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BAT Showcase

Started by mattb325, February 01, 2007, 04:07:43 PM

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Andreas

Well, you don't have to re-do the entire lot, if it's just the transit switch properties that make the tools crashing, then create some dummy lot, do the editing there, and copy the properties with another program that doesn't crash. ;)
Andreas

metarvo

Sorry about the difficulties with the station, Matt, as you're doing great with the BATting.  It's very rare for someone to go back and add nightlights to a previously unlighted building, so I must commend you for doing so.  The nightlights are spot on; including the flood light.

:thumbsup:
Find my power line BAT thread here.
Check out the Noro Cooperative.  What are you waiting for?  It even has electricity.
Want more? Try here.  For even more electrical goodies, look here.
Here are some rural power lines.

matias93

And the new commercial building? It's also great and we are jumping over it shamelessly  :'(

Keep on with the supernatural powers of custom content creation, Matt!!

"Lets be scientists and as such, remember always that the purpose of politics is not freedom, nor authority, nor is any principle of abstract character,
but it is to meet the social needs of man and the development of the society"

— Valentín Letelier, 1895

bombardiere

Great work with the station. It is an interesting concept and it will fit nice into modern city. And thanks for Plaza. It went straight to my Chicago 1890 folder. :)


Quote from: mattb325 on December 15, 2017, 04:17:43 PM


I'll definitely have to redo the lot as I get a lot of errors on the transit switch in both the reader (it crashes) and now the SC4 Tool even though everything else works fine  :bomb: :'(



May be reduce number of transit switches. Leave out the subway and bus. I know that many such multifunction stations has been made successfully, but I personally prefer fewer transit option in the station. I want to use separate lots for bus subway etc. This way I feel that I am better controlling on how the Sims commute. I have often see that with bus etc option the Sims use station as " shortcut" and while not using station as such they add to used capacity and thus unnecessary cause congestion.

That picture show how pedestrian are using the station as shortcut to get other side. Pedestrian cannot be helped as otherwise no one is able to get in trains, but I hate to see when bustraffic do similar jump.

art128

The station looks great... I might even sneak it in my city. Bullocks Wilshire is also pretty nice, although it's definitely not my playing style.
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

mattb325

Thanks guys

Glad you like the Bullocks nite-lites. I may re-render the station just as a commercial building.

I re-worked the modding of the station. Using the arched rail station as a template kept causing real issues in the reader/SC4 Tool, so I took the cue from the Nam-revised Raphael Ninja boulevard kiosk, and now at least the reader v.093 is happy (the SC4 Tool can read all but the transit switches now which I can live with). I'm aware of copying the exemplars via the reader for the old lot would have saved a little bit of time (I've done plenty of times before), but when I used the new reader (v1.54) to try and investigate why the old reader would crash, it showed so many errors on each subset that it's simply better imho to start afresh.

One small downside of this re-modded lot is that it now appears in the Misc Transport menu.

I can live with that. The lot has more functions pertaining to Misc Transport than Rail Transport, so it makes sense, I guess.



I don't have a problem with pedestrians cutting through the station. The TSEC adequately penalizes that activity. Plus in real life, most people cut through a rail/subway station to get from one side of the tracks to another rather than following a nearby road overpass and this lot is specifically for a downtown area. It does also function as a rail station only if you don't connect the subway line to it.

There'll be shops/cafes etc in the ground floor area and the towers above provide office jobs. I've modded it with 1600 jobs in all wealth categories, so it really acts as a transport hub/interchange.

I've given it nite-lites (sorry, I forgot to take an in-game pic)


And lastly, here's a truncated overview of the modding if anyone wants to eyeball for errors (I've never considered myself anything other than a 'basic' modder, so feel free to interject)

If a nam person wants to look over it for errors, I'm more than happy to send it your way prior to release.

For my next trick, I've found a building from the spitalfields that I would happily drive a train through, so will to work on making that an Elevated rail/Viaduct Rail/Monorail/HSR to ground rail and subway interchange. More to come....


Andreas

Ok, 92 REPs for the Transit Switch Point property might have overloaded some programs a bit. ;) I'm not entirely sure if this still is a problem, but Transit Switch Entry Cost and Transit Switch Traffic Capacity should have a REP count of 0 instead of 1, otherwise the Mac version might show a wrong capacity. As for the values, the active NAM members should be able to tell if everything looks fine. Cool nightlighting (as usual)! :thumbsup:
Andreas

mattb325

Thanks Andreas! I always forget the 0/1 Mac issue... $%Grinno$% I've made the necessary changes.

Here's the next proof-of-concept for el-rail in this City Link series.

Having issues with the custom LODs that still need to be re-worked. The inspiration for this one is a building from London's Spitalfields. Ugly enough to want to drive a train (and el-rail train) through:


Hoefully I can get the LODs to behave on the re-render  &mmm

Tyberius06

I really like the bulding and the idea:) It's looking great! :)  &apls &apls &apls
Keep up the good work! :)

- Tyberius
You may find updates about my ongoing projects into my development thread here at SimCity 4 Devotion: Tyberius Lotting Experiments
or over there on Simtropolis into the Tyberius (Heretic Projects) Lotting and Modding Experiments.
I'm also member of the STEX Custodian and working on different restoration projects on behalf of non-anymore-active custom content creators.
Current projects: WMP Restoration and SimCity Polska Restoration.
Member of the NAM Team and RTMT Team.

FrankU

No, this isn't ugly!
I like the building in fact, but I'm an architect. That might explain my opinion.  :D

art128

I like it too!

Do you think you will be able to make a non station version?
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

Andreas

I don't think it's ugly as well, but rather pretty realistic for a 1960/70 downtown setting. The upper and lower level opens lots of possibilities regarding transit switching. like your rail/el-rail example, but it could also work as GLR/HSR station or some other combination, if you manage to work out the LOD problem.
Andreas

matias93

*appearing from under his brutalist rock*

I really like it. Not in the sense of "looks good for being a huge concrete slab", but on the "I would love one of those being built in front of my house"

It has a pretty reasonable scale, a nice shape, fine details, and it's functional. What else could you ask for?

Well, only one thing: a 7.5 metres entrance model, compatible with L1 networks like the new ERRW or even viaduct roads (this can work as a bus station too). You don't even need to take the time to mod those options, we can relot it ;)

*crawls back under the rock*

"Lets be scientists and as such, remember always that the purpose of politics is not freedom, nor authority, nor is any principle of abstract character,
but it is to meet the social needs of man and the development of the society"

— Valentín Letelier, 1895

bombardiere

Oh unlike others, I say it is ugly like hell. :D But it is a brilliant Bat.  :thumbsup: &apls It is great to have urban stations and 60/70's look is good, because almost every city has these kind of monstrosities. So it blends in well and it can be used in almost any modern city build.  :thumbsup:

In fact I like how you do these 60/70's office blocks. Shiny glass skyscrapers may be the face of a modern city, but drab concrete office blocks are the backbone.

If you go to London style, may be you can add fallen/broken concrete slabs, graffiti and moss to crate urban decay.  :P

I would love to see also Victorian and Edwardian transport option. ;) Something like your great Chicago Terminal.  My batting is in hiatus currently,but  I would one day like to do  something based on this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldwych_tube_station

I want a subway station which could placed in middle of a wall-to-wall row. It could be 1x2 or 1x3. Most subway stations are for corners and it sometimes want to place it in classical row.

Seaman

mattb325, this one is really nice  &apls
I am curious to see, how it will fit in a urban setup, layout-wise. El-rail over road would nicley go along...

mattb325

#1275
Thanks guys, just because because it's ugly doesn't mean I don't like it  $%Grinno$%

Bombardiere, Odd from Sweden made some subway stations like the ones you are talking about: https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/12994-european-subway-v2/. They are very old now, but his stuff holds up incredibly well, and I have all but one or two of his files in my plugins even to this day.

So, the bad news is that my tinkering with the custom Lods or adjusting the size of the opening did nothing to fix the issue.

In fact, looking at similar models (of the very, very small minority which don't have baked in textures) nothing apart from splitting the model into a number of pieces and rejoining them in the Lot Editor will get the custom lods to show the network being dragged under the roof on the side angles.

For the record, I won't be splitting the model into a number of pieces.

But, just like a Christmas miracle, I was able to improvise a 'hack' which I think is a pretty good compromise.

I made a small 16mx16mx.0.1m piece of El Rail as a prop which I have used to visually connect the network from the disappearing network.

So that means, I can just make additional props for each network I want to connect (HSR/Monorail/other elevated networks). And of course it means that a user can adjust the model as the textures won't be baked in (I don't think I have ever baked textures into my stuff anyways).

This will become more important as I intend to make at least one or two more types of station in this vein.

My question is: do the guys from the Nam happen to have the straight texture pieces for these networks handy? Even better if they have already been colour corrected...but that might be asking too much!

If not I can get them out of the reader  ;D

At any rate, here is the result (including my colour correction of the el-rail piece). Not too shabby.



So another couple of questions - Matias, what is this 7.5m errw?

Also, what texture does the viaduct heavy rail use?

Now to try and get some actual modding and nite lites for this one....

Tyberius06

Matt,
the ERRW is a new NAM36 feature - dragable elevated heavy rail RRW, Real-RailWay style ONLY (like all the new Rail network type developments), basicly it replaces the elevated heavy rail puzzle pieces. With the NAM36 we got not just the regular 15,5 meters (L2) Elevated Heavy Rail viaducts (like the EL-Rail pices on your picture), but the 7,5 meters (L1) viaducts too. However there apparently there is no station for this type, as I know.

Very cleaver trick what you found out. It will completely get me rethinking some of my cities... :)
Thanks!

- Tyberius
You may find updates about my ongoing projects into my development thread here at SimCity 4 Devotion: Tyberius Lotting Experiments
or over there on Simtropolis into the Tyberius (Heretic Projects) Lotting and Modding Experiments.
I'm also member of the STEX Custodian and working on different restoration projects on behalf of non-anymore-active custom content creators.
Current projects: WMP Restoration and SimCity Polska Restoration.
Member of the NAM Team and RTMT Team.

matias93

This (check the NAM documentation, specifically /SimCity 4/NAM Auxiliary Files/Documentation/feature-guides/realrailway/realrailway.html )


(looks like Tyberius beat me to it :P )

That's also the texture you are looking for. BTW, I remember having read MGB that the NAM indeed includes both textures and props for straight sections of their networks, allowing lotters to include them without the need of recreating, and making the resulting lots easier to update if the NAM changes. What I don't remember is where on the NAM directories those models are, but I'm sure somebody on the NAM team can guide us to it.

"Lets be scientists and as such, remember always that the purpose of politics is not freedom, nor authority, nor is any principle of abstract character,
but it is to meet the social needs of man and the development of the society"

— Valentín Letelier, 1895

Andreas

Somehow, I feared that tinkering with the LODs won't do the trick in your case, but you came up with a very clever solution alright! I'm pretty sure the NAM Team has templates for such situations, if nobody shows up here any time soon, don't hesitate to drop them a PM. Tarkus, mbg204 or eggman121 are among those that have been around a lot lately.
Andreas

eggman121

Hey mattb325

Another alternative oppose to LODs is to reference the Transit Piece in your Station and Add it with a Resource Key Type 3 property.

That way there will be no mismatching and any Model Changes will be automatically transferred to your Lot / Station.

I will attach an Exemplar file on the next post once I hear back from you. I just need to recuperate.

I have been at work all this morning and Supermarket work at this time of year is well... Not very pleasant.

-eggman121