WIP Beta released Barbent's Homerange (Alpha) 0.1a

Innovation and design continues to thrive on Homerange and the above images look fantastic....are these updates in the latest download for looking at?

Regarding personal note: I hope you get through the personal challenges and will be thinking of you during this time....all the best and take care my friend.

 

Still doing great things, I almost can't wait for the next update, great work Barbent.

 

I find it really amazing how you really take the time and go into depth with almost every aspect of the game to create a more immersive version of BeamNG. This is really something else and many people will appreciate it.

 

Being creative with LUA is simply part of the game for me. I just do what I enjoy, and making the map more immersive fits my playstyle in many ways. It's also a welcome change from pure landscape design .

 

Dear Diary ,
I love BeamNG with all my heart. Forever . Nevertheless, a crash managed to destroy the entire tree population. All files in the "forest" directory were completely overwritten with null values, meaning they retained their original file size, were of a more recent date, and thus managed to get into my level one backup. A moderate disaster for the map. I've now reconstructed most of it from older backups, limiting the damage to two working days, which is still manageable. Once again, I encourage all map modders to make as many backups as possible, even if they sometimes seem unnecessary or redundant; it's extremely important to have a backup timeline. One backup alone is definitely not enough. And version comparisons should also refer to the file content, not just the date and file size.

It turned out alright in the end, and I'm writing about it here, and not under Troubleshooting, because it affects the progress of the Homerange map and because such errors are virtually impossible to reproduce; it can just happen at some point.

Let's go ahead... ... ...

 

Sorry to hear that. Hope you can recover all the progress you made.

Also are you working on optimization cuz its lagging on my computer.

 

Yes, many things on the map are way more optimitzed now. But naturally while the map grows, also the load is growing. Nevertheless I get better FPS with my current working version than with the repo version. Even though there are way more assets now. I will continue to place a strong emphasis on performance.

 

Good
--- Post updated ---
Also I saw you liked some of my posts in my thread last Thursday. Thank you

 

Oh Shit. BeamNG things. Good that you got it managed somehow. I spent the effort to use git with Large Filesytem LFS extension. For long term projects it’s really a good thing.

 

Pfffff, glad you could fixed it, it would be a disaster for the commutity that this beautifull map was lost, keep up doing the good work.

 

This is great news, as I want to do a video and as of this post my old PC found it tough going to get smooth camera motion around the map...although probably mostly the fault of my low powered PC...lol

 

I unzipped the anti-ai file, dropped it straight into homerange.zip, and rezipped it. It didn't work, and just made homerange not show up in the map selection screen. Where exactly in homerange.zip do I need to drop the anti AI file?

 

Just place the content from AntiAIPicturePack.zip into the root of homerange.zip. This will replace the picture files (HomerangePreviewXX.jpg and spawn_XXXX.jpg, 18 files in total).

 

Just cruzing around Homerange and came across this scene, had to take a screenshot as the scenery and water depth look absolutely superb.

 

New impressions of sky and earth.

I've been able to work a lot more on the map in the last few days. Besides extensive landscaping, the weather system has been expanded to include a 360-degree projection screen. This is essentially a long, ring-shaped band around you, with a diameter of 12 km and a height of approximately 4 km. On this projection band, I display a cloud panorama with a resolution of 4096x256 pixels. This closes the visual gap between the clouds of the weather system above you and the horizon. While the weather above you uses various effects, which, for performance reasons, are naturally limited in their extent, the surrounding weather and far clouds are displayed far around you on this transparent screen and are dynamically adjusted in color.


Overview sketch: how it works.

The projection is animated, creating a vibrant cloudscape. The cloud band is constantly moved along with the player's camera, so you're always at the center of the weather action. Even when you're going far away from the map, for example in an aircraft, you can still experience the weather and perspective.



So the map now features a combination of a projection surface surrounding you, similar to a skybox (but open and only up to a certain altitude), and a real-time weather system above you. The screenshots are all from regions where the design work has progressed in a big scale. This means I'm fully back at BeamNG; my personal circumstances are largely resolved, and the map is getting what it needs: plenty of time, work, and, of course, lots of my attention ...

 

Wow, beautifull, great work Barbent.

 

This genuinely looks absolutely amazing. The whole concept of your weather.

I know, you created this system specifically for your map, it would still be really interesting to see this as a standalone mod that could work on other maps aswell. No idea if this is possible. It would also make sense as a paid mod tbh.
I really can´t wait to see it in action on the homerange map when the next update is out.

 

This is some pretty revolutionary stuff when it comes to beamng map modding! This was already my favourite beamng map with the alpha version. Easily my most anticipated mod of 2026. Cant wait for the release!

 

Yes, it's definitely possible to program such a weather system as a standalone mod. @MegaKnight has already done something similar. I programmed the software very specifically for this map, and it's naturally experimental. For example, the weather system assumes that certain scenery objects are present by name. For performance reasons, and also to keep the code reasonably compact, there are no tests or error checks. If the scene tree changes in an unforeseen way the sofware will crash.

I've also integrated my sound system with the weather system. And, most importantly, I've used fixed values and formulas for combining the color values and curves for the color transitions. So it's hard-coded and very precisely tailored to the Homerange map. I'll first focus on finishing the systems and the map to the point where I can release it. This release will definitely be free. Homerange first.

 

I have a question about making the map
While making an all-rounder map to fit all vehicles (I'm assuming that, looking at the progress posts) and coding specific systems, is it (how should I say...) difficult to optimise for different PCs?