Is there a way to read SC4Lot files ?

[Duftus 2]

Hi Guys,

one thing I've always missed in Sim City is the possibility to build a city, that looks like it has gone threw different times, just like a real one does. Of course there is the option for different building styles, but after installing a few lots this gets pointless. For example if I want to start my city with c.p.'s beautiful early 19th century houses and after some time decide to start a "new age" with a new architectural style things gets complicated. The new houses need to have an other building style than the one from my early homes (Chicago). But this means, i wouldn't be able to have any new lots, their building style is Chicago too. Otherwise my newly zoned ares would have both "new" and "old" houses, destroying my plan to have different styles in different areas.

 

So my idea is to change all the buildings I want in one age to a specific style, and all the other ones to a different one. By this way a city could look like it grew through four different times.

 

As I only tried making some models with gmax a few times, and never got to the point making the final lot I don't know how the building style is selected and whether it is possible to change it afterwards. Possible or not this method would be a really annoying and time consuming one.

 

So i came to the idea of writing a program that simply changes the building style to the one you like. As my experiences as a programmer are not really much and my knowledge never exceeded one year in university, i'm not really sure whether i could do this. But why don't give it a try. And this finally leads me to my question: is there any possibility to read the SC4Lot files?

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

The Lot Editor is the tool used for editing SC4LOT files, but that's not what you want.  (You can only change the props, buildings, and textures of the lot.)  The SC4PIM (Plugin manager, originally made by Maxis, there's a better version available made by wouanagaine) is the tool you want to easily edit things like building styles of lots.  Here's the support thread.

 

I believe the property of the buildings you have to alter is "Occupant Group," but you definitely have some learning to do before you undertake this task.  Good luck!

[Magneto 316]

I like your idea! If we had a fast method to reassign buildings to a specific tileset, that would be neat.

As for reading/editing a sc4lot file, Indiana mentioned PIM-X, but there's also ilive's reader, which can be downloaded on this exchange.

 

All the best!

[Cyclone Boom 16,829]

Here's a brief tutorial I made on how to change the building tileset of a lot using

 

[Duftus 2]

Thanks a lot for your answers! Let's see whether this is possible...

[paeng 2,507]

So my idea is to change all the buildings I want in one age to a specific style, and all the other ones to a different one.

 

You may want to look at ... you'll probably find some good pointers or even templates for your idea.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

If you're looking for a user-friendly tool to perform simple tweaks such as tileset changes, SC4Tool might be worth a shot. It's as easy as opening a file and checking/unchecking a few checkboxes for the desired tileset(s).

[Duftus 2]

Thanks again for your answers, especially for the SC4Tool. Sadly I am not experienced enough to  do this. Seems like i'll do it one by one with the Tool...