brtim2

Hmm, I'm pretty sure I did not request a range here, only in the Family Props Index, so could I request a range please? Or, if I already have a range, could someone remind me of that range? Thank you.

You right, the community does not respond well to works done by others. But I think you need to change your attitude. In BAT and LOT threads no comments usually mean 'All Clear.' That means people are happy with it or they see nothing wrong with it. Comments in the BAT section are usually about something being wrong or out of place. There are, however, more active threads that get lots of posts but they all say the same thing. 'please make this' or 'i like that' or 'there is something wrong' or 'you're a god'. I don't like those posts, they annoy me. I'd rather have no posts and a lot of views on something than 87 'cool' posts. Which brings me to the next section. In a City Journal things are a little different. No comments does not always mean 'all clear,' but could mean something is wrong. However, one cannot take that as it is and instead should check the Views of a thread. That is a good indicator. I will look but not comment in many CJ's because I agree with what has been said, and obviously I like writing more than a line. Usually I venture into the CJ department just to look and gather what others have done. That means the views will go up and the posts will not. Take it as you will. (Although I have started posting more so more people can see my satire.) And I agree with Duke. I think those Photoshop enhancements are ridiculus. Especially those that include the sunlight dot or whatever it is. It isn't cool and it hurts my eyes. That's a good way for me to immediately hit the back button and skip the rest of the update.

Becca, While I must say you have gotten a hold of the BAT, I would like to offer some suggestions. The last lot you uploaded, I feel the LOT is holding it back. I think you should not have grass. Many of the Storage Places around me have cement or asphalt throughout the whole of the complex. This way trucks and cars can pull up to individual garages and off load with a little carrying as possible. Grass would get pretty messy, especially after a rain or the spring thaw. Just a suggestion if you feel the need to update said LOT. And, in reference to the LA River canal. This is a good idea, especially for bigger cities to control river paths. I do have a question, is what you have shown one large BAT or is it a mash of BATS onto seperate LOTS? Also, in regards to the texture, very, very tiled. Maybe you could make a large cement texture (128 pixels for every 16 meters in game) and then adding some blurring, some shadows, some dirt spots to break up the tiled look. Also, the GMAX renders always show colors much, much brighter than they are. It is a shame. While some people do different things, I have found that the tutorial by GasCooker is a great resource for textures. Or, if you want an easier project, just darken the texture by about 30% (or more if it is a light texture). That should make the texture show up as you intended. And I want to warn you about the water texture. Something like SimGoober's texture, outside of the canal, looks rather flat and dull. I have tested this and it does not look good. What makes the canals look decent is the addition of the 'water sparkle effect' prop in the LE. But I'm afraid you would not be able to use it as your water is smaller than a tile wide. I would say take a look at some of the water textures available that can be tiled and see if they are what you want. To insure continuity you would need something that can be tiles, but only over a large distance, that way it does not look repetative like yours does now. And, I would like to make a content suggestion. If you have many of the same straight river canals together it will look boring. Perhaps making a few random prop families that add some abandoned cars or weeds would make them more realistic, although I realize you are probably not looking at that right now as the BATs have to be made first. And I think that is it for right now. I would just like to point out that you are brave for working on the BAT and showcasing stuff, because, well, where is my thread, right? (And that is not an invitation to anyone to go dredging up my BAT Thread, if it exists.) But I have taken it to mean that you are looking for comments and suggestions. And that is what I hope I can offer you, a way to improve upon your foundation. I salute you and your work and hope you can keep it up.

Yes, but you can't classify everything. Things in the real world do not always fit in nice and neat catagories. Take The Empire of Chaumont for example. Where would that fit? It is realistic in building style. It's North American. Therefore it is realistic North American. And yet it isn't. There is no Empire in Virginia, only a Commonwealth. So then would that be Fantasy North American? But what about the parallels to real life? The characters that actually existed? And the Old World feel to some of the cities? What I am trying to say is you can try and classify all you want, but there are journals that fit many descriptions and ones that cannot be classified. You can't have one journal in a classification by itself. A classification (as like outlines) must have two or more members. The only real and concrete catagorizer of each and every city journal is the date it was created. That cannot change and it will not change. That is also the easiest and most available piece of information that MayorMommy has. Not to say the tag idea is bad, I just think it can be refined. Perhaps having the authors (that are still around) offer a few tags of their own for their own CJ's, that is an idea. Less work for MayorMommy and the author can decide what they want prospective readers to know about their journals in a quick glance.

I would love to see this tool back on Simtropolis, all paranoia aside. It gives a very good estimate to where someone is located as soon as they click on or type in www.Simtropolis.com. For many people what they would do is to only look at the World or perhaps the country they are located. When zoomed out all the way there is no way to tell where someone is located precisely. For the most part it is only one big blob of pointers in one politically designed boundary. When zooming in closer that blob becomes clearer, yet it is still not accurate. As mentioned above the tool is not that precise. And I think that is the major argument FOR it right there, it is not precise. I cannot go onto this program and look up your address, for example. Even when I tried to find myself I could not, I had to cross reference it on another site. So, with the inacurracy of this tool, why would one want this tool on the site anyway? Because it gives a good general location of anonymous individuals that visit this site. As Dirk said it was pretty cool to see a member from Ghana. Many of the more well known people here are already famous for where they are from (vidioman comes to mind) but because they volunteer that information. However, what if he never talked? Then we wouldn't know he was Thunder Bay. With this tool we can see (without pinpointing the actual member) that someone is from Thunder Bay, Ghana, Madagascar or the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. And we are aware that this is an international community. It has to be. What with the 'Great British BAT Thread' and the 'Massively Gigantic Japanese BAT Thread' and the DE Liason and the BR Liason. That makes it known we are a part of one large international community. But, when it is seen on a map with thousands of pointers, it reinforces the idea that we, as a community, are drawn together by the love of SimCity4 (and probably the hatred of EA Games). There are some people here who have not reinstalled the game yet come back to the site just to talk to friends. This is a large community, this is an international community and this is a tight community (among the active members) and now we have a map detailing how small this world really is. Yes, this tool does not function as well as advertised, but it is a great way for Simtropolis to show how very international and large this community is. And unlike the Frappr thread, this includes all visitors, even those that would never venture into the forums. And this one is anonymous. The Frappr thread you can pinpoint your city and attach it to your screen name (or is it the other way around?). With GeoVisitors the point I originally thought was mine (in my hometown) was not mine. Mine is not located in my hometown, but it is still close enough to it to show there is a one more member in the Mid-Atlantic. And your original argument was that it pinpointed the location rather accurately, when in fact, it does not. So wouldn't that protect your identity even more? If someone were to use this to find me they would see the same thing everyone else does, Catonsville. Good luck finding me there, or anywhere in that county. And beacuse they are looking in the wrong place, aren't I even more invisible then? And it seems the more rural you are the more off it is, which is good. Yet it still gives a general location of your whereabouts, which is all the tool is after. With GeoVisitors you are an anonymous blip on a map. Nothing more. And plese, people, remember, personal attacks are not tolerated here, or anywhere. If one has to resort to attacking a person instead of an argument it means they have already lost. Stay civilized and leave a person's well being, mental health or mother out of an argument. (Unless of couse, it is an argument about said member's mother.)

Date: 12/3/2005 8:36:12 PM Author: vidioman Date: 12/3/2005 8:34:18 PM Author: brtim2 I was especially surprised there is a member living in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.quote> Those were the Canary Islands. My grade 9 science teacher is from there.quote> No, the Canary Islands are not in the middle of the Atlantic. They are to the east. I mean there was someone in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. I zoomed in as far as I could and there were no islands so I zoomed in as close as I could get with the Sat. and there was nothing appearing. So it was either someone on a ship passing through or GeoVisitors was picking up part of the Trans-Atlantic Fiber Optic Cable.

Date: 12/3/2005 5:54:44 PM Author: sim1234 In my opinion I would say Bring it Back! EDIT:WELCOME TO PAGE 3!!! quote> Darn. Someone beat me to it. A little piece of me has just died. But, on topic, I would not have a problem with it being back, I thought it was a cool little feature. I was especially surprised there is a member living in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

...ask for help here Don't mind if I do. I am trying to create more Mayor Mode Objects similar to the ones on the STEX by Goldiva, Jeronij, et al. More specifically I am trying to add more water props. I have tried Andreas Roth's tutorial posted in this thread and requested help which can be seen in this thread. Even with the help I have not had luck in getting the water props in game. I figured if I were to be able to get my problem to more modders I can find a solution. These are the steps I take (not necessarily in detail): I. Make prop in BAT. Export and use the PIM to make the object a prop. II. Take another MOD that works in game. In this case DT WATER MOD BY DUSKTROOPER AND JERONIJ. III. Follow the tutorrial by Andreas Roth and copy said properties and change said properties (see example at bottom of page). I grab these properties from the DESC file as opposed to the MODEL file. Does that matter? IV. Save as new file after REINDEX and REBUILD in the READER. V. Start SIMCITY 4 and get mad as the original MOD is there and mine is not. And I have tested the original MOD's to see if my water prop has overwritten it. No dice. So if anyone has any information as to why my MOD does not show up, please speak up. I would greatly appreciate it. Click for what my MOD looks like in the Reader after changing all properties

Aha! So you have! I understand that the multiple ' show up when you 'preview' a post. For each preview another ' shows up (if there is a ' already in the title). So when you see titles with '' the person really wanted to see what each word looked like individually, or something like that. I wasn't complaining, I just thought it was funny there was an extra ' on the homepage ticker. You're just an all around helper man in these parts. You can mod the game and mod Simtropolis (thread titles at least). You just one talented man.

Hey, don't worry about it, I thank you for taking a look at this, although it only dumbfounds me more. I really want to know what is making things like this not work for me. Would it be better for me to create a new dat and manually enter in all the files as opposed to copying and changing ids? Would that matter?I have more models to try, so we shall see where this takes me. But before I begin all this work, (and anyone, not just Andreas can answer this if they know the information) is there a list of Exemplar IDs I can look at to know which ones to avoid in the same way the Prop Families are listed? Like is there a set that the game has reserved and then a set players have reserved and such? Or is it a free for all with the hopes there are no conflicts? And I wish I could take credit for the model, alas it is one of Cycledog's trees that I have altered. Now that I see it in game I agree that it is quite bright. I shall use that sparingly. Thank you again, very much appreciated. Edit: Haha, just noticed the title of this topic has a ' instead of a ' in 'won't' but the reply message on the home page shows '. That's just a little wierd, no?

Consider this a request of another sort. Could someone (perhaps multiple people?) take the model file from the first zip i uploaded in this thread with the data file found in the second file and tell me if it shows up in the Mayor Mode Tree button? After testing could you report back to me? I need to see if it is only a problem on my machine or if I am doing something wrong. Thank you.

And, apparently, mine fluctuates. I set it up at my blog, just to see if it was more than me and family that were reading it. And because I think it's cool and I'm not gonna stalk anyone. Well there are 4 seperate points, 3 in CA and one in MD. The one in Maryland should be me as it was the first one. Except it isn't even in the right county. The one here is about 5 miles off while the one on my blog is about 35 miles or so off. At least it's in the right state. Edit: From the link just posted, it says I am from Catonsville, MD. That is what my blog is showing and I just checked Simtropolis' and it shows the same point. So that means the one I thought was me is not me but someone else and I am reported to be 35 miles or so from where I am actually sitting.

Does it actually go to your house address or is it based on the physical location of something more generic? Like does the internet company have a 'node' that is used for a region and all traffic is filtered there before heading out to the rest of the world. I cannot find documentation on the site either way. I ask this because if it were to give the physical location of my house I am not too pleased because of some of the crazies out there. But when zooming in it gave me a location in the middle of an airport for, what I can only assume, is my location. There is no one else around that area and I have been on here a couple of times today. So either the program is off or they are not actually basing it off my home address but the location of a 'node' the internet company uses to handle traffic in my area.

I myself live on the fringe of 'wasted space'. My area is quickly going from farmland to single family houses. Although I don't like it I feel like there is nothing I can do about it, and I'll tell you why I think this: People want their space. The ability to own (as opposed to renting) thier own house with thier own yard is a very powerful thing to people. It does not matter what size the yard, as long as they have that piece of grass in front of them where they can entertain and hold cookouts or fence off and escape to they are happy. And yes, you are right those 'forrests' are not doing their job well as they have been planned, but they are to be considered community areas. No one owns that piece of property it is protected from development. Usually it's because there is a small stream or creek running through it, or it is a reforestation area. But it gives cover to the other houses and it makes the yard seem bigger. But the motivation to own land and own their own house will continue to push the suburbs out into farmland and sprawl them away from the city. That's why there is a lot of wasted space, the pursuit of land.

Date: 11/30/2005 8:55:39 PM Author: ardecila *Ardecila points to the part of his last post where he offers to do his own modding* I'm not requesting anything - I'm seeing if there's any interest.quote> Well then I wasn't talking to you, now was I? You are one of the people I know would do their own work, you have the experience. I was just trying to control what could have eventually been a request barrage. But you are right, I think that bridge would look cool in game. It actually gave me an idea about an aqueduct that could be dragged/drug/drugged across a valley like a bridge but without a road texture on top. Eh? I would love to make something like that, but I jump from project to project too much. I just can't keep my attention. That PM I sent you awhile ago? Yeah, not working on anything close to that right now. I can't concentrate on one thing for too long or I throw my computer out the window.

Date: 11/30/2005 12:04:25 AM Author: artforce_1 Hey, I still didnt fix my problem yet. Ideas, Anyone?quote> Sometimes the BAT lights are messed up and won't work. After my problems with BATs just be happy it rendered. But seriously, take one that is lit, merge the sign that does not light up into that scene(just the sign, no LODS or lights or cameras) and export it. That should work. If it worked for one it should work for the merged one, right? I think that would be the simplest answer to your problem than anything else I could mention. But then again I don't work with lights because they are such a pain. So try what I said and see if that works for you.

weather? it would be continually snowing!

c'mon people, this isn't a bridge request thing. This is a 'hey, maybe this will work, maybe it won't. If it does great, if not then we know it won't work.' this is a broadening of NAM and SimCity4. As you can see there seems to be a problem with the first attempt in the form of black lines between the pieces. So until the first one gets done there will be no second or third. And smoncrie also said, one bridge at a time. That means this one AND THEN the next one, if he feels it is worth it. Let us all see how this one that Jeronij and smoncrie are working on now goes, and then, AND THEN maybe there can be a bridge request thread. Or you can wait for the tutorial and do it all yourself. But we all know how that works around here. So can I please put my own request in? That we hold off on the requests until the time it is requested for requests? alright, this part was to explain about algorithms and dates and times and exporting to get the right id, but apparently there is a much, much easier way to do it that jeronij explained. it would help if i read and didn't only look at the pictures, no? and before i ask my next question i'm going back to reread the bridge. maybe tomorrow. it's late. but remember what i said above. take it to heart.

Thank you. That is what I was going to suggest. I say, no politics. They can get rather dicey. SC4 and such. Glad to hear we were on the same page.

What is meant by the 'Current Events/News' and the 'Roundtable' portions of the show? Current news around the world, or only from the SimCity world? Roundtable like political discussion or something like that?

Jeronij, about that problem. I think if you were to make the model 18 meters long but only have the LOD 16 meters long then those cracks should not show like that. That works for normal batted buildings (like canals) but it might be different with the way bridges are seen. Don't know but try that, it might make a difference. And I think the new bridge looks awesome. There are a lot of good 'long bridges' MAXIS included, but not a lot of decent short bridges. That one looks real good.

Date: 11/27/2005 5:29:05 PM Author: Andreas Roth You can do that with a little trick. Activate the development mode (if you haven't done so already), and create a new development profile called 'Full plugins folder' or whatever, where you check every folder in the list. Then click the 'Load' button, but don't select one of the development programs. By clicking the button, your plugins will be moved back into 'Plugins', but no program is started. You can also do this the other way round - when you just want to clean out everything temporarily, create another profile and deselect everything in the list.quote> Haha, I didn't even realize it, but I already did that. I even called it 'All'. Silly me. But yes, that is exactly what I did. And it worked like you said. So, please retract my request from the record.

Date: 11/28/2005 2:55:50 AM Author: Karybdis One of the interesting things is that maxis had pointed out at some point that Diagonal Bridges were possible, but just would have taken them too much time to fit diagonal pieces together. Maybe if we ever do perfect the process we can do that for them. You never know.quote> Yes, I remember a post about the features of Rush Hour and someone had commented on the bridges. A Maxis employee responded with it was either more bridge types or diagonal bridges and that they were happy with the decision they made to include a greater variety of bridges. I don't remember the exact wording, but I know it was an 'either-or' besides an 'and'. But who is to say diagonal bridges were a limitation of time instead of the game?

Said with Japanese accent while bowing head and clasping hands Ah, why thank you, sah. But thank you. I don't know why but I've always had problems with trying to put Mayor Mode Objects into the game. I finally got my water thing to work, but it won't work a second time. And I don't know what some of the properties are, I just know they were in the one I copied so they are there in this one. Again, thank you for taking a look at this. I really appreciate it.

This is a remarkable program. This makes things much, much easier for modding files. Lets just say before, when I wanted to mod or work in the LE I would have to move everything out of the plugin folder and move a new just prop and texture folder in there. But not now. This is awesome. I've had so much fun with this. And it's so easy to use. My only request (so far, I'm a needy person) would be to have a button that automatically places all subfolders back into the plugin folders. Right now there is a 'cleared plugin folders' what about a 'full plugin folders'? That would be cool too. Again, thank you very much.