[NFS3] Not all Custom Cars appear in Grid regardless of FEDATA.LNG parameters

[lafoxxx]

Hello.
So I downloaded a few custom cars from nfscars.net, and used VIV Wizard to modify them.
I found out that "Bonus" and "Available to AI drivers" only work for some specific cars, and I don't seem to understand how to make the rest work.


List of some cars which never appear on grid (unless I choose same car):

400r (A) Ryuji Kainoh
Vipr (A) Ryuji Kainoh
F40c (A) Ryuji Kainoh
Ff50 (A)
Mcf1 (A)
Lstm (A), EA official

Spon (B) anuarismail
Lmiu (B)
Pant (B)
Mgto (B)
Shlb (B)
F456 (B), EA official

Sr42 (C), EA official


On the contrary, the following custom cars always appear when enabling "Available...drivers" flag (even if I don't select same car):

Nazc (A) giulliano L
P959 (A) Eric Arroyo
Schm (A) Thomas Egelkraut
Haki (A) Thomas Egelkraut

Nr33 (B) giulliano L
Walm (B), EA official

Ae86 (C) guennoun
Golf (C) guennoun
Ldel (C) guennoun
Hciv (C) guennoun
Must (C) marco (polo)
HGTS (C), EA official



List of some cars which don't get locked in game after setting "Bonus" flag:

400r (A) Ryuji Kainoh
f40c (A) Ryuji Kainoh
Vipr (A) Ryuji Kainoh

Spon (B) Ryuji Kainoh
Lmiu (B)
Pant (B)



These cars do get locked after enabling "Bonus":

Futr (A)
P959 (A) Eric Arroyo
Haki (A) Thomas Egelkraut
Schm (A) Thomas Egelkraut

F355 (B), built-in

Golf (C) guennoun
Jxkr (C), EA official


Questions:
1. Which parameters prevent the aforementioned settings from working?
2. To unlock my own "Bonus" cars, do I just complete Tournaments as usual?
3. Is it possible to make a car "Bonus", but so that it'll appear on Grid even if still locked?

Here's an archive of my "Carmodel" folder: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r8jdZHLLRkxnk7ke2mEzMF3z1IRpiUVV/view?usp=sharing

[Rider66]

For me it appears that FEDATA format for 3 is not quite clear even now. My recent example was when I was trying to get showcases working for official EA cars AFTER putting them into carmodel directory. Once I'd replaced FEDATA's with some standard cars ones, I was able to get showcases up and running for each, including 456, Lister, Spectre and so on. Maybe somebody here might have detailed fedata format description, but I figured that by experiment

Moreover, 456 and Spectre both appears on grid for me.

[pete9516]

EA used to hexedit the fedata.lng files for their addon cars, i managed to fix cars not appearing in grid by replacing the fedata.xxx files with ones that actually work on other cars. I never use the "bonus car" flag, for me it's just limiting game features. "bonus car" and "available for AI" seem to be tied together in some weird way, so better stay clean and use clean fedata.lng from cars like Corvette, Countach, Diablo, CLK-GTR, etc.

[rata_536]

1. Which parameters prevent the aforementioned settings from working?

To make AI pick cars, you need to make sure their Serial Number is below 50, in first glance.
Second, there is an undocumented byte in FEDATA which prevents AI to use cars, regardless if the Available for AI flag is set. To edit this, you need to open VIVWizard and switch to the hex view, then find byte 0x0E and set it to 00.
The only EA cars that come with this flag enabled are the DLC cars, namely Lister Storm, Jaguar XKR, Spectre R42 and Ferrari 456M GT. If I recall correctly, Ford Falcon GT and HSV VT GTS don't have it, but check it just in case.
I called it DLC flag and my guess is that it would have been used to load up the placeholder during online races if someone did not have the car installed, but VEG stated that the placeholder vehicle is never ever called so it'll remain in a mystery.
And since we're talking about FEDATA, another undocumented byte is 0x12, which handles the driver position in dashboard view. 00 is for LHD cars, 01 for RHD cars, and anything else (for example 02) is for central drive cars (El Niño). Which brings up a very funny thing, EA did not set this flag properly for all DLC cars so you might want to check and correct them.

Another edit:
TO answer the other questions:

2. To unlock my own "Bonus" cars, do I just complete Tournaments as usual?

Nope, setting Bonus flag will just make them remain blocked, as there's no code to unlock those IDs. You can even do CARS cheat and they will remain locked.

3. Is it possible to make a car "Bonus", but so that it'll appear on Grid even if still locked?

Nein. Unless you're doing memory edits with ghost editing, cheat engine or jericho's randomiser, you have to unlock it first.

Moreover, 456 and Spectre both appears on grid for me.

If you're using my cars that's expected cos I removed the DLC flag for them. I don't remember if I did it for all of them though.

[lafoxxx]

Thank you all for the replies. very helpful.
Changing Serial Number worked so far, and the car appeared right away.