Released Hectic Delivery (Gull) 1.3

Get it here: https://www.beamng.com/resources/hectic-delivery-gull.5965/

Deliver the package to the tourist information centre before time runs out. There's quite a distance to cover, and a bunch of traffic to dodge. Good luck!

I'm interested to hear your feedback, suggestions, and comments, so post away. I will likely work on updates to this scenario in the next few weeks (if I get enough free time). I also wanna do a guide on how my Lua script works with the objects in the prefab file, so you can use this stuff with less frustration!

 

WOAH, that's an insane time! I didn't think that anything faster than 2:35 was possible. Then again, I had a bit of lag to contend with on my runs. Congrats!

I'll be fixing a few spawn bugs tonight; it seemed that there was a high chance of traffic failure at the end.

 

Damn, that's impressive! And yeah, the lag starts to happen when the script starts teleporting cars, which happens when you reach that invisible zone before the bridge. For now, I can move that zone to a nice spot, until I find a lag fix.

 

Ready to upload a small update. I moved and added a few traffic spawn zones, and fixed minor bugs in the code.

By the way, I just got 2:31 .

 

LOL! That's funny, but I guess I can add an obstacle there for the next update.

 

I can fix that for the next update. I'm thinking of two methods to accomplish this, it's just a matter of which one is more effective and efficient.

Last night, I was also experimenting and directly modifying the game's Lua scripts (gasp). I found that I can use more traffic cars without increasing lag if I disable their dtSim related calls while they are inactive. Then, I can theoretically swap them in and out of the traffic pool. This means that I would still only simulate 4 or 5 traffic cars at a time, but with more variety. I would need a lot more work on this, as well as finding a way to not screw up anyone else's default BeamNG Lua files.

 

I believe you're right, it's like an interval passed to the vehicle part and GFX processing.



The diagram above shows my current traffic management logic. I'll explain it. The prefab file has a bunch of Lua trigger objects spaced apart rather evenly along the route. Traffic cars can teleport to the middle of them, plus they can get their flags and AI modified while within the bounds of the zones. Traffic will always try to spawn 2 zones ahead of the last zone that the player entered. Here, the red zone was triggered by the player; the orange zone is the active zone for traffic relocation. Only 1 car at a time can get teleported to 1 zone. Once the newly spawned car leaves the zone, that zone is ready again.

Traffic cars are chosen for teleportation based on their distance and interactivity to the player. Examples:

• Traffic car #1 got teleported to the orange zone and is heading towards to the player 2 zones behind, in the red zone. It can't teleport yet.
• Traffic car #2 passed by the player a while ago, and will be queued to teleport.
• Traffic car #3 got too far away from the player, and will be queued to teleport.
• Traffic car #4 wandered off the main road. I actually put selective Lua triggers on other roads, so that car will be queued to teleport.

Traffic cars will teleport directly to the origin point of the Lua trigger objects; I placed each zone so that the origin point was at about 1 foot above the road (to avoid buried tires). Additionally, cars will get rotated to match the rotations of the trigger objects. By default, they will go on the lane towards the player. I added alternate zones that hover over the main zones; they are rotated 180 degrees compass wise. Then, the traffic cars have a random chance of spawning going towards or away from the player.

 

I squashed a few bugs. Apparently, the traffic speed limit wasn't working as expected; cars would go crazy fast down the straights. Also, I reworked the traffic damage so that the player is much less likely to take the blame if traffic does something stupid away from you. I have a few more things to tweak, then I'll release another update. After this, more traffic scenarios. Heh, heh, heh...

 

New update to wait for. I fixed some bugs as mentioned above, but not the lag. I'm looking into the vehicle initialization code to see what I can do. Later, I will work on an experimental scenario that will really test the limits of traffic in BeamNG. Dunno if it will be a success or failure yet. Fingers crossed.