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

Updated​

Old (For Comparison)​

US40 E & W​

Bug report -
Airport spawn does not spawn me at the airport.
Sprawl mart parking lot spawn actually puts me at default/Rockwood spawn (same as airport).

Minor hiccups here and there but otherwise running good with reflections turned off. Turning on reflections while recording is just asking for trouble in my experience.

Great work! It really is amazing how much more immersive the terrain has become as more and more detail gets added in - I spent two hours just driving around lost without a map the other night and had a blast while rocking out to my tunes.

 

I had to play this map after a while

So I spawned 2 cars; a beater Caprice wagon for me, and beater Custom Cruiser for AI that I named "Bobby." (yeah, why not)
Trip started peacefully, I just set AI to manual and destination to RW_something I can't remember.


*drives somewhat 20-40km, I forgot to setup the app that measures distance*

Then, we arrived at town. Bobby didn't know the traffic rules


Then, suddenly Bobby slammed on the brakes, backed up a bit, and drove in front of random store. We arrived at the destination.


I tried to continue our trip by setting up another route for Bobby to follow. My car didn't have parking brake on, and it backed up itself to the street.
Bobby was slamming the pedal to the floor and before I even got gear in Bobby crashed into my Caprice.
My car's front suspension collapsed on the left side, the car was basically non-driveable. Truly fantastic AI in this game, indeed.


(Hope this was not too roleplay-ish, I just wanted to share my today's experience in this map)

 

Does anyone else just scroll through the thread while waiting for the mod to download? I'm just lucky my internet is working properly today.

 

I tend to be too busy driving to scroll. I put in on average 30-50 miles each time I load up Roane County, sometimes in excess of 300. I've seriously been considering doing an all day stream to explore every nook and cranny I can find with no map and a chat room to draw diversion from.

It is the primary map I load when I drive in BeamNG, aside from when I am looking to hunt something I can see from far-off with the attack helicopter.

 

300?! That's crazy. What car(s) do you use? I've been trying to find an all-rounder that works well but nothing's quite working for me yet.

 

My favorite right now is a custom 5-speed variant of the Plymouth Roadrunner-a-like that comes with the Eris Coucal, which I use for general driving. I really like everything about the way it handles, especially having swapped the 4-speed manual for a 5-speed and reinforced the suspension. Having the Logitech G29 with the accompanying shifter makes driving a pleasure, and I have my bluetooth speaker directly behind the wheel so I can manage the "radio" with my iPod, as I would in a car. As far as total miles go, it is easy to go 300 miles listening to three albums at speeds in excess of 100 miles an hour.

Aside from that, Darren9's Custom Sport Bike and Super Gnat account for a lot of miles respectively, due to the difficulty of mastering them and the joy that comes from operating them well. His DH Outlaw is my go-to time trial vehicle, when I am not using the FR17 because it poses a unique challenge with its ability to overheat and destroy itself with torque. It is fun trying to balance power with cool-down time, especially when the situation calls for more power and the engine is on the brink of failure.

I also use the Cessplane L19, which can take off and land from many of the roadways available with some practice. This map is great for flying as well as driving, and I can spend well over an hour gliding along major and minor roads, practicing landing and taking off from anywhere I spot that looks interesting (with helo or plane).

I also use the DSC Bora when the mood strikes.

 

Thanks, you'll like the other new version too that gets out in about two weeks - hope to have most of Kingston done then (this version that's downloadable is 0.81 or 0.82 or something, oops, forget, even though it calls itself 0.72 on the page). The new version will likely be 0.85 or something to the like. Always appreciate the kind words, especially considering I've sunk 2000~2500 hours or more of work into this (I've well beyond lost count, and Steam doesn't record the time running when I don't use Steam to launch it. It's notification pop-ups can be distracting and end-up in screenshots accidentally... it says 2234 hours though, I'd say that's about 60% of the time).

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I do stuff like this all the time, AI works pretty well but sometimes it likes to cut corners and munch on stop signs. I will get all the bugs worked out eventually, but glad you had a good time with it to say the least. You won't offend me, feedback on how the map is used helps me put more good things in the map in the future, and hopefully less bad stuff.

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If you have slow internet like me, yes, it's nothing out of the ordinary to find something to do for the 10~20 minutes it takes the almost 1gb file to download, so don't feel too bad.

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For some reason, the spawn points added by 0.10 game update aren't working, I cleared out other fields to see if it helps anyone later-on, oddly, they work here, not totally sure. When I do my next backup (this week or weekend sometime yet), I will private message a link to you to see if the spawn points work. Thanks for the bug bits there, I will definitely have a look-see and make sure to test out what's up with the spawn points. Problem is I can't re-create the issue here even when just running as a zip file.
Could be a game bug too, confusing the names up, or something of the such. Will try and see if I can find out what's up with it.
I also generally keep my reflections on minimum or OFF. They're not really needed and this map isn't built efficiently enough to really have both them on and have a stable frame rate (I'm a good mapper but not THAT good, not a pro, just have some talent).
Driving around while listening to music - this can be much more fun - not to mention soothing to the soul, as some would say for us middle-aged or older folks, suprisingly does almost as much good as the real thing, almost. Sometimes it's just quite entertaining to 'just get in and drive' even in just a simulation like this, and see what cliff you fall off of, or if you can manage to keep the car around long enough to run out of fuel, etc. I have little issue racking up 80~100 miles per session without thinking about it. There's still a few dozen more miles of roadways to add in, too, so never-fear on that end. The end-total of road mileage for this map would be around 200~230 miles of roadways, town streets included. It's now at around 173~174 miles or so, give or take a mile, errorring on the low side here.
Will most definitely add the videos to the resource front page when I modify it next. Thanks a bunch for those!

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88 Pessima AWS (all wheel steering), With a type 1 or 2 turbo depending on how good you are at handling the speeds it puts out.
6 speed manual gearbox etc. The car config is above, you need the 'notchback mod' for it to have the trunk and tail lights though.
This car has fairly balanced handling, while still able to power-slide well enough for a front-wheel-drive car, it is easy to recover if you mess up though, but get too foolish and you'll buy it quick as with anything. It's moderately durable but no where near as durable as the 4WD Roamer or Pickup.

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So, just a note, created a few new signs for a few extra places of commerce, will have more progress later, but looks like the Dollar store is having a great sale on...

CAT SANDWICHES !!! YEAH!!! WHO'S HUNGRY!???

More on that and the map later...
--Cheers!

 

I personally felt that the AI routes in this map were almost as good as in vanilla content. Only big things I noticed that cars like to do crazy moves in freeway intersections just before entering the actual freeway. Also I didn't use the "stay in lane" option in AI app, that might've caused the wrong way driving.

Otherwise, this map is great for endless driving and exploring with or without AI. This is not a map that you'd play only once - the fun will last days, even weeks.

 

This was terrifying.

 

Do you have a link for the mod? I loved it but I had to wipe every mod a couple updates and never found it again...

 

https://www.beamng.com/resources/pessima-fastback-1985-1987.1218/
Took me a few minutes to find it, it's the LIFTBACK mod not NOTCHBACK mod. I think the wording was changed or my brain just goofed up. Will attach this to the post where it's relevant too.

 

The AI network is indeed great. I noticed however, that the AI has a marked tendency to use the wrong side of the road. Not in case there's no other choice but rather deliberately. This is also noticeable on Nevada Interstate, I haven't looked into it yet but it's interesting.

This map is incredibly fun, yet has so much potential still......

 

Thanks, and yes, it does use the wrong side of the road, because there's no way to tell it that it's going against the flow of traffic, it's merely using the shortest point and taking whatever side is to the 'inside' of turns unless there's no cross-over parts/intersections nearby.
So, if you want it to use the correct side of the highway, put it at the correct on-ramp first, if on a road, you may have to get it going on the correct side, but turns will still throw it's judgement off as it will always go to the 'inside' half of the road.
When I can 'force AI to drive in the direction the road is drawn' I will have this fixed. I have requested the feature.

 

I suspected something of that nature.....

Let's hope the AI gets out of its infancy soonish-like!

 

Well in that case I've got to say your map is in a league of it's own; this game really needed massive levels like yours. Please keep up the good work! The store names are hilarious by the way.

 

Awesome, thanks a bunch. Love cramming humor into the map whenever possible and practical. In fact, since I can't infringe trademark without moderators lighting my tail on FIRE, I had to come up with new names. What fun!
Again I thank you highly, I would like to agree with the 'league of it's own' comment if I can without sounding full-of-myself, but I couldn't have done what I did without RedRoosterFarm, Occam's Razer, and many many many others - especially all the testers.

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Speaking of store names, here's one more for the record. I had teased this a month ago, so time to stop being such a tease!






Truth be told, there's supposed to be a church here with some extra buildings (offices, or a school of sorts, that church in the real world did seem to have a playground with children's equipment on it, so I'd imagine a daycare or elementary school of sorts is there, it's a large plot of land). However, this seems like as good of a place as any for a big-box store fencing imported goods and sending your hard-earned dollars to another country - oh noes...
Okay, I will say I'm quite proud of how this came out, as there really isn't much to want now that it's done up nice. There's a few small half-block or less sized lots (3~4) and one whole block to finish up yet with commercial property. I still have to make dozens upon dozens of homes, but it looks like I will have to hide some visibility blockers somewhere to help with the fps (it's still no-where near as bad as Harriman downtown has gotten).
There's even a realistic drainage (swail?) swale (easement, to collect runoff, as pavement doesn't 'breathe'), for your crashing and crunching pleasure. Fixed up the interchange ramp that's next to this easement and the Worst Buy store, too.
On another related note, it looks like there will be a Worst Buy skin for the dry-goods trailer, maybe in a few weeks (no promises, I'm not making them but I handed over some source graphics to facilitate ease-of-creation to the person making it). There's already two skins (not made by me) for the Sprawl-Mart and Spend-a-Lot dry-goods trailers, and a Roane County Sheriff police vehicle skin available on the forums here by some splendid folks (thanks!).
Much to do to bring the 'older' section of town up-to-par, but I've also fixed up a lot of time-consuming things like converting all the driveways over to 3d forest object driveways, and filled in lots of 3d grass. A new traffic light (at the Worst Buy) was also added today.
--That is all!

 

got any room for this?

 

Haha surely I can put that in a strip mall. I could use some more strip-mall stores, as I have a whole line of 6 of them I have to name up yet in Kingston at the old-default-spawn point near Burger World.
--- Post updated ---
Finished up most of the area by the bridge, the north-end of the commercial strip in Kingston. Still plenty more to do but it's getting somewhere finally.

Last shot - yay for realism, it's really starting to get that immersion factor going.
Fixed the orange texture issue on the gas pump pads, where the pump itself was.
Filled in another spot, woohoo. Now there's an OH DEERE dealer in town, for all your tractor/supply needs.


There's a hidden jump at the OH DEERE business but I won't say exactly where, you will probably find it though.
I had also built two more homes when I was mapping yesterday but don't know if I took pictures at the time, here's one though, it's the first two homes on the right side of the road, grey and tan.


Put occluders (render-blockers, optimization) in large buildings so that it blocks the rendering of things behind it but for some reason, it only helped with 1~3fps. Likely not worth the time or items slots they take.

 

http://media-cdn.beamng.com/XmKq5Oymc6ohtOtt/screenshot_00014.jpg

 

Yes, that's the map's center, full of editor-induced glitches...so it gets done LAST. Stark contrast to town, right? The obvious dome of grass with the hole in the top is 100% the 0,0 map center, too. If the game screws up, you end up there, as does the editor cursor when the editor lags up, hence the wacky undesired and otherwise unintended 'features'.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: you're not supposed to be here