We know that it has been a long time since we released an update, and the plan going forward is to greatly increase the frequency of the updates. This next update will be a large pre-race update, containing all the physics updates, vehicle updates (including the Pigeon), terrain updates, and the new user interface (UI) basics. The racing system, East Coast map, and Gavril T75 will not be included in this update, but they will be released in smaller updates later on. We will try to continually release small updates at a fast pace that will integrate the features that are in the race update. So: no more huge updates with long delays but rather small, short, simple ones.
We ran into a lot of unexpected hurdles and had to rewrite a lot of code just to get things back to a working state. After the pre-race update, it will be full throttle on the racing system. In addition, you will be able to enjoy a much more functional updater, with faster download speeds and less fighting with anti-viruses, firewalls, and file permissions. (see updater-first-public-test)
Unfortunately, because of the large changes to official content, Lua, collision, friction, and the core physics, many mods will need to be updated to work correctly. There is no way around this; you will have to adapt your mod to work well again if the update breaks it.
Going forward after the race updates, we might look to implement some delivery features and gameplay; trailers, ties, tow hitches, cargo, and the like, as well as fixing the collision and friction problems with cargo carrying. It should be quite possible for us to code some delivery missions.
We’re also interested in hearing from you, the community, as to what direction development should take as far as features and gameplay are concerned. As the possibilities are a bit overwhelming, and we are a small development team, it is important to concentrate our resources on what is most important to our community 🙂
Here’s a list of all the changes that are already done for this pre-race update:
Vehicle updates:
- Added vehicle: Ibishu Pigeon
- Global improvements to handling and top speed (tire tuning)
- Roll cage optional part added to Covet for Race and Rally models
- New Covet Sport as a factory model (+10 hp, sportier suspension and wheels)
- Added fender flare parts, engine variants, and 2 new sets of wheels/tires for Bolide to create 2 new factory variants (320 and 390 GTR)
- Adjusted shift points for all automatic transmissions
- Added 5-speed manual transmission to D-Series and Grand Marshal
- Enabled steel wheels for D-Series
- Recalibrated speedometers
- Revised torque curves for Gavril I6 and V8 engines (230 hp for the standard V8)
- Engine tuning stage parts added to Gavril V8 engines (stage 1 = 270 hp, stage 2 = 420 hp)
- Factory sport models added for the Grand Marshal and D15 using stage 1 engine tuning
- Added optional welded differential to D-Series, H-Series, and Grand Marshal
- Drift Missile variants added to D-Series, H-Series, and Grand Marshal
- Repaintable decals for the H-Series (put your own fancy logo on it!)
- Fix for brake lights only coming on at >50% pressure
- All gauges now glow when the engine is running
- Various tweaks, fixes, and improvements to all vehicles
- Revised some vehicle part weights
- New default colors
Terrain updates:
- Improved road materials
- Improved textures
- Improved roads
- Improved terrain
- Improved lighting
- Improved sunflare effect
- Improved skybox texture for reflections
- Improved objects
- New objects and vegetation
- New reference images for all maps
Physics updates:
- Around 25% performance improvement
- More stable and accurate collisions (fixed a lot of bugs - less shaking and getting stuck)
- Heightmap bugfixes and optimizations
- Static collision optimizations: terrain objects are faster and reload quicker
- Improved flexbody performance
- Friction and ground model improvements
- Brake and parking brake greatly improved and extremely effective
- Fixed water density
- Engine reaction torque added
- Automatic transmission launch behavior greatly improved
- Realistic automatic transmission mode implemented (manual PRND21)
- Removed ability to manually shift an automatic transmission as if it were a manual
- Differentiation between automatic and manual transmissions added
- Removed auto-clutch while changing gears
- Added auto-clutch on stalling
- Increased wheel and beam limits
- Fixed physics-crashing problem with beams with 0 spring deforming
- Added warning for zero-sized beams
- More fault tolerant drivetrain initialization
User interface (UI) updates:
- Completely rewritten UI using HTML5 developed in an open source manner: https://github.com/BeamNG/ui (see also: more-work-on-everything)
- Modular and flexible customizable system with widgets
- Rewritten debug functionality
General updates:
- Per-vehicle Lua system added
- New Lua mod extension system: hooks that vehicle’s Lua can use
- Added RPC-alike call for vehicle Lua
- Added Lua functions getDirectionVectorUp, getBeamLengthRestRatio, inWater, setBeamLengthRatio, setBeamLengthRefRatio, getBeamLengthRefRatio
- Implemented vehicle-specific input maps
- New prop placement system
- Prop breaking via deformGroup added
- Added flares to spotlights (WIP)
- Added more electrics sources for animated props
- Fixed some Torque3D terrain and vertex buffer locking crashes
- Improved performance of scene rendering (faster sorting of rendering objects)
- Added render distances for BeamNG vehicles
- Fixed crash on truck deletion
- Fixed crash on spotlight deletion
- Fixed crash report date/time
- Fixed up slow motion
- Improved triggers: rendering depending on distance, new trigger improvements (seesee Race-triggers-accuracy)
- Fixed Lua error levels being set at lots of places, now only once at system start
- Fix for particles disappearing randomly (see Little-Update-Particles-disappearing-randomly-Fixed)
- Improved particles and added normal force
- Added dynamic loadable prefabs: ability to change the level on the fly
- Re-added camera collision
- Fixed camera control inversion for interior vs. exterior
- Limited up/down camera movement - no more flipping over
- Camera focus fixes: use the right mouse button to rotate the camera
- Fix for most collision sounds being missed (was mistakenly using beam ID as node ID to emit sound)
- Tire rolling sound now only plays when a tire is contacting asphalt
- Fixed and improved tire slipping sound logic - now only plays on asphalt
- Xbox 360 controller input map reworked (D-pad is now used to operate signals, headlights, and hazards)
- Fanatec 911 Turbo S wheel input map improved/reworked
- Steering wheel now remains 1:1 on cars where it turns less than 900 degrees (for 900 degree wheel users)
- Removed Oculus Rift support
- Removed Skia (previous debug drawing method)
- Menu changed to winter + two folders to swap it out for summer/winter
- Added benchmarking tool - test performance with multiple vehicles and output data
Valve Steam status: [Steam page]
- We applied via Steam Greenlight and were accepted due to our awesome community. Thanks so much! <3
- We want to publish a reasonably polished game, with as few bugs as possible, with some kind of basic gameplay
- We have no official Steam release date to announce at this time
- Everyone who bought alpha access will receive a free Steam key when it is released there 🙂
Linux / MacOS / OpenGL Port: We are currently porting our game engine Torque3D to OpenGL, then to Linux and then to MacOS. The OpenGL port is nearly done. 🙂
Currently known problems that we are working on:
- Vehicle selection GUI not working properly
- Vehicle configuration persistence not working
- GPU will still sometimes crash on some maps
- Flexbody frame lag, exacerbated by multiple vehicles
- Flat tires are not really flat anymore due to the tire tuning we did
- Lots of other stuff on our bug tracker right now (244 bug and 93 feature tickets atm)
We will try to resolve some of these problems before releasing the pre-race update, which should be in the next few weeks.
As always, thanks for your continued support. We hope you enjoy this update when we release it, and the progress to come afterwards 🙂