Hard Road – A beautiful procedural post-apocalyptic game

42 points by getbutterfly 22 hours ago on hackernews | 17 comments

teaearlgraycold | 21 hours ago

Seems I can’t control it on mobile?

taneq | 20 hours ago

Same (iOS), looks pretty though I guess?

Edit: The ‘Controls’ button takes you to a help screen which only mentions keys (eg. WASD) so I guess it’s keyboard only.

avaer | 20 hours ago

What's procedural? The meshes? Textures?

I'm impressed that I wasn't able to drive into a void, a lot of times I see things like this and it's a single generation pass that ends after 2 minutes of walking. Is it infinitely generating in chunks?

Also what is the goal of the game? Is it a driving simulator, like ETS?

anigbrowl | 20 hours ago

The landscape, I assume.

peyloride | 20 hours ago

Seems like a vibecoded not finished game.

Conscat | 20 hours ago

I was able to upload hacky unpolished amateur game demos long before LLMs existed.

p-e-w | 20 hours ago

Sure, but it’s easier to slander someone with unfalsifiable accusations of “vibecoding” than to engage with their work on any substantial level.

anigbrowl | 19 hours ago

I liked it a lot as an engine. Game-wise the first things I'd add would be car/tire damage, fuel use, and scattering replacement parts nearby. Perhaps off-road tire tracks could sometimes lead to wortwhile loot, but often into danger. Since it's post-apocalyptic, a geiger counter or wild-animals seem like natural extensions.

I don't care that it's vibe-coded, the author has clearly invested time and effort in tuning the feel and controls, as well as getting a natural feel for the procedural landscape which makes up for the low-poly visual. The driving experience felt much better than most other games I've played, where steering and acceleration involve distracting levels of over-correction.

Randomly scattered parts or other valuables always irk me. Better let the player find a ruin, or a wreck (if we're talking tire tracks) where parts can be salvaged - it makes more sense to find stuff in such places.

anigbrowl | 40 minutes ago

They irk me too, and yet I see lone car wheels and other debris quite frequently in the real world.

cjkaminski | 20 hours ago

This demo makes a good first impression, but the lack of technical details makes this post feel more like an advertisement instead of a topic of discussion.

riidom | 20 hours ago

Some suggestions, if I may:

You should mention on the help screen that the scroll wheel lets you zoom into first person/ engine hood view. Before you do that, those should be fixed though: The front shield is black, not transparent, so I could use only engine hood view. This is a bit too "dynamic" though, in lack of a better term. When you drive upwards, the camera descends below the engine block and I see the front suspension. When driving downwards, I look in the sky and can't see the car at all, makes avoiding obstacles difficult.

For the roads: To make driving a bit more challenging, add obstacles close to the road, e.g. guard railings.

For the generation: Right now it feels like a very even distribution of item scattering. Defining some types of areas and how these get populated with scenery may give a sense of "overall structure".

As a fan of Slow Roads, I do like this approach! Climbingin the mountains and jumping down was kinda fun. Maybe add a second car that is faster?

Well I hope you sell a lot of plugins so you can keep working on this :) Bookmarked and looking forward to updates.

trinsic2 | 19 hours ago

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Nicely done.

Going offroad I discovered some nice physics like hitting a small rock at speed and it bouncing along beside me for a few seconds, or nearly getting stuck on the lip of something resembling a volcano.

Only suggestion would be somehow making finding the way back to the road easier when you get the other side of a block like a mountain range.

Evidlo | 17 hours ago

Why was this flagged? This is cool

vivzkestrel | 17 hours ago

- stupid question: how do you go about building something like this from scratch

- what are the processes involved

- what skillset / knowledge is actually required

- which libraries or game engines are needed for making this kinda stuff

- how long does it take?

Can you drive on mobile?