Cities in Motion Mods and Addons. from SMCE

Try as I might I cant seem to escape from the building of rail based mods but it seems that there’s always something more that can be tweaked altered or created.
I have recently created a set of Industrial styled station/platforms in both normal rail and metro varieties, initially they’d been designed as purely metro stations but thinking on I decided that a bit more realism could be obtained by creating a set for the AI trains.
Also got to say that I’m very happy with how my first ever created solely by me texture looks on the platforms giving that well used look without looking shabby .
Included in this set are 40 prop items specially modded to allow the placement of the props on a platform, as you can see from the picture that the effect that can be produced is very pleasing Download from CimX

No reason not to add a couple of new normal Railway stations to the game as I’ve been asked many times to do, I’ve altered the two 3 tracked stations from the metro mainline addon to normal Railway use, Very useful for builders of larger maps wanting a more modern look to their stations Download from Cimx

On a roll a bit this weekend and created some ships and modded a couple of the std ones for more variety and added them to the recent prop transport mod that i released Download from CimX

Back again, Its all been a little hectic of late, I’ve been spending a lot of time tweaking and tuning of old mods, converting a lot of stuff to GS format and spending a little too much time debugging the huge Asheri State sync project map, all very frustrating, one things for sure, within the sync project we’re definately pushing the boundaries of whats possible with the Cities in Motion game engine, more info on the sync project can be found HERE
But on to something new, now I’ve got to grips with the stations in Cities in Motion I’ve decided to expand the variety and try some new elevated stations and some alterations to the underground stations, I have to give some credit to Syrkzero for his overly fertile imagination, when you’ve done as many mods as I have it gets to a point where you can’t think of what to do next, and having him around provides a constant input of ideas admittedly a lot of them are just not possible in the current framework of Cities in Motions game engine, but some are actually possible.
So after a fairly hectic time I’m ready to show you whats possible and some previews of mods to come. The quad elevated stations, I’ve always been slightly disappointed that after all this time CO haven’t done anything with the elevated stations at all so after a bit of brainstorming with the other members of the sync project I decide to expand the range a bit,

So an elevated station with 4 platforms, very useful for station transfer where lines meet, it was actually surprisingly easy to make what was originally an underground station into an elevated station, the real difficulty comes with making it accessible to cims, if you’ve ever looked at the script for the underground stations you will see that there is quite a lengthy code set for the actual station halls and stairs or escalators, and unfortunately i couldn’t get it to work for me with the standard models, so it was time to fire up the 3dsMAX Fortunately I can look at a standard game object and see in what way it can be modified to suit my needs and I’m just about proficient enough with the 3D application to be able to rework an object to suit my needs, so what i needed was a way for passengers to get from one set of platforms to the other without having to go down to street level, so I decided that a modified underground station hall might fit the bill, but alas it wasn’t really usable in standard form. So after much chopping and moving and a fair bit of cloning i started to get somewhere close, In the end i ended up with about 12 models of various shapes and formats before i finally nailed it

So that worked well, mapping the access element to the station was a bit tricky and there are still some parts of it that i’m not too happy with, but its early days yet. Next to be attacked was the std elevated metro station, someone had asked if i could take the roofing away as we all thought it was very ugly so back into MAX and out with the graphical scalpel, removing the roofing wasn’t as simple as I’d first thought as it was tied to the walls, so when the roof came off so did a lot of the barrier wall, once fixed it looked rather smart.

Not content with just those i made a ground level version as well with a similar access setup to the elevated only reversed, not easy but very satisfying once completed , with a few tweaks to make the positioning was right it came together well. While i had the single station open in max I decided to remove one of the platforms and access elements so that making an express line where a train stopped wouldn’t hold up a through train,
Unfortunately I’ve not got a god pic of that but you can see it on the bottom left of this group photo that shows some of the stations that are on test in the Asheri state sync project

As an aside to the metro stations i’ve decided to also have a look at the Tram side of things, i can already make trams go underground though i’ve had loads of issues with the station side of things, so after another random conversation about where to go next I mad some elevated track sections just to see if a tram would be able to run on elevated tracks, the answer was a resounding yes, with a lot of cheating I’ve managed to create the basics of an elevated tram system, the joy of this in games is that although elevated the new sections of track are able to follow the streets just like normal ground level metro, giving the ability to provide a tram service uninterrupted by traffic or other incidents, I managed to create an elevated tram stop which removes the need for transition to ground although a transition is automatically placed by the game its an ugly affair and I’ve still got to alter the std metro slope section so its at the same pitch as that required by a tram, so thats enough for now I’ll just let you see some pics of the prototype elevated tram system, and leave you to imagine the options that could be available, if you have any ideas that you’d like to see become reality i can be contacted via Cities in Motion exchange

Multiple Metro Stations released
DOWNLOAD HERE

After much chaos and a few misfires the multiple metro stations for Cities in Motion have been released, not forgetting the Hovercabs and Footbridges that are also included in the pack, those items took a back seat a bit as the muliple metro stations took on a life of their own, from an initial four different stations to a total at release of ten new stations. As previously mentioned the stations have been released in combination with some other items that have not been seen before except in picture form., the stations on the whole work faultlessly although the info text really needs sorting, the Hovercabs that I really love have been glitch free for several pre-production versions, and the same can be said of the footbridges for all sizes of road and the general station accesories. All in all I hope it’ll be a storm and I know once used it transforms the character of the game beyond recognition.
The second Special Edition version that is at present only available via The Asheri State Sync map project is a much more complex and feature filled pack with propable stations and tons of extras, this pack will also be getting 4 new stations to push things on a bit.
I have been experimenting with elevated, subway and stacked platform stations and the results seem promising, I’ve also got the metro bridges to work with a much reduced parts set and although the ramping is automatic now it does have trouble still with the girder bridge end so still a bit too glitchy for release.
There are some other things in the pipieline including regional building sets starting with the UK as I live there so have lots of references so far constructed is a selection of villiage type tudor and medeval housing, 2 new chapels/churches, a selection of car garage modules two stand alone and 1 designed to be placed against other structures and a small group of council styled flats, expected release is sometime around the middle of march.

Too much modding and not enough gaming, suffering a bit from mod fatigue right now so I just settled for posting a couple of more download links for my mods, still not got them all moved in yet but I’m sure I’ll catch up eventually. Meanwhile the tower of mods that is the Spanner Monkey mod machine came crashing down around me this week, the inherent instability of Cities in Motion doesn’t help when pushing the boundaries and occasionally it all becomes too unstable to run, which leaves me with the fiendishly dull task of finding the trigger for the collapse. While sorting out the mess I’ve started bringing my mods up to game std quality with all the files being self contained, which rules out dependency issues and having all the correct info text, no more will a hover bus be called a tram!! And in the tradition of teaser piccies look at this…………..

A little modding bio and more station news
For those that don’t know from elsewhere I’ve been bashing away at a secret project for some time, and because things are afoot I’ll reveal some of whats been happening at the mod bench,.I along with others was slightly annoyed by the lack of variety in cities in motion as a whole, it was for that reason alone I started modding the game, Initially I rescripted a few buildings and I was happy, but like in all things I just cant leave it alone, I decide that just to rescript a building was fine but it really didn’t bring anything new to the game, so I set about trying to modify models by editing the mesh, starting with simple things like removing signage and fixed props, that was all good but I wanted more.

Me I like trains and am not happy with the stupid AI run rail network I want to run All the transport, mind you having something to compete against would be good. Thoughts of world domination aside I’m seriously going to remove the trains from Ai control, So the first step of course is and was to create some real ground level stations for metro trains, I started suprisingly with the biggest viable station in the game, the seven tracked railway terminal. figuring rightly that if I could crack getting that to work the rest would fall into place easily. Well I wont go into the rest of it, as the results are already here in pic form. It seems that I hadn’t finished with the stations and I really thought I had but in reality its the begining of something much bigger. For the first time ever. I actually put a mod out for testing, and sent the stations and the hovercabs off to testers from CimX ( excellent forum) and aside from some cosmetic changes and re-working of the station steps arrangement, as i could not get the multiples to work properly, part of the trouble being that the world of CiM is so very small, they have been as good in practise as they were in conception.

I’ve also been asked to make some special and unique items for the Asheri State synced map project that are only going to be available to people taking part in that project, So now i’m involved in two large projects 1 of which will be complete soon and hints, teaser and perhaps clues can be found at CimX I’ve sort of agreed to not spill the beans, but what i can say is that its one of the biggest unofficial things ,if not the biggest to hit the world of CiM, I expect it’ll be a download success as none of it has been seen before. But back to the stations, as part of the Asheri project there’s a requirement for special customisable stations, also a new single track ground station and perhaps some modular type station, that could be built as large or small as required, and if possible the same for the underground (the underground thing is really funny) but anyway back to the surface. In a minor modding frenzy I managed both, so today i present to you the first pics of the new single track metro station and the modular station that will come with a plie of 1 off props to connect it all up and provide passenger access and shelter.

I’ve also been tinkering with other metro related stuff and thought you might be interested in some other projects in waiting

Alternative entries and exits for underground station

Alternative underground to surface transitions and tunnels

HostGator Promos

I’ve finally come to the end of my station modding frenzy and the results have been well received on the forums, I’m hoping to release a Beta version of the files sometime over this weekend, it’ll have to be a beta for i really cant justify spending weeks testing all of them fully and individually, i’d like to but its just not viable, I have however play tested them all as a group on a small map and aside from the headaches caused by tring to route 7 tracks in and out of the terminals they all seem to function as expected, I ended up modding so many small items that are combined to produce a full station I’ve put out a small object mod with all the addon parts for general use
I’ve constructed a couple more stations in response to requests from the CimX forums
A modern style twin tracked metro station, all you see attached to the station is as it’s loaded and placed, so no need to mess around with props.

AS I said I’ve had enough of stations for a while so here’s a pic of the full lineup as it stands

So this is what the full lineup actually holds
from left to right back to front
4platform
3 platform
2platform overpass
resized city stairs so that they are correct height for platforms
set of steps liberated from ground level metro station
7 Track terminal station
7 Track mainline station
3 Track mainline station
3 Track mainnline station with bus tram terminal areas
2 Track traditional branch line station
2 Track modern branch line station
gave up for now with Tokyo conversion as it was melting my brain!

Hopefully these will downloadable from here and CimX Sometime before Monday but it’s very early on sunday morning now, its been a very long time since bedtime so dont hold your breath..

Hi all , been messing around with the stations a lot recently as I’ve always found the choice of metro stations available a bit on the mean side. So with this in mind I cloned all the relevant files and set to work,.It is important to realise that the stations and terminals in Cities In Motion are not a complete object in themselves, so that for example if you where to extract the railway station into 3ds you would not have a complete station, you’d have a station building and a few floating benches and signs, so youre left wondering how on earth does this work, well the answers in the script file for the station, i’m not going to tell you what it is exactly as i’ve already given enough clues to would be modders. but suffice to say that i can now get any object to load another object, so adding lighting signage etc is no longer an issue.
So after many hours and possibly hundreds of game starts I finally cracked it and am currently testing a 2track metro station based on the original train station but with some important differences, the station platforms are linked by steps and a bridge over the track and the side of the platform that does not have the ticket office has a long flight of steps almost the full length of the platform that go down to street level

A 3 track 6 platform station in two varieties 1 without extensions for tram or bus stops and 1 with

And the big brother of them all a 7 tracked end of line terminal

Everything you see attached to the station, lights signs, bridges,steps are all loaded with the station, in the case of the platform linking staircases/bridges and the steps to street level where all made by me to fit the purpose, although they are loosely based on already in game items, I’ve considered releasing those items as props also, but wont until i’m asked.

Further work i’ve been doing on the railstock has started to produce results

.

And as a just for laughs mod I’ve liberated the robot from the Tokyo dlc and turned him into a hoverbus

Apologies for the shady resolution of this pic, i was just doing another screenie when i noticed him in the back ground so its a bit over enlarged.

And another just for laughs project the triple decker
just avoid low bridges and tight bends
DOWNLOAD