tchntm43

Date: 8/29/2005 12:17:05 AM Author: Lord_Bertrum How are you finding the transition to BATting for SC4?quote> Hard to answer the question. SCURK was so long ago that I can't remember well what it was like SCURKing. I'm not new to 3D rendering as I've done some on another program, though that has a text-based editor whereas gmax has a visual modeller. The best part is that I don't have to replace buildings, I can add new ones. BAT artists will defeat building repetition! Or so I hope. ;-)

175 mph is the same speed as a tornado. One of the analysts I saw on the news mentioned the possibility of airborn light automobiles. He also said that a number of the taller buildings may come down. Most other buildings will have all or nearly all of their windows blown out. The news anchor also just said they are now stating that this will likely be the most destructive storm in US history.

My current project is almost finished. I feel it is a huge improved in texturing over my previous buildings. All of the textures are my own. I took advice from gascooker's tutorial (which I also used on the previous building), as well another poster who's name I will never remember (all numbers). I still have to finish adding roof objects and some objects to the porch balconies (bicycles, etc.). I need to add a few internal objects in the foyer, too, because the windows are so big there that it becomes noticeable that the room inside is empty. Also, I see that the railings for my porch balconies have disappeared. I guess .05 radius for cylinders is too small? The bright area on the roof was unintentional, but I kind of like how it looks. This is not based on a real building, but there are probably hundreds of buildings that this could be. It's a very typical high-rise apartment complex for a large city. I decided to give silly name like many Maxis Buildings, so it is called Sunnyside Up Apartments. This will fit on a 2x3. I will upload this when it is finished.

This next one came out a bit better than the previous ones. Almost all of the textures are my own, though I modified the Maxis bricks for the bricks here. I don't know how I forgot to texture the roof. *hits self* This is actually based on a real building. It is the tallest building in my home city of Fitchburg, Massachusetts (pop. ~39,000). I didn't have pictures to work with, though, so I'm sure there are a few inaccuracies. It will fit on a 2x2 lot. If I can get around to texturing the roof I will probably upload it.

The third building is actually inspired by the apartment building I was in while I was living in Dorchester (a part of Boston) for a year. It is meant to be R$$ (which is why I can no longer afford to live there ;-) ). It is really a very typical kind of building for outskirts of large cities, where there are usually rows and rows of these triple or quadruple deckers with wooden siding. The siding texture is mine, but the roof is the default roof texture included with BAT (and it got murdered by jpeg compression here). It will fit on a 1x2 lot. I doubt I will upload this, but if anyone wants it, let me know and I may reconsider.

The second building I did is not much of an improvement in quality. I'm only really posting the first couple because I like to see how other artists develop as they get experience, and maybe others feel the same way. This is supposed to be another R$. I just call it Small Projects. There are a couple original textures, including the blue-painted concrete siding. I still had problems with night lighting on this one, and I had difficulty aligning a texture to the angle roof (which is why I abandoned the texturing of the roof entirely). The different panels of the roof are made with the line tool and face extrude. I have never used 3DS Max before or any renderer other than POV-Ray (completely different), so I'm still trying to get the hang of it. As with the previous, I doubt this will be uploaded unless there is interest in it.

S.A.C., now that you mention Sim Gothia, I remember you. Sorry 'bout that. :-) Your SC3K BAT and BAP buildings are excellent. I tinkered with the program a little, but I got frustrated with the limitations pretty quickly. I did I few buildings with SC3URK, most notably a building from Minneapolis with reflective glass and all (I couldn't find any screenshots, unfortunately). I'm not sure why I stopped; maybe that was when Diablo 2 came out. I am picking up with SC4 now, though (I'm late, I know). I have almost finished by 5th building, though I haven't posted any here yet. I will look for Stephen's SC4 buildings. I remember his NYC set for SC2K being my favorite for that game. -Justin Smith

Wow, nice remake of the Tom Nillesen tile. You must have been from way back in the day. If you went by a different name back then and were active on the sc3000.com site, I might have known you. On that subject, how about some Lee Sojot remakes? Or Wren Weburg or Stephen McGlen? :-) -Justin Smith (another old SCURKer from that time)

Hi, this is my first post on the forums. I've been playing vanilla SC4 for a year or so, and just recently found out that the game can be modded and BATed. Since I have experience with modding other games (Diablo, Civ, and others), and I used to love to make graphics for Simcity 2000 back in the day, I think I am really going to enjoy this. I wanted to ask a question right off the bat. Is it possible to change the population requirements for each of the building stages? The thing is, I come from a small city (about 39,000 people). The tallest buildings in town are around 10 floors each (and there are only 4 or 5 that big). Yet in SC4, you can get one or two of the really big ones (40+ floors!) by the time you hit that population. It just doesn't fit right with me. I would like to scale the requirements way up so that stage 8 requires a regional population of a million, with other stages being scaled between. On another subject, what is the highest amount of jobs I can give a building where I can reasonably expect it to be able to appear in a large city? I ask because I read the comments for a building posted in the STEX that offered over 21,000 Co$$$, but only as a ploppable, as the description claimed that it would be impossible to get as a growable. Thanks. -Justin Smith

I went back to using just ilive and found where growth stage is mentioned. Turns out it is defined in the lots, not in the buildings, which is where I was looking before. Seems like an odd way to go about it, though I guess it means you could put a building on a 2x2 lot and give it a higher growth stage than if it were on a 4x4 lot. New question, then, now that I found it. Basically, I don't like the way Maxis has the buildings divided up amongst the different growth stages. I think they spend too many stages just downgrading the lot size for a building that the change from stage 7 to stage 8 is rather abrupt. I would like to delete/edit/add lots to fix this. My understanding of the Lot Editor (which I don't have yet because I don't have Rush Hour yet) is that it only works for user-created buildings (I could be wrong about this, though). Is there a way to do this in ilive? One thing I want to do is have Co$$ only go up to stage 7, by setting the stage 8 percent to never go above 0,and lowering all Co$$ stage 8 to be stage 7.

I downloaded ilive's LEProp program (the one on this site), and loaded up the dat file I made containing all of the R$ buildings in the game (which I have already altered population capacities for). But I can't figure out where it allows me to change a building's stage. There are 8 buttons on the right, none of which seem to lead to anything resembling stage data (it's mostly stuff for turning buildings into schools or other civic functions). The other stuff on the screen has to do with Plop Cost, Bulldoze cost, etc, and Pollution and flammability. Are you sure this is the right program?

Okay, I figured out how to alter the population requirements for the different stages by dissecting someone else's modd. But I have two more questions... How do I change which stage a building belongs to? I was looking at the information for individual buildings while altering the jobs provided by Industry, and I couldn't find anything that put the building in a specific stage. Also, are stage requirements defined by city population or region population? I was pretty sure it was regional, but the description in ilive's reader for the stage requirements says as a function of city population, so now I'm not sure.

Organic Farming Ordinance (replaces Carpool Incentive that everyone says has no measurable effect) Cost: based per farming population Main Effect: Greatly reduces water pollution from agriculture. Minor Effects: Slight benefit to R$$$ demand Note: Normally large-scale farmers do not like being made to use organic growing methods. However, the monthly cost here goes to pay for the difference in the price the farmers would have to spend to grow this way, so their reason to complain about it goes away. If it is possible, and if no one else is interested, and if I can figure it out, I may end up trying to figure this one out myself.