On Story Campaigns...

Of the mods I've always wanted to make, a campaign with a proper story has been high on the list. A few scenario/campaign mods have been released with a story, such as Darthbob's classic The Bridge Conundrum, but to say they're few and far between would be putting it generously. And with BeamNG's career mode almost certain not to have an overarching story by this point, I just want to generate some discussion about whether narrative campaigns have a place in the future of the program, how best to build them, and to gauge how much interest (if any) there is in their development.

So, would you play a story campaign mod? Would the quality of the writing make a difference, or just how well the story doesn't get in the way of the gameplay? Would branching paths improve replay value, or would it be one-and-done for you either way? Would you even be interested in downloading scenarios at all?

 

Would you play a story campaign mod: Yes.
Would the quality of writing make a difference: YES
Would branching paths improve replay value: Absolutely.
Would you even be interested in downloading the scenario at all?: Yep!

 

Y E S x4 Combo

 

I think there's some untapped potential in these sorts of mods, but cutscenes are a bit elusive. The closest things we've got at present are comics and pathcam intros. Comics are unintuitive (or expensive) to make, perform poorly, and have been stuck in some sort of ugly wireframe mode since at least 2018. Pathcam intros could be stretched to display characters and dialogue, but they can only portray things, people, or places that physically exist in the game world.

The only more or less completely developed campaign I have just uses portrait intros. Unlike comics, they're reliable, don't require too much work to illustrate, and don't require the player to skip them before starting the scenario. But since you can only suggest that one character is speaking, you can only create monologues, no actual conversations. And unless you want players scrolling through paragraphs of text, you have to use the given 60 or so words to:

1. Describe what the player is actually trying to do in the scenario,
2. Describe how this scenario fits into the story at large,
3. Tell the player something about the character who's speaking, and
   
4. Do all of the above while making the text intelligible and fun to read.

So, yeah. All told, there are no perfect options :\

 

Maybe something like the original Call of Duty intros? Maybe place the text on the wall of mechanic or garage (wherever the scenario happens). Maybe just have a cut scene, then a menu with what you need to do in the mission.

Also yes, yes, yes and yes!

 

Having a proper career mode or even just a story based campaign would certainly get some people back to the game properly.
As for the construction. Beam is a sandbox game, so, having a focus on a heavy story line can take a bit of a backeat. What it needs: An expensive sight on the cars and physics themselves, at least its the more important bit for ME... I dont speak for everyone of course.
So, what I would like to see would be a sort of "physics playground". Having a sort of small story line where you take a small, garbage car around a track, collect data, get into tuning details, explaining how things work and how to tune it, using that data to slowly get into racing / offroading / rallying (that could bet the sort of branching you mentioned) since everyone has a different point of interest in the game.
I dont know how usefull a sort of currency system would be, so you could do side missions to sort of increase the money you could spend on the car, or even just buy a new one. Thats IMO what the game would need. Nothing too complex, nothing that goes away from the game that it is, keep it realistic, no silly jumps off cliffs etc. I dont want Beam to become a hardcore sim-racer, it should still be accessible to "everyone" but make it in-depth enough to be fun and interesting and to add replay value by creating different methods or even randmise each playthrough, so you have to think about how to tune a car. And don't make it easy like Forza. It should be difficult enough that, not considering how to drive or driving like a dummy would actually hinder you in the progression.

Im going way too deep, but I just wrote what I think.

~Nistii