Hi, so I think the vehicle could be improved to help better organize configs and reduce bloat, which is quite a problem for vehicles with multiple markets and bodystyles, a good example being the new BX. Also sorting configs by price makes things difficult to navigate. My proposition is a linear selection process to streamline things, something like this: Market: you will begin by selecting the market country, under which brands available in said market will be displayed. So if you were to choose US, you will then be able to access Gavril, Bruckell ect.. as well as Ibishu, however selecting US>Ibishu will only display USDM models (the 240BX). to access the Diana, you would choose Japan>Ibishu VVV Make: as explained above, after selecting a market you will be presented with all the makes available in said market VVV Model: after selecting a make/brand, you will be presented with all the models of said brand, so could be US>Ibishu>Pessima or JP>Ibishu>Diana VVV Year/Generation: After selecting a model, you will be able to choose which year/iteration of said model. This offers a way to sort different generations of the same model (e.g old or new Pessima) as well as facelifts of the same model. A selection by year would be best as many cars in the US feature yearly updates, such as the 71-74 Chargers. Think of this step as selecting a brochure VVV Trim Level/Bodystyle: The next step is to choose the trim level and bodystyle. Pretty simple, think of this as choosing from the brochure you have just selected VVV Options: now that you have chosen a trim, the next step is to choose options if they are available. This is where you would choose between Auto or Manual gearbox, and other optional parts such as bodykits, decals ect.. VVV Colours: The final step is to choose a colour for your vehicle. I think the colour selection system also is not that great and could be improved. I would propose a system like Gran Turismo 7, where you select a 'paint job', in which body colours 1-3, as well as interior colour skins and liveries can be linked. This would have the ability to create proper two-tone paint schemes, as well as having the ability to link interior colour to the exterior, as is often the case (AE86 for example, high flash and high tech two tones have red interior and bronze glass, high metal has blue interior and no bronze glass) Hopefully this makes sense, I would be happy to hear everyone's thoughts and please feel free to contribute
I definitely like this as a concept, but I think the difficulty in executing it is making it work for casual players who don't care about markets, facelifts, trim levels, they just want "a redneck truck" or "a yuppie's convertible supercar" and navigate by looking at the thumbnail images. Logistically, with the D series having 533 possible factory configurations (not including unrealistic configs, i've done the maths), it'd be horrible if they had to manually make every config as it's own .cs file with a lookup system. It'd be much better to implement a procedural system, but even the logic behind that gets tricky, e.g. you currently have a "post-facelift" model selected, you change the trim level to the "Chief Rancher", so it puts the bits on, but then you select the "pre-facelift" so it changes the front fascia part, but it needs to also remember to put the high-end headlight sub-parts on rather than using the default cheap headlights. Another problem, where does this leave aftermarket/service configs? Sure, it'd be cool if you could select a pre-facelift of the police covet, but can I have a USDM police covet? Could I put a diesel in my vivace rally car, and how many performance upgrades should it default to having? When I select a USDM 240BX as my Drift car, does it remember to leave the JDM front end panels on? I think a good middle ground for these two problems would be to keep a super slim selection of hard-coded configs; probably one of each trim level, and one of each aftermarket config, with the transmission/market/facelift/bodystyle randomised between them, like how it currently is for some vehicles. Then if you select one of those factory configs, it can either just be loaded as-is, or be popped into the configurator as a "preset" to be modified. this is just a rudimentary mockup keeping the overall layout the same, note how now for the legran there are only 8 factory configs listed (you could thin it down even further if you wanted) In a perfect world, a little spinning 3d preview of the car which loads a preview of the optioned parts in realtime (like a real car manufacturer's website) would be ideal, but of course implementing such a thing would be a massive pain (smoothly loading the necessary meshes, some way of cataloguing the meshes and moving parts on different bodystyles probably without loading the jbeam for nodeoffsets or flexbody references, etc.) so it'd probably have to do without.
thanks for the in depth reply, and yeah some good points to address there first and foremost I am very much the opposite of a casual player, an auto otaku would be a petter description that said there certainly is a certain fanbase I think would greatly appreciate an in depth menu giving you absolute control and making you feel as though you are actually ordering a car from a dealership to your liking so in addition to the indepth setup, there should probably also be a simplified 'quick play' style menu aimed at casual players, or for when you just want to drive a random car without much thought basically much like the simplified menu you have shown, with the option to either randomize or choose transmission/market/facelift/bodystyle and also there should probably be a 'my favourites' category GT4 style, so after you go through the indepth menu and create your dream ride, you can save it and quickly access it via the my favourites menu as for aftermarket/service vehicles and such, these would be able to be chosen under trim level/bodystyle, me personally I would probably order something like this: stock(base>loaded)>beaters>tuned[category e.g track drift drag offroad](mild>max)>race[category e.g track drift drag offroad](mild>max)>service alternatively, after choosing a stock trim/bodystyle, there could then be another category to turn said trim into beater, modified, race or service type vehicle also the 3D spinning model would be super cool, and probably doable, only problem is simulating it via jbeam would probably kill loading times lol maybe have a simplified menu only jbeam, or just render the mesh without jbeam worst case it is not feasible, pre rendered png images would work fine imo, much like car brochures looking more at the image you posted, having that checkbox thing on the right would probably work just fine imo
I just want an option to have a simple text tree that let's me choose the raw config files...the defaults plus the custom. This will avoid loading thumbnails which is slow anyways.
I dont want to cycle through 100 menus just to spawn a car. Yes the current one needs refining but there is too much here. Maybe this is more appropriate for career mode car purchasing and importing
