I was trying to mod the Oldsfullsize to put a new engine based on the 1981 Cadillac L62 (V-8-6-4) in it. It worked perfectly up until I tried to mod it. When I tried to load the vehicle post-mod, the thumbnail image of it was blank, and the car wouldn't load (it loaded the D-series default). Looked in the console and it was saying the game couldn't find any of the parts on the vehicle and was reverting to the default truck. Tried making different changes to different vehicles and they just break instantly, no matter how small a change I make!
Do not edit zip files, put copies of files you want to edit into Documents\BeamNG.Drive\vehicles\vehiclename\yourmoddedstuff That way you can put new models and materials.cs file too without overwriting anything from the mod or game content.
Is this something different about the new version? I have previously edited zip files to mod and it's worked fine!
Oh no, zip files from repo were tamperproofed several versions ago, ones from forums or other places are not tamper proofed though.
Editing zip files has always been pretty sketchy, I'm surprised it took you this long to encounter any problems. It's always been a 50-50 chance for me. But yes, you should definitely make your own folder for that stuff, I have a mod folder named myMods that I use for random stuff I want to test without worrying about breaking things.
I think your quote was bit of a miss, but yeah, editing zip files is sketchy at best. It's really nice to make own folder like I did wrote earlier, makes it so much easier to deal with meshes and materials at least.
Actually, I ran into the same issue with 0.16... I always worked on my mods in the BeamNG/mods/unpacked/vehicles folder. I could just edit anything on the fly with no issues, no zipped files, nothing. It was really easy and painless, and in doing so I could link that folder to my Google drive so every time I worked on something, it would update the files directly onto my backup, and if anyone uploaded a modification to my drive, it would then directly update into my game. Just a simple hit of Ctrl + R and it would update. It was super nice and convenient. So what your saying is that this isn't a thing anymore? Or am I just doing it in the wrong place now and that's why I am having issues?
I have never done anything with unpacked, with Documents/Beamng.drive/vehicles/ everything works flawlessly for me, I think you just need to swap to that path and continue as before if now you are getting trouble with unpacked method. One nice thing with Documents/Beamng.drive/vehicles/ path is that I can have zipped mod in mods, then just pull one file to Documents/Beamng.drive/vehicles/modname/ and that overrides what is in zip, very easy for quick tests etc. For additional parts it is then easy to have Documents/Beamng.drive/vehicles/modname/newparts/ so there won't be any conflict trouble etc. Not sure if there is official stance on this path stuff, what is official recommended way, but vehicles and levels work with this path logic just fine, if I want to put new static object on gridmap, that is easy as I just export to Documents/Beamng.drive/levels/gridmap/art/shapes/myfancystaticobject/ BeamNG then makes materials.cs automatically and if I export textures there from Blender with export material textures option enabled I have textured object in game with few clicks without need to edit any files. Packaging then is easy as I already have correct folder structure that I just need to replicate to zip.
Thanks, I will have to try that out. I have really been struggling to get all of my old/unpacked mods (that I haven't finished yet) to work in 16, so perhaps this will fix that issue.
Messing with unpacked mods still works fine for me, although if they are repo mods packing them again can cause things can get odd. I keep all of my personal mods unpacked and I can edit them on the fly just fine. For my released mods I redownload them off the repo, unpack them and don't pack them again until it's ready to ship, and it works fine for me.
My logic is simple, as in zip of the mod path is /vehicles/vehiclename/ and as that is exactly same as Documents/Beamng.drive/vehicles/vehiclename, but just inside the zip, it has to work I guess technically it should be same for unpacked too, it is same /vehicles/vehiclename/ there, just haven't used that. Can be very well that there are other reasons for issues atv_123 is experiencing, but it will be interesting to hear, if issues will disappear, then there might be something odd in path mounting or something.
