GTASA handling.cfg breakthrough!

[ThAtSgOtTaHuRt]

fEngineInertia is a feild of every vehicle's config. Inertia (if you didnt know) is the resistance to change, in short. By default it is a positve number. The GREATER the fEngineInertia, the MORE resistace to change in motion. LESS fEngineInertia, less resistace to change in motion. Simple!

 

Although the awesome part is as follows: A negative fEngineInertia, as you might assume, makes a change in motion (such as hitting the gas) easy - or little resistace. BUT, it not only makes it easier but AIDS in change in motion. Simply making the fEngineInertia a negative number gives the vehicle a TURBO effect.

 

With a negative fEngineInertia, the more you accelerate the more "boost" you will get out of it. As you first take off it may not seem like it will be doing much but after you begin to accelerate the negative fEngineInertia gives you a nice boost in acceleration!

 

Hope this helps!

 

[tommygun1]

Cool man, might come in handy for car mods, do I see another 2fast2furious mod coming. JK. Keep it up man.

[Fro]

Cool man, might come in handy for car mods, do I see another 2fast2furious mod coming. JK. Keep it up man.

Better yet, a Midnight Club Mod.

[Zelius]

One question though, does this work on aircraft?

[fuckindumass]

changing it to 0 on the Hustler induced interesting game crash

[ThAtSgOtTaHuRt]

changing it to 0 souldnt do that. but I have noticed that the current editors often corrupt the files they are editing and I often have to copy them over with my backups. once it corrupted the carcols.dat I opened it up manually and it said:

 

79,79,79,79,79,79,79,

79,79,79,79,79,79,79,

79,79,79,79,79,79,79,

79,79,79,79,79,79,79,

79,79,79,79,79,79,79,

79,79,79,79,79,79,79,

ect

 

thats all it said. so you may need to just use your backup and try again.

[GodGell]

why use an editor for handling.cfg?

[DexX]

because reading it in notepad can be confusing, especially if you havent done it before. both will get the job done, but most editors give you a much nicer gui, with columns and comboboxes and such. its all very tidy

[GodGell]

because reading it in notepad can be confusing, especially if you havent done it before. both will get the job done, but most editors give you a much nicer gui, with columns and comboboxes and such. its all very tidy

i'd only use a handling.cfg editor for the flags. never managed to get how the f*ck to edit them

[ThAtSgOtTaHuRt]

Yea, the handling editor should only be used for the FLAGS - but sometimes an editor compresses the handling.cfg. That makes the handling.cfg harder to edit manually, so I usually just end up using the editor all the time.

 

Hopefully someone will make a FLAG wizard for SA. WAIT! Just as I was typing this out I found this:

 

FlagStudio v2.1 by Cerbera

 

Thank you cerbera!

Edited June 21, 2005 by ThAtSgOtTaHuRt

[GodGell]

 

Yea, the handling editor should only be used for the FLAGS - but sometimes an editor compresses the handling.cfg.  That makes the handling.cfg harder to edit manually, so I usually just end up using the editor all the time.

 

Hopefully someone will make a FLAG wizard for SA.  WAIT!  Just as I was typing this out I found this:

 

FlagStudio v2.1 by Cerbera

 

Thank you cerbera!

yeah, i dl'ed that too, but all that's in the zip is a file called prjFlagStudio.vbw and i have no idea what to do with it. never heard of the extension "vbw" before.

[ThAtSgOtTaHuRt]

try downloading it again - there are 8 files in the zip.

[Sociapath]

Yeah, the flagstudio works with me too

 

but when i edit the handling nothing changes really...(Well, in the FLAGS)

 

Can someone maybe take a print screen on what numbers you have too change, that would be nice..

 

 

[BenMillard]

It's actually a RAR file, not a ZIP. RARlabs is the site of it's makers and there is normally a free download somewhere on the site. I've been testing out as many data file editors as I can find recently to see if there are any which have innovative, useful features that I could adopt for me in-development CFG Studio editor. So far, what I've found are very clumsy interfaces which don't resize and only show one car and only show about eight settings for that car.

 

There are 209 cars and 36 columns in the standard data alone for GTASA's handling.cfg file, which means 7524 items. Added to the 180 items of special boat data, 208 items of bike data, 528 items of flying data and 1050 items of animation data gives you a total of 9490 data items! This makes it an extremely large file, so editors need to show a lot more than eight items of at a time.

 

I have also found them corrupting data when they read it. This is mainly because they don't use the same parsing method as the game; they often rely on specific comments at the start of the file or for a specific data line to be the first one. The correct method is to read the file line by line, removing any non-data lines by testing the first character and then parsing the remainder of the file as data. I guess some tool makers don't feel they have a responsibility to protect the data of the thousands of gamers who download thier programs. That gives newcomers a really bad first taste of modding.

 

 

 

Anyway, rants about editors aside, I think I understand what the topic starter is saying about fEngineInertia. Basically, it seems to be a setting which reduces engine power as speed increases and reduces it by a greater amount the higher it is set? That isn't what I thought it would do, I thought it would basically set the "engine braking" of the car. If the engine had a low inertia then the vehicle would slow down a lot when lifting off the throttle and it would only slow down a little if an engine had a high inertia. I guess the setting actually has an effect when the throttle is on as well as off, then?

[Sociapath]

So basically, the faster you go, the less power ur engine gets...

And if you change that to a negative number, the power will decrease slower..and ur car will go faster

 

Am i right? (cus im a nub )

 

 

Hmm, well i changed the Inertia on my Greenwood to -2, and all it did was moving the weels up into the chassis

 

Maybe i changed the wrong number

Edited June 22, 2005 by Sociapath

[BenMillard]

 

So basically, the faster you go, the less power ur engine gets...

And if you change that to a negative number, the power will decrease slower..and ur car will go faster

 

Am i right? (cus im a nub  )

 

 

Hmm, well i changed the Inertia on my Greenwood to -2, and all it did was moving the weels up into the chassis

 

Maybe i changed the wrong number

Your first line is right. However, a negative value actually makes the power increase with faster speed rather than decrease with faster speed.

 

The wheels will move up into the chassis when the values in the handling file are too strange (such as exceeding legal ranges, text instead of numbers, etc) but the won't crash unless the data in the file is actually invalid or corrupt. You might have changed the wrong value and -2 might be too strange for it. Restore your backup of the file and try again.

 

In the handling file, column letters are often not in line with data letters so be careful of that. That is why using editors is a much more sensible idea. I've gotten so used to reading the raw data that I can see what type of setting a number is just by comparing it to the other numbers around it. Neo schmeo.

Edited June 22, 2005 by Cerbera

[1319987654321]

I have a problem too , I ask here instead of having a new topic

 

When mass changed the car become very bouncy

and i try to have a greater suspension

but when the car crash it will spin crazy....

 

what should i do ?

[BenMillard]

 

I have a problem too , I ask here instead of having a new topic

 

When mass changed  the car become very bouncy

and i try to have a greater suspension

but when the car crash it will spin crazy....

 

what should i do ?

Restore your backup.

 

Try again.

 

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas Handling: Definition - read what the settings do. If you car suspension goes very bouncy, in that it seems to actually kick up from the road, then the suspension is too hard. If the wheels stay on the road but the car body moves around a very large amount, even when going down straights, then the suspension is too stiff.

 

If the car is spinning easily, then your "TurnMass" is probably much too low. Don't make big changes to ANY values until you FULLY understand what they do. Make small changes to one or two settings, test the effect, then make another small change, test the effect, and keep doing small changes and lots of testing to understand how the handling works.

 

It's better to make a new topic than go off-topic in an unrelated thread, btw.

[1319987654321]

Thx for help

I will try it tomorrow

 

I mod taxi and it run fast

but when it turn , it will crash

the force going forward is too strong that the taxi cant overcome

so i decided to modify mass also

but modding mass is hell....

 

unlike VC , VC just change the num of mass , everything normal just kick the others ass away

 

but in SA.... changing mass led to strange car and need many configtion to make it work nice

 

 

[ThAtSgOtTaHuRt]

 

Cerbera:

Anyway, rants about editors aside, I think I understand what the topic starter is saying about fEngineInertia. Basically, it seems to be a setting which reduces engine power as speed increases and reduces it by a greater amount the higher it is set? That isn't what I thought it would do, I thought it would basically set the "engine braking" of the car. If the engine had a low inertia then the vehicle would slow down a lot when lifting off the throttle and it would only slow down a little if an engine had a high inertia. I guess the setting actually has an effect when the throttle is on as well as off, then?

 

thats exactly what I thought to. so at first a set it very high - expecting the engine to "run on" when I let off the throttle (its high level of inertia would make it "try" to continue to run as fast as it was going before I let off). although it didnt, it slowed down the same as having a low inertia - but had a much slower acceleration and a much less top speed. (or more resistance to have a change in speed) when I set it negative the car was MUCH more responsive (quick acceleration) and also had a MUCH MUCH greater top speed. (it had the oposite of a resistance to change in speed - it HELPED it accelerate.)

[BenMillard]

 

Anyway, rants about editors aside, I think I understand what the topic starter is saying about fEngineInertia. Basically, it seems to be a setting which reduces engine power as speed increases and reduces it by a greater amount the higher it is set? That isn't what I thought it would do, I thought it would basically set the "engine braking" of the car. If the engine had a low inertia then the vehicle would slow down a lot when lifting off the throttle and it would only slow down a little if an engine had a high inertia. I guess the setting actually has an effect when the throttle is on as well as off, then?

thats exactly what I thought to. so at first a set it very high - expecting the engine to "run on" when I let off the throttle (its high level of inertia would make it "try" to continue to run as fast as it was going before I let off). although it didnt, it slowed down the same as having a low inertia - but had a much slower acceleration and a much less top speed. (or more resistance to have a change in speed) when I set it negative the car was MUCH more responsive (quick acceleration) and also had a MUCH MUCH greater top speed. (it had the oposite of a resistance to change in speed - it HELPED it accelerate.)Oh marvellous. R* have introduced another retarded parameter that doesn't use proper units, or even work in the same way as the effect it is named after. Urgh. I really shouldn't have believed the hype.

[BenMillard]

I have been making lots of experiments with the Taxi in GTASA. I have concentrated on the various acceleration settings and recorded all my results. From the graphs that I have made, I have some interesting conclusions:-

• Drag Multiplier does change top speed.
• Drag Multiplier does change acceleration.
• Mass does not change top speed.
• Mass does change acceleration.
• Engine Inertia does not change top speed.
• Engine Inertia does change acceleration.
• Driving up or down hills does not change top speed.
• Driving up or down hills does change the rate of acceleration.

Many of my graphs are just a horizontal line because there was no effect. I won't put these graphs on my website because the page would be full of pointless graphs. I will probably just make a list of which settings have an effect on either top speed, acceleration or both.

 

I tested the acceleration curve of the standard Taxi handling. It is a not much smoother than acceleration in GTA3 and GTAVC. However, I am going to do some experiments to see how the acceleration curve is changed by the Drag Multiplier and Engine Inertia settings. I will make graphs of what I find. Eventually, these experiments will be written up into a tutorial for my website.