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

There are no streetlights on this map, if you are talking about the traffic lights, they have never worked 100%

Not sure if the airport arrivals road is supposed to be a canopener, it's at the perfect height for the tgs with the bumps. You may need to add a warning sign or two, the bump is the smaller issue to be warned, lol
If you decide to rise the bridge/lower the road a height of at least 4.20m would be nice so that the 4.15m capsule bus fits, but driving with that bus around the map is quite interesting anyway since canopener moments happen very frequently, so one too low bridge more or less wouldn't make a difference, just a 4m truck should fit.

 

Really no point to have commercial vehicles going to the front of the terminal. It's mostly for arrivals and departures. I do think we need some sort of cargo ramp for the airport.

Also Bob, come back

 

bob's been working on the 11'8" bridge remaster in secret this entire time probably

 

We miss your weekly health, weather, and map progress reports. I hope everything is well.
OT: There's a small typo on the police building plaque.

Unless your tax assessor plays old slavic death metal in the basement. Sample

 

Street lighting won't be for a bit yet, due to the fact that relies on a script, and the engine has some work in that department yet to-do (I don't want to have to do it and do it again a month later). It will be in as-soon-as-possible (tm) that I won't have to do double-work.
Good note on the can-opener at the airport, it's not supposed to have truck traffic though (trucks go to the rear of the terminal, though the areas aren't signed/marked yet). I will make a note here to get that signed so that we're not decapitating trucks as much. It fits buses, but not made for trucks.
Hopefully the approach road (on the return side) doesn't decapitate them too (where the runway / staging areas overhang, though that's a bit WIP there as it's not 100% detailed yet).
@silvermanblu We do need a cargo ramp, there's sort-of one in the back, but it's not good enough.

My bad, good call on that, I can fix the graphics fairly readily. Wouldn't have caught that otherwise.
Thank-you.
And yes, I do miss making my constant posts, but I have had some other issues to deal with.
Pretty much everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and did, but the project lives - it shall not die unless I die - and I've just been dealing with things one at a time.
Between health, rights management on various assets I am trying to clear for city use (and modder re-use!), and hardware issues, I've had my plate full. Even simply deleting a file (or trying to!) caused an issue the other day and locked the entire interface up repeatedly. Eventually fixed that, but still I was doing a lot of swearing that day.
Now we're having ice storms in-stead of tornadoes, but that's none-the-better as the power goes out A LOT here when we get ice due to being far from substations and power plants.
I am working on models, I just am not showing everything so that we can have a nice surprise when the update drops. Besides rights and such for assets (models and textures, must contact each author for commercial assets, and must contact many authors for a reprieve from the no-commercial/share-alike use clause on some licenses on a case-by-case basis for some free models that are useful), while it tends to drag things out, my 'decent' knowledge of the legal field keeps me from being an idiot and getting DMCA'ed over something stupid.
If I send it out now, there'd be a lot more orange-textured roads than I care to elaborate on with screen shots. Basically, it looks like I broke the thing more than anything, and while I have done anything but, until I finish the graphics update on the back-end of the map, I can't send it.
I had wanted to get it out before, but it was too much to handle and these things need time. Most of the additional delays come from game updates in the last two major versions of the game and changes to the rendering engine. It just needs to be done correctly, otherwise it's not worth doing / just double-work in the end.
The DEC 2018 collector road (5-lane road with central turning lane) update (that was lost when I lost the c: drive that month) I have managed to finally get added back into the map (yeah 3 years later? where did the time go!) as I've found them archived / backed up in the mean-time. These are the ones with built-in reflectors (GTA V has these) and make it a lot easier to see at night.
Speaking of being able to see, I finally hooked up the monitors (almost a month ago now) I had bought in the previous spring for roughly 10% of their value new, and having two (will install the 3rd when I have the physical function enough to enable me to re-do the desk here) monitors makes it WAY easier to model and do UV work on here, a whole lot easier. It has shaved a good 25% off the time it takes to do UV work, if not more.
I was originally going to shave off some quality to get things done quicker, but I scrapped that idea as it goes against the don't-do-double-work policy I have personally and could hit FPS, possibly badly.

So here's the conundrum here: as I update the road textures, building textures, and everything else over to the newer formats, I am also simultaneously removing the old ECA assets and adding in new / better commercial assets (and that's where rights come in, so everything doesn't end up in the taboo commercial folder). So it's a long, complicated drawn-out process, that will make Los Injurus not only better, but also make it stick around and not get ban-hammered.

Oh, and speaking of health, winter = suffering time for joint-pain sufferers, plus the usual seasonal depression stuff (not too bad here, but it doesn't help). I finally am getting over whatever sickness I had, possibly Covid, but it took THREE WEEKS, sheesh!

So no worries here about the project please, it still is being worked on, but I don't always post about it as much as I had before.
I can only promise it will be worth the wait.
On the bright side this also enables me to fix a lot of the issues I had personally with things on this project (textures that weren't good enough, doubled up resources and other redundant stuff, wrong names on things and such)... so it's not all bad.

I am here, as I will continue to be, for as long as I can foresee, modeling, mapping, texturing, etc and doing about all that I can to shove this project along the long, challenging, time-consuming road to completion.
Thank-you to the folks who help support this project, as I could not carry it myself or do it without you.
--That is all for now.

 

What about traffic lights, that's what I meant

 

There are traffic lights, they don't work on low (and sometimes medium) settings. The next update might just finally fix this stupid bug, because there's a lower-resolution duplicate somewhere and it should no longer act up when using anything but high-quality (full quality) textures.
Games (not just this one) down-sample textures to make them fit in the memory of all but the latest and greatest video boards (in VRAM).
When it down-samples the 3-pixel tall 32-pixel wide (or there-about), it creates a smear and just makes a mess, causing the light to quit working.
So entirely, there's something in there still. I will likely port the entire traffic light kit over from WCA where they fixed it last year sometime, if it is still an issue (might just do that anyway).

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For those wondering what I'm currently working on (it's a building you saw a while back but this is putting the details / finishing touches on it).
This is a far departure from the past buildings I've built.
MOST of the detail is in, the street level section is pretty much done (as is 95% of the building). I just have to reduce some more draw calls (there's a ton mostly due to windows and because of the dirt masks under the windows / at the roof-line), otherwise it'll hit FPS worse than 25 other buildings combined.
UV work sucks, big time, it's a chore at the least and a bottomless time-consuming pit of despair to be frank. HOWEVER, all is not misery here, I've bought a "UV assist script kit" for 50$ (project funds), and it's already saved me an hour (and I only got it 2~3 hours ago) so this should help things along nicely. It has a TON of scripts that save a lot of time here with these buildings - and it will save me even more time when I learn how to use everything properly.
I will randomize the window textures more on the final-level detail model (that'll eat draw calls for breakfast but it's only going to show all that when you're within a half block to a block away or less).
Brutalist architecture says 'hi'.
Edit: fixed dupe screenshot

 

Good enough for now! Introducing the next completed tenement, in all it's hideous glory! Act fast to reserve your own not-brand-new apartment in this cat-poop colored eye-sore. Or not.
It'll use a little more than it's share in draw calls when you're up close to it, but it'll be fine from a block or more away.
Just needs a fast collision mesh, and some LOD's. Will try to keep pop-in to a minimum but again it's done for FPS boost, so there's always going to be a line to walk between the worst of either. If people are looking for pop-in on models, then I haven't obviously jammed enough detail in the current scene to justify looking at some of it, vs the things far away.
Brought to you by "HEH!"

Edit: Forgot to upload the 2nd screenshot I just created minutes ago. My memory is terrible, it's completely toast, it went south for the winter (or longer) without me (don't get upset if I forget stuff, people, etc). Sorry.

 

I probably should've asked this way earlier, but are you still available to things regarding commercial resources/assets and replacement textures? I've noticed that in the repo description, however, I understand that you're very busy with Los Injurus and other things in life, so I was wondering if that kind of discussion is still open. I apologize if this isn't necessarily on-topic.

 

I use some commercial assets such as models and textures in the map, they're the minority, but they're still in there. If wishing to use things, provided you refrain from using the stuff in the metrocity/commercial folder, you'll be just fine. This means you can still use stuff in the 'metrocity' folder (that's the map's code name, btw), but not the stuff in /commercial.
If a model in the metrocity folder should require some texture(s) from the commercial folder, just substitute another one in it's place, there's absolutely plenty to choose from that aren't license-restricted.
The assets with restrictive licenses are clearly marked (by being in a special commercial folder) and there's absolutely no shortage what-so-ever of other 'free to re-use in BeamNG mods' textures. Said commercial use licenses over-ride any license derived from this mod being on BeamNG Drive mods website (this website; you can feel free to use absolutely anything not in the commercial folder, that's what this map is for and the map itself is but an example but in no-way the end-all to what you can do).
Word of advice though: Only take what sets you need from the MRK folder and what buildings and textures you need, this rivals base-game size when expanded and is quickly approaching 10gb's unpacked.
Also, keep an eye on VRAM use when using assets from this map, this map PIGS VRAM for breakfast and I in no-way try to hide this fact. Actually, I put a big warning about it on the resource page because it WILL exceed 8gb on highest texture settings provided you either use enough AI or drive around enough.
The MRK assets should provide you with anything and everything you need, and almost every single one is fully optimized already or darn close (for those who don't know yet, the MRK is the Modular Road Kit that makes up city sections of this map, all road objects come from there and it has it's own folder under 'shapes' folder in the map). That doesn't mean the UV work is perfect (in-fact if you take issue with any of the texturing on the modular road kit, please give a shout my way and be descriptive), but if there's future updates that keep the same name (of the objects in the kit), they will be drop-in upgrades where you just copy the new stuff over.
Try to avoid resource bloat, as if you exceed system RAM or VRAM in this game, performance will drop usually by 2/3rds or so (for VRAM, and if for system RAM you'll end up crashed to desktop with an FFFFFFFF error window), as there's no way currently to unload objects out of VRAM when they're not in view like in almost any other game engine, grrr.
I hope this answers any questions you might have; if I have failed you and you need more information, please let me know a little more precisely what you need.
*Note: I try to contact resource authors when I purchase resources, sometimes before, or sometimes after (depending on my time allotment that day, my schedule, health, and how good the resource is), to ask if they have an issue if they're re-used by others in the mod community. Obviously, if those authors have issue (or want to rake me for more money for that 'feature'), then it goes into the restricted assets folder. I usually invite resource authors to contact me on here asking for private beta access, for the allowance to re-use assets in a non-restrictive manner on this mod site (for only this game!).
Mods which re-use commercial folder assets without purchasing a use license, will get the submission taken down, suspect authors might be put on a temp ban, possibly resulting in a perma-ban if it's bad enough. I didn't want to limit this project from the wonderful quality and selection of commercial assets out there on the web, as the free ones aren't always good enough and can be sometimes more trouble then they're worth. That said, there's lots of freebies out there, and PLENTY and I mean PLENTY of good freebies in this map to use. Most of my models, sans the airport stuff, are usually pretty small, so you can use plenty of them before assaulting VRAM limits too readily. Texture sizes can usually be cut-down by half (half on X and half on Y) without too much loss of detail for a resulting 60~70% decrease in texture vram use - which is the majority of VRAM use here. Sorry if any of that sounded nasty, just have to be transparent about the reality of using things from the commercial sector.

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Had time to finish up the LOD's and the collision mesh (grey one, furthest) for the ugly tower, now it's ready to go in-game when the textures are all scripted in. 1st shot is full detail, then 2nd closest detail, then the furthest away model will be flat-shaded only. You won't see the flat-shaded one until you're on the other side of the lake from it, and at that point it'll probably be blocked by other buildings. Again, the grey one is the collision mesh, which should be very close to the visual aspects of the tower - except on the roof it's made with ramps to the edges so that the 0.25 meter lip on the edge of the roof doesn't cause you to be 'stuck' up there. I generally do this on building roofs so that it helps playability (GTA SA and others also did this). I don't think you're likely to get 'stuck' in any of it anywhere.
Edit: Also, the tan texture in the 2nd shot is updated to have that dirt / grunge effect on it now where needed.
Oh, and the model site is having a pretty decent SALE, so that means more good times for us!

 

Thank you very much for all the information provided. I feel like this is enough to understand what I may be doing for my map. I will definitely keep in mind of the commercial folder. I've done some digging around in the Los Injurus files and found the metrocity, MRK, and commercial folder. As you said, I will try not to add too much from the metrocity and MRK folder to mind the memory/RAM, but I may add a few highway intersections to my map. Hopefully, 8 GB should be enough to make this map without crashing, at least not too much, since you did mention that it may exceed 8 GB depending on the settings. What I might try to do is add some of the folders (e.g. metrocity, mrk, don't use the commercial folder ofc), rename the paths in the material files, and then later on, delete all of the unused resources/assets. Would this make it too hard on myself? I know that there is a lot of resources/assets in these folders, however, even though I really should take only what I need, I never know what I might need, since one could easily forget or find new things that would be appropriate for their map (e.g. finding out that certain signs are common in someplace in Google Maps that their maps is based on). Regardless, I know that it may take a lot of time, however I'm willing to push through it. I will also try to learn more about map optimization, since my map could possibly end up being memory intensive. Other than that, I definitely appreciate your time to explain the resources in detail, and I will keep that in mind during the making of my map. I also wish you well on Los Injurus and anything going on right now.

 

Me playing here on a 710 with 2Gb DDR3...

 

Don't ever be ashamed. If you really must know, around 2018~2019 sometime, a friend of mine used a Radeon (terascale core) 5670 1gb, and it ran just fine on a 1366 (socket B Nehelam) first-generation i7 930 / 940 CPU (don't remember which one), if 30~60fps was your goal. The system featured 12gb of RAM, and was an HP workstation machine purchased 2nd hand. This was before the BIG FPS improvement we got two years ago, where speed more than doubled (we got batching and a few other draw-call reducing / cpu-bottleneck reducing improvements to the rendering engine, this map has the most batching of draw calls of any map for this game to my best knowledge).
If there's a way I can hack up the map to get better performance without everything looking terrible because of it, I will do it!!! You can be 65535% bet that I will leave no stone unturned on the performance front, short of any incomplete/WiP models (and a few of the original houses I made). I was going to power through this phase of development by cutting corners and sacrificing performance... but doing corner-cutting and rushing things made me so batty with the crashes (@#$% Maya) and stupid Windows 10, that I threw my broken mouse through the monitor I was using. It's alright though, I set up my nice new multi-screen setup (had bought screens with cash - not project funds - last year, and the broken one was 1080p and quite old / slow to respond). It's much easier to model with multiple 32" monitors. Got these for 25$ a piece when a doctor's office closed down in the next town over.
So I turned on my head and tried making the best model I could. Such as the one in the attachment below (which I still did more with today, wasn't happy with it before, I hope/think it's really finally done now).
I didn't wish to cut corners, not after doing all this work. I'm on the cusp of a new release, as soon as I get the new road textures in and pretty up the scenes I've been working on (finishing them). No one likes falling out of the map or crashing into invisible walls or being garnished by orange no-texture things galore.
Speaking of new textures and things... I purchased (avg 50% off) assets on sale, some of which including AAA-quality road textures, new buildings of varying quality, new modular buildings (they will hit the map pre-assembled, for draw call / cpu-use reasons), and other things to help me bring a 'new york' style of flair to parts of this map (or any inner-city scene really).
Whether VRAM use will go up or down I am not sure at the moment. There will be LESS textures for some things, more for others. If it's slow for some on the next update, knock texture detail down some and see if it helps (not sure if a game restart is needed). What I am working on, is getting the DOWNLOAD SIZE reduced, as that's a large hurdle.
Still 4 months or so out until we get gigabit fiber connection to the city - it's already installed to the house ahead of time. There was a large millions-of-dollars grant to improve rural internet for Tennessee and some other states, due to how bad remote schooling was found to be in 2020. The internet around here literally ground to a halt at 7:40 every week day morning for hours as all the neighborhood kids went to online schooling during Covid. When that new internet gets here, I'll have a gigabit connection and will be able to upload a lot more often, and possibly not need the moderators help as much for public updates too. It's due in May 2022, but absolutely no clue if they're held up by things down the line or not - it'll sure be nicer than satellite though & won't cost more.
Added below is a preview of things to come. The first one is the final revision to the building I spent the last two weeks on, and then 3 pictures (from store pages! important note!) of the different assets I purchased just yesterday.
IN-CASE YOU MISSED IT, THESE ARE *NOT* IN-MAP SCREENSHOTS, but are content being currently added in. Not only is it things we need, but those road textures are some of the absolute best I could find anywhere, and I was very happy to pony up for them. I will pick up an additional pack of them next month when more project funds come in, to complement the ones already purchased / complete the set.

 

Im crying

 

wait until everyone in your house goes to bed, then click the arrow press "retry"

 

Ok ill try that

 

This is a large file, a very large file, so it's quite likely that if you have intermittent packet loss (I have tons of here! My internet is a dumpster fire to put it lightly.) you will have issues downloading.
If you're on wifi, get closer to the router, or if there's a way to hook an ethernet cable to the internet connection router to some computer, use that computer to download it. If you have a friend with good internet, go to their house to download it or just copy the file from their computer, or see if you can download it at the local library onto a thumb drive. Just make sure you don't save your login details on the library computer.
Then open up your beamng user folder (google the location), and plop your file in the mods folder inside the beamng user folder. If there's no mods folder, add one. Just remember that when you want to use a new version, that old version will conflict until you remove it. Just write down where it is.

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I don't know where the new user folder has moved to (it's somewhere under the users/login name thing), but I hate it, and moved it right back. WHY THEY MOVED IT I DO NOT KNOW BUT IT'S SURE MADE A MESS OF THINGS. WHY WHY WHY??? Talk about DERPTASTIC - YEAH LET'S HIDE THE FILES FOR THIS SUPER-MODDABLE GAME SO NO ONE CAN FIND THEM TO WORK ON MODS. *lots of swearing omitted*
Sorry, but if you can't find the user folder, ask the staff where it is; and also ask them why in God's great name did they move it to some archaic location some 8 folder levels deep.
I am going to go back to whacking my head against the desk trying to user Editor 2.0.

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Since I hate the new editor with a passion (but still want to work on this!), I still have been modeling things! This one originally was a freebie from I believe blendswap's website. Great site, too, but it'll only give you 25 downloads a month (honestly plenty for most!) until you pay up or wait a month.
So I spent some hours working on it, and it's come out looking like this (below). Welcome to "HOA Purgatory Condo #1". I don't believe I will re-skin this one into different colors, but I might make an all-concrete version that's a tad more fancy - or even make a very run-down version of it for the shady part of town.
Speaking of shady part of town - yes - this will soon feature a very run-down and somewhat abandoned rust-belt-like area (think Detroit, Gary Indiana, other similar post-glory mining / steel towns)
When I get more of the abandoned resources in the map, then I can show off what it will be. When those shots go up, you'll know a release is quite near. If I am not finished with enough of my texture conversions (there's SO many...), I will use some of the older texture entries until the new ones are in (it's not so much a look difference, it's the formats of GFX and the texture entries formats, the texture entries / indices will soon not be supported as I still use the legacy - easier to read - format, so I must get these updated while I have everything ripped up).
*Even when this releases, the little section of town near the skate park on the far side of the lake from the default spawn, may have a missing building or two, and possibly temporary / mismatched / missing textures. That little town section is merely a concept using old ECA assets and had a serious FPS impact so I knew I'd need to make my own models to make this run better than Roane County did. I have better stuff to go there anyways so no worries. The road layout will likely stay the same there and be improved & more detailed.
I am also working on re-coloring the sidewalks into the typical tan color we know well from suburbia in almost any part of the country. It was said to me 'not everything is new', and that is correct.

I am most of the way (70%?) done with this next model.
So yes, the next model is pictured below in the modeler. Some textures are low-res but honestly being up against VRAM limits, if I do not have a higher-resolution version already in assets of the map, I will be leaving it for now provided it looks fine from the street. I did NOT make this model, but I am texturing it (it had some, but I am optimizing it and improving the textures, fixing the 10-foot-tall-entry doors etc). Probably has too many HVAC towers, but I digress, I will look at it when it's done and figure it out then. I even made sure to smooth the top edges of the roof-edge trim. So yes, welcome to HOA Purgatory, hope you brought a rocket launcher...

 

I assume you mean the one in "C:\Users\YOUR_NAME\AppData\Local\BeamNG.drive\0.24", in which case the only real thing that sucks is that most people don't know to check "Hidden Items" under the View pane of File Explorer. That might be what was making it so hard for you

 

They move the userfolder with every update so that the complains about broken stuff go down that isn't caused by the "terrible update" but outdated stuff in the userfolder.

There is an option in the launcher to open it, this is always a quick way to find it, independed of where it is or if it is hidden.

Other places have buttons to acess it, too, like the mods manager, and I wouldn't be surprised about one in the world editor.