Looking for a terrain mod

[monkeywater 910]

Is there a terrain mod that matches the appearance of the "open grass area" maxis park?  I just want that texture everywhere except on cliffs.

 

I like using the open grass area next to roads to add sidewalks to them, but I have to play so much with MMPs to make everything blend then. 

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

On 8/27/2019 at 11:49 PM, monkeywater said:

Is there a terrain mod that matches the appearance of the "open grass area" maxis park?

None that are exactly the same, but you could take a peek in Cori's Terrain Shoppe which has pictures of all the terrain mods.

These are prolly the closest already created:

• CPT OlympicTerrain Mod1 (v1.0)
• LBT Yucatan Terrain Mod 2
• Berner Oberland Terrain Mod (v1.0)

 

I tried my hand at it (tho I've never made a terrain mod until now).   First I simply used the park grass textures 0x25273000 to 3004 and it came out way too light. I did some tweaking and the best I've come up with so far is:

 

One thing I notice is because it's always one texture you can see some tiling when zooming out. That itself might not matter once you've got trees and a city built. If this would happen to work for you, I can attach the file.

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

Me again.

I believe this version is pretty damn close.

 

It's still not exact and the tiling is there too. I'll see if I can tone that down.

 

[Cyclone Boom 17,032]

From a sneak preview copy of Cori's above 2nd version, I can confirm this...

2 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

One thing I notice is because it's always one texture you can see some tiling when zooming out. That itself might not matter once you've got trees and a city built.

How the custom texture appears to have a slight tiled pattern when there's nothing built.

Like so:

 

Then with a scattering of trees using the flora blast command (set to a strength and coverage density of 90 90 90):

 

I suppose to use a bit of imagination here into context, the tiling on such a scale can be seen as where maintenance crews are meticulously mowing the grass in a uniform pattern. With this being seen as a parklands theme of terrain, and then to blend in closely with the Open Grass Area park.

@CorinaMarie tells me she's working on a new even better version though as I'm typing here, so watch...

↓ This Space ↓

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

19 minutes ago, Cyclone Boom said:

↓ This Space ↓

Ok, so here's my latest and last attempt:

 

And the Terrain Mod in case it's what you might want to use: Simulated Park Grass as Terrain Textures v3.dat

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

On 8/27/2019 at 11:49 PM, monkeywater said:

I like using the open grass area next to roads to add sidewalks to them

With this in mind, have you considered using the hidden zoning to create them? Then there would be no need to plop all those parks nor would they need bulldozed for later expansion/growth.

 

Let's start with Agricultural just cause it's a little different. Select Ag zoning, hold down the Control key while clicking and holding in the center of the street (or road). Next drag all along the street and then up 3 cells from it. Once you see a floating cost you know it's good to go. Release the mouse.

 

Here you can see the dirt adjacent to the street from completing the above. On the next one it's the very same steps, but using low density residential zoning and only needing to drag away from the street by one cell. This'll be the one that would create the same type of sidewalks as plopping the open grass area adjacent.

 

And this pic shows the results from various zone types:

 

When using this method, the type of zoning will be listed if you query the adjacent terrain, but nothing will ever grow. This gives you the sidewalks as well as allowing electricity to flow thru it so it's also a neat little technique for carrying power to a rural town without needing power lines or its own power plant.

If you like, this would work well in combination with the terrain mod attached above I created for you to have near park like coloring and there wouldn't be the discrepancy of the plopped park grass not perfectly blending in with the terrain.

[rivit 3,404]

Well you learn something new every day!  Thanks Cori,  I've never seen this during all the years I've been playing SimCity, and many are the times I've zoned 1 tile of ag to keep the streets the way I want. I really must RTFM more.

[PaPa-J 778]

That is a neat little bit of information. Thanks Cori!

[monkeywater 910]

Shit, this thread has been amazing!

 

Thank you so much everyone!

 

I was not expecting someone to MAKE the literal terrain mod I wanted, just for me

 

I <3 this forum.

[mattb325 28,894]

Wow! Thank you Cori for this awesome bit of info. You learn something new every day! 

[sejr99999 8,384]

19 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

If you like, this would work well in combination with the terrain mod attached above I created for you to have near park like coloring and there wouldn't be the discrepancy of the plopped park grass not perfectly blending in with the terrain.

thank you  this is amazing  and I will definitely use this technique in all my small town and AG districts

[tariely 4,499]

Cori, you're a miracle worker ! 

[hugues aroux 3,875]

Unbelievable ! Thank you Cori

[markussaage 762]

Wow! I didn't know that! That's awesome! Thanks a lot @CorinaMarie

Kind regards!

[Holocene 8]

Cori, this is incredible! The things you learn here are awesome. Thank you!

 

[Lucario Boricua 7,060]

Does this work for the road network? I know of one specific case in which I'd deem it super useful: roads following the crest of my dams and reservoirs. Grass isn't supposed to grow there if it's a concrete dam, so I might as well try the medium/high commercial density commercial.

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

10 minutes ago, Lucario Boricua said:

Does this work for the road network?

At least in vanilla, it works for streets, roads, owr's, and avenues. I have a feeling it might not work with NAM puzzle pieces or other fancy curves. Prolly just have to test and see what happens.

[Lucario Boricua 7,060]

In the case of dams and reservoirs, I'm specifically interested in these cases:

* Road, orthogonal (simplest case)

* Road, diagonal (might be tricky to apply, given that the distance to cover with the zoning tool does not stay consistent)

* Road, fractional angles (FAR-2 and FAR-3)

* Road, curves from orthogonal to diagonal, or from orthogonal to fractional angle (most difficult case as these are more recent NAM advancements)

 I might do some experimentation on the topic this weekend. 

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

1 minute ago, Lucario Boricua said:

(might be tricky to apply, given that the distance to cover with the zoning tool does not stay consistent)

For this part, just do little short distances at a time. The minimum is click and hold in the middle of the pavement and drag away one tile. Rinse and repeat.

[rsc204 21,868]

It might be useful to know that when using a transparency mod for the Rail / Rural (Farm) zoning, you can fake-zone with the I-AG tool to prevent either Sidewalks or Grass appearing. If you are using the default Farms, you'll need to zone at least in 4x4 areas, since it's the minimum farm size. Mods exist to remove this limitation, SPAM contains such a change.

On 20/09/2019 at 6:24 AM, CorinaMarie said:

At least in vanilla, it works for streets, roads, owr's, and avenues. I have a feeling it might not work with NAM puzzle pieces or other fancy curves. Prolly just have to test and see what happens.

Generally speaking there are two types of content in the NAM, the more traditional Puzzle Pieces and the newer Flex-based content. The former uses static textures, where either any sidewalk or grass must be baked-in, i.e. these are not adaptable, you'll only ever see the textures it was made with. The later works very much like the original Maxis networks, Flex-based pieces, either dragged or placed from menus, have a set of wealth textures which adapt.

Spoiler

In short, there are usually four textures, one with just the Network itself, the game can then turn on or off the sidewalk around it. Three others contain the grasses too, one for each wealth level. Again these usually do not contain sidewalks, but that is added by the game. This is why these pieces don't need special mods to display custom sidewalks.

Puzzle Pieces usually have either a full sidewalk baked-in, which by default will always remain the Maxis sidewalks. Otherwise they may be set to display transparency, i.e. just the Road parts, but will never be able to display a sidewalk. Mods exist to alter this however.

On 20/09/2019 at 6:27 AM, Lucario Boricua said:

In the case of dams and reservoirs, I'm specifically interested in these cases:

* Road, orthogonal (simplest case)

* Road, diagonal (might be tricky to apply, given that the distance to cover with the zoning tool does not stay consistent)

* Road, fractional angles (FAR-2 and FAR-3)

* Road, curves from orthogonal to diagonal, or from orthogonal to fractional angle (most difficult case as these are more recent NAM advancements)

Ortho, Diag and Flex-based (Draggable) FAR all work with wealth textures, so can utilise the fake-zoning trick. Of course you need space to zone, other zoning including existing grown buildings and especially Plopped items also touching the same segment will potentially alter things. Also, since Diagonal, FAR and Transitions with full sidewalks generally need a sprinkling of fillers to look good, this causes a problem. I use a variety of Pedmalls, fillers and overhanging fillers in combination with the zoning, to have more control. Pedmalls are useful because as a Transit Network, they don't alter the zoning of networks they touch. Of course it does prevent any fake zoning from existing where they are placed however. Likewise Ploppable fillers tend to force the grass to come back if there isn't enough space between them for fake-zoning to affect a given tile. Overhanging fillers can work great, since they can be placed such as to leave a space for such fake-zoning. However those are terrible any place that isn't flat, but can sometimes really help to unify an area.

[Fin44850 46]

GREAT POST. Works for NAM angled roads as well. Thanks guys !!

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

Woww! Just Speechless, I just know this although have played for many years, Thank you CB @Cyclone Boom for letting me know this great CoriTip. I thought we need a column for the article or post like this so that we won't miss the wonderful parts.

Sincerely,

-- Raymond

[Flann 1,709]

Since this thread just got linked here I thought I would share another tidbit which is that this trick can be used to clean up the jaggies from the wealthing on diagonal networks.  For example, I have medium density zoning on one side of the street but nothing on the other.  Normally I would have a zigzag of full sidewalks, but I can fake zone low density on the empty side and get a nice clean transition into the empty space: