WIP Beta released The Tennessee USA Roane County 0.71 Beta Discussion/Suggestion/feedback Thread 19.3.1

Are there any plans on updating the map with PBR materials? And night lighting perhaps?

 

The author of the map said that there will be no plans for updates yet and is currently focusing on the map Los Injurus.

 

i love the map, its huge and fun to drive around on!! but the train tracks are often obstructed in a lot of places, and trains cant really drive on them, like trees being too close to the track and knocking my train off, or a bridge being too low and crushing the train, still an amazing map!!

 

Does anyone else experience missing textures across the map every time I close the game and reload it after clearing the cache? This issue occurs consistently.

 

Go to the other pages and you'll see more people experiencing missing textures.

 

While I'm certain Los Injurus is getting the creator's full attention I wish this map could see an update or something. Hopefully the textures thing gets worked out at least?

 

Los Injurus is nice and all, but nothing will beat the sheer realism and immersion of this map.

 

I agree

 

YES THIS IS GETTING FIXED. Give some weeks and it will get a public-facing update. Supporters on Patreon for Los Injurus City project will get an early preview or two depending on how extensive this gets.
TO FIX:
*There was absolutely positively no light no nothing, the sun broke(!?), think I fixed it though.
*Bridge and jersey barrier on bridge texture missing all layers
*AI is really janky in a few spots especially where roads change lane amounts or at on/off ramps
*FPS issues, will use custom commercial and residential buildings where-possible to reduce draw calls, back-ported from Los Injurus. THIS TAKES A LOT OF TIME.
*Road textures somewhere are broken in a few spots, downtown Harriman (now working!?)
*Not sure I can fix the train issues but I will see what I can do. IF TIME ALLOWS.
*Tree bit my choo-choo train issue ... yeah, that's bad, and I can fix that. BAD TREE! MEANIES!
*Bridge mooshed my choo-choo train issue, let me know how much it needs raised and where at.
*Will try to fix the bumps from grass depth bleeding under roadways bounding you around.
*Might double the terrain resolution. Will see what I can do here, IF TIME ALLOWS.
*My water broke. Ohnoes! It's not that bad, easy enough fix, water will be back soon.
*Make signs not EAT cars, though I bounced off them when hit at <60mph. Might cause more issues as I think pole models are shared so highway signs might still eat you if hit hard enough.
*Whatever else gets reported, I will (try to) fix, in time as it comes in.
Give this AT LEAST a month, for one the moderators / staff on the site are currently SWAMPED. Seriously folks, don't upload any mods for a WEEK at-least, if not two. It can wait. Number two, it'll be at-least 3~5 weeks for me to do everything I need to do here including doubling the terrain and working on the FPS issues. Will try not to swamp VRAM use on this 'level' with better textures but some will get improved if I have to work on them.
Please keep in mind this is a MASSIVE environment, one of THE biggest out there built off a terrain. The terrain is 4k Like Nevada Interstate and Los Injurus, but it is MASSIVELY stretched, so the terrain gets jagged in some spots, the grass is in square chunks, grass traction planes bleed under roads and cause cars to bounce, sometimes collision on the terrain isn't 100% perfect and may not always be what is expected especially near sharp changes in slope, and other issues here and there. The shaking was fixed on the game-engine end of things a while back thankfully. HOWEVER, this environment was very much loved, and a LOT of people enjoyed it for exactly everything it was and didn't have a lot of issues with what it wasn't. I want to preserve this just the way it is, if possible, without raising the requirements drastically in any regard. So to that end, I'm going to do the required texture and game-version bug-fixing updates FIRST and FOREMOST, then I will work on enhancing it slightly without breaking it for everyone else who enjoys the original.
If you have special requests, please do tell, but DO KNOW THIS IS FINALLY GETTING FIXED!
--That is all, please support the LOS INJURUS project if you have not!
Los Injurus project links here - HERE FOR FORUM THREAD most recent post, or
HERE FOR LOS INJURUS PATREON SUPPORTER PAGE to help support and maintain the mega-sized mods I make for this game. Both links above are safe for work.
-The (very busy) Bob.
GREEN stuff means fixed, or so I see it as fixed / no longer broken here, more testing needed of-course. Stuff in black with a * before it means it's still broken, or it might be other text.

 

I really appreciate your map.
It's the only map I play this game on, about 600 hours now. I've since used the map editor and build a loop highway around this map. And then I added more towns and more roads and houses and farms. And another airport. And still adding more stuff.

Love the map Bob

 

Okay well I appreciate the lovely comments. There is one issue to all this though. That is not my issue personally, but a technical issue. If this Roane County is updated, and you download the update, YOUR updates will over-ride the changes I make and provide here. However, it's in all likelihood that your changes are more significant, and I would hang onto your version in that case. I'm going to fix the things I made mention to above, to the amount possible, and upon completion upload the changes here to the queue (though it could take a bit to be approved, like the changes I did to Los Injurus which will go public in the next week or two...or four, could take a bit so give them good time!).
So you could rename your changes, by changing the path of things in the level itself, and the paths inside the forest object definitions and all the JSON / CS files (if there's any CS files left, those were on their way out a long time ago). This way you get the best of both Roane County worlds.
Just do a bulk-replace on all json or cs files and rename the folder name inside all the paths to something else on the folder for your changes, and that should do it.
I appreciate your enthusiasm though, but at the same time I realize that's a TON of work you've sunk into it and I'd hate for you to lose it.
IF you make your own version of the level with it's own paths, you'll not only keep it / eternalize (sic?) it on your own computer, you'll also not have it conflict with this version that gets future updates.
At some point, you should upload it to Mega or some other service and send me a link, I wouldn't mind taking a look at it. If you didn't change textures (other than fixing bugs) etc, then your only changes would be to the /forest folder inside your version of the level, the /main level data files, and sometimes stuff in the root folder of the level.
There might be a way I can add in a 'bonus non-official expanded version' of the changes you made depending on the quality of work, that comes WITH this next update (or a following update). I've seen this done before in other levels, and if the changes are significant enough it could warrant a value-add like this.
Of-course, though an update could include your changes, it does not FORCE all to use these changes. The changes would be optional, showing up as an additional level along-side the original that we all know already. So you'd have 'Roane County' on your level select screen and 'Roane County bonus content' in addition, allowing the choice between the two. You would be fully credited for said additional work upon my base work that is Roane County.
That said, when I do update this, you could just absorb the changes in the /ART folder into your custom-modified version and it'll likely fix any graphical bugs remaining, if you still have any you did not fix.
Appreciate the love, this project took a very long time and though I did not sink as much time into it as Los Injurus has now taken it was still A LOT of time. I still sank 5000+ hours into Roane County and then some at the bare-minimum - and that's likely a massive understatement - maybe to the tune of 1000~1500 hours shy of time actually taken. I'm sure Los Injurus has blown past the 10,000 hour mark or is close if it hasn't gone well over already. 40 hours a week would mean FIVE YEARS to make 10,000 hours, so that sounds about right and Roane County had three solid years of development while compared to Los Injurus' 5 or 6 years.
I'm sure others would quite enjoy your effort, but sharing it publicly would cause all kinds of crazy conflicts as it stands, so this solution may be best in everyone's interest.

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I didn't have time to work on Roane County yesterday (was away most of the day) nor yet today, but should have some time later and definitely some tomorrow/Sunday so check for progress updates at that point later. Just put this note to be transparent about things as-is my policy.
--That is all!
-The Bob

 

TILT TILT TILT!!!

This is getting fixed, pronto.
At-least if it happens HERE, I can actually SEE it and FIX it.
EDIT: Evidently one needs a doctorate degree in college courses for game design to even make any sense in the new terrain materials index files. Yeah, that's not going to happen. I'm going to have to copy my Los Injurus terrain definitions over and modify them so it somewhat looks like Roane County again. What a literal [censored] show the last few hours have been. I can't even begin to think of what or why, I've never seen anything 'mod friendly' or any game to date be this complicated. This is nuts.

 

Weird, I just loaded the map, and I dont have this problem.

 

As far as I know the changes that I make will always save in the levels folder somewhere, and I do have a backup of that.
I don't mind my work getting removed when you make a map update. I've been driving so much on this map, that I would even just want to remove everything and start with a black template of this area.

Because this map is pretty much the biggest out there, it really works well as a template also.

But looking forward the updates or even should there be no updates in the future, I just keep editing when I'm too bored of the same thing.
Since I pretty much just spend my time on this map in the game.

PS. The missing texture thing, I had that when I started messing with your map, I fixed it by adding some textures to "grass1" and then it replaced all those red areas with some texture I ended up making.

 

Another bug: The Navigation app is completely empty everywhere. Not sure how much work this will be to fix though.

 

You'll get that when it loads from cache due to the terrain using the OLD format for textures.
I've got new textures defined and it's complaining about size, and about missing textures for things and it's throwing in random unique numbers on them from stock maps and I have to figure that mess out.
It's become absolutely stupid-complicated. I mean, how do they think anyone is going to be able to figure any of this out? It used to be simple when it was working off the old CS format and Torque3D-style texture indices. Now it's so complicated that it feels like a major step backwards, taking days what took me minutes to figure out the first go-around. So complicated and 1000x more likely/easy to break.
It might be a day or two before I even get back to attempting anything. Trying to think of what it might be, but I honestly am having a hard time even approaching this one. Doing my best here, but I dunno.
Will likely hack in the terrain definitions from Los Injurus and put in the old values for colors and texture files from Roane County so it still looks 95% the same except no orange.
If that fails I will over-ride the definition for no-texture with grass!
Put it this way, it's currently so broken that I can't even edit it in the editor. I haven't gotten it to work well enough to get that far. There's no bad scripting errors though, I've checked that much over.
Started with ECA terrain as a base, first mistake but it's the closest map currently to what I need. I put in new textures... the texture size is bad. so I change the texture size values. still doesn't work and complains about texture size. Well we have to keep all the textures for base-color the same size now, evidently, as script doesn't allow it to be per-texture set even though there's more definitions. After hours of fussing trying to get the thing to even SHOW said textures, it just shows a black mess and still complains. I am not doing a cent more work on that DISASTER that the devs call a texture system for terrains. It's not fun. I wouldn't even do this for 1000$ an hour, as surely as water is wet I would go maniacally insane before my first break came up.
So I'll use my file from Los Injurus and try and get that to work, or see if one of the older stock game levels has simpler stuff (it does, I'd rather use newer if possible which is why I tried it this way).
Mod friendly, yeah right, who are they even kidding? NO ONE outside of those with a college degree or is retired/disabled is ever going to figure this out. I'm in the 98th percentile on intelligence when tested and I can barely make any sense of it or why there are so many different values (all of which if one single value is not 100% correct a whole layer is bad).
Sorry if this sounds like a RANT, but it IS a rant. I'm a bit steamed. More than a bit, a lot actually. I set out to do something, with a years-newer version of the engine. What I get for that is, in-stead of making things more user-friendly, easier, and simpler to figure out, things have gone completely backwards in the terrain/textures department. What used to be easy to quickly parse texture indices have completely gotten wrecked (as far as I'm concerned) and might as well be in machine-code characters at this point, though not nearly as bad as trying to read / use / make sense of the terrain stuff. They don't even have sensible names (of course) to make sense of what some of the values even DO, and sometimes there's multiple fields that seem to be for the same thing.
After hours of it, and me being about to beat the computer into a useless pile of bolts after owning it five years+ and never wanting to have done so, I had to step away and leave the computer entirely for a while. I was just that disgusted.
To be quite frank, I'm not even a bit steamed. I'm down-right ANGRY. The Bob is very angry at not the wonderful folks who enjoy playing this, but that things must be this much more complicated. I'll take the old graphics engine back in a heart-beat if it means simple CS files for texture and terrain indices come back.
So, again my apologies. But this is insanity at best (and self-loathing at it's current state) trying to make sense and work with / modify the stock game level settings for even such a similar environment EVEN WITH PROFESSIONAL GRADE TOOLS at my disposal. Will do the best I can with slightly older versions of one of the stock game level's terrains if hacking in the Los Injurus stuff also proves a dead-end.
It's just going to take some time. Evidently I have to do some experimentation after doing some more research so that I don't have to shelve the idea and can get this done in an otherwise semi-reasonable amount of time.
In the mean time I will work on fixing the Los Injurus AI bugs that are irking me and re-upload that, so if any of you are on the Patreon for it, you'll get the update for it within the next week to 10 days and I will be uploading that version. It might come sooner than that, but that's a worst-case scenario.
For Roane County, I'll get it done as it's possible to work on it. Right now it's still REALLY broken and I'm not going to do other work to it until I can get the terrain to actually function more than just on the first load in (and now it doesn't even work then on my end). Considering the terrain is a very pixelated black mess right now (yeap, it's worse), it's probably the wisest decision.
I will keep folks posted on it, and wish I had better to report, but this situation right now just sucks and there's absolutely positively no getting around that or sugar-coating it. This should have been much easier, this shouldn't have even been a situation, but it is what it is.
THIS LEVEL WILL NOT BE GETTING PBR TEXTURES. I'm not toying with the texture indices any more than I have to here, so please do not ask for PBR textures. It would be nice in theory but this would take forever. Unless I make completely new ones, they wouldn't look much of any better. Time would better be spent banging my head on the desk than trying to do that to this level, and it would be less likely to break the level, even if I nailed the keyboard with my head a few times. No worries, I despise the keyboard anyways. The D key is going out on it, and I've only had it 18 months, and the space bar broke a week or two ago (and then decided to un-break when I dropped my fist on it hard enough).
I'll have another post when I get somewhere with this tangled mess that's called a 'mod-friendly game'.
At this point, though, I'd sooner bathe in a week-old dirty cat pan than mess with the terrains any more right now. Will get on this again when sanity is more plentiful, probably a day or two.
-I miss Doom. The old, original MS-DOS Doom. It was so simple.
--The Bob
Attached is an example of the old (on the left), VS the new (right side) texture indices for the terrain. You can't even see the whole texture entry on the new one, that's half or two-thirds of it.
For those not in the know /southernhighway/ is the internal code-name and directory structure for Roane County. A unique project name is always used on my level folders so it doesn't conflict with other levels in the future possibly made by someone else, except Los Injurus because it's unique named. So if someone else made a Roane County map in the future, and named the folder /RoaneCounty/ then it wouldn't conflict. However seeing as that's yet to happen in 8 years, I might rename it to that some day to make more sense, if and when I get this working. Hopefully I do get it working...
Also, I finally let Windows 10 update after FIVE YEARS, so I can play 'The Last Of Us' which I paid around 20~30$ for months ago. MISTAKE. My next computer will be Linux and only Linux, and whatever doesn't work on Linux doesn't need to be on my PC. I'm DONE with Windows after this PC, it just SUCKS, as bad or probably worse than the new terrain texture index format does. At-least I fixed the update causing my graphical software to crash out and lock-up.
It is through no act smaller than a feat of God himself, that I haven't thrown this tower through the window in the last week.

 

Get Beam Advisor, it's better.
--- Post updated ---

If possible, can you add a Point of Interest for Harriman?

 

ITS GETTING FIXED ITS ABOUTTA BE FIIIIRE

 

8+ hours spent just trying to get the terrain to work this week.
Tried to use East Coast as a source, didn't work, ended up with black speckled terrain.
Tried to use Los Injurus as a source, didn't work, ended up with shiny black terrain.
No layers, not one, have shown up.
I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to fix this. I have one or two more tricks to try, but after that I'll have to talk to the developers.
In 2016, working with the terrain layers via text, and getting the formats right, was fairly / moderately easy. Working with the layers in the editor was nice. The log was helpful.
In 2024, working with the terrain layers via text is confusing and very complicated, why are we using PNG format anyway, when everything else is DDS format textures I can't even get stuff to open correctly in the editor. The log is cryptic and doesn't always tell me what's going on or why, it's about a 50-50 chance it tells me what's going on or not.
Not sure what's going on here, it's not tying the layers to the terrain, unique ID's or not.

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@gta5online9_official I can consider doing so once I get the terrain working again. Right now it's solid black. There should be a default spawn there but it's a few blocks off the main route (Route 27).

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@Stampylongnose1234 I don't know what changed with the navigation thing but it hasn't worked in years here, or in Los Injurus (last time I checked). I have to look into that and see what's changed or if I'm hitting some limit.

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--That is all, just keeping folks updated. I'm trying, but right now it's about as productive (and about as fun) as mating with an active nest full of angry Giant Asian Hornets...
-The Bob
Oh, and the mower is still broken, because why not? I tried fixing it today, but this had no effect.
At-least I THINK I know what's wrong with it now.

Buzza-buzza Buzz-buzz-buzz-buzz-buzzzz... Buzza buzza buzz-buzz-buzzzzzzzzzz...

 

oh dear i hope verything goes well good luck dude i hope i can see a updated roane county tennesy
--- Post updated ---

wait try american road textures its perfectly fine try that