r/trucksim • u/knotfortytwo • 17h ago

Discussion Is there a particular reason why multiplayer mods insist on not adding AI traffic?

What's actually stopping them from doing this? Having a majority of the map devoid of any traffic is probably the #1 reason why I choose to not switch from singleplayer, but I also want to drive with other players as well.

Shouldn't be that hard to have AI traffic in isolated regions while it decreases smoothly in player-dense regions.

8 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

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14

u/JDM12983 ATS 13h ago

As many times as I see PLAYERS crashing into each other - most the times related to sync issues... I would hate to see what it's like with traffic in the mix... lol

9

u/Cant-think-of-a-nam KENWORTH 12h ago

I would say its because of sync issues

1

u/Kazick_Fairwind 9h ago

This. Truckers MP was working on adding synchronized traffic a few years ago. But it got bumped for bus’s, and then nothing after convoy came out.

5

u/SnooChocolates2750 10h ago

Two major things, and one minor third thing. The first two being synchronization and performance. Multiplayer in general is already pretty difficult to design, even worse when you've got players traveling at higher speeds next to poorly behaved NPC vehicles. Getting everything to line up between clients is a lot of work to get right.

The minor thing, mostly opinion, is moderation of players involved with NPC vehicle accidents due to said sync issues. An NPC may be 200m ahead of one player, but 100m ahead from another players' POV. Suddenly, brakes from NPC and player one tries to avoid, but player two overracts to this and collides.

There's also a common issue with NPC traffic in multiplayer games, it takes away from the immersion of playing with real people. Every one else around is a real person when there's no NPC traffic. The gameplay is very different and many players have raised concerns about this. If they wanted to play with NPCs, they wouldn't be with players in the first place. That's why TruckersMP gained so much traction in 2014/5 despite not having NPC traffic.

Luckily though there are other services these days that do have AI traffic(though may not be publicly available yet). TruckersMP has the ability for AI traffic, but keeps it off. And even better, Convoy mode.

5

u/OddBet475 13h ago

A lot of VTCs run dedicated servers and with that you have traffic like normal while driving together.

1

u/BouncingSphinx 7h ago

Do you want client-side traffic that nobody else can see, or do you want server-side traffic that has to be updated for everyone?

Client-side, a player could crash into a car on their game while you see nothing at all. Server-side, it would have to keep up with traffic across the entire map (resource intensive), or at the very least traffic in an area around individual players and make sure that it matches when players' areas overlap (super resource intensive).

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u/OcifferPig 37m ago

Well, every car has to be synced between all players, and once you throw in latency and desync, you get cars teleporting into people or vanishing mid-intersection. They just couldn't deal with it at present.