Update Speculation thread

So why ECUSA and JRI don't feel clustered? They have same size as WCUSA after all. Ah yes, because you can't see whole map at the same time and they are designed to have less "unique" places (few houses, towns, sawmill etc.) rather trying fit too many things at the same time ("big city" that is a little bigger than town in ECUSA that trying have every district in it, massive highways and massive racetrack). Because grid map, you know, the empty map with few objects after all, is going be bigger doesn't mean every map should be big. With that logic Industrial site should be, again, reworked to be bigger, same with Derby arenas and Hirochi raceway. So maybe they should merge ECUSA with Hirochi Raceway? Both of them are placed in same state and 4x4 maps are GREAT!

ETKTC the only thing it needs is more "fun" stuff. The map is divided in 3 regions. Big round empty space which is used to create randomised simple tracks (I think a lot of people forget this exist). North and west side for handling test. And there is the issue because both of them are too similar and there are 3 wet straight surfaces, one should be enough. This should be changed to something different.

I can't imagine Italy map having racing track without ruining feel of this map. Not to mention that airport on this map is tiny but still it take a lot of space.

I will show you a example from other game - Snowrunner. This game have location divided by several playable maps connected with loading screens. Gameplay looks like this - you can drive whatever you want, even to the other maps (there are usually no restrictions). However game is created in that way, you usually will do everything on one map, to earn more vehicles, abilities etc. to go to another one, and then another to finally do final objective to drive across several maps.

In beamng you need reload map to load eg. race. So whatever you like it or not there will be loading screens. Example - you have quite big, open map - like ECUSA. You are doing some jobs like "take that guy from A to B" or "chase that bad guy who stole your wrench" etc. This open map would be great for this. Then when you'll earn enough, lets say, reputation you'll get new option - racing on the racing track. So you will drive to the loading zone on the edge that will transport you to the Hirochi Raceway. After few races you'll come back to the main hub and start another missions on that map.

Now, which option would be better? One map 2x2 WCUSA or two maps, 2x2 ECUSA and 1,5x1,5 HR?

Funny how you see utility for smaller maps in certain specific circumstances but still insist to make ETKTC bigger rather than make new bigger map more useful. Also who said you'll need race or chase across different maps? You could be locked in that one big map until you finish this mission.

Also it sounds like you didn't get me from the beginning. I don't want every map be small. I want decent maps that aren't clustered to be mediocre.

 

What? Why? I'd rather have a good map than a mediocre map. The developers don't want to make mediocre-quality content, and players would probably not want to play on mediocre-quality maps.

 

All i want is paint scrapes, dents and dirt on the cars

 

This is update speculation.
And dents already exist, just slightly damage your car. Isn't that the entire point of the game, to have realistic softbody simulation which includes damage?

 

To be fair, people have been asking for an expanded version of ETK pretty much since the map first came out. And it's not strictly tied to the fun factor; it just seems like a waste of the setting. Germany is famous for its highway system, storied architecture, and the fact that it hosts arguably the most grueling race course in the world. BeamNG's only German map to date contains almost none of the above.

Every one of those maps has already been revamped. Nobody's suggesting that they need to be revamped again, nor are they suggesting that any such revamp should make them drastically larger, as none of them feel particularly cramped or unrealized.

Also, I can't help but feel like you've got a lot of passion with regards to this debate. I don't tend to pay much mind to forum goings-on, so perhaps you and Manfred have some rocky history. But in a vacuum, the sarcasm seems unnecessary.

Yeah, this last sentence completely lost me. If you were trying to underline your overall point, you may have actually muddied it further. So I'm understanding it as: you want decent maps, which aren't cluttered to the point of being mediocre. Is this correct?

 

I'm guessing he/she either:

- Wanted many maps with mediocre quality instead of just a few with high quality (not sure what this has to do with the rest of the point though)
OR
- Thought "mediocre" and "medium" meant the same thing, and was trying to say that they want medium-sized maps that aren't cluttered(?)

 

For the most part Occam'sRazer already responded to everything here, but there's a few other things still...

Yes, that would be great. Like, that would actually awesome. The ability to seamlessly go from the town to the race track without breaking the immersion. Why wouldn't we want that? Has anyone here ever played GTA V and thought to themselves "I really wish there was a loading screen every time I entered the airport". Of course it's more complicated than just stitching them together and calling it a day, but for the sake of the ETK Map discussion it's a fair simplification.

Saber didn't think to themselves "Everyone would love if we break the immersion with forced and sometimes buggy map transitions", they split regions up into maps because that was deemed a fair compromise for work flow and performance. But ETK Test Center is 1/16th the size of Italy. You could make the thing 10 times larger and it still wouldn't be close to the largest in game! We aren't anywhere near the point where such compromises must be made.

Not quiet sure what's funny there. Like I said, there are certain use-cases where small maps make sense, such as rally stages. ETK is not one of these use cases.

That's the issue. ETK is an outdated 1sqkm representation of like three features of an automotive test track. It isn't big. That is literally half of the problem here. It is not big enough to comfortably have much anything other than the learn to drive campaign and generated tracks.

 

There are already moonhawk Sedan mods. One is @AR162B outdated Brickell moonhawk pack and @waboll Moonhawk sedan, which seems outdated. But it could be good an official sedan or wagon or limo body.
For early GM, I can agree. But I'd like to suggestion you the 1968 Ford LTX Or LTD, Idk. But I agree everything

For GM, I'm telling you something like this


It's an old, very old mod

 

my moonhawk sedan is still working on my side so its not outdated

 

For me seems outdated or broken, bcs when I drive, during the trip, hubcaps fall automatically...
And Roamer has serious textures problems... I will have a look again, I'll see if problems are mine...

 

well roamer is broken because texture in the game got messed around with so its nothing weird they broke but the moonhawk works fine

 

So, to change the subject again. I was thinking about career mode and what possible starter cars could be. My idea, at this point, is pretty simple: take any car with a derby-racer config (or multiple, in the case of the LeGran), figure out what factory config it's based on, then remove any hubcaps, hit it with an old-paint skin, and replace bias-ply tires with radials because seriously, the only people who still use bias-ply tires in 2021 are nut-and-bolt restorers.

There's one big problem with that, though. It's called the Ibishu 200BX. To get an idea of what I'm talking about, here's the starter-car list I came up with:

Ibishu 200BX (5MT)
Gavril Barstow 232 I6 (4MT) [substitute 175/65R14 Standard tires]
Gavril Bluebuck 232 I6 (4-door sedan, 3MT) [substitute 175/65R14 Standard tires]
Ibishu Covet 1.5 DX (4MT)
Gavril Grand Marshal Fleet (4AT) {"The Miserable" comes with a police livery and spotlights, but is in all other respects a base model.}
Bruckell LeGran Regulier (sedan, late, 4MT)
Bruckell LeGran S V6 (wagon, early, 3AT) {There is no S V6 wagon included in vanilla content, but "The Objectionable" appears to be one. It's also 4MT, but I decided to call that non-factory.}
Bruckell Moonhawk I6 (early, 3MT) [substitute 205/75R15 Standard tires]
Ibishu Pessima 1.8 DX (5MT)
Soliad Wendover 3300 (early, 3AT) {"The Unpunctual" is 4MT, but given that the Wendover ended up being more Cadillac than Pontiac, I'm going to call that a non-factory installation.}
Gavril D35 V8 (RC/SB, mid, 4AT) {Non-vanilla configuration, but the front axle, frame, and engine tell me it's what "The Disappointment" is, making the short bed the most suspect part.}
Gavril H15 (4AT)
Gavril Roamer V8 (early, 4AT) {Heavy-frame shenanigans with "The Horrendous", but it's not an LXT35 so I'm going to ignore that.}

After laps around Hirochi Raceway's long course, the first thing that sticks out to me (other than not having a D15 anywhere) is that that even the base-model 200BX, stock for stock, is head and shoulders above pretty much all of these cars. It's also faster than higher trim levels like the Wendover SE 4400, Pessima LX 2.0, and Grand Marshal Police Package. Basically every car on this list requires a higher trim level to get close to the base-model 200BX, and switching to an automatic transmission barely slows it down despite making it several million times more annoying to drive. The Barstow seems to be the closest with a 291-2bbl and radials being mostly sufficient; the others require much higher-level hardware to bring them to parity. In particular, no H-series is ever going to match it without serious upgrades.

The next thing that sticks out to me is that nearly other car on that list comes with some sort of down-the-line sacrifice - some sort of built-in failing that will require swapping major components, such as engines, gearboxes, or suspensions, to be competitive in the endgame. The Barstow, Bluebuck, and Moonhawk all come with garbage I6 engines, which currently have no tuning other than derby exhausts and nitrous. Most of the modern Gavrils have the 4.5L V8; the one that doesn't is saddled with a heavy frame and beam-axle front end so it will never be good for much except smashing cops out of the way. The Covet has the useless single-cam engine, and that gearbox has a big step between first and second which, when combined with the gutless engine, makes certain low-speed corners utterly heinous. If you want a LeGran, you have a choice between the garbage version of the I4 (which also suffers from the same gearbox issue as the Covet) and the garbage version of the V6. The Pessima has, again, the engine no one will want. The Wendover is just dog slow with the same "lesser" V6 as the LeGran wagon. If the devs felt like making upgrading more complex, you could possibly stick with the original hardware - at the price of having a more expensive upgrade path with less to show for it in the end.

The 200BX, meanwhile, comes with none of those sacrifices. There's only one engine available, and it's a perfectly capable tuning platform. There's only one suspension setup available, and it obviously does well enough in the curves to more than make up for any lack of power. Picking the 200BX as your starter would just be easy mode, straight up. That car, as it came, would be able to carry you all the way into the endgame with no swaps or conversions.

So, this is more of a suggestion than a speculation, but when the 200BX gets remastered, it needs a lower-end version to make it a little more even with the game's other old-paint-skin-having cars. A 180BX, or even a 150BX. Maybe give it a targa/T-top or convertible version, to make it heavier. I don't care if this isn't perfectly realistic. Call it an entry-level version that didn't sell well, or say it was aimed at developing markets. Something like that, rather than allow it to become the early-game OP car with no reason to ever choose anything else.

 

Ok. Thanks

 

Yes, you are right. This is a little wasted setting but I don't see why this should be the reason to expand that map into another cramped setting. Well, maybe the ETK Experience Center could be turned into racetrack with that facility next to it. However remember, ETKEC is 1x1 that means it would take 1/4 space on, still small, 2x2 map. I'll just mention that gruelling race course in the world would take all that 2x2 space placed diagonally.

Nah, I didn't want to sound rude or mean. So I'm sorry if that sounded wrong or vulgar.

Well yes. And before someone ask - for me this medicore (or in better words, a map that has potential) is WCUSA. I like the track, I like the highways, I like the city... but because there are a lot of stuff it doesn't feel right and too clustered. In comparison ECUSA and Utah are much better in my opinion.

I would love to see big maps like in GTA, Horizon, Fuel, TDU etc. Too bad Beamng don't run on engine that allow this so you need keep that in mind That why I show example on Snowrunner. If you can't do something in the game because of the engine limitations you have few options: change engine or try do it differently. In our case changing engine is not a option. Just imagine how GTA3 or VC would look like if they decide to "hey, why we don't just shrink whole map so we won't have loading zones".

 

ETK test center reimagined as a 4x4 map, would really open up possibilities...

Spoiler: Reference photos

 

And the highway? What do u suggest? References?
Btw, i totally agree with you. And these photos are amazing! ^_^
--- Post updated ---
Guys, how can i make Wet roads and more realistic clouds?

 

normal 3 lane highway, im from austria im guessing that german highways are quite similar (except for speed limit ofc). it could be a rumbly hitler concrete autobahn, but im not a fan I imagine its quite annoying. This one would be almost 5 km long and quite straight and flat due too the tunnel. realistically there would be a speed limit because of the tunnel but where is the fun in that. Either way it great for top speed runs

 

Yes ^^. This is amazing

 

The highway could have a few slight bends just to extend it, for more speed It already has over 5,5 km, but this could extend it to a nice 6-7.

 

I made something similar to this a while back with the idea that the map become something like a 8x8.

Spoiler: Legend

Legend :
Dark blue : Autobahn style highway
Brown : Forest trails that also double up as service roads to the big race track and a mix of asphalt and dirt rally stages with some small villages scattered around near them similar to Italy.
Red : Large village on a mountain inside walls with castle near the top, similar to the actual city of Nurburg.
Dark Grey : Long winding track famous for its 24Hr race and dangerous past. Now used a testing track for many modern manufactures to prove their track worthiness (maybe have a whole bunch of little manufacture garages, as well as aftermarket brand garages testing there newest parts) . Also includes a more modern GP style circuit.
Lime Green : Heavily wooded area, would be a nice place to hide some secret easter eggs.
Dark Green : An expanded ETK test center with a larger handling track, offroad trails, high speed banked circuit, suspension testing area with off camber corners, old cobblestone roads, large potholes and other hazards you might find on the road and usage of some of the new props we got as the tilting platform that already has ETK branding.
Light blue : Lake and rivers