Update Speculation thread

It's also normal in the BeamNG universe as the Piccolina has used the same body from 1957 until 1973, even the Hopper has used the same body from 1989 until 2001.

 

Post war Italian economy cars and 1980's Japanese "Jeeps" are far different than 1990's American trucks. Not exactly comprable vehicles/markets... You may as well say it's normal for American pickups to have rear engined .6L i4 motors because the Fiat 600 did back in the 50's

The Piccolina's production years are only 2 years longer than the Fiat 600, and the Hopper has identical model years to the Iranian Jeep YJ's (and the Hopper is essentially a foriegn YJ, being Japanese and mechanically a Wrangler).

 

You do have a point though.

 

those vehicles were basic in some point (an economy car like the fiat and the well known wrangler) so outdating wasnt all that bad.
for a cargo vehicle like the d-series, should be important to keep up to date...
I say should, i know nissan used the same taillights, bed and overall the same truck from 1985 to 2010's

 

Yeah even the 5th gen Dodge truck shares the same basic design as the 4th gen, the only real changes is the fascia, bumpers, hood, fenders, door handles, taillights, and interior. the 4th gen started in 2009 and ended in 2020 and I know the 5th gen will last about as long.

 

A'right! Career mode! That's somehing that's always been looming far far ahead in the game's development path. We all know it's far from release, but since there's not much else to speculate ATM, let's take a look into the game's files, updates history, and developer's posts, and ask:

What do we know?

I'll start off by saying we actually know very little. And of that very little, we can mostly say what was once intended for career, or what was in development at one point in time. But that can hint at what's to come one day. (Keep in mind this is the update speculation thread- I'm speculating. That's almost like 'guessing'. Take it with a grain of salt...)

1. We have a few character designs that we know of, which were intended at some point for career.

Spoiler: characters

And this post by Lisa, from the BeamNG team
These are all in the game files ever since the Driver Training campaign was released.
And here are some updates to those characters, that the devs posted a while back (Nov 14, 2017):

Now, back then we didn't have anything related to the 'ranger' (that's his name in the files). But a year and some later, Utah got a new ranger hutt- he now makes much more sense.

2. We also know that WCUSA was seeing experiments with, or an implementation of, a teleport system to switch between maps, and Utah has seen experiments with or implementation of what seems like either a car garage, or a dealership with actual cars in it.

Spoiler: original post

Now off to things I can't prove:
I personally believe that this round of overhauls to maps would be the last update to maps and after it they should make sense for career. So that means, that whatever new features the devs want the maps to have in career mode, would be added now. So we can look for patterns in things that are both added to maps, and are expected to be in career, for example:
- Ways to move between maps, using the ports, airports (and maybe also roads at the edge of maps). Patterns: Utah has received a new airport, ECA and Small Island received a small port in the overhauls, both had no way to 'enter' before.
- A functioning fueling system. Pattern: the remasters add to maps new gas stations and E-charge stations. See Utah, ECA, Hirochi Raceway etc. Also, the new scenario where you refuel the Piccolina.
- Scenarios centered around emergency vehicles: Italy and ECA got new emergency authorities buildings in updates (fire stations, police stations and a hospital).

And one last thing: I think that "a rocky start" was meant to be the 1st chapter of career. However, the devs decided that it was not enough, and that career mode can't just be made out of more scenarios (can't remember if it was confirmed at any point, but it makes sense anyway). Enter: nodegraph scenario editor- a more powerful and modular tool to write scenarios, perfect for developing new systems that can replace the traditional way of making scenarios. (Check out the 3 new scenarios, or the demo in the nodegraph editor- they are far more sophisticated) Also, in "a rocky start" the AI wasn't very impressive when racing. That should be solved with AI improvements, and/or: The ScriptAI, where AI follow a predetermined path.

Both the Nodegraph and ScriptAI, I believe, were developed for career in the first place, and released for us to enjoy in the meanwhile, because career is probably still a long long way off. However, the foundations are here already.

Alright, that's all I've got so far. What have you guys got?

 

Thank you for looking further than the usual fasciasm, tailight fetish and hollow facelift lore mainstream. Most of your speculations seem plausible although 3 years after those sketches without any real news I guess we will have every model year d series from 1950 to 2020 before we got any meaningful advance in the campaign (aka gameplay) front.

@devs, how about some honest and up to date talk about your current "early" access plans for beamng? (in adition to high quality taillights teasers) Thanks.

 

another location ECUSA got that I haven't seen people mentioning is the "firwood savings bank", suggesting it might be a start location of either robbery jobs, or police chases.

 

wow that sign looks depressing. hopefully that building gets a new model but thats just my wishful thinking.

 

Nice!

 

Haven't posted since August due to taking a break from the forums, but I've got a lot of information today.

These first 3 screens are from Nadeox1's imgur.
The first image of JRI remastered and a Park Ranger Hopper.



Another image with the Beam Safari one.


A Sheriff Hopper Crawler.


B25Mitch was on the KissMP discord and provided some insights into the WCA Remaster:

New roads and tunnels:


Additional confirmation that the racetrack is staying:


Good news for modders, the city is now being split into multiple meshes, meaning that you can now use some WCA buildings!




Lastly, there are far fewer roadblocks


Overall, a ton of new info. This update is shaping up to be really interesting!

 

Wow, thanks for posting that! One thing I noticed on the park ranger Hopper is the new wheels. They appear to say Gavril on them and will probably be included with the D-Series facelift.

 

it looks more like an ibishu logo

 

no, definitely gavril.

 

Oh shit it looked like the ibishu logo middle line at first

 

Yep those were the same wheels that were on the orange D Series here

Look to be a similar design to the wheels on this GMT800 Tahoe.

 

another thing I just realised, the roamer in that teaser picture has 3 dimensional tail lights, where the existing version is just an opaque lens.

 

I believe the facelifted taillights that are already in public release are 3D. I think it could be the lighting making shapes look more pronounced.

 

The current ones do have an inset for the reverse and indicator lights but that's it, the teased ones have the lens showing etc

 

They look like this rim right here which is off of a 2001 Chevrolet Silverado 1500.