WIP Beta released East Coast Dynamic Traffic (Gull) 0.9.3

Get it here: https://www.beamng.com/resources/east-coast-dynamic-traffic-gull.7478/

I kicked things up a notch with traffic in BeamNG. Now, traffic can spawn on any valid road without the use of manually placed spawn zones. This scenario is a proof of concept, but I have bigger ideas for later.

Issues or feedback can go here! Let me know what's up!

 

That is a really good idea! I've never made a UI app before (and I love scenarios a bit too much!), but perhaps this will be the next thing that I will work on.

 

In a quick test, I pumped up the number of unique AI vehicles to 7. Wow, it got intense; the road was rather busy at times. My CPU got a bit stressed, but the game still ran at around 30 FPS.

Edit: With more traffic vehicles, a new bug showed up. I'll have to improve my spawn code to fix it.

 

Sure. You have to move the .zip file to My Documents/BeamNG/mods/unpacked, and unzip it there. Put it in a unique folder (so the path will go like this: mods/unpacked/eca_traffic/levels/...). Open the .lua file and edit the trafficNames line by adding vehicle names. Also, open the .prefab file and copy and paste the vehicles lines. You can rename the object names, models, and configs, if you know how. I hope this works; I typed it on mobile while at work.

I'll upload a test version with more traffic and bug fixes this evening, so if you can wait, there will be a new file here about six hours from now.

 

Ignore my instructions in my previous post, it would've failed because I didn't do any error handling for the vehicles' color switcher. Gimme half an hour and I'll post a test file with 7 AI cars, and with better error handling!
--- Post updated ---
Ugh, so many posts. Last one for today! Here's the 7!

http://gamergull.com/East_Coast_Dynamic_Traffic_BETA_EX.zip

Warning: Quite buggy! I didn't figure out why the Burnside refuses to start at first, and vehicles might rarely spawn into each other. I intentionally left a color array out of the code to ensure that things work, so the Ibishu 200BX gets painted in random colors. Also, the fail screen won't show up unless you honk the horn after you stalled.

I'm hungry... gonna go eat, then fix some code!

 

That should be possible. It would cause a bit of loading lag at the start UI of the scenario (and I don't think I could run the script while the map is loading), but I will definitely try it out. I want to do something similar in my next scenario anyways.

Optimized some of my code this morning. Right now, I'm working on making the AI aware of what's in front of them, so they won't play bumper cars as much.
--- Post updated ---
My AI awareness works ! But the code is ravioli, so I gotta clean it up before I do my next release.

 

The script works with air vehicles!? I didn't even expect that to work! That's so awesome.

I still need to optimize my aware AI stuff. Currently, it's running too hard and causing game sounds to cut out for some reason. Tired now, more work next time.

 

http://gamergull.com/East_Coast_Dynamic_Traffic_BETA_EX.zip

Updated link. Now with bug fixes and rudimentary "aware AI". Please note, the AI doesn't work as intended all the time. The van in particular likes to plow into stopped traffic anyways. Also, vehicles may be either too cautious or too unaware. I think I need a better way to code it; I might do some AI research online.

I'll update the repo version later today, likely. I'll add the option to have either less or more traffic. Also, yes, I am slowly working on the traffic app, but it's still tricky for me to understand. I haven't done much coding outside of scenarios.

 

Sounds like a fun idea, and it would be somewhat easy, too! However, my priorities are updating this mod and working on the app, so we'll see how that goes.

Haha, thanks a ton for the praise! I don't think my coding skills are at dev level yet; I do this as a hobby and only have a little bit of experience from school (several years ago). As for adjusting the number of vehicles, I realized that I kinda hardcoded the vehicle names in the .lua file, and I can work on a much better approach soon. I also debugged some things in my head while at work; I'm gonna fix a few AI bugs in a few minutes.

I might be short on time tonight, but I'll get a fresh update out by the end of Sunday. I'm also gonna try hard to get a traffic app done. Ooh, so many challenges, so little time!

Edit: I managed to crash the game entirely with a line of code . Also, learned something new; deleting a vehicle via code breaks the scenario.

 

Improved the spawning algorithm and fixed yet another bug so traffic is a bit smarter (dang van though, what's wrong with that driver?). The spawning algorithm now uses a segmented line to choose a road node, so it's more likely that traffic will spawn on the same road that you are on.

Also, cars can now stop at the gas station .