T Wrecks

Wow, talk about optimisation! Those are some impressive numbers, and - needless to say - the building is even more impressive. I'd like to thank you explicitly for going the extra mile and getting the base to actually connect to the SimCity grid. It's always a bit sad when we get a top-notch building, but it doesn't really line up with anything in game.

Shouldn't be hidden at all if you are on a notebook (it's normally only used on notebooks). For a wireless keyboard, it should theoretically be similar, but I'm not familiar with those. As Cyclone_Boom said, if the key is not directly on your keyboard, it may be a secondary function on your number pad, and you should be able to switch between numbers (often 9 and 3) and PgUp / PgDn by pressing "NumLock". Do you have a photo showing the layout of your keyboard? Maybe there's a photo online somewhere you could link us to? Do you know the model number at least? And have you checked Logitech's documentation? Even with a very reduced set of keys, they should give you some information on how to use basic functions like Home/End and Page up/down. Here's a page I found, but I dunno if it refers to your keyboard...

I've got some catching up to do! Meanwhile, take this wonderful, relaxing piece of music: EDITS @Takingyouthere: Wow, that Kobana track sure was a surprise for me! Didn't know the artist, not really my genre, but great soundtrack. And oh my god, you just catapulted me back into my summer holidays with that last video! That city is exactly where I spent a part of these holidays - it's Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia! It's like I'm back there. If you ever have the chance, go there! It's a wonderful little city - big enough to be lively and interesting, but small enough to feel easy, laid back and cozy. I just loved it! The holidays in the years before, we did the rural part first and then went to a city for a few days, which always made the transition really harsh and the city seem too hectic, stressful and loud - not relaxing at all. Last year, we decided to do it the other way around, but Ljubljana turned out to be so pleasant that I didn't feel stressed at all. I definitely recommend Slovenia anyway - love that mixture between Alpine, Mediterranean and Balkan. And if you like to eat well (and much!), you're definitely at the right place there, too. I must confess that I didn't like the music of the second vid so much, but thank you for the memories. I gotta dig out those photos... @Tonraq: Aaaah, now who wouldn't like that? Both the movie and the soundtrack, in fact. @NMUSpidey: That was a pretty cool one all around, thanks for posting it!

IMO this one would also be suitable as a generic stage 7 CO$$ mid-rise. It does have a certain "administrative" vibe to it, though. I wouldn't expect anything too exciting going on in there, just your average paper-pushing office stuff. Congrats on your invite to become a member of the NYBT! This could only be topped by Mr. Awesome Graham picking up the BAT again.

Good stuff! This should be a good building to get some practice, too, because it's not overly complicated but still interesting.

The list normally shows whatever you entered as exemplar name for the building exemplar. "Item Name" or "User Visible Name Key" from the building exemplar will be ignored, and the lot exemplar names will only appear after selecting the building exemplar. I suppose this is a feature because it allows you to select exemplar names for better categorisation (you could do fancy stuff like "mipro_JCW_Detroit_GuardianBldg" there) and still have the building show up simply as "Guardian Building" in game. [I do this all the time when I mod stuff for my plugins folder. I'll select author prefixes and other stuff to make sure I find what I'm looking for. For example, @Jumpthefence made those beautiful Little Italy buildings that are called by street number and street name IIRC; something like "123 sample street". Problem is, if other authors do the same, you'll hardly find them in the list. Therefore I'd name the exemplars something like "JTF_LittleItaly_1_123 sample street" and so forth - you get the idea.] As for the CAM question, I'll have to pass because I'm totally unfamiliar with the CAM, sorry.

Only if it's tears of joy. Which are perfectly justified after looking at such tasty renders IMO. This would make for a funny CML: "Notice the caustics!".

Superb testing! It's basically the same modding that SimGoober and @madhatter106 have already used for commercial buildings with NIMBY effect. I don't recall this type of modding ever being used for residential, though. Wasn't there a property somewhere in the Simcity_1.dat that defined desirability effects of RCI/wealth categories in general, though?

Such a property actually seems to exist, but it appears to be undertuned to the point of not being noticeable at all in the default game. I also remember it has been discussed here in late 2018, but I suck really hard at finding threads again. I'm paging @CorinaMarie because she may have been involved as well and, unlike me, she seems to have a better memory than a goldfish. However, what you suggest should basically be possible. I've been playing with that thought myself for quite a while. It might be hard to strike a healthy balance, though.

-Cori Edit: These posts are being parsed out of a prior topic. Since the first post I move has to be the first one I'm adding this comment to the top of this one. I have not altered any of the original. -Cori Edit End. Okay, I think it won't hurt to describe the sharing policy again in simple terms. Let me try to put it down in an easily understandable manner. In short, the policy is in place to ensure two things: The creator receives credit for their creation, and it always remains clear who is the creator. Content can be shared and enjoyed by others. In detail, this means the following: If you make a BAT model, that model is your creation. Nobody else is allowed to say that it is their model. If you upload your creation on the STEX, it is still your creation. Others can download it and use it, but they cannot say it is their creation. Likewise, they cannot simply upload it again and say that it is their creation. They can also not upload it to another site under their own name. If they want to do that, they need to ask the creator for permission first. If you make a new lot for an existing building that is not your creation or any similar modification to an existing upload that is not yours, you are not allowed to include the original upload (the item that was created by somebody else). This is because it's not your creation. Instead, you need to provide a link to it so that people will have to download the original file as uploaded by the original creator (as a so-called "[external] dependency" - your creation depends on this original file). The modification is your work, your creation. You can upload it freely. It's yours. However, the pieces that you used for it are not yours. Therefore, you need to link to them so people will have to get them separately, from the original author. Any pictures you take of anything you make in SimCity are your creation. You took these pictures. Therefore, you can share these pictures as you like. ______________ That's basically it. Let's check an example: Cycledogg has made wonderful textures. They are his creation. They will forever be his creation. Nothing will ever change that. Am I allowed to upload them here? No, because they are not my creation, and Cycledogg has not given me permission to upload them here. Am I allowed to upload them here if I ask him first and he says "yes, that's okay"? Yes, then I can upload because I have the creator's explicit permission. I will still have to mention that they are not my own work, though. Now let's suppose I make a nice park in the Lot Editor using Cycledogg's textures, and I want to share my park by uploading. Can I just upload the park and Cycledogg's textures? No, because the park lot is my creation, but the textures are Cycledogg's creation. Can I upload the park and link to Cycledogg's textures? Yes, I can upload the park because the park is my creation. However, people will also have to click on the link to Cycledogg's textures. The link will take them to the download page for Cycledogg's textures. There they will see that this is an entirely separate creation, and that it was made by Cycledogg. They can probably even leave a rating and/or a comment there to say thanks to Cycledogg for making the textures. Can I simply use the park for myself, take pictures of it, and share these pictures online? Yes, I can do that because I took these pictures myself. Therefore, the pictures are my creation. It's actually rather intuitive, I think. If all this sounds too abstract, think of a car: Can you just take another person's car and say "This is mine, I'm giving it to you"? No, you can't because it's NOT yours. Can you make a tuning kit / spoiler, add it to the car and then say "This car with tuning kit / spoiler is mine, I'm giving it to you"? No, you can't because only the tuning kit/spoiler is yours, but not the car. Can you make a tuning kit / spoiler and say "This tuning kit / spoiler is mine, and I'm giving it to you. However, you'll need this particular car to use it"? Yes, you can. You are the creator of the tuning kit, therefore you can share it as you like and say it's yours. You are not sharing the car, and you are not saying you own the car. You merely inform people where to get this car from the original owner. Can you take a photograph of a car that has your tuning kit / spoiler attached to it, and share the photograph? Yes, you can because you made the photograph. You don't share the car or the tuning kit /spoiler, you only share the photograph. You do not claim to be the owner of the car. I hope this helps to clear things up a little. If it doesn't, please don't hesitate to ask.

Wow, what a cornucopia of cool features! Rail viaduct through building - if you don't get people with that, then how do you wanna get them at all? Looking at the sample pictures - particularly those with simhottoddy's buildings added to the mix - I came to realise two things: Once you are taking care of the final roofjunk props (and also the transparent ground filler props), I think it may be worth considering shapes that don't fill the tile as much. Why am I saying that? It's because you managed to hide the seams between the individual 1x1 pieces so well that any result really looks like one single and coherent building complex. However, many of the preliminary roof junk tiles make the underlying grid rather obvious again. If you had more props that only fill a part of the tile, this effect could be more subtle and improve the illusion. The concept is great, it's just the fine tuning. Looking at the comparison buildings, I noticed that the top of the parapet on your modules is really wide - is it really like that? It might totally be, I'm not familiar with the originals. Just wondering because of the direct comparison to be seen in your pictures. All in all, this is easily one of the most impressive industrial projects I have ever seen for SimCity! Going through this thread is really a joy - whenever you think "Wow, this is the highlight so far", up comes the next. Gorgeous work!

Yes, vanilla buildings adapt themselves. However, in the earlier days of BAT4max, several BATs were produced that contained a full night render just like the DarkNite BATs you are editing here, but at colours that match Maxis night. So it's basically the same scheme as DarkNite, only brighter. While the buildings look fine if you switch to static Maxis night, they cannot use the dusk/dawn cycle.

Wow, splendid progress! I think the brick texture looks spot on now. It should not clash at all with Maxis content, and it absolutely looks the part IMO. My former school used to have bare yellow brick walls, and they certainly looked exactly like this. Honestly, I'm somewhat relieved that you were going to make another render anyway because I sometimes feel like a jerk when I see the 98% awesomeness but simply cannot help mentioning the last missing 2%, too. Great suggestions by @mattb325, too! Oh boy, it's sure fun to watch this project come together... thank you for letting us participate in this way. By the way, I moved your topic as per your PM request. I'm sorry it took a bit longer, but my Simtropolis time is a bit limited these days and I wanted to double-check with the admins that your followers wouldn't be affected. I hope everything worked as intended.

Interesting read, thanks for posting these links! It would really have been a shame if these buildings had been demolished.

Wow, that's impressive! To be honest, I'm surprised just how well the modular approach worked visually. I'm all for modularity (although it never fails to drag me down into a quicksand of wanting to mod/lot 1,854,633,634 variations ), but I'm also aware of the limitations. However, if you look at this building from zoom 4, you really only see the seams if you know it's modular. Otherwise, those tiny offsets here and there are not much different from the occasional one-pixel offsets found in coherent models by default. Splendid work! The one feature that gives it away most "easily" (quotation marks because the overall result is really good and "easily" is really relative in this case!) is the roof texture with its pronounced streaks that either line up (if all goes well) or end apruptly. Since the roof texture is rather varied and vivid, there may be some room to tone down very pronounced features (partiularly those with a clear orientation/direction) in an attempt to hide the seams even better. Another little thing I noticed is that the yellowish brick texture might lean a tad far towards a greenish hue compared to the game's default palette. Both of these observations, however, relate to minor aspects, and I know it must have been a pain to render all this stuff. There's probably no need to worry about anything mentioned in the last two paragraphs unless, for some reason, you need to make another render anyway and might want to change a thing or two in the process. Whoa, wait a second. I always considered myself relatively familiar with SC jargon, but I have never heard of this. May I ask what this functionality entails?

Well, no wonder. You've been through a lot. I cannot really blame you, not at all. I also didn't mean to oppose your opinion per se (you're entitled to it, and it doesn't matter whether I like it in this particular case or not), but rather highlight that whatever decision we take might have repercussions on existing stuff, and in this case I would have been immediately affected. As @CorinaMarie pointed out, though, it might not be like that. Then again, there's the "I feel this states..." - it is also what I felt and understood to be generally applicable, but after reading some of the stuff in this thread I'm no longer sure. Then this "nice" Jesus picture put in context with the current debate, which basically frames (no pun intended) a more liberal sharing policy as paving the way to renowned artwork getting irreversibly butchered by incompetent wannabes, and then I read of people allegedly bossing BATters around and telling them what to do when all I'm trying is to make sure I can utilise the tools we now have and share content in good faith as I always did (or thought I did) with other tools and techniques, and I can't help it, but I feel like I'm the one being told to do and what not to do and not the other way around. Take any BAT, repurpose it for a different use by modding a new desc and making a new lot, upload with the original work as a dependency.... fine. Take any BAT, keep its current purpose, but design a new lot (implying that I like that more than the default one), upload with the original work as a dependency.... still fine. Take any BAT, e.g. scale it 0.5 metres narrower so that it can be used as a W2W, upload a .DAT that's not functional on its own, with the original work as a dependency... aaand it's an offense apparently. Of course, if I wrote a downloadable script that would do the modification automatically, and 20 people did that, it would be perfectly fine again. Add to that suggestions like "stuff by creators that are no longer active cannot be modified unless the creators give their prior consent", which is pretty much the same as saying "you are welcome to step on this lawn, with the exception of those patches that have not given you their prior consent", and I feel like I'm not in Kansas any more. Guess I'll wait what happens and keep puting together my own plugins folder. I should probably just care less.