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

yay

 

it looks good in some areas, not so good in others. some of it is WAY too saturated to be growing on essentially dry red dirt, so where you have actual grass floor texturing i'd use that more saturated, scraggly ground cover you have in the second image (one with the red brick house to the left).
i do believe those empty spaces of red dirt need some form of foliage, but that probably isnt it. Also, it would not hurt to scatter more trees here and there. I'm aware its an arid climate, but it really does help make the map feel filled out from ground level.

Good work so far

 

AIYEEEEEEEE!!! *screams like Mrs. Cleaver seeing a big rat in the kitchen*
This is when the [censored] gets real folks. THEM THERES TARNADERS A COMIN!
DO know that I will likely be okay and DO have safe places to hide (centrally located closets and underground in our crawl space with 12-inch thick concrete walls with 'highway rebar' in them). Doesn't matter how heavy I'm sleeping, the weather will wake me up long before I hear the rumble of an approaching twister (usually a half-hour or hour before it shows up I wake up WIDE AWAKE, instinct + PTSD works wonders).
A lot of wind out there now, 40~45mph gusts, and a decent temperature difference via the cold front, that's going to make a mess of things.
But, on the bright side, if a tarnader comes by and beats up on my house, I don't have to worry about the stained-to-heck carpet in the old living-room or remodeling the old master bathroom and the (landlord-special) kitchen (both of which have certainly seen better days).
*goes into kitchen to open a fruit can at 2AM* *can-opener mounted to wall falls off the wall* *sigh* ...
IF any y'all in Tennessee and get this right-quick around when I post this message, mind the "tarnaders"!
These are some of the clearest tornadoes I've seen to date on a radar screen yet, and I watched the Nashville Tornado from 2~3 years ago stroll by on the radar screen (and out back of my house, it went about 2 miles past our house and then it died out / let up, missed us by under one mile / ½ mile).
At-least at night you know you'll be home and where safe spots are, but in the day when you're out that isn't always the case.

Looks like sleeping in optional tonight. Sleep will be downright impossible when the hail starts pelting the METAL ROOF, ugh.
Do let me know how y'all like the terrain changes in the previous post, or even tell me how it can be done better and what needs changed & why. I'd like to know BEFORE I go about uploading this in around 2~3 days (ASAP). For some reason it's supposedly easier this way.

Gotta love DIXIE ALLEY, I'm right in the hot zone for about 5 months of the first half of the year here & a tiny bit in the fall periodically.

 

do be safe, but beyond what i suggested (a bit more trees, moving the new ground cover to strictly areas with a grass floor tetxure, and filling out the red dirt areas with more shrubby, dead looking foliage), it all looks good so far.

 

Yes, I definitely agree 100% with you on all that which you touched-base upon.
The super-green saturated healthy foliage upon dirt which does not seem to normally sustain happy plants is definitely a little out of place - or a lot for that matter.
Good to know I am heading in the right direction with this other than the dry grass areas.
I do not know if I can do scatter trees *with collision* or not, I think that's too heavy for this game engine. However, that doesn't mean I can't do something like that with meaningless skinny sticks-for-trees that wouldn't impact collision normally in the real-world. I can manually place trees, but more trees likely will show when I run the automatic terrain shaping tools on it once a lot of the main city itself is done.
No doubt this is as much a learning process for me as it is everyone else in here though!

---

Won't see much map progress today, high winds keep cutting out my power. At-least the tarnaders didn't munch on my house last night. Seems to be calming down now maybe I can work on it a bit!

 

Worked on the terrain a bit more. A lot of swearing silently to myself later... I got this! Not precisely what I want but it's not BROKEN-looking now.

This takes the terrain more back to what it was before, but doesn't undo all of the changes and still adds some visual variety to the fields.
First picture is domestic grass (for yards around nice houses or apartments), and the second picture has 'rockydirt' (arid field) and 'grass2' wild field layers shown. While some of the wild field grass is a tad more saturated than it should be, it'll be okay for now. This is passable for a beta as far as I'm concerned (it's also after 2200 hours on a Saturday evening). I DID make sure to remove a lot of the lush green stuff off the arid field layers though.
It should be more of what you know, with just a little more filler for those fields. Probably wasn't worth ALL THAT TIME it took to straighten it out, and 3 layers are still broken (so they're disabled, they better stay that way until fixed!), but this is working right now and STILL WORKING when reloaded.
Sometimes, it's less fun to work on maps, this is one of those times. The game doesn't even update live when you switch grass source graphics for crying-out-loud. Some graphics were coming through way way too dark and looking like an eye-sore, again, so those are disabled.
Expect better things in the future, but 'out of sight, out of mind' for right now, and most importantly, not holding up beta release anymore.
A few other bugs to fix and that should be it for now before the beta release, short of me taking a few hours to test after fixing bugs for AI issues and excessive derp-age.
--That's all for right now!

 

i appreciate your dedication, this looks fantastic dude.

 

This intersection got it's striping and AI routing done (there was some AI here, should be spot-on now). Roads to all sides striped also.

Needs another cross-walk or two, some traffic lights, directional arrow stencils yet, and maybe some wear/tear stuff, but for now, it's functional.
There's some missing curbing to one end of the intersection, that probably won't get put in yet until after the beta. Will try and get a traffic light here though before shipping this out.
I've checked for any wacky-placed traffic lights, so they don't mess up your wacky race about the map.
Sunday is QC / QA day, so bugs reported past noon (central time) might not get fixed until after the next beta round.
--That is all!

 

Only an hour to three hours of testing AI remains. Then I do the simulated-end-user test with the map packaged to see if any resource errors occur. That's all that is left before this gets upload.
I got done all that I really wanted to get done, and a whole lot more. I did however spend just about the entire day (except when I went for worship) working on this, but at-least substantial progress has been made (8~10 hours worth - lost track).
I will upload pictures tomorrow sometime (technically it's already Monday morning here so whatever).
The window for BUG REPORTS on the last private beta has now closed. Please wait until re-testing the new version of the map to submit any more bug reports, if the bug(s) is/are still present in the map. Yes, just today, after spending 20+ minutes working next to an intersection, I finally noticed another traffic light pole (which I hope was the last) in the middle of a travel lane near the 11-foot-8 bridge / Cabrini-Green buildings. It's been how many weeks,? I've blown right past it a few times!
A LOT OF AI MESS-UPS WERE CORRECTED TODAY! If this goes over well, then this private beta will be transferred to the public servers in the following several days post-private-release.
Thank-you for your patience, which you soon will no longer need to have!

 

BUGS FOUND AND FIXED! However, despite not being my intention, I did a lot more than just fix a few bugs.
New / upgraded stuff:

ALL of the above stuff is either revised noticeably changed/revised or (re)created completely, such as several new blocks of delineated roads with added curbing now, a much better transition from the narrow to wider concrete highway that is both immersive and gives you a little more warning.
Below I also added or corrected AI paths for the old 'black asphalt' section of highway, which otherwise hasn't been visually/notably upgraded, and also did the same for some 3-lane concrete highway sections I did a year or two ago. NOT NEW STUFF, but AI is fixed here now as I'm sick of it.

Last two above show the large grey 5-lane roadway re-connected (last supporter beta it wasn't) until I completely replace it later on in development. The traffic light at the Sprawl-mart is now no longer sitting in the middle of the road. Sheesh. I really hope that's genuinely the last one like that!

Above, it's dark in the tunnel again (near the default spawn, was one of the first tunnels in the city area if not THE first). I am re-testing zones for dark ambience, so if this works for others and does not bug out, I will do the other tunnels like this one is. Hopefully it works fine. It's been broken since I fixed the 'map elevation 500 meters or more below sea level' or 'flying plane hits invisible terrain in mid-air surrounding the map' bug(s), but fixed now.

Above, replaced missing (old ECA) town-homes that were part of the initial test-build of early city components / buildings. They now use models that I've made in two different styles / sizes. I somewhat slap-dashed these in, but they shouldn't look oddly rushed. This area gets another detail pass later in development anyway to help the immersion. Speaking of which, the highway construction area is right here also, which is when I noticed the missing buildings (for resources no-longer present).

Above, finished off the entrances to the homes on the hill here (split-foyer homes here, also called 'bi-level' homes, did not have stairs). I also made sure the tower pictured last above had a cobble-stone surrounding and not dirt/weeds. It's done enough to not be an eye-sore for now.

Above, I added another warehouse lot to the map right by the 11-foot-8 bridge. The last shot is very satisfying to see my efforts come together as well as that lot did. Truckers rejoice, as there's a few loading bays you can use here for role-play or future missions / etc.

Above, added trees to the recently created traffic triangle, and fixed a lot of AI derping issues with them randomly stopping (due to disconnected or badly joined AI routes). So the experience/immersion should be much better when driving through.

Wrong way traffic pictured on the road above in the last supporter beta or two should be fixed now. Just saw it today, was missing the 'one way' setting for a route to each side of this main thoroughfare.

Above, delineation is mostly finished now at this intersection and the three roads (of four total, one not put in yet) connecting it are decently finished enough minus some missing curbing that won't make it in in-time for this coming beta.

Above, the tunnel to nowhere (you fall when you get to the other side, off a cliff) now has an obligatory hint to send you elsewhere, and stop-signs.
The tunnel mouths on both ends were accidentally closed in during an older version update, but you'll be able to drive through it now, again.

The road going through the old Packard Plant has all of it's sidewalks now, even if the curb and building texture isn't quite 100% what I want it to be yet. These are known issues but won't be fixed before the beta as the curbing requires texture work and the building requires a new specular (reflection/refraction) mapping layer, and it's rather time-consuming. This will have to do for now.
Some but not all AI testing was completed. I got as far as I could alternating between testing and fixing bugs / completing stuff / adding new AI lanes/routes in. I fixed a few (3~4?) scrambled grey pavement textures on some 4+ lane roads around the map as I noticed them.
I will be using tomorrow to run the map through the slimmer tool (or just updating the old slimmed version except a few things). This is THE LAST step before upload. No more in-map work remains except to fix AI glitches and to fix anything the slimmer tool massacres. It takes a few hours to fix the slimmer-tool bugs, so I set time specifically just for that once I fish out the bugs. Almost forgot about the slimmer tool so that's why it's costing me an extra day besides the plethora of squashed bugs - OOPS. Don't want the full-fat sized map to bankrupt the devs due to server bandwidth fees after-all.
Map version in selection screen updated so you know it's the new one.
Terrain scatter-grass seems to be alright now even after a restart or two with cleared cache. Maybe it'll be fine for you, also, I hope - never can be sure if the past is anything to go by.
I didn't plan on staying up this late, but at-least lots of things got fixed/improved over the last two days.
Tomorrow is another day.

 

Are we going to see a little more suburb? Im really missing a lower income area outside of down town in west coast and hope thgat we are gonna get a large ish suburg as well here

 

Did the update break anything (I don’t believe it did, but i’d rather ask anyways)?

 

v0.28 Release Notes

I'm not experiencing jitter anymore far from spawn on large maps like Roane County

 

Suburbs and poorer areas with lots of old trailers, RV's and such WILL BE FEATURED but not in this beta. I have to integrate the models and such into the map when they're finished. However, you are totally right in wanting to see variety in the map, as it totally needs that to feel complete / immersive.

I do not know yet, I have to fire up the new version of the game, which I got just in-time to get it quick before 0800 hours when day-time data cap kicks in.
I'm still editing/bug-fixing the map in the old version and it's over 80F in here (so 2D stuff only when it's this hot), Knoxville which is an hour+ from me just hit a record of 88F and it's not much different here. There's at-least good wind though. I should be able to get some stuff done tonight on it on the new version though and will report back.

IIRC they are moving the world around the player now (as many open-world games do!) and not the player around the world (as we were doing and older games used-to-do). Thus things you are close to won't be so far from 0,0,0 that they shake due to imprecision (the further you go using floating point number, the larger the number; thus the larger the number, the less precise it is with the same amount of digits, since you start to lose the digits on the right as you add digits to the left side of the increasing numeric value). They may however have done it another way, but I did a write-up on doing it this way a while back (not published) and shared it with them somewhere just before the previous major update was put out. I do keep in contact with the staff/developers here, as with my lengthy foray into modding, and knowledge of how both game-engines and computer hardware works, sometimes I can be useful especially if you just need another set of eyes and ears on an issue.
That said I don't get to know when the next update hits before-hand any more than anyone else nor what it shall contain (or not contain). I get to find out when I see 'update queued' on Steam, usually happens right when I go to release an update - even all the way back to Roane County and Nevada Interstate. There was always an update either at the same time, one day after, or several days before (but same week) as a map update. That's just the way it goes.

---

Got a game update downloaded this morning. Will delay release until I know this is working. Will check it tonight, but I just got home less than an hour ago from running around town all day. Give me a few days to sort out any issues if I have them.
I tried 3x yesterday afternoon to try and get the updated map slimmer tool which is 87mb or so, and three times it failed (why use buggy old version when new one means less work on my end).
ON A BETTER NOTE, I signed up for gigabit internet - yes gigabit - at LESS THAN HALF the current monthly cost of dumpster-fire satellite internet I have now. It'll be a good three weeks until I get it, but it'll be well worth the wait. No more data caps, no more several-minutes-to-load-a-webpage, no more dropped connections randomly, no more stuck-buffering video, no more sister's-kid-used-up-the-data-cap issues etc. Plus, it's local, so I can drive into town and pay the bill right there or use the drop-off and not have to put my card on the net.
Depending on how the installation goes, I may or may not lose connectivity for a few days, or even a week to 10 days. If this happens, I'll survive (I have MS-DOS Doom and seemingly a million wad files for it, and lots of DOS games), no worries, but that's if it goes down like that for a bit, then you'll know where I went. Not going to pay 145$ a month for rubbish satellite a day longer than I have to. Don't ever buy satellite internet, even if it means you need to sell your house and move, just move.

 

great! I can't imagine the potential for map size now, the Antartica map by @ibishucovet1987.txt had quite a lot of jutter, but now, it's very very minor. just imagine a 1000x1000km map!!!

 

the old version of the map shrinker should still work for you. Good luck!

 

Yes, if I remember correctly, I only had an issue with about four different textures. If my memory served better I'd have just copied the new stuff over the old shrunk map size but...
No telling which of the not-previously-used textures I might have implemented & I cannot remember all the things on the asset-side that I changed up, as I work here-there-everywhere and do whatever needs doing or whatever I feel I can do (which isn't always everything) on this map project.
I will get the new one. In three more weeks this won't be an issue with the new gigabit fiber, I will be able to upload the map in minutes not hours/days.
That and having such high-speed terrestrial-based internet (not satallite and not cell phone tower dependent) will boost the house value here by at-least 10% due to work-at-home possibility. I will actually be able to get more of my content on to modeling sites too, to help support the project further.
Again, this is partially why everything is modular (plus, make it once, make as many maps as I want as even if I used commercial licensed assets, they're licensed to my projects/me and not one-time nor royalty based). There's more thought put into the assets than just clicking purchase or shaping up the latest house that randomly appeared in one of my dreams.
I appreciate you letting me know, though. I will try again at a less busy hour.
Thanks for being there/here! It's nice when folks care, after-all. Gives a little more hope for this society that's hell-bent on seeing it's own destruction.

---

From everything I could tell, 100% of the map survived the latest version upgrade (not major changes to level data structure, file formats/support, and so-forth - though scripting could have changes as I don't use it much currently). Have not / will not test the last public release from 2021~2022 sometime as I already know it's well past it's prime and it's getting updated very soon. Hang in there!
This was only a light hour-or-two long mostly-AI test because it's currently hotter than the devil's rectum in here, having had a high of over 85F today. A lot of behind the scenes stuff has gone on over the past 6~12 months that you hardly ever hear about, to help keep updates from breaking the map + trying to keep to by-the-book 'standard practice' much more feverishly / not so *experimental.
BUGS FIXED:
Stupid terrain smoothing issues where I hadn't given a cliff face it's last pass for quality (makes terrain-based rock walls streaky).
Bugs to do with some paired one way AI paths becoming part of a two-way street when away from an intersection, vehicles approaching from two sides kept turning around, but vehicles exited the intersection (the other way) just fine. Stupid Technology! FIXED.
To-Do's / Need more time on:
The map slimmer!
Figure out why AI always seems to be getting turned around, but this didn't happen on 0.27.x so it could be update-related and hence not on my end of things to fix. Will again as-stated need more time to watch for it and see it as it happens, or notice if it's just the AI flying through unlevel intersections or bumps in turns and losing control as the wheels reinterface with the ground.
--That is all.

*For me and possibly me only, it's hard to think that before this map, we didn't even have subway tunnels in BeamNG Drive maps.

 

you luckily wrote the texture down in my thread. It is possible that the error still exists. I think didn’t check it and I can obviously not debug it anymore because I don’t have your unshrinked version. Ah wait. It should be still in the shrinked version. Will give it a shot after holiday.

Your comment:
metrocity/newmosaic.dds was deleted, it is used on the CASA series of houses in the metrocity or metrocity/commercial folder.
plasterdirty0324_grey - but this might not have had an entry from the looks of it.

 

This could be a system that the devs added with the AI which uses ray tracing. Read the devblog and you'll find out more.

 

Well, here's the limits of the current engine.
NO STREAMING: Once you run out of VRAM in the video card, it's up to the video driver to manage things, and usually it goes over the amount of video ram only to use (much slower!) system memory as an additional place to store what needs to be displayed. This often cuts FPS down to a mere 20~40% of what it normally would be without over-using VRAM. "The Last of Us" is an example of a game going over 8GB vram. I would have bought it, but I will wait until I get a better gpu, as that's much MUCH more important for me (so I can take my screen-shots using HIGH detail textures in-stead of medium). Better/Faster PCI-E speeds (such as 4.0 or 5.0 vs older PCI-E 3.0) will help the system ram be more useful to the GPU and also for excess GPU memory to be used for programs and data by the system itself (Resizable BAR makes concessions for this feature, not just for larger GPU transfers to and from the system VS just requesting / using 256mb chunks of VRAM at a time the old way), so it won't hit FPS as hard if you exceed GPU VRAM when you have faster PCI-E speed and not bottleneck there. Sorry for the mega-run-on sentence.
With full streaming like most other large game engines have, you will be able to unload stale meshes and textures not needed right now for the current scene frame and load fresh stuff in and not cause stutters or a hard hit to FPS if you manage to keep what's in view under 8gb. Features like GPU ray tracing / path tracing or DLSS also cost you some VRAM so they can do what they need to.
Simply put, 8gb is not enough. 10gb is not enough. 12gb is a good start and should be the minimum vram card you consider if you spend over 250$ USD. 16gb and up is great and shouldn't really be exceeded by anything on the market right now even with all features turned on & rendering at 4k res. System RAM use by comparison isn't too bad any more, and is half of what it was just 5 years ago in-game. 16gb system ram is considered a minimum right now, with 8 being rather paltry and giving you lots of hitching in open world games except cheap console ports.
ONLY ONE TERRAIN MAY HAVE COLLISION: Other terrains WILL display but will not interact with your vehicle, they will be just for show, sort-of like a skybox around your main map area (the first terrain is the only one you can drive on). You can get around this by turning all other terrains after the 1st, which you wish to interact with, into meshes and therefor they will have either dedicated collision meshes (recommended, but larger file size and time requirement to make), or can use 'visible collision' if set to do so (not optimal, can cause vehicles to stick or pass through narrow triangles like curb faces).
Notice those edge-of-the-earth signs in Roane County? This is why. I like working terrain inside the BeamNG editor in-stead of with complex crap-storms like World Machine. World machine is so complicated (as is substance designer) that I almost can't even understand everything. Heck I can't even get textures to blend in Maya because the setup is so complicated. Why can't I just texture by vertice and select where to blend with the mouse? Isn't the point of buying commercial software to make it easier and faster to work? If it's so complicated, that I feel like I should be paid to do it, then it's time to find a new program that does the work for you - or pay to take a four year college course to figure out how to work it (ugh).
So I didn't wish to use mesh for terrain. It just doesn't look as nice, requires A LOT of work to blend it right and it's nowhere near as manageable as actual terrain in a map. It's just another problem causing thing in my mind, and when tiled terrain (with collision) is fully supported, the edge-of-earth signs will go away and there WILL be more map to explore. It's just how bad do the developers want this to hold back their game engine or not.
A bit short-sighted on their part if you ask me, but it's not my ship to sail or sink nor am I the one signing their pay checks. So I don't get a say, really. I've tried to talk to them about it but the response was 'sometime after version 1.0' even though it WAS on the original road-maps up until a year or two ago.

---

Been fighting with the AI some. Will try and get a release out this weekend when the skies decide to clear up. Only 3 weeks until I can take my satellite for the internet down to the end of the yard and use it for target practice (and then mail it back to them).
AI is having odd troubles going from dual-way roads to separate single-lane single-direction roads (where there's a wide median or left turn lanes separating the directional travel and then it goes back to just one lane each way with a double yellow or no delineation at all, or vice-versa).

Sometimes they go, sometimes they don't. It's set up just like WCA and a few other maps, which usually work fine. I think I will throw in a towel and 'tell the devs to fix it' if it's enough of a bother to anyone. I've done what I can do here for this and I can't really do anything else to fix it besides disable the AI for this road altogether, which is not a solution.
I will be fixing some more bugs as I find them and running the slimmer then tomorrow. Very sleepy for some reason right now so not sure if I'll post again later or not. The new version introduced some changes to the AI and how it holds lane or decides to turn or turn completely around (on a one-way single lane that doesn't just END, derp). Again, no clue on it, just filing it under 'not my fault' for now until I see some better way to rig it up.
--That is all for right now.
--Keep posted to this thread so you know when it's time to watch for a release date, as it should be almost any day now.
Just to be clear, whatever doesn't get done by Sunday won't make it into the beta, but I will ship SOMETHING working out of here by then. I am tired of continually having to postpone my beta release dates over and over and that does cause other issues as this is not my only commitment. Have to get my lawn taken care of and other things (although I have been taking care of it and the left-over leaves and dead bushes etc slowly but surely, at-least the holes in my hand from raking for hour or two straight are healing). Next time I'll put a little electrical tape around my raking fingers (the ones you wear holes in) while I do it. Putting holes (blisters which pop) in your hand SUCKS, do not be like The Bob and ignore pain until you have a more serious issue, and as a bonus it's now caked in dirt due to sheer ignorance of working without gloves but with several blisters/holes.