Questions About Fixing the Menus (by editing files)

[GoodOak 1]

I'm sure it isn't news to anybody here that it doesn't take many BAT downloads to end up with a busted landmark menu that takes ten minutes to scroll end to end. So I'm trying to fix that. I figure that if I'm going to use three different coastline kits, NAM, about a billion landmarks, and all kinds of other crap, I should at least have some way to know where I put it all.

Here are my questions:

1. Can I edit the in-game descriptions and titles by modifying a file?

I know the titles of buildings/parks/etc can be edited in-game, but I want to know how to open up the files and just fix the problem permanently.

I've noticed quite a few times that somebody will make this awesome skyscraper - great nightlighting, perfect proportion and design ... only to plop it and realize that this amazing structure is entitled "Custom Ploppable" and it doesn't have any description (so I can differentiate it from the million other awesome skyscrapers). I'd like to edit the files and fix that.

2. Can I edit menu locations of buildings and the order in which the building appears in the menu?

I'd like to be able to control which menu buildings show up in (parks, landmarks, hospitals, etc), and then also be able to "cluster" them with similar models. For example, keep my various Dubai towers all together in landmarks, or keep various cargo ship props all in one place under seaports, and the libraries and museums separated.

I'm trying to fix instances where I find a neat train station, find that it doesn't show up in-game, and weeks later find out it had been hidden at the bottom of the parks menu. After enough downloads, it gets sorta irritating.

I assume there is some numerical identifier to tell a building where it goes in the menu. Can this simply be changed by editing the file?

3. If the above is do-able, can I use the RCI menus and add stuff to those?

Those menus are always nicely empty. I'd like to stick various shops, malls, towers, industrial clutter ... all of that undernearth the zone/dezone buttons. But I've never seen anything else placed in there.

Thanks for any help or responses!

[Xyloxadoria 1,099]

1. Yes To do it you will need Reader

Open the Lot File that comes with the download you should see a picture of a puzzle piece with the name of the lot below it click on that.

There will then be some things that appear in the Whitespace that say "Exemplar file" Pick the bottom one

Look For The Propertey "Item Name" and double click it

Below "Values as text" put in the new name then click apply to the right.

Close out of that window then save the lot using "save" at the top

Following the above desctipton will change the name, do the exact same thing in the file (minus the first step since your lot is alredy open but with "Item Description" to change the description.

2. To change the Order in the menu, you will need to change the "Item Order" Property It is just a number, Changing that number  0 will make it appear at the top of the menu. The higher you make the number the farther down it will be. That means something like 100 will probably be near the end.

3. To answer your thrid question, you cannot put stuff in the RCI menus, they are for zones only.

[Eʟᴇᴍᴇɴᴛ 273]

Hi Good Oak!

I had the same problem as you when I had a scroll menu that took me 10 minutes to go from to end as well. All I did to fix the problem was change the vertical scroll rate on my mouse from 1 to 12. I did this by going into mouse properties in the control panel. This should make scrolling much faster for you.

As for organizing your menus you can do that by downloading MMLs (if available) or by changing the order of a menu as you have suggested.

I hope this helps you out!

[GoodOak 1]

Thanks to the both of you.

Reader works great. It took a little bit to figure out what was going on, but it makes sense.

But how do I change which menu a building shows up in? For example, if I wanted to move something from the Landmarks menu to the Power menu? How do I define which menu something shows up in?

And just out of curiosity, why is it not possible to place anything under the RCI tabs?

Thanks again!

[thingfishs 416]

 also you should be aware of the DAMN system which allows creation of custom menus via the news ticker.

[GoodOak 1]

Wow! I thought that custom menus were not possible ...

What's up with the aptly named DAMN? Got a link for it?

[thingfishs 416]

it's still under development and does allow you to create your menus (albeit with a hassle or two, but these are continuing to be ironed out)

this is the link: https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1775, you'll need to be registered.

(to be more specific, the link is to version 1 while version 2 is currently is currently being tested)

[CaptCity 4,669]

Originally posted by: GoodOak

But how do I change which menu a building shows up in? For example, if I wanted to move something from the Landmarks menu to the Power menu? How do I define which menu something shows up in?quote>

Here's a thread at SC4D discussing and explaining the process if you're still interested.

[GoodOak 1]

So, I played around with DAMN for awhile ... it looks really promising for clearing up some of the seldom used menu clutter (like stadiums or small office towers that don't really work as "landmarks" etc) ... I'll need to try this a little more, or see if I can find a tutorial.

I'll probably take a hybrid DAMN/file mod with iLive approach and just keep it organized that way.

And indeed, I'll check out that menu moving thread on SC4D.

So thanks Thingfishs and Captcity! I really appreciate the help.

[City Planner 121]

DAMN when used in conjunction with SSPTool is an easy to use menu system. SSPTool allows you to add items to your damn menu in just a couple of clicks (assuming you don't need to add any information to each building). I've been using it since it came out and only recently though really gotten into adding items to DAMN when ever I download a new item that would be appropriate to have in the damn menu system. Obviously, not every item that people have created is suitable to place in the DAMN menus, however a great deal of it is.

The SSPTool can also be found over at the sc4devotion website in their forums somewhere. I'd find it for you but they've got so many forum that their forum system looks worse than my Simcity 4 menu system with how many options there are all broken down, but I'm sure anybody that wants to use it will find it over there.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Not much left to add here - let me just say that the nifty little programme "LEProp" is far more comfortable to edit lot names and descriptions than ILive's Reader.

A further advantage is that it allows you to use special characters - depending on where you live, this can be very valuable - we Germans, for example, have all those funky "Umlaute" - ä, ö, ü - which must be encoded in Unicode gibberish if we want to use it in the "Item Name" and "Item Description" properties.

What LEProp does is that it adds two so-called LTEXT files to your lot that contain (A) the name, and (B) the description. They are referenced in the building exemplar files as "User Visible Name Key" and "User Visible Description". These can contain special characters.

With LEProp, it's also quite easy to adjust stuff like the menu a lot will appear in, the plop and maintenance cost, park and landmark effects, query sounds (don't you hate it when a ploppable office tower sounds like Big Ben when you query it?) etc.

There's only one glitch about that programme: If you make multiple changes at once, hit "Save" and exit, sometimes not all changes are adopted. Therefore, I recommend opening a file, making one change, saving and opening again. This approach may take longer, but in the end it can save you time, because it ensures you don't have to enter everything twice.