Installing only bus stops from RTMT?

[fredinno 54]

I want to install RTMT, but only want the bus stops- how am I suppose to install only them? I think adding the subway station too makes them a bit OP...

[z1 566]

There is no easy way to do this.

[Prophet42 1,501]

The task would be quite daunting and you could easily screw something up. The RTMT lots are all in .dat files.  You would have to use iLive's Reader and search through just about every .dat file in the RTMT installation and remove any exampler lot files that contain transit stops other than bus stops.

My suggestion would be to keep all the stops.  You could use the Reader to modify each lot's 'Item Order' parameter to but the bus stop only lots first in the SC4 Transit menu.  The Item Order could also be used to put all the other transit stops at the end of the menu.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

I'm going to reply to the above out of sequence.

On 9/4/2016 at 8:45 AM, Prophet42 said:

You could use the Reader to modify each lot's 'Item Order' parameter to but the bus stop only lots first in the SC4 Transit menu.  The Item Order could also be used to put all the other transit stops at the end of the menu.

First off, this is the version of Reader I use:

And here is an illustration of the field Prophet42 is referring to:

 

On 9/4/2016 at 6:15 AM, z1 said:

There is no easy way to do this.

No?

Disclaimer first: My understanding of these things is slightly above the amoeba level, however here's what I did. I installed Roadtop Mass Transit V3.50 and Suburban Bus Stop Set 1.01. Turns out there are some BSC dependencies too, but I skipped those for my quick test. Then I plopped two of the On-The-Street Bus Stops and made sure they were carrying passengers. The in game menu looks like this:

^ All the bus and subway choices are there.

Then I went into Reader and found the following exemplars and removed them.

• Ut_RT_Street_Sub
• Ut_RT_Street_BusSub
• Ut_RT_Road_Sub
• Ut_RT_Road_BusSub
• Ut_RT_Road_BusSub2
• Ut_RT_OneWay_Sub
• Ut_RT_OneWay_BusSub
• Ut_RT_Ave_Sub
• Ut_RT_BusSub

Note: I did not install the 3rd RTMT option cause my test bed doesn't have NAM atm. Here's a pic showing the first subway exemplar:

And then I saved the .dat file overwriting the original one.

 

Now in game the menu looks like this:

^ So, it's now just showing the Bus Stops and the Subway and Subway/BusStops have disappeared except the two off the road ones. I'm guessing those are in a different .dat file. (I'm not going to look for those until the gurus say if what I've done will cause any problems.)

 

On 9/4/2016 at 1:39 AM, fredinno said:

I want to install RTMT, but only want the bus stops- how am I suppose to install only them? I think adding the subway station too makes them a bit OP...

You could try what I did and see it that gives you what you want. Keep in mind I know so little about what I'm doing this could bork things in ways I don't understand. I looked into it just cause curiosity got the best of me. If this causes your computer to explode or the game to crash or anything else bad you have been warned that I'm not an expert in these kind of edits.

 

[rsc204 21,808]

Whilst you've pretty much outlined how you would go about it, perhaps the reason others declined to go into detail, is because most users won't touch the reader. The logic being that if you knew enough about the reader and SC4 files to do this, you wouldn't be asking here.

In this case, you've got to manually remove two thirds of the exemplars. In reality, it's best practise to also remove all the redundant data you are no longer using as well. So that means Buildings Exemplars, LotConfig Exemplars, Cohorts, Icons, Models and perhaps textures. To do this cleanly would take someone with a good knowledge/understanding of Reader and SC4 Files. It's very easy to mess something up by accidently deleting one file that was required too. RTMT is quite a complex beast when you consider the whole, as such messing with it is unsupported and not usually recommended.

Like many things, it can be done, it just requires enough knowledge and will to do it. But a step by step guide is not something you'll see from the RTMT team.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

... perhaps the reason others declined to go into detail, is because most users won't touch the reader. The logic being that if you knew enough about the reader and SC4 files to do this, you wouldn't be asking here.

Yes, that is a good point. I look at it from the perspective that the person asking may not know what is involved and by presenting an introduction they can then say, Oh, I can do that. or Yikes! That's too much for me. But, either way there is some information from which to make a decision.

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

In reality, it's best practice to also remove all the redundant data you are no longer using as well.

Yes. Careful, clean and thorough would be the ideal way. And, ofc, much more work. My idea is that if the menu items are simply removed the stuff those exemplars used to reference will just be orphaned and can collect electronic dust, but otherwise not cause a problem. That's assuming they won't interfere in ways I don't know about. I believe in programming vernacular it's called the down and dirty method.

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

RTMT is quite a complex beast when you consider the whole, as such messing with it is unsupported and not usually recommended.

Hence, those disclaimers in my post.

[rsc204 21,808]

2 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

My idea is that if the menu items are simply removed the stuff those exemplars used to reference will just be orphaned and can collect electronic dust, but otherwise not cause a problem

Yeah, I can't let sleeping exemplars lie so easily. I have a very tight plugins folder, I even strip custom UIs from most lots to reduce file counts.

But certainly if you just want the menu entries gone, run through all the Buildings Exemplars that include Bus Stops and delete the property "Lot Resource Key". That should prevent any from appearing with the minimum of effort/risk. But that will leave many redundant files knocking around.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

... run through all the Buildings Exemplars that include Bus Stops and delete the property "Lot Resource Key".

Uhm, do you mean any that contain Sub or BusSub? The idea is to leave only the Bus Stops and ditch the rest.

 

And back to @fredinno

You've now seen Cori's bull in a china shop method and rsc's professional perfection preview. Where you go from here is up to you. Just do be careful cause, as mentioned, you can bork things quite easily when mucking around with Reader.

[rsc204 21,808]

48 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Uhm, do you mean any that contain Sub or BusSub?

Well I'm assuming if you only want bus stops, that the BusSub stations would also be removed. But whichever you preferred really.

I give the advice of removing the Lot Resource Key only as a modder, not as a member of RTMT. Officially speaking, it's a package and we don't support customising the files within it in this manner.

[Prophet42 1,501]

Also, before you start messing around with the Reader and/or Plugin files, it is highly recommeded that you make a back up copy of your plugin folder.  That way, if you totally mess something up, you have a way back to 'functionality'.

[fredinno 54]

Thanks, everyone! This was of great help.

[fredinno 54]

I tried this, and I get brown boxes for every RTMT lot. And I do have the suburban bus set lots installed. No idea what the issue is. My RTMT installion folder is given...

[APSMS 1,892]

If combined stations are a concern, but having a completely streamlined plugins folder is not, couldn't you just not use the combined stations?

The RTMT provides all the options by default: bus, bus/subway, and subway, along with the occasional 2-tile bus stop. Just leave the extras in your plugins and go on your merry way never using them. 

[fredinno 54]

28 minutes ago, APSMS said:

If combined stations are a concern, but having a completely streamlined plugins folder is not, couldn't you just not use the combined stations?

The RTMT provides all the options by default: bus, bus/subway, and subway, along with the occasional 2-tile bus stop. Just leave the extras in your plugins and go on your merry way never using them. 

Because it clutters the game plop menus up. The less, the better, really. It's why I don't like modular stuff. It's a pain in the butt to find anything.

30 minutes ago, APSMS said:

If combined stations are a concern, but having a completely streamlined plugins folder is not, couldn't you just not use the combined stations?

The RTMT provides all the options by default: bus, bus/subway, and subway, along with the occasional 2-tile bus stop. Just leave the extras in your plugins and go on your merry way never using them. 

Besides, I already fixed that. Now my problem is getting the bus stops to appear without a big box on it...

[rsc204 21,808]

You probably missed some dependencies. Brown Boxes = Missing dependencies, there is simply no other reason for them.

Bear in mind with RTMT, it's a little more complicated. In the props folder are many props, but in most cases you should only keep one of each type. So for example, if there are 10 items listed with "BusStop", you should remove the nine you are not using. Which dependencies you need will depend on which of the props for the Bus Shelter, Bus Stop Sign, PhoneBox and other such items you keep. In any case, you should refer to the documentation that came with RTMT for further info.

50 minutes ago, fredinno said:

The less, the better, really. It's why I don't like modular stuff. It's a pain in the butt to find anything.

Menu space is a continual issue, though both MMLs and DAMN are solutions to the problem, incidentally both supported by RTMT. But anyone with a large amount of addons is always going to have long lists of stuff.

Modular content is a staple of SC4, since modular lots are vastly more flexible.

RTMT isn't modular though, it simply happens to have many pieces. It's impossible to have a bus stop that works where you select it using one menu item, but it could then be placed onto any road, ave, street, etc. Thus to support as many of the NAM networks as possible, it's necessary to have many lots.

[fredinno 54]

42 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

You probably missed some dependencies. Brown Boxes = Missing dependencies, there is simply no other reason for them.

Bear in mind with RTMT, it's a little more complicated. In the props folder are many props, but in most cases you should only keep one of each type. So for example, if there are 10 items listed with "BusStop", you should remove the nine you are not using. Which dependencies you need will depend on which of the props for the Bus Shelter, Bus Stop Sign, PhoneBox and other such items you keep. In any case, you should refer to the documentation that came with RTMT for further info.

I read the Readme too you knnow.

That's why I got the screenshot, so that you can check if there was anything I missed. I don't think I missed anything, after checking briefly myself.

[rsc204 21,808]

3 hours ago, fredinno said:

I read the Readme too you knnow.

I'm sorry, but you didn't. Either that of you've not fully understood it or made some mistake.

You will only ever see a brown box when a prop exemplar exists that is referencing a model that you do not have installed for use. Take away the prop exemplars, you'll not see a brown box, but the prop will be missing (invisible) instead. So you've got prop exemplars (in the RTMT props folder), but don't have the models, those dependencies you are missing.

As I stated, I can't say you need to download for example SG's BusStops, because which files you need depends on which of the props you decided to use, there are many.

Update:

I'll just add, looking at the screenshot you have used the file "RTMTV3_PropF_BusStop_SG12_Style4_Orange.dat" It occurs to me that perhaps you didn't intend to use the family props? All the PropF props will point to a prop family, these do not work the same as the PropS props. This wouldn't change the dependency situation, since unless the prop family in use links to other exemplars with the same prop family, the game would treat it like an ordinary single prop. It's reasonable to assume if you had the file containing these exemplars, that it would be part of the package with the models. I.e. this is not the cause of your brown boxes.

But you've also kept both styles PropF/PropS for the Subway Stair prop. You should only use one (F) or the other (S), although you won't need either if you only kept lots with bus stops.

It additionally looks like you've completely removed the models folder from your install. You will need at the very least to keep the signs subdirectory from that (vital). And probably the TimeTable_Romen.SC4ModelFile. If those don't solve it, logically your missing dependency must either be the Bus Shelter or the Phone Box. Neither of which (models) are included in the RTMT download directly.