Where are we going?

What would you want to see then, let's say for next 6 months, what would be your list which you would like to see?

 

Pretty much what was going on prior to this year. Obviously Italy and the Autobello, as they're already confirmed to be coming in the next update. Probably some content (skins, parts, scenarios, etc), various improvements to the physics, and some fixes for some long term bugs in the game, some progress to be shared with the community regarding career mode (as of now nothing has been posted in a while). Not that much, kinda similar back to how progress was in 2017 and before. Not sure if in the next 6 months, or later, it would be nice to start seeing some of the older official levels and vehicles being brought up to current standards (this is already somewhat happening with the Gavril V8 engine). As I was saying, bringing the game back on the old track with a focus on eventually reaching a finished game.

 

Ok, in this post tdev mentions that they are doing scripted AI for career testing purposes:
https://www.beamng.com/posts/947317/

Also he mentions that prototype of career mode did not work well, such setbacks can happen, which obviously has caused delays.

As scenario system has to be redo, it can be reason new scenarios have not been made.

They did give new map and whole new game mode in last update.

Sounds have been worked a lot during this year.

Update, also 2018 has been:
SBR4 got totally overhauled
T-Series got skins, new config
Powerglow skins, whole new kind of stuff
WCUSA has got fixes and updates


I think quite lot on your list are happening?

 

Happening, but remember that we use to get a lot more content back then. We're getting content at a slower rate than usual.

 

Doesn't sound any bad to me.

 

There are still new cars made. And I prefer new quality mods plus new Automation mods at the same time.

Also, Automation cars don't even appear on the main repo page. If you don't like 'em, don't look at 'em.

 

"If you don't like 'em, don't look at 'em."

^ That is like saying, oh global warming is killing us all, let's just ignore it because we don't like it.

Don't look at them? Go look for yourself, they're flooding the whole page, and the new mods sidebar. That is an incredibly flawed mentality, please take a moment and look for yourself instead of trying to ignore the issue. Automation cars shouldn't be mods in the first place. I understand exactly where you're coming from. But I really think that we should leave the mods up to the real modders.

 

Agreed, but also as I have pointed out before, there is quite bit of content, there has still been new updates to beam types for example that has needed new work to vehicles.

So direction, plan, focus, it is better to have limited amount of content until all new mechanics are in place as it gets quite heavy doing everything many times over, isn't this exactly what was requested in 1st post?

You need to remember that this game is pioneering new kind of physics, it is their first game, so lot of time goes to learning, it is not as simple as making Just Cause 3 or 4 where lot of it has been already done once and generally everything is much simpler.

 

Obviously physics should be the number one priority, and I understand that this game is a pioneer of these kinds of physics, but at the same time, car collision physics have not changed from what I've seen in past year or so. And it obviously does need work, but just my thoughts.

 

I agree wholeheartedly @Fera . A very well written and approachable entry into a long running subject for me too.
Since early 2014 I have made occasional posts regarding many of the things you bring up. While my approach needed
work I essentially ended up getting an inflamed and well defined passive aggressive response from the devs.

I have just resigned myself to thinking BeamNG will never be the technical definition of a 'game' in my lifetime. Suffice it to say
and make a very long story short, I am just about ready to move on from this. My deep love of the realtime physics and deformation
here will never die. I have had immense fun learning and interacting with the community but late in 2018 I feel lost and almost completely
disconnected from everything this game was supposed to be by now. My excitement and energy for doing anything in this game has
disappeared because the goalposts for a "stable release" constantly move while simultaneously never being nailed down or even communicated.

Done all this before...blah.

 

Flooding the whole page? THey're not even on the main one.

Also, in terms of looking at myself, my Automation mods take about 1-1.5 hours on a good day, and usually more. There's research, designing, porting, testing in Beam, improving even more, retesting, repeating until it's good, making a description, and finally a release.

 

That's one more skilled person out of the maybe 500 others working on Automation mods. Just saying.

 

The cool thing about Beam is that it is free from traditional limitations.

You can go straight from small impacts to a 90s midsizer to racing among neons in an 80s supercar to shooting mobile homes from a Nazi fighter jet to building a 60s British executive sedan and driving it in Beam.

 

I see exactly where you're coming from, I myself am automation user, in fact, I've made many automation cars that I'm fairly proud of. It does take me around a few hours to make a good automation mod. Also, yes they are flooding the new mods sidebar.

Automation cars are not mods because it only takes a few hours, real mods take days, months, even years. Remember the kid that tried to sell his automation mods on his website?

 

And that one person's work should go to trash?

Also, why aren't the talented modders going out and complaining?
--- Post updated ---

Where in the definition of a mod is that it can't take a few hours to make?

 

There aren't talented modders complaining? I own a decent sized discord server, and quite a few big modders are there and each one is highly against automation mods.

 

My main issues are when content must be remade, not due to new systems in place due to programming, like the powertrain rework a while back, but due to the first attempt simply was not well thought out and there were obvious issues (as was with WCA's initial release). The second main issue is content that seems rather random, and likely will not be a focus in the finished product, yet time was still put into it when that time could have been put into more focused content. That brings us to the issue of focus. Originally the game was just planned to be a derby/racing sim. Obviously, that's changed over time, but I feel like when they made the decision to expand the horizon of the game, they expanded their scope too far.

 

Do you mean @FestiveAidan130?

 

What do they lose from that?

 

Haven’t we had this conversation like 3 times in the last month?


As for this track builder/automation mod side discussion... What’s with the hate for “low effort” things? Yes there are a lot of automation mods but they are easy to ignore and once in awhile a genuinely good one shows up. I don’t see why we have to only allow community content that takes months to create and bar everyone else from trying/starting somewhere.

As for the track builder mods, I’ve actually wanted this ever since track builder came out and I was very happy to see it, I’m personally disappointed it isn’t being used more. I’m bad at making tracks but am hopping to see some cool community made tracks, even if it didn’t take them half a year to make it.

IMO people are over reacting to everything, and this is coming from someone who tends to over react. It’s in alpha, there will be bumps along the way. Yeah it sucks that we haven’t gotten a ton of new content lately but I think everyone is letting their nostalgia get to them. The “1 new car per month” thing lasted for what, 2 months? I remember back in the “1 update ever month-ish” era, everyone was saying they wish there was more time between updates so more stuff could be in each.

Calling the company out for the quick holiday fun modes is just stupid. Those are extra stuff and official mods. Calling them out for the light runner mode is silly since it’s mostly just an extra way to show off the additions to the track builder. Calling them out for adding a gameplay feature for the bus is silly for many reasons. A lot of people like the bus mode and from the start many people said they like how BeamNG is a slower pace game where people enjoy average vehicles instead of 800hp supercars. Calling them out for having the automation update be mostly on automation’s end is silly, we got what IMO is the prettiest map in game, and a feature to test cars we made for those of us is who aren’t the .1% who can build a quality mod.

Yeah development isn’t perfect, but for a smaller company I think it’s actually going fairly well. Both Bugbear and Saber has to go out and get a publisher and took a hiatus of a year or so to get their development back on track. BeamNG is doing this themselves and the biggest gap we’ve had between updates was what, 6 months for the pre-race update?