Cori's Terrain Shoppe

[SecretMbr_735754 2,157]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

Let me know if you find any others which need to be fixed.

Other than SimCityKurier, I think there's only 3 other places the terrain files link to,  here, over on the LEX, and at toutsimcities.com, and they're working OK.

I'm going to install the Columbus Terrain later today and then render your Temere Locus map.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Catty, you are really a work monster and a SimCity archivist!

[catty-cb 4,392]

On 2017/08/12 at 1:23 AM, T Wrecks said:

Catty, you are really a work monster and a SimCity archivist!

Thanks .... RL is proving very difficult to escape from, but I did end up finishing re-indexing the SimCityKurier site and updating the CB website (have kept the old links so people can refer back to them if needed)

https://community.simtropolis.com/clubs/26-city-builders-website/catalog

 

[simcitynate 134]

Fantastic! I've been especially eager to get the Snow Terrain for the most northern parts of my country. Couple that with the Icy Arctic water and, my goodness, what a spectacular sight. Why any Sim would want to actually live in such a place is beyond me, but hey, to each Sim their own. 

[Naomi57 2,985]

Thank you, Cori!

After saving 3 of your pictures to desktop + Maxis vanilla terrain for comparison, I've chosen my terrain mod.

THL Terrain Pack 2.3 Wet Tropical

I'm planning to mess around with the water transparency settings in iLive Reader, having just read a few posts on the subject.  This one looks not too much different to Maxis Vanilla, but I like the look of it, and the water is bright, like we get down here in Australia.  Even though I mostly do USA downloaded maps, I like my water and beaches to look Australian.  

Now, if there were only some Australian flora, too, that would make my New York city region really feel like home.  

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 hour ago, Naomi57 said:

I'm planning to mess around with the water transparency settings in iLive Reader, having just read a few posts on the subject.

Once you get the hang of using Reader, it'll open up so many possibilities to customize things to your own liking. On the subject of water, you might be interested in this topic some chick wrote: Cori's Side Water Alternate Paint Scheme (Tutorial)

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

From the sublime to the ridiculous. The mods I want most wont work for me(I've tried). Be aware that some of these can alter God mode trees and terrain elevation, which can make port installation a pain.

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

1 hour ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

From the sublime to the ridiculous.

I'm a little confused at this statement.

While not all the listed terrain mods are for everyone, certainly I know Cori spent a significant amount of effort compiling her Shoppes.

 

1 hour ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

The mods I want most wont work for me(I've tried).

One possibility is perhaps the selected terrain mods you've tried use HD textures and need "Hardware" rendering for them to function and prevent an instant crash to desktop (CTD). Also some of them might need dependencies too which quite literally provide the necessary groundwork.

Another thought is how certain terrain mods contain exemplar properties which alter the rendering of maps. When using the standard Ctrl+Shift+Alt+R option to render a grayscale map, there's one property in particular named ImageImportScaleFactor that alters the scaling of how it does so. There's likely others too which have an influence, and this means either they can be rendered using Mapper instead, or to remove the terrain mod beforehand.

Let us know if you'd like guidance with installing any in particular.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

32 minutes ago, Cyclone Boom said:

I'm a little confused at this statement.

While not all the listed terrain mods are for everyone, certainly I know Cori spent a significant amount of effort compiling her Shoppes.

I just meant some on the list are not to my taste. No insult intended towards Cori.

 

32 minutes ago, Cyclone Boom said:

One possibility is perhaps the selected terrain mods you've tried use HD textures and need "Hardware" rendering for them to function and prevent an instant crash to desktop (CTD). Also some of them might need dependencies too which quite literally provide the necessary groundwork.

Another thought is how certain terrain mods contain exemplar properties which alter the rendering of maps. When using the standard Ctrl+Shift+Alt+R option to render a grayscale map, there's one property in particular named ImageImportScaleFactor that alters the scaling of how it does so. There's likely others too which have an influence, and this means either they can be rendered using Mapper instead, or to remove the terrain mod beforehand.

Let us know if you'd like guidance with installing any in particular.

I usually avoid downloads with excessive amounts of dependencies, so that is usually the first thing I look for. I might have missed whether they were HD tho. The very first desert mod on the list(Painted Desert I think) didn't work for me. Of the seven or eight I downed, only 3 worked for me. I'll live.

[luvs2draw 295]

Hello SIM-ple Jack,

If your looking for a "Terrain Mod" that isn't hard to use I recommend 2 Terrain Mods. They are  both "PEG MTP Terrain Mod 1 & 2".  They are in the "PLEX"  the MTP selections, top of page 1 and page 3. They are very user friendly. Download either one of the Mods. After you have it downloaded to your computer, extract it and a folder will be created. Open the newly created folder and the Mod will be in this folder named "ZZZ PEG Facelift Mods". Now to put this folder (by cutting and pasting) into your main plugins folder for the game.

If you don't know how to do the Cut and Paste here is how I do it. Right click the "ZZZ" a window will open, select the "cut" option, open your game plugins folder, a new window will open, select the paste option and it will put the "ZZZ" folder into your plugins folder.

Hope I have explained well enough so you understand how to do this. 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

18 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

One possibility is ..

I bookmarked this thread a while back, and if I remember right, I downed the textures I liked along with any necessary deps(that I could see). The 2 deps listed on Painted Desert were for this site and also on SDev. They were going thru some reconstruction over there, so it's possible those deps weren't right(kind of thought it odd that the texture was here and the deps were there). So I re-downed them all from here. Now they work. As you can see below V. Sorry for reeking any havoc.

 

8 hours ago, luvs2draw said:

Hello SIM-ple Jack,

If your looking for a "Terrain Mod" that isn't hard to use I recommend 2 Terrain Mods. They are  both "PEG MTP Terrain Mod 1 & 2".  They are in the "PLEX"  the MTP selections, top of page 1 and page 3. They are very user friendly. Download either one of the Mods. After you have it downloaded to your computer, extract it and a folder will be created. Open the newly created folder and the Mod will be in this folder named "ZZZ PEG Facelift Mods". Now to put this folder (by cutting and pasting) into your main plugins folder for the game.

If you don't know how to do the Cut and Paste here is how I do it. Right click the "ZZZ" a window will open, select the "cut" option, open your game plugins folder, a new window will open, select the paste option and it will put the "ZZZ" folder into your plugins folder.

Hope I have explained well enough so you understand how to do this. 

Thank you good sir(or ma'am, not sure which) for the assist, but i have years of "Read Me"s under my belt.

[thesantiagossj4 26]

Can you try Pluto's terrain textures?

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

23 hours ago, thesantiagossj4 said:

Can you try Pluto's terrain textures?

If you are asking for an existing mod to be included in the guide here, then I'm not aware of a Terrain Mod for the planet Pluto nor of a terrain mod created by any member named Pluto.

I'm guessing then you might be asking for someone to create such a mod and if so, we can point you to the mod requests topic. (I know I personally don't have an interest for attempting an off Earth one myself.)

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

Working on a region today, I discovered something that is either well-known to all or an anomaly. I'm working on a region with 358 cities(actually 9 regions)and am attempting to sync the starting times of all cities to Jan. 1. I glanced at the region map and noticed 1 tile was pale lime and the rest were the usual deeper green. I could have sworn I reset the time and went in to see if I'd screwed up the save. Well, the clock was still running and had taken the date up to late July. So I obliterated the tile and reset the clock to 1/1. Back in region view, the color was correct and matched all the other tiles. I'm thinking some(or all) of these terrain mods are seasonal, and aberrations in region view may be caused by what time of year it is in tile. Like unmatched colors on land and water, tiles appearing high/low or separated from the map. I'm currently using the PyreneanTerrainMod v 1.0 , but I might try it with a few others.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

1 hour ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

Working on a region today, I discovered something that is either well-known to all or an anomaly. I'm working on a region with 358 cities(actually 9 regions)and am attempting to sync the starting times of all cities to Jan. 1. I glanced at the region map and noticed 1 tile was pale lime and the rest were the usual deeper green. I could have sworn I reset the time and went in to see if I'd screwed up the save. Well, the clock was still running and had taken the date up to late July. So I obliterated the tile and reset the clock to 1/1. Back in region view, the color was correct and matched all the other tiles. I'm thinking some(or all) of these terrain mods are seasonal, and aberrations in region view may be caused by what time of year it is in tile. Like unmatched colors on land and water, tiles appearing high/low or separated from the map. I'm currently using the PyreneanTerrainMod v 1.0 , but I might try it with a few others.

You are correct about some of the terrain mods being seasonal. Basically, terrain mods are partially mapped according to moisture levels. However, the game's weather simulator causes moisture levels to change according to the season. The overall moisture levels will go up or down depending on the time of the year, and the distribution of moisture in certain areas will change.

This causes terrain mods to change over the course of different seasons, with different areas showing different coloration depending on the time of year.

Lowkee33's development thread on SC4D has a bunch of notes about this. If I remember correctly, he actually modified the way moisture levels function as part of his Seasonal Flora patch to try and remove some of the wild fluctuations this causes. However, even with his patch, you'll see moisture levels and textures shift over time.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

20 hours ago, BartonThinks said:

You are correct about some of the terrain mods being seasonal. Basically, terrain mods are partially mapped according to moisture levels. However, the game's weather simulator causes moisture levels to change according to the season. The overall moisture levels will go up or down depending on the time of the year, and the distribution of moisture in certain areas will change.

This causes terrain mods to change over the course of different seasons, with different areas showing different coloration depending on the time of year.

Lowkee33's development thread on SC4D has a bunch of notes about this. If I remember correctly, he actually modified the way moisture levels function as part of his Seasonal Flora patch to try and remove some of the wild fluctuations this causes. However, even with his patch, you'll see moisture levels and textures shift over time.

[MrFissure 11]

Hi, thanks for the great post. Just wanted to notify that the dependency links for PyreneanTerrainMod are broken. New link adress looks like this

https://www.toutsimcities.com/downloads/view/1641

 

Cheers !

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

Hi @MrFissure

Thanks for letting us know.

We felt the best way to deal with this would be to perform a sitewide update of these old broken links. Since the ID number remains the same, it allowed that part of the URL to be replaced with the new part. So from database queries we've now batch updated 25 posts and 18 STEX files to make all these updated properly.

It was a case of replacing this:

http://www.toutsimcities.com/downloads.php?view=

With this:

https://www.toutsimcities.com/downloads/view/

To leave the ID number preserved afterwards for each link to be valid.

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

Gotta bump this to bring up a more obscure terrain mod, never released to the exchanges (yet).  It's Badsim's VIP terrain mod.  Which can only be downloaded by this link from the AntiGone city journal at SC4D.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

5 hours ago, Indiana Joe said:

Gotta bump this to bring up a more obscure terrain mod, never released to the exchanges (yet)

Thanks for mentioning it. I've edited the first post to include it like this:

 

The following is HD so you will need to have Hardware Rendering or you will get CTD.

VIP Terrain Mod by Cédric. (Attached to this post on Devotion.)

Note: In addition to the Terrain Mod there are also Beach, Rock, and Water mods. The following pic shows all 4 installed:

[BartonThinks 3,416]

Linking this here in case anyone is interested in modding their terrain. It's a way to lower the snow line of your terrain mod to mimic colder regions.

As an example, you can go from this:

To this:

 

This post explains how this method works:

 

And this post contains step-by-step instructions on how to modify your terrain mod:

 

[thornp113 54]

I could spend ALL DAY on this page.  Thanks for all the hard work!

[monkeywater 910]

On 7/27/2021 at 5:06 PM, CorinaMarie said:

Thanks for mentioning it. I've edited the first post to include it like this:

 

The following is HD so you will need to have Hardware Rendering or you will get CTD.

VIP Terrain Mod by Cédric. (Attached to this post on Devotion.)

Note: In addition to the Terrain Mod there are also Beach, Rock, and Water mods. The following pic shows all 4 installed:

This is an amazing terrain mod!  However in the pictures of it there are many pebble beaches vs the brown ones in the screenshot above, as well as in what I downloaded.  How does one get the pebble beach?

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 hour ago, monkeywater said:

How does one get the pebble beach?

Do you see the one you are referring to in Cori's Beach Shoppe?

All the pics in this Terrain Thread were created with only a Terrain mod so if one of them shows pebbles on the beach then it's part of that mod. If you would copy the linky to the picture you've seen and paste it here, we can prolly get a better idea of what you are looking for.

[monkeywater 910]

Hi Cori,

 

It is in the VIP terrain mod by cedric link. 

 

I have tried to run it both with and without the optional beach file from the download link, but the beach looks nothing like this.

 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

2 hours ago, monkeywater said:

However in the pictures of it there are many pebble beaches ...

Ok, I'm up to speed now after you posted those pics.

The version which includes the Pebbles Beach mod was originally attached to this post on Devotion and in the same thread this post shows those pics.

So, the problem is in the post which had said attachment it was edited to say " Outdated version / Link removed 20/10/17 ".

[rsc204 21,808]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

The version which includes the Pebbles Beach mod was originally attached to this post on Devotion and in the same thread this post shows those pics.

So, the problem is in the post which had said attachment it was edited to say " Outdated version / Link removed 20/10/17 ".

I'll add, I don't think this ever got beyond a public beta, I could be wrong but I'm not sure you can say the posted images will represent the final product, if it ever sees the light of day.

[monkeywater 910]

Thank you both, I am so sad the rocky beach version was never released.  Does the creator have an account on this site?

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

2 minutes ago, monkeywater said:

Does the creator have an account on this site?

It does look like @BadSim might be the same person.

[Barroco Hispano 26,695]

9 minutes ago, monkeywater said:

Thank you both, I am so sad the rocky beach version was never released.  Does the creator have an account on this site?

I can make a rocky beach mod if needed.