Texture improvement. I have to do the speculars yet but It's starting to look nicer already! Improved all the old grey textures inherited from the ones I made for Nevada Interstate, and the newer-pavement versions also. Looks a lot more consistent and a lot less patchy. This was another 4~6+ hours.
MOAR new textures in - all textures updated, concrete texture improved slightly. Road striping (the lines, duh) are more vibrant/saturated and not so faded out. Just about all the textures have SPECULAR textures now - a bit of a sheen where the asphalt is worn smooth. By far the best news, is that, for the first time (to my best guess) in Beamng.drive, REALISTIC WATER. What do I mean by that. See the pics involving water, for some answers. If you hit it doing 60~100+ mph, the front of the car will hydroplane or "boat" across the surface just like the tyres (tires) do in heavy rain on a wet road. I adjusted the jumps in some spots accordingly to this so they can still be made (mostly to the north side of the map). Going to possibly upload a beta tonight to MEGA to see what you folks think. I have a few AI paths to adjust and a texture specular to fix on the concrete 3-lane highway, and it should be ready for testing! I tried not to break anything... in-stead, only adding to the fun with some corner banking as it DID need it in a lot of places. It's not quite all done yet, but what is worked on, is 98% perfect. Some of the pics I left the interface on, wasn't worried, was too busy editing - just seen a nice shot so figured I'd add it. --- Post updated --- Updated to show me drowning the poor pessima ricer-beater This is a time-frame over 12~15 seconds or so. The 1st pic of the series is last because the uploader failed on the 1st pic. It actually coasted that far at high speed before stopping, and finally sinking.
OK, Interim version 7 is out of So-Cal, though it may not seem like it, there's been lots of under-the-hood updates. Don't expect to be wowed like crazy with a world of differences, though. What amounted to another 60+ hours of work, is represented by new road textures, lots of banked corners and re-worked roads. Also on the table is the new testing-phase of the water physics. It's not displace-able and it doesn't move around like we all dream of yet, but the pessima (and the moonhawk and a bunch of other cars), sink properly like real cars do. The water also slows you down appropriately (unless you're going so fast you skip across the top much like a stone, until you dig in and sink). It's actually pretty cool. You can still go flying right in nose-down and sink fast like a torpedo, but if you hit the water nose-up you'll skim across like a jet-ski until you lose momentum. Only bad side is if you hit it wrong with a covet, it could float (I got the back of the moonhawk to float once or twice, but it's not often). 75~95% of the time, it's real as can be. It's much better than the way it was before. Large tires may cause floating, too. The beater covet never had floating issues, with it's tiny tires, whereas the DRAG pessima and the covet with much larger custom tires sometimes did. However, if you get the drag pessima in the water, you're doing something seriously wrong to start with. Other than that, it should be pretty fun to toy with, and I'd like everyone's feedback on this. I am going to make the devs aware of this so maybe they can get a jumpstart on improving the water interaction, a bit. Just doing my part to make this game even better for everyone! MEGA link until I can get this properly uploaded to this site on version 8. http://www.beamng.com/resources/so-cal-interstate-highway-126-miles-of-road-path.891/ and six months later there's v 0.8
Decal editor - click NOTEXTURE - delete. This is a decal the game couldn't find a texture for after the update. There's two right there i think. That's fixed in the <1 week away update that's coming. I just got done running 100+ miles in the map just now. What good times it still is (OK OK I am tooting my own horn, but I made this map for myself first and foremost). With the new keyboard control improvements, I drove an 88 Pessima until it RAN OUT OF GAS without crashing it once. I've never, ever done THAT in Beamng.drive (due to driving with a keyboard). Changes from last forum-hosted update (not the slightly hidden mega hosted update): THE ENTIRE PERIMETER 26.x MILE HIGHWAY IS BANKED NOW!!! WOOHOO!!! All that perfectly flat roadway and non-banked corners are gone from that outer loop - full speed ahead. LOTS of median barrier and guiderail on the edge of the highway has been added. The inner surface street (with intersections and jumps over water) loop is banked now. Fixed completely missing road chunks due to older 0.7.x update changing decal road calculation formulas. I am working on (required/essential/game-version fixes): banking the inner highway loop next in the few spots it needs it. fixing the rest of the glitchy/scrambled decal roads. Most of the missing spots are fixed, though, as stated above. getting rid of the few boringly-flat areas designed in 0.4.x and 0.5.x when the editor had less sculpting tools finishing adding posts to the bridges near water-level that still need them Things that would be a bonus that may or may not make the next update: Signs! Yes, it doesn't have any right now and should get them like the ones in my last tennessee update. A few misc texture perfections that will get done eventually (they aren't noticable until you're stopped and staring at them). Things that will come after I get my backlog of maps sorted: Buildings, more roads, and signs (if, in fact signs don't make it in this up-and-coming version). Notes: Lag isn't so hardcore on this map and most machines should be able to maintain 30fps on decent video cards, however, there still is a bit of lag at odd times if the vsync is off during full-screen play. I've been trying to make it better but the map is so expansive and without naturally occuring vis-blockers except near the edge (read: Mountain chains), it's tough to do anything without just dropping the draw-distance. 0.7.x Beamng had twice as bad lag as 0.8.x does. Starting in air (at 0,0,0 coordinates) bug will be fixed, too (shows up on 0.8.x). So keep tuned. For those that also have Nevada Interstate and find (or for that matter could not find) the missing chunks of road, there's a .mis in the Nevada Interstate discussion forums, if you know how to modify a .zip file manually. The new 0.8x game version dropping today was expected, I knew it'd come sooner or later - especially being two months since the last revision. Now I can get back to hard-core mapping. I did not see if the mission editor was back, but if it is, I will try to throw together a few missions for this and my other maps. I won't be putting in anything I don't directly enjoy doing myself. In keeping of my traditional posting objectives, here's just a very, very small sample of what So-Cal looks like with properly banked highways: A picture is worth a thousand words - but a moderately-large map for Beamng.drive - is AWESOME! Those aren't mountains/hills/dirt mounds, THOSE ARE RAMPS/JUMPS/AIRTIME! Almost every mountain in this map can be used as a car-launching (and obliterating) ramp if you folks didn't already know.
The only issue I have discovered so far is that the default spawn location seems to be missing. When I load the map, I spawn high up above the bridge leading to the small incomplete island off the mainland, with no vehicle. This is the case regardless of whether or not my default vehicle is stock or custom. It's no trouble for me to fly down to the road and spawn the car, but I thought I would let you know. I keep trying to record a video for you but scaling down my driving habits from Tennessee is HARD :V
It's okay about the video - if you can hold off a week or so I might have a new version up and online. Yes the spawn point is broken. Maps missing the new multispawn map info file will do this - Nevada Interstate also does this as many maps from 0.6.x or before do. These will be fixed (both maps) in short term. Yes, you must scale down, this is much more winding and mountainous than Tennessee in general but it's also about only 1/3rd the size total. However, much more road banking is in the next version so it will significantly help with those folks who slide off corners. I am also taking some more time to additionally refine roads, remove odd bumps, and just generally cruise around and see the sights as I refine things. There's also a shed-load of texture mishaps and garbled spots on the roads I am fixing. Nevada is also like this in this respect. I will try to put in a few different spawn points for this map as I fix the default spawn. The default spawn puts you at 0,0,0 coordinates, which unfortunately, is about 500~1000ft in the air. Sure makes a great boom though! I don't know what I will do for missions. There's no mission editor anymore so I must resort to hacking a game script and making THAT work to my liking. Will see what I can do here. The performance is a little bit improved in 0.8.x, though I did find a few rough spots here and there, will see what I can do about that. I am not sure if it's my map or just the game engine in general bogging down as I have a ton of items in the map (about as much as Tennessee does, or close!).
OK so pretty much, the highway is banked, that's done (the outer highway anyways). I only have ONE turn left to bank - that's it. I will do the inner highway loop, then i'll throw this online, so sometime over the next 3~4 days I should have it uploaded. It's just a few corners and the on/offramps that need attention. The innermost loop (the one that's not a divided highway, and has intersections) is already banked and done. I may re-grade some of the hills so they are more natural/even as I did the one approaching the highway tunnel (picture included) I still have some more bridge supports to add... getting there anyways! Just a few pics, while it may not 'look' much different, the hills are more natural and not quite as steep, and the turns are quite nicely banked. You will be able to go MUCH faster now. A few bridge 'bumps' were removed/lessened.
Some more map shots of me working on portions of the inner highway loop. If, from where the map starts you high in the air, you took the highway directly over the mountain (the very straight one), and went down the other side, the turns near the intersection at the bottom, near the center of the map, is where I've been working today. I've tried very hard to get rid of more bumps than I add, and remove 'boring flat' spots. Pics enclosed: (the sky-cam pic is just for bearing to show what part of the map the work was done)
Yes, the one a few posts above. If you wish to wait a few days, I will have a new version up. I'd say another day or two of work, and I'll put a link up and eventually get that transferred over to the Beam site. The only thing wrong with the v7 is that it starts you in the sky, you can just spawn a car crashing down to the map or fly the camera down, and there is one instance of NOTEXTURE on a portion of a bridge (it is a decal, no clue why it won't work, deleted it in this version).
So, A bit of a work-in-progress (literally) screenshot here from ye'olde editor mode. Sculpting my decal road highways with a mesh. How? Simple, make a super-wide thin mesh and use the 2nd and 3rd last terrain editors to SCULPT the land surface under/above it to your mesh road's top level. If you bank the road and set break angle really low (within reason if you have a slow cpu)... you'll end up with a beautifully banked roadway like Tennessee has (this is how I MADE TN's roads and highways so awesome). Just a little rippling to smooth out at the beginning and ends of turns with the smoother when done, then you're set. Move out of the way the mesh, or delete it if you're sure your done and test out your creation. The result is what you get in my maps. Why give out all the secrets? Because then maybe some other mappers will see and use this method. You can make some super roadways when you get it down! Your only limits are your CPU and your brain and patience. The reward is so fun though. Literally make ANYTHING you desire! The result is that you will be able to keep your speed gained going down the hill much easier and won't be forced to slow so much through the flat turn. The hill is also blended together (the little incline to the right of the overpass, and the initial beginning of the mountain climb), there's no more flat area in the corners in the center of the shot. Note: I will fully bank the ramps properly, They're a mess. A few of the ramps in this map are pretty dodgey, they'll be fixed. I'll show in this screenshot, me straightening a highway alignment much as they do in real life when upgrading highways. The turn is both a reduced angle and now banked! The green line in the screenshot is the desired CENTER of the NEW alignment (the highway median will center where the green line is, in-stead of where it is now). There's both a top-down birds-eye view and a view looking back towards where 0.8.x starts you out in the air (past the distant mountain) for some stupid reason (I will fix that). Edit: Added 5 more pics, This interchange is 100% totally and completely banked. The bridge has been updated (more importantly, the abutment's retaining walls were changed to sloped, this will make for some bizarre wrecks, I am sure). Really looks sweet now - or at-least I am quite happy with it. Edit: Added another picture during speed testing... it's way better than it was! Banked and re-graded another two+ miles of road south of the birds-eye-view shot (in relation to the picture), all the way to the next cloverleaf. There's two more full cloverleafs to do (ugh), and that will likely do it for this version's work. (and two corners too - almost forgot, but those don't take long!). Hopefully I'll have the start fixed. It's quite a bit of fun cruising on those roads now, you can go almost twice as fast as before. This took a good... 6+ hours to do this interchange! I still have at-least one or two more interchanges to do, and a double-decker (yup) road section by the cliffside That should be fun doing that part. Best part: THE DEVS FIXED THE SELECTION BUG IN THE F1 OBJECT EDITOR THAT HAS PLAGUED ME SINCE I FIRST RELEASED THIS MAP!!! WOO-@#$%ING-HOO!!! I LOVES THEM LONG-TIME! *edit: Well, it's not 100% gone but it's less common I will mention, this still leaves me quite cheery!
*Got a bunch more corners banked. ALL of the highways are done now. A few multi-lane surface roads got some banking, too, where I felt it was imperative. *Banked and graded two whole full-cloverleaf intersections - but didn't touch the diamond interchanges or the darker of the two 3y-interchanges (the other 3y is done now). *Fixed the AI lanes up, so that the AI is a bit more predictable and stays on the road better (it would have fallen into the retention pits, due to changing the interchange ramps slightly). *Installed some more guide rail, where needed (such as highway divider, and guide rail on a few more shoulders that have more than the 1:3 slope - as per US DOT standards). *Fixed a few bridges that annoyed me with bumps causing the car to catch some airtime (sheesh!). Yes, it was really bad. I am sure there's still a few bridge bumps left though. *The water now behaves like more earthly water, thankfully I could do this now as the developers improved the reaction of cars to submerged roadways (still slows you down a lot). *Fixed *A LOT* of stupid decal road garbling/glitching (visual errors only). *The unfinished island near the corner of the map where you start is still unfinished, as is the bridge that goes to it (finishing that won't be in this version). *Tried to fix the car and camera at start issue, fixed the car but not the camera, you have to hit SHIFT+C to get to the car, but atleast it's not under water @ start any longer. Will fix this more tomorrow and make multiple spawns like Tennessee USA Roane County has, as do the in-game included maps. One I get the stupid spawn point bug fixed, I will upload this and make it available to everyone. Another trail will be added before it's uploaded, also. The preview picture roll needs to be updated on the map preview in-game and on the mod page entry. Hopefully I will only need one more night to work on this map. I should be able to finish everything up tomorrow evening. Will then mega host it and if all goes well, pass that over to the mod's page (hosting it via Beamng.drive website here as a mod) if it's not too buggy. --Happy New Years. (next version after this gets done) Signs, traffic lights, banking the side roads where needed. Missions! Double-decker where the steep cliffs warrant it in one or two areas. This was originally part of the map workflow but it was too much work to do at release time last spring/summer.
It wasn't posted, because it's basically the same work as the previous stuffs, times TWO (and then some!). It was getting late and I had already close it out for the night because I was getting tired after testing it some. I will try and post something, but I am currently trying to get the camera-in-the-sky at map loading time fixed. It runs fine, you just have to shift+c to the car when you start it up now, instead of being underwater or something. When I get that fixed I will do some updated screenshots and then have the file uploaded. It might be a few days before it gets fixed because the game update broke backwards-compatability with older maps, and no one seems to know how the new system works. When I figure it out, or someone decides to make an article on it, and it's documented, I can fix it, and it'll be clear for upload & release. The map crashes the spawn LUA script in the game engine, and that's why the camera attaches to the sky. The car is named theplayer and the game finds it fine. It just doesn't find a camera spawn point and for some reason, the script crashes and refuses to by-default on-game-start attach it to the car. You can get around it by manually doing it (pressing shift+c brings the camera to the car), but possibly some people won't know how to do this. What it comes down to, is that I cannot figure out what to name the camera spawn sphere, as the old names no longer work. Again, when this is fixed, I Will go ahead and upload this, give it out to a few people via private beta, and if it runs with no major snags (should be just fine!), then it's good for release. EDIT: I did add a path that runs along a cliffside, it's narrower than the last paths, looks more like bolivia's death road, and is about 1.3 miles long or so. This bypasses 1 of the two mountainous roads that has the stone wall on the low side (there's two, one with black pavement, and one with grey pavement). This path bypasses the one with grey pavement. It's not far from the side of the map with all the watery jumps. The reason for it, is that some folks complained of odd lag induced by laying skidmarks on the surface of the winding road portion with the stone wall. Eventually, I'll find a way to mitigate this, but it may just be a bug with the game engine for now.
The new update will likely be posted within the next 12 hours. It's already been uploaded it's just in due-process right now. You actually spawn like you're supposed to, in a parking-lot, not just some random spot, not in the sky with no car...etc. Stay tuned to the official mods page for this item. Everything works, there are no show-stopping bugs to speak of that i know of. The AI works on the entire map, every road. Most every major road is banked now, there's rarely a flat turn (anything flat yet is intentional, or is a small 2lane side road, some aren't done yet). FIXED the big BUG on the winding, stone-wall-lined mountain road with black pavement, wp59 was missed on map.json for AI waypoints, AI would have rode the mountain there. Many bridge bumps reduced or eliminated with only 2 added back (or so), so there's way less now and the ones that remain aren't too bad. For those still using version 6 from the mods page, there's new hi-res textures that came with version 7 that are carried-over. Some made it to Roane County Tennessee, too. Bugs, Errata, and other release notes for this about-to-be-released version: I did not yet include support for the AI multi-lane feature, that is coming in the next version in a month or two (or way sooner, who knows!). I did not yet include signs or traffic lights. I wanted to get a new working version up since the old one had many bugs, again, will be in next version. New jumps too! This being said, because there's no signs, lights, or specific jumps in the forest brush, or TREES, there IS NO FOREST BRUSH YET. I will add one in the future for this! Many of the smaller or less-traveled side-roads are not 100% optimal yet. This is known, that being said however, they're 100% drive-able at modest speeds. There's still a bridge or two (or four) over the water that aren't done, including the one to the STILL UNFINISHED ISLAND. A few don't have all their pillars. That bridge and the unfinished island will be completely revamped, have a race track, a derby arena, and a very nice unique hand-made bridge. Keep out of here! There's still on very high bridge with super-duper-ugly pillars. I haven't done anything about it yet because I may or may not eventually do something with it. There's still some ugly 'normal' MIP-MAP textures on the concrete. Not a big priority but is something to work on when the time comes. I will eventually buy or download an open-source program that does these things. Any ideas or good GIMP x64 plugins? Some hills are steep on the side-roads. Not so much on the highway anymore. Some are intentionally steep (ITS CALIFORNIA!), some are JUMP opportunities. These mentioned hills, are good testers for slower cars, to see if they make it up or not. If it 'shouldn't work but does', then pick an alternate route, there's always another way. There are MANY, MANY, MANY jumps. Four of them have been re-worked, to make it so that AI cars (or you) don't get wedged into a stuck triangle-shape and have to be reset. You can still get stuck on the 2d ones with no side texture as they are just meant to look like bent steel and won't have a better model until the signs/traffic light update, when I add the forest in. You can only get stuck if you hit it from another direction that you're supposed to, or if you fail to jump far enough and skewer the car on the end (though it's hilarious when you do get stuck, tee-hee-hee, hold INSERT to get unstuck). Some jumps are just piles of dirt, some are mountains with smooth bases (they're everywhere, I mean it), and some are 2d-looking metal jumps over water pooling on roadway. Again, these jumps aren't impossible, many can be made with a NOMI Pessima, some need a fast sports car. Some of the hardest jumps usually have a bypass road or an easier alternative set of jumps. Some jumps are on non-obligatory spur-roads or loops roads. Try them all for fun! --That is all, see you on the mods page soon (as soon as it does not say OLD version in the title). EDIT: I will also post a link back on my Roane County Tennessee page mod description and discussion pages, for those who've followed there and not here also. There's new pics on the mod-resource page for this map (even though the title says OLD, they're already updated). --- Post updated --- Mods resource page, as it currently stands. Keep an eye on this, this is where the map will be when it's approved. http://www.beamng.com/resources/so-cal-interstate-highway-126-miles-of-road-path.891/ This is also the link to the updated pictures.
We're live! Click the link for the most-recent 0.8.x of So-Cal Interstate. http://www.beamng.com/resources/so-cal-interstate-highway-126-miles-of-road-path.891/ Thank-you for sticking with me this long, and thank-you developers for wonderful Beamng.drive! Thank-you moderators for putting up with everyone on this site - we love you!
I saw your content on youtube a few days back, under 'Acheron' or something similar, IIRC. If that's you, awesome awesome work. Seeing things like this is the best feedback I can get my hands on (as is things like system specs, so I know what design limitations I must have for performance etc), and really genuinely helps me make better maps by: Showing me where users are congregating, where it's most fun to be Showing me what takes away from the fun, or causes unintended slip-ups or crashes Showing me basically what to expand upon and what to omit This map was build around a poll of what folks wanted, which was conveniently left open a very long time (a few months), with multiple votes so that opinions really counted. High speed highways, varied interchanges, AI usability were all tops. Missions, cliffs, and corners proved less popular but still, the latter two of these add to it. I haven't added missions into it yet, but will eventually when they make that a bit easier and less map-breaking to do so. I will be doing things like this in the future. I am working on trying to get rights to use the city map, the generic city. If I can get this, I can get my hands on some more city models, and be able to highly improve that map.
A while back I was questioned about why I chose such dense water in this map as to float the car for a few seconds. Turns out I've been 100% right the whole time (not suprising). Not to gloat, or to goad at all about things... (To note: the base game has been updated, and version 8 of this map reduced the water density, because the Beamng 0.8 has added it). A well respected show does this for me right here: Mythbusters! Yes, your car will entirely skip over the water in this map (and TN, USA) if you go fast enough, but only for possibly up to 60~80 feet.
