Game mechanic explanation and tech (technical terms used!)
Jul 12, 2014 12:34:40 GMT
ch3rryboyhunter, Renegade1911, and 29 more like this
Post by CHILLI on Jul 12, 2014 12:34:40 GMT
So I've been chatting with some people in the various skype groups and finally decided to make a full list of things I've learned about GTA IV and V's mechanics that might be useful to some.
WARNING! This will involve technical terms! (but I'll still try to add some kind of "layman's term" explanations too)
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
Here's a list of findings with short descriptions. You'll find the full tests scattered throughout my posts in this thread.
:: Tuning Parts ::
Suspension
Lowers centre of mass/gravity, offsets entire suspension travel (appears to still have the same max travel length). Can also be used to tweak steering responsiveness. Stock reacts faster but is also twitchy, full upgrade is slightly sluggish. Test different upgrade levels on different cars until it feels right for you. There is no right or wrong here.
Wheel types
Any wheel type will make the car easier to control. Some types work better on some cars than others, so mess around with different types yourself to find what feels best.
Note: The traction is calculated based on the turning angle (known as slip angle). So a low slip angle means that the traction peak is reached when turning lightly, likewise a high slip angle reaches peak traction when turning sharply. Exceeding this angle causes the car to lose traction, so pick wisely depending on the car at hand.
Offroad: Very low slip angle. Thick tyrewall soaks bumps well (slightly better than Tuner).
- Potentially induces understeer on most cars. Superior stability but may restrict maneuverability.
Stock: Uses slip angle stated in the handling file (third traction param.) without any modifications. Tyrewall thickness varies from car to car.
- Good if you want snappy cornering without restricting maneuverability too much. Bump soaking might be sacrificed.
Lowrider: Close to stock slip angle. Thick tyrewall soaks bumps well.
- Is close to stock wheel cornering but assures you have some tyrewall to spare for bumps.
High-End: Fairly low optimal slip angle. Thin tyrewall barely soaks bumps.
- "Nervous" tendencies, can be good for aggressive driving. May feel unpredictable depending on your style.
- Has the most unique wheels of any type known to date:
* The "Carbon" variants at the end of the list increase anti-roll, making the car feel lighter.
SUV: "Sticky Slidey" behaviour. Fairly low slip angle with a quite sudden loss in traction. Thin tyrewall barely soaks bumps.
- Feels snappy, has tendencies to straighten out but may have more punishing oversteer.
Sports: 50/50 High-End/Tuner. Good for aggressive driving. Thin tyrewall barely soaks bumps.
- Is a little looser than High-End but still fairly snappy. Has very predictable oversteer and isnt too punishing.
Muscle: The "Sticky Slidey" equivalent to Tuners (fairly high slip angle but a little lower than Tuner). Thick tyrewall soaks bumps well.
- Similiar attributes to SUV but shares overall cornering ability from Tuner. Is on the looser side so it might appear unresponsive at times.
Tuner: Fairly high optimal slip angle. Thick tyrewall soaks bumps well.
- The loosest of them all. Good for maneuverability but needs a bit more finesse to get around a track compared to the other types.
- Has 3 known unique wheels to date:
* Slideways - shifts traction balance towards the front slightly.
* Countersteer - increases anti-roll strength. look ugly
* Rally Masters - increases anti-roll strength, shifts traction balance towards the front slightly.
Spoilers
Adding a spoiler to your car, if available, will greatly improve cornering. But depending on the size and placement of the spoiler you pick, you can tweak the grip balance. A larger spoiler will put more pressure on the nearest wheels (usually the rear), so it can be used to encourage understeer with a large spoiler or balanced grip with a small one. Used to tweak the handling to your preferences, so try different spoilers until you find what feels best.
Turbo
Adding this will increase the acceleration based on its "charge". It takes 2-3 seconds to go from non-turbo acceleration to full boost and it will drop back to no boost in around 1 second. Credits to fuksias for pointing this out.
+ Most Sports Classics and Muscles use a "supercharger" equivalent where it has 2 "buffers" compared to the single "buffer" in a regular turbo. Can appear in other cars too. Can be identified by two dials charging up when increasing revs instead of just one.
Transmission
Contrary to what the acceleration stat bar states this does not make you accelerate faster. What it does though is make gear shifts a lot faster so you waste less time not accelerating. And when upgrading from stock it adds 1 gear to the transmission that kicks in right before hitting top speed. When the last gear is engaged the car's driveForce appears to be equal to gear 1 or 2, giving it so much acceleration that it "locks" it into top speed. Also at this point you gain far more from curb boosts than the mid-gears, allowing you to exceed the top speed far easier and notably higher.
Note: When balancing cars for events transmission is definitly a good place to do the finest tweaks. If a car appears too strong when going at full speed then changing to stock transmission could be a good first step without sacrificing acceleration.
Engine (EMS)
Increases the driveForce of the car (raw acceleration). The effects are a shorter time to reach top speed, not counting gear changes. As the car goes from the start to the end of a gear the acceleration decreases similiarly to an "ease-out" math function, which is why it's possible to "get stuck" in a gear for longer periods of time.
Note: The Banshee 900R is an exception to this rule where drag is decreased and top speed is increased, allowing it to be so fast in a straight line. Also it's possible for cars to increase beyond 100%, making them faster than expected. Some cars on this list are Banshee, Futo and Slamvan just to name a few. Credits to Pardonias for helping with finding this out.
Math: The driveForce gets increased according to the formula: driveF + ((EMS% / 5) * driveF) where driveF is driveForce, EMS% is the upgrade percentage (50% upgrade = 0.5, 100% upgrade = 1 etc). So if we take our favorite showoff car the Dilettante with a driveForce of 0.1. So if we fully upgrade it the resulting acceleration is: 0.1 + (1/5)*0.1 = 0.12.
So in layman's terms for every 100% upgrade it adds 1/5 of its own acceleration. The stronger the car is originally the more it will get per 100%. Credits to Hertz for finding this out.
Other Cosmetical Parts
Going by the same logic as different spoilers, parts with additional collider shapes will alter the weight balance. For example bug catchers and spare wheels. You can find out if any part has an effect by bumping into it with your character or, if possible, hitting other objects with the car.
So lets start off where this crew is at, the driving. I'll have this split between button combos and physics engine tech.
Let's start with button combos.
Since GTA IV the player has had the ability to force cars and trucks to turn or remain relatively straight by using what I call the "burnout trick". As long as the car is losing a tiny bit of grip this should work just fine and can sometimes prevent going off the road completely.
This is done by holding both the gas & brake at the same time while turning. To remain in a somewhat straight line just turn a tiny bit. And to recover from oversteer just countersteer all the way and it should eventually go straight again. One thing to keep in mind is that, unlike IV, this effect is gradual and not instant. So thinking ahead about 1-2 seconds will make this very beneficial for bumpy roads and such. This has saved my car from spinning out in the downhill section of "Learning Curve" numerous times, so I'd recommend testing it there first.
Note: This will allow FWD cars to spin themselves out without ever touching the handbrake, so use it carefully for those. The response with those is near instant unlike AWD/4WD or RWD.
Theory behind this: As the car is losing grip it's sort of becoming a hybrid between "driving" and simply doing a burnout that lets you rotate the car. Since the cars are truly physical it wont just turn by turning the wheels, so some rotational force has been added when doing a burnout. It's this force that lets you do weird things like that even at high speeds.
Proof: I'm in the red Felon just ahead of meetmypyro at 2:28 in this video. Some quick thinking (probably more down to reflexes) saved me from wiping out and killing a pole thanks to this trick.
Making ramps and edges less of an obstacle by simply pretending to treat the car like a bike. Leaning back will help you with getting over small obstacles instead of stopping by them, but it also depends on the car's collision model. Some cars will simply insist to run into things if the collision model is too low.
Theory: Well... I have no idea how this makes any sense but I've had a lot of fun doing this in IV that's for sure. And I think I've managed to go over ramps a little faster than my opponents in V so it certainly does something. The physics engine probably keeps directional and rotational velocities in mind before doing the next physics update and also checks this when collision checks are called. I'd assume it checks movement and collision in such an order that this is possible before the car is moved in preparation for the next physics update, at which point the game thinks you've already gone over it or hit it at a seemingly odd angle which lets you ramp over the edge instead.
Gear Speed Shift(ing) or "GSS" (aka. "Short Shifting" dubbed by the community)
So recently word has started to spread that there's this technique that has been hidden behind curtains for the longest time. If you've read my old explanation (spoiler tag above) you can sort of figure out what I'm hinting at. To better explain what the game is actually trying to do here's an updated version:
In GTA IV & V the game will treat the throttle input as 3 things:
1. acceleration amount
2. driving "mode"
3. attempted driving "mode".
Not giving full throttle lets the game know you're not intending on going for full speed, so it goes into some sort of "eco drive" where it's fine to be in low revs at high gear. But depending on what you're doing with the input it will interpret your actions as one out of 2 things:
1. lowering throttle = heading towards "eco drive"
2. increasing throttle = heading towards max acceleration.
I'll get to number 1 in a moment. In situation 2, imagine cruising along at high gear in low revs (half-throttle) but suddenly mash the throttle to full input. The game will interpret this as "oh sh*t time to go fast" so it adjusts the gear to what's most appropriate for the current speed and, in this case, gears down to get more acceleration. However this has negative effects in a racing situation because the gear change time will cost you more than the acceleration you get out of it.
Moving on to situation 1 this is what's being abused when when attempting a GSS. It's most commonly used in conjunction with curb/bump boosting (explained below) by being in high revs + low gear and quickly tricking the game into thinking "eco drive time!" by letting off the throttle slightly (doesnt have to be all the way to 0) and shifting up. Because the speeds are presumably really similiar it wont bother gearing down again. But if you hit a bump boost right after shifting up you'll potentially get more out of it because you can accelerate at a constant rate, completely avoiding part of the boost being lost by a gear change half way through it.
While the gains are relatively small they will add up over the time span of a race. So the longer the race is going to be the more you'll get out of it. A single GSS wont make the difference between winning or losing so dont let it get in your way of having a good race.
Curb/Bump Boosting
This is probably the most well known bug in the game that lets you drive faster than intended by hitting bumps and dips in the road. After going back and forth between GTA IV and V trying to figure out the cause, I think I've finally got it.
So in both games the acceleration is relative to a combination of the current engine RPM, current gear, suspension stress and the speed difference between the current RPM-to-wheel vs. actual speed. What this means is that if you jump and increase the engine RPM before landing you'll get a small speed boost during the time the RPM goes back to match the current speed. A side effect of going over bumps is that the suspension stress may increase or decrease. If it decreases it will allow the vehicle to accelerate faster to the point where there isnt enough weight to provide decent traction.
Moving on to how the suspension works in V, things get more complicated and start to appear to break the laws of physics. Knowing how it works with a basic suspension setup (IV, as described above), it will make it easier to understand what's happening. When you add anti-roll/sway bars into the mix the otherwise fairly subtle effects in IV become a lot more pronounced. As one wheel of a wheel pair hits a bump the anti-roll bar will transfer some of that force to the opposite wheel in an attempt to keep the car body level. A side effect of this is that the estimated suspension stress will potentially become incorrect, allowing a wheel under high stress to keep accelerating the car at a more normal rate. The other wheel, which will be under less stress after the initial bump in additon to the anti-roll bar effects, is allowed to accelerate at a slightly higher rate than normal. Then to make things even more complicated the game has its pop-up effect when going over too large bumps which might cause the suspension to overcompensate or undercompensate. These things added together can lead to a sudden increase in engine RPM, thus leading to achieving a higher speed than intended for a short while before returning to the expected speed (hence why you have to keep boosting to keep the speed up).
Any fix?
There is (nearly) always a fix for every problem. The real problem here though is that fixing this bug would require a complete or partial rewrite of how the game calculates acceleration and engine RPM, which may or may not require the addition of more handling parameters to control the desired behaviour. Honestly I dont ever see this getting fixed for any existing game because going back and reconfiguring all the vehicles is just unrealistic to expect for a game of this scale despite the fact that it's built around heavy usage of vehicles.
Tech talk! My favorite!
GTA IV and V stand out from other games involving driving in the way that it does collision checks for the wheels a little differently than most.
For most games, imagine that the wheel is just a point. The smallest unit the engine can calculate. Then draw a line with that thickness downwards relative to the car. While driving over smoothly shaped surfaces you'll hardly notice the difference, but using this technique potholes and small edges can really be a pain to drive over if you're unlucky.
Luckily there's a solution called "Convex Cast". In IV and V the wheels of all vehicles (as far as I know) are represented as lowpoly cylinders (you know, those boxy wheels back in GTA SA. That level of detail but used for collision checks instead). This allows each wheel to climb edges and completely skip potholes possible without having to care about the random factor of spinning out from running over a toothpick. You can try this out for yourself by very slowly driving onto a sidewalk or over a fallen pole. Wheel size makes a difference.
EDIT: Turns out I wasnt seeing stuff. The tyrewall is no longer able to maintain full grip in V. 2-wheeling a car has more realistic punishment than in previous games.
Ever since IV we've seen some pretty complex damage going on with cars. But Rockstar decided to take this one step further with V and add in some more variables to the damage system (sorry guys, these are not found in the handling lines. You'll have to drive to notice this stuff and I'm sure you have already).
Wheel damage has gotten updated quite a bit. In IV we had to worry about the camber angle and displacement (the wheel having an odd angle and is moved away from it's original position). In V, specificly Online, this is the least of your problems now. The suspension will take a lot more damage than the wheel itself so even a light nudge can mess the handling up enough to lose significant time. I'm sure you've noticed that somewhat damaged wheels might give in under stress, as in the suspension for that wheel will suddenly just collapse briefly with a sudden rebound that can cause all sorts of problems. The main problem being spinning out, aswell as just having bad handling overall. If the wheel is also turning it will make turning a pain in the #%@ if it's too damaged. Problems ranging from simply understeering to even flipping the entire car.
Oh and by the way, the car's collision model will also deform slightly so a damaged car can also cause problems regarding hitting things. Low cars might run the risk of hitting tiny little imperfections (I have yet to experience this in V though).
Non-racing related but I'll throw it in here aswell for those wanting to kill people.
In short - Do you see the car windows? Yes. Do you see the car paint on the other side? Nope. Is the guy sitting behind the rear quarter of the car? Yes. Great, now shoot him!
As ridiculous as it might sound, you WILL hit the guy. The reason for this is simple. Detachable parts such as doors or fenders have their own collision boxes (so that they can hit the environment before and after being detached). So shooting through those is impossible. With the car body itself though it's just a shell. And since everyone noticed by now you can shoot through the windows of cars, this means that if a bullet can reach the interior of the car the person behind the car aswell as the car itself is running a high risk of getting damaged. So be careful when shooting the driver out with an auto-shotgun. Since shooting the area just in front of the rear wheels can cause cars to explode instantly, you can become your own enemy (aka. blowing yourself up in the process). You can test this for yourself by trying to pop the rear wheels through the front window. As long as that is possible, you can even shoot through cars and hit people down the street if you know where to aim. So next time you fight someone and use cars as cover, sit behind the doors as shots cant reach you there (your head or feet might still show on low cars though so that's still a problem of course).
I hope this has been informative and that you find this useful in the future. Who knows, maybe I'll find more cool tricks like these in the future.
TL;DR A bunch of cool stuff you should read. It involves an exploit muahahah
WARNING! This will involve technical terms! (but I'll still try to add some kind of "layman's term" explanations too)
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
Here's a list of findings with short descriptions. You'll find the full tests scattered throughout my posts in this thread.
:: Tuning Parts ::
Suspension
Lowers centre of mass/gravity, offsets entire suspension travel (appears to still have the same max travel length). Can also be used to tweak steering responsiveness. Stock reacts faster but is also twitchy, full upgrade is slightly sluggish. Test different upgrade levels on different cars until it feels right for you. There is no right or wrong here.
Wheel types
Any wheel type will make the car easier to control. Some types work better on some cars than others, so mess around with different types yourself to find what feels best.
Note: The traction is calculated based on the turning angle (known as slip angle). So a low slip angle means that the traction peak is reached when turning lightly, likewise a high slip angle reaches peak traction when turning sharply. Exceeding this angle causes the car to lose traction, so pick wisely depending on the car at hand.
Offroad: Very low slip angle. Thick tyrewall soaks bumps well (slightly better than Tuner).
- Potentially induces understeer on most cars. Superior stability but may restrict maneuverability.
Stock: Uses slip angle stated in the handling file (third traction param.) without any modifications. Tyrewall thickness varies from car to car.
- Good if you want snappy cornering without restricting maneuverability too much. Bump soaking might be sacrificed.
Lowrider: Close to stock slip angle. Thick tyrewall soaks bumps well.
- Is close to stock wheel cornering but assures you have some tyrewall to spare for bumps.
High-End: Fairly low optimal slip angle. Thin tyrewall barely soaks bumps.
- "Nervous" tendencies, can be good for aggressive driving. May feel unpredictable depending on your style.
- Has the most unique wheels of any type known to date:
* The "Carbon" variants at the end of the list increase anti-roll, making the car feel lighter.
SUV: "Sticky Slidey" behaviour. Fairly low slip angle with a quite sudden loss in traction. Thin tyrewall barely soaks bumps.
- Feels snappy, has tendencies to straighten out but may have more punishing oversteer.
Sports: 50/50 High-End/Tuner. Good for aggressive driving. Thin tyrewall barely soaks bumps.
- Is a little looser than High-End but still fairly snappy. Has very predictable oversteer and isnt too punishing.
Muscle: The "Sticky Slidey" equivalent to Tuners (fairly high slip angle but a little lower than Tuner). Thick tyrewall soaks bumps well.
- Similiar attributes to SUV but shares overall cornering ability from Tuner. Is on the looser side so it might appear unresponsive at times.
Tuner: Fairly high optimal slip angle. Thick tyrewall soaks bumps well.
- The loosest of them all. Good for maneuverability but needs a bit more finesse to get around a track compared to the other types.
- Has 3 known unique wheels to date:
* Slideways - shifts traction balance towards the front slightly.
* Countersteer - increases anti-roll strength. look ugly
* Rally Masters - increases anti-roll strength, shifts traction balance towards the front slightly.
Spoilers
Adding a spoiler to your car, if available, will greatly improve cornering. But depending on the size and placement of the spoiler you pick, you can tweak the grip balance. A larger spoiler will put more pressure on the nearest wheels (usually the rear), so it can be used to encourage understeer with a large spoiler or balanced grip with a small one. Used to tweak the handling to your preferences, so try different spoilers until you find what feels best.
Turbo
Adding this will increase the acceleration based on its "charge". It takes 2-3 seconds to go from non-turbo acceleration to full boost and it will drop back to no boost in around 1 second. Credits to fuksias for pointing this out.
+ Most Sports Classics and Muscles use a "supercharger" equivalent where it has 2 "buffers" compared to the single "buffer" in a regular turbo. Can appear in other cars too. Can be identified by two dials charging up when increasing revs instead of just one.
Transmission
Contrary to what the acceleration stat bar states this does not make you accelerate faster. What it does though is make gear shifts a lot faster so you waste less time not accelerating. And when upgrading from stock it adds 1 gear to the transmission that kicks in right before hitting top speed. When the last gear is engaged the car's driveForce appears to be equal to gear 1 or 2, giving it so much acceleration that it "locks" it into top speed. Also at this point you gain far more from curb boosts than the mid-gears, allowing you to exceed the top speed far easier and notably higher.
Note: When balancing cars for events transmission is definitly a good place to do the finest tweaks. If a car appears too strong when going at full speed then changing to stock transmission could be a good first step without sacrificing acceleration.
Engine (EMS)
Increases the driveForce of the car (raw acceleration). The effects are a shorter time to reach top speed, not counting gear changes. As the car goes from the start to the end of a gear the acceleration decreases similiarly to an "ease-out" math function, which is why it's possible to "get stuck" in a gear for longer periods of time.
Note: The Banshee 900R is an exception to this rule where drag is decreased and top speed is increased, allowing it to be so fast in a straight line. Also it's possible for cars to increase beyond 100%, making them faster than expected. Some cars on this list are Banshee, Futo and Slamvan just to name a few. Credits to Pardonias for helping with finding this out.
Math: The driveForce gets increased according to the formula: driveF + ((EMS% / 5) * driveF) where driveF is driveForce, EMS% is the upgrade percentage (50% upgrade = 0.5, 100% upgrade = 1 etc). So if we take our favorite showoff car the Dilettante with a driveForce of 0.1. So if we fully upgrade it the resulting acceleration is: 0.1 + (1/5)*0.1 = 0.12.
So in layman's terms for every 100% upgrade it adds 1/5 of its own acceleration. The stronger the car is originally the more it will get per 100%. Credits to Hertz for finding this out.
Other Cosmetical Parts
Going by the same logic as different spoilers, parts with additional collider shapes will alter the weight balance. For example bug catchers and spare wheels. You can find out if any part has an effect by bumping into it with your character or, if possible, hitting other objects with the car.
So lets start off where this crew is at, the driving. I'll have this split between button combos and physics engine tech.
Let's start with button combos.
Since GTA IV the player has had the ability to force cars and trucks to turn or remain relatively straight by using what I call the "burnout trick". As long as the car is losing a tiny bit of grip this should work just fine and can sometimes prevent going off the road completely.
This is done by holding both the gas & brake at the same time while turning. To remain in a somewhat straight line just turn a tiny bit. And to recover from oversteer just countersteer all the way and it should eventually go straight again. One thing to keep in mind is that, unlike IV, this effect is gradual and not instant. So thinking ahead about 1-2 seconds will make this very beneficial for bumpy roads and such. This has saved my car from spinning out in the downhill section of "Learning Curve" numerous times, so I'd recommend testing it there first.
Note: This will allow FWD cars to spin themselves out without ever touching the handbrake, so use it carefully for those. The response with those is near instant unlike AWD/4WD or RWD.
Theory behind this: As the car is losing grip it's sort of becoming a hybrid between "driving" and simply doing a burnout that lets you rotate the car. Since the cars are truly physical it wont just turn by turning the wheels, so some rotational force has been added when doing a burnout. It's this force that lets you do weird things like that even at high speeds.
Proof: I'm in the red Felon just ahead of meetmypyro at 2:28 in this video. Some quick thinking (probably more down to reflexes) saved me from wiping out and killing a pole thanks to this trick.
Making ramps and edges less of an obstacle by simply pretending to treat the car like a bike. Leaning back will help you with getting over small obstacles instead of stopping by them, but it also depends on the car's collision model. Some cars will simply insist to run into things if the collision model is too low.
Theory: Well... I have no idea how this makes any sense but I've had a lot of fun doing this in IV that's for sure. And I think I've managed to go over ramps a little faster than my opponents in V so it certainly does something. The physics engine probably keeps directional and rotational velocities in mind before doing the next physics update and also checks this when collision checks are called. I'd assume it checks movement and collision in such an order that this is possible before the car is moved in preparation for the next physics update, at which point the game thinks you've already gone over it or hit it at a seemingly odd angle which lets you ramp over the edge instead.
Gear Speed Shift(ing) or "GSS" (aka. "Short Shifting" dubbed by the community)
{Old Explanation}
Old Explanation...
Stuck redlining? Getting a slow entry for dirt roads? Let go off the gas for a split second to let the game rethink the gearing. But be careful because if you're taking a sharp turn and want to keep your current gear you dont want to let go all the way, so make sure you always apply some input so you dont screw yourself over by letting the car change gear at bad moments (though inevitable from time to time). But in the case of GTA V just let it redline, believe it or not you'll keep accelerating at the current gear's normal rate. The way accelerating works for cars with more than 1 gear (not counting reverse) is that it divides the acceleration by the current gear number. So gear 1 is (1/1), gear 2 (1/2), gear 3 (1/3) and so on. So the lower gear you are in the better as the acceleration is cut less. A forceful way to keep it in low gear is known as Mid Drive Speed Boosting (or the rather cringy name Double Clutching as you may have heard of before) where a combination of letting off the throttle and tapping the handbrake at the right moment will force a downshift and get it stuck there for a moment.
Note: Mid Drive Speed Boosting is unrealistic and, even disregarding realism, defies logic. The rotation speed of the wheels is a direct relation to the engine RPM (granted that the clutch is enganged). If the engine is no longer increasing its RPM, like redlining, the wheels wont either so the speed remains constant until it's put into a higher gear. But hey, it's a part of the game so more power to you if you can make use of it.
Stuck redlining? Getting a slow entry for dirt roads? Let go off the gas for a split second to let the game rethink the gearing. But be careful because if you're taking a sharp turn and want to keep your current gear you dont want to let go all the way, so make sure you always apply some input so you dont screw yourself over by letting the car change gear at bad moments (though inevitable from time to time). But in the case of GTA V just let it redline, believe it or not you'll keep accelerating at the current gear's normal rate. The way accelerating works for cars with more than 1 gear (not counting reverse) is that it divides the acceleration by the current gear number. So gear 1 is (1/1), gear 2 (1/2), gear 3 (1/3) and so on. So the lower gear you are in the better as the acceleration is cut less. A forceful way to keep it in low gear is known as Mid Drive Speed Boosting (or the rather cringy name Double Clutching as you may have heard of before) where a combination of letting off the throttle and tapping the handbrake at the right moment will force a downshift and get it stuck there for a moment.
Note: Mid Drive Speed Boosting is unrealistic and, even disregarding realism, defies logic. The rotation speed of the wheels is a direct relation to the engine RPM (granted that the clutch is enganged). If the engine is no longer increasing its RPM, like redlining, the wheels wont either so the speed remains constant until it's put into a higher gear. But hey, it's a part of the game so more power to you if you can make use of it.
So recently word has started to spread that there's this technique that has been hidden behind curtains for the longest time. If you've read my old explanation (spoiler tag above) you can sort of figure out what I'm hinting at. To better explain what the game is actually trying to do here's an updated version:
In GTA IV & V the game will treat the throttle input as 3 things:
1. acceleration amount
2. driving "mode"
3. attempted driving "mode".
Not giving full throttle lets the game know you're not intending on going for full speed, so it goes into some sort of "eco drive" where it's fine to be in low revs at high gear. But depending on what you're doing with the input it will interpret your actions as one out of 2 things:
1. lowering throttle = heading towards "eco drive"
2. increasing throttle = heading towards max acceleration.
I'll get to number 1 in a moment. In situation 2, imagine cruising along at high gear in low revs (half-throttle) but suddenly mash the throttle to full input. The game will interpret this as "oh sh*t time to go fast" so it adjusts the gear to what's most appropriate for the current speed and, in this case, gears down to get more acceleration. However this has negative effects in a racing situation because the gear change time will cost you more than the acceleration you get out of it.
Moving on to situation 1 this is what's being abused when when attempting a GSS. It's most commonly used in conjunction with curb/bump boosting (explained below) by being in high revs + low gear and quickly tricking the game into thinking "eco drive time!" by letting off the throttle slightly (doesnt have to be all the way to 0) and shifting up. Because the speeds are presumably really similiar it wont bother gearing down again. But if you hit a bump boost right after shifting up you'll potentially get more out of it because you can accelerate at a constant rate, completely avoiding part of the boost being lost by a gear change half way through it.
While the gains are relatively small they will add up over the time span of a race. So the longer the race is going to be the more you'll get out of it. A single GSS wont make the difference between winning or losing so dont let it get in your way of having a good race.
Curb/Bump Boosting
This is probably the most well known bug in the game that lets you drive faster than intended by hitting bumps and dips in the road. After going back and forth between GTA IV and V trying to figure out the cause, I think I've finally got it.
So in both games the acceleration is relative to a combination of the current engine RPM, current gear, suspension stress and the speed difference between the current RPM-to-wheel vs. actual speed. What this means is that if you jump and increase the engine RPM before landing you'll get a small speed boost during the time the RPM goes back to match the current speed. A side effect of going over bumps is that the suspension stress may increase or decrease. If it decreases it will allow the vehicle to accelerate faster to the point where there isnt enough weight to provide decent traction.
Moving on to how the suspension works in V, things get more complicated and start to appear to break the laws of physics. Knowing how it works with a basic suspension setup (IV, as described above), it will make it easier to understand what's happening. When you add anti-roll/sway bars into the mix the otherwise fairly subtle effects in IV become a lot more pronounced. As one wheel of a wheel pair hits a bump the anti-roll bar will transfer some of that force to the opposite wheel in an attempt to keep the car body level. A side effect of this is that the estimated suspension stress will potentially become incorrect, allowing a wheel under high stress to keep accelerating the car at a more normal rate. The other wheel, which will be under less stress after the initial bump in additon to the anti-roll bar effects, is allowed to accelerate at a slightly higher rate than normal. Then to make things even more complicated the game has its pop-up effect when going over too large bumps which might cause the suspension to overcompensate or undercompensate. These things added together can lead to a sudden increase in engine RPM, thus leading to achieving a higher speed than intended for a short while before returning to the expected speed (hence why you have to keep boosting to keep the speed up).
Any fix?
There is (nearly) always a fix for every problem. The real problem here though is that fixing this bug would require a complete or partial rewrite of how the game calculates acceleration and engine RPM, which may or may not require the addition of more handling parameters to control the desired behaviour. Honestly I dont ever see this getting fixed for any existing game because going back and reconfiguring all the vehicles is just unrealistic to expect for a game of this scale despite the fact that it's built around heavy usage of vehicles.
Tech talk! My favorite!
GTA IV and V stand out from other games involving driving in the way that it does collision checks for the wheels a little differently than most.
For most games, imagine that the wheel is just a point. The smallest unit the engine can calculate. Then draw a line with that thickness downwards relative to the car. While driving over smoothly shaped surfaces you'll hardly notice the difference, but using this technique potholes and small edges can really be a pain to drive over if you're unlucky.
Luckily there's a solution called "Convex Cast". In IV and V the wheels of all vehicles (as far as I know) are represented as lowpoly cylinders (you know, those boxy wheels back in GTA SA. That level of detail but used for collision checks instead). This allows each wheel to climb edges and completely skip potholes possible without having to care about the random factor of spinning out from running over a toothpick. You can try this out for yourself by very slowly driving onto a sidewalk or over a fallen pole. Wheel size makes a difference.
EDIT: Turns out I wasnt seeing stuff. The tyrewall is no longer able to maintain full grip in V. 2-wheeling a car has more realistic punishment than in previous games.
Ever since IV we've seen some pretty complex damage going on with cars. But Rockstar decided to take this one step further with V and add in some more variables to the damage system (sorry guys, these are not found in the handling lines. You'll have to drive to notice this stuff and I'm sure you have already).
Wheel damage has gotten updated quite a bit. In IV we had to worry about the camber angle and displacement (the wheel having an odd angle and is moved away from it's original position). In V, specificly Online, this is the least of your problems now. The suspension will take a lot more damage than the wheel itself so even a light nudge can mess the handling up enough to lose significant time. I'm sure you've noticed that somewhat damaged wheels might give in under stress, as in the suspension for that wheel will suddenly just collapse briefly with a sudden rebound that can cause all sorts of problems. The main problem being spinning out, aswell as just having bad handling overall. If the wheel is also turning it will make turning a pain in the #%@ if it's too damaged. Problems ranging from simply understeering to even flipping the entire car.
Oh and by the way, the car's collision model will also deform slightly so a damaged car can also cause problems regarding hitting things. Low cars might run the risk of hitting tiny little imperfections (I have yet to experience this in V though).
Non-racing related but I'll throw it in here aswell for those wanting to kill people.
In short - Do you see the car windows? Yes. Do you see the car paint on the other side? Nope. Is the guy sitting behind the rear quarter of the car? Yes. Great, now shoot him!
As ridiculous as it might sound, you WILL hit the guy. The reason for this is simple. Detachable parts such as doors or fenders have their own collision boxes (so that they can hit the environment before and after being detached). So shooting through those is impossible. With the car body itself though it's just a shell. And since everyone noticed by now you can shoot through the windows of cars, this means that if a bullet can reach the interior of the car the person behind the car aswell as the car itself is running a high risk of getting damaged. So be careful when shooting the driver out with an auto-shotgun. Since shooting the area just in front of the rear wheels can cause cars to explode instantly, you can become your own enemy (aka. blowing yourself up in the process). You can test this for yourself by trying to pop the rear wheels through the front window. As long as that is possible, you can even shoot through cars and hit people down the street if you know where to aim. So next time you fight someone and use cars as cover, sit behind the doors as shots cant reach you there (your head or feet might still show on low cars though so that's still a problem of course).
I hope this has been informative and that you find this useful in the future. Who knows, maybe I'll find more cool tricks like these in the future.
TL;DR A bunch of cool stuff you should read. It involves an exploit muahahah
