CT14's Railroad Lots and BAT

[CT14 2,486]

@SimHoTToDDy hey, thanks for stopping in! Obviously I've been a big fan.

I guess the employees probably came in the back - I'd like to release an addon with the 'expo' parts of the building: elevator houses and large shipping docks which sat behind the main building. I had some trouble deciding how I wanted to model it as modules - I'll get back to it at some point.

Although RL has been busy - starting a new job next week - I've already begun on a similar model - Fisher 10 in Detroit. It's a red brick set, 4 and 6 stories. I'm going to take my time and build up the base brick texture with grunge and gradients before applying it. This last project was really the first time I've done a lot of custom textures for BATs.

Per others' encouragement, I already have a folder of "Yellow brick Maxis BATs" images that I used to calibrate this set - I'll be doing the same for red brick.

[CT14 2,486]

The filler lots visible in the Fisher screenshots have been packaged and uploaded:

 

[CT14 2,486]

New cast iron W2W building, based on the 1883 A. H. Johnson building from Portland, OR. Also testing prop families for the Silver King Aerial Tram 48m spans.

 

This was the first in-game texture test, the brick and the facing are too bright and will be toned down. A bit more roofjunk to add, and nightlights, and variations.

[CT14 2,486]

Reference: IRM Filler Base Texturing

Dirty - 0xd5b0464a

Base texture for IRM I-D fillers uses North Country Dude's Railyard Textures (or the RRW override if installed):

 

Manufacturing - 0x258d1000

Base texture for IRM I-M fillers uses Maxis concrete:

 

High Tech - 0x258c2000

Base texture for IRM I-HT fillers uses a different Maxis concrete, not shown.

In most of my work I use Manufacturing or even Dirty for old High Tech lots, since those types were considered high tech 100-150 years ago.

[CT14 2,486]

The Silver King Coalition Mines Co Terminal has been released:

It's built as a high-tech lot, for your old cities which are always in need of high-tech workers.

[CT14 2,486]

Reference: Transit Texture

Just a place for me to keep notes on texturing transit. Broad goal is to put dirt or cobblestones on everything. Avenues are the big missing piece for 19th century transit modeling right now. There's also a need for dirt tram-on-road, dirt streets, etc. I favor Trolca for cities; Peg's dirt is perfect for the country but too rutted/dried out for the city.

A SAM-style AAM would also be nice - to switch between the two dirt styles, for example.

Tutorial for transit texturing: https://www.wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Tutorial:Creating_Textures

Location of Tram-Ave textures: Network Addon Mod/2_Additional Network Features/Light Rail/Ground Light Rail Dual-Networking/NetworkAddonMod_GroundLightRailxAvenue_Plugin.dat

[BartonThinks 3,416]

On 7/30/2020 at 1:14 AM, CT14 said:

This was the first in-game texture test, the brick and the facing are too bright and will be toned down. A bit more roofjunk to add, and nightlights, and variations.

I'm so happy to see this. I've found it extremely difficult to track down era-appropriate commercial buildings for 19th century and early 20th century North American cities, and it usually means making a compromise of some sort (either settling for something with era-inappropriate props baked into the model or using models that feel a little too obviously European). I find stages three and up particularly hard to fill, especially if I want to avoid overly repetitive commercial districts. The size and style of this building are exactly what I've been looking for.

4 hours ago, CT14 said:

The Silver King Coalition Mines Co Terminal has been released:

It's built as a high-tech lot, for your old cities which are always in need of high-tech workers.

This looks fantastic, and it's a welcome addition to my plugins folder. I know you couldn't find appropriate reference pictures for the scale houses, but it would be really great to have this part of a small themed set (e.g., terminal + company HQ + mine shafts). There are a few really solid options for lumber industries (specifically the MTP series by Pegasus and Paeng, as well as Slaytfork Mill by Onlyplace4). However, I've always found the options for mining a little bit lacking for one reason or another. The Old Mining Co series by Ionionion is a little too dilapidated to serve as a functioning mine, the Pegasus and Newman Inc. mines require a mountainside to look right in-game, and most other mines are modeled to appear much more modern.

4 hours ago, CT14 said:

Reference: Transit Texture

Just a place for me to keep notes on texturing transit. Broad goal is to put dirt or cobblestones on everything. Avenues are the big missing piece for 19th century transit modeling right now. There's also a need for dirt tram-on-road, dirt streets, etc. I favor Trolca for cities; Peg's dirt is perfect for the country but too rutted/dried out for the city.

A SAM-style AAM would also be nice - to switch between the two dirt styles, for example.

Tutorial for transit texturing: https://www.wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Tutorial:Creating_Textures

Location of Tram-Ave textures: Network Addon Mod/2_Additional Network Features/Light Rail/Ground Light Rail Dual-Networking/NetworkAddonMod_GroundLightRailxAvenue_Plugin.dat

I'm nowhere near close to starting work on this, but I've been puzzling over the best way to accomplish this for my own cities. At this point, the part I'm struggling with most is how to manage rural vs. urban roads.

In an ideal world, I'd like unzoned, IR, and low-density roads to use Peg's dirt, while mid-density and high-density roads would use BSC's earthy cobbles, or a similar texture. As far as I know, there's no way to accomplish this with a simple override, since the textures for mid-density and high-density roads are auto-generated using the unzoned/IR road textures. So unless I'm mistaken, I'd need to create a starter piece override system to switch between the two styles, which... well, that's going to take some work for me  to figure out.

Either way,  looking forward to what you come up with on this project.

[CT14 2,486]

@BartonThinks thanks for your comments! Likewise, I have always wanted more 2-4 story 19th century commercial buildings in game. In the past I have just gone full "New York" and enjoyed all the 3-5 story New York style buildings, but most cities are just a little bit smaller.

Regarding Silver King - I am still looking for any drawings, records or pictures at all of the other end of the tram line - I'm assuming it was at the mines but the mines were sprawling and gigantic, the pictures available on that end don't show the tram's portal too clearly. I may just put something together based on other period mines in the area.

Roads: I just use lots and lots of SAMs with road-blocks to change between them. SAM Stoppers are nice too, and there is a niche for someone to create stoppers for the transitions between the SAMs themselves (cobblestone to Trolca for example).

I figured out the FSH stuff finally, here's a Trolca dirt Tram-Ave. I discovered the same textures are used for puzzle pieces and click-to-tram. Going to try adding an alpha so that the sidewalk doesn't show all the time:

edit: the bright lines at edges is definitely an artifact of the way I stretched the ortho Trolca texture... going to have to redo with a different method.

And here is some of my thinking around the prototypes, as well as some fun times figuring out what was in an old picture by cross referencing another old map. We will need Tram-on-Gravel-Street too:

 

 

By the way, "Macadam" is just "Scientific Gravel Road":

[BartonThinks 3,416]

1 hour ago, CT14 said:

@BartonThinks thanks for your comments! Likewise, I have always wanted more 2-4 story 19th century commercial buildings in game. In the past I have just gone full "New York" and enjoyed all the 3-5 story New York style buildings, but most cities are just a little bit smaller.

Regarding Silver King - I am still looking for any drawings, records or pictures at all of the other end of the tram line - I'm assuming it was at the mines but the mines were sprawling and gigantic, the pictures available on that end don't show the tram's portal too clearly. I may just put something together based on other period mines in the area.

Roads: I just use lots and lots of SAMs with road-blocks to change between them. SAM Stoppers are nice too, and there is a niche for someone to create stoppers for the transitions between the SAMs themselves (cobblestone to Trolca for example).

I figured out the FSH stuff finally, here's a Trolca dirt Tram-Ave. I discovered the same textures are used for puzzle pieces and click-to-tram. Going to try adding an alpha so that the sidewalk doesn't show all the time:

Re: 19th Century Commercials -- Absolutely! I've been using Onlyplace4's Wild West series for most of my stage one commercial lots, but I've been leaning heavily on your 19th Century Shops as I've planned my stage two lots. When I've lotted those shops, I've always wondered what a series of larger and/or higher wealth shops would look like in your style, so I'm really excited to see this. Especially since this building checks off a number of features that I've been hoping to see in similar buildings (specifically the cornice and ornamentation along the roofline and the subdued romanesque style of the windows).

Re: Silver King -- It's a great addition to the game, regardless of whether it comes with other lots in the future. I got a bit curious after reading your reply and Google around for some pictures/info on aerial mine tramways. Not sure if you've seen this page or this page, but they might be helpful if you haven't stumbled onto them yet. 

Re: Roads -- At the moment, I'm in the same spot. My cities tend to be a ton of SAM streets, almost entirely PEG dirt currently. They work well enough for my personal use at this point, but I'm mostly building Stage 1-3 towns right now. At some point, I'd like to get a road override working so that (a) it's easier to build larger rural networks (bless NAM's diagonal streets, but the game really wasn't designed for streets to act as sprawling city-to-city networks); and (b) my networks can manage higher volumes of traffic when I start building mid-density and high-density areas. Whenever I get around to this stuff, I'd also like to figure out a solution that reduces the need for starter pieces, stoppers, etc. as much as I can so that it's manageable for novice/intermediate users. Not sure if that will actually be possible.

P.S. If you're playing around with retexturing networks to create dirt roads, here's a link to a very quick, very simple experiment a did a few weeks ago. I took the regular Maxis dirt texture, applied PEG's dirt street texture overtop at 50% opacity, then trimmed everything down to the size of a standard Maxis road. This maintains the traffic patterns created by PEG (which I'm a big a fan of), but the end result is a little more muted and feels a little less messy. It also eliminates the transparent section in the middle of PEG's streets and creates a clean profile for sidewalks (no more dirt spilling over onto walkways). I figured this might give me a fairly easy way to create some more city-appropriate dirt roads without creating a bunch of textures from scratch. Note that I haven't tested this in-game, and I'm sure you'll end up with something a little more elegant. But I figured I'd share in case it sparks any ideas.

Edit: That is some excellent detective work on the different types of streets and roads in that map. I've had a nightmare of a time trying to figure out how prevalent dirt, cobbles, brick, macadam, asphalt, etc. were around the turn of the century -- black-and-white photos and garishly-colored postcards aren't very helpful when it comes to pavement, unfortunately. Any chance you have a link to that map?

[CT14 2,486]

That's great to hear you were able to use those BATs. I wasn't 100% happy with the lots I made for them, and will probably revisit them at some point to match Smalltown USA for those who don't have SCILT. And yes I will be producing larger ones if all goes well!

I have a ton of unreleased Wild West BATs that are ready to go - just need lotting. Maybe I'll just publish them as a prop pack to get them out quicker.

Here's a link to the map, courtesy of the blog that unearthed it - lots of other great stuff there.

https://vintageportland.wordpress.com/2010/03/26/paving-map-of-portland-january-1-1894/

Your dirt texture looks good. I was planning to just 1:1 match Trolca's classic dirt streets.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

19 minutes ago, CT14 said:

That's great to hear you were able to use those BATs. I wasn't 100% happy with the lots I made for them, and will probably revisit them at some point to match Smalltown USA for those who don't have SCILT. And yes I will be producing larger ones if all goes well!

I have a ton of unreleased Wild West BATs that are ready to go - just need lotting. Maybe I'll just publish them as a prop pack to get them out quicker.

Here's a link to the map, courtesy of the blog that unearthed it - lots of other great stuff there.

https://vintageportland.wordpress.com/2010/03/26/paving-map-of-portland-january-1-1894/

Your dirt texture looks good. I was planning to just 1:1 match Trolca's classic dirt streets.

Well, you can rest assured that I'll be downloading and trying out those Wild West BATs as soon as they hit the STEX. Same with that set of ortho warehouses from around the same time (I think?). No rush, of course.

Thanks for sending along the map. I might go ahead and run a quick test to see how that dirt road appears in game. Might give it a shot with an avenue as well. That said, if you use Trolca's dirt streets in other areas, I'm sure those textures will be a better match for your cities.

[CT14 2,486]

Ultimately I'd like to have both types of dirt road supported for Tram Street/Tram Ave/Ave - PEG and Trolca, along with some kind of gravel... These'd be overrides that drop-in, choose one. Unless AAM is possible, then it'd just use starter pieces.

Did I mention we also need wooden railway crossings.

I have a T21 mod also in progress. All this stuff has to change to make convincing 19th century scenes.

Those warehouse models are already staged for inclusion in the next prop pack, too. They are as done as they will get.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

There's a bit of a color glitch with the sidewalk textures, but here's what the tram in ave looks like using the maxis dirt + peg overlay technique I mentioned earlier. (With a little bit more polish than my first test.)

Spoiler

I originally tried to make the sidewalk sections transparent using an alpha mask, but for whatever reason, those areas appeared white in game. I'm assuming the GLR in Ave puzzle piece doesn't have any sidewalk textures assigned to it, so the game doesn't have a texture to display underneath? Not entirely sure. I figured the easiest thing to do was bake the sidewalks into the main texture for this test.

I tried to adjust the wood plank texture so that the colors would match up with the SCILT textures in-game, but I might have messed something up in GoFSH. The color adjustment tool darkened the planks, but not enough for a proper match. I also left the gutters for the rails as-is, so it still looks a bit like the rails are set into concrete.

Edit: Thinking about this a little bit more, and I'm wondering if the simplest solution wouldn't be to use the following setup:

• Basic roads: Dirt or gravel textures, uses the game's standard road network
• Urban roads: Cobble or brick textures, overrides the game's one-way road network with increased capacity two-way roads
• Avenues: Cobble or brick textures, uses the game's standard avenue network

By replacing the one-way road network, this system would avoid the need for starter pieces -- all three networks would be draggable straight from the menu. It would also allow smooth transitions between dirt and cobble roads, without having to use any specialty puzzle pieces.

[CT14 2,486]

The PEG Tram-Ave looks really good! The textures are always a pain to match, I have to go back and forth a lot of times... most recently for the overhanging prop to match concrete base texture in the industrial filler set.

For my work, I'm sticking with the idea of swappable texture overrides for now, for simplicity's sake. I don't have the capacity to handle pathing, etc.

If AAM is possible, that'd be another 'avenue' to explore.

[rivit 3,402]

On ‎1‎/‎08‎/‎2020 at 8:06 AM, BartonThinks said:

In an ideal world, I'd like unzoned, IR, and low-density roads to use Peg's dirt, while mid-density and high-density roads would use BSC's earthy cobbles, or a similar texture. As far as I know, there's no way to accomplish this with a simple override, since the textures for mid-density and high-density roads are auto-generated using the unzoned/IR road textures. So unless I'm mistaken, I'd need to create a starter piece override system to switch between the two styles, which... well, that's going to take some work for me  to figure out.

You can make all of these options into one set up to a point. I recommend read the GoFSH manual which explains how transit textures work and details many of the ways you can assemble sets -  largely in an automated fashion.

In short there are 8 different textures based on wealthing for a given tile that you can individually fashion. So its possible to have a rural only (Wealth 7) part of a transit mod, you can explicitly control the high wealth/density 4,5,6 stopping the paving everywhere defaults, and you can have different grasses/dirt everywhere. Paving is a bit harder to control but can be baked in. Its really mostly having a well defined plan and sticking with it.

You do not have to reinvent everything from scratch - its also possible to take an existing set and modify it, or as you suggest merging two different sets into a new one. A lot can be accomplished merely by renumbering textures. Drop me a PM if you'd like to discuss this further.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

12 minutes ago, rivit said:

You can make all of these options into one set up to a point. I recommend read the GoFSH manual which explains how transit textures work and details many of the ways you can assemble sets -  largely in an automated fashion.

In short there are 8 different textures based on wealthing for a given tile that you can individually fashion. So its possible to have a rural only (Wealth 7) part of a transit mod, you can explicitly control the high wealth/density 4,5,6 stopping the paving everywhere defaults, and you can have different grasses/dirt everywhere. Paving is a bit harder to control but can be baked in. Its really mostly having a well defined plan and sticking with it.

You do not have to reinvent everything from scratch - its also possible to take an existing set and modify it, or as you suggest merging two different sets into a new one. A lot can be accomplished merely by renumbering textures. Drop me a PM if you'd like to discuss this further.

Thanks a ton for the tips, @rivit. If I'm understanding you correctly, there's a way to manually create unique textures for wealths 4, 5, 6, and 7, rather than having the game generate these textures automatically based on the wealth 0 texture? If so, that would be great news. I had been hoping this was possible, but from what I read in the GoFSH manual (and other places), I got the impression that players could only mod wealth 0,1,2, and 3, and that the only difference between 4, 5, 6, and 7 was the base texture matched to each wealth level.

I will definitely send you a PM sometime soon. If you're willing to put up with some novice-level questions. I'd really appreciate any guidance or tips you might be able to offer.

[CT14 2,486]

[Tyberius06 12,267]

Nice looking prop pack. I like the idea of the diagonal and angled werehouses and factory untis. We doesn't have much of those anyway. I asked a few years ago @Simmer2 to expand the NSB Set with diagonals and the latest version of it actually contains diagonal DTR and STR overlay textures. 

Also thanks for your recent releases. The filler set is awesome for sure!

- Tyberius

[CT14 2,486]

@Tyberius06 I am happy to hear you are enjoying the filler set.

The prop pack is released:

I still have a few old 'almost finished' models to work on, but this takes care of most of the release backlog for finished props.

First lot up for release is the Alpaca Scientific Instrument Corporation, an I-HT and CS$$$ plop:

[CT14 2,486]

Released: Alpaca Scientific Instrument Corporation, a 1x1 FA3 I-HT and CS$$$ plop. FA3/D1/R only, for now.

 

[CT14 2,486]

Last one for the day. Good luck with these...

[BartonThinks 3,416]

Extremely happy with the prop pack. I was a little worried that the Wild West buildings might clash with the series by Onlyplace4, but I've tested them side by side, and they look fantastic. The warehouse models look similarly great, and the size, color, and angle variations are really helpful. Finally, those cars fill in a pretty big gap for me -- I've been relying heavily on props from this obscure Mike Seith BAT for my early 20th century cars, particularly low-wealth and mid-wealth models, so these props are going to gt some heavy use on my end in the coming weeks.

FWIW, I might take a run at a prototype reskin of the Maxis roads using the Maxis dirt + PEG dirt streets method. If you'd have any interest in using these roads yourself, let me know. I'd be happy to incorporate specific features, like the wooden railroad crossings, or to ensure that the prototype is compatible with whichever SAM systems you use. The only features I'm not keen to try out on the prototype is FA networks and complex turns.

[CT14 2,486]

I feel like I side by side tested Wild West with onlyplace4 at some point, since I used the BATs with the rest of the 19th century stuff in a full plugins folder.

Wow, good find on that @mikeseith pack! Grabbing that for sure.

Cars: I never found a good Model T or Model A on the warehouse that I could use. Streets with half model T, half JFF Horses/Carriages are one setting to try. Will make my own at some point.

Road reskin sounds good - I had no plans to work with them yet. T and + connectors for ortho PEG/Trolca/Brick/Cobble would be welcome.

[rivit 3,402]

There is this one which I resurrected from SimCity files - cant remember where actually. You could make some color variations - black should do ;-) 

Don't edit the S3D in Reader - it will clobber the Driver. Clone/Renumber are OK 

ModelTwithDriver.dat

  Edited August 3, 2020 by rivit  
add pic

[rsc204 21,866]

On 01/08/2020 at 12:28 AM, CT14 said:

I figured out the FSH stuff finally, here's a Trolca dirt Tram-Ave. I discovered the same textures are used for puzzle pieces and click-to-tram. Going to try adding an alpha so that the sidewalk doesn't show all the time:

Send me a PM. As part of my SWN repository, I have a complete and organised set of textures, with ready to use scripts for packing them into DATs. It would likely save you a lot of time trying to track down every texture as it's not all as obvious as it might first seem.

Adding an Alpha will probably create forced transparency, since the TiA is based on Puzzle Pieces. In fact all of the GLR networks have baked in sidewalks, meaning they are part of the texture itself and do not change when using a custom sidewalk.

[CT14 2,486]

Textures: JBSimio Smalltown USA

My notes on  making a lot that matches JBSimio's Smalltown USA releases, commonly used as a standard base for matching 19th and early 20th century lots.

Textures used depend on wealth. Here is an example for CS$$ or CO$$:

Front Pavement: 0x258f2000 (Maxis $$ sidewalk texture)

Back Pavement (Lots with "Back Alley" areas): 0x258c2000 (Maxis R$$ gravel base texture)

Setback: 2 tiles on the front pavement texture (3.2 meters)

[CT14 2,486]

I made the happy discovery that a building I've been working on, the Johnson Building, is one of the prominent facades in an old photo here. Can you spot it?

Dilapidation/CS$

Fancy/CS$$

One CO$$ variation in the pipeline. Lots need alley/sidewalk junk and done, basically.

Edit: Scrappy 2 story Johnson variation

[CT14 2,486]

Side by side testing with a full 19th century plugins folder revealed the windows are far too bright. Re-rendering and fixing a few other minor things for the models.

A lot of these buildings which survive are less their cornice - they tend to fall off at the worst times, or be removed before they fall off...

With 5 variations for 3 and 2 story versions, I'm shifting gears to lotting now.

[CT14 2,486]

Constructing LOD for a 32m curve filler. Boxes will be boolean subtracted from the cylinder that formerly served as the building's footprint. Cylinder becomes new LOD.

Also note 8m offset from the main tile (a 16x16 portion of empty roof in this BAT) on X, Y for the model and LOD. This is so the prop can be pushed all the way to one corner of a 1x1 tile lot and sit properly as a 2x2 overhang.

"Kahn" you dig it?

@rivit here is the Model T in the only color anyone should ever need... this is simply 'colorized' with a grayscale>RGB transform and layer masking on the original for brass/canvas bits, and needs to be a bit darker... which ID do I make unique to add this to the green model T rather than replace it?

And some more side by side testing for the Johnson Building - you can see two versions of one of the variations here, darker is newer.

Massive shout out to @justforfun and @rivit for the horse drawn automata!

And last but not least, I've just completed SCILTifying and de-automobilizing the Smalltown USA lots (and some Spa and SimGoober 19th century stuff) - more pictures soon in small town thread.

 

[rivit 3,402]

Got to say I'm enjoying your experiments

Here's a clone/renumber of the ModelT that should do the trick - all you need to do is slip your better texture  (IID=1123000B) into here

ModelTwithDriverBlack.dat