[Kneiterhard]

Hey people!

I'm new to the forum and I have a few questions regarding vehicle mods.

Firstly, I have implemented a few vehicles in the game using 'Spark IV' and the vehicle mods offered on the website www.gtainside.com. I also changed the lines in the handling.dat, carcols.dat and vehicle.ide files, but I am not sure what each of these files mean. Could someone give me a rundown on what happens once I change a few lines in carcols.dat and especially in the vehicle.ide files?

Secondly, a few vehicles I have modded into the game drive really badly. You've probably seen it before: cars fall over when taking a corner, cars have atrocious understeer, etc. Most of the vehicles from the modding websites offer a few lines you should change in the handling.dat file, but the problem is that even after changing the handling.dat file accordingly, the modded car still drives ridiculously fast or just unrealistically. Isn't it possible to change the handling.dat in such a way that the modded car drives exactly like the car I replaced it with?

This was it! I really hope you can help me out, especially with the second question.

This post has been edited by Kneiterhard on Sunday, May 13 2012, 18:19

[ZBNYNC]

To answer your first question, the handling.dat lines change the handling on a car to stop it from flipping around corners, like the problem you said you were having. The carcols.dat changes the car colors to whatever colors the author wanted, all of the numbers are a code for a certain color. Car colors, depending on if they have three or four numbers, will normally change the paint, the interior color, and the wheel color.

As far as the handling goes, the cars shouldn't flip after you put the handling line in. Make sure that you're putting them on the proper car. For example, if you make a car replace the Infernus, make sure that you put the modded handling line on the Infernus's handling line. It is possible to tweak handling lines but most people just use the one that the author provided them with.

[pez2k]

All vehicles.ide does is define the list of vehicles in the game, along with important information like the names of the wft and wtd files that it uses, and flags to give it certain properties like 'bangerexhaustfx' - thick black exhaust smoke.

It also matches the car to a set of engine sounds, special features and a name from the GXT files, for example 'INFERNUS' is a sportscar sound, exhaust flames, and displays the name 'Infernus' when you get into the car. You can't add any new sets of these however, any car you add has to reuse an existing one.

[Kneiterhard]

Ah okay! (And what about the vehicle.ide line changes? What do they do? You were quicker than me, thanks for the answer!)

And the author added handling lines are pretty much the problem, as I stated in my second question. Most of the time the author added handeling lines make the vehicle unrealistically fast or they give the vehicle too much grip. But if I use the default handling lines with a modded vehicle, then the handling is absurd too.

Is there any way to make a modded vehicle drive exactly the same as the standard version without ridiculous handling?

This post has been edited by Kneiterhard on Sunday, May 13 2012, 18:27

[Costar]

Hi and Welcome to the board. Yea these guys have said well, to expound, the handling info is in the ">FIELD DESCRIPTIONS<" section at the beginning of the file. You can match those descriptions to the info in ">THE DATA<" portion of the file, the "name, mass ..." all of that is shown for you in the description. That lets you know what each value in the line relates to for the vehicle.

I think the line I and others have had experience tweaking for cars that flip is the COM, center of mass values, which you see from the file are E, F, G fields. In this example;
AIRTUG 1400.0 20.0 85 0.0 0.0 -0.2 0.0 5 0.10 1.0 140.0 0.4 0.50 0.7 35.0 1.15 0.95 11.0 0.10 0.5 4.0 1.5 1.5 0.10 -0.10 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.0 0.8 1.5 0.0 15000 440000 0 0

you see COM(E,F,G) are the 5,6,7 values in the line

Its the Z value (G) I think we've adjusted in the positive or negative range to stop some cars from flipping, you can experiment w/ this as a means to attempt to stop some cars from flipping IF you want to just leave the original handling. I wont say there are ppl that will make custom handlings for all the cars you want to add, so you'll proly have to just experiment. Just remember one of the first things to always do is make a backup of the files you plan to alter first.
There are alot of other things to alter, accel, braking, ABS, top speed, suspension etc...
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In the veh.ide it also tells you what the values relate to. If you want to change the engine sound, (horn sound is changed also), you'd change the "Game Name" value to whatever vehicle name whose engine you want to use.
airtug, airtug, car, AIRTUG, AIRTUG, VEH@VAN, NULL, 100, 999, 0.1104, 0.1104, 0, 2, 1.0 ,1, noboot+ext_conv

The 0.1104, 0.1104 has to do w/ wheel radius, some tires/bare rims look as if they're *in* or maybe above ground, adjusting these should help fix that.
=========
Carocols has all the refs for car colors, I'm sure you've seen "Car3", "Car4", you might need to move car names from one or the other group in order to take advantage of the color schemes say using a trainer, some modelers make their rims the 4th color, some make it alter the interior, so to take advantage of that, if you get a replcmt for the cabby now w/ its rims paintable, you'd remove the original "cabby, 89,89,1, 89,1,1 " from Car3 section;

and use the author's replcmt values in Car4 or create your own, just follow the format correctly.
Car4 ....
cabby, 89,89,1,5, 89,1,1,9
.....

If a car is NOT set up to use extra colors moving it from Car3 to Car4 wont give it new functionality.
Just remember to keep them in correct order alphabetically.

This post has been edited by Costar on Tuesday, May 15 2012, 19:49