Gernot66

That looks very interesting.

Llamas are quite popular, hm? They are welcome as shepherds (their size). I'm working on the roofing ridge you asked forand for this i used the BAT lighting, but i already expected this the result i get in blender isn't what it turns to in the bat, neither for the final rendering or the display in the bat. It needs some tweking even if i'm now pretty close to it. Excerpt bat.ini [Lights] ; There are six lights in the 3DS scene Ocean set up for 3K buildings. ; All lights are "free directional." ; ; 1) pointing in the +Y direction, RGB 98,98,133, multiplier=1.3 ; 2) pointing in the -Y direction, RGB 98,98,133, multiplier=1.3 ; 3) pointing in the +X direction, RGB 255,249,232, multiplier=1.3 ; 4) pointing in the -X direction, RGB 255,249,232, multiplier=1.3 ; 5) pointing downward ~15 degrees off of vertical in the -Y,+X direction; RGB 198,198,198, multiplier=0.75 ; 6) pointing downward ~15 degrees off of vertical in the +Y,-X direction; RGB 198,198,198, multiplier=0.75 ; These lights are only used in construct mode ConstructNorth=164,164,164 ConstructWest=72,72,72 ConstructSouth=164,164,164 ConstructEast=72,72,72 ConstructTop=141,141,141 ; These lights are only used in paint / detail / placement modes TextureNorth=190,174,164 TextureWest=71,71,91 TextureSouth=190,174,164 TextureEast=71,71,91 TextureTop=141,141,141 ; These lights are used in file mode, and ; to preview and render the result for SimCity. PreviewNorth=190,174,164 PreviewWest=71,71,91 PreviewSouth=190,174,164 PreviewEast=71,71,91 PreviewTop=141,141,141 What i use now is something in between the rendering lighting setup and the colors for the paint mode. Indeed it's already pretty close - but not close enough for a fabrics technician One set i will make using the roof textures of the bat another i started using own textures they must not fit in lighting setup but it won't harm them. A third which i need the lighting setup for is a blank object one can apply a texture and when blending it using a multiply mode the artificial shading will be as close as possible. like this (lighting as the original ocean scene), below the ridge using an own texture, exists already in red and orange and more different textured will follow.

I guess you will like this new addition, A smaller sized is planned but recently i need a break from chimneys, i'm not sure how i will solve it for a smaller size, the copper edging is alright but if the chimney is smaller i need a different idea. The shading isn't ideal the reason is the small size of the object (32 pixels wide) everything bleeds into the other and a slightly darker area easy looks like wrong lightened. Of course the other rooftop objects are ready as well and are now textured (and branded a.t.d).. If you use a temporary pole of bricks and work from top down you can stack up the tubes, but i guess the hats are more useful as the tubes. The neon hangsign is a leftover from the "neon glyphs" i made, this one i made first using only a paint program and a suitable font (since it's "unreadable" it won't matter so much if it appears several times in the city). The aircondition block(s) can be combined as well. Since these are mostly rooftop objects i dropped them all into one zipped folder "rooftop1". Looks like i like to create "LEGO" bricks, it seems to be in my venes daddy worked as engineer for a injection machine factory which elaborated the standard bricks, it took some time until they reached the needed precision that's why i had standard bricks en masse (either to loose or to heavy bound) and if i would still own them they would be absolute rarities (pink and blue melange, semi transparent and whatever was at hand) since i've read LEGO doesn't likes reject to be spread and this makes them quite rare, but who cared back then for such? No one liked them one could say, they wasn't "original". --- Looks like i forgot to post this - never mind you will have noticed the new rooftop props. I revisited all cars and added a few more color variations plus a new set of cars. I also sorted them new though that all vehicles from Streets of SimCity are in an own zipped folder. Mainly i did this to have a uniform scale by using a groundplate in the size of the bounding box, the same method as i already use for the other props. Streets vehicles are to handle seperate since they have a non metrical scale and also vary in scale (i.e. the "traffic mercury" (unused sine i have a better mercury) is far to small compared to the "Streetrat" (beetle), the "Sedan" (a sort of dodge charger i assume) is a giant even compared to the "Northtown J57", it seems each has a different scale, dunno why perhaps to make it harder for the faster cars (as wider as harder to take the turns). Most of all the dummy helps me to position the object already when rendering. Before i can post the new set and the revisited old i have to make sure they work fine, it will take until tomorrow. But i have an appetizer for you, i've read that the farms look very "U.S." (indeed they do), further if you click on a field you hear a clear "muhhh", quite strange crops which make such a sound. Streets has a cow model (just as target, it counts how many times you shot a cow while it has no influence on the game but one could use it as a condition in a scenario) thus i thought, "let's get the streets cow into sc3k". Overall i made four variations, the "original" dark brown black-spotted, a "holsteiner" (white with black spots) and a browns (Swiss) plus a calf which is simply 2/3 of the brown. Of course i already planned to make european (swiss) style farm buildings. It's a bit to crowded but it's just a test. Since this is only a prop you can assemble your own cattle or use them otherwise. What could suit better as SimCars? To the cars i added almost all Streets models (with exclusion of the mercury). for some i used the minimal textures they have, for some i revisited the ones i made for the game or used them as they are, the "Azzaroni" (prob. a Ferrari GTO, it's not to clear for this one) has a complete new texture based on what i made for Streets (i removed the artificial shading on the texture because it looks better without, resp. when i leave it up to the raytracing). volvo pickup cop cow northtown j57 gangster azzaroni kraft durch freude sedan utility The Beetle, Sedan was until present in "vehicles1", the Utility Van (orig. blue) in "utility vehicles". Therefore i added a couple of new cars to "vehicles1", they are from the same low-poly set as the ones which i already used in "vehicles 1", corolla civic riviera (pops: "a baroque church instead of a radiator grille", it must be a buick) mercury, i hope it's not completely wrong since the colored skin for this model is very lousy and it was not to figure out where the enamel ends and the chrome or woodgrain-imitate starts, since i have no web at home it's based on what i remeber and a brief appearance in a crime story i watched not to long ago. The Stretch Limo is now in scale and one cell shorter To the utility vehicles i added the cube van (truck) But as i said i need a day to make sure that everything is as expected, "vehicles 1" is broken in the version in uploaded it, some .met files have errors in it (wrong listing). The cars are still somewhat larger as the standard ones, but i oriented myself on the buildings and the sims (compare the mercury in the BAT to a Sim, you would have to fold a person to have enough space in it, while if you compare my schoolbus to the schoolbus in background it's quite good in scale). However, even if a pixel or two larger they are as well a little smaller in scale as the sims or the buildings, it's a compromise.

I started to render some more of by my already used properties which i made for my buildings. An aircondition unit (3 different sized, all in one aircondition "monobloc"), a floodlight (or large spot, two sizes), a thingy and another thingy (sorta turbine inspired by the industrial thingy of sc2k and a tripod of which i have no idea what it is but i looks cool i used it in a smaller version in opposite colorizing as smoker or barbecue, it's anything you imagine) and a speaker/horn to put on a policestation, railroadstation or similar. Latter is a very tiny object and it might not be much left of it in the game, also i expect that the lamella of the monobloc will vanish. I will derive some more before i upload them, they are all more or less untextured because it allowed me to use for some only 4 sprites instead of eight, i.e a texture on the monobloc would need 8 sprites because of the texture which will be rotated by 180° if you look at the object from back. Perhaps the "hairdryer" (a rooftop object from simcopter, what about a classic analogue tv antenna? it looks so "historical", fun fact when i was about 5 in '71 i drawed many pictures with parabolic antennas on buildings and even cars and ppl asked me what i think will be the use of - even this is now history since quite a while). Perhaps something "stupid" like a stackable tube for whatever purpose, i still have some rooftop objects which i can use i.e. hats or caps (dunno how you name them) for aircondition tubes, the typical ones which cover usually the top of a tube to hinder the rain from dropping into the tube, some cover them completely and have slots on the underside usually a cap for a cylindrical tube others cover a quadric tube in the opposite manner with a funnel larger in diameter as the tube. Of course dishes. The "monobloc" is maybe useless especially the large one (it's only three cubes long, i stacked one on the other) since this would be to reach by use of the bat, texture and details for the lamella. --- Unrelated to props. I noticed a weird behave of the bat when you add details which use a .plt file, if you put such in your custom details folder they will be reaload each time you select "details", means each time it adds the same images, to avoid this such should placed in "..res/BA/Details/..". If you leave the .plt away it's no problem but it's stupid to leave it away for to a building arranged details. Somehow sad that the .plt is disregarded resp. leads to a wrong behave in the custom folder. The advantage might be that you can move details and the directory will be refreshed each time you select it (unlike for props). Some i collected back then, i can't tell if you already own them if not upload them to the stex. As far as i can judge three are EA/Maxis and one is a custom made house. Most probably you own them already. baroque_federal_brute3_haus1.zip

"Burn Baby Burn" Whole SimCity 3000 has no fire escapes thus i made one. Something was messed up, never mind i assume you will have noticed already the fireescape in in the STEX (i forgot to submit my last post and made a new one, as it looks the above post turned to a mix of both, that's most probably why the image links didn't worked and the posts was messed up). STEX: Fire Escape OhKeh, that's a little extra (a left over from the full comment, find out yourself what it is) parking_fields.zip

Not much to unlock except window washers and the jazzy track, both can be found in the original release of sc3k as well as the stereo versions of the mono jazz tracks (stumped for disc space i assume). Would it be fine if i link the "updated" .xa (updated in the sense of that it uses the stereo tracks)? (sure). You will also find a tool on github to convert .wav to .xa and the turd really works (set "maxis-xa" as output format no matter what is stated). One could listen to music on any player but i like to have a specific playlist for a game, means i heavy used the converter and filled the playlist with a lot of music, from SimCity Classic (DOS and both win versions, i used "fatboy" as soundfont near to realistic a baroque ensemble is nearly not to differ from a real one), the theme from SimCity CDTV version (it's really a cool track) and the funky jazz tracks from Streets (plus the soundtrack from "Driver" and an album from the same artists "American Powerhouse" and the soundtrack from twpga 08 because i like it). Besides the player does play as well uncompressed pcm but to keep a reasonable filesize one will have to stump it down to 22khz 8bit depth. There is a switch "high performance" in the music section of the .ini but i guess it does the opposite to what one assumes, it does not enhance quality it lowers it to use less processing time to decode it. EAXAS (ea .xa) https://github.com/lgdel/eaxas my mini batch (drop a .wav on it) it also shows the proper switch for the used format. "C:\Program Files (x86)\audiotools\eaxas\eaxas" %1 --maxis-xa To play the turd back in GAP 132 you wil need to hack the header and change adress 0x02 to 0x4A for "music" (or to 0x49 for "sound effect"), the funny thing is the game overlooks this completely (it could be empty) while this old player totally relies on it (you define differences between fx or music in the .ini thus the entry in the header is passed by). Another hint, I use following two alterings to the options section in the .ini (apart from a enormous long playlist). [Options] ... MusicPlayerSongDurationMsec=600000 ;(instead 300000 milliseconds, 10 minutes maximum playing time instead of 5) MusicPlayerSongDelayMsec=3000 ;(instead of 10000 i guess it was, it will shorten the delay between tracks to three seconds) (i need ten minutes because of "Elefant", a midi track from "Buzz Aldrins Race Into Space", assumed you have tracks longer as 5 minutes this will be of interest else not, resp. else it will fade out at least at the time limit). It is no problem to create subdirectories as long as you keep this stated in the .ini, i.e.: 0x15="SimCity",0,"music\classic\sctune.xa","",0,1,0,1 Furthermore, the tracks have an ID and i respected this but in principles you can forgo the hexadecimal ID (means using the same ID won't play no role) the tracks will be listed nontheless proper in the playlist and an occasion which would refere to the ID doesn't exists for music as far as i know. In principles you can enter a path to any directory on your hd just set the switch for "path is absolute" to 1 (the third switch). Unfortunately the player doesn't plays mp3 else this would be a cool way to setup a playlist and to use what's already on your hd. Here's the link to my one-drive for the "updated" sc3k files (stereo jazz tracks and original sc2k theme recorded using "fatboy" soundfont, for the ease of it all the rest of it you already have) SC3k_music.zip (131 Mb) (how could they record the sc2k theme using a standard stumped down win32 soundfont? It sounds like played back on a cell phone).

Board 1 I never liked how signs or adverts turn out using the bat. Not much left of a bat building only the roof and the walls on back. The idea is rather that you create your own because you will need your own and it's a simple paint job all 16 variations i made so far are based on the same four sprites, scale any image to 46x29 pixels, shear it +/- along y (height) by half of its width (x) and paste it into the template images. The ones i made are to see as examples some might not be useful. "recycle or die" belongs in a wider sense to frontier.dev "we are sirius" as well it's to see in every space station you dock and it was a must for pioneer, "we are sirius" is in this direct consense an idea of a codev (also that the constellation "sirius" looks somewhat like the trash symbol), the sirius corporation is omnipresent in frontier, in my case it's the soylent corporation which was well an idea of another contributor to pioneer (we had also a "join the carousel" advert, see "Logans Run" Movie). "Cool Cola" and "Diet Steakette - it's bad!" (now even more bad!) are even frontier while "Due Ragazzi" (get the calzone out of your mouth franky), "Bob's Temps" (hard work for slave wages - bob's temps) and "Ocean Gas" are from SimCity 2000 resp. SimCopter / Streets, they belong to it as the omnipresent Picayune. I could need some help for certain brands in the simcopter ads, i.e. i'm not sure about "stadelmann" or "stutterman", really some names i hardly understand but it would be cool to keep the cheesy fantasy brands for sc3k, what i downloaded back then as details was mostly (always i guess) real brands but i never liked them you see them every day. But it's your decision what to display, a less high for company names and probably a 1.5 as this scaled board will follow, if you like have it shorter legged excavate the building where you like to position the prop, place it and close the building - voila, or use a paint program translate the image by 16 pixels for each unit down (what is below the groundline won't be shown you don't have to cut it off in the images). STEX link: Board 1 Edit: looks like i forgot to press "submit".

"Pa'dong" i was brutally interrupted by a person who swapped the soup under my laptop, fortunately nothing serious happened (but i had to clean the "mess" and one vent is now a bit sticky from the fat, i expect that i have to clean it far more often as usual). I nearly forgot what i liked to post. I haven't much to show off except this cube comparison, sure i made a couple of balconies but it looks like i have to make them again. However i elaborated a good method to keep things in scale, simply add a quadratic dummy plane in the size of the template (3, 5, any odd number of tiles/meter) and render it with this plane, after exporting it (as animation) i crop the images to the size of the dummy plane, position (except vertical) and scale as expected (metrical as made). It saves me a lot of work with positioning the object since the vertical shift is for all sprites the same, the cube i.e. since it doesn't leaps over the dummy, i didn't had to position at all. I already made a tutorial (no clip, i guess a picture book will be more useful), but i wil have to make it again for two causes, i used the old blender v2.x i usually work with meanwhile we have v4 and it looks completely different and if i use the old GUI it willl confuse nubes. A simple object like a balcony is ideal, because i know one will think it's far more comfortable and the degree of detail isn't to reach with the BAT. If i look back what annoyed me most back then it was this limitation to 1x1x1 meter cubes (factually as i found out, 1x1x0.815). half a meter doesnt exists but if you create your building in a cad you can go down to 20 cm (less will get lost in the blur when scaled down). But no matter i will create more props, it's still a challenge to work with the limitations. It won't matter which fully saturated "unnatural" color you choose for the dummy plane as long as it's unshaded it is a single color which won't appear in the image, i decided for 0000ff since it hurts the eye far less as magenta or green. After cropping i erase and it's from then on it's only a matter of scaling to the size of metrical units the dummy has. You can't fail in scale in this manner (as long as the difference in height is respected) and also the position even for a displaced object as this will be correct (except vertical, but that's a sneeze). I displaced this one because it will leave half a meter to window or door, some other i centered but they won't leave not a mm to a window or door, both is somehow useful personaly i can't decide what will be more useful. Also the height of the balcony itself is debatable, they are now on level 0, but in principles this is slightly to high (the balcony floor has a certain thickness), perfect is to shift up by 14 pixels (instead 16) this will set the balcony a little under the floor. But mostly you won't see and if it's a "wider" (deeper) balcony which lets the floor appear then you can hardly judge this without placing a window exactly beneath for comparison. "Soup" dammit, lol.

A note, i stumbled over something which surprises me still and i still have no proper idea why it was made in this manner, the aspect of sc3k isn't true orthographic, the height is shortened (probably to give a better impression, maybe to compensate the metric scale). The height of a cube is only 0.815 meters (to 1x1). that's very strange because if i calculate the difference between the resulting 36 pixels if it's a 1x1x1 cube and the 32 pixels which are used in sc3k as "1 unit height" i get 0.8888.... as result. However it is in this manner, i feel a bit stupid that i didn't made this comparison right at start. The props i already made i won't change you won't notice this slight difference for the vehicles but you will for the balconies i have planned (started to make) and as well for future window props since i have no to calculate 0.815 x 2 or 3 for one floor. Seen from this ward it's not even stupid since in this manner 3 units height equal to ~2.45 meter which is a good floor height for a residential building. This differemce i noticed because of the balconoies since i made them 1 meter high

step1, create a wall step2, paint your object step 3, crop and center it in a paint program and get a wrong result but for the first try made in less as 20 minutes it's not bad and i guess you get the idea it could be made much better given more time and patience and after two or three tries it will be clear where to draw the wall to hit the spot, probably it would have been better to start with the object at groundline. It is displaced even if that isn't well to see.

Alien Mothership spotted, defense forces launched get the shuttle and two rather useful objects in the stex. Pond - Gas Pump - Shuttle The shuttle doesn't hovers, i placed it on a stack of blocks and removed them. The pond comes in three sizes, in my opinion the small one is to small it's a pit and not pond but i made it and perhaps it's useful nonetheless. The one on the shot is "pond medium" meant for residiential buildings, a large variant i made today because if you like to assemble (it's rather an assembling of props) a park the other two are two small. The gas pump is a bit oversized but therefore you can still recognize in the game what it should be. The pond uses also 8 sprites but since the light direction isn't clear to see four would be enough. If i have time left i will post an idea how to create props without a cad using the old sc2k urk, it will be ideal for this task since you can't fail in the isometric view with its toolset and the color gradients are as well useful, the size of 128x128 in maximum is certainly wide enough for props. Such a gas pump is a rather easy object to create and two views (sprites) would be already enough (the other two are simply identical). Further you wouldn't have to care how to position it since you can't fail in position if you paint the prop using the scurk (meant if you as first draw a wall in center on which you then paint your object, then erase the wall to background color. A simple balcony would be a good example. No, i really had no idea.