The city (and current membership) is growing!

A heck of a lot of city has been built up in the last week or two, I've been on a building bonanza here.  As stated previously, once certain hurdles have been hopped, things will go crazy speeds compared to what has come before.

Looking like this summer we could see one public release for Los Injurus.  I would update the public release every 3~4 months or so, but Patreons would still get the monthly or twice-a-month updates here, seeing the new stuff a week or two before everyone else.  There has to be some reason we're here, right?  Let me know if you don't feel that's fair to Patreon folks here, or if that's entirely cool.  I only wanted to make an initial public release to allow folks to build their own maps with the MRK, Modular Road Kit - that means MORE city maps for those that enjoy it.  This is a large reason behind this project after-all.

I want to personally extend a big thanks to everyone here for supporting this project.  It has enabled me to really see a lot of creative potential realized here, something I wouldn't have been able to do alone on my fixed income, without the help of the community here.

Trying my best to make an awesome content-packed release happen next week, so definitely stay glued to your set for that.  Going to be starting AI work this weekend.

Due to being slightly over the basic goals of the project, tonight I am signing up to purchase high-resolution textures for this project, so you can see your game come to life with high-fidelity 4k and possibly above graphics, vs the 0.5k ~ 1k stuff that I can snag for free during the day.

35$ buys a lowly 500 credits - a 4k texture takes roughly 20 credits - so that's a little over a dollar per texture (1.20$ ~ 1.35$ a texture).  It's more for ones with built-in normals and specular but I can generate those here, too.  Strongly considering the 59$ per 1000 credits, which might give me enough to get a lot of the map done honestly, but I can always pick up more later if I go with the 500-pack.  Ever notice how I still have this *same* i7 4790k system I built 4.5 years ago?  Well that's because I'm not wasting any of this money (aside of spending 45$ on a refurbished 2tb Hitachi HDD for backups!!!) on computer parts I don't really need.  That'd be selfish to ever say an RX 480 8gb card isn't enough, when if I built this thing correctly in the first place, that's plenty good enough to provide 45~80fps all over the map without any issues, even in fully-realized scenes.  Besides that, it's around the speed of a GTX 1060 which is one of the most common cards on Steam surveys.  So it behooves me to run what y'all are running on your end, so I know it will perform correctly.  We don't want (not me, not you!) a repeat of Roane County when it first hit in 2016, do we?  Pretty sure I know the answer to that - as does everyone else.  A resounding NOPE.

No new cars, no new furniture, no new computers, nothing like that.

That Patreon income pays for software and assets for the map.  Surely I must set some aside for taxes this year as the income will surpass the threshold for which I must file, but we only pay Federal income tax, there's no state income tax here in good old Tennessee, and city tax is quite minor, if there is any at all (I have to check).  The only time Patreon money *might* be used (and then only if absolutely needed) on computer stuff is *replacement* parts, not upgrades.  If it's more cost-effective to upgrade that will likely be out of pocket (example: Ryzen board + cpu + memory costs close to replacement motherboard), then it would behoove me to spent Patreon money on the map and pay for the replacements or upgrades out of pocket.  So no worries here.  I don't want to have to dig around inside the computer and mess with a WORKING machine when it's not broke.

Long story short, I feel good buying high-quality textures for this map, with support from the community that this project has gotten.  I want to extend a large thanks to everyone and let them know, that if you haven't checked the Los Injurus thread lately, a LOT of progress (and screenshots) have been made, so do check it out!

My next announcement will be upon or immediately prior to the next beta release of this map.

The next announcement following that will be Nevada Interstate AI upgrade for the traffic tool, which is rather demanded by the Car Crash Youtube folks :x  I am sure everyone else will enjoy that too.  That shouldn't take more than a week to 10 days, then it's back to spamming out buildings and putting them into the Los Injurus map.

So thank-you, a big thank-you to the community that is supporting this community-funded project.  I want to make this the most awesome thing I have made in 25 years of game modding, and there isn't a better time or game-engine to do it in.

So look for the announcement during the week next week, for the new copy of Los Injurus!

--Cheers!