Mind Scape

[kimcar]

I wasn' t know that your wife's family was in Chile. Great news if everybody is ok. Take care and we are with you and your wife.

[rooker1]

The Real Life Update....
The last month or so has been very strenuous on myself and my family.
My wife is from Chile and there was several earthquakes that have caused a lot of damage to the cities there.  Most of her family members live there still,  all are okay and most just about have thier lives back together. 
My kids have been very sick passing thier colds back and forth and my wife recently has been in and out of the hospital.




Replies

superb work and fantastic introduction to the CAM and No Maxis mods.

Thanks a lot

Interesting stuff, Robin! This means I've got to reorganize all of my very disorganised plugins

                 -Jordan

Hey Jordan, good to see you in here again.  As I have said before, I have re done my plugin folder for various reasons and being organized is the way to go for sure.  I now also keep a back up, so there will be no re doing my plugins ever again.

Interesting, but I like more variety.  That is just me. Your concept looks good in say early America where the row house was prevalent in the bigger cities. 

I have to agree with you, I like more variety as well, but I also like it to look realistic and when you are in the projects you won't find a lot of variety.   In commercial areas...yes for sure more variety.  And this is the look that I am going for.

A  lot of things to read there, Robin... 
It's a nice experiment you have there, to be honest, I didn't read everything, but I've done a "diagonal" read and I can tell you this is awesome. Also nice pictures you have there my friend, great job, as usual !

Take care,
-Arthur.

Hey Arthur, thanks for stopping by.  A "diagonal" read sounds interesting.  I can only guess that that is what most do when they see a post sooo long.

Very interesting update, I quite like the results you're getting.  I could probably stand to organize my plugins a bit as well, there certainly seems to be a lot of value to it.  It will take me a while to clean my stuff up though!  Also, thanks for drawing attention to that particular no maxis mod, I didn't realize there was one that went to such fine details.

Looking forward to seeing some more!

Organized plugin is the way to go and I'm glad I could point you to the "No Maxis Modd", definately one of my favourite modds out there today.

I like to have a paste of puglins well organized, but I think that I don't have more skill of tidy my mess, on my folder!!! I agree with the others comments, very Interesting update!!!

Organizing your plugins will take some time but even more patience but worth it in the end.  I would almost recommend just starting over, that may actually take less time.

Very well done, Robin. I like your system for getting exactly what you want to grow and the system for organizing your plugins.

Well....as you'll see below the system doesn't work all that well, but I am working on another.   

Hi Robin, this is really a very good tutorial. Thanks for that.
But if I move out the lots that have been growing, isn't it so that the game deletes the models and/or certain props?
I one day tried something similar:
First I let grow a certain lot in large amounts. Made them historical. Then I wanted to grow another kind of rowhouse in the next neighbourhood. I took out lot nr 1 and added lot nr 2.
I expected to see a lot of boxes, but i was ready to live with that for a while, because for the end effect i would put the lot nr1 in again.
But after having opened the game (when lot2 wat put into the plugins) the lots of nr1 were partly empty and I never got the buildings back! I am not sure what I did exactly, it is about two years ago...

Or did you do this trick by growing only Maxis lots in the first place? And replace them with the chosen lots?

Okay.....you are partly right.  When you remove anything from your plugin folder and re enter the game without them you may see brown boxes and even some other problems with the base textures and the model missing, but every time I replaced the Dat file I have gotten everything back as if I had never taken anything out.   I am not too sure why you have encountered something different.

Wow, what a great tutorial. I'm going to keep that plugin folder organization project on the shelf for a rainy day. I wish I had done that in the very beginning when I first started playing the game. I love it but my patience level is somewhat lacking. You've also done a nice job with your CAM introduction.

Take care.

Geoff

Hello Geoff, good to see you in here.  I have shown how I organized my plugins with the hopes that I can encourage those that have messy plugins to fix them but more so for those that may be just starting or for those starting over for waht ever reason.

Whoop, you caught me, Robin. Even though I haven't been lurking a lot recently, I just am making sure not to right now.

That style of growth and plugins organisations is really interesting, this is really a good way to make sure certain BATs can grow. I'll be watching for some more info.

Also, are you testing a new version of the CAM?

Ethan

Hey Ethan....it's really nice to hear from everyone, including my lurkers.  Thanks for taking the time and Yes I am testing the new version of CAM, if you are interesting in doing so as well, I suggest that you drop Tage (Ripplejet) a PM asking if you could help out too.

Interesting update 

Thanks 

Hey Robin,

seems like I missed some things around the forums, and it turns out that Mind Scape isn't an exception. I see you are still as great as I remember when it comes to giving gameplay hints that the whole community may benefit from. Now for the update commentary... That was certainly one of the longer updates, and a VERY informative one. First of all thank you for showing us your plugin folder's organisation. I'll have to try putting all my plugins in this way, because while my organisation of the folder seemed effective with a little amount of plugins, now everything seems to mix-up (As of now, the folder looks like this: Plugins->category->[wealth]; no author, which is the most irritating thing...) Back to the update itself, now... I still can't believe that those residential areas you and Alek King of SC4 built are not plopped. They just always looked to me as unnaturally ideal. And now I know your secret... [insert mad scientist's laughter here] ...and I finally know how to use this No Maxis Mod that BSC prepared properly. In all seriousness, I always put everything from that zip file into my Plugins folder, and then I wonder why nothing wants to grow. Yeah, I'm sometimes stupid like that... I also wanted to say that I just can't wait for your tutorial on commercial zones. They have always been a nightmare for me when it came to growing custom buildings. I never had such problems with industrials, but only because most of the time I could find them all in the Landmark menu. Now I'm making eye-candy cities, but with your tutorials on here, I want to experiment with CAM and growable buildings some more.

That being said, I have to end writing, since I have some growables to experiment with in SC4

Keep up the great work; I can't wait for the next installment in your tutorials series.
Piotr

Great to hear from you, Piotr.  I glad that you have liked the tutorial so far, but I have come across some problems with it and you'll have to read below.  I am working on a different way to end up with a similiar result though.  I hope to hear from you again.

Almost a scientific approach to planning your cities, and it seems that it working very well.

The idea is there but the way I was doing the end result is flawed.  Read below to see waht I mean, athough I think I have figured out a work around. 

Very interesting approch and to complicate for me Seriously if i made a city one of this day i will take a better look at your experiment. Thanks for sharing it

Kimcar, my friend.  Thanks for stopping by.  Sorry if it is too complicated, not my intention, but if I were ever to create a city as good as yours I may loose the last of my patience.   See you next time.....I hope.

Ever had the "make historical" not work?  I have... which stinks, especially when you're making a low-income neighborhood of houses that aren't all that difficult to get to pop up... but that you want to STAY low wealth, so as you add services, they automatically try to become wealthier...?! 

I have.

It sucks.

Yes....this has happened to me as well.  But I can't really say it was because it didn't work, but more likely that I had forgotten to make them "Historical" in the first place.

Hi, Robin!

Unbelievable work you've put into this latest update! Well beyond the scope of my playing ability, my friend--excellent stuff! The amount of work and effort that you've put into your work is just amazing! "Lots of patience," indeed!

Sorry for being a stranger here, too--I do apologize. My work schedule isn't a schedule per se, the days and shifts during the week that I work change so often that I can't really get a regular routine anymore. It's no excuse, though...especially with the extraordinary work going on here!

Take care, my friend, and I hope that all is going well with you and your family!

Dustin

Thanks for the nice commments Dustin.  It was a lot of work and I am still not really finished.  As for being a stranger as you put it....don't worry, I understand.  And the family is doing as well as can be expceted, thanks for asking.

Another great update, and a lovely nice tutorial. Cant wait for the next update. As for the pictures before, the only real complaint I can have is that your buildings are a bit repetitive. Other than that though, everything looks great!

Thanks Nadel,  let's see what I can do over the next few updates to get rid of the repetitiveness in the commercial sectors.

Telephone lines are still dead down there. I'm sure they just haven't been able to contact you yet.
As long as Johana's uncle and family stay out of downtown Concepción, they should be safe.

My uncle is now okay and at home and I thank you for your help. 

Amazing update!
I just remember Electric Light Orchestra song : Telephone Line.
I hope all of your family is ok.

Thanks for your thoughts for my family.

I wasn' t know that your wife's family was in Chile. Great news if everybody is ok. Take care and we are with you and your wife.

Thanks again.





As for the experiment.....I am doing some further testing.  It seems that if you have growable plugins in your folder and you allow them to grow, than take them out, run the game, than save the game and reload the game with these growables again, all tax information is lost for good.  The only way around this that I can see is if you run the game with the least amount of customs in your folder as possible while a city grows and once you have a significant amount done you slowly introduce your custom growables, destroy and rebuild the areas you want.

Or......as you download you use PIM_X to remod each item as one of the four....New York, Chicago, Euro or Houston.  Sounds like a lot of work, right?  It is, but this is what I have done and it has taken a lot of time, but I think it was worth it.  I have used each one for my favourite creator(s) and some have more than one.  For instance I used New York style for marcszar and jestarr.  This has raised my odds of what I wish to grow at any particular time.  The system isn't perfect, but I am a lot closer now than I was before.  As I continue to test this method I will keep you all up to date and how much easier it is to get what you want to grow when ever you want it.

I also have a very important question in right now with a Modd genious.  Let's hope what I am thinking is possible.    I'll fill you all in on this thought next update.

Some Inspiration from our good friend Neofita.  For those of you that haven't had the pleasure of visiting his MD, Pannocja recently....you should!  I would suggest you start from the begining, but if you are lacking the patience for that than you should certainly see these group of pictures!!!  Some of the best scenic pictures I have ever seen. 

Recently I have been intrigued and very inspired with other members picutres of scenic areas that I thought I would give it a try.  I also need some farming communities while I am testing the CAM.  Not my favourite thing to do, creating farming comminities that is, as I think I am not very good at it, but this is my attempt none the less. 
Tell me what you think.
I'm also hoping that Derry and Bernhard (or anyone else for that matter) will some by and tell me some of thier secrets and the best farming downloads.









I hope that I didn't hurt anyone's eyes with these pictures.





Liu Bolin ~ The Invisible Man
This guy paints himself, no kidding.  He uses no trick photography, he just paints himself.  The first picture is my favourite.
Meet the Real Life Invisible Man
Interesting read and great pictures....









How people treat you is their karma, how you react is yours.  ~ Wayne Dyer

Something for everyone to think about while considering why the world is the way it is.



I hope you have enjoyed this update and I look forward to hearing your replies.

Robin 

[Nardo69]

Nice.

A bit swampy, lots of trees...

Some of them seem to have grown out of the water. Either the area is flooded or they are mangrove trees (which look a bit different AFAIK).

I also don't like the SimFox pine trees - unlike his other trees. Maybe you should have used / replace them with some of c.p.s or pegasus; Girafe's wouldn't fit in there IMHO.

My favourite is the second one even though it is zoom level 6 ...

And that invisible man is invisible incredible!

Take care my friend!


Bernhard 

[Nanami]

Neat!

[figui]

woohoo, i made it to the end.
i had to look for almost two years of posts on this md and finally reached the last one posted by 976. 

too much things to comment. hope you understand if i simply write "wonderful work, really inspiring".

and i can't leave this post without congratulating you for the new member in your family (i'm late, i know.. )

mauricio.

pd.: i wonder what happened to the region with gigs of tons of kilometres of seashores.. 

[RickD]

Hi Robin, it has been a loooong time since I commented in your MD (about two and a half years and 50 pages back ). Shame on me.  But I will be around more from now on.

You had some great updates since then and I also like your newest one. The combination of waggons on the freight train looks great.
The nature looks great, too. Good job on the details!
I am just not sure about Simfox's "big round tree". I love to place it in my city's parks. But in natural scenes ... I don't know ... it somehow looks too polished and artificial. But that is only a minor and personal issue.

[art128]

I have to agree with Bernhard, my favorite picture is also the second one. I don't know why. There's just something in it that makes it awesome (even in zoom6 as Bernhard mentioned).
What you did with the trees and flora is really breathtaking, I really like the composition of the nature, greatly done. Only maybe the very bright green trees seems a bit out of place there (the ones that remains in all the pictures.).
The fact that you've taken the pictures with a train passing (the Amtrak or the Canadien National) is a nice touch for the pictures (and the eyes).

Take care,

Arthur.

[canyonjumper]

Beautiful detailing Robin! I must third what Arthur and Bernhard said, that second pic is amazing!

             Your friend,
                            Jordan

[rooker1]

Just a quick pic.....



Robin 

[ecoba]

And that quick pic certainly is a great one. Interesting region you seem to have there as well, Robin.

Ethan 

[Tomas Neto]

Hi Robin, the images of your railroad are pretty impressive!!! Great work my friend!!! 

[canyonjumper]

Interesting Robin! I wanna know what's going in there!

                        -Jordan

[Nexis4Jersey]

I'm eager to see what the next update has enstore.   

[Myself.or.?]

Hi Robin,
tonight I finally decided to start reading your Mind (Scape) and I've got to tell you in all honesty that I don't like it. 

It's just so full of amazing Pics', Comments, Riddles and whatever else that I only made it to page 23 and now it's already 3.42 in the morning.    Shame on you for keeping me awake whole Night. 
And with another 40 pages to go I gues I won't get enough sleep for another 2 or 3 nights. 

Anyway, who needs sleep. Great work all along.  Hope your RL is coming back to normal and quiet.

[rooker1]

I'm back again.....
Everything seems to be going very well for me personally now. 
The family in Chile now has their roof repaired and things are as normal as can be after such a large earth quake.
Nicholas is now 3 years old and his birthday went perfect.  I can't believe how fast time flies.  You know, when my parents said these things I always thought they were crazy and that I would never talk like them, but the older I get, I find that I have similar views and say so many similar things.
I'll be celebrating my birthday along with my wife's next weekend.  Our birthdays are only a few days apart so doing them together was inevitable.  Right after that we need to plan our daughter's first birthday. 
Very busy times, but lots of fun and great excuses to get together with family and friends for BBQs and drinks.

Nice.
A bit swampy, lots of trees...
Some of them seem to have grown out of the water. Either the area is flooded or they are mangrove trees (which look a bit different AFAIK).
I also don't like the SimFox pine trees - unlike his other trees. Maybe you should have used / replace them with some of c.p.s or pegasus; Girafe's wouldn't fit in there IMHO.
My favourite is the second one even though it is zoom level 6 ...
And that invisible man is invisible incredible!
Take care my friend!
Bernhard 

Hello Bernhard,
I trust everything is going well for you, your wife and the Little One.
The Simfox trees are gone now.  I have to agree with you there, I also thought they seemed out of place and belonged better in a comercial district.  As for the trees in the water a bit, I was trying to make it look like the water had rose, but maybe some of them are too far into the water.  If you look around you can also see tree stumps.
I know you and several others don't like close ups like that, but it is a good way to cheat if you don't have very much of the area done.  I forgot how damn long it takes to decorate an area this way and add that I am not very skilled at these methods, I find myslef redoing parts over and over and over again until I find something I am remotely happy with.  I am having fun making some farming rural communities, but it is very time consuming for me. unlike you and a few other professionals that come to mind pretty quickly.

Neat!

ahhhh......Thanks.

woohoo, i made it to the end.
i had to look for almost two years of posts on this md and finally reached the last one posted by 976. 
too much things to comment. hope you understand if i simply write "wonderful work, really inspiring".
and i can't leave this post without congratulating you for the new member in your family (i'm late, i know.. )
mauricio.
pd.: i wonder what happened to the region with gigs of tons of kilometres of seashores.. 

Mauricio,
Really good to hear from you again.  It has been a long time and it's good to know that you are still alive and kicking and willing to to stop by my MD.   Thanks for the compliment.
As for the miles of sea shore, that map is still around and I visit it every once in a while.  Maybe some day I'll come back to it. 

Hi Robin, it has been a loooong time since I commented in your MD (about two and a half years and 50 pages back ). Shame on me.  But I will be around more from now on.
You had some great updates since then and I also like your newest one. The combination of waggons on the freight train looks great.
The nature looks great, too. Good job on the details!
I am just not sure about Simfox's "big round tree". I love to place it in my city's parks. But in natural scenes ... I don't know ... it somehow looks too polished and artificial. But that is only a minor and personal issue.

Hey Rick,
Another one that I haven't heard from in quite some time.  Well it's great to have you here now and to know that you'll be around more often.
Like I said to Bernhard just above, they are now gone and I understand better now where they fit in.   "Too ploished and artificial"......I agree with you and it's obvious that I need more practise with these tyoes of scenes.  Let's just see if I can get better with all this great feed back.

I have to agree with Bernhard, my favorite picture is also the second one. I don't know why. There's just something in it that makes it awesome (even in zoom6 as Bernhard mentioned).
What you did with the trees and flora is really breathtaking, I really like the composition of the nature, greatly done. Only maybe the very bright green trees seems a bit out of place there (the ones that remains in all the pictures.).
The fact that you've taken the pictures with a train passing (the Amtrak or the Canadien National) is a nice touch for the pictures (and the eyes).
Take care,
Arthur.

Hello Arthur,
Thanks for stopping by.  Picture is a nice pic....maybe because the focal point is so obviously in your face and that bridge is perfection, IMO, and I think the angle helps out a lot.  I usually take about twenty or so pics every time I'm ingame and only a few ever get posted.  If I don't think they look any good, they get ditched!  It's all about composition!  And if there is a train track in the pic there needs to be a train on it!

Beautiful detailing Robin! I must third what Arthur and Bernhard said, that second pic is amazing!
             Your friend,
                            Jordan

Jordan,
I am trying my best to make the area look as good as I can get it, but I am still not happy, I think I need more practise.  Thanks for stopping by and the nice compliment.

And that quick pic certainly is a great one. Interesting region you seem to have there as well, Robin.
Ethan 

Ethan,
The map is primarily for CAM 2.0 Testing but and that is the main reason why it is flat.  But than I started thinking that I would give it some character by customizing it myself with some rivers, lakes and that's when I thought maybe I would try my hand again at doing some farming communities.   I'm glad you like what you see so far.

Hi Robin, the images of your railroad are pretty impressive!!! Great work my friend!!! 

Hello Tomas,
Hopefully I can amaze you much more with this update and get a "very impressive".   ;)Thanks for stopping by.

Interesting Robin! I wanna know what's going in there!

                        -Jordan

Jordan again,
I plan to stick with region for a while.....at least until I fill the tiles around the large and finish that large tile with a big dirty downtown city.  So with that said hopefully you can follow along and I'll try to keep posting some region views from time to time.

I'm eager to see what the next update has enstore.   

Hey Corey,
It's always a pleasure to hear from you and I hope you enjoy this update.

Hi Robin,
tonight I finally decided to start reading your Mind (Scape) and I've got to tell you in all honesty that I don't like it. 
It's just so full of amazing Pics', Comments, Riddles and whatever else that I only made it to page 23 and now it's already 3.42 in the morning.    Shame on you for keeping me awake whole Night. 
And with another 40 pages to go I gues I won't get enough sleep for another 2 or 3 nights. 
Anyway, who needs sleep. Great work all along.  Hope your RL is coming back to normal and quiet.

Myself.or.?,
It's great to see a nice face in here and commenting. 
I'm still not too sure if you like my MD or not, but I am sorry to keep you up so late.  Good thing the weekend is coming and you can catch up on your sleep than.

Okay....this is what I have come up with.
I suggest that each and everyone of you re organise your pluggin folder and as you are re down loading everything you send it through PIM_X and set each growable as one of the four tile sets.  What's that?  Some of you are saying that isn't possible.   hmmmmm   Than I'm not sure what to tell you.  I went through my entire plugins and categorized all my growables into one of the four tile sets and I am now having a lot of fun growing exactly what I want.  Between this change and using the BSC Maxis Blocker it works very well.  Every once in a while something does grow that I don't want but that's when you destroy until you do get what you want.  I'll show in an upcoming update the different styles of cities I have now. 

Some pics.....
This is what I have been up to recently.  Tell me what you think no matter how harsh.
(And I know the grid is on.....I forgot to turn it off. )

Above you can see that I was able to get the majority of the population to go to work at the factory.  I am now in the middle of trying to get everyone to work there from this medium size tile.

In the picture above, originally there are 12 men but when it changes, there are 13 men!! Where does the thirteenth man came from?
Warning: This puzzle may drive you crazy and I except no responsiblitiy.

"Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny." 
"Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past."
~ Tryon Edwards 1809 to 1894.


Well that sums it up for this update.  I hope you enjoyed it.


Robin 

[Myself.or.?]

Hi Robin,
glad to hear that your family is doing ok.  Quakes ain't fun at the best of times. We had one over here last year and they are still struggling to get the comunities up and running.
I simply couldn't wait to finish, so I just put in an extra turn of fast-reading. Was well worth the effort, especially since it's still fairly early over here and I might be able to catch up on some pillow-hugging tonight.   

You're not sure if I like your MD? Well, bad news. I really don't like it, I fell utterly in love with it... 

As for the pics, they remind me of the Ruhr area a couple of decades back. Huge factories in the middle of endless rowhouses. Nice one!
Andreas

[TheTeaCat]

Hey Guess who?

Yep its me back at long last 

Well so much has happened since I been gone, where do I start?

Boy am I so glad you took my advice and move out one level at least with your pics - no pixelation wohoo
Now I can see you skills even more clearly.

I must admit I did love your little bit of rural.
Looks real good mate
And then its back to what Robin does best - Dirty Industrial.
(ye Gads whats that I see - is it the dreaded grid??)

But I do admit to finding your last update quite realistic what with the industrial plant surrounded by residences.
Only thing missing is the admin/office building that would be on a site like this.
How about removing the car park closest to the road and replacing it with some office complex?

And don't worry I haven't forgotten about our conversation regarding rural stuff for you  -  just been delayed a little bit on that.

Till the next time

Derry

[RippleJet]

In the picture above, originally there are 12 men but when it changes, there are 13 men!! Where does the thirteenth man came from?
Warning: This puzzle may drive you crazy and I except no responsiblitiy.

12 tall men and 13 short men...
With the total body mass unchanged...

[figui]

^^^

"The mass of an isolated system cannot be changed as a result of processes acting inside the system."
Stated in 1789 by Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794)

mauricio.

[canyonjumper]

Great update Robin! How'd you manage to get everyone to work at the factory? Or are there no neighbouring cities?

                       -Jordan