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

So, modeling the school is done, will have pictures in the next day or two as I have to re-size it - I made it a bit too long - OOPS. D'oh! Other than that 10-minute resize operation, it fits just fine & looks great. Maya was making me nuts so I put off the resize operation until tomorrow. Should have more patience then and not want to kill the computer. Stupid Technology!

 

two ideas:
1. airport with runway that ends in the sea (so i can throw the caldera down it)
2. area that looks italian (little italy, maybe?) so the piccolina has a place to call home

 

Re: whether to have a bridge across the lake or let it be an unfinished construction project.

If it makes the freeway more "loopable", i.e. provides more ways to drive on the freeway indefinitely without ever touching a surface street, then I say do it. For... purposes.

 

The runway's ends will both be bordering the ocean, as it's an island that surrounded by water, the runway will be perpendicular to the access road (bridge) that goes to the island.
I don't know that I will have an area that looks like Italy, though there will be much that looks like California and a little that looks like some Rust-Belt areas of the US North / North-east. Nothing is ruled out of-course, but the map is quite large thus far.
--- Post updated ---

There will entirely be an unfinished large bridge in the map. It will have jump-able gaps but nothing too large to cross and possibly some alternatives to the jumping if it's realistic. Why? Well doesn't every town have some unfinished bridge somewhere? I was thinking about this today and it's just too awesome NOT to have it in the map.
The inner and outer loop freeways were designed, as was Nevada Interstate, from the ground up as a loop-able circuit (or circuits in this map's case) so that the fun never ends. You should never reach the end of the road - and the fun - as I'd like to say. Look at many games like GTA's for example - there's lots to learn and a lot they got right (and some things they did not, admittedly), about the map-flow. What usually prevails is a looping highway or significant wide surface avenue that allows general convenient access to the whole map, or most of it's common portions. This provides great flow and I am totally not going to miss this opportunity especially with the 44 miles of highway (If I am correct!) already in the map, as it suits perfect to both realism and racing.

 

This building ended up having to be shortened a bit in one direction, was just about perfect in the other. A bit of touching up on some UV's around the roof at some point (they don't really stick out) and it'll be 100% perfect. I am hazarding a guess here but I'd say around 20~25 draw calls close up, at most. Much of the UV's are duplicates and will batch wonderfully. The LOD has even more of the UV's linked and so will be around 10~15 draw calls only. It will eventually go to billboard rendering when it's far enough away. Considering it takes up most of the block, that's pretty darn good (you could render 200 city blocks of this school - even if they did not batch render, and only then around 180~200 objects - if they were ALL different - would it start to slow down!).
So, Los Injurus now has a proper school. There's actually the non-fitted (not shortened) version across the map somewhere, it's not final where it's put but it's close. That one's just a bit larger but the lot isn't even started yet for it.
So many things to make yet but it feels great to see it done and in place. I am just getting to the part where I can start throwing out buildings quicker now by re-using pieces of others I've already made as I need them (that's how it's done, not every building needs to be made from scratch). This took a little longer as planned but it definitely shows / was worth it.

Now tonight / tomorrow evening (provided I don't have a migraine) I can start making that military base and the bridge going to it will be updated, too. That will take UP TO a week to 10 days, max. Well hopefully not more. I have the textures for everything but the runway already, so I will be definitely eager to hear some feedback on the base once pictures start going up on it. Once that's done and in, I can package this up as the next Beta and release it - I'd like to have it out before the 10~11th at the latest. After that it's time to fix up Roane County - which will benefit from new bridges from this map - all of which is made possible by the kind folks who joined this map's Patreon. Thanks!
If it feels like it will take longer than planned to make the base, I will knock off progress wherever it is around the 10th or so, and package the beta up as-is. The runway should be the first thing to get in, so no worries there for the would-be pilots in all of us.
--Cheers!

 

https://europlay.eu/en/product/slide-osaurus/

It is not proper without that

 

Well I dunno if that will make it in or not, if it does it would likely be later on. If I make something like that, it's got to be big/wide enough for cars to go on so that it contributes to the map.
In some other not-quite-map news...
Got my back straightened out at the Chiropractor and had lots of electricity run through it, the pain has been knocked down some. It's still a burning aching mess, but it's a little more tolerable. Let's hope this signifies that I will be better off in the future. It's not cheap, but it's 100% required any more as I am tired of writhing in hopeless agony.

Will be starting work on some new models (mostly stuff for the base) & will be adding another block or two of homes to the map over this weekend.

 

Working on the island base now. Decided to make a lot more of it than originally planned inside the BeamNG editor vs making a model for the ENTIRE thing, as with decal roads and no 4096 object limit, it gives me a lot more flexibility as a mapper than there used to be.
Runway numbers I am coming up with here are as follows for size:
7000ft / 2133 meter length. 200ft / 61 meter width, for the runway size. This is mostly to service fighter jets, cargo aircraft, and other small and medium size aircraft as need arises.
There will be a left and a right runway, likely marked 36 as the heading, either 36L and 36R, or 35 and 36. I don't have more than 3000 feet across in the widest area to make a crossing runway, so they must be adjacent.

--Let me know if there's any other requests here that you'd like for the MILITARY BASE RUNWAYS, and if it's going to be long enough / wide enough to suit needs. The figures given do NOT include potential overshoot areas, just merely including the PAVED portions except 'blast pads' that will be on what I believe is the north end. The south end borders the map edge, so I will build modular retaining walls there vs shore as there's not enough room to blend the terrain very nicely as I'd rather have it.
RUNWAY MARKINGS will be standard fare as US airports go, with typical threshold, touchdown, center-lines, and runway designation markings on the runway itself. I am using Wiki to get the skinny on how to build a nice realistic runway. For consistency sake, the civilian airport and the military base air field will have the same markings, but not the same runway numbers (obviously).
THIS IS NOT THE CIVILIAN / CITY AIRPORT, this is the one going on 'HEH' island that has access via the blocked-off old-style bridge (the island has just doubled in size magically, and the bridge *should* be replaced by the time this is done and up for beta.). Just put that for clarification.
Base buildings will be similar in style to the way the school is built, except likely out of brick vs stucco. There will be one large main building, several barracks rows OR possibly a small town with many close-built houses, I haven't decided entirely on this yet, I may use townhouses here as they fit a lot of house into not a whole-lot of space. I will be designing the operational parts of the base before the residential portions of the base as that IS how it's done, normally, and plus the residential portions can be put kind-of where-ever. Obviously the base won't be 100% fully populated and decorated by the first beta that includes it (a week from now), but a good bit of function should be in by then certainly.
Give me some feedback on what you would or wouldn't like to see, and anything you'd like to be sure is included.

Included is a screenshot of a section of runway, this is very early on. Maybe not WIP for so much longer though. That tiny little orange speck on the left of the shot is the car. Runway is just shy of 1.4 miles long, end to end of pavement, and about 200 feet wide. Surely it's wider than many runways out there, but in a simulation, I am sure the extra room will be welcomed.

--That is all I have for now.

 

It's almost like the Lake Ponchatrain bridge, the big long expressway built in a relatively shallow body of water in Louisiana USA... except, I've already crossed 70% of it here.

The loop above is fully banked and 97.625% perfectly smoothed. There's a few imperfections to iron out, though I may leave a few for realism. % is approximate...results may vary.
The bridge is so long actually, that it doesn't even show up entirely when you're at either far end of it. It is actually there though, the pillars are not quite yet in. The bridge is roughly 0.7 miles long. The end of the expressway is made into a loop, from which you will be able to access the base housing, or the base itself. A road will run underneath the close side of this bridge (where the black colored road runs right now, which will be gone), this is where the base housing will be at. This is already going to be better than planned.
The cloverleaf on the far side of this bridge was re-done in November 2018, so I am sure the location should not be a stranger to anyone, though it is a good 10 miles or so from the spawn point. That in and amongst itself is pretty nice though, being able to drive 10 miles and not even come close to crossing the same road again (you can actually go a good 24~26 miles on the outside highway loop of this map, until you come back to where you started). From my point of view, highway driving was severely under-serviced when I got mapping just over 3 years ago in the BeamNG community, and it surely won't be forgotten here - no - we FOCUS on it with this map. This is the map with more highway miles than ANY other (about 44~45 miles when last checked, not counting the sides separately). Cruising on the highway will always be enjoyable, especially for those of us who don't mind firing up their favorite open-world driving/racing games and just cruising around, no goals in mind, without a care in the world.

That is all for tonight!

 

Another day, another few hours on it, many hours to go!

This is the checkpoint, to get in or out of the base, there will be walls here and such so you obviously cannot drive around it, etc. Moat with alligators would be impractical.
Will be some type of decorate rocks/stone in the center of the loop there, and those objects are WCA assets (which I already had the textures in for). One lane in and out is roughly 12~13 feet wide or so, it's the outside most lane, in each direction at the checkpoint, so large vehicles can get through with oversized loads, as this does happen.

The road heading toward the bottom of the shot will go to base-housing. The crossover in the center just before the loop is for 'lost civilians' turning around, or folks leaving the base housing to quickly turn around if the checkpoint gets backed up around the loop (it shouldn't, there's THREE lanes at the checkpoint going in, and two out), and two lanes around the loop.
Still no pillars on the bridge. Getting there! They will be in before the beta, surely.

Beach sand is in again, that was something else lost with the data disaster that hit in December, so that's back in. The water between the island and the mainland is also much more shallow. It will be full of sand bars and such with occasional plant-life. Spend a good hour or two re-sculpting the land around here. Also noticed that this interchange in the last beta, was stone-traction under the on/off ramps. That will be fixed before it's out for download, no worries. Sorry about that. Noticed it last week and was like 'doh!

Going to try and get some of the above finished up and possibly do some runway/taxi-way stuff done tonight. Pilots will be happy with this next release, as best as I can keep them!

--That is all for now, might have some more pictures when the runway/taxi-way areas are more complete.

 

Looking good, always cool to see you massive maps and their progress.

 

Seems like you put a lot of thought into worldbuilding. Makes you a natural fit for this game, as far as I'm concerned.

 

Thanks a bunch - there should always be a 'reason' as it gives immersion to the map. Roads to no-where just don't have the fun to them that actually going somewhere when driving does. Nothing like firing up the game and being able to drive so far to get to your destination it actually could take almost 10 minutes to get there if you went anything reasonably close to the speed limit.

Massive maps where I am clearly in deep over my head is the only way to go. I am disabled so I have lots of time to spend stuck at the computer - sometimes whether I want to or not!

---

So speaking of destinations, and places to go see, here's something this map was lacking. An objective for Jeep folks who like going swimming in their Jeeps. Shallow water and sand-bars galore. About 1½ to 2 square miles of them!

Everything between the 'HEH' island and the mainland is now shallow water with sand bars, so there will be quite a bit of fun. Can certainly make a checkpoint-based course down there for snorkled vehicles, even ones without if you're careful where you drive, you can get across. There will be of course occasional bits of vegetation here and there (not sure if the vegetables will be in the beta...).
So if you just want to blast through some shallow water and hop across sand bars, this will be THE place to be.
Going to work on more of the base tonight. So lots of hours of work to do yet tonight.
--That's all for now - more later possibly.
--- Post updated ---
Finally fixed those stupid anemic looking skinny pillars. Sheesh. That took long enough to get around to...

Not to mention that there's about 100 pillars that have been placed now between the existing bridge near-by that was pillar-less and now this one too, which has 75~80 of them.
Folks crossing this bridge will quite well be reminded of the Lake Ponchartrain bridge in Louisiana that goes for 26 miles of absolutely nothing but lake. This is only three-quarters of a mile long but it's still plenty of length for a bridge in this game. Updated the collision model on the pillars too so it matches. Everything should collide natively & perfectly in this map - no excuses!

Well, in all my years of playing BeamNG, I never managed to quite get stuck, like THAT ...

It's just hanging there by the rear suspension and front wheel. I was crash-testing the bridges and such with an SUV and it almost rode down the barrier balancing on it and then slowly slid over. Priceless.
Just one more reason why I love this game.

 

this looking west coast themed I suggest you put an area that isn't run down but is just like sorta deprecated, I would show pictures of what I mean but the only place I've seen like it is in my town

 

There will be, surely, 100%. It won't make the next beta but it will be going in.
In a few days I will stop progress and put up a copy for Patreon folks on here. I will then work on Roane County for a little over a week (give or take a few days, could be two weeks max), then it's back to this if my other maps are working (if not I will spend about 2~3 days on Tail of The Dragon, and Nevada Interstate, fixing those up). My other maps are broken in various ways and need a bit of work. Before march hits I will be back on this one, though.

 

Some new textures were made today, as I needed them for the taxiways and parking pads for aircraft. Striping texture for the taxiways is from West Coast map.
So I've got all the taxiways themselves done, and connected to the airstrip, everything is leveled properly (runways and taxiways are glass smooth), and has proper traction.
I've used the JRI hangars as they're likely to be about what I needed anyways and I am pushing up against a Beta release within the next few days, as scheduled.
Currently no other buildings exist at the base yet but I will do my best to get something in by the time the beta goes up. At the least the base roads will be mostly in by that time so you can drive around it.

Thus far the airfield itself is pretty much done aside of completely lacking lights and runway signs. Runway signs will come later likely after the beta, as will lights.
The "islands" of terrain inside of the taxiways and runways are mostly a meter lower than the runways for drainage reasons, but otherwise, all taxiways and runways are 100% level.

Again will try to have some administrative buildings and maintenance buildings in by the time this goes to beta - doing my best! I've got one started, similar in style to the school (as they were often built by the same architect), but it's not done yet.
Replaced a not-too-far-away bridge also, and that's a new texture, which is much too bright, will fix when I restart the game again.

The texture replaces the awful one that was in the last beta which was atrocious at night. It also matches the highway texture nicer.
Did some work in this area yesterday, eventually will be a small stream flowing here.

--That is all for now. Beta is on schedule around or just after Monday.

 

I'm feeling quite excited to drive on this map too when it gets released, and considering I still fire up the old version (SoCAL) quite often when I just feel like driving around in BeamNG on my dated system every now and then.
I've been quietly watching this thread since about the start of it, and I must say... the content looks great.

Hopefully this computer of mine can handle this map at a playable frame rate, once it comes out.

 

FPS should be no issue, period. I'm doing 60+ map-wide with reflections on, on an RX 480 Radeon 8gb card with a 4.25 year old i7 4790k, you should have no issue unless it's a pre-built office machine older than mine with integrated video.
Basically, unless you have a rather slow way-old AMD fx-4000 series PC or Core 2 Duo or something even worse that doesn't run the base game well, you shouldn't have any issue here.
However, that being said, even before the optimization which next to doubled FPS in this map, an i7 930/940-class CPU (original 1st-gen i7 Nehelam circa 2009) + 1333mhz memory + Radeon 6750 1gb DDR3 video board was doing 30~40fps on low and I believe about 60fps on lowest settings, 1080p to my best knowledge.
Now that's before the optimizations, so it would likely be about double fps that I quoted.

If you can run the base game fine, you can run this map. That's one of the design goals, that pretty much anyone can run it. It's made of simple modular components (hint: portable, you can put them on most any map once you have the textures in), and put together like a giant jigsaw puzzle of simple pieces. So anyone can make a city (yes, including me) that looks somewhat professional. You won't need modeling skills, just knowledge to work the editor, and you can make your own city.

First performance tests didn't turn out too well but then all things became 'full speed ahead' when I realized it wasn't really my doing (beyond a few elementary boo-boos I made, and fixed), it was the game engine not batching properly, and changing state quite often (read: incurs processor wait time). So it went from 'why doesn't this concept work, it should run very well and it runs terrible' to 'I'm in tears this runs so much better, I'm so glad it wasn't me after-all'. That being said, this map will bring not only the map itself, but lots of puzzle-pieces to build your own city with too - which should help bring up the quality of all maps.

So no worries on performance, if you have a computer that can provide playable FPS on most of the stock maps, you will be perfectly fine. 4GB of *FREE* system memory is the only requirement!

0.15.x update did see downtown Harriman in Roane County TN map go from 20~30fps with reflections on to 70~75+ FPS. I was pretty much in tears I was that overjoyed. As a mapper, it's like a dream come true.

THIS MAP WILL RUN ON INTEGRATED GRAPHICS ON INTEL 4xxx SERIES PROCESSORS OR NEWER. You just might have to play at 720p, if that's all you have. The memory requirement is firm, however.
--- Post updated ---
Fixed the bridge texture, that's a little better, could be a touch more tan... gosh I could finesse this type of stuff all darn night if I wanted to and still not be happy.


Getting the runways to have better texture/presentation now. They looked a little unfinished before.
--- Post updated ---
Beautiful RUN WAYS! No... Not Ru-Paul *cat vomit sounds* I mean AIRPORT Runways!
The old ones just plain SUCKED like ... (OK OK OK not going to mention Ru-Paul again anymore, this is going downhill fast).
So yeah, here we go.

I am quite a bit more satisfied with these! A few bushes to get rid of along the edges, and everything will be good to go (and I fixed them not showing up from far away - turned out to be not just an editor bug but the CENSORED texture too - what next - when it rains, it pours!). The bugs saw me coming and tried to gang up on me.

--That's it for tonight, I have a MASSIVE migraine.

 

So after a migraine I had last-night that was so bad I blew chunks about 20 minutes before bed... (better than 20 minutes after I'd have gone to bed...)
I got a little bit more done today.
Two bridges were replaced. One at a cloverleaf and one not too far from it - they were old style ones yet.
Viewed from above (hint: not supposed to look took much different).

Fixed up a merge section where the inner and outer-ring highways meet up for a few miles. Not far from the abandoned mall.

Fixed wrong traction for terrain surface below - my short-sighted mistake - all ramps had gravel traction as did a short patch of newly-paved highway past the bridge in the top of the shot.

Added an access road on the island open to civilians that is tourist-friendly (will have a lighthouse at the end with a circular road for u-turns), including parking for beach area.
The road is not 100% smooth and isn't intended to be, it's not a high-speed road. Ever see a tourist driving fast? No, they're always taking up space & slowing everyone else down.

Another shot of the same - showing the unfinished island base. There's not a fence yet, or military installation buildings, but the hangars and runway/taxiway are done as previously stated and in 100% working order. The runways also can be seen from fairly far away. I am going to do some tests on lessening the fog some for pilot-friendly skies now that the game engine runs better.

Forgot to mention yesterday about the bridge I updated, an area nearby was re-worked a bit adding a sharper crest to the hill and banking this turn a little making it more fun. Out-of-shot to the left if the road is followed far enough past where it starts to descend again, that turn is also banked properly now.

Seeing about replacing 2 or 3 more bridges, then considering tying up any remaining loose ends and getting around to uploading this tonight or tomorrow sometime for the next Patreon beta round.
Surely I've done a few more odds & ends around the map that have slipped my mind, but that's most of the major time-consuming changes for now.
Oh, and I did fix that too-bright bridge texture I mentioned yesterday - that is done.
This map is getting close to the point where I will be making a release to the general public hopefully by early spring - Patreon folks would still get it a bit earlier, and would be getting more regular updates then the general public, but I will leave it up to y'all to decide when it's far enough along before I do so.
The map is about 2.4GB un-compressed without the template file in place (not the template map from the game, a 1.6gb template of the terrain that I import into the modeling software). In a ZIP file it could easily top 1gb. I don't know how much it will be until before I upload, but it will take all night when I do upload it and possibly some of the next day. Yes, this is bigger than Roane County TN, but the texture quality is also much better - and this map will only get larger. It is a whole AAA-sized game environment that hopefully will look a lot more like AAA quality when it's done. I have the tools (like World Machine 2 or 3 (?) for example) I just have to figure out how to better use them without having to do the entire road-grading portion over again. Surely there's a way I can selectively re-do it.
So whomever donated to the map-fun on Patreon will be playing a copy of a new version of this map in the near future. They're not night and day changes, but surely you'll see quite a few new things spread out around the map.
This will be uploaded either tonight - or tomorrow night - releasing the day after (or as soon as it's done). Otherwise, pretty much on schedule for now & will be picking up Roane County again for a week or so (possibly a bit longer) to update it a bit so it's not so glitchy, when this is out in the wild.
*Those who, at my discretion, have contributed models, or contributed other time and effort into the map, will also get a copy as it's been quite a while since I've updated.
--That is all for now.

Once folks have it, feel free to make videos or record your game-play as you desire, I have zero issue with that, just provide a link-back to the first post on this thread and the project's Patreon page, so folks can chip in if they so desire (link-backs are a friendly way to say thanks and help show people the project, especially if you post to social media or video-hosting sites like Twitch or You-tube).

 

I replaced 6 bridges today and fixed A LOT of AI paths that were not in the correct spots...

I really mean that, those AI paths were awful, some weren't even on the road at all. Oops...
While I was working on a few of the bridges, I dressed up the terrain along the one edge of the map in a few spots (towards the island-side of the map)...

The long bridge above, and the one center-shot in the background, are both also replaced as-shown.
So yes, some changes will be obvious, but many, like AI functions, not as obvious. Still no buildings at the base besides the hangars and the checkpoint buildings (guard shack), I am not entirely sure if that will end up being a base it's supposed to be or a full-fledged airport. I think I may stick the airport closer to the city, however...
I will be buttoning up some of the AI stuff I was toying with, making sure everything's proper (or as much as I find, I will fix, etc), and again tying up any loose ends before zipping this up.
So, I will likely be setting this to upload tonight. That means sometime tomorrow the links will go out via Patreon unless the net goes down or something goofy happens.
--That is all for right now.