un1

If you were to one day recieve a PM saying "You have been chosen to become a moderator", what would you do? Rules: Follow the Forum Games rules that the real moderators set. Any current moderators, admins or Dirk, you aren't allowed to post here unless there is a moderational need to post. Example: If I was an ST moderator I would organize the boards that I moderate. (Note: The ST staff are watching...) Enjoy, -un1 Edit: Removed that rule so I can post.

Authors: Un1 and Deathtopumpkins If you have any questions about this article, PM Un1 or Deathtopumpkins for more information. Part 1 - How To Create and Mod Base & Overlay Textures Before we get started, a common knowledge and the having of the following programs is required. (Click to go to the download link) A Photo Editing Program (MS Paint is an example) SC4 Tool Lot Editor IrfanView Just a note about the lot texture I am using, this texture I am using is just a easy texture I made so I can make invisible base textures. Step 1, Make the texture using any photo editing program. Here is my example, (Read the texture note above for any questions on the texture) Link to better quality .png. Step 2, Resize the texture to 128x128. Try to use IrfanView for this, it is much more friendly to use. Step 3, Save the image as any name you desire, though, I like to save it as a texture code. (It keeps things simple in the long run) Step 4, Load SC4Tool and select the Texture Creator. Step 5, Select the .dat file you wish to load the texture into. *Anyone who tries this out after the LAM (Landfill Addon Mod - by un1) is released, please don't put your textures in it* Step 6, Then select add texture. Step 7, Select the folder that is circled in the next photo and find your texture. Step 8, Make sure the circled items below are selected. Step 9, Insert the texture IID (Identification hex number) , you can get your own range here. If you do not use your own specific range, duplications can occur and produce unwanted results in the game. To avoid this, please request your own range. *NOTE: Do not copy the above hex. This is my own and will cause conflicts. Insert the first texture in your range in the selected area. I suggest that you don't click on the "next free IID" button. This will require you to re-paste the IID. Please do not put 0xF45AAA into that area as it is my personal IID. Get your own here Then click on "OK". That is all for making the textures, now you want to check the following things to make sure it works right. Check 1, Right after you click "OK" you close the add texture box then click on the texture you just added. If it worked right it should look like this, Check 2, Then you open lot editor to see if it got into the list. If it did not make into this list, you either did not insert the correct hex, or something else went wrong. Re-read the above steps and try again. Check 3, Now check to see if the texture goes onto the lot the right way. This concludes part one. Part two covers transit texturing. Part 2- Transit Textures Necessary Tools: -Ilive's Reader -FiSHman -photo editing program (MS Paint will suffice) -SC4Tool Note: In this article I will be replacing the orthogonal road texture with a slightly modified one to match the SCRT's upcoming Transit Retexturing Project. STEP 1: Open the Reader, and select "Texture Viewer" from the Tools menu. Note: This only works for the Maxis network textures. To get any custom ones, such as for the Rural Highway, you must open the dat and extract the textures, by selecting them all, right clicking, and clicking "Save Decoded File." If you use this method, skip steps 1-3. STEP 2: Expand "Street/Road/Rail/Highway" and then "Zoom 5," and click "Road." Don't panic if at first you don't see anything. Even on my high-end PC it takes a minute for them to load. STEP 3: Scroll down until you come across the orthogonal road textures. Then right-click on the one entitled "0x00004b14" and click "Save FSH." It then saves the .fsh file for that texture somewhere on your computer, usually in the last folder you had open (i.e. when I just did this it saved it in the folder containing the pictures for this article. STEP 4: Open FiSHman, select Open, and browse for your file. When open, right-click the bitmap icon, and click "Export... Color." When saving the file, be sure to save it with the same name as the original .fsh file. This is not absolutely necessary, just extremely helpful later on when you go to putting it back in the game. It will always begin with "0x," and in this case it's "0x00004b14." Then in the "Save as type" field, save it as a .png (Portable Network Graphics). For the purposes of this article, it does not matter where the file is saved to. Once you've saved the color png, do the exact same thing for the alpha, just add something on to the end of the filename to distinguish it. I usually use a lowercase a. STEP 5: Close FiSHman and open the .png file in the image editing program of your choice, make your desired changes, and save. When you have all the textures you wish to make a texture mod out of, open SC4Tool. Here's the texture I'm using: STEP 6: Once SC4Tool opens, select the "Create your own textures" button, and wait as the program loads all of the texture files. When it's done loading, you should be at this screen: Click the Star to make a new dat file. You should then be at this screen: Despite what the window's title says, this is in fact the "Save..." window, and is where you will name your dat file you're going to create. The name has no effect on the mod, so it doesn't really matter what you name it. STEP 7: Once you click "Open," it returns you to the "Texture Creator" window. From there, click the little picture icon, and it opens this window: You then need to check the "Disable TGI-checking" box, or you'll get an error when adding textures, and select the "Traffic texture" radio button. STEP 8: Click the folder button next to the 128x128 field in the Bitmaps box. In the window that comes up, browse to wherever you saved the .pngs, select 0x00004b14, and click Open. Then click the camera icon next to the folder icon you clicked on. This tells SC4Tool to automatically copy this texture for all zoom levels. Some people prefer to do a separate texture for each zoom, but that is not necessary, so I don't usually bother. Then repeat what you just did for the alpha textures, and you should end up with this: (yes I'm aware that my images are JPEGs, I had to convert them to post on here, and so just used the converted ones for the purpose of this article) STEP 9: The last thing you need to fill in for this texture is the IID (Instance ID), which goes in the field in the top left. Remember back when I had you name the .png after the .fsh? That was because the.fsh was named with the IID for that texture, and now, since the .pngs are named with the IID, we can use that as reference for entering the IID. But it's not exactly that simple... The last digit of the IID must be changed to 0 to work, as the last number of the IID stands for the zoom level, and the 0 acts as the overall one. If your window now looks like this, you're good: Then just click OK and you're good. A folder will appear in the panel on the left with your textures, and you can keep adding more by repeating the last few steps. Once all of the textures are in there, just close the window, move the dat into your plugins folder, and start the game! It automatically saves every time you add a texture. Note: It is safe to delete the .sav file accompanying your dat when you are finished.

I've tracked tropical cyclones globally for a few years now, and this storm was truly horrifying. To compare it to any storm that ever existed is foolish. There is no aircraft that fly into Western Pacific typhoons (why not? no idea) anymore, so we could only go off of satellite estimates. The Dvorak technique is what is commonly used. Haiyan, at peak intensity, looked unlike anything I'd ever seen. The storm was so amazing, it broke Dvorak, which at one point gave it a "8.1" rating, which is impossible since the scale stops at T8.0. Dvorak had no ability to comprehend that a storm this perfect could exist. The cloud tops surrounding the eye were too cold and the eye was too warm for it. Notice the ring of cold clouds that go above the scale directly around the eye. What made Haiyan like this? I honestly have no idea. The storm was only initially supposed to make landfall at the very minimal super typhoon status (130kts, 150mph). It explosively intensified two days before landfall, and had only barely reached category 5 status at that point (140kts, 160mph). Usually storms like this weaken abruptly right as it reaches peak intensity near the lower end of category 5 (think Katrina, Rita etc). I remember saying to someone (no one in the storm path) that Haiyan didn't seem likely to even be super typhoon at landfall just because of how storms like this never intensify much past 150kts (175mph). Haiyan didn't stop. This loop basically starts at how it looked when I told that guy it should weaken, right up until landfall. Dvorak reaches T8.0 once a decade maybe, I remember waking up about 12 hours before landfall and my heart sank once I saw the fateful T8.0. It was clear at that moment that this storm would be just terrible, no matter what anyone did to try and make it better. At that time it had reached previous world record intensity, 165kts (190mph). The storm kept strengthening during the last hours before landfall. The clouds continued to get colder, the eye more round and the storm more symmetric. JTWC upgraded it to the now global record intensity, 170kts (195mph) a few hours before landfall. At this point, the storm had the appearance unlike anyone had ever seen since the satellite era. It made landfall not long later, on Guiunan, Philippines. This is why it's considered the strongest storm to ever make landfall. Was it really? Dvorak typically underestimates storms, but we have no precedent for Haiyan, so we can only guess that it really was. As horrible as Haiyan was, it was moving incredibly fast. This saved the landfall areas from flash flooding (main killer in cyclones), although it made surge worse and gave it that "it was like a tsunami" feel. The last report from Guiunan (where the storm made landfall) was about 2 and a half hours before landfall. They measured 100mph winds and 977mb pressure. That was the last anyone heard about that city until nearly 4 days after the storm. Nothing could've made anyone prepared for this storm. The area isn't likely to get a storm this horrible this for a millennium, even then a storm this strong happens maybe twice a century globally. This is a horrifying comparison of Haiyan at landfall to Katrina at peak intensity (same IR enhancement). Katrina hardly has any -75C cloud tops, whereas Haiyan is basically just -80C cloud tops. Katrina was much weaker at landfall as well.

Death by inactivity!

SC4 is the best. SCS isn't really SimCity, it is more an extension of the Sims. -un1

In this situation damage describes the severity of the storm much better than death toll. It's sadly true that storms regularly cause 100s of deaths globally every year. However, it's very rare for a storm to cause more than $10 billion in damages though.

102 people confirmed dead (was at 67 before landfall on New Jersey). Deadliest atlantic hurricane since 2010. Initial damage reports suggest at least $20 billion in damage, but some go upwards of $50 billion. For the record, the 5th costliest atlantic hurricane of all time is Irene, at $19 billion in damages. The costliest is Katrina at $100 billion in damages and second costliest is Ike at $37 billion. This seems to have a shot at beating Ike for second place in damage totals for the Atlantic basin.

So after a rather "blustery" night in the northeast, it would appear that most of the damage has been done. Lower Manhattan experienced record storm surge and has been flooded, and a bunch of New Jersey cities have also been completely flooded. Of course, these are night time reports and we will have a better idea tomorrow in the morning. Although it would appear that for now Duke's concern about the subway lines being flooded has come true. It seems the situation is grim. It would also appear that the fatalities will exceed 80-100. With 67 being confirmed in the Caribbean and so far 11 being confirmed in the United States, 6 of those in NYC. Won't go into much detail on the damage although I would like to point out the significance of this storm. A storm like this, honestly, is something I would never expect to see in my lifetime. It's rare enough to get a strong storm like this north of the Caribbean, but Sandy was nearly a category 2 hurricane at landfall (with pressure and size nearing category 4 strength). Conditions were absolutely insane for this to happen. So in direct response to Sgt Pepper, no way this was overhyped. This thing was almost automatically going to be way worse than anything Louisiana has seen since Rita in 2005. I wish the people of the NEUS the best of luck while rebuilding! Sandy at peak windspeed right before landfall on Cuba. Sandy at lowest pressure (940mb, lowest out of any hurricane this year) right before landfall on New Jersey.

Sorry for my lateness; There are 3 types of cyclones, extratropical (cold core), tropical (warm core) and subtropical (hybrid). To be a warm core cyclone the storm must have a lot of deep thunderstorms that comes from the warmth of the water. Now in the case of Chris, he was over the Gulf Stream, but over waters of 22C which is nearly 6C below the normal temperature needed for a hurricane. What he did is he was under a cold core upper level low which gave him a lot of support to fire thunderstorms and lowered anything that was too negative for development. Since the water was warm enough and he was moving slowly he was able to organize his little amount of thunderstorms into a tiny but rare hurricane. Other examples of this is Vince from 2005 and Grace from 2009.

7639. Seems to have slowed down lately.

4 years...and one day. Can't believe I forgot yesterday.

I'm around here on the political compass: http://www.politicalcompass.org/facebook/pcgraphpng.php?ec=-6.38&soc=-2.41 Economic Left/Right: -6.38 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.41 Which makes me independent. Economically, I support full state control on the economy. Not sure why, but I've developed a hatred towards businesses. However, I am a supporter of Keynesian economics. Socially, I support freedoms, and I do not put much focus onto them. I'm more laissez-faire on this side. Although, I am not a huge fan of freedom of religion (I am strongly atheist). I'm not a huge fan of freedom of media either, they have biases and can be very wrong when that freedom exists. I would rather everything be biased to the state. Overall, my views are pretty crazy, and that's how I like it!

Congrats cacks and dta!

On the topic of history classes in high school, I am currently in the Ontario required Canadian history course in grade 10 covering the era after what we learned in grade 8 (which was colonization and independence). I was pretty amazed as to how much they fit into the course, we covered over many topics about the Boer wars, the social changes and the prosperity under Laurier, WW1, the great depression and tons about WW2 (including the holocaust, Hitler's rise to power and a surprising amount on the Soviet offensive). Looking forward in the textbook to the cold war, it covers a fair amount on the main topics of Korea, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and the dissolution of the USSR. We will probably run out of time and only discuss those topics in minor detail, but it really amazed me as to how much we crammed into a few months, and how many people are actually failing the course. Back onto the topic though, the US is no where near the point that would allow for an extremist to be easily allowed into power. I know some people would jump on board if there was a "Hitler"-esque person around who promised better times via extremism (in the view of a republican, would that make Obama a soviet hitler?), and I'm sure that he could eventually get into power. Although, any attempts at taking too many rights away at once would not be possible and I'm sure after the first skipped election a large revolt would happen. At this time of course...the global outlook for 2012 does looks gloomy, so you never know how much this post might change in 1 year....

The first video game I played was Pokemon: Fire Red version, but it was Sim City 4 which made me get addicted to computer gaming. I still haven't played a console game in my life and I'm proud of that!

No, doing that would've been completely stupid. Truman was right here. The USSR wouldn't have died without killing hundreds of millions and completely burning everything in the world to the ground. The Soviet Union wouldn't have fallen easily either, the country is too vast to nuke to the ground and invade, and they had the resources, as they showed in WW2, to build a huge military in a few years and mobilize it quickly while using the advantage of the winter to starve enemies. A war with the Soviets would've been horrible for both sides. The US and allies might've had a chance to win a war against the USSR and allies before they found nuclear weapon technology and before they rebuilt after WW2...but after that and until 91 the USSR wouldn't have fallen without a massive and bloody fight. I'm sure that a large hole would've been blown out of the Earth's population had the Cold War escalated into a real war.

Tomorrow/today (depending where you live) is the start of the hurricane season. The models are predicting aren't predicting a La Nina season (high amounts of activity, including 2010) or an El Nino season (lower amounts of activity, including 2009) but a neutral year. A neutral year, being relatively unpredictable means that nearly anything can happen (low activity years and high activity). The current prediction average is 17 (100 year average is 11) named storms, 9 hurricanes (100 year average is 6) and 5 major hurricanes (100 year average is 2) mainly due to the above average sea surface temperatures. The last neutral hurricane season was 2005 (very infamous for anyone living near the gulf coat). A few analogue years have been picked for this hurricane season (years that could be similar to 2011) and luckily 2005 isn't on the list. The list contains years with quite a bit of US hurricane hits, including 2008, 2004 and 1999. In fact there is a 70%+ chance of a major hurricane (category 3 or more) hitting the US. There hasn't been a major hurricane landfall in the US since Hurricane Wilma in 2005. Accuweather has created a nice map of areas that are in danger from this upcoming season. If you are pretty much in a frequently hurricane hit region, I would suggest being prepared for one (especially if you live in/near a higher area of concern). Early season would be June-July and Mid-Late season would be August-October. This thread will be pretty much a thread where I (or anyone, I'm going on a trip in July and August and wont be able to update easily so any one who wants to take over can) post information. I will also try to post information on any large storm that is heading to populated areas all over the world. (I debated about starting this thread a few days ago when Typhoon Songda was heading for Japan) Pretty much, this year will be pretty crazy, especially if you live in a frequently hit area. So be prepared to get hit and always know what to do when you have to evacuate! Here is a list of names if anyone is curious: This is the same list as 2005 without Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Wilma and Stan. During the season I will refer to invests and tropical waves. Invests are storms that the NHC is "investing" in to become a storm (rarely does, but there is atleast a 10% chance of it becoming one). A tropical wave is a storm that has a decent chance of becoming a hurricane if in the right locations. If so the NHC will "invest" in it and create special forecasts for them and publish model data and all that. As of right now there is 1 invest and one tropical wave that I feel could become a tropical storm (and it's only June 1st!). The invest is just off the coast of the Carolinas and the models seem to take it directly into Florida while it is developing to become a tropical storm. There is a relatively low chance it will become Tropical Storm Arlene on it's way to Florida, but it is possible. There is also a tropical wave that has a high chance (I feel) of becoming Tropical Storm Arlene. It is currently in the south-west Caribbean Sea and models have it possibly becoming Hurricane Arlene within the next 8 days (there is a high chance that it will be unable to retain the hurricane intensity past Cuba however). The models also show it taking an eerily similar track to Tropical Storm Arlene of 2005. I'll post an update when something happens.

The 2011 Atlantic and Eastern Pacific seasons have ended, with the NHC posting their final scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook with the famous last paragraph of "THIS IS THE LAST TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK OF THE 2011 [Atlantic/Eastern Pacific] HURRICANE SEASON. THE NEXT REGULAR TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK WILL BE ISSUED ON [June/May] [1/15] (Atlantic starts on June 1st, Eastern Pacific starts on May 15th) 2012. SPECIAL TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOKS WILL BE ISSUED AS NEEDED IF A SIGNIFICANT WEATHER SYSTEM FORMS DURING THE OFF-SEASON." A lot has happened in the past week, surprisingly, even though November is usually one of the more quiet months of the year as only the North Indian Ocean basin has it's peak in November. In the Eastern Pacific basin a week ago, a hurricane named Kenneth formed. Formations at this time of year is rare enough, but to make this even more rare, it's a La Nina year, which is when the waters of the equatorial Pacific is colder than normal, thus making the Pacific basin usually have a weak tropical cyclone season. But Kenneth was a final chapter in the amazing season that was the 2011 Eastern Pacific season, he did what many other storms did, became a category 4 hurricane with 145mph winds, then quickly weakened afterward. Kenneth became the strongest hurricane in the EPac in November, in a La Nina year. Quite impressive if I must say so. Hurricane Kenneth near peak intensity. The NHC also decided that it would upgrade Tropical Storm Nate to Hurricane Nate in it's post season review, making it the "7th" hurricane this year (though it was the 3rd hurricane of the year when it became one), still a really low number but it's getting better with the post season analysis. The NHC also decided that it would upgrade a previously unnamed storm that formed on Sept 1st north of Bermuda to tropical storm strength. This unnamed storm is officially the 13th storm of the year, bringing the total to 19, tying 2010, 1995 and 1932 for 3rd most active year on record. This is invest 90L, which is likely the last storm to have even a remote chance of developing. The NHC currently gives it 20%, and it has some good model support. If it develops it will become Tammy (it would've been named Vince, had the unnamed storm been named in the operation season), bringing our total storm number to 20. I would say that the chance of developing is pretty low right now, but once these types of storms start developing, they really don't stop. Otherwise, I'll make the final post of the year near the end of December to post a summary of the season and the totals, as well as the first predictions for 2012 and whether or not I'll actually do this again next year. I'll leave off with 3 links... Here's a summary of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season by NOAA (including a bit more info on Hurricane Irene). Here's a summary of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season in a Wunderblog post by Dr. Jeff Masters from Wunderground. Here's a Youtube animation of the entire 2011 Atlantic season (and part of the Eastern Pacific season) by view from satellites.

6459 Larks: really? I believe my last post in this thread was around the 2000 mark. And SKIMBO!!!!! and thanks for the welcome back!

Yeah, the Mediterranean storm was very impressive. It dissipated on impact with France, so I don't think it caused too great of damage. And yes, the NHC does have a lot of yellow circles, but that is normal for this time of year. If the NHC thinks a storm has a decent chance of developing in a few days it is usually orange. I believe that the NHC uses yellow circles to cover themselves if it does mysteriously develop, not because it actually has any chance in 48 hours (3 storms this year developed when they were at 20%, so it isn't all that rare). Anyways, Sean has been absorbed by a front, after he achieved 65mph winds (he might've been at hurricane strength at some point on the 9th of November however, we'll have to see in post-season reanalysis). What is most amazing about this November is that models show 2 more storms developing in the next 5 days. If Tammy and Vince were to develop in the next 5 days, we would tie 2005 for most November storms (3, in 2005 Gamma, Delta and Epsilon developed in November).

I see that this thread has made good progress without me. 6454

Well Rina's story ended nicely. She almost got to major hurricane status, was very close to it for a few hours and might've been one briefly. Then she started to mysteriously rapidly weaken. She made landfall on Mexico as a tropical storm, way better than the category 3 hurricane she was expected to be at one point. 97L became nothing also. However, November is already more active than October so far. This morning, Subtropical Storm Sean formed out of an extratropical storm. Just a few hours ago he got upgraded to a tropical storm. Not much is expected to happen with him, the NHC says he'll peak out at 50mph before he heads out to sea. Tropical storm watches have been issued for Bermuda, but it seems unlikely that they will see anything more than rain and waves from him. The real story is the incredibly rare storm out in the Mediterranean right now. Dr Jeff Masters from Wunderground wrote a really good blog post about this unusual storm today (scroll down to "Unusual tropical storm-like low forms off coast of France" just below everything about Sean). Currently, NOAA has this storm as Tropical Storm 01M (unofficially named Rolf), making it the first ever recorded tropical cyclone in the Mediterranean. There is no one issuing advisories on it, and a track and intensity isn't really well known. It seems more likely that this storm is subtropical, rather than tropical as the satellite intensity dictates. Although TS Sean and "TS"Rolf are definitely very similar, they even look the same on satellite. Also good to note about what he said in his blog post: "According to research published by Gaertner et al. (2007), an increase in ocean temperatures of 3°C in the Mediterranean by the end of the century could lead to hurricanes forming there. Miguel Angel Gaertner of the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Toledo, Spain, ran 9 different climate models with resolutions of about 50 km and found that some (but not all) of the models simulated hurricanes in the Mediterranean in September by the end of the century, when ocean temperature could reach 30°C." It seems likely that these storms will eventually get more common over the next few decades, and eventually we will see real tropical cyclones develop in this currently rare region. It's really amazing at how odd the Atlantic has been this year. What should've been the rarest storm this year (Arani in the South Atlantic) has been beaten by an even rarer Mediterranean storm. The strongest storm this season, achieved maximum intensity north of Bermuda..in OCTOBER (albeit early October). No one can forget the fact that there has been a record 18 storms this season also. It seems likely that Sean will be the last storm this year in the Atlantic, but December storms are also possible, so we might be able to get Tammy in the next 2 months.

Well, 2 days ago it was pretty quiet..now it's pretty hyperactive. 24 hours ago Tropical Depression 18 formed from invest 96L and has since rapidly intensified into the seasons 6th hurricane. Currently the forecast has Rina peaking at a category 3 hurricane before weakening to a category 2 at landfall on Cozumel. But the NHC said in it's latest forecast discussion that.... GIVEN THE EXTREMELY LARGE SPREAD IN THE GUIDANCE...AND THE POOR RUN TO RUN CONSISTENCY...THERE IS MUCH LOWER THAN NORMAL CONFIDENCE IN THE LONG-RANGE TRACK FORECAST OF RINA. This amount of uncertainty is very common in October storms, especially on the intensity forecast side of things. October storms can easily exceed the intensity forecasts by 50kts and be off by 100nmi in only 3 days. The model guidance pretty much shows all possible options for Rina. And just so you guys no..Rina is indeed the replacement name of Rita. To finish off this update, here is a picture of invest 97L, which models currently predict it to become another major hurricane in the Caribbean.