Double post
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Today the third and final part in the tree controller series. There isn't much of a theme or anything but rather a number of seperate issues. First up are some rather annoying problems, some of which I'm still struggling to get rid of. The second half focusses on a number of ideas I'd like to hear your thoughts on. Lets get going though with said annoyances.
# 1 small treesHard to explain so I'll let a pic do the talking.

See how in the area outlined in red there're predominantly small trees? It only happens with firs and it's as if that particular area doesn't have enough space for the larger models, while it sure does seem like there's enough room. I've tried many different times with many different settings but I just can't get larger models to show up there.
# 2 brush boundariesI've showed this pic before but it provides a nice illustration of the problem at hand. Have a look again at the areas outlined in red and notice how there aren't any items near the vicinity of the trees.

This is weird because the trees and grassland are next to each other in the Preference table but it seems they don't get along well. It's somewhat of a mystery why this is because I've seen this happen in one spot but not in another. Again I suspect it has to do with the terrain and I really hope it can be resolved eventually.
# 3 waterfloraItems which are placed at the outer right moisture level show up at the wettest areas. However the presence of water isn't necessary so cattails and the like will also pop up inland.

One could argue it's somewhat realistic, as if the area is prone to flooding or something. And if those wet spots are worked upon a bit with say, for instance, the smoothing tool, it's in fact possible to get rid of them. So out of all the annoying issues mentioned, this is actually the least pressing. Still, I don't particulary like it but there isn't anything really that can be done to prevent it from happening.
Now with that out of the way, I'd like to float a couple of ideas and hear your thoughts on them.
# 4 the winter shadow problemAvid users of seasonal MMPs undoubtly know what I'm talking about, otherwise have a look below.
erm yes well you see, the sun doesn't know there aren't any leaves . . 
This has bothered me for quite some time. In fact right from the very moment I started using seasonal MMPs, well before making them myself. When I started doing so, however, the cause became easy enough to understand, as did the solution. As already mentioned, the Resource Key Type 4 holds all three models for each flora item. The downside of the RKT4 is SimCity will only cast shadows for the first entry, in this case the autumn model. So in order to get the proper shadows to show in winter, all it takes is a duplicate set of exemplar files which has the winter model as the first entry and presto, gone are those pesky shadows.

Now this presents another problem in itself, which is suddenly all the autumn models are replaced with winter models. Or to put it in other words, unfortunately it isn't possible to get both autumn and winter models and their respective shadows in one picture, unless with a little photoshopping. That said, I'm entertaining the idea of creating a small patch file for cosmetic purposes only to go along with the controllers. Good idea?
# 5 meadowsWhile I've created a number of different meadows I'm somewhat hestitant to actually implement them. For one because it adds another, signifcant amount of items which may slow things down even further. In addition I don't like how some items look at the larger zoom levels.
Click pic for full size and notice those bright pixel like spots. Now I know there's the
AppearanceZoomsFlag property which controls at which zoom level each item shows. That said, I haven't been able yet to figure out which values correspond to which zoomlevels. If anyone does, please let me know!
Apart from that I was also thinking to include meadows as a seperate option, especially for the River controller since the 'central area' shown in the pic above is left empty at the moment. I'd like to implement continuous grasslands which would stretch from top to bottom, pretty much like CPs Italia controller has. I haven't done so because of the aforementioned performance and zoom issues.
# 6 waterfloraYet again, though this time a bit different. When a flora item has the property
kPropertyID_WaterFlora present it can be plopped into the water a bit. Though it only works when the water is extremely shallow, it makes for nice, thick shorelines.
Normal shoreline
'Waterflora' shorelineHowever, the downside of this property is it overrides the height specified in the Flora Preferences which means the 'waterflora' will be all over the place, like so.

So this property basically renders the controller pretty much useless except for use on flat land. Though once again I'm entertaining the idea of making a 'waterflora' version for each controller so with a little extra effort, you can have best of both worlds by switching to the normal controller once the shoreline is in place (or the other way around of course). Too small a benefit to add or a nice little option to have for you control freaks out there?!

So this concludes the tree controller series. Though keep an eye out for a little something extra. In the meantime, please don't hestitate to leave your ideas, suggestions and critism below.