fix the camera, and... which textures i need? Also the mech body, on my pc, all of this works weirdly
Sorry, the 0.31 update broke the configs for this next update so it is taking some time to get it out. The textures you need are all in the mod. The mech body is a leftover from an earlier version and is not present in the most recently uploaded version. If you want to see a mech in-game, I have a work-in-progress mod here
Sorry for the huge delay and the less-than-perfect update! I wanted to fix the camera issue and overlooked a few major issues. These issues will be fixed in the next update. I haven't really been that motivated to work on this mod lately, so progress is glacial at the moment. I still consider it to be my crowning achievement, so it will never be forgotten. In other news, I started working on the hard race tires to get them in line with the soft tires and they are functioning as well as I wanted them to. If you choose them, you need careful throttle control to keep from spinning out. I am also considering an even lower tier of tire to simulate low-powered rental karts.
Thanks to my sons, I discovered that the wheels like to explode when you slide over bumps just right. This is most prominent on the race kart wheels but still occurs with the others. I have been spending the past few days troubleshooting and correcting the issue and am getting close to solving it. At this point, I am focusing on the welded front race setups as those are the ones I use the most and seem to have the biggest explosion chance. This also means that I am going to have to rework the tires yet again. I really wanted to wait for the devs to update the tire simulation before I tackled them, but the issue is bad enough that I felt I should fix it now. What this update will do is double the weight of the wheels, which had a much larger effect on the bounciness of the tires than I thought it would and the extra 3 lbs per wheel is not super noticeable. I had to increase the weight of the rims because the beam spring needed to keep them from falling off or bending under normal driving was causing the explosions. The tires get to be a lot softer since the wheels can be much stiffer without losing stability, which allows them to absorb bumps a lot better to the point that the front torsion bars that stiffen the front end have just as much effect on the bounciness as the tires do. The last thing I am tweaking for the next update is the frame strength. The frame stiffness was another major factor in how unstable it was during a crash. I severely over-stiffened it to allow the tractor config to do what it did IRL, but the amount of spring and deform was excessive. The kart can now deform when crashing and I have yet to see instability or explosions when testing it myself, but my sons will probably find something to break lol. I do not yet have a timeframe for this to be completed since I am still experimenting with just one of the three frame setups, but I am working on it daily again so I hope it won't be too much longer.
Sorry for the huge delay, I kind of got tired (hah) of working in the tires and spent some time away from the game for a bit. I finally have some jbeam values for the wheels and tires that not only make them more stable, but also a whole lot more predictable. Now with every non-aero config, it will lose grip at 1.8 g's regardless of speed and the wheels no longer explode when you slam into a wall at high speeds. This means that slides are extremely predictable and can actually be held with proper steering/throttle control. You'll also notice that the front wheels no longer turn into tacos when turning at high speeds. I also discovered that the 350cc engine was 50% more powerful than the engine I based it on, which made it just slightly slower than the 500cc engine. This will be corrected in the next update as well. I still need to fix a bunch of minor things I have overlooked until now and need to clean up the jbeams a bit before I will consider this update done. I still do not have a timeframe for release, but I figured I'd let you all know that I am still working on it, it's just taking longer than I expected.
Sorry for another huge delay. I had a major move and I now have less time to work on this mod than I did with my previous living arrangement. I am still making progress, but very slowly. The new Visual Studio Code jbeam editor has made it much much faster to work on the jbeams and has helped me quickly identify and correct poorly shaped torsion beams as well as some beams that were attached wrong altogether. Since the last post, I started to tackle fixing the Tractor parts. The textures are fixed, the steering column shows up, the front suspension no longer gets stuck or explodes, and the dummy no longer throws itself off when you turn. I also made some decent progress with the Independent Rear suspension. It can still explode at this point, but it no longer happens just because you hit a curb at 5 mph. The standard and alternate front suspensions are also getting tweaked as they can explode with just the right hit. I fixed the lower arm disintegrating with the smallest hit to the side as well as fixed the suspension arm stiffness torsion beams, which allowed the arms to move more freely while also increasing stability. I plan on waiting until at least the next BeamNG update is released before I upload an update to the Backyard Kart since the update should be coming soon and I want to be sure nothing breaks after I make a release. I can't guarantee the next update from me will coincide with the next BeamNG update, but I will do my best. ToDo List Before Update: Frames Inspect each frame for misplaced or badly placed beams and torsion beams Front Suspension Finish changes to the welded front suspension Finish changes to the standard/alt suspensions Rear Suspension Finish changes to Independent Rear Improve swing arm rear suspension Misc Clean up mod files Clean up Jbeam files
I might do that myself, but if anyone wants to use any part of this mod for their own projects, I am all for it.
I finally managed to fix the jerking with the cvt transmissions! I used some variables to smooth out extremely high gear ratios, like 10:1 and higher, on the rear differential and the cvt absolutely hated that. Now you can be in gear and hold the parking brake without moving so you can start a race with the revs up.
Long time, little progress. While helping out another with their kart, I discovered a way to make the steering be accurate to the real kart. What this means is that the tierods are connected to a center point that pivots around the axis of the steering column using a torsionHydro rather than the traditional slide rails and nodes. What this means is even more weight saving due to no longer needing 4 additional nodes as well as improving stability to the front end due to not needing to keep the heavy system in place. This also has the side effect of dramatically improving the handling. The front wheels can now have different toe angles like a real kart with this type of geometry. This significantly increases the jacking effect of the inner front wheel, which causes the inner rear tire to slip much more easily and causes a ton of oversteer with the 10 and 15 degree caster settings. old and new steering The old steering was prone to inversion if the angle was any greater than the above. The new setup can almost go 90 degrees. I am still tweaking the values of the torsion hydro and the tierods to keep the hubs from wiggling a ton, but it's already a huge improvement to the steering response
So with version 0.33 in place, I feel I can start working in earnest now that I know that the update won't break the kart. I decided that I would keep both steering types as the heavier, more traditional steering is much more stable for heavier configurations. The configs with the motorbike engines will all have what I am calling "Kart Steering" in game, and the rest with car engines will have the traditional steering, but of course, the kart steering will still be available. In other news, I am still finding instances of instability with the independent rear suspension and am working on tackling those. I have received reports that the camera is acting strangely with the dummy. I cannot recreate what I saw, but I will be working to remove any potential duplication with other dummy mods in the hopes it helps. Aside from that, I just need to go through each file to clean them up and redo a bunch of the thumbnails as they have outdated setups.
It is from this mod for assetto corsa. It's not quite what I am looking for, so expect it and all other engine sounds in this mod to change once 3d engine simulator is released!
Sorry for no updates. I have had very little free time to work on this mod lately... However, I have been able to make significant progress in regard to the handling. One of the earliest points of feedback I received with the race karts is that the driver should lean out instead of in with racing karts. I could not do this at the time due to the way the steering was set up and the amount of grip the tires needed to have in order get the G's up where they should be for a race kart, which would result in a flip if the dummy didn't lean in. Since then I have changed the steering geometry and improved the race tires to the point that the kart will slide unless the axle hop digs the tires into the gorund. Now, the kart experiences significant axle hop when the dummy leans in and has massive oversteer when it leans out. The dummy is no longer just there to prevent bounciness and to absorb sudden forces from bumps and the axle hop! Due to this, the no driver seat performs about as well as the static dummy does and you can get away with minimal stability loss if you choose to remove the dummy from the driver seat. There's still a ton of work I have to do before I will post another update, but I am still working on it!
The kart does have a really small steering angle. This is not an issue on the hardware I use, which is why it hasn't been fixed yet. What I can do in the next update is add a slider to increase the steering degrees so you can adjust it!
Yayy!!! I can now finally race without spinning out because I forget the steering angle is very small... Another suggestion I have, is an proper steering wheel.. (It probably might not fit the "backyard kart" theme, but it would be pretty cool if you're up to that..)
Unfortunately, I don't have much more I'm willing to share openly on the Internet. The vast majority of the images with the kart have someone driving it and we weren't super fond of headgear back then However, I'm willing to answer most questions you have about it
The simple change from a steering rack to a simple torsion hydro has improved the handling in such a way that making more minute changes to the alignment can have noticeable effects on handling. From changing the toe and caster, even to changing how much the dummy leans affects the handling characteristics! This helped me correct long standing issues with the steering of the kart. Previously, for some reason, I had this belief that the front wheels should point in the same direction at all times and went to astounding lengths to ensure this happened because I believed that the issues with the handling were due to the wheels being a bit unstable under cornering. That belief was about as wrong as you could be! All hail ackerman steering! Basically, the biggest issue with handling and stability came from scrub. The front wheels are incredibly light and small to the point that any lateral forces on them are amplified due to how little leeway there is in jbeam for wheels that small. I do not believe I have the steering knuckle at the exact correct position, but now the front wheels deform very little during corners, where they would try to turn into tacos before. This results in a much smoother and way more predictable turn, even during axle hop. It's smooth enough that a slide is very easy to ride through a corner when the dummy leans out and you can shift during turns without worrying about unsettling the kart as much. I copied the new steering model to the non-welded front suspensions and the handling has been noticeably improved. From fighting understeer, to feeling more balanced, especially on the IRS race configurations, although snap oversteer haunts them. The only exception would be the tires I did not copy values from vanilla tires for (primarily the bubble tires) since their friction values were tuned to the kart. The torsion hydros like to explode with the right amount of force, so a portion of my work is going to be put toward finding the sweet spot for the spring values to hold the steering angle while not causing instability. I also added a leaf driver modelled after one of my friends' twitch avatar. I am excited to drive the kart again now that some more of the issues with it have been corrected, so I expect progress to continue at a more steady pace now. I have a small video showing the differences in handling and the smoothness (as smooth as I could capture) of cornering: And here is the leaf body:
