Sidewalk textures

[Goggles123]

Sidewalks look different when connected to low density zones than when connected to high density zones. Specifically, in low density residential and commercial there is a grassy strip next to streets and roads that is replaced by block sidewalk when next to medium or high density.

Is there some property or value that can be added / edited in the reader to make this behaviour configurable with any lot?

Or perhaps this is a function of the lot type, rather than any lot property? i.e. because the lot is a park it causes the street to display low density? Maybe the behaviour associated with the higher density zones can be mimicked somehow?

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I also posted this question in the iLive reader help forum but I think that it is more appropriate here...

[Swamper77]

The game has a bunch of strange rules in regards to how it does textures on the networks in regards to wealths and nearby lots.

Here's an example using a Medium Wealth park across the street from a Residential or Commercial lot:

$ RC +  $$ park = $$ Grass
$$ RC + $$ park = $$ Grass
$$$ RC + $$ park = $$$ Grass

This behavior is the same for any plopped lots, whether they be parks, civic lots, or ploppable lots with jobs.

All industrial lots are medium wealth, except for High-Tech industries and farms. High-Tech industries are high-wealth, but the grass that appears on nearby networks is medium wealth grass. Farms are low wealth, but they display dirt sidewalks. Landfills also display dirt sidewalks on the nearby networks.

If there is no nearby zones or there is a plopped lot across the street, then it just displays the low wealth grass on the sides of the networks regardless of the wealth of the lots. The sidewalk textures will change, unless you are using a mod that makes them look all the same.

Avenues are the hardest to deal with, as the textures shown are an average of all the zones and wealths along the avenue. It's the "majority rule" with avenues. So if it is mostly farms along an avenue, you will have dirt sidewalks, even in the urban areas that are along that same avenue.

-Swamper

[Goggles123]

Ok... so putting wealth to one side for the moment, what you're saying is that grass sidewalk is always displayed on a street until it is touched by med/high density zoning.
I don't know much about Exemplars, Cohorts etc., but could it be possible to somehow 'trick' the game into thinking that any given ploppable lot is a med or high density zone with regards to the sidewalk generation?
Or to look at it from another angle... somehow trick the street into thinking it was next to a medium or high density zone... 

[Swamper77]

Correct, the game always displays the grass on the network textures unless there is a medium/high density Residential or Commercial zone touching the network.

Sadly, there isn't a way to make the game think the plopped lots are medium/high density Residential or Commercial zones. On the STEX, I released a mod that removes the grass textures from the game's default network textures. However, it is rather incompatible with the Euro Roads Mod or any other mod that changes the game's network textures. I'm not planning to update it anytime soon either. I gave myself quite a headache doing it the first time so long ago.

-Swamper

[Goggles123]

Yea I found your mod, it's a great idea but a shame it has to be all or nothing! (plus I'm using the Euro Road Textures anyway  )

So I found the Exemplars for the Zones themselves, at the beginning of the Simcity_1.dat file. I'm guessing they are treated like a special kind of ploppable when first placed, that can 'evolve' into a different exemplar. Presumably they way the game handles that is all hard coded from that point onwards too.

So just to be certain, the 'values' that determine whether a sidewalk appears are completely black box hard coded, or are we still not sure? I was playing around with the zoning on a stretch of avenue, and some unusual things happen as you go zone different combinations of res/comm at different densities. It was pretty inconsistent, but essentially I think the following is true:

• Each zone option (of four options, Low density Res, Low density Comm, Med/High Res, and Med/High Comm) has a specific 'sidewalk value' attached to it. As far as I can tell, the sidewalk values for the medium and high zones are identical.
• As you said, the game decides how an avenue looks based on the averaged values of all the lots connected to it, or facing it whichever. When the average sidewalk value is below a certain threshold, the avenue has a grassy sidewalk. When the sidewalk value reaches a certain threshold, a solid paved sidewalk appears on the avenue.
• Commercial lots seem to have slightly higher sidewalk values than Residential lots.

The only possibility I could see is that these values are not hard coded and remain hidden somewhere. Like I said I found the zone exemplars and I can't see any properties that indicate anything like this. So unless there is somewhere else those values could be stored, I guess I will have to reluctantly accept your assertion that it's not possible. 

Unless someone else has any ideas? As you can probably tell I don't like giving up on things

[sithlrd98]

 

As you can probably tell I don't like giving up on things

Yeah , join the club! This would be most beneficial if proven to be possible.

Jayson

[Goggles123]

Ok, so I've been trawling through the Exemplars in Simcity_1.dat, and I've found the files that deal specifically with rendering streets for different wealth levels and density levels, for Res and Comm (and I think there are exemplars for I and Seaport/Airport too but I didn't look at them). These control files appear to decide what props are displayed on these streets, which presumably is how people like Jeronij and Andreas Roth have made their street trees mods. I've been trying to decipher the LotConfigPropertyLotObject entries, and as far as I can tell there are only entries for the street lights in the original files, although there seems to be a flora entry as well for the medium wealth zones (at least, there is an extra entry with a type descriptor of 0x00000004, which according to www.modthesim2.com is a flora entry).

Is anyone familiar with this level of detail in the reader, maybe they would know if its possible to add in an overlay texture manually to these exemplars? I think if that were possible then we could change the sidewalks for any zone type but only across the board, which is something.

[Swamper77]

Goggles,

There is no way to add an overlay texture to a network tile. You would have to create a prop to do that. Network tiles only support props and flora, nothing else. Therefore, no buildings, base textures, or overlay textures on network tiles. The game is rather specific on what it will allow on network tiles.

-Swamper