timcravey

That was an effect left over from the Maxis original water treatment plant -- I thought it was the sparkly one but it turned out to be those black puffs. For now let's say it's a by-product of the treatment process.

Hot Chocolate -- my guess would be that you already have passed the development phase for agriculture. Even if demand is high, nothing develops in agriculture after a point. If you really want the farms, I use the ExtraCheats.dll and RCI Demand mod to force development. I've never had a problem with either one.

The water pump is an older bug -- sometimes it does that, sometimes not. Make the water pipe come out from all four sides of the pump and it will kick in. The little BAT next to the cleaning plant is an air filter and should remove pollution from the air. The re-zoning issue is a Maxis bug - not sure what causes it but it doesn't really affect gameplay.

Sending petitions wont help -- we should all gather with him on that day and weep while the books burn. Not because of which book he chooses to deface, but because he is destroying a part of that hard-won knowledge we cherish so dearly; we should weep because if he could he would deny us all access to information that doesn't fit his worldview. Today it's the Qur'an; how long before he starts burning the Constitution? Or "A Midsummer Night's Dream"? Or "Hammond's Concise Guide to Piloting and Navigation"? Don't think it hasn't crossed his mind.

That is very cool Rene. Looks like you have a lot of lights so that may be why it takes so long. It will be worth the wait. Sometimes I have rendered BATs that take 12 hours or more to finish. You don't have to stay with it the whole time; start it at night, turn off your monitor, and check on it in the morning. Most of the render time will be on Zoom 5 - it will finish very quickly after that. You might consider not lighting every floor but it looks good like it is.

Have you tried asking over at SC4D? Maybe someone over there could help.

@ Jarrod -- Beta 3 will be released soon. You can use the Mergatroid with Beta 2 but it will be missing some props.

This is a short tutorial on modding SimMars. I hope to show how existing mods (terrain, demand and traffic controllers, etc) can be used in conjunction with the Beta 2 and the upcoming Supplement, or Add-on. First, let's download and install the Beta ( here: ). I don't play with the music on but if you prefer you can download the SimMars music seperately and install it according to the directions in the ReadMe. Now we'll render a region - in this case I'm using a map of the Ares River Valley delta. At first glance there doesn't seem to be much difference between one location and another but close examination and careful attention to scale produces many exciting and challenging terrains. The new MOLA images from USGS are accurate enough that very little manipulation of the greyscale image is necessary. The straight-up SimMars terrain is beatiful if perhaps a little monotonous; it works real well with this tileset and it does grow on you. One thing we need is God-mode ploppable rocks that can be painted in like trees. I'll lay in a small starter colony -- The zone colors are different from SC4 standard but otherwise the game plays the same. After a brief period of development we have our first SimMars town. By creating similar small towns in most of the surrounding city squares and connecting them to my main town I'm able to create a viable regional economy quickly. One of the problems with the Beta 2 is a lack of infrastructure that cripples growth -- no trains, airports, highways. I'll add in most of the new SimMars content plus several mods not specific to the SimMars project to correct the deficiencies. Some of these may be fixed by the Supplement but for now they funtion quite well. The water purification plant (Brita Filter by Ralphaelninja) is absolutely necessary as the modding on some of these lots makes them major polluters. From PEG I borrowed a small solar plant and a large air scrubber (since replaced by my own). THL's DataViewMod is not necessary but greatly increases the amount of data available to the player so is recommended. LNX is a group of Mars related props downloaded from the STEX, possibly intended for the Beta 2 anyway but not included. Cycledogg's ploppable rocks (Mayor Mode only) are essential for filling in where trees might normally grow. Some folks find the original SimMars terrain to be rather bland and I prefer to play using THL's Desert Mod for a sandier rexture. Most of what the new Supplement will add is Parks, Rewards, Landmarks and several transit options. Let's have a look. Next -- unemployment drives me to install the NAM (with a few changes) and I try a demand mod to force development in order to show off some of the other growables.

Here is a link to my experience with ped malls -- https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=124&threadid=102759&enterthread=y It contains links to the two other tutorials I know of.

Here is a link to my experience with ped malls -- https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=124&threadid=102759&enterthread=y It contains links to the two other tutorials I know of.

Using my cover as a battery salesman I enter Rama again, this time discreetly. I am to attend a convention in the 'frontier' city of Pueblo. The city constitutes a region of 500,000 sims spread along the mouths of the Nilo Syrtis canyons. You can see in this image some of the changes expected from terraforming; the flooding of Crater 2 Aeolis Mensae and a sandier surface layer with some growth of vegetation within 500 years, widespread development of oasis and channels by 1000. The convention center is part of the world class Schiaperelli School of Business Arts. A gift from the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Martians, the magnificent Shrine of the Evil Baphomet frames a plaza outside the colony's Frontier History Museum. The fact that it remains unvandalized by the Art person mobs seems to indicate that it is being poorly received by the local critics. we saw it mostly at night and I even took the opportunity to visit Mars' most talked about nightclub -- Mojo's ChickenPotPie! I don't remember much about those evenings but I felt oddly safe and the war seemed very far away. Mojo's is a virtual reality parlor with full perception interactive creations of anything you can imagine. While touring their business district as part of the convention activities I notice that iBots and Sirius Business have built offices in the town. There is still much available real estate but plans are being discussed of a 'green belt' of inexpensive self-constructing grobots. I was shocked to see a statue of our own benevolent Governor standing in a park downtown. Again, the lack of grafitti seems to indicate that the people just haven't bothered to knock it down yet. The airport is modern and friendly; a few military craft were seen around the terminal but it is not a base. It is large and busy and zoning is in place to allow for commercial development in the area. The factory district is apparently run almost entirely by robots. The trucks keep rolling out but only a handful of people work there. Most of the population is engaged in providing services or working from home. Wierd tracers from the runway lights when departing may've been a side-effect of the mushrooms I had at Mojo's.

Using my cover as a battery salesman I enter Rama again, this time discreetly. I am to attend a convention in the 'frontier' city of Pueblo. The city constitutes a region of 500,000 sims spread along the mouths of the Nilo Syrtis canyons. You can see in this image some of the changes expected from terraforming; the flooding of Crater 2 Aeolis Mensae and a sandier surface layer with some growth of vegetation within 500 years, widespread development of oasis and channels by 1000. The convention center is part of the world class Schiaperelli School of Business Arts. A gift from the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Martians, the magnificent Shrine of the Evil Baphomet frames a plaza outside the colony's Frontier History Museum. The fact that it remains unvandalized by the Art person mobs seems to indicate that it is being poorly received by the local critics. we saw it mostly at night and I even took the opportunity to visit Mars' most talked about nightclub -- Mojo's ChickenPotPie! I don't remember much about those evenings but I felt oddly safe and the war seemed very far away. Mojo's is a virtual reality parlor with full perception interactive creations of anything you can imagine. While touring their business district as part of the convention activities I notice that iBots and Sirius Business have built offices in the town. There is still much available real estate but plans are being discussed of a 'green belt' of inexpensive self-constructing grobots. I was shocked to see a statue of our own benevolent Governor standing in a park downtown. Again, the lack of grafitti seems to indicate that the people just haven't bothered to knock it down yet. The airport is modern and friendly; a few military craft were seen around the terminal but it is not a base. It is large and busy and zoning is in place to allow for commercial development in the area. The factory district is apparently run almost entirely by robots. The trucks keep rolling out but only a handful of people work there. Most of the population is engaged in providing services or working from home. Wierd tracers from the runway lights when departing may've been a side-effect of the mushrooms I had at Mojo's.

Here's what I'm working on -- the Tetarchy of Mergatroid It's being a real pig about loosing its textures.

Here's what I'm working on -- the Tetarchy of Mergatroid It's being a real pig about loosing its textures.

I don't disagree with your screening methods. You attract a very high level of talent to your threads and the quality products that emerge are proof enough that your 'tough guy' style is very effective for many students. But some people don't want to learn EVERYTHING there is to know about BAT; they just want to recreate grandmothers dacha to put in their game and that may be all they ever do. Some may go on to do much more, most wont; but even they should be encouraged to try. They might be the next I.M. Pei. On a similar note, some people like to poke around in a new program, pushing all the buttons and discovering what can be done. But some people don't. For the inexperienced the 3d modeling environment can be intimidating. The vocabulary alone takes quite a bit of effort (I still have to grab my dictionary all the time!) For the very young, the elderly, or people whose education has neglected this field it may be near impossible to render so much as a simple box without the help of a live human being. I do, however, disagree wholeheartedly with your opinion of my simple tutorials! If I make the easy things look easy, then they can move quickly on to more advanced things. They may feel confident enough to push 'that' button that has always been a mystery to them. They might even start modeling something that IS worthy of your attention. As for the Help file, it was written in 1994, covers less than one tenth of the functions available in the program and often leaves out crucial steps that may only be discovered by exploring this or similar sites (GMAX is the design tool of choice for several other games as well) or by trial and error. That is NOT much help. But it is SOME help -- I'm sure that it was neither you nor I nor JasonCW who gave the answer that helped Lugnuts get his lights working but he worked it out for himself after seeing what we all had to say. We could ask him, but he has probably run screaming from the forum by now or, more likely, is working on his BAT rather than bothering with us. That's what I'm gonna do!

Well, I apologize for my error -- the correct prefix is 'nitelite'. But you DO need to uncheck the On box. You might also want to set the Contrast to 50 to 100 percent for the best effect; don't overdo it or your model will be too bright in-game and you may loose many of the finer details that really only show up in the night render. If you're using SimFox's Day_n_Night mod in your game (I do!) it is better to set the contrast lower (50 to 70) rather than higher so it doesn't stand out too much. You'll probably want to try this a few times to get a feel for the right lighting and it will be different for each model. Edited: Response to archived post ~zel

@It-it There is still much to do for SimMars; many of us will continue to work on SimMars content and mods. But let us get this one up before we start discussing the next one. Whether or not there is a fourth release depends on all of us, including you, continuing to volunteer our efforts for the project.

Looking good.  Beautiful picture quality - wish I had your graphics card! Interchange looks nice, too. I always do highways late, so I end up hacking my way through old neighborhoods and they look messy. Yours looks very well planned.