[Development] The Day Major Fantozzi went Farming

[tigerbuilder 131]

This thread is so promising.

I think your project is a great idea...I hope you don't grow tired of it.

I love farms too....these lots you have look really nice. This is something I look forward to. Great job so far!

cheers, tiger

 

[Fantozzi 4,069]

@tigerbuilder - thanks for the kind words. Indeed I'm running out of creativity and new farm buildings and feel immediatly tired when I fire up PIM-X or LE. So if there are idears for farm lots (for stages 5 to 10), they are all welcome. Just throwing names or types,  some funny brainstorming. You know, you can see this even on the maxis lots or you can learn it even better from @madhatter106. You can tell a littel story on the lot or the building, giving it a 'personallity'. A guy spilled the milk can, a trap door to a secret brandy stash (see above) etc. Even if I used a very few lots twice at least I try to give each lot a small story or a 'scene'. I once wrote lotting is a little bit like painting - much about using colours and to compose with colours a scene. But regarding those 'scenes' - or maybe you can call it 'themes' or 'subject' I'm almost without idears. If I look on my scrap sheet, there stands 'Cashmere farm', 'Smoked Trouts', 'Sugo Di Nonna (tomato sauce, ketchup), Banderas Cooperativa (Greenhouses). So, I'm working mainly with names. As mostly, if I find a name (or some kind of slogan) for the farm I already have an idear for the 'subject'. So my creative technique is this, thinking of the crops and then 'who' could do 'what' with these crops. So if you like to help me - atm I would appreciate if you have some farmes you'd like to see to deal with some crops. Most probably I won't do a Donald Trump farm - all I can imagine is boeing planes and skyscrapers growing on the fields. But if you - you all - have a nice idear, you're wellcome.

So far I made 90 new props - but mostly for the fields and to relate the lots with the fields. The carts with the tobacco plants f.e. for the tobacco related lots. The cutted trees and the wood piles and poles and for the bamboo lot stacks of smaller poles. Well, there are roundabout 30 new farm fields, some I'm really satisfied like rapeseed, strawberries and potatoes. If I'm looking at that  - I'm quite surprised that most of the work is already done. For level 9 and 10 I will do only four, five farms. For creativity now, level 5 to 8, they might be the hardest, but regarding work, it's roundabout 50 lots and I'm finished. On the other hand I think it's good to have even more farms and then delete 10% again. Maybe I need a break. It's more than a year I'm only lotting and reorganizing plugins and didn't play the game - there is so much new content I didn'tplay with it I can't write reviews on them.

 

[Fantozzi 4,069]

@nos.17

Last night I made two farm fields one with JENXFAUNA cows and one with JENXFAUNA sheeps. For testing I let them grow exclusively, so 10 of these fields with animated  props did grow on my city tile. When I turned to fast speed the game became almost inresponsive, nor scrolling nor zooming worked well.

I deleted the farms until 2 were left and things became normal (but if just zone a single 10x10 field - you get 100 animations. It seems to me that animations are a performance killer if they appear massively. At least to me in this case.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Yes, animations are really performance killers. It doesn't even have to be JENXFAUNA - I remember a case where someone complained about performance problems after adding a growable lot with the "seagulls" effect that Maxis created for the lighthouse (?). The lot ended up growing very often, resulting in many instances of that animation within the city tile. Even those animated business sculptures by Maxis can gobble up a lot of performance if the appear too often. I guess the SimCity engine is absolutely not optimised for animations as these were never intended to be used on a larger scale.

[matias93 7,535]

Farm ideas? I'm up! Let's try with a couple of concepts, absolutely on the public domain:

• a B-class celebrity decided to use their money to make their own wine, so bought a downridden winery, invested a lot of money and employed a very snob enologist to run the place. The building is a post modernist rural house used as exposition place, and some anodyne warehouses on the back to produce the wine.
• an indigenous cooperative has managed to recieve recovered lands from the government, but the ones with the right age to work are mainly city dwellers, so they have to learn everything rural and traditional in short time. The building is a small hamlet of huts and tiny wood houses, along with a stable and some minor machinery. The field would preferently be of subsistence crops: maize, potatoes, squash, etc.
• a small farmer gets a contract from a big food firm to produce one of their ingredients, but has to follow all their standard procedures. The lot is a small wood house with a barn, alongside a container or trailer from the food company and a lot of sacks with seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and so.
• a big forestry company has a huge pine or eucalyptus plantation, and contracted some local families to vigilate their fields. The lot is a small rural house with some tiles devoted to crops for the family, and a forestry company truck parked on the front. Some cutted logs are piled aside the house.

Those are the ones on the top of my mind right now. I'll include more when thinking on them...

[nos.17 5,265]

4 hours ago, Fantozzi said:

I deleted the farms until 2 were left and things became normal (but if just zone a single 10x10 field - you get 100 animations.

Makes sense that numerous animations would cause yuuuuge lag spikes. Could you perhaps add the animations to a prop family of mostly blank props so there was like a 1/10 or 1/20 chance of appearing?

[Fantozzi 4,069]

@matias93 - free of copyright and charge?  Great! This is the right stuff to refresh my mind.

Picking your third suggestion and playing with it - I like the idear doing a Monsanto-Farm (something looking chemical) as a big central farm and some smaller 'monsanto slaves farmers' around it.

 

Back to the cows:

I'm surprised - this isn't looking bad at all, using Jenxfauna cows on the fields and then removing all borders and even more and placing cosmetic puzzle pieces (added versions with fences) - so they aren't grazing on the streets:

And the same with sheeps:

[Fantozzi 4,069]

4 minutes ago, nos.17 said:

Could you perhaps add the animations to a prop family of mostly blank props so there was like a 1/10 or 1/20 chance of appearing?

That's what I did (1/4). Anyway - I like the idear and the results if you're deleting the borders and put the cosmetic pieces there. So one or two of this farms won't hurt. And I'll put a performance note in the readme. But to me your proposal looks too good to drop it.

[Fantozzi 4,069]

Ladies Day!

 

Helene Dutrieu Estate

 

Betty Heidler Yard (the milk vans in front are timed props and I missed them on the snap shot)

[matias93 7,535]

I think somebody should notify that pilot that the pesticides won't go through the greenhouses' roofs...

[Fantozzi 4,069]

The plane is out of order since 1961. It's a museum piece and therefore fenced.

[matias93 7,535]

Oh, I saw it flying over the field...

[Fantozzi 4,069]

7 minutes ago, matias93 said:

Oh, I saw it flying over the field...

Maybe it's overscaled?

[matias93 7,535]

I don't think so (the wingless width is about the same of the truck on it's side), it's only the lack of depth that's natural to the game...

[Terring 6,476]

On 13/4/2017 at 2:42 PM, Fantozzi said:

@Silur: thanks!

 

CAM Stage 10:

Hydro Molecular Plant

 

Oh yeah, now we're talking! That's the future, ladies and gentlemen. No more traditional farms that spends too much land and resources to produce few and low quality food full of pesticides. Instead, how about high-tech food industries, that produce some serious amount of healthy and pesticides-free food, without using too much land and resources? Now that's something that I want for my cities. Mix them with the Pegasus' Sky Farms and SimMars' Martian farms and you'll get the farms of the future

[Fantozzi 4,069]

After enjoying a @korver picture of Anomeria I made this level 3 farm, Bubka Cropping:

[matias93 7,535]

I love how the lot blends with the crops!

[raynev1 1,887]

I love it . It looks fantastic to me . As matias93 said "the lot blends with the crops" and they really look cool . 

[Fantozzi 4,069]

Another tobacco barn ... as it's not my business what they are realy doing at the ...

Sasser Hideout.

[Fantozzi 4,069]

I discovered a strange issue. By mistake I started the game without all my custom dependencies, only with the last lots I did.

 

But instead of getting brown boxes for the building I got a small maxis house.

This happens for different buildings I generated from the same model. The model I created with the B.A.T.

Does this mean I have a conflicting ID for the model file? How the B.A.T creates those IDs.? What shall I do about this? How can I check I didn't create other conflicting models?

[matias93 7,535]

I guess that your custom buildings got TGI numbers that are already occupied by maxis. I'm sure that @rsc204will know got to fix it. 

[Fantozzi 4,069]

The maxis building appearing when without custom dependencies

R$6x8_123HouTinyHouse1_004A

TGI: 6534284A 67BDDF0C 004A0000
RTK1: 5AD0E817, BADB57F1,004A0000

 

My building:

Sasser Hideout
TGI: 6534284A, B517DCF2, 968CEC3E
RTK1: 5AD0E817,50DBF120,004A0000

 

So all they have in common is the Exemplar ID of the model they refer and, of course, the type ID - but this shouldn't cause a conflict as the group ID differs?

But as I used the model to create different buildings with different TGIs and it happens with all the buildings I created from this model, the conflict should be with the model. Only ... why? DataNode doesn't show any conflict or override on my model file.

So maybe - if I render the model again - I would simply have to edit the RTK on the building exemplar to the new model's TGI?

[matias93 7,535]

I would test first if the conflict affects the lots of the maxis house when your models are loaded. If not, maybe the phenomena would have no effect for end users...

[Fantozzi 4,069]

Sadly it does.

[rsc204 21,869]

1 hour ago, Fantozzi said:

This happens for different buildings I generated from the same model. The model I created with the B.A.T.

Are you using a blank model? If so, just change the RTK ID to the Maxis default blank model, you don't need to have a custom one, it's simply a wasted resource.

As for why the conflict, that's a bit complex to explain. But in essence the Type ID tells the game what type of object something is. For models, the unique ID will then be either the Group ID OR the Instance ID. Depending on which, the other is used to define the various zooms/rotations of the models (LODs) and textures. The mere fact that you have a model exported which is grouped by the instance ID, tells me you may not have the Texture Fix for SC4BAT installed (found on SC4D under BAT section). With this you should always have the group ID used as the unique model ID.

[Fantozzi 4,069]

24 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

Are you using a blank model? If so, just change the RTK ID to the Maxis default blank model, you don't need to have a custom one, it's simply a wasted resource.

Yes, I did so with the farm fields but I must confess I used empty 'prefabed' boxes of different size for the lots to get the right stats without much LOD modding. Lazy me.

But I'll follow your advice and replace them all.

 

24 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

may not have the Texture Fix for SC4BAT

 

I should have. I did more than 100 props for this project already. Would be a desaster if I didn't apply the texture fix correctly.

[rsc204 21,869]

42 minutes ago, Fantozzi said:

Yes, I did so with the farm fields but I must confess I used empty 'prefabed' boxes of different size for the lots to get the right stats without much LOD modding.

Actually that's not a terrible idea, given how PIM-X works. If doing that I would make sure the occupant size is very small (especially the height), probably .5, .5, .5. Then once you've made all the buildings, with the properties based on such "template/helper" models, just change the RTK ID to the Maxis Blank, so that way it doesn't require any dependencies. You don't need to replace the buildings (on the lots), simply modify the RTK ID of the buildings exemplars and you'll be good to go.

[Talla 2XLC 36]

I really should look up the Forum more often, this was totally under my Radar

I did not read all the Stuff but i guess this is for the CAM?

[Fantozzi 4,069]

16 hours ago, Talla 2XLC said:

I did not read all the Stuff but i guess this is for the CAM?

That's the main reason I started this. If I'm right, this will be the first pack covering all CAM stages (1-10) of CAM 2.1 and having a visual progress from tiny romantic mediterranian familiy farms (stage 1+2) to futuristic industrial farm plantations (lstage 9+10).

Currently I'm working on level 5 and 6 and have problems to find a transition. I must confess, when I started I didn't think about how a transition between romantic farming and industrial farming could look like - 'semi romantic' doesn't really exist and 'semi industral' neither. I'm seeking for props covering this.

***********************************

Blofeld Organics (Stage 5) - picking up a story idear from @matias93 (see above) you may notice the turqouise pallettes and sacks on the lot. These appear on some farms and are genetic manipulated seeds and those farms have a contract with an unscrupulous seeds provider I will do later, maybe stage 7 or 8. I think this fits with the plan having mainly field only lots on stage 7 and 8.

 

 

 

BTW - should I explain why there is a plane on the ' Helene Dutrieu Estate'? Well - you can make up your own story about this plane, how it arrived there, who drove it. But that's what I like to do - lots that might tell a story or you can invent a story about.

[Fantozzi 4,069]

Stage 6: Selma's Smoked Trouts