Making some no-dependency variant Beautification lots

[Psiman 177]

Having searched far and wide, but having not found any basic park pieces, I've decided to create my own.

They will just be variants of the basic 1x1, 2x2 and 3x3 vanilla Park Green tiles. I'm going to attempt to make them using only vanilla props and no dependencies, so they will be some of the least interesting park tile pieces around.

I've started with a variant of the 2x2 Park Green. The flora is random.

Pictured at the top in the next screenshot are vanilla 2x2 Medium Park Greens. At the bottom is the new variant. On the left, they are rotated (recommended), and on the right they are mono-directional.

From the vanilla Medium Park Green lot, I deleted the Picnic Table and Grill and added two benches, a garbage bin and a group of exotic plants. Apart from slightly moving a couple of plants, all the flora is unchanged from vanilla, but since the flora graphic is randomized, this isn't noticeable.

I haven't done anything with the animated people graphics yet, so I'll probably move them around.

[Psiman 177]

A couple of questions:

1) What are these floating green things? My googling hasn't identified what they are.

2) I've tried adding a path overlay texture to this tile and, as soon as I click save, the path disappears. Why is it not saving?

[Manuel-ito 322]

The green diamonds represent 'effect' props. In this case, those are 'randomwalk' spawners, in other words, the ones responsible of generating those sims that randomly walk around the park in-game.

As for the overlay problem, the lot may have multiple base textures stacked on top of each other. Try deleting said base texture(s) and replacing it.

[Psiman 177]

Thanks for the info. I figured out that I wasn't clicking on the tile to "lay" the overlay after selecting it.

So this is what I'm thinking of making...

Variants of vanilla tiles:

Open Grass Area - Variant with the same shade of green as Park Greens. (Possibly also larger 2x2 and 3x3 sizes)

Small Park Green - Variant

Medium Park Green - Variant

Large Park Green - Variant

Possible:

Park woodland - These would be Park Green base colour with randomly-spawned trees and nothing else. Possibly coming in 1x1, 2x2 and 3x3 sizes. For cost of these park woodland tiles, I am deliberating between basing them on the cheaper Open Grass Area tiles, or more expensive Park Green tiles. I'm leaning towards making them the cheaper cost, same as that of Open Grass Area tiles, as they won't have lights, benches, garbage bins or suchlike. If making 2x2 and 3x3 park woodland tiles, then I'll have to work out how to change a tile's stats, presumably using iLives reader, as the other modifications are purely graphical, and can be done in Lot Editor.

However, I've since been thinking that these pre-fabricated woodland tiles may not be a good idea. The individual trees planted in the game count against pollution, right? What about those on (park) tiles? Is there a difference between the fauna props that one places as fully-grown trees, and those that have a cycle of growth, like those planted in the game?

If they don't count against pollution, then it would be better to just lay Open Grass Area (of Park Green colour shade) and manually plant trees. I've not looked into tree planting mods - maybe there's something useful. 

Park paths - A set of park green path tiles to make paths in park greens. They would come in two flavours, one like a muddy path, and another like a stone or asphalt path. I'm still cogitating about costs.

Park walls and gates - Could use the cemetery walls to create a set of park walls and gate.

EDIT: Actually, Open Grass Area is same cost as Small Park Green. Maybe I was getting confused with Open Paved area and Small Plaza, which are different costs.

[Psiman 177]

Sneak preview: I've managed to extract a set of six modular park wall lots from the Cemetery lot. I've only done the walls, and haven't touched the other props on these graphics yet (apart from gate path).

[Psiman 177]

I'm using the Hedge prop to create a second park perimeter lot type (along with walls, above).

Due to a graphical imperfection when joining hedge tiles, I've added an object at the edge of each 1x1 tile's hedge. One version creates a random tree, and the other produces a lamp post. I'm debating which version to use - could make them both options. Pictured below are rows of park hedge with tree variant, lamp post variant, and alternating between both variants.

I have some questions about lamp posts, which will help me decide what to do.

1) Do lamp posts, such as found on park green tiles, do anything in-game?

2) Do lamp posts, such as found on park green tiles, turn on at night? I always play day time. I connected some park green tiles to electricity and they didn't light up when I switched to night view.

3) When do street light appear in the game? In the screenshot above, there are no streetlights on the road. It might therefore make sense for there to be some street lights on the outside of the park hedge, as they are above.

[rsc204 21,806]

53 minutes ago, Psiman said:

1) Do lamp posts, such as found on park green tiles, do anything in-game?

Depends on the prop used, if it was designed to, it should light up when powered in-game during the night. It's really nothing to do with a specific lot though.

54 minutes ago, Psiman said:

I connected some park green tiles to electricity and they didn't light up when I switched to night view.

Perhaps you were too quick, it may be a while after plopping before lights get activated, this is normal. Otherwise, working lights sometimes won't work if the Prop is too far off the lot, this is a complex issue that can't always be solved easily.

56 minutes ago, Psiman said:

3) When do street light appear in the game?

Usually this is dependant on zoning next to the road itself. Such lights are added by "T21s", which can be set to appear differently for all sorts of zoning/wealth combinations. Note that plop-lots don't constitute zoning in the normal sense, so may not trigger the T21s. That said, every network/piece will have different T21s, with potentially different settings. It's hard to know for sure if a user would or wouldn't see lights, without knowing the exact circumstances of it's placement. If in doubt, make one with and one without lights, that way they can adapt better to more surroundings.

[Psiman 177]

Here's a comparison of of two parks using each hedge variant and vanilla park green filler.

And at night.

Street light placement looks a bit haphazard. 

[rsc204 21,806]

1 hour ago, Psiman said:

Street light placement looks a bit haphazard. 

I'd agree with that, are you using NAM? Because I don't get that problem, but it's been so long since I played vanilla, I can't remember if it's simply how it was before. Either way I'm pretty sure the T21s were given an overhaul of some kind.

[Psiman 177]

20 hours ago, rsc204 said:

I'd agree with that, are you using NAM?

Yeah, I am.

---------------------------------------------

I've been trying to make a 1x1 Small Flower Garden variant. I've been through loads of designs. Here's a screenshot of some unfinished design ideas.

This one is probably the best I've come up with so far. It has mostly randomized trees and flowers. Screenshot shows normal Small Flower Garden on left and the rest are randomizations of the new tile. 

I might try and make alternative versions of all the vanilla beautification tiles - Park Green set, Plaza set and Flower Garden set.

[Psiman 177]

I've made a possible Large Plaza variant. It randomizes one of two sculptures in the centre of each tile, along with some other random bits. On the left in the screenshot are vanilla Large Plazas, and on the right is the variant.

[rsc204 21,806]

It occurs to me that you could probably save a lot of menu items by using Prop Families/Randomisation techniques. Since for the most part the lots are identical except a few props, if you added those to a Prop Family, then placed the family on the lot instead, just one lot would randomly display one of the options. Of course this doesn't allow for finer control, but it will keep your menus smaller.

[Psiman 177]

9 hours ago, rsc204 said:

It occurs to me that you could probably save a lot of menu items by using Prop Families/Randomisation techniques. Since for the most part the lots are identical except a few props, if you added those to a Prop Family, then placed the family on the lot instead, just one lot would randomly display one of the options. Of course this doesn't allow for finer control, but it will keep your menus smaller.

I'm already using Prop Families. The Large Plaza variants above all derive from a single ploppable tile.

Ultimately, it would be good to put lots of the variant lots in puzzle packs, so they can be cycled through by pressing Tab.

[Psiman 177]

I've run into the issue of the game not being able to put the texture overlays in order. As demonstrated by the following screenshot, it means the lot can look different according to the zoom level, as the order the overlays are shown in changes each time.

Obviously one solution is to work within the game's limitations and remove overlays that will change appearance.

I found this thread, which mentions this issue and provides other solutions:

1) Extract the graphics and use an image editor to combine them. This would perhaps mean I am deviating from my aim to produce park tiles using vanilla graphics and no dependencies. 

2) "Another option is to use SC4-PIM (PIM-X) as it allows you to have multiple overlays, just bear in mind the overlapping issue." I'm not familiar with SC4-PIM. Is it just an advanced lot editor, so that using it would produce a single "normal" *.SC4Lot file?

[rsc204 21,806]

3 hours ago, Psiman said:

Ultimately, it would be good to put lots of the variant lots in puzzle packs, so they can be cycled through by pressing Tab.

That would require complex RUL0 code to achieve, which would ideally need to be added to the NAM, it's not really practical.

58 minutes ago, Psiman said:

"Another option is to use SC4-PIM (PIM-X) as it allows you to have multiple overlays, just bear in mind the overlapping issue."

Yes you can stack multiple overlays, but the same effect still occurs if they overlap, basically this z-fighting occurs because the game has no way to prioritise the order of the overlays. So either you have to find a way to avoid them overlapping, create a special texture which combines everything or live with it.

[Psiman 177]

That's a shame about the puzzle pieces.

I've been through loads of Large Plaza lot variant designs. This I think is the best one so far. It uses Prop Families for the sculpture, central tile and flowers, so they're randomized with each plop.

[Psiman 177]

The vanilla Open Paved Area tile has a selection of graphical base layers that are randomly chosen, and which can also randomly change when reloading etc. I've therefore always wanted a more basic one that would make for a more useful filler.

I'm thinking of two variants of Open Paved area - medium-wealth and high-wealth. The game's beautification tiles have a wealth setting. As far as I'm aware, this only affects the graphics of the pavements around the tile. Is this correct?

I'm doing the same for the Small Plaza tile, the variant of which is fairly nondescript and, like the new Open Paved Areas, should act as filler that will blend in to the surrounding tiles better than the vanilla versions.

Here are screenshots of them - props may be subject to change. Vanilla on left, variant on right (and bottom).

So getting back to the medium-wealth/high-wealth thing. The following screenshot shows the basic vanilla beautification tiles and shows how the pavement colour changes according to whether the tile is set as high-wealth or medium-wealth. The medium-wealth is a white/grey colour, while the high-wealth is slightly bronze/brown colour. 

The following vanilla beautification tiles are "high-wealth": Open Grass Area, Open Paved Area, all Plaza lots, Large Flower Garden.

The following vanilla beautification tiles are "medium-wealth": all Park Green lots, Small and Medium Flower Gardens. Other beautification tiles, including gazebo and tennis court, are set to medium-wealth.

Pavement selection also seems to be influenced by other things. I think that a high-wealth house by a "medium-wealth" Park Green would use a high-wealth pavement graphic. "High-wealth" beautification lots placed on a road opposite industry will produce medium-wealth graphics.

So, while I'm thinking of using both medium-wealth and high-wealth Open Paved Areas and Small Plazas, there could always be a danger that placing a white/gray medium wealth plaza initially fits well visually, but if the surrounding lot upgrades to a higher-wealth, it will look out of place. So I might need to do some more testing/cogitating.

Her's another screenshot showing how pavement changes with beautification tile. Note that I haven't changed the new white/gray medium-wealth variants to medium-wealth yet, as I don't yet know how to, so they are showing as producing high-wealth pavements.

[Psiman 177]

Screenshot showing comparison of vanilla Small Plazas and Open Paved Area lots (top) with the variant ("high-wealth") versions (bottom). There are times when simple filler such as this would be useful.

[/img]

[Psiman 177]

I've made some slight changes to the alternate Small Plazas(s). First, I've removed a randomized street object to make it less cluttered. Secondly, I've changed the benches in the medium-wealth version from the stone benches found in other (high-wealth) Plaza tiles to a different bench style. Thirdly, I've changed the potted plants in the medium-wealth version so that they cannot grow tall - the high-wealth Small Plaza produces random tall and small potted plants.

Here's a screenshot demonstrating the changes. High-wealth on the left, and medium-wealth on the right (of four strips in centre).

[Psiman 177]

I've been struggling to come up with a new Medium Plaza variant layout that I'm satisfied with. 

The vanilla 2x2 Medium Plaza is designed in such a way that it can also be used in modular fashion to create larger 4x4 or 2x4 plazas, as shown in the screenshot below.

For the variant, I'm currently thinking of keeping the vanilla Medium Plaza design, but replacing the fountain with an object from an "ad hoc prop family". As with the vanilla Small Plaza lot, when plopping it, one of several objects would appear in the centre of the plaza lot at random. 

The screenshot below includes current objects, or props, I am thinking of using. 

Vanilla fountain is bottom-left. Middle, from left to right:

1) Street clock.
2) Statue.
3) Food stall.
4) A planter of some type. I have a shortlist of three planter graphics, which I've yet to narrow to one.
-----
5) Red telephone box. Probably I won't use this one, but it reminded me of the red telephone box in the Spanish horror film La Cabina (below).

[Psiman 177]

I am currently mulling over what do with the park path pieces. They make a park look nice. The problem is that, as 1x1 pieces, they are relatively expensive and also they have a small radius. As one might want to put a path through the middle of a park, this could make them quite inefficient. They do say one must suffer for one's art, though.

At the moment, 1x1 park path tiles are the same, stats-wise, as 1x1 Small Park Greens.

Some options I can think of:

1) Do nothing, so 1x1 park path tile = 1x1 Small Park Green tile.

2) I am going to have to create some new stats for a 3x1 park stone wall gate lot, so I could potentially make some long, maybe 3x1, straight path tiles. 1x1 Small Park Green has a Park Effect of 15 tiles, while 2x2 Medium Park Green has a Park Effect of 30 tiles. So maybe a 3x1 stone wall gate and the 3x1 straight path could have Park effect Radius of something like 25 tiles.

On the against side, it perhaps doesn't make sense that a 3x1 straight path, basically three 1x1 straight paths, should have a larger radius.

3) Could reduce cost/maintenance cost of 1x3 straight park path.

4) Do something different. Could maybe increase park paths' Park Effect radius and reduce its power to compensate. 

---

Also, there's no crossroads piece for the nice park path, as there is no graphic for it in the vanilla files. So I might make a 3x3 park path roundabout lot, such as seen in screenshot below.

[Psiman 177]

I've made a copy of a 1x1 Small Park Green to test out Park Effect and radius. 

In Reader, if I click on the Park Effect parameter and change view to Integer setting, it says Magnitude of 30 and Radius of 4. According to the wiki, Small Park Green should have a Park Effect of 50 over 15 tiles. So these values don't match up.  

EDIT: Never mind. I've found there's another Park Effect entry, which appears to correlate with the stats. 

Not sure what the first Park Effect entry I saw is for then. Its values cannot be modified. 

[Psiman 177]

I have a plan!

2x2 Medium Park Green has a radius of 30 tiles and Park Effect of 60. So, if we give also give 1x1 park path lots a radius of 30 tiles, we can consider them to be one quarter of a Medium Park Green.

I tested by giving a 1x1 Park Green tile a radius of 30 and I reduced the magnitude from 60 to 15. I then placed 12 of these modified 1x1 Park Green tiles in a line. Following this, I placed three Medium Park Green lots in a line of the same length and compared the land value data views.

On the left in this screenshot is the line of a dozen 1x1 "park path" lots, and on the right are three Medium Park Greens. Visually at least, the Land Value change looks to be the same, or close to it. 

So it looks like this would be a good option, and currently my preferred one. Park path lots would basically function as one-quarter Medium Park Green lots, with a small cost penalty as they are smaller. So Medium Park Green would be slightly more efficient, cost-wise, than four park path tiles.

With increased radius, paths in the middle of parks would lose less efficiency, and it also means I wouldn't create any 3x1 long paths or 3x3 roundabout. 

It can be made sense of, in game terms, as park paths making a park more attractive to visit and therefore enticing more visitors from further away.

[Psiman 177]

I've just about finished the straight park path piece. Haven't re-positioned the animated people on it yet.

There was a graphical problem with the straight path overlay in that, for some reason, the joins did not match up perfectly when placing the path in a rotated ABAB pattern - the normal pattern, that would make lamp posts and bench appear on alternate sides with each tile. Which means I've had to make two pieces for straight path, one with lamp post and bench on left, one on right. I've managed to make an advantage out of it though, by patterning trees and lamp post in a three-series rather than two (lamp post, vegetation, space), which looks better.

Here's a screenshot. The brown tiles are just a work surface, and will be trimmed off, of course.  

[Psiman 177]

Simple park built in modular fashion.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Looking good! I was surprised to read that you didn't find any no-dependency park lots, though. In the early days, the BAT hadn't even been released yet so people were forced to work with whatever was available in the vanilla game. There were many creative lots, some of which look good even today. You should think there'd be a bazillion of modular park/plaza lots because those are relatively easy to make and can be used to great effect. Then again, I was surprised to see my IRM fillers being used in many CJ pictures, which shows that, even in a time when we have ultra-HD 3dsmax DarkNite renders with neon lights and whatnot, very humble and basic fillers are still in demand apparently.

[Psiman 177]

11 hours ago, T Wrecks said:

Looking good! 

Thanks!

I'm planning on adding an extras folder to the megapack with some optional lots. For example, the Medium Plaza variant lot plops one of four random objects in the middle. In the extras folder, these objects will be separated and each given their own lot, for those who would prefer complete control over which object appears.

I also though I'd make some useful tree lots using Flora trees, rather than Prop trees. So they will be planted/growable trees that fight pollution, unlike the decorative prop trees seen on other lots.

One will be "Open Grass Area with Planted Trees" with four random trees planted on it. 

Then I thought it would also be useful to be able to plop planted trees on their own, without the park effects and costs of Open Grass Area. For example, at the transitional edge of an industrial area, where one just wanted trees as a screen against pollution, rather than having the Park Effect boosts and costs.

One can do this by just planting trees, of course, or using a tree painter mod. I think it could also be nice, though, to not have default bare ground tiles within one's city. 

So I'm thinking about some "Planted Trees" lots, that are functionally-empty tiles, with only the planted trees providing any effects. All lots must have a base texture, and there doesn't appear to be an invisible one or one that copies the default ground texture, so it would mean having its own base texture. 

There are two vanilla base textures that I think would be best-suited for this role, one more green, one more green-brown. I initially had high hopes for the more brown one, but I felt the green one fitted better visually in more residential and commercial-type areas.

Here's a comparison of "Open Grass Area with Planted Trees" and "Planted Trees", which is using the more brown texture. I've also increased the likelihood of fir/pine trees in the "Planted Tree" lots.

Here's a comparison of empty space either side of the road on the slope of a bridge in my previous city. In the first screenshot, there is a line of palm trees on bare ground. The second screenshot is using the more green texture with single random planted tree. I think I prefer having the texture covering the bare ground. It hides the grid lines too.

[rsc204 21,806]

1 hour ago, Psiman said:

So I'm thinking about some "Planted Trees" lots, that are functionally-empty tiles, with only the planted trees providing any effects. All lots must have a base texture, and there doesn't appear to be an invisible one or one that copies the default ground texture, so it would mean having its own base texture. 

The LE won't allow you to save a lot without a base texture, but the game will allow lots to display without them. PIM-X will allow you to save without Base textures, otherwise you'll have to remove them using Reader manually. Note that SC4 lots can support transparency, but not partial transparency. Meaning, if you use Overlay Textures with no Bases, you'll trigger all sorts of graphical ugliness (the Water Bug).

[Psiman 177]

I've just read that all lots generate crime. If that's the case, then that would surely mean a disadvantage for using "empty" lots to plant trees. 

I recently saw a mod that allowed one to spray the underlying ground with different textures, but I can't remember whether it was for SimCity 4 or not. I know there's one for Cities:Skylines. I couldn't find it when searching - anyone heard of this?

The next screenshot show different base textures. On the left is default Open Grass Area; second from left is Open Grass Area that's the same shade of green as Park Green (that I will also be making available as an alternative grass to the default). 

On the right are the two potential base textures for empty "Planted Trees". While there are a lot of textures available in the Lot Editor that look as if they would be suitable, they actually appear in the game as normal Open Grass Area, and change in appearance to muddy when a building gets dilapidated.

The advantage over an invisible base is that the lots fit in better visually than showing the default bare ground. See following screenshots. (In the screenshot, they're still technically Open Grass Area tiles, so the surrounding lots upgraded and dilapidated while trees grew).

So, while I'll include some Open Grass Area with Trees tiles, I'm as yet undecided on the "empty" Planted Trees tiles.

EDIT: I've done some testing and I'm not convinced that the crime factor is a significant issue, especially as the amount of land taken over to "Planted Trees" is generally going to be pretty miniscule. I even tested in an area of farmland - spots of crime can occur in the middle of a field, so using some Planted Tree tiles along the side did not much affect crime patterns. Since these Planted Tree lots will essentially be incorporated empty space within urban environment, it makes sense that they should not be immune to crime. 

[Psiman 177]

Learning more about the effects of parks, as discussed in this other thread I started, has made me question whether part of the megapack is going to work, namely the path tiles, hedge tiles and wall tiles. 

The problem is that there appears to be a threshold cap on the level of Land Value that park tiles can attain in the long-term. So clustering lots of 1x1 tiles together, as would be the case when laying park paths, hedges and walls, would be a waste in the long term due to this fixed ceiling limit.

There is a significant short-term boost when plopping park tiles, as discussed in the other thread, but it's difficult to compare the relative power of these short-term and long-term park effects.

One option I am thinking of is to group all of the park path, hedge and wall tiles into a new category of park tile, with all of these 1x1 tiles having identical properties. 

They would have extremely high park effect radius, and extremely low park effect magnitude. I think it makes sense for these tiles. In the vanilla game, the largest normal park lot is 3x3. Yet park paths, hedges and walls are intended to be part of something larger. Just putting a path through a park and a hedge or wall around the edges, takes up a minimum width of three tiles. One is not going to want to build a park of just paths, hedges and walls, so, of course, other larger park tiles will be needed. They would be large investments of resources.

I'll have to test more fully, but I'm thinking of giving these new path/hedge/wall park tiles a radius either the same as Large Park Green (45 tiles), with a Park/Landmark Effect magnitude of something like 5 (compared to Large Park Green's 75), or increase it even further, to a radius of 60 tiles, but a park effect magnitude of only 3.

The intial short-term boost to Land Value when plopping a park tile appears not to be much, if at all, affected by its magnitude or radius settings. So, in the very immediate short-term, a park path/hedge/wall would provide a similar effect on adjacent properties as a regular Small Park Green. However, with a greatly increased radius, its long-term effects would not be negated when clustered together in large amounts.

Building parks with paths and hedges/walls is a big undertaking due to the space/cost requirements, so one is probably only going to build a small number of such parks in the city - perhaps a central park, and maybe a couple of others. With a radius of something like 60 tiles, these large parks would therefore be able to serve as larger park hubs, with smaller park greens and flower gardens placed elsewhere serving to top up park effect locally.

In these big parks, the paths, hedges and walls therefore act as augmentative pieces, turning a collection of regular park lots into a sort of super-park, and between them their properties would boost both nearby land and more distant land.