I can't edit and save engine files at all

I build a new gaming rig a month ago and yesterday decided to reinstall the game and play. I went to do something I regularly did before, which is edit engine files torque and rpm numbers, and this time I ran into issues. At first it was saying I had no permission to save in the location and needed permission from an admin, which I was and am. Figured out I needed to change the ownership of things to my profile instead of this "trusted installer" and it seemed like that would work. Now that I've gotten past that issues, whenever I try to save, instead of it just saving, it opens the save as window and the default save file type is a document so literally nothing will show up. I go to the drop down box and change it to all files and the usual folders and locations show up. I then manually open and go to the location I want to store it, which is directly over top of the default engine file and it says this. (screen shot)

 

You are editing game files, that is very very bad and you should not ever do that!

Instead make a copy of engine file, place it to Documents\beamng.drive\vehicles\yourvehiclename

Then change name of engine part at top of the file and also Name:"" field to something else, like add your nickname to end of those two, then make your edits and in parts selector choose your own named engine.

Read also how to properly edit stuff from wiki:
https://wiki.beamng.com/JBeam_Introduction
https://wiki.beamng.com/Portal

To fix your game installation, delete everything in content folder, then go to steam, right click beamng select properties, then select local files tab and choose verify integrity so Steam downloads missing files as it is very likely you have very broken installation if you have tampered files in game folder.

 

Pretty sure this method you are mentioning is extremely out of date. That would've worked when the games architecture actually meant the vehicle files were under Documents\beamng.drive\vehicles\. But they aren't now and haven't been for a long time. They're in the actual game files now.

 

See, I just made this:


Yes, it is pretty early in the morning, but I can assure you, your method is totally wrong, you must place copy of the file to whatever document folder your BeamNG installation uses, never into program folder!

Cloud things are such big a mess that if you are using such, sadly I can't help as I stay away from those, nothing but a trouble, but wherever your beamng user folder is, there it is that you must put files, no matter what kind of editing you are doing.

When I did last clean reinstall, game put weirdly named folder to C:\ instead of documents, maybe yours has done similar thing, but never ever you will replace or edit files in game installation folder because that will break game installation.

 

Firstly, there isnt a creation of my own that im trying to install or put in, its just an engine file im modifying. Seeing how I want to modify the ETK engine, if I were to copy the etk engine from the game files, where would I paste it? NO base game vehicles are in documents anymore, period, thats a fact. That was changed a long time ago. The vehicles are now under vehicles under C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\BeamNG.drive\content\vehicles. I repeat, not at all under documents. So how exactly would I paste the copied engine file into the ETK folder in documents if the ETK folder in documents doesn't exist? TBH if you have a microphone and discord it would be nice to call you, share my screen, and show you.

 

It does not matter where base game vehicles are.

Fact is that what is in userdocuments overrides what is in base content and furthermore you should make new engine, not to replace stock content.

You can see how I added new engine:


If you observe engine file I attached, you can see how I changed name of the part and name which is shown ingame.

I made that file simply by copying engine part from vanilla game file, pasting to empty text document and saving with name as you can see, also I added bit of torque to engine.

This is the path I placed the file, not sure if Win10 has it bit different, but you should find out where beamng user documents reside:
C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\BeamNG.Drive\vehicles\etkc



Mods are installed to C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\BeamNG.Drive\mods

When you want to change torque curve, you are creating new content, new mod to game and those are placed in Documents\BeamNG.Drive\vehicles or Documents\BeamNG.Drive\levels depending if it is vehicle or map, then after work is done, it is zipped while maintaining folder structure, so that in zip there is vehicles\etkc\new_kseries_engine_fufsgfen.jbeam inside the zip.

Open up any mod .zip file and you can see same folder structure, game is built so that such folder structure is loaded last.

Try with that attached file and you should see how it works.

 

Fufsgfen is correct, any files placed under documents\beamng\mods or documents\beamng\vehicles will overwrite the stock game files, to allow for mods to work properly. You cannot edit the game files in the directory, they are in a locked zip file. Even if you did, your changes would be reverted the next time the game updated.