The King's Workshop

[raynev1 1,886]

      The  Super Strip Mall #2 is looking very nice and I have to agree with nos.17 . I wouldn't reduce the lot to the rear either . That traffic island is a nice touch , maybe a sign as TWrecks had mentioned would do the trick . You are doing a heck of a job . 

      I just downloaded the FAR Grass Fillers , some very useful stuff . Thanks for being so dedicated to producing more content .

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@T Wrecks, @markussaage, @nos.17, @raynev1: Thanks for all the feedback and comments on the Super Strip Mall! Sorry it took me so long to get back in action here.

Releases

Well I kinda snuck this one out, though I think some of the contents in this set was mostly public knowledge almost a year ago. Without further ado I've finally brought out the FA3 addon texture set for SuperSHK. After cycles of revisions and scrapping and restarting it's finally released! Get the SuperSHK+ set here:

110 Cannon Street was also close to release for quite a long time but it's finally in the flesh.

New Stuff

I mentioned a couple of updates ago that I would make my entire SuperSHK Repository public. The wait is over. You can now gain access to all the RAW files for my entire SuperSHK parking texture repository. Have a copy of GoFSH and need to make a customized version to complement your sidewalk/terrain mod? No problem.

Here is the LINK to the repo on Google Drive. (5.6MB zipped, ~180MB uncompressed)

Note that for "D0" files, blue indicates grass and green indicates pavement. For those cases where my set isn't comprehensive enough, feel free to create derivatives from the raw files for use with your own custom texture IID ranges.

[metasmurf 705]

I applaud the release of the GoFSH-script! Customizable content like this is great and keeps this game relevant.

[matias93 7,535]

Given that you opened the possibility...

I think @Abrams124 will be happy to see this  

[rsc204 21,808]

More great parking textures, thanks. I wonder if at some point you'll break the lot editor with all these options .

Thanks for supporting both the use of GoFSH and releasing your repository for all. There is a lot happening right now behind the scenes, but hopefully in the not-to-distant future, they'll be some big new repositories available too. This will include both my full TGN and SWN repositories and content from others too. I really hope that people will take the time to check this out, because the new options it brings are something revolutionary. I'm really pleased that other creators want to be on-board with this.

[Abrams 1,744]

15 hours ago, matias93 said:

Given that you opened the possibility...

I think @Abrams124 will be happy to see this  

YESYESYES THANKYOUTHANKYOU

I luv it! 

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@metasmurf: Thanks! More power to everyone I say.  

@matias93: That was nice and quick! The pavement looks so much better without the stock Maxis tiles. 

@rsc204: Thanks a lot! Well if the lot editor ever breaks for me, I'll just need to download more RAM . Looking forward to playing around with your full repositories in the future.

Updates

Progress continues on SG's Super Shopping Center - I've already begun prepping for a release. For gameplay-related purposes, I set the plop costs of these lots fairly high ($80,000-$111,000). Since these are fully functional buildings that grant jobs AND take a ton of space, plopping something like this shouldn't come cheap.

Another large ploppable (12x10) joins the fray in the form of a second corner lot. A random lot layout popped in my head today so I went ahead and winged this one. More importantly, I just wanted to play around with FA sections . Lotting took approximately an hour.

Unlike the previous two this one is toned down and only utilizes two buildings. Lot contains 662 CS$$ jobs.

All 3 monstrosities put together at an intersection. I'm just imagining how awesome it would've been if SG released more buildings in this theme.

I've also taken the suggestion for some more compact versions of these lots. These are both growable and have dimensions of 7x3. I believe it is possible to create a W2W version but I haven't tried yet. Rear section is designed to play well with IRM-HT fillers and my parking set.

 

[matias93 7,535]

1 hour ago, kingofsimcity said:

This, this is perfection. It could be just the image and it would already be worth winning a challenge, the fact that it is also a downloadable lot is, well... Everything is good now.

[nos.17 5,120]

22 hours ago, kingofsimcity said:

 

They look great and I'd love to see them up soon. I'm being quite nitpicky here, but the centerlines at the 4 way stop are not the same length on the left and right side. It looks like the right one is one tile shorter. Was this intentional because of the speedhump?

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

*casts resurrection spell*

Has it already been two months again? I've been captured by the jowls of RL unfortunately and so have been lurking on ST here and there for the past month or so. However, I've seen so much great content being pumped out recently and it gave me an itch to try lotting again. So here we go, another cycle! 

Replies

Some late replies:

@matias93: Glad those compact versions are to your liking!

@nos.17: Ah yeah, I didn't notice that until you pointed it out. I had changed the lines for the final release, but forgot to update the screenshot. Now I'm slightly bothered by that image.  

New Stuff

Costco Wholesale (with gas!). I've been thinking about re-lotting this one some time ago, but never found the inspiration to, as I wanted to incorporate a gas station, which is present in many Costco Wholesale locations across the US. I tried digging around for some pumping stations that wouldn't clash visually nor have a scale that was off relative to the Costco building. I settled upon the b62 Wawa pump - it has a reasonable size and being oriented in 22.5 degrees just really tickled my odd-angled fancy. I made a minor tweak as the original exemplar did not set it as a ground model, and thus it didn't cast shadows.

 
This was the starting layout that I worked with. For the first time, I tried incorporating girafe's flora as shrubbery. I added cafe tables on one side to emulate Costco's food court, as the original building was only the warehouse. I made the area as lively as possible, even using a Maxis storefront prop to emulate the station where you go order food.

After populating the lot with trees and vehicles the lot, I felt the gas station was still a little barren.

I went ahead and created a few custom and super specific textures that would fit the gas station.

I'm pretty happy overall with how this one turned out.

[DavidDHetzel 1,816]

I wish I had the talent to do textures like that

[Tyberius06 12,189]

@kingofsimcity Well-well! It's amazing. Those details around the gas station are beautiful! 

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

That is utterly brilliant, and the FA petrol station is such a cool touch.

[RRetail 7,906]

I pretty much echo the above. Nice idea by adding the gas pumps on. 

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@DavidDHetzel: Thanks! Honestly, I'm actually not very good with a lot of the advanced image editing stuff. My texture creations are pretty barebones if you strip away all of the "beautification" around them. I think once you establish some basic guidelines to follow, the creation process is pretty straightforward. A lot of the really complex stuff is often handled by other programs .You can definitely do it!

@Tyberius06, @Ln X, @RRetail: Thank you very much!

Updates

I have to thank @nos.17 for enlightening me on little hidden gem that's Orange's prop pack, as there's quite a few 22.5 angled cars to choose from. With those new props, my gas stations are no longer so lonely.

Here's Costco with Gas #2, a pseudo-mirrored 10x10 lot to the first one. I finally found SG's Costco sign prop, which was for some reason buried under the "Misc" BSC MEGA props file.

Continuing on with the Costco theme, I also tried re-lotting the Distribution Center. This was another one of those old lots that I saw that absolutely needed to take advantage of Mushy's HD trailers. I made another few custom textures for this one, namely the large 22.5 degree parking stalls for the trucks. There's a ton more open space here as well now.

[RRetail 7,906]

I like the smaller footprint!

[nos.17 5,120]

I absolutely love your use of SHK's Lineout props. Personally, I thought they had been rendered useless with the advent of your textures, but you seem to have proven me wrong. 

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@RRetail: They're actually all the same size. I think I should include some gas-free ones with a smaller footprint in there somewhere.

@nos.17: Thanks! The yellow ones in particular are still plenty useful in a lot of situations for me.

Updates

Another one joins the fray. Nothing much to say about this one: 10x10 in size and a layout that is somewhat close to the first one.

Had a little fun and added a makeshift tire center with one of the larger storefront props.

I revised the textures a little bit again to better reflect the markings of RL Costco locations. Due to the size of the gas station in-game, I wasn't able to perfectly replicate it but I felt this iteration was close enough. Maybe my arrows need to be a little pointier. 

Finally, here's all three together. Any additional suggestions and feedback are greatly appreciated!

[Evanjs 602]

Costco need a relot so bad thanks!!!! What about a Walmart shopping center? 

[RRetail 7,906]

Surprised that it is the same size, it looked like it was smaller. No big deal, I guess I like it more than the original one you posted then. 

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@Evanjs: Thanks! I don't have a Walmart on my list at the moment since most of the ones either have fairly decent lots or the model itself is not up to snuff.

@RRetail: Glad you liked the second version!

Updates

ReM #3: Costco Wholesale is now ripe and ready on the STEX! I made a few changes to my description formatting on my uploads. The building stat section is replaced with a greatly abridged version that I sort of copied off @T Wrecks's IRM W2W upload description . The reasoning behind this change is outlined below.

One of the changes coming to my uploads (both future and retroactive) is an updated README. My READMEs have been few and far between in the past. For the most part, it only existed in the form of an ugly normal text file with a list of dependencies.

For a while now, I've kept my documentation to largely the STEX upload description. Today, I got sick of the old approach and decided to dedicate a few hours of my being to a brand new README format (though ultimately it was just an excuse to play around with responsiveness with a modern looking webpage and CSS <.<). The current general stats section in the STEX description will be moved here. All dependencies and other necessary information is also fully present here as well.

Back to lotting! I've been tackling some more of Costco's industrial counterpart. The original version was fine but I felt it was overall too small for my liking. Thanks to reasonably tight LODs, I was able to smash two of them together back-to-back. Behold, the Super Distribution Center!

This is a massive 16x9 lot that I designed to be a sort of a strange hybrid I-M/I-HT. A large part of the front-facing section (the right side in the shot) has a stretch of $ grass textures, which fits with both I-M and I-D. Meanwhile, the front entrance section consists of well-watered parking islands and shinier pavement, which plays nicer with I-HT.

I've since made some considerable changes to the Super Distribution Center. I inverted the mirroring FA parking section since it didn't look quite right, and I changed around the layout towards the front entrance quite a bit.

Like with the first distribution re-lot, I've created a set of textures for the parked semis - this time in orthogonal and yellow. I feel like if I keep up with this I'm going to have to consolidate another texture mega pack soon...

[nos.17 5,120]

CSS?  

I think the inverted truck parking looks a lot more natural right now. Nice.

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Brilliant job with Costco's retail store and the warehouse!

[metasmurf 705]

I think the lot looks really good, but the grass parts within the fenced off area could either be removed or roughed up a bit.  One example from my hometown here.

As you can see there's nicely maintained grass and trees on the parts facing the road, but within it can look more gritty. I looked at other examples and I saw dirt tracks or patches, gravel, unmaintained green areas where they just trim the overgrowth roughly, just pavement with random things like palettes etc. With that being said, I think it's important to not make it too gritty. There needs to be a balance.

My two cents

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@nos.17, @Ln X: Thank you!

@metasmurf: Thanks! Yeah, I've been pondering that particular area for a while. That section was a super rough interpretation of this area where I decided to cram the two angled semis parking stalls closer together. I've since made some modifications but that entire area still has me a little stumped on how I want it to look exactly.

Updates

I've updated a few of my recent ReM and ITS Office Parks files (as far back as Zurich House) to include the new READMEs and an updated screenshot with series icons. These new revisions have the "b" version attached to the upload version number.

Work continues on the Distribution Center.

I've finally created a separate set of FA semi parking stall with crosshatched caps and have begun experimenting with it. Something still doesn't feel completely right for me here though - maybe it's the random orthogonal set of stalls right in the middle.

Here's a few other supremely WIP test layouts that I've spawned. a 15x9 that's a bit of a mirror to the first one, and a gigantic 15x12 for no other reason than to show off some new textures...

Now I can have a gigantic section dedicated to parked semis. The next step would be to port something like these over to IRM with a full set of custom prop families for all of Mushy's trailers.

One thing I've been debating over is how to stripe the diagonal "no parking" sections. The orthogonal textures with the wider gap looks visually cleaner while the "tighter" striping is more consistent with SHK's stripe props and all of the textures I've done to date, though it suffers from a moire effect a further zooms. What do you think?

[nos.17 5,120]

I'd stick with the larger textures. In these industrial-type lots, I do not think too much of a concern should be placed with matching with the other (smaller) SHK+ hashes as they most likely will be used on a limited basis. The wider striping looks better overall IMO, especially when placed next to the semis. Even at zoom 4, I think the tight ones are a little hard on the eyes. For those reasons, I'd go with the wider textures.

[DavidDHetzel 1,816]

This is fairly nitpicky, but I think both warehouse buildings should face the same direction. It just looks weird to me having the office on both sides of the warehouse.

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@nos.17: After several test runs I'm in total agreement here. Definitely ditching the narrower striping.

@DavidDHetzel: Yeah, that's definitely something I've always felt a little off about when making this. The problem is that reversing the direction of the second section always results in some rather undesirable z-fighting, so this was the best compromise IMO. I'm gonna run a few more tests with this and see if it changes with some minor height adjustments.

Updates

In addition to the Costco distribution center, I've been starting work on a couple of other ones, namely the Tractor Supply and Wally K ones.

I suddenly needed to scratch a modding itch and so I've been porting @Diego Del Llano's spectacular BATs released this year into growables - both CAMelots and regular lots. Here's the IBM-Marathon Tower growing - a gigantic building with over 9,200 CO$$$ jobs. Do note that the stats for growables are going to be very different since I ran through the filling degrees for each building. So far some of the larger buildings have truly impressive generated stats, such as the AON center being a stage 15 monstrosity by default and having over 10,000 jobs . I'll be sure to tone some of those down for normal use. 

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Grat job once again! My IRM relots for TSC / Wally K's look like junk in comparison now, haha.

[RRetail 7,906]

Looking good!