Various issues experienced.

[Gaalidas]

After a bit of difficulty, I think I've found most, if not all, the functional ground based parts in the game's pseudo-campaign mode. I've built simple little buggies, complex cranes and, in my recent session, a semi-aquatic all-terrain truck with folding wheels for aquatic stability.

I've detected quite a few problems with the "stability" of the vehicle. By this, I mean the ability to drive over smooth and rough terrain without disaster striking and flipping said vehicle in unnatural ways.

First off is the fact that, in the beginning, you can only build a little buggy that has almost no ground clearance. This buggy works pretty well with some notable exceptions. Because of the lack of ground clearance, I have experienced the vehicle breaking itself on very slight inclines because the blocks, despite being above the ground, are thought to be hitting the ground which results in immediate deceleration and breakage of said blocks. Angled blocks help a little, but that is short lived because there in a point on each block where the collider still reaches to the full extent of the block and that point will collide with the ground despite visually being in the clear.

On a special case note, I played around with the cosmetic spiked rims. These objects, despite being circular in shape and identical in visual size to the basic wheels, they are not, in fact, that size. They are actually a good bit larger around and will collide with the ground constantly despite there being no visual indication of this. It took me quite some time to discover this. They also do not rotate with the wheel as a "rim" part would suggest.

Suspension and/or vertical rotation parts are a disaster. I have tested this on small, light-weigh vehicles and on large, heavy vehicles. Playing with the advanced options can get you some relief but, in the end, the entire thing will vibrate constantly. My best efforts resulted in only a very slight vibration but it was enough to botch many of the explosive part retrievals in on the map. Even without any of these suspension parts (heck, even on a fixed-wheel setup with no turning enabled at all) there is often with slight vibration that makes you spin off to one side (usually to the left, but but always). I can understand slipping on problematic terrain but, on a flat surface, I should be able to sit motionless inside or outside of the vehicle. This cannot be done. To fully test this I even created a vehicle that consisted of a cockpit, three rectangle blocks for stability, and a light on top. Sitting on the ground with no moving parts whatsoever, I was able to make a 90 degree turn with zero input. This is an indication of floating point errors and/pr physics frames being skipped. The only time I have seen this in a physics based game built in unity is when I tried to launch a rocket, in KSP, using a single core laptop three years ago. It ended very badly a half hour later when my game stopped rendering single slides every three seconds.

One more thing I noticed when playing with hinges and servos. It has to do with the speed setting. A speed setting of 0.5 when using the "toggle" option, results in a near-immediate turn. Using the same speed setting without "toggle" checked will result in slow smooth movement. I have tested this thoroughly and the results are pretty consistent. If you want things to run smoothly, using the "toggle" option (so that you don't have to hold the button down to get the desired result) overrides this speed setting. There are other issues with these parts as well such as, when using the larger hinge with a speed set to 0.0 in a steering array will result in movement. 0.0 as a speed setting would indicate that it won't move, I would think. Negative speed would seem to be movement in the opposite direction? It all seems a bit strange. If I want movement in the opposite direction, I flip the part around or swap the activation keys.

Buoyancy. It's cantankerous to say the least. Others have posted about flight and aquatic diving being very unstable and I have experienced the same. The basic floats are great, especially if you like your vehicle flipping like a madman if you transform into it with anything more than a foot of water over the floats. The buoyancy control blocks have so few steps in their buoyancy levels that a single tap on a non-toggled key-press sends you flying out of control in whichever direction that block would move you. I could not tell if aerodynamics were having any effect under water as my vehicle performed the same either way. I could not achieve stable horizontal movement no matter what I built, within the excessive complexity limits, and ended up solving this problem by not using buoyancy at all. I ended up spamming underwater engines on a wheeled vehicle and simply drove on the seabed. Wheels, however, have buoyancy and so catching any "air" under the surface resulted in an instant flip of any vehicle I submerged with.

In all, it's a fun little game. In the end, however, it becomes unplayable. You cannot build advanced machines in Trailmakers without the pleasure of watching your hard work tremble itself to death over and over and over.

Anyway, those are my experiences in this game. I have seen others post about everything I have said here, so it's not just something wrong with my PC or a case of not playing it right. I never did get hover pads to work, and I have reached the limit on what parts I can pick up in the game's single player mode since I cannot thrust in the air due to nothing being available to do it, but need to do so it order to reach the floating islands. It's a pretty much no-win scenario. Only thruster available is the gimbaled one, which means it only points downward no matter what you do, which is kinda pointless. I'll report back when and if I ever get a chance to mess with that side more.

[alvaroping1]

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

First off is the fact that, in the beginning, you can only build a little buggy that has almost no ground clearance. This buggy works pretty well with some notable exceptions. Because of the lack of ground clearance, I have experienced the vehicle breaking itself on very slight inclines because the blocks, despite being above the ground, are thought to be hitting the ground which results in immediate deceleration and breakage of said blocks. Angled blocks help a little, but that is short lived because there in a point on each block where the collider still reaches to the full extent of the block and that point will collide with the ground despite visually being in the clear.

You can modify the little starting buggy to give it more ground clearance by rising the body (although that's also going to raise the center of mass and make it a bit more unstable on turns, but since it doesn't have too much power to get to a high speed that shouldn't be a problem), but i have never seen it happen so it would be better if you posted the blueprint and locations where it happend

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

They also do not rotate with the wheel as a "rim" part would suggest.

I think that's intentional since wheels don't rotate any blocks attached to them, so the only way to achieve that is by adding an animation to the block of it rotating (which one of the rims does), but that only works correctly if the wheel is spinning at a specific speed

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

Suspension and/or vertical rotation parts are a disaster. I have tested this on small, light-weigh vehicles and on large, heavy vehicles. Playing with the advanced options can get you some relief but, in the end, the entire thing will vibrate constantly. My best efforts resulted in only a very slight vibration but it was enough to botch many of the explosive part retrievals in on the map.

Did you happen to have more mechanical attached to it? it's known that having multiple mechanical blocks attached to each other causes wobble since they aren't perfectly rigid. Blueprints are better than text in this cases (since the devs can load it with a debugger attached to see what's causing it)

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

Even without any of these suspension parts (heck, even on a fixed-wheel setup with no turning enabled at all) there is often with slight vibration that makes you spin off to one side (usually to the left, but but always). I can understand slipping on problematic terrain but, on a flat surface, I should be able to sit motionless inside or outside of the vehicle. This cannot be done. To fully test this I even created a vehicle that consisted of a cockpit, three rectangle blocks for stability, and a light on top. Sitting on the ground with no moving parts whatsoever, I was able to make a 90 degree turn with zero input. This is an indication of floating point errors and/pr physics frames being skipped. The only time I have seen this in a physics based game built in unity is when I tried to launch a rocket, in KSP, using a single core laptop three years ago. It ended very badly a half hour later when my game stopped rendering single slides every three seconds.

That's a known bug, the game is divided in 2 processes, a server and a client (both in your pc if you are playing singleplayer), the problem is caused by the slight desynchronization between the two of them, however the rotation should be very slow which in most cases it shouldn't make a difference

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

Negative speed would seem to be movement in the opposite direction? It all seems a bit strange. If I want movement in the opposite direction, I flip the part around or swap the activation keys.

That's intentional, when controlling them with keybind you can just flip it/change the keybinds, but there are sometimes when controlling them with logic (specially with servos and when controlling multiple of them at once) where changing the speed to a negative number is the easiest and most compact way to do something (the other way would require an extra logic gate with -1 output value)

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

Buoyancy. It's cantankerous to say the least. Others have posted about flight and aquatic diving being very unstable and I have experienced the same. The basic floats are great, especially if you like your vehicle flipping like a madman if you transform into it with anything more than a foot of water over the floats.

That's just how physics work, if the center of bouyancy is not directly above the of the center of mass it will rotate the vehicle untill the center of mass is directly below the center of rotation, the reason why it doesn't happen on the surface is simply because as the vehicle rotates the side which is rising gets out of the water, which reduces its bouyancy and eventually reachs a point of equilibrium (all of this also happens irl)

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

The buoyancy control blocks have so few steps in their buoyancy levels that a single tap on a non-toggled key-press sends you flying out of control in whichever direction that block would move you.

Again, blueprints are better than text, the default submarine for stranded in space for example doesn't have this problem (i tested it). You can also reduce the speed of bouyancy control devices using the timers, just set the active time to 0.02 and inactive time to x, the higher x is the slower it will be, that should fix the problem. I also just tested it and the few amount of steps you have noticed is probably due to you sending it long pulses (if you are using keybinds to controll it it's hard to press the keybind for a really short amount of time), in my test i have sent 1 frame long pulses (aproximatelly 0.02s) to it which is the shortest length a pulse can have and it has up to 60 different steps in bouyancy

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

I could not tell if aerodynamics were having any effect under water as my vehicle performed the same either way.

They do work while underwater, although they work a bit differently than on the air, basically they work the same but the backwards aerodynamics also affect forwards speed (which doesn't happen on the air)

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

Wheels, however, have buoyancy and so catching any "air" under the surface resulted in an instant flip of any vehicle I submerged with.

I think that's intentional and it was in fact the way to make boats before bouyancy blocks were a thing, i have seen people make underwater cars without that problem though

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

I never did get hover pads to work

What do you mean? Hoverpads only hover slightly above the ground/lava and on water if moving faster than a specific speed, so if you were trying to hover in the air that's probably why it didn't work

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

I have reached the limit on what parts I can pick up in the game's single player mode since I cannot thrust in the air due to nothing being available to do it, but need to do so it order to reach the floating islands. It's a pretty much no-win scenario. Only thruster available is the gimbaled one, which means it only points downward no matter what you do, which is kinda pointless. I'll report back when and if I ever get a chance to mess with that side more.

All thrusters and blocks that allow air travel should be available on stranded in space, this are the locations if you can't find them: propeller is in an underwater cave at the south of the volcano island, mini thruster is on top of some rocks in one of the pine islands (there is a path to reach it with a car), raw thruster is on top of a pilar at the east in the volcano island (can be reached by jumping from a close platform which has a ckeckpoint), dragon thruster is inside the volcano. Mechanical blocks also should be available and you can make propellers with them

[Gaalidas]

Some clarification. I do know I can modify the starting vehicle. It's just not that easy unless you have objects to attach the wheels to that won't have weird collider meshes themselves. These were just observations based on my experience that might be looked more closely at. I'm not bringing anything new to the table either, just reporting what I have discovered in my own experimentation.

As for hoverpads... actually, on ground, they hover no matter what speed you're going. You can turn very slightly with them but cannot move forward or backward without some sort of thruster that I have been unable to locate anywhere. Actually, i did find a thruster, but it points downward no matter what you try to do with it which is useless to me.

Yes, wheels have buoyancy which isn't the real problem. The problem is keeping them upright without floating without using so much extra weight that they can only crawl extremely slowly.

if backwards aerodynamics affects the vehicle under the water, having a note about that somewhere in the game would be great. Aerodynamic visualization does not indicate this in the slightest.

Also note: the default submarine in this game mode IS what I tested all buoyancy issues with. I modified it after initial testing to see if I could balance it out. I am not alone in reporting this either. There are posts here that complain about the submarine behavior. Trying to keep things level and controlled can be a real pain in the rear because it never settles down in a stable orientation. it's always either rotating upwards or downwards. Upon thrusting forward that gets offset by at least three button presses on the action key to get it somewhat stable. You speak of timers, which are not something I can use because scouring the map for things to gather has not shown anything advanced like like. The most common finds on the map are power cores and structural parts. Even when I thought I found something rare and useful, it was a box spawner. A box spawner is not useful in this game mode.

However, I did not exhaust every possibility on my plate. Again, these are observations from a regular, semi-casual player level.

[alvaroping1]

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

As for hoverpads... actually, on ground, they hover no matter what speed you're going.

yeah that's what i meant, the speed requirement is only for going across water

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

You can turn very slightly with them but cannot move forward or backward without some sort of thruster that I have been unable to locate anywhere. Actually, i did find a thruster, but it points downward no matter what you try to do with it which is useless to me.

all of the thrusters should be on stranded in space, you can check my last comment to see the locations of them if you can't find them

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

You speak of timers, which are not something I can use because scouring the map for things to gather has not shown anything advanced like like.

all blocks which can be activated have built in timers, there is no dedicated timer block. You might not have seen it due to not having toggled on the advanced menu setting when in the config menu of a block though

[Gaalidas]

You assume I am incompetent which is fair, but I don't do simple things. Yes, i know about activation delays and such. I was not aware this could reduce the step amount for each activation of the object, however. I figured it would still increase by the same amount, just on a delay. that is interesting. This gives me something to look into.

[Gaalidas]

Okay, so I managed finally to make an aircraft and here's what I've found. Stable flight is pretty easy to achieve UNTIL you add a steering servo for ground maneuvering. Once I dud that, I was being messed up right and left with phantom sideways forces. A little more testing revealed that I could minimize ground vehicle spinning by removing all forms of steering from the wheels. This explains why all the YouTube videos of this game I've seen feature almost exclusive use of the spinning servo to create a gyro steering system. If I were in development for this game, I'd be looking at the steering as a possible culprit.

Also, it would be super nice if I could set a throttle for the propeller. it's either on when button is pressed, or toggle. No options for running at half so I can actually land on the floating platforms without being killed every single time.

[alvaroping1]

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

Okay, so I managed finally to make an aircraft and here's what I've found. Stable flight is pretty easy to achieve UNTIL you add a steering servo for ground maneuvering. Once I dud that, I was being messed up right and left with phantom sideways forces. A little more testing revealed that I could minimize ground vehicle spinning by removing all forms of steering from the wheels. This explains why all the YouTube videos of this game I've seen feature almost exclusive use of the spinning servo to create a gyro steering system. If I were in development for this game, I'd be looking at the steering as a possible culprit.

Whenever things like that happens, the blueprint is way more useful for the devs to see what's going wrong than text, since there are lots of planes which have ground steering and don't have that problem (the official discord is a good place to post it, you can just post the blueprint file without having to upload it to the workshop)

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

Also, it would be super nice if I could set a throttle for the propeller. it's either on when button is pressed, or toggle. No options for running at half so I can actually land on the floating platforms without being killed every single time.

That can already be made with logic, output value modifies the power in thrusters/propellers, if you go to my workshop i have a testbed of a thruster gearbox that allows up to 10 power levels (although it can be expanded/reduced to any amount)

[Gaalidas]

Well, unfortunately I can't just give you a blueprint here. I'm just reporting what I've experienced.
I'm not requiring anyone to fix my craft. I see tons of posts about people having their planes twisting in the air, or constantly rotating the wrong way. I'm experimenting to find the cause.. that's all.

As for logic... are we not paying attention to the flow of this thread? I'm in the campaign map! If I had alt those things, I wouldn't need to fly. They're all stuck up on floating islands you need to fly to. I have yet to achieve landing on any of them without my vehicle spontaneously exploding. If I could build anything I wanted in this game mode, then your workshop might be the answer to me problems if I didn't want to figure out what the core problem is. This isn't about getting me through the game as quickly as possible, you know.

This is why I posted on a bug reporting forum. I'm simply trying to provide some feedback. I don't need a quick fix put together for me.

Also... Discord? pfft... I tried using that once. The thing is so disorganized I couldn't even find a simple channel that I was given the name of specifically. It really needs to be reworked for usability.

[alvaroping1]

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

Well, unfortunately I can't just give you a blueprint here. I'm just reporting what I've experienced.
I'm not requiring anyone to fix my craft. I see tons of posts about people having their planes twisting in the air, or constantly rotating the wrong way. I'm experimenting to find the cause.. that's all.

The reason why i asked for the blueprint is because for the devs just saying it happens is as usefull as not saying anything since there are literally hunderds of similar creations in which the problem doesn't happen

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

As for logic... are we not paying attention to the flow of this thread? I'm in the campaign map! If I had alt those things, I wouldn't need to fly. They're all stuck up on floating islands you need to fly to. I have yet to achieve landing on any of them without my vehicle spontaneously exploding. If I could build anything I wanted in this game mode, then your workshop might be the answer to me problems if I didn't want to figure out what the core problem is. This isn't about getting me through the game as quickly as possible, you know.

I told you how it can be done because you said it would be nice to have a way to throttle the power of a block, as a general rule if it's already possible it's really unlikely to be added by the devs (quote from one of the devs on the discord from a few months ago: "I know when we’re thinking about new blocks internally we question if it’s something you can already make with existing parts and if so what’s the benefit of making it in that case?"), if you don't have the logic gates then you can't do it, but not having unlocked all blocks is not a good reason to ask for something which can be done with said blocks imho

Gaalidas の投稿を引用：

Also... Discord? pfft... I tried using that once. The thing is so disorganized I couldn't even find a simple channel that I was given the name of specifically. It really needs to be reworked for usability.

It already has 3 categories (general, community creations and feedback) and each category has channels for its respective topic (general has channels such as #general and #off-topic, community creations has #gifs-and-screenshots, #blueprints and #vehicle-discussion, and feedback has #bug-reports and the feature discussion and suggestion channels)