WIP Beta released LEGO Car (progress thread)

MOD LINK: https://www.beamng.com/resources/toy-building-block-car.26315/

I have been working on this mod for around 2 years now. This is the Lego Car.

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The car is based on a custom design I have built originally many years ago and I've been improving it sometimes. The version in game is pretty close to the real one, the only changes I've done are the ones I wish I could do irl as well but can't due to lack of fitting parts. They contribute to structural stability and better visual look.

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Video of the car in action:



Keep in mind that the car has adjustable strength and it is set to a really high value here, it's not so durable by default. Although it is true that it can take a lot of beating and lose many parts before it stops, regardless of set strength.

You can see the destruction better at the beginning of this video:




This mod is 99.99% scratch made by me. The 3D models of all the parts I made in Blender, using the real life version and some Lego store websites and blueprints as references. I didn't use any tools like Lego creator apps with export to make it easier, because I wanted to learn better modelling on this project, and seems like it worked out well. The materials are really simple and use mostly flat colors with some vanilla textures and a few normal and color maps for larger pieces, and slightly more advanced setups for the stickers. All the textures that aren't flat colors are either based on vanilla assets, or drawn by me in GIMP, or both. I plan on improving the materials after all of the pieces are finished, by adding some normal maps and ambient occlusion to make the pieces slightly curved on the edges and with better shading.

There is no single 3D model of the whole car, but each piece is separate and can be reused easily, which will make it easy for other people to make mods for this car later. Here's what the setup looks like in Blender:

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It goes without saying that the Jbeam of the car is fully scratch made by me. (With the tiny exception that the wheel hubs are based on the Grand Marshal as I had no idea how to make them properly from scratch back when I made them. I corrected the geometry to fit this car after gaining more experience.)

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Almost every piece is Jbeamed separately and can fall off, the only exceptions are the pieces that are really stuck together irl, they won't separate in game for the sake of simplicity. Each piece is super stiff, as much as the game engine can allow without instabilities, and nothing should deform on a reasonable use. 150 separate pieces can fall off in total. This is much more than on a normal car, so it's slightly more performance intensive (I experience a bit of lag with several of these cars spawned at the same time) but it's nowhere near as bad as some other mods I've used. As of BeamNG update 0.26, somehow the car doesn't lag at all, it's as performance intensive as vanilla cars, no more. The crashes can look really spectacular sometimes.

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I added quite a lot of variety already but it's limited to a single 2-door platform. There is only 1 main body style and a few others based on it with removed parts, in the future updates I want to add more body styles but it will be a lot of work. The models available are loosely based on 70s and 80s car design styles, the former being V8 powered and RWD with a 4-speed transmission, and the latter V6 FWD with 5-speed. Sporty 80s models get AWD, they are not finished yet. There are automatic transmission variants meant for American market and manual ones meant for Europe. There are police configs from various countries, US ones range from the late 70s to early 2000s. There are configs for various kinds of racing, junk beaters, derby cars, tuners, ricers, lifted and off-road versions, replicas and configs inspired by movie cars, both sensible and crazy variants for a lot of vehicle archetypes!

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Now here are some notable quiks and features of this car that are hard to find on other mods:

• Adjustable weight and strength, the default being realistic for a car (1545kg or 2kg per basic piece, lights and bumpers break on small crashes). Adjustable overall air drag.
  
• All engine, transmission and brake values are adjustable, but in a much simpler way than in my other mod, allowing for easy tuning without having to change engine parts. But there are still various intake options which are also adjustable, ability to add nitrous, and customizable engine damage. Everything is simplified so that things like friction and torque loss don't exist, so the torque you set is what you get at the wheels.
• Heavily customizable drivetrain. FWD, RWD, AWD, 4x4, various types of transmissions, transfer cases, differentials, disconnecting shaft options...
• Implemented mileage simulation from my other mods. Additionally you can set the damage of the starter, head gasket, piston rings, rod bearings, spark plugs and injector.
• Tires with adjustable friction settings, they are also supposed to be solid rubber tires with no pressure in them, but I had to leave some pressure inside to avoid issues.
  
• The speedometer has no markings on it by default, and the value on the scale treated as the top speed is customizable, can be in metric or imperial units. Peak RPM on the tachometer always matches the engine. But marked non-customizable versions are also available in both metric and imperial.
  
• Pieces of the engine bay can fall off, which will damage the engine to an extent. The carburetor on the V8 engine can fall off which will really damage it. Intakes can fall off which will break them.
• Exhaust system is basically choosing where the tips are, and they are connected to the engine with invisible pipes. So you can have as weird of an exhaust outlet configuration as you want, derby stacks, front and rear fender exhaust, and side, center or twin upper exhaust on the back, 13 outlets in total.
  
• By default there is no suspension, the wheels are attached straight to the axles (with "cheaty" hubs to allow them to turn) which are stiffly attached to the chassis. Real suspension is only available on lifted configs because it would not fit on normal axles. The tires somewhat act as suspension but pretty badly, might improve it in the future. Everything else is as solid as it can get with this game engine. There are lifted axles with fake suspension textures too.
  
• Rear wheel steering is available, both as Pessima-like AWS and crawler-like mirrored front steering. This was just natural to add since the front and rear axles are exactly the same.
• Modular separable unibody, you can mess with parts that would be inaccessible on a normal car, such as the bulkhead, rockers, B pillars, firewall, squab panel, individual pieces of the trunk...
• Animated Lego fire appears on the fuel tank when it gets ruptured. You can add lego afterfire to the exhaust, and lego nitrous fire of various colors.
• Everything in the interior is physically simulated and animated. There is even an option to add an animated crash test dummy driver! When an interior piece falls off it stops being animated and becomes loose. The doors can open by key bindings too as long as they are attached.
• There are custom engine sounds recorded from the real life version of the car. So it really sounds like a lego car would a bit. The sounds so far only work on the V6 engine, I need to make different ones for the V8.
• It has real Lego colors selectable. Not the official names due to possible copyright issues with that, but still. That includes the gold color and the metallic ones.
• Various parts have variants of different colors selectable. Most often it's the 3 color palettes, light and dark grey, and black. It's not that revolutionary but it's cool and good for customization.
  
• The police skin have a roof number that you can set in tuning or generate a random one, credits to Inn0centJok3r for help with the CSS for the texture.
• There is a small trailer also included with the mod, both in the car's parts selector and as a separate vehicle. Offers decent customization.
• According to several people who saw my screenshots, it crashes like a Lego car would, I don't know any other mod that does it lol.
• JATO and ram plow included, every mod needs these lol.

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Some questions you might have now, will expand it into a QnA section if more arise:
-Why are you making this? Several reasons. Because nobody made it before, because there are way too many normal cars in the game and not enough weird ones, because I always wanted to have my Lego car in the game, because I want to smash Lego cars and not worry about finding all the pieces afterwards and putting them back together...
-How did you make it crash like a lego car? By making it out of many separate simple pieces that don't deform and can break off, making all connections the same strength except some naturally weaker ones like single stud connections or large to small pieces, making everything very stiff and having a realistic weight distribution and consistent scheme of attaching the pieces. I wasn't sure it would work, but it did.
-Why does it wobble when static or driving slowly? It has no suspension so the tires suspend it and they are not really doing a good job at that. Maybe I will fix it in the future if I figure out how.
-Will it be on the repository? Yes, but it won't be called 'Lego Car' due to copyright. 'Toy Building Block Car' will be the official name.
-Can you add a driver? Unfortunately, having a Lego minifigure as a driver won't happen due to it being a patented design. It's a real shame as it was already in the mod and I had to remove it. It has a custom lego crash test dummy as a driver instead.
-Will it have that meme Lego breaking sound? Maybe in the future.
-Will it have a taxi version? In the future
-Can the wheels be used on normal cars? They can be used on center lug wheel hubs, so they fit both Civettas, the new Pessima and some mods. If you use my mod for wheel hub swaps, they will work on any car. (Unless I break them and forget to fix which has happened before with the wheels I make...) Offroad wheels fit 6-lug hubs instead.
-When will it be released? Now.
-Is this harder to make than a normal car? It's certainly different. I have never made a normal car from scratch so I can't tell, but I imagine that the advantage is that you don't have to do any research on how similar cars work in detail and you don't have to worry about deformation, but on the other side it requires way more creative problem solving because it gets issues that would never happen on a normal mod and they need to be fixed, and it has to be much stiffer than a normal car so you need to be more careful to avoid instabilities.
-Does it have a crumple zone? Idk who would ask that but I just wanted to point it out for the cool picture below, it kinda does but it's more like a shatter zone. It keeps the driver safe alright, and it's the same in the irl version. This is totally not a happy accident. (Remember that the driver will be changed to a dummy, the picture below is outdated.)

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TODO LIST:

• Get dummy in game with good Jbeam DONE
  
• Add crash test skin DONE
• Add police parts, lightbars and configs, with good customization and many variants DONE
• Add FBI parts and configs, concealed flashers, working guns DONE
• Add Sheriff and Fire Chief parts and configs DONE
  
• Add sport parts, finish sport configs DONE
• Add electric parts and configs DONE
• Add beater, rusty, dirt racer, derby and crazy derby parts and configs DONE
• Add various types of wheels and tires, small, big, donk, offroad, etc. DONE
• Add off-road, baja and 'crawler' parts and configs DONE
• Add rally parts and configs: amateur rally, normal rally and group B rally DONE
  
• Add drift parts and drift config DONE
  
• Add race parts, widebody fenders and fender flares, race wheels, trackday and race configs DONE
  
• Add pace car, amber light bar DONE
• Add stock car / NASCAR parts and config DONE
• Add hillclimb parts and config DONE
  
• Add proper drag parts and configs (V8 RWD, V6 FWD, electric AWD) DONE
  
• Add tuner, sleeper, street tuned, ricer and bosozoku parts and configs DONE
• Add tow hitch and small trailer (designed irl already) DONE
  
• Fix any bugs I find meanwhile Maybe will find more lol
  
• Record and edit V8 sounds Cancelled, uses edited V6 sound instead
  
• Update the default config with any changes I might do to the irl car I haven't changed a thing so far
  
• Bake normal maps and ambient occlusion Probably cancelled, too much effort
  
• Prepare the Blender file for public upload so others can make mods for this car easier DONE
• Get someone to finetune some of the configs
• Perform automated testing
• Final beta testing and release
  
  For future update(s):
  
• Fix crawler clutch burning
  
• Try to fix AI with trailers #2
  
• Fix some configs that drive bad
  
• Attempt to fix Touring Car config by adding heavier engine
  
• Add receive shadows to lights and glass
  
• Try to improve materials and optimize materials filesize
  
• Add selectable engine sounds: custom, vanilla, old vanilla
  
• Change around sound system Jbeam to make engine sound selection easy to access
  
• Fix typo in rally description
  
• Update the outdated gun particles system, looks bad since 0.27
  
• Try to fix/improve gun breaking system
  
• Add independent race suspension for easier tuning of race configs
  
• Remove hidden Windows files from zip
  
• Update mod assets with new stuff
  
• (Maybe later) Add hatchback body, add configs, convert some old ones to hatchback
  
• (Maybe later) Convert rally config to asphalt spec and add gravel one with new skin
  
• (Maybe later) Add GT4 config with new spoiler and other accessories, new skin
  
• (Maybe later) Add cheap Fleet config, some maintenance config based on it too
  
• (Maybe later) Add cheap 'offroad' Cross configs that look like SUVs but suck lol
  
• (Maybe later) Add Budget Race config
  
• (Definitely later) Add 2 and 4 door sedan bodies, configs including taxi and crazy taxi
  
• (Definitely later) Add wagon body and configs, including 'GhostBlasters' config
  
• (Definitely later) Add SUV body, convert a chunk of configs to use it, add new ones
  
• (Definitely later) Add ute body, loads, configs including a prerunner thing
  
• (Definitely later) Add ability to float on water, propeller, and crazy config to use them
  
• (Definitely later) Add pickup body on custom frame, requires redesigning 2/3 of the car
  
• (Definitely later) Add limo body, requires a completely new chassis and many parts
  

Things added from the above list:

You can add a crash test dummy to the car, it can be broken into multiple pieces and get flung off the car on big crashes, but usually will stay inside.

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The dummy is also animated! It interacts with the interior as you drive.


There are many customizable police skins and accessories:





The above screenshots showcase all of the variety but are outdated now, here is what the light bars look like currently:


Light bars in action (outdated materials, sorry, but the animations are still accurate):







There are working guns too!




Sport parts:


Modular wing!


Off-road lights


Tuner parts and configs so far:



Junk/derby configs:


Donks (why not)


Special editions so far:


Off-road parts and configs:


Rally:


Drift:


Race:


The trailer:


JATO!

You can see all the progress on the car on my YouTube playlist:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjYaoeUVsoLRXvU8UVByRPeRPyxldvYdx​

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Credits:
BeamNG - some default assets
Felipe Maciel - feedback and some stuff for the minifigure that I had to delete unfortunately
CrashBoomPunk - beta testing and showcase
Inn0centJok3r - CSS for the police roof number texture
CrashHard - a lot of help with the off-road suspension, wouldn't be possible without him
SKB - feedback and ideas
Xupaun - help with configs and suspension
Me - everything else

Future plans: improve some configs, add more body styles.

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I wonder if anyone reads this whole thing, it took me like 2 and a half hours to write lol

 

I didn't expect someone would remember that lol

 

The reason is that I wanted to learn how to model better by making it, which has worked, I never would have imagined I would be able to model some of the more complex pieces like minifigure hair (which I can't include sadly). I know my modelling skills are far behind the other modders here but they have still improved a lot thanks to this mod.

 

There's not really a good place to attach it, but I'm planning a custom Lego JATO rocket (I knew I forgot something, that was it)