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

So entirely going to post this here, you guys will love it.
If you haven't seen the Cleetus Mcfarland channel yet, you're going to love it.
demo derby drag race, this is the [expletive deleted] most awesome thing I have seen in ages!


--Cheers & enjoy
Whenever the mods decide to update the repository entries, the new version will be out. I uploaded it... 10~12 days ago. MAINTENANCE

 

This is the most American thing I've seen, and I live here.

I love it.

 

Yeah, I laughed like heck, this is better than whatever rubbish is on the TV SET. Yes, I called it a TV SET. Gotta love getting old. You can still have fun while you're getting there though. I totally would be down for demo derby anything if my back wasn't entirely shot, good thing I popped it back into place a few days ago (in my sleep, I managed to un-collapse a section in my back, pushing down hard enough on the sides of your hips with your palms = POP). I just laid there for about 2 hours after which enjoying next to no pain & the cool rush that comes with having fixed that. I was even able to work in my yard a little this week so it doesn't look like some type of rain forest. Alas, though, sadly, no demo derby participation for THE BOB, but hey, we can all enjoy a bit of time watching it. Was the best thing I've seen in a LONG TIME.
Rob Spaghetti's 500$ car challenge was decent but just 'half decent' in comparison to that.

Sorry for the rambling.
Still waiting on the update to approve *shrugs*. I think they musta kicked the server or something.

--Cheers!

 

I downloaded the map but it wont install it I have closed the game to see if it was there but wasn't when I checked

Edit: its been more than 30 minutes of this thing not working for me ill deal with it later

 

It'll show up at the very bottom of the free roam level selector, one of the last 3~5 maps you'll have in your list.
Put the map in /mods/ folder, that is inside your documents/beamng.drive folder. I have never tested the in-game installs, but this map is packaged like all others, so it should work. The map DOES work though.

 

Thanks i'm guessing manually putting the map in the mods folder helped

 

bob.blunderton updated Tennessee USA Roane County Beta, REAL TERRAIN, 8gb System RAM REQ'D with a new update entry:

[Moderator Upload]

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

bob.blunderton updated Tennessee USA Roane County Beta, REAL TERRAIN, 8gb System RAM REQ'D with a new update entry:

Tennessee USA Roane County, FPS IMPROVED! Real Open World, 8GB RAM REQ'D, 193+ Mi of Road, 175sq/mi


Read the rest of this update entry...

 

A thought just hit me.. Wouldnt it be possible to add debri, scrap stuff, old cans, papers and so on with groundcover or forest tool? Also brought this up in Ideas & Suggestions; using the Particle Emitter to get dust, smoke, flies, dots and what not to fly around would add dynamic to a map:
https://beamng.com/threads/wcusa-particle-effects.54028/
Also, trying to get a good looking 3d ground cover grass (and other foliage) on a test map but for some reason it wont assign the chosen material to the shapes. You run into that before?

 

Lol now you're uploading updates the same way I do. My internet is too slow to upload a 100mb file, so I use school wifi to upload it to an external source and the mods upload it to the site.
They're so nice

 

Have to make sure your materials are valid (the game can find the texture, and that texture has a "mapto" field that is what the texture is called from the model files (DAE) themselves)

Code:

singleton Material(example_concrete_texture)
{
   mapTo = "concretelot";
   diffuseColor[0] = "0.99 0.93 0.86 2";
   diffuseMap[0] = "levels/southernhighway/art/roads/concretelot.dds";
   normalMap[0] = "levels/southernhighway/art/null.dds";
   specular[0] = "0.5 0.5 0.5 1";
   specularPower[0] = "50";
   castShadows = "0";
   translucent = "0";
   translucentZWrite = "1";
   translucentBlendOp = "None";
   materialTag0 = "Miscellaneous";
   vertColor[0] = "1";
};

Yes, I lazily used a null texture file for my bump-mapping, yes, welcome to making a 175 sq/mile map with one person.

That bit aside, you'll see the name example_concrete_texture here. This is what decal or mesh roads or other objects made by the road tools in the editor call it, but here's where it differs.
The name "concretelot" gets called by the objects that use the texture. For simplicity sake, you can use the same name in place of the editor name (what it's called inside Beamng.drive), and the mapto field, which is what the DAE's reference. This is how it almost ALWAYS is in my maps, however, I purposely changed it here to something different so that I could point out that they're two different things here.
Inside of a DAE which is just XML extended (plain-text) markup language use like on web pages for 20 years or so now:

Code:

              <bind_material>
                <technique_common>
                  <instance_material symbol="oak_leaves-material" target="#oak_leaves-material"/>
                  <instance_material symbol="oak_trunk-material" target="#oak_trunk-material"/>
                </technique_common>
              </bind_material>

Above it's showing the material's used for a bush, instead of OAK_LEAVES, we'd be using CONCRETELOT, case is not sensitive here.
So basically, what we're after is making sure the reference to the texture is the same inside your DAE model (have a look, in notepad++ and search for MATERIAL, which should be the name of your materials MAPTO= field discussed above.
THEY MUST MATCH, or NO TEXTURE FOR YOU.

Fine print:
*please don't take my translucency and translucent z-write settings to heart here, they may not be correct, as the map is yet unfinished. Please reference the official game textures and files (for textures like buildings etc) for the correct settings so that shadows are drawn properly on the texture or not. For decal roads, you'll want translucency=1, for mesh texturing you'll want it translucency=0 unless you're obviously using something like open-mesh bridge grating or a see-through window glass texture.
No really, please confirm these values before getting too far in your mapping. You can test textures out by making a 1 meter thick 10 meter wide road bridge out of a mesh road to see if they cast a shadow and hence catch the car shadows too, which is precisely how I tested it.


Also, yes, it's possible to add rubbish, but I haven't gotten to that part of detailing in most areas short of a few buildings in Harriman (the later parts of downtown by the tracks, that were in after the rest of the main downtown on the high hill and main route was built). There's trash bags by the brown t1-11 clad duplexes, and there's metal rubbish and debris by the factory across the tracks where all the jumps are (not the one next to the river, the one behind the strip mall in Downtown Harriman).
--Cheers, I hope this helped!
--- Post updated ---

Well too bad in my mid to late 30's I have 0 excuse to go near a school to use the wifi, I'd probably get arrested for it.
The in-game repository management has intermittent connection handling, but I do not think the web site here does through the browser - at-least not through Firefox. No Chrome browser for me - it has too many back-doors & can auto-download files without your knowledge or interaction.
But also, more on 'the nice moderators will help you a bit'.
That's why I pick up copies of this game for friends who are less fortunate, and help try to encourage anyone even remotely interested in driving games to pick this up. It's my way of saying thanks back to the devs, but they do know that for instance, my 'Tail of the Dragon' map has helped sell quite a few copies of the game. I myself bought this game due to @DoullPepper 's Canyon of Speed, which I have recently got permission to 'refresh' as he's pressed for time. I will fix the texture corruptions and missing AI paths (for bridges) on it shortly. Thank @CrashBoomPunk for the encouragement there by checking out his youtube channel here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN1i5mDtOx0m_3Z18WsSibA (safe for work), and join the over 650,000 subscribers. My maps are used quite often on this channel and sometimes you'll even see early releases here. Crash is the reason why I am updating the very map that made me want to buy this game - don't worry - I will keep Canyon just as original as it always was - it's surely one of a kind. No, really, I love that map, it's truly a great setting and unlike many maps, does not forget that it is in a game that's a CAR ACCIDENT simulator. Have had many a good time knocking pianos off those cliffs, I'm only one Coyote and Roadrunner short of a good time. That's also why there's Coyote shaped holes in my map, that's the reference and 100% why.

Yes always - we miss Dale sorely. Many a Sunday I watched with baited breath to see who would win - but in the early to mid 80s and even into the 90s growing up EVERY (male) child loved NASCAR. Back when it was the WINSTON CUP, and you could actually name or even advertise Cigs. Playing NASCAR games on the NES or even SNES or PC (DOS) was just mind-blowing. NASCAR? In REAL 3d? On *MY* *486* ? NO WAY! YES, WAY! *mind blown with jaw dropped to floor etc*
How times have changed.
--Cheers!

Just a note on the game-plan for the coming months:

Currently re-encouraging myself to try and learn a bit more about Blender3d this month. I've got sponsoring to pay for 3d modeling courses for me if I should need it (which I will do if I cannot learn via written text, video moves too fast for me, and my connection = poo).
This should help my city map get off the ground sometime in the next few weeks/month or two.
City map might be a re-boot & re-skin of So-Cal with a 'Generic City' slapped in the middle. It already has all the highways, etc. Let me know what you think of this, I have to run it by the Generic City author and listen for his input. It beats designing a whole new road-network from scratch, and would exponentially speed up dev-time. I'm short some models but I have a majority of them made already. Trying to go for 0% fake collisions (visible collision, used on objects without a built-in collision mesh), though I need above-mentioned Blender skills to make that happen. This Roane County map gets a back burner spot while I work on that, which is why I wanted to get optimization out of the way (also, when I port models over, I don't have to do it twice, as it's very very time consuming to optimize and also error-prone).

If I *DO* choose to re-boot So-Cal, it will still have it's So-Cal look on the outskirts, with a temperate-climate city slapped down in the large, flat middle of the map surrounding the lake, and the border roads within and at the edge of the city re-done. After-all, it already has a huge bunch of highways that go 'nowhere' for no reason, let's give them a reason to be there. I originally wanted to build a city on that map, and it was designed for it, and I have a city map coming up so... DERP, or not DERP?

It won't look like West Coast, it won't be a copy of it, but it will likely use Tree/bush/plant models from it as the terrain matches that quite a bit. It also wouldn't look like a GTAV clone any more than the real California coast cities do, nor would it take so much as even ONE model from that game (or texture!).

I want to hear folks thoughts on this. So-Cal would still, in fully developed form, aim to run better than Harriman downtown does in Roane County (even post-0.9 update), so it shouldn't be a bear to run. That means, it would likely run much better than it does now (my local copy runs butter smooth, but the repository version doesn't run so well with it's 'see for miles and miles' view distance).

Roane County will still get finished, but we want something fresh, right?

 

Well i added the ground material and it pops up ingame but when i (using the torque 3d foliage tutorial/guide) add material it doesnt change a thing. Realised that i can skip that process if i change/add the info in material.cs? The material in 3dsmax has the same name as the file itself, but havent touched the material.cs at all, just tried adding it in the World Editor.
I need more hours on my days, im too busy working on one of my real cars but at the same time i want to get time to explore some ideas, like using particle emitter for say papers and other scrap blowing about.

Thank you for your help, its great (as always )!

 

Don't use the built in materials editor, I've never seen it work properly (for me, and others have noted this also, but not everyone). It may seem like it works but upon reload, it doesn't find it, the paths are incorrect upon reload.
Please use notepad++ and copy entries from a known-working map, and edit them to taste and suit.
Diffuse or colormap = regular texture that looks like asphalt or dirt or anything as you'd normally see it. In an old DOS game this would be about the only texture you'd need.
Detail map = Surface 'grain' texture used with colormap but not diffuse (to my knowledge) to give the actual surface texture to the plain-jane color map. Diffuse maps have the detailing texture built-in so they look alright without it.
Normal map = bump mapping / 3d look, like good for making 3d looking bricks on a flat surface, Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl featured heavy use of this for it's release time around 2007 and really looked good.
Specular = the reflectivity, light for a lot of reflection, dark for dull and little reflection.


Again make sure the texture name the object looks for is the name of the MAPTO = field. So if it's MAPTO=Rubbish, THe model's going to look for the 'RUBBISH' texture, it doesn't matter what the files or texture name is called/named, it only matters if it finds the correct MAPTO field.

Models looking for 'CONCRETELOT' will find it via the Example_Concrete_Texture or whatever it is in my previous article (book), by looking for the MAPTO name Concretelot.

 

I kind of had a feeling that the editor had issues with this, made a few maps years ago but never had those issues back then.
Thank you for your very explanatory tips, although i have (hopefully ) somewhat good knowledge about what texture does what its always good with a reminder or for others that search the same answers.
I prefer Crimson Editor but that is simply due to not been using Notepad++ at all, might test it out
Your dedication to your map and to our questions is unprecedented!

 

No problem, you're quite welcome buddy. I have no issues answering questions at all, after-all, in the end, it only means more good/better quality maps from everyone.
I wouldn't have gotten as far as I did without bombing people with questions after questions, much the same. Have to learn somewhere, and that somewhere doesn't leave many options as of late.

---

In other news, I got sponsorship for Maya from one of the Youtuber's who uses my maps for modeling software.
Yes. This means I get to figure out Maya LT. What an easy thing that is to do. I literally only had to watch 1.x minutes of camera movement tutorial and the rest is pretty intuitive that I can learn as I go without self-destructing my creation. It features automated LOD creation and many other useful goodies and such. All without exploding my brain in seconds trying to learn Blender. Free is great if you're broke, but I couldn't learn Blender to save my hide.
I've already made something in <1 hr of messing about with it, it's just a chunk of bridge model just like Scenic Drive over US 40 in this map, but it's more importantly for my up and coming city map. The model will be a shared resource along with most of the rest of them.

So yes, yes I am busy modeling things in the program, and hopefully it'll get somewhere good in a hurry.
I literally did more with it in 3~5 minutes then I could with Blender after an hour of tutorials and days working with it.
While you won't see a lot of progress on this map itself, I am preparing models for the up-and-coming city map which will get it's own thread eventually; all in due time.
For those that don't know, I'm basically combining So-Cal Interstate (which is going unsupported very very soon - look it up and grab it if you haven't, it's going to be killed off), and Generic City (with permission - which is a bit un-optimized, and not quite graphically up to Beamng standards), into one big awesome city map that won't be the same as (though will use some forest/tree/shrub/rock objects from) West Coast USA, but will feature a very similar setting. This map here (Roane County) will still get additions to it as time permits and isn't going to be stagnated entirely.
That huge flat area, around the lake in the central plain of So-Cal Interstate, will get a huge sprawling city from skyscrapers to suburbs and also many of the same stores found in Roane County (read: not going to design them over, when I already have them). Unfortunately it will mean an EVEN BIGGER download, but hey, it's worth it in the end.
No shoe-box panoramas from this man - Bigger IS Better! Don't worry though, nothing in the up-and-coming map should not be nearly as bad performance as Downtown Harriman currently is, though (even in 0.9 it's still 'bad' in one or two spots by the bank and a block north of it). Would like to keep things 50~60fps on my RX 480 at full detail with reflections, but we shall see.
If anyone wants to help sponsor my future projects, I will be putting a Patreon page up shortly (to help keep my 3.5 year old tower going, which surprisingly is still quite adequate - NOT for unwarranted upgrades, not for the newest intel Unobtainium's or 1080ti's, but also to help pay for software, it's not cheap and I don't pirate, or my doctor visits when Medicare doesn't cover it all). We're gonna kick this up to a whole new level, game developer quality. I'm removing the last obstacle in my path, the modeling hurdle. This aside I might just be able to pull this off without too much of a hitch.
My creations aren't for sale and won't be; but in the near future, donations will be accepted. You'd be supporting a physically disabled person and helping pay for awesome maps and my medical bills too.
--Cheers from Rural Tennessee, where a full set of teeth is a luxury!

Following attachment...
The ends of the bridge that you drive on and off of, are even beveled at a 45 degree angle, so it doesn't eat tires. OM-NOMNOMNOM-NOPE. Sorry, it's not textured yet.

 

Good news, I've actually managed to make something decent, modular bridge section. You can preview it at the safe for work link, here: http://prntscr.com/jh6nu5

This basically will mean I should have little issue aside of a small stumbling block here or there figuring out the rest of the program, woohoo.

 

Who said I should not keep reflection on? I get perfectly good solid 60fps with high detail setting and reflections on (ok, it does go to 57-58 at few spots), there is just one little trick that is needed to do





Maya is certainly wonderful news, you get to really build things now! So happy for you, there is always a solution to problem and sounds like that modeling department is getting solved nicely with that.

 

Thanks, and yes, yes entirely! Modeling is one of the keystones to building an immersive, original scene. To be able to model is awesome. Getting them to play nice with BeamNG is another story. Thankfully out of the blue, I get a message from Meywue with exactly how to do it, some examples, and a few pointers/examples here on this site. He actually took the time to write a message saying he uses the same software with success, and that he took the time to make an example video, provide a sample prop, and all. So in a day or two or whenever I'm not busy/in agony/migraine etc, I will try and get it into the game.
Being held up a tad by texturing some things, I've not got that down 100% but I do have some models made already. I have to pull my city map models (that lack collision) and see if I can use them. If not, I might just cut up the city / suburb's roads in West Coast into modular pieces (not the highways, I'll make my own, though the textures could prove a time-saver). I do NOT want my maps looking like a re-arranged dupe of West Coast though, but if the models are there, made well (they are), why re-invent the wheel? Of course, making modular pieces of them might be more difficult than making them from scratch so I shall see about this.

I want to thank everyone!
Especially @meywue for his examples, he took time out of his day to answer my simple post of 'Anyone have any luck with Maya LT?' and went over and above for this project (and my other projects).
Thanks to @Aboroath for the talk to lift my spirits a bit, when I really needed it... it's extremely frustrating spending a day or two perfecting something only to have the game swear and blow up when you try to use it.
Yes, even you @fufsgfen for encouragement and much feedback.

I would encourage everyone, to try a 30 days trial of Maya LT. I couldn't learn Blender to save my hide, but if you can understand the BeamNG editor, you can understand Maya. I picked this right up and ran with it (okay, still LOTS to learn, and don't know what 75% of the program does, but to make simple models, you don't need to 'know it all', you just need to make what matters).
You can look for a Maya LT download here https://www.autodesk.com/ (I don't get kickbacks, just sharing)
It costs in the US dollar price of 30$ a month, or 245$ a year (a 1/3rd discount, almost), which isn't even near as much as the regular program would cost for commercial use. It's geared towards indie developers, and hobbyists. Make sure to have your OUTLINER sheet open in the program to see model hierarchy.
Also, there's a tutorial for the FBX (to DAE - collada) converter here with the download link for it:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/search-result/caas/video/youtube/watch-v-9McOw1q238s.html
the converter linked is here if you use Maya
http://areadownloads.autodesk.com/wdm/fbx/HTM_INT_FBX_Converter.zip

Let me know if you folks have any problems. Know that there's an issue with the Z axis on objects imported and this can be fixed while modeling / during export.

Now I shall go back to making simple curbing... boring! But it must be done! Then I can get back to my bridge (which is done & textured, it just needs collision and proper hierarchies).

Thanks again to all that were very very supportive, and who also help the project in any way past or present.
I can't do this without your help, even if it's just a bit of cheering up when EVERYTHING GOES WRONG.
You will see models I make both make it to Roane County, and my City map I'm doing up nice.
--Cheers

 

One of the things with curbing was learning to do an array, if I remember that correctly, anyway learning to do arrays will open huge new doors for anyone making models as you can place stuff between set intervals very quickly.

I found little tutorial video about arrays in Maya, but there is probably more to it:


Way you look at things changes when modeling experience increases, I found solutions completely different that I could ever think of at beginning, when I did modelling for a while, not that I would be any good making models, but box is just not box after a while, it is source of something far more complex, like piece of puzzle that fits to place I could not see before.

In Blender I made just cross section for curb and then I think I used lathe or something similar tool, it might be called lathe in 3ds max, I have used too many programs, can't remember anymore which is which!

Anyway, I found another tutorial for a skill that might come handy for you at some point, this can be used making curbs too as you would just need to make small section (that would be in place of sphere in that video) and then extrude from that curb profile to create a path of ready made curb, only imagination is limit how to use these different methods:



Wish I would have more time for everything, but there is only so many hours in a day and just so few days in our lives :-\