Ian's BAT Workbench

[ianpaschal 77]

INTRODUCTION

Hello! After a several year hiatus from SimCity 4, I have decided to return and actually follow through with a lot of grand custom content plans I made back around 2008/2009. The reasons for this are complicated, but a big part of it is that the NAM has, in my mind, finally come of age and between fractional angles, curves, widened and arrowed networks, etc., it is possible to build the cities I want to build. Lastly, if there's any older members in the audience, this is Scipio. I'm back!

 

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GROUNDWORK

One thing that I know every BATer has struggled with is scale. SimCity 4 is a bit whack but since I––essentially––intend to BAT an entire city, I have the freedom to fiddle with scale as well as a mandate to get it right, and stick to it for the next several months of BATing.

So I started my research for looking for benchmarks that I could use to get an idea for what a SC meter translated to in the real world. The benchmark needs to be whatever I don't have control over. For the most part this is automa, sims, roads, etc. So step 1 was to figure out how large the streets and railways were in Simcity (things that are easily compared to real life) and figure out what the difference in scale was.

The results were as follows:

1 lane of road: 5 meters

1 lane of street: 4 meters

1 set of rail tracks: 1,8 meters

The road and street measurements were telling: in-game meters were 0,2 to 0,25 times wider than what would be expected in real life. I figured then that a house which was, say, 5 meters in real life, should be scaled up to 6 or 6,25 in order to look proportionate in game. The wrench in the works, then, was the railroads, which are in fact spot on with what they should be (or at least the difference is negligible). What do; what do?

Since I intend to be focusing on Dutch BATs, it made sense to compare existing Dutch BATs to real world data about the buildings they imitate. Vanderaap's BATs always struck me as a little large, while Haarlemmergold's seemed a bit small. When I looked closely though, they both used a standard of about 2 buildings per tile. This would make the buildings enormous... 8 meter wide facades which very few buildings in Amsterdam have. Most range from about 5 to 6 meters. In fact, old Amsterdam zoning laws defined lot sizes in "Amsterdam feet" and started at 18 feet, or almost exactly 5 meters, up to 22 feet, or about 7 meters.

So using the game's 16 meter tile sizes means that you could comfortably fit about 3 buildings onto a tile instead of 4, making them look extremely small compared to cars, roads, or the oddly tall sims (even for Dutch genetic standards). For this reason I'm leaning towards scaling 12 real meters to 16 game meters. That means creating a BAT at real-life scale, then scaling it up by a factor of 1,333 on each axis, and an additional 1,333 on the Z axis to negate vertical squash.

I suspect this will keep buildings looking proportionate to their in-game surroundings such as the giant cars, sims, and roadways. Am I crazy or is this actually some pretty sound reasoning? I'd like to discuss it with other BATers before making a final decision one way or another and churning out the buildings.

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UPDATE 1

5 March 2014

It wouldn't be a BAT thread if I didn't show something, so here is the first thing I've started working on! 7,5 meter rail viaducts!

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to tell me what you think regarding the scale issues!

[Jasoncw 11,840]

ah, great to have you back!

 

For the scale issue you have it sort of backwards. It's not that sims and cars are at a scale and that everything is adjusted to them. It's that everything in the game is actually in straight meters, and that some things at small scales are made bigger than they should be, mainly for visual clarity because the resolution of the game is so small. Sims obviously, but even for cars, if the lanes and car sizes were correct it would look cluttered and a little confusing, even though we'd so much heavily prefer all the sizes to be correct.

 

But anyway, the game is in straight meters and you can model in meters without any adjustment. The dutch buildings will look underscaled because in real life they have a very small scale. This is a property they have in reality, and if you were to teleport an old building from amsterdam to canary wharf in london, it would look just as underscaled. They'd also look underscaled dropped into the downtown of an american city, or even really most cities in the world, since dutch cities have such fine scale.

 

So the scale contrasts are accurate, except for the contrast with the gigantic sims and the other overscaled street stuff, which is unavoidable.

 

Something I'd like to do is rescale all of the sim props. There's a tool for rescaling things like that, so I think it would be possible to extract all the sim props, rescale them, and have them override the existing ones. But it's a little outside my realm of expertise so I haven't dug into it yet.

[PBGV103 729]

Scaling the sims, props, and automata was going to be one of SimFox's projects.

If anyone had the skills to scale them to the proper sizes I think it would be one of the greatest mods of the last few years.

[APSMS 1,892]

The NAM has a standard road lane width to scale stuff by, and for that reference I think the lane standard is 4 meters.

 

Generally speaking the game scale is the same in a directions by up, where of course you scale by 4/3 to counter the vertical squash, as you mentioned. The only other thing to remember would be to make sure everything corresponds to the game's grid, which some BATters have forgotten about until the last minute, and had to redo everything (or a lot of stuff).

 

Also, this topic addresses new NAM development regardign rails, notably that they are now much narrower (okay, so maybe only by a few pixels) and match the RL dimensions in accordance with the game's treatment of road lane widths.

 

Generally many of the default BATs provided by Maxis didn't have a consistent scale either, with the med-wealth houses being not too big, but the R$$$ Mansions being ridiculouly large to propagate in any large number. Don't even mention the R$ bungalows that hold 14 people but are visually about a third the size of the med-wealth homes. So scale is problematic, but generally as long as the BATter is consistent and your BATs blend well (despite the scale, Mattb325's buildings come to mind), then I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it.

[ianpaschal 77]

Well either way when it comes to scale the reference point is arbitrary. It can't be forwards or backwards, Jason. My point though is that considering how it's not much work to create new content at a larger scale and it's an enormous amount of work to reduce the scale of every prop, sim, and automa, why not take the original game stuff as the reference point?

I'm not sure if I'm actually clarifying anything here or not, but my point is that it's all relative. In many ways it's like Simoleons and USD or Euros. Simoleons are an arbitrary scale used to simplify gameplay. "16 meters" is a rather arbitrary number picked because of of its base-2 properties, since the actually stuff on that grid does not reflect the size that it supposedly is. In this sense, although I'm aware the game uses "16 meters" as a tile size, this number seems mostly symbolic.

 

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Edit:

 

I suppose though since that too is rather arbitrary, so putting 3 buildings on a tile will look small compared to other BATs but if you maintain that scale across the entire city and then take steps to use the road space correctly, it should be OK.

The question that remains then is, "Do you use the inflated 12 meter scale to make your buildings look more in proportion to the rest of the game, and match with existing Dutch BATs, or do you go for 16 meters, 100% real scale, and accept the fact that Dutch houses will look minuscule next to American houses?" I don't know the answer, although in many ways it's a bit ironic that it is the ST community who insists that real-scale is the way to go when a large amount of the content that is created is in fact not realistically scaled at all.   

[PBGV103 729]

Actually, since everyone obviously has the content included with the game, yet the actual models for all custom content isn't publicly shared and would take far to long to re-export at a larger scale, it would only make sense to scale down the stock content, rather than make up a whole new scale. Unless you plan on never using anyone else's custom content. In that case which ever you prefer makes sense; however, expect to get lots of complaints from people if you upload your work to the STEX if you choose a larger scale than what everyone else is using.

[ianpaschal 77]

It would take far to long to re-export at a larger scale, it would only make sense to scale down the stock content, rather than make up a whole new scale.

 

Well my original point was sort of that "real scale" seems to be a bit open to interpretation. Although JasonCW's last building was, in fact, honest-to-God 16 meters wide in real life too, the builds from people like Vanderaap and Haarlemmergold mysteriously appear both too large and too small, while both filling a 16 meter tile with "12 meters worth of building." So I am trying to say that although I understand no matter what, every tile in game is in fact 16 meters, the amount of "real meters squashed or stretched into 16 at export" seems rather open to interpretation.

 

 Unless you plan on never using anyone else's custom content. In that case which ever you prefer makes sense; however, expect to get lots of complaints from people if you upload your work to the STEX if you choose a larger scale than what everyone else is using.

 

That I do. The question is more if other people would plan on using mine. I'd like to think I'm contributing to the community given all the effort I will put into my BAT projects, but if so, which option is preferable?

A: Real-scale. Roughly 3 buildings per tile. Will likely look too small compared to other player's content.

B: Inflated-scale. Two buildings per tile, scaled up to fill. May look more "in-place" but if 1:1 realty to game proportion is no longer used, what's the right ratio?

[PBGV103 729]

I can't speak for everyone, but I do know I am always faithful to the real world scale of buildings. For instance, the latest building I've been working on, is 67 meters wide and has a domed top. Scaling down to 64 meters wide would either squash the dome into something egg shaped or reduce the size of the building. While some people would opt to scale down the entire building, I am also trying to recreate an actual city meaning the building would then look out of proportion to its neighbors. The solution I've found is to also create the smaller surrounding buildings to a point that the cluster fits nicely into the game's grid.

For your case, trying to scale up your buildings for the sake of making them blend in better with existing content won't work so well when the doors and windows then appear too large to be believable. If you leave their scale alone and increase the size of everything else, you're simply making fictional buildings rather than recreations.

I see two viable options, one you create these fictional buildings because you don't actually like the size of Dutch buildings, or you faithfully recreate the buildings. I would personally go with the latter. Once you have enough of these buildings made, together they will set s precedent for their scale and look natural among the other buildings in the game. Plus, as of now there aren't many high density, low height structures available to the game. You would be bringing greater variety to the STEX if you made them true to their real size.

[APSMS 1,892]

You can also make your buildings greater than one tile wide, which will allow for a little bit more wiggle room depending on how wide or narrow you want to squeeze them in. A 3 tile wide BAT, for instance, can fit four Dutch houses at the stated game scale with no overlap or stretching. You don't have to be completely controlled by the game, as there is leeway in modeling, esp once you realize it isn't exact. A good piece of advice to follow would always be to remember that the standard Sim is 2.5 meters tall, and this is generally a constant number that all BATters tend to recognize (except for Rivit, for reasons, but his stuff is automata and thus less noticeable w/o nearby other mods).

[ianpaschal 77]

You can also make your buildings greater than one tile wide, which will allow for a little bit more wiggle room depending on how wide or narrow you want to squeeze them in. A 3 tile wide BAT, for instance, can fit four Dutch houses at the stated game scale with no overlap or stretching. You don't have to be completely controlled by the game, as there is leeway in modeling, esp once you realize it isn't exact. A good piece of advice to follow would always be to remember that the standard Sim is 2.5 meters tall, and this is generally a constant number that all BATters tend to recognize (except for Rivit, for reasons, but his stuff is automata and thus less noticeable w/o nearby other mods).

 

Well I'm leaning towards using real scale since I might as well if a whole city will be custom content. The other thing I will probably do is make all buildings overhang the front of the lot by 2 meters reducing the street scape to 12 meters. Between the 3-4 meters of sidewalk this is no problem.

The other thing though, if we say the average person is 1,85 m and again use the 12->16 conversion, that comes out to 2,47 so that would be further evidence to the fact that "16 meters" is really symbolic number used for what is really a 12 meter tile system.

Bleh I just don't know. I suppose though I can start creating models real scale and then decide if I want to scale them up or down later.

[APSMS 1,892]

I would agree, except that Sims aren't necessarily any wider than their RL counterparts, just taller. Also remember to watch out for any streetside mods or T21s that my interfere with your overhanging BATs. Maxis has street-lining props, too.

[ianpaschal 77]

I'm still trying to figure out what to do in that respect. I will want to make a mod that removes all street side props anyway because they will also interfere with canals. I'm tempted to just include "building side" street junk as overhanging props on the front of buildings, and "canal side" street junk as coming off of canal pieces (or buildings if there is no canal present.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

The thing is though, is probably about 90% of what you see on the screen at any given time is in straight meters. All of the maxis buildings are except for a few of the low density R buildings. All BATs *should* be, but some aren't, especially older ones. People back then didn't have a sense of what reasonable rl dimensions were, and just eyeballed everything and if it "looked" too big or small just scaled it up. Nowadays pretty much all BATs are scaled correctly. Other than a few of the maxis buildings, the only maxis content that's scaled wrong are sims, things which are scaled to sims, like benches, and lane widths. Internally, the radius for things like police or firestations is handled in meters, along with all other distance related numbers. The landmarks in the game are to rl dimensions, and they even didn't do the 133% vertical scaling. Highway interchanges and airports are made compact for obvious reasons.

 

So even though things are relative, that's what I mean by backwards. Everything in the game is accurate, unless there's a reason for it not to be. The sims are actually about 3 m, both comparing them to buildings and by measuring them according to the game's own unit system.

 

Luckily this is very convenient, because you don't have to do anything special to recreate buildings.

 

 

And for your buildings it sounds pretty good. If 3 buildings fit on 2 tiles I'd just do that. When I recreate things I make them to rl dimensions and then I scale them to fit onto 16 m lots. Sometimes they fit great and only need to be scaled a few % in any direction, and sometimes they don't fit well at all, and they either need dramatic scaling, or I just avoid them altogether. The other thing I do is take google earth screenshots and scale a 16x16 m grid on top of it, and shift it around to see exactly how things line up, and if things don't line up, which lot absorbs what differences. Because often times one building will need to be made smaller and the other will need to be made bigger in order to get them to all fit on the grid together.

 

And I'll be truthful and say that if you plan on making a lot of BATs, it doesn't matter if the old dutch bats were overscaled, because you'll be replacing them at a higher quality.

[ianpaschal 77]

UPDATE 2

12 March 2014

Alright, I've been working on several projects, but here's the first one!

That's right, yet another canal set. This one though I hope to provide with better real water integration, and for the first time ever, some really nifty little transit puzzle pieces to make 1x1 bridges. They should be easy enough to make since they're straight and are simply a 16 segmented arch with the road texture on top.

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

Wow! Looks great!

[ianpaschal 77]

UPDATE 3

17 March 2014

As I mentioned in my last update, I have several projects going on (I'll make a list in the first post) so I'm kind of bouncing between them. This is one of the more typical BAT projects. It's a simple recreation of the Scheepvaarthuis, in Amsterdam. This building used to be an office building for 6 shipping companies, but is now home to the Grand Amrath Hotel:

And my version:

I live very close to it and always thought it was a gorgeous building so I decided to recreate it. One thing that is nice is its rather unique shape. The model above is tweaked slightly in proportion and angle from the original so that it will fit neatly into the corner of a 45 degree to FAR transition puzzle piece. When I have the other side of the building in, I'll do a render with some road lines drawn in.

This took a while, but it's actually getting very close to finished very fast. The delay was largely because there was a lot of math involved in making it with the weird angles. The solution is that it's made of hinged modular pieces, that I already UV mapped when they were at 90 degrees, and then swung into position. So the model is quite large, but it's already ready to have textures slapped onto it.

SO. MUCH. TRIGONOMETRY.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

So far so good!

[AndisArt 2,066]

Wow that's quite a particular angle! Will be great addition to the STEX!

Good work so far

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

It's lookin great!

[ianpaschal 77]

UPDATE 4

17 March 2014

Thanks guys! I'm nearly done with the annoying roof area in the curve, so I'll be starting the tower soon, and should have most of the geometry done tomorrow-ish.

[Vlasky 1,803]

Great progress. Love the details.

[NielsC007 499]

I'm really liking your BATs, keep up the great work!

[ianpaschal 77]

Well the tower on the front of the hotel proved to be tricky. Very tricky. Very very I-need-another-piece-of-scratch-paper tricky. So I decided to start texturing the canal set.

After spending some time compositing dirt and moss and wood textures, I had the perfect pylons. Naise.

 

So, then I finally installed BAT4Max. Let's see how those sexy pylons look at zoom 5.



"Underwhelming" would be a good word to describe it. I'm also debating whether or not to increase the scale of the brick texture. They're already bigger than real life but they're just a brown smear right now. Curious what other people have done with brick surfaces.

Also I'm trying to figure out if I can get rid of the blue cast to the water. Typically NL is pretty overcast and the result is that the water is rarely as blue in appearance as the MentalRay sky reflections are. I'd like to, between water mod and canal set, get this kind of look going on:



As always, feedback and advice welcome.

[NielsC007 499]

I like those bridges very much and those are some good textures too! This is looking great! They also remind me alot of Leiden, the big city near where I live, Oegstgeest.

[Bipin 3,402]

Nice work, I'm excited to see how this work turns out, it's all quite promising.

[ianpaschal 77]

I like those bridges very much

Glad you like 'em Niels.

I am wondering though if I should try a different "model" though. Because of some ways the LODs work, I can't build anything other than plain wall within 2 meters of the end of the tile, which is problematic for T pieces like the one in the render. Something like these might work better, and maybe be a bit more interesting architecturally. The inspiration is as follows:

 

I think the last one is probably my favourite. What do you think?

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

So, then I finally installed BAT4Max. Let's see how those sexy pylons look at zoom 5.

"Underwhelming" would be a good word to describe it. I'm also debating whether or not to increase the scale of the brick texture. They're already bigger than real life but they're just a brown smear right now. Curious what other people have done with brick surfaces.

Also I'm trying to figure out if I can get rid of the blue cast to the water. Typically NL is pretty overcast and the result is that the water is rarely as blue in appearance as the MentalRay sky reflections are. I'd like to, between water mod and canal set, get this kind of look going on:

 

More awesome canals... seems to be a theme at the moment. Looking great so far!

 

"Underwhelming at zoom 5", yeah that's the curse of BATing... something that looks great and realistic in close up render doesn't translate at BAT scale. I'm in no way a texturing expert, but generally speaking, you need to lighten and desaturate the textures, and increase contrast. And, although it slows down render times, a bump map goes a long way to increasing definition as well.

 

If you solve the blue sky mystery, please share .. its another curse that I haven't found a resolution for either. I know you can change the sky colour, but I think that would make the BAT look non-cohesive with other BATs (if that's important to you)

 

Keep up the good work!

[ianpaschal 77]

If you solve the blue sky mystery, please share .. its another curse that I haven't found a resolution for either. I know you can change the sky colour, but I think that would make the BAT look non-cohesive with other BATs (if that's important to you)

It definitely does. I remember back when BAT4Max was first being developed, there was a lot of discussion regarding red and blue casts to the light that the game has (or at least that Maxis content has).

I was getting pretty tired of it yesterday, but the idea is this:

I have managed to make grey water by increasing the red and green values of the water very high and having blue be zero, so that when it reflects the blue from the sky, the entire thing appears neutral in colour. Unfortunately, though, this makes the water very light in colour so the next thing to try is adding some transparency and sticking a non-reflective black plane just under the water surface to bring it back do a deep murky grey. It's kind of crude though so I'll also keep my eyes open for better alternatives.

[ianpaschal 77]

Alright, it's not perfect, but messing with the reflection color seems to have neutralized the sky somewhat.

This is using the Hue/Saturation/Value of 0.06 - 0.65 - 0.9

And this one 0.06 - 0.625 - 1.0

I'm not sure which one I prefer. I think the latter though, the first one is a bit dark...

[NielsC007 499]

I prefer the 2nd one, the 1st one is a bit too dark.