Development Sneak Peek #1

Hello everyone!

We want to keep you guys on the loop about BeamNG.drive development. We realize we are often so focused on the game development itself that we forget to keep you updated as much as we would like.

After reading your feedback, we have decided to put some extra effort to improve on that front.

This post contains a few sneak peaks into what some of the BeamNG team has been working on since the last update. Most of it is taken straight from our Developer Section, so if you want to find out about these tidbits before anyone else, you may want to subscribe to that subforum.

If we see a positive reaction, then this will be the first of a series of posts. Our aim is to post somewhat regularly, and more frequently than game updates.

What you see here will NOT necessarily reach the next update or the final version

If it does, it is NOT representative of what it may look like

More work happens behind the curtains – this is only a random selection!

LJFHutch May 4, 2017:

Improved the water: Improved the water:

Diamondback May 11, 2017:

A while after publishing the 0.8 update with the all new powertrain and controller system, it turned out that it’s just not practical to replace the entire vehicleController if you want to have a custom shifting logic.

While this is perfectly supported, it means that you need to copy/paste a lot of the stock code that doesn’t deal with shifting just to have your own shifting logic. Certainly not an ideal way of solving this. A while after publishing the 0.8 update with the all new powertrain and controller system, it turned out that it’s just not practical to replace the entire vehicleController if you want to have a custom shifting logic.While this is perfectly supported, it means that you need to copy/paste a lot of the stock code that doesn’t deal with shifting just to have your own shifting logic. Certainly not an ideal way of solving this. So the proper solution is to outsource the shifting logic into its own module that can be easily replaced while still keeping the other code. I finally found time to tackle this and now it looks like this:

So every gearbox type has its logic in a dedicated file now. This means a few things:

A lot less code is loaded into memory for every vehicle (since it just loads the relevant code for a given gearbox)

The vehicleController code is a fair bit cleaner now

It’s very easy to specify a custom file with your own shifting logic

LJFHutch May 11, 2017:



Diamondback May 12, 2017:

Currently working on making rev limiters optional.

And guess what, it means we’ll also have some sort over-rev damage. Finally!

Currently you have a chance of damaging your valves (less compression/torque) and of completely messing up the engine (locked up).

Nadeox1 May 14, 2017:



LJFHutch May 17, 2017:

Lower road is getting along well too Lower road is getting along well too

donoteat May 17, 2017:

Hi everyone, I made some buildings. Hi everyone, I made some buildings. Should be able to post a cool video soon — not today, though.

stenyak May 19, 2017:

This took way more time and code rewrites than I anticipated, but it’ll improve the camera situation:

This took way more time and code rewrites than I anticipated, but it’ll improve the camera situation:

LJFHutch Jun 1, 2017:

A few more textures: A few more textures:

LJFHutch Jun 6, 2017:



TStabbert Jun 8, 2017:

Working on procedural track generation…

Working on procedural track generation…

Nadeox1 Jun 12, 2017:

Was going for a surprise, but looks like you forced my hand :p Was going for a surprise, but looks like you forced my hand :p

Diamondback 12 Jul, 2017:

Little update from my side:

We have decided to not allow any shift anymore. Previously, the game did not use any safeguards against weird or almost impossible shifts, for example it let you shift into too low gears, overrevving the engine or let you shift without using the clutch (essentially assuming unlimited force to engage the gear and applying gear damage at the same time).

We now moved away from this and implemented several safe guards and changes to this:

There’s a new “Gearbox safety” option which prevents you from using gears that would exceed the engine’s maximum rpm, the game will simply reject the shift

This also applies to switching non manual transmission modes (for example going from D to 2/1)

In addition to that we made the switch to rejecting shifts that did not use the clutch at all. While we are still working on this and we might change the design slightly, the idea is to prevent users from “cheating” by not using the clutch while tolerating the applied gear damage. We also try not to interfere too much with users that don’t press the clutch far enough. Little update from my side:We have decided to not allow any shift anymore. Previously, the game did not use any safeguards against weird or almost impossible shifts, for example it let you shift into too low gears, overrevving the engine or let you shift without using the clutch (essentially assuming unlimited force to engage the gear and applying gear damage at the same time).We now moved away from this and implemented several safe guards and changes to this:

LJFHutch Jul 17, 2017:

A few more sections updated: A few more sections updated:

Diamondback Jul 18, 2017:

A little update on the previous blog:

There has been some confusion about whether the gearbox safety will be enforced or an option. Of course it will be an option 🙂 We won’t restrict your joy in destroying your favorite gearbox if you so wish

The reason the safety option has been added is that overrevving now causes serious damage, so it tends to destroy your engine pretty quickly if you don’t watch out. To prevent frustration about that, the gearboxes will protect themselves a bit better when that option is enabled

In addition we switched from outright rejecting shifts to “cutting power” for a short time. This makes it much less frustrating to miss a shift while still penalizing you for it A little update on the previous blog: