rivit
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Everything posted by rivit
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that a large...
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When the alarm...
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Since GoFSH has been around since 2011 its probably fitting that it has a dedicated support topic. It will probably contain Tips and Tricks and Examples of things that can be done with GoFSH and Bender. However, I'd also like to use this topic to talk about making textures in general. I envisage this topic to be both informative and contemplative (hence the title). Please feel free to contribute your questions, insights and knowledge. I know there are many great texture wranglers in this community. Its almost exactly 12 years since I first dared to submit a modd for SC4. The HerringboneBrick Streets were made the hard way - all manual and using a program called FSHMan which didn't always work as expected. There was a lot to learn. It took me about three months to make just one set of $$$ wealth street textures but it was worth it. Eventually this has led to GoFSH and a number of new mods as my skills and productivity improved. For anyone interested below is the original High Quality Herringbone Brick texture - feel free to use it in BATs or other textures - maybe a Euro sidewalk mod or replacing some hackneyed Lot Texture/Overlay. These are appropriately scaled for SC4, but you may want to adjust colors or rough them up a bit to fit your purposes. There are three sizes in the zip 128x128, 256x256, 512x512. They will tile without seams. HerringbonePavingRed128.bmp RedHerringboneBrickPaving.zip
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Hi @Eggman121 Nice sleuthing - that narrows it down a lot. Ultimately all GoFSH is doing is using a fully expanded Path, even though the scripts may be defined with relative paths. So unless the bottom of the filesystem tree is not C: it will feature. Have you tried on another volume (assuming you have one)? Just any old USB volume should be enough to check this. I always have my work folders on a TEMP volume in reality Z: i.e. I avoid C: altogether for anything that isn't OS oriented. I wonder "Is there a permissions thing going on?". I assume C: is also Root: - do you (or Nemo) have permissions to modify root? or does Nemo absolutely protect C: by default to avoid damage by accident? Now my memory of UX (read 1980s) has me thinking that you can assign a volume name to any folder (dont know if modern Linux allows this or it depends on flavour). It may need to be a single letter name to work in GoFSH given its Windows origins. Will that work (at all?) or even on an underlying C: volume? Telling GoFSH that it cannot use C: rooted paths is not a viable option on Windows (it works on all OS volumes), but maybe there is a way to disguise/redirect the issue on Linux. EDIT: I thought id better check if what I was suggesting could work and the following Google query suggests it can: can you assign single letter volume names to folders on linux mint But (good news bad news), way down in that answer there is also another clue. : is not allowed in a filepath under Linux. So the volume C: is illegal, and so all paths with colon in it will fail. I would have thought that Wine might have dealt with that itself. I don't know how to do that selectively as yet, so any clues into how I can tell if I'm (as GoFSH) running on Linux (under Wine presumably) are welcomed. Then I might be able to patch it.
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@Eggman121 Since Windows and Linux/UX use different path separators its possible that the \ or / in filepaths could be getting scrambled or misinterpreted. Windoze uses \ , Linux /. Although I do try to cater for both I've no idea if it is completely correctly implemented, or if the Wine emulation deals with it well enough, as I've never tested on Linux. It could explain empty output folders though. In the log that displays in the Builder it will tell you if (and where) no files were found or produced as it runs. The _ReaderLoadList.txt is probably empty when it fails, or is suddenly truncated where its baulked.
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that wieners are...
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microwave in the...
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indescribable noises did...
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Sorry matias - I didnt find that - everything gets rendered the same way depending on the program used. Its a fixed feature of the rigs. The finding was related to Maxis rendering in gmax which is warmer than BAT4Max rendering which was colder. gmax is pretty much linear and saturates pretty early , BAT4Max has a much more dynamic curve, but truncates low values in the night renders. In-game Bat4max next to gmax for the same model will look a bit more clinical. If people want to get into the nittygritty below are the results of rendering 16 value grey ramps that we got after I asked MattB to render them with default setups for an experiment. MattB explained to me that he made his BATs a little warmer by adapting his model textures to compensate before rendering them with BAT4Max. I have the detailed color curves and other rig data for anyone interested, just PM me, its a biggish file. Ideally, to fit best in-game, you want something like the gmax colortone with the BAT4Max dynamic range so details will not get washed out. As it also depends on the render engine parameters and rig setup, its an iterative process to get the result you want.
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Yes, well thats one of the mysteries of windows msg handling that I can seem to get on top of. Despite deliberately giving a way to just get the biggest textures, it does still occasionaly give them all. I've not been able to get to the bottom of it. In the case of these tunnels though, I see in my archive that I only made the largest ones. For models used in networks we have two methods available - one is that of a BAT - so you will have 20 textures, 4 orientations, 5 zooms., so in your example above the ..430 texture is orientation 3 and zoom 4. The rendered texture contents scale as 146x,73x,32x,16x,8x relatively speaking. What this means is that the Zoom3 texture is Half the zoom4, and the zoom2, 1, 0 are also exact multiples of each other. But you cant use the 4 to make all of the others with clean integer scaling. From 3 to 2 will go blurry very quickly 73/32 being relatively prime. Also each zoom has a subtly different perspective. - the other is an S3D model which is scaleable so may use just one texture, or in some cases 3 or 4 but always at one size, which can then scale linearly. Viaducts and the RRW Tunnel are made this way. ~~ The shortcut way is that doing what you normally do for a 5 mipset for each orientation (but manually renumbering after) using the 4s will look OK in game at the 2 closest zooms but the others when downscaled are off in perspective - however you can frequently get away with it because the 2,1,0 are so small. This is what i did for the street tunnel - I only made the largest ones as its a small model and the centrelines lines disappear pretty quickly as you scale down so you need to be fixated on it to see the difference with MAXIS street. If you really want to give yourself a test then you need to edit all 20 of the original model textures, replacing maxis street with the TSR street and taking account of the shadows. Its fiddling time. There is a method in Bender to take a flat street (use the Lot version for color match) and make the perspective correct image of it to use when editing the model though. This saves a lot of heartache. However YMMV.
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Version 1.33
9,981 Downloads
SC4DataNode - A SimCity 4 Exemplary - is intended as a Gold Standard SC4 Audit Tool - is NOT an Editing Tool - for this there are Reader, SC4Tool, Lot Editor and a number of others. The program supports four main Tasks 1. Audit/Review of Loading Sequence, file redundancies and Overrides 2. Dependency verification (as many as possible) 3. Audit/Review of a. SC4 file integrity (.dat etc) and b. TGI file content integrity (Exemplars etc) to the Property Level 4. Exploration - a really good informative display of Exemplar Property Values and file contents so that one can learn something of how SC4 works. Tasks 1 and 3a focus on the physical SC4File View Tasks 2,3b and 4 mostly on the TGIFile view (SC4 Content) These tasks can focus on the whole SC4 Environment or incidentally scanned files/folders (or both) Potential Audiences are: - The User who wants to make sure that some new plugins aren't broken - The User who wants to make sure the game loads plugins in the right order - The Modder who wants to learn what/how things work - The Modder who publishes work and wants to make sure its correct, and will work correctly with a given environment - The SysAdmin who wants to make sure their site is only hosting quality products - Potentially programmers to make use of the functionality (of the SC4DataNode.dll) How it works: SC4DataNode loads all of the files that SimCity would load, in the order it would load them when starting a game. It then marks all files that are redundant, checks the contents for accuracy, finds the interdependencies and marks them as found or not and offers a number of views of the resultant data. This can also be carried out for any given set of files. Use the included installer (program can be installed anywhere) and you're on your way The program is written in VB.NET v2.0 and should run on any machine that can run the .NET 2.0 Framework or an equivalent. It also installs one very clear to read Font. Full Documentation is accessible from within the program. (Docs Button) cheers Ron May/Jun 2012 -
@watercitymadero - Thanks for showing us how you did it. There is really no substitute for nature for sources for textures in the game. You've also very successfully taken account of the fact that, when making water-wave textures for SC4, the perspective is important. The textures must have dominant lines running close to the angles of the projection (16 and/or 60degrees from horizontal) for the swells/waves to look best in the game. The scale of the swells and waves must look reasonable with objects running over them - the speedboat is a good measuring item. The lighting must be from the left when shown in-game. And of course the holy grail is perfect tiling (no visible joins) and natural textures don't - they are continuous, so that usually turns out the hardest to do. Your inspiration texture meets these criteria and your resultant textures look great.
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Thanks. You have been busy - I might have to hand my archive over to you to maintain. As for the tunnel not sure there I don't know how to make draggable street tunnels work at all. Looks like a wrong orientation of the texture, maybe 180 deg out.
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@watercitymadero How did you make your water textures?
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cheers. thanks for that - roundabouts have always had tricky-to-draw joins to the rest of the network.
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I'm creating a new city-building game with a powerful Building Creator tool
rivit replied to pedroseabramedeiros's topic in City-Building Games
@matias93 - I agree it sounds plausible. The buildings that @justforfun makes are all made that way (by hand) - essentially a scaffold mesh with textures over them just like automata are made. They would not have self shadowing or cast shadows in SC4 but that doesnt mean they couldn't (be made to) look like they do. Looking at the 3d-ness of the pics at the top of this post the meshes will be mostly be more complicated than one prism - but the principle remains intact - assembly from relatively simple meshes. In the end it degree of difficulty depends on their internal representation in the building tool, which looks quite slick, and a willingness on the part of the author to subvert its intent from his own (game) uses for it. I can imagine win-win sharing scenarios of ideas/content going both ways though. For instance, apart from S3D and FSH for SC4, if you can get buildings into an .obj mesh format with or without textures then they become exportable to a number of 3D rendering tools tools including Blender. Thence going the other way with meshes made in the right way isn't necessarily impossible either. Be sure though, between brainstorm and implementation is a fair bit of software work.- 52 Replies
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I'm so old..............what was the question again?
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Allô, qui appelle ? I've been a little distracted of late with GLR and to be frank hadn't thought of it. But guess what @bhmantan? here it is on my Onedrive 202506 RUM MGB - E5 HuguesAroux StreetX.zip 202506 RUM Maxis Lookalike - E5 HuguesAroux StreetX.zip All WWStreets are covered in these zips. Remove previous version as there is a name change on SAM8
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Congrats on the completion of a huge project - it cannot be over-emphasised how much work this represents.
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Having a dedicated Texture Range (PM @Tarkus to request one) will allow you be pretty sure they are unique. You can use the same IID block confidently for Models and Exemplars IIDs as well since you're making automata. Just keep track of them in a spreadsheet so you don't overwrite yourself. There is a chance of duplication even this way but its a lot smaller. For automata you can use all digits of the IID so you can pack them quite tightly together. MAXIS was somewhat profligate leaving lots of free space between their automata IIDs. As for the LRM its used a lot of IIDs because they are BAT models and they use 20 at a time, but even there there will be large spaces you could exploit between them. In this case you'll find that anything from the wxyz0500-0FFF parts of those iids are probably free - just one will get you about 1500 iiDS. ~ Renumbering those can be done in Reader but its pretty tedious and prone to error. If you've adhered to blocks consecutively numbered it will be easier as you just add an offset to the ones you've got to get a cloned version. But the exemplars and models need to be edited one by one to point to the new iids. So before launching into that I'd be very sure I had to do it, and pick off the most painful ones (those known to be in conflict) first. Otherwise find a block and sit tight - conflicts will be reported.
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Sorry, I forgot it wouldn't show you the folder. Its Here
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Thanks Tibi, I have all of those in the mod so far. (they're also in the SWN as rsc204 notes). The others you show are not and I'll eventually get to them I guess - only those with rail embedded in texture are potentially relevant here - and it depends on their unique usage whether its desired/needed at all. The reference list is very useful. The point I was making is that Lots using the $$ Paving base texture with GLRail overlay method will not automatically get updated using this mod because it (the $$ paving) is used everywhere for a number of purposes. The rail itself has been regenerated. I've gone for two new modifiable base textures (just $$ paving with the undertrack texture inside it, 1 orth and 1 diag) for those stations that people may want to adapt - its by no means a fixed requirement. They're trivial to make and automate but the lot needs to be modified manually to apply them. Yes its Dirt00 in the scripts so you can do grass, paving and center paving all at once. I've sent you a PM.
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Many thanks everyone - I'm surprised but nevertheless happy that this GLR thing might have legs. For the brave and daring amongst you I've made up two demo .dats for you to try out. They can be found here on my one drive (7MB each) and start 202505 RVT GLR Reskin v2. One is for MAXIS as a default, the second uses the SV grass and MGB sidewalks. Both use Street for Tram in Street rather than SAM8. Standard drill: You need to make sure they are the last thing to load or you may get odd results. As it is WIP they will not be perfect in lots of ways, but you will get a good sense of what the overall change is. I would love to see some before/after scenes. Now the most obvious shortcoming is that Stations will retain the textures they were made with. For some obscure reason almost all GLR ststions are made by using the default $$ wealth paving and overlaying rails. Looks like this: This won't be changed by this mod. So far its the only part of GLR that won't automatically adapt. Unlike rail (RRW), there was never a dedicated base texture. Some custom stations with their own base textures will change. For this to work long term we need another solution and I'm still in two minds as to whether a new dedicated base texture either with or without rail is better. I'm beginning to favour the latter as its less disruptive of the lots which will need editing. For demo purposes I have modded a couple to show how seamless it can be: NAM diag AVE station and MGBs ace corner station: Finally to answer a few questions. As with all the GoFSH scripted mods, the Grass and Paving can be selected and the Dirt00 texture is used here to determine the underlay for the rail. This means you can make this match everything else you've set up. Once released, you run the script and you've got your unique setup. It takes a less than a minute to run. I've maintained the original GLR gauge specifications but the rail itself is no longer white and is 3 instead of 4 pixels wide which gives it a more HD feel. The underlays are deliberately scaled to be unobtrusive and cause minimal disruption to the rail. I am however pushing the edges of envelope and aliasing shows up in curves. Random uses of GLR elsewhere will fit - the old rail may look a bit bright or damaged. You will see in particular that TiA has very dark intersections and very bright rail - its an area that still needs work and is particularly fiddly (and is quietly driving me mad).
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I've been getting to grips with the 900+ tiles that comprise the Ground Light Rail component of the NAM. It's a mighty piece of the NAM, very clever and extensive, but it has experienced many years of relative neglect, both in textures and player usage in-game. It looks like this: (Random scene in SC4 Vanilla + NAM) While still WIP, I've now redrawn over 80% of it using modern methods either from scratch, or by editing existing textures, and have produced a new GoFSH generating archive. Would you use GLR more if it looked like this? (Two tiles here are not yet updated) and you could do this with it?
