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It does. Maybe the lights aren't powerful enough. I do need to learn omni lights, because I always have trouble with them... it could light up more than it does now. I'll probably re-light the building as it gets closer to Christmas. Bic Camera. There is a version of this building as the Sofmap. I am doing an accurate one with just billboards and the McD's and a fictionalized one with urban clothing brands on the sides (which I use for my own gameplay). Pictured is the latter. EDIT: time to learn i guess

The main issue is that you use the boardwalk pieces in the wrong way. Your enbankement is too high. I don't know the exact terrain behaviour and parameters, but to place these near water/partially water pieces, the edge of the embankment needs be very close to the actual water surface. PEG created these CDK terraforming lots, which do specificaly that, flatten the terrain near to the water on the right height. You need to use those, then use the road tool around them tile-by-tile to flatten the terrain, and then you can demolish these leveler lots, then you can start plopping the actual waterfront lots (like these marina/boardwalk lots). Based on your image, you need to bring down the whole section (probably including those plazas too) to the water/beach level.

This is very impressive. Thank you for putting this together - I have no doubt it will be useful!

Thanks for the bug report. It should be fixed now. Also, don't hesitate to create a new post if already some time has passed since your last post or you have significant new information. Otherwise, it's easy to miss the edit. Edits are for minor corrections like typos or clarifications.

Wonderful... i can't wait for this...

Attention: This is a security update. Version 1.4.0 of the application is now available. My advice is to upgrade to the latest version of sc4pac directly – as a precaution, without opening any older version of the GUI. Older versions cannot be used anymore. If you do open an older version, it will tell you to upgrade to the latest version. Affected versions: 1.3.1 and all earlier versions of the GUI (Windows/Linux/web-app). (The CLI is not affected.) Fixed versions: 1.4.0 and later. The resolved issue: If there had been a malicious website specifically targeting sc4pac users, and you opened the website while the sc4pac GUI was running, it would have been possible for the website to install arbitrary files on your system without user interaction. Impact: I have no indication that such a malicious website exists, so realistically I think there's no need to be overly concerned about this issue, at this point. Such a website would have to be designed for sc4pac specifically which, given the size of the community, seems unlikely. There's no problem if you visit any random shady website that's not related to the community in some way. There's no problem when the GUI isn't running. There's also no problem if you use Safari or Brave as web browser. So, to summarize, I have no indication that the issue has been abused, so far. But, as precaution, be sure to upgrade to the latest version. Other changes included in this release: Most of the new features focus on functionality to help you resolve abnormal situations, that wouldn't usually occur under normal circumstances. For example: If you've accidentally deleted a file from the Plugins folder, use the "Reinstall" button for the corresponding package. If a downloaded file is corrupted and fails to extract or doesn't contain the expected files, use the "Reinstall & Redownload" button. If you've accidentally removed an .sc4pac folder from your Plugins, use the "Scan & Repair Plugins" button to re-sync the Plugins folder with sc4pac. If you've created two Profiles with conflicting Plugins folder locations, sc4pac will warn you about it. Additionally, you can now rename and delete Profiles.

So I ended up lowering the shore and ploping the waterfront one tile backwards surrounded by road stubs. It worked Thank you for all the tips , and also @Tyberius06

I actually confirmed it lights up in a later post. Though the nightlights really aren't all that bright (and I have no clue how to BAT, much less do nightlighting so I kind of get what you're saying). Lammtarra in particular should have its signage glowing bright yellow and AOKI's roof should be illuminated by downward facing lights surrounding it, though that one's not as much of an issue. Still wonderful job nontheless.

Finally, coming back to this: The channel hasn't been updated in a long time, so without maintenance its contents are basically available "as is". You may find some unique things there, but others might conflict with the other channels which have grown a lot since then.

...and I wasn't satisfied. Just one more lane, right? E-W route widened to RHW 6S - North ramp terminal - West ramp terminal - East ramp terminal - South ramp terminal - Zoom out - Compare to- OG build

That is a bunch of extra work for every exemplar the game loads, and it would just be duplicating something a DLL can do by itself. The process of fetching the file path from an exemplar (or any other DBPF resource) is somewhat convoluted. I implemented something similar in the query UI hooks DLL to optionally log the file path of a queried building. The steps are as follows: Get the TGI (cGZPersistResourceKey) of the object of interest. The code I linked to above demonstrates this process for cISC4BuildingOccupant. For property holders and most other resource types, this can be done by requesting a cIGZPersistResource pointer through QueryInterface and calling its GetKey method. Use the TGI to request the matching cIGZPersistDBSegment from the resource manager. Grab the file path using cIGZPersistDBSegment::GetPath. Note that user plugins are often bundled into a class derived from cIGZPersitDBSegmentMultiPackedFile, which adds a layer of indirection. My GetResourceFilePath method (called by the code I linked to above) handles both steps 2 and 3. Here is an example that gets the path of a property holder:

I found an example. I bulldozed a couple of buildings and plopped road stubs: Zoomiered:

Carrying on with semis...

Hello...! Yep... I'm very slow at making BAT... I'm so sorry about that. But I've been very busy in reality lately. Here is the current status of my BAT. I'll make the back of the building someday.

Beginning to definitively establish the walled city...

Hey everyone, my first post in a long time I've been working on a new DLL mod that makes finding and plopping lots a lot easier. Here's what it does: Features: In-game UI window with searchable lot browser Filter by zone type (R/C/I/Ag/Plopped/Other), wealth level, lot size and if necessary Occupant Group as well Search by building name or description Shows building icons and details before you plop (if they exist) Should works with all custom content and growable buildings Hotkey to toggle the window (customizable, currently uses O which is not mapped to anything else in the base game) Why: Instead of scrolling through endless menus (though the Submenu DLL has already improved this a lot, thanks memo :D) or trying to navigate the awful builtin LotPlop or BuildingPlop dialogs, you can just search "police" or filter for "2x3 commercial $$" and see everything that matches. The tool interfaces directly with the game's placement system, so plopping works exactly like using the normal (sub)menus to plop something. Video of the advanced lot plop tool in action here (on Streamable) Note: The mod uses Dear ImGui for the interface and hooks into the game's DirectX renderer. It does need DirectX11, which means it will only work for people running SC4 in DX11 mode via dgVoodoo (or potentially other DirectX wrappers). First release: A first release is now available on GitHub: https://github.com/caspervg/sc4-imgui-advanced-lotplop/releases/tag/v0.1.1 This is very much a "works on my machine" kind of release. My machine in this case means Windows 11 25H2, SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition (Digital from GOG) and dgVoodoo3 set to DX11 mode. But you might be lucky with some other configurations too, definitely let me know! Some screenshots are attached Suggestions and comments appreciated!

I've never used any of these programs and haven't tested, but a search through google and some old forum posts indicate programs like TurboTop or OnTopReplica might help you out.

For the standard menus, I prefer to stick to just 1 level of nesting, i.e. just top-level submenus, to avoid unnecessarily deep menus. Especially the noise barriers or streetlights, I imagine, would usually come in sets with their own sub-submenus which could go directly into the Signage submenu. So you'd have 2 levels of nesting instead of 3.

Working on this building some more and an update from my last post: 1. Lowest funding/grades are now fixed with appropriate LUA coding based on the DOT code. 2. Number of Educational buildings is fixed by adding the # of schools + libraries + museums. 3. Funding numbers for buildings were, after extensive testing, determined to be percentage amount of funding represented by the slider and not actual $ amounts, consistent with the overall education funding percentage noted above. With these fixes, I'm very close to a final version of the query. Just need to test it a bit more. As far as buildings/lots go, that's another issue. I was again thinking of using @Diego Del Llano's Aldred Building for an urban version. Not sure about a rural version yet.

This is exactly what I was talking about ! Thanks, I appreciate it !THANKS A LOT !

Links added for SFBT CID Headquarters 2059 swi21 Ecole de Musique BSC 1686 Winterton Opera House 1911

When you find the torture chamber of that one psychopath neighbor who was always "oh, so peaceful and kind-hearted".

Make sure that you have also moved all the dll-files that dgvoodoo2 comes with to the directory where SimCity4.exe is located, and that you have applied the 4GB patch to your SC4 executable. Not easily I'm afraid. The game retrieves all the .dat/.SC4Model/.SC4Desc/.SC4Lot files from the Plugins directory at load time and I query the game's methods that allow me to look for exemplars, but that data no longer contains any information on the original files or directory that they came from. Maybe this would be possible if the sc4-resource-loading-hooks DLL patched a new property into each exemplar with the path it was loaded from, @Null 45? I think that could be possible, at least for favorited lots that are actually ploppable. Will take a look into it

Currently, I am creating this small neighborhood, with the church plaza very central:

Excellent! I will make various models with a few Parisian building facades to add variety, similar to the Manchou buildings. What's more, there's a diagonal version. Thanks again, @simmering.

was going to release this Saturday but the site was down. better late than never!

I exported the barriers as separate props

Current status of my BAT Yep... I'm very slow at making BAT... I'm so sorry about that. But I've been very busy in reality lately. It would be nice to have a tutorial that summarizes the process from exporting the building from BAT4Blender to completing the BAT. And I hope the BAT4Blender will have Day, MN, DN lighting presets someday. The process of adjusting the lighting settings to in-game is very difficult...

Agreed with ACE re: the glass noise. I think the reflectivity is fine, it's just the bump strength. Lately I've been working on a few buildings that have that dark mirrored glass, and it's a pain to get right. Also really nice to see Accenture in the mix. I have a fun memory of getting lost in there a few years ago and eating a falafel that tasted suspiciously like it was cooked in one of the fryers at the Popeyes next door. Nice work!

That looks a lot better! I like the blinds. A few more nitpicky suggestions: the bump noise on the glass is a little intense. I'd maybe reduce the scale on the noise texture a bit, maybe halve it, to reduce the noise frequency. If the panes are separated (i.e., not a single sheet of geometry), you can also play with the Random Per Island node to break up the noise per window pane. I'd also suggest playing with the coat roughness (assuming you're using the coat for tinting). By bumping that, you can soften/mute the reflections higher up the building without needing extreme noise in the normals, which looks a bit more natural. The advantage of doing this with coat roughness (instead of base roughness) is it will have less effect on the transmission, so you'll still be able to see through the windows correctly. Again, nitpicking, it looks great already. But prominent reflections tend to look a bit jarring in-game where they don't actually correspond to anything.

Unfortunately the light rig (and compositing setup) depends pretty heavily on driver connections to know the rendering state. AFAICT, drivers are very fragile and break as soon as you copy them, even within a file. So we'd need some alternative means of getting the data around. I've experimented with custom named properties for this, but annoyingly one of the fields I need to update (the rotation of the sun disk in the world lighting) does not support noodle-graph input and so can't be changed automatically without a driver. I do absolutely agree it should be better, and I hope we'll get there in time. For now, the expected workflow is to start by forking the light rig file and importing anything you need in there. Alternatively, use linking to non-destructively load your model into the light rig scene (this makes it a little easier to update to a new version of the rig.) Somewhat related: in an attempt to make emissive night lighting easier to manage, a new custom node: Work has been kicking my ass so I'm struggling to find time/energy to get this all ready to go, but updated rig should be out sometime this month.

Cuidick Financial District/Central Station

Today I did a technical test (for now, a preview rendering) with a model that I can't export from Blender to 3DSMax 2012, so I decided to do a technical test with the new updated version and @ACEfanatic02 lighting. In the preview, it seems that the rendering with the current settings works, especially the differences between Maxis Nite and Dark Nite (With Post processing and Super Sampling enabled) DAY Maxis Nite Dark nite Since I come from 3DSMax, I have to say that Maxis Nite is acceptable in that a lot of blue has been reduced and it strikes a good balance between blue and black. The lighting system is not very intuitive at the moment, and there are definitely improvements that need to be made. I wonder if it would be possible to apply the settings automatically without having to merge two Blender files. For now, these are my first impressions, especially when switching from 3DSMax to Blender, which is not very user-friendly. Tomorrow I will definitely test the model in the game to see if there are any possible improvements, but I think the tool is already ready for an official release.

uphill

You were so right about the glass on 1 S Wacker. Does this look more correct?

Yeah, that is the way. However, only Staff have said Source button. It seems I can paste a table when I copy it from an HTML source (Example below). Is it OK to do it that way or do you see any issues? SimCity 4 Regional Stats Overview City Name Population Mayor Rating New Arcadia 125,000 92% Bayview Heights 87,500 88% Greenwood 54,300 95% Ironclad Point 102,600 89%

A modular marina with a helipad. Obviously not ready yet. Need to find a less silly water paint and make the helipad, and maybe even add a lounge room and a lighthouse.

I think the glass may be a little too reflective, especially on 1 S Wacker. Looks more like metal than glass on the shadowed side of each view. In street view you can clearly the offices through the windows, so they're not nearly that reflective IRL: The bands of opaque and transparent windows would break things up a bit, make the building look a little less... dystopian, IMO.

Shouldn't this be named "Cori's Shoppe, something, something"? Just saying.

When you use the Create New Region, that makes a new, random Config.bmp in that folder. Go ahead and delete that one. Then use Window's File Explorer to create a Boston folder in the Regions folder (which is in the SimCity 4 folder in your Documents). Now copy in your grayscale jpg, my config.bmp, and region.ini into that new Boston folder. Go into the game and Open an Existing Region called Boston. You should then see it like in my first pic. And now do the magic key combo for rendering.

It sounds like you've been working hard on this stuff and it looks great! I'm surprised that these edits would require a full version level up, but that's up to you. I am very curious about the "corruption of exemplars" and how that could've happened. While I understand that this is a development diary, I'm hopeful you'll be able to expand on exactly how this corruption occurred and what the fix is, so that at a minimum these updates are not lost to time and so that we can understand the impact in our own game and if these issues affect other people who may or may not be using CAM 3.0 and/or PIM-X. I've noticed, for instance, several reuploads of long-standing buildings (like the U.N building and the Secretariat Building, or the growable Empire State Building) that were reuploaded for CAM 3.0 support (like adding a version of the building for CAM, as well as sc4pac support, and submenu support). All of those buildings also include release notes like "fixed eventual bugs". What does that mean? Do those reuploads for those "eventual bugs" involve exemplar corruption? Does this mean that if we used those buildings in our Plugins prior to these versions, there is exemplar corruption? I took a look at the Growable Empire State Building and I didn't notice any edits at all (the file dates are exactly the same in the new version and the old version) although I didn't go through the building exemplar line-by-line to see. Also, I remember the other thread which discussed crash-to-desktop due to beach placement. Does that apply only to beaches that were made with PIM-X (recently or forever?) or is it a broader issue? I have some custom beaches but haven't gotten around to testing them yet. I'd just like to know the extent of these bugs and if there are implications for my existing game. I think it's good for this sort of stuff to be discussed in the open, like in the old SC4Devotion forums, so that we can know what's going on with the game. PS: Love the idea of the Universal Cap. I was testing a beta-version of this. One thing I have yet to determine, and maybe you know, is if the Cap immediately applies in an existing city with the installation of the patch (maybe after running time), or if you need to re-do the neighbor connections first.

Hi! The last version has this arrow as a tip, just like you suggested:

New version with some extra features now available: https://github.com/caspervg/sc4-imgui-advanced-lotplop/releases/tag/v0.1.3 - The filters you set are saved when exiting the city and carry over the next time you boot the game as the default - You are able to mark specific lots as your favorite, this will also save and carry over to any other city within the plugins folder. (see image 1) - The tool will keep track of your most recent plopped lots, and you can review them quickly in the Recent tab at the top. (see image 2) - Double clicking the row of a lot in the table will now also activate the plop mode. Enjoy!

I wanted to contribute metadata for a tree controller that's not currently listed in sc4pac, is there a process for doing so? I submitted a PR to the memo/sc4pac channel but then I realized simtropolis has its own channel and now I'm unsure whether that was the correct place. The mod developer (blunder) hasn't logged into the site since 2024, so I figured it isn't likely to be getting an update anytime soon from simtropolis's servers. Also, I stumbled across Zasco's sc4pac channel, it appears that it's mentioned in the sc4pac "About" page, but aside from that It's not very discoverable at all (and it's not included in sc4pac's default channels). Is there any reason against either merging it into the main channel or adding it as an additional channel in sc4pac? There's a lot of extra mods there, including the tree mod I just documented myself...lol

I love where you are going with this. (I added the Featured Star to draw more attention to it.)

Hello, I'm back... maybe...? 😂 I'm trying rendering my building on BAT4Blender now. I set the sky/sun lighting and now it looks similar to a screenshot of a Gmax rendering that I made before. I wanted to add the nitelite lightings on the building but BAT4Blender doesn't seem to support extra lighting yet. So maybe I'll try a building that doesn't require extra night lights. Here is the recent render pic of my latest BAT.

Did a lot of work on my region's beltway this week - check out my commentary on YouTube. Let me know if you want to see anything in particular next

I don't think that's supposed to be a thing

Well, this is awkward...

I'm a fucking genius when it comes to city building. Nobody does it better than me. Deal with it.