Name: Skyscraper
Rating: 3 (5 reviews)

Overview

Skyscraper is a fully-featured, modular, 3D realtime building simulator, powered by the Scalable Building Simulator (SBS) engine. The main feature SBS provides is a very elaborate and realistic elevator simulator, but also simulates general building features such as walls, floors, stairs, shaftwork and more. Many more things are planned, including gaming support (single and network multiplayer), and a graphical building designer.

What's new in Skyscraper

Version 2.0 Alpha 8:

Eevators now report as available if on the same floor as the call and not moving, regardless of the door state fixes an issue where pressing call buttons more than once would open additional elevators
Fixed TruncateNumber function, to return correct floating point precision without exponent
Dialog text box resizes
Remade queueresets feature
Floor announcement sound is now played along with the other arrival notifications, and so is affected by NotifyEarly
Up/down message sounds now play according to last chime direction
Elevator now chimes the previous chime direction if doors reopen (if applicable)
Turned off queue reversals if NotifyEarly is on
Added ReOpen elevator parameter
Added AutoEnable option to turn on and off automatic enabling/disabling of elevator interior objects
Added queue pending state flag
Fixes issue where pressing both call buttons in a 2 elevator shaft would call the same elevator for both
Switched to standard elevator availability check for single
Elevator call buttons
Major work on elevator queue/arrival notification code
Call button behavior fixes
Changed freelook crosshair to cross
Added elevator queue limit, to prevent calls opposite of queue direction from being placed removed same
Floor check in call button code, which broke calls when elevator was moving past current floor
Decreased classic elevator door spacing
Fixed logic that caused down calls to alternate chime direction
Added inspection service speed multiplier setting
Elevators now ignore the leveling offset if brakes are turned on while beyond that offset
Fixed a floor check and positioning issue with in
Elevator directional indicators, which caused only single indicators to be created
Added default/error texture
Added support for configuring the main menu from the INI file
Reversed the Sears Tower and Glass Tower menu entries shift-clicking on doors now locks them
Added new command SetKey, which allows models to be specified as keys
Added new command SetLock, which sets lock parameters when creating doors, controls and call buttons
Fixed elevator door bumpers
Added actions for inspection service up/down/go toggle options
Added support for multiple parents per action
Added ip20112.5 update for "The Spire" building
New Glass Tower roof, based on movie blueprints
Fixed a name check bug in the cut function, which was causing elevator door filler walls (done by FinishDoor()) to sometimes fail
Added support for elevator door vertical offsets
Elevators now stop according to the shaft door's voffset instead of the floor's base, where applicable
Added note to script guide mentioning that automatic filler walls needs all related walls to contain the word "shaft" for it to work
Changed camera speed to half, for a more realistic walking speed
Fixed texture autosizing quirks (diagonal walls/floors are now autosized correctly)
Added ability to delete models, controls and triggers
Limited object prepare on delete, speeds up object deletion
Added a fog multiplier setting in the INI file (changes fog density)
Glass Tower
New test service elevator serving most floors
Glass Tower
Changed executive elevator to use floors in movie depiction
New stairwells in Glass Tower, along with railings
Work done on Glass Tower floors 135-137
Updated AddFloor command, which fixes a number of issues with the old command
Fixes for planar texture mapper's autoflip functionality now appears to work properly (but might potentially cause minor breakage of existing buildings need to check)
Added ReverseAxis and texture direction parameters to AddFloor
Added rotate option to the planar texture mapper (which the texture direction parameter now uses)
Added GotoFloor function (mainly in camera controller window)
Added percentage indicator to script startup
Added note to the script guide about custom texture mapping and automatic reversals
New glass elevators in Glass Tower
Fixed issue preventing custom walls from being made in elevators
Separated elevator motor sounds between up and down movements
Added comments in script guide about leaving sound fields blank
Performance improvements
Fixed volume bug in AddSound
Volume parameter was specified as an int, preventing fractional volume values
Added lobby ambient sound to Triton Center
Added support for split car up/down elevator sounds
Added support for playing multiple sounds with the same name from an action
Added support for running multiple actions with the same name
Added couch model to Simple building, with physics enabled
Added centering support to models, and added parameter to AddModel commands
Added second couch to Simple building, and couch to top of Triton Center
Fixed object parent values for some new objects
Some fixes to cascading object deletion
Triton Center antenna tiling fix
Added texture animation
Added support for direct loading of ogre materials in data/materials
Added caching to GetFloor() and related functions
Triton Center external windows overhaul, using alpha blending Glass Tower overhaul
Added Action and Trigger objects
Added action viewer (control panel window)
Fixed global AddSound command which was overriding the per object ones
Updated AddSound command for FMOD and added loop option for new control/trigger commands
Fixed texture and material counters
Added changetexture, playsound and stopsound actions
Disabled doppler effect (sounds) by default
Default main sim window size now changed to 800x600, menu window size separated and kept at 640x480 (configurable)
Added internal skip for wildcards in filenames (*) (fixes those bogus error messages)
started in sim object creation (code constructor)
Added building startup options to turn on/off collisions and gravity (listed in the designguide)
Disable basement number conformity (fixes Cliveden Desmond Wharf)
Added a file check for the include section (loading now fails if an included file cannot be found this prevents serious and hard-to-diagnose errors later on)
Added Empty building (not working properly, but is used to create buildings from scratch)
Object colliders are now removed by default (for running performance) except for elevator doors (due to slowdowns when entering Triton Center elevators)
Disabled backface polygons for ground
Object info listbox now updates if you exit that window and re-enter
Added new control aliases, mostly for Mac users
Added support for setting the default sky time speed in the INI file for Caelum, and changed the default to 25 (you can now easily see the clouds moving, and a day moves much faster so you can more quickly see sunrises and sunsets)
Switched Mac frontend to use Cocoa
Switched from normal flipping to standard texture flip (for ogre coordinate system compatibility)
Added the Caelum sky system
Lowered default texture filtering anisotropy level to 4 (from 8 ) switched to 16
Bit hardware indices; should fix geometry corruption on some older cards, and should improve performance somewhat
If a cut operation eliminated an entire polygon, the original polygon would not be deleted
Added ability to only play elevator music while moving, and updated related INI file parameters
Added advanced option to profiler
Added profiler system
Added check for duplicate entries in missing files list
Added proper error reporting (and OGRE exception handling) to frontend initializer
Fix for operational conflict between floor grouping and ShaftShowFloors command
Added DisplayFloors parameters
Added texel override
Added physics support for models
Added support for model colliders
Added support for Ogre meshes (using converters for Google Sketchup)
Added checks to ensure that starting floors are less than ending floors in AddShaft and AddStairwell commands
Gravity reset fix and fix for IsInShaft() distance check
Fixed an issue where shaft would rapidly turn on and off if on top of elevator
Fixed issue involving reversed polygon faces resulting in some textures being reversed. Put in a precision workaround for Alpha 7 compatibility.
Sound fixes, added ability to view camera collider via F7, and fixed a line skip issue in the script interpreter
Filler wall reset fix
Added support for different open/close speeds for elevator doors
Wxwidgets compatibility fix
Added proper failures on numeric checks to report errors and prevent loops
Added texture filtering options, and switched default to anisotropic (previously bilinear)
Added ability to switch on and off collision detection and visible colliders via F7
Split SBS into shared object on Linux, and restructured source files
Removed AddGenWall and migrated items using it to AddWallMain
Switched translator code to OGRE's right
hand coordinate system (SBS uses left hand)
Switched to FMOD for sound
Switched to OGRE for graphics
Switched to Bullet for collisions and physics
Triton Center renovation
Fixed door filler walls
Object deletion fixes
Added geometry deletion support
Fix crash that only happens if shafts are created out of order
New internal mesh object system (Skyscraper now generates it's own 3D geometry)
New horizon distance setting
Added render distance limits for small objects

2 Skyscraper Reviews

Looks intriguing but the download has about 90 items and not a clue what to do with them. Upon going to 'Skyscraper Project's forum I see that Skyscraper is far, far from a finished project......may take a year to complete. Oh great, so why did the developer put the feckin' thing out here so prematurely? Duh! It's essentially unusable. (Skyscraper seems to be a one person operation....the developer' apparently has a full time job and not much spare time to devote to his project). I don't get it, I...just...don't...get...it. So for all practical purposes this thing's a waste of time and energy.

Version 1.5

Well, it works... you want a fully rendered 3D skyscraper? You get one. I see now why the elevator system is essential to the building. However, lots of things did not work for me. I could get the elevator doors open by clicking on them, but the cars never moved and the buttons did not light up. Flying/floating did not work either. So I had to go up stairs, around and around, that was annoying... other than that it was well rendered with nice textures and fun to fall down inside an elevator shaft and look around (not). I think it needs lots more work.

Version 2.0 alpha 6

1 answer(s)

Eventhorizon5

25 March 2010

"However, lots of things did not work for me. I could get the elevator doors open by clicking on them, but the cars never moved and the buttons did not light up. Flying/floating did not work either. So I had to go up stairs, around and around, that was annoying... other than that it was well rendered with nice textures and fun to fall down inside an elevator shaft and look around (not). I think it needs lots more work." None of the users on my forum ever had any of those issues, and all of that stuff has worked fine for years. Elevator doors are opened by pressing call buttons and elevator operations have always worked fine; flying/floating is done by turning off collision detection and gravity (in the control panel), etc. Forum: http://forum.skyscrapersim.com -eventhorizon

27 November 2009

"Looks intriguing but the download has about 90 items and not a clue what to do with them. Upon going to 'Skyscraper Project's forum I see that Skyscraper is far, far from a finished project......may take a year to complete. Oh great, so why did the developer put the feckin' thing out here so prematurely? Duh! It's essentially unusable." To run it, extract the package and double-click on "Skyscraper". If the main screen doesn't show up properly, move the window and it'll appear. This version (2.0) has been in development for 5 years, and is far from premature - it's currently extremely usable, and the Mac version is what's fairly new. -eventhorizon

Skyscraper

Overview

What's new in Skyscraper

Skyscraper Screenshots

2 Skyscraper Reviews