T Wrecks

Well, ploppable residential lots with people can be done - technically. I.e. you can add people to a landmark lot. However, what works fine with industrial and commercial lots tends to fail with residential lots. Why don't you try yourself? Download Bransford House by 6459978. and plop it in a city. 95% of all people report that their ploppable residentials will dilapidate and get empty, even if they did plop them on already developed residential zoning. So I can add people, but chances are it won't work anyway. Regular growable lots are no problem at all. The lot should be fairly easy the way you described it. For the gardens, some fences or hedges could be used to prevent them from looking too empty. A parking lot in front of the house is no problem, either. Well, as I said: With these guidelines, I can create a lot and show you a pic. Then you tell me what needs to be changed, and I change it and post a new pic. We play this game until we have a lot design you like.

@ Rickk: A landmark lot can't be turned into a growable lot and vice versa. However, using Equinox' tutorial it should be possible to make a blank growable lot and copy the design from the landmark lot into it. All I really need is the building as sc4model. I can generate a desc file from it, and I can whip up a growable and a landmark lot from scratch. Once 1 growable and 1 LM lot are finished, the rest ought to be easy. Open growable lot (colur scheme 1 ... replace the building (colour scheme 1) that sits on it with building (colour scheme 2) ... save as growable lot (colour scheme 2) ... done. Residential ploppables with people won't really work, however. If you have any particular ideas about what the lot should look like, just let me know. I can then post a picture here so you can see whether you like the lot design.

These houses look really nice, but they have few windows, don't they? Especially the back looks somewhat odd. Well, if the original looks like this... *shrugs* Must be pretty dark inside, though. Anyway, how big would these be (speaking in SC4 terms)? 2x1? 3x2?

ROFL @ that Lego comment... but actually, I used to love playing with it, too. Though I was more into ships and helicopters. Ahem... back to topic: You found a great solution for the roof! I love those asymmetrical blinds; it makes the upper part of the building a lot more interesting and at the same time more realistic. Hmmm, with the textures on it, it actually doesn't look bad... I mean, not beautiful in a classical sense (at least not IMHO), but no realistic city consists entirely of flashy, beautiful buildings. I think I'm gonna d/l and try it out at least. If it's not love on the first glance, it's always an option to look a second time and see what happens. Good job - as usual! Excuse me, gotta go to the STEX...

Hahaha, ok... no building for me this time. I'd still like to suggest a few things: - Try to connect the towers with the main building somehow. So far, they look as if someone had piled oversized LEGO blocks on top of a horizontal surface... it might look a lot better if there were a fluent transition from the main building's corners into the towers. And once again, there's the conflict of shapes: Round towers with a pointed roof on a rectangular block... Still, I think with a better connection it might work out. - Maybe the dome would look better if it were a tad smaller? Just my 2 Simoleons, of course...

I don't know... somehow I don't really like the combination of a rounded, transparent glass dome with a very light and elegant steel frame and that bulky, rectangular, blocky building with tiny windows under it. Either the windows are way too small and the building looks to heavy and un-elegant, or the glass dome looks too sleek, flashy and weightless for the rest of the building. I really like some of your buildings like that restaurant, your asult shop, Altema Fluid Management and the Redfish Book Store, but tbh, this building here doesn't tickle my pickle so far. Good luck with it anyway - not every building can hit my personal taste.

@ garfiedude: Just a little word concerning these guidelines I'm compiling... I'm working on an Excel table where all the buildings I modded to reasonable stats (in compliance with default buildings) will be listed by the # of jobs / residents. Now let's pick up your example: Mid-wealth res with 212 residents... in my lists, you could scan for buildings with similar # of residents. Let's say you find one with 198 and another one with 315. Now you could compare the values of these two buildings and tweak your building to values that are between these two, but closer to the smaller one (because 212 is closer to 198 than to 315). Remember you don't have to turn this into rocket science; 5 gallons of water consumption more or less won't hurt you much. But you will see the original stats of the BATs I modded, and this will give you an idea of the disproportion that most BATs are suffering from. For a 1,000 jobs CO$$, we are not talking about 5 tons of garbage or 7. We're talking about 5 tons of garbage and 70! That's the scale where things really start to hurt. If you're interested in a preliminary version of the list (just to get an idea of what it looks like and how far off many buildings are), feel free to PM me your mail address. I can save it as an Excel 97 version for you if necessary.

@ Kris123: Great! Can you send me a PM with your mail address, so that I can send the new lot and desc files to you? Then you can make an update for the STEX. Since XDesign_Team would prefer a CO$$$ version, maybe I will add one and send both versions to you. Then the building would be growable CO$$, growable CO$$$ and landmark. @XDesign_Team: Yes, I know. There are many buildings which could be CO$$$, not only this one. The problem is that there are so many CO$$$ buildings on the STEX already, and so few CO$$. That's why I made it CO$$... However, as I wrote above: Maybe I'll just make a CO$$$ version, too. This way, everybody can choose what he/she likes best. -EDIT- Oooh, what a pity. I just realised that this building doesn't have any night lights. Night lights make a BAT so much better and more enjoyable - I'm sure much more people will download your stuff if it looks good at night, too.

Hmm... you know that ploppable residentials are somewhat problematic, I suppose? Well, I've never made a residential plop... but with some existing building as a reference for what needs to be added (and Equinox' tutorials and occupant group list) I bet I can do it. Meanwhile, I dug out a test lot that never got used... here's the pic . Oh, and here 's one of Superstar's Big 6 former 4x4 mid-wealth residential landmark, which I modded into a 3x3 growable low-wealth building.

Are you making growables? I'm asking because I happen to know a bit about modding growables to reasonable stats, and I can whip up a decent lot, too - check Kris123's Warsaw Financial Center thread for a little sample. I can post some pictures of new lots I made for buildings I modded, if you want. Oh, I just remembered that you can find another little sample when you have a look at AOX Corp. Building . (browse the comments a bit...) If you're not sure, you can ask 6459978., eburress or Equinox what they think about me. So if you want to risk it (and provided you don't pump out a new building every two days), all you will need to do is send me the .sc4model file and the # of residents / jobs you had in mind, and I can take care of the lot & desc files. One thing of which I don't have a clue, though, is transit-enabling lots, just so you know.

Nice one! So nice, in fact, that I listened to some peoples' complaints and fooled around with it a bit. Basically, I... - made this a CO$$ growable (there are way too many CO$$$ buildings already!), - decreased the lot size from 6x4 to 5x3, - pimped the lot a bit, i.e. made it more interesting and lively, - adjusted the stats to match comparable in-game buildings. Here are two crappy preview shots taken from within the Lot Editor (I don't have any time to play the game, wait for the building to grow and take screenshots of it), which show the front and the rear view. Front: Back: ------------------------------ Here are the building stats: Lot size: 5x3 Stage: 8 Tileset(s): Euro Zone type: dense commercial Jobs: 2,520 CO$$ Building worth / bulldoze cost: $ 1,130 Building value (=taxable income): $ 12,462 Power consumed: 58 MWh / month Water consumed: 575 gallons / month Air pollution: 9 over 5 tiles Water pollution: 9 over 6 tiles Garbage: 6 topns / month Flammability: 40 Max. fire stage: 5 ------------------------------ Anybody interested? Most importantly, what do you say, Kris123? Would you consider updating the upload and adding this growable version as a new option? Or don't you want me to make this version accessible for others at all? You are the creator of this building, so I think I shouldn't do anything without asking you first...

Hey, nice to see that there are more good BATs around the corner. However, I can imagine that your batting skills surpass your knowledge of decent values & stats to integrate your buildings into the game as perfectly as possible. I suggest you take a look at Andreas Roth's building database. The values suggested by the Plugin Editor are way off and should never be accepted unless you want to throw your game balance away. Some buildings put out a hundred times more waste than they should, and this is not even an exaggerated example!! Just to remind you that once the BAT is finished, the work continues... Anyway, I wish you good luck!

Count me in, too. I think that I failed to make it clear that I already like the building as it is and would certainly d/l it, although it might become just a tiny bit better.

Congratulations; this building is pretty impressive! At first, I didn't even know which building you meant, and that definitely is a good sign! Having a closer look at it, the only thing it seems to lack when compared to Maxis buildings is a bit of that slightly weathered and 'used' look. I dunno, the textures may be a tad too smooth and clean. Maybe a tad more graining or some kind of structured surface could help?

@ topcliff: If you're using a windows PC, those files should be executable by double-clicking them. However, if you have a Mac, you won't be able to use .EXE installers. Please refer to the BSC Mac Archive to find Mac-compatible ZIPs. Here's the link: https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=57070

The shape looks really good, but the textures don't. Concerning the glass texture, that's nothing new to you - you already mentioned that. But IMHO the wall texture needs work, too. Just look at that yellowish horizontal stripe that keeps repeating several times... It might become very difficult to make such a large empty wall look realistic and not too monotonous and cartoonish. I guess that a texture gradient (refer to gascooker's tutorial) might help, but then again I'm no BATter. Anyway, this is coming along pretty nicely. I wish you the best of luck!

Hey, what's that beige, football-shaped mid-rise building near the bottom of the last picture (next to Porkissimo's shopping center) ? Concerning the pics, I gotta admit that I'm no fan of grids personally. Once you zoom closer, the city looks great, though. Some transitions between low and high density could be softer for my taste. GJ!