vortext
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Everything posted by vortext
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That Unused Moisture Data View
vortext replied to CorinaMarie's topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
Oh for sure, I didn't intend for to come across as bemoaning it. Indeed it was way ahead of its time as they clearly set out to make thoroughly comprehensive simulation, not only in terms of climate and terrain. There're also all sorts of LOT related properties, like 'allow for mixed use' and 'fence definition' of which we can only imagine their intended purpose. And who knows some day some one will come along and prod at them long enough to make some use of it, in similar fashion seasonal flora came into existence. -
That Unused Moisture Data View
vortext replied to CorinaMarie's topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
As far as I know there's nothing directly hinting at a tie in with agriculture, however, it's safe to say a lot of terrain & climate features got axed. Only 1 of the 4 terrain textures tables in the ini file is enabled, which also happen to have settings related to wind erosion, hydrology and even a rain fall - all of which have no to little effect ingame. My best guess is the devs planned to include a seasonal watercycle, with actual rain (as evidenced by the rain tool) which would have an effect on actual, flowing rivers. One comment in the ini file especially alludes to this: Such a shame to think what could have been if only they'd been given more time. Ah well, best not to think of that too long I guess. -
phew. . . And here're two more pics, both mosaics so make sure to view full size. More found in my MD.
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Hope this still counts as small town. . ?!
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Central European Tree Controller - Development Thread (TESTING PLAYERS WANTED)
vortext replied to 11241036's topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
Exciting to see a new seasonal controller! Attached to this post a file which overrides the power graph with moisture values, thus making them visible ingame. Also note, the flora preference columns represent moisture, akin to how rows represent height. Unlike altitude however, not all sixteen possible slots actually show brushes ingame. To the best of my recollection columns 7-8-9-10 are responsible for most of the brush placement. The outer ranges show hardly at all, on steep slopes mostly. Oh, and I would also really like to see summer pictures, if it's not too much to ask.- 33 Replies
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- tree controller
- florapreference
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Given the error it seems to be a character problem nonetheless, unicode 0106 corresponds to c accent.
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Yes the Reader has a clone function. Simply select the files you wish to clone, right-click, and choose 'clone file'. Now a window will pop-up where you can specify how many clones you want and how the TGI should be incremented for the clones. For example if the original file IID ends at 0, and you make 5 clones which increment by 3 the clones IID will end at 3,6,9, C & F respectively.
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Central European Tree Controller - Development Thread (TESTING PLAYERS WANTED)
vortext replied to 11241036's topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
As @rsc204 already said the Flora Cluster Type property strings multiple item together. I had, at one point, made a three-part series on tree controllers in my old thread, however, imageshack has devoured all the accompanying pictures. . I'll see if I can find the pics again and rehost, or maybe rework it into a tree controller tutorial of sorts. Anyway, maybe the text is still of help to you, part 1 is here. As for your specific questions: the Flora Preferences Table works in a binary fashion (i.e. 1 & 0) and only 1 exemplar per slot. If there are two, or more, exemplars the loading order of dat files, or the exemplar order within a dat file, will determine which flora exemplar shows. Also note that once you start stringing Flora Exemplars via the Cluster Type, and create what I called a 'brush', only the 1st exemplar needs to have a Flora Preference set - the rest will follow suit. You can use this to your advantage, for example by re-using part of certain brushes in other places. Or for example making different 'starter' brushes and point them towards the same brush for the end items. Final, and important note: you cannot 'loop' brushes. That is, you cannot point the last flora exemplar back to the start of the brush. This will cause the game to freeze and you'll have to force quit.- 33 Replies
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- tree controller
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maybe because there's a 't' at the end of my nick. btw, is there any change of some new LoTR buildings sometime? Not that I'm a big fan of the series, rather I'm intrigued by all things primitive & medieval when it comes to SC4 (see link in my signature) and the partially underground and overgrown hobbit houses fit the bill nicely in that regard.
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Since it appears you can actually plop the lot, the descriptor & model files should already reside somewhere in your plugins folder - otherwise you'd get brown boxes or experience other issues. The zoom issue could be explained if the main building were actually a prop with improperly set zoom flags.
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- simcity 4
- custom content
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DATPacker and JDATPacker on Windows 10 [SOLVED]
vortext replied to LironTheChick's topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
Yeah this happened to me a lot as well, mainly because Jdatpacker is a bit unusual in the sense that the 'source directory' needs to be set one level above the actual directory you wish to dat-pack. Or to put that another way, it does not recognize single .dat files within the source directory but rather only the folders it contains, which in turn contain the actual .dat files you want packed. So in your case, try to create a new folder within the plugins folder called 'CAM' first of all and put simcity1.dat & CAM files in there. Now open JDatpacker, set the source directory to the plugins folder and run it. Barring any Java issues it should have created a new .dat file called CAM inside of the plugins folder.- 3 Replies
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oh sorry, t/m is a Dutch abbreviation for tot en met, to indicate that if 0,1,2, and 3 are excluded. Will edit. That's what happens when I type too fast, Dutch words will slip in on occasion. And I'm more than likely to simply skip words all together.
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yes these are proper IIDs for 3 unique textures. Texture families simply do not matter as long as the wealth marker is not active , i.e. as long as 0,1,2 or 3 are not used as the fifth digit. If either one of those values is used as the fifth digit than the entire range, consisting of the preceding 4 digits, is considered a wealth family. And if the range is considered a wealth family, than the 7th is indeed used for dilapidation though it requires additional flags to be set in the Lot Config reps to make it work. If on the other hand 0,1, 2 and 3 are excluded from use in the fifth digit, than the game does not consider the preceding 4 digit range to be a texture wealth family. And in that case the 6th and 7th digit are a-okay to use.
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Whether or not you want to assign new IIDs to the old textures and issue a re-release is up to you. More important is to use the proper, next available non-wealth IIDs for any new textures you make from here on out, as it'll save you a lot of future frustrations.
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yes, exactly. Well the same logic more-or-less applies here as well. If FA00(0-3) is active than FA00(4-F) is considered to be part of the wealth texture family and will behave accordingly (that is to say, very puzzling ). Again I refer back to explanation of texture IID: 'The only way to avoid this (i.e. puzzling behavior) from happening is to not mix Wealth Level markers 0-3 with 4-f in the same family groups'.
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Whoops yeah you're right. My bad. Admittedly I'm a bit confused myself, doing all this from memory. At any rate, lets see if I can put this another way. There are two positions within the texture IID at play, namely the 5th and 8th, and they have an interaction with each other. Lets first discuss the fifth digit, aka the wealth marker. Yes this is correct. This however is not correct. As soon as either 0,1,2 or 3 is used as the fifth digit, it's considered to be a wealth marker and consequently the complete range of FA00 is considered to be texture wealth family ID. So putting an A, B, C, ect as the fifth digit does not matter because the range is already marked as texture wealth family and the game will try to display the texture corresponding to the lot wealth, or default to whatever is the most appropriate available within the range. Okay, now on to the last digit, the so-called zoom level indicator. Ordinarily this digit can take the value of 4,9 or E for the largest zoom levels. However, if the wealth marker is active than the zoom level indicator can only have one of those values because the game now uses the 4-digit wealth family ID + wealth marker to identify textures, rather than using the unique, entire 8-digit texture IID. Okay that took a while to type out, I hope it made sense.
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Yes this is correct. Now for a texture outside of a wealth family the fifth digit will range from be 4 t/m F and in addition the zoom level indicator can be either 4,9, or E. So for example the next 3 IIDs will be considered unique textures: FA004004 FA004009 FA00400A If the wealth marker is active, however, the zoom level indicator does no longer matter because the game now basically considers only the first 4 digits as a single texture IID. Note the perhaps confusing implication here: the IIDs I said would be considered unique a moment ago will in fact not be because in practice the wealth marker is already activated. The thread I linked to previously is very clear on this as well:
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yes this has all the classic hallmarks of wealth issues. Not so much with the marker itself, but rather crucially that if the marker is active, the first 4 digits of the IID are considered the texture wealth family ID. I would not be surprised if indeed it's not possible to have multiple IID within one and the same texture wealth family. Or to put that another way I'd imagine that if there're textures with a wealth marker, the family ID takes precedent over the individual IID. And consequently, any texture IID within the same range, i.e. starting with the same 4 digits as the wealth family, will be considered part of that family, regardless of what the actual wealth marker says.
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GroupIDs: What are they exactly?
vortext replied to Dracoceros's topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
yes, thanks for catching that. dem numpads -
GroupIDs: What are they exactly?
vortext replied to Dracoceros's topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
In the installation folder you'll find a text file called GroupId in which to set it. Yes. Lot Editor textures use GID 0x1986135E, Transit textures use GID 0x1ABE787D, and terrain texture another all together, can't recall which atm. Note to omit 0x when setting the Groupid.txt for PNGtoFSH Because it processes one texture at a time to create a so-called multi-FSH texture. This is a FSH file which has a single IID, yet contains multiple textures which the game picks from at random. Useful to counteract repetition and tiling effects for LE and terrain textures, unfortunately does not work for transit textures. Also, if you're going to make LE textures it's might be useful to read Explanation of the Texture IID numbers, if you haven't done so already. The section on the so-called wealth marker especially as that one can cause all sorts of puzzling and unwanted behavior. -
Obviously gridbusting is a good idea but imho it's a bit overkill atm, the warehouse & road area especially. Try thinning it out: e.g. through road at a FAR angle, diagonal access road branching off into industry and one or two strategically placed diagonal warehouses. To a lesser extent the same goes for the railyard: 1 huge one has more impact visually than 3 imho. I guess what I'm trying to say currently it looks too cluttered to me. Or the other way around, I think less clutter would have more visual appeal. The farms and meadows are great though, don't touch them!
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Two quick notes. First here's a diagram how to operate PNGtoFSH batch. It really is quite straightforward. Also the IID you used: technically is still considered a wealth texture, since the fifth digit is a zero. If I understand correctly this IID range is already in use in your previously released textures? It's not a problem though as long the other wealth markers (1 t/m 3) aren't used. Or in other words, any new textures within the same IID range should start at 0xFA00400A.
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I think I might know why. How did you make them overhang? Did you use the trick where you start with a big lot that covers everything, then reduce it to make everything overhang? If you did, the textures on the lot will repeat as if the lot was still the larger size. Hm dunno about that. If look at the picture the two engines cast very large and weird shadows in the opposite direction, typically seen when a prop extends below the ground plane. Since these are automata used as props, my guess would be it has to do with the engines themselves, possibly related to the nighttime S3D?
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Here's another bit of info which might be helpful in your study: Explanation of the Texture IID numbers.
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The difference between base and overlay textures is that the latter have transparency. In other words, for a base texture you have to remove the transparency beforehand. How to do that exactly depends on the graphics program you use, though typically you'd be looking for a 'delete/remove alpha channel', or 'merge all visible' visible command. The process to actually get base textures ingame is the same as for overlays and you should be able to follow the tutorial.
