Moody Non-Photo-Realistic Driving

An anonymous reader points out a project called Drivey, which he describes as "a dark and fascinating example of 2.xD [not quite 3d] graphical rendering. This tiny, free [as in beer] demo gives you an amazingly compelling driving experience. To quote the author, 'It was conceived as a driving simulator for old farts like myself, who are kind of nostalgic for the "old days" [ca. 1985] but are not so thick as to believe that the games from the 80s were actually in any way superior to the games we play today.' Even works fine under WINE!"

Comments

Well, gee whiz

[katana]

Hold on while I just go ahead and download an executable called Drivey through a link that was submitted by an anonymous author. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Well, gee whiz

[OpCode42]

Exactly the same risks as downloading a tarball of sourcecode and compiling it. Oh, you read every line of source you download? Including the configure script, which may well contain a trojan? Ignore me then!

Style

[CleverNickedName]

here is a quick pic.

Simple cell-shading done with style. This is what's missing from most games. Real style.

If I wanted photo-realism, I'd get up from my PC and head out the front door. Games such as WoW, Rez, Killer 7 and Ico have shown that a little creativity in the design can go a long way. It can also be easy on the gpu.

Re:Style

[badasscat]

Its a _RACING_ game.

Its one of the very few genres were maximum realism really is wanted, because everybody known how it look to drive and have expectations how it should look like when driving, well, faster...

You've obviously never played games like Burnout, Outrun, Daytona USA, Ridge Racer, Wipeout, F-Zero, or any of the other myriad of racing games where realism is most definitely not the goal...

And to the "style" of this "demo". Well, i cant call it style, and i cant call it a demo. Its more like a short looping flash movie, and the "style" is using only one colour and making everything so dark you cant see there isnt anything too see.

And from this, I can tell you've obviously never played any of the prior art listed on this page, such as Night Driver or Speed Freak.

Racing games are not a genre that requires any more realism than any other genre. The point of a racing game is to have fun. There is no need for them to be realistic - there is only a need to make you feel like you are driving something.

This guy does call this a "driving simulation", which implies realism, but even that's a misnomer. There's nothing about the word "simulation" that implies realistic visuals - the dictionary definition that applies in this case is "Representation of the operation or features of one process or system through the use of another: computer simulation of an in-flight emergency."

And to further that example, modern commercial flight sims (you know, the ones that cost $2 million each) have less realistic graphics than commercially-available flight simulators available at your local GameStop. Because simulating the inner workings of something is not really about texture-mapping every single crack on the asphalt.

Re:Style

[Kinetix303]

It's a 500k demo. Stop complaining.

Please.

It's just a fun little project. You're going to give yourself a heart attack trying to find fault.

Re:Burnout ruled

[Jaruzel]

Then you, my friend, are missing the point.

Not all games/demos have to be at the burning edge of graphics.

15 years on, and loads of people still play lemmings. The emulator scene for old 16 bit machines, and even old arcade machines is bigger than ever. All these people can't be wrong.

All modern games have, is their graphics. Most of them don't even have enjoyable game-play. Graphics are not everything, calling a game with low-spec graphics, rubbish, is like saying Impressionists couldn't paint.

-Jar.