Well, after having been away for a good while, through all the updates of GTAV and LSPDFR, I've decided to get back into it. However, I'm pretty lost when it comes to adding in modded vehicles (not as straightforward as GTAIV, at least). Any video or guide I've read says different things about which "patchday" folder the game loads a certain vehicle from, I'm not seeing certain vehicles in certain folders, and then I guess I have to create a "mod" folder?  I'm pretty lost on what I'm doing. And before I critically break my game and have to redownload or backup large files, I figured I'd ask here first.

 

Is there no more file for each vehicle, Sheriff stanier, granger, LSPD stanier, buffalo, etc? Or is each model just in the gamefile once, and each livery (sheriff, lspd, etc) contained within the model file? 

Well maybe I can help a little bit.

First, I should say that I personally don't use a mod folder, so I don't know the specifics of setting that up. It's not required, although if you don't use one, you'll be modifying the game files themselves and you run the risk of messing something up. In my case, I have the Steam version so I can verify the game files and download the originals easily, and I also back up every file I tinker with. Someone else might be able to point you to a tutorial if you want to set up a mod folder.

As for the cars, it's quite different than GTA IV. Because of Rockstar updates, various cars are located throughout various locations, and it can be a pain to sort out. For myself, I solved this by putting all of my modified police vehicles into the "patchday5ng" folder, and so far everything has worked perfectly.

The exact path to the file is GTA V/update/x64/dlcpacks/patchday5ng/dlc.rpf/x64/levels/gta5/vehicles.rpf

This is the file that you open up in OpenIV and where you can put all of your police vehicles.

Now, this is a complete list of the available default police vehicles:

fbi, fbi2, police, police2, police3, police4, policeb, policet, pranger, riot, sheriff, sheriff2

 

Depending on the configuration, each vehicle can have up to 4 files total, like this:

police.yft - The actual vehicle model file, normal version

police_hi.yft - The actual vehicle model file, high res version

police.ytd - The texture file, normal version

police+hi.ytd - The texture file, high res version

All vehicles follow this naming structure. Some may have all 4 files, some may not. When you want to replace textures on a vehicle, you want to replace each individual texture in both the normal and high res files, and then you can view what it looks like by clicking on either of the yft files.

In addition, things can get more complex when you have to edit other files like vehicles.meta or carvariations.meta to make sure the handling, lights, and other stuff work correctly. Really, the best way to learn is by trial and error and by following instructions in readme files. Most models have specific instructions on how to install them. The only thing that I personally do differently is that I install all my stuff in the file I mentioned above, so that way if I mess anything up, I can simply delete those files, restore my backups of the vehicles.meta and carvariations.meta files, and start again from scratch.

Hopefully this was a bit helpful. I know the whole thing is seriously confusing.

Wow. That clears a lot up actually. I appreciate it. 

So if I'm following you correctly, I can move all the Police files from the various "patchday" folders into "patchday5" and it'll work? One last thing, there is a police 2(I think) in "patchday3" and "patchday4" which one does the game read?

 

Edited January 18, 201610 yr by Pavelow

1 hour ago, Pavelow said:

Wow. That clears a lot up actually. I appreciate it. 

So if I'm following you correctly, I can move all the Police files from the various "patchday" folders into "patchday5" and it'll work? One last thing, there is a police 2(I think) in "patchday3" and "patchday4" which one does the game read?

 

It would read patchday4. It's best to put it in the most recent vehicle folder.

Instead of moving the files to patchday 4 or 5, I would just install your new vehicles into that folder and leave the old ones where they are. The game will read the files from the latest patchday folder and use those. But leaving the old cars where they are allows you to delete your modified cars and go back to vanilla if you find the need to. Or you can extract the vehicle files from the various folders in Open IV and install copies into your chosen patchday folder if you'd like.

I used patchday5 because it was the highest folder I found with a vehicles.rpf file, and that file only had a couple of vehicles in it, which made it much easier to keep track of my police vehicles, instead of having to find them by sorting through ALL the game's vehicles. I would think that either one would work though.

I kinda forgot to make a backup of the original vehicles.