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Xannepans creations

Started by xannepan, October 05, 2007, 06:52:11 AM

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Should the weather plugin include a version with destructive effects (e.g. associated with tornados and lightning)?

Yes
41 (57.7%)
No
30 (42.3%)

Total Members Voted: 71

Voting closed: January 26, 2013, 06:50:01 AM

noahclem

Fantastic work  &apls &apls  I love Poseidon!

FrankU

Maybe a silly question, but why didn't they give us this in the original game? Why did one of us have to dig into the game ten years after release to find this out?

xannepan

#1502
I am fairly sure pc performance back them must have been a concern :S

In the mean time my experiments to create MMPs for these effects, esp. for the terrain paint brushes are sadly failing :(
I quickly created a matlab script to attach effects to S3D model repg section, but unfortunately only the models appears not the effect :(

Question to all of ya: I have seams between my HD water surface textures... Any idea what's causing it?


NCGAIO

#1503
Quote

KARYBDIS


Posted 29 November 2005 - 01:34 PM
Ah what the heck. Here's how to make your own animations for Models for anyone who's interested.

A model animation consists of 3 parts. The Base anim, the Registation type, and the effect

the Number of frames in the ANIM section of a model must equel the number of transforms in the REGP section if you wish to have an animation.

ANIM sections need not have anything relevant. All you're telling it is Frames Per Second, the type of animation (repeating, one shot etc) and the sections to use for that frame. Since this section doesnt actually animate, the sections per frame should be the same for each frame of the animation. Open your S3d In reader and just adjust the frame count as needed. Make sure all entries are the same as the initial entry created by the BAT or by Simcity4 depending on the object and just leave them that way. You can adjust properties like animation type as you want.

REGP just defines the point at which an animated part moves from or moves at, and has sets of transforms which move/rotate it. In addition it has a name fx_##_name, where the fx defines it as part of the effdirectory, the ## is the number of the effect in the REGP block, and the name is an entry in the Effdir file (Section 13 entry for interested modders). YOU WILL NEED TO TYPE THIS IN MANUALLY IN DATGEN4's HEX EDITOR. I cant emphasize this more. Reader does not show data for this section, and Datgen4's S3D viewer is the only way to see what you've typed. Open the REGP section of the S3D in Datgen and try to follow through with the values. You can see the general idea from the old S3D spec though it didnt cover everything I'm afraid and our new one was always restricted from being handed out. The First 3 32bit numbers show the coordinate that the motion is attached at. and the next 4 32bit numbers show its rotation.

EFFDIR's are more complex. See the spec in the known formats in the R&D section of simtropolis for info on it. You'll have to make S1 entries from scratch. I'm sorry about that but its true. If you DO to it though, you can have things like flying missiles etc.

I'm afraid it doesnt get much simpler than this, but it is possible to do. Good luck if any of you are interested



I'm afraid this is all I can give you for manual typing of REGP (From the original ModdSquad S3D work)

REGP (4 bytes)
DWORD - Size of regp area including header
DWORD - Number of effects in regp area
(Effect):
BYTE - Length of Effect name including the 00 ending byte
Effect Name ( fx_##_effectname )
BYTE - 00 (end effects name)
WORD - number of effects subgroups for this effect
(Effect Subgroup):
DWORD -?
DWORD -?
DWORD -?
DWORD -?
DWORD -?
DWORD -?
DWORD -?
...
...


As to what all the DWORDS at the end mean. Hint Hint. Look at Datgen REGP section for what could possibly take up 7 values.


I posted the entire text because not even remember where he was.

In fact the reader  shows the content RGP with  the Hex tab  as also allows to edit and paste a section (right click) 

Maybe it was useful to consult the relation ( exemplar)  on wiki for your problems and congratulations for changes in the effect of the waterfall ..  in white is  much better than the original!  &apls

suggestion:  think it could also bring back the effect of smoke from the engines as in vanilla SC4  which was excluded in the updates ( optional of course ) sure lovers of railroads would have fun too.


  image rivit -. Show us your... railroads and GLR

NCGAIO

#1504
Quote from: FrankU on November 28, 2013, 08:20:12 AM
Maybe a silly question, but why didn't they give us this in the original game? Why did one of us have to dig into the game ten years after release to find this out?

One of the reasons .... (Or excuses so to speak)

Quote
zenbungle (Nov 19, 2003 6:28:27 PM)

Rain and surface water were recently discovered in the SC4 coding. Is this something that will be "unlocked" in a download or will we have to wait for an expantion pack?

MaxisKevin (Nov 19, 2003 6:28:27 PM)

Often times in development we start on features only to have to cut them later because of time contraints. Surface water is one of those. So there's still some infrastucture in place for that in our code, but no where near a full feature that we could simply "activate".

But lacked the other side of the story that were the techniques employed to make possible the game well executed in median hardware those times --  >:( CTD :angrymore: GRAPHIC BUGS

Quote
by Paul Pedriana - Software Engineer E.A.



"......  Unfortunately for us, video card manufacturers and 3D programming interfaces are designed much more for first-person games than for God-view games such as SimCity. This is the reason SimCity 4 has to do so many tricks to work well. If 3D card and programming interfaces were designed to better support God-view games such as SimCity, we would have the following features (which I won't go into detail explaining):


Scissoring
Depth sprites
Better support for offscreen color and depth surfaces
Much higher video RAM sizes
Viewport viewplane scrolling
Better support for depth offsetting ... "

source:- wayback ( sometimes )


&mmm  - IMO it seems so....    &sly  good times those of the partnership 3dfx & E. A.

Now the funny ... ten years after AMD back to speak at proprietary API for graphics cards (Mantle) and MS includes Direct2D in new windows.


The world really turns a lot of .. meanwhile everyone run to buying  new hardware to testing if they are going the right way

ps: Alex ... sorry  the post out_topic

xannepan

Thx NCGAIO. I am fairly sure my modding of thr S3D is correct. There must be something else wrong, or it is just not possible to have effects show up in MMP plopped S3D.

The steam engine is a good suggestion. If time i'll look into it. As far as I can tell now the REGP of the engine model still includes the smoke... So there must be something else wrong with it.


Indiana Joe

The waterfalls look great...but I'm absolutely stoked for the animated water surface.  The thought had come to my mind long ago, I thought perhaps it would be as simple as overriding the sparkling effect, but I never looked very far into effect modding.  What you've done looks fantastic.   :thumbsup:

xannepan

Thx!
Please be careful with the effect attached a few posts back. There is a bug that causes an increasing numbers of ripples to be created over time. Eventually this will crash your pc. Fix by now, so I'll attach maybe later today a new version for testing.
-Alex

xannepan

#1508
I think I understand the basic mechanism that controls the surface water effect brush I have created some time ago. The effdir dir parameters that determine the brush properties in section 5 basically control the brush in the same way the brush exemplar properties do (to which section 5 refers to). So it seems like duplicated functionallity in this case. This is a good thing, since I have not mapped every parameter in section 5 to a corresponding brush exemplar property. But now there is also no need to further dig in to it. I can simply control the brush properties from the exemplar.

There is a caveat.  For the surface water brushes basically every local valley (your lake to be) within the brush width boundary fills up water. Each time you apply the brush the water level rises. The degree to which it does (water level height) is determined by the brush strength. It will NOT rise beyond the slopes of the valley. If you are fairly sure the valley you have is the only valley within the brush boundaries it is all fine. However, sometimes it is very difficult to see/determine you have a very shallow valley surrounding the valley you intent to fill with water. If that valley is within the brush width boundary the brush will be unforgiving. It will fill that shallow valley with water... and destroy your buildings (ploppables only I think) in that area.

The other side of the coin is that if the valley if wider than the brush size it won't fill at all. So all with all for an 100% safe use of the surface waters in the upcoming poseidon mod there would need to be a perfect match between brush width and valley size, which is impossible to do.

The god mode gives you more control, ie you the brush properties vary per zoom level and you can control them to some degree with the shift and control keys and with ctrl+num.
For effect dit brushes applied to lots I have only one specific set of properties per brush effect that I can define in the effectdir. So best I can do is created several brush lots each one with different properties. Additionally, I have visualized the brush width with circular markers similar to those that appear when you plop a police station (small sideeffect is that the game thinks these lots are police stations and despite their capacity is zero the advisor will sometimes start nagging about road connections).

The video below shows how I first apply a brush with a relatively small width by plopping the effect lot. Plopping multiple times fills up the center valley progressivly, but never beyond the slopes of that center valley. The second brush has a large footprint. Now you see it will fill up surrounding valleys... eventually also the entire map (because it is 100% flat it is considered as a valley).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MbL-5R2FMw&feature=youtu.be
(currently uploading... will that about an hour before available after timestamp of this post)

All in all the surface waters should be applied with extreme care.

For people willing to test and provide feedback you can download an alpha version (surface water, terrain paint, waterfall) here:
http://we.tl/drxM2mltBW

Note that the ripple generator will not create ripples on the jenx surface water. For that I have included a single ripple generator. Plop it mulitple times randomly distributed in your lake.

xannepan

Small side project for Bipin.

Bipin

Thanks a million Xannepan, I really appreciate the gesture!  &apls This will be perfect for my needs. As it's quite large at the base, is the right colour and even has wind effects (yes, really)!



This seems to be when there is little wind and the column of smokes rises vertically. It has the ability to "sway" both left and right quite a bit, as one would expect on a windy day. Beautiful work Xannepan. These will be an excellent addition to my cooling towers.

NCGAIO

#1511
Quote from: xannepan on November 28, 2013, 09:08:45 PM
Thx NCGAIO. I am fairly sure my...... ...........steam engine is a good suggestion. If time i'll look into it. As far as I can tell now the REGP of the engine model still includes the smoke... So there must be something else wrong with it
.



Yes
, but only for the old motor (SteamEngine_11790000) section does not exist for FreightEngine_10AA0000 and despite the fact still be in the string section, if I remember correctly is divided into section 1.

Very annoying to see Effedir the reader, so only your infinite patience to solve. txs


For a bit of light on the water mod - Change in a mod ground "MinSeaLevel -10" "MaxSeaLevel 500"

With this, you can change the Sealevel through "setsealevel" trick play the map ledge below.

Make changes in sea level and save the game without leaving the city and analyze what happens to the mod water at various heights from the ground.

Remember that when you go out to the area and then return to the city, the level again reset to default in the ground mod

You can also disable the display of the terrain texture "DisplayTerrainSurface" to help visualize, but it has the disadvantage error to redraw the buffer, so you have to rotate the view of a shift and others.

I think you can come to some conclusions, but only to say this is unlikely to have any solutions, because apparently this is the way the code interprets the depth between the textures of water and land as a limit.

As for the surface effects appears the same Automatos problem they will always be at the default level (Sealevel indicated tuning ground) ... It seems to be the maximum before raising the level ps:


If possible attention to the effects I mentioned before. txs  :thumbsup:
















nos.17

#1512
Quote from: xannepan on November 30, 2013, 12:19:39 AM
...

For people willing to test and provide feedback you can download an alpha version (surface water, terrain paint, waterfall) here:
http://we.tl/drxM2mltBW

Ok, I have been trying desperately to keep up with and make sense of this (amazing) mod, and decided to to some quick testing of my own. What I came up with could actually be bugs or may be the product of my own ignorance, I'm not sure. Anyways...


---- Texture Brushes/Surface Effects ----
All of the texture brushes and surface effects worked very well.  &apls One suggestion though - maybe decrease the radius of the rock brush slightly because it is more ostentatious than the others. This will help it blend in with other textures in smaller areas too.


---- Water ----
First off the only lot that appeared to do anything was the Surface Water 1. 2 or 3 did not appear to have any visual results for me.  ()what()

I was only to reproduce this once, but when I plopped the Water 1 it made a large sinkhole:


When I used the ground leveler, on the already flat ground, the water completely dissappeared above/around the previous hole:


Next, I repeatedly placed Water 1, 2, and 3 (again seeing only effects from 1) on top of the mesa. Is this how it is supposed to work? All of the ground has a blue tint, acts like water (cannot place buildings etc), but is not like previous ss I have seen where there is actual visual flooding. The mini map says my city is covered with water, but it does not appear as I have expected:


Another little visual oddity? On a little spot of green that (appeared to be) above ground, I used the terrain level tool, only to find out that the ground was already flat (the green spot was not actually above water), and this appeared:


** Edit **
Placing the surface effects & the ground moving seems to make the water show up at the proper height, flooding most (but not all) trees. This pic is only 1/2 flooded:

**
---- End ----

Thats all for now... Anyways, excellent job again overall  :thumbsup:.

xannepan

Thnks for testing! It triggers me to make sure there is a good readme .
The issues with the water are well known limitations I cannot solve. Once the water is plopped, it is permanent but as soon as you use a terrain brush, you erase it. Once that happens the only solution is to bulldoze the water lot(s) save and reload the game. Then the water is gone and you can try again.

Did you read my 30 Nov post with the video? It explains a bit how the water lots work and how they can be applied. I think you need to understand the basics of the mechanism before you can properly apply them.. It is not easy t udnerstand i am affraid, but this is largely unfinished functionallity left in the game by Maxis which I am trying to unlock and repair as good as possible.

I also recommend to use a darker water color mod. For the light original water color I am fairly sure the ripple generators won't be visible. I will include an optional darker water color mod in the poseidon beta version.

Good suggestion of the rock brush :)

-alex




xannepan

Just having some fun: Niagara Falls set


noahclem

Great work Alex  &apls   The lighting on the falls looks great!

nos.17

Quote from: xannepan on December 02, 2013, 10:25:19 PM
Thnks for testing! It triggers me to make sure there is a good readme .
The issues with the water are well known limitations I cannot solve. Once the water is plopped, it is permanent but as soon as you use a terrain brush, you erase it. Once that happens the only solution is to bulldoze the water lot(s) save and reload the game. Then the water is gone and you can try again.

Did you read my 30 Nov post with the video? It explains a bit how the water lots work and how they can be applied. I think you need to understand the basics of the mechanism before you can properly apply them.. It is not easy t udnerstand i am affraid, but this is largely unfinished functionallity left in the game by Maxis which I am trying to unlock and repair as good as possible.

I also recommend to use a darker water color mod. For the light original water color I am fairly sure the ripple generators won't be visible. I will include an optional darker water color mod in the poseidon beta version.

Good suggestion of the rock brush :)

-alex

Yep I'm trying my best. I've read more and I understand more now, so will try to to a little more testing. By the way, I do usually use a darker water mod (by SHK I think), but I just opened a new blank region to test. The ripples are indeed visible, but barely.

weixc812

Oh my God... what do I see? A colorful waterfall!! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Welcome to ALFERRID(UPDATE 5-District C)
And my other pics at SimCityChina:click here

xannepan

#1518
Thx everyone!

Here is a preview of the result of a pebble paint and brown surface water brush lots, combined with a few MMP rocks.


NCGAIO: can you try to be more specific what you want with the heli_closetoground and sparkles_of_prufication effects? I understand the part of the frequency for the heli effect: you want it slower, correct? But what do you mean by restriction to 3x3 tile size.. By the looks of it it already seems to fit a 3x3 tile area. Do you want it bigger or smaller?

-Alex

gn_leugim

OMG..

I can name a list of usefull textures for that.  "$Deal"$

Pebbles
small pebbels
rough sand
dirt (dark, and light)
asphalt
concrete
different stone textures maybe?

Maybe it could be possible to make this is such way, people could easly replace the textures for the ones they would need, like some refereing to their terrain mod (other possibility is to link the terrain mod textures to brushes like these so one can paint rocks where he wants and not only have them where the mod wants) or others as he would want.

Is it possible to link it to external .png files instead of .fsh? that would make constumization way easier then :)

Maybe I am just day dreaming anyway or asking too much  ::) anyway, amazing job you've done!  &apls