WIP Beta released Barbent's Homerange (Alpha) 0.1a

I can only say that much: if you stay it will be trouble, if you crawl it will be double ....

 

I suppose the greatest disadvantage of object rocks is simply that it takes forever to place them. Of course it will look nicer but we are just single persons working on these maps, not AAA studios with dozens of people only working on placing individual rocks on a map... Just use them in places where you really need a specific location and decals and for the rest don´t. At least thats how I am doing it, I didn´t even know that it makes a difference RAM wise...thanks for telling haha

btw, the rock textures on the first pictures look really good imo. Do you use custom textures also or just vanilla ones?

 

Yes, you are right, we are single man power , but I have no problem if it takes time to place the rocks exactly. For me it is a question of style how I make trails and avoid big object rock areas, though.
I use many custom textures and materials. A challenge is to have good normal maps. For me working on the map is part of the game. I drive, see and edit.
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...haha, except the bad debugging days, that's exhausting...

 

...and as if I have had called it with my last words ... I had a big problem and debugging work the last three days. I drove around some mountain corner and encoutered a massive FPS impackt. Unplayable. So I began to search for... what? I haven't made any new objects nor materials nor... I simply made some more roads and trails the day before. Checked the performance graph and tryed to find the location in the landscape by bearing crosswise where to search. Checked out the logs and the console and started a big clearing session. Solved old errors and warnings but they never made problems .Then disabled things and more by luck found some of my countless water blocks having wired parameters (see pics). I never touched those values and some had random digits not coming from my mind... So the World Editor must have made some poetry again and made a few of the water blocks to super high resolution... Haha, she's creative like me ! Anyways, I'm glad, it's fixed now .

 

Boy this is the weirdest french name i ever heard

 

Haha - yes that's true... You marshalling! "Rangieren" in german means shunting and is pronounced in a french way like some other german words... So the residents have decided to baptize their village "Du Rangier". It's crazy! (The neighbour village is called "Marshalling mellow", I really don't know why hihihihi)

And to steer away from the topic a bit again, I have three lovely screenshots of my work and fun progress to show:

 

This looks fantastic, plenty of detail, structural variety interest, off road, rally and highway driving etc and your grass color fits in nicely to the environment...all this and more on one map, very nice indeed

 

Dear Diary
My progress for today with the happy new BNG.drive version 0.32.4 update:
(after receiving two times corrupted files from Humble)

5 times 0xC0000005 - STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION
2 times 0xdontknow - STATUS_STACK_OVERFLOW (never had it before)
2 times 0xC00000374 - STATUS_HEAP_CORRUPTION (freezes sound loop)
4 times Unresponsive UI Process (with AV disabled)
2 times abrupt exit (no message)
1 time Windows blue screen
1 time loosing all BNG user settings (luckily I backuped controlls layout)
1 time loosing World Editor window layout (saved before but file corrupted)

not specifically repeatable

and every time fear of losing parts of the (session) work. I can barely hope it's only statistics and not a characteristic of the new version. I have no more words. I will not write it in the troubleshooting thread cause I expect no answers anyway. Maybe I have to go back to 0.32.2 and ignore the strong advice from the devs to use the update cause of a security issue. Really heavy!
I am sad and tired

 

Hey my friend, do not get discouraged....sometimes having a break, some time off and doing something else for awhile until the inspiration sparks again and come back to it with a fresh perspective

 

Thanks for your kind words . This is balm for my soul. Tomorow I will decide what to do.

 

Keep up the work, that'll be surely one of my favorite map. Also , i have two suggestions :

Perhaps name the Map/Country "nitaq almanzil", wich is none other than Homerange in Arab.

A (very) small army base. Sure Homerange may be a place in your dream that's untouched (for me , it's smh Tunisia) , but you're Never safe from an invasion, especially if you have petrol.

 

Hey! Thanks for you ideas! Since I have several small towns, villages, mountains and regions I decided to make a bit a language mix in the names to have it international (but only latin script). Also I have generally the strong advise for the human being to finaly find peace on earth. War is past in "A Homerange". The peace flag is hoisted.

But to have some dramaturgy, like you suggest, I do have some old military places. E.g. there is a big old bunker facility with several levels and a long tunnel. You can go in mountainside and come out with access to the water of a huge old dam. Also there are some old defensive fortifications. Everything makes sense for me if you can drive in/on them and I have not to use many assets or it can be made with low poly. There are also some abandoned border lines and -crossings, perfect for race/rallye start points...

I will think about using your term "nitaq almanzil" for the desert region. The desert mountain is called "Altas" (not Atlas). There is a desert bay called "Tunes Bay", it's not Tunesia Bay because if you stay for a while you sometimes can hear quiet magically tunes coming from the wide desert while the coyotes communicate with each other. Well, they also decided to live there cause it is so peacefull and they like BeamNG, too. We will never surrender.

(WIP Town: "Nodehinge Hill" in the early morning)

 

I'm looking forward to this , as it's one of the rare Maghreb maps (would've counted Bush Valley, but it looks more like a Middle Eastern desert.).

And what i meant by military base was a little settlement with an Airstrip long enough for a Spitfire or a F-262.

Also , what will be the History of Homerange ? Since it's based in Western Maghreb, i'm guessing it will be occupied by french colony, that will get hard Times of independance in the 50's. And will run on road's mostly with french vehicles and later Toyota Pick-up.
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Also , why only latin script ?

 

This is an artists decision. All vehicles are welcome and will have their dedicated challenges. Politics is not source of my decisions.

 

I just thought i would've suggest a lore made the same way as Land Of Sand's one

And i meant general traffic, not the only cars on Homerange.

 

Hey, is there any news on this so far?

 

Tanks for your interrest
I first had to take a short break to free my mind. Then I reverted back to 0.32.2 but unfortunately I cannot give any conclusion yet. I'm working the second day now and had some progress and crashes, too. It's significantly less for now, but I don't think you can derive any statistics from that. There are definitely days when everything runs perfectly for hours, then there are series of crashes. The only inconvenient thing is that I have to take the security risk with the old version, the exact details of which BeamNG GmbH is keeping quiet about. I would just like to keep working on the map and not spend days trying to make statistical statements about the probability of crashes of the versions. I'm going to continue with 0.32.2 for now and not download any new mods. Maybe I can update to 0.32.4 in a week and then compare again.

Meanwhile I'm sculpting endless banks and rock flanks, created a new island and gave one of the small towns a bit more detail, I hope I can finally educate AI-traffic with a car penal institution !



Noice day!

 

Fantastic work 'Barbent Servo GT'...I'm a fan....I do not pretend to know how much work is involved in creating this type of work, but would breaking this map into smaller blocks of realivent scenarios to drive between be more BeamNG code friendly?....sorry for non-tech terminology....lol

 

Hi, thank you M D Gourley!
The BeamNG engine handles the objects and trees and things very dynamically, so it is better to spread things and not to have dense areas. If they come into sight BeamNG has to address many objects at once - and lags. It was intended to have a really big map and try to make it technically possible. My goal is and was to have l o n g rides through a variety of landscapes without feeling a crack or split between them and certainly not reload times!

If theoretically (hahaha) BeamNG has errors in sorting objects, allocating and freeing RAM or VRAM (to load and unload things), the errors would statistically happen more often on RAM consuming maps. I don't know how things work exactly under the hood but that could be a reason for these crash series. I more and more use few bitmaps using them im many materials - using same materials on many objects and do instace objects as often I can and use instance coloring and levels of detail. PBR only if really needed. These are my weapons .

Splitting in any kind is not an option for me, well I thought about it but: I can tell you, it makes BeamNG a complete different game if you can drive half an hour without turning off the road, 2 hours and more without using the same road, jumping into heavy offroad where ever you like or racing some laps without ever exiting freeroam or loading scenarios. Taking the ferry if your ready for a break. I wanted a map where you can really drive and feel the cars. Not circling or noodling on italy a hundred times or repeating the tasks in Johnson. That's the plan and this project has been started exactly to enable this. And all that in a breathtaking environment without scenery overload.

Let's see what I can achieve

 

I have complete confidence in you to acheive this....keep moving forward