Custom vehicle game?

[YPU]

I am looking for a game in which you can design you own vehicle, be its plane, car, boat, spacecraft or whatever. I don’t mean customization, I mean full ground up building of the thing. I don’t know in what extend this exists, but considering the number of games out there I am sure there is something like this, I don’t care if it’s a bit old, gameplay is most important. Console, well, I would prefer a PC game. Does anybody know anything like this, or am I questing for a non existing grail?

[Timberwolf]

Original Sega GT has a car building editor and it's quite good too but good luck completing it, I swear the left something out of it. You have set body shapes to go at though but you can specify engine size + type and a few things. Supercar Street Challenge has a slightly more in depth body styling but there is a problem with the game. It's rubbish.

[Maxymiuk]

Any of the incarnations of LEGO Racer. That's the main selling point of the games, really.

[YPU]

Any of the incarnations of LEGO Racer. That's the main selling point of the games, really.

Tough I do like these games, they don’t pose any challenges at all, it took me 4 ours or so to complete them on average, I am hoping to find something a little more, challenging.

[Blayze]

Try getting your hands on Garry's Mod (Steam, yada yada), and the WireMod to go along with it. Just last night, I created a hollow cube with a button-controlled winched glass door, hoverballs for levitation, thrusters for directional control and speed (As well as rotation), numpad-operated turrets and death lasers, wheels, shields to prevent people from coming ANYWHERE near it, and theft-deterring dynamite covering the hull, linked up to a one-second countdown the moment anybody pushes a dummy "Open" button.

Of course, I'm just beginning to learn about both Garry's Mod and WireMod. For instance, the countdown and dynamite (And the winched door and buttons) were hooked up using the aforementioned WireMod, of which I am slowly going through various tutorials, and applying what I learn in them to my own creations.

Sadly, however, the structural integrity and stability of my creations leaves something to be desired. The moment I entered my cube-shaped craft and pressed the numpad key I had assigned to the thrusters on the underside... Well, the entire thing suffered a cataclysmic fault, as the hull caved in on itself and I was killed by my own winched door.

Then it exploded.

That's probably as close as you can get to a PC-based "Build anything" game.

Edit: The SpaceBuild addon for Garry's Mod does exactly what it says on the tin. It's Garry's Mod in space, as far as I can tell. And people have made some AWESOME spaceships.

[tannish2]

NOONE has mentioned armored core yet? there are like 10 of them for PS2 and one for 360, if you get one of the PS2 ones start with armored core 2 or armored core 3, most of the others are exceptionally hard, and i have not played 4

[Jacob_Gallagher]

Try getting your hands on Garry's Mod (Steam, yada yada), and the WireMod to go along with it. Just last night, I created a hollow cube with a button-controlled winched glass door, hoverballs for levitation, thrusters for directional control and speed (As well as rotation), numpad-operated turrets and death lasers, wheels, shields to prevent people from coming ANYWHERE near it, and theft-deterring dynamite covering the hull, linked up to a one-second countdown the moment anybody pushes a dummy "Open" button.

Of course, I'm just beginning to learn about both Garry's Mod and WireMod. For instance, the countdown and dynamite (And the winched door and buttons) were hooked up using the aforementioned WireMod, of which I am slowly going through various tutorials, and applying what I learn in them to my own creations.

Sadly, however, the structural integrity and stability of my creations leaves something to be desired. The moment I entered my cube-shaped craft and pressed the numpad key I had assigned to the thrusters on the underside... Well, the entire thing suffered a cataclysmic fault, as the hull caved in on itself and I was killed by my own winched door.

Then it exploded.

That's probably as close as you can get to a PC-based "Build anything" game.

Edit: The SpaceBuild addon for Garry's Mod does exactly what it says on the tin. It's Garry's Mod in space, as far as I can tell. And people have made some AWESOME spaceships.

How do you steer with hoverballs? I find the lack of inertia to be extremely annoying, and you can't make brakes for it.

And how do you avoid the spastic bits-mashing-and-flying apart syndrome with big vehicles?

[Warshrike]

Space empires series by Malfador Machinations. Not all of them are overly Graphical, but all have fairly large demo's and I hear that most have free keys floating around the net. If you don't mind poor graphics but want advanced gameplay I'd say number 3... It's also the midpoint of the series at current.

[Ranis]

Spore will do that.

[Blayze]

How do you steer with hoverballs? I find the lack of inertia to be extremely annoying, and you can't make brakes for it.

So far, I've been using thrusters and buttons to control them. I'm trying to learn how to wire up a Pod correctly to allow directional input (If I can get the Wire thrusters to respond to the relevant directions, then the only other issue will be balance).

I can get normal thrusters to activate on numpad commands. That's an easy task. The problem is, though, that I want to be able to wire some Wire Thrusters to the Pod I'm sitting in. It may be a while before I get to there, though. So much stuff to learn other than that.


And how do you avoid the spastic bits-mashing-and-flying apart syndrome with big vehicles?

I've had some success with NoCollideMulti (Not normal NoCollide, it takes too long with left-clicking, and with right-clicking you make the object so that YOU fall through it as well).

However, from what I've seen, NoCollideMulti gets best results when the various parts of the vehicle are solidly stuck together, to allow for minimal movement when you use the PGun. I use the PHX (Phoenix Storm) pack, as it has a lot of shapes of varying size, as well as several 'framework' objects that you can put in the middle.

For example, you use a 2x2x2 framework cube, and then you line up and stick six 2x2 squares to the sides. There, you have a cube. SmartWeld the seven pieces together, then NoCollideMulti them. Now lift up the cube by any piece, and try moving it around.

Obviously, if you try chucking it around the place, you'll get the pieces moving around. But if you don't...

[Shovah]

Smart Weld, stacker and multi-nocollide are all pretty useful in making large vehicles in Garrys Mod.
Stacker makes sure that your various props(it works well with PHX models) are properly alligned to avoid collision issues and keep your vehicle regular.

Smart welder, although it can be laggy in multiplayer when people don't use it responsibly, keeps your constructs very stable and works well with stackers ability to line up props.

The multi-nocollide tool makes sure that your construct can move around without ripping itself apart.

'nuff said.

[Icewalker]

Spore will do that.

Spore will do a lot of things. Such as be insanely awesome on just about every level...if it ever comes out...

[Om]

Galactic Civilisations II allows you to customise your own spaceships. Decent game.


Spore will do a lot of things. Such as be insanely awesome on just about every level...if it ever comes out...Just like Black & White was supposed to...

[Setra]

if it ever comes out...
Oh please, it hasn't been THAT long.

I really don't think it's been long enough to worry about yet.

[Triaxx]

Besides, last I heard, they'd announced a release date. Not necessarily firm, but a release date none the less.