Where are we going?

Going to be honest, I think there is a main problem to this....lack of communication...
Also, I really think Automation is a good idea. Atleast it's more content. And like Estama said above, anything they do has research behind it; that research could lead to other things they either didn't know how to fix or was wrong about.

Buuuut that's just me. I'm the dumbest person on here, you all know that

 

I think you have hit it on the head there, theres a distinctive lack of it between the Dev team and the Community, theres that gulf between the Beam Devs and the Community and I feel there should be someone who can go between the community and the Devs, the Microblogs are good for stuff being developed but if there was a way of getting more out there I had the idea early on that there should be some way of asking the devs questions and stuff but I am not entirely sure if thats a workable idea or not....

 

Just realized. You know the "What you did today" thread (I think that's the name). If this game is gonna be as realistic as possible, how often does the community help out simulating and researching? People have different vehicles/lives anyway. This does go with the the communication thing anyway.

Point is, the community, and especially modders should be helping out in some way. Not saying that amazing mods should be official, as that could open a really nasty can of worms. Just stuff like researching what stuff does.

Also I did a good, can you tell I'm happy?

 

You know, without this game I wouldn't have met most of the greatest people that I've ever met. I met some of my best friends through this game. This simple car simulator has brought together so many people, it has brought many of us together. That is why I want this game to stay alive as long as possible. I will never forget how much this game was affected my life in one of the most positive ways possible.

 

Yeah I see what you mean with the Liveries as for the researching stuff you would need communications between the Devs and those "modders" you described yes you would do that and I do agree with the modders helping out with the finer details and stuff and also with people who understand the LUA code (I am a complete NOVICE at that) but for them to go in and look for ways to improve it, I have my own "Custom" UI list and also custom game units in the game that I put in there myself, if the devs want my core files that I tweaked I would gladly provide them, also you did extremely good @Danny Werewolf

 

EDIT: I was wrong.

 

Post 146 in this thread

 

Earlier in the thread, one of the devs said they're basing on fixing some FPS issues with Italy, pretty sure it is because of it being the biggest map so far. Also, Italy isn't the only thing they're working on. I'm just happy it's going to exist honestly.

 

You could've just quoted it, but alright.

I'll go ahead and quote it so others can see, just in case they haven't.

It seriously slipped under my radar.

 

I hope that there will be new skins, configs and parts for different cars

 

Look, I don't know where this game is going tbh. I asked a long time ago about fire damage.


This was their response.

How can a game be called a simulator, yet fire does absolutely nothing but pop tires. It's mostly cosmetic, which is not the point of a simulator. I feel like this games priorities are completely out of line. While (in my opinion) they should be focusing on physics, graphics, tire physics, weather, dirt/mud physics, etc. They're focusing on reskined snowman hunts, cars, maps, etc. We don't need this devs, we want an actually realistic simulator, not a Hollywood movie. We expect, and better.

Thanks.

 

Fire damage is a bit lacking, and it surprises me that it does not at least affect thermals.

If one wanted to put some time in, you could have fire affect thermals, disable electronics at a certain point, and for those who want to go overboard, allow for a burn texture to fade in on the vehicle, and you might consider allowing it to spread from vehicle to vehicle, or across grass (add more fire to the ground and put effects on the ground similar to the skid marks).

At the very least it should affect thermals.

 

I not am going to be popular for this post but that all sounds like complete bs.

automation=better tires..... on what planet?
art team=responsible for tronmode.... guess the environment team and coding guys didn't do any of the work then
bus=better enignes...so why the duck waste time on bus routes?

I ain't buying what you are selling.... it just seems too far fetched. I might give you the ffb but there is no reason that automation was needed for it, you chose to use it.

I am not meaning this as a personal thing, its just my opinion on what you have said. I don't mind if this post doesn't get a response, I just wanted to say it and get my feed feedback/critique out there.

 

I personally would actually LOVE to help with research and data gathering... plus I have a rather wide array of vehicles at my disposal that I could do it on as well. I would just need to know what was needed before I could start providing... that and a way to track the needed data... but that could be discussed. If anyone wants to make a thread on that and actually gets the devs to ask for a type of data from something I would be all over that.

 

Can you name a simulator where fire does burn electronics or any of more than being cosmetic?

Think about Farming Simulator or Euro Truck Simulator, they don't even have any kind of physics, they are faking even basic movement, no research done at all, just making mesh to move without physics at all.

But, I can sense how it does not really matter, opinions have been locked in and anything is done to twist messages to fit pre-set views.

Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but it would be nice if some reality checks would be done.

 

I think he is saying that doing all these projects helped them find weaknesses in their pipeline and improve their efficiency. Making the bus routes helped them find flaws in the game engine and fix them, which I think relates to career mode. Which is a long running goal, but before that, they have to find weaknesses and fix them. All in all, these side projects are helping them make mistakes and learn from them so they can deliver the best experience for career mode. After all this is their first game and many of the devs have experience in other areas.

 

Something about parametric something. Not sure what that means but it sounds impressive. May have something to do with grip and sidewall strength scaling according to the multiple variables present in Automation, not just compound but also engineering year and quality. The Automation team may have also helped them adjust their existing (and future) tires to grip and behave more realistically - remember the fairly recent work on making sidewalls stiffer, perhaps the Automation team was involved there?

"Tronmode" is, as I said before, basically a reskin of the track builder they were already upgrading. They took the work they were already doing, added in some glowy track pieces, some glowy skins, and a fairly simple map. If a modder had done it, it would be impressive and probably talked about for months, but there's nothing really groundbreaking there that they weren't already doing, so probably fairly simple for the dev team to do.

Gives the bus a reason to exist in the game beyond simply crashing, gives people a taste of what future campaigns and career modes might involve at some point, and also helps develop the game's ability to "check" the completion of complex tasks. To complete a stop on these routes you must face in a specific direction, stop, tilt the bus, wait, untilt the bus, and set off again, overall a much more complicated series of steps than simply "pass through the circle"... and now that the system is there, it could probably be adapted fairly easily to delivery missions, pit stalls for endurance racing (once tire heat & wear are simulated), and who knows what else. It could possibly even, though I admit this is reaching a bit, eventually lead to the creation of a more refined anti-cheese system for closed-course racing missions, allowing the big ugly checkpoints to be dumped entirely for those.

 

Someone said "fire damage" and then someone said "what game on earth does realistic physics based fire damage?".
That alone describes but one of millions of possible things the devs would love to do with this software/engine.
It is also a cornerstone of my queries as to when to draw the line with research and decide to put out a game.
When do you say "okay, we have tons of cool, ingenious and never attempted things working that are stable, repeatable
and solid. We have enough to blow the world away, lets get this baby to retail"

The DLC after that could be so epic it boggles the mind.

This is where it seems the idea of cohesion of a goal in the development of BeamNG seems completely lost.

 

For me the last few additions like lightrunner, bus routes, automation export and so on were fan services. The big stuff was and is still in the works (maps, cars, gui, careermode) but instead of releasing updates with only under the hood stuff they added those low/mid effort stuff(compared to a 16km² detailed official map) so the fanbase has something to do.
So i dont think its a lack of direction what is going on. But what i see is that we slowly enter the last quarter of the timeframe a commercial game should take to develop. Beamng is now in development for ~6 years and at some point it should go atleast into beta. With every year also Torque3d is showing its age a bit more. My uneducated guess is that the "game" part as in "careermode" is holding them back quite a bit. But idk.

/should have read the thread before posting. Everything is already discussed or answered by devs. no need for my yadda yadda.