We should make a BeamNG.drive category

[Matt Y]

See this video?

Looks exciting isn't it? Well this game is called BeamNG.drive and it has a small and struggling modding community, barely any new cars or tracks come out for it. I'd like you to adopt this game. Get some conversions in there, will ya?

Here's the website: https://www.beamng.com/

 

[Fat-Alfie]

Yeah, I think I'll pass on that thanks. It was an interesting sandbox 'game' in its original incarnation as Rigs of Rods, but BeamNG is a crashing simulator now I enjoyed that kind of thing was I was 15 years old, but these days I like to avoid crashing in my sim racing, not watch endless replays of wheels falling off

I bought BNG when it came out on Steam to support the RoR dev team, but one of their '3D artists' got his way and turned it into a kiddy crash sim. Needless to say, it is no longer in my Steam Library

 

[Neilski]

I saw the slowmo stuff at the start of the video and thought "LOL, that's the rendering speed with full physics on"
Seriously though, is it actually any good as a racing sim? (Keeping in mind the name of this website - notwithstanding the recent Wreckfest fetish!)

 

[UMC 22]

I've played it at various points since buying the EA a loooong time ago, and to be honest I have to agree with Fat-Alfie. At the current time it's a crash simulator, not a racing game. Wreckfest is both... it's racing without rules, and that's part of the fun. But the "realistic" crash physics in this game mean that racing just isn't really any option. One touch or bump with an opponent or scenery and you're knackered.

 

[Matt Y]

Yes this game doesn't have a proper race mode yet but I'm told the developer is interested in licensing the engine out to developers. Maybe we can make our own racing game with this engine?

 

[Fat-Alfie]

If it still has 16-sided wheels for its physical model, I couldn't possibly take it seriously as a racing simulator.

I've been there, driving along in one of the cars, watching the camera bounce up and down as the facets of the wheels roll from vert to vert

Invictus Games did soft-body physics better, and 18 years ago (1nsane Off-Road)

 

[Neilski]

16-sided

Wow, seems like a rather small number.
How many would you like to see though?

 

[Fat-Alfie]

Personally, I think the whole concept of 'constructing' the physical wheel with nodes and connecting segments is flawed. It's probably fine for enabling deformation of the body, but if the wheels are still modelled that way, where only the nodes have any physical contact with the ground, you couldn't possibly use that for a serious racing simulator. It's the same method that Rigs of Rods (BeamNG's predecessor) used back in 2005. What happens to the car when the contact between wheel and road is 'between nodes'? It seems crazy to me. It kind of made sense back in 2005, when simulating 20 ton trucks, but not for racing.

 

[Neilski]

Well, if you mean that the tyre contact with the road should instead be modelled as small "areas" rather than "nodes" then yeah I would tend to agree but with enough nodes the difference should be negligible. Also, once you have a sensible number, the contact patch will always have multiples nodes present, so the "between nodes" case wouldn't apply (except when the tyre starts to lift off the ground I guess).

A quick attempt to build a mental picture of it makes me suspect that a whole bunch of the weird and non-linear things that tyres do might actually be easier to get right with a nodal representation.

Also I just did a wee bit of googling and it looks like I'm gonna have to do some more, because I now see that BeamNG is a commercial product (not open-source as I had been imagining) but yet Rigs of Rods was GPLed. I had thought that the former was directly derived from the latter but the licencing implies that that can't be the case.

 

[Dave Stephenson]

Also I just did a wee bit of googling and it looks like I'm gonna have to do some more, because I now see that BeamNG is a commercial product (not open-source as I had been imagining) but yet Rigs of Rods was GPLed. I had thought that the former was directly derived from the latter but the licencing implies that that can't be the case.

Of course it can. If it's their own code they can do as they please without needing to respect the GPL. Even if others contributed depending on the terms of that contribution. It's not unusual for contributions to some projects to require surrendering your claims to any copyright or exclusivity for the code you submit. If they had nothing in place for that then stripping that code away and rewriting is still a viable option if the bulk of the work was done in-house. It could still represent

People can also, and often do, dual license software, providing a publicly GPL'd version and licensing individually to other people, companies and enterprise clients who are GPL averse or who may have other legitimate reasons to modify without feeding back into the open (security services, governments etc).

Still with all that sad it wouldn't be unreasonable to have rewritten from the start, improve on that learning and knowledge from the previous project. If you'd worked a while on the older project the domain knowledge acquired would go a long way to speeding up the dev of something completely new.

 

[Neilski]

Some good points there Dave, and yeah it would indeed depend on the terms of the contribs that came from others (or rewriting those bits, but yuk, that would get messy). Btw, a bit more googling has left with me a vague impression (no definitive source) that it was indeed entirely re-written in any case...

 

[Dave Stephenson]

Some good points there Dave, and yeah it would indeed depend on the terms of the contribs that came from others (or rewriting those bits, but yuk, that would get messy). Btw, a bit more googling has left with me a vague impression (no definitive source) that it was indeed entirely re-written in any case...

tfw Bram took the informative smiley away

 

[UMC 22]

One plus point about this game that I found out over the weekend. If you also own Automation, you can build your very own car/engine from scratch, import it into BeamNG, and then drive it. It's not quite perfect yet, but it works and it's kept me busy for hours so far. Added value for both games!

 

[Neilski]

One plus point about this game that I found out over the weekend. If you also own Automation, you can build your very own car/engine from scratch, import it into BeamNG, and then drive it. It's not quite perfect yet, but it works and it's kept me busy for hours so far. Added value for both games!

...and this is why we need the WOW smiley back

 

[Dave Stephenson]

If you also own Automation

Man I totally forgot that game was a thing. Saw some vids either pre release or close after then completely forgot it existed. Sounds pretty awesome that you can then drive them too.

 

[UMC 22]

Man I totally forgot that game was a thing. Saw some vids either pre release or close after then completely forgot it existed. Sounds pretty awesome that you can then drive them too.

It's definitely worth keeping an eye on. The actual tycoon part of Automation still hasn't been implemented yet (the "lite" campaign is available, but only in the pre-Unreal version of the game), but the car/engine designer is excellent. Takes some time to learn if you're not a full-fledged mechanic, but I've found tuning/tweaking to be surprisingly addictive! Looking at graphs to work out the issues with my cars puts me to sleep... but sticking them in BeamNG and driving (read: crashing) them is much more informative!

 

[RaceWasGood]

If ATS fits under 'other racing games' i can't see why BeamNG wouldn't (same goes for ETS2 also for that matter). Just sayin'

 

[Dave Stephenson]

If ATS fits under 'other racing games' i can't see why BeamNG wouldn't (same goes for ETS2 also for that matter). Just sayin'

The games in other racing games are not there because of the type of games they are but their traffic and/or age. They all had a chance in the sun at some point. They start out front and we assess further down the line whether it should hold onto a premium spot in the forum list or not.

 

[RaceWasGood]

Yeah, i just meant to say that personally i don't mind at all that other type of driving games that are not racing games per se (such as ATS) have their own subforum under 'other racing games' I don't recall ATS ever having a premium spot in the forum list though, but i might be totally wrong there. Cheers!

 

[UMC 22]

I don't recall ATS ever having a premium spot in the forum list though, but i might be totally wrong there. Cheers!

You're probably right, but we've had boards for the previous games in the series so were able to judge how popular ATS was likely to be in terms of forum traffic. Plus our forums are listed alphabetically... it would be weird calling ourselves RaceDepartment, and then having American Truck Simulator right at the top of the forum list!