Vehicle Pack Validator

The Vehicle Pack Validator reads an addon car resource (or a whole [cars] folder) and reports every broken link between fxmanifest.lua, the vehicle metas and the files in stream/. Each finding names the file and line and says what to change. It is for server owners installing car packs and for devs who build them.

What it is for

A car that does not spawn, spawns without textures, has no tuning parts or flashes another car’s light pattern is almost always a wiring problem, not a model problem: a data_file line with the wrong type, a meta missing from files { }, a handlingId with a typo, a kit id that another pack already uses. Finding those by hand across five metas and a manifest takes a long time, and it gets worse when you merge twenty car resources.

Drop the pack here before you put it on the server, or when a car misbehaves and you want to rule out the metas.

Quick start

1. Open the tool and use Choose a folder (pick the resource folder, or the parent [cars] folder), Open a .zip, or drag the folder or zip onto the card.
2. Wait for the progress bar to finish reading the files.
3. Read the verdict at the top: Ready to ship, Works, with problems or Broken, with counts of errors, warnings, notes, vehicles, broken cars and resources.
4. Work through the Findings tab, errors first. Click a model name under a finding to jump to that car in the Vehicles tab.
5. Open the fxmanifest tab to compare your manifest with the one built from the files that are really in the folder.
6. Press Report .md to download the whole report as Markdown for a ticket or a Discord post.

No pack at hand? Try a sample loads a made up pack with invented names and placeholder model files, broken on purpose.

Input

What you can drop:

• One resource folder (the one with fxmanifest.lua or __resource.lua).
• A folder holding many resources. Each folder with a manifest becomes its own resource, and conflicts between them are checked.
• A .zip. Normal and zip64 archives with store or deflate compression work. Password protected zips and 7z or rar archives must be extracted first. Files the zip reader skips are listed under the verdict.

Vehicle files that sit in no resource with a manifest are grouped by their top folder (the folder above stream/, data/, meta/, metas/, audioconfig/ or sfx/), so a pack without a manifest is still checked and gets a “no fxmanifest” error.

Ignored: __MACOSX/, .git/, .DS_Store, Thumbs.db, desktop.ini.

What it looks at:

The report

Verdict

• Broken: at least one error. The title says how many cars will not work as shipped.
• Works, with problems: no errors, some warnings.
• Ready to ship: no errors or warnings. Notes may remain, they are optional.

Findings tab

Findings are grouped: fxmanifest and data_file, Stream files, vehicles.meta, handling.meta, Mod kits (carcols and carvariations), Sirens, Engine sound, Asset size, Conflicts between resources, File and folder names. The filter row switches between All, Errors, Warnings and Notes. Each finding has a title, evidence lines (file:line and what was found) and a fix. Model buttons under a finding open that car in the Vehicles tab.

Vehicles tab

One row per modelName, worst status first. The chips show what the car links to:

Open a row to see the meta file and line plus all findings for that car. With more than 6 vehicles a filter box appears (by model or resource).

fxmanifest tab

A suggested manifest per resource, built from what is really in the folder. It says whether it differs from the current manifest or matches it. The rules:

• fx_version 'cerulean' and game 'gta5', plus lua54, name, author, description, version if you had them.
• Your shared_scripts, client_scripts and server_scripts are kept.
• One data_file line per vehicle meta with the type that matches its root element, and one per sound file, in Rockstar’s DLC order: HANDLING_FILE, VEHICLE_LAYOUTS_FILE, VEHICLE_METADATA_FILE, CARCOLS_FILE, VEHICLE_VARIATION_FILE, CONTENT_UNLOCKING_META_FILE, VEHICLE_SHOP_DLC_FILE, TEXTFILE_METAFILE, AUDIO_SYNTHDATA, AUDIO_GAMEDATA, AUDIO_SOUNDDATA, AUDIO_WAVEPACK.
• Other valid data_file lines you had (types this tool does not manage) are kept. DLCTEXT_FILE is dropped.
• files { } lists every data file target, the .nametable files, <folder>/*.awc for wave packs, and your own entries for other files (images, json).
• escrow_ignore is kept.

Compare it with yours before you replace anything.

Every check

Severity: Error blocks loading (car does not spawn, meta not loaded, crash). Warning means it loads but looks, sounds or behaves wrong, or clashes with something. Note is information.

fxmanifest and data_file

Globs follow FiveM’s rules: * and ? stay inside one folder, ** matches any number of folders.

Stream files

vehicles.meta

handling.meta

Mod kits (carcols and carvariations)

Sirens

Engine sound

Asset size

File and folder names

Conflicts between resources

Handling, kit, kit name and siren duplicates across resources are also listed under Conflicts.

Example

A typical manifest from the fxmanifest tab for a car with its own engine sound:

fx_version 'cerulean'
game 'gta5'

client_scripts {
    'client.lua',
}

files {
    'data/handling.meta',
    'data/vehicles.meta',
    'data/carcols.meta',
    'data/carvariations.meta',
    'audioconfig/mycar_game.dat151.rel',
    'audioconfig/mycar_sounds.dat54.rel',
    'sfx/dlc_mycar/*.awc',
}

data_file 'HANDLING_FILE' 'data/handling.meta'
data_file 'VEHICLE_METADATA_FILE' 'data/vehicles.meta'
data_file 'CARCOLS_FILE' 'data/carcols.meta'
data_file 'VEHICLE_VARIATION_FILE' 'data/carvariations.meta'
data_file 'AUDIO_GAMEDATA' 'audioconfig/mycar_game.dat'
data_file 'AUDIO_SOUNDDATA' 'audioconfig/mycar_sounds.dat'
data_file 'AUDIO_WAVEPACK' 'sfx/dlc_mycar'

And the display name the “No display name” note asks for:

CreateThread(function()
    AddTextEntry('MYCAR', 'My Car GT')
end)

Tips

• Drop all your car resources at once. Kit id, siren id, handling and stream file clashes only show up when the tool sees both sides.
• Keep one list of the kit and siren ids you use across packs. Base game kits run up to 640 (and 999), sirens up to 20.
• Links with ?sample open the tool with the sample pack loaded, and ?tab=vehicles or ?tab=manifest picks the tab that opens after a check.

Limitations

• It reads metas and file headers. It does not open the models, so it cannot see a broken mesh, missing bones or a wrong embedded texture.
• Escrowed (.fxap) stream files are encrypted, so their memory size is estimated from the file size.
• A sound that another resource provides cannot be seen from here. The finding says so instead of calling it broken.
• Handling values themselves are not judged. Use the handling editor for that.
• Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

Related tools

• Vehicle Handling Editor
• Vehicle Sirens to build siren settings with free ids
• YTD Optimizer for oversized texture dictionaries
• Native Audio Builder for custom sound banks
• fxmanifest Generator