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FrankU's Lottery - Space Center update

Started by FrankU, October 19, 2009, 02:43:51 AM

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FrankU

Hi Fred,

Although the silage silo's aren't exactly what I hoped I will use them. They are definitely useful.
You know, we have a quite uncommon cooperation. Usually a BATter has his/her own thread where new products are shown. People that like the work say "Ohh" and "Aahhhh!". Maybe they criticize some details, but they never say: that's not what I intended! It's different, I cannot use it! And people that are not interested usually just click on to the next subject.
But the fact that you offered to make BATs for my project puts me in the situation that I can say: that's not what I intended. But it also gives you still all room for saying: OK, FrankU, it's maybe not what you intended, but it's anyway the way I make the BAT. And I accept this. No hard feelings. So: if you show something, I just say what I think of it, you take the comment and do with it what you want. In the end it is your BAT, and I am going to use your products as much as I can, because they are very useful for my set.
I also use the Haarlemmergold BATs, although they are not like I would have made them: the roof of the barn is too steep, the large farmhouse (in Harleman Eieren) has no back doors. So these models have their negative sides, but I use them anyway, because they look Dutch and they are nice.

So now for the comments:
1. Your silage silo's are not exactly what I intended, but they are very useful and I will relot my farms as soon as you have sent them to me.
Three is really enough! Don't exaggerate it! Also take in mind: it is my opinion that it is more versatile to have three small models of a kind than two large ones: it's easier to combine small models into large objects.
2. The manure silos are beautiful. If you find time, I would like to see a second one with covering: black covering, please. The med-large covered one is perfect. The manure in the large open one is a bit light. The color in the steel one looks perfect to me. Real farmers use these manure storages to save the manure for a short time: they spray the manure over the meadows on days with a certain kind of weather (don't ask me about the details). The law about mineral deposition is quite strict here. You cannot just put it on the grass when you like it. This is also one main reason why many farmers have large areas of meadow: to deposit the manure, not for grazing the cows! The cows are often indoors all year.
The pig-farms usually have manure cellars under the barns.
3. And the barns: well, I'll wait what comes out. Our barns have quite high roofs not for storage in the attic, but for temperature/climate reasons: a large volume of air helps keeping the barn cool.

In my region we like to have the buildings dark and inconspicuous. You know how small the Netherlands are: about twice as large as your farm (OK, let's not exaggerate. Your drive to the next supermarket is probably the same distance as a drive through half the Netherlands). We like the countryside to look not too densely populated, so we decided to make the barns, sheds and other farm buildings in dark colors: dark green, gray and black. Because these colors blend in between the trees and the shadows in the landscape. Thats why we have no blue or white tarp and not very often light gray or white roofs.

And if you want to go industrial:
The larger pig farms have no farming look whatsoever. You see only a row of low brick barns with pitched roofs. Maybe five or six of these barns next to each other. Mayne I am going to try a kind of this farm in my stage 5 lots.
And I know of a just finished chicken farm (for the eggs) that is ten meters high, just one large dark green steel box with a pitched roof. It contains three floors of chickens that never see the daylight. I can make a picture of it.
But I don't know if anyone is going to use a model like that in their Utopian Simcity rural ares?

See you!

Maybe it's wise that I wait with lotting? Maybe I concentrate on some additional stuff like tweaking and querying? And I can try to release the windmills set?

mrbisonm

Quote from: FrankU on June 13, 2011, 12:02:23 PM
Hi Fred,

Although the silage silo's aren't exactly what I hoped

Well, here's a tiny problem for me....the word *exactly* is just like the word *perfect*, and unfortunately both do NOT exist in my library nor my life.
My father was a perfectionist and I felt sorry for him, having seen him many years trying to make his world *perfect* and *exactly* as he had imagined it and having lived an unsatisfied life. Not me, sorry.....nothing with me is exactly as something else and far from perfect. Just my way of seeing life after a couple of heartattacks.... ;) Besides, nothing is perfect, unfortunetly not even our world we live in.

Back to BAT, I probably will never be able to make something as exactly as you hope for, but I surely can do something for you. I will continue to listen to your comments and desires and I will do my best to create the models as described. Pictures are always helpful.

QuoteNo hard feelings.
Of course not. I offered to create some props for you to use, if you cannot use all or some of them, don't. But they will be in my farmprop pack anyways. Consider them as "by-products" for others to use. ;) I know that you would like to re-create dutchfarms as close as possible to reality and I'll try to help.

Anyways, let's not talk about this anymore, I'm sure we understand each other. So, let's do something more productive. I would like to know what kind of props you would still be interested in. That is besides the manure pits and tanks and the silage pits. Let me know please. I cannot do agricultural machinery though, too complicated and too little time.

I am working on another roofed manure tank, this time with a black cover as you mentioned. Also I am trying to create a barn with a higher and darker roof to fit well into your specifications.

I should be able to complete these props within the next two weeks and then I will test and render all of them at the same time and send them as a prop .datfile to you.

If you got anything specific in mind, don't hesitate to tell me, I 'll do what I can, but nothing more... ;) ok?

Greetings

Fred


....Uploading the MFP 1.... (.........Finishing the MFP1)

FrankU

OK, Fred. All clear.

Well, you would make me very happy with the barns and sheds you are working on already.
Also the silage silo's, the haystacks (how are they doing?) and the other stuff you showed before will make me very happy already.
There is no need to make machinery. There is already enough on the market.

There is one kind of prop that I would find very useful: and that is a set of hoppers or silos (what do you call these?) like you see on the left side of the barn in this image:


There are already some props on the market like Simgoober's hoppers, and one of your own silos in you silo prop pack. And I use these, but they are all more or less the same size and as you can see on the image and as anyone will find out who drives through the countryside, farmers have them in a variety of sizes. If you were able to make three of these that would be perfect. These three should all be of almost the same width, but have different height. I will put them into a propfamily and place them next to my barns.

And there would be one kind of barn that you probably haven't thought about: a low brick barn with hardly any windows or doors. A metal roof (gray). Like this:


This is a pig farm. The buildings are closed, you can get in through one door where you need to desinfect. The pigs never come out until they are big enough for slaughter.
It would be very good for my stage 5 pig farm. And a small version would be very useful for several kinds of common barns on the farms.


mrbisonm

I haven't worked on the haystacks lately, but will do so soon. At the moment I am busy with a barn (stable) with a higher roof pitch. There will be a picture this week, hopefully together with the haystacks and other smaller things that I have been modeling.

The "Hoppers", as you name them, or grainsilos would be interesting and fun to make. Maybe a set of 3 different ones with different sizes and textures could be great to use as a family prop. No problem, project accepted.

Then the Piggy barn (stye or piggery) will be a challenge also. I will not be ready so quickly with this one, there's quite a lot of planning and details to do, but I'll be willing to do this too. I will use as close as possible the same textures as on the picture. That is surely making a great stage 5 addition to the game. Let ya know during the modeling process on how they come out. ;)

Fred

Edit:  Just to find out if this roofangle suits you better that the ones before. Let me know please, before I go on. I raised it by quite a lot. I also will be using different roof and wall textures to give it more the darker effect that you mentioned and maybe I throw in one or two different details also.





....Uploading the MFP 1.... (.........Finishing the MFP1)

FrankU

Hi Fred,

Yes! These angles are great! Also nice that you used two different ones. This gives us a lot of variation too. Maybe I'll even put the barns into a prop family. As you maght know I am fond of prop families. I am still planning to make a lot that exists solely of prop families, so that every plop looks totally different. Maybe an allotment garden.
I can't wait to see your next achievements.

mrbisonm

I had some time this evening and finished the other barn/stable with the higher roof. I made two slightly different versions of it with darker textures than the models before. I will have to readjust the textures though a little as I saw when I looked at the pictures, nothing difficult. Hope you will be able to use them. ;)

Now I'll attack the other things later this week.

Fred







....Uploading the MFP 1.... (.........Finishing the MFP1)

FrankU


mrbisonm

Glad you liked the ones above.
I had some time again during my lunch hour and created the brick piggybarn on the picture, the last of the barns/stables. Some fine-tuning and adding small details will still be necessary.
We don't have farm brickbuildings here in Quebec, most likely because of temperatures below 30 and 40 C in the winter.

Fred



EDIT: to make this post more interesting, voila, two more small props, the first grainsilo, of small size, and the covered manure pit with a black roof as you demanded earlier. I had some time again this evening. ;)

Fred




....we're getting there! :thumbsup:







....Uploading the MFP 1.... (.........Finishing the MFP1)

FrankU

Hi Fred,

great additions.

Maybe you could make the color of the brick a bit lighter (less saturation) and a bit more reddish?
Also: would it be possible to split this prop into two? Then I could make at least fice differnet barns out of these two props:
- a single narrow barn,
- a singe wide barn,
- a double narrow,
- a double wide
- a combination of both looking like your prop on the image.
It would make your work very versatile.
It is a great prop anyhow.

The manure pit is beautiful. Not too small I hope? I'd say a diameter of 15 meters (almost a tile) is perfect (no I wasn't going to use that word anymore) good.

The silo is very nice. Maybe the color would be better if you made it more dirty yellowish. It's a bit too white in my opinion. And could you remove the foundation plate? As far as I know these things are standing just on the ground, but I could be wrong.

In the meantime I am breeding on some other lots. I think I better wait with my set until you have finished some of your barns and props.

mrbisonm

Quote from: FrankU on June 19, 2011, 11:51:23 AM
Hi Fred,

Maybe you could make the color of the brick a bit lighter (less saturation) and a bit more reddish? Lighter and added a little red.
Also: would it be possible to split this prop into two? Then I could make at least fice differnet barns out of these two props.
I got my chainsaw out and cut them into two, now you'll have the choice. ;)

The manure pit is beautiful. Not too small I hope? I'd say a diameter of 15 meters (almost a tile) is good. Well, it is not quite a tile big, the small barn you see below is one tile large, so I suppose the pit is about 13 meters, good enough?

The silo is very nice. Maybe the color would be better if you made it more dirty yellowish. I made them a little darker and dirtier....
And could you remove the foundation plate? As far as I know these things are standing just on the ground, but I could be wrong. I guess you're wrong, because these silos need a cement base to keep them from sinking into the ground. Even on the pictures you showed, they have them.

In the meantime I am breeding on some other lots. Keep on thinking and imagining because there will be a lot of props for you to handle and play with. You'll have quite a choice of props and be able to make quite a few different farmlots. ;)


I show a picture of everything assembled just to show what they look like together and comparing sizes of each. Of course they will all be individual props including the barns.

I am also back working on the other barns, putting on better textures and adding some more details. Be back with some more props soon.

Fred

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....Uploading the MFP 1.... (.........Finishing the MFP1)

FrankU

@ Mrbisonm:
Wow great!
Your chainsaw is really useful. This gives a lot of versatility.

The manure silo is great. The size is very useful. Your image where we can see them next to each other is very good for comparison of sizes and scale.
The scale issue spoiled some of the combinations of props I had found, because they were not the same scale. E.g. I have a very nice old farmhouse by Vanderaap, but it is too large, so if I'd put it next to the Haarlemmergold barn, the lot looks wrong. And it would be very bad if the scale of your props was out of scale with the Haarlemmergold stuff. But I am quite sure they will fit together.

The color of the silo could be more yellowish/gray/dirty, but it's OK already.
The brick we use here is usually a bit less saturated in color: it's cheap brick, with no pronounced color, but here too: it is OK like it is now.

---------------------------------------------------------
@ All:
I decided to wait until mrbisonm has finished his props, because I realized that I will have to redo quite some of the lots I had already made. And I am going to add some new lots. This made me wait with development of lots and it keeps me from releasing the finished lots. I would like to have them in a good set that fits nicely together.
Of course I could release some of the lots, let's say the first three stages already, so that other players could experiment with them. Maybe some testing? Is someone interested? The disadvantage could be that I will redo some of these lots and that the first set and the second do not fit together. So that would desire some bulldozing before installation of the second/edited set.

Does anyone have advice on this?

supremec

FrankU, You have luke that mrbisonm help you to make farms  ::)  props are awesome and I can't wait to see some pics of the farms in the game  :thumbsup:
Click on the banner to see my BATs

mrbisonm

Well FrankU, glad you like the props and also glad that you will be using some. The red brick barn I can alter again a little, less saturated. Before you asked for more red....lol...that's what I gave you. ;) Hard to know the exact colour one means by words only.
My scale should be ok, if I compare them with the original Maxis scales. I made sure that they will blend in quite well. I don't know about the size of Haarlemmergold's scales, because I don't seem to have any of his works, besides maybe a church or cathedral.

Anyways, I did some more variations of the barns and props (see below), now all that is left to finish my propset are the haystacks and those bales in plasticbags, if I am able to create them properly.

I know that some of my prop models here you will and can not use for your Holland farmsets, but they will be included in the propack anyways. Maybe someone else will be able to use them some time.
Btw.. I will give you priority on the propack, FrankU, meaning that you will be able to create, test, finish and upload your farms before I upload the propack, giving you the first chance to use these props.

I will probably upload a whole picture set of all the finished props by next weekend, then the job of rendering will keep me busy the next week. ;)

Have a nice week

Fred

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....Uploading the MFP 1.... (.........Finishing the MFP1)

FrankU

WOW! These barns look very good!  &apls

The roofs are great. All of them. The cement blocks I will not use very often, but they are used in the Netherlands sometimes and so I'll put this barn on one or two lots too. The stone is more for French farm lots, I guess. We don't have this kind of stone here. We would need to import it and that's too expensive for a simple barn. Maybe you can do another render with brick?

And the other props too. Most of them willbe useful for me and I am sure the other props will be useful for a lot of other users. Thank you very much indeed!
The color of the bricks: sure it is hard to tell what color I mean, but I guess it will be OK. On the other hand: if you want I can make a picture of a wall and put it here.
The scale, I am sure, is OK.
These three barns: are they the same size? I could make a prop family out of them for variation on the lots. This works only if the sizes are more or less identical and when the arrows of the props point in the same direction.

Now I am sure I will wait with releasing my farms until I have spiced them up with your props. Some relotting is at hand.

In the meantime I have been playing with a small other project; Dutch Ditches. I am using mayor mode ploppable items as props: ChrisAdams RRP's and PEG's PPond props.
I want the ditches to have cattails and other plants around them. But of course no repetition. So I thought I dig into the subject of Prop Random Chance.
You will see some pictures when I have something.

mrbisonm

The three latest barns and the redbrick one are of the same size indeed and can easily be used as a family prop. So are the ground level plastic covered silage piles and some of the manure pits, which I did 4 different textured models of. So there will be a lot of choice for familyprops.

I won't have much time this week to model or finish anything, I am in the middle of hayong and silaging some of my fields. Well, actually I don't do the real hard work, but I drive the tractor...... ;)  &Thk/( Could we call that "working" too? lol

Anyways, your new "ditchproject sounds good, not much use of it here in eastern Canada, but surely for most euro players a great add-on indeed.

Does anyone know how to make a cube in gmax rounder?

Fred


....Uploading the MFP 1.... (.........Finishing the MFP1)

mrbisonm


Not to fill up FrankU's space with all my pictures, I have uploaded the finished Products to my own Nexis BAT Thread. Sofar all the buildings such as the barns and stables have been "finetuned", and they are ready for the next step, the rendering. The silos, pitts, stacks etc will follow later this week. This is more work than I thought. Ouffffff, 8 hrs already just to make them look like on the pictures.

FrankU, I hope that you can use a few of these. ;)

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=7835.msg385556#msg385556

Fred


....Uploading the MFP 1.... (.........Finishing the MFP1)

Getron

@mrbisonm,

I love your dutch farm props. They look really great  &apls. Can't wait to see them in FrankU lots.  :)

Getron

FrankU

While Nexis is sweating on his prop pack for my Farm Lots I have been fooling around with another small project I had in mind.

Because everyone refused to make them, I tried it myself.
I wanted to have some very simple narrow ditches that fit into a Netherlands themed region.
There are several canals sets for Simcity4, but they were either too fancy, too urban or too cranky.

I put a copy of Peg's PPonds kit and ChrisAdams Pasture Flora into my plugins folder, threw everything else out and came up with this set.
The lots are made by changing the MMP Tahoe water (Peg) and the flora (ChrisAdams) into props. I edited these props in a special way.



What I wanted to obtain was a set of props that look different every time I (or you, if you like it) plop it.
There are several ways to achieve this.

The best well known feature are the Prop families. A disadvantage of this is that there is always a prop appearing. I wanted to have the ability to make a prop family that contains an empty "prop".
This appeared to be easy. I have been making prop families where one or two props are empty: you don't see anything. The disadvantage is that your list of props will show a lot of empty props. I don't know if anyone of you bothers about this, but I did not like it really. It felt like a kind of cheating.
And what do I do if I want a prop to appear only every tenth time? Do I make a prop family with one prop and nine empty props? That would be quite stupid.

But I found out there is an elegant way to achieve this.
For this you need the RKT4, the Prop Time of Day and the Prop Random Chance.

Listen.

You have a prop in mind. You want it to appear on some lots, but not on all. Meaning: when you plop or grow the lot you want to see the prop on some lots, but not on all. If it appears you want it to be visible always. If it does not appear you don't want it to appear ever. So this is not about timed props that appear and disappear during game time. Although the process I will show you looks very much like this process. I am even quite sure it is partially the same.

First you select a prop.
In Reader you make a copy of the prop exemplar. You give it a new Instance ID (because otherwise you'll overwrite the old prop and your cities will get Prop Poxed!)
What do you do?
1.   You make a copy of the original exemplar.
2.   You paste this into a new file.
3.   Give the prop a new IID
4.   Save and exit.

Then you open SC4-PIM and select the prop.
1.   Right click and select "Change to RKT4"
2.   Save and exit.

Open Reader again and select the prop again.
Now the real job starts.

The RKT4 file will show 8 reps:
1   0x00000000   Normal state
2   0x00000000   X-offset
3   0x00000000   Y-offset
4   0x00000000   Z-offset
5   0x27812820   for RKT0 or
   0x27812820   for RKT1
6   0x--------   Type ID of your prop
7   0x--------   Group ID of your prop
8   0x--------   Instance ID of your prop

You need the file to have 16 reps.
1.   The easiest way is to double click the RKT4 property. The pop up screen will show the list of 8 reps.
2.   On the bottom of this pop up screen you will see a row of numbers: these are the same eight reps in numbers divided by comma's.
3.   Select all 8 reps, go to the end of the row, add a comma, and copy the reps.
4.   You will now see that the above screen shows 16 reps. The second series of 8 reps is an exact copy of the first 8.
5.   Now you need to edit two of the new reps.
6.   REP 9 needs to be 1.
7.   REP 16 needs to be 0. That's all.

Your RKT4 property should look like this:
1   0x00000000   Normal state
2   0x00000000   X-offset
3   0x00000000   Y-offset
4   0x00000000   Z-offset
5   0x27812820   for RKT0 or
   0x27812820   for RKT1
6   0x--------   Type ID of your prop
7   0x--------   Group ID of your prop
8   0x--------   Instance ID of your prop
9   0x00000001   Special state
10   0x00000000   X-offset
11   0x00000000   Y-offset
12   0x00000000   Z-offset
13   0x27812820   for RKT0 or
   0x27812820   for RKT1
14   0x--------   Type ID of your prop
15   0x--------   Group ID of your prop
16   0x00000000   Always Zero!

Now save.

Now the next step: adding the Prop Time of Day property.

In reader your prop exemplar is still visible.
1.   Right click in the right part of the screen.
2.   Select "Add new property"
3.   Search for "Prop Time of day"
4.   Click "yes".
5.   Now the property appears. You click on it and edit the values.
6.   There are two: the first is the time of day that the Normal state(see REP1) appears. So in this case: the prop you are editing will appear on that time of day.
7.   The second is the time of day that the normal state disappears and the Special state appears (rep 9 and further) (if you edit the RKT4 by filling in reps 14,15 and 16 the TGI of a totally different prop then that prop will appear on the second time of day).
8.   Because we want the prop to be visible all day we fill in: first value= 0, second value is 24. The prop will be visible between 0.00 hrs until 24.00 hrs. The second "prop", the special state, will not be visible ever. Nevertheless you need the second set of 8 reps. Otherwise the effect we want is not there.

Now you can finally add the "Prop Random Chance" property that you wanted to have in the first place.
1.   Right click, select Prop Random Chance etc.
2.   There is one value you can put here. There is something weird: Reader says you may enter values between 0 and 255. So first I guessed 255 will mean: all the time, meaning 100%. But that's not true. If you want the prop to appear in 10% of the situations, you enter 10, which will look hexadecimal in your list as 0x0000000A. So if you enter 255, showing as 0x00000100, the prop will appear in 255% of all situations..... meaning 10%, I guess.

Save and exit.

What, in fact, have you done?

You edited a prop.
This prop now has two states that will show in turn: the normal state is defined by the first 8 reps, the second prop/special state is defined by the second 8 reps.
Because you don't want to use the second state the IID is zero. I guess you may also change rep 14 and 15 into 0, but I did not check.
Now you need to tell the prop when to change form the normal to the special state.
The property Prop Time of Day gives you the opportunity to define when the normal state is visible and when the special state is visible.
Because we want the normal state to show all day we defined the normal state to show form 0.00 hrs (midnight) until 24.00 hrs (midnight again).
We need to do all this because otherwise the real item we wanted, the Prop Random Chance, does not work at all.

So now, finally, we can add the Prop Random Chance, give in the percentage we had in mind an all is set.

Now you can put the prop on your lot.

You will see that if you entered 10% the prop will appear in 10% of the cases that you plop the lot.

With this knowledge I made my props.
Look, this is the same lot plopped several times:



You can easily make ditches with this set.



And you can combine the set with the orpginal PPonds Set and the MMP flora by Chrisadams and Peg.



Of course you could make these ditches with only the original MMPs, but that is a heck of a job. Believe me: I tried.

Do you like it?

And to finish it off I made the Icons.


Getron

FrankU,

Nice work, looking perfect for Dutch City Journals. But I'm missing the bridige option. Is there a possibility that you can include it?

Getron

FrankU

Hi Getron,

You mean something like this?



There are no real bridges. In real life these ditches visually often just stop where there is a street. There is a small dam. Of course if you look exactly there is a culvert under the street. It would be nice to have something like that, but because in my lots there is no visual difference in height between the water and the street, there isn't really place for a culvert or something.
My advice is to lay the ditches up to one tile distance of the street and then take the MMP stuff to fill the gap. That's the way I did it.
I admit that there is room for improvement.