Released Bag o' Donuts 1.0

Skirmisher submitted a new resource:

Bag o' Donuts - A pack of 3 scenarios, all about drifting in the abandoned port

Read more about this resource...

 

So far I've taken a crack at the first two scenarios. I've gotten down to 51.37 on the first scenario and 2:37 on the second scenario. Basically I feel like my runs look very bad and I'd love to see demos of some smooth drifts... mine are just terrible.
I do find that my drifting has improved over the course of my attempts, so that's good.

 

I've only dipped below 50 seconds on the first one once, so you're doing alright there! 2:37 is a pretty good time for the second one, too, since it's hard to run it flawlessly. Basically, if you're getting excited messages at the end, you're doing well!

I could see about recording some runs. And yeah, practice really helps here! Before I started making these, I loaded up the Sunburst and found it incredibly difficult to handle, but by now I'm pretty darn good with it most of the time.

 

The times may be OK, but I just can't get the "drifting" bit down... Here are the videos I uploaded from yesterday:
Bag o' Donuts - Do, Like, 5 Donuts / in 52s / BeamNG.drive scenario
Bag o' Donuts - Dual Donuts / in 2:37 / BeamNG.drive scenario

 

You're not doing too badly, really--I suppose you've gotten a bit better since you started out. You mostly just need to figure out how to maintain your drifts longer. Here's a couple rough takes I did on my laptop:




(That grate is killer when it gets buggy, and I didn't wanna bother doing another take, haha.)

I notice that you're using arcade automatic, while I'm using manual; in automatic, it gets a little weird since it's so easy to accidentally shift up a lot. In manual, though, you can floor it in first gear without any weird things happening. Heck, you don't even have to leave first gear except for the ramp in Dual Donuts (and even then, you could just duck to the side instead, like you did). I suppose I might wanna make note of that somewhere, if arcade automatic really does make it significantly harder.

The rest of it is a lot of fiddling with the gas pedal and steering, haha. Hope these videos help.

 

Thanks for the videos. I'm actually using Manual w/ clutch assist in the video of the first scenario. (The video of the second scenario is actually older than the first - I went back and re-tried the first scenario after it occurred to me that the automatic shifting was messing me up.)

I'd really like to see a lap-times summary at the end of the first scenario, and probably the second as well. (I have not tried the third scenario yet.) It's very difficult to track how your driving changes affect your speed when you have 5 short laps all added up. Glancing at the laptime between laps is a good way to lose control. ;-)

 

Ah, that's probably a good idea, I guess. I thought about reporting lap times at one point, but figured they weren't important enough, especially since the second and third scenarios only have two laps, and I thought the first was fine being viewed as a whole. (Also, different laps don't have comparable times since you have to turn around in the second scenario and have extra distance to go in lap 1 of the first, but I suppose that sort of thing is pretty typical, so whatever.)

I've been considering taking the random message system (it really is a whole framework) and packaging it up for others to use, and a rundown of lap times would be a great thing to have as part of that, although it would make it a little more involved. Unfortunately, the scenario finish screen seems to ignore line breaks for some reason, so that presents a formatting challenge (and I should probably report it so it gets fixed). Maybe I should add the system to BNSE if Scepheo allows, so we don't go around having lots of dependencies and splitting functionality.

 

Even if lap times aren't comparable within a race they are comparable race-to-race. EG the first lap is always the same length, so if I did 0.5s better on the first lap this race vs my previous race...

Sounds like having a talk with Scepheo would be a good idea. Avoiding duplicate work seems to have been the point of BNSE. FWIW so far I think that all of the features in BNSE (or bnse as Scepheo styles it...) are functional features rather than UI related, so I don't know what Scepheo's take on that stuff might be.

Speaking of your completion messages system - have you considered adding on a medal system alongside it? I personally like the medals in TrackMania. TrackMania awards Bronze, Silver, Gold, and the "Author Medal". I assume that the first three medals are set based on how challenging the race is supposed to be. The "Author Medal" is simply the author's best time as far as I know - sometimes it's a small amount better than Gold, sometimes it's much better. In TrackMania the times for Bronze/Silver/Gold are openly displayed, but initially the time for the Author Medal is not displayed - a neat twist I think.

Tangentially related...

 

Yeah, I'm familiar with the TM medal system (though I might term the Author medal "Diamond" after another game I play, Distance). Implementing that in BeamNG would give you a better idea of your progress, but as it currently stands, all it would be is an extra few words in your finish message, along with the medal times being listed in the scenario description. I had a look at the UI stuff that powers the finish messages...and promptly resolved to not look at BeamNG for the next few days, as you can tell. >_>;

Basically, it could work, but making it actually nice is beyond me at the moment (and extra text would probably look weird with some of the more...extravagant messages, but whatever). I'll go drop Scepheo a line on the bnse thread now, though, before I forget about it entirely.

 

I think that I know exactly what you mean - some systems that are currently in place are very basic and arbitrary placeholders for now. They clearly aren't intended to be messed with and should be left alone. Trying to implement a [nice] medal system with persistence / hot times / etc as a mod would be a big waste of time. I was thinking more along the lines of something tied directly to what you're already doing (categorizing final times) and throwing out a "few extra words" as you described it. Nothing more than a suggestion though, and not a big deal at all. FWIW while I think that the current system is quite neat, I did find some of the completion messages vague enough that I couldn't tell how well I'd done.