Hi everyone! First of all, sorry for the lenght, it's the only way to seriously explain this. Also im sorry if my English is not that good, im working on it! Have you ever think about the cuteness of the snowman, but dream about having legs and arms? Have you ever been asked "why is the car driving by itself?" as a content creator? Have you ever notice the lack of a character but dont want to put pressure on the Devs? We all know how difficult will be the implementation of a "working" character. The ragdoll crash test dummy mod is great for do dummy stuff, but dont feel like a character for the game. At some point of the development, a character will be added for sure, but the question we all been asking ourselves is "how will the character look like?". Would it be customisable? like change sking color or face styles? Will be male or female? Can I choose it? Could you change clothes and customize them? Well, there's a lot of things to think about the character. But with a character in the game, you may also have NPCs. And guess what: NPCs in the streets can be involved in serious troubles if a player decides to drive a Scintilla at 300mph in Belasco City streets. You know there's already a lot of games where you can do that and much more to pedestrians, but I think BeamNG will not ever be focus on that kind of things, at least on making them look reallistic. Because making a realistic scenario where people can be crushed into cubes inside or outside a car, can be something that not everyone love once the game is released. I'm not talking about the players, but the people who can potentially ban the game on media for being "too realistic" on the bad way, or even countries where that kind of possibilities with a human body simulation are banned by law. Remember that it's not only about the cars hitting people, we also have a NodeGrabber that can couple nodes and stretch objects that are not meant to be stretched. Some games already have this, yes. But that kind of games and brands are not ruled by its developers and are much bigger. They have powerful people behind that ensures that the game will not be banned. Even if that is not a problem, to create a character and make it look realistic + adding working NPCs + animations,etc can take some years from now. And that's something we may not have the oppotunity to wait for. I've been enjoying this game for lot of years, and everytime I think and ask myself about the ideal character, I allways get the same answer. A 3D stickman like character. Like a shadow with not a 100% oppacity. This way the character design is made by own player imagination. It would also be easier to put clothes or helmets, cause now they don't have to be 100% realistic once being dressed. Remember that old videos from the Euphoria Engine? Imagine a character like that, but as an object you can see though. I'm sorry about the quality of the images im going to share, but I hope someone can understand what im saying: Cockpit view (brightness is what it is), notice arms grabbing steering and gear knob and legs on the pedals: Driver seen from the outside (sorry for scale, now it looks small): Character putting some juice on that baby: People walking: More people walking: Maybe some characters look weird and not fancy on black, but you get the idea. They may look like humans for our imagination, more if they can be dressed up, but don't have a human face or facial expressions. Feelings can be added by music and subtitles or even color changes... Now it would be different to change your sking color, cause it will not be weird to see a green or a red character, "it's not meant to be a human representation" so who cares? (this also can be used for role purposes) Maybe you dont like to see shadow hands or fingers, so you wear an Okudai vest and gloves. Walk and jump can now easily be animated and also grabbing things from walking mode. This way, imagination can flow on a different way with the game experience. Yes, crashes will still be there, but they will be taken with another feel. Some of us at this comunity have been trough or seen real life crashes, and its not something you want to see or live. In other games you can crash, but you cannot take the car to a cube state. I hope you can kind of imagine this and give some suggestions on the idea. For me it looks like a great idea (at least as a fast way to add a character to the game), easier animations, less texture problems, more room to imagination on players experience... But maybe some of you would rather a realistic human character or think that this idea is kind of empty. Im wondering if it's hard to replace the ragdoll dummy mod parts for round shape cylinders and test it. What do you think? What kind of character would you add to the game? Always remember to think about pros and cons about its development. Thanks a lot for your time, have a great day!
Very high quality post here, so kudos for that. I think that characters would be a nice addition to the game and would definitely add a lot of depth to the otherwise hollow and desolate maps in Beam, but due to the complexity with.. everything else in Beam, I don't see them getting added anytime soon. That said, characters of some kind are on tdev's long term wishlist for the game and I think I recall him saying that the devs have toyed around with getting them in-game in some capacity. I can also see in-game characters potentially upsetting game review boards like PEGI and USK because of the realism depicted in the accidents involving people, which is something I can imagine the devs want to try and avoid. Great concept to discuss though, and I like the artistic depictions you have included
I’d honestly never thought about this before. When the rigs of rods game had its very basic player character, that’s the type of thing I thought they do in this game. A character with actual realistic physics would be an awesome
