Thingfishs is having a B.A.T Downunder (wanna take a look)

[dobdriver]

Bloody terrific! things,

You've done a marvellous job overall, and all through this thread is a great lot of info to help out other budding batters.  Well done mate and i can not wait to see it up for sale.

Cheers and take it easy
dobs

[cogeo]

What are all those people walking in front of the winery? Have you included the Landmark Ogle occupant group?

Also is this growable or ploppable? Proper modding is necessary to get a well behaving lot, ie one that neither grows like weeds nor grows rarely. The number of occupants (workers) should depend on the lot size and growth stage. Other stats like garbage production, pollution, electricity consumption, building value etc should be set carefully too.

[thingfishs]

Thanks a lot Dobs , yeah my entire progress is laid out here, it would be great if others could benefit from it as well. Don't you worry, it'll be on the market soon - at a reasonable price.

cogeo: Yeah it's on a landmark LOT. I started building on there before I knew what I was doing, and by then I'd spent so much time arranging the garden that I couldn't bear starting again if it was avoidable, and I've been told that via reader it is (transferring my current layout to the PIMX). I want this to be as accurately balanced for the game (and CAM) as possible.

In a farming BAT help thread I've had going concurrently with this one: http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=9668.0 (but which with this post is hereby closed) Barby offered to help with the appropriate lotting and reward stuff. This was some weeks back though so hopefully that's still doable. Also I had someone that was/is going to assist with turning some of the (primarily CP) seasonal trees, I'm using into year round versions, at the moment they are only there for one quarter of the year. Unfortunately due to unavoidable circumstance he is currently unable to do so and I still don't have the faintest clue about all that stuff.

 

So with the winery nearing completion I will stop posting the vineyards I have been creating in the other thread and do it here. As I've said previously the winery will be a reward lot that will be activated when a certain number of these vineyards grow (and maybe when a certain stage is reached?) The original vine models are by couchpotato and I've spent quite a while trying to texture them appropriately. The summer version is looking just about ready to me, maybe just a little dull. The last version was too bright but I have a feeling I've slightly over corrected.

 

I want these to be slope conforming as well as looking like continuous rows. I've noticed on slopes the gaps between each 1×1 tile is more obvious, I assume I'll just have to live with that? That doesn't bother me, I've still been able to avoid the pronounced "box effect" that many farms/fields suffer from. I also will put an eyecandy version in for MD/CJ folk.

[Couchpotato]

I like the slope version and the gap doesn't really matter.   It's always bothered me that you couldn't place a winery on the side of a hill. 

The whole package looks really good.   

[gottago]

The finished lighting and lot look great, and the new vines look ready to go as well. And they look great on the slopes too. They don't look blah to me at all--have you looked at a big field of them from zooms 2&3? This is where you're going to see if the overall color and saturation work or not--it's hard to judge at max zoom.

[thingfishs]

Well after a frustrating few days trying to figure out how to make my grapevines seasonal voila! Primary thanks in all this goes to cogeo, who realised my sequence wasn't working because SC4PIM was wiping the properties I had set in reader. Now ugly as my sequence may be, at least it's working (but if you can tell me how to cut a step or two out that would be great).

I'm exporting the vines from gmax, then I'm making it into a prop in the PIM, converting into RKT4 in PIMX, adjusting the exemplar (I hope I'm using that term correctly) settings (flammability/ground model etc) in reader (as well as the simulator settings) and finally loading it onto a LOT in the LE. Now I know PIMX is supposed to replace the PIM & LE, but there's things I haven't figured out with it yet.

At any rate I now have seasonal vineyards Hooray!!!



The photo shows all three states at zooms 4-1 as well as zooms 5 & 6 for the winter version. In the lower left is another patch where something unexpected occurred. See how some of the base texture is a different colour? Is this related to "dampness" or terrain change of some kind? Is this what makes some residential blocks different colours?
This version has had the vine rows reduced by one vine because previously it was extending beyond the 16m boundary. The winter version shows gaps because of the missing foliage, I guess I'll just spread the vines out a little in that one...
As for the vine models this version was just a test, I intend to make a couple of each state to limit the tiling. Or do as cogeo suggested as a possibility for perfectionists (which I am by the way), which was create a prop family of vines.

I've now been told by two different very experienced SC folk that I should:

1. have the vines as 4 props (in my case 12?) to increase their ability to conform to slopes (which I want them to be able to do)
2. have the vines as 1 prop (in my case 3?) because the slope conforming advantage is outweighed by the extra processor load.

Does anyone have any further thoughts on any of this?

[mightygoose]

maybe each vine row as 2 props compromising on the issue, anyway these look superb...

[jmyers2043]

What are your assumptions?

Is your vineyard going to grow in huge mass numbers overtaking the countryside? Then it may be a bit much.

Will the typical player find themselves with 3 or 4 vineyards growing in their rural city? I don't see a problem.

How big is the typical farm for the typical SC4 player? 10X10 square? 15X15? 20X20? Look at some MD's. Fields sizes range from tiny to huge. Obviously, the larger fields will have more props in play whereas smaller fields fewer props.

Then again - what's going to replace the vine props if there is no field? A densely forested scene? Where is the prop savings in that case?

Let's say I want to make a park. In that park is a row of flowers and bushes. That's like telling me that I have to lot a park with 'all in one' props and cannot use individual Maxis flowers and shrubs. Bah!

It's good to be concerned but I think it's better for you to be happy with the end result of your work.

<edit>

BTW - I do like the way your vines look.

[cogeo]

In a private message to Ryan I just raised a concern about the number of timed props in these farm-fields. Timed props are not like normal props, the game stores and calculates additional information for these, at least the "state" and "days elapsed since activation". The members who have analyzed the prop-pox problem can provide more detailed information about this. And these are re-calculated all the time.

There are four rows of vines in each tile, and as you can see in the pics there are three models to display, so each farm-field will contain 4 x 3 = 12 timed props! Therefore I proposed considering making "big" props (with four rows of vines) instead. And these can be slope-conforming too. In theory the four single-row (as it is now) may look somewhat better, on slopes, but only on tiles with really steep and uneven slopes (with all four tile's vertices at a substantially different height). However I think the "big" prop will be acceptable as well.

Ryan, this is easy to test, modify your test-lot so that it doesn't flatten the terrain, having it simply "sitting" on the sloped ground; I think you just need to set the LotConfigPropertyMaxSlopeAllowed and LotConfigPropertyMaxSlopeBeforeLotFoundation properties (in the lot exemplar) to a high value, eg 90. Then plop it on highly slopped terrain to see how it looks.

[thingfishs]

Thanks mightygoose, jmyers & cogeo

As for the 4 prop (or 2 prop) versus 1 thing it's clearly beyond my understanding but the deciding factor on which way I would go isn't. I found on less smooth terrain (not necessarily steep) that with 4 props they would stick out in different directions to one another whereas as a 4 prop, even if they were a bit wonky, at least the rows remained parallel to each other. Also it quarters the workload.

So with that in mind I finally decided to add the most important season of all, wine season. So now the vines have four states including a summer fruiting state. I have extended the vines slightly past the 16m boundary to assist with continuity, but have set their occupant size to 14m.



Spring



Summer (the same but with red grapes, lets say they're Merlot)



Winter (I have added a whole bunch of canes to the vine models, vines in winter, post-harvest are pretty ratty looking)



Autumn (Fall) (I have de-saturated these a tad, and added a few red leaves)

I'm thinking these might be good enough. (although the green ones are a tad bright in zoom 3, I just don't want them to be too dull in 4 & 5.)

[puresim]

Wow those look really good to me. It's not immediately obvious in the screenshots that the summer season is fruiting, it looks very similar to spring, but in the real it wouldn't be too obvious either. I don't know, is it?

I can't wait for you to release this, and hopefully more vineyards in the future. I have a farming community keen to taste some fine local wines

[dobdriver]

G'day Things, the vines are looking good there. These will certainly add some flavour to the farm communities, not to mention a few drunken sims.

puresim, local? these are Barossa Valley wines. You'll have to import it  . I'm sure things will make a corner bottlo if we ask

take it easy
dobdriver

[thingfishs]

Dobs, watch what you say...

these are NOT Ford, they're Holden... sorry, let me rephrase that. Shottesbrooke is NOT the Barossa Valley, it's Mclaren Vale.
The Barossa is roughly 40km north of Adelaide, Mclaren Vale is roughly 40km South. BIG difference...

As for the corner bottlo, I intend to add to the Shottes reward chain at some point with something like that. Actually now I think about it, it will probably be a local pub with a bottle shop or drive thru (local to me that is, you're going to have to import that too I guess. I can't imagine what the shipping on that would be...). Another idea I just had was the annual Bushing Festival. Hmmm, how that would be created. I wonder if it's possible to temporarily block off a section of road from visual automata.

Thanks for your thoughts there puresim & Dobs , we'll be filling their glasses before long.
I agree the fruit could stand out more. I'll add some more and make them a bit more purple, they look a bit like extra shadows now but it's probably not too far from what they would actually look like. I'll adjust the green of the leaves in the Summer version as well to make it more different from Spring, and hopefully to make the fruit stand out.

And here's a look at my new region thanks to dobdriver/drunkapple. It's his wellington map in 200 years, when the water level has risen, taking with it flat boring land suitable for SC4 metropolises (nature can be so selfish ) So now it's different from anyone else's and has more islands and channels. It's going to be an interesting challenge.
Thanks for my world bloke.

[mrdazza_460]

those vineyards look grate  , every vineyard has a seller door and high priced restaurants, could you make some to go with it maybe....   

[dobdriver]

Oops

[puresim]

G'day mate. dobdriver got the country right, that's what matters

You can never have too many local pubs. I think you're on to a winner here thingfishs

[dobdriver]

Right country... It's only 50 miles apart but may as well be the next universe. I remember we used to drive 50km to the next town to fight the kids there.

[thingfishs]

I remember we used to drive 50km to the next town to fight the kids there.

Yeah, there's some friendly rivalry between the Barossa & us. Haven't had a punch up for a while though.

Thanks mrdazza and puresim for your thoughts.

mrdazza: There is a cellar door, it's the smaller building. As for a restaurant, maybe. Certainly where there are vines there are restaurants filled with pretentious city folk who think they know about wine. However at this point I'm pretty sold on the pub idea. The Mclaren Vale pub has a traditional front bar as well as a posher restaurant area and a drive through bottle shop, it's an all in one package.


(Hotel McLaren)

puresim: Yep, never enough pubs. Rather than base it on the Hotel McLaren, which is a beautiful building, I think I'll base it on this one from Uki in northern NSW (but with stone walls - although looking at that photo of our local is making me have second thoughts...):


(Mount Warning Hotel)

Here are the vines. I tried making the fruit more purple but it started to look cartoony, much too purple. In RL red grapes are quite dark from a distance so I'm not too concerned. I did alter the leaf texture as well though which helps make the seasons all feel different. It's seem they will always tile a bit. I like the idea of making prop families to avoid this but I've learnt enough for my first project, maybe I'll update it one day.

   
Spring/Winter

   
Summer/Autumn



This is zoom 2 for the seasons that stand out the most, I think it's bearable.

I have had a new problem arise though. For some reason the base texture I've applied to the LOT isn't showing. After many version and much annoyance it's still MIA. The texture itself is just a regular maxis one that comes from simcity_2.dat (which is installed as it always is). Instead the base texture is the regular green of a maxis grass LOT (which they are built on). Does anyone know what might be going on. And am I done with this whole Shottesbrooke thing? (bar the base texture)

[mrdazza_460]

yah, I'm liking that Hotel McLaren, I could see myself sinking 1 or 2 ummmm or 10  frothy's there.....

the Mount Warning Hotel, it a nice pub, but I made a building like that sometime ago,  the problem is there just to much roof for the game because of the camera angle,  that's all you see is one big roof.....


As for the vineyards I wouldn't over load them with any more detail, you could have a bigger gap between the vines, because they look a little bit cluttered, but it looks good, I also  I think you do need to get darken those bright leafs on the top in autumn view, they stand out a bit to much when zone out,  other then that I love the winter view, I also like the base dark green grass texture, it makes the brown stand out more plus I hate maxis grass textures so I would keep it, 

kepp it up.    



 

[Girafe]

the vines plants are so beautiful, and very usefull. Very nice work. It is HD ? because I tried HD wheet and the game doesn t support big fields so I stopped there my research in this subject.

but for sure vines are superb