Dev Blog #2 | Company history and the direction we're going in
Author: MikeyShines,
published 2 years ago,
[h2]Hello Drivers and Engineers! [/h2]
Welcome to our second blog post! We thought we might take a little bit of a different approach in this post and properly introduce ourselves to the community. We have some established fans from the [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1330660/Train_Life_A_Railway_Simulator/]Train Life[/url] community and now, with the development of [b]Urban Venture[/b], more and more people are coming to get to know us.
We know you all are hungry for more information regarding [b]Urban Venture[/b] as well as [i]Train Life: A Railway Simulator[/i] (Trust us, we are eager to give it to you!) but we thought it would be cool to also take a step back, and give the community some insight on who we are and what we plan to achieve. We will be sharing more information regarding updates and news for both Urban Venture and Train Life in the near future. So, who doesn’t love a little bit of a back-story? Let’s dive right in!
[h2]Get To Know Us[/h2]
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42073432/d39a6af8649300d187497df9899ac74b49e80d66.jpg[/img]
We started off as a software house in 2014 specializing in training simulations. Since then, we have been creating professional simulators, e.g. for trainees in the United States who were learning to drive real-life trains, and we used this as the basis for our business today.
After several years of hard work we gained the knowledge to create vast worlds and immersive simulators for the gaming community. We have specialists from all over the world and right now we’re about 70 people strong all having experience in the gaming industry and beyond. In our everyday work, we use modern equipment and in-house technology such as Traffic AI™ and City Generator, tools we use to make the games you see today and will make in the future. We’ll talk more about those in a bit!
[h2]We Make Premium Simulation Games[/h2]
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42073432/4b2ede90620d929f389f05915b8a5eb848c2047d.png[/img]
We’re an independent game-developer focusing on premium vehicle simulators. As you guys may know, we currently have 2 titles; [b]Train Life: A Railway Simulator[/b] and [b]Urban Venture[/b]. We value quality over quantity and we believe that gameplay is king. Our technologies let us implement scale & details easily, mapping real life cities and streets while also giving your fellow drivers on the road believable actions & reactions. With those taken care of we can focus on making sure the core foundation of our gameplay: the driving, the progression, and the exploration, all feel and work great.
It’s also very important for us that our games are available on all platforms - not just PC but also consoles. As we deal with COVID-19 and other difficulties, computers and technology have played a major role in our daily lives. We want to cater to people from all walks of life that play our games. From the hardcore sim fans with years of experience and an intricate simulator setup, to the casual player that just wants to relax after work.
[h2]Let’s Talk Tech[/h2]
We've developed two pieces of technology that we mentioned earlier in this blog, [b]Traffic AI[/b]™ and [b]City Generator[/b]. We use these technologies inside of our video games to bring players a fully immersive experience.
[b]Traffic AI[/b] is an external library which places cars on virtual roads that behave just like they do in the real world. We have used this technology in real life autonomous vehicles to teach their intelligent algorithms. If you’re interested for more information, feel free to check out [url=https://simteract.com/projects/traffic-ai/]this link[/url].
[previewyoutube=gQxyweSfQzM;full][/previewyoutube]
[b]City Generator[/b] is an advanced tool that allows us to instantly create virtual environments in 3D, ready to be implemented into any game engine. We use [url=https://www.openstreetmap.org/]OSM[/url] (Open Street Maps) data to automatically create and generate cities where we can go back and make edits and changes as necessary. You can learn more about how we do this, by checking out the video we made describing this process in some more detail.
[previewyoutube=iiHCNpoMZq0;full][/previewyoutube]
With that, we think that’s about it from our side! We wanted to give you a bit of background and share a bit of our roots before we start to dive into sharing the development of [b]Urban Venture[/b]. We’re happy to be part of the community and you guys have shown us a great amount of passion for the games we make. In turn, this gives us the motivation and focus to bring you guys games that you will play for hundreds, if not thousands of hours in the future. Without the community, we wouldn’t be in the position we’re in today. Thank you.
Stay tuned for more, there is much to be done!
Mike
Simteract Community Manager