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

I have two 3090s in my system at work. But it is mainly for training AI models. In my private one I have one 4090 which is faster than the two 3090s. At least for gaming.

 

SLI tech is pretty dead in the water for the most part, as it was difficult to support and code for (outside of the nvidia sources for the rendering engine). The other thing is, and this was very common, Vulkan or DirectX 12 is needed to boost performance in multi-GPU setups, because (and this has been true even since GTA IV and Fo3 / New Vegas) games are limited by the rendering engine. However, the amount gained in FPS by having dual or triple graphics boards isn't often enough to warrant spending that amount of money. It won't gain you anything in this scenario of trying to run Los Injurus. In-stead, a nice X3D AMD CPU with enough cores (for the amount of AI you wish to handle reasonably) and a half-decent 12gb/16gb GPU, and 16~24gb of system RAM is optimum for this setup (the system RAM isn't so needed anymore, as this normally uses 3.5gb up to 5gb once the level is loaded, so if budget is tight and you have 16gb or more, you have plenty FOR THIS, though 24~32gb may be more optimum for other games/software).
I'd sooner have them put it into graphics cards with upgrade-friendly sockets where we could double (or quadrouple) the graphics memory through add-on daughter-boards like we used-to do in the 80's and 90's. It wasn't until 1997 or so that graphics cards started coming in non-upgradable form more and more (lacked the VRAM or VESA expansion headers, though the VESA headers stuck around a year or two more on some models for TV cards and the like - though my DEC 1997 purchase of a Matrox Millenium II AGP 8mb on my brand-new at the time Pentium II 300 PC had both yet).

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OK so plan of attack for getting something to end-users / players / the public outside of this server itself (this server will get a post-holiday update 2nd week of January, maybe a week earlier). First off, for those who don't know, the staff kindly told me that releasing my 4.8gb Los Injurus just before Christmas would cause the entire BeamNG Drive server here to go belly-up in moments, likely for a week or more. THAT happening would bomb ratings, and likely mangle their time off. So to avoid lots of back-lash, bad reviews due to new users trying to get mods at 4kb/s due to this sucking all the bandwidth, and to not have someone from staff sitting at the server 24/7 with a fire extinguisher in hand I plan to use outside hosting. No virus sites, no spam/spyware stuff, and MEGA is out of the question. I will use more than one site, if possible, when possible.
VERSIONS:
I am working on a version with slightly downscaled textures on many of the higher 4k textures, this version is 'in the works' as I've been doing some experiments with it currently to see what I can downscale, and what I need to leave alone as it'll make things difficult to see. This should knock a good 1GB off the download size, and be good for users with 8GB and smaller graphics cards. Look, I absolutely hate blurry mud textures as much as anyone who lived through the Quake and Doom era, but if this makes it more accessible to those with borderline current graphics cards, or lower-cost models, than this is what I SHOULD be doing.
That said, 2GB of this weight is merely in the models in the Buildings folder and the MRK folder (MRK is the Modular Road Kit that gives you roads, rails, highway, and misc bits like tunnels, bridges / bridge supports, sea-port walls, promenade pieces with railing, sound barriers and such). This ends up not taking as much in video memory as these get compressed in cache before / as they're loaded in (which is why first load takes longer). There's much more than just buildings and roads though. Still, on to the next bit.
HOWEVER, I am also going to release a TEST version for folks, that I would like to know if it would work or not, which is a pre-cached version of the level. If I can get this to work on my end, and I can get it to work on a new / clean installation, I am going to try and release it. These models are already in compressed form that the game generates, and thus you'd not have to wait the extra two minutes during loading the first-time around. This is separate from the down-scaled texture version. Expect a tester release for supporters that's a pre-cached version. This would be a one-off if there's any problems with it, but if there is enough demand, there could be ones like it in the future. There's little savings in the ZIP file size, but there's loading time to be saved. This isn't high priority and could be difficult to use resources from, so it's not practical considering this mod is largely to provide end-users with modular road bits to build their own cities with (see what I'm doing here? We all love a city map, so be the enabler why don't we?).
THERE WILL ALSO BE A MERE BUG-FIX VERSION RC3 without the additional unnecessary unused resources included, to reduce the download size & of-course size-on-disk. This is likely the version y'all will get (with or without the unused resources removed, depending on time constraints) on public servers. Plus who doesn't love an extra free GB or more of disk space on your SSD?
The BeamNG servers, by the time this gets hosted (10~14 days away?) will get the version with unused resources removed as to remove as much load as possible from the BeamNG server.
Versions will be clearly labeled, with appropriate video card requirements, should they be different than what we've come to know and love (or hate) from Los Injurus.
Regardless, as always, there will be a version of Los Injurus with the complete MRK available at any time if you're a supporter; but I'd also like to put a version of the MRK with the surplus pieces available so they can always be available to users who need it to build their own city level.

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So DO know that I'm working hard at trying to get new more efficient versions of Los Injurus to YOU in the near future. Yes, I will have public links up on/during, or before Christmas day. They WILL NOT BE pointing to this server, they will be pointing to outside mod hosting sites, and will be in use until their services are no longer needed and the file is hosted here (or I might leave them up, who knows, depends on demand load here).
I've backed up the level after fixing the last of the reported bugs, and will be reducing the unused resources starting now. The resource-reduced version at first will not have downscaled textures. The new version released after the resource reduction will have the down-scaled textures. If I have time, I will release a cache-only version but this is currently being tabled while I check compatibility and if it even works - plus it could break when 0.35 comes out in whatever amount of months it takes them to release it. So if you don't see this cache-only version, you'll know that it was fraught with issues and was not worth releasing or maintaining a version like this.
Other than that, I hope y'all get all the goodies and material possessions your hearts desire for Christmas, and get to most importantly spend some good time with family over a good meal.
Other than that, I don't have too much else to say other than have fun and look for me to release something to the public very soon. All bugs are fixed, just a little optimization to do.
POST-RELEASE work-flow will be on Smart traffic lights, fueling scripts for the service stations, and parked traffic vehicle support. I would like to have these supported by the end of January at the absolute latest, though you'll have to be a supporter to get these prior to the next public release (public release will be more often than yearly, shame on me for most of that, but the public repo was broken in the late summer / early fall which nixed that release entirely).
--I think that's everything!
-The Bob
P.S. If there's still some bug somewhere I've missed, derp, you can still send in bug reports.

 

Thanks for the update. Just want to double check, are you aware of this tool?

https://www.beamng.com/threads/beamng-tool-for-map-creators-updated-2024-06-02.89058/

https://github.com/alexkleinwaechter/BeamNG_LevelCleanUp

however, if you need to keep copies of old vanilla assets in the map zip, this could remove/break those? e.g, 0.34 changed the trees on East Coast, which broke them on maps which referenced them as links, rather than copying them out.

 

Completely agree that multi gpu is dead for games. I don’t know one game which supports it nowadays. For render jobs and ai model calculations a second card adds up 75% performance. 25 are lost as overhead for dualcard management.

 

Three very good maps that I have are affected by this including High Force UK, and awash in NO TEXTUREs. The BeamNG devs should really be more mindful of things like this; I can't imagine it would be particularly hard to tally which vanilla assets are referenced in mods, either via telemetry or a script that automatically downloads maps from the repo and forums. Then, every time they want to remove or update a material or mesh in a vanilla map, they could check it against the list, and if it's in one or more particularly popular mods, leave it in temporarily and give modmakers at least another version to replace the deprecated asset with the new one before fully removing it from the game.

 

This only uses linked assets that are here on the version they're available, which is 0.33 and 0.34. The rest of the assets are included in the level data, including ALL the foliage (every single thing!). This will change in the future, but for now, the stuff is working, and is staying working. The only thing that broke in 0.34 is something that had broken in 0.33 that I thought I had fixed, but apparently didn't (it is fixed now, surely).
Thank-you for the word of warning, however. It's appreciated.
Yes, I am aware of level clean-up. I will be working with it prior to putting it on the server HERE. The next public version of the level won't have the clean-up run, but it's a temporary version that'll be able to reach the public until a slightly more space-efficient (and bandwidth efficient!) version hits THESE servers. Other than the resource pruning, the version available on THIS server in JAN 2025 will be otherwise unchanged compared to what's on other hosting sites later, unless there's some serious bugs that crop up between uploading the two versions.

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Got this working, the 3-lane portion FINALLY works properly. Now cars can switch between all three lanes where it wasn't working right and they previously tried to make 4 lanes out of 3 for some stupid reason.
The fix ended up being: Disable Auto-lanes check-box. Set lanes right to 3, set lanes left 0 (otherwise one-way will break!). Sheesh. Don't ask how I figured this out. Thanks to a hint from @Car_Killer I think it was who pointed me in the right direction. Thanks!

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Fixed the 'under construction in 2023' sign that I kept forgetting to fix. Now says EVENTUALLY...
Fixed issue with cars not driving properly near the huge dam. Or so I hope.
Added more detail to two areas today, as a bit of a bonus!

Laned the intersection here on one of the beach-front areas (this one is near the island airstrip / base thing).
Added cross slope to the roads here.
Added sidewalks and back-filled against the backs of the sidewalks.
Added AI here but it's not really tested and slightly imperfect. They won't use left turn lanes for example and might go straight out of a right-turn-only lane.

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Added road closed signs and asphalt trim texture here on the below-shot.

You can feel free to ignore the signs and just blast clean off that huge dirt pile.
That's why it's there! I hope you've done that already as it's been there even for the last public version. If not, you know about it now, so be on the look-out for those huge piles seemingly placed sporadically around the level, for that reason usually (and a bit of immersion).

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Finished the grocery store lot for LINE CITY.
Finished the AI paths here, too. Hope it works well, didn't test it much any.
Adjusted all AI paths in intersection in last shot, it now has all it's turns and they should follow lane direction normally.
Upgraded some of the texturing here. I hope you like it, as it's more like what I've been doing lately with the textures.
Added traffic light poles to several intersections. There's no signal heads yet, because I have to get the traffic lights themselves in when they're scripted up. Hopefully that doesn't involve taking all my poles down.
Added signs for the Taco Hell restaurant.
Added signs for the BIG WONG Chinese fast-food store and finished the lot.
Lots of curbing and trees added here. Gives it a little more fit and finish.
Added two signs to the stores on the strip mall across the road, but didn't really have time to mess with it, short of added some detail to the travel lanes there.

This will be uploaded hopefully by mid/late afternoon on Christmas day.
The links will be posted below this post. I just hope that I can get a little testing done first. If it's around dinner time, don't hate me too badly. Doing the best I can and I want this release to be GREAT, and not half-baked and half-broken.
Again, to be clear, it'll be on an outside public server. Supporters will get a notification too!
Sadly, it's 0400 hours on Christmas morning, I've had my fill being up all night, I can't do any more.
Will test some later today and will do my best to get something working out to y'all today. Shouldn't be an issue.
Next release, Public Release Candidate (DEC 2024 release candidate 3), hopefully up by 1600 hours on 12/25 (today), Central time USA. It needs no other changes.
--ZZZZZ!!! I should have been sleeping hours ago.
-The Bob
Happy Holidays / Merry Christmas, and all that stuffs.
Hope you get all the material stuffs you want, hope none of it is no-textured, and hope the food and family company is great. Get the in-laws hopelessly plastered if they get too annoying, or give them the 'special' brownies the teenagers made.

 

I am posting to say Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays to all.
I just finished prepping and uploading the file to ModDB, where you will be able to download it once it's authorized here:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/los-injurus-2024-public-release-rc3
4.85GB in size and thus you should be able to get it when it authorizes in the next 24 hours. I don't know when that will exactly be, but keep me posted if you still are not able to get it by close-of-business on Thursday. Don't know why there's an authorization delay, but I didn't have one the last time I uploaded something to their site. Can't fix that though, just have to wait this one out.
Just wanted to post and let all know that this has been done.
--Cheers!

If you absolutely, positively cannot wait, you may go here for the one-week-old RC2 version, but beware there may be a bug or two, and you will miss any of the details / finessing that I've done over the last few days / week (including one spot with 'surprise invisible pole' in one tiny spot along the highway just past a tunnel exit).
https://www.moddb.com/games/beamng/addons/los-injurus-12-2024-release-candidate
IF YOU GET THIS, PLEASE MAKE SURE NOT TO HAVE A DUPLICATE VERSION IN YOUR MODS FOLDERS! IF YOU HAVE MORE THAN ONE VERSION YOU WILL HAVE LOTS OF SOMETHING AND THAT IS PROBLEMS. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN BUT IT WILL NOT BE GOOD, AND IS PROBABLY WORSE THAN GETTING SAT UPON!
DUE TO THE SITE, FILE NAMES MAY NOT BE EXACTLY THE SAME, BE CAREFUL!
If you don't know how to install mods manually, it goes in the mods folder in your user folder, but make sure again you only have ONE copy / version of Los Injurus at a time. More is "NOT GOODERER"! Google the default folder path of your user folder (as I use the 'old' location one on mine for simplicity of not having it buried under the default users/USERNAMEHERE/appdata/local folder, which I think is where it normally defaults to, but this could be off, so if it's not there, search for the info or look for beamng.log file under c:\USERS folder, and put Los Injurus ZIP in a folder 0.34\mods in there).

EDIT: Yes, lovely, 3 lanes via AI is WORKING WONDERFULLY. I think there's another section of the highway that might be broken with that but it's on the other side of the level, and I'll work on it at some other point as it needs some re-freshening up and details.

Don't bother spawning more than 20 vehicles on the highway though, otherwise you're just going to get a traffic jam. Go ahead and spawn more but I won't be responsible for you having spent a ton on your CPU to get this fancy CPU to run all this AI vehicle load, running BeamNG Drive on it with Los Injurus, and after all that you are rewarded with GRID-LOCK because you spawned 30+ vehicles. Though, even my 5+ year old 3950x here, while long in the tooth, can and will happily give playable FPS with that many. Realistically you don't need more than an 8-core chip with this software though as more vehicles than an 8-core can handle just makes gridlock as I said.

 

Amazing work, as always, but I have found one bug so far - the train always jumps the tracks at this point here:

Also, this multi-level carpark is going to be the starting point for the Chickenball Run in case you want to give it a name:

 

Downloaded it a few hours ago from one of your alternative mod website links, Loving it so far.

 

There's also another section down the line causing derailments.


Come to think of it, after further travel down the tracks, they don't work very well in a few spots.

 

Hey, thanks for the hard work on your updates!

Apologies for going off-topic, but you might find it easier to read the above posts with this tweak to make the forums full-width.

Note: this is not a personal dig in any way.

 

Yeah there's more than a few spots where the trains act like they ate jumping jacks.
I really have to get a solid train mod and test it next time I plan on making a public release. The tracks are something I don't really test often but evidently people use them more than I realized.
Thanks for the report!

 

You're welcome, thanks for a great map.

The one shown in the image from passengerpigeon acts like there's no collision, some act like there's something on the tracks. If you'd rather not have to deal with setting up a train you could always use Universal train wheels

 

I feel like you should've kept it the way it was. After all, it would be accurate to real life construction projects!

 

Yeah, the last time I tried to setup a train I had to message the mod creator (luckily I have the majority of GOOD mod makers on instant message things, for good reason!) and ask OK NOW HOW DO I MAKE IT GO WITHOUT CRASHING INTO IT!?
So yeah, there was some to-do, trying to get it up and going. Some would go without too much effort, though. But yeah, the tracks are implemented, just not refined that well. I don't know how much is due to imprecision or how much is due to my tom-foolery of not doing a great job especially when first building them... probably more of the latter as a lot of that imprecision was left in Roane County for good reason.
I will get collision helper objects out when needed. There may be issues with pieces not having proper collision, this sometimes happens and strange things happen in-game with some objects sometimes, but it's not unavoidable. It can be worked-around or pieces swapped when needed if they don't work for a specific spot.
ALL track objects are part of the forest brush, however, beware with the tunnels, as those can be difficult to move around. The movement gizmo/handle should always be either just to one side of the object, or to the center of mass (or at/near one end center-of-mass). So if you get sick of waiting (eternally sometimes it seems) for me to fix the tracks and what-not, you can try and scoot things around in it. Also, if you can't seem to adjust something perfectly, hold CTRL while rotating (but not moving) to fine-tune rotating if needed, or enter the coordinates manually after the unit is selected. You'll get the hang of how the coordinates work with testing it out and hitting CTRL+Z to undo if needed (I think CTRL+Y might be re-do if you undo too far but check on the menu, you usually also hear an audio chime if you undo or redo successfully while the application is in-focus / active).
If you have a specific spot where there's no collision, let me know on that. Maybe I screwed something up! If that's the case I'll re-export the affected model and make sure that it's fixed and send the model out for you to drop in the .zip file's MRK folder and fix the level permanently (you may have to re-gen cache but I don't believe that affect collision, I could be wrong here!). Collision for anything is always the sub-model COLMESH_1 object inside the main object for those handy with the 3D-model/mesh object editors like Blender, Maya, or *Houdini.
Remember, saving the changes of the level will cause them to override the changes I make in future versions, so keep this in mind and remove your user/0.34/levels/losinjurus folder when you want to remove those and get a new version of the level to work/play nicely. Confusing the game with different versions can cause odd or crashy (to desktop) things to happen. This is just a reminder, though, as not everyone knows this.
Also, if there's any screw-ups on the AI roads (on road vehicles) that you fix ones-self, remove all vehicles from play except your's, hit CTRL+L to re-load the lua for the level, and regen all the AI routes for navigation, and then re-add AI vehicles. Just thought I'd add that bit. Don't hit CTRL+L with AI vehicles in play, bad things can happen (less-so now since I've been moaning to the staff about it since they were introduced and I use CTRL+L a LOT in dev-process of messing up the AI).
*Houdini has a free indie license on their site, if you're interested in getting into 3D modeling. Blender also is free all the time, if you find you won't be working on anything serious and don't need day-0 support responses which paid software provides (which is why I usually use paid software, though I have a free year of Maya LT left since they discontinued it, I believe, so I will keep using it as long as humanly possible before going to another, to keep costs down). Don't know what they'll replace Maya LT with, but I hope it's decent and not as full of JANK as I found Blender to be and Maya LT had at times. I like Autodesk software in a general sense, but still, it can be pricey - though I'm not against paying 50$ a month (USD) to get both Maya and 3DMAX on here per month. Just beware buying Houdini on Steam as it can cause goofy issues trying to install add-ons for it, due to non-standard install paths used for the Steam version. In-fact, I think you can still get it free off the web-site if you qualify or are just using it to get your feet wet in the industry (or for game mods).
So despite me totally going off on a tangent that would absolutely impress those with a masters in ADHD (despite me being tested and being the ONLY person in my family to *NOT* have it at all, though my sanity does suffer from having to deal with everyone else - for example - no one pays attention if I meet up with them to bowl - and they're all - except for one - adults, and they still get a double-helping of "OOOH SHINY!" while I/whomever regret paying by-the-hour for the lane), I hope some of this helps someone somewhere. "THE PINS ARE OVER THERE @#$%!!!" *points* The Bob loves his relatives, yes certainly, but sometimes questions tolerating them voluntarily as if The Bob knows one thing, sanity is a limited/finite and valuable resource.

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Remember folks, if you missed the CHRISTMAS DAY RELEASE PUBLIC (improvised) VERSION, you can get RC-3 version of DEC 2024 down here. This is the same version/post I made Wednesday afternoon.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/los-inju.../downloads/bob-city-map-alpha-patreon-preview
Please make sure to only have ONE version of Los Injurus, as RC2 didn't share the file name.
--So I hope y'all enjoy the rest of your holiday!
-The Bob
If there are still other bugs unreported, or don't seem to be on the last two pages here, you can still feel free to report them while I work on the resource-optimized version that's a smaller download for the BeamNG official servers to host. If there's any big changes between that version and RC3, I will be sure to clearly list them! Other than working on resource optimization (and down-scaling some of the MONSTER sized textures), I won't likely be putting heavy detail into this or script-work until I get the release out on this official mods server here (for the sake of sanity, and continuity, keeping track of things / not chasing bugs fixed between versions and so-forth).
As is usually the case, any and all links contained in my posts are clearly to be expected SAFE FOR WORK, however commentary of others cannot always be controlled, but I did the leg-work making sure things stay decent for you loyal folks.
If you got Wednesday's version, you needn't download it again here. This is just for those who missed it or were passed-out drunk (or other) over the Holiday. This is still Wednesday's version. I hope I listed that enough times.

 

It seems to be more than a few & getting things set back up to try & find them is maddening. I did manage to grab another spot but it takes so long to even get a car aligned on the tracks it's driving me nuts.



That spot I was referring to before behaves the same. I'd just say the tracks are not suitable for use at this time.

 

Okay, it looks like they need a whole lot of work. Maybe I can figure out how to change the models of the train wheels to they stay on the tracks better somehow in the future.
That said, it's going to be a bit before I can get to fixing the track models. There may be issues with the way the bending works in the modeler and it may have caused issues. However, I have run a train down them (years ago!) when it was two different sections on each side of the lake, and it worked fine. I wonder what happened, if changes to the physics engine caused it to fail?
I will look into it and talk with the staff about it, if there's a better way to approach this or if I need to truly do a ton of work to fix this or if it's something simple I'm overlooking.
I will put this on the to-do list just after the scripting changes for the smart traffic lights, night lighting, parked vehicles, fueling stations scripted, AND the resource-reduction stuff.
I think NEXT WEEK we might see a version of Los Injurus hit the BeamNG servers, hopefully, it's the right one! (shouldn't be an issue, so don't worry about that, I just had 3 betas so far and they've all had a few little issues here or there - which I hopped right on to fix, but it's getting BETTER with less surprise collision kaboom or road gfx priority issues etc).
You have my full apologies with the track testing. Yes it's a super pain to get things aligned. Do it at one of those crossings. Due to the collision, if you have decent clearance, those level crossings should cause the wheels to fall into the track easier.
Those crossings will get changed soon so they're not so drastic. Just so that's known. It was brought up 2 years or so ago and I haven't got it nicked yet, but it's on the to-do list before spring (hopefully!).
I'm just in so far over my head, that's the only thing I am asking is that people test stuff out, try to break things, try to get stuck etc (sometimes the tops of raised highway barriers will eat you near the default spawn, but I will get that nicked eventually too for the most part, I've switched over to proper barriers for most stuff because of this).
You get free (for the public version access) to a huge game-world here, in exchange for bug reports if things go wrong (and of-course they do).
As a result, you get an even better game world to mess about in by way of updates, and I get better at game-world development through experience and feedback ANDDDD hopefully don't screw stuff up so much in the future (hopefully).
Thank-you for all you do in testing. I know it's a pain in the butt, but I will get onto the track issues by February at the latest. I am sorry it's not sooner but people really really want the newer game-engine features put in here.
This project is huge. It's a mess, out-right. So is the desk I work at. But a messy desk IS a busy desk. That said, I can manage it, with a little help here or there. Surely I took on way too much duty here and am super-far in over my head. But I love every minute of working on it. Hopefully I don't blow up the damn computer by BeamNG'ing it to death since I don't really want a new one (this is getting a little pokey at 5.5 years old) as this one is STILL doing the job and has everything set the way I want it... I will happily keep on keeping on over here bringing more Los Injurus goodness as much as possible.
Though don't get too mad if I waste some hours or an evening here or there playing original SimCity (still have SNES copy, plus it's also Micropolis on the MS store), or Super Metroid (etc) if only for sanity sake. New games are too complicated so I don't get into those too much. I've had jobs in the past that are less complicated for sure. If I want something complicated, I need look no further than my own project. There's always something to do, and for that I am eternally grateful. This is my goal, just as everyone needs goals in life, to finish Los Injurus, even if it eats my sanity sometimes (as is sometimes reflected in posts, I get my moments like any other).
Don't push yourself past the limit to find bugs, but when you don't have too much pressing you to do, you can always go hunt for some and report back. I do value and use bug reports. It's some of the best feedback I can get short of having videos of people exploring the level on youtube (that shows me bugs, player interaction, level flow which is very important, what people like a lot, don't like, improvised jumps, what people try to do etc). Just know what you do is appreciated over here, and I'm sure by others.

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I have a good solid 3~4 days coming up where I'll be stuck in the house. So expect some results showing up here over it on the features I wanted to add.
--That is all for right now, I hope. Otherwise I missed something again, but that'd be far from 'news', surely. "I are human."
-The Bob
NOTE: I might be able to extend collision of the outside of the rail out, if the vehicle often sinks into the track's top surface, that'd be a hack-job but it would fix THAT. That's not my mistake per-se, but is a game engine limitation with collision on narrow surfaces, especially when going faster.

 

You're welcome. Don't worry too much about it, it's just something I decided to check out based on the other report & decided to share what I found more as a heads up so it can be checked out when you have time.

I know I, as well as many others, appreciate all of the work you do. For me especially with the little things like road rot dips, sewer grates & the random road wear texturing.

Side note, any news on Roanne County? People are curious, of course no answer/update is always fine.

 

Well, first off, good news for Roane County. While I never did get the terrain working correctly 100%, I got it some 50% working before giving up out of frustration alone, and writing to the staff saying "it [the terrain] was just too difficult to work with to be practical", and that "I am going absolutely maniacal over here trying to make heads or tails of this very restrictive system" and also that "I had never seen something so finicky in even non-moddable games for consoles" or something along those lines (which was the whole truth and nothing but).
So they've relaxed the requirements of the terrain a bit, allowing it to pull files out of folders other than the art/terrains folder, such as sharing some road texture files without needing a separate copy for it, and keeping things simpler (If I move the files to the terrains folder, it can still work as a decal or mesh texture but my pathing will break, thus no texture, until I change things, so it creates work, especially if it's referenced in more than one texture index in more than one folder - such as for building parking-lots in MRK stuff), it also seems a lot less picky about formatting, now being able to use direct-draw surfaces and not solely PNG (yes it will work, it will preview a bit dark in the material library, but will be fine on the terrain in-game, yes I found both out by accident because I'm stupid, but stupid me learns a lot along my blundering way, hence the name). In-fact, I think I'd know about 10~20% as much as I do now if I didn't screw so much stuff up - so yeah - I'm an idiot, but a knowledgeable one at that - so glass half full amirite?
Editing a PNG and saving it into the terrains folder (if you're using PNG like a good boy), while the game is minimized, will cause an asset de-sync and a CTD, so save first, folks.
Editing a DirectDraw Surface and saving it into the terrains folder, while the game is minimized, will NOT crash it as drivers natively use DirectDraw Surface files.
This is because the game creates a cached DirectDraw Surface file for TERRAIN PNG's internally, and the process of overwriting this isn't as easy as the native DDS swap.
I do NOT know if there's still size requirements between different layers on the new-format for terrain textures, but regardless, I am going to sink some time into it soon (before Spring? not 100% sure but it's in the current work-queue).
In 0.32 and 0.33, working with the terrain utterly and totally SUCKED.
In 0.34 (and hopefully future versions!), it's much, much, MUCH easier. Hooray! THAT, THAT THERE, is the good news!
Now maybe I can fix that stupid mess that is Roane County. Poor Roane County. Neglected yes, but far from un-loved.
I'm just sorry it's gotten to the state it's currently in. Look if I can't fix it, I'll be open to options of other folks maybe lending a helping hand with it, but let's see where I get with it first.

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So speaking of TERRAIN stuff. I've actually been testing it out, as I bumbled into messing with terrain in Los Injurus because I wasn't happy with the other recently-fixed Asphalt layers. I believe there's a 32-layer limit yes, but now I'm making it so that the asphalt layers will match properly now and can be used better. It's not totally done, but it's certainly getting there! On this, any news is GOOD news, because some of them looked pretty trashy.
Some of these even required a solid hour/two hours or more of work on just one graphic, because I wasn't spending 15~35$ for a texture membership to get a matching non-destroyed asphalt graphic to the ones I have which were more derelict. My graphics came from several sources - free and paid - but didn't match even remotely so in some cases.
Now several of them do!

Behold, four beautifully cohesive matching but differing asphalt graphics, which may be used interchangably for more random asphalt looks without decals! Any decals added thus could be extra bonus details (of course add some in, because yes that will make it look AAA quality and not made-in-a-collapsed-shed quality). The graphic to the right is the standard graphic used for grey asphalt which is cracked and broken to many pieces (usually the case with neglect/age and especially subsidence / too much truck traffic for the road foundation materials). Now, there's a solid grey asphalt (bottom left) that I was able to color-match to the others, a matching less-cracked graphic (top right) which I've had for some time but never worked, and a variation with large cracks (top left) which I spent a very long time on also - which was to another set of asphalt graphics but I selectively kept the cracks through a WHOLE LOT of time involved with texture layering and the eraser button (while masking can work, it doesn't work well when what you want to keep is similar color/tone to what you need to get rid of, so doing by-hand it is then!).
To match this will also be a cracks graphic where the road is more broken up with larger, deeper cracks, also which will be color-matched to this set if I can help it (but will continue to be available in other colors in the roads folder). The material is shown below in decal-road form where the asphalt meets the bridge here:

On the right side of the bridge here, where the road enters the bridge, there's cracking-details that have been added (along with 3 hours worth of other detail nearby) here, and that graphic will be the basis for the new graphic that will be available as a terrain layer.

While still a bit repetitive here, the graphic above has been VASTLY improved! It really looks 'alive' and 'pops' now. Definitely looks like old, bleached, weathered (and very neglected) asphalt. If it just makes you want to get some 5-gal buckets of seal coating out and a stiff broom, congrats on being a happy home-owner. I know it does that to me. But this happened more by accident as I was trying to check color on this graphic and trying to get it to look a little less boring, and when this came up I said WOW and kept it

Added more details such as storm sewer inlets (drains, mostly near intersections), more patches, fixed graphic bugs where spare gfx where erroneously generated under cross-walks etc. Also, set proper stop-bar width and wear-patterns for them and the crosswalks at intersections where it wasn't set right. A bunch of detail (plants & planter boxes) to one of the intersections pictured above, and a little bit shown in the last picture.

Above, this shows the new detail added here. The only decals are the parts where the old asphalt lot has been dug up for curbing replacement and storm-sewer infrastructure replacement (and obviously, the white paint is decals also). The rest shows the new terrain layers in action. While not 100% what I wanted, it's 95% of the way there, and adding in that final 5th graphic (provided I can get it to match well enough) will be the icing on the cake - but even if I fail that, this will still look much better than it did. Notice how it's not nearly as 'splotchy' or otherwise having odd light/dark spots like the road near to the 'Crashboompunk' spawn has in the current DEC 2024 release for RC2 and RC3 - and expect that to be fixed somewhat (or entirely) in the next release. That's a bug that I was working on removing, or more of an imperfection, rather.
When I get this terrain sorted, it's onward to the scripted fueling stations & traffic signals first and foremost. Those features are VERY sorely needed AND highest requested.
So do know THE BOB has been busy messing about with this, and has been up to something good (VS wasting time trying to take over the world again).
--That is all for right now.
-The Bob
P.S. If it wasn't clear, yes Roane County will get fixed, that's a definite; but the 'when' part is what's up in the air. I'd like to get traffic lights and fueling stations working on Los Injurus before I do that. At-least with working with Los Injurus, I know that the terrain is a bit less of an obstacle now when I go to do that for Roane County.
EDIT:
This is the texture I haven't got to match yet, it's too bright and doesn't have the color of the others. It will, if I have anything to say about it.

Guess we'll find this out in the next episode. Don't touch that dial!
Another EDIT:
Got it!

Much better, now you don't have to sit around for an hour messing with the rabbit ears on the set hoping to catch tomorrow's episode. (wonders quietly to self if anyone even knows what rabbit ears have to do with a television set, anymore? joke was probably lost on 99% of folks, but kudos if that's not you)
Yet Another EDIT:
Splotchy mess is gone!

I'm so happy this turned out swell. It's nice when things actually DO work out for a change, in-stead of me spending half the night trying to get it working, and the other half of the night submitting bug reports and saying lots of mean things to the poor members of the staff who end up receiving it. If I wasn't so good at breaking things and being a blithering idiot finding ever-crazier ways of completely CTD'ing the game-engine, they'd have probably ban-hammered me LONG ago. Thankfully, they're either patient as saints, or have mostly all raised a bunch of angry kids already (something which I admittedly might not be far from seeming like, after spending hours/days trying to get something to work that otherwise should work, but doesn't, to the point where I pretty much melt down / explode) and are used to it. Well God Bless them. I hope they keep that '10' attribute in social skills and the buff to 'idiot tolerance' for the rest of their long lives.
All changes above will be in the resource-reduced version that will get uploaded at some point. One of these days. Likely middle of next week, I need the weekend to work on that and I'll likely be busy hurting myself tomorrow trying to do something else. I'll make sure to back this up tonight before I break anything else.