Devlog #9 — Five towns, and the world starts to look lived-in (and left)

The last few rounds were all about cars. This one finally turns to the world they drive through. We cleared out the old barns and house clusters on a copy of the main map and built five abandoned towns in their place, plus finished off the roof-rack load-out and turned a couple of tools into weapons.

Five abandoned towns

The south-east town's main street: diner, shop and dead power lines

Each town is laid out along the roads that were already on the map, and we chose a style for each one based on the road shape and real-world country towns:

South-east farm town. A tight main street with a diner, a shop, a garage and a gas station, thinning out into farm houses along the road. The big steel power pylons that already crossed this area stay, and the houses are kept clear of them.
East and Central. Main-street towns. The central one sits on a junction, so it has the most to offer: shop, diner, corner shop and a garage, with houses running back from the junction.
North and South-west. Spread-out towns: houses scattered along a curving highway and a rural lane, with big yards and long gaps between them.

Every town gets 8 to 14 buildings, one or two of them burnt out or caved in, fences and yard clutter (bins, barbecues, swings, mailboxes, garden furniture), dead street lights and signs, six to ten wrecked cars (one of them crashed in the middle of the main street), a barricade of concrete blocks, sandbags and wire, and 10 to 17 loot crates using the same loot tables as the rest of the map.

The houses

The buildings are the PostApocalyptic bundle's modular house kit, put together the way the pack's own examples do it rather than as one-off meshes. That gave us four house layouts, an L-shaped house and a garage. Ivy hangs off the walls in curtains, floors have debris, and the bases are wrapped in weeds, long grass and rubbish, kept clear of doors and steps so you can still get in.

The burnt houses use scorched wall and roof textures; the caved-in ones have lost their upper floor. On slopes the houses sit on a low concrete foundation so they don't float or sink into the hill.

Power lines that move

Wooden power poles now run through the towns with the cables strung pole to pole. The cables sway gently in the wind, using the same approach as the cables in another pack we own. So far we've only checked the sway by comparing editor frames; nobody has stood under them in game and watched them move yet.

Checked at eye level

Aerial shots hide a lot, so we jumped into every town in Play and looked around from the road. That caught 41 wrecks resting about half a metre in the air and five loot crates stuck under the floors of the diners and one ruined house. All fixed.

Eye-level views from all five towns in Play

It also caught a physics crash. With 41 wrecked cars all simulating at once, the engine fell over the first time we jumped into a town. So wrecks and unfinished cars now switch their physics off once they've been sitting still on the ground for two seconds. They cost nothing, can't be shoved around, and can't crash the game. As soon as a car is complete again, meaning its engine parts, doors and wheels are all back, physics comes back on and it drives normally. In the test map 89 of 101 cars froze themselves, and a wreck we repaired came straight back to life. No crashes since.

Roof-rack load-out

The roof rack from last time now has things to carry:

Jerry cans strap onto the left of the rack. Each adds 20 L on top of a 60 L tank, and any overflow goes back to you at the engine bay. The driving HUD now shows fuel in litres.
Bedroll. Strap it onto a car's rack and you can respawn beside that car, with a five-minute cooldown. It doesn't work on wrecks.
Weapons case on the right of the rack opens as 12 slots of car storage.
Light bar bolts to the roof in front of the rack and turns on with the headlights.
Plow bolts onto a fitted bull bar.

A loaded roof: rack, jerry cans, bedroll and weapons case

Tools you can hit things with

The spiked hammer and spiked wrench now swing as melee weapons. The wrench still does its day job too: left click unbolts armour plates when the "Remove armour" prompt shows.

Smaller fixes

Car lamp lenses no longer show a checkerboard placeholder.
Off-road wheels face the right way round.
Oak trees now block you only at the trunk instead of with an invisible wall the size of the whole canopy.
A developer hint in the pause menu is hidden.

What's next

Walk every street in all five towns and go inside the houses and shops to check the interiors.
Then move the towns from the test copy onto the main map.
Longer term: stand under the power lines in game and tune the sway.

The towns are still on a test copy of the map, so none of this is in the main map yet.