Daeleys Custom Query Stuff

[rubik3 117]

Man, that is one great query   You definately outdid yourself Daeley and I can't wait to see what kind of functionality is next to come for your UIs.

 

So how often does the game check the reward requirements?  Is it every month or every 3 months?

[Daeley 46]

well the Placeholder Query only updates each time you click it, so staring at it to wait until demand is met won't work unfortunatly

The menu description will update on regular bases. This works through a sort of built-in threading system that runs through all menu descriptions and updates them regularly. As of such, the rate at which it refreshes is dependant on a lot of things, but mostly city size, computer power and game speed.

 

and as for what functionality I'm gonna come up with next... don't fear I've got plenty of ideas left I was hoping to create some animated UI's but I can't seem to find any time (or delay) properties in LUA... for now I'm working on some bar nifty indicators... I've also got a little idea for a BTC Stadium in waiting line that will allow you to select the name of the hometown team

[Andreas Roth 614]

Daeley, having fiddled around with your query today during the process of translating the WTC into German, let me say it's really a great piece of work - better than every query Maxis had done with all those nifty features regarding to the requirement display and such.

[Daeley 46]

here's a little BSC Oktoberfest teaser...

 

a CARCH-Daeley query design

the bars in the middle will adapt in lenght accoring to the total population of industry, and the amounts of industry compared to each other

[cerulean 15]

isn't that purty
All 5 of the BSC buildings this month will feature this query with different pictures and stats...the commercial ones are blue and the iht ones are yellow I think they turned out great, and the bars are really cool too! Daeley's should be released soon

[dudyconstructor 43]

wow they are very creative and different... thats great to break the old SC4 query tools window

[Superstar 69]

lol, a brain  thats looking really great, very interesting

[DarkMatter 21]

I just thought I'd pop my head in and say Great job! to Daeley (and Co.) You guys have made some amazing headway on querys, this stuff looks GREAT! A lot has happened since I was active here at SimTropolis, great stuff.

[Jim 6]

Daeley, your query stuff is just amazing, great job man

[greyveil 37]

ok, after procrastinating all I could, I decided to start doing custom queries. and thanx to Daeley's Tutorial, Equinox's Tutorial and the various forum threads, things are going great,

but I do have a couple issues, that are more due to my lack of graphics skills than tech skills, lol, anyway if anyone would mind addressing these issues I would be very greatful.

1. I can create fully transparent parts of a graphic, but I see alot of semi-trans borders (opaque) that are beyond my knowledge to recreate, are there R,G,B colors that are used to do this or is it done with a paint program (I use paintshop pro)?

2. is it possible to tie a query window with a query window, or to popup 2 query windows when a lot is queried? this is just for an idea I had and was asking if it was possible before I waste brainpower working more on the idea, lol

Thanx alot for all your help in advance...

P.S. an example of my progress so far, lol

[Daeley 46]

I'm fairly sure you could add two queries to any building, just use two separate IGZWinGen roots.

[Daeley 46]

here's something else that's brewing inside the BSC dungeon... more pubs! (more info will come soon)

 

and to support them a little, if you grow enough you get a very special reward....

 

yup, that's right, you get your own very special brand of beer!

[Equinox 1,209]

That looks damn awesome.

Haha, this new lot presence count-based reward system could bring some interesting twists in the gameplay of SC4! I hope it sticks around 'cause I think it's nifty.

Now, all we need to see is Daeley's head bouncing around talking to you in that window! Daeley the BSC advisor says ...

[Daeley 46]

*wipes dust off the thread*

here's another little teaser of something I'm working on... the regional tracking mod. It's a little mod that stores information about your cities and makes it available for use in other cities... stuff such as population levels or BSC farm fields... or just the city names of other cities...

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//BSCFmod_final01.jpg align=baseline>

[Guinnessmonkey 0]

I wants it! I wants it now!

[Daeley 46]

my creation has been posted *waves hands in the air* it's aliveeeeeee

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?mode=files&filetype=Prop&Str=bsc%20daeley%20regional%20tracking%20mod

  -===========================-

-the BSC Regional Tracking Mod-
  -===========================-

features:
----------

The BSC Regional tracking mod is a mod designed to store specific data from your cities and make them available for the entire region to enhance regional play.
Whenever you enter a city, you will receive a popup message asking you to track the city. With the data tracked by the mod, you can also have a look at a detailed regional population report and, for the farming lovers out there, you can look at the number of BTE fields in your region.
Several upcoming releases from the BSC will also use this data to enhance queries or reward requirements.

 

   

a word of caution:
--------------------

The regional tracking mod saves data dependant on the *NAME OF THE CITY. This means there are two limitations you should keep in mind during gameplay:

1. Deleting or renaming a city confuses this mod. I advise against renaming, but if you want to delete a city, it's best to just start a new city with the same name. If you wish to just create a test city you plan on quickly deleting, you always choose *NOT TO TRACK THE CITY.
2. Similarly, two cities with the same name in the same region (different region is ok) will result in only the data from the last one visited being saved.

Note that cities are not tracked by default. This means when applying this mod to an old region, you need to visit each untracked city and track it, much like when you use a watermod to change the color of the water.

 

have fun people!

[Guinnessmonkey 0]

*hugs his new regional tracking mod, dreaming of all the stuff we can eventually squeeze out of it....*



*Thinks about regional rewards that can only exist once in a region. Hugs it again*

Either way, I've got a TOUCH of wierdness. It's worked fine for most of my prexisting cities (and I noticed that it's clever enough to track cities with 0 population (one where I just drug rail through), but not list them in the list of tracked cities, meaning that it doesn't get cluttered with cities that don't really exist. Thing is, I did have ONE preexisting city where the UI to track it came up, I selected show farm report, and it just closed the menu. Either I accidentally hit close (I don't think so), or else it was some strange script bug... Either way, even when I reload the city it won't let me track it. Is there any way to manually force it to track? Or is the best solution just to reinstall and open/track/save all my cities again?


And Question #2... This is probably the best thread for it...

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had ever made a mod so that all the Maxis rewards get your wonderful query that lists all the requirements, let alone the actual reward effect (which might be nice for Maxis landmarks, too).

If not, someone should.

Who knows... Maybe after grad finals are wrapped up I might take a crack at it. I've been experimenting and trying to learn LUA coding, though eventually it was just a matter of stickin' by your format and just changing the constants and texts... It seems anything interesting I tried tended to just not work. Either way, I did manage to convert a bunch of STEX rewards that previously had no requirements (such as the Hockey Venue, the Pier Mall, some of the BSC churches and cathedrals) into real rewards, though they're not truly ready for prime time yet (that and I'd have to talk to all the developers, first).

[Daeley 46]

*Thinks about regional rewards that can only exist once in a region.  Hugs it again*

good thinking even though it might take a while before I have the time to develop something like this, they are in fact possible

 

Now as for your first question, I don't really have any idea why that happened... my suggestion would be to remove the mod from you plugins, reload and save the city, and then move the mod back into your plugins. If all is well the popup *should* appear again.

[Guinnessmonkey 0]

Hell, now that I think about it, it might be neat eventually (once we get a good LUA template for rewards that read regional tracker info) so that folks who want a ton of realism can get a mod which restricts most of the Maxis landmarks to one per region (essentially a LUA that returns it as false if the regional count for that rewards is greater than zero... Hell, I reckon some landmarks could be more flexible than others... Some you could be limited to 3 per region or whatever. ).

You'd actually have to think and strategize: Do I want the Empire State Building in this city, or would it be better somewhere else? It could make landmarks into, well, landmarks, totally unique buildings that make your sims oooh and ah.

Edit: my modding philosophy is Why leave something as vanilla when you can tweak it?

[Daeley 46]

Date: 5/17/2005 2:11:12 PM Author: Guinnessmonkey 'Why leave something as vanilla when you can tweak it?'

quote>

I can answer that one right away...

If I would've had infinite spare time to spend on SC4, I would've done a lot more mods already

[Guinnessmonkey 0]

Date: 5/17/2005 4:49:08 PM
Author: Daeley

Date: 5/17/2005 2:11:12 PM Author: Guinnessmonkey 'Why leave something as vanilla when you can tweak it?'

quote>

I can answer that one right away...

If I would've had infinite spare time to spend on SC4, I would've done a lot more mods already

quote>
Lol

The way your message showed up in my email box, your sig kinda flowed into the message. The see all those BSC rewards on STEX? yup... I made that happen, so you can give me suggestions on how to do better if you don't like it made it seem as if you were actually getting pissy and defensive. Then I realized my mistake. (has been up for a long, long time at this point... Bloody grad finals...)

And yhea, I know what you mean... I remember playin' SC4 when it was new and liking it, but not loving it. It was SOOOO slow on my old computer, buggy as hell, and there was no lot editor. So many SC3/2 features were gone... And the patch was taking forever it seemed.

So I wandered away from it. Picked up Rush Hour a while back, but hadn't even bothered to load it up, as my old hard drive was just packed. Finally got a new hard drive (40GB-->140GB... So much room... ), reloaded games I had uninstalled for the space, and figured I'd give SC4 a try, now that all those custom lots are out and that expansion pack and such.

Next thing I know, it's a few weeks later. This game is worse than crack. Not only is the game itself essentially based around aethetic perfectionism to its full, anal extent, but the lot editors allow me to tweak to my hearts content. It's funny... The older I get, the more time I spend tweakin' instead of just playing. In my old age its almost as if tryin' to figure out LUA files is more fun than the game itself.

(BTW, what I learned about LUA files is that they LOOK understandable, but really I should just use your templates and move along. )

[pauld 0]

Hi,

Not sure if I am posting this in the right place - these forums confuse me!

I have tried everything I can think of to get the your regional tracking mod to work...looks like I must be on my own....

No matter whether I open an existing region or create a new one, the popup asking whether or not to track city just refuses to appear. Tried removing the mod, opening and saving each city in turn, exiting SC and reinstalling the mod but to no avail.

I can only assume that I have a conflict or I'm missing something somewhere but must confess I'm at a loss where to begin. Will keep trying and let you know if I have any sucess as I really want this mod if possible.

Kind Regards

[Daeley 46]

first of all, it sometimes takes a moment or two for the popup to appear, especially on slower machines... do you let your cities run for a couple of months?

Also, for now I can only assure it works on a windows platform and a conversion to Mac has not been made yet... you wouldn't happen to run on a Mac?

[pauld 0]

Many thanks for taking the time to reply.

I am running SC Deluxe version on Windows XP with an Athlon XP3200, 1 Gb ram and a Nvidia Geforce Fx5900.

I have let the cities run for a couple years.

I have to confess that I know absolutely nothing about the inner workings of SC so have no idea what kind of item I have might of instaled ie. a BAT, Lot or mod that might be a possible cause of my problem.

I'm thinking perhaps a reinstal of SC may be the solution., The only problem with that is the worrying possibility of losing my cities, especially the rural ones. Still if that's what it take, maybe I'll have to bite the bullet and go for it.

Regards

[Daeley 46]

It might be possible something else is conflicting though i can't really think of what it could be...

If you do a reinstall, you don't have to lose your cities per se, you can always back them up and put them in the appropriate folder after the reinstall.

[sharkbait16 0]

Wow, I didn't know these kind of things were possible, Sim City amazes me every day.

[Daeley 46]

well, the creators of the game left a few gaps for us to play with, but I don't think they ever imagined us getting this far

*warning* development screenshot leak

 

oops...

[Guinnessmonkey 0]

Been bughuntin' a bit more with the regional tracker...

I've got a few cities in my preexisting region which simply refuse to track. They seem to be the larger ones, though this doesn't seem to be a rule. Either way, the popup comes, but no matter what is clicked on the popup (in those cities) just closes, and the city's tracking information is not entered.

To experiment, I deleted all the tracking .dats from my Apps folder and uninstalled/reinstalled the tracker. Loading up these cities I got the same situation again. Opening up the newly created popfile.dat the game created, I saw only:

$beginfile
$nextregion
$endfile

I even tried manually entering the cities into my popfile.dat. I copyied/renamed another entry in popfile.dat, hoping that upon loading the game would be smart enough to simply take the entry for that city and update it with the new stats. Nope. Same problem.


Any idea what I might have done to bug it up like this (assuming its something I did)? Has anyone else had any trouble having it track preexisting cities of any size (these large cities aren't really that big. None are bigger than 25,000ish...)?

Either way, since right now its only tracking my rural small towns and ignoring my cities, the regional tracker is nearly useless... The majority of my regional population isn't being tracked....


Edit: Eureka! I think I found the bug!


I was experimenting, tryin' to figure out if the city file was somehow bugged. I tried backin' it up, deleting it, and starting a new city with the same name (so I could replace it with the old city more easily). No dice. Then I realized something. Both the cities which were always bugged had apostrophe's in their name: Miller's Crossing and Devil's Island. I tried creating a new city with the name of Devils Island. It worked.

I'm now gonna take a look at the LUA to see what's invalidating citynames with apostrophes.

Edit2: I tried the simple route (autoreplacing all apostrophe's in the LUA with quotation marks, but it didn't work. I'll take a fresh look in the morning.)

[Daeley 46]

well dammit good thing you found that bug... I'll try to make a fix asap

edit: yup, found where it comes from... not in the LUA btw...

[Guinnessmonkey 0]

Date: 5/25/2005 7:12:28 AM
Author: Daeley

edit: yup, found where it comes from... not in the LUA btw...

quote>
Where is it, then? Anything I can quickly edit for myself?


*is curious where it is, if it isn't in the LUA*