Type S: Driving Skills Required

-Aug 27, 2005
Thanks to the community support, new mirrors are available for hosting the demo. This should alleviate some of the heavy traffic that the site has been getting this month. If you would like to become a mirror host, upload the demo to your server and send your link to
TypeS @ bedoworks.com so it can be posted on the downloads page.

-Aug 24, 2005
Added text based Google Ads. This is my first attempt to generate some maintenance income for the website. The ads are generated using the content of this page, so they can actually be of interest to visitors.

-Aug 10, 2005
Demo v. 0.2.1 is now available for download. After receiving some feedback on the Proof Of Concept demo, the physics have been slightly tweaked. The car is a bit heavier now, with more grip, better torque distribution and reduced bouncing effect during collision.

-Aug 7, 2005
Proof of concept, Development Demo v. 0.2 is available for download. This demo is meant to demonstrate the current
stage of the prototyping process as well as the potential of
the project. It is purely intended for gaining developers' interests.

-Jun 19, 2005
Major work has gone into the development of the basic physics engine. Problems such as wheels coming a part and the car exploding while driving have mostly been resolved. Collision with mesh surface is now supported, enabling the car to go up and down hills. The next demo will be a technical demo, featuring the car driving around in a closed parking garage/skidpad.
Demo screenshots.

-Jan 7, 2005
The car model has been completely remodeled from scratch in order to take advantage of the new system for part management and texturing. The screenshot section has been updated to show the new model. Other new features of the game engine include, real-time shadows, and improved car physics for front wheel, rear wheel and all wheel drive vehicles. Terrain object collision is now functional, and the Open Dynamics Engine is fully integrated. The next demo should be released soon, once terrain mesh collision is enabled and the components of the car engine are established.

-Oct 19, 2004
Over the past several weeks there has been some work done on the graphics engine to support new texture types. The new texture types that can be applied are JPEG, TGA Compressed and TGA Uncompressed. With the TGA textures, transparencies and masks can be stored, allowing for much greater and more efficient way of representing detail. To take advantage of these new texture methods, the 3D models are currently being optimized. Here is a short white paper briefly describing the optimization method.

-Sep 26, 2004
The game has been progressing quite nicely. The car models are undergoing remodeling to take advantage of the graphics engine's new features. This includes higher polygon count, lighting, and a multitude of compressed texture support. Developers will also be able to supply model transparencies through the use of alpha textures. The older demo is no longer available for download since it is very outdated and at this point misrepresents the quality of the upcoming version.

-Jul 12, 2004
Over the past few months a great deal of effort has been put into implementing some basic physics for the next demo release. These video clips demonstrate independent suspension work as the car drives over bumps and slides around a parking lot. There are also some new screenshots of the same scene. Enjoy.

-Mar 31, 2004
There has been a great deal of optimization done on the Type-S game engine. Enhancements such as more efficient memory management and decrease in loading times will ensure that the project will run with lower system requirements. More features have been added to the menu system as well. Text boxes, buttons, sliders, and mouse driven menus. Once the menu system is fully developed, there will be no longer need to edit text files, all the customization options will be managed through a graphical interface. Unfortunately with updates like this, there is little to show with screenshots. I will try to post some new screens of the menu system in the near future.

-Feb 22, 2004
The website has been down for the past couple of days due to a change in hosting services. Check out Fuzor Media for great hosting services. Also a new forum has been added which is hosted right here on this site. As for the project, the code has undergone major redesign. Several small features have been added such as loading screens and mouse selection menus.

-Jan 13, 2004
It has been a long and slow process redesigning the Type-S game engine to support more complex components. However, I am pleased to announce that I have successfully integrated the Open Dynamics Engine into Type-S in order to create real world physics. Special thanks to Ahmen Ismaiel for providing configured ODE library code and examples.

The upcoming development release will feature car physics, a collision model and full featured editors for both car models and environments. Please feel free to drop me a line with suggestions for the upcoming demo.

-Oct 23, 2003
Physics Update: after a long design process on how physics and collision will be implemented, I have settled on using the Open Dynamics Engine. This is a physics library that has been widely used to simulate rigid body physics and is well suited for vehicle simulation project. Many of you may have probably already seen this engine used in other projects, so I feel confident that the development project will be going in the right direction.

If you would like to contribute, I will greatly appreciate any demos, tutorials or source code from ODE. Thank you for being patient with the Type-S development!

Project Update: Coder, a devoted fan, has developed an awesome 3D sound library with OpenAL for Type-S. It will be implemented in the next demo release. You can visit his website at www.first-reality.com.

-July 19, 2003
Version 0.1.3.0DE is now available to download. The purpose of this "Development Edition" is to give the end user the chance to contribute to a work in progress project. Version 0.1.3.0DE is NOT a complete demo nor a bug free software. It is intended for the users who wish to take part in the development process of the project. Version 0.1.3.0DE demonstrates obvious anomalies with the software such as; 3D models are incorrectly initialized through TSI files. Camera angles are defined incorrectly. Certain weird behavior is exhibited by the variables when doing unexpected operations. Users who intend to use this software version are encouraged to resubmit fixed TSI files, note bugs in the code, or even modify or add 3D model data for better visual appearance. Suggestions and new ideas are always welcome. Those who submit the best data and ideas which will be implemented in the next versions will be credited for taking part of the development process.
The reason for releasing this edition is because the project has grown greatly in size and I am no longer able to manage every aspect of it by myself. I plan to make this simulation a true online developed project, where the input of anyone around the world can make a difference.
Please refer to the Development section for documentation and details.

- June 29, 2003
Version 0.1.3.0 development demonstration has been set back a bit due to some minor issues that arose with the car shop camera design. However I am expecting to resolve these issues soon and post the updated version some time later this week. If you have any questions or comments, you can e-mail me or simply post them on the forum.

- May 29, 2003
New screenshots of the Car Editor with Component Car Models. Each part or component is a separate object and can be scaled, rotated, and positioned anywhere in 3D space. Each part preserves its assigned properties and remains as part of the intended car model. Tracks and environments are also component based, so adding new buildings, roads, and objects is exactly the same as adding new parts to a car.

- May 1, 2003
Component Car Models (CCM), one of the most interesting features of Type-S, is finally complete, and will be featured in the next demo. What is CCM? Component Car Models give the user the ability to create car models with a variable amount of parts or components. Each part is given a property that is characteristic to its behavior. For example, the car tire is a component. Its properties can include visual surface type, specific physical coefficients, location relative to the car... etc. So why is the CCM feature so great? It gives the end user the ability to truly customize any part of the car. Here are some examples of how CCM works:

Create specific parts of a car and add them to an existing model e.g. spoilers, rims, wheels...etc.
Mix and match parts from other cars in Type-S.
Define properties for each car component e.g. reflective surfaces, the position/size of the part relative to the car, drag coefficients, frictional coefficients, etc.
Car components are regular .3ds files, which means that you can create them with your favorite 3D modeling programs.
A single car is defined as a collection of component files through the TSI text files. Changing a specific component is as simple as typing in the path of the component file into the TSI text file.
Because Type-S reads the location of the .3ds files from the TSI text, you can share the same 3D models and textures among different cars.

- APR 4, 2003
New development demo v 0.1.3.0 is on the way.
updated features will include:

Modify data through current .tsi files
Car selection menu
Freely adjustable driver camera
Reflection mapping and transparent car windows
Viewing code outputs to console
Ability to add cars, car components or tracks
Downloads section will include new car files and updates of current components if people make submissions. I will post a small tutorial for adding and modifying car components.

If you have any suggestions or ideas for the next demo, please post them on the forum.

- Mar 30, 2003
Component modeling, transparencies, and reflection mapping are now supported. Component modeling means that each car is separated into different models, e.g. car body, coupe, tires, rims, steering wheel, etc... and each of these models can be assigned a reflectivity value and an opaqueness value (setting how transparent the car windows are for example). I updated the screenshots section with a sample of the new features on a car model submitted by MeSS.

- Mar 27, 2003
I am also trying to fix some browser issues with Netscape and mozilla, if anyone is experiencing difficulty viewing this website, please let me know, thank you.

- It is now possible to install custom cars and tracks. This will be featured in the next demo, however a user interface has not yet been designed for it (you may post your suggestions on the Type-S Forum). The way it works is the users create the necessary car data and make a .tsi file which is very similar to an windows INI file, which describes the location of the data, textures, initializes variables, etc... This is all that is needed for the car model to be read in. The name of the cars or tracks' .tsi files are added in the program's own .tsi file, so that Type-S can load the data for the cars and tracks.

It may sound somewhat complex but it is really simple, all the process involves is creating the car data, and modifying a text file. It would be nice to make a user interface instead of writing manually to the initialization (tsi) text file, so please if you have a good idea and would like to contribute you may post your suggestions.

The dynamic camera system is also more complete and functional, for more info you can check out the forum.

I have also made a better looking menu interface, which involves transparent buttons, and other cool stuff. I will be posting some screenshots soon, as well as a description of some of the new features.

- Mar 13, 2003
Updated the screenshots section with some preliminary Ferrari 512S renders.

- Feb 12, 2003
The Lancia is finally ready, it will be included in the next demo release. I have posted a render in the screenshots section. I will post more later in the week.

- Feb 7, 2003
In the past couple of weeks I have been working on a 1970 Lancia Stratos. So far most of the body work is complete although it is missing the textures. For those of you interested I have posted some development screenshots.

- Feb 1, 2003
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