[OFB] SimoBank ATM (working; from Ticket Machine)

SimoBank, the bank that charges the lowest commission throughout the SimNation, has just launched a new business--to put their intelligent touchscreen ATMs in business lots of any SimEntrepreneurs and pay them a good amount of Simoleons! If you're one of these SimEntrepreneurs, why not try out this offer today!

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OK enough buzzing; this is my second creation posted here. (the previous one is almost 1 year ago!) It's an ATM cloned from the Electrono-Ticket Machine; I came up with the idea when I was playing a business lot that resembles a shopping street in a low-income district. I use quite a lot hacks, especially the sleeping-in-business-lot one, and that business lot (with apartments up the stairs) will be such a waste if I don't charge customers for staying. But a modern stick called "Electrono-Ticket Machine" really doesn't fit in the scene, while an ATM does. So I started my way.

So in one sentence, this is just an alternative look of the Electrono-Ticket Machine. It copies all functions of that machine. No hacks, no money deposits or loans, no credit systems, it just sells tickets.

"All kinds of experts wanted"?? Yes, I mean Testers, Recolorers, Remeshers, BHAV Modders and any other expert types you can think of. I'll explain now.

------------- READ ME FIRST (Update Log) ------------

20060503: Squinge has created some ticket machine hacks, but I haven't investigated on them to check the compatibility. Use with caution if used with my ATM or wait for anyone to claim compatibility/conflicts.

------------- for testers / users (IMPORTANT INSTRUCTIONS) ----------------

To Download (and General Information)

Get netmicro_atm_060424!.zip and unzip the only file in it to your game's Downloads folder. It goes into Electronics/Miscellaneous, next to the original Electrono-Ticket Machine. It is very low on poly/vertex count: SimPE says 314 faces, 539 vertices. Anyway it's just an ugly box; how big do you expect these numbers to be?


To Install (on your business lot)

Place an original Electrono-Ticket Machine anywhere on your lot, then place one or more of this ATM. Beware that when you pick up the ATM in the buy catalog you'll see its back--because the ETM was already designed that way, and I don't have enough skills to revert it. So take care of its direction when putting down the ATM.

When you've started your business [only for home business players], click on either the ETM or the ATM and start charging customers/commissions, and all xTM will be notified. If you forget to place at least one ETM, the ATM will refuse to start up and pops a message (see capture).

To Manage

All maintenance codes in the ATM are programmed to also perform on all ETMs on the lot, so if for example you change the price ("commission") on an ATM, all other ATMs and ETMs will be updated. HOWEVER, this object does not contain hacking code and thus the ETMs in turn will not update any ATMs of the change. Therefore, updating prices should always be performed on any ATM.

To Uninstall (remove from lot)

Deleting the last ETM will remove the global controller since that ETM thinks no one else will use it, but here comes the ATM! So please delete all ATMs before deleting the last ETM. If you forget to do so, any Sim wanting to interact with the leftover ATM (including visitors about to think of paying) will be reset (a.k.a. the "jumping" effect). Removing all leftover ATMs will solve the problem.

-------------- for recolorers -------------

To Recolor

Grab the textures inside the package, and you'll see some of my comments painted in them. The zip file uvmaps.zip contains two UVMaps you'll need.

Dig into the object package file and you can see more textures than recolorable--the original ETM introduced them, and I changed them--I now have 2 screens instead of 1, and I need lighting effect for the lamps which is perfect to borrow from the original screen material. Check them out if you want to change the screen displays too.

-------------- for remeshers --------------

To Remesh

This might be a new career anyway, you see that I'm a 3D dummy without any nice, professional 3D tools and can only make this ugly look. If you're interested or if you already have a perfect (nice-looking && low-poly) model for an ATM, help me out!

Oh, in case you notice the strange "inner shell" covered by the outside shell but with only 0.001 distance: it seems that if I set my graphic card performance to "best performance", it won't render alpha-blended planes correctly, and the bottom, for example, will show up despite that it should be covered by the sides completely. So I extended the "surfacemetal" group which does not use alpha blending to cover the inside of this machine.

--------------- for modders --------------

To Do More Research On "Controller - Bandatron"

I've spent a lot of time digging into the BHAVs, making sure no original GUID was referenced, and yet the ATM can't function stand-alone. I believe that's because lots of accompanying code is inside the "Controller - Bandatron", GUID 0x50594460. That probably mean we need a game mod like the band controller or stuff to enable ETM cloning. But I've run out of my time and energy to check into the big package file, and instead I restored all original GUIDs and appended my new one (e.g. originally: for all ETMs set price; now: for all ETMs set price, then for all ATMs set price too).

To Turn It Backwards (or "back forwards")

This is probably the first *big* object which needs to be dragged the opposite direction to be placed correctly (*small* objects already exist: most desktop lamps cloned from the cheapest two in the original game), but I dont like this uniqueness. However, I don't have any knowledge about routing slots (and looks like there're plenty, two or three in the object and three or four referenced from global), nor am I interested in modifying the original game file (the animation from walking up to finish substracting money is controlled by the controller; not this object), so I'm passing this job to someone else :P

To Make It Base-game Compliant And Can Become A Real ATM

I just noticed that there exists a banking system already in the mod forum, and I could probably use the controllers and make the community (both SimNation's and ours) more consistent, but right now I'm not so motivated to do this job yet.

---------- for all who read through this pile of text ---------

You really, REALLY have my gratitude!

---------- for all who read this line, no matter if you've jumped here -----

Enjoy playing/staring/redistributing*/recoloring/remeshing/remodding/removing(ouch...)!

Max [ID@MTS2=netmicro]

*Redistributing as a non-free object or as part of a non-free project in any form is not permitted. Though I don't stop you from posting the file directly to somewhere else, it's anyway a good habit to link it back here to let your downloaders know of any updates.