Re-Roading Project - 400 alphas and counting

[eleventwentytooo]

Hey fellas, and the one girl.
So, I've been researching path nodes that the AI use to drive in V. I started work on a pretty ambitious and drawn out process of a mod, which involves me redesigning R*'s very old AI node links.

The reason I'm doing this, is to primarily increase vehicle speed to an insane amount. I want cars to whizz past at lethal speeds wherever they get the chance. The other accomplishments will be great action in smooth braking, variation in pileups/ rubbernecking, onoff-ramps, car parks and junctions. Smooth, meaning further possible sight distance, which correlates to perceived improved intelligence in drivers, increased brake reaction via input modulation for AI only - aka handling changes without affecting the player's experience in the same vehicles, and increased task times such as tailgating, side mirror slow down (as the game refers to it) and curb crawling, crashes and possibly the most noticeable feature, speed tolerance around corners.

Cars will stick to even an insanely tight curve. Dependent on ped type they will tap their brakes, or skid momentarily as to give off an effect of relaxed driving in real life suddenly becoming manic in shock (aka hitting da brakes)

It's going to be a long task of releasing small updates constantly with areas covered in sections. An Alpha is up now for my mod, but may seem anti-climactic after this read. All in the test of time...

If it's okay with mods, I'm planning on making this the dumping ground for my research. People Googling in the future that way can come across this data.

"Redesigning R*'s very old AI node links."

2010. That's nearly 10 years ago all you LSPDFR players are enjoying down in Los Santos - those nodes were placed by a designer.
      Sure, updates, but not anything visual.

[PsiBurner]

Now this is how you mod!

@eleventwentytooo I just got my hands on the initial release and I'll be reporting any bugs I find. Spent a few minutes with it so far and it's looking great! We actually have something approaching real traffic here!
I ran my ass across the highway a few times causing pileups and getting clipped in ways that would cripple and maim a normal man.
Fantastic and beautiful work bro. Two thumbs up. Your hard work paid off and it's appreciated/

(Community asset here folks. Give this guy some rep!)

[eleventwentytooo]

@PsiBurner Alpha 2 coming within an hour!

Thank you so much mate Hands are burning from the clicking... but it's going to be worth it in 2 months from now (less than that wink-wink)

[eleventwentytooo]

▒▒

[eleventwentytooo]

This is how I got the road shots

[ReNNie]

curiosity aroused

[eleventwentytooo]

Absolutely burnt out. I just can't find a way make all vehicles reach 77 MPH. Only sports cars do it and it's the last stage in my mod coming out of alpha!

I've tried all the lines you can think off in handling, vehicles.meta, changing handling flags and handling type, vehicleaitasks, nothing makes SUVs, trucks or cheap/ old vehicles drive any faster. I need the assistance of a programmer stat!

[eleventwentytooo]

@Cass @eshenk Hey guys, child of God making a complex mod here.

Cass you are probably the most knowledgeable about what's hardcoded and what's possible for us in gta V.

And Eshenk you're oldschool...

So, I've got a big issue that stands infront of us all finally having brilliantly visual traffic. Speed is the key characteristic and I've achieved a lovely effect already, as seen in the covered roads in my second Re-Roading Alpha.

But, no matter what I do or where I look, including vehicles meta, flags, handling flags, all the handling regular and sub lines, flag testing via my AI node programming project, vehicleAItasks, animations, I've even looked into popgroups but I still can't break a stupid feature of R*'s. If a vehicle is nice looking, I can get them up to 88 MPH (my desired effect, alternatively 77). If it's a truck, so haulage, an old car like an emporer, an SUV of any sort, even expensive, and most other cars lock to 55, sometimes 40 MPH. I've looked everywhere, made a 24 file OIV meta reinstaller for every vehicle and DLC, changing every flag from POOR and AVERGAE to God forsaken RICH! Still, only sports cars and a handful of expensive looking cars allow max speed!

Is it in the peds driving the car's clothes? Is it a hardcoded featur to each hash of vehicle models? Will people have to install WOV as to include their DLC vehicles in SP as desired, and then hack my mod into working if it is a meta file issue?

I really need some help here guys. A good 2 weeks since my first alpha, every evening I've had the chance I've been hard at work.

Opions very much needed... hands killing me

[eleventwentytooo]

@stillhere Sorry to drag you into a thread but I would like to let you know, on top of all this other information regarding my increased AI speed mod, that when sitting in an AI's car as a passanger, and reloading even a default handling CFG using your DriveModes, makes the car, of whatever type, able to reach max speed.

If possible could you please elaborate on why this works?

[eleventwentytooo]

@PsiBurner @dodgeboy121 Really improved alpha this time. Ah man, I've made some mistakes but Alpha 3 not bad. I reckon I will get to 10, let the community help me for those next 7 and then final release. Then maybe one day I'll return and do the boats and ambient plane paths to make them look cooler, closer, etc.

[eleventwentytooo]

@PsiBurner @dodgeboy121 Have either of you tried the mod out yet in it's latest state? 2 comments telling me it insta crashes people's games. Can you 2 test it out and let me know if you freeze?

[PsiBurner]

@eleventwentytooo I downloaded it and installed last night. Haven't gotten a chance to launch yet. I'll let you know

[PsiBurner]

@eleventwentytooo Had a minute to launch and run around for a few mins. Everything is working fine

[eleventwentytooo]

Well I don't get why people are claiming to crash. They must have a gansta janky file setup for their gta.

If you can't notice much of a difference man head to airport. That whole area is covered.

[PsiBurner]

@eleventwentytooo I have an explanation, but it isn't exactly politically correct

On a brighter note, the traffic is looking great! I've got my vehicle population jacked way up and the flow really resembles real traffic. I'll let you know if I spot any issues after I get a chance to go more hands on with it

[eleventwentytooo]

@PsiBurner This is stupid of me to say, but to get my sort of "vision" of what I want in the end result, use a mod like population control or even just turn that down in the game's settings, if that'll be effective enough I'm not sure, but, anyway

If you head to, for example the long road by the beach, Del Perro or the airport, you'll see sports cars fuckinnnn whizzziiiiiin and braking so late yet so effectively. I just have to get over the forced vehicle type issue... @eshenk said try popgroups, and popgroups And popcycles... and pop pops and pip pips I did try, yet alas, trucks still do 55 in the rain... fuck sake.

[Reacon]

excited to hear more about this! good luck with it and hope you get the speed cap issue fixed! (i’d offer a solution but i’m clueless when it comes to that stuff)

[eleventwentytooo]

@Reacon Thanks man me too, can't see how I'm gonna do it though.

I mean, there's AIhandlingtype, changed that
then you got DriveAbility and DriveSkill memory in gameconfig, edited them
THEN I found popgroups and popcycle spawn entites tie "poor, average, rich" labels to every vehicle spawn, so I changed that!

And still SUVs (even a Baller!) only does 55 whereas a passing Exemplar will do 88 GOD DAMN MILES PER HOUR

Amen.

[stillhere]

@eleventwentytooo said in Dumping ground for all my AI path node research - crossthread:

@stillhere Sorry to drag you into a thread but I would like to let you know, on top of all this other information regarding my increased AI speed mod, that when sitting in an AI's car as a passanger, and reloading even a default handling CFG using your DriveModes, makes the car, of whatever type, able to reach max speed.

If possible could you please elaborate on why this works?

Just seen this. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but I have no idea! My guess is that there is probably an error in writing values back into memory. Did you check if the same occurs with RTHandling editor by ikt? Most if not all of the handling code in DriveModes was derived from there except for a few tiny changes that I remember mentioning to him; I'd have to check messages from back in 2016/2017 to be sure.
You can find a much newer version of RTHandling in the 5mods discord btw, I'm not sure if the one posted here works on the latest version.

Another thing that happens when switching between the handling CFGs is that the current vehicle is basically cloned; colors, mods (as in car shop mods), lights, health, radio station - everything I could think of at the time. Perhaps a certain vehicle mod is mistakenly applied when it shouldn't be (transmission level? turbo? not sure if those have any effect on ped driving speed). Hope this helps in some way!

[eleventwentytooo]

@stillhere Thanks for checking out the posts man.

Although I've tried and pretty much concluded that handling/ handling flags have no effect on achievable AI driving speed, I haven't looked at the sort of -runtime if you can call it that- upgrades like turbo. Gonna take a look at that now thanks for the input.

If you could please answer another question - do you have any idea where the game defines vehicles as being only driven by a certain type of ped except for popgroups and cycles?

I ask because I'm starting to think I've been looking for the treasure chest and actually found a solid gold crate... in other words are peds the overiding factor in speed related rules? If so, I'd like to make every ped max-speedable, but I've done this in popgroups already. If you know of another definition location please let us know.
Thank you

[eleventwentytooo]

After 1 week of Alpha 3 and 3.5 I only just managed to fix large vehicles ability to brake in time for junctions, and I have also improved their ability to stick to corners at high speeds, though...

the problem of large vehicles, old vehicles and trucks all being limited somehow still stands in the way. Apart from the lovely supporters and people giving me tons of advice and images... is there anyone reading this...? Hello? Programmers, it's our time again. We can change V for ever...

@ikt

[eleventwentytooo]

Good news... I've discovered that
Is a big pain in the (optional) hole. I will from now on release an additional archive to be used by the OIV installer this time for paths identical inside of x64e.rpf

Be freee tonight
Time, time is on yo' side

[a63nt-5m1th]

@eleventwentytooo said in Dumping ground for all my AI path node research - crossthread:

do you have any idea where the game defines vehicles as being only driven by a certain type of ped except for popgroups and cycles?

Worth taking a look at 'pedpersonality.ymt'

...\Grand Theft Auto V\mods\update\update.rpf\x64\data\metadata\pedpersonality.ymt

There are sections at the bottom that look like this:

Example:

    <Item>
      <PersonalityName>GeneralMale</PersonalityName>
      <DefaultWeaponLoadout/>
      <Bravery>AVERAGE</Bravery>
      <AgitatedPersonality>default</AgitatedPersonality>
      <Criminality>Law_Abiding_Allow_Cop_Pursuit</Criminality>
      <AgitationTriggers>default</AgitationTriggers>
      <HealthConfigHash>AVERAGE</HealthConfigHash>
      <WeaponAnimations>
        <Item>default</Item>
      </WeaponAnimations>
      <AmbientAudio>default</AmbientAudio>
      <WitnessPersonality>default</WitnessPersonality>
      <Agility>
        <Flags>AF_CAN_DIVE</Flags>
        <MovementCostModifier value="1.00000000"/>
      </Agility>
      <IsMale value="true"/>
      <IsHuman value="true"/>
      <ShouldRewardMoneyOnDeath value="true"/>
      <IsGang value="false"/>
      <IsSecurity value="false"/>
      <IsWeird value="false"/>
      <IsDangerousAnimal value="false"/>
      <CausesRumbleWhenCollidesWithPlayer value="false"/>
      <AllowSlowCruisingWithMusic value="false"/>
      <AllowRoadCrossHurryOnLightChange value="true"/>
      <VehicleTypes>PED_DRIVES_POOR_CAR PED_DRIVES_MOTORCYCLE PED_DRIVES_RICH_CAR PED_DRIVES_AVERAGE_CAR PED_DRIVES_BOAT</VehicleTypes>
      <AttackStrengthMin value="0.80000000"/>
      <AttackStrengthMax value="1.00000000"/>
      <StaminaEfficiency value="1.00000000"/>
      <ArmourEfficiency value="1.00000000"/>
      <HealthRegenEfficiency value="1.00000000"/>
      <ExplosiveDamageMod value="1.00000000"/>
      <HandGunDamageMod value="1.00000000"/>
      <RifleDamageMod value="1.00000000"/>
      <SmgDamageMod value="1.00000000"/>
      <PopulationFleeMod value="1.00000000"/>
      <HotwireRate value="1.00000000"/>
      <MotivationMin value="0"/>
      <MotivationMax value="10"/>
      <DrivingAbilityMin value="1"/>
      <DrivingAbilityMax value="10"/>
      <DrivingAggressivenessMin value="1"/>
      <DrivingAggressivenessMax value="10"/>
      <Affluence>AFF_AVERAGE</Affluence>
      <TechSavvy>TS_HIGH</TechSavvy>
      <MovementModes/>
      <WeaponAnimsFPSIdle>FirstPerson</WeaponAnimsFPSIdle>
      <WeaponAnimsFPSRNG>FirstPersonRNG</WeaponAnimsFPSRNG>
      <WeaponAnimsFPSLT>FirstPersonAiming</WeaponAnimsFPSLT>
      <WeaponAnimsFPSScope>FirstPersonScope</WeaponAnimsFPSScope>
    </Item>

Lots of tempting looking values in there but I've not had any luck playing about with them yet.
My test setup may be missing part of the puzzle though, so I'd say it's worth having a play around with it yourself & see what results you get.

The '<VehicleTypes>' line is integral to getting the game to spawn traffic.
With all the peds lines set to this:

      <VehicleTypes/>

not a single car will spawn. I think it's just a 'what kind/s of vehicle is this ped allowed to drive' line but there may be more going on with it.

These values:

      <MotivationMin value="0"/>
      <MotivationMax value="10"/>
      <DrivingAbilityMin value="1"/>
      <DrivingAbilityMax value="10"/>
      <DrivingAggressivenessMin value="1"/>
      <DrivingAggressivenessMax value="10"/>

can go as high as '255' before OpenIV throws an import error.

TEST SETUP:

I edited 'popgroups.ymt' to only spawn one vehicle (I tried 4 different vehicles all in all. 'Vigero', 'Surfer', 'Adder' & even GreenAid's Chevrolet Silverado (silv86) add-on).
Results where the same for all. Most vehicles hit ~77mph (even the 'Surfer'):

while some others only did ~60mph, causing faster vehicles to bunch up behind them:

Some others cruised at ~67mph at various times during testing & occasionally I got ~55>58mph (usually on a long corner).

Maybe there's something else going on when multiple classes of vehicle are spawning at the same time (some sort of speed allocation hierarchy perhaps) but with multiples of only one vehicle I'm not seeing a connection between the speed limits & a vehicle class.
To me it looks like whatever vehicles spawn, some go fast & some go slow, which suggests the cause is somewhere else. Something to do with peds & their state of being/capabilities makes a lot of sense but other than dragging a lot of women & old bald guys out of slow cars I haven't found a lot to go on. Still haven't given up though. I'll have another go & come at it from a different angle after I get some sleep

[eleventwentytooo]

@a63nt-5m1th Thanks so much again man, on it right now...!

Will update with all my lovely findings. This is brilliant!

[eleventwentytooo]

Quick in-design mode note: I've somehow changed the bunching up effect to be wayyy worse. So, on the right track, I think...