Early Experimental Preview of Career Concept

Yeah so it turns out this was a horrible idea (I'm now in debt). Who would've thought?

 

Okay, this is very cool! I hope this gets added to all the official configurations, as well (although, I'm not sure how the Wydras will be able to do the skidpan).

What speed will the skid pad testing be done at? For my time trials, I tend to go at 64 km/h.

That's quite alright - so long as Career Mode is still being worked on, I'm fine with that.

 

That's great news, though! No market manipulation for me, thanks.

 

Right, makes sense. I do appreciate that you're designing this for every vehicle type. (And I see why y'all are doing 50 km/h instead of 64 km/h for the skidpan, since some vehicles (like the twin-steer T-Series and the Wentward) have significantly larger turning circles at 64 km/h vs. 50 km/h.)

Huh, that's a fair bit slower than I imagined it would be. Although, I do see why that's the case - vehicles like the three-wheeled Pigeon tend to tip over at over 50 km/h. It also looks like there's minimal difference in g-forces between 50 and 64 km/h. For context, a stock SBR4 AWD TT S2 (without ESC active) at those two speeds:

50 km/h: 1.14g
64 km/h: 1.14g

And a stock Barstow Lancehead at those speeds:

50 km/h: 0.81g
64 km/h: 0.81g

So, yeah, it checks out. (Also, will ESC be active in these skid pad tests?)

In my tests, many vehicles would understeer, which would reduce peak g-force readings by anywhere from 0.03g to 0.05g (which is often the same as going from standard tyres to bias-plies, so that's...not a small gap). So, I just measured the vehicles at a steering angle that was just before they understeered.

Yeah, I tended to solve this issue in my tests by locking the diffs on vehicles like the Stambecco and T-Series (if I could). I don't know if y'all can make the AI do that.

Right, makes sense.

Alright, nice.

 

Yes, that's an issue that would definitely affect vehicles like the hillclimb SBR and Scintilla Custom. Of course, a fair few configs have trouble getting to 100 km/h, or maintaining it in a tight-enough circle.

That's fair enough. I'm currently doing a base-model time trials tournament, where I throw various factory configurations around the track, and originally, I had around 50 configs (the cheapest factory configuration of each vehicle (except the Piccolina, whose 110 is practically identical to its 110 A), plus a few extras like the Autobuggy, Tograc, and Charro), before expanding it to every frame, then every body type, then suspensions, and finally engines and/or AWD systems.

I haven't done every engine yet (simply because I thought some of the configs weren't that interesting), but I found out that I only need to do seven more configs to get every engine in the game. (I'm not doing it per car - I'm doing it across the whole range. So, if I have a Hirochi 2.0L F4 in the Piccolina, I don't need to use it in the SBR or the Sunburst.)

It's taken me about two months to get these times down, simply because even with all the restrictions I've placed, I'm still at 205 (soon to be 212) configs. Which is only around 1/4 of the entire roster (880 configs).

That's perfectly understandable to leave ESC on for those cars which come with it.

And you're welcome! I'm just hoping we can see this skid pad testing data be implemented in the regular configs, so I can quickly look at a car's performance data and see a grip number for handling.

 

Every time you say skid pad I think of this and get excited until I remember there's another type for testing which is the one you're referring to... A burnout pad is needed in this game imo

 

Yeah I usually just go up to shuffleboard garage and either drift around the big open space or try and drift through the little container stack.

I do have another question, in the big open port building (the one shaped like a U) why did you guys edit the model to have extra pillars at each side of the joint part, I used to drift through there but now it's been blocked. Obviously there's probably a good reason but it really caught me off guard lol!

 

I figured it was like that for that purpose

No worries, I'm over the moon that this can be fixed and I'm happy to have helped

 

Quick couple of questions r.e career mode as I've recently put a good 20 hours into it since the .35 update.
-once certain levels are maxed out e.g delivery or racing etc will any sort of ungiven unlocks or earned credits etc get rewarded?
- secondly will there be a way to keep save files over multiple updates? Or could that lead to issues with levels etc similar to my first question?
-is there a way to have selectable icons showing up on map e.g liquid/dry material pickups, trailer pickups, also icons for quarry, hot rolled, etc or are they just not showing up from some lack of exploration as there is a good number of facilities I haven't discovered yet.

Side note I've had a flawless run so far and career mode is really turning into something great. Look forward to what's coming in the future,

 

Hello krallopian, hope you're doing well. This might be seen as something potentially off-topic relative to the career mode, but since you had a conversation about this, I wanted to ask anyway:
Along with this new test, do you have any plans on revisiting & blowing the dust off the non-career way of automatic vehicle performance testing? The one that's loaded with 'util_worker'. It seems really outdated.

Take the selecting part: you can't select multiple configs of a vehicle without going through all of them, nor you can't put configs of multiple vehicles on a test with one launch, and that's a bummer. If a mod adds only one config but for many vehicles, changing the values in 'work.json' is really tedious. It was eventually automated with a PowerShell script, but that's just a workaround for a feature that many modders would wish for to be added officially.

The testing part is not ideal whatsoever: for example, the braking is performed at about 110 km/h for all vehicles. Makes sense, but some ones can't manage to achieve such speed. And, while this vehicle is still driving, the game just... finishes testing? Or crashes? I don't really know. But the braking test seems to get aborted. What I can suggest is either replace the 110 to 0 for MAX_SPEED to 0, OR accelerate it to 20 km/h, use the recently added "boost" feature that gives it +100 km/h and wait until the inertia speed drops below 111 km/h, and then brake and measure the distance. Though, the usability of such data is... questionable.

The visual part is not that important in actual testing but still shows the testing map's age: NO_MATERIAL on the road, very strange reflections, etc. Once again, not that important, but would be cool to see this map being a little more polished.
O-o-or you could spent more time on it and turn it into actual realistic vehicle testing chamber from where some promotional videos could be filmed!

Thanks for reading my ramblings, hope you think about some points, and have a nice day!
--- Post updated ---
If that would grow to a full conversation, I can move my post to the performance testing thread

 

One more issue I have faced is where on the road up to this carpark the AI like to drive on both sides of the road on their way up to the car park which makes them freak out crash or just sit there jittering their steering for a while. Did have a video of it but it won't upload to this message so I might put it up on YouTube instead. I meant to mention this on my first post so sorry for all my postings of issues being so spread out.

 

You can also add a used market in which there may be: Different cars by type: one may not have a bumper, another has a rear window and so on, they may also be rusty, may not have a factory color, elements of the secondary market, racing bumpers, spoilers or some homemade features like Gambler 500