Converting GTA 3 & Vice City Handling
If you have a skim through my GTA 3 Handling Definition and my GTA Vice City Handling Definition you will probably notice that there are a lot of things very similar or exactly the same. Basically, the only differences are these:
- GTA 3 has no Suspension Anti-dive (column ad) parameter to artificially limit the pitching of the vehicle when accelerating and braking.
- GTA 3 only has the four bytes of ModelFlags data whilst GTA Vice City has seven. The smallest four bytes (the ones on the right end) are the same for both, though.
Converting from GTA 3 to GTA Vice City
In this example I will use the original Sentinel setup from GTA 3:
SENTINEL 1400.0 2.0 4.9 1.6 0.0 0.2 -0.20 75 0.91 0.80 0.55 5 165.0 24.0 R P 10.17 0.55 0 30. 1. 0.13 0. 0.8 35000 0.27 -0.15 0.5 8002 0 1The GTA 3 format does not have the Suspension Anti-dive so we need to add it. Find column ac of the SENTINEL line. You will find 0.5 is the current value becase it is the Suspension Bias column in this edition. We need to insert the anti-dive setting after this, so place a 0.0 after it to indicate no Suspension Anti-dive effect. Make sure there is at least one space or tab between the two values.
As GTA 3 does not have the extra ModelFlags features available in GTA Vice City so we can just leave the ModelFlags as they are. Hey, you have just converted the handling! You should have something like this:
SENTINEL 1400.0 2.0 4.9 1.6 0.0 0.2 -0.20 75 0.91 0.80 0.55 5 165.0 24.0 R P 10.17 0.55 0 30. 1. 0.13 0. 0.8 35000 0.27 -0.15 0.5 0.0 8002 0 1Converting from GTA Vice City to GTA 3
In this example I will use the original Sentinel setup from GTA Vice City:
SENTINEL 1400.0 2.0 4.9 1.6 0.0 0.2 -0.20 75 0.91 0.80 0.55 5 165.0 24.0 R P 10.17 0.55 0 30.0 1.3 0.13 0.2 0.56 35000 0.27 -0.15 0.5 0.3 8102 0 1As the GTA Vice City format does have the Suspension Anti-dive we need to remove it. Find column ad of the Sentinel setup and you will find 0.3 is the current value. Delete this number but make sure there is still at least one space or tab between the remaining values.
As GTA Vice City has extra ModelFlags data for some cars, make sure the ModelFlags data is no longer than four characters. If it is five, six or seven characters long then delete characters from the left. This will leave the four smallest bytes which are supported by both GTA 3 and GTA Vice City.
The Sentinel only uses the first four bytes. If it had something like 1008102, to enable FAT_REAR tyres, you would remove the 100 from the left. The completed line should look something like this:
SENTINEL 1400.0 2.0 4.9 1.6 0.0 0.2 -0.20 75 0.91 0.80 0.55 5 165.0 24.0 R P 10.17 0.55 0 30.0 1.3 0.13 0.2 0.56 35000 0.27 -0.15 0.5 8102 0 1Advanced Users
Although what I have just stated will get the handling to work in both editions, there are some slight differences in how the games react to certain settings. You will find that in GTA 3 you must use a Brake Bias of nearly 0.5 to stop the front or rear wheels locking. In GTA Vice City you will normally need a setting around 0.65 because there is much stronger weight shifting in GTA Vice City.
You may also find that you have to reduce the Brake Force when coverting to GTA 3. You may need to increase it when converting to GTA Vice City to get the maximum braking without all the wheels stopping.
In GTA 3, the 1G_BOOST feature of ModelFlags gives a very powerful acceleration boost at low speeds. This makes it easy to spin the wheels of cars and do donuts but in GTA Vice City this effect was reduced, so it is not as easy to do donuts. The stronger boost in GTA 3 also allows steeper hills to be climbed than in GTA Vice City.