I know this thread is a bit of an echo chamber, but I'm going to write this anyway. So like past projects from me, this mod has become an absolute crunch but I actually make tons of progress on the daily, about 1-2 complete suspension kits a day after lots of bug squashing (seriously there were lots of missing variables or just random mistakes and such) I also had to do lots of tweaking and fix bad math that didn't work the way I wanted it to. This is probably the most enjoyable project I've ever worked on, the next update will overhaul the entire mod completely in case anyone couldn't tell by now. This should make the game more enjoyable for anyone who comes to this game to push cars to their limits and really drive them hard on the vanilla maps, bringing most vanilla content to new heights. Finally I have a project where progress is huge which brings me more joy every time I sit down and playtest. It offers so much content it's insane. Rather then build a single car that lead me down an endless tunnel of problems, limits, modeling and ect. I can make a mod that improves the majority of vehicles in the game in a totally unique way. it's astounding. For once I have a project where I feel I've made promises and I'm going to be able to deliver on those promises. It might be soon or in a couple of weeks, but it'll get there. I keep getting so hyped to further the amount of content that I feel releasing it in a half-assed state just isn't worth it. I wanna release this in a more complete state, with as much content as I can make before hitting a wall where more development is required. Such as previously mentioned leaf spring suspension which I am leaving out for now. So no Burnside, Leaf Spring related D-Series Platforms, Miramar or Hopper for the time being. The hopper is wack. I also cannot promise I'll be able to sort out the Bolide due to an issue I already know I can't really fix. The Bolide rear suspension needs to be stiff in order for the car to gain performance, otherwise under braking the rear flies up and you lose braking performance due to lack of anti-lock brakes. If you make it stiffer then it suffers in compliance (bump/rough road performance). No amount of fancy springs can provide the properties to make the spring stiff upon extension and compression beyond a certain point and actually be realistic. Rebound damping also isn't magic and can only be so stiff before it's just garbage. So unless it's very stiff you simply cannot make it good. The bolide will remain on the back burner as a project for another time which will probably be intended to make it a better racecar, rather then trying to make it much better on the road since I'd have to break the laws of physics far too much for my tastes to make that car's potential come through.
ha ha ha, it would appear I've made an error and the IRS (Independent Rear Suspension) on the Legran uses a mono-leaf spring. As a result I've had to deal with a Leaf Spring sooner then planned and I've come up with a way to make it adjustable that makes sense within consistency of my mod. This will now test to see how much can be accomplished with my bumpstops alone or if I'll need to go further with bumpstops sooner then I thought. If that happens I'll just put bumpstop development on the back burner and continue working on everything else like I was previously, as to not delay release of my mod update with stuff that can happen in later iterations of the mod, especially because more custom bumpstops will have to be made on a car, per suspension basis. I will also continue to leave further leaf spring suspension on the back burner behind two higher priority pieces of content. Being the K-Series, 800 Series, Moonhawk, Barstow, Bluebuck and possibly the Wendover, but that last one might happen after the previously mentioned ones and might come an update late, because I don't feel like making configs for it just yet, the Muscle cars will be a lot for me to work on already. Ultimately I'll need to figure out a way to make bumpstops have an adjustment window without leaving the end user feeling like their dancing a line with some black magic. Things are already going to require a light user manual to explain how things work and what they do. It's leaps and bounds more user friendly then it was originally. With my Pro-Grade suspension I aim to make the most varied suspension platform possible on a singular suspension part, with subparts and tuning adjustments to have the most powerful adjustments at your fingertips, rather then locked away in a Jbeam file. Not to mention I've taken the Jbeam file and made tuning options which align with my way of interpreting the settings and how to get benefits out of them. --- Basically my planned roadmap looks as follows, yes I'm doing muscle cars this update now. K-Series 800-Series Moonhawk Barstow Bluebuck Write a user manual? - Release Official "Projekt Drive Beta" Update - Covet Wendover Piccolina Bolide (maybe here, maybe when I get to bumpstops) - Release Update - Hopper Try to develop bumpstops for it, if successful I release an update which contains content made with them. - Possibly an Update - Work on Burnside Miramar Attempt a similar thing and release an update. - Possibly an Update - Proceed to add custom shocks and leaf springs to all suspension which uses it for the D-Series Platform (trust me it's still worth the effort) - Release an Update - Start developing Bumpstops for cars that could benefit from alternative options and attempt to develop a better interpretation of racing bumpstops. - We'll see what happens when I get to this point -
I just had to break every single variable and then fix them in every config which uses them by hand. I did this so that I could fix an issue before it ballooned so big that I had to fix it after release causes people's configs to break if they used the mod, which then would require their config files to be fixed by hand or scrapped.. considering how hard it is to build and finalize a setup with the mod.. that would be a horrible situation.
So apparently I didn't do my research good enough because I can build rebound stops for the Bolide shocks to attempt to limit the max spring height and the hopper isn't leaf spring, it's just that bad. So I'm gonna work on the hopper and bolide tonight. I got the K-Series suspension setup but I need to try to mess with that steering rack to get it where I want it, currently it just doesn't feel good to me at all and never has. So I'm going to try and change that with a different rack, if I can't do that then I'll move on and come back to it in the future but rn I wanna do something more fun, so hopper and bolide, let's go.
I spent about 6hrs messing around with Bumpstops on the Hopper, unfortunately the Hopper steering kinda sucks and isn't great with FFB on a wheel for some reason. It is a better hopper but I ran into a few walls that I need to sort out to really improve my ideas for bumpstops. I will proceed to continue working towards the 800 Series and Muscle cars over the next few days.
Just did suspension kits and steering racks for the Bluebuck Moonhawk Barstow In an hour and a half.. holy cow.
I took a break after doing those three vehicles and I have to make a change to my variables because I want my spring preload calculated differently so it's less dumb to the end user, but it means I'll have to overhaul two variables completely for all parts and configurations, so it's at least 1-2hrs of very uninspiring work.
Adjusted Variable names and values so none of my measurements are in 0.01 / 0.001 (hundredths / thousandths) of a meter, instead they are measured in mm.
Made an alternative steering rack for the K-Series. The tie rod in the model might not like it very much but it feels 1000x better.
Stauts Update Made modified steering for the 80's Pessima Made new configs for Bluebuck Moonhawk Barstow K-Series Roamer Previously Unmentioned configs have been made for Grand Marshal D-Series Pessima 80's (Refresh of RWD configs) 200BX (Complete replacement with 2 new configurations) I-Series (Complete refresh of configuration lineup) K-Series Things I still need to do... 800-Series Suspension Kit + Steering K-Series Suspension Kit on Front Struts are broken Bastion Suspension + Steering Covet Suspension + Steering?(MR) Make configurations for 800-Series Bastion CovetMR I need to complete the info files for configurations on the Grand Marshal K-Series Bluebuck Moonhawk Barstow Roamer D-Series ---Done--- Add Racing Bumpstops to many suspension kits because I was stubborn and hadn't done it originally. I-Series 200BX Pessima 80's/90's Grand Marshal Sunburst Legran ---Done--- --- Post updated --- -Status Update- Created functional rear bumpstops for I-Series (was needed due to wheel clipping and malfunctional rear Bumpstops, was giving me trouble for at least 3 days) --- Post updated --- -Status Update- Implemented a feature that lets the user swap between duel rate progressive springs and continuously increasing rate progressive springs. The latter needs tweaking as it may not have been working as well as I'd of liked.
-Status Update- So I've re-written the progressive spring logic completely from the ground up again. Once I implement it to every spring in my current content I will rebuild every single config that uses the suspension mod make the ETK 800 Series suspension, make configs, build the configuration Info files then finally release the mod. Then I will do updates for more cars and added parts ect. It's a lot better now that I've made the rather needed rear ETK I-Series Bumpstops --- Post updated --- I am aiming for a Christmas Release
Created 3 new configurations which use the new suspension for the ETK 800-Series, very happy with all of them. --- Post updated --- I still need to try and improve the following setups which I'm unhappy with after changes. I-Series - Basic RWD Clayton's RWD (Based off his car) 3.0 Eurosport RWD Eurosport RWD Custom 80's Pessima - RWD Custom RWD Turbo AWD Sport 200BX - RWD Turbo - I'm hoping to get this done and then build Info_vehicle.json files for the new configurations, configuration names are still kinda lazy, I know I will potentially try to improve that in the future, for now it is what it is and it's simplistic. I'm really happy with my 800-Series configurations AWD V10 [520Hp] AWD V6 TwinTurbo [420Hp] They feel like they have Gran-Touring suspension RWD I6 [350Hp] Somehow slapped this together with some minor tweaks to the front suspension from the AWD variants and it feels very good too. --- Post updated --- -- Unfortunately a lot of the RWD setups are very hard to perfect, I had them feeling awesome before the update to my progressive spring logic and rebuilding them is just the bane of my existence but if I can get them to the standard of quality I'm after before Christmas I'll be very happy. Unfortunately I'm gonna lose time today as I have to be up early tomorrow morning for a dentist appointment. But I'll be cracking away as much as possible as this goes on. I also plan to make preset packages, assuming this idea works with my new suspension, basically you'll have a part slow on the shocks/struts where you'll pick a package preset and it'll modify the default parameters/variable values to ones that allow a quick tune to a better setup with the click of a button. (This should work assuming on the setup you've previously not touched the sliders at all and it's not a configuration that has variables filled in within the configuration file, all my variables are custom names as to resolve conflicts with vanilla or other mod content, if it doesn't load the preset you'd have to click the "reset" button and reset all variables to default) Where these presets would be limited is at the anti-roll bars... I may have to develop my own anti-roll bars for vehicles so they get included into the preset package for the settings, as well as allowing me to sort the settings of the ARBs better in the variable menu, all of this will be in the future when adding polish to the mod after more content is finished, it's a ton of work but it should improve usability for the player dramatically, ideally for anyone not familiar with suspension tuning, I'll see how far I can push this concept to make super easy setups for people a possibility. A full user manual will also be developed at some point after release of the mod, it will take time to write and make the graphic design for so please bare with me, I am doing all this work solo and have been at it for at least a month now, feels as though I've been modding for ages. I mod/playtest this stuff 5-12+hrs a day, mostly around 10hrs I gauge on average, some of my playtesting is done with other people who I can drive my setups against, drive my setups together with others and see how they perform. Overall I am able to get way more performance out of cars on the sports compound. Racecars will be made in the future also.
-Status Update- Finished setups for I-Series Custom Eurosport (350Hp RWD) 80's Pessima RWD Turbo (250Hp) RWD Custom (180Hp) 200BX RWD Turbo (250Hp) --- I also forgot to add that I need to do the Sunburst RWD setup. Also my mod will likely release with broken Pro-Grade suspension on the K-Series front, my K-Series setups don't even use it instead opting for regular TT-Sport Front Struts anyway as most the magic comes from a good rear spring setup. - I'll fix it at some point.
