Re: [Torcs-users] Where damage is distributed

[Bernhard W. <be...@bl...>]

Hi

Damage does currently just increase the drag of the car, that's it, 
front impact hurts 1.5 times as hard as a rear impact. And I think this 
is a strong point, not a weak one, see below.

Walls have a damage property assigned, so the track designer can adjust 
this, I think we are low on this because we found it is no fun to wreck 
it too easily.

Car 2 car is different, because you should not annoy other drivers, so 
this should be expensive.

Changing the damage model is very easy, e.g. you could "break" aero 
parts, such that downforce goes down as well, Christos had 7 years ago 
(or so) implemented wheel axis and suspension damage/wear, but this code 
is not activated by now. Or implement engine overheating because of 
damaged cooler, brake system pressure loss, etcetc, all just a few lines 
of code.

So as long you want a whatever complex damage model without 
visualization it is very easy to do, with visualization it is much 
harder (Christos implemented back then that the car shape was bent) and 
the damaged wheels were whobbling/ripping off, but if you want more you 
need to remodel the cars, such that the can disintegrate into parts and 
have something "under" it if some part is ripped off.

To cleanly integrate it much more is needed (robots must deal with it, 
human driver must be informed somehow (noise, more damage bars, 
whatever), damage must be distributed for network games, additional 
testing/maintenance, etcetc.).

Because the USP (unique selling proposition) of TORCS is simplicity 
(less code -> less bugs (exponential), less testing (exponential), less 
compile time, faster to understand, better performance, compatibility, 
...), the current simple mode is just fine (you hit something and it has 
consequences, why doing more?), especially because damage should be the 
exception, not the normal case, so I think it is not worth the bloat.

For me it does not make sense to try to be a copy of the commercial 
racing games (you cannot be a good enough copy, because you compete with 
really large budgets and Open Source does not work for games IMHO), if 
you bought your gaming pc for $3000 and your steering wheel/pedal for 
$400, then the $100 for a great commercial game do not matter much 
anymore:-)

There are TORCS forks and other projects out there, maybe those have 
implemented/plan to implement other damage models.

Best regards

Bernhard

On 09/03/2012 07:57 AM, Schnuck68 wrote:
>
>
>
> Arnaud Ceyrolle wrote:
>>
>> and  I have noticed that when I have dammage on the car (from
>> collision,...), the top speed of the car is less and less faster.
>> So I was wondering where the damage is located on the car (front spoiler,
>> wheels) or if it was not taken in account but it was more like a global
>> damage and in this case, are there other elements of the car that were
>> altered (like top speed) ?
>>
>>
>
> Hello Arnaud,
>
> I think the damaging is still a weak part of Torcs. To me it seems it's just
> a global
> parameter that is added which just slows down the whole car. (top speed that
> is)
>
> I'm not a developer so I have to guess. But from my observations there's no
> difference where
> the dammage appeared and why.
>
> Also it is not really consistent. Sometimes I go off the track and crash
> into a barrier in a blunt angle, and get away
> with hardly any damage at all. In real life that would have been the end of
> the race (if not the end of the life of the driver).
> On another occasion I just slightly touch another cars wheel and gain a huge
> amount of damage.
>
> But I think a developer should comment on this.
>
> Greetings
>
>