Development Screens (Each post contains a picture OR contributing post)

Haven't really posted any WIP stuff over here forever so probably time for a catch up post, been working on tons of larger projects recently

First of all, the Yakuza map ports. These haven't really been the main focus of map work for a while now (for reasons you'll see in a bit) but big things have still been happening over there. Yokohama is finally getting close to release now that what I think should be the final load of model work has been done, which means the latest optimisation stuff is in and all the broken uv maps just need flicking to the correct ones, as well as some general map cleanup and night light polishing before it can be released.

The all new version of Kamurocho is much earlier in development but starting to take shape, I've done most of the map cleanup and it's currently awaiting having all the models properly processed to sort out uv maps and apply the latest optimisations. Still needs lights, ai, further cleanup but it's a solid start.

However, the yakuza stuff hasn't been the main focus because of these, the Infra map ports. These are something I've wanted to do forever and together with Car Killer (again, of course) have been making decent progress on over the past few months. We've got a fair few maps here, ranging from some of the "larger" (still source engine lol, don't expect The Crew) maps, including the unfinished and cut from final game driving section maps, to some smaller showroomy ones again.
These have a ton of fancy features (mostly Car Killer's magic, as usual) with the highlight being optimised jbeamed dynamic props (on some maps anyway), for that extra level of "this map for the driving game is best for the walk mode". A showcase of this on the castle rock map was posted a while back here by Car Killer so go dig that up to see this in action

for where the saab is from, see below
These are complete for the most part, though there's still a big chunk of modelling for me to do on one of the cut maps (great fun when it's all hammer brush models in separate files). Expect to see these released soonish (maybe) (hopefully)

Now for the other main project, traffic stuff. For the past many months I've been working on making realistic traffic vehicles, with lots of time put into seeing just how much performance I can squeeze out of the models and jbeams and stuff. Which I think I've been successful with, I've had Car Killer running 60 of these with a solid over 30fps on an alright cpu (which I don't think anyone has ever really managed with normal vehicles at the moment) and I can manage smooth gameplay with 15 which isnt too bad for a very much aging 7 year old quad core, definitely so compared to stock traffic. All the models are below the 100 drawcall mark and everything uses as much generic data value materials as possible, so I can have an entire pack of vehicles running on only a few megabytes of texture memory. Models are the only real expense for file size and this is a limit I can't really do much about since dae is inherently just not very efficient for this. 2.57gb of the 2.67gb of files total for all of this stuff and related experiments I have is purely dae files. I posted a video of messing about with these a while back on youtube and I think a couple other people have shown them too (see the Fairhaven map teasers), incase you wondered what that was then it was this project.

There's a few versions of this I've been working on. There's the "main" mod, which is all real cars from every optimal source I've collected over the years, covering multiple regions and is still very WIP. I've ensured that I should still be able to release it one day and made sure nothing is stolen from individual creators and modellers, though lots of these need lots of work still so won't be seeing the light of the forums for a good while still. Vehicle choices are mostly decided by what's the most common to see in everyday circumstances in standard american and european cities (mostly focusing on places we have in beamng right now, so lots of italian focused stuff atm) based on highly scientific poking about on street view research.
However, I've also been dipping my toes into making map specific traffic, the main one of which at the moment is traffic for the yakuza maps. I've gone and ported the majority of the traffic vehicles (hoping to have all of them for release, still a few to go) based on the same optimised traffic base for traffic on the yakuza maps, which doubles as working quite well as a generic japanese traffic for the C1 Shuto map and stuff. This is nearly complete so should be releasing alongside Yokohama whenever that's done. I'll also be doing an expansion for hawaii, whenever we get round to porting that but that will be a fair bit away still at the moment.
I have tons more plans for the traffic beyond this too. At the moment I'm still working my way through my existing supply of vehicles, both modern (from 3d configurators and stuff) and older (from games, mostly forza with a side of gran turismo) and once those wells run dry I've got plenty of other models that I'll be dipping my toes into retopology stuff to make. There's then more map specific stuff, which includes the need for speed pack mentioned in the future plans on the Fairhaven thread, which currently is not started or highest priority (see: all the other stuff I've been doing) so won't be coming too soon (you can stop spamming that thread asking if it's done yet or saying its not possible now). Also planned to go alongside the main mod are what I've dubbed "service vehicles", stuff like police cars, ambulances, bin lorries etc to break up the onslaught of crossovers and add that extra level of depth to the realism.

And last of all, because when doing this I realised the stock traffic systems aren't quite up to scratch for my needs I then went and learnt basic lua and imgui for the sole purpose of making my own fancy tool for it all, with much bugging CK about syntax and what all the functions are called here. No way near done, some of the listed options don't function yet and theres lots more features and ui changes I want to make but it's a start

 

Yeah its one of the many traffic vehicles (theres a note about it in the post since i knew someone would ask, guess i made it too hidden), i'm currently considering modelling the lower spec wheels for it at the moment seeing as it doesn't require a total conversion to make it look like more everyday spec (if only other cars were like this)

 

For the full list (should be final):
Castle Rock Island, both map 1 and 2 merged together (so you can drive from the boat dock area by the bridge into the main map)
Point Elias, Both the main map and train station merged together, so you can drive from one half to the other normally
Turnip Hill exterior map, with the hangar shed thing
Pitheath Canal (with the open concrete area by the factory), mostly just a showroomy thing that CK wanted
Black Rock Power Plant exterior, showroom again (see saab picture)
Stalburg underground entrance gates, another showroomy one
(traffic vehicle again)

And then for all the cut stuff, none of which has proper names or anything so we're just going off the names (and presumably noone else would recognise either)
Alleys, Industrial, Shipyard, Parking Cave, Residential
Alleys and shipyard are the biggest ones, and shipyard is the one that I've been doing loads of work on as it was very much half finished and half missing beyond the road itself. Others only really work as showrooms again (though industrial has a bit of road you can use), main issue with infra is all the maps are small even if good looking but we've done what we can to make them enjoyable
Please ignore the mess on this one, it is very much still a construction site (and only looks good from ground level, but that doesn't give you a nice overview)

They're all technically drivable because if they weren't the AI couldn't use them, they are just even more stripped down versions of the existing stock game simplified traffic jbeams, so they don't drive remotely nice or anything (because you're not meant to, they just need to be controllable to the AI)
They're not going to be straight copy paste everything but to avoid having hundreds of unique engine parts and stuff I'm just going to have a generic set of engine options so each car gets something vaguely like its supposed to have, even if Generic I3 Engine is not perfectly tuned to the specifics of whatever the base model hatchback is supposed to have irl

 

The motorway map was literally just a few separate floating short pieces of road, only one of which had any form of surroundings (short stretch between two tunnels). That bit we've tacked onto the end of the shipyard map since it worked, lots of the cut maps are chopped up and cannabilised bits of other earlier cut maps and the motorway one was probably the most obvious example of this. One of the other bits was already in shipyard iirc, and the intro section is mostly reused in residential which we also already have. We don't have the map itself but we've got the good bits of it elsewhere so thats's at least something