WIP Beta released The Tennessee USA Roane County 0.71 Beta Discussion/Suggestion/feedback Thread 19.3.1

Thanks! It actually just got a YBR review a week or so back, so go have a look.
Well, if your PC has enough ram to load this (4.85gb to load this, including the UI and default truck spawning) *and* enough ram to keep playing (it can use up to a reported 9.1GB after a while), you will be fine. Video options can always be dialed back, if needed, though it's not usually the case IF you can run East Coast fine. While this is exponentially larger, it also has much finer reflections in much greater amounts, plus some very (naturally) open areas, which can hurt FPS.

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I worked for 15~16 hours straight on this, to try and get the next update pushed out ASAP.
Finished up most of the curb building in Rockwood (for now, there's still no buildings, but it's ready for them now). All the traffic lights required by design in Rockwood are done too, also same for Broadway of America/Roane State Highway. Re-did 2 miles of Roane State Highway (Rockwood area) to use the new textures (lower object count). Also spruced up the route 27 and 40 junction (center of map, where you get off the highway exit and go north or south on 27 that goes to Harriman (north) or Rockwood (south). Finished up the creek in Rockwood so it reflects properly and looks decent, instead of like chocolate milk.
Signed all the exit ramps. Created stop-sign-ahead sign and used it for offramps with stops at the end. Removed many temporary (hidden!) mesh roads used for road-shaping when the roads were being built, as I shouldn't need them anymore and they count against object totals & have no use anymore. Also removed a bunch of random roads stuck in out of the way places that detract from realism and clutter the GPS map, leftover from building.
Added lots of little things like fixing AI pathing 'ugliness' and also things like right-turn lanes, and connected Airport rd to Rockwood Rd.
Tried to fix up the railroad track as good as possible so it doesn't derail the train. There's one gimmicky spot left but if you go 30mph or so, you're fine.

Object count is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3520 units, so I have about 500 units left - better than expected. There's somewhere around 140~145 miles of road now, though you'd be hard-pressed to find many of the new roads as they're mostly town-related stuff unless you have the map memorized.

TODO before uploading this version update:
Traffic lights in downtown Harriman and one at Ruritan Rd & Pine Ridge Rd.
Testing session for ~2 hours to make sure I didn't break the AI paths anywhere and that there aren't any serious gameplay/immersion-breaking errors or screw-ups.

TODO (comprehensive):
Building placement, flesh out towns and give life to the boring, empty spaces in the map
Implement the last few signs I need, like a 55mph speed limit sign (i have the gfx already in), and place remaining/missing signs.
Fix gratuitous console error pages
Set-up the sound stage for the map (environment sounds) to help with immersion (water sounds are in, still needs sounds of birds 'birding')
Missions: LOTS of these, including some (but not all) with other mods such as hauling things around. Races too, of course, maybe I can even make a train mission or two, which would be a lot of fun.
A skybox, which would solve the immersion-breaking edge-of-earth issues. (this is in now, decently enough)
Fix normals on a few textures making them just slightly darker than other textures - not really a show-stopper right now at this point.
Touch up the landscape/terrain and get rid of blocky parts left over from road-building.
Finish Scenic drive, and a few roads near Harriman, Glen-Alice, and possibly some near the Airport by the 'eat at Joe's' sign.

Errata:
Back of stopsign is square, due to the model used, and also that some signs aren't direction attached to poles but 2~5 inches away so they don't collide/glitch the pole graphically.
The normals on some of the fresh asphalt may cause it to be darker by a bit (same with regular offramp graphic), though this may be a game bug.
Some oneway signs are upside-down (very few actually), because I didn't make the other directional arrow yet. This will be fixed soon.
EDIT 10/12/2016:
One decal road error escaped my sight, in Rockwood on Gateway Drive (just north of the Rockwood spawn 3 blocks), the center left-turn lane is glitchy a bit, I fixed this the day after release - sorry.

The draw distance is less because of the issues with FPS and such. I am going to up the draw distance since the game version has become more refined with the 0.7 release. I will keep an eye on RAM requirements, before and after.
The shadow distance will also be increased, as it's set considerably too close for a fall-off. You can always turn OFF shadows if they bug out your FPS.

Some signs 'pop' into view about a quarter-mile away or so - while they're still to small to read (noticable on the highway), I don't really intend on fixing this, it keeps the FPS in a healthy range the way it's set.

 

< The grass glitch.

< north of EAT AT JOE'S [Looney Tunes reference].



< here there is a no texture road under the surface.

 

(this glitch is fixed now, I just fixed it yesterday - thanks for reporting) < The grass glitch.

(this is going to be a road*, ignore this for now, actually, n/m I'll take 10 mins and put a road-stub there)< north of EAT AT JOE'S [Looney Tunes reference].

(temporary sections of railroad track, yes they're ugly there, but I surrounded the with trees so I hope you might not see them while driving)

(most likely a left-over road sculpting no-texture mesh-road block, I've been removing these now as it's time.) < here there is a no texture road under the surface.

Thank-you for sending in bug reports. I have fixed most of these for the release I will do very shortly.
I just have to build traffic lights in Harriman and place a few speed-limit signs, so it'll be a few hours for that and then the AI test, then I can get to uploading. Uploading will be 5~6 hours in and of itself. Then I will post the MEGA link when it's done to the FULL DETAIL version of the map. Ram use really isn't much higher. Maybe 45~55mb of textures more and maybe 2~4mb in misc small .dae's. There's less trees now because there's more STUFF (like roads and rail track) where trees used to be, so RAM use didn't go up noticeably (good).
Sorry it's taken longer than expected to get this release out, but things came up and my health is dodgy, so I do the best I can, when I can. I did get 15~16 hours in yesterday though!

*When I am plotting out roads, sometimes asphalt texturing gets splattered about on the terrain, I'll clean this up as I finish up each part of the map.
AND ITS KINGSTON!!!

--Cheers

 

Just finished shoveling coal into my DSL modem that sux, Uploading has begun!
So yeah, all the traffic lights are in (I think so, anyways, sans any roads not implemented at all yet), most of the roads are signed with speed limits.
Stop signs pretty much in all spots that need it except in a few spots between east of Downtown Harriman and west of the Power Plant.
The highway has all it's signs except the ones for harriman/rockwood (Roane St exit 1 mile ahead) which didn't make it into this version yet, still has the exit demarkation though.
The sound stage is mostly setup now. You'll hear water when you're near it in MOST spots.
Fixed up the jumps a bit better north of Harriman on the dead-end of the road where it meets the map-edge.
Speaking of map edge, there's not so much of one now. No, I haven't implemented the entire earth requiring 999999PetaBytes of RAM - I have given it a skybox (mostly!).
It looks purdy!
Requires 5~5.5gb on load, should not go over 10gb ram usage during the run. More if you use lots of AI, of course, so shut down what you don't need (web browser, I am looking at you) before run-time. A lower-ram-usage version will be out next week or soon there-after. If someone wants to make one, feel free, but please only remove trees and nothing else. I'd recommend replacing the oak, birch, and aspen tree models with a null model.
Of course, in desperation, you could try deleting the trees (in oak, birch, and aspen) and leaving the rocks, houses, signs, traffic lights in the forest brush to enjoy.
The zip is 623mb. Ouchies.

There's some console errors (plenty of them) for stuff that's not fully implemented yet. Ignore it! It means NOTHING for now. I will fix those in the next two weeks.

The download link should be posted as soon as I see this is done. (and now back to our regularly scheduled couch bashing via BEAM)

Pictures below:

 

welp.... the game just got updated a few minutes ago... would this work in v0.7?

 

I had no sooner finished up the zip, started uploading and then the game goes 'new update available'. So I download the update, paused the upload, open up the new version of the game, it sees NO mods.
Ghost's map CRASHES the level browser with invalid level....(NOT the desert he just made, the older map with the circular strip of road, was rather small etc and hard to run on lower video boards).
So that's fixed. Tested the map, works fine with v 0.7. Going to add an extra spawn point or two to try out the new features and upload this.
A download should be available tomorrow morning. I will see fit to list 0.7 compatibility on the OP.
So-Cal Interstate is reported to work fine also.

 

Yeah I had to find out which mod to disable - I nearly had an aneurysm too.

 

One again, upload started - again - this time with VERIFIED BEAM 0.7.x COMPATIBILITY. So, when it's posted tomorrow, download worry-free.

If this works out fine for everyone, I am considering hosting this on Beam's site (I'd have to speak with a moderator about getting this large of a file hosted) as soon as Rockwood is finished.

So, yes, it's done, it'll be up tomorrow @ some point.
Zipped size 636mb, unzipped 1.2GB - yes - GB.

 

I'll do a flyover when I get the chance - Looking forwards to it!

 

Link to version 4 PULLED due to new version being out.
There is no LOW detail version right now, and won't be for a short time until I get ROCKWOOD built.

Includes features of version 0.7.x for multi-spawn-points. 7 different locations.

Don't use the old forest patches on the NEW version, as it will cause undesired operation.
Traffic lights and signs are ALL in the forest brush. The Skybox chunks are NOT in the forest brush.

@NewoFox , if you wish to do a flyover, great, just don't show the skybox flaws if possible You can't normally see any flaws with it noticably but it's a bit on the I-just-made-it side of things.

 

downloading now, i will report to you if it works on my 8gb ram laptop

 

yeah give me a shout...
If it does not, restart the PC, load Beamng.drive right away (without the web browser or other apps loaded!) and try to load this map when the game starts.

 

I loaded the map, with spotify and skype on, and after it was loaded (took some time), it worked like a charm, 30-50 FPS with 35 average . Maybe the 4gb of Vram in my 950m did the trick?
Here are some screenshots:

 

Sweet pics. Sounds like you're good to go with that. If it starts getting weird stutters, you'll know when you've used up most of your available RAM.
However, extended-play RAM use is much better on the newer game version I've noted, so more folks should be able to play.
And yes, the one-way sign is upside down in the one pic, as I've not implemented both directions yet. It would have delayed the release longer, as I've used up my two pages of signs and the stop sign is the only thing on the 3rd page that's scripted in thus far. It will have 4 pages of signs in full.
One page = about 10 signs/300kb, this keeps the size down. I've been editing my models via script/text editors as DAE models are XML script.

I will be putting out a new version of NEVADA INTERSTATE before more work gets done on Tennessee by request, so this might get quiet for a week or so (I need some time off too, been burned out by several 16+ hour editing sessions immediately prior to release).
I put more time into this in the 3 days prior to release than most people work in a week. It is a labor of love though, so you folks owe me nothing, nada, absolutely nothing, just enjoy the map and let me know if it's broken in some way.
I always do enjoy watching videos of your trials and tribulations or any other things you wish to make of it. I figure hey, there's plenty of small maps for folks with lesser machines, this isn't going to be one of them. What started with a large-map-proof-of-concept-engine-test-for-BEAMng.drive, became something. It was almost canned as a project more than once, but after EIGHT MONTHS, I am fully glad I did not cancel it.
Long story short it's always nice to run something on your PC that will *USE* all the expensive hardware you most likely paid too much for
On the bright side, my Radeon HD 7850 2GB that's beyond 3 years old, will run this at 32~50+ FPS in any spot, does not dip below 30, with a 1050mhz core clock (default is 860mhz, but they used these cores in R7 series with higher core clocks, so it does nothing to it to clock it up some)... so most folks with a 750 Ti or higher Nvidia or a Radeon R7 265 2gb or higher will have NO issues (unless they have a lesser card with DDR3 RAM, then knock settings down a notch).

Beam is a truly awesome and revolutionary piece of computer software, and has become quite a favorite of mine as of late. This software is wholly under-served by it's small native maps, so I've come to fill that void. IT CAN BE DONE, you just have to want (to do) it bad enough.

Building on this map will continue next week or shortly following so send in your bug reports except the listed Errata!
(signs a bit distance from poles due to lack of precision, one way signs upside down, back of stop-sign is square, and black asphalt sometimes too dark in spots)
--Cheers!

 

Mirror: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzJ-WWaQYXttRXZYamx0b3d1S3c

 

This map is a killer but i love it

 

hidef version works on my 8 gig ram system. Im shocked actually

 

I am 99% sure the RAM use is better in the new version of BEAM, on larger maps. It (BEAM) is noticeably better on RAM use especially after loading OTHER maps before this one. So, many people with 8gb systems may actually be able to run this, even if they couldn't last time.
I am doing whatever possible in the up-and-coming versions to keep RAM use level and sane so the majority can have a good time.
Glad it works (it is working for many). I will be sure to pass this on to a couple guys on Steam that have 8gb to give it a shot. Thank-you for the 411!

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it. It was a bear to make but I do enjoy driving on it myself, so it's not all work-and-worry here.
Grab a pickup, stuff two sofas in the back (prop-mod), and go find some jumps or just drive fast and have a good time.
Better if the AI chases you!

 

Cr

Cruisin' and chilling around with the regency with the auto is fun too

 

Thanks! I will have this posted in shortly!