Finding Downloaded Items

[Bumblegrum 0]

I am reasonably new to Sim City and have taken advantage of the opportunity to download some of the brilliant items posted on Simtropolis but I am finding extreme difficulty in locating some files when playing the game. As a "for instance" I downloaded 3 different transport hubs - buildings that handle more than 1 transport mode. Common sense (to me) says that these would show up in the Transport menu but alas that is not the case. I can't find 2 of them and the 3rd appears in the Rewards menu. This is not an isolated case and it seems to me that some people who develop these items - and I most sincerely thank them for their efforts - appear to give little thought to where their items should appear in the game menu. Being new to the game, I would assume that anything to do with trains, trams, aircraft, boats and cars would be available under the Transportation menu. Similarly I would expect to find Education related buildings (schools, colleges, libraries, museums etc etc) under the Education menu item but again it's a case of hit and miss. I am assuming here that the item developer is the person who says where their item appears in the menu. I fully realise that different people have different ideas on where their items could/should be appear in the game menu which leads me to think that Maxis have given little thought to providing a comprehensive menu system within the game to make it easy for players to select appropriate items for their cities. Am I correct in this assumption? Is there a way in which players can allocate downloaded material to a specific (and perhaps expanded) game menu item for ease of access or must we endure inappropriate allocation by item developers?

[Magneto 316]

There are 3 remedies to the cluttered menu problems

First, Daeley DAMN menus you can get at sc4 devotion:link

Basically it's a mod that will provide extended and better organized menus via a link appearing in the counsellor advice window, can't really comment further as I never tried it

Second, there's a menu remover mod which will remove every maxis item from the game, that is if you wish to do so. It's a great mod when you have both enough custom content and desire to bypass maxis stuff. Even better, you can chose which categories you want to keep:

Third, learn the basics of modding with ilive's reader (search it here on STEX) and tweak your menus to your desire. With reader, you can change the menu position of custom items, make them appear where you want to, erase lots from sets you don't use, modify icons etc.

This is by far my preferate method: all items appear in the order I want, in the right category. Only stuff I use. It's amazing how much timle you can save just because your menus are organized to your liking. The major downside is, it takes some time to organize everything, and each time you grab new custom content you have to dedicate some time in reorganization. But trust me, it definitely worth the trouble.

If you want the basic instructions for reader I'd be glad to explain the things you have to know to make the job, just let me know

Cheers

  Edited August 20, 2012 by Magneto  

[DarkSoul 3]

I don't know about the OP but I'd be interested in knowing how to use reader to move stuff around my menus ore remove certain things

[Magneto 316]

So be it, I'll make a mini tutorial explaining how to do that. I'll post it tomorrow

[rjamesp 138]

read the file description. most of the time downloaded items are located under the landmarks menu. if you still cant find them, download "simcity 4 cheats plug in" from the stex. type ctrl+x, an empty bar will appear at the top left side of your screen. then type "building plop" in the bar and a pop up menu will appear showing you the list of all ploppable buildings including those you have downloaded. I use this "cheat" sometimes because I cant find some buildings that I recently downloaded.

[Magneto 316]

Note: For this tutorial I will use ilives reader version 1.2, but it can be done with version 0.9.3 as well although some features such as hex conversion are not present.

How to change item position

Every item showing in your menus is given an Item Order value. This value will determine the item postion by the following logic: the more negative the value is, the more it will make your item appear on the top of the menu; and the more positive the value is, the more it will be on the bottom.

So from top to bottom: ..., -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...

Note: for easier reference, every Maxis items appears in position 0. That means if you wish to place your item in order to appear above Maxis items, you have to assign it a negative value.

Launch reader and open the file containing the lot you want to edit. It can be a .sc4lot file or a .dat file. For the purpose of the tutorial I just open a simple custom lot. You should have something like this:




All we want to do is move the item position. For that we need to find the Item Order property, which is contained in an Exemplar file. Each lot uses 2 exemplar files: one that is named LotConfigurations (ignore it) and another one, containing the properties we wish to edit. Just click on the exemplars in your list until you find it, it should look like this:



We've found the exemplar containing the Item order. Now to edit it, just right click on the item order row and a dialog box will appear. Choose "edit property".



The row highlighted in blue is the value we want to edit. Here I'm using reader ver. 1.2 so I have an extra feature to convert hexadecimal to decimal making things easier (if you have reader 0.9.3 then you could probably find a site that can do the conversions for you). Unless you feel confident using hex values (or use reader 0.9.3), tick the "Int" box: it will convert the value in decimal.



Click on the value and assign a new one. If you use hexadecimal, leave the 0x at the beginning and make sure it has 8 digits/letters following it. 0x00000001 for 1, 0x0000000A for 10, etc.

Once assigned, click on the "Set" button then click on the "Apply" button. You're done. Don't forget to save the modification by clicking on the floppy icon on the top!

Extra notes:

• the range of values you can use for item order is pretty large. You can easily go from -10000 to +10000 (I've personally tested until 14000) but there is a limit somewhere, so don't go too crazy with numbers
• in the case there is more than one item with same item order, the item price will be the tiebreaker, with the cheapest on top and the most expensive at the bottom. Thus a custom lot with item order 0 and costing 5 § to plop will appear before a lot with item order 0 and a cost of 10 §. This can be useful to sort items with identical item order.

What if there's no item order property?

This is more common with older lots, sometimes the property doesn't exist. Lots that don't have Item Order properties will appear at the 0 position, along with Maxis content. Luckily, creating the property isn't hard at all.

1.Click on the exemplar containing the building properties (not the LotConfig).
2. Anywhere on the right part of the screen where the properties are, bring the dialog box with a right click and chose "Add Property".
3. You'll have a blank property showing up:




Click on the drop down arrow (circled in red) and scroll down the list until you see "Item Order". Select it, then follow the same procedure as described above to edit the value. Save, and you're done!

How to change item category

Lauch reader and open the lot you wish to change category.

Find the exemplar containing the properties (see above). The property we want to edit is "Occupant Groups". Right click on it and you'll get something looking like this:



Here you have the categories of the lot (it can be one or more). At the top you should always have the main category (Civics, Utilities, Transportation,...) and below the subcategories (Misc. transit, Rail, Fire, Schools,...). Subcategories aren't needed.

Those using reader 1.2 can have the list of OccupantGroups and their values by clicking on the question mark icon. For those who don't, either search for the list on the net, or simply open a lot that is in the category you wish to use and write down the values, then apply them to the lot you wish to edit.

To edit the list, you'll have to remove all categories by highlighting the corresponding row then press the Remove tab. Once the list is emptied, you can add the new category.. Press Add tab and enter the value corresponding to the category you want, then press again Add to confirm your choice.



Here I removed Civics and Parks to replace it with Transportation (main) and Rail (sub). You'll find out there are a lot of subcategories but those are not necessary. Anyway in case of doubt just open a reference lot and write down the values.

Once finished, click on Apply to shut the box. Save, and you're done!

Warning: never attempt to move civics buildings such as hospitals and schools out of their respective category (but why would you do that anyway?).


How to erase undesired lots from a set

Either the lots are separated files (each file is a .sc4lot) or are merged in a .dat file. For sc4lot files this is straightforward, just delete the undesired ones and you're good. If they're merged, you'll need the reader.

Launch the reader and open the dat containing the lot files. You should see an alternance of Exemplars files, probably along with other types of files (PNG, LTEXT,...)

To remove a specific lot, just find the building exemplar (the one containing properties) associated to it: search in the properties of the lot for any clue (exemplar name, description, cost, ...) that might indicate you this is the lot you want to delete. When you're sure you've got the good one, right click on it and choose "delete property". You could also delete the associated files: the PNG and the LText (if they are present) and LotConfiguration exemplar, but it isn't necessary. If you're not sure then just ignore this step.

When all the exemplars of the lots you don't wish to use have been deleted, right click anywhere in the left panel and choose "Reindex". Once reindexed, save and you're done.