Lost Paradise - Modded map for BeamNG Drive.
Project Summary
This is my first project for BeamNG Drive – an incredibly realistic driving game with near-limitless possibilities. Soft-body physics engine simulates every component of a vehicle in real time, resulting in true-to-life behavior.
In this project, I aimed to simulate how well I could accomplish tasks delegated to me by someone else, thus I turned to ChatGPT for assistance.
Before diving into this analysis, I encourage you to watch the short project trailer video.
I requested ChatGPT to briefly become ‘my boss’ and assign me tasks based on a list of assets I provided. Here’s what was generated:
I’ll showcase how I handled these tasks at the end. For now, let me illustrate the creation process and the challenges I encountered.
Creation Process
It was my first time using this editor, so I watched tutorials from experienced level designers in BeamNG Drive, which proved to be very helpful. I began by duplicating an existing map to acquire its assets and proceeded to clean every decal, road, and terrain asset to create a blank canvas to work on.
Next, I checked Google Maps to find an existing island that would fit my project ideas. I settled on the island of ‘Aegina‘ in Greece and used the ‘terrain.party‘ website tool to export heightmap from Google Earth. After importing the heightmap into the editor, I started experimenting with its various functions and tools, quickly grasping its workflow. It felt somewhat akin to Unity, and I liked this workflow.
The first challenge I encountered revolved around textures. I faced difficulty painting textures on the map as they seemed to overlap and appear translucent. I discovered that depending on the terrain’s size e.g. 2048×2048, the color of textures is generated using a ‘base color map‘ of the same size as the terrain, resembling something like this:
Each colored pixel corresponds to a unit of colored texture. Such a color map, as depicted above, is generated when the map is completed. I found a way around this problem by checking the colors for each texture and then created a base color map for each individual texture with the appropriate color.
I acknowledge that I could have added some noise to slightly differentiate colors between individual pixels, providing a slightly better visual effect for the textures, but I overlooked this.
The second issue I faced was when I tried aligning the terrain with a basic mesh road using the ‘align with mesh (up)‘ tool, but it didn’t work. The fix for this problem was adjusting the ‘height‘ setting. I had to set it higher than the mesh road was on the Z-axis.
It wasn’t straightforward, but I think this tool works similarly to the ‘set height‘ tool. The mesh road gives coordinates for the terrain to reach. These are just my thoughts, and I might be mistaken.
After resolving these issues, I began creating specific areas as directed by ChatGPT. This part relied more on creative thinking. I tweaked the terrain shape and added another island using terrain tools.
Then, I placed key buildings and assets in various map locations. I connected everything with asphalt roads and off-road trails.
Following that, I added filling assets (like in picture below) and applied ‘decal roads’, which are 2D planes on splines with textures. These help create road lines and give a 3D look to dirt roads (second picture below).
Once everything flowed smoothly, I experimented with adding missions to the map. I started with simple A to B races and then moved to more creative missions like rock crawling, drifts, long jumps, cop chases, and races against AI opponents. There are 15 of them in total.
Then, I focused on adding nature to the map. I began with placing rock walls and cliffs, which took some monotonous days but was worth it for the final effect.
Next, I created a waterfall and a river that branched out using the ‘River Editor‘ working similarly to the ‘Mesh road‘ tool. I also included a particle system and used ambient nature and waterfall sounds from ‘jungle rock island‘ to enhance realism.
After that, I planted trees and bushes. Using brushes from ‘jungle rock island‘ I started with the smaller island, experimenting with various tree styles. Once satisfied, I moved to the larger island and added finer details like dead branches, small rocks, and palm tree leaves.
Most of the work was completed, but I had one idea left to try. I wanted to create a night time version of the map with lighting. I found a script that enabled ‘point light’ at specific times. Implementing this, I illuminated the entire map and the runway.
However, this lighting caused significant FPS drops. I disabled shadows cast by ‘point light‘ which helped a bit, but it wasn’t perfect. Currently, I’m working on solving this issue.
Project Features
Now, I’ll show how many tasks I managed to complete and what the result of this work looks like.
Starting with task number 1:
Observatory is located on the hill near military base on bigger of two islands, Its been abandoned and overtaken by nature as well as resort which is located on smaller island. The industrial site includes a hangar where crucial working technologies are stored.
Task number 2:
I lacked the assets needed to create a water park within the resort, so I couldn’t finish that part of the task. However, you can drive into the castle area to explore. Currently, BeamNG doesn’t have boats for water travel, but I had assets that I placed around the islands and near the port. In the back of the industrial site, there are dirt roads and technical mud roads that challenge players skills.
Task number 3:
As mentioned in task number 1, there’s an observatory near the military base. Inside one of the hangars, I placed a broken-down military airplane asset. Additionally, there’s a secret tunnel that runs from the military base directly to the port.
Task number 4:
I created a mission where the player navigates through the smaller island to collect ‘money sacks.’ The goal is to gather all the sacks, and once the player collects them all, they win.
Task number 5:
Just like Task 4, I designed a mission that includes all the task objectives.
Task number 6:
Unfortunately, I didn’t have any dinosaur assets, so I couldn’t finish this particular task.
Task number 7:
I wasn’t quite sure how to tackle this task, but I decided to bend the rules a bit. I created a mission where the player has to escape the police and reach a safe zone at the end of the port. During this escape, they need to dodge aggressive attempts to stop their vehicle, and there’s a chance they’ll encounter a roadblock. I showcased part of this mission in the trailer at the beginning of this post.
Even though I didn’t complete all the tasks, I’m still happy with how well things turned out. I had a lot of fun working on this project, and I genuinely learned a great deal.
Each challenge I encountered was a chance to learn something new, whether it was figuring out the complexities of the editor or finding creative solutions to unexpected problems.
It’s encouraging to see how much progress I’ve made, and I’m eager to apply these newfound skills to future projects.
Value Of The Project
The map has achieved big success, garnering a flattering response from players. Its have been a month since map release and the map already has over 42k downloads with seven 5 star reviews, and its popularity continues to grow.
Link to project page: Lost Paradise
The map is accessible on BeamNG Forum as well as in Game Repository.
To showcase the community’s reception, I have included a selection of videos and reviews below.
If you have any questions I will be glad to answer them.
I’m always open to talk about new projects, creative opportunities and how I can help you.