I've noticed something with maps in this game and I think this could be improved. I'm not sure how much this would impact performance, but I thought it deserved a thread. Current maps usually got only roads, or roads and cities. We don't have that much maps that are really "city maps" (by that, I mean the map is the city without anything else), but we have some (such as Chicago or Expressway). Our current maps are great, but in my opinion, they lack something. Let's take East Coast USA as an example : This is currently one of my favorite vanilla maps, and it is really pleasant to drive on. However, when driving on it for some time, I can't help but notice one thing. Yes. The map only has one city. It still is interesting to drive around, but on some maps, only having one city really bothers me. Why ? I see two reasons why : -While playing, it can be interesting to go to a point A to a point B, usually specific locations. On a map such as Mafia Lost Heaven Countryside (https://www.beamng.com/threads/mafia-lost-heaven-countryside.30669/), this isn't a problem, since you can, for example, go from the city to the motel, then from the motel to the circuit, etc... On other maps, there isn't much to see. -In real life, some cities and villages are isolated, but they usually have other cities/villages around. When driving, you usually have to go through multiple villages to get to your destination. Now, let's take another example : the upcoming West Coast USA map. Once more, we can notice the layout only includes one city. I have no problem with that, but I think it would be nice to see some other map layouts Now, let's see a map from another game. I took something extreme on purpose. This is the San Andreas state from Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas. Sure, it's huge, and I am pretty sure making a map of this size wouldn't be possible (or at least very problematic) on BeamNG.drive. What made this game so awesome at the time was the fact that you could drive through an entire state. That means, three cities (Los Santos, Las Venturas and San Fierro) and many little towns (although those are sadly not that interesting in-game). I am not saying we need bigger cities (even if that could be interesting), but we could have maps with more cities. Here is a map from Google Maps. I circled all cities and villages. The big circle in the center of the map is a city, while all the other are either towns that aren't that small or really small villages. Maybe that can be useful, so here's the same map but with the scale : I think it could be a big improvement to have maps with such a layout. I've made a crude map concept to show how a map could include multiples towns : I have no idea if this would be a fun map to drive on or not, but I think it could actually be interesting (obviously, you could add more stuff that wouldn't be seen on a map of the terrain). Sadly, I don't know about any BeamNG terrain having such a layout (except maybe bob.blunderton's Tennessee, but I am not sure since I am not able to make it run). Speaking about bob.blunderton, here is a screenshot from his Nevada Interstate. You can see that this terrain truly is gigantic (it has tons of roads too), but appart from one little "village" (if you can call that a village), there isn't much to see. My aim here isn't to criticize his work, but to show how, in my opinion, BeamNG's terrains could get more interesting. Driving around big terrains is good, but I think it would be better if there were more cities (or atleast, things such as some motels, or some buildings like that) to drive to and in. What do you think ? EDIT : I am not sure if this is in the correct section.
@Fast-Subaru71 - I think you make valid points about gameplay, but here is some technical insight to give food for further thought: RE: bob_blunderton's map(s): He's hitting the object count limit, adding more towns is problematic for that technical reason. Maybe he'd consider making a "compromise" map which was smaller and would thus allow a higher static object density. RE: official maps: I'll show you East Coast USA with the 1km scale you used on your Google Maps screenshot:
What I see in the future is a sort of "Warp" feature to travel between the maps. ETK, Hirochi, and Utah all have blocked roads leaving the map, and it appears that WC has multiple. I'd imaging that those roads might be used to travel between the maps, probably in the big open-world career mode that they keep talking about.
Thankfully for you, me (and the rest of the community!) Italy will have multiple communities. I felt the same way as you!
Torque was one of the worst possible engines they could have picked for an open world driving game. Who thought that a map size of 4 km squared would suit an open world driving game? Midtown madness 3, a game that came out nearly 14 years ago, has bigger maps than a modern game released in 2013. The Washington DC map is about 2.15 miles by 2.6 miles with so much to see and do. For comparison, the new Italy map will be 2.5 miles square. Midtown madness ran on a system with 64 mb of RAM. I think today with 8+ gigs of RAM we should be able to do a lot more, but Torque is trash.
Lol the wheels on that bitron Well maybe the devs will work some magic with the engine (it is highly customizable after all) and we'll be able to have bigger maps. Remember they said replays probably wouldn't be feasible but now we have a mostly working replay system?
Thats the thing that bothered me at utah there arent any non commercial houses but alot of workplaces where did the people live? Maybe add a small town with 2 or 3 houses maybe?
Thanks for the answer. RE : bob.blunderton's maps : I wasn't sure about this, I was aware he ran into technical problems but I wasn't sure what sort of problem. If he is hitting the object count limit, then I can see why he didn't put cities in his map. RE: official maps. I was aware ECUSA wasn't gigantic in terms of size, and I only included my Google maps screenshot to show you could find more than one city in a area bigger than 2 kilometers. I don't know if trying to squeeze two or three cities in a 2km terrain is a good idea though, might depend on how it is done. But that might be bad performance wise. Sure, although I think it might need refining. I read about that idea before. It could be a nice way to counter this problem, but it might be complex to put in-game. It would offer alot for sure. I kinda stopped following Italy's development, since I felt it would take some time to be released and hyping about it wouldn't be that useful. But that is some good news
Remember,this game is still in Alpha so,devs can surprise us in the future.They will probabaly add more maps etc,etc.So, who knows what's gunna happen in future?
Ideally the tunnels shouldn't loop, and the bridge should provide access to some town. Imagine it like this: The two sides of the tunnel entrances are roads to other sectors, the bridge takes you to a city. There's a already a very small old town in Utah tho. After all, the map of utah you play around is in a valley
What I hate is how almost all the maps are islands and half of them are "abandoned". I also don't like how there's not many cities and how the tunnel loops. I drove through it and I needed to set the AI to do it then left do do something else for a little. (Really. It took that long)
