Xannepans creations

[Serkanner]

It never stops to amaze me how many things are still being discovered with this game. 

[Girafe]

Amazing developpment Alex 

For the timing of snow and snowy ground, it could be good to align the timings with seasonal flora. The winter livery starts the 1st december. I think snow could begin few days before (last week of november) 

If you need to test "animations" on powerful pc, feel free to ask 

[NCGAIO]

NCGAIO, Yes you are right! There is a skier in the game, it just moves a bit strange for a snow skiers. But perhaps for a first beta version it's not that bad.

There is more than one model that would serve both for skiers simple as for one "Snowbord Slalom Xtreme" doing the editing of some vertices.

Can you please give me some indication how to import animations in the reader? I have tried and have no clue.

Ok! That would be no problem but which involves your understanding about editing animations on S3D.

I will continue ... wait

Same for the LUA. Can you offer some help/hints how to do it? I really like to make a LUA script (if possible) that generates weather. I seem to remember that there is a moisture property in the game that 'behaves' seasonal (amongst others). Perhaps that would be something that can be used to trigger rain and snowfall and thunderstorms. I am trying to find some inspiration by looking at other effect triggers in the game. The pothole effect and garbage effects are interesting. They seem to be triggered by time and funding properties. So far I haven't found any lua script for that yet...

[Jasoncw]

Super cool stuff you've got going on here!

Weather and seasons are something that don't really affect gameplay much but they change the feel of the game.  The original SimCity (or at least one of the editions of it) had seasons and it added a big sense of realism and time.

[xannepan]

I have hit a fundamental limitation. I was wondering how it is possible that my rain and snow effects would affect the waterstream/fall and fountain effects. It turns out  there must be  a build in limitation to the total number of particles that can be generated in the game. So as soon as I try to spread out the rain/snow flakes over the entire map and increase the number of particles to have an acceptable raindrop/snowflake density, waterwalls and fountains stop from spraying water.

For the experts: the parameter in section 1 refered to in the reader as "high detail" actually means: the number of particles generated when the visual game settings are set to high.

The only way to "solve" it is by trying an approach Lowkee has proposed before, that is using FSH files with multiple drops/flakes. I'll try that now and keep you up to date on progress.


Finally as small correction to my previous post about u1 in section 1

The 4th entry in u1 (xxxxNxxx) represents 4 bits
bit 4: display on/over water
bit 3: display on/over land
bit 2: unknown?
bit 1: refers to something like: spread the effect randomly over the entire map.
so if bit 4 is set to 1 then the hex number for N=8
bit 3=1 is set to 1 then N=4
if both are set to 1 then N=C (ie display both on water and on land)
etc

[noahclem]

Fascinating work with the snow!  I'm a big fan of winter in simcity and would love to have another tool for making nice winter scenes 

[xannepan]

I have hit a hard fundamental problem in the number of particles unfortunately. Using multiple snowflakes or raindrops on a single FSH works, but it's not enough for zoom 4-6, nor for large maps, on which it just looks very bad.

I won't give up yet though. I think it should be possible to create a bit more compact rainshowers that occur randomly distributed on a map, yet with sufficient raindrop /snowflake density.

After a quick start this is turning to be more difficult then expected, as with the planes, as with the animals... Still making new discoveries and puzzle solving is a lot off fun.

[xannepan]

Guys, the rainshower approach actually works! and it looks good. It gradually moves accross the terrain. Now all I need to do is attach some clouds to (above) it. This really solves a huge issue I was running into yesterday. Well probably no updates for the next few days

Merry Christmas to all!

[Girafe]

Really good news Alex!!!

Merry Xmas to you

[whatevermind]

This is excellent news about the weather effects! Keep up the amazing work!

[Lowkee33]

Hi Alex,
  I'm on winter break, so I'm trying to get this editor together.  Have you noticed that Reader doesn't show many of the variables within Section 2?  Have you changed the values of them, and are they what the Wiki says they are?

-Carl

[xannepan]

Yes the spec for sec 2 on the wiki seems to be ok. I am using it for the snow, cloud and plane shadows.

I really need to take some time to update the wiki by what I have learned. (I now have a spec for sec 3, and for u11a,b and the sec indx in sec 12. Also a partial spec for several yet unknown parameters in sec1, esp u1 which is crucial to the behavior of many effects). There is also more to u34 then I initially thought, it can redirect to sec13 with post fix _slave,_terrain,_water or _death.
Anyway, if you need some help before i get to update the wiki, let me know.

By the way: I know somehow the day and night mod(s) modify a PNG but also require the effdir. Do you have any idea how the PNG is linked to the effect dir?

(I am trying to make it dark(er) during a rainshower/thunderstorm, but using terrain shadows or sec3 lighting effects don't look good enough.)

[Lowkee33]

The only difference between Gizmo's Day/Night effect and the Maxis effect is a small tweak to entry 1134 in Section 1.  Day/Night mods typically use the lighting exemplar to change the colors.  SimFox' mod has no effectDir in it.

Right now I'm just plugging away at getting all of the sections to be visible and editable.  Then to try to make isolating effect easy.  The format of the data (Windows Forms DataGridView) is a little precarious.  The program is too easy to crash as well as get too many entries added to an effectDir.  After that I will start putting variable names into a file so that the column headers can be defined at run time (and also edited easily if there is something new figured out).

[jdenm8]

This is just incredible! The rain is fantastic and I love the ripple effects (Which could be very slightly improved through the use of a different texture).

Is there a way to attach a sound through the EffDir? I'm sure the Volcano has sounds and the Lightning Strike certainly does, though they may be more related to the hardcoded disaster properties rather than the effdir.

[xannepan]

Sounds are certainly possible. In fact if I find some time today I will try to get them to work for the rainshowers.

[AngryBirdsFan436]

SO COOL! I have a question: will there be a hurricane effect? Ranging from Tropical storm to Cat 5?

[CasperVg]

I have hit a fundamental limitation. I was wondering how it is possible that my rain and snow effects would affect the waterstream/fall and fountain effects. It turns out  there must be  a build in limitation to the total number of particles that can be generated in the game. So as soon as I try to spread out the rain/snow flakes over the entire map and increase the number of particles to have an acceptable raindrop/snowflake density, waterwalls and fountains stop from spraying water.

For the experts: the parameter in section 1 refered to in the reader as "high detail" actually means: the number of particles generated when the visual game settings are set to high.

<snip>

That seems to be how the game handles it, indeed. However, I don't think the limit isn't that rigid. In fact, "Graphics Rules.sgr", a file (in C:\Program Files\SimCity 4) that defines the graphics options, has a few settings that might be of interest for you.

Code Select Expand

optionGroup $VisualEffects
   option $Low
      property particleDensity       0.25
      property particleScale         2.0
      [b]property maxParticlesTarget    400[/b]
      property particleDamping       0.0
      property particleLODOffset     2    # subtracted from the zoom.
      property effectPriorityLevel   1 
      property useScreenShake        false
      property useScreenFlash        false
     
      property demolishModelThreshold 24

   option $Medium
      property particleDensity       0.5
      property particleScale         2.0
      [b]property maxParticlesTarget    1200[/b]
      property particleDamping       0.0
      property particleLODOffset     0    # subtracted from the zoom.
      property effectPriorityLevel   3
      property useScreenShake        true
      property useScreenFlash        true
   
      property demolishModelThreshold 18

   option $High
      property particleDensity       1
      property particleScale         1
      [b]property maxParticlesTarget    5000[/b]
      property particleDamping       0.0
      property particleLODOffset     0    # subtracted from the zoom.
      property effectPriorityLevel   5
      property useScreenShake        true
      property useScreenFlash        true
   
      property demolishModelThreshold 12
end

I would experiment with these myself, but right now I'm quite busy because of upcoming exams. Keep in mind that the game uses some parameters to choose the High/Medium/Low option though - a computer with a

1.8GHz processor and 500MB RAM is considered "High speed"
1.6GHz processor and 400MB RAM is considered "Medium speed"
any lower than that is "Low speed"
certain graphics cards will default to "Software rendering" (lowest possible settings)

I hope playing around with these settings cures the disappearing effects at least a bit.

EDIT: You might be able to play around with these renderproperties on the fly (without restarting the game every time) using the "renderprop" cheat, that is part of Buggi's ExtraCheatsDLL. For example: renderprop maxParticlesTarget 10000

[xannepan]

Casper, thanks for pointing that out. I already found out that changing the ingame graphics settings affected the effect behaviour. For now, I have found a way of working that still gives good enough results, and has limited effect on performance on large undevelopped maps. I have briefly tested  the effects on the medium map with the maxis large city tutorial. I have average performance without the effects and with the weather effects I experience only a slight additional impact.


I 'll be ready for posting a progress video in the next few days. And maybe a first version for testing early next year.

[NCGAIO]

This thread can help you ... -  Ground Fog


Considerations for manipulating Effdir ... - Effects Dir editor?


The key word about the limitations imposed is "Drawcall" ( at the time of the release of the game of course)

Pinched this discussion are some "explanations" about what was left out. as well as the involvement of the Mod Squad with Maxis that was much more flexible.

simsnetwork.com/news/2003 - chat about simcity

Sorry ... would complete the post on the export of animations and
scripts but I think I deleted the draft. I'll rewrite and send Pm ok!

[xannepan]

Thanks NCGAIO. Looking forward to your PM