What goes into bus simulation? The same ingredients that go into your favourite triple-A action games, it turns out. There’s an open world, but it’s no backdrop to gunfights or fire propagation - here it provides an urban landscape to drive your passengers across safely and punctually. And there’s an AI director sending commands to hundreds of NPCs, but they’re not enemies - simply the civilians you’re picking up, dropping off, and sharing the roads with.
Bus Simulator 18 developer stillalive looked to Unreal Engine 4 for the newest iteration of its game. The studio wanted to go bigger, drawing on Epic’s expertise in level streaming, the technical trick that powers so many open worlds. And for the roads, stillalive made use of a piece of software you may already be familiar with - Cities: Skylines.
Want to see sprawling landscapes, urban and otherwise? Try one of the .
But first: remember how Left 4 Dead’s zombies had an unseen director? Bus Simulator 18 has its own, pushing the zombie-like commuters this way and that in order to make the streets around you convincing in their simulation of city hustle and bustle. Left 2 Drive

“We spawn the pedestrians and vehicles around the player,” lead designer Alexander Grenus explains. “Neither know where they want to go.”