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SimCity 4 General Discussion and Tutorials => Tips, Tricks and Tutorials => Questions About Custom Content Creation => Topic started by: gn_leugim on August 26, 2016, 03:14:39 AM

Title: Issue with textures IDs
Post by: gn_leugim on August 26, 2016, 03:14:39 AM
Hello,

So, I've been planing to make a big (huge?) texture set, for a total re-lot of my SC4, Portuguese style. But I think I encountered some issues  :crytissue:

My ID range is f410000 to F417FFFF. So I built a table in excel with the possible ids I can use. When i did so, I take in consideration what I have read in forums and what the SC4tool gives me as possible ids, so I get something like:

0xF4101000
0xF4101005
0xF410100A
0xF4101010
0xF4101015
0xF410101A
0xF4101020
0xF4101025
0xF410102A
0xF4101030
0xF4101035
0xF410103A
0xF4101040
0xF4101045
0xF410104A
0xF4101050

I know that the 4 first digits (F410) are the main ID, the 5th (1) the wealth, the 6th (0) the dilapidation indicator (should be pair), the 7th I found no meaning for it and 8th is the zoom.

The thing is that in a none-wealth test lot, the textures show up properly, while in a low wealth one they dont show up good. either none, or with no alpha, and this cycles as I zoom in and out, or rotate the camera (no pattern found though)

So, is the 7th digit the problem? should I avoid it altogether??  %confuso  %confuso

thanks for the help.

GnL
Title: Re: Issue with textures IDs
Post by: mgb204 on August 26, 2016, 03:42:35 AM
Your problem is the 5 digit being a 1, change that to a 4 and use only 4-F for the fifth digits and you'll be fine.

Basically the wealth indicator is made active whenever a particular group is used, even if that group only has one ID. Therefore it's best to just skip 0-3 altogether to avoid problems.
Title: Re: Issue with textures IDs
Post by: gn_leugim on August 26, 2016, 05:03:05 AM
and what about the 7th digit? I was planning to make them wealth dependent textures (making a set of corresponding low(1) mid(2) and high(3) textures)). Are the 7th and 5th digits somehow incompatible?
Title: Re: Issue with textures IDs
Post by: mgb204 on August 26, 2016, 10:19:26 AM
I think the confusion is because for transit networks the 7th digit is used for wealth, but this doesn't apply to LE textures. It's only the fifth digit you need to worry about, in which case for each preceding four digit "family" i.e F410 you would have up to 4 textures with the fifth digit starting 0, 1, 2 or 3 for the no wealth / $ / $$ / $$ textures (#). Then the remaining three digits can be used for groups of wealth textures.

So the first group of four textures would be 0xF410#000, the next would be 0xF410#005, then 0xF410#00A.
Title: Re: Issue with textures IDs
Post by: cogeo on August 26, 2016, 11:00:36 AM
This behavior (cycling when zooming in-and-out or rotating) is a quite strange. I would say, check the lot with the reader, to see if you have put multiple textures in the same tile - has happened to me in the past. Alternatively, check it with the Lot Editor, eg if deleting the texture leaves it empty, or there is another one under it.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, you can have only one base texture (w/o alpha) in a tile, but multiple overlay textures (w/ alpha). Not sure what happens if the overlay textures are wealth-dependent though.
Title: Re: Issue with textures IDs
Post by: gn_leugim on August 26, 2016, 01:43:05 PM
thanks for the replies:

Quote from: mgb204 on August 26, 2016, 10:19:26 AM
I think the confusion is because for transit networks the 7th digit is used for wealth, but this doesn't apply to LE textures. It's only the fifth digit you need to worry about, in which case for each preceding four digit "family" i.e F410 you would have up to 4 textures with the fifth digit starting 0, 1, 2 or 3 for the no wealth / $ / $$ / $$ textures (#). Then the remaining three digits can be used for groups of wealth textures.

So the first group of four textures would be 0xF410#000, the next would be 0xF410#005, then 0xF410#00A.

do you know then, if I keep away to 0-3 in the 5th digit, can I use the 7th freely?

Quote from: cogeo on August 26, 2016, 11:00:36 AM
This behavior (cycling when zooming in-and-out or rotating) is a quite strange. I would say, check the lot with the reader, to see if you have put multiple textures in the same tile - has happened to me in the past. Alternatively, check it with the Lot Editor, eg if deleting the texture leaves it empty, or there is another one under it.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, you can have only one base texture (w/o alpha) in a tile, but multiple overlay textures (w/ alpha). Not sure what happens if the overlay textures are wealth-dependent though.

I know that in my test lot, I have only used a base texture (unrelated to my set) and then in some tiles one overlay and in some more than one. but that didn't have any effect on the ending.

Let me ask the question in other way. disregarding wealth (hence the 0-3 in the 5th digit), how can i maximize my ID range? because I am planning on making many textures, right now the number is on the 500+ and counting.
Title: Re: Issue with textures IDs
Post by: mgb204 on August 27, 2016, 03:37:07 PM
Quotedo you know then, if I keep away to 0-3 in the 5th digit, can I use the 7th freely?

Absolutely.

QuoteLet me ask the question in other way. disregarding wealth (hence the 0-3 in the 5th digit), how can i maximize my ID range? because I am planning on making many textures, right now the number is on the 500+ and counting.

If you use your first "group" as 0xF410WUUU
(that's W=Wealth (0-3) and U = Unique ID)

That will give you 768 Wealth-Grouped IDs (3,000 textures) or thereabouts. As far as I know, once you've made use of 0-3 for the 5th digit, you can't use 4-F for it, which does cut the number of IDs down a little. So for IDs NOT using wealth groups, I'd start with 0xF4114UUU.

I've attached a zip with two excel sheets. One for the Wealth Groups, the second for non-wealth grouped textures. For the second it starts with 0xF4114UUU textures. Again, that's another 768 unique IDs ready to copy/paste or use. If you run out of those, just run a find/replace operation to switch F4114 to F4115 - now you've another 768 IDs. You can keep doing this until F (5th digit), then you have to start with F4124UUU. Rinse and repeat.
Title: Re: Issue with textures IDs
Post by: gn_leugim on August 27, 2016, 03:58:24 PM
thank you very much for your reply and for your help.

Things are much clearer now. I guess I can still make my texture set with as many textures I was planning  :thumbsup:
I'll be taking your excels to help on mine. also, I guess I'll keep away from wealth. I though it would make thing easier upon lotting, but it does not, so, there is no big point on it.

Again, thank you very much.

GnL