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Skunks - driving simulation with Open Dynamics Engine(available for download at sourceforge.net; current version: 5.0.0) Overview
 
This is an electric car driving simulator (^).

Driving simulators allow researchers to study driver training issues and driver behavior under conditions in which it would be illegal and/or unethical to place drivers.

Skunks 5.0.0 Skunks 5.0.0 Skunks 5.0.0 Skunks 5.0.0

Only SDL 1.2 or 2.0 and Open Dynamics Engine, which are also free software, are required. ODE is included with all versions, so it doesn't have to be downloaded separately. Because it doesn't have a lot of dependencies, the game can be and was adapted for various operating systems and devices, as shown below. Around the time when I was thinking about a name I had recently discovered a somewhat similar game with cars released in 1990, called STUNTS, and I saw some skunks on TV, so...
 
Videos
 
Version 5.0.0
 
Below is a video of version 5.0.0 running on a very expensive high-end gaming laptop (^). The operating system is GNU/Linux (Fedora 34 MATE):
 
Download Skunks5.webm

MD5: 69c92b8c0d7621539b0092bfb9709db1
Version 1.0.0 (phone)
 
Somebody from Ukraine made a menu and adapted the game for an operating system called MotoMAGX (^), for mobile phones, then sent me the following video:
 
Download Skunks.mp4

MD5: 547cbdd07d4d14593f12295ce98e2802
Performance
 
The following table shows some results obtained with a few different CPUs and GNU/Linux distributions. The tests were made as shown in the first video from above, at 800x600x32 (in the video, the game is running at 800x480x32). Video cards aren't mentioned because they don't matter.
 
CPUoperating system -march= frames/second
Pentium 4 650 Fedora 34native (nocona)70 (67*)
CentOS 6.1043
Core 2 T7300 Fedora 34native (core2) 142 (92*)
CentOS 6.10121
Atom N455 Fedora 34native (bonnell) 27.1 (23.8*)
core2 31 (26.2*)
CentOS 6.10native (atom)30.1
core230.4

I also tested the game on a computer with a Pentium M 740 CPU and Mageia 8 installed, which came with a bunch of graphical interfaces included, so:
 
CPU & operating system graphical interface frames/second
Pentium M 740, Mageia 8 LXDE 70
IceWM
MATE70 (58*)
GNOME Classic58
GNOME on Xorg
GNOME40
Cinnamon
Plasmadidn't work
Openbox
XFCE

*with software compositing window manager enabled in MATE (it's enabled by default, so it has to be disabled (System » Preferences » Look and Feel » Windows))
 
Articles and other mentions
 
Skunks: un simulador de conducción ideal para niños
 
gizmos.republica.com (^), 2012-04-18

Los juegos de simulación de conducción en juegos de vídeo de código abierto no abundan y entre un listado más o menos breve de éstos, encontrar un título que sea perfectamente jugable tanto por un niño como por un adulto, parece un gran desafío.
 
Si bien hay títulos muy interesantes como Trigger Rally o CoreBreach, sólo por escoger dos al azar, la dificultad de los comandos hacen que no sean juegos de vídeo accesibles para los más pequeños.

Skunks – 3D realistic driving simulation game
 
linuxlinks.com (^)
 
This page recommends some free books and tutorials for learning C and the game is also mentioned in another page (^) from the same site:
 
To be eligible for inclusion in this list each game needed to meet the following requirements:
  • Free to play (no download charge, no monthly charge)
  • Does not require Wine to run. Wine is a compatibility layer for running Windows software
  • Must be playable and great fun

Raport - Cercetarea științifică în UTCB (2013)
(Report - Scientific research in TUCEB (2013))
 
dmcdi-old.utcb.ro (^)
 
Download raportcercetare_utcb2013.pdf

MD5: ebb903cd2feb23e94e0ad61cdb4178cb
Page 164: DEZVOLTARE SOFTWARE
[...]
skunks-4.2.0 (simulator autovehicul bazat pe metoda elementelor discrete)

An Open Source car simulation game based on Open Dynamics Engine (ODE) for Linux
 
linux.softpedia.com (^)

Skunks is an open source, multiplatform and completely free 3D video game implemented in C/SDL and designed from the offset to act as a car driving simulation that features several electric cars, multiple tracks, as well as stunts.
[...]
The game’s software rendering is based on the Open Dynamics Engine (ODE). It uses the SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) library for displaying the objects in the game, which means that no hardware acceleration is required to provide its 3D realistic driving simulation.

The rendering is not based on Open Dynamics Engine, however; only the dynamical simulation is.
 
Ported versions
 
Sega Dreamcast
 
Version 2.0.0, which is no longer available at sourceforge.net (but 3.0.0 is), was adapted for Sega Dreamcast consoles and is available at dreamcast.es (^) and here. The archive includes the modified source code and this version has a menu made with SDL_ttf, which is now obsolete.
 
Download skunks-2.0.0DC.zip

MD5: cec569958e5de3c15f6bb81b2ba85cee
AROS Research Operating System
 
Version 4.2.0 adapted for AROS (^) is available at archives.aros-exec.org and here.
 
Download skunks.i386-aros.zip

MD5: b1de52325c6c6ac92dfb6acf5098393b
The primary goals of the AROS project are to create an open source OS which:
  1. Is as compatible as possible with AmigaOS 3.1 where appropriate;
  2. Can be easily ported to different kinds of hardware architecture and processors, such as x86, PowerPC, Alpha, Sparc, HPPA;
  3. Is binary compatible on Amiga, and as source compatible as possible on other hardware;
  4. ...

Pandora
 
Version 4.1.0, modified and adapted for Pandora consoles was mentioned at pdroms.de (^) and can be downloaded from repo.openpandora.org and from here. Apparently it uses OpenGL ES. The files can be extracted with p7zip, according to which the archive is of type SquashFS. Version 4.1.0 was the first to include support for OpenGL.
 
Download skunks.pnd

MD5: 12a633ab36c89a0f5cede33df219f13d
Skunks 4.1.0 OpenGL Skunks 4.1.0 OpenGL Skunks 4.1.0 OpenGL Skunks 4.1.0 OpenGL

The problems with OpenGL are hardware support (it's not supported by most devices, many of which have support only for OpenGL ES) and unreliable results, as can be seen in the pictures above, which show images displayed by 2 different video cards. With certain video cards, like the ones usually found in old and slow computers, where OpenGL would be most needed, gaps can be seen between triangles, and they can be eliminated only by declaring the triangles in a very complicated way. Besides, although GPUs have many advantages in scientific applications, using them for games is, in my opinion, overkill.
 
MotoMAGX
 
This was mentioned above.
 
Comments
 
happypenguin.org (^)
 
2011-02-22 Reminds me of a game I used to play 20 years ago back in the arcade- called 'Hard Drivin'. Fun!
2012-03-02 My only other request, is it possible to make a camera that follows the car from behind but doesn't bob up and down with the car (makes me dizzy). They have this type of camera on games like Gran Turismo.
I did that, but I usually sit inside the car when I'm driving; I don't fly behind it. I don't know about other people.
 
dreamcast.es (^)

There is no "editor" itself, but to create a circuit is very easy. As easy as fuck notepad and go putting numbers
In the Readme inside explains how to do it,

dreamcast-talk.com (^)

There are RAM issues with this port: when you try to reload new tracks and cars, RAM increases until goes for more than 16MB.

This problem was solved in version 5.0.0, from 2018, but the message is from 2012, when I hadn't found out about Valgrind yet.
 
pyra-handheld.com (^)

The game is not finished, its more like an interactive tech demo (or a playground). Right now I'm working on moving most of the render operations to GLES (lighting and fog were made in software, among other things).

This comment refers to version 4.1.0 adapted for Pandora consoles, which seems to use OpenGL ES; I can't be certain, because whoever made the adaptation overlooked the fact that I might be interested in the source code. I made an OpenGL version for version 4.1.0 out of curiosity and I don't understand why they used that, since this type of console apparently doesn't have such a bad CPU. I don't know what finished could mean in this case and I don't think it's a demo, because I didn't make it for demonstrative purposes. The fog from the OpenGL version isn't made in software; only the colours assigned to the vertices are calculated in software, after which the interpolation, to create the appearance of fog, is done by OpenGL (the video card, where available). I found this to be more efficient and reliable than declaring fog as such in OpenGL and many video cards can't perform lighting calculations anyway, not to mention that for flat shading it's not worth the trouble. However, a playground (^) is something better than a game:

A playground, playpark, or play area is a place designed to provide an environment for children that facilitates play, typically outdoors.
[...]
Modern playgrounds often have recreational equipment
[...]
However, it was only in the early 20th century, as the street lost its role as the default public space and became planned for use by motor cars, that momentum built to remove children from the new dangers and confine them to segregated areas to play.

Playgrounds are good, but children should never be confined to any segregated areas to make room for cars, instead it should be the other way around (^).

when the car was invented and thousands of people who couldn't afford cars were slaughtered by the tiny minority of Americans who could afford them: the auto industry did a puffery, inventing the idea of "jaywalking," blaming the dead for their own murders:
[...]
The automotive Big Lie never died: we still routinely blame "pedestrians" (another puffery!) for their personal failings when they are killed or maimed by cars. Today, people with self-driving car brain-worms are saying that EVs' propensity for running people over is a problem with people, not "AI"

repo.openpandora.org (^)

Could definitely do with a reset car key when the car is toppled so I don't have to restart every time I bump a tree.

As far as I'm concerned, reset car means putting the car in the initial position and that is achieved by restarting, but from the context and considering other games I've seen, I think the person referred to magically putting the car on the road and with the wheels under it, somewhere close to its current position. I find that totally unrealistic and such a function would also encourage reckless driving, but it could be implemented by anyone who wants to, since the game is free software.
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