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T Wrecks

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Everything posted by T Wrecks

  1. A request for all builders. Night versions.

    T Wrecks replied to Spamoidutout's topic in SC4 - Custom Content

    The tension mounts...

  2. Help me grow my city

    T Wrecks replied to vaughanwiliams's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion

    Wow, that looks splendid! While you are using a lot of custom content, it still looks like good old SimCity - I like it. I like it a lot. If you're up to a challenge, you could try and see if you get those rail lines alongside the harbour and the avenue completely grade separated, but that's pretty advanced stuff. That city sure developed impressively. I just checked the initial picture again, and there has sure been a lot of change. The city now fills the tile and looks pretty complete. It's also fun to discern the BATs you used from this far away... a bit like spotting the faces of people you like in a crowd photograph. "Oh, there's Roy Thomson Hall by 6459978... and my, isn't that Simmer2's torus-shaped water tower there? Don't I know that retail store over there, too?" I always like that. Thank you for showing the progress of that city! I hope it won't be the last picture you post here on Simtropolis.

  3. A request for all builders. Night versions.

    T Wrecks replied to Spamoidutout's topic in SC4 - Custom Content

    I'm going to bed now, though, so don't hope for another quick answer.

  4. Show us What you're Working On

    T Wrecks replied to Haljackey's topic in SC4 Showcase

    Nobody does the initial settlement part quite like you. It's really your signature style, and I admire your patience.

  5. A request for all builders. Night versions.

    T Wrecks replied to Spamoidutout's topic in SC4 - Custom Content

    Depends on what you call "painful", really. What I do is this: Open the .sc4model file in iLive's reader. In the left area, click on "Entry" in the column head - this will sort all files inside the .sc4model by type so you'll have all FSH files grouped together. Select all FSH files, right-click and select "Copy file(s)" from the context menu. Change to the blank dat (empty file) that the Reader offers in the upper left corner, right above the model file you have opened to extract the FSHs. In the left area with the columns "Entry"/"Compressed" and so forth, right-click and select "Paste file(s)". Select "File => Save As..." and save the .dat file. Now you have a file that contains the FSHs of a given model, and only the FSHs. I suppose you are planning to decode these using GoFSH, and afterwards you want to put them back into the original model file, right? If so, you can us GoFSH to re-encode so you have FSHs again and save them into a .dat file. Then you'd have two options: Replacement: You could open the original model file, delete all the old FSHs, and then copy the new FSHs from your .dat file over. Override: You could also give your .dat file a name that will make it load after the original model file so that it overrides the original FSHs. This can be useful for incremental testing and for easy switching back and forth between original and modified versions. You can always make the replacement later. You probably know this already, but night textures typically have the number eight as the fifth digit. If a model has the IID 00460000, the textures will be as follows: 0046: the first four digits don't change. 0: the fifth digit is either "0" for day or "8" for night. 0: the sixth digit is zoom level and ranges from "0" (zoom 1) to "4" (zoom 5). 0: the seventh digit is camera angle/rotation/orientation and ranges from "0" to "3" for the four sides of the building. 0: the eigth digit is a running number - bigger buildings may need to have their FSHs split into various squares to show the entire building. For example, 00468322 would be building IID 000460000, night texture, zoom 4, camera angle 3, third texture square.
  6. That's a really cute model there! I wonder of this one might go better with a cooler base texture, though. Maybe some of the station/platform props made by @Simmer2 would lend themselves for this purpose? Access from the parking lot to the station looks a bit difficult, too. Stepping through a small gap in the hedge over a patch of grass sounds perfectly reasonable for a private parking lot next to your house, but it might not be the best idea for a public building. In any case, it's an adorable little station, and it certainly deserves to be presented on a nice and up-to-date lot!
  7. See? Now you know why I eyeball the occupant values. In this particular case, I may have chosen a number for the 1x4 single version first, which I then simply multiplied for the other lots.

  8. Show us What you're Working On

    T Wrecks replied to Haljackey's topic in SC4 Showcase

    Argh, that sucks. In any case, that's some impressive work with those bridges! The transition is really smooth, and the bridge pillars are positioned very realistically. Great job! @Simmer2: Sweet like maple syrup! The shingle roof tiles a little, but I guess that's one of the parts that are still WIP. The flat roof looks great, though, and the roof junk is excellent. Wonderfully modeled and textured, superb job! I'm really looking forward to seeing the front now. @Tyberius06: It's good to hear that Glenni might still have the models of those tunnel portals! I looked at them and wondered whether it would be possible to remove the baked-in network by texture or alpha mask editing, but that would have been quite a chore, not to mention that I'm not sure if this method can achieve satisfactory results. @WolfZe: Does work ever end, though? The will of people to pay for it, sure, but work... I don't think there'll ever be a shortage.
  9. Another downside of using an invisible blank as the actual model (to which the building exemplar relates) and a prop as the visible building (but otherwise totally inert) is that the construction scaffold that you see when the lot grows will adapt to the dimensions of the invisible blank. Once the construction time has elapsed, the visible building will then pop up out of nowhere. If you mod the invisible blank to the same dimensions as the visible building [prop], you can alleviate this - purely visual - issue to some degree. The scaffold will then grow upwards, and when it disappears, a proportionately sized building will pop up there. However, you will still not see how the building gets pushed out of the ground. Mind you, all this is really nothing important at all and, hence, nothing you should be worried about right now. Chances are it'll only confuse you if you attempt to take it all in at once. I guess you'll be better off focusing on the key points for now and bearing in mind that it is generally preferable to "use the building as the building", i.e. make sure that the building exemplar relates to what you'd say is the key structure on the lot. EDIT When it comes to occupants, you will probably have noticed that Maxis buildings don't always seem to follow a stringent and obvious formula. They are inconsistently scaled and, in many cases, inconsistently modded. Still, this doesn't break the game. Therefore you also have some wiggle room and don't need to be afraid of breaking anything if a stat is a few numbers "off", if that can even be defined. You'll typically have a rather wide corridor of acceptable values, and in most cases there is not a hard limit between "still OK" and "no longer OK". This means that eyeballing occupant numbers is definitely a possibility. I typically do that. I'll plop the candidate between simlarly sized buildings of the same type and try to find a suitable number. Then I base the other stats on this eyeballed occupant number. Even there, a few gallons of water consumption more or less or twenty Simoleons tax income more or less won't matter much in the end. What matters is whether waste generated is 4-6 tons or 20 tons for a building that will grow often, for example. In my old plugins folder, all BAT stats were eyeballed and corrected by me loosely based on Maxis references. That stuff was far from exact, and yet all curves in game were smooth and without any odd phenomena. No sudden waste plague, no insanely high or low consumption, no inexplicable pollution hotspots, no peaks and plunges in average tax income during city growth, all smooth sailing. To wrap it up and as a word of encouragement: Try to get the basics right, but take it easy otherwise - you're neither juggling with nitroglycerine nor calculating the landing trajectory of a Mars rover.

  10. Help me grow my city

    T Wrecks replied to vaughanwiliams's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion

    Nice looking city there! I like the transition from low to high density. One thing I'm pretty certain about is that - if it was my city - I'd place the harbour along the north coast. IMO it makes sense to have the harbour at the mouth of that river, plus the coast is relatively straight there, which makes things a lot easier. There's also more space up there, and you'll see that a decent custom harbour consumes a ridiculous amount of space. That small bay at the west coast, between your two potential sites for a harbour, might make for a nice fishing harbour or marina, by the way. As a buffer between the harbour and industry zones, you could place some council housing. Or maybe low-rise commercial stuff. Big box retailers, warehouses, servo stations, fast food chains, car dealers, and the like. Or both! The "Office 3?" area might indeed make for a good suburban mid-rise office park, or maybe some high-tech industry. These are some suggestions I can think of off the top of my head.
  11. Ah yes, looks like I misread that. I guess it can't hurt to post a step-by-step instruction here for people who are aware of the risk, can get their hands on the driver from a halfways trustworthy source (ideally one of their own or a friend's older computer) and want an immediate workaround.
  12. It looks like you're out of luck with Windows 10. You see, the removal of support for SafeDisc copy protection was introduced via an update for Windows 7 and 8. This means that you could remove this update and re-enable support. However, Windows 10 didn't come with support for these legacy DRM solutions in the first place, so there is no working status to roll back to. This article sums the situation up.
  13. This sounds about right to me. I'm not too familiar with either CAM or PIM-X, but the list of properties shown in the bottom right window clearly belongs to a building exemplar, i.e. the file that holds all the properties related to a building plus a reference to the building model it's supposed to use (called Resource Key Type 1), but does not alter the referenced building model in any way at all.
  14. Sorry, I just came back home and can't really focus on pretty much anything right now - the only thing I wanted to leave here immediately for you, @JimC, is that you are definitely very welcome to make any modifications you like and redistribute freely, as long as you don't parade around and claim you had done the original lots, too. No need to ask me first - I give stuff to the community for everyone to enjoy as they please. If people tweak my stuff to their liking and maybe make it more attractive for like-minded folks in the process, all the better. Nice Tina avatar, btw!

  15. Show us What you're Working On

    T Wrecks replied to Haljackey's topic in SC4 Showcase

    I meant these two, for roads and for avenues, respectively. Unfortunately, it looks like the road/avenue texture is baked into the model, though. Otherwise, these things could even be repurposed. Anyway, I think they belong to the best-looking tunnel portals there are. I thought these might be interesting for you when you FLUPify or otherwise mod something. If not, that's all right - I figured it'd be worth a shot at least.

  16. Show us What you're Working On

    T Wrecks replied to Haljackey's topic in SC4 Showcase

    Great stuff there! I particularly like the diagonal slope-conforming sound walls. By the way, @Tyberius06, seeing how you have become pretty much a transportation / FLUPs / pathing expert by now, I was wondering if the NDEX tunnel portals have ever been on your radar? I recently came across them again, and they are impressive models for sure.

  17. Kellydale2003's BAT Mine

    T Wrecks replied to kellydale2003's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop

    Personally, BATs like these are the reason for me to want to go into modern tilesets at all. While I am really a sucker for anything that fits into Chicago 1890 / NY 1940 tilesets, there are just too many mouthwatering BATs from more recent times to ignore. I can't help marveling at them and thinking "Man, I just have to use these sooner or later." What's taking shape here is, without doubt, one of those buildings.

  18. Show us What you're Working On

    T Wrecks replied to Haljackey's topic in SC4 Showcase

    Well, that word seems a little big now, seeing how nobody attacked them in the first place. I explicitly said "you could also" - if this sounds like an attack, then how would you expect me to word it to clarify that I only intend to offer an additional option that you may not have had on radar? It's sad that I should even have to write this, but of course this is your creation alone (which I gave my Like to with a thumbs up, by the way, because I think it's pretty awesome, makes for a lovely picture and I genuinely, well... like it!), of course you are free to do as you please, and of course you don't need to defend or justify anything. "I'm doing it like this because this is how I roll" is, has always been, and will always be, totally fine - be it explicitly by stating it or implicitly by ignoring any comment and sticking to your original plan. This being said, you are also 100% right that the rail goes over the road here. I just "travelled" to Melbourne using Google Maps, and I saw that, in fact, the entire complex seems to be raised relative to the bridge across the Yarra River - here's the view from Queens Bridge. Not that this has to matter for aynything, of course. It's just a very interesting setup, I think. In any case, I'm curious to see the station once you've aded those buildings under the elevated rail and finished the surroundings. All of your projects have been a delight to look at so far, and this one is no exception. @Tyberius06: Whoops, you're right - I screwed up there. Thanks you for leaving that additional info on the rail viaducts after I summoned you for no reason, though.

  19. Show us What you're Working On

    T Wrecks replied to Haljackey's topic in SC4 Showcase

    @Tyberius06: I think it's a feature of the new NAM. However, @VALASatoshi, if you're going for realism, you could also switch the overpass and make an avenue bridge instead. Trains are much less slope-tolerant than road vehicles, so you'd typically try to avoid any unnatural gradients. I guess you can also make some pretty nifty constructions using the elevated avenue pieces, including an elevated intersection with the road that runs parallel to the rail line. @Simmer2: No way it is close to finished! I would expect some lizards enjoying the sun on the warm stones, plus some ants crawling around... maybe some horse droppings, too... in short, your model is totally devoid of any detail. This is utterly unacceptable. [Yes, I am kidding.]
  20. There is a mod out there, though. Here's the link to one that combines several of the fixes.
  21. It looks like there are several threads recently concerning downloads... from a particular city; from a particular era; suitable for a particular tileset. It might make sense to revive the plan of tagging STEX uploads accordingly rather than compiling some stuff in threads that will soon sink to the bottom. In any case, I agree that the information would be very useful to have in a more accessible and long-lasting format.
  22. Personally, I always copy a few of them into a test folder, fire up the game, and plop them using the "buildingplop" cheat. The LE view doesn't show shadows, you don't see animated props (if any), and lighting can also be different in game. IMO, nothing beats the actual view that you'll get when you add someting. What's more, you can even plop the building side by side with other content and check if it fits in. IMHO, this is the only method that gives you a full picture.

  23. Kellydale2003's BAT Mine

    T Wrecks replied to kellydale2003's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop

    On the question of how to design the base, I'd say it would be best to leave that triangular part you highlighted out, i.e. not model anything there and simply cut the model off at the angled line. This would open up two possibilities: The building could be offered as an overhanging ploppable BAT that conforms to FA road - it looks like the line goes roughly 1 tile sideways for every 3 tiles ahead (the lot is 9 tiles wide, and the upper rigth corner of the triangle is almost exactly 3 tiles away from the road). This should correspond pretty closely with FA-3. (If it's not entirely 3-1, the BAT's ground could easily be cut at that angle even if the wall would not be exactly parallel) On the other hand, this would not prevent the building from being offered as a regular growable (or ploppable, for that matter) on a usual square lot - the triangular area would just have to be filled with textures and props, which shouldn't be much of a problem (especially if the LOD shell follows the angled edge). These days, we even have overlay textures for FA-3.

  24. A Directory of Houston, Texas buildings for SC4

    T Wrecks replied to LivingInThePast's topic in SC4 - Custom Content

    I think @DuskTrooper has made a lot of BATs from cities like Denver, Dallas and Houston, only that he probably didn't want any fuss about the accuracy of an actual recreation, so he gave them slightly different names and didn't mention their real-life inspiration. Maybe he also wanted to keep with the spirit of the Maxis guys, who also copied real-life designs (sometimes almost faithfully, sometimes very loosely, depending on what they deemed sensible for the game) and gave the buildings fantasy names. In any case, his portfolio should contain a lot of déjà-vus for anyone familiar with (post-)modern US skyscrapers from cities other than those on the East and West Coast. I'm not sure if there actually are any more from Houston, but there might be.

  25. Kellydale2003's BAT Mine

    T Wrecks replied to kellydale2003's topic in SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop

    You know what, I don't think that's a bad idea. This community is getting old, and there are members returning after years of hiatus. While I know the practice around the STEX discs from all the years I've spent here with rather constant attention, this might not be the case for everyone - neither for new members nor for those who return after a longer absence or at least after a period of low activity. Plus, emails can land where they don't belong, depending on your ISP, mail software and possibly any third-party software you may be using. Placing such a heads-up on the upload screen would be a reminder right where it's relevant, when it's relevant, and readily visible for everyone. If it is technically feasible, it could even link to a little text explaining the STEX discs and their role in contributing to the maintenance costs.
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