Badi_Dea's Workshop - Post Office Released

[Judazzz 1,936]

That looks like a pretty complicated feature you're trying to create, but it's looking very promising!
Also great to see fresh blood giving modding a try - welcome to the nerd's creed, @Badi_Dea

Just wondering: would it be possible to attach 'milestones' to your upgrade path? Like unlocking one upgrade for every 10.000 inhabitants, or when the player makes certain other achievements? That would give this - already great - idea an actual game-play component!

[Badi_Dea 476]

On 10/29/2017 at 5:21 AM, boformer said:

Upgrading service buildings like schools and fire stations is the first thing that comes to mind, but it would also be interesting for airports (more runways, terminals) and train stations (more platforms).

That is exactly what I'm thinking! although something like this could be used for decoration, my motivation is firmly gameplay/mechanics based.

 

On 10/29/2017 at 5:45 AM, rovapasi1 said:

If triggered by actual gametime this could trigger a change in a commercial subbuilding for holiday seasons.

it's a good idea certainly, but probably out of scope for this project.

In fact, take a look at @boformer's awesome modding tutorials, especially https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/73475-modding-tutorial-1-prop-remover/
Using something like this, you could make a mod that swaps out props based on the time of year, it would probably take some voodoo to prevent a massive lag spike that'll happen when they change though.

Besides, Colossal Order, based in Finland, really doesn't know about seasons. In fact, they had to guess what summer even looked like, which is why we have entirely different biomes for summer and snow.

 

8 hours ago, Judazzz said:

Just wondering: would it be possible to attach 'milestones' to your upgrade path? Like unlocking one upgrade for every 10.000 inhabitants, or when the player makes certain other achievements? That would give this - already great - idea an actual game-play component!

Awesome you would mention that! I was just working on that today, that's exactly in line with my vision for this mod.

I rebuilt the interface.. and on boy, we sure could use some more documentation about how this all works. Anyway, the sub building that's shown was created using the template for the tax office, so it's unlocked by building a Water Treatment Plant, I haven't implemented it yet since I'm still trying to get everything to render out properly, but I'll disable the button if the unlock hasn't been fulfilled yet, exactly like how the builtin unique buildings work.

Another thing is, that I'm having some goofiness around what buttons are present in the sub building atlas (it actually really messed me up before I added the placeholder icons, I thought the button was hidden somehow...) for these tests I'm just using stock buildings, so that might have something to do with it - in the next picture, you'll see that my custom building has it's icon in the atlas.

The interface changes, I think, make everything a lot easier to use. Using the old interface, someone mentioned that putting everything in the city service building panel almost completely covered up the building your working on.

Now, when you click the 'modify building' button: the city service info panel closes itself, the camera focuses on the building you're working on, and a special sub building panel opens. I wanted it to be similar to, but distinct from the regular building panels so that one could tell at a glance that you're altering a building's sub buildings.

The tabs you see at the top of the sub building panel correlate to the sub buildings currently present. I'll put icons on them eventually, and in the end it'll end up being a little like the sub building tabs mod.
You'll notice that there seems to also be an additional tab; this building is made up of a parent and only one child sub building. That extra tab opens back up the info panel for the parent building, while the subsequent tabs are for each of the currently existing sub buildings. Clicking on one of them will open up the info panel for that sub building. If the sub building is providing a service (like healthcare or police) it'll have all the regular information pertaining to that, it will also contain a button to destroy that sub building, if desired.

The way I plan on going with this, is to use the stock building editor to place all the sub buildings, then also have a config xml that contains things like additional abilities (like instant +5000 money, or +5 service vehicles to parent, configurable per each sub building) and some form of dependency and mutual exclusivity chains; for instance, if you place an extra classroom on a modular school it might take up the same space that an auditorium would have taken, so you can't have both.

I plan to figure out a way to detour (probably give Harmony a shot) the building placement so that the prefab is stripped of sub buildings during placement only if the config xml exists for the building, that way we don't end up messing up buildings that aren't built specifically for this mod but still use sub buildings, and at the same time we can still view/change/remove sub buildings for them. Like, if you don't want the integrated metro in the Intl. airport, you can remove it, no problem.

Thanks for all the feedback, folks. I really appreciate you all chatting with me about this, it's slow going trying to get everything right, but seeing the level of interest is most definitely motivating.

 

[rovapasi1 53]

6 hours ago, Badi_Dea said:

Besides, Colossal Order, based in Finland, really doesn't know about seasons. In fact, they had to guess what summer even looked like, which is why we have entirely different biomes for summer and snow.

When you are going there you will find out this is basicaly the case. Winter there is dark and days are short and at summer you have nearly 24h light. The country looks so different in winter and summer. Much more than f.e. in central europe. So I can understand their approach. :-)

[Badi_Dea 476]

Hi all!

So, I was visiting family for the Thanksgiving Day holiday, so getting some coding done was near impossible, but I did manage to find the time to start on a City Hall to be used with the Modular Buildings mod. I got it pretty much wrapped up over this last week - I've found that if I don't really feel like writing code, doing some modeling really helps break down the motivation wall.

I just think it looks really pretty lit up at night...

 

This is the base building as it's placed in-game.

 

It's nothing too special - just under 2500 tris and 512x1024 textures.

 

All of the available modules added - we've got a rear section, a left and right wings, a dome (with variants), and a left and right sitting area/platform.
It's based on, but not a direct copy of the Alabama State Capital building in Montgomery. I went with more of a neo-classical style, rather than a southern classical style.
With all the sub-buildings attached, the tri count is almost at 8100, and most of the buildings share textures, so with the Loading Screen mod sharing textures on the atlas, I hope it's fairly light.

 

Here is the variant Dome, I like the gold-ish color, originally I was kinda going for a newer copper dome, instead of the older looking tarnished one, but I think I'll saturate out the yellow a little bit more and call it a gold dome. Also, got rid of the wings and platforms. Playing around with buildings you can add and remove pieces from at a whim is really fun, and really makes getting the look you're after pretty easy.

 

I thought this looked like it should be on a postcard. I think I'm going to add a name plate module at the front with a few variations for 'city hall', 'state capital', or even something in other languages if anyone feels the architecture would fit it. The reference building has a clock tower on the front I thought would look kinda cool too.

 

Thanks again for taking a look!

[mntoes 270]

Amazing work. Love the detail.

[barcasam7 185]

Happy late thanks giving. I echo the same thought as above it looks incredible. 

[K141 19]

On ‎12‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 11:34 PM, Badi_Dea said:

Hi all!

So, I was visiting family for the Thanksgiving Day holiday, so getting some coding done was near impossible, but I did manage to find the time to start on a City Hall to be used with the Modular Buildings mod. I got it pretty much wrapped up over this last week - I've found that if I don't really feel like writing code, doing some modeling really helps break down the motivation wall.

I just think it looks really pretty lit up at night...

 

This is the base building as it's placed in-game.

 

It's nothing too special - just under 2500 tris and 512x1024 textures.

 

All of the available modules added - we've got a rear section, a left and right wings, a dome (with variants), and a left and right sitting area/platform.
It's based on, but not a direct copy of the Alabama State Capital building in Montgomery. I went with more of a neo-classical style, rather than a southern classical style.
With all the sub-buildings attached, the tri count is almost at 8100, and most of the buildings share textures, so with the Loading Screen mod sharing textures on the atlas, I hope it's fairly light.

 

Here is the variant Dome, I like the gold-ish color, originally I was kinda going for a newer copper dome, instead of the older looking tarnished one, but I think I'll saturate out the yellow a little bit more and call it a gold dome. Also, got rid of the wings and platforms. Playing around with buildings you can add and remove pieces from at a whim is really fun, and really makes getting the look you're after pretty easy.

 

I thought this looked like it should be on a postcard. I think I'm going to add a name plate module at the front with a few variations for 'city hall', 'state capital', or even something in other languages if anyone feels the architecture would fit it. The reference building has a clock tower on the front I thought would look kinda cool too.

 

Thanks again for taking a look!

Wow! That's seriously amazing! And I looked back at your backlog in the OP and its funny cause I have some of the same places marked off that I wanted to make!  Though, of course, when it comes to modding I'm basically a complete noob right now haha.

[Badi_Dea 476]

I decided to play around with the networks editor finally... it's cool! we finally have a pretty much feature complete editor for something, I love the detail in it!
So, I made a little powerline so that rural areas look a little better not having gigantic masts everywhere.

It's kind of a bummer that the wire shader is so limited, I tried to make the cables a more reasonable size but I didn't see a way to pull it off.
Using a regular mesh would accomplish the task, but I wanted to have the lines sway in the wind; just like the default powerlines.

On another note - I'm still developing the modular buildings mod, it's turning out really cool, but it's a monumental amount of work so it's a little slow-going. I hope to get it feature complete in the next couple months, along with several modular service buildings so it has a purpose on release.

Thanks for taking a look all!

[Delta2k5 311]

12 hours ago, Badi_Dea said:

It's kind of a bummer that the wire shader is so limited, I tried to make the cables a more reasonable size but I didn't see a way to pull it off.
Using a regular mesh would accomplish the task, but I wanted to have the lines sway in the wind; just like the default powerlines.

Um - you could try the trams overhead wires shader I think - they are not that thick and sway also somehow. I dunno if they then require the snowfall dlc or if everybody has this shader installed by an regular update, but you could try to use them. @Ronyx69 could be more helpful on this end I think

[R3V0 909]

12 hours ago, Badi_Dea said:

I decided to play around with the networks editor finally... it's cool! we finally have a pretty much feature complete editor for something, I love the detail in it!
So, I made a little powerline so that rural areas look a little better not having gigantic masts everywhere.

It's kind of a bummer that the wire shader is so limited, I tried to make the cables a more reasonable size but I didn't see a way to pull it off.
Using a regular mesh would accomplish the task, but I wanted to have the lines sway in the wind; just like the default powerlines.

On another note - I'm still developing the modular buildings mod, it's turning out really cool, but it's a monumental amount of work so it's a little slow-going. I hope to get it feature complete in the next couple months, along with several modular service buildings so it has a purpose on release.

Thanks for taking a look all!

Sway can be done with vertex paint, https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Road_Editor

"The wire shader doesn’t use any textures, and models using it will sway in the wind. The amount of sway can be set per vertex on the blue channel of the vertex color (0 for no sway, 255 for full), and the phase of the sway can be controlled with the red channel."

[Badi_Dea 476]

On 12/24/2017 at 4:44 AM, R3V0 said:

Sway can be done with vertex paint, https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Road_Editor

"The wire shader doesn’t use any textures, and models using it will sway in the wind. The amount of sway can be set per vertex on the blue channel of the vertex color (0 for no sway, 255 for full), and the phase of the sway can be controlled with the red channel."

The vertex colors aren't the problem, it's that there seems to be a floor for how small the raster output of the wire shader can go. I put a little more detail here:

I think I'm alright with it though, it's not too bad.

Thanks for input though.

[DaEgi 14]

Modular buildings would be sooo awesome. I always though that it would be great, if we could start with small service buildings that are only enough for a small town and then upgrade them once the town starts growing. Tell me if I can help you somehow @Badi_Dea.

[Badi_Dea 476]

Thanks for the offer @DaEgi, I'm still working on the mod; but taking @Judazzz advice - slow and steady. Despite all the bugs I still have in the development build, it's pretty fun to add on to buildings as you need them.

In the meantime, I'd figure that I'd confess that I super love the road editor - there's so much you can tweak, and it's not all that well documented so figuring out what works is a treat. (I'm actually being serious)

I've had an iDea in mind ever since I heard about the road editor: parking lot networks! I've always found custom making parking lots to be a chore - and I super hate the look of all these cars parking on the sidewalk, especially if they have to ramp the curb to get there. I mean, everything is already available that you'd need to do it, right? - well, as it turns out, no, not so much.

Even though the invisible parking marker is able to be added to a network, it only behaves like a prop, it seems to lose all it's functionality... besides, the prop spacing on segments is a little tough to get a handle on (but possible). - I did take a look at the method that handles parking behavior, and I think I'd be able to make them functional, but it would probably conflict with the parking AI enhancements out there already, and I don't want to open that can of worms...

Maybe I can angle the street side parking lanes... nope!

So, I had to resort to the next best thing; a park, and use anarchy to place it on the road. It worked out well enough, but wouldn't ya know that darn invisible parking marker cant be manipulated vertically, and it resets itself to surface level... dang floating cars...

Alright, so, I finally decided to create a 'building' sunk into the ground, clip the terrain around it, and snap the parking marker to it - success at last! we have proper parking spaces, and roads suited for placing them. At least I have control over the visibility at a distance via the LOD texture. Let American suburbia flow though you!

 

Here's the start of it. I still have work to do though, I need to tweak the textures for the parking lots and make different sizes. The networks are looking pretty decent so far, but I think I'd like to bring down the color by 25% to 50%, bring the diffuse out a little more - there's a lot of detail in the texture that just gets lost in the road mask, I still have LODs to do, and perhaps elevated (big maybe) for custom parking garages(maybe). There's a surprising amount of work that goes into these networks, especially if you want them all to look close to the same.

All of the networks I'm making for this project are pictured above -

• 16m service road, no parking, just driving
• 16m parking lot, asymmetric - parking on one side, driving on the other
• 22m parking lot, doesn't fit in the grid, so no zoning, but driving lane in the middle, parking on both sides
• 40m parking lot, no zoning, two driving lanes, four parking rows
• 58m parking lot, no zoning, three driving lanes, six parking rows

The build above took maybe 10m, tops; and I was testing stuff, so it's not like I was rushing or anything.

 

One of my desires was to recreate some of the big office buildings that I see around where I work. A couple of them have the coolest parking layouts, with concentric rings of parking swallowed by green space in between the rows. It really cuts down how horrible your standard parking lot is by quite a bit. You see though, the thing is, it was never really possible before. not unless you made it entirely custom involving a couple hours of work, and a couple more hours if you wanted to have it the least bit functional, and then you'd probably have floating cars... frankly, aint nobody got time fo that.

 

The last picture here illustrates two things, no floating cars! and brief glimpse of the next thing I plan on finishing after I release the parking lot network. The network editor really is versatile.

It's tough to see here, but I took the time to do something CO was unwilling to do, I actually uvmapped the sides of the curb (gasp!)

I used real life 1:1 scaling (nice reference picture) for the parking lot networks, so some of them are a bit out of bounds for the 8x8 grid system... I was able to get a pair of arrangements to fit properly, so you can zone against them while the others should be connected to nothing but those service roads.

Thanks so much for reading, everyone. Lemmie know what ya think.

 

[Stanil 15]

I love it and am looking forward to the release  

[Matthias King 348]

This is something I've been waiting for since the game launched. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

[K141 19]

Incredible! Have you ever considered doing some municipal buildings?

[Badi_Dea 476]

5 hours ago, K141 said:

Have you ever considered doing some municipal buildings?

well, there is that city hall / state capital building a few posts up - what were you thinking?

thanks for the comments everyone!

[Avanya 2,605]

Uuuh, this looks very nice!  I definately look forward to getting my hands on these. 

[K141 19]

Oh, mainly like tax offices, courthouses, social security, stuff like that.

[Badi_Dea 476]

On 1/25/2018 at 7:26 PM, K141 said:

Oh, mainly like tax offices, courthouses, social security, stuff like that.

My preference in this game is to make stuff that has a function - since there isn't really a facility like that in the game, it's gonna be a pretty low priority for me. But I know you know how to use 3d modeling software, you should totally give it a shot

Last teaser before release - I planned on making a quick scene to get some screenshots for the thumbnails and workshop page... one thing led to another, and I accidentally created all the suburbs.

This took around 5 hours, yeah time totally got away from me... easily would have been triple that laying it out completely by hand.

 

I mentioned in my previous post about how I was really inspired by some of the offices in my area; this is a basic recreation of that style, and I really like this one. This area is just off to the east of the picture above.

It might be a little difficult to tell in this screenshot, but there are some slopes in the area - I was originally using the nobase shader for the lines, but I changed it to the fence shader so I could achieve the same effect, and have a degree of slope tolerance. The parking line meshes are quite light on tris, so there is still some clipping on areas without verts, but not a whole lot.

I toned down the road darkness, it's still darker than the default streets by about 50% - rbg 93. But I like it quite a bit more than the super dark black tar ones. I think bringing it closer to neutral will help with those that use decals on the road surfaces.

The parking markers are done, several variations of -0.3m parking lots for differing length, handicap accessible, and electric vehicle charging spaces. Since they are buildings instead of decals, their LOD mesh is visible from really far away and since we're taking about little lines here, the pop in effect is non-existent.

 

I was planning on including everything in one big pack, but considering the asset files total in at 120Mb across 13 files, I'm thinking splitting it up might be prudent - any opinions?

I also am thinking about different variations of the lines: yellow lines, 45° parking lines, handicap spaces with the flow of traffic, a set without parking bumpers - is there anything we're missing as far as road level traffic things go?

Thanks again all!

[barcasam7 185]

This looks fantastic, love the images real American sprawl that! Definitely approve the yellow lines as they are used in certain places in California. Also love the electric charging spaces, as a Tesla owner I approve  . Thank you for this. 

[Delta2k5 311]

10 hours ago, Badi_Dea said:

I was planning on including everything in one big pack, but considering the asset files total in at 120Mb across 13 files, I'm thinking splitting it up might be prudent - any opinions?

I'd release that set. Take a look on how big some themes are - there is one created by "The_Ping" which is over 300Mb big just for some textures! Some buildings also are larger than 120Mb, so go ahead - one can still disable the not wanted roads featured in that pack in content manager

 

11 hours ago, Badi_Dea said:

I also am thinking about different variations of the lines: yellow lines, 45° parking lines, handicap spaces with the flow of traffic, a set without parking bumpers - is there anything we're missing as far as road level traffic things go?

Parking spots for electric cars  as mentioned before by @barcasam7

[alborzka 66]

Handicap spaces are definitely needed (as well as the additional space/width they require); also one suggestion: Having breaks/paths every 20-23 spaces. I know we can make our own intersections, but it'd be nice to have a landscape break between every 20-23 spaces built-in. These breaks can be grass or landscaped areas/islands or include pedestrian paths, etc. Landscaping, pedestrian safety and paths (having a dedicated path to the building/destination and sidewalk/street), trees for shade, etc are big parts of making friendly parking lots nowadays:

https://www1.toronto.ca/city_of_toronto/city_planning/urban_design/files/pdf/greening_p-lot_guidelines_jan2013.pdf

[Badi_Dea 476]

Released!

And also released!

 

14 hours ago, barcasam7 said:

Definitely approve the yellow lines as they are used in certain places in California. Also love the electric charging spaces, as a Tesla owner I approve  .

Cool! yellow lines on the list - Electric charging spaces made it in the pack, thanks much!

 

11 hours ago, Delta2k5 said:

I'd release that set.

Parking spots for electric cars

I split off just one road - Since I used the Asymmetric template from Mass Transit, I decided to make a separate workshop item for it.
Even though I'm not using any asymmetric lanes, I had a hard time getting the other road prefabs to not flip the texture on me during curves, this way just tons easier...
Thanks for seconding @barcasam7 EV spots are in, thanks!

 

9 hours ago, alborzka said:

Handicap spaces are definitely needed (as well as the additional space/width they require); also one suggestion: Having breaks/paths every 20-23 spaces.

Handicapped accessible parking made it into the pack, thanks!
I like the idea of having breaks in the pavement, but doing it automatically would limit the flexibility of the network too much.

Thank you very much for the resource, there is a lot of very good info in that PDF! Depending on time and requests, I think I'll have to make some 'parks' to replicate those islands, from road to curb height to replicate some of those designs.

 

Thanks again everyone!

 

 

[barcasam7 185]

Thank you for this great mod! It's incredible, so easy to use which is kudos to you as parking was tedious and a nightmare. Here is a screenshot of what you can achieve in literally a few minutes compared to a few hours!

[Badi_Dea 476]

Thanks! That looks really nice, hope it works out for everyone

[Stanil 15]

@Badi_Dea Do you have any idea why the road markings / parking lot markings don‘t appear in my city?

I have the „Roads United“ mod, but I think it's configured right.

 

[barcasam7 185]

Did you plop down the actual parking spaces? The roads come empty. Then you have to apply the parking spaces yourself. 

[Stanil 15]

@barcasam7 Well… no  Thanks, I will try.

[Badi_Dea 476]

Yeah, Unfortunately, there are some technical limitations to the invisible parking marker working on road prefabs. (as in, it just doesn't)

While it's not that hard to make the lines on the road automatically, the fact that they wouldn't be functional was a no-go for me. I decided that leaving them blank would offer the most flexibility and providing the proper parking markers along with the lines (so you could see where they're spaced) would be the best option.

Thanks folks, I appreciate the comments.