BAT Showcase

[Jack_wilds]

now that is a really nice house.. I am impressed...
and if I did not note the downtown hotel at all I like that model as well...
but the house is good place to be...

[manga rivotra]

It will be a superb Mayor'mansion, for sure!  , and a big thank you (I'm a little late) for the Downtown hotel, really perfect in every way. 

[mattb325]

Thanks guys

I fired up the game yesterday afternoon (full plugins) plus some other bits and pieces that I had forgotten about that were in other folders, on the desktop, etc, or just generally lying around.
One very, very old BAT that I've never shown before grew for me while doing some other testing. It was from 2013 (a GMAX Bat, but still perfectly acceptable).

I have no idea why it wasn't in my plugins (I've dozens of these types of files. I need a BAT secretary...lol) or whether I was going to make some mid-century modern series of homes. Who knows, I certainly don't...but here it is:



It has a certain kitsch cool factor.

http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3641

[PaPa-J]

How cool.  I have always loved your homes.  Thanks!

[art128]

It indeed is cool. This one will go in my plugins.

[Barroco Hispano]

I don't like the flag :/

[Tyberius06]

Wow, really nice, Matt! It reminds me some of the suburban family houses in my old neighborhood back in Hungary, where I lived.
Thanks for sharing it!

- Tyberius

[Akallan]

Super BAT, thank you!

[mattb325]

Thanks guys.

It turns out that there is a scary, scary amount of stuff in the 'vault' (for want of a better term) that I have made over the years, put into a separate folder outside of my main plugins and then forgotten about.

It's not just one or two models, it's more like many, many dozens of models made in both Gmax and 3DSMax.

So it will be a case of sorting through them and working out what is acceptable to upload, as obviously, with some of them being between 5 and 10 years old there is different levels of quality and I won't be uploading all of them just for the sake of it. But there will be enough to keep me busy 

The next one is an electric car recharge station from 2013 (I think it was originally an SC5/simcity 2013 model???) that I turned into a bus stop.



Available here:
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3643

[bladeberkman]

That's great! Love the concept! 

[mattb325]

Thanks blade 

Still going through all of the old folders (so many bats which I'm just sorting out for visual quality and then testing...super boring, but expect quite a few more of the 'vault' files in the next week or so  ) BUUUUTTTTT...I can't help myself...I made another BAT 



I was watching a BBC expose on Huntington West Virginia, which reportedly has one of the worst opioid epidemics in the US. Apart from the terrible health and socio-economic tragedy that has befallen an otherwise really naturally beautiful area, what struck me was that there were a number of blood donation centers in town (presumably for locals to make $ from selling blood). In Australia, making a blood donation is just that - a donation - there is no monetary reward, but what was most telling was that if I typed in a wealthy zipcode like 90210 into the red cross donation search site, nothing is returned, but low socio-economic zip codes have a proliferation of such centres. Go figure 

Anyway...I haven't really done any modding on the above lot so my questions are:

1) When placing a hospital/clinic, the game automatically starts to upgrade surrounding lots from R$ ->R$$-> R$$$, which of course leads to C$$$, I-HT, etc. It also raises the health quotient of the entire tile, which will stop allowing R$ to grow as readily.
2) Obviously, a Blood Donation Center is not something that you find in an up-market neighborhood: I can make this lot so that it has a negative mayor, park and landmark effect over a select number of tiles (however many tiles I limit it to) which means that for 5 or 6 blocks it will promote R$ and C$ types, but still enable the health quotient of the city to improve.
3) This would mean that placing this lot (in theory) would enable you to improve your overall city tile in terms of R$$, but have a small pocket of R$ within the radius of the building....ie, give you some real control over the types of buildings you can get to grow within city blocks.

I like the idea of buildings that enable a real granularity of growth types, but is this something that others want? Or do you just want a standard clinic lot?

Let me know...

[Tyberius06]

Hi Matt!

Lovely building! I like the idea what you described above. I can't wait to see more stuff from your "vault"!

- Tyberius

[Ralfger]

I really like your fantastic work and will use it for my development for sure.
Here in Germany you receive a small reward for blood donation as well - as a kind of compensation for the time spent. Definitely an opportunity for less well off people to make some money... Personally, I don´t like the in-game automatism to increase the wealth level when placing a clinic. Not only that depleted people need treatment, too, but also very often you find hospitals in poor districts in RL.
I really appreciate your idea of negative effects to ensure a R$-environment for your BAT! However, I would prefer a less "polished" surrounding on the lot for that purpose...

[art128]

If it isn't too much trouble you could release both version, that would definitely make every side happy. However i do like the idea of a poverty radius lot.

[twalsh102]

Your basic premise intrigued me, so I did some research.

Blood donations in the States, are mostly also just that  - donations.  In the past one could sell blood for personal profit, but the risk of contamination from any number of diseases (primarily hepatitis) generally stopped that practice decades ago.  There are apparently some exceptions (for rare blood types for example)

The American Red Cross accepts blood and plasma donations, but I could find no evidence that they pay for either.  The distribution of Red Cross Blood Donation Centers varies.  There are 5 centers surrounding central Los Angeles.  There are none in the state of Colorado.

However, one can sell plasma up to two times a week at a going average rate of $30 - 50 per visit depending on the amount of plasma extracted (apparently a heavier person yields more plasma per volume of blood) at a growing number of commercial companies that are making a fortune from collecting and selling plasma.  It would be more likely to find these centers placed to cater to the clientele that feel a need to sell their bodily fluids to make ends meet (or for whatever other reason they need the money).  These centers will usually also accept blood donations, but they don't generally pay for them.  If one just searches for Red Cross Donation Centers, one does not get a good idea of the whole  blood/plasma collection picture.

Economics may also come into play to a certain extent.  Rental or real estate costs are going to be more expensive in affluent areas.  Non-profits such as the Red Cross obviously want to keep costs down to allow them to spend more money on client services, while for-profit companies want to minimize overhead, in order to maximize profits.

So for your lot, maybe one version as a Red Cross Donation Center with the stats for a clinic (and the associated positive effects), and possibly a slightly altered, second version (no idea what it would take to change the on-building sign) for one of the (for lack of a better term) commercial, for-profit, "plasma factories," with stats for a CS structure and the negative effects you are considering.  Just a suggestion.

BTW, like the building.

[manga rivotra]

I like the very neutral aspect of architecture here. I find that this corresponds perfectly to the use for which the building is intended.
I do not really have any opinion on how to set up the building in the game. Maybe a completely neutral version at the level of statistics in addition to the clinical version will satisfy those who would like to place the building in a pre- existing block, without changing the level of wealth? 

Thank you also for the Car Recharge Station, a great idea and the Lorraine house, very interesting aesthetically.

[mattb325]

To clarify, twalsh102.

I am (and was) perfectly aware of the distinctions between blood donation types and rates of payment for same.

For brevity, I devoted merely a  few sentences to describing a blood donation center and the point from which the inspiration idea arose. Ergo, the building is not really about blood donation centers, it could be replaced with a 'homeless shelter' or 'free clinic', or 'womens shelter', etc.

Crucially, like splitting hairs, splitting blood products must be done outside the body. But you still go to the same building, and the same staff stick the same needle in the same vein in your arm and draw your same blood regardless of whether it is whole- or part-blood you intend donate. Whether it is split for additional products is completely irrelevant to this BAT; however describing the purpose as a blood donation center is perfectly relevant (and encompassing, as the term 'blood donation' encompasses whole blood, red blood cells, platelette & plasma donation). 

Rather, the point of it is to provide something that has a parallel in reality that doesn't act as a blunt instrument that enacts a tile-wide positive or negative change which is what 99% of all ordinances, YIMBY or NIMBY placements have in SC4. Short of not laying water pipes in a certain area, marking certain grown-wealth as historic (but even that can be over-ridden) and/or keeping certain developments outside health/education/fire and police radii, there are few other ways to achieve granularity within a number of city blocks within a tile while raising the overall positive quotient effects that a hospital placement would otherwise make. That, quite simply, is the purpose of the BAT.

[Seaman]

hi matt325

It's a nice BAT and thank you very mutch for the effort of going through your old work. It's highly appreciated.

I can't exactly tell why, but I have the impression, that your releases have always some extra flavour on top of the quality BATing and LOTing. It's nice to see, that you've come up with so many ingame rewards and quite a lot of your ploppables have some nice special effects in terms of game mechanic. I think we have a lot of normal clinics already and I am happy to go along with your special features, making your LOTs really stand out.

Art 128's idea of making 2 versions out of it would be the icing on the cake, or one could say, an additional "service" to your customers

If it works as you are intending, I will surely find a spot to use it sooner or later

[Jack_wilds]

like the blood center... 

it is more institutional looking than the blood centers in appleton... the one on spencer street is a contempo type structure with extensive environmentals for the red cross... the valley has 3-4major medical hospital/clinics here... then two plasma/bloods collection centers are very modern 'medical' structures ... those only take collections though no clinic services... 

as far as teh controversy is here no opinion... do not know why its such a discussion anyway... it is only a bat/model for our game... 

as for teh choices, I would like it to be a simple clinic for teh game... but imagine it as blood collection center with clinic services... 

the structure bat looks to be a late 70s or early 80s type look that was built to be an office lease or a clinic that expanded to other services...

[matias93]

First, the building itself is fantastic, whatever its purpose is. More in general, you are one of the only BAT creators that can make fictional brutalist buildings without creating a caricature of the style, and that's not easy at all.
Now, about the concept, I like it a lot. The only similar thing I've seen is a food bank on Detroit by nofunk, but is not exactly the same, and that one was modded as an industrial lot in fact.

I think that, while the overall idea is great, maybe some testing would be necessary, as mayor rating modification is not a simple thing to do correctly. I've seen dozens of cities get permanently damaged by a bad usage of mayor rating changing lots (including a couple of my cities, indeed), particularly when you accumulate too much lots in a single area.
In any case, it makes perfect sense for an hospital to produce certain value depression on its sorroundings. To live close to one means having ambulances noisily going in and out 24-7, lots of extra traffic on the area, people parking over the sidewalks, pedestrians hanging around to avoid waiting inside, even more people selling on the streets, local commerce being replaced by funeral homes, etc.