The joys of menu customisation

[Magneto 316]

Yesterday I found Soldyne's guide in the omnibus section about how to change the item order in the game menus with ilive reader, and decided to tidy up things a bit.

Took me almost all night, but it is well worth it! I definitely enjoy this game even more now that every item in the right place. Well..Almost every item.

Quite often for older lots and exotic creations, I had to add the Item Order property manually, but for a reason I ignore I couldn't change the order of some of them despite I could add the property and assign the value to the lot.

So I got a few questions

1. What is preventing me to change the item order of those odd lots? I noticed a few had their exemplar file colored in blue, like if some propertie was embedded to them.

2. When 2 lots have the same item order, what is the second property that prevails for menu order and is it possible to tweak it safely?

3. I was able to reassign lots in different occupancy groups (i.e erase a lot from the misc. transit menu and have it appear in the water menu), but does this alter in any undesired way the properties of the lot?

4. I couldn't find the occupant group value for both roads and highways menus. Is it possible to move some lots in those menus or is it more complicated?

Thanks

[jdenm8 362]

I can't answer all of those questions, but I can give it a shot.

1. What is preventing me to change the item order of those odd lots? I noticed a few had their exemplar file colored in blue, like if some propertie was embedded to them.

Presumably settings in their Parent Cohort. You'll have to chase up the settings from the Parent Cohort to know if they have that set in there. Some lots (Which are usually just re-lots) will re-use the Parent Cohort from the original lot.

2. When 2 lots have the same item order, what is the second property that prevails for menu order and is it possible to tweak it safely?

As a programmer, my logic dictates there is probably no defined number which determines it other than the one that loads second is loaded into the Array second. I'm not speaking from modding experience here, so I'm probably wrong.

3. I was able to reassign lots in different occupancy groups (i.e erase a lot from the misc. transit menu and have it appear in the water menu), but does this alter in any undesired way the properties of the lot?

Trust me on this: It does absolutely nothing except determine what menu it's in. That's why there's "Modular Airport Lots" (They're actually Parks with the park effects removed) in the Airports menu.

[Magneto 316]

Trust me on this: It does absolutely nothing except determine what menu it's in. That's why there's "Modular Airport Lots" (They're actually Parks with the park effects removed) in the Airports menu.

I suddenly feel better after reading this

Thanks for your swift answer jdmate, cheers

[ArchangelMichael 51]

The hierarchical order of properties that determine menu icon positions are:

1. Item Order property
   
2. Lot Size
   
3. Item Cost
   

The menu positions for lots that have identical values for all three of those properties might be determined by the lot or building exemplar ID, which is generated randomly when the exemplar is first created.

Be careful changing occupant groups. Schools and hospitals, for example, will not work if placed in any other menu.

An effective way to put a group of similar lots in a specific order is to give them all the same item order value, then increase the cost of each subsequent lot by one simoleon. You could also get very specific with the hex values for the item orders and allow yourself room for future expansion without a massive re-modding effort. Apparently, this was investigated long ago and posted here at Simtropolis by BigRedFish, but either I've searched for it with all the wrong keywords or the thread has disappeared in one of the many site upgrades the way my dryer eats socks. Luckily, BarbyW has a copy of it, which she posted at SC4D, and I'll relay it here:

Lots with Item Order 0x00000000 are sorted with the default lots

Lots with Item Order 0x0000ffff (-1) are sorted immediately before the default lots

Lots with Item Order 0x00008000 (-32768 ) are sorted before those lots (at the very top)

Lots with Item Order 0x00007fff (32767) are sorted at the very end.

This applies to at least items under the Parks menu.

The Item Order is of the form 0000xxyy

where xx is one of 80=top, 01=bottom, 00=middle.

yy is in the range 00-FF, and sets the order within the group set by xx. Lower numbers appear toward the top of the group.

A few recommendations:

1. Use the old version of The new version is prettier and faster, but has some instabilities and it corrupts building exemplars by resetting the Occupant Size to all zeros, making the building model disappear in-game. Check the lots you've modified to make sure they have not been altered in this way.
   
2. Keep a spreadsheet of the names, item order values, lot sizes, and costs of the lots you've changed. It will be a handy reference if you should decide to make further changes to the menu orders. Use the group and range system outlined above to make future expansions quick and easy.
   

Sources (you may have to be registered and logged-in to the SC4D forums to access these):

Tool to reorder items in game menu, specifically this post by jplumbley.

A simple way to move and rename lots

This post by BarbyW.

[Magneto 316]

Glad I didn't tweak schools and hospitals Some interesting bits of info there, thanks for your thorough answer and links Archangel :thumbs:

Now find out how to move stuff in the highway menu

Cheers

[ArchangelMichael 51]

Assuming you are using NAM, you can alter the menu positions of the additional highway items by using the Reader to open the files NetworkAddonMod_Custom_Highway_Menu_Plugin_Optional.dat and RealHighwayMod_Core.dat. Make backup copies of them before making changes, and store them outside of the Plugins folder. Use the filter in the exemplar analyzer to show only type 28 "Mayor Mode Tools" exemplars (the exemplar analyzer will call them "Misc Catalog" exemplar types). Here you'll find the Item Order properties which you can change to suit your needs, then save the changes to overwrite the originals (don't forget to make backups, first!). The other menus -- roads, rail, misc. transit -- can be adjusted in the same manner.

If you wish to make changes to the default Maxis menus, you'll have to extract the relevant type 28 exemplars from simcity_1.dat (just copy-paste them into an empty .dat), make your changes to the Item Properties, and save them as a unique file (e.g., "my custom road menus.dat" or something like that). It would probably be best if such a mod loads after the core game files (the ones located in Program Files\SimCity 4 Deluxe), but before the NAM files, although this may not be necessary.

[jdenm8 362]

The only things that can be put in the Roads and Highways menus are the aforementioned Type 28 Exemplars. There are no Occupant Groups for those two menus.

[Magneto 316]

Okay, I'll try that. Thanks for your input guys