The FrankU and Nexis CO-OP

[thebagleboy]

Someone has been busy. Impressive work.   

[FrankU]

Fred has sent me the liquid manure set.

I will not bother you with a list of images with all the beautiful props he made. He can do that himself. One thing though: 18 dry manure props and 30 liquid manure props.

I will show you the first four farm lots that now use these silos.

Looerweide 2
With all six variations I have put on the lot.
You see that also the trees and shrubs are different every time.
The haybales will probably be replaced by some kind of haybale prop that Fred is making.


Erve Boxbergen 1
Three of the possible variations.


Hegeman Runderen 2
Two of the endless variations of the lot. You see other prop differencens? The shed? The food silos in front of the large barn?


Willemsen Melkvee 2
The thingy at the left side of the silos tries to look like a silage silo.
Hopefully Fred will make a good prop that will replace this improvisation.


I really like the silos. I hope you do too.

[Jack_wilds]

awesome fun stuff...    

[FrankU]

While working on my farm lots set I always had in mind to use the BSC Maxis farms blocker when I actually start building a city. Because, of course, these Maxis farms don't fit into the picture I am constructing.
I never really felt happy with that solution. And last week I came up with an alternative: a Maxis Override farms set. And that is exactly what I am working at while Fred is struggling with the shadow issues of his undergound manure pits.

So at the moment I am relotting all Maxis Farms. Some of them got alternative building models, because several buildings do not fit into the Dutch Farms set. And I willl replace the Maxis farm fields by my own Farm Fields.
But the names will stay the same, the job counts and other properties will stay the same. And, maybe strange, the queries will not be replaced by my Dutch farms queries. That is mainly because I intend this set to have no extra dependencies over the neccessary ones of the Dutch Farm Fields set.

No images yet..... Just wait a few days... 

[CahosRahneVeloza]

Maxis overrides!?   

What a neat idea 

I can't wait to see those as well as getting your current farms.

BTW, I hope you can also add BSC Tracking on your Farm lots, making them BSC Tracking Enabled (BTE) for Agriculture, so they can contribute to obtaining rewards on the BSC Rewards Chain

[FrankU]

Hi CahosRahneVeloza,

Thanks for the enthousiasm.
And I already did add the BSC tracking. I also added a FrankU tracking, because I intend to make my own Dutch rewards, although that may take a while.

[CahosRahneVeloza]

@FrankU: FrankU Tracking & your own rewards chain 

That'd be fantastic, so take your time, we'll wait patiently. As the saying goes, "Patience is a virtue and rewards are meant for the very patient".

[FrankU]

While I was thinking that Fred fought the shadows of darkness, I was working hard on the following set of Farm Lots.
Like I say in my Profile (since yesterday); never waste a good building exemplar.

So the choice of suppressing the Maxis farm lots by using the BSC Maxis blocker did not feel good. On the other hand: the BSC team was completely right in deciding to release the file, because the Maxis farms hardly fit well in my Dutch Farms Set.

But the better option is: make new lots, that override the Maxis ones. And that is exactly what I did this week.
I made new lots for all 24 Maxis farm lots. They have exactly the same stats, the same sizes and the same TGI's, so they override the Maxis farms.
Don't use this file in a developed region though. I don't know what will happen to the looks of your lots....

Of course I will assign my own farm fields to this set.
And another thing: The dependencies issue. I decided to make this set with only the dependencies that you need already for my Farm Fields set. So no extra dependencies needed. The list is long enough anyway.

But prepare for the list of my final Farms Set! I did warn you already.

And now I am ready to show you my results.

This is the first set of Maxis lots, belonging to building 1Farm3
I disliked the greenhouse, so I replaced it by the MJB one.


This is my version


This is the Maxis 1Farm4
The shed model is OK, and can be called Dutch, so I leave this model.


And mine


Maxis 2Farm5, suggesting it is a Stage 2 farm, but it is a Stage 1.
This is not a Dutch building. If you do a good search, you might find one, but it's far from typical. And as the set of dependencies did not contain a good alternative, I decided to make a small stable set with the Maxis model you see repeated. The horse theme stayed.


And mine, which I renamed to 1Farm5


Maxis 1Farm7
Not very Dutch either, so I replaced it by a group of cranky sheds and barns. A messy yard.


And mine


Stage 2: 1Farm1, hence another naming mistake by Maxis.
Not a Dutch barn either. So a PEG-SPAM one in place.


My renamed 2Farm1


2Farm6 by Maxis
Not very Dutch, so...


And by me
A Simgoober Turkey barn, acting as a chicken farm.


3Farm2, by Maxis
This is a beautiful model, so I kept it.


And my version


Well... what can I say?

Please comment!

[Jack_wilds]

awesome and excellent!...   

will need to study 'em out for any comment      ...

but, it all looks like fun! 

[w_swietwoot]

looks great frank!

[vortext]

Great work, you make re-lotting seem so easy! 

Though on a personal note I don't like that large grey silo structure at all. . In fact one of my first endeavors into modding was to make a custom blocker for those specific lots but I must say your re-lot is much more pleasing. Besides I don't use Maxis farms anyways so it's a moot point really.    

[c.p.]

Your re-lotting, especially of the large gray silo, is great   The problem I've had with the large gray silo, is that it grows too often.  If only one or two were to grow per city, and only on one of these new lots, I think I could really come to like it a lot.

[FrankU]

@ Jack_wilds
Thank you! Waiting will prove to have been worth wile. I hope.

@ w_swietwoot
Thank you too.

@ Vortex
I do like the silo structure in fact. Althoug it is not a farm of course. It would be better to use it in an IM lot, but well, Maxis decided differently. So it is a farm.
It resembles the food silage silos that we can find all over the Dutch countryside, although most of them are cleaner and much smaller.
In fact I am not sure if I would buy the food for my cattle from a firm that has such dark, ugly and dirty silos. Too much risk of dirty food for my dear cows.

Anyway, we deal with the material that is given to us (or sold, in fact, for a modest sum).
Why not use this override? You can always try to talk me into a dedicated version without the silos... Read on and you will find out what possibilities there are.

@ c.p.
Thank you!
In the original game the silo is the only farm that has growth stage 3. The weedy Pedriana Plant is infamous indeed.
As it is the only farm in that stage, a city that allows stage 3 and still has IR demand will be overgrown with silos.
There is a Pedriana Plant blocker somewhere on the STEX. You could use that to avoid the flooding. That is solution 1.
Solution 2 is use CAM or SPAM and add other stage 3, 4 and 5 farms. Then Pedriana is one of the many stage 3 farms. It will grow, but between others. That is the solution I prefer.
I did no modding to the lots or the building exempalrs, so my Pedriana will grow as weedy as the original.

And a first addon to the set is also in the making.
Because Tariel on Simpeg said she liked the original Maxis greenhouse so much I added one lot to my set, featuring this greenhouse.

Here it is:


Also, while testing, I made two images of the farms in game.

A close up


And an overview


Still testing, but nearing the end....

[FrankU]

Aaaand ... ... ... the end! 

The set is ready and can be found on the LEX and on the STEX.

Let me know what you think of it.

Frank

[mave94]

Hurray! Congratulations Frank. I like it very much!

[noahclem]

Great work and congrats on the release    Already picked up my copy 

[Jack_wilds]

got my copy... 

with unwrap and play and then report... 

but it all looks good...

[belfastsocrates]

I've downloaded the override. I'm looking forward to working away on rural Perseus with your fantastic lots and eventually posting pics.

[mrbisonm]

So little time and so many ideas to improve models and textures.................. I am at that specific point now, but.....I guess it all has to stop somewhere.
Everyime  I open gmax, I start teaking and playing around with textures and the models to find something better how they look, and everytime the model looks different and indeed a little better....lol...Heck, I could go on like this for eternity.....Whoa!!!

Here are the latest additions to the silo set. I also have one like this that is partially underground, still needing some good textures and then it's off to FrankU.
So, the silo set is big now, it has all kinds of silos, as a matter of fact, maybe too many, but there are so many different models that exist irl that I can't even find the end of it. I will only keep 25 to 30 of them to include in the package, instead of the 108 that I created.....lol. Loosing my good sense and judgement you think? Well..... maybe......But now I have to make serious decisions which ones to keep......................omg............


Anyways, below is the "drive-thru open air ground silo" we find a lot in Europe from Russia to Spain and Finland to Greece. The first is empty, the second contains green freshly cut corn silage and/or chaff, the third is the same but after fermentation and the last is covered with white plastic, still needing some tires to hold the plastic sheet down.....(now where did I store all my tire models??)

I have promissed myself that I will not make anymore models for the MFP1 and will finish what I have started, otherwise the set will never see the end.

I put the deadline for silos to next sunday. then I will end the shed set (ah no, no more new models, no Sir!) I will just have to make some serious decisions of which to keep there also.

Hope u'll likethese.

Fred

[kelis]

I've lost some updates here...I can see lot of progress here, I really like this project and I can't wait to see it finished !!

Congratulations guys your work is pretty good