Hello! My name is BlackMaze and I have only learned about BeamNG.drive a week ago. As excited as I was by the introduction video as well as community video's on Youtube, I quickly purchased the Alpha version, to test out the game and support the developers. So far I can say I am absolutely stunned and amazed by the engine's capabilities. The developer's mission is to create the feeling that you are controlling a real-time environment and not so much just playing a racing game really shows! There's much work still to do and I realize that with the engine and game still in Alpha state, much development is still done on the foundation (handling, physics, etc) and not so much yet on the user-friendly functionality of things. Still I would like to show my findings on the engine/game so far and give some feedback and suggestions I realize some of my points may have already been suggested by others, but I suppose voicing it again put emphasis to the feedback. Option menu for control setup Perhaps the current control setup is only due to the Alpha state of the game, I still want to emphasize that the ability to set up controls via an in-game menu would take a lot of hindrance away for many. Option menu for gears selection I'm playing with manual gears, it would be nice if I could set this in an option menu, so pressing Q at the start of every game would not be required. Gears handling The current way vehicles handle their gears is... awkward and in my opinion only playable through manual gears. Using auto gears creates the hindrance of not being able to stop your car. You're either going forward or backward, even though the parking brake is engaged. This is because the car is always throttling and you are unable to counter-brake this effect with auto gears. Manual gears allows you to at least put the car in neutral (I know you could also press L-Shift for clutch, but you shouldn't have to). Automatic gears When putting the car in D, pressing the brake should allow me to keep the vehicle stopped in position. Instead the brakes are not strong enough it seems, and the car will always roll forward (or backwards if in reverse). For any car with automatic gears, holding the brake down in D will stop the car. Slowly letting go of the brake will then make the car move slowly until the accelerator is pushed. I'm missing this option and find my self having to clutch or put the car in neutral every time, shouldn't have to! Parking break This thing needs to be stronger, I should be able to keep the wheels LOCKED when standing on a slope! RWD grip I believe this has been mentioned many times before and is still much under investigation, the grip seems a bit off on especially RWD cars. The tires loose traction much too fast, either because there is something wrong with the tires or the car just outputs too much BHP. I don't know the details, but just putting it out there again. Overall car performance Overall, the car performance is awesome, all the vehicles handle much like you would expect from their chassis/weight/shape. I totally love it and please don't take the feedback above as if I don't appreciate the rest, because it absolutely rocks! Keyboard controls It would be nice if we could set a speed for which the pressure is applied to steering/throttle/brake. Currently turning the steering wheel throws the car about like crazy because there all force is applied instantaneously. I realize keyboard input is not the way to go put it would be nice if we could set the steering to be less sensitive. Note: I currently play with keyboard, WASD to drive, up and down arrows to shift gears, left and right arrows for slowmotion Clutch It doesn't seem that clutch is used automatically. If the car takes off, I would like to hear the clutch slip a little, would also be nice if going up a hill would automatically slip the clutch further to attempt to get up the hill. Currently I have to do it manually, but not all control setups have easy access to clutch. Car selection Would be nice to have the option to select the car before the initial car is spawned at start of mission. Colour selection Would be nice if this was added to CTRL + E car selection as an easy drop down. Skid sound I won't mention sound in general, this is Alpha and it would be unfair to criticize about sound in such an early stage. However, I'm going to request skid sounds for various terrains. Currently the skid sound is very harsh and quite frankly, a little annoying at times, especially when you're driving on soft terrain, it doesn't make sense. Skid texture Same deal, would be nice to get some terrain dependent skid textures in, despite Alpha state. Pilots Would be nice to have a pilot sitting in that empty seat, buckled up or not. Can understand that this is something for the long run though, considering Alpha state. Borderless windowed mode Please? Replay camera I don't even need to explain how amazing this would be. Camera movement Yeah, currently very annoying and I'm sure there will be some improvement here soon. Would be nice if we could use the mouse in a more convenient way. Also, would be nice to have the ability to switch to free cam (World cam) or snap to different vehicles in-game rather than via the editor (F11). Tip: I have increased the NUMPAD view speeds in the keyboard settings to 0.25 (original 0.1). I think this could be considered a default number as 0.1 is too slow imo. Also I have swapped NUMAD4 and NUMPAD6 as they work counter clockwise where NUMPAD8 and NUMPAD2 don't. This however triggers that it doesn't work the right way around in first person view. Grab vehicle Also suggested before, would be nice if we could grab the vehicle with the mouse in real-time and put it down. Could be considered an Alpha feature only. Getting suck under a bridge sucks GUI Could we get some info rendered while in third person view? Think about: speed and current gear. Could be just text based while Alpha state. EDIT, forgot one: Concrete wall This thing wobbles around like a gummy-bear. What?!?! The risk with a physics engine is that things wobble too much. I still see that happening here too, be careful you don't make things too wobbly! Don't be afraid to stiffen things up Just because you can, doesn't mean you have to! Soooooo....... This hopefully doesn't seem too much like a complaint, because again, absolutely love the engine, love the game, love the work done to it, absolutely stunning. My compliments and appreciation to everyone working hard on this!
Very nice post! What you mentioned about colour selection, the devs already made it this way so you can change the colour with CTRL+W in the parts selector. Or CTRL+E, one of those, cannot remember. It is already in-game, it will come in the next update somewhere this or next month, so I'd suggest editing your OP and delete that suggestion. Also, the car designer (Gabester) is working on improved handling for the Civetta Bolide. It will be easier to drive in the next update. I also agree with the sounds. You see, the sounds right now are just placeholders. That is why there is no horn, too. It is just useless at this stage. The sounds are pretty low at their to-do list because there are much more higher priorities. But the sounds will get completely remade eventually.
The detail in this astounds me I mean you have put into words what I cant...main reason is I dont like writing and it would take me several days to process the data I have seen...and put it into words...but I would forget details but I agree with all those points you made there..
First of all thank you for the kind words . Some answers now. Option menus: We are revamping the whole GUI infrastructure. I don't know if we have the time to implement all these options in the release, but the new GUI will permit us to have the required functionality to provide all these things in the near future. Also, since it'll be based on web technologies (HTML/Javascript), it'll make it a lot easier for people who know web technologies to modify/improve it. Automatic gearbox: The automatic gearbox has been done in this simplified way so as to permit people without much driving experience, to drive a car right away. Parking brake: Brake and parking brake have recieved a lot of attention in the development version. In particular, parking brake is stable now and able to stop vehicles standing on a slope. It took a huge amount of effort to solve the parking brake problems, because of the way we approach physics. Our parking brake simulation works like a real parking brake's physics. The brake pad only applies forces to the wheel and the wheel back to the brake pad. To be able to do this in a stable manner, while keeping the whole vehicle stationery and by not using any "non local" information (like the state of the vehicle or other parts of the vehicle) is an extremelly hard problem. RWD grip: Yes, RWD vehicles are very difficult to be driven. A traction control subsystem would solve this. On the other hand, we chose to model vehicles from before the age of electronics. These vehicles were "raw", and the monsters among them (looking at Bolide) required significantly above average driving skills. Traction control would be an anachronism for these vehicles. Nevertheless, we are going to implement traction control, to "soften" the character of these temperamental vehicles. Overall car performance: We have redone (with pen and paper), most of the physics calculations that are in the core of our physics, correcting inaccuracies wherever they were found. I know that there will always be people complaining about changes in driving characteristics, but my personal preference is for mathematical/physics accuracy rather than "looking correct". We have also added the last major physics phenomenon that we weren't previously simulating. This is torque reaction from the wheels to the engine. It doesn't make much difference for normal vehicles. But for vehicles with huge amounts of torque (dragsters) it will be visible. Clutch: There is already a clutch in there, and it is automatically engaged/disengaged. And it slips . The reason you don't hear it, is that we haven't yet found the time to tie it to the sound system. It is in the TODO list, but with a lower priority. Skid sound: We have done some work concerning wheel sounds (rolling, skidding), and we now transmit the terrain's information to the sound system. This opens up the road to having terrain based sounds. Skid texture, Pilots: Not much done concerning these. So many things to do, so little time . Borderless windowed mode: I believe (but may be erroneous), that our last public update had this feature . Have you updated? Replay camera: We are in the thinking phase concerning this. Our physics approach makes this particularly difficult, due to the huge amount of state that would be needed to be saved. Camera movement: We are looking into ways to improve it. Nevertheless this is a particularly hard problem for our use case. Our vehicles are not only ment to be driven down a road, for which case a camera's movement would be pretty much constrained. Our vehicles tumble, fly, crash do all kinds of abnormal stuff. Creating a camera able to cope with all these situations was a very difficult undertaking. Grab vehicle: This can be done while in the editor. You can even do it with the physics running. But be carefull, because if you push with the mouse a vehicle inside a solid obstacle, the physics will react violently. Concrete wall: The shaking behaviour has been greatly improved in the develpment version. This also required an enormous amount of effort.
An addendum about the automatic transmission: The current "arcade" mode (brake to reverse) is only temporary/will be optional. We plan to implement proper manual automatic gears (P R N D 2 1) so that holding the brake in D holds the car in place, and releasing inputs will cause it to roll forward, like a real car. Also, vehicle car handling (RWD especially) has been quite improved (by tuning the individual vehicles' suspension and tires) since the last public update, especially for the Civetta Bolide. I have compared the "drivability" side by side with a 900 degree wheel with other well-known racing sims (Live for Speed, Forza 4, Assetto Corsa, etc.) and found the feel and difficulty to be similar (except for our current lack of force feedback). I think when we implement force feedback (driven by the real aligning forces) we will have a feeling and simulation accuracy that is quite close to reality. Also we have (and are still) improving input lag, which plays a huge factor in controlling wild RWD vehicles like the Bolide.
ummm, some things he mentioned (such as borderless window mode) are in the latest version, if you look at the date of the op, youll notice it was back in august, so, yeahhhh, surpsied no one seems to have noticed that
The Civetta Bolide is just a beast. I haven't picked out a wheel yet so using an XBOX controller does the job. I've given the base track an honest 30min session with the Civetta after a little warming up. I have to feather the throttle and when I drive that car, I don't wear my lead shoes. Now, if I'm in the Covet, that's a different story. To anyone spinning out, try building up your laps or waiting until your "up to speed" to throttle. Gradually press the throttle, if you continue to spin out press it more-gradually. When your racing follow the come in wide, cut in close practice. Its about how you hit the corner.
