WIP Tail of the Dragon / Deal's Gap 1.0.1

Trees....Trees...Will it have trees...ITS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WOODS... A forest...OF TREES.
(no rudeness or offending intended)...
So yes there will be trees*. Guide rail will only be roughly where it is in real-life, to the best of my ability.
This is to be even more true-to-life, or as much as I can make it, even more-so than Roane County is.

I casually invite you and everyone able to use youtube, to follow this, this is merely a search for this exact place I am mapping.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tail+of+the+dragon

As you can see, it's quite the popular driving (and crashing) destination. So popular I thought it'd be a perfect fit for this game, when someone (Okay, I totally forget who) requested it.
*The density of said trees will be controlled by just how much of a RAM footprint this will require for the physics model, as they do add up over time.
Enjoy the vids a while (they're not mine, just links to a search result).

 

Last total was 8.55 miles, I've added just a few feet short of 1.2 miles more done, now it's up to 9.75 miles plotted, banked, graded, & ground-modeled. I've now noticed, that the view distance of 4000 meters, is exactly the LINEAR distance to the far edge of the map where the far end of the (unfinished) roadway is, if I drew a line to the far end of the map. Of course it's more like 6000 meters or something close to that of roadway, to finish yet, due to it snaking left and right as this does. I'd say another 4~5 days like tonight and I'd have the main road done.
There may be a little more progress to be made yet tonight. Took me about 3.5 hours to do 1.2 miles, so i'd say 3~3.25 hours per mile of road plotted, banked/formed, and ground-modeled - much better than 6~8 hours per mile!
Edit: Adding a screenshot here to demonstrate what's left for road-forming here - looking NORTH EAST

I've been working left-to-right here, from the back-ground to the foreground, for orientation purposes.
The TAIL OF THE DRAGON stop is at the BOTTOM RIGHT (the white blotchy mess), there's about a mile of road below the screenshot (southward) that you can't see, you can see how 6000 meters of road I stated is most likely more like 8000 meters, but whatever.
The pink marker denotes cursor position, that's where I started today. Where the dark overlay is, is where the road is not done yet, that's my overlay as guidance. Once it's done, I revert it to the 'regular green' stuffs.

 

I meant that will it have like an ass-ton because of lag and sh*t.
(my pc could still probably run it.......)

 

It'll have enough trees, but I'll try to keep them only where it needs them. However, that being said, it *IS* in the middle of a forest.

On another note, I have been working on the normal map for the roadway. so far so good... but it still needs work.



Got it!


The edges look a bit inverted, but I'll get to that.



DING-DING-DING! For those wanting me to share, I shall.
Using the GIMP normal map plugin, values as listed:
Filter 9x9
minimum Z = 0
Scale 10.0
don't change height source
don't change alpha channel
none
none

Wrap (check)
Invert X (check)
Invert Y (check)
No swapping of RGB

Looks pretty much as good as Beamng developers would do!

I guess I have gobs of work to do on Tennessee Roane County when I get to it but it shall be much improved when it does get done, however, this map's getting done 1st.

 

If you ported the NFS:HP 2010 map or NFSMW 2005 map into BeamNG that would be amazing. If you remember from NFSMW there was Rosewood, the borough that you start out in, then you unlock the other two through the gameplay. Maybe even that one starting borough would be nice, it is most likely the same size if not smaller than your Tennessee map.

Also did you intentionally misspell dams as "damns"?

 

Can't port the actual game assets or textures, but I *COULD* re-manufacture stuff and re-represent stuff if needed. Honestly I think it would be much more fun making original real-world roads into this game, then making something from another recent video game (but that's just me). Not to say I won't make some SNES game stuff on here one day (I have something on the back burner I've been planning for oh quite some time now... but that's a secret).
I do play me some NFS Undercover now and then, now that I got it working, seeing as EA doesn't support their software.
FILE SIZE is largely down to terrain & texture sizes.
Roane County most likely holds the record for most texture data in a game mod for this game currently, and it wasn't intentional.
Every road looks different, and that IS intentional and by design.
Otherwise it'd be even MORE easy to get lost, and we wouldn't want that now would we?
I did misspell dams, my bad, I'll fix the unorthodox typo as soon as I see where it is. Might take a bit of reading... OOPS

---

So if anyone must know, I've gotten as far as here on the map!

This is how far I've PLOTTED (the orange NOTEXTURE thing is a mesh, and shows where I've gotten to, as I use meshes to carve my road base and get the general grading of the roadway and banking correct). The little green dots/line will be the center of the roadway, however, the road is only about 80% as the widest (most visible/not hidden by terrain) parts of the mesh.

Compare to the LEADING BRAND, which is Google (real map!) :
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.4673906,-83.9209595,626m/data=!3m1!1e3
I'm actually using this to map from, plotting out, right now.
There's less than a mile left to plot out.
I haven't banked any of this new stuff yet. The current amount banked is still what it was yesterday.
I've graded the roadway all the way to the Tennessee / North Carolina state line. I haven't banked it or sculpted the terrain there yet, though. That is for tomorrow (or technically later today).

 

Is it possible to make a new texture of a newer asphalt?
like more darker and smooth.

 

It's possible, but that's not what this road currently looks like. That pavement has been there possibly 8+ years or so, so it's sun-bleached. The bedrock in Tennessee is largely sandstone, old seabed, interspersed with some grey rocks etc, so our pavement is usually some sort of tan-color here, as often seen in beach-ridden states (as they source sand/shells for it, as it's what they have).
Tennessee portion (majority) of this has a tan/beige-colored pavement (exactly what I have here), the North Carolina side has a medium grey color (I haven't added this one yet, but I shall tomorrow or tonight).

This is what the Tennessee portion looks like.



Another map.
I have Plotted, Graded, and Banked (and smoothed and integrated 99% of the hillsides into) the road all the way from the north west end (where the map ends) south-east to just past the 'crossroads of time' towards the bottom of the map. The bottom of the map is slightly cut-off, ending at SUTTON STRAIGHT.
I've done 3.2 miles today, that brings the total up to like 12.8 miles (!) that's done.

There's really 5 stages, to make this more specific:
Plotted 12.8 miles
Plotted and graded 12.8 miles
Plotted, graded and banked 12.8 miles
Plotted, graded, banked and hillsides smoothed 12.8 miles
Plotted, graded, banked, hillsides worked, and ground-modeled (complete) 12.8 miles (finished it up)
I passed up the TAIL OF THE DRAGON stop @ roughly 12.6 miles of progress.

Total yet to work not included above: 1.25~ miles (estimate, may be off by as much as 0.2 miles either way!)
SIDE ROADS NOT INCLUDED IN THIS TOTAL, those are much quicker to do anyways.
Got another normal-texture done today. Yay for easy to use GIMP plugins.

Tested the AI

Now I have an issue with my hands b/c I have done this for too many hours without a break, so I must leave the PC for a bit!
Expect a bit of progress tomorrow.

So if y'all wonder what the heck I listen to while I am mapping, it's dance-groove/funk from the 80s stuff. I absolutely cannot stand modern music for the most part... so here it is, a really good megamix!
https://www.mixcloud.com/DJFunkEd/dancin-tight-mix-80s-funk/
Out of all the places I searched, Mp3million has more of these songs (for 9~10¢ a song at that) than anyone else I tried (did not use or ever try iTunes, I don't care for apple, period).
If your specific card you use does not accept foreign transactions like mine doesn't, they do have a pin-code reseller partner that gives you pins for their site, which works (you can find it under help/FAQ).
I really recommend the sites, out of 150 songs or so I've tried and bought, only 2 skipped (they were Vinyl).
(regardless, I did fix the skips myself, the Vinyl skips are easy to fix).

They are currently offering a 30% bonus on 10 bucks (I imagine it's similar, if you spend more, or better) spent, so you put in 10, you get 13. I don't make anything on this, but go ahead and try it out and let me know what y'all think at www.mp3million.com .

I used to use Amazon and Emusic interchangeably but Amazon's software is broken for the up-teenth time, and I refuse to deal with it, because it just SUCKS.

 

I did not know that, I just saw this from googling:

 

That's much like the preview picture I've used for the map, actually (well, quite similar).
That's on the North Carolina side of things, where the asphalt is typical grey, it's also quite shady there (so it of-course shall look darker).

On another note, the map preview and description is mostly in (mostly!), and I've got some of the starting points in place.
I need to build up a few of the features (like the dam, etc), before I go and move the rest of them into place, so I won't have to fall out of the map next time I start the level using the wrong start point.

 

Love the progress, but I could not know ANYTHING about the road because I live in Finland............

 

Thank-you, Don't feel too bad about not knowing the road, I still have to take some time to drive out there this summer, and I only live about 2 hours from there. Being from Finland, I am sure you have plenty of winding roadways out there, so this will feel pretty 'at home' here.
I hope whomever it was that released the motorcycle mod a while back, keeps it up to date, as I am sure this map will do much for demand for it. Me, I'll stick to the AWS model 88 Pessima, as it's what I know.

 

cant wait for that map beam always needs curvy roads!

 

I've reached the south-eastern edge of the map today. *BIG fanfare*
I over-estimated the last amount of road that was done by 0.2 miles or such, it was actually 12.6 miles (approx to within +/- 0.1 miles).
I completed (plotted/graded/banked/fixed hillsides/ground-modeled) the last 0.85 miles left, bringing the total length of the main route to just a hair under 13.5 miles.

The purple mark is the TAIL OF THE DRAGON rest-area.
Did an AI test with 10 vehicles, 9 of which were AI driven...
It's possibly the most fun I've ever had in this game!
Notable results were: The Soliad plummeted off a cliff after cutting a corner, multiple cars got pushed, the Clark Griswold station wagon got stuck trying to turn around at what was yesterday's north end of the route, I will make sure the AI can turn around properly at both ends because of this. The sports car bumper-humper'ed the police SUV and knocked it off the end of the map at the north-end of the map, I got to see the whole thing, got a good laugh though. There was one very nice wreck of 3 cars in the middle of the map, and I went flying off the road more than once while illegally passing. I managed to put down 85 miles on just my vehicle before deciding to give it up after 2 hours. I only would recommend this if you have a rather-affordable 6-core or 8-core close-to-4ghz Ryzen or better, or a years-old 4790k de-lidded like I do.
Testing one vehicle AI driven, told to hold-lane:

Testing a few AI cars, told to hold lane:


They cut corners a bit in a few spots but over-all it works out really well and only had one path-finding failure-related wreck in 90~100 minutes because of it.

 

Added 4.3 miles of more roadway (1 mile of this is dirt path, for the lower dam access road to Calderwood Dam).

Calderwood Dam rd (about 9/10ths of a mile long, ends at the Scenic Lookout on Rt 129)

Installed a very primitive representation of Calderwood Dam, it's ho-hum at best, and pretty hideous, but it's far from the focal point of this map, but if you go careening down Calderwood Dam rd and don't stop at the end or take the dirt path, you'll go flying off of it

Added the lower dirt-path access to the Calderwood Dam, also called 'Calderwood Dam rd', it's about a mile long or so. It doesn't connect to the upper part of the Dam access road, but in this map, it shall, because it's more fun this way.

Added Growdon BLVD which is about a mile and a half long, is paved, and runs along the river, eventually connecting to the lower Calderwood Dam dirt path access.

Added Housley Drive, which is a little less than a mile long (8/10ths of a mile), and runs between Growdon and Rt 129.

For those not from the area, Rt. 129 is the main route of TAIL OF THE DRAGON, and the north 'end' of the TAIL OF THE DRAGON route, terminates at where Housley Drive meets 129. In this map, Rt 129 continues from another approx 2 miles north of Housley Dr.

This gets many of the northern-end routes into the map, and aside of not having a model for the dam (I made a cheesy one out of a mesh road textured in concrete as a place-holder for now), will enable me to tie up all the loose ends so I can start foresting and adding in the water for the river.

 

I am on the edge of my seat, super excited for this. It looks like it's coming along great and it's good to see so much progress! I look forward to attempting to drift the entire run B) hahaha

 

It won't be the most detailed map, it won't have the wow-factor Roane County or Nevada Interstate did with their expansive mass of terrain, but rest assured, it will be one thing, and one thing surely: FUN
If you really like drifting around hairpins, this will be a hoot. I've tried to bring a perfect 1:1 layout of the roadway to you folks, I've got it mostly right. I have to take time and spend a whole day or two doing some odds n ends like pull-offs, and get some better models imported, etc, but eventually, I'll have it right enough to release. The AI surely is well tested already and shall have all the kinks ironed out when it's done. I will only have AI traffic ability on the main route, so that it can be populated and doesn't veer off onto side-roads. This is actually more fun than having it on a bunch of little, short side-routes, as the main route is the focus on the map. I will make, at my leisure, a version of the route, with more of the roads off the beaten path AI-capable, but this way when you populate the map with 10~12 cars or as your processor allows, they'll stay on the main road. I'm tempted to buy a Threadripper AMD processor just to have more cars in play (the game crashes beyond 7~10 cars in play, the longer you keep them, the more chance it has to CTD, though sometimes you can get up to 18 cars going before it does crash). My 4790k stayed fluid and playable with an Rx 480 8gb video board here, even with 10 vehicles in play (9 AI drive) as stated above - the reason I say it again is because if this is similar to your PC or you have a new Ryzen 5 or 7 cpu, you will have fun like you never had in this game. I sure did - but not teasing - totally being serious. Racing up and down a road alone gets boring, add 10 vehicles into the fray and it becomes a blast of unexpected challenge.

The future of computing allowed to us by these new AMD processors at very very respectable price levels, is surely a god-send for computer users like us that run cutting-edge software that eats CPU cycles for breakfast!

I will be making sure the textures look the part also, as some of the better ones I've put out, with full bump mapping on the little stone walls and guide-rails, and reflections where applicable.

I have not thrown out the possibility of a winterized version coming out in late fall / winter, too. Anything is possible.

It's not the biggest, it doesn't have 'the most roads' or the most 'fine details', but it will be extremely fun with as many cars in play as is able to be done by the cpu, THAT I CAN PROMISE!
I will 100% be up for someone doing missions for this and sending them in when it's released, so if that's your call, then get ahold of me in a week or two (I should be able to having something out shortly after that time-frame).

 

TBH, I prefer simple but fun roads. I've spent most of my time on Stairway Mountain trying to perfect that run. I have seen this road many times through various car groups that make runs through there and I have daydreamed about making the trip cross-country in my E30 to run that route as well. Someday.... Until then, this may be the closest I get as I have not seen it in any game previously. And as much fun as Nevada, Roane and SoCal are, I do prefer the tighter, more technical courses honestly. But I do love your work, the roads are so smooth and the curves are actually manageable at speed, so rest assured I was being fairly reserved with my "edge of my seat" comment, this is my most anticipated map by far

I haven't tried more than 4-5 cars at a time, but I'll be sure to ramp it up as I haven't struggled to run the game yet. I have a fairly decent rig (EVGA GTX 980Ti ACX 2.0 SC, I7-6700K@4.2Ghz, 8GB 2800Mhz DDR4) I'll take your advice and ramp up the number of vehicles and see what happens.

And again, I've seen your work, it's fantastic, so I believe you'll deliver exactly what you say you will. keep up the fantastic work buddy.

p.s. I've had a drink or 3 so sorry if I rambled a bit lol

 

Your 6700K* with 2800mhz DDR4 at 4.2 should be comparable to within + or - 2.5% or such of what this machine here does, and I believe you have higher-end memory bus with that 980 card than my Rx 480 8gb, so you should fare slightly better than I with FPS on cpu and gpu (even if just slightly). I always try to put out my maps with a minimum fps on a modest configuration of 45fps, otherwise the complaints come in hardcore, if not I have to shovel my way out of yet another punji pit of complaints. So I think you will 100% enjoy this map fully, and should be quite satisfied as all will. There's only one way to do things, that if I can do it, that is how it shall be done (so long as it is within my ability). That's the RIGHT way. I thank you highly for the praise on the smooth curves on my maps, I take *LOTS* of pride in being able to keyboard-drive my car and for that, they're quite forgiving (yes, this is a large reason why my maps are as forgiving as they are, not every one has or can use an analog-class joystick or wheel!). When I say a highway with smooth corners and long sweeping turns like So-Cal or Nevada (in some spots!), or conversely, a winding mountainous switchback type route as this one is (also lots of these in So-Cal and two or three in Nevada), you know exactly what you're getting. To that end,

I try to not make promises I can't keep, so as to not disappoint anyone that follows these maps, but there's a few golden rules to live by here and it goes (loosely) something like this:
*If it's a real life map it's got to sort of match up to the real thing, bridges where bridges are, turns match up, grade/minimap has to match up too, same speed limits etc (Roane County, this map)
*If it's a fully-created fictitious setting, it's still got to have that 'inspired by' look from *somewhere*, so I use real-world settings that peak my interest to inspire myself by, as this makes a better map and is much much more interesting for folks. No green sky etc!
*It's got to be *FUN* above all, so while the maps are realistically done for the most part, sometimes a smidge of realism is sacrificed for fun, but not in any seriously fatal way (I may make a dirt mound that looks out of place for a killer jump (Nevada), or shape rock walls or concrete impedements/driveways/etc into such that it will launch the car airborne deliberately (Roane County).
It also has to be very engaging to the driver, not too many boring straights on highways, etc (The Autobahn was designed like this).
*It should always bring a little something new to the community if possible (road textures, a building or other prop, or a totally new location etc).
*It should NOT be small, as we have enough 2km x 2km or smaller size maps and WILL NOT have 'started with a flat terrain' look. Flat terrain look is fine for some (not going to point fingers, not everyone bought a 4k-capable terrain program), but for me, that's not what I am about. Sure, my So-Cal and Roane County aren't as well done as say Trynelgren or Yellav Valley (both of which by Ouerbacker and are absolutely beautiful I must say), but they're pretty enough in their own right and, not flat either.
*This is a driving game, and as such, first and foremost after being fun, it must be focused on having a viable road network! So many mappers miss this aspect, and no, it may *NOT* rely primarily on mesh roads (that's a pet peeve of mine).

So with this book out of the way, don't feel bad about rambling, I do it with almost every post.

Remember, communication is a wonderful thing IF you use it. This is what brought humans to be a dominant species.

On other more map-progress-worthy notes:
I couldn't do a lot productive yesterday, was in too much back pain to concentrate on something productive (I won't take Rx Painkillers). Did a lot of yard work over the beginning of the week so am paying for it - but at-least it didn't put me in the hospital.
I have to do some more texture work today, might do something to spruce up the EXTREMELY BORING look of the terrain
The forest floor will be brown, unlike ECA's green; as that's what a forest floor is, full of dead leaves, not GREEN like grass is!
I will have to make the Tail of the Dragon rest-stop area as I have not made it yet. This is yet to-do! It will be done before release.
I cannot promise the models for it will have collision (if custom, if I make them), but I can put 'dummy collision' invisible boxes in there so it will still bounce cars off if needed, when they hit the sides.
I will start foresting soon. I will remove unseen/unused portions of the terrain to reduce render load in the most remote places.
I will try to put some kind of sound-stage on this map this time, I don't think any of my maps have a working sound-stage (I usually have my funk-80s-groove stuff blaring, cue Disco Duck saying "LETS GO TO THE DISCO" - not an excuse though).
If you have a favorite spot or something you really like, a favorite pull-off etc, it will probably make it in, so no worries. I will do a 'pull off' decal with the right-turn arrow too for placement on the road surface about 100 feet/yards/whatever before the turns.
I don't have the rectangular yellow ----> arrow signs though so I can't put those in yet, but it's still possible I might include generic road signs here (I should, it would add a lot).
--- Post updated ---
Time to get this scene worked a bit to make it nice and...pretty: 5~10 mins tops.

Just a sample of something much closer to what the final product will look like, and yes, the forest floor is brown with dead leaves.
Another corner (yes it's a different one)

Added a little undergrowth as is typical for next-to-the-road stuffs

Another turn with forest and a little undergrowth here


Time to get the forest brush WORKING (it was already scripted in, it was BUGGED, suprise suprise)... HOUR OR TWO.
Bug report(s) filed. This always happens every time I make a map. OK OK sometimes things are my fault BUT not this time.
0.9.x introduced new forest brush schematic that out-modes brushes.cs in /art/forest inside your map. It's no longer used.
WRONG, nope, there's still one line of code asking for it, and I found it. Ugh.
Sheryl Crow's song "No one said it would be easy, no one ever said it would be THIS hard" comes to mind - in fact I think I'll go add it to the playlist in a moment just for @#$%'s sake.
My original CD was scratched to ribbons, I re-purchased the CD a few years back, it was STOLEN, so here I got another copy for 88 cents. OK I can live with that.
https://www.mp3million.com/download/Sheryl Crow (select Tuesday Night Music Club to find the song, "No one said it would be easy" ... it's a slow song but she has good music).
No, really; as an adult, I couldn't give a rats (expletive deleted!!!) for modern rubbish music.
I am sure you can find it on youtube too, just don't go pirating it.

Thank-goodness for backups. I am a file-hoarder by nature. You never know when you're going to need something, I still have my Doom Levels I made from the 90s from my 1st pre-pentium PC for crying-out-loud. So I had to snag an 0.8.x and previous game-version's old forest file out of an old version of Roane County (backups folks, backups!!!), and strip out the custom Roane County stuffs.
"Stupid Technology!!!"

I will be busy editing the forest for a bit, so look forward to more presentation-quality pictures in the future, that picture above is by no-means done, and lacks undergrowth etc, and the BROWN is to show the 'dead leaves' of the forest floor. Forest floors aren't GREEN, EVER.

So it takes a good hour or two at least to a do a mile (of forest along-side the roadway), so it'll take me a good several days at the rate I am going to get even half of it done.

 

Not directly related to the (awesome) map to be, but when you de-lidded your cpu, hammer or cutter?
Also, what did you use, solder or paste?

I have a 3770k and this is of interest to me.