What do you guys think of the private mod/meshslap stuff on the community screenshots thread?

Depends on how well the editing was done, but it shouldn't meet the technical definition, no. I think the original term was more a synonym of "Russian mod", i.e. a stolen model on a literal unchanged JBeam. Someone wanted, say, a Lamborghini Murcielago in Beam, but they didn't want to put any effort into it, so they just slapped it onto an unedited JBeam from whatever car seemed most similar to them. It'll have textures and mapping that look "off" in Beam due to being set up for a different game, it'll spike and look stupid when it crashes, it'll drive completely different from the real thing, the torquecurve and gearbox type/ratios will probably just be whatever the original Beam car's were, it may even be the wrong size or have the wrong drive wheels. This kind of thing was rampant in the early days of the game when it didn't have much content but was all over YouTube (I may have actually found the game through a YBR video YouTube shoved at me), but is less so now that the game is more mature and everyone knows not to download mods from sketchy third-party websites.

At this point, I would say that any mod which really looked and functioned like a true "Russian mod" would be an outright nostalgia piece.

 

Meshslaps and private mods are ok, until they all being called "Russian mod"

 

"meshSLAP"

*Davie504 has entered the chat*

OT: I got nothing...

 

I hate that this is off topic but I love Davie504. I am conflicted lol

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the term meshslap seems to have came much later than the Russian mod term

 

i meant unless.
bad english

 

I've read through this thread and there seems to be lots of confusion between different terms and stuff here so I'll try to give my opinion and clear some stuff up.
For a start, the term "russian" mods dates back to the early years of the game where users (usually not active on the forums) created quick mods that were usually 2013 grand marshal jbeams with a gta sa forza model slapped on top, usually just so they can have their favourite car in the game or whatever. These were then uploaded to "russian" sites, namedly modsgaming.ru since the forums wouldn't accept the low quality nature of them, which is where the term "russian mod" came from. Since all these external mod sites reupload everything they get their hands on since it makes a lot of money, these mods spread to every dodgy mod site to ever exist it seems so tracing the origins and credits of things has become pretty hard. Most of these were made by a russian guy called 58_gram, who up until around the start of this year still used the same 2013 grand marshal and gta sa model formula. This created the reputation that all "russian" modders were lazy and didn't want to improve, although some other users of these sites put some sort of effort into their mods. This can be seen with some of the older mods like the various old russian trucks which were pretty heavily modified d series 6x6 jbeams, and the uaz 2206 which idek what jbeam that was but it was pretty heavily edited from whatever it was originally.

Now, for the "meshslap" stuff. The term was coined around late 2017 when there was a sudden popularity with making quick, usually supercar mods for fun which were bolide or sbr jbeams with usually a real racing 3 model. These were given out in groups and ran rampant in community screenshots, and within like a month started to make their way onto modsgaming (this is where the whole leaking private mods started). This was what gave birth to the meshslap name, which was used to describe the mods that were untouched jbeams with a barely edited game model slapped on top with some semi decent materials to make it look good in screenshots. After that had stopped, modders started to move on and actually put some sort of effort into their mods, but as the private mods evolved so did what people considered a "meshslap" to the point where you could scratch model something and use heavily modified stock jbeams from 3 different official vehicles and you'd still start a flamewar over your mod being a shit meshslap with no effort and the creator is the worst person ever in the world. I'm not saying that that's what every private mod is now, but for the most part there's at least some effort put into fixing and reworking models to make them more suitable, making jbeams actually fit and function like they should (stuff like gullwing doors, tailgates instead of boots, unique parts that just wouldn't work as a stretched existing model where it's needed) but since these are more safely guarded they usually never make their way to the depths of modsgaming and nobody can get their hands on them, leading them to be assumed as shitty meshslaps because they're private and there's nothing to say otherwise.

There's been a big argument from both sides of the forum recently over whether these should be allowed or not, with pretty much the entire modding community being split over what's considered "low effort", a "meshslap" etc. I'm yet to figure out myself how "banning" these would work as some people are suggesting, since then that needs a clear definition which nobody could ever agree on here in the current state of this forum. How much jbeam editing stops it being a meshslap? How much editing has to happen to the model to make it "suitible"? How can this be proved? Do we have to sent every mod to nadeox or leeloo to be checked if it can be posted? would a mod have to be publically released or going to be publically released to post a screenshot, meaning the ban extends to everything that's private (or in addition originally or leaked onto external sites only)? how would that be enforced? would we have to have every image approved by nadeox or leeloo to make sure there's nothing "private" or "meshslap" in it? I am yet to figure out how you can ban such a loose and broad idea of a mod fairly and then enforce it properly too, as if the moderators don't have enough stress from banning people over the 25 meshslap arguments a day already. This is especially difficult since so far, apart from brief acklowledgements from a couple staff members, there's no official recognition of quality guidelines for mods or even staff officially recognised definitions of a "meshslap" so that would have to be sorted out too. I've heard a fair bit before about internal issues with the devs too so i'd imagine there would be lots of conflicting opinions there. Unless the staff come ahead and even give us a clean definition of what they would consider a "meshslap" and what is and isn't allowed regarding them I doubt anything is ever going to go anywhere productive arguing over them
rant(?) over

fucking hell i accidently wrote an essay there, apologies for that i got carried away i think

 

One of these days I miss the informative button
Could have actually used it here

 

I personally think, let anyone upload any mod they want regardless of quality. if they gain a reputation for making crappy mods, that's on them.
I find it kind of funny that in general, the people who complain about decent quality mods and call them meshslaps are usually people who've never opened a Jbeam file.

 

my personal opinion is that everyone can use meshslaps if they want,i wouldnt want a meshslap,otherwise this is a game that wants to be portrayed realisticly as possible so I use "quality" mods that are realistic with crash physics(sorry if i screwed my post,english isnt my first language)

 

I only now noticed that. Why did they remove it??

 

getting offtopic, but a few weeks ago they removed it because apparently people were abusing it.

 

it's been abused for a while, basically used as a passive agressive "fuck you"
so they got rid of it

 

My opinion:
I kinda hate meshlaps, but that doesn't mean they are ALL bad, you can fit an 80's silverado on a D series perfectly. But Alexio's Vivano(no offense) stinks. I downloaded it and when I used it in Beam, reversing into something sucks because you are reversing a D series. But not all Meshlaps are bad of course, some can be very good.

 

I mean divisive opinion but that ae86(saw you there earlier) is more or less a meshslap so that’s not an entirely true statement.

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I could write an essay on this topic as I probably have in the past but I will keep it short with the amount of work mods need to be decent it is almost always worth starting from scratch or basically redoing everything jbeam wise. Cars aren’t the same so we shouldn’t make them from the same stuff over and over again. Model wise is perhaps the harder thing as beamng needs to balance a fine line of poly count, density, flow, etc. So again just about better starting from scratch or redoing a vast majority. A vast vast majority of meshslaps are terrible for these reasons and not worth having and bring down the forum and game.

oof so much for no essay.... enjoy my god awful grammar.

 

I wouldn't call the ae86 a meshslap, not only does it have a good roster of parts, but it also has unique suspension, different from the 200bx, and tweaked weight distribution,chassis stiffness, jbeam reworked for the hatchback body etc. sure it's not as good as it could be, but it's definitely had work put into it.
it certainly doesn't drive exactly like a 200bx.

but really, if we had 50 more mods to the quality standard of the ae86, even if you think it is a bad mod, would the game be in a worse state?

 

The ae86 is a good mod. So no, the game would not be in a worse state

 

Considering 30-40% of the mods you see in the communism screenshots thread are of worse quality, no lol

 

communism?
i hope its a typo

 

Nope, it has been rebadged to communist screenshots.