Where are we going?

In their defence... Look how many games it took for Polyphony Digital to get their sound right in the Gran Turismo games and not to sound like a vacuum... literally 20+ years of a full fledged company that has nearly unlimited access to whatever car they could wish to get audio files from... But they tried (and eventually succeeded) to make engine sounds dynamically in the game rather than with just a microphone. If done properly, this can create an almost lifelike experience and unbelievable, dynamic, rich sound... and in the most recent Gran Turismo, that's exactly what we got... finally.

Now they could just go grab some audio files and slap them on a car... that would work... and it would sound ok... but that's not how Beam.NG... or for that matter, Polyphony Digital, roll. They both strive to be the best they can be with no exceptions. No cut corners. No loopholes. No compromises. And I love both of them for exactly that.

 

Does anyone know what happened to the modding community? A ton of great modders just got up and left.

 

People have lives outside of making mods for BeamNG.drive. I would assume that most of the modders left for personal reasons, or they were fed up with people disrespecting them here, as the community has grown a lot in the past 2 or so years, and a lot of new members aren't as respectful as they should be.

 

Well, some great modders didn't leave on their own...

 

Some were forced out sadly. Hopefully we have another mod revolution like we did in 2013-2016..

 

The one thing I did notice about the Audio files is its using likely uncompressed FLAC files since each file is like 200MB each or something

 

well i just hope that more modders would come back soon

 

It really makes me happy that developers are actually reading the OP's post tbh, not many developers do this.

 

Well, one thing to remember is how difficult it is to make a mod for this game... and not just game wise, because that is also more difficult than for most games, but community wise.

For instance... I used to make a bunch of silly things back in the RoR days and just release them onto the forums... people loved them... they had no mesh's, they were just nodes and beams, but they served their purpose and were entertaining. I could make whatever I wanted and just release it and receive almost no backlash for it (unless it didn't work at all... then thats a different story)

But that would never fly in BeamNG's community. For this community it seems that anything that doesn't crash realistically, short of just a couple of mods that managed to fly under the radar, are seen as just compleat garbage. I could still make the stuff that I used to back in my RoR days like functioning engines, real functioning differentials, crazy suspension systems... you know... stuff like that... but it would be seen here as complete garbage because it doesn't crash well or it doesn't look pretty... which wasn't the point of my contraptions... the point of my contraptions was HOW they worked and what it was like to drive these crazy things... not really crashing.

Anyways... point being that the BeamNG forums seem to hold a crazy high level of expectations for mods that you really just don't find anywhere else... like... if you look at some of the top teer hand made mods on here, you will notice that these mods could pass off as something that came from a AAA game and sometimes even better than that. Like... these mods take a CRAZY amount of skill to pull off and do it right... nevermind the incredible amount of time that is required to do them properly.

Having said all of that, I reiterate, the mods on this forum seem to have the bar set REALLY high. So when a great mod comes along, people seem to compare it to ingame content, and if it is dev quality (hard to pull off) it just seems to get kind of "meh" reaction. That really puts a damper on the modder as they want people to enjoy their creation they have just slaved months over, not just be swept under the rug and have it barely get a passing glance.

 

You're getting it a bit wrong. We don't hate simple or quick mods. We hate when somebody steals a third party 3d model and pastes it over an unedited jbeam.
Your contraptions are the opposite - self-made skeleton without a mesh, while these are fancy stolen 3d models on unedited, often unsuitable skeletons.

 

No, I understand that. Those were banned on the RoR forum's as well. They are basically the lowest of low quality of mods when it came to the deformation system. The 2D skins over a skeleton were regarded higher than mesh slaps.

I am just talking from several of the mods that I have either witnessed get reefed on, or ones that I helped with get reefed on. The day after it was released for them while they may have had hours and hours dumped into them we get tons and tons of responses about how this is crap and that is crap, this must be the beta release, nothing works how they think it should, so on and so forth... like... not even constructive criticism... but almost just straight up bullying for who knows what reason. Like I get it... it may not have been perfect for whatever reason be it that we missed something, or just made a decision that seemed odd to some about how we did the mod... and that is fine if you tell me that. I am open to all sorts of criticism and will probably use that to come back and fix things you found wrong that I must have missed... but to have multiple people say, "this mod sucks... must be a beta release I guess" when literally 5 posts back we just stated that this is the full release... thats low and takes a hit on the modder.

I am going to tack onto that and my previous comment that in RoR, you were also only making one vehicle. There were no configurations or swappable parts, so if you made multiple configurations of a vehicle, you were seen almost like a god to many. Here... its like they NEED a minimum of like... 5 different configurations and tons of extra parts. Like... I created a system for a mod I was helping with that allowed you to build your own engine. Each layer had 2 parts and it was 5 layers deep. That doesn't sound like a lot, but that required me to make 64 different torque curves... with different engine settings for each one to make it behave differently... so on and so forth... that took me forever to make susing everything out and figuring out the part hierarchy, never mind the fact that there was also a decent list of standard engines available as well with all your normal upgrades... yet when the mod launched I had several people complaining that there weren't enough engine parts.

I just wanna make my silly vehicles and move on the the next mod guys... I do this for fun... not to make me want to kill myself when trying to set these things up (a little extreme, but still)

 

This is very true.

 

I have found out lots of people have enjoyed my really simple (and perhaps crappy) modification adventures, there has not been really bad complaints or anything, so I think simple mods have their place here too, if it is usable and provides entertainment, it does not need to be so hugely massive monstrosity that kills a spine under workload required.

I think issue comes more from modder trying to make something hugely popular which makes expectations to be really high. With simple original content there is not so much issues I think.

 

I am still amazed at the amount of people saying "Please add Multiplayer" to the game and they have no clear understanding of what a beast the game engine is and just how powerful it is to run, some people have no sense of understanding the complex nature of Torque3D, I think of it like a human brain, and your trying to make it talk to another persons mind without using a mouth....its extremely difficult...

 

Kids. It's mostly kids.

 

Yeah I had to school one person on it on Facebook less than 5 minutes ago, a game like this adding a multiplayer aspect to it is 30 times harder than you expect, its down to how the physics does it and also how each car apparently needs 1 CPU core, try having say 50 vehicles in 1 level even on a processor like mine it wouldnt like it very much

 

To be fair, as a modder who has been on the forums since 2015, i just want to give my own opinion, I feel that the modding system as a whole is going downhill, now I am not saying that peoples mods are bad, but I would love to see more how to say... organisation on the mod section of the forums, I mean it is absolutely plastered with automation mods making it hard to actually find a mod for official cars, maps, UI etc.
if I can give an example, say if someone were to release a map say, and they spent two years working on that map from scratch, then release it to the forums, that mod may be at the top of the list for the guts of like two minutes before it is pushed down by automation mods, what I am saying is, I think this whole automation mod release is going completely overboard, too many automation mods being pushed onto the repository at once.
I personally think all automation mods should be kept separate from the forums, why not put them on steam workshop for example.
***Disclaimer: this is my opinion, and I know about the fact that you can click on the mods tab and the automation mods are separate***