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

New sidewalk texture! Hooray!

I don't have the bump-mapping for it yet (I will shortly), but it looks way better than the WEST-COAST map stuff* I was using. The yellow curb-face here is still from West Coast though, for now.
Fixed some of the angry console errors that were popping up. Going to remove more of the duplicate texture errors shortly, among other things. Just trying to clean it up some while I add more stuff in.
Just one of the many things I've been doing over the past months finally gets to see the light of day in the map.
I will be posting almost daily, so expect to see quality-of-life/quality-of-work upgrades like this over the next week+ or so until release.
*Yes, do expect more of those stock-game textures to be replaced. The game-sourced models will also eventually become quite scarce. It just takes time and sanity (sanity in trying to make it work!).
There's SO MUCH STUFF. LOTS OF STUFF. I made a ton of stuff & have to make it all work now. What fun!
So enjoy the next week of posts in the run-up to the release to supporters. Also called 'watch the Bob cry'.
subtitles: [dot dot dot]


EDIT: FIXED A BUG ON THE AIRPORT RUNWAY TEXTURE BEING UNCOMPRESSED. THIS SHOULD FIX SOME OF THE SLOWDOWN NOT RELATED TO THE TUNNEL. DERP.
8k texture uncompressed = lag lag lag. I sure earned my name with that BLUNDER.

EDIT: FIXED BUG ON GAS STATION CURBING TEXTURE. FINALLY.

So yeah, I tried the new editor finally (I have been using the old version to edit the map).
Taking this picture crashed the editor. Yup. Didn't even get to edit the map.
I HATE THE NEW EDITOR (almost as much as it hates me).
Long live my 0.20 game version with the map editor. Ancient, but IT JUST WORKS.

 

Matching new curb texture is working now. I have to match the brightness on the pieces with the planting strip (grass strip against curb = planting strip). That's finally properly updated though.
Fiddling with new terrain layers currently for realistic asphalt.

I will append further work to this later, so if you see this sentence DO check back a little later.
Ouch, leg nerves just went, both at once. Kicked the back of the desk FULL FORCE without even trying to move, with both feet. THAT REALLY REALLY HURTS. That'll knock the wind out of your sails.
Will post more Wednesday (it's early Wed AM at the moment), as I am working on pretty much nothing but the map until release time. I've already done some testing so my test-times will be shorter.

Worst-case bugs might be some textures acting up / being oddly dark or wrong color / terrain texture acting up (though, that said, the terrain shouldn't be an issue like last time, as I added these new layers via text which SHOULD be fine as it has been in the past). It's notable that last time the terrain textures bugged up, it was because I created the layers within the editor (1.0), and it didn't save them in the terrains index with the map. I've learnt my lesson on that good and well, and didn't repeat THAT mistake.

The map will now use a different internal folder name, and thus, will not conflict with the old version of the map. If you still have the old zip, and IF you put the new one in without overwriting the old one, there will be TWO Los Injurus entries in the map selector. The reason for this is mostly because the old So-Cal map had conflicted before and since this is a wildly different improved version of the original terrain from that map, I've chosen to finally 'fix' that issue. Most of the reason it hadn't been fixed is I had too many things open in too much software to change it at any time without everything going batty because of it. I had to move to folder since 0.24 came out so finally got to fix that.
The lowest version of the game that this map will be supported to work with is now 0.24. I am not saying it won't work in 0.20 ~ 0.23, but officially I am dropping support for the older versions as I'm not 100% sure all of what's changed in the internals of the map data when saving with the newer version.
That said, the end-user running a legit current version of the game regardless of store at which is was purchased, should have no issue running the new version.

 

One crash report later (only one!), I've gotten some info on why some textures were too dark even though I used the 'right' format. Well I got the diffuse/colormap (the texture you see) and the specular (the reflectivity / shininess) right, but blundered the normal-maps which break in 0.21 or higher if they're BC7 even though they worked fine in 0.20 (where I still edit from, yup, it just works).
So switching those over to BC5 is taking it's sweet time. My brain is a clouded mess** but at-least it seems to be able to tolerate finishing off models and shipping them into the map.
This is how collision meshes make your map enjoyment just a little bit better. See attached picture below. I make sure not only to make all stairs as ramps (as much as possible), but to make the roof of most all buildings able to be driven off of. There's not much reason to be up there, but it would be less fun if you got stuck and couldn't drive off it. You never want the player to get stuck in places they shouldn't (short of a small roadside drainage ditch or catch-basin etc where one should expect to get a car stuck). You always want to leave the player an escape path. ALWAYS.
Getting stuck stops the fun cold, unless you call a tow-truck or get winched out by a 'Jeep Guy'.
Would like to get all my new buildings into the map by no later than end-of-day tomorrow.
*note: Collision here is shown as bright green, because for some reason while I was shaping it, Maya broke the texture it uses, though it doesn't need texturing anyways so no loss here.
I put things like this public because I want to show others "how to make a better game environment". I just wish there were ten of me because I want this map done 100x more than anyone else.
**My brain is a hot mess some days. I really hate it. The meds they gave me for pain and arthritis issues are wrecking me something severe. Working on figuring that out in time.
Also, if I build my desk (finally) that I now have all the wood for doing so, it will push back release by one day. Just waiting on a good physical-health day to do it (really need it!). 5 foot piece of counter-top and lots of 'used' 2x4's for-the-win. IKEA rubbish will NOT do. No particle board / press-board junk, it just doesn't last. I will try to take a picture of it when I get it done though.

 

So I listened to the developers and used BC5 for the normals like the documentation said to.

Lost another day on my progress to this. Now I have to restore from backups. Again.
It'd be real swell if this engine was not only documented, but that the documentation that's there is actually correct.
I'm NOT impressed.
This is what happens when I ask someone else for help on things - shame on me. The game editor likes to crash, Maya crashes out. Not having a good time here. Hopefully I can stick to release day here.
If there are no posts tomorrow it's because I went outside and did something else for sanity's sake.

 

I have the terrain working in 0.20 which is my editor-1.0-editing-the-map version. It works 100%.
I DO NOT have the terrain working in 0.24, and it could be a few days before I get to the bottom of it, possibly into next week if I throw in the towel and have to send it to the developers to fix it. There's no reason why it shouldn't work. It's all DDS formatted properly. I do not have a clue, I even removed ALL the normal maps, so now I am absolutely clueless as to why it's broken.
At this point, there is absolutely, positively, no way in you-know-where that I can have a release on Monday-Tuesday timeframe, I've lost a large part of the last two days already and then some trying to fix this bug that likely a game bug and not mine. There's not even console errors to tell me what's wrong.
Long story short, the release will be delayed until this - or the game - is fixed. Expect a release within around a week though. It shouldn't be more than 10 days off. I am quite steamed by this.

I can still build stuff in the map in editor 1.0 in game-version 0.20.
Trying to use the editor 2.0 in 0.24 only lead to the map breaking, and a bunch of stuff not working, and the editor crashing out the interface (making it useless) or crashing to desktop altogether. There is positively NO WAY that editor 2.0 is ready for prime-time use and I haven't the foggiest how they worked with it enough to get the newer maps out. I hate to be Debbie Downer here but I really have no other way of saying that. I love the dev-team and what they do and of-course this simulator, but I just can't get to the bottom of what broke this time as I've exhausted all my guess-and-hope fixes and options.
I already have a trouble ticket in and it's just going to take time to fix this. This is a large part of what's been going on the last few months. Things keep breaking with this game when trying to port everything over. It likely would have been easier to just port it all to GTAV, remove any BeamNG content, and be done with it - but I digress as that'd be a smack in the face to supporters. Considering I've been trying since Monday-Tuesday to get the terrain working properly, and still haven't gotten ANYWHERE, this shouldn't be surprising.
I just hope this is not caused by not having enough VRAM... I'm running on low and medium settings to get around that limitation for now (it looks terrible).

Do know I'm doing the best I can here, and I'll get to the bottom of it eventually. Likely as soon as this week-long migraine subsides. This whole situation is not helping it one bit. But do know I'm on it like stink on [censored].

 

Is there a way to fix the lag? i have upgraded ram to 32 gb and it still lags and is unplayable

 

maybe use something like drver booster from steam ? it helps me when it closes alot of useless processes

 

ill check that out

 

Turn down the detail on the video settings, specifically TEXTURE DETAIL. It doesn't look very pretty on low, but medium you shouldn't notice much texture degradation. If you put it on low, it should never go over 4gb of VRAM including tons of stuff open in web browser, graphics softwares, etc.
If you close everything out, medium should be OK for 4~8gb cards. Some folks with 6gb cards reportedly can run high, but I wouldn't trust it as both my AMD and Nvidia 8gb cards max out when they get over by the airport. The map shouldn't slow down so much by the airport when the next version hits (soon!). Turns out half the airport slow-down was due to an 8k texture (for the concrete runways, custom made), the normal-map was somehow not sized right, or not the right format and was causing some slowdown. Normal maps are the 3d-look to the texture, they give it some height/depth and tell the engine where to reflect light off of, and generally makes it look not flat.
Using driverbooster, or any other similar software, doesn't really help unless you have a pre-built PC from Dell / Alienware that comes with a TON of bloatware infesting the system for FREE.
Uninstall what you don't use, and make sure things you don't need aren't starting up when Windows starts. Not only will this leave more room in RAM (and on the drive if uninstalled) when you go to run the game, but the entire computer might be a touch faster and Windows should load quicker. If you don't use it, get rid of it. Don't be a data/software hoarder like THE BOB and then leave the web browser open for 10 days (with 100+ tabs open) and wonder why it ate up 3/4ths of 32gb of RAM...
Pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ESC while in Windows anywhere will bring up Task Mismanager and let you see what's running on your system, and give you access to a resources page to see just how much of your computer's RAM and even video card RAM (VRAM) is used or free. Don't go willy-nilly canning processes left and right or you might lock up the system or cause it to shut down and restart or lose data, but it's a good place to see if you've left something running. Some processes may be required to be running to use other things like a cellular phone's features or certain things like printer functionality and fancy keyboard drivers etc - so again, don't go crazy in there.
YOU CAN HARM THE SYSTEM SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION if you don't know what you're doing, so DO make absolutely sure if you uninstall something that you won't be needing it.
If you are frequently out of RAM no matter what you do, buy more RAM like what is already installed and works with the main-board and install it. 16gb = good, 32gb = great, 64gb = ???
Out of disk space? External drives are easy to hook up via USB or Esata, and internal ones aren't requiring NASA engineering degrees to use either. Please refrain from using duct tape to mount.
VRAM all used up almost on every game? Well, you'll have to give your video card an upgrade then, thankfully prices are currently falling and are continuing to do so - so it's your call if you want to spend on that right now or not. My personal recommendation is 6~8gb VRAM for a mainstream system (run this map on medium), or for 'high settings' or 'max settings', get something with no less than 12~16gb of VRAM. Try to skip the 2, 3, or 4gb options out there unless it's a cheap used card like a Radeon 550 4gb, or Radeon 570 4gb / 8gb model - those are cheap and plentiful and the drivers are pretty well ironed out now. A 1650 Super or 1060 6gb is also a good card when caught for a good low price new or used. Be mindful of scams when shopping for used or new-old-stock cards on sites like Fleabay (ebay) by looking for folks with good long customer-review history and avoiding newer sellers. Try to purchase from a place with good buyer protection and return policies to also help feel a bit better about your purchase in-case something goes wrong.

---

This area is very heavy WiP, completely torn up & being re-worked, and looks awful even in high detail right now...
An example of LOW detail. It doesn't look that bad, but the pillars switch to 2D too fast, and you can definitely see where the LOD's (reduced detail versions of mesh objects) kick in towards the left of the shot on the bridge. Yes, I'm editing in low detail, it sucks, but I really need to update the video board with a card with more VRAM but it's not in the budget for at-least another 3 months. For now aside of ugly screenshots it will have to do, and for that matter, it works fine like this.

---

Still editing on 0.20 here. Managed to get hours and hours of map editing done thankfully using editor 1.0, old reliable.
The developers told me how to get my terrain textures working. Evidently, it's really, REALLY picky and I have to feed it PNG formatted files for some reason. I will likely do that on Sunday. The release is going to be later than I'd planned, but on the bright side, at-least things will be done enough to enjoy. Otherwise the map might feel like 'what exactly have you done Bob?', as a majority of my time was spent on models and textures, much of which I have been working on bringing over from 3D software to the game-engine in the last week or two.

Aside of getting things working on the newer versions of the game with the terrain and some random textures being too dark, if there's a way for me to keep editing from 0.20 editor 1.0, I might just keep doing that forever. I don't like the new one about as much as it doesn't like me. The new features of the game engine since 0.20 are GREAT, but that does me little good if I can't make the map better every time I open it up... or do anything without crashing it outright.
I love my old editor. I should. I've used it for about 6.5 years now and I know it front and back. The new editor crashes before I can even do anything. When I tried to convert/update textures those buttons just game me an empty file and nothing came of it besides crashing the menu system out. I can't even set it up without things going down-hill fast. A screenshot crashed it - yes - the in-game screenshot feature caused an access violation and took out the whole program! Ah, Desktop, we meet again! So after twice crashing it in 2 days, seeing as I only tried it twice, and the third time the terrain was so broken I couldn't do anything anyway, I threw in the towel on it and went back to editor 1.0 where I could actually get something done and not want to kill the computer.
My quote to the staff was 'How does this pass muster?' but probably not phrased as nicely. I was OK with editor 2.0 existing but when they got rid of editor 1.0 I knew that I had to go about things differently. So I kept my old version, that worked, to ensure I can continue to work on the map as needed. Without keeping the old version and in-stead relying on the new editor in the new game version, this project would have been to difficult to keep going and likely would have been canned.
So there's a method to the madness. Thanks to Car_Killer for walking me through some of the terrain stuff for 0.24, even if most times I couldn't reply because I was busy scratching my head, wondering why oh why things are the way they are.
I try so hard to keep being respectful to the staff, as they deserve nothing less, but it cannot be masked how befuddled and sometimes annoyed I get when things quit working for reasons I cannot and never could fathom. That, and friends don't let friends use LUA* code in games.
Some days I think it pays to just stick my head right back into the pickle barrel where it belongs.
At-least my migraine went away for the most part.
*Stalker series, 3D Fallout series, Elder Scrolls Skyrim... all those games crash, and 99% of it is LUA code issues or with Fallout/Elder Scrolls mods/DLC's deleting an entry vs disabling it.
Seriously. My nightmares are coded in LUA. It's like my Kryptonite.

OK I should stop ranting before I get banned. I don't know how I haven't been already...

I will be here, editing the map, until it's good enough to ship out.
If all goes well with the textures and terrain, I will be able to put out a release, but please keep in mind I've lost half the work-week to that stupid picky / buggy terrain engine in 0.24, so it's not going to be out in the beginning of the week. This is out of my hands - just being transparent here.
--Cheers!

 

I got the 6gb version of 1660ti
Also remember that its a gaming laptop

 

Stick to medium on laptops, may help prevent your lap from burning too. Use a laptop cooler that sits under the laptop when gaming at home to extend the life of most laptops when used for gaming often. They're about 25~30$ or there-abouts with some more expensive variants.

---

This tower is pretty much done already. Collision mesh and LOD will be quick due to design... but if I want to be able to read scripture at church tomorrow, I'll have to get some sleep before the sun comes up for once. It's actually a set of four towers, identical, but I'm leaving them in as one model due to the fact things will batch quicker, they're not terribly complicated ( approx 1mb~2mb VRAM difference), and that speeds things up a bit on object placement. Doors are 3D on the roof and at ground-level to enhance the immersion a bit, the AC units on the side of the buildings are also. They aren't immersive enough to get pushed out by disgruntled tenants to fall on your head (or car) though, thankfully. We're not quite at that level of computing yet.
Just a quick post - while a number of days behind schedule - things are moving along. I did spend some of that 'down time' waiting for documentation / staff help with modeling and getting new stuff ready (like this) to model in the pipeline. This model is a part of a 50+ skyscraper mid-rise / high-rise set of middling quality. It's not the best, things aren't sized right from the get-go, but it was absolutely dirt cheap and if it didn't have 832mb of textures due to the way it's modeled, I'd have it in already. I am cutting the textures down so that I might need 50~125mb or so of them, which while taking time, will make these load a lot quicker and be much lighter on VRAM. Models also need a bit of foundation under them so that they can be placed on un-level lots as this city is not entirely flat (that'd be boring).
Some of these textures that you haven't seen before are commercial textures, others are repeat offenders that I've made here (sometimes from other commercial textures).
Just a quick post.
--That is all!

 

Please... Segment your paragraphs. Don't just jumble it into one giant paragraph, that is not enjoyable to read..

 

I *DO* segment it into paragraphs. This forum doesn't always make it easy to read as far as actually seeing where the paragraphs split.
I admit I am not perfect, far from it, but I DO try to segment it and portion various responses apart.
I know it can be difficult to read though, it'd be nice if every other line had a slightly darker background color like the sheets/ledgers used for financial records (when not done solely on computer). I do miss that, sorely - and while it could be done, it's time-consuming and hence said time should be spent on the project.
When I started on here I stopped being in the habit of using TAB to indent, which may be what you're referring to. TAB switches to the next field (this is anywhere in Windows/DOS apps and Unix/Linux based GUI's also feature this too). Trying to use an extra line sometimes does not always work consistently among forums on the internet, as often they condense things automatically. I'll see what I can do though...but my memory is not good and will likely forget a majority of the time - you have been warned.

---

So 3200 lines of texture indices' scripting later... never-mind that's all been in the last 30 hours... now I have tons of graphics to convert over. That said once I am done and get the terrain straightened out (and the rest of the new models integrated and proportioned into the map), the price of 8gb cards should go down as they will be twice as NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
I have gotten 75% of the models that have been worked on over the last 6 months all set with proper texture names (I hope so), and all have collision/LOD meshes done appropriately.
I only wish I had bought my texture scripts sooner as those REALLY have saved time when UV'ing the last several models. Just rotate the model 45 degrees and hit MAP FOR X or MAP FOR Y, then expand the UV's horizontal plane by 100%, and stick the model back to it's proper rotation and you have perfectly mapped walls every time (exception: if the walls are sloped like a roof is, you'll have to work that out, but you can use MAP FOR Z on that to get a birds-eye-view type of texture mapping for those and connect it to the rest of the walls manually). I have a trouble-ticket in on the script package and asked for said feature.
I am still putting some other city models into the map, which I did not include in the above % provided they won't take weeks. While this is a continuous thing, some things I need to complete scenes will be added.
Still have to fuss with the terrain, that will be Friday-Saturday sometime. I want to finish this model texture index stuff before I forget the other half of it.

What is that texture? Open model go look for it, find the file it uses somewhere in the computer (many are in my source folder already), go rename it, change reference in the modeling software to match, make sure it's power of 2, make sure it's the right format, put it in the MAP data, add it to the map texture index in the right folder, add or make normal/specular/metallic/glow maps making sure THOSE are in the right format (what do you mean now we must use DX5 normals???) etc and HOPE IT ALL WORKS (hint: it usually doesn't 100%, that's rare).
Go back and do it again (repeat until correct). Hope you didn't end up with a duplicate texture somewhere. That makes a mess and eats up VRAM / disk space / loading time unnecessarily.

I really DO NOT like this part of the process, and more than half the time it just makes me feel like my brain is going to catch on fire and sometimes comes with a free migraine... but it MUST be done. The modeling and mapping parts are a joy by contrast. What's the worst though? The log system does not tell me half the things I need for the last several game versions.

On another note I have renamed over 100 textures, to get naming schemes in-line with one another and prevent typos causing textures not to work when models do not reference the right name (well, it'll reduce it a meaningful amount, it has been an on-going issue). I also prepped transparent versions of some window textures (the window itself all but the glass), so that took about two hours or so but needed to be done so these can be used later. I still have one (some art-deco metal window) to do but that's maybe a half-hour at most. I hope.

What isn't going to make it? Well, the one sky-scraper had a parking garage and some roof details that didn't make it. I was kind-of ticked about that but something scrambled in the file and Maya corrupted it. Thankfully a backup saved the building itself less the added fancy detailing, so it'll still be there less the parking structure underneath. I have set that file aside so that in the future, I can go ahead and see if some conversion software will be of any help. I might luck out one day and save that data, so it's there if need-be.

While waiting for the terrain conversion process write-up / info I did do some stuff to the area near the '11-foot-8' concept spawn point (which will be moved), which is also right next to the 'flood control canal' starting point. THIS WHOLE AREA was redone and might actually have a lot more buildings this-time-around. Just depends how this game-engine cooperates with me over the next week. The roads are already about 60% done in the immediate vicinity and most of which can take cars at good speed. This completely changed the train-track elevation from the point with which it leaves it's below-grade embankment and starts climbing. The spot where it previously ended will feature a tunneled section (can be driven through like others because this is a car driving game after-all).

Not sure if I will use the old tunnel models or some new ones (I don't care much for the old ones, they're due to be upgraded, but I don't have 100% of them done yet and of-course it won't be 100% drop-in replacement, AND importantly will hence require a little fine-tuning and A LOT of patience/time). Not sure if new stations will make it in or not (they require a lot of new textures or an extensive UV rework to use existing textures, I may just put them on the back-burner until just past this release because of the increase in texture weight will be notable already without this too), the current situation of being behind on this release (to put it lightly) is that they won't be in until the following one - which while a disappointment to myself doesn't affect the map all that much. Many people haven't even noticed the subway until they see one of the tunnels sticking out where it meets ground-level track or a slope to go at-grade.
I have models for above-grade raised rail like the Chicago EL or 'L', those need some optimization before I ship them with the map, so will see how long that takes. Don't get mad if those aren't in as it'd be for the better, plus getting stuck if you even lightly touch the supports just sucks. Unless it's production-ready, I don't like to put things in. Janky stuff is just bad for business, and there's enough buggy things in this game as a whole - not just this map - being early access so as it is.


--That is all for right now. I should have more pictures as soon as I get those 25% of the remaining already-done models tidied up and into the map. The textures need to also be transferred (and named right!!! this could take time!). Not all textures will have normal/specular maps so may look a tad flat up close - this can wait until post-release. Doing the terrain-texture stuff will be last (as I am always fussing with the map terrain shape itself on an almost daily basis), any delays in getting things to work will obviously hold up release BUT as soon as that is done it will be shipped for supporter/private (and eventually public) beta. Not re-promising another day but I'd reckon it's around a week, maybe a day or two more, hopefully not worse than that. I hope this was more legible for the grammar lecturers out there. Read louder or something... ?
EDIT: Nope, double-space before starting a paragraph doesn't even work, the forum removes this.
EDIT AGAIN: 2nd hard-lock on the machine, last one happened about 16 days or so ago. Nothing in the logs, that's going to be a fun one to track down. Only happens when saving in paint dot net, does not happen in BeamNG Drive when leaving one to two dozen traffic vehicles running overnight or even running Prime95 small FFT's eternally. Not heat related. No data loss at the moment, I backup religiously... but just a bit strange. It might just be time to update my video / chipset drivers or my almost-three-years-old Windows which hasn't updated since I installed it (as I broke the updater, deliberately). It's possible it's crashing the system or tripping a false virus positive in the CPU microcode / BIOS somewhere that's designed to keep software from accessing the wrong chunk of memory* (such as that which is assigned to different software or marked non-executable, potentially giving a hacker access to private info). Seeing as it only happens in the newer paint dot net versions when saving, this is something that leads me to believe the source of the issue is the program itself.
*That is termed as an access violation and sometimes happens with certainly buggy or brand-new software.
The anti-virus debacle...
Special note: For those of us WHO HATE being forced to restart; I just tried out AVAST ONE anti-malware / anti-virus (which *IS* free) and when it tells you 'you must restart', you can set the time frame from any one of seven or eight options ranging from 'remind me in one minute' to 'mind me next CENTURY'. I kid you not, what a lovely piece of software - so amazed here I might just have to get the paid version.
Norton / Symantec (who also owns LifeLock) makes you hand over credit card info before signing up to a trial or installing paid boxed (or downloaded) versions of the software - yes - even after you just paid for a year or more of it. Even if you don't want it, they will charge up to 100$ or more *USD* after your year is up even if it's been un-installed if you forget to take your credit card off the account they force you to make.
Kaspersky is great if your in Russia, but there have been some potential security concerns about it solely due to geographically where it was created (for those in the US or with various NATO countries). I can't attest to any of that being true, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be or couldn't happen.
Bit-defender is just plain ANNOYING. Leave me alone you pesty software! Never again!
But just trying Avast one (who recently was bought out), shows me just how much control it gives you and actually lets YOU decide what to do with your PC (such as restart) and when. At-least ONE company cares.
Just though I'd add this tidbit for those in the market for a virus scanner / malware scanner. While the market is flooded with many options - Windows Defender is actually pretty good when properly set - a good thing for those of us who cannot be bothered to fuss with the PC config.
Stupid Technology...

 

Worked on some textures last night for a few hours. Getting things production-ready or at-least a whole lot better than they were.
Am feeling daring tonight, maybe I should dare touch the terrain??? (!) I hope you people have insurance!
Participation in supporting Los Injurus City Map project has allowed me to purchase a one-year membership to Sketchup Texture Club, which gives 50 premium textures a day, each day, for one year. It's more like a donation, but they DO have a lot of good textures, and so it's a really GOOD deal. I managed to get a ton of concrete and building textures, and even a few road textures (I have more different asphalt textures in this map resources right now than most AAA games have by quite some bit - of-course including the resources not currently in the map).

I've finalized what I feel a good idea of a computer that could run 'ultra' or 'high' quality on this map when it's close to complete, or complete altogether.
Modern CPU with many cores Haswell/Ryzen Gen 1 or newer -
16gb ~ 32gb of 'good' performing RAM, configurations below 12gb NOT SUPPORTED but may work
16gb-equipped video card - if you meet one of the requirements this and system RAM should be it
Modern SSD to load this map from, as loading from a hard disk drive will be murder

Current public version of Los Injurus requires Beamng 0.20 or higher, next version may require at-least 0.24 to run properly without broken textures (though it should still 'load' despite bad textures on older version). While all paying customers who have a copy of BeamNG via Steam or wherever don't have an issue as updates are automatic, these version-requirements matter when you have a Youtube channel with BeamNG Drive crashes and require a map working with certain game versions.

Texture work below, this is merely a sampler and is down-scaled and watermarked so I don't poo all over the terms-of-use / licensing. This is quite time consuming but must be done so I know what I have to script into the map (and then convert to the format needed, to feed the game engine, so that it can then further convert it into the native game-format, since that's what the devs told me to do). Sheesh. A well, something done is better than nothing. There's quite a few more than this that I worked on, but these are just a sample. I figured I'd best share something.

As previously stated, I am also upgrading/replacing a lot of the older textures with better stuff, too. Anything that tiled poorly or too obviously is being replaced, some super-low-res stuff like canal texturing is being upgraded (at some cost of VRAM) and some needlessly hi-res stuff is being knocked down a bit (like the airport runway texture that went from 8k to 4k).
Does this ever end? Probably not. Didn't do much modeling today due to being a bit dizzy and being busy with said textures / graphics. Just merely making sure I script in all the textures my recent models call for.
WARNING: I still have HUNDREDS of textures to port into the map despite scripting 65~75% of them in already. DO expect an obvious graphical improvement though if everything goes well the next time you download the map. This should bring this city much closer to AAA-quality as far as texturing is concerned - as much as the VRAM limits let it, anyway.

 

Great map! Will/would you consider releasing smaller bits and parts of Los injurus? It's so it can run easier.

 

I would not rule this out in the future. I have floated this idea in the past. It depends how far PC tech gets by the time this is near completion. I'd like to say I'm somewhere around 'half way' done with this project. So, while not a promise of 'yes', let's just say it's certainly not a 'no' either.

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Just letting you folks know that I'm currently getting the texture-scripting (indices) done for the 11-foot-8 bridge I can't wait to play around with that one! I swear this is by-far the best part of the next update.

 

wow!
it's great to see you're still working on this and a fair bit too! i kinda expected for you to have abandoned this map like many creators do for their maps yet you are still working on it and doing major progress

keep up the good work man can't wait for the new update!

on a side note do you think a ryzen 5 3600 32gb of ram and an rtx 2070 will be enough to run this at 30ish fps on ultra settings at 1440p? because your statements on performance requirements are quite worrying due to the fact that the only graphics cards with 16+gb of vram are 6900xt and rtx 3090 neither of wich i can't afford sadly

another question i have is that are some materials like tho roads ever going to get pbr? i know it's a total pain (i work with materials myself) but the end result is always worth it imo

 

PBR workflow is what is taking 75% of the time updating this map. I have slowly been getting things ready, but it'll depend on some other things to see if and how many of the new materials make it into the next update. It'll either hit before or just after the next update, or just before the following update. It depends if the game engine features that updated and re-format textures work or not (they're currently quite broken! that'll be fixed on short order from what I heard, though).

My poor brain. I have to get material names straight between what commercial models come with, as-per file name of source graphic (most just are diffuse / color map textures, occasionally you'll get normal maps also), make sure it's the same in the model, and make sure the name is consistent so that they list properly when I pick them and so I can remember some of them (like buildings_highrise_048_d for example in-stead of brickbuildings048), and get the texture index and files to match along with the map-to field that gets called by the model for whatever texture it wants.
Flow:
source file & source models > format conversions > source-images folder, proper naming, adjust sources for consistency > format conversions for game > add to texture index along with any color-adjustment versions (in the case of stucco and asphalt, you may want more than one shade of it) > then add files to the game and make sure to double-check texture indices for consistency.
Now add about 500 graphic files.
Now add in The Bob's lack of immediate working memory (the stuff you use while you do things, and helps you remember where you were)...
This doesn't bode well. Not at all. But I am managing through what I hope is a temporary issue with my memory. I think it's one of the pain meds doing it but hopefully I won't need that anymore soon. At-least I am not in agony on a daily 24/7 anymore though.
That said it really, really can make workflow CRAWL. I have to constantly double-check and triple-check and I still mess it up more than I should after doing this for so long. I am getting by however.
So entirely, I look at it daily, get completely overwhelmed, forget what I wanted to do, and just do SOMETHING with the map data / work load and hit save, leaving it open for a while so I know what I did until the knowledge 'sticks' mentally.
Do know that PBR is on the way, arrival date of which is no-promises right now due to too many variables with my health, the game engine, and just technology generally being stupid.
Regardless, those DARK TEXTURE bugs should be history by the time the update comes out, so while it isn't as good as PBR if it's on the old format, it will at-least look okay and not broken for now.

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I've had it with this absolute dumpster fire of internet and am getting something else. I needed a @$%^ing awning texture for the 'monster condo' that I have, and I can't even get a damn 6-meg file. Will use some map funds to make this happen, which will also mean I don't have to lose internet every time there's a cloud within 500 miles of me. Don't know when fiber will get here, but SOMETHING must be done.
What's better? It can't even complete 1mb of the download, and I am not anywhere close to my data cap being spent for the month. The file download gets interrupted and stops so that when I come back and look 30 minutes later, it's not gotten anywhere requiring me to sit here babysitting it and hitting restart all the time. All the while you hope the download didn't miss packets and get corrupted otherwise you have to do it over again.
I am so sick and tired of sitting down to do something with finishing the models up, hitting a point where I need a texture 5 mins later, go to get one and I can't and thus I can't finish the model and get it exported.
So yeah, going to solve that this week. Will keep you guys posted. I'm done paying ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY DOLLARS PLUS TAX PER MONTH for this 'broadband + VOIP house phone' plan. It's done. My sanity can't take it anymore.
Do know I'm still working on things over here, doing the best I can considering what's up with the internet.

Oh, and just to be clear, THIS PROJECT WILL *NEVER* *EVER* BE ABANDONED. Period. No exceptions. As long as I am breathing, and can make it to the computer, it will be worked on.
Just wanted to make sure everyone knows that. The only person who wants this completed more than you, is me. I want to enjoy playing the next update more than anyone as I put a ton of work into it - even if not all is visible.

 

And I used to complain about having DSL at my old place lmao. However frequently it would drop from 300 kb/s to 1000 b/s

 

That tower is gonna be cool