Games Metro Sim Hustle

Take the reins of an underground commuter train as you hustle your way to the top in a city packed full of real estate, cheap entertainment, and felony street crime.

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Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/882250/Metro_Sim_Hustle/​

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Departure-Interactive-1517900588512122/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroSimHustle

 

I really love the graphics, very clean and elegant, reminds me a bit of Mirror's Edge. Will this have VR support? Looks like something that is very immersive and would be fun to do in VR (sorry if that was specified, viewing from my phone).

 

Is there going to be a demo?

I have some friends that are really into sim games and would probably love this. I myself don't play a lot of sims but, I haven't seen a train sim mixed with The Sims type side activities. Helps mixing it up, I like your approach to this genre. Even as stated, I don't play a lot of sim games, you have peaked my interest, well done sir!

-Vincent

 

@gpgothic Cheers, likely there will not be a demo, however you can get a full copy on Steam Early Access on September 28 Thanks for your support. The train simulation is easy to jump into, but does require a lot of focus to become an expert!

Today, I have done some modeling/texturing passes to beef up the visual quality, and some boring stuff like revised door animations and completing the consumable item sounds. So now, every type of consumable item has a unique sound that is played when the item is used.

How about a drink to relax after a long day?

 

Looks cool, are you using 3rd party shadow technique or unity build in shadow?

 

Hi @TeohRIK the item images in the game, like those cocktails, are rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 3 and imported into Unity for use in the game inventory. The Unity scenes are mostly stock, except for Unity's proprietary plugins and a volumetric light system which I got from here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/true-volumetric-lights-now-open-source.390818/

Here's a sample of some of the consumable items in-game

 

What steps do you take to generate those GIFs?

 

Hi @gpgothic most GIFs are first recorded using Microsoft's game recorder (Windows Key + G)

Then the video output is processed through Adobe Media Encoder to eliminate artifacts that can occur through Microsoft's codec (usually results in some frame glitches in some software if this step is not taken)

Next, the processed video is imported into After Effects, time condensed usually to < 3sec, and sent back to Adobe Media Encoder for final export as H264 mp4

The completed video is imported into Photoshop using Import > Video Frames to Layers. I usually drop the resolution to around 500 x 300 pixels and then add the game logo on top of all layers, the logo overlay doesn't need to be added to the timeline.

Export > Save for Web to save the GIF, I usually use settings like this:



I always leave it set to Adaptive & Diffusion, modifying the Colors, Dither, and Web Snap seem to have the greatest impact on file size, fortunately the file size can be previewed before export. And of course the image resolution has a major impact on the file size. I always aim to get filesize under 3MB, more than that and they seem to be either rejected by some websites and/or take a long time to load.

The whole process probably seems a bit labor intensive for just making a GIF, but the GIF can be valuable marketing tool and once you get used to the process you can probably crank them out pretty quick!

 

Thanks for all this great info! I will definetly have a look. These look really nice

 

What kind of optimization have you done? LOD, occlusion culling?...

Thanks,
Vincent

 

Hi @gpgothic yes indeed for most consumable items I have made three LODs and a custom collider, this is important because the player can drop all of their inventory items into any environment, causing a lot of rendering overhead.

Also use of light probes and yes, occlusion culling for most objects.

The environments use mostly baked lighting, but there are also interactive lights that the player can use, usually in the apartments, and those lights are realtime with global illumination.

The reflection probes are set through a script that updates them for each hour of gameplay time that passes, but they will also update if the player flicks a lightswitch so that the updated lighting can be taken into account. Without this set up, the reflections from the daytime would be present at nighttime, which looks really weird in my testing. The other option would be to update the reflection probes each frame, but that is super expensive and I would not recommend it.

When the game is complete, most objects will use custom colliders. The player can drop their items on a coutertop, or in a sink, or a toilet, so the custom colliders have to have just enough detail to accommodate this feature but not as much geometry as the mesh renderer itself.

Many models in the game use baked normal maps, which can fake the appearance of curved edges. This helps immensely to cut down on geometry, for example the following asset, a range, consists of only 326 triangles. I didn't even bother making LODs for this object because the geometry is already so low. The drawback is that a high poly model also has to be created to bake down to the low poly, but the result is totally worth it if you have the extra time.

Also added a bonus render,

 

This looks pretty awesome.

 

Lately I've been fixing bugs and doing some revisions of the inventory item icons, here's a screenshot of the inventory. You can examine items from the inventory to check their description and effects, move the items around, drop the items in the environment, and you may also trade items with characters you encounter in the game.

Some characters will pay a premium for certain items, while other characters may pay less, or not be interested in the item at all. You can find out more about what a character is interested in by chatting with them and asking questions.

 

:O wow amazing job on the graphics and textures!!!!

 

Thanks for your support @salfingerandrew

Working on boring stuff lately, quick shot of an elevator found in some apartment buildings

 

Wow! The level of quality is gorgeous, keep up!

 

Thanks a lot for your support @QuadArt

Today I have a sample of the mid range apartment, it is roughly 700sq ft and has some nice amenities including the shower, bed, and toilet, that will boost your stats better than lower end apartments.

 

Been doing some fine tuning and work on the city hub, a quick shot of the metro train