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Strange Concrete Builds

Umair Ahmed

Member
Messages
65
Well due to the lack of variety in pieces for other sets, I ultimately succumb to predominantly concrete based builds. I try to mix n match but could never realize what I want otherwise.

So sometimes I end up making some really strange structures though I ultimately tear them down and start anew. Thus few reach a complete settlement.

At murkwater I once built a coliseum esque build with a tall circular tower with a 5 floor high ground floor with defenses and gargantuan pillars. Upwards the residential/commercial/industrial sectors were located. In total it had over 15 floors and with working path finding. The biggest let down that I couldn't screenshot it and share before the game starting crashing...

At that time I didn't know how to reduce the VRAM consumption of the game but now I am very much equipped for it and feeling ambitious...

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The first one was a clipboard cloned build with supports to have extruding institute/BOS platforms housing SS plots.

The second one is something I am currently working on. I'll share some more pics of that soon. Essentially I wanted to have that overhead accommodated somehow in a settlement. Cautiously I have been adding 14-floor plot towers on its ends. Right it has three but if all goes well, I'll add the fourth one too.

Each tower has 3 internal plots per floor. 2 are residential and one industrial. the spans adjacent to residential towers accommodate agricultural plots while the one adjacent to the industrial tower has commercial plots. All three spans feature 2 bathroom areas each.
 
:umnik2
Well due to the lack of variety in pieces for other sets, I ultimately succumb to predominantly concrete based builds. I try to mix n match but could never realize what I want otherwise.

So sometimes I end up making some really strange structures though I ultimately tear them down and start anew. Thus few reach a complete settlement.

At murkwater I once built a coliseum esque build with a tall circular tower with a 5 floor high ground floor with defenses and gargantuan pillars. Upwards the residential/commercial/industrial sectors were located. In total it had over 15 floors and with working path finding. The biggest let down that I couldn't screenshot it and share before the game starting crashing...

At that time I didn't know how to reduce the VRAM consumption of the game but now I am very much equipped for it and feeling ambitious...

View attachment 4744
View attachment 4745

:yahooAmazing! Not just size and style but the creativity. :pilot2I really haven’t seen anything like it before. :good
I really mean it, :moil “Holy Builder Batmam” :vampire

I so hope you post more screenshots! The interior would be wonderful to see:this

Also, I would really like it if you elaborated more on what you are talking about with VRAM consumption? :umnik2:umnik2 I mean “come on man?” :punish you’re killing me you can’t say something like that without some elaboration :tease:happy
 
:umnik2

:yahooAmazing! Not just size and style but the creativity. :pilot2I really haven’t seen anything like it before. :good
I really mean it, :moil “Holy Builder Batmam” :vampire

I so hope you post more screenshots! The interior would be wonderful to see:this

Also, I would really like it if you elaborated more on what you are talking about with VRAM consumption? :umnik2:umnik2 I mean “come on man?” :punish you’re killing me you can’t say something like that without some elaboration :tease:happy

<You asked for it, its gonna be long>

Well its more of a personal experience. Like I have built settlements with tens of thousands of pieces. You can get some idea from my imgur profile (I have just publicized a gallery of another now abandoned project).

I have this bad (good?) habit of making only those designs which are somewhat technically possible. Thus I add additional supports, beams etc till I feel satisfied. As you can see in the above photos that I am an avid fan of beams...

While reaching limits (depending on your VRAM) there are certain behaviors which start popping and I can understand that the game engine is reaching its limits. Like:
- If you have tcl enabled and you cycle it while in midair, a short animation and sound plays as if you landed on ground. The delay from the point you disabled clipping again to this animation marks the load the engine has. It progressively increases with more pieces.
- When you come near to the limit, the engine then starts reducing the texture resolutions. Most of the textures will then become bland, there will also be stutter. The stutter is more related to how your settlement is planned, a spread out one does not exhibit much of it.

The last spectacle island settlement I built (150+ settlers) served to be the food supplier for ALL my settlements, It had fisheries all around except the north side of the island. Also 2 house rows along the coastline with brick pathways and pier embankments. The central area had a mountain. All terrain was custom. It worked flawlessly with minimal stutter... It perhaps had many times more pieces than any of my previous mega settlements. I used a low resolution texture replacer then.

- Finally when you continue like a stubborn mule, badgering and hammering the poor engine, you finally see artifacts. Its difficult to describe. You are walking in the view of the settlement and suddenly the walls will vanish, and the interior will be visible. If you move your view sideways, it will become mush.

- After one encounters that its best to start downsizing as you never know that the next save load or any random subsequent save load will start crashing in this settlement. Also if you have too many SS plots then it is almost certain that SS will bite you in the *** soon (I guess due to scripts) and most probably the situation will be irrecoverable...

So I am now using a very low resolution texture replacer and thus I have achieved what I could never imagine with that concrete build.

<Side story: Another Day Another Lost Cause>

I remember once I built a mega circular bridge (6x256 width) on spectacle which ran all around the coastline. I remember each angled section had about ~750 pieces. And there were, I guess about 18 such pieces cloned with clipboard.

Then there were 5-floor triangular towers which were about 3-6 floors above ground attached to these bridge sections. Each tower had 3 plots, a base section and a sitting area on the roof. Each had about ~1400 pieces.

I encountered the artifacting when I placed the 5th tower... Thereafter SS soon bit me, and incarcerated my character for eternity... no amount of bribes, brainwashing could save him...
 
Oh my I just got an idea... How would a mountain surrounded spectacle island with the settlement in the middle look like... A lot of terrain work but not much settlement space will restrict it to be small.

A tunnel going out to form a pier with defenses. As the settlement will be on custom terrain, all enemies will essentially spawn under it anyways.... I always wanted to build a wide tunnel :crazy
 
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So this is its current state. I am not too sure about the wood shacks on those spans yet.

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The beams... :heart:crazy

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The white stone span I like. But maybe I will turn it into shack or the convert the other two into stone, indecisive a bit here...

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The walls of one of the towers... making them piece by piece is hard work...

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Tower base. I may remove the entrances and add them as staircases/lifts around the central pillar, that way defenses will be concentrated in a ring around it.

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An overhead pic.

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The customary Boston skyline pic...

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Back to the subject...
 
View attachment 4755

So this is its current state. I am not too sure about the wood shacks on those spans yet.

View attachment 4756

The beams... :heart:crazy

View attachment 4757

The white stone span I like. But maybe I will turn it into shack or the convert the other two into stone, indecisive a bit here...

View attachment 4758

The walls of one of the towers... making them piece by piece is hard work...

View attachment 4759
Tower base. I may remove the entrances and add them as staircases/lifts around the central pillar, that way defenses will be concentrated in a ring around it.

View attachment 4760
An overhead pic.

View attachment 4761
The customary Boston skyline pic...

View attachment 4762
Back to the subject...

:heat This really is like settlement porn to me. :crazy Oh, the shame of it!
I mean really look at those pillars :spiteful

I now have an uncontrollable compulsion to leave work and go on a building binge for the entire weekend :rollseye
 
Yeah, my job is keeping my builder craze in check, else I would have had a complete commonwealth developed by now... :spiteful
Unfortunately due to being a business owner I don't know when I get free time. All of your motivating words make me build more and risk the ire of my already crazed business partner on the management side... :crazy
 
I love it!
I really like your building style, all the angles and how everything has structural integrity. Brilliant!

Some constructive criticism....
I think the castle walls take a lot away from the over all look of it. To me it has a feeling of a massive abandoned industrial complex. Why would such a place have clean medieval walls? I would put some machines/silos from PBP there instead.

Also why do you not enter the settlement building contest? You'd do really well I suspect.
 
I love it!
I really like your building style, all the angles and how everything has structural integrity. Brilliant!

Some constructive criticism....
I think the castle walls take a lot away from the over all look of it. To me it has a feeling of a massive abandoned industrial complex. Why would such a place have clean medieval walls? I would put some machines/silos from PBP there instead.

Also why do you not enter the settlement building contest? You'd do really well I suspect.

Yes, I had the same thought, the whites are really too clean... I added actually to just see how the snappy kits work out (My first time with them)... It has other themes too, perhaps I'll try the others.

The other thing is that these stone/brick walls will definitely be heavier than those shacks, thus they feel out of place overall for them being on the span at all... I was already taking a leap with the stone with my uneasy heart... haha

Actually I am being limited here, as I want some commercial space too. Usually my settlements at the end cannot accommodate aesthetics and other clutter much due to already extensive construction.

As for that contest, I guess I could try once its complete. I have never looked into it.
 
The problem with the shacks in my mind are that they are too unrealistic. I mean, I would never make a house or any building for that matter from pieces that has holes in them... And the walls are also too thin... These really irk me...
 
Yes, I had the same thought, the whites are really too clean... I added actually to just see how the snappy kits work out (My first time with them)... It has other themes too, perhaps I'll try the others.

The other thing is that these stone/brick walls will definitely be heavier than those shacks, thus they feel out of place overall for them being on the span at all... I was already taking a leap with the stone with my uneasy heart... haha

Actually I am being limited here, as I want some commercial space too. Usually my settlements at the end cannot accommodate aesthetics and other clutter much due to already extensive construction.

As for that contest, I guess I could try once its complete. I have never looked into it.

hahaha, most of the time I do things like the blocks just for myself. Contests are not for me. I'll often do what you have done just to see what it looks like. The textures are-what-they are.

The pattern, geometry, and creativity are what I see when I get so excited.
I see inspired. That inspires me.

Sharing things like this become worthwhile as they compound and if sharing it can inspire even one other user to have a wonderful day where their own creativity takes control of them for hours. That "is a good thing."

The art isn't always just in an aesthetic. Often art is an unspoken communication that translates something to anyone :)

An ugly dog can still be amazing, useful and cute. :!dog: a beautiful dog can be dumb and poop everywhere :!wolf: hahaha!
 
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Also the rationale in removing the entrances around the towers and putting them around the mid tower is actually to make the path-finding work more properly. Usually staircases work better either in twos or in adjacent arrangement. The key is to not place staircases on top of each other, there must be at least more than 1 floor between two stair pieces.

Both the arrangements are my most successful ones. I haven't seen their upper limits yet but the twos I have built have resulted in less errors and have made settlers go above to the top 8th floor on a outpost zimonga settlement (see my imgur).

While the adjacent arrangement is more prone to congestion but still works with settlers in an internmittent flow.
 
So I scrapped the spans... :crazy:nuke:skull

I have now instead decided to use the industrial set of snappy kits. The industrial theme really does look awesome with this settlement. It has light steel pieces and also bright colors which bring some vibrancy to the existing dull concrete pieces. The only thing remains to be found is some big ass silo pieces, preferably snappable...

I have worked more than 24 hours on this. The following pics are a bit of patchwork because I changed the designs as I discovered workarounds, and not so obvious piece combinations. The first span took me over 10 hours to build and optimize. Still any pics later may not capture the beauty of constructing this.

01.jpg

So this is the new span makeup v3. As the beams are thinner in this, I have augmented them with steel "I" beams. The small pads you see serve as base for the vertical steel "I" beams. They are to compensate for the the concrete beams being 32 points below the floor level.
02.jpg

Catwalks are really nice in this set, albeit angled variations are not included which made me quite a bit frustrated at first.
04.jpg

The support frame for the industrial rooms. It was the first version but the only time I took a pic of it...

03.jpg

Industrial halls. Again its the v1.

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v1 in full. Sorry for the dark pic.
06.jpg

Industrial halls v3.
07.jpg

v3 sneak peek. I will post some more on the weekend or later. Too much work has piled up... :(
 
This build was an experiment of sorts to find out points on spectacle that I can use to house almost settlement size lean structures and still be able to make the engine work with them. Frankly I got greedy in the end. Its still working with 2 complete towers but I should have not developed the mid towers and spans at the least. So at least now I know how much should they be apart to work. That is the left tower gets its interior offloaded from memory when I got to the right one, making the engine stabler.

I have also an inclination to check the extreme corner points on spectacle. So rather than scrapping this piece by piece (ah clipboard instant cell scrap, I miss you so much), I am going to build anew. If that fails, I'll come back and try fixing this.
 
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