8 new city buildings from Vlastan

[Luomu]

New scifistic skyscrapers from @vlastan, see http://www.spacesimcentral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=2375&p=22513#p22513

[Luomu]

Whoever's merging this, now would be a good chance to delete the crummy placeholders buildings in data/buildings/classic/

[robn]

I'll take a look at them when I do the merge. But what will we laugh at without towerOfShit?

[s20dan]

hehe yeah I dont think all the old ones have to go :) Although we could remove \models\buildings\city\building1, building2 and church as they seem rather silly to me..?

[vlastan]

My intent was to completely replace the old ones with a set of distinct and homogeneous styled buildings, so let me know if there is the need of other meshes (like the smallest ones) and i'll do that.

[robn]

What if we just commented out all the old ones and see how it goes?

Also I imagine at some point we're going to want more variations/themes to reflect architecture from different cultures. That's not needed right now.

Trying them just now, I think the shapes are fine but the material seems to be highly reflective, making them look quite plastic. Can we do anything about that? Also I can't help but think some window lights or something might help. That's just ideas though, and I might be wrong on it. I won't block merging these on that, but I might open another issue for it.

I will merge these tomorrow - about to go out.

[Brianetta]

Window lights should perhaps be procedural. Isn't that why the models are bound up with Lua? (-:

[vlastan]

I don't know about material scripting (maybe it has something to do with the lua files ?)
Anyway, here are some window lights maps:

Png with transparency
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9418121/windowslight.png

Png with black and white alpha map:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9418121/windowslightalpha.png

[richardpl]

You can use noise() to generate some random data.

I think it is possible to make window light to blink periodically. Look how are wheel animation made or engine animations of some ships.

-- get_arg() indices
ARG_ALL_TIME_SECONDS = 1
ARG_ALL_TIME_MINUTES = 2
ARG_ALL_TIME_HOURS = 3
ARG_ALL_TIME_DAYS = 4

now if you call in dynamical function of your model something like this:

     if get_arg(ARG_ALL_TIME_HOURS) > 18 then
        turn on lights ...
     else
        turn it off

or like in factory1.lua:

local lightphase = math.fmod((get_arg(1)*0.5), 1)
    if lightphase < .5 then
        billboard('smoke.png', 2, v(1,0,0), { v(13.5,50.5,-10), v(10.5,50.5,-10), v(-13.5,50.5,-10), v(-10.5,50.5,-10), v(1.5,50.5,-10), v(-1.5,50.5,-10) })
    else
          billboard('smoke.png', 2, v(1,0,0), { v(12,50.5,-11.5), v(12,50.5,-8.5), v(-12,50.5,-11.5), v(-12,50.5,-8.5), v(0,50.5,-11.5), v(0,50.5,-8.5) })
    end

[vlastan]

I think window lights should only appear during nightime

[richardpl]

nightime - let it be something random until right routine is exported to lua

[Luomu]

I think window lights should only appear during nightime

Glow/self-illumination maps should be the most suitable way - like the ones you have made. I'll look into adding support for them at some point...

[vlastan]

Updated pack:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9418121/NewBuilding.rar
Added 2 new buildings (factory and very small houses)
I also tweaked the size of existing ones.

[Luomu]

Added the new buildings and updated models. Also, I changed tags to just 'city_building', while it did cause them to appear more often they are not technically starport or power generating buildings (the tags are supposed to affect building selection and we will probably have more in the future).

[robn]

All merged. "Old" models commented out (but not removed). We will undoubtedly bring some of them back (eg the arcology) but some work is needed on model selection first. I'll make a couple of followup issues.

[vlastan]

building 9 is a power gen / factory type of building
Also i can make any specific model that is still needed.

[vlastan]

Updated pack with 1 new building (temple/plaza)
also contains updated texture with shadowing baked in for the buildings
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9418121/NewBuilding.rar

[Luomu]

I will make a new merge request for your updates at some point - or you can meanwhile plunge into the exciting world of git and try it yourself.