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Odainsaker

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Everything posted by Odainsaker

  1. Tower Life Building

    Odainsaker posted a file in Commercial

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    TOWER LIFE BUILDING Origin: San Antonio, Texas, USA. The crowning masterpiece of architects Ayers & Ayers. Completed in 1929 in restrained late-Gothic Revival style, its observation decks decorated with terra-cotta and festooned with gargoyles offer grand views of the city. Originally named the Smith-Young Tower after its developers, this was for over twenty years the tallest building in Texas and home to the city's top architects, lawyers, and insurers. Architects Ayers & Ayers would even claim a whole top floor with observation deck for 360 degree panoramic views of the city below. Intended as the initial centerpiece of a new downtown commercial center of landmark high-rises, the tower would never see its envisioned sister buildings completed, for the shocking onset of the Depression would crush further grand building projects. The building is currently named the Tower Life Building after its primary tenant, Tower Life Insurance. With its glittering wedding-cake crown gleaming in floodlights at night, this tower remains among the most popularly recognized and admired skyscrapers in San Antonio. I had hoped this could be a wall-to-wall or a diagonal lot, but the angles of the building base are just too bizarre. In exchange, I gave it a nice unpretentious plaza with an outdoor cafe. LANDMARK VERSION Lot Size: 4x4 Corner Plop Cost: 110000 Bulldoze Cost: 12773 Wealth: High Wealth Pollution at Center: Air 10, Water 10, Garbage 4, Radiation 0 Pollution Radii: Air 6, Water 7, Garbage 0, Radiation 0 Flammability: 38 MaxFireStage: 4 Power Consumed: 194 Water Consumed: 1226 Mayor Rating Effect: Magnitude 10, Radius 256 Budget Cost: 150 PLOPPABLE VERSION Lot Size: 4x4 Corner Plop Cost: 110000 Bulldoze Cost: 12773 Wealth: High Wealth Pollution at Center: Air 10, Water 10, Garbage 4, Radiation 0 Pollution Radii: Air 6, Water 7, Garbage 0, Radiation 0 Flammability: 38 MaxFireStage: 4 Power Consumed: 194 Water Consumed: 1226 Occupant Types: CO$$, CO$$$ Building Value: 53906 Capacity Satisfied: CO$$ 2200, CO$$$ 1501 GROWABLE VERSION Lot Size: 4x4 Corner Growth Stage: 8 Bulldoze Cost: 12773 Wealth: High Wealth Pollution at Center: Air 10, Water 10, Garbage 4, Radiation 0 PollutionRadii: Air 6, Water 7, Garbage 0, Radiation 0 Flammability: 38 MaxFireStage: 4 Power Consumed: 194 Water Consumed: 1226 Style Tileset: Chicago, New York Occupant Types: CO$$, CO$$$ Building Value: 53906 Capacity Satisfied: CO$$ 2200, CO$$$ 1501 DEPENDENCIESThere are No Dependencies required for this BAT. Let me know if there are any problems, as I do not have a city of sufficient size to test grow the growable version. Exemplar modding is another world for me, so who knows what I have really done. This model has been extremely long in coming, as I was planning it even BAT first came out, so I hope everyone enjoys it. A first BAT for me, hopefully there will eventually be more! Many thanks to everyone here and in the BAT Forums for their help, tutorials,and encouragement with this little project. I've downloaded gigabytes of great stuff from here, so it about time I gave something back. Enjoy!

  2. Can we mod the contour lines?

    Odainsaker replied to Terring's topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion

    Some time ago I made an accurately scaled map of the San Francisco bay area using a 16-bit mapmaking process and 1 arc-second (30m) Copernicus DEM data layered over 30m NCEI bathymetry DEM data. I noticed the NCEI bathymetry when rendered using SC4 Mapper colors had a processing artifact: contour lines! I admit, I kinda like the visual effect even if it is a sign of stair-stepping in the underwater portions of the map. Sadly, it would be masked away and lost once these tiles are rendered within SimCity with a proper terrain or water mod.

  3. Simtropolis Shipyard

    Odainsaker replied to AP's topic in SC4 Showcase

    There indeed does not seem to be many detailed photos out there but instead numerous paintings. It doesn't help that as steam propulsion became more reliable, sails were seen as auxiliaries, continuously reduced and simplified to cut down on crew size until the sails were eliminated entirely. If the sails weren't even being used, there is even less chance of such a ship being photographed with a full spread of sail. I wonder if it might help to pin down on a particular named ship. Best bet might be something like the SS Great Western (1838) or the SS Great Britain (1845), which actually still exists preserved in Bristol and so would have more recent measured drawings and photos. Interestingly, those two Brunel achievements are in the lineage of the goliath SS Great Eastern (1857). The Inman Line had a number of sail-rigged steamships, several of which, such as the SS City of Rome (1881), were acclaimed for their beautiful profiles: ...but, yeah, how much of this is the artist rather than the reality. Interestingly, SS Oceanic (1870), the first of the famous White Star Line and the lead of the popular Oceanic class of six ships, several of which served until 1910. ...of course, again, how much of this is the artist? Should I ever spot an true photograph of any of these actually with sails deployed, I'll be sure to share. __________ I admit, I've also long been looking at fan-made models for the games "Virtual Sailor" and "Vehicle Simulator," particularly those on the wondrous fansite Great Virtual Fleet by Fabricio3d. Amusingly, I was looking specifically for sail-rigged steamships for historic port scenes! Perhaps more usefully here now, though, is that the fansite has a nice catalog of already-made ships which can be skimmed to see how they and their sail patterns may look before embarking on a full, self-made, high-detail BAT recreation of a particular ship. Here is a link and sample to the collection for the White Star Line: ...of course, how much of this is the artist, for did these steamships ever actually deploy this much sail? __________ SMS Hindenburg's mast tophouse is so intimidating! Like Maximillian!

  4. Simtropolis Shipyard

    Odainsaker replied to AP's topic in SC4 Showcase

    Your Cutty Sark came out amazing! Given the theme and sides of the thoroughly engrossing historic navies collaboration, I have to do a fun shout out for a paired recreation of Preußen, a stunningly 5-masted, full-rigged icon of the windjammer era. Sadly, Preußen was accidentally rammed by a cross-channel steamer and infamously lost off Dover, but I know the perfect artist to bring this historic wonder back to the world!

  5. Show us your Camera Angles

    Odainsaker replied to Ulisse Wolf's topic in SC4 Showcase

    Are we sure those are not really photos of real scenes?! Amazing! All the wonderful scenes in this thread are keeping me wide awake with SimCity thoughts. I might have mistakenly thought many of the towering downtown scenes were already stitched mosaics with the new camera angles, but perhaps the new viewing angles are trowing off our established sense of the familiar SimCity scale. I too was thinking of also doing something like that when taking the previous image of Stromboli, as the single tile view had cut off the sides of the island volcano. So... Just needs a lava lightshow! __________ At this furthest zoom these landscape side profiles are already huge images, but why stop here? Adjusting my game's vertical resolution to 1200 pixels got me just enough camera view height to fit in the accurately scaled height of Mount Vesuvius: A 4x3 large city mosaic panorama was made with the highlight city tile being the one closest to the viewer. Imgur won't let me upload the full width of the profile view as seen from the Bay of Naples that I made with the settings "CameraYaw 45" and "CameraPitch 0", so here is the 50% reduced image size: But, we can still enjoy a view of the Vesuvius in full-size cropped for Imgur acceptable sizing: Herculaneum is near the center of the panorama facing the coast. Pompeii is further inland to the right-side image edge. I need to pile in @WannGLondon's BATs around the volcano base. (Photo from Mario Coppola) I may need to adjust my background graphics and then have some fun triggering disasters down upon my sims!

  6. Show us your Camera Angles

    Odainsaker replied to Ulisse Wolf's topic in SC4 Showcase

    Omigosh, like many others I at first though the mod was an April Fool's Day joke, but now I have been playing with it all night! In a Grand Canyon map I showed in another thread, I tried to make a bridge which SimCity instead decided to make into a thrill ride with a down ramp slotting through the canyon walls. I wondered if with the camera mod we could seemingly get inside the canyon: I did indeed try to look upwards with the camera, but there are numerous zoom, scroll, and elevation constraints. Almost...however, amusing as it was, I never expected to be able to actually look down that ramp slot in game... ____________ While I could not look upwards with the camera because of the geometry of the canyon, I did alternatively try to look upwards towards the Matterhorn for a better profile of the sharply pyramidal mountain: However, because it too its prominence already begins so high in elevation, zooming and vertical scrolling constraints kick in. That will probably hold for any great mountain. However, at sea level it is possible to get certain iconic profiles. Gibraltar: Stromboli: Sugarloaf: These max zoom out views of large city tiles use "CameraYaw 45" and "CameraPitch 0". The camera is pointed to the center of the map with those options, and the map center remains at window center regardless of rotation, but it is also not possible in this configuration to further scroll vertically or horizontally at this zoom. For comparison, here is an accurately scaled Sugarloaf Mountain in default SimCity camera angles: ...and here is the same map with "CameraYaw 45" and, more importantly, "CameraPitch 12.5" applied: The profile at this angle looks so much pronounced and recognizable, ready for a SimCity partial recreation of one of Rio de Janeiro's iconic views: (Photo by Jeremy Woodhouse—Digital Vision/Getty Images on Encyclopædia Britannica) Just add city!

  7. Show us What you're Working On

    Odainsaker replied to Haljackey's topic in SC4 Showcase

    I was finally able to resolve the issues I was having with many of @CycleDogg's terrain mods, as I wasn't catching that the multi-mod installer needed me to deliberately select the appropriate default rock textures essentials file as it didn't automatically default to the defaults when the desired terrain mod was selected. Minor technical details...what matters is that I can now apply the Grand Canyon Terrain Mod to my own Grand Canyon map: Naturally, there was a compatibility issue between the seasonal tree settings of the terrain mod and the seasonal tree settings of the used Cascadia Tree mod, causing the trees to not rotate through the seasons, but I was able to resolve those. I still haven't tweaked for snowlines or treelines yet, as I just wanted to see a quick mockup with everything working in a test plugins environment. This map orientation was originally meant to also include Zion National Park: However, I think I instead like the following alternate map orientation: At the top, rightmost corner is the volcanic S P Crater, for which @CycleDogg's Grand Canyon terrain mod also provides a great match before the drier season takes hold: (Inset photo by J8063LRsteves (Steve S) on Tripadvisor) For amusement I tried to see if my Grand Canyon could be bridged in SimCity, attempting a rough bridge near the Toroweap Overlook, but I forgot that my bare-bones test plugins folder didn't have NAM's bridge or slope controllers, and so SimCity decided on an alternative infrastructure strategy: To cross the canyon, daring drivers begin by entering a giant ramp whose thrilling descent cuts a sheer slot through the cliff wall. Gaining downwards acceleration, vehicles will have enough speed when entering a tunnel entrance at the base of the opposing cliff wall to then be propelled upwards through the sharply rising tunnel and ejected at the top of the cliff out though a tunnel exit emptying into another ravine.

  8. Show us What you're Working On

    Odainsaker replied to Haljackey's topic in SC4 Showcase

    Real life once again threw all my best laid plans into a rollercoaster, but I did get a moment to tease out another personal 31x52 large map experiment I call Greater Phoenix: In truth, "greater" Phoenix is more to the bottom left quadrant of this map, but I wanted to also include Sedona and Arcosanti, site of Paolo Soleri's real-wrold attempt at building a small arcology. However, the most interesting feature that decided the overall map cropping for me is in the extreme top right corner: Meteor Crater, Arizona! Overall the map is made on 1 arc-second, or roughly 30-meter resolution Copernicus DEMs. Currently, this is the best that the general public can freely acquired for most of the globe and, for SimCity, it is really good enough, however, it is still less sharp than SimCity's own 16-meter per ground tile can allow, and we can see a bit of the effect of lower resolution along the rim edge of the crater. Fortunately, for a few countries or of select areas the public can freely download DEMs at even tighter resolutions. The USGS offers DEMs at 1/3 arc-second, or roughly 10-meter resolution, of the United States. Other, better SimCity mapmakers than myself had already been using 10-meter DEMs already ten years ago. This resolution creates DEM tile sizes that are perhaps completely unwieldy for 31x52 large SimCity maps such as those I have been tinkering with, but it is easy enough to process and cut-and-paste iconic features like certain mountain summits using this higher resolution map data, and so I did the same with Meteor Crater: Definitely a slight but noticeable improvement over the 30-meter based Copernicus DEM. The greater map is still based on 30-meter DEMs, but where I want signature detail like for the Meteor Crater, a 10-meter DEM section can be used. You can find 3-meter DEMs for the U.S., 5-meter DEMs for France, and even 2-meter and 0.5-meter DEMs of the whose of Switzerland for those willing to tackle the Swiss coordinate system. That's overkill, as SimCity will ultimately reduce the resulting resolution to 16-meters per ground tile. USGS, EarthExplorer, NED, and now 3DEP keep changing the ease of use of their alphabet soup map viewing and downloading portals, but a current direct source for 1/3 arc-second, 10-meter DEM data of the U.S. delivered as 1°x1° tiles in TIFF format is the USGS ScienceBase-Catalog: 1/3rd arc-second Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) - USGS National Map 3DEP Downloadable Data Collection Be aware the filesizes are hefty and the tiles are organized and identified in their filenames by their top left latitude and longitude coordinates in 1°x1° intervals. Also, when DEM merging tiles, the DEMs do employ a 12-pixel overlap. I had used the wonderful Sahara Terrain Mod by @_marsh_ in the crater images above. This is probably not the ideal desert terrain mod to emulate this real-world location, but it helped to see the crater rim edges, and I have not yet been successful getting many of the CPT-essentials-referencing terrain mods to fully cooperate, like the CP Painted Desert or Grand Canyon Terrain Mods by Cycledogg, even though they look to be the perfect fit for this map. I think I have the essential files loading in the right order in a clean test plugins folder, but there may be some special terrain modding tweaks or elevation/slope handling issues I need to resolve. I did alternatively get the CPT-essentials-referencing Socorro Terrain Mod V.2 by @_marsh_ to work, and, amusingly, I did find a relatively similar aerial photograph at just the right perspective angle to compare: (Insert image by Shane.torgerson, CC BY, on The Conversation: "Meteorite impact turns silica into stishovite in a billionth of a second") Another alternate terrain mod quick attempt using the LBT Chihuahua Terrain Mod by @Heblem yielded even more snow because of the high elevation: Move along, Imperial Probe Droid...I haven't developed any Rebel bases there!

  9. Chapter 15: Anatomy Of A Battlecruiser

    Odainsaker commented on Dreadnought's City Journal Entry in IMPERIAL DOCKYARDS: CUXHAVEN

    Another fine entry with a fascinating warship! I love the image of SMS Von der Tann passing through the roadstead entrance. Although simplified, I was caught up in the cutaway section showing the armor plan, as it explained a separate nagging mystery for me. A friend had made and given me a 1/700 scale model of the battleship Nagato, on which I had noticed a very peculiar bulge to its hull that gave the ship the appearance of what I had been calling a "pregnant guppy fish": This quick photo with my phone somewhat shows it, but physical moving around the model really makes it clear this sexy battleship has some belly fat and thick love handles! Nagato had began construction just under a decade after Von der Tann did and the cross-sections with anti-torpedo bulkheads were not too dissimilar. I had assumed I was just perceiving the general thickness of the armor casing around the vital internals, but I had never thought it was so bulbous from period photos. Wiki tells us that in the immediate naval design fallout after the Battle of Jutland, the Japanese designers apparently rapidly proposed additional, oil-filled anti-torpedo bulges to augment the existing bulkheads, but these were deemed too costly and time-consuming with construction already underway. Instead, these side-swelling blister augmentations were not actually added until Nagato was reconstructed in the mid-1930s, perhaps as torpedo-panic began to set in. I had seen a reconstruction armor section of Nagato, but did not then fully realize I was seeing a girth addition to the hull and not an original double-hull until I saw your simplified diagram with elements I could still trace within the reconstruction section. Interestingly, I can see in a similarly scaled gift model of the WW2-era battleship Bismarck that the bulging anti-torpedo blisters had gone out of favor in preference for optimal speed. ... Oh, naval zeppelins...I wonder if SimCity Cuxhaven will get an Imperial German Navy zeppelin base like the Nordholz Naval Airbase of the real-world Cuxhaven. Don't let the British spot the giant airship sheds!

  10. King's palace

    Odainsaker commented on mitsos's City Journal Entry in Dimland

    I get excited to see ancient ruins and the layered remnants of past history in a city journal, and yours never fails to astound me. While I have been focusing on making maps, I get deeply caught up when I discover some region has a long lost city or excavated archaeological site that I just have to recompose and crop the map to incorporate these places. Of course, Greece, Italy, and the rest of the Mediterranean are just festooned with such sites. Recently, in cropping a map of Córdoba in Spain, I found out that just outside the city was the medieval archaeological site Madinat al-Zahra, the fortress city palace of the first caliph of Al-Andalus. Previously, in cropping a region map of Athens, I found out about Sounion with its Temple of Poseidon perched on a promontory with the most amazing views of the Aegean. Nope, I haven't ever been to Greece or the Temple of Poseidon, but I know I've seen it before already, here in Dimland!

  11. Chapter 10: Neither Fish Nor Fowl

    Odainsaker commented on Dreadnought's City Journal Entry in IMPERIAL DOCKYARDS: CUXHAVEN

    There is an old 1974 British miniseries called "Fall of Eagles" that follows the interplay of the major ruling dynasties from the 1848 Revolutions up to World War I, with scene-chewing across several episodes by Bismarck and Wilhelm II. Bismarck had taken control of the conservative education of young Wilhelm in order to pit Wilhelm obstinately as a counterweight against his more liberal parents Frederick III and Victoria, the former Princess Royal. Unexpectedly, Frederick III died early of cancer of the larynx, making Wilhelm II the new Kaiser, and with the original intended target of Wilhelm's pent-up conservative obstinacy now gone, the next remaining father-figure for the new Kaiser to stubbornly oppose turned out to be his old mentor Bismarck himself. Sacked by Wilhelm and faced with the crude dismantling of everything he had build for Germany, Bismarck in desperation turned to and embittered Victoria, and in a melancholy scene, both realize they are now powerless against they monster they had created. With Bismarck sacked, there was still one more larger, higher, paternalistic figure to oppose: Edward VII, from his hated liberal mother's side of the family, and the uncle with the larger empire and navy to jealously covet and despise. What a soap opera! I can see Wilhelm amateurishly sending battleship design sketches to his naval architects, as I must admit that I used my notebook paper in school to draw battleship side profiles, but I didn't have my own imperial naval ministry to send of my doodles to for serious design consideration. Probably for the best! Thanks for another fascinating chapter showing such wonderful ship models!

  12. Chapter 13: Death Of A Hybrid

    Odainsaker commented on Dreadnought's City Journal Entry in IMPERIAL DOCKYARDS: CUXHAVEN

    The more I learn of the Russian Baltic Fleet sent into the Far East the more I am baffled at how the Russians could be so grossly mismanaged. From the choice of fleet admiral because he was popular with the Tsar at the court in St. Petersburg, to sinking British fishing trawlers at the Dogger Bank thinking they were the Japanese. Understandably, the Russians were locked out of the Japanese-allied British network of coaling stations and so had to pack everything on board before even leaving the Baltic Sea, but that was on strongly tumblehome ships that were already top-heavy with Imperial Russian officer quarters outfitted as if they were St. Petersburg palace salons. Actually, I really shouldn't be so surprised, for if Massie's biography Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia is at all accurate, the entire tsarist system was such a teetering house of cards of bad decision-making, where at every turn when a critical choice was faced, tsarist, imperial, orthodox, and autocratic ideologies along with royal palace drama all invariably resulted in the choosing of the worst possible option. ______ Oh, thanks for another great chapter, the detailed drydock especially was wonderful to see. I am reminded of an old newspaper front page I had see in a book covering the history of Pearl Harbor where the 1913 headline was of the collapse of the harbor's first dry dock being attributed by local Hawaiians to the anger of the Pearl Harbor's guardian shark goddess, whose underwater cave home in the waters beneath the dock was damaged by the construction. Later reconstruction of the dry dock was carried out both with re-engineered designs and with appeasement offerings made by Hawaiian priests to the shark goddess. More interesting to me was the newspaper front page spread had an artist's drawing of a giant shark god dramatically thrashing across the front page as if fearsomely swimming through the text and photographs in vengeful fury. It was one of the most beautifully composed newspaper spreads I had seen, and now we don't publish newspapers with front pages quite like that anymore.

  13. Show us What you're Working On

    Odainsaker replied to Haljackey's topic in SC4 Showcase

    Amusingly, @SIM-ple Jack's mock up and @Dreadnought's intentions remind me greatly of a series videos I had watched by Samuel Resin Models on YouTube of creating diorama battle scenes using plastic model kits of 1/700 scale battleships. The most jaw-dropping to me was an exploding and sinking Yamato diorama, and though these are physical plastic kits dioramas, they are not too unlike the digital models and dioramas we all make in SimCity, and in this case especially the marvelous city journal Imperial Dockyards: Cuxhaven. I like how the modeler after some comments in the first video went back to not only add more battle damage in the second video, but went far further and has the decks and water now running red with spilled blood. Like @Dreadnought's current search for shell splashes the plastic kit modeler here too had to devise a means to construct bomb and torpedo splashes, though in this case physically with festooned cotton balls. I have no doubt the non-physical SimCity version will amaze us all. Enjoy, and I hope these were interesting or inspiring!

  14. AGC - Monuments DLC

    Odainsaker reviewed Barroco Hispano's file in Dependencies

    These are wonderful! I admit I downloaded the same models long ago from Sketchfab as a side project because I wanted more landmark monuments in my own cities, but the reality was I never had the free time to actually run through the full process of bringing them into SimCity even if just for personal use. I am really happy to see you have done so much more with them than I ever did and in sharing these beautiful monuments with the community you even gave them beautiful nightlighting.

  15. Show us your Most Scenic Areas!

    Odainsaker replied to Fischbob's topic in SC4 Showcase

    Some quick renders from prominent spots around a Greater Seville map. They are undeveloped, over-forested, and still have non-Mediterranean terrain textures as I was just looking at rough-drafts and config layouts, but I wasn't expecting the Pillars of Hercules to still be so scenic... The Rock of Gibraltar Jebel Musa Ceuta Cádiz Maybe instead of fortifying these historically strategic locales we're going to make vacation resorts! Then again, the British and Franco-Spanish armadas are just off Cape Trafalgar, so maybe the coastal fortresses are warranted.

  16. Chapter 04: Innovation On A Budget

    Odainsaker commented on Dreadnought's City Journal Entry in IMPERIAL DOCKYARDS: CUXHAVEN

    Usually the romantic presentation is that the honor of the Imperial Navy required it to do its part through the brave and glorious final sacrifice for the homeland, as the army, kamikaze corps, and even the civilian population were already making their own patriotic sacrifices for the last stand of the nation. More modern but still romantic interpretations seem to now lean towards tragically dutiful sailors being cruelly sacrificed in a floating tomb to save political face for the naval general staff. Amusingly, there is a twist ending in the otherwise sometimes silly film regarding the battleship's forlorn purpose that ties both of these ideas into a darkly ironic knot and I admit I did not see it coming. You can the watch the full movie with English subtitles for free with ads on YouTube.
  17. Another great chapter! Everytime I see Dreadnought, I admit I think about the poor spotters trapped between and behind the belching funnels. The final episode of the 2009-2011 special NHK war drama "Saka no Ue no Kumo" is "The Battle of Tsushima," where we can watch pre-dreadnought battleships (via Dailymotion), including some seriously top--heavy, ungainly, and tumblehome Borodino-class monsters, sling it in out on the high seas. I also remember one of my old history books opening with the painting "'In Honour of our Queen': Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee Review at Spithead, 26 June 1897" by Charles Edward Dixon: ...and concluding with this bookend "Arrival of the Fleet for the Coronation Review" at Spithead in 1911 painting by Alma Claude Burlton Cull: How the times, technologies, and portents changed in a few years. Thanks to @Barroco Hispano and @AP again for bringing such ships into the game for this great journal. Also, having now seen a shoutout here to Italian battleships, I hope we might someday see, perhaps when we get closer to the war, some of the rare, German-allied, Austro-Hungarian battleships visit Cuxhaven from sunny Pola. I do like how the red-and-white Austrian naval ensigns contrast against the uniform grey of their ships, not unlike Japan's naval ensign: I know it's a painting, but all these lofty, oversized ensigns seem so 19th-Century! Perhaps though it will make it too easy for Italian torpedo boats to know which end to aim at.

  18. Show us What you're Working On

    Odainsaker replied to Haljackey's topic in SC4 Showcase

    You have probably already seen it, but, just in case, here is an old topic Neon Signage Tutorials. I would think shining a direct light onto modeled neon tubes of your sign, as mentioned by @Jasoncw in that thread, and then using the exclude parameters of the light to ensure it only affects those neon tubes, might be the easiest way to get the tubes to have the hotness you might be aiming for without affecting other window nightmap lights. I don't recall if Gmax nightmap textures were affected by lights shined on them or if they were solely an overlay (EDIT: @Jasoncw points out here that they are indeed just masks over the rendering, so it will not help to continue texturing any neon tubes with them if also shining lights on the tubes). Your sign is obviously going to be much larger than what is shown there and so would seemingly have a large area of glow. However, on the pitch black background there is nothing against which to glow, and BAT and Gmax do not make it easy to create glowing air beyond the cutout profiles of our BATs. What you might do, however, is also include the the back structure of the sign in your render tests. You can then practice arranging and tweaking omni lights in front of your sign such that they hint at the appearance of this glow against parts of the back structure.

  19. Chapter 04: Innovation On A Budget

    Odainsaker commented on Dreadnought's City Journal Entry in IMPERIAL DOCKYARDS: CUXHAVEN

    "Sounds good – but when dealing with “government money” – there are always strings attached." Hehe, this entire chapter reminded me of the 2019 Japanese historical movie "The Great War of Archimedes," where interwar-period Imperial Navy staff plot the costs and practicalities of two competing budget proposals: a new fleet carrier, or the large super-battleship Yamato. Spurred by then-Rear Admiral Yamamoto, chief backer of the carrier plan, a young mathematics prodigy is recruited to discover the secrets behind of the faulty budget and design calculations of the ominous super-battleship proposal and perhaps, by doing so, preserve peace. Who would have thought naval staff procurement and accounting conferences could be such a thriller or that Yamamoto really was such a jokester? Thank you greatly for showing how your landscaping is done and referencing the tutorial of @MissVanleider and the Poseidon Terrain Mod, for the results you have achieved are inspirational. Thank you also, AP, for amazingly detailed warship models. Amusingly, the math hero in the movie I mentioned above actually finds himself clambering about measuring the battleship Nagato by hand with a tape measure!

  20. Chapter 07: The Last Of The Armored Cruisers

    Odainsaker commented on Dreadnought's City Journal Entry in IMPERIAL DOCKYARDS: CUXHAVEN

    Some years ago I watched the Taiwanese romance drama series "Silence" starring a Korean actress and which was largely set in Qingdao, China. As much as viewers were supposed to be squealing for actress Park Eun-hye and boyband idol Vic Chou, I was instead unexpectedly captivated by the romantic views of the city of Qingdao. Of course, Qingdao was briefly the German concession of Tsingtao, and German colonialism left a striking and picturesque architectural legacy on the city which has been largely preserved. Now that we have ships in the yellow and white foreign-station paint schemes, it will be cool to now be able to create scenes of these ships visiting historic Tsingtao, or even Shanghai or Tangier!

  21. Chapter 06: Evolution Of The Armored Cruiser

    Odainsaker commented on Dreadnought's City Journal Entry in IMPERIAL DOCKYARDS: CUXHAVEN

    This reminds me of the SS Imperator, a pre-WWI German ocean liner which was the first ship to be larger than the Olympic-class liners of the White Star Line. At the time of her construction in Hamburg, it was revealed that the also-under-construction RMS Aquitania would be longer by 1 foot. The last-minute solution was add to Imperator's prow a huge bronze figurehead of an Imperial eagle, the size and beak of which extended the total length of Imperator to longer than that of Aquitania, saving the triumphant pride of Imperial Germany. Clutched in the eagle's talons was a globe inscribed with the motto "Mein Feld ist die Welt"...the Kaiser must have been in love! Sadly, in 1914 the wings of the eagle were washed off in a storm and the remnant, wingless figurehead had to be completely removed as the ship was also still top-heavy...surely not a foreshadowing of things to come. Also, thanks for another fascinating chapter, and thank you AP for such beautiful ship models. I would never have imagined a torpedo tube on a ram bow, but there it is!
  22. Unfortunately, I do not have a Mac and so cannot try it out myself. The previous version of SimCity 4 for Mac was still a 32-bit program, and so it too would have been limited to 4 GB of addressable memory. It would not have needed a 4GB Patch, though, as Apple did not use the reserved memory scheme that Windows did. However, the current version of SimCity 4 for Mac has been updated by Aspyr to run as 64-bit, and so should theoretically be able to address far greater memory than 4 GB if the 64-bit upgrade to the program was truly thorough. A way to test is for someone running the 64-bit Mac version to create a sufficiently large region that it uses a large chunk of memory, and then create in that region a city that entails enough plugins that it also uses a large enough chunk of memory such that the memory utilized by the region plus that used by the city is greater than 4 GB, and then exit from that city back to region. If the memory used by the city with all its plugins plus the added memory of the region is greater than 4 GB, the Exit to Region processes haven't changed, and the Exit to Region process is successful, then the 64-bit upgrade has alleviated this sort of crash. If it does succeed, then us poor Windows users need to beg, bribe, cajole, and do all the ritual sacrificing necessary to nudge EA or GOG into upgrading SimCity 4 for Windows to 64-bit. Nobody hold their breaths!

  23. Are there really a limit to growth?

    Odainsaker replied to Propfam's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion

    I have noticed that it is possible to run out of 32-bit memory when using any "Exit to Region" options, and this too can have dire effects on any "Save and Exit to Region" function. During "Exit to Region," the current city with all its loaded plugins still remains fully in memory even as the Region View is reconstructed for loading, and a combination of large enough city, heavy enough plugin utilization, and large enough region can exceed even the hard 4 GB addressable memory limit of 32-bit SimCity with the 4GB Patch applied. This will result in an inevitable crash, and if your game is additionally saving when this crash happens from using the "Save and Exit to Region" function, the save will also be corrupted. If the 4GB Patch has not been applied, then the addressable memory limit is only 2 GB! This type of crash will vary for each player as it depends on their combination of city, plugin, and region utilized memory sizes, but it is a real constraint on how expansive we can make our games. I have crafted test regions where the Region View alone requires around 3.7 GB, seemingly leaving little leeway left for loading a city and plugins in a 4 GB space. However, when loading a city and its plugins from Region View, the Region View memory is swiftly flushed and the chosen city thumbnail with minimal memory usage displayed during the transition until the Loading City is ready, so it is still possible to normally load and play a full city from an extremely large region as the hard memory limit is avoided. The issue comes when exiting the loaded city back to Region View using the "Exit to Region" options, via either "Save and Exit to Region" or "Exit Without Saving," as as there is no placeholder transition thumbnail view behind which the city memory can be flushed. Instead, the loaded city and its plugins remain fully displayed and in memory even as the Region View is reconstructed, and if my large NAM city has 2 GB of simulation and custom content in play as a 3.7 GB Region View is simultaneously being reconstructed, I am going to hit the 4 GB addressable memory limit and crash. Other players may have smaller regions to load, but alternatively have much more complex city simulation and greater quantities of plugins utilized, with their own such combinations still also hitting the 4 GB limit. I have found in this sort of circumstance that I can only "Save City" and then afterwards "Quit without Save" without ever returning to Region View during the same session if I want to avoid this type of crash. Restarting SimCity to play each city tile in a gigantic region might seem a daunting adaptation for some, and it would be nice to make a magic mod that flushes persistent memory during the "Exit to Region" process and reduce unexpected crashes, though the time then spent reloading plugins for each would probably moot any time savings from restarting the game for each city. A quick way for other players to test this themselves is to use Windows Task Manager to monitor the memory usage of the SimCity 4.exe process, noting how much memory is used at loaded Region View, how memory changes at the Loading City thumbnail transition, how much memory is used by a fully loaded city, and then how memory changes when exiting back to region. If the memory of loaded Region View plus the memory of a fully loaded city is greater than 4 GB, then a crash is likely when exiting back to region. During the Loading City transition, you can see the memory get flushed, while during the exit to region process, you can see unflushed memory from the city already loaded balloon as the Region View memory is added until the addressable memory limit is ultimately reached. (Edit: The 4 GB limit described above applies only to 32-bit versions of SimCity 4 and shouldn't apply to the 64-bit version of SimCity 4 for Mac.)

  24. Show us What you're Working On

    Odainsaker replied to Haljackey's topic in SC4 Showcase

    Haha, now I know I wasn't the only one struggling with Munich! I had originally rotated a gargantuan Munich map 3.07° clockwise to align the SimCity grid to the grand axis of the Nymphenburg Palace and compressed to the lake surface elevation of the Chiemsee like so: Later I experimented and found that if I rotated 17.46° counter-clockwise to align with axis of Ludwigstrasse and the Siegestor leading into the old city, the outer regions of the map could include the Grossglockner, the highest mountain Austria: I'm a sucker for mountains, so I had to make the change, but in truth, all these mountains and high lakes means lots of compression, and I had compressed the lower elevations of my map by 208 meters to make the large Starnberger See be modeled with SimCity game water. However, that much compression is really extreme and severely reduces the prominence of elevations below the elevation of the lake. You can even see how much the lower, compressed elevations lost texturally in the raw, uncompressed dry run: To my frustration, the Festungsberg with its mountaintop Hohensalzburg Fortress in Salzburg particularly gets compressed. Here is what Salzburg should look like, with the large Kapuzinerberg mountain on the left middle ground and the fortress-topped Festungsberg on the right middle ground: (Panorama image from Puch near Salzburg) Below in the left region view image we can see the larger Kapuzinerberg at center and the Festungsberg facing it across the river before elevation lowering and compression, while on the right region view image we can see them after lowering and compression: The Kapuzinerberg is less than 1/3 its true size, while the Festungsberg has almost completely disappeared. We can still see the remnant outlines of the lost portions of the Kapuzinerberg in city view. However, the once domineering, mountain-top Hohensalzburg Fortress is now at ground level. His Eminence the Prince-Archbishop is NOT impressed! I will try another run through compressing much less...perhaps only to the elevation of the Wolfgangsee, which is somewhat below the top of the Festungsberg. On the plus side, it is possible to recreate our Wagnerian fantasies with a Munich map that reaches the site of Schloss Neuschwanstein. Here is quick mockup: just the VIP Terrain Mod, Cascadia Tree Controller, the Maxis castle landmark, and the no power cheat. I hadn't yet plopped in the Alpsee or Schloss Hohenschwangau... "Ooooooh! Ahhhhhh!" -- King Ludwig II of Bavaria No compression at that elevation whatsoever. It stands out even more prominently for the Valkyries when the seasonal trees change... ...and while I was sizing up my shot and waiting for a picturesque cloud formation while humming sublime tunes from Lohengrin, the castle actually caught fire at the same time as the city budget ran out, and as I had no fire stations or money left in this rough mock up, my Romantic Fantasies went up in melodramatic flames and multiple red disaster pop-ups. Sheeesh, c'mon...Obersalzburg and the Berghof are on the other end of the map! (Edit: I keep mixing up the Festungsberg and the Kapuzinerberg.)

  25. Show us What you're Working On

    Odainsaker replied to Haljackey's topic in SC4 Showcase

    This map will be great like the others! To make recreating the city of Austin easier for players, you might consider rotating the map 17.80° counter-clockwise. This will align the grid of SimCity to the original grid of downtown Austin as well as to the axis of Congress Avenue and the Texas State Capitol. The bridges across the Colorado River, the most urban stretches of I-35, and even the former rail lines through the old downtown warehouse district also all readily align to this grid. Amusingly, Austin's worst, most unbanistically incompetent stretches of roads, I-35 and MLK Boulevard, both exist where later planners foolishly broke or shifted the grid. I actually also made a map of both Austin and San Antonio together, but I admit I was sadly not able to do the rotation I'm suggested here, as my focus was instead on San Antonio, which has a closer north-south orientation based not on an American-style grid, but on a Spanish Law of the Indies colonial grid originally organized around central civic plazas. It has an L&L Hawaiian BBQ, Jollibee, and See's Candies! Into all my cities it will go. Now we just need a Shiro's Saimin Haven, a Leonard's Bakery, and a Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour for some steaming hot saimin, freshly hot malasadas, and a hot Fudge-ana ice cream sundae.
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