A study, concluded in 2019
The first Ground. An open world rebuild of Kish Island in Unity, built to establish what one person could do with a real place. It reached its conclusion in 2019 and became the benchmark everything since has been measured against.
Kish is a real island in the Persian Gulf, and as far as I could tell nobody had ever put it in a game. ATG Kish was an attempt to fix that: an open world driving and lifestyle simulator built in Unity, on an island modelled from GIS data, roughly twice the area of the map in GTA V.
I was a computer science student while I built it, and I ran it like a serious piece of work for two years: my own money, my own hours, and a scope chosen to test the limits rather than to be safe.
It did what it was set up to do. It established how to model a real place, how to make a car feel right, and exactly how much an island costs to build. That is the whole value of a study, and it is why Pardis and ATG Racing start from solid ground rather than from guesses.
The pre-alpha showcase, recorded during development.
The parts that were built and, in one case, given away.
A dynamic water drop windshield effect, built in 2014 and 2015 with help from the PolyCount community and inspired by DriveClub. It is the first one I know of that was publicly available for Unity, it was released free, and people still write to me about it.
Read the postKish modelled in engine from GIS data, about twice the area of the GTA V map, with the road network, coastline and landmarks in place.
Drivetrain, tyre and suspension simulation using Vehicle Physics Pro by Edy. That was the right tool at the time. The current projects run on NWH Vehicle Physics 2 instead.
A rebuilt car customization system, and support for adding your own cars and parts to the game.
A custom synthesizer for engine audio, built to avoid the layered loop sound that most projects settle for. That thread continues today in the vehicle noise synthesizer on the docs site.
A full pass on the look of the game and several iterations of the interface, including a concept UI that never shipped.
See the UI workThese were the questions people asked while the project was alive. The answers are kept in the past tense, because that is where the project is.
A driving simulator, and a lifestyle one. You drove cars you liked around a real island, explored it, and lived there. Kish is Persian, and it had never been simulated before.
Steam for PC, because that is the easy answer that comes to mind first when someone asks where a PC game would go. It was never the point of the exercise. Kish concluded as a benchmark for what ATG became, and a released game was not part of that plan.
If a sponsor or the island authorities ever wanted a full Kish built properly, the groundwork is here and the answer would be worth having. That is a possibility rather than a plan.
It had answered its question, and studies end when they do that. Education and life were taking the hours, and the sensible move was to carry what Kish established into Pardis, on an island scaled to one person, rather than keep extending a test.
People who like simulators. It was not an arcade game, and it was not aimed at younger players.
No. It was a passion project, paid for out of my own pocket, and so is everything that followed it.
I designed it. The name reads down the letters: A round, T he, G round.
The project had threads on a few community forums during those years. They are still up, and they are a fair record of how the work actually went.
