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

I guess should stop the growing the map and start to seed more immersion details.

 

Okay so while I didn't get much in the way of houses built, I did get to test the AI and make sure it's working properly for the beta.
I am uploading the beta so anyone who has supporter beta access will get links within the next 24 hours (or sooner, if it finishes before I get to sleep) via the Patreon.

BETA links just went out via Patreon for supporters.

 

Hi, just wanted to say how much I enjoy your map. I just signed up today as a Patron at the $10 level. Keep up the great work!

 

Thank-you for doing so in such a kind gesture.
This is a dream of mine, and on a fixed income, without folks like you, I couldn't make it come true. I wouldn't even have a Patreon for it if I wasn't using commercial software and some commercial assets (which greatly reduce my workload sometimes). I highly appreciate everyone who contributes, even if it's a dollar. It doesn't go towards PC hardware, just software and assets (I pay for hardware upgrades through side work helping people I know, or just plain save up, and occasional one-off donations from folks who make money off this map on Youtube). I don't need nor want a fancy computer - heck this one doesn't even have a window (deliberately!) - I don't need RGB - I just need to keep the folks on here happy enjoying the map with continued updates.
I can only promise that while it takes a lot of time to turn it into reality, it will give BeamNG the almost-AAA-class huge city environment it deserves.
While the Patreon page for the map lists 'goal achieved' that's just the software monthly costs covered and a little bit extra for assets each month, anything over an above allows me to buy assets of professional content sites where the likes of Rockstar, iD Software, Bethesda, Ubisoft, and many countless others buy their assets from.
Part of the goal of Los Injurus isn't just the city itself, it's a complete modular infrastructure kit, that can go together like Lego's and allow anyone with basic editor experience to build a city of their own.
So while I won't say it'll be the best mod every created for this game, it certainly will provide you with plenty to explore and do, and eventually one day have a story mode when enough of it is done; it will also certainly be fun to go flying through the city and see what you can crash off of next. It's got to be fun, otherwise I wouldn't want my name - or anyone else's - anywhere near it.
But the best part, is definitely that doing this makes me happy, as does when what I create makes others happy. That is the true good part of making mods.
So thank-you, and thank-you to each and every one of you even if you couldn't offer money and could 'only' offer critique or suggestions.
We all do what we can, and here that's more than good enough.

 

Currently am optimizing the older models on the first set of houses I built for the map. I will have some more variations added, also, of those houses.
This should help bring (just a few) more fps to the main default spawn area of the map. It should look better from a further distance as the LOD models won't kick in until you're further away, reducing pop-in on some of the models (which can be a bit distracting, though it was necessary to keep fps up near the beginning, but optimizing models leaves me more room to push better detail further from the player). Most of the performance gained will be used up by the increased detail, but I have a sneaky suspicion their still will be a bit more fps left over.

 

Made some different variations for the town homes. They will also come in a variety of colors, what you see is just the defaults.
Newer windows will also be added as I finalize the graphics for those (they'll likely be in before the next beta).

 

As soon as I have my new window graphics in, I will be doing the supporter houses / requests as I go along here in the work-flow. So if you requested your home be added in, know it's coming.
Sorry for the two or three-line post but just wanted to keep everyone in the 411 with what's going on. Please keep in mind for the next 6 weeks or roughly until August I am working with a broken finger splinted up, due to someone attempting to 'assault me with a door' two months ago ( I never got it looked at until last week). It's not slowing me too much, but you'll be saved from some of the book-long posts. Don't worry though guys, the door is fine.

 

New windows are in! Hooray. Still need a few variations but they're in, all 256x256 pixels of them... Stupid 8gb VRAM limits.
I didn't change anything but the windows shape/size on this house to show the difference. I think I will add window shutters later to some models.
--- Post updated because The Bob's internet sucks ---

 

Oops, I might have broken one of the road graphics on the supporter beta, that's used on the road in-front of LINE CITY grocery and a few of the intersections and on the non-delineated roads near the school. Let me know if these are broken for anyone else. If so I will give a file that should fix that!
If it's not broken, please ignore the message or if you have the supporter beta, do respond and say 'it's not broken'!

 

So in other news 'please pardon our mess' ... but lots of work is getting done here. The route 1 look-alike will eventually be where this surface road leads. However, for ease-of-access to this corner of the map, drastic changes are underway. Please ignore random roads slapped in spots, as I'm not done yet. Orange carving guides (like the same kind you find under the map when I forget to delete them / not done with them at that point) abound while I work the terrain into something resembling 'Earth'.

Don't worry, within a few more days, I should have this done up to where the two orange-colored high rise buildings are that just got put in a week or two ago / where the 'upgraded' highway stops. Surely I can make it looks something like Cali. There were never exit ramps here due to the wildly-varying terrain heights, but I've made things a little more 'even' now / less drastic altitude. Lots of jump / crash / fall off cliff opportunities will abound in this corner of the map (come to think of it, that's almost anywhere, but that's intentional by design - almost a polar opposite of Roane County). I spent a day just making that exit / entrance ramp pair right there and that's only 2 of 4 ramps at this junction.
I will be keeping some of the mountains in this corner of the map (same corner that has the strip mine / quarry and the civilian airport), but removing others or toning them down a bit to make the land ripe for development. The highway will look nothing like it did before, though as I'm 100% redoing it all here both altitude and graphics, to fit in with the rest of the redone highways. You should have no issues however driving on it when the next Supporter Beta lands in 10~12 days or so.

 

More mess, but it's starting to take shape (yes, what you see here took all day).

Ignore random ugly orange thing that won't be there in the next beta, but the fancy highway will.
Edges still have to be cleaned up, blended, etc, and I don't have all the road striping (the lines) on yet.
More to come in the following days.

 

for areas that do not have a finished road put an overhead sign that says "Error 404 'Road not found'" it would be pretty hilarious to be a first comer to the map and suddenly see that sign just to drive off a cliff.

 

my map has no texture

 

I would love to see road signs on that highway are you're working on. I think it would make it more interesting. You don't have to do it if you don't want to. It's just a suggestion.

 

First please make sure your computer has 8gb or more of system memory, and for video memory, make sure that your video card is the following spec for graphics detail setting:
For LOW you need 1~1.5gb of video memory
For MEDIUM you need 2~4gb of video memory (sorry I do not have a better handle on this I haven't tested lately)
For HIGH you need 6~8gb of video memory
The map should run fine on all 8gb cards + 8gb or more of system memory (16gb of system memory for traffic use highly recommended), but keep in mind running other software while you game (such as the web browser) will raise this amount quite quickly. Don't be like me and 'always leave Rimworld open' while you edit, otherwise the system will get annoyed with you constantly asking to swap resources from video and system memory, and run like dirt (low fps).
EDIT: The city as-is right now required 5.1gb of VRAM with one 'older Pessima' vehicle in play at-load, after free-cam flying about the city for a moment and a few minutes of driving (e.g. most things loaded).

MAKE SURE you've got a good copy of the map, e.g. try re-downloading it, and if you've downloaded it in-game, make sure to leave the game open long enough to complete the download. Alternatively, you can download it from the mod resource or from supporter beta (if you have access) within the web browser if that does not work. This map is a 1.8x ~ 1.9x GB download. Most all maps (except Roane County) are 200~450mb, this map is a whopping 4x the server maximum here and I had to get staff permission to host it (they actually had to reconfigure the server, derp). So yes, it could take quite some time to download. Maybe skipping the wifi in favor of plugging into an internet connection or your router IF possible is the best way to fix this.

Make absolutely sure you do not have So_Cal_Interstate???.zip (replace ? with version numbers), this map does share much of the folder structure of that map, and it will override it, and cause won ton errors such as crashing to desktop on loading attemps, and floating buildings to name a few.

Don't worry it'll have signs. I've already left spots in the median for that, and it is being (re)designed from the get-go with this in mind.

 

Hey man, thank you for answering my questions and for giving users information about this map (and the progress on it) in general. I'm glad for all the progress you've made to this map. I would love to learn how to make videos so I can make a vid for this (and possibly Roane County) in the future. There is no way I could've made maps like this and Roane County. Also, you've answered my questions quicker then I thought a lot of times. This is one of them actually. Anyways, I hope you will be able to evolve your maps and keep updating them. Thanks for giving feedback and for being great in general, man.

 

OK. So got the highway completed, aside of some minute details and some more signs needed of course. Got lots and lots of terrain detailing done too, to some extent.

Wait a minute... but... there's something missing... where's that going to? into the ground? The could only mean one thing... well besides a wall to slam into...

TUNNEL! Not just ANY tunnel, but tunnel of curvy awesomeness! Have fun going way too fast, hitting the wall and flipping, heh.
Oh, and yes, this is a view from over-top the airport:

The older highway at the bottom of the shot has a tendency to disappear when far away. Have to fix that.
As stated previously, the majority of the lane road-striping isn't in on the stuff I've done in the last 48~72 hours, only about 35% of it is in (guessing).
About 2+ miles of barrier has been installed in this area...it could be 3 miles, not sure, didn't count, but this is roughly 2 miles of improved highway if not a bit more.
Fear not, there's still plenty of places to go flying off the cliff, and I mean plenty. I just wanted it semi-realistic.
Only the road engineering/carving, basic terrain detailing, and barrier installation is done, none of the details/lots/homes/buildings are really 'done' entirely yet, and the interchange where I started last week is still a mess (but drive-able). I will get to the interchange likely next time I have a chance to edit more, which will be in 2 nights.
For the unsure, this is the corner of the map with the civilian airport in it. This is the highway on the mountain-top (well it WAS on top of it, I lowered it and made it more conducive to development and hence needing a highway in the first place). Don't worry, I promise it's way way better than it used to be, and I mean it.
If it's not fun, and it's not as awesome as I could make it, I don't want my name on it, nor do I waste time uploading it. So it's got to be awesome, for everyone - even my own enjoyment, and yes I do enjoy driving about in my own map a few times a week, not including play-testing.
If anyone has ideas for improvements (well besides finishing touches like wear-marks / aging, imperfections / signs / ditches / rivers or streams / houses etc, that is next), do say something.

In the last week, I created easily 40~50 new barrier variations for all kinds of slopes/turns including creating sloped/turning pieces of the 180 meter barrier, if I didn't mention it before.
These will be in the next supporter beta, in the MRK kit folder. They will also be in the next public beta, which might go out in mid-to-end July sometime. Hopefully before August, but I'm going to need quite a bit of time to button up development - at-least a month - until then.
--Cheers, hope you like it all.
Thank-you to all that support Los Injurus project.

 

Bugfix: The brick texture inside the abandoned mall where the circular ramp is looks much better now (the 3d bump-mapping - normal mapping, was inverted), and I temporarily renamed the texture reference to one of the concrete textures, because it was broken for some odd reason and coming up as gravel/stones when it shouldn't (the front of the smaller anchor store at the far end was odd-looking for the last 6~12 months or so).

 

Wow, you're making good progress on this map, man.

 

Finally got the concrete look I was going for. It'll cost a few dozen draw calls within 1 mile of this road, but considering the draw-call limit is about 4000+ on most half-decent modern computers, I have some room to work out here far from downtown (gaming computers or not, pretty much any Ryzen CPU or 3+ghz i3/i5/i7 2xxx / Sandy Bridge in 2012, anything but AMD FX basically). Further than a mile and it will fade out to only terrain coloring. I also got around to making some bridge pillars that match the arched bridges, except they don't have a bridge deck - it's just the pillars/arches. This way you can put whatever bridge you want on it, however long you want to make it. Comes in small, medium (road-spanning) and super-size arch lengths. Size them up for highways or wide roads, and leave them 'normal' sized for regular 2-lane routes. Textures don't quite line up on the sides of the arches between spans but that'll be covered by a detail piece later on when I get around to making them. Can't use round sets of pillars on everything ya'know. Sorry it's that unfinished, just wanted to post an update on what I was working on tonight, and I don't think I'll get it finished until a good way through tomorrow. In around a week, I will be releasing the next Supporter Beta - so sometime between July 2nd ~ July 6th.