CT14

In addition to more work on the above BATs, I've recently done this quick Historic Harbor-compatible relot of JMeyers' Bender Building: The plan is to trawl through the rest of JMeyers BATs and grab a few more that fit the theme, then release a lot pack. I've also noticed another Jestarr boilerhouse variation BAT, which will be added to the boilerhouse power plant pack before release.

Don't build a loop of 3 or more cities with neighbor connections. Sims will circle forever causing demand problems everywhere. This is the Eternal Commuter bug. Instead, build neighbor connections in a tree or star shape.

I spent a long time digging through the models created for Google Earth on the warehouse and none of them at all were of good enough quality to turn into bats. The building models you are looking for on the warehouse are few and far between and they have been created by experienced modelers in most cases. An example would be the Pullman Factory buildings which are of excellent quality but still require a lot of texture work to bring into SimCity. Other than having to replace all of the textures used in SketchUp because they aren't good for SimCity, I found many models with some faces of a mesh having reversed normals. This looks like a black hole on the model. Poke around in the gmax mesh interface and you can find a checkbox to flip the selected faces' normals and this fixes the model sometimes. Other times there are simply too many faces of the mesh reversed and it's not worth it.

Thanks for checking. Does SC4DatPacker give an error when run directly on some folder in your plugins?

From this line: It looks like there is a missing DLL. But without more information, we can't tell which one is missing. Please update your spoiler to include more of the error message, if possible.

It's looking good! The rear left edge of the roof looks like it might have a small alignment issue, but I'm sure you already spotted that. You can create images with transparency in photo editing software, export as TGA format (png or gif might work?) and get some pretty good effects like the ghost signs you're talking about. The general method, once you have the TGA loaded into a material in the BAT, is to create a very thin mesh, say .001 deep (plane probably works but haven't tried). Apply the transparent texture to it, then position that mesh on the wall. The wall will show through around the letters. I used that technique for the Saber LA River lot.

Mid-19th century wooden grain elevator with marine leg. Lots are compatible with Historic Harbor... and canalside: edit: and warehouses!

Old time utility lots SimCoug posted an old time urban power plant made with only Maxis props (link)... I took the idea a bit further and made some fancy ones out of default Chicago residential BATs. Plus an old water tower/pumping station combo lot. I also took the opportunity to do the Jestarr boiler house power plants that I'd been thinking of. The diagonal lot doesn't have smoke because I couldn't figure out how to make the smokestack (off-lot overhanging) line up with the smoke effect prop (limited to placement on the 1x1 lot only). Possible solutions include increasing lot size. Bison Co-op Grain Elevator Here is the Bison Co-op Grain Elevator, another Maxis Buildings as Props special. This is a grain elevator with an older part and a modern addition., a 4x6 I-Ag landmark lot with jobs. Please let me know if you find any issues with the lot. I plan to eventually post it to the STEX. The lot is transit enabled for road (appearance only) and rail (capacity 1000). Its dependencies: Maxis Buildings as Props BSC Mega Props - JES Vol01.dat BSC Mega Props - JES Vol03.dat BSCMegaProps - JES Vol05.dat BSC Mega Props - JES Vol06.dat BSC Mega Props - JES Vol09.dat Download it here: PLOP_4x6_Bison Co-op Grain Elevator_86c2a4ce.SC4Lot 19th Century Wooden Dock Elevators I've been into these chimaeras for some time. Here is a source photo from Brooklyn - possibly Gowanus Canal mouth, though I haven't been able to verify the exact location or identity of these buildings: More delicious prototypes, many from Atlantic Basin, Brooklyn, NYC: Here is a new original BAT based on the building at center right above, intended to work with either Historic Harbor or various canal sets. The marine leg with bucket conveyor is extended as if just about to enter the barge or canal boat. I want to model canal boats since the SG Canal Dock boats are baked into a canal bank BAT. There is probably some boat or ship appropriate to the period that will fit under the leg nicely, and I'll check the usual suspect prop packs. Historic Harbor version (based on Quay Ortho A lot): The bottom story of the warehouse needs to be finished, and warehouse filler models (also in stone and wood cladding) will be created. Elevator variants will include fireproofed versions. The textures are an obvious WIP but I'm happy with materials so far. The warehouse part of the BAT is fully shadowed in the south rotation, which looks strange, especially next to other structures that are not shadowed. I'll move it to a separate BAT. I resized the RippTide wagon down by 60% to match prototypical draft horse sizing; it's a little smaller than the HH KrashSpeed props as a result. I will keep looking into scale but may just match KS scale. This one is tentatively "Llama A" after the old practice of calling elevators A, B, C... Dock Elevator With SimGoober Canals Update: Improved textures and details on the elevator, and made a Warehouse (and a bunch of old time signs!)

For the problem in the first picture, double check LODs to make sure they cover the model and are not out of bounds below Z=0. Use the automatic rebuild if there were no custom LOD. The textures look good so far, maybe decrease opacity of the windows a bit? I would also guess that those roof vents occupy a disproportionately large number of pixels at low zooms due to their brightness; modifying the texture, using a different texture or decreasing the output curve on that map may help.

@SimCoug The mattb325 commercial lots look great! I can't wait to work them into...well, a lot of areas. Here are those fancy power stations, fixed to use Maxis building exemplars (and one prop exemplar, included...) The water tower and pumping station is also here, renamed as Old Time Water Works. I also added three jestarr Boiler House power station lots in this zip, enjoy. These depend on BSC Mega Props jestarr Vols 01, 02, 08. There is a 1x2, 1x3 and 1x1 diagonal included. Thanks again for the idea, and letting me share these here. I'll buzz off back to my own thread now, promise. CT14 - Old Time Utility Lots v2.zip

Some smaller Old Time Power Plants - @SimCoug's idea, really: jestarr's models of small boiler houses, modded as coal power plants: And some fancier urban style power plants, with even older plants behind them... streetside are my utility poles and T21 development (guided by Neko Panchi's excellent JPN Sidewalk mod, which generated the manhole covers here). The power plant lots here use only Maxis buildings and props.

Works with 7 for sure. Let us know what you're running, others can chime in.

It's looking good! Hopefully these bats will be rendered in HD to show all those details you are modeling.

Thanks for the inspiration! I took this concept and messed around with it a bit. Here are three utility lots using Maxis props (Buildings as Props dependency only... realized after the fact that this can be done with the SImcity_1.dat building exemplar...guess I can redo them) Small Beaux Arts Power Station, Medium Beaux Arts Power Station, and Small Art Deco Water Pump (maybe more 1900s-20s?). My only qualm about repurposing these BATs as power stations is that they look a little too safe with all those fire escapes! Power stations were notorious for cutting corners in safety. I've attached the lots, if you want to work them into a package with the other power station that'd be nifty. The water lot obviously doesn't go with them, but is included just for fun here. CT14 - Old Time Utility Lots.zip The University Boiler House is another Maxis BAT which could form the basis for a 2x2 lot.And, here are some prototype pictures of Fancy Power Stations. I really like the Jersey City style: /thread hijack

Hey, those utility lots look great. I especially like the W2W power plant, as I've been collecting some prototype material for those types of structures:

It seems like you could copy the offending prop exemplars to a new dat, and change them to point at blank models.

Old Time T21! I went back to my dream of old fashioned telephone poles on a T21 (as hinted at in the above shots...). Spent some time researching pole construction and installation, to make a true scale model. Fortunately, lots of old manuals are out of copyright and available online, so I now know a bunch of nearly useless details, like: Etc... After much puzzlement, I got T21s working with a prop family of 30 foot poles with 32 meter wires. A test lot is also shown here. Check the full size image for HD details: The poles in most of the view here are really twice as close together as in real life, but I wanted to have the crooked poles, while bringing the wires back to zero at the next 32m point. I'm quite pleased with the results but gosh, it will be a long time until this mod is finished! T21s are no joke, there are hundreds of them necessary for full coverage. Pole models by comparison are simple, there will be 45 foot poles all the way to giant 90 foot poles with 10 cross arms for the avenues. I also want to do a set of railroad telegraph poles (like the UP poles or the IC poles) and include basic coverage for DTR.

Maybe this pack has something to suit: Cogeo's Logistic's Center Dependency Pack https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1884

@SimCoug How strange about that model file being there but not the prop! Definitely a lot of great models in this pack. @DavidDHetzel There are plenty of growable-only models that are rarely seen... I'd love to see some more relots.

I feel like that one was included with the lot download since I've never seen it in the prop packs either. I'm sure you'll figure it out by the time I get in front of my computer for a real answer...

Old trailers stashed in the woods! Nice! @DavidDHetzel in the last pic of the second post back, what is the building that is kitty-corner to Wendy's? Edit: the industrial one

Prop families are defined solely by the presence of the Prop Family ID entry in the prop exemplar. Once you get a range of family IDs assigned to you from the BSC folks, you can tag whatever props you like with them, and the Prop Family will then appear on next launch of Pim-X. For the SHK props, probably best to copy their exemplars to a new .dat file and change/randomize the Instance IDs for each prop exemplar, before adding prop family ID entries. That way your mod won't affect the original SHK mod's function.