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

Personally, I like 0.20 too. Sadly though, it's an update that has some bugs. However, even though I'm not surprised that happened. It still kinda sucks. Also, do you know how long you can use that 0.19 editor for?

Wow, did a bunch of cool Civil Engineers with Master's degrees do that? That looks like the coolest Civil Engineering design ever. Good job on the map.

 

Bob, where did you learn how to make such nice roads? Is there a tutorial you followed?

 

I can use 0.19 likely for a number of versions more if needed. Likely I won't need to use it that long, as the bugs will eventually be fixed (what isn't fixed already).
I don't have special degrees in (Civil) Engineering, but I certainly might seem like it. I could draw almost 100% realistic homes, roads, intersections better than any commercially available 'road mats' or 'road carpets' available for kids... I am sure we've all seen them, they used to be plastic mats in the 80's that you could use matchbox cars on, becoming carpets sometime before year 2000.
I always paid attention. As a little kid I grew up in construction, so I always was with my father working in concrete construction as a kid... so naturally I took to engineering along with construction, and always paid attention to everything with a concentration that was unbreakable.
I got into the DOT at 17 as an IT intern while demonstrating that the 90's security solution common in public schools - Fortran's Fortress hardware security - was easily bypassed. I was an ethical hacker in the day. I never changed my grades, heck I didn't even think about it - I just showed the schools the security holes etc that needed no software or disks to bypass.
This was short lived however, as since I ran such circles around my 360 pound boss at the DOT so badly that they framed me and fired me merely months into the job. Their loss!!! I am in the 98th percentile, I could do so much with my brain, but in my late 30's (almost 40, ugh) my body is pretty much shot from growing up in construction and pulling a lot of short straws genetically.
So my brain wants to go, go, GO. My body just says 'no'. I finally found something I can do that taps into talent, uses my brain, without getting too much of a fight from my body.
That something is Roane County, Tail of the Dragon, Nevada Interstate, and this Los Injurus. Los Injurus is a city of dreams, which I can only now make. I can only hope you enjoy driving around in one of my odd dreams - hurt some pianos for me.

Actually I helped give ideas for the tutorial for the roads (someone else wrote it, but I was one of the first if not the first doing that). I was the reason you can carve terrain to mesh roads to make nice roads like explained in the 'something about roads...' thread on this very forum. I requested that feature as it was a nice feature from the Valve Hammer editor that wasn't present here.

Just make a mesh road* where you want the terrain to be, at-least double the width of the road (the wider it is, the nicer/smoother the terrain at the edge of the road will be).
Get the mesh road banked as you need it, make sure it's not kinked too much. If you keep the nodes evenly spaced and don't bend it too hard it should come out decent.
Set the break angle to 0.02 to 1.0 depending on how long it is, shorter roads can use a smaller break angle as they won't run out of surfaces that fast (there's a hard limit to total surfaces on a road, break up your road or use a higher break angle if this happens).
Set the width divisions (like break angle but side to side) to 1 per meter, if you have a 48 meter wide road set it to 32~64 width divisions. This helps transition to banked corners easier and less lumpy.
Then use the #1 tool in the terrain editor to raise or lower the terrain (or use specific raise/lower tools for that) with the mouse until it's at/near the level of the edge of the mesh road so that a later step is easier.
Now carve the terrain up or down to the level of the mesh road, do this very thoroughly. Slower processors will necessitate the use of a smaller carving brush to make it smoother.
Now lay down an asphalt, dirt, or concrete decal road in the center of your mesh road however you want it to go. Set it to 'improved spline' and try to keep decal road nodes evenly spaced for proper bending. Use multiple sections if you have a lot of s-curves. You may use my road textures from my map if you wish. Start and end tangent settings can be used to bend the ends better, this is handy around corners through s-turns and the like. If using the decal road for AI itself (vs an invisible AI only road independent of the visible road you can see), use more nodes or leave 'use subdivisions on' (use subdivisions doesn't work if you have bridges or raised sections of roads and also breaks 'over objects' setting), the more nodes you have around corners, the more realistic the AI goes down it. More nodes around corners or for grade / elevation changes and less nodes on long flat straight roads.
Now set the texture of the mesh road to invisible and smooth out any bumps in the roadway (in leu of this you can use the f1 object editor mode to click on and move the entire road down below the ground a few meters), an invisible texture or moving the road out of the way helps you see if the road is ready / smooth enough to be used. Pay careful attention to where banking starts/stops, as it's usually lumpy here.
Once you are SURE your road is the way you want it, (only) then carve the sides of the road to match your terrain, try not to damage your road surface. Sometimes it's real handy to leave the road in place until you're done with all carving operations. Just make sure you smooth the road surface before you do the sides otherwise it won't turn out as nice and you risk damaging your road.
One you're sure you're done you can remove the mesh road and set the terrain material (asphalt) on the road area with the F3 terrain painter tools as-needed.
Congrats on your new road. If you can get a mile or two done in an hour or two, you're pretty good! It is much faster if you have a less winding road.
Now add signs, striping (lines), trees/plants, wearing, buildings along-side etc as-needed to your new environment, test & enjoy.
Don't forget to post and brag about your new creation like it's the world, because to people that enjoy driving on a new professional-grade environment, IT IS

*Mesh roads were crashing the new editor 2.0 on game version 0.20. This is a reported/known bug and may have already been fixed - feel free to haggle the staff about it, if it is still broken.
If you go to carve (lower) to mesh and the terrain makes a huge hole for no reasons far below your target mesh, turn off your ground plane. If it is already 'hidden' or 'disabled', turn it on then off again, as it defaults to on if there is one even if you have it turned off from the last time you edited (this is a bug I believe, but it only happens when you've reloaded your map after hiding your ground plane).

Look up the 'something about roads' thread for the same info as above. F1 object editor and F2 terrain tools / F3 terrain painter tools may not be the same in editor 2.0 as editor 1.0, but the functions are roughly the same. I use the old editor as I am fast with it, and it has much less bugs.
Yes, as I said above, I am the reason there is a carve-to-mesh tool in the terrain editing tools as of 0.6 or so game version - I was working on the prequel to this map - So-Cal - when I asked for them.

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I should be able to get the tunnel in tonight. I have a little more work to do on it but it's pretty much there in a form that won't eat the vehicle. I can't wait!
I then have to un-mess-up my canal graphics (which may or may not wait until the next version to debut), they're currently hideous as I was testing textures out.
I then have to fix my signs for them to work in 0.20 and add a little more to the roads and I should have a supporter beta out. Sorry it's been so long - life sometimes only hands me short straws.
Besides the tunnel there's a few new miles of road to enjoy however... so surely it should be enjoyable.

 

I do enjoy driving around in Roane County and Los Injurus. I haven't tested out your other maps, but you've done such a great job on both of those maps. The vibes of those maps are absolutely wonderful. About the engineering thing. To me, it kinda looked like you got some extremely talented engineers to help you, but you did it yourself, so that's great. I've actually been testing out the BeamNG editor, so maybe I could make a map someday. Who the heck knows? Anyways, great job on the map.

 

Slowly - very slowly - getting the tunnel working. Have to figure out what's up with the textures and such first. Don't know if it's a model or texture issue but i'll figure it out shortly.

As if I needed this type of difficulty right now. Doing my best right now with what I can!

I did get all the normal and specular maps done, I will have to fix a few of them though.

 

Reverting back to 0.19 was one of my first thoughts when I opened the broken old editor and trying the new one for myself. I don't know how to do that. However, mods have said they are working to fix the old editor (for me (and just about everyone), only the mesh and decal editors are broken, the most important ones...) I just find the old one much easier to use (one of my biggest gripes of 2.0 is having to old down ALT while making a road, which won't allow you to move the camera while editing). While update 0.20 added some good content, and some of the features of the new editor are nice (namely the ability to decide how far off the ground a meshroad is) I simply want to continue to use the easy-to-use and less laggy old editor.

 

[deleted by The Bob]

 

could it be related to the game’s lighting itself and not the textures/materials?

 

Uh, maybe give yourself a week or so to fix it and if you can't, make a decision?

 

Well due to feedback I am getting, and due to Occam's Razer (of Garfield Heights fame / he's a staff member) caring to look at this for me, and Mitchell from level design offering some pointers, I might just be able to salvage it after-all. So don't write it off just yet - but entirely thank the staff (even if it's just by recommending this game to friends) when you see them next.
That is holding up release, however, which I hate doing - I should have released something two weeks ago; but with 75% of my time spent modeling, there wouldn't have been much to enjoy admittedly.

Release of the next supporter beta will be about roughly 3 days after I get this tunnel fixed... failing that, if I am unable to fix it, I will just connect the roads nearby anyways without it, and release what is there. The 3 days time gets me time to put it in (not entirely that long) and time to set up the area around it, so it's not a tunnel under emptiness (it's a cut-and-cover tunnel, bypassing an industrial area on the surface).
A sincere thanks to the staff for stepping in, in private.
I really get put off sometimes due to some of the bugs because, due to the nature of Early Access here, and due to the nature of cutting edge tech all around, there's not always someone who knows better than me if I don't know how to fix something... so I am batting blindfolded here at times.

That would be in relation to texture normals generally, which for the most part are just fine. The staff think it's 'vertex coloring' that came with the source portion of the model that I purchased (which I therein modified & added-to heavily over a few weeks to work with Los Injurus). Said vertex coloring ended up randomly splotched all over the place, and I ended up with a Dalmation-painted tunnel.
So maybe not cancelled entirely yet, but it's hanging on by a string. I've been looking up researching things left and right trying to figure stuff out to fix it.

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The staff was able to show me a thing or two about vertex colors, and where to look to get rid of them.
I can't thank them enough, they are so awesome. I even used Blender to do it, because for some reason, I am actually able to use the 2.8x version EASILY, unlike previous versions that I couldn't use at all.

Now I can go back to breathing again. Sorry for the roller coaster there folks, but I spent just shy of THREE WEEKS on this stupid tunnel.

The picture above shows much of the detail, and how you can see vehicles passing on the surface road above through open grating, from within the tunnel itself. This is why I was so bugged when it wasn't working, I poured so much love and vision into this thing... I mean, even the bolts on the columns are in 3d.
I have a few UV's to touch up, and a texture option or two to set, and then I can put the other section of the tunnel in and test it out well. I have learned a lot in the last few weeks, including some stuff in Blender so that I may eventually transition over to that.
EDIT: That big chunk of tunnel entrance, is at most 90 draw calls. The total budget for the scene without the vehicle must not ever exceed 4500~5000, and is best to keep under 3500~4000 at all times when possible, to keep 60fps. That's REALLY good, I was thinking it'd be 120~150 or so, at best.
It's not triangle fill that gets today's games bottle necked like it was 10~25 years ago, it's draw calls, that's why a lot of games are hung up on CPU speed when you have a good enough graphics card. That's the same thing that slows West Coast down a little bit (and Italy too, just due to sheer size). That's what I am trying to avoid as I go back and optimize things better.

 

Tunnels are in and functional, the models are 99% good ( a few alignment bits with the curbs at some point might get done, they're only off maybe by 1cm), I just need to put lights in the tunnels, but that will be after the next beta likely.
Currently getting all the terrain carved, then two full nights of putting in roads, connecting all the loose ends on that side of the map, and testing it out.
Pictures will be as I finish off parts enough to show - it's a wreck right now.


Just got done with an 8 hour editing session. Had a few hours on it before that, too. What you see above is very incomplete but the tunnel models are 99% done aside of a serious shortage of lights. I will deal with that after the beta unless there's extra time and I'm not burned out by then.
Lots got done today. This section doesn't have AI yet, it will soon enough though.
The tunnel is in, in completion. There's another tunnel though... that's tomorrow.
I haven't built anything on top of the tunnel yet, but the face of the tunnel between the two descending roadways is a ramp in disguise. NO TRUCKS in this tunnel, though the industrial area above it will be where the trucks go. If trucks try to go in the tunnel, bad things will happen to the truck's roof. A moving van will fit in fine just not the T-series or concrete mixer / truck (no, it's not a cement mixer). Crunchy times ahead.
--That is all for right now.

Beta comes Tuesday morning / Tuesday afternoon sometime (Central USA time). Rain shouldn't mess it up beyond delaying it 6~12 hours at worst as it's very on/off with the rain here.
OOPS: Remember I said the moving truck would fit through the tunnel? Well, it ALMOST fits, just stay away from the edges of the entrances on either side and stay to the middle and you should be OK.

Ah well, good thing there will be surface roads on top of the tunnel, where trucks are supposed to go anyways.

 

Got a variation/hybrid of a trumpet interchange done (there's another name for this besides 'confusing mess of on/off ramps' but it's eluding me right now).

The last shot above shows the existing big long highway mountain crossing on the right, and the NEW tunnel and extension of the highway through the mountain on the left.
This all needs road striping here, but the tunnel in the shots is ready to be driven through now and connects to the interchange by the dirt track (to the portion that was unfinished).
There's at-least another mile or two to do, but I got about 1.8 miles done last night. Another night and I should have the road striping and AI routes in, and it can be uploaded then for Tuesday some time. The 'missing' bridge in the second shot won't be built for a while yet, and may have to wait until I have this area more populated.
Keep in mind the unpacked file size has increased another 1gb. The map unpacked is now 6GB in size due to textures and complex models, so it will likely be in the neighborhood of 2.45~2.6gb when it's all zipped up and ready to go.
The tunnels badly need lighting but I'm afraid I won't get that in before the beta. That will come soon after the beta though (and likely before the next one after that).

 

I will be finishing up my work within 2 hours tonight, as I am making a hard cut-off due to time constraints to make sure this beta gets out tonight.
The supporter beta will then be uploaded, and I'll link you guys up tomorrow morning via Patreon. WARNING: Have a good internet connection, it'll likely be 2.4gb ~ 2.75gb in size.
The next supporter beta will be in about 12 days or so AFTER this one releases (max), so that I can finish what I'm working on here, and make it look nice etc, and put the polish on it that it deserves.
Not all roads are 100% finished in the new area and they won't all be done by the time you get the beta, HOWEVER, most of them are all linked up except in my last post where that one winding mountain road has a bridge missing (the bridge that spans the canal and the new section of highway with the tunnel). So you can drive them all (and the AI should too), but I don't know if all the tunnels will have AI (that takes an hour or two to do all that) by the time this beta comes out. That's why there will be another one in 12 days from tonight.
Then I will start working towards the next public release... which is mid September or so.
Why the wait for the public release? / I thought the next public release would be THIS month!
Real life sucks sometimes and I have to fix my house, it needs a lot of work. In the next month I will lose a good week to 10 days of time I could normally make this map, due to having to repair my house. I will get it in order though, just some things that must be done before it starts getting cold again.

 

Hey if any of y'all in Louisiana or Eastern Texas, get the heck outta there or get to higher ground in a concrete structure, they want this Hurricane Laura to be pretty bad - to be a category 3.

In better news, the supporter beta went out this morning, Errata as follows:
Signs may have orange no texture, I still have to find out what changed in 0.20 to cause this.
No AI, lighting, or sound stage (echo) changes in tunnels. This is a short-coming of this release due to time constraints & should be better next time.
Some new roads may not be fully detailed or have the edging put on currently, I'm still working hard on those and will be over the next week.
Small patch of 'hidden' sand in the road near the highway tunnel that's NOT next to the airport, it's where the ramp bends around, just know I found it a little too late but that I do know it's hiding there.
I was really rushing things out, but I got it done when I wanted it to be. It was already way way waaaaaaay past due, so I'll try not to let that happen again.
If you have any complaints, comments, commendation, or criticism DO give a holler.

 

Map progress update...
Finished off 90% or so of the detailing on the new roads I've recently added, and still need to add signs more (need to FIX the signs, too). I also added another mile-or-so of side-road, off which residential structures will reside upon.
Added AI support to the shorter tunnel (not the big fancy one yet).
Added in a few missing bridge abutments and a little more barrier.
Fixed sand spots hidden in the on/off ramp interchange by the new bridge with the raised center and by one of the new tunnels.

Currently learning: BLENDER! It's so much easier to use now that even The Bob can (sort of!) use it.
TO DO soon:
Populate the new roads with some fresh buildings, signs, and the like.
Fix / improve flood control canal textures, and keep only the ones I like.
Fix sign texture not working in 0.20 even though it's fine in 0.19.
Prune out old ECA assets that were only used for a concept, though some textures will remain if they're useful. This map size is becoming quite bonkers and this should help a little. Some old JRI / Industrial assets can be pruned, too.
Get my rooftop and construction props that I paid for into the game.
Improve the tunnels with lighting, proper sound echo, and 'zone' treatment so it gets light/dark to mimic the way human eyes take a little bit of time to adjust to very different light levels. Give the fancy tunnel AI treatment, too.
Oh, and try to finish up building the church's computer that I am building them free of charge with old-stock-but-brand-new parts. They are lovely people, and their 15 year old computer bit the dust. This way they can do their data entry or show videos / do video conferencing if needed.
I also have A TON of outside work to do before fall, as we just had the driveway paved (we got it at a nice discount, but you don't want to know what it cost!). At-least now it's much more maintenance free as none of us are that physically able here. It won't absolutely massacre my free time but it will impact workflow a small bit.

That list is subject to change, and is anything but all-inclusive - but it's good enough to give you a general idea of what's going down in the near future.

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In my never-ending desire to learn all there is to learn about infrastructure, I found this zany actor explaining it, it's actually somewhat humorous.

 

Good job on the map, again.
Do you see this being released by September? I know you'll release it when it's ready.

 

The next supporter beta will be after this weekend sometime, it just puts a little polish / finishing up on what's already here, and a little bit more roads. Tunnel AI is in (almost done with that), and I will try and get a few more blocks worth of developments filled out before it's uploaded.
I'd like to get the public version updated by the end of September, I'm not exactly 100% sure when it will be.

 

I was talking about the repo version, but okay.

 

Tunnel AI is in and tested, it usually works well enough. I truly need to widen the tunnel lanes by about half a meter each, or 16 inches each for those on imperial scale. So as it is, passing a T-series or a bus (which is approx about 8 feet wide or 3 meters wide), in the tunnel, is a bit precarious but CAN be done... even when driving using the keyboard.

I've also got two new roads put in and graded nice, striped as needed. One has AI, the other not yet, but that's because I'm busy building a townhouse development there. I will be pushing out another supporter beta likely by Tuesday morning, or sooner.
The next supporter beta adds:
Tunnel AI for both new tunnels, AI will no longer attempt to turn around and avoid them.
Two different new roadways, one which crosses the highway.
The start of a townhouse development, how much is done depends on how long it takes to finish up the computer for the church (their's died and it's 15 years old).
Detailing / trimming etc on all the new roads that appeared in the last beta is much closer to done now, they're considerably less plain/boring, but still need signs/signals.
The signs will be fixed (hopefully) before the next beta.
I may work on the canal textures some, but that's in the back-seat so to speak vs other stuff that's a bit more important.
I will get around to installing traffic signals when I get the chance, I'm waiting to build up some of the development around some of the intersections I'm unsure of so I can see what I need there first, though admittedly, many of them could be put in now regardless. Don't expect many new signals in the next beta though, but I'd like to get them done before the next public beta.

 

One block of the townhouse (rented/apartments) development is done.

Last two shots above are sky-cam shots for perspective of where it is. That development might get a few little details here and there but is largely what is representative of the final product there. The road at the bottom of the shot with the bridge, is newly added and one of the ones I mentioned yesterday (or whenever it was).

In the three shots above, that's the new road off which the rental town-homes are located. Below, I've completed another half-mile or so of the large four-lane roadway (the same one that goes past the townhouses). Needs a traffic light here in the first shot below.

That's pretty much it for now.

EDIT:
Built another building across the road, that is part of the same complex. Added in all the AI for the area, and some light wearing/detail on the roads here.

Not too much but it's another hour or two of work easily. I am confident that folks will enjoy this area, especially when more is built up around it.