Radical modding concepts... Is this even possible?!

[Jim T.]

Hello world, I'm a new member here with some questions I'm hoping get answered!

I have thought up some pretty daring, and original city and infrastructure concepts. Although some of them may not be as easy as the first seemed to be.

I have developed and/or modified various mods to my liking to achieve a unique atmosphere in SC4. Currently, I am in the process of designing a gritty, yet medium/high wealth w2w region set in an Eastern European style. I have created a smog mod, a evening-only mod (orange sky.) I am missing one thing though: urban decay on a massive scale, I suggest you view the pictures to see what I mean.

www.flickr.com/photos/brickartisan/4183196132/sizes/o/

www.flickr.com/photos/brickartisan/4183196382/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Would there be any feasible way to create a mod that alters building textures to my liking, just like this?  Would there be a way to put a digital "filter" over the screen that makes buildings look like this? In case, it is any help, I should note that I used the burn filter in paint.net.

Thanks in advance, Jim.

[joelyboy911]

Sorry, I can't see the pictures. I have to log in, but I don't have an account. 

I don't know if its possible to apply a filter to every building. But you certainly modify individual buildings, one at a time by editing their FSHs. This would be a rather tedious process, I imagine, considering the amount of buildings.

I'm interested in seeing the smog mod in action.

Good luck to you!

[nerdly_dood]

The page is private - if you want us to be able to see it you must make it public. I don't have a Flickr account (I use PhotoBucket) so I don't know how to do that, but there should be an "options" page somewhere where you can fix that.

[Jim T.]

The links have been fixed, you can now view those pictures!

Thank you for your support, you two.

[sumwonyuno]

How about dilapidation?  Make the buildings R$$$, and make your city (initially) desirable to R$$$, but don't make any R$$$ jobs.  Those residential buildings will downgrade to R$$ and R$ and look gritty.

[xxdita]

Or keep the R$$$ just as they are, and have everything look delapidated. Take a look at the Building Developer Simulator in Reader, and you'll be able to adjust the Lot Developer Occupancy Thresholds, which determine at what percentages of occupancy a building will delapidate, abandon, or renew.

Otherwise, I can only suggest you alter the Brightness, Saturation & Contrast on your monitor. 

[RippleJet]

Or keep the R$$$ just as they are, and have everything look delapidated. Take a look at the Building Developer Simulator in Reader, and you'll be able to adjust the Lot Developer Occupancy Thresholds, which determine at what percentages of occupancy a building will delapidate, abandon, or renew.

The Building Development Simulator Exemplar in SimCity_1.dat is not displayed correctly in Reader though.
Several properties are missing, including the Lot Developer Occupancy Thresholds.

Increasing that property's second value (which tells the game when the building should look distressed)
to 1.00 should achieve what you're after though, at least for growable RCI buildings.
It probably won't work for ploppable, functional landmarks, and certainly not for any other ploppables.

Try the file attached to this post, and let us know if your city becomes gritty.
You may have to wait a month (at least) for the graphics display to upgrade,
and newly built buildings will probably not look gritty, at least not the first month.

[Jim T.]

Alright, thanks for the help everyone! This is my first time interacting with this community aside from downloading files from the exchange, and I must say that I love this community. You are all quite helpful!

I'll be running some tests concerning the dilapidation of buildings (thanks for that file; RippleJet.) I'll also be looking into those FSH files. On that note, I would like to say Thank you!

[joelyboy911]

I don't quite know how Gizmo's night mod works, but it certainly changes the look of buildings at night. I wonder if something similar could be done for the day view to achieve something like what you're trying to do.

[Jim T.]

As of now, I so far;

- Have modified Gizmo's night mod to display a day-round orange haze (representing smog.)
- I have modified FSH files for one of Porkissmo's ploppable mid-wealth res. building. Theoretically, if I modify every FSH of every building that I use, I can achieve the look in those pictures I showcased here.

This is gonna' be one heck of a tedious project, but please, cut me a bit of slack. I'm only fourteen years of age and am just immersing myself in coding, script writing, rendering etc... While I am fluent in HTML and different sorts of basic script and all, I'm just starting to get comfortable with more complex things such as writing game modifications, among other things.   

[joelyboy911]

That sounds really cool. I'd like to see what your modified day-night smog mod looks like. Good luck!

[Jim T.]

Expect screenshots soon, joelyboy. Thanks for your interest in the topic.

EDIT:  Behold; the first screenshot! After a day of grueling work, I have found a way to recreate FSH textures exactly like the ones in my "concept" photo found on Flickr.

The steps are as follows:
^1. Go to iLive Reader and open a lot of your choice.
^2. Select an FSH, click Save Selected File(s).
^3. Open in Paint.net FSH file plugin for Paint.net required. Commence your editing.
^4. Once the file is edited click Save. Save is not to be confused with Save As.
^5. Click Insert File in iLive Reader and insert your file which has been saved under the exact same name as it was before editing.
^6. You must delete the old FSH.