Oh well, actually it doesn't matter anymore since his acess is restricted from the forums Welp, my bad lmao.
ok but I literally cannot figure out how to do half the stuff I need to. Everyone just says look at stock cars and figure it out but I don’t function that way. The documentation is useless and I can’t reverse engineer for my life.
You can model well, at least way better than me, it would be a shame if your models have gone to waste just because Jbeam is hard for you. Don't give up, eventually there will be documentation, and some people will help you with the stuff you need if you ask.
The only reason I’m good at modeling is because there are lots of resources available to do it. It’s not just a BeamNG specific thing. It’s been a year and while I’ve had some help here and there, nobody has showed up yet to teach me how to do the things I need to do (custom texturing, jbeaming engines, basic lua, hydros, etc.) They either are wayyyy too vague, basically assuming I’m knowing what I’m doing, or just don’t help at all. Someone has to like, get on a discord call with me and walk through exactly what I need to do and why step by step. I know it’ll never happen, because nobody gives a crap. So yes, my models will just go to waste and stay on my computer until somebody shows up who cares, or I magically am able to learn by reading. Uh, no I won’t lol. That’s not how it works. I don’t just learn by existing I learn by doing and having somebody teach me. And actually teach me, not tell me 2 things and expect me to know what the hell it means.
All the things you listed are documented on the old wiki. Not sure what you mean by custom texturing but there are many guidelines on it as well as a whole workflow page. Most of the engine Jbeam is explained there, the smartest thing to do is to copy an existing engine and change everything you need to, there are many things that basically stay the same for all modern engines and only differ for very old ones like the Burnside or Bluebuck. Basic LUA (not BeamNG specific) you can learn from tutorials outside of the game, in BeamNG it works exactly the same and just has some extra functionality that should be mostly documented on the old wiki. As for hydros they are really easy, they are just beams with extra settings that enable them to change length based on input, you specify what input (it's documented on the old wiki what inputs it accepts), the in and out rate, the limit, and if it's steering then other things related to steering too which you basically copy from an existing car and increase or decrease until you are happy with it. If I was good at explaining (which apparently I'm not) I would help you with stuff like this.
the old wiki is horrible. Cant follow anything on there. also.. everything you just explained doesn't really help either no offense. its just exactly what I said, explaining like I know and being too vague. you gotta actually show me for me to understand, not show me a crappy webpage and say like 3 sentences no offense. I know what I need to do, but not how to do it.