geoffhaw

With the help from the following fine folk: cerulean, SimGoober, Vlakhaas, Caliban, GrampaAl, BigRedFish, pmiller19574, Pegasus and BarbyW, I think we have finally worked out how the base and overlay textures work with respect to the Instance Numbers and Wealth level settings. I'll try to explain the theory as I see it, but I'm more than open to having any errors/omissions pointed out. All texture files have a TGI of 7ab50e44 0986135e ????????, where the ???????? represents the individual Instance number of the texture. The instance number is a hex number 8 digits long. For example, 25a71002. Furthermore, each individual texture is not just one Bitmap picture sized 128x128 pixels, but a series of five pictures, decreasing in size from 128x128 to 64x64 to 32x32 to 16x16 and finally 8x8. We now know the following: The first four digits 25a7 identifies the 'family' to which the texture belongs. The fifth digit 1 is a marker which refers to the wealth level of the lot in which the texture is used. (More on this later.) The sixth and seventh digits 00 at present do not seem to have any significance that we have discovered yet. Further testing may find out more about these digits. The eighth digit 2 represents the zoom level at which the texture is viewed in the game. Now, going into more detail about the above points: Eighth digit - zoom level On all the Maxis textures, a '0' in the eighth position represents the view of the texture in the game from the farthest distance away. (The 8x8 picture.) 1, 2, 3 and 4 progressively represent closer views, with 4 (the 128x128 picture) being the most detailed close-up. Some textures produced by Lot Builders have used the other available numbers (5 to f) here. This does not seem to have had any detrimental effects in the game that we have noticed. However, in every circumstance that I have seen, the range of numbers used have been sequential - i.e. 0 to 4, 5-9, a-e etc. So it seems that as long as the eighth digit for a texture has a sequential range of numbers, with the smallest representing the smallest Bitmap picture etc., the game works OK. (More testing can and will be done on this, but it appears to be true.) Sixth and Seventh digits No info at present - see above. First, Second, Third and Fourth digits - Family marker (out of order, but for good reason) This groups textures into 'Families'. These families are used by the Wealth marker below. Fifth digit - wealth marker This is the one that caused us a lot of pain! Each Lot in the game has a Wealth level assigned to it. There are four to choose from: None, §, §§ and §§§. These are represented by the numerical values 0, 1, 2 and 3 respectively. (I believe that if a lot has no particular Wealth Level specified in any exemplar, the game assumes it is level 0.) Now, the part that took a while to work out... Say we have a range of textures with the following Instance numbers: 25a70000 (including the corresponding zoom levels 25a70001 etc.) 25a71000 25a72000 25a73000 25a74000 Note: These are all in the same Family group 25a7. In this case, a Wealth Level 2 Lot, using texture 25a74000 will never show texture 25a74000 in the game. This is because the game will see the Wealth Level 2, and display the texture with a fifth digit which is also 2 from the 25a7 Family. If texture 25a72000 did not exist, 25a74000 would show up properly. Conclusion: This rule applies for all Wealth Levels for both base and overlay textures. The only way to avoid this happening is to not mix Wealth Level markers 0-3 with 4-f in the same family groups. (An examination of the Texture Index shows that the standard Maxis textures follow this rule.)

@ Heides, your range is 0xF8000000 to 0xF803FFFF There are lots of technicalities to the way the game interprets meaning to the IID of a texture, but to be honest most of them don't seem to have any practical effect in the game that I have ever seen. I think what Barby is referring to is the "5th digit" (reading from the left) wealth indicator. This certainly has an effect, and should only be used if you want a wealth dependent texture. (A 0 in this position indicates no-wealth, 1 is low-wealth, 2 is medium-wealth and 3 is high-wealth.) To be safe, only use 4 to F in this position. btw, the range you requested is the 56th one next in line, and at the current rate of allocation would not have been given out until sometime in April 2012!

@ Subbub, your range is 0xF7180000 to 0xF71BFFFF

You don't need any IID range for textures for vehicles. That would be covered by your model if you make a new one, or the original IIDs if you re-skin an existing vehicle. However for base and overlay textures your range is 0xF7080000 to 0xF70BFFFF

@ Timmystwin, your range is 0xF7000000 to 0xF703FFFF

@ JeffCoyote, your range is 0xF6F00000 to 0xF6F3FFFF

Whoops! A bit late in replying again... CIUU96, your range is 0xF6EC0000 to 0xF6EFFFFF

@ TorontoHobbit, your range is 0xF6CC0000 to 0xF6CFFFFF

@ Renedius, your range is 0xF6C80000 to 0xF6CBFFFF

@ Ropeh3ad, your range is 0xF6C40000 to 0xF6C7FFFF

@ ShonMach, your range is 0xF6BC0000 to 0xF6BFFFFF

@ jim 546, your range is 0xF6B80000 to 0xF6BBFFFF

@ littlewhitebutterfly, your range is 0xF6B00000 to 0xF6B3FFFF

Damn! Fell foul of the new page thing again!!! Sorry for my slow reply. @ tigerbuilder, your range is 0xF6A40000 to 0xF6A7FFFF @ TownMaster2005, your range is 0xF6A80000 to 0xF6ABFFFF

@ meister1235, your range is 0xF69C0000 to 0xF69FFFFF

@ mike_oxlong, your range is 0xF6900000 to 0xF693FFFF

@ Nego16, your range is 0xF68C0000 to 0xF68FFFFF

@ BraveSirKevin, your range is 0xF6880000 to 0xF68BFFFF

Sorry for the delay, I'm sure I'd checked this thread since 20th February... ah well. @ fsfinn1, your range is 0xF6800000 to 0xF683FFFF @ Lord Morpheus, your range is 0xF6840000 to 0xF687FFFF I would suggest that you check with the RTMT (Road Top Mass Transit) crew over at SC4Devotion if you are planning to release anything you create. Just to make sure that nothing you do conflicts with any of their stuff.

The texture index is for the textures which appear on the ground of the tiles. This is the texture that everything else such as props and BATs sit on. The texture for a BAT is something you apply when you are making the BAT, and as such does not need any number. For a ground texture, you make a 128x128 bitmap drawing and then use the texture tool in SC4Tool to convert this into a dat file to put into the game. Once you have done this, your texture will appear in the Lot Editor tool for selection in any new lots you wish to make. I can give you a range for the ground textures, but as the numbers are based on hexadecimal numbers, 'T' is not available. Also, as we are using numbers starting with 'F', F1993xxx has long since been allocated. (Back in 2006!) Your range is 0xF66C0000 to 0xF66FFFFF.

@ thingfishs, your range is 0xF6180000 to 0xF61FFFFF Glad to hear that your stuff is showing up. I must admit that I'm a bit of a stranger to the forums these days and a lot of the links I had to old tutorials and threads don't work anymore. The explanation of how the IIDs work in the first post of this thread are still valid of course. There have been additions by those who are far more technical than I about some of the finer meanings of some of the IID 'digits', but to be honest I have never had any trouble with operating by the 'simple' guidelines in the first post. I would pay particular attention to the 'fifth digit' - the 'wealth' marker. Most problems people report with their self-made textures have been with this, so I would avoid using 0, 1, 2 or 3 in the fifth position. Apart from that, all I can say is that you just search the forums here and at other SC4 sites - this texture thing isn't so hard you'll find!

Simguy228, do you mean a texture mod for replacing standard Maxis road textures? If so, you cannot use your own texture IIDs. You have to use the same IIDs as the Maxis textures, and then place your modified textures in a dat file that will be read AFTER the dat file of the textures you are replacing. If I have misunderstood what you are planning, please reply and I will allocate you a range of textures for 'normal' ground textures.

First of all an apology to all those who have been waiting. I seem to have had a problem seeing this thread. I've got a shortcut to it, but I must have been seeing a cached copy of the page, and as far as I was aware there hadn't been any recent requests. Having being advised that there were people waiting, I got to this page through the forum menu and was horrified to see I had a queue! So, with humble apologies again... @ rivit, your range is 0xF5E8000 to 0xF5EFFFFF @ bento, your range is 0xF5F00000 to 0xF5F7FFFF @ paeng, your range is 0xF5F80000 to 0xF5FFFFFF

How to make an Overlay Texture... I had a look through the site and to my surprise I couldn't find a tutorial on the subject. I'm sure there was one once, but it would have been waaaaay back in the early days. Without actually writing a tutorial myself (just haven't got the time at the mo) here are the basics. Put at its simplest level, an overlay texture is a texture which allows the viewer to see not only colours from the overlay texture itself, but also some of the colours from the base texture underneath. So what use is this? Say you want to have a pathway going across a piece of grass. There is no base texture which has grass with a pathway going across it. But with overlay textures you can create the appearance of this quite easily. The black areas of the overlay image allow the base texture to be seen 'through' the overlay image. Black is totally transparent, whilst various shades of grey allow you to adjust the opacity of what is shown. Hope this helps. Please get back if it doesn't, or if anybody else can find a link to a full tutorial please post here!