Hello everyone,
We hope that everyone has had an excellent start to 2018. We've come back from the holidays fully charged and eager to hop on to develop the game. Over the past few weeks we've been working on the AI traffic and the parking ticket system.
Traffic AI
AI drivers were previously a menace to society, ignoring any designated rules of the road and causing a selection of disastrous vehicular collisions which not only caused some vehicles to probably be classified as write offs, but would also cause a pile up of stationary vehicles blocking traffic.
Some work has however been done to improve the AI and they now stop and yield to incoming traffic at intersections. While this should of course be expected, we're still pleased with how the system is working right now.
Additionally, we've also worked on Traffic light systems and have synchronized the lights so that they work with online multiplayer.
Parking
When loading the game, each session will see cars placed in various parking spots. This kind of adds to the world as there is always a row of cars on the road. But there will be times when a busy road may have fewer cars parked in that particular area and other times when a quiet cul de sac will see an increase in parked cars. Of course, this leads to the environment changing slightly and may even play a factor in accessibility to certain areas.
Parking Tickets
The bane of the average driver, parking tickets. As an on the beat police officer you will be able to issue parking tickets to various vehicles based on whether they were in a no parking zone, parked in a handicapped area without displaying a proper disabled badge. You as the player will need to decide what reason you are issuing a parking ticket and then fill out the form
Any tickets that you create will then be placed on the actual vehicle and can be seen and read by other players online.
Online Multiplayer Testing With PC and MAC
Flashing Lights Early Access release will see both PC and MAC support. We've been doing some testing with both platforms communicating with each other online. Everything seems to be working pretty much right away! So regardless of your friends platform of choice, you'll be able to play with them. Below are just a few images of a Mac and PC player playing online together
Note: We do not condone any fire department to blast a police officer in the face with a water directly from a fire hose, there's a high probability that they won't take too kindly to that...
Short Graphics And Art Update
In other news we are at the stages of working with an art audio who will be creating 3D models for Flashing Lights. We are anticipating that we will also be working with other individual artists for game objects too. Nothing is quite yet set in stone, but we hope that working with these artists will definitely allow us to bring Flashing Lights up to scratch on a visual level
So there we have it! this week has been working on parts of the AI and elements of the police role. Next month we will be looking at introducing a few game mechanics to both the Fire and EMS so stay tuned for some more info on those services in due course!
Thanks to everyone who has shown support in Flashing Lights, we've seen a massive spike in the forums and even on the figures for the wishlist numbers on Steam. If you have come across the game and want to be kept up to date with news, do add the game to your wishlist. More news will be incoming soon!