Post Modding Requests Here

[Vico93 6]

On 24/02/2025 at 2:15 AM, matias93 said:

build a railway and then click over it with the monorail tool, that should convert it (though I'm not sure if that's the case as well for elevated hybrid railway, I'll check).

Tried, elevated HSR (not the other "older" elevated rail that needs to be placed tile by tile anyway) with both Monorail:

... and regular rail (that i suspect are overriden by RRW rails in NAM default installation):

[rsc204 21,806]

HRW uses similar textures to RRW. But you can tell them apart as they have the catenaries and wires upon them, unique to HRW. So all looks normal to me. 

[Vico93 6]

10 hours ago, rsc204 said:

HRW uses similar textures to RRW. But you can tell them apart as they have the catenaries and wires upon them, unique to HRW. So all looks normal to me. 

Oh i see. I suppose HRW are the elevated ones on the image, while RRW are the ground ones. But is there a way to drag HRW tiles without to place them one by one?

[AsimPika3172 1,129]

REQUEST!!!

Please make Jepak - Bintulu bridge, location at Bintulu, Sarawak, Malaysia!

Is now finished and opened today! Info on this website!

https://dayakdaily.com/san-francisco-style-bintulu-jepak-bridge-to-open-to-public-on-march-23/

San Francisco style bridge! The highest bridge ever! Hehehehe!!! 😆

[MagicSpear 52]

A mod that bypasses the cinematic part of the city obliteration process, i.e. shortens the amount of time it takes as much as feasibly possible to reach the white screen with "Busy Wiping Out City." at the top after clicking the Obliterate City button in the confirmation dialogue. It's niche, I know, but I've found myself mildly annoyed enough times over the years now that I figure there's no harm in bringing it up.

[Null 45 3,020]

1 hour ago, MagicSpear said:

A mod that bypasses the cinematic part of the city obliteration process, i.e. shortens the amount of time it takes as much as feasibly possible to reach the white screen with "Busy Wiping Out City."

That appears to be controlled by two City Obliteration tuning properties, Obliterate_NumClustersVsTime (0x6a5a6701), and Obliterate_SmokeScreenFormationTime (0x6a5a6702).

The first one seems to be responsible for most of the animation time, but I have not tried editing it. I have never been able to grasp the GeneralResponseCurve parameter format.

[Crossroads Inc. 68]

AHOY ALL!

A humble request... and I am like, 90% certain i remember seeing this years ago...but...

a Mod that Disables residential lots from "joining" together. IE... If I zone a big long strip of 1x2 lots... each one makes a single house, instead of merging together into a bunch of 2x4 mansion lots. Or medium zones merging into HUGE apartments, when all I want is a long strip of 1x2 row houses... Anyone remember a plugin like that>? 

[Null 45 3,020]

1 hour ago, Crossroads Inc. said:

Anyone remember a plugin like that>? 

I am not aware of any DAT plugins that can do so, but it sounds like some kind of blocker.

My Building Styles DLL has an option to disable that behavior, the option is exposed in the UI template as the Disable Lot Aggregation check box. By default SC4 will use aggregation and subdivision to resize residential and commercial lots to fit what it wants to build, but those check boxes allow the user to control that behavior.

Note that the options can stall growth if the game can't find lots to build with the correct size.

[Crossroads Inc. 68]

58 minutes ago, Null 45 said:

I am not aware of any DAT plugins that can do so, but it sounds like some kind of blocker.

My Building Styles DLL has an option to disable that behavior, the option is exposed in the UI template as the Disable Lot Aggregation check box. By default SC4 will use aggregation and subdivision to resize residential and commercial lots to fit what it wants to build, but those check boxes allow the user to control that behavior.

Note that the options can stall growth if the game can't find lots to build with the correct size.

I'd been looking at that for a while trying to deiced about putting it in. It is quite an, elaborate mod in terms of what it covers. WIsh there was a simple plugin that disabled that. It's funny, it feels like one of those things that Tons of people would have encountered and wanted to deal with..

 

I'll read more about yours and look into installing it later today. 

[CorinaMarie 29,575]

53 minutes ago, Crossroads Inc. said:

It's funny, it feels like one of those things that Tons of people would have encountered and wanted to deal with..

Indeed. Peeps have requested such a mod in the past.  

Trouble is, it simply isn't possible at the .dat level. It only became a reality as programmer peeps started creating DLLs which can improve the game at the C++ level.  

[11241036 5,096]

7 hours ago, Crossroads Inc. said:

AHOY ALL!

A humble request... and I am like, 90% certain i remember seeing this years ago...but...

a Mod that Disables residential lots from "joining" together. IE... If I zone a big long strip of 1x2 lots... each one makes a single house, instead of merging together into a bunch of 2x4 mansion lots. Or medium zones merging into HUGE apartments, when all I want is a long strip of 1x2 row houses... Anyone remember a plugin like that>? 

I can't help you very much with the modding part, but you can easily get what you want by clever zoning: Just lay out zones for every second 1x2 area, let things grow, and then mark any lot you want to keep historical. You only need to make sure that no two zones are touching each other (only horizontally), and only fill the gaps when all adjacent zones have been marked historical. This is an illustration I quickly made with Paint:

As for strips of row homes: You may want to plop them with the BuildingPlop cheat and then use the Growifier DLL to growify them, I've done that frequently and it works really fine.

Other than that, I wrote a tutorial that can help you achieve that by creating lot blockers, although it's probably only useful for experienced modders and it's a lot of work. By blocking all lots with any other size than 1x2, you can make sure that only 1x2 lots are growing. Frankly, although I really appreciate all the efforts of Null 45 and memo to create new DLL mods and the Building Styles DLL, I've never installed this mod and I only use a lot-based solution to make exactly the buildings grow that I want, but it really gives me good results.

 

[Crossroads Inc. 68]

3 hours ago, 11241036 said:

I can't help you very much with the modding part, but you can easily get what you want by clever zoning: Just lay out zones for every second 1x2 area, let things grow, and then mark any lot you want to keep historical. You only need to make sure that no two zones are touching each other (only horizontally), and only fill the gaps when all adjacent zones have been marked historical. This is an illustration I quickly made with Paint:

As for strips of row homes: You may want to plop them with the BuildingPlop cheat and then use the Growifier DLL to growify them, I've done that frequently and it works really fine.

Other than that, I wrote a tutorial that can help you achieve that by creating lot blockers, although it's probably only useful for experienced modders and it's a lot of work. By blocking all lots with any other size than 1x2, you can make sure that only 1x2 lots are growing. Frankly, although I really appreciate all the efforts of Null 45 and memo to create new DLL mods and the Building Styles DLL, I've never installed this mod and I only use a lot-based solution to make exactly the buildings grow that I want, but it really gives me good results.

 

AHOY! Thank you for the response! 
I have used "checkerbor3ed" pattrens for making houses line up in smaller towns, where i want blocks of individual houses.

"Row houses" i notice only seem to 'grow' in numbers if the zones are next to each other... if i try and make the checker bored patterns... often i end up with a dozen different row house types, instead of a uniform row of buildings...

in terms of 'Plopping'  As far as i know, residential plops don't...work...unless there is a different plop addon? I hve an old one that makes EVERY maxis building in the game plopabable. Commercial and Industrial both work in terms of having jobs people goto... but any house i plop down doesn't add population to the city...

[Null 45 3,020]

13 hours ago, Crossroads Inc. said:

in terms of 'Plopping'  As far as i know, residential plops don't...work...unless there is a different plop addon?

That is what the Growifier DLL fixes, it adds a cheat to Growify plopped RCI lots. The Building Styles DLL also has a cheek box for an automatic growify option.

13 hours ago, Crossroads Inc. said:

if i try and make the checker bored patterns... often i end up with a dozen different row house types, instead of a uniform row of buildings...

The game picks buildings to (re)develop at random, so a uniform set of buildings is not guaranteed unless you plop them. The Building Styles DLL has a few options to limit what the game can grow beyond just custom styles, wall to wall only, etc. But that relies on the buildings being properly marked as wall to wall.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I would love a DLL mod that lets you control which building stages grow on which zone densities. 

From my understanding (which could be entirely wrong), if a lot doesn't have LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes, the game defaults to certain density zones for certain stages. If it were possible to have the game ignore LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes, and then modify what the game defaults to for each stage, it would give players a lot of control over how their city develops. 

I imagine a DLL file and another file with user settings. For me, the residential zones would look like: 

Quote

 

Low Density Residential = 1,2,3

Medium Density Residential = 1,2,3,4,5

High Density Residential = 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

 

Which would make it so that low density zones were generally single family houses, medium density zones were rowhouses and small apartment buildings, and high density zones would be big apartment buildings, midrises, and skyscrapers. (Note that I haven't checked the exact stages all the different lots grow on but this is the jist). Currently in the game, if you zone medium density, you get Manhattan or Hong Kong levels of residential density, some of the densest places on earth, since skyscrapers grow on medium density zones. 

A rural player (@CorinaMarie) could use this mod to make the zone densities correspond to the scales typically found in rural areas. Something like: 

Quote

 

Low Density Residential = 1,2

Medium Density Residential = 1,2,3

High Density Residential = 1,2,3,4,5

 

Which would have rural houses growing on low density, the more urban/suburban style houses typical of old towns growing in medium density, and rowhouses and small apartment buildings growing on high density zones, and midrises and skyscrapers being blocked from growing since those stages weren't assigned to any zone type. 

I imagine the same mod would be used by CAM users, by simply including the extra stages in their settings if they have CAM installed. 

But I think this DLL mod would be incompatible with IRM. It would also prevent fine tuning from lot makers. For example, I've made lots which PIMX says should grow on low densities, which I've manually edited not to, since based on their character they definitely shouldn't. 

[11241036 5,096]

1 hour ago, Jasoncw said:

I would love a DLL mod that lets you control which building stages grow on which zone densities. 

From my understanding (which could be entirely wrong), if a lot doesn't have LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes, the game defaults to certain density zones for certain stages. If it were possible to have the game ignore LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes, and then modify what the game defaults to for each stage, it would give players a lot of control over how their city develops. 

I imagine a DLL file and another file with user settings. For me, the residential zones would look like: 

Which would make it so that low density zones were generally single family houses, medium density zones were rowhouses and small apartment buildings, and high density zones would be big apartment buildings, midrises, and skyscrapers. (Note that I haven't checked the exact stages all the different lots grow on but this is the jist). Currently in the game, if you zone medium density, you get Manhattan or Hong Kong levels of residential density, some of the densest places on earth, since skyscrapers grow on medium density zones. 

A rural player (@CorinaMarie) could use this mod to make the zone densities correspond to the scales typically found in rural areas. Something like: 

Which would have rural houses growing on low density, the more urban/suburban style houses typical of old towns growing in medium density, and rowhouses and small apartment buildings growing on high density zones, and midrises and skyscrapers being blocked from growing since those stages weren't assigned to any zone type. 

I imagine the same mod would be used by CAM users, by simply including the extra stages in their settings if they have CAM installed. 

But I think this DLL mod would be incompatible with IRM. It would also prevent fine tuning from lot makers. For example, I've made lots which PIMX says should grow on low densities, which I've manually edited not to, since based on their character they definitely shouldn't. 

Actually, you can do this without a DLL mod - if you have a lot of patience. The zone types are controlled in the lot exemplar file in the LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes property, and, as you may know, lower stage lots (1-3) grow on all zones, medium stage (4-6) on MD and HD and high stage (7-8) only on HD zones.

You can change this. Usually, on lots with the Growth Stage property set to at maximum 3, the LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes shows three reps: 0x01,0x02,0x03. You just need to remove the 0x02 and 0x03 and the lot will only grow on LD zones. The only problem (that's probably the worst problem): You need to do this with literally every single lot exemplar file that is a growable to make the effect working on a large scale.

By the way: 0x01,0x02,0x03 are for residentials, 0x04,0x05,0x06 for commercials.

Edit: But as you yourself stated, finetuning this is a nightmare. The fact that Hongkong skyscrapers grow on MD zones is IMO a case of poor modding. I think we are already on a good way with the Building Styles DLL because if you combine that cleverly with zone assignment, you can have 3 types of buildings with only 1 building style active, depending on which zone types you are laying out.

[Null 45 3,020]

5 hours ago, Jasoncw said:

From my understanding (which could be entirely wrong), if a lot doesn't have LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes, the game defaults to certain density zones for certain stages.

It defaults to marking the lot as incompatible with all zone types (same with LotConfigPropertyWealthTypes and LotConfigPropertyPurposeTypes). LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes could be set in a parent cohort, but none of the Maxis lots I looked at did so.

Maxis set all 3 of those properties to an empty array in some of their landmarks, which would have the same effect as not defining the property. They got away with that due to the buildings not being growable, but it was a fun feature to encounter when writing an exemplar parser.

[Crossroads Inc. 68]

On 8/24/2025 at 4:45 PM, 11241036 said:

I can't help you very much with the modding part, but you can easily get what you want by clever zoning: Just lay out zones for every second 1x2 area, let things grow, and then mark any lot you want to keep historical. You only need to make sure that no two zones are touching each other (only horizontally), and only fill the gaps when all adjacent zones have been marked historical. This is an illustration I quickly made with Paint:

As for strips of row homes: You may want to plop them with the BuildingPlop cheat and then use the Growifier DLL to growify them, I've done that frequently and it works really fine.

Other than that, I wrote a tutorial that can help you achieve that by creating lot blockers, although it's probably only useful for experienced modders and it's a lot of work. By blocking all lots with any other size than 1x2, you can make sure that only 1x2 lots are growing. Frankly, although I really appreciate all the efforts of Null 45 and memo to create new DLL mods and the Building Styles DLL, I've never installed this mod and I only use a lot-based solution to make exactly the buildings grow that I want, but it really gives me good results.

 

Heeeyyyy browski... so.... Been experimenter with this the last few days and.. specifically on a new city i am planning out.. I wanted to do a test run, I filled in huge parts of my test city with medium residential, and some smatterings of High density res and commercial... and last night i tried out the command:
Growify <Residential> <medium> [make historical]

And.... Well, it didn't seem to do anything... at first... but...

I watched the residential slowly fill in, and, it DID seem it wasn't making any "merged" lots. they were all 1x2 or 1x3 lots...
but... what i realized is.. it wasn't actually making Medium housing.. it was ONLY making 'houses' nothing more dense than single houses...
The while city was just, houses... there was, 'occasionally' one or two apartment blocks... but.. no big long rows of row houses or similar... 
so......

have you encountered this? and... if you have... do you know how to turn it off?

 

 

 

[11241036 5,096]

Well, that depends on what stage the rowhouses are you want to grow. If they are at stage 4, it may take a while until they can grow, and they surely won't grow if you mark zones historical BEFORE they grow. Unfortunately, there's no absolute guarantee that you get only rowhouses. For gapless rows of rowhouses, you are best off plopping and growifying them.

Also, you may need to make sure you have enough jobs in your city or else residential growth will sooner or later stall.

[Crossroads Inc. 68]

1 hour ago, 11241036 said:

Well, that depends on what stage the rowhouses are you want to grow. If they are at stage 4, it may take a while until they can grow, and they surely won't grow if you mark zones historical BEFORE they grow. Unfortunately, there's no absolute guarantee that you get only rowhouses. For gapless rows of rowhouses, you are best off plopping and growifying them.

Also, you may need to make sure you have enough jobs in your city or else residential growth will sooner or later stall.

ok so.. i migt have entered it when the city was at.....zero population....
thats bad right>?

[11241036 5,096]

It looks so. In general, whenever you start developing an entirely empty city, first only small houses grow, and they are succeeded by larger houses and eventually skyscrapers. To speak in in-game terminology: A city starts at stage 1, and when enough people live there, it is progressing to stage 2, which means bigger houses with more people (however, there's no in-game indicator in the user interface that is letting you know). The maximum in default SC4 is stage 8. The game can also replace low-wealth houses by houses of higher wealth levels, and smaller houses with only a few sims with bigger houses; you can limit the growth, however, by only laying out low-density zones, which means, only small houses can grow there. Small houses can grow everywhere, even on medium and high-density zones.

The hint I gave you above with how to lay out zoning can only help you with preventing the game from merging zones - it does nothing to help you with giving you more control about what is growing in your city. The only thing you can do is

• create and use blockers (see my post further above about how to make them),
• put the Building Styles DLL by Null 45 to clever use (I have no experience with this, however),
• plop and growify buildings with the BuildingPlop cheat.

Unfortunately, all three hints are only for experienced users. There's no easy way to control what is growing in your cities, and there are also aspects with the game simulator that may mess you up. The game simulator also checks if there are enough jobs provided by agricultural, industrial and commercial zones for your sims, and if there aren't, this may prevent your city from further growth.

[TiepiNL 182]

6 hours ago, 11241036 said:

It looks so. In general, whenever you start developing an entirely empty city, first only small houses grow, and they are succeeded by larger houses and eventually skyscrapers. To speak in in-game terminology: A city starts at stage 1, and when enough people live there, it is progressing to stage 2, which means bigger houses with more people (however, there's no in-game indicator in the user interface that is letting you know). The maximum in default SC4 is stage 8. The game can also replace low-wealth houses by houses of higher wealth levels, and smaller houses with only a few sims with bigger houses; you can limit the growth, however, by only laying out low-density zones, which means, only small houses can grow there. Small houses can grow everywhere, even on medium and high-density zones.

The hint I gave you above with how to lay out zoning can only help you with preventing the game from merging zones - it does nothing to help you with giving you more control about what is growing in your city. The only thing you can do is

• create and use blockers (see my post further above about how to make them),
• put the Building Styles DLL by Null 45 to clever use (I have no experience with this, however),
• plop and growify buildings with the BuildingPlop cheat.

Unfortunately, all three hints are only for experienced users. There's no easy way to control what is growing in your cities, and there are also aspects with the game simulator that may mess you up. The game simulator also checks if there are enough jobs provided by agricultural, industrial and commercial zones for your sims, and if there aren't, this may prevent your city from further growth.

With "see my post further above about how to make them", do you mean this one?

On 26/08/2025 at 12:31 AM, 11241036 said:

Actually, you can do this without a DLL mod - if you have a lot of patience. The zone types are controlled in the lot exemplar file in the LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes property, and, as you may know, lower stage lots (1-3) grow on all zones, medium stage (4-6) on MD and HD and high stage (7-8) only on HD zones.

You can change this. Usually, on lots with the Growth Stage property set to at maximum 3, the LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes shows three reps: 0x01,0x02,0x03. You just need to remove the 0x02 and 0x03 and the lot will only grow on LD zones. The only problem (that's probably the worst problem): You need to do this with literally every single lot exemplar file that is a growable to make the effect working on a large scale.

By the way: 0x01,0x02,0x03 are for residentials, 0x04,0x05,0x06 for commercials.

Edit: But as you yourself stated, finetuning this is a nightmare. The fact that Hongkong skyscrapers grow on MD zones is IMO a case of poor modding. I think we are already on a good way with the Building Styles DLL because if you combine that cleverly with zone assignment, you can have 3 types of buildings with only 1 building style active, depending on which zone types you are laying out.

Is that also how Maxis blockers etc. work, by altering the LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes property?

I'd like to create my own blockers but not by editing lots but with overrides instead, and to block them from growing at all. My use case: I like to "paint" my cities with BuildingPlop. I like to keep menus clean and therefore use the growable versions of buildings in my Plugins instead of the functional landmarks. But often I don't want them to actually grow (At least not on the tile that I'm painting). Overrides might take some effort to create, but after that it's easy to maintain in my Plugins by simply moving them in and out. (Btw, I have considered to use the Building Styles mod for my use case, but then I'd lose compatibility with the use of "real" building styles once creators start to actively use them.)

Long story short: I'm looking for help to create blockers for individual growable RCIs. Any guidance would be much appreciated.

[Null 45 3,020]

3 hours ago, TiepiNL said:

Is that also how Maxis blockers etc. work, by altering the LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes property?

All of the residential and commercial Maxis building blockers I am aware of work by overriding the building exemplar and replacing the Maxis building styles in the Occupant Groups property with a bogus value, some older blockers used the style id 0x2004 and at least one new blocker uses 0 (which the Building Styles DLL reserves as invalid). Removing the style occupant group values would also work.The Maxis industrial blockers work similarly, removing values SC4 requires from the occupant groups.

3 hours ago, TiepiNL said:

Btw, I have considered to use the Building Styles mod for my use case, but then I'd lose compatibility with the use of "real" building styles once creators start to actively use them.

In what way, reusing part of the public range for your private styles?

[memo 1,439]

29 minutes ago, Null 45 said:

All of the residential and commercial Maxis building blockers I am aware of work by overriding the building exemplar and replacing the Maxis building styles in the Occupant Groups property with a bogus value

BSC No Maxis works differently. Instead of altering the Building Exemplars, it blocks all the Lots by setting the MinSlopeAllowed property to 89 degree in the Lot Exemplar. Often that's preferable, as it doesn't interfere with other mods that modify the Building Exemplars, such as CAM.

Earlier versions of it blocked the Lots by setting the growth stage to 255.

4 hours ago, TiepiNL said:

Overrides might take some effort to create, but after that it's easy to maintain in my Plugins by simply moving them in and out.

What I would do is create an Exemplar Patch for the lots you want to block by overriding the MinSlopeAllowed angle. That way, there's no risk of conflicts with anything else. You can maintain the Lot IDs for the patch in a spreadsheet, for example.

[TiepiNL 182]

2 hours ago, Null 45 said:

All of the residential and commercial Maxis building blockers I am aware of work by overriding the building exemplar and replacing the Maxis building styles in the Occupant Groups property with a bogus value, some older blockers used the style id 0x2004 and at least one new blocker uses 0 (which the Building Styles DLL reserves as invalid). Removing the style occupant group values would also work.The Maxis industrial blockers work similarly, removing values SC4 requires from the occupant groups.

In what way, reusing part of the public range for your private styles?

If I create custom building styles to manage which files can grow and a, I cannot use the the building style functionality as indented anymore. But my thinking is flawed here, because just like with patching other properties like MinSlopeAllowed it's only when the patch is applied and I want to have the building blocked anyway. So yes, it's possible to use the building style too.

1 hour ago, memo said:

BSC No Maxis works differently. Instead of altering the Building Exemplars, it blocks all the Lots by setting the MinSlopeAllowed property to 89 degree in the Lot Exemplar. Often that's preferable, as it doesn't interfere with other mods that modify the Building Exemplars, such as CAM.

Earlier versions of it blocked the Lots by setting the growth stage to 255.

What I would do is create an Exemplar Patch for the lots you want to block by overriding the MinSlopeAllowed angle. That way, there's no risk of conflicts with anything else. You can maintain the Lot IDs for the patch in a spreadsheet, for example.

I like the approach of using MinSlopeAllowed, thanks! Also ty for the exemplar patching link. It's a bit hard to digest for a relative noob like me - my PIM-X experience is limited to alter some capacity or budget values - but challenge accepted.

I found this forum post by @rsc204 when googling for "examplar patch", and also this step-by-step explanation by @Edvarz. Enough to get started. Thanks again!

[11241036 5,096]

6 hours ago, TiepiNL said:

With "see my post further above about how to make them", do you mean this one?

I actually meant this one:

At the bottom, there's a link to a tutorial I wrote on how to make blockers. As memo and Null 45 already told, there are multiple ways to make blockers, by altering some settings either in the lot exemplar files or the building exemplar files that makes it impossible for a lot/building to grow but still allow full functionality. From my experience, there are only two things to keep in mind:

If you create blockers by altering lot exemplar files, the modified files will interfere with any file that overrides the same lot.

If you are editing a lot that you have modified in LE, be aware that you have two versions of this lot - the original and the modified one. You should find a way to make the changes made in LE apply to both.

[rsc204 21,806]

The benefits of using the Building Styles here is that you can switch in-game on the fly between styles. But it would be a bit of work to setup. However using the Buildings Styles DLL, it should be possible to create a new Building Style. Apply that to all these little Row Houses and when you only allow that building style, only Row Houses would be able to grow. Note that doesn’t mean they will. You’ll need the right desirability for wealth, location, growth stage and more.

[TiepiNL 182]

6 hours ago, memo said:

BSC No Maxis works differently. Instead of altering the Building Exemplars, it blocks all the Lots by setting the MinSlopeAllowed property to 89 degree in the Lot Exemplar. Often that's preferable, as it doesn't interfere with other mods that modify the Building Exemplars, such as CAM.

Earlier versions of it blocked the Lots by setting the growth stage to 255.

What I would do is create an Exemplar Patch for the lots you want to block by overriding the MinSlopeAllowed angle. That way, there's no risk of conflicts with anything else. You can maintain the Lot IDs for the patch in a spreadsheet, for example.

I jumped into a rabbit hole but without much success. I can't manage to copy a Cohort (of the plaza-submenu.dat file) to a new file. Screenshots I've seen don't match my iLives Reader (1.5.4), assuming they're made with the 0.9.3 version. Do both Reader versions have identical functionality?

I had a look at the submenu dll thread here and was wondering if @smf_16 perhaps would be willing to add a MinSlopeAllowed-based "blocker" function (create, add to) to SC4, just like the submenu one. 

[CorinaMarie 29,575]

24 minutes ago, TiepiNL said:

Screenshots I've seen don't match my iLives Reader (1.5.4), assuming they're made with the 0.9.3 version.

For almost all things you want to use 0.9.3. It's completely stable. 1.5.4 can corrupt files, most especially LText entries which you might not even notice until it's way too late.

[memo 1,439]

On 8/29/2025 at 7:24 PM, TiepiNL said:

I can't manage to copy a Cohort (of the plaza-submenu.dat file) to a new file. Screenshots I've seen don't match my iLives Reader (1.5.4), assuming they're made with the 0.9.3 version. Do both Reader versions have identical functionality?

Yes, both Reader versions work the same in that regard. To copy a Cohort file: "Right click > copy" in the first file, "right click > paste" in the second.

[TiepiNL 182]

On 29/08/2025 at 7:49 PM, CorinaMarie said:

For almost all things you want to use 0.9.3. It's completely stable. 1.5.4 can corrupt files, most especially LText entries which you might not even notice until it's way too late.

Thanks. I wasn't aware of that.

I have downloaded reader v0.9.3 now. added the new_properties.xml v3 file on the right, and pointed SimCityLocale.dat to the actual file:

But all properties are "!Unknown!". What am I missing here?

7 hours ago, memo said:

Yes, both Reader versions work the same in that regard. To copy a Cohort file: "Right click > copy" in the first file, "right click > paste" in the second.

OK, I've managed to copy the cohort to the blank dat:

I assume I have to replace the values below with the ones of the lots I want to block from growing. How can I find and copy that value from a growable lot? It would be nice to see a screenshot of a random example.

And the part I have no clue how to proceed (besides getting my xml properties working): how to make the patch not set the submenu but change the MinSlopeAllowed instead?

Thanks in advance for helping me forward.