DEVELOPMENT BLOG

Spawner path visualization

I’m always looking for ways to improve player experience. When I developed Traffic Brains 2 in the early stages some of the features were rushed. Now, when the game is released I have to improve on some aspects of the game.

One feature, that I received quite a few comments about is the spawner’s path visualization. Players have a hard time understanding where is what.

Those arrows are ok when there are not many spawners. But, when things get serious it is hard to see through that clutter…

I have changed the arrows to simple lines, with a little bit offset from each other.

Is it an improvement? What do you think? I find it easier to follow lines, than arrows in the previous version.

By Arunas Pangonis, ago

Traffic Brains 2 tutorial update

I have received good feedback from Reddit r/gameDesign and I have made an update on my tutorial.

Things that I changed:

  • I ditched that talking guy with his wall of text.
  • Removed long animated intro.
  • The Player has control from the beginning.
  • Added highlight which buttons to press with simple explanations.
  • I made it more clear which frame is selected by darkening not selected frames.
  • Added congratulations, when the tutorial is finished with 3 stars drop, which doesn’t actually mean anything. (I think this part is a little bit stupid, but I need somehow inform the player, that tutorial is finished)
  • Added a few tutorial elements to the first level.

Do you see how it can be improved more? Maybe change the wording or pacing? Is it clear to you?

I’ll try to release this version and after some time I will post statistics to check if it is any better than the previous

By Arunas Pangonis, ago

Level editor preview pt1

A few people asked me about my level editor. So I thought I would make a video explaining some parts of it and show how I’m creating levels for my game Traffic Brains 2.

This is the first part, where I’m showing how roads are placed, buildings created and terrain modified.

By Arunas Pangonis, ago

Uncontrolled intersection better, than controlled?

While creating and testing levels with new features and road signs. I’ve noticed quite a big problem. Traffic flow is better when you just leave all traffic lights green. Basically make an uncontrolled intersection and let the cars figure it out for themself. Yes, cars sometimes crash, maybe more often, than with controlled intersections. But overall intersection throughput is much better.

As you imagine this is not very good for gameplay. Why bother to set up traffic lights if it is just better to leave them always green. Problem is, that the cars are a little bit like daredevils and drive through intersections very confidently. My first thought was to detect such an uncontrolled intersection, where all traffic lights are green, and upon car entering the intersection, make it more stupid, disable some detection colliders. So more crashes would accrue.

I did not like this idea much. My car’s AI is not perfect. They crash a lot already. So I did. So I made them drive through uncontrolled intersections very slow. It makes sense. You just don’t fly through an uncontrolled junction. You stop, take a look around, and approach slowly.

Now if you leave all traffic lights green, for cars it takes much longer to reach the destination. Problem solved. What do you think?

By Arunas Pangonis, ago

Pathfinding nightmare

Hi, guys. I just one to make a short devlog about what I was doing recently.

So I’m working on a road signs system for my game Traffic brains. I want the player to be able to easily divert traffic and optimize traffic flow through some intersections.

When I started, I thought, How hard can it be. I will just place some roadblocks in my path-finding algorithm. So yeah, needless to say, how wrong I was. I was stuck with this feature for 3 weeks.

So many corner cases. Sometimes pathfinding algorithm will get stuck in the loop or just can’t find the path, even tho it is clearly visible. At least for me.

At first, I thought I don’t need to visualize how my algorithm works. I will debug my code with breakpoints. Just nope. I’m not a genius. I forget numbers fast and unless I’m drawing everything on the paper, not gonna happen.

So I’ve invested some time to make crude visualization, which saved me a ton of time trying to figure out what the hell is happening.

So here are the results of my new road signs feature. I’m pretty happy with how it works. It really adds a new dimension to the gameplay. And sparks new ideas for new levels.

There are more types of road signs. You can increase the speed of the traffic on the open road or bypass. Block road altogether or just limit trucks’ movement.

By Arunas Pangonis, ago

Dude, where is my road?

This week I’ve been working on a new game mode implementation. Players can pause the game, adjust traffic lights, and then continue traffic flow. This is different from other modes because previously when you stop traffic all cars were removed and each time you start traffic, everything starts from the beginning. Cars were spawning at their starting spawn points. All path findings were when the player tapped “GO”. And if there were no available paths for any car, the player was informed and simulation could not be started…

With this new play mode, where the player can pause the simulation, adjust traffic lights, and maybe even block roads, there are many tricky situations. What if the car can’t reach its destination? What if the traffic light in front of the car is blocked and will never turn green.

It was an interesting week, at first I thought it will be an easy job. How hard it can be? 😀

Check the video, where I’m trolling testing with a yellow car by changing paths.

By Arunas Pangonis, ago