Ami's Berlin: Assets (L.A. westside map released)

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Nvm this, I discovered the semi-colon in powershell. It's ugly but it works

Copy-Item parkinn_d.png parkinn-1-hotel_d.png;Copy-Item parkinn_d.png parkinn-2-europcar_d.png;Copy-Item parkinn_d.png parkinn-3-primark-ccc_d.png;Copy-Item parkinn_d.png parkinn-4-spagos_d.png;Copy-Item parkinn_d.png parkinn-basejump-banner_d.png;Copy-Item parkinn_d.png parkinn-basejump-plank_d.png;Copy-Item parkinn_d.png parkinn-basejump-support_d.png;Copy-Item parkinn_d.png parkinn-basejump-target_d.png;Copy-Item parkinn_d.png parkinn-roof-stairs_d.png;Copy-Item parkinn_s.png parkinn-1-hotel_s.png;Copy-Item parkinn_s.png parkinn-2-europcar_s.png;Copy-Item parkinn_s.png parkinn-3-primark-ccc_s.png;Copy-Item parkinn_s.png parkinn-4-spagos_s.png;Copy-Item parkinn_s.png parkinn-basejump-banner_s.png;Copy-Item parkinn_s.png parkinn-basejump-plank_s.png;Copy-Item parkinn_s.png parkinn-basejump-support_s.png;Copy-Item parkinn_s.png parkinn-basejump-target_s.png;Copy-Item parkinn_s.png parkinn-roof-stairs_s.png;Copy-Item parkinn_i.png parkinn-1-hotel_i.png;Copy-Item parkinn_i.png parkinn-2-europcar_i.png;Copy-Item parkinn_i.png parkinn-3-primark-ccc_i.png;Copy-Item parkinn_i.png parkinn-4-spagos_i.png;Copy-Item parkinn_i.png parkinn-basejump-banner_i.png;Copy-Item parkinn_i.png parkinn-basejump-plank_i.png;Copy-Item parkinn_i.png parkinn-basejump-support_i.png;Copy-Item parkinn_i.png parkinn-basejump-target_i.png;Copy-Item parkinn_i.png parkinn-roof-stairs_i.png;Copy-Item parkinn_a.png parkinn-1-hotel_a.png;Copy-Item parkinn_a.png parkinn-2-europcar_a.png;Copy-Item parkinn_a.png parkinn-3-primark-ccc_a.png;Copy-Item parkinn_a.png parkinn-4-spagos_a.png;Copy-Item parkinn_a.png parkinn-basejump-banner_a.png;Copy-Item parkinn_a.png parkinn-basejump-plank_a.png;Copy-Item parkinn_a.png parkinn-basejump-support_a.png;Copy-Item parkinn_a.png parkinn-basejump-target_a.png;Copy-Item parkinn_a.png parkinn-roof-stairs_a.png

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Here is the props collection:

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Question for you guys. I use the two vanilla tiles (blue one, gold one) quite extensively, and I imagine many others do too. Do you guys know if anybody made a pack of angled and curved versions of these tiles that would allow us to paint them into a variety of shapes?

[Matthias King 348]

Not that I know of, but I'd love to have them. I use the tiles a lot too, and having a half version or a corner version would be extremely handy.

[Avanya 2,605]

These park decals by KingLeno use the yellow one and there's a smaller version of it. Still a square though.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

If I ever bothered to learn how to make decals, I would make a 1/4th circle, 45deg triangle, 60deg-left triangle, and 60deg-right triangle versions of both the blue and the gold one. 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Hopefully, I just futzed with this thing for the last time in Blender. Now it's time to release and I'm still not sure exactly how to do it. There are now 4 buildings (2 of them maxed out at 64 vanilla props each), and 17 custom props.

I think I understand how to make a prop pack; you just open the folder and add all of the other .crp's when you're sharing one of the props. That part sounds easy.

 

I'm still hoping that there's a way to release the four buildings, with all of their vanilla-props and custom-props in place, as one asset. What if I import an empty .obj into the editor, then add the four buildings as sub-buildings, then add my custom props (after i sub to my own published pack on the workshop, ofc)? Won't modders still be able to use the parts if they search for them with "Find It!"?

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Prop pack is up, now to figure out what to do with the buildings.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=926383732

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Hey simtropolians, I'm having some trouble with sub-buildings. If I load it normally (without -noworkshop), it's incredibly slow and laggy and I can't really place any props. If I load it without the workshop, it seems to not work right -- it doesn't jump up the plot size. It's supposed to jump up from 16 to 32 or something, right? But it just doesn't... it's stuck at 16 even after I add a sub-building. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Some progress - I unsubbed to all my assets, so now I'm able to run the editor without -noWorkshop mode. I loaded the Spagos restaurant as the main building, then added the 3 other parts (hotel, europcar, shopping center) behind it. Each part was imported using a monument template (High Interest Tower), which feels wrong.  The building+sub-buildings looks ok (though wrongly positioned) in the Asset Editor

 

 But when I go in-game to test it, only the restaurant plops and the sub-buildings are missing. Halp!

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Baby steps of progress. I had "larger footprints" running, and that was messing up my sub-buildings. I'm getting the proper sub-building menu now and I'm able to increase the plot size:

Now my next problem. I can't raise the props! They're stuck on the ground and PageUp with Move-it! is not working. I have prop anarchy and prop-snapping installed. Is there anything I can do?

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

I'm trying to hack around in modtools to look for a place where I can change the vertical position of the prop, but I'm coming up empty. Props will elevate on the original building (screenshot), but not the sub-buildings.

If you have any ideas, pls help. This seems to be the last thing in my way.

[Darf 1,439]

Don't you need to attach the props on the original sub buildings?

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

The sub-buildings have their own props (lights, mostly) and some of them (particularly the main hotel tower) are full at 64/64. I was hoping to add the custom props from the pack during the sub-building process. It's working fine for the ground props, I just can't elevate the props that are meant to go up high (roof stairs, parkinn signs, billboards).

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Ugh.. I think I have a solution for the props, but now the game is refusing to kick up the plot size again. Only once or twice did it ever give me the option to go to 10x20. Now it's stuck at 10x14, as if a sub-building was never added. Why is it doing this?

 

[Ronyx69 2,413]

I have no idea how you got more than 16 before, but you're not supposed to get higher sizes than 16.

That's why we use sub-buildings.

[Avanya 2,605]

Pretty much everything you're experiencing is working as intended. Subbuildings don't increase the footprint of the main building in the editor. Getting it to 20x10 was likely the Larger Footprint mod still messing with your game. That's also why the subbuildings should have props placed on them before adding them, which means you'll have to work with the 64 prop limit. Placing props outside the footprint of the main building will likely just cause them not to be saved or even give you "out of range" errors in the game. Same with elevating props - they don't do that normally, they only snap to buildings. The fact that we can make props float with MoveIt and Prop Snapping in the game is a side effect of giving us the ability to snap props to buildings in game (basicly it shouldn't really be possible, but yay for it being so!).

The only way to really work around the prop limit on buildings is to cut the building up into more parts. For props on the ground like the plaza you could make a park without any structure and just add the props, then add it as a subbuilding. But you'll get an annoying terrain glitch until the update Thursday (the building will flatten a large area around it after reloading the save).

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

After one of the most frustrating C:S days I've ever had, I've resolved the issues.

 

1. I wish I had understood that sub-buildings are not meant to increase the footprint before I woke up this morning. Understanding that now, things make more sense. I was hell bent on getting what looked like a proper footprint at 20x10 and was baited by seeing it as possible a couple of times. You're probably right, it must have been a mod that let me get those values a few times.

 

2. The good news: props DO stick everywhere on a sub-buildings asset, even outside of the footprint.

 

3. Once I figured out that props could only be raised on the initial building and not the sub-buildings, it didn't take long for me to figure out that all I needed to do was stick it on the side of the initial building, then move it over to its proper spot with MoveIt!. Props must have a flag that gets set when you first plop them, which either makes them stick to the ground forever, or be able to float. After I stuck a prop on the side of the initial building, I could easily move it up and down w/ PgUp & PgDwn.

 

I'll be able to release the Park Inn as a big one-plop (I think the game even condenses similar textures when you use sub-buildings, w/o the loading screen mod). Sadly, "Find It!" won't be able to see the sub-building parts, so I'll probably just lump those all in with the main .crp as a pack, similar to the props. It will be a bigger file size but at this point I don't really care. What's important to me is that it will do everything I want; be a one-plop with hundreds of vanilla & custom props, and be 4 big buildings that can be used modularly by true enthusiasts.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Finally! 

 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=927394296

[Avanya 2,605]

Woohoo! Congrats on finishing it - that's a large complicated project

I haven't had a chance to check it out ingame yet, but I noticed something you should prob keep in mind for future projects - the LODs. 1A and 1C have some very high tris count (remember the goal is as close to 100 as possible) for the shape of the buildings - you'll pretty much always want to stay below the 300 tris for a LOD (only exceptions should really be very curvy buildings). Should you have future buildings where you're not sure how to get the LOD low enough without losing too much detail, then you can always post some shots of the model here and we can prob give some advice.

[Matthias King 348]

This looks great, but that filesize. Ouch. I won't be able to use it. It's just too darn big.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

It's highly optimized. The same set of four 2048x2048 textures are saved 5 times in the main asset and 5 times in the prop assets. So if you use Loading Screen Mod, it's about 1/10th of the filesize.

[Ronyx69 2,413]

9 minutes ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

It's highly optimized. The same set of four 2048x2048 textures are saved 5 times in the main asset and 5 times in the prop assets. So if you use Loading Screen Mod, it's about 1/10th of the filesize.

So it's optimized for loading, not for file sizes.

It's actually really stupid the steam workshop doesn't use compression, it would cut like 90% off some assets...

For example the doel nuke would be cut from 22.9 to 8.47 MB.

[Matthias King 348]

My framerate struggles with 24gigs of RAM. I'm fast approaching the point where I can't sub any new assets, so anything I sub now has to be really tight on file size for the game to continue to run. I wish I could have this asset because it looks super nice, but I just can't sacrifice that much RAM space.

[Alexgru88 19]

By now I have 7k assets taking 70gb full loaded... 

LS is a lifesaver)

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

I don't think you're understanding how it works. By offering the asset in this fashion, utilizing the capabilities of the Loading Screen Mod, it takes less ram space than it would have taken if I had broken the big texture into smaller independent textures. So it's actually "tighter" than most assets.

 

In this project I offer 22 objects: 17 in the prop pack (68MB) and 5 in the main building publication (58MB). Many of those object share the exact same textures. This allows different objects to use the same texture space over and over again. This sharing wouldn't be possible if the textures were broken into many smaller ones that are each different. So you're getting more bang for your buck in terms of memory space. The biggest set of textures, which is used 10 times throughout the objects, is only 5MB! The rest of the extra textures are even smaller than that, and those too are used multiple times in the prop pack. So while you download ~130MB of stuff from the workshop, I'd estimate that only around ~13-15MB of it is going into your ram.

 

I dunno if you have done this yet, but have you checked your asset collection in-game with the Mesh Info mod? This will point out the real killers that are strangling your computer. I one time downloaded a small plane prop that just wrecked my game performance -- it had like 30k triangles in the LOD model or something absurd like that. A few "bad apple" assets (like the vanilla merry-go-round prop that we all make fun of as a sort of running joke) can do so much damage to your performance. By removing them, you free up space for dozens of well made assets.

[Matthias King 348]

It's been a while, but I did go through and clear out a lot of my assets based largely off what Mesh Info showed me. I had a few that were pretty bad and had to go. I think I'm pretty good now, but I have a lot, just in pure volume. I think Loading Screen helped a lot, it seemed to, but I still have quite a few and I'm running out of juice.

Though I may try this out just to see what happens. I was hoping to make it a central feature of the business district of my biggest borough. It fits in with the overall feel I have in mind for that area. If you're right about the textures, then it might be ok.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

I understand your concern. There's probably a way to test it and get the exact numbers from the Loading Screen Mod (I'm curious too), I just haven't tried to figure out how to do that yet. 

[_Beardmonkey 449]

Nice work! Looks awesome!

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

So I didn't pay much attention to the management aspects of the buildings, and I think I messed it up. For example, when you plop the main asset, you see 5 noise pollution rings. Should I have set the noise pollution on the sub-buildings to zero? Did I use the wrong template for the sub-buildings? I need some advice about templates and managements numbers for a project such as this. Which values to you guys recommend?

 

I should probably update the asset with better values.