T Wrecks
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Everything posted by T Wrecks
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Ah, it sounds like they are not centered on the origin of the 3D grid. This could be remedied using cogeo's SC4 Model Tweaker, though, with a bit of trial and error. Even if you don't get them to sit smack dab on the origin, the remaining slight position shift will probably amount to no more than 1-2 pixels in game and will hardly be noticeably unless you know it's there and look for it explicitly.
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Yes, absolutely! In fact, this is the technique that I'd recommend. This is particularly handy if you need to keep the line for the building exemplar itself (e.g. when you made a new .sc4desc for it, but want to copy over the old lot design). Makes it easier to locate the line that belongs to the building. The only downside is that the LE will store a preview image that shows the barren dummy lot even after you copied all the lines/properties over. If you want to update the preview pic, you need to open and save the lot in the LE again because the LE generates it when saving.
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Theoretically, exporting a perfect cube with a perfect circle on each face should be enough to illustrate the phenomenon. With everything left to 100% (or scaled uniformly along all three axes), you should see the squashing effect in game, i.e. the circle on top should still look circular, but the circles on the walls should look squashed. The approach to counter this phenomenon and the exact amount of compensation have been subject to lengthy debates, some of which you can find here, here, and here, for example While some of the articles are really excellent and well-founded in the analysis part, my personal stance is that going too deeply into these matters and debating about fractional digits is a slippery slope that can end in religious wars if you are not careful. It's good to know that the effect exists, but ultimately it's your model and your decision in what way it looks best.
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It was mainly intended to keep proportions realistic. For example, if you were to model a clock tower and kept the scale at 100% for all three spatial axes, the clock face would end up as a horizontal oval shape rather than the circle that it actually is because the perspective in SC4 causes a visual squishing effect. Likewise, a perfect cube rendered at 100% all around would end up like a cuboid that's as deep as it is wide, but not quite as tall. When compensating for this effect by scaling the model at 100% on the X axis, 100% on the Y axis and 133% on the Z axis, you can ensure that a cube in 3dsmax will actually end up as a cube in game, and a circle on any vertical surface (such as a clock face, a porthole on a ship, a circular window on a building, or a wheel of a car) will actually look like a circle and not like an oval. Prop or building doesn't really matter because it's interchangeable anyway - you could take any building and turn it into a prop, or vice versa. It's all a bunch of FSH textures showing a pre-rendered model painted over an invisible S3D LOD shell, ultimately. Thing is, stuff like this becomes more noticeable with bigger structures. When your slender skyscraper with tall windows ends up looking somewhat stocky and squashed and having square windows, you immediately see that something is off somehow. A car, for example, isn't that tall anyway at game scale, so the squishing effect isn't nearly as noticeable. This may be how the impression "useful for buildings, but not for props" was created - typically, smaller ancillary objects are modeled as props, and the big central structure as building. As outlined in the previous paragraph, however, this is merely the most frequent case but by no means a hard techical rule.
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Wow, pretty cool to see how you plan things out on paper! Of course, it makes even more sense than usual because you have the tiles laid out like in game, but still I've never done it this way. Maybe I would if I made big lots like you. Pretty convincing layout, too!
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Farm field lots and zoom visibility
T Wrecks replied to adam forrest's topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
Hey, you're very welcome. You know, it sounds like you made just the same experience. I remember how disappointed I was when I had a nice colourful patchwork of farm fields (I even lined up their edges across city borders by making sketches of how many tiles away from a road or rail line a field extended!), and in the region view much of it didn't match the view in game. To make matters worse, some crop props looked nice from closer up, but absolutely garish from zoom1 or region view. Good luck tweaking your fields and happy farming! -
@Simmer2: Whoa, they sre didn't make that LCBO building look very welcoming and cheerful... makes me wonder if they wanted to say "Bad alcoholics. BAD BAD!" without words by designing such a booze bunker. I went into a Systembolaget (Swedish state-owned alcohol store) once, and it had a different method of making you feel dirty and inadequate: It was all squeaky clean and proper inside, and the clerks were practically all young females, ridiculously good looking, clad in neat and tidy uniforms - they looked more like first-class stewardesses or as if they worked in a super high-end perfume boutique. And there you are, in your everyday clothes, hair a bit ruffled by the wind, carrying a shiny basket full of alcoholic beverages, and feel like a homeless junkie facing the understanding and professional smiles of these alcohol elves, never quite knowing whether they are secretly judging you or not. Mischieveous! @mattb325: Wow, ivy props! They sure look nice and seem to work suprisingly good considering building LODs can be tricky to work with. BATstaches for everyone!
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Ah, I didn't read every single post about it over the last months, so I must have missed the eye candy part. I'm not in here as often as I used to, you see. Well, in any case I merely tried to offer some input because it seemed that you were not quite certain which way to go and what you liked best. No criticism intended. As for the "real ones", it pretty much depends on what particular system you base your ideas on. Unless you have a particluar one in mind (pardon me if I missed that, too), you can find pretty much any style out there: Personally, I think one approach (the one I was getting at in my last post) would be to go by effect: What do I want the system to look like, what impression am I going for? Another would be to pick out any of the existing styles and recreating it with any degree of freedom you like. None of these approaches is "more valid" or "better" than the other, of course. There is really not just the one solution, and at the end of the day it all boils down to what you think works best for your creation. Whatever style you pick, the one thing that's for sure is that it will be good in the end - your modeling and texturing skills will make any kind of rail and support look the part.
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The rail looks great, but I'm not sure about the supports tbh. Maybe that's simply because we still associate MagLev with "modern/future technology", and those massive round concrete colums look like any old bridge support and just don't convey that scifi-esque vibe. I do think something vaguely in the shape of an H, A, or /\, possibly with rectangular beams and colums, and relatively slender and elegant in overall appearance, might "sell" the modern aspect somewhat better. Of course, 7.5m height would make it even more realistic, but this is supposed to be a direct monorail override, I guess?
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@Simmer2: Draggable FA oil pipelines next?
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Farm field lots and zoom visibility
T Wrecks replied to adam forrest's topic in SC4 Modding - Open Discussion
Hi Adam, let me start by saying that I have encountered the same problem in the past. The problem is related to the props that are used to display the field crops. Fields are composed of individual 1x1 tiles. If these field tiles are only a flat texture, they will display just fine at any zoom level. However, if each field tile consists of a texture and one or more props to represent the crop, then the problem that you noticed might occur. This is because all props have a visibility flag to control at which zooms they will be displayed. Maxis did this to recuce the load on your computer. If such a visibility flag didn't exist, the game would be forced to render even the tiniest objects such as small rocks, shrubs, trashcans, traffic pylons and the like even when your city is zoomed out as far as possible - so far that these objects are hardly (if at all!) visible. As you zoom in, the aforementioned objects will begin to reappear because they become visible again. To deactivate this behaviour for your farm fields, you'd have to open the affected field lots and determine the IID(s) of the prop(s) on it. Then you'd have to locate the origin of these props (they are probably part of a dependency prop pack). Armed with this knowledge, you could then open the prop pack(s) in question in iLive's reader, find the prop(s) you are looking for, and change the appearance zoom flag to the value of "1F", which means "visible in all zooms". I hope this helps you a bit to understand what's going on under the hood. Regards Thomas / T Wrecks -
So wonderful to see you uploading to the STEX again! I suppose it's not easy to make such a black box building, which tends to look so simplistic at the first glance, really shine. Not surprisingly in your case, you pulled it off masterfully. Nothing really jumps out at you as spectacular, but the closer you look, the more you realise that everything is just right. There is simply no "yes, but..." - only "yes".
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It sure looks like 1024×600 is the maximum resolution the KAV60 is capable of displaying.
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Whoa, what's that massive silo thingamabob towards the upper edge of your picture? I don't recall seeing that one anywhere, but it looks awesome.
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@Haljackey: Cool road layout! And by the way, now that I see that railroad station again: I haven't forgotten about you. I did load it into GoFSH and try to get something out of the textures, but it wasn't much use. Toning down the highlights far enough to make the blinding white become an acceptable grey decreases contrast so far that it all becomes one undefined pixel porridge - even more so because the roof lacks any structure and texture. I've been doing a lot of recolouring lately for my upcoming plugins folder and I reckon I'm getting somewhat better at editing, so maybe I'll try my hands on this one again, but I'm not very optimistic, sorry to say.
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Hey, you're very welcome. I thought it was a nice thread idea, so I wanted to contribute. Well, I see where you're coming from, and that "endless lego bricks" metaphor is actually quite nice. Then again, I sometimes wonder whether it's not actually the limitation that makes us creative, and the difference just lies in where you see that limitation. One person may see the limitation in not having endless lego bricks and having to find ways to get along with that. Another person might not like that thought and say they don't want to be limited, but don't lego bricks come with inherent limitations such as regular geometric shapes that make it difficult to recreate anything organic? In this case, endless lego bricks would only shift or reduce the limitation, but not remove it. But yeah, if when you say "outside factors", you may have meant stuff such as random events or any other kind of sudden interruption, not general underlying limitations. Still, it's probably only a temporal thing because once you have built anything you wanted owing to your endless possibilities, what's left to strive for and get creative about? A word of caution about OpenTTD: While Transport Tycoon was very enjoyable on the good old 14" CRT screen with 640x480 VGA resolution, looking at the same 16-bit sprites on a full-HD is... visually challenging. Everything is tiny and fiddly to control, so it's really an option for the hardcore fans rather than anything that would be accessible to a wider audience. I dunno how much inconvenience you're willing to deal with to get that good old feeling going again. The game can do that, I can attest to it. It comes at a price, though. I totally understand that feeling when you generally just don't like a setting. If I imagine all those fantasy/sci-fi games I enjoyed being transferred to a real-world setting... meh, I dunno if I'd like that. Probably not. So while my particular taste is apparently quite different in that respect, I understand the general sentiment. Well, it just so happens that the round-based strategy games I can think of at the top of my head are all either sci-fi or fantasy, too! A recent example would be the Battletech game that's based on its namesake tabletop game. A fantasy franchise that I really like is the Age of Wonders series (which is heavily inspired by one of the genre classics, Master of Magic.) Two other games that I enjoyed very much were the classic X-COM games Enemy Unknown / UFO Defense and Terrror from the Deep. Simple graphics, but superb atmosphere! But yeah, all these games are pretty similar to a board game (or tabletop) where the computer automatically calculates line of sight and environment parameters, moves the enemy units and rolls the dice. I like these games because you don't win because you can click faster and more accurately than the enemy. Instead, you can lean back, scroll around, make plans, think through everything, and then make your move whenever you're ready. Unlike chess, however, there's still some random factor and luck involved in the game so it's not just mathematical brain exercise.
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Version 1.1
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INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION MOD I-D Filler Set 1 1 - INTRODUCTION/OVERVIEW This is a set of 12 ploppable filler lots for dirty industry (I-D) that can be used to complement grown industrial areas with some open yards, walls, and several types of cargo stacked outside. The set has been made for the IRM and, as such, blends in well with I-D areas because it uses the same base texture, and the brick walls look good in connection with older brick factories and their side buildings. You will find these lots in the landmark menu, conveniently grouped together. Names and descriptions are bilingual once again, i.e. if your SimCity installation has a German locale, you will automatically see German names and descriptions. All other locales will display English names and descriptions. The lots with stacked cargo on them will be restricted to relatively level ground - after all, you wouldn't stack containers or pallets of cargo on an incline! The open areas and walls, however, are highly slope-tolerant, which makes them extremely versatile fillers. Most props have been highly randomised. In some cases there is not only a random selection of the particular prop to appear, but also a certain probability wheter any prop will appear at all - or not. This has been made to maximise variation and visual interest. When you have these lots on your mouse cursor, you will notice orange-coloured bars being displayed on them. These are positioning indicators that show the position and alignment of the most important props before you plop so there is no trial and error involved. Play around with it a bit, and I'm sure you'll find it to be self-explanatory. After plopping a lot, the positioning indicators will appear once for a second or so, and then disappear forever. In terms of game stats, these lots are almost neutral. They do not contain any park/landmark effect, cause a negligible amount of pollution, and cost §5 to plop/bulldoze each. There are no running costs whatsoever, so plopping a lot of these will not harm your budget even in the tiniest starter town. INSTALLATION: I recommend extracting the ZIP file into your main IRM folder (...\Plugins\IRM\). After installation, a new folder called "I-D Filler Set 1" should have appeared, which contains the 12 lot files you will need in order to use this set. However, there is no technical necessity to use this folder; any place inside your plugins will work. 2 - THE TECH STUFF Not much this time, since these are pretty plain eye-candy lots. As mentioned above, use with the IRM is recommended and will yield best visual results, but there is no technical interdependency. 3 - DEPENDENCIES If you use these lots as an extenstion of the IRM, there will only be one additional dependency: SFBT Essentials - for the diagonal overlay, the barrier, and those nifty positioning indicators. This pack will be used on upcoming filler sets as well. If you use these lots as a standalone set, you will also have to download the following dependencies: BSC Mega Props Jestarr Vol.01 - for most of the cargo props and some ancillary objects. BSC Mega Props Jestarr Vol.02 - some less important props [information added Dec 17, 2012] BSC Mega Props Gascooker Vol.01 - for the containers and a dumpster model I used. Rail Yard and Spur Textures Mega-Pak 1 Version 1.02 - for the base textures. 4 - FINAL WORDS After so much growable stuff, I hope you will enjoy these ploppable fillers as well and find them useful to "dress up" grown industrial areas. Similar filler sets for manufacturing and high-tech industry are in the making. T Wrecks, Dec 15, 2012- 14 Comments
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I bet you can shave off some polys there.
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As soon as SC4Devotion is back online, you might want to take a look into Cycledogg's (C.P.'s) current development thread. He has some really jaw-dropping stuff in the works that is intended precisely for this purpose: using MMPs to create marshlands.
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Whoa, not so fast! Okay, one thing after another: @rsc204: As usual, a very helpful and insightful post - you certainly don't disappoint. Thank you very much, I really appreciate it. @CorinaMarie: Throw a theory into the forums, and Cori tests it - complete with pictures and everything but the kitchen sink. You're unbelievable! I'm tempted to buy a hat just to take it off for you. And doesn't the pic with the pylons look pretty amazing? I need to play around with these values... Finally, back to the actual topic of this thread: @tribar: You are explicitly looking for highway/avenue, not road or rail, right? Well, there is only these few that I remember off the top of my head: I dunno if this one counts because it's more a transit station than a "normal" building: Then there's this one with a diagonal avenue into it: I'm sorry, but I can't think of any more right now.
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Yes, that's precisely what I was referring to. IIRC, Marrast somehow made his game generate these supports more often, even when dragging road over a pretty gentle slope.
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I can absolutely second this recommendation - fantastic buildings. On a side note, I remember pretty well how thrilling it was for me when I was driving down a road in Halifax during my vacation and suddenly saw the real-life counterpart one of spa's buildings - the Clay Café, iirc. You are in a foreign country, not even at a top tourist destination like the Eiffel Tower, and all of a sudden - BANG! - hey, I know this building! It's really fun. And boy, did his BAT look the part! I suppose the others are no different in that respect. EDIT @PHBSD: The style reminds me of Thailand BAT Team's @on001222, but I'm not sure.. @rsc204: I seem to remember that @Criquette (formerly known as Marrast) once had a mod where these solid walls were replaced by concrete pillars. These pillars were probably part of the game as well, but he changed something to make them appear more easily. You wouldn't happen to know where to look for parameters/properties that could do such a thing, would you?
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@simlacroix: This would be what you're looking for.
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[Solved] Looking for NDEX-ITS Modern Glass Roof Station
T Wrecks replied to tariely's topic in SC4 - Custom Content
This should be the direct download link.- 2 Replies
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