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

Sorry for asking a needless question, but I just wondered if any sirens played during this storm? Please excuse my periodic asking about them, I’m obsessed with the things

This is a screenshot from a Hammer map I am making for Valve’s Source Engine. Surprise surprise, it contains a siren.

 

Everyone is 'obsessed' with something. I like infrastructure / building cities. It's not an obsession any more if it's some type of money maker. Consider a job in creating and/or installing storm warning systems some day.
We all have specialties. There's a guy that fixes radiators, there's a guy who rebuilds engines, a guy who's life is putting transmissions back to a working state, or the guy on the corner with the discount tire shop who loves to see you mid-week when all that can be afforded for your 1000~6000$ car is a used tire to keep you able to get to work (and home again).
So there's a specialty, a specialty that every one of us has, that makes us all unique, and in the same stride gives all of us a place in life.
After-all, you wouldn't want your tire guy putting in the concrete foundation for your new house (provided he'd never have done it before), would you?
We *ALL* have a place. Your place in the future could save lives. Be proud of that.
Now, that out of my system, no sorry the sirens don't play out here in the middle of nowhere. They have them not too far from here though near church. When I was at the school nearby dropping off church donations (for the students, we donate paper, pens, pencils, crayons/markers, binders etc) they were still fixing the (mostly superficial) tornado damage from one of the ones that's hit in the last two years. It mangled the front awning (there's covered roof areas made of aluminum awnings where drop off sections are here for almost all schools due to how much it rains). It also ripped off some of the flashing around the edge of the roof of the school. Luckily, when the tornado had hit, the sirens wailed, and they got the students who were leaving back off the buses and into the building where they were a lot safer. I don't think any of the students were hurt, luckily. It's a heavy masonary building (I think they all are down here) so they're pretty solid and keep the kids safe.
Now I wasn't there when it happened but I do know there's sirens there, there's also some in various places around here, just not here. I am kind-of glad in a way as I don't need them (I will wake up if there's even anything close to that coming, and have commando-rolled off my bed more than once by instinct), I have a knack for my paying heed to my 6th sense which has saved me from death and serious injury MANY times, too many to number (no joke on that).

As far as Hammer maps, I was making those and also making Doom maps 20 years ago, but I never released anything for Source engine due to going over the limits all the time.
I had tried to make stuff around 2010 for Half Life 2 but the maps supported were much too small.
One of the cool things I made (wish I kept!) was a 2-story colonial new (at the time) American cookie-cutter McMansion - but that's not the good part. The good part is that the entire thing was destructible. Every. Last. Beam.
Every. Last. Wall Stud.
Every 4x8 sheet of drywall.
Every last floor joist.
Every window.
Every door (that was difficult as they could either open or destruct, but not both without scripting)
Every kitchen cabinet.
Only the foundation walls (it had a walk-out basement) and the ground and concrete slabs remained.

It had a big deck out back and all that. Only problem was is when I was done getting it drywalled and such I started running out of brushes to allocate, destruct-able brushes are apparently numbered.
So if you shot off a rocket / RPG in the room, the entire room would be gone and just wall studs and maybe some floor/ceiling joists would be holding the shape of the room you were in. It was absolutely awesome. My poor pentium III *TOOK FOREVER* to do the RAD stage for radiant light, and sometimes I'd wake up to *LEAK LEAK LEAK*. I will say that my fiance at the time, I was 18 or so, she had a world of patience with me on it... because I was always messing with the editor. I even tried to get her to learn it by using real world examples. I showed her an example to our bedroom, the door, I said 'This is a rotating door, the hinges are the origin brush upon which it rotates' ... she looked at me and said 'that's not a rotating door, that's a BORING DOOR!'. Lots of laughter resulted, and I couldn't tell her she was wrong, it was a cheap apartment (but in a great neighborhood!) after-all.

All that said, I figured I'd have to share it when speaking about hammer editor. It was fun making maps but I really preferred Doom. I loved the original Half-Life, it was ground-breaking when it first came out, but something about the fun of original Doom's 1st episode just kept bringing me back. I still play it, too.
What did I try to make in 2010? A multiplayer server online where you could drive and do deathmatch or do teams co-op to have 5 on 5 or 10 on 10 matches, or eventually destruction derbies. However, the BSP-based engine just wasn't conducive to large outdoor environments. BSP lends itself to underground, interior, or otherwise sight-limited places very well but large outdoor areas are it's undoing - causing build-times (pre-run, in-editor) to crawl exponentially, and performance to TANK because there wasn't much reject-mapping to optimize memory-starved old Dos-game-based engines that depended on it. Reject mapping is what DOESN'T get rendered from any point, think optimization. What games did mostly automatically back then, we have to do manually now quite often.
Go figure.
I only wished I kept one of the other map's I made of my childhood home around 2001 because it had a piano that if you walked up and pressed use on it, it blew up and took you out too.
If you listen to any of this and you have not yet purchased Black Mesa, and you still enjoy original Half-Life or at-least did back-in-the-day, you owe it to yourself to play through it. I did last year and it's awesome. If you enjoy the puzzles of original Half-Life but not the gun-fights or whatever fighting stuff or are just 'too old for that', you seriously SERIOUSLY need to play INFRA. INFRA is uniquely just plain made of awesome, a non-violent game that will intrigue, puzzle, and confuse you, and then reward you well for solving it's never-ending route full of puzzles.

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I have been making progress on the map. Hooray I'm alive.

Triangle is physically complete, needs signs and AI, hope you like the textures at the intersection pictured in the last two shots, it is just a stones-throw from one of the 11-foot-8 bridges.
TO-DO:
*5 building textures are broken. These MUST be fixed or dummied prior to release.
*1 (of 3) building model must be checked for surplus UV's and rigged quickly to work well enough (the flockheed building to be specific) so that it doesn't murder FPS. Other two are done.
As previously noted, the last building I checked had a layer of UV's I missed and was eating the entire scene budget, and then some more, all by itself. Purchasing models to refine here sometimes has it's downsides, and sometimes that downside is ME. Oops. This helps keep variety of buildings good, though, so I don't plan on changing this way of working when cheaper model packs become available.
*AI Routes need to be put in to the new area, and the 3 problem areas I'm aware of addressed.
*Stop-lights, we need them & more of them. They bugged again on LOW detail here. GRRRRRRR!
*Orange things get hidden & spare slop in the form of surplus curbing needs to be hidden/removed for cleanup.
*About two (city) blocks worth of curbing to place yet, maybe 3. That's better than miles of it.

I did cut down the amount of curbing to do before the beta to just the essentials of what's left, so that this beta gets out in my lifetime, and hopefully in yours also. The orange road in the background of the shot (well one of the two) won't have all of it done prior to the beta. 80~90% of the curbing I wanted to get done in the last two weeks or so is done, though - so if this list above seemed extensive, do not despair. It took FOREVER to slap down all that curbing BUT it looks so nice when it's done THE RIGHT WAY, even if I have to move a whole road over 6 inches to make it perfect due occasionally to the fact the terrain resolution is 2.x meters.
I fixed a bug with the on-ramps model which is used where it goes from 2 to 3 lanes and vice-versa. The detail levels were rendering backwards. Well it's fixed in the modeler, it better be fixed in-game...
Fixed two other models with really stupid bugs, but with my lovely lack of memory I forget what they even were. Sucks to be me, sometimes.

NOTE - dummied above means just either re-wired to a working texture 'for now' or a default concrete texture put in it's place until I get to it. There's a number of textures like this already so I try to avoid it.

IRL: The mower is broken and I almost put my foot through the deck out back my house. It's been taking some time obviously but I still find time daily to work on this so no worries. Was working in the yard earlier because for once, physically, I actually could and then the mid-day heat made short work of me. I am very careful around the heat since I ended up with severe heat rash/exhaustion in my mid 20's, and I still get close calls.
Mind that heat, folks, it means business this year. If you must work outside around your home, do it in the early morning or early evening when it's more comfortable. Remember kids, death is expensive, so 'say no to death'!

I think I figured out how the traffic light textures work, so I may be able to get left-turn green signals to work sometime in the future.
That's all for right now. Gosh this post turned out a lot longer than I had planned.
If my next post states that I'm sending it from the crawl space under the back deck, and I don't post for another week, you can likely assume THE BIG CRUNCH happened and also who had to be Mr. Fixit AGAIN.

 

so much work...it looks awesome

 

Details details details. I can spend a few hours just detailing a one to two-block stretch of road like this one, and not even get the signs in yet (they will be in, yet another thing I didn't list in the to-do's, oops).
However, and thankfully, the floating curbing of immersion-destruction will be removed before it's uploaded. I won't forget that part, as I've run into it more times than I care to share, with usually some spicy words trailing soon after.

I feel what takes even longer than initially engineering something that's both plausible AND immersive, while still being functional AND fairly enjoyable/fun, is the numerous iterations things can go through until I am satisfied with it enough to ship it. This has held things up the most. Sure, this by far isn't the world's best user-created game world, but I feel just 'dirty' for lack of a better word, or maybe unsatisfied, if I put out something I'm not truly happy with (barring things like temporary bridges and so-forth to temporarily link under-construction areas up for map flow reasons).
Still, while it's hard to decide what to keep and what not to, it's far from impossible. I just find that the best thing is blasting around it with a few different vehicles. If I constantly mess up somewhere, such as a turn, or an ambiguous / inconspicuous lane alignment through an intersection (such as the intersection at the far end of the above shot), I refine it until I correct or sufficiently work-around these issues. This while being a crashing simulator, is also a driving simulator, and I DO want to simulate enjoyable driving all the while keeping it immersive so the player wishes to (and is rewarded for) go and explore. It sure won't be GTA V, and it might not even come close to the quality of GTA IV, but it'll be our city both being plenty good enough and it'll certainly be better than what we had before.
*Picture shown in Low texture detail. You should be able to swing MEDIUM texture detail on 8gb cards though (maybe 6gb too). As always model detail is to be kept at max or the map will just look bad and bits will pop-out too soon when driving away or appear too late when driving toward something.
GPU requirements will raise and lower periodically as I adjust details on things, sizes and variety of textures, and many other things during development. As-always if it's too slow, lower texture detail, then you should be fine. My editing environment here takes 2x ~ 8x the VRAM that just playing it will; and yes, editing at 8~12fps is normal here due to said VRAM issues.

 

Now for some of the boring stuff...
Fine turning terrain. This wireframe shot shows the CANT, or the cross-slope of one of the roads.

This is notice that: regardless of progress, this Friday evening all work will STOP, and the map will be uploaded for testing to those on Patreon and those who have donated 'stuff' to the map or otherwise supported it. Work will then continue while you have time to go over the map so you can find & send in bugs, and I can then fix any bugs before a further public upload is made (supporters STILL get early access to the 'fix' to make sure it's actually a fix and not a bust).
I am very very sick of the never-ending delays, so I have to do this to get a beta out since apparently I really suck at that lately. Also, there will be time to address concerns or issues with game-play etc in this time (E.G. falling somewhere and not being able to drive out, dead-ends not caused by map construction, editing errors of many kinds, misc not-fun stuff, performance is awful remarks, and so-forth).
I just figured I'd post this because I really need to do other stuff around my house in addition to doing something to please contributors/supporters, and the work-load around my home is just plain piling up on me to epic proportions.

In other news, to my best knowledge, September 15th marks the release of the DDR-5 equipped AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors, and x670/x670E motherboards. There is supposedly a *SUBSTANTIAL* performance lift more than any other generation previously in some benchmarks I have seen (take with grain of salt here). 670E chipset difference includes PCI-E 5.0 while non-E chipsets have PCI-E 4.0. It is unknown at this current time if any DDR4 motherboards in the 670 line will surface, but it is unlikely. It is however likely that there could be further AM4 support that AMD has hinted at, and the possibility that lower-end chipsets may have this *IF* the CPU integrated memory controller can be compatible with DDR4 at all. Definitely something to look out for next month.
Also, new intel chips and platforms (and possibly the return of the HEDT / high-end line) will release shortly after - though all of this is subject to change as always.

So it's a good time to stash some cash for a new stash of hardware coming this fall, if you're not already on Ryzen 3000-and-above or intel 9000 series and above.
For me, this 3950x is still plenty up to the challenge of game development and then some. It just needs more system memory and a higher-VRAM capacity GPU when I get around to that (going to note that yes I have known this for quite some time, and knew about 32gb of system ram very probably not being enough when I bought the memory kit, but also knew it'd get me by for a few years if I was conservative enough). I believe I will continue to use this 'build' (computer) for the next several years though, even if I (or anyone else) manage to kill it again.
Thankfully I've been mindful and proactive about taking the computer every other week to counseling so it's no-longer as suicidal as it used-to-be. It's still much faster than the coal-powered machine I had before this (not just because coal is more expensive now than it once was, never-mind the smoke), so the counseling is worth every penny.

 

Considering my Ryzen 5 2600X is still plenty to run BeamNG at very decent settings (as long as no traffic/police Scintillas spawn), I think I'll save my money for car hardware first lol

Should have a new and larger SSD going in soon so I can finally redownload this map

 

Use cheap SSD's for gaming, as to store games they don't use much wear-wise and could last 30 years storing games provided you don't leave them without power for months, otherwise they'll basically format/erase themselves. They will easily outlive mechanical HDD's / Spinners.
I have four or five half-terabyte (500/512gb) drives in here, about half for project resources either stuff I created, CC-0 / CC-SA license free AND paid stuffs. This is normal, not everything gets used and no one wants a 2tb map. Then there's a 1tb NVME backup of the OS, and a 2tb Samsung 970 that CrashBoomPunk helped me purchase so I could continue making the map.
What's it all for? Mostly models and graphics, and some sound stage stuff (background stuff, interactive object noises, underground background sound/rumbles, but yes THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of models and probably 4000+ textures (+/- 1500). About 1tb~1.5tb is free space. I believe there's another 512gb drive in there but not hooked up all the time, along with some spinners for backups. THIS IS NOT A BRAG, this is a requirement and I stay transparent with things.
ALWAYS BACK UP. I SAY THIS AS YET-ANOTHER-STORM APPROACHES. THIS MAP WOULD HAVE BEEN TOAST 18 MONTHS INTO IT IF I DID NOT BACK UP EVERY TWO WEEKS OR MORE.
So sorry to scream folks eyeballs out, but yeah backup is important! I don't go to the store to buy stuff I don't need but want, I just get stuff I only need because we don't fix what isn't broken. I DO need to upgrade this PC though. The core system is great, but it needs more VRAM (I'm editing on low at 12fps on a daily basis here) on the GPU, and it needs more system memory so I can do more at once.
So some funding toward the map will be directed towards these things. That said I have to pour a solid 1500$ into the house before the year's out otherwise when I walk out back I will end up in the veritable bug dungeon under the deck... not fun!
All that said, map progress below:

Made new textures for the road striping when used on concrete. Other textures will be upgraded too in this manner for those used on concrete. This makes it easier to see, because on these rubbish screens I couldn't see the lines at all. Again keep in mind this is low graphics. Attempting to set this higher will result in less than my current 12fps (due to being out of VRAM) or an outright crash.
This should not be surprising as ever since 2 months into my first computer in 1994 almost 30 years ago I have pushed things to the limit until either the game engine, editing tools, or computer itself goes POOF from overworking it. This has basically been the case all the way back to the original 1993 Doom and using 'Doom Construction Kit 2' or 'DCK' as it's known.
Again, I've not done the highways yet, mostly due to my right arm at the shoulder muscles is locking up. Earlier today I had to spend 45+ minutes filling out paperwork because of new doctors, insurance changes on their end, and the such. This caused my neck to totally lock up half way into it. They didn't even provide me with a desk or a chain with good back support at said deck to do it and I'm permanently physically disabled. What's even worse, is that the pills I have (I am conservative with taking them) don't really even touch the pain. Looks like I need more back work now... but hopefully this goes away soon enough. Highway graphics might not be changed before the beta (as I don't want to mess with a good thing until after I've packaged up the next beta for uploading).
I have precisely four more days of work to put in this before it gets packaged for uploading, however I will do a little testing for an hour or two with the AI to make sure it's working before uploading to the best of my ability.
I have not yet created 'instanced' traffic lights that the AI will pay attention to, that will come later this year if possible.

 

The map will be uploaded sometime this weekend (likely Sunday evening).
It's finally STOPPED raining after TWO WEEKS of almost nothing but rain (sans one day), so the yard duties are WAY behind at my place here, and I can't leave it go any longer or the only thing that will be able to cut down the yard is a controlled burn. That SHOULD give me enough time to squash some last minute quality issues, clean up some spare (mostly sidewalk/curb) pieces floating about, hide some test-only stuff, and test the AI for an hour or two as-needed. This way you get something that works. I'm an hour south of the Kentucky border give or take 20 minutes, and I'm sure I needn't explain all the flooding issues they've had. We only lucked out here because we live on a humongous lump of ancient sea-bed made of sandstone at 1875ft elevation.
ERRATA:
*There will be some graphical mis-match issues in the old So-Cal carry-over portions of the map as the new road graphic replacements aren't quite the same 'size' as the old ones, there hasn't been any work in these extreme edge-cases (literally at the map edge) so it's not a big deal right at the moment. Does ANYONE even drive out here / know there's roads there? This is minor.
*Some ECA houses that were slightly modded for Roane County might not carry over (read: not appear) any longer as some or all of those resources won't be in this update, they will be replaced in the next few updates with better work that's my own (or purchased). This is minor.
*Some terrain textures aren't 100% what I want them to be yet, please be patient especially if they seem to tile/repeat obviously as I haven't tuned them not to be so obvious. This is minor.
*While I am trying to get all the building texture bugs fixed, there still may be a select (Very) few that don't work. This isn't a big deal but it's surely a bit ugly. I will try to get this rectified before shipping the update but it also cannot hold up the map. This is moderate, as it's quickly immersion breaking when bright orange screams out your eyeballs, as if it was a text message from a person who is currently burning.
*There's a lot of unfinished stuff over behind the mall, but fear not, that's where I'll be doing most of my work in the next few weeks.
*If the last building causing performance issues cannot be fixed in time for the beta, it will be flat-shaded when the beta ships to alleviate any performance penalties it would otherwise inflict. This is minor, as it isn't readily obvious from the street AND it's a metal facade anyway. It's the FLOCKHEED building.
*Some AI bugs will invariably occur in the new area, this is as much my unfinished map as it is the game being finicky when it comes to divided roads beginning or ending at a non-divided roadway. The AI engine just does NOT like that at all and causes them to turn around, stop randomly, or drive just plain stupid. Me being a total ditz when it comes to remembering things is certainly not helpful here.
*Lastly, some sections of the map where changes have occurred since I updated to editor 2.0x, the roads are a little more lumpy / uneven than I desired them to initially be, this will be fixed when one of the editor tools is restored as it was a tool I used constantly to perfect road grade / cross slope.
*Still having issues with the stupid traffic lights not showing up on low, thought I fixed that but maybe I lost that change when restoring from a backup at one point, they will be updated to the new ones from the game engine that came out a version or two ago (I keep copies) for now & hope that fixes it for the time being. I need more info on the newest instanced ones to see if they're a drop-in addition / replacement or if they require back-end scripting on the map on my-part to support, will speak with staff about it. Instanced traffic lights are lights the 'AI' can 'see' and respond to accordingly.

What's important? The 11-foot-8 bridge works just fine, so ignore the issues and enjoy the map when it hits on Monday sometime for supporters and contributors (and also BeamNG staff).
Needless to say, I do look forward to seeing folks' doing crash compilations with the bridge on Youtube someday soon (when my internet cooperates, we still don't have cable/fiber internet here yet).
I will also be very interested in performance hits due to VRAM loading (over-loading?) when the new beta comes out, so I can adjust or recommend things accordingly for folks who have slightly older or less powerful computers.

 

Seems like I didn't have a chance, but better late than never.
Here you go: https://beamng.com/threads/derailment-resistant-rail-tracks-fix-for-some-maps-pbr.86632/

 

Thank-you for the link, I'll pull it up in a moment.
My rail tracks that I've made for Los Injurus all have tapered ends to a point about 6" (half a foot, or about 2x the height of the rail itself). This helps aid collision for rail vehicles, but it can also make it pop upwards or damage the trucks or wheel spacing on said trucks if rails are very poorly overlapped. Basically, when dealing with mathematical precision of map object placement being done on an FPU (this is for any game using it, on any system, as far back as an SNES FX chip), the FPU is not precise, it's a float (that's the F in FPU, a float is a reasonably quick but not medically precise number). This means between map loads, the number can vary just a tiny bit (as-in, 0.125" right near the center of the world at 0,0,0), but will vary more wildly when you get 6~10 miles from map center (10~18km?, the variations here at said distance are alike to those on the outskirts of Roane County map, where the car shakes notably having up to 1~2" of imprecision). Going 100 miles in any direction will make the car completely spaz-tastic and flickering wildly all over the screen frame by frame.
I've actually left a vehicle fall accidentally in a map with disabled water for over a week or so while working on the map (sometimes physics paused, but sometimes not), and it was just a blur all over the center 60% of the screen and half the UI didn't have a clue what was going on.
Granted, the physics still work, but the car's location being a floating number, when further out the number's value gets less and less precise as the number gets larger and larger chopping off the trailing digits beyond the decimal points. E.G. your number goes from 0.0000001 to 1000000.0, so your precision is naturally less. Being a float, anything after about 8 digits or so (guess with some evidence!) will get truncated. So with the location constantly changing between frames, things can appear to shimmer, then shake, then end up flying around the screen like a fractious cat.
What to do with rail pieces though?
Well in Roane County the pieces were donated, and hence the collision to my best knowledge was only done with visible meshes, and that in itself precluded having any tapered ends on the rails since it wasn't like that on the visible mesh, it just 'ended' where it met another model, as if someone sliced it like bread, but the inside of the bread was totally hollow.
I corrected this and made all new pieces for Los Injurus, and also made sure to taper the ends of things. This includes not just rail tracks, but highways, roads, sidewalks, and many other things with surfaces that can or will be driven upon. This even is including steps, this facilitates driving up them (this is how it was done in the GTA series, btw, and where I got this 'trick' from, but that was far from the first example). Even the flat sides of sidewalks have a small taper to them, to keep car damage a bit more minimal (as otherwise if the sidewalk was an inch higher than the surrounding lawn, sliding sideways over it would stop the vehicle, unlike in real-life how the sidewall of the tire would absorb and deform to allow the vehicle to mount an inch-high sidewalk reveal cleanly).
So sometimes it's for realism, sometimes it's for map-flow or gameplay reasons, sometimes it's for fun (stairs can = ramps, and ramps = fun of-course), and occasionally (read: usually here) is so that lining up pieces is not only faster and more forgiving (use grid please) but also so the player doesn't 'see under' the map through gaps between pieces.
Holy smokes that takes forever.

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I did 6 hours of yard work without a break and messed myself up ROYALLY. As soon as my head clears enough to where I'm not a zombie movie-prop (pain meds suck, don't get hurt folks) to solve a few small bugs holding me back, I'll upload & post the map update.
Yes, that does mean I fixed the mower, I used a real ratchet on it this time.
I literally need one good night with a clear head before this map upload can go up.
72 hours max, but might show up in 48 hours. This is for kind supporters/patron folks.
*TO-DO
Fix AI routes reported as broken or dysfunctional
Replace bridge AI near the triangle that I deleted when working on it.
Get rid of orange stuff (this contains the texture bugs, will work-around or fix if possible)
Try to get the traffic light bug fixed again, I don't know why it re-broke honestly, think it was restoring backups possibly at some point when I completely killed the map during conversion process attempts (there were very many until it worked). Well, it'll be fixed one day. I hope. Maybe?
Clear any remaining orphaned curbs or stray decals, or at-least put them in a heap somewhere insignificant and hope no-one notices or is otherwise any-the-wiser.
There's not nearly as many traffic lights as needed to be placed, but i'll get to it sooner or later, but this last one won't hold up release.
Updates will resume normal pacing after this upload goes live, coming every 3~5 weeks thereafter.

Hopefully tonight or tomorrow my head is clear enough to do this!

 

Just for clarification, you meant chair, not chain, right?

 

Maybe I should be on a chain and not a chair, the map updates would likely be more frequent / consistent for starters.
Yes, yes I meant chair. My fingers twitch and click things they should not, and don't always click or push when they need to - which I really really HATE when I'm trying to work. Usually my resolve is doing something else (casual game, watch video/read, or going through file management stuff for the project), until my fingers want to follow orders. The worse the pain is the worse the twitching is.

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Remember that 3rd building I said I had to go over to find those random UV's ? Well that's done. I also fixed some messed up UV's on it and made the ceiling texture work which took some hours.
I have about one to two hours left of work before the update can go out. That's it! I did NOT get all the stuff done I wanted to, nor all the other models in that I wanted to add to this update; but you'll get an update and that's the only thing that matters. I should be able to nick this tomorrow during the day and upload overnight.
Don't worry, the sign illuminates (that's the 3rd building I had to work UV's on, bottom of post pic).

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Also, I've included a non-map-related video on vehicle history. So if you LOVE old planes trains and automobiles (this is not the movie, sorry), here's a good documentary on these things! The model T, the Packard, old steam trains, and a 1950's DC-3 dual prop plane!
Formatted for PC viewing, safe for work (SFW). I hope all you folks enjoy this as much as I did.

 

Building refreshes (3) imported, more textures work now. I'll rig the rest to work later, stray UV's improved however so you should have a few more FPS. USE LOW TEXTURES if map is choppy. I will try to restore the medium-texture footprint in VRAM for 8gb folks as I continue development.
Map mess (spare curbs, decal roads, etc - evidence of construction) is 95% cleared.
Mesh carving guides hidden below the map as I might need some/most later.
Map AI layout for what is built this update is 90% complete. Incomplete roads might not all have AI.
Noticed WCA Oak tree texture isn't quite the right color (this will be fixed).
Another subway tunnel (that was 'built' but not placed and terrain not setup) is complete & functional.
Added a ton of lane striping so that you can be rather more sure where you're going.
WATER RE-ENABLED. That was super important, glad I didn't forget. Don't need people writing in saying 'Help! My water broke!', as this is not WebMD.
Texture double-checking and AI bug-fixing will get a very, very quick pass for basic functionality.
If there are bugged building / WCA Oak tree textures that take more than a moment or two to fix, I will forego fixing them in favor of starting my upload.
I do not know how long it would take to upload as the map is bigger now. My internet = dumpster fire and the weather will be 'random storms' 60% chance. It took from dusk til dawn last time.
Was busy mowing the yard today because it's going to rain again for a week or more. Still worked on the map for SEVEN hours and got a lot done that I wanted to and a bit more road worked on. I truly only needed to work on it 1~2 hours but did not like the idea of broken AI paths, scrambled looking textures, and nasty collision surprises that would eat the car due to poorly aligned / temporary objects laying about.

 

OK, so after feeling completely trashed physically and mentally (and now fending off one of those colds the youngest bring us as presents in back-to-school season, hermits eat your heart out), I've gotten most of the textures fixed from the re-import, and fixed a LOT more of them this time! Hooray! I have been fighting with this for about the last week.

Some of the sign textures aren't working here but I'm getting to that. A small Maya-caused glitch is on the back of this building. This is the KVNT TV building, and it is a mixed-use building featuring offices on the upper floors, with commerce below. Barely visible on the right is a typical mixed-use older tenement building with commerce on the bottom and residential floors above.
There is one other problem, but it won't be a problem for about half of you. It's a 5GB VRAM-used problem. That's on LOW. Derp. I will be down-scaling textures immediately post-upload. That said the texture detail (pixels per inch) on low is as-good-as or better than the texture detail on GTAV on high right now on the new textures. So that's 50% of the issue right there.
There was also the issue of the phantom cache directory. It didn't exist, but it's SOMEWHERE. Nope it wasn't where it was supposed to be, it wasn't where it used-to-be, it's a rare bug that's over a year old. Do you know how long it takes / frustration involved in figuring out what went wrong where in what step when? This is what's been destroying me over here, is stuff like this, but it's part of the deal.
Clearing cache (and then waiting a LONG time for file verification) took the bug out, hopefully, though one can never speak too soon, actually I haven't verified there's a cache folder even where it's supposed to be now but the models did update.
Was able to move the BIG skyscraper to it's final spot (the Flockheed building).

Getting these @$%^! textures to work has been holding up this beta forever, even getting the models to update with current models so I COULD TELL the textures started to work wasn't working. To top it off, textures that shared same names as stock-game textures would completely fail to work for no reason as per the log. They just would show up 'no texture'. I really hate that, and yet they say we can't source textures from the stock game without putting them in the map, as virtually every other game that supports modding would have been fine with / able to use stock-textures without dupes.
Almost forgot, pathless textures are starting to act up which is just a shame, as it helps newbie modders when you don't have to change paths when making a new map, so avoid these if you map!
Switching to the new version mid-beta was a big mistake, that's my fault, but honestly it had to be done sooner or later. This has been the source of my missed deadlines, for the most part, besides my health getting slowly worse over time, and my house needing a lot of maintenance as houses do.
*I have 3 sign textures to remedy, and a window texture; a broken texture atop one of the buildings can wait, you won't see it in a driving game and it's 22+ floors off the ground.
*My water broke (in the map! seriously, it's there in the editor, close the editor and it goes invisible).
*Roads implemented since I upgraded the game-editor version I use from 0.20 to 0.25 might be a little on the rough side, but that'll have to be tolerated for right now until they implement the single missing editor tool for hand-tweaking terrain. Hopefully they do it sooner than later.

That's it. I'm not happy with missing deadline after deadline, but I've hurdled over most of the bugs thus far, a good 95% of them anyway. However, regardless of where I said I was going to stop and upload this and then continue, I couldn't release it BROKEN or at-least seriously maimed. It was bad. Your experience however, should not be.
Am I in over my head? Sure! Always! That's just me. Will it make me stop mapping? NEVER!

---

Below reading is optional, unless your GPU is rather OLD!
For those with 4gb video cards and under, fear not; as I will be down-scaling textures a bit so that it stops eating as much VRAM. However, you can still try to run this and report back if it gets too slow or if it works just fine (it could be my OS eating up the other 1 GB of 5gb used, after-all, I am using system-wide use indicators as to provide real-world experience thresholds, especially since I use a Windows 98 / 2000 theme on my OS so I can even use the thing without immediately throwing the PC out of the side of the house... I absolutely positively hate Windows 8/10 with a PASSION, I feel like I am suffocating when I use it, akin to drowning with one's arms/legs removed).
For those with 2~3gb video cards, the next update is not recommended, but you can try it on very low GFX detail and see what happens. I haven't tried kicking it down to very-low here but it's not pretty.
What's the main issue with VRAM use? We don't have full asset streaming; your GPU VRAM pool needs to basically support the entire map at once. Please politely ask your local BeamNG staffers for full streaming support soon, as they've somewhat brushed me off on both this and multiple-terrains-per-map feature. Textures are not the only resident of VRAM; things like models (a big one here) and other stuff such as various shaders, ray tracing (no official support yet), DLSS (don't use here), and super-resolution features will obviously RAISE the VRAM requirements in your situation. Going over VRAM that your GPU has will cause your FPS to drop hard especially on OEM systems with slower RAM and also this starves CPU RAM bandwith which is important for physics that make the vehicle systems and soft-body simulation work. Almost every other 3D game out there supports full streaming, but this one doesn't, yet. If you know someone who can code something like that, let me or the staff know about this little fact and maybe they can help out in some manner.
Fancy words and definitions for those not technically inclined, or "The 411" for short.
System RAM = The memory your programs use, this is the CPU's work space. If you run out of system RAM, your PC will slow down, crash, and possibly need to be restarted if it becomes unresponsive.
VRAM / Video RAM / GPU Memory = The memory your video card uses, used to store models, textures, shaders and other things like for Ray Tracing computations and results of computations, the finished product of rendering everything which is then sent to your monitor when it refreshes is held in VRAM also before being sent to the monitor during a vertical blank.
The vertical blank happens when the monitor is ready to display a new frame, most monitors except fancy gaming monitors display at 60HZ, which is 60fps to put simply. Fancy monitors can go up to/above 240hz!
Your GPU (graphics processing unit, a.k.a. video card, graphics card, or VGA card) and it's VRAM is much like your CPU and it's system RAM. Your GPU however, will start to use much slower system RAM when it runs out of VRAM on the GPU card itself. Your GPU renders all you see on screen and controls FPS mostly.
Technically a GPU is the processor ON the graphics card/VGA card, but we in the tech space just tend to call the graphics card with it's processor and VRAM "a GPU". So if you hear someone say 'I upgraded my GPU' they mean they bought a new graphics card, not upgrading the chip on the card itself. To be correct, just call it a "graphics card" or "graphics processing unit" if you want to sound fancy.
I think I got vertical blank right, the rest is good. If not, you know who to yell at.

 

OOPS. The 'My water broke!' was entirely my fault. The visibility setting 'off' is ignored in the editor when toggling hidden status but reverts on exit. Remembered it WHILE ASLEEP (!???) and just remembered again now. At-least I'm owning up to it.

Those who are in charge of ark building may now proceed to regularly scheduled plans. This area is exactly near the north/north-west (?) edge of the map, precisely in the middle of nowhere. I haven't touched this area, but at-least the road texture is nice. It'll blend better in the future, I promise.
Just figured I'd say something about that. One less thing to worry about and one less thing preventing me from pushing the beta out.
Like I said in previous, VRAM use will be high!!! So seriously, please don't be angry with me, that'll be fixed quite shortly with a subsequent upload after this one - just as soon as I get a week off of this thing post-upload so the house doesn't fall down (as much) around me, or on me for that matter.
Those who spent (probably way too much) on a fancy GPU with more than 8gb of VRAM, eat your heart out & enjoy your moments free of any buyer's remorse you may have had when buying it.
Expect the future to hold a release schedule closer to what we were used to before last fall, with a content addition release where more city gets built, then a refinement/bug-fix/optimization/a little more content (added jumps/curbs/poles/signs, things from previous release polished) etc release, then back to more content additions for the next release and so-on and so-forth.
--That's all for the moment.

 

I'm sorry for you mental sanity

Thank you for making this map

 

Thanks! If it wasn't this project mangling my mental health / sanity levels, it would be the next thing I choose to do that'd mangle it, so it might as well be something I enjoy.
However, that said, it's not me, it's any game-dev job/duty etc; it all does this to you. Breaks for no reason, works for no reason, switches between working/broken randomly, etc. So I could be swearing at the computer at 2am or swearing at the lawn mower at 2pm. I think I'll stay in here for the time being doing this.
I'm sane, if I wasn't, I'd have self destructed in the first 10 days of this project, however, sometimes it makes you question it when this thing makes it's own decision if it wants to work or not while you're pulling at straws (and your hair) to hope it works and stays working.

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OK, so I've gotten more things to work, yay!

Roads have been built out 90% enough (enough for a release for now).
Textures have been decently fixed enough*. There's a few stragglers but important stuff is done. *see note
AI networks are 80% complete. I have a few to fix that were sent in, and to make sure things work properly, and that built-up roads have AI.
I have NOT yet started down-scaling textures. If I was to do this prior to release, it'd add at-least another week to 10 days to it as I do not have an automated program with which to do it.

I WILL try to fix the stoplight texture before I ship the beta. I had it fixed before, dunno what happened but it likely got un-fixed when I restored from backup in the many, many, MANY failed attempts before finally having success upgrading the map to 0.25. This way the lights work on LOW detail due to high VRAM use, and you might just have to use that to run this.
UPLOADING will start within 24 hours, especially because my data package resets in 2 days and I want to get that out before-hand.
GPU's with below 2gb WILL NOT BE SUPPORTED officially, and I'm not sure if I should even support those right now, at-least until I get the textures downsized to hopefully cut the VRAM requirement in-half. That does not mean 2gb or less GPU's cannot run this, it just means don't hate on me for now if it doesn't.

I will be laying out the AI grid tonight but not testing it until tomorrow, otherwise it's going to be ~100F in here after an hour, because when running max AI this thing really farts out the heat. Okay, maybe only 86~90F after an hour, but that's NOT a fun temperature "to computer" in. Been there done that, and it's already almost 80F now. I'll do my best to make sure the cat doesn't sleep on top the computer when I test the beta so you don't get it smelling like cat flambe.
NOTE *There's two textures on the 11-foot-8 bridge that aren't up-to-scratch but those won't take long to address, half-hour to an hour max and only that if they give me the run-around.
Also, there's one busted texture on one of the buildings; but it's a roof texture and you won't see that unless you go over 5+ floors worth of height off of a jump somewhere nearby. I don't know why it's broken, but it doesn't matter that badly to me right now in the grand scheme of things.
This (see below) is why the GPU VRAM req' is so high. This is brick texture on LOW. This should be how it should look on high texture detail. So yeah, you're not going to miss much with the down-scaling. The high-detail textures will be retained over here on my end, and become available again later on with a drop-in add-on after people beat it out of me. /s Actually, it'll go up when most of the textures/models are done to avoid forking development this early on, which is really bad, mmm-kay. Not doing a full map-wide down-scale of textures, just making sure it gets done on an as-needed basis and also a size-determined basis. Doing this also substantially reduces the size of the download, as much as 50mb per every 4~5 textures on a zip file, obviously double this when extracted. This map is massive. Think ~11gb when extracted, half that when zipped (guessing!) +/- ~1gb.

--That is all.
--- Post updated ---
Almost forgot (might as well make another book of a post while I'm here!), I have made adjustments to the water, since the 'my water broke' incident. In an effort to make it more realistic, I am slowly adjusting it over time until I get it where I want it to be. This isn't the Bahamas with the crystal-blue water that's almost completely transparent, after-all.
I've included some pictures (this is under educational / fair use!!!), as comparisons. Maybe dual-monitors is handy after all (it's supposed to be 3 monitors, but I STILL haven't built my desk yet, because the beta is still not out yet as that's partly my motivation).
Let me know how you feel about these in any way you can. If you think it's an improvement over before, just hit AGREE, if you have other things to say please reply to this message.
Right now I feel the water is still a little too translucent, it should be a touch more opaque.
I need more time to work on that post-beta (the water will be as-pictured in the beta, if a touch less translucent), and I also need more time to look at how other games are making a good immersive effect.

 

Damn that looks good! Nice signs to!

 

god the Coma store

 

Thanks, lot of work into this building and the signs. Why make a sign if it's not going to be funny?

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Yup Yup, making signs can be boring or it can be funny AND make you snicker/laugh as you drive past.

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Finalizing texture fixes now, should be uploading very shortly.
Slapped down a few miles of missing AI routes. Hope I didn't mess up too bad, but it should be pretty OK.
Did not have time to test the AI, so don't be shocked if it gets wonky around intersections or gets stuck somewhere. Will polish it and test more prior to public release.
Moved 11-foot-8 spawn to where the new bridge is, you'll start about a block before it. There's also two other low bridges if you turn left just before the 11-foot-8 where the track crosses the road two more times.
Sorry this isn't better, but it'll be quite fun.
Traffic lights FIXED (?) ... time will tell!
Currently my 8gb GPU can run medium* just fine, but I didn't try driving over to the airport. One lag bug other than the tunnel over by the airport was fixed though as one of the runway textures made things chug.
*You might exceed 8gb if you use a lot of traffic, but not by much, how slow this gets depends on system ram speed AND drivers.
TRAFFIC LIGHTS WERE BROKEN PREVIOUSLY DUE TO A GAME BUG pulling data from italy map and not mine. Every time I opened the traffic light texture in the material editor in-game it was pathed to italy despite me having set it in the text to my own map. This is a pain in the rear, and this bug has been around for years. Apparently you can't pull things from other maps if the files aren't in your own map - it won't work, but it's doing that when it's not even supposed to.
Now uploading! Hooray!