Bad Hügelsdorf 2020
It began as a community map in 2017 and ended as a commercial Steam release in 2020. This is the story of Bad Hügelsdorf 2020.
Key elements I learned during the development of Bad Hügelsdorf
Level Design
I created the 62.4 square kilometers big map from scratch in a scale of 1:1.
Project Management
I managed big parts of the collaboration between team members.
Community Management
I got in contact with many community members, collected their feedback and wishes and tried building upon that.
Texture and Sound design
I have edited and created a lot of sound and texture files to help players immerse into the game.
What is Bad Hügelsdorf?
Bad Hügelsdorf is a mostly fictive city located in the south of Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
I started creating Bad Hügelsdorf as a OMSI-2 community map in 2017 and released a free version of it at the official forums later that year.
OMSI is a Bus-Simulator released by Aerosoft. In the end of 2018 I pitched an ungraded version of Bad Hügelsdorf to the publisher Halycon Media. We started a cooperation to release a completely new version of Bad Hügelsdorf as a commercial OMSI 2 AddOn. This new version is called Bad Hügelsdorf 2020.
Bad Hügelsdorf 2020 offers players a 62.4 square kilometers big map that includes urban areas as well as cross-country routes.
Being an extension to OMSI 2, Bad Hügelsdorf uses OMSIs Engine including systems like ai-behavior, physic calculation or playerinputs.
However, the map Bad Hügelsdorf itself is build from scratch and only shares some basic objects from the original OMSI map Berlin-Spandau.
Trailer
In July 2019 we officially announced Bad Hügelsdorf 2020 to the public.
Compared to its free predecessor from 2017 Bad Hügelsdorf 2020 now offers a lot more. The map became bigger, the number of driveable lines increased from 3 to now over 14. Also, the DLC includes thousands of new 3D Objects and three busses as well as special AI-Vehicles.
Design wise the map has reached a new level of detail. The existing areas from the 2017 version can still be found in the new version but have undergone massive updates.
New areas of the city also come much closer to a real city as they are now more based on a real life model. Indeed, some areas of Bad Hügelsdorf can be found in an extremely similar shape in the city Baden-Baden.
Time limited events in Bad Huegelsdorf 2020
OMSI includes a system called „Chrono Events“ which allows modders to create special variations of the map which will be activated on specific dates. Bad Hügelsdorf implemented a lot of these events to offer players a living, changing and therefore interesting city-experience which fits the respective time of year.