Why can't we have a game?

Today is the first I have logged on to the forum since 2017, but I do play beamng quite frequently. I have over 1100 hours logged on steam for Beamng, which is more than any other game I have in my steam library... by far.

While coming on to the site to read the patch notes for the shinny new release of version of 0.35, out of curiosity I took a look at my account, and something occurred to me.... This account is over 10 years old.

I purchased this game the same year I graduated highschool, and I am now in my 30s.

In that 10 years, Beamng has changed and improved immensely with better graphics, vastly improved physics, and new maps and vehicles...

However, during all these years, and all these hours.... there's been one main thing I have longed for but haven't really gotten.... a game.

I don't feel like a "play" beamng like it's a regular game... it's more like mindlessly drive around, crash into stuff, or try out a new mod every so often while watching youtube.

Honestly, what beamng really feels like still after around 15 years of development is a glorified tech demo with a core feature that is satisfying enough to re-try every few months for a few hours before it becomes boring again, and then start again in a few months when you feel like seeing another few car wrecks.

It's basically like Tear Down (if you don't consider the campaign), where every so often I get in the mood to explode some buildings or something.


My point in all this being that this game has been around for FAR to long with the "Career" button grayed out with a "coming soon" label slapped on it. No.... it is NOT coming soon. In fact, from what I gather, it doesn't seem like it might ever come at all.

Just like Teardown, a game like this would be immensely improved with a cute little story with missions.... it doesn't have to be all the original, even. Just some barely-believable, goofy, trope-ridden plot (like Teardown) would give this game a real, tangible spirit, and would give this "game" a LOT more of a draw, and a larger audience, and more money.

As it stands, this game hasn't gone further than a fancy tech demo with lots of cars and maps to demonstrate the technology. Except, the problem is that, as impressive as this engine is, the core technology is a over decade old at this point, and so it technically isn't really 'innovative" anymore. And, more importantly, it's like not event close to it's theoretical performance limits.

From what I've heard, Beamng's physics is entirely CPU bound... Unless I have gotten outdated information, the core physics engine could be completely rewritten using CUDA (or some other compute shader framework). From my knowledge of how this type of physics works (I've ported core sections of the original ROR code into c++ libraries), and from my knowledge of compute shaders (I write compute programs), I absolutely know this game could easily get a 10x improvement to its performance being reworked into compute programs.

As it stands, it'll only be a matter of time before someone knowledgeable and passionate enough does this. Hell, *I* wanted to do this.

My message to tdev, if you ever read this, is this:

Minecraft was the OG for its type of game. It will always be remembered as the OG, even though it actually wasn't (voxel mesh gen has been around for decades). People will always remember Minecraft, and lots of people still play Minecraft, even though many duplicates (vastly improved duplicates) have been created. Minecraft is vastly more simple than Beamng, which is why it has been duplicated so much, but yet it is still the one every one thinks of with that type of game. The reason? Minecraft has Spirit. It presents the player a narrative to follow with its gameplay, and challenges to solve.

Unless Beamng undergoes a complete fundamental rewrite to utilize the immense bandwidth of GPU compute, it will be usurped. Somebody will eventually make something like beamng, as a game, with immensely improved performance. If they are smart, they will do what Teardown did and write a cute story for it.

If this happens, Beamng will be a footnote.

I guess I'm just disappointed, because I've been feeling this for years.... That Beamng could have been so much bigger, and really lived up to its potential, if beamng could have just been given a spirit.

/endrant

 

Did you ever click the career button? If you spam click it, you can try it out

 

Learn something new everyday.

 

Enjoy, I think the career is in a great place already and just got a big update in 0.35 which I've yet to try.

I don't know their reasons for not using GPU compute for physics, but in case you're not aware, the beta Vulkan renderer improves CPU utilization a lot.

 

and if the vanilla game mode isnt good enough for ya you should take a look at the RLS Career Mod which is currently in the fixing for the 0.35 update i played it alot and its amazing

https://www.beamng.com/threads/rls-career-overhaul-v2-2-3-0-34-compatible.97107/

 

I agree, I barely touched the game in the last years or so, I'm just checking the forums for potential mods and speculations. BeamNG has had lots of potential for a long time now, yet it doesn't look like it's going anywhere. At least if we could have more transparency on the roadmap and features being developed, or even what's supposed to even be in the final version, that would be an improvement for the community, but that's never happening at this point.

After the updates, I usually start the game without mods to check the new features, and that's when you realize how empty it feels as a base game without the mods, especially when you've been playing for years, completed all the scenarios and explored all the maps

 

Same with the new 'Rally Mode' which is basic but still pretty cool

 

Because it is a simulator. If you turned it into a game it would lose it's meaning of what makes it interesting. They still try to please everyone though(which i disagree with) but they sacrifice the niche part which is realistic simulation.

 

Beamng still has no competitor on the market using the same approach to physics and equal level of details so it is still at the top of its game, technology wise. Many optimisation has been made on the core tech, and Vulkan integration is still in progress.
It is still in development, that takes time but the devs never got lazy during the process and are still hard at work after all these years. There's been no shift in focus or shady business practices. Progress has been steady, full of great advances, and if you followed the devlogs you may know the devs are extremely passionate and meticulous about their craft. I've also followed many early access titles and Beamng is the only one that absolutely never disappointed me, as the team is clearly putting all the effort imaginable to get the best out of their concept, and won't stop until they bring it to the absolute limit.
About the rise of a competitor you're expecting to appear, my answer is : Hell yeah bring it on ! Finally something that could compete with Beamng and would contribute to innovations in the real time softbody physics department. Except that did not happen in 12 years lol.
You're frustrated to not have a complete game after more than a decade of early access, I get that. But you're overlooking a lot of what happened on the way just to basically say "i vaguely feel like that's enough time, just release the thing because I don't want to wait anymore." That is not a constructive statement.
The fact you didn't even check out the wip career mode before writing such a massive rant shows how superficial your knowledge about the game state is.
Take some time to dig every bit of information available about Beamng, you'll get a more precise idea of what has to change to make it like a "real game" and why it hasn't been made yet.
From my point of view it's all about Ai. Now that we have the basics of traffic and races, I am waiting for the devs to bring Ai to the next level so we'll be able to race against challenging pilots instead of blood thirsty degenerates.

 

Wreckfest? Rigs of Rods?

 

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how an old, outdated game is a competitor to a game still in development and receiving consistent updates...Please explain that to me.

As for Wreckfest, that's an arcade racing game, a far cry from a simulation-focused, multifaceted automotive sandbox game, that's branching and focusing on different elements and progressively becoming more detailed in each discipline(drifting, trucking, offroading, road racing, rally racing etc)

 

Wreckfest is a game solely about derby, and Rigs of Rods is an extremely old game that won't ever excel BeamNG

 

Oh FFS. I have 2200 hours in, in the last 4 years and I’m not bored. You don’t NEED the devs telling you whether to try to haul logs down a mountain road without wiping out, race, rock crawl, rally, whatever. If you are a car enthusiast and are bored with BeamNG then you’re bored with gaming, period. That’s fine, most of us need more sunshine, less screen time. But it’s not the fault of the devs for not telling you what to do.
Btw, I tried career mode for like two weeks and got bored. Why should I earn fake “money” to buy fake cars via repetitive tasks when I can already pick any vehicle I have downloaded, pick any task or terrain I have downloaded, and see how it handles it? Doing Pikes Peak (gravel) in my self-tuned moonshiner Bruckell 9 or building and running my own off-road log truck wherever I can on Alzan trails etc>Repeatedly doing virtual menial jobbery on a version of West Coast.

 

I begun playing BeamNG in October 2021, and while I personally would not call BeamNG a game, it is a simulator first and foremost. A simulator that thanks to the tireless efforts of the devs and modding community is a endless sandbox you can do most anything in, I have flown large aircraft under a bridge in Italy tearing its wings off before it shattered on the valley floor below, and I have performed thousands of laps of hundred of different time trials across dozens and dozens of maps spanning the globe, I personally enjoy the career mode too, in the last 3 and half years I've collected over 600 mods, played for over 5000 hours and now consider BeamNG what I turn too when nothing else scratches the itch. TL;DR BeamNG isn't the issue here.

 

Rigs of Rods was the precursor to BeamNG. Without RoR, there would be no Beam.

In regards to what the OP said, the whole point of Beam is it's a sandbox. You can create your own games, your own worlds, or download worlds or add ons or scenarios other far cleverer people have created. It doesn't fall into the typical 'game' bracket because it's a driving simulator, with infinite options for how you approach it.

 

As RoR was the predecessor to BeamNG, I can't see the Devs finding any intent in continuing RoR to the point where it could be considered an acceptable alternative.

 

Im i the only one who doesnot play the game parts, and just enjoy free rome lol

 

Lol
You could not bring up a better example of what a competitor is Not. ROR is outdated on all aspects and was built by some of the same devs who brought us a better version of it, in every way possible aka Beamng. It’s like bringing up GTA3 as a competitor to GTA4. Ancestor =/= competitor.
And Wreckfest just doesn't simulate anything the same way Beamng does at all, nor has it the same scope. These 2 examples make no sense.
Believe me I'd know if there was a serious competitor to Beamng today, as I've been obsessively looking for anything similar to ROR in the late 2000's and never stopped since.

 

I am only still somewhat active in BeamNG because I mod from time to time. Most of my 1800+ hours that I have cracked up over the last 3 years or so, I have spent modding (also the only game I have more than 500 hours on). But that is hours counted on steam and not the previous 3 that I had played on a cracked version and then on my friends account. I would have left the game already because it is in fact, very repetitive. Career isnt fun either since I really dislike how the traffic is forced on (on an already demanding map) and you need a super computer to run it smoothly. Also career just feels a bit drab, due to the fact that it is just the basic racing game concept applied to a vehicle physics game and nothing else.

 

“Repetitive”-Only if you define the ability to do pretty much anything that can be done with cars as “repetitive”. By that definition every other driving sim is even more repetitive.