Hello, all. A long while ago I had a simple idea for connections between multiple official maps. Although I did create a thread on the matter a while ago, I feel that I didn't explain myself very well, making it look like I was suggesting something that was and likely remains beyond the capabilities of BeamNG and Torque 3D. So, with a spit-shine, a fancy name, and proper elaboration, here's my proposal: 'Paths and Ports' is a gameplay component concept for BeamNG.Drive that offers a more canonical means of moving between the game's maps, mostly for the sake of the game's eventual career mode. Paths Paths are imaginary connections between maps [implicably] located on the same landmass as one another. In terms of systems and required content, there are two parts to a path, the path end (visual, a road that leads toward the edge of the map, or off of it), and the path trigger (a trigger that activates the movement between levels). When a player hits a path trigger, the game saves the player's current vehicle, its parts, its color, and its condition to a specialized file. It also saves information from the trigger itself, letting the game know which map is being headed to and from. The game then loads up the corresponding destination level, and the player's previously owned car. It also spawns the player on or near the path end that leads to the level that the player just left. This creates the illusion that the player is driving from one level to another, even if it isn't seamless. This has a few advantages: Immersion. To get to your destination in Utah from East Coast, your instructions are more relatable to the real world. Instead of opening menus, you just need to drive west. Possible challenges. This opens up long-distance trucking and cross-country races (à la Cannonball Baker and the Cannonball Run) as possible events that the player can take place in. The newly-created path ends can serve as obvious potential destinations for fleeing vehicles in car chase events. The collective maps can become something larger; a part of a digital continent, if one made largely with smoke and mirrors, that the player can traverse at their will. Road trip, baby! So, what's a port? Ports Ports have a less ambitious concept; they're pretty much any in-map seaport, airport, truck terminal, or rail loading dock that could presumably be used to ship a vehicle or its owner. They just consist of a trigger that opens a level selection menu, and as such, are meant more as an alternative to paths for campaigns, than as a freeroam feature. To incentivise using paths in the campaign, using ports comes at a nominal financial cost and is restricted in ongoing events, and ports may not be present in every map. But they save travel time and ensure that a vehicle will arrive in the same condition as it departed with. Ports are also necessary since several maps don't take place on the same landmass, and many are even islands of their own right. Community-generated campaigns might also be built around community-made maps, which may not have direct inferred connections with any other maps or the outside world. Needed Features Obviously, even if the devs like this concept or have already thought of it themselves, quite a bit still needs to be done to make it possible. Firstly, we still need vehicle state-saving, which would also open the way for persistant vehicles and a rewind feature. We'd also need some means of saving to and loading from a file from within the game itself. Needless to say, none of this is going to happen overnight. Now, all of this is subject to feedback. If you don't like the notion of having to pay to visit island maps, think some of the above would clash with the intended campaign structure, or might have other ideas on this system's possible realizable forms or potential uses, feel free to comment.
God I love your thoughts here! +1 for sure --- Post updated --- This would make the ideal open-world vehicle sandbox
I for one would like to give you some of the recognition you deserve. These are great concepts, thank you for taking the time to share them.
This is an excellent idea, I think that if this is implemented, there could even be a mod support aspect that somehow allows community made maps to be reachable by this system. For example, a hub map of sorts with roads that automatically connects paths to maps found in the mods directory. If this is implemented, it may also be nice to have long, highway/freeway style maps that are only a hundred meteres or so wide, but many kilometers long, sort of like buffer maps, so that you would not just drive from ECU to UTAH with no transition. Sort of an accurate simulation of having to drive on the highway to get from one place to another. Also, how would you drive to Gridmap?
I had the idea that path ends could be user-constructed, such that any two or more community maps could be 'connected.' If multiple and community-made career modes are planned, perhaps the path connections could be defined by the campaign files, such that the campaign creator could define which path ends go to which map (and, in turn, which maps are available to be traveled to and when). That way, custom connections [Utah > Blackhills] could be possible. Perhaps some path ends would be unreachable unless they go someplace. Say that the broken bridge in Utah stays broken unless the campaign designer tells it where the path end goes. Then, it's replaced with a complete, functional bridge. I did have the idea of freeway/interstate-type 'nexus' maps, meant to overcome the obstacle presented by maps with only one path end (looking at you, Hirochi Raceway). They'd feature multiple possible routes over a small area and a small amount of content (quick to load), but would extend the system by allowing the player to travel to multiple maps in a region without using a menu. Moreover, some inaccessible 'under construction' routes located off of exit ramps and cloverleafs could lead to maps that haven't yet been defined or built, allowing the system to be extended. And perhaps this could be used as an answer to the community maps question above. Also, I should clarify that I didn't mean for the singular connection between ECU and Utah to be permanent, only that paths could allow a dearth of maps to represent a whole continent. Perhaps a better vision would be East Coast>Midwest>Rockies>Utah. But of course, that would mean many more maps, and is asking for a lot all at once. Baby steps! I really wasn't accounting for the VR maps, as they're a bit out of the BeamNG canon. Then again, we don't have enough of a story for there to be a canon, so perhaps that was a failure on my part. One option would be for it to be reached via ports, or perhaps it would be some kind of simulation-within-simulation thing, where one drives home to their in-game computer, and 'uploads' their personal car to toy around with, or complete small challenges. It'd be a little goofy, but it would let the player bash up their unique personal car without any repercussions. So, really, BeamNG in a nutshell.
Excellent idea, in theory you can do it without a massive hassle, a mod could probably be made for all but the car damage. If you just have a script that activates on parts of the map that loads up the one you would be driving to, and then when it is done, teleports your car to the proper location. If I remember correctly torque3D has a mission system that is about half of this: you reach the end of the mission and it takes you to the next one
I really love this idea, and I think it would be 'doable' in game with limited scripting. I've already got maps with roads that lead to the map edge (or as close as I can go) and would love to interconnect them. You need an origin unit, that is on both maps, that's kinda like in the same spot on both maps, so that the player's game can transition seamlessly - half-life uses this - it's been that way since gold-source (half life 1, made from the Quake 2 Engine - ID tech 2 I believe?). It's the anchor point which when you hit the level changer area (a world-object that triggers the change when the player enters it's boundaries), and your ?? distance from the origin block, you will appear in the same rotation, axis, and distance from the NEW map's origin anchor point in the new map after travel. It really works well. The old GTA's did a system like this also, namely GTA III and Vice City. San Andreas was the first one that did streaming and did not do this. Anchor points get the same name in both maps (they have to be named so you can have a map with more than one transition). This way they reference one another. Level/Map Changer objects need to have different names so that it knows what to target. You name your origin and TARGET level changer AND map name here. This way the game can take you to the level, find the same-name origin unit and level-changer and position you accordingly. Of course (after transitioning) the level change would be disabled for a moment until the player leaves it a certain amount of distance away so that say if you spun and hit a wall and bounced back (as can happen on level transitions!) you don't end up warping back out of the map accidentally. If the game can't find the map, it wouldn't warp you as that'd drop you to console/menu or crash the game. It would be a super-cool idea and I think this seriously needs to be added to this game. It would definitely kick it up a notch! I've been doing game-development since the mid 90s in DOS with modding and other such like that, so with a little scripting, it COULD be done, provided we can script in new objects for the game. Entirely would link Nevada Interstate and So-Cal Interstate in a second I've actually designed my maps around this feature hoping one day I could talk the devs into it. *edited for a few typos and actually putting the correct words in this time... &#$%! --Great Idea & best of luck with this!
I don't know enough about programming or the game itself to know for sure, but this idea seems good on the surface. Now if it could be done the way @bob.blunderton said, that would really be cookin' with dynamite... it could actually render megamaps (such as his own So-Cal, Nevada, and Tennessee interstates) obsolete by allowing the game to portray the same expansive area while maintaining a better heightmap resolution.
Nice dump Trump icon, totally feeling that one. On the map change topic, I wouldn't want to have to experience going though loading zones on So-Cal and other maps, simply because it would detract. Beam does maps of this size (So-Cal in this example) just fine, it's maps like Tennessee that could use to be split up (but most likely will never be). Tennessee and So-Cal use the same size, but a different spacing on the terrain triangles (the actual hills, valleys, etc, that divide up the terrain). It would be a nice extra for a finer resolution for So-Cal, though it's entirely NOT needed, it is sorely needed on Tennessee however. There are ways to dress up 'blocky' terrain though. I've already heard some moaning about driving around in So-Cal and experiencing loading times on more minimum-spec computers (got some flak for it). Actual map loading screens would really make people angry. Most recent systems do run this map fine, however. This would be great for streaming data into the game via an open-world style with no loading screens, though. I am all for that, as splitting up levels in a streaming manner (which is what almost every open-world game does) into chunks would enable a mapper to have more than 4k amount of objects in a whole map area. I am really hoping the devs come through on this one - even if they impliment it a YEAR from now, it'd still be totally cool with me. They could sure put their game on the radar of people who don't like 'loading' seperate segmented areas or small game-maps, if they could do the open-world area. That's much harder to do than actually 'warps' or triggered transitions. Sure would help the FPS though.
@bob.blunderton There is one issue that I didn't think about, though. While it sound like that "streaming" (method could certainly solve a lot of problems, maybe even allow a giant map to be assembled out of multiple minimum-size/max-resolution heightmaps, when you think about it, all the loading that would necessitate might cause slower systems to start falling behind, rendering the transitions not entirely seamless (occasionally happens in some PS2 NFS games - the game will randomly freeze and show a loading icon, then a bunch of the map suddenly appears in front of you and the game resumes), especially on fast freeways. Seems like it could also use up an SSD pretty quickly, assuming reads wear them out as well as writes (not entirely sure, or I may have a totally wrong idea about the technology in general).
I think I might be familiar with that technique, it's one of the main ways to prevent floating point errors from becoming noticeable after significant distances. Once the player and other gameplay-relevant objects get too far from the centerpoint, move everything back to keep things stable. Even large-scale and open-ended games do this; KSP from what I can tell uses this to move its articulating multi-part rockets through literally astronomically large sections of game world. I do like the thought of this or a similar system being useful for creating macro-maps. But call me crazy, I actually would want a system with seams. Not to say that I wouldn't want a system without, but as at least a secondary option, loading zones have my favor. I do have a few reasons: Simpler. Easier to design, easier to implement. Can get in BeamNG's feature set sooner. Less content needed. To properly connect ECU and Utah with seams, you'd need a themed interim map or two, representing parts of the link between New England and the Southwest. To do it seamlessly, you'd need every themed region between those two points. Not that that's a problem, strictly speaking, but it's asking for a lot all at once, especially with half the people working on maps as on cars. That brings us to: It's extendable. If you make New England connect directly to the Appalachian region, and later decide to add New York/New Jersey/Eastern PA as its own map, you'd probably have to completely redesign a seamless map, but would only have to change a few quick values to a seamed one. It's more forgiving in the planning stage. Moreover, there's better likelihood of mod maps being capable of connecting to official ones using a loading zone. More feasible scale. This one's mostly personal preference. I'd rather have a supposedly full-scale continent to be able to cruise around in, if only in the small vignettes that are our current-scale maps, than a singular, large, seamless map that portrays a greatly downscaled continent. I guess I find the latter immersion-breaking, even if I have no love for loading screens. Just to be clear, none of this is meant to be exclusive to North America. In fact, I thought up this thread partly so I could try and compel Hutch not to make Italy an island map (better late than never). I'm just using North American locales as examples since we now have the most maps set there, and am personally most familiar with said continent's distinct regions. I'm also editing this post because I called Kerbal Space Program a 'fairly' large game. Silly me.
You know, you might be able to make a basic mock up of this with campaigns, they it loads up scenarios based on if you passed or failed, so if you do it right you can have it move you to a scenario on a different map
Maybe users can create their own "paths" for their own maps or the official maps. The Beamng team can make preset paths for the official maps. Users can edit those paths or make new ones. Great idea. Edit: Needs to save the time of day, too.
