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

Thanks, there's a subway tunnel too if you can find it. It's not very obvious, the stations are within buildings, and yes, you can drive your vehicle right inside the buildings through the doors, and find it, though the stations are identical for now.

A lot of bridges are older type bridges, I've avoided taking down until I replace them. There's one bridge that looks missing up hill from the town - though there's a flat chunk of invisible road there that'll get you across, I haven't replaced it yet because I have to re-grade the highway there to make it more consistent. Before I do that I have to make a 3-y before it near an overpass, that I'm not really 100% sure is going to go there yet. So it's kind of held up fixing the highway in that spot. If you choose to drive around some barriers and come to a missing bridge, you can still drive across anyways.

Yes, I will agree, while there's much infrastructure right now, there's not too much else besides small bits of town here and there randomly. It'll pick up once I have more infrastructure fixed up. No point in building lots and lots of town if I might have to rip it up again later. A lot of the highway that is there, needs to be improved, and there's easily 40~50 bridges that have to be updated to the newer style too.

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Currently looking at purchasing world machine 2. This is what the devs use, this is what will get a much, much, much better looking map then it is currently, and allow me to import my terrain into Maya. This will enable me to make large one-piece sections of map (while keeping the modular bits around for folks to build their own cities with), and do generally a much more professional job. As it stands there's a large distance in perception of what I feel in my modeling program VS what's in BeamNG and I am just not getting what I want with this current setup.
If anyone knows of any discounts or sales etc on it, let me know, but otherwise, I still am going to have to get it regardless.

 

Today's update with BeamNG fixes the decal road crash and also the issues I was having with the forest editor. So in the next update we can say goodbye to all those random stuck items placed out, before I realized I could never delete the things.... grrr... I mean YAY it's fixed!

 

yay awesome

 

Now also they fixed the issues with terrain exporting writing PNG file error. heh, can't complain about the service that's for sure.
Click attachment, that's looking at the track area - no texture yet, as the terrain is merely a guide that's inside Maya at the moment for when I do my editing for various sections of highway.

I can now make custom sections of the map, in 'chunks' kind of like how they did the GTA's, each block / half block or so is a section, then the buildings on it are one section and so-forth.
This is the way a lot of 3d games are made, and how I'll likely move forward making this. That being said, it should go much faster if this model is spec'ed right. Will test tomorrow.

 

Just adding an ERRATA list so if you folks know about it they're either not bugs or they're known...
*performance isn't balanced or perfect yet. Yes I know, this is what I am doing behind the scenes that's more than eating up half the work I do on the map entirely.
*The cloverleaf near the track has goofy pillars, that's because I elected not to mess with it and tear it up before sending the beta out.
*The map looks bad at night. Yes, 100%, it's awful. I am working on this, and hopefully will get most of this fixed up before it's done, mostly waiting on game-updates to the headlights before I mess around with it too much more, but the new bright reflectors are on many of the newer 'old concrete' 2/3 lane highway pieces and those are here to stay.
*what's that orange thing? I used it for grading near the Packard Plant, just ignore it. It's a bit odd and out of place, it will be gone eventually when I am sure I won't need it again.
*There's no pillars on the old and new long bridges by HEH Island, and there's nothing on HEH Island, and there's no barrier to one side of the cloverleaf (and through it also) for the center of the highway near it, yes I know, the barrier got deleted accidentally, I've not bothered to put it back as it could be a waste of time until I am done with the map. Will entirely be re-doing this area.
*Heh Island is also empty. It will be enlarged, to occupy more of the map space, and be some type of Air Force base, so the folks who work on aircraft can take them for a joyride and enjoy their creation, just as the train makers can take their trains on a joyride through the subway (albeit slowly so they don't go airborne or derail). 6000ft runway is req'd so I will lengthen the island a bit. It will have a dirt-track looking ring-road like the one in GTAV for base patrol's MP detail. (MP = Military Police for your civvies out there). Any Army folks wishing to provide pointers where I missed to make the base more real after it's put in the map can always go ahead and bring things up, as I'd love the folks who served in uniform to be able to enjoy being in a realistic simulation. While I can't necessarily provide GTAV quality, it can be close!
*Strange collision can cause you to get stuck in the ends of jersey barrier if they're not covered by a sloped object, and even if so on some bridges. If it's a tan, open railing (type 80 bridge rail) you likely won't get stuck, but the 'jersey barrier' types you will likely get stuck on the 'end piece' of the bridge or highway. I will likely remedy this in some way later, but the problems are way down the list on priority.

 

I have not posted a comment here for a long time..btw nice progress

 

Thanks! Appreciate it - doubly-so because I have been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that's not always obvious. Doing my best.
It's very tough being a one-man-army trying to build a whole town, if not just plain 'daunting'. Thankfully, it's not so lonely as I have a handful of wonderful people out there who wanted to donate towards the project and help push it forward so that I can build a better map.

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As I've been alluding to:
Going to try to pick up a copy of 'World Machine 2' soon, when I get my hands on that, do know that there will be both a large improvement and a substantial change to the map. This change could break a few existing roadways temporarily while I work on rebuilding them up a bit. I will do what I can to not wreck the highways for any considerable length of time as they're quite fun to speed around on, even if you're not hauling pianos. Speaking of which, one part of the dirt track is too steep for a truck to go up with a load of 12 pianos, this will be remedied in a future version. I hope it's not too bumpy, especially the mud, as it is, it's using 'default mud depth' as I don't have the software to write a fancy depth map YET. This will change!

The BOB needs your feedback!
What would folks like to see first, an AIRPORT, a MILITARY (Air Force, Army joint base) BASE, or more city roads/city stuff, or just 'better more professional terrain like the developers do' ?

With World Machine 2, I will be able to likely bring this very very close to developer quality here (it will also help my other maps!). Also, the existing map city blocks are going to get redone a bit piece by piece (which is why I haven't built a ton more city yet), to improve performance as-per draw calls. Not going to do that until I get a few more LARGE buildings in though.

 

a military base like in gta 5

 

...Because no one ever fires up a new GTA for the first time and says: "WHERE'S THE TANK, I MUST HAVE THE TANK"! Wrong, WE ALL LOVE DRIVING THE TANK INTO/OVER/THROUGH everything. When they added animals to GTA series with GTAV, I for one was loving using the tank's mortar to bat things around, including the animals, tee-hee. I didn't stop until I murdered every bunny in the map with it - oh how terrible. But it was good fun VS where some people just use it as a crime simulator, I used it as an animal control simulator. If I ever get better internet I'll have to make a video of it. BOOOM *little squeak*, "Take that! Varmint!, tear up my garden will you!?" ... You can also use the tank mortar like a bat and bat cars around, specifically the police 'van', which bugs and can fly over the moon if you try it enough times. Some other vehicles bug too. Also, very very strange things happen with the physics if you try to bat a boat while it's being towed on a trailer, or a boat in the water at the shore with the tank (don't drown yourself though). Try it and see, it's hysterical sometimes what happens.

GTA FANS! Look up GTA Underground if you still love San Andreas as much as I do - personally I think it's the best one of the series with character building, and if I ever get my way (that'd be a first), I'd make this map into it less the absolute pedestrian-smooshing-brutality of GTA for obvious reasons of the target demographic of this game being so far from GTA.

This is likely the route I will take here - building a Military Base. Everyone else is free to agree, or disagree, or agree to disagree - I will leave this open all weekend for folks to suggest things, though it's never too late to make a suggest or send (in private) pictures of your house for me to inspire to build and place in the map somewhere (not underwater), remember though, no address numbers as The Bob (nor anyone else) needs to know where you live.

Also, if something isn't in the map already, feel totally free to suggest something!

 

i said like gta5 but a military base would be cool or a big airport like LA

 

Did you even read his/her post? He/She said that there's a military base planned, and anyways, Los Injurus is probably not going to be a metropolis with a gigantic airport. Hell, I would be satisfied with just a small airfield

 

dude don't qoute all my threads u are just annoying me..i only saying ideas did u ever heard about ideas? just let me alone or ignore me

 

I would vote for a terrain as terrain is a bases of everything and after you have a solid base to build on, you can build bases etc. Doing it other way around probably will get tedious as more stuff needs to be micro managed for new terrain bits.

 

Yes I agree, and this will be done along side of whatever I am modeling. Basically, If I do an 8k terrain for this map (it has a 4k), it would give me opportunity to expand the map (especially when tiled terrain is added, there will be more rural and undeveloped area, though not much more city than planned), I would decrease the square size (distance between points on the terrain of individual height - the resolution so to speak for those who don't map), from it's current 2.6 to about 1.5 or so, and expand the terrain just a little bit each way, so that the shores would be a bit further out (a half KM on each side, average), but the center of the map would still be the 'same' as I've built many things there already. It would just look better and there would be more things past the edge highway as it's a bit close to the edge of things now. Basically the reasoning is to give the highway more reason for it's placement, a more 'central artery' and some more visuals in the map.
--- Post updated ---

He was responding to my 'near top of this page post' :

That is all, no need to arch back, lay ears flat, tail in the air, scowling and hissing and all *disgruntled house cat sounds in the background*
It will have a modest-sized airport in the map but I must work on the terrain first. It will be the kind you can land a 747 at or other similar large commercial airline. The Military installation will have a runway long enough for fighter jets and at-least two or three helipads, along with the usual expected fare of buildings and obstacles (literally obstacles, for (re)training field exercises, and similar).
Besides, if we eventually have enough processing power for random vehicles being spawned (whether by game engine for traffic or just parked, or spawned by the player), it will look good with helicopters parked on some of the helipads without blocking them all from player use, should the game/processors support this much further down the line.
This map is being built with much more planned for this game from the get-go than most all other maps. This is why I want to get things squared away and know what people want early-on (as early as possible). It's also why I am building said subways (already a bit of one in but much, much more to come), and airports into this map.
In the future when there's more awesome mods than there are now, you'll always find a spot where you can use them; upping replay value and general amount of function/enjoyment of this map.

*footnote - if this post made anyone angry, I'm sorry, that's unintentional, if a bit blunt.

 

I vote military base. Maybe do some nifty underground tunnels and bunkers. Or dare I say a military airport.

 

I vote terrain.

That way you can have undeveloped parts that still look realistic. Also should be easier to put city stuff in that way than to have to do ad-hoc terrain prep for each area.

 

I vote for more city parts, to finish more progress there and there's less on the list to do.

 

Everyone has valid points here. @silvermanblu the map will have a city-class Airport, which will be proportionate to the size of the city. The base is a combination Air Force / Army base. There will be a Marines/Naval base on another side of the map, too, complete with port and a dry dock (at-least one). Since I don't have many pictures of dry docks handy I might use the one in San Fierro on GTA SA for pointers if push comes to shove (right by where you do Imports / Exports).

Right now I've been unifying the mall with it's parking-lot (and completing the parking-lot too, it was missing it's end, buried under rubble). I will then be making some large road sections for the map to help cut down on materials needed & keep draw calls down. Then I can add some more 'stuff' to that area and I will finish the factory up that's nearby and relatively untouched before I do too much else.
Yes a lot of things are unfinished! I have been doing lots of research on what works, what doesn't, what helps, what hurts, and also working on the freeways with some experimental new pieces (which is a success). The reason for the freeways being updated is I wanted to get the road reflectors in, and they look awesome now. They actually reflect like real ones do, only the goofy normal maps where the pieces of roadway joint detracts from the night-drive experience now. That will be addressed later on down the line as I get to do-over yet even more objects (I will be unifying pieces as time goes, where needed, HOWEVER, even if I don't use them in the map, I will still leave puzzle-piece road objects for others to build with).

Engine efficiency (game engine, not car engine in game vehicles) while rendering and such is seemingly the focus of the next GAME (not my map) update, along with some other new goodies/assets. The developers know this game engine chokes rather quickly/early on draw calls, so hopefully, they have some tricks up their sleeves. I wouldn't write off anything just yet, but word is that I've been reading in the forums on related topics is that, yes, they know, no they're not happy with performance either, and yes, they're working on it sooner than later. So stay tuned!
I've also been begging the developers for tiled terrain. I hope it works, as I buttered them up so much in the last week, that the price of butter went up & the local butter plant went from 1 to 3 shifts.

I'll be busy unifying objects and also working with terrain when I pick up World Machine 2 over the next day or two. It's time to make this map much, much more professional. This is a thanks to the folks who kindly helped out on Patreon to help me pick up software (and in the future, assets) for this project (and others) that I wouldn't normally be able to spend money on, being disabled on a fixed income. I will have a better version out before the holidays for folks to enjoy on their time off. Hopefully it not only looks better but runs better too - but we shall see! I have lots and lots of time coming up this month, and it's winter, so I have months of mostly free time. Might as well spend it doing something productive like this - plus blowing up rodents with launched cats (as missiles) in a video game gets boring after a while if you do it long enough. Yes, a 2400+ pile of explode-on-death Rad Rats jammed into a pretty 2 story house you built with the settlement tool crashes Fallout 4 after about 10 minutes of 1 frame every 10~20 seconds... I could build stuff in that, as I did for months on end if not over a year, or I could build stuff here. I find this much much more fulfilling here.

Just for clarification:
No, I don't spend funds from Patreon on computer hardware (unless the parts go to the PC tower in the sky, then it's just 'replace what died and move on', not as an upgrade, this PC tower is fine for what's needed), those funds are NOT for buying video games with. Those funds aren't to buy music (unless it's for the map and I can pay for a license deal with someone, which I *HAVE BEEN* looking into via SoundCloud).
Those funds are for mapping software and assets for the map *only* (well, stuff for this map may make it into my other maps if it's useful), nothing more, nothing less.

So I want everyone to know, your opinion matters. If anyone has any other suggestions, there's always still plenty of time to get them in as I have LOTS on my plate for the moment.
If anyone is here that has a means to donate, and has not, the patreon page can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=12840784 - even if it's only a buck, that's a dollar towards assets, some of which might not cost much more than that. A buck can sometimes buy a few textures, or at-least one, surely! So no to blurry textures, folks, they're just bad.
For those who have donated, as above, Thanks a million. I promise to make great use of the money, not waste it on 'I wants' and make a great map with it. It's also helping pay for monthly cost of Maya, and the very seldom but random doctor bill so I don't die at the [censored] computer trying to map. Thanks, I mean it, from a disabled man who can't even feel the lower half of his body sometimes being in that much pain - yesterday was one of those days, and I'm not quite 40 yet. I wouldn't be in as much pain if I took addictive codeine pills, but I don't even want them. I will still have pain and an addiction and mood swings too, no thanks. If that isn't bad enough, if you take them for a month or more, they might start to hemorrage your internal organs - happened to my sister after a bad car accident years back. Save the crashing for BeamNG, surely.

--Keep it real guys/gals, enjoy your lives to the fullest, and check back in a few days to see if anything interesting pops up. I should have something worth looking at by the end of the week.
I will do my best to get something done with Roane County TN in the next 4~6 weeks but I am kind of pushing this back as the developers have another update planned for mid-to-end-of-month.

 

I've picked up World Machine 2 with an indie license, and did a test-build of a terrain with double the x and y resolution of the current 4k terrain. So I should be able to enlarge (by no more than 30%) the map while still being able to increase the resolution of things. To this end, I could put in nice beaches/docks/etc on the shore-line. I can also add in my skybox terrain later as a mesh, or a terrain (while using an invisible mesh for collision - good idea have to remember that one!), even though multiple terrains can't have collision (only one can currently). The skybox will give the illusion of land to ONE side of this map's boundaries. I can likely separate it with a river/gorge and some broken bridges or something similar to make a believable map-edge.
The terrain resolution doubling will also happen with Roane County, so look forward to a better looking map there, too in the future (though it's still on hold / on the back burner until after the December game update). Roane County TN map will have more than just the terrain doubled though, so it's going to require a good few weeks to get that whipped into shape.
Have to fix my deck that my sister's dogs ruined, ugh. They ripped the lattice out from under it and now it looks like rubbish. So that's today's task, and in addition I am prepping up some of the pieces of the modular road kit later for release to mappers, by popular demand, for free use on your own maps. This way then everyone can make a semi-professional looking city road layout with only a minimal easy learning curve to speak of.
I have to await our next game update as the developers are working on a lot of things which could seriously change how maps are built, and a lot of things about models. It's in my best interest to wait that out, so I have to work on the terrain to keep me busy for a while. Always plenty to do! Game update looks like it will be 3rd or 4th week of December, if nothing else comes up.

--That is all!

 

Please pardon our mess - of a bit of down-time while I figure out World Machine 2 - a program I purchased without first trying to learn it 100% (though I have to learn it, period, no excuses, so that is moot). Thing is, it's basic-edition (free version) is limited to 513x513 terrain sizes, so there wasn't anything useful I could practice on it first. I can make some rockin' awesome sky-boxes with it though once I figure out how to upscale terrains and such with it. World Machine 2 is the program that the developers use for their game maps, and what makes Utah and West Coast so beautiful (among other maps, they do make beautiful maps - credit where credit is due!). I believe DoullPepper also used it to make Canyon of Speed - the very map that made me buy this game.

In other interesting news, the deck is fixed (stupid dogs, thankfully The Bob is really good with tools and home repair!), I got some shopping done yesterday (OK OK I went to get some stuff for me too at the discount tool store, things that were NEEDED, this wasn't Patreon money either - it was money I set aside all year for things like this). Never ever ever go to Harbor Freight right after you go to the bank, folks. The temptation is far to great. In other news, I am going to start picking up and integrating some map assets as I have time, this month, I will also be doing some preliminary work on improving Roane County TN, though the bulk of work on that will be next month. I got to drive down a bunch of Roane County TN roads in real life yesterday because the US40 highway was shut down east-bound east of Westel (the western-most exit in Roane County TN), and even though I never ever once got off at that exit, I knew right where I was going and never needed a map (good because I didn't have a GPS or map with me, though to my credit, I've never once gotten 'lost' in my entire life). So mapping things in BeamNG if you do so for areas near your home, can come in super useful! Albeit, I will mention once again that driving through Rockwood and Harriman in real life after driving through the area 100's of hours while mapping Roane County TN is rather odd feeling.

Things on the short term goal list:
"For [expletive] sakes do something with Roane County TN you idiot, what the [censored] do you do all day?" <~~~ this is the collective result of game updates messing up textures/models for 0.14.x
Work with World Machine 2 on the terrains, for this map and Roane County TN
Acquire map assets, and such, during the 2nd half of the month for this project, and integrate 'donated' map assets. This includes higher resolution textures, beautiful pre-made buildings, and Sound Stage components. It's going to be a week to 10 days before I have access to ANY of the funds for this map, so please be patient. Thanks to those who donated models/buildings, etc!
Fix the missing building in town where there's a floating door and such. Oops, that should have been fixed already, my bad.
Unify forest brush assets to some extent to improve draw calls while still balancing the modular feel, look, and function of the city (this will lower CPU use / bottle-necking if you experience it). Will be done only as-needed but more future areas will be done this way - though this will increase disk space and ram usage, so must be done with caution as it's a very large project.
Unify Mall with parking-lot and then neighboring derelict Packard Plant, and whatever 'frontage roads' are nearby, to help keep draw calls down, as they share some surfaces but it will still help. This is only listed as it does go under the unify forest brush assets immediately above as it's the last thing I was working on inside of Maya.
Build metropolitan airport and a military base with it's own airstrip.
Build more city! Will be done when I get some more things unified, otherwise, I will not be able to tell if unifying the city is helping FPS much by lowering CPU usage (it really should).

Keep in mind a lot of the reasons progress has seemed to slow down is we have a GAME update pending 3rd ~ 4th week of this month (December 2018), that's going to change things (from what I've heard) about mapping. I have some real-life stuff to handle over the next few days to a week but beyond that, I might be able to get some shots of what I am doing in here somewhere.

To those waiting on modular road kit objects, please stay tuned, I am doing what I can as my schedule (and my health which is 100% unpredictable) allows. I wanted to go out today and get some things done but I feel incredibly dizzy/weak and my gut's a wreck as usual. Lovely, as if I need this now; I swear I didn't eat a pound of holiday cookies in one day! Buy stocks in bathroom tissue manufacturers if you know what's good for you, folks

--Cheers!