BeamNG.Drive

[krooks]

I know this is probably pretty known by now, especially since I know about it (I don't keep up with games whatsoever), but if you haven't seen this game yet, it's a whole lot of wholesome fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSfJfxB_ToU [any way to embed this in the post?]

BeamNG is a very small group of people working on a softbody physics engine, and the game Drive is their game using, and I assume pushing the limits of, the engine.

What's been released is a sandbox, where you can create your own tracks, worlds, cars, and even edit lua files.
It's been fun because I've been able to do some small lua mods based on what I've learned here(!)

Check out the free demo if the above video is at all compelling. So far it's the best video I've seen on the game.
http://www.beamng.com

On a side note, I've never played a game that is as fun to watch as it is to play

[JamminR]

Nice, reminds me very much of the physics simulator called RoR - Rigs of Rods.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGaDlkfao9k

www.rigsofrods.com

Drive looks to be much more polished on simulation and graphics though.

[krooks]

I've never seen RoR prior to getting Drive (see my above statement  ) but on the drive forums, everyone is comparing it to RoR, and even porting things over.

The consensus is the same as yours, a bit more polished and a bit more realistic handling, which apparently they are really striving at to eventually create a complete car 'simulation' game

[JamminR]

Do they have planes yet?
That's pretty much all I do in RoR, fly around.
Free flight sim, and can buzz, sometimes annoy but not too often, the other drivers on the ground.

RoR was originally, if I remember correctly, a closed code project.
Released as open source in 2009.
I've not seen an update to it in over 2 years.
Wonder if the few that were maintaining it decided to go closed again.
I will also have to Google stalk the info whether Rigs of Rod's Beam engine is a precuror to BeamNG.

[krooks]

They have no official "roadmap" that I could find, but they do have plans to make it more game-like at some point.

There are hints of some sort of multi-player, and it already has two (very simple) AI modes.
One that has AI chase you (destruction derby!), and another that has them flee from you, and then I created a third as a lua addon, that just has a car drive in a straight line (good for setting up crashes or jumps for videos etc) 

Someone has created a spline path addon already as well.

I've heard they'd like to make it into some sort of game that allows you to modify the car (realistically) in game, and then race it. They likened it to some other game, but I forget which, and didn't know what it was at the time

Yeah, you'll have to do some digging, I'm not good at this game history stuff as you can see