Author Topic: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio  (Read 4545 times)

Offline Lift Excelsior

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #30 on: January 05, 2025, 10:03:16 am »
Update: 05/01/2025
Happy new year! Let's celebrate with the latest happenings in Spaceport Village. The car park is now fundamentally done - all the spaces and stuff like that is done but some extra decoration will likely be required before I can officially sign it off, as it's looking a little bit barren in parts. As massive as this looks though, it ain't the only parking zone this mammoth complex will have, for at least two levels of underground parking are planned for directly below this space as well as a multi-storey car park elsewhere on the plot. There's also a couple of vehicles in the southern spaces.






Entrance gateposts and small boundary walls have been added around the northern perimeter footpath to help differentiate this area from other parts of the retail park. In my mind, this northern area will be where all the fancier shops will be (likely stuff like department stores and maybe a few fictional designer brands) and then the more "big box" style retailers that you'd typically find in a retail park like furniture and electrical stores will occupy the west and east sides.



I've also added two random sets of doors to Athlone Town Centre, connecting Sports Direct to the service passage and the service passage to the outside world.

-Lift Excelsior, creator of The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
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Offline Lift Excelsior

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #31 on: January 12, 2025, 07:20:33 am »
Update: 12/01/2025
Progress has been made all over Athlone Town Centre, including the addition of doors, a few lift shafts, and the groundwork for some small redesigns around the hotel.

Doors have been added to all the service passage entrances in the mall

All shops now have direct door access to the service passage except those that don't have a neighbouring service passage (either I couldn't fit one in or just haven't built it yet) or are part of an area that isn't fully complete.






To help backfill a large empty space in the middle of one of the service passages, I've decided to add a loading bay between the mall and hotel. This likely isn't here in the real building but I needed to add a loading bay and this seemed like a fair place to put it. Doors link it with the hotel lobby and mall service passage.

In the hotel lobby, doors have been added to the reception, lift lobby and associated service halls. A lot more doors need to be added to the hotel but there's some big layout changes that'll need to happen, particularly on the upper floors, before that can go ahead.


The Harvest Cafe has seen some updates including the addition of the counter and kitchen space and a major rework of the layout to accommodate the new position of the car park lift, which had to be moved to put it on the correct side of the parking ramp. The direct connection with the hotel conference centre has also been removed as it was blocking where the first floor restaurant will go in the future. Some empty shafts have also been installed to mark out where lifts will go in the future. So far 3 hotel lift shafts have been added as well as 6 goods lift shafts in the service passage. They are all bare cinderblocks for now but that'll change when the lifts go in.

All the mall entrances now have transparent glass doors.


Hotel exterior now that some of the external doors have been added.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2025, 09:11:30 am by Lift Excelsior »
-Lift Excelsior, creator of The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
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Offline PC Grasse

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #32 on: January 12, 2025, 10:56:02 am »
Update: 12/01/2024
-snipped-
It's 2025, no longer 2024.
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Offline Lift Excelsior

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #33 on: January 13, 2025, 09:13:43 am »
It's 2025, no longer 2024.
Oops! Changed it just there. Sorry about that - it can sometimes take me a while after New Year's to fully process the change of year.
-Lift Excelsior, creator of The Lift Excelsior Portfolio

Offline Lift Excelsior

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #34 on: January 19, 2025, 06:56:49 am »
Update: 19/01/2025
Two new lifts and a staircase have been added to Athlone Town Centre - a Schindler 5300 and staircase in H&M and a large KONE MonoSpace in Marks & Spencer leading down to the currently absent car park. I'm personally super proud of how these turned out. For the Schindler I've used the DoorSensor parameter to add a sound to the sensor to emulate the user stepping into the lift, which I'm not sure if this has been done before in Skyscraper.









-Lift Excelsior, creator of The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
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Offline Lift Excelsior

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #35 on: January 26, 2025, 07:04:10 am »
Update: 26/01/2025
At Athlone Town Centre, all six lifts in the Sheraton have been installed and are fully complete.
First lift - serves levels -2 to 1. Connects the shopping centre car park (-2, -1) to the hotel lobby (0) and the Harvest Cafe (1)



Second and third lifts - left one serves -2 and -1 (spa / leisure centre, not there yet), G (lobby), 1 (conference centre and eventually a restaurant) and 2 to 3 (mainly hotel rooms). The right lift does not serve the basement levels.




Fourth and fifth lifts in the tower - these serve hotel room floors 2 to 11.


Sixth and final lift is a service lift and serves all floors bar -1.



The orientation of the layout of the tower does not match real life, so the elegant location of the lift entrance on level 1 is a complete coincidence. Sadly on 0 there's no convenient service hall and the lift opens into an improvised lobby behind Golden Discs.

Going forward, focus will likely be on finishing Athlone as quickly as possible. Below is the current state of the project's to-do list, the jobs in approximated chronological order.
- Install 6 goods lifts in the service passage
- Install platform lifts in ZARA and TK Maxx, plus stairways in TK Maxx and River Island
- Create atrium voids for the escalators in ZARA and TK Maxx
- Add more doors to the mall
- Add stairwells to the service passage
- Create the basement levels (underground parking, hotel spa and service areas)
- Add stairwells to the hotel
- Fix the hotel layout (remove unnecessary walls, better partition conference centre, add restaurant on level 1 and finish adding doors to rooms)
- Decorate and partition the shops
- Finish the Mardyke Street entrance
- Add a basic interior to the post office building
- Build the apartment buildings and install the lifts and stairs within
- Build the library building in the Civic Square area
- Complete the landscaping and add model buildings to the greater town centre
- Install escalators in the mall
- Add a few secrets and Easter eggs
- Lots of bug fixes
- Code cleanup and de-bloat
Focus for Athlone is now less shifted towards creating a perfect 1:1 recreation of the complex but instead on completing the existing Skyscraper building in the way that makes the most sense. So apart from the hotel, which desperately needs a rejig, no major realism-motivated layout changes are planned. I'm still reluctant to announce a projected release date in case something happens but I'd say it's most likely to be complete some time this summer. Once I get a few more jobs ticked off though, I'll probably put out a more accurate prediction.
-Lift Excelsior, creator of The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
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Offline liftfilmer124

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #36 on: January 26, 2025, 07:49:59 pm »
I feel like the majority of the lifts we've seen so far are KONE

Offline Lift Excelsior

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #37 on: January 27, 2025, 09:57:30 am »
I feel like the majority of the lifts we've seen so far are KONE
All the lifts in the real complex besides the shops were installed by KONE. There's some more variation coming up soon though in the form of the platform lifts.
-Lift Excelsior, creator of The Lift Excelsior Portfolio

Offline Lift Excelsior

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #38 on: February 02, 2025, 09:55:54 am »
Update: 02/02/2025
6 goods lifts have been installed around the Athlone Town Centre service passage, with custom KSS-305 fixtures.









-Lift Excelsior, creator of The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
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Offline PC Grasse

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #39 on: February 04, 2025, 06:00:17 am »
This looks very nice!

Offline Lift Excelsior

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #40 on: February 04, 2025, 09:57:24 am »
-Lift Excelsior, creator of The Lift Excelsior Portfolio

Offline liftfilmer124

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #41 on: February 04, 2025, 01:22:53 pm »
Are you planning to install any generic lifts? As you and I both know, they're everywhere in the UK, especially the Dewhurst ones.

Offline Lift Excelsior

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #42 on: February 05, 2025, 04:04:22 am »
Are you planning to install any generic lifts? As you and I both know, they're everywhere in the UK, especially the Dewhurst ones.
Sports Direct has a Raloe scissor lift with Dewhurst buttons, which has already been installed. There's two platform lifts in progress right now for TK Maxx and ZARA, and there's a library and council building behind the main shopping centre which has two Ennis (MacPuarsa) traction lifts, though as I haven't seen much of that building I'm not sure if I'll emulate it in full. Aside from those though, as well as the Schindler in H&M, all the lifts in the real complex are KONE.
-Lift Excelsior, creator of The Lift Excelsior Portfolio

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #43 on: February 09, 2025, 06:55:33 am »
Update: 09/02/2025
Two platform lifts, three escalators and two new staircases have been installed around Athlone Town Centre.
TK Maxx - an open-air staircase, single up escalator and basic platform lift have been installed. In the real complex, TK Maxx has a sort of split level design, where the back of the store on both floors is a few steps up from the front, creating two small mezzanine levels. The escalator and stairway connect these mezzanine levels, while the lift is positioned on the border between the main floor and the mezzanine and can therefore serve all floors. In this recreation, however, I have decided to omit the mezzanines and the shop spans only the main floors.





ZARA - two escalators and a platform lift have been installed. Some partitioning work has also been done on the first floor.




Finally, a staircase has been added to River Island.

-Lift Excelsior, creator of The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
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Offline Mn10

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Re: The Lift Excelsior Portfolio
« Reply #44 on: February 09, 2025, 07:14:19 am »
Looking cool!

(I think that the red walls in the first few shots are quite flashy, but that might be a common design where you live. There could be some deco walls of different colors so that the walls won't look to bright.)
"The most realistic buildings will always be one in real world."