Manuel-ito's lots and relots

[Manuel-ito]

I'm opening a topic for my lot experiments here just to avoid cluttering the "Show us your... current proyects" thread 

As suggested by MushyMushy on that thread, I replaced the college's parking lot with a open area. Also shrunk the library's parking lot, reloted the museum, facelifted the flower gardens and recreated the koi pond version as a separate lot:

As you can see, I'm replacing most of Maxis' flora with CP's seasonal (and semiseasonal) prop flora. I'll leave some hints of Maxis flora here and there, except on the flower gardens.

Remade the fenced sportfields as separate lots too. There's supposed to be seasonal flora there, but I forgot to leave the simulation running for a bit before taking a screenshot. Oops:


Still working on the train stations. This time I made the platforms a bit longer as per suggestion by Themistokles:

[gn_leugim]

I like your lots, simple, easily going well on game, yet, more realistic. keep them coming.

btw, where are you from? :p

[Manuel-ito]

Thank you! I'm from Argentina, by the way

Re-loted the City halls:

In an attempt at 'internationalizing' the city hall, I decided to get rid of the front driveway. I also added a connection for Paeng's Parks at the back, if you want to make some municipal gardens

Some utilities:

Changed the grass at the treatment plant, paved the pathways and added pipes and more props since it looked like it fits in the facility. Not sure if the layout is believable for a treatment plant tho. Some subtle changes on the other utility lots, I'll leave it up to you to find the diferences

Parks:

Changed their base textures so that it matches the open grass area. Well, almost, since if I tried to use the exact base texture of the open area it changed to a duller green because the other parks are set to medium wealth. Also, seasonal and semi-seasonal trees.

Plazas, open paved area and beach. Made a subtle square pattern on the medium plaza with the SCILT textures and got rid of the sand texture on the beach, since that caused some annoying graphical glitches.

By the way, should I keep using CP's SCILT for these lots? I use it because the overlay textures that it includes have some flexibility that i couldn't find on other textures, but conversely it could not match right on unsupported sidewalk mods like Super Light Asphalt or Veredas Santiagueñas. What do you think?

[Seaman]

In an attempt at 'internationalizing' the city hall, I decided to get rid of the front driveway. I also added a connection for Paeng's Parks at the back, if you want to make some municipal gardens

I second what gn_leugim said. The connection for the Park is a very nice idea, well done.

[Themistokles]

...I decided to get rid of the front driveway. I also added a connection for Paeng's Parks at the back ...

This is like two simple but fabulous ideas they make the city hall look much better.

I like the translucent beach texture very much, because the terrain showing through will make beaches much more realistic. For a more European beach front, I'd go for less parking and more strolling space, but that's a matter of what style you're going for. I would however be careful about props in the sandy part of the beach (like the maxis palms and the beach guard (?) house) since they would get very repetitive on long beaches, and also limit the possibilities in terms of style choices. Personally, I would prefer using mmps for all details.

Anyways, this is just some feedback, the lots look really great

[Andreas]

Wow, I really like those re-lots, many of the Maxis civic lots look a bit... bland, to say it nicely. I always wanted to do something similar, but so far, I only touched the churches and cemeteries (released on the LEX a few years ago), and I made a handful of park and plaza lots that match each other better than the Maxis ones. Quick question: Do you always keep the original lot size? That would make it a lot easier to replace the Maxis ones, and it would allow a similar mod like the one I just mentioned.

[FrankU]

This is really a very nice project. I like the simple and effective way you changed the lots. This set is really a good choice for those who don't want too much stuff in their plugins, but like to have better than Maxis Vanilla.

Please continue!