Planning Lots




        These are planning lots to assist you in future city development. They were built for my own use, and while they are very simple and contain nothing harmful, the standard disclaimer: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!! If they burn down your house and run off with your significant other, it may be my fault, but I accept no responsibility.

        I use these in conjunction with my 'Label' mod, though they can be used independantly of each other.

        That said, they are color-coded to represent RCI, and Civic and Utility zones. If you want to represent ports, or military bases, you'll need to manufacture new textures, although the lots can be cloned to new IIDs to accomplish that. They will appear near the top of your Landmarks Menu.

        The Ruler lot has various uses, but can be used for placing Mayor mode plopables. Put it on an adjoining tile, before placing your plops. each tickmark indicates 1 meter.

        The accompanying '!_PlanningLotTextures.dat' file contains the necessary textures. FOR MY OWN USE, I used a small gap in the Lot Editor IID texture sequences near the top. That may conflict with other textures YOU own. It is easy to change them in iLive's Reader, but is beyond the scope of this 'Readme'. Lots of info on this topic is available at SC4 web sites.

        Just put the lots and textures in whatever Plugins system you are using. To remove them, just delete them.

        You may modify any aspect of these lots, using the appropriate tools, but if you distribute such lots, please credit me.

TECH NOTES:

        You can use these lots as-is, but if you wish to expand on them you will need to learn some rudimentary modding techniques. As far as tools, the most basic necessary is iLive's Reader, and the SC4TOOL. My personal preference is the 0.93 version of the Reader. It has been used for years by almost everyone, is stable, with few bugs. There is a newer version, but I've heard mixed reports on it. The SC4TOOL is very useful both as a database, and a tool for manipulating textures, and transit-enabling.

        I use these lots without a base texture to allow the terain texture to show through. For this mod, I gave them base textures. The game will use a lot without a base texture, but the Lot Editor will not save a lot without one. To my knowledge, there are 3 ways to accomplish such transparency:

        1) Remove the texture from the Lot Config exemplar in the Reader.
        2) Use the "Stupid Texture" trick. (I.E. Use a base texture that exists in your plugins dirs for the Lot Editor, but remove that texture from your plugins before running the game. The game will ignore the missing texture.)
        3) Reportedly, the newer PIM-X tool allows saving a lot without textures.

        NOTE: Using any overlay texture without a base texture, if you use an underground DataView, when you return to normal viewing, said lots will be black (the 'Water' bug). There is no harm, but the only way to restore the normal view is to exit to Region view, and return. An inconvenience. Some players claim workarounds, your results may vary.

        The building on the lots is a modded version of the games Small Grass Park. All attributes were zeroed out. You can easily add a new building or props in the LE (though changing the building will likely move it in your menus). If you want to change any of the attributes, say, plop cost (to mimic some development budget in your own game play), you will have to edit them in the Reader or another program.

        The game allows zoning for larger blocks than 1x1, using the 'CTRL' key. All these lots are 1x1, and will not appear in-game as contiguus large building zones. If you want larger zones, (i.e. 1x2, 3x1, etc.) you will have to build them in the LE, though you can still use the included textures. They will however use up more space in your menus.