Collecting Thoughts

[Pygma 24]

Hey everyone,

 

im asking anybody who tried to accomplish anything along modding / SCPak etc to share your thoughts on what you discovered and what knowledge was gained.

 

Atm im failing in creating a new network type. But what i found out so far:

- Each network Type contains a Menu Item, 1 regular Path item, 2 Bridges (Path items too) and two yet Unknown Items, one seem to handle what can drive on the road and which roads can cross and color information for textures.

- I created a new path type and own instances, but seemed to have missed an xlink somewhere. The visual fallback network seems to be the Med Den Street.

 

Other:

- all TGA files seem obsolete / old Junkfiles.

- there seems to be a lot of old junk and grafics scattered over packages and file formats.

- dds files are not plain DXT5 interpolated alpha as their image width and height are not a multiple of 4. Maybe DXT5_NM im just guessing. -> someone told he already found out what exact settings the dds files need. -> ?

- Property files only contain visual data. iE Effect Radiuses are only visual. If you only change them there it wont affect the simulation.

 

Maybe im far behind the average knowledge and im posting common sense. But maybe we can collect some knowledge and structure it somehow. So it all gets a little easier or doesnt need to be discovered by everyone again.

 

Feel free to contribute, or dispute anything i found out.

 

 

Thanks for your attention and possible contribution.

[oppie 487]

Here's some of my observations regarding the property files;

 

Missing data (cost, capacity etc.)

One of the things that has me puzzled is how a lot of constants are nowhere to be found. Many of the simulation objects are easy to find in the package files - it's pretty straightforward to find the files that define a menu item, unit or agent, but things like the cost of a building, or the capacity of an agent are not included in these files - not even in the DLC ones, where I'd expect the capacity upgrade for a bus from 80 to 100 for example. They might be hidden in the rules somewhere and linked to a specific instance ID? Are they hidden somewhere else that's not in the package files?

 

Everything eventually relates to an agent, unit, path or map

If you want to understand how modding SimCity is going to work, watch this video again:

- glassbox is set up pretty much like they describe - all buildings are units and all vehicles are agents. This even goes to the point where for example the 'plant forest' menu option doesn't just plant some trees - it actually drops a unit that runs a rule which adds to the forest map which then displays a bunch of trees.

[w0lfalot 18]

Shouldn't we make IRC and hidden reverse-engineering wiki or something to avoid EA patching the good bits ?