Input

Menu

• File
  • New  Reset the application to initial state. All unsaved changes will be lost.
  • Open  Load a .xodr map. Only those exported from LaneMaker are supported.
  • Save  Save the current map in .xodr format.
  • Preference  Application-wide options and About.


• Edit
  • Undo  Cancel last edit.
  • Redo  Revert last undo.
  • Verify Now  [For developers only]
    Checks interal state and reports any inconsistency, i.e. bug.
    If "Always Verify" is set to ON inside Preference, this check will run upon each edit.


• Replay [For developers only]
  • Save  Save actions since startup (including loaded map) to a .dat file.
  • Debug  Load saved actions (.dat) and start playing at the highest rate.
  • Watch  Load saved actions (.dat). In the new dialog, hit play > button to play/pause, 1 to step, and < to start over. Double-click on a list entry to toggle break point.
    Playback will be in real-time, i.e. will last (roughly) how long it took to record.


• Simulation
  • Toggle Simulation  Randomly spawns cars, each following random route. This may take a while on large maps.
  • Paused  Pause or resume simulation.

Modes

• Road mode  Create roads with auto-generated transitions and junctions.
• Lane/Ramp mode  Manually make junctions and highway ramps.
• Modify mode  Two clicks on the same road, then apply a new profile to the segment. Double-click to select entire length.
• Destroy mode  Two clicks on the same road, then destroy the segment. Double-click to destroy entire length.
• View mode  No editing is allowed; allows traffic simulation.

The idea of making a road editing tool came from the time when I was learning Unity during my graduate study.
Tired of all kinds of FPS or platformer games as Unity bootcamp projects, I really wanted to try making something different. I'm a big fan of Simcity games, and was especially motivated by the huge success of Cities:Skylines. It would be super cool if I could program something like that, I always spoke to myself.

I launched the first project in late 2018, named RoadBuilder. Soon I found it's a much bigger kind of challenge than popular entry-level games, due to the nature that most of its content was player-defined: there's no pre-built scene or content, while I need to provide the player with robust and convenient editing tools. In this sense, the game engine itself is less useful than usual: rather than leveraging Unity, I'm largely building an engine within it.
On the other hand, performance is always a concern for this kind of game, and without proper optimization, one can easily end up with thousands and thousands of game objects, gradually overwhelming the hardware as the map expands.

As a newbie in Unity and game development, I underestimated these challenges at that time. The 1-year development ended up with an editor that appeared useable, but one never knows when it will crash or freeze due to random bugs. Even if you got lucky and triggered no issues, it's guaranteed the frame rate will become intolerable within 30 minutes, if you don't have the most powerful graphics card.

After four years in the industry as a simulation engineer, I believe I've got enough experience and skills to stand up to the challenge. This time, I chose the combination of C++ due to its unbeatable performance, and Qt for more straightforward UI development. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I followed ASAM OpenDRIVE and found an extremely useful xodr library to start playing with.

Then the journey of LaneMaker began as year 2024 arrived...