K17 - Cars: "neutral gear", fuel saving and lag-caused accidents (ideas 65-69/177)

[Krzeszny]

Topic: Ideas about driving cars. Like this topic template mattered at all in this case...


Short explanation (in notes):
1. Cars shouldn't use fuel when you're not accelerating.
2. Preventing the cars from excessively losing momentum - stopping accelerating should be like pressing the clutch or changing to the neutral gear.
3. The car shouldn't instantly stop when the engine is turned off while driving. (not sure if it's fixed by now).
4. If possible, when the server lags, it should apply handbrake to all players.
5. When the server detects client-side lag, it should make the client press the handbrake.

Detailed description (why should it become added/...):
1. This one is really important and probably easy to fix. From my experience even when you stop pressing W or S, the fuel is still being drained (correct me if I'm wrong), which makes it much harder to crawl to a gas station. And don't tell me "don't drive below 1/4 because when I'm in the forest or subs, there's always a problem in driving to the nearest gas station.
2. I think that the cars slow down excessively when you stop accelerating is for safety reasons in case of lag. But it doesn't change a lot in case of client-side or server-side lag.
This is what I know from my experience: when the client lags, the car stops accelerating. When the server lags, cars still accelerate. It's also possible that if the client lags, their car still accelerates (when W or S was being held, of course). Although I'm not really sure about it.
But the system that makes cars slow down excessively when you release W/S wouldn't really help, as they're not slowing down enough to prevent an accident most of the time.
I know that it could be impossible to change.
Here are the advantages:
First of all, it would make driving low on gas easier - accelerating, using the momentum (especially downhill) and so on. Secondly, it would make driving without having to look at the speed limiter much easier - right now when you stop accelerating, you instantly start slowing down and have to press "W" again almost immediately to keep the speed, which is annoying. Lastly, the car slowing down for no reason when you stop accelerating takes some of the immersion out - it makes me (and not only me) think about bad driving physics (momentum) and that when I'm driving a car in real life, it doesn't slow down like that.
3. I haven't tested it so I'm not sure if it's still bugged, but I believe that turning the engine off while driving makes the car stop instantly, which makes no sense.
4. How is it that when the server stops lagging, most drivers find themselves with their faces in front of a wall, next to a wrecked car, while before the lag they were driving? It's obvious that the server still calculates player movement even when it isn't sending data to the client during server lag. In other words, we're still moving in the game even though we don't see it (and I don't see a reason for it work that way unless Source is to blame). So I suggest looking for a fix to it.
5. The client-side lag is probably easier to fix - when the server detects no data from the client (or something like that), it should apply the handbrake to the player's car to prevent client-lag-caused accidents.
It happens to everyone, while DDoSes are rare.

 

[StephenPuffs]

No offense but this is one of your least thought out idea posts and makes the biggest assumptions...

1. http://www.quora.com/How-much-gas-does-a-car-burn-per-hour-while-idling I think that speaks for itself.
   
2. We do not control precisely the manner in which cars operate, you can thank the developers at VALVe for how they decided what should happen when the +forward key is released or in general how the car physics behave. We can not change that, nor can we create any sense of a neutral gear. All we realistically can change is the acceleration, turning ability, ride height, and a few other things to a certain degree and in a very fixed way as Garry's Mod presently has no way which allows one to change those on the fly. This is why some cars are incredibly slow because we have no other control over them other than to set them to be slow to start with.
3. We already require the vehicle to be close to if not at a stop before allowing the engine to be turned off, so I'm not sure what your point is here. It may go from 5MPH to 0MPH when turned off, but I hardly see that as an issue or something to address. Now you'll say oh but you can turn off your engine at any speed, to which I would reply like so—there's a big difference between turning a key and accidentally pressing a button, so for gameplay reasons it will remain how it is.
4. As mentioned before, we only have so much control over cars, and while someone drives one there is very little than can be done. If you want one example of what the vehicles do automatically which we already had to address ourselves here you go. If you go into sandbox and spawn yourself any vehicle, you will first note it spawns with the handbrake off which allows you to toss with your physgun and have it roll around, but if you get into that vehicle and back out, it automatically applies the handbrake. This has nothing to do with any Garry's Mod code, it is strictly native Source. So besides not being able to set the handbrake on any player, determining if the server is lagging or having a heavy load would simply cause a system like this to activate at inopportune times and be much worse than it is now.
5. We don't control when/how client data is sent to the server plus as I just mentioned we have no way to apply the handbrake for the player. Also again, this would create really horrible driving problems if you happened to experience some packet loss which is not uncommon. It would cause you and your car to drive very shakily down the road causing serious problems for drivers behind you.

You tend to think that somehow this isn't Garry's Mod and that we'd have access to the source code of it which sadly is not the case.

 

[Krzeszny]

@StephenPuffs I have just one thing to say.
3. Can you make it possible to turn the engine off while driving to make it easier to drive to a gas station when low on fuel and does it make any sense? I'm only suggesting it because you usually can't drive to a gas station from the subs, let alone the forest, when the fuel indicator starts blinking.