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

All the best wishes for your health.

 

Poor guy has his hands full trying to keep this carcass going :x I try to be nice to the Lord and his crowd of many folks, for that alone, among many many other reasons.
Still, despite my stomach going absolutely nuts this week, I still feel good having already lost 14~15 pounds in around 2~3 weeks...
Well, there's a lot more interesting stuff that happens during the week that I don't list here (I don't let pensioners / retired folks or veterans who eat at my table pay for the food, they can eat on my dime I don't mind), not just limited to MY COROLLA FINALLY DIED! Didn't let me sit on the side of the road though, because I knew what was going down the second it started acting strange. It only took 8.5+ years of owning it and 180,000 total miles (I put 35~45k on it).
Yeah that. Entirely that. I didn't think it was possible - Thought it would outlive me. I'll fill in a bit more in a few days when I feel a little better and actually get around to fixing it (or get sick of feeding the v8 in the Chevy, whatever comes first). Chevy pickup VS gas / petrol station = OM-NOM-NOM-NOM!
My life is NOT boring, it is NEVER boring. Boring is something for dreams! There will always be something (read: LOTS) broken / needing maintenance that I must fix, people that need help (that deserve help) who can be helped, things to learn that I need to learn or help others figure out, or just saving those in my immediate vicinity from (sometimes their own) peril. Don't get me wrong, I'm NO hero (well except to that guy in the burning car who I literally saved in 2013, or the sweet almost-retired age lady who works at Wally World, who had a serious head-on off-set collision out-front of another store I was at 18 months ago) but I was always the type to help others - even if it meant putting my life on the back burner. Of-course if this wasn't naturally ingrained into almost all of us, we wouldn't have become a dominant species on Earth, either.
So to you, and to all others above who had taken time out to say nice things, THANK YOU. It helps me a feel a little better, and it means more than can be written.

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Thanks! Yes, I am working on connecting those odd-ball roads that have no end. They will almost all be connected in almost every case. Dead-end roads can be quite immersion breaking. It'll take a few more revisions of this project before I get them all connected though, as they'll be done as I go-over each area. Fuel-station logic is planned for the rather near future.

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Was working on this stuff last night. This was a section of old highway (ironically the part with black-colored 'new' looking asphalt) that was six lanes in total width that had a 15~18 foot (4 meter?) wide paved median. It was fun to drift but the new section will be more fun in ALL aspects.
The new stuff is the same six lanes, with a proper Jersey barrier median, but the interchange is where the improvements are/will be focused. This interchange is around or just over 50% complete, and the remaining section (a mile or two) of highway will be getting a HUGE re-do. The ramps and striping aren't yet complete here. The AI routing is pretty much done even where the ramps haven't been completed. I say 'pretty much' because there's plenty of finessing ahead with it as to be expected. It can take well over an hour, sometimes a few hours, to create, test, fix, test and continue doing so to get an interchange FULLY working right 99% of the time.

The terrain is hideous, road details fade out too soon, the interchange is not yet complete, but it'll give you the idea of what I've done here. The better stuff is coming up, but I've gotta go finish up one of the models I'll need.
Oh, and the bridge I was working on for the route-1 concept now has the correct sized lanes and bridge-barrier / railing-height. It looked a bit strange with the bridge barrier over the roof-height of the car before it was adjusted.
A picture of the OLD version is included BELOW, for comparison reasons.
For those who've followed along this blog / project, you might have a hint of what is going here just at the end of the highway in the 2nd picture above, where it turns right. This, however much it may seem, is much less of a cliff-hanger and more of a 'not wanting to promise what didn't get ported in-game yet' deal.
Hopefully I end up feeling better soon, before I can't see through the jungle growing outside the windows of my house. Meh, if not, I will just continue as-is / as-necessary and spend time working on this. Make those tornadoes work hard if they want to make it to the house, they'll have to get through my sort-of jungle-of-a-yard first.
--That is all.

 

Dayum! I've been away from the game for a while--big changes happening in my life--and I just drove around this city for the first time in a year or so. I have yet to explore everything that's new, but I definitely have some catching up to do! Amazing as always.

 

Sooner or later there will be an even never version released. I have so much stuff torn up, that by the time one thing is fixed up enough to be 'passable for release' (driveable with enough signs, lanes/road markings and traffic signals to be passable as a real road, generally speaking) I've ended up tearing up something else (either as part of it or "I just felt like working on that today" or "Just bought something for the project that goes over here and now I need to do all this stuff for it, for when the model is brought in, so the area is ready").
It's a rabbit-hole of never-ending work, and considering I don't like putting out stuff where the highway just ends at it's current 100~120 foot (30-something meters) CLIFF next to a body of water because I'm in the middle of completely re-routing a mile of it, it becomes difficult to release as often. If I was just filling in city sections once the road network is in (a bunch of it is, about half of the city road network is in AT MOST), then it's easy to release regularly... but that's not what's going down right now. I've got a little over a mile of highway left to work up - and it's not just a freshening with new textures - it's a complete tear-out and re-route, which takes very long especially because I'm still working on a model for part of it. Ugh!
Do enjoy driving about on the new stuff. There's some exits missing on part of the new stuff if you have the latest build, but you can sneak across the grass next to the highway if you really want to get on it from certain areas in the much newer sections. I really DO have to do something about the 'hidden' nature of some on/off ramps - hidden from the surface roads by absence of clear markings/signs and being routed down what sometimes equates to side streets (if only for realism sake, or just the logistics of the area, in the real-world this is more common in urban areas). Thank goodness it's a driving simulator, and not the real world, otherwise they'd have come for me with pitch forks LONG ago. So much for that career in engineering the thoroughfares of tomorrow.

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Hey look, road nerd stuff!
"NERD!" - Homer Simpson
Some of the stuff THE BOB looks at when referencing various aspects of roadway and highway engineering. This stuff gets super-duper technical, but if you've already dabbled in the Code of Uniform Highway Standards, and want more info (or just want to know how all this [censored] stuff works to get you to your destination), it's worth a read. Who knows, maybe someone will want a career in this stuff after seeing it, and we'll all have less of a chance of getting stuck in traffic in the future. Hopefully they can have more of an effect on the roadways of the real world than I do, which admittedly won't be hard at all to accomplish.

Highways/freeways, and what makes them what they are : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled-access_highway
LEVEL OF SERVICE in regards to roads/highways/etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_service_(transportation)
(continued, technical math included) Traffic flow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_flow
Traffic light CONTROL AND COORDINATION: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light_control_and_coordination
(highway) GRADE SEPARATION: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_separation
conversely; surface roads LEVEL CROSSING intersections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersection_(road)
Fun fact: A cluster of traffic released from a traffic light green stage (AU calls this a 'phase') is called a 'platoon', and I bet 0% of the folks around you know this.
There's tons and tons of stuff on subject, like grade, clearways, lane/bridge/tunnel widths req'd, sight-line minimums, and all kinds of other things.
While my highways don't always 100% conform to this standard, they are as close as reasonably possible to this standard when and where at all possible.
There's also a youtuber called 'Road Guy Rob', you can type it in on Youtube search and it will pop up with lots of videos on some of these very things. He's not just knowledgeable on the topics; he also is a pretty good riot of an entertainer at times. Even I still learn various things about the topics he covers in most of his videos.

If life is boring, same-old same-old over and over; learn something new. When you learn enough new things, you'll see the world differently as it may feel vastly different with your new-found knowledge. Getting bored with life means it's time to pick up a new trade or hobby, be it fixing decks or biology and going on nature walks.

--Development continues with some good things in-store.
-The Bob.

P.S. I will finish, fix, or detour the giant cliff I mentioned in the highway where the improved section stops before releasing an update. You needn't worry about falling off a cliff because some lazy level builder didn't finish making it in-time, as we have plenty of cliffs already to fall off of, should that just so happen to be on your itinerary.

 

Recently I've also gotten into road construction.
https://www.youtube.com/@Streetcraft/featured
This is a channel that I like.

 

Cool, I didn't know that. I've always borrowed from biology and called it a bolus.

 

Ah yes, road construction. Something I know quite well. I've been putting up with a few years now with it less than a mile from my house. They've got about 7 miles of the main state route to town torn up and routed all kinds of crazy which ways, which occasionally change now and then. They tore out the regular-boring two-lane mostly rural road and are putting in a 4-lane divided highway (grass median w/drainage swale, I think it's about 30~40 feet or 8~11 meters with a good 3' or about 1-meter drop in it) and also a 5-lane highway for the last two to three miles before you get to town (central shared left-turn-only lane) where it also has curbing/proper storm sewers/sidewalks. It's nice, and they're taking out all the hard and sometimes blind corners, blind crests and hard drops/bringing the grade of the road to highway standard. Basically like a highway but with level crossings like a regular roadway would have (vs highway's grade separated crossings using under/overpasses and on/off ramps). Past where we live near it'll still be two lanes (total, vs 4 or 5) but straightened out and leveled out a bit, then about 8~10 miles up it goes back to 4-lane where they're installing 100's of feet of bridge (half mile?) to span a rather large ravine. They were considering 4-lane all the way but they don't want to commit to that much yet (IMHO, traffic study was borderline on even needing it there as it's quite far from town). It'll be nice WHEN IT'S DONE. Hope it finishes soon, and they fix up the intersection at the end of our road, as it's full of bad temporary patches and honestly the whole road is raveling and pitting getting proper holes everywhere. Raveling is basically the fancy term for not enough binder or binder is degraded basically letting the road crumble from the top down (and term is used where it's not caused by freeze/thaw or foundation subsidence/failure such as heavy trucks and/or undesired water movement under the road will do). Raveling will become holes especially in winter, and will eventually wear through the wearing course and make for a VERY uneven and sometimes dangerous (in corners or bad weather) drive time if you don't see it coming. The only way to stave it off is lower PSI pavement, but that is prone to shoving / wash-boarding especially at corners and often (busy) stop-lights. Shoving / wash-boarding is when pavement is too flexible and ends up moving around some, making it look almost melted, often forming ruts in the process. Wash-boarding being forward/backward repositioning and shoving is usually where it goes to the outside of the turn or toward the cross-slope or "cant" of the road. Lower PSI pavement does hold up better to weather changes and residential vehicle traffic though, so where there's not a ton of trucks, that is what they use. Higher PSI pavement must be used on highways, major thoroughfares and other places lots of trucks go, for reasons explained above. However, regardless of the PSI or whether it's new or recycled pavement (asphalt is de-facto the most recycled material in the world by long and far), if it's not maintained it will crumble after only a few years (holes filled in short order, sealer used to cover cracks to keep water out which may freeze and pop pavement when it expands), obviously the northern states in the USA will see pavement degrade faster due to bad winter weather / temperature changes. They've never put any crack sealer down, dumping some sealer over the raveling would have negated much of the continued damage; and they've only seldom come by to fill the ever-growing holes so there's holes everywhere. One section under a tree is nothing but holes and patches across the whole lane for several car lengths - and if you don't know it's there you might go out of your lane of travel unintentionally. So yes, our road needs fixed very very badly, but I believe they're waiting until they're done reconfiguring the intersection a mile out. They last paved it in October 2012. This is some construction I wouldn't mind seeing, for a change. Compared to the destruction that is this road, it'd be welcome relief.
That rant having been said, Tennessee usually has very good roads in terms of upkeep and in terms of number (of roads, and of lanes on the roads). Compared to any northern states, this place is way better; though I'd be shallow to not admit the last 5~6 winters have been especially bad to the infrastructure here.
Thanks for the channel link and I will check it out at some point soon!

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The Bob is making something. Anyone hazard a guess? The model needs curved slightly, and will be 8~10x longer. That is your only hint right now until I get it further along (Specific male body parts are not valid guesses, so get that idea out of your head!).
--That is all for right now.
Click to expand the picture.

 

Is it a dam?

 

You are correct sir!

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It is now extended and it's got it's curve on it, and as-such it's nearly ready to be introduced into the game environment.
Collision mesh done, Lod's done, texturing done, model internal hierarchy done, req'd edge-smoothing is also done. Most all the detail is preserved well enough that the LOD models shouldn't pop in/out notably also, a right concern of some of the early batches of models for this project (like the single-family homes tend to do near the default start).
Just need to touch up texture names, double-check position and for messed up textures, and possibly dress up the grunge-layering a little bit to randomize it some.
The model shouldn't even have over 10 draw calls on the full detail model, so it's going to be REALLY good for performance. The idea is to keep it simple, but there will be some detail added in later with decals (think: stickers) and extra bits such as lamp-post bases and buildings. Buildings (when they get added) will be on another model. The overflow pipe and outflow pipe (the other end) will be added in a little later when time allows (buildings/outflow not as high priority as the physical dam itself, buildings will come before outflow/overflow pipe models). If I kept all the details of such things onto the main model, it would be much bigger, and the renderer would have to work harder displaying pieces otherwise outside the field of view. This not only increases FPS, but also helps out when streaming in models and required textures for those models only when needed. Smaller models mean less hitching while the video driver and renderer wait for the object to be loaded and less space used by it in VRAM (largely by removing duplicate objects such as lamp posts / other similar common things and making those their own object or objects).
The dam will feature a 25~30mph road on top of it, and will be bypassed by a very large single-large-span highway bridge for those who want a good view of it. There will be parking areas but those will be part of the terrain and have their own object set, but I believe you'll be able to park on the dam also if you really want to, without blocking the travel lanes. Just try to park somewhere dry with non-aquatic vehicles, please. Also, this isn't the only dam in the map but will likely be the largest. Now only to think what to call it.
It's not going to be terribly tall either, but you'll see how it will end up looking when it's in the game itself very soon. This is no Hoover Dam or Glen Canyon Dam remake, just to make it clear if drawing from likeness alone. If I make it too much taller I'm going to have to add in another texture for the grunge dripping down the side or forgo it near the bottom, so it's best kept pretty much like it currently is. It's currently roughly the height of a 20-floor apartment tower (or just a little more than that), which should be enough where it's going. Super big things have a nasty tendency to get moved accidentally as I edit the environment (such as the port and beach kit) so I didn't want to make it too unnecessarily huge and it be unknowingly out of place during several different releases before I figure it out. Hopefully I've got the size of it close enough to what I really need in-game.
We've got the dam now, now we need a very big bridge supported by something outside of the typical post-and-beam style of bridge super-structure/sub-structure construction (e.g. something different than all the rest of the bridges in Los Injurus which largely use the standard pillar or pillar group models with a 'bent' at the top). For those lost, the thing between the bridge span beams (that run the length of the bridge) and columns below is called a BENT, and it distributes the load of the bridge to the columns as evenly as possible. The thing at either end of the bridge where beams rest is different and called an abutment, however, just so I haven't mislead anyone here accidentally. Abutments not only support the bridge but hold back the ground (and it's water content) behind it, so columns have it easy by comparison only having to hold the bridge in place. However, this is far too tall for columns (and the model of them in-game) so I'll be using a suspension bridge or under-deck truss / possibly through-arch style of bridge here. The arc of a through-arch design would compliment the arc of the dam nicely (as does suspension bridges) when both are in-view, so it's the only good of choice as is a suspension bridge in my eye.
This area where the dam/bridge will be will have a spawn point, and as such, it will have to look the part for good first impressions when loading into Los Injurus. It won't get totally completed before the next update but it'll have a lot of it's substance when you get to try it out for the first time.
Non-obligatory / OFF-TOPIC bit is below:
In other news, I've lost 25 pounds in five weeks, averaging 5 pounds a week, and just passed below 200 pounds in the last two days. I also stopped about 87% of the medications I was on (joint pain, sleep issues, other issues with my physical condition like constant burning nerve pain, nothing mental-related) since my doctor closed down (retirement), and I still didn't feel great or capable of anything. Weening off things is sometimes less than fun, but I managed to do it and as-such; between this and the weight loss I haven't felt better in years (provided I'm not coming down with something at that very moment). It's been so much of a difference, that I not only have been able to tame a chunk of the jungle that grew where the garden used to be (and is again), but I also don't look like the bad-year blimp or blow up stretch bluejeans anymore. Hooray, no more OSHA hazard when the button flies off my drawers due to the extreme force put upon it being exponentially greater than that which it was designed for. It's nice not having to hand out safety glasses just before every time I go to pick something up off the floor, just so I don't get sued for eye injuries from flying buttons!
I better stop there, but it's been a long time coming as I was fast losing any mobility I had left. Sure I have more discomfort from joint pain and often am feeling like my skin is on fire, but I have some energy and can still get around easier than before - much easier. The meds they hand out at doctors these days (aside of blood pressure meds, which I also take and will continue to take) don't always work for everyone anyways. So if anything, it'll save me some cash that I can put towards other things... like fixing my deck AGAIN so I don't fall in any new holes (I fixed it two or three years ago but more old boards came loose since then due to rusting dozen-year-old fasteners). Would rather not fall into a new hole in the deck and end up surrounded by angry giant centipedes under my deck if I have any say in it. They might make me buy them shoes or something expensive like that - there goes the budget.
Just posted this last bit in-case you were low on nightmare fuel. Well, maybe someone will get a good chuckle out of it, too. Here's to not needing to buy clothing made of kevlar/titanium due to being overweight anytime soon. Only 20~30 pounds to go at most.
--That is all!
-The Bob.

 

Okay, so The Dam is in, and it's too dam big Okay okay, well it is way oversized, so I made a medium-sized one.
This is all well and good as it's maybe 3 minutes to reduce it and re-import it (or 5 minutes, didn't count, it's fast though). Much faster than making it larger.
Technically you can stick them end to end if you really wish. Thankfully, the second time is the charm.

Now to re-angle the highway by around 45 degrees so the bridge for the highway goes in-front of it.
I'll make sure to keep the model in the files of the Patreon release so you can use either dam size in your map. The dirt texture is a commercial one I had to buy (and then fix up a bunch and make it tile, too), so I'll rename that to something in the base-game within the model, so it calls the right one. Have to check the face texture to see if it's commercial or not, I don't entirely think it is as I've had it since Roane County days (it's actually the Dollar Miserable parking-lot texture from re-created Rockwood TN in Roane County).
I will add in lighting later when I get a better idea of my budget for lighting. Trying to keep things pretty open in terms of adding lighting later, because it's a hard hit on FPS when it's on, and not everyone runs this at night. When night-lighting is added and installed by large, I will enable the day/night cycle for this to kick on and off automatically at night (thus if you drive long enough, it will become night time and the lights will kick on).
"But Bob, why haven't you added night time with automatic street lighting support in yet?"
This is due in part to the fact that night driving, while possible, isn't 100% supported by means of separate sky-box (the sky) is needed for night. Also, I have no way to enable/disable building illumination (back-lit windows) texture layers manually via time-delayed scripts (more layers = more draw calls, more draw calls = less FPS by 5~15% depending on where you are, thus I won't enable anything related to this until I can put it all in and make sure it shuts OFF in the day time so FPS stays nice during the day).

In this close-up, you can see that the driving surface features cross-slope as most of the city roads do, storm sewers with appropriate amounts of road surface depression, and of-course above-mentioned lighting added via poles and such later on. Driving lanes here are 12-foot just like on the highway.
It's not lowered into place to fit the map, just wanted to show the models I've been working on for this.
The large-sized dam and then the really dam big dam are actually entirely the same model, there is just 2 chunks added on to each end of the 6-chunk large-sized model to make the extremely big one, which is 10 sections total.
In the first picture, there is a small two-lane road (not the big four lane one or highway stuff) that will likely be flooded out, removed, or moved elsewhere. The ends of it on either side that aren't flooded will be re-used for parking areas and tourist trap / facilities stuff. If you're unsure, it's that little road just 'above' the smaller dam in the 1st picture, and has a very small curved bridge on it. Now the dam is also curved, but you also now know why that bridge was curved in the first place. I originally wanted a dam here when I threw this environment together waaaaaay back in 2016, long before I had the knowledge to build Los Injurus. Okay so only took 8 years for that idea to come to fruition, but better late than never.
I'll post more pictures when I actually get this thing integrated into the environment itself, and not just plunked there willy-nilly. This way when the melt-water surge of melted snowflakes who got dangerously close to The Bob's politically incorrect aura, can be turned into city drinking water stored here and actually do some good for society for a change, instead of just moaning about it.

So check back in a day or two, there should be something posted here when I get the dam set up and later when the bridge super-structure is done. Unless I get lost in my yard (work), or work on my car (yeah it's still broken, but I got the parts, the garage is deadly hot during the day so it's holding that up until the heat wave passes, so I don't DIE in there).
Still can't get over falling below 200lbs as-per my weight loss success, it feels amazing physically and is equally mentally refreshing. I thank GOD for it daily, even if some days I question if I deserve such treatment. Time will tell on that, though.
--That is all for the moment.
-The Bob.

 

Got to digging, thankfully the in-game kind.
Random chunks of grass (planting strip) in curbing is just an illusion, it's due to shared LOD on the curbing (even though I don't believe the game will batch this currently), I will fix that in the future. Doesn't do it up close.

The dam looks 'okay' thus far, it really needs the buildings and tourist areas, badly. Very badly. Highway was re-routed a little, as it would have pointed right at the dam otherwise.
AI is all installed most spots but not over the dam yet. Traffic circle and on/off ramps have it fully, and it's already in for the bridge that doesn't exist yet. Hopefully I get the bridge in sometime soon before all the AI ends up in the ravine. Yes, they'll happily drive clean off the end of that 6-lane expressway into the great blue yonder without a care in the world, at-least until I get a bridge installed. Maybe I'll sit and watch it for a while.
Yes, the mound in the center of the traffic circle will launch you just as much as they do in all those car-crash videos, especially the American car-crash ones.
Oh, and YES the water in the dam is deep enough to fill the whole area below, I MADE SURE OF IT THIS TIME. Derp! It's right down to the existing water-plane (ocean) level, which consequentially is also the floor-level inside of the dam's catchment area (to prevent 'double water' issues).
--Worry not.
EDIT: Supposed to be sleeping already but guess what The Bob did.
Immediately went back in and fixed all the (oops) huge lumps in the road carving, and then immediately flipped on 39 AI vehicles (with mine included that's 40, yes it runs, yes it's playable on a 3950x stock settings). Bit slow as I'm on DirectX 11 and not Vulkan, but it's certainly playable. Vulkan is way better as DirectX already has it's hands full on this map solo and drops frames quick with a dozen vehicles in-view. If you use the in-game editor, please make sure to run in DirectX 11 as Vulkan might crash in the editor.
To say it runs way better now (especially with the AI vehicle model optimization last year) is an understatement. Running more than 30~32 vehicles on this when I got it 4 years ago (had the 3700x 5 years ago but got the 3950x a year later) usually got pretty close to 20 FPS or below pretty quick (I forget the exact number), it's a lot better these days.
Can anyone tell me what kind of performance a 5800x3D or 5700x3D gets if anyone has the numbers on this map with AI vehicles in-play ? The old-fashioned banana-bench results would work, too, if needed.
I can't find ANYONE outside of AMD themselves with one of those engineering-sample 5950x3D chips otherwise I'd pay almost a grand to put one in here (would save me having to replace this whole thing when time comes). They never took them to production as it never made sense with the clock speed sacrifice, but they're REALLY good for stuff like this.

 

The pictures are awesome. Btw, I did sadly cancel my East Coast, USA mod map out of frustration, but thank you for helping me.

 

Well, starting the map is usually a lot harder than working on it outright, excluding things like losing interest for whatever reason. When I feel confused about what to build, I drive around the map and find something that needs doing, and obviously I don't have to drive too far for-sure - even bug-fixing, as there's ALWAYS some bugs I haven't yet found. Like two days ago when I ran a 40 vehicle AI test (39 of them one of me), and found out pretty fast where I forgot to enable the AI for a 3 lane bridge. That was one very big pair of pile-ups. If there's another reason you lose enthusiasm, then take a break for a week or two; maybe try out some games similar to this one and find something you like. Bring that thing to BeamNG Drive, and people might really like it.
I enjoyed the heck out of San Andreas, so I wanted to bring something somewhat similar to BeamNG Drive without falling afoul of copyright or DMCA things. So as I brought this to light (multiple developed areas, highways in the shape of ring-roads, varied and also challenging terrain, etc) it sort-of grew into it's own identity. While I use San Andreas as inspiration, it's not the only thing/game that inspired me. There's a lot more to it, the more you look and explore the world I've built here. You can build just as well as I can. Just try hard enough for long enough, and you'll easily surpass anything else I can do here with enough time invested. Time and effort are your two tools to enable you to do anything, put that with a desire to create and learn how to create and with a proper computer, you'll be making a masterpiece in no-time. Just use the many resources (even Youtube) on this here interwebs thing, to learn whatever you need to.
Maybe you're not quite ready yet. So go out, and come back with a couple buckets of experience points, and put those into the intelligence and game design / 3D-artist skill-set and you'll be set. Heh.

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More detail. The current bridge over the huge gap in-front of the gap is a place-holder bridge until I get the model in. Approach to other side of dam now has a road to it, and AI, including AI across the dam now. Added dozens of signs and decorations (etc) to the area, and lots of sidewalk to the section under the bridge adjacent to the dam.
Also, added full AI to the previous area I had worked on in the last two months, where I put all the new roadwork by the coast. Testing out the new flag on AI routing that prevents it from making junk intersections when you put in left-turn lanes and such as it crosses the oncoming lanes, or most left-turns in general. The new flag prevents the AI from turning right mid-way through the left-turn if coming off the end of an off-ramp onto a divided surface road, or when turning off the divided road with a left turn onto another road or on-ramp it prevents it from making a u-turn (which it can't always make the turn, causing it to get stuck or jam-up traffic trying to turn around). We'll see if that works well enough when I have a chance to test it.
Also edited the filler sidewalk piece files so that they don't drop into LOD so fast. They drop into LOD too quick because it's done by screen-fill rate, and since they're smaller they fall into LOD the phases faster. This is the thing that caused some of the sidewalks made of concrete to show up with grass planting strips when viewed from a roughly two-hundred feet away or more, when they don't actually have them when you're close up. That's called pop-in / pop-out (generally just 'pop in') and is something I'm trying to make less obvious. Thank goodness from my time working the Roane County project, that I learned to do that in the text editor. Just keep in mind when you update to clear the cache otherwise the change won't take effect for the sidewalk bits, whenever this update gets out. I haven't cleared my cache yet here (or even restarted the game) yet here, so the changes to the sidewalk filler pieces (the small ones) aren't shown here.

AI across the dam is shown in the picture following these words.
--That is all for right now.
-The Bob.

 

Got the structure of the parking-lot done, and it's painted/striped-out as it needs to be. NO AI in the lot yet, but it'll get that shortly. There's also a dirt road that goes to the road that got cut off when the dam was built and thus flooded out. A large retaining wall built of squared off rock slabs is somewhat of a focal point when looking away from the dam itself. Plenty of sidewalks and ADA ramps make sure there's always a place to stand where you're less likely to get 'mooshed'. There's a dedicated BUS parking area for about half a dozen busses, with over-sized parking areas and plenty of room to move about (well I sure hope so anyway). I don't like having dead-ends in the map so this dirt road at the far end of the lot, while not generally open to the public, serves purpose to prevent dead-ends at-least until I get a new alignment put in for the remainder of the old road. Consequentially, if you dove under water, you could find the old bridge and old alignment of the road underwater.

All said, this lot took several good solid hours to put together, but it's entirely worth it in the end. It still needs more signs, some benches, maybe some pick-a-nick tables or something similar.
--That is all for now.
-The Bob.
--- Post updated ---
"You have exchanged insurance information."

Sure you have. Sure... I hope it's with water-proof paper and water-proof ink, because I'm a few meters below the surface of the city's water supply.
Doing a lot of testing here, found some more bugs. I find them all the time, sometimes it's possible that I'm using TOO MANY vehicles, but when doing highway testing you need A LOT.
CURRENTLY I have to re-do the new highway* section's AI (2+ miles) as I used a single section for each 3-lane, and it's not handling 3 lanes properly (this is a game AI / traffic bug that I'm in contact with the devs with). So I'm going to re-do it like I've done the other 3-lane per-side sections of highway with a dual-lane AI-route and a single-lane AI-route to make the 3 lanes. The game is currently splitting the road and giving me four lanes and not 3, even if I did 2+1 lanes or 1+2 lanes. Oh, the follies and fun of working with early-access software on an early-access game environment. I can 100% see why folks get frustrated or give up, I get frustrated too, but got lucky to have a crazy-big brain, a whole lot of time, and I also don't give up easily without at-least trying to see if it's something stupid I did (which happens) or a game bug (this happens too) and if I can fix that or not, or at-least go moan at the team member who can fix it.
*Only the section of highway that I haven't released to supporters or the public yet, not the stuff you already can explore in the existing version. That's the only part with goofed up AI.
--Yeah really, no hit and runs under water people!
-The Bob

 

Are you going to add a working gas station for the vanilla map?
As the map is large, fuel consumption is inevitable, so a gas station is essential.

 

Bob, this looks absolutely epic and can't wait to drive on these roads. Hope you are feeling happy and healthy and dodging all the tornados!

 

They're slated to be added in before the year's out. I can't say as-to when, as I've got to figure out some theory behind how the scripting works and references the station nodes themselves, so that I can enable more than one at a time in the city.

---

Some of these routes are pretty fun with enough cars on them to make it feel real, and I'm trying to get the AI to work reliably and not GO THE COMPLETE WRONG WAY down one-way roads. Some sort of bug is manifesting, either in the AI routines themselves or in my implementation as-in there might be a disconnect somewhere between some of the lanes causing the AI to think it's near the end of the road and turn-around (going the wrong way to go back). I don't have it 100% figured out yet on everything but I think I've fixed 2/3rds of the issue. Have to keep dumping all the AI vehicles out of play (disable AI), enter the editor, move nodes, save & exit editor, go back to my vehicle and hit CTRL L, rebuilds nodes (it's supposed to!), and then spawn 30~40 vehicles and enable AI. Sit back and watch the calamity or drive around and try and find what screwed up where... usually by SLAMMING into a pile of crashed cars that is currently where the road is supposed to be. What the?...AHHH! *screeching non-anti-lock brakes & 4 tire smoke show* BOOM! *Pessima bits everywhere* yeah, that.
Trying to avoid the Tornadoes. After the one mid-May decided to try and delete my house and myself with it, FORMING DIRECTLY ABOVE MY HOUSE but not touching down (thank-you JESUS is all I can say!), that was pretty much all she wrote for tornadoes in the spring-time here. If I wasn't religious before then, I'd sure have been after that come-to-Jesus moment. This property has already had one tornado strike in the past before I was born (I'm in my 40's), it doesn't need another (yes, I checked the historic tornado lines, this and the neighboring house got CLOBBERED, sure does explain the janky walls/floors on the original/older half of the house). How do you luck out and not get tornado hairdo and munched house even though one forms directly over your house? Let's just say I got pretty worked up in church and got a little teary-eyed when talking about it, but the members fully understood. Most all the folks, except those who just moved into the state, have been through close calls or the real deal itself around here. Now whenever there's bad weather I'm almost smothered with cats and the dog won't stop whining.
Put it this way, when it looks like there's several squad-car strobes (police lights) going outside and you KNOW it's not police emergency lights, don't question it, just RUN DIRECTLY for cover. You might not even make it if you wait that long, but that's the thing to look for is the constant flashing. Don't just stand there in a dead-pan stare locked up with your jaw hanging open like I did... Tornadoes only rumble when they hit the ground but you won't have the freight-train sound for a warning if it's forming over you and hits you right there and then, you will STILL have the constant 0.5~2 second interval flashes of lightning as a warning unless it's day-light enough you can't see them. Man that really puts me into a funk talking about that, but I digress, people NEED TO KNOW. If it helps even but one person, it was worth typing all this stuff out. We get a lot of night-time tornadoes in Tennessee (and states south of us, and Kentucky too), as is the standard for Dixie Alley - a lesser-known but just as active version of tornado alley centered right over the states I mentioned. Where am I living? Right at the down-wind end of the red zone but securely inside of it, in other words, SUCKS FOR ME.
Thankfully, through some grace of God, I've managed to live (and keep most of my sanity) through that and dozens of other times 98% of others would have been dead meat. Still get my moments of the 2000-yard stare, if you know what that is (sometimes called the 1000-yard stare), but I can deal with that; that's merely chump change left over after the whole bill. All the more good that I attempt to keep my brain busied with the Los Injurus project here. I should be building a bridge if anything, if stupid Maya will let me turn off step-snapping this time (lots of swearing over that yesterday, wouldn't let me turn it OFF).
My health is about as good as I can ask for, though I do feel quite a bit better having lost 20~25lbs. Seriously, I can't stress that enough. I couldn't imagine the amazing difference for someone losing 50~100lbs. I appreciate the kind words / thoughts and give much thanks, so thank-you.

---

Intel's debacle on the issue with 13th and 14th generation chips is now mildly affecting SOME of the more powerful laptop processors, but this is few and far between and most of them haven't fallen victim of issue yet. However, desktop processors started failing close to new-year's 2023 (DEC 2022 1st reports). Issues with games crashing due to the bugs affecting desktop-only processors have now started to slowly become more common on the same-generation laptop chips on the higher-end of the product line.
Turns out, when I said it looked like OVERCLOCKING DAMAGE due to a bad / too hot of an overclock, akin to suicide-runs that the tech-enthusiasts do to try and set records, or even in the home when people who don't know what they're doing set a speed/voltage that's too much for the cooling solution, turns out I was 100% spot on. That is why it affected the top end of the product line first, as Intel put TOO MUCH wattage/voltage through the chips for them to last their useful lifetime before degrading or crashing outright. I've been saying this for months just from the evidence presented, while news media ran in circles blaming this or that, and intel wouldn't comment because they have NO fix for it other than to slow your processor down by reducing the voltage/wattage ceiling of the default speed / performance profiles.
Intel just wanted to look like they beat AMD on benchmarks, and at what costs? Breaking all the gaming systems after only 4~16 months at default settings by brute-forcing idiocy in the form of power to the chip to make it go faster and faster? Silicon can only take so much abuse before the physics of the material are overcome by doing this. Processors are degrading, and this process is exponentially sped up by the extreme heat put out by doing so, so processors with less use and cooled better are lasting a little longer than those who are really put to work, or not cooled 100% as well as the others / in a hot environment.
Intel expects to put out more BIOS updates, so hopefully this helps some of the folks who still have working chips, and prevents future chips from breaking. Those with crashing intel chips should RMA their chip immediately, and also apply the BIOS updates as they roll in.
When I built this system, I chose AM4 as the more upgrade-friendly platform, more/faster PCI-E lanes (AM4 had PCI-E 4.0 and intel did NOT in 2019), and because the intel chips on the top-end of the product line were too hot (for air cooling - required) to handle. This got me not only a better deal, but I got very lucky to avoid this one.
Link to Videocardz (SFW) article mentioning such HERE.
As always while the article itself is perfectly safe-for-work (SFW), user-comments below it may or may not be, it is moderated.
Also, intel has SILENTLY released 14th generation processors WITHOUT E-CORES. Really? Maybe people don't truly like those economy-cores after-all, considering the nightmare they've produced for developers even before this whole self-destructing-processor fiasco. If you don't mind buying into a dead-end platform and need another computer, but don't want E-cores around to mess things up (especially if using Windows 10 where they like to do that most), now's your chance to get a sweet deal on heavily discounted LGA1700 motherboards! Give me a real core or give me nothing! Can't say if they'll go belly-up with the same issue as the rest of the line-up, maybe sit this one out for another month and see how next week's Zen 5 release fares against the rest of the world, first. I would be naive to think this release has absolutely nothing to do with current issues; but maybe intel just has enough CPUs with defective e-core clusters to do a limited run batch of these. Could go either way with that.
That said, I will forward the warning that multiple tech sites recommend AGAINST purchasing any intel processors from the 13th or 14th generation, until this issue is confirmed solved with degrading chips. Best to do your reading, or failing that, wander to youtube and listen/watch on there.
Link to Videocardz (SFW) article on new 14th-gen intel processor release without e-cores
As always while the article itself is perfectly safe-for-work (SFW), user-comments below it may or may not be, it is moderated.

---

Currently building my bridge super-structure and sub-structure in Maya 3D, it'll be a through-arch design. The concrete bridge deck is done, now I need to do the beams/arches. It's 6 lanes total separated by a Jersey-barrier, 3 lanes each direction. No shoulder spacing aside of maybe 12~24 inches (30~61 CM) on each side AT MOST, it's at the absolute bare minimum.
All that reading and just a few sentences about the project. Sorry about that but important news on PC stuff (since you need a beefy PC for running Los Injurus) is definitely pertinent to the cause.
--That is all, pictures of bridge when I get it picture-worthy.
-The Bob.

 

OK, went back and widened the bridge deck by a good 10 feet for each direction (almost a lane width PER SIDE), to allow for proper 18" (46cm) shoulders on the inside, and roughly 8' shoulder on the outside (245cm~248cm, a little over 2 meters). So this is a lot better, as I'm not so sure I'd feel comfortable driving THAT close to the wall... Then would anyone else?
NOW I can get to the super/substructure components (sub-structure holds up the super-structure which holds up the dead-load of the bridge deck, it's trimmings/barriers and the live-load which is YOU / everyone).
That said, in standard post-and-beam or below-deck truss bridges, the sub-structure is the super-structure and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably (even if it is wrong to do so; hopefully the engineer gets it right, and maybe the bridge will stay up, too).
Bridge deck is roughly 12 draw calls, some are duped so won't count, barriers are dupes and will be 1 or 2 in addition to the bridge. Super-structure shouldn't add too much more than the deck itself, would like to keep it < 40 total so it can be rendered from a mile or two/three/four away easily in higher detail. The less draw calls, the less I have to trim when I make levels-of-detail for far away viewing (LOD's). Thus lots less likely to get pop-in or pop-out when getting closer/further from the model and it switches between the LOD phases.
Crazy ramblings aside, just a short post here, will put up the super-structure pics later/tomorrow/whenever they're picture-worthy enough.

 

Okay so more bridge super-structure is done. The sub-structure is currently non-existent except where it's obviously an integral part of said super-structure, but with through arch bridges, you get that confounding of terms as I stated previously. So in other words, it still needs foundations and such, and some bracing under either end in the form of box-girder stuff. The super-structure needs diagonal X-bracing (running between the arches on each side semi-horizontally above and below the bridge deck) to resist contorting and torsional load stresses placed on bridges as heavy trucks drive over them and wind blows against them. Would the design I'm using actually work? Probably, though I'm sure some of the exact sizing I'm using and the fact that it's done in concrete and not steel might not be a good thing. I wanted it to be concrete, though, for now. I will probably switch it to the weathered-steel (brown) box-girder type texture later on though, we shall see. Speaking of texture, that it-don't-tile-right texture on the superstructure which was also on the last arch bridge I showed off months ago NOW is FIXED and tiles seamlessly.
That super-structure is a whopping TWO draw calls right now. Yes, seriously. It will probably be 3 or 4 when I account for the odd stretched texture issues, but still, that's very good for FPS. That WHOLE thing isn't much over a dozen draw calls IF it even is at all. It might be only 10 or 11 draw calls. That's insanely low but LOD model says HOORAY FOR FPS, you'll see this thing for MILES!
So yeah, that's a thing, and there shouldn't be much pop-in unless I bugger something up between here and whenever this thing is done. Again, since it's low draw calls, the likelihood that you notice whatever I choose to omit on the lower-detail levels is slim, since I won't need to remove much to make it top-notch.
It's NEVER going to be as detailed as the one in West Coast (the BIG bridge), but I don't want it to be. You should be spending your time flying down it at 100+ mph or finding ways to go blasting off the dam, or even flying a plane under it (or a car, who am I to judge, don't get paid enough to be judge any-who), etc. I'm not going to pour weeks and weeks and weeks into a portion-of-a-mile-long bridge here, when I need a lot of different bridges, and this is but one scene in dozens/hundreds of different little sections of the HUGE game-world that Los Injurus is striving to be. It just needs to be good enough that it is not an eye-sore, it does not detract or break immersion, and is both enjoyable plus doing what it says on the tin. Plus, the fancier and more detailed it becomes, the more space it takes up on disk and in VRAM (video memory on your GPU)... and I'm already on the line so as it is with many 8GB graphics cards not being able to run highest detail textures.
Just a friendly reminder from The Bob, that if your experience with Los Injurus is too slow or otherwise becomes a slide-show, consider firing the game up with the texture-detail settings one lower than they currently are. If it runs a ton better, that is why you had an issue, it is exceeding video memory. Only a few % of machines in the world (that run Steam) can run Los Injurus with HIGH DETAIL textures, as that is the % of machines that have a GPU with at-least 10~12GB of VRAM on them. It might even go over that with tons of AI vehicles loaded, or other things open on your computer, but I don't know the little details on that yet (plus this is always changing).
--That is all for right now, but at-least it's something to show for the general design of the bridge.
More detail later on, in the coming day or two.
-The Bob
*NOTE: It's one picture attached, even if it looks like it might be two. I merely put them in one file.
click to enlarge

 

I was working on the bridge and managed to make this, will still possibly do something with the sides:
Click picture below to expand
Obviously with a migraine going on for days on/off, The Bob mustn't feel like typing much.