T Wrecks
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Everything posted by T Wrecks
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So many goodies at once! It's like Christmas before Christmas.
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Show us your... r-r-r-r-r-repetition-n-n-n-n!
T Wrecks replied to cromabianca's topic in SC4 Showcase
@Haljackey: And, as usual, one architect had to misread the plans. "Oh, was that Southeast? Haha, never mind." ^_^' -
That 19th century warehouse sure is a welcome addition! I like that it's sand-coloured brick for a change, too. Is it just me, though, or does the roof texture tile rather visibly? Concerning the train cars, I agree with everything you wrote: some final tweaks on the cars you mentioned, and this set looks ready to go. Choo-choo!
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Modding / Recalibrating Land Value
T Wrecks replied to Psiman's topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
Well, I don't know what the default "neutral" desirability is, but this "baseline desirability" that you found seems to be a modifier of it: Take the default "neutral" desirability, add 68 points, and the result is the "neutral" desirability for CS$. These are some interesting stats, by the way. They show just how picky I-HT is, for example. It was a surprise for me to see that CS$$$ is absolutely not picky. You should think they wouldn't want to build luxury boutiques and hotels next to a landfill, but apparently they're not that picky in SC4. BTT, lowering all these values across the board should have the effect you mentioned. This might also offer an opportunity do do some fine-tuning, e.g. by spreading the three residential wealth levels more evenly if deemed necessary. (However, I think it's fine that R$$ is much closer to R$$$ than to R$.)- 50 Replies
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Modding / Recalibrating Land Value
T Wrecks replied to Psiman's topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
Let me join CycloneBoom in saying that you're doing very interesting research here. Much like you, I have always been annoyed by high-wealth buildings (not just mansions) popping up so easily. However, my thoughts used to be focused on an exemplar/property that seems to determine how much different wealth levels would attract or repel each other - hopefully changing it such that a low-wealth neighbourhood itself would discourage high-wealth development (you wouldn't build a mansion between council housing estates, after all!). Then again, this would probably make it too hard to 'level up' existing areas. Therefore, the approach you chose may be better: It will make it harder to get R$$$, it will make placing parks and trees more impactful and strategically relevant, and it doesn't prevent a neighbourhood from becoming more desirable for high-wealth Sims.- 50 Replies
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@Edvarz: If you decide to go ahead and get stuck somewhere, don't hesitate to ask. (The same applies to anyone else who may be interested, of course!) I merely outlined the process here and didn't provide a full walk-through or tutorial. Nonetheless, I think it's a pretty 'achievable' technique. i.e. you really don't need to be an expert in anything - pretty much like basic lotting. GoFSH itself takes a few minutes to get used to, but once you know where to click, it's really a piece of cake. It is literally 1 click - select file - 1 click - confirm path - FSHs exported - 1 click - all decoded. And the way back is pretty much the same.
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Looks like JENX Quay de Seine (spelling?) to me. Originally neither exactly a sewall nor industrial, but it sure works surprisingly well here.
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Oh my gosh, where do I even start? @Simmer2: Those subway stations are great! They are generic enough to work in pretty much any city, and yet they offer some much needed variety. Top notch, I'm really looking forward to them! @WolfZe: Wow, now those are some ambitious projects for sure. Respect! @Goldman Sachs: Is that last vessel you showed here a Liberty Ship, i.e. a C3 freighter? If so, do you think a civilian version would be possible? AFAIK, many of the former Liberty Ships would go on to sail the seven seas under different merchant flags for many, many years to come, and a model like this would be the eye-catcher in any Simcity harbour... @matias93: The recolouring technique cannot do wonders, but it is certainly true, and it is not even difficult. I've been editing the heck out of the plugins for my next region. All you need is the Reader, GoFSH, and any image viewer/editor capable of batch processing (IrfanView and XNView would be two free options). The actual process is simple: Check the building against a Maxis backdrop, see if it stands out, try to figure out where it's off (the most common issues are: too dark, too saturated, colour hue too cold) - 5 minutes Copy the day (colour) FSHs from the model file - or from a DAT that contains several model files - (we don't need the night textures) to a new DAT - 2 minutes Use GoFSH to (1) extract the FSHs, and (2) decode the FSHs so you get the bitmaps. - 2 minutes Pick a suitable bitmap and play around with it in your image editor until you think you've corrected the issue. Note down the steps you took. - can be fiddly & take 10ish minutes Fire up the batch processor and apply these changes to all bitmaps ending in "-C0.bmp" (these are the actual textures, the -A0.bmp" files are the alpha maps, which we don't need to touch at all) - takes literally seconds Overwrite the old textures with your recolured versions - once again, takes seconds Use GoFSH to (1) encode the recoloured bitmaps to the original FSHs again, and (2) to merge these FSHs into a new DAT file - 5 minutes You now have a DAT file that contains a recoloured copy of the model's textures. Make it load after the original model and check out the difference. That's basically it. Once you're done, you can either leave the file separate (maybe for distribution on the STEX?), or you can delete the FSHs from the original model file and replace them with your recoloured version so you have an updated version without loose files. @Haljackey: Better setup? (your older post) I bet the (former) users of that stadium beg to differ! @Josh6: Wow, that's a very creative idea, and I also like the implementation! Good to see some activity from you again.
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It's certainly great to see this thread going at full steam again!
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Nice to see this one on the STEX! As I commented in your thread, it's a really unique building full of character. Might be hard to use, therefore I think your choice to offer it as ploppable landmark makes perfect sense, too. I wonder if it would also work as a rail freight station? Maybe placed on the side of a rail trench so the beautiful foundation shows? Oh, and one note on night lights: Unless you rendered this in 3dsmax with Maxis night settings only (full render, not just night overlays), then this should work with both Maxis night and DarkNite. And if not, GoFSH in the latest version also enables converting BATs from Maxis night to DarkNite.
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Wow, congratulations on your success! The modules look good so far, I like the windows in particular. However, I must confess I'm not entirely sold on the roof texture. It tiles too obviously, and it's extremely dark and saturated. Once I'm writing anyway, let me say that this elevator you built last looks absolutely spectacular! It's an almost surreal structure with all those strange angles and protrusions, but that's exactly what gives it so much character. I think you really nailed it, too!
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How to create realistic farms/agricultural land in SimCity 4?
T Wrecks replied to Psiman's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
The pattern you see there is pretty realistic. Farms are mostly where there is relatively flat land to begin with. In many hilly regions of Europe, you'll see farms down in the valleys (although there's often not much space), then hillsides covered in forests, and on top of the hills there's more farmland.- 35 Replies
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Life sure takes strange turns sometimes, but I'm glad to hear that this time it was one that made you happy.
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@Simmer2: That billboard in front of the shop... is that new? Did you replace those corny Maxis signs with it? Now for a glimpse into a part of my current work - I knew genuine gmax / 3dsmax Mental Ray renders wouldn't be that hard! Thanks to XNView, the batch processing works super intuitively and super quickly. Here's one humble result: BEFORE - you'll notice the building has a too greenish hue: AFTER - takes but a few minutes, and I'm still practising:
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Yeah well, that depends. Any system works if you apply it consistently. The problem begins when one tool or item uses a particular setup and makes it so much of a hassle to keep track of things manually that it effectively forces you to stick to the same setup to avoid trouble. Since the game loads folders with more underscores after the "z" last and NAM switched to "z____NAM" (four underscores), you have only two choices: You change the NAM folders to comply with whatever system you prefer (which means the NAM installer will no longer find the folders you renamed) You bite the bullet and comply with the system imposed by the NAM (which means unintuitive underscore juggling if you add further mods manually) For most persons, the second alternative is probably preferable because it enables them to let the installers do their work. They'll only have to rename other mods accordingly. The first alternative is something that I'd only recommend for control freaks with good game knowledge who don't need to rely on installers doing their work properly.
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Indiana Joe and the Quest for the Ultimate Plugins Folder
T Wrecks replied to Indiana Joe's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
OK, nothing spectacular to post - I just wanted to share that I'm moderately satisfied with my progress. With both small homes and single-tile rowhouses out of the way, I'm currently busy with mid-rise apartment blocks. I started with NY1940 stuff and ended up using pretty much all of @Aaron Graham's NYBT stuff for medium wealth and @Don Miguel's and @tag_one's stuff for low wealth. There won't be that much high-wealth stuff in this department, but that's OK because many of the NYBT residential highrises can be used for high wealth. This means that I'll have high-wealth sims predominantly living in mansions in the suburbs, or in high-rises in the city centre - not necessarily the most unrealistic pattern. Low and medium wealth will share wall-to-wall houses in the not-so-upscale areas. The recolouring jobs went OK-ish. I did manage to get some of marcszar's residential to be sufficiently in line with Maxis content, but I also had to give up on a few. If anyone has an idea what kind of havoc you need to wreak on the colours of these houses, for example, feel free to share your magic. I managed to get these and these and these, among others, to play halfways nicely with Maxis content. Now I'll soon move on to the Chicago tileset, which will be populated mainly by @spa's work. Some of these are oversaturated IMO, so I might do some recolouring again, but it should be easier this time because it's a regular gmax render in the first place. I'll also have the opportunity to play around with Maxis night => DarkNite conversion, that should be interesting! Currently I'm at 13x low wealth and 12x medium wealth apartment blocks, that's pretty balanced. I also have a new naming scheme for my downloads, which looks pretty much like this, using Aaron's NYBT Bainbridge Row as an example: $$ o+oo NYBT Bainbridge Row (Aaron_Graham) [W2W] [SF] The "$$" denotes wealth, in this case medium wealth. The four next characters show the tilesets from Chicago 1890 to Euro Contemporary, with a "o" meaning "doesn't grow" and a "+" meaning "grows". In this case, the building will grow in the NY 1940 tileset only, and I can see so at a glance. Then follows the team, the building name, and the author in parentheses. last there are two optional markers in square brackets, "[W2W]" for wall-to-wall stuff and [SF] for a slope-friendly building. In addition to reaching new levels of anal retention, this allows me to see at a glance how much stuff for which wealth level and tileset I have in my plugins. -
Making some no-dependency variant Beautification lots
T Wrecks replied to Psiman's topic in SC4 - Custom Content
Looking good! I was surprised to read that you didn't find any no-dependency park lots, though. In the early days, the BAT hadn't even been released yet so people were forced to work with whatever was available in the vanilla game. There were many creative lots, some of which look good even today. You should think there'd be a bazillion of modular park/plaza lots because those are relatively easy to make and can be used to great effect. Then again, I was surprised to see my IRM fillers being used in many CJ pictures, which shows that, even in a time when we have ultra-HD 3dsmax DarkNite renders with neon lights and whatnot, very humble and basic fillers are still in demand apparently. -
Once again, you went far above and beyond the call of duty! I feel almost like a jerk mentioning it, but since Basketball courts are often found in run-down areas and not just in middle-class or upper-class sports complexes, wouldn't a version with somewhat faded and/or soiled textures make sense?
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How to create realistic farms/agricultural land in SimCity 4?
T Wrecks replied to Psiman's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
Ah, yes. Almost forgot to reply... Sorry, not a chance right now. Peope IRL are suffocating me, and I must focus to keep my head and take it all very slowly to not waste what precious little energy I have left. That's why my activity is currently focused on personal projects that allow me to set my mind apart and don't require too much energy. -
Nice work, as usual! I will have to look at these props that you use to piece together a platform eventually - I've always dreamt of having a kit for modular stations at my disposal, but the most recent attempt seems to have died as well. So this might really be the best solution currently. The only thing you could add IMO would be an overpass / underpass for the Sims to get to the outer platform. Apart from that, everything looks spot on: simple, sleek, and realistic.
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Does the number of props affect game performance?
T Wrecks replied to Psiman's topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
That, and the CPU will need good single-core performance because SC4 doesn't scale over multiple CPU cores. Which is a shame, because there are plenty of simulators running in the background and the game would sure be suitable für multi-threading! Alas, these options weren't available back then. It'll be interesting to compare performance between my old, dying notebook and my new one as soon as I get it all set up and running the game. The gfx adapter won't do much, I guess, but going from a 2.4 GHz i3 to a 4.0 GHz (base clock) i7 should benefit the game. The memory upgrade won't do much, either, because SC4 is pretty limited in that way, too. Well, the new RAM should be faster at least. Back to topic, on my old notebook I have also noticed the loading delay and somewhat jerky scrolling when there were many props to display. Maxis didn't go for a such a boring and bland lot design for nothing! -
That's smooth, good looking and compact! Did you leave out connections from South to East and vice versa (assuming that South is the bottom left screen corner) on purpose?
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What Music are you listening to right now?--The Second Verse
T Wrecks replied to Livin in Sim's topic in General Off-Topic
Nobody? Oh well, time for a shameless double post. The bad example I set as a moderator! I just figured that since I'm currently working on pretty mind-numbing stuff anyway, I might as well numb my mind the good way. The Ozric Tentacles way: Helps to get into a flow... for me at least. -
How to create realistic farms/agricultural land in SimCity 4?
T Wrecks replied to Psiman's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
It's even easier with a farm zoning mod that eliminates the minimum size (4x4?) for agricultural zones. You can then plop 1x1 farming pieces along all slopes and contours and fill the rest by dragging rectangles as usual.- 35 Replies
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Now this is a surprise! It must have been a huge relief to finally find a method that did the trick and enabled you to finish this project. The result looks awesome, I gotta remember to download this as soon as I'm home! Are you going to make an "official" STEX upload, too? It's really been a while since we saw some flora items.
