Texture variations with Ilive Reader

[FrankU]

Dear friends,

Somehow I might have overlooked this until now, but here I go. I found something that might be nice to be used.
Smoncrie's Alternative to Prop Families is perhaps a well know technique to make a variation of props on a lot without having to make a prop family with all the fuzz that goes with it. The technique is explained here.
Maxis uses this technique extensively.

I have worked for quite some time with this technique and it works very versatile and when you get the hang of it it is very practical.
But now on textures. I am not able to make my own textures. Probably not because of stupidity but mainly because I just never found time or felt like it.
In the game there are several textures that show a set of four textures that show up randomly when you plop the lot.
But these textures are not very common and mostly they contain four very similar variations of a texture. Like four grasstextures or four plowed farm fields. Nice and useful, but we always like more.... don't we?

Now I thought: is it possible to add several single textures to the LotConfigPropertyLotObjectData in Reader?
And yes. It is! It is not only possible, you can even plop the lot and play with it. As far as I found out there are no CTD issues or something cruel like that. Although there may be some instability that I have not found yet.

The disadvantage is that the texture is not saved like a prop. Once a lot is plopped with a certain random prop (from a variation or a prop family) the same prop shows up after you have left the game and entered it again. With the texture variations this does not work. Every time you open the game again there is a chance of another texture, which makes the possibilities a bit less. But nevertheless: who knows what use we will find for this?

I did some testing.

This is one lot, meaning: one entry in your crammed park menu.


Maybe it's useful for construction lots? Here I added the four construction textures and three prop families.


Or you could make one lot, useful as several small plaza's or parks. Maybe it would be smarter to make one lot with plaza textures and one with park textures. But that is up to everyone of us.


Have fun!
Frank

[gn_leugim]

well, actuality you can create (I have when I made my industrial texture replace mod) "texture families".

It works by adding more than one image on the FSH file. It is easier to do on some FSH editing software like Multifsh

nevertheless, it is a good finding, and maybe useful for a precise control of what you want to see in a given lot, without having to use texture families.   

[Diggis]

The lots with the varying textures I believe have 4 textures in the same FSH file. There is a way to do this, Geoffhaw has done it, but I believe it suffers the same problems you've highlighted above with loading a new city.

Jason and I looked at doing it for the SAM but I don't think it worked on Transit textures.

[FrankU]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I fear it's not so useful. Especially not the precise way.... 

I found out that, similar to what I already have observed in the existing textures with four variations in them: after having plopped the lot and having ran the game for some days (game days! meaning minutes for us) the textures sometimes change to another. Why is that? What is the purpose? What is the reason? Is it possible to switch this off? Does anyone know?
On the other hand: the variation technique also works for overlay textures. They do not change after plopping, but like the base textures they are not saved: when you save the game, exit and then enter again you see another (or maybe the same) texture. It is a random choice everytime you open the game again.
So it might be useful for lots where you have several similar textures that you want to show up randomly, but not for precise plopping of a certain visual quality.

Frank

And a not very closely related question: when I view my Maxis textures in SC4-Pim I see several invisible textures: 0x253e1000 up to 0x25413000. I cannot see them in LotEditor. Does anyone know what these textures are for? In game there is nothing I can see on the lot base.

[gn_leugim]

So it might be useful for lots where you have several similar textures that you want to show up randomly, but not for precise plopping of a certain visual quality.

that's the main purpose of them, to give some nuances to bigger lots or larger patches of the same texture, so they won't tile and repeat them self so much.

And a not very closely related question: when I view my Maxis textures in SC4-Pim I see several invisible textures: 0x253e1000 up to 0x25413000. I cannot see them in LotEditor. Does anyone know what these textures are for? In game there is nothing I can see on the lot base.

not sure. I think they are related textures, as textures may be grouped (via their ids) by wealth. one of the 8 id digits related to the wealth of the texture. if a lot has a given texture, and it is $$$, it will search the texture with the 3 on the 7th digit (or 6th or 5th, not sure XD), for instance the 0x11110030. if the lot loses value and became $$ it will use (if available, always) the 0x11110020. 0 means no wealth specification and is the regular textures you find in most texture packs.

[FrankU]

It's funny that it appears that the textures are chosen anew each time the city is loaded again. When you have a prop family the chosen prop is saved in the cityfile somehow, because this prop will show up again when the city is loaded again. But altough the way the texture is defined, as another rep in the LotCofig etc..., is the same as with props the way it is saved is different. Strange are the ways of Maxis! 

[gn_leugim]

Strange are the ways of Maxis!

only now did you notice such thing? :p

[FrankU]

Strange are the ways of Maxis!

only now did you notice such thing? :p

Oh no! As long as I play this game I wonder what strange things we encounter. And the more we dig into the possibilities of the game I wonder how much better it could have been if the EA/Maxis team would have had a bit more time and a bit more fantasy to implement the possibilities that have been built into it.
But thanks to the community and people like Ilive, the NAM team etc etc etc we do indeed have the possibilities to extent the game furter. It's like digging into a deep an rich deposit of minerals that shows new findings every time you stick the spade into the newly exposed ground.

[gn_leugim]

I couldn't agree more