CT14's Railroad Lots and BAT

[Linus van Pelt 293]

3 hours ago, T Wrecks said:

Is it just me, though, or does the roof texture tile rather visibly?

In my opinion the FAR version tiles though the orthogonal version looks fine.

But it is anyways a great addition. We couldn't have enough diagonal buildings and/or industry.

[metarvo 711]

They say the railroads are declining... but they are wrong.  Railroads are alive and well, and these cars will keep that spark of life going on the rails that we build.

The warehouse are a nice addition as well, since many a blank space needs to be filled and small warehouses do the job well.  I think warehouses lend themselves quite well to W2W-style as this means of building allows one to have variable sizes of warehouses.  It certainly doesn't hurt that there are diagonal and FA options available.

Great work CT14!

[CT14 2,486]

FA3 Intersections gridbusting!

I've wanted to try this for ages. These sheds came together rather quickly. I also completed most of the work on the FAB-D2 regular filler model - so, about halfway finished with the FA3 filler set (D1,D2,D3 in the map below).

 

[CT14 2,486]

FA3 Intersections

Rendered scaled versions for testing. Still need to place interior objects to have something to look at through the windows.

Another new BAT...

So far, all the work I've done has been on industrials and transport. I keep visualizing a small 19th century commercial building...finally whipped one up this week.

For this project, I made all new scene parts, without reusing any of the meshes from the industrials. The building is made to fit on 8mx27m so you can have a 3m setback in front, 2m in rear (or 5m in rear). Here's the result so far.  Need to test side-by-side with JBSimio Smalltown USA and Cycledogg houses.

For this model it was all about the details -

• One gas vent flue, two stovepipes
• Awnings! With authentic awning patterns!
• Downspout to cistern (ooh, gonna make it a rain barrel on the bare wood versions)
• External staircase to second story
• Hatch to access basement
• Windows with real geometry
• Old advertising signs
• Gold leaf on the windows
• And more! gotta leave an Easter Egg or two...

At night, the shops are mostly closed, and the shopkeepers are upstairs with their families.

I can see at least 3 LOD problems, one mesh problem and one texture problem in the test images... but overall I'm pretty pleased with the results. I'll be applying some of what I've learned on these to finish off the brick warehouses shown on the last page. I also started on a cast iron facade but it's gonna take ages - so this little Wild West thing came first.

This model will lend itself to 1 story and 1x1 variations, and I'll make those before release. Testing models as shown here are not yet scaled 133% vertically already to compensate for the 'squish'.

[CT14 2,486]

Testing W2W 19th Century Commercials with JBSimio Smalltown USA standards

Well, the BAT works ok with the JBSimio Smalltown USA stuff, which has been a major goal for the project. I was wrong about setback - standard is 2m for the front. I'll be lotting them to match that, and the textures JBSimio used for the base textures - so it's as seamless as possible.

In the first image here, you can see a comparison of one of his buildings: white with green trim, and one of mine in the same color - on this green/white render you can see two of the LOD problems are now fixed (Cornice and awning), but the front of the foundation still looks like Ruffles... they've got ridges.

Some interesting spaces forming in the center of the 4x4 blocks.

I really like the little fence on Stanley and Mercer Buildings lot...and the matching setback here.

The alleyways came out well, I think. I may do future 1x2 commercials at around 8m by 25m, to give 5m in rear for alleyjunk while allowing 2m setback in front. This will be a better match for Smalltown USA. The 1x1 versions I'm planning will also give plenty of room in back when lotted as 1x2.

In this image I also see less tiling on the small buildings' shingles than on the warehouse, which is good - I can go back and apply the different technique.

Here, we can see that the 4m Beltlines (plus .5m foundation) are a reasonably good match with Smalltown USA, although not perfect. JBSimio was not always consistent within the series, so it will be impossible to match 100% anyway. His target seems to have been closer to 3-3.5m; this gives a direction for my future work as I certainly wouldn't want to go taller than 4m where it is now.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

This is all shaping up very nicely!

As for setbacks, it's complicated. They are based on pavement tiles, and the use of setbacks is not as consistent as you'd wish it to be. For most authors, the following division is true:

• European stuff: 2 tiles (Xannepan, all SFBT, Glenni, debussyman and other BSC members, simcitypolska members, etc.)
• American stuff: 1 tile (All NYBT authors, BSP / mipro, Jasoncw's / nofunk's solo work, etc.)

JBSimio's Smalltown USA collection is an exception from this pattern, as is spa's work IIRC. I'm not sure about Cycledogg. In any case, since JBSimio's work is closest to your stuff and corner buildings made for the 2-tile setback cannot be moved further towards the front without causing gaps, it's probably wise to do as you did and stick to the 2 tiles as well.

On a side note, while piecing together my next plugins folder, I found out that JBSimio (A) seemed to use a monitor calibration that caused him to shift the overall colour balance of his BATs towards a bit towards green when compared to the Maxis palette, and (B) often scaled his BATs pretty big - I ended up rescaling some of his apartment blocks (particularly older ones, though) to anything between 75% and 85%. The latter will probably not be an option for W2W because you'll want to keep the W2W character of the BATs. However, it looks like scale is pretty fine on the Smalltown USA buildings anyway, so this shouldn't be a problem.

By the way, it's good to see screenshots of these buildings from up close. The old STEX preview images often don't do them justice, and some of them actually look really good even today. I might end up using more of them than I had anticipated. Some are a bit off colour IMO, but armed with the knowledge that I have acquired recently, this shouldn't be a problem, either.

In any case, you are cooking up some really interesting stuff here, and it's fun to follow this thread!

[CT14 2,486]

@T Wrecks thanks for the useful information on setbacks! I appreciate the rundown on which content falls in where, as I hadn't done much investigation yet. The other thing about 2m setbacks is it gives enough room for large balconies/boardwalks in front of the building, so I'll be sticking to the 2m for these lots. I may go with 1m for the Cast Iron models though.

I agree that the Smalltown USA BATs have realistic scaling which has been scaled properly in game (doors not too wide being the easiest way to spot this at a glance). It's definitely on the shorter side of what is realistic (i.e. typical "Wild West" proportions), while my model has nearly 12-foot ceilings as you'd find in larger towns.

To address this, I'll make the 1x1 versions of this BAT to also have smaller stories, to provide a nice blend between the sets.

And, it seems inevitable that I need to test side by side with the full regalia of other W2W Chicago-tileset BATs you mentioned, along with IRM W2W - full plugins folder.

I rebuilt the geometry of the area that's ruffling under the building's front door, but still ruffles. Split testing a variety of LOD, mesh and lighting conditions is next...

Oh, and this happened...

[CT14 2,486]

I fixed the wavy foundation bug, I think. It seems to be due to an off-center render. The problem also affects some of the new smaller BATs I'm showing here, but at least I know where to start fixing it.

Wild West Commercial Pack

Another thing I've wanted to do forever. These have 3.5m stories. I may do some utterly squalid shacks around 2.5m or 3m. Here are a few of them - they'll be in prop families for 8m and 16m widths. The corner BAT will be modded for corner lots.

The buildings all have 2m setbacks with 2m awnings. I'm happy with how this looks next to the game sidewalks.

And here is the fixed 1x2 Commercial with JBSimio and Cycledogg houses...along with the 1x2 Industrial and Wild West of course.

The industrial has boxes on the floor and a revised roof texture, along with a crane at the cargo doors.

Another view showing three different variations on the industrial.

The plan is to render 4m, 8m, 16m sections of fencing/side lot to put into the Wild West and 19th Century Commercial 8m BAT prop families and give the lots some room to breathe. Another lot can have one 8m bat in center and 4m fence surround...a whole 16m lot with just fence and outbuildings...etc.

Looks like most of the Wild West night lights need a double check.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Wow, that is an epic update! Making a tileset, are we?

That industrial building looks spot on now, in all variations. A certain addition to the IRM W2W in due course, hehe.

Although I'm not too familiar with the looks of US cities and towns in the mid-to-late 1800s, everything looks pretty realistic to me. That sidwalk texture sure looks good in combination with the dirt street texture and your buildings, and your plans for building families and lot configurations also sound great. These gorgeous pics really made my morning, thank you for that.

[CT14 2,486]

@T Wrecks Thanks for confirming that the new roof texture is an improvement!

True corner lots

With a new red brick corner BAT comes true modded corner lots, and the chance to seamlessly cap the end of 2-tile blocks with the same corner BAT growing on both sides, effectively appearing as a 1x2. Using this tileset, I no longer get anything growing on a left corner except this red brick building, and never get the corner building in the middle of a block (whack-a-mole!)

Board Fences

Yet another bit I always reach for and never find. There are some low res ones in Jestarr props, and a few small HD pieces in the SM2 prop packs, but no large board fences with all the angles. I've created 4m, 8m, 16m props as mentioned above, with longer props to match diagonal, FA2 and FA3. The filler lots aren't done yet (base textures be buggin!) but there will be lots to match Dirt, IRM I-D and IRM I-M. The angled filler lots are all based on the great work of @Tyberius06 and @kingofsimcity.

Rough preview of the IRM I-M appearance:

FA2 with dirt lot is also visible in the next shot:

With Cycledogg Tenements... fixed hardware store on right and SCILT textures on its test lot.

Dirt filler lots finally cooperated for a few screenshots.

Some more dirt fillers here.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Splendid work, and Cycledogg's tenements look surprisingly good in this context!*

_______________
*I mean to say that it's suprising to me because I had never thought of using them like this - the fact that those models are absolutely superb is hardly a surprise!

 

[CT14 2,486]

Shorty is here

8m by 12m BAT. I've been a bit confused about the setbacks, even though T Wrecks tried to show me the light. Each tile on a Maxis tiled base texture is 1.6m. When speaking of 1-tile setback, 2-tile setback, it's thus 1.6m or 3.2m, etc... This means that the Wild West BATs really have a 1-tile setback, not 2-tile. Gonna stick with it for now with both the commercial project and the Wild West, since it matches most other things anyway.

She's got a new cornice top, weathered awnings and cleaned up a few meshes while resizing the walls.

Flat roof with 2-story front, and 1-story variations for pitched and flat roof models are the only others I have planned for this series. That will yield several dozen color/shape combinations, enough to avoid repetition. Yes, that is a picture of a dog smoking.

Prop families

I've assigned prop families from my range to 19th Century Shops regular, medium, and small, Wild West 8m, 16m and corner, along with new prop exemplars for each prop in the families. Final lots using these prop families are in testing. When the renders and the lots are solid, I'll fill out the varieties on the BATs.

[CT14 2,486]

19th Century Small Shops lots

I've created lots for the prop families for 19th Century Small Shops large, medium and small BATs. I'm pretty happy with the results so far, although there are some obvious issues remaining.

So the issues right now:

• Base textures and SCILT overlay need a cleanup (rear of lots will match JBSimio dark gravel, front $ sidewalk with SCILT overlays. The intent is that the back of lots can form alleyways. We probably need IRM-style dark gravel filler lots to match this, to provide period-appropriate parking and so forth.
• Cornices, doors and certain roof tiling are too similar. New BATs will vary these points
• New 2 story BATs will have interior stairwells so it's not a forest of identical exterior staircases
• At least one BAT has an LOD issue, and another is off center
• Some foundation fronts need paint to match pilastres
• Setbacks: it's apparent that Cycledogg is also 2-tile - the lots need to be adjusted to 2-tile.

Lot modding with PIM-X

All of the lots have occupant size matching the prop buildings, not the blank used to make the lot. For the lots with combinations of different size buildings, the numbers were averaged. This yields stats similar to default CS$ lots (40-50 capacity satisfied or so). In testing, it took a little while to get the full size 8x24 3 story BATs to appear, so it seems to be working OK. The lots are all stage 1 and 2 right now, and I'm considering doing some larger ones (Still W2W chunks) so that PIM-X assigns Stage 3 or 4.

For now, I'm considering the 2-3 story BATs as "medium density" and the 1-story BATs as "low density". The plan is to look into modding the lots this way in addition to the automatic stage balancing that PIM-X provides.

[CT14 2,486]

Still churning out 19th Century Small Shops variations

Setbacks

Setbacks have been set to 2 tiles for all 7 lots.

Lots

I've added one that has 4m 'side alleys' between the buildings and I quite like the effect. I will add a couple more of those. Base textures match JBSimio now: Maxis $$ Gravel, 0x258c2000. All lots have SCILT support to extend sidewalk appearance (get your SCILT set up now if you haven't, it supports all the different sidewalk mods!)

Props

I've decided not to finish the board fences before this project - SM2 Old Pressure Treated Fence is doing the job splendidly. All the props are HD from Historic Harbor and SM2 with a few Maxis weedy clumps.

BAT variety

The set is almost where I want it - need more "Medium" models in particular. Several BATs have already been fixed (textures, positioning, etc) based on tests runs. There are 37 unique BATs in the set right now. It will not be more than 50, for the sake of my sanity. Most of the remaining renders will be awningless and lack exterior staircases, for variety.

[JimC 159]

Good Lord!

I realise that those BATs have been designed with a wild west theme in mind but they look so versatile! A re-creation of early 19th century Manhattan could be pulled off using those lots. Well done.

 

[CT14 2,486]

@JimC I agree these buildings could be from nearly anywhere!  And thanks for the nifty prototype picture - quite a lot of interesting details there.

Here is the 19th Century Small Shops download to play with, just released:

 

[Silur 3,308]

This is a very pleasant and useful addition to my work. Thank you!

[CT14 2,486]

@Silur you're welcome! I'm glad you like it.

Here's a peek at a new BAT. Can anyone guess which building this is? (it's the one in the drawings I'm using for scaffolding...)

I goofed on the scaffolding and it's too wide, but I'll correct that during final scaling.

Edit: here's a preview of the state of it with final scaling applied... 140k+ poly already and Gmax is crawling

[CT14 2,486]

First floor unique parts made, window bay depths adjusted. Brass kickplates installed on main doors:

The secret to working with too many polygons is to hide most of the objects when you're not working on them - no more lag.

Update: Broome Street facade complete (there is a bug in the windows, can you spot it?)

[Bombardiere 591]

Your are doing interesting things. I am building a Chicago with Chicago 1890 tileset so you have many useful things for me. Thank you

However, if I may to do a suggestion. I  would like draw your attention to roof texture. For example, lets look your red brick warehouse. I think you have used one plain rooftile texture, which is repeated e.g. tiled. Well tiling may look fine in 3D program, but in SC4 it often looks unnatural. In some time repetition is just too obvious.

Due the Sc4 viewing angle, we see mostly the roof. So it is where the eye most naturally wanders. In 3D program one is probably spends most time looking at the facade, the roof is sometimes a little bit forgotten.

So I would suggest that you would add some "effect" to the texture. With word effect I mean shading, streaks and grime. Even small "effects" can break otherwise monotonous texture and it would give to the building more alive feeling. Maxis used shading and grading and I think that was a nice touch for their models.

 

[CT14 2,486]

@Bombardiere Thanks so much for the comments, it is very helpful for me to know how successful each aspect of this work is.

Regarding roof textures and tiling, I agree completely with the sentiment that more grime is better, and tiling is bad. I've made an update already to try to address this in the newer brick warehouse.

In general most of my textures end up with specular maps applied in Gmax. I've takens some screens of the roof materials' specular level map and settings... sometimes I use a lighter specular color but this texture was already rather bright... I would be happy to know if there are better ways to do this in Gmax.

Likewise, here is the brick material, with salt texture specular map. Along with a squished preview.

And the roof material. Turning Diffuse Color down to 60 from 100 results in more of the Diffuse color swatch coming through over the bitmap - this is more often near 80 but needed to darken the render quite a bit:

And its specular level map - size is increased by 100% by setting Tiling to 0.5. This picture of salt has been working very well to generally grime up a lot of different textures:

So there's still a bit of tiling, not as much as before but I'll look at ways to use multiple maps.

I'd also love to find a setting that creates a gradient on the texture in Gmax, to simulate shadows/darker areas near the bottom of the building. Placing low intensity omni lights above and to the side of the building might be one option.

And finally, I guess I could look into bump mapping, fake bump mapping or just adding new meshes to break up those perfect vertical shadows on the pilasters - perhaps a cornice at the 2nd floor is in order.

[CT14 2,486]

19th Century Small Shops minor update to 1.0.1

After @rsc204 cleared up a few things for me in this thread, I went back and updated the small shops lots to the original OccupantSize of 8,1,8 matching the blank.dat used to create the placeholder building. I'd had them at the larger, realistic sizes used to calculate Capacity Satisfied. Apparently you're supposed to change it back after doing the CapSat stuff. Oops. The fix has been posted and the readme improved a bit.

Introducing the Haughwout Building

I've now completed both facades and the fire escape. Remaining are the roof details such as fancy bits on top cornice, elevator house, the interior, the nightlighting, texturing everything. The back walls are almost entirely eclipsed by neighboring buildings, but there is also a small lightwell with plain brick window openings at the rear.  Here's the progress in scaled previews:

This building has seen a lot of changes through time since 1856...

The present day state of this building resembles the original, as it has been recently restored to match. However, I'd like to do one alternate version with rusty, faded black paint to match the wonderfully grimy Broadway Manufacturer's Supply Company days...

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Wait, wait... the Haughwout building? Hasn't @Don Miguel made one with the same name?

[CT14 2,486]

Oof. Probably, since it's famous. At least I can get some clues about how to lot this beast.

Most of the roofjunk and main texturing is now done, the model needs nightlights, rear windows, a couple of skylights and signs, and the industrial texture version.

Edit: found the prior art - this lovely SD model from 2005:

Looks like he did it as a 2x2 lot, chopped 2 bays off the long side (12 vs 14) to fit with the 1 tile set back. His lot uses some of his other cast iron NYC bat models to fill the empty space (from BSC Mega Props Misc Vol01 - https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=426).

Presumably, if I want to keep the last 2 bays I'll need to make it a 2x3 lot with more filler buildings. A prop family with those smaller cast iron buildings could do the trick.

Rant about broken robots.txt

I hadn't seen this before, because Simtropolis disallows Bing (and thus DuckDuckGo) from indexing pages properly. Already reported the bug and the fix (in robots.txt). Hopefully staff gets a chance to implement the fix soon, so that the site doesn't continue to suffer from losing all potential traffic from Bing/DuckDuckGo.

[CT14 2,486]

Wild West revisions

I've begun updating the Wild West models to have 3.2m (2-tile) setbacks instead of 2m setbacks.  A rather quick job for the ortho models, fiendishly time consuming for the corner ones as @T Wrecks predicted.

Since this puts the walls out of view behind balconies and awnings, I made a new variation on the corner BATs, with rolled up awnings for sunny weather. The front awning rails stand up year round. There is also a version with full awnings as before.

I made some new props for the porch area include tack hanging from the railing, wet barrels (this size is standard for wine) and a hitching post. The post and barrels will also be rendered as standalone props.

Night lights all got the 2nd pass and should be cheerfully bright.

Lots of texture and mesh fixes.

A version of this building without balconies or awnings could represent a typical 20th/21st century survivor.

 

Plain Jane wooden version:

Here's a new 1-story model.... this version is occupied by a tinker. The window covering also says "Clocks" on it, but it's too small to see at scale...just part of the magic.

[CT14 2,486]

Fisher Body Modular Factory

Finishing up the first stage of the Fisher Body Plant modular project. @matias93's idea to make it as modular as possible was a good one. There are only 6 different 1x1 lots used to create the structures above, with 3 different park lots (plus a sign) reproducing the prototype's landscaping. Ortho, chimneys and loading docks use prop families for variety.

The big wacky stacks are venting from paint booths and upholstery production spaces.

The lots are nearly ready to go. I'm looking into adding query-to-plop functionality as with Historic Harbor lots. And some more standard roofjunk on an ortho variation.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Wow, that's impressive! To be honest, I'm surprised just how well the modular approach worked visually. I'm all for modularity (although it never fails to drag me down into a quicksand of wanting to mod/lot 1,854,633,634 variations ), but I'm also aware of the limitations. However, if you look at this building from zoom 4, you really only see the seams if you know it's modular. Otherwise, those tiny offsets here and there are not much different from the occasional one-pixel offsets found in coherent models by default. Splendid work! 

The one feature that gives it away most "easily" (quotation marks because the overall result is really good and "easily" is really relative in this case!) is the roof texture with its pronounced streaks that either line up (if all goes well) or end apruptly. Since the roof texture is rather varied and vivid, there may be some room to tone down very pronounced features (partiularly those with a clear orientation/direction) in an attempt to hide the seams even better.

Another little thing I noticed is that the yellowish brick texture might lean a tad far towards a greenish hue compared to the game's default palette.

Both of these observations, however, relate to minor aspects, and I know it must have been a pain to render all this stuff. There's probably no need to worry about anything mentioned in the last two paragraphs unless, for some reason, you need to make another render anyway and might want to change a thing or two in the process.

2 hours ago, CT14 said:

query-to-plop functionality

Whoa, wait a second. I always considered myself relatively familiar with SC jargon, but I have never heard of this. May I ask what this functionality entails?

[Bombardiere 591]

On 8.12.2018 at 9:25 PM, CT14 said:

@Bombardiere Thanks so much for the comments, it is very helpful for me to know how successful each aspect of this work is.

Regarding roof textures and tiling, I agree completely with the sentiment that more grime is better, and tiling is bad. I've made an update already to try to address this in the newer brick warehouse.

In general most of my textures end up with specular maps applied in Gmax. I've takens some screens of the roof materials' specular level map and settings... sometimes I use a lighter specular color but this texture was already rather bright... I would be happy to know if there are better ways to do this in Gmax.

Likewise, here is the brick material, with salt texture specular map. Along with a squished preview.

 

And the roof material. Turning Diffuse Color down to 60 from 100 results in more of the Diffuse color swatch coming through over the bitmap - this is more often near 80 but needed to darken the render quite a bit:

 

And its specular level map - size is increased by 100% by setting Tiling to 0.5. This picture of salt has been working very well to generally grime up a lot of different textures:

 

So there's still a bit of tiling, not as much as before but I'll look at ways to use multiple maps.

I'd also love to find a setting that creates a gradient on the texture in Gmax, to simulate shadows/darker areas near the bottom of the building. Placing low intensity omni lights above and to the side of the building might be one option.

And finally, I guess I could look into bump mapping, fake bump mapping or just adding new meshes to break up those perfect vertical shadows on the pilasters - perhaps a cornice at the 2nd floor is in order.

I do this with a paint program. GIMP.  I use brushes or even cropped images which I superimpose over the base texture. If I feel like it, I can add burns or penstrokes as I choose. Usually to the roof texture as I said I feel that the roof is most important and will get most attetion. It is perhaps more complex work, but I would say that it is essentially same than your salt map.

I also do grading with a paint program. I feel that I am more confortable with the paint programs rather than 3D aplication.

I have been told that bump map would not in GMAX. I don't know as I have not used it in GMAX. Nowadays I use 3DS MAX and I find pump and displacement useful if I want to do a stone effect. But I have not really used it for brick or tile roof.

 

Your modular factory looks good. I would have not spotted the seams unless I would have knew what to look at. Although I do agree with T Wrecks that the roof texture should blend in better. ideally you should soften the texture edges so that each side is fairly even and there would be no dramatic change in the colour shade.

[Tyberius06 12,267]

@CT14
Oh... it's looking good  This is why I have hard times to put together a decent dependency list for the next chapter of the Heretic Seaport, because some of you just keep coming up with these awesome new stuffs (like @Simmer2, @Krasner, @Linus van Pelt, you, @Angry Mozart) meanwhile I discover a bunch of older but still usefull stuffs on the different exchanges  
I'm just joking, keep them coming (all of you). 
Really nice models, thanks for making them!

- Tyberius

[CT14 2,486]

Thank you all for the feedback! It is much appreciated. There are currently only 13 building models in the set, which each take about 10 minutes to render, as far as that goes.

Seams we have a problem

I agree the roof is still seaming too much, and there are some jaggies between roof tiles in zoom 4. There is also a 2 pixel off center on the Fancy Corner visible in the above shots, and possibly chimneys 1px too far forward + docks 1px too far back - need to fix on lots.

As suggested, I will try changing the roof texture in GIMP to blur the edges. The "not lining up" was to try to make it look more varied by rotating textures on some models - I will also try having them all be the same direction (as strips of tar paper, should probably go across the roof perpendicular to the building's main axis).

Other geometry woes

There is an error in the geometry (overlapping of two boxes at the roof seam point) which is being fixed and tested. As well as the zig zag foundations visible on roof chimney lots. And a few other mesh errors which are visible in these pictures.

Yellow brick

I'm ready to try to use GIMP try to take the yellow a little further over to the red side properly. Attempts in Gmax so far have failed. It does seem that the color photos of the prototype are themselves skewed to the green side of the palette.

Query-to-plop

@T Wrecks Someone on the Historic Harbor project figured out that you can configure a plop lot to send you from a custom UI query straight back to its plop. It's a bit complicated to program and I'll have to dig up the details - would be nice to have documented. It was discussed in the Historic Harbor thread in relation to some of the lots having bugged functionality (the bugged lots query-plop the wrong lot). Anyway, you can try it with the official HH lots to get a feel for it.

Retexturing

Here's a first stab at adjusting the roof texture in GIMP. I think I overdid the effect, and it's not a net improvement. There are still some artifacts. A person could spend a lifetime chasing rendering artifacts in Gmax.

A color shifted, less green brick texture is also visible here on the test BATs. Zooming out reveals the concrete is still too bright - it will be toned down until it's not.