Connecticut License Plates 1953-2020 1.3

I know, there are already a couple of mods around that feature Connecticut plates, so why should you bother trying this one?

Well, in this mod I tried to bring all the plate bases issued from 1953 onwards. Why from 1953? The Burnside Special is the oldest vehicle in game, and it is a 1953 model year, so it means this mod features a period correct plate for every car in-game. Hooray!

The plates go by the name of "US, CT [years]" in the in-game menu.

Plus, you can also choose from a bunch of specialty plates.

Before I list the features, massive thanks to Googlefluff and osyu46 for allowing me to use the fonts from their American License Plates Pack in versions 1.0 e 1.1. If you haven't downloaded it yet, I highly suggest checking it out.

FEATURES

• All the base plates issued since 1953 up to this day
• Some specialty plates as well, for a total of 30 plates in this mod
• Plate text pattern generation follows real-life counterparts (thanks Derp_de_Herp for your input on this one)
• Now with accurate custom fonts for each set of plates!
• New stickers feature! Read more to learn how to use it
• New pre-1957 custom plate format for the Burnside Special

STICKER FEATURE

This took me a while to get it to work properly.
All plates in their standard form come with the last sticker they would have used IRL (depending on the plate) or no sticker at all.
If you want, for example, to make a 1998 sticker appear on the corner of the plate, get to the plate text bar in the in game menu and add "y1998" after the text that is already there, and click on the tick icon on the right.
It always is *yourtext* + "y" + *year*.
Year has to come in 4 digits.
If the "y" and part of the year appears as text on the plate, force it out of the digit limit for plate text by typing some spaces or "," "%" "/" in between the actual text and the "y".
Only realistic combinations are there. Don't try a 1972 sticker on a 2000 plate.

1953-1956 YEAR TABS FEATURE

Very similar to the sticker feature, this has some differences. It was complex to get to work so for this plates STICK WITH THE INGAME TEXT GENERATOR or you'll make a mess.
The last digit commands the year tab that is going to show up.
Lowercase "a" is for '53, "b" for '54, "c" for '55 and "d" for '56. Each tab should have its colour, but I couldn't code it right so it gets randomized every time.

NEW PRE-57 FORMAT (since v1.3)

Only for the Burnside Special, a new plate format is available for the 53-54 and 55-56 plates styles. Just navigate on the parts menu like you would do to choose the EU format, and select "Front/Rear Old CT License Plate". Remember to put back in place either a EU format or a north American standard plate before changing plate style again in order to avoid a "no tex" texture to appear. If you are lazy you can still use 53-54 and 55-56 plate styles on a standard north American plate.



FUTURE OF THIS MOD

This is my first mod ever, I hope you people like it. If you find some bugs or anything that I can address to make it better just let me know. Apart from that, I only plan to roll out a new update in case another vehicle gets added to the game in the future, in the eventuality that said vehicle is pre-WW2 or something like that.
Anyways this mod has grown way over the expectations I had in the beginning and I learnt many things working on this, and now that I have implemented all the features that I could only dream of just months ago I think I'll say it's finished. I'm confident enough to say this is amongst the first out there to feature an entire evolution of a license plate from the 50s to the 00s, a large number of specialty plates, year stickers generated "on demand" and now even a completely new plate format. These last two features in particular took me a lot of trial and error to get them right, and I am willing to share whatever knowledge I got to achieve with whomever wants, just feel free to DM me if you are taking inspiration for your own license plate mod and want to spare yourself some headaches.
I hope you can enjoy it to at least a fraction of what I did working on this, it really was, at times frustrating, fun.

Cheers