Experimental Tracked FPU Wydra 1.1

Nah this was a one time experiment, not planning any more track stuff, unless I update the Maluch Remaster mod at some point and add tracked military prototypes based on that car which existed irl

Why not, I can do it here now.
I started by creating the new axle layout in Blender, and during the process I modified the Wydra wheels so they resemble tank roadwheels and sprockets more. I modelled a piece of a track from scratch in a way that it can be assembled like puzzle, reused the tire textures for it. Then I modelled a rough shape of the tracks outline around the axle layout from a modified cube, and used that as reference to get a more accurate shape using a curve. Then using the array and curve modifiers I created a Jbeam layout for the tracks, using flat planes the size of the track piece I made. I joined the resulting meshes together and merged the vertices by distance, then triangulated the result. I duplicated it, flipped on the X axis, deleted faces and merged with the old one in order to have crossing beams in both directions. I used the Blender to Jbeam exporter twice for this structure, once per each track, with naming changes. I did some necessary node and beam settings for the tracks to work correctly. To prevent flopping I added precompression on spawn. Both track layouts are originally in the middle of the vehicle but in Jbeam they are moved to the correct places, the position is also affected by the track offset variable. After I got it in game I initially just used normal wheels for all the roadwheels, sprockets and idlers, but it didn't provide anywhere near enough grip between the sprockets and tracks or stability. So I went back to Blender and modelled custom paddle-like structures for the sprockets in a way that they push the nodes of the tracks without clipping, then I used the coordinates of the resulting mesh vertices as a reference to create Jbeam structures for the sprockets. I used the normal wheels as reference when setting up the structure, and used rotators to make it act like wheels. I also added an outer layer of collision as a cap to prevent the tracks from sliding out, and some angled collision triangles to help the tracks position themselves properly. Due to these changes I had to reduce the friction of the tracks and compensate by giving them more ground grip. Then I spent a long time adjusting the node and beam values of the tracks for stability. I ended up reusing the sprocket structure for the idler to prevent the tracks from folding in on themselves, I also had to reduce the size of the wheels among other things. Meanwhile I also used the track pieces I modelled as props to make the tracks visible in game, I used a workflow technique I learned from another person who made tracks in the past to speed up the process. Finally to prevent the tracks from constantly sliding out when turning, I added collision caps to simulate the wheels holding the tracks in place at the bottom, I had to significantly reduce the weight of the wheels because of the added weight of the caps. During all of this I also battled against game bugs that got fixed in the following hotfix, and had to do a lot of finetuning of the track values to get decent acceleration and top speed out of the vehicle. There's a lot more stuff I forgot most likely. Idk what more to say, this is already long.

I don't think I will be working on this mod anymore

The entire point was to do it without rails lol

Do you think I haven't tried increasing the length, it makes the tracks more floppy so they fall off even more, and the current length is well fit for the sprockets, the reason it appears to not fit is just due to some physics engine limitations I think

Actually increasing tension makes things MUCH worse. With the current value the tracks rip off and get stuck much less. I think it's another limitation of the game engine that is causing this.