Released: SAM-7 Asphalt Street Textures (Hableurg) Override

[kelis]

OMG...That is awesome !! I can't believe that finally we will have this kind of textures in the game, do you know how long I'm  waiting for something like this?? I just can say THANKS and I hope this MOD is avalaible for us as soon as you can finish it. This will be a very good add to the game, especially for the people of the Benelux !!

[MandelSoft]

Nice textures though. Good to know the basic set is finished. Just a quick question though, why is there tire marks on the bicycle lane?

Remember, we are talking about dutch bicycle lanes here. They get heavily used

[mgb204]

I have started to look into T21 modding for the bikepaths:



This is my first attempt at T21's, already I've run into problems, only one of the three cyclists I tried to add to the straights appears Edit: I forgot to reindex the exemplar, now they all appear.

How does the scale look, I think the cyclists (NBVC props) are a little big, so I will see what I can do in model tweaker? I circled where a car drives through the prop, obviously this can't really be avoided.

If I can work it all out, I would like to rework the SAM 7 T21's to add EU street signs, have some sort of random bike placement (right now they are in a pattern) and hopefully fix a couple places where the wider streets make some props look out of place.

[APSMS]

Well, EU street signs is really only preferable for those of us with European cities/regions; maybe separate the DAT files so we can choose?

Also, for random bike placement, would adding some blank models into the prop family create a little more randomness, since the bike chosen might be invisible? Not sure how that would work quite, but I'm not up on my T21 modding either.

[vortext]

Things keep getting better and better! 

The props might be scaled down just a bit indeed, the head should be about the same height as the van roof.

Also, since T21s are placed in a pattern by definition you might want to have a look at the prop random chance property. This does imply making new prop exemplars since it uses RKT4, then again, T21s should always use new prop exemplars to include the RKT#xm property, which allows props to appear on flipped tiles.

[Dantes]

Great texture work! I am grateful for every image that you post.

[mgb204]

So the bikes are in two prop families for Ortho and Diag, I've reduced the models to approx 72% of their original size, I'm quite happy with this personally. I'm also thinking of adding Murimk's bikes to the prop family for some more variety, although this would mean another dependency. Does anyone know of other bike props that might work here also?

Rest assured any T21 mods will be optional, I envisage the basic version to have adjusted street signs (you can see on the crossroads how the wider street geometry necessitates this) and the bikers. I have to look at SAM streetside mods, because one problem with adding bikers is that this will override other T21 mods.

If I change the RTK property in the reader (just from 1 to 1xm), the models suddenly disappear so am I right in saying you can't just change the setting, what else do I need to do? I've made an RKT4 prop once before, but my recent attempts with Seasonal MMPs are all failing, I just can't work it out and trial and error is not helping me to understand what is going on at all. Can anyone help me with this, or know of a tutorial where changing RTK settings is explained at all?

[vortext]

If I change the RTK property in the reader (just from 1 to 1xm), the models suddenly disappear so am I right in saying you can't just change the setting, what else do I need to do?

Sorry I wasn't clear. RKT#xm needs to be added next to normal RKT#. So the prop exemplar will in effect have two RKT# properties.

I've made an RKT4 prop once before, but my recent attempts with Seasonal MMPs are all failing, I just can't work it out and trial and error is not helping me to understand what is going on at all. Can anyone help me with this, or know of a tutorial where changing RTK settings is explained at all?

While both flora and props can utilize RKT4, they're two different exemplar types and their timing mechanism are different. For seasonal flora you want to copy the FloraParameters property over from an existing seasonal flora exemplar.

[noahclem]

Great progress here 

I never noticed the scaling issues with those bikes though it's not too surprising people are so consistently (and annoyingly) scaled larger than everything else. I'll be scaling mine down today. I like the idea of using more bikes, including murimk's. I feel like I've found another bike set that's nicer than the others, and I forget who made it now but my best guess is namspopof or vnaonod, probably available from the LEX and/or TSC. I believe Girafe also made some perfect-looking ones for the proposed VIP streetside mod but I don't think he ever released them. Maybe if you pester him a bit he would share them   

[cmdp123789]

Lovely 

Although, I do want the signs.. specially because this type of teture works well with Euro cities, and Euro signs will nail it!!

[mgb204]

Since I've mostly confined myself to working on the Wealth textures and T21 parts, I'll try my best to show the progress of the textures here. They are all finished now, although I do want to make some improvements here and there.


Here you can see how nicely the pebble strip for the $$$ wealth textures can blend into other wealths.


A selection of Diagonal Junctions.


Some more junctions (I know my commentary sucks)...


I modified the RRW textures (don't worry they will be the default) to make compatible crossings for PEG's Rail Mod note the yellow markings will not be part of the mod, they are part of something else I am working on.

I have both RHD and LHD Euro versions complete, so I need to finalise the US textures and the base mod should be ready for release pretty soon. The T21 mod may come later as it would be optional in any case. I have also made textures to replace those used for RTMT and HSR with the new bikepaths, I can't think of any other cases that use SAM7 but if I've missed something please do post and let me know about it, I would like this to be as complete as possible.

[Diggis]

Hope it's OK to spill a few beans here - I think the intersections are all done, at least all those that actually have SAM-Override IIDs for the other SAM networks. Does anyone know if some functionality was ever planned and not finished or removed/made incompatible? For example I have IID's (from Diggis's templates for SAM) for GLR crossings, but they revert to regular streets with all the SAM networks. There are also a few other connections that just don't work with any SAM set, so I've no idea why there would be IID's floating around for them either.

My name was mentioned 3 times and like Beetlejuice I appear... 

Just a quick note on the project overall, I've seen a few people start SAM sets and give up when they see how many textures it takes. You've done a great job! 

On the note of the IIDs, you are indeed correct, functionality for the GLR crossings and a couple of other minor pieces was indeed planned for. One or 2 sets had it RULed, but were missing something else. When I was last looking at it (god knows how long ago, 2 years maybe) there was talk if propagating it across all sets, but looks like it never happened.  All the sets in the main SAM should have the textures done already. It's worth doing the textures for it anyway, in case it does get added. Also chase Tarkus as I think he worked on the GLR RULs. 

Also, someone mentioned getting this added as a main set. We've looked at doing that before, but have almost always been given incomplete sets so it's been too much work to do. If you finish the whole thing, and T21s off, it's worth approaching the NAM team about having it included as another set.

Also you mentioned in the first post below that you used the end piece to create the intersections with the other SAM sets. Unless you've repathed the piece, I don't think traffic will use this as it's technically a dead end.

Thanks for reading!

[mgb204]

My name was mentioned 3 times and like Beetlejuice I appear... 

Let's try another one, Santa Claus, Santa Claus, Santa Claus... Anything?

...It's worth doing the textures for it anyway, in case it does get added.

Actually I think we got all but the GLR done before realising some didn't work, so I'll bear that in mind, thanks for clearing it up though. Oddly I use so few rail/street intersections I didn't even know there were SAM textures for this before working on this mod. The irony for me being that I put GLR over streets all the time, this would be far more useful at least for me.

Also, someone mentioned getting this added as a main set. We've looked at doing that before, but have almost always been given incomplete sets so it's been too much work to do. If you finish the whole thing, and T21s off, it's worth approaching the NAM team about having it included as another set.

To my knowledge it's complete, although I'm not entirely sure how far I'll take the T21's yet. I like the idea of an additional set, since the Haleburg streets are pretty useful too. One problem I can foresee would be that the bikes themselves would likely need an external dependency, which is a NAM no-no. For now I think we'll release the Override for SAM7, thereafter we can look at this option too.

Also you mentioned in the first post below that you used the end piece to create the intersections with the other SAM sets. Unless you've repathed the piece, I don't think traffic will use this as it's technically a dead end.

Quite correct, I believe it was noted that this would only be a visual connection. Even if you made a custom path, would that not cause some oddities when the same piece was used as a cull-de-sac? In theory we could just copy the paths from the straight piece so it's not a lot of work, I'll play about with this though because that ending is just so useful for transitions it's a shame that it can't be fully functional too somehow.

[Durfsurn]

To my knowledge it's complete, although I'm not entirely sure how far I'll take the T21's yet. I like the idea of an additional set, since the Haleburg streets are pretty useful too. One problem I can foresee would be that the bikes themselves would likely need an external dependency, which is a NAM no-no. For now I think we'll release the Override for SAM7, thereafter we can look at this option too.

Regarding the external dependancy, depending on it's size, you could ask for permission to re-distribute it via the NAM Installer - I don't know how well this would sit with the other NAMites but it could be a possibility.

Otherwise this has progressed massively and looks amazing.

-Billy

[Catalyst]

Santa Claus, hey that's actually my real name... Ok maybe not, haha.
Diggis, great to see you here, thanks again for uploading the SAM Texture Creation Set, without it I never would've been able to start this.
The end piece with the speed bump was indeed intended as eye-candy only, but changing its paths so that it can connect up with other networks such as the SAM streets is an interesting idea!
mgb204, its good to see our stuff in action in someone else's city, looks great! I really like the first picture with the straight-diagonal wealth transition trick and the last picture where the low wealth grass blends in very nicely with your terrain mod.

[mgb204]

So I finished off the remaining changes, added STR crossing textures and made all the US textures this morning. In short this means the textures are now done (with the exception of some colour correction).

I'd therefore like to ask for volenteers for testing, nothing more than using the pieces and providing feedback on problems/improvements. I'd especially be interested to hear from US texture users as I really don't have a way to check them here. If you are interested please get in touch via PM.

[mgb204]

Just a quick update to let everyone know that the initial release of the SAM7 Textures is now available from Simtropolis.

I'm still working on the T21 mod, but I hope to have a surprise to reveal shortly. In the meantime if anyone downloading/using the textures has any comments please feel free to provide full and frank feedback here.

[FrankU]

Fantastic!

[noahclem]

Great to see this released! Why not publish it on the LEX as well?

[dwelln8hss32]

Really just checking in on this SAM7 set and seeing it for the first time, taking in what you've achieved. As I said on STEX review (I'm "estates to the real" over there) this is a milestone SAM mod, and I laud your efforts and others who supported its development. Looking forward to the T21 modding. Congrats on the release!