Japanese Licence Plate Generation

One of the features of Jalopy that I feel often gets overlooked is the licence plate generation. Licence plates in Jalopy were generated uniquely for each player. Each vehicle registration generated in Jalopy abided by the format set out by the German Democractic Republic. Honcho will feature a similar system, with each generated plate abiding by the format set out by the Japanese government during the Showa-era.

When designing the structures in the world of Honcho, I referred a lot to the scale model community. They provide greatly with conceptualising a design and even how I might tackle it in 3D.

Thanks to this community, implementing dynamic and historically correct licence plates was actually very easy. ItsNickkk, seemingly a model car builder, found they were spending a lot of time mocking up licence plate art work in photoshop. They decided then that they'd create a plate generator, that abides to the rules of the Japanese registration system, to help speed up this process.

Looking into how this works, and refitting it for Showa-era generation, I've been able to build a C# implementation into Unity. Each vehicle sold in Honcho now generates a unique registration plate. Giving player's a little more ownership over their truck.

Route Generation

I'm busy rewriting how route generation works in Honcho, so there isn't a lot more I can update on just yet, but details on this big change should be coming soon. It's something I really excited to share with you and lifts the game experience immensely. For now, here's Keiko with a new hair type.

Cheers,
Greg