Avanya's buildings (Update 7/1: Cargo rail stations released)

[Avanya 2,605]

@Judazzz Thank you very much! ^^ The chimney should be part of it. Do you have the sub-buildings mod installed and activated? For the time being it's needed for this asset.

[Judazzz 1,936]

2 hours ago, Avanya said:

@Judazzz Thank you very much! ^^ The chimney should be part of it. Do you have the sub-buildings mod installed and activated? For the time being it's needed for this asset.

I initially removed Sub-Buildings because of Roadman's 'How to survive 1.6" post on Reddit, but afterwards I realized that older buildings still need it (and also read your comments about the built-in system and how you can't use custom props), so I re-subscribed. I may have forgotten to re-enable it though - I'll check as soon as I get back home.

Edit: turns out I'm a doofus. After enabling Sub-Buildings the building shows up correctly, chimney and all! 

[Feindbold 1,190]

The plant looks great! Finally a plant with proper size.

[Bad Peanut 826]

On 04/12/2016 at 8:22 PM, Avanya said:

That's totally my plan, but it just looks boring and unfinished without custom props. So as long as the native format doesn't save those I'll stick to the mod - my other option was to delay it until a fix.

just a thought - what happens if you publish one of the sub buildings to the workshop, with all the correct custom props added, then go back in game and create the native sub buildings with the subscribed version of the sub building? does it keep all the right serialisation of the custom props?

that's probs not the clearest thought process but I'll try it out when i can and let you know if it works

[Avanya 2,605]

13 hours ago, Bad Peanut said:

just a thought - what happens if you publish one of the sub buildings to the workshop, with all the correct custom props added, then go back in game and create the native sub buildings with the subscribed version of the sub building? does it keep all the right serialisation of the custom props?

that's probs not the clearest thought process but I'll try it out when i can and let you know if it works

Prob won't make a difference as the subbuilding is copied and saved to the main building's .crp file. But I guess I can always try it and see if there's any difference at all.

Update: I've got no clue why, but it does seem to work adding the subscribed version as the sub building. Gotta do a little more testing to make sure, but looks like the props show up like they should. Tyvm for the suggestion @Bad Peanut! I would never have thought to try it like that!

Update2: Looks to work flawlessly. I just pushed an update no longer needing the Sub Buildings Enabler mod and even got it to replace itself, though a replop is prob best.

[Bad Peanut 826]

13 hours ago, Avanya said:

Prob won't make a difference as the subbuilding is copied and saved to the main building's .crp file. But I guess I can always try it and see if there's any difference at all.

Update: I've got no clue why, but it does seem to work adding the subscribed version as the sub building. Gotta do a little more testing to make sure, but looks like the props show up like they should. Tyvm for the suggestion @Bad Peanut! I would never have thought to try it like that!

Update2: Looks to work flawlessly. I just pushed an update no longer needing the Sub Buildings Enabler mod and even got it to replace itself, though a replop is prob best.

i think because the serialisation of the props works because instead of looking up the local file name in the sub building's code, it looks up the workshop file name so it still recognizes it, even though that code is now embedded within the sub buildings  yay I'm glad it worked for you!

[Avanya 2,605]

After being the cause of flooding and much headache for me the large coal power plant back and fixed! I spent most of the weekend on this, so not much progress on my coal storage area. The portal scraper is getting there - I need to do the part connecting to the conveyor belt on the right and then some piles of coal.  As you can guess it's not super low on tris - currently sitting a little below 4k, but considering it's a 8x16 building which we won't have a million of it should be fine. 

[boformer 3,169]

3 hours ago, Avanya said:

After being the cause of flooding and much headache for me the large coal power plant back and fixed!

How did you resolve the issue?

[Avanya 2,605]

8 hours ago, boformer said:

How did you resolve the issue?

The 1x16 park with no mesh was the issue. Can be reproduced by adding the base game Small Park to anything as a subbuilding.

[_Beardmonkey 449]

I love the scale of this power plant of yours. If my city ever gets big enough it will be powered by coal. Can't wait to the finished asset! Great work so far!

[Avanya 2,605]

Thank you! ^^ I've encountered a minor setback with the companion assets - MOM is way too fun to play around with  It also doesn't help that the missing part is some of that more complex machinery which is hard to get good reference pictures of. I really hate doing those bits!   But I'm finally making progress I'm happy with, so hopefully not too far out now. Looking forward to the actual coal piles!

I also can't remember if I finished the tram depot, but at least it should be close. Gonna have a look and finish it since it's nearly there. I'm prob just gonna give up with the placement issues - if people don't have anarchy it places fine in intersections. And I could also just let it place without a road (it behaves just fine when you connect roads to it). Hoping it'll be up tomorrow or Saturday.

[Avanya 2,605]

Little update for today. Piles have been added and I've started the UV mapping. Just gotta get past the boring sorting of them and then the fun texturing starts  I also had a look at my tram depot today. Not sure what I'm gonna do with it. I'm really not happy with it. It's a pain to place and I really don't like how it connects to the road. Using one-way tram roads going in and out helped get fewer posts, but it's still a cluttered mess in front. Honestly I might just leave it. I'd rather make a dedicated tram depot at a later time designed for it - plus this being mostly a recolor of some of my early work, there's stuff which annoys me (like flipped faces where the normals don't show up right). 

[Matthias King 348]

If you do end up doing a whole new redesign, maybe having it set farther back from the road would help with the tracks and catenaries being so close together. Also, maybe having the entrances for the cars spaced a little farther apart.

Though as I'm looking at pictures of real tram depots now, yours is very close to what they really look like, but the cable networks are hung overhead rather than being on posts. Nothing you can probably do about that I'm guessing.

I'm not sure what you can do about it, but I'm sure you'll figure it out.

[Avanya 2,605]

Yeah, anything realistic will have all those poles messing up the look. Very annoying. :/

[Avanya 2,605]

Alright everything is getting back to normal after the holidays, so I should have a chance to get some progress with my coal storage. I did start texturing before Christmas, but it's still pretty boring. I'll prob grab a screenshot whenever I get some more work done on it.

I've had the time for some smaller projects, which you may or may not have seen pop up. I've created a handful of Must Have Mods collections to hopefully help answer those questions whenever they pop up. And I've finished up two map themes, which I just released today (one was pretty much done, I just hadn't taken screenshots yet ). They're kinda situational and will look funky on alot of maps, but I figured I might as well share them, as they do have their uses.

No cliffs and Farmland Europe

Oh, and I passed 2k followers on steam a little while back! It's so crazy and wouldn't have come this far if it wasn't for this awesome community and especially the help and tips I've gotten here.  

 

[Lost Gecko 481]

Congrats for this impressive but totally deserved milestone! Thank you for improving the game on a daily basis! I'm going to try these new themes, they look really nice and nothing is situational with Theme Mixer

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

Avanya, I'm surprised you don't have more followers Your work is awesome!

[Avanya 2,605]

@Lost_gecko True! That mod is golden! Love it so much  Hope you find a use for them (or some of their textures).

@Mr_Maison Well, I've only been at it for a little over a year. And my stuff is prob not pretty enough for some  

[_Beardmonkey 449]

Nice looking themes! Can't wait to try them out.

 

[Avanya 2,605]

Thank you and enjoy.

My coal storage is taking shape - or rather color  Ofc all the detail is missing. Most of it is just basic texture with baked AO. I'm considering splitting it up though. If I do the pile as a subbuilding (or maybe prop would be better?) I can have it texture underground - I can already see that line at the bottom of the foundation texture the game applies and that's on a super flat map. Might actually make more sense anyway as I plan on a few extensions (prob 2 8x8) with less and no coal, so it can be mixed for long more varied storage. With the coal by itself it makes alot more sense for them to share the texture.

And I think that yellow might actually be too dark for once - this is default temperate, so it might look too dark/desaturated with LUTs. I'll have to try the ones I have installed.  Can't wait for alpha and normals to be added - plus ofc some actual detail.   Oh and the dirty ground is a decal I've made - That way it doesn't matter what concrete your map theme uses, this will always match. 

[Badi_Dea 476]

looking good so far!

I agree with the points you have brought up:
The color looks great! but I bet it will be far too dark and desaturated without the default LUT.
The ground texture decal is a great idea, and it's coming along nicely. It could use some tire marks and other bits of detail.
For the coal pile itself, I would say a sub building (now that they're supported out of the box) is totally the way to go simply because of the control you have over the LOD.

I'm totally looking forward to seeing this done

[Avanya 2,605]

Thank you and yeah, the decal could use more detail! At the very least a bit more noise in the texture would be welcome. It's semi-transparent and placed several times (making it useful for other ores and generally dirty concrete), so I'm not sure if tire tracks will work that well. Worth a try though! Otherwise I've considered creating another even larger one, where the tire tracks could be implimented.

Got some more detail added and split the pile from the rest of the structure. Worked on the alpha map too as that brings lot of the details as well. Still got areas which aren't finished and ofc it's missing normal and specular too. And the pile needs more work - pretty much just grabbed the texture from my other piles which doesn't really do it here.   Color is getting there too. Just a bit more saturated and then it'll look perfect with LUTs on.

Edit: I did some more - the color is there now and normal and specular have been added. Got a few more details on the cabin/platform to add and then I'll work on the pile. LODs will come last

[Avanya 2,605]

Coal storage and transport shaft released!

[Badi_Dea 476]

looks excellent, looking forward to playing with it

I'm glad you went with a sub-building for the coal pile; I prefer not to use the adaptive prop distance mod, and I wouldn't want this beauty to disappear when zooming out.

[jduffett 34]

So the conveyor going lengthwise down the side of the pile feeds the movable a-frame conveyor on rails, which drops coal on the top of the pile, and is height adjustable, yes? What does the opposing conveyor do, or how is it fed?

I see a lot of bits and pieces in this that could be useful for a bulk terminal/ship loader...

[Avanya 2,605]

@Badi_Dea Yeah, it's a much better solution for something like this. I'll prob do that for my little growable coal storage when I get around to updating my ore buildings. And it comes with the benefit of ppl not having to sub a prop (and the comments from confused people who never subbed to the prop).

@jduffett Something like that yes. I'm actually not sure how it works, as it also seems to be able to gather the coal again. It's typically used at bulk terminals and for coal power plants as far as I can tell. It's called a portal scraper if you're more curious.

[jduffett 34]

18 hours ago, Avanya said:

@jduffett Something like that yes. I'm actually not sure how it works, as it also seems to be able to gather the coal again. It's typically used at bulk terminals and for coal power plants as far as I can tell. It's called a portal scraper if you're more curious.

Ahh! It's amazing what the right search terms will do for you! Stackers and Reclaimers appear to the general terms.

[Avanya 2,605]

I learn so many new terms doing these industrial structures!  So far I think the most interesting research was for my recycling project - never knew how much can actually get recycled and how much energy is saved by it. My kitchen now has 5 bags for sorting out garbage xD

I finished the bauxite and iron bulk storages and released 2 extensions - one 16x8 with a large pile and one 8x8 empty lot. I might do a smaller pile, perhaps on an 8x8, but I'm not sure. Gotta play around with them more to see how needed more variations feel. Some variation can also be achieved with the empty one and my pile props.

Find all the new stuff in my Piles of Piles collection  

[Avanya 2,605]

And now to something completely different!  I've wanted to do train buildings for a while and since ND broke the only roundhouse on the workshop (Prob crazy tris or something) I've had some subtle requests over on SkylinesNation. A little bit of testing showed it's possible to have them snap to each other (without so much fiddling I'd cry) and I've started working on one. My plan is 2 roundhouse bits and an engine shed roughly based on the Age of Steam roundhouse. Damn these weird angles are a pain to work with, but I've got enough tricks to get it symetrical and good looking. Model is mostly done (need some vents/chimneys on the roof) and I've started textures. My plan is to add a color mask with some extra grunge to give some variation when several are placed together.

 

[Matthias King 348]

I love this. It looks great. I love the red brick and industrial windows. Something about that has always appealed to me.