WIP Beta released American Road 1.91

Drawing tablets are expensive, and paper is a far superior medium for drawing in my opinion. I don't know how to include something as a download, but it looks like you can just right click and save the image. Hopefully it doesn't compress it and lower the quality. I'll try to figure out how to make a download link.

 

can someone please help me? i cant load the map, beamng stops responding after a few second of me clicking where to spawn. Ive verified my cache, reunstall the map and unpacked it still cant getr it to work
windows 7 64bit
amd fx8350
16gb ram
amd r9 280 gpu

 

Just wait, should load in less than ten minute.

 

The map load time is 3 minutes for me, so you have to wait a moment or two without clicking anything & just make the game do its thing

 

Current version loads in 1 minute 27 seconds for me.

Map loading uses only one CPU thread so fx8350 will slow things down a lot compared to my hardware, if running game from hdd that will add even more to loading times, 10 minutes might not be too far figure, especially for first load, which takes considerably longer than loading map after 1st initial load.

Having over 200 mods like I have can have affect to loading times as vehicle/part tree needs to be read and it takes bit longer with so many mods, I think that I had quite bit faster loading times with less mods.

 

This may help with visibility. Great work AntiqueT. Now we need somebody with Illustrator skills and time to make a colored vector map...

 

Man, that image really brings out how beat up the paper became over the past few months, haha! Maybe, as Sithhy pointed out, the old world aesthetic I love isn't right for a map like this. It would be nice to make a detailed, clean, colored map. Wish I knew of a program that could help with that. Hopefully people can get some use out of this one for now, at least.
--- Post updated ---
I should mention that some of the marks are extremely fine, and the high contrast version faded some of them out. I tried messing with contrast and brightness when I scanned the original, but I can't seem to find a happy medium between visibility and clarity... You guys are almost making me want a drawing tablet. I'll always like having a physical copy of things, and there's just such a unique feeling about committing graphite to paper, holding a sketch in your hand. Though, it might be worthwhile to branch out a bit, and use different mediums for different projects.

 

I knew some of the detail was lost but it was still helpful. Thanks again! I found some new trails I missed before using the map.

 

Powerpoint, Clip Studio Paint and Inkscape, last one is free.

Libre Office presentation program might also work and is free, but haven't tested it as that is so awkward to use compared to ms office, then again ms office is very annoying to live with as even with it completely blocked from internet it does some shady auto updating and reinstalling while using Blender etc.

If I would have time, I would do it with Clip Studio paint most likely, because it has nice features for such, you draw with tablet over all lines, then you can correct lines to be very accurate, all sorts of painting options etc. Not free though. Inkscape would be free version of Illustrator I believe, that would be best free choice I think, but it is bit more work than with Clip Studio paint, imo.


Then again, Inkscape has trace bitmap function, but I'm not sure how well it works given source image is quite faint. Anyway, you import your image, then hit shift+alt+B and choose your options, after that you wait while 1 to 2 cores process things _slowly_ until you end up with some messy result.
Inkscape is annoying in there, many tasks in it takes really long as it uses only 1 or 2 cores most of the time and I'm not sure it is all that optimized either, but probably that would be something to try.

For me it did create vector roads, but it is painfully slow to use, however it looks like it would be possible to use that to make vector map.

It's just so annoying to use, you click and then wait few minutes and I have 8th gen I7 running at 4.6Ghz, very rarely I use Inkscape from this reason, not sure if latest updates are finally improving it, program has really nice features that you won't find anywhere else, but prepare to wait long time with anything bigger than few points:


Update: Before anyone jumps the gun and start advising to increase thread count in preferences, I know, but most of the time it just does not have any effect as process is not threaded enough.

 

I wanted to propose an addition to the map.
Now that trains have been introduced to BeamNG, how about some rail lines? I don't know how hard this would be or how much time it would take, but it would be a good thing to add in my opinion. I can see trestles spanning over the water, some parallel to already existing bridges. Maybe make some rail stations, one for each town and one in the logging area. I'm just throwing out ideas here, but you get the point. Would be fun to drive some trains around on this map.

 

Just an idea, what if you had 1 or 2 big skyscraper cities like west coast and lots of smaller cities like sf city? That make the map very realistic. Also cars can drive right through the airplane. I can run this map on 4gb with medium quality at a decent fps. On my big computer with 16gb it only uses 4-5gb. I have loved this map since I first started beamng. 5 stars

 

I would love to add more buildings and details to the cities, but it was causing problems when there was too many details.

 

What kind of problems?

 

Like performance issues?

 

Yes, exactly. When I placed too many trees, for exemple, I was not able to run this map even with my 8 GB of RAM. But good news. I am making all models by myself for my next map, and they will have empty "level of detail", so it means that they will disapear when they will be far from player. I hope it will allow me to put more details there.

 

That sounds good. It would be great if there were a few more cities and a few big ones.

 

Today I decided to create Patreon site for my mods, so if you like American Road, or if you would like to support me, I will be very grateful for any help. You can also find some screenshots of my new map there
Link for Patreon

 

Ok I think I will. Good luck on your map!

 

Thank you! I will be posting about map progress soon.

 

I can make 3d city models if you want. Also I can make props like trees, rocks, airplanes, buildings, etc...etc... but I am not very good with code or jbeam.