Vehicles

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; the broader travel toolkit also includes boats, rideable animals such as horses, and planned phone-booth teleportation.

Cars

Most car designs are based on real-life vehicle types, such as minivans, sports cars, trucks, and decrepit rides. A basic 3D car model usually takes around three to five hours to create, after which the model is saved at 24 different angles. Pixel artists then paint over each angle to bring the model into line with the game's aesthetic, and a subtle 8-frame animation is created for each angle so wheels appear to turn and the chassis bobs slightly. Headlight sprites are stored separately so they can appear bright at night while the rest of the car does not, and water-submerged overlays are kept for boats in water.

Cars react realistically to obstacles. They can ram through wooden walls and small fences, while brick and steel walls may require special vehicle modifications. Cars also react when hit with banana peels, take damage when bumped into objects, and have proper acceleration that varies with the vehicle type.

Confirmed Cars

Driver AI

Driver AI is one of the most complex systems in the game because vehicles are essentially large fast-moving hitboxes. There are no traffic lights in the world; to avoid chaos at intersections, NPC-driven cars obey a 'first-come, first-served' rule, with an internal queue letting cars proceed one at a time. When something unusual happens (for example, the player standing in the middle of the road) a car switches to a more flexible mode that can deviate from its normal road behavior. In these cases the AI may turn or stop more quickly than a human player could, in service of avoiding collisions and ridiculous traffic jams.

Boats

Boats are primarily useful for reaching islands that would be otherwise inaccessible. In future development boats may also become useful for traversing rivers to reach areas that would be dangerous to attempt by land. The developer has also discussed an underwater dungeon concept and cargo transport sometime after the Early Access launch, citing Sid Meier's Pirates as inspiration for that direction. An Armored Boat has been added internally, and police boats are confirmed for the world; military boats are teased but not committed.

Phone Booths and Teleportation

To balance the time spent driving across the large world, the developer plans to install phone booths across the map for teleportation. The balance between driving and teleportation is still being determined; in the alpha demo there were very few teleport options and players reported too much downtime between activities. The intended fix is to let players grab missions over the phone rather than returning to questgivers, and to add the town-portal-style teleport mechanic in the future.

Rideable Animals

Horses are rideable from the start. Other animals may also be rideable depending on character size and animal traits; a small character or a strong-backed animal can support combinations that would not be possible by default.

Future Plans

Planned vehicle changes include more variation in turn, speed, and acceleration across vehicle types (some sports cars getting faster), an option to respray cars cosmetically, modifications to bump-damage balance, and a destruction mutator that modifies overall environment fragility.

Controls are also being worked on: vehicles currently share the same stats and handling, with three different control schemes available so players can pick the steering style that suits them, and per-vehicle modifications and vehicle-specific abilities are planned so that different vehicles eventually play differently.