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A brief lesson in handling

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Mad_Maxine
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A brief lesson in handling

Post by Mad_Maxine »

So hi, As you might know im not an expert on carmageddon physics, so Im just going to try and teach some Basic things for setting up diffrent kinds of car handling, I hate 5 ton hatchbacks that waste everything, muscle cars that stick to the road like glue, and large sedans with solid supercar suspension

And I Know theres handling tutorials out there that go into detail. but think of this as a beginners guid to looking at car txt files,

So heres what I do..
Please note, ALL Handling I have set up in this topic is designed to work in 2.0 X Gravity, since for me that feels the most realistic.. All cars are tested on the Figure of hate splatpack track, seems the best for testing cars,

so here we go. As you may know there are many diffrent types of cars, and whatever your making will handle in its own unique way, I often base cars on things ive driven, but over exadurate some points to fit other cars.. For example.. ive driven sports cars But not supercars.. so I take the charictoristics I learnt from sports cars and exadurated them, making things feel a littl tighter and all. driven plenty of junkers tho.. so I know how they feel mostly..

So lets quickly go over what you need for a drivable car.. I wont be going into groves, funks, fire points, camra positions, or any of that stuff here,

Hardness:
Youll find this line in your newly created car (if you compiled it with cared)

0.5 // softness 0.7 is soft(sportscar), 0.2 is tough(truck), 0.0 is a rock(solig granite car)

prety much explains its self.. alltho The Mass is allso an important factor in this... The mass looks like this..

// Mass: The more mass you have the more damage you can inflict.
// 1.5 - 2 is average, but 60-80 tons will let you smash through just
// about anything.
4

As you see the cared txt file gives a small explination.. but for some reson allways sets cars to 4 tons, now A car with a softness of 0.5 and mass of 4 will pretty much be wasted on its first hard impact. a little guid of my own personal way of doing things.. by looking in orignal car files..

Normal car:
Mass - 1.8
Softness - 0.6

Sports car:
Mass - 1.2
Softness - 1.0

Suv/Van:
Mass - 2.5
Softness - 0.5

Truck Cab:
Mass - 6.5
Softness - 0.25

Just some little examples.

Engine Stuff:
This is where you will find the cars power, steering and such
and itll look like this at first

START OF MECHANICS STUFF version 1

// Minimum turning circle. How sharp of a turn you can make at low speed.
// 0.5 is average and 0.3 is super tight
0.420000
1.000000 // Brake multiplier.
1.000000 // Braking strength multiplier.
6 // Number of gears.
200.0000 // Speed at red line in highest gear.
// Acceleration: This value determines how fast your car will be. The average is about 5.0,
// setting it up to 7.0 or 8.0 is about the limit of being able to handle it.
5.500000 // Acceleration in highest gear (m/s^2) i.e. engine strength.

so what do we do here? this car would actully be pretty fast.
Well all of this pretty much explains its self, You will have to try diffrent things untill your car feels the right speed. Or look at orignal cars from the game, Or other peoples mods if they drive well.

Wheel editing:
This will start with..

// Wheels entry #1

Under that you will see the 4 wheels. wich will each look like..
This is the last wheel.

// Wheels entry #4
1 // Type
Right rear // Identifier
RRWHEEL.ACT // Actor
0.16,0.06,0.24 // Position
0 // Steerable flags
0 // Driven flags
0.013000 // Suspension give
1.300000 // Damping factor
1.000000 // Fractional reduction in friction when slipping
85.700000,85.700000 // Friction angles
2.000000 // Traction fractional multiplier
0.050000 // Rolling resistance

Position - Position of center of wheel, Best to set it as accurate as possible to your model.

Suspension give - The higher the number here the softer the suspension. usually 0.016000 - 0.004000 are the limits without it getting too soft or hard, if that gives you an idea Something I did spot that seems important is the suspension seems backwords. you make the front suspension stiff in the txt, it affects the rear of the car. and vise versa. Something to rember, I dident figure it out for quite a while.

Damping factor - the higher the number the less bouncy, if you set it to 0.000000 the car will litrally Not stop moving around,

Fractional reduction in friction when slipping - Determins how much friction is lost, the lower the number the less grip once your wheels brake loose.

Friction angles - The more complicated bit, The higher the number the more your car will have to slide out to loose grip.. Thers really no other way to learn than trying it for yourself and seeing how it affects the car. Setting higher angles on the front than the rear will make the car oversteer, setting higher to the rear will make the car understeer.

Traction fractional multiplier - Determins the amount of grip that wheel has, same as before Front grip, oversteer, rear grip, understeer. Go experiment,

So thats all there is for now. A quick look at car txt files and things I have learnt over the years, Hear are some example cars for you to look into those txt files for.

Blue:
Drift Car, capable of sliding into bends and keeping control. you can look in here and see how to make a car brake loose at the rear and still be driveable.

Red:
Old Car, Old american feeling heavyweight, will wallow into bends and be hard to controll at speeds.

Yellow:
Sports Car, Rear engine proformance car that can take bends at the highest of speeds, But push it too far and it will snap out of its grip Just like that,

Black:
Muscle Car, Powerfull muscle car capable of acclerating in a stright line, But not much good at cornering, This is a good example to look at if you want to see the reverse suspension I was talking about,

Image

Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?l2vmzxxf5rj627l

Now go and create something awsome!.. christ look at those cars its like a game from 1996

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coffeycup
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Re: A brief lesson in handling

Post by coffeycup »

Hey this is great. I used to only mess with the physics a little bit, mostly because I would usually make it worse. :tongue:

This is a good reference!
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