Released Desert Highway 2021.12.29

For some reason none of the bodies of water seem to be working. Whenver I place my car down in there, it's just two feet of water and then the rest of the space below is completely dry. Any ideas for why this might be happening?

 

In the art/roads directory of all my published maps, I have a transparent_AI_Guide texture that works for use as a 100% invisible road to make the AI go where you want it (good for straight bridges, mesh roads with landscape nearby underneath them, or complex intersections where enabling AI on all the bits and pieces would confuse it greatly, make it act up or just eat CPU cycles needlessly).
Just lay a two-node decal road (with only a start and an end) at each end of your bridge (right where the decal roads end), just make sure it aligns well with, or overlaps the decal road on both sides, so that the line between the two nodes makes a straight line across your bridge, and the AI will drive across it like nobody's business. I did this heavily in So-Cal, a lot in Tennessee, and some in Nevada (though, nevada uses waypoints more). It's much more straight-forward than doing waypoints and much less time-consuming.
If you have a curved mesh roadway (or bridge), that the terrain is too varied underneath of to make use of the invisible road trick, use waypoints here.
I also have some intersection 'blanks' in my maps. Tennessee has the best ones, but they're high-res. You could always scale them down if needed. If you need to bend and contort decal roads to odd stretching usually happening around intersections (like narrow ends and a wide middle like you'd do for an intersection overlay), 'improved spline' helps here and so does the start/end fade.
My just-released Nevada Interstate 7.0 (that I've been working on for a month or two now on an off), has lots of beautiful, never-seen-before concrete sections of highway (mostly), so if you ever build one, again, the textures are there for use - have at it if you wish.
'That bridge' pops tires because it's not buried enough. Burying the ends a bit longer might do the trick.
The 'something about roads' post may be very helpful if you ever want to carve some of those decal roads into the terrain, doullpepper just made a video about it explaining it motion, if it's anything. If you have meshes with banked spots (whether carving with them or just using them as roads), WIDTHDIVISIONS setting pumped up to like 24~32 helps substantially keep them smoother, if you haven't used it already.

All things considered, I was very impressed with this, and will say that your talent is very apparent in this map. Much more attention to detail is showing, and there was also plenty of new scenery and content here. For a map to keep another fellow mapper busy for an hour or two alone in one map, is really something to be said. Your map also does a very good job at hiding the large-terrain-square misgivings - something I know all too well about!
Keep up the great work, and I look forward to future releases from you.
--- Post updated ---

The stream is not deep enough. The stream is an entity much like a mesh road, and exists in a finite area (unlike a water plane, which is an ocean of water). He mentions he'll make a new one which is most likely the easiest method.
Screenshot the values in the editor or the .mis file in a text editor for the old stream, if you must keep them, to facilitate re-entering all the little details.
Also, slightly skewing the sound pitch for the multiple waterfall sounds used will prevent aliasing around the waterfall (this is that weird flanger effect that happens and can make undesired sound for some, I am a music producer as a hobby for myself, so I know about these things), it will also make the sound more realistic (I did this for my tennessee waterfall to some effect and I think the game devs did too).

 

Possibly to your surprise, I made an invisible AI guide road texture long ago. In deleting the mesh roads, I lost the invisible roads so under the bridges so I just need to pop those back in. Good call on the waterfall sounds! I can bugger around with those easily as well.

Thanks Bob. Very helpful comments.

 

iheartmods updated Desert Highway UPDATED Version 13 with a new update entry:

Fixed AI

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

Don't sleep much do you??? Thanks for the fix, will d/l and adjust my review as needed (will copy, edit, and re-submit, if allowed, if not, i'll just post a note here if needed!).

Of course, I don't sleep much either, that's why I am also here.

Beamng.drive, home of the night-crawler-mapper-peoples.

 

I took out the engine, brakes, and fuel tank and...



Excellent work with the decal roads. It makes the map feel that much more real. I have only explored a fraction of the update, but everything I have seen so far seems to be an improvement of grand proportions.

I will miss the retaining walls on the straightaway though I used to call that the 'Death Star Trench Run' for the feelings of vertigo and motion sickness I would get while doing speed runs from the cockpit view.

 

@NewoFox you always seem to find new ways to entertain, both yourself and these videos you show us (hey, even if this isn't my map). I always had a spot for this map (again, it made me realize: hey I can do what I want to do with a map in this game), so I keep an eye here.

I must disagree on the barrier removal, as they made me ill when I felt boxed in (claustrophibia?) as I was in motion. The map is fairly scenic, so hence why not be able to see the nice scenery, why be blocked from cliffs/jumps made of terrain, etc.

@iheartmods
Overall this map is coming along quite nicely and I enjoy coming back to it time and again. Now that AI can go over bridges, you can have some pretty good chases, as the straight (decal) roads lend themselves well to it (it never used to be that good for chases, say how they would randomly brake a year or more ago, but it is great now for that). Keep up the great work.

 

Thanks man, love the love!
@NewoFox Wonderful video. Thank you!
--- Post updated ---

Added to the todo list. Thanks!

 

I remember this!! I will be making a video of this map.

 

Great! I look forward to it.

 

Okay, but do you have any reccomendation of music for me to put in it? That's why it isn't out yet.

 

Anything really. It's your vid!

 

Okay, I'll try and find something that fits.

 

nvm fixed.

 

Mind telling me what the problem was?

 

Well I tried to update the version only it stayed version 12. But eventually I got version 13 working.

 

Cache issue?

 

Nope. I had more than one copy of version 12, so I deleted all of the previous one, installed Version 13 and it worked.

 

The update broke many dependencies to assets, as expected. As a buffer, the update(s) on all my maps will be up by Sunday!

 

No! Well, at least I played the map before I updated to 0.9.