No Creek Map Progress Update: I'm Still Here

Hello No Creek fans. It's time for another update on how the map is progressing. I've been pretty quiet on Discord and here lately because life has been incredibly busy. Between things that I have to get done at home this time of year, being very busy at work, lots of meetings after hours, and health appointments for my daughter, working on the project has been very difficult. I mentioned several months ago that this would be the case with all that I have going on. I promise that I'm doing the best I can to move this project forward and appreciate your patience.

Now for some actual project information. As I have started working on the main farm on the map, it has required me to customize a lot stuff. Currently, I've got four beef cattle pastures/lots/barns all setup and ready to go. This will give the player options to move animals around and have lots of flexibility for how you want to run your operation. FS25 is so much better than previous versions of the game, as the animal meshes work way better. The open pastures are very large and it is fun to see cattle spread out like you would see in real life.

I've included the Ray County hog floor setup that I made for that map. It was actually modeled off the real thing on my family farm from this map, so it fits right in. I also made a custom shed to more closely reflect what that main building actually looks like.

What I have spent the most time on, though, is modeling and setting up the farmhouse that I grew up in. This has taken a tremendous amount of time. To be honest, I will probably never do another house from scratch again. I'm confident that I have 100 hours in this structure alone already and it still isn't entirely finished. Many players won't step foot inside it more than a few times so it is hard to justify that kind of time for what is supposed to be a simulation of farming. When I started this project, though, my goal was to have each farm with an enterable house so that is why I'm committed to this. I do plan to use structures that myself and LJR modding setup for Ray County on a couple of the other farms. Even though it has been a long and tedious project, I'm really excited to have so closely recreated the house I grew up in and have it in the game. As a disclaimer, the layout of the house is exactly like it is in real life, but it has been updated with a modern style.

In addition to the main farm, I've been working on the dealership. You all selected the location and the building through polls on Discord, so it was time to get this started. I've still got a little to do, but it is mostly finished and I'm pretty happy with it. The space was a little awkward to utilize, but I think that is often the case with these types of businesses. As I worked on this, I thought it would be cool to have gates that opened/closed to represent realistic hours of business. There is a game limitation that really prevents this from being a viable option, but guess what, with another .lua script, I was able to get around it. Basically, what you run into in the base game is that you can't have an object appear in a location (in this case a closed gate) and then disappear at certain times of the day and have the same apply to the collisions that go with the object. So if you have an object with collisions and you make the object visually disappear, the collisions still remain, which defeats the purpose of a gate. If you don't apply collisions, then even when the dealership is "closed", you could drive right through the gates. Now, with the script, the dealership has gates that will appear closed after hours (and have collisions), but have open gates (without collisions) during business hours. This is just another example of what can be done through .lua scripts. The options are pretty endless.

I also took a bit to model one of the buildings that I plan to incorporate in the tiny town of Dunlap. Right across from my where my grandfather lived in the town, there was a small church. I remember it vaguely as it was torn down when I was about 7-8 years old. In all of my searching I was able to find just one picture of the structure and make due to create it. Now, all that remains in that location is the bell they removed from the tower before tearing the structure down.

On another front, I've still been messing with the rising water. I decided to take it to the next level and see if it could work. As a kid growing up, I can't tell you how many times No Creek flooded out of its banks. It would typically happen every year, and sometimes multiples times in a season. Because the terrain is extremely accurate, I was able to recreate this in the game. Now, there is the potential for much of the bottom ground along No Creek to be underwater during large rain events! I'll be honest, this is something I'm really excited about. I can see the exact sights in the game that are etched into my memory from atop a hill looking over the hundreds of acres underwater. There is still a lot to do with adjusting the script and numbers here as obviously I don't want it to flood all the time, but still have it happen on occasion. This will take a lot of trial and error with adjusting numbers for the scripts and potentially editing some environment files that pertain to precipitation.

With the potential for flooded ground, this opens up some new gameplay scenarios. In FS25, with the implementation of rice, the game knows when water planes are just below, at, or above the surface of a field. If there is water near the surface, it will not allow you to plant those areas. Since the water will recede over time, you will have to wait to plant these areas until they are "dry" enough. It is unlikely, but possible, that some ground will be unplantable during a season.

Finally, don't think that I haven't been paying attention to things that you have posted in the bugs channel on Discord. I plan to dive into those and correct them before releasing the next version so keep posting. Once I get a few more things finished up, I'll get Beta 3.0 out for you guys to test all the new stuff. Again, thanks for your patience and support.

No Creek Farms