District of Wenzel - Update 116 - 3/17/15

[Vizoria]

Are you Ln_X on Simtropolis?  Thanks for links to some more fillers that you use.  I'll give them a look.   

Yes I am.

[packersfan]

Update 101 - City of Martin: Burnham Park and Portland Creek Neighborhood
I spent much of the week working on maps, but I did fill in some area around Portland Creek.  I am trying to resist using grass lots, so I can show off Lowkee's terrain mod.  What do you think?  Good or bad idea?

Burnham Park at the end of Portland Creek







Ugh, for some reason the picture number tab doesn't match in size.  What are you doing Photoshop!?



Portland Creek Parkway fall colors








Holy Name Cathedral




The new Portland Creek Neighborhood






















You are here.

Wow.  That is a lot of pictures, and it is so late here!  Hope you enjoy this look at an "old" area that has finally been filled in.  Tell me what you think about this update, the map, whatever! 

Check out the District of Wenzel Street Map to get an idea where we are.  This is A NEW LINK as the old LINK was dead!

[carlfatal]

Damn, I am too late... But nonetheless congrats to the last mega update, the 100th! 

But, and this may be some excuse for my late comment - the pictures here always let me become speechless for a while. And to have the possibility to look at so much aerial shots is very addictive for a map geek like me. 

My personal favorite shot of your last update is Bayview with the huge railyard (what does may look odd in a detail picture comes out double realistic from distance) P E R F E C T ! 

The new pictures - well, impressive like always, very nice mosaics, especially I like the last one with the abandoned building and the massive parking spaces. And I have to admit, that I would love to have the whole map of this region as paperwork and all your region shots in full size... 

[vortext]

I am trying to resist using grass lots, so I can show off Lowkee's terrain mod.  What do you think?  Good or bad idea?

Definitely a good idea! 

Also, doesn't his terrain comes with an override for LE textures?  Than things would blend in even better. .

[packersfan]

I am trying to resist using grass lots, so I can show off Lowkee's terrain mod.  What do you think?  Good or bad idea?

Definitely a good idea! 

Also, doesn't his terrain comes with an override for LE textures?  Than things would blend in even better. .

I have no idea.  I'm not very adept at lot editing.  That would be great if I could have all the texture blend better with the terrain mod.  Then filler lots would be unnecessary in most circumstances.  I'd still need some (though I love them to match the terrain) to put along roads to get the sidewalks in areas where there is open lots on both sides.  Any help in this area is appreciated!!

[vinlabsc3k]

Fantastic update!! 

Where did you find these back-alleys?


Click to enlarge

[art128]

Love the autumn colors, really splendid. Seems like a nice area to live in.
As usual the overview is perfect. I think I've never seen another region view that comes close to yours.

[noahclem]

Outstanding work on the last update    I love the fall colors too, and that bike trail turned out great, even if you didn't get the textures you wanted. I was going to suggest you look at the "how to make a lot really transparent" thread for how to deal with the base textures but then saw you'd already been there. Best of luck figuring things out to your satisfaction 

[Shadow Assassin]

Lookin' good, it always impresses me how large your region's grown.

As for the cycleways not having the base texture overridden, have you thought about switching it out for the Transparent DAT in the original download?

In my cycleway pack, there were three options: nice grass (which you have); crappy grass and transparent terrain. They had their own IID, so you will need to override that in Reader.

[packersfan]

How did you make the transparent base texture?  Will it cause the black hole bug?  I just did Jeronji's How to Make a Lot Really Transparent by just deleting the config property for the base texture in READER.

Would it be possible to override other textures with the transparent base texture?  (i.e. create textures of the same name as other textures to override them with a the transparent texture?)

I tried to make vanilla SC4 lots transparent but that's right, you can't edit the SimCity_#.dat files...oh well.  Just trying to see what I can and can't do.  Modding is fun if you know where to even start!

[vinlabsc3k]

How did you make the transparent base texture?  Will it cause the black hole bug?  I just did Jeronji's How to Make a Lot Really Transparent by just deleting the config property for the base texture in READER.

Would it be possible to override other textures with the transparent base texture?  (i.e. create textures of the same name as other textures to override them with a the transparent texture?)

I tried to make vanilla SC4 lots transparent but that's right, you can't edit the SimCity_#.dat files...oh well.  Just trying to see what I can and can't do.  Modding is fun if you know where to even start!

You need the IIDs of the Maxis textures, then make a new .dat and fill it with your textures with the same IID of the texture that you want to replace.
Save it as zzz_"filename" in a ZZZ folder so you'll be sure it will be loaded for last.
You need iLive Reader. and SC4Tool

[c.p.]

Wow, that region shot is outstanding 

[packersfan]

Yeah, I know I have to make my own texture dat with the same IIDs I want to replace, but how do I make transparent texture?  I already tried making replacement textures for the grass in Lowkee's Appalacian Terrain, but I could never get a texture with the right colorization (I know it is impossible to get it perfect, but I wasn't even close).  So now I'd like to either make the lots transparent by either eliminating the property in Reader or by doing a texture replacement (which I know will cause black hole bug, but is less time consuming and only way to do it for maxis lots).

Thanks for all the feedback on this update and with my modding questions.  This is the most activity I've had on this thread in a while.  Thanks.  Individual replies will be posted following the next update.

[carlfatal]

To transparent textures:

As I know, this bug occurs only, if you use overlay textures. And it still is a minor bug, nothing to be sad about, as one step into zones view and back makes things nice again.

Also I had a look into my last lots with transparent base textures. As long as I can remember I used the reader to make the base texture transparent. Take some easyy to identify texture on a lot, open it in the reader and change the texture ID into 0x00000000. Then the base should be transparent.

This is something I did the last time in 2011. So I only hope, that my suggestion is helpful.

[packersfan]

Yeah, I know it is possible to make lots transparent by editing in reader, but I was wondering if it was in any way possible to make a replacement transparent texture (since I can't edit the original Maxis dats and it would save a ton of time to just make replacement textures.  Shadow_Assassin's bike path pack comes with a "transparent" dat but there isn't any texture in there to create new textures with...ummm.

[vortext]

I was wondering if it was in any way possible to make a replacement transparent texture

The conclusive answer is no. Base textures are solid, by definition. And consequently overlay textures contain transparency by definition. However, if a lot only has overlay textures it will give rise to the black hole bug, period. As has been said previously, it's easy to remedy so it's up to the individual player to decide it you find that acceptable. Personally I do, though only if there's really no other way around it.

Now, to get a proper transparent lot it has to be stripped of all textures: base and overlay alike. You can do this in the Reader by deleting the lotconfig lines which start with 0x00000002. Or you can do it in the SC4PIM as the program allows you to save lots without any textures. Furthermore slope tolerance needs to be kept in mind: a transparent, yet slope restricted lot may still give rise to a black surface when it's plopped on too steep a slope, or when the surrounding area is terraformed afterwards. 

[carlfatal]

Yeah, what Eric said, is, what I did first. But then you have this bug. I am not sure, and I did try to find my old files but didn´t. So - what I think is: do the steps written down by Jeronij, but don´t delete the last instance of a base texture. Instead you can change it to the number I have written in my last post. So this base texture has a texture but an invisible one.
This also prevents you from not beeing able to save a lot cause of missing basetextures. You can save a lot with a real invisible base. I did it. As soon as I find my old files I will give an example. Sadly I have around 200GB only SC4 data... 

EDIT: as far as I know, there is no way to save a single invisible texture. Instead you have to change the ID of another one into 0x00000000.

[packersfan]

So I can change a texture to a transparent texture...or I can only do this per lot.  I know how to make individual lots have a transparent base by deleting the properties, but are you saying I can edit a texture to make the texture itself transparent?  If so, how do I do that?  I haven't edited a texture in Reader, yet, beyond trying to extract FSHs (which I've had no luck converting to PNGs for editing) and just looking at the contents.

Thanks for the conversation!

[carlfatal]

Sadly I did this last time in 2011 and can´t find my old files. But I know, that I used first Jeronij´s method to eliminate the base texture from a lot. Later then I saw, that Framly used Overlays on lots without basetextures. I am really not sure, but it should be possible to try - instead of deleting the property of a base texture you can change this last property in the reader into this 0x00000000.
Then there IS a base texture, but it isn´t visible anymore. This prevents you from the fact, that a lot without base textures can´t be saved in the LE anymore. So you can make one lot with invisible textures and open it in the LE if you like so. This invisible texture should be visible in LE as a white ground.
I know, that I used to place one easy to identify texture on a lot, then changing it and then i designed the lot. That was, what I did with my last lots in Waldey.

[Shadow Assassin]

I took advantage of a bug in SC4 - basically the "transparent" DAT contains... nothing. So in-game, it will be blank. Unfortunately this does lead to the black hole bug, but most of the time it works.

So it won't show up in SC4. What you can do, to use Gobias's texture, is copy that texture to the IID of the base textures.

Hopefully that helps.