v0.19: Removed vehicle saving :(

0.16 is no good. The Derby and Banger mods only work on 0.18 and 0.19 so we may as well just quit playing the game as it's no longer realistic.

And yeah go on Facebook on the BeamNG Derby Group as well as the two banger racing groups, you'll see exactly what I mean.

 

what exactly doesnt work on 0.16? maybe its downgradable?

 

As far as the underlying code goes, there shouldn't be any difference between it being used for career mode or at random - it's surely the exact same function calls to the physics core.

What you said (relevant to the above quote of mine) is this:

Implying that saving/loading is not beneficial for "how the game is meant to be played", whatever that is.

"physics improvements are more important than up-keeping features"
Yup, see the last part of my previous post for a response to that idea.

Yes, obviously, that was sarcasm.

Not saying that the game lost all it's fun, just an important part of it.
I (and others) have mentioned a good amount of uses for it in this thread, but I'd say that the most easily-relatable is the simple ability to save what you're doing, shut the game down and then come back to it later, still in the same vehicle!
The soft-body physics aren't just good for chaos, but also for buildup of damage over a long drive, exploring the levels, where the preservation of the car that you've been driving for over an hour now (and/or that has been deformed in a lucky/interesting way) becomes a fun goal - save/load is very important for this type of gameplay!

The removal of it is not the absolute end of the world, it's just unpleasant to see the value of this feature be so underestimated.

 

I've never tried this "save mode" everyone keeps talking about. I'm still using v.0.17 and never updated. Would you suggest I stay there for the time being until something maybe gets sorted out in all this?
If this "save mode" is all the rage everyone says it is, then maybe I'd like to give it a try and judge for myself-- while I still can.

I had always thought "save" meant save a different car as your default, but someone astutely explained that it's to save a "damaged state" of a vehicle and use it in another instance-- be it in the same map, or a different one. I guess I feel sort of ignorant for never knowing this possibility existed. I never used it. I'd like to see what it's all about, while I still can.

This is one of the reasons I'm so sheepish about moving onto the next updated version-- until I've read the general consensus on the forums, to see how the population of players is receiving it. And I can tell that this issue has become unusually controversial, compared to the changes in past updates.

This is why I have two separate BeamNG icons on my desktop at all times. One links to Steam and will immediately update to the newest version, if I haven't done so yet... but the other one only links to my beamng.exe file in my "in computer" ("off line") of my "Programs" (64-bit) folder. So if I open it up from there, I can force the old version I'm current on, and keep it there indefinitely.

So I didn't make the move from v.0.16 to v.0.17 until November 2019, and am currently still on v.17. Unfortunately, it would appear that I've missed v.0.18 for good, and probably should have at least done that... but oh well.

I'm sure there are some definite benefits to moving forward to v.0.19, but I'm just not ready yet, given all that has been said on this thread. At least one go on the "save vehicle damage state" merry-go-round, to see how it feels, before possibly moving on.

 

Thats the spirit!! Yea this save feature has been the best thing keeping me playing this game. Now that its gone I have no desire whatsoever to play long term and I have over 200+ hours just doing derbys and at the end of each one I used to save the state of the car respawn and load it in to see if itd run as thatd repair the motor and radiator. and have a 2nd demo derby with the survivors. Now that our Save feature is gone it takes away that 200+ hours of fun that I always had and really upsets me and 900-1000 others according to my facebook group and itd be nice if the devs would hotpatch it back into the game or release a developer mod for it to be added back in for the ones that wanna use it!!

 

Deleted

 

I think it's safe to say that the majority of players don't even know that it ever existed, and/or what it can do - I started using it only after it had been out for some time, and only recently noticed that it's able to save shapes per vehicle type, and does it permanently, not just for the current session, as initially expected.
Also, it can repair "internal" damage, which is great, but took a little use to actually discover - why would anyone expect this?

 

I never really used it, however I think even though it was used alot by some people, its better to have no option for it, than a broken, glitchy feature.

 

i never used this option but if you put it back


That cool

 

And as for the "load" button still being in the game, maybe that was a minor oversight because the save feature could have been removed at the last minute before the update was pushed. Understand that this is an early access game, and that there will always be something that attracts negative attention when that thing is often unintentional or otherwise necessary.

 

But what we want to know is if its possible at all to get it back or an alternative improved version. Like it saves the body state but reconnects the tie rods, fixes the radiator/motor and airs up all the tires. but keeps bent struts and the smashed up body.

 

Interestingly, it still works too - it can load states that I had saved before the update, so with the code not having been all stripped out, maybe it was "last minute" indeed, who knows

 

A lot has changed since 0.16....

The Miramar has an edited body.
The Grand Marshal has an edited body.
The Fait One won't work probably.
The Covet Banger mod that took ages to make won't work.
The new 11 oval tracks that aren't published on here won't work.


Basically, it's a no go.

 

While I'm sad to see it go it has a good reason to go. If it can effect something as deep as the physics core and possibly cause major issues then I'm ok to see it go for now. All I would hope for is that F7 (teleporting) a vehicle would keep all damage as is more reliably since it still has some issue and this would be the best alternative. I would also expect that once the game is "full release" whenever that happens the save feature is likely to return due to all major physics updates are done with.

 

I can't imagine the feature causing major issues to anything but itself, and as supported by this:

It was perfectly fine just sitting in the background for a while now.

The problem is here:

'Keeping it alive as is' doesn't sound like it was considered as a valid option by estama, and so the posts make it sound like a bigger problem than it is, as "fully maintaining it" would imply stretching the feature to cover all the variables involved in the ever-growing internal simulation (drivetrain, powertrain, brakes, cooling, fire, etc...), which would indeed have MANY maintenance implications.

I'm going to dare say that that as long as it's kept as simple as it is (or needs to be, for) now (saving node positions and broken beams), there shouldn't be much maintenance cost at all, as long as changes aren't made to the fundamental data formats, which surely doesn't happen very often.

As loading of deformation saved before the update still works in v0.19, I'd guess that the decision of removal was taken more to solve the issue of incoming bug reports (of bugs that unintentionally made the feature BETTER, by allowing repairs), and not because a new change made it any less usable, and while this would've been a bit of a dirty solution, the problem could've been solved by adding a UI message saying "We are aware that this feature is incomplete, but currently have other priorities, sorry!", which is nothing but an issue of "optics" for the developers.

 

So everything said is just blanket wrong, is it? Obviously, there's a lot of guesswork, but please be more specific, as this reply is quite meaningless otherwise.

Yeah, I get that we're dealing with something fairly complex, but this isn't some alien tech either.

Going by what estama said:

The feature (in it's current state) was not some giant, complex undertaking to implement in the first place, and what I'm advocating for is as "quick and dirty" of maintenance as it has been getting (or NOT, as it has "worked by chance" for a while) already, instead of taking up "full support", which surely is where much of the dread for needing to support it comes from, no?

 

Can we please all stop?

Answers have already been given and I feel like debating on this subject isn't going to fix anything or bring the save/load feature back from its ashes.

I think that we all agree that the devs have other priorities, and we must understand that they are willing to make sacrifices to be able to keep development times low. estama and Nadeox were clear and their choice is perfectly understandable.

You'll move on eventually and forget it, as with all things in life.
Sorry for that line, felt like I needed to include it.