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

Glad your having fun there with some scenes, it might just be that! I didn't represent each building perfectly for time constraint and GB's constraints (and I can't model), but the majority of it should be good. The lay-out is a little bit simplified in some spots, for FPS and time constraints again (it's slow enough).
Look up Kingston TN (Kentucky street, about 2~3 blocks north of RACE street - the 'main' light in town).
Harriman and Rockwood are built a little closer to their real-world specs, though Kingston's newer stuff that was put in in the last few months, is a bit closer to the real thing, though there's a church/school where the Worst Buy is.

---

Map progress. My internet was down most of the day yesterday. Have I mentioned how much my internet sucks and it's the slowest thing I've ever used since leaving dial-up in 1998~1999?
No, really, it sucks. It redefines sucking, it's like the brand new Hoover Black-Hole 9000. If my internet was a vacuum cleaner I could pull galaxies out of black holes with it, and possibly reverse the 'big bang' itself.

Worked an ENTIRE day just on one scene! Too long, but I had to do something while the internet was kaput.

A new store! Some familiar names return, with a new location for your crashing pleasure. The rocks form a jump along the entire river-facing side of the parking-lot (there is a road before the river, but you'll clear this road, and possibly the entire Emory River with somewhat ease if you go at-least 130~140mph. The new rock walls really set the stage for something fresh in terms of visual cues.

There's now 191.2 miles of road in the map, as Daisy Hill Rd is finished (a small bit of it can be seen, as the darker road in the first screenshot). It used to end about 100~200 feet south-east of the bridge with a fallen tree blocking the end of the road, where you'd have to turn left to continue.

So while progress continues, so does the map editor bugs. (I saved a copy a few days ago so that I can re-create the crash that was occurring for the dev-team when my internet is better I can upload that privately.) I am working as best I can with the way things are at the moment.

Before it's done: I plan to get more road built, another 8~10 miles of it, in fact. At-least that must be added as my end-goal is roughly 200~225 miles of roadway for this map, content-wise.
LOTS more buildings must be added to flesh out the small towns, and to add-in the real-life look to the map, where it's bare and low-detail, and basically hasn't been changed much if any in over a year.
This map is officially two years old next month, as I started it in February/2016. I would like to have something for public release at that time, but nothing promised with the current state of the editor. FPS should be roughly the same or better than the towns, in areas where I am adding things. Occlusion volumes are working much better in 0.11.x now than they were in 0.10, I can say that much. where they used to just hide a decal road or two, they now hide most trees, the ground, mesh / decal roads, and possibly a building or two, though that's rare they remove all buildings behind them (that needs looking at). FPS is notably better where they're used. I will add a few more around the slower spots of the map, though not too many.

Tall dry-grass props (stuff by the rock walls, not the auto-generated tall-grasses) color and size isn't 100% yet. There's some 6~8 foot tall weeds in that shot - not that I haven't had a few of those on my property since I started mapping for this game, just know you need say nothing, I am on it

--Cheers.

 

Wow, just wow, those details are just incredible.

Getting all buildings right would be bit much to ask, pretty much all buildings are different, all would require own textures, models, everything would explosively multiply and no computer would run such monstrosity, also I doubt that map maker guy would survive from such workload!

It is really amazing how you can do such work with the editor and rest assured that your efforts in hair pulling are appreciated, even not many might say it aloud, they do appreciate your efforts.

When you see or hear map being used, that is appreciation right there


I wish that there would be possibility for you to have same kind of internet as what I have, this has been quite good on me, especially upload.

 

Crashed twice now in 15~20 minutes, causing about 10 minutes of lost progress. Getting sick of this. third time is a charm and quit for the day.
Just moving/adjusting decal roads.... BOOM desktop no warning.

 

Hmm, I get that when driving at Glassview mountain map, not sure if it is same thing, seems to happen when software has to move a lot of data, when copying objects in map editor I get similar SDD high usage and full stop, then crash, despite I have a lots of ram free. It might of course be that it just writes crash logs and that is causing SSD load.

Hopefully next version fixes these problems, but it might take bit longer to fix editor if there is lot of problems related to each other so they have to fix whole chain.

 

I get this after editing when driving around at times too. I think it's just this game version is inherently ... to put it lightly, an unmitigated disaster in regards to stability. I mean, yes, it's alpha, but from 0.8~0.10 it was pretty golden stability wise; the editor had bugs, but avoidable ones mostly. It's absolutely nuts now, at times there's days I can't do 10 minutes of work until I'm steamed-up from the crashing.

 

That is really shame about editor, I really hope that new update for it comes soon.

Luckily this map works when driving around though. I started from some airfield, took about an hour to get here at Sprawl Mart, just reversed there to do a unloading of trailer:


I was delighted that there was some though put for a poor trucker that has to do delivery and some wide turning space was provided by the map maker guy, but of course he had made it realistic enough so that there is bit of challenge reversing to that spot, like in reality


Truck is bit special, something I have been working for a while:


It's a stress relief to do these long hauls, just enjoying the scenery and to be hopelessly lost

 

Haul some pianos for me (it's fun, and they sing until you hurt them enough!), whilst I deal with this crash-happy mess. I crashed it about 5~6 times in a row but finally got my intersection re-aligned.
Sometimes I can re-create the crash every time with some spots, other times, it only crashes after I've moved a few, say done 5~10 minutes of work moving them about. I created a zip of the map where I found the one repeatedly crashing, so I can send it to the developers to see WHY it crashes.

So anyways, re-aligned about a mile (or 3/4ths of a mile) of South Roane Street (the road from Harriman to Rockwood - goes directly between the two towns, and under the highway and has rail along it for much of it's length between the two towns). Regraded it too, butter-smooth now, for your 150+ mph cruising pleasure. There will be things along this road when you next cruise down it!
... yeah now that I've dealt with about half a dozen above-mentioned crashes ... #$@%!!!

WHY WHY WHY !???

This shot is looking mostly east, a birds-brain view of just south of Harriman downtown area (which would be to my left here).
The little 2-lane road 'behind' that teensy itty-bitty Roane Street building on the left (it's a shop), is Daisy Hill Rd, the one I showed/mentioned finishing earlier, it also goes to Harriman.
Might get the two roads here on the bottom of the shot finished up too. More civilization will be here!
*All* roads that I've added in lately or adjusted or otherwise was working around are NAMED.
The tracks are all there yet they just don't show up from this far away. The white area on the terrain is where the road *was* - everything from the rail overpass on the right to the black intersection on the left (both actually) was adjusted.

Wait till you see the new fast-food place, CHICKEN MUNCH!
--Cheers!

 

Chicken munch, now that sounds omnonom!

Oh, no problem I haul some pianos for you, play a tune too!


Still needs bit of adjustments though, tow hook is bit high so need to change that a bit, spent better part of the day making this possible, I'm quite sure that trailer is going to follow quite smoothly, you won't even know if it is there, anymore after that last jump or turn...

 

...but what is it? Time will tell... It won't be a name or business already in the map.

@fufsgfen I will have to try out the travel trailer sometime buddy.

Try hauling a trailer full of about 7~8 pianos behind a 'Power Wagon' pickup (might be in-game config, not 100% sure, it's a quad-cab pickup with about a 6 foot bed, room for 2 pianos in the bed).
...and take said pickup and trailer down tail of the dragon. WITHOUT them falling off ... it's a LOT harder than you think unless you creatively bind them together.

Had a truck full of pianos last night, it EXPLODED upon respawn, repeatedly. BOOOM pianos blowing out the back.

Managed to get a still of it, in slow mo. Did this repeatedly. Evidently, if you pack them tight enough, pianos are like atomically-charged particles. I mean, it was chock FULL of pianos. Not the first time this happened!

Shot was taken on a recently re-aligned section of Airport Rd (there's new roads out here!) in the west of the map. Both bridges on that road were re-done (not including the highway overpass, one was removed, one was upgraded and made nicer, object penny-pinching, basically).

It's a hoot hauling things in this game if you have the powerful truck engine mod, it's totally awesome. I can go 85mph up a hill in my piano hauler, and my full-size rig can get to the speed limit with a load (is it me or are stock commercial truck engines terribly under-powered???).

---

There will be more stores to haul to in the next (public) update! I might see if I can put some huge warehouses in somewhere, like an industrial park or large distribution center... there's got to be some, somewhere in this map, being that there's an interstate. Don't know if/how many more stores will make private beta.
I will see about tying up loose ends in the map before the week is out to try and get a beta uploaded for private beta testers & You-tuber's (crash comp guys).

--That is all

 

My internet gave up the ghost. Actually, the router went to heaven. I was ready to use my 40 cal on it... but they came and fixed it. I think it died a miserable death of being hated by everyone that needed/used it's services. There was no funeral.
I can't begin to explain what it's like living in the boonies, with no internet, for roughly a week. Was ready to use cell service to get internet at one point but didn't want to bother as it was only a few days.
So I worked on the map and finished up all the things that needed finishing as best I could. Thankfully I had lots of location (plot/land parcel details) stored in my head because it's just great at storing images... days worth of work, actually.

Lots of pictures. Getting lots of things done here, and fixed a few bugs.
The view-distance is 'low' for testing and consistency purposes. Down-town Harriman refuses to be smooth, it's still as slow as ever (I really didn't do anything to make it WORSE; added some more occluders, but it didn't do much). Lots of occluders (dozen or so) were installed in more-so laggy parts of the map if there weren't any yet. Helped some performance issues near the Spend-A-Lot by the highway (Pine-Ridge / Broadway of America / US40 area).
Fixed the bugs with the highway signs not being the right height, in the private beta (they were fine in public beta).
HOPEFULLY I've seen the last of the diamond sign texture bug (fixed the size bug, but the textures broke on addition of the yield sign). I haven't verified this yet.


So, for the record, there's a few new businesses:
Chicken Munch (you may have seen this)
Interstate Diner
Happy Sack Grocery (you may have seen this too)
Organized-Crime Supply Store
Slobby Hobby
Ibishu Dealership and parts/service center
Drucker's General Store
Derp 'N Slerp drive-up Coffee

A few new locations for existing businesses:
Auto Clone
Snake Oil (one on Ruritan Rd and one about a mile away one Roane Street)
Pasta Purgatory
Big Wong Chinese Food
Burger World (now with it's 3rd location)
Brat Clips
Corruption 'R Us detective agency
Corruptec Surveillance Gadgets
Oldwell Wanker

In addition, last week I added a Snake Oil gas station to Westel Rd.
All the things above (aside of this one) were on Roane Street / Ruritan Rd next to Roane Street (block or several, away).
Pine Ridge rd (the 'mid town exit' off US40, 2nd east-most exit, by Spend-A-Lot) turns into Ruritan at the light half way to Harriman.

Fixed: Various annoying small texture bugs, floating trees, and other stupid annoying problems.
Fixed drive-thru in Harriman downtown Wacholovia bank being completely missing since the 0.9.x update to the game - took long enough but it's fine now and up to snuff that I won't have to touch it again.

That's 8 new businesses and one or two more yet I haven't even revealed (in the near future, many MANY more to come in the long term). One's pretty funny though and I am surprised no one thought of it. There's also new cubic blocks from which I build buildings from (since I cannot model), so there's more variety, and it's actually great on the FPS!
I should be able to make a public update on the repository here by the end of February, though this date is subject to change. Private beta within a week... hopefully, unless our internet goes down AGAIN. I can't help that.

I have paid special attention to making sure the AI paths work fully, all the larger lots have them and most of the fast-food places too (most, I can't do them all, there's going to be hundreds of businesses by the time this map is done... a year or more from now).

The square-mileage and linear mileage of the map was updated. Apparently I had it wrong before. It's 175 square miles, and 13.24x linear miles on X and Y dimensions... not 144 square miles and 12.x linear miles on X and Y dimensions.
So yes, yes, it's big. Very Very big. No wonder this took so long. I'm barely half done!

--Cheers!

 

Looking awesome!

 

@KiloHotel - thanks it does mean something.

---

Had to re-align Roane Street again, didn't have to re-work much of anything besides the road itself a bit.
Made some new signs!
Bwahahahaha I couldn't resist the next one...

Because 'the interstate diner' was just boring, and well, the place looks like a pit, currently. It's such a dive.
So the Tea Pit it is!
Hoagie Bogie is new, too. There's an 'adult beverage' store too, because I think somehow Liquor Stores would get censored.
New sign for Taco Hell (shows the old interstate diner to the left, that's what was changed to the Tea Pit)!

A NODEway inn. We'll have a sleazy motel here soon enough, just on the other side of the interchange.

^^^ if anything's going to cause an issue it's my Wendy's parody. Forest-Brush Veggies!!!

These sign pictures (except for the ones on completed building lots) are just temporary to test if they work.
So yeah, the next few days should have some interesting pictures of finished product!
--Cheers!

 

Longdong Silver's is a pretty good one lmao. Glad you're still working on this, pretty much the only map I play now. Only thing missing seems to be off road trails, dunno what its like in Tennessee but here in BC Canada any road that leads away from a highway and isn't near a town is likely going to turn into a forest service road or have an offroad trail along it somewhere. Also, little goat trail neighborhoods like this seem pretty cool after just peeking around on google streetview. Especially how it snakes down a hillside and has a little rivine filled with overgrowth on the other side. Just some feedback / ideas for ya! Keep up the great work.


Edit:

https://www.google.ca/maps/@35.8848...UsUkQAzSWV6V1Ck_w-Tg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?dcr=0


https://www.google.ca/maps/@35.8866...QAZUerbPcmpVGgZrKYZg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?dcr=0



https://www.google.ca/maps/@35.8875...EfE9gykIGtCu1ayd_2fQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?dcr=0


Like even just short little dead end dirt roads leading to illegal dumping sites or lil campfire pits or whatever would be cool as hell.

 

I will surely add more trails once we get tiled terrain support for this map. The terrain doesn't have enough detail to give really decent off-road trails any real texture, they're going to end up too smooth, if you know what I mean. Terrain here by contrast will make a beautiful highway though.

---

MAP PROGRESS:
Long Dong Silvers, Taco Hell, and Weedy's all make a starring appearance on S. Roane St.
I have tried very hard to make this some of my best work and I do want to thank anyone and everyone who donated original models for help making this possible such as @RedRoosterFarm @Occam's Razer and even @fufsgfen for the effort put in.

Well, at-least I don't have far to walk for parts & service ... and a new car.

Added 3 more occluders around this area to help get rid of rendering you can't see (when you're outside looking into this developed area from beyond a hill or driving along the highway, or when you're in here, it'll block the stuff on the far side of the hills). This won't help some folks who're processor limited much but the GPU-limited folks will appreciate it.
I split downtown Harriman into many chunks with occluders the other day, it might help some folks, it hasn't helped me any with my RX 480 8gb here though (this was the slowest spot in the whole map).
This game is odd, sometimes when I start it up, it'll be 10~15fps faster than other times, temperature, system conditions, etc, all the same otherwise. Stupid Technology!!!

--Hope y'all like what you see.
--- Post updated ---
Testing is always the best part!

and yup it's stuck there...
You all will get to try soon too, pretty happy how this is turning out.

 

Work is being done as usual, well until it crashed from a crash that was reported back in 0.7.x that still isn't fixed.
Looking down while using the forest brush, especially then, THE MULTI-SELECTION TOOL LOCKS THE PROGRAM.
@Nadeox1 please check the crash in the previous sentence. Looking straight down, like the old classic 2d GTA camera would, to align my traffic lights, I crash this rotten editor every @#$%ing time. Sorry, but it's aggravating.
I didn't try to multi-select. Please make it so you have to hold CTRL or SHIFT to do that (shift does NOT dupe FOREST brush items, so that's okay), or just make those handles on the objects MORE sensitive and the drag-select less sensitive.
This happens while I am rotating and moving things for doing my traffic lights, you can't do it at an angle effectively in any time-friendly manner.
Thank-you Nadeox1, I know you are good for it; please don't beat me for using capital letters a lot more than I should when asking for something.

Thankfully I save, and save VERY often, actually, about 20~30 minutes of this is WAITING for this thing to save per day, but I don't mind, I go make tea or check messages when that time comes (as it takes 1~2 minutes).

I got most of a strip-mall built tonight. The Roane Plaza here.
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.9183184,-84.5748086,78a,35y,180.52h,62.82t/data=!3m1!1e3
It just needs it's lines, front entrances, a bit of curbing and detail along the front (the buildings, curbing all other places, the lot grading and texturing, and the signs on the stores themselves, and even the parking bollards (yellow poles to stop cars) are ALL in.
The map is currently at 3512 of 4000 total objects possible. It's getting closer, but it should be fine really. A fast food lot takes 2 objects total (the whole plot, just the lot and the lines themselves, and a 3rd for an AI route if it's enabled for that lot), but a strip mall can take 10~13 objects total plus any AI paths (one or two usually not more, as I snake them back and forth, check the Spend-A-Lot or Sprawl-Mart lot for an idea). Many small plots don't take any object spaces, and a smaller strip mall might take two to four object slots. So you get the idea. It can be a few miles of road or a lot, but the roads get boring if there's nothing at the other end of it... which is where I am now.

Some in-dev shots, remember this one isn't done yet! Look at the real thing on street view if you want to see what it'll be closer to when it's done.


Strip mall that runs the lot length wise, occupancy left to right: A smaller Spend-A-Lot than the first, A Thrift Shoppe and a Planet Fatness store here (4th is vacant).

This last shot above so you know where it is, the dead-end road with all the track crossings is on the left there. The Happy Sack Grocery is down the road twice the distance of Line City, and the fast-food area is about 4/10ths of a mile (half of 1 KM) behind me on this road. There will be businesses almost all through here, with a consistent frame-rate, until you cross the bridge into Downtown Harriman.

Thrift store #2 and Check cashing / Payday loan place

These businesses are just to the left (from road-view) of the rest of the strip-mall.

A grocery store is started! The building is mostly complete sans a detail or two...


So yes, you should be able to do delivery mock-ups if you like to drive a large truck. This parking-lot doesn't have spaces painted in yet or curbing/grass filler models yet.

Another shot for bearing, again, this will all (eventually) be populated!

The Line City and just before it in the distance, the Spend-a-Lot strip mall above, are just barely visible top-left. It doesn't show the railroad bridge sections fully as there's render-blocking stuff in play here, but it works just fine on the road/ground.

So all in all it's finally coming together nicely... sadly even complete & filled, that's only 2 miles of the road with *barely 6 miles* properly furnished/detailed ... on a road that goes some 13+ miles from the north to south end of the map. I know @NewoFox and a few others will love this.

 

That looks really good for trucking!

Look what this poor AI driver is trying to do, going trough a rock! This is Rockwood spawn point, so I guess it is kinda fitting


Update, there was a magnetic signpost, which AI could no resist:


Another one too:

It was here:

 

Thankfully i wrote on the terrain like a kid with crayons. That's the hamlet of POST OAK right there, (E) to the south is Eureka, like the vacuum cleaner. I will handle that. They end up in stop signs because they are too close to the road. The AI eating the sign on the off-ramp will be avoided in the future when it's minds lane direction. It's because the ramp is too far to the right on the texture. I have to go and change the texture, not going to be fun there... should only be about two dozen of them max though. Texture was made before there was 'lanes' to an AI path.

So the game update. Surely this is good. NOPE. Ate every last stopsign.

They're there. They're just only good for your kiddo's lego set now. @#$% as if I needed more.
Thankfully, I think I can fix this. I need to find what's duping the size down 2x now.
This stupid game. I swear. If I had a change-log that was super-detailed that the folks using the map editor would understand, I could live with it, but this... sheesh. I'm surprised I haven't shot the tower yet.

 

Agreed.

 

Trailer MAX , a parody of CARMAX because a salesman tried to skim my deposit there 2 or so years ago when I needed a car bad enough to consider something of theirs from an auction. So they didn't get my business. They DID get mocked

The MALLGREENS gets it's first location. Hooray, and another almost finished loading dock, hard to get a truck in there, it'll challenge you as the curbing is right behind me! There's not always a place to pull past & room to line up every time.

Some misc unnamed businesses here, that I don't have signs for yet. They might get signs by the time a public update rolls around. The plain looking 4-store mini-strip-mall thing 2nd from the left and the left-most building are abandoned/empty. They will more look the 'abandoned' part 'later on down the road', however, it's just good filler for now, it's pretty much what's there in real life, too. Everything I've modeled on this road except for the 'Tea Pit' is modeled after real-world locations. Generally, where a Drug Store is, there's one in the map, where a food store is, there's one too, and so forth. It should keep it with that real feeling. I've been making models as I go (read: re-skins of existing super-low-poly stuff, that keeps FPS moderated decently - not perfect - but trying not to make this as bad as Kingston or Harriman).
3543 slots of 4000 used currently. Keep in mind the majority of Rockwood is already laid out. Most stores with smaller parking-lots don't use objects, so this should be fine. As I need objects, roads will be more efficiently laid out, and multi-piece fancy bridges will be replaced with simpler ones, that don't take up object slots or only take one (exception, the big 4 lane bridges that are super-long, I can't swap those for anything but ugly stretched default bridges, so I won't be doing THAT).

Got the lot lines in Roane Plaza - took a manual screenshot as the screenshots don't work in the editor unless you run from Steam. Also did Line City grocery store (it's the red lines). Green is Roane Plaza strip mall.
This will be able to be a destination then, 'Roane Plaza' and 'Line City' so you don't have to wonder where all the details are.

 

Coyote problems?

Those parking lots, if there would be low poly versions of official cars, those could be made to single non collide object that would fit into parking lot. Many maps would benefit from such, even official maps. They would not need to have collision, or just simple planes for collision, it would add a lot immersion to game world as it would not be so empty looking.

It is amazing how you can create those places so well, if there is Tennessee tourist center, they should start paying you something as once people visit your virtual world, they start wanting to visit real place too. Maybe it would be possible to create tourist driving school using Beam and your map, learn to drive before blocking roads of Tennessee, now that would be surely a hit