Lots by Edvarz: development and support

[Edvarz 1,984]

Hello, people of Simtropolis, this is my humble attempt at adding some custom content to my favorite game.

I installed the Lot Editor a while ago to fix some old LBT (Latin american BAT team) lots that had things that I didn't like, and to try to make my own lots when they weren't to my liking, but also because I wanted to create a mexican-themed city; I even tried to recreate Mexico City (at least the famous parts) to some degree, seeing as how there are a lot of buildings from there for SC4. Since I like to actually run the cities that I create, I wanted my lots to be functional and thus learned how to mod. From what I've seen, those old LBT lots were horribly modded (they never grew on my cities, all were stage 1!!) I've also come across four big packs of models that were never released in any lot whatsoever.

So, since I know the basics and I've already put some effort on my lots, it would be a good idea to go all the way and show them to the community, to get feedback and ultimately, to upload them and contribute to this great game. There are a lot of models to make a lot of lots (lol)...

My current projects:

Dependency packs

• Essentials by Edvarz (ver. 1 November 2016)

The Lat Am Project

• Wall to wall pack (completed)
• Apartment complexes pack 1: medium wealth (unreleased)
• Apartment complexes pack 2: low wealth (unreleased)
• Historic pack 1: commercials and civics (completed)
• Historic pack 2: residential and commericial (completed)
• Offices pack (unreleased)
• Services pack (unreleased)
• Suburban pack (unreleased)
• Historic pack add-on (unreleased)
• Suburban pack add-on (unreleased)

Lat Am Reward & Civic Lots

• Mayor's Villa (completed)
• City Hall Pack (unreleased)
• Churches pack (unreleased)
• Teatro Degollado Opera House (unreleased)
• City Market (unreleased)
• Museums mini pack (unreleased)
• Supreme Court building (unreleased)

LBT Remastered

• Heblem's Retail stores Pack 1 (unreleased)
• Heblem's Retail stores Pack 2: Mexican Retail stores (unreleased)
• Hospitals pack Platinum (unreleased)
• Police Stations Pack Remastered (unreleased)
• Hotels pack 1 (unreleased)
• Hotels pack 2 (unreleased)
• Mexico City Skyscrapers Mega Pack (unreleased)

Misc Projects

• Tcx HD-DarkNite Mega Pack (completed)

Future projects

• Versatile filler pack
• Retail stores filler pack
• Latin american plazas
• Nokkebekken modular apartment complex

 

Spoiler

 

So here´s a small preview:

First, some colonial lots from Debussyman, some of these are bulidings found in Mexico City's historical centre, they are suitable for any such districts found in many Latinamerican cities.

 

Then some small colonial and XIX century style houses, also from Debussyman, lots 1, 2 and 4 use prop families to show different buildings every time they grow or are plopped.

 

These are some more colonial buildings made by Tcxalapa from the LBT; the models for these are not here, but in the spanish language site Capital SimCity.

 

Some suburban modern houses and a mansion found in the unreleased pack.

 

Some more suburban houses found in another house pack from around 2007

 

And last but not least, some wall-to-wall, modern, never released (Edit: now finally released! see table of contents) apartments.

 

So what do you think? there are still many models to be put in nice lots, from all the styles and all the packs, and with different progress In them. I haven't made any low-wealth lots, and there are also two commercial model packs that I haven't put into any lot, I haven't even installed one of them!. As I said, it's a pretty ambitious thing to do, but If I'm going to do it, I might as well not rush and make a worthy addition to SC4.

 

 

[cmdp123789 710]

Looking good.. I like what you're doing.. are those models from Heblem?

[matias93 7,535]

Really a great work, that urges to be in my colonial town (now demolished because of terrible terrain operations)

[Terring 6,473]

Very nice work

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Wow, this is just the kind of work that we can never have enough of! Reminds me of a time when I was remaking some of Ill Tonkso's stuff for simcityplaza.de and found out that one DAT with model files for a suburban home also contained totally undocumented diagonal models that had never been modded or lotted. Looks like you found a real treasure trove there!

 

The lots are looking great so far - not too fancy, but still with lots of nice details. Are you keeping track of dependencies in order to keep them to a reasonable amount?

[Edvarz 1,984]

Hello again!
Sorry if I take a little while to respond, I am a little busy with university, as it is the end of semester, so I won't be able to post on a regular basis. Anyway, thanks for the feedback, everyone, it's really appreciated and encouraging, and it will help me get some quality lots done.

 

@cmdp123789 Thanks! Some of the models are by Heblem, and some by Berethor and Tcxalapa, since they are all mixed up in the pack it's hard to tell which ones specifically, but I guess the best looking ones are from him and from Tcx.

 

@matias93 ¡Gracias! Having a colonial town or a historical centre in a city has always been a dream of mine. That's what got this started on the first place! (I hope you can rebulild your colonial town with better terrain work)

 

@Terring Thanks!

 

@TWrecks Thank you! I am a fan of your IRM and I've seen some of the advice you provide with lotting and modding, you sir are like a Jedi master. As of the dependencies, so far I've only used props that come labeled in the Lot Editor for fear of not knowing which pack it comes from; aside from the model packs themselves I've used Maxis props, Simgoober's props, and LBT props though I don't know to which one of the mega-packs the later correspond to, for textures I've used Maxis defaults and LBT textures, again, I don't know from which mega-pack (In both cases it should be easy to figure out, nevertheless). All of the lots I plan to do are going to use at least these prop packs as the basic and different sets may require different textures and additional props.

 

And now for something completely different (to be read in the voice of John Cleese)... well, not really, but I wanted to say that.

 

I put together 18 basic office lots from an unreleased LBT office models pack, these were a bit easier to make, as they are in less quantity and I had already classified them, I just needed to shake off the laziness and slap them in some lots. These are all the models contained in the pack, it's effectively exhausted. These lots have no details whatsoever yet, and I will make some extra sizes for some. So here they are, there's colonial bulidings, nice wall-to-walls, and a couple of towers.

 

First the mid-wealth offices. The letters GS stand for Growth Stage

 

 

And these are the high-wealth offices.

 

 

So, once more, all your feedback is truly appreciated.

 

Now for the technical stuff.

All the buildings on the lots I've shown so far were exported as props and made into a single .dat file, I made a small, completely transparent box in Gmax (that's the only thing i could do with it, evrything else I tried to make failed miserably ) it is a "dummy building" hidden underneath. If I move some of the dependency packs to my root Plugins folder I could export the models as proper bulidings in the Plug-in manager, this is true of Debussyman's prop pack, the colonial model packs and the 2007 LBT housepack, but not of the residental and office model packs, that lack some xml file.

I saw a post in SC4D that detailed how to add that .xml file, but it required to modify the models pack itself (something I'm not allowed to do if I plan to release the lots) and it's too much of a hassle, I think the dummy building solution will work fine, and it will allow the creation of multi-building lots, something I definitely plan to do for some models I haven't shown yet, it will also avoid the inmortal lot problem, since some building props were a bit bigger than the lots they were supposed to go in and the Lot Editor didn't let me put them in, so I had to shrink the size of the lot after putting them (Does this approach bring any kind of trouble? ).

On the other hand, this solution will make it more difficult to assign stats to the buildings, so far I've done it by getting an occupant number first, this in turn is done by comparing the buildings to others of similar sizes, then, based on that occupant number I use SC4Tool's database and a handy spreadsheet of Stats and values by TWrecks to assign the pollution stats and building value. This method yields the most important stats in a way that I think it's accurate, but a bit work-intensive. For now, I think I'll stick with this solution.

 

Phew... this post is getting a bit long , I think this is enough for now. Next I'll try to put together some more residential lots and show a broader picture of what I plan to do with them, I also have some more doubts about prop families but that will be for another post. See you all and gracias for your comments amigos!

[rsc204 21,808]

You don't need to muck around with XML entries to make them into either building or prop exemplars, but not having them does make this task a little more difficult to do and would probably require use of the Reader to edit the exemplars. If you need a hand with this I could sort that for you?, otherwise using blank building props is fine, after all Maxis invented that one .

[Von F. 29]

Really nice lotting job there! I'm intrigued by those modern apartments at bottom of 1st picture - hope they'll be released soon?

 

(...) I think the dummy building solution will work fine, and it will allow the creation of multi-building lots, something I definitely plan to do for some models I haven't shown yet, it will also avoid the inmortal lot problem, since some building props were a bit bigger than the lots they were supposed to go in and the Lot Editor didn't let me put them in, so I had to shrink the size of the lot after putting them (Does this approach bring any kind of trouble? ).

On the other hand, this solution will make it more difficult to assign stats to the buildings, so far I've done it by getting an occupant number first, this in turn is done by comparing the buildings to others of similar sizes, then, based on that occupant number I use SC4Tool's database and a handy spreadsheet of Stats and values by TWrecks to assign the pollution stats and building value. This method yields the most important stats in a way that I think it's accurate, but a bit work-intensive. For now, I think I'll stick with this solution.

 

 

 

For immortal lot syndrome and building/prop size vs lot size issues, you can edit the occupant size property of your exemplar before lottting... 1 stone, 2 birds

 

Also Wouanagaine's PIM-X tool doesn't require models to have an .xml file to create a building exemplar; therefore no need to assign stats manually. Time and energy are precious resources  

[Edvarz 1,984]

Hello again!

 

@rsc204 Many thanks for the offer! but I checked the PIM-X out and it can export the models just fine, that solves the occupant size issue and makes things way easier.

 

@Von F. Thanks! I think that set of wall-to-wall apartments is going to be the first release of all the sets I have planned, I still have a couple of w2w models that need to be put in lots, but with PIM-X it is going to be waaay easier.

 

So, there will be a couple of facepalm moments during this post...

 

I had previously downloaded PIM-X, but I planned to use it until the last "phase" of making the lots, which was the modding and testing. In retrospect, maybe modding the buildings should have been the fist step, but I didn't even know how many models I had to work with, nor did I have a general picture of what I wanted to do with them so maybe it wasn't a bad idea to tinker with the LE first to sort that out. Now that I know what I want to do and have everything neatly organized, I think I will focus on exporting all the models and then I will resume the detailing on the lots.

About the occupant size issue... that's no longer an issue, really. The lack of the .xml files made it impossible to export anything in the Maxis Plug-in Manager. That meant editing the occupant size of the buildings required messing with the models pack, which has the model and descriptor files merged into a single .dat file. This I'm not allowed to do if I plan to release the lots, of course. However, I realized that "occupant size" was a property of the building exemplar, contained in the descriptor file, independent of the actual model size, that's how modders make those nice overhanging buildings! (You can facepalm now if you haven't). And given that PIM-X can export the models without the .xml files that means I can effectively export them as buildings, with the adequate size and not worry about that anymore.

 

Now that that's taken care of let me show you those multi-building lots I talked about on the las post, they are also presented as single building lots, I haven't got as many time as I wish I had this past week to work on them, so they have different amounts of detailing. For this lots, I drew inspiration from Mattb325's work.

 

First some medium wealth lots.

 

 

The parking lots are made with default Maxis textures, but they show a replacement mod I use. Same with the cars, they show custom cars that were added to the original Maxis prop family (I forgot to use a clean Plugins folder when taking the pictures, but I tested the lots and made sure I was using default textures and props). I may end up changing those for SHK parking textures and car props, anyway.

 

A better view of the detailing, I just noticed the badly placed cars in some lots.

 

 

 

And lastly, two low wealth lots. These resemble what is known in Mexico as "Unidades habitacionales". "Habitational units" are a type of social interest housing solution, they are found in every major mexican city. As far as I know, all of these multi-building lots could be classified as UH, but they generally resemble the more gritty lots of the last picture.

 

 

I realize that the models are not going to be of everyone's liking, wich is why I plan to include a .pdf catalogue with the name of the lot files and a picture with the release, so everyone can easily uninstall or edit the ones that don't cater to their gusto.

 

A final note regarding the various type of buildings I'm working with. I'm going to break them down in various packs for release, the first will be the one that it's closest to completion, which is the wall to wall pack, then I'll release either the multi-building apartments or the commercial offices, then the colonial pack, afrterwards the commercial services pack, and lastly the suburban residential pack, which is the most demanding one.

 

So I hope you like what you've seen so far, and please, feel free to criticize whatever you don't like, your comments are always sincerely appreciated.

[Bastet69008 1,102]

T Wrecks sent me here

 

Okay my 2 cents for this:

You're off to a great start here! The LBT Team has been looking for someone for the lotting part of their huge prop pack, you're definitely the one they were looking for.

 

The colonial part is really interesting, I really like the idea of using walls to complete the smaller buildings. I personally would have added a couple trees on these. I also suggest you make a larger lot for more realism. The initial LBT colonial pack had 6x6 lots, you could use the same formats for loarger lots and could add some streets like I did here:

 

 

I haven't visited Mexico yet (unfortunately ), but from what I saw in South America and the Caribbean, the streets in colonial cities are pretty narrow, you could make larger lots where you would include smaller streets, using an old cobblestone/brick texture as a base texture and you could make larger lots with bigger buildings where you could include a plaza

 

 

For the residential part, you should definitely take a look at CDM Madero's work here 

 

The houses are still lacking a few trees in my opinion. For the trees you could use CP's props, that are available at SC4 Devotion, this is basically a general dependency, most people have this prop pack, you can get desert trees to recreate houses from Northern Mexico, some more general trees if you want something like Central Mexico or tropical and palm trees for a region like Yucatan or Guerrero.

 

I also would have used the cars from VIP/Girafe prop pack, there are great HD car props that are more realistic and come with a variety of colors at different angles (90 degrees or 45 degrees), you can see the cars on the pictures I posted here.

 

For the larger residentials, I would have used other textures, especially for the parking lots, I would have used LBT's textures. Heblem also worked on a custom pack of textures that I can give you if you want (just PM me we'll figure that out )

I would have added some extra props for more luxurious residentials, like football/tennis/basketball courts or swimming pools. Some highrise luxurious residentials have been released but are not available on the STEX, I can give them to you if you want (Thank you STEX Collections CDs!)

 

 

As you said, you're just starting to work on the offices, a lazy trick I recommend you is the use the default Maxis storefront props for the frontage of the buildings, I can't remember the exact name of the props on the LE, but I can get that for you. Basically, you can add realistic storefronts to your buildings like restaurants, retail stores, hairdressers or laundry stores, it gives a more realistic feeling and since it's a Maxis dependency, everybody has them!

 

I used that technique on a couple of buildings for my CJ:

 

 

 

That's what I have to say for the moment, I'll definitely come back to check the progress of your work

 

Keep up the good work and good luck 

[Edvarz 1,984]

Hello once more!! This post is only a reply, it's a long one, so you can skip it and see the next post where I'll show you some more updates.
 
@Bastet69008 Thank you very much for your comments. I gotta say, your CJ is truly an amazing work of art, it's one of my chief inspirations for this project, actually. Ok, brace for a long reply.
About the trees, good thing you noticed, I completely forgot to put them in the colonial houses. I had used CP's trees in the suburban lots, but I removed them to organize the dependencies and until I did further research on the types of trees that most resemble the ones around Mexico City (where i'm from). I actually thought about making two versions of this pack for exactly those tipes of climates: one for subtropical and caribbean cities, and a temperate one for places like Mex City (high altitude) or some regions of Chile or Argentina, maybe I'll also do an arid version for places like El Norte (*puts a sombrero) or some places on the Andes.
 
About the colonials, I really didn't think about making the same kind of big lots that were in the original pack (I only liked two of them). I wanted to give my lots a little more flexibility, so I made them "standard sized", that way whoever uses them can control the zoning and the types of buildings they get. But now that you mention it, maybe I'll add another pack with lots of that kind of size that way I can also take advantage of Debussyman's prop families. Since those mega-lots are a bit more rigid, maybe I'll make them commercial ploppables!
 
About the parking lots, I wasn't satisfied with Maxis' textures either (even with the replacement mod) I'm already experimenting with better ones, maybe I'll take on your offer and see what can be done about those Heblem textures. And about the props, I think I'll use Girafe's cars then, I removed them to reduce the dependencies, but for the humongous amount of lots I'm going for (100+) It may very well be worth it. Besides, everyone deserves to have those beautiful cars.
 
About the storefronts, It may seem lazy, but they can really liven up the lots.
 

 
However, some of the buildings just don't like having those shops and always want to show in front of them! (I believe this is an issue with what they call LOD's, but I'm clueless beyond this point)
 
And lastly, about the modern luxury residentials, I have only done a couple of them and they are in a "preliminary stage" I have neat things planned for those like building families, more lots, bigger lots, and more props, but is going to take a while until I can tackle it.
 
Again, thank you very much for your feedback, and please, stay tuned!

[Edvarz 1,984]

Alright, so let me show you a couple of updates.

 

Here are 10 new lots between colonials and modern buildings. I've been busy learning how to use PIM-X and re-exporting the models for the lots I already had with it, the good thing is that it's a wonder program with wich the modding is way easier and quicker, so I may have a couple more things to show by Monday. Also after this week I'm going to take a big hiatus from Simtropolis to present finals, so I won't post until next month. Better not waste time then!

 

First: I just updated this lot that I made months ago, the model corresponds to a hotel located in the mexican city of Veracruz

 

 

A couple of cornerlots with neat buildings made by Heblem for the LBT's colonial pack

 

 

Two "vecindades" (as we call them in Mexico, I believe they are called "corralas" in Spain) these are big old buildings for many families that are common around Latin America. These are from the unreleased residential models.

 

 

And to finish, some modern wall-to-wall apartments in 1x1 lots and one in a 2x1 lot (There aren't a lot of buildings of this type around here, from what I've seen)

 

 

Remember that all your comments are deeply appreciated, and please stay tuned for more updates. See you next time!

[Edvarz 1,984]

Hello!

I've been taking little breaks from RL to work in this project to avoid burnout on either front, and this time I have a big update. I am very pleased to announce that the first one of the sets I plan to release is almost complete! , I just need to test the lots, write documentation and figure how to make the names show in Spanish or English according to the user's installation language.

 

So here it is: the modern wall to wall apartment pack.

 

 

These are the capacity stats of the buildings:

1. Urban apartments (they are grouped in a building family) 328 $$ residents.

2. Inner-City apartments (grouped in a building family) 504 $$ residents

3. Delgado building 361 $$ residents

4. Los Jardines apartments 391 $$ residents

5. Cheap apartments (grouped in a building family) 195 $ residents

6. Modest apartments (grouped in a building family) 222 $ residents

7. Boulevard Plaza building 126 $$ residents

8. Hidalgo apartments 102 $$ residents

9. Heblem building 82 $$ residents

10. Regina apartments 102 $$ residents

11. Morelos apartments 182 $$ residents

12. Tepico building 600 $ residents (I feel this one is a bit over the top)

 

There are 16 models in 14 lots, the modding was done using PIM-X, so they shouldn't have "surprises" like 300 tons of garbage generated monthly, still, let me know if you think they have too many inhabitants.

 

The only essential dependencies needed are the ones that contain the models, and optionally CP's prop pack number one and LBT mega texture pack for minimal details in one of the lots, namely, cars and a parking overlay texture. These are common dependencies and I'm going to use them extensively in my other packs anyway.

 

Now, I have updated the multi building lots I showed a couple of updates before with trees, better parking lot textures and different car props. I have used CP's trees from both packs and Girafe's oaks and ashes. I've also used Cycledogg's textures, BSC textures from the first volume, and LBT textures. For props I've used CP's props, LBT props and Simgoober's props (also, Maxis props). Let me show you:

 

 

About the trees, I did some "research" about the type of trees found in temperate climates here in central Mexico, they are rather similar to other temperate places in Latin america (i.e. places in Argentina or Chile) these are the ones that are shown here, I'll later do a tropical version and maybe a desertic version. Also, I didn't use any seasonal trees, they are all evergreen or semi-seasonal, but  I think the best looking solution for the temperate version is to use a mixture of the three types, so what do you think? should I use seasonal trees?.

For the car props I tried using Girafe's cars and the SHK ones, but they didn't mix very well with the parking textures (they are too big), so I resorted to CP's cars and LBT cars, I think this yields a good variety, they mix well with the textures and with each other, plus, CP's cars are timed, shaded, and come in families.

 

I know it seems like too much dependencies, but before you roast me, let me show you 9 new additional lots with no additional dependencies.

 

 

 

(In the next image, the one in the middle is the new one, the one in the left is an updated one, and the one in the right...)

 

 

About that last image and the lot on the right, It's a 6x6 lot, and as you can see, the buildings don't look terribly good in it. I've seen in a couple of places that 6x6 is the limit for growable residential lots. Is this true? If it is, I'll keep just the single-building lot, if it isn't, i'll just make a bigger lot.

 

So far there are 19 lots in the multi-building pack, and there are still about 10 more coming, so I think the amount of dependencies is justified.

 

So that's all I have to show for now, I hope you like my work, and please, do feel free to tell me what you like and dislike, and stay tuned, because the colonial pack is coming together at last! On a side note, RL is gonna be heavy this next two weeks, and I may not post an update or release the wall to wall pack until mid-June, but after that I'm going to be off for summer vacation! So you'll be seeing more lots more frequently.

 

See you next time!

[Bastet69008 1,102]

Excellent! Some great progress here!

[T Wrecks 10,209]

6x6 is an "artificial" limit that the Lot Editor imposes on you by default. It's "artificial" in that it's not a technical limit at all; my guess is that Maxis programmed that limit to keep growable lots to a more manageable spectrum of 1x1 (minimum) to 6x6 (maximum).

 

However, you can trick the LE into accepting larger lots. Simply make a lot with a permitted size, i.e., up to 6x6, and save it with the desired name. Now exit the LE and open the .sc4lot file in iLive's reader. Find the property called LotConfigPropertyLotSize (or very similar). Its values should read something like "0x05, 0x03" for a 5x3 lot. Simply change the numbers to the desired value in hexadecimal. As you probably know, the first value is the lot width (alongside the road), the second value is the lot depth (away from the road). For a 10x7 lot, for example, you'd have to change the values to "0x0A, 0x07" (0A = 10 in hexadecimal).

 

One important aspect to consider in this context is what you could call "growability" - how easy is the lot to grow? For example, if you make a lot that's 12 tiles wide and 4 tiles deep, the game is very likely to split it up into several 2x4, 3x4, and 4x4 lots instead of growing your 12x4 lot. If you make it 4 wide and 12 deep, the game can't split it up. On the other hand, it won't be able to combine two or three existing lots to your lot. The latter, however, doesn't happen very often.

[Edvarz 1,984]

Hey everyone! It's been a bit since I last updated this thread. Between finals and other stuff, RL has made me busy this month, plus, I decided to use my SC4 time to play with a region and a couple of cities I have been building (I'll be posting that soon in the respective forums )

This update has no real progress at all, I don't have significant advances to show, I just wanted to report that I am picking up this project and ask a couple of things. I'll be posting updates on the colonial lots and the apartment complexes next, and after I finish testing and documenting the wall to walls I will be ready to have my first upload in the STEX!!!!

Once again, thanks for reading this thread, and for the replies and feedback.

@T Wrecks I see, i am using PIM-X, which lets me make lots bigger than 6x6, but I was unsure if residential lots of this size would work correctly, thanks for clarifying that. I have tried to grow 5x3 or 6x2 lots only to have many smaller lots grow in place It's annoying! but I don't think a 7x7 Is likely to suffer from that problem.

Now, a couple of doubts related to slopes. The models i'm using don't have any kind of custom building foundation so I figure they are not very slope-friendly. As far as I know, slope tolerance is given by the Min/MaxSlopeAllowed property of the lot exemplar, where the default pair of values (0,0) make a lot flatten the terrain where it's placed completely. If I change this values too far I don't think the lots are going to look terribly good, so how do I set reasonable values for this? I am going to fidget around with a test lot to see how these properties work, but in the meantime it doesn't hurt to ask.

Thanks for stopping by and see you next time!.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Yeah, I remember I once asked if anyone knew what a slope of "5" actually meant - I received what I assume is a precise and correct answer in the form of a diagram accompanied by a geometric formula. Being the math nincompoop that I am, that didn't really help me much, although it was probably the best possible information. If I remembered the exact thread, I'd link you to it, but unfortunately I don't.

What you can do, however, is use the Extra Cheats DLL to plop a building using the "buildingplop" cheat. If its max slope settings are exceeded by the given terrain, then the lot should turn red and will not plop. This may help to give you a rough idea of what to expect.

Oh, and the flattening effect is slightly different - the propery responsible for this is "Max slope before lot foundation". A lot foundation, as opposed to a building foundation, means that the entire lot will be level and rest on a foundation. Check this example:

• min slope: 2
• max slope before lot foundation: 10
• max slope: 20

In this example, the lot will not grow at all if the slope is below 2 (slope) or above 20 (max slope). From slope 2 to slope 10, it will show a normal building foundation, but the lot will follow the terrain. Above slope 10 and up to the max slope of 20, it will change to a foundation for the entire lot, i.e. the lot will rest on a large lot foundation and be exactly level, but it will stick out of the terrain or be sunken in it.

On the other hand, I wouldn't spend too much thought on it. If players zone a 7x7 lot over a steep slope, it's their fault if the result looks wonky. Then again, some might not even mind. Not every player is obsessed with detail - some enjoy looking over a sprawling city from zoom 3, others will place MMP daisies on avenue medians in zoom 5. IMO, if you don't prepare the terrain a bit for everything else but low-density, single-family homes, you don't deserve otherwise.  

[matias93 7,535]

I Need This!! Is just plain wonderful the work you have done, a very credible 'feel' of contemporary latin american city.

About the lot size, stick with 6x6 and its divisions: is relatively easy to do ingame (when playing and not only modelling a city), and is the standard size of every latin american block: 100x100 meters (like 110 'varas castellanas' in the XVI century to be precise, but it is rectified now) 

[Edvarz 1,984]

Hello once more!

This time I have an update, but it's a rather small one, this post contains mostly graphical glitches, bad modding (not from me) and frustration, so you've been warned.

Replies at the bottom.

The good news are that I have finally finished the last details of the modern wall to wall building pack. I modded the lots to look good on sloped terrain and added LText to the building exemplars so that when you query them, they will show the building's name in Spanish or Portuguese if such is your installation language (I don't really speak Portuguese, so I deeply apologize in advance for any mistakes I made, it is not my intention to butcher such a beautiful sister tongue); if you have any other installation language, their name will show in English. Now I just need to write documentation and they'll be in the STEX maybe in the upcoming week.

I have also finished making basic lots for the first historic pack, some of them just need detailing so let me show the last ones to you.

First, five residental lots using prop families.

And two extra versions of lots I showed previously, since these correspond to a museum and a bookstore IRL, I thought it'd be a good idea to throw in a museum and a library version. Also shown, two commercial service buildings.

Now comes the ugly part...

Some lots use a dummy building and prop families, and those props have the property to orient to slope set as true, so if I were to leave the lot's slope settings as they were set by default, whoever downloads the pack could end up with something like this...

So no slope tolerance. Now, for a less funny glitch, you can see a nice green house from zoom five inside the black box, but on zoom four and further up, half of the rear wall just disappears (glitch circled in red). This seems to have something to do with the model file itself, so there's nothing to do except try and cover the ugly truth up with a big tree or something.

And now, the (rotten) cherry on top of the cake. To the left you can see a nice block of houses, but to the right you can see a zoom one view of the test city on which such block is located and... half the houses have disappeared!. I checked the descriptors on Debussyman's prop pack, from where i'm getting the props turns out many of the building props on which I rely have the visible zoom levels set to 2,3,4,5.

The only solution to that last problem is to re-export the house models myself and use my own IID range for the prop families, so the mega pack would only be used for the models and the original descriptors would just sit idle on the user's computer, taking up hard disk space. I don't think Debussyman is still active, because I could offer him to patch the pack (it's really just a matter of ticking a few boxes) however, I could also reach out to someone at SC4D to see if they can look up into it, but with such an old pack it may not be worth the hassle.

Also, you may have noticed the wall props I'm using don't line up correctly. I swear!!! I have spent hours editing the lots to get them to align with no succes, fortunately, I've got my eye set on the props from Romualdillo's amazing project on SC4D, I think I will put this part of my project on hold until that set is released to see how can I better my lots with them. Seriously, check it out, it's gorgeous.

And lastly, some trivia: I came up with a catchy name for this lotting project "The Lat Am project" it will consist of six core packs: the modern wall to walls, the apartment complexes, the historic pack, the office pack, a services pack i have yet to show you, and the suburban pack; plus one or two add-ons for the historic pack and one add-on to the suburban pack. I also have plans to make a couple of replacements for game buildings like the Resort hotel or the Mayor's house, similar to FrankU's dutch lots, I've already picked the models for those two. So I guess i'm building a Latin american theme for SC4.

In total, I've made 104 lots for this project (!!!!) Granted, many of them aren't yet functional and many lack details, but still...

So to wrap it all up, for the next post I'll show the last ten lots of the apartment complex pack, they will be low wealth apartment blocks, so get ready for some grit and grunge!

See you around!

Replies:
@T Wrecks I like math... but not to that extent. I've been messing with slopes and ended up modding most lots so they will totally flatten the terrain anyway, I think this update clearly shows why. Since I'm a detail-obsessed kind of player (I actually tried plopping flowers on an avenue median, sadly, it's not possible ) I wanted to get that property right so the lots will not have those annoyng details.

@matias93 Thanks! I hope that when this project is done I can create a latin american CJ that encompasses that "feel", there are so many angles from which too look at any city in the world and the ability to do "themed" cities is why SC4 is such a great game. And that last information it's interesting to know, I'll plan my cities accordingly!

  Edited July 12, 2015 by Edvarz  

[matias93 7,535]

@Edvarz I think that the slope-oriented housed, well used, aren't a glitch, but an interesting addition to the realism of the game. So far, I've seen more than a few houses mildly inclined in unstable terrains, like in Valparaiso. With a good slope mod to make more reasonable incline, this could look fairly natural and real.

[Edvarz 1,984]

Hello everyone, RL has caught me for a while, and only now do I catch a little breath. Remember the pack I've been saying i'm about to release only to not release it? well, it's packed and tested and the documentation is half done, so soon I guess. I just wanted to come by and leave a teaser of the promos i've been doing, with a logo i created for the project. I whipped it up in Open Office Impress (analogue of MS Powerpoint) so it's not the best quality. Does anybody know what programs do the people here at Simtropolis use to make those nice images in their CJ's and content promos?

Once i'm done with this paraphernalia, the other releases will take considerably less time to document and illustrate, since I will use the same format for all of them.

Coming soon...

[Hotwheeler 409]

Looks like a very exiting Set with lots of Buildings to choose from.

The modern Stil will fit in many different Areas,not just Latin america.Keep up the great Work,can`t wait to see them soon on the STEX.

[Heblem 600]

Thank you for taking your time in lotting something I should have done many years ago, it was on my plans doing this but I guess you took to job first and I gotta say many thanks for your time in doing the lotting of many of the buildings.

I used many of these props in my city project "Fresnillo" like 6 years ago, if it helps how these props should be placed, please consider looking at this project I did long ago, I guess you'll love it.

I'll keep a look into this project.

Cheers 

 

[Edvarz 1,984]

Hello everyone, great news!

Long overdue, finally I have my first upload to the STEX!

The pack of wall to wall buildings is up, you can get it here.

Thanks to everyone who provided assistance, feedback and encouragement, this project wouldn't have the quality I hope it has without your help, you are an amazing community!

Now I want to share with you some other plans and thoughts, and other stuff I've been working on, but first, overdue replies

@Hotwheeler Thanks, I made this set thinking exactly that it would fit with many more regions, hope the community likes it!

@Heblem Wow, I feel honored! Thanks for dropping by and commenting, I have to say that since I started playing SC4 I have always wanted to follow the steps of the LBT, Im glad I can contribute to bring content like this to all the players. I had watched some of your old videos (don't remember how I found them) to get inspiration, and I checked your amazing CJ, that is how a truly mexican city should look like (the highway looks rad!). But I still feel there is a lack of BATs and other plugins for making such a city, especially crucial historical colonial BATs and dense wall to wall little houses, thankfully, the first thing is getting developed at SC4D and that dream may finally come true! that is what motivates this project.

I don't have a lot of time to post pics in this update, so I'm just going to talk about my plans and later I will show you what I meant.

1) So, the next set of lots I plan to release is the apartment complexes, there are only a couple of them unlotted and a coupled of them undetailed, for the details, it ocurred to me that I could make the LBT cars in the parking lots prop families (using my own range of IID's) to have better variation, this will also result useful for further lots, so I'll test that and get back with the results.

2) All of these time, I've been checking some LBT buildings that I use in my cities and fixing the lots and the stats, for example, may buildings use a base texture that corresponds to a supposedly outdated texture pack, instead of the up to date pack, so they often lack base textures, fixing this is simple and quick enough. I have also retouched many lots to clear them of props that didn't look that good, or added props from other packs. Would there be interest for a "LBT Remastered" series?

3) I plan to make BATs!... once this semester ends. I have already spotted a couple of Mexico City buildings that should be easy enough to start off (I will disclose them in due time), I would focus in what I like, that is, historic and art deco buildings, and I also have plans for a car pack that directly replaces the cars in the LBT prop pack, but that will have to come later.

I hope this is a prolific year and look forward to seeing your comments.

Cheers!

Edvarz

 

[Edvarz 1,984]

Hi! I'm just popping in to say hello and leave a small teaser of things to come in a hopefully not so distant future. I got some free SC4 time this easter vacation, but it's time to go back to university, and now also to work, so my plate is kinda full right now. I just couldn't resist showing this in my thread.

So here's the start of my LBT Remastered project!

Seems that there has been a recent influx of retail store lots, so why not jump on the bandwagon with my collaboration? , this is just a simple unfinished retouch of Heblem's Office Depot, but I plan to re-lot all of his mexican retail stores.

(Sorry for the quality, seems that I compressed the image a bit too much ) There's a 4x5 and a 4x4 growable lot, and a 4x3 ploppable "bare" lot so people can use whatever parking lot or filler set they wish as complements. Also, I used SHK's parking textures, but I plan on using KOSC's great (and crazy big) parking textures pack.

And here's a pre-decorated re-lot (and fix) of Berethor07's Fiesta Americana Reforma hotel.

A big 7x4 lot that will come with growable and ploppable C$$ and C$$$ versions for players to choose between, and if I manage to pull it off, a ploppable overhanging version (we'll see how that goes).

Next update will show the final touches on my second residential pack, which will be the medium-wealth apartment complexes, I look forward to sharing it with the community.

See you later!

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Ha, great idea to take care of these retail buildings! When I saw nos.17's thread with all those re-lots of old BAT models by Bobbo662, I immediately thought that something similar could/should be done to all those great buildings by MarcosMX. However, nos.17 has plenty of work cut out for him already, and the same applies for KOSC with his suburban offices by ITS and the parking lot stuff. As for myself, I have IRM stuff to take care of... this is why I'm all the more pleased to see that these buildings get some lotting love, too!

Good luck with that hotel, too - an overhanging lot sounds like a great idea. If you run into problems, don't hesitate to ask.

[Edvarz 1,984]

Hello!

So today my modest lot thread reaches the one year old mark!

I wanted to clebrate with an upload to the STEX but wasn't able to finish anything on time (I got distracted trying out KOSC's parking lots). But anyway, instead of an upload there are lots of teasers! so let me show you how things are moving along, and also some plans that I have for the future. Oh, and by the way, I have edited the first post on the thread to show all the projects I am (or will be) working on, so be sure to check that out!

First, I started the last four lots for my next release: the medium wealth apartment complexes pack; these are all 6x6 lots. The layout and textures are done, now I just need to decorate them with props and flora. To upload this new pack I still need to make tropical versions of all the lots in it, write documentation and create some timed prop families for the LBT cars on the parking lots so there's still plenty of work left to be done but hopefully it won't be too time consuming.

Next, some low wealth apartment complexes that I started a couple of months ago but forgot to show here.

And now some remastered LBT retail stores. Here's a preview of yet undetailed ploppable versions of Heblem's Home Depot and Sam's Club.

Now, you may be wondering where the parking lots are. Before you write an angry comment, let me show you the plans I have for this retailers pack.

Since these lots are so big and have such a unique footprint I figured they shouldn't be at all difficult to grow, and thus a ploppable version with parking would be kind of redundant... instead, you could take advantage of all the filler and parking lot sets out there and use them to mix and match, and create realistic retail corridors with any shape, look and footprint that you desire! Shown in this picture are KOSC's modular parking lots, TWrecks' IRM fillers, MGB's diagonal fillers, MMP industrial junk and an MMP truck, and that Office Depot I showed in the last update. This is just something I whipped up in a bit of a hurry, but it showcases the possibilities rather nicely! Oh, and it's all functional, all the stores have jobs and road access.

On a bit of a side note, I made a mistake with the asphalt texture on the lots , don't worry, I'll change it for a base texture that matches the parking lots and the IRM IHT filler set.

And now, for the last part (I promised it would be a long update didn't I?) here's some buildings that I'm going to turn into functional rewards! (Provided I learn how to do that)

From left to right these lots will function as: 1) A small farmer's market (with the same stats than the Maxis default but no agricultural requirements) 2) A big farmer's market (same as the last one but with stats suitable for a medium to big city) 3) An Opera House (kinda obvious) 4) A Major Art Museum. Note: all these are the original lots, not mine (I would never use those radioactive palm trees).

These four churches will function as... you guessed it: Houses of Worship.

And lastly, these three will obviously correspond to the three stages of City Halls!

So that is all I have to show... phew! and I still have a reply to post...

So any thoughts or suggestions? Next time I'll be showing the finished versions of the $$ apartment complexes, both the temperate and the tropical versions and some more of Heblem's retail stores. Until then!
Replies:

Spoiler

@T Wrecks Well, to be honest I didn't have the intention to re-lot those retail buildings I only had vague plans to retouch Marcos MX's mexican restaurants and make them compilant with my retailers set. Maybe in the future I can see if I can add them to my list but as it happens I got tons of stuff I would like to finish first (as evidenced by the edited first post of the thread). On a side note: more IRM stuff! yay!

 

 

[Heblem 600]

Just stopping by and telling you all your projects looks fantastic, I love it. Sure you can go ahead with the remastering LBT stuff and mine ofc. Anything you need, just ask, can be fixes, BATS, or something related to Latam or other.

Also, there are many ugly unused props from LBT which I'm not sure how to extract from the DAT packs for remove, and use only the useful, but I guess those will still be there, that's for a remastered prop pack version and texture, but haven't touched the modding of SC4 since 2010... so probably will have to take a look and have some time for it. The missing textures in many of my packs it's for a textura pack thats its located in one of the obsolete props packs, if I remember right it's the LBT prop pack 1, a file called Texturas.DAT or something like that. I recognize there's a big mess that I wanted to fix years ago, but unfortunately back then I got a virus attack to my old PC which caused to lose many original 3D files for Prop Packs for fixing, best I could do back then it's just doing a cleanitool file for sort the content, but seems the file was removed... the correct use of LBT stuff is just having the Mega Prop Pack, Mega texture pack and that texture.dat I mentioned.

I have many old hidden BATs in my PC that never was released, mostly stuff from 2008-2011 which it just needs some adjustments (texturing), exporting and lotting, many of those were not possible to export from my old pc... but now I have a better pc, who knows... I might be able to export it all now. And since I don't really want to use anymore LBT prop packs I stopped producing new BATs until I get a new prop pack with HD props, as personal prop pack for my future uploads (since 2013), but unfortunately since I have many things to do in RL, I can't do much for it, but i'll see if I can get to work on it...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Edvarz 1,984]

Just reporting my progress: you may have seen this screnshot posted at the Show Us What You're Working On thread (figured I would get more exposure there) these are some LBT props that I've been modding and grouping into families. The easy part is done, that is, modding all the props except the cars which will be timed props.

And here's some more nice props that I didn't show on that post. All of them have been completed.

So far 92 props have been modded and grouped into 19 families and that's only half the work! I'm burnt out for now, and I still need to do the more intensive part: the cars. In addition, RL calls: my final exams start this week. So I'll be taking a break until the end of this semester, since what little free time I'll have, I'll dedicate it to other things. However, you can expect to see these props and many more things both here and on the STEX by next June, including medium and low wealth apartment complexes (with tropical versions) and a couple of surprises that I will disclose in due time. See you later!

Replies:

@Heblem

Tkanks! I've checked the problem with the textures before and found that there are two ranges that LBT lots use, there's the file you mention and the LBT Mega Texture Pack, one of the reasons for doing remastered re-lots of LBT stuff was getting rid of those old Textures, but also making LBT content compatible with many new releases that are quickly becoming prevalent.

And about those BATs and HD props you mention, it would be great to see what you have in store. I've been learning my way around the Reader, so if you struggle finding the time for modding and lotting, I would be happy to help.

[debussyman 1,348]

I had forgotten about all of these models. Great work!! Thank you very much for reviving them.

I have a few more colonial BATs that were never published, in case you are interested.