Weight tuning¶
Introduction¶
SUMOWEIGHT ?
A guide to tune your trucks to a realistic weight
I will try to explain here how to tune your trucks weight without loosing it characteristics. A lot of things have changed with the recent physics updates and there is no need for overweighed trucks at all in ROR anymore.
This guide is based on RoR version 0.36.3+.
All templates in this guide are free to use, you don't need to give any credits.
Why go for a realistic weight ? Well, RoR gets more and more realistic physics in the last updates, so i think for gameplay and especially multiplayer trucks should have realistic weights in the future, so loading, lifting and crashing stuff works propper. Since the new physics support this, here is your tutorial:
Here we go...first of all a template truck:
300 kg... RoR's first working 200 km/h light weight truck
Its a truck featuring independent suspended front wheels and a rigid rear axle, it has a realistic steering geometry and is basically built for baja(gravel) terrains.
Overall weight including wheels is 300 kg, featuring working wheel nodearms and a small aerodynamic help for drifting and jumping ( to avoid zips its visible in the template file )
Spawns in the street cars (146) category.
Step by step weight tuning
Minimass¶
minimass
5.0
Even lower settings are fine. You need to add loadweight to every single node for weight tuning. Please refer to the template truck.
You can use set_node_defaults for group loadweights here too, but tweaking single nodes does not work and so its not recommended
A minimass setting lower then you minimum loadweight to a node makes no sense and will not provide any benefit.
Set_beam_defaults¶
Truck file format - set_beam_defaults
set_beam_defaults 12000000, 350, 200000, 2000000
A good setting for rigid truck parts like suspension and frame with low weight nodes.
For lightweight nodes always use LOW damping settings, if you want parts of your truck deform propper while crashing, play around with spring, deform and brake values.
NEVEREVER use high dampings, they are responsible for truck explosions at spawn most of the times.
Wheels¶
wheels
0.45, 0.3, 10, 13, 11,9999, 1, 1, 20, 22.5, 5000.0, 600.0, tracks/wheelface tracks/wheelband1
Really light weight wheels which work fine with light trucks.
If the wheels collapse too often or explode when hitting a wall, gently add some kg and test until you are fine.
Increasing the spring rate gently works fine too. Test in small steps until you are satisfied.
Overall weight¶
globals
50.0, 500.0, tracks/beam
A significant low starting weight helps to make trucks light.
Please note: Your load weight in this line ( second entry ) should be at least the total loadmass of you nodes, better higher.
it does NOT apply to the truck weight if you set it higher then the actual sum of your loadweights.
Shocks¶
Truck file format - shocks/shocks2
shocks2
;front axle
10, 3, 8500, 1250, 5, 5, 8500, 1250, 5, 5, 1, 1, 1.05, vs
Use LOW shock settings now, especially the damping really needs to be LOW (less than 5k) for testing
If your trucks spawns stable, gently alter spring and damping settings until you are fine with the suspension works.
Overall guideline: lightweight trucks use low numbers ;)
Engine/Engoption/Brakes¶
engine
1350.0, 3350.0, 350.0, 4.1, 1.8, 1.8, 1.8, 1.1, 0.8, 0.7, -1.0
engoption
0.125, c, 55, 0.4, 0.8, 0.4
torquecurve
gas
brakes
600
Low settings for torque, brakes and clutch avoid exploding wheels at higher speeds and while braking hard.
Fusedrag¶
fusedrag
3, 0, 0.25, NACA0009.afl
Your truck not accelerating propper and wheels spinning fast ? Use a small fusedrag.
Testing¶
Open RoRConfig -> Debug tab -> Select "Beam Break Debug". This will log broken beams to the RoR.log file (Located in Rigs of Rods/logs/RoR.log), a vital tool for weight tuning.
So now spawn your truck, enter it and see it explode.
If it does not explode, you didn't push the limits hard enough, if you are fine with your weight and it works for you, you are successfully understood and managed to use the contents of this tutorial.
Else, you need to see if the truck disintegrates or the wheels explode. You might enable the replay mode in the configurator and use it to see.
If the trucks "walks/strafes" around your wheels are too light or their damping is too high. Fix that and try again
If the truck explodes or simply some beams break, exit ror and open your ror log (Located in Rigs of Rods/logs/RoR.log)
Search for "xxx" in the log file, the first entry is the beam that broke first. Write down the node numbers, open your truck file and add some kg to both of the nodes.
Spawn your truck and do this until you can spawn your truck without braking one single beam
When you managed to spawn your truck without any broken beam, start testing it. You might find some more beams that break when jumping/landing hard or using commands etc.
The procedure is always the same, look into your RoR.log file, identify the nodes which were attached to breaking beams and gently rise their weight until you got them working properly.
Overall, this way of weight tuning should lead to a fast and simple way to build really lightweight trucks.