CT14
-
Content Count
691 -
Joined
-
Last Visited
-
Most Liked
8
Everything posted by CT14
-
Looking at community.simtropolis.com/robots.txt now, I do see Google whitelisted near the top (empty Disallow:) User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: User-agent: googlebot-image Disallow: User-agent: googlebot-mobile Disallow: User-agent: Mediapartners-Google Disallow: But near the very bottom, Bing is banned from the site (any page will match '/') - probably not what is desired. I think this is what was messing up my search results as it's actually DDG I was on (they get results through Bing). Not a Google related problem on my end, sorry. User-agent: msnbot Disallow: / User-agent: MSNBot Disallow: / User-agent: bingbot Disallow: /
-
PLANNED - Suggestion: Fix robots.txt so that search engines can index pages properly. Specifically, anything on the STEX shows on Google as "We would like to show you a description of this page, but the site won't let us."... with no page title or anything. This will help get traffic up and prevent spam sites from intercepting traffic by making Google-friendly description pages of STEX content (this is already happening).
-
Heyyy that new industrial you posted in the megathread looks great. It would also make an awesome anchor for a farm lot!
-
FA3 Intersections gridbusting! I've wanted to try this for ages. These sheds came together rather quickly. I also completed most of the work on the FAB-D2 regular filler model - so, about halfway finished with the FA3 filler set (D1,D2,D3 in the map below).
- 296 Replies
-
- 12
-
-
-
Sometimes things take a while to finish! With all the semi truck props released recently, this will be a great addition.
-
Hey, that's great to know about GoFSH converting to DarkNite. I don't play with DarkNite by preference but it might be fun for certain BATs to offer the choice. I'll see about rendering another version of the Lyons foundation without the marine pilings (and perhaps even the structure without the marine leg).
-
Sign by @jtportland FA-3 depth 1 in red brick
-
New 19th century warehouse model This is a brand new 19th century warehouse model, inspired by those classic Cycledogg lots. I tried to leave the building as generic as possible so it could represent a wide range of industrial uses, even commercial services. There's also a concrete textured version. The BAT is 16x27m, so it will sit on a 1x2 lot with 3m front standoff and 2m back standoff, to match many other W2W lots. The Ortho model can be plopped side by side to create a larger structure. I'm happy with how the night lights turned out. Billboard Reefers I added a few more details to the wooden reefer model above and textured a bunch of them with old advertisements. These used to be everywhere on reefer cars until the 1930s when the rules were changed. A few of the textures still need toned down (Roberts Meat yellow/black roof, the green and white car, Oppenheimer's, blue roofs for sure). I'm pretty happy with the pack otherwise. They are almost ready for angle renders and release.
-
The situation is slightly out of hand at the Billboard Reefer Factory...
-
Well, it's probably a pretty old one - before 2007 when the SC4D BSC Texture Index thread got going: https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=2101.0 The first range given out on that thread opened at F3500000. Just looking at my BSC/BSCTextures folder, there are a couple dozen possibilities from before that time. Maybe someone knows of a tool that makes it easy to sift through everything? Edit: it's not in my BSC folder, but the ranges included in BSC Textures Vol02 do encompass the ID you are looking for. So it is probably somewhere in the timeframe of the original release dates of the packs that got rolled up into BSC Vol02. Hope that helps.
-
The Lyons Elevator is released. 40' wooden reefers I've begun work on a brand new 40' wooden refrigerated car model, based on 1910s-1930s Grand Trunk prototypes. Details of geometry include catwalk, brake handle and platform, ice covers, end ladders, side ladder bottom rung shapes - could probably use doors too. The brake handle top is unfinished. Texture is Grank Trunk's fantastic orange, needs toned down a little bit. Trucks and chassis are reused from my N&W coal cars. The final model will be overscaled slightly to match other vehicle props. The catwalk is probably too tall, its shadow appears too large: Fisher Body Thanks all for the feedback so far, it's very helpful. The windows got a total rebuild while I was working on finding the problem with rendering. The rebuild reduced poly count for each window by about 25%. I'll open a lot of the windows for the final renders - the geometry is separate for the opening parts. The roof texture is a placeholder as I am still trying to identify the material used in the real factory roofs - tar and gravel, tar paper perhaps the most likely. Several other Fisher plants including Cleveland's plant have similar construction, so I'm sure I'll find a reference sooner or later. Albert Kahn seems to have been the architect. I did learn that the floors were often made with creosoted wood blocks.
-
CAP Relief provided by beautification lots
CT14 replied to Psiman's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
CAP relief will be city-wide (and thus region-wide, through neighbor connections). -
Fisher Body At last, I've got the ortho module working. There was a chopped up mesh that I was able to replace with several box objects to fix the problem with rendering. The night lights are a work in progress...
-
Still no luck with the factory modules. I'm rebuilding the geometry as a last resort. In the meantime, here is a deep web source for some glorious firetrap prototypes by late 19th century civil engineer Charles E Goad: http://collectionscanada.gc.ca/lac-bac/results/arch.php?module=arch&action=results&Language=eng&PageNum=1&SortSpec=score%20desc&SearchIn_1=partof&SearchInText_1=3821327&Operator_1=AND&SearchIn_2=&SearchInText_2=&Operator_2=AND&SearchIn_3=&SearchInText_3=&Media=&Level=&MaterialDateOperator=after&MaterialDate=&DigitalImages=&Source=&ResultCount=10&BIGipServerWEBSITE_V41XAPPS_SERVER=1361792654.20480.0000&MaxDocs=-1&MaxDocs=-1 There is a lifetime worth of material in there which doesn't normally come up in a Google search, because it is buried in the library website. I've rehosted a few so you can see what is going on - no hotlinking to the library site allowed.
-
Snaking through the hamlet of Lowbrow Mule and Ditch are friends
-
Three ways to Lyons: Bonus Fourth Way (apologies to Gurdjieff) Nite lites are being turnt up, windows opened and a few errors in the mesh found and fixed before making a final render for release. There's a certain offset grain scow prop I have in mind, too... Fisher Body Plant I've done quite a bit of work to try to get a 2x2 module working, per @matias93 suggestion. So far, I kept running into LOD problems, even with an automatically generated LOD and no foundation. I'll revisit this as I feel it's a strong concept. Gonna add some more bits and pieces of the line and maybe a worker or two in there, texture the inside of the blank end wall with an illusion of depth. I had fun stripping one of the Sketchup Warehouse Lowrider models down for this. Inside the real thing:
-
Looking good so far! I really liked the picture with the section roads and irrigation circles. It looks like you have the quarter mile section roads at every 25 tiles or close to it, right on scale! (25 tiles = 400m ~= .25 mile at 1609m/mile).
-
Looking good! If you want a good prototype for FM that will fit into a smaller footprint, the Burlingame store at SW Terwilliger and Barbur in Portland is their original. It still has its large mid-century modern sign standing. On the other hand, if you want sprawling malaise dialed up to 11, try the Gresham or West Eugene stores.
-
I definitely will consider making a "side" piece and a "roof filler" piece so deeper areas can be constructed. I still have another project that's trying to accomplish an identical goal, perhaps it's time to revisit it and tackle some old problems again. There were another dozen or so buildings inside the lot, along with some interesting fillers like lumber stacks, conveyors, main switch hut, guard shacks, etc - this building is in fact a crust, only 4 bays deep. Here's a picture of the model's progress: Zoom 4 is required to see the whole thing... Links to high resolution aerials of the site - in the early '30s the lumberyard was still there: https://digital.library.wayne.edu/item/wayne:vmc77402 https://digital.library.wayne.edu/item/wayne:vmc78516 And some more background information - a plant diagram from some time after the lumberyard was removed, and an old postcard which gives a more comprehensible overview of the site layout:
-
@matias93 Great idea! The building is uniform for the most part. There are some large roof vent stacks in some places, and a few window air conditioners, and a lot of open windows. An entrance door or two and a dock in the back. As seems to be the norm, I can't find any pictures of two angles of the building, so I'm relying on plant diagrams to tell me where the dock is, and what the function of the building was (upholstery and export). For a modular Fisher Body Plant #1, a few modules would be sufficient for these main wings: 1x1 Straight 1x1 Corner 1x1 End For the Straight model it will be important to vary windows, roofjunk etc. I guess that can be done with one or more prop families depending on how tight my LODs are. For this building, I could clone cornice and rooftar... Boolean union them to one... move lowest vertices down to cover walls. Using prop families for variation in building details With a skintight roof LOD I can use roofjunk props, roofjunk prop families and avoid rendering several versions of the same whole building for it. I'm considering doing open/closed windows the same way - seems possible with LOD around windowframe, yes? Disadvantages of this method: - Slightly more complicated during READER stage of project - Others who use the building BAT will not have the propped-in parts of it unless they, too add the prop families in the correct places - important from a packaging/release standpoint to distribute these parts together with the matching buildings, especially for windows - Night lighting adds another layer of complication. A few BATters have released light/shadow versions of props (cycledogg comes to mind... jestarr... maybe others?). I don't really want to have to manage which prop I use based on whether or not the building BAT has a light nearby. This gets really sticky for windows in particular. Minimizing interior nightlights could be one solution. Gmax nightlights are a whirlpool of disaster anyway so I'm not too fussed about this Advantages over my current method: - Much less time spent on exports since main building geometry only gets exported once - Ability to fully randomize windows, roofjunk, building bay functions Prior art: - All the storefront, poster and roofjunk prop families already in use on existing lots. A prop family for windows could look like this: Open Closed Half-open Open (lit) Closed (lit) Half-open (lit) Air conditioner Bricked up Bricked up (new bricks) Vent hood Open with Cat on the windowsill Etc.... However, I don't really know how this works with lit windows, so I'm going to have to do some testing and report back.
-
Modeling a factory complex that's about 55 tiles square is probably a fool's errand. I want to see what it looks like, though... That would be the 55-tile vista down South Saginaw Street, below... If this project goes anywhere, I'll have to break it up into about 6 lots to make it usable... it's also tempting to make a 'toy' version with only 10 bays on the front of each wing, instead of 45...
-
I am nearly finished with the Lyons Elevator. Feedback welcome...the foundation is a few pixels off in this shot but you can see what I'm going for. Front view: Side view: Prototype details The model came out a bit shorter looking than the prototype, even after scaling 133% to satisfy game geometry. The outside of the building is metal to match other similar prototypes late in their life, because I couldn't find good reference photographs of the shingle siding. In reality, this elevator didn't last long enough to be retrofitted with steel siding. BAtting Foundations with Custom LODs in Gmax I discovered an effective way to make custom LODs for complicated geometry, like the stone piers, wooden pilings and ropes in the Lyons Elevator foundation prop. In your foundation model, under Tools > BAT > Parameters, click "All" to show your existing LODs. Select and delete LOD3, LOD4 and LOD5. Select every part of your foundation, group it as one object and clone the group. Move the cloned group away 50m so you can work on it without running into stuff. Ungroup the clone. Find the object which is the largest part of your foundation, and create a Boolean object from it. Choose "Union" from the Boolean options (Subtract is default operation). Use "Pick Operand" on a smaller part of your foundation to union it with the larger part. Finally, Create Mesh from the resulting object. Repeat step 3 until the entire foundation is one big mesh. Rename this mesh LOD3. Clone LOD3 object twice, naming the clones LOD4 and LOD5. Move the LOD objects back to your foundation objects. At this point, they should be 'skintight' with every vertex aligning perfectly. You can verify this by selecting part of your foundation, going into vertex mode, noting the coordinates of a corner point and then checking the corresponding vertex on the LOD3 mesh. With this method, you can place props near any part of the foundation without awkward clipping, and the foundation itself will merge cleanly with the slope of the ground in game. Naturally, this will work as well for any prop LOD, should you need it.
-
Those tall ships and steamers are amazing! There are far too few tall ships in game and as far as I know, all of them are ships of the line. Merchant vessels would be especially welcome.
-
Looking good, as this is about 10% overscaled by my quick calcs (2.2 * %133% ~= 3) if we consider 2m as 'real' scale. 10-20% overscaled seems to be the 'sweet spot' to match the existing body of figure and vehicle props. I've made a few props that, in retrospective, feel too small at true scale, and might redo them at some point. @pclark06 Nice variety! Are you going to make separate 53' props matching AngryMozart set so we can have a proper Tim Horton's train? (AM set is 110% if i recall correctly).
-
Worker housing and viaduct rail sidings, wow!
