How to: Make your own Mods

[jumesyn 0]

so the Float32 properties are always decimal huh?, thats good to know

[cp702 2]

Can I create a new ordinance?

[cp702 2]

How do I make a disaster able to be triggered in God Mode?

[sim1234 62]

Creating new disasters is impossible at the moment, no-one has found a way of doing it. Sorry about that.

[cp702 2]

How do I allow a riot to be triggered in God Mode?

[cp702 2]

How do I make a God Mode riot trigger?

[cp702 2]

How do I change a disaster like riot from its current trigger to a trigger like fire's?

[jumesyn 0]

is it possible to change the max amount of people that can live/work on the residents, comercials and industrials?

[helomoto 28]

wait...u want to make it so that when u click fire it will trigger a riot instead...why?

[cp702 2]

Sorry for all the posts. I didn't see the extra pages, and thought the post didn't work.

[journey09 0]

i'm sorry... on mine, ordinances has no plus sign by it

[woopypooky 1]

hi, can someone teach me how to make a booster x9000000 for comercial? i just wan to build a pure big comercial city, without any population. I tried to edit the demand created of stock exchange using ilive reader but it doesnt work in game or i didnt do it right. I dont understand 0x00002030, and 0x00001830 I also tried using radical ordinance, super demand plugin and watever mods outthere but all i get is the building gets abandoned after a while due to desirability, commute time, and lack of demand. even using plopmode also not like simcity 3000 where i can plop and the residents or workers will stay there regardless if got roads or not not to mention water and electricity.

[BusRocker 3]

Thanks for posting that convenient tip toroca, this is useful since I am myself learning how to mod. Now I can do a little more when it comes to modding. Thanks!

[CD82 0]

uh weird in #1 in my reader prog when i have the tree open. and and have smoke dectors selcted i dont see coast per resident.

i see monttly constatn income and monthly income factor. i got updated game sim city 4 deluxe some of this i dont udnerstand and kinda lost

[RippleJet 36]

The Monthly Income Factor is the one determining the income/cost per resident.

Total income/expense is:

Monthly Constant Income + Monthly Income Factor × Population

[CD82 0]

in the value its -0.001 so id change this to 0.100? if i wanted the income to be 100$? insted of negitive?

[J0nnD0ugh 31]

is there a tutorial on how to give jobs to landmarks, rewards & parks? I think its silly that civic structures don't have anyone employed.

[aking88 7]

If i want to edit the capacity of my subwaystations, do i have to bulldoze them before edit and replop not to crash my game?

[BigBangTheory 0]

im having a bit of trouble.. i can't find any file named simcity_1.dat.

[RippleJet 36]

Originally posted by: aking88 If i want to edit the capacity of my subwaystations, do i have to bulldoze them before edit and replop not to crash my game?quote>

No, that should not be necessary. It is only if you mod civic buildings with local funding (buildings you can fund individually with funding sliders) that you have to bulldoze every existing building in order to avoid the phantom funding sliders bug.

Originally posted by: BigBAngTheory im having a bit of trouble.. i can't find any file named simcity_1.dat.quote>

It's in the folder where SimCity 4 was installed, probably C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4\

[BigBangTheory 0]

ok, well when I load the file and go to the analizer tree. but ordinance doesn't have a plus beside it.

[RippleJet 36]

First of all, you don't need to open the file simcity_1.dat explicitely in Reader. On the left hand side there are four tags, called "Loaded DAT", "Simcity DAT", "Lot Editor DAT" and "Plugins". If you click on the tag called Simcity DAT, you will see all DAT files that came with the game. The first one is simcity_1.dat.

Regardless of whether you open simcity_1.dat in this tag or open it manually, you have to click once on the file in order to select it. After that you can open the Analyzer and get all the exemplar files loaded in there.

[Emre Yigit 0]

I have a question about air pollution. I'd like to make it so that the larger parks reduce this somewhat, while raising garbage pollution. In the GreenPark3 bit (the largest green park), I notice that there is a "pollution at center" line, with different values for air, water, garbage and radiation. The last two are 0x00000000, which I can easily change to 0x00000001 for garbage (to raise garbage pollution, right?). But the air pollution value is 0xFFFFFFF1, which has a decimal value of 4294967281! I'm stumped.

So the question is, how do I adjust this to lower air pollution?  And if I wanted a negative number, how can I get this in hexadecimal?

The second question is radius of effect. I guess the pollution radii (6,3,0,0) could be amended to (12,3,3,0) to make the effect for air and garbage more noticeable?

And the final question regards the decline in effect as one gets farther away from the park. I could find no line which suggested something of the sort.

Please help. Pretty please. And thanks.

PS.  The flip side to this is that I can't find any information for air pollution values under say, "Industrial Dirty".

[Sam 163]

0xFFFFFFF1 is a negative number. There are no + or - signs in hex to represent negative numbers. The FFFFFF represents a negative number, so FFFFFFF1 is actually -15 which is a fairly high pollution reduction. I think funforfree explained how to do negative hex maths earlier in the thread somewhere, but I'm not sure where. Its not quite FFFFFFFF - FFFFFFF1, I think there is an extra -1 in there somewhere.

Edit: oops ok its not in this thread, I'm not sure where it is now.

[BigBangTheory 0]

Ok...i don't know what im doing wrong. When I open simcity_1.dat, there is no plus sign.

[RippleJet 36]

Since you reinstalled Reader, you will have to make the setups first. I think Reader automatically opens up the Options window if there is no READER.INI file. When you press the OK button after setting the options, all your setting will be saved in a new READER.INI file.

You may want to read this post in case you're having difficulties how to set the options.

After this you need to restart Reader in order to get the settings read from the INI-file.

[RippleJet 36]

Originally posted by: cp702 Can I create a new ordinance?quote>

Originally posted by: journey09 i'm sorry... on mine, ordinances has no plus sign by itquote>

Originally posted by: BigBAngTheory ok, well when I load the file and go to the analizer tree. but ordinance doesn't have a plus beside it.quote>

Originally posted by: BigBAngTheory Ok...i don't know what im doing wrong. When I open simcity_1.dat, there is no plus sign.quote>

First of all, since Funforfree99's tutorial is rather old and based on changing exemplar files within the simcity_1.dat file, I'll take this opportunity to tell you DON'T ! If you made a mistake and screw up the simcity_1.dat file and didn't make a backup copy of it, you will need to reinstall the game in order to correct the errors.

Instead, if you want to change something within simcity_1.dat, you need to copy the relevant exemplar file from simcity_1.dat and save it as a separate DAT file. If this DAT file is placed within your plugins folder, the exemplar file contained within it will overwrite the same exemplar file in simcity_1.dat. If your mod screws up the game, you simply need to remove your DAT file from the plugins folder and smile again (or curse your modding failures and start over).

Partly in reply to all above quotes, I'll illustrate how to extract an exemplar file from simcity_1.dat by guidelines showing how to extract an ordinance exemplar for your own needs. The same procedure can be used for extracting any file, eg. building exemplars, if you want to mod in-game civic buildings or landmarks.

How to extract an ordinance exemplar

When you open Reader, it will look as seen below. Since we want to find an exemplar file within the game files of Simcity, click on the tab Simcity DAT shown with the arrow:

This will open up a list of all DAT files that shipped with the game. All exemplar files are included in the first one, simcity_1.dat.

At this stage it is important that you actually click on the file, simcity_1.dat. You can verify that you have clicked on it by looking at the blue title bar. It shows the name of the file you currently have open in Reader:

Note, do not click the button "Fill the list" on the right hand side. This would list all files included in simcity_1.dat and will not be needed for the purpose of these guidelines.

The best way to locate a specific exempar file is to use the Exemplar Analyser. Click the "Ex Analyser" button in the toolbar to open it. Note also the name of the file (simcity_1.dat) shown in the blue title bar of the Exemplar Analyser.

Click the Tree View button in order to get all exemplar files grouped according to what they are. This will immensly help you to locate what you are looking for:

Note that the name of the button will switch each time you press it. When you are in Tree View, it will read List, and v/v.

At this stage there are still no files to be found in either the List or Tree Views. Those categories that include subcategories have a + sign on the left side of the name. As you can see in the picture below, the Ordinances do not have any subcategories.

In order to find all exemplar files in the "container file" you have open (simcity_1.dat), you need to click the Search button:

After a brief search all exemplar files can be found in the tree (each category that contains exemplar files gets a + sign to the left of the name). Clicking on the Ordinance you'll find all ordinance exemplars. In this example I'll click on the second ordinance, which is the Carpool Incentice (see picture below).

Note that the address (TGI) of this exempar can be found in the bottom right hand side.

Now, assuming we want to edit this ordinance, we need to extract it from simcity_1.dat into a separate DAT file. The first thing to do, is to right-click on the exemplar file you want to extract. From the menu that opens up, select Sync. with file ?:

This will synchronise the main window of Reader with this particular file. When you now close the Exemplar Analyser, you will notice that the Carpool Incentive Ordinance exemplar has appeared and is selected.

Note also that you are still within the simcity_1.dat file (based on the name of the title bar). Reader is only showing this single file, not all of them. So please, do not edit anything in the exemplar file yet!

Now you need to copy this exemplar file. Right-click on it and click Copy file(s).

After this, we will leave the simcity_1.dat file.

First, click on the tab called Loaded DAT (that's where we started).

Then, click on the file blank.dat (this is an empty template file). Note that the name in the blue title bar will change to blank .dat.

Now, right-click anywhere in the empty white area indicated below. In the menu that pops up, click Paste file(s). This will insert the exemplar file we copied from simcity_1.dat into the template file blank.dat:

After this you only need to click save as... in the File menu, in order to create you own DAT file, eg. My Own Ordinance.dat:

Note that the file name in the left hand side still says blank.dat. This is a small bug in Reader, and in order to fix it you have to exit and restart it. When you open your file My Own Ordinance.dat, it will read correctly and you can start modding your ordinance, which will replace the Carpool Incentive.

[Muko 0]

Hi is it posibule to make a mod that can be yusfule with orgenicing the ingame menues that would be a big help so u dont have to scrool throo alot of lots ??

My park menu is getting long and ist begining to be anoying to scrool throo them so many times when it could be eaysier with a costom made system

I have been lookin for this but havent found anything yet

i hope som of you can help me feel free to send a private pm to me i dont bite

[RippleJet 36]

Unfortunately it isn't possible to create custom menus.

[ErikMesa 5]

Great tutorials I'm learning alot (even with my mistakes).  I'm glad I backed everything up to another folder and am using a starter city to try these out in.  I've had some crashes and stuff so I'm still not quite there.

FunForFree99 could you possible do a quick tutorial on editing the trash presort and tire recycling so they do a "super job" on garbage?  Or do a "super increase" on the recycling center.  I'm having huge garbage problems with my region and everything I've tried with the Iilve isn't working at all.  I'm not sure what I'm missing.

Thanks,  ErikMesa