turning the real world into a retro video game

like a lot of us, i grew up playing a lot of video games. racing games in particular: need for speed underground, gran turismo 3/4, gta 3 and chinatown wars.

for some reason there is something deeply nostalgic about this era of video games. i personally feel back then games really felt like video games rather than what we get today. the stories, the coziness, the warmth of retro pixel art has always had a soft place in my heart.

i took inspiration from all the games i liked to play and thought to myself, how can i make an interesting world where most of my ideas and interests can come together?

the idea

i decided to land on the idea of making the world a retro video game. starting with street racing in sf.

turn the real world into a 2.5d open world racing game, starting with san francisco.

eventually what i want to do is re-render each city block with a retro pixel art feel, making it look like something out of the games i grew up with.

the quick mvp

for a quick mvp i built over the weekend, i took openstreetmap as the base to understand structures of buildings, streets etc. with some basic rendering on top to make it feel more cozy and warm.

it comes with a full 24/7 weather and time system. sun, rain, fog and storm animations, as well as noon to night transitions.

the current game has npcs walking and crossing the streets, npcs driving around, and waymos roaming the city.

the police system

there is a police system with the gta inspired star system. to activate the police you can either hit an npc, hit a cop car, drive through speedzones (circles on the map), or drive past police cars at absurd speeds.

up to b class cars, you can only get 3 stars. from a class and up you can get 4/5 stars, with helicopter pursuits starting at 4 stars.

the cars

there are 4 tiers of cars:

• c tier: your average beater car
• b tier: tesla model s tech bro edition and similar
• a tier: sport cars and the more nostalgic class
• s tier: hyper cars and legendary cars

the intro mission

there is one intro mission so far: the tutorial.

you get stuck with your waymo in a one way street where you meet the ceo of anthropic (i know, ironic) dario. he gets angry and asks if you want to drive him to his meeting with his tesla parked at the end of the street. in the meantime he can take calls since his company is in chaos due to the latest drama with the ai model mythos/fable 5.

i thought it would be a fun intro mission since a lot of people in my audience are pretty deep into tech. and it fits very well with the city and what is currently going on in the world related to ai.

the vision

i want to redo the rendering, physics and overall game feel. make each city block realistic but with a retro pixel art style over it to make it feel like a game.

i want to eventually model the entire world, make it open ended like minecraft where you can interact with random npcs you meet around the world but at the same time have the ability to build your ideas on top of the world.

i also want to redo the driving mechanics with reinforcement learning, so traffic, rivals and police drive more realistically, get stuck on corners less, and feel smarter overall instead of me hand tuning forever.

eventually i would like parts of the game engine replaced by a world model that can predict outcomes of situations emergently. for now it is the sim and rl on driving, but that is the direction i am thinking about.

imagine fortnite-like battle royale but you drop into the middle of the world, have to interact with npcs to make teams and so on.

i think that by turning the world map into a playable cool game, starting with racing, you can give people the ability to connect over shared interests, explore cities and places you have never been to before, and meet npcs/ais that have actual character and personality fitting into where along the world you meet them.