(MOD) Houses & Parks v0.2.1

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eleaza
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(MOD) Houses & Parks v0.2.1

Post by eleaza »

I've always want to make new city looks prettier, so I decided to reintroduce the houses and car parks, as well as cinema and amusement park back into the new city with the latest City Economic Simulation DLC. I tested myself and it is compatible with version 4.2.08B beta.

v.0.1.0
1x1, 1x2 and 2x2 houses are under apartments building screen, and they have much less capacity, as well as less profit. If anyone think they are still too high, please leave some advice. Car Parks, Cinema, and Amusement Park are listed as commercials, and they have less capacity, but amusement park, which has a very high setup cost and decent capacity, so a city won't spam a lot of them and make the city looks stupid.
Houses and Parks MOD logo.png
Houses and Parks MOD logo.png (1.47 MiB) Viewed 3521 times
v.0.2.0
Add various parks and gardens under Commercial building tab. And their expenses should be almost always greater than its income, so AIs won't build them (or if they do build them, they will be on-sale very quickly, so players can buy them and tear them down if need to). Also the larger the park, the more monthly expenses required. Make sure your city or your corporation have enough cash to handle them. Also I recommend only build modded parks with city funds, so there won't be a corporation logo in front of them.
Build_menu_commercial.jpg
Build_menu_commercial.jpg (466.36 KiB) Viewed 3477 times
v.0.2.1
Add trees under Apartment building tab. Like gardens and parks, their expenses are higher than income (but a lot less once reach supply/demand balance). Even though the in game tree sprites are included, currently I only added one buildable tree into the build menu. Since in game trees are actually a group of 1 to 4 trees within in 1x1 land tile, and there are 8 types of tree, the build menu for Apartment would be too crowded if I put all permutation in. Right now with just one test tree to see whether its expense is too high or too low. Later version I'll try to add more varieties in later version.
Build_menu_Apartment.jpg
Build_menu_Apartment.jpg (634.32 KiB) Viewed 3477 times
I've added it to moddb website, I wonder if I should as David to add it into the official Capitalism Lab page there, maybe later when I actually added trees, various parks into the CES DLC.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/houses-and-pa ... ab-ces-dlc

For easy access, I also added it in my dropbox, and here are the links
v0.1.0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ztkc61t4rjpa ... 1.rar?dl=0
v0.2.0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d4gdnfmbu7asl ... 2.zip?dl=0
v0.2.1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uenk2buoueie0 ... 1.zip?dl=0

If anyone wish to modify the mod, here is the mod_kit files,
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j3jhmwcrnr3ae ... it.7z?dl=0
but you will need 7zip to unzip it (since it has much higher zip ratio, and it's free), and here is the 7zip official website
http://www.7-zip.org/
Last edited by eleaza on Tue Aug 30, 2016 2:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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eleaza
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Re: (MOD) Houses & Parks v0.1.0

Post by eleaza »

I'm still trying to figure out how to add actual trees and parks/gardens into the mod (I already have the sprites and icons for them). I tried the PARK firmtype and it didn't work, and originally I've place them under MANSION firmtype, however it doesn't end well, since AI persons like to build their own mansions, and often place these "tree/park/garden" mansion in the most annoying and inconvenient places, and I can not even move them somewhere else with mayors. And it would be idiotic to place them under apartments or commercials. Anyone has good suggestions?

(making "trees" as "FARM" firmtype is the best I can think of right now, make it produce "insects" like butterfly, or leaves for souvenir, perhaps produce "recreation products" to sell? Flowers from the gardens? That wouldn't be too weird, just a little odd that they shouldn't be mass producing)
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eleaza
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Re: (MOD) Houses & Parks v0.2.1

Post by eleaza »

After some testing, I decided to put parks and gardens, as well as trees, under Commercials or Apartments, since if I place them under player buildable buildings, like farms or even mansion, there will be a corporation logo in front, blocking the view of these lovely assets. And I tuned their expenses to be way higher, and actual capacity way lower (the lowest I can set), so they don't interfere with the actually city running too much (like every 50 trees will have the same capacity of a normal apartment, and much lower for parks compare to default commercial buildings). Also the larger the parks, the higher the monthly expenses they have.

Please leave your opinions if you've tried this mod, and tell me whether the expenses setting of these parks and the test tree are too high or too low. I'll tune them accordingly in future version.
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cantdownloadit
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Re: (MOD) Houses & Parks v0.2.1

Post by cantdownloadit »

looks good (is an amusement park supposed to be 37 million ?)

is it possible to add airport buildings, seaport buildings and the CBD buildings like bank ? so we can at least make the city look like a normal one ?
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eleaza
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Re: (MOD) Houses & Parks v0.2.1

Post by eleaza »

cantdownloadit wrote:looks good (is an amusement park supposed to be 37 million ?)

is it possible to add airport buildings, seaport buildings and the CBD buildings like bank ? so we can at least make the city look like a normal one ?
I just don't want AI with good money start to spam amusement parks everywhere in the city, that looks idiotic, since it's one of the few commercial buildings I added in the mod that actually have positive rent income. And since this mod is decorative in nature, I feel when players tried to use it, they probably have set themselves up enough (or with very high initial start-up capital), so they don't care about the setup cost. (37m compared to a 500m start-up, reasonable in my opinion, if you think it's too high, how much do you think it should be, or should amusement park also like real park, shouldn't make any income, and purely decorative?)

Yes, it's possible to add airport, CBD, banks, buildings into the mode. But AI will still have a small chance of building them, and make existing cities looked weird (like I got confused with multiple CBD and finally realized it's an AI building). I'll probably add airport in the next patch, like an amusement park, and probably banks. Just hope I find the right balance, so AIs won't spam them. The approach of making it with negative income sometimes don't work, since AI will still build them from time to time, but put them on-sale immediately. and players have to buy them and clean them up from time to time (I personally feel that to be quite annoying). I should just make them not buildable for players but for city only? I haven't tested AI mayors enough to see whether AI mayors will spam commercial on their own randomly. Still working on that (have to wait for a more stable patch version though, and functioning parks, so I have more room for commercials, excluding normal parks, the build list is growing too big at the moment)

As for the seaport, that's the tricky one. I can certainly put the image in, but it will be a "land building", and definitely look weird. I think we will have to wait for a real functioning seaport added mechanism in future patches or DLC. And since a new city already has seaports in none-survival mod, I think we'll only have to wait for the survival mode patch (which they are supposed to be a closed nation without any outside help of imported goods, so no ports are a sign of that setting). The real issue of no seaports in survival mode is the freight cost calculation. You don't have to build outgoing facilities close to goods port anymore, but close to the map edge.
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E is for Elate, making others happy
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Arcnor
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Re: (MOD) Houses & Parks v0.2.1

Post by Arcnor »

How did you make your buildings icons? They look great !
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eleaza
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Re: (MOD) Houses & Parks v0.2.1

Post by eleaza »

Arcnor wrote:How did you make your buildings icons? They look great !
For most of them, like small houses I just extract them from the MOD_kit folder, you can find the original building image in the C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Capitalism Lab\MOD_kit\Images\Buildings (Original)\

For image I create on my own, I simply find a base template images, and then use image processing softwares to create the transparent effect (you can use any kind of softwares, even the simplest Microsoft Paint), in Capitalism Lab, its transparent effect is done by filling the background with the right RBG green color, and you have to make sure your own building images don't have large area similar to this background neon green. You can convert the processed images into PNG format with XnView, it's not the best converting software, but it's free and can batch process lots of images, and resize them into the correct size.
E is for Endear, all cute and cuddly
L is for Luxury, longing for splendid
E is for Elate, making others happy
A is for Amenable, a serene nature
Z is for Zeal, zest for wonderful life
A is for Admirers, all of you love me
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