People have made some pretty nifty Quake and Doom mods. That would probably be the way to go.

This is a very big question, and I have no idea what the answer is. There are lots of games that are user moddable (as in you can create 'mods'; user made levels and in-game items), but you'd be better off first deciding what you want to use your game world for. It's no good spending weeks or months building a world in a game and then deciding that you want to do something in that game world that the game itself won't allow.

Maybe something like the very flexible (so I've heard, I've not used it) Unity would be good https://unity3d.com/

Or look at pages like

http://www.develop-online.net/tools-and-tech/ … or-2014/0192302

http://www.indiedb.com/engines

for ideas. Either way, you'll be putting a lot of work in, both in learning how to use the software, and then creating your own world. You'd also be better posting on a more suitable forum, as VOGONS isn't really about creating games or game assets.

Pro-tip for real-world data: EU open access data. For example, National Land Survey of Finland publishes terrain data (e.g., 3D point clouds produced by helicopter laser scanning). Triangulate that and bam, you have a fairly accurate landscape to drive on.
http://www.maanmittauslaitos.fi/en/profession … ets-free-charge

Jorpho wrote:

People have made some pretty nifty Quake and Doom mods. That would probably be the way to go.

for driving?

no

There really isn't that much moddable driving games. the GTA series are really unsupported and have bad pipelines (and GTAV will ban you for it i hear)

I would highly advise against using Doom or any Quake for this. Their hard map limits and complete lack of driving physics will just make you hit limits, and plus those particular engines don't even provide enough precision for a vehicle to work in

Yeah not interested in trying to mod Quake or Doom - those engines are pretty much the opposite of what I want. The map would be for an unspecified future 3D roaming/driving/visuals engine that I may or may not create - honestly I think I'd have more fun just sculpting the landscape than actually writing the engine, but who knows.

Unity is kind of a possibility; I started learning it a while ago and it's not too hard; but I get the impression it's better suited to FPS type maps than big open driving/flying sandboxes.

Actually I guess an oldschool flight sim world would be a good analog for what I want to do - F22 Lightning II for example had some fantastic terrains with relatively high detail where it was needed (near runways, etc.) and less where it wasn't. Anyone have a rough idea how that was generated?

Mig alley by rowan software went open source
https://github.com/gondur/mig_src

you still need the game for the data files

Also EECH Enemy Engaged – Comanche vs. Hokum and Rowans's Battle of Britain
are open source.
Falcon 4 is not open source but if you search you can find the sourcecode
FlightGear is probably the most modern opensource flight sim
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlightGear

There are others

leileilol wrote:

the GTA series are really unsupported and have bad pipelines (and GTAV will ban you for it i hear

How does a game ban a person?

The old 18 Wheels of Steel games are moddable. The one I know for sure is Haulin', but probably others in the series also. That game has a lot of deficiencies though. Maybe the modern "Eurotruck"/etc games are moddable too, I don't know.
I spent quite a while fixing the broken signage around just one city in Haulin' before I got tired of it. Most of the documentation for modding that game comes from one person's web site, so it's not exactly a robust dev scene.