Pedestrians, activities and heavy traffic

[angelsdavid1989]

Maybe this has been discussed elsewhere, but I am just wondering, howcome we don't see more people doing random things - especially in towns and cities, and heavy traffic around cities. Man you just haven't lived until you've driven a rig through dense traffic, 6 lanes and everyone motoring at 80 mph!

[funewchie]

To be honest, if they added pedestrians...how long do you think before someone does the glaringly obvious, either willingly or accidentally?
That'd shoot the game's ESRB rating up super-fast.

As for traffic, I dunno, they seem to simulate it pretty nicely at times. The cars do travel at different speeds, and drivers make odd decisions at times (like driving a sports car 10 miles under the speed limit, or swerving in front a semi for no particular reason)...which is a lot like real-life drivers do.

That said, the lack of rush hour traffic is a bit odd, but then... I'm certainly not complaining.

[Twelvefield]

I imagine frame rates are an issue for adding traffic and pedestrians. I don't want to think about haviung pedestrians tie up AI traffic. It is wierd to drive through, say, Las Vegas and there's three cars on The Strip. On the other hand, I really appreciate being able to drive through the streets. If I wanted a true-to-life Highway Traffic Simulator, I'd go back to commuting to work.

I recall driving out to the Park & Ride to catch a commuter train and thinking that I could walk from home faster to the P&R than it took to go by road. Sure enough: 45 minutes to go by road, 43 minutes to go by foot.

[angelsdavid1989]

Well, in my comment, I didn't mean to have them on the streets. Just, when you pass through a town the sidewalks should have people walking up and down them, going into shops and stores, etc. Maybe driving along and see someone out there mowing their lawn, just at random, maybe (a little humorous...) see some farmer chasing a cow through his yard.

Originally posted by funewchie:

To be honest, if they added pedestrians...how long do you think before someone does the glaringly obvious, either willingly or accidentally?
That'd shoot the game's ESRB rating up super-fast.

Yah, that is a morbid thought for sure, BUT... if someone DID actually go out of their way to go off the road and drive up onto the side walk to commit.. um, mayhem... the game would not have to acknowledge it. You could run over a pedestrian but nothing happens, as you drive on and see him/her in your rear view mirror, nothing has happened to him or her, he just continues to walk along the side walk. It would not take too long for certain drivers to get totally bored with trying to run them over.

[carllyngholm]

Can't help you with the pedestrians, but if you want heavier traffic, there are mods out there that can provide that for you. Personally I sometimes use "Realistic Traffic and Density for ATS" (or its called something similar to that). I say sometimes because the mod is not without its issues. For example, the increased traffic sometimes leads to erratic behavior by the cars or issues when merging onto freeways. But overall it makes driving around not feel as lifeless as the base game tends to offer.

[MaskMcgee]

They don't have pedistrians because they desire to keep their game G rated, and adding them in a way that allowed people to hit them would increase the rating. Secondly, as well as the reason for traffic, it would tank the framerates.

[Olanov]

I'd like to see pedestrians but not in a manner you could run 'em over. It'd make the world a bit more lively, for sure. :)

[Moving Shadow]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1785461140

These pedestrians were having a nice chat in the rain, behind some posts, so no way they could be run down.

[n3mes1s]

Dude, its common sense. Because this is a driving sim. Pedestrians are completely unneccessary. Be happy we have a couple of em in each city walking around. Also, performance. If you start adding pedestrians all over the place, adding new animations, and so on, the performance will start dropping like a cyrcus. ATS already improved performance with each version, adding more pedestrians and animations will make it fallback again to lose performance.

[Olanov]

Few pedestrians aren't considerably gonna hurt the performance unless you're on a total potato, that's just nonsensical. You could however make the argument that scripting and animating them is valuable production time that could be spent elsewhere like working on the map, vehicles etc etc.

[angelsdavid1989]

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

Because this is a driving sim. Pedestrians are completely unneccessary.

Well, for the sake of immersion and realism. Just a video game and who cares, but this goes to the simulator category, and when you have a simulator, especially one that is already very good, you want it to be realistic in every possible way. Looks to me like alot of effort has already gone into ATS to provide a realistic and immersive in world environment. Pedestrians, while maybe not a critical aspect to driving, would certainly add to the realism of the world around you thereby increasing the immersive experience.

I could also comment that I have read several threads of players commenting that they get bored easily, especially after reaching level 20 and getting the best truck, it seems some people are going to get bored with just driving. So this is one of the reasons why it is important to have leveling up continue, goals and rewards to continue to strive for and yes, whatever will contribute to an immersive experience, one of them could be people out and about adding a nice touch of realism and some more immersiveness to your driving world.

[n3mes1s]

Dude, in all my years playing i never EVER read any "complain" about this. Thats because people dont expect to be playing GTA, or whatever, they are playing a truck sim.

Sure, a few more pedestrian will not hurt anybody, but again, it is not necessary and SCS has already working on a lot of different stuff.

And in any case , you talk about sim, but the animations of the pedestrians and their behaviours are completely horrible. Not only that, you cant interact with em in any way. Whats the point? Do you really want to add more nonsense to them?? how is this going to increase immersion? lol.

About traffic, it depends, but sometimes you see a lot of traffic in a city on rush hour, sometimes you dont. Traffic spawning needs a lot of work from scs (specially the spawn rate is awful when you see a bunch of spawned ais, then nothing for 10 seconds, and anothe group, rinse repeat..), but i assume they are working on it in every release.

Thats why we have traffic mods. :)

[LittleBlueDuneBuggy]

I think it would be fine. On lower graphics settings, they would lose detail, until finally they would just disappear all together. As far as running them over, just make them have no collision, so you go right through them, and nothing happens.

It's not a terrible idea. I say they implement it right after they finish Colorado, and fix traffic AI.

[angelsdavid1989]

Originally posted by LittleBlueDuneBuggy:

It's not a terrible idea. I say they implement it right after they finish Colorado, and fix traffic AI.

No, not at all, look at the amount of stuff happening at any moment in GTA!

In ATS I see hot air balloons, parasailers, planes and helicopters flying overhead, I see the cops with vehicles pulled over, trees, a brilliant sky, moving rain clouds and rain and lightning too - some people standing around in small groups, and other various little things happening, and most of it is probably for the sake of immersion and realism, to create a perceived living world around the player. Great job, great effects, now ATS, just add some more pedestrians walking around the sidewalks and in and out of shops and stores and stuff :)

[Dwarf80]

yes and i see all kinds of people helping others....that nice young man helping the shop owner to open his door for him using a crowbar...people are so nice !

[richpd7]

If we did add more pedestrians or more people on the side of the road, there would have to be another traffic violation added to the game where the bell would ring and the short message would say "Pedestrian struck". Just like with all other violations, you may hear the police sirens and the deduction sound effect which is money coming out of your account.