ardecila

Do you plan on making a Boston Market, cause if not, I'm gonna give it a try. Anyway, I love that Outback! Seems like there's a fair bit of demand for it here, so it should be appreciated. My favorite thing about Outback is that they give you free dessert if they make a mistake. My only suggestion for the hotel would be to add a little sidewalk around it, cause you might find it a little hard to do that in LE.

I simply meant that as long as you have the Type and Group right, the game will recognize any instance ID. I don't think there have been any retaining wall mods, though, so all you have to worry about is the IIDs conflicting with the already-existing ones, easily checkable. As for the FiSHMan thing, well, I haven't actually used that program all that much. Really just for extracting road and automata textures, and encoding new automata textures. As for that little bit at the end, I'm assuming that's a sig . . Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention . . if you want to give your retaining wall a name to identify it, create an LText file with the name in it, and then reference it in the User Visible Name Key property.

Well, I don't think you'd want to include WTC7 in this, anyway, for two reasons - one, it's already modelled well and released by someone else, and two, it'd add extra tiles to the lot, which we could all do without. As remarkable as it may seem, I've just tuned in to this thread now, and I must say, great job, Rubik! It's incredible how much detail you have crammed into this lot. Most Batters would model the towers and the Marriott, stick it on some concrete base textures, and call it a lot. But you're even going to the trouble of getting the logo right on a miniature coffee shop, and all of my cities will be all the more accurate, realistic, and beautiful for that. On a side note: How's the transit-enabling coming? I would suggest changing the textures to avenue textures, which can also be extracted from the dat files (4, I believe). Also, if you change the angle of the road just slightly, so as to remove those little tiny bit-tiles from the far side of the road, you might be able to cull those empty far-side tiles out of the lot, like the cloverleafs do in the middle of the leaf. I dunno. Just a thought.

Have you guys talking about the sunken overpasses even read the thread? Look around page 7. It's on the way, but I believe Tropod has set it aside for the moment.

Yeah. Just like base/overlay textures, there are five files. One for each zoom level. They're kept in dat file 5. There is also an exemplar file for each retaining wall, conatining 3 properties (other than ParentCohort, Exemplar Type, Exemplar Name, and Exemplar ID). These are kSC4RetainingWallPropertyWallTextures and kSC4RetainingWallPropertyWallTextureSize. The first one is an array of the five zoom-level textures, which all have the type 0x7ab50e44 and the group 0x891boe1a. The images must be square. The second property is the width and height (because the image is square) of the zoom 1 texture. If that was a bit confusing, let me put it into a step by step guide. 1. Create your texture in a paint program like Photoshop or PSP at a size of 128 square. 2. Save it. 3. Then, resize it so there are 5 copies of that image, at 128 square, 64 square, 32 square, 16 square, and 8 square. 4. Save all of those. 5. Open FiSHMan. Go to tools and use the batch image processor to create FSH files out of each of those 5 images you created before. 6. Open iLive. Create a new DAT file, and insert each of the five FSH files. 7. Give them the type ID 7ab50e44 and the group ID 891boe1a. The instance ID doesn't matter. 8. Create an exemplar file, and set it up like the picture. Give it the type ID 6534284a and the group ID c977c536. 9. Finally, replace the values in the . . . ertyWallTextures with the instance IDs of your FSH files, beginning with the smallest and ending the biggest. What a mouthful.

The Ped Malls aren't lots, as strange as it might seem. They're actually 4-sided ped-only network tiles, like puzzle pieces. For these, I don't believe you can set transit parameters like I/O Time Cost or fee. You can't convert things like Cobb's pier to this format because they can't have occupants or residents, or any other lot attributes. Schmails boardwalk and Peg's lots might work, though. You just wouldn't have a park effect, which I don't think anyone cared about, anyway. The Network Addon Mod will not do this. However, Tropod has hinted that such things might be possible in the future.

jsieczka - There's no official group, but I suppose I'll have to start one. I'm hoping geoff_diamond will chime in, as he's probably the best Chicagoan BATter here. I'm also one, and I'm not sure if TheeLord is from Chicago or not. As for the actual topic of the thread - this is my first time in here. I love the City Hall, mainly because it's so similar to the Merchandise Mart here in Chicago. The architectural style is very familiar to me. The lower roofs need some junk, or at least a texture. The station is awesome. The tower needs some sort of spire on top, though. And why does the plaza look so . . bent out of shape? Is that a texturing error?

You guys have to undertand that there is more to this than just modelling. The way the BAT spits these files out, there are multiple model files, one for each zoom angle (4) and one of those for each zoom (5). So there are 20 model files, and that's for every tile of the interchange. First, you have to unify these model files into one model for each tile. Then, you have to skin the S3Ds, because the unifying process removes any textures. This in particular takes a while, because you have to work with the UVW tools in iLive, which aren't very good. Then, you have to write exemplars and SC4Paths for each piece. The exemplars give the pieces all their transit-related properties, and the SC4Path files dictate how each type of automata should move while on the tile. Finally, you have to test it. I hope I don't seem put-downy, but I'd just like to let you know the hard work people like RedLotus and Tropod are doing.

Holy . . that is just - - uggggh. I don't even want to think about modelling such a thing. Cool, yes. Ungodly traffic patterns - unfortunately, also yes.

Does anyone know a good patina copper or bronze texture? I could really use one, in multiple BAT projects.

Oh, so that's a trumpet interchange. For the moment, I'm sticking to RedLotus' idea of only creating intersection possibilities that don't exist yet.

Orthogonal means straight sides, literally. How about the diagonal/diagonal stacks? They shouldn't require too much extra work on your part, just rotating and a little squeezing should do the trick. Since Chozo is already working on the highway Y-int, I'm not really sure what to do next. There have been plenty of requests for SPUIs, so I might look into that next. First I'd have to look into how traffic works on the in-game diamond interchanges. Once I do that, I could say for sure whether SPUIs are possible. I could also do some prelims on the diagonal-trumpet-into-straight and straight-trumpet-into-diagonal intersections, if someone hasn't done it already. As for the helping out, RedLotus, I'm interested. I'm gonna take a few days to make sure I'm comfortable with Reader, then I'll give you a decision.

Whoops! Good thing I saved a draft. I'll resend momentarily.

The above overpass was really just an ad hoc thing. I needed one in my city, so I designed one. As for the avenue Y-int, it should be in RedLotus' digital hands now. Could you confirm, Red? If you don't have it, I'll re-send it.

OK . . the next thing in the works from ardecila's House of BATting: Diagonal Overpass Interchanges! Ever have a regular grid, but want to run a diagonal highway through your city? Well then, have I got a gmax file for you!

RedLotus: Yeah, sure, you can render it if you want to. I just gotta reduce the poly count first. If I sent it to you now for skinning, I think you'd have a heart attack. There are about 18 tracks of polygons in each deck. Pretty scary stuff.

I'm already working on one. Basically like my avenue Y-intersection (which you can see earlier in the thread), but with highway pieces on each end. I should have pictures in the next couple days, once I refine the basic shape (which is already made) and texture it. Joexcooldude - you realize that those are basically the same in terms of traffic direction, right? That could be possible, but you'd need 4 different interchange models (well, two really, since you could just flip each). And you WOULD need 4 sets of path files. \/ <-( I'm working on this) others -> \| |/ \| |/ | | | \ / DuskTrooper - the people who think stacks are bad will wish a terrible plague upon your family for bringing such an atrocious concept into a public forum! Not really a good idea, as no one would use it except you. Maybe. My Active Projects: Y-interchange, avenue (fully modelled, needs rendering) Orth road over Diagonal highway (fully modelled, needs textures) Y-interchange, highway (model needs refining) I kind of have a lot on my plate right now, so I'm going to stop taking suggestions for the moment. I'll still continue to post updates on the above projects, though. RedLotus: I love that diag-orth ground interchange. Could you post a pic at zoom 5? The details are sort of hard to see at that level.

Yeah - the paths that the cars TAKE through the intersection would be the same, but the path FILES are locked to the geometry of the terrain. It needs a new set of path files. Also, path files contain all the paths that transit types can possibly take on the tile.

Marrast, there are Urban Overpasses in the works so we can do overpasses over ditches. There are issues with Urban-style diamond interchanges, though. You guys say you want a highway y-intersection? That shouldn't be too hard, as the only pieces I need to change are already available to me through the in-game trumpets. Can we do interchanges in puzzle-piece form? If so, I could make some parclos.