madhatter106

I think the roof texture is a good start - perhaps just a touch darker or greyer. Overall I am looking forward to seeing how this last one turns out.

I'm on the hunt for some user-created props (preferably in one or two dependency packs) that would be good for use in lotting for auto body and car repair places. Things like stacks of tires, junked out cars, that sort of stuff; I don't think I could rely on using the standard Maxis props for this, so wondering if anyone knows of any here or at one of the other exchanges. Since my stuff usually doesn't have dependencies, I am not aware of what is out there in terms of all the prior created prop and dependency packs, and I haven't stumbled across a "magic bullet" for this in my searches yet.

The Eden Parkway rowhouses at the top of this page are absolutely yummy. Can't wait to see their colors and textures.

This is because many content developers don't model or mod their content specifically to compliment or compete with buildings like Wren. If you wanted to BAT skyscrapers that would show up in everyone's city (that is, everyone who downloaded your plugins), you could conceivably make a building family full of BATs which are modeled, sized, lotted, and modded to match Wren and which the game would then draw from in addition to Wren. It would dilute the "Wren pool" and add variety, something sorely lacking in certain lot size configurations as cogeo and others have noted above.

This is one inspired in part by a more modern building whose pic I had sitting in my swipe file. It's missing some details and added flare, but I got stuck in a texturing jag for it. There's something a bit off about it; can't quite pin it down. (Working on my clunky home laptop, the colors seem off even though they're recycled textures from previous BATs.)

In the effort to combat the glut of 3x2 office buildings that seem to plague our downtown commercial business districts, I've been turning my thoughts toward that task. I have kicked a few around in my fleeting moments of free time, but this little fellow is the first to make it through the majority of modelling and texturing. There are a few more 2x2 ones for me to finish...mostly ones that I didn't want to tackle the nightlighting...

Threads like this make all the work and effort and hours worthwhile.

Is the sign face texture applied to a spline? (ie. is the sign, rather than the post, itself a spline?)

Yeah, thanks Huston. That workaround did the trick. They're up on the STEX finally...!

Hmmm...I had thought this might be the case, but a check yields all the normal file types - descriptions, lots, etc. No .sav files (which I usually get rid of if they're generated), and the images are .jpegs. The readme is an html file and a folder with the images and the normal html stuff in it; nothing that I haven't already uploaded in the past. The archive is indeed a .zip file. Very strange.

Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. IE and FF on one laptop at one location, and Chrome on a second laptop at a different location. All with the same result...

Just tried another attempt - using Chrome, same results. I re-zipped the files, successfully unzipped them, and checked to see if anything odd was included. The only files are the BATs and their respective lots and necessaries, plus the .jpeg images and the html "readme" file, which was made from the same template that I used on previous uploads. Like I said, I can't even view the error message that is generated when Chrome tells me the upload is 100% done - it just cuts it off at the very tip top... I am guessing this is the error - however, i don't get the message - I don't see that graphic - all I see is a tiny shred of the top of the first row of letters, making it look like a dash and a couple of periods. The only reason I know that it's this error is that in one of the browsers I tried earlier today, I was able to highlight and cut and paste the text into a .txt document so I could read what was happening. As far as changing file formats, something seems odd about having to do it when the site has accepted .zip and .jpeg files in the past. (I don't want that to come across as peevish, but it just seems an unnecessary workaround.) Ah well, I will be in a holding pattern until I hear more...it's taken me two years to get these to a sharing state, they can wait a while longer.

I'll try to get one of the admins to get in touch with you - I know you mentioned that you updated your browsers... have you tried to clear your cache and then open up ST? Attempted from a different computer, different location, different browser (Chrome this time). Same result, even with cache cleared. It won't even post the error message; it just truncates it so all I see is the top of a couple of letters where the uploaded file name should be. Very odd.

Attempting to upload to the STEX and after several attempts, I managed to get the message that I've been blocked. There's a CloudFlare ID that I was told to email to the admins - who/where do I send it? I seem thoroughly unable to find who/where to send this to...

Well I have been attempting to upload these to the STEX for the past hour, but it hasn't worked. It keeps preventing me from attaching it in either IE or Firefox; instea of listing the file uploaded or attached, it just showed a dash and two periods. The last time I attempted, I noticed that it looked like a truncated message, so I highlighted it and even though I could barely read it, I pasted it into a .txt file to read it, and I've apparently been blocked from uploading it, including a CloudFlare Ray ID and a message to email admins with that info. I've updated my Flash player, restarted, but can't figure it out...so I guess now I ave to delay and send this to someone here...ugh...

It's my sincere hope to publish these last few pages' worth (or at least the majority) on the STEX soon; they've been tested and tweaked, and just need some finishing touches (having languished far too long on my hard drive) before they're bundled and uploaded. In the meantime, here's a tease including the naming convention for this set... Arbuckle Escrow Company – over the Labor Day weekend of 1921, silent film comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was accused of the rape and manslaughter of up-and-coming actress Virginia Rappe during a riotous, drunken party at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Despite three widely publicized trials and an acquittal at the last, Arbuckle was cited by the press as an example of the low morals of Hollywood and his career was ruined; it was rumored that Buster Keaton had suggested he return to films as a director under the pseudonym Will B. Good. Deane Tanner & Associates – born William Deane Tanner, director William Desmond Taylor was found shot in the back in his bungalow in February of 1922. Still unsolved, a number of suspects have been advanced as having committed the murder, including his former valet (who mysteriously disappeared after the crime), comedienne Mabel Normand, and former child star Mary Miles Minter or her mother. Oneida Insurance Agency – director Thomas H. Ince fell ill and died under mysterious circumstances after a birthday party held in his honor by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst aboard his yacht the Oneida in November of 1924. Though officially deemed as a death by heart attack, vague rumors circulated that Hearst had shot him in a fit of jealousy over his mistress Marion Davies; in-the-know Hollywood gossips would later refer to the yacht as “William Randolph’s Hearse.” Reid Capital Group – famed all-American leading man Wallace Reid became addicted to morphine after an injury in a train wreck while shooting on location in Oregon in 1919. His ever-increasing dependence on the drug and a frantic work pace of shooting pictures back to back forced him into a sanitarium, where he died in 1923. Reid’s widow became a champion against drug addiction, going so far as to produce the movie Human Wreckage and touring with it nationally. Thomas Commercial Realty – former Ziegfeld girl and starlet Olive Thomas died of acute nephritis in Paris in 1920, five days after mistakenly taking a dose of mercury bichloride. Media speculation attributed the death to drug addiction, a suicide attempt, or an attempted murder by her husband, actor Jack Pickford (brother to movie star Mary); it was rumored that the chemical she ingested had been used by Pickford to treat his chronic syphilis. The Hays Corporation – former chairman of the Republican National Committee and Postmaster General under Warren Harding, Will H. Hays became the first president of what would become the Motion Picture Association of America. Hays’ name would be forever synonymous with the Production Code, which included a list of “Don’ts and Be Carefuls,” regulating everything from spoken blasphemies to the proper length of an on-screen kiss. Rubens, Hansen & La Marr – In and out of mental hospitals and sanitariums due to her crippling drug addiction, starlet Alma Rubens retired from the screen in 1926 and died of pneumonia less than five years later. Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty and actress Juanita Hansen overcame her addiction to cocaine and morphine to become an advocate for the specialized treatment (rather than incarceration) of those addicted to drugs. Dubbed as “The Girl Who Is Too Beautiful” by Hearst feature writer Adela Rogers St. Johns, actress and Hollywood party girl Barbara La Marr married five times, became addicted to drugs and alcohol, and died of tuberculosis at the age of 29; she famously quipped that life was too short to sleep more than two hours per night.

My suggestion - finish it and release it! Glad to see you back again...

Off to a good start. The textures will definitely need fine tuning - it's very rare that one can take a texture from a source and not alter or change it in some way to have it jive with SC4. But they have lots of character, so you're well on your way to making them look appropriate. Just look at other buildings in the game and other custom content that blends well with the in-game content that you have or use; even photoshopping screenshots of your stuff into snapshots of your cities to compare them is a great metric for knowing what to do with your textures to improve them. The windows look "painted on" in that you haven't modeled them; they're part of the texture. So everything has a flat look to it on closer inspection. This can be easily done just be going ahead and doing the required modeling - holes where there should be windows, extrusions or other basic standard objects for sills and mullions, etc. I would say that before hit the texturing stage, you should do your modeling, or most of it; especially if you are starting out, there will be lots of stops and starts and redos and going back to the drawing boards in the modeling stage, so jumping the gun with textures won't help.

The building repetition hurts my eyes. The goggles, they do not work...

Thanks everyone - I ended up leaving the building a bit generic. I do like banners and whatnot on the front of some buildings, but sometimes they become too distinctive or specific; I just ended up putting a little bas relief deco lettering at the top of the building front. Here's a little monstrosity I based off a few pics in my research "swipe" file. I think the next pack will be a mix of older style buildings with newer ones...hopefully I can get around to a release soon...