Rural Renewal Project

[bixel 1,223]

wow!! thats really good.

[Mulefisk 15]

Wow. Just wow. This is looking great. Realistic flora is sorely needed.

[Duvad 26]

Just discovered this thread - all this stuff is amazing. From the fences to paths to gates to boats - this stuff is exactly what I've been looking for.

[Alien_397 8]

You guys are always too kind.

If you haven't noticed yet, I've been expanding into a few new types of water flora, as I've never been very satisfied with most of what's been on offer.  The latest addition is some cat tails.  Gizmo's water flora, despite most of it being extremely over scaled, actually had a decent cat tail in it, though the colors where more saturated than what I liked and all his only have one model, which hurts the diversity you can get out of it.  Here's what I've got so far, with some of gizmo's for comparison.  Since the two are very much in the same scale, they can be mixed and matched quite nicely in the same area.

You can see here they also have an interesting effect under water.

I was also very much wanting them to work well with ploppable water, and in particular transparent ploppable water, so here's a few experiments.

And here is a marshy area I put together using one of my ditch protypes(seen by itself feeding into the top right corner) along with the cat tails for the edges with good effect IMHO.  You can also see how the 'water lillies'/duck weed(more on changes there later) works with it.

For those who aren't familiar with Jeronij's transparent ploppable water I suggest seeing the thread at SC4D(I'll edit in the link later, the forum is undergoing some maintanence right now).  There are better examples of it's use there, lol, but you can see the transparency here nonetheless.  As I said in an earlier post, the water lillies/duck weed is raised a little over 4 meters in the render in order to sit on top of it(as well as shallow in game water)

[jacqulina 162]

wow chris the flora is amazing,and i see what you mean about size,they do look very nice,i cant wait to try them

[gabry85 2]

OMG, can't recognize SimCity anymore! Your work is outstanding!

[Xyloxadoria 1,099]

Wow, that looks very good.  It makes the farms not look attached to the grid. You get to have bunnies (which are supposed to be congraulatory or something)

[bbfan02 23]

Not to ask a dumb question and all, but is that water flora out?

[Alien_397 8]

Jacky and Gabry:  I always appreciate yall guy's (and gal's) support

Xyloxadoria:  Sweet! bunnies.  lol.

bbfan:  not a dumb question at all, but unfortunately they are still very much in developement.  Some things are done or more or less done, but I'm not releasing them peacemeal.

[BurroDiablo 222]

Amazing stuff! This is going to make my Taiga complete when its released!

[Andreas Roth 607]

The fourth pic almost looks like a real one - this is great stuff!

Oh, and bunnies are very nice, but I figure that duckies fit even better.

[jayo 44]

Nice work-When will they be realese.I'm kinda desperate lol

[FrankU 354]

Chris,

Followed your thread on SC4D, and read it here just now.

It's even getting greater. Can't wait to work with your stuff...

Thanks in advance.

[penguin007 27]

Wow your flora makes those places so realistic. When are you going to release the fences and tracks?

Keep up the great work

Will

[Alien_397 8]

I'll get to replies this evening as my time is limited.

I got around to correcting an error in the diagonal gate props today, then I started working on randomizing them as had been discussed a while back.  After some experimentation and testing I got them working like I wanted, when right in the midst of my celebration, I took a look at the shadows...

Apparently the game is only using the shadows for the state zero model in the Type 4 exemplar, no matter which of the two models it shows.  I've wracked my brain for an answer, but I'm stuck, and it might not be possible to fix.  If anyone knows anything about this issue, I'd sure appreciate the help.

[Sim shady 12]

wow...thats got to be annoying...

it looks great though

[Fledgeling 1]

If you cant fix it, randomized open and closed gates as separate plops would work just as well. One for open, with its shadows. One for closed, with its proper shadow. Not as fancy, but the end result will be the same.

[jacqulina 162]

i agree with fledgeling chris

[Duvad 26]

If you cant fix it, randomized open and closed gates as separate plops would work just as well. One for open, with its shadows. One for closed, with its proper shadow. Not as fancy, but the end result will be the same.

Each gate still has slightly different shadows because of the different gate designs, but yeah that would be the next best thing.

[sobol 1]

Nice looking farms....

wow.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Yeah, I suppose you could give the gate props particular schedules. I'm sure they have schedules in real life anyway.

If that's not an option, you could also just have the gate cast now shadow. It would be better than having a shadow cast from a nonexistant object.

Everything's still looking great though, keep up the good work.

[calibanX 1]

Anxiously awaiting this release. My large rural areas will get a big boost!

[Shanna 1]

Wow amazing works!! I love the fences and I can't wait to use them in my rural areas!!!*__*

[CDI_spy 5]

That's insanely gorgeous, or gorgeously insane, however you want to look at it.  Aesthetic value is through the roof, anyways.

[BurroDiablo 222]

Man, forget the Replies... the more time you spent replying to us, the less time you'll have to develop all this awesome and desperately needed flora and random rural stuff!

[Alien_397 8]

The lack of replies hasn't been by choice, I recently moved appartments and don't have internet set up here yet.  I'm just occaisionally being able to pick up other wireless networks, so bare with me.

As for using regular timed props as Jason suggested, the shadow problem is actually associated with the reskey 4 property, not the randomized aspect, so any timed or seasonal prop will have this problem.  Thus there will be open and closed lots as in the beta.  Thanks for everyones input on the issue.

Due to RL stuff, I haven't gotten much done on my larger projects lately, I've just confined myself to smaller simpler ones that don't require quite so much organizing and such.  Living in central Texas, we have a lot of Dairy Queen's, and Kevdan did a DQ some time ago, but it was a much more modern looking one.  So I decided I wanted to make one representative of the older style that I'm used to, and which can be found in just about every small town around here.

The results:

Some of you might notice you've never seen these parking lots before as well, and for good reason.  I'd been wanting to add to the possibilities with some of the existing parking lot textures for a while, and the lot gave me the perfect reason to finally do it.  These are additions to the Peg scenic drive textures and the NDEX ADC parking lot textures.  I've made the new textures in both styles, here's some examples of what they can do:

There are 'T' parking, two types of corner parking, and numerous transitions between seamless parking areas, or those broken up with curbs as in the original Peg textures.  These images just show all the new textures, in no particular order, just to give a better idea.

So I haven't been idle, and I haven't been ignoring you guys, but you will have to be patient with me, there's a lot going on right now, and as I said before, internet is pretty touch and go until I can set up my own connection.

Chris

[DarkEldar 6]

These are looking great! reminds me of some of Simgoobers work how he did the small convenience stores.

[jacqulina 162]

wow excellent buildings very nice work chris good luck with your move,im looking out for more progress

[Alien_397 8]

DarkEldar:  Thanks, just to aviod any confusion, the best buy I used for those example lots is a Simgoober building, I'd just picked a random building to use for those as they were just showing the parking lot textures.

And thanks as always Jacky.

I've also decided that over the next several days I'm going to get an initial release of the fences and paths put together.  It won't have everything I'd like it to, but I'll add on to it in later updates.  I've just got to fix a few lots, change the menu placement and make sure everything has custom icons.

[jacqulina 162]

hi chris thats awesome news my friend i look forward to them,would it be cheeky lol to ask when the flora will be released im dying to get hold of that lol