delta9

Thanks! The mod is Tarkus's TRK-NAM Default Asphalt Streets.

Yeah, I finally found that it was actually just another instance of old CP street trees in the SFBT Props folder. I actually do use that mod. Maybe I should look at HD street doodads to replace the other stuff instead.

In coming back to the game recently I once again reinstalled the SFBT Street Tree Mod. I didn't want the old Jeronij parking bays at all since they clash with asphalt (I'm using TRK-NAM Default Asphalt Streets) and don't look that great nowadays anyway. But they wouldn't go away, because the T21s are in the SFBT mod. Rather than painstakingly remove them, I decided to replace them with some parking bays that would fit in seamlessly. After lots of futzing around I assembled new 2D props in probably the most roundabout way possible with Reader, Model Tweaker and GoFSH. Pretty satisfied, and since the props are just 2D planes changing them just requires changing the 3 textures, aside from having to stretch them to full width/height (128) because of how they're UV mapped.

Let's face it, planting godmode trees has always sucked. "flora blast" was discovered but only works with Maxis trees. Save your poor left mouse buttons and use this AutoHotkey script, along with the Standalone Flora Brush Mod from the LEX, to blast a tile to its maximum with a button press while the game runs in the background and you do better things. Note that I have only tested this with the game in windowed-fullscreen mode and not fullscreen. Copy the following into a new text file: #9:: ControlClick, X683 Y384, SC4Fix r7, , , 256 The first line defines the hotkey you wish to assign to this action. In my case, this is Win+9. Refer to this page for other modifiers like shift/ctrl/alt and other options to get your hotkey assigned just the way you want (aka not conflicting with anything else). End the line with the double colon :: to declare this line as the hotkey. The second line is the simple function we use to tell AHK what and where to click. The format is ControlClick, [X Y], [WindowName], , , [# of clicks]. Ignore the empty parameters. Here is the full documentation for it, if you like. Change your x/y values as appropriate (AHK has a tool named WindowSpy to assist with this), and if your window isn't named SC4Fix r7, go download it! Change the number of clicks at a time to your liking, or whatever doesn't make your game hang uncomfortably long. Save the file as yourfilename.ahk. If you have no other use for AHK and want this to be its default script when you start the program, save it in your Documents directory and name it AutoHotkey.ahk. Make sure it doesn't save as .ahk.txt. Double click to activate your script and open a tile you want to f up, and by f I mean flora. Center the tile if it isn't already and select the god mode flora tool. Press your hotkey, tab out (or the other way around, doesn't matter) and post on Simtropolis while the game draws your trees. When it finishes and unlocks, save rinse and repeat. When you're done with your script, just close AHK from the taskbar. AHK is a great program that has the potential to do a lot more than this, such as automating modding tasks. Hope you find this useful, and maybe someone can think of some more creative in-game uses for this too. EDIT: Oh, I forgot something! If you are running SC4 as administrator, make sure AHK does as well. It can't do anything to windows with higher permissions. And if someone knows how many times to click for maximum density please chime in!

Good luck in your pro gaming career.

Hello @Tarkus! Definitely someone I was eager to find to a reply from. Yeah, I came across other reports of broken functions in that same thread once I stopped tunnel visioning the posts with code. I took a peek at the ReaderLua.cpp but my C++ skills are too rudimentary and rusty to really know how to troubleshoot the relevant functions right now. Then again, it's reassuring that I'm not as bad at coding as the experience led me to think. After figuring out the structure of the mat and anim blocks by looking at the hex in Reader I'm actually thinking about directly processing the S3Ds, but my hope was to make a flexible and relatively user-friendly method of doing this to distribute, like GoFSHing your own SWN and TGN, but hex editing isn't even user friendly for me Model Tweaker is actually one tool I neglected to check out. I did try SC4Reader, but it crashes when it tries to display an S3D, and I haven't seen any solution floating around. Taking a quick glance right now, it looks perfect! Seems I'd just have to make a separate sidewalk S3D and merge to all, then run a texture script (which seems to be the only type that works) in reader to increment the L0 texture's mat block. EDIT: Actually, I'm not sure that makes sense. I'll have to see how the processed S3D turns out. The only thing that is important is that the Sidewalk layer is below the L0 Network layer in the Anim tab in Reader, and switching the mat blocks up was the cleanest way of doing it. On z-fighting, I was reminded of the potential for it in my digging but had neglected to test for it. Just tested on some hilly terrain and the Road and TLA-5 I have now Works On My Computer(tm) as far as the z-axis goes, and I'm just using a laptop with Intel HD 620 (hey, it's enough for vanilla WoW). For other users who may have z-fighting problems, is there a known ideal distance to shift the L0 network layer up to minimize it without causing visual misalignment? If that's not feasible, I can just do it quick and dirty for immediate personal use, and work on assembling some alpha textures for the sidewalk layer. In fact, I know just the place to look... Actually, you know what, if I can appropriate @rsc204's alphas for the new sidewalk layer, it could both solve the z-fighting and also allow one to choose whether they wanted low or high density sidewalk alphas for those pieces where it makes a difference, chiefly diagonals. Ideally I want to make a method flexible enough for people to pick and choose which crossings or categories of crossings they want Sidewalk'd and in which density, since it's all baked in. Forgive me for the stream of thought there. Your post has been a great help! Really got the noggin joggin. I do still have a question, though: Why is the sidewalk on my road piece scaled down to SD and properly colored, while the TLA one is HD and has puzzle piece brightening? Is it because NWM is model based? This isn't a problem for my own quick-and-dirty personal use, but I would like to maintain visual consistency as much as possible for any sort of end user. Losing HD on the Maxis networks is fine if it can't feasibly be avoided. If all NWM underpasses will have this pp brightening, then I guess the idea is to package the mod with a default base texture that the user mods to match their sidewalks. Edit: I also just had the nightmarish idea of making these cosmetic PPs. Not sure if I need more eggnog or less.

Hello Simtrop! Boy this place has changed. Recently getting back into the game after many years, and a lot more on the modding side this time around too, thanks to all the wonderful things GoFSH can do to customize your game (can't thank rivit and MGB/rsc and everyone else enough for that). It's been crazy trying to catch up on how far things have come, much less trying to remember where I left off. So, much to my joy I learned that RHW can go over NWM now, and much to my dismay I ran into my old nemesis, the sad, bare network textures under overpasses. I searched high and low for a mod or script or anything that could do this for me. The closest I got was MGB's underbridge and the JPN Facelift, which while brilliant, were narrow misses. I already adventured through the Reader figuring out how to change base textures on lots (note to self: make alphas to GoFSH the grass on Clayhurst lots) so I figured there has to be a way to do this. After much digging (and lots of glass shattering sounds because of Simtrop's Xmas CSS...) I found this SC4D thread by ebina from almost 10 years ago telling how to add base textures to a puzzle piece. Followed the steps, and with a little trial and error due to missing imageshack pictures and never messing with S3D files before, I got it to work! First on the Road, then the TLA-5: I'm using Gobias's Brooklyn Brick (HD) and this directly references the mid-wealth sidewalk texture Instance. Of course, now I have to figure out why the Road one is scaled down to SD and properly shaded while the TLA-5 one is at the proper resolution but needs color correction. My first mistaken attempt at the Road had the sidewalk layered on top, but it was HD with the puzzle piece brightness, so I'm not sure what happened. So, to the main point, that's fine and dandy, but I don't want to do this by hand. I want to script it, but try as I might I can't figure out how to muck with anims/meshes/frames. The code for textures makes sense to me and I can get it to work, but not frames and meshes. Part of the confusion for me is not knowing exactly what a "block" refers to on the anims tab. "s3d_Count(s3d, 5)" returns that there's only 1 anim element. Aren't the meshes the anim elements, given that textures are mats elements? And are frames elements of meshes as the script code and Reader UI would indicate? The plan is to export relevant S3Ds to separate dat(s) and process those. The exact steps that need to be performed (aka automated) on each S3D file is as follows: - Mats > Add Texture - Set Texture >> 0x08200004 - Set Flags: depth test, texturing, backface culling; Alpha Func: greater than; Depth Func: less than or equal; Src Blend: one; Dest Blend: zero; Alpha Threshold: 0; Wrap Mode U: clamp V: clamp, magni filter: bilinear; mini filter: linear mipmap linear (trilinear) - Anims > [last mesh = 4th mesh = L0 network i.e. Road] >> first/only frame >> change/increment Mat Block from 3 to 4 - Add Group >> first/only frame >> set vertex block = 3, index block = 0, prim block = 0, mat block = 3 (same as L0 network's initial settings) - Save S3D Seems simple enough but I just can't crack it, and scripting Reader doesn't seem to have ever been a popular topic, at least on anything Google has managed to crawl. Thanks for any help you can offer. Sidebar funny/tragic story: through some mix of confusion and swapping addons back and forth and figuring out how to GoFSH everything, I nailed one of my other ancient enemies: SAM-7 textures for connecting to NWM. I spent several hours learning GoFSH and making a full texture replacement for all SAM-7 x Ortho&Diag NWM only to learn Tarkus had already done a better job with his Default Asphalt Streets... which I was already aware of and had used at that point! I think trying to use TGN and TRK-NAM at the same time and/or in wrong loading order, and later removing TRK-NAM had convinced me they still didn't exist. oof

Is there any general info one can link me to or copy/paste about adding pylons to transit pieces? I'd like to be able to throw some pylons onto FARHW pieces for the purposes of having a FARHW bridge via some SC4 Terraformer fiddling. Can it even be done with puzzle pieces? I can't recall a case where it has been, so if not, then I'll stick with a diagonal bridge... as sexy as that FARHW bridge would be. Thanks!

Yeah, several times. Strangely I was able to download anything but that file. Maybe jeronij woke up and saw the email I sent an hour or so ago and fixed it, hah. Alas, the problem solves itself: turns out SC4Tool has included the updated DLL since 2009 and the error I experienced while making the texture was a result of not having the patched for Win7 exe, rather than having the wrong DLL. Jeez, I need to slow down and pay more attention instead of just freaking out... Thanks for the reply, Ganaram (and, you know, all that crazy NAM stuff you do). Came here to delete this so feel free to lock it. EDIT: the problem the whole time was having Avast's active protection on like a scrub, and having it on silent mode. I should probably configure stuff I install if I don't want it doing moron-friendly tasks on my behalf. It's the whole reason this mess started! It's why FiSHMan screwed up in the first place (it deleted the new DLL), why I was 404ing, why said 404ing started with a broken, incomplete zip download, why just now it blocked me when I went to download SC4Tool 2.2.7a, and why I need to reinstall SC4Tool in the first place! It detects a virus in the fhslib DLL that obviously isn't there. Argh. I don't even know why I have an AV. I have no real use for it.

Short story short, I accidentally overwrote the wrong file when I reinstalled FiSHMan after it stopped working, and now for some ungodly reason the ONLY copy on the entire internet (https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2250) just 404s when I try to download it. I downloaded it less than 12 hours ago (but didn't save the zip)! AAAAAGH Could any of you FiSHMan/SC4Tool users out there upload a copy of that little bast--little wonderful file?

Originally posted by: gabry85 quote> Hmm... this looks vaguely familiar... Not an exact replica or even the same height but I think it's pretty clearly modeled after it. There's no mistaking that characteristic crystal roof! Too bad they can't use the Frost Bank logo to make the so-called "owl eyes". Kind of flattering to see this! Even thought I'm not a particular fan of such a glass dagger being in my city, but hey, that's what carpet-baggin SOB's from Cali and NY do to a good honest city! LOL