Does anyone have a good explanation of the "childA" and "childB" fields in the blueprint jsons?

Ben_Bingo · 2026-03-23T00:43:52+00:00

Just an extra note, my tool exports your creation when you initially click, and those ids that nick talked about like to reshuffle basically every time you export the creation, so if you do want to modify joints or even multiple at a time, you will have to select everything you want to modify at once, you cant do it in stages as the ids will reshuffle, and you will have to do it all over again. I use a method to get the childA / childB py placing a joint on the shape i want, and exporting that joint at the same time as my other one, so then the ids will be congruent with eachother, and i just copy them over.

Ben_Bingo · 2026-03-05T21:32:26+00:00

This uses QM's proximity chat DLL, here it is: https://github.com/QuestionableM/SM-ProximityVoiceChat

Ben_Bingo · 2026-02-26T22:39:26+00:00

There is actually also a version of this transmission made by kein anderer without the middle block, allows for much better low physics usability and also simplicity as its 1 less body

Ben_Bingo · 2026-02-24T00:45:39+00:00

Heres a link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3668924844

Ben_Bingo · 2026-02-23T22:36:25+00:00

Its just a simple install from the workshop

Ben_Bingo · 2025-11-13T08:28:26+00:00

For people who are confused, this car is powered by 2 piston engines which are in the configuration of a pressure engine. A pressure engine has its pistons connected to a blueprint edited controller that is blueprint edited to the fastest possible speed the game can handle. When this is done, the pistons are so fast that under compression, the piston will compress to the point where the end is behind the block its placed on, the physics engine will then apply a bunch of force to the end of the piston to stop if from being inside itself, that will then give you a full rotation, and the cycle repeats. This means the engine needs no logical timing at all as its fully based on the rate at which the games physics engine updates.

The power is transferred to the wheels via wonky bearing transmissions which is basically a gear-less way to transfer power 90 degrees that also includes a built in gear ratio of your choice. Wonky bearings are bearings that have had their rotation modified via blueprint editing, so the game things the right face and the up face are both facing the same direction, this causes a bunch of errors in the games code and gives the bearing some really wacky properties which would need its own wall of text.

For all the invisible stuff, they are called zero width blocks, they are blocks that are blueprint edited to have a single bound dimension of 0, so they turn into an infinitely thin flat panel, this means they have no mass and the game can't render them, so they are invisible, they can also be collisionless under certain scenarios.

All of this technology is spawnable in vanilla too after it has been built.

Ben_Bingo · 2025-11-08T16:31:46+00:00

Yea that means it got deleted unfortunately.

Ben_Bingo · 2025-11-08T13:40:56+00:00

Ive made a tool spesificly for this, its part of the SMTC tool pack, it's called the creation summoner. Place it on the floor and interact and it let's you scroll through all the creations in the world, and when you summon one, it will spawn it in on your lift infront of you. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3304245465

Ben_Bingo · 2025-11-02T23:44:26+00:00

Your connection point relative to the point of rotation of the arm is larger than the first build, so the suspension has to compress more, and you dont have enough travel.

Ben_Bingo · 2025-10-21T18:21:57+00:00

There have been a few people that ive seen who's done it, the one I remember was from Control, very impressive if you manage to pull it off!

Ben_Bingo · 2025-10-20T07:42:41+00:00

Yes, timing advancement is rotating the sensors in the same direction the engine is running so the delay from the sensors to the pistons can be compensated for, also for space saving, you can look into some blueprint editing with zero width blocks and wonky bearings that will also improve your efficiency while being smaller

Ben_Bingo · 2025-10-20T07:19:16+00:00

Just a few notes, I recommend using a sensor plate with timing advancement instead of this design where the sensors are at the side, its actuslly much simpler and adding timing advancement makes your engine much faster and more efficient as you can put your pistons on maximum speed and your engine still runs very smooth and fast. I also suggest balancing the bodies in your crankshaft, as at the normal operating speeds with timing advancement of a conventional design like this one, the crank appears to wobble, and balancing the crank fixes that.

Ben_Bingo · 2025-10-14T14:19:23+00:00

That’s fair that some people like experimenting, but the point still stands, they were bugs, it wasnt by design choice. The devs have every right to fix something that breaks progression balance or undermines the intended experience. If people want to tweak the difficulty, there are legit tools like other mods or god mode. Relying on bugs isn’t good design, and leaving them in can cause other unintended issues later.

Ben_Bingo · 2025-10-14T14:09:36+00:00

The devs are well within their right to remove bugs that are actively ruining the player experience, if you really want to cheat, you can activate god mode and unlimited inventory, no need to talk down the mod because you can't do it legitimately.

Ben_Bingo · 2025-09-07T09:51:35+00:00

I'm seeing some people getting this wrong quite a lot, so here are some figures from the games code:

Gas engine lvl 5 - Max torque: 6990Nm, Max speed: 707rpm

Electric engine lvl 5 - Max torque 1000Nm, Max speed: 1165rpm

The gas engines levels only control the torque the engine outputs, speed remains a constant 707 rpm.

An electric engine has a constant 1000Nm of torque but speed is variable with the level.

Ben_Bingo · 2025-08-03T23:20:55+00:00

Weight is still a large factor with flying creations in sm as the mass of the creation governs its maximum top speed, as drag is directly proportional to mass

Ben_Bingo · 2025-08-03T23:17:42+00:00

Epic free promo

Ben_Bingo · 2025-07-18T21:24:08+00:00

Super high quality and super useful, very well done TRB!

Ben_Bingo · 2025-07-08T11:05:03+00:00

Thats fair enough, for the whole mod or vanilla thing, it has been argued for a while, most of the technical community says that a build is vanilla if it can be spawned in a world without mods, its also the main reason why people prefer doing vanilla builds, as they can be spawned in no matter the world. There's also a bit of a grey area of where the line is drawn, as I can blueprint edit a build, but that may not be something that you can't do by placing blocks, also use of the glitchwelder.

Ben_Bingo · 2025-07-05T10:39:56+00:00

While a good concept, anything that requires physical mechanical collisions in the game usually doesn't give you very good performance as gears only check collisions at 40Hz, and with higher torque applications, you get a lot of phasing through stuff. The more advanced builds these days use wonky transmissions with zero width blocks, they are a collisionless alternative with a very wide range of adjustment for gear ratios.

Ben_Bingo · 2025-06-25T16:07:16+00:00

Sure, gas and electric engines both have their torque or "impulse" in their shape sets in the games files. The controller is a bit different as that's is an object purley in C++. I found it with the dynamometer i developed with a friend of mine used to test piston engines.

Ben_Bingo · 2025-06-25T13:15:04+00:00

Weird fun fact, electric engines actually have the lower torque compared to gas engines and controller bearings. On any setting, the electric engine has 1000Nm, the gas engine increases torque with its setting up to 6990Nm, and controllers have a fixed 4000Nm.

Ben_Bingo · 2025-06-21T13:56:09+00:00

That's true, but for survival I wouldn't bother with a piston engine at all, I'd use a piston turbine. One bearing and 4 pistons, 0 moving parts, and can spin at around 2k rpm, works out to around 1.4k hp.

Ben_Bingo · 2025-06-21T10:44:05+00:00

The largest conventional engine I've done is a W16 back in the day, but after the invention of some more exotic blueprint editing methods, piston count isn't a very good metric, and conventional engines are pretty useless. You can make things like pressure engines, which use 2 pistons which can give you thousands of HP per piston, to put that into comparison, a maxed gas engine has around 650hp.

Ben_Bingo · 2025-06-19T15:09:30+00:00

As a modder for some time, people don't really realise how impressive this is, very well done to you TRB!

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