city + bus

just some pics from our latest product, released december 2007
hard working crew on this:
- florian proksch (programming)
- sebastian louven (lead level design)
- dan silverman (assistant level design)
- john konke (assistant level design)
- philip höffmann (lead model design)

just looking for some thoughts on this...









http://www.photon-interactive.de/City-Bus/City-Bus%202007-12-10%2017-32-18-57.jpg
http://www.photon-interactive.de/City-Bus/City-Bus%202007-12-10%2017-32-36-32.jpg
http://www.photon-interactive.de/City-Bus/City-Bus%202007-12-10%2017-33-12-42.jpg
http://www.photon-interactive.de/City-Bus/City-Bus%202007-12-10%2017-39-37-43.jpg
http://www.photon-interactive.de/City-Bus/City-Bus%202007-12-10%2017-43-18-95.jpg
http://www.photon-interactive.de/City-Bus/City-Bus%202007-12-10%2017-48-15-21.jpg
http://www.photon-interactive.de/City-Bus/City-Bus%202007-12-10%2017-49-04-32.jpg
http://www.photon-interactive.de/City-Bus/City-Bus%202007-12-10%2017-50-12-90.jpg
http://www.photon-interactive.de/City-Bus/City-Bus%202007-12-10%2017-52-13-00.jpg
http://www.photon-interactive.de/City-Bus/City-Bus%202007-12-10%2017-53-08-12.jpg

It looks amazing! The city looks very realistic and the effects (like the snow on one of your screenshots) are very well done. It's also an original idea.

is played the german demo wich is available here: http://www.icebytes.de/uploads/media/Busdemo_setup_03.exe

good thing is, the graphics looks pretty good, a bit too much shaders for my taste! however its unplayable at high settings shown in the screenshot with my 1.8ghz dual core, 2 gig of ram and geforce 7600. i really get like half a second lags.

what i did not like is the car ai, the cars seem to have a pretty stupid ai wich would disturb me if i would like to buy me a bus sim. as i would say traffic is a major feature in this kind of game.

the menu + music is pretty cool though. good luck with sales. ohh and i forgot, i never saw streets so clean in germany

@Ulf, siehste mal da hab ich mir richtig viel mühe mit der Kehrmaschine gegeben was

cYa Sebastian

Well as I'm still downloading the demo I can only comment on the given pictures. It's really looking very nice although there is a downside imo: The bus interior...

On the forth screenshot for example (the one from inside the bus):
Have a look at the floor which covers the right front wheel. With only 4 edges for a 180° round face that's really very low-res. Especially when you look at the street lights which show up in huge numbers and have a 90° rounding at the top with multiple times as much polies just for that...

In addition to the not so poly-rich interior its textures also are bad in comparison to the rest - have a look at the ceiling for example (you can hardly call that a texture but some kind of color gradient )...

I mean it's not that just some more polies and a bit higher texture resolution would make a big deal - it's just that the bus has the main attention and when it looks noticeable worse than the environment where not everything is always that present it's strange in my opinion. I think this also kills the "ego-perspective" which is shown on the third picture - a five edged back mirror and cockpit isn't that appealing...

But as I said the rest really looks appealing and I'm curious how the gameplay is going to be...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

Ok - I played a bit in the meantime and have some issues:

1.)
The first thing you do to skip those intro screens is to press escape - it's bad when this throws you back to desktop...

2.)
It seems your game doesn't like 5.1 Audio Systems because I only have sound on a single box (which somehow sounds bad). On the intro screen (and at the beginning of the first level) it just played from the left box - later on in the game when driving around the speakers started switching through (I think it had something to do with the direction I was driving to i.e. North, West, etc.)...

3.)
The performance really is bad (although I don't know yet which option is the worst fps killer). But with a system that can handle Crysis on medium to high settings you shouldn't have to put the settings down to a rather medium/low basis for the given visuals. Ok I shouldn't compare a top notch AAA engine with A7 but still the performance was bad for the given visuals...

4.)
I found the controls rather difficult and it's often hard to say when you collide with something and when not...

5.)
Well those "You've run a red light"-penalties are a nice thing but totally useless as you can just go driving on the sidewalk without punishment and thus evade those penalties at numerous places...

6.)
A tutorial or training mission would be nice. Or at least put on the map as a standard so new players at least can figure out where to drive to without looking up the whole keyset again...

EDIT:
Sorry for double posting btw...

EDIT2:
I now have found some more things:

7.)
There is something wrong with the penalties as you already get them when you run a yellow light (and yes - it really was yellow )...

8.)
I think you really should do an own button for erasing an account because that question window popping up each time you just want to play on is bothersome...

9.)
How's the resolution determined or is it fixed to 1280x1024 or something which some people even cannot play (properly)?!

10.)
The standard keyset for the bus doors is confusing. I mean the camera views the back door on the left and the front door on the right, the interface for the doors starts with the back door on the left but still the standard y, x, c keyset handels it just the other way round i.e. y opens front door, x middle door and c back door. When I played with this setting I pressed the wrong buttons every 2nd station as it really is a contradiction between your perception and the way you control it...

11.)
Found this level bug:


I found it quite strange that this "house-touching" didn't show up during testing because this is what you stare at for the entire time you have to wait on the last stop of the first level...

12.)
I don't know why but this writing of the highscore data crashed my PC after completing the first level. The music kept playing on but nothing happened for minutes and as I even couldn't get back to desktop despite all key combos you can do I had to reset...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

Ich sage mal nicht viel, da schon einiges genannt wurde.

1. Einige grobe Fehler sollten bereits hausintern eliminiert werden. Z.B.
- Kollision, wo keine ist
- die Ampel bei Gelb zu überfahren ist kein Verstoß gegen die StVO.

Nehmt Euch doch einfach die Zeit für einen großen teaminternen Test.
4Players.de & Co. werden es Euch danken.

2. Wenn ich mitten in einem Spiel die ESC-Taste drücke, sollte es möglich sein, die Tastenbelegung anzusehen und auch verändern zu können.
Sowas verlange ich von jedem Spiel. Egal ob mit A6/A7 gemacht oder der CryEngine 2.

Love the looks and the atmosphere, really impresive work here.
I find the overall tonal blending to be as good as the Cadiz scene, very satisfying to see members producing such quality works, keep it up please

Ich habs noch nicht gespielt.

Auf den Bildern sieht es eigentlich nicht übel aus, etwas leblos vielleicht, aber das hat vermutlich auch Gründe des begrenzten Budgets etc.

Was mir hingegen negativ auffällt, ist dieses seltsame "Glühen" vieler Häuser. Das läßt igrendwie so ne seltsame Endzeitstimmung aufkommen...

Hi!

Das Spiel gibt es schon längere Zeit u.A. auch über gamesload.
Ich habe mir dort die Kritiken angesehen und den Trailer:

Die Modelle und die Levelgestaltung (Gesamteindruck) finde ich gelungen.
Die Musik erinnert mich an Trophy Brass Fishing, aber ist auch hier gut angebracht.
Der Trailer und die Kritiken haben mich davon letztendlich abgehalten, das Spiel zu spielen.

Mein Fazit: eine sehr schöne Arbeit und ein großer Schritt für das iceBytes-Team!

Was mir immer wieder auffällt sind die anscheinend fehlenden Tests der Spiele und das zu seltene Einholen aussenstehender Meinungen währende der Entwicklungsphase.

A simple but very important marketing Information:

looking at the page:

http://www.bussimulatorgame.de/

I did not find a link to purchase the game, even after 2 Minutes of looking at the page.

This should always be an option to see quikly! and on every
page of the website!

A customer who want to purchase the game should never! have
trouble to find that related information.

Put a link on the top banner for example.


Edit: The Demo always crashes after entering the username and starting the game
on my computer. No crash with acknex message, the game is simply exited "exe does not function anymore"
(Windows Vista)

I actually like the idea quite much, it's sort of unique if you look it at the practical side From what I've seen from the screens I can only say that it looks great so far, every scene element is 'compatible' with eachother which is a pleasure to the eye
Keep up the work but judging from the list of team members, I guess this will not be a problem ^^

Cheers

Frazzle

Well...the screenshots look nice. Unfortunately many things concerning code-architecture and gameplay seem to have gone wrong...considering that this was a commercial release (I'm talking about things that have been mentioned either here or in the forums of the bus-simulator homepage).
Also I'd have expected to be mentioned (for some of my plants you are using) as this is required and clearly said in my EULA. You might want to fix this with a patch...soon to be released.

I dont like to be negative...but in this case I have no other option.

@Loopix , which Plants do you mean? Ive done the Leveldesign and im sure that ive never seen your Plants in this Projekt... And i had all Files !

Show us a Picture pls...

cYa Sebastian

Mainly the pinetrees in the winter landscapes...
http://www.photon-interactive.de/City-Bus/City-Bus%202007-12-10%2017-53-08-12.jpg
...and some of the smaler plants in the gardens.

It's really important to respect the licence agreements when using other peoples artwork. Such lack of proffesionality can easily lead to loss of publishing partners if one has to take legal actions.

Ok youre Right, theyre looks very simillar to yours...Ill Contact maybenew to proof it...

cya Sebastian

Thanks for all the comments.
the game is now in the 5th week since the release and have been and in some places still are in the top 25 of some major pc game charts. Amazon had the game in single digits in the games-in-general category before and after christmas.

Quote:

---

Mainly the pinetrees in the winter landscapes...
http://www.photon-interactive.de/City-Bus/City-Bus%202007-12-10%2017-53-08-12.jpg
...and some of the smaler plants in the gardens.

It's really important to respect the licence agreements when using other peoples artwork. Such lack of proffesionality can easily lead to loss of publishing partners if one has to take legal actions.

---

Your grass pack is used in this game, but the Important!.txt explicitly states that no credits are required.
The pine trees seem to have found their way in the project from a RAR-Sourcefile WOODLAND_TREES.rar not including any statement about terms of use.
I also have a tropical model pack of you containing a terms of use TXT stating that credits are required. This file is dated 2007, the other two files are dated 2006, so I assumed the terms of the first document applied to the tree package as well and therefore no credits were given.
But, as we have an patch/update release coming up the next couple of days please provide me with your full name and I will include it in the credits, even if I don't have to - but just to be fair.

this has nothing to do with being unprofessional, you simply released old material with new terms of use and forgot that some people might have gotten the material before you changed the terms. I usually give credit even if I don't have to, but we were in a rush to finish this game and it got lost.