BotW3 (1 Viewer)


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This thread replaces the old one in this subforum in order to help clear any confusion with this project and its direction - given the amount of changes that have happened in recent months. Therefore, we would like to start again with a clean slate. Please disregard anything you've seen or read previously in order to prevent confusion.

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BotW is a fictional representation of the south Devon area of England, set in the current era. The current public version of the map is v2.9 - which features the 35 connecting Totnes with Paignton. Note - this route does not exist in real life.


The next version of the map will be v3 - which will feature a heavily improved version of the 35, as well as an expansion of routes.

Although every effort is made to consider the performance impact of this map, it is intended to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible, and thus not recommended for low-spec systems.

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OLD: Version 2.9: Buses of the Westcountry (BotW)
Version 3.0 is still work-in-progress, and therefore unavailable for download.


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Updates will by posted by team members undertaking the work
 
Last edited:

iomex

UKDT
Dec 10, 2015
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After spending the evening (and some of the morning) fighting OMSI - I've managed to clear out the old design of the lag-inducing Tweenaway Cross. It seems I've saturated OMSI, having refurbished the scenery on these tiles five times now (first incarnation was back in 2012...), and it was just generating incessant errors. Having overcome that, I've cleared away the scenery in order to make room to upgrade the dual carriageway that runs up to the P&R site into a proper, grade-separated NSL dual carriageway. Finally, some proper use for the Caetano Levante.

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As you may be able to see - the junction will be turned into a Diamond interchange - this makes a change from the old crossroads design seen in v2.9 (which involved a LOT of objects and splines, which caused long tile load times and low FPS), and from the grade-seperated Roundabout Interchange from the WIP streams you may have seen. Unfortunately, the roundabout design wouldn't have fitted into the space or meet the criteria demanded by this road, so we've gone for this design which is a lot lighter on system resources and is more elegant. Don't worry - crossroads and roundabout interchanges will undoubtedly feature elsewhere in the map.

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You can see in the above image, a bus depot sat to the left of the dual carriageway. Many of you may have already seen this from the development streams - but don't worry, the upgraded road will fit around this - I have no intention of it being deleted after the effort I've put into it. You can see that I've made a start clearing the scenery from around the road.

The roundabout you can see in this image will go, as well, with this now being a proper high speed road. The road that joins it will cross the dual carriageway via an underpass - which will then connect to the train station you see on the right of the image. This will eventually form the terminus for the Paignton town route we have planned. It'll go from here to Paignton town centre via a new residential area - where the depot in v2.9 is currently sited.

So where will this dual carriageway lead?

It will be extended out of the map some way - past the current P&R site, to provide at least a few minutes worth of high speed running for the Levante. Along this will be an updated P&R site, with a design to be confirmed. At the end of the dual carriageway will sit a small regional airport. Every other P&R service will run on to the airport. There are no plans for a specific branded airport route. This line will likely be a limited-stop service, calling at (Airport), P&R, Hospital, Paignton railway station then use the fastest route to Paignton Bus Station.

What will happen to the zoo?

Because it would put the map out of balance having 3 major attractions on the same road - the zoo will be repurposed and moved. If you've watched the development streams, you will know it initially moved from its current location in v2.9 to near the P&R site in v3. The zoo will be made bigger, fancier, and will live along the 35 route, most likely by Blagdon village. We have something special planned for the zoo, which we hope you will enjoy - but for now, it is a secret ;)

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Now, onto the subject of depots.
Paignton depot needs to be expanded due to limited space at the current depot (i.e. where it is now in v3, next to the rail line). Therefore, NBC Devon has acquired the scrubland on the opposite side of the rail line to the main Paignton depot. A bespoke, modern depot will be constructed there, greatly expanding the capacity in Paignton. The cost for this will be offset slightly by closing down the Paignton town garage - rent and operating costs are quite high for this prime seafront location, and noise abadement was prohibiting early morning/late night movements.

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The Totnes outbase, seen above in a run-down state, will continue to operate. Low demand for buses at this site has resulted in stricter budgets for this site, but due to a new contract, extra buses are needed, so it will be kept on, but there is only money for minimal improvements. A local coach operator now rents 3 spaces for vehicle, up from 1 earlier this year.

The depots will receive detailing from Whistlehead - with accurate signage, markings, layout and fittings. The small Totnes outbase you see above is in a first-draft state. It is located at the back of a small trading estate - which is wedged between a supermarket and the River Dart.

Now, moving on... on the Totnes side of the map - the 525 route is beginning to take shape. A previously-unused spur of road which extends from the north of the map will be utilized. It will be extended slightly, to serve a rural shopping complex resembling Trago Mills Newton Abbot (http://www.exploredevonapp.com/media.ashx/trago-newton-abbot-view-over-haytorw_870_489.jpg). It will run from that, along the spur, to a new supermarket on the north edge of Totnes:

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It will then cross this new roundabout:
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The 525 then goes into Totnes, and exits, following a back-country route, eventually ending along the coast from Paignton, at Brixham.

So, what about the rest of the route?

We've already had a brief look at the P&R route and the 525. The 35 will remain largely the same (although it will have a route variant providing a limited-stop service), but will use the main roads to cross Totnes, calling at a new college, rather than using the back streets.
There will be a new seaside route, which goes to Brixham (Estuarytown, for those who watch the development streams). However, no framework for this has been laid. And finally, as mentioned before, there will be a Paignton town route which goes from the bus station, up to the train station by the dual carriageway via the residential area.

This gives 5 routes plus one route variant in total.

There will also be the secret feature at the zoo, in addition to another secret feature located north of Totnes.

There will be more updates soon - but in the meantime, why not follow the UKDT Twitch channel? Tune into www.twitch.tv/ukdt for regular development streams.
 

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Kyle Clemenkucc

The one, the only
Jul 10, 2017
152
156
Torbay, Devon
Well if you're doing Brixham will you be doing the 12 route from Newton Abbot to Brixham? I'd guess not as it is a large route but the opportunity is there for it. Also, there are loads of smaller routes going throughout Paignton and Brixham that would be very interesting to drive. Other than that I must say it is shaping up to be an incredible map.
 
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0118999

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Remember this is a fictional map, it's only inspired by Devon. There's no 35 in reality, it's equivalent is part of a Stagecoach Gold service. Thus it's unlikely there will be a 12 or even a Newton Abbot, and if there is it won't be a 1:1 reality.
 

iomex

UKDT
Dec 10, 2015
1,548
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We've been keeping things quiet, as we would have liked to keep most of the map a surprise, but given how eager some people are for updates, I feel I should post some progress.

To start, I'll show some screenshots of Totnes - I've recently constructed further scenery past the rail station to go to a trading estate where a depot outstation is located. This means there's only five minutes of driving between Totnes and a depot. This is in preparation for further routes, and more flexibility with night time routing of the 35. This will take the place of the Paignton town garage, which I'll mention later in this post.

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This is the entrance to the Totnes depot outstation. The building on the left of the picture is simply a warehouse unit. The depot has yet to be detailed, hence no interior shots. We can see coaches parked just inside the entrance - these are a few spots rented out by a local coach op.
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This is supposed to be a sort of run-down trading estate, so of course there has to be a scabby garage in there.
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The estate is located on the edge of town, just behind this Morrisons supermarket.
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The station itself has had a refresh, with the area made to feel more industrial with 'arches' units.
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A bit of context for the area. The scenery behind the rail line won't be completed until it is finalized.
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A newbuild development sits alongside the canal on ex-industrial land. You won't really see the canal in passing, but it should make a decent spot to take screenshots of your bus :p

Right now, the map is in it's 'Second Polish' phase, so the following tasks are underway:
  • Updating splines from old to new. These have 'final' textures, have extraneous faces removed, correct height profile tags, seasonal textures, etc. The road surface texture has been swapped to use that utilized in Cotterell - the weathering on this means that there is some work in re-aligning some splines. The differing height profiles, along with removal of 'offset' splines means that some splines have been pushed out of alignment, and need to be fixed. M-R conversion splines will need to be updated, as well, to have correct texture profiles.
  • Review of existing scenery - my method of working is to make several 'passes' of a map - trying to make one area final quality in one go results in differing styles and levels of quality across the whole map, so I prefer this 'polishing' method.
Once this has been done, then a third polish phase will be started, which will introduce final level of detailing, road damage, etc. Ambient audio and other features will be implemented at this time as well. Junctions will be converted into objects, and 'side street' and 'long distance' views implemented.

There is nothing to show you from Paignton right now, as the new height profiles (and 'highlight' textures) mean that it's a mess of bright colours and horribly cambered splines. However, I can say that we've resited the Park & Ride, removed the old road leading up to it in favour of a proper 70mph dual carriageway and made space for a new main depot. Paignton is still to be worked on - the seafront needs to alter to accommodate new routes - this is partly why the Paignton town garage has been removed. It is unnecessary to have a main depot and a town garage in the same place, and with that part of the map being redeveloped as a nice seafront area, a grotty bus garage simply wouldn't fit.

We have a solid plan for routes, which are final.

  • 35: This will remain the staple route, going between Paignton and Totnes, using the new roads, but otherwise the same. There will be evening/weekend workings and a route variant to provide a bit of variety. Instead of going via Baker's Hill, which the 525 will use instead, the 35 will stick to the main roads, taking in a new college on the edge of Totnes.
  • PR: The Park & Ride site has been moved to the Tweenaway Cross area, this route will serve as the 'local Paignton town route', taking approximately 10 minutes to get to the bus station, taking the fast route to the seafront, then going on to the bus station.
  • 525: This will run from an as-yet undeveloped part of the map north of Totnes, in our parody of Trago Mills, running cross-country via twisty single-track lanes to a new town past Paignton.
  • 12: This will be a seafront route, a parody of Stagecoach's 122 route, going from Paignton to the new town mentioned above (route 525).
  • NX: No number decided for this, but it will leave Totnes, and head to an as-yet undeveloped dual carriageway, flying through the middle of the map. It'll call at the new Park & Ride site at Tweenaway Cross (therefore connecting with the PR route to serve Paignton town centre), before heading back on to the dual carriageway, and going up to a small regional airport, about 15 minutes out of Paignton. This hasn't been built yet but will parody Bristol Airport.
The 35 (its variants), and the PR route will be finished first as 95% of the scenery and road structure is already in place for them. That will make for a full, final release on those two routes.

···
Later on, we plan to release a second version, featuring the rest of these routes. We plan for this to be a 'premium version'. Therefore, there will be BotW v3, featuring 2 routes, and BotW v3 premium version, which will feature five. The premium version will be paid for.

This is something we've been considering for a while. We don't believe that BotW should be fully payware, as it forms a large part of the OMSI UK community, and making it fully payware would cut it off from a large part of the community we're trying to help grow.

Therefore, we feel a 'premiumware' setup is a fair compromise. The reason we need to do this, is to help invest in the further promotion of the community. Showbus events are expensive to put on, it is all done at our expense (last year I paid for pretty much everything, and Chris and Onion brought in their equipment to use). Also, we really feel we ought to make UK OMSI mods a lot more professional to reach a larger audience, with good quality boxed copies (we'd like to put goodies in them), as well as a proper Steam presence, access to professional content (The flora pack cost money to get textures for, for example), and so on.

We will, of course, be listening you at all times. When this premium version is released, we will go back and update the free version with some secret goodies (we think you'll like them). Note, Cotterell is not part of this plan - as the idea to link Cotterell with BotW was dropped some time ago - it will remain free, even if/when it goes on to Steam.

I understand this could possibly annoy some people, but we feel that we're not 'taking anything away', as content currently available in BotW will remain free (PR route, 35), and that we are going to be throwing in extra stuff with those as well. We have our own ideas about what should and shouldn't be paid-for, certain developers are jumping on the bandwagon, throwing stuff on Steam and seeing if anyone will buy it. It has been something we've been planning for very carefully over the last few months, and we will be fully transparent with everything (including a transparency statement). We will only put content on there which we feel really deserves it. And of course, negotiate a good deal with the publisher.

···
Later on, once complete, I will be able to show you the refreshed Totnes town centre, before the rural stretch (which should be quite fast to do).
 

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Kyle Clemenkucc

The one, the only
Jul 10, 2017
152
156
Torbay, Devon
I am honestly squealing in delight at the fact that a "12" route is being implemented. Even if it isn't the actual 12, I don't care. As long as it gives me an excuse to make the Hop 12 livery I've been meaning to make I'm a happy guy. And if the ALX400 goes Regional I could make a Bayline repaint. And if that's a thing that can happen, it's happening. And as for the progress you've made so far. I'm quite frankly blown away. Will definitely be grabbing the premium version when it's out :)
 

LazyGuy222

Resident First Leicester Enthusiast
May 7, 2016
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I am honestly squealing in delight at the fact that a "12" route is being implemented. Even if it isn't the actual 12, I don't care. As long as it gives me an excuse to make the Hop 12 livery I've been meaning to make I'm a happy guy. And if the ALX400 goes Regional I could make a Bayline repaint. And if that's a thing that can happen, it's happening. And as for the progress you've made so far. I'm quite frankly blown away. Will definitely be grabbing the premium version when it's out :)
Please, make it again but the Hop 12 livery has already been made and is available for release here!
 

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