Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown

I'm more up in arms about the map in FH5 still being so small. I hope that this new team doesn't make the same mistake. I'd like them to have a map at least as big as Ibiza, if not Oahu. I never really spent any time in my houses or buying clothes for my avatar in the TDU games, anyway.
 
I'm more up in arms about the map in FH5 still being so small. I hope that this new team doesn't make the same mistake. I'd like them to have a map at least as big as Ibiza, if not Oahu. I never really spent any time in my houses or buying clothes for my avatar in the TDU games, anyway.
Yeah that was the draw of TDU. A HUGE map... like you can actually explore the damn thing. They should go for gold and model Mallorca or Puerto Rico.

Edit: I see gambling chips... Monaco? Maybe Macau/Hong Kong?
 
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Yeah that was the draw of TDU. A HUGE map... like you can actually explore the damn thing. They should go for gold and model Mallorca or Puerto Rico.

Edit: I see gambling chips... Monaco? Maybe Macau/Hong Kong?
Monaco or Macau would certainly be something, especially if they accurately represent the traffic. But Monaco is only 0.7 mi² and Macau is 44.5 mi². Macau would be as big as the Mexico map in FH5. Maybe as introductory areas, but not for the meat of the game.
 
Monaco or Macau would certainly be something, especially if they accurately represent the traffic. But Monaco is only 0.7 mi² and Macau is 44.5 mi². Macau would be as big as the Mexico map in FH5. Maybe as introductory areas, but not for the meat of the game.
Yeah I'm just thinking of big gambling places... i hope its not las vegas lol.

Mallorca would be awesome. Really good geography.
 
Nacon Connect has revealed that the next TDU takes place on Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong Island is only a little over 34 mi² with 447 km of road that is spread out quite sparsely along the island, so this is disappointing. If it was connected to mainland Hong Kong it could be quite interesting.

 
A densely populated city is not my idea of a good driving road either. Quite lame. And besides they are driving on the wrong fucking side of the road, that'll never fly with me.
 
the video looks cool. seems like it might be a good vr game too where you push the cars features and pretend you own the car.
 
A densely populated city is not my idea of a good driving road either. Quite lame. And besides they are driving on the wrong fucking side of the road, that'll never fly with me.
Yep they completely missed the mark with this bizarre decision :/
 
A densely populated city is not my idea of a good driving road either. Quite lame. And besides they are driving on the wrong fucking side of the road, that'll never fly with me.
Hong Kong Island isn't completely dense. The north side of the island facing the mainland is dense city, but it gets sparse in the middle and more residential to the south. It will be interesting to romp around in, in my opinion, since up to this point games like this have been mostly all country roads.
 
Hong Kong Island isn't completely dense. The north side of the island facing the mainland is dense city, but it gets sparse in the middle and more residential to the south. It will be interesting to romp around in, in my opinion, since up to this point games like this have been mostly all country roads.
TDU had the dense city and the country roads both. This is a huge scaling back from there. There won't even be a place on the map to fully open up the throttle if they are going to be faithful to the real world location. The longest strech of relatively straight road is about half a mile. Like playing golf on a football pitch. :(

Meh, at least we have a date and it is sooner than I'd have guessed.
 
A 30-minute presentation of the game, including the first gameplay footage, will be streamed at 19:00 CEST (UTC +2) this Wednesday (13:00 EDT/10:00 PDT).

 
There's a game I haven't thought of in a minute.
I last played a Test Drive on the PS1. 5 & 6 were the last ones I played, one was in Paris I think.

Are they still arcade style racing games? (yeah I'm too lazy and drunk to look it up.)
 
There's a game I haven't thought of in a minute.
I last played a Test Drive on the PS1. 5 & 6 were the last ones I played, one was in Paris I think.

Are they still arcade style racing games? (yeah I'm too lazy and drunk to look it up.)
The Test Drive Unlimited series was simcade like Forza Horizon. The physics in the first TDU were closer to Forza Motorsport than Horizon. TDU2 was pushed out the door by the publisher before it was finished, so the game has some oddities with the physics, but it's still good. Solar Crown is being developed by a completely different developer, though, so we'll have to see how it plays. The developer produces primarily sim racing titles like TT Isle of Man, so it probably leans more toward sim like the original TDU. TDU modeled the entire island of Oahu to scale, and TDU2 included a fully scale model of Ibiza in addition to Oahu.
 
Looking pretty good. Anybody recognize the person portraying Vivian Hughes? 😍

 
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That looked patently horrific.

  1. It instantly comes off as a Forza Horizon clone instead of TDU. Racing a C8 on dirt and jumps? WTF is this? TDU was on the side of simcade not this unrealistic crap.
  2. The graphics looks awfully dated, PS3 level if I'm being generous, or mobile game if I'm not.
  3. The physics are just not there, cars seem to have no weight and accelerate way too fast. Not to mention pivoting around their cg when turning.
  4. Sound effects are absolutely horrendous, perhaps why they try to cover it up with their constant jabbering and laughing
  5. The video focuses more on the people fooling around instead of actually showing the game, but credit where credit is due, they managed to demonstrate every reason why I refuse to engage with the multiplayer aspect of games.
  6. Even though they are presumably connected through a lan look at that netcode, cars jump all over the place during racing.
  7. Despite the dated graphics random stutters are happening, in the inner city it looks like it's running at 15 fps.
  8. They completely miss the lifestyle part of TDU, buying houses, outfits, driving to showrooms, instead you have this spaceship looking complex where you have a room? WTF is this street racer academy?
What a giant and utter disappointment. From being cautiously optimistic I instantly went to maybe I'll try the demo, I'll go and remove it from my steam wishlist right now.
Looking at the video comments and ratio they got I'm certainly not alone with this assessment.
 
That looked patently horrific.

  1. It instantly comes off as a Forza Horizon clone instead of TDU. Racing a C8 on dirt and jumps? WTF is this? TDU was on the side of simcade not this unrealistic crap.
  2. The graphics looks awfully dated, PS3 level if I'm being generous, or mobile game if I'm not.
  3. The physics are just not there, cars seem to have no weight and accelerate way too fast. Not to mention pivoting around their cg when turning.
  4. Sound effects are absolutely horrendous, perhaps why they try to cover it up with their constant jabbering and laughing
  5. The video focuses more on the people fooling around instead of actually showing the game, but credit where credit is due, they managed to demonstrate every reason why I refuse to engage with the multiplayer aspect of games.
  6. Even though they are presumably connected through a lan look at that netcode, cars jump all over the place during racing.
  7. Despite the dated graphics random stutters are happening, in the inner city it looks like it's running at 15 fps.
  8. They completely miss the lifestyle part of TDU, buying houses, outfits, driving to showrooms, instead you have this spaceship looking complex where you have a room? WTF is this street racer academy?
What a giant and utter disappointment. From being cautiously optimistic I instantly went to maybe I'll try the demo, I'll go and remove it from my steam wishlist right now.
Looking at the video comments and ratio they got I'm certainly not alone with this assessment.
It's an alpha version. Looks about as "bad" as the Destiny alpha when I played that, and look how good that game turned out at release.
 
It's an alpha version. Looks about as "bad" as the Destiny alpha when I played that, and look how good that game turned out at release.
I don't know what glasses you are wearing but this looks significantly worse than any racing game that came out in the past 5 years.
Alpha version is feature ready. Maybe they can fix the netcode and the bad performance, but the rest is unlikely to change significantly.
Destiny is not even in the same genre. And I only played it once for 5 minutes, so that means nothing to me.

Anyway I could excuse the graphics if the physics looked promising or the other features, but there is literally nothing in the video that would impress me.
 
Graphically, it definitely looks pretty dated. Along the lines of a last-gen console title. Some things look okay while others look almost like a Switch game. Hopefully that's really, really, early footage. I'm okay with more arcade-y racing titles, but I also believe that killer graphics should be the hallmark of a game like this.
 
He says this is the ALPHA version - so it's not even BETA yet?

Hopfully we'll see it in 2025 since it is already almost 2024...

He also referenced the "Streets" vs the "Sharks", so somebody in development is 50+ to ID that West Side Story ref.
- yikes there was a remake in 2021 & I know it's hard to believe but it's more gay than the original from 1961


View: https://youtu.be/nXe4OsFH8KQ?si=6j1FzjbkDWWDvUhT
 
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He says this is the ALPHA version - so it's not even BETA yet?

Hopfully we'll see it in 2025 since it is already almost 2024...

He also referenced the "Streets" vs the "Sharks", so somebody in development is 50+ to ID that West Side Story ref.
- yikes there was a remake in 2021 & I know it's hard to believe but it's more gay than the original from 1961


View: https://youtu.be/nXe4OsFH8KQ?si=6j1FzjbkDWWDvUhT

Alpha means feature complete. In other words they have everything they want in the game, now they're just polishing it. You can tell as the graphics and performance look much improved in the latest videos compared to the initial reveal. It's almost as if I said something similar when comparing it to the Destiny alpha vs. beta a few posts up.
 
So BETA comes before ALPHA?

I thought it was Alpha, Beta, Release candidate 1, 2, X, Final, patch 1, 2, 3, infinity
 
So BETA comes before ALPHA?

I thought it was Alpha, Beta, Release candidate 1, 2, X, Final, patch 1, 2, 3, infinity
You have the order correct. Beta is for bug testing and stress testing. The game itself is complete at that point, which is why I always have to laugh when people say the game can change after they participate in a beta test.
 
Looks much better than in the awful live reveal event. Now it's all down to the handling and physics which can only really be judged hands-on.
 
If I just saw the video without titles, I'd say it is a trailer for Forza Horizon 9 or The Crew 6. It just seems so generic. TDU doesn't need off-road racing. They should stop trying to mimic other, lesser games.
 
If I just saw the video without titles, I'd say it is a trailer for Forza Horizon 9 or The Crew 6. It just seems so generic. TDU doesn't need off-road racing. They should stop trying to mimic other, lesser games.
TDU2 had offroad racing. It came out a year before the original Forza Horizon and 3 years before The Crew.
 
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