Rural Renewal Project

[patriots_1228 51]

make a peice with prisoners milking cows for community service jk. good work alien.

[Darmok 34]

Chris, I'm simply and truly flabbergasted! This is the greatest thing since the NAM in my opinion!

Saw your lots in Jacky's Cj, and couldn't believe my eyes!

The expression "Great work' does not begin to describe my enthusiasm for your project, I'll follow this and rest assured that I'll download and try those fantastic pieces as soon as they're available!

Looking forward to see what's coming next.

-John

[Alien_397 8]

Thanks darmok.  Their coming along, though I'm still filling some things in and working on some technical issues of the slope tolerances.

Big progress report tomorrow.

Oh yea, and a quick picture to tide folks over

Chris

[Silur 3,304]

Once more - Great work !!!

[bakercity 270]

Bravo on all the work shown so far. JKB

[Sim shady 12]

Its tomorrow!!! the flora looks stunning!

[jacqulina 162]

beautifull flora chris amazing work your doing the paths look awesome running through the flora

[Insane Child of Bodom 1]

Very cool!

[Alien_397 8]

Alright, so I'm a day and a half behind my update on SC4D, The formatting's easier there.  eh.

Diagonal Fillers

At Ennedi's suggestion, I've added some diagonal filler lots as shown below.  At present they exist for the diagonal 1x1 pieces and the 2x1 curves in several different configurations, but I've got several more I would like to add.

Slope Friendly Pieces

Also, I think there was some confusion about the sloped pieces I'd made from where I'd showed them placed on level ground.  This is something that would never be done in practice and was only shown there to give an idea of just what I'd done.  So here's a better example, showing my pieces next to pieces following a more traditional approach used by many fences I've seen.  While the 'one size fits all' traditional approach isn't bad in urban settings, I think it's more realistic in rural areas that it should try to follow the terrain as closely as possible.

Basic Set

Since my first post, I've filled in a few voids on the basic fence lots that I've come across or that others have pointed out, so here is a view of all the basic pieces, minus gates(which are all shown in a previous post):

New Curves

One thing that is not readily noticeable in this picture is the improvements made to the 2x1 curves and all the pieces built around them.  I've done a better job of getting a smooth transition between these pieces into the next(thanks to Gaston for bringing this up), and have used the same approach to improve the 's' curves, plus I've added a diagonal 's' curve, which I've found to be really handy.  Here's a picutre of the orignal, note how the angles just don't line up, it bows out a little bit:

Here's the new curve, along with the diagonal 'S's

And an example of these new and improved pieces in practice(plus an excellent illustration of why men should be sober when constructing fences )

As far as the gravel paths go, I've got a couple of transitions I need to get around to making, then they will be finished for all intents and purposes.

Need to do list

SO, here's a quick list(not necessarily complete) of what I have to complete before I can get this ready for release:

1. lot icons for new fence lots

2. additional diag filler lots

3. Correct positioning of diagonal gates

            This is a biggy as it will require rerendering all ten diagonal gate props

4. additional transition lots for gravel roads(to dirt farm roads, and possibly one or two other things)

flora

These will be released wholly separately when they are completed and are primarily on hold until the fences and paths are done.

On that note, I have actually started with something after I accidentally got an interesting result and decided to improve upon it, but it's something I wanted to try to do from the beginning.  There's never really been a good way to make a ditch before, that was slope tolerant.  What I've done is combined the ideas of plobbable water and my recent experiments with flora.  Here's the basic idea I was going for:

And here's the results thus far:

Let me know yall's thoughts on it so far, and any ideas on variations or improvements.  Thanks everyone.

Chris

[Silur 3,304]

Hi,Alien_397

Great Project and Giant Work !!!

This is my favourite today !!!

I like rural style in SC4 ...

[gabry85 2]

Wow! Now that's detailing! Rural areas will not be the same...

About fillers, can you add some Maxis' land textures to the diagonal and curves fences?

[Meastro444 1]

i hope he doesnt, because it would be out of place in the open, where you are trying te create fields.

alien, it looks most awesome, keep it up!

[jacqulina 162]

awesome work chris the curves are wonderfull,slope tollerance is fantastic,i love the ditch and flora i cant wait to see more and use everything in the game

[Darmok 34]

Hi Chris,

Diagonal fillers: Great idea. hoping that there will be pieces with a transparent texture.

Slope friendly pieces: Simply fantastic!

Basic set and new curves: What can I say besides that I can't wait to use them!

The ditch experiment looks VERY promising, are you planning to have different colored textures to simulate ditches that can be a bit deeper?

Thanks for your hard work!

-John

[Dexter 40]

These look great. I have been waiting for something like this for ages, as I have never liked the way that fields do not have any fences or hedges around them.

This also means that we can have more realistic looking overgrown empty lots in the semi-urban areas in the game.

[Scaley McSlither 1,714]

Who needs SC5? This is amazing work, take a bow!

[sebbyb07 2]

This looks awesome, i can't wait to add these to my city. I like how the fences stick 2 fingers up t the grid, lol! if you need any testing help let me know.

[Godzillaman 21]

Hail SC4 and all custom content creators!

[bakercity 270]

not bad at all. keep it coming. JKB

[SimRabbit 48]

This reminds me of rural Georgia, US..

Keep it up man!

[JADsHome 12]

Ooooh I'm looking eagerly forward to this - GREAT work so far...

[Fledgeling 1]

\love the ditch, it looks exactly like a very small damp prairie watercourse with vast swaths of sensitive fern, that exact color.

[dedgren 830]

John (Darmok) pointed me at your work here, Chris. You are doing phenomenal things, and have a wonderful sense of scale- I think that's why its all so particularly eyecatching.

Thanks for working on one of the great "holes" in the game.

David

[gabry85 2]

Originally posted by: Meastro444 i hope he doesnt, because it would be out of place in the open, where you are trying te create fields.

alien, it looks most awesome, keep it up!

quote>

Never said he shouldn't, but it would be great if I can plop them in closed fields as well.

Just my 2 cents, anyway.

[Alien_397 8]

Well I started contemplating ways of working these into fields a few weeks ago when I was doing the daigonal fillers.  Of course doing pieces for every farm texture out there is quite impossible and unrealistic timewise.  Let's take a straight diagonal piece with trasprent textures on one side, and one of the maxis lettuce fields on the other.  There are actually two ways the lettuce field can run in relation to the fence, so that requires two lots, same thing if I put a straight ortho piece on this texture.  That's already four lots for one field and very minimal use of my fences.  As you start adding basic curved pieces and fields, the number of lots goes through the roof.

Instead I'm contmplating making a couple of nondirectional, nonspecific textures(just dirt, no rows, etc.) that could work with multiple fields along with flora to soften those diagonal edges.

But that's still a ways off right now.  In case anyone's wondering why I hadn't been around here much, it's because I'm trying to finish an old project of mine from back in april real quick(and it is actually getting close ).  You can see it at this link: https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=37&threadid=87760&enterthread=y if you hadn't already.

Or you can go here for a little more discussion on it(it's been kinda quite on ST guys)

Chris

[SCkid 0]

wow. this is quite amazing, i would like to use them, but i havn't figured out how? mind helping me out? thanks

[Alien_397 8]

Hi SCKid, glad you like it.  None of it is ready for release yet, and I'm diligently trying to finish another project(see my post above) before I move on back to these.  The fences and paths will be ready for upload probably within the next 2-3 weeks, but don't quote me on that.

Chris

[TheQuiltedLlama 34]

Originally posted by: Alien_397The fences and paths will be ready for upload probably within the next 2-3 weeksquote>

Mwhahaha!

Seriously though, the work you are doing here is phenomenal, It was much needed.

[SCkid 0]

Ha, ok. thanks. i can't wait. it looks great!

[Alien_397 8]

I appreciate everyone looking in on me here .  I've been here and there, and a few places in between, and while I've been here, I've been working on the football field project, which keeps getting added to.  I've got a bad tendancy to do that .

Here's a quick teaser of something I started playing with tonight.

This was really just testing out new textures and techniques, and once I get organized I'll have a lot more pictures to show where I'm going with this.