RRW Texture Reskinning

[TheCouncill0r 70]

Hi girls and guys,

 

Long time listener, first time caller - I've been a member of SimTropolis since 2007 and this is my very first post!

 

I was talking about the look and feel of the RRW with mgb and the NAM team over at SC4D, who said "if you're not happy with the RRW texture, change it - it's never been easier". So after learning how to use GoFSH and Rivit's scripts, I've made a collection of 16 complete RRW Reskins, all in ready-to-use format where they can simply be extracted into the plugins folder! I've attached a picture that previews all 16 of them so you can see what I'm talking about - I think this would be a great addition to a site like Simtropolis given the relative lack of complete and ready-to-use railway mods of this nature - I certainly had fun toying with various textures and testing them out in different scenarios in-game!

 

Unfortunately, they're about 70mb each skin, but I've got them down to 25mb compressed, and have even split them into 2 sets of 8 so as not to exceed the upload quota. I'm having what appears to be a common issue with larger uploads though - error 200 (pictured). The quota is apparently 250mb so I should at least be able to upload one of them, but the transfer meter gets about 2/3 of the way through and then conks out. Both parts are available at this WeTransfer link (https://we.tl/t-imzXR1brWH) based on the advice you've provided to others with these issues, but I didn't want to create a placeholder STEX upload with a text file or some such until checking in with you that I wasn't doing something else wrong, or that there's some other quota I'm not aware of because it's my very first upload.

 

Part 1 contains: City, Classic-Concrete, Classic-Wood, Imitation HSR, ModernCommuter, ModifiedRRW, Overgrown-Rural, and VIP-contrast.

Part 2 contains: ConcreteBed, Hypermodern, Overgrown-Abandoned, Overgrown-Industrial, RegionalFreight, Suburbs-Concrete, Suburbs-Wood, and WorksYard.

 

The parts are about 196mb each in highly-compressed RAR files. Any advice on how a newbie can make such a large mod  available to the community without breaking something?

 

 

Cheers!

Dicko (TheCouncill0r)

[rsc204 21,808]

These are pretty large files and I seem to recall for new accounts, there may be some additional restrictions in-place on uploading items. In any case, I'm sure once our Admin team get a chance to see your post, they'll be in touch with a solution.

One thing I maybe didn't mention (on SC4D), but if you are releasing these sets, please would you include somewhere the textures used to create them (Rail, Ballast and Sleepers). Doing so will help ensure users who like a specific style are able to use the same automation, to make other textures compatible with the RRW styles you'd released. That could include overrides for street/SAM mods they use, or things like my TGN/NGN/SWN texture mods. It also ensures that if the RRW textures are expanded in future, if you weren't able to update these mods for whatever reason, users would still be able to do that themselves. In essence by requiring released mods made using the RRW Reskin to include these textures, it ensures all such mods are future-proofed to some extent.

We're just putting the finishing touches to the most up-to-date version of the RRW Reskin repository, which includes complete coverage of RRW in NAM 42. So perhaps you might want to wait a few days until we can finish that off, then your mods will also be bang up-to-date with the current NAM release.

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

Hi @TheCouncill0r

Welcome to the forums, and it's never too later to make a first contribution.    (And this is a very notable one at that!)

Your project sounds an excellent incentive, and a great idea to share your reskins of the network textures to give people extra choices. It is absolutely possible to upload files this large to the STEX which doesn't actually count towards one's attachments quota, but people have reported trouble with such errors when doing so.

In terms of uploading them...

As @rsc204 is way more knowledgeable about this than Cori and I are, we'll wait for the suggested changes and then we can certainly help you with the large upload workaround. Once it's all finalised, what we can offer is using our admin tools to directly upload them to the Simtropolis server.

Let us know when it's ready, place the file(s) on WeTransfer again, and then create the placeholder STEX entries.

Thanks!

-CB & Cori  (The Admins)

[TheCouncill0r 70]

Thanks for the responses, guys.

 

I can certainly include all the original textuers I used through the GoFSH program, they're even each in individual folders with the standard maxis textures as filler files for the bitmaps that aren't used in certain scripts so you can just "click and go" in GoFSH so to speak. I'll throw the texture folders into the individual zips so the corresponding textures are in the file with the mods, that's no sweat, it had crossed my mind to allow people to change what type of sleeper they preferred. Alternatively, I can remove the filler textures and rename them to "rails" "ballast" "sleeper" etc so people know exactly what's going on... whatever fits better with your future vision of the RRW reskins.

 

On the other hand, when you say RRW Reskin repository, is that a third-party website or mod or some such? I don't know if I should include the actual program or the scripts from rivit's dropbox though as it isn't mine, and they've made it accessible themselves, I wouldn't want to appear to take credit for the processes behind the reskins - not sure if you've seen the contents of the online drive but I used the "202007 RRW Reskin Kit v2.6" zip file (which I though was fairly up-to-date, but just realised the NAM release cycle has accelerated significantly since I last played a few years ago)... Are you saying there's about to be a new reskin "kit" with different / updated scripts for GoFSH? Or is the repository just a collection of such reskins? Either way, certainly no rush, happy to wait to keep everything up-to-date...

 

...if it's new scripts for NAM42, that would be a bummer, it took me almost a full week to run! lol... couldn't imagine a huge number of differences in the number of textures used though?

 

While we're on the topic, I'll have to ask some of the pros how to use GoFSH to remodel all the textures that appear beside roads when zoned, maybe get a script for some of that more general retexturing work. Just having the Sudden Valley grass instead of maxis grass near crossings (and some awesome pavement textures I found and reworked) makes a pretty big difference in terms of realism and it looks like what the script program was originally intended for, with the 3 wealth levels of pavement and grass. It would be great to apply those wealth textures to the whole game.

 

Thanks for being so responsive cori & CB, I'll reply to this thread when those aforementioned updates are all good to go.

 

 

EDIT: haha I just realised you're MGB over on SC4D rsc, should've read your signature. Can't thank you enough for putting me onto this little gem!! If you hadn't made that one little comment about it "never being easier," I honestly would probably never have tried, the whole scripting and texture packing seemed so daunting at the time.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

37 minutes ago, TheCouncill0r said:

I'll have to ask some of the pros how to use GoFSH to remodel all the textures that appear beside roads when zoned, maybe get a script for some of that more general retexturing work.

I'm quoting you, but to mention something to @rsc204:

In the WSSNCOPFL Mod v0.45 Beta PM you described the complete process for altering the grass adjacent to the SAM networks. If that would be good to post here, it'd save re-writing all the steps.

[rsc204 21,808]

3 hours ago, TheCouncill0r said:

On the other hand, when you say RRW Reskin repository, is that a third-party website or mod or some such? I don't know if I should include the actual program or the scripts from rivit's dropbox though as it isn't mine, and they've made it accessible themselves, I wouldn't want to appear to take credit for the processes behind the reskins - not sure if you've seen the contents of the online drive but I used the "202007 RRW Reskin Kit v2.6" zip file (which I though was fairly up-to-date, but just realised the NAM release cycle has accelerated significantly since I last played a few years ago)... Are you saying there's about to be a new reskin "kit" with different / updated scripts for GoFSH? Or is the repository just a collection of such reskins? Either way, certainly no rush, happy to wait to keep everything up-to-date...

So the RRW Reskin repository is simply the tools (textures and scripts) used to create a RRW Reskin mod. This is something 4 NAM members, myself included, have been working on in one way or another for over 4 years. If a NAM release includes new RRW textures, those won't be covered by the tools, until we have the chance to update them. However, Eggman121 has been a big part of this project since the outset and is pretty much the guy who's made all new RRW content recently, so every new texture is created with ensuring it will make it to the Reskin tools eventually. Indeed, we're literally putting the finishing touches to the latest version, which basically is just more complete. Indeed it could be there would be script changes, or simply just new textures, but the process essentially remains the same. Documentation is still a little on the sparse side, for example the first two scripts must be run with your Rail Textures, the Rail, Sleeper & Ballast ones, the third using normal Paving and Grass textures, then the 4th with a special set of concrete textures (included with the download). Not sure if you got all that, but hopefully you worked it out.

Users are free to use it for anything they like, the only caveat is if releasing mods, to include the source textures. How is really up to you in terms of naming, but somehow users will need to be able to work out which set is for which mod. I'm sure everyone will be doing things slightly differently, for example I released my custom set with an installer personally. These textures then are installed into a folder where every version distributed with my installer code, would place them all into one folder, with a unique folder name for each variant.

The repository can be freely distributed, we'd love as many people as possible to make use of it. However to be clear, I'm not asking you to do so with your download or anything, but as a group we are more Open-Source minded here.

It's really great to see someone offer a large number of pre-made options for others, because we're all too aware, even with automation the process is not going to be user-friendly enough for everyone. When people share the results made with the tools, the whole community benefits for simply having more choice in how things look.

3 hours ago, TheCouncill0r said:

...if it's new scripts for NAM42, that would be a bummer, it took me almost a full week to run! lol... couldn't imagine a huge number of differences in the number of textures used though?

There is an in-dev version of GoFSH (3.7.7) at the same shared folder as the ReSkin, install that and use the NoPreviews option, I can't tell you how much quicker that makes building the mod.

3 hours ago, TheCouncill0r said:

Just having the Sudden Valley grass instead of maxis grass near crossings (and some awesome pavement textures I found and reworked) makes a pretty big difference in terms of realism and it looks like what the script program was originally intended for, with the 3 wealth levels of pavement and grass. It would be great to apply those wealth textures to the whole game.

Again, you are spot on, Rivit and myself worked a lot on a process that could automate this kind of task. Whilst Rivit made the code and thought up the how, I spent months creating the repositories (based on previous mods of similar types) and testing out GoFSH. TGN for Sudden Valley already exists (which replaces all in-game network textures with terrain-matching grass). Likewise the repository I used to make it can be found on my own OneDrive, in addition to some of my other mods, eventually I will share everything. Take a look here, it's in-progress for now, but I'm trying to document all the Repositories online and offer step-by-step instructions on how to use GoFSH in one place.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

If I may ask about it here, I've noticed that the Ortho STR crossing Peg's SAM 3 Dirt Road is faded (lighter colored) than the road on either side of it.

 

And so it looks like this in the game:

^ Note: I do understand why the grass is different on the left side because of adjacent park filler lot plops. That's not the part I'm mentioning.

The same faded dirt at the crossing appears in @rivit's NAM37 RRW Reskin MAXIS Lookalike as well. Could it be the base SAM 3 texture is somehow getting a double diffuser layer or something?

[rivit 3,391]

An interesting question.

The RRW SAM street Xing textures are based on a color corrected (darker) base texture made from the SAM (which is considered the master) color for that street. To me this explains the slightly duller color on the left RRW swatch. Essentially the original SAM was corrected down to match the RRW, then the crossing made and then regenerated into a network texture. The grass ends up the same because its inserted by the game. The density of the RRW street I think has been affected by the alphablending going on.

It will take a bit of sleuthing to work out exactly which step needs fixing, but it will be almost impossible to get an exact match because of the slightly different paths SC4 uses to render the RRW tiles and the SAM tiles themselves.  You will find small color differences on all RRW crossings because of this. The same problem exists with Lot Textures relative to network textures even if the same sources are used to make them.      

[TheCouncill0r 70]

19 hours ago, rsc204 said:

it could be there would be script changes, or simply just new textures, but the process essentially remains the same. Documentation is still a little on the sparse side

I got by pretty well with the brief description of each step included in the v2.6 readme on ^^rivit's OneDrive/dropbox, in fact the only problem I ran into was an error in the script because there was no "Lot Support" folder present in the install folder - it was as simple as creating an empty folder. There was also no description of step 5, which appears to be the textures for the newer draggable ERRW (I think - I'm no coder) but I used the same textures as step 1 & 2 and it all turned out fine. 

 

19 hours ago, rsc204 said:

I'm not asking you to do so with your download or anything, but as a group we are more Open-Source minded here

Cool beans, I wasn't sure if that was the end-game or not - I'll just include the texture folers I used in GoFSH for now. You also mentioned you set up an *.exe installer for your versions, which is possibly a bit beyond me (for now anyway), have you posted these to either the LEX or STEX? I did find all the textures you used in the 2.6 repository but haven't seen it available on the typical "mod" download sites, but I haven't had a thorough check in a few months.

 

19 hours ago, rsc204 said:

we're literally putting the finishing touches to the latest version, which basically is just more complete

So that would be the NAM42 version I gather - what was the NAM version used as the base in the 2020-07 v2.6 version? I'll have to correct that in my own readme as I've claimed it's up-to-date as of NAM42.

 

19 hours ago, rsc204 said:

the 4th with a special set of concrete textures (included with the download). Not sure if you got all that, but hopefully you worked it out.

Yeah I did get that, used the included dedicated SAM11 concrete textures so it should all fit in in those environments. I'm definitely going to grab your TGN mod for Sudden Valley too, thanks for that!

 

 

Frankly I think the "open-source" mindset of a lot of the creators and modders for SC4 are the biggest reason why it's still alive and going strong today. If you guys have ever read Tarkus' blogs he had one on all the Cities Skylines creators (which I've been playing on and off for the last 3/4 years in place of SC4) who charge money for mods... even at $1 or less a pop, that would've amounted to hundreds if not thousands of dollars on my part... if that were the case here so much of this game would just never have happened!

 

On that note, if you want to include any of the texture sets I've used for this one you're welcome to - here's https://we.tl/t-WQizA3knDw a 3mb rar file with just the textures in GoFSH-ready format (although the filler textures I mentioned are included, in 12 appropriately named folders), but I would still like to upload them either here or the LEX so people who don't go as deep as we do still have the chance to come across them and maybe even find out more about the customisation process you guys have set up, via my pack. I've been around ST and SC4D for many years and only ever though to access the forums when I had that specific NAM / RRW query! Which is a shame really - it's an amazing community you guys have here, I'll have to get onto that Discord too when I have a chance.

 

In the mean time, I'll just monitor your dropbox Rivit for the latest repository.

 

 

P.S. How do you find playing windowed mode, Corina? I wish I could get that happening, it would allow me to take full 3440x1440 screenshots, but it was a bit of a struggle even getting it going at 1920x1200 fullscreen. How perfect is that stock RRW texture in rural areas, I feel a bit bad for changing it...

 

EDIT: OMG There's a fricken progress meter in 3.7.7?!! that and the no previews speed-up... it's too much, I'll be toying with stuff for years! I can't even...

 

5 stars. even more keen for the update now.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

15 hours ago, rivit said:

It will take a bit of sleuthing to work out exactly which step needs fixing,

Based on your thorough explanation, I believe it might be as simple as the Ortho base dirt SAM 3 needs to be darkened since the angled crossings look fine in the game. (I'll double check each possible crossing and let you know if I missed any.)

 

13 hours ago, TheCouncill0r said:

P.S. How do you find playing windowed mode, Corina?

It's absolutely wonderful. I put it over on screen one (where my taskbar is) so I us the Raise the UI mod and that allows me to play whilst I do things on my other screens. For the higher resolutions, you might need a Wrapper. While I've read each of those threads, I still play in 1280 x 1024 so I'm not sure which thread to recommend. @rsc204 is one of our experts on Wrappers.

[rsc204 21,808]

I would add that differences between hardware/software settings et all, can also dramatically effect how things look. For example, here is the same texture from my TGN mod (just with different grass), yes there is a difference here, but it's more subtle than in your screenshot.

That said, I checked the rest of the SAMxSTR crossings and only this one seems to be really bad. I didn't like the look of the DTRxSAM3 OxO texture either, so I remade both from my RRW sources, please try the attached override. If you are happy with the changes, you can simply overwrite the current file in Plugins\Network Addon Mod\2 Additional Network Features\Rail (RealRailway)\z_RealRailway_Textures with the same filename. But to test it, try loading it after the Network Addon Mod first.

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

For the higher resolutions, you might need a Wrapper. While I've read each of those threads, I still play in 1280 x 1024 so I'm not sure which thread to recommend. @rsc204 is one of our experts on Wrappers.

I've managed to get a screenshot manager working using Elisha Clouds DXWrapper and the game runs for me at 2560x1440 now under DirectX. There has not yet at least emerged an upper limit for resolutions with this method, certainly 4k and some 5k displays seem to work fine. Essentially there is a limitation of 21##x1920 for DirectX 7, which is what SC4 uses, hence why previously Software Rendering was needed to go higher.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

33 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

If you are happy with the changes,

Yes, I'm perfectly happy with this:

^ Nice work!
 

Would you mind to compile one for Ron's RRW Reskin Maxis Lookalike? (I know I could learn to do it, but since you are already familiar with the process I'd appreciate if you could make it.)

[rsc204 21,808]

7 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Would you mind to compile one for Ron's RRW Reskin Maxis Lookalike?

RealRailway_Textures_Crossings_SAM3.dat

Yes, I think I can do that, only problem is I'm not 100% certain which textures he used, but I think it's the MaxisAltRRW set A (from the ReSkin files), in which case these may actually be right .

Either way, since the problems are more apparent on your system and the standard colour-correction seems to match better, could you check the other SAM 3 crossing textures? Each combination of Ortho and Diagonal crossing, 4 for DTR, 4 for STR exist, although the diagonal SAM streets are a bit unstable. In case you've never made a diagonal street by rail crossing, you need to use the Diagonal Street Helper piece to cross the rail. If you find any other pieces which could use some improvement, we might as well clean up the SAM-3 set entirely whilst we're here.

All these changes will get pushed into the main RRW textures (NAM) and into the ReSkin tools once finished.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

3 hours ago, rsc204 said:

I think it's the MaxisAltRRW set A (from the ReSkin files), in which case these may actually be right .

Thanks so much!

Here's that same crossing now:

 

And I do have a diagonal crossing in the same tile:

 

3 hours ago, rsc204 said:

could you check the other SAM 3 crossing textures?

I hope these are the right 4 of each.

 

Maxis Lookalike DTR Crossing SAM 3 - Full Screen:

 

Maxis Lookalike DTR Crossing SAM 3 - Windowed:

 

Maxis Lookalike STR Crossing SAM 3 - Full Screen:

 

Maxis Lookalike STR Crossing SAM 3 - Windowed:

 

NAM's DTR Crossing SAM 3 - Full Screen:

 

NAM's DTR Crossing SAM 3 - Windowed:

 

NAM's STR Crossing SAM 3 - Full Screen:

 

NAM's STR Crossing SAM 3 - Windowed:

 

And the pics in a zip if that helps any: Test Pics for STR and DTR Crossing SAM 3.zip

 

Looks to me like:

• Both Maxis Lookalike and NAM's could go darker for the diagonal DTR crossings for both Full Screen and Windowed.
• Both Maxis Lookalike and NAM's could go very slightly darker for the diagonal STR crossings for both Full Screen and Windowed.
• Both Maxis Lookalike and NAM's could go very slightly darker for all Ortho crossings.

What completely escapes me is how there would be a difference between STR and DTR diagonals since they'd be using the same base SAM. And I don't see a difference between Full Screen and Windowed for the texture colors.

Edit:

3 hours ago, rsc204 said:

In case you've never made a diagonal street by rail crossing, you need to use the Diagonal Street Helper piece to cross the rail.

Oh. I suddenly understand this now. I'll check those too.

 

Edit too:

The diagonal SAMs in Full Screen:

 

Looks like those could all go darker too.

[TheCouncill0r 70]

In the mean time, I've installed your SuddenValley terrain grass mod and have been playing around with the various scripts available on your online drives, I've managed to get a custom sidewalk texture happening on every NAM/NWM/etc piece, and even the draggable elevated standard networks like road and ave, but can't seem to get the basic road networks to display the new texture. I've scraped every script and repository i can find onto my hard drive, and have managed to get the TGN, SWN and even the rural GLR scripts from the OneDrive working, replacing everything from the centre island of the turbo roundabouts to the concrete textures under standard Maxis buildings, but not the standard sidewalks...

 

I feel like I must be close, because there are other sidewalk texture mods out there that are just a single DAT file and cover pretty much all the sidewalks, so perhaps I'm using the wrong GoFSH repositories here?

 

Also can't get any of these wrappers working on my GOG version either, which is bugging me. It just opens to the pre-intro black screen, then immediately closes. but this a distant secondary consideration to my texture toybox right now.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

And the diagonals crossing diagonals:

 

Which look good to me for STR, but could go darker for DTR.

[rsc204 21,808]

49 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

What completely escapes me is how there would be a difference between STR and DTR diagonals since they'd be using the same base SAM. And I don't see a difference between Full Screen and Windowed for the texture colors.

Ultimately I don't know who made these or what processes were used, different creators or methodology employed I guess. Before colour correction was added to GoFSH, there was no standard for doing so, it just involved messing with curves/brightness/saturation or whatever to get the closest match. 

I took the set of crossings and just tried to expand RRW to every legacy crossing piece that was not supported, it was a large job. Hence I have files that make re-creating these pretty easy to do. Given the issues at play, I think I'll just apply the update to all the remaining pieces, since they all look off in your screenshots. Yet oddly enough, the difference is negligible on my system, logically we have to consider this could make things worse for others. That said, when I see inconsistent textures like this, I'm straight on it, one way or another they should at least use identical street textures, reason enough to fix this for me.

17 minutes ago, TheCouncill0r said:

I feel like I must be close, because there are other sidewalk texture mods out there that are just a single DAT file and cover pretty much all the sidewalks, so perhaps I'm using the wrong GoFSH repositories here?

SWN is designed to replace all the Baked-In sidewalk, mostly legacy, pieces in the NAM (well except a few features covered by the Jap NAM Facelift mod I never included. The actual sidewalk mod itself, is typically something people already have downloaded, they just want everything else to match.

However, hidden in the \12 - Lot Textures\a_MTRDK folder, are the necessary tools to create the actual sidewalk mod. Pop this script into the root of the SWN repository and run it to create the Sidewalk Mod itself from one to three unique textures.

_TempBuild 00 Sidewalk Mod.txt

17 minutes ago, TheCouncill0r said:

Also can't get any of these wrappers working on my GOG version either, which is bugging me. It just opens to the pre-intro black screen, then immediately closes. but this a distant secondary consideration to my texture toybox right now.

Are you using the GoG Galaxy Launcher? If you are, then you'd be better off downloading the Standalone Offline Installer, the launcher doesn't do anything for SC4 and simply gums up the works unnecessarily.

I myself am using the GoG standalone version and it is simply the best version of SC4 in terms of compatibility, future-proofing, including language options and default commands that help it run on modern machines.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

5 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

... logically we have to consider this could make things worse for others.

Naw, make it perfect for me and let the chips fall where they may.

But seriously, that's a very good point and reminds me of when you mentioned something similar while I was still a neophyte and making the Shoppes threads inasmuch as the pics would only be a reasonable representation, but could look different for other peeps.

[TheCouncill0r 70]

10 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

Pop this script into the root of the SWN repository and run it to create the Sidewalk Mod itself from one to three unique textures.

You bloody legend. Niiiiice!

 

And indeed I am using GOG Galazy 2.0.41, The game itself is installed on my HD and I can run it without it, the launcher just made it easier to insert the "arguments" or whatever those lines of code are called instead of creating a shortcut. I wasn't aware the galaxy version and the offline backup version would actually operate any differently?? When I first installed the GOG version, it actually opened up with all the plugins from my old disc version and vice versa, so that caused a few issues I thought I'd rectified.

 

Downloading the offline version now, will get rid of this galaxy version because SC4 is the only game I have in there anyway, and I only bought it because I figured it'd be handy to not have to run a made-for-modern-times version downloadable at any time in the future. My original was actually SC4 and the separate Rush Hour and it was painful to make happen, it's actually why I stopped playing some years ago in windows 10.   And, it was a measly AU$6, no more haslles or no-cd cracks and the like which most mods now don't support.

cheers m.

[rsc204 21,808]

3 hours ago, TheCouncill0r said:

I wasn't aware the galaxy version and the offline backup version would actually operate any differently

At the level where you are playing, all versions of SC4 are identical in terms of the code. If you have the fully patched version (you do), it would be effectively identical to even the CD edition or having SC4 + Rush Hour as an addon.

The differences come from how they are packaged and distributed, along with what’s included. Specifically the GoG Launcher v.s. no launcher thing, tends to favour the latter since it’s cleaner to avoid the unnecessary additional layer. The standalone installer creates shortcuts like the disk versions, you can add any command line switches you need there. You’ll probably note it’s already got a few, added after customer feedback. Things no other distributor seems to bother about. Plus it’s DRM free, so will work so long as Windows supports 32-bit apps and the code is still supported. That’s certainly better than the discs held up in the grand scheme.

But when you want to start using wrappers and the like, launchers may interfere with or hinder their intended functions. Especially considering you don’t need GoG Galaxy for anything else, I’d uninstall it. All the GoG games I have are the offline installers. It’s the same as a collection of disks, only on a hard disk. Providing you’ve secure data, there is no reason you’d ever loose it. Provided GoG were still around and don’t suddenly change policy, you can even redownload everything as many times as you need. 

[TheCouncill0r 70]

So I'm still unable to get the wrappers working - I'm struggling to understand how simply copying new files into the Apps directory would make the *.exe utilise them without some sort of alteration to one of the game's *.ini or *.dll files, but I've still been working on the SWN and TGN and have completed my custom grass and sidewalk textures, except for the turn lanes!

 

It looks amazing in-game, the degradation in the concrete from high wealth to low wealth, and has effectively replaced every bit of grass and concrete under pretty much every lot I can see! Except for the turn lanes. Considering I've used my own GoFSH textures folder which includes *both* the custom grass and paving texture files, I'm at a loss to understand how these texture squares manage to use the custom pavement texture but not the custom grass texture? Is it possibly something to do with the underlying alpha files not accounting for new grass textures in this part of the script, or maybe something to do with the way I've ordered the texture folders in \plugins? I've currently got z___RRW Retexture, z___SWN Retexture and z___TGN Retexture, and if I understand the use of underscores correctly, the game should load these folders last (or close to), and in this order. 

 

This GoFSH scripting has revolutionised my game, just a bit of fine-tuning left and it'll be as close to perfect as it's possible to be!! Cheers guys.

[rivit 3,391]

It will be in the Alphas - quite probably the grass is baked in to avoid issues with different corners being different colours of grass because of the wealthing mechanics - i.e. it will be white in the alpha so that it isn't replaced. Now that you've become expert enough in how this stuff works, once you pin down the tiles involved you should be able to make the change yourself so that they do replace the grass or become all paving.  The manual explains the niceties in the advanced section and there are enough examples in the archives you're using to deduce what to do.

On the results so far (a big step away from vanilla SC4) could I offer the following? To my eye the paving is dominating the scene - its just a shade or two too bright for the palette of everything else. If you tone down the paving a bit (it should have an average value of around mid-grey) then I think you'll find it won't pop out as much. Of course it's all a sense of taste but once seen is hard to unsee.  The other consideration is scale - 1 pixel in SC4 represents about 12cm (1600/128) so gaps in paving bigger than a pixel will result in sims risking their ankles.

A good way to get a sense of these things is to look at google street overhead view for ideas. Those perspectives are not a lot different from SC4 at this zoom.

[TheCouncill0r 70]

18 minutes ago, rivit said:

1 pixel in SC4 represents about 12cm (1600/128) so gaps in paving bigger than a pixel will result in sims risking their ankles.

Haha that's a good point, those grass patches between slabs are probably a metre wide in reality. Fortunately it's one of those areas where I can overlook the realism side in favour of aesthetics - I have a picture of a whole region made from screenshots one zoom back from the above image, and the smooth transition between wealth level footpaths looks too good!

 

Interesting note on the lightness of the concrete though - my initial efforts were actually quite a bit darker, including the grass. They probably looked a bit more realistic, but when stood back and looked at a larger area of the city, the lack of contrast between the grass, roads and pavement sort of... well, not ruined it by any means, but made the whole city have a "low wealth" look to it, so I brightened it up a bit. I might try toning it back down just a smidge now that I've got the file and folder setups right. I had a similar thing with some of the above RRW Retextures, they look excellent in the texture files, but in game zoome out a bit, lost juuuust enough detail to bring down the overall feel of it,

I'm also having issues getting the retextured cul-de-sacs appearing for SAM streets (the standard-grassed ones work ok), but I think that might be something else because the "zoption_TGN_CulDeSac" patch dats are definitely present in my TGN folder. In any case having some residential areas without courts/culdesacs is not a dealbreaker.

 

Thanks for the tip on the alpha stuff rivit, that'll be my next endeavour. it's certainly been a bit of a learning curve getting the hang of textures in a 128x128 file vs how they look on surfaces in the game but imho the results have certainly been worth it. Honestly I feel a bit bad using GoFSH to modify my whole game without having made some sort of purchase, especially considering the level of support you've offered after-the-fact.

[rivit 3,391]

You shouldn't feel obliged in any way - everyone here who contributes stuff does so because they want to and its the reason the SC4 community (here and SC4D) is what it is.  

In fact, even by discussing the things you try out and make yourself you contribute something for everyone else be it ideas, straight how-to or just enjoying the journey. 

[rsc204 21,808]

4 hours ago, TheCouncill0r said:

and has effectively replaced every bit of grass and concrete under pretty much every lot I can see! Except for the turn lanes.

1 hour ago, TheCouncill0r said:

I'm also having issues getting the retextured cul-de-sacs appearing for SAM streets (the standard-grassed ones work ok), but I think that might be something else because the "zoption_TGN_CulDeSac" patch dats are definitely present in my TGN folder.

The turning lanes (FTLs) which contain the slip lanes are not presently in the online TGN build, but should be present in the TGN mods on the STEX. I can send you some additional files, ultimately i've a lot of stuff that's still in-development, so it's not been pushed into the public repository whilst I finish it off.

For example the SAM cull-de-sacs are a new option and did not exist when I last updated TGN. So these are simply cases of the mod not yet supporting every new texture. But as Rivit mentions, if you find the file containing them, you should be able to change your personal repository to include them.

In terms of why Grass is different to Sidewalks, it has to do with how SC4 wealthing works. In essence modders must make between 1 and 8 textures for everything you see in the game. Older legacy Puzzle Pieces and the like tend to use a single texture (not supporting wealthing), with a baked-in sidewalk and grass where used. This is essentially why SWN is a thing, to replace all the textures that force the Maxis white and replace them with a custom sidewalk. TGN is quite different though, because the textures it tends to change are fully wealth-compliant, like basic Street/Road textures for example. When unzoned, you usually see only the street, when zoned with low-density R/C, you should see a strip of grass and sidewalks filling the tile. If you upgrade that to Med-High density zoning, the streets then show with full sidewalks. What's important is how the game achieves this, the transparent part remains transparent without zoning but with zoning the game fills in any transparent areas using the actual installed sidewalk textures. This is why most network textures show sidewalks automatically, even custom ones. But unlike the sidewalks, the grass is not dynamic, you can't change three grass textures and alter them that way. Instead, you have to find every texture that includes grass and re-make it. This was an unthinkable task when I started out, but by automating as much of the task as possible, TGN became a thing. This also explains why SWN and TGN exist as separate entities, because they do very different things, the release versions are more flexible by keeping Sidewalks and Grass as different mods.

2 hours ago, TheCouncill0r said:

Honestly I feel a bit bad using GoFSH to modify my whole game without having made some sort of purchase, especially considering the level of support you've offered after-the-fact.

Many years ago in a place far away, well in the next room, I decided I would do what it took to get rid of the Maxis sidewalks. From the outset I worked differently to most others, because I didn't simply create a new texture mod, I designed a system that could be re-built multiple times using automation, so I could change to another sidewalk in future without having to re-do everything. But I did not have GoFSH to help me, it was a very clunky process, not user friendly, but it worked. When Rivit started with the idea of adding a function for GoFSH to process such jobs, I jumped on board and converted everything to work with this new system. The point of everything we've done since is to unlock the potential for custom textures, you no longer need to be crazy enough to spend months extracting, converting, editing textures and getting them back into files with the right IDs. Not to mention, you no longer really need to be able to edit textures either.

Getting to the point, sorry I can ramble, the goal here from my perspective was to enable others to create, customise and share the results. So I'm only too happy to help people through the process who are keen to utilise the resources we made. After all, seeing customised variants created from these, or even better seeing them released as ready-to-go mods, is what makes me happy, since that was the ideology driving this for me.

We touched briefly on the installer for the RRW Reskin, essentially any complex mod (lots of options to choose), that I release tends to end up in an installer. The plan is, eventually that installer will be included with the repositories, it's actually not very hard to modify it either. The installer script is easy to edit without special software, typically you'd only need to update one or two lines that ultimately customise it with your mod's name/type. Optionally you can replace some screenshots/images, so again the installer shows your personal variant. After that you just install the same Installer software I'm using, NSIS 2.46 with the Modern User Interface 2. Having run the necessary GoFSH scripts to create all the needed textures, then just run the script with NSIS and it spits out an identical installer to the official releases, which you are free to re-distribute as you like. Best of all, because the mod is made from my resources and installer, I can offer support for these custom versions, because structurally they are identical to my releases. Obviously using the installer or even re-distributing these things are both totally optional, but I hope it will eventually lead to other options/variants of my mods available for download. After all, no matter how easy we make it, there will always be what I call the Can't Mod/Won't Mod crowd, the more options the better really.

Once more, all of this has been years in the making and personally I'm very close to the point where the basic 'infrastructure' is in-place that ensures I can update my personal versions, whilst seamlessly syncing those changes with the public ones. Sounds easier than it is, because I have customisations and in-dev content I need to filter out. The biggest headache was creating a system that wouldn't necessitate constantly editing my repositories to synch changes. Sadly this big structure-change happened just as RL hit hard, so it's taking longer than hoped, but I am slowly chipping away at things.

You might consider playing around with the 'filliter' option in GoFSH, another in-dev tool. If this had existed when I made TGN, it would have created 90% of the repository textures without me lifting a finger. If you use that with the files containing the missing textures like the SAM cull-de-sacs, it can produce C0/D0 texture pairs you use with GoFSH automation/scripts.

[TheCouncill0r 70]

13 hours ago, rsc204 said:

If you use that with the files containing the missing textures like the SAM cull-de-sacs, it can produce C0/D0 texture pairs you use with GoFSH automation/scripts.

So I didn't end up testing the filleter because I got a much simpler option to work re. the cul-de-sacs, I simply copied the bitmaps from the cul-de-sac options that weren't working and overwrote the standard the bitmaps in the TGN and SWN folders. In this way I even used them and photoshop to make a pretty good SAM7 cul-de-sac, something I've long wanted since pretty much all streets in my part of the world are asphalt. I've attached them and the edited alpha file just in case they're of any use to your repositories.

 

With the Turn lanes, I tried a similar thing, modifying the alphas so they would all just have a static grass texture instead of switching to conrete based on zoning density, but I just couldn't get it happening with the newer draggable turn lanes. I have a lot of legacy plopped ones in my cities and they worked fine but I've copied the file from your SV TGN mod as as that one seems to work with your SV grass textures, which are actually very close to mine, I actually extracted some SV textures with GoFSH in order to make mine. Long story short, now my plopped TuLEPs have all my textures, and the draggable ones have my footpath textures with your SV grass!

 

I've just joined the discord server too, so I'll see you all there!

 

EDIT: Thoughts on the very-slightly-darker footpaths, rivit? I think you were right, it takes a bit of the harsh edge off, with slightly lower contrast too.

7AB50E44-1ABE787D-5B04000E-D0.bmp

7AB50E44-1ABE787D-5E500704-D0.bmp

7AB50E44-1ABE787D-5E500704-C0.bmp

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

@TheCouncill0r

CB and I were chatting. We believe this topic would be better suited over in the Modding Forum as it's now mostly about the technical aspects rather than your original question concering uploading large files. (We'll still be following for when the upload part is ready and we'll help get that sorted.)

We've also renamed the topic to better represent what it's about. Should you want it to say something other than RRW Texture Reskinning, feel free to edit your first post and you can change it.

-Cori & CB

[rsc204 21,808]

13 hours ago, TheCouncill0r said:

In this way I even used them and photoshop to make a pretty good SAM7 cul-de-sac

So this texture only exists for US textures so far as I can work out, not to mention it seems it's only the SAM 7 set that has a special Cull de Sac option, that's something I can add to TGN. Since I'm using the original source texture for this, it should match better, something I tend to be picky about. My SWN/TGN mods don't simply change the sidewalks and grasses, but I have been slowly updating and improving the textures, although most of this is again Euro textures.

13 hours ago, TheCouncill0r said:

With the Turn lanes, I tried a similar thing, modifying the alphas so they would all just have a static grass texture instead of switching to conrete based on zoning density, but I just couldn't get it happening with the newer draggable turn lanes.

Last night I pushed a pretty substantial update to the online TGN repository, amongst them are the MRCs, FTLs and Roundabouts. There are also some updates to match newer FA-RoadxStreet intersections and refreshed diagonal street pieces. I hope to get on top of all the updates from NAM 37 through 42 before NAM 43 is released, so further updates will hopefully be coming. However, this should support the slip lanes as noted in this documentation. It also supports the OWR slip-lanes between Ortho and Diag intersecting Streets, Roads, OWRs and Avenues, another recent NAM addition.

I'll patch in the SAM3 Rail updates and the SAM7 Cul de sac option at some point tonight.

[rsc204 21,808]

@CorinaMarie: Here is the new set of SAM3 textures for the Maxis AltRail style, let me know if you are happy with them or not.

RealRailway_Textures_Crossings_SAM3.dat

They now use identical SAM textures so they should match as well as the previous fixes.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

@rsc204: Excellent! Thank you!