GouRou

EDIT: no problems here, are you using IE?

I will throw this out simply so someone can use it work against, did they hardcode the one way roads because their system couldnt use them...? As I said, I'm with you guys, I doubt they did that, as it would be against their whole system, what we need is a way to search all files in the data for those 4 bytes, some way to scan the dat.......I'll work on this.

just make it have thickness, splines are objects, a thickness of 1 and several sides will be an object. if you want a spline to be there, but not show as a final object, use thickness 0, dont map coords, and dont display mesh.

Maybe I'm not thinking in the same perspective, but you cant exactly take gmax and tweak it, can you? you dont have the source, so therefore you would have to write one of your own modeled after gmax wouldnt you? Anyway! I didnt intend to grill you on the workings and makeup of the bat. I am interested in knowing how you do complex curves, such as, imagine if you will, a pipe cut in half, concave on the bottom, then this is curved to be concave over it's length, how would you do something such as that if it's a large scale object, such as a roof?

"emulate gmax", interesting two words you put there, I think it also stays many question I had, thank you MaxisBrian

the normals are flipped around, the reader is *I believe* normalizing both sides, it's putting textures on both sides, the game is not, on top of backface culling, it is only texturing the texture side, the s3d's have errors.

I just read through this, so I get to play catch up, MaxisBrian mentioned a library of objects. I have been doing this for a few years now and have a HUGE library of just such objects, I might make something interesting and simply save it out as another object, use it later. I have never, to my knowledge textured as I built a mesh, unless it's to build an object to a texture, which I have done only rarely for Morrowind, never for buildings. For those that are having trouble with splines, practice, because building something by mesh is harder. I use Nurbs more often than not, but I have just found out that GMax doesnt come with them, so I guess I need to ask a question of MaxisBrian.. will the bat support 3DS Max scenes? or will we have to export to 3ds, then go through gmax to export to dat? Good luck all, I know I for one cant wait for the BAT!

MaxisBrian, to insert an image, either click the HTML checkbox and enter the <IMG SRC="url"> or if in IE with rich text on, click the Image icon above in the reply box, 5th from the right on the bottom row, the rest should be self explanatory, rules are 800x600 or below, other than that, you should be all set.

good job guys given all of this information, would it be possible to make a program to generate these? I am kind of assuming that is the next step for all of this perhaps a viewer/editor, there are a couple places in a couple tiles that I feel could use some smoother transitions. I know DM that you were working on a viewer for DatGen, I cant wait to see how it comes out

these wont take much figuring at least, straight from the file itself # Sections # # These are chunks of tiles that can be included into bridges. The # syntax for specifying pieces: # # piece <instance, rotation> Simple piece # piece <instance, rotation, htdelta, yoffset> Sloped piece with the given height change over the tile and model Y offset # piece <instance, rotation>:depth Simple piece with support column (: syntax also works for long form) # piece section-name Reference a section # # You can specify more than one piece/section in a line and you can # also reverse a section while referencing it: # # piece rev(foobar)

A self portrait for those that wish to know what I look like,

they are strange, they dont seem to point to anything, perhaps their sole job is to hold more unknown properties for us to unravel

there is still a very complicated, very intertwined puzzle to solve *goes back to deciphering*

sounds fine, anyone that need to change it will know what it does anyway

that logic doesnt quite fit DM, the sc4paths have no references, so therefore the game is just sharing the property, unless the exempler references the fsh, and the rule file is based on the fsh, then the sc4path is referenced by the rule

the sc4path file instance ID is located in the last value slot in the Resource Key Type value for highways for road and train, it's property 0xC9A5A1BE, currently an unknown

in the 1.0 paths files, the total number displays everything, where has the 1.1 spec breaks things down a bit. here is what is confusing me, I loaded up all of the sc4paths files into a special text editor and searched for the string such as this.. 1 1 1 0 now, this string appears multiple times, along with it's distinct header (--car_a_1_0) in multiple files, whether they be 1.1 or 1.0 so question is, how are these distinguised?! for that question, we might have to look at the rules again, here is an instance I am puzzling, but the ruls for the highways gives little insight..... -- car_a_1_0 1 1 1 0 17 91.6553,87.9784,15.6997 87.5981,83.9369,15.6995 77.8174,74.4877,15.6995 67.6121,63.6345,15.6995 56.2522,52.2338,15.6995 47.2002,44.005,15.6995 35.5972,32.5437,15.6997 23.3867,20.4115,15.6995 9.96142,6.93793,15.6995 -7.83789,-10.742,15.6995 -21.2023,-24.46,15.6995 -34.7495,-37.4447,15.6995 -54.8567,-58.2965,15.6995 -65.6912,-68.7108,15.6995 -73.9318,-77.0735,15.6995 -83.7727,-87.3166,15.6997 -87.9996,-91.7517,15.6995 my first thought was to check if their is a highway rule anywhere with the only number that could be different.. 17! but alas, no my next insight isnt terribly deep however, but it is enlightening, road rules and paths are handled differently than highway rules and paths. highways are 3d objects, roads are textures. the rules for highways point directly to sc4path files, which contain only rules, and I believe, only the rules for that tile, still figuring out roads. how the highway rules are pointed to is a mystery, but perhaps it's handled by whatever exempler controls the highways how it decides which to use might be simpler however... 1,2,4,1,0 2,5,1,4,2,0 3,0,0x02001500,2,0 3,5,0x02001500,2,0 3,3,0x02001500,0,0 3,4,0x02001500,0,0 a highway rule, the digit between the 3 and the address to the sc4path file might tell it which data set to use in the sc4 path file.

SC4PATHS 1.1 <--version 24 <--transportation paths in this file (car/train) 32 <--sim paths in this file 0 <-- 0 is road paths, 1 is highway paths / on/offramp paths

last coord is height for highways and such, this looks like an onramp.... -- car_e_3_1 1 5 3 1 17 34.5533,-55.9998,0.0500002 34.4353,-51.0973,0.0424185 33.6303,-44.7928,0.17947 32.4236,-39.6752,0.17947 28.7852,-33.7599,0.17947 24.9325,-31.3081,0.377468 20.9046,-27.8056,2.28054 15.1255,-22.9021,7.91385 11.761,-19.9476,11.4749 8.84956,-16.8741,14.1883 7.09831,-14.4223,15.4227 5.55745,-11.3949,15.8993 3.91744,-7.66618,15.8958 2.66576,-3.59903,15.9332 1.65253,-0.142101,15.7394 1.13902,3.53553,15.7242 1.0,8.0,15.7 as a note, the height overall is unsteady, it fluctuates up and down, the fluctuation can probably be considered to be normal. it's never more than .05, might even be less and the '-' is a comment, anything behind it is irrelevant to the engine, there are a lot of paths that are commented out or incomplete, perhaps in an attempt to fix them, also, as I surmised, the 'version' at the top is just what I thought it to be, anything with a newer version overwrites the old, a lot of these are invalid, and possibly the version was implemented so as to not have to edit the source save files. Since I brought that up, I might also surmise out loud that they probably didnt make these paths by hand putting in numbers... so! tropod! is there any thing in the house tools that might allow them to plop path points?

a couple basic points I noted earlier in sc4path files SC4PATHS 1.0 <--always 1.0, or 1.1, version? it was said that the turning for a tile was updated in one patch. 5 <-- number of path sets in this file 1 -- car_a_1_3 1 1 1 3 6 <-- number of path points below -0.566288,8.0,15.6995 -0.566288,5.26864,15.6995 -0.566288,1.40557,15.6995 -0.566288,-3.42325,15.6995 -0.566288,-6.18258,15.6995 -0.566288,-8.0,15.6995 in the above, I have a hunch that 1, 1, 1, 3 are more or less related to the external connections, aka, connect the dots with other tiles, there are a lot of these sets that repeat those numbers, but with always differing numbers of path points. in MOST of the files, the last coord (of xyz) is usually 0.0, but in this case, it isnt, anyone have any idea why that might be? 1,02,00,02,00 3,0,0x00004B00,3,0 in the second line, it always starts with 3 for the texture line, I can find no exceptions also, there are times when ther is a 2 beginning in the first line, I saw these mostly on interesections, there would be a 1, then a 2, or a 1, then a 2, then a 2... I'm going for more research, updates later

I opened a city that used mods, the mods are in the city file, simcity apparently packages it all together, good to know that when we exchange cities, you wont have to snag the lots and buildings and mods other people used. might be a good idea from now on to package the props in with the lots, then someone wont need to have the building prop plugin file to use the lots.

I just checked a hunch, the .sc4 map files are readable by the reader, meaning they are .dat too, you could package your custom lots in with your city if it doesnt already

you can put custom graphics in a lot file, they are simply .dat files I think, but with the different extension, more people are likely to be able to differentiate between them and the normal plugins. also good for places like the exchange so that it can load just the lots.