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Automated Grass/Sidewalk texturing.

Started by mgb204, May 04, 2015, 04:23:45 PM

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nattemorris

#40
Yesterday night I followed all the instructions (excellent instructions by the way!) for replacing NAM sidewalk textures with Paeng's sandstone sidewalk texture. After fifteen minutes or so gofsh had done its job and I opened the game, anxious to see if I had got the desired results. Regrettably I had not. NAM curves of streets, roads, avenues, rail (RRW), and GLR had no sidewalks at all.

Today I realised I was applying this to NAM 35, while your repository is probably built for 34. Is that correct? Is a method of applying this to NAM 35 coming up any time soon?

Cheers
/N


nattemorris

Quote from: Ernestmaxis on March 24, 2017, 04:57:48 AM
Do you mean this?
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/29775-mgb-sandstone-euro-nam/

Are you sure that works with the latest NAM? It was last updated in 2014, i.e. before the latest version of NAM was released. Before I tried going down the GOFSH route, I tried MGB's TGN and NGN mods. None of those worked, since they are prior to NAM 34 even.

/ N

Ernestmaxis

I dont know but you can give it a try.

nattemorris

I'm afraid that's not going to work. Otherwise mgb wouldn't have started this thread and wouldn't be working on an SWN mod. Thanks for your help nonetheless.

mgb204

Quote from: nattemorris on March 24, 2017, 07:19:36 AM
I'm afraid that's not going to work. Otherwise mgb wouldn't have started this thread and wouldn't be working on an SWN mod. Thanks for your help nonetheless.

No, Ernestmaxis is right. You can use either mod, they are identical for the most part. You see whilst SEN was designed only to work with Paeng's Sandstone sidewalks, I ensured during its creation I had all the bits needed to make it for other sidewalks too. Then Rivit came along and made GoFSH's automation and all the pieces were in place to offer a user-friendly solution for others to make custom variants themselves. But the two mods are created from near-identical sets of textures.

The only downside with using the SEN mod over the automated version is that it's only for EU texture users and a little out of date. But it still works and the additions from that to the automated version are practically non existent. So I'd use SEN for now unless you are using US textures or want another sidewalk. When the final SWN mod is finished, that will have some major changes, but that's not publicly available since I'm working on it right now.

Just a little info about how mods work, making something for NAM34 doesn't mean it won't work with NAM35. Such mods simply don't work this way. These are texture overrides, so unless the NAM texture IDs change (which pretty much never happens), it doesn't matter how long ago the mods were created. In practise all that occurs is that some new textures may not correctly display. Since NAM33 there have been 3 new textures with baked-in sidewalks.

The imperative thing with either mod is ensuring it correctly loads after the NAM, specifically the z___NAM folder. Long and short place either mods folder into a folder named z____MGB Mods to ensure this happens correctly. If you are having problems, most likely you didn't copy the output (the automated files don't install automatically) or you changed the default folder name.

I've had some time to work on SWN, what with two 12-hour train journeys this week. I'm hoping to be able to release that shortly at which point the fist major update for the Automated repository will happen. But the changes are so huge it's taking a very long time to put everything together.

nattemorris

Quote from: mgb204 on March 24, 2017, 08:33:23 AM
No, Ernestmaxis is right. You can use either mod, they are identical for the most part.

Brilliant!

Quote from: mgb204 on March 24, 2017, 08:33:23 AM
but that's not publicly available since I'm working on it right now.

I'm glad you're still working on it.

Quote from: mgb204 on March 24, 2017, 08:33:23 AM
The imperative thing with either mod is ensuring it correctly loads after the NAM, specifically the z___NAM folder.

In previous attempts I had done just this, but after doing the GOFSH thing I forgot. So I tried, and it worked! With a couple of caveats...

Only dragged NAM curves get the desired sidewalk texture, while plopped NAM curves don't. But maybe that's a feature and not a bug, so to speak.

At any rate, I at least partially managed to get the desired result, which I am very, very grateful for. Thanks a million!

Cheers / N

Tarkus

The older plopped curves that exist as conventional static puzzle pieces can't support proper wealth textures, unlike the newer FLEX and draggable curves.  Most of them are considered deprecated or soon-to-be-deprecated.

-Alex

mgb204

Quote from: nattemorris on March 27, 2017, 12:41:00 AM
Only dragged NAM curves get the desired sidewalk texture, while plopped NAM curves don't. But maybe that's a feature and not a bug, so to speak.

Not really either a feature/bug, since my mod has never supported such old legacy pieces. The main reason being that a better solution exists as part of this existing mod. For the most part these legacy pieces are really out of date too as Tarkus states. Although until the OWR and AVE pieces get Flex replacements I know they are widely used. But for any road curves, you are better off learning the new drag patterns. If you are not familiar with those, take a look at this video tutorial on YouTube which will explain it all. :D