Cosmospeed

Cosmospeed is a basic driving simulation game with procedurally generated engine audio and torque output from Engine Simulator.

Download

This game is currently only available to Patreon members. If you'd like to become a member and get access to this game and other perks, consider joining here.

Installing the Game

The game comes as a .zip file and does not include an installer. Installing the game is as simple as unzipping the .zip file and placing the game folder wherever you like on your computer.

Running the Game

1. Open the bin/ folder in the game directory
2. Run cosmospeed.exe

If you encounter a DLL error, you need to install some standard dependencies. These installers are included for you in the installation/ folder in the game. Run the installers located in this folder and the errors should go away.

Controls

Action	Input
Starter	Hold s key
Steer left	Move mouse left OR Left arrow key
Steer right	Move mouse right OR Right arrow key
Part throttle	q, w, e
Full throttle	r
Brake	MMB OR space key
Clutch	shift key
Shift up	LMB OR up arrow key
Shift down	RMB OR down arrow key
Reset vehicle	backspace key
Change camera	tab key
Zoom (with some cameras only)	Mouse wheel
Fullscreen	f key
Exit game	escape key

The game intentionally hides the cursor and locks the mouse to the center of the screen. To release the mouse, press the Windows key or tab into another application to take focus away from the game window. Reactivating the game window will re-hide the cursor.

Toggling Between Mouse Steering and Keyboard Steering

Pressing either the left arrow or right arrow keys will toggle the game to keyboard steering. To toggle back to mouse steering, press any of the mouse buttons.

Free-cam controls

From the cockpit view, press tab 3 times to activate free-cam.

Action	Input
Look left/right/up/down	Move mouse
Move forward/back/left/right	w/s/a/d keys
Fly forward/fly backward	r/f keys
Move slowly	Hold MMB

Changing Engines

1. Open assets/main.mr in the game directory
2. On line 7, change the text enclosed in the quotes with the path to your engine's file. The path is relative to the assets/ directory

Changing Vehicles

1. Open assets/main.mr in the game directory
2. On line 12, change the text enclosed in the quotes with the path to the vehicle you'd like to use. The path is relative to the assets/ directory

Builtin Vehicles

Cosmospeed comes with 3 default vehicles located in assets/vehicles/:

1. default_vehicle.mr
2. goofy_vehicle.mr
3. italian_vehicle.mr

Resolving Issues

Low framerate

This is a fairly CPU intensive demo so it's possible that the game will run worse than the normal Engine Simulator. Reducing the simulation frequency in your engine inside the .mr script has the same effect in Cosmospeed and will trade audio quality and simulation stability for better performance.

Game Crashes Upon Opening

If the game crashes immediately when opened, follow these steps:

1. Open the bin/ folder inside the main game directory
2. Scripting syntax errors/mistakes will be shown in error_log.log. Resolve any errors that are reported here
3. Next check engine_sim.log for other Engine Simulator failures like generic engine mistakes or missing audio files
4. If the previous steps did not resolve the issue, there may be some other bug with the game. Join the Engine Simulator Official Discord Server and ask one of the moderators or @AngeTheGreat for help

Creating Your Own Vehicle

1. Copy and paste one of the default vehicles (the .mr file) in assets/vehicles/
2. Rename the file to whatever you like and place it in the same directory
3. Open the .mr file
4. The settings near the bottom of the vehicle node are specific to Cosmospeed. Some settings above this are also used by the game. Modify these values as you see fit to match your vehicle. Refer to the table below for information about what they do
5. Follow the steps above in Changing Vehicles to use your new vehicle

Setting	Function
mass	The vehicle's mass
drag_coefficient	The vehicle's aerodynamic drag coefficient
diff_ratio	The vehicle's differential gear ratio
tire_radius	The radius of the vehicle's tires (ie the distance from the center of the tire to the outside of the rubber)
rolling_resistance	Generic resistance the car will have to moving
stiffness	UNUSED
damping	UNUSED
max_flex	UNUSED
limit_flex	UNUSED
simulate_flex	UNUSED
max_brake_force	UNUSED [Use max_brake_torque instead]
coeff_static_friction	Friction coefficient between the tire and the ground while not sliding
coeff_dynamic_friction	Friction coefficient between the tire and the ground while sliding
wheel_base	The distance from the front to rear wheel centers
track	The distance from the center of the left front/rear tire to the center of the right front/rear tire
max_brake_torque	The maximum torque that the brakes can apply per wheel
center_of_mass	The vehicle's center of mass compared to the center of the wheelbase. Example: A value of +3 centimeters indicates the center of mass is located 3 centimeters in front of the center of the wheelbase. -3 would indicate the center of mass falls towards the rear of the car, 3 centimeters from the center of the wheelbase
weight_transfer_bias	The simulation doesn't account for weight transfer. To roughly approximate it, this value can be used to exaggerate the effect of the center of mass on the tire downforce which in a very crude way can resemble weight transfer
vehicle_asset_file	The path to the visual assets for the vehicle. The path is relative to the game's main directory. See the next section about modding these asset files

Creating Your Own Vehicle Asset File

The modding/ folder contains some useful resources for game modding. To start modding:

1. Install Blender

2. Install the Delta Interchange Export Blender Plugin

1. Find interchange_export_addon.zip in the modding/ folder
2. Open Blender
3. Go to Edit, Preferences..., Add-ons
4. In the top right corner, press Install... and navigate to the file found in step 1. Press Install Add-on
5. Enable the plugin by clicking the check next to it in the list of plugins installed. If it's not on the screen, search for "delta" in the search box in the top right of the window

3. Open modding/vehicle_template.blend

The scene should look something like this:

4. Create a copy and test the exporter

1. Click File, Save As... and save wherever you like on your computer with a descriptive name
2. Press a to select all currently visible objects in the scene
3. Click File, Export and from the dropdown select Delta Interchange Asset (.dia). If this option doesn't appear, try reinstalling the addon from step 2
4. Name the file something descriptive and place it in the assets/vehicles/ folder. Keep all the default settings and press Export Delta Asset
5. Change the vehicle_asset_file parameter in your vehicle's .mr file to point to this new asset file
6. Follow the steps for changing vehicles above and make sure main.mr points to your new car's .mr file
7. Run Cosmospeed

5. Change the vehicle model

1. Hide the Rig collection and unhide the VehicleBody collection in Blender
2. This collection contains all the geometry that makes up the vehicle's body. By default it is a single sphere. Place and edit geometry as needed to construct a car body. See below for a simple example. IMPORTANT: try to only use regular mesh objects. Modifiers like Subdivision are supported but more exotic objects like metaballs or curves may not work as expected Make sure all objects fall under the VehicleBody collection
3. Switch back to the Rig layer and hide the VehicleBody layer. You should now see the new vehicle body in the rig
4. Select all and export the scene again as was done before
5. Run Cosmospeed and confirm that the new car body is now shown in-game

6. Adjusting the steering wheel

1. The steering wheel mesh can be edited in exactly the same way as the car body mesh by modifying the SteeringWheel collection shown in the Scene Collection view on the right of the screen
2. To adjust the cockpit driving position in game, first return to the Rig collection
3. Select the CameraEye empty and move it to a suitable location. You can visualize the camera position by pressing 0. IMPORTANT: The camera is there for visualization purposes, do not try to move it as this will have no effect in-game.
4. Once the camera eye is positioned correctly, you can also adjust the camera target by moving the CameraTarget empty
5. To adjust the steering wheel position, select the SteeringWheelRoot object and move it so that the steering wheel is positioned correctly and visible in the camera
6. Export the scene to verify the seating position and steering wheel position in-game

7. Adjusting the wheel models

1. The wheel mesh can be edited the same way as the steering wheel and car body. No modifications are required in Rig because the game places the tires automatically based on the car's wheelbase and track IMPORTANT: The wheel model MUST have an overall radius of 1 meter, otherwise it will not appear to be the correct size in-game. Follow the wheel model in the vehicle_template.blend as an example

8. General alignment and scale

1. Cosmospeed uses the same scale as Blender, so 1 meter in Blender will equate to 1 meter in-game. It is better to keep your car model in-line with real-world measurements for this reason
2. You will sometimes need to adjust the position of the vehicle model in order to align it with the vehicle in-game. A useful rule to remember is the VehicleRoot empty will always be at the exact center of the 4 wheels in-game (and at z=0)

9. Materials

1. Cosmospeed supports a small number of builtin materials. These are conveniently listed in the Materials collection. Assign these materials to your objects to color your model The material names assigned in Blender will be mapped to the builtin materials in Cosmospeed

9. Complete!

If something didn't work as expected in this tutorial, please create an issue in this GitHub repo and @AngeTheGreat will take a look.