Know how much is left!
1 January, 2019
In this blog post, I’ll wrap up what has happened recently to this project, and share some important stuff!
So normally in summer people have some free time to do their passion projects, so did I. I started with the UI designs. as it was planned in its ToDo list in “Trello” first. Watch the video below to see all the recent changes to ATG.
New User Interface system
To start with the UI, I tried asking people what a good and a bad UI would look like in the official Discord of Around The Ground: Kish – which by the way, I suggest you to join it!
The bad UI the good UI
I quickly realized that people don’t like the complex menus but a minimalist, modern tiled-looking design. For example, Forza Horizon 2 and GranTurismo 6 look simple and modern, while Gran Turismo 5 has a very complex UI system that forces you to spend a lot of time doing one operation. For example, If You want to choose a car for a race, after hitting several buttons GT5 lets you know that the car is not available for the race. And instead of showing a list of cars to you, you have to go back and see several UI panels and finally choose a car! There are several articles related to this GT5 issue, I recommend you to read them. On the other hand, GT6 fixed all the issues and I noticed a lot of people admired the design.
The process
So, based on the response I got from the Discord users, I designed a concept UI on a paper – image below. Sorry for the super low-quality image as I didn’t have a better camera than my Laptop’s webcam at the time!
The initial ideas of a UI for the video game
And after working for days, I turned the idea into a real concept UI. Mind you, the below images are not in-game scenes!
The concept UI of ATG’s main UI menu
You can see the main UI menu above, a tile-based deisng with blurred transparent background. You select a button and it would have a pinkish-red border with white text.
You select a tile, the image of the buttons would be more vivid and looks sharper
The pop-up UI of ATG:Kish, Added palm tree and the Persian “Sarv” designs for more Tropical and Persian flavor.
General ideas for the HUDs and common UI designs.
In the image above, you’ll see: The mirrors which are only visible when you push a button, The speedo and the rest of the dashboard which you can hide/show, HUD elements and the command center UI at the middle and right position of the picture. With command center UI, you can quickly control the wipers blinkers and the common features of your vehicle in the simulator software.
The new garage scene UIs
After a month of working on UI system, I’ve designed the new UI system based on the concept UIs. In the two images below, you can see how different the UI of preAlpha and the newer Beta version of ATG Kish look like! Still, the UI system is in the development stage and you can see how much is left for the UI system in the official ToDo list here and here.
The pre-alpha version of the UI
The actual current beta version of the UI
The Pause Menu
In addition to all of these updates, I also worked on the basics of the Pause Menu of the project based on the concept designs. The two images below show the actual current in-game menus. These UIs are still not fully done and you can track them with the Official ATG Kish ToDo list.
version 0.1 Beta of the Pause Menu of ATG Kish
The v0.1 beta of the UI menu
There are more! freebies!
Download a tech demo of its physics system – for everyone!
As a “thank you” for following this passion project, I’m going to show you a demo of a physics engine, I’ll be using this Physics engine for this software. This is not a part of the ATG: Kish simulator indie software yet. However, you can play with the physics engine as a beta demo.
About the demo
This demo only demonstrates the future vehicle physics of ATG: Kish simulator software, the graphics, and all the other game-play features are obviously NOT in this demo.
The physics engine is currently based on nVidia’s PhysX 3.4. It is made by Edy Garcia for Unity3D. Check its website for more info.
Requirements
You’ll need:
- A Logitech G27, G29 or TrustMaster TX500RS wheel (recommended), or a game-pad (not recommended), or a keyboard (not recommended).
- A Modern Windows operating system. However, if you go to Edy’s website there are Mac-compatible demos available there.
- A Decent computer
Download Links
Visit the above website link to know more about the demos!
- The Pickup demo which is recommended for knowing the overall features of this physics engine. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD PICKUP DEMO
- The VW demo, Play this if you like to set lap records and have fun in a race car! CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE VW DEMO
Download another tech demo – for game devs!
As a token of my appreciation to people who design and develop free plugins and assets, and also to you for following this project, And also to help the indie game devs, I shared the world’s very first dynamic water-drop on windshield FX for Unity for free! This asset was designed with the help of people in PolyCount back in 2014-2015. I hope you guys try to improve it and use it in your projects, don’t forget to include the credits in your projects tho! Check out this updated blog post for more info!
What’s next? An important message!
As I no longer have free time to continue this project due to education and some personal life issues, the development of this passion project is now stopped. It is not permanent tho! if you care about this project – well thank you for that, I appreciate it – then stay tuned. As this project is literally like a car project, you may finish it or may not. Follow this to see what’s next for this free indie passion-project!
Kind regards.
Dan.