Vehicles are one of the main open-world features of Streets of Rogue 2 and a key way to cross its large, procedurally generated island nation. The developer has said players will do a lot of driving, and that vehicles were an obvious inclusion for a modern-day open world. Cars can be hijacked and driven, and the broader travel toolkit also includes boats and rideable animals.
Cars
Most car designs are based on real-world vehicle types, such as minivans, sports cars, trucks, and assorted decrepit rides. Each vehicle's art is built from a 3D model that is rendered at many angles and then painted over to match the game's pixel-art style, with subtle animations for motion such as turning wheels and the body bobbing. Car parts like chassis and headlights are stored separately, which lets the game add visual variety through recoloring and keep headlights bright at night while the rest of the car stays dark. Vehicles also have broken-down variants.
Driving Feel and AI
The developer has described spending significant time tuning vehicle physics, experimenting with values for grip and bounciness to get the right feel. Traffic is handled by driver AI rather than traffic lights. There are no traffic lights in the world; instead, cars follow a first-come, first-served rule at intersections, passing through one at a time using an internal queue to avoid collisions. NPC drivers generally stick to fixed paths and simple rules, but switch to a more flexible mode when something unusual happens, such as the player standing in the road, so they can route around hazards and avoid traffic jams before returning to normal behavior.
Boats
Boats let players travel across water, and are primarily useful for reaching islands that would otherwise be inaccessible. The developer has described possible future uses such as traversing rivers to reach locations that would be dangerous to approach by land, and has mentioned ideas like an underwater dungeon and cargo transport tied to water travel.
Rideable Animals
In addition to motor vehicles, players can ride certain animals, including horses, as a way to gain a combat advantage or travel long distances without a car. Not every animal can be ridden; whether a given animal can carry a character depends on factors like the character's size and the animal's abilities or traits. Mounts and other animal interactions are detailed in Animals and Wildlife.
Fast Travel
To balance the amount of driving across such a large world, the developer has described placing phone booths across the world for teleportation. The exact balance between driving and teleporting was still being determined during development, with plans to reduce downtime by letting players take missions over the phone instead of returning to questgivers, and to add a teleport mechanic so travel does not become tedious. These travel features are part of ongoing work described in Early Access and Development Roadmap.