0.25 Discussion thread

Did you guys make any changes to the horn system, specifically the fade in and out? Because I was making custom horns before this update and they sounded fine but now it's all glitchy and weird. Attached is a video of the issue.

 

Only those two at the moment

Actually I am just very interested in technical stuff and as such have done extensive research on automotive engineering. Yet, the more I know about internal combustion engines, the more I am aware of their shortcomings and as such I am convinced that electric vehicles are the future.

No, I dont work for any EV related company or have shares of one, I promise. I also dont own an EV yet, although my next car almost certainly will be one.

 

I don't know how to fix it, but the revamped crashing sounds lack impact to me. 0.24 was maybe a little cartoonish I suppose, but still. Prior it felt like the cars had weight and it was metal and glass along with plastic. Now all the cars sound like they're made entirely out of plastic.

 

I figured I would take some time to evaluate the issues I've seen, but these issues seem to be recurring, so I'm compiling the two big ones here:

1. During situations where the police are chasing me, on very rare occasions, all traffic will despawn right in front of my eyes. They will quickly fade out and disappear completely. Not sure exactly what triggers this, as it is very infrequent, but the issue is very jarring when it does occur.
2. Much more common, the AI police will "forget" they are pursuing me. I know that, as part of normal game design, as I get far away from police cars, they will progressively despawn and new ones ahead of me will spawn and chase me as though they have always existed. For whatever reason, several police cars will spawn with their lights and sirens off, and they will not chase me or attempt to do so. This will happen to a few cars (anywhere from 2-5) and then the police cars spawned after some indeterminate point will return to normal and will be chasing me. Even if the spawned police cars resume chasing me, the previous cars that were not chasing me will continue to ignore me.

A side note: my Steam name still shows up in the license plate even with the option unchecked. This could affect streamers, so please ensure this is fixed quickly.

Finally, I still have some issues with the AI system during police pursuits, but I'm still working through them. Maybe later I'll elaborate on how it is deficient (there are still a surprisingly large number of cars that drive straight into other cars and cars that continue to floor the throttle even when they're blocked by something like a wall).

Also, all these errors were found with mods disabled.

 

when i start the mission in italy near the rundabout, (the one where you must carry 3 scintillas with the truck + trailer) the truck and cars spawn outside the road on the grass area and bump out of the track every time, most of the time is just after spawn just one scintilla left on the truck.

 

This might be an existing issue, but the Unicycle has difficulty walking and jumping through sand, especially in the run-off areas at Hirochi Raceway as seen in this video.

I don't blame it though; I myself find it very difficult to run and jump through soft sand, so if anything this bug is actually simulating real life.

 

I know this isn't technically related to your comment, but your comment reminded me of some feedback I had.

I like that the police don't blindly kamikaze you or make unintentional roadblocks trying to turn around quite as often anymore (at least at first, but there seems to be some kind of trigger that causes them to target you much more aggressively after a pursuit has been going on for a couple of minutes). I do, however, feel like the police respawns could still stand to be less aggressive. As it is, they respawn constantly in front of you to the point where the only way to lose them is hide off-road. Go somewhere traffic barely spawns or doesn't spawn, like the drain or the racetrack in WCUSA, and stay there until you stop hearing sirens in the distance. How well this works varies by map; on Utah, despite the dirt roads being fairly decent, the entire middle of the map is one big cop-free zone (except for the crosswise road and the bridge/campground road) and takes longer to cross than the time required to lose a chase, and on WCUSA you can use the aforementioned drain and racetrack (and maybe parking garages thought I haven't tested this) as safe zones, but on ECUSA you have to find one of the trails that's nasty enough to not have any traffic spawns, and hope your car is capable of maintaining some forward movement there because I'm pretty sure they will still try to chase you down them if you don't trigger a respawn. Italy is even worse as there are very few dirt roads, most of which spawn large amounts of traffic, and much of the terrain itself is impassable except by a dedicated off-road vehicle. I think the only time I've ever legitimately escaped a chase on Italy is by accidentally falling down onto that beach west of Norte that there's almost no legitimate way to leave.

I know the constant respawns are probably done to make up for the police AI's slow driving (I can drop Polizia Bolides and Scintillas in a stock 200BX - not an especially fast car, you might notice - very quickly even with traffic to maneuver around), but the way it's done creates a situation where legitimate, non-cheesy evasion is basically impossible. I don't know how to solve it either, especially on the coding side of things - maybe put police vehicles in a separate pool that spawns less often, can go much farther from the player before despawning, and/or has limited respawns once aggroed? Meanwhile, the race AI proves that BeamNG's bot drivers can move pretty quick, so I'm not sure why they're so slow as police.

Reducing the respawn frequency of police units but simultaneously making them faster would create a situation where, instead of just casually walking away from vastly superior police vehicles and then parking somewhere sufficiently far from a major road, you have to legitimately outpace and/or outwit them, and once you do, you are rewarded with an evasion rather than an immediate respawn around the next blind corner.

See, I'm of the opinion that the shortcomings are worth it, and that none of the advantages of EV technology are worth the price in terms of involvement. Even ICE cars, I feel like sometime around the late 2000s they crested the hill of natural evolution and began falling into the tar pits of technological hedonism.

 

After testing police chases in traffic for a long time, I have a few comments:

First of all, thanks for the work on traffic @Gamergull , everything works much better after the update, I have definitely more FPS than in 0.24 and the cars behave much better
I played a lot as a cop before the update, traffic chases were ok, but now they are even better, a lot harder to catch up with the suspect, they don't make stupid mistakes anymore.
However, I have the impression that in 0.25 to stop anyone you have to completely destroy their car - is this intentional? In 0.24 it was probably more random, sometimes it was enough to lightly hit the suspect's car and sometimes they were actually more stubborn - I think it was more realistic than now
Another thing is the frequency of suspects, I think that there should not be more than one at the same time - in 0.25 it has already happened several times that three suspects appeared in a very short time, which spoils the fun of chases and turns them into Carmageddon .
There is also a problem that occurred in 0.24 - if the suspect shows up while driving from the opposite direction, he immediately switches to the opposite lane, hitting the oncoming police head-on.

 

[redacted]

 

Hello. I have such a problem with ibishu pessima glasses. P.S.(I have ultra graphics and don't have mods).

 

Unfortunately it seems that the police still like to kamikaze me in a chase (try being pursued by the police in a Pigeon and see what happens). And they do make plenty of unintentional roadblocks (they usually either hit a wall while turning around and sit there while flooring the throttle, or hit traffic and said traffic gets pushed sideways by the cops). Perhaps this is a map-related issue: I usually play on WCUSA.

 

AI still sometimes ignore red lights. There are still few broken paths on certain junctions like this.


AI won't turn on lights in tunnels near city (Dockyards, Promenade, Financial District) and will turn off lights in halfway in eastern tunnel to San Amaro.

 

I failed mission, but...