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

@bob.blunderton Will you eventually add Greek Revival buildings in the map?

 

so it would be like how tree leaves sway in the wind on maps like ECA? not the movement, just the mechanism

 

No, trees sway in the breeze by using specifically edited models. The engine looks for certain things and uses that to bend the objects all gently in unison.
This object would be more like @Nadeox1 's garage door in his desert map that's been around a good year or more now. I forget if it's in as a vehicle or not, but it would be animated only when you're in proximity to it, as he did with the door. These things don't have collision, but you don't notice it as they swing or crash out of the way to emulate or avoid collision all together. Even if you did come into contact with it, since it's not jbeamed, it wouldn't affect anything or slow down the game with Jbeam interaction.
Also it's similar to the oil derricks that move on WCA, except in the fact that those move continuously.

There will likely be some, though not nearly as common as Modernist / Ultra-Modern, Art-Deco, Arts & Crafts for large/medium buildings. For homes - Classic colonial (and some contemporary) homes and such, along with Ultra-modern, and lots of stuff like you'd see in the south or west coast. Not 100% sure on everything here of course as they're not all built yet.

So while you wait for me to seemingly TAKE FOREVER to get my [swear words] mall out, Do check out GTA UNDERGROUND on MOD-DB for GTA San Andreas, as that has come out with an update recently. It combines all 3 original GTA III (vice city, and S A map too) into one game (San Andreas). Do give it a look - but it's a huge 6.5GB download! No story but lots of gang wars. Will totally be playing some of THAT after I get my mall done and off my plate.

The mall, needs a bit more "aging of things" (Random building materials laying about, Sheets of plywood, Piles of rubble, these should be pretty fast to make though), and a giant skylight in the octagon room, along with some other skylights, and some water-like substance lining spots of the floor. The back lot behind the mall also needs to be done, along with lots of service entrances for stores and mall staff. Also will likely make a layered texture on the floor so that it looks not to pristine. Should be pretty fast to make as I'll merely dupe the floor services, I just need to make the texture 1st.

The mall itself does not have collision yet, however, this will be rather fast (less than 30 minutes to make) as I've kept very detailed fine meshes on a separate model for that reason. Post collision inside Kaufmann's will be just a touch larger (2~3 inches per side) than the poles, so you don't get eaten by it, and will be a basic box-shape with a few horizontal divisions to prevent car munching badness.

Then I must script about 3 dozen textures into BeamNG (they're in the directory, but the game doesn't load most of them via materials script yet). I will get this part done tonight, the rest of the stuff above, tonight into tomorrow night, I should have the lion's share of the work done by then. The work in-game itself is rather paltry compared to getting this there, as it's mostly all one huge object (except the parking-lot divisions).

That being said, from the fun I have had making this, and though it's time-consuming to say the least, this will be FAR from the only abandoned derelict building you will be able to cruise/crash through! There will be MANY more. I hope in the near future we as a community can figure out how to get the 'on-foot' mode working, as it'll really kick immersion to a whole new level!

I will be editing all night again, so if you have any questions about the mall, give a shout and I'll be checking every 2 hours or so.

 

It is time we Crown Bob as the King of Map Making.

 

@bob.blunderton
I really hate giving complicated suggestions, as it feels like adding a side of fries in a 50 hotdog eating competition, but I got an idea.

Beach side amusement parks like I could easily see this town having a vintage 1920s amusement park.
(Similar to classic Coney Island)

My idea would be to make a wooden roller coaster (Not a newer more complicated one)
It would have a cheap, portable layout. (Lift hill, ups and downs, turns around, repeats until station.) with modular cheap to construct supports.
The payoff, would be to be able to take a small car and drive up and down the track, doing jumps and stunts.


Very good example of the style I'm trying to convey.

 

Can there be a 20th century Catholic church somewhere in the middle-class neighborhoods styled something like this?

 

So my response is 'first thought' : "I guess I wasn't the only person trying to drive around on the roller-coaster in GTAIV when it first came out, 3~4 blocks from the starting point..." It didn't turn out too well.

But the good part is - This has a modular road kit. You can take a map, or this map, and spawn in the road pieces to your heart's content and make a road-roller-coaster of your dreams. I did 100% just that when testing out concepts before I actually built something. There's actually a remnant of one (it's able to be driven on, might have a few small alignment issues when I refreshed all the pieces that make it up, but you can drive on it fine), it's in a residential area (very small one), near a car stunt park on the 'subway station / canal' side of the map. Just drive along the inner ring highway (there's a larger outer ring that's about 24~26 miles long, and an inner highway ring that's 12 miles long, pick the inner one), until you see the concrete section of the highway start/end near an overpass where there's a car stunt park, there's an 8-block long "road roller-coaster" that leads right to that stunt park. Enjoy!
* I don't have loops, though I suppose you could make one out of the roads if you wanted, they don't have back-faces though so if they're not on the ground, they'll be able to be seen (and driven) through from the 'bottom' side upwards.

You can 100% make a race-track out of the pieces in this kit. If you folks want to start building with it, either join Patreon (everything's in the MRK directory except the subway station I think), and start fooling around with it and trying it out. Everything's in the forest brush = unlimited placement, only limited by draw calls and your GPU/RAM/CPU set-up. OR for accomplished modders/mappers here if you've made a map mod or two or are making a concentrated effort to contribute to the community, even if it's just a few car mods (or one good one, whatever, who am I to judge?), feel free to send me a message and I will ship out the directory to you.
Be aware the modular road kit is 374mb by itself, unzipped. Doesn't take long to load up though, for what it's worth. There's hundreds and hundreds of high quality models in there though, all with full collisions and LOD's (except about 4 pieces, don't have LOD's but they're getting them next month).

So yes, road roller-coaster = totally possible and very much encouraged - they're quite fun actually. Jumps and all can be made! You could have quite a time with this.
I will consider making a roller-coaster kit much later in development, or something similar with it, but if I make track it will be standard train gauge so that you can use the bridges and subway tunnels with it if desired as they're already made & integrated into the map.

Something to seriously consider! I like these ideas.

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Just finished the stock room of Kaufmann's store and am doing the skylight of the mall in the octagonal room.
It gets a ramp here under the skylight and also I need to do some more details, and a little more work on LOD's and most of the above-mentioned stuffs in previous post.
--- Post updated ---

Thanks! I'd be honored - even at the suggestion of it.
I have to really hand big honors to @fufsgfen for being a big help with the subject of map performance, and helping me figure out what helps, and what hurts map performance. He had a world of helpful suggestions and such about draw calls, in other words, showing me some little tips and big ones too, that helped me figure out how to pack the most fun into every block of this map without absolutely murdering performance.
I've wanted to do what I am doing for roughly 25 years now. I've seen other racing games & loved many, but this game - or simulation as it is now - is a horse of a different color. Now all obstacles (all big ones, most small ones), have been removed, I can finally do what I've been dreaming up for more than half of my life. So everyone shall reap the rewards, and I can show folks what this game can really do and really be. It's just going to take some time getting there. This is the Garry's Mod of cars, and it just needs content and some goals, and it can be so so SO much more.
So, a big thanks! It means a lot.

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Someone has mentioned before about breaking up the map into chunks, like making the mall a chunk, a car stunt park a chunk by itself, and while it might not be worth it for the majority of folks due to decent if slightly imperfect map performance - it may be done for things like the mall in due time should it be sensible and enough demand. It shall be considered.
There's never a bad suggestion.

Churches will be added later on in development (month or two minimum) to the residential areas. Each residential district will have it's own church. I live in the south of the USA (Tennessee), there's churches everywhere. It's only fitting. While myself I am not overtly religious, nor do I declare a specific denomination of religion better than another, I am a 'live and let live' person by nature, so I will be glad to put a few churches in. One will be "The Church of Draw-Call-Reduction Saints".
--- Post updated ---
Don't have the divisions in the skylight glass panels yet, but this is just a picture of the large octagonal room, looking up. I am somewhat proud of how disgusting/nasty/yuck/black mold/get a gas mask/ etc it turned out. It's definitely looking the part thus far!
Needs lots more rubble/trash/broken building bits yet.

 

LOD's are pretty much done. Lowest LOD is about 5 draw calls before it disappears. In the grand scheme of 4000 or less draw calls per frame, vehicle included (Old Pessima), that's not too terrible. Medium LOD is maybe double that much. Interior won't pop in until you're right on the lot. You'll be able to see into the Kaufmann's (large anchor closest to the road) from a block or two away (due to huge entrances) but that's maybe 80~100 poly surfaces extra to display the inside, which are textured just flat grey (all a single draw call, maybe two) until you get onto the lot itself.
Mall is currently <50 draw calls to render fully - interior and exterior combined! -possibly half that much. I have been really spartan about those. Much of the beams, poles, escalators are all dupes so that they render all batched - at the same time. Doesn't look bad doing it this way either.
TO DO LIST:
Rubble piles inside (may possibly be a different object(s) altogether, placed manually in BeamNG)
Store entrances (just will be metal security shutters for now, some plywood bits covering windows and sometimes doors).
Collision mesh (shouldn't take too terribly long, I have designed the mall with this in mind from the get-go)...
Scripting textures into BeamNG.Drive itself (an hour at most).
TESTING (an hour or less, no pianos needed)
Upload map to backup to release to folks via Patreon.
Make mall look better after getting feedback from early testers!
Add sound backdrop in afterwords. VAPORWAVE!

Why in the heck does the spell checker not know what 'BeamNG' is? Who do I smack?
It wouldn't be a MALL without the circular ramp now would it? *Updated Picture.
That now has a basin where a fountain once was. You won't get stuck in there though if you crash, there will be rubble smoothing out the difference between the basin and floor height.
The stone inside the flower bed's color isn't final, I'll get some aged stone in there later on after the beta.

 

another idea: on every map you have made with train tracks, i have been able to use a pigeon (or a dove) with the wheels between the tracks as a makeshift "train." can you add a slope to the outside edges of the crossings so i dont smash my front bumper into a rectangle of concrete every time i try to cross a street

 

I believe it already has it, the tracks are ground-up a completely new design and don't even share textures with the old ones.
I will make sure by the time this hits public downloads it has it, it's also so it doesn't catch trains with stuff (cars) stuck on the front, or if the intersection isn't 100% perfectly placed the train also won't hit it and end up like a pack/long link of sausages all dropped everywhere... So you should be good, but I'll double check that after I get this mall shaped up.

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Progress:
Got a bunch of boarded up 2d sprites (flat models) into the mall, should make the walls look less plain. It's still not where I want it but it's getting there. Trying not to make it look like garage doors - because the steel security shutters just happen to look like that. At one point the mall looked more like a U-Store-It then a mall. DERP. Working on that - Plywood to the rescue!

Huckleberry Hound: (sings) Oh ma darlin' Oh ma darlin' Oh ma darlin' DERPentine...

Fetched some more rubble textures tonight, prepping them and doing the normal textures too (normal texture = the bump mapping, if you will). Got a few scripted into the game thus far.
Looking into doing the rubble via the terrain layer (for the 1st floor of the mall / buildings, anyways), VS using models for it as that eats more draw calls. If you use textures on the terrain that don't have normal maps you will have issues with the terrain looking funny.

Have to do the collision model yet, which will be the lions share of the work, an hour or such I'd predict.

-Will have some more news once the model is in the game. Shouldn't be long after that, folks on Patreon will get access to it.

 

Don't mean to rush or any thing like that, but what will Downtown look like?

 

Depends what part you mean, this map will be huge. Yes the engine can do this, yes you will be able to drive into some buildings to explore, too, even into the subway tunnels (some portion of which are built already).
There will be the 'big city' part with lots of tall sky scrapers and other modest 8~20 floor buildings intermingled & subway stations with functional track and tunnel (there is an access path at the side of the tunnels that you may drive your road vehicle along).
There will be suburban areas typical of anytown USA, in good repair for middle-class folks to reside with low and medium density homes. Between here and the big city will be big box stores and many some-what familiar retail chains from Roane County will return.
There will be older sections which are more blighted and run-down, with rough concrete/asphalt road surfaces and an opportunity to test the durability of your vehicle for-sure. A lot of vacant lots will also be in one of the more suburban ends of this part of the run-down town.
There will be metro (standard gauge railroad) tracks that will be partly above and below ground.
There is a raised highway through portions of the town, also, in various places - you folks that know my maps, know I can build a highway.
There will be various 'events' or 'destinations' to go to (though you may need a menu to start events like derbies or races), such as race tracks, 4x4 courses, demo derby arenas, and also for free-roaming, multiple car-sized 'skate parks' for vehicles.
This list is not all-inclusive and there will be much more.

This map has just passed from concept phases and is entering building phases now that much is optimized enough for me to continue building it without making performance atrocious. If everything goes fairly smoothly, even a rubbish PC can run this, but to crank settings to max a strong CPU and a fairly decent GPU will be needed.

 

Can't wait! Also, will the "Old Town" part of the city (If there will be any thing like that) have red brick roads and old brick buildings, like a theater?

 

Well, I don't know if it'll have red brick roads (maybe I can fit red brick sidewalks or crosswalks possibly), but it'll have typical old-town Detroit/Baltimore/other rather depressed rust-belt city stuff in it, surely a theater wouldn't be out of the question.
I will be referencing this thread many times beginning to end, before this map is done, so I keep my promises and obligations in order and everyone is happy.

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PROGRESS!
Redundant pieces removed, draw calls further reduced (offset mostly by the boarded up shops, those might add another 6 draw calls while the interior is visible, not much, all the plywood is mostly dupes - reducing boarded up things to <10 draw calls total).
As-stated, boarded some things up...
Touched up & Added in textures (two) for terrain layers (also as mappable textures in materials.cs) for RUBBLE
Fixed some boo-boos with textures and such I didn't notice until now.
Grouped objects so it's easier to make a collision mesh - without having to remove 500 different surfaces with no easy way to not make mistakes and delete something I needed.
LOD's should be almost indistinguishable from the real-deal, I tried to do a really GOOD job here this time around, I hope it makes a difference (it's a big building, so I didn't have much choice here, it's not just some dinky house after-all).
Other changes...
Mall building and interior (which now looks like boarded up stores are in it!), LOD's (includes 3 levels of detail, these which needed some touching up as I found some boo-boo's while quality/consistency checking, which I did), and such is done, everything's ready for porting into the game - except:
(THIS IS WHAT IS NOT DONE YET)
*I need to do the collision mesh, that'll be tomorrow night. I'd say an hour or two tops for that - I've prepped for this already.
*Make sure all the textures are named the right thing inside the DAE file (model file)! Doesn't take too long.
*I need to script in the remaining textures in-game and do normal-maps for a few of the ones that need it yet, that's also tomorrow night, shouldn't be more than an hour or two.
*Then port the mall into the game, and add in two new 'rubble' terrain layers (think how Fallout 4 uses the terrain, I'm doing just that).
Using the terrain to make rubble piles is a much 'cheaper' way rendering-wise to do what I need to do especially in THIS game.
*There possibly won't be rubble on the 2nd floor of the mall until later on post-beta, but surely it'll be plenty good as-is for now.

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"But when, WHEN, I WANNA PLAY IT!"
So allowing for possible complications, porting it in-game tomorrow night after doing collision, at most 2 days roughly until I can upload; however, if things go well, I could possibly upload sooner. When you see pictures of the mall with the car in it, in game, you'll know I've got it mostly licked and it'll soon be in the hands of project supporters.
Remember, I don't get to mess around and crash about in the mall until right before you folks do.
So I want this done more than anyone else does, as I've spent the last 10 days roughly building this derelict building!

In the pictures, since the textures for boarding up the stores are right adjacent to the wall, they don't render well (inside this program, in the game should be fine however), I left the 'boarded up stuff' object selected so you could see the 'outlines' of where the stores will be (that are boarded up). There's even plywood panels on the floor where the doors being boarded up was knocked/crashed down.
The Kauffman's has two entrances to the outside you can drive in, and the mall has 3 separate entrances (two to the lot, one out back right adjacent to Kaufmann's store), the Kaufmann's also allows access from inside to the store into the mall on both levels, but the exterior mall exits are all on the 1st floor. There's a circular ramp and some 3 pairs of escalators (one pair in Kaufmann's) to traverse the levels, though. The escalators are off, but the Pessima will more than happily take you up or down a level, just mind the missing railings... as there's none.

 

Bob, did you know about this? :
https://www.beamng.com/threads/modular-mesh-roads-pack-v-0-1.6814/

 

you should probably slightly change the name of the stores again, just in case. (Coughmann's, anyone?)

 

BeamNG.Drive has integrated roller coaster generator


I think that I read that in future they might add support for custom road piece meshes, now Bob think about modular road kit with that track builder, that is like Stunts track editor on steroids

 

Yes, Generic city was made with it. No offense to anyone, but those road textures were atrocious. Those textures would be OK on some Legos, but, I'm about 25~30 years too old for Legos bud. In another 3 years I'm going to be 40 years old, none too happy about that either. That road pack was a cool intention, but I am not even sure they have built-in collision.
I was originally going to re-build Generic City and at the last minute I said; "Well, it could be a LOT better if there was more surrounding map." Then I combined what I wanted to do with the old So-Cal map, while still making the MRK set to go with it (Modular Road Kit). My roads actually LOOK like real roads, have cross-slope (important) and some pieces have storm sewers / manholes in them, and there's many pieces with curbing / curb cuts for lot access/driveways etc. In the end I can make a much better city here, and for everyone else, you are enabled a whole lot more freedom to build as much or as little, or in any direction you wish, especially with the pieces (many) that have reduced draw-calls. It's like Simcity 4 NAM kit for BeamNG (except this only has up to an 8-lane highway).

Roane County store names will often be featured, as they're not trademark / copyright / IP infringing and I've done those already. It won't be Kaufmann's store, but that's what I am calling it in this thread (it does not have the name on it anywhere), as that's what I modeled it after. Don't need to do all this work and end up with a take-down notice after all.

@fufsgfen Yes I read that somewhere about the track editor. That would be quite fun. I would entirely make the Top Gear / Top Racer SNES version mesh piece of track, so you could have some retro good times.

 

Collision Mesh is done. LOD's finalized and put in place properly with appropriate detail levels.
Working on texture entries in the object and then scripting in BeamNG. Hopefully in a few hours I can have this done.
Expect some pictures later or tomorrow of the mall in use, in game.
THAT means Patreon member beta update in <2 days hopefully! There's not much left to do (barring there's some error or problem, might add an hour here or there). I don't expect anything other than lots of texture hunting when in-game "oh that's not working, what one is that, have to script that one in yet, oops" ...
So - stay tuned!

 

this looks like a top tier map dude I'm getting serious cali vibes and I love it, keep going I really wanna see how it turns out because I think it's gonna turn out great.