Ultimate Driving: Council Bluffs was the first game in the UDU in the state of Iowa and the Midwest, created by BullRusterXxl15 and opened for beta testing in October 2016.
Overview[]
The game is located in a rural area of western Iowa, with many country and dirt roads to explore. This game was based on the Council Bluffs, IA area, its namesake in real life. In addition, grain elevators could be found near the citizen spawn, a staple in many major Midwest towns. Major roads in the area were US 30, CR L64 and I-680, which mostly formed a circular route around the map.
A rail line, complete with level crossings passed through the area. Traffic was required to stop for trains. The game featured three towns and had mostly two-lane country roads, being set in a predominantly rural area.
History[]
When the game first opened in early October 2016, servers were able to fit up to 50 players. Since Council Bluffs was a mostly incomplete at the time, the map was not suited to handle a large number of players. As the game had been opened as a free beta test, part of the map was still incomplete. Therefore, most, if not all of the spawn points were in the same plaza in Missouri Valley. Also, most, if not all the houses and the gas station were located around the same intersection, concentrating players into the small area. Combined with the few roads available, most traffic would travel along the same route around the game, except when travelling to the house by the railroad crossing and along a few rural roads near Missouri Valley.
As a result, major traffic jams occurred in the town of Missouri Valley, since the main intersection could not handle all the backlog. Sometimes, it would take at least 10 minutes to clear up congestion, as people tried to drive the wrong way to jump queues (and block oncoming traffic), and other players were blocking the roads. As the traffic signal was also prone to malfunction and was not properly timed, it further added to congestion and long wait times. This made the game notorious for traffic jams, as people had difficulty even leaving the spawn area. It was also difficult just to drive through Missouri Valley near the spawn area alone.
A school bus crosses a narrow bridge, one of the unique features of Council Bluffs' predominantly rural areas.
One of the major traffic jams on opening day.
The control box for the US 30 level crossing (with gates and lights) was also available prior to full release. Players were able to activate and deactivate the crossing to simulate trains passing through the area. This caused further traffic congestion as people could get stuck at the crossing and had to turn around in a driveway just west of it. The control box was removed in the next update, as well as a reduced player count to 30 per server. Traffic jams in Missouri Valley still continued but they were not as severe as before.
Council Bluffs was under beta testing as of mid-November 2016 according to the Roblox game's page and was converted to a paid access game. On August 2, 2017, the game was reopened as a throwback (classic) map. Its link can be found here.
https://www.roblox.com/games/955086641/UD-Council-Bluffs-IA-THROWBACK (closed)
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A car exits I-680 en route to Missouri Valley.
On July 14th 2018, this game was closed and is no longer playable, along with Ultimate Driving: Pleasant Valley when Bull retired from the UDU.
The game is no longer in beta and got replaced by Ultimate Driving: Mississippi Valley and later Ultimate Driving: Pleasant Valley, due to Council Bluffs' rating being 4 and Bull's expectations for UD Games to get 4.5 and up. This is possibly due to the heavy traffic and the design of the map, with all spawns and services consolidated in Missouri Valley around one intersection. This design flaw was later resolved in the Pleasant Valley map.
Trivia[]
- Council Bluffs/Mississippi Valley was the westernmost point of the UDU that was publicly available.
- This game was notorious for traffic congestion because of poor spawn placement and vehicles often blocking the main intersection (US 30/CR L64) in Missouri Valley, to the nuisance of other players, alongside a few roads for people to explore.
- Council Bluffs had the largest player limit per active server in the UDU at any time, initially at the ROBLOX limit of 50 players (despite being servers in Roblox games allowed to be much larger today, player limits per server in the core games are at 20-40).