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

Week 3 November supporter beta links just went out over Patreon. Do enjoy!
--- Post updated ---

The abandoned mall is fun to mess about in, I enjoy too, so glad you do also.
Yellow Diamond Sign, at the interchange on the highway there's a set of them indicating a right hand bend in the road, where the re-done highway meets the old decal-road based black-asphalt highway and turns kind-of quickly, it's a bit rough of a transition but again temporary. I have to work on the area just past the signs so the transition is temporary at best.
The next supporter beta after this one (2.5~3.5 weeks away max) will be phased over to the public repository after the supporters have it for a few days to a week, to root-out any nasty bugs or boo-boo's on my part.
So on to the telephone pole subject.
Yes they are planned, I just haven't put them in yet. They will be added in the older sections of the map. The new housing areas will have utilities and green junction dog-houses in their place, but definitely will be poles and wires in the older sections. I am waiting until I get finished with areas before I add in final layers of detail, so I don't murder the FPS (this is why even completed areas are missing things like that). I don't want to build half the city and then miss-out on performance.
I still have a few tricks up my sleeve on performance if need-be, so no worries.

 

Okay, thank you for answering my questions and thank you for giving me information about the yellow diamond sign and telephone poles. I do have a few more questions about this map though.

1. Are you going to make your own telephone poles, or are you going to take them from another map like East Coast USA, Hirochi Raceway, West Coast USA, and Automation Test Track?
Both of those options are fine with me.
2. Are you going to a put a music billboard like "[insert band or artist parody name here] performing at concert" or something like that on Los Injurus?
If you decide not to do that, that's totally fine.
3. Will the next public update of this map be released before 2020?
I would like the public update to be released before 2020, but you can release it anytime you want.

 

Is there a name for the remote air-strip and the big airport ?

 

for the second one, "Coming on the second of February... One year only!... For 1959... The Winter Dance Party!" how about having some very old posters in the run down section of the city that are torn and heavily faded and come from better times in the late '50s and '60s

 

Nice, although they’re still missing some guide signs and I want to help make guide signs!

 

I'd have to look at the in-game poles to see if they're good and not overdone. I wouldn't want to 'waste' precious draw calls (over 4000 = bad). I don't like to just 'steal' game models all the time though, but they are plenty good to use until I do make something of my own generally (like the gas station).
One can have all the detail you want but by the 4000th time you render a new texture per frame, you start to hit performance notably on many machine configs. By contrast you can render one million to 10+ million triangles (everything is a triangle or many triangles) per second depending on your video hardware... but the draw calls on DX11 and below titles (not DX12 or Vulkan) is what limits you the most. DX12 and Vulkan have multi-threaded draw call feeds that alleviate mostly or completely the limits of DX11 with single-core-fed draw calls, and hence why most new 'open world' type games (or very detailed ones) use it. It allows you to push the video card harder especially on slower-but-many-core processors that would otherwise hang up on feeding draw calls from the cpu to the gpu. This limit is precisely why Roane County's default-spawn in downtown Harriman is a bit laggy on years-old processors.
Billboards are planned. What they are and what they will be is a mystery at the moment. They won't be in until likely next year.
A week to 10 days before Chris Mess I will have a public update on the repository.

The name for the airport is:
California Regional Air Port
I just didn't name it because someone objected. One of the airline graphics is already made, too. It's 'Breaking Wind'.

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Feel free to keep posting ideas. There's tons of guide signs I have to make. I need to get to that but I've been pushing it off, it's just a matter of adjusting some graphics (I have most of the sign graphics I'll ever need from Roane County yet) which is merely minutes. They're not top priority but they're slowly getting in. I haven't been modeling too much ( I did make a new curb section for the median where it narrows for a left turn lane though), as the modeling software is a bit crash-happy with my broken video board. I will be replacing that before the next update is out, then I'll be modeling like crazy. Hopefully not too much of it misses the next update.

After the weekend, or if I should get 'bored' of games I will hop back on the map editor and get more production out. I need a day or two to just goof off for my own sanity as with all updates. So do feel free to post ideas!

 

A possible idea that could be incorporated into the map could be a somewhat large truck-stop on a major interstate exit right outside of the main city, a good amount of fast food, general stores and some neighborhoods.

 

Thank you for answering my questions @bob.blunderton. Keep up the good work on this map.

 

Geez Bob, this map is getting very Murica, very big time Murica!

Scale of structures is really really Murica, there was something orange when I was driving road below there, then I wanted to get up on that bridge, but it's miles and miles to get somewhere you see being right there.

Like when IRL I wanted to go to mall I saw from hotel window, it required sitting in cab for a considerable amount of time, despite I saw it other side of the road. I think that is very realistic experience about US infrastructure, it can be very frustratingly Murican sized at times

There are few tiny orange spots here and there:





I6 Automatic can pull a drift on some downhill turns here, parking lots that one can get lost into, buildings size of small maps alone, multilevel intersections you would need a guide to get trough, it really is realistic experience, you get that hopeless feeling of being small...


I did count something over 140 spots for planes at big airport, so 140 big planes could be parked there, just one of the airfields, that are just small part of the map. Insane project if you think about it that one person builds all of such.

 

Yes, it's not a project worthy of doing if I'm not entirely in WAY over my head. I will entirely being re-doing the bridge with the 'orange stuff' on it, which I did see at one point two weeks ago (and of-course entirely forgot about). So thanks for reminding me of that boo-boo. It ended up with 'no-texture' because I deleted some of the old carry-over assets from Nevada Interstate / Black hills, which this map was originally based on (even the mountain-side opengameart.org sourced texture, which is still in). Will be trying to keep the style of that bridge though, as it's very unique. There are parts of the map you must drive miles and miles to get to. If I followed the speed limit (or stayed under 100mph / 140kmph), I could smoke a whole cig in the time it takes to get there - and then some, sometimes. I enjoy that part of the realism, too, even sometimes when it's a bit much because there's 'construction' or I'm otherwise re-doing something with the interchanges.
There's a little section of highway missing if you drive way past the mall on the highway from the spawn point (spawn, do a u-turn out of the parking-lot and take the ramp ahead to the right, next to long-dong-silver's and just stay on that highway straight until you get to the mall, go past that interchange and the next diamond interchange, the highway switches over to the older stuff, go another mile and some road is missing just before the tunnel). I am going to re-do this area with black asphalt / missing 100 feet of road (33 meters approx), it will be double-decker style like when you go down to the industrial park.
It totally NEEDS A MAP. VERY VERY MUCH, like a map on the 2nd screen of your PC if you have one. I will try to get one out using the terrain height-map colored as a guide. Do know this is on the agenda, and I will try to get this in by the end of the year, at-least in the form of a graphic you can view before / during the time in the map in a web-browser. That is of-course if I don't get it into the game in time. I can't promise this at all, but do know I'm aware of this.
That being said, it's not a Bob Blunderton map if you can't get lost easily! To me, almost / completely getting LOST is part of the immersion. This happens when you drive to places you don't know in real life.
The airport has 145 gates. I believe it's 29 per concourse. A few more may be added on the back of the terminal for package transport and mail / small planes. I left room to add a sixth concourse on the end if needed, which is why It's not 100% done yet. There is room underneath it for a "plane train" when that's needed too, but that's far off.
Thanks for the great words @fufsgfen I appreciate it highly, it means a lot, and thanks again eternally for helping myself & the staff too, on performance last year. People rave about it and I couldn't have done it without you. I know so much more and was glad to find out the bane of BeamNG performance is not triangle fill but indeed draw-calls, before I had gotten too far past the point-of-no-return with performance/progress in the map. I would so sooner require 8gb of VRAM for max detail, than go and have everyone stuck at 30~45fps even on a 1080Ti/ RX 5700 video board.

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The mission statement, for me to be fully transparent with the supporter-funded Los Injurus City Map project is this:
First-off, to demo a concept of a GTA-sized world in BeamNG Drive without murdering performance while providing a varied and interesting diverse landscape that both immerses players and is playable on a modest machine.
Second-off, to create and distribute a diverse city-building kit with all the modular components needed to build an awesome city and all it's infrastructure.
THE CITY BUILDING KIT (MRK) is available in the art/shapes/MRK folder inside the map and is free for all BeamNG map modders to use.
Third-off, to get myself more familiar with building modern 3D worlds, get experienced, and maybe sometime after this is completed, get a job doing this.

The buildings are not the focus of BeamNG Drive experiences. It's the roads and the infrastructure they make up. It's a driving game. It's not The Sims, or Sim City, or Sim Tower (though I love the last two - Sim City 4 and Sim Tower / Yoot Tower). It lets you build a city + the buildings are 'just good enough' to give a somewhat-immersive environment without putting too much detail out (that puts weight on the processor and game-engine) to cause slow-downs when running a dozen-plus vehicles not including your own in TRAFFIC. That's why the buildings are 'simple' unless they're a destination like the Mall or Police Station or airport. That being put out, I have been working on improving the textures some, though MANY still need to be updated to look better / tile better / have detail layers to make it look less 'tiled' or cheap. I have been delaying doing stuff about that as frankly, the textures in the map are 'good enough' for now and don't hurt performance (but improving the textures WILL increase VRAM usage and possibly drop frame rate by a few frames). So when scenes are further along, I'll crank up the details a bit when and where needed; and where performance is poor enough that I cannot afford to add more detail, I will leave things as they are if it's good enough as-is (if it's not good enough and performance is poor, I will tear out stuff and re-do things).
So yes, the buildings COULD be more detailed, but in the scope of the entire project, I wish to devote my immediate future to completing scenes and landmarks (and the highways) first... more fine detail on homes and apartments or the Air Port will come in the future.

Yes there will be a Pilot cop-off called LOT LIZARD'S Truck Stop near the new interchange I just built/showed earlier this week. There will be more than one. This is a good idea and I'm glad you suggested it.

This is going to be a whole county, a huge metropolis, and all the things that make it up will be here. While a lot of the buildings look the same, many many more are planned.
I want to thank everyone for their support, and on that note I will finally be replacing my video card (that's broken and won't hold it's stock speed anymore) in December, after 6 months of fiddling with it trying to keep it going (hey I tried). I also have to renew my World Machine license next month for a whopping 50$ or so (that comes out of Patreon funds as will some assets for this map).

That is all, sorry for the book, it 'just happens'.

 

So, remember that area of black pavement highway (by where I just made a new interchange, one exit past the mall) winding around the edge of the mountain where it was easy to fall off?

It just got ripped out and completely re-done, with two additional tunnels. There will be a parking lot and a building on-top there where the section of black pavement / rocks / sidewalk is. A sort of 'destination' building, built in against the mountain - it'll also look nice from the highway when going under it. This area is completely gutted at the moment so I don't have it ready to drive yet, but I can't wait to!
Don't worry, it's still super easy to fall off the mountain, but small hills at the edge will help you if you don't want to fall off. If you DO want to fall and just go HAM on the throttle off the cliff you'll have a nice jump opportunity. I was going to do double decker here but I had to rip so much up, I kind of threw that idea to the way-side at the moment.
When this area is completed, you'll be able to enjoy cruising the newly improved-upon highway all the way from one side of the city to the other. I know for one I enjoy driving on the new parts that I've worked over since building the city. The 'old' portions are just 'bland' by comparison, feeling almost out of some prequel to BeamNG (almost RoR).
So do know I am working on it again, and what a massive migraine I have right now, ugh. That's all, you are saved from "the book" tonight!

Note: Turn chevrons (at the outside of turns) will have their collision mostly removed in the next update; so it doesn't munch up the car, but might give you a bit of air.

EDIT:
BUGFIX: Cars traveling bi-directionally on two of the four-lane two-lanes-per-side roads is fixed, and the one 5-lane road by where I re-did the intersection (pictured above). Sorry about that, that'll be in the next supporter beta.

 

Considering amount of building going on with this map, you might need some kind of institute of building placed there, even it is only Bob who's doing all the work

These have offices at several places, not sure if there is any nice office buildings they reside in:
https://www.ibts.org/contact-us/

Bob is doing all the work of such institute.

 

Yes, like in GTA's and Midtown Madness and many others less-open-world but still explore-worthy games, there's always some type of government, park, or institutional function there.
Entirely what is going there - great minds think alike! It's something that will be rewarding to find. Maybe one day we'll have a walking mod (RoR has one), and we'll be able to go into buildings (I just flip the interior off when you're 0.5~1 block from it, one-quarter of 1 KM or so, or make the interior a separate object with two detail levels and an empty/single untextured cube low-detail level). They said this game couldn't handle interiors. Other games have it, so I say even a driving game can have it, too, even Carmageddon!
I still have to ready that building you sent a year (?) ago. I will be using it soon enough.
Got to drive on the part of the map I fixed up, it's great. AI is working well enough, too. Found another accidentally two-way road section on the four-lane-per-side (8 lane) highway, on the less developed side of the map. Oops. It's where the cars were often stuck in the ground before (they're not now from what I can see).
It will take me another year or two to get this map to 'mostly done' / 'functionally complete' ... but it's a whole map. It's going to be multiple GB's by the time it's done - it's already 3.25GB unzipped, could be 5GB by the time it's done. Considering there's no plagiarized assets or other-commercial-company/game assets except this one in here, that's pretty good!
I might purchase an asset to use here if I find something cool enough. I found some really cool modular subway station pieces for sale for <20$, they're so getting bought for this. I will put them together in the modeling program (otherwise it's too many draw calls / pieces to stream, for something otherwise 'hidden'), derivative work can be then included in this mod (not the modular station pieces themselves that I use to make the station).
I have to figure out lighting in this game engine. I have NONE in the map. Need to get Nadeox1's script in and use it for street lights.
Wish I could figure out how to rig it so that I only show the subway lighting when inside the station / immediate vicinity.
Likely will render it lit in Maya, use dummy lighting in BeamNG, and use a zone to hold the car's brightness while inside.
--Cheers!

 

Fixed more wrong-way drivers with the AI as I have been testing it a lot lately.
Implementing directional way points. I don't know if the game reads them or not in it's current form (I will test it). It's a new feature so it may take time for this to 'work' better than it does currently where things use way points, if it does not currently work. It lags pretty hard core when rotating them so it takes A WHILE.
Vehicles using the wrong lane when entering single-lane on/off ramps or doing other things like driving down the shoulder, is due to some missing code on the game-engine side of things, and will eventually be used better (as the lane function was recently added in the last year). It currently does not read dead lanes (disabled lanes) on entering a new road from an old road at an intersection in the current version of the game as my tests have shown. This was reported to the staff, so I am sure it will get implemented eventually. How long it will take is anyone's guess, but I won't complain to them, they do a bang-up great job so as it is.
Got rid of some old pillars from the old So-Cal highways in the corner of the map with the city airport (they held up the highway on the mountain range). Will replace these soon, likely before the beta.
Will fix other bugs, too, as I see them, including what @fufsgfen mentioned about the big bridge missing textures that were caused by old assets I deleted (the assets had a bug that prevented some folks from loading the map). They were assets I wasn't going to make any use of anyway, so worry not it's no loss, they will be replaced with better ones.

Will work on updating/improving the 'newer' looking highway textures and correcting texture mis-alignments at the on/off ramps in the city. It's been bugging me.
I'd like to get all this done before the next beta. Not sure if there will be one or two betas between now and Chris Mess, that's a bit up-in-the-air, as I can get busy in real life during this time (and don't wish to make a commitment I cannot keep). Will do my best.
--That is all.

 

I think interiors can be something like 12 Tri's for each floor at bare minimum, that is not much of anything, but of course can add up with shadows and other fancier things like speculars etc.

Still, I don't think interiors can actually be too much of an issue with current optimizations, you can always cull them too.

Devs have some fake interior things at new East Coast like they have such at Italy too, which do add a lot when one is driving by.

I'm making full interiors so people can place stuff inside the buildings for gameplay entertainment purposes or whatever, but as I'm against using textures it really does not matter so much, I spent little extra Tri's for downstairs of this building to give better visual indicator about shape of the space (red stripes), with LODs I think there might not be any limit to how many of such buildings I can put to scene.


But there are thoughts in my mind I have no real answers, GPU compute position using one instance that is in Vram, placing object with editor, placing object with 3d modeling program.

Theoretically one could think that placing object in editor and making copies in editor could create instances instead of copies to vram and placing with 3d modeling software (all everything would need to be clumped to one object I guess) would have no such potential saving in vram.

It might be that game engine does not do such GPU compute position stuff of course, but considering 3D trees or some features in buildings, such GPU compute positions could be huge vram saver as no need for storing all vertices of everything etc. just have translate of group by GPU compute.

I'm having silly thoughts today, I better turn off thinking module

 

Well entirely I wish to do some fake interiors for the larger buildings, that only pop-in to the scene when you're close to them. I mean hopefully the pop-in isn't too bad, some of the early residential single-family homes have it pretty bad but otherwise it's not usually TOO bad. I've been getting better. There's PLENTY of room for extra triangles and maybe a few draw calls here and there on a scene. I am no-where near triangle max even with the scene full of cars and my lowly under-clocked main-stream video board that's half way dead. I'm a little on the verge of ouch with draw-calls and around a dozen vehicles in play (mostly the vehicles doing it), but the scene itself without the vehicles is pretty well under control. I'd rather have somewhat simple buildings VS over-doing the buildings and making a slide-show when cars are brought into play. Sure - I can make us some fancy buildings. A little 3d look to them with translucent glass and some interior lights glowing in the ceilings of the skyscrapers wouldn't hurt and would only barely take 1% of the draw call budget.
Don't worry, you'll see more interiors added in time, they won't be that complicated though - but for the depth they add to the scene even 10 draw calls additional per building (only when close enough to it) is worth it.

 

Got a little progress done on the map tonight. A little is an understatement though, as I did spend a few hours on it.
Added drainage basins, rock outcroppings, plants, and lots of guide signs to this interchange. I will change the collision tomorrow on the guide signs so it doesn't skewer the vehicle anymore, it will in-stead just knock your vehicle upward a bit.
The in-game screenshots weren't working so I used a screen capture of it - always have a backup plan. STUPID TECHNOLOGY!
...Just click to enlarge below.

 

I am honestly looking forward to the upcoming update on this map. I can tell you put a lot of work in this map. By the way, the interchange looks good.

I do have a few questions though

1. Are there going to be yellow diamond signs besides curve signs in this map such as stop light and stop sign warning signs and truck downhill signs?
2. Are there going to be any runaway truck ramps on this map?
3. When will you get your video card replaced?

Any answer is fine with me.

 

1.) Yes plenty of those yellow diamond signs will be put in all over. Just have to find the time and put them in as-needed.
2.) Yes it will get run-away truck ramps where I have a place to add them and the need, both realistic ones and "truck obliterating" types heh heh, though they're a ways out yet.
3.) Who knows, I've been setting money aside, saw some black Friday deals on one model of video of GPU, but then browsed around and the same site had cheaper variants with the same or better warranty, same amount of fans, same GPU core and memory etc. So I've sat here ignoring black Friday for the most part (as it's mostly a sham and I don't have the health to stand for hours nor nearly the patience to put up with THAT many people in a crowded space). Hopefully I'll get my dying RX 480 8gb replaced this-coming month. If not, I will just make do with the existing one. At-least I got it to remember it's 'under-clock' settings on the next boot-up, so I won't crash randomly at stock settings after reboot until changing it back to lower settings. I am a penny-pinching (expletive) like no-one ever has met. I would cut pennies in half to save money if possible. Now if black Friday deals were SAVE 75% off a 500$ GPU I'd be on them like flies on [censored], but they're not. It's save 10~15% with promo-code at best, honestly that's very 'meh', and I can get those 24/7-365. I found better deals on pleated window treatments than video cards... though I could honestly use some, as the cat absolutely murdered my 1980's-esqe mini-blinds (and me being the cheap [BLEEP] I am, haven't gotten around to spending money replacing them yet). One of these days I will.
Thing also is, I am living on a fixed income, I have doctor bills/meds I need to pay for, Chris Mess Presents for the very very select few people I care about in my family, probably-already-deferred-too-long car maintenance & an exhaust held up by coat hangers for FOUR years (they're still holding!), monthly software fees, next month's renewal for World Machine & all my I-don't-live-for-free bills, AND a broken half-working video card that's somehow-by-the-grace-of-God still going... all vying for the same income stream. I'm not even in government subsidized housing (though I DO qualify for it, being physically disabled), nor food stamps, nor anything like that, sadly... so I have to make the dollars count. I'd earn extra income if I could, but if I could I'd already have a primary income stream taking up 40~70 hours a week like I used to when I was able to hold a good job (I LOVED my jobs, I used to sing in the car on the way to work, even if they weren't my dream jobs; I was quite happy to make money even if as someone's slave). I hate being stuck in the house disabled - especially permanently - but I must accept this. So here we are... 2019 and The Bob tries to make just enough on the side with this project to keep it going (technically, I don't really post any 'profit' on this project; anything left over goes back into the project for more software, assets and such).
So if you have the money: please donate to this project, it matters. The project won't be canned without it (though surely I'd be able to do more with more income!), but your dollar counts, even if it's just a dollar. The sad part of the whole thing is, yes, the RX 480 8gb is still a capable card, it just refuses to hold it's stock speeds anymore and is slowly getting less stable. So time will tell. I will figure out what I can do the best I can, and will make do however I have to, through thick and thin to keep this project going. Why can you be sure of this (Especially important when donating)? Simply put, I feel like my whole purpose for being has been removed when I take my 3-days-per-release time-off from this project, and I mean that. It's something like 'okay now what the heck do I do, isn't there something I should be doing?'. I sometimes have trouble staying off of it for 3 days, the very 3 days I set aside post-release (which are for my sanity as much as time set-aside to fix any experience-mangling bugs that may occur).
So no worries, this map will continue to be my Primary Objective for the foreseeable future. There will be LOTS more LOS INJURUS to come for many months (year/years?).

--The Bob ...signing off for now.

 

Thank you for answering my questions quickly. Hopefully, you can have a good time working on this project. I would love to be able to make a map for BeamNG.Drive, but I don't know how to make one sadly.