Hello everyone, Long time listener, first time poster. I have been playing beam since the early days when all we had was a D series, and finally decided to take a crack and some mod creation, specifically map creation. Using MapNG and google maps for reference, I am creating a semi-faithful copy of the town I currently live in! I've basically started around where I live and been slowly expanding from there. The full map is 4k by 4k I believe, so it's hard to say when it would ever get fully finished, but it is certainly coming along! Current Status: Around 8km of Ai road paths created, therefor around 8km of painted/decaled roads. 30-40 houses placed, many buildings, thousands of trees/vegitation Multiple POI's with BeamNG specific creative paths Drift/Race paths built Future Plans: Continue finishing roads, detailing trees/vegetation Placing hundreds more houses Ai Paths for all road ways Need to figure out how to place parked cars for traffic spawns Mannnnyyy many more things to do. Thinking of eventually releasing as a public mod, might get a version together to post for some play testing. If anyone has thoughts or help for creating parked vehicle locations, that would be much appreciated. Thanks for viewing!
This is what MapNG was built for. A great base for building real-world maps, which then is much easier to expand upon. With the release of this tool, I think that the devs should add a repo rule that banned publishing unedited MapNG maps. But that being said, this is a great example of what MapNG maps ought to be: well-made replicas of real places. So, enjoy your project, and keep up the good work!
I spent a lot of effort in importing geodata to BeamNG with my tool. My focus is in generating smooth roads and vanilla terrain materials. It’s more complicated than MapNG but worth a try. https://www.beamng.com/threads/beamng-mapping-tools-updated-2026-06-01.89058/
Maybe I'll look into it for the next map lol I'm so balls deep in this one and how I'm making it, I can't try something new now. Appreciate the input though!! EDIT: Actually clicked into your link, pretty sure I have used this?? I know I will need some helping cleaning this up and removing unused files or duplicates once I'm closer to releasing.
For maps based on a real life location and where the main area is based on relief (like a canyon or a cliff), unedited export is alright I guess. Still it'll lack details anyway.
It's done by the parking spots part of the sites editor, info should be here https://documentation.beamng.com/world_editor/windows/sites_editor/ The important bit is to make sure it's saved to the main root folder and named city.sites.json otherwise it won't work but as long as the sizes are large enough for cars and it's saved to that file it should work with nothing extra to do needed
Little drive through of the map in it's current state! --- Post updated --- I have tried this, just made a bunch of test spots, unpacked folder, placed, still nothing.
Yes, city.sites.json in the root folder, meaning zipped mod folder. Or does this need to go in the base of the actual game? As in { D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\BeamNG.drive }
One other thing that can catch people off-guard: the .sites file normally only loads (or fails to load) when first loading the level. The sites editor won't allow you to preview your changes in real-time, or even in the same session. You'll need to either reload the level, or reload the lua by hitting CTRL+L
Progress Update: Working on finalizing more residential areas and making shortcuts through the blocks, detailing ditches and landscaping, and finishing up a big section of the main highway through town. Also figuring out how to make a roundabout. --- Post updated --- Nope, that would be DRWNED on Patreon, who I would HIGHLY recommend purchasing his mods. Very high quality and well done mods - drwned. — BeamNG.Drive mods | Patreon
--- Post updated --- This looks very promising so far although will this map be more residential focused or will it also include in the rural bits as well?
This map will have a couple miles worth of residential areas, but also some highway/freeway and major county roads
