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Giving ground vehicles more traction

Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 5:11 am
by Swaffy
1st question: Is it possible to give a ground vehicle such as a Jeep Willy or M10 Wolverine more ground traction?
2nd question: If it is possible, how can you do this? I would like to give my Willy 4x4 some better traction.

Also, there's another thing I want to ask about: How can I move the center of mass for the Willy? It is front-heavy, and I want to even out the weight and make its center of mass in the middle of the car.

Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 9:00 am
by freddy
i think you can make the willy four-wheeldrive by replacing the frontwheels

Code: Select all

ObjectTemplate.Grip c_PGFRollGrip
with

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ObjectTemplate.Grip c_PGFEngineGrip

Re: Giving ground vehicles more traction

Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 11:53 am
by fo0k
Sounds like you already have it 4x4.. so to get more grip you can mod the collision properties of the wheels.. 37 would be default material id for wheels but I have played with 92 and achieved better grip..

Try that and play around with other ids.. be interesting to know what works well

Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 11:36 pm
by freddy
maybe i should read better before i post lol :roll:

anyway a plan b could be to create some extra invisible wheels and hook them up to the engine.

Re: Giving ground vehicles more traction

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2010 9:43 am
by fo0k
The only way to really make the center of gravity where you want it is to move the actual model from within 3dmax. the centerofmass offset script never seemed to be effective for me.

Re: Giving ground vehicles more traction

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2010 10:11 pm
by Swaffy
[Stupid Post]

Re: Giving ground vehicles more traction

Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2011 4:41 am
by Swaffy
This is a bump of a year-old thread, but for a good reason: I want to keep the "clutter" down.


fo0k wrote:The only way to really make the center of gravity where you want it is to move the actual model from within 3dmax. the centerofmass offset script never seemed to be effective for me.
ObjectTemplate.centerOfMassOffset 0/0/0

Yeah, I tried it and the game keeps reading the coordinates wrong. One game, my car will fall forward form the CoM being in the front, then in the next game it will be flipping to its right side and flying outside of the map. So it seems to be a broken script.
fo0k wrote:so to get more grip you can mod the collision properties of the wheels.. 37 would be default material id for wheels but I have played with 92 and achieved better grip..
I'll check out that idea. I said I would about a year ago, but at that time I didn't even have 3DS Max on my laptop nor did I know how to use it.

Forgotten Hope has better grip; does anybody know how they did it?

Re: Giving ground vehicles more traction

Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2011 7:18 am
by Senshi
FH? What do you mean with traction? Offroad capability or "stability" (no bouncing tanks after shooting/stopping like in Vanilla)?

Re: Giving ground vehicles more traction

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 4:03 am
by Swaffy
Senshi wrote:FH? What do you mean with traction? Offroad capability or "stability" (no bouncing tanks after shooting/stopping like in Vanilla)?
Grip. Sorry, I was referring to it having less "slideyness." I'd like to have vehicles that have more tire/track grip on the ground. Is it just a matter of changing the Coll IDs?

Re: Giving ground vehicles more traction

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 5:02 am
by Apache Thunder
My Karts in my Mario kart mod had some traction issues. I solved it by increasing the resistance values for the ground materials (I did not change the friction settins. I did however increase the friction for the 37 material along with the ground material changes). This may affect all vehicles though and not just jeeps. ;)

Example: (bf1942/game/materialManagerdefine.con)

Code: Select all

MaterialManager.material 3
MaterialManager.materialAttGroup 3
MaterialManager.materialDefGroup 3
MaterialManager.materialDamage 30
MaterialManager.materialFriction 0.8
MaterialManager.materialElasticity 0
rem MaterialManager.materialResistance 0.08
MaterialManager.materialResistance 1

rem Dry dirt
MaterialManager.material 4
MaterialManager.materialAttGroup 4
MaterialManager.materialDefGroup 4
MaterialManager.materialDamage 30
MaterialManager.materialFriction 1.0
MaterialManager.materialElasticity 0
MaterialManager.materialResistance 0.04
Also note this will result in the vehicle also traveling faster. Since the wheels slip less, the vehicle's engine is able to translate more of it's power to the ground resulting in faster speeds. ;)

So for my Mario Kart mod at least, this allowed me to reduce traction for off road areas to slow down the karts while the main road would allow them greater traction and speed which allowed the mod to better replicate the driving physics of the real game. :D

Video comparison of the change in driving physics:

Before:

After:


Which I believe fo0k also suggested to me when I had this issue. :D