Tadpole

This is a personal project I've been working on throughout this year, and although it's not complete yet, it's in a good enough shape that I feel safe enough to share this with other people. Consider this mod to be an open beta - provide feedback if you run into bugs or balance issues, and make backups!
Vintage Platinum is a submod for the 1.21 version of TDU Platinum that rebalances the game to be set around 1986-1987, featuring only classic cars from the era - normally only available in Class G in regular Platinum (as well as a few non-G cars that were in production by '86), now redistributed to various other classes so as to make racing progression feasible in regular gameplay. I created this because I'm personally a big fan of older cars and, after playing games like Driver: Parallel Lines and Motor City Online, had developed an interest on the concept of a racing game set squarely around the 1970s-1980s, centered exclusively around the sports and performance cars of the late 20th century prior to the 1990s. Obviously, creating a racing game from the ground-up is an unrealistic task for a sole person to manage, so I decided to make a submod for Platinum that does it, as it already has a rich enough selection of era-appropriate classic cars to choose from:
Class A Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 Stradale (Bonus Car) Ferrari 250 GTO Ferrari 288 GTO Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Ferrari Testarossa Lamborghini Countach LP5000 S Quattrovalvole Lamborghini Miura P400SV Porsche 911 Turbo Porsche 959 (Bonus Car) Shelby Cobra 427 S/C Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe #CSX2299 Class B Audi Quattro Sport AC 289 BMW M1 BMW M5 E28 BMW M635csi Chevrolet Corvette C2 Stingray 427 Dodge Challenger R/T 426 Hemi Dodge Charger R/T 426 Hemi Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa (Bonus Car) Ferrari Dino 246 GT Ford RS200 Evolution Porsche 911 Carrera 2.7 RS Porsche 944 Turbo Class C Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato Aston Martin DB5 Vantage BMW 2002 Turbo Chevrolet Chevelle SS-396 Sport Coupe Chevrolet Corvette C3 Stingray 350 Chevrolet Corvette C3 Stingray 350 LT-1 Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe 409 Turbo-Fire SS Chevrolet Nova SS 396 Dodge Charger R/T 426 Hemi TorqueFlite Dodge Charger Super Bee 426 Hemi Dodge Coronet Super Bee 426 Hemi Ferrari 250 GT California Scagletti (SWB) Ferrari 308 GTS Quattrovalvole Ford Sierra RS 500 Cosworth Lancia Rally 037 Stradale Lancia Stratos HF Stradale Mazda RX-7 (FC3S) GT-X Savanna Oldsmobile Hurst/Olds 4-4-2 Holiday Coupe Plymouth GTX Hemi Plymouth Hemi 'Cuda 426 Plymouth Superbird Hemi (Bonus Car) Pontiac Firebird Trans Am Pontiac GTO The Judge Pontiac GTO Tri-Power Porsche 550 A Spyder (Bonus Car) Shelby GT500 Toyota Supra Turbo (A70) Class D Alfa Romeo Giulia TZ2 Zagato (Bonus Car) Alfa Romeo Montreal Alpine A110 Chevrolet Corvette C1 283 V8 RamJet Chevrolet Corvette C1 283 V8 RamJet 315hp Ferrari 250 Berlinetta Lusso Ford Mustang GT Hardtop 289 Ford Mustang GT Fastback 2+2 390 Jaguar E-Type 4.2 Coupe Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3 Mitsubishi Starion ESI-R Plymouth Barracuda Six-Pack AAR Porsche 911 E Volvo 242 Turbo Evolution Class E Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GTA Chevrolet Camaro Z-28 Ford Escort RS1600 Ford Thunderbird 312 Super V8 Ford-o-matic Lamborghini LM002 Maserati 3500 GT Touring Mercedes-Benz 190 E 2.6 (W201) Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing Nissan Fairlady Z 432 (S30) Nissan Skyline Hard Top 2000GT-R (KPGC10) Toyota 2000GT Toyota Sprinter Trueno GT-Apex Class F BMW 507 (Bonus Car) Bugatti Type 57 Surbaissé Compresseur Atlantic (Bonus Car) Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz Chevrolet Corvette C1 235 Blue-Flame Powerglide Fiat 595 Abarth Esse-Esse Nissan Datsun 1600 (510) Volkswagen 1200 Käfer (Typ 1) Volkswagen Samba Bus Typ 2 (T1) Unlike in the vanilla game, the player starts out with Class E cars rather than Class F, with the latter class being repurposed for the particularly super-weak vehicles with speeds too low to be competitive; Class G was phased out of the game altogether.
This mod comes with Patch 1975 bundled as a download, so you are able to replace the 1990s-2000s traffic with something more period-appropriate. Patch 1975 was NOT made by me - it is an old mod made by the OAHUCARS team that got nearly lost when their website went down, and all credit goes to them!
 
- INSTALLATION -
You need to also download the Music mod.
Drop the "Bnk" and "Radio" folders in your TDU installation folder. As stated before, make backups, or you will have to reinstall Platinum again when you want to go back to the present day.
Do not put the Documentation folder in your game directory, it only contains details about the inner workings of this mod and the ramblings of a madwoman with a special interest in classic cars.
Patch 1975 has its own instructions. You may need Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 for the installer to work. If you're playing on the Steam Deck or Linux, just install "dotnet20" through Winetricks on Wine or Dependencies on Bottles. Again, make backups!
 
- KNOWN ISSUES -
As stated earlier, the mod is not feature-complete yet as I haven't had the time or energy to complete it, but right now that largely applies to the Vehicle Transport missions as I haven't fully replaced every car with them (it's an extremely time-consuming task), as well as the possibility of a few races not being properly re-balanced (which I would like feedback on, so I can properly fix it). Additionally, various vehicle dealerships still show modern cars parked in front of them. All of these are (relatively) minor flaws that I plan to fix eventually, but as mentioned, they are extremely time-consuming to do.
Besides that, however, there are multiple drawbacks with this mod that you should keep in mind, and currently they are completely unfixable as there's nothing I can do about them - the most important one is that you cannot achieve 100% progression, because several Courier, Hitchhiker and Top Model missions still require you to use modern cars and haven't been rebalanced to accomodate for the slower cars; as far as I'm (and other experienced TDU modders are) aware, there is currently no known way to edit those missions, which means there's nothing I can do to fix it. Additionally, of the Vehicle Transport missions I did edit to feature older cars, a surprising amount of them are bugged and have a completely chromed paintjob for some reason, which I can't figure out how to fix yet.
Please keep those factors in mind when playing with this mod.