Should we please have an all things included asset (item) pool that is acessible in every level (including the empty ones)? The game shouldn't compel the average gamer to copy/paste between folders but present every item (trees, rocks etc.) available under a simple menu. Once I start an empty map, I should have all the items to make a scenery at my disposal. Editors are meant to be easily used by the average gamer. Not every gamer is a code writer.
Well the problem would be the sheer amount of stuff to choose from, way too much to make it look any organized. And modding is not for gamers but for code writers, even making a map requires doing some work with file structures and similar stuff, so who said the editors are meant to be used by gamers??
I did. A simple "search" function could be added for said organization. Maybe BeamNG Drive could think of being inspired by the Little Big Planet and Dreams franchises on PS4. "Even making a map requires doing some work with file structures and similar stuff"= NONE-USER FRIENDLY ENVIRONMENT. If we can spawn vehicles and such with a few presses of buttons and add them to a level, why can't we place some trees and rocks that easily? Is there a logic answer to that? Editors ARE to be used by gamers who want to make their own levels and have more fun. And maybe they have better ideas than some boring code writers to implement.
I've been thinking about this topic myself. This morning, I went through all of the base maps and copied all of the terrain art files into one folder. I ended up with 256 items, following a somewhat consistent naming convention, although there are duplicates an inconsistencies. As I consolidated the files, it became apparent that no map had more than a handful of unique textures. Some had nothing beyond the common files. Some unique files are not actually unique. (Example of substantially similar rock textures below) I think it would simplify modding a lot if all of the resources for the BeamNG maps were located in a core folder. That way, if you use terrains or a buildings from Jungle Rock Island, for example, and the next major update completely overhauls that map with a bunch of new textures and items, your links aren't broken, and you haven't had to make a bunch of unnecessary duplicates. Core files should follow a naming convention that doesn't reference the map they were created for. For example, utah_rocks should be something like redsandstone_rocks. jri_forest_floor should be jungle_forest_floor, etc. Modders could use whatever names they wanted for unique files, but encouraging a common pattern would help when people want to use each other's custom resources: geobeck_yellow-snow, for example. To be clear, I'm not talking about converting everything to drag-and-drop, which would require a huge overhaul of the editor. The issue I see here is similar to something we're trying to fix at work, people creating new documents by re-saving a document in their personal files, rather than using the newest company template. I've probably fixed at least 400 health & safety files in the last few years. BeamNG has an excellent mod repository system, which should serve as a model for a core resource repository. The best part: Existing maps would not necessarily be broken by this change. Any resource that has been copied into an individual map could still be referenced there. But any new json files could reference the core resource folder. Mods could be updated to the new system over time, rather than needing to fix them all at once. In the end, centralizing all of the resources would lighten file sizes. Mod files would only need custom resources, not copies of core resources.
Would be convenient to have a common art folder in game files that contains every asset there is now and in the future. But there's not for some(?) reasons. Maybe it would be hard to maintain or loading all of it would take too long. At least they are working on making browsing easier. https://www.beamng.com/threads/world-editor-2-0.61035/page-7#post-1254477
https://www.beamng.com/threads/beamng-map-options-map-duplicator-and-renamer-v0-3-05-sep.3768/ Ancient thread from when +100MB maps were considered big. Common asset source idea was shot down by tdev. Modern version of that experimental "unused file cleaner" would be handy however. You could create a massive set of art and then bring the file size down when the map is finished.
