The King's Workshop

[RRetail 7,906]

All these parks look fantastic! Keep up the great work.

[blade2k5 1,523]

"Bout time someone is making realistic parks for the game.  Been a looooong time coming.  Dude, your parks caught my eye the first moment I saw them, and even though the Dependency list was long, I only had to snag three or four from the list, so absolutely no complaints there,..actually no complaints at all, just high praise.  Don't stop making these.

 

I do have an idea though, I always like to plop playgrounds next to Elementary schools and tennis/basketball courts next to the high school. Is there any chance you could maybe make something more realistic for playgrounds, tennis courts and basketball courts for schools?

 

Keep up the awesome work with these stunning parks.

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

I did the classic "forget about this thread" again for a month. Bit late for these but better than never!  

Replies

@tariely, @Jasoncw, @bladeberkman, @RRetail: Thank you for the comments!

@T Wrecks: Thanks! One of these days I'll bring out a lower wealth version of those semi-modular parks. And the stats on the release are configured exactly like you mentioned: weak park/LM effects on the low-wealth ones and higher values with the higher wealth versions.

@blade2k5: Thank you! I will be taking consideration with respect to schools in the future, as I do have plans for that particular category (elementary/middle/high schools) in the future.

Updates

Well, I dug out some more old backlog things and worked on them a little bit.

First off, you may (or may not) remember this set of luxury condos by Diego that I lotted into a complex from last year. Here's Icon Vallarta.

I made some tweaks to the plaza section and swapped out the pavement and tennis courts to match the overall palette. Originally I wanted to use flunight's Copacabana textures to give it more of that Latin American beach feel but I ran into some minor issues with dilapidation.

Of course, you can also get em as a single growable 3x3 building as well. I plan on offering a temperate version of this one as well and maybe even attempt a triple building complex (which is what the real life one is).

Shifting gears, here's some industry: Simgoober's WallyK and Tractor Supply distribution centers.

Originally these were I-M buildings but I found that they wouldn't exactly be out of place as I-HT either.

There's ample room in the rear to load/unload for trucks as well as places to store large amounts of pallets.

Repository Updates

In the coming days I'll be making some minor updates to my texture repository which will, finally, include the raws and custom sidewalk versions of the park textures. I'm considering creating an "essentials" package to consolidate all of the textures eventually. 

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Splendid lots! I'm paging @Diego Del Llano, hoping that he'll see what you did with his BAT. After all, I kept pestering him about removing BATted ground if possible so re-lots are easier, but since I'm currently bogged down with other stuff, I couldn't show a practical example myself.

Those industrial lots... wonderful. I wish Maxis had given their industrial buildings that much (realistic) breathing room and programmed the game to better handle large lots (police coverage, susceptibility to crime, etc.) - it makes a whole world of difference! My IRM stuff is a lame compromise by comparison. Oh well, at least I can tell myself I started with a more primitive default set of dependencies and I needed to crank out huge volumes, so lotting every building at this standard you're showing here was out of the question.

[tariely 4,496]

15 hours ago, kingofsimcity said:

Repository Updates

In the coming days I'll be making some minor updates to my texture repository which will, finally, include the raws and custom sidewalk versions of the park textures. I'm considering creating an "essentials" package to consolidate all of the textures eventually. 

That would be excellent !!!  

And bravo for the industrials, they look great.

 

Something else entirely before I forget : I wanted to take out the palms in your Eastland Grand Station (I don't play tropical or southern regions much) and I did, but I realized, when I plopped it, that the building has no nightlights. I assume the original was like that (don't remember...). No way to change that ?

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Nope, some of Ill Tonkso's early BATs came without night lights, and I'm afraid there's no way to change that without access to the gmax model.

[tariely 4,496]

Thanks. I'll have to do without that pretty station, then... (hey, we don't have a crying llama ?)

[Jasoncw 11,840]

The lotting makes such a big difference.

[Diego Del Llano 5,206]

Awesome Lotting! <3

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@T Wrecks, @tariely, @Jasoncw, @Diego Del Llano: Thanks a bunch for the comments!

Updates

Just a quick update on the Icon Vallarta re-lots.

The 1x variant, which was originally only on a 3x3 plot is now joined by a more compact 3x2 and a larger, temperate themed 4x4.

I made a couple more minor texture and pavement tweaks to the 2x and 3x respectively.

Hopefully I'll have these ready before the day is over (PST, of course ).

[blade2k5 1,523]

Wow!  Those are nice.  Will have to snatch those when they become available.

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@blade2k5: Thanks!

Updates

Finally, the raws for the second set of park textures are out for your custom-generation pleasure! Apologies for the wait, just been a little lazy with SC4-related stuff. 

Grab the repository here via Google Drive:

Community Park Vol 2. Custom Texture Repository

Additionally, I've been slowly building up a custom vault of pre-generated sets. Currently most of the available DATs were requests by @tariely, but if anyone has any suggestions for full or partial replacers on these sets do let me know. I have quite a bit of Drive space after all.

Pre-generated sets are available in these flavors currently for pavement only. These cover Park Pack Vol 1+2 as well as SuperPaths.

This repo can be found below:

Pre-Generated Texture Pack Repository

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

*Turns lights back on*

Oh dear, it's been 4 months, yikes.

Regardless, I'm back in business again! Found some interest in lotting again so I thought I'd put that creative energy into some good use...

A long time ago I tinkered with some FA2 compliant IRM fillers for I-D and I-M but ultimately forgot about them and they were lost in digital garbage collection. Well they're back for real time, and they're back with some new friends! Sadly, I-HT will once again not be joining this party.

While the original logistic set covered a lot of the basics, I wanted to dive deeper into more specialized pieces this time around. I could certainly put more use into the diagonal and 22.5 angled trailers but that would exacerbate the puzzle piece situation. I ultimately went with the "big filler" prefab option. These are larger pieces that are meant to fill gaps, yet at the same time they're reasonably sized such that there shouldn't be many situations where you'd want them broken up into smaller components.

Additionally, thanks a lot to @The British Sausage for raising the suggestion for the FA2 trailer wall sections! I thought they would be rather difficult to fit in but with just a little bit of overhang, it's possible to have them blend very well with each other! No textures sadly, but honestly that is far more pain that what it's worth.

Finally, I've made a rough list of some potential items to tackle for this addon set. Let me know if you have any particular suggestions or critiques of the items in the list!

Basic Fillers

• FA2 I-D and I-M fillers that cover empty space and parked trailers. Maybe semi-cabs too?
• Diagonal I-D, I-M, I-HT fillers with trailers. Like the FA2 counterparts, these are probably gonna be overhangs without any custom texture work.
• Joiners and transitional pieces for some situations with the new angles.
• A larger, longer avenue TE entrance with a gate for truck access.
• Wall-less versions of the default 1x1 parking piece.
• Some larger base pieces like 1x3 long walls, some curvier 2x2 corners. Seems fun but not necessary.
• Walled versions of some of the industrial clutter like barrels, tanks, crates, etc.
• Some I-HT FA2 love somehow? 

Big Prefabs

• Large block of FA2-aligned parked trailers. 6x2 is currently the tested option but I can play around with smaller ones like 4x2 or 5x2.
• Ditto but with diagonals, and parked trailers with cabs intact.

[The British Sausage 5,449]

6 hours ago, kingofsimcity said:

*Turns lights back on*

Oh dear, it's been 4 months, yikes.

Regardless, I'm back in business again! Found some interest in lotting again so I thought I'd put that creative energy into some good use...

A long time ago I tinkered with some FA2 compliant IRM fillers for I-D and I-M but ultimately forgot about them and they were lost in digital garbage collection. Well they're back for real time, and they're back with some new friends! Sadly, I-HT will once again not be joining this party.

While the original logistic set covered a lot of the basics, I wanted to dive deeper into more specialized pieces this time around. I could certainly put more use into the diagonal and 22.5 angled trailers but that would exacerbate the puzzle piece situation. I ultimately went with the "big filler" prefab option. These are larger pieces that are meant to fill gaps, yet at the same time they're reasonably sized such that there shouldn't be many situations where you'd want them broken up into smaller components.

Additionally, thanks a lot to @The British Sausage for raising the suggestion for the FA2 trailer wall sections! I thought they would be rather difficult to fit in but with just a little bit of overhang, it's possible to have them blend very well with each other! No textures sadly, but honestly that is far more pain that what it's worth.

Finally, I've made a rough list of some potential items to tackle for this addon set. Let me know if you have any particular suggestions or critiques of the items in the list!

Basic Fillers

• FA2 I-D and I-M fillers that cover empty space and parked trailers. Maybe semi-cabs too?
• Diagonal I-D, I-M, I-HT fillers with trailers. Like the FA2 counterparts, these are probably gonna be overhangs without any custom texture work.
• Joiners and transitional pieces for some situations with the new angles.
• A larger, longer avenue TE entrance with a gate for truck access.
• Wall-less versions of the default 1x1 parking piece.
• Some larger base pieces like 1x3 long walls, some curvier 2x2 corners. Seems fun but not necessary.
• Walled versions of some of the industrial clutter like barrels, tanks, crates, etc.
• Some I-HT FA2 love somehow? 

Big Prefabs

• Large block of FA2-aligned parked trailers. 6x2 is currently the tested option but I can play around with smaller ones like 4x2 or 5x2.
• Ditto but with diagonals, and parked trailers with cabs intact.

Brilliant! I didn't realise you already had some FA pieces collecting dust.

As for further textures, well I guess there is Simmer2 or rsc204 who specialize in textures... Maybe they can use that Gofish (probably spelled that wrong!) program to churn out textures...

Those FA fillers are definitely worthy of a Trixie.

[tariely 4,496]

Why not I-HT ? (I'm not protesting, just not understanding :-) )

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

@The British Sausage: The parking textures would be easy work but since these are FA pieces, aligning the textures in such a way that adjacent tiles match is the difficult part. Since some of the trucks overhang as well, accounting for that would be mean larger lots, and I didn't find that too appealing. Thus I felt that having FA wall pieces with trucks but without parking striping was a good enough compromise.

@tariely: The fences used in the original IRM for I-HT fillers only come in 45 and 90 degree versions. The I-D and I-M versions use cp's walls and these come in 22.5 angles. While not perfect, they're close enough overall. I'll probably experiment with some substitute, probably something silly like bushes or some kind of zig-zagging. 

[airman15 4,111]

An FA compliment to the industrial wall sets?? Best thing since sliced bread!

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

@airman15: Oh yeah! There's more to come too!

So I came to the realization that 22.5 degrees is equidistant (~4.1 degrees) from both FA3 (18.4) and FA2 (26.6). I had originally assumed that FA2 was the only thing I could wring out of those cp walls. Boy, I'm glad that I was wrong!

They're not perfect but they come close enough. Yes, FA3 walls are now also at your disposal! I also tried FA "walls" using cp's bushes for I-HT, but they didn't quite look right with me so I might scrap them or go the fenceless route.

Back on the subject of big fillers:

A full complement of 22.5/45 blocks, each with different types! the 45 degree spaces are longer and thus I've accommodated for the entire truck. I'm probably going to remove the "truck only" markers, since it's pretty self explanatory at this point. 

Finally, to top off the "big fillers", I've included a set of large 2x5 avenue-TE entrances dedicated for freight. I wanted to put truck props on them initially but they ended up too cluttered for my liking. I might tweak the HT version slightly, since those seasonal cp hedges look just a little out of place. LHD versions will be there too!

The release is going to most likely be broken up into several uploads, one for the big pieces and several for the non-logistic and logistic IRM fillers. Have to take advantage of how the original uploads were named anyways . I'll be going on a short vacation soon, so I hope to push out at least one of these buggers on the STEX in the next couple of days!

[The British Sausage 5,449]

The King is spoiling us now!

Respect! And amazing discovery! The power of geometry...

Also, how do you create those half and half FA textures, with one half grass and one half IRM-D concrete?

[RRetail 7,906]

Amazing work there! Those trucks are just begging for a truckstop. 

[airman15 4,111]

Are you a wizard??

Seriously, this is one of the top addons I am looking forward to right now. The base set of Ind. walls changed everything about way I build industries now. The one Achilles Heel with it is all of them ended up needing to be on squared blocks or awkward 45d angles in situations where terrain doesn't permit a realistic arrangement without heavy terraforming. But that's the only gripe I had about the originals. This will make a good thing even better!

The trucks are icing on the cake!

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@The British Sausage: Thanks! For the FA textures I just took a simple 128x256 / 128x384 bitmap image, drew a line from corner to corner, then filled in one side with black and the other side with blue. I then blended the two colors at the middle so the texture transitions rather smoothly. This results in an image that can be processed with GoFSH and I can replace that blue section with a grass texture of my choice. It's how I've done all of my texture work until now actually.

@RRetail: Thank you! Maybe I'll attempt a truck stop in the future.

@airman15: Thanks a lot! I wish I was a wizard, then I'd probably be able to pump these out a lot faster . But yeah, I created these for the sake of those awkward situations you described. It's kind of surprising that no one has attempted these in the past, though I'd suspect that the walls being 22.5 degrees natively would mean something isn't going to align perfectly.

Releases

And so the releases finally begin!

 The big prefab logistic fillers are at your disposal! Time to start making those large industrial zones and seaports busier with freight activity. In here you'll find 45 and 22.5 parked trucks, as well as the large avenue entrances.

Updates

Up next on the agenda are the regular FA wall pieces for I-D and I-M. FA2 and FA3 will be included in the set.

Completed thus far:

• FA2 and FA3 for I-D and I-M.
• Trucks for FA2 I-D.
• 1 random test piece for FA2 I-HT (wall-less). Would like some feedback on how to approach I-HT. Should I just make wall-less versions?

That's it for now. There's a ton more stuff I want to explore and at this rate, there's going to be almost as many IRM filler pieces as I have parking lots.  

[tariely 4,496]

On 7/4/2018 at 3:13 AM, kingofsimcity said:

Replies

@blade2k5: Thanks!

Updates

Finally, the raws for the second set of park textures are out for your custom-generation pleasure! Apologies for the wait, just been a little lazy with SC4-related stuff. 

Grab the repository here via Google Drive:

Community Park Vol 2. Custom Texture Repository

Additionally, I've been slowly building up a custom vault of pre-generated sets. Currently most of the available DATs were requests by @tariely, but if anyone has any suggestions for full or partial replacers on these sets do let me know. I have quite a bit of Drive space after all.

Pre-generated sets are available in these flavors currently for pavement only. These cover Park Pack Vol 1+2 as well as SuperPaths.

This repo can be found below:

Pre-Generated Texture Pack Repository

Oh goodie, new toys ! 

[AsimPika3172 1,136]

Awesome!  

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@tariely, @AsimPika3172: Thank you for the comments!

Releases

The base set of FA fillers are ready! It's just a simple set of basic walls (and no walls) that complement the original IRM sets. For those of you that are using TGN or any other grass replacement mod, I'll be uploading the repository soon for the IdM Essentials package and the FA grass textures.

 

Updates

For the upcoming logistics set #2, I've been playing around with Angry Mozart's new prop pack.

The new 53ft trailers will serve as an additional option to diversify your industrial areas. Furthermore, I've added type-specific trucks for each industrial category.

I-D features oil tank trucks and dump trucks. These were designed to be perfect for your refineries or garbage dumps. The different parking lot markings used here is just added "flair" to break up the monotony of all the textures!

I-M boasts varied truck chassis and flatbeds with various batches of industrial piping. Finally, the I-HT variant has a bunch of mystery items hidden under colored tarp. I wonder what kind of secrets are hidden underneath?! 

Putting everything together now and you'll have one helluva truck depot!

[tariely 4,496]

(that covers a lot of real estate !...) I like the new trucks, more colour variety ; considering the trucks I can see on the road, the white-grey ones are not in the majority nowadays, are they ?

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Holy cow, industry zones will indeed look pretty different from now on, with the industrial SAM, your superb fillers and additions and the IRMified lots.

Seeing your huge truck lots - and the much-needed breathing room they can give the (often quite cramped looking) industrial complexes that grow - I feel even more confident that going for the job quadruper option was a good choice after all.

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

In a slight departure from filling industrial yards with actual industrial junk, I've decided to populate it with some nature and actual junk instead. Behold...

IRM fillers! Using the concepts I explored back with my previous abandoned project (which ironically, sits abandoned currently), I made it so that the tiles are being reclaimed by nature. Might as well be called the Industrial Reclamation Mod now.

I utilized the ad-hoc family technique that I learned from @T Wrecks onto the ground, walls, plants, and light posts. Instead of industial clutter, like crates, pipes etc., there are now piles of randomized garbage instead. The grungy concrete effect was achieved with several custom overlay textures. These are also randomized, so there's even less of the "tiling" effect from plopping the same lot next to each other.

There are 6 lots currently made. These include 2 straight wall sections (regular parking and with rusty trailers), diagonal and corner wall sections, open tile with overgrowth, and industrial junk tile with pure garbage. If anyone else has any ideas for additional lots, I'm all ears!

Finally, here's lot spiced up with a little bit of MMP. Some spots are currently not very MMP friendly (diagonals in particular) but that's due to the large size of the helpers.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Holy mackerel, that's an impressive view! I also believe it might be one of the first serious applications of randomised overlay textures, and even though I've whined about how this possibility is underused more than once, I'm still surprised to see how good it can work. This was obviously helped by the method being in capable hands, though!

Detroit, here we come!

Oh, and while we're at it, I think our leading partner in grime, @Simmer2, needs to see this. Those derelict lots plus his rusty industry stuff should be a match made in heaven economic downturn.

[Simmer2 23,786]

I agree.

Lots of people like the grime factor in their cities, it gives them a touch of needed realism. Having a city all shiny and new all the time is not on par with reality.

@kingofsimcity You are doing a great job on the industrial side of things. I hope you are still thinking of doing the same with the residential sector by using the Abandoned set of models I made a while ago.

Cheers

Simmer2