Jason's BATs & Tutorials

[Glenni 1,444]

Yeah, that looks very good, it sort of reminds me of the 30's buildings in MAFIA, it's a game from 2001 set in the 1930's. Lot of nice 30's architecture there!

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Beautiful! Yesterday I downloaded Perry Station for my new region - another gem from your jewel collection. However, it reminded me that another very important structure in SimCity is still not available in a style that would look nice in a city focused on the Chicago and NY tilesets: a bus station! All available bus stops just look too modern. In my last region I've used Ill Tonkso's Washington D.C. bus stop (and liked it very much!), but nowadays that's a rather old BAT that no longer reflects today's standards some of you guys have reached. Just thought I'd mention it... *whistles a tune and sneaks away*

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Dusktrooper:  *The police station files a police report inside of itself, for sexual harassment*

SimFox:  Will do!

Patriots:  It has a copper roof, limestone (though different type) facade, and little square windows, but other than that they're not the same.

Scipio:  Sandstone?  I don't know if that's the right material for this, lol.  But either way, this was originally meant as a weekend project, like that library I did, so I'm already way behind schedule.

Spa:  Thanks!

Bigskelding:  Yeah, hopefully it won't be much longer.

YoshiIsland:  Somehow I've managed to be pretty productive though, in general.  For most of 2007 I averaged a little less than a BAT per month, while recently I've averaged a little more than a BAT a month.  I finished the train station, The Knoll Building, this, and have gotten most of the modeling done on that skyscraper.

ilikehotdogsalot:  lol, thanks. 

El Burro:  Thanks!

Glenni:  I intended that the building looks like it's from the early 30s, so that's good.

T Wrecks:  When I originally posted it (June 21^st, 2007), I was trying to find a use for it (other than generic CO growable), and came up with train station, and someone had proposed bus station, but I didn't really know how to rework the building/lot to fit a bus plaza in it, and didn't want to spend the time to (it was supposed to be a quicky, like so many of my buildings), so I just made it as a train station. 

But there's an art deco bus station in Ann Arbor, Michigan that might be a BSP building someday.  It looks a bit smaller than what you're thinking of (1 story 1x2), and I don't know how the buses interfaced with that either, since it also looks like a wall to wall building.

[Fledgeling 1]

Wow. Just, wow. Stunning

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Nonono, that comment about a bus station wasn't related to Perry Station. Perry is far too big for a bus station; it might be the head office of a bus company, if anything. What I was referring to is a simple 1x1 bus shelter that doesn't look like it was built after 1960, i.e. that's neither a boring conrete slab nor a shiny steel and plexiglass creation.

[Swiss_Canadian 2]

Hey Jason, that bus station in Ann Arbour looks freakishly similar to Windsor's old bus station I was telling you about - the one that was "updated" in the '70's *shudder*

[edmonton_stinks 5]

Looks good. I love the distinctive looks your buildings have. There are a lot of the same window styles, and the stone exteriors.

Stlouisdude, nobody is asking you to leave, only to post constructively. Every city has things it's not proud of. There are slums in St. Louis, just like everywhere else.

[autoVino 26]

Oh my!  My interent just broke and suddenly started working... and imageshack started working :-D

Looks nice is what I can say.

[st louis dude 6]

hey dood sorry about talking down on detroit all the haters can back off did anybody make the ren cen yet?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Fledgeling:  Thanks!

T Wrecks:  ahh, ok.  Send me a PM with some photos of what you're thinking of.  Depending on what it is I might be able to quickly make it.

Swiss_Canadian:  ahhh, lol

Edmonton_Stinks:  Thanks, I'm really glad you've picked up (and like!) my style. 

autovino:  Hope it stays that way!  I can't believe that you even bother coming online without seeing pictures from imageshack.

st louis dude:  I'll just pretend I didn't see that post. 

BAT Complete!

[Sim shady 12]

Fantastic job

[spa 968]

Looks great. The only suggestion I have is maybe you need some small lights on the walls. The flood lighting looks great but it kind of just appears out of thin air.

[Andreas Roth 607]

Originally posted by: spaThe only suggestion I have is maybe you need some small lights on the walls. The flood lighting looks great but it kind of just appears out of thin air.quote>

That was my first thought as well, although many people seem to add such lights, but keep forgetting to model the source of the light. Apart from that, it looks excellent indeed.

[edmonton_stinks 5]

All right! Whenever you release that one, consider it downloaded!

[bigskelding 12]

Looks great, when can we expect it to be the long arm of the law in our cities? and swiss_canadian, come on u dont miss that old bus station? lol the ally or w/e u would like to call it lol. great work jason

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Thanks guys.  I thought about light fixtures, but I've really just been trying to get this one out the door.

This will be released sometime in the next week or two.  It's a 4x2 if you want to make a spot for it.

Here are the actual nitelites.  I forgot to make it TruNite for the last screenshot.

[autoVino 26]

looks phenomenal.  Seems to me that you have the daylighting rig figured out, and the nightlighting looks good too.

[mcarch 15]

Love it. Glad to see a new and different Police Station

[ky72x 13]

Excellent! The lights look very stunning. I'm glad that you left it at a 4x2 lot, because it makes it pretty versatile. Also, it lets us use it however we want in our cities, with or without parking, plazas, etc.

Any chance for a fire station to go along with this beauty?

- Kyle

[Jasoncw 11,840]

autoVino:  Thanks!  I've had the daylighting rig figured out for over a year though. 

mcarch:  Thanks!

ky72x:  Yeah, I hate it when the building fits where you want it to go, but the parking lot doesn't.  Or you want to expand a road to be an avenue, and there is no building there, but you still can't build over the parking lot.  But no fire station though, at least not any time soon.

Ok, so I guess I should start with a quote from T Wrecks.

Not if you mod your police station. RippleJet has found out that large part of the problem is due to the small radius of police dispatches. When a crime occurs, the game simulates a police car that drives there, and police officers that pursue the criminal and attempt to get him. The nearer they come to their maximum dispatch radius, the more the probability to catch the criminal decreases... and their max dispatch radius is 2 tiles = 32 metres. For comparison, a fire truck has a dispatch radous of 8 tiles = 128 metres. Yes, that's correct: It means that the fire brigade can spray water further than a policeman can run. Must be all the doughnuts, I guess.

Anyway, what happens when a crime occurs in a big lot is that the police officers have reached the end of their dispatch radius several tiles before they approach the criminal, hence the chance to catch the criminal drops to nearly zero. And a criminal that remains free is very likely to commit further crimes. That's the reason why you often get that "crime den" message, which almost always refers to places on a bigger lot.

Setting the max dispatch radius to a higher value improves the situation considerably. I haven't started my new region yet, but all police departments that go into my cities (both default and downloads) will have an extended dispatch radius. I could release a patch for the default stations, but it is RippleJet who dicovered all this, not me. Hence the credit is all his, and the honour of publishing a patch and enjoying the praise and the downloads is also his. I'd feel like a thief otherwise. It just wouldn't be right.

I merely wanted to spread the news that we might very well be at the point of seeing another barrier crumble... (and I hope I managed to summarise halfways correctly so that RJ isn't banging his head on the desk now.)quote>

It's about the crime bug for large lots.

So I made a city, and put lots of airports adjacent to each other, and plopped all of the big rewards, etc, and got a lot of crime going.  I put down a bunch for normal police stations, and as usual they didn't get the crime in the big lots.

Then I plopped my police station (I modded it btw), and it caught every single crime (though it was only 11 crimes).

I modded the station so that it would be the next step up after the deluxe station, except that the radius covers the entire city, and it can overcome the crime bug.  I scaled the price of the station to be in line with the others, and then added 100 to the plop and monthly cost for its special abilities.

But anyway, the point is that it covers the entire city and seems to catch every crime, and even though I made it more expensive, it's still cheap compared to most people's budgets.  I don't want this to be a cheat lot.

Any input?

[SimFox 802]

It is all peachy! But that is exact name of the exemplar in question? Is it Police Station Dispatch Radius? (one that is set at 48m?)

If so then at least one old stations shouldn't have had any problem catching all the criminals in big lots - Frogface's Modern (Glass) station has dispatch radius of 248m (15,5 squares), or am I missing something?

BTW iLive Rider states that default value for this parameter is suppose to be 200m. Where does this figure come from given that all the ingame police structures had it set at 48m?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Yes, I think it is the dispatch radius.  Does Frogface's station catch all the criminals?

My testing wasn't very thourough, but from what I saw, the crime wasn't really reduced (or at least not enough for me to notice), it's just that the police caught every single criminal, compared to using the default stations, which did not.  But the city wasn't crime-free, and it still seemed like the big lots were still the high crime areas.

I don't know anything about how crime works though.

If the default value is supposed to be 200, then that would be a more reasonable distance.  In the game, 48 meters pretty much means that the police are able to walk across the front lawn to the front door of the house, lol.  "Remember guys, murder at least 48 meters away from the street..."  Or maybe the police are all RoboCops, and can't run.

[mightygoose 92]

no the dispatch radius is how far from the car the police can make an arrest. a fire engine has a a dispatch radius of 8 tiles... ie the hoses can put water up to 8 tiles away from the road. hence there is no fire problem on buildings less than 16x16 if a building is larger than this it will start to experience with fire what the large lot crime bug does with lots over 6x6, = to twice the dispatch radius of the police. this 200 number... i have no idea where you pulled that from simfox... maybe we are talking about different parameters either way i know there is a thread about mattb325's station on the LEX that has a greatly increased radius for just this reason....

[T Wrecks 10,209]

The dispatch radius is actually 48 metres for all default police stations. The property "Police Station Dispatch Radius" is set to 48 (Float32). This is a fact, and everybody can check by selecting SimCity_1.dat in iLive's reader, firing up the navigator and browsing for the police station building exemplar files. There you have it, black on white.

Apart from that, I can't contribute that much because I haven't really played the game in months.

With regard to that bus station, some simple iron & glass construction would do, I guess - it doesn't even have to be Art Deco, simply old and obviously pre-1950. Something like this, for example:

[Jasoncw 11,840]

MightyGoose:  Can you post a link to the thread about matt's station?  I just looked for it all over the site and couldn't find it.  I couldn't find anything by RippleJet about the stations either.  SC4Devotion confuses me, lol.

T Wrecks:  Yeah, I can probably do something like that sometime.  I could make both an Art Nouveau and an Art Deco one.  Would you want them to be on TE to be placed directly on the roads, or would you rather have them be independent lots, like the Maxis stations?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

ok, so the police station is done. 

But I've decided to make a lot that is like the opposite of the police kiosk, it has neglible policing power, but it has patrol cars.  I'd like to make this lot to complement the patrol car-less central station.

"Police Station, Total Dispatches" is set to 8.  So when there is a riot, shouldn't I have 8 police cars from there?  When I query the lot, it tells me it has 8, but in the dispatch menu, it says I have 0 available.

The lot is a 2x4, which could be placed behind the police station to fill out a 4x4 block. 

Or should I just not bother with this lot?

[bixel 1,223]

Excellent Station. Real top notch and great idea. Never thought to have a station look like this but it is soo perfect.

[Andreas Roth 607]

Originally posted by: Jasoncw

Would you want them to be on TE to be placed directly on the roads, or would you rather have them be independent lots, like the Maxis stations?quote>

I'm not T Wrecks, but I'd vote for an independent lot, since bus stations that are placed directly on the road have a certain influence on the pathfinding engine of the game. It would be more flexible this way as well.

[shanghai kid 6]

Originally posted by: Jasoncw ok, so the police station is done. 

But I've decided to make a lot that is like the opposite of the police kiosk, it has neglible policing power, but it has patrol cars.  I'd like to make this lot to complement the patrol car-less central station.

"Police Station, Total Dispatches" is set to 8.  So when there is a riot, shouldn't I have 8 police cars from there?  When I query the lot, it tells me it has 8, but in the dispatch menu, it says I have 0 available.

The lot is a 2x4, which could be placed behind the police station to fill out a 4x4 block. 

Or should I just not bother with this lot? quote>

 

Please do make this as, we then have some police cars at the station who can be dispatched & as a bonus we can fill out a 4x4 block as you say.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Originally posted by: Andreas Roth I'm not T Wrecks, but I'd vote for an independent lot, since bus stations that are placed directly on the road have a certain influence on the pathfinding engine of the game. It would be more flexible this way as well.quote>

Andreas saved me the trouble of writing it up myself.