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SAM - Street Addon Mod

Started by jplumbley, June 25, 2007, 11:05:11 AM

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wes.janson

Recently (See: Watching David work his magic over at 3RR) I have found myself wanting to do a SAM set. I've d/l the SAM Creation set and have worked through the Standard, 4-Way Intersections, Roundabouts, Ave-Intersections, and about 4/5 of the diagonals so far. I was wondering how I would go about putting just the standard textures in game, just to see how the textures look in game.


Henrik Sedin: 82gp 29g 83a 112p - 2009/2010 Art Ross/Hart Trophy winner!

Diggis

The textures all have an IID for a file name which contains an X.  If you replace the X with one of the set numbers and make sure it loads after the original SAM sets it'll use that instead of that one.

wes.janson

@Diggis.. Thanks! Rather simple now that you point it out.

I have a another question regarding getting textures in game. My first few forays into doing this resulted in not the most appealing textures, but it allowed to me to figure out how to match/blend the different textures together. So now that I've gotten past that point, I want to attempt to do it with HD textures (Which I gather are 128x128 textures with the quality of 256x256), and I am not quite sure how to do this. I have the EA Graphics Editor (That is the right tool right?), but I do not know just what the heck to do with it. If anyone could give me some tips.. that would be cool.

Here is a shot of some of the textures I have done so far. I am going for something similar to the in-game roads because there are just times that you want the look, but don't want to have to spend the money. Or.. at least I do.




Henrik Sedin: 82gp 29g 83a 112p - 2009/2010 Art Ross/Hart Trophy winner!

emgmod

Or where you want the look, but don't have any actual reason to build one?

It could be used for older roads that aren't maintained. I like. it

Diggis

Not sure I can help you on the HD front... it's out of my area.  However, if you don't mind I'm going to make a couple of comments on your textures...  the main thing is they seem a little green.  I think you are going for a worn look, but I don't feel it's worked. 

z

Actually, they remind me a lot of the roads here in Oregon, where moss grows on everything.  ;)

wes.janson

Quote from: Diggis on February 15, 2010, 01:22:42 AM
Not sure I can help you on the HD front... it's out of my area.  However, if you don't mind I'm going to make a couple of comments on your textures...  the main thing is they seem a little green.  I think you are going for a worn look, but I don't feel it's worked. 

You have somewhat of a valid point there. They do look more green when having the grass texture behind them and not as bad when it's a black background. I am going to play around with the red/green/blue levels a bit to darken it up because now that you have pointed it out, it's all I can see  :D

I am going to resize them to 128x128 png files to see how they look in game until I can figure out, or get help on the HD front.

Quote from: z on February 15, 2010, 02:01:54 AM
Actually, they remind me a lot of the roads here in Oregon, where moss grows on everything.  ;)

Hah.. funny you mention that, I'm in Vancouver (where it rains 200 days a year) and am used to seeing residential roads/streets spouting little green bits all over the place. That's sort of where I got the look from.


Henrik Sedin: 82gp 29g 83a 112p - 2009/2010 Art Ross/Hart Trophy winner!

j-dub

#1207
Wes: I don't know if you were aware that new street intersections now use the same turning radius as the street curve textures, while it is not written anywhere, this new designed seems to be favored as more streets have been textured with smoother intersections. Streets that have been treated with smoother corners so far are: the default Maxis vanilla street, the asphalt SAM street, and Nerdly's cracked street. I don't know what else has or has not gotten the new treatment yet, but you are free from the grasp of Maxis. Below is an example. Also, there were plans that the sidewalk would cross the street at the intersection, instead of turning corners, but so far I have only seen Nerdly's texture get that revision.


wes.janson

Quote from: j-dub on February 15, 2010, 09:20:54 PM
Wes: I don't know if you were aware that new street intersections now use the same turning radius as the street curve textures, while it is not written anywhere, this new designed seems to be favored as more streets have been textured with smoother intersections. Streets that have been treated with smoother corners so far are: the default Maxis vanilla street, the asphalt SAM street, and Nerdly's cracked street. I don't know what else has or has not gotten the new treatment yet, but you are free from the grasp of Maxis. Below is an example. Also, there were plans that the sidewalk would cross the street at the intersection, instead of turning corners, but so far I have only seen Nerdly's texture get that revision.



Thanks a lot!! I was just following the standard curb set, but the corners in that there look WAY better.


Henrik Sedin: 82gp 29g 83a 112p - 2009/2010 Art Ross/Hart Trophy winner!

ShadeSlayer

Quote from: wes.janson on February 15, 2010, 05:02:13 PM
Hah.. funny you mention that, I'm in Vancouver (where it rains 200 days a year) and am used to seeing residential roads/streets spouting little green bits all over the place. That's sort of where I got the look from.
:O We're almost neighbours. I live in Kelowna.

bob56

hi, just wondering if it would be that difficult to choose to have one of the SAM textures be the default instead of Maxis streets. For example, I use the asphalt version the most and get annoyed by having to do the whole starter piece thing every time I drag a new zone that is separated from already-converted streets. I was just wondering what steps would need to be taken to make a SAM the default.

Thanks,

--Grif
You can call me Grif

--Currently out of the office, will resume SC4 7/19

Diggis

Bob, you would need to reiid the textures in SAM 7 (I think it's 7) to the IID of the orignal road network.  Not impossible, just tedious.  If you want more information let me know and I'll explain in more depth.

joelyboy911

I'm also interested in the same mod as Bob has described. If I can help, somehow to do a portion of the tedious work, I'm happy to do so (I don't really want to go it alone).
SimCity Aviation Group
I miss you, Adrian

bob56

thanks for the info! I'd love more information on how to do this. And Joelyboy911, I would love to split up the work.

Thanks,

--Grif
You can call me Grif

--Currently out of the office, will resume SC4 7/19

Diggis

OK, every item in the game has a unique TGI address (ID).  TGI = Type/Group/Instance.  The address is made up of 3 hex numbers, one for type, one for group and one for instance.

Traffic textures all have the same Type and Group ID's: 0x7ab50e44 and 0x1abe787d respectively.  They then all have a unique Instance ID based on the internal SAM structure.

To replace one texture with another you just need to give it the same TGI address as the original and ensure it loads last. 

As the SAM texures you want to replace the original with are already created you just have to re-IID them as they already have the correct Type and Group IID.  For every piece in the SAM set you need to find the corresponding IID of the original.

You can find the IID of the original game streets by opening the reader and going to the tools --> texture viewer and selecting Zoom 5 --> Streets in the popup window.  This should display the street textures and corresponding IID's for the original street textures.  Some of the intersections may be under other networks.  The items for diagonal streets will be found in one of the NAM plugins.  I'm not sure which, but I think it's called diagonal streets :)

Once you have the IID for a piece you need to find the corresponding piece in the new set.  Bear in mind there will be 5 texutures, ending in the number 0-4 for each zoom level.   You need to replace the first 7 digits in the IID of the new texture with the IID of the old texture.  The save the file as a copy so you don't overwrite the original SAM IID's.

I've written a lot of this from memory, it's been about 18 months since we did the last SAM release so it may be a little rusty.  I would suggest starting with the 5 standard pieces (straight, 90 degree turn, T intersection, 4 way intersection and end piece) save and check it works.  If it doesn't let me know.

thingfishs

Hi SAM!

What I want in a function street (which may have been done...?) is a texture with two gravel tyre tracks which is otherwise transparent, as demonstrated in this shot:

(from a shot by T Wrecks)

I am assuming (because it's not in the SAM) that these type of tracks that I see in people's shots are non-functional. (Incidentally where can these be found?)
How hard would it be to turn these pre-existing textures into a SAM street?

cheers :thumbsup:

Diggis

Those are from Chris Addams's Rural Renewal Project.  They are a series of lots and unfortunatly suffer from the Water Graphics bug.

We considered turning these into a SAM set but there are a couple of minor issues with them. 

The main one was that they are only really wide enough for one car.  If you were to add paths to these the cars that drove on them would look like they weren't on the tracks. We can't have the paths on top of each other as then the cars would crash.

The other problem is, if these were functional, automata would use them and it would look funny having a dozen cars on them.

However, here (link) is a base set for SAM that I used to create the original textures.  Feel free to add more.  ;D

thingfishs

ah, thanks for the info. Regarding the lots of automata in my experience streets that are away from built up areas get minimal use anyway so I don't think that would be too much of a problem. But the other lane of traffic is... I figure this is a no but I might as well say it ;), is there anyway a one way street could be modified to appear like this? Even if it meant changing all one way streets to this texture?

Diggis

Quote from: thingfishs on March 05, 2010, 05:58:55 AM
ah, thanks for the info. Regarding the lots of automata in my experience streets that are away from built up areas get minimal use anyway so I don't think that would be too much of a problem. But the other lane of traffic is... I figure this is a no but I might as well say it ;), is there anyway a one way street could be modified to appear like this? Even if it meant changing all one way streets to this texture?

There are no one way streets... only one way roads.  And they are still 2 lanes wide so the Automata would still not show on the track properly.  And you'd need a way out at the other end. 

But yes, you could change the OWR textures to these ones.

thingfishs

one way roads, that's what I meant. ;D If I were to make a new set of textures that were aligned to a side rather than centered, and otherwise transparent, then the effect would work? And it's just a matter of having another track back to the rest of the grid right? I don't see that as a problem either, unless they have to be really close to one another. How close would they have to be?