I had almost the same idea in my head. It would be great that when you're approaching an intersection point, a random car automatically appears on the road you're about to cross, and starts driving towards the intersection point. If you drive careful, slow down and lookout for passing cars, you should be able to avoid a crash. But if you maintain speed, you would probably collide with the other vehicle. This could be very useful in career mode to get realistic accidents. It's also best to use a lot of randomizing on that, so the game becomes not repetitive. That way you can get situations like crossing the same road for days, and then suddenly being surprised by a car coming out of the road. The downside is that if you make the car run into a straight line, you can only implement this on straight roads. If the road before the intersection point is curved, then the other car would probably crash before reaching the intersection. That way I think it's almost a must to implement AI that follows the road, maybe with splines like VeyronEB suggested. Also if you want to implement races, then you must have AI that follows the track, otherwise your opponents wouldn't get passed the first curve . That 'Murderous AI' also looks nice. If you place such a car into an open field, together with your car, then you already have a simple destruction derby.
Indeed a good idea. I would find it awesome to be cutting a blind corner and getting surprised by a car that suddenly appears in sight. Or something like that. AI vehicles are in my opinion a must-have in this simulation/game. It adds so much realism.
I just had... the best idea I've ever had in my life... Hear me out. Instead of making weird not-very-well-functioning Artificial Idiots for the game Why not... *dramatic pause* Be able to save a movement you've made. *dramatic music* What I mean is the following: In some racing games (GT5 for example) you see those ''ghost'' cars after you've done a lap (on arcade mode, not sure) Why not make those ''ghost'' cars less... ghost-ish... For example: I drive down a road at 25 mph... I can save that movement so I crash into that car later on. Or I want to have a race, so I can save about 5 other cars I've driven before. I hope y'all get this, because in my mind it's a rather good idea...
How about having "simple" versions of the vehicles running "on rails" around the environment (much like Kerbal Space Program) and only loading physics and the AI code when a player comes in a certain radius of said vehicle?
Id love the idea of setting up some cars on the track, the possibilities would be endless. Automated cars would allow easy crash set-ups, races, crash-tests, etc.. it would be a nice feature. Of course with a user friendly-ISH editor it would be eaven more sweet, or else i and many other people would have to look into LUA a little deeper.. what is ok, but less convinient, and more time consuming EDIT : And NO! This game shouldnt be anything like GTA. There is GTA if you want to play something like GTA
Ksp for life OT i think this would work, but not exactly on rails, but like in ror how you can send vehicles to sleep, what if the beam physics were off untill you came close enough to crash into it, to save memory, of course the suspension and everything else has to work, so it still looks like it's driving, and if it's about to crash, the vehicle's physics turn on a split second before the crash, and using some of the parameters from the murderous AI it would be able to try to back up and continue it's path. sort of a driving ai that isn't a perfect driver but still has the basic skills to take turns, also using that heat thing that someone mentioned, and also the AI could have something that determines when the car is totaled to turn off the ai, so the car doesn't spin in circles endlessly.
GTA series uses that exact thing too (not sure about the 'rails') Plus: if the car is far away--> no detailed textures, if the car is nearby--> detailed textures. Could save some FPS. http://www.gtagaming.com/images/mods/1325188119_11V2TRAFFIC.JPG Look at the cars that are far away: they have much worse detail than the cars near the player.
That's not really what I meant. I'll explain it again. Being able to save what you've done and the loading it. I hit "record movement", I move car 1 in a straight line, hit "stop recording", the movement of car 1 is now saved. I get into car 2, hit "load movement", car 1 then starts doing what the game has recorded. I can now interact with car 1 with car 2. For example, I want to crash two cars (car 1 and 2), I record that car 1 goes in a straight line. Then I position car 2 however I like. I'm all set and I hit load movement, car 1 now starts going in a straight line (we recorded that), I crash car 2 (which I am driving) into car 1 (which is driving by itself, 'cause I saved it) E voila, no Artificial Idiots driving into sh*t like a bunch of retards, but just you, driving with past-you.
Not a bad idea. Although, the part where I quoted can't necessarily happen. Imagine it thoroughly, You drive the 5 cars, taking the best lane & such. When you start playing with those 5 cars again, all 5 will crash on the 1st turn, each trying to go to the same place (best lane). It's not a bad idea for a very basic AI though. I kind of like the other ideas (of paths or rails or line-of-sight) better. Another thing to add after the AI is implemented is a "AI Track Editor". Using this 'editor' you can change or create or edit new/existing 'paths' of the AI. So, using this 'editor', I can just have AI crash perfectly & exactly as I want, as I would be able to control everything. Also, it would allow easy, minute changes to the crash-test. Eg: I want car 1 to be going at 100km/h North. I want car 2, coming from West & going 50km/h, to hit car 1 at exactly car 1's center. Now that I saw the previous crash, I want to know what would happen if car 2 was going 100 km/h or 150km/h or 20km/h, I would easily be able to do it.
Never really thought about that. But still, you know what you recorded, so you know what's going to happen. But yeah, AI would be much better if they were perfect and do what they're supposed to do.
It's never a GTA, it's supposed to be like Rigs of Rods, just more realistic on graphics, terrains, and driving. But like on GTA, you can smash cars into each other, RoR and BeamNG has that technique but cars on both RoR and BeamNG will have more damage.
Much more to do here than Rigs of Rods, such as in game customization as well as I believe there will be a career mode?
I think it wouldn't be so difficult to do this. If I look to the murderous AI (M-AI), it looks like the car you drive, has a mark on it. The M-AI cars are constantly running towards that mark. So if you place a lot of those marks on the track and number them sequential, then the AI-cars will run to them, so they will be able to stay onto the track (heading for mark #1, if mark #1 is reached, then heading for mark #2, ?). If you can place speed limits onto the marks, then cars will automatically slow down, so they do not slide off the track while running through the curves. Racing-AI would be more difficult. Especially to determine the points and force of breaking, to go through the curves at maximum speed. Also implementing race techniques like drifting, power sliding and slip-streaming would be difficult. The AI-cars should also be able to dodge other cars to avoid crashes. Or the opposite way during derby?s . Anyway, I would be happy if I can make an AI-car that will be able to drive a complete track. Looks like a nice challenge when the game is released.
