SC4 Landscape Designers Studio Development Thread

sithlrd98 · June 20, 2009, 09:05:57 PM

I actually prefer the state that the first one is in....I can see it working better , maybe a little blueish tones mixed in , but if it was available...I'd use it over Pegs brig. mod!

Jayson

Ennedi · June 21, 2009, 05:42:07 AM

When we tested Chris' mods at BSC, some people told us that waves look great on an open sea, but it would be nice to prepare also some water mods with more calm surface for use on lakes, rivers and in harbours. Chris' work with scaling waves is very good, so I decided to make a few water mods with very subtle surface details to add some variety.

Some of you (like Ioan) suggest us to make various color versions of our mods. Of course we will want to make enough surface and color versions to give you a good choice, but I would suggest you to test our first mods in the game and then send your opinions here. The water color is not constant in the city tile, it depends on the ingame Environment Map. This is an additional lighting layer applied by the game to the water surface.
Here you can see it on the large water area (Maxis default water):

The Environment Map lighting pattern is always the same, so we must take into account that every water mod used by us will look brighter near the centre of the map and darker close to it's sides. It is clearly visible on my pictures below. So every water mod gives us some additional color variety. It can be sometimes uncomfortable, for example if we want to have dark water surface near the map centre, but there is always a solution - we need to choose even darker water mod in that case, knowing it will be brightened by an Environment Map. Everything can be done after some trials and errors

1. Light Blue Lake Water Mod. The color is similar to the defalult Maxis one, but the surface look different, especially closer to the city edges.

Z1

Z2

Z3

Z4

Z4 - the next example (you can see how the color changes in various places, please compare this picture with the previous one)

This building is a special version of Murphy's Bar designed for people who want to observe whales while drinking their favourite beer. Those who no longer see the whale are moved to tables in the backyard when they are refreshed by the nice cool sea water

Z5

Z6

2. Blue Lake Water Mod

Z1

Z2

Z3

Z4

Z5

3. Muddy Green Water Mod

Z1

Z2

Z3

Z4

Z5

All water mods showed here are made in HD version, they look good with current game settings, but they will also work with new generation terrain mods.

Adam

Chrisadams3997 · June 21, 2009, 12:49:35 PM

As promised, I'm looking to release each watermod in four colors that will be consistent across all of them, including Ennedi's, to facilitate coordinating them with future TPW. The picture below shows the current proposed colors (brown, green, light blue, and blue) as applied to my first shown watermod (which I'm calling the Brazoria Watermod from here on out).

Chris

Ennedi · June 21, 2009, 01:53:15 PM

Very good choice of colors Chris!

Adam

PS. The next development stage will be beach mods, some surprises are prepared

girlfromverona · June 21, 2009, 06:45:50 PM

Stunning work, guys!

Just wondered if these be available in SD versions as well?

sithlrd98 · June 21, 2009, 08:00:24 PM

Thanks for the explanation on how the lighting is handled on these Adam!(can't wait to see the beach mods....

) Chris, I like all of them and can't wait to get my hands on 'em! Great job to both

!

Jayson

FrankU · June 22, 2009, 01:59:27 AM

Wow, guys! Great work!
I like the subtle waves in all the mods you showed us.
My interest goes to the muddy water mod, because it seems to fit my desires best: I always liked to have a water mod with hardly any transparecy that resembles the real water of the North Sea. Up to now Peg's Brignatine mod was the best I had, but I fear I have to say goodbye to Brigantine now.

The environment map is probably intended to give the impression of the sun reflecting in the water. Especially on high altitudes (zoom 1 and 2) it looks nice to me. I never thought about it that it would also have an effect on colouring in detailed zoom levels...

io_bg · June 22, 2009, 02:58:09 AM

Great job!

(my favourite is the third one)

art128 · June 22, 2009, 03:12:45 AM

Great water colors there Chris, nice work on it. i really love the second one and I think I will use it when it will be released.

Arthur.

Orange_o_ · June 22, 2009, 04:41:29 AM

Fantastic work chris, you made a magnificent work on zoom 1 and 2

... and yes chris is the same texture, but your work is better that mine, thus I am going to abandon this texture and to leave you the priority

Girafe · June 22, 2009, 11:43:11 AM

Nice textures very good work

shoreman905 · June 22, 2009, 12:27:39 PM

To tell the truth, here on the Eastern Shore all four work. It depends on the time of day, and weather conditions as well as depth. I would guess the green is the baseline for this region. And, I am excited about the beach mod as well.

jacqulina · June 25, 2009, 03:59:56 AM

awesome water textures

i have a possible stupid question sorry.about the sky and night backgrounds,can i put one of each in the folder together,sorry if i missed that allready.

Ennedi · June 25, 2009, 02:47:55 PM

Quote from: Orange_o_ on June 22, 2009, 04:41:29 AM
Fantastic work chris, you made a magnificent work on zoom 1 and 2

... and yes chris is the same texture, but your work is better that mine, thus I am going to abandon this texture and to leave you the priority

Thank you Orange_o_! Such situations are possible, we will do the same if you will need it

Quote from: jacqulina on June 25, 2009, 03:59:56 AM
awesome water textures

i have a possible stupid question sorry.about the sky and night backgrounds,can i put one of each in the folder together,sorry if i missed that allready.

Unfortunately no

It is described in the readme, you can have only one sky background texture at a time, it should be installed in the root Maxis/Plugins folder. The sky background is a set of textures, day and night in the game are caused by changing lighting conditions. These are completely different things, independent one from another. You can also see that sky background textures have identical names in each set (Background3D0, ... , Background3D4). It would be impossible to have two sets of textures with identical names in one folder.
Some day backgrounds can look quite interesting during the night, I showed one of them in my MD. You can experiment with them.

Night sky backgrounds are especially useful for MD purposes.

Adam

KoV Liberty · June 25, 2009, 03:14:12 PM

Cool!

jacqulina · June 26, 2009, 01:04:26 AM

thankyou for your help

FrankU · June 29, 2009, 02:40:56 AM

Quote from: Ennedi on June 25, 2009, 02:47:55 PM
Unfortunately no It is described in the readme, you can have only one sky background texture at a time, it should be installed in the root Maxis/Plugins folder. The sky background is a set of textures, day and night in the game are caused by changing lighting conditions. These are completely different things, independent one from another. You can also see that sky background textures have identical names in each set (Background3D0, ... , Background3D4). It would be impossible to have two sets of textures with identical names in one folder.
Some day backgrounds can look quite interesting during the night, I showed one of them in my MD. You can experiment with them. Night sky backgrounds are especially useful for MD purposes.

Adam

I guess that it is possible to put Background files in your plugins that come from different sets: e.g. a starry night Background3D0, a daylight Background3D1 etc. This would result in different backgrounds in different zoom views...
I don't have the game at hand, so can't test the idea.

jacqulina · June 29, 2009, 04:01:57 AM

i did try this out and yes on different zooms it works but only close up zoom for starry nights

FrankU · June 29, 2009, 04:05:37 AM

Sorry?
I don't understand. Do you mean that it only works on close up zooms? Or that it does only work for starry nights?

Ennedi · June 29, 2009, 04:53:37 AM

Of course it is possible to have sky backgrounds from different sets in different zooms, thank you FrankU for helping Jacqulina!
But using backgrounds from various sets can lead to mistakes

Every set is complete ie. it contains PNG files for all zooms, and PNG files have identical names in each set (Background3D0, Background3D1, Background3D2, Background3D3, Background3D4 - 5 textures in total). So looking at the file name you don't know from which set is it, you must open the file in any photo editing program or even in the Windows preview.
Personally I use one whole set at a time, it isn't so much work to replace one set by another one

If somebody wants to see the particular texture (for example starry night No1) in - let's say - Zoom1, he/she must have the Background3D0 from the starry night set in his/her Maxis/Plugins root folder. The same for other zooms

Honestly saying I don't understand Jacqulina's problem, I suggest to check which textures she has in her Maxis/Plugins folder.

Adam