BeamNG Drive has an outstanding community of Modders and Creators. Over the entire Time Hundreds of Vehicle mods and Thousands of new Engine/Drivetrains appeared on the Forums. With 8.0.X the New Physics Engine was introduced bringing major improvements. Sadly many of the Custom Cars and almost every Custom Engine Created became obsolete and unusable. I personally think that it is sad to see so many genious configs and mods just go Obsolete. I think that in this case I can speak for the majority of the BeamNG players, its a real pity to see VM (VarietyMod) Go. It added hundreds of new Configurations, not only amazing paintjobs and Car Configs but New Body styles and engines. And Now because the creator stopped updating it the mod is gone. R.I.P VM! This is why i would love to see a option to use the old physics engine again in a future update. Its a thing that in my opinion has to be done just to show some respect to all the modders out there that spent many hours creating new free content for BeamNG and made BeamNG more diversified and fun to play for every single one of us. This is a Shoutout to the BeamNG Devs not only to show some appreciation to the amazing community but also a HUGE personal THANK YOU to all the Modders out there. BeamNG Dev Team, please bring the old Physics engine Back!
This is an early access game. Such an game is gonna have major changes and not everything can be compatible. The devs strive for backwards compability and it just wasn't possible to get compability for older config/part mods. They already made an extra "basic powertran" that older car mods would use so that they would be compatible. Anybody can fix the older config/part mods if they want to. The devs were kind to leave an wiki on howto convert older mods to 0.8: https://wiki.beamng.com/0.8_Mod_Conversion_Guide And finally, VM is dead as an whole but it will be cut up into smaller mod packs and released as that.
Steam has an option to roll back to 0.4.0.6, I don't know how many mods were supported from this stage though. But I doubt it's possible to have a game with two choices of game versions either with just a simple option in the menus, iv'e never seen it in any other games either.
The devs will make an effort to maintain backwards compatibility, but they are constantly changing and improving the engine. There will be times that maintaining compatibility is just too much work, or is impossible with the improvements. If you want your old mods to work, keep copies of older versions of the game. While you won't be able to get any from before now (not legally, and I'm not going to promote doing illegal things), you can make a copy of the current version and put it wherever. It'll work without Steam, just run the game's *.exe.
its ah.... You cannot just change physics engine with the click of a button in a game and expect it to be simple and work.
Actually, game engine automatically attempts to use older model, some changes were such big that some mods don't work out of the box, but there is support for older way of doing things still, so no need for complete rewrite of mod. Of course bringing mod to level of latest version of engine will provide much better experience. With this one could try to make old mod to run on new version, it mostly requires bit of patience and some time to get old mod working again. https://wiki.beamng.com/0.8_Mod_Conversion_Guide
having a button that "enables the old physics engine" would basically require having two different copies of the game installed. not realistic at all. this game is in constant development so mods will very likely break every now and then.
Are you really asking devs to bring back an older feature only for playing mods? are you serious? First of all I don't think it's even possible to have two "physics engine" in the same game.. Then it's mod creator job's to update a mod for the current version of the game, and if he don't want to (like '99 with VM) it's his choice.
Load mod with old files and observe how in console it says something along line of using old driveline model, sorry can't remember exact wording, but there I saw it, on red
There's a compatibility mode for powertrain simulation indeed. What's being requested here is a parallel physics engine.
The physics engine is not what changed, what changed is the drivetrain code for engines (old system was called "drivetrain", new system is called "powertrain"). STANDALONE mods work because the game can detect that the mod has a complete old drivetrain and then convert it to use the new powertrain. Just this compatibility system alone took a lot of work for us. ADD-ON engines, transmissions, differentials, etc, are broken because when they are installed, the vehicle then contains a mix of the old mod parts and new official parts, and there is no way to figure out where the old mod part actually fits in the new system. The combination is the problem, it has nothing to do with which version of the "physics" or anything like that. We do everything we can to support mods, unless it completely stops us from being able to improve the game. Actually, many old mods that were broken in the years past work again now, because we went on a mission to test them and fix any issues we could. I'm sure most of the add-on mods will get fixed up. I even wrote a guide on how to convert them, you can try it yourself, once you know how to do it, it probably takes around 20 seconds of work for an engine. Or, just wait, because I am sure modders are hard at work to come up with new mods, ones that take advantage of the new powertrain features.
Thanks for that goosah, Tried it already but made the changes to .pc now to get it working because something always breaks my game when i try to convert the engines. If sb is capable of converting engines he shall pm me i checked the mod and have a list of all parts that need reworking. and then sb has to convince 99 to give uploadpermission (I'm currently trying) --- Post updated --- TO ALL ABOVE : Whoopsie. I thought the devs swapped the engine not changed the format. Update II: Thread Can Be Closed Now thanks to all
Dude? Have you even read my entire post and my earlier posts to this topic? i have changed the files and archeived what i wanted to, now all VM configs spawn working. i know that the unique i-TEC characteristics are lost beacuse i replaced them with the stock engines. Im new to modding and still try to convert. if you have the skill to do it ill send you the mod and the exact files you have to convert.
Oh I can fix the whole thing. The difference is it's not a mod I use, I don't have permission to redistribute that mod either. It's not a hard one to fix, its just time consuming and permission and all that. My time is money. Where is my incentive? Eh this is besides the point now. You got your answer. The devs do what they can to maintain back compatibility. Sometimes they just can't though
