Map Making failure and rage, three things that occured before, and I don't want to happen now.

Hello all willing enough to help a walking lemon.

Before, while making my first map, I kept running into a problem where the world editor would say that it had failed to create bla/bla/bla/mods/levels/canyon_race.mis.decals. It ruined any playability with it. Is there any way to stop this with my new map?
And also, all of my roads have the same amount of traction of the material below them. How should I improve this?
And finally, my sea looks GOD DAMN dark... can I make it brighter?

Thanks x100 to anyone who is helpful in this thread.

 

Everything you add, delete or change....whether a decal, material, tree, road, sun angle,...everything gets saved
to the BeamNG.drive documents folder. Each and every one of those must be copied back to the original level
folder and in their respective places they came from. Sorry if this isn't helpful but map making has become so
complicated these days it's damn near impossible to convey it all.


Your DECALS file is either in the wrong place or has the wrong file name. My best guess.

 

Also, whenever there's an update, it stuffs up my map. after the 4.0.1.1 update, everything disappeared apart from the trees. I copied the files from the backup to the mod folder, but it didn't work.
Thanks.

 

If you are working on a map unzipped the updates throw that entire folder, unmolested, into "unknown user files" or whatever. Simply copy the
map from there right back to where it was when you were working on it. I don't work on maps from the mods folder, I work on them unzipped and in
the main steamapps/common/BeamNG.drive/content/levels folder. I keep updated in progress copies unzipped on my desktop and a fully updated zip on the desktop.

Hope this helps.

 

Ehrm, that's if the map was being worked on in the incorrect place. When the map is being worked on in the correct place (Documents\BeamNG.drive\mods\levels\mymapname), it will be thrown into a folder called "backup" in the Documents\BeamNG.drive folder.​​

 

While this being half true, none of my zipped or unzipped mods in Documents\BeamNG.drive\mods have been moved anywhere. (only the unimportant cache folders)
There are a few reasons why I myself have to work from the "incorrect place" though.
Mainly because not all the features of the world editor work properly from the "correct" location.

I have to work from steamapps/common/beamng/levels to be able to use all the features of the shape editor and to setup materials. If I use the "correct place" when making maps, it throws up errors in the shape editor that stop me adding LOD's and collision meshes to my models, and materials I pick are just white. The resulting material.cs generated has a crazy long file path for the material and needs to be manually corrected and the map restarted before I can see it. Working from the documents folder would be great.... if it worked fully. I don't get any of these issues when working from the incorrect place.

From what I can gather there is a bug stopping some of the functions of the world editor from working properly from the documents folder. Like some file paths for certain features haven't been set or are conflicting. I'm not a programmer, but the errors are all file path related.

So if working from the incorrect place works better than the correct place, where it the correct place to work?

So I disabled auto updates and make sure to move my maps from steamapps/common/beamng/levels to my desktop before updating manually. Then move them back after to save confusion. Heck it works for me.

 

Thank you jammin, you said what I didn't have the patience to say.

I've tried making maps from the mods folder and encountered the exact same things. Materials filepath issues
and editor bugs. Add the whole zip process into it and it's just a mess.

I have stated several times the way I do it works for me but apparently very few people are listening.
Frustratingly, I think no one but the actual devs know what the theory and endgame to this is.
None the less it is a WIP so I won't go on a tirade about it.