Can't wait 'till we see some progress! It's probably a good idea to start a new thread, with a link to this one.
Since you mention it, I took a look at some of these things. For performance reasons, I am going to need most all of the models replaced with collisions vs using 'visible mesh' (it has to be done CORRECTLY if it gets my name on it, not trashing my name for lack of patience). If anyone can do models, can re-do these models, or make equivalent ones, with working collision, let me know and contact me. I will be re-making the roads all by hand (they will use the Tennessee textures, and So-Cal / Nevada textures as needed, this is already all done and I have all the working textures, the traffic lights etc). I have to re-place all the buildings by hand once I get all the stuff in place with new building models. So, what's done: Check over the map and evaluate it, see what can be kept, re-used, and what has to get wiped off the map. (checked, can't use much here unfortunately, it's all stuff without it's own collision model, which hurts performance and limits the models you can put into the map, to get a proper city that's truly filled and busy, you need models with collision). Get building models that have collision (I have checked, I don't have a lot of large-scale building models WITH collision). While I could keep a few, it really limits what I can do with the map, for everyone I use, and it highly reduces performance on the CPU and GPU, and well, we don't need me to make ANOTHER laggy map. Req'd software and talent requirements: Can do just about anything in the mapper I need to do, and bought a paid version of L3DT to work with 4k terrains (which is what it's going to be, for max detail)... though I am still learning the modeler stuff in blender (as I can't really use sketchup for this stuff with collisions). I keep crashing this sucker out to desktop with my models, this is what's holding up the process. If someone can do this modeling, that'd be wonderful. Everyone wants a good city map, I could throw one together, but it'd be a waste of time unless I've got better building models (better by having collision), I can't really do this properly (and won't continue until I do). I will keep the street layout mostly the same, though hills would be smoother, and done with terrain, etc, not meshes, for native AI pathing and a usable map. So, if anyone knows anybody that can do proper models for buildings with collision, I am not picky on the textures, I can work out my own textures without issue (as I have with my road textures), I just need a better set of buildings. I have: Roads, road textures, and traffic lights that work. I have trees that work from default Beamng.drive assets and some residential buildings and such. I have driveways and smaller low-zoning houses that can be inherited from the Tennessee project (single family homes). The roads would no longer be so square and grid-like. In other words, I'd be for the most part, replacing every building by hand (once I get them re-modeled) and also re-doing all the residential neighborhoods heavily so that they look more modern and not like something swiped out of the 1st midtown madness game. I would keep most of the square-ness to downtown as many cities have the grid thing going on in them. So call out to modelers out there. Even if you solely stick a working collision model on the object, that's ALL that is needed, I will handle re-doing the textures somewhat closer to 2017 standards. I can handle the rest (and will). Everyone I talked to wants a city map. Sorry for the hush-hush, I thought I had made a post here last month and I must have foolishly assumed this. My references are So-Cal Interstate (road layout, map from scratch, road textures from scratch, all but one). Tennessee (Roane County, as it's known), where you can see what a almost-fully-realized town looks like. This will inherit the road texture catalog, and the building catalog from Tennessee in addition to whatever I get via building models. When I've got what I need, I will gladly take some concept pictures, there's nothing worth pictures at the moment.
hey, I know this is a bit of a bump but I could probably make the collision and models, if you still need it.
That would very much so speed up the project, and help in such a big way. I would so highly appreciate this, as would the other fans of the map. You wouldn't be doing this for me, you'd be doing this for everyone. I have tried, forever and a half, to get to know my way around BLENDER... yeah... not going to happen. But I can move the camera around great! I am considering purchasing 3ds max to do models for my maps, but I am retired and on a fixed income. I'm not poor but I can't exactly shell out for stuff left and right. I spent enough on this SAS card & breakout cables already as it stands (bought because the Toshiba enterprise-class SSD's I have keep dropping off the intel controller, without it being power state issues). I see they have a 3ds max education edition, and since i'd like to learn this stuff (I can't model my way out of a box on PC), I might try that and see how far I get. Regardless, it would be super-duper helpful if you could add collision to the buildings in the map though. I don't so much care if the roads get collision done to them or not, but if you re-do the buildings, it seriously does remove the limit of the amount of buildings used. I believe the statue/park property DOES have collision though, that much I did find. If you can do this, it would be wonderful, hats off to you my friend - you shall have everyone's gratitude. When you do get them done, or as you get them done, let me know and send me a message/file via PM. Everyone wants a city map Trust me on that EVERYONE I talk to for my suggestions says MAKE A CITY. In the mean-time, I'll have a 4k terrain ready to go for this, and those road textures... oh those hideous, ms-dos DOOM resolution road textures, my eyes BLEED seeing those things, those will be entirely replaced with my own. TOP GEAR on the SNES has better road textures than this map. I only ask one thing - if you can possibly do this - to make models accept any size texture, e.g. if I take the building's textures that are something like 256x256 and replace it with 2k x 2k texture, to look like a modern game should, it would stay the same 'size' on the building, right (It wouldn't make it look like the door was 100 feet tall?). I don't want the finished map to look like I stole building textures from Duke Nuked 3d (dos game!). If you have any other buildings you wish to throw in, please do I won't mind. If you CAN'T or become unable to do so, it's still all good, I won't hate you. I will just have to figure out how to do some modeling stuff on here. If anyone knows good tutorials for 3ds MAX on how to make something with collision, let me know, as I just can't use blender it's too @#$%ing complicated - I tried, and tried, and tried, and tried, and tried. It makes my head want to explode. In the mean time, I am here, I have been slightly side-tracked by my summer duties here at the house and other real-life things. I have not forgotten or abandoned this, though I have been sinking some time into Tennessee's Roane County map, and Tail of the Dragon. If anyone else wants to donate some buildings, let me know. We can always use them for this project and others, and the Beamng.drive community as a whole. I also have a question for everyone - anyone who reads this - you don't need to quote this whole post (and you probably shouldn't as I type a book) : The sharp rises in elevation on the highway will be smoothed out a bit, replaced by continuous grade (not flat, but a gentle slope), however, the city elevation changes I am a bit undecided on. I won't make the entire city flat, as this is not a 1993 ms-dos game after-all. Real cities have gentle slopes, though. I had quite a bit of fun racing up and down them and getting airborne, so should I keep the 'jump opportunities' provided by the roads that quickly change elevation, or make more realistic longer grades/slopes? I am somewhat leaning towards keeping the sharper inclines the surface roads (non-highways) have, but figured I'd ask who better but - THE FOLKS THAT LOVE THIS MAP. --That is all - Cheers folks!
I will get to work on that, hope you don't mind me using the original models/textures as a base, well have to figure out someway I can send you those models without spamming this thread. --- Post updated --- If you don't mind starting a conversation that would be great, first of I think the naming of some of these files breaks the tos so I can rename them and just make a new materials.cs, some of the ads are also most likely violations but nothing that can't be fixed.
Yes you can change the names or I can, doesn't matter. I will have to remove all the instances from the existing map anyways. I am going to script those into the forest brush and then re-add them into the game. The ads will be converted to generic versions with similar style, as this map will follow the forum rules 100% when done. You can start a conversation anytime and when you have the files, just load them onto the conversation attachment feature and I will take it from there. --Thanks!
at this point im not even using the old models, if bob wants a good quality map it would be best just to restart, the only thing I can use is the textures, the models are *no offence to jammin but there terrible, many layers of the same geometry no collision there mostly useless, they all need to be scrapped.
Had to ask. It's cool this is being done however and if I were jammin I'd be proud of the enduring legacy this map has created, regardless of whom is doing what with it. He put alot of effort into trying to help people learn how to do the whole Sketchup import process (me included). I never was satisfied with the process....way too convoluted, but I learned about Torque in general so it was worth it and I appreciate his efforts to help. Anyway, best of luck to you guys on this and am eager to see what happens.
spawn script is broken, you can fix this by going into your mods folder and opening generic city.zip then going into levels then copy generic city folder, go back indo documents and then into levels and paste it there now open it then open generic city text file, then find spawn script delete everything inside the brackets that are enclosing spawn script that look like this { <Don't delete these though then paste this new SimGroup(PlayerDropPoints) { canSave = "1"; canSaveDynamicFields = "1"; enabled = "1"; new SpawnSphere(spawn) { spawnClass = "player"; spawnDatablock = "DefaultPlayerData"; autoSpawn = "1"; spawnTransform = "0"; autoplaceOnSpawn = "1"; radius = "1"; dataBlock = "SpawnSphereMarker"; position = "-461.428 -1040.28 178.858"; rotation = "1 0 0 0"; scale = "1 1 1"; canSave = "1"; canSaveDynamicFields = "1"; sphereWeight = "1"; in there.
I wouldn't see how the guy would have an issue with this. Technically speaking, when it comes to models, textures, etc, I always ask for those, no excuses. However, to be technical, if you read the EULA for uploaded data/resources, it's free reign for anyone on this site and the developers of Beamng.drive to use it as they see fit. It would be not cool to claim someone else's work as my own, however, so all credit will be given where it is due. I may indeed start an entire new map from scratch, as there isn't much left but the terrain and some water when you take out all the models and the Doom-resolution (*DOS* DOOM) textures on there, well there is a statue... *crickets*. I mean it's an awesome concept, just, not necessarily executed in the best manner with the current state of the game, and improved knowledge/techniques in the community. I don't want to make a city out of West Coast models just remixed (when it comes out, though that being said, I may be tempted to stuff some of them into my Southern California map), I want to try and source buildings from folks that know how to model a decent building (with collision) since I couldn't model my way out of a soggy box. This map relies almost soley on models without collision built in. This is two-fold BAD. 1.) This makes physics much more intensive, so lower FPS due to cpu bottlenecking on all but the best processors, and 2.) You can't use them to any success in the forest brush. So basically, that's why it was never completed. I was going to put working AI in it and then I realized I'd have to waypoint an entire city, a city that's mostly near it's item limit already, or use hackey methods I've used in the past to get around waypointing, which could get buggy in the future versions. So basically I said, well, I ought to rebuild this from scratch, because there's only a handful of modders out there, who can get this job done, and not many of them have the time. Everyone wants a city map, ESPECIALLY ME. This won't be anything close to GTAV or even GTAIV, heck if I can get it on par with GTASA I would be thrilled quite well with it, but don't hold your breath. However, I do see NO reason why I cannot get this up to par that is Roane County. I will try to avoid other things like making the map rediculously huge (it's not going to be, it needs to use earthen roads mostly, except for the raised bridges/highways), and I need the terrain to do fine details fairly well. At the largest it'll be the size of So-Cal however I don't think that we'd have the buildings to fill that much city, so it'll likely be smaller. So, that being said, I will do my best to not dissapoint. At this rate, I've got some terrain made up, I just have to put it (all the models, maps stuffs etc) together to make an actual map. The second I have something decent to show for it, I will post a thread. Work on my other maps, such as Roane County and Tail of The Dragon will still continue simultaneously, and the Roane County map will be lending this map a bunch of assets. If anyone has the following, they are encouraged to contact me via private message (or on here if you can't figure it out), and post contributions, full credit will be given. I need the following to help boost the project along: Any large building you'd see in a city, tall skyscrapers of all kinds of any purpose, parking garages, etc. Bridges other than the ones from the default game (which I will be using to keep poly count down where possible). I already have traffic signals, and signs (signs from @RedRoosterFarm ) I have benches, bus stops, and plenty of road/highway/sidewalk textures I've made already, so we don't need those I could also use more multi-family homes like apartments or townhouses. I have plenty of single-family homes from @Occam's Razer . So yes, this is not the thing that will come overnight, this is something that'll take time to do right, but the nice thing is, as I get assets for this, I can add some more fluff to Roane County and vice-versa. This is why I am doing projects in tandem. Plus, as anyone would know, you need to change the pace every now and then to keep your brain fresh and on-target. You also often times get many ideas that could not be used in one map but could be used in another. I will see as to looking up MitchB25's old city map from a while back and see if I can't use some of those freeway pieces in here, as they're done already (I'm not one to reinvent the wheel folks, suprise suprise, this is why I use works of others, consider it a compliment, not laziness on my part, more map, less time & work smarter not harder). Remember, those folks whose work is used, are given full credit, name in signs (lights would take too many pieces...), etc --Cheers If anyone has any questions, please let me know. It surely will be one thing - and that is great for crashing cars / crash videos! EDIT: Just started messing about with Sketchup, wow, I can totally do this. It just clicked... hopefully I can figure out how to do collisions in here (it is possible) and how to import it into Beamng without CTDing the thing, again.
Have fun. Sketchup is cool alright but getting it's collision meshes and textures into BeamNG is so tedious and glitchy I lost interest. I don't think Sketchup is even meant for 3D rendering applications/game engines. I suggest starting small as always....and slowly work into more complicated structures. The last straw for me with Sketchup was two things: No way to export a collision mesh as a single .dae readable by Torque like Blender and others can, and no UV mapping capability aside from a weird and frustrating community add-on. As far as I'm concerned Sketchup is perfect for a few small models/objects that can use visible collision without going into FPS issues. I suppose you could make a base mesh in Sketchup and pull it into Blender for the collision mesh and texturing. I've been toying that idea.
