Hello everyone. I got a request to make a sand-based map, so I started looking for some neat areas and found these dunes that are nestled between mountains and thus have some decent foliage throughout the edges of the dunes. This map will include: A 2km closed course in the dunes This one is fairly manicured to simulate a well-used course The course surface is a modified sand groundmodel that is slightly softer, which I based on videos of dune racing where the surface of the dunes is generally harder than the sand underneath. An 11km end-to-end course This one is very lightly changed from the lidar source. The parts that were changed, were changed to better delineate the course around specific corners. lots of trails in the mountains There are some incredibly steep sections of the trails, but they are all traversable with the right setup. The crawler hopper can easily traverse all but the steepest one, which needs a bit of speed to get up. This is still a work in progress as I am fine-tuning the sharp terrain on the trails and some other areas that have some strange leftovers from the Lidar data.
Thanks for accepting my request. I'm very excited about what will come out of this, I'm sure all the drivers in the series will like this.
This is a very belated update, but after some feedback, I decided that I should revisit the mountains.The image below shows the trails that are currently decorated and in progress of being decorated. The area in green is the area so far that is completed. I also am reworking the cliffs as they were terrible. The last bit I wanted to update on is the kind of driving conditions parts of the trails will have. There were several parts of the trails that were very rough and on those parts, I will be putting in rock crawling courses. Below is an example of one of the longer of them. Also, some of the trails were severely off camber and did not look like a path a sane person would follow, so I added some rocks here as well to give them more of a solid base.
Progress for today: I plan on working on one branch per day so I can better focus my efforts and not rush this part since this is the most manual detail I've had to put into making a map so far. The green area is the total progress so far. I finished another section, which has the most challenging rock crawling section yet. I also figured I'd show a picture from closer to the foothills
Today's branch was fairly short and relatively flat, so I was able to complete it relatively quickly. The completed sections are in green, the yellow is the area I plan on working on next, and the red is what I plan on getting to by friday. A lot of the trails marked out here actually do not exist irl. I put them along erosion pathways and connected them via likely pathways. The area of these mountains is actually a nature preserve, so the only real trail is the one at the bottom of the image that goes off to the right, but even then, it appears to be used very rarely. Because this section is relatively flat and uneventful, I placed obstacles throughout the trail instead of just on the rough areas. I want to edit the terrain as little as possible in order to retain the detail from the lidar scans. However, the cliffs had to be redone because it seems that I cannot get a lidar scan to properly form them. Otherwise, I try not to change the terrain from the source data because I want it to be as close to driving there as possible. Below is one of the rock crawling sections off of one of the branches near the end of this portion.
Quick update: I finally figured out how to accurately place objects using the forest tool. This will push back my expected progress by quite a bit as I have to replace all of the manually placed rocks with forest tool versions in order to significantly improve performance. I placed well over 200 individual items and noticed a drop in fps from my limited 75fps down to 65, which prompted me to finally look at how to actually use the forest tool. I found the solution buried in a years-old forum post. I am glad I found the solution before I got more than a third of the way through the mountain lol.
Forest item replacement is finished. I am taking the weekend off, so expect a progress update on monday.
So for today, I started working on the next section, but then got into a discussion with a member of Beam staff who is helping me out with tips on performance. Due to this, today's update is boring once again. But fear not, as this means the map should perform better than if I were to not have received their help!
For today's update, I finished the fourth branch. It was another fairly short one, so it was a fairly quick job. I also corrected some issues with ai pathing being duplicated and some minor decal road placement. Referring to an earlier screenshot, the yellow area is what was completed today, and the red will be worked on tomorrow. After completing the red section, I will be tackling the top of the mountain, which will be a good way to "cap" off this section. I already have in some placeholder trails along the cliffs that will be fleshed out once I get to that area. Below is an example of the crawling and branching paths in this section. The crawling course, like all of them so far, is WIP and I plan on revisiting them all after I get more experience designing courses of this type. I am a super noob at rock crawling, so I have been heavily relying on existing maps and feedback from the Crawling discords.
I think the only building in this area irl is a platform in one of the corners of the dunes. I definitely can add it in, but it will be a very low priority.
Sorry for the longer time between updates. The southern half of the mountains is now complete as well as a small section in the central section between the mountains. This one took longer than expected due to the sheer amount to do, plus coming up with ways to better optimize the forests. Tomorrow, I will continue the central portion.
It's there, actually! I'm taking a bit of a break from this map since I completed the southern mountain. I burned myself out with how much time I put into it. If you would like to try it out, I can post an update. Honestly, the southern mountain was my favorite of the two since it was just more interesting all around
