Programmable vehicle control behaviour

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3 comments, last by Erika87 8 years, 5 months ago

Are there any (space/flying/driving) games where the player can customize the mapping between player controls and the input to the vehicle actuators/engines programmatically?

I.e. games where the control system in the diagram below is replaceable by custom code.




                 ----------------                      --------------- 
Player input -> | Control system | --Vehicle input--> | Vehicle model | -+-> Vehicle motion 
                 ----------------                      ---------------   | 
                        ^                                                | 
                        |                                                | 
                        +------------Feedback (optionally)---------------+

I've been thinking about this on and off for some years, but never found it implemented. However, I recently found out that Star Citizen plans to implement this to some extent.

I'm curious to see what would happen if a game only imposed physical models of vehicles and let players choose how to setup the control systems.

For example, in spaceflight games the default could be a mode where say the roll is automatically stabilized, players could then modify this code to instead take full control over the thrusters, or just tune the aggressiveness of the stabilization down a notch.

I imagine some hardcore players would really like this, and it would be cool if players started sharing/trading settings to tune their ships. Maybe even making it possible to trade control systems as in-game items. (This seems to be what SC envisions.)

A more extreme version would be if sufficient signals where exposed via an external interface, so you could write complete autopilots in your language of choice. I would love to teach automatic control using such a game. smile.png

I hope this is on topic, seemed the best fit.

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I'm getting into (physical) drone racing at the moment, and this is a big part of that sport. There's a few different competing firmwares, custom branches/forks of the code, custom configurations to the control loop hand tuned for each aircraft...
A game based on the sport really would have to include that aspect of it :)

I remember Incoming offering a wide range of different Terran and alien aircraft with genuinely different control schemes, all good and simple. I don't remember options to configure control automation, but it might give you ideas about what's possible.

Omae Wa Mou Shindeiru

"From the depths" does this, and does it very well. If you make a good enough craft (balanced center of mass, thrusters firing properly) you can make fighter jets, even.

Personally, my boats always flip over when I accelerate, and all my planes need emergency balloons and repair drones for when they crash.

Thanks for the replies, From the Depths is the kind of thing I was looking for!

It seems a bit more focused on autonomous (sub)systems than on enhancing player input, but still right up my alley, everything seems programmable. People are sharing control scripts in the forum, discussing parameter tuning. Thanks again conquestor3. smile.png

Hodgman, I can imagine it's a big part; drones are quite a hot topic in automatic control. As you say, would be cool to see a game based on that. I mean since people already use VR-headsets for drone-flying it would be a perfect fit.

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