Swamper's Garage

[nerdly_dood]

WICKED cars Jan!  Especially the police SUV; the police car isn't bad but the image on the doors is a little too bright, and may I suggest that you use a similar emblem to the one on the default car as a replacement? Just a suggestion...

[Swamper77]

@Meastro: Check your PM inbox

@Nerdly: That car door image is one that I will be using for my personal use. It was also a test image, so it most likely won't be used again. The car has been updated/changed from that version.
I have made my decision on the models I showcased earlier in the "Garage Preview". All of them will be released at some point in the near future. As with the NAM, when they are done.

Here's an update on the Police Crown Victoria:

Fully functional red & blue light effect for dispatched cars and UDI mode. Pure black and white paint scheme with the word "POLICE" in black on the front doors. The front doors also do not have any door trim on them. The rear quarter panels have "911" in white on them.


Mod to replace the parked police car props with the Crown Victoria. Currently displayed, the generic black/white police Crown Victoria with red/blue lightbar. No support for replacing the 50's police cars that are part of Maxis' building models. Consider the cars that are part of the Maxis police buildings as display models, like a museum would have.

A few generic models/paint schemes will be made, and a "paint kit" will most certainly be made for this vehicle so people can customize the car to their liking. I don't have enough time and energy to make individual paint schemes for each and every police department/law enforcement agency in the world. The paint kit will also contain instructions on how to color the lights to match what is on the skin for the car model. The paint kit will be a bit more advanced than the other paint/developer kits that I have released so far.

[Pat]

Jan that is looking better then Pegs cars I hate to say but dang I like that B&W!!!  Is there a chance we might be seeing a rework on the Fire Chief's Car with a light bar?

here is my truck that is for personal use 





Even though its just Red and White here in wisconsin that is all the volunteers can legaly run siigh....

[Swamper77]

Pat,

It shouldn't be too hard for me to reconfigure the Jeep Cherokee to be a fire unit. However, it won't be configured as a fire truck. It will end something like the fire chief's car, a separate vehicle that depends on having a fire department placed. It would definitely be more suitable for rural regions than the Crown Victoria that is currently available. Crown Victorias are more of an urban/suburban vehicle.

I'll see about adding a lightbar to the fire chief's car, but it will be a separate release from the American Emergency Vehicles set.

-Jan

[nerdly_dood]

@ SW77:  Now that looks a lot better! I probably would use both the jeep and the ford at thesame time with this update...

@ Pat:  It did occur to me that since you're a volunteer firefighter, you probably do have lights on your car.  In VA, msot volunteer firefighters have smaller lights (probably because the bigger ones like you have must be more expensive), and they are always red and white (i don't know what exactly the law says), but I did hear about a volunteer firefighter getting drunk and improperly using his blue flashing light and getting arrested a few months ago, and I think that was in VA.  Blue lights are always used bo police cars around here, sometimes along with red, and cop cars around here never have only red or red and white lights, that is for the fire trucks and ambulances.

[Pat]

Jan that is awesome news to both extent and honestly from what I see departments in both IL and WI tend to go with the SUV types as they are so much more easier to use as a comand vehicle... I know that in Chicago that is what is primarily used is SUV's.... Man you got me twitching here Jan lol and I soo cant wait to see the further development!!!

Nerdly I know here in my department since most of us have SUV's, due to the weather.. Our chief allows us to have the full size light bars and honestly they are rather cheap if you know where to get emm IE E-Bay lol....  I've heard alot of stories about Volunteers getting arrested for abusing their powers intrusted upon them and its rather sad if you ask me... Typical all police vehicals are red and blue for their lights here in the states... It may vary depending like in chicago, police use blue lights only and fire is red and green lights, now that is the ecepetion to the rule lol...

[Swamper77]

I've been working on yet another taxi model. This is the "box" sign model that I was talking about:

The sign is lit at night along with the two orange marker lights that sit beside it. There is just one more sign model type to create, which is the "marquee" style sign. The "marquee" is a fairly typical model of sign for taxis to have on their roofs.

I've been looking around the internet with Google's Image Search. There are hundreds of sign types and variations, not counting the companies themselves. There is no way I can model them all and make vehicles for them. So I am just making three sign styles and 6 taxis to go with them, 2 for each sign type. Each pair of taxis has a image for the car doors, so there could be three different cab companies, one each for each sign type.
The taxis I'm making are based on the New York Yellow Cab company which has mostly yellow Crown Victoria's, and some of their older vehicles had gray bumpers on their Crown Victoria's. Once I'm done with the sign models, I will show off the gray bumper variants. I refer to them as Classics because of the gray bumpers. Don't ask why as I don't know why I do it.....
In regards to discussing different variations of vehicles, I don't mind as long as you don't clutter up my thread with the discussions.

@Pat: I'll see about making a Jeep with red/white lights. I assume the white lights are in the middle, so they might get lost in the model of the spinning lights that will be made for the light bar for the Jeep. At the very least, I will make one with red lights on it.

-Jan

[Pat]

Jan,
Yes that is correct that the centers is usaly white... that would be sweet with the red lights on the jeep....  I am liking how the taxi has turned out with the sign on top, is that center lite up??? Or is my eyes playing tricks on me lol......

[Swamper77]

Pat,

I'll see what I can do with the light bar on the Jeep.

Yes, the center is lit up on the taxi along with the two orange lights on the ends of it.

-Jan

[iamgoingtoeatyou]

Great Crown Victorias, I'm a huge fan of those Yellow Cabs! Can't wait to see them driving around. They are very common in US cities

[Pat]

Jan that is sooo wicked!!! 

[Une_ame]

Jan, your CrownVic' taxi is  (BTW it is actually a Police Interceptor and not a CV cause the front grill is black ).

I wasn't aware that it is actually possible to create such a realism for small automata in SC4!!

[Swamper77]

Actually, they are Crown Victoria's as the grill is a gray/chrome color. I haven't changed it from the model of the fire chief's car that Ripptide sent me. I could change it to black though for the taxis and the police car

-Jan

[Swamper77]

Double posting, but I don't care

I've done some more work on the vehicles I have to work with:


Taxi sign style #3. A nice slim roof sign, at least until I can find the sign model that I want to use.....



The fire chief Jeep Cherokee. I just added the emblems on the doors and hood today.
@Pat: I tried to add white lights to the center, but they got lost in the red lights. So this will have to do.

I'm also working on a new version of my Automata Essentials file so the fire chief Jeep Cherokee does not require the fire chief's car from my American Emergency Vehicles pack. The new version of my Automata Essentials file will allow the fire chief Jeep Cherokee to work without it. A few other updates are in it as well, so I don't have multiple files with the same data strewn about one's Plugins folder(s).

-Jan

[Pat]

Jan that is stunning and it does look like there is white in there as is!!!  The Taxis is also sooo very stunning too!!! WOW!!!!

[Swamper77]

I'm wrapping up my new fire chief pack for release to the LEX. I finished this one last night and it has double red rotating lights. I just recolored and re-IID'ed the police car lights from the Crown Victoria I showed earlier. I also made a minor update to the original skin to include the graphics for the lightbar. This skin is a standalone skin in comparison to the original fire chief's car that I uploaded. No updates for that one for the time being.

All the additionals have been made as shown here. I just need to make the replacement version of the new fire chief car, and then I will start packaging them up. Each vehicle will have a Readme.txt file written from Notepad accompanying it. The additionals actually work without having the American Emergency Vehicles Pack installed, but they need my Automata Essentials File installed to run.
The Jeep Cherokee Fire Support/Fire Chief vehicle has it's own icon in the Main UDI Menu, but will require a fire department to be built to enable it for UDI. It has a new coding feature I've been working/testing out. The feature is finished and will be used in some future automata creations of mine.

The police units will be in a separate upload. It's been stalled due by issues with the selection of police car paint schemes. I don't want to create skins that have already been done by PEG, Nerdly, or other automata creators. I also want to have a wide variety without spending a lot of time making the various skins. Some I want to do also require further development of the vehicle model itself, so those are on hold until I can work out the modeling details.
So far, I just have a generic black/white police car. I'm planning a generic white with blue stripe, a sheriff's car of sorts, and maybe one other skin for now. I'm looking for suggestions, but I do not want this to turn into a request thread like similar automata threads tend to degrade into.

-Jan

[Pat]

Jan that is looking real sweet there!!!

[Une_ame]

How !!

Nerdly_dood and Jan (plus PEG and some few others) are a dream team. You have made everythings to change SC4 Cities streets into realistic N. American streets !! Awesome.

[scottott999]

Would it be possible to make Nerdly's yellow and Swamper's red fire engines into props so that they could co-exist on the same lot?  If so is there any chance of getting a blue ladder truck and a white pumper? 

[Swamper77]

Scott,

Automata are not props, as props are just static models that sit on lots. Automata move around on their own on the game's networks.

I won't be making props of the vehicles in my Emergency Vehicle packs as Ripptide has already done so for those models. I may make props of the new vehicles that I have been creating, but that is not likely.

In order for the automata that Nerdly has recently released to coexist with mine, he'll have to change the Instance ID's of his files. It will be up to him to do that, as I will not do it for him. If he wants to make props out of the vehicles, that will be up to him. I will only provide technical assistance to him, not do everything such as rendering the models in GMAX/BAT.

I don't normally take requests, as I have seen what happens when a custom content creator opens up their thread to that. I allowed for requests on one site once, and I just got swamped by the number of requests. So I don't do that any more. I make automata just to use make use of the various models that are sitting on my hard drives.
Occasionally, some models have more than one use, and ones that I can easily adapt my models to. I usually make basic models, so I need ideas as to what else I can do with the models. That is why it appears that I am taking requests when I am really not.

-Jan