WIP Beta released A new *CITY* map - LOS INJURUS 2023-12-20

Welll Vulkan seems to run great on smaller maps but like OGC 2 my GPU utilization is pretty much always at 100% so I think it's just I need a better GPU to run it all. Also when loading my VRAM runs over 10gb on OGC2 so I assume the same on this map.

 

This definitely wants at-least 12gb on Los Injurus on high with ONE vehicle. It might be a *hair* lower on this next update, but not a lot. I mean it might be 11.5gb in-stead of 12gb, but it'll still require a solid 12gb for a solid run (this is total used, including your OS's needs, because of-course we don't want a laggy OS when we alt tab to the music player, or web browser to spin up yet another video). Actual requirements may be 500~768mb lower than what I report here as I usually have other things open - lots of things mostly development tools and graphics software, however it's best to err on the side of caution here as I don't know what people's OS situation is.
Maybe your GPU only has 10gb and not 12gb. Depends on the model, some models without the X on them have 10gb and not 12gb, much like a 3080 has 10gb and even that is slowing down in modern games (Especially once you go higher than 1080p and want to use RT and DLSS / frame-gen stuff).
Again for those buying a GPU soon, 12~16gb is a good place to start - only go lower if you cannot afford better, and even then I'd reckon going for a well-regarded seller of used video boards / PC hardware on an auction site over buying an already out-of-date card brand new.
Still, even regarding having to use medium for now, it's still a plenty good experience with the game. Stick to medium if high crashes the game unless you're sticking to stock levels. This is too big, with too many varied textures, to really get it back under 6~8gb to really make a difference. It will only get higher requirements in time (that is why I'm holding back some of the buildings that I've readied over the last 6~8 months or more, as it'll push the requirements up on past 12gb decently and run a lot of people's cards into the ground in the process, want to make it worth it when I go past that 12gb mark). Also, PBR texture conversion would add 1.5~2gb to VRAM use if I did the entire level, so one can see why I didn't hurry to convert this. New textures are fine to PBR in, but old ones might stay the way they are for a while yet until I get a setup that isn't going to make everything so [censored] shiny.

---

The Bob did something.

So yes, LOTS of detail to these. I mean, if I spend an entire working day (6~8 hours or more) on creation & details for JUST ONE BLOCK of this, it's going to be oozing with all those little details. The streets aren't really even part of that, creating those took hours but the details even more hours. Plus there's added light poles now, in preparation to create lights that flick on at night (those light-sources aren't in yet even though the fixtures are there, BUT the script that runs them IS in the level, thank Nadeox for that script so it doesn't beat up your FPS in the daytime).
I added more detail to the interchange / ramps here where it's near the developed area including some more Jersey-barrier, even adding a wall of trees (doesn't really block line-of-sight at the stop-bar - YES I check for this!) for sound/noise abatement, and a 'gated road' that the AI is aware of (I believe it'll still chase you across them but the AI won't normally use it) between the ramps so you can set-up police chases and what-not if you like to do that sort of thing, or have a realistic scene for where an Officer / Patrolman could be sitting - laying in wait.

Haven't managed to get much more space savings (MB size) in the last day or two. That said, still, I find folks should be quite happy with the added details and content.
Also, lots of curb trimming and road detail was added over the space of a few blocks near where I built that recent below-ground / sunken station and school-like building (such as adding in wear lines, and also doing curb trimming which is the little concrete bit on the road surface along the curbs, usually found with *slip-formed single-piece curbing).
*slip-formed curbing = you need a special truck with equipment on it's back-half where a concrete truck dumps a ton of concrete into it, and as it drives, it poops out finished curbing just like a pavement machine would poop out road surface. It's the same thing for curbing, and a lot of the highways (the concrete ones) were done like this even back many decades for both the road surface and concrete curbing.
That out of the way, there is official regulation on curbing slope for both cities and highways (it must be much more tapered on a high-speed highway vs a city which requires only a little bit of taper on the face - if you check - the curbing in Los Injurus IS NOT vertical, it's actually tapered to the regulation, ALL of it).
Regulations on curbing, regulations on line-of-sight / sight-distance, regulations regarding egress/ingress to private lots and business, lane widths, even banking (though some roads are a bit more banked than required as this IS on a computer and gives you a chance for extra speed), lot set-backs, even the water run-off / drainage details all over - all kinds of regulations are taken into account when creating the infrastructure of this environment we call Los Injurus. Thus it gives that extra bit of realism and detail I know many of you enjoy. There's a lot of games that miss those details, but they're here, multiplying like rabbits as I get more and more time creating this monster. It truly has become a monster, but it's one I enjoy battling never-the-less.
--That is all
-The Bob

 

I went up to low settings and it's still significantly better than the vanilla maps for my fps, though I have not looked at the actual fps readings since I turned up the graphics. It still takes a lot longer to load because of all the colladas that it has to import.
@bob.blunderton in your post above you said that a 12 GB GPU is recommended for Los Injurus, but as long as I keep the settings on low or steamdeck then my 4GB card suffices.
I was in town today and ran over a curb and somehow ruptured my fuel tank and I just went as far as I could as fast as I could and got outside the city before stopping. Turns out speeding thru the streets of Los Injurus at 100 mph with an underpowered 141 hp Sunburst with ESC &TC off is surprisingly fun. Keep up the good work Bob, this map is already an absolute joy to play in.

 

Thanks! Glad to hear you somehow got it running on Steamdeck! On low a 4GB card will work, 6~8GB needed for medium, and 12GB for HIGH textures. You can leave mesh detail up most likely, none of the meshes really do super-duper detail levels until you get right on it anyways, even with mesh detail maxed. This keeps the triangle count down for iGPUs, and tries to keep draw calls down along with it by preventing the highest details of meshes from being unnecessarily drawn in until you're close enough to see the actual details.
It's easy to tear off or damage the following: fuel tank, drive shaft, axles, oil pan, or flatten tires / bust wheels when neglecting to mind those curbs! They are slightly tapered but going sideways into one will surely bust axles and wheels / flatten tires. Blasting off one curb and into another, having vaulted across the taper/crest of the roadway will often remove your oil pan quite effectively, or injure it somewhat, leading to main bearing failure, excessive wear, or leading to connecting rods bending/snapping.
One thing GTA IV had that GTA V neglected, was road taper. Blasting through an intersection and catching some air was something I did enjoy especially in the online race mode which I played a ton of on IV, but never enjoyed on V due to the hateful children in it that were too ram-happy. So I made sure most of the roads here had not only cross-slope / taper to them, but the curves in roads/highways/anything were tapered also (something GTAV really didn't do at all, those curves are FLAT, if the road modeling in that game had as much curves/tapering as the models of women in that game did, we'd have a much better game and it would actually add something of value).

---

I tried to figure out smart traffic lights. THESE WILL NOT BE ADDED UNTIL THEY ARE SIMPLIFIED ENOUGH TO WHERE A ROCKET SURGEON COULD EVER STAND A CHANCE AT FIGURING THEM OUT.
So yeah, no smart traffic lights until the devs simplify it a bit or make it a little more straight forward. It just made my brain hurt trying to figure it out. There's no way in heck I'm ever going to figure it, and I even looked at the stock levels for examples. Sorry, I did what I could, but it's too convoluted and the terminology / programming knowledge of real traffic signals really doesn't carry over to in this simulator beyond the timings.
The wiki for the editor doesn't do anything. It's maybe 2% of what it needs to be. Seriously. This is sad.
So Los Injurus WILL NOT have SMART TRAFFIC SIGNALS until the wiki has all the info I need, and the in-game editor interface for it is made more straight-forward. It's just too much for my brain, period. Never mind there's 100+ intersections in this place.
Sorry, as I said, I tried. It's just NOT happening. I'd rather whiz on an electric fence.
So I spent a while adding some more details anyways, and adjusted this intersection some more.

Added a bunch more signs to the area also, and little details here and there. More chevrons/striping where it was needed around this local. Just hours fussing over little details few people notice, but stuff that comes together to create the imperfections and immersions of real life.
--That is all for right now
-The Bob

Sorry for the bad news on the smart traffic signals, but I'm just not smart enough to figure it out, and I was born into the 98th percentile on a national intelligence test, and that's evidently not even close to enough brains for this. Maybe one day they'll figure out why no one's using them, except them.

 

SCHEDULES AND DATES!
This weekend: I'd like to get a new copy of Los Injurus online for supporters, Patreon folks, and anyone else who contributed. This will have all changes up until the point which I uploaded it.
When this is bug-checked and what-not then I'll know that uploading a resource-reduced version will be much easier and less fraught with bugs and other misc. perils. I will work on the resource-reduced version next week, that can go on the public servers here.

If you haven't noticed, The night cubemap is now being used. This will let me light up building windows at night and only at night, like you've seen in GTA for the last 20 years and just about every other open-world game (at-least any one that isn't post apocalypse devoid of life or electricity).
I've also done an overhaul of the sky settings. Still haven't gotten the cloud layer perfect, so turn 'clouds' setting to minimum in 'environment' settings pane, and you'll get a nice clear blue sky instead of a grey fogged look (it's not THE DREADFUL N64 FOG OF NO SEEING 500-FEET-NESS like Roane County used to have, no worries, it's just the sky color gradient!). You can still see across pretty much half or even the whole entire terrain here... but as expected, moisture (and possibly pollution) will knock out the color/saturation of far away things. If anything, it's clearer now and the shadow map is just slightly ever-so-more-detailed (2x the detail of before in x and y directions, probably in the Z-direction too).
*I don't have DOF enabled here as it nauseates me, but you can flip that on should you so choose.
Aside of the illuminated middle-finger shaped tower sticking out like a sore thumb, and almost all the PBR textures being way too wet-shiny, it looks pretty nice. I've got two test-lights in for the street lighting, but the script isn't running / maybe it's just not picking up the lights. Whatever.
The closest traffic light (signal head models) to this location was switched over model-wise to the new smart traffic lights, to see if I can get the traffic lights working last night. That was before my head wanted to explode and got me a migraine (which continued to get worse) until I gave up trying. So it doesn't function right now and won't in the update. COMPLAIN TO THE STAFF IF YOU WANT SMART TRAFFIC LIGHTS PLEASE, I can't make them for you or even myself if it's too inconspicuous how to do so, too technical, and not at all documented except 1~2% of the stuff. What's more confusing than that is trying to figure out how they managed to make it more complicated and difficult then setting up a REAL traffic light in real life!

---

In other news, A scammer took over my bank account, on the week of my birthday, and stole pretty much my entire social security check (but *NOT* the project funds!). The bank who runs the account set up by the government 12 years ago is the worst bank in existence and is still fighting me tooth and nail. If it wasn't for the little bit of income I get from the project here going into a separate account, I'd probably not be typing this right now. On-top of that, my family didn't even get me anything for my birthday except a 6 dollar box of chocolates from the dollar store. Wow! Amazing.

F-BOB LIVE ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
MY FAMILY IS A BUNCH OF NARCISSIST [CENSORED]'S!​

...and to think, I went out of my way so much for so long and endured so much pain for these people.
I should have listened to the GOOD cops a decade ago, when they told me I'd be a lot better off without these people in my biological family / extended family around. Ya'know, because for some reason, maybe me being an idiot, but I'd say more blind loyalty and "being raised right", not even my own family having pointed firearms at me (usually for no reason deserving of even close to that) had discouraged me (hey! put that pea shooter away before you blast the landlord's carpeting again! I don't like this rug enough to want to buy the landlord a new one even if he is a family friend of ours! that much I had said when I lived with my brother a bit a decade ago - the same brother who passed away on September 10th).
Ah well, it's alright. At-least the community helped me pull through. Well, now, Sadly I don't make enough from this project to live off. I don't do drugs, I don't drink, I drive a 22 year old paid-off car and my car insurance is paid until about June... but ... When you're missing decently over 1000$ of social security money and you had no clue your entire account was taken over, and it takes nearly a week plus nasty letters to the Inspector General (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau dot gov) for the bank to accept that you are even you... plus ten days after that for them to send out paperwork, yet you're supposed to return the paperwork within 10 days of fraud being declared (your/my call to the bank), it doesn't make a lot of sense when the bank is by law to either reimburse you within 10 business days of reported / declaration of fraudulent activity, or to at-least give you provisional credit, unless you did something blatantly stupid like give your info out over the phone or internet - which I DEFINITELY didn't do (Regulation section E of PREPAID card regulations/law). Considering writing the BBB and possibly Financial Advisory commission or whatever the heck that other one is called.
If you have the means, and the time, please sign up for the Los Injurus City Patreon. If you were considering contributing, please do.
PATREON LINK, SAFE FOR WORK / SFW!
Thankfully project funds are in a separate account, with a different, LOCAL bank.
If you think you have some lawyer friends, or any ideas, please let me know (if it's confidential, please private message, but you can message in this thread if you want to). Stuff was ordered off Amazon in 3 large sums and shipped to Florida to a vacant house, and I haven't been to Florida for nearly 30 years (27½ years).
IF YOU use DIRECT EXPRESS, run by COMERICA BANK of TX, USA, which has customer disservice call center subcontracted through CONDUENT LLC of New Jersey (they do not care, callous bunch they are), take your money and RUN to any other bank. Hiding your money in the mattress or under your pillow is safer, or do what I do and hide your cash under the cleaning utensils like the broom or weed wacker (because no one would move/touch those but me).
10 business days have come and gone and they claim that even though I called in within 24 hours of discovering the discrepancy and my pin changed, they think it's only been 7 business days... They THINK they have then an additional 10 days once getting all the paperwork squared off to decide to credit me or not? No, the law / regulation E of pre-paid gov't benefit cards CLEARLY states 10 BUSINESS DAYS from when you report fraud. Not 10 days from when you finally believe me is ME even though they locked the account down on the 1st day with the 1st call. Not 10 days following the first 10 because, oh, I don't know, let's see how many customers starve to death or become homeless so we don't have to pay up. Sheesh. It's bad.
I can now see why they lost their contract, in sheer irony, as of THIS MONTH, with the government for Social Security benefit payments. Though I managed to get the account back under my control, Comerica / D-E certainly lost my business.
...and I was just telling myself last month that I need to get over the past and start to trust bank cards and credit card systems again. No thanks! Cash only please! It always works, and it's required to accept legal tender if you like your business license in the USA.
I am physically disabled. I already have issues with PTSD-related anxiety issues, and I don't sleep worth "poo" so as it is without this mess, not to mention a host of other problems only aggravated / made worse yet by said issues. Constant migraines, though partly from hunger this time, and my knee that was good for several months (a record) now is fully 'on strike' basically now because of not sleeping enough and I'm having issues walking again.
Trying to hold on though. It's tough. I didn't need this now. My family's doings on my birthday and completely ignoring it was even a thing AFTER all this bank rubbish went down was just the icing on the cake.
At-least I have this community, and this project to keep my ailing brain occupied.
Thank-you for any support you can give, but don't feel bad if you can't and need it as badly as I do right now.
--That is all, I hope.
-The Bob
There was recently, in 2021 or 22, a class-action lawsuit and settlement that Comerica/DE lost in regards to this exact thing. Well, nothing has changed.
I just have to figure out if I can get treble damages for punitive damage in a civil suit in TN...

 

To take your mind out of the troubles and maybe make you feel a little better, here's a middle finger from the past from our mutual online acquaintance Ouerbacker. I think this prophet foresaw the rising of Los Injurus when he made his graffiti-art.

Anyway keep laying road and stay on the path.

 

is there a link to a more recent version of the map?

 

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=12840784

 

@bob.blunderton Do you mind pinging me when the new repo version of this map is availible? I have the resource and the thread watched but sometimes the forums decide to stop notifying me abut stuff I've followed.

 

I lurk alot on the forums, I could make a permanent note for myself if you would like a notification, or if you'd prefer, a DM, I could handle that, as it seems bob.blunderton has a lot of work already to handle :3

 

You can actually watch resources on the repo and it will notify you
--- Post updated ---
Here's an image of what it looks like on a normal desktop (I'm already watching the resource)

 

yes I have it watched but the forums and the repo just stop notifying me after a while so maybe it will work, maybe not

 

The map hasn't been updated in a while, that might be why
--- Post updated ---
Actually, it hasn't been updated on the repo for a year now

 

Over a month since @bob.blunderton was active, is everything all right?

 

I'm wondering the same

 

Yeah. Not good.

 

I was wondering the same thing. i hope Bob is okay.

 

I'm alive here. Sorry for the hiatus.
I think I fractured a leg after falling over our trailer I couldn't see, walked around the back of the Chevy and didn't know the (black) trailer was hooked up to it yet (GRRRRR, someone TELL ME THESE THINGS!), cracked my shins FULL FORCE and went head over heels over the goose-neck of the trailer that was still hooked up. I couldn't see in the dark, so yeah, ouch. I did catch myself a solid there with my hands, didn't even scrape any skin off my hands, but my arms are pretty strong from me using them to get out of the chair pretty much every time I stand.
That combined with having my bank account stolen in January by someone in the US via the 'card declined' scam on a fake store, also having been EXTREMELY ill and what-not, it was too much in addition to all the other stuff including private investigators STILL trying to bother me (regardless of me having zero liability legally to their slander attempts and things like them socially engineering people into trying to make my life miserable - have the I4J on that)....
I needed to shed anything that added anything onto my to-do list quickly before my brain went BOOM. My poor PTSD-hobbled brain can't take what it used to when it was younger, and my physical condition is even worse.
So I took a bit of time off from everything even remotely social media related (I don't really do traditional social media, but this does count).
Some people don't pay attention to their brain throwing warning signals that it's overloaded - and those people snap, act/flip out, hurt others (they garnish someone with a crowbar in traffic or slam into them with a vehicle on the highway, or go completely bonkers and hurt a LOT of people - just pick up a US newspaper for that), and that's totally NOT my style. I'm just some church-going guy that tries to do the right thing, and sometimes makes cool stuff online now and then, only to literally have idiot private investigators going over solid white lines (like trying to pass on the right when I'm clearly in the right-most right turn lane) in desperation to RAM me in traffic. The question still is "WHY?" and my suggestion to them is GET A LIFE. At some point in the future I will release links to uploaded dash cam footage of them doing stupid stuff in traffic, even them almost causing a pile up with innocent other folks on the highway (I was waaaaay back maybe 20~30 car-lengths driving the speed limit, in no hurry, going to an elective objective/destination anyway, so I just saw it and thought 'another tourist is lost even with a GPS, not surprising', they jammed the brakes at a gore-point of an exit and almost got piled into by a human cell-phone holder on a 70mph highway). Those idiot investigators are so much of a danger to everyone around them, causing copious amounts of liability to anyone they work with not to mention all those in the public around them, that they are even a danger to themselves, and on-top of that don't even have a good reason to be bothering me (I barely even do anything, let alone even get as much as a traffic ticket which I haven't in over 9 years). Won't even delve into the illegal substances (which you should please NEVER do) they've been caught with, or the stolen license plates they got busted with last May (what is so secret you must do that? Crime much? Oh do tell!). When they're out there 'striking a pose' trying to seem scary to me, they remind me of the kids in school (in the 80's and 90's) that were the ones who got 'placed' upside-down into the trash cans at the end of lunch.
In the mean-time, I've been enjoying a bit of Simcity (the really old one that's over 20 years old), and a little bit of those open-source or closed-source game-maker-based retro games. I've also been trying to catch up on a bunch of my other duties around here in the real-world, as much as I can with my messed-up legs.
I'll make sure to get the most recent version of Los Injurus uploaded this week though, I still have it ready. My brain just said ENOUGH when it did, and that happened to be the week I was going to upload the last update.
Do you like retro games? Even the ones that seem to go into the realm of self-loathing?

If you ever played Zelda II Adventure of Link, but thought it was too hard and didn't have enough to it, you can give this one a shot.
If you have an old game-pad hooked-up via USB, like I do, you can use JoytoKey to forward controls to whatever keyboard keys you want (provided the app doesn't pickup controller input and keyboard input simultaneously).
It's been expanded, to basically double the size of the old one, completely remade in game-maker and this means you break no rules downloading it off itch IO.
https://hoverbat.itch.io/ziiaol
There's an option menu if you pause the game and then hit O on the keyboard. It might take a minute to figure out how to get around in the menu though.
There's one that's nearly like Zelda III (the SNES one), but it's not Link to the past, in-stead it's an infinite random dungeon that's also a rouge-like and different each time it easily puts an end to you - though it does look just like an infinite link-to-the-past dungeon. This one gets QUITE FUN if you can get past the 1st boss encounter on level 3.
https://archive.org/details/zelda-dungeons-of-infinity-1.1.1
Both links (pun intended) are SAFE FOR WORK as far as I know when this is posted.
Do enjoy, they are quite fun, though don't get mad if your parents think you're playing an old NES or SNES game!
You can also look up a game called Metroid Planets, it's another fun free one, but it might be harder to find and you'll need to visit the right discord channel/group to get 'rooms' for it (as with enough 'room' files - individual rooms), it can generate unlimited 'worlds' or quest for Metroid just like the original NES game but different planet layouts.

So I'm going to sit back and relish in my yet-another-migraine. These things are more often than not now. Could be worse though - I'm not quite sure how beyond meeting my end. It's going to be beautiful nearly shirt-off temperatures (which I could almost do - lost nearly 40lbs since JUNE 7 2024) this week for most of the week, and I can barely walk. It's got to heal somewhat over time, so hopefully I get at-least one or two good days where I can do something outside so as to make my home look less abandoned... I had JUST cleaned the driveway off after winter only to have a huge wind-storm come through (a week ago) and COVER the whole driveway in little sticks - seriously - there's got to be 1000+ of them on it. It looks like someone dynamited a full-size tree out there, as if World War Tree occurred, if you must.
Just know I'm okay, and I DO appreciate y'all caring, but DO NOT worry. I will be OK. I'm not in a mental pit or anything or a danger, I just am having a rough patch not helped by the fact it was freezing cold out and the things that've happened to start off 2025 and being injured and all. I will make it some-how, I've got no choice.
That said, I'll do my best to get an update out to supporters this week. I should have uploaded it weeks ago.
If y'all are still deciding to support this project (which will continue) just know it's likely going to be going towards medical bills, because the gov't-provided insurance barely covers things these days. I wish it could go towards a new computer, but I'd need over a year of that type of income to really replace this with anything decent, and also while the 3950x's per-core performance these days (compared to new stuff) is barely half what the newer chips are, when all cores can get used (or at-least a bunch of them) it usually doesn't leave me wanting in the performance department. That said there are some applications that use newer instructions I don't have here and they do lag a bit. Also, to whomever your name was who donated the cash towards a GPU nearly two years ago so I could run this mod on full detail, a GPU which I'm still using, and it's still not outmoded - it was worth every penny and then some, and I will have it for many years (even if I have to send it away to have it repaired if it breaks). Still, if my worse offense in my life is still using a 5.5 ~ 6 year old computer as my daily, well that's totally doable. Sadly, that's far from the worse issue for me. That said, this old beast still does most all of what it needs, so I'll be okay for now or at-least until they don't make parts for it anymore.
Courtesy notice: For those in the market for a new or used GPU, just get something with 16gb or more on it, even if it's two years old. Doesn't matter who made it, just don't 'settle' for less than 16gb, and you should definitely pass-up those 8gb models as they won't give you highest details even at 1080p on many newer games. New games out in the last 12~18 months often require more than 12gb to run 1440p or 4k resolutions even without ray-tracing or DLSS which does add 2gb to required VRAM on-top of what the graphics/models/shaders use already. I still keep up with the GPU news even when taking time for myself, news which has told me that the 50-series Nvidia cards' drivers are much worse than even AMD beta drivers have been when they were at their worse nearly 10 years ago (AMD has come a long way, and the 9070/9070 XT drivers are decently solid, plus existing cards' drivers for AMD GPU's are fairly solid and on-par with Nvidia's more solid driver releases in the past; so don't fear AMD GPU's due to driver issues in the past).
So I hope this isn't too much of a disappointment here.
TLDR: Yes I still work on this, yes it's continuing, and yes I needed a little time away to not run myself ragged over here with everything (mostly not related to this project).
That is all for right now though, I think I will eventually be forced to go get checked out by some medical folks soon though for my physical ailments at this point, lest I not be able to walk at all anymore.
--Sincerely
-The 'still alive somehow, and not easy to break' Bob.
I'm hurtin a bit, a pile of my former self, but I'll make it, one painful step at a time.
[extra reading below]
No pity needed - seriously - things just take a bit longer than they used-to do. I just hope The Lord isn't too angry with me swearing the name of the person who thought our side door should have 4 steps to get in the house when they could have made a ramp there / had a better elevation, every time I have to bring a case of water in the house (or big bag/box of cat litter, or anything else over the 15~20 pounds that I'm not supposed to carry) using a dolly, and yanking the thing up the steps with my bad back having no other choice. Guess I gotta drag a stool out to the garage to sit on while I make a ramp out of the scrap wood I "thankfully hoarded" last year in the garage. You'd be surprised how much wood you can stuff into a 20+ year-old Corolla when you put your mind to it, and don't mind going down the road with pieces hanging out the trunk or the side windows, though it wasn't maxing out the suspension admittedly - and no it's not a hatchback What matters is I got the doors shut. (They knocked down a 100-year-old building that looked like the store from Green Acres, that was a mile down the road from my house here, when they put the highway project into motion on the main road to town. I saw a huge pile of scrap wood and a lot of it was old hardwood in half decent shape despite being disassembled with an excavator, so I rightly stopped being the cheap CENSORED that I am. Of-course I stopped. I didn't leave until I couldn't fit any more wood in the car. I must've been a sight for some older folks or anyone in passing really, as I went down the road with wood hanging out in all directions - dangerous as it may sound I dropped nothing - it's just some boards were 8 or 10 feet long! For what it's worth, my little sedan hauls more than most pickups in driveways all over Suburbia do, even with oft-crippling disabilities of mine)... I just hope I can do something with all the board-feet of lumber I've hoarded - short of nailing more and more increasing amounts to my deck in lieu of falling through it, before I'm totally cripple (if I'm not already). I hope the mental image of a Corolla over-stuffed with scrap lumber going down the road brings some humor to your day. Sometimes all we need is a good chuckle or to know someone cares.
Thank-you for caring. It means something. It DOES make a difference in the world, however small it may seem. Some folks need that something to make a difference. Sometimes that's you. Sometimes it's me.

 

Take care of yourself, that's always most important. Thank you for the update though, we're all glad to see you're still around. Get well soon Bob.

 

Dont feel sorry, your health is important. Just glad your okay.