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

So uh... when will the BeamNG team hire you? You’re essentially doing their work for them!

 

Haha! Your right!

 

Or his map would become an official asset...

 

Hello mate! Loving the progress so far! I was wondering however if you are planning to add more underground areas to explore in the map, like a cave system, or a sewer system, or an abandoned mineshaft? Given that you have already made a whole subway system, none of these should be far out of your reach. Keep up the good work!

 

New road added, also updating some of the older roads to the newer textures (they all will get updated over the course of development, and the older textures from 2016 will be deprecated and hence removed from the map).
The new road should provide some fun jump opportunity, as will the existing updated road, as I gave it more crests where anything over 50mph will give you some good air time
I also banked the existing road a bit more.
In the first shot the low area in the gully will eventually have some water in it (maybe?) as it's going to be a stream bed.

First two shots, very much unfinished but there's a 'line city' grocery placed and a Worst Buy is there also. Will have to figure out where to stuff the local Sprawl Mart, as it requires a LOT of real estate.
Last shot(s) is that I've finished (finally) the shore-front road. It's got all it's striping, needs a touch of AI work to stay within the lines, and some more work on a parking lot for the beach guests / tourists. I think I can conjure up a way to make the AI especially derpy down here because it's a tourist area. The best part is, that's the DRIFTING road. It's super-wide, pretty smooth, and the sweeping banked turns you can get plenty of good momentum going to slide it totally sideways and power-slide the turns. There's a good solid mile of nice wide roadway with few obstacles unless you hit the mountain, or fall off the cliff or into a drainage area.
Trust me when I say it, if you like drifting at good speed, you will LOVE that road. Don't worry, there's PLENTY more where that came from coming up in the future. So do know I've been working on this daily, BeamNG Drive pretty much always stays open on the PC (hats off to AMD Ryzen, this processor is really the Bee's knees for ensuring smooth consistent work-flow, this slaps my old Haswell quad-core i7 4790k silly... not a brag at all, but if you're on the fence and you can get a 3000 or 5000 series Ryzen, DO IT if you have an older intel quad-core).
So entirely, plenty of suburbia getting built up around this interchange. It'll be a nice break from places that go on and on and roads to no-where with seemingly no point and no one to use them. So now it's that much closer to that dream-BeamNG city map. I hope this map serves everyone's needs and gives folks plenty of enjoyment for a long time to come.
The next supporter beta will come out in a little over a week, likely around the 4th to the 7th of May, and the public version will get updated within a week following that for a new version on the BeamNG server here. It's time to update the public version as it's been a while and lots of folks are quite deserving of it.
Oh, and my back is doing better now. I'm still suffering with it but it's tolerable now, thank goodness. It's maddening sometimes the pain and suffering from my Lumbar region of my back, but if I can keep the vertebrae from slipping out of line and pinching my nerves / spinal cord too hard by doing my twists then I will be in decent shape. Sadly no fixing it though, just have to tough it out - but that's not too tall of an order for me.

Hope everyone likes the new textures, attention to detail (my specialty), and new roadways that are coming in the next update. You folks deserve that, and thanks for the support from those who do choose to do so, even if it's just a thank-you and or a compliment. At-least I can do something meaningful with my time, as just playing games (unless it's this one of-course) does not do it for me as much as making games / maps does. Los Injurus is a labor of love and I hope it shows.

Feel free to use the road pieces in the MRK sub-folder of the map if you want to make your own city though, that's what it's there for.
--Cheers!

EDIT:
This 160+ mph jump can be 100% perfectly landed and done, it's AWESOME and you can land it perfectly if you can get the car fast enough (reduce the final drive gear ratio and hit the bottom of the hill doing a little over 160mph so you can go off the jump at at-least 150mph). There's two crests in succession here, the first one (behind the car) launches you, the second one (not shown) you can land on and there's plenty of smooth ground around to slow the car reasonably without damaging it. This will be kept 100% as-is.

 

I can’t think of anyone else on the forum who’s more mature or well composed than you Bob. Setting an example as always.

 

Don't worry, there will be PLENTY of underground infrastructure to find. Some of it the AI will even be able to follow you through, how readily will be seen when it's done, but we just keep fingers crossed. Of-course, that it does go without saying, I basically invented the 'invisible road' trick to get AI across bridges, through tunnels, and the like without using way points (which the developers have used well now) but using basically clear-textured roads because they're so much more flexible (and way points did not handle one-way traffic at the time in 2016).
In-fact, I just added a quarter-mile (or a bit less) long underground 'flood control' channel under this shopping center, and yes you can drive through it, and no it's not the only one in that specific drainage channel. There's 3 separate parts you can drive through, some with a bit of water, some dry (I try to keep stream water low enough that it won't readily drown a car / truck quickly except in some deep spots).
There will be PLENTY, no questions about that. Thank-you for the kind words, it's appreciated.

I try to lead by example. I am not one of those 'do as I say not as I do' folks - I live by the same rules all the other folks have to live by. Sure there may be some imperfect folks out there, but that doesn't mean I have to go on the defensive, I just try to be the person to bring people's day up and not down. I help others where possible, as it helps me sleep at night. Thanks!

Well, I have given BeamNG co free use of my assets as-needed, on the stipulation that I didn't entirely agree to the 'giving away all rights of all assets uploaded' of the forum rules, which is on file. I said, I still want to be able to port this to another game if emergency arises etc, less the BeamNG stuff if the need absolutely comes to it. I wouldn't mind if the developers used what I made, just that they briefed me first about it. This way, I can make sure all the red tape (licensing, some of this is commercial assets) is in proper order, so no one gets DMCA'ed or sued.
Would I get hired? I don't know, I don't use Blender and that has stopped me from being hired (though admittedly, that's the only thing). I like using Maya, it gets along with my brain, and it's not terribly expensive. Also, in paying for it monthly I can get support with staff if I need to get it, so to me that adds a lot of value, as it can be absolutely infuriating sometimes. Would I take the offer if it came by? Sure, on the stipulation that real-life and my health issues might keep me from progressing on a task at random (though not overly common) times - though I could still do 40 hours a week at the PC should it be needed of me.
I make Los Injurus out of desire to do it. I've wanted to do this for close to 30 years. I remember sitting in middle school drawing on my marble notebook pages all kinds of game-maps and layouts. Everything from castles, to military installations, to residential developments complete with beautiful homes. If I got hired by BeamNG I would still be working on Los Injurus, I will NEVER put it down unless I am dead or it's finished, whichever comes first.

---

To whomever above said 'it would have to be finished first'. There's dozens upon dozens of models, some free open-license stuff that needs a bit of touching up, to hundreds of little things (usually in packs) that I purchased. There's also some stuff I made or have not finished quite yet that also has to get in. Laying curbing and planning can take forever; but once the models (houses/buildings) get put down and a little scene population is under way with plants and the like, it seems like a giant burst of progress. I am always doing things with this map even if I only have fifteen minutes to burn - so many little things I can never list on here like painting/leveling terrain, fixing an improperly stretched / skewed texture on a model, touching up an errant AI path that only I would notice, things like that. It might be close to half done, but I never know, as I have raised the bar a few times since I started (and hence why I re-did some early areas).
So yes, it does have to be finished, and it will be finished one day. Then I get to pick up Roane County again and touch it up and add in a lot of these models where appropriate.

This isn't the world's best graphic engine. Actually the graphic engine is about 8~10 years old compared to mainstream games and doesn't even have DX 12 or ray tracing goodness (yet). I am okay with that. The detail capabilities would be wasted anyways if placed anywhere but where you drive (usually the road or highway)... I save the detailing mostly for the roads and the buildings are simple but functional - and only detailed enough not to break immersion or look too cheap. This isn't Sim City (though it fulfills my urge to play Sim City 4, which is installed here), so the buildings aren't the main attraction. It's all the infrastructure - all the way down to subways and drainage tunnels / flood control canals. It's fun to explore and find new things, and I hope Los Injurus continues to amaze people in the future. I'm not ever putting the editing tools down, and even have a spare complete computer just-in-case (saved the old one) this one goes POOF. I enjoy this, this is what I do when my daily real-world activities are done for the day. Without this, I feel a bit void and have less purpose... so to that end, don't ever expect progress to stop. It might halt for 2~3 days after a release so I can keep sanity (deadline crunch is not fun), but then it picks up in earnest.
So no worries. I've planned life around this. I am physically disabled (and my body is reminding me a lot about it lately to be frank), and this is one of the few things I have left that I can do.
...And so it is, onto map progress!

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The last shot is just to show how far the tunnel under the shopping center goes. It actually only costs a few extra draw calls to have these tunnels (about 5~6 max per piece, extra copies of the same piece do not impact draw call CPU load due to simultaneous rendering, hence the modular nature of my entire map which also keeps VRAM use / GB size on disk down too). In a world where a comfortable max of draw calls is 3000~5000 depending on the machine, a few extra draw calls are definitely worth the price of entry to have places to explore (it comes down to 1~3% of the total at most, almost negligible).
This is NOT an open world game engine - but I made it work by skirting some limits through various ways and also being super-duper nice to the developers / buttering them up / getting them to massively increase or out-right remove limits that used-to block map progress / expansion. Roane County was but an open-world game environment test for this game, and when it first came out, it showed shortcomings in asset streaming (hitching up / slowing down), artificial limits on objects or roads, and so-forth. That map is likely why asset streaming is good on this game engine. I will dress up that map one day, when our systems are capable of handling that.

That said, I am continually improving Los Injurus, and I thank everyone for their nice words - makes my day - and continued support / contributions. I just wish I could map 100x faster because there's so much 'cool stuff' I want to show folks, that I'm going to add in when I get to it.
I would like to have a public update of Los Injurus up in around 10 days or so, give or take a day or two (this is tentative scheduling, if all things go well).
I just wish there were more Youtube videos of folks exploring Los Injurus, for some reason it's really only the older versions and the car-crash compilations (those crash comps use it a lot).
For the truckers out there, there are now exactly two more locations with truck-height bays.
Support for the fork-lift mod is still in the very early stages and I haven't integrated those models into the game yet. I do not know if fork-lift mod support will make the next version.
--Cheers!

 

I'll be waiting for this, but patiently of course, can't wait to roll in and out of a trailer picking loads with the fork lift !
You know what, once you release this I'll make a mod for the dry van trailer so that the doors open completely as they are supposed to when positioned against a loading ramp

 

Bob, i have honestly never seen anyone that is half as dedicated to their projects as you are. Never seen any other modmaker or developer write these giant essays for every progress update. I read all of them and what i get from them is that you deeply love your projects. Anything from the way you talk about progress to how you reply to comments and suggestions, are a sign of someone who loves what he is doing with every ounce of his being. Nothing but respect from me, god bless you man!

 

Hey, that would be really handy. I will mention that fact to the developers about the dry van doors not folding back against the outside of the body (270 degree rotation) as they're supposed to do for proper access in loading / unloading freight (like at an RDC or even a destination store).
I've driven a CDL-class (commercial) class B vehicle (non-articulated) around private property more times than I care to remember, though we didn't usually have doors on the back or a box. However, I'd reckon that the fact the doors only open 150 degrees or so would make it difficult to keep the pianos in, if they broke off when hitting the building.
That's a really good point though, I'm a bit disappointed myself in that I never thought of that - but that mod will be super-useful for bored truckers So 100% I'll check it out when it's done and I have a few moments between releases.

I can't help the huge books / essays - I've tried so many times to condense posts. My run-on sentences could make any 'motor mouth' kid jealous. That aside, I just spill my brain on this update blog, about this that and the next thing, and all of a sudden I've eaten a whole page or more. Oops.
I am glad that you enjoy and respect the dedication that I have to my work on this city. I've wanted to do this for almost 30 years since just after 1990. It was only when Doom came out and I got a PC with it (and the editors like Doom Construction Kit or 'DCK'), that I could start to build worlds.
However, it was only when I discovered BeamNG that I could entirely make a world even remotely close to what I wanted without it being 1fps.
So on that note, I'm not about to stop now - I've just begun! Being unable to physically escape from the computer due to being half-crippled often helps me find time to do this also.

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Onward now, I've made a shopping center here (yes another one! the houses will come a bit later after this is done). Commercial things such as grocery stores, big-box stores, and strip-malls and of-course prerequisite fast-food joints line the roadways near the highway interchange They depend on heavy commuter traffic so this is logical city planning at it's finest.

Quite a bit unfinished at the current rate, but it'll likely be functionally complete when the beta comes out next week some time. The parking areas only have base-terrain color right now to expect them to be more dressed up. Also to note, curb ends disappear this far away like in the last shot, this helps keep FPS up if you're far away from them and they don't need to render. It makes for bad screenshots, but keeps budget CPU's from drowning.
In the last shot, if you race down the long light-grey road running left to right which has the back shopping center entrance on it, you'll end up coming to a T (right-most edge of last shot) and there's a nice dirt-mound to fly off of. Can't forget the main mission objective here in the car crash simulator, especially when it's such fun.
If anyone with an older PC is having trouble keeping FPS up, send me your system specs and what texture detail is used and if reflections, shadows, and SSAO are on or off (as those hit performance). I'd like to know sooner than later if this map is hitching up for folks.
For folks using high/max detail textures on an 8gb card, it is possible to get hitching over by the airport as all 8gb of the graphics card memory can get used up, relying on slower system memory in it's place if it goes over. Please use medium until I 'downgrade' the tunnel slightly (I will split the repetitive objects like the railing a bit, to keep memory footprint size down).
I am trying very hard to coax the developers into programming a routine to unload unneeded assets while they're out of view, to help lighten the video memory load some, but I'm not having much luck. The game engine can currently load-on-the-fly to stream assets in if they weren't loaded at the start, but it does not have the tech to unload them when not needed. One day maybe it will. I will keep pestering them about it, as if they weren't busy enough already.
--That is all for now.
Thank-you to all those folks who put out kind words of support, and to those on Patreon who support this project, and also those who contributed to it.

 

Wow, those pics look good. Do you plan on doing any more additional work on that highway like more signage, especially past the military base?

 

Thanks.
The highway, while functionally in place, needs LOTS of signage. It has almost none. It will get plenty, and yes there will be lots of signs to the military base as that's what highways during Eisenhower era were built for.
A lot of sign graphics I have to make yet but that's not much of an issue currently.

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A few more hours work on the shopping center / Worst Buy parking lot here.

Loading bay pictured, should be the right height for a commercial truck, but I'll double check shortly to be sure. That's such a simple 5 minute thing that it would be foolish to let that slip by me (if I got the height wrong). I try to pay attention to detail (un-level man-holes and storm water inlets, proper drainage for parking-lots, try to keep everything from being 'perfectly flat', worn road striping/lines, changes in pavement that you not only see but feel like in real-life), so I won't want to mess up something so 'easy'.
Grass medians don't have the blending overlay applied to the terrain that keeps the curb-edge grass from looking different from the terrain grass, yet. That comes soon.
Normally pictures are more finished than this, but real life CLOBBERED me this week with busy work, and of-course my back is still recovering (but it's getting a little better, hooray! So that's off the worry-list for the moment..), will keep posted on map progress for the next few days.
To-do before release:
Stripe and finish up the rest of the main 5-lane road that goes through here, at-least enough to drive (fast) on and see where you're going. Not sure if all curbing will be in yet.
Finish Worst Buy / Line City shopping center, or get it mostly visually done and functionality 100%.
Get town-house block across the road from previous shopping center done enough to not be an eye-sore or detriment to the user's experience. Might not be 100% finished upon next release.
Fix up AI paths that are surely knackered from all my fussing about with moving things and re-aligning the main road by several dozen feet in places.
Move parking-lot that's very far from civilian airport closer to the airport and to one side of the highway, in the industrial area. It doesn't make sense where it is right now, and moving it under the flight path will be conducive to better take-offs from the shorter pair of runways VS having buildings right on the other side of the stack interchange from the runways.

The bug in the previous supporter beta with the shore-front road I re-did, having bad AI paths, has been corrected for the next version - I had caught that one too late last time.

Now for the unfinished stuff I still have to do in visual-form and something special.

So totally ignore all the unfinished stuff right now and focus on the center of the shot between the two stores (Line City and Worst Buy), at the innocent-looking stairway.
That's no stairway, that's a RAMP, it only LOOKS like a stairway.
EDIT again:
Strange things happen when you tell the AI to use the stairs-ramp as a regular full-speed road.

With how much I've been laughing at this for the last 45 minutes, the 'secret' road here on the stairs might stay in the release for a bit.
--That is all.

 

Cool. And I assume there will be more signs on that highway in the next update?

 

Not likely on this update (as otherwise it'd delay release), but I'll see if I can get some more placed for the next one following it.
I will see what I can do about making sure the turn chevrons are in, though (on the outside of some turns).

 

Work continues as always, just know I am doing my best to make it immersive, fun, AND perform well.
Added proper detailed asphalt to most of the parking lot, the back is concrete (it doesn't have it's detailing yet in the back aside of the dirt water trail running off from the hill).
Did a lot of testing the last two nights with the jump, it's quite fun! The electric SBR can get going very fast and land about where the store in the last picture is on the right (it can land on the roof if you aim just a tad right). The jump is the 'stairway' in the last picture, because most all stairs are able to be driven up - just like GTA had it. That also makes walking mode 'smoother' as you climb the stairs, for what it's worth. This isn't my first rodeo, so to speak.
--That is all.
Lots of rain incoming, so towards the end of the week I should have this uploaded for supporters (I hope!). Public version will come a week or so later as I get around to making sure there's no major bugs.

 

Cool, though the road in the second picture where the divided road connects to. Is that a one lane road going to a highway or something?

 

Hey bob. Is there any plans on making bus lines? Maybe a long one connecting two big terminals and up to 4 stops between the start and end of it? Since I believe that a city line, with LOTS of stops would be a pain to make in a map as big as this.

 

I will be adding bus routes when I have the time. I have to put forklift mod functionality in first, though. I was supposed to get THAT working MONTHS ago, but ended up swamped with getting my sister's trailer home ready to move-in (it was a drug house / trap house, I fixed it up structurally and the plumbing, and she did the finish work like spackeling and painting), so that stole in essence the majority of a month to six weeks worth of time I could have put in to this map unfortunately. However, seeing the happy face of a 12 year old girl and her mom (my sister) was so worth it. I didn't ask a penny and even paid for some of the supplies (and any used tools I needed), I wanted her to have something decent and comfortable / sound for her and her daughter. I felt good doing it, and despite my back going out from over-exerting myself way way too much, and then crippling me on and off for 10 days (completely crippling the first four days), I would do it again in a heart beat.
So yes, while it's a lot of excuses from one point of view, I put myself in her position when deciding to do it or not - and I am sure you know what that made me decide on. There was but one answer.
I'm much better physically now than I was around month ago, that's for sure, but I really have to be careful especially leaning over to do things.

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I will be getting to bus lines as soon as I have a ring-road around the lake finished - it's temporary in some spots where there's no city yet, and completely missing in others.
This will be done AFTER I make some models for stores fork-lift mod compatible, of-course.

Fork-lift compatibility will be done by means of changing models, not changing the map directly.

In other news, I have been hard at work extending the new road I have been re-doing. It's done up to about one city block from the highway that goes over the mountain in the distance.

It does not look as complete in the distance due to models going LOD, road texture disappearing showing terrain underneath (which it is supposed to do both of those things, to keep FPS up, as when you're in the driver's seat - the only way to drive - you don't see as far as you aren't as high up).
Needs trees, signs, traffic lights and so-on to look more complete.
The Worst-Buy lot is functionally complete and needs signs / trees / shrubs / detailing and a bit of AI. The Line City lot needs all of those plus some curbing / parking stalls added - I haven't done much to the Line City lot yet admittedly.

The beta will release when I have fulfilled what I need to do before uploading it, thank-you to all who support this project and for those who are waiting patiently for me to release this update.

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In other news, nothing like going out to breakfast with your retired-age mother for some good chit-chat and a change of pace, and a TORNADO rolls on by in the not-too-distant background. Seriously, I just wanted to eat. I got in the diner and not even 5 mins later a tornado warning (tornado in progress in your vicinity) blared out all the phones - 20 some of them - in the diner. LOVE-LY I thought. Well, at-least we won't die hungry.
There's more storms coming shortly over the next day, hopefully it's a little quieter for a few days, that's the second tornado I've seen in the last a-little-over 14 months or such. I think I can speak for most people in town when I say: I won't mind missing out seeing any more for a while.
My sixth sense told me there'd be one nearby even without that tornado warning telling me... it's one of those things where while it triggers your PTSD something severe, that in itself also keeps me hyper-aware and safe. There's a silver lining in everything!
--That is all
P.S. For those in the south and/or in Tennessee or neighboring states, I hope you don't have to see any more twisters this year either - there's already been plenty the last 2 years.