nerdly_projects

[Swamper77]

Now I just need Swamper77 to release his police Jeep so I can use its exemplar to make state police cars and sheriff cars separate from city police cars... (I will need some advice on how to put them in the UDI menu though)

You don't need my Jeep file to make additional police cars. I've posted in the other thread as to what needs to be changed. And using my Jeep to make additional police unit would not be recommended due to how the vehicle is modded. It does not drive like a normal car when off the pavement.

After that I hope to make a pack of state police cars which will be standalone choices in the UDI menu, so that you can have a city police department and a state police department. (When you dispatch a police car, it will be the city police)

Then maybe I'll make the sheriff cars already available into another standalone choice in the UDI menu so that you can have police, sheriff and state police.

The second one - the additionals - requires a little advice from SW77.

The last two - the standalone additionals - require SW77's police jeep to be released, as well as a little more advice.

Unless you know how the game's LUA scripts function, this will be a hard task. I am not going to do the work for you, so you will have to be willing to learn how to do LUA scripting. LUA scripting is not beginner's stuff. Depending on the complexity of the scripts, they are considered intermediate to advanced modding. The LUA scripts are what make certain UDI vehicles available when certain buildings are present in your city, and they control how the automata behave in UDI mode. Such scripts also control what the Occupant Groups do, at least the ones that are not hardcoded by the EXE. The Occupant Group ID's used by the vehicles are created and controlled by LUA script files.

-Swamper

[nerdly_dood]

I know that the LUA in the DAT tells the game how to deal with the vehicle in UDI - I intended to remove that from the DAT anyway...

I'll definitely check the other thread in the next few seconds or so.

[Swamper77]

The LUA file also is what makes a vehicle separate entry in the UDI Menu. It's how I made my Fire Chief's Jeep separate from the Fire Chief's Car.

-Swamper

[nerdly_dood]

Oh okay, so perhaps the fire chief car is what I should base the state police/county sheriff cars on?

Anyway...

The tutorial for making additional police cars works! 

First I tried out an additional police car with an otherwise empty plugins folder:


Then I put in the police car I use normally:


And the partial prop replacement thing I made also works (It requires that the additional be loaded after the replacement, so the additional police car filename starts with zzz and should be in the same folder as the replacement)



And then I tried it with a police van (the one farther away facing to the left is the replacement; the box-van is the additional)


And this image below took a long time to get, because for some reason the replacement police van appears much more often than the additional.


I will be unable to make any progress on this for the next few days because I'm moving a block up the street.  When that move is done though I should be able to continue working on these projects.

[Swamper77]

Oh okay, so perhaps the fire chief car is what I should base the state police/county sheriff cars on?

You can, but without making a custom LUA file:

- The vehicles will require a fire department to be place before being unlocked
- Only one vehicle will appear at a time on the roadways near fire departments.

You will need to make a custom LUA file to make your vehicles require a police station building to be available for UDI. You can also use the custom LUA file you will make to have your state police/sheriff cars appear on the roadways near police departments. We'll discuss the specifics in the other thread.

I can't help you next week as I will be camping with some friends for a week.

-Swamper

[j-dub]

 

Only one vehicle will appear at a time on the roadways near fire departments.

I know where talking about police cars here, but also them being under the fire department menu. Its just, how did this picture happen then? As you can see, despite two of the same vehicles driving around, there is three Different fire vehicles driving around on the Avenue here. This station allows three vehicles to be dispatched, as it has three garages. Is that whats causing more than one fire vehicle in this picture below to be driving around?

[allan_kuan1992]

what a diverse fleet 

- Allan Kuan

[Swamper77]

I know where talking about police cars here, but also them being under the fire department menu. Its just, how did this picture happen then? As you can see, despite two of the same vehicles driving around, there is three Different fire vehicles driving around on the Avenue here. This station allows three vehicles to be dispatched, as it has three garages. Is that whats causing more than one fire vehicle in this picture below to be driving around?

There are properties with all police and fire department buildings called "Response Vehicle Type" and "Response Vehicle Count". The "Response Vehicle Type" property references a particular Occupant Group ID of an automata, in your case the fire engine Occupant Group ID (0x00004202). The "Response Vehicle Count" property tells the game how many of that type of vehicle to produce, in your case 3. The properties are set on a "per building" basis. The vehicles are produced once, after the building has been plopped. After they disappear, they will not respawn.

With my fire chief's car installed, all fire departments will spawn one fire chief's car upon plopping the building down. After a set time, the car will disappear and another will take its place on the roadways, starting at the fire department. My fire chief's car file has linked an automata generator to the game's fire department Occupant Group ID (0x00001502). Removing my fire chief's car file will stop the fire departments from spawning fire chief's cars.

-Swamper

[nerdly_dood]

I know where talking about police cars here, but also them being under the fire department menu. Its just, how did this picture happen then? As you can see, despite two of the same vehicles driving around, there is three Different fire vehicles driving around on the Avenue here. This station allows three vehicles to be dispatched, as it has three garages. Is that whats causing more than one fire vehicle in this picture below to be driving around?

He was talking about the fire chief's car specifically - one each of it and the fire support Jeep will appear near fire stations when plopped, in addition to however many fire trucks that station can dispatch - so if the station can dispatch five fire trucks, five will appear when the station is plopped.

[sgtsoul]

Exciting stuff guys keep it up! Love the vans as well, great to have a match for all the sedan options!

[nerdly_dood]

I haven't done much work on this lately, except for figuring out that the order in which I release the addtionals will be:

1) Fire trucks, sheriff cars and state police cars
2) Nonspecific police cars that I came up with on my own
3) Police cars based on real cities, and international police cars

The props will be released in the order 1, 3, 2.

The reason for the additionals being released in that order is:
1) My fire trucks that are already additionals aren't compatible with SW77's additionals; and state police and sheriff's offices are separate entities from city police departments, so they get priority
2) Less priority than 1; more priority than 3.
3) It's less likely that you would want an additional police car for a real life city or for another country's police cars because individual city police departments almost always use the same paint job on all their cars, and in other countries, police car designs don't vary much from city to city; mostly country to country, so therefore these cars in the 'additional' format have low priority.

The reason props will be released in that order is:
1) The fire truck props that are currently available are only red; lot developers making state police stations or sheriff's offices will be able to use these props separately from the regular police cars that they are currently restricted to and separate entities and yadda yadda...
3) Less priority than 1; more priority than 2.
2) The nonspecific police cars are more likely to be used as the city's only police car paint job, and unless someone is making a police station with more than one paint job, that person will probably use the police car prop family in Lot Editor.

Using the prop family is much better than using individual props because the individual props appear at certain times of day, which is why there are more than one individual props, so if the person uses the prop family, the cars will be randomly dispersed around the parking lot, and it will seem like the cars will be randomly driven off or parked back at the station, instead of all driving off at once and coming back at once. The partial prop replacement feature of the additionals would be best used if the police station lot uses the prop family for this reason, so that it will appear that the two designs are randomly scattered around the police station parking lot. Yes, sadly, the partial prop replacement limits the number of police car designs in the prop family to two; you can have more designs driving on your streets but only two will show up as props - but you can choose which designs you want as your props, one will be the 'replacement' model, the other will be the additional that loads last, and to make them load last, make sure it has more Zs in front of its name than any other additional, and it would be preferable to have the same number of Zs on all additionals that are not used as props, which could if you choose be none at all, but it must be less than the number of Zs that begin the file name of the additional that you want to show up as half the props at your police stations.

EDIT: I will release those two police vans in the next few days, before any of the additionals or props are done.  They will be released as additionals and as replacements at the same time; props will be released in the first pack.

I would like to have made a pack of police vans to match every oe of my police car mods, but until such time as I can get Windows 2000 on my virtual machine (running within Windows Vista) you can use one of the police vans shown above which will be released soon (they survived the death of my laptop), or you can use use one by Zwanneman, links on page 1.

[Pozzessed]

I got to come out of hiding for this one 

Thanks for the Brit police cars, they look great.
This is just an advisory for anyone that's having the same problem getting them to show as I did. After checking through my somewhat weighty (3.5gb *insert blushing smiley* ) plugins folder for Pegs police cars, I then did the hokey-cokey with the rest in order to find the offending file .. it turns out that I'd installed (many moons ago) 'Dunkin Donuts' by Kevdan25, complete with 'cop car'. I guess I'm getting too old for this game, I tried every abbreviation of 'police' that I could think of in my search, never gave a thought to searching for 'cop' .. shoot me now, please.

[nerdly_dood]

Gladly.



As a matter of fact, there is even a prop pack on the LEX that accidentally included a police car mod by MikeSeith.

If I remember properly, it also was done by Kevdan25, and included the very same mod that comes with the Dunkin Donuts.

[nerdly_dood]

I'm beginning to consider releasing my police cars on the LEX here... I'm not entirely decided but I'd like some input to see if people really want them on the LEX in addition to the STEX. If O do begin to release my stuff on the LEX, first I will release my three mega-packs and one request pack all at once, and then after that all future releases will be both at SC4D and ST.

I'm being kinda lazy now and not doing much with the props or additionals, but at least I have the functionality figured out and finalized for whenever I actually start working on them.

[Pat]

its all good nerdly and I personaly think it would be cool if you did get up on the LEX....

[nerdly_dood]

I don't know if there is anything with the BLaM name on the LEX - you would probably know though. (Wait.. Is there some HIDP stuff there?)

[Pat]

the only HIDP stuff is the rework by xxdita that I know of...  There is a few things by Ant on there and also I think one or 2 by Glenni..

[nerdly_dood]

I have salvaged the data from my old laptop hard drive! I have managed to pull a Virginia Beach, VA cop car mod that I completed from it, and I may be able to continue my work on various automata mods, some of which aren't emergency vehicle mods. The Virginia Beach police car is attached.
Due to this discovery, ANY ORDER OF PROJECT RELEASES POSTED BEFORE TODAY IS NOW OFFICIALLY NULL AND VOID.

I will continue working on police vans, releasing the van mods in the same order as the police car mods that they match, including Mega-Packs 1, 2 and 3 and Request Pack 1. I also have the following police car mods being made: Annapolis, MD; Older blue and white Polish policja car; Boston police; Durand, WI; Florida highway patrol; Knoxville, TN police; Ontario provincial police (both the black/white and white versions); a gold police car requested by Deion30296 at ST; and of course Virginia Beach police. I also am planning mods for more realistic American school buses; a mod to replace the in-game Army truck with a Jeep; a mod to replace the UGLY PINK CONVERTIBLE with a nondescript sedan of your color choice; a pack of police van mods to match the various skins included in the PEG cop car mod, and that's all that I have already begun so far.

I may also make a pack of totally random police car designs - no specific city, just designs that I think might look cool; and also several international ones (so far I have specified the Canadian RCMP, Swiss Miltärpolizei, United Nations civilian police, Abu Dhabi, UAE police, and others); several American police departments, including Charlotte County, Alachua County, and Bay County, Florida sheriff; Georgia state patrol, Americus, GA police, and others) and maybe a pack (or several) of police SUVs.

Now this Boston police car may be a sticking point between me and Ja/Att who has made his own Boston police car, but I (naturally...) think my car would be infinitely better than his for several reasons which I don't really want to type but if inquired I'll tell you why mine's better. (But I haven't done anything to the back of the car to make it like the real Boston car because I couldn't find images of it but now I have some so I'll change it when I get a chance)

[packerfan386]

I will continue working on police vans, releasing the van mods in the same order as the police car mods that they match, including Mega-Packs 1, 2 and 3 and Request Pack 1. I also have the following police car mods being made: Annapolis, MD; Older blue and white Polish policja car; Boston police; Durand, WI; Florida highway patrol; Knoxville, TN police; Ontario provincial police (both the black/white and white versions); a gold police car requested by Deion30296 at ST; and of course Virginia Beach police. I also am planning mods for more realistic American school buses; a mod to replace the in-game Army truck with a Jeep; a mod to replace the UGLY PINK CONVERTIBLE with a nondescript sedan of your color choice; a pack of police van mods to match the various skins included in the PEG cop car mod, and that's all that I have already begun so far.

thank you for not giving up.... good work

[nerdly_dood]

it's all cool, man, i got things goin', ya know what i mean?

Anyway... I'm making progress on the random police department skins, including these two but that is all I did today (in addition to identifying a few usable FSH files for police vans)