Roundabout Facelift Mod - Now on the STEX.

[TPB 563]

Do you like roundabouts but don't use them because of texture problems?

 

Do you wish you could use roundabouts and have them show your preferred sidewalk mod?

 

Are you tired of that ugly maxis grass in the center of your roundabouts?

 

Would you like to have different roundabouts for different wealth levels and densities?

 

Then this Mod is for you!

 

I present to you: TPB Roundabout Facelift Version 1.

 

Available now on the STEX, There are versions for normal Maxis streets and RVT Tarsealed Urban Streets.

 

Some of the things it fixes:

 

 

These are the options for roundabouts centers, please click links for larger images and more details:

 

          Grass 1                         Grass 2                       Sidewalk                    White Daisies                   Yellow Daisies

 

All versions share the same textures for Unzoned and Agricultural land:

 

                            Agri/None

 

Full wealthification has been done.

 

Low density zones show "wealthed" grass around the roundabout: 

 

(Roundabout flora is not part of this mod, but you can get it here to add a nice touch.)

 

Medium-high density zones feature a square plaza, but due to the overlay nature of the textures, sidewalk wealthification will show through as well:

 

 

 

 

A note on sidewalk mods:

 

This mod works both for people who use custom sidewalk mods as well as for those who prefer maxis white as seen here:

 

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

It has been brought to my attention that some sidewalk mods alter the grass textures for the different wealth levels. This is something I did not think of.

 

I will start testing to see what happens if I remove the grass and add transparencty in its place, maybe there is an underlay of grass textures underneath like how sidewalks work?

  Edited February 6, 2015 by TPB  

[SimCoug 5,973]

Great work so far! I think this will be incredibly useful for many folks. Looking forward to seeing this on the STEX.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Very neatly done, certainly looks like a noticeable improvement!

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Ooooh, I like what I'm seeing here.

[TPB 563]

Thanks for the encouragement!

 

Rivit provided me with more files and instructions on how to do the wealthing so that will be next step, stay tuned.

 

I'm currently taking a break from my learning experience to play a little bit though, but as soon as I make progress I'll post here.

 

Cheers!

[vortext 573]

Nice start, this will be a welcome addition indeed. Couldn't help but noticing though the draggable s-curve is missing in the first pic. And what about the various intersections which can be drawn out?

[TPB 563]

Nice start, this will be a welcome addition indeed. Couldn't help but noticing though the draggable s-curve is missing in the first pic. And what about the various intersections which can be drawn out?

 

 

I am unaware of draggable S-curve apart from the one you make from combining two 45 degree curves, if that's what you mean then yes its covered. As for intersections, so far I haven't found anything tha'ts missing, but will take some testing!

 

Of course you need to allow some extra space when intersecting at certain angles or you get small imperfections, like in this screenshot:

 

 

In these cases one must leave an extra tile after the curves before creating intersections to fix this..

 

I haven't really tested many types of intersections apart from road/avenue/owr, but in any case, Rivit mentioned he is working on that and will probably release (don't quote me) the files once done, so knowing him and his work I'll bet it will be pretty complete once out.

[vortext 573]

I am unaware of draggable S-curve apart from the one you make from combining two 45 degree curves, if that's what you mean then yes its covered. 

 

No I meant the 2x3 s-curve. 

 

Also note you can drag out streets from it ,like so. 

 

 

And the same goes for the 90 degree curves. 

 

 

[TPB 563]

No I meant the 2x3 s-curve. 

 

 

 

 

Nice thank you for that, I did not know that one I admit! Always nice to have one more smooth curve in the grid-busting arsenal!

 

As for your question, I tested and it looks like its working  :

 

[vortext 573]

Yeah it seems these features are often overlooked, though not by Rivit obviously. Looks really nice! 

[rsc204 21,857]

Thanks Vortext for the tip about the S-Curves, I didn't know about that piece. These WRC's, especially the ability to run streets from the corners, are the main thing stopping me from using SAM more often. I'd love to see similar functionality for Roads and especially OWRs (because then large EU-Style roundabouts could be made using 4 90 Deg turns together) in the future.

[TPB 563]

Hi folks, reporting with new developments.

 

Been working on wealthing for the roundabouts.

 

Now,full wealthing would lead to funny scenarios when different wealth buildings share a roundabout, resulting in different colored grasses in the center: ugly.

 

So my workaround to this will be simple:  the central grass part of the roundabouts will always show medium wealth green. Think of it like the neighbourhood garden, it will be greener than the rest of the sidewalk grass 'cos more ppl take care of watering it or something

 

IID 0x  (Wealth = none) and 7x (Agri) will have  no grass at all anywhere so you will see the farm dirt texture for agri or your terrain textures for None.

 

1x - 3x (low, medium, and high wealth for Low Density zones) Will show appropiate wealth grass color but ONLY in the outer parts of the roundabout. Also, these Low density roundabouts will have no sidewalk in the central part, just grass.

 

4x-6x (Low,  medium and high wealth for Medium and High Density zones) These will drop the outer grass altogether to give you a solid sidewalk more suited to urban areas, while adding a sidewalk part to the center of the roundabout.

 

So far I've focused on street roundabout but I will be doing something similar to the road roundabout to add this wealthing pattern to it too.

 

Some pics:

 

 

 

By the way, I'm trying to figure out a way to get medium and high wealth colors to show but not sure how... are there parks that trigger higher wealth textures? because zoning just shows low wealth grass..

 

Finer details will be done last I suppose, like adding more shading and fine tuning details, especially that wider roundabout needs more work : )

 

I'm still new with all this which makes my process kind of slow, hopefully I'll be going faster once I get the hang of things.

 

As always, any comment, criticism, etc, is greatly appreciated.

 

EDIT:

 

Trying some terrain textures as rsc204 suggests below: dandelion roundabouts! Heh.

 

 

Wealthing works too

 

  Edited January 31, 2015 by TPB  

[rsc204 21,857]

To show the other wealths you must wait for higher wealth buildings to grow there, this is because anything "plopped" such as landmarks or items from the parks menu will not impart their wealth to the surrounding network tiles, I read somewhere that this was simply not possible, but then the Maxis Open Grass Area piece makes things high-wealth (for some reason the sidewalk but not the grass texture) so I think it's technically possible somehow to influence this.

 

The roundabouts are nice, what I've been playing around with recently though is using a texture from my terrain mod (currently Gobias' Sudden Valley) for the centre of the roundabout instead of the usual grass, so maybe that's something you'd like to consider? I've also adapted Magneto's mod which places trees (or flora) in the middle of the regular Road and Street roundabouts to include all of the SAM streets and the Cull-De-Sac style roundabout you've shown above, which is nicer that just a dead space for me.

[TPB 563]

Gotcha, well I guess since the low wealth is showing I must have gotten things right, I'll have to load up an established city to fully test.

 

Wouldn't using terrain texture force me to add the texture as a dependency though? Or would I have to ask permission to include it? How does that work? Don't wan't to anger anyone. And would prefer no dependencies.

 

Yes! I also use Magnetos roundabout trees, it adds a nice touch... do you plan on sharing that adaptation? I am greatly interested! Or I can try to decipher his mod, heh!

 

I'm also thinking of adding more details, like benches and rubbish bins, could have several options, and get user to pick which one they prefer, plain, with bins, with bench, etc.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

Here's the best way for me to invoke the three wealth levels:

 

Low wealth low density: regular zoning (anything low-density, including industrial zoning)

Med wealth low density: regular zoning, but with a bus stop nearby

High wealth low density: regular zoning, but with a plaza or open paved area (if I remember right) nearby

 

High density: no easy way to invoke without actual land development; only low wealth high density can be observed using med or high density

 

Agricultural density: Farm zoning

 

The bus stop and parks are the most convenient lots to use, since they're all 1×1 (bus stops can be accessed using hotkeys). Good luck texturing.

[rsc204 21,857]

Generally speaking it's OK to re-use textures so long as you don't distribute an unmodified version of it, in which case you should add it as a dependency instead, It'd probably be appreciated if you asked the creator first though.

 

As for the T21 mod, I guess I will release it at some point I can give you a copy if you like though. If you wanted to add benches or other props you'll need to learn T21 modding to accomplish that. It's actually possible to have different props with a random chance of appearing. That way rather than making many different versions of a mod, you only have to do everything once. A user would simply click with the road/street tool until the design they wanted appears. This way you could have say three roundabouts close to each other, one with benches, another with a tree and another with nothing at all. You can observe how Maxis did this by finding a street with developments and repeatedly clicking on it, you will see nearby props change as you do so.

[TPB 563]

 I can give you a copy if you like though.

 

That would be lovely, yes please.

 

I'd love to learn more about that T21 thing you mentioned, any suggestions on where to get started?

 

Meanwhile, I've been working on a flowerbeds version. 

 

It's crazy how much time it takes to do this, you guys make it seem so easy

 

I've done the road roundabout now too and seems mostly everything has been done. Still having trouble with the alpha maps, but maybe that's positive since it adds a layer of imperfections to the shapes, making it perhaps a tiny bit more realistic? lol.

 

I'm hoping to develop a workflow where I have an easy way to change textures without much work, mainly by saving template files in photoshop, any tips on this would be awesome, how do you guys organize when working on textures?

 

Personally I like these dandelions, they look nice when flora from Magneto's mod starts growing, too.

 

 

My aim is to make a few different options, including one with just solid sidewalk in roundabout centers so people can pick and choose

 

Possibly a version with props too? If I manage to learn how to do that

 

And finally, I'm debating making a version for people that don't use RVT TSR if I see there's any interest..

 

 

Click here for larger image.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

This area is a bit obscure to me. In my case, textures 4x to 6x are exactly the same but I am forced to add them separately to the file nonetheless because otherwise Simcity defaults to texture 0x when it doesn't find, say 5x.

 

I would have thought it would default to the nearest texture but it doesnt seem to be the case.

I will say this: you've essentially figured out the general behaviour of wealth textures. This post that I've made from ages past explains everything:

Wealth grass, on the other hand, are dictated by the transit textures themselves. Excluding mipmaps (zoom levels 0-3), there are usually four main textures (wealth levels 0-3) that control wealth grass (which I usually call wealthification).

The last four digits of a network tile instance ID is somewhere along this format: PPWZ, with PP being the piece ID, W being the wealth level, and Z being the zoom level.

. . .

And for reference, the standard format for (almost) every transit network IID is 0xMNPPPPWZ, with M being 0 for non-NAM tiles and 5 for NAM tiles, N being the network or project ID, PPPP being the piece ID, W being the wealth ID, and Z being the zoom ID. For the wealth ID, 0 for zero-wealth/unzoned, 1-3 for low to high-wealth low density, 4-6 for low to high-wealth high-density (which is usually unused and the unzoned texture is used in its place), and 7 for agricultural (also unused). 8-F is essentially 0-7 repeated, but that's used in only very special situations in NAM-only networks (asymmetrical network crossings, for example). For the zoom ID, it's 0-4 (which should be obvious). 5-9 is typically used for networks that have overhangs, and A-E is used as a textural reference for when the network in question is crossing under an elevated network (Street x Elevated Rail crossing) so that the crossing model can have a texture to refer to.

. . .

For the record, the only time you want to use 4-6 for the wealth level is if you want to change the high-density wealth textures to something else. As of today, RHW is the only transit network whose IID scheme also includes wealth IDs 4-6.

In short:

- The seventh digit dictates wealthification according to density and wealth level. The eighth digit is usually 0-4 and is zoom level.

- 0 is for no zoning.

- 1, 2, and 3 correspond to low, medium, and high-wealth low density, in that order.

- 4, 5, and 6 correspond to low, medium, and high-wealth high density, in that order.

- 7 is for agricultural zoning.

- If anything from 1-7 is missing, the game will use the texture assigned to 0.

- 8-F are the same exact thing for 0-7, just with +8, but used more commonly in modern-day NAM projects. With how things are, it won't be too long until there are transit textures that have a seventh digit of 8-F and an eighth digit of 5-9. If a texture is missing from there, it'll use the texture assigned to 8, not 0.

-----

Also, something worth knowing, in case you didn't know. Again, from a post from ages past:

Most textures that require sidewalks to show through require that there be an accompanying image that's used for the transparency.

. . .

 

 

Notice how 0x57001014.png has an accompanying 0x57001014_a.png file? That's the alpha transparency used to cut holes in the first image so the sidewalks can show. In theory, you could cut holes yourself in the original texture, but this would actually take longer to do (and having tried it myself, I can say don't try it and do keep the files that end with _a in the name; if you're keeping the original sidewalks in their original places, handling transparencies like this is actually the easiest method, particularly for wealth textures).

In short, for each texture, add a second .png file with "_a" (underscore A) in the name, and wherever in that image is black, that's where the holes are cut.

[TPB 563]

Thank you for a great reply, Ganaram Inukshuk.

 

That cleared quite a few things out. 

 

As for the alpha maps yes I am aware of that and that's how I am working.

 

In these images you see a sandstone sidewalk but those are not baked in, that's simply the sidewalk mod that I happen to be using.

 

This addon will show any sidewalk

[TPB 563]

Greetings,

 

I'm happy to say that I'm working much much faster now, thanks to all the useful advice from you guys. Woo!

 

So yeah, I spent all yesterday working on my little project, I've come up with 5 versions which people will be able to pick from.

 

Some are fairly similar and well, I made them just because, heck, why not?

 

I tried making a maxis grass version but could not get it to show seamlessly at all so I ditched it.

 

Here are the options:

 

(Click on links please, as shrinking with photoshop to make this thumbnail makes the daisies look uglier than they really are!)

 

 

          Grass 1                     Grass 2                  Sidewalk                WhiteDaisies              YellowDaisies

 

 

Please click on the big blue links to see my actual work. (Yes I said it twice, hah)

 

All versions share the same textures for None(not yet zoned areas) and Agricultural areas. 

 

I've "only" done the Street roundabout tiles so far, and have got quite some work to do now to finish all the Road tiles, plus the few OWRoad ones.

 

I'm confident it will go way faster this time, as I will avoid all the silly mistakes from last time, such as forgetting to put 0x as prefix in my file names, and having to manually add it to hundreds of files later...

 

(By the way, anyone know a windows command-line way to batch-rename files, but only to add a prefix, while leaving the rest of file name intact?)

 

I am aware my work is far from perfect, but trust me I am doing my very best to polish this so it can be of high quality before I even think about release.

 

I am having trouble making some of the textures seamless, such as White Daisies and Grasses, but I think this result right here is not THAT bad, I'm getting there.

 

My favourite is Yellow Daisies, if only because of the quality achieved, with very little texturing apparent in the center.

 

Now it's time to work on finishing the Road and OWR tiles, catch ya next time!

[vortext 573]

Nice progress. Don't know if you mean the same with 'trouble making some of the textures seamless' but for the white daisies there're some white artifacts visible along the edge of the diagonal exit from roundabout.  

 

Not a command line tool but for batch renaming textures I use Advanced Renamer, it's free and works like a charm. 

[TPB 563]

Nice progress. Don't know if you mean the same with 'trouble making some of the textures seamless' but for the white daisies there're some white artifacts visible along the edge of the diagonal exit from roundabout.  

 

Not a command line tool but for batch renaming textures I use Advanced Renamer, it's free and works like a charm. 

 

Well spotted sir. I'll fix that. I had a bit of a nightmare with white pixels at one point Managed to get rid of most except these it seems.

 

Thanks for the renamer link, will be useful.

 

EDIT: Ok, it was an easy fix, done!

 

  Edited February 2, 2015 by TPB  

[SimCoug 5,973]

Very impressive work going on here

[rsc204 21,857]

Here are some good tutorials for T-21's, this explains the basics (note: I think the TGI of the texture has changed since the tutorial was written, so bear that in mind if following along with the example), this might also be useful as it explains how to work with more complex networks with multiple textures, some of which is relevant to roundabouts.

[TPB 563]

Thanks Simcoug, I guess I'm doing alright for a rookie!

 

Thanks for the links rsc204!

 

I got a little questions for you guys, does anyone know how to make this piece appear in-game?

 

 

 

I need to test it but can't seem to make one.

 

Edit: Ok I figured it out, hehe, that tile will need some work:

 

[TPB 563]

Ok, this deserves a reply of its own as I have a few questions..

 

There is this little error in the NAM euro textures on certain roundabout tiles:

 

 

I am wondering if this is the case for other types of Euro NAM textures(I think I am using standard), and/or the American textures?

If any of you have installed American texture or other Euro textures, if you would kindly check for me that would save me having to install NAM a few times...

 

The road tiles are also kind of pixelated

 

I've been working on fixing those issues as seen here:

 

 

 

Hopefully this fix will apply to all other NAM texture options too!

[rsc204 21,857]

I think at somepoint the texture that connects to this one was changed and this error brought about as a result. Many textures in the NAM are creatively re-used, so you must be careful when making changes to understand what side effects it may cause.

 

You've done a pretty decent job of fixing this one, I attempted it when making the SAM7 textures but I just couldn't get good results. Once you've finished, it could then be used as a template for all the other roundabouts that have the same problem, that would at the very least include each of the SAM networks.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

There's a fundamental problem with NAM textures: there are absolutely no standards regarding it. The only standards that exist are for the RHW, but with regards to texturing the non-RHW textures, there simply aren't any.

The closest thing to that is the Cosmetic Retexture Mod, which only works on the base tiles for Street (including SAM-7), Road, One Way Road, and Avenue. It doesn't work with any other transit textures that the NAM adds, so for situations with the Roundabouts, for example, you'll have tiny misalignments like that. These also happen with all of the unique NAM-related crossings, much of which are hard to find because they're hard to document because there's so many of them.

Lots of the NAM textures are just copy-paste jobs that take some part of the original textures and hopefully modifies them to just fit with the old texture to some extent. The problem is that if you add in the Cosmetic Retexture Mod (I'll call it CRM), which modifies the Street/Road/One Way Road/Avenue textures to have smoothened intersection corners (among other things), things will begin to fall out of alignment. The worst example of misalignment is with all of the Road-SAM crossings (excluding SAM-7); cross any of the other SAM networks with the Road network and you'll find that they don't share the same amount of aesthetics as the CRM; the SAM predates the CRM, so the textures there are based off of the pre-CRM textures.

The next worst case of misalignment is with the NWM, but those misalignments are so subtle, they're easy to miss, even by other NAM devs. (I'm talking about textures that are misaligned by just half a pixel in two directions, such that there's a tiny transparent edge, discontinuous grass borders or inconsistent sidewalk markings, trails on the intersections that seem to don't make sense, and so on).

The next next worst case are with the Euro textures for the NAM; the non-RHW Euro Textures are basically a copy of a copy, and those textures have become distorted after much copying, and the RHW textures are basically a completely different set of textures entirely, and they don't even physically line up with the elevated and curved RHW models.

There are other cases of misalignment and inconsistencies, such as with the puzzle-based (now mostly depreciated) Road and Street curves and FA pieces (a lot of them have green edges along the curbs), and the Avenue 45-degree and 90-degree curves, both of which were only recently fixed.

The only solution around that much misalignment is to scrap all of the textures and replace it all with something that's consistent, something that I've been doing on and off for ages but haven't successfully done as of today. The fundamental problem is replacing every possible texture is a monumental task; the best thing you can ever do is to just try to fill in the gaps, one piece at a time. The fact that there's no easy way to generate textures en masse is the other big obstacle; if a program existed that did the wealthification AND alpha for you, the amount of textures the creator would need is just one and not four or seven.

[rivit 3,402]

@TPB Coming along very nicely - I'll have the yellow daisies

 

@Ganaram - I developed GoFSH to cut this work down when I was making up my streets and rails and it can take out 80% of the work - have you tried it out? 

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

@Ganaram - I developed GoFSH to cut this work down when I was making up my streets and rails and it can take out 80% of the work - have you tried it out?

No; everything I know is a lie, then.

Won't be able to try it out right away, but after reading through the instructions, I've one question: what if you want to use custom wealthification, IE, what if I don't want to use the traditional grass-wealth textures? (I bring this up because someone wanted different wealth textures from the usual grassy ones.)