some sort of constraints would be cool in the world editor so you can attach a chain to nodes on the car or something so we could get awesome swings into walls etc I really would like to drive full speed down a straight then have a chain rip the front end off to send the car into a role or something
wouldnt this be awesome, can do some tug of wars, can get others unstuck without magically placing it somewhere else (adds that touch of realism). Im sure it wouldnt be to difficult, be cool to change the strechyness, strength, model (tow-strap, chains, rope), thickness etc. Idk how it would work but i think its a good idea anyhow edit: dont know how i missed this earlier, but there could also be cables, i.e Winches that can hook to a tree aimed at with the mouse? idk just a thought. be awesome to have to winch out of a 5 foot deep mud hole after getting completely stuck and record it to show off the physics. Cables - tow trucks as well? now that i think of it, im sure this has all been thought of already, but better to post it and have it answered
It worries me a bit that such a vast majority just wants to watch crashes. Is there any interest in vehicle role-play like there was in RoR? I remember endless youtube videos of police chases, towing, crane hoists, ambulance responses, and crane hoists. Yes I said crane hoists twice, a game based on RoR that doesn't have full analog hydraulics and a hooknode/cable system (good for towing as well) isn't really complete. Is there going to be hydraulic control at the level of RoR or better? The devs don't seem to be saying anything about this, and it would be <strikethrough>really nice to know</strikethrough> the deciding factor on whether or not I contribute extra for the alpha.
ALPHA release. keywords. Also the search button, and even the 'billboard' on the main menu of the game itself, says 'Support for heavy machinery and other vehicles' which means TO ME, Tracks, Winches, Hydraulics?, all those lovely things that need to be implemented to make those awesome machines work properly. They have said this more than a few times im sure. In due time, they have a LOT of work to do im sure, and are slowly but surely getting things rolled out/fixed in the proper way. Also i thought id say, this is the best community ive been in, for DEV communication. (Which can make or break a game imo) Take a look at Nascar2013. Devs dont give a rats ass and the games been broke for months since its release. (my rant stops there on that subject lol, search NTG 2013 on steam, read the discussions youll see.) But yeah just my two cents
Can you please point us to those threads where the devs mentioned cables, winches, chains, etc... ? And heavy machinery does not automatically imply cables and winches. Back hoes, bulldozers, quarry dump trucks, forklifts, etc. are all heavy machinery that don't use cables. This is an "ideas and suggestions" sub forums, if he has an idea he can post it. I'm tired of people saying the devs are busy and they need to fix things first. Just because the devs have other priorities doesn't mean that they aren't open to suggestions. But you are right in one way. The BeamNG community is definitely the best on the interwebs. OT: this is a really cool idea. There are definitely a lot of cool things that can be done with this. I'm definitely on board with this idea
One, i never said they mentioned that specifically (because i couldn't find the post which referenced it), otherwise i would have specifically said "So and so said this and that". I was just listing some things that one would think would be required for machines/heavy machinery like tow trucks, tanks, dump trucks, all that stuff to work. Two, I never said he couldn't post his idea, after all i want this to be implemented as well. I never said they weren't open to suggestions (idk how you came up with that...). As well as i never said they need to fix things first... Maybe i'm wrong to assume a tow-truck with a winch/cable system is going to be in a crashing/vehicle game... :S Although i dont know how hard it is/will be to implement. Edit: Although this doesnt necessarily mean 100% cables/winches/ropes, and it was a while back when posted
You did say "they have a LOT of work to do im sure, and are slowly but surely getting things rolled out/fixed in the proper way." (which kind of, to me atleast, sounds like you are implying they dont have time for his suggestion)I didn't mean to sound like I meant you specifically said that they weren't open to suggestions. Just in general, I'm tired of people saying that the devs are busy. It's just really annoying. Telling someone that the devs are busy is completely irrelevant. I would understand you mentioned their full schedule if he wanted this implemented right away and was being demanding, but he just suggested something. Yes, the devs are busy, and they will most likely always be busy, but just because they are busy fixing things it doesn't mean they can't add features as well. You also came off a little rude by telling him its alpha and that he needs to use the search. I've been a part of the forums for a long time and never have seen this suggestion. The search bar isn't a one stop shop for finding everything you need to know. Searching cables, winches, and chains most likely won't turn up any results regarding his suggestion. Most people say "use the search bar," when in fact they haven't tried searching it themselves and pointing people to the correct threads. Telling people it has already been mentioned isn't helpful if you can't show them where it's been mentioned before. I'm sorry for any confusion or misunderstanding regarding what I/you said. I'm just getting equally annoyed at people making duplicate threads as I am having people say that the game just in alpha. People throw around the word alpha on these forums as a way to put down ideas people have. Like alpha means it can't be in the game. :/
I dont think you understood what i meant...however doesnt matter now im just going to back out of this 'discussion'
It was most likely a misunderstanding on my part That's one of the downsides of conversations over text. You can't hear the inflection in one's voice to decipher what the person means. Sorry
Haha exactly why i hate texting, and barely do. Sorry for any misunderstanding on my part as well, also any rudeness i may have shown
After looking at it a few times I realized you weren't being rude. I was already worked up over a few other threads and I didn't think very clearly before going off in a tangent
Haha, thanks guys, I see that almost went the way of the RoR forums there, but you're right, this is a great community, I'm still curious as to where you are finding this evidence of features to come. I get it, impatience has no place here (especially it being in alpha, and me not having purchased the game yet), but It would be nice to have some more information about the project's goals. For me, it's an issue because as much as I like to support these kinds of projects, I have a very limited budget. Just hoping to hear more about what additional mechanics will be added to the game in months/years to come.
From a physics standpoint, simulating a link chain (or even rope) accurately is extremely taxing on the CPU. You'd need the physics step running at ridiculous frequencies to keep everything together under load. For example, chaining your car to the ground, driving 100 km/h when the chain gets taut and ripping the engine from your car, sending the car into a roll. I'm speaking from experience (link) working with physics simulations inside 3D programs like blender and 3Ds max. This is also why you don't really see chains accurately represented in games, if the are in games, the physics is being cheated and from what I've heard from the devs so far, it's real-world physics or bust. I don't know how things work in the world of the game dev though, maybe they could conjure up some sorcery make something like this work, but I doubt it. It would be a really cool thing to see the Beam though
I'm not an expert of this engine neither a soft-body physics expert but I always imagined that simulating a rope with soft-body physics would be very simple And not even node-hungry. It would be just a string of nodes attached to other nodes, where is the problem?
I can see how simulating a chain with mass is particularly taxing, though RoR worked quite well simulating an ideal cord, it was unsightly, but it worked, and it may be possible to use a simplified model for the chain's weight, say, tension = length*constant*arctan(cos(length/distance)) would be a very simplified (basically triangular) model (I realize it can be mathematically simplified using the pythagorean theorem, it's just late and I'm tired). It would suit roughly horizontal situations at least, perhaps a modifier would be needed for the angle of the line between the tie points. then simply render the links or cable along an inverted parabola. The calculus shouldn't take up too much cpu time, I'm not an expert though, I'm a mechanical engineering student, I know how I would do the math once, I don't know how the computer does the math hundreds of times per second. Hydraulics on the other hand, are extremely simple to simulate; they only require dynamics when there is a control input, and when they stop, they act like a solid bar.
We have a thread about ropes and chains, but what about a pulley system? http://www.beamng.com/threads/3518-Pulley-Rope-system?highlight=pulley
This is basically what happens when trying to simulate chains using very lax physics descriptions The individual "links" behave very weirdly when there is too much tension This example is obviously a very exaggerated case of the phenomenon
