well my guess is, its has to with your LODs, ive noticed alot of buildings dont have basic model for distance, they remain loaded as 3d model at very long distance before switching to a 2d one or disappearing, a few appear to remain fully rendered regardless of distance here is high cameras angle, at which point most buildings should be using basic model ( this is easy to see on Official maps like italy towns ) Here the outer town showing 2d textures with some 3ds, even as the camera is closer to the center town Here in the red, numerous buildings still in full 3d model ( they appear to retain full textures not revert to basic model ) WIth that said, i will say ROANE COUNTY map loads faster than this map,took only 61 seconds to load with no cache( the largest map i know ) https://www.beamng.com/resources/roane-county-tennessee-usa.1586/ REQUIRES 8GB OF SYSTEM RAM! 16GB Recommended. the game will crash other wise,
I did notice that the game seems to not show some of the 2d imposters for some reason, even though its generated them. I will look into this a bit more. Some of the buildings are placed as static objects and some are placed as forest items. When I made the map I hit the static object limit so I had to finish the rest off by putting them in as forest items. I will investigate, Thanks
Another thing that might help is making parts of the map as one big model, alot of stuff in Official maps are single Static or single forest item, like alot the sidewalks, fencing and even groups of buildings on west coast are all a single part. it might help with loading
I used sketchup to make everything because I can't get on with blender. This means that I have to make separate models for each LOD and collision mesh, then combine them in the shape editor. I noticed a glitch with the imposters 5 years ago when I made this. Sometimes they appear invisible, sometimes they fade in, sometimes they pop in abruptly. Its totally random. Sometimes the game over wrights the objectname.cs file with an incorrect file path just by opening the shape editor. It then complains it can't find the lower LOD/Colmesh. I had double checked all those files to make sure everything is pointing to the correct meshes. The buildings are made up of up to 3 parts depending on how complex they are. object.dae objectlow.dae objectcol.dae I load the high detail model in the shape editor and import the objectlow.dae and objectcol.dae into that shape. I then enable the imposters and hit save. It generates the object.cs file that I have to edit to correct the file paths. After that the model is set up as far as I can tell. The square grid road sections are a little different, as the imposters were being janky I didn't enable them and opted to make an even lower LOD which was just a single plane with a texture, this was to stop the imposter rotating around and looking weird. I also didn't use a collision mesh because it wouldn't have been a worth while reduction in complexity. I will have a look again at the LOD's to make sure all the object.cs files are still pointing to the object properly, and that its told to generate the imposters. It normally says in the log if it cant find a file, and I didn't see anything missing last time I looked. (they may have been over written again) Regardless the map loads for me without it screaming errors everywhere, it just looks janky. I will investigate later when I get a few hours free. --- Post updated --- See what I mean about the imposters being generated, but they randomly become invisible? This is the object.cs file too. Code: singleton TSShapeConstructor(Citysky2Dae) { baseShape = "./Citysky2.dae"; }; function Citysky2Dae::onLoad(%this) { %this.setDetailLevelSize("2", "1200"); %this.addMesh("SketchUpB 2", "./Citysky2low.dae", "SketchUpB 2"); %this.addMesh("SketchUp 2", "./Citysky2low.dae", "SketchUp 2"); %this.setDetailLevelSize("2", "600"); %this.addMesh("SketchUpB 2", "./Citysky1col.dae", "SketchUpB 2"); %this.addMesh("SketchUp 2", "./Citysky1col.dae", "SketchUp 2"); %this.renameDetailLevel("detail2", "collision2"); %this.setDetailLevelSize("2", "-1"); %this.renameObject("SketchUpB", "Colmesh-1"); %this.renameObject("SketchUp", "Colmesh-2"); %this.addImposter("0", "8", "0", "0", "256", "0", "0"); } Even the tall building you mentioned is working as expected in the shape editor. You can cycle through all its LOD stages and everything appears to be good. Not much I can do about it if the editor is saying everything is working. --- Post updated --- There must be a limit on how many imposters can be shown, as in this picture the same building can be seen with and without imposters. Realistically I don't think I will be able to do anything about it. As the map has 643 meshes to load and then thousands of instances of said models I'm just happy I can run the map at 60 fps. I rarely see the map from a distance while driving, so I can't see much benefit from doing anything about it. It is what it is I guess.
the funny thing is, I use a crap all in one family pc, and this map loads just fine (i think its because I used to play this map everyday and it has most of the meshes and texture loaded in) Btw whats with the weird loading screen noises?
They are gone if you download the version in the main post of this thread. They were just meant to be something silly while you wait. I thought the sound reflected the janky nature of the map quite well lol. I think the loading issues are dependent on your CPU. It seems ryzen CPU's have a ton of trouble. Intel, not so much. it's weird, like me. When I first tried to get the map working after 5 years it would crash without clearing the cache first. After fixing errors and updating stuff it started behaving for me. I thought it was running pretty well, so i uploaded it, only to find people were having issues. I guess you are one of the lucky ones
What city would you say this map is based off of? Me and my friends are trying to roleplay on it but we can't figure out what city it is. @jammin2222
I just tried out this forum version, it works flawlessly over here and I love it ! It's an awesome map with 100% drivability and an amazing sense for detail ! Here's my literally first run on the map : https://www.beamng.com/threads/community-videos.1701/page-79#post-1179870 Loading time : somewhat the same as Los Injurus which is pretty decent on my end, about 2 mins or so (first time loading without cache). Console output : I think I saw a mere 4 red lines (.dds related) and all the rest a bunch of green My system : older gen i5, 16GB ram, GTX1650 and using Win 8.1 .
Great vid! I'm glad its working for you now, I guess those changes I made did do something at least. I hope you enjoy the janky textures and repetitive buildings As I live in the uk and have only been to New York/Manhattan in my childhood I guess I very loosely based it around that. It has a park in the center, like a tiny central park. Though the traffic lights are totally like English ones. Its a random mash of things if I'm honest. The housing estates look more English than American too. I just designed it in small chunks that could snap together in various ways and that's what I got at the end of it. Its just a generic city lol
I feel for you man, I really do wish I knew why ryzen cpu's find this map hard to load. I know sketchup models are janky compared to professional ones made in Blender. I'm not a professional. I'm just a guy that knows sketchup quite well and knows little about blender, having a go at something and learning on the way. Back in the day when I learned you could import sketchup models I got carried away and this city was the result. There must be something about the game engine that handles stuff differently for certain CPU architectures, and they way this map works just isn't playing nice. I really hope I find the cause, but I fear the way I made all my maps will always be a problem unless the dev's change something. The conventional way a mesh works in blender is that the LOD's and collision meshes are built into the same model. Sketchup models have no such feature. The game engine does have a feature allowing you to combine separate meshes into one model to make up the LOD's and collision meshes. This was a feature of the Torque 3d engine Beamng is built on. So that's what I did with my models to make them work. As the devs don't really need use that feature because they do all the LOD and stuff in blender, I guess they over look the shape editor when troubleshooting bugs and stuff. It seems to work well enough for me with my i7 CPU, I guess the code doesn't translate well with ryzen CPU's because they didn't exist when the game engine was designed? It probably can be fixed, but I fear it will need a dev to do something. I could be talking out of my pooper, but that's my theory. It will be a miracle if the dev's read this and look into the problem. If they do, it will open up map making options for those who can't get on with blender. It sucks for me to spend so much time making things for it not to work for everyone. Its safe to say I won't be making any new maps unless I can find out why these problems are happening. There is no point if a decent chunk of players will just complain its broken.
id say message bob.blunderton ,, he has made 2 very large maps, that load pretty quick and easy , he might able to help giving some info to what he does to optimize his maps, how he makes them, i know he does use alot of paid software and such, but it could be good insight
Thanks, I bet he uses Blender or something much better and more complicated than Sketchup. I am just a noob that knows how to use sketchup. I have tried Blender but man that thing is confusing. I made this map years and years ago. I was just trying to make it work again because people kept asking for me to bring it back. I don't have the patience to make anything new for the game. Once the lock down is lifted I wont have time to play Beam much anymore. I think this map is as good as its going to get at this point. Every model will need to be remade to make any noticeable difference, and I haven't got the time or willingness to do that. So unless I magically find a huge mistake with something, I think this last pending update will be all this map gets.
I might be in the minority, but it loads for me on a Ryzen 7 3700X. It takes longer than most maps, though, even big ones like Los Injuros and Roane County I'd say.
I have an Intel i7-3930K CPU rated at 3.2GHz along with 8GB of Ram and the map refuses to load, I think I got it to load twice before it stopped loading
