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

how ai settings (that I never used in game) is affecting spawn stuff?

 

Yes that's an excellent card, especially if it has 4gb or more of memory on the card. Any 1050 or higher, or 970 or higher is excellent and may run high detail/maxed, and most-definitely medium on 2gb or better cards like 1050 2gb or 960 2gb. Turn shadows/reflection resolution down/off if things are too slow. Remember this is pre-release + beta/unfinished map so your mileage-may-vary and there MAY be slow spots randomly.

The AI works in this map, where it may not work in other user maps unless it's a good thorough mapper that does all the behind-the-scenes work to make the AI work. AI ALWAYS WORKS IN MY MAPS. Period. I don't put out maps without AI support because for myself it's most of the fun!
What good's a highway or roadway network if you can't chase AI down it?????? So yeah, open up the APPS options on the ESCAPE key menu sidebar. Go into the + button there and look for AI controls. Put it somewhere and checkbox NO COCKPIT view so it's not in the way when you're in-car. Sometimes it randomly can turn itself on strangely or you turn it on not realizing it and/or game crashes after it's on, oddly remembering some of the settings later. Stranger things have happened.

 

That probably should run most of the maps perfectly, I find that Tennessee is not very demanding map for GPU, with Normal graphics profile setting this map runs fine.

Towns might be bit slower, but at least for me it is not the GPU, but CPU that limits performance on those, as with any map objects seem to cause CPU load that slows things down, but disabling shadows seems to fix most of that, shader quality is another option that can slow things down, so turning that to low helps.

Hower over 90% of this maps runs perfectly on maximum graphics quality settings with 1050Ti + i7 6700 and 90% of this map is a lot of driving.



I like to explore developing areas, so interesting backroads, of course it sometimes leads to problems as areas are not yet quite finished, map is really best in BeamNG for long haul trucking experience.


I was wondering, is there Tail of the dragon on this map? That is US 129, but I guess you know the place?

 

Let's see if I managed to do it anyway right, but it should be high quality video:


1500 might be bit too little visual distance, but I think it is only visible at the beginning? Of course morning setting and fog helps a lot with that.

Most of the time I can run at full visual distance, but at some places there is hiccup, still map runs really well, on video I have maximum graphics settings, only dynamic reflections are toned down a bit. There is little slowdown on bridge crossing, but such are quite rare and even around burger world with 1500 visual distance it seems to be running 60fps when using normal quality and all eye candy on, so 1050 can handle this map really well, much better than East Coast USA.

With graphic settings maxed out, near burger world it runs bit slower, here you can see 50fps, also reason why truck is not very fast, trailer and truck has full loads of Tasti Cola, so there is quite bit of weight to pull.

 

@fufsgfen Nice videos, I will check these out tonight. Have to let them buffer because my 'Bedrock DSL unlimited' = poo. Performance feedback is always useful to me, too.
Tail of the dragon (deal's gap) is not in this map, it's about a good solid hour EAST of where this map is. Maybe 40 mins or so. However far it is from MIDTOWN or KINGSTON, both of which are on the eastern-most 2 miles of this map. Tail is @ the border between TN and NC.
I will, however, do a mini-map called tail of the dragon, at some point in the future. It won't be a huge map, or a super-graphically intense one, but there will be trees, and as such, it will be a fun race. I will only add what is necessary for enjoyment of it.
There are plenty of roads in the mean-time to get you by.
And yes, some of the railroad crossings do catch trucks. Most of them can be bypassed, however, so have a look around with the free-cam if you're not sure. Ones that can be bypassed include Rockwood (overpass to the north, comes out just north of the service station), Pine ridge road (not sure if it's high enough to hang up the landing gear, but it may be, if it is, take the highway), Harriman (there's an overpass that heads to the waterfall, same road, i think it's called 'old harriman hwy' so look for it if you're not sure with the AI target), *most* of them cross side roads, Pine Ridge is the only major with a level crossing, IIRC. I will work on these more @ a later date (it is known, but for now they make awesome JUMPS).
I wish this game could pick up and rotate the landing gear up like it normally does on real trailers (I used to sell it and other commercial truck/trailer parts).
--- Post updated ---

OOPS! BUG! Thanks, I will move that about 3 feet further away from the curb (which is a tad high of a curb). I will affect this change next time I edit this map so that it's done. Thanks for that! Some of the starts may not work 100%, also a bug; to be fixed.

 

how long did it take to make this

 

Over 1000 hours, or in close proximity to that number (+/- 250 hours, most likely more than 1000 hours).
Yes, it took a very, very, very long time. About a year. I started it one year ago, almost exactly.
It was originally just a 'large map proof of concept' to see how big of a map you could make in Beamng.drive.
AND IT WORKED. As I decorated, and polished the turd is was, by the summer of last year, it started looking plausable that it could be done. Demand grew so I kept at it... for seeming forever. Many models were contributed to the map by other map authors (see the credits!) or were used with permission (hey, I ask), as this map couldn't have been populated by just the East Coast models alone.
Work will continue on this map however, release of a new version would be somewhere following the 0.9.x update due to the changes it has for map structuring.
*edit: Will most likely be working on this for the next few weeks. Should be able to get an update out then.
Was thinking about it, since I updated So-Cal in January, and Nevada this month, I should do this one now.
Going to see if I can re-spin a few textures on some of the house models I have for some more randomness. Who want's some vinyl siding from the Home Cheapo?

 

Thank you immensely for this map! I actually am from Roane County (Rockwood specifically) but i've lived in Kingston, Harriman, Midtown and a lot of these surround area. So seriously i learned to hoon and fuck around with cars on some of these exact roads. That stretch of interstate from Harriman off ramp to Airport Road is perfect. From the overlook to the actual bumps from concrete washout, you guys are doing an amazing job. Thank you! Keep it up!

 

Well, welcome to Tennessee, it's a beautiful place, and the people are by large very nice here. I live about a half hour or so west of Rockwood. I don't get down that way often enough but that interstate is definitely a view. Even seeing it in a video game is pretty awesome, so that's why I've tried quite hard here to get the 'feel' of it - yes, even in the road patching. It needs some more trees along there but I didn't want to block the view.
I will most likely be filling out the rest of Rockwood (or atleast more of it) in the coming days/weeks.

 

Just to let everyone know, active development has resumed on this map. I don't know if I will have more pictures tonight or in a day or two, but I've got the lions share of roads in Harriman downtown laid out. This is where I am currently working right now:

Please pardon the incomplete, absolute hideousness of it. The intersections, grading, deforestation etc isn't done yet. I haven't painted the terrain here, but just getting this part correct (there's also more past the top of the screenshot) as far as road layout is concerned was a bear. It will take me days and days to get this area looking correct and semi-professional looking. It's a somewhat simplified (and yet much incomplete) version of what you can view on google here.
This is also what's on my other screen at the moment (yes, hooked a second screen up, man is that a whole-lot easier). If the link works it should plop you right @ Harriman. I've also noted that the spawn there doesn't provide you with a vehicle, this will be fixed (my bad). I will post updates every day or two as I work on this. Progress should go something like Harriman, Rockwood, a bit more of Kingston, some of Westel and then maybe do Glen Alice (this will take me a good month, all of this!). So please don't expect anything super-snazzy like next week or anything
After playing the campaign mode today (Chapter 2), I realized how NICE it is to have a minimap. So if at all possible (I posted about this) I will be putting a minimap / chapter story-mode of this map to make missions available, though that in itself will wait until game version 0.9 drops, because I don't want to have to fix it! I mean, considering this is like a GTAV-sized map, and all... it should have MISSIONS, right?

 

The housing development from hell is coming along nicely. A majority of the homes are in to the east side of North Roane St (the main road through Harriman downtown, that's already done up nice in the publicly available version). I am working on grading the land nicely.

No trees, signs, driveways etc have been placed yet, but it's going somewhere!
Also, the grass color of the terrain itself is updated, matching the google earth picture almost 100%, the grass models (that randomly spawn about all over the terrain by themselves when you're nearby) have been slightly darkened (even more!) to match. I will be darkening some of the other plants also in due time as I get around to it (trees, other foliage, etc). All the roads in the picture have had the terrain asphalted properly and also, the grass 'skirting' has been installed here to cover up the low terrain resolution creating obvious square grass patches. This is super-duper-time-consuming but as I get these things done, these areas will be 'completed'.
I could literally spend 40 hours in a week on this development and only then would it look close to completion.
However, I refuse to do a half-arsed job of this. Sure, a little detail is sacrificed with a map THIS huge but it doesn't mean it has to scream of it. It's still fun, and when you have a need for speed, you know which map to pull up.
The upper-left area into the distance doesn't really show much (as it's much less done over here, northwest of town, this shot looks north over Harriman), but there's a few miles of new roadway out here as well. Over a mile past the development (that I am working on) is where I added those extra jumps in December for added fun and several new miles of roadway, before I went to update So-Cal and Nevada. I am fairly confident that the road mileage is 150~155 miles now with all the new roadway added near here.
You can really catch some air if you do 80~100mph or more through these side roads, as they're only 25mph streets lined with homes. They're nice and smooth and fairly realistic though grade-wise when you're driving along at the expected speed. Thankfully due to the naturally occurring hill here, not all will be visible when driving through town, so it should help the FPS some.
OCCLUDERS will be added in for the next update next month sometime (these tell the game engine what it can toss out of the rendering queue, so substantially help FPS, my map doesn't have any of these in it, and SORELY needs it). I will hide these inside mountains and hills that naturally line this map, so that only what you can see (mostly) is rendered. There will still be a few slower spots (like flying over mountains) where they won't help as much (also, while driving length-wise through naturally occurring valleys if they're large/long enough). All in all it should be much better.
If anyone knows how to make residential buildings (homes, single family and multifamily homes for low/medium housing density), and wishes to contribute them (they must have working collision), feel free to drop me a line and send them (I will gladly snap them up and give you much credit).
I will make sure the reviewers (those who show off this map on youtube), get credit on the CREDITS signs on the highway.
EDIT:
Just a heads up, I am just over 3800 of 4000 objects. What this means is, I can't really add much in the way of more roads etc... or more bridges, and so-forth. I will be finishing off areas as I go. The map already has 95% or more of it's road network. It's more like 98% of it now. I will be finishing up:
Harriman (it's roughly half built, though it's not fully detailed the half that is).
Rockwood (I haven't done a whole lot here since the last update, but there's a few more roads). Most likely I won't make it as BIG or as COMPLEX as it's real-life counterpart. I will finish this up.
Kingston (where the original 0.6.x start was when this was in alpha), this will be finished up, most the town is done already but I will finish up the housing development.
Westel: this will just be one road that already exists, lined with houses, with a network of trails (4x4 / jeeping fun times!) out back and around it. This is in the west end of the map.
Airport: I'll get this guy finished up, I am going to expand the area it's in hopefully enough to make it look decent. I am going to try and populate it a little more, hopefully.

Signs, trees, rocks, houses/stores/buildings misc all DO NOT take up object space and therefore I've left them mostly until LAST.
There will *NOT* be any more railroad track than is already built here. I have added ~2.x miles or so (maybe 3+ ?) since the last update. I will measure it better when I play-test again after I am done with the development from hell.
This map will get DONE, it will look DONE, it will feel DONE (important!!!), and I will still be saving 96 objects (or more, will try for about 120+ free slots) for 8~16 car races (far in the future - I am looking at you AMD RYZEN awesomeness - comes out THURSDAY MARCH 2nd!), for track objects, missions etc.
Tentative but not promising anything I don't have concrete ability to add:
When the road network is finalized, I will use the asphalt layer of the map to add a minimap and campaign mode. I will make this Campaign T (IF I am able to add in a campaign mode in this version, I *SHOULD* be able to but at this point I am not sure if the game will pick up or 'see' the files I add in).
I already see *HOW* this is added (I can't have this minimap in freeroam yet but I can if you choose open-world campaign mode), and have done the 'leg-work' digging around in configs (marry me, oh beloved Notepad++)... so I see how it works, and it's a bear for someone who isn't proficient in scripting BUT I AM PRETTY SURE it CAN be done. Pretty sure. Don't hold me at gunpoint for it... but I think I can do this!
The finished road network will most likely weigh in around 160 miles of roadway or so.
Do I have to cut short anything or not do anything I wanted to do? No, actually not. This is pretty much as-planned with the exception that I possibly wanted to add a bit more railroad track here, but this is a car-centric map and the train-works is a pro-bono mostly for trian fans and the car crash guys.
Shout-outs:
Nice work car crash guys, you know who you are. I love your videos - because I don't have to clean up the mess you make of things! Keep up the great videos folks. Thanks to everyone who beta-tested and put up with the numerous bugs that slowly have been smacked out of the map.
There is likely to be one release each time I finish up a town. I will do-up the roads nearby the town (if any are unfinished), as I finish up each town.
There will be one thing for sure: There will be plenty of crash opportunities.
Ram use is staying mostly the same. FPS should be better in time. Keep me posted if anyone else has objects with collision built in they wish to donate to the Tennessee project.
Remember, this is NOT the only Tennessee project I have.
Future: Tail of the Dragon, Cumberland County, and somewhere between Knox and Roane county (oops, I seem to forget, D'oh), and a section of what I believe is Cooke County (by Cookeville), the last of which I need more building models for. I also have an 'abandoned PA turnpike' map I will work on sometime this spring. That and 'tail of the dragon' shouldn't take too long, they're smaller maps that will only have just the main playable area and that's it. My city map project is on hold until I can secure more collision-ready models. When I do it shall be game-on for that (after this map is done).

 

Damn you settlers!
Looks so good, always a treat to step by your threads and read up on the latest updates

 

AMD RYZEN 8-core 1800X, 1700X, and 1700 series CPU's are out today March 2nd. Head over to www.guru3d.com for a review and the lowdown on the high-end 1800X processor for less than half of what intel charges for the same!!!
They features 8 true cores (unlike Bulldozer/Piledriver APU and FX series chips), with FPUs, and 2 threads per-core using SMT (TM) technology much akin to Intel's Hyper-Threading (TM) tech.
*Names, trademarks, etc, are property of AMD and Intel respectively here, I won't get into details, I am not paid to promote this. However, if you're looking for a great Beamng.drive experience and have cash to burn, these could be your ticket!
Hooray, the CPU WARS are back in the NOW and maybe we'll see some @#$%ing progress.
I really mean it - those funky symbols aren't for show - they're to keep me from getting the ban-hammer ...

Well thank-you, that's mighty modest of you! As always, it's always nice to hear good things.
I just want to get this bloody map done, it's been what, a *YEAR* (initial terrain was created 2/2016 as a proof-of-concept).
Heck it wasn't even supposed to see release. It DID, and it was liked, so what the heck, why not give everyone (that liked it) what they want?
Folks were commenting 'is this dead?' or 'keep working on it' etc... and it's fairly far enough along... while it's close to the object limit... I will leave room for more races, cars, etc.... So just going to finish up the towns and such and optimize FPS where possible (make sure meshes have meshculling = 1 enabled, so they don't render from 15 miles away on the other side of the map), and try to stick occluders inside the hills so you don't have to render what you can't see.
Going to work on this some more today, as I am getting to need a break from other things I play.

I just want to get this one done so I can start on the next new map.

The way it's looking (to be frank), It's going to be another 3~4 weeks easily until I get this straightened up and close to completion. Again, if anyone's got building models they'd like to add to this project, it's not too late to get them in.
This could still be 6~8 weeks depending on just HOW long this takes, how many roads I fill with detail.
The FPS hit shouldn't be too bad though. I am still going to make some 'variation' models of the existing models of homes, to add some more variety (just raw text editing the .dae collada models to reference different textures).

I will be sending early progress releases to the guys who make car crash videos, and those who know me on Steam, as I finish up each town so you'll get to see plenty of preview vids (I will link my backups through there, as I do backup!).

Also, I seemed to have solved my 'Houdini hard drive' mystery with why my new SSD's were dropping off the controller randomly after a day or two (drive removed notification). Here stupid Microshaft Winblows had power save on non-system-disks set to 20 mins (even on high performance!!!). While consumer-level drives are fine with this, and the system is active enough for this to happen only to drives that aren't C: (the install drive), it DID happen to other drives. The enterprise drives didn't like this (it's not the first time this has happened if you look on google, nor did it suprise me), and would 'brick' until the power was toggled (warm reset did not fix). This was luckily one of the 1st things I checked after switching both drives to the secondary controller, and swapping cables (as I'm a hardware guy at heart, this is 2nd nature). Sure enough... 3 days later, no nasty notifications in my Event Viewer or disappearing acts in 'My miserable Computer'...
I run Toshiba Pro and Enterprise model drives here... 880tb of wear per 512/480gb drive, planar MLC NAND. It's a proven technology, sure, newer drives are faster - but how little of a difference it'd make, vs the price, doesn't justify it.
I will stick with what is tried and true and has years of proven service when I need my PC for content creation, vs taking a gamble and losing weeks (or possibly months or years if I did not back-up regularly like I do) of progress...

Again, this is why I don't like upgrading... grrr... STUPID TECHNOLOGY!!!
Other than those bits of horsing around, all is well and progress does continue.

 

It might be 4 weeks at least until I have figured out how to make proper models and get them to game, I still have to make some sound work to Blijo's Covet which I thought I could of been already made but shoulder was acting up and then felled on ice and injured my back, so slowly recovering at the moment, there always has to be something.

It is quite limited hours I can do anything intelligent, using mouse is bad for shoulder and when it starts acting up I have to take a brake, so everything is slow these days.

Dragging with mouse by left hand is impossible, I really can't understand how some can do that, would be handy sometimes.


Upgrading is indeed twin edge thing, with CPU wars maybe there is indeed progress, but then again it means again upgrading, grrrr, can't live with or without, just like a...

 

I've spent the last 7~8 hours working on the map. Got most of the signs in (mostly stop signs) on Harriman (the part I was working on anyways)... and did a nice full-scene mock-up of part of the development. Suprisingly, it came out a whole LOT better than I ever thought it would. @Occam's Razer your house models look nice in here, though the townhouses themselves are from ECA.
Most awesome part about all this in the following pictures is NONE of it added a single 'object' to the map. Woohoo!
It's all in the forest brush - as intended.
OOPS, guess this forum doesn't like my shakey internet connection, oh well, no pictures for now.
They'd complete and say there was an error! Nothing's changed on my end so guess the forum is broke, oh well.

This works: ALT-O in the game! This mostly shows the 5~10 block area I was working in (Harriman).









Overview (for those that get confused - looking north/northwest)


This will be what the 'finished product' looks like.

 

looking good.

 

It's....beautiful!

 

Just to let y'all know progress is bein' made down here - 50% or such of the development on this half of downtown Harriman is done at this point. I just need to touch up the terrain in a few spots to prevent grass from growing in the terrain through the driveways. That's about 50~60% of the trees placed, and about 50-55% of the driveways placed.
Lots and lots of time-consuming things like that. It took roughly 3~3.5 hours to do that much, short of the few blocks I spent 8 hours on the other day (mostly the town-homes). The townhouses are detailed nice because that's where a SPAWN will be.
It sure is fun to blast down those roadways though. What is a very nice, placid and forgiving pave-job becomes an unmitigated disaster above 60mph (as only to be expected)... of course, this is intended, and fully realistic.
So those of you who said 'hey it's too smooth everywhere', will have your hands full with this development.
I generally kept the main roads very nice and even so that you can speed through it, I haven't changed the main roads much or at all aside of where needed to incorporate details like intersections for stores/shopping centers etc.

YES the FPS is a little lower, to be expected. Adjust details accordingly/ turn off reflections for a BIG boost.
Pretty sure occluders will help substantially here. There's high hills everywhere around here.
More pics will follow as I do more with this.

 

Excellent work! Love this map.

 

A bit late, but I've gotta agree with you here, my houses look quite cozy in that space. It's nice to see my homes have... well, found a good home.