BeamNG.Drive Version 0.8 Available

The BeamNG.Drive game has been updated to V0.8.  The Early Acces Smash’em Up game is packed with loads of new content, features, and improvements. For more details, check out the full changelog and demonstration videos below.

BeamNG.drive is an immersive driving game in development since 2012 by a small team with big ambitions. It offering near-limitless possibilities, featuring an impressive and revolutionary soft-body physics engine in CryEngine3 that simulates every component of a vehicle in real time, resulting in a realistic, dynamic behavior.

The BeamNG.drive Early Access version is available for purchase on Steam for € 22.99. Get instant access and start playing BeamNG –http://store.steampowered.com/app/284160

Version 0.8 Changelog:

Highlights

• New vehicle: Bruckell LeGran
• New campaign: A Rocky Start
• New powertrain physics system
• Completely renewed Garage mode
• Added ‘Quickplay’ hotlapping mode

Physics

• Vastly improved vehicle collisions
• Physics core is 5-10% faster
• Slight decrease of physics core memory usage
• Improved accuracy of friction
• More realistic water drag
• Improved stability of drag (both air and water)
• Working intake snorkels
• Fixed vehicle collisions on rotating frame of references (such as the hamster wheel)
• Fixed physics of couplers
• Fixed coupler resetting
• Toggling couplers resets them even when they are in semi-coupled state
• Added “Center of Pressure” debug visualization
• Optimized vehicle G-force sensors
• Fixed particles being generated while passing through terrain holes
• Torquenode does not default to Armnode anymore

Gameplay

• Added QuickPlay mode: choose the map, layout, car, environment settings, and go! (Documentation available here)
• Completely revamped Garage mode, with full controller support:
• Default shifting mode is now configured through the Options menu, rather than using the Q key
• Radial/pie menu improved: better behavior, more items, fixed dead-zone bugs, much easier and nicer to use
• Added three Steam achievements for completing the campaigns:

Vehicles

• Added new vehicle: Bruckell LeGran
• Added new vehicle: Travel Trailer
• Added new upfit for T-75: Dump Bed Upfit
• Added new prop: Wood Crate
• Implemented BeamNavigator for all cars with new boot screen
• Barstow: colorable stripes, tweaked torque curves, deformation tweaks, steering and front frame stiffened
• Burnside: added race suspension parts, optional 423 CUI V8 from Barstow with superchargers, cut hood, drag and custom variants steering and front frame stiffened, frame is now totally separable from body
• Covet: added ‘Vandalized’ skin, made ‘Rally’ and ‘Selecta’ skins colorable
• D-Series: added 2-tone paint jobs, added new “Beast” variant, added snorkel, front frame and suspension mounts stiffened
• ETK800/ETKC: More durable suspension, add “Post Crash Braking”
• ETK I-Series: made ‘Rally’ skin colorable
• Grand Marshal: added 2-tone paint, reduced spiking in trunk and front wheel well corners
• H-Series: added running boards, front frame and suspension mounts stiffened
• Miramar: colorable roof and trim using 2nd and 3rd palette colors, colorable Okudai skin, added adjustable 5-speed race transmission, working dashboard clock
• Moonhawk: deformation tweaks, colorable stripes, added colorable trim using 3rd palette color, tweaked torque curves
• Pigeon: Added ‘Street Cleaning’ skin
• Roamer: added 2-tone paint, added snorkel, fixed UV errors
• SBR4: corrected power output, added navigation screen
• Sunburst: corrected power output, added navigation screen, made ‘Custom’ and ‘Rally’ skins colorable
• T-Series: Cleaned up beam section headers
• Tanker Trailer: added ability to rip open
• Fixed vehicle steering wheels, pedals, and other parts becoming severely misaligned and sticking out in crashes
• Removed inter part coltris, leading to 5-10% improvement in vehicle optimization
• Reduced friction of plastic parts, added correct ground models to plastic vs. metal collision triangles
• Reduced weight of mirrors, rally lights, and some spoilers
• Fixed strange spawning angles and camera positions on props
• Fixed some inaccurate gauge needles on cars
• Many other small vehicle fixes and tweaks

Powertrain

• Modular and expandable system to create almost any drivetrain layout
• New interactive powertrain UI app, allows to toggle device modes with your mouse, and visualize the torque and speed of each component
• Simulation of torque converters
• Improved Automatic, Manual, DCT, CVT transmissions
• More advanced shifting logic with shift timing, clutch, and throttle help
• Selectable locking differentials, locking wheel hubs, high/low range
• Improved limited slip differentials (Torque-sensing, speed sensing)
• Engines can stall, be dragged into reverse rotation, restarted with starter motor or by bump starting
• Flow of power remains correct when driveshafts or axle shafts break
• Implemented energy storage framework (fuel tanks, batteries, etc)
• Initial support for electric motors
• Initial support for multiple engines
• Support for replacement or add-on drivetrain controllers for custom vehicle types

Vehicle Powertrain Upgrades

• D-Series/H-Series/Roamer: Added locking axle differentials, high/low range switching, 4wd/2wd switching, unlockable front hubs
• ETKI: Added 2 AWD transfer case types (viscous AWD, adjustable race LSD AWD)
• Pessima: Added 2 AWD transfer case types (viscous AWD, adjustable race LSD AWD)
• Sunburst: Added 2 AWD transfer case types (viscous AWD, adjustable race LSD AWD)
• SBR4: Added 2 AWD transfer case types (viscous AWD, adjustable race LSD AWD)
• Semi: Added locking interaxle differential, locking axle differentials

Input

• Added support for 4th and 5th mouse buttons (not assigned by default, can be used for gas/brake, shifting… anything)
• Improved the force feedback feeling on FWD and AWD cars
• Added new input maps for: “Racing Wheel Thunder V5” (using a “PS(R) Gamepad Adaptor”), “Saitek Heavy Equipment Wheel & Pedal”, “Saitek Side Panel Control Deck” and “SpeedLink DriftOZ”
• Revamped inputmaps for: “CSL Gamepad for PC”, “Dualshock 4 Playstation Controller (Wireless Controller)” (wired mode), “SRWheel”, “Dual Trigger 3-in-1” and “Fanatec ClubSport” (force feedback now enabled by default)
• Created new wiki page with all information related to controllers: Controller Support
• Minor speedup of controller detection and FFB system initialization
• Fixed invalid steering values coming from iOS version of BeamNG Remote Controller app
• Fixed remote smartphone controllers generating many error logs for the first few seconds of gameplay
• Fixed H-shifters forgetting the current gear when alt+tabbing to a different window
• Fixed sticky right-mouse-button when a menu shows up while rotating the camera with mouse
• Fixed random moving elements in several special vehicles when using XBox controllers (dead-zones were missing)
• Deprecated discrete camera zoom bindings in favor of smooth zoom bindings

Replay

• Improved replay format: now supporting sounds, props (pedals, etc), full car transparency and current UI app data streams
• Bumped replay version: files recorded with previous versions will no longer be readable (this will continue happening until the replay system is stable enough)
• Minor improvement of file sizes related to vehicle shape (though new features still made them bigger)
• Fixed incorrect camera orientation during replays
• Fixed playback freezing during fast-motion in replays if computer couldn’t keep up with the required calculations
• Fixed replay length being inaccurate by up to one second and leading to lockups
• Fixed several vehicle shape corruption bugs during playback
• Now all vehicles move when seeking through replays featuring more than one vehicle

Artificial Intelligence

• Initial support for lane driving. Currently accurate only for single lane in each direction
• Added a Risk parameter on the AI app. It tunes the overall aggressiveness of the AI controlled vehicle
• New pathfinder for the AI (no map target) flee mode
• New pathfinder for the AI random mode (does not require a prespecified) target), and reduces unnecessary three-way turns
• Refactored AI Flee Mode
• Dynamic aggression for the AI manual Mode

User Interface

• Improved loading screen: less likely to hang, better status messages, fading on finish
• Enhanced main menu: new sounds, better navigation and improved looks
• Fixed units of turbocharger app
• Support for one level of subcategories for tuning variables
• Updated UI Apps thumbnails
• Added support for blurring arbitrary rectangles below the UI
• Optimized UI updating (based on current FPS)
• Improved defaultGearboxBehavior to have two values: ‘arcade’ and ‘realistic’
• Added image slider control supporting multiple previews, blending when in focus in various selectors
• Units system: length now reporting smaller units as well (yard, etc)
• Level selector improvements: better detail view
• Fuel consumption fixes: not displaying values that do not make any sense
• Improved hotlap app visuals

Audio

• Improved how sounds are affected by simulation time
• Better sound resource cleanup
• Limited excessive crash sound emitting
• Fixed bugs on audio system causing missing sounds and latency on start

Renderer

• Added support for dynamic deferred decals, used for navigation arrows on the road (temporarily disabled on lowest graphic settings)
• Improved speed of UI textures upload to GPU
• Improved nodegrabber render performance
• Improved vehicle color palette (skins can now be colored)
• Fixed possible render artifacts on the first frame after a vehicle spawns
• Fixed issue with spotlights shadows
• Fixed bug causing dynamic HTML textures (license plates and navigator) to initialize incorrectly
• Fixed crash when vehicles are destroyed with the lights turned ON

Campaigns

• Added new campaign: ‘A Rocky Start’
• Steam achievements are now awarded during campaigns (if online mode is enabled in options menu)
• Added the new ‘Exploration Map’ that can be used by campaigns
• Added Mission markers with UI hooks for displaying relevant information
• Added navigation lines to show the direction to campaign missions’ starting location
• Enforcing competitive scenario rules during campaigns
• Added ability to specify requirements for scenarios used in campaigns
• Improved Campaign json format and increased version from 1 to 2
• Improved campaign folder structure convention
• Added Odometer app for use in campaign scenario

Scenarios

• Added support for playing comics in campaigns or scenarios
• Deprecated onRaceWaypoint, replaced it with onRaceWaypointReached
• Added onVehicleSpawned extension hook
• Added onVehicleTakenDamage extension hook
• Improved how scenarios find prefabs
• Improved timing for displaying end screen
• Improved vehicle tracking with per vehicle data
• All vehicles can now trigger waypoints via onRaceWaypointReached extension hook
• Added waypoint branching – multiple routes to a destination can now be specified
• Ability to calculate distance traveled along a road path
• Improved statistics filtering for scenarios
• Scenarios can now specify required stats
• Extended cinematic camera to follow an additional valid target
• Added option to hide the countdown in scenarios
• Added directional waypoints with a flat collision plane, useful for start/finish lines

Misc

• Modified free camera behaviour, to allow smoother inspection of the vehicles and less jerkiness during rotation
• Improved “center” camera type
• Small orbit cam adjustments
• Added vehicles colors to vehicle configuration files(PC files)
• Improved level loading times
• Cleaned and optimized vehicled recovery subsystem, should work a bit faster/smoother now
• Outgauge split into two modules to use them separately
• Added simple job system: the mods will keep loading in the background when you start the game
• Added Generic executeLuaSandboxed method to catch lua execution output
• Removed system lua instance: was not used anymore – added replacement for broadcast function: queueAllObjectLua
• added new -batch command line option to prevent levels blocking the loading with messageboxes
• Creator mode basics: this opens an external browser window to control your vehicles. Very much work in progress.

General Bugfixes

• Fixed Recovery system only working for cars controlled by users (now also works for AI and others)
• Fixed Recovery showing the same message when tapping the key as when holding it
• Fixed Recovery system moving your car after being manually placed with editor or F7
• Fixed log messages were getting lost randomly
• Fixed inability to replace the vehicle when using the free camera
• Fixed game unpausing when resetting a vehicle
• Fixed inability to modify any of the vehicle color slots when using the free camera
• Fixed json serializer producing invalid syntax on null items in objects or lists
• Fixed creation of forest objects
• Fixed Lua Simobject field performance problems
• Added safety check to extension system: Case sensitive errors added preventing loading the same module twice
• Fixed problems when using certain C++ APIs from within Lua coroutines

Jbeam / Lua

• Powertrain controllers are a superset of the previously known extension system
• Powertrain controllers are tied to jbeam, so loading jbeam specfic code is very easy
• The entire vehicle powertrain control logic can be replaced by custom code if a mod desires so
• Added non-linear temporal smoother Lua function
• Removed synced GFX step of vehicles
• Cleanup of Prop control API
• Added possible default value as a second argument to settings.getValue() to make it easier to use

Official Webpage – www.beamng.com