Changed a school to a college and now the game crashes

[megaplex4 0]

I downloaded a school and used SC4Tool to change the parameters to make it the same as the city college. This is because I want a city college but I want it to look old, not modern. However when I plonk it down in the game it crashes before the plonk sound has even finished plonking. Can anyone tell me what it is that I might have done wrong? Even if you could just point me into a vague direction, otherwise I'll have to do a trial and error, line by line testing thing and I don't think I can listen to "Challenge Everything" over and over again. I just can't.

[how_deep 2]

Use the Lot Editor to copy the old high school building onto a blank lot, then use sc4tool to mod it into a college.

[cammo2003 20]

Originally posted by: megaplex4 I downloaded a school and used SC4Tool to change the parameters to make it the same as the city college. This is because I want a city college but I want it to look old, not modern. However when I plonk it down in the game it crashes before the plonk sound has even finished plonking. Can anyone tell me what it is that I might have done wrong? Even if you could just point me into a vague direction, otherwise I'll have to do a trial and error, line by line testing thing and I don't think I can listen to "Challenge Everything" over and over again. I just can't.quote>

LOL.   BTW, you can turn the intro off.

Just add -intro: off to your shortcut (without the space between the : and the o and without the quotation marks.

Saves the sanity of us modders (I dabble from time to time), lotmakers, and regionmakers.

[megaplex4 0]

So I'm going to  add this:

-introff

...and where exactly do I put it in the shortcut ?

[megaplex4 0]

When you say to use the LE to copy the old school building onto a blank lot - where do I get a blank lot from ?

[Andreas Roth 616]

Make one yourself: Pick a suitable lot in LE, remove all props and textures and start over.

[megaplex4 0]

All well and good, but the ploppable lots don't let me put just any old building on it. If I open the city college lot for example, I can only put two buildings on it - the city college and the university.

[tungston 19]

What parameters did you change, other than the age groups they are basicaly the same. I might be the lot you downloaded, rather than what you changed.

[cammo2003 20]

Originally posted by: megaplex4 So I'm going to  add this:

-introff

...and where exactly do I put it in the shortcut ?quote>

"C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4\Apps\SimCity 4.exe"  -introff

is how it should look. Oh, and sorry about the emoticon, it's an unfortunate coincidence. (Dirk, we really could use a code tag!).

[Andreas Roth 616]

@megaplex4: I guess you didn't change all necessary properties, or maybe picked the wrong ones, that's why your game is crashing once you plop the modified lot. The best way would be to start from scratch: Put the building model in your plugins folder (not in a subfolder), open the Plugin Manager and drag the model onto the "College" entry. This will create a new SC4Desc file. Now open the Lot Editor, pick the default college lot, and select your new college building from the building list.

[megaplex4 0]

I did that but I just BATted a 1x1x1 cube and used that as my building, and then put the props from the downloaded school over the top of it. There is a way, I know there is because I've done it before but I've forgotten how to do it, of BATting a building that you can "see" but that doesn't "show" - if you know what I mean. I tried using just a flat spline but it wouldn't render. It's like when you have the SC4Desc file without the model and you end up with a grey square in the LE without being able to see the actual building. One of those would be really useful.

Thanks for all your help by the way. It's good to know this website is here otherwise the visual aspect of the game would wear pretty thin after a while, and I really don't have the time or the mind to get techy with it all.

[Andreas Roth 616]

You can make an "invisible" BAT model by deleting the Resource Key Type 1 property from the building exemplar file of your lot. This is basically the same as using the invisible grey "building" that Maxis made for the parks, just that you used your 1x1x1 cube before to get a new SC4Desc file from the Plugin Manager. IIRC, OP4 also posted such an invisible model at the STEX, so you can use this as a template.

[megaplex4 0]

Cool, thanks for that, that's useful to know. 

By the way, on the subject of hospitals, what is the difference between demand created and demand satisfied, and why doe the hospital only have demand created ?

[tungston 19]

megaplex4: I use a simple way of making visible "invisible" lots, I texture a plane in gMax. It renders quickly, and you can make it almost as large as the building you are going to use. That way you don't have to hunt too much to query it.