YND Traffic Path Editor

The YND Traffic Path Editor opens the game’s path node files, draws the whole network on the real map, and writes the files back out. Traffic, GPS routing and wandering NPC drivers all follow this network, so this is what you edit when cars will not drive on your new road.

Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

Quick start

1. Press Open .ynd files and pick the nodes<number>.ynd files for the part of the map you are changing. A CodeWalker XML export works too.
2. Look at the blue squares. Each one is a 512 metre area and one file. Everything inside a square belongs to that square’s file.
3. Drag nodes with Select, add them with Place, join two with Link, and right click one to delete it.
4. Fix anything in Checks. The download stays off while there is an error.
5. Press Download resource, drop the folder in resources, add ensure fivemad_paths to server.cfg and restart the whole server.

The files in stream/ are real binary .ynd files. There is nothing to convert, no data_file line and no script.

Open every file you are touching

A link names its target as an area plus a node id, so a road that crosses a square boundary is stated half in one file and half in the next. If you change a node that a neighbouring file links to and you do not ship that file too, the two disagree.

The Checks panel lists exactly which files the open ones link into, and how many links go each way. When you have doubts, open the neighbours as well; there is no cost to having them open and not changing them.

Where the game keeps them

Inside the game archives, at update/update.rpf/common/data/pathnodes/ and the equivalent folders in the DLC archives. Extract them with CodeWalker. The number in the name is the area.

The area rule

nodes<N>.ynd covers one 512 metre square:

• column = N % 32, row = N / 32
• the square’s bottom left corner is at -8192 + 512 * column, -8192 + 512 * row

So nodes400.ynd is column 16, row 12, covering X 0 to 512 and Y -2048 to -1536.

A node has to be in the file whose square it sits in. The game looks a node up by its area, so a node in the wrong file is a node it never finds. Drag a node across a boundary and this page marks it red, draws a line to where it belongs, and turns the download off until you deal with it.

Move to the right file does the whole job: it moves the node into the correct file, opens that file if it was not open, and repoints every link that named it. Node ids are positions in an array, so a node changing file changes its id, and anything that linked to it has to be updated. That is the part a careless tool gets wrong.

One thing it cannot do for you: a file you do not have open still names the old id. The page tells you which files those are after a move.

What you can edit

Ped nodes (the three crossing types) always sort to the end of the file. That is what every one of the game’s own files does and this page keeps it that way for you.

Links

A link is one way in the file. Node A says there is a road to B, and whether there is a road back is whatever B’s own list says.

In the whole base game, all 166,544 links have a matching link back. Not one is one way. So a link with no partner is almost always a mistake, and this page:

• draws it in amber with an arrow showing which way it is stated,
• calls it an error rather than a warning,
• and has Repair links, which adds the missing half with the lane counts mirrored (forward one way becomes backward the other).

A dangling link, one pointing at a node id that does not exist, is what actually breaks traffic. That is an error too.

Cayo Perico

Files numbered above 1023 are the second node set: nodes<1024 + area>.ynd. The game only uses them after a script calls SetAiGlobalPathNodesType(1), so on the main map they do nothing. The page handles them, labels them, and keeps the numbering right.

What it will not do

• It does not author junction heightmaps. A junction carries a small height grid. An imported file keeps its own unchanged; a new file has none.
• It does not rewrite the heuristic value on a node, because nobody has a rule that reproduces Rockstar’s numbers.
• It does not recompute every link length. Only links you create or whose ends you move get a new one; the rest keep the byte they came with.
• It does not let you invent a file name. The game asks for node files by area, so a .ynd called anything else would never be loaded.

Doing it from a script instead

Worth reading before you edit a file. The game’s path natives can:

• switch every vehicle node in a box off and on (SetRoadsInArea, SetRoadsBackToOriginal),
• do the same for ped paths (SetPedPathsInArea),
• stop GPS routing through an area (SetGpsDisabledZoneAtIndex),
• read a node’s position, density and flags, and a road’s lane counts and width (GetClosestRoad, GetVehicleNodeProperties).

They cannot move a node, add or delete one, change a link or set a lane count. Nothing can, at runtime. The second tab on the page gives you working code for the things that are possible, with the area box already filled in from the files you have open.

Installing what you downloaded

1. Put the folder in resources.
2. ensure fivemad_paths in server.cfg.
3. Restart the whole server.

Streamed assets are read once at startup, so restarting only the resource will not reload the network for players who are already connected.

A streamed .ynd replaces the game’s file of the same name outright. It does not merge, which is why the download always carries the whole square rather than just your changes. To undo it all, delete the resource and restart; nothing in the game files was changed.