Building Themes Mod

[boformer 3,169]

Workshop Link

This mod makes possible to apply building themes to a district or the whole city. Only buildings which are contained in one of the selected themes will grow in a district.

 

What this mod does:

• Adds 'Themes' tab to districts policies panel
• Filters buildings in districts by districts' active themes.
• Provides two built-in themes, 'European' and 'International'
• Stores building themes in an XML file ({Steam folder}\steamapps\common\Cities_Skylines\BuildingThemes.xml)
• Allows adding custom themes and extending built-in themes via the XML configuration file (Later this will be possible with UI - see 'Upcoming features' section)
• Saves district data in XML files for each saved game (buildingThemesSave_{ID}.xml). They can be found in {Steam folder}\steamapps\common\Cities_Skylines\Cities_Data. Cloud saves supported too. To clear themes assignment just delete those files.

Use 'Themes' tab to enable or disable district's themes. You can specify any number of active themes. If no theme is active for district it will mean that any growable is allowed.

Biome's native theme will be active by default ('European' theme for 'European' biome, 'International' theme for 'Boreal', 'Temperate' or 'Tropical' biome).

Themes specified city-wide will be applied to each new district you add automatically.

If you redraw district's borders the buildings not belonging to district's theme won't disappear. When it's time for them to upgrade they will level up to a building that is allowed in the district.

What this mod doesn't do:

• It won't corrupt your save games if you disable it
• It doesn't unlock European growables for non-European biomes or vice versa. Use European Buildings Unlocker for that.

Upcoming features:

• Building Themes Manager UI: Allows you to create your own themes (supporting vanilla and custom assets)

This mod should be 100% compatible with all other mods. If it's not just tell us.

Recommended mods to use together with this one:

• European Buildings Unlocker (+vice versa)
• Control Building Level Up

Feel free to comment. If you have any errors/exceptions please don't paste them or output_log to comments. Use dropbox, pastebin or similar tool.

 

Old WIP post:

Spoiler

I'm working on a mod that adds customizable building themes which can be applied to districts or an entire city (like a policy).

This is the GUI:

 

Update: It works!

 

[cromabianca 158]

Yeeeeeeah! That's what we've been waiting for!

But how do you tell the building which theme is it in?

[namspopof 117]

I will follow this project with interest. 

[Koriolanis 14]

That would be an amazing mod ! Keep up the good work !

[boformer 3,169]

Yeeeeeeah! That's what we've been waiting for!

But how do you tell the building which theme is it in?

The player has to create the themes and assign buildings to them. It will be completely customizable.

Other options (low-priority):

Let mod authors store theme information in the file name of the asset

Workshop Collection Integration

Third-party database

[cromabianca 158]

Could this also be used to keep the default buildings from growing?

This could be a great way to make blocks of row homes and housing subdivisions with repeated houses.

Actually, there is a mod for that already: I use it and it works absolutely great, I couldn't do without it. It's called "Control Building Level Up" (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=410535198&searchtext=level) and it works citywise or districtwise.

[boformer 3,169]

Update:

 

The GUI now works flawlessly. It was a pain to hook into the policy UI.

 

Right now I am investigating how I can override the "getRandomBuildingInfo" function that selects a random Building Model. The problem is that the function has no "position" or "district" input argument (needed for building themes per district). For those who are interested how it looks like:

GetRandomBuildingInfo(
    RandomGenerator, 
    Service (e.g. Residential, Commercial, ...), 
    SubService (e.g. ForestIndustry), 
    Level (1-5), 
    plotWidth, 
    plotLength, 
    ZoningMode (Corner or Straight)
)

I think i found a (very hacky) solution that should work. Will work on it this evening.

 

Sweet! This is a feature I think a lot of players want.

 

Could this also be used to keep the default buildings from growing?

 

This could be a great way to make blocks of row homes and housing subdivisions with repeated houses.

 

Good luck man, and keep us posted!

Yes, you can disable all default buildings.

 

Some Ideas what you can do with the right custom assets:

• China town
• Slum
• Old Town

 

You could create a theme that only contains UK terraced houses from this collection, so it would look like this:

 

[boformer 3,169]

Little update: I hooked into the "Building Manager". My mod now gets a notification when a new building is created.

 

The next step is to delete the buildings which are not allowed in a district.

 

[pieuponieu 70]

Amazing! I love, love, love this. If you need anyone to help test it, please let me know. I could not build a mod to save my life, but I would be an enthusiastic user!

[ghosty20 150]

Hopefully it will work with the European Buildings Unlocker (+vice versa) Mod http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=456408505be so cool for that as well..

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

This is great! I almost feel kinda bad for CO who worked so hard on the European set. With this mod that feature will be a bit obsolete. I was just thinking today how I long for a mod to stop default buildings from growing in targeted districts. Especially when we want to test our own creations or truly give our cities a certain look by architectural styles. I too will be following this with interest.

[Kaschperl 92]

Well, I was just about to ask if there was a mod like this when I bumped into this topic, and I'm happy to see that somebody's working on it! Thank you and keep it up!

[boformer 3,169]

I am now working together with the creator of the European building unlocker mod.

He got some great techniques to hook into the games source code without causing incompatibilities with other mods.

You can follow the progress on GitHub: github.com/boformer/BuildingThemes

[boformer 3,169]

Hopefully it will work with the European Buildings Unlocker (+vice versa) Mod http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=456408505be so cool for that as well..

Yes it does. Me and the creator of the mod are working together.

Little progress update: It works!

[Cool_Z 1,547]

I was praying for such a thing from the start !!!!!

It was my N°1 regret when CSL was released, not being able to set buildings to styles, no way to make chinatown grow (if we had enough asian themed buildings yet) or so...

 

 

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU !!!!!!

[Cool_Z 1,547]

I'd prefer people NOT adding stuff to the assets themselves... I wouldn't want weird stuff happening when sometimes you disable or uninstall custom builds...

[boformer 3,169]

Hey man,

Once again, congrats on getting your mod out!

Have you played around with the custom configurable properties on the building AI settings?

It looks like you can add custom text and number data that is tied to each asset.

Every time the asset gets run though the building AI simulation step, it appears to grab the value that was set in the asset editor.

I made 2 buildings, applied my derived AI that has custom fields, and set different values on each asset. I printed the custom value to the console, and the value changed with every building as the simulation ran.

Could this be an easy way to add categories to buildings?

Do you think it would be possible to use reflection to add custom fields to the existing buliding AI's?

 

 

I'm sure that there would be a way. The problem is that only a few modelers would support it.

We are planning a few ways to create custom themes:

1. Enter the link of a Workshop collection, and it will create a theme with all contained growable assets you are subscribed to. That's a very nice way because every Steam user can create collections.

2. "Buillding Theme Mods": A simple mod that hooks into the building themes mod (if installed) and adds a theme. The idea is that we write the generic mod. Everything is loaded from an XML file that is bundled with the mod (even the mod title displayed in the content manager). There could even be an "export" option in the Building Themes mod that generates the other mod + xml file, so the user only has to share it in the workshop (and link the assets as required items).

 

[boformer 3,169]

I updated the main post. The beta is released!

[boformer 3,169]

No. That's not controllable.

The opposite is possible: Asset creators include a little mod in their collection that automatically adds a theme to the game (and does nothing if the main mod is not installed).

Right now I'm working on 2 things:

* the themes manager gui

* a better building footprint calculator (if no 4x4 asset found, search for 3x4 -> 2x4 -> 1x4 -> 4X3 -> 3x3 ... 1x1). Right now themes with only small assets don't work correctly because the game only searches for larger footprints.

I am also working together with asset creators to make existing assets compatible with the mod.

  Edited June 24, 2015 by schmidtbochum  

[boformer 3,169]

The better footprint calculation is ready. Is anyone willing to test it? I prepared a "UK terraced houses" theme for testing that looks great. But I'm not sure if there are any errors in my code. As an alpha tester, you get exclusive access to an unpublished version of the mod!

 

Tomorrow I will release a small update that allows you to remove buildings from the default themes (e.g. The ugly blue roof building in the euro theme).

  Edited June 27, 2015 by schmidtbochum  

[boformer 3,169]

I just released an update (bigger than expected):

1. You can now remove buildings from the vanilla theme. I updated the tutorial: https://gist.github.com/boformer/39ca8136d03b43d65da6

2. The footprint calculator of the game was improved to support themes with only small assets (it just works...).

3. The mod can now be extended with "Theme mods". I created one for the "UK Terraced housing" collection:

Get it here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=470539837

The theme mod does not contain the building models. Subscribe to the building collection:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=452704398

[Cool_Z 1,547]

It's getting more and more awesome !!!!

[Turjan 1,048]

Yay. That new theme is great. I'll have to try that today.

[Shelltoe 15]

this really sounds awesome so far. i'm gona try this.

• Stores building themes in an XML file ({Steam folder}\steamapps\common\Cities_Skylines\BuildingThemes.xml)

so could we share those themes xmls? or does everyone have to create his own xml?

  Edited June 28, 2015 by Shelltoe  

[Turjan 1,048]

So I downloaded the "UK Terraced Housing" theme, plus the buildings of course, and it works perfectly:

The theme needs a few more sizes regarding lots, but I guess there's enough variety for the start. This looks very promising.

Very easy to use.

  Edited June 28, 2015 by Turjan  

[boformer 3,169]

this really sounds awesome so far. i'm gona try this.

• Stores building themes in an XML file ({Steam folder}\steamapps\common\Cities_Skylines\BuildingThemes.xml)

so could we share those themes xmls? or does everyone have to create his own xml?

You can share xml snippets. Other players can add them to their xml config (it is a single file):

Here is a tutorial: https://gist.github.com/boformer/39ca8136d03b43d65da6

Right now I'm working on a user interface that makes theme editing and creation a lot easier.

  Edited June 28, 2015 by schmidtbochum  

[Shelltoe 15]

thats pretty cool. would it be possible to create one xml per theme instead of one file for all themes?

creating a online DB for ppl to share such themes would really easy and awesome.

[boformer 3,169]

thats pretty cool. would it be possible to create one xml per theme instead of one file for all themes?

creating a online DB for ppl to share such themes would really easy and awesome.

The goal is that the users don't have to mess with the xml file at all. A way to share the themes would be great.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Question : If we remove a building from a theme after it has grown in a district where the theme was active, will it be demolished or will it stay there ?

[boformer 3,169]

Question : If we remove a building from a theme after it has grown in a district where the theme was active, will it be demolished or will it stay there ?

It will stay there.