JBM-Modding Questions (Help only)

[GrampaAl 76]

Date:10/29/2004 11:50:39 AM
Author:pmiller19574

ok I posted the building one in case the problem is there.

 

I got the farm to grow but then went and did the 1x1lot and got it all set up. Got it to grow again but found I did not get the IDD right. cause it did that field growing 1st then the lot itself. like the sunflowers did when I 1st gave it a shot. Now when I redid the 1x1 and told the building exemplar to look at it .

 

Ran the game and placed the Farm tiles to grow the farm.

It stopes the game and boots me back out to the desktop no matter what I do to the file it still boots me back out. I can attatch the file if you want to take a closer look at it and tell me what I did wrong.

quote>

Shall we dance? I take one step forward, and you take one step backward. Now we both take one step sideways, and stop right there.

Edited all below:

You were there and you didn't have faith. The little lots showing up first is NOT a problem. That is normal.

For your Stacy's farm lot. Change the field lot pointer to 0x00024100, this is the in game grassy field. Just plain green grass.

Don't worry about whether the fields appear first, there is a time delay for the actual building on the main farm to grow, so you may very well see the fields and even some of the main farm, before the building itself is finished.

Now, will the farm grow correctly without crashing the game? I hope it does. When we know it grows OK without crashing, we can continue with our dance.

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

Date:10/29/2004 7:32:17 PM
Author:GrampaAl

Date:10/29/2004 11:50:39 AM
Author:pmiller19574

ok I posted the building one in case the problem is there.

 

I got the farm to grow but then went and did the 1x1lot and got it all set up. Got it to grow again but found I did not get the IDD right. cause it did that field growing 1st then the lot itself. like the sunflowers did when I 1st gave it a shot. Now when I redid the 1x1 and told the building exemplar to look at it .

 

Ran the game and placed the Farm tiles to grow the farm.

It stopes the game and boots me back out to the desktop no matter what I do to the file it still boots me back out. I can attatch the file if you want to take a closer look at it and tell me what I did wrong.

quote>

Shall we dance? I take one step forward, and you take one step backward. Now we both take one step sideways, and stop right there.

Edited all below:

You were there and you didn't have faith. The little lots showing up first is NOT a problem. That is normal.

For your Stacy's farm lot. Change the field lot pointer to 0x00024100, this is the in game grassy field. Just plain green grass.

Don't worry about whether the fields appear first, there is a time delay for the actual building on the main farm to grow, so you may very well see the fields and even some of the main farm, before the building itself is finished.

Now, will the farm grow correctly without crashing the game? I hope it does. When we know it grows OK without crashing, we can continue with our dance.

quote>

I think I may not have explained very well the 1st time. But I will change it to what you say and see if it stops crashing the game. Then we can go from there. I had it lost it darn it...

Thanks

 

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

Hello

 

I got it fixed. It kept crashing becasue goffy me changed the exemplar name and did not go back into LE and replace the buidling. It is now growing and even the field lots are growing. I am still having one little problem.

 

I'll post what it is in the morning. Or rather post a pic in a min and explain in the morning.

 

I attached a bigger pic with the explination of the problem.

 

not sure why this is happening but it is. Any ideas how to fix it.

 

[GrampaAl 76]

Hmmm! I see two things that I'm not quite sure how to explain.

 

1. The dirt base texture in the farm circled in black seems to have disappeared?

2.  I see in the picture circled in red, that there is a white spot under a couple of trees in the lower portion of the picture.

 

I'm not sure what is happening there, but try this next. First grow just one farm, then make sure you have a street or road seperating it from any other zoning before you try to grow more. I have seen some strange problems similar to this, but never did figure them out.

 

Two other comments.

 

Changing the name of the exemplar will not affect anything. That does not cause a problem at all.

 

I suspect that you either never did have the proper building on the lot, or you had somehow messed up the pointer to the building in the Lot Exemplar, and when you replaced it (again?) the LE fixed it for you. Also, a good note here. When you replace a building on the lot you also reposition it, but do NOT place it right on the edge of the lot. This can cause other weird problems. When you see the grey box for the building, while in prop view, the grey building box better not be hanging over the edge even just a little. In fact it is better to have it a bit inside the edges.

 

Do you have more than one field lot specified? If you have more than one, and the game can not find one of them, you can also get some strange goings on, which I can explain, but only if we find that there are more than one field lots specified.

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

How do I merge files together with ILIVE? I wanted to put the Barn Model and Disc in the same file as the LOT can this be done or no?

 

Or how do I merge the Model file and the Disc file to make one dat file with Ilive?

 

I know how to do it with DatGen but I don't want to risk messing the lot up by using DatGen.

 

Mary

 

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

ok I have noticed a couple of things.

 

Let me post this pic 1st to show you what this lot is doing and then try to explain something else.

ok in this pic you can see that the field was there 1st. What I did was zone a large section to see if it did this everytime and it does. If you zone a section large enough to hold two farms it will do the 1st one 1st and place the 1x1 lots all around the farm like it did in this pic. Now wait for a little while then you will see the second farm pop up and grow though the crop.

 

Now something else I have seen is to compleatly get rid of the lot I have to 1st DEZONE the section Then Buldoze the prop that remains. the same thing happened when I was trying to do the Sunflower one a little while ago. Is there a reason why it has to be done this way or is something not set up right.

I sure hope I explained this in plane english this time.

 

 

This is what it looks like if I buldoze the whole section should take the crop with it but it does't

 

When I dezone the section this is what it looks like It has left the crop behind Now I will have to take and bulldoze the section again to compleatly get rid of it.

 

This is why I ask if I have not got something set up right.

 

Iwill try a few things and see if it works but I am not sure why its doing this in the 1st place.

[GrampaAl 76]

Date:10/30/2004 8:40:10 AM
Author:pmiller19574

How do I merge files together with ILIVE? I wanted to put the Barn Model and Disc in the same file as the LOT can this be done or no?

 

Or how do I merge the Model file and the Disc file to make one dat file with Ilive?

 

I know how to do it with DatGen but I don't want to risk messing the lot up by using DatGen.

 

Mary

 

quote>

Yes of course. You can do anything with the reader.

With the main .sc4lot file open, click on the options menu and then click on the Merge to opened dat item, now browse to the folder containing the additional files you wish to merge. Select each file you want to merge until you get only the files you want to merge all into the list box. Now click on the Merge button at the bottom of the screen. Presto, done!

At this point you can move those items you have merged into the lot off into some sort of a archive directory out of the plugins path.

[GrampaAl 76]

Ah hah! You have the old Overlap problem.

 

I believe you are not using one of the in game field lots as your basis for the farm field lot. In the future you should use one of the in game field lots as your basis.

 

For this field lot only, open the Lot Editor, find the field lot that is the problem here (Lettuce field?) and then once open, click on the building tab. Now see the little gray square? That is the building. Move it to the center of the lot and save the file.

 

Your problem should now be gone.

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

ok Its still doing it.. I even replaced the building with one that said Farm and its still doing it. I have no idea why,

[GrampaAl 76]

That was not the problem eh! From the description and pictures of the bulldozing, and the fact that the fields didn't get bulldozed when you tried, that sure sounded like the problem. I apologize for making the extra work since that was not the problem as you have said.

 

Maybe I misunderstood. When you said you bulldozed everything, the farm went but the fields stayed. Maybe I assumed you bulldozed the entire area, but perhaps you only bulldozed the main farm and expected the fields to go with it. That is not what will happen. To bulldoze the fields you need to bulldoze all of them as well as the main farm.

 

Anyway, let's try one more thing. The little 1x1 field is definately the problem, but the lot exemplar you showed is fine by itself. Also this is proven by the fact that it does grow as expected.

 

So, it must be the building exemplar that has the problem. Now open the field lot with the Lot Editor once again, and again click on the building tab. Now use the Replace Family tab. You will see a list of Industrial Resource items. Click on them one at a time until you find one of them that says FarmField and also has a number after it, like FarmField4. You don't want any with names since others may not have those, but the industrial resource FarmField (there are about 7 of them total I think) will be one of the in game buildings. Note that these buildings are all invisible for farm fields. This last try should fix it.

 

I did just now find that using an in game farm field will not allow you to do a SaveAs, so it takes a bit more work to make one.

 

For now this should fix the problem. Meanwhile what I will do is to make you your very own custom blank farm field lot, which I will attach to another post here later. That one will allow you to do a SaveAs, and you will be able to use it as a template for all future farm field lots.

 

Going to take a nap now. Been walking on the mountain for the last hour or so. It is a lovely day here, quite humid since it has been rainy and foggy for the last few days, but today is sunny and temp around 80, so it feels quite tropical. Walking in the woods among the trees, birds and yes occasional animals is so much fun. Gets you in touch with nature as it was meant to be enjoyed. We came across a whole flock of wild turkeys during our walk. About 15 of them I think.

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

this is the one I chose.

 

The Yellow circle is where I placed it.

 

going to go test once again and see if this works.

 

ok still not working....

 

I did bulldozed bot the lot and the 1x1 field lots and it still wont del the 1x1 lots. And it still grows like it did in the prev pics.

[GrampaAl 76]

What! I did already just what you did and had no problem.

 

So please attach just the little 1x1 field lot in a .zip file here. I will have a look at it to see just what is going on if I can.

 

Edit: Guess what folks. Ol GrampaAl has goofed somehow. See post below for corrections.

[GrampaAl 76]

Guess what? I repeated the instructions I gave you and don't you know it, now I have the same problem.

That seems strange to me. Now I wonder if the in game lots will also do this. It has been so long since I used any in game lots, I have totally forgotten. Maybe they will do this also.

So, here is what I have done for you. I have made a custom basic lot for you. It has only a base texture and a blank or invisible building.  It is attached in the .zip file below.

Delete your old lettuce field, and using this field lot, remake the lettuce field like you want it.

Now remember this lot is your template, so save a spare copy in case you mess it up somehow. When you use this always do a SaveAs, never just a save. Yes it can be SavedAs now.

Once you make the new lot, remember to SaveAs and then exit the LE, and open the reader to get the Instance ID of this new field lot and paste that into the building exemplar of your Stacy's farm lot.

I did exactly this and it works fine.

Just to keep your field lots understandable, I recommend also changing the exemplar name of the building exemplar (for the new field lot) which is now included on your new lots, to the same name that you used when your did the SaveAs.

Please let us know how it works for you. It should save you lots of time now.

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

thanks for the lot. This should help me out alot. I wonder why the ingame ones do that. It was driving me batty. Infact I decided to go Play LOTR and I finally beat the level after about 20 to 30 tries. but did it all by myself. LOL......

 

Thanks for the help. I'll prop try this in the morning.

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

ok at last a 1x1 field that is working it even takes out the crops when I bullzode it. Wondefull. I thought I would give it the old girl scoute try again and see if It would work and it does, Now I can contunue work on the main lot again. Speaking of the main lot thought I would post a pic. Normally I do this in my other thread but thought I would do it here tonight.

 

The farm is growing folks and with the help of Grampa Al the 1x1 lots are now funtioning properly. Now back to the detail of the main lot.

 

as you can see on the side the 1x1 lots are inplace. So happy building everyone.

[GrampaAl 76]

I am so glad that we got that sticky problem solved. Now on to the next one.

 

I do believe that we should now take a close look at this farm, the main farm lot.

 

I see that nice but probably smelly barn is very close to the house in the back corner there. I also see the Garage(s) are way off to the right on the far corner. Now I don't think GramMa Stacy will like carrying those groceries all the way across the farm passing the chicken coops along the way. So I'm going to suggest that the barn and the garages be swapped in position. Also the roadway or dirt ways, whatever we call them seem so very wide. Seems like they should be narrower. I think there are some much better looking dirt farm roads in the base textures section. Might be worth a try.

 

Also, since I think I see about 3 or 4 chicken coops, but no chickens. Wonder if that is because the chickens had nothing to eat since they don't like lettuce all that well. BTW: The lettuce fields do look rather nice. Congrats.

 

Maybe they need corn for feed?

 

Well watch this develop. In fact you may want to start a brand new announcements thread right here rather than  over in the BAT section. You are making BATS, and those can be announced over there, with pictures from the gmax, but lots I think should probably be better off over here, or are they already? Guess I'll have to scroll down to see.

 

Good luck!

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

Here is a nutty idea.Turn the campsite lots and rest areas into commercial plop lots. They will have the effect of a park plus jobs for the uneducated sims.

Can someone help me with trying to do this. I am still very new to ILIVEs READER. I am not sure how to go about doing this. I found SimGoobers Tutorial but not sure if it will relate to this as this is a comercial plop and not a land mark.

 

thanks

Mary

 

[GrampaAl 76]

Well Mary, actually IMHO this is not such a good idea.

 

You could use SimGoobers tutorial to do this, but the problem with any RCI building, no matter which type, is that a ploppable just does not have all the same good characteristics as one that grows.

 

So my recommendation for this idea would be to forget it, and concentrate on what you are learning to do well. Heaven knows you have plenty to do and plenty of other ideas as well, so sometimes we just skip over those that are not the best we can do.

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

Hello Grampa AL,

 

Well I was going to skip it and leave the lots as they were. I was fine with them being a park only. But figured since blackbeard suggested it be something like the above message suggested that I would try it.

 

I know the Plopable RCI lots don't have all the Benifits which was why I was not going to do farms that way. As I think about it Tents have allways been part of parks and not RCI stuff. So I might just go ahead with my Original Idea and leave them as parks. after all thats what they are.

 

Mary

 

Gramp Al

Thanks for the calm advise.

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

I need a bit of help.

 

I need to know how to change the SFX Querry sound for the default sound of a landmark to the one for the church.

 

Does anyone know the codes for it and how to put it in.

 

Or can someone tell me how to make one and put it in.

 

Thanks

Mary

JBM  Team Leader.

[GrampaAl 76]

Date:12/24/2004 3:35:01 AM
Author:pmiller19574

I need a bit of help.

 

I need to know how to change the SFX Querry sound for the default sound of a landmark to the one for the church.

 

Does anyone know the codes for it and how to put it in.

 

Or can someone tell me how to make one and put it in.

 

Thanks

Mary

JBM  Team Leader.

quote>

Here are the values you need to use in place of those found in the landmark file.

SFX:Query sound = 0xCA8C9FC3
SFX:Default Plop Sound = 0x4A5EC571

Just replace the values already found in the landmark with these values.

You could also use the reader and open the SimCity4_1.dat file (in your main Maxis directory) and once opened, click on the Exemplar analyzer button. Then click on the search button. This will take a short while to fill the list with values. Then click on the tree button. Now you can browse thru all the normal in game values and find whatever values you wish to look up like I just did. This will be your invaluable research tool, once you learn how to use it well.

 

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

Date:12/24/2004 8:43:35 AM
Author:GrampaAl

Date:12/24/2004 3:35:01 AM
Author:pmiller19574

I need a bit of help.

 

I need to know how to change the SFX Querry sound for the default sound of a landmark to the one for the church.

 

Does anyone know the codes for it and how to put it in.

 

Or can someone tell me how to make one and put it in.

 

Thanks

Mary

JBM  Team Leader.

quote>

Here are the values you need to use in place of those found in the landmark file.

SFX:Query sound = 0xCA8C9FC3
SFX:Default Plop Sound = 0x4A5EC571

Just replace the values already found in the landmark with these values.

You could also use the reader and open the SimCity4_1.dat file (in your main Maxis directory) and once opened, click on the Exemplar analyzer button. Then click on the search button. This will take a short while to fill the list with values. Then click on the tree button. Now you can browse thru all the normal in game values and find whatever values you wish to look up like I just did. This will be your invaluable research tool, once you learn how to use it well.

 

quote>

 

Thanks that helps out alot. We will need this. Again your help had been Very Valuable. Thanks

Mary

JBM Team Leader

[Lobo ll 0]

Hey just tring to get an ideal on quirying

thanks

Lobo ll

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

Hello I need some help with a lot. I am trying to update one of my old lots that Dark Matter and I were working on a while back. I made a new building for the lot and used the plugin manager to tell it to be a power plant. Propblem is it keeps saying its a wind power plant when its not. Can someone help me.

In LOT Editor the windpower plant building has been replaced by my building. But in the game it puts the windpowerplant back in.

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//SwitchStation.jpg align=baseline border=5>

Can someone please tell me what I did wrong?

LYNKS

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

I have attatched a screen shot of the exemplar file. Could someone take a look and tell me what I might be doing wrong.

here is what the lot looks like in LE

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//new.jpg align=baseline>

the extra prop over the building is the same building as I found this one will disapear and places the windpower plant where the bunker is instead. Which is not on the lot.

[newyorkrunaway1 110]

Date: 10/31/2004 12:46:06 AM
Author: Lynx1

ok at last a 1x1 field that is working it even takes out the crops when I bullzode it. Wondefull. I thought I would give it the old girl scoute try again and see if It would work and it does, Now I can contunue work on the main lot again. Speaking of the main lot thought I would post a pic. Normally I do this in my other thread but thought I would do it here tonight.

The farm is growing folks and with the help of Grampa Al the 1x1 lots are now funtioning properly. Now back to the detail of the main lot.

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files/Farm2.jpg>

as you can see on the side the 1x1 lots are inplace. So happy building everyone.

i like your work, but this one could use a little more attention. it looks a little way to fake. its too green. the alignment looks fine, and the lot too, but....hmmm...i dont know, it just doesnt look right and i can't put my finger on it.

[JohnB 66]

Hehe. I dont know what you mean. Those lettuce textures are super realistic. What can possibly be wrong with it. Btw our team, JBM has temporarily broken up a few weeks ago. Its really sad.
But dont worry, its just temporary, until Pmiller has more free time again.

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

I will see what I can do with it when I finish the tree projects I am working on.

LYNXS

[GrampaAl 76]

I don't see a picture of the exemplar from the reader here. You attached it. Please put the picture here so all can view it right here and then I can tell you what to do with it.

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

I tried to put it here but it was to big. I'll see if I can put it on another sight then have this place look at it.



ok here it is.