If you read & understood my post, you would know that I was talking about NOTICEABLE changes to the player. Sure there may have been say some rework of say the tire ground contact physics. But I didn't notice any change and no change was needed as far as I can tell. So it's about focusing dev time on the bigger bangs for the buck. Yes, new cars and maps are fine and noticeable, but those are assets, mostly done by artists. There hasn't been much done by the programming side of the team that's really noticeable or useful to the player, at least in my opinion. The only thing I can think of is the water splash particles and water current physics.
Currently, we're in a phase of remasters. Perhaps when the remasters are done, the devs will work on new features. Trust me, I want new features too, and I think dirt physics and dust are great ideas. But as stated before, the current game engine doesn't really support that kind of stuff. It appears that the devs are working with what they have, and adding what they can. Sure we could technically have deformable ground, and even modders have touched it on small scale projects. But to bring that into an entire map would destroy performance on even the beefiest of gaming rigs.
OK, that's a reasonable reply. I too hope focus will return on new features as I said. Regarding deformable ground, you certainly wouldn't want it on an entire map, just a few sections with mud or sand here and there. If done correctly, there's no reason that should impact performance on the average gaming PC.
I'm just going to let this post speak for itself I wouldn't consider those three things to be in a great state for a full release game. Obviously we just got the new ground contact stuffs and as a lay person I find it comfortable, but the more hard core sim racers in the community seem to think it still needs work. More importantly, thermals, wear, and flat spots are all entirely non-existent. For a sim racing game, the lack of tire wear is a big deficiency. Engine customization is minimal at the moment, and Diamondback discussed some deficiencies with the current simulation here. As for traffic... No, the AI is not good. At all. And we will have to see what happens with the car pooling system they just put in game. I fail to see how visual dust effects ought to take priority over actual simulation and gameplay mechanics. In the Over The Horizon blog post, they mentioned wanting to do multiplayer (not sure which type of multiplayer they are referring to, maybe this was multiseat?..), and I recall a couple of dev comments stating they had been looking into it. Historically speaking, Estama has been very pessimistic about it (One example of Estama discussing it can be found here) but maybe they picked up again, we as a community have no way to know. To me it seems that the "rudimentary" third party mods are generally at a sufficient point for most of the player base to be happy with it, so I certainly hope that they have begun to look into it again.
And I simply fail to see it your way. I guess we'll just have to disagree. As I said before, we have no dust/mud on tires, except some static dirt on a few offroad tires. Big deficiency there. The physics simulation on the other hand is already so advanced & detailed. It just seems like diminishing returns to keep hammering at it at the expense of more basic features that are missing. Sure it's a nice idea to simulate every fuel molecule and all the chemistry and mechanical forces that happen inside engines, but what's the benefit to the player if they see no difference? It's just impractical. This is after all a driving simulator, not an engine design simulator.
i dont think i've ever seen a racing game with flat spots actually, and i hate the idea that im gonna have to learn braking instead of slamming the pedal down and locking up
^ This... to a certain extent. I get that BeamNG is very much a function over form kind of game currently, it has a dated look that I can easily forgive because it offers a gameplay experience that matches no other driving game I've played (menu navigation excluded). OP has a point however. There's a weird disconnect that occurs when you put an entity with as much visual detail and dynamism as a BeamNG vehicle into an environment that's rigid and unchanging. This kind of works for racing sims because the focus is on the racing aspect of the game. The tracks need to be accurate and so do the cars - it doesn't matter if a tree behind the barrier is just a 2D plane because you don't get to see that up close - not so much the case in a sandbox like Beam.
Exactly. Why not spend some time on the static environment and tire details, where the game is lacking, and come back to further improve the already very advanced physics and vehicle simulation at another time? I think that would make more sense. The physics simulation overall is already far ahead of any driving/racing game I've seen, even if for example BeamNG doesn't simulate tire flat spots, but so what. That seems like a very minor detail. If the devs want BeamNG to be more competitive with other racing games, I'd say introduce a racing mode to the game, i.e. time trials but with AI cars. I'm surprised that hasn't already been implemented, even though it's been suggested. --- Post updated ---
Apart from Your glaring lack of any knowledge on any part of game development and You know.. Capitalism. You seem to just not be part of target demographic of this product. As far as everyone's concerned, their roadmap seems to be coherent and fairy well executed. I'm sorry if I or anyone else here seems condescending, but every single post You made here make us all scream "this is not how any of this works". I do suspect in part where all this confusion in younger gamers comes from. You peeps see all those cool looking games made in UE4 and Unity by a handful of people and You think "Well that wasn't so hard, was it?" Without realizing the amount of time and resources spent in development on creating dedicated tools and environments which Spintires was mostly spared by licensing Havoc and utilizing it to make what here take years and years of development. Havoc Physics is very well optimized, especially for what Spintiers utilized it for, hence they didn't need 10 years and 50 people to do it. I mean whoop te do if I buy I car I don't need to build it, rocket science innit? Again, You're telling them to stop building something they need to build the thing You're asking for. Tires have been in the works for years and recently there was a huge update to them. All those things sound simple to you so you think they're simple but they're not. They take years, literal years. Nothing can be done about it realistically. Asking for it to be done faster isn't going to materialise it faster. It if was easy everyone would have made it by now. Please be patient.
Uncalled for. FYI, I'm a middle-aged game developer myself. I didn't say any of the things you accuse me of saying. As I've already said if you bothered to read & comprehend my posts here, the vehicle physics are second to none. I admire them very much, especially as a game developer myself. What's so wrong with asking for focus to now shift to the static environment?
Because this is supposed to be a simulation game, and it's still lacking many simulation aspects such as thermals, and some things need to be redone like the sounds system for the car interior, and old content has to be remastered because it's not up to quality with the rest, and implementing what you want now would slow down the development of these things that have the highest priority, because it would be way more complex than the things the devs should actually focus on now. It can't be done in the near future, maybe in a few years.
If You're a game developer then You know the answer to this question. You understand the game development cycle. If so, why does this thread exist? I'm so confused.
He makes a good point, it would be great if they could focus on the static environment for a few months just to polish everything up. it’s not like BeamNG is eternal, there will be a point where development needs to stop. I don’t even think development will last another 5 years, so there are things that need to be prioritized.
I completely understand where you're coming from, but I think you're missing the larger, broader goal which BeamNG sets out to achieve: be an ultra-realistic driving simulator wherein the realism comes from simulation, not direct programming. The very nature of this goal means that BeamNG's simulation needs to simulate both parts and external forces that act on them (such as thermals effecting tires and brakes)- and developing a simulation like this takes a long time. If the vehicles in a game billed as "the most realistic" don't drive realistically, you can't cover that up with eyecandy like glowing brakes or dirt effects. The simulation takes priority over the graphical fidelity. That's the way which this game is being developed.
Again, You think that things like that take few months from a concept to finished product. They just don't. The most crude and simple dirt accumulation would take that long sure, but it's execution would make it stick out like a sore thumb (particle effects fi.). A hard-coded feature in the sea of simulation. Whatever cheeky technique that could blend it fairly well and would be fairly easy to implement would require a ton of research, which is time that person can spend doing literally anything else. I'm really not that strong on how this project operates as I am not a game developer, so I could be wrong in a lot of my takes. But I really doubt it's as easygoing as You make it out to be. And Yes, I can assure You this game will still be in development in 5 years. I'm more sure of that than I am sure of most other things in life. Take under consideration that even if the game would to release it's not really just a video game, it's a simulator that has a lot of it built from scratch. I don't think You just mop it up and piss of to do something else. While pointless to speculate I'd assume it would have a fairly long post-release roadmap and continuous updates for at least two years if not for a decade. After all, I think when all of the main features are built, this is where the fun begins from the development standpoint in my opinion.
Well you physics-only guys are entitled to your opinion, but it seems even the devs don't agree with you as some graphical improvements have been implemented over the past few years, not only the already mentioned water splash particles but shaders, optimizations for frame rate (especially West Coast level), etc. So stop acting like my request for tire dirt and dynamic mud is out of line. The physics simulation is already 9/10 in my view. Graphics & effects probably 6/10. Just because you don't care about something doesn't mean no one else does. Maybe you guys should play some SnowRunner for a while, then see how it feels to go back to the static environments of BeamNG. Of course BeamNG has way superior physics, but that was never in question. --- Post updated --- I understand that. But BeamNG also set out to be pretty while doing that advanced simulation, even if the graphics are secondary. --- Post updated --- Because it's a suggestion in the suggestion forum. I don't know why that's so confusing to you. Maybe you should post somewhere else.
the creator of this thread is really driving me nuts with this much brain damage over something this senseless
