apparently anomalous exemplar reveals new type

[J_McSim 0]

 

 

Hi guys,

  Made an interesting discovery on the weekend

[Tropod 144]

sweet mother of...........[:0]..........

Now that, explains a lot!

Back in the early days of modding, I had actually questioned this very sort of thing, in regards to the Reader & the display of data like this. I had even examined quite a number of Exemplar files hex data, only to come up blank. I've not examined the file in regards to what you've done here, but it does seem to confirm my beliefs. woow

I had actually at one point modified that particular exemplar, with some personal stuff I had done (to increase the allowable construction levels). For some reason the changes I made resulted in game crashing when changing the BuildingStyle, & so thus I had to abort the modd I'd done (it was never released).


This certainly does explain a few things though. So yeah, can't wait to see more. So are you developing a tool for SC4 files, like the Reader & Datgen, or you just using Datgen (as depicted)?

[Josh24_81 0]

So that would explain why I never could get something to do something when It was suppose to do something about something. Ok So umm cool this sounds like an important discovery. I really don't know what it means(really need to do some reading and stuff). But if its to bring greater understanding to the wonderfull world we know as SC4 then gratz.

[J_McSim 0]

Ok, I've attached a dat file with the exemplar in question in text format, the

Reader can see it all, except the one property with the Uint16 type.

 

I plopped it in my plugins and ran the game for a while, no problems...

I then changed the Uint16 to Uint32, which is what properties.xml states its

type should be, loaded the game, ran it for quiet a while, changed building styles,

no crash... I have however decided to upload the version that is just a text

version of the original, extract and change it's type in notepad if you wish, it

didn't crash for me. 

 

Haven't had time to scan the cohorts yet, will hopefully do it tomorrow night...

 

Tropod: 

I use reader most of the time, I was until recently planning some modding tools,

simrolle seems to be doing quiet nicely with SC4tool atm though, so my goal now is a content management system, detecting broken plugins, missing deps, and perhaps most importantly checking their pollution levels, water and power usage, and value, and changing them if they don't fit, statistically, with the default buildings of the same purpose & wealth level.

 

I am going to create a gui for displaying dat's and their contents along the way though. so there will be a reader/datgen like dat editor, eventually.

 

Not much time to work on it in general atm, though my other half is in Perth for

a couple of weeks, so I'm making good progress now... should be something worthy of downloading in a couple a months.

 

 

[Andreas Roth 622]

Date: 8/29/2005 6:41:26 AM Author: J_McSim

I use reader most of the time, I was until recently planning some modding tools,

simrolle seems to be doing quiet nicely with SC4tool atm though, so my goal now is a content management system, detecting broken plugins, missing deps, and perhaps most importantly checking their pollution levels, water and power usage, and value, and changing them if they don't 'fit', statistically, with the default buildings of the same purpose & wealth level.

quote>

This sounds like a good idea; one of my motivations for creating SC4Tool (or better, the predecessor of it) was to provide some reference material for balanced BATs and lots - esp. when it comes to pollution values and such, since the Plugin Manager suggests ridiculous values in many cases. Maybe you could work together with simrolle, since SC4Tool already features scanning routines for dependencies (both for props and textures).

[J_McSim 0]

Date: 8/29/2005 8:37:00 AM Author: Andreas Roth

This sounds like a good idea; one of my motivations for creating SC4Tool (or better, the predecessor of it) was to provide some reference material for balanced BATs and lots - esp. when it comes to pollution values and such, since the Plugin Manager suggests ridiculous values in many cases. Maybe you could work together with simrolle, since SC4Tool already features scanning routines for dependencies (both for props and textures).

 

Wow, I wasn't aware it did props too, I've downloaded it, but yet to install and play with it. Your original building database was really my motivation, I'd started to experience the garbage problem,

but wasn't aware it was all the custom content until your building database thread first showed up.

 

While I would sincerely like to work with simrolle, I'm not sure I have the time to learn how to use

a new framework, I'm using Java, which I'm familiar and confortable with... Now, that said, I do have Visual Studio .NET installed . . . just never got around to learning .NET, collaboration on such

projects would be a good thing. . . but I'm a busy man at the moment, so I'll likely be sticking with

Java.  Out of interest though, what language is simrolle using ?

 

 

[Andreas Roth 622]

In its current state, SC4Tool will scan both the LD file for prop and model dependencies, as well as texture DATs. The LD scan could be refined a bit, since it tends to give some false reports - whenever someone modifies an in-game exemplar file, it will be reported with the new name in the LD file when the lot designer doesn't clean out his plugins folder before editing the lot. Since the IDs of in-game and custom exemplars are the same, there is no way to tell which one is really needed, so the only way is to remember all lot designers to remove custom stuff other than the needed prop packs from their plugins folder before editing a lot. A workaround for this would be some kind of blacklist, where common false reports are entered (Pegasus modified some stuff for his CDK lots, and when you have mikeseith's European Car Mod installed, these DATs will be reported whenever you use the LotCarCluster prop family).

Anyway, rather than developing dozens of tools and invent the wheel again and again when it comes to reading SC4 files and such, it would be great to join our effort and create one tool that covers all these aspects, since they are quite similar in the end. And even if you're not familiar with .NET programming, you could share your knowledge with simrolle, give hints regarding the UI and test the stuff extensively. I will point simrolle to this thread; I guess he can answer questions regarding the programming language he uses and such better than I could.

[simrolle 18]

@J_McSim: I've used different languages - C# and - because i wanted to learn it and the project seems good for that - vb#.No problems in using and no problems in communications between libs of both languages.Therefore, modules written in J# would be no problem as well.

 

As Andreas said, during startup of sc4Tool all files in both plugin folders are getting scanned; now just only for textures

because i need them for the TE-Editor,TextureCreator and TextureScanner. It would be no problem to scan the

Exemplars for Props as well to give you a list of all non sc4-Standard props. But - you have to scan LotExemplars

for used props as well to get a complete list of all dependencies. Could be a new part of sc4Tool 

maybe with a graphic output of all dependencies found.

 

If you want to use this as your first project in j#, you can use the main reading/writing procedures of sc4Tool located

in the sr_sc4lib.dll. Unfortunatly i haven't made a documentation for the functions yet but if a question

occurs you can ask me if you want.

 

The other part - getting a list of values of buildings of the same purpose & wealth level is quit a great idea.

Would be great if you could compare those values e.g. in a spreadsheet.

 

If you do not have the time for that, i can realize it very quickly after my holidays . I think it would not

take more than 1 week for coding and 1 week for testing + bugfixing.

 

Let me know - even for help during coding or -if you do not have the time- if we should realize your ideas with sc4tool.

 

simrolle

[J_McSim 0]

I've scanned the cohorts, and (unfortunately?) there's no properties of type Uint16, or any other new data types ... no more previously hidden properties...

 

 

Andreas:

I'm not sure I understand your first paragraph. . .  If your talking about lot designers 'accidently' overwriting default game items by unknowingly using the same TGI, you could just load everything in the same order the game does, overwriting duplicate TGIs as you go.  I don't think this is what you meant though . . .

 

As to reinventing the wheel, I'm no fan of it, but when I started coding (some months ago now) there seemed little choice... the readers source is a horrible mess, and the newer datgen needed a lot of work, especially in regard to handling SC4 stuff.

 

Having played with SC4Tool a little bit now, I can offer FSH loading/display/conversion code, one of the first things I implemented...

 

 [EDIT:]

Oooops . . . had the compose window open a little long . . .

 

simrolle:

I think I'll certainly have a look at what's in your lib... you're clearly a lot further along than I.  I am in a good position to do the analysis with own code now though, so I'll probably go ahead and do that... You did say reading/writing procedures though... I can only read images and exemplars at the moment, and write neither... so I might well take you up on the offer, I'll be in touch.

 

Cheers,

    - James

 

[Andreas Roth 622]

Date: 8/30/2005 6:12:37 AM Author: J_McSim

Andreas:

I'm not sure I understand your first paragraph. . .  If your talking about lot designers 'accidently' overwriting default game items by unknowingly using the same TGI, you could just load everything in the same order the game does, overwriting duplicate TGIs as you go.  I don't think this is what you meant though . . .

quote>

Yeah, I figure that this paragraph is a bit complicated - maybe because English is not my native language. What I meant is this: Whenever you edit a lot with the Lot Editor, it will create an LD file with a list of dependencies (such as the model's SC4Desc and the filenames of prop packs etc.). This is quite nice, but can also lead to errors. Take mikeseith's European Car Mod as an example: He created some European car props and used the same IDs to override the in-game car props. Now, whenever someone uses a LotCarCluster prop family (which is a prop family that randomly selects between all available car props), the DAT where mikeseith's cars are stored is listed in the LD file as a dependency as well. But I call that a false alarm, since the mod is not necessary; if not present, the game will use the in-game cars without no problems, since they have the same IDs. Pegasus modified the prop exemplars of several in-game props as well, and whenever someone uses these (in-game) props on his lots and has PEG's files installed, the Lot Editor will list these filenames in the LD file. The only way to prevent this is to empty your plugins folder before editing a lot, so it's up to the lot designers to prevent such false alarms.

[Karybdis 34]

Cheers on the discovery. The simcity4 modding world has been too quiet on this type of front the last year

We'll get the data integrated into the exemplar browser as soon as the chance makes itself available.

[Tropod 144]

Ok, due to a slight mishap, somehow a little something extra got added that should have been removed, in version 1.0 (pretty sure I had removed it, obviously not though. doh!). So I've corrected this, updated it & had my previous post removed (which had the older version attached).


J_McSim
I would just like to thank you, on behalf of anyone & everyone who uses SC4 Modds (especially one modd in particular).

It may not be the Readers or Datgens fault, & it may not actually be a new data type either. It would actually seem that property Lot Developer Stay New Time (0x47E2C400) has been configured incorrectly in the games original files. Either that, or the information that's been provided in the Ingred.txt file (that comes with BAT) is incorrect (in which case, it would be a new data type), which actually has this property classified as a Unit32 data type. Either way though, least now it can be fixed. So.......
I've gone & adjusted the Exemplar & fixed that property in question & attached it to this post, along with a ReadMe. I've since tested it, & it seems to work without any problems, even after modifying it.


Going back though, regarding the issue I mentioned about game crashing with the BuildingStyle: I found the cause of the problem. It was due to the fact that the Reader would chop off a whole heap of data when anything in the BuildingDevelopment Exemplar was modified. Parts of the Exemplar not showing are linked to the BuildingStyle control panel. Now though, with the information you've provided, modifying that Exemplar (using the attached file) no longer causes this problem.
Once again, thank you!


double edit: nvm, found my answer.

[prince_of_sims 0]

i would just like to point out something that i found while messing around with the fixed exemplar.

there is a value Tract Developer Kick Out Lower Wealth which is set to True. the description says that if it's set to true, higher wealth buildings can replace non-empty lower wealth buildings.

i set it to False and ran the game. to my surprise, i found this setting works! so now, it is theoretically possible to create true suburbs and such. possible, yes. practical, i don't know. it's tricky, requires a lot of patience, and won't work if low wealth demand is too high.

 

there's a lot more values in there we've never experimented with, simply because we didn't know those values were there.

 

so, i would like to really thank J_McSim for his awesome contribution. and i remember him mentioning some more exemplars that were like this. any word on what they are or if they're fixed or not?

[J_McSim 0]

 

Date: 9/5/2005 2:23:40 PM Author: prince_of_sims

i would just like to point out something that i found while messing around with the fixed exemplar.

there is a value Tract Developer Kick Out Lower Wealth which is set to True. the description says that if it's set to true, higher wealth buildings can replace non-empty lower wealth buildings.

i set it to False and ran the game. to my surprise, i found this setting works! so now, it is theoretically possible to create true suburbs and such. possible, yes. practical, i don't know. it's tricky, requires a lot of patience, and won't work if low wealth demand is too high.

there's a lot more values in there we've never experimented with, simply because we didn't know those values were there.

so, i would like to really thank J_McSim for his awesome contribution. and i remember him mentioning some more exemplars that were like this. any word on what they are or if they're fixed or not?

 

 

1. Yourself, mr Tropod and all others are most welcome, glad I could contribute something :-)

 

2. the three other exemplars I have trouble with are due to, what appears to be, another subtle bug in my decompresssion code . . .

 

3. I was playing with 'Tract Developer Kick Out Lower Wealth' myself just the other day. I was most happy to see that it appeared to work too!