Transparent Surface Plopable water ... one step further ?¿

[jeronij]

Hello dear SC4D members 

I know its been a while since my last custom content release, but I can tell you that I am seriously involved in many group SC4 related projects 


But this time I will go for a personal one.... a long time wished, and hopefully finally true  . The lack of surface water has always been one of the biggests lacks of the game. We made some attemps to bypass this limitation creating the plopable water, which has been proven to be really helpful and flexible for many users.

However, the biggest complaint about this water was always the unrealistic look. It gives you the idea that there is water there, but it is not realistic.

So I always wanted to create something more nice  . And yesterday, thanks to a profitable conversation with Cogeo ( A BIG THANKS from here  ) , he teached me how to make my idea a reality 


This is the old known plopable water. There are several version of this, but I choosed this one for the example. You will see that the colour of the water is irrelevant at the moment.



The idea is that you see how the plopable items fit with that water.... You can also not see the bottom of the water.... 



But, what if we try another approach ?¿



I show the grid here just to give you an idea about the terrain used.



The closer we go, the more noticeable the difference is....



This is a test city, and the idea is to see how the existing plopable flora fits with this water....



The water comes in lots. Due to the semi-transparent nature of the water, we can not make it plopable, due to graphical glitches when the props overlap. Using lots, this will not happen, but this will also limit the flexibility of the streams and rivers....



I think most of the plopable items do fit properly, and the look is nice...



Many pieces will be needed for such a set, something like a canal set.....



But I think the effort will be worth it....



You will have to excuse the poor test pieces... they dont fit properly, but are enough to test the idea 




So, what do you dear members think about this ?¿, can be it called an improvement, or a step backwards ( going back to lots  )


Feel free to share your feedback 



I have extracted some rules you should keep in mind when using the plopable ( transparent ) water :

1) DONT USE IT IN AN UNREALISTIC WAY  . Specially when it comes to the slopes. The real water does not stay quiet on the slopes. It drains the terrain and creates rapids, waterfalls, canyons and such naturall accidents, which you also should try to re-create when you plan your rivers, streams and humid zones. The real water stays quiet only in mainly flat terrain.

2) Use anything to cover the water shores. Natural flora props ( trees, bushes, rocks...) or man made props/lots like walls, parks and such. Combine them. In the reallity, again, the water bodies are always surrounded by something. Usually flora, but also human constructions.

3)  Use the smaller pieces posible, specially on slopes, to avoid graphic glitches, and the limit the number of pieces to the minimum. If you can draw a stream with ten (10) pieces, dont use 15 or 20 . It will increase the chance for graphic glitches to occur.

4) At the furthermost zoom levels, the LODs are not controllable, and the water looks like squares. If you followed the rules above, this should not be that much visible, but if you make a big open water body, it will probably look ugly from these zoom levels ( 1 and 2).

5) Accept the limitations of the plopable water. In fact, to simulate water in a realistic way in this game, we would need a whole engine for it. It is perfectly understable ( perhaps not so forgiveable  ) the reasons why Maxis discarted this option.

And with these rules in mind, I think you can enjoy the plopable water in a reasonable way 

[Krio]

You sneaky old fox  IMO this is better than previous ploppable water because I hated when they didn't go as I wanted and created irregular shapes and such things. Keep doing this jeronij, you got my support 

[M4346]

God, just when I thought it couldn't get any better! 

[douwe]

jeronij, is it possible to create a variety of lots of varying transparency to transition from shallow to deeper water?  Also would it be possible to create lots with partial water and partial total transparency so we get a more natural edge to our waterways?     Perhaps the edges could have the quality (whatever it's called) that bridge abutments have in the game where the edges disappear into higher terrain thus giving us irregular shorelines.

what  you have shown shows great promise.  As always your work amazes me.
Keep up the great work.  I will be following your progress closely.  This may enable me to create the region of the Pontiac where I need to have several different levels of the Ottawa River including falls and rapids.  Existing water plops are too dead looking for my purposes.

This could be the major breakthrough many of us have been dreaming of. Awesome!

[Ennedi]

This water is an excellent idea! 

But in my opinion two things will be absolutely necessary:
1. more diversified stuff to create sides (irregular, but looking as you want). You can say we have some stones and flora yet. Yes, but it is very little collection. In addition, most of this stuff doesn't match with many terrain mods and with other flora. But I think it isn't a problem - there are a lot of talented people here (sorry I will be able to help if I will learn it )
2. Making these pieces ploppable in water. Every of us know how important are transitions from canals to the ingame water for many players. I am sure there will be the same situation with the new water.

I am sure this idea is worth of developing. But i am also sure the old ploppable water can be improved (Bengt said about an important problem, from this point of view Jeronij's/DT water is much better than Scorchin's water) and I think the old water still has a big potential 

If you will need some help with testing, I can do it

Good luck!

[Heblem]

Excelente trabajo amigo, me gusta mucho tu idea   

[Tarkus]

Jeroni, you and cogeo have done it again.  This looks absolutely fantastic. 

-Alex (Tarkus)

[Traff]

It does look Fantastic...
I appreciate all the work you guys do in creating content for the community.

I'm not sure if its a step forward or backward..
As I think this will be a great asset for creating canals and long straight rivers that split many cities.
But.
I love the ploppable water far much more for creating winding rivers and streams in my cities, even without the transperancy of those plops.

[jeronij]

Hello and thanks to all for the feedback 

All this sample was done with a single 16x16 squared piece  , I mentioned above that more pieces would be needed to give it more flexibility when it comes to irregular shapes 

I will work some more with this and post some pictures soon 

[Filasimo]

that really does look like something else jeroni  great work and i cant wait to use it

[LoneRanger]

Wow, that looks great, transparent ploppable water. 
The fact that I stopped using ploppable water was that it stands out to much in regional view, looking to unnatural.
If it's possible could you give us a taste how it looks from region view? 

[BarbyW]

This looks very promising, Jeroni, and I like the transparency in particular. I look forward to seeing the progress on this.

[rooker1]

This does look very promising. 
I can't believe after all these years we are still learning new thing about the game everyday.
I think this will be a super improvement over waht we have now.  But I do echo some of the concerns the others have.  I sure you will figure them all out.



Robin   

[metasmurf]

 

[threestooges]

This does look very intriguing and I think it could be a very valuable addition to the game. The only thing that I'm thinking is that we can no longer use the plop flora to hide imperfections and "create" the river bank. However, I think the entire concept is a good one and should be looked into further. Great idea.

[dedgren]

I'm out here and will be commenting at length.  I'm having a serious RL week, and need to attend to that first.

Watch this space.


David

[Glenni]

uuuh, not really, i'm not to sure if it would look that good, because with that  method, it would look too linear, and i don't think any iregular end pieces would make it any less linear.

[Pat]

Jeroni, hmmm I have a mix of emotions on this... One is OMG great and the other is OK now what? I understand this is still in the devolpment phase of it but.... Even when all pieces are said and done its a lot. Would this be in the mayor god menu or would it be in the mayor parks menu?  Im a little wearry of it honestly but some stuff that has me excited it does look like real water with the transperancy that you cant get with PW...  Jeroni this does hold promisses and a good devolpment i will be certain to follow here.....

[dedgren]

OK, some initial thoughts as I wait for my next appointment to arrive.  Jeroni, I presume that what you have is a lot that is transparent and the "water" is a building or a prop BATted in such a way as to give the illusion of depth.  The work, btw, is beautiful- you don't need to take that end of things much further...

I'm assuming that the footprint of the water prop (I'll call it a prop for the sake of simplicity) is very tiny, which allows other ploppables to be placed on the lot more or less at will.  That effect, btw, is also beautiful.

The prop "overhangs" its base all the way out to the edges of the lot.  When the lot is perfectly flat this works perfectly, except for the completely linear shore, which is the big drawback as things are currently conceived.  When the lot is inclined on a hill, the top of the prop, which remains "level," draws back from the edges of the lot, leaving the margins seen in several of the pics.  I see that as being addressable with careful terraforming, although it would appear to limit the ability to make water flow "downhill" unless special lots were developed, such as ones that incorporated rapids or waterfalls.

My initial idea is to make the water prop overhang the lot on both sides with an irregular shoreline on both sides in one axis.  I don't have the easy ability to draw or scan a diagram of what I mean here at work, but basically you could make three or four variations of these, all with the overhangs coming out so that when you strung the lots together, they would form a continuous shoreline.  The lots, when placed abutting each other, could be varied and also flipped end-for-end so as to avoid have the irregularities in the shoreline become repetitive.  Careful creation of the stream's bed, with rising banks on each side, might also be used to add some variation.  This would work well for long straight streams, I think, but, alas, such straightness is not usual in the real world.  Curves and diagonal lots would also be necessary- like you said, this effort would involve a bunch of lots.

...note that I didn't say a lot of lots- thought about it, though...

A second idea would be to leave the lots as is and somehow create "shoreline" ploppables that would, when placed, allow creation of the irregular shoreline by virtue of which one and where each would be plopped.  These would have to be done to match a number of different game environments- CP's various terrains and the "game terrain" would be a good place to start.  Again, I can't create a graphic here, but will do that on getting home.  This approach would have the additional benefit of allowing streams to be created that would be less than 50 feet/16 meters (the width of a gridsquare) in width.  One of my biggest issues with the current PW stuff is that the ploppables themselves are too big and clumsy.

Either one of these approaches would allow a nice margin of trees and shore flora to be placed in a way that would create a much more realistic looking bank.

Or, I could be all wet (oooh!) about this stuff, and be guessing wrong from the get-go.

In any event, Jeronij, hats off to you!  This would be a project well worth exploring, and I will add to what I've said here in a few hours.


David

[jeronij]

Hello again and thanks to all ( specially David) for your feedback and suggestions 

I spent last night making a second lot for the set. A "shore" one, which rotates 11 different shore sections. You can see the idea on the left side of this picture:



All these single shorelines have been placed with a single lot.


In this other picture you can see how the new lot joins the original one, with the idea of make it irregular....



However, due to the transparency, the models do not fit nicely.... if I make them bigger, the crossings between the tiles are more visible.... if I make them smaller, the terrain can be seen under the pieces... if I leave it this way, it does not look right, and the more I zoom out, the worst 

I will carefully read and try your suggestions, and I will keep you informed about the result of the testing... 


Btw, David, you are right in most of your assumptions... good eye