Raymond's Newbie Thoughts

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

I forgot something again, 

@Kloudkicker Hiya Nick, hope you won't mind i reply you here instead of PM, Just thought it maybe useful to others and my poor head.

I have got some improvement with Dege, he oberved that: " I noticed that the game sets a 16bit display mode even if 32bit quality is selected in the options,"

it explains my results, From the shots i captured, we can see the side water is abnormal, Meanwhile, i know some game's textures reference to some special pics, For instance, the side water, there is a 1x128 pixels picture which decides how the water changes gradually. 

-----

And in terms of the difference between Optimus and MUX switch, below is my understanding:

One biggest problem is that whatever we change the LCD still actually is connecting with Integrated card in Optimus laptop:

 

This is Mux laptop, but too expensive and seemed less of them nowadays:

 

This is our better choice in laptop, Muxed, But still a little expensive IMO.

 

 

Here below is my rough understanding, Don't laugh at my awful painting.

Anyway, Let's still wait for the good news from that two masters of wrapper, i will keep an eye on them everyday.

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

Interesting @Raymond7cn. I didn't put much thought into it. Just thought I'd share it. Since you have NVidia, the most important thing I thought was, if you use a monitor with the laptop, that will force the laptop to use the video card. Maybe try that with the dxwrapper settings that would only let you use onboard video.??

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

"Do Not Use Windows Rollback for Graphics Drivers To reinstall a previous or older NVIDIA graphics driver, do not use the Windows rollback feature. This method will not reliably restore all the previous driver files. Instead, use the Windows Add and Remove programs to remove the current driver, and then install the older driver using setup.exe." That's according to this guide: http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/456.71/456.71-win10-win8-win7-release-notes.pdf

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Hiya Barton @BartonThinks, 

VintageCR.zip

Frankly, I'm a bit unconfident of the final output, I'm really lack of experience of small props,  Hope some of them would be useful for your project, I thought you may need to make them to family props, If so, i will publish them after you help me with this,  And if you have any other simple needs, just tell me that, i will try my best.

Thank you @Jasoncw @mattb325 @Barroco Hispano for your kind and helps, i do appreciate them and will try to avoid more questions at the next project.

BTW, There is another Volkswagen Bus, i'm still working on texturing now, I will tell you when it's finished.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

The cars, look wonderful, @Raymond7cn! I love the colors on the 1912 Model Ts in particular. The 1912 vans look amazing. And the 1930 style pickup trucks are a great addition to the set.

I think it would be smart to release these as prop families. Because of the way that prop files work on my lots, I won't be able to use these families. However, I'm sure other lotters would appreciate having these available as families.

I'm not sure if you have a prop family range of your own. If you don't have one, I would be happy to let you use some of mine. I'm also happy to lend a hand with any further modding or assistance you need with this set. Just let me know how I can help.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Thank you very much Barton, @BartonThinks I don't have a family range yet, Frankly i'm still a little confuzzled of which id range do i need to apply, Apparently i'm still quite a Newbie. @CorinaMarie has elaborated it to me before, however i could only remember that i should ask @rsc204 for the help on this, basing on my understanding by now, I just know The texture and Automata and Lua and prop family need to apply for, I should check out the rules about them first, If i couldn't get them, I believe you and Cori could lend some treasure to me.

Ah, Speaking of Automata, Really feel ashamed that i haven't got time on those Automatas i have promised, i will make them as soon as i finished the Simtropolis model. @CorinaMarie @Cyclone Boom @Terring

[BartonThinks 3,416]

@Raymond7cn

Creating a prop family and/or adding a prop to an existing family is easy. There are two basic rules you need to follow:

1. To assign a prop to a prop family, simply add the family ID number using the "Buidling/prop Family" property.
2. Each prop family needs to have a unique ID.

That's pretty much it. To create a new prop family, simply choose a unique prop family ID (one that's not currently in use), and then assign it to one or more props. As soon as you do that, you've created a new prop family. You can take a few extra steps to name the prop family if you wish to, but that's entirely optional.

I think the easiest thing to do would be to create six prop families -- one for each style of vehicle that you've created. If that makes sense, I can simply take six of my prop family ID numbers, assign them to the props files you've already created, and then attach the modified files to this thread. Or, if you prefer to mod the files yourself, I can send you six ID codes that you can use.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

32 minutes ago, BartonThinks said:

To create a new prop family, simply choose a unique prop family ID (one that's not currently in use), ...

I, too, have need of a free range for family IDs. Is this managed somewhere? (Perhaps similar to the way it's done for Texture IDs.)

[BartonThinks 3,416]

6 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I, too, have need of a free range for family IDs. Is this managed somewhere? (Perhaps similar to the way it's done for Texture IDs.)

It's handled over at SC4D, pretty much the exact same method as for textures (though I haven't had any luck requesting an ID range for textures).

@rsc204 is currently in charge of assigning building/prop family ID ranges. You can find the thread here.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

11 minutes ago, BartonThinks said:

(though I haven't had any luck requesting an ID range for textures)

For this, maybe I can help. I have a range and, iirc, it's like 30,000 numbers. (So far, I've only used a couple hundred.) I could give you a chunk of mine and then mark them off of my list so I wouldn't use them.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

1 minute ago, CorinaMarie said:

For this, maybe I can help. I have a range and, iirc, it's like 30,000 numbers. (So far, I've only used a couple hundred.) I could give you a chunk of mine and then mark them off of my list so I wouldn't use them.

I will probably just PM someone over at SC4D soon to try and get a range pinned down. If I can cobble the project I'm working on together, I'll need a substantial number of textures (not sure exactly how many, but thousands wouldn't be out of the question), so I'm hesitant to use textures from an active creator's range.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

Hi @Raymond7cn

Just wanted to let you know that I've been testing the car props, and the results look superb. I had some textures I was testing for some Mattb325 homes, so the era of the building is wrong, but the scale and quality of your vehicles look like a perfect fit.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

2 minutes ago, BartonThinks said:

Hi @Raymond7cn

Just wanted to let you know that I've been testing the car props, and the results look superb. I had some textures I was testing for some Mattb325 homes, so the era of the building is wrong, but the scale and quality of your vehicles look like a perfect fit.

Woww! Thank you for sending me the post card,  I never thought of my works could stand together with @mattb325's,  Frankly, i have future projects in which i want to make some BATs for Wild West town (is it a right word, i mean some cowboys live in there.) and Futurist city, But Unfortunately, i can't do it right now due to don't want to miss a birthday party. however i thought my future jobs maybe useful to you when you want to expand the era of your work to 1600-1900 or… 2100~???? @Terring Anyway, Thank you! I'm just applying ID resource from Robin through PM.

[rsc204 21,808]

4 hours ago, Raymond7cn said:

Frankly i'm still a little confuzzled of which id range do i need to apply, Apparently i'm still quite a Newbie. @CorinaMarie has elaborated it to me before, however i could only remember that i should ask @rsc204 for the help on this, basing on my understanding by now, I just know The texture and Automata and Lua and prop family need to apply for, I should check out the rules about them first, If i couldn't get them, I believe you and Cori could lend some treasure to me.

Currently you will need a dedicated reserved range for the following modding (links to apply for them included):

• Building/Prop Families
• MMPs
• Lot Textures

This is because these types of objects are limited in terms of the number of available IDs. Releasing content using non-assigned IDs can easily lead to conflicts. Note if you have no intention to release things, it doesn't really matter, since you can just make sure any content doesn't conflict with your own Plugins easily. But if you want to put content on the exchanges, this really is non-optional.

Automata do NOT require a reserved range, they generally use a set ID structure, but it's down to the modder to use IDs that don't conflict with existing vehicles, assuming you want them to play nice with existing content.

LUA is a bit more tricky, generally speaking I think there are not enough LUA mods out there, that it's absolutely necessary to have a reserved ID. I think someone was handling IDs a long time ago, but I do not know of either an official list nor goto to get such IDs today. Frankly, there has been so little development here, it's hardly surprising.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

2 hours ago, Raymond7cn said:

Woww! Thank you for sending me the post card,  I never thought of my works could stand together with @mattb325's,  Frankly, i have future projects in which i want to make some BATs for Wild West town (is it a right word, i mean some cowboys live in there.) and Futurist city, But Unfortunately, i can't do it right now due to don't want to miss a birthday party. however i thought my future jobs maybe useful to you when you want to expand the era of your work to 1600-1900 or… 2100~???? @Terring Anyway, Thank you! I'm just applying ID resource from Robin through PM.

I would definitely be interested in any Wild West content you create. I'm planning to cover a 150 year period, from 1875 to 2025, and I'm using some Wild West BATs for the 1875 to 1900 period.

You might already be aware of this, but there are three users with some existing Wild West content...

• @onlyplace4 (who unfortunately passed away a few years ago) made an entire Wild West series back in 2006. Some of the BATs look a bit outdated at this point, but most of the series has held up remarkably well. Here are a few of my favorites: Mercantile,  Doctor's Office, Feed and Grain, Longhorn Hotel
• @dolphin66 also made a collection of Wild West BATs circa 2007 that can be found in BSC MEGA Props D66 Vol 01.
• @CT14 released a sizeable set of Wild West BATs earlier this year in his Prop Pack Vol 2. However, none of the BATs have been released as buildings/lots yet. I'm a big fan of this set and look forward to using it for my 1875 lots.

As far as other time periods, I might go back a little further into the 1800s, but I'm probably not going too much further than that. Each additional 25-year period requires a ton of extra lotting, so I've tried to limit myself a bit. The main reason I chose 1875 as a start date is because it's approximately when modern cities started to develop, which seemed appropriate for a game like SC4. (The other reason is that I don't know if I can find enough BATs to cover earlier time periods.)

I briefly considered doing futurist versions of the lots, but I don't think I could manage the amount of additional work that would require. It's also not an area that I'm super familiar with. I've spent a lot of my spare time researching cities of the 1800s and 1900s, so I feel comfortable designing lots for those periods. If I try to pull a futurist set of lots together, I worry that the results will look pretty slapdash.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

4 hours ago, Raymond7cn said:

...i have future projects in which i want to make some BATs for Wild West town (is it a right word, i mean some cowboys live in there.) and Futurist city, ...

Been watching Westworld? Try the 1973 version-

It's funnier. As for your FRONTIER Town, WolfZe has a very nice fleshed out collection too.

[sejr99999 8,343]

47 minutes ago, BartonThinks said:

I would definitely be interested in any Wild West content you create. I'm planning to cover a 150 year period, from 1875 to 2025, and I'm using some Wild West BATs for the 1875 to 1900 period.

You might already be aware of this, but there are three users with some existing Wild West content...

• @onlyplace4 (who unfortunately passed away a few years ago) made an entire Wild West series back in 2006. Some of the BATs look a bit outdated at this point, but most of the series has held up remarkably well. Here are a few of my favorites: Mercantile,  Doctor's Office, Feed and Grain, Longhorn Hotel
• @dolphin66 also made a collection of Wild West BATs circa 2007 that can be found in BSC MEGA Props D66 Vol 01.
• @CT14 released a sizeable set of Wild West BATs earlier this year in his Prop Pack Vol 2. However, none of the BATs have been released as buildings/lots yet. I'm a big fan of this set and look forward to using it for my 1875 lots.

As far as other time periods, I might go back a little further into the 1800s, but I'm probably not going too much further than that. Each additional 25-year period requires a ton of extra lotting, so I've tried to limit myself a bit. The main reason I chose 1875 as a start date is because it's approximately when modern cities started to develop, which seemed appropriate for a game like SC4. (The other reason is that I don't know if I can find enough BATs to cover earlier time periods.)

I briefly considered doing futurist versions of the lots, but I don't think I could manage the amount of additional work that would require. It's also not an area that I'm super familiar with. I've spent a lot of my spare time researching cities of the 1800s and 1900s, so I feel comfortable designing lots for those periods. If I try to pull a futurist set of lots together, I worry that the results will look pretty slapdash.

please try these lots using CT14's buildings and props from OnlyPlace 4, D66 also need cp textures and trees

CT14 Wild West.zip

[BartonThinks 3,416]

37 minutes ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

It's funnier. As for your FRONTIER Town, WolfZe has a very nice fleshed out collection too.

One issue that I've noticed with WolfZe's frontier/wild west set is that the buildings aren't scaled to match other custom content. Going by memory, I think I needed to reduce them to 66% their original size. But they are extremely well made models.

[Terring 6,473]

I'll agree that Wild West content is rare and deserve some extra love. Maybe we could bring Lucky Luke and his adventures on SimCity 4 too

6 hours ago, BartonThinks said:

I briefly considered doing futurist versions of the lots, but I don't think I could manage the amount of additional work that would require. It's also not an area that I'm super familiar with. I've spent a lot of my spare time researching cities of the 1800s and 1900s, so I feel comfortable designing lots for those periods. If I try to pull a futurist set of lots together, I worry that the results will look pretty slapdash.

I'm not a BAT creator, but I can help you by giving some ideas and advises on this topic. The future has so many faces and can hug so many visions, from retrofuture and dieselpunk to cyberpunk and solarpunk, from Metropolis and Blade Runner to Star Trek and Anno 2070. If you need some ideas, I can give some to you

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

10 hours ago, BartonThinks said:

One issue that I've noticed with WolfZe's frontier/wild west set is that the buildings aren't scaled to match other custom content. Going by memory, I think I needed to reduce them to 66% their original size. But they are extremely well made models.

I think WZ meant for it to be a standalone set, not mixed in with other lots. Most old west towns were pretty small by today's standards, so scaling them down would mean they would have to compete even harder with vast wilderness landscapes. WZ's set is much better textured, too. I like onlyplace4's set, also, and usually mix the 2 together.

[rsc204 21,808]

On 09/10/2020 at 6:46 PM, Raymond7cn said:

I want to know why there are two sets of straight road, I could see the change by modifying "5E54…", so what's the function of "5E5E…"?

No idea where you are getting the 5E5E texture from, that certainly is not the main Ortho textures used for SAM4.

Quote

Likewise, There are two groups in one texture, One has transparent area, another one has three vanilla grass (maybe), May i know that what they are used in game? i couldn't guess out them since It's really been a while haven't played with SC4 after learnt your NAM's tutorial. Thank you!!

In game, sidewalks are added in the following "groups":

• 0 / No Zoning
  You will see the texture ending in 04, with transparency as per the Alpha channel used.
• 1-3 / Low Density Zoning
  Textures end 14/24/34 for $ Wealth, $$ Wealth and $$$ Wealth respectively. Usually the base texture is identical to the 04 one, but it doesn't have to be. Grass does not get added "on the fly", it must be part of the texture itself. However, any transparency left behind, not the case for SAM4, but typically there will be, get's filled by the sidewalk automatically, again the wealth used depends on the wealth of the zone.
• 4-6 / Med or High Density Zoning
  Textures end 46/56/66 (where used), again for corresponding wealths. If no specific textures exist, SC4 will re-use the 04 texture, but instead of transparency, it will fill such areas with sidewalks. Since most textures would be identical to the 04 filled with sidewalks for these options, it's a waste of time making unique 4-6 wealth textures. But, there are cases where you might want to do this. For example, if you wanted to keep the grass so Med-High density zoning kept the grass, you'd need dedicated 4-6 textures.
• 7 / Rural (I-AG) Zoning
  Very rarely used, but there is a specific texture, just for farm zoning. Again, if no dedicated texture exists, SC4 re-uses the 04 texture, only this time it fills it with the same texture (dirt), that you see under zoned rail.

I hope this gives some insight into how wealthing works in SC4.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

10 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

No idea where you are getting the 5E5E texture from, it's not even in the SAM ID range, all SAM textures should use 5E54 for the first 4 digits.

Just hopping in here real quick -- Not sure if it makes any difference, but I just checked through the texture IDs for SAM 3, and this doesn't appear to be true. All of the textures start with "5E5," but the fourth digit varies from texture to texture.

[rsc204 21,808]

12 minutes ago, BartonThinks said:

Just hopping in here real quick -- Not sure if it makes any difference, but I just checked through the texture IDs for SAM 3, and this doesn't appear to be true. All of the textures start with "5E5," but the fourth digit varies from texture to texture.

You might be right, there is a "family" Id for SAM, seeing what you've said, I guess it's just the first 3 digits, not 4, sorry!

However, the additional straight is not right, so either the texture should be something else, or it shouldn't exist at all. I'd have to do a lot more digging to confirm which and I only have access to crappy cloud-based versions of my repositories right now.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

6 hours ago, Terring said:

I'm not a BAT creator, but I can help you by giving some ideas and advises on this topic. The future has so many faces and can hug so many visions, from retrofuture and dieselpunk to cyberpunk and solarpunk, from Metropolis and Blade Runner to Star Trek and Anno 2070. If you need some ideas, I can give some to you

Thanks, @Terring. I'm certainly intrigued by the idea of adding a 2025 to 2050 period that tries to envision how suburbs, cities, and other environments might change in the coming years. But because of the unique way that the lots and props I'm creating work together, that would add a massive amount of work to my current project, and I don't think I can manage that right now. I might futurist lots as an expansion pack at some point, but if I do that, all of the other lots will be frozen in time circa 2000 to 2025. (Also, me being me, any futurist lots I create would probably be fairly restrained and similar to modern-day lots. I'm not sure how much that would appeal to other players.)

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

2 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

You might be right, there is a "family" Id for SAM, seeing what you've said, I guess it's just the first 3 digits, not 4, sorry!

However, the additional straight is not right, so either the texture should be something else, or it shouldn't exist at all. I'd have to do a lot more digging to confirm which and I only have access to crappy cloud-based versions of my repositories right now.

Thank you Robin, I just checked it out in my comp:

it maybe since i selected some options when i installed NAM 36, but really couldn't recall the details at then. So i thought i may needn't to worry much about that.

@BartonThinks, Hiya Barton, @rsc204 has helped me with assigning a range (Prop Family) for me, i will make them to families as soon as i can.

@Terring Frankly, i never thought of there are so many peeps like Wild West content, especially you Terring, Thank you for your thoughtful tips and advices my friends, I will try my best to create some with my imagination, Frankly, i'm even not sure if they are Wild West style, they just come from movies. I knew some of them even are not West, But they do give me the feeling like that: (Bingo time!)

@CorinaMarie @Cyclone Boom I feel a bit pity that we couldn't have a BUS Building, It will definitely lost most of details when rendering it to Props or Automata, Anyway, i enjoy making it, Another production by CoriBoom™.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

About the other straight piece in SAM, I can't really tell from the pic posted, but I know there is one that has just the teeny-tiniest bit of a curve to it as a transition so maybe zoom way in and check. Or export both and overlay one on top of the other in Photoshop. (Set the transparency of the top one so you can see both at the same time.)

Definitely count me in on a desire for Old West style buildings. I've had onlyplace4's Wild West set installed for a couple of years now.

And that bus looks wonderful.

[+Guest 760649]

5 hours ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

I think WZ meant for it to be a standalone set, not mixed in with other lots. Most old west towns were pretty small

That hits the point. The older offers were simply too small for me....

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

Definitely count me in on a desire for Old West style buildings.

OK, It's the deal ma'am,  I'm trying to get into the mood of a cowboy, Let's see if i can rock and roll in the West world, the only thing i kind of concern about is that i may couldn't insist the quality in processing, since i'm still growing.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

17 minutes ago, Raymond7cn said:

OK, It's the deal ma'am,  I'm trying to get into the mood of a cowboy, Let's see if i can rock and roll in the West world, the only thing i kind of concern about is that i may couldn't insist the quality in processing, since i'm still growing.

@Raymond7cn

I'm not sure if this will be helpful, but if you're making western-style buildings, I thought I'd share a few quick points

As you've mentioned, movies and TV shows have had a big influence on what people think of as "Wild West" buildings. So if you're making a collection, it might be a good idea to choose whether you want realistic buildings or something closer to a Hollywood western.

If you're looking for realistic buildings, I would suggest looking up photos of famous frontier towns like Deadwood, Tombstone, and Dodge City. Here are a few examples:

If you're looking for a slightly more "Hollywood" appearance, I would suggest hunting down some Westerns from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. One of the images you posted above is from High Noon (1952), which is a great movie to watch if you need inspiration. Here are a few more images from it:

Another place you might want to look is Frontierland, which is a section of Disneyland/Disneyworld. The buildings in Frontierland are less realistic than in a movie like High Noon, but they're a good a source of inspiration if you want to create idealized western settings.

Of course, these suggestions only make sense for older western towns. The classic "Wild West" town is usually from the late 19th century (somewhere between 1850 and 1900). However, some of the images you shared are from newer settings more appropriate to the 20th century. If you're looking to create a "modern" western collection, you'll probably need some different sources of inspiration.

One place you might want to look for "modern" western inspiration is model railway buildings and scenery. A lot of model railway builders enjoy creating country scenes from the mid-20th century, so you can find a lot of great ideas on sites like https://www.modeltrainstuff.com/. Some examples:

 

 

Hope that helps, and let me know if I can be of further assistance with research/inspiration. Would be happy to find more photos or track down any information that might be helpful.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Thank you so much Barton @BartonThinks,  Those infos are quite useful to me.

6 hours ago, BartonThinks said:

One of the images you posted above is from High Noon (1952

Yes, These movies i posted are what i have seen before, Just knew its English name, Pretty classic, Thanks.

6 hours ago, BartonThinks said:

One place you might want to look for "modern" western inspiration is model railway buildings and scenery

Exactly, Frankly, most of models i made they just come from toys, since i could get more appropriate perspective from the store sells them on web.

This lot is from @Cyclone Boom

After looking around those names you mentioned from google, To be honest, i still couldn't have a clear image in my mind, so let it be, here is my plan: i just make some follow my feeling, Then i post it here, It's you my friends help me with identifying whether or not they are Wild West style, Though they are not, it's ok, I believe you can tell me that it might actually be useful for other things as well, That's my learning style, Trials and Errors! What say you?

Before that, Hope i have good luck on Simtropolis Building, and i will keep learning Terrain Exemplar, No need to concern about Effdir now, since we have CoriBoom™.