BAT Showcase

[belfastsocrates]

I'm absolutely loving your foray into the Mattb vault! Much needed Euro-style loveliness

[gutterclub]

love those medium density apartments, so useful!!

[mattb325]

Thankyou, belfastsocrates & gutterclub

The vault still has more in store:

I've made use of the prop pack RDQ released years ago by giving them all some much needed lots.



Here:
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3667


Also, the fist BAT I made in 3ds (how embarrassing!)

A visitors center. So common in real life, but so few in the game (I think I'm the only one who's made any)

It's a non-conditional, new type of reward that I made to complement the SFBT park system (It of course works with other parks + standalone). Dark nite only, sorry.



Here:
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3669

[tomvsotis]

I've recently returned to SC4 after a break due to RL nonsense, and I am delighted with this ongoing Mattb325/Simmer2 BAT-off! Long may the uploads continue!

[mattb325]

^^Lol. I think it's really good to see increased activity on the exchanges...the more the better, I say. If I recall correctly, you have a lovely art-deco house that needs to see the light of day. 

I released these yesterday. Another couple from the vault. I think I was testing the idea of mirrored buildings. Anyway, they're kinda cute.....


Here:
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3671



Also, the next upload is actually kind of *super* embarrassing. I truly and honestly thought I had released all of these (how I can misplace almost 100 models in plain sight is beyond me), but after a HDD failure and plugins/total SC4 rebuild I must have put this file into my main plugins rather than the folders I use to keep track of the production line and test and queue releases.

It is BATPropsVol04.

http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3672

It is designed to supersede BatPropsVol01 & ModernHousePack Vol01. It contains lovely new trees, props, prop families, building families, up-to-date texturing & scaling for old re-rendered models...AND...custom foundations for slope tolerance. It would have been really useful to so many players 6 years ago 

You can see the development from 2011 until I locked it with the HDD failure here:
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=13913.0



This is a random taste of some of the new work:


Better late than never, I guess 

EDIT....Photobucket has allowed hotlinking again?? My old images are displaying. 

[Andreas]

Heh, that's quite a big discovery alright, one can only wonder how to forget such a huge thing indeed. But it reminds me of JBSimio's University Expansion Pack, which he trustfully sent to me for modding, and then I got sidetracked by RL, only finding it a whopping 8 years later in some testing folder on my HDD, after countless people asking for it in the development thread or elsewhere. Well, better late than never, I do remember your homes, nice to see they got the revamp finally. The other "new" houses look very nice as well.

[tomvsotis]

^^Lol. I think it's really good to see increased activity on the exchanges...the more the better, I say. If I recall correctly, you have a lovely art-deco house that needs to see the light of day. 

Aw, I'm flattered you remember! Yes, i do need to get my act together and upload it

[Simmer2]

Thanks Matt

We both seem to have found a forgotten treasure chest, deep in our digital vaults 
.


Always love your work.

Nick

[mattb325]

Thanks, that's very kind  . Here I was thinking it was more like when I lift the couch cushion and find the horrors of dust, food crumbs, pet hair and other unspeakables  I'm almost at the end of it as not all of these crumbs I have found are release worthy...they have to be reasonably aesthetically pleasing and/or be purposeful to make the upload cut...

But trying to get thru it all as quickly as possible so I can resume my usual program of making models!

Back in 2006 on Simtropolis I released the Sydney Town homes. For once back then, my scaling wasn't too bad. The texturing was OK, too and I mostly kept them in my plugins all through the years... But boy, oh boy they were a shocking weed growing on all densities if you don't have suitable competition and the lot work was a little OTT (but of course it was using the available props at the time).

That's been changed. They now only grow as 1x1. They have new stats, have been shifted to the competitive stage 5 medium density and of course have new softer textures and better scaling.

I didn't make a custom foundation for them, but by tweaking the lot min/max slope parameters they still work really well on sloping ground.

So this:



Becomes this:



Here:http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3673

[mattb325]

So my first ever BAT  that I released back in 2005 (awwwwww...*burn it*  ) gets a much needed overhaul.

Fun fact: as well as being my first ever bat, this was also the first house I ever bought.

Goes from this - which incidentally looks like a grotesque parody of the real thing:


To this:


Here:http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3674

[rivit]

Nice, these are in my favourites too.

Now we can finally redo The Rocks - at least faster than Sydney City Council anyway.

[Tyberius06]

Wow!
I've collected these nice houses from STEX a few months ago, when I went through all your uploads over there. I like the new versions, they are very nice small w2w houses and will be a fun playing with them!
Thanks for sharing them!

- Tyberius

[mattb325]

Thanks guys.

The new versions are chalk and cheese from the originals. @Rivit...if there weren't those pesky heritage orders all over the rocks, then Gladys could sell the whole thing off to developers like the rest of Sydney. I'm surprised if she hasn't already found a way 

Another one from real life gets an overhaul.

Little Riley St Surry Hills...this is the last rental house I ever lived in before buying the house in Chippendale (even 30 years ago Surry Hills - grungy as it was - was too expensive for a first home buyer). It was also my second BAT.

This BAT - then and now - explores the idea of run down inner-city houses being gentrified: you have a rough R$ version, then one or two in the terrace get renovated (still R$), and then the whole row is renovated to become R$$ without tearing the building down.

Even in the first overscaled, poorly textured version, for some reason I still had a soft spot for this BAT. But the new one is far better. This one has building families and, with custom foundations, is also completely slope friendly.

It went from this:


To this:



I even put boston ivy on the walls 

Get it here:
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3675

[manga rivotra]

I can not wait to see all these beauties grow in my cities. 
Thank you for sharing them with us! 

[mattb325]

Thanks Manga Rivotra 

The next BAT is another 2006 one that in all honesty was quite OK in terms of scale, and dare I say it, textures.

It is a really unusual Sydney row of terraces that are in a fanciful high victorian gothic style. It is a really pretty row of houses.

It was still slightly overscaled and the textures were somewhat too saturated; that was fixed in the re-rendered version, and it also got a custom foundation.

The new modding ensures it grows a little more frequently than the original, but being 3x2, will never become weedy (unless you have nothing else in your plugins  )

In RL, this is what is left of the terrace:


It went from this:


To this:


Here:
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3676

[omgitskosc]

Thanks for sharing all of these gems from the past! I especially love those mirrored homes. They would be a great asset for creating those boring PUD suburbs that pop up in America nowadays.

[mattb325]

Thanks omgitskosc  PUD...even the name sounds awful 

But it's nothing new. The Victorians did the same thing. Here's an American pattern book house made famous by a terrible TV series. The house I liked, the show not so much. This old 2006 BAT needed the least amount of re-work in terms of texturing and scale. But in the makeover it gained an incredibly complex custom foundation with curves and nooks and crannies.

It n real life it is this:


At Simtropolis in 2006 it was this:



Now it is this:


Available here.
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3677

[mattb325]

The original of the next re-work belongs in the 'what was I thinking?' category. they were uploaded in 2006 and despite all of the issues were very often downloaded and appeared very often in CJs (much to my embarrassment)

The actual house was demolished a few years ago; my modeled version of it was OK in terms of modelling, but sheesh, the texturing and scale were so far removed from the game's palette and dimensions that it always stuck out like a sore thumb...it was literally off the charts and I shuddered every time I saw a picture of it, so this file was certainly the one I enjoyed overhauling the most. Hopefully I can convince everyone out there to purge the old version (assuming they still have it in their plugins....I deleted my version sometime in 2006!!!!).

These are now in building families; and you still have the diagonal versions. There are a number of lot variations

The Simtropolis version in 2006:



It is now this:

Also, I haven't been showing these on flat ground (as part of the point is to show off the custom foundations) This is what they'll look like on falt terrain:


I think it looks much better. Get it here:
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3678

[omgitskosc]

I don't think I've ever noticed how the old house was practically McMansion levels of oversized. Putting it in perspective now though, yikes!

The overhaul looks fantastic as are all the color variations! Looks like I have some bulldozing to do.

[mattb325]

It's good to hear that you'll bulldoze the old version...now I just need the 14,000 or so other players who downloaded these to do the same 

As for the next one, for most players this will be a new file. Only the older members will recall seeing this over at SIMPEGs when I released it there. When the site went down the public version was lost and I never replaced it elsewhere (there were at least 10 files from memory that this occurred to) I had GMAX back-ups of some of them which I re-rendered. The rest, as they say, are history.

This one is a house from Sydney's Mosman, and although it is now R$$$, when it was built, the area, and the house were truly R$$. This is such a typical East Coast Australian adaptation of the Federation House. They came from a pattern book and were a builders basic version - usually constructed for less than £300 back in the day

The real one:


The SIMPEG Version Circa 2007:


The new version...now slope tolerant and rescaled, better textures:


Available here:
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3679