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Rural Renewal Project

Started by Chrisadams3997, September 11, 2007, 03:54:51 PM

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Ennedi

Quote from: Andreas on September 12, 2007, 02:39:25 AM
Wow, it looks like I'm not the only one who fell in love with this project. ;) Those fence props look so inconspicuous, yet the overall effect is amazing, as well as those tracks that "disappear" in the middle of a pasture. I also really like that brushy land in the upper left corner of the second picture, is that the new "pasture" flora you mentioned?

I agree, I fell in love with this project too!  :thumbsup: I am very interested in this pasture flora, the second picture looks fantastic with it!

I will test it with pleasure  ;D
But I have two questions:
1. What about the slope tolerance?
2. You are interested in cows - and what do you think about sheep?
New Horizons Productions
Berethor - beskhu3epnm - blade2k5 - dmscopio - dedgren - Emilin - Ennedi
jplumbley - moganite - M4346 - nichter85 - papab2000 - Shadow Assassin - Tarkus - wouanagaine

jayo

This is the good shizz :P Good work mate  :thumbsup: &apls &apls
I'm back

BigSlark

Aye, sheep would be very welcome. I'm going to visit a friend who lives a couple of hours from me on Saturday and will photograph any interesting fences or other rural features I see on the way.

Cheers,
Kevin

Chrisadams3997

Ah, yall are cutting right to the heart of the matter here.

so first off....

Jayo and Rooker: thanks for the compliments.

Kevin: Thanks again, hope to see what you find.

Ennedi: Simple answers first, yeah I have some interest.  I just recently got my degree in animal science, with an emphasis on cattle production and management.  And glad you like the flora so far.

Now, you bring up the question about sheep.  This is a much more complicated issue(at least if they would be anything more than static props) and and would require the help of some of the automata gurus out there, at least to provide some answers about the feasability and necessary process.  Also anybody with any experience with effects, knowledge of how they work and how to edit them could help with this.  I've been looking through the .fsh files in the simcity dats in order to just try to reskin the cows and have found the skins for horses(all three colors and multiple zooms), giraffes, elephants, apes, apes in lab coates, you name it, but so far haven't found what I'm looking for.

The difference the best I can tell is all of those are wild 'fauna' unlike the cows which only appear from the cows effect prop.  Perhaps the .fsh's for it were hard coded in instead of included in the dats.  But I find this unlikely, as I know for a fact that the soccer ball from the soccer effects is in simcity dat 2, as I've modified that file before, and I'm pretty sure the skins for the soccer players themselves were in there as well. 

This may all seem like a digression from sheep, but it brings me back to the point that I need information of how the effects work, where they are controlled from, and how to edit them.  Is it possible to replace the model in one to create sheep?  Can we reskin something of a similair size and shape to achieve the effect?

These are all long term goals, and if anyone has or knows someone who has the know-how to approach these questions, I'm all ears.

Chris

Ennedi

OK, I see that sheep are more complicated and I understand why. So I think I should make a request - maybe any automata guru will read it?  ;)
New Horizons Productions
Berethor - beskhu3epnm - blade2k5 - dmscopio - dedgren - Emilin - Ennedi
jplumbley - moganite - M4346 - nichter85 - papab2000 - Shadow Assassin - Tarkus - wouanagaine

Kitsune

Wow, this is very much reminds of my old "back yard" when I lived in Calgary - Kananaskis  Country. This will be a welcomed addition to the game, have you thought about overpass' for the roaming animals over highways yet? There quite common out there too...
~ NAM Team Member

Chrisadams3997

#26
Kitsune:  We Definitely don't have those in Texas, we try to keep the deer from roaming as much as possible ;), So I'd have to see some pictures.  It could be a possiblity eventually.

Also I realized I totally forgot Ennedi asked about slope tolerance.  It is definitely an important aspect here, as there are few truly flat rural areas, and it really annoys me when someone makes something cool, but it only works on flat ground >:(.  The paths being textures are completly slope tolerant. 

The fence pieces have what I'd refere to as limited slope tolerance. The fence props are all set to 'orient to slope', which makes them follow the ground quite well on gentle slopes.  The straight sections(with exceptions on some 2x1's) are also broken down into 3.2m sections to help out.  As the slope increases in my testing so far, it can cause at first some posts not lining up perfectly so that you end up seeing two where there is usually one, but will eventually cause them to totally separate so that you get gaps.  2x1 curves in the set work well as long as both tiles have generally the same slope as they are one piece generally.  As a general rule as long as you don't have extreme angle I think they'll work well.

I'll actually be interested to see how they fare as yall get to testing them(it's coming I swear ::)) as I have only done some limited experiments on slopes.

As a side note, while 'moving' sheep and such seems a long way off if possible, static props might help ease the pain, we'll see.

Chris


DFire870

Static props could work, especially if the deer were static props, as they tend to just sit there looking at the cars that zoom by. As long as they're not in the middle of the road, that works for me. :P
After a long absence, I'm back! And I will be starting a new MD soon.

Gaston

#29
   This is some of the koolest stuff I have seen.    Un-freakin-beliveable.    I would be happy to be a beta tester for these when you are ready to start testing.     
   I am gonna post a link to ths forum in the SAM forum.    If we could figure out how to use the textures from the gravel drives in SAM ...       
             .... that would be fantastic.
                                   Rural farms connected by gravel tracks.    Very kool indeed.


---Gaston

okay I linked to it in the SAM forum.    ;D
白龍

They say that the memory is the second thing that goes....
...dang , I wish I could remember the first.
WooHoo made Councilman - 05 FEB 07 Yipee made Mayor - 13 MAR 07 Hip Hip Hooray made Governor - 04 AUG 07 Rock On made Senator - 15 MAR 09

Zaphod

#30
QuoteZaphod: lol, we'll see how many people actually get that one.  I'm actually hoping to reskin the maxis cows if I ever find the right .fsh files as the frickin' Holstien's really chap my a.. well we won't go there.  I can actually convert my models to barbed wire pretty easy and plan to, but I have doubts about how well it will look in game, we'll see once I get there.  I'm also looking at a number of things like you've mentioned already, so if you have any source pics on anything you'd like to see just post 'em up in here and I'll get to it.  Anyway, on a side note, just saw your'e from College Station in your profile, you at A&M?(class of '05-WHOOP!-myself, yea, I know, I'm old)

almost, right now I am at Blinn.  I am from the area so yeah &mmm

I think I might end up at Texas State next year.

Quotehave you thought about overpass' for the roaming animals over highways yet? There quite common out there too...

I remember when I was a little kid there was this special "overpass" for livestock out on a farm road outside of Houston, it was FM 2920 I think

It was made out of rusty metal and I don't know if it was just something that a rancher built and had gotten authorization to put over a public highway. But it was kind of cool, like an old bridge that was moved.
War Kittens !?

Crissa

Wow, you have all the parts to make this into draggable draggablepieces ^-^

Mmmm... Will someone do that?  Pretty please? ^-^

-Crissa

Gaston

Okay I was asked to provide a reciprocal link to the SAM forum.    So here it is.  [ linkie ]   If you haven't been there ya'll should definately check it out.


---Gaston
白龍

They say that the memory is the second thing that goes....
...dang , I wish I could remember the first.
WooHoo made Councilman - 05 FEB 07 Yipee made Mayor - 13 MAR 07 Hip Hip Hooray made Governor - 04 AUG 07 Rock On made Senator - 15 MAR 09

IanB

#33
Quote from: Gaston on September 12, 2007, 06:41:14 PM
   This is some of the koolest stuff I have seen.    Un-freakin-beliveable.    I would be happy to be a beta tester for these when you are ready to start testing.     
   I am gonna post a link to ths forum in the SAM forum.    If we could figure out how to use the textures from the gravel drives in SAM ...       
             .... that would be fantastic.
                                   Rural farms connected by gravel tracks.    Very kool indeed.


---Gaston

It's very spooky, I just PM'd jplumbley with a suggestion for doing exactly that today, before I saw this thread... which started today! A more undeveloped and rutted rural track would be a better rural street IMHO than even Jeronij's rural roads mod. I was offering possible help with textures... One of the three road textures I was suggesting was precisely this one, a farm track just in the grass.

Chrisadams, I realise this is just personal preference, but to me the ranch entrances look very wrong with the street stub running off-road. For one thing they create unnecessary street props at the join, and they also don't make sense as no civic highway engineer would waste tarmac on adding a link into someone's private property. They aren't paid to do that... The tracks should link right up to the normal road somehow with a more rural surface than tarmac streets.

I have a question. Since automata are very processor-hungry (eg. the famous seagull problem), and many herds of cows are going to exacerbate this problem, is it possible to integrate this or a few varied cow props into the farm tile itself? Cows and other ruminants don't really do much moving anyway, they just stand/lie around chewing.  ;)  IE., the dairy farm could be a growable farm much like any other, but with a randomised farm tile that would have a transparent texture most of the time and a random cow on it at others, rather them being ploppable props? Clearly there must be some randomisation possible because of the appearance of the sprinkler prop in some of the fields. I also seem to recall from seeing the chain of BSC farm reward dependencies somewhere here that BarbyW mentioned there was no milk production in the chain for the chocolate boutique, as there was no growable dairy farm, so that could be an interesting upgrade...

I realise this wouldn't make huge ranch systems like the ones you are showcasing here likely, but the variety amongst other farms would be more natural for European and non-US agriculture.

flame1396

I hate normal farms in sc4.... boring. repetitive. I can't wait :)
The most astounding and unique aspect of the human race is our fervent application of our ingenuity to kill each other, thus completely defying the near-universally proven fact that the ultimate goal of a member of a species is to ensure the survival of the species.

Diggis

Ian, I think the reason that there is currently a street intersection is because the first lot is transit enabled.  However if JPlumbly decided to take up the challenge, I think we will be able to manage something more like what you are suggesting.

Chris, I am more than keen to give these a test if you are interested. This is a very exciting set, and I have just the place.  I am also willing to create MML's for you lots if you wish.

Meastro444

diggis, if you do that, this project would be even more of an awesome mod.
im speechless!!
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Chrisadams3997

#37
Alright guys, I'm working hard on this, and I ended up having to redo about two hours of work yesterday because the plugins manager decided to give me a whole batch of busted props.  They would show up just fine by themselves, but the prop families I assigned(in the reader afterwards) wouldn't show up at all.  Well I didn't need the individual props, I needed the prop families(it's for the gates, 15 props and three families).  Deleted the prop exemplars and started over and they all worked just fine.  Go figure.

Anyways, enough complaining from me.  There's not much new as I'm just getting everything set in order for the fences and roads, filling in gaps, and whatnots.  I've just got to finish up those prop families, do icons for the new lots, and name all the lots.  So here's a quick shot in the mean time(and see I got the diagonal gates in there ;D)



Replies

Madiera:  thanks, that's certainly my goal

Pfire:  Sim Goober had made animated props based on a number of the ingame animals, though I don't have a clue how.  He might even have made deer, though I don't recall, I'll have to take a look when I get a chance.

Gaston:  It would be cool, but that will be primarily up to them.  The biggest challenge I see with that is that there is only one 'lane' on these, so pathing could be a problem.  At any rate, if they would get to it, it will be a while judging by what they've already got going on.

Zaphod:  ah, San Marcos.  I've got a cousin out there right now.  Went into google maps and followed fm 2920 all the way from Waller to Spring(heh, used to live there when I was young) but didn't see any sign of it.

Crissa:  Like I said to Gaston, totally out of my hands, but if someone wanted to I could make more textures for it.

IanB: I absolutely agree about the intersections, it was just the most simple and direct method to avoid this:


Like  Diggis said, the SAM team could do something about that, but the other option in the mean time is to create a piece with overhanging props to look something like this:


As for the cow automata, I could see a problem on the edges of large cities, but rural areas generally are a lot less taxing.  I've been runing my rural cities with lots of cows in them while testing this with shadows on high(which I would never do in a large city except to take a picture) without any problems, and my computer is definitely not setting any records.

However you reminded me I wanted to check out how that prop was randomized and found a new property to play with.

I'll have to play around with it as I get time to see how it functions, but on on that point, what you've proposed is possible.

The problem with it is the transparent base textures however.  I've already done quite a bit of testing with growing farms with transparent textures, and it works just fine--so long as you don't care about your region view.

Here's the breakdown-there are two(ok, three, but two produce the same results here) ways I'm aware of to produce a transparent base texture.  The older method involves placing a texture, then removing it from the plugins to produce a  'false' base texture.  This method results in the old 'black hole' bug as I like to call it anytime you go into any overlay other than zones(which coincidentally is how you fix it) AND when you save, which is the problem.  You get this:


If you use Jeronij's new method(check the tutorials section if your not familiar with it), this bug doesn't happen as long as there are no overlay textures(my fences won't produce this bug, but the paths do, though it doesn't produce much of an eyesore like entire farms will), but on zoned land, the zoning color stays even after the land developes.  Imagine the above picture, only the black area would be yellow.

The only real work around, unless there is some approach I'm not familiar with, would be to use the false base texture method(first one I mentioned), where the removed texture is kept outside of the plugins folder unless you wanted to get a good region shot, where you would have to replace the texture in the plugins folder, then go through and resave all your cities.  A pain, but could be done.

Alternatively(yea, I know I said only one workaround before, but I just thought of this) we could use the second method and remove the yellow zone color from IR zones, but that would make zoning a nightmare.

Diggis:  Wow you read my mind.  As I already stated on my thread over at ST, I have no intention of releasing this without MML's, so that would extremely cool if you could do 'em.  One more thing I don't have to learn.

And I'll send you a copy of the beta when it's ready.

Just one last thing guys.  I was looking around on google maps and took a couple pictures that looked kind of familiar ::).  Check it out.



rooker1

So you join the site on August 04, 2007 and in @five weeks we are at this point with you.  The fences are going to be an awesome addition to the game.  I think I won't do my farming sectors for my MD until these beauties are released.

&apls &apls &apls

Robin   :thumbsup:
Call me Robin, please.

BarbyW

Do you have an IID range for the prop families? If not let me know and I will allocate one to you. That may be the problem you have had with the prop families not showing up correctly.
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