Requesting your input on props with additional police cars (POLL CLOSED)

[nerdly_dood]

Please look at my third post on this page!

I'm making each and every one of my police cars made so far into additionals - so that you can have two (or more) separate kinds of police cars in your SimCities.  I can have the additionals replace ALL police car props on your police station lots, or some of them, or none of them.  What I want to know is which mods should have what kind of police car prop replacement.

If you choose to have the additional replace ALL police car props, then your old Maxis clunkers (or whatever police car you have to replace them) will be entirely purged from your lots, but not your roads.  If you have partial prop replacement, some cars will be the Maxis clunker (or your replacement) and others will be the additional and this applies to lots AND roads. If you have no prop replacement, the additionals will only appear on your roads, and not on the lots.

Now I must recommend to ALL LOTTERS that you DO NOT use a single police car prop when you make your lots! If you do then only one kind of police car prop will show up no matter what.  You should either use the prop family or manually use a variety of props.

Here is an example screenshot of a police station lot using a blue and white replacement police car, and an additional that is white with a blue stripe, using my partial prop replacement method (and yes it is a PNG, I'll fix that as soon as this poll is finished)


I want to know your collective opinion because state police departments and sheriff's offices are separate entities, with their cars at a place separate from the municipal police department, but some police departments use more than one design on their cars.

- If you are using a police car mod based on the design of a real-life city police department (such as my Chicago one or my Las Vegas one) or an international one (such as my gray and blue Polish car) then you probably won't want police car props mixed together.
- If you use a state police car as an additional and a city police car as a replacement, then you probably won't want state police cars mixed up with your municipal police cars.
- If you use a sheriff car and a police car, then perhaps your police department and sheriff's office is using the same munipal building as their HQ, in which case they probably should be mixed together.  However, if you have a sheriff's office separate from your police department then they shouldn't be mixed. 
- If you use two separate police car designs for your municipal police department (such as a blue car with a white stripe and a blue car with a white stripe), then you probably want them mixed together.

Clarifying the poll options:

- No prop replacement: If the additionals are made this way the additionals will NOT show up as police car props at all. You can use as many additional police car mods as you like and whatever replacement police car mod you have, its cars will be the only police car props anywhere.[/b]

- Partial prop replacement: If the police station lot is made how I prefer them to be made, about half the cars will be the original police car prop (or whatever replacement police car you have) and the other half will be identical to the additional police car. You can use more than one additional police car mod, but the one with the filename that comes LAST alphabetically will show up as half the props.

- Complete prop replacement: Option removed because complete prop replacement would remove some of the "additional" aspect of the mods and I think that just ruins the whole purpose of this mod.

- State police cars: California highway patrol, Michigan state police, Virginia state police; Colorado state patrol, New Jersey state police, and Oregon state police.

- Sheriff cars: The big pack included in Mega-Pack 2, the black and white sheriff cars, and the sheriff cars based on the Broward County, FL sheriff's office - NOT including the police cars based on these.

- RL city police departments: Chicago, IL; Washington, DC; Las Vegas, NV; San Francisco, CA; Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (not a real city, but still based on the design of a specific city's police car paint job); Denver, CO; New Orleans, LA; New York, NY; Roanoke County, VA police; Roanoke City, VA; Bloomingdale, CA; Allen, TX.

- International police cars: UK chequered police car; Spanish "Policía Nacional"; Hungarian "RENDÖRSÉG"; Polish gray with blue stripe; German, gray with blue stripe; German, gray with green stripe; French Renault Laguna "Police Nationale" (Model by MikeSeith); Belgian police; nonspecific police cars with a yellow stripe; Austrian, gray with a red/blue stripe (NOT including the ones similar to this but with the word POLICE instead of POLIZEI); Italian "Polizia di Stato".

- Nonspecific police cars: Blue/white; "generic international" (light blue stripe and either red OR blue lights); black police cars; police cars based on the design of Broward County, FL sheriff; black and white police cars, and white police cars with a blue stripe.

- Military police cars: Included in Mega-pack 3.

[nerdly_dood]

Seriously, I really need as much input as possible.  Don't make me add a link to this page to every one of my posts (not my signature either...)

[sithlrd98]

If you choose to have the additional replace ALL police car props, then your old Maxis clunkers (or whatever police car you have to replace them) will be entirely purged from your lots, but not your roads. 

This might be a dumb question , but if you replace all , wouldn't it also remove the maxis models from the road?( sorry , but I really don't know!)

I think that if you are gonna replace then , they all should be the same.It would be too difficult to replace by municipality/township/county,etc...(wouldn't it?)
By the way , great job on these!

Jayson

[nerdly_dood]

This might be a dumb question , but if you replace all , wouldn't it also remove the maxis models from the road?( sorry , but I really don't know!)

No. My mods that are currently available do that already, and they also replace the props completely. I can make a mod to:
- Partially replace the Maxis police car props without affecting the automata
- Partially replace the Maxis police car automata without affecting the props
- Partially replace the Maxis police car props AND automata
- Entirely replace the Maxis police car props without affecting the automata
- Entirely replace the Maxis police car automata without affecting the props

And the only remaining option is to entirely replace the Maxis police car props and automata, which is what my mods that are currently available do.

I am going to definitely make a mod to partially replace the Maxis police car - or, if you like, you can have a mod that replaces all your Maxis police cars as well as the additional mod, or... wait... 

{thinking}



POLL CLOSED FOR THESE REASONS:

It just occurred to me that if you have one of my police car mods meant to replace the Maxis police car automata and props, it can be the user's choice as to how the mod affects the props. No matter how the mods load, there will be two kinds of police cars on your streets - the additionals and the replacements. BUT if you have one of the additional police car mods that includes partial prop replacement as described above, and the mod loads before the replacement mod, you can have two kinds of police cars driving on your streets, and only the replacement will show up as props.

How that works is like this (WARNING: Modder jargon!)
    There are a number of exemplars in the DAT files for the replacement police cars that have the purpose of replacing the various Maxis police car prop models at all zoom levels and rotations (a very inefficient method of showing a prop) with a single model for all zoom levels and rotations - this model is the same model as the automata model, but it has a different IID, even though it uses the same FSH texture. My plan for the additional mods is to have half of those exemplars included so that half of the police car props are replaced with whatever one this additional mod is. There is no exemplar to define a model as a police car replacement - you just give it the right TGI. There is, however, an exemplar to define a model as an additional police car - and it works no matter how it loads.
    When the game loads different DAT files, it loads in alphabetical order (ABCDEFG...) of the filename and folder name. If a file loads that contains a TGI that has already been loaded, any files containing that same TGI will override the previous ones, so whatever loads last with any particular TGI is the one that is active in the game.
    So if you have one of my replacement mods, say a generic police car with red lights (filename is Red lights Peg emblem Plain hood.dat) then it will replace all automata and all props with a police car of that description. If you have an additional with a filename that comes later in the alphabet, such as my Virginia state police car (filename is VIRGINIA STATE POLICE.dat) then about half the automata and about half the props will show up as Virginia state police and the other half will still be the generic police car. If, however, the additional police car has a filename that comes before that of the generic police car, such as my California highway patrol car (filename is CaliforniaHwyPatrol.dat) then half your police car automata will be CHP cars, and the other half will be generic cars. But ALL your props will be the generic ones - because its DAT file loaded last and overrode the ones in the DAT file of the CHP car.

So know this: You can only have two kinds of police car props, but you can have as many kinds of police car automata as you want. In order to choose which props show, begin the filename of any mod that you DON'T want to show up as police car props with AAA, and leave the replacement alone, and then change the filename of the additional mod that you DO want to show up as half the props so that it begins with ZZZ.

[sithlrd98]

Head.....Hurts.....

Very informative , but seems like a pain in the .....

[nerdly_dood]

Yes I certainly am a pain in the .....

but it's less of a pain in the [noun] than other things