A little help making a lot...

[mdhsc4 5]

So I've read a handful of tutorials, gotten reader/loteditor/pim/bat installed, and have an idea for what I want to do.

Essentially, my desire is to create a scaled-down airport based on the fire department landing strip, with 4x15 dimensions rather than the significantly larger "landing strip" and scaled-down capacity and costs to match. Based on what I'd read, this seemed pretty simple. I'm not artsy, so creating a custom building that looked good is beyond me, but plenty of hangar and control tower props and bldgs exist, so no worries. Just create a lot and assign it the right properties (it's an airport, it costs X/mo, X to plop, etc.) and then put the results in my plugins directory.

Unfortunately, a few snafus.

First, the loteditor tool doesn't seem to want to let me replace the building in the fire department strip lot for some reason, nor to use the "save as" feature. These buttons are available on other lots, but not this one, and I have no idea why. I had hoped to just make the lot from the fire dept. lot (replace building with the hangar bldg from the small landing strip, replace/remove/add props to add a control tower, and change the parking from fire trucks to cars, etc) and then "save as" it into a .SC4Lot file which I could then muck with in the reader in order to link to the other necessary aspects once I got to that point.

So what's the easiest way to do this? I have to be missing something, but a lot of the tutorials out there seem overcomplicated for the simple task I'm trying to accomplish here... or is it just not that simple?

Thanks!

[Jack³ 291]

Here is a simple tutorial on the lot editor.

It is probably not letting you press "save as" because you are trying to add a new item to the fire menu with a new building. I think you should follow the instructions in the tutorial. To replace the building of the airport, do not press the replace building button. Add the building by using the props menu. To get all the buildings in the props list, download the second and third links on this page.

If you want the airport to be functional, it will take some modding using Ilive's reader or maybe LEprop.

There are some airport packs with smaller airports and runways on the STEX that you might like too.

[mdhsc4 5]

Here is a simple tutorial on the lot editor.

It is probably not letting you press "save as" because you are trying to add a new item to the fire menu with a new building. I think you should follow the instructions in the tutorial. To replace the building of the airport, do not press the replace building button. Add the building by using the props menu. To get all the buildings in the props list, download the second and third links on this page.

If you want the airport to be functional, it will take some modding using Ilive's reader or maybe LEprop.

There are some airport packs with smaller airports and runways on the STEX that you might like too.

I'm aware I can add new buildings as props and have seen how to do this using the bldgprop dats I got from Maxis. I want to change out the fire station building though because I don't want a fire station in my airport.

I'll check out that tutorial more exhaustively now, too.

As far as messing with it to make it a functional airport, it doesn't look like it would be too hard if I use leprop to look at existing airports as an example and trial-and-error it from there.

As far as finding smaller functional airports, I've searched for 'airports' in the STEX and sc4devotion file archives. Didn't see any smaller airports, just add-on packs and such for them. Maybe I wasn't searching exhaustively enough though.

Thanks!

[Jack³ 291]

OH! If you want to replace the actual building you follow all the steps on the tutorial, but it the part where it says "Drag the building into the Parks Category" in the plugin manager, drag it to the fire station category. Then you open the fire Dept. Landing Strip and Replace Building and find yours.

  Edited September 1, 2011 by jack3oh3  

[mdhsc4 5]

OK, so I've got a nice looking lot at this point. It has two dependencies which are pretty common ones, probably for base textures. A couple of questions...

When mouse-overing the airport, it says it's an airport and shows the correct name. Half (2.5/5) of the airplanes are greyed out showing some level of usage which is cool. I plopped it in a random functional city to test it. However when I click on it, it says it's a plaza that costs ten bucks a month with a green bar (mouse-over has the correct pinkish airport color bar.) Any ideas how to rectify this, and where I'd specify the maximum capacity? I couldn't find the obvious location for it in the reader either. Using your guide, I made some modifications to the instructions, one of which was to put the tiny cube in the Airports menu (in the PIM) rather than in the parks menu. I guess this wasn't enough; it's half of an airport but not a whole airport.... or something! One other thing I did was to change the occupancy of it in the reader after completing the lotting.

Is there a way to upside-down flip base textures in loteditor? I know how to spin them via PgUp/PgDown. Seems like an upside-down flip is necessary to get the right base texture for two of the corners of the air strip. Might be wrong here, will check on this by examining how the fire landing strip does it later.

Once this is Good Enough I'll upload to the STEX. A first upload.... always fun.

Another thing I was thinking about was a mod to ratchet down crime a bit. It seems like piling up very-high-density residential near very-high-density industrial leads to unstoppable crime which makes commercial growth in the area scarce, but this strikes me as unrealistic. I've seen some "drastic" crime removal/lessening mods, but I'm thinking something that just eases the burden to where you don't see a situation like a dozen Deluxe PD's overlapping and still RED on the crime map...

Thanks guys!

[mdhsc4 5]

Also, I'd like to set the jobs level. Seems there should be some work at an airport. Again, not sure where this would be set. Got my pollution settled pretty easily via the reader. And one other thing, I also added it to the bus stops occupant group. Seems likely that a bus would stop at an airport, independent of a separate bus stop, and I'd like to add workers so this would be useful.

[ScottFTL 29]

Are you making a Fire Landing Strip or a functional Airport? I'm asking because there is complex modding required for functional airports and seaports. Even when properly modded, they tend to conflict with other custom airports and seaports - and by conflict, I mean you can crash and lose a city tile.

Another thing I was thinking about was a mod to ratchet down crime a bit. It seems like piling up very-high-density residential near very-high-density industrial leads to unstoppable crime which makes commercial growth in the area scarce, but this strikes me as unrealistic. I've seen some "drastic" crime removal/lessening mods, but I'm thinking something that just eases the burden to where you don't see a situation like a dozen Deluxe PD's overlapping and still RED on the crime map...

There are already a few mods to reduce the crime problem. Check out Buggi's Crime Simulator Mod or RalphaelNinja's Crime Doesn't Pay Mod. Please note that you don't need an additional crime mod if you have the CAM installed as it already contains a modified version of the Crime Doesn't Pay Mod.

[mdhsc4 5]

Are you making a Fire Landing Strip or a functional Airport? I'm asking because there is complex modding required for functional airports and seaports. Even when properly modded, they tend to conflict with other custom airports and seaports - and by conflict, I mean you can crash and lose a city tile.

I'm looking to do the functional airport thing. The reason I mentioned the FD strip was that I'm using some of its textures (for the runway itself) and my airport lot is the size of one (4x15 tiles).

There are already a few mods to reduce the crime problem. Check out Buggi's Crime Simulator Mod or RalphaelNinja's Crime Doesn't Pay Mod. Please note that you don't need an additional crime mod if you have the CAM installed as it already contains a modified version of the Crime Doesn't Pay Mod.

I noticed Buggi's, but judging by the description it seemed a bit more drastic. I may play with it to tweak it to where it feels right for me. I'm not using CAM right now.

[mdhsc4 5]

So I guess what I'm looking for now is some information on how to turn it into a functional airport and how to add some I-HT jobs if the latter is possible given the former. The functional airport thing is more important, of course. Thanks guys!

[Jack³ 291]

So I guess what I'm looking for now is some information on how to turn it into a functional airport and how to add some I-HT jobs if the latter is possible given the former. The functional airport thing is more important, of course. Thanks guys!

That will be pretty complicated. I suggest ilive's reader. That will probably be the only thing possible to choose menu locations, add jobs, and make it a functional airport.

LEprop is very simple and can choose the menu location.

Good Luck!

[mdhsc4 5]

It's already showing up in the right menu location under airports. I'm familiar with using the reader, but I'm not sure specifically what's necessary to turn it into a functional airport, and can't find any good documentation that explains it.

[Jack³ 291]

It's already showing up in the right menu location under airports. I'm familiar with using the reader, but I'm not sure specifically what's necessary to turn it into a functional airport, and can't find any good documentation that explains it.

Well I'm not familiar with the reader. It won't work on my computer . But it has to be in there somewhere! Maybe someone more familiar with modding will know this.

[mdhsc4 5]

Well I'm not familiar with the reader. It won't work on my computer . But it has to be in there somewhere! Maybe someone more familiar with modding will know this.

Do you have the microsoft dependency installed?

Try downloading and installing this: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5582

Then try re-installing and running the reader. That's the most likely issue.