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

ik this isnt the thread for roane county but both of these games have roads with NO NORMAL signs on them. is that something wrong with my pc or something else? also, on all of your maps, whenever I spawn a car it shakes when you go into the interior mode

 

That's just a country / rural road. Most of these don't get striping on them (the lines = striping, that's the educated term for putting lane lines / delineation down on roads).
These back roads are generally 35~40mph speed designed, meaning if you go faster, you're likely to get some serious air-time if you're not careful - or you could go fast on purpose and find out what that entails. Quite often in this map on the outside of turns are perilous cliffs, inconveniently placed small hills / rock piles etc (or conveniently if that's your thing) to send your car absolutely flying / falling for some crazy crashes. So do mind the speed limits where they're posted - where I've had time to post them anyways. I totally admit there's maybe 5% of the total signs placed in this map. It will take me a good two weeks or more to place them all, and that won't happen before this beta goes out in the next few days. It'll be out before the weekend is through, hopefully.

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So maybe the tornadoes got bored since I really wasn't THAT scared yesterday (I wasn't close enough to hear it rumble but it was in the distance as I semi-calmly ate my breakfast), though that said I was still on full alert yesterday morning. There's been none today around these parts, so I got some more map progress done.
I have curbing and striping done up to the bridge that goes under the over-the-mountain highway (there's no interchange with the highway here as the highway there is more like a bypass with no exits until it gets down to the bottom of the mountain at the big par-clo / flyover hybrid interchange near the city).
Have a small section (less than a quarter mile) of a road that won't be complete in the next beta, but should be done on the next one, a nice windy thing it will be.

Second shot is merely a progress shot. I needed a bulkhead for the box culvert tunnel ends in places where it's not square with the terrain as there were holes in the terrain (where the tunnel goes below the terrain) that you could fall into, and were quite unsightly. Trying to use existing stuff to fill in the gaps was looking ugly / was a poor use of rendering resources.
So the bulkheads only use three draw calls and don't have an LOD (as it's not needed), they just disappear when you get more than a half-mile away like the box culvert pieces do. Will adjust the distance (of it no longer rendering) if needed later on, it's only a text edit in the file.

So remember, this is the real deal, a real city for BeamNG the size of GTA V's city. I'm not using any pieces from other games (only this one and stuff I made), so no worries of DMCA nasties like other projects had to deal with or died from (Los Beamos progress was suddenly deleted, sadly; hope it wasn't that). The purchased assets in this map are all properly licensed. There's no 'editorial only' (news use) or other specially restricted things here. When the project is 'done' I will go over everything again with some of the other object authors, maybe I can move some stuff out of the 'commercial' asset folder by the time this is done (that is the restricted license stuff that I haven't cleared for re-use by others yet; these license restrictions supercede the BeamNG Drive mod forum regulations and EULA, so please ask before you use stuff from the 'commercial' folder or better yet avoid it if making a map).

Never-the-less, work continues as always. I should be able to get this finished up over the next 2~3 days hopefully. I want what IS here done, properly, and don't want it to be like last time where the traffic was jamming up on the wide road by the shore (that is fixed now). There's NO excuse for broken traffic when you've built a 16-core 32-thread CPU based computer to test it on, sorry. I need to do BETTER; for me, for everyone. You have my word that I will.
With the help of the developers, some contribution from the community, we can take this driving simulator to the next level.
For folks here that deserve the best, the whole community, of whom I am very grateful to serve, will get only the best.
--Cheers!

Edit: Right at the underpass, this road has a rather good crest on it where it starts to level out. If you do a good 80mph or more over it, you'll go airborne. There's plenty of room to get speed in either direction, too.

 

Got it, and btw. Nice pics.
Edit: Also, This map is great for editing in F11.

 

It is fine to ask here, provided it's about one of my maps - it makes little difference to me which thread it is (honestly it's easier here anyways as my internet is super-duper slow).
The NO NORMAL thing is because the Roane County normals aren't DDS texture, they're PNG if I remember correctly. This is no longer supported and only DDS texture is supported. Roane County has been around since... 2016~2017 sometime? It's pretty old and really needs a going over.
The current version of Los Injurus does not have a 'No normal' issue.
It's 100% NOT your PC. YOUR PC IS JUST FINE, so no worries! It's entirely that map.
Roane County shakes due to the imperfections of 'floating point' being a tiny bit different with each frame drawn. Normally you'd never see this unless you had a 32768 x 32768 monitor resolution - but since that doesn't exist, you never see the shimmy-shimmy-shake the cars dance to.
This is purely visible anomaly and nothing negative happens to the physics engine or car handling because of it. You'll notice it most in Roane County near the northern extremes, and near Kingston, as those places are furthest from the center. You'll hardly see anything at all in Rockwood as that's only a mile or two from the map center.
It does it a little bit in this map - but only maybe 20% as bad, as this map is only about a quarter the size (square mileage) of Roane County, so it doesn't let you go that far out to where you'd get the shimmy-shimmy-shake going down.
Sadly, due to this being the only way to run physics in real-time, especially with a bunch of vehicles in play, we must live with the visual shake if we want big maps - the further you go from the center, the more the shake. A 20x20 mile wide map - perfectly centered - would be the absolute biggest game world I'd ever recommend in this game, and even that will have a lot of shaking once you get 5 or so miles from the map center. I cannot fix that issue.

Thanks. This map is made to be used as a base to practice building city stuff, and as a base to start your own map (provided you can host it yourself, or slim it down to only the things you absolutely need the most, so it can fit within 488mb upload limits). The 1055-piece (currently as of right now) MRK kit is modular in nature and meant to be used by placing pieces together like a puzzle and thereby making a realistic scene - or a road rollercoaster if you so wish. It's all up to you. Even if you edit this map, if there's a place you think needs a road, or you want to add a bridge, go ahead and build one, nothing but time and effort stops you or anyone else.

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I didn't have a lot of map editing time today, however I did fix quite a few texture errors and 3 missing texture files were added. I also fixed the grass 'helper' decals that I use in parking-lots so that the traffic islands have correct texture & so it blends correctly, and the gutter texture having blending issues is fixed too.
The road pieces in some sections of the city will still have dark green planting strips until I get to changing that color soon, I am not sure at this moment if I want to change it at all yet until I get the mowed lawn the color I want it so it's just a little less dark-green / saturated. Just a little.
A few texture entries that didn't need to be here (Redundant) were removed from scripts. Maybe there will be a few less orange no-textures popping up in the in-editor texture preview / browser now - but surely there's still one or two somewhere.
I will likely be very busy tomorrow so I might not have a progress update to show, or if there is one, it may be later in the evening (as it often is?).
Fork-lift mod preliminary support looks like it might get added in 2 or 3 of the stores before the beta, though this may delay the beta by 2~3 days. It was supposed to be in, and I really need to add it, and it won't take TOO terribly long. It also won't be an FPS hit, just trying to keep my word to the folks to whom I said I'd add it in.
--That is all!

EDIT: Ended up spending an hour or two just fixing texture index scripting bugs / oversights / general 'oops' issues.
This should fix a lot of 'that texture gets too blurry in the distance' issues with the highway textures, and many of the textures for roads I added in over the last 12 to 18 months or so.
Also, you should be able to see the delineation (the lines) on the road (and anything else like cracks or pavement slab joints) from quite a bit further away now, especially important for users of LOW and LOWEST texture detail - though it does improve sight distance even on medium detail too.
There's a setting you can add that will blend things better in the distance, that helps render the texture in a perceptual manner rather than just computing it using generic filtering / down-scaling math. This setting was missing from almost 100 (or maybe more?) textures just in the roads texture index. Oops. Bad BOB!
Regardless, things will look a little more professional / refined / closer to current-gen game-engine expectations on the next release (though, honestly, a bunch of people probably won't notice unless the blurry concrete / asphalt textures at medium distance bothered them before).
Below is an example as the white lines for the lanes (and yellow stuff in the center) can be seen a lot further away now.

 

FIXED Even more textures-bugged-due-to-bad-scripting or who-knows-what going's on in the texture indexes... sheesh!
Most of this stuff was seldom used resources, variation textures, and so-forth.

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Since this map doesn't have enough dirt trails, I added a hill climb right at the airport spawn point. It leads to an abandoned stretch of four or five-lane roadway (which the AI will still use, for now) that was left-over from the old version of this map. Since the bridge is out (there will be a jump eventually) you can enjoy watching the clueless AI fly into the chasm unabated.

So yes, a little more immersion for the map, and a hill climb. For those who want to hill climb in a car, there's plenty of room to get good speed going and most cars should make it up without too much effort if given enough out-right speed. It's not a 100% perfectly smooth hill though.
The AI will not use the dirt roads leading to/from the abandoned highway as the AI spawning in will eventually get shut-off on the abandoned sections of roadway, with only police chasing you up there if need-be. For now though enjoy watching it dump into the chasm where the bridge span is missing (there will be jumps there, and the AI in current versions dumps into the chasms too, the road is just much uglier).
--That is all.

 

Progress will be cut-off Tuesday (the 11th) night, Beta goes out Wednesday sometime.
This next beta won't have forklift mod capabilities included, need a little time on those & it's not worth holding up the beta longer.
While this is not the world's most jam-packed mod update, that is for sure; I've spent much more time engineering the layout of things a bit better for immersion sake (and exploration perks as well, most notably is the flood control canal box culverts I've shown).
Comparing the old rural four-lane route to the new up-to-date 5-lane route with it's drainage channels, commercial strip, and even some homes is a night and day deal.

So, happy exploring (in a few days). There will be LOADS of box culverts and underground water-handling infrastructure to explore in the future with each update.
Before I do traffic lights (after the beta), I am going to homogenize the models so it doesn't take but a quarter of the time to place traffic lights, as there's LOADS of intersections that need attention in that regard.
There will be a small bit of content coming just after the supporter beta on Wednesday likely about two weeks away from that point, which will include:
More traffic lights / signs & forklift mod compatibility.
Bus routes are planned but likely won't make it yet, as there's too many unfinished parts of the city yet. I can do bus routes when I've finished building around the central lake in the map.
Sorry for keeping folks in the dark, weather was bad and the internet wasn't working very well / consistently with all the storms the last 24 hours.
Also, there may be a few days that go by that do not have much in the way of content posted as I have to pull the head off my car engine to fix the gasket's small oil leak.
--That is all.

 

Final-pass testing is being done currently for the AI.
I have a little work to do near the recently-added town-houses, that's about it.
The new "Line City" parking-lot didn't get done yet, but that can wait a bit as it's not worth holding up the beta for it.

Lots of odds and ends, adding AI paths, adding trees. Still so much to do after the beta though as always.
Expect supporter betas tomorrow. Thank-you for support, contributions of any kind, and at-most patience while I try to hit deadlines and fail miserably :x Hey at-least I'm transparent about that. But no, really, supporter betas will be out tomorrow.
After that, I will be adding in Forklift mod support as that's waited way too long, and I will be working out a few more bugs and such for the later-this-month public version update.
--That is all for right now.

 

Currently doing full AI test. All minor improvements and additional AI paths are in. I think I've got done most of what I wanted to except the Line City grocery store lot, but that can wait until after the beta. End of the month will be a second beta that will be the about-to-go-public test.
That means the end-of-month beta will just be a quality-of-work improvement, bug fix, AI fixing, and so-forth. Forklift support will be added then.
If anyone has any props they're working on for the forklift mod, please let me know so I do not have to purchase them if they're already within the community. Thank-you for your attention to that matter.
Otherwise, I'll get the beta uploaded tonight, and hand out links sometime tomorrow for the supporters and contributors.
Edit: Tested, all tests are a pass, so expect no issue. It DOES take a while to load on 1st run though.

 

I spent a stupidly long time working on this same road I've been working on, adding another few tenths of a mile to it. I do enjoy doing it though.
Below is an incomplete area where I've been working. I've outlined in grey the new main road course. The preexisting roadway that runs to the west of it and wraps around will become a rather nice wide road for a residential housing area in this some-what rural setting. I am working on straightening some of the corners out on this road, to make it more realistic. There will be *plenty* of roads with curves and hairpin corners to make up for the loss of this one S-curve. That said If I chose to try and build that S-curve into the main road, it would be nothing much beyond an exercise in self-loathing, and wouldn't turn out very nice. I can put it in a housing development, though.

To the right of the bottom future corner of the roadway, is a nice open ravine, a small valley that will house a lake with a small earthen dam, and a small stream letting out from it. Or I may stick a mining operation in there, not sure entirely, no promises. However, there will be no issue with falling into it. I will make sure that if you wish to plummet, you will surely go flying and falling, into whatever it will be. That being said I'd like to put a nice resort somewhere around here, so we shall see what becomes of this.
Also, to add, I've managed to get some royalty free warehouse racks off one of the model sites, so that's one more hurdle out of the way for forklift mod compatibility. I will build simple interiors and make sure that doors are open to accept freight. This will be a per-model change, so it is basically a drop-in replacement that requires no work aside of changing a model and clearing cache.
This should have little to no effect on FPS, due to the fact that the interiors will only pop in when they are close enough to your camera position and you are on the property itself. This is how I've handled the other interiors this same way, aside of the subway station platforms themselves, which have two LOD levels before they disappear (the tunnel however is on all LODs due to not wanting to see sky from underground if you're traveling in the subway and coming up on a station, that would break immersion big-time). One thing though, I cannot promise that if you somehow manage to crash a car into a forklift rack inside a building at high speed, that you will not get stuck. You might get stuck if you hit one going fast enough with a car, just not with a fork lift. If you manage to go that fast inside a grocery store or big-box-store location in a sports car, you deserve to get stuck...
There might not be a picture update tomorrow as real-life might get in the way for the next day or two.
Still on track for an end-of-month preview of the public release for supporters, and then a full public release immediately following if all goes according to plan.
DO let me know if anything is majorly wrong, you have about two weeks to get all bug reports in (10 days would be best, by the 25th~26th or so).

 

you are like, the hardest working map maker i know of on this mediocre website. dare i say the hardest working modder in general. quality map my guy

 

Honestly the best map for BeamNG. Very large and diverse... you still add more stuff to it and all it does is get even better than before.

 

To NEGATIVE INFINITY and BEYOND! (wait, what?)
read: I've added more road mileage to the map nearby and have re-done more of 'that same road' I've been working on for the last month or so. Very early shots so please 'don't mind the mess'.

1st shot, I've spent hours and hours just building the road curve you see ahead, too many hours in-fact! Placing curbing can be tedium especially with hills and turns combined, but the finished product is worth it on this 4 to 5 lane avenue.
2nd shot, Large wide roadway that will have houses built on both sides, this road is about the width of an inner-city 4-lane thoroughfare, but is only two lanes; making it great for drifting with it's gentle banked corners and wide surface. There will also be intersections for housing developments which would have too much traffic to directly connect it to the main avenue.
3rd through 5th shot, beach access road that's barely a mile long. Some housing will be up on the hill accessed by this road, the lower part being mostly a tourist trap. This road is fading out super-early, I'll work on correcting that before the beta if it's not a game-engine bug causing it (that has happened before on some textures - I will go-over the texture index again, as it could be a bugged texture index entry that I missed when fixing the others).

I really, really, REALLY need to get around to making a ton more of the modern-style up-scale California homes, which is why most of the recent side-roads got put in lately.

Sometimes I wish I had a bit more time off from mapping, but if I take a day away, I really want to map by the 2nd day. Consider it an addiction. Once I learned how to make modern game worlds, playing games just never felt as fulfilling (as creating them does) anymore. There's a number of hardworking modders on this site, they just don't always make something so big, and not all of them are physically disabled and stuck at the PC full time as much as I am (or at all). So while comparing the folks with limited time is a bit unfair (to them), I still appreciate the kind words.

That's what I am trying for, "very diverse and getting better". I try very hard to continually raise the bar for my own work, always trying to go the extra mile (literally, pun entirely intended!). This map aims to be the one-size-fits-all game-world where you can do pretty much anything AND still do everything (or reasonably close to it). Why be forced to drive in constant circles on small maps, or switch between many maps for just that one or two things the other maps don't always have room for, when it's possible in modern day to fit that all in (and it's been for quite some time now) ? I would suggest time is mostly the enemy of many modders. You really have to have a LOT of time (and almost no life!), and just as much drive/motivation to be able to keep your attention on something for thousands upon thousands of hours. My job basically is making these maps, and I enjoy it. Sure it's not a high-paying job by any standard; but when you enjoy your work, it no longer feels like work. I am still wholly grateful to those who contribute time, models/textures or money to the project however, especially for the time-savers and encouragement it gives.
Everyone needs goals (and means to achieve them) along with shelter. I'm OK on shelter but I otherwise wouldn't have many goals outside of maintaining my house (or trying to! home-owners will understand this) and vehicle. Let's just say I wanted something to show for my time and effort, something that just so happens to bring many people joy. I can do this, even with my body's mobility pretty much 'on it's last legs', to put it lightly. I've wanted to do this since the very early 90's, so I'm not about to throw in the towel yet. Los Injurus has only just begun to show what it can be, and I'm not stopping until I get it done. As I've said many times: I enjoy (just as y'all do) blasting around my own map, demolishing the vehicle in short order in the process. There's no reason we should be stuck with small or boring maps when there's plenty of tools out there to make good ones, learning curve aside, with today's tech.

So thanks to all for the kind words, I appreciate it. Do know that you'll continually see Los Injurus updates for the foreseeable future, with the best quality I can jam into it.
Should Los Injurus not live up to someone's expectations, I'd love to hear about how I could do this better (seriously! some of my best ideas have come from valid critique). It's easy for one person to overlook something, no matter big or small; but with the eyes (and ears?) of others, this map can be even better than I alone could ever think to make it. So keep me posted if anyone has an suggestions; I am always open to them, no matter how off-the-wall or conversely mundane it might seem!
Above all, glad to hear/see so many folks enjoy Los Injurus, it helps keep this project alive.

 

What a difference some signs and trees make!

Placed a few corners full of chevrons, a TON of right or left 'turn ahead' arrows, many intersection warning signs (+ or T shaped / other), and a few missing stop signs (oops).
Didn't touch the highway yet, will try to get that better signed before the next beta that will become the next public update at the end of this month.
This section of roadway is mostly hand-leveled, so it's 'realistically' smooth VS glass smooth, pretty much like the rest of it. Not all roadways are absolutely 100% perfect, even when new.
Was at a church function (Revival) the last two nights, so lost a little time from that (but it was time well spent, and the folks that go are absolutely wonderful souls).
--That is all for tonight.

 

There's a such thing as TOO MUCH detail. Like this fork-lift-friendly warehouse racking. Each rack is one-half MILLION vertices / polygons and almost a million triangles / edges...
That's more than most scenes in the map, heh.
So I will definitely make something fresh, that although basic, will do until I create or find something more detailed that doesn't hit performance badly.
That's okay though, because this is FREE; someone went through the hours and hours it took to make and perfect this and gave it away for free. I am still grateful and absolutely still thankful for it. Sadly, I'm not even sure modern video boards could render this in real-time inside of a video game, outside of DX12 or Vulkan renderers.
For example, to Jbeam this (as vehicles props etc have) would not only take a year to do; but to run it, it might get 1 frame per hour at best-case sitting still.

 

I wouldn't go too crazy on those details in the warehouse areas. Just being able to drive into buildings and move pallets should be enough.

 

Don't worry, not planning on making it crazy detailed. Only up to 25% of the users might ever even use the feature at all over the entire play time in the map, which might be 10% of the time or less compared to driving. Some folks will love it more than others, but the good news is that interiors will ONLY show up when you're on the lot that contains the building, or right adjacent to it. This way any performance hit (while very very small, maybe 1% max to do the interior VS the entire scene budget for a full scene render) won't happen unless you're right on it or in it. Like the subway stations and other build interiors, these won't render until you get here, basically - because they don't have to.
I don't want to go TOO complicated for another reason - the number one enemy - VRAM limitations. I can't actively unload things out of sight or across the map, so whatever is in the map will eventually have to be loaded into VRAM. This is why I am keeping models SIMPLE, sometimes (like the case of the fancy old tunnel) I have to simplify things to put it in the map - not just for draw calls - but for VRAM capacity issues too. I'm already bouncing off the 8GB limit on high details, it need not be made artificially worse.

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In other news, I'm trying to get this road completely re-done all the way to town, and will likely spend a good solid day or two on the cloverleaf that's got to be updated (it's been a mess for two years now!).

I've been re-grading all of this (that is done), it needs to be striped (the lines), and edged - be it with curbing or with blending graphics - to look realistic.
The curves will be nice realistic banking with fairly solid radii VS the random nature of the curves on the road it replaces. It should be MUCH better for drifting now, though, some parts of the road aren't 100% perfectly smooth yet (and some spots aren't intended to be).
I will also be doing the road that lets out where the pavement changes in the screen shot above, that one needs A LOT of work as does the terrain around it.
Will have to make a dam for the road on the bottom right that is missing it's bridge. There will be an earthen embankment dam here similar to the other one up somewhere near the open-cut mine. There will be another dam in the very top-left of the shot (there's a road if you can see it up there, that will basically be across the top of the dam). Both dams will let out through the same waterway, one is downstream from the other, basically.
When the next beta comes out, you'll be able to drive this road from interchange to interchange with good speed and it won't look like 2016 anymore, hopefully anyways.
--That is all.
--- Post updated ---
Got most of one of the dams built.

 

More work on the damn dam.
This time the lot is finished off, and there is a (temporary ECA place-holder) water-works building there, too. I will find something better suited or make something later on, but this will do for now.

It's almost scenic, almost - but it doesn't look too bad. Quite boring yet as not everything is in, but it'll have to do for now.
--That is all.

 

@bob.blunderton

 

Looks good! Maybe you could add a trigger for the walking mode, too, so you have to do a little bit more than just sitting in your forklift and pressing keys.

Edit: Nevermind, the standard trailer has them already

 

So entirely, have gotten roughly half-way to the city area with the road re-vamp (1.5 to 2 miles since the last supporter beta is done), with another mile that's half done (and around a mile NOT done plus an interchange). The next part should go a little faster as it's not all curbed.

A nice new tourist lookout is featured, including two jumps (one is the stairs themselves, lined up beautifully with the road across in the 2nd shot, and the other is the rock formation in the rock garden in the middle of the concrete pad). The rocks along the road-side will also launch you quite readily, so be mindful of that. The small bushes do not provide collision (though the slightly larger ones will provide a little, there's none of the larger ones by the road though).
I might add benches at a later date, but I'm waiting now as I might re-do the model soon if the old one hits FPS too much (some models are less optimized).
--That is all.
@NOCARGO I will check out the video shortly - looks like you've got the truck doors opening nicely from the preview; but my internet is so bad right now I could only get two screens of four uploaded. Thank-you! Still on track for forklift capability in the next beta.