Olympic Tree Controler

[thornp113 54]

No matter what I do I cannot fill the bald spots on the edges of the tiles.  I used Flora Blast but then I tried to fill in the spots with the God Mode tree tool and I only get shrubs in those spots.  The terrain is completely flat and the edges are reconciled.  I've tried everything I can think of to get ride of them.

IDK if this is happening because of Olympic Tree Mod or if the Vanilla code would do the same thing but I'm super OCD so this is a problem for me.

Any Ideas?  The Mod is great by the way just FYI.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

I'll guess the Terrain INI needs tweaked to tell it to put trees there instead of shrubs.

^ Wrong. See my next post in this thread.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

I think I read somewhere that it has to do with ground moisture. Cori, I believe, has a data graph for that. Certain times of year are dryer. So certain areas behave like mountainous terrain, even though they're level. You might want to try changing the game calendar to different times of year to see if the results change.  This usually happens near a tile edge.

[Barroco Hispano 26,698]

@thornp113 Damn how many FPS is your game running at?

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

I'll guess the Terrain INI needs tweaked to tell it to put trees there instead of shrubs.

I'm back from errands now. I suggested the wrong thing.

It's actually the kSC4FloraPreferencesProperty in each Flora exemplar that is a part of the Tree Controller stuff. Those have 256 reps of data with values ranging from 0 to 1 in each and they control how likely that particular flora is to grow per elevation and moisture level.

 

[11241036 5,097]

Corina is right, the FloraPreferencesProperty controls which type of flora grows at which elevation/moisture level. In theory, you only need to find out which files are for the shrubs and disable them by setting all 256 reps to 0 while compensating by altering all other files to have 1 insted of 0. You can read more about this topic in this tutorial I wrote:

However, since this is a really complex matter, I'm offering you to make the necessary changes for you, if it's not too much work. If possible, please provide me a link to the TC you're using. However, I'm at a loss as of why this occurs at completely flat land - in theory, this is very unlikely to happen because completely flat land obviously has no elevation difference, and it should not have any moisture difference as well.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

@thornp113

Btw, what map is that you are using?

[thornp113 54]

7 hours ago, Barroco Hispano said:

@thornp113 Damn how many FPS is your game running at?

Idk my laptop is stupid. It's making me create an Xbox live account to view the fps.  Another problem for another day.

2 hours ago, 11241036 said:

please provide me a link to the TC

You mean this?

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1638

2 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Btw, what map is that you are using?

Funny you brought that up.  It actually started as Vancouver. https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1638

But, Ive imported and modified so many tiles that it's unrecognizable now.  The area I'm working on is actually the outskirts of my own version of Miami and the Everglades, hence the need for so many trees.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

2 minutes ago, thornp113 said:

It actually started as Vancouver. https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1638

Seems the Tree Controller linky was still in your clipboard when you pasted that.

[thornp113 54]

Lmao. 

 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

12 hours ago, thornp113 said:

The area I'm working on is actually the outskirts of my own version of Miami and the Everglades, hence the need for so many trees.

You might want to save a little space on Alligator Alley for those Seminole Villages and swamps that are back in there. By the way, this tree controller might suit the scenario better-

 

as there aren't a lot of Xmas trees in the jungle.

Another way to alter the behavior of tree controllers(or FloraBlast) is with the cheat setsealevel 0 which temporarily sucks all the water out of the tile. I don't recommend building anything, especially roads and highways beforehand.

[thornp113 54]

3 hours ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

You might want to save a little space on Alligator Alley for those Seminole Villages and swamps that are back in there. By the way, this tree controller might suit the scenario better-

So that was actually the tree controller I originally had but I read that the glades are mostly cypress trees so I switched to Olympic. I'll have to do some research on Alligator Alley though.  I've never actually been there, only Northern Florida.

What I REEEAALLYY want is to find a mod that has trees with Spanish Moss.  I haven't had much look but I haven't looked very hard.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

28 minutes ago, thornp113 said:

So that was actually the tree controller I originally had but I read that the glades are mostly cypress trees so I switched to Olympic. I'll have to do some research on Alligator Alley though.  I've never actually been there, only Northern Florida.

What I REEEAALLYY want is to find a mod that has trees with Spanish Moss.  I haven't had much look but I haven't looked very hard.

I have much experience driving that stretch, delivering dr...., er flowers, for the cart..., um florists!

I used to live in Aventura, so I know that stretch pretty well. Not nearly as tree-ey as what you've got going on. Look the area up on Google map. Swamp cypress and Mediterranean cypress are 2 different birds. That mod is about the closest you'll get to swampy trees.  As for Spanish moss, I'll save you the look, as I'd already have it if it existed. Very few make mmp's, so perhaps you can throw yourself on their mercy to make it for you. Or pay them

[11241036 5,097]

OK, I just looked into the files of the Olympia Coast TC, and everything is a big nightmare to me...

I'm talking about literally 611 subfiles, requiring me to check all of them out to see what's going on. To make matters worse, some entries have a few single 1's scattered out, so it's very difficult to find out what CP has been planning - without any idea of what CP had in mind when making this TC, it's difficult to make a modification without messing everything up in an undesired way.

Fortunately, the TC has a good naming convention, which allowed me pretty quickly to find out which files are responsible for planting shrubs. The interesting thing about them: All of them have actually been disabled. So, technically, it is actually impossible for your TC to plant shrubs, unless another file points to them. Which will result in a situation that the TC starts planting trees at first, and then replaces them by shrubs.

Another thing I've discovered (from first glance) is: There are some altitude-moisture combinations where no file is assigned to. This should technically leave you in a situation where at certain altitude/moisture levels, you shouldn't be able to plant anything at all.

(As for the technical aspect behind of this: The entire terrain in your region can be divided into 16 elevation levels and 16 moisture levels, making for a total of 256 different combinations of altitude and moisture. A TC is always being programmed in a way that certain trees/tree combinations can be limited to some of these combinations.)

The combination of the last two facts I've mentioned could thus be the explanation: While making my own TC, I found out that sometimes, if you leave some altitude-moisture combinations empty (i.e. no flora can be planted), the game starts placing nonsensical objects. This could mean that maybe with you, the game starts planting shrubs when it isn't supposed to do so. Fixing that, however, surely is an insane amount of work - I don't know if I'm even able to to this, and real life leaves me with little time, unfortunately.

All of that, however, still doesn't explain why you are getting the shrubs only sometimes, not all the time. Technically, this cannot happen on completely flat land because on flat land, the moisture level is always the same, and, obviously, the altitude too. My only explanation to this would be: Perhaps you might have a slight, minor elevation/slope there, barely visible with the eye, but the game still considers it a slope. Slopes have moisture values differing from flat land; I can't explain in detail how, but in theory, this might affect the TC. And reconciling the city tiles might even make it worse because it only raises/lowers the land at the city tile borders. All of this would explain why you are getting the shrubbery especially at the edges of your cities, if my eyes are serving me well.

As a solution, you might want to make a temporary experiment: Use the God-Mode flattening tool to even out an entire city, no matter if it lines up with neighboring city tiles. I don't believe that it is that big of a problem if there's an altitude difference of below 1 m between two city files. Then let the game run for a few months to allow the simulator to catch up, and then try again. Please also be aware that moisture is being affected by the time of the year, which means that it is possible to get a different result when trying to plant trees in spring, summer, fall, or winter.

Sorry for all of that bad news, unfortunately, tree controllers are highly complicated mods and are therefore difficult to modify, especially when the person that made them isn't here anymore. If the last suggestion I made doesn't work out well for you, I'll try to think of something better, but this isn't something that I can solve in a few days and with a few clicks.

[thornp113 54]

6 hours ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

That mod is about the closest you'll get to swampy trees

 

3 hours ago, 11241036 said:

this isn't something that I can solve in a few days and with a few clicks.

That's okay! Apparently that mod had the wrong type of trees anyway.  thanks @SIM-ple Jack.  I am just going to switch back to HBS Yucatan Tropical and see if that fixes the problem.  I will post my findings if I have time this weekend.  Thanks for the help

[rsc204 21,808]

12 hours ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

Very few make mmp's, so perhaps you can throw yourself on their mercy to make it for you. Or pay them

Note that making an MMP, is nothing more than very specific set of properties/links, it's not really hard but you have to understand what you are doing. In any case reasonable requests for new MMPs rarely get ignored, but we're talking about using existing models and making them into MMPs. Frankly almost everything you could want as an MMP already exists, literally I could make as many as I wanted, but I just never feel much need to do so and I am a heavy user of MMPs.

What you are really asking is for someone to both make the tree (model) and then make it an MMP, a vastly more time consuming prospect altogether. The idea of 'paying' someone to make your models for you, well I suspect you may have underestimated the sheer amount of work it takes to create models, especially detailed complex things like trees.

$10/hour is a pretty crap rate of pay, but for the sake of an example let's use that and consider what a tree would cost? Assuming it had to be modelled from the ground-up by someone who is going to do a decent job, you are probably looking at a minimum of 15-20h work. You have to create the main tree and branches, which are very complex in 3D modelling terms, due to the need for irregular shapes. Whilst you could get away with repeating the leaves, you have to manually cluster them together in different orientations, angles and what-not. Now of course there are shortcuts like taking an existing 3D model or using a special plugin designed to generate such, but both come with issues. Models you can download for free rarely allow for commercial use and selling or taking a commission, is very much commercial use. Whereas plugins that generate trees/flora are usually pretty expensive, who's paying for that? Talking of paying, you can't use 3DS Max for commercial use unless you pay for it and currently the cheapest subscription is $142/month and requires a 3-year contract, assuming you want to do this legally at least. Who's paying those costs?, because unless you are paying for it anyway, there is unlikely to be enough work to pay for a fraction of them. Because, unless you want to work for cents an hour, there is no way this works financially even making vastly simpler models for $50 to $100 a time.

This is why in the history of SC4, paying to have a model created for you has never been a thing, people just don't get the amount of work this stuff takes. It's also why requests are rarely taken on, because you are simply asking too much of someone else, unless they themselves are inspired by your wish or have some personal interest in creating a given asset, it probably isn't going to happen.

[thornp113 54]

9 hours ago, rsc204 said:

unless they themselves are inspired by your wish or have some personal interest in creating a given asset, it 

Well if someone out there is inspired, I think Spanish Moss would be a great Asset to the game.  Anytime I see a movie that takes place in the South and I see the moss in the background I immediately feel like I'm there.  Watch Django Unchained.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

38 minutes ago, thornp113 said:

Well if someone out there is inspired, I think Spanish Moss would be a great Asset to the game.  Anytime I see a movie that takes place in the South and I see the moss in the background I immediately feel like I'm there.  Watch Django Unchained.

We make voodoo dolls out of it, back where I'm from. Since Spanish Moss hangs off of trees(usually Live Oak), you'd have to wait till someone makes a tree with it, as moss just laying around on the ground would look kind of strange. We have request threads btw. I've wanted to recreate my hometown, and have managed to find only 5 buildings from multiple sites. Florida is considerably easier, because it's just one long strip mall, broken up by swamp.

[mattb325 28,880]

3 hours ago, thornp113 said:

Well if someone out there is inspired, I think Spanish Moss would be a great Asset to the game.  Anytime I see a movie that takes place in the South and I see the moss in the background I immediately feel like I'm there.  Watch Django Unchained.

The southern US trees have been around for years. (inc. spanish moss)

They were also turned into MMPs years ago (you need the above tree pack as the dependency):

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=166

Have fun recreating Gone with the Wind or Django Unchained 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

17 hours ago, thornp113 said:

Well if someone out there is inspired, I think Spanish Moss would be a great Asset to the game.  Anytime I see a movie that takes place in the South and I see the moss in the background I immediately feel like I'm there.  Watch Django Unchained.

Good luck finding this-

Evergreen Plantation

[thornp113 54]

.....This would complement the plantation

On 4/23/2022 at 3:31 PM, SIM-ple Jack said:

Since Spanish Moss hangs off of trees(usually Live Oak), you'd have to wait till someone makes a tree with it

I didn't even know it grew in the ground.  I thought it was only in trees lol

[thornp113 54]

So the problem went away with Yucatan Tropical

 

Before (Olympic)

 

After (Yucatan Tropical)

 

Pay no attention to the white line in the middle.  That's railroad tracks, not a border.

I plan to try Olympic again when I work on my mountain regions but that may not be for awhile.  I'm sure Ill have more problems but if/when I do I will post any problems/solutions on this thread.

On 4/23/2022 at 11:10 PM, mattb325 said:

The southern US trees have been around for years. (inc. spanish moss)

AWESOME! Thanks!

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

17 minutes ago, thornp113 said:

So the problem went away with Yucatan Tropical

That is absolute proof it is the FloraPreferencesProperty causing the issue as @11241036 explained in an above post.

Also, as @SIM-ple Jack mentioned, the ground's moisture content varies throughout the year and this is one of the key factors for the type of flora which will appear when planting God mode trees. Ofc it depends on the how each FloraPreferencesProperty is set per tree / shrub that the tree controller uses. Then, too, even perfectly flat ground will have variations in moisture.

February:

 

August:

[mattb325 28,880]

On 4/28/2022 at 12:28 AM, thornp113 said:

AWESOME! Thanks!

You're welcome....also it's not quite as obvious as it was never released as a southern usa tree pack, but CP volume 2 contains live oaks with spanish moss.

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2790

The live oaks were turned into an MMP (and these actually use the spanish moss models, which you can see in the first screenshot)

 

[Barroco Hispano 26,698]

@rsc204 Currently the two best tools to make trees are GrowFX for 3DsMax ($375 or $175 black friday) and also Speedtree, especially since two months ago when they launched the indie subscription (Before you had to pay $1.2k). You can also purchase "cheap" tree bundles at maxtree.com, 3dtree.info, globeplants.com, 3dsky.com or evermotion.org.

 

 

[Tubthumper 499]

On 4/21/2022 at 7:17 PM, 11241036 said:

However, since this is a really complex matter, I'm offering you to make the necessary changes for you, if it's not too much work. If possible, please provide me a link to the TC you're using. However, I'm at a loss as of why this occurs at completely flat land - in theory, this is very unlikely to happen because completely flat land obviously has no elevation difference, and it should not have any moisture difference as well.

I am going to hit you up on this - and please feel free to move if needed - but I am using the Cascadia Tree Controller - Mods & Tools - Simtropolis with the Lowkee Appalachian Terrain SC4D LEX Details - LK Appalachian Terrain Mod - WINDOWS (v1.0) (sc4devotion.com) and I have issues with the moisture level being crap on certain tiles on my region giving me these weird strips

I know it is moisture related thanks to Cori's moisture data viewer...so would you be able to alter the Cascadia Controller to plant the trees with 0 moisture so I can fix these ugly strips

[11241036 5,097]

1 hour ago, Tubthumper said:

I am going to hit you up on this - and please feel free to move if needed - but I am using the Cascadia Tree Controller - Mods & Tools - Simtropolis with the Lowkee Appalachian Terrain SC4D LEX Details - LK Appalachian Terrain Mod - WINDOWS (v1.0) (sc4devotion.com) and I have issues with the moisture level being crap on certain tiles on my region giving me these weird strips

 

I know it is moisture related thanks to Cori's moisture data viewer...so would you be able to alter the Cascadia Controller to plant the trees with 0 moisture so I can fix these ugly strips

Easier said than done. Ther's one point we haven't discussed yet: Any modification done will affect the way a TC works in the entire region, up to the point where it will produce undesired side effects. I can disable certain brushes for you and transfer the numbers to other brushes, but this might put you into a position where you won't be able to produce variation at a location where you want it to appear.

Fortunately, there's also good news: I've looked into the Cascadia files, and it looks like Blunder organized his files in a much better way than CP. In short, this means that all brushes (certain forest combinations) are labeled with a name, and only the first flora item is enabled, which means that it should in theory be possible to figure out how this TC works. It's still heck of a work, and the aforementioned issue cannot easily be solved, but it's at least possible to understand what's going on in this TC.

But in order to provide a fix for you, I need you to make close-up screenshots of the affected areas first (zoom level 3 should do), from the city view, not the region view. From the overview, I can't tell what to do because I cannot recognize the brushes.

Please be also aware that it looks like there are at least two brushes alternating; at least I'm thinking so because there are small areas with only conifer trees and small areas with mostly deciduous trees. Replicating this effect will be difficult to achieve.

Another solution, however, would be to simply disable all brushes from the Cascadia TC and enabling only one, and this one for all altitude/moisture combinations. You can simply temporarily put this file in your Plugins folder, plant some trees, and then replace it by the default Cascadia TC once you'e done. You will only be able to plant 1 type of forest everywhere, but at least you can partly fix these ugly stripes. Again, I can only help you if you provide me with close-up screenshots of the affected areas.

[Tubthumper 499]

On 6/1/2022 at 5:55 PM, 11241036 said:

Another solution, however, would be to simply disable all brushes from the Cascadia TC and enabling only one, and this one for all altitude/moisture combinations. You can simply temporarily put this file in your Plugins folder, plant some trees, and then replace it by the default Cascadia TC once you'e done. You will only be able to plant 1 type of forest everywhere, but at least you can partly fix these ugly stripes. Again, I can only help you if you provide me with close-up screenshots of the affected areas.

I think this would be a splendid solution (if I understand correctly).  Basically, I put that TC into my plugins, fix the ugly stripes, and then replace with the default Cascadia TC? If that is the case, it should be a non-ugly process.  Because everywhere in the region these strips appear is the same forest area (as shown in these screenshots).  Basically if you can override the "Transition Maple to Meadow" with "Ash Conifer Transition" I think it would look fine.  Overall region wise - this is the only type of forest that displays this issue - at least in a graphically noticeable way...

[11241036 5,097]

On 3.6.2022 at 5:15 PM, Tubthumper said:

I think this would be a splendid solution (if I understand correctly).  Basically, I put that TC into my plugins, fix the ugly stripes, and then replace with the default Cascadia TC? If that is the case, it should be a non-ugly process.  Because everywhere in the region these strips appear is the same forest area (as shown in these screenshots).  Basically if you can override the "Transition Maple to Meadow" with "Ash Conifer Transition" I think it would look fine.  Overall region wise - this is the only type of forest that displays this issue - at least in a graphically noticeable way...

Good idea of showing me the names of the brushes, that greatly helped identifying the problem files.

I've attached you a quick fix to this post. Unfortunately, the trees in both brushes have different space requirement settings, thus, it makes little sense to make you a mere graphical override. I had to change the FloraPreferences property to disable the "Transition Maple to Meadow" brush and transfer its settings to the "Ash Conifer Transition"; this will require that you bulldoze the affected areas and replant the forests. I hope it will work out, in theory, it should.

Important: Make sure this fix loads after the Cascadia TC files or it won't work.

zCascadia_TreeController_Fix.zip

[Tubthumper 499]

Works like a charm, thanks a million!!!

On 6/5/2022 at 3:04 PM, 11241036 said:

this will require that you bulldoze the affected areas and replant the forests.

Just to clarify, I would only have to bulldoze the areas in the affected tiles? For stability sakes, I am turning flora off and then reenabling it in the messed up tiles, because IIRC, there can be issues with a game crashing when trying to place roads or other stuff on a square - at least I had that happen once in another region...but I shouldn't have the issue with the entire region...I don't understand the mechanics of the game that much...