FrankU's Lottery - Space Center update

[whatevermind]

The cemeteries are looking good! I would think increasing the properties for the larger ones would be fine. Especially for the one with the church, the Sims would get more function out of that than the basic Maxis cemeteries, so it would make sense the values would be higher. 

[catty]

I think that the relots look very good. Unfortunately I can't comment on their realism in details, because I'm only familiar with Californian cemeteries, which are usually on hills (which I know are difficult to find in the Netherlands) and are generally very sprawling (Forest Lawn is a good example).

But for dense European graveyards, FWIW I think they look very good.

We have lawn cemeteries as well in NZ, but about 100 yards down the road from my house is a very old church surrounded by graves its not as formal as these ones and I think the trees were self-seeded as they are all over the place, but I do like the look of these ones they certainly are an improvement over the Maxis ones, and I'd agree with the comments whatevermind made.

Looks good FrankU   

EDIT: Went looking for a picture of the church and cemetery on my street, have attached a picture to this post, its over a 150 years old, there are 1000 people buried in it and they only accept ashes now, the last burial there was about 20 years ago, its a beautiful looking place

[vortext]

I concur with the above. The lots look great and adjusting the stats is a sensible thing to do. 

[FrankU]

Hi friends,

Thanks for the replies and compliments.
So I decided to finish the lots this way. Maybe some tweaking here and there with props.
But then I decided to have a look at the stats and, like everything in this game, things are more complicated than I thought, although this might be a result of my simplicity instead of EA/Maxis's carelessness.

The second and third cemetery lots are larger. Now, if the lot size is double the size of the original, should I double all stats? So both Park Effect Amount and Park Effect Radius? Or should I take care that the amount x radius is double the original amount x radius? That is what I presumed in the following table. Is my guess correct and do you think the stats below are realistic? The stats of Cemetery 1 are the original Maxis Cemetery stats.

Property                 Cemetery 1  Cemetery 2  Cemetery3
Lot size                        4x6         5x7        7x9
Scaling                           1         1,4        2,5
Bulldoze cost                  1200        1680       3000
Poolution air amount            -15         -18        -35
Pollution air radius              3           4          5
Pollution water amount            4           5          6
Pollution water radius            3           3          5
Garbage amount                    1           2          3
Garbage radius                    0           0          0
Radiation                         0           0          0
Flammability                     35          35         35
Power consumed                    0           0          0
Water consumed                  100         140        250
Maintenance cost                  0           0          0
Park effect amount               40          48         63
Parke effect radius              20          24         32


Thanks for your help!

Frank

[Swordmaster]

What? No radiation? That's disappointing.

Nice job Frank   Stats look OK to me (except so much water?)


Cheers
Willy

[catty]

I agree the water amounts look to high, and I would have thought there would be power for the church and for the lights I can see scattered around the cemeteries

[whatevermind]

The stats seem to make sense. I agree the water consumed seems high, but maybe Maxis did that figuring all the lawn watering would take a lot of water?

As an aside, I recently modded the Eembden Moederkerk on its original 7x4 lot as a house of worship in PIM-X, and that program gave it a park effect of 140 over 43 tiles. That only takes into account the church building itself, so it could reasonably be even higher to include a large cemetery on the lot as well.

I've never looked into using PIM-X to mod a cemetery, but it is an option. Might be something to look into to see what sort of values it gives you.

[gn_leugim]

good work so far, promising

[FrankU]

@Swordmaster,
Some people believe dead souls radiate, but I am not one of them. Also radiation in SC4 is meant to represent another kind of radiation. So, sorry, no radiation effect. 
And 100 water is the Maxis stat, so I levelled my own larger lots with hat. Probably Maxis thought all the flowers and lawns need an awful lot of water indeed.

@catty,
Yes, you are right. I thought that too, afterwards. A bit of power consumption for the lights should be there. I'll add some.

@whatevermind,
Your info on the church is useful. These figures are quite a bit higher. And indeed, I could experiment with the stats SC4-Pim gives me. A good advice. Thanks for that.

@gn_leugim,
Thanks for your support!

[FrankU]

It's been silent here, because I was busy with my other thread. You know: the release of the Dutch Farm Fields Set V2.0.
Now that that is off my desk I wanted to finish the cemeteries, in order to go on with other rewards.

While testing them in game I found something strange that is happening already quite some time, but apparently nobody has seen it or at least reported it to me. And is has escaped my eye until yesterday.... (I am not such a thorough tester, I guess).

Here's the issue.
Not all of the Reward lots that I have made, even some of the published ones, are visible in the Reward Menu. At least not in mine.
E.g: the four churches that replace the Houses of Worship are not visible in the Rewards menu. They are being offered to you when the time is there, and you can plop them. After that they are visible, but of course greyed out, in the Rewards menu.
That is exactly what happens too with these three cemeteries.

I did not see it earlier, because I tested always with the "you don't deserve it" cheat. And with the cheat all are visible in the Rewards menu.

Question 1
Does anyone of you confirm this behavior with the Churches?

Question 2
Does anyone knwo what can be wrong? I copied the building exemplar of the original Maxis Reward from the Simcity datfiles, and changed some minor properties (new Icon, new exemplar name, maybe a bit more or less power, water, cost etc) , and I made a new Lot exemplar. No real modding done...

Please help?

Frank

[kelis]

if I don't remember wrong, I am almost sure your churches appear in the menu of landmark in my case. I remember to see them almost in the final of the landmarks list...

[FrankU]

It's even worse! 

Even if I remove all plugins from both locations where we can put plugins and I fire up a completely fresh region I do not see the Maxis Houses of Worship, the Maxis Cemeteries and the Maxis statues. So this seems to be the normal situation. Would anyone please confirm or contradict this for me?

Thanks

[gn_leugim]

But, ain't that the purpuse? only appear "grey or not grey" when you reach the requirements?  (maybe I misread)

[whatevermind]

I'm pretty sure that's the default behavior of the churches, and a handful of other rewards as well. Whenever I next get a chance to fire up the game I can confirm this if someone doesn't beat me to it.

From what I've seen in my own tinkering with rewards, the two parts that impact the menus are the rewards LUA and the building exemplar. The LUA has a "hidden" state listed for many of the rewards as the default - I haven't ever actually checked that the ones listed as hidden truly are hidden from the menu, but it wouldn't be hard to test.

I don't expect anything you did to the building exemplars would have broken them, but it's always a possibility.

[Swordmaster]

I do beat you to it--it's indeed default behavior.


Cheers
Willy

[FrankU]

Ha, yes.... Indeed. Default behavior. Funny that I never noticed it works this way.

So as I got reassured by you, thanks gn_leugim, whatevermind and swordmaster for that, I finshed the lots. I added park version and uploaded the set just now on LEX and STEX.

Let me hear what you think of them in your own game.

Following reward: I think the Courthouse!

[FrankU]

Yup. It is the courthouse.

Here is my first attempt. You like it?
To spice up the front yard I placed a statue of Caesar Augustus in it. I also have the choice for Vladimir Iljich Ulyanov (for those who don't know: his revolutionary name was Lenin), Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon or Jeanne d'Arc.
Do you have preferences? Your opinion counts! Remember this is a Dutch themed reward! So get your history lessons straight before you reply.

The main building is another Haarlemmergold. A classicist building with an International Style modernist glass addition. I don't know if you like it, but I thought it quite appropriate.

Front image


Back image
The small light-green strip is part of the model. Maybe I put the SG roses on it instead of next to it?

[Swordmaster]

I would try some Girafe trees. The building has fine details and the trees need to match it. I'd also try a more subtle/less saturated brick texture.


Cheers
Willy

[gn_leugim]

I remember you using this building before, don't know if you changed it at the time or not, but if not, ain't that a bit repetetive?

Also, there are no parking lots? some more flowers/shrubs on the gardens could also look good.

[FrankU]

Hi Willy,

Your suggestions are fine, but I will not follow them. Why not? This lot is one of a series and I try to make all my work in a style that fits together. Therefore I decided to use the CP trees and the CP textures. CP trees are fine, but indeed the Girafe trees are even better. I feel a bit sorry that I did not use them, but I started the set about three years ago (Windmills, church replacements, first attempts of farm lots etc..) and Girafe was then just beginning with his trees.
The disadvantage, which does indeed hurt a bit, is that I can use only old prop packs. The advantage is that the long list of dependencies will hardly hurt anybody, because most of them are already in the plugins folder.

My hands are aching to use the Girafe threes and otehr props, but I feel it's ebtter to restrict myself.

And hi Carlos too,

Indeed I already used this building in one of the Stage 6 farm lots attempts. There is nothing wrong with your memory. But I threw the building out of that lot and changed it substanitially. So now there is no repetition anymore. It would indeed be stupid to have the same building as Courthouse and as mansion on a farm lot in the same set.
Yes, parking lots.... I remember there is some kind of animation in the game with cops arresting a criminal. I searched for it, but could not find it. Maybe someone has a clue? I'd like to add that to the lot. Maybe indeed on a parking lot.
But maybe parking lots would be better to leave out, so that everybody can add his or her own preferred parking lots? HooHa, PEG,.... whatever?
And ok, some more shrubs. I also thought of making a fence around the garden.