corner textures ?

[SIM1966]

hi

i was wondering is there such a thing as a corner texture, i have roundabouts and diagonal roads streets etc... that have a horrible splodge ( ? ) and it all looks very squarish...is there a way to sort this. i hope this makes cense.

As always many thanks in advance.

Ian.

[mgb204]

If you are talking about making them using the Street, Road and OWR networks in-game, here is a YouTube tutorial that shows how to correctly draw them all.

If you mean for use in the Lot Editor on lots, then if nothing exists, that would be very quick to rectify. It might help if in that case (or if the tutorial doesn't help), you post a screenshot so we can see exactly what's going wrong.

[vester]

Maybe you can post a picture of the horrible splodge.
A picture tell so much more than words can.

[APSMS]

It sounds like there is a missing texture somewhere and he's getting that RGBK square that shows up as a placeholder, but I'm not sure if that's accurate or why that would be.

A picture, as vester pointed out, is worth a thousand words. Please post one so we can quickly diagnose your problem.

[SIM1966]

picture as requested.

[mgb204]

Thanks for the picture, it's clear that what you want is the diagonal "zig-zag" effect to be gone.

There are a number of potential solutions to the problem, but you need to bear in mind how SC4 works. So for most networks, when there is no zoning, you just see the roads. But when you zone next to a network, if will alter to match both the wealth and density of the buildings surrounding them. In short for low density R/C you get wealths 1-3 with three types of grass. For med-high density R/C you get the matching wealth pavements (sidewalks). But when you plop a lot, in almost all cases, the textures only ever show the $ wealth (yellowish grass).

A set of diagonal fillers, such as these, allows you to transition to other grasses, sidewalks etc, but as someone once said, all you are usually doing is moving the problem over by one tile.

In my personal attempts to minimise this problem, I've a bunch of half-sidewalk/grass lots that use models not textures, this way they can show transparency. This solution is not perfect, since such models only work on completely flat land. But creative use of the two together can often improve things.

Another trick is to hide the edges with trees/flora that mask the problem. Yet another common fix is using MMP grass/foliage to break up the pattern of the grid.

I also think my TGN (Terrain Grass NAM) mod helps to combat the issue of diagonals, by more closely matching the network grass to the terrain. That's less useful unless you are using one of the 4 supported HD terrain mods. Here's an example of what TGN makes possible:



You can find the mod on the LEX here.

[Seaman]

This problem is a regular issue with SC4. As you know, the game is based on 16x16m quadratic tiles and most of the assets in the game are based on several of these tiles. As your city grows (and you download more custom content) you will surely find several buildings (like roads, parks, houses etc.) with different "base textures". In your example, the creator of the park next to the road used a different green base texture than your default texture used by the roads. The diagonal roads are based on a zigzack tile pattern and therefore you get this ugly "corner texture".

Enough explanation (I'm not an expert anyhow). I'm sure you want a solution!
Sad news first, there isn't an easy solution to this. Instead there are several workarounds that come to my mind:

• ignore and live with it
• hide and cover the edges of the tiles with ploppable trees or bushes (you can find these under the "plant tree" section)
• be sure to download/place only buildings/lots which fit your set of textures
• change textures on your own with external editors (what might be a nogo for the casual player)
• or let another mod swap textures for you (MGB did fantastic work, e.g. here. It changes the grass texture next to roads and other NAM transportation networks to fit your terrain mod, in case you have one) this is an advance technique and you might need additional advice in case you want to use something like that. Unfortunately, this does not solve the whole problem but helps in several situations.
• try to somehow avoid these situations where possible or place buildings with fitting base texture next to each other (in your example: use other parks or buildings)
• there are some "overhanging" lots. They extend over their base tile and cover the neighboring tiles (with the zigzack problem). Like here

my ideas might be depressing, but in my eyes, the problem you mentioned is actually a key criteria to recognize the amazing players of SC4. Some of the amazing city journals and major diaries on this site get their amazingness from keeping an eye on the used textures and solving issues like yours. What I want to say: solving that is actually pretty hard!

EDIT: ah... MGB was faster. He's always around to help!