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Some nice pics (well sad really). If only you could plop a few schools and parks to fix the problem. Slums are a fact of life and I wonder if the problem is more social than political. Pat's I was in upstate a while back, went of the beaten path, what a suprise! little run down towns in the middle of the woods. I took pics but I can't find them. Even around the Catskills had it's odd run down area's. Of course Chicago like most other cities has it's fair share of "ghetto". I grew up near a few but nothing that compares to the (former) Cabrini Green and the Rober Taylor Housing Projects. Good thread! j

Well I am back in business, so to speak. I actually made the model in Max and imported it into gmax for export. That seems to work well enough. The textures are messed up and I forgot to reset the transform and scale in Max before bringing it over but I managed to get a fully functioning power plant out of it somehow. I'll go back and fix those things up. Im not sure about the scale, it seems small I'll play around with it. Oh yeah and night lights. I think Soldier Field is going to need some modding that goes beyond the plugin manager. I need... what is it? iLive's tools?? Eh... I'll download all of em... UI tool? Neat, I always wondered how that was done. Pats, thanks for the offer. I think I got it now but I was just about to take you up on it. Hawkpride, I love teemu's stadiums, I am suprised there aren't more like them on the STEX. Hanson, thanks. I am glad you knew what this building was 301 W. Taylor St., it always made an impression on me when driving past it. Hopefully you will have it soon Bixel, yeah I was not having much luck getting Bat4Max running on XP and Max 9. Also isn't there a bat request thread somewhere I couldn't seem to find it? Not that I can't come up with my own ideas but you never know. Oh and one more, is there a way to change the city's date in game? Thanks again everyone. j

patriots_1228, yeah I am working in Max 9. I am wondering now if it was a good idea, hopefully I can figure out the BAT this weekend. If this turns out half as cool as teemu's work then I'll be happy. Jill Jacobs, I figured it was based of of some Roman or Greek architecture. The Vitorrio is a bit more involved, Thanks for the feedback so far everyone.

I still don't even have Bat4Max up and running yet and I already have run into some problems trying to install it. At anyrate I decided to do something a little easier in order to get familiar with the tool set. This is an old ComEd steam plant, you can find these smaller plants closer to or even in a downtown area, they are smaller than a regular power plant and produce less electricity. I got tired of plopping a coal plant at the edge of my city and dragging powerlines all the way up to where I am zoning so this would be a nice early game alternative. (I think) Well the building is kinda nice anyway. I did a little bit more work on Soldier Field. I have a feeling that it is going to take a while to finish the art. J

Hope you don't mind me chiming in. Merriman is an amazing OLB but I am suprised that he is forgoing surgery, it will be a tragic loss for the Chargers future if he is seriously injured. Regardless I have to wonder how he is going to look by mid season. My hats off to him at any rate, two torn knee ligaments... that's rough. I hope, like Norv say's, they watch him closely and not over use him. Lights Out.

I am really looking forward to this game, and the thing that really gives me hope is how involved MC has become with the city builder game community. Hopefully things work out well for MC because it seems like EA really didn't give a crap about what the community wanted for SC5.

Heh, that's more compliments for the new Soldier Field than I have heard before. Maybe it's a Chicago thing, you know, messing with history and all. At least they kept the colonnade and outer walls. I suppose if I really hated it I wouldn't make it, and I have a new appreciation for it as I try to replicate it. Jeez... it is so subtly asymmetrical. I have to say there are some really awesome soccer, err... football stadiums bat's here that make me kinda envious. I hope I can live up to that quality. Thanks for the warm welcome back bixel, I am surprised how many people remember the Chase Plaza. Hopefully I can be a more pro-active member this time around. J

Hi all! Well I haven't been around here in quite some time. Admittedly I suck at the whole online community thing so even at my best I still fade in and out. My last bat (quite a while ago) of Chicago row houses is dead in the water after a hard drive crash which kinda killed my motivation. So the story is that I was curious about the whole CitiesXL project and it lead me back here, and what do ya know the community is still alive and kicking. I dusted of my SC4 disks and grew a new city and I remembered that I always wished there was an NFL stadium reward. There isn't much out there in the way of NFL stadium bat's or I might have just let it drop. So rather than pick something easy I decided that I would do the new Soldier Field. Yeah it's pretty ugly but damn if it isn't tough to model. Hopefully this will work out better than my last attempt. As I get closer to getting this in game I will probably have some questions. My last bats were in gmax (which sucks) and I am doing this one in 3ds max. I really hate dependencies so I plan to only use maxis props. J

I was going to wait until I got closer to releasing this BAT before I brought this up but I have been trying to decide the best way to approach the lots. Here is what I am thinking for the varients: 1: Brick 2 Flat model A1 and B1 these are the ones I have started 2: Brick 2 Flat model C1 and D1 2 more building meshes 3: Brick 2 Flat model A2 and B2 texture varients for buildings A and B 4: Brick 2 Flat model C2 and D2 texture varients for buildings C and D 5: Building with empty lot? Most neighborhoods have the ocassional empty lot I would like to recreate it. I thought it would be cool to have the buildings grow randomly on the lot, that would make something like 100 lot variations with 1 lot.Unfortunatly I don't think it is possible to randomize the building or have more than 1 building per lot but I am pretty sure I can use a prop family and have a different prop grow each time. I don't think props show up in region view though. Or I could just save myself the hassle and make them 5 seperate lots. Overall I would like to make something with a neighborhood type feel, so in the future I was thinking of making some 3 flats, maybe an apartment building or two, and a few low rise commercial buildings to cap the whole thing off. onlyplace4: I had ilive at one time I probably have it on disk somewhere. J

I don't know why I didn't do this before. I was scaling based on the first style of rowhouse in the picture but it seems to be the odd man out as far as size goes. To do list: I will scale the height to match the other models and widen each building so that each one still takes up half a lot. That should solve any scale issues, and I think if I am careful I can do it without loosing all the details or making the model look squished. Also I will model some props for inside the house and a few for outside. I took out the grass, but I do want to have a fence infront of the building so maybe I will make it a prop, personaly I didn't want to make any dependancies (even if they are my own) but I suppose there isn't anyway around it. I may do something else with the roof but I am not sure what yet. Maybe just dirty up the textures a bit. And then the varients... I kinda started on one already. Thanks for the feedback everyone this will take a bit longer then I expected but it will be worth it since I am learning all this stuff for the first time. I am happy to know that this will make my first STEX release a good one! J

Hi, Sorry to revive an old thread but I had the exact same problem, I exported the model from BAT and it showed up in the Plugin Manager just fine but it didn't show up when I tried to replace the building on an existing 1x2 lot In the LotEditor. As it turns out I had exported the building from BAT larger then the 1x2 lot. When I tried to replace a building on a 4x4 lot the building showed up just fine in the Replace Item dialouge. So maybe your building it to big in gmax? I hope this helps. J

Thanks for the kind words everyone, like I said it's the least I could do to give back to the community! Ok... I think it's done(ish). I have a few areas that light is bleeding through that I need to fix, maybe a few tweaks to the lighting. When I make the lots do you think I should make the buildings props? Thanks J