Lost Gecko

Made 2 other houses from Mons, Belgium sharing the same textures, and another one is slowly on its way! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1385738555 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1386540957 2 French half-timbered RICO filler houses: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1388621913 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1400734458 More houses from Troyes are coming: Shop from Cork, Ireland to go with a more unique pub to be published very soon, made for vokepasa's awesome Cork recreation! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1416547300

More growables, and still so many more to create before reaching fully fledged building style level! This time a town shop (storefront desaturated a bit since the screenshots were taken!) and a couple of narrow houses sitting on a 1 cell wide plot. Those are from Mons in Belgium, which has architecture I really like, so I'm planning to make many more from there! As always, that's the plan at least... https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1368920804 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1375157863 (front and rear) I've also been messing with custom "pavement" and "asphalt" textures that I both turned into cobblestone. This is just for my personal use (since I'm not making an entire map theme), but when I'm satisfied with the textures I'll share them for those who are interested . However I've also started making custom "old town" cobblestone streets that will be released when ready (a lot of testing and tweaking needed to prevent issues!). This one is a very simple one-way low-intensity "shared" street. It's designed to be 8m wide, but the vanilla zoning system only supports widths that are multiples of 2 cells. Maybe a mod will someday take car of this like NExt2 is doing with tiny roads, but it will have to be 16m wide for now. Fully pedestrian (only with service and emergency vehicles) streets are planned too. Also depending on how the Parklife DLC and the mods developed for it turn out, it might even be possible to keep those vehicles off those streets! Which would of course be less realistic functionally but way more visually since the game simulation creates a constant flow of those vehicles on all streets... Here is also a quick preview of some tests for medieval wall networks. It's pretty hard to work around the stretching of segments with such crenelated walls, but it's possible to make them kinda work with a bit of messing around. However walls with a simple parapet will be much easier to work with. And of course some destroyed parts are planned too... I'm also making some towers and gates to go with them. It's high time I finally made a decent replacement to my first medieval walls, which are completely obsolete after almost 2 years of creating assets...

Wow I hadn't realized it has been such a long time since the last post... A certain amount of stuff has been released since then but at the same time nothing out of the ordinary... I have mostly made a number of houses from Nivelles which benefit from custom pictures used as textures... We're still very far from an entire building style but rather a small town block, which is a start... Many more are planned and I do have plenty of texture material for them at least! The most noticeable one is a tiny free-placement RICO filler that is thiner in the fron than back (so works well to fill gapes on the outside of street curves). I'd like to make more of such irregular fillers which add a lot to the organic feel. https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=951738766 We also have a generic wall-to-wall French city shop which hopefully is only the first of a small series, but as usual my lack of focus can be in the way of achieving that quick... https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1335918515 ... And a generic modern shop based on and compatible with @Jerenable's Modular Buildings. Which means it's wall-to-wall and RICO. It uses a Green Cities growable texture because growables from that DLC look fairly nice and it makes the asset so much faster to create. Again, I hope to make a bunch of them as well as top parts based on residential assets. I know that in a way it is free redistribution of paid DLC content, but the meshes are either custom or heavily modified, and the assets are RICO and only for a specific use (in a modular setting). I'm making sure not to re-use DLC content in a way that would make it a very similar replacement to the original paid content, which would make buying the dlc redundant to some. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1341869223 Other stuff includes some Monaco balustrade props made for PugGaming's YouTube series (possibly network variants coming? Not sure yet) and an old stone wall network. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1357762231 Plans for the future? More Belgian and French houses, a number of sustainable buildings for Yuttho's Astergea YouTube series (to be released as the same time as his episode, there are some teasers on his Twitter account), a former convent from Nivelles (with personal pictures too of course!), getting back to the canals I briefly experimented with directly after the Green Cities update,... I recently went to Paris so I now have a bit of good texture material for French stuff! So that was long... That's what happens when you forget to post regularly Thanks for your attention!

@Cool_Z I agree with a lot of what you said, sometimes to a lesser extend, and sometimes I don't quite agree. First, thank you for what you brought to the game. I wasn't around when you were active but you sure were a pioneer in the early days. About the agent simulation, I think it has pros and cons and I can't quite make up my mind on whether there's a better one, though I must say given that the simulation is so weak it only really just brings the pleasure of of stalking your cims which is... something I guess. An agent-based simulation would really be a huge plus if the simulation mechanics were actually deep though. I find the water simulation to be a really nice thing to have which allows for a lot of creativity. Just wish it was less clunky. I wouldn't go as far as saying they are lying. I think they are full of good will and are ready to listen to the playerbase, but I must say everything they come up with seems pretty underwhelming and often kinda amateurish. It fits in the "small team and limited resources" narrative which gave us the base game, but with the millions they are making you'd expect the game development to become a bit more professional (as you said for specularity and post-AD for example, but also for things like using the ship shader for monorails, etc. They do try and improve the game here and there, also on the content creation side: the content editor is way more stable than it used to be, they implemented network and citizen modding, random props/trees, sub-building support,... Here too the result is sometimes often half-baked (no LOD for citizens, etc) and I really wish it was overall way more friendly and efficient to use, but they are trying... Overall I wish the game was more solid all across the board and there are a ton of frustratingly absurd limitations and design choices, but I feel like the developers are at least trying and do care for their game. It is still a very enjoyable modding platform (never played SC4 or any other city-building game but from what I gather it's quite messy to create content for) and CO certainly managed to prove that the potential is there for great city-building games.

I agree with Avanya in that I totally understand the amount of frustration those situations involve (though fortunatly for me I'm not affected by it). But I also agree with the fact that a total takedown of your Workshop would just punish the wrong people, while having little effect on those at fault. In addition to all the valid points she made, I will just add that those warnings of possible removal would likely go mostly unnoticed to people re-uploading your stuff, as I doubt they spend a lot of time here or reading descriptions carefully anyway. Not to mention that many people doing that (in case of simple reuploads with asset-editor only level of changes, so not this last case of course) are probably kids who are just messing around and don't know better. Ultimately you have every right to do what you want with your content of course, but for those reasons I'm not sure those last-resort measures (or threats thereof) would have any real impact. People sensible enough to take those threats seriously are sensible enough to understand the concept of intellectual property in the first place

Pretty awesome result! For the Network Tiling dependency, I hesitated because it can indeed feel a bit frustrating to subscribe to a new mod only for some very specific assets, but I went with it since it allows texture optimization that' totally worth it. Since it's likely to benefit most networks anyway, its use is likely to become very widespread so it's l good. If I'm not mistaken there's an option to disable segment bending. However I don't know how it works in practice, or if it actually refers to that situation at all. For prop packs I have the same concerns as you: I'm afraid you might need to update the original asset you used to include the other crp's in, otherwise everything might disappear ofpeole's cities. Couldn't confirm this 100% but I have a number of packs that need updating but are stick as they are for now.

Looking great, and once again I'm pretty amazed by the amount of work you've been able to produce for the Monaco Project! However I can't help but think 4k is a bit much for such a building - even with bricks... Since it seems to be a seamless texture repeated over the building 512x512 pixels dedicated to them would seem sufficient for me, depending on how the mesh is laid out... Which would only take 1/16th of a 2k texture. That being said I love your use of the Green Cities roof vegetation to give an abandonned look. Keep up the great work!

Time for some networks now, the first one being a conversion of my concrete retaining wall props. Its simplicity made it ideal to start figuring network modding out. The trickiest part is to get the angles to look right. It's not perfect as I haven't been able to disable smooth shading and there is a bit of z-fighting on top, but it's not too visible. It follows the terrain and has a 2m default height but it can be raised up to 32m or lowered at leisure with the Move It mod! because it doesn't take the ground with it. Hopefully this should make using those retaining walls far more convenient while sparing some props in the process... I'll probably be converting the stone version as well down the road. EDIT: I've also started released a brick wall with the same properties (2.5m default up to 3.5m) and more types are likely coming.

Another house from Le Mans, France. 2x2 level 4 low-density residential. I think I'll make RICO free-placement individual variants of each house with irregular footprints for gaps and weird angles. Not sure what's next, either those, some belgian houses I started recently or something else entirely like trees or draggable walls... http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1273465168

France now with this corner house from Le Mans. I decided to go with the back/side garden so it works best between 2 roads spaced by 3 tiles but as a result it's not very versatile... I might make a more standad 1x2 version with the building only, and a non-corner version while we're at it. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1254775963 My unfocused Starting-1-New-Project-Every-Day rampage has been worse than ever recently so there are a looot of new projects waiting to be completed... I won't even try to make a New Year resolution for being more focused, but I'll still try to finish as many as possible before starting new ones. So normally there should be (mostly) a number of French growables coming in the near (?) future. EDIT: Made a 2-storeys Level 3 and 3-storeys Level 4 wall-to-wall version. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1262518350

Cities: Skylines was my first city building game so I don't have the experience as far as comparisons go, but while I overall agree with what is being said here, there are a couple of points I'd like to make. I originally bought the game for what it looked like "vanilla" because I love city planning and simulation wit all the creativity that goes with it. While I had fun for a little while, I soon wanted to create my own assets to be able to make exactly what I want in the game, and that's how I became a "city painter". This wasn't because I was disappointed in the simulation aspect and looked for something else, but as time went by I indeed came to the conclusion that some fundamental aspects of the game were pretty lackluster, especially on the simulation side. I do love creating beautiful cities and only worry about the looks but I do wish I was able to actually simulate the city at the same time. I think that vision of the game has been increasingly developing among many people, certainly "city painters". That being said, my main point is that Colossal Order was (and still is) a tiny company with very limited resources when they made the game. As much a many people (me included sometimes) want to complain about their design and development choices, most of the existing issues stem from the game being build by a small team who couldn't possibly dream of the success their game would have. So yes, there are tons of fundamental weaknesses, design flaws and overall I would argue almost a certain feel of amateurism (non-exhaustive list of examples of small yet frustrating details in the spoiler), but unfortunately it all comes down to a lack of resources, and they can't really be blamed for that. As for the stubbornness of the developers, I would have to disagree. As much as I would want to see the aspects you listed improved, it's not possible to do so on the go once the game is released. Most of these things need a complete rework of how the whole game works, which is impossible to achieve in a game update for tons of reasons. They tried to implement what they could from what the community has been asking: the DLC contents are pretty much all adressing the wishes of the community, albeit not always in the way we would have hoped. I'm uncertain about agent-based vs procedural simulation. Both have their merits and downsides, and I think it's more a matter of preference than one being obviously better. There is undeniably a certain appeal to being able to follow every individual process of city life, from people visiting their favourite park to studying the goods supply chain of the city. And with all the problems traffic has, the agent-based simulation really allows you to design your infrastructure in a meaningful way, because everything you do will have a direct impact on individual citizens. Similarly, water physics add a lot of depth to the simulation and visuals, and I don't think it's that much of a strain on resources, so I'm all for it. So overall, I agree with most of your criticism but for me it all originates in the core of the game being made with limited resources, which given the context can be excused and cannot be changed now that the game is released. Which brings us to a potential future city-building game hopefully adressing these issues. Coming back to your orginal statement, I'm convinced CS didn't kill the city-building genre but rather revived it. CO proved that demand is there and they have managed to make a successful game with what they had, which regardless of its actual quality is a superb achievement. I hope they will work on a CS2 and take advantage of their success, experience and money to make it more polished and with an actual in-depth simulation, but I realise that everyone wishes something different and there will also be great aspects of the original game that won't go into the second one. All of this was pretty critical of the game so here is also a list of things that the game got right and should totally expand upon (as stated earlier some of those are more down to preference than being objectively better than something else): large maps (I wouldn't enjoy 10x10km maps which would be 3x smaller) - water physics - terraforming freedom - road layout freedom - modding support (gives so much more depth and replayability) - agent-based simulation - recently added road editor ... Not a huge list but these are much more fundamental aspects than my previous list... Overall I really love and enjoy the game, aknowledging its merits while at the same time wishing for a new one that would go that much needed step further... But once again I think CS was very beneficial to the city-building game industry than the opposite, we'll see how it goes... Thank you for your time reading this awful long comment... For further reading thee is https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/71734-have-co-lost-touch-with-what-players-want/ with people expressing similar opinions to mine way better than I do and of course very interesting various points of view...

And one of my favourite little houses from Nivelles, Belgium, from around the 30s http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1231062649

As usual I'm all over the place (and cities) with 2 new growables: Brussels house (level 3 high-density residential): http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1216753063 York corner restaurants owned by 2 CS content creators... (level 2 low-density commercial): http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1228245347 Instead of using Street View textures like I did for most of my last old buildings I took the time to mostly create them from scratch and it's worth it! I also put more detail than usual into them, so the tris count is a bit higher than usual as well. I personally think the overall better quality is worth it! I would like to be able to say I'll be focusing more on one single style instead of changing all the time but I just can't help it, so who knows what the next ones will be... Not to mentions there's also a lot of monuments, trees, props and networks in a corner of my head...

Thanks. As I said this is more of an experiment than an actual serious project. I just made a diffuse to test things quickly but yeah when (if) I get to make such a road I would give it a normal map

Back with more of the same! Second townhouse: Osahra Prison: And a modern mid-rise housing project from London. This is the growable variant but a modular RICO one following Jerenable's modular buildings concept is planned. As happens every few months my interest switched back to modern stuff, and more of similar buildings might come after that (before I go back to old stuff again!). The Green Cities update came with great new opportunities so I started messing around with roads and canals. No precise project right now but I've got a couple of ideas.