kant01

Sooo...its been a while since I have been active on Simtropolis or with SimCity at all, but I decided to get back in to it and try my hand at some BAT-ing. I am starting a series of colonial style homes from 17th & 18th century U.S. These are the very first BAT's I have been willing to share and my first go at this in about 4 years, so please be kind! But I would also be open to some constructive advice. New England Colonial - Capen House [16m wide] New England Shack - Clemence [8m wide] New England Shack - Johnston [8m wide] Each of these is a residential building. I will try to post some lot shots from in-game soon. Thanks for your feedback in advance!

So far its looking good! Definitely excited to see more!

Chapter 1 During the reign of Chancellor Gaius Valarum, in what was known as the worst persecution of the Droth people since the Second Inquisition, an exodus took place. The Droths decided to pursue their brand of scientific mysticism outside the rule of the Imperial domains, outside the laws of the Senate, and away from the rabid anger of Chancellor Valarum. The Droths feared Gaius as much as the Senate, for both considered the Droths a danger to Imperial stability. Gaius used his Imperial forces, and in particular the Royal Assassins to round up Droth leaders in the night, to execute them in hidden covens where they worshiped, and to kidnap and torture their children. The Senate passed laws to seize suspected Droth property and make it impossible for them to conduct commerce. And so, after decades of persecution, hiding, and fear, the Droths began to leave confines of the Imperial domain. They settled at first in uncharted territory and they called their home New Salem. They established a small farming community which soon grew to a hefty 5,000 members, all Droths who had escaped from Chancellor Valarum and the Senate. They lived off of the land, growing barely, alfalfa, and soy, as well as cattle and sheep. The people who came had spent so long in hiding, in persecution, and many without a profession so they farmed and became herders. As they divided up the land into plots, they also built homes, nestled together around a small city square. It was in that square that they would meet on the first new moon of each month to worship the Droth Lord and to watch the stars and to chant their sacred rites. And over the course of 5 long years with two severely brutal winters, they eventually came to have a solid and thriving community. And once their numbers were strong, they built a house of worship to the Droth Lord, and they sacrificed the new born calves. And the remaining Droths who still lived under persecution back in the Imperial domains heard secret whispers of this new land as did the other religious minorities, and people told tales of a public meeting place where the Droths could gather and no one had to hide from Chancellor Valarum and the Senate. As more tales were told, the people continued to flee to the town of New Salem. The small original settlement of 5,000 quickly grew to 9,000 in just two more years. Some of the new people that came in the second wave were not Droths, but the Droth peoples opened them as fellow outcasts of the Imperium. As the people came, the small settlement had to expand it center, providing marketplaces and meeting houses for the other faiths. People began to engage in other forms of commerce, to hold festivals, to sell flowers and earthenware vessels in market stalls along the sidewalks, and to conduct in banking and finance. This rural farming community of star-watchers was now a small collective and the loose forms of civil management were no longer enough to maintain order and plan for future development. But little did the people know that the worst winter yet lay in store for them. That January a plague broke out amongst the people. Men, women, and children found themselves sick and dying. The bodies began to pile up, food became scare, and no one wanted to leave their homes for fear of catching the plague. When the winter past, the Droth leaders found that nearly 2,500 people had succumbed to the disease. As they buried the bodies in mass graves, they decided that the time had come to implement some changes. They couldn’t live without structure and organization to figure out what to do in a crisis. They needed protection, guidance, and decisions to be made. And they needed specialists who could treat disease and take care of urban planning. For some had speculated the plague came about because of waste run-off from the farms into the river. Without engineers and architects to figure out some basic planning strategies, they seemed likely to repeat the devastation in winters ahead. To be continued...

Updated all my drivers. Nothing. Vista 64 Home Edition. I don't know about this "Select Language" thing because the pull down menu underneath log in name is blank so I don't even get the option to select a language. ugh.

Originally posted by: wafgking I've gotten into the game and started to create my avatar but then its a no go. It refused to upload and the CitiesXL servers are now down.quote> Yeah, I have made it into the game but can't get past the avatar stage. Just won't upload.

I have a key but the beta page won't load at all. MC's system must be way overloaded. i keep trying to refresh but am not getting through. Edit: Just got through and now there is an error msg which says the page is temporarily unavailable. grr

Originally posted by: SimFox2. you have unzipped/unpacked/ it into folder that you archive software suggested you. and that was C:\autodesk\3DSMAX_2009\. Here is a first confusion - this is NOT an installation! Calling this procedure installation confuses the heck out of situations and would you not post screen shots here I think this issue would NEVER be resolved. You just can't call things what ever you want. Or, you can, buit other people wouldn't be able to understand you.quote> I can see how this is confusing and glad its cleared up, but I had no way of knowing that the installation had reversed itself (and I think you are probably right about that!). Contrary to how it may have appeared, I wasn't just calling things what I wanted to. I called that the installation folder because that is what the BAT4Max instructions called the C:\autodesk\3dSMax_2009\ folder. But trust me, I wouldn't have called it the "installation" folder just because I wanted to. I realize I got a tad confused here , but just as a suggstion, I think the BAT4Max instructions could be a little bit clearer on this point. after the extraction you have run from that folder setup program which suggested you to INSTALL program into it's default location C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2009 - this is an installation! funny that you have decided to "fix" empty space problem in "3ds Max 2009" but didn't think that same empty spaces in "Program Files" would be a problem. Would you care to explain why? Not to me to yourself...quote> Again, I think the instructions could be a bit clearer on the spaces issue. It didn't say that I needed to take out spaces from my Program Files directory. It just said "spaces" and not being clear on why the spaces needed to be taken out one could just as easily assume - as I did - that the spaces it was referring to was in the ...\3ds Max 2009\ directory rather than the C:\Program Files\ directory. I understand now that when you said "path name" that you were referring to the entire thing (and perhaps I should have figured that out ). In the BAT4Max instructions above it says: For instance here is a right type of pathC:\Max or C:\3dsMax and here is a wrong one: C:\Programm Files\...\Max or C:\3ds Maxquote> Perhaps under "right type of path" you could also include an example like this: C:\ProgramFiles\..Max ...i.e. the longer name without any spaces Thanks again!!! This has been very helpful EDIT: I should also add that you are wonderful, SimFox, for going through all this with me. I really appreciate it.

I am using Windows Vista Home Premium edition. Looking back through the installation process just now I know I didn't mess anything up because I didn't deviate from anything that it told me to do. If it installed things into the wrong folder then it is because that's what the installation told me to. Just to prove it, I went back through and took some screen shots: First: This is the very first thing that opens up when you go to install it. The destination folder is the one it suggests. I didn't change it at all: Second: You get these menu options; I selected "Install Products": Third: It now asks which products you want to install. It asked if I wanted the 32-bit, the 64-bit, and Backburner. I just did the 64-bit; as you can see here is says the 64-bit is already installed: Fourth: It now asks you to configure the installation, i.e. to select which product to configure; if you look a bit below that you will see that it already has selected the ...\Program Files\... location as the destination. But it doesn't give you the option to change that until you select it to configure: And Fifth: It finally asks for the installation path. Again, this destination is supplied as the default. I did not change it. However: the second time I tried installing I just took out the spaces. It didn't work the first time I did with spaces and it didn't work the second time I did it without the spaces: After you hit next it then asks you if you are ready to install. So I didn't change anything through this process. I just let it guide me. After the installation, however, the directories do not match the instructions. There is no ...\scripts\... folder in the C:\Autodesk\3DSMax_2009\... directory per the screen shot in my previous post but rather in the ...\Program Files\... directory. Hopefully that clears up the installation process...As I said, I thought I could have misunderstood the instructions for installing BAT4Max, but given that I followed the installation for Max2009 exactly as it guided me it is not clear what I should have done differently. Thanks again!!!

These look wonderful! They will make some excellent additions to the game

I didn't change the suggested installation folders. The first one that came up when it asked me to install was C:\Autodesk\3DSMAX_2009\. I didn't change that in any way since that was the suggested location. Then part way through when doing the 64-bit installation it asked again for a location and that time it suggested the C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3DS MAX 2009\ location. When I reinstalled it for the second time I did change the second title just to remove the spaces so that it was ...\3DSMAX2009\ but I didn't change anything else.

Ok, I cannot see the last thing that was typed because of the weird new page bug, but here is the problem I am still encountering. This is what my installation folder looks like - at least, I think this is what you mean by installation. There are no spaces in the folder name. As you can see, I added the gamepacks folder there from the BAT4Max download. But there is no scripts folder in this folder. Where I have a script folder is in my program files folder. But as I understand, this is the wrong place. So I tried just creating a scripts folder in the former one but that did nothing when I started up Max. So then I tried adding in this other folder and that did a little something but still gave me an error. Maybe I am just misunderstanding the instructions :\ EDIT: ok, now I can see the above post. I don't have any problem with windows file structure and I did read all the instructions. The first time I tried to follow them perfectly even though the instructions said to place the two files into my scripts folder - but there was no scripts folder. Based on reading other people's responses in the above thread, it seemed like at least 2 different people suggested I should be using the program files folder since that is where the \scripts\ folder was actually located in my drive. But that didn't work either. It seems that the default installation of Max on my pc didn't give me anything that looked like the folders I should have according to the instructions. EDIT: I can try this with 2008 per the recommendation, but that will take me a little bit of time to download and install. THANKS for all your help! And sorry for getting off track

Ok, so I gather that I would reinstall and select the installation path to be the same folder but without any spaces. Is that it? Or is there anything else I should attend to in setting up?

Originally posted by: autoVino There is the folder and it's in the Autodesk\3ds max 2009\ folder. Spaces in the path might be a problem for some parts of the script, btw.Also 3ds max mental ray crop has some problems with it when rendering via scriptquote> So can I take the spaces out of the folder name?

Originally posted by: nofunk So the two files that are in 3dsmax8\gamepacks\BAT\scripts\startup (CPTB2Startup.mx and trueNiteConverter.ms) should be moved to 3dsmax8\Scripts\Startup ?? Just want to make sure! Thanks in advance. quote> So I downloaded 3dsmax2009 and there does not seem to be a \scripts\ folder in my main installation folder. I am not sure if this differs from the 8 version or if I need to create a scripts folder. I have look in every single folder in the installation folder and there is no "scripts". There is, however, a scripts folder in programfiles\autodesk\3ds max 2009\ but as I understood the instructions above that is the wrong folder. am I missing something?

mosin33 - yeah, i agree that this looks too brown. I have lightened up the sides and also made the roof gray. I think this is an improvement. belfastuniguy - thanks for commenting and stopping by I am glad you like these. ok, so in order to counter my troubles with this one I also added some gable and roof edges. I think the building is improved but I am still not entirely happy with it. Also, I noticed that the quality of the building is greatly reduced once I opened it in LE and the game. I think you can tell by looking at the screen shots and the previews that the actual game shots make the edges look a lot more jagged. I am not sure if there is a way to avoid this or not Finally, I have been working on my own fence props, but much to my horror they did not render right at all either: If anyone knows how to fix this I would appreciate the suggestions. thanks!

This has turned out really lovely! The roof looks fantastic

Beautiful! I love the below-ground effect - super cool!

Oh I like this one Todd. Very nice I think the variation in the roof texture is excellent. We need more buildings like this!

Thanks for the comments! nihonkaranws - I'm glad you liked it! Yes, I do plan on making that to fit with a diagonal road. pingangster - thanks for the suggestion. Yeah, I agree the dirt doesn't look quite right. I will try to lighten it a bit and see how that turns out. And a few of the market stalls are definitely too dark. thanks! scotty222 - thanks for commenting and for the suggestion! allez l'om - thanks so much! andisart - thanks for commenting No I am using gmax so I am not sure I have that capability. I really wish I could get the shadow side lighter. It may just be my textures are too dark and so no matter what I do the shadow side will also be dark. But I am working on it to see what I can do art128 - thanks so much! Gn_leugim - this market is just going to be diagonal at the moment. I will probably make some other diagnoal buildings in the future though TheSixCents - thanks! Ok, I am also working on a R$$ house, although the size is a bit off compared to some of the other R$$ in the game. I suppose I could make it R$$$ if people thought it would fit better. It is the House of 7 Gables in Salem, Mass, built in 1668. This one is part of my Salem set It spent a lot of time on the roof and the different side pieces - what with all the gables and all - and I am happy with how the basic model turned out. But I am not so happy with the textures as usual. I would love some suggestions on what I should to do get this closer to being done. Here is the building in RL: And here is my version: And here it in game for some test shots: Thanks for your help and your suggestions!

Your region views are absolutely stunning! And the region looks amazing in the latest shots with the snow and terrain! Really, you have done a beautiful job here

I think this is an excellent start so far! I am quite impressed. Your skills with laying things out and filling with trees and plazas is terrific!

Your cj is beautiful! I really like the latest airport shots but really the whole thing is very well done. I love all the brick plazas - so creative!

this is a very cool cj you have here. I like the way the airport has been developing - nice job!

nice start here! the speedway is a great touch. looking forward to seeing more

This one is still my favorite out of all your buildings SimFox I love these buildings in RL and you have certainly done them justice here. I so want to see this textured. It is unbelievably grand!