Driving
From Shadowrun: Awakened
Riggers and street sams alike enjoy a nice Sunday drive (with heavy weapons fire and explosions!), meaning that driving will be a very important section of gameplay.
First off, movement should be real-time and only weapons firing and aiming will be channeled through the rules. The statistics of vehicles will lend to their performance (IE high handling == good control in game).
- Combat! This includes how LoneStar (and maybe even DocWagon) get involved.
- Racing. As in, there will be some underground races for riggers and that gameplay needs to be just as good as combat.
- Avoiding traffic and overall EXTREME travel. If we could make dodging through traffic, finding alternate paths through town, and running from the cops enough fun, then travel will never be boring for a rigger (since they will always be needing to move their pimped out vehicles).
On the technical side of cars, etc. This will be a big spotlight for physics in the game and one place where we would be willing to show more flexibility than others. It could be a good proving ground for physics in other sections of the game. Wrecking adds another dimension. if you have a Bulldog, it's going to take a hit (or give one) better than an Excelsior. As such, someone in the right vehicle may just plow through traffic rather than go around.
99% of cars in SR have an auto-pilot system; we could just have all foot traffic interactive areas by auto-pilot only (say city regulates traffic with a wireless engage system and fancy communication protocols to monitor traffic).
Also, we would put a lot of work into segregating roadways from foot traffic (by making a lot of sky bridges for pedestrians, raised highways, etc). Basically, Seattle, Bellevue, and other cities take pains to do this whenever possible.
Technical Implementation
Cars will be ODE objects with specially turned friction, weight, size, and application of force. Generally, cars in video games suffer from certain common implementation problems. These includes lack of realism, likelihood to suddenly flip over, and poor AI control. ODE can help us with simulating these vehicles, but the only way of assuring quality is to place it as the most important requirement.
Cars will require their own AI scheme to control.
Vehicle mechanics are lower priority than core mechanics dealing strictly with characters, but vehicles are still a requirement for 1.0.
