madhatter106

So I have been absent for a while, though BATing in my head from time to time when I see an interesting store front or architectural detail. I've begun working on a few buildings for the sequel to my earlier New Age and Occult Pack, and have a couple of quick questions for you kind readers/forum peeps... - Is there a color/intensity shift between the final render in gmax and once the building is seen in-game? - in terms of peaked roofs(such as seen in a typical residential house), anyone have a good reference angle that they use as a starting point ? Everything I make looks too sharp and pointy, or too flat and squat...it's that 1/3 squishing factor of seeing things in gmax versus how they end up rendered which is hampering my efforts... - if I have some cool roof junk that I wanted to use in another BAT, what's the best way of getting it on to a building I've just created? Is there some way of cutting and pasting certain selections between BATs? Thanks as always!

I have considered doing a Broadway theater BAT for a while now...perhaps I will get around to it sometime soon. Trouble is trying to decide which one to do - my heart may be set on the Al Hirschfeld (formerly the Martin Beck) Theatre, as that has a personal "warm fuzzy" feeling in my jaded heart - I saw the original productions of "Into the Woods" and "Grand Hotel" there. (And the later had that secretary supporting actress from "Aly McBeal" in a dynamite knockout performance!)

A while back, Pegasus created a tutorial on adding sound effects to custom queries. However, it seems that the two files Peg included in the post to help with them have been eaten by the forum monster - perchance does anyone have those two files that were originally attached to this post at https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=42&threadid=49433 , or is there another tutorial or different method of doing this?

So I'm compiling these into what I'm calling The New Age & Occult Pack - Vol. 1 - the models have been revised, rendered, lotted, modded, and tested to grow in game. I've added some customization to the queries (mainly images at the bottom, with a goofy stat response curve statistic fitting the proper establishment.) So far there are six, and they are... - Sister Eva's Palmistry Parlor - Olga Ouspenskaya Psychic Readings - Madame Maria's Tarot Den - "The Third Eye" New Age Bookstore - "The Great God Pan" Occult Shop - Mambo Yvette's Gris-Gris and Gumbo However, in going through them last night and checking their dependencies in SC4Tools, I've found that a couple of them have overlay or base textures that are included as part of other STEX BATers' and modders' texture packs. (I think they're all part of Peg's MTP texture packs, or at least as far as I can tell from their file descriptions.) What is the ettiquette when this happens? Should I contact Peg and get permission to include these textures in the lots, with a link to the appropriate texture files to download in my readme .txt files? I figured this would be the standard for when someone uses another's model or prop - but what is the ettiquette where textures are concerned?

My pet peeve is the "fire breaks." Just when you're in the middle of trying to figure out where to put that next subway station or whether or not to rezone some area that is dying out, you're suddenly taken to the fire location and have to play fire chief. I have a public saftey advisor who periodically bothers me with stupid information, why can't he dispatch the fire trucks? I'm busy makin' a city!

Hello again. In constructing a custom query with the Reader, where I've changed the width of the query window as well as alignments for all the stats. In this case, I've been able to move all of the stats with the exception of the little simolean symbol for the Wealth row. In looking at the .dat files in the Reader, it seems that nearly all the changeable stats (specifically the Desireability factors and the Jobs, Land, Powered, and Watered) are comprised of two lines of code - in this case they're the IGZWinTextID number and the IGZWindText area. The only exception I've found is the Wealth IGZWinText area for Wealth...is there any reason why this is the case? I am unable to move the location of the little simolean symbol further right because of this...in all other cases, providing a different X or Y value in the IGZWinTextID field allows me to do this, but since there's no equivalent ID field to match Wealth, I seem to be unable to shift the simolean to the right...here's a pic of what I'm referring to, which should make sense... See how that little guy is floating out there, too far left? For the life of me, I can't figure out what code line generates the simolean or where I can alter the X coordinate to push him in alignment with the rest of the stats... It's strange, either I'm missing a line of code or I'm missing something in the Text area field for Wealth...anyone with more experience (ie. more than 24 hours that I have) with the Reader and custom queries see what I'm talking about and might be able to steer me in the right direction?

Eureka! You're fantastic, RippleJet! I had thought that the IGZWinBMP line referred to the little "Make Historical" checkbox - but now that I'm looking at your post, I can see that the "Make Historical" line is it's own button...so it was there in front of me all the time...heheheheheheh.... Thanks again, Ripple!

This is looking really nice. Loving the roof texture. Though I'm not a fan of the diagonal pool in the right unit's yard - maybe the angle seems too extreme? Maybe if it were a little less acute or severe - right now it looks like it's at a 45 degree angle to the exterior fencing... Which makes me think of another question - since these three units already have exterior fences, why the need for a fence around the pool as well? I think it might look more open if you did away with the pool fences...then I probably wouldn't mind the angle of the pool on the right....but that's just my quick blink reaction...

Originally posted by: Scipio You textures look amazing. My 2 things I'd suggest is putting something in some of the windows, like a magazine rack (easy to make, just a box with some pics on it) just for detail and please please don't ruin these with bad night lights use actual lights with the prefix "nitelite" the night maps look pretty bad on windowsquote> Yeah, I do have little shelves and boxes/knicknacks in the large windows for the two-story bookstores. They look great at night... No, I haven't used night textures on the windows (or at least, on the large windows). Some of them will have little neon signs in them, but all the large front bay windows are not night-textured but lit from within.

I do have SC4Tools, and used it to tweak the stats in these lots. The Plug-In Manager does indeed come up with some strange and wonky stats - but a good comparison of in-game Maxis buildings and similar sized/themed/capacity quality STEX downloads has helped. In the end, I have some workable stats and I don't mind reconfiguring the exports...I managed to see what they look like in-game, and the frequency of their growing at an early city's stage, plus I know that they'll grow at all with the stats I plugged into SC4Tools. (I do like the screenshot idea, and will use it in the future.) So I don't mind the extra step - it's like troubleshooting the visual as well as the logistics in one fell swoop. Plus I got to compare their lighting to the in-game as well as some downloaded low density CS$ stuff... I've been doing some reading on custom queries, as I think these new age ones might be goofy and quirky enough to warrant something fun...maybe a little custom pic in the query BG as well as a spooky/eerie/ghostly/mysterious sound. Plus a random goofy stat - such as "Number of palms tickled this week - 3" or "Incense sticks sold this month - 21" or somesuch silliness...

Isn't the disc required to be in the drive in order to even load/play?

So I managed to darken the roofs a bit and I lotted them and grew a bunch in a test city in-game. The roofs still look pale (my monitor must need some severe color calibration) on a couple of them - specifically the edging on the psychic and the tarot card reader. Is there a way of re-exporting them, without having to go through the same run-through of the Plug-In Manager and Lot Editor afterwards? (Not that they take too much time, was just wondering...)

RE: the color saturation - yeah, I find that I forget that the steps between BAT and the final lotting tend to bleach out the saturation on the textures. I've noticed it especially on the roofs. I should aim to darken them a hair to overcompensate for this bleaching in the final steps... RE: the textures and lot size - I haven't lotted or grown them in a city yet, so can't say for certain how they match up with the Maxis buildings. We shall see. But I'll be losing some detail since most of these, especially the single story buildings, are all fitting on a 1x1 square area. (These are zoom 5 screenshots taken in the preview render in BAT.) The lots themselves may be 1x2 or 2x1 if I decide to add parking, but the buildings won't occupy more than a 1x1 square. I'm considering to do different versions, both with and without parking. I think the purple on the tarot building may be a little much, but it's part of the cheese factor of these buildings - there's not subtlety when dealing with these, hehehe... RE: door scale - yeah, I need to raise the door heights on the single story buildings for certain. I have a tendency to forget about the 1/3 drop in height once the rendering is done, which accounts for those doors looking so squat and short. It's almost glaring in the single story buildings, and it's on my list to fix. RE: the backs - the backs are done, mostly rear doors/steps/windows with piping and/or junk. I just didn't include the screenshots here. Also the sides for the tarot and the palm readers have silly painted details on the stucco - a tarot card and giant palm, respectively. You'd be amazed how junky these sorts of buildings look in real life, and it's what I'm trying to capture in these BATs. (Hence the aim for CS$ on the single story ones.) I'm still mulling over lighting issues - the phillipbo BAT tutorial only has basic lighting concepts, and I find most of the threads concerning lighting on this forum are of the "I can't get the night lights to show up in game" variety. Perhaps my search-fu is weak in this regard, but I've found precious little with regard to actual lighting techniques being the subject/main body of threads. (I haven't delved into personal BAT threads/discussions, so perhaps my elusive quarry is there.) I guess I'll keep digging and playing around in BAT. I'm a bit fuzzled over the difference between "night lighting" and "night texture" and the possibly difference between these two effects...