Early Experimental Preview of Career Concept

Overall, what makes me the happiest at the moment is the little extra hype of what'll be new for career mode in each update from now on.
Beam is one of the few games that still has me very excited for updates because I know that what we're getting will be quality, no matter what it is.

 

Not sure if this should go to here, or the Linux one. My steam deck freezes whenever I try to load the career mode. Putting it on safemode after clearing cache let's it load near the end until it freezes. I have Beamng installed on my SanDisk extreme u3 a2 256gb microsd card if that helps.

 

So, I've completed this version of Career Mode! Woohoo! I'm so glad to see that Beam's finally getting a lot more gameplay!



And here's what I think. My critique's a bit long, so I'm gonna be using spoilers to keep it from being a giant text wall. Keep in mind that this was done on an XBox controller by someone who was just learning how to use one with no assists on most of the missions.

Overall:

Spoiler: e

A lotta fun, with a good variety of missions and disciplines. Just about everything from the game gets at least a little bit of the spotlight - trucking, police chases, stunts, circuit racing, and more. I don't know if the career mode should be this "general" instead of allowing people to pick a specific category (i.e. only doing Motorsport missions).

Some vehicles (like the bus) rarely, if ever, get featured, and I feel like the Specialized career path is heavily under-utilized. For a game with such heavy emphasis on customization and making "built" cars, it's a bit odd that I never had to build my own cars for any of the missions.

The current game economy seems to give out a ton of money - which does make sense, considering how expensive some of the cars in this game can be and how many cars and configurations there are. I'd really like to see prices for parts displayed in the complete version - perhaps even a PI system, like Forza.

(I know there's already the "Performance Class" thing, but it's not currently being used for very much ATM, and it's only for stock configurations.)

Motorsport:

Spoiler: e

Not too many issues here. I loved doing (most of the) hot-lapping scenarios. Especially Solar Circuit - that was an absolute blast on controller. Sailing through the first turn at 39 mph (~63 km/h), barely on the edge of grip - oh, yes. I really liked the crawling missions, too - yes, they were quite frustrating, but they were great practice for using a controller.

The only major problems I've had controls-wise are mostly with the drifting missions - and that could mostly be attributed to me not turning off anti-aliasing to reduce lag. I feel like the points counter is a little quick to complete a chain after you stop drifting, and it is a bit cheesy that I can gain huge points from spinning out or going in reverse.

Two specific AI races - Street Rivals and Going the Distance - are practically hotlap sessions after the first big braking zone, since the AI just plows into the barrier and wrecks themselves. It's nice that I can pull out my own cars after I've won these races, and their layouts are fun. I really like how Rivals uses the tunnel system part of the way - which is rather under-utilized in Beam in general.

Thankfully, the other three AI races - West Coast Circuit 1 and the two Highway Loop races - are a lot more challenging and fun, and the AI can actually drive there without crashing all the time - even with traffic enabled. Granted, I do tend to leave them in the dust, especially around the highway loop, but they still can put up a decent challenge.

Laborer:

Spoiler: e

I liked the generally laid-back nature of this path compared to Motorsport - especially the Garage-to-Garage missions. Those are fantastic for just driving around for an hour or two, listening to music. The deliveries do tend to be a bit short - I think Italy is more suited to G2G, since it's a much bigger map.

I do think that the mode could maybe use a damage penalty system to discourage crashes. That might be too punishing, though - perhaps it could be an optional bonus, like "Do 10 deliveries without a single bit of damage"?

Moving Assistance, Furniture Delivery, and especially Fuel Delivery were all quite challenging - which is good, to break up the monotony of "take vehicle from here to there" that Laborer can be. I don't think such missions should be the primary focus of this path (especially Fuel Delivery) but I think that Broken Truck could work well if career mode ever goes to East Coast, USA.

I wasn't expecting the T-Series to have such a prominent role in this path, having four missions all to itself (the same as the D-Series in this path, and one of the most frequently-used vehicles in Career Mode). I don't think that's a problem to have a big rig show up that often for probably the only career path it can reasonably be used for.

However, it could maybe be a late-game vehicle, with the smaller trucks having more missions devoted to them early on. Especially the Pigeon - that thing's street cleaner variant would work nicely for some trash-collecting missions.

There wasn't as much of the H-Series in Laborer as I thought there'd be, considering it's "the big van" in this game. I didn't drive it much in G2G, it almost never showed up in traffic, and there's no missions where it's used as the stock player vehicle. The Wentward was completely missing from career mode - it might work as a part of Laborer with its bus missions, but it might also work well in Specialized.

Speaking of which...

Specialized:

Spoiler: e

Not much to say here, gameplay-wise. It's just six police chases of varying difficulties, all of which are either done in the Grand Marshal, Roamer, or Sunburst. I did have a lot of fun with Tamper Proof and Dangerous Speeds, though.

This path could definitely have much, much more added to it - the ambulances, fire vehicles, and even the taxis and Wentward could be rolled under this umbrella in their own missions, especially since WCA already has the infrastructure for all of them. But I don't know how much y'all want to push this path as an option - it might be better being rolled into the Laborer path.

Adventurer:

Spoiler: e

Man, this is one wild path - it's probably the most "traditional Beam" of the four. Shooting Pigeons, knocking over barrels, parking cars, jumping over the city, car darts - it's a lot of goofy fun.

I really liked A Flock of Pigeons - it's always nice to see the Old Cannon get some use. Construction Slopes was a lotta fun, too - it was a real challenge getting my Moonhawk to hit all the bollards under the time limit, balancing grip and speed with precise aim. Parkhouse Bully was a riot for me - parking and demo-derby mayhem? Yes, please.

The parking missions were some nice low-speed fun - Back and Forth was especially great fun in cockpit view, learning how to quickly switch from forward to reverse driving, while I found Dockyard Parking and Construction Road Parking a bit frustrating, mostly due to the '88 Pessima and Miramar having manual transmissions.

I haven't been able to get more than two stars on the two Mudbarrels missions - I don't know if it's just me having skill issue, my computer being slow, or the game simply not giving enough time to whack down the barrels. Could be a combination of all three.

I don't know what other major types of adventuring could be added - maybe some Wentward or T-Series stunting?

Anyway, just another bit of rambling from me.

 

Oh, my, I wasn't expecting my first staff pick - and a great reply - to my OP.

Once again, I'm gonna be using spoilers, since this will be quite a long post and I don't want to make another text wall.

James, if you want to reply, you don't have to reply to all of these points - just whichever ones are most important.

Feedback/UI

Spoiler: Feedback/UI

Hello, James! Thanks for making your post - it's very detailed and clears up a lot of things about career mode.

I know that A Rocky Start features drawn cutscenes, and Hustle and Bustle also has a drawn director character who features in the beginning and end of missions. The old Driver Training campaign also used to feature a drawn trainer character (I think it was Mike? I dunno, it's been a while). As far as I know, no new characters have been drawn in a long while - will any Rocky Start-esque cutscenes be featured in the final version, or will it be just "go to mission, select mission, complete mission"? The current style works fine, and I can definitely see cutscenes being expensive, time-consuming, and hard to run on low-end systems.

Ooh, interesting! That's very nice to hear - and I think introducing career mode in a solid WIP state to gather feedback, instead of waiting until it's fully released to do so, was a fantastic idea.

I know that Beam's often struggled with UI development, so I can absolutely see why having a good UI would be so important to y'all. Currently, and especially later in the game with so many little bubbles on the map, it can be a bit difficult figuring out exactly what missions are new. I think highlighting new missions in a different color could help people find them easier.

Also, I'd love for the missions to show their win conditions when they're selected in the map, instead of having to drive to the mission to figure out how to win it. It'd make figuring out which missions people want to do easier and faster.

Perhaps an app that tells people what street/highway they're on would be nice - it probably wouldn't do much for gameplay, though.

Other than that, I haven't had any major issues with the UI design - it's clean and functional.

Gameplay Part 1

Spoiler: Gameplay Part 1

And I can say that it's worked very well - I managed to drive almost every official vehicle in Beam at least once in Career Mode, with almost every discipline covered - but there are a few things...lacking.

For instance, will there ever be missions for the ambulances, fire vehicles, Wentward, and taxis in the full Career Mode? WCA's got a full bus station right in the middle of Belasco, and the city's got a massive hospital and fire station, as well. It'd be a bit odd for these vehicles to not be utilized at all when there's already the infrastructure for it. The ambulances and fire vehicles could go into Specialized, while the Wentward and taxis would work nicely in Laborer.

Beam also has a lot of demo-derby configurations and a full Derby Arenas map, as well as many figure-eight tracks like the one in the racetrack at WCA. Will we get to do demo-derbies at all in Career Mode? They're quite popular with players, would showcase the game's damage model, and be a nice, easy way for people to make some cash early on. There's no need to worry about crashing in demo-derbies when the whole point is to crash.

I don't know which branch demo-derbies would fit into - they're a form of Motorsport, but they fit into the "smash-'em-up" style of Adventurer. Speaking of which...

Well, that mission would certainly be wild. And yeah, I certainly hope that Adventurer gets even more goofy stuff to showcase Beam's potential - it would be a great way to feature more of the props, like the large cannon, the piano, and all the furniture. Things which normally wouldn't be touched in a racing game's career mode.

The current progression works quite well, but I think it's a bit fast - going from a stock Covet to a Scintilla in two tiers is...jarring, to say the least. How long do you plan for the full Career Mode to be, roughly?

Will there be any specific "championships" or whatnot to the Motorsports branch? For instance, West Coast Circuit #1 features similarly-performing vehicles which are (presumably) in the same racing class. It might be a bit difficult to balance, and class-spec'd racing configs don't tend to exist right now, but something like a mini-GTE or -Group 4 would be real fun to have in the full Career Mode.

Likewise, a full street-racing "championship" like the one featured in Street Legal Racing: Redline would be neat, as well. There's already the infrastructure in WCA for this, as well - the junk-cars dealer near Logistics would work great for buying a beat-up starter car, if one wants to, and there's multiple other dealers and repair shops to buy cars and parts from, too. I dunno how well this would work out in, say, East Coast or any of the Texan maps (Derby, Industrial).

With so many maps, these "championships" could be the way in which the player explores the game world. If they complete all the races in their series at WCA, they can move on to, say, Utah, then ECA, etc.

This is excellent to hear, since I had many issues completing Circuit Drift initially, but then came back and did...alright at it. Certainly alright enough to unlock the other drifting missions. Likewise, I had a lot of trouble with The Gauntlet - only got 80 points after many, many failed attempts. Likewise, while I do enjoy doing the Garage-to-Garage missions a lot, they're not the kind of thing I can just pick up and play. If I want to get all five stars, I gotta drive around for like, 1-2 hours.

That sounds brilliant - and that same rock-crawler can then be used in an Adventurer mission, if the player so chooses.

I think that for this style of "combo", the Specialized branch might be the most difficult to combine. Then again, depending on how that branch works, a player might not need to buy any vehicles at all.

Gameplay Part 2

Spoiler: Gameplay Part 2

Yep, I can agree with this. Even in games which I would normally consider unforgiving, like Wreckfest, you don't have nearly as much risk of suddenly losing all steering because you whacked a curb too hard. It's a lotta fun for me, but I can see how it'd be a pain for y'all to balance around.

And I'd say that you did it quite well. I've driven career mode completely on controller (without assists) and about halfway through on keyboard (with almost all assists), and I can say that a lot of missions don't feel significantly more difficult on one method than another. It's easier for me to do most missions on controller, but even on keyboard, I was still doing just fine.

Granted, I've been driving on keyboard for well over a decade on hundreds of racing games, and for almost 7 years on Beam. Controller, I have about...two or three weeks' experience.

Oh, you made the Time Trials? Awesome! They're very cool for just trying to improve my driving.

As you probably know, I massively enjoy Solar Circuit. The combination of a tiny, simple circuit with a little hot hatch buzzing around at low speeds is just magnificent.

I also liked Horizon Sprint a lot - I found out that if I shortcut the last chicane before the big bend after the recovery point, I can save 2-3 seconds per lap (which is how I got 3 stars there). And that first fast "hairpin" was absolutely awesome to get the Vivace through - I had to basically dance on the throttle to keep it from spinning while maintaining enough corner speed for the exit while dodging the barriers. Absolutely beautiful corner, and helped me get a bit better at throttle control in FWDs.

Steep Bolt, Fog Hill Shilly-Shally, and the other time trials were a lotta fun, too - I like how Steep Bolt uses the blocky street pattern to make an old-school racing game layout. Cathedral Race or whatever it's called was great, too - the layout looks very simple on the UI, but all the jumps and bumps make it a right thrill to complete.

Belasco Core and Palisade Sprint were a bit less fun, but they were still fine. The first fast sweeper and the fast jump sweeper at Core were a right PITA since I couldn't go as wide as I wanted to to get the best line. It was fun when I nailed them, though, and they were good for practicing controller driving at high speeds over uneven terrain.

Palisade was basically a "don't lose traction" contest on ice, and man, was it tough to drive that 291 Barstow fast without it overheating or skidding into a pole. Granted, these issues could be because I'm quite unskilled at using controller and I'm using no assists - I don't think the layouts should be changed if you don't want to change them. I just find them quite difficult.

I should probably re-try them, now that I'm getting better frames with no AA - that could help me get three stars at those sprints.

Oh, that makes a lot of sense - with how often I crashed in Career Mode, I think I would've gone bankrupt pretty quickly, even with almost 500K cash and often using very cheap cars.

Economy and Story

Spoiler: Economy and Story

It's very nice to know that we'll be spending our BeamBucks on cars, parts, repairs, and fuel, among other things.

Will we be able to sell these cars with other players, like the Forza Horizon Marketplace? I know that'd probably be a massive technical headache on top of what already is a very difficult task, and it'd introduce a whole load of other issues (like scamming), but if it's reasonably possible, it could be nice to see happen.

Ooh, what kind of special events? And how will their "limited-time" nature work, anyway? Will it be like, "You have [x amount of time] to enter [y event] after completing [z event]"?

Speaking of which...how many of the maps will be involved in the full career mode? Because I know that back in 0.22, WCA, ECA, Italy, and Utah all received more dealerships and repair shops - and not only does it help the atmosphere, it also makes them more viable career mode maps.

Utah features the Senseless Destruction and A Rocky Start campaigns, parts of which could be rolled into the full Career Mode. (Senseless Destruction's scenarios would work great for the Adventurer branch.)

And, of course, there's Small Island, which is placed off the coast of California - presumably near WCA. I think having a teleport point somewhere on the coast of WCA (probably a ferry, like the one in Port Escape) that goes to Small Island in Career Mode would be nice. A similar treatment could be given to ECA and Hirochi, as well as Industrial and Derby.

Italy, ETK, and JRI might not feature in career mode, since they're so far away from the mainland US, and Automation...probably won't either. But I think at least the first three of these maps would work great - Automation might not be "canon" to the Beam universe.

But I dunno. Maybe career mode will be much bigger than just "do missions at WCA and maybe Small Island".

Ooh, I like this idea of a relatively "unscripted" career mode - it certainly opens a lot of possibilities for alternate paths.Will crashing into traffic affect the story at all, or no? Like, if you crash into a Scintilla in freeroam, will you suddenly piss off its owner enough to not be able to complete a certain mission or two?

I think that instead of having two scenarios, they could be packaged into one like in Gull's Roadblock Run scenario. You start off driving the truck, but if you complete the mission as the truck, you then get to be the police. Completing the mission as the truck unlocks, say, an Adventurer mission or two, while the police run gets you some more Specialized missions. I dunno how hard that'd be to work into the current scenario system, though.

I don't think I've ever seen a career mode done like this - maybe I just don't play games with career modes enough. In Wreckfest's career mode, I just had to complete enough races and get enough points to win the trophy for said series, and then move on to the next series. Sunset Racer 2's career mode was...well, unfinished, and was almost entirely "do time trials to unlock more time trials, etc.". But this unscripted style works extremely well for such a freeform game as Beam.

Anyway, enjoy!

 

Junkyards?
I'm on my hands and knees praying that we'll be able to pry parts off of junk cars and use them on our own cars

 

Or the ability to fix certain parts on our cars without respawning them, like if we pop a tire or break a lower control arm - it would be really neat to be able to fix parts on our vehicles

 

he said in a different thread that that was actually just nothing.

 

Can you include a vehicle choice ?

 

damn, this has a really strong Driver: San Francisco vibe imo, i love it!

 

Wow, I wasn't expecting another reply, and so soon, as well! Thank you so much, James!

Anyway, enjoy!

Feedback/UI

Spoiler: Feedback/UI

Alright, that makes sense; would love to see her work, as well!

Excellent! That's very good to hear.

Oh, nice! I didn't expect this idea of mine to be a big priority, so I don't mind if it isn't included in the finished career mode.

Gameplay Part 1

Spoiler: Gameplay Part 1

Yusss! That's fantastic to hear! I know that the current bus mode isn't very popular with people, since the Wentward is so slow, but I reckon that the taxis will be more popular with players since they're faster, cheaper, and you can modify a taxi into a race car or whatever else.

Makes sense for a condensed version of Career Mode.

That sounds fantastic! However, will AWD be banned from the circuit-racing championships? Few circuit-racing series allow AWD, and with so many AWD-capable cars in this game, I think it'd make sense to not allow cars to use, say, a slightly-modified Vivace 410Q in a BTCC-equivalent championship. Likewise, a lot of racing series have displacement and/or horsepower limits - will these also be a thing, or is that a bit too complex and limiting?

This would also allow street racing to stand out a bit from the professional racing. Just about anything would be able to race and the money earned could be fantastic, but the risks of crashing and getting caught by the police are quite a bit higher. This system might force people into using one or more cars per series, but with how many cars are in the game right now, I think that's a fine compromise.

This is exactly what happened with me - except not just with drifting, but with controller driving in general.

About a month ago, I decided I wanted to transition to controller by taking 650 official configurations around Hirochi Raceway Medium for some hotlapping on keyboard. I did 2 laps in the forward configuration with no rolling start and most of the assists turned on. It took me about two weeks to do all the laps in those cars - about 1,500 in total, with all the crashes and spin outs and mechanical issues I had with the cars.

I sometimes managed to go 7-10 seconds a lap faster than the times I did last December on keyboard. However, I only drove the Picco 110 around Hirochi on controller with no assists. I ended up going only half a second a lap faster than on keyboard with the same car, and after that..hotlapping at Hirochi wasn't much fun for me. I have the laptimes all saved in an Excel spreadsheet, so if anyone wants to see them, I could probably make another post or a thread or something for them.

With Career Mode, though? I spent about half the time getting better at multiple types of driving while having a lot of fun, and still getting to drive many different vehicles. It certainly works well as a good "training" for people who want to get better at the game.

Hehe, that's quite funny. But yeah, I kinda expected Specialized to be heavy in police content - it's got a police car as its logo, after all. The hazmat delivery and body guard/escort missions do sound interesting, though - I wonder what vehicles will be used for those.

Gameplay Part 2

Spoiler: Gameplay Part 1

Oh, nice! I think I remember seeing some of your posts about drifting on keyboard back in the day. And yes, for being such a realistic game, Beam's driving model is very keyboard-friendly. I remember playing this sim called Simraceway about 10 years ago, and that was quite fun on keyboard in slower cars, like the AE86 or 2000GT. I even did fairly well with my MP4-12C...until I got perma-banned for ramming players too often.

The base stock car in that game couldn't turn around one of the big ovals - I think it was Daytona - where, in order to get the car to turn properly, I had to damage its steering just right to get its front right wheel to basically auto-turn for me.

Then again, that game was heavily wheel-centered, and even had its own racing wheel - the SR1W or something like that. I've never had to do any such cheesing in Beam, even in the really difficult cars like the Bolide Group 5, to get them around circuits on keyboard or controller. I just had to not be a muppet.

That does give me an idea - the stock Burnside configurations really hate hard driving (I've had the Dual-Matic blow its engine after less than 2 laps of Hirochi Raceway Medium), so perhaps one of those could feature in another Palisade-esque time trial. Perhaps around Mount Wallis or the redwoods or tunnels - places which aren't used much in Career Mode as of right now, but which would work very well for Burnside torture time-trailing.

Economy and Story

Spoiler: Economy and Story

A'ight, fair enough. If it doesn't get added, that's fine - I understand how difficult it could be, and y'all already have a long road ahead of you.

That makes sense - I know a long while ago, when WCA first came out, people (including me) complained about how...small the map felt, with the racetrack taking up a large portion of the middle. Thankfully, a lot has been done to make the place feel bigger (I-110 now loops onto Highway 55 and 54, the tunnels in the city were added, among other changes), and now that I've tried career mode, it works well as an "introductory jack-of-all-trades" place.

Oh, yes, Utah would be a great place for the player to go to for an off-roading championship - but tying into the whole "freeform" idea, I might have an idea of how the map unlocks could work. Map unlocks could happen automatically by getting enough BeamXP, or they could be unlocked sooner with enough branch-specific XP (or maybe even competing in championships).

Let's say I want to go to Jungle Rock Island, which in this instance takes 2K BeamXP to travel to. However, if I complete a lot of the Adventurer missions and get to Tier 4, I can unlock JRI faster.

Or, if I want to go to Derby Arenas, which in this instance takes 500 BeamXP to travel to, I could compete in a derby championship starting at WCA. If I finish the championship at the arenas, I can then unlock the map as a freeroam area to mess around in.

It doesn't just have to be general -> specific. There could be a GTA-esque thievery path that starts at Industrial, then leads to ECA and/or WCA. Or maybe there's a bird watching mission group that starts at Small Island and goes around the world.

I think the big, general city maps - WCA, ECA and Italy - should have lower requirements (if any) for unlocking than the more branch-specific maps. That way, people can start multiple paths from one map instead of having to grind through maps to get to a specific path they want.

Also, will barn finds be a thing in the full career mode, like Forza Horizon? I think the abandoned maps and Utah would be really cool places to find, say, a rusted Barstow or a wrecked Bolide. (I know I keep referencing Horizon, but that's just about the only "freeform" career mode like this I can think of, and that only has to contend with racing and stunt missions.)

Holy shit, yuuuuss!

And that's it for now.

 

I'm not an expert, and suffice it to say that you guys have been mulling this over for far longer than I have. But if the player is going to be using a provided vehicle for virtually all events, what incentive is there for the player to work to acquire and build better vehicles? Sure, they can use their car after completing the event once, but why would they? In the early game, the provided vehicle will probably be better than their personal car anyway. And in the mid- to late-game, most players would probably rather use their more capable car right from the outset; forcing an even temporary downgrade on the player is bound to rub them wrong.

 

Thank you for the very detailed answer, I really do enjoy reading through your texts to get a better insight on the development of career mode