CT14
-
Content Count
691 -
Joined
-
Last Visited
-
Most Liked
8
Everything posted by CT14
-
Cool! I'm not sure if there are textures for it, but a wide street without markings (as wide as the 1-tile, 3-lane networks) would look great in an industrial setting.
-
A yard using my own QTR ladder puzzle pieces from simmer2 textures pack (https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3329) with other rail related lots by SFBT, SimGoober: Engine and car service, water tower, yard office, mainline Auxiliary area with watchtower at ladder mouth. Need to find cabooses for empty caboose track. Ladder/classification tracks overview, A/D track and mainline at bottom
-
Thanks rsc204, that's good to know that tab rings are not low hanging fruit! I will focus on minimizing number of plop pieces and maximizing modularity.
-
Looks like the yard body is the part that needs four tracks. Something like this can be done with just a few plops:
-
Thanks for the feedback, all! I'm still puzzling through how to build a set that allows freeform yard building without using dozens of tiles. My goal is to do it in about a dozen pieces - yard mouths, leads/runarounds, themed yard body areas. The number of pieces is a concern because I know most people aren't using DAMN - I have my own ideas about how to make DAMN more accessible, but that's another story. I may also look at using a tab ring for the pieces. Simmer2 - I'll keep looking for that tile - thanks for confirming it's there! As far as prototypes - I'm sure it varies by region, but a lot of large railyards around here match the four track per tile layout where space is a concern. By contrast, industrial spurs/sidings are more likely to be spaced out to two or three tracks per tile to allow access by workers.
-
Simmer2 released two texture packs which include Swordmaster and Indiana Joe's RRW textures. This is great because it means we can do some proper quad track rail yards! Links to the textures: https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3329 https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3310 And here is my quick sketch of a yard lead... still finding the right textures, it's quite a large set.
-
Some parks and gardens in central Bottlecap.
-
What you are actually asking for is a collection of lots and mods that recreate the look and feel of those times. This doesn't exist, since there aren't any real modpacks for this game (and likely never will be). What you will end up doing is collecting downloads that match the theme you want, then using a Maxis Blocker to stop the default, late 20th century California stuff from growing. You can do almost any type of historical scene using MMPs (ploppable scenery). There are also a large number of Old West type lots and models available. Check out the New Sorgun posts to see a fantastic example of them in use - he starts with the settlers landing on the shore, ends up with 19th century towns: https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/48762-new-sorgun/ Also see discussion here: https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/51374-cities-designed-with-acurate-historic-origins/
-
My SC4 CJ Scrapbook | Important update and news!
CT14 replied to BLANKBLANK's topic in SC4 City Journals
Is that some Gridbusters industrial I see up there? Beautiful work with building selections and W2W placement! -
I'm really looking forward to adding the Paramount Theatre to my mid 20th century regions. Keep up the good work!
-
Lose the diagonal grid on the intersections, add a bunch of mobile homes/trailer parks, parking lots, chain fast food stores and drugstores, and NIMBY lots and you'll have a pretty good approximation of Yakima/Tri-Cities area towns... You can also go for flavor with "Wild West" style MMPs - old stuff from 100+ years ago is everywhere in the countryside in this area.
-
I've posted a new version, v1.0.1, that fixes the left overhang bug. The readme also got more information about the lots.
-
-
Version 1.1.0
1,315 Downloads
18 ploppable lots to let you build realistic looking freight train sidings for North American prototypes. The lots use default Maxis railway textures and are RRW friendly. The mixed freight, boxcar, intermodal, and single engine/single car lots all use prop families for variety. Some lots have overhanging props for rail cars on the rear track. These are divided into two types: left and right overhang. These lots should all fit with each other, in the same direction. Transit enabled pieces allow the active lines to blend in nicely with the sidings. They have props on only one track, and so can be used next to both left and right overhang pieces. There are versions of transit enabled pieces for both left and right ends of the sidings, with and without engines. Dependency: - BSCMegaProps JES Vol01 (v1.0) - https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=342 Feedback: See thread on SC4 Modding Open Discussion - https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/69360-north-american-freight-sidings/ Changelog: 11232015 - v1.0.0 - initial release 11292015 - v1.0.1 - fixed overhang on left overhang mixed freight to match left overhang intermodal 10082016 -v1.1.0 - changed base textures to dirt to avoid transparent/water bug, added minimal flora props -
Here be dragons... scale issues galore. There is enough coherence to mix prop sets together into lots, but not perhaps into families to the extent I had hoped. The PEG autoracks need a couple pixel nudge on their right overhang but are going to work just fine with the smaller scale cars. Autoracks are gigantic in real life anyway. I found a bug in the release - the two left overhang pieces don't actually match each other's overhang. This is visible center screen where the red boxcar is overlapping the orange Hyundai container's car. I'm going to adjust the mixed freight piece's overhanging props to match the intermodal, and wait to see if I find any more bugs before updating the STEX download.
-
T Wrecks: Thanks for the feedback. I don't know enough about European prototypes to model them effectively, but I appreciate the suggestion! Some of the Gizmo and Peg props are based on historical prototypes which were a little smaller than the last 40-50 years of railcars. Likewise, some are a little bit larger scale than RRW (ore hopper cars come to mind, too wide). I'm hoping scale isn't too much of an issue with the modern cars between the different prop sets. Re-scaling props sounds like work, and usually also would need to involve the original authors. Speaking of IP etc, after re-reading the prop family creation tutorial at http://www.wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Tutorial:Creating_Prop_Families, I noticed it refers to copying prop exemplars as if the assets were being copied wholesale to a new DAT file. I wanted to understand if this was actually happening under the hood, and realized I hadn't tested it. So I tested my released package without the "BSC Mega Props - JES Vol01.dat" dependency file, and confirmed that the process described in that tutorial does not copy assets over. The dependency is definitely a dependency. Now that I've confirmed that, I'll do a few test lots before building prop families (if I can't get lots to scale properly, won't be using those props...)
-
The first package, based on Jestarr's props, was released on the STEX last Monday. I've been looking into additional prop packs and their use for more lots like this. There's the PEG CDK3 SP Rail Fleet, which is somewhat similar in scope to the Jestarr collection and has lots of nice livery visible. There is also a treasure trove of road-specific railcar and engine props on the Gizmo archive - including eight road-specific packs based on real prototypes. It's been almost ten years since they were released. My thought is to take all these prop packs, and use them as dependencies for region-specific lots. There are props for CSX/NYC/Conrail/Tropicana/Bay Line in the East, BNSF/BN/SP&S/Canadian Pacific/NP/SP in the West, KCS/Rio Grande/Santa Fe/SOO in the Midwest... CN, UP and RRX everywhere... Also, mfw
-
Seasonal rice paddy in Puzzle Beach which (under)utilizes the NekoRiceFields set, surrounded by Newman Inc ditches, across the Rural Highway from some BSC forest plops.
-
-
I made a thread in Modding forum, thanks. Here are a couple of shots showing STR-to-DTR leads into sidings, and more embankments/trenches. I am still trying to find the best MMP for the embankment sides. "Bushes (Seasonal)" and yellow wildflowers, here. Looking across the 31m double height embankment, with 8m trench on far side of view:
-
I've fixed the road access requirement by editing jobs provided to 0, at the Demand Created exemplar in Reader. For power requirement, merely setting Power Consumed exemplar "Value" column to 0 was not enough to remove the no power zot from transit enabled lots. I had to set another column, "Rep" to its reported default of 0 for the Power Consumed exemplar. I also went through and set Item Order exemplars to move the Intermodal, Freight and Engine tiles next to each other in the Rail menu. And last but not least used PIM-X to remove the base textures and get to transparent base. On vanilla installations this will result in a strange match with the dirt base texture outside the puzzle piece, even with no nearby zoning. The pieces are modded as Railyard (no station), no wealth. The transit enabled pieces seem to affect wealthification differently than the non TE pieces but I haven't figured out quite how yet. Here are a couple more development shots showing the current state of things in vanilla and RRW. Added multi-line LTEXT descriptions with LEProp and uploaded an initial prerelease (attached to OP). Found transparency bugs that didn't show in initial testing and removed upload until I can work out a solution - likely using dirt base textures that match the vanilla dirtification. Sort of a tough question. Per this thread https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/42425-transparent-texture-issue/ the bug, triggered by underground view for all lots which have overlay textures but no base textures, can be worked around easily by switching to zone data view and back to regular view. This does work for me. I'm going to keep the package available while i decide what's best.
-
-
Thanks fantozzi, I wasn't aware of your project yet but it looks like we have a similar idea. I'll download your textures and let you know. I appreciate the link very much! Edit: I checked out the textures. They are very nice and give me a lot of ideas for how to achieve the 4 track tiles. Group seven, textures 30-34, are a good example of the sort of yard ladder I want to be able to build, but with four times the density of storage tracks compared to group seven, and a lower angle on the lead track. For those following along, I pulled the relevant image out of fantozzi's readme.
-
I updated my prop family IDs with an officially issued range and had to replace props on a couple of dozen lots. I also went through and changed wealth from 2 to 0 (medium to none). No progress on STR sidings despite some more poking around in the textures. However, 4-track intermodal looks kinda fun... there will be some overlay texture work required for track leads.
