On the Stex we all know how to find the old Diagonal Jagged Edges Mod by Pjot. He/she (?) promised to edit the mod for new terrain modds, apart form the original CP terrain modd. I am not aware of any new DJE-modd that is appropriate for other terrain mods. Dit I overlook them or don't they exist?
Pjot thanked JeroniJ for his information, so maybe you could help me out?
I installed the CPT Meadowshire Terrain this week and I cannot delete this anymore. It is just too beautiful, and the old terrain by Maxis looks really boring now.
The modd, though, is quite essential for sunken highways and raised rail or road, so I can't do without it. But, well, you guess already, with the modd installed my terrain looks boring again.
What can I do?
Can someone please look at this! I've been wondering the same thing and would very much appreciate one for the Olympic Terrain mod by c.p. ;D
Pretty please! :)
I agree with M.
huh. i used the Olympic Terrain Mod and the DJEM at the same time and had no problems. if there is no other solution, make the OTM load after the DJEM.
10 days ago I have created a special terrain controller for personal use. It is for C.P's Meadow Shire Terrain, and I have merged Gizmo's DNM and Pjot's DJEM into that. Those 3 Modds change a certain same exemplar. So, if they were installed at same time, can't get fully function of them.
Quote from: dragonshardz on October 16, 2007, 07:52:26 PM
huh. i used the Olympic Terrain Mod and the DJEM at the same time and had no problems. if there is no other solution, make the OTM load after the DJEM.
I think if you take that method, terrain controller will override DJEM. DJEM won't work... &mmm
If there's enough demand, I will start a topic for making special terrain controller, after the U-Rail RTMT project is completed.
well i dunno. i used the DJEM and the OTM together and they were fine. btw, what is the DNM?
DNM stands for Day-Night Mod.
Pjot's Diagonal edges mod only alters one value in the aforemetioned dat. If your using a CP terrain, it'll be called 'CP_(name of terrain mod)PlayTerrainParameters'. The property altered is called 'MaxNormalYforCliff' which pjot set to .85 instead of the default .675(for CP, haven't checked the original Maxis one lately)
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg90.imageshack.us%2Fimg90%2F1705%2Fdiagedgesmodkd7.jpg&hash=4bb1d98509d1bfc319cbfa2f38c9974c1cba1548)
All it does is force the game to show cliffs at much lower hieght changes since the diagonal walls display properly on cliffs. If you've got the reader, all you have to do is open the terrain parameters exemplar you're using and change that one value(and save of course :P).
Note that if you have more than one copy of the terrain parameters exemplar in your plugins(e.i. gizmo's water flora comes with one, so does his DNM as stated above) only the very LAST one loaded will have any effect, so make sure the one you want to use is loaded last(placed in a folder named zzz at the root of your plugins for instance), or delete the others. If you change the value and nothing happens, then another copy of the exemplar is loading after the one you changed ;).
I can look into what Gizmo has changed in his DNM in this exemplar and give more info on how and what values to merge from that one so it'll work with any other ones you'd like to combine it with, but I'm pretty sure he's just adjusted the day and night water colors in it. I'll take a look though.
Edit: Gizmo's Terrain Param exemplar included with the DNM only changes one property, the 'NightWaterColorAdjustment', so it'll only have an impact on how the water looks at night in his mod, but the new values for it are as seen in the screen shot below.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg81.imageshack.us%2Fimg81%2F7656%2Fgizmodnmrf5.jpg&hash=5e9cb0464407baa9bd4e84cc977aba0f0f91f8dc)
Quote from: Chrisadams3997 on October 16, 2007, 10:21:34 PM
Pjot's Diagonal edges mod only alters one value in the aforemetioned dat. If your using a CP terrain, it'll be called 'CP_(name of terrain mod)PlayTerrainParameters'. The property altered is called 'MaxNormalYforCliff' which pjot set to .85 instead of the default .675(for CP, haven't checked the original Maxis one lately)
All it does is force the game to show cliffs at much lower hieght changes since the diagonal walls display properly on cliffs. If you've got the reader, all you have to do is open the terrain parameters exemplar you're using and change that one value(and save of course :P).
Thank you! ;D :thumbsup: I'll try this right away! ;)
Chrisadams, thank you very much indeed!
I have the reader, so altering this one value will be no problem.
But your answer raised a new question: how many plugins can there be that alter this value? And do they affect in any way other properties of the terrain? Like the visual quality of the meadows and slopes?
As stated in my first question I see a much less interesting terrain after having added the DJEM. Indeed I see almost all my slopes as cliffs now, so my mountains are almost completely grey rock. But also my flatlands look less saturated and have a more uninteresting look.
I have installed the waterflora modd (really nice plops). Could this one affect also the terrain? And if it does, do you know in which way?
If I understand you right and don't overlook something, I should alter the MaxNormalYForCliff in the CPT_terrainparameter for the Meadowshire terrain (whatever the excat name is) to a higher number (maybe less than 0.85? I'll experiment), and then, to be sure this one loads last, rename it to ZZZ_etc....
Anyway, I'll try this somewhere this week (not too much time for SC4).
Thanks a lot.
It seems I am a bit late .... ::)
Thanks Chris for your clear explanation :thumbsup:
I did it... and it worked! :thumbsup: ;D
Thanks again! :)
Thank you a lot Chris for this info. I also wondered how it was done exactly, without having a look at the examplar myself. Now I don't need to anymore. :thumbsup:
So M4346 what did you do? Edit the exemplar?
I have a question though: thinking of renaming. I am still not sure: is it the filename, or is it the foldername in which the file is placed, that makes up the order of loading?
FrankU: First off, the terrain param exemplar Gizmo included with his water flora only changes the 'WaterDepthForMaxAlpha' property, which just makes the water more translucent up to a greater depth(changed it from Maxis standard 30 to 90!). While I figure he included that so people wouldn't come running to him saying "help!help! I can't see the water flora", it's pretty extreme for that value, unless you just like seeing the sea bed two miles out from shore &Thk/(.
There are a LOT of things controlled from this exemplar. Most of them will probably never be touched. Some of them I possibly recall seeing mods for are the max elevation on a map, the elevation of sea level, the way the game imports greyscale bitmaps as a map, and way it deals with auto edge reconcilliations. Any modds for those things will include this exemplar, but they generally only will change one or two of the properties.
CP only used it(at least for the Columbus terrain) to modify Max elevation(from 2500 to 2383), a slight tweak to map importing(one less iteration for wind erosion), the Max width and hight for beaches, and some tweaking to the water transparency. As far as I can tell, there is nothing in this exemplar controlling how the terrain textures will show, at least nothing like what you're describing. CP also included in the same dat an exemplar that impacts how the textures blend with each other, so if that got deleted(it's in the same 'CP_PlayTerrainParameters' file) perhaps it could cause what you described.
Also, the Maxis default 'MaxNormalYforCliff' is .5, CP used .675--so it's already increased some--, and Pjot's uses .85, just for reference.
Also, and someone correct me if I'm wrong here :P, but it's been my experience that folders load after files in the root plugins folder(top level), the file just being named 'zzz_' might not work, I'd place it in a folder in the root of the plugins folder that starts with 'zzz_' to be sure.
Chrisadams, thanks for your elaborate answers.
And although I am afraid this discussions will become too technical for me, I still have a question now.
You say that e.g. the waterflora mod changes one value. Ok. I understand that. So this one value overrides the Maxis-value, but the mod contains also all the default values by Maxis. Which means that the game uses all the default values (except one), because the values in the waterflora mod are the same as in the Maxis file.
I have the feeling that the game uses the file that has been loaded as last one. And it uses all the values in this file.
Again; say there are two mod files. First: the game loads the Maxis-values... Then it loads the first mod, let's say the waterflora mod. In this mod we see a different value for water transparency. All the other values are identical, so overwriting doesn't change anything. Then the second modfile is loaded. It contains the default Maxis-value for water transparency, but contains a different value for MaxNormalYforCliff. Then, I think, all the values in this file are being written to memory, which means that the water transparency is set back to maxis-default, but the MaxNormalYforCliff is altered.
This should mean that if I like to change more values in this exemplar, I should use one mod-file with all the changes in it and then make sure it will load last.
Correct or not?
Or is it completely different and does the game only read the altered value(s) form the plugin-files and is it then possible to alter all values by making separate plugins, each for one or more values? So: one for water transparency, one for MaxNormalYforCliff, one for whatever I like.... etc.?
The colors of my landscape:
I did not have time today to experiment, but I surely will one of these days.
But for one I am sure: I did not delete the file. So there must be something in the DJEM file that alters the values. Maybe because of the extreme value for MaxNormalYforCliff that even the flat squares are affected and show a kind of mix of cliff textures and meadow textures, which comes out as less saturated meadows. That's my theory.
Do I understand the loading order:
1. Maxis files (in Program Files/Simcity 4).
2. Files in the root of the plugin directory, in alphabetical order.
3. Folders in alphabetical order, and the files within these folders also in alphabetical order: all files in the AAA_ folder (first file AAA*, second file AAB* etc), then all files in the AAB_ folder etc. untill folder ZZZ_.
Yes, this is the exact loading order, and yes, only the exemplar file that is loaded last will have an effect on the game. Each exemplar file might only have one property that has been changed, but the exemplar file is still used as a whole - so you have to copy all properties that you want to be changed into the same exemplar file (and delete the other copies, since they aren't used anyway). This is exactly the same situation as with the NAM (or better: the NAM Controller), which holds all transit-related settings, and which has to be updated constantly whenever new puzzle pieces etc. are released.
Chrisadams3997 and Andreas,
Thanks for your help.
So, yesterday I played around with what you taught me here. Especially thanks for the hint about Gizmo's Waterflora mod, because it was this file that confused my setup. Because of the name it was loaded after my CPT_Meadowshire_terrain mod, so the effects were out of order.
The conclusion after about two hours of moving, removing and renaming: I did not need the DJEM by Pjot anymore (thanks though to him that he made it in the first place), so I deleted it. I put the Waterflora mod in a directory called AAA_Waterflora, so it would be loaded first. Then I edited the CPT_Meadowshire_terrain mod and found out that the jagged edges disappear when the MaxNormalYforCliff is set to 0,73. Problem solved.
In the meantime I discovered something I never heard about before. It concerns the coloring of the terrain.
In an earlier post I alredy mentioned that the saturation of my terrain was much less after installing the DJEM.
Well, in short: the MaxNormalYforCliff does also have an effect on the coloring and saturation of the terrain.
- In my first set up of plugins the waterflora mod was loaded last. It has the MaxNormalYforCliff set to 0,50, and the meadows were very saturated, and there were hardly any cliffs on the mountains.
- Then I installed the DJEM, with the MaxNormalYforCliff to 0,85. The saturation was low, even on flat terrain, and I had a lot of rocky terrain.
- In the end I deleted the DJEM completely and edited only the MaxNormalYforCliff in the CPT_terrain mod. The higher I set it, the less saturated the meadows were and the more rocky terrain there was.
After rethinking this all it is quite obvious: the MaxNormalYforCliff has an effect on the amount of tiles that are considered as cliffs. Higher values give more cliffs. Also, and this is maybe new, I think that all terrain tiles are a mix between several textures and this mix of textures is also affected by the MaxNormalYforCliff.
The higher the MaxNormalYforCliff, the higher the effect of the cliff texture.
Which means that even in the flatter areas the cliff texture has an effect. And if you mix a saturated meadow texture with a grey cliff texture you see a less saturated meadow terrain. Well, I guess I'll have to live with it.
Sorry, but yesterday when I found this out I made a lot of pictures to show the effect, but the computer I am working on now is mixed up and doesn't recognize my USB-stick. Maybe I can show them if you are interested.
Would this maybe be something for a tutorial: "setting up your own Diagonal Jagged Edges Mod"?
How, that's definitely an interesting effect I would have never expected. I would like to see the pictures, and I might do some experimenting myself :). There are situations where people might actually want the cp terrains more or less saturated, though it'd certainly be better if it weren't controlled by another independantly important variable.
As for a tutorial, it wouldn't be hard to do. Perhaps after I know more about this present discovery I'll write one.
The terrain textures are appplied depending on the height and moisture of the level. It is defined this way in every terrain controller file. If the terrain elevation change ( this is our case ) the terrain textures are affected.
However, I would not use the JEM intesively in irregular/hilly areas. It will break your landscape. It should be preferably used in flat ( or the more flat possible) areas.
Well, I did some experiments and though I thought it would be quite straightforward I found some weird things. Maybe I am doing something wrong....
To begin with: I wanted to use the DJEM in order to make raised and sunken roads and rail. For this I use the Ground Lifter and Hole Digger by Smoncrie. Without the DJEM they look ugly, at least when you want to use Jeronij's Diagonal Walls, which I do.
So, for me it's not an option to use the DJEM only in flat areas.
For my experiment I used the values MaxNormalYforCliff = 0,50 (Maxis Default) and 0,73, because I thought that this value is right to do the trick.
The influence of the value on the overall view. You can clearly see the difference.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg100.imageshack.us%2Fimg100%2F65%2Fmaxy05totalviewaf9.jpg&hash=02340c0de62bf99628027ca8e914aed3182859b1)
MaxY = 0,5
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg145.imageshack.us%2Fimg145%2F9749%2Fmaxy073totalviewln9.jpg&hash=40a601fee33a596660fbbe37e48f19e8991515e8)
MaxY = 0,73
Then I made some raised roads.
I set the value MaxY to 0,5 and built the road and covered it with the walls.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg132.imageshack.us%2Fimg132%2F5461%2Fmax05detailfc9.jpg&hash=4c97d4fec46e718f3164bc7781e24a0ad0f5ee59)
You can see the jagged edges one one side. But on the other side everything look OK. Why that it? Beats me...
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg91.imageshack.us%2Fimg91%2F5367%2Fmaxy073detailpp9.jpg&hash=69c3e22aebdc6e85562a5a05dd829bea49660967)
Then I changed MaxY to 0,73. You can see, everything is allright now. Also watch the difference in saturation and the amount of cliff-textures.
Without showing all the pictures, I found out that it seems to matter what the MaxY setting is on the moment you do the landscaping. Because first I made the raised roads when MaxY was 0,73 and when I then set it to MaxY = 0,50 everything still looked allright, almost..... Don't know why....
As a last small detail I found out that with MaxY = 0,73 the walls look OK, but the shrubs are floating in the air....
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg141.imageshack.us%2Fimg141%2F8451%2Fmaxy073flyingshrubsab0.jpg&hash=756251f0e4eb2f87020253608eddd69cd2069025)
Well, if anybody can help me further....
Have you inspected the original Olympic and Maxis versions of the mod to see if it has the same effect? I'll have a look at it too though, but I can't and won't guarantee anything. &mmm
No, sorry, I haven't. But I can assure you: the only thing I edited was the MaxNormalYforCliff value.
I was quite surprised and it only stresses the meaning of the saying: each answer raises new questions.
Well, as for the change in saturation, I think your eyes are playing a trick on you here. What you're seeing is the bleed over from the cliff textures where they blend with the next tile, but if you look at an area without any cliffs in it in either version of the mod, you'll find that the saturation is all the same.
The reason that without the DJEM, only one side messes up has to do with the way slopes are handled. Any tile that is not flat is composed of two planes which are split from one corner to the other diagonally across the tile, which leaves two possible ways it can be split, bottom left to top right, or vice versa. In order for the diagonal walls to appear correctly, this line splitting the two planes has to run in the same direction as the wall, where the bottom of the wall texture rides right along that split.
For any non-cliff slope, they all split in the same direction. In the case of your pics below that's bottom left to top right. That causes the line to split textures on one side, while the other is drawn appropriately. Cliff tiles always split perpendicular to the slope on the other hand, allowing them to display walls properly.
Unfortunately forcing the cliffs is the only way known at present to fix the wall textures, which means there isn't much of a way around your predicement. The only thing I can see is to perhaps change the cliff texture to something less disruptive for your terrain, perhaps to a green grassy texture of some kind, so that it doesn't actually look like a cliff. Of course this means that you can't have a cliff if you actually wanted it, and the areas covered by the cliff texture will still lack much of the variation that would exist without the cliffs there.
Naturally, as you know since you've been playing with the values, the lower the MaxY value you can get away with and still fix the walls, the better off the rest of the landscape will fare. Perhaps you could use a greater hight change for your raised and lowered networks to allow for a lower MaxY to still fix it, though I realize that has it's own problems with the appearance of the network and connectivity since most props for such networks are built for a 15 meter hight &mmm.
Chris, thanks.
I have seen the bleeding off effect. Sure this is part of the changes. But what I found while experimenting is that also the colours changed on terrain further off the location I showed. Even on completely flat ground. But I have some ideas about the reasons. One I gave already in an earlier post: the mixture between grey clifftextures and green meadowtextures. Afterwards I realised that the elevation of the terrain must also be a factor in the mixture: I am guessing, but are almost sure that higher terrain will have more cliff or rock texture, and thus less saturation. In my overviews you see that the higher the MaxNormalYforCliff is, the higher is the amount of rock and cliff textures.
In my experiment I first tried to find the lowest MaxNormalYforCliff that can do the trick of DJEM. This first experiment I did on completely flat terrain almost on sealevel. And here I found 0,73 as useful value. PJOT had 0,85 as value, maybe because he found that in some situations lower values simpy don't work. In other words: the higher values will force the squares to split in the desired way. So apparently 0,73 just isn't enough.
And the saturation question: maybe I just have to live with it. It is not really an option for me to edit the cliff textures. Maybe I just stop using elevated and sunken roads and rail?
And your last point: I did also some experiment with 7 meters high walls: first raised road (15m) and then sunken rail (8m). The cliff texture didn't show, so it looked much greener, but the splitting of the squares did not look any different. Although I did not experiment too intensively...
So conlusion:
1. To solve all the jagged edges I suppose 0,73 is not enough.
2. If I want to fix the edges I have to live with a much more cliffy and rocky landscape.
3. Someone could feel challenged and make a terrain mod that has much less cliffs and rocks....
Well, you know, these discussions are very educative for me and I thank everyone for her and his answers and support. Also: I would like to experiment with this stuff, but have to take in account that I have not much time. Effectively I have maybe about 6 to 8 hours a week to play the game. The forum I can visit on quiet hours at the office... So you will understand that in these limited hours I sometimes just want to work on my region.
Quote from: FrankU on October 25, 2007, 04:11:39 AM
So conlusion:
1. To solve all the jagged edges I suppose 0,73 is not enough.
2. If I want to fix the edges I have to live with a much more cliffy and rocky landscape.
3. Someone could feel challenged and make a terrain mod that has much less cliffs and rocks....
Hello frankU,
1 and 2 are ok, unfortunately.... ::)
3 it is not possible, because only one texture is used for all the cliffs in the game....unfortunately again ::)
But I hope you can find a workaroud to make the walls work always ;)
Btw, dont forget that when the seasons change in game, the terrain textures ( not the cliff ones) do change. In summer you should have more dry terrain textures, and in winter more moistured ones.... .depends on how the mod is designed... the terrain textures are organized depending the height first, and the form dry to wet....if you terraform your terrain, you make a hill or a mountain, usually the parts in the shadow will have more moistured textures that the part exposed to the sun. I hope this helps to understand how the terrain textures work ;)
Higher terrain will use different textures with or without cliffs, as the game assigns textures(other than cliffs and beaches) by the elevation range and moisture/proximity to water of a given tile, although how they change is dependant on what terrain mod your using.
What did suprise me is that there is a saturation change associated with the MaxY property, even away from cliffs. Without going into too many details of my sampling procedure, I took various selections of areas of terrain in your two pictures that were far enough away from cliffs to avoid any bleed over and compared their histograms, finding typically anywhere from 5 to 7% drops in saturation in such areas. I also used the sea in the pics as a control and found no saturation difference, which initially indicates that the difference is not a result overall saturation differences between the pictures through editing(resizing, etc.) of the pictures, and that only the land was affected.
However, given the fact that I had to check it in an image editing program to see if the difference really existed, I doubt most people will notice much ;), the over abundance of cliffs really is the larger problem visually, but there's no way around that either.
Also, in order to reduce the necessary MaxY value, you'd have to increase the hight change in your elevated and sunken networks(to 20m for instance) rather than lower it, as the point is to make it easier to get cliffs on the edges of those networks.
Finally, you can replace the cliff texture without changing the rest of the terrain mod. Just look around at the available cliff mods(Peg's for instance) and make sure that which one you want to use loads last.
Thanks, Chris and Jeroni, both of you.
I really had the impression that I could see clear differences in colour and saturation. Maybe it's good to experiment further on this.
Another thing: all pictures are taken on the same SC4 day: the game was paused somewhere in january.
Anyway, I think I will just take it as it comes and try to live with it.
Pity though, because especially the "cliffs" at the raised roads and rails would also be beautiful as green areas in my cities. But now they are rock and I think I need to cover them with walls or parks.
And Jeroni, what about your floating shrubs?
Quote from: FrankU on October 29, 2007, 02:28:45 AM
And Jeroni, what about your floating shrubs?
()what() ...
oh my bad memory.... what are we talking about ?¿ ::)
Take a look at my last picture: the detailed one. You see the wall textures are flattened against the cliffs up to the road. But if you take a closer look at the nearest corner you can see that the round shrubs are floating in the air. If my eyes don't deceive me they follow the shape that the cliffs would have if the MaxNormalYforCliff had been the lower Maxis-standard value (= 0,50).
So somehow it appears that the landscape and the attached textures are affected by this famous MaxNormalYforCliff, but that the shrubs are not!
Well, those are Maxis shrubs, so there is not much that I can do about it atm ::) . It seems the props "sit" on the real terrain, regardless of what we think we see $%Grinno$% ¡¡¡
Yes indeed, so that raises the question: what is the real terrain? ()what()
I hate to bump an old topic from the depths but I think there is renewed intrest in this and well Im trying to piece together in how to fix this myself so FrankU have you come to any conclusion on the effects of Diagonal Jagged Edges at all and why the maxis props float?
Pat, thanks for the interest.
But no.... time, time, time.....
RL has its demands...
So, in short: no I did not experiment further.
I decided to edit the MaxNormalYforCliff in my terrain mod and go on play the game.
The shrubs still float in my cities... My sims don't complain, so I leave it that way.
Ahh OK thank you FrankU, I do thank you for your hard work that you did put into the information at least I have a starting ground.... bad pun I know....
Pardon my butting in but when I opened the CP Terrain Meadow DAT I found that the MaxNormalYForCliff had a value of .65 and not .85. Does this mean I have a later version? I am about to change it to .73 as suggested but I am now wondering if that will take care of ALL jagged edges? Or did I misunderstand something (again?).
Nope Handson I think you are understanding it just right as thats what I belive as well from reading here...
Quote from: Pat on April 12, 2008, 02:21:05 PM
Nope Handson I think you are understanding it just right as thats what I belive as well from reading here...
Unfortunately, it seems I must have misunderstood something because I did the dirty deed but the "jaggies" annoy me as ever..so the quest for the ultimate no-jag mod remains..
so it didnt work for the Terrian Meadow??? Hmm I wonder if something else is missing then? I have the Meadow as well and I will try it out myself later when I get off work...
All right then.
As far as I know this is it:
Original Maxis is 0,5
Pjot's DJEM is 0,85
While I was experimenting I tried to find a value that is as low as possible to do the trick. I did this, because I found out that the value also affects the saturation of the terrain.
I my case 0,73 seemed to do the trick. But afterwards I found out it does not.
Now I use Pjot's value: 0,85.
HandsOn: think of other files that edit the same exemplar. I advise you to put the Meadowshire modd into a directory that wil be loaded as one of the last. A directory with a name like ZZZ_Meadowshire.
E.g. Gizmo's waterflora mod also edits these values. If this modd is loaded after Medaowshire, your edits will be of no use.
Hope all is clear now?
&apls - you're absolutely right!! I did this last night as part of my overall cleanup of the plug-in mess (1.5gb and rising) and this did indeed change the look of things. But as you said .73 seems not enough, so I'll try .85.
Now I wonder if this will in anyway affect such stuff as bridges over sunken highways - because try as I might, I cannot get these to be level, hole digger or not. So could it be..
And FrankU - did we not once talk about crashes resultinbg from zooming?? If we did, I found the solution - it really works - here:SC4D Help Section (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=2033.0)
I've personally taken care of the cliff-problem by replacing the rocktextures that came with Meadowshire Terrain Cliff.dat, by some of the grassy textures from CPT's main texture packs. With this, temporary, solution, cliffs do visually not appear. Problem is, they never appear with this technique.
::) Actually, I now have to admit (ssshh - don't tell anyone) that I misunderstood this entire issue: the edges and rockies don't concern me at all: I meant the zig-zag along road and rail curves: that's what I need to get rid of! Think I whould have phrased this better..
The Terrain Exemplar has no bearing on the networks having the "stair-stepped" look on the diagonals. Since SC4 is a grid-based game, there will always be that issue.
Somewhere on the STEX, I remember seeing a sidewalk set of lots that was designed to fit into the spaces on diagonal roads, giving the appearance of a straight diagonal edge. The lots had a diagonal overlay that matched the grass texture of the Maxis parks.
Found it: Urban Beautification Pack Volume 2: http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=16017 (http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=16017). It requires a few dependencies, but it visually eliminates the "stair-step" look on the diagonal roadways.
-Swamper
Thanks, Swamper77. And since I have your absolutely divided attention, let me get back to something discussed a while ago. The famed street-side mod. I believe you had one out that very neatly gave dirt sides to undeveloped and farm areas, and normal sidewalks to the rest. I am sure I had that installed. Unfortunately, latly updates, NAM, and Euro Textures, have messed me up a bit, and I think I lost it. Where can I find it - if it still exists (the diagonal add-on does not work for me because it turns everything into dirt sidewalks).
It could well be that I've messed it all up myself - in fact, lets assume that. I do need some advice here.. &mmm
Thanks
I did have such a mod, and it worked by using textures based on wealth levels and zones. However, there were numerous bugs with it and the site that held the files deleted it while I was absent from that community. I will see about getting the bugs fixed and getting it re-released to this site instead.
The mod was my "Suburban Roads" mod. Basically, I added new graphics of the roads, streets, oneway roads, and avenues that appeared in specific areas. In this case, they appeared near farms/landfills and not anywhere else in you cities. It was created mainly to keep the dirt shoulders in farming/landfill areas while using the mod that removes the dirt sidewalk image from underneath the rails. The dirt shoulders for farming/landfill areas were added to the roadway graphics themselves, so they were unaffected by "No-Dirt" mods that replaced the dirt sidewalk image with an invisible one.
It only worked on roadway tiles that followed the grid, not the diagonals. It also used images copied from PEG's MTP roadway mods, so I will have to create a new dirt image to avoid copyright issues with his files. Since there are 1000's of images for the roadways, it will take a long time to complete, which is why I gave up on finishing it. Not to mention that the shoulders would look a little odd on the diagonals since they would not fill the tiles completely.
-Swamper
That's really a pity :'( - I can nowadays imagine the workload, and I've just begun looking (sheepishly) into the modding issue. So' ll try to find the old one, surely it is in one of my numerous archives (never throw anything away - still have MS Windows Version 1.1!). Maybe someday you complete it - I'll be the first to download it. And I am not worried about diagonals - when I do use them, they are almost always for residentials.
I just wonder about an altogether different approach: it is possible to have textures as props extend "under" stuff. Now why not create a mod that has dirt textures of different sizes anchored by, say, a rural bus stop, or arandom barn. If there were enough sizes - maybe five or six - would that not solve the whole problem? Just blabbing, of course - I don't even know how to do it..
That is a possibility of using lots that have overhanging props attached to them. However, if you use plopped lots in farming areas, they will revert the sidewalks from dirt to tiles, whatever you have for the sidewalk tile images. So such lots would have to sit 1 tile away from the diagonal roadways.
Avenues are a little different. They display the sidewalk textures and props on the entire length of the network, and it is based on the average of the zones touching the avenue. So, if the majority of the zones touching the avenue are farms/landfills, you will see dirt sidewalks. Like-wise for other zones and wealths. That is why you can see high wealth sidewalks in low wealth neighborhoods that are far away from the wealthy housing.
-Swamper
;) Oy veh, this is getting already way to complicated for the likes of me. Maybe someone ought to just sit down and rewrite the game - and not create another "societies" failure.. :D
The Diagonal Jagged Edges Mod for newer Cycledogg terrains (Italia, Olympic, Meadowshire, Missouri Breaks) and also for the default Maxis terrain is available here (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=2157.msg148834#msg148834). There is one file for each terrain mod in the zip, please use only one of them!
This is a beta version. Please download and test it. The final version will include also other existing terrain mods including Columbus Terrain Mod.
The MaxNormalYForCliff value is equal to 0,77. The minimum wall height at which diagonal jagged edges are removed is 13,4 m. It is enough - an average wall height using Hole Digging lots is 14 or 15 meters. The road tunnel entrance model is 13,8 m high.
I decide to make the new mod also for Maxis terrain and Cycledogg Columbus, because it's influence on the terrain is less than in old mod made by Pjot (MaxNormalYForCliff = 0,85). I made some experiments and showed it in my MD (follow the link above). I showed also which types of the terrain are affected more by the mod.
Enjoy!
Adam
Ha!
So finally there is indeed an new DJEM!
On the other hand: I edited this one value myself in the meadowshire file. Thaks to Chrisadams and Ennedi.
It works fine.
So you now found out that 0,77 is enough? OK. I'll change it. See if it works....
Thanks.
This week I Datpacked my files and it seems that some things are loaded in a different order now. Because something with my water colour, transparency and the diagonal jagged edges works differently now.... But that's not for this thread.
And HandsOn: there are also siome diagonal roadside fillers by Andreas/SFBT. But they are mainly for rural areas as far as I know.
Quote from: FrankU on May 20, 2008, 07:42:12 AM
This week I Datpacked my files and it seems that some things are loaded in a different order now. Because something with my water colour, transparency and the diagonal jagged edges works differently now.... But that's not for this thread.
And HandsOn: there are also siome diagonal roadside fillers by Andreas/SFBT. But they are mainly for rural areas as far as I know.
DatPacked: try renaming your folders in the order you want them: 0_whatever, 1_whateverelse..all the way to the omnious zzzz_terrainmods - eliminated my problems.
Andreas/SFTB: got those but they have sever limitations & a small flaw on uneven terrain: SC4 underbelly shows through. Besides, what I am
really looking for is a mix of the street-side mod that works with Peg's alternate rail mod
and Ennedi's slop mode
and the new DJEM,
and as an encore gets rid of all the left-over blanks roads & rail tend to leave about!! :P
Guess I want it all..
Adam you are truly wonderful!!!! If I could give you a high five I would!!!
Well, HandsOn, indeed you want it all. I'm afraid this is going to be alot of work for you.
Your renaming suggestion: I guessed that already. I had my terrainmod together with some greenery stuff, includig the Waterflora by Gizmo. This file also contains some info on DJE and watertransparency. They got probably mixed up. I'll change that.
The underbelly? You probably mean the Water Bug. This happens when you have lots without base texture, but with overlay texture. In the base of the lot you get a White Hole that shows the inside out version of the SC4 space-time-continuum. In plain language: you see the background texture of your cityview.
Change you view bach to normal by opening up your map view, select "zones" and then deselect. That should restore your normal view.
Quote from: FrankU on May 21, 2008, 04:22:54 AM
Well, HandsOn, indeed you want it all. I'm afraid this is going to be alot of work for you.
Your renaming suggestion: I guessed that already. I had my terrainmod together with some greenery stuff, includig the Waterflora by Gizmo. This file also contains some info on DJE and watertransparency. They got probably mixed up. I'll change that.
The underbelly? You probably mean the Water Bug. This happens when you have lots without base texture, but with overlay texture. In the base of the lot you get a White Hole that shows the inside out version of the SC4 space-time-continuum. In plain language: you see the background texture of your cityview.
Change you view bach to normal by opening up your map view, select "zones" and then deselect. That should restore your normal view.
Thanks - never thought of trying that. Speaking of zones: in previous iterations of SC, there used to be a short-cut key that showed the zones but also showed all the civic, i.e., plopped buildings. In those "good" old days you could also switch to the different underground levels without resorting to the subway or water tools. But the zones is what I am on about: is that still possible? Because the map view makes everything disappear which in certain situations is less than helpful.
As for having my work cut out: I wish I had any understanding on how to even approach such a gargantuan task - I was merely dreaming, I don't expect anyone could ever achieve this without modifying the holy grail: the exe.. :P
No, as far as I know a view like this does not exist. It would be most helpful though. E.g. if you want to place a busstop in an area with high rise buildings that block the view on the road....
Quote from: FrankU on May 21, 2008, 04:57:02 AM
No, as far as I know a view like this does not exist. It would be most helpful though. E.g. if you want to place a busstop in an area with high rise buildings that block the view on the road....
Precisely what I had in mind..now ther's a mod that needs doing.. :thumbsup:
Quote from: HandsOn on May 20, 2008, 08:41:04 AM
Besides, what I am really looking for is a mix of the street-side mod that works with Peg's alternate rail mod and Ennedi's slop mode and the new DJEM, and as an encore gets rid of all the left-over blanks roads & rail tend to leave about!! :P
Guess I want it all..
Looks like you have a bit of confusion as to how some of the mods work:
Slope mods affect how your networks go over and through hills/mountains (as tunnels).
The DJEM mods affect when and where cliffs appear on your landscape.
The street-side mods just add new T21 exemplars for displaying new sets of props along your streets.
To handle your complaint about PEG's Alternate Rail Mod, a mod can be made to remove the dirt shoulders from the street while keeping the dirt fringes on the tracks.
As for the "left over blanks", you can try downloading some lots that have diagonal textures on them to "hide" the blanks on the diagonal sections of your networks. Here are some recommendations:
Urban Beautification Pack Volume 2 (http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=16017) by Soldyne
Diagonal Rail Park (http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=3889)
Railway Dirt & Dark Grass Set (http://www.simphoni.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=12739) by Dhamp. You will need to register to the Simphoni forums in order to download this file.
The SFBT diagonal fillers are another good recommendation. Since you are seeing the background grid showing through the lots, it sounds like you are missing a dependency.
-Swamper
Swamper, that wasn't a complaint at all. I like Peg's mod, and for all I know the fact that it "cancelled" out whatever rural dirt shoulders I had before may well lie buried in the load-order. Something for me to figure out - eventually. But I will certainly follow those links - thanks a million. Never have seen any of them before. But then I've got a lot to learn... ;D
Quote from: HandsOn on May 21, 2008, 03:43:47 PM
Swamper, that wasn't a complaint at all. I like Peg's mod, and for all I know the fact that it "cancelled" out whatever rural dirt shoulders I had before may well lie buried in the load-order. Something for me to figure out - eventually. But I will certainly follow those links - thanks a million. Never have seen any of them before. But then I've got a lot to learn... ;D
Actually, that is a side effect of installing the mod. PEG designed it to remove the dirt texture that appears under the railroad tracks. Unfortunately, it also removes the dirt texture that appears under roadways near farms and landfills. It is fixable though. Either I can fix the mod itself or provide a file that needs to load after it to put the dirt texture back and then the dirt texture will reappear under the tracks and roadways in farming/landfill areas.
-Swamper
There are two (I think) SFBT diagonal filler lots that don't have a base texture, but just an overlay texture that covers one diagonal of the lot. All other fillers have a texture that has various grass, dirt or concrete textures on both sides. The first two would show the SC4 background once the water graphics bug is triggered (by switching to underground mode and back), but all others shouldn't show this issue.
Quote from: Swamper77 on May 21, 2008, 04:42:26 PM
Actually, that is a side effect of installing the mod. PEG designed it to remove the dirt texture that appears under the railroad tracks. Unfortunately, it also removes the dirt texture that appears under roadways near farms and landfills. It is fixable though. Either I can fix the mod itself or provide a file that needs to load after it to put the dirt texture back and then the dirt texture will reappear under the tracks and roadways in farming/landfill areas.
-Swamper
Whoppee - my kind of response, especially since I wouldn't have a clue on how to fix it myself &ops. If it really could be fixed so that both the original effect intended by Pegasus remains and the dirt next to rural roads reappears - well, what can I say: that would be outstanding, indeed! :thumbsup:
I'd be gratefull if you could do either. Just let us know where to find it, when it's done - I'll keep a lookout.
Thanks, Swamper &apls
Andreas: I think its only the ones with a diagonal wood fence - at least those I remember having that "problem". But the "zone off/zone on" kind of Zen way does work, for a while at least.
Quote from: HandsOn on May 21, 2008, 05:33:48 PM
If it really could be fixed so that both the original effect intended by Pegasus remains and the dirt next to rural roads reappears - well, what can I say: that would be outstanding, indeed!
I second that! That's the only downside to the Alt Rail Mod, and having the road dirt back would be great.