SWoT - traffic jam sim

YAY!

I've finished it, after 2 years on and off (mostly off)



For those who don't know SWoT - Sheer Weight of Traffic, it's my little baby. A puzze game based around the setting of traffic signals. The aim of the game is to keep the cars moving by switching the lights. Try it :)

1 level demo can be downloaded at http://www.binary-people.com/downloads/demo/swotdemo.exe (6.3mb)

Scientifically you're keeping the particles (cars) in a fluid state and working on their solid state to maintain a flow.

Game plays with either mouse or joypad with some keyboard options as follows...

joypad, mouse, WASD or curs keys to move around (joypad and mouse use push scrolling

mousewheel, joypad 2 & 3 or Q & E to zoom in / out.

number pad to change the angle of the cam, space to return to overhead view (best view to play in)

The game has some funky features like day/night, a couple of hundred cars on screen at once all driving around with headlights etc and their own routes through the city, dynamic level of detail on the cars as you zoom out (based on FPS so it adjusts detail based on your PC speed etc).

I'd love to hear what you think, I've enjoyed working on this one and have big plans for sequels etc.

I got an 'illegal memory address' on the loading screen.

hmmmm tests ok here on 3 machines :/ do you get music and images? what colour is the progress bar?

I get the opening Binary People logo with the light, but when the green progress bar starts to load, about 20% into it, I get an error.

:/ anyone else getting this?

downloading now to test it...

Get IMA after having played, it doesn't shut when the web page is launched.

But, to be hornest, don't count on selling anything based on that demo, but innovative idea.

It runs fine for me, except when closing, it doesn't close on launching IE and I get an IMA error when I switch back to the program.

The level that you provide for the demo, is well, a little dull, graphics, sounds, interface are all fine (except I would be tempted to either increase the zoom speed, or allow the user to hold ctrl or shift whilst using the scroll wheel to zoom quicker). But I don't think I could go through fifty levels of it, when all you do is control the traffic lights.

@eBusiness: Thanks for the great comment. Aside from an IMA when the demo quits what exactly is so terrible that I shouldn't count on selling anything? (obviously the IMA will be fixed shortly) btw, your racing game is superb ;)

@ Perturbatio : ok so it's just the game that's dull then?

It's a bit boring. Also it is hard to tell what option will do what, turn them the right way, eventually remove a couple of options (havn't seen any traf light with that many states). Maybe programming the lights would be better, personally I can barely handle four lights (partly because changeing takes too much time), but of course we need big cities in the higher levels, where it would be impossible to handle that much.

Well, yes, to be honest. Don't get me wrong I enjoy most sim games, sim city 2000 being one I played regularly. But there needs to be a lot more that you can do. If all you can do is change traffic lights then it will get tedious very quickly indeed.

Perhaps if you could build the roads, place the lights and program your own sequences for them (rather than having to manually control them), then that would add a bit more to it, also adding the need for road repairs (handled by the user), occasional accidents that require you to divert traffic, perhaps bank raids where the police/criminals cause havoc on the roads during car chases, thing like that.

My problem was that, as far as I could tell, there was no combination of traffic flow icons that would make traffic flow well throughout the level, so it didn't feel like there was any real solution to the puzzle. Instead it felt like a very repetitive task to just go around and toggle them all the time.

The music was very good, but the load time seemed very very long.

hmmmmm, i think some of you don't realise its a puzzle game, they are supposed to be repetative!, i actually enjoyed the level, i was quite disappointed that there was only one for the demo :(

I found I had the thing zoomed out so I could see the whole map, scrolling around was a pain in the arse. This meant that I couldn't see the icons on the tops of the cars and the 3D aspect was pointless. The cars could be replaced with sprites and I wouldn't notice.

I think if you could change the timing speed of the traffic lights instead of changing them manually then it would become more of a logic puzzle rather than as Al Mackey said just going round all the lights toggling them.

I'm afraid I have to agree with the masses, it was just a bit dull.

well at least it isn't the 1000th clone of something, the idea is pretty unique, so it has potential.

the graphics are nice :)