Do vehicle replacement mods exist at all? Have they ever?

[FramFramson]

I've asked in quite a few places about vehicle replacer mods, tried to search for info or mods, and it's been pretty much crickets.

 

The question was (I thought) fairly simple: How to REPLACE vanilla vehicles (purely graphically, no functional changes)? This seems even odder given that in most other games I've modded, you generally see mods which replace vanilla assets before mods where entirely new assets are added.

 

So is there some aspect of 7D2D that is especially hostile or complicating for "simple" graphical replacement mods of the vanilla vehicles (maybe the ability to dye cars requires vanilla replacements to include this option)? Is this why the most popular packs are entirely additive rather than including any replacement options?

 

Just hoping for an answer so I can stop groping in the dark to try and figure out why such seemingly "simple" "basic" mods don't exist where seemingly more complicated ones do.

[bdubyah]

Because they would probably end up being about the same amount of work as just making a new vehicle. I mean, for the 4x4 as an example, if you found a vehicle mesh you could use that lined up perfectly size wise then it wouldn't be too much work, although the easiest method to do it currently is broken as vehicles cannot be buffed at the moment. But there's only gonna be so much you can do with that, and there is no easy way to adjust other things such as wheel joints and stuff without taking into Unity. And once you do that, you may as well just make a separate, new vehicle.

 

And my biggest question to yours is, why does it matter? It would require the same amount of work from a user's side as far as installation goes. So who cares if they add new vehicles or just edit vanilla ones? There was a server side vehicles mod that arramus kept updated, but again, it's currently broken due to not being able to buff vehicles. That might would be the closest thing to what you are looking for in terms of function, but most of those aren't normal vehicles to my knowledge. And also this method just attaches meshed to the vanilla vehicles, but one issue here is collision as meshes attached this way don't support colliders as far as I know. So say you used a buff to attach a school bus mesh to the 4x4, it would act like it is still the normal 4x4 size, which wouldn't look great when colliding with things.

[meganoth]

[Moved to appropriate forum section]

[FramFramson]

14 hours ago, bdubyah said:

Because they would probably end up being about the same amount of work as just making a new vehicle. I mean, for the 4x4 as an example, if you found a vehicle mesh you could use that lined up perfectly size wise then it wouldn't be too much work, although the easiest method to do it currently is broken as vehicles cannot be buffed at the moment. But there's only gonna be so much you can do with that, and there is no easy way to adjust other things such as wheel joints and stuff without taking into Unity. And once you do that, you may as well just make a separate, new vehicle.

 

And my biggest question to yours is, why does it matter? It would require the same amount of work from a user's side as far as installation goes. So who cares if they add new vehicles or just edit vanilla ones? There was a server side vehicles mod that arramus kept updated, but again, it's currently broken due to not being able to buff vehicles. That might would be the closest thing to what you are looking for in terms of function, but most of those aren't normal vehicles to my knowledge. And also this method just attaches meshed to the vanilla vehicles, but one issue here is collision as meshes attached this way don't support colliders as far as I know. So say you used a buff to attach a school bus mesh to the 4x4, it would act like it is still the normal 4x4 size, which wouldn't look great when colliding with things.

 

Main reason I ask is because in running a multiplayer server for a gang of relatively new folks, I have avoided any non-serverside mods. Since new vehicle mods always involve adding extra assets, that's something I have no way of reconciling. As you say, Arramus' mod is currently broken.

 

I get what you mean about using entirely new meshes, and I'm already aware that you would have to use something with very similar collision boundaries, but with all the models out there across a large number of vehicle mods, there are a few which are close.

 

But without even touching entirely new models, the simplest example I can think of right now, was the once-popular A19 mod Motorcycle Alterations:

Since this used the base model at the time, it was about as close as you could get. Of course that mod no longer works and the modder in question appears to have moved on, but it was close to what I had in mind. Not that I needed all the different recipes and variations, just wanted to use one of the two stripped-down models as a straight replacer. I had something similar in mind for the 4x4 if that was feasible (removing the "cowcatcher" which seemingly has no collision anyway, either by mesh or even just texture alteration).

EDIT:  To clarify, I'm okay with model replacers that only I can see. As I said, the players I'm playing with are mostly new and don't care about this stuff (yet).

Edited August 14, 2023 by FramFramson (see edit history)

[bdubyah]

Well, I'm assuming we will get the ability to buff vehicles back, as that's a big thing for modders, and even something TFP might could use. I know it has been reported to TFP, but we haven't heard much on their thoughts or any progress on it being fixed. But the new vehicles they've shown for A22+ look to do the same as that mod you linked to with visual parts maybe becoming a mod item in the game. So that may be an option. But even his mod had new assets and wasn't serverside only as I believe he had ripped the vanilla vehicles and repacked them. Though that does make me wonder if it would be possible to make vehicle specific mods that activate/deactivate certain transforms that would accomplish the same thing. I may see how that works. Would give you a bit of variety while staying serverside.

 

I kind of figured you were coming from a serverside perspective. But the mod arramus has is about all you can do to stay serverside only. So hopefully TFP returns the ability to buff vehicles sooner rather than later.

[FramFramson]

15 hours ago, bdubyah said:

Well, I'm assuming we will get the ability to buff vehicles back, as that's a big thing for modders, and even something TFP might could use. I know it has been reported to TFP, but we haven't heard much on their thoughts or any progress on it being fixed. But the new vehicles they've shown for A22+ look to do the same as that mod you linked to with visual parts maybe becoming a mod item in the game. So that may be an option. But even his mod had new assets and wasn't serverside only as I believe he had ripped the vanilla vehicles and repacked them. Though that does make me wonder if it would be possible to make vehicle specific mods that activate/deactivate certain transforms that would accomplish the same thing. I may see how that works. Would give you a bit of variety while staying serverside.

 

I kind of figured you were coming from a serverside perspective. But the mod arramus has is about all you can do to stay serverside only. So hopefully TFP returns the ability to buff vehicles sooner rather than later.

 

So, just to clarify, would a client-side only mod that replaced only the texture or mesh not function at all (for reasons X, Y, or Z), or would they simply be not visible to other players (their clients would display unedited vanilla objects). If a simple transparency edit to the texture files could produce the desired look, that might do as a temporary measure.

 

Again, the idea is that this is only client side for me. Kind of like if you use a UI mod yourself without necessarily imposing that on other players.

 

Edited August 15, 2023 by FramFramson (see edit history)

[bdubyah]

Not likely as it would use xml, and that gets overridden by the server's xml when you join it.

[FramFramson]

34 minutes ago, bdubyah said:

Not likely as it would use xml, and that gets overridden by the server's xml when you join it.

 

Ah. So, if I get this correctly, if I tried that but I'm the host, it still wouldn't work because my game would be trying to impose the .xml changes on the other players joining, which would cause an error because it would be looking for an asset they don't have?

[bdubyah]

56 minutes ago, FramFramson said:

 

Ah. So, if I get this correctly, if I tried that but I'm the host, it still wouldn't work because my game would be trying to impose the .xml changes on the other players joining, which would cause an error because it would be looking for an asset they don't have?

If you had added a custom asset for the mesh, yes, it would error on their end.