Hello guys! This is my first ever map for BeamNG which I plan on releasing soon, probably sometime this week. I started working on this map a few days ago and have made some significant progress. The map is a grassland with some dirt trails through a forest of sorts. The map also has a small town (not finished yet), a small pond, a meandering river, covered bridge, and a port (not finished yet). It's fun to take a rally car through the trails trying not to hit any trees. I am still quite new to the terrain editor so I am still learning things every day. I have more plans for this map including more trails with varying surfaces, a larger town, a mud pit, a complete port, a small mountain, different dirt and road textures, and more. If you would like to help me test unreleased versions of this map, you can privately message me, I would love some help and feedback. And again, you can expect a release sometime this week. Below are some images of the map.
A few notes for the budding level builder: Ah, map making - We must all start somewhere. You have a long, difficult journey ahead. It is one fraught with many challenges and many unknowns. *Always feel free to mug some of my road textures, I put my all into them (usually) because they're for everyone in the community here at Beamng.drive. *Always make backups, especially before adding groups of textures or forest-items in or making other major changes. *never move the terrain or re-size it after starting the map. BAD things can happen! *If you have an issue, pull console, or check the logs in the beamng.drive directory in mydocuments. *NOTEXTURES are almost always the result of a typo (like /level/ instead of /levels/ or ROAD in place of ROADS), or otherwise a missed/overlook field in the materials.cs scripting or model reference .cs files. I still make typos, too! When using find-in-files or auto-replace in your editor to change the directory, always use a leading a trailing / in it. Example: If I wanted to copy my So-Cal map (which is named codename TSH in the file*)... I'm using Notepad++ I would go and find (in files!) and replace /TSH/ with /NEWLEVELNAME/ or whatever my level name would be. If I don't use the leading and trailing / on TSH it'll just be TSH and it'll change the texture script words 'CasTSHadows' too. OOPS. First beta of Tennessee has this error. It doesn't crash the game but can cause other issues. *If you have multiple copies of the forest brush, the game can only use ONE, try to look in your main .mis file and figure out what is the one that's referenced. Terrain can do this too. Small terrians/forest brushes are only 3mb or so, but large ones like Tennessee can be up to ~96mb (the forest can range from 1kb on a tiny map to 16mb or more)! *Maps don't have to be monstrous to be fun. Maps can be any size you want, but as they get bigger, they require exponentially more work! Make sure your up to the challenge as the good lord knows all-too-well we don't need more half-finished maps on here. *Use Transparent-enabled textures on decal roads, and Non-Transparency-enabled textures on MESH roads (when you use mesh roads, use them sparingly, they make great walls, bridges, guide-rails etc). Transparency can be set inside the materials.cs, as can CastShadow (bridge doesn't let light shine through) variable and transparentZwrite. Non-Transparent textures used on terrain decal roads will have hard edges, transparent textures used on mesh roads will cause issues with shadows landing on the terrain underneath (floaty car!). Nevada had that in Jan/Feb. *If you don't know how to do something, put that part of the map on the back burner unless it absolutely must be done, and send out a question to a friend or post it in the forum, so you can get back to it later when you know. *Use SHIFT-mousedrag in the F1 object editor to make a copy of something. You only need to hold shift for a second or two when you start dragging. As soon as you hit it, a copy is made. You can select multiple things with CTRL+CLICK just MAKE SURE you get the right things selected *You can get real USGS terrain off terrainparty.com and upscale it with L3DT to 2k on the free version. Heighmaps must be square, power of 2, and in 16bit PNG format or the game won't import it correctly. *AI is done in two ways (that I know of!), you can make your decal ROADS driveable (not mesh roads), by setting DRIVEABILITY field to 1 (it starts at -1 for no-go), which makes it show up on the automap also. 1 for a regular road, 0.5 for a reduced-speed dirt path, the AI won't usually pick paths but sometimes it does - it will if it has nowhere else to go! Values such as 0.25 or 0.75 won't work, I've tried them. Only 0.5 and 1 are valid. The other way to make AI is to script path nodes (Waypoint) items into your map (name is WP1), by placing them in the editor, and shift-dragging as many duplicates as you need. You'll add these to map.json for your bridges, mesh roads needing AI support, and other misc things like jumps etc. These will also show up on the minimap as roads like the decal roads do. Small bridges will only need two, curved longer bridges or arched bridges will need more than 2, long mesh roads winding for miles on a mountain-side will need LOTS of them. I have over 120 in So-cal! *It's not EASY, it was never meant to be. While the editor is nice, and mapping is awesome... If you get burned out of it for a night - that's fine - walk away or play something else or pick up the clicker and watch the (yuck!) TV Set. Come back when you have some fresh ideas and the drive to map will come along automatically. If you're away from the PC and you get some ideas, take some pics of the stuff that gave you the ideas (like an interchange), or write them down in some way you'll trigger your memory in your brain. *If you have issues moving the starting point... Save map, close game, reload game, open map, open editor, move starting SPAWN SPHERE and it's associated camera nodes (if any), put it where you like, and save your map, now close the map out and reload it. If you're in the new spot, it worked, yay. It's a bastard but it works! *When in doubt, experiment! You never know if people will like what you do in a map. We literally had almost no super-highway tracks that weren't just a pre-fabbed highway plopped on a grid in the middle of nowhere when I made Nevada Interstate. It was very well received when it hit the forums - even with the errors it had first coming out - and thus far has spawned more tracks like it and will likely spawn many more. It's not easy to build a replica-highway though! You might just find something new to make that we'll all love tomorrow. These smaller maps make GREAT destruction derby maps. The map's MAX amount of items is 4096 including ThePlayer, the terrain, the skybox item, cloud layers, the water or ground plane, etc. Once you go over 2048, odd things can happen. You'll still be able to map, but things like selecting things in the F1 object editor might not work as well with random OTHER things selected. Gameplay is unaffected until you go over 4096 though. I selected some waypoints to delete on a bridge in Nevada Interstate one time and pressed DEL and it killed the sun too. Imagine my suprise when all the light in the map went out and it became pitch-black except for the spot lights Sometimes you'll have to be careful when you get seriously-high on the amount of items you have if you should choose to delete things you might have to manually unselect things. Objects in the list-box on the right are generally in there Chronologically. I wish you the best. If you have any questions, just ask. Usually I am at the PC, but sometimes I am doing other things, too. My health is not the best, so when I am here and see the message (or on Steam), I'll get back to you. If I am not here, google is your friend and many Torque3d questions apply here as well, so there may be more stuff on that engine question-wise. This game is based off Torque3d.
New images! Put in a different port, added some cranes and I plan on adding shipping containers and buildings at the dock area. Re-routed the river, and also started a more rugged offroad course. Also fixed some texture issues I was having. Hoping to release in the next few days still.
