*hides under desk*

(Hey, that's what we were supposed to do in the event of nuclear war!)

Ok, well, that was... completely painless. I went with default textures because I understand those and the skies look great. But... now... my terrain looks really bad! Can we say... slippery slope!?

Yes, it is a very slippery slope, indeed. You could try a horizon to soften the sky/terrain boundary. One of GCP's older non-seasonal ones is about as resource-consumptive as a sky...but of course then it won't get snow on it. The seasonal ones have 6 2048x2048 textures vs. just the one with non-seasonal.

And hey! The world didn't end! Booooooooo!

Can you take a picture of what you mean? Or do you mean EA ground textures look bad in comparison if so that is the slippy slope of defaults. I think I am one of the few people who like EA grass, it looks like Aussie grass! Kind of patchy and not too green. If anything I need more yellow/brown summer grass, EA's is even too green. When i see peoples green default grass I wonder, is grass really that green?

That's what they meant about may be resource intensive! Doh. I checked the polys and was like pfft this is nothing -- it never occurred to me that the textures could be so huge.

Yes, I mean in comparison. It's fine normally. I prefer it, also, to any of the super green ones I've seen, but now it looks a bit low res in comparison to the sky. So, yes, slippery slope of improvements and defaults. I'd like patchy in color, but less blocky, I guess. I really hate photo-realistic ones, though, so not that.

I refuse to even look at the horizon.

It seems like textures have taken over as the thing to worry about over polys, although I still refuse to download jewellery that is 26k.

I think I am lucky that EA grass looks normal to even somewhat overly green to me. I did just grab a snow default though with all these hood links flying around, so that will be something else to test out. I wasn't unhappy with EA snow since I don't really know how snow should look either but the downloads seem to indicate EA's version is all wrong.

Yep! Big, big textures and lots of 'em. Which is why I said that the video-maker in the original post was kinda lying when they said "you don't need a good computer." You may not need a stellar computer as a whole, but you DO need a decent video card to handle all those textures, especially in combination.



Really, you need to worry about both, but for different reasons. Or at least you need to be aware with what you're doing with each before you decide what you're going to stick in your game. And it helps to be able to know how to check polys and texture sizes. And yeah, nothing that's more than 20K stays in my game. The 40K+ hairs floating around are ridiculous! :p



I kinda like the EA grass texture, but I don't like how yellow it is. And how low-res it is. I've actually been thinking about making a higher-res color-adjusted lush default. But then I'd have to make other stuff to match and....ugh.



Queenslanders! Oy!

Suppose you wanted to go the other direction? Like if I take some lovely 1024x1024 texture that someone worked really hard on and brutally delete it so there's no more than 512x512 in the package - will it work?

With deleting images outright? Probably not. A terrain default needs all of its images or else you'll have holes in the terrain somewhere. You could size them all down, though. No guarantees about how it'll look, and you should do it proportionally. So if you've got a mix of 1024x1024 and 512x512, you'd size down to 512x512 and 256x256. Otherwise you're going to have resolution mismatches.

Good to know. I'm already seeing it makes a mess. I have just never seen a terrain replacement that is higher res that looks to scale. I mean, it seems to me, I should not be able to see a blade of grass more than about 20cm from the ground, but all the ones I've seen, I can see the detail in the grass too far away to look right to me.



Btw, I tried changing the texture memory in the graphics rules and taking identical screen shots because I don't trust myself not to *think* I see a difference. I couldn't see any difference, so I left it anyway, just in case it helps later, but no magic improvement. I was hoping for magic, but, hey... I got sky.

Yeah, that's an issue with terrains. That is, if you make the scale more realistic, then in pulled-back neighborhood view the terrain just looks painted, with no texture. Kind of like how basegame carpet makes floors look like painted slabs of really smooth concrete. If you want noticeable texture, then the scale is wonky. It's not like you can make more detail emerge as you move the camera in closer. Would that you could! So, basically, you have to pick your poison. I'm a texture girl, so I'll choose texture every time.

Fortunately, terrain defaults are simple to make if you can't find one you like and have basic image editing skills. Just take an existing default and switch out the textures with ones you make yourself. Just keep the texture sizes proportional, like I said. And be prepared to do lots of testing as you fiddle with scale and tiling so that textures don't look too "repeat-y."

@iCad if you want to make an Aussie grass default be my guest! I added a golf green looking actually green because grass can be green even over here. Yellow though is pretty normal.

Aussie grass looks a lot like Colorado grass. Only y'all have more of it. We have clumps of thirsty-but-determined dry grass competing with clumps of juniper and stunted prickly pear for what little water there is.


One day I will make a Colorado terrain...and it looks like it'd almost work for AUS, too. Just would have to have a bit more grass...

But seriously...Generally speaking, all the EA terrain colors are oversaturated. I guess it contributes to the "cartoon"-ness that some people like to accentuate in their games. CuriousB's lush is oversaturated, too, and so are pretty much all of the lush terrains out there. Even mine. I want to make a set of more realistically-desaturated terrain defaults. Because really, terrain that green only happens in isolated parts of the world that get a lot of rain, so tropical areas and places like coastal US/Canada and parts of Europe. Most of the world isn't that....vivid. Even the EA desert looks more like false-color images of Mars than actual deserts, which, yeah CAN be red if there's a lot of iron in the rocks/soil, but are mostly kind of just tan/brown. CuriousB's desert is close, but is a little too beige. And...yeah, I think too much about this stuff.

A lot of Australian native grasses has a yellow tint to them even after rain so that pushes the general look to our grass looking more yellow. Some people have green lawns because they place down turf often which isn't a native grass and they mow and water it- well until the water restrictions hit, but seeing a whole hood looking like a putting green looks wrong to me. Water restrictions is pretty much a sure thing here. I can't imagine tending to turf only to see it die once sprinklers are not allowed. Diehards will stand outside after 5pm braving the mozzies with a hand-held hose until hand-held hoses are banned then only the dedicated are left with a bucket. *would rather be inside playing sims*

Yeah, people around here do the sod and constant-watering thing, too, and I just don't get it. Usually it's people who've moved here from other places where they had lawns. But we've been under extreme drought conditions here for several years now, so no one can water their grass anymore. I mean, you're looked at with intense suspicion if you have grass that isn't dead. But even if that weren't the case...Xeriscaping, man! It's awesome! And no-maintenance! And for heaven's sake, it's the desert! Or near enough, anyway. No one is supposed to have green grass here! I just don't get people who want grass and all the maintenance crap that comes with it.

Edit, because I think Sunrader added to their post after I'd replied:


No, increasing texture memory usage will have zero effect on how your game looks. It just allows the game to use more texture memory -- cache more stuff, basically -- than it normally would, which means you can stuff more crap into a neighborhood before it explodes into a seething mass of pink. If you are not seeing pink, then it's not something you need to mess with.

Assuming you have all your graphics settings on max, increasing resolution on stuff is really the only way to make stuff look better in-game, but you have to balance the degree of visual improvement with the increase in resource consumption, and different people have different priorities for that.

Some people here have bores and larger properties dams, but they always put up a sign saying bore/dam water in use, because the last thing anybody wants it local officials sticking noses in. The fines are pretty high if you are caught using town water on the lawn.

I just came from testing (should have added a camera mod) but it placed just fine. I will try again in my main game and hope something odd was going on the other day and that its cleared up.

Yeah, everyone in the little area I live in has a private well because there's no public water out here. But we're all drawing from the same aquifer, and if people feel you're using too much because your "lawn" is suspiciously green, you will get the stink-eye. Which around here might involve shotguns, if people get riled up enough. And in town, where there IS public water. Yep, steep, steep fines.



I wonder what's causing it in your main hood. It's Elsewhere, right? Maybe it has some funkiness that makes it not like horizons. I can't imagine what, but...Well, you've said it's got weird terrain, so maybe there's other neighborhood-specific weirdness. If mine still doesn't work, try another horizon and then at least we'll know if it's horizons in general or just mine that it doesn't like. If it's just mine, then I'll DL Elsewhere and see if it'll work in my game...

Icad, I had forgotten that you had a terrain replacement. I just tried it. Very nice job with the scale, from someone who is very picky about scale. It's a nice easy compromise, not at all jarring. A good complement to the sky textures.

Ugh I have more issues now, I can't download any new files I realized since yesterday, FireFox or Chrome, so none of those fields or snow default are even there. Now I have to go troubleshoot this.

I'm glad you like it, Sunrader. I think I'm going to make a desaturated and "roughed-up" version of it to use as a dirt-terrain default that I might use more often than lush, which tends to be just a little too green sometimes, for some environments. I tend to like to use dirt terrains in general for "downtowns" because concrete-covered hills are just silly. Maybe I'll make a yellow Aussie-grass one for Jo. And I think Mortia's making a de-satted lush version for her own game, too, and I think she intends to share it, so if you don't follow her on Tumblr, you might want to give her a follow, see what she comes up with.

Edit for Jo: You mean it doesn't download, or it appears to download and you get nothing or you get empty files? If it's the latter, I'd suspect your antivirus. Unless your default download location was switched on you?

It just doesn't download. Even when I found that grass and did save image as it didn't show up, I dragged it to my desktop. Something has changed. Odd thing is I can download from MTS. I placed all my files into a folder so I could check it easily and the one file from MTS showed up.

I would love those options. I like a bit less lush myself - not a lawn person either - more Texas than that.

Lucky me I found I already had it downloaded in my huge container of downloaded goodies. way back in on the 27/4/18. I don't know what is going on. Gina is suggesting it might be my internet provider since her's kind of choked up during peak times.

Edit: These fields will be great. The cliffs I tried don't look right so I won't use them there. I think the grey horizon did work but I can't find where it is placed. I tried it on the grass and the box shows up, but in the water, I can't see it at all.

Yes, but that would remove all of the lights from the whole game. I meant that if I put one in the wrong place and wanted to either delete it or move it to another part of the house, I would have to go to a lot of trouble and might even have to demolish part of the house just to get at the light. That's just a bit too much fuss for me to bother with.



I'm a bit confused here. You don't have to choose one or the other - the DR skies and the skyboxes are NOT mutually exclusive. It's entirely possible to have both in your game at the same time. Nopke's DR skies are great, but they don't look right in all neighborhoods. I usually use a skybox for desert 'hoods. There's one with a clear blue sky and wispy clouds that looks very nice in a desert hood - I think I got it from iCad's website.

The DR sky package contains 6 files: Autumn, default day, neighborhood, night, overcast (used during rain and thunderstorms), and snowy (used during snowfall). Neighborhood skies appear to use the same textures as lot skies, although I don't know how to tell if it pulls them from the other textures or whether it has copies of them instead.

The .zip file also contains DRs for a darker moon and invisible sun. The invisible sun looks much better with the DR skies and also with several skyboxes. Having that white circle just stamped on the clouds looks weird and most skies have a "sun" somewhere on them already.