In a new developer blog post, KT Racing has detailed its design process for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown‘s map and environments, including its recreation of Hong Kong Island with 14 unique districts as well as the salvageable Wrecks, Challenges, weather dynamics, and other activities that populate the in-game world. A host of new screenshots from the game has also been released, which you can check out below.
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Map & Environment Design:
KT Racing’s Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is an upcoming open world racing game set in a “1:1” recreation of Hong Kong Island. The developer’s take on the region incorporates a wide variety of ultra-realistic terrain features from rocky mountain trails to wide highways, and as such, players are expected to explore what the game’s selection of vehicles offer over each other in a given situation.
The game also features a dynamic weather system and a full day-night cycle to introduce further realism and nuance into the game’s driving experience. As an example, rainfall will force players to adapt their driving to the additional risks and disruptions, such as changing tyres and gear ratios as well as keeping windscreen wipers on for visibility.
Hong Kong Island, with over 600km/370 miles of in-game roads, needed to be recreated with adequate “variety and small details” per Creative Director Alain Jarniou:
In an open-world game like TDU, we need to provide a seamless and interesting driving experience as well as encourage exploration, which is an important part of the experience. To increase immersion and transport players to a new country, we also wanted to make HKI very realistic, which is why we recreated it at 1:1 scale. It was a challenge technically as well as in terms of gameplay.
[…] Hong Kong Island is an amazing playground that offers incredible diversity, and each environmentreceived special attention to make them more fun for players. To emphasize the fast and smooth driving, for example, the very dense urban network of HKI needed some small adjustments because of certain little streets that were very (too?) narrow. Conversely, some light redesign was done to the major thoroughfares to make them more fun and adapted to very fast cars, while respecting the identity of Hong Kong Island.
To increase exploration options, we used our expertise from WRC games to transform certain walking and hiking paths into small mountain roads that a car can use. It’s up to you to discover all the island’s secret areas by driving down routes that aren’t always shown on the map! It takes time for HKI to give up all its secrets…
The 14 districts included in the game are “full of activities, events, and objects to find and collect” as well as real-world landmarks such as the Hopewell Centre and Convention Centre. Wrecks make a return to Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, with players able to acquire special cars through locating all the parts of a given wreckage. Districts also include a variety of Challenges, with players also able to compete against each other in Instant Challenges as well. As for the damage that cars will understandably receive through normal exploration and competition, players can restore the condition of their vehicles at gas stations located throughout the map.
Screenshots:
KT Racing also revealed a selection of new screenshots from Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, which you can check out below:
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown shoots out for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S sometime later during 2023.
Source: TDUSC Steam