madhatter106
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Everything posted by madhatter106
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Twinkle, twinkle, little BAT...
madhatter106 replied to madhatter106's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop
This one took a long while to get the proportions right. It was inspired by a beautiful old building in downtown Los Angeles. Lots of details yet to be included - roof details, roof access, all the ground floor windows and entrances and whatnot... This one is going to be an absolute bear to texture. So many different separate details...ugh... -
William Peter Blatty, author and producer, dies at 89. Originally working as a comedy screenwriter for director Blake Edwards, Blatty would go on to pen the best-selling novel "The Exorcist," as well as serving as a producer on the film and writing its screenplay, for which he would receive an Academy Award in 1974.
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BAT - Troubleshooting & General Discussion
madhatter106 replied to Jasoncw's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop
It can depend on your workflow and how you are modeling - in the early days of my BATting, I used splines for the walls, mostly because they had windows and because that was what was outlined in the phillipbo tutorial. However, the more I have worked, the more I find myself using them only for certain occaisions - walls that have archways, starters for weird complex shapes, etc. Treating each individual wall as its own spline will certainly make texturing easier in that you don't need to worry about unwrapping UVW maps and assigning certain sides to certain portions of the texture. Nowadays I might use a spline to establish the outline of the building if it is a weird shape (ie. not rectangular) in ground plan, and then extrude it, transform it into an editable poly, and then go carving it up with windows, etc. As far as nightlighting, it doesn't matter, as you can assign the nitelite prefix to both splines and standard primitives. I personally don't use un-extruded splines for window glass as recommended in the tutorial, but rather a very very very thin box primitive; that way I can see where the window glass panes are if I am looking at them from any angle, even from behind them. -
On the topic of nightlighting - I would really be interested to know what percentage of the game is played in night mode by the vast majority of players. Like lots of people, the only time I am in night mode is to test or screenshot my stuff before uploading. The vast majority of what little game-playing I do is in the day mode. That said, though, there are some who probably play in night, or a combo of both modes, who would appreciate the nightlighting. I agree that it can be extremely tedious to do as far as the BATting is concerned; very often by the time I am nightlighting, I have grown tired of whatever I am working on and just want to get it done. But, nightlighting should also be considered a selling point - or rather, a downloading point. If one of the screenshots of your BAT on the STEX shows good nightlighting, you can be guaranteed that it will get more downloads than if it were only day shots. There have even been a couple of occasions where I wanted to download a BAT but refrained, because I thought the nightlighting looked bad or was sorely lacking - and I think subconsciously it was a reflection on the overall quality of the BAT as a whole. If the creator had taken such care to present the BAT at its best in the day, but had neglected or overlooked the nightlighting, it felt incomplete or lacking because they didn't exercise that same care for the night view. That said, nightlights in MAX seem much easier to do than in gmax (from what I have read here) - with poor little old gmax, it's either nightmapping or modeling interiors and lighting those behind windows, an extremely tedious and time-heavy investment...
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Super Bowl. No one ever cares about the commercials during the World Series. Coffee or tea?
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Twinkle, twinkle, little BAT...
madhatter106 replied to madhatter106's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop
Sidelining the art deco building for the moment; I've painted myself into a corner on it, but will no doubt return to it soon enough. In the meantime, this one happened; still working on details and needs textures to really begin to come alive... The elevation is inspired by a building I've seen in downtown Los Angeles... EDIT: The texturing went quicker than I expected. That, or I'm holed up inside while it rains. (Rain? In LA?) -
A crazy idea about getting SC4 sources
madhatter106 replied to Razip's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
OMG I am having flashbacks to playing "Pool of Radiance" on my Commodore 128, and the DRM was also a pinwheel. Ahhhh my misspent youth... -
Twinkle, twinkle, little BAT...
madhatter106 replied to madhatter106's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop
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Twinkle, twinkle, little BAT...
madhatter106 replied to madhatter106's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop
One of the Maxis buildings suffers from it? /faceplam Yeah he does look a bit squished, doesn't he? I should run a contest - with the site funding at 80% so far this month, I'll add one floor/storey for every percent that it goes up between now and the end of Christmas Day...I usually don't do tall buildings, but it might be a challenge. -
"Very few people possess true artistic ability; it is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass." - Fran Lebowitz
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Twinkle, twinkle, little BAT...
madhatter106 replied to madhatter106's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop
The color is difficult to get - I am working between two laptops, and these colors look a bit different between the two of them. I never have liked doing texture work on a laptop - for some reason, my good old CRT seemed better, but that died a while back. In the meantime, this one has been going slower and slower the further I get in. It's missing a lot of detail work, and I still haven't figured out where the roof and top floors are going.... What is the tallest one could create a building in gmax without getting into trouble with lighting rig restrictions? Or am I dreaming of that problem....? This one almost deserves to be much taller... -
self-contained Is it possible to have self-contained BATs?
madhatter106 replied to Terring's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop
I would imagine that you could mod existing BATs and buildings so that their water and power consumption are zero (in effect, not drawing anything from the proverbial Grid) and so that their production of trash and pollution is zero (thus not producing any waste). So the effect would essentially be the same as something that, for example, generates the power for a 100 watt light bulb and only uses power equal to a 100 watt light bulb, for a net loss or gain of zero power.- 4 Replies
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Twinkle, twinkle, little BAT...
madhatter106 replied to madhatter106's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop
I'll have to do some research on the options; right now I discovered a method of sharing them via links to where they are in my Dropbox, but I am guessing that if I migrate or move them down the road, that will cause things to go haywire... Yeah I have been focused on older style buildings of late - stuff that would fit best in the New York and Chicago tilesets. I have a number of more modern ones already under my belt, and I find the older ones quite challenging from a problem-solving standpoint (how best to model them, efficiency in objects and polygons, etc.) as well as aesthetically - many of them have great subtlety and intricate detail, and that's something I have a hard time mastering. When I look at prior BATters who could achieve such things (JBSimio of the BSC in particular has been an inspiration), it makes me want to attempt it, too. More details and textures loaded in - I realized I haven't done the doors yet, but they're so recessed you could hardly notice them... I think a tiny percentage of desaturation needs to happen - SC4 does take things a bit "salmony," but not nearly this much from my recollection. I think the roof textures need to be cooled down, too - everything is looking "warm," just a drop of blue or cyan or a tiny bump on the color balance sliders should do it. And more details need to be dumped in and finessed - that HVAC unit on the topmost roof is looking too large, for starters... -
Twinkle, twinkle, little BAT...
madhatter106 replied to madhatter106's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop
Been torturing myself getting this one right with the polygon modeling. In retrospect I could have cheated and made it easier on myself, but I somehow wanted the challenge... In a deco sort of mood lately. The front elevation was inspired by a real-life building - this is still the rough stages, as the window frames and lots of details have yet to be "loaded into" it. Plus I still don't know what to do with the roof access. Side note - what's a good image hosting website? I am sick to death of Photobucket's sluggishness. Last week it took me thirty minutes to upload a single little picture... -
Twinkle, twinkle, little BAT...
madhatter106 replied to madhatter106's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop
Thanks, all. These past few have happened rather quickly, despite my sluggish toaster-oven of a computer. This one is based partly on a swipe file photo of an office building in Ohio, though I took many liberties with texture/color, roof details, shape, etc... I think all of the ones in this pack will be CO$$$. And looking at them, at least a few could conceivably be relotted or remodded to serve as hotels or CS$$$ if one were so inclined. -
Twinkle, twinkle, little BAT...
madhatter106 replied to madhatter106's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop
Tweaked the texture on the earlier Deco building. Just a tiny touch of green. Plus the roof garden was looking a bit underwhelming, so umbrellas give those little tables some joy and some shade so you don't get sunburn while you're on your lunch break... -
Twinkle, twinkle, little BAT...
madhatter106 replied to madhatter106's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop
Looking at the one above, I might take it a touch away from the cream side and toss a little bit of green in the mix. There are a couple of Maxis buildings that have a grayish green tinge, and I think this one might look good this way, too. Here's another, based in part off a building in my swipe file as well as inspired by the rooftop of an earlier upload of mine... I am not sure if I want to keep the rooftop interior wall cream, or change it to match the brick texture of the back wall and the roof access. There's already a lot of brown and cream going on in the BAT, so the brick might balance that out... -
"Nobody should have to clean up anybody else's mess in this world. It is terribly bad for both parties, but probably worse for the one receiving the service." - Tennessee Williams The Catastrophe of Success
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Twinkle, twinkle, little BAT...
madhatter106 replied to madhatter106's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop
Re: water and stats - provided that they are not over-watered, I suppose it's fine. Under-watered is less of a problem, and easily modded if one wants to get them closer in line to the Maxis stuff. The vast majority of the stats for these are the ones that the Plugin Manager gives me - I rarely change anything that it generates. Though I'm glad these are worth the scrutiny... Re: goofy stat - the modding on this came directly from a thread on here somewhere, so I was just using the info I learned from that thread. Again, not game breaking, and as long as it spits out a number, it really doesn't matter what the number itself is. I wish I could find that thread, but it was something I read and noted a while back. Re: queries and packaging - each query is slightly different, and though they use the same four images within them, the text is usually different. I guess it could be engineered to reduce plugin size, but at that point I feel the time and effort involved on my end would be nitpicking and too granular. I personally don't like datpacking, so unless it's something that I would want to remain contained and packed, I never use it for my stuff. But anyone could if they would like once they've downloaded this stuff... BATting has been very difficult the past few months. I find that when I am at liberty, I can barely bring myself to fire up gmax. Part of it is figuring out the naming convention, which also determines the scale of the pack. I got stumped on getting a BAT right a while back, and it's bogged me down mentally. This little deco one was a palate cleanser, though it needs more details...it's not quite there yet. -
Did you know that the term "devil's advocate" originated from an actual official title/position within the Catholic Church, whereby the canon lawyer would act as an investigator and skeptic, to deliberately argue against a candidate's sainthood in order to uncover any possible misrepresentations or flaws which might prevent canonization?
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The Simtropolis Vending Machine - Inspired by The SC4D Vending Machine
madhatter106 replied to aaaling's topic in Forum Games
* receives a heaping bowl of Kraft Mac'n'Cheese and two tickets to the next Pittsburgh Penguins game * * inserts two sticks of Doublemint Gum * -
I have eggnog and rum in the fridge. No matter the results we see tonight, I will be all set...
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Hate. Too much stop/start, stop/start of the clock. Coffee.
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nitelite
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Banned for not deleting the underscored line before his forum name, or for not including a second underscored line after his forum name.
