Deed_Poll

So I'm wanting to make a bigger more planned city, but once it's turning a profit I'd prefer to play without infinite money. If you save the game, turn inf money off and reload will it disable the mod or is it linked to the save game? Cheers

Thanks for the video! Do they do a distance x speed calculation to come up with a 'best scenario' journey time? What if you make a loop where one way is 6-lane until it reaches the industrial building, then the building is placed on a 2-lane for fairness, then a 3 lane for the other direction? Then you could move the building (and extend / contract the roads appropriately) to see how close to the lower speed turn off you'd have to put it for the truck to go that way? (if at all). If it is calculating a best case time estimate, you would expect a road with double the speed limit to end up as 2/3 of the loop vs the smaller road

Some of these are truly spectacular ! Do any of you experts have any tips for how to get nice smooth curves with your on/off ramps and other roads? Or is it just sweat and tears? One thing I've found is it looks best, if possible, to either curve a road or raise / lower but not both. Mostly mine look like thin little ribbons when I do that and the curvature goes all lumpy.

So I've been having lots of issues with models not showing up in the lot editor browser. I've been going crazy trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong as sometimes models have worked, I've re-scaled them and then they won't load again. I think I know what might have been the problem. I was exporting models from 'object mode'(which is correct) but when I selected to export I think I pressed 'a' to select all. I just realised that selects the lighting as well, I am having much better luck deselecting all and clicking once on my object before going to export. I just thought I'd share that in case anyone else who's new to blender (as I am) was coming up against the same problem!

I don't know whether this might be something Paradox have to do, but a pair of tick boxes in the lot editor to convert intersections between driving on right / left, and one that mirrors the intersection whilst keeping the R/L in tact would be cool for asymmetric inters.

Hi guys, I'm trying to model a set of post-war semi-detached british houses. I plan to make 25 - 50 different blueprints for these, some mock Tudor, some smaller distressed pebbledash, some with or without conservatories, flat-roof extensions, skylights etc. Eventually I want to create a full set of "grim middle England" type houses and commercial units, with motorway service stations, retail parks with TK Maxx, B&Q, Pets at Home - you know the deal! I do all my modelling in Rhino 3D, then I'm exporting these to Blender which I have next to no experience with (or mesh modelling in general). At the moment I am exporting the models from rhino in .3DS file format and opening them up in Blender with no problems and with the colours in tact. The problem is I have no experience doing the texture modelling the way Blender does it. It seems very obscure and over complicated to me, I'm used to setting materials in render software like KeyShot which is much easier. I'm often confused that I don't seem to have a "palette" of swatches - sometimes I'll be able to find my "brick" texture and apply it to a selection; at other times it will only apply it to a single triangle; most of the time I can't find it in the menu, or when I do find it it will show up white or pink. Basically my brain is a mess and I need someone to put me straight on the best way to group objects and apply textures, and how to extract the kind of unwrapped texture maps CSL wants from those models. Here's my first attempt. You can see how the brick texture is squashed in the x-axis on narrower panels. The roof tiles also look rubbish and presumably need some sort of bump map. Which is based on this I'm basically having a nightmare grouping stuff together and applying textures. Am I right in thinking that the 1024x1024 texture map files / bump maps are the sort of unwrapped "compositing" type? If someone can give me any advice about texturing, or better still someone who knows how to do this texturing and shares in my vision who wants to collaborate on grim British stuff, I'd love to hear from you. I'm just finding Blender totally counter-intuitive at the moment! Here are more of the types of buildings I want to model: '90s Leisure Centres

DSHP01 - that's great! The most recent model above is based on a 1930s semi, I don't know the exact date. I only had the front photo and had to make up the back so it has turned out it doesn't match brilliantly, definitely looks later almost like the front of a 1960s council house. I've thought about the issue over controlling which styles spawn, I thought similarly to you I think, in that I think the "type" of building should be determined by the lot size somehow (so all the terraces are 2 squares wide, semis are 4 wide for 2 houses, detached are 3 squares wide perhaps) and that the levels might use some of the same models with differing levels of gentrification / extensions.

Hey Guys Just a little update - I'm getting much better at modelling with blender and I think I've got the hang of the UV mapping - mostly! Here's my first real stab at a british style semi. It looks kind of '30s at the front and a bit more '70s at the back! Hope you like it. I should get it finished tomorrow.

I was thinking this. There is a big lack of residential fences / hedges / flower beds. It would also be great to make conservatories and extensions to make more varied lots.

Those apartments look great! They really fit in with the existing buildings well. I've found the standard resi high rises are too brown / beige.

The roads are big by UK standards. I think it would be cool to have a tree lined street that has half the traffic capacity, but allows for parking. If you could make them "no through roads" to regulate the traffic density. This would fit great with Victorian / Georgian / Recency terraces.

So having seen the amazing C:SL recreation of Los Santos from GTA V, I've found it impossible not to imagine how awesome it would be if you could 'bake' your whole cities out to a GTA type game for real free roaming, or something like Gary's Mod. I don't know enough about this stuff to know if it's possible but a boy can dream...

Haha that is amazing! Nice one. Did you have to 'plop' a car park in there or did it spawn on its own? I thought something like this for 'pedestrianised' town centres would be super cool. You could plop in a car park and let the ped paths be arterial to it. All it would need is re-skinning and allowing commercial to be zoned on it. A 'park and ride' scheme would not be too far removed from that to get shoppers from satellite towns into the centre to shop.

I noticed the lot editor lets you clip ground tiles - anyone have any cool ideas for this? I'm thinking terraced houses like this could be cool Maybe a skate park with a sunken bowl? Or a large metro station? Share your ideas!

Cool! You should turn that into a billboard in the asset editor and put them on your subway station tiles!

Thanks! Yeah I'm starting to get it now. It's a hundred times easier to keep track when I model in blender rather than importing meshes. The unwrap from viewport tool is coming in handy a lot. I'll do a bunch of these semis and some council houses as level 1 and 2 buildings with a few bungalows thrown in, some dreadful Bovis / Barrett estates for L2 as well and a mix of regency / Edwardian and detached houses for L3... I'm thinking a set of services buildings based on the brutalist style would be cool too. I'm thinking stuff like John Maden's Birmingham Central Library, sadly now earmarked for demolition. I also feel like a growable multi-storey car park as a high dense commercial might be cool.

Because then you can maximise your resolution. Let's say you're making a concrete car park. If there are 10000 faces on it and you have a 1024x1024 grid that leaves only 10 by 10 for each face. But if they are all concrete you can re-use the same texture again and again, giving you the full resolution for each and every piece. Of course this means there will be some repetition, but you can often introduce some variance in the texture and move the pieces around to prevent having 2 adjacent faces with the same texture. You can scale and move around objects in a uv map without it affecting the model, for instance for white window frames you can scale them down to be really tiny and put them all over 1 pixel of white and it still works.

Layer all the pieces over the top of each other on the UV map. Make sure they are all scaled by the same factor if you want to avoid stretching problems!

Bigger growable lot sizes! I think this needs to happen, with the huge amount of space to build in C:SL there's no reason to scale down large buildings. I would also LOVE to be able to make my own sub-sets of RCI, like "motorway services", "out of town retail park", "shopping mall" etc that I can then populate with appropriate buildings. I'd love to see a central "car park" zonable tile that you could zone retail park buildings and grocery stores off of. Also more leisure spaces like football fields and running tracks, leisure centres etc. It would be good if these could slightly improve health in the area, maybe they could work like health clinics or something like that. It would also be cool to subdivide the big region map into more natural shapes that are not squares, maybe if they have more resources they could be smaller or more expensive.

This is probably all a bit premature, but what the hell! I work for a packaging company as a designer of parametric models to produce box nets. Basically all the measurements of the box model are driven by global variables, usually height, width, depth and material thickness. I have always thought that what SC needs is parametrically designed models for buildings which are driven by plot size / shape, land value, demand, traffic, tech level etc. I have been studying the rules of urban and suburban architecture, and I think with a bit more work and some help I could link in some randomization of variables and suppression of some features so that buildings randomly borrow the DNA of their surroundings when they are built. For instance, in city centres buildings are usually defined by negative space, so that the buildings are pretty much one 'mass' and this is sculpted away by roads, parks and public squares which form contingent spaces that span between plots. Conversely, in suburban areas buildings have 'shape' and the spaces between the buildings are more amorphous. This is probably not applicable to SC13 mods, but I had an idea for a 2.5 dimensional city builder game that basically can only be viewed from a few angles (set by the player). Basically buildings would be generated fractally / procedurally / parametrically and a high quality render would be taken of the model from the predetermined angles, and these would be used as sprites in the game. A simple 3d model would be retained for shadows, plus a simplified DNA code to allow for additional expansions in the building and commutivity to other buildings. What do you think?

I appreciate that the mods might think this is in the wrong forum section. However, I would ask you to hear out my case. Primarily I think that delivering on the admittedly high expectations people had of SC2013 is a good starting point for such a discussion. Also as a product designer myself, much of the research into developing a new product is the identification of weaknesses in existing products to improve upon them. This being said, I would encourage posters to have a constructive and positive attitude in this thread focusing on what is achievable, at the expense of the many valid criticisms that we are all now familiar with. I've read that a few have tried and failed to get a kickstarter city simulator off the ground. I lack the programming skill and experience in the industry to make my own attempt at this, but I would like to set out what I'd be looking to see in a large scale, 'blue skies' reinvention of the genre - and I'd be really interested to hear ideas from you all as well. I think competition in the marketplace is essential to guarantee progress in quality. Games like Gran Turismo and Pro Evolution Soccer stagnated until Forza Motorsport and FIFA 10 respectively took the fight back to these franchises and reinvigorated progress in these genres. SC2013 is the best current example of a monopoly gone stale. I'll start with my vision for such a game. As I work with a lot of rendering software in my job as a designer, I would approach the visuals in a different way. Instead of a fully interactive 3D view I would have the player choose 2 or 3 angles to switch between. Each New building would be generated as a 3D model and then photorealistically rendered from each of these angles, at different times of day and weather conditions, so that it could be implemented in the game as a 2D object. A very simplified box model of this building would be used to update shadows on surrounding buildings as they grow and vice versa. Buildings themselves would be algorithmically generated in accordance with: - style of surrounding buildings - plot shape / size - desirability / wealth level of prospective inhabitants - overall city technology level - proximity of parks, waterways etc. This would ensure that each building would be unique and communicate to the player the relative affluence and desirability of certain areas. An algorithmic model would also allow buildings to gradually change; to grow, shrink and change textures naturally. This would be another important element in the uniqueness of each building as anyone who knows fractal geometry and chaos theory knows that iteration is key - having systems both as inputs and outputs will guarantee complex and interesting results even from simple foundations. With this system you would be able to see the history of each building, how it has grown, shrunk, become enriched or impoverished as time goes on. Every 5 years the simulation would take a compressed snapshot of the building and pop it in the archive. Additionally, parametric modelling like this would suit repurposing of buildings - from industrial to residential for instance. Chimneys would become lift shafts, lumber yards would become carparks or communal gardens. User input could inform the simulation, weeding out the genetic material of buildings you choose to demolish, and conversely favouring elements of those you make historic for future building generation. In addition to the 2 or 3 camera angles you choose to view the game (which would of course be 'isometric', or at least would have infinite 'lens length', i.e. no perspective) you would also be able to make 'districts' in the city where a point is placed in the centre and allows a panoramic, perspective view from the centre of that point. This would behave like a city view on Civilisation, where you would be able to tweak that region's spending on health, education, police and other services. Of course, each building would have to be rendered separately for this view as well - again, just to make up a 2d image, just one which could be looked around like an old point and click like Zork or Myst. I would prefer a statistically based model rather than an agent based model, to aid scalability. I think public land like parks and plazas should be grown and not placed, better to fit in with their surroundings. They should still cost money to run. I like the idea that a park zone in an affluent suburb could turn into a skatepark or swimming pool, if you place a higher monthly cost limit, or a basketball court, playground or barbeque pit in a poorer area.

Only the community of modders, to whom I owe so much enjoyment, can fix this game. I look forward to the day the servers shut down as this should legally force EA to unlock the game. Then the modders can get to work on fixing this broken and pitiful game. Specifically, the problems with this game are well known - tile size, non contingent tiles, etc. Bigger buildings will only emphasize this. The key to previous SC games was that to build up, first you must build out. It forced you to recognise the requirement for low wealth areas and high wealth areas. Many among us grew to love our high density housing projects and poor areas of town on the outskirts of industrial regions as much as we loved the high wealth commercial centre. Now within 2hrs of play, every city is the same: a perfectly square, tall and unrealistic monolith in a field of green.

Thought this was too funny not to share! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHPOiOr94L8 Sums it up for me.

Hey, I've long been of the opinion that SC games need an algorithmic system to generate each building uniquely as a product of environmental factors. I was searching for algorithmically generated artwork when I came across this... I thought this system would be great in supporting gradual building growth (a la CAM) and could show you the history of a building in the information panel - where it came from and how it has developed over time.

I've basically stopped playing SC2013 completely now. Probably racked up about 100hrs, so I've given it a pretty good shot. Problem is, like many here I find myself enjoying the game up to a certain point then giving up out of frustration. I just check back here every month or so to check if anyone's cracked it yet. It's the only hope, IMO. My message to maxis for the sequel is this: 1) Get rid of the stupid glassbox engine. Replace it with a decent, robust statistically based system that scales properly (for processing and simulation purposes). Strategy games rely on trusting the game mechanics 100% - how can I know whether a problem has been caused by bad decision making or just another glitch? 2) Make the tiles AT LEAST 16x bigger. That should be a small tile. a big tile should be 64x bigger. 3) Give me real large scale infrastructure. I want highways, elevated rail, one way roads, and much more. 4) Get rid of this specialisation nonsense and BRING BACK ORDINANCES! Why is the state running the casinos? Owning the factories? It's not Tropico. I'd like to see unlockable ordinances like the internet, I want to decide jail terms for offenders and set speed limits to balance crime incidence against jail population, and safety vs traffic for example. If you want a casino city, legalise gambling! 5) make the road system more involved. Roundabouts and 1-way roads are a must. Underpasses and overpasses should also be possible. 6) More gift buildings. These really contribute to the feel good factor of the game, especially when they are handed out for achieving certain objectives. You could get a museum for having a certain % of your sims well educated. An opera house for a high % of $$$ sims, or mandatory plopping of projects if you don't provide for your $ sims! (like the army base on previous games). 7) Get rid of discrete wealth groups. Providing tax breaks for lower wealth sims should increase their wealth. The tiered system causes all sorts of problems with tax revenue consistency and population fluctuation. I want to set my tax rates AND decide my tax bands. Buildings should be algorithmically generated, so they can make the best use of any plot size and grow / shrink or get rich / poor organically. This could be reflected by different design rules, or textures to signify wealth (red brick for poor, glass & steel for rich, etc). This system would also facilitate repurposing buildings, for instance when re zoning industrial as residential. This would make each borough of your city distinct, and help communicate the challenges and character of the area to the player. I like the idea of buildings starting off all sparkly and new and getting older in style as time elapses. I've thought about this quite a bit - if a building was already too large that it couldn't 're-skin' to an older style it would stay modern. You could still make buildings historic to freeze this process, or turn it off entirely. Maybe more rich people in an area would accelerate the effect, and there would be only so much 'age' to the buildings in any one city. 9) Zoneable public land - essentially growable parks and plazas that reflect the area they're placed in and cost money to run. Enough with the stupid identical square parks, etc. You might zone a block in a rich residential area and have it turn into a spa complex with tennis courts and a pool, or in commercial to see it become a fountain or market square. 10) Bring back seasonal variation! And don't lock me into this crummy day / night cycle. 11) And of course, let me play the game offline and save on my HD! Rant over.,..