The Skyscraper Simulator Forum

Will Shillander Financial Center, Lint Plaza, Grove Building, Denton Plaza, Coniferous Tower, and Alfinity Plaza eventually get full interiors?

Maybe.  If I have a good idea for the inside, then I'll add an interior to them.

The call button issue has been fixed - it ended up being a complex problem in the simulator.  Some objects like call stations are created at the sim engine origin (0, 0, 0) which falls outside of the boundaries of your building, and so they fail.  The fix was to move the call station to the position first before creating any walls on it.  The reason it's a complex issue is that I'm working on code to limit the movement and positioning of objects so that they can't go out of bounds, that broke things even more because of the issue I mentioned about how objects use the origin and construct themselves on that.

Great!  I imagine I won't do an "offset engine" like this often, but it helps with moving an existing building to its own engine.

Build 17 Released

I am excited to announce the release of build 17!  This build features a large amount of updates to Terrace Version 3 and a start to the south (large) building at Northeast Triad Convention Center.

Full Build:  https://www.mediafire.com/file/b15hnjaksl57lfd/EG881IP_Build17.zip/file
Patch:  https://www.mediafire.com/file/zzb8t7565ah83jj/EG881IP_Build17Patch.zip/file

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Download Instructions
Click on the Full Build link to go to the MediaFire download link.  Place ZIP file in the Skyscraper folder and extract it with the Skyscraper folder as the destination.

If you have EG881 Integration Project Build 16 already installed, you may download the Patch version and follow the same instructions above.  This version contains only the updates made since Build 16.

Skyscraper 1.11 Alpha is sufficient for this build.

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Overview

This build contains numerous updates to Terrace Version 3, listed below.  I also started work on the south building for Northeast Triad Convention Center.  It is at least accessible right now and has some escalators, but I haven't put in elevators or interior walls yet as I am still working on the floor plan.

• Remake of Fountain I
• Added Fountain II building (no interior yet)
• Added "Stilty Wilty" building (near center of map), interior included
• Added old tower parking garage with improvements
• Landscape cleanups (filling holes, adding retaining walls)
• Added several trees and bushes
• Added landscape and driveway into Terrace border parking garage
• Converted exterior doors to "AddExternalDoors" so they don't disappear when entering another building
• Improved elevator interiors in TV tower and Lattus tower
• Added doors/windows to retail spaces in TV Tower basement
• Updated floor layout for mall area in Lattus Tower
• Updated parking garage layout in Lattus Tower
• Added doors on loading dock level of Lattus Tower
• Updated exterior door textures in Lattus Tower
• Renovated Lattus Tower lobby
• Updated some elevator sounds
• Some bug fixes

Hope you enjoy!

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Next Build
I am not sure where I'll jump to next.  It'll depend on where I come up with inspiration.  There's plenty to do.

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Featured Screenshot

Here's one.  I might replace this with a better one shortly.
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Looking nice, as usual. Nice to see the entrance doors being added to Fountain I.

Seeing the return of TV Tower parking garage, I am guessing that you are reverting to the original design since Terrace V2, instead of replacing the garage with a taller building.

Spoiler (hover to show)

Speaking of Terrace V3, I was thinking that the doors on the northern edge of TV Tower, Capitol Tower*, and Lattus Tower should be converted to external mesh whenever you are ready, so that those objects can be seen when inside the SW Andersville Library or Terrace Border V2 engine. Attached here is a photo of the view from an upper floor of Terrace Border South Tower, to help identify the missing doors and windows outside the main Terrace town engine (click for full size).
(Attachment Link)
*Including the windows surrounding the doors on the 1^st and 2^nd floors.

Thanks!  That is next on my todo list.  I am working on doors in the Lattus Tower right now (finally getting rid of those ugly exterior doors).

I've noticed a new building next to Fountain I. What is that and what elevators does it have?

Fountain II.  I plan to put TKE in it just like Fountain I, but with a newer look.

It's been 7 months since I posted anything, since I did not have much time to make any more progress on my buildings in the 2nd half of 2024.  I hope I can find more time this year, since I still have several ideas I'd like to work on including...

• The south building in Northeast Triad Convention Center
• Terrace Border building interior
• Complete Eternity Plaza
• Get stairwells installed in several buildings
• Landscape expansions
• More tools in ObjectPlus to speed up coding

There's updates to Fountain I and the new "Stilty Wilty" building I advertised that I need to release.  I also will be upgrading/replacing my computer later this year, which will be an opportunity to finally get the latest and greatest of Skyscraper Sim.  I look forward to seeing all the new features.  I might need someone to give me a quick summary of what changed since the start of 2024.

Project Update - April 26, 2024

I made substantial progress on Fountain I.  Updates include entrance doors, interior corridors, new textures, minor elevator improvements, and cleanups.  I need to at least add in the side entrances and get Fountain I's new BLD file loaded into the Terrace V3 map before making a release.

I also will be adding a new building to Terrace V3.  It'll be another small building, since I also would like to focus on Terrace Border, TV Tower, Capitol Tower, and Lattus tower.  Depending on timing and progress, I may release it with the Fountain I updates or wait until a future release.

Here is a progress screenshot of Fountain I...
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Build 16 Released

Build 16 is now released!

Full Build:  https://www.mediafire.com/file/6isitf26qp08tab/EG881IP_Build16.zip/file
Patch:  https://www.mediafire.com/file/qxhf07eee74ycmq/EG881IP_Build16Patch.zip/file

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Download Instructions
Click on the Full Build link to go to the MediaFire download link.  Place ZIP file in the Skyscraper folder and extract it with the Skyscraper folder as the destination.

If you have EG881 Integration Project Build 15 already installed, you may download the Patch version and follow the same instructions above.  This version contains only the updates made since Build 15.

Skyscraper 1.11 Alpha is sufficient for this build.

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Overview
This build releases the new Doolittle Meridian Center, consisting of the existing Doolittle St. parking deck (across from Northeast Triad Convention Center) and a 19-story office tower (Tower 1) connected to the garage.  The Northeast Triad Convention Center BLD file will load this complex by default, but there is also a BLD file that loads the garage and tower, and one that loads just the tower (I'd recommend at least loading the garage and tower together).

The office tower simulates a late-1980s into 1990s facility that was renovated to keep its space attractive to modern-day tenants, comparable to suburban or "just outside downtown" office buildings in the US.  A building this tall outside of a downtown would exist in a city like Atlanta or Dallas.

This building really pushed my coding skills.  Some novel implementations I did include...

• Curved walls, exterior, and cylindrical columns
• Using SetTextureMapping to get curved surfaces textured properly
• Using SetPlanarMapping to keep texture tiling seamless (such as false ceiling tiles)
• Curved outdoor pathways
• Realistic terrain with drainage elements
• Non-orthogonal doorways (no operable doors though)
• Water fountains
• Yes, this works!  Using TextureOverride on elevator shaft doors to make the interior of elevator shafts more realistic
• The skybridge was tricky as it kinks over to avoid a column in the garage and also travels across the load boundary of the garage and the tower.
• Neat Trick!   I discovered this on accident.  Using negative wall and floor thicknesses can be used to create rooms, chambers, tunnels, insides of things, etc. using less lines of code.  Essentially, if you enter a negative number for thickness in AddWall or AddFloor, instead of creating the outsides of a box, you create the insides of a box.  The only caveat is negative thickness will flip the direction of wall and floor orientations.

Hope you enjoy!

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Next Build
I want to focus on Terrace V3 next.  The Terrace Border and Fountain I buildings need a lot of work.

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Featured Screenshot
See below.  Also, I changed the image on the topic front page showing the fountains and exterior entrance.

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Project Update - February 9, 2023

It's been a while since I made an update.  January became extremely busy and I was unable to do any coding until two weeks ago.

I completed the terrain for the Doolittle St. parking garage courtyard and tower and have moved on to interior work for the tower.  Flooring and exterior/skywalk entrances are nearly done.  I am hoping at a minimum getting the loading dock, ceiling details, and interior doors put in before packaging up a release.

Following the release, I think Terrace Border V2 needs the most attention.

No image to show just yet!

Project Update - November 15, 2023

This will be an unveiling of my newest building, which will be on the north half of the field on the lower level of the Doolittle St Parking deck.  I opened up the playbook more for this one and experimented with a few items.  A minor item I realized is TextureOverride works on shaft doors, which will need to be something I implement in my other buildings at some point.  The major item is working with curves, which I'll elaborate below.

Curves
Creating curved surfaces in skyscraper requires approximating with several wall segments that follow an arc.  This is very simple to implement if you know the math.  I used Excel to calculate the coordinates and generate the AddWall's for the different segments.  Texturing gets more tricky, since the default texture mapping will make segments easily visible and ugly as a small strip of the texture gets repeated.  The image below shows the 3 successful texturing solutions I used to create the curved windows, circular columns, and curved fillets for the granite.

Solution 1:  For the windows, I created a curve such that the length of each segment is the width of a window pane and manually tiled the textures.  This actually happens in real life.

Solution 2:  For the circular columns, I made 16-sided prisms and used LoadCropped to create 1/16 strips of a concrete texture and assigned them to each segment on the cylinder in order.  This trick is easy to calculate, but only works well at small scales and if you are not trying to continue a texture along a chain of arcs and lines (see Solution 3).

Solution 3:  For the granite walls, I used SetTextureMapping to force the texture to appear to "continue" along the curve.  This was more challenging and I again used Excel to calculate the UV coordinates of each texture segment and generate the SetTextureMapping code for each wall segment.  This is the most flexible and doesn't require loading several cropped texture segments.  I am thinking this solution could be implementable in an ObjectPlus function.

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