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Crafting LOTs

Started by greckman, May 27, 2011, 03:21:55 PM

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greckman

Hi everybody, greckman here, although I prefer to be called TC which is short for my other nick, Towncrafter.
For about a year now, I've been making lots in LE. I've relotted Maxis things, and I've also lotted a CSX building. As I'm building a city, and I start thinking "I could really use a pond on a 2x2 lot", I'll go into LE and put a pond on a 2x2 lot. I've also made parking lots, and TC Berms, and retextured riiga's asphalt paths. A TC Berm is used in a slope situation where the slope isn't enough for an embankment wall but I want something that looks nice there.
This pic makes use of the Diagonal TC Berm with Maxis Trees...


My current project is a Street Tollbooth. All I did was change the textures of the Maxis Tollbooth. I also did the same with riiga's RHW-2 tollbooth. I then TE'd the lots for street. And I'm currently in the process of getting all the properties of the lot how I want them.

Here's what I came up with...

TC's Street Tollbooths (Maxis) - vanilla, gravel, and dirt


TC's Street Tollbooths (riiga) - vanilla, dirt, and gravel

Don't know if I'll ever release these because of the tendency for the SAM textures to revert back to vanilla. I already have permission from riiga if I wish to release these.
Anyway, that's all for now. If you wish to see what I've done previously, then please visit Crafting LOTs on CSGforums.
-TC ;D
CLICK to see my MD on SC4D: Towncrafter's World - The Cities and Towns of greckman

greckman

I was playing around in LE today (LE is fun don't you know ;D ) and I as I was making TC's Fire Station v3, an idea struck me to put the fire station on a corner. Thus was born the TC Corner Fire Station. I made a city version using the maxis building, then I made 2 rural versions using Daeley's Rural Fire Station.
Here's how the rural ones came out...

I'm going to work on that some more. I'm not pleased at all with the color of the dirt texture in front of the fire station. And that corner flowerbed seems more suited to the city version. I'll work on that sometime later.

-TC ;D
CLICK to see my MD on SC4D: Towncrafter's World - The Cities and Towns of greckman

greckman

I made this yesterday...

I call it TC's Whatsit 1x1 Filler (the pic has four of them plopped together to show how it can fit together)

That's my first lot with a transparent base and I'll be making more of those.

And then I made this today...

That's the TC Lots Waterwell for Rural Areas. It produces just a tiny bit of water, and it's for the out of the way houses that are too far away to have pipes all the way to them that end up just wasting your water watering the road. This lot is something I've been wanting to make for a couple of months now. I wanted a wishing well type of well, but since I don't BAT, I knew I'd have to find one that someone else made. After I learned how to make a transparent lot yesterday, I figured it was time to make that lot. I searched for a waterwell and discovered Paeng's White Sands Parkway lots. The wishing well is a prop on one of the lots in that lotset. I put it on a transparent base (obviously :P ) and then changed the properties of the lot so it would produce water.

I like the transparent base, and one of the benefits is that the MMP's look real snazzy around the lot. Here's an example using alot of different MMP's...


-TC greckman ;D
CLICK to see my MD on SC4D: Towncrafter's World - The Cities and Towns of greckman

marsh

I need those wells TC.  ;D And any chance of turning that path lot into a full set? ;)

Deionn


greckman

#5
Thanks marsh and Deionn for the compliments on the well.

As I was growing Rendon (yup, that city is all grown which is why I showed a half finished city in my last MD Update), and it got close to being built out on the whole small tile, I still hadn't plopped a police station. It became pretty evident where I wanted to locate the police station. Only thing was, the spot wasn't large enough. So, after Rendon was built out and crime had climbed up to 6 which is pretty high for my cities since I usually provide police for a city pretty early on in its life, it became evident I needed to plop police. Trouble is, the radius of one small police station only covers about one-fourth of a small tile and I didn't want 4 police stations. The Large Police Station didn't cover the whole tile either, but that lot footprint was way too large.
So... what to do... what to do...
Lot Editor to the rescue!  ;D
Before going into lot editor I looked closer at the area I wanted to build the police station. I could put it either on a 2x2+1 plot of land that had trees on it (think 2x3 with one tile missing), or I could demolish a 3x3 Commercial lot. I decided on that odd shaped spot.
So, into LE I went to make a 2x2 lot for the Maxis small police station. I quickly realized that parking plus the building was not going to fit onto a 2x2 lot very successfully. I could've done it, but it would've looked like rubbish.
So... my solution was to get rid of the parking on the 2x2 lot and have just the police station. For parking, I made a 1x1 police parking lot.
Now, the police station could fit on that odd shaped spot of land that was available.
To take care of the problem of the small radius, I adjusted the radius in leprop to cover a small tile from corner to corner plus a little more so it can be plopped almost anywhere on a small tile and still cover the whole tile. (The radius isn't large enough though to plop the police station in any of the corners or edges, but it's pretty large.) I also adjusted the number of dispatches from 2 to 4, and I might increase that to 5 or 6 sometime later, depending on how the 4 dispatches works out. If I had plopped 4 of the default stations there would be 8 dispatches, but I felt that would be too many dispatches for a city of 8,000.

I make my lots just for me, so I make them to fit into the city, which in this case was Maxis, which in my opinion isn't that bad in some cases. I like the Maxis Small Police Station and think they did a good job with that particular building. I did get rid of those horrible Maxis bushes though and put the SG rosebeds on the lot. (They're on the other side and aren't too noticeable in this picture.)

Here's how the police station lot and the police parking lot looks plopped in Rendon...


Until next time...
-TC Greckman ;D
CLICK to see my MD on SC4D: Towncrafter's World - The Cities and Towns of greckman

chester

i love the well, it looks great.

greckman

Thank you everyone for your comments.
Sorry it took me a long time to post again. I didn't post here because I lost interest in SC4 for many months. I played it a few times but only for a few days usually.
Well, I've started to play it again more. And I've tweaked one of the lots I made last year. I never was totally happy with that lot and always wanted to get back to it.

Here's the retweaked TC's Civics Corner Lot - DAE rural fire station...
CLICK to see my MD on SC4D: Towncrafter's World - The Cities and Towns of greckman

jmyers2043

Quote from: greckman on June 17, 2012, 07:35:29 AM
Here's the retweaked TC's Civics Corner Lot - DAE rural fire station...

Looks good. I am curious about your decision to have the fire trucks on a dirt drive and employee parking on paved?

- Jim

Jim Myers  (5th member of SC4 Devotion)

greckman

Thank you for your comment. That helped me remember that had been asked last year when I first made this lot and that I was going to change that.

Here's the lot with a paved place for the firetrucks...
CLICK to see my MD on SC4D: Towncrafter's World - The Cities and Towns of greckman

FrankU

Still no other reactions?

The lot is getting nice. I just think the empty dirt area with the tank could use some rubbish to spice it up. Maybe some empty cans, street dirt, maybe small shrub/weeds. Maybe you move the tank towards the shed and use the rest of the lot for this rubbish. It just doesn't look finished yet.

Frank

Flatron

Why should there be rubbish beside the fire dept? I'd rather expect a freshly mowen lawn there...

FrankU

Ah well,
It's because all of our lots look so nice and clean while reality always shows some empty boxes, lost paper, unwanted weeds, indescribable thingies, left over pallets etc...
But a lawn would be nice too.