ChrisAdams3997 Miscellaneous Works

[Chrisadams3997]

Well, figured it was time to grease the wheels for upcoming releases(yea yea, their coming,) as I finally got around to double checking things on my old project and actually making decisions on how I was going to handle it's release.  This is a high school (American) football stadium, along with a pack of smaller fields made to compliment the ingame soccer field for smaller athletic complexes.  There's a good deal to cover here, so hopefully I won't miss anything.

Albriet Stadium

This is a 11x9 lot with similair, though slightly superior stats to the ingame soccer field, intended for use as a high school stadium, though I imagine it could be used for small universities or less-than-pro football teams.  Here's some screen shots:









Note that I've used timed props, with game time occuring to coincide with the ingame professional soccer props and effects, some of which have been used to bring some life to the stadium.  By my recollection(as I haven't looked at the prop files in a while) it should be about 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.  I've created copies(included) of some of the ingame $$ car lot clusters that I've changed the IID's, adjusted the time properties(with some randomization across them over a few hours time coming and going), and created a new prop family for(I've acquired a prop family range at the appropriate topic at ST) such that they show up for the game time.  I managed not to capture it in these photos, but the scoreboard also lights up at night.

Football Pack

This includes 6 different lots to cover a few different possibilities, and just the preferences of the user, as follows:



And Here's the Pics:







As seen in the close up, these have recieved the same treatment as the Albriet Stadium in terms of timed props, except that they coincide with the youth soccer props and thus occur during the day(don't recall the times.)  For this reason I've done no night lights for these lots.  They also don't have any parking lots, thus there are no custom parking clusters in this case.  Ultimately these were modded and lotted to be as similair to the Maxis soccer fields as possible, and they appear(in order of size, by use of incrementally higher plop cost) directly after the Maxis soccer field in the menu.

I'm kinda of the opinion the lots on these could use something more, but they fit in well enough with the Maxis field as they are now.  Any input is welcome however

Additional Notes

Since there are a few props used by both planned releases, right now I have all the props, as well as the car lot clusters, and nosoccerball.dat(discussed shortly) placed in one dependancy .dat for both.  I've done this to prevent one release being required as a dependancy for the other.  Alternatively I could just release each with all the props necessary(there are no other dependancies at present) for that one, as there are only a couple of overlaps.

Since I've used the soccer effects to approximate the action on the field, I've also included an optional mod that would remove the soccer ball from the effect(just changes the alpha map for the appropriate .fsh file) which is the primary reason I lean away from just duplicating the repeated props, besides issues of cleanliness.  Which one would I include that with?  So it seems to make the most sense to me.

I'm in the process of producing the readme's for it, using SC4 tool, but HTML is something I haven't gotten around to learning much of yet, so I might need a little help there .  Otherwise, I think I've got everything ready for yall to look over.

Also, I'd like to thank Travis for his help in starting to get this released(I didn't forget about you ), though I decided to change a few details of packaging.  I kinda got a little chuckle when I looked at the TG candidacy thread just before I came to post this, pure coincidence on the timing, though I can take a guess at where the inspiration for some of those lots came from  .

Chris

[Andreas]

This looks very nice, my only complaint would be that the red of the running track looks awefully bright. Is there any chance that you could tone down the saturation a bit? Also, for the modified Maxis props, put a prefix to the exemplar name, if you haven't done so already, otherwise, lot developers might mix them up with the original props if they didn't empty their plugins folder before creating a new lot. SC4Tool includes some HTML readme templates, feel free to use them.

If you want to edit them, I'd suggest NVU Composer, which is a freeware WYSIWYG HTML editor. Just make sure to check the program's options and disable "Rewrite HTML code" (or whatever it's called), otherwise it might trash the variables for the images etc. (see SC4Tool's tutorial for some information about this topic).

[jplumbley]

Chris, these are very nice lots.  I would have to echo Andreas' complaint about the brightness of the red track, if possible it might be a good idea to tone it down by adding brown to the color.

The Albriet Stadium is well planned out.  I like the snack bar or team house in the top corner of the lot.  The paths around it compliment the lot very well as they are not too rigid to the grid.  The parking areas are well placed for easy access to the bleachers.  And finally the lot isnt over cluttered, it is very well done.

Keep up the good work.  I cant wait to see more and you have my vote.

[Chrisadams3997]

I've tweaked the texture a little bit.  Sorry for no ingame pics, but this field takes well over 2 hours to render, maybe 3, I don't recall.  This zoom 4 preview took almost 10 minutes by itself, so it's best to get things ironed out before rendering.



Here's a couple of source pics to compare it to:





I'm considering lightening it up a bit more still based on those.

A few things to note.  While I was working on this last night, I didn't happen to notice I didn't have any of these fields updated to my newer textures, which is what is seen in this preview render.  At the time I was originally working on all of this I was unaware of the scripting update for bat and all of a sudden started having the .fsh conflict problems that it corrected after having rendered half of the fields or so to the newer textures.  As you can imagine(and some of you have probably experienced) waiting 3 hours for a render only to find out that it's useless is a little frustrating and was part of the reason the project got dropped for a while(besides RL stuff at the time.)  But apparently I got rid of the new renders that did work to get the fields uniform.

The primary difference is in the numbers on the field which are of a more appropriate size, and the inclusion of the arrows next to them.  Also if you look here I've showed the field with the optional soccer markings for a dual purpose field.  As I get time to get all these new ones rendered, I'd like to have prop families for each of the fields in the football pack so that these would appear randomly.

I already renamed the edited car cluster props when I first created them.  All my props, new and altered, begin with ALN, from my ST screen name, and have been named as clearly as possible.

Concerning readme's, I've already produced a basic one for Albriet using SC4 tool, but of course there's tweaking that needs to be done(dependancies list, the link at the bottom, etc.) so thanks andreas for the link to that HTML editor, I'll get to looking at that when I get time.

Chris

[Andreas]

Ah yes, I'd say the new texture will work much better in the game. As far as I know, the BATs always turn out a bit brighter in the game than they are displayed in gmax, so you'll have to do some tweaking anyway. Anyway, apart from the texture issue, I'd say this will be a fine addition to the game. I don't have time to do any testing for others, but if you need some modding advice/checking, I can have a look at the files (this also couts for your rural stuff).

[Chrisadams3997]

While I finish up on the football lots, I'd like to put this in here.  These are four lots, three that place on water, and one for land(ploppable water) to recreate people floating the river.





There are three models for variety, one on each of the water lots, and a prop family on the PW lot.  The prop family on that lot is raised 4 meters to sit on top of Jeronij's transparent ploppable water.

These being eye candy lots, I've made them neutral, here's the stats I've set for all the lots.

Lot size: 1 x 1 tiles
Menu position: Building: Civic,Building: WaterTransit 
Jobs: 
Plop cost: § 1
Bulldoze cost: § 1
Monthly cost: § 0
Park effect: 0 over 0 tiles
Landmark effect: over tiles
Max. Fire Stage: 0
Power consumption: 0 MWh/month
Water consumption: 0 Gallons/month
Air pollution: 0 over 0 tiles
Water pollution: 0 over 0 tiles
Garbage pollution: 0 over 0 tiles

I've attached the files for testing and comment.

Also, what's the best way to make an installer for it?  Thanks

[flame1396]

You'll get on the LEX, no problem. The tubers are a novel idea. Another thing for plop water that I'll download and rarely use (Not too big on creating natural beauty  )

Good luck. Doubt you'll need it.

[BarbyW]

I'll have a look at the lots and PM you. If you would like me to make an installer for you it doesn't take long to do.

[Chrisadams3997]

Thanks Barby.  Making the installer for me is fine for now, though I'd like to know how for future releases as I don't expect you or anyone else to have to do it for me every time .

[BarbyW]

OK I'll post the lots in an installer for our scrutineers and hope to get some feedback quickly.

[Andreas]

Making an installer isn't that hard. When I downloaded the Clickteam Installer for the first time, it didn't take me more than 10 minutes to find out how it works. There's a wizard that will guide you through the process, and once you've created one installer, you can save it as *.iit file, which can serve as a template for the future.

[RippleJet]

I'd like to know how for future releases as I don't expect you or anyone else to have to do it for me every time .

That's a very good point, Chris! Barby is making more than enough installers already at this very moment...

The Clickteam installer can be downloaded here: www.clickteam.com (click Install Creator on the right)

[BarbyW]

I have done the one for the plop float lots but if you like to investigate the links above you should be able to make your own easily enough.

[BarbyW]

The plop float lots are on the LEX.

[capo]

The plop float lots are on the LEX.

I'd hug you if I could, on my way to download them now!

[Chrisadams3997]

Wow, thanks Barby!  that happened quicker than expected.

[Chrisadams3997]

I've always been a little frustrated when making lots by the lack of options with many of the existing parking lot textures, they are generally built to work in linear or rectangular configurations, but are ill-suited to more irregular areas.  With that in mind, I've made some additional textures to supplement the Peg scenic driveway and ADC parking lot textures(which are of course made to match the Peg parking lots.)  The primary elements are the addition of parking to corners and 'T's, as well as the ability to transition freely between seemless parking areas or curbed sections, like the Peg parking areas.  Here are 4 lots, one just using the options available with the Peg overlays, and four using my additional ones, hopefully it will show some of the additional possibilities.





I've made all the pieces in both styles, as well as ADC style parking spaces to mirror the peg ones, so that you can make the exact same configuration in either.  You'll also notice if you look at the top two lots in the second pic that there are two types of corner parking.  I've made quite a few transition pieces to allow flexibility in the appearance of the parking lots--that said, it's impossible to cover all the possibilities, particularly with the corners and 'T's, but this comes a lot closer than we were before.

Here are some pictures showing all the new textures:





I'll be using these on my upcoming Dairy Queen lot, and hopefully some other lot makers will find them as useful as I have.  The file is 475kb, so I can't attach it.  Anyone wanting to look at the files can just PM me their email, or if there is a better way, let me know.  Looking forward to any comments or suggestions.

[Nealos101]

As far as I can see there doesn't appear to be anything particulary wrong with the textures, but the football fields I have a small concern with.

As the pitch has been labelled accordingly, is there by any chance of placing actual American Footballers on the fields for the final lot? Say, as a set of team props to add to the realistic feel of the fields? As much as I would like to help I am not very reliable when it comes to induvidual and unplanned projects, although the idea does seem intreuging...

[Chrisadams3997]

I've got the Rural Culverts (Images) all packaged up and, I think, ready for upload.  Here's the link: http://www.yourfilelink.com/get.php?fid=464707.  All the info on them is in the readme.

Chris

[Rayden]

Nice work Chris, another top class addition to SC4