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

Thanks! I hope you'll enjoy driving by them. Or driving into them. Or falling off of them. Or pushing pianos off of them. Maybe try landing a helicopter on them (do we even have a helicopter)?

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I think CGTrader has some 'free' heli models if needed, for those who are interested. Just tag me on here about it and I'll throw a link up. One or two might even be in the map by the time I am done with it.
There will be helipads featured on some buildings, tall, short, and even ground-level ones. I will try to make these as good as possible and close to real-life counterparts, including having one atop a hospital or atop the highest level of a hospital parking deck. Aiming for 1 dozen helipads.

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Okay, I've been working on something for the last, um, WHILE; I forget as I've lost track of the days...
So yes, will let the pictures do the talking.
New parking garage (underground) model. Way more detailed! Much older and a bit less loved.
New single-draw-call elevator door model (static, does not currently open), better than the last version.
Managed to save the 'door' models from the buggy police department model that killed the last parking garage I tried to make (that set me back days and days). Enhanced said door models, splitting the door and door frame into two models, the frame being part of the building it's in and the door being a separate model so can be opened via script when you get near. The door frame is 1 or 2 draw calls and the door is only 1 or 2 draw calls, so it's super-duper easy to render. I take a very long time doing the texturing on my models, but as you can see from my (lousy low-res monitor!) pictures, and as your CPU will soon tell you, it's definitely got some benefits. I will be pushing for AAA-quality here as aside of Ghost187's parking garage (I think he made a post-apoc scene with one too, in a desert), we really didn't have good ones. As behind as I am in releasing this update - sheesh - I wanted to work on it some more, so I did. I finally had gotten all the textures needed so I figured 'full speed ahead'.
This will be a spawn point, so it must be a good scene. Door script might not make the update (you will be able to walk through the regular door though as it won't have collision due to how moving models that aren't vehicles/props works currently, normally it would pop open as you got near). Inside will be a small lobby with two elevators and access to a stairway.

I plan on making some buildings having open lobbies and elevators that when approached will take you to the roof, or stairways that can sometimes be access in lieu of elevators and you can take that to the roof. Most all the decent sized / decently detailed buildings with interiors will be marked as interesting on the map and have spawn points. There will likely be 5 or 6 dozen spawn points by the time this is done.

Los Injurus was planned to have a little something for everyone. Unless/until it explodes people's computers when they try to load it, it just might end up having a lot of something for everyone. This is designed to be cutting edge, so an 8GB GPU might struggle on high TEXTURE (not model) details here. Expect this, please do not get mad, it is due to the limited streaming supported by the game engine for assets in the map. It's a whole city, this is bound to happen sooner or later - unless you want the scenery repeating every 2 or 3 screens like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon does. I don't.

Anyways, here's the pictures.
1st picture is looking into the cramped lobby on the parking garage level with the door open, 2nd picture is just taken from below the floor in the room with the elevators to show the detail. Yes, it's very detailed. I spent many many many hours just on those details. All columns and doorway cut-outs in the concrete have smoothed / rounded edges. This does SO much for the look of finished concrete. This is designed to look old, dated, a bit dirty, but not unkempt or too run-down. This parking garage may have multiple below-ground levels, that is unknown yet if all levels will be in the next beta or not. Depends on performance figures during testing. I need to add sidewalks, fix the ugly ceiling texture to match the other concrete (it will, that's a simple texture index edit), arrange parking, add bollards, and finally make the stairs up to the main level. Eventually you'll be able to exit the main street level out the front or back when it's done enough. When the beta lands, you WILL be able to drive in and out of the parking garage as expected, as I'd like to do that too (provided this model doesn't bug out either!!!).

DO expect more work on the underground areas of the map in the future, it needs it, really really needs it.

 

Well, i have an antonov mod and i guess i could drop a car onto the roof
Or i could spawn that new crane mod and put car on the roof

 

Oh Bob, why must you tease me so. I do agree we do need more underground infrastructure. Would remind me of Lower Wacker dr. in Chicago.

 

By what I'm seeing, does this city have an actual beltway around it?

 

Are you planning on replacing some of the trees with their remastered versions? or are you keeping the legacy trees?

 

There will definitely be things like Lower Wacker drive in Chicago, and California Plaza (in LA?). California plaza will be similar but not identical, and the Lower Wacker section will be pretty fun and a good way to get past some of the more crowded parts of the city.

Yes, an outer beltway that's some 25 miles or so (give or take a mile or two), and the inner beltway is 12 miles (about 4 miles of it are shared between the two freeway loops). There's also a highway that specifically takes you from the inner city area, over a mountain, and then down to an island military base just after crossing the outside loop. You should find that there's around 60 miles or so of highway in this map on the currently available download version. There will be more (but likely only narrow inner-city / cramped highways, most of the countryside or suburban interstate stuff is in already), including possibly a large golden-gate themed bridge going out to another section of the map which does not exist yet.

If you want highway, this map likely has more than most any other map does, and you will find a lot of fun here.

The old Nevada Interstate map has a 12.x mile beltway around the map, and is quite fun. Maybe it still works, haven't tried it in a year or two. Roane County (also another map of mine like Nevada) only has an east-west highway for about 16 miles, and a wide north-south route that while not a highway, is wide and rather open, short of where it goes through two towns, at 18.x miles in length. American Road (not made by me) also has highways, though I haven't tried that one in quite a while so I can't vouch for the accuracy or quality of it (no offense meant to the author, I just haven't tried it as I don't have time with always working on this project).

Eventually the newer trees will be used. I will eventually get them ported in, they're not top priority right now though. As I am churning out buildings right now from both commercial buildings I bought and ones I've made here, these buildings and building the infrastructure of the map are priority.

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I've been busy giving us somewhere to use walking mode to enjoy. Stairs, lots of lots of them.
I will make sure to test it out. With a piano. Probably several pianos. Big mess.
These go from the parking garage to the roof of the 12-floor (well 12 above ground floors) building.

 

1 *opens model in modeling software, to verify consistency / completion*
2 *checks texture names for accuracy*
3 *checks if the entries for textures are all in place in texture indices*
4 *check to see if that texture set** for each texture is in the map data files in the right place BOB you idiot!*
5 *check the textures to see that they're the right format*
6 *export and then convert model in another software then remove file-name references (to where it is on the drive here, BeamNG doesn't need it and it wastes space generally making loading less efficient...*
7 *Load the game up and find that model to import it*
8 *Go back and figure out why half the textures don't work, go back to 2* (skip this if it's all pre-used textures)
9 *Do the textures work? If so, continue*
10 *Check for offsets on LOD's and collision that could cause problems or break immersion, if found go back to the modeling software and do this over less the texture issues hopefully, anyways*
11 *Does it work? HOORAY! You did it. You win.*
12 *Now do this over for EVERY. LAST. MODEL.*
13 *Cry on the blog posts / map thread whilst simultaneously placating the 'where's the update!?' posts*
... a long while later ...
14 *Enjoy using the model in the map*
15 *Post-build test, with traffic, lots of crashes because 'reasons', and hope you didn't mess anything else up otherwise you get to do it all over again, less the other texture hoops you already jumped through*

**Each and every texture in the game can have 2 to 6 layers, generally 3 for old style (diffuse which is what you see, normal for the 3d look to it like bricks or holes etc, and specular to reflect light properly), and 5 or 6 for the new-style PBR stuff which I am still having issues with and is causing a mess but I'll frankly get over it sooner or later - thank-you developers (not being sarcastic, they're super helpful, sometimes it's even before I want to bash my head through the monitor too!). Stupid Technology!!!

So entirely, I'm quite busy doing all that texture stuff. The map UNPACKED (not zip!) will likely be about 9~10gb by the time I'm done, and there's still a few lack-luster old-version game textures laying around. If I don't entirely sort the PBR issues, I will fix what needs to be fixed with the old textures and use those until I get it straightened out (PBR looks better but provided the old stuff is not BROKEN or dark/wrong color etc the old textures will do fine when there's a new section of the city to explore).
There's some old-style textures currently on the public-facing version that are broken due to using wrong normal-map format (BC7 was fine, now it needs BC5, whatever), that'll be fixed either way.

The 'magicians' worked their magic on my back yesterday, so I am feeling a little better... I still hurt like heck and could barely sleep at all last night due to all the stuff they had to put 'in' me. Hey, if I have to go through torture hour (more like torture-two-days!) to get some relief for a month or longer, I'll do it.

In other news, I have whatever med is fogging out my brain narrowed down to two different pills, I've almost got it... that should start improving in the next day or two when I find which one does it AND stop taking it. This will seriously help things especially working with textures and texture indices, as trying to work with that stuff was not doing much besides just confusing the stuffing out of me due to said pills.

How did I figure out and notice when I was better? I didn't take my pills except blood pressure and PTSD-prevention pills the day the doctor had to do stuff to my spine. Turns out when I don't take all those pills, I can be as good at TOP GEAR (SNES game) as when I was a kid. I was absolutely rubbish at it when I was taking those pills. Go figure. Yes, I still enjoy that game semi-regularly. No, no illegal downloading here, I have a cart-dumper that puts data from the game cartridge onto a flash card so I can use it on the PC or to play patches on here - or even on the real system. It's pretty cool.
If I didn't fire up a game of TOP GEAR (Top Racer in the UK) last night for an hour I'd have never known. That game rocks... they definitely had the formula for awesome games down-pat on that one.
Just one of those things that you could never have guessed would have happened.

That said, I am at-least 50% of the way through the texture indices - most of the textures that are needed are scripted in, I just have to figure out what files have to go where, and see if I can't get PBR working before I ship this update. I'd have screenshots BUT unfortunately I'm out of VRAM on an 8gb card (because Nvidia never puts enough VRAM on a card on purpose - to limit it's lifespan), so I can't fire up the game editor at the moment without shutting down the modeling and GFX softwares.

All things considered, when I am over the PBR graphics hurdle, textures shouldn't be an issue anymore. Getting rid of that brain-fogging med will really be a big help, too. After-all, it's more than a tad hard to keep working and keep focused when your 'working memory' constantly blanks itself every few minutes (e.g. what you're currently doing is stored here).

Maybe I will stop losing the car in the Sprawl Mart parking lot, too. One can only hope.

--Just thought I'd post that I'm still here, and still doing things.

P.S. I hate getting used-to PBR textures; but honestly since they're now industry standard AND look great, I must come to terms with learning how to make this work reliably with BeamNG Drive. On the bright side, Substance Designer that I paid (too much) for back two years (?) ago or so is FINALLY getting some use (and Substance Player too). Now if I could just put Substance files into the game folder, I'd be really peachy about it.
Edit: Forgot to add, that I've gotten permission to modify/use the teleportation script so that I can warp players from building lobbies to roof-tops or upper-floor penthouses / apartments via elevators or stairways & roof access doors. Thank-you DrowsySam, people will appreciate it when I finally get it figured out, working right, and put in. This will work just like the warps for parachuting in GTA SA.
If you lack a parachute for the roof-top adventure, you can always just go up there and make a happy marriage with pianos and gravity, for lack of anything better to do up there.
I don't believe I'll have the script ready for the next update but might be ready for the following one.

 

Just curious. 1. Could you add dead end signs? 2. Can you add Bridge Ices Before Road signs? and 3. Could you add curve signs with mph signs below? These are the pictures.

 

Do take a break from it when you feel like you need to, yeah? No point overworking yourself on this and cause more health-related issues.

 

Good work Bob, Keep it up, one of my Fav maps to play on

 

Thanks man, and coming from the team, that really means something. I've never loved a dev-team like I love this bunch, so helpful and a great positive attitude towards modders, and staying positive and firm when the you-know-what hits the fan. That's all the more reason I get miffed when stuff is broken or a feature is 'missing' (in my opinion) - when you have passion for your work it shows... I love this project, and the BeamNG Drive simulation a lot. I can finally make what I wanted to for roughly 30 years now.
The team never fails to surprise me with features that show up in new versions, and is always there when I needed help with something. So entirely, thank-you so much, and give the team my best regards.
Sorry if this wasn't the best wording, it's the best I could do (I'm bad with that stuff, always has been a shortcoming of mine!).
However, I will make sure the next update is worth that big download; 'soon as I get a few more buildings placed and situated, and a few loose-ends tied up well enough to use & pass muster.

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Yes, I do take mental and physical breaks from working on the project or using the PC in general. I need those. There's times when I want to do nothing more than progress the map for 10~12 hours at a shot and physically can do it - and do. There's also days I can't think for Jack, and other times when I just can't manage to solve issues - so I step back for a bit and give myself a mental breather. It's integral to project progress that I pace myself and don't burn out. A lot of people give up, but I don't, and this is one of the reasons why. It's just the last 4 years or so that I could model things (as of this month!) and now I can finally make whatever my heart desires (and whatever of that fits in VRAM / system RAM and can be handled by the CPU). Sure there's limits, but I am going over things and finally really taking off with this.
There's over 1000 pieces to the MRK. Some better than others, but they all 'work'.
There's over 1000 building or object assets in the map / ready to be worked on to be put into the map.
There's probably over 1000 graphic files minimum, if not 2000, that I have to sort and widdle down to what I need and what I do not can be set aside for another project.
I've purchased over 100~250 buildings (I forget, but I'm currently documenting things now, something that was sorely needed, I was getting mentally lost in this). I had to make a spreadsheet-like text document that shows all the stuff, where it was purchased, and where it is in the computer, and most importantly WHAT it is not just a number that is like 12345678-upload or 12345678-buildings etc.
I will have a more firm number of buildings rounded off to the nearest dozen. There could be as many as 500 of these things hiding out in the resources. I frequently get packs of them dirt cheap.
It's just... all this work... and only two arms and one brain. 32gb of RAM and 8gb of VRAM goes REALLY quick on a dev machine (I have to upgrade both of those by next year).
So yes, I am keeping my sanity, even if it's doing something you'd never think a 3D artist (mapper) would do - like data entry for that above-mentioned table of contents file. That really has proved helpful and helps me keep track of progress and resources WAY easier than the 4 directories of stuff - which does not include the map - that was the only organization until now. Data entry may seem mindless, but you will find yourself mindless without the benefits of it's presence, strangely enough.

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I need to know where you sourced those pictures / graphics from of those signs, so I can find the license, and give proper credit. If I just go an use them and say 'this is my city I built it alone' that could be construed as plagiarism. Please do NOT think that I am shouting you down or being negative, but a project of this magnitude is a bit hard to keep control of (all the licenses, what can be freely used by others, etc). I may already have those signs in some of the sign packs that I purchased or picked up free (CC-0 open license or CCA/attribution req'd).
MPH recommendation signs for curves will be added in the future, though there are a pair or two in there already. This will be added in probably within the next 6 months. Bridge will be ICY signs may not apply, but am considering them (I may already have these resources but not in the map data yet).
I have a dead-end or no-outlet sign somewhere... like I said above, data entry has it's benefits when you can actually FIND what you're looking for, not to mention knowing what you do and do not have (and what is downloaded, licensing for it, etc).
Licensing is super important to keep track of. This keeps the project from getting DMCA'ed and also keeps trolls at bay. We want to be able to enjoy this map well into the future, and this is one of the less-fun aspects of it, but is entirely important none-the-less. I hope I explained that well enough.

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Oops. This post wasn't supposed to be this long, but I hope I cleared up any questions.
For those out there who asked a question and I've missed it or not fully answered it clearly enough, do make your presence and dissatisfaction known, so I can address that shortcoming.
Anyways, fixed the stupid on/off ramp graphic bug where it wasn't aligned. Or at-least, it looks like it's fixed in the modeler now. There's an identical one on the other on/off ramp model too that I will do before the night is done. I might even be able to reduce draw calls by a few here while I am at it (which helps as there's more than a few of these things in the default spawn area).
I still must go through the houses near the default spawn and upgrade them. That will take A WEEK and not be done until after the next update. They use draw-calls like crazy and need optimization and better UV work in general, especially on the LOD's that are subject to pop-in pretty obviously. DO know that this is on the to-do list post-update.
The pic just shows two on/off ramp pieces here as they'd normally be attached. Hopefully that translates over into the game well enough. Tried my best to fix the crooked lines / road-striping too.
My original UV work from 2018 was terrible, but we have to learn somewhere / sometime.
*Also created a rails-only piece for the train track set that'll go across the top of the bridge for the 11-foot-8 setup.

 

Real cartridge enjoyers

Anyways back on topic, really nice work! I love watching this map come together and reading your messages! Its nice to read about how you and the map are doing every now and again

 

Oh, okay. I actually made the two signs in Paint3d and I got the curve sign from wiki commons.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_signs_in_the_United_States

This article has basically every possible sign, including the two Grind86 made. All in the public domain, all in infinite resolution .svg files.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_signs_in_the_United_States#/media/File:MUTCD_W8-13.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_signs_in_the_United_States#/media/File:MUTCD_W14-1.svg

These are the specific Nevada roadsigns, pretty big pdf, might need some scrolling. There is an index at the end with page numbers for specific signs.

https://www.dot.nv.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/4462/636190448015930000

 

Have Top Gear 1, Top Gear 2, and 3000. 3000 is pretty awesome with the DSP-4 chip which helps the math calculations for the AI and such. It's basically an FPU (mario kart has DSP-1), and helps when you have branching paths which is too much for the 2.x mhz CPU in the SNES. The SNES didn't even have an FPU at all, which is primarily why when you tried to do any 3D (such as Race Drivin', which I also have) without the Mario "1" Chip (Super FX 1 or 2) the system will crawl. One of the only games with decent 3D without the FX chip is Wolf3D or Jurassic Park. That said even ones with the Super FX chip are still a crawl. Doom needed a custom engine - with a LOT removed (the floor/ceiling textures was a rom size issue not processing issue, it will display them if you add them in). Stunt Race FX was a slide-show, like Star Fox. For 3D though, it was really something.
Interesting, to come full circle... if you load SNES DOOM and go up to any wall corner, and look left and right slightly when facing the wall, you can see the textures move about 1~2cm as you move. That's the same floating point imprecision that Roane County gets it's shake from.
So yeah don't get me started on old systems, but I did pick up Hard Drivin' for the genesis for 3.99$ today when I had to take my 13 y/o niece to the game store today. That was entirely not an excuse for me to go - of-course it wasn't.
Have the 16-bit systems and a clone 8-bit system for the NES games (mostly puzzle games for the NES), I would likely get rid of the computer before I got rid of those.
The off-topic police will never crack down in here when it comes to old games, especially old racing games. They were all we had back then and most important, they were FUN (and still are).

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That sounds great! Thank-you for the clarifications on those. Just want to keep the ban hammer away from my map.

Well thank you kindly! Those are super-duper helpful. Now to throw some coal in the satellite modem and download those. With luck it might be done by the time the next recession is over with (well that or hope we don't get a recession; but if fuel prices don't come down by 30% or more WE WILL have one, mark my words).

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Both on-ramp models got finished & exported. Hopefully the chevrons aren't bugged. If they are it's due to Maya incompetence & it'll have to wait until after the beta.
Trying to get this stupid model done to help make WALKER mode more useful.
Meet the world's ugliest railing. I should have just stolen some out of a 1970's mall.
Not all the railing supports may be perfectly plumb (straight up and down) because Maya sucks and I had to walk away before I smashed ANOTHER monitor. It's really trying my patience. That said, Blender breaks twice as much and has no formal support unless you pay just as much... so it's useless to me to spend all that time converting over only to be treading the same water. I'd sooner switch to different commercial software like Houdini indie which supposedly does UV's a lot better.
Modeling pace has slightly slowed now that the warm months are here. I don't know what's different with the setup this year, but it's sweating me out so bad I ended up with a bacterial infection on my body TWICE now in the last two months due to the heat. BOTH central AC units are on and working.
Looks like I will have to figure out what's putting out so much heat. I have the GPU at half it's speed so that the fan never kicks up. The CPU is stock and really only gets load when doing GFX stuff or running BeamNG tests and it has the biggest Noctua cooler made already (it only hits 82C under the heaviest BeamNG load I can give it for HOURS, everything else barely hits 70c).
So sorry if this sounds negative, it's easily over 80F in here on a regular basis which other rooms are 70~73F on with the central AC units running. I'll get stuff done, but long-time afternoon modeling sessions without several fans going are definitely out for the count. I'll figure something out.
At some point I will likely have to cut a hole in the floor and put a second, larger register in and hopefully that cools it down some.
I will dupe the super-ugly railing (which is all of 3 or 4 draw calls for ALL of it, and it's all smooth-edges) and finish off the stairway, add the stairway into the building, and add the entrance (it won't be that involved nor pretty) to the parking garage from the street. You will be able to walk from the parking garage, up the 12~13 or so flights of stairs to the roof should you wish to do so, or just push pianos off it / do what you wish. Railing had to be bulky so the collision mesh makes sense otherwise you'd get lodged in it. Concrete texture in the stairs should be pretty realistic, it's as good of one as money can buy (it is commercial textured). Any off-sized cinderblocks in the stairway will of-course be corrected before release but that's just the way it looks at this moment.
Stairs are also all-smoothed edges (except the bottoms underneath), and a single draw call for ALL stairs (except one). Basically, what I am saying when talking about draw calls, is it'd be super rare like finding a needle in a haystack if you can find me a 3D object not from this map or base-game with draw calls done better. The less draw calls, the better, the less time your CPU wastes before giving the data to render to the GPU.
The shimmy-shimmy-shake and the FPS issues can stay back in Roane County. I learned a lot from that map. It was a fun map, despite FPS issues, but I'll be darned if this one isn't better.

So now, if you want to do something (stupid) like the (attention-seekers) that infest (tiktok and) youtube and drop something down the middle of a huge stairway, but don't want to get arrested in real life, now you will be able to live the dream. Or you can just enjoy the map, and everything else that comes along with doing so.
Too_many_stairs png just shows a view from the top down (railing not in yet).
I might just change the railing though, it's not jiving with me really. Might just do the bog-standard black wrought-iron railing we've all come to know quite well or some tubular/box-beam mesh combo.
Everything here is draw-call reduced as much as humanly possible. EVERY building could have an interior if I did it all like this, unfortunately I won't always have time to do this. This is a focal-point building with a spawn point, and is also there to help use and refine features (such as walking mode) in the game. What couldn't be draw-call lowered was duped so that everything batch-renders at once (when the CPU processes one draw call with identical matching parts of a textured surface somewhere else, it gets rendered simultaneously due to batching which is a *BIG* improvement as good as lowering draw calls does). Batch-render works great on bush/tree LOD's, or doors and windows to buildings (or anything else similar you see a lot of).
Only two features in this game engine are sorely lacking, with a close 3rd.
1.) Full asset streaming for no-more-hitching with details cranked up on all but the best GPU's.
2.) Tiled Terrain. That's a big one, you should know what that means.
3.) the close third? Inverted far-view cutoff feature, to display only basic/simple single LOD model when the far clip plane is used to harshly lower draw calls (Roane County does have a close-set far-view cutoff/clip plane, but sadly I do not have a model that I could configure to draw beyond it due to engine limitations!). That means you could have a simple model draw out past where the high-detailed scenery cuts off and have a monster map that's also very detailed. Wouldn't do much good without #1 though. For an example, open-world Bethesda games (Elder Scrolls, Fallout) do exactly this.
Ask your friendly staffer/developers for Full asset streaming support today!
*Bad storms may come tonight hampering internet connection etc, questions may be answered by late Sunday / Early Monday if things get nasty enough or if the storms scare all my internets away.
Now I have to move around a bit in the chair because one side of me is getting too crispy. It's hotter than the Devil's rectum in here right now.
--- Post updated ---
Got a freebie for y'all since you're all here!
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This *IS* a time-limited offer.

 

[redacted] TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES Stay tuned.

Great news! I fixed the stupid ramp-texture alignment bug.
Bad news! I broke the one right next to it.
Will replace texture that's broken on a text-editing level with generic concrete. I literally laid a (transparent) chevron texture over top of concrete in Maya, this shouldn't be this difficult. Thankfully I hang onto all my source files.
The chevrons being there will be gone. I'm not dealing with this being broken by trying and trying to do this model over and over. It will be chalked up to a loss and forgotten. The sad part, is the chevrons aren't even in the right spot, as the stupid modeling software pulled the UV data from the wrong set. If it pulled them from the correct one, it'd be angled and sized / repeating correctly.

This is also the first picture in existence of Los Injurus working on 0.24.x on my machine because it's literally the first time I've gotten it to work.
Thanks to @Car_Killer for stepping me through trying to un-break the map, after none of the conversion buttons in the terrain editor did anything good to it. Seriously, was about to go HAM on this thing.
Might just be able to get some shots of the 11-foot-8 bridge today if all goes well enough.

*Note: I am running super-duper-low detail here, to be able to fit the map into VRAM with graphics and modeling software open. I sorely need to update the GPU but I openly refuse to pay what they want for these higher-end, over-8gb graphics cards. That said I'll see to it that, to the best of my ability, the traffic signals work at-least on LOW / MEDIUM. I don't even have grass billboarding flipped on. My ASUS non-reference model 7850 2gb card from 2013 made graphics that looked better than this does right now (still have it around, still works).
Will append more pictures as time goes on, feel free to ask any questions about stuff.
STUPID TECHNOLOGY!
Still have not figured out why it's getting so ungodly hot in here at night even with the AC on.
Had to go back on the brain-fogger pills because I don't think I can survive another night without them. Thought for sure I wasn't going to see the sun rise this morning as-of last night at 2am, as it was several times past the point where you can hear your heartbeat in your ears / get dizzy / jello legs / etc.
Best part? Those pills are not proven to be addictive, nor are they for blood pressure at all.
Ah well, if this does prove to be the end of me, at-least I'm doing what I enjoy (MOST TIMES). I wouldn't be worried about it though, and no pity needed nor requested. I am just thankful that I have A LOT more patience for broken software than most so I can keep working here.

 

I shouldn't have to explain what this is, but it's here. It's FINALLY in the map. FINALLY have the new editor 2.0 working. It's alright... maybe I'll hate it less after a while. I don't care as much so long as it WORKS and continues to work.
Please excuse the super-duper low detail graphics. Scraping bottom here with the VRAM situation. You won't have half the issue I do with VRAM, as I'm running multiple screens and also have a lot of different stuff open such as graphic software (for last minute touch-ups or format issues), and the modeling software.
The color shading for the beams (brown) and the crash bar (brown, yellow top) is not currently set in the texture indices. It just needs to be colorized and then it should be good to go looks-wise.

 

I can't wait to peel some trucks on that bridge

 

for the helicopter part I got two.

 

Okay, I will be sure to let you know and have some time if and when I should need them, to properly test the landing pads (if I can't fly the thing any better than I can fly in GTA SA - pretty bad admittedly - screw the 'flight school missions' - maybe you can test them out for the folks here).
THANK YOU. I appreciate the availability and volunteering shown by the community here (and it's probably saved the project a lot of hardship, too). Will let you know!

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Hey guys/gals, question here.
Was fooling about testing the map on 0.24 and I noticed that the tunnel entrances were blocked off by terrain and this isn't something I intended to happen. This has something to do with the upgraded new terrain on v 0.24 (not something you can see when driving, but internal structure and formatting is different). Let me know if anyone's tunnels are not able to be entered. I just want to know if this is solely on my end or it's everyone running this on 0.24.
If your tunnels function just dandy (as they did before), then please ignore this 'bug'. It will be fixed either way. This is not the first time (and probably not the last) this has happened.
Why? The tunnels make use of the 'terrain hole' feature which removes terrain displayed and collision for it from any spot where you designate. This is how we make tunnels in maps, underground parking, subway entrances (be it for people or the train itself), underground military installations, pits Mario can fall into and die, etc. If it's not working right, no one will be able to drive / walk into a tunnel.
Please let me know on that.