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

Well I found out why it wasn't showing up. About two or three months ago I did a quick hacky fix (to hide) some of the flat grey shading in the map (edges of roads), that fix broke the Mall's flat grey shading (window/door trimming) because it used the same name. Only problem was, is that IT NEVER WORKED ON MY END more than the first time when I initially changed things and implemented said fix 2~3 months ago. *Muttley muttering in background*...

People might not notice the window trim missing at first, but they will notice invisible walls to hit and holes in the walls / gaps. I spent a lot of time on that mall and wanted it to look nice (and ruined), not shoddily done.

But yeah that might have nicked that bug for now. I will do something with it later.

--Cheers!

 

Just a hint of something to come. It was asked for (this is very early version of the model, but LOD's are already done, finishing the final visible mesh you see when you're close up), and for vision-purposes the ground-level will be a little below where the white foundation starts.

 

It's that Detroit themed factory isn't it

 

DING-DING-DING.
YOU'RE WINNAR!
(extra kudos if you know where that's from)
Don't worry, I'll make it nice and cruddy and decrepit. As decent as I can do, anyways.
It'll be very close to the mall so it will look the part and look much like the outside of the mall does with piles of rubble all over.
At this point, it doesn't have an interior, but I'm not ruling that out in the future however. There will be lots and lots of hidden places in this town, for sure. It's always fun finding 'secrets' just too bad I can't make them as fun to find as (DOS) DOOM or Super Metroid was.
Many interiors in buildings (except the mall as that's done already) will come much later in development when I have a better idea of where I can add things and how much, due to performance consistency requirements.

 

That quote is from Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing.

 

So 0.14 game version dropped yesterday / update today.
My slow internet connection finally finished downloading it.
The good, the bad, and the no texture...
A pair of parking-lot / driveway texture normals were broken, as was the decorative tan stone (but only when used on models not the stuff on the terrain).
Recent AMD RADEON drivers cause grass to glitch like crazy with black shrapnel all over. Does it on stock maps too. Does it worse in 0.14 now, much much worse.
I will look into it tomorrow.
Map is still 100% playable. Next update out within 2 weeks to fix this, possibly sooner.

 

I updated my AMD drivers recently as well (I have a RX 480 4GB) and that black flickering "shrapnel" appeared after updating as well.. It's been driving me crazy. Happens on the stock maps and some (not all) custom maps. I heard that disabling the grass helps, but I haven't had time to try it myself.

 

Big city doin' a bustle.

 

Yes I am either going to have to get an Nvidia card (that's never going to happen), or fix the bug with the grass. It has to do with the grass fade-out distance/dissolve settings for ground cover in f1 object editor. Specifically, the terrain layer ground cover for GRASS does it most, the scrub brush for ROCKY DIRT doesn't really do it nearly as much (sometimes, but it's not looking like an etch-a-sketch threw up).
I have the RX 480 8gb, and to be honest, while it's no power-house of a graphics card, it's surely 'Good Enough' to get sufficient visual fidelity while playing games and I'd like to hang onto it a few more years yet. At-least until it ceases to function or it just isn't good enough for whatever game I play on the sides, when not level building. Being brutally honest, I am not thrilled with the 2d/3d performance in Maya but that might not even be the card doing it, that could be the CPU slowing things down because it does it when there's thousands of UV's too, BAD. I was getting really slow for a while, then after Maya used up 1.25GB of Video RAM, it told me "I was out of video memory", and promptly crashed to the desktop (that happened while building the mall).
The only thing this tells me is - what of a veritable "hell" REAL game designers must go through - to make games for us to play. I've only sampled mere months (modeling) / years (mapping) of it with this game (though I've been modding for well over 20 years now, since modding began for old DOS DOOM). There are so many bugs, glitches, rubbish, etc. I mean I'd hop right out and snag a Fire-Pro or Quadro card - but the thing is - I don't even know if that'll fix the issues - and I DO NOT want coil whine as sometimes I sit here in dead silence and pull all-nighter's mapping/modeling when every other person in the house is sleeping and I can FINALLY concentrate. I lived through the coil-whine nightmares that was the 7xxx series Nvidia cards (from 2006~2007) up to the ones from about 7~8 years ago - NO WAY I am going back. You could hear the coil whine in almost the entire house on one SLI high-FPS setup I used to have, and yet again another reason I am leaving the RX 480 8g card in.

When I brought home an RX 480 4gb card I originally got, it had a pretty good rattle, so much so in fact that I took it back. However, before I took it back, I went and tested out my current project at the time - Roane County - and it went and used up 3911mb of 4096mb video memory. That only "sealed the return deal" there. I told the store, some kid might not care but I do 3d stuff in silence in the dead of night and it was driving me up the wall, it'd be different if it was free. Go figure the 8gb model developed a rattle too. Replaceable fans on these things, I can see why they're replaceable, THEY NEED TO BE, or you'd go mad. I've already needed to buy one set for it (they were free under warranty for what it's worth, though tech support wanted me to re-install my Windows 7, I told them to go suck a bug). I said "Really, if I stick a pen or a finger in the fan to stop it and the rattling stops, or remove it altogether, you're trying to tell me software is at fault, for faulty fan bearings? Look I didn't just fall off the turnip truck buddy, I was messing with hardware since when the 486 was king. These are faulty bearings from the get-go, the QC for these fans is TERRIBLE! Frankly, I am offended here.".

Rule(s) of thumb folks:
If you bring your new graphics card home, and you exceed or fill up your VRAM 90% or more when you get it, send it back.
If you bring your new graphics card home, and it rattles, send it back. Keep taking them back until you get a quiet one.
ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE all make nice quality graphics cards. The lesser brands are Palit, HIS, XFX, and so-forth are the lesser brands. If I didn't list them here I wouldn't buy them at all. That being said if you are buying a reference card (if you must absolutely deal with loud noise of drum fans to dump heat from the case - exception - GTX 2xxx series), then any brand will generally be equal and it's warranty that concerns the difference.
If you buy an absolutely top-end card it will be 5 times likely to blow up within 3~4 years, than a mainstream graphics card, if all other things regarding quality are created equal and they are all reference cards.
Bob gets very annoyed if no one else in the industry can do their job correctly. Bob usually feels/seems annoyed, because of this 'rule'. Bob just wants to be happy, along with everyone else, and make fun maps for everyone to play. *NOTE* This is why the BOB edits for BeamNG not other games, because the developers are of above-average intelligence and know how to do what they're doing - they also work with you.

--Sorry for the rant. It always turns into a rant.
More good stuff in the coming days, I will have time in the weekend to do things & next week when I am not painting my house, or chopping up fall leaves with the riding lawn mower until I can't recognize they're leaves any more (my back is shot so I can't pick them up, I have to slice and dice until perfection).

 

SORRY BEAMNG BROKE EMBEDDING SCREEN SHOTS. CAN ANYBODY CODING THINGS ON THE COMPUTER DO ANYTHING RIGHT THESE DAYS?
Just a snippet of things to come. Obviously missing a road here...that'd be a hint of what you'll see in the next shots.
http://prntscr.com/ldef38 Safe for work link. Sorry, but the way I always put up screenshots is broken, and I can't fix everything around here.

Screen shots will be print screen program links until I find a better way. Sorry. Couldn't upload to the site either, it never ends it's 'processing' or 'busy' phase with attachments over 500kb.

 

I can't post screen shots anymore, this website is BROKEN since 0.14.x game version, what the hell happened?

I will have to host my mods on my own website along with pictures from now on if this isn't fixed in a few days.
https://prnt.sc/ldubzy Was working on some textures here, though I'd like to share, but heck, if it's going to be this difficult, I'll keep previews on the Patreon page.

Can I do something - anything - without other people putting considerable effort into screwing everything ELSE up that WAS WORKING FINE?

EDIT: This website is broken too, I've tried to post this over half a dozen times.

 

I don't use any software to take screenshots, I just press that print screen button, then I hit ctrl-v in this box where I type text and image appears, then delete pic and hit thumbnail down below this box and done, no complex additional steps or software required.

Yesterday even Steam was down for a brief moment, some global internet hacking maybe, I have no idea.

Putting old drivers back in, version that did work, like 6 months old or older and sending hate mail to AMD would be my suggestion, they will get tired if enough hate mail clutters their inbox

 

I just want it to WORK. If it works DO NOT FIX IT - you will inevitably BREAK IT. As I said before, thank-you @Nadeox1 I do appreciate it and will make sure you're on the next Beta roster that goes out in about 2 weeks, give or take a few days.

This was image I wanted to show that I spent a while manually working over the texture normal. It's a little over-done but I am going to leave it for now, and might come back to it when I do some more in a few days (actually, it may just be 'too shiny').

I sure hope this works.


This last shot is taken within the modeling program as I don't have it in the game yet, just a small section of road for the older section of town. I haven't done much with the road-surface yet but I will make it look less than perfect also. The sidewalk texture is custom, I spent a good hour or two on that, as it's made from a combination of several freebies I could find. It will be much less flat-looking in game. It should look good by the factory & mall at any rate.

 

I have the full concept (lacking some road surface texture enhancements yet, will do those tonight), down to 2 draw calls for the higher two LOD's and one draw-call for the lowest LOD.
While doing so I found a *COLOSSAL* oversight in relation to draw-calls on the LOD's, so the next version might have a few extra FPS packed into it. *DERP*
So tonight I am going to spend a few hours (at most) re-re-re-updating some of the road LOD's, as that'll be worth it.
Looking into getting better internet here, as that's getting in the way of progress and updates, and is a large part of why it's been quiet lately (well aside of the screen-shot server snafu the other day).
FRONTIER INTERNET AND COMMUNICATIONS = DUMPSTER FIRE. DO NOT GET.
Do know that work continues, despite this issue, and regular monthly or every-other week updates when available will continue!

 

I had first internet troubles few days ago for years, that was fixed by installing new NIC drivers. Well, it is not card anymore, chip on mobo, but that thing started cutting out when heavy data transfer was happening.

I guess issue was that Z370 motherboard NIC driver had partially still in for Z170 board, they use same chip I think or at least same driver kinda works for them, reinstalling Z170 drivers clean made it work again like it has been, so when uploading video I could surf internet or download without issues.

After that did lot of driver purging and installing, but no chance to get BeamNG stable when steering wheel is plugged in.

Nothing of that has changed the fps of your map, it is same still, GPU load 20-25% and around 30% at maximum, but I do have a monster GPU.

 

The small bit of optimizing I am cramming in tonight will help drop CPU load a little bit. It may only knock off 100~200 draw calls but hey, on a number like 4000 draw calls, that means 2.5% per 100 draw calls reduced of improvement. It may actually help much more-so in dense built areas. I was wondering why it wasn't helping so much when I put the LOD's in.
--- Post updated ---

I don't have specular or normal mapping on the sidewalk texture yet, so it'll look a little flat, but so-far so-good. Needs lots of overgrowth though! As stated before I didn't make a custom street texture for this set yet, but I've only made one piece to test out so I could see how it did.
Replaced 15 pieces of the modular road kit (full/half/quarter, single and dual apron pieces to 4lane delineated, 2lane delineated, and non-delineated kits), with more updated and efficient pieces, you won't be able to discern the difference though (that's the point, I didn't have to meddle with object placement any either).

 

Fixed the stupid errors on normal textures, which were mostly my typos that the game no longer (for some reason) fixed the boo-boos for. Grrrr...

So yeah, that's out of the way, boy am I going to have fun fixing Roane County's boo-boos much the same. Not exactly looking forward to that, that and since it's an OLD map (as this one originally was before the retro-fit), it's got files for the terrain (and possibly some other things) that still have - characters in them, which the game doesn't usually like, ever, especially in path names. So that's all got to get converted.

 

Well, the good thing is that Mall actually did work fine yesterday as I tested with iGPU, that actually works if stupid user like me figures out properly which input (labeled 1, 2) is which GPU (not labeled anywhere)

With iGPU at 1080p I got actually 5fps more than on WCUSA map, which is quite good considering iGPU is not really liking to do 1080p.

 

That's a good think, I think your iGPU on Skylake is a bit better than mine, your RAM speed shouldn't be too far off mine either (I have Cas11 2400mhz dual channel here), and iGPU is dependent on that. My 4xxx series iGPU is actually not too shabby, it does 720p gaming with modest ability, it's nothing snazzy, but Carmageddon (the 2014 remake) was actually fully playable at 720p on the thing, with room to spare. 1080p was not playable, but on older games, surely there wouldn't have been an issue. Glad to know it can run on integrated GPU. The reason it runs great is low poly count. This is things developers don't always think about. All those polys is fine and dandy but if it's just non-interactive scenery, then 'meh, you haven't gained a lot. If you can drive on or in it, it should be detailed enough, but I let the textures do the work mostly (where it doesn't crank draw calls). Surely I respect the developers for a detailed environment, but not everyone has a video board capable of pushing high poly-counts. Now if only I can get these draw-calls down some more, we'll all be in better shape. Working on that, but it's about to storm like all heck here so not doing much serious with Tornado Watches in effect. I might actually shut my computer *OFF* for the evening, for the first time a month (it's made to run 24/7 for it's lifetime, and does).
Who knows! If I get whacked by a tornado, maybe I can actually bring myself to build a new computer, after 4 years of having this one; but with my luck, it would survive, and with my attitude, I'd keep using it a few more years if only just for spite. Nothing worth buying for intel 4xxx owners yet, until 7nm/10nm hits mass-market, and that's in the spring (for AMD anyways). Intel will come out with more glued-together chips next year (after bashing AMD in the last 18 months over it!) to keep up with AMD, chips that will not only cook your breakfast but burn it to a crisp, too.

Enough of a rant, I will be fine, provided this migraine doesn't get too much worse. Cheers for now!