• Welcome to SC4 Devotion Forum Archives.

MGB's Mods and other stuff

Started by mgb204, May 04, 2015, 04:48:16 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

cmdp123789

Roads? good!
Seawalls? GOOD!

Excited about the whole thing? oh yeah.. bring it on!

Vizoria

Quote from: cmdp123789 on February 09, 2016, 12:38:47 PM
Roads? good!
Seawalls? GOOD!

Excited about the whole thing? oh yeah.. bring it on!

The roads (industrial SAM) are mgb204's creations. The seawalls seen in the last two pictures are a new creation from Bipin, something which I have never seen before. Bipin has created a lot of his own grungy concrete BATs and LOTs, some of which he has kindly shared with the community. Which explains why every picture of his looks so amazing distinctive and realistic.

mgb204

Quote from: Vizoria on February 09, 2016, 01:24:39 PM
The roads (industrial SAM) are mgb204's creations. The seawalls seen in the last two pictures are a new creation from Bipin, something which I have never seen before. Bipin has created a lot of his own grungy concrete BATs and LOTs, some of which he has kindly shared with the community. Which explains why every picture of his looks so amazing distinctive and realistic.

Well the fact that Bipin gave me the base texture to kick-start the mod in the first place might explain why it fits so well with his work :). But yeah, I've always been a great admirer of Bipins work, I'm big on HD, but there is always something totally unique about all his BATs. Not many people do dirty, but in truth, how many of us see a pristine paradise everyday? That's something special, because it's far more realistic.

mgb204

#123
I've been playing with some overrides for the original Maxis Level Highway/Ground Highway bridges today:



The L0 highway has a bump, that's because it's reusing the L2 models, and I guess the adjustment is different between MHO and the original models. I have some ideas to solve this, not least brute-forcing new height adjusted models in there instead :).

Gugu3


mgb204

#125
Fixed the bump:



How about this suspension bridge, now fully BTM compatible. :) I've more bridge stuff planned for Moonlights El-Rail & BTM mods too.

Vizoria

Nice one with the bridges! The Maxis Highway Override could always do with some bridges of its own.

Themistokles

Delicious! &apls Bridges are always in high demand, and these look very good. :)
Come join me on a hike to St Edmea!

Latest update: 7

"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy." - John Sawhill

epicblunder

Quote from: mgb204 on February 11, 2016, 06:31:22 AM
The L0 highway has a bump...

Surely that's just an over-engineered expansion joint. It'll be fine   "$Deal"$   :thumbsup:

Simcoug


mgb204

#130
I've made some great progress with the bridges. ML's BTM will be able to use all the existing Monorail Bridges. I'm hoping I can find a way to add new bridges too. That way I can clone many of the existing HSR bridges, but replace the decks with either BTM or Moonlights El-Rail. Speaking of ML's El-Rail, the bridges for those are proving a tougher nut to crack. I've managed to fix the problem with the pillars, dirt underlay and T21s (Fences) all floating in the air. But, somehow these bridges are linked in a way I can't seem to unlink. The missing link here is finding where in the NAM the regular El-Rail bridge is being overridden. I can't find it anywhere, but simply overriding all the Maxis stuff is not working like it did for the BTM.

Onto my third S3D (model) fixing project... Maxis Highway Override. The two bridges I've shown are likely all you're going to get, since even if I could somehow make the Maxis bridges play nice with MHO, I can't see how it could ever work. The additional width of the MHO pieces is the basic problem there. Still there's always RHW-4 bridges, but it's nice to have the basic level bridges as an option. The T21s are proving a nightmare for that, if I solve that issue, they'll see a release in the next NAM. Otherwise I might cancel the T21 lights for now, so you can have the bridges, not sure really.

Something for MHO that won't be featuring in NAM 35 are these pieces:



That's every one of the Japanese NAM Facelift Mod overpasses working with MHO now. Diagonals are not perfect, usual problem, models made for a thinner network. The main issue though is the T21 security fences. I've a solution/workaround for those however. When building the diagonals, remove the model files containing them from your plugins folder. This shouldn't cause brown boxes, but you can place the piece without the fences interrupting the lanes of the highway. A few of the concrete supports are protruding too, but I think with a little editing I can make them smaller so they don't stick out so much. These will be rolled into a separate mod in the near future, since the MHO patch will be made redundant with NAM 35's release.

So yeah, ML's El-Rail and BTM mods and MHO are both about to get a huge injection of cross compatibility for NAM 35 :satisfied:.

Swordmaster

Nice work! I haven't used any of those mods, so I have no idea about the El Rail bridge.

I think we may be able to do some tricks with the Maxis highway bridges, though. The Golden Gate one, for instance, looks wide enough to carry RD-4, and maybe a type of RHW-4. Not sure if that would fit the bill you had in mind, though.


Cheers
Willy

mgb204

#132
@Willy - I may look at what can be made out of the MHY bridges at some point, a few of them are really nice bridges, but I'm not going back to MHY any time soon, so sadly they never get used. It would be nice to find some creative uses for them, filling in gaps elsewhere.

Working some more on my T21 mod today, this Avenue curve took a long time to get right:



I've made it compatible with the Jap NAM FL mod, so the sidewalks remain in place, this will be optional though. Speaking of which, I noticed a small error with the file "Overall Pavement Style", in z3 for one rotation an additional group was missing, in short this makes light patches of $$ sidewalks appear. Fix attached, place it in the same folder as the original file :).

belfastsocrates

Looking forward to seeing the final T21 mod. The initial street teaser file you provided looks good and the replacement trees look so much better!

I'm glad the avenue curve is being looked at, the bareness of the existing curve is a touch annoying, that picture looks great. Will the 45 degree curve be addressed as well?
A unique nation fusing technological prowess and unparalleled grandeur

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination" - Oscar Wilde

bombardiere

You are doing interesting things. I use ML EL-rail mod, so what you have done is very useful, thanks. :) However, I am still in so much in period stuff that I haven't paid much attention to anything with black asphalt . :D

Vizoria

Does this T21 fix finally mean an end to those obnoxious palm trees which appear on high wealth road, one-way road and street tiles?

Missvanleider

Hi, long time lurker. First time commenter! - The avenue curve looks great, I've been using the euro-asphalt 45 and 90 degree curves but they don't quite match with the superlight asphalt, I always think they look a bit strange so anything that can be done for the avenue curves would be smashing

mgb204

#137
After a couple revisions of my Industrial SAM textures, I sent a preview to Rivit. Next thing he's helping me with them and made the following improvements:


  • Added a curb stone
  • Colour-adjusted the textures

Initially, I wasn't sure about the curbing, I liked the idea of the "messy" edge where the concrete fades into the road surface. However, after using it for a few days, I'm convinced this is the right way to go.

The colour correction has dimmed the white road markings, so they no longer stand out so much. In addition, it's made them better-fit the game's colour palate. This means that they will blend in better with most people's game. Don't get me wrong, the originals, as you can see in the pictures from BiPin passed, were fantastic in the right environment. As such, I plan on these being the final textures:



Picture courtesy of Rivit, I've just finished the v4 base textures with EU (White) markings. Now it's just the junction textures that transition to road, ave etc to complete.




REPLIES:

Quote from: belfastsocrates on February 28, 2016, 11:18:51 AM
Will the 45 degree curve be addressed as well?

Yup, I will cover all the puzzle pieces that do not have draggable alternatives only though. I plan to add lights everywhere they don't exist, I really want more uniform lighting on networks. I may add some trees and other props, but I went all out for the 90, as you say, it's too bare, but I think the others fare a little better.

Quote from: Vizoria on February 29, 2016, 01:36:40 AM
Does this T21 fix finally mean an end to those obnoxious palm trees which appear on high wealth road, one-way road and street tiles?

If I do it right it should. Not only that, everything will be seasonal too. I plan to incorporate every T21 from Maxis and the NAM, in addition to LRM (should be USL compatible), SRM and Jondor's crossings. I've not had a chance to introduce it properly, this is at a very early stage.

I plan to use Girafe's flora, urban pack, car props, bikeprops & French road signs. Additionally I will be creating a number of new props to fill any gaps. Different zone types will have different props and it should look as British as I can make it.

Sorry to RHD users, but the goal here is a LHD UK Streetside mod. Where possible all the generic T21s will be split from the LHD stuff. But the likelihood of me making RHD variations is close to 0. I really get annoyed with T21s, this is a big project, I simply don't have the motivation to do that unless I can find a solution that doesn't massively increase my workload.

Quote from: Missvanleider on February 29, 2016, 04:23:01 AM
Hi, long time lurker. First time commenter! - The avenue curve looks great, I've been using the euro-asphalt 45 and 90 degree curves but they don't quite match with the superlight asphalt, I always think they look a bit strange so anything that can be done for the avenue curves would be smashing

The problem with a texture mod, it only supports the texture it was made for :(. These pieces are supported by the Japanese NAM Facelift mod though. The one you see in the picture has the ability to match whatever sidewalk is supported, I don't have any textures for the curve installed.

It can be a little tricky to work out how to install it though. I did have a tutorial to explain it all in-depth. This was on Simpeg.com until it went down, but it needs a lot of updating to make it current. I'll quote from another topic where this came up earlier:

Quote from: mgb204 on March 01, 2016, 03:05:02 PM
Just looking over the previous tutorial, there is so much that needs changing, this is not going to be an overnight job. So it might be a few weeks before I can get that up-to-date. Confounding the issue is that certain parts of the process are still in-development, so I've been holding off updating it until I could be sure no further changes would be introduced. Thankfully that process is nearing the end, the plan being to update everything to NAM 35 specifications, prior to an official release. So it will be a few weeks after NAM 35's release hopefully before the tutorial is done...

MushyMushy

This looks great! These will be handy.  :) I can picture them being used in many different ways.
My only question as of right now is this: for the 4-way intersections, should one of the center lines actually go through the intersection? I only wonder about this since it will show up with the same orientation always going through the intersection and the same orientation not every time. To me this is fine on the 3-way ones since the road that passes through is arguably the main one since it doesn't end, but in the 4-way situation aren't the 2 streets technically equal? I certainly don't think it needs stop lines or crosswalks or anything like that (this is grungy after all), but I think the center line should end on both streets.

bombardiere

Quote from: mgb204 on March 01, 2016, 05:17:55 PM


Sorry to RHD users, but the goal here is a LHD UK Streetside mod.

Now you caught my attention. :D Let me know if you are in need of UK street props. Although I am currently badly stuck with the Georgian Terrace. :(