BATs by Bipin

[simlink 1,098]

Sweet! They look great Bipin. I look forward to seeing them lotted in the future.

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

You know what I think about it

[Bipin 3,403]

So who wants to build 14 new contemporary condominiums/suburbs in their cities?

[mattb325 28,891]

Hello Bipin

I thought I would post this in here rather than the STEX file itself.

I downloaded your lovely houses: I really like the colour schemes you have given them....nice touch; the materials used are also really charming.

I note that you say this is version 1.0.0, I do hope you will revise these as they could be really stellar creations....the following items in particular are off:

* The buildings themselves are wildly off-centre and will not sit on any standard lot sizes. To compensate, I know that you have made them into props and used a blank building, but that just means that they will appear at growth stage 1 which isn't really desirable. Re-positioning and re-rendering will address this.

* The buildings are quite overscaled. While the Z axis is roughly OK (you should probably decrease the floor height by about 0.5m); it is the combination of both length and width (approx 28m) that really make these houses appear way too large....that and the fact that there are only 4 windows and a glass door to the deck tell me that if those dimensions are correct, then these houses would be very dark inside.

I would suggest decreasing the depth by approx 8-10m - if you look at Maxis R$$$ homes, your R$$ homes are substantially larger than the biggest palazzo. Yours of course have a double garage, so you would probably not want to decrease the width too much.

If you do take the trouble to re-render these homes, could you add a gradient to the roof/walls? I know these are in HD, but the textures look odd at Z5 and I believe a gradient will help in this regard and all in all make for some really useful additions to the game

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Right know I think I can agree with Matt, he know what's right. You can't always judge a bat by it's cover until you have downloaded them and tested them.

I have not tested them, the fact is I do not really test anyone's bats because I am a "Heavy Batter", I do not play the game often. I do hope you do fix those changes and another thing it would be great if you can show more pictures in your uploads, not only that you need to upload in game shots, the more the sometimes better so we can see if there is scale problems lotting problem, before I upload my bats I try to get other batters to test my work, its like my only little scrutiny behind lines.

I think it's important for all batters and modders to test there work and is better to have other to test your work before upload bats. This is not only for you this is for all batters too! and non noobs batters.One thing I do hope is that we can be a little more organized when we upload buildings and modds for the new sim city 5/ Sim City 2013. We are a community of batters, modders, and city buildiers,and we will help each and should if something is wrong.

  Edited April 10, 2012 by Aaron Graham  

[gutterclub 2,729]

Look great pal, but is there any chance of both SD and HD versions? No worries if not but worth asking

[RRtexasranger 45]

Can anyone point me in the direction of a tutorial to making the on ramps such as the one Bipin shown with CURBs?

AKA, this one:

https://community.simtropolis.com/index.php?app=downloads&module=display&section=screenshot&record=96080&id=27197&full=1

Those retainer walls are the only thing that makes me want to use RHW (meaning I'm completely new to it).

[nick13 194]

Yeah, can you give a short tutorial on how you set up the RHW? Im having a hard time figuring it out and I really want to use the curb

[Bipin 3,403]

Sorry all, been busy lately and couldn't reply, but I'll get on it for sure!

[Bipin 3,403]

A new CURB set has been released; completely remodeled and retextured! I didn't publicize this one until a day or two ahead, as I wanted it to be a bit of a surprise. Without further adieu, I present to you...

  Edited June 4, 2012 by Bipin  

[Bipin 3,403]

Surprise! I've added a more modern firestation to the STEX: I felt as though it would help fill in the gap of SC4 missing urban public services. Hope you enjoy it!

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Nice upload. Why didn't you announce it in your thread

[Bipin 3,403]

Wanted to surprise you guys. :-)

[weixc812 509]

Your BATs are so delicate

Thank you for sharing

[Bipin 3,403]

Just a little teaser of what's to come:

That's zoom 6, and those are BAT'ed streets, as opposed to textured.

[darn42 1,268]

Looks cool but the intersection definitely needs some work. The tire marks look weird atm

[Bipin 3,403]

The intersection is just tthe normal intersection texture, the only modified parts (the stuff I BAT'ed) are the roads leading up to the intersection. I can't make that intersection "tile" yet because I don't have my computer with the 3dsMax on it with me.

  Edited July 19, 2012 by Bipin  

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

I would love to see another Street Restyle Mod. I remember Heblem made a video that was called "SC4 Extreme Realistic City" or something like that. He used a similar texture which was never uploaded though. If this would be your new project this would be great.

I like what I see. The texture looks great although I still don't really know which part was made by you. An intersection would be great. Also, I would love to see some european-styled lights. From what I can see at the pic, they look oversized.

Looking forward further updates

  Edited July 19, 2012 by skyscraper241  

[Bipin 3,403]

I made the red rubber grip tiles and the overlaying straight road sections. The lights are from the USL light mod and the sidewalk textures (except for those red mats) are from the very mod by Heblem you mentioned.

[Francis90b 748]

Very nice! What do you plan to do with it?

[Bipin 3,403]

It will only work with lots where sidewalk textures, such as the ones shown, can be placed on the edge of the lot facing the road. The road BAT I have created is 16x16m, like a tile. It overlays the road tile adjacent to the lot it is used on. What this means is, roads or streets can be dragged about in a grid pattern like normal, but once lots with the sidewalk textures and the overlaying road piece are plopped beside the dragged street, the overlaying BAT makes the streets appear essentially as the ones in the picture above. This is especially good for making more realistic, uniform suburbs and low density areas.

[Francis90b 748]

To be honest, that seems a bit unpratical to me right now...the "overhang" will cosmetically retexture only a short stretch of the road, therefore the player will need to plop an awful lot of them to make things appear uniform.You, as the BATer of those pieces, would also need to BAT a large number of those overhangs in order to get a functional pack.

I would rather think about making it as a cosmetic mod for SAM.

  Edited July 19, 2012 by Francis90b  

[Bipin 3,403]

The thing is though, the road is one whole tile wide, to make it appear like the wide suburban roads in wealthier or newer areas. The other advantage is that it would be easier to do driveways, especially with existing textures (because the road is one whole tile wide, the driveways will end where the road curb is). If however, it was possible to to make a SAM mod where props could be placed to overlap the road itself, then I suppose it would work. The other problem is I simply don't know how to mod this. I can BAT what's required, but can't mod it. All I know is HTML and Java, so I'd need someone to do the modding.

[Francis90b 748]

"SAM" is a graphic mod that allows you to have some streets that looks different from the standard SC4 street....so, you would have a starter piece, and roads looking as you would like could be dragged from it.

So, using this mod you would have what you're aiming for, but probably with more ease and flexibility.

I know that modd as a player, but you might try to see how it's made.

  Edited July 19, 2012 by Francis90b  

[Bipin 3,403]

I think what you mean is more of a streetside mod, because that way props, such as sidewalks and wider roads, can be added in the form of T21s. Something I again, do not know how to do.

[Francis90b 748]

And i say, again, that you better have to learn how to do it.

[Bipin 3,403]

I never really learnt how to do it in the first place though, because with Windows 7 a lot of modification programs dont work, they only run on XP, and iLive is kind of buggy on Windows 7 (unless there is a version for Windows 7, do you know?) For the moment, I'll just stick with what I'm doing until i get a good idea of how these new streets look. Even if this isn't the method I stick with (which I agree is more cumbersome) it will look the same as it would with a T21 mod I suppose.

[Francis90b 748]

I'm so insistent over this because i think it would be waay more cumbersome, that's it.

I have PIM, Ilives, and other programs...though i don't think i have all the programs you would need to use to modd this specific project.But, what i have, runs fine on my windows 7.Also, never had pbs with Ilives...so idk.

Try asking other people with win 7 what they have and how it runs on their system, though.

Some programs also have paths that should facilitate things...but idk much about them.Just know one of my programs needed one, and i downloaded it, and then it ran fine.Period .

  Edited July 20, 2012 by Francis90b  

[SimCoug 5,976]

I have win 7 and have no problem running ilives reader, or any sc4 tool for that matter. There are usually a couple hiccups once I first installed the programs, but once I went through the support threads I was able to fix 'em.

[Bipin 3,403]

Most (but not all) of the problems were with SC4 Tool. I had tried to use this tool on my Windows 7 computer a while ago, long before I was on these forums, but whatever I tried, I couldn't. That may be because I used it so early on that no Windows 7-supported version was released, I don't know, but i'll check it out.