Help me make GTA IV playable! (Car physics)

Farout Foolio

As we all know, GTA IV has one of the worst car physics engines of all time. OF ALL TIME. </R. Kelly>
I have searched for a comprehensive mod to make it better, but the majority of what I find are either mods that make the driving more 'realistic', (Making it even worse somehow) or an app that allows me to edit car physics car by car and value by value. (Which would require hours and hours of trial and error.)
Does anyone know of a good mod that just makes driving a bit easier?

Esh

Farout Foolio wrote: »

As we all know, GTA IV has one of the worst car physics engines of all time. OF ALL TIME. </R. Kelly>
I have searched for a comprehensive mod to make it better, but the majority of what I find are either mods that make the driving more 'realistic', (Making it even worse somehow) or an app that allows me to edit car physics car by car and value by value. (Which would require hours and hours of trial and error.)
Does anyone know of a good mod that just makes driving a bit easier?

No, but I think you meant </K. West>.

Namel3ss

Also, I think Deadly Premonition has the driving physics beat.

Malkor

If you play it for a few hours you can get used to it I guess.

Adus

The handling.dat file in the GTA4 folder will allow you to change car physics, but I'm afraid I don't know more than that. At least anything other than the fact that altering 'wbias' to a negative value makes cars have negative friction and go crazy.

ashridah

Pretty sure this goes here:

http://youtu.be/wmG8nO0-IhI

I had similar pains with gta4, so much so that i put it down and didn't actually play it all the way through until almost a year later, on PC, instead of xbox. It took me a long time to accept it, and i still prefer gta:sa's car handling over gta4's.

saltiness

If by worst car physics engine you mean 1000x better than the previous GTA games then you're right.

Have you tried looking for a mod which emulates GTA3 driving physics?

Farout Foolio

Esh wrote: »

Farout Foolio wrote: »

As we all know, GTA IV has one of the worst car physics engines of all time. OF ALL TIME. </R. Kelly>
I have searched for a comprehensive mod to make it better, but the majority of what I find are either mods that make the driving more 'realistic', (Making it even worse somehow) or an app that allows me to edit car physics car by car and value by value. (Which would require hours and hours of trial and error.)
Does anyone know of a good mod that just makes driving a bit easier?

No, but I think you meant </K. West>.

D'oh.

Oh man, I love those carmageddon videos. I wonder what would happen if you got into one and tried to drive it...

Adus

You can't get in. As soon as you pull the handle on the door the car [vidURL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw4hp-nLBdI#t=05m19s&quot;]flies away[/vidURL]. Maybe if you could find a car without a door...

glithert

I love the driving physics in GTA 4. This thread confuses and disturbs me.

Donovan Puppyfucker

glithert wrote: »

I love the driving physics in GTA 4. This thread confuses and disturbs me.

Really? The car physics pissed me off. Fuck-all lateral grip, terrible braking, handbrake usage resulting in wildly inaccurate response... I know real cars made for the American market aren't exactly world-renowned for their handling prowess but come the fuck on Rockstar. That was totally unrealistic in a game that was meant to be super-realistic.

This was on PS3, just after game launch. I've never finished the game, but not because of the shitty car physics. Maybe it's been patched and is a bit better now, but whatever. I find it very difficult to drum up interest in the game, and I've owned every previous GTA (except for London 1969).

Asiina

I don't know if it's just the PC version but it definitely felt that you were driving on ice. Trying to turn at any velocity would cause the car to just spin out or miss the turn and slam into the corner of a building.

I used this program: http://www.gtagaming.com/downloads/gta-iv/tools/1825

But it's one of those that had all of the physics options. What you can do is find a car you like that doesn't drive like ass (some of the really nice ones actually have good handling) and the program I used had a mass-change option so all cars would behave like that car.

If you do want to tweak I believe it's the stuff in brakes & traction you'll want to alter. To find out which direction you want to change the numbers look at the difference in numbers between a crappy car and a good car and then just move them further in that direction.

It really improved the game about a billion percent.

Blarghy

I remember playing GTA4 and just giving up on driving places and instead took taxis/subway everywhere. Then I realized how ridiculous it was to play a game named Grand Theft AUTO where it was more fun to take public transportation than friggin' drive.

OnTheLastCastle

You should get better at it. I thought it was terrible at first, but with some (not much) practice I was popping the emergency brake and squealing around corners. It's perfectly serviceable.

Adus

If you're driving a car at 70mph in real life, stopping quickly is going to cause you to skid. The driving is far more realistic than previous games, and it actually makes the cars feel like they have weight to them, rather than the plastic toy route the previous games and Saints Row take. That said I can see why people simply wouldn't find it fun. Some people just prefer control over realism in a game. I merely just disagree that GTA4's physics are bad, or that they made a poor choice by doing it that way. I quite enjoyed it.

Asiina

I think it doesn't really matter if other people find it better or more realistic. Some people just don't enjoy the changes to the driving system.

The point is that the OP doesn't like it, and there are mods that improve the handling to be more like the other games.

ashridah

Blarghy wrote: »

I remember playing GTA4 and just giving up on driving places and instead took taxis/subway everywhere. Then I realized how ridiculous it was to play a game named Grand Theft AUTO where it was more fun to take public transportation than friggin' drive.

this, ever so much. In my second playthrough, i took a taxi almost everywhere. It's just too big of a world to drive from one end to the other, and the placement of weapons, mission start points, etc, just doesn't make the game fun for me. Particularly if i mess am ission up, and now have to drive all the way back from times square back to some place a long way away, then listen to an entire car-ride of dialog again (at least they had a presence of mind to add variety to some of the dialog in this case!)

That said, if i've got time to kill, driving around randomly and jumping off stuff was perfectly awesome. It just depends on what i'm trying to do in a game.

Project Mayhem

Blarghy wrote: »

I remember playing GTA4 and just giving up on driving places and instead took taxis/subway everywhere. Then I realized how ridiculous it was to play a game named Grand Theft AUTO where it was more fun to take public transportation than friggin' drive.

This is actually the most realistic part of GTA4. I would HATE to drive places here. Go public transportation!

DiannaoChong

If you do singleplayer, I am pretty sure it mucks your driving up for you as you are "new" to the country, and it quickly returns to normal as you play a bit into it. I could be wrong on this though. But I always felt like going from driving at end game to driving at the beginning it really feels like Niko just doesn't know how to drive at the start. It could just be Romans car being absolutely terrible.

Farout Foolio

I think that's more a result of the cars getting better as you move away from the slummish areas of the city to the more affluent bigger city areas late in the game. And yeah, Roman's taxi is terribad.
Thanks for the link Asiina. I took the stats for the ferrari equivalent and applied them to every car. Let's see how this works!

And I know my opening statements could be seen as somewhat hyperbolic, but I enjoy a good colorful exaggeration now and then. :b

Lucid

I don't know if it's just the PC version but it definitely felt that you were driving on ice. Trying to turn at any velocity would cause the car to just spin out or miss the turn and slam into the corner of a building.

This likely has more to do with skill level. When I first started the game I felt the same way. As I've played it over the last month or so, I've become better at driving, and with certain cars I can turn corners fairly easily at high speeds. I don't really understand why people have an issue with incremental buildup in this regard. In a game focused on driving, why would you want it to be easy from the beginning? Also, wiping out can be fun during a chase sometimes.

Tube

This isn't a discussion forum guys