Thunder Road

Haul cargo through an irradiated early 1980s Pennsylvania on the brink of anarchy. Take jobs and contracts, plan your routes carefully. Brawl with bandits and bikers. Upgrade your vehicle with armor, weapons, and special abilities. Start in a run-down van and work your way up to a glorious big-rig. Gain a dynamic reputation with the many factions vying for power. Will you bring order or chaos to the wasteland?

Composed of state police and local sheriffs still attempting to keep the law in this era of madness, mostly unsuccessfully. Patrolling the highways, operating checkpoints, busting up Bootlegger operations and Brotherhood protests, and fighting off Highwaymen and Road Rats.

Once an underground union network for the downtrodden blue collar workers of the commonwealth, now turned populist militia. Determined not to be pushed back into irrelevance the Brotherhood is using the current instability to get their foot wedged firmly and irrevocably in the door.

The nation's oldest private military contractor still operating today. Famous for its history of union-busting and loyalty to the highest bidder. Currently employed by the federal government while the military is busy elsewhere. Call them what you want: union busters, a private army, or just some workin' type stiffs just tryin' to put bread on the table -- They never stop.

**Composed of moonshiners, homebrewers, smugglers, drug dealers, and petty criminals. Just your average, everyday folk making a living in trying times.**

Tough times build tougher men, some say, but times have been tough far too long. The Highwaymen are made up of draft dodgers, rogue national guardsmen, police and mercenaries as well as those with the ability to defend themselves and an axe to grind with the current establishment.

Wayward souls lost to the highways, living a life of senseless violence, killing, looting, and abuse. Traveling in gangs on dirt bikes and motorcycles from town to town seeking their next thrill. It’s easier to destroy than it is to build, it’s more fun, too.

Right from the beginning of their history the American has been fighting. They fought the Indian for their land, they fought the English for their country and they fought each other over whether or not they had the right to fight each other. The United States of America was built upon conflict. Endlessly striving toward that which they do not yet possess. It is the most basic of human aspects. Civilization is built upon it and Governments are built upon controlling it.

Since the last great war the world has been split in two between the capitalist West and the communist East. The two superpowers fight not over land or honor, but over ideas. America has bled itself dry attempting to stem the red tide, spending generations of its life blood on the far side of the world. A global economic depression exacerbates a worsening energy crisis. On March 31st, 1979 a buildup of hydrogen gas exploded inside the core of the Unit 2 reactor of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station blanketing eastern Pennsylvania in radioactive material and poisoning the mighty Susquehanna river.

With federal resources stretched to the absolute breaking point after the recent special military operation into Canada, the good people of Pennsylvania are caught between overwhelmed local authorities and private military organizations loyal only to the highest bidder and a growing population of desperates, anarchists, doped-up freaks and weirdos.

America is on the brink, but as the saying goes, there is always a party at the end of the world, and somebody needs to deliver the beer.

DEVLOG

August 30th 2024

Inception! Mark your calendars folks.

September 2024

Working on the design doc and character animations. Also made a temporary dev vehicle GIF.

Was innitially planning to use the same weapon drawing animation for all of the guns but clipping hitboxes at short range aside, it just looked wonky and was too long to add a muzzle flair in my PS canvas, a fixable problem yes but I took it as an art-from-adversity moment and made unique animations for all.

October 2024

Working on design and some rough visualizations.

**Dodge obstacles and outmaneuver enemies.**

**Load up cargo in the most optimal configuration for maximum profit.**

November 2024

Working on animations. As you can see here I do a rough sketch and then finalize on top. So here’s the thing. I don’t have an animation program. I have to draw the frames in photoshop, save them out as numbered png’s and then put them onto a free gif making website, format them to the right frame rate and only then can I see if it’s good or not. Christ, it’s one step above cave paintings.

December 2024

Working on the map and banging out the default Van.

An early mockup for balance and composition. This was the original scope for the game but… you know how it is.

Still working on getting the right spacing on the settlements and getting the real life roads to be workable.

Final version of the blocking, this was right before I moved on to the final art.

Decided to change the palette to a warmer 70s feel.

Current final version as of 1/16/2025. I think it pretty nicely fits the old road map vibe.

January 2025

Finished the Van and the Truck for the first vehicle manufacterer, DeFallt. Get it?

Also working on road generation.

**An early mockup of what roads will look like.**

**An early look at highway generation in-game.**

February 2025

Added details to the roads, still not totally done with them but for now it is GOOD ENOUGH!

So how it’s gonna work is i make some lines and cracks with some random variation and then in-engine we’ll generate some patterns with them and just generate those the way everything else is generated. Hopefully it looks solid.

Working on the first Big Rig. Unlike the Vans and Trucks, Rigs are going to have unique manufacturers, first up is Chamberlain. Get it? Chamber - like a gun - and lain, kinda like a road—lane. Plus it’s the name of a civil war figure which in this universe is even more culturaly relevant than in ours.

You have no idea how hard it was to find reference online for this crap. You’d think someone at some point would have taken a picture of a cabless semi truck chassis on the entire internet, but alas.