Rural Renewal Project

[Pat]

OMG chris i've had the chance to see what you are doing here and wow some great and amazing stuff
this is wow... I love the fences and flora.... Are the gonna be coming out anytime soon???
                                                                           


btw welcome over to page 6

[Ennedi]

I agree, it is very interesting  

But it would be good to cover a larger area with your wildflowers (they give a bright background) and see if the shining is visible

PS, congratulations on 100th post, you are entering into the Bestsellers section!

[Chrisadams3997]

well, Ennedi, I have tried that, and there's a reason I've got them on bare ground in that pic.  Of course with movement you do see them better, but you'd never notice them in a pic

Right now, this is about as far as I can take it with my present knowledge.  In order to truly get the effect, the .fsh it's using to produce the 'sparkles' would have to be made brighter, and darker 'blobs' it also produces(not much visible at night or against dark backgrounds, but it's there) would have to be removed.  In order to not interfere with the normal 'sparkles of purification' effect, I'd have to be able to point this effect to new IID's for those .fsh's, which I have no idea how to do.  I'd also have to be able to give it an additional 'blank' state so it only showed at night.  As is right now it's more of a curiosity.  Though if anyone knows how to access those properties, speak up....

Pat:  Soon?..hmm.  How does that old NAM addage go...  .  I'll have a progress report on this tommorow however.

[Pat]

oooh chris you are such a tease lol.... I love it and i know it will be ready when its ready butttttt dang i truely love it and i want it lol.....  sorry for acting like a 2 yr old lol

[Chrisadams3997]

Sorry for the short hiatus everyone, but I've been busy with RL.  Besides, needed a short breather from modding .  So anyways, I wanted to start off by showing the present status of everything.

Diagonal Fillers
At Ennedi's suggestion, I've added some diagonal filler lots as shown below.  At present they exist for the diagonal 1x1 pieces and the 2x1 curves in several different configurations, but I've got several more I would like to add.



Slope Friendly Pieces
Also, I think there was some confusion about the sloped pieces I'd made from where I'd showed them placed on level ground.  This is something that would never be done in practice and was only shown there to give an idea of just what I'd done.  So here's a better example, showing my pieces next to pieces following a more traditional approach used by many fences I've seen.  While the 'one size fits all' traditional approach isn't bad in urban settings, I think it's more realistic in rural areas that it should try to follow the terrain as closely as possible.



Basic Set
Since my first post, I've filled in a few voids on the basic fence lots that I've come across or that others have pointed out, so here is a view of all the basic pieces, minus gates(which are all shown in a previous post):



New Curves
One thing that is not readily noticeable in this picture is the improvements made to the 2x1 curves and all the pieces built around them.  I've done a better job of getting a smooth transition between these pieces into the next(thanks to Gaston for bringing this up), and have used the same approach to improve the 's' curves, plus I've added a diagonal 's' curve, which I've found to be really handy.  Here's a picutre of the orignal, note how the angles just don't line up, it bows out a little bit:



Here's the new curve, along with the diagonal 'S's



And an example of these new and improved pieces in practice(plus an excellent illustration of why men should be sober when constructing fences )



As far as the gravel paths go, I've got a couple of transitions I need to get around to making, then they will be finished for all intents and purposes.

Need to do list
SO, here's a quick list(not necessarily complete) of what I have to complete before I can get this ready for release:

1. lot icons for new fence lots
2. additional diag filler lots
3. Correct positioning of diagonal gates
            This is a biggy as it will require rerendering all ten diagonal gate props
4. additional transition lots for gravel roads(to dirt farm roads, and possibly one or two other things)

flora

These will be released wholly separately when they are completed and are primarily on hold until the fences and paths are done.

On that note, I have actually started with something after I accidentally got an interesting result and decided to improve upon it, but it's something I wanted to try to do from the beginning.  There's never really been a good way to make a ditch before, that was slope tolerant.  What I've done is combined the ideas of plobbable water and my recent experiments with flora.  Here's the basic idea I was going for:



And here's the results thus far:







Let me know yall's thoughts on it so far, and any ideas on variations or improvements.  Thanks everyone.

Chris

[Filasimo]

hey chris!
just wanted to pop in and see how your project was going and i must say, great progress you have going so far. knowing that i am from nashville,tn born and raised lil country boy asian hehe i always loved looking at the rural parts of town when i travel around nashville for work. the farmlands are really something else over here and im glad youre creating a set to make it possible for people to recreate the rural areas the way they should be seen as in game. good job man and keep it up! 

[Olasz]

looks brilliant so far 

[Ennedi]

As for fences and fillers - nothing to say, I'm sure you will make them perfectly , the progress is really good!

Of course, if you will need any help with testing you know where I am

And as for your new kind of flora - as I understand, it's purpose is to suggest the ditch, am I right? Or is it possible to make a narrow stripe of ploppable water and put these plants along it?

[Chrisadams3997]

Olasz, Filasimo:  Thanks for the support guys.  It's really appreciated

Ennedi:  I wanted to clarify how it would work a little more, but didn't have any pictures of the models when I did the last post.  But since I was just playing with the textures for it, I was already in gmax, and had my picture editing program open.  So I conviently took some pictures .



But I decided it needed more reflection of the sky, even if the water is muddy, so here's a new texture I just applied:



So you can see that in the middle of the model is a piece of 'ploppable water', much smaller than most that have been released before, surrounded by short grasses.  In this case they're integrated into each other since the whole point is to have a grassy ditch/small stream.  But the basic flora model(after a little further work on it) is most likely going to be created as a flora you could place separately along other ploppable water, and I will likely make some 'cleaner' versions of the smaller ploppable water tiles, so this is just a start for the idea.

Chris

[Travis]

I'm loving that ditch- those small kind of drainage ditches are non-existent in SC4. Fences looking great too.  

I would also like to give these a test run, if possible.  

EDIT: Caught me while I was typing- anyway, I'm a huge fan of plopable water, and my biggest complaint with it was the size of each individual
piece, almost fifty feet across. It will be very handy to have some smaller variants. 

[Ennedi]

The next fantastic idea! 

[TheTeaCat]

This is turning into one of the best additions I could think of for rural areas.

The fences look amazing especially the SF ones, just what I'm looking for.
As for the ditches this is something I've wished for for years 

Having "smaller" PW would be so great, as for the flora (combined or not) these alone would be a
fantastic addition to the game. I look forward to more developments but it looks superb as it 
and I would be more than willing to test them if you required it.

Maybe this will help


TTC

[Chrisadams3997]

Thanks again guys.  As soon as I get just a few more things packaged together, I'll send out some updated beta tests-and TTC and Travis, I'll add yall to my list.  On a side note, I just wanted to share the textures I made for the water, just because I thought they came out pretty cool(heh, I'm a better texturer than modeller, anyways )




Chris

[DFire870]

Ooh, nice job on the drainage ditch, those might even work well in semi-suburban/semi-rural places.

I'd also like to test these, if possible. (Especially since my new region is supposed to have a lot of farms/ranches. )

[Pat]

Awsome update here chirs and fantastic work too.... If you still need a beta tester lemme know...

[figui]

  and more 
this is a piece of art
those ditches will be very useful, i already have plans for them 

[rushman5]

Wow, that is a very detailed picture of a drai- wait a minute - IS THAT SC4?!?

Great progress has been made, and I can see it is continuing: keep it up

-sean

[Emperor Stormont]

oh my goodness, what wonders.

I'm not a big rural person, but when this is finished I would certainly make use of it and create some rural communities, a fabulous project and I love those fences, curves are so sexy....

[threestooges]

Excellently done. The ditch idea is a great addition. Something I had been wanting without necessarily realizing it. If I may make a suggestion, would it be possible to make a 'plain' smaller plop water tile? That would be a great addition in all bodies of water. Great additions. This thread just keeps breaking new ground in the rural world.

[BigSlark]

You do amazing work, Chris. The latest ditch development recreates something has always been missing from the game. And you've nailed it-all of the undergrowth, none of the visible pools of water.

Cheers,
Kevin