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

Sorry to go back a few posts, but what do you mean when you say dodging storms? Do you mean in real life?

 

Mr. Stingy and friends decided to have an all-out party on The Bob's hands, so it's a little painful to type or use the keyboard for much. Got nailed when I went to pick something up at a charity store. Ouch.
That's why it's been quiet. I've got one super swollen hand and one nicely swollen wrist on the other.
It'd swell more but the skin can only go so far! I should bee fine after a few days, and it's not something that worries me more than it is just a change of plans for a few days.
Maybe next winter will leave me thankful for the cold, but knowing me, probably not.

@Eclipse DDS Yes, random T-storms. That's very common here.

 

Addendum/EDIT

Upgraded the terrain texture. Not sure I'm digging this yet. Will figure it out!
7~12 fps sucks. It's not the map's fault, I just don't have enough video memory (and I think it's on medium, goodness). I am doing optimizations over here to try and get this to run better.
It'll run better if I set the graphics detail lower, but there's still a model in here that's got hidden UV's that's sucking up the CPU render budget like a sponge. I'll figure it out and fix it, it'll just take some time.
One of the buildings might be 'flat shaded' (just color not texture) until I get time to fuss with it more. My concern 1st is FPS and then finishing up some of the roads so that you can drive around the map easier.

If someone has legit access to 3DS MAX* or wishes to sponsor a subscription of 250$ or so per year, let me know, they have an indie thing with maya that gets you a year of full-featured Maya and 3DS MAX for 250 a year but money like that I have to put towards the house, medical bills, and project money goes to software, models, textures, and sometimes a portion goes to fix exploded hardware or NECESSARY hardware upgrades (not things I want, I want for nothing but a decent FPS of 40~45 or so!). Seriously. I'm not out here buying a 5950x or intel 12th gen setup when I already have a good CPU that runs things just ducky, etc... I am the 'build it, set it and forget it' type of person who happily keeps a PC for many years (5+ if possible). This does what I need short of adding more memory (I have used up about 28~30gb of 32gb right now), and updating the video board over the winter (it ain't happening yet, period).
*I asked if someone has access to MAX due to the fact that there's a bunch of nice low poly 70's and 80's house designs for dirt cheap (a few bucks a model) that I am picking up, but just incase I can't get them into Maya or Blender I am asking so that I could possibly send someone some files for conversion. I can convert / import 3DS, OBJ (bad), FBX (decent), convert Blend to FBX, but MAX files I can't get. I might use a trial version of the software to convert them in a pinch, but I'd rather not do that.

Will keep folks updated. Still hurts bad to type and I can't take anything that thins blood or lowers swelling. Figured I'd post an update though as I am still TRYING to work on this, both hands swollen something severe and major pain from that, back is slamming pain as usual, stomach is on a war path, the usual... making anything very difficult. There will be no posts tomorrow likely unless it's very late at night.
Check the FPS number in the top right, OUCH. I don't even have anything open in Maya at the moment.
Still trying to push this update soon. Will try to work on it some more tonight.

 

Thanks for all the hard work, keep it up!

 

Oof, I can't even imagine the pain you are going through right now! I hope that you recover soon

 

Please. Stop spending on computer software/hardware or making mods. Your real life is way more important.

 

I am getting by, but thank-you. I have to spend what I do to keep progress going and keep things varied in the map. Plus, there's so many beautiful commercial assets out there for very reasonable prices.
I am getting a little better with my hands, and just had a bunch of nerves burned off in my back today so that I don't have to feel the burning constantly, which was downright crippling (which is an understatement by long and far).
Doing the best I can over here. Game development requires a little extra computing power now VS just running games, and what was fine a few years ago needs a bit of a boost now. There's not much getting around that as I've dealt with the VRAM issue for a little over two years now, and the memory issue pretty much the last 18 months. Just got the 80% memory used warning from beamng drive startup about a half hour ago. I'll figure it out sooner or later. I've got real-life handled as best I can for right now though, no worries on that, doing the best I can is all I can do.

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Finally got some textures the way I want them. The new terrain texture seems to be alright, plus I fixed that fuzzy tar texture (that was not dark enough) that was on some of the roads / lots.

Keep in mind this texture is several different textures layered over, but it's looking much better now with a little TLC and some nice terrain texture improvements. Terrain textures will be continually improved.
I have several variations to that terrain texture, in various stages of disrepair; so when they're working it'll be even better looking and won't repeat as easily. Still have some more bugs to work out with the terrain, like why DDS textures cause it to turn black since 0.25 dropped... but it's getting there and slowly I am squashing bug after bug, and fixing screw-ups on my end (of which there were more than I'd care to share other than to say, it took a while and it's time spent wisely).

 

I've made some buslines for the repo version, attached below.
The pack has six different lines hopefully letting you discover places you haven't been before.
Make sure to bring some long gears to the flat routes and a lot of power to the steep ones, some of the mountain passes are no joke in a bus.

@bob.blunderton Since the map has no names of places visble, not even the subway stations are named, and the internal names like lake1, lake2, lake3, ... aren't immersive either I had to make up a lot of names for the places/stations. If some of the locations have proper names please tell me so I can change them before you integrate them into the map or I upload them on the repo eventually.

Known issues:
- I was to lazy to make preview pictures yet
- the AI routing insists on certain turns not being possible, especially left turns, and sends you on detours, I tried to fix this with waypoints, but didn't really work out
- the navigation is invisible on meshroads, just drive straight, if you need to turn there will be an arrow above the intersection
- I had some trouble with the roatation of spawnpoints, so your bus may spawn sideways on the road

Just activate this as a second mod after Los Injurus, no need to merge folders or anything like that.
Have fun!

 

Thanks! Appreciate this. I guess I can just throw this in mods and check it out?
First, since you took the time to do this I will do the following:
Send you an in-dev version as soon as I'm able (have AI routes and the following stuff far below done)
NAME the stations (possibly the streets they're on)
Adjust AI routes where necessary if there's issues (pictures can help, draw the line that's difficult / impossible).
Adjust the paths if necessary, instead of /TSH, it's now /LosInjurus as I FINALLY got around to changing it about two months ago.
I have some serious work going down in the area (below) not too far from the abandoned mall and one of the house projects that's abandoned also. So we'll hopefully avoid this area for right now until the next update is out.
I never bothered with missions, as I need to get the map 'arted out' first to a decent extent.
What is up with the map? See below.

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STATE OF THE MAP
About half-way through getting some driveable roadways here. I totally tore this up! More than once, too.
Basically, what was there, I totally threw out 90% of this area that was there. I tried to engineer this one way, then another, then added the u-turn under the bridge to alleviate excess weaving otherwise the AI (and your brains) would have been a mess trying to get through that area.
It was this monstrosity or a stop light (BOOOORING, but super easy).
Did I take the easy route? Nope. Of-course not. That's alright, plenty of other maps out there did. This is not one of them, this will never be one of those.
Long story short (or not), the following picture, the orange sections are where I've carved/formed the roads, but not entirely thrown lanes down. There NO AI here yet, that'll take a good day to set up and another day to perfect. I need a good 3 days on-top of that to finish this up - full days mind you - so it likely will take a bit longer than that.
What's the best part? I have to take a metro line across this mess. Oh boy! What fun. I already have a good game-plan for that, namely in the form of raised rail like the Chicago EL. I purchased some raised pieces in the last year, but I'll be making some more of these to complement of what I already have. The elevated rail line will not be featured in the next beta. I have no concrete time when that'll go in as there's lots of fine edges I have to figure out how to make reliable collision for that doesn't munch on you / make you stuck, especially with the 'walking mode' now.
This map, while some parts predate walking mode, was made with the intention of this feature to be available.
Below, is a picture of map progress. The road position is set, the roads are carved, but almost no graphics have been applied here where the orange is. That's 3 days of GOOD progress solid, to put it lightly. This is the last thing (besides a few textures not working) that I have to do before release. It's been a long hard road to get to this, but it's 100% going to be worth it.
It's actually been so long that I entirely forget most of what I did.

There's a few more intersections with jumping opportunities too, you reckless speeders you.
The insane intersection here won't have all it's signs until the following beta, so good luck on that for now.
The rest of the roads are all carved that you can see, but mostly not finished yet lane-wise.
After the beta is out, I can concentrate on filling in these areas.
Oh, and I got two concrete alley-way textures that I bought cleaned up and ready to tile in to make a texture with, too. There were a few other texture things I did, but that's not quite ready to show yet. The concrete texture pair is each 16k x 16k but they'll be cut down to likely 2k x 4k or such. Otherwise they'd be 1~3gb total for the pair (too much!).

 

Thank you!

Yes, it is a full working mod, just make sure you activate it after the map since it needs to overwrite a file, no need to look out for anything else.
There is probably a way to solve the overwriting by inserting lines into the existing file with a script, but I'm no .lua/.json wizard

The map has really progressed, I can't even tell where your picture above has been taken. Keep it up!

I will dm you later today, no need to clog this thread up with intersection sketches that don't show progress

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Edit:
Apparently you can't dm pictures, so here we go

In the area I called Oceanview this left turn is impossible, also the right turn, but the busline doesn't need that one:

at the stripmall the busline wants to turn into the area, but the current situation is better for traffic
This left turn is impossible:

Somehow you can't get from the upper deck to the right

Unrelated to busses this one way road setup is causing absolute mayhem:

Thanks in advance

 

All noted. Airport one was an oversight, other ones are bugs or unfinished. I will make sure they ALL are as decent working as I can get them. THIS HELPS A TON and is 100% the best way to show me AI screw-ups.
I thought for sure I had that one at the airport working okay. Derp.
The last one, yes that needs work. Dual-directional roadways that separate (or come back together, depends which way you're heading) cause absolute mayhem in the AI and I haven't quite mastered that Unless it's hitting another road at an intersection. There's likely about half a dozen spots that do this, and about half or less work properly. I have to pop open one of the developer's maps and see how they did it and try to recreate it better (I tried before, it didn't turn out so well, try and try again for me). One of two things happen, you can overlap the roads and sometimes the AI routes will 'snap' to the nearest node between the two of them and end up with AI driving over curbs or worse the median, or they'll end up turning around because the two-way section nodes don't overlap the spline of the one-way sections.

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GPU PRICES CONTINUE TO FALL, so for those wanting a new GPU, you can either wait a bit and pick through the price-reduced left-overs (30-series RTX card production has ceased, fyi), or you can buy now (or soon-ish) and get what you'd like for hopefully a reasonable price.
RTX cards obviously take the crown for ray-tracing performance but if you just want a good cheap card with plenty of VRAM usually AMD cards are several hundred dollars (US dollars) cheaper in the enthusiast range for the same class of card VS Nvidia boards.
The developers expressly recommend Nvidia; however, the AMD cards work just dandy if that's what's available or preferred by you.
My weight continues to fall, too. I am finally back to what I was when I finished dieting in the winter. I had the nerves burned out of my lower back last week and so it's a LOT less painful when not moving around too much. The amount of bone / skeletal degradation means it's too far gone to put a rod in my spine to strengthen it, but I can have things like this done annually (or sooner) as I can afford it to improve quality-of-life.
TO-DO:
*Finish intersection-from-hell mentioned yesterday. Lots of curbing / texture work.
*finish fixing the last half-dozen to one dozen non-working building textures
*find the building model that's eating the entire draw call budget and noticeably cutting FPS in half or worse.
*Implement and test AI in new areas, and fix bugs related to turn lanes and other misc boo-boos listed above (thanks!). AI implementation is scheduled for two days. One full day to implement, half-day to test it.
*Release beta to supporters, get feedback / fix bugs, then make a public update. Time-frame indeterminate at the moment.
WARNING: Due to increase in texture and model weight, you might need to flip texture detail down a notch if things get slower for you at map load or during play as you explore.
Also, some new roadways may be a little more uneven than planned for, but this is due to a missing editor terrain-shaping tool. This will probably be corrected within a month or two. It shouldn't drastically affect play or enjoyment unless you're going ludicrous speed (100+ mph).
Remember, the tunnel MB-size by the airport has been reduced, and texture bug with the runway also has been fixed, so it shouldn't be as slow right there. That was totally my fault with the texture bug as one of the layers was NOT power-of-two which really makes things chug. This was fixed in April or May.
@Bauer33333 Oceanside or oceanfront is a good name candidate for that area and will be considered.

 

Just found out when saving a proof (work in progress graphics, the master & full detail source with which I make one or more - usually several - graphics from for roads buildings or whatever), that if you try to save a 32k x 16k (yes) file in DirectX graphic format (which is what the video card wants most times for graphics in game), that's not allowed. I believe it goes up to 16k. That's okay though because a graphic that size would be 0.85gb ~ 1gb, PER LAYER (and there's three to five / six layers), and there won't be any of those in-game. So I'll use the program's proprietary format for now, but DO know this does not hold up development, just something odd I found that I did not expect.
That's the same graphic that I showed above (two posts up).

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I've got a little over one solid day of work into the map of the five or so days needed (not including bug chasing of AI related stuff). The area I've been mostly working on recently is starting to shape up.
I also have one bangin' migraine right now too, and I've had it most of the day - it'll slow me down but it'll take a LOT more than that to stop this man.

Please excuse orange incomplete sections, piles of curbs, piles of road striping not used / re-used yet.
The orange areas aren't textured, given lanes, or have had the final edge and road surface smoothing yet. So there's still plenty to do here and I mean that strongly.
I've left the lanes at the 145 degree bend rather wide (a bit more than twice a vehicle, about 13~14 feet or roughly 4 meters), this is to facilitate articulated lorries / tractor-trailer rigs to turn here. It's a very tight turn and the back will tend to wander to the inside of a tight turn as any trucker knows.
The other two sides of this 'triangle' (it will be loosely referred unofficially as 'the triangle') will have single-lane u-turn with yield signs. A jersey barrier has been installed to discourage (but not quite 100% prevent) weaving issues (as you could still cut hard across at the end if you so wish to break the rules, this is also true for emergency vehicles however when "running code").
In the future, some places MAY have emergency vehicle short-cuts. These emergency vehicle short-cuts are more recent and only started being engineered in roads built or refurbished in the 21st century, usually around hospitals or police departments where emergency vehicle traffic is heaviest.
There will be a select few roundabouts in this map, as there's already a few at the airport (two?). Roundabouts in the city especially near industry may have sloped centers which not only make a good car launcher for speeders but also allow the rear axles of long commercial trucks to override the central reservation of the roundabout. I don't believe I need sloped centers at the airport roundabouts, as the trucks have absolutely no business being in the car park area.
Since I last posted, at-least another mile of curbing (most with sidewalks) have been placed. The editor 2.0 is growing on me, akin to there being a fungus among-us, with it's ability to copy-paste forest objects. The intersections without any traffic control (read: traffic lights) are an endangered species now (time to place traffic lights isn't factored into the map update release, BUT that shouldn't take too terribly long). It also makes placing curbing a LOT more 'doable' in a reasonable time-frame.
I will keep folks posted as I go, likely daily from here out until the next release VERY soon.
Attached is the graphics software saying 'haha! NOPE!'. Just one of those goofy things I encounter when filling the role of a 3D artist / map dev. Like I said it's not an issue.
Oh, almost forgot, the bridge in the first pic near the out-of-ram message in the top-right is going to be changed *AFTER* the beta to look more appropriate for Cali / LA. Just the shape/slope not the capacity.

 

Please, please please take a vacation or some time off to chill and relax after working on this, you clearly need it. Thanks for working on this

 

Well, if I get too over-stressed while working on the map, or just physically am unable to do things on the map, I take the day off. This is why I don't burn-out of my projects or get bored of them.
When I have this release out, I then have to fix any remaining serious show-stopping or annoying bugs, then I can pass that on to the public servers here for everyone to enjoy.
When that's done I have roughly two to three more months (based on cadence of release between game versions) before Nevada Interstate, Roane County TN, and Tail of The Dragon (Deal's Gap) stop working due to being old CS file based. Those will be run through the converter (and I will fix various graphic bugs that cause the 'no normal' or 'no specular' bugs to appear in the textures such as Roane County also), and then updated online around when the next game-version comes out. Of-course supporters will get those first. I am only doing those because I pledged support, even if back-burner, a long time ago, and plus because they absolutely won't load in or run in any meaningful way as CS file support will be GONE in the next game version. That's also why this release took just a little bit longer (it still would have taken almost this long anyways minus a few weeks to a month).
While I'd love to take some time off, honestly I don't 100% need it. When I get burned out for a day or two I take time off needed right there and then, provided it's not right before release. You cannot put out quality work when you don't want to do it nearly as quickly, easily, or as meaningfully as when you enjoy and want to do something from the start.
I have a high bar I set for quality, even though it's pre-release and things are unfinished, if I do something, then it has to be done right. Otherwise, it doesn't fly (or get uploaded) until it's corrected.
I appreciate y'all looking out though and the kind words from all involved. It certainly helps.
The only thing that I'm currently fighting is 'The GPU is not responding' issues while editing as of late, which is due to the VRAM overloading and there's nothing the driver can juggle to get out of it's situation, and I'm only on MEDIUM graphics here. Soon it's time for a GPU with a larger VRAM pool, I've begun the process of setting funds aside for that but it might take 6 months yet. Will deal with the random crash (and lots of saving!) until then. I save every 5~15 minutes so it's not usually too bad over here.
This thing needs a bigger GPU and more memory for the system, but that's the life when editing, especially being that I set the quality standard higher since the project has launched (going from the old GTA San Andreas original standard of detail, to something much closer to current gen within limits of this game engine). That said I will keep this thing going for now (though, as of this month, it's been 3 years since I built this system, so giving it a boost is expected), and keep putting out releases as I am able.

 

So, trying to make the textures work, one building at a time. When you have commercial models you purchase, they often have textures with names that would look like a group of giant centipedes have had a substance-laced party on my keyboard all night. Well that won't do will it?
While I sit here with lots of exclamation and question marks over my head, talking amongst myself and generating subtitles that contains lots of 'colorful' (and banned) words while I work would only be expected...
It's very easy to get texture references wrong, and adding in my very bad memory, it makes it even more difficult. That explains about half the 'no texture' orange-fest going on with the new models.

For folks who merely play this map and don't make mods, you can skip the next bolded section.
I will place here an OFFICIAL announcement regarding changes to the map directory structure. THIS IS IMPORTANT IF YOU MAKE MODS THAT WORK DIRECTLY WITH THIS MAP OR THE DATA WITHIN IT.
THE MAP FOLDER NAME IS NO LONGER /TSH/ IT IS NOW /LOSINJURUS/, so make sure your mods will reference this change if you wish to use them with the next release version. This also means that if you don't clear out your old zip, or if you rename the new update, you could confusingly have TWO versions of this map!!! Do NOT publish mods using the old /TSH/ naming scheme at this point, as the map will be privately updated very soon and the public update will follow within 2~3 weeks there-after provided the beta goes smoothly.
For those wondering, TSH is a codename for the old So_Cal and early versions of Los Injurus. It was coined as a Huckleberry Hound cartoon played and mentioned 'THE SUPER HIGHWAY', and there it was, the codename for this highway laden map. I knew I wanted to make a city here one day when I figured out how, so that is why the map adapted so well for this purpose.
That's all for right now. The above announcement about folder structure change will not negatively affect the map playability in any way shape or form.

 

Don't forget the water
Do you have plans to upgrade the rail lines to something like the derailment resistant tracks mod does in the fixing process?

 

Hah I tried vulkan and not only the game went 6fps, my youtube video went 6fps, and so did the OS.
Derp! Let's not do that.
That said it's fun to watch a 'save as' dialog in the OS fill in element by element like it did in Windows 95 on a AM-486 dx/2 66... hey at-least it was a DX not an SX (the latter didn't have an FPU and was much worse).
Why? 8gb VRAM. Ouch. Enjoy a good laugh at my expense.
Need to do a little more optimization on some textures before this beta goes anywhere. I am sure I could consolidate and knock this down by 0.5 ~ 0.75gb of VRAM use somehow.

 

I have absolutely no knowledge of such mod, how it works, or that it exists. However, I might have time to even look at other mods when I get this release up on the server. To that end, I don't think I've even had more than a passing 5 minutes max to even look at mods (much less test them), with how crazy busy I have been on this project.
When you have a chance, in the coming week, try to link that project please.
The water is there, you just can't see it. I have it 'off' because of editing things. I'll try to NOT forget to flip it visible again before I sent this out.

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...And on that note, a big thunder cloud morphed out of thin air and almost made the cat - and me - go through the wall/ceiling whatever. Holy smokes. BOOOOOOOOOOM!!! *house shakes* after utter silence for 10+ minutes will get you every time. That's only the SECOND time a thunder cloud has appeared from nowhere in the last 5~6 hours. Gotta love Tennessee! If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes and try again. Too bad no one told me until we got here that I moved to the rain forest - and that it's monsoon season (again).

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Map progress is coming along nicely. Getting a lot more curbing in, and most of the triangle (80%?) is laned/striped properly and just needs some edging and maybe a bit of fencing.
The new textures look great and I'm sure with time they'll get even better as I have other complimentary textures in place also.

There is a section of road with a sidewalk built over it where it meets the side of an exit ramp before the bridge. This road has been closed off through previous road improvements for road safety and will have small barricades to deter unlawful vehicle traffic while not preventing emergency vehicle access here. This is not uncommon to find in cities around the US, nor does it prevent player use entirely.
Okay so crazy storm happened and I'm finishing this up and sending it post-storm.
Roads need a lot of smoothing, and there's still a good solid mile of road to do, a dozen intersections to put stop lights (not that bad as it used to be), and all the AI work.
There may be a bit more unfinished bits in this beta than before, but there is also more content than before, so it's win-some lose-some with this coming update. However, you'll still be able to mill about and enjoy your time on the map, without too much ado. There's just not a ton of barricades barring you from getting into the less immersive unfinished areas.
The 'ruined structures' set of models is not yet into the map. It will be in when I have enough of them to warrant the increase in VRAM load.
I have 1 of 3 buildings processed for 'missing textures issues'. The other two have to be done before the beta, and a fourth and fifth might get added in also (there's a bunch more really, that are very close to done but not given a final once-over and maybe some more optimizing, but that's again not worth even more delays, they can show up in the following beta good as... well not new, but you get it).
I lost two whole days of time to being out of town and one to just feeling awful like I was spinning, so I didn't get as much done as I'd have liked to, but what IS done is good work and not just slapped together. So I am sure it will be deemed plenty good enough and you folks will enjoy it.
That's all for right now.
Hopefully no more *BOOM* surprise storms appearing out of nowhere tonight, because I'm the guy that's got to fix the cat-shaped holes in the wall when the storm scares the heck out of the poor things...and me...

 

Oh yes, update....

 

More than 600 surplus UV's and random two-sided (error) polys were removed from building 2 of 3.
This means another building is done. Should be able to have the proper textures on it working now, too.
Garbage cans on front/back were removed and will become their own objects later on, due to high UV's.
More progress to be posted later, through an edit on this post (not a new one).