Any Suggestions?

[Jasoncw 11,941]

In the second picture, the LOD of the taller building has a flat shape, but the building itself has a zig-zag shape.  In the first picture, it looks like the LOD is sticking out too far to the right.

The LODs really need to be close to the building where they match up.  You can edit the LODs just like any other shape.  Booleaning parts of the LOD out works well, but you can also make the shape from scratch, as long as it is named "LOD5" (or whatever they're called) it will work.

It might take some tweaking to get right, so it's probably best to do draft renders untill everything lines up right.

This is my 500th post

[plan9 6]

Well... thats it! Lod problem solved!!!!!

even fixed the shadow on the hirise after the pic was taken.

now... whats next?... the lot:

got a few shots of it from all angles:

the dependencies till now are as follows:

01     vehicle_props-V3.dat

02     jeroni_fence.dat

03     BSC MEGA Props SG Vol 01.dat

04     BSC_TexturePack_Cycledogg_V 01.dat

05     BSC Textures RT Vol 01.dat

06     plottextures2.dat

07     plottextures3.dat

08     plottextures4.dat

09     plottextures5.dat

10     plottextures7.dat

11     Stollhouse_Textures.dat

12     zADC_ParkingLot-LP.dat

13     SC4PropsNightLightFix.dat

14     VendingmachinesModrop:SC4_Pink.dat

15     merged.dat

Am I right in assuming that number 6,7,8,9,10,12,14 & 15 are from the original simcity files?

The stollhouse one i have no idea where comes from.

[Jasoncw 11,941]

I think ADC is ardecilas ndex parking lot. From the names, they don't look like maxis files to me. But that's alot of dependencies, I'd bring it down to 2 or 3. If something has more dependencies than that, I usually remake the lot myself, or I don't download it.

The stollhouse one is probably came packaged with a stollhouse BAT that was made specificly for that BAT.

When making lots, I think it's best to empy your plugins folder, and then as you go along if maxis doesn't have a good prop, then you can look through the prop packs, and add one. That way you end up with alot less prop packs as dependencies.

visually, your lot is looking good, especially how the textures line up with the parts of the buildings. I noticed the smaller part of the hospital is missing its shadow. When you make it a prop in the plugin manager, make sure to go through all of the options. One of them turns the shadow on.

[spa 970]

It looks good! This has come along quite nicely. I have to second Jasoncw's advice regarding dependencies. I do the same thing when I'm lotting... although I have to empty the plugins folder to render anyway so it's not too big a deal to leave it that way while I lot my BATs. If you can't find any props that appeal that Maxis made and you're going to have a lot of dependencies, then you should try to keep them in the form of dependencies that most people already have (BSC and NDEX files are a good place to look). It's up to you though. Looking forward to this one.

[plan9 6]

I found out that there were some remnants from the lot i used to begin with, so I started from scratch again.

I'm now down to 4 external dependencies, out of which 1 is optional... I don't suppose not having vehicle_props-V3.dat (for the ambulances parked in front of the ER) will create any brown boxes. At least it didn't for me when i ran SC4 without it.

Jeronij's fences were exchanged for the maxis grey stone wall, I lost the vending machine and the RT Textures.

The list now is as follows:

BSC MEGA Props SG Vol 01.dat

BSC_TexturePack_Cycledogg_V 01.dat

plottextures5.dat

plottextures9.dat --- Both of these come in one download, so i'm gonna count them as one dep.

Vehicle_props-V3.dat

... and of course the nitelite update from Maxis

Now for the hospital settings:

this is what I've imagined since I started this...

Coverage Radius 4096m (1 lg map)

Patient cap: 20000

ambulance funding 750 or 1000 ... im leaning towards 1000 as the standard hospital is 200

doctor funding : 4000

plop cost 25000

bulldoze 2500

wealth medium

flammability & max fire stage: same as standard

now .... a couple of questions .... what is hospital HQ boost?

and which one out of demand created demand satisfied is the one telling me how many sims work in it?

[Jasoncw 11,941]

I think the hospital hq boost is how much more healthy it makes the sims. Unfortunatly I don't have any good answers for your questions, but I'm glad you're taking the same care with the modding as you did with the BAT.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Did somebody call me?

A capacity of 20,000 patients, eh? Ok, let's see what I have for you in my stats box... I have modded some hospitals in what I regarded to be a logical extension of the stats of the default Maxis hospitals, and I'm trying to wedge your hospital into this pattern in the following - assuming that you want to create a building that offers some bang for the buck, but without being a hidden cheat.

Well, first of all, the HQ boost is the effect that the hospital will have on your health quota, i.e. it determines how strongly this hospital will boost the corresponding graph (health). All satandard hospitals have an HQ boost of exactly 11.52. If you go over this value, you will make a cheat building.

Going a bit higher could be cool for a small private clinic for rich patients like e.g. Vu Medical (and actually, Vu Medical does have a slightly higher HQ boost) or mrbisonm's Nexis Gentleman's Health Club, but not for a hospital like yours. So stick to 11.52.

A capacity of 20,000 over a full map, ok. So you are planning on a funding of 4,000 / 1,000 for doctors / ambulance cars? Pretty cheap IMHO. Don't be afraid to go to ~ 8,000 for doctors and ~ 1,500 for ambulane cars. Remember, we want to cover an entire large map.

The plop cost of standard hospitals is actually not that high; if I were to mod your hospital, I'd probably set the plop cost to ~10,000. Then again, it can't hurt to make it a bit expensive.

As for the jobs, the Maxis hospitals (the big ones) have "demand satisfied" set to 0/0/0, surprisingly. However, they do have stats for the properties "demand created" and "amenities". I would guess that the latter one is the amount of jobs they offer, and the former one is the amount of demand they create in exchange. Many buildings are set to create as much demand as the pull away in terms of jobs so that they won't have trouble getting sustained. I'd probably mod something like 205/325/70 for both. This should create a decent amount of civic jobs, but not sucha disproprtionatly high number that you can build a city around the hospital. You want the hospital to be a good employer, but nowhere near a huge industrial enterprise which often determines life and death of the communbity where it settles down because it provides 80% of the local jobs, I suppose.

Now one important point is pollution and consumption. I would suggest pollution values of 8 (air), 8 (water) and ~80 (garbage).

Consumption would be ok at ~750 - 850 (electricity) and ~1,600 - 1,750 (water) in my books.

Of course, all these are just suggestions, and in the end, it's all your choice. But I suppose if you don't stray VERY far from these suggestions, you won't notice any undesired effects.

And if you do, another aspect to remember is that those stats aren't cast in stone. Should anything unexpected occur, you can always grab the reader or SC4Tool and tweak them a bit if you think it's too cheap, too expensive, too clean, too dirty, too weak ot too strong.

I hope I managed to provide some helpful input... btw, I really like the building, and I like how you care about things such as keeping dependencies down and asking for decent stats before you add to the STEX collection of beautiful, but horribly modded BATs. Thumbs up for that from me!

[plan9 6]

Many thanx for your insight T Wrecks... this really helps a lot!

Now... a couple of observations:

The Maxis Lg Medical Center costs 1000 for 3000 patients ... If i multiply the patient cap by almost 7, the cost should be no higher than 7000 IMO. And of course I would think it to be logical to decrease the cost for doctors the bigger the hospital is, what with centralization and all... So... 5000 for doctors should be sufficient.

I agree the ambulance funding might be a bit low at 1000 a month. But, again compared to maxis, you can cover most of a lg map with 5 of the maxis lg medical centers.

In other news... the 10 hour export I did last night failed to add a couple of textures to the roof junk on the main building. The other building came out just fine, with the exception of something I can only explain as a bug... Fortunately it only affects an area of a 0,4m x 3m in bat terms, and will mostly be covered by the other building.

I'm gonna start another export in not too long so hopefully it'll be ready for upload tomorrow afternoon sometime.

[spa 970]

Actually I just noticed a small thing. The road that enters the hospital building, it has no exit. Is it suppose to be underground parking? If it's the suppose to be the standard kind of loop that most hopsitals have so that people can drive up and pick people up from the door then it reall needs to exit out on the other side of the building. If it's suppose to be underground parking you're probably fine though. I just saw it and it struck me as out of place. It's up to you though. If you've already rerendered it's probably not worth going back and redoing it for such a small detail.

[plan9 6]

It's supposed to be an underground parking. I didn't want to get into underground modelling so I just left it simple.

[plan9 6]

It's up !!!

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=15590

[Jasoncw 11,941]

Cool!  So what are you going to make next?

[plan9 6]

I had this hotel from syntagma square in athens, greece in mind.

It's a lot bigger than the pictures suggest. Each of those arched windows on the ground floor are at least 4m wide.

I'll be spending wednesday & thursday in athens so who knows what i may stumble across. There are a lot of beautiful buildings in the centre, so lack of inspiration won't be a problem.

The bad news is I'll be without internet access for at least the next few months... but there are always internet cafes.

[plan9 6]

Or maybe I should just finish this one:

I can't remember what problem I ran into that made me stop it, so it might be worth having a second look at.

[Jasoncw 11,941]

It looks good.  Is it a theater?

The bad news is really bad! 

[MarcosMX 222]

The graphics look kinda of wierd. It seems to be a SC3000 building

Anyways, I just want to say,thank you for your hospital, it looke very cool in my city.

Good job

[brancra 1,140]

Yes, here's hoping that Athens has PLENTY of internet caf

[plan9 6]

MarcosMX: The graphics look off cause it's not textured yet. Those are the colors from gmax. And the white base is just something i use to help not go outside the intended lot.

Jason: Yes, it's a theater. But a really small one at that. just big enough to fit a 2x2 lot.