Redevelopment Mod

[spaced5 1]

I recently installed the Less Abandonment modd which raises the higher wealth development requirements so that they are not at the same level as what causes sims to abandon them.  So far I it seems to work, but it still does not solve the problem of redevelopment.

In the game sometimes a medium or high wealth building will depreciate and become occupied by lower wealth level jobs or sims.  Also sometimes you have abandonment issues due to transport or water issues, and if you don't realize it and save the game, then you have to hopefully find those buildings yourself and demolish them.  I believe both of these ideas brings some realism to the game. What is unrealistic is that the game does not ever redevelop the depreciated buildings to a lower wealth building type, or reoccupy or redevelop the abandoned buildings for transport or water issues if the issues have been resolved and there is a demand for that building type.

Does anyone know of a modd that provides a mechanism for the game to redevelop to lower wealth buildings, or reoccupy or redevelop abandoned buildings?   If such a modd does not exist, then would it be possible for someone to write a modd that would give a reoccupied at a lower wealth level or abandoned building a 5% chance each month to redevelop to a lower wealth occupancy or for abandoned buildings to reoccupy provided desirability requirements are met and there is a demand for that building type? I believe such a modd would bring greater realism to the game.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

I did a wee bit of research over at SC4Devotion's Wiki on the Exemplar properties page. Then scroll down to the Building Development Simulator. Of potential interest in your quest are:

• 0x47e2c400 - Lot Developer Stay New Time
  • Number of days before a building can distress
• 0x47e2c401 - Lot Developer Occupancy Thresholds
  • When to abandon, distress, and renew. Values 0-1
• 0x47e2c501 - Tract Developer Reoccupy Thresholds
  • Start and Stop percentage of desired capacity that can be fulfilled by abandoned buildings
• 0x47e2c502 - Tract Developer Redevelop Size Threshold
  • What percentage of the existing capacity must be demanded before we redevelop

And of interest to me personally, but prolly not helpful for what you want:

• 0x47e2c540 - Tract Developer Kick Out Lower Wealth
  • If true, higher wealth buildings can replace non-empty lower wealth buildings

Since your questions intrigue me, I'd like to see what I could do with these. However, when I open the Building Development Exemplar in SimCity_1.dat those variables are not in there. So far I've only extracted single exemplars and modified existing stuff with some other value(s) and then saved them as my own little mod. In this case it appears one would have to add these variables. I'm certain that's possible (and prolly pretty easy), but I haven't tried something like this yet.

Let's wait for guidance from the gurus and see what they have to say.

[spaced5 1]

CorinaMarie,

Thanks for your response.  I have used the ILiveReaders app to make changes to an existing structure before, but on a modest scale like changing monthly cost or plop cost up or down if the existing cost seemed unrealistic.  One time I needed to create thumbnail icons for a portion of a building set that had not been put in, and that was only because it messed up all the menus.

It would be interesting to see if someone with more knowledge of the game's hard wiring may be able tell us if what I am looking for is even possible.  I suspect that the abandonment preoccupancy and the redevelopment to a lower wealth level may need to be handled by two different modds.  In any case if you do figure out anything I would look forward to hearing about it.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

11 hours ago, spaced5 said:

What is unrealistic is that the game does not ever redevelop the depreciated buildings to a lower wealth building type, or reoccupy or redevelop the abandoned buildings for transport or water issues if the issues have been resolved and there is a demand for that building type.

^ This kept bouncing around in my mind.

For the first part (redevelop the depreciated buildings to a lower wealth building type) I would suggest it not doing so is quite realistic inasmuch as Big-O-Expensive-Building, Inc. builds a high wealth apartment building. They lease out a bunch of the units for more Simoleons per square foot than the riff-raff low wealth Sims can afford. All is well until something causes the building to become less desirable and they all move out. Big-O sells the building to Nice-But-Cheap-Holdings, LLC and they fill it up with low wealth Sims. As we see in the game, those occupants tend to trash the building and it becomes grungy looking and even has a higher capacity now. This all seems consistent with the real world. Whyever would any developer want to buy the building, demolish it, and then rebuild a lower wealth one on the same parcel? The return on investment would take forever (and 9 days) to just break even. Wouldn't the new owner be happy just collecting rent and not care about the lack of full upkeep?

For the second part (reoccupy or redevelop) are you certain it will never happen? I've had high wealth residential towers get taken over by low wealth just because of the desirability issue and then later pop back to high wealth once I improved the area.

Additionally, in my game yesterday I had placed a water tower at a cross road in my farm region and the low density commercial developed into high wealth.  This was cause the connected city created demand for them.  But they promptly abandoned since none of my local Sims could even figure out how to open the doors (due to no education) so I just bulldozed the water tower and within a couple minutes (at cheetah speed) they did redevelop back into low wealth.

[rsc204 21,808]

The game has a safeguard of sorts in play here, so a typical R$$$ building can adjust to both R$$ or R$ sims if necessary. When that happens, the number of occupants greatly increases too. Much the same happens with Commercial buildings too. The idea being, if a building does house lower-wealth sims/jobs, that boost in the numbers will provide a buffer that help stop imbalances upsetting your entire city. This is part of the properties of the buildings exemplars, you can remove the properties that allow higher wealth levels to become satisfied by lower wealths. But you'd not only need to adjust every Maxis building, but all your custom content too.

There are mods that totally prevent the need for water in your cities, so I'm guessing that can be changed also.

The mod you propose is IMO a great idea, but I'm not entirely sure myself if this is something that should be altered. You always have to think about the unintended side-effects of such radical changes too.

As far as I know, abandoned buildings can re-develop. But having abandoned buildings around negatively affects the desirability of the area. So it becomes easiest sometimes to simply demolish them altogether. I can't think of a way to automate that process however.

[twalsh102 1,601]

CorinaMarie,

Your experience intrigued me, so I went looking.  I did find all the properties you mentioned in the Building Development Simulator exemplar (IID E8DA7677).  One of the problems I always run into looking at the property list is that while it provides a description for a particular property, it doesn't "explain" what that property does, or what the numbers really mean.  I also suspect that while all those properties exist, the ability of the game to actually make meaningful use of a particular property may not have been implemented.  For example, it is a commonly held belief that multi-use buildings (i.e. a building that can be occupied by more than one developer type - CO and CS for  instance) are not possible.  However there is a property called "Allow Joint Occupancy"  and described as "If true, different types can occupy the building simultaneously" that would lead one to think otherwise.  I have never seen this property used on any building.  One has to ask the question (or questions):  Has someone tried this and it didn't work?  Or has no one actually tried it?  Or didn't anyone know it existed?  Things that make you go HMM!

spaced5:

Much of what is hard-coded in the game can only be guessed at as we don't have the source code. 

As far as someone creating a mod as you suggest, understand that the vast majority of existing mods exist because someone chose to change their own game-play experience, were successful, and decided to release their work to the community at large.  Sometimes, there is someone unique like Corina that just gets intrigued by a question, and ends up going outside the box trying something new that no one else has tried before.  The problem is that trying to tweak the numbers (which is in reality all a mod usually does) can cause undesirable effects in other areas.

These things being said, another thing that one must remember/understand is that SC4 is as much a city-management game, as it is a city building game.  As such, you need to make sure you have an understanding of what causes things such as downgrading and abandonment.  The mod you're asking for would affect symptoms, and not the underlying problem causing the symptoms.

Abandonment:  This is for the most part caused by "environmental" factors (lack of water, power, jobs, road access).  For water, power and jobs, you have 6 game months to resolve the problem before a particular lot abandons.  In the case of road access, you only have three.  How much time you have to recognize and deal with a problem is greatly affected by how fast you are running the game.  At Cheetah speed, 6 game-months speed by in about 10 seconds.  At Turtle speed, you have about 6 minutes.  If you can determine the cause of the problem and deal with it in sufficient time, you won't have any abandonment.  Another possible cause of abandonment is high negative demand for any particular developer type (i.e. an overabundance of buildings for a particular developer type and wealth level).   The simulator does supposedly try to reoccupy abandoned buildings.  But if I understand correctly, it will only reoccupy if demand exceeds the maximum occupancy level of that building.  Try is obviously the operative word here.

Downgrading:  This is generally caused by a change in desirability for a particular lot.  There are any number of things that can cause a decline in desirability.  It's generally up to you to figure out which factor(s) is/are causing that decline and figure out the appropriate measures to reverse it.  There are twelve different developer types in game, and each is impacted slightly differently by the different desirability factors (fourteen or so in total - not all affect every developer type).

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

On 12/22/2016 at 3:20 PM, twalsh102 said:

I did find all the properties you mentioned in the Building Development Simulator exemplar (IID E8DA7677).

Hmm. Apparently I'm looking in the wrong place. Mine has a minimal set of variables and the IID is different than yours:

So, would you kindly point me to the right place to look?

[rsc204 21,808]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

Hmm. Apparently I'm looking in the wrong place. Mine has a minimal set of variables and the IID is different than yours:

Where are you reading the IID from? To see that you'd need to right click the heading "Building Development" in the Analyser and select Synchronise with File. This will put the selected entry on display in the main Reader window, then you can find the TGI of the actual exemplar. The one you show in the screenshot has the IID E8DA7677.

[spaced5 1]

I agree that the game is a city management game in addition to a city building game. From my experience playing the game over the years is that when there is a demand for high wealth development and all the zoned land is developed with medium and low wealth development, the game will kick out some of lower wealth and redevelop.  The problem is that it tends to do too much at once and then you have an over abundance of high wealth and then degraded properties where the lower wealth sims reoccupy.

Looking at the real world, it is true cities and towns will go through cycles of decay and revitalization.  It is also true that developer will often overbuild and cause a similar issue found in the game.  The difference is that in the real world there is the redevelopment process of once high wealth areas redeveloping into lower wealth areas.  This redevelopment does not always happen naturally and/or quickly.  It seems to happen over a long period perhaps 20 to 50 years.  The challenges of blight in the real world are far more complex and difficult to resolve than in the game.  If there are incentives and grants a developer can apply for, then that can increase the chances a decayed building will be torn down and redeveloped.

My initial thoughts were a 5% chance each month for such a redevelopment process, but taking into consideration the discussion we have had on this topic, I am thinking about a 5% chance over a 20 year period would be more realistic or approximately a .2% a month.  This discussion also made me think about incentives developers may be provided to redevelop a decayed property.  This could be accomplished with an expensive ordinance (perhaps 3000 simolians a month) that a mayor could enact for short periods of time that would increase that likely-hood a developer would redevelop a particular property.  Perhaps a fifteen to twenty percent chance over a 20 year period, or about 6 to 8% chance a month.

The issue of the abandoned buildings that never reoccupy due to power or water in my experience become permanent if you missed set to reoccupy period.  This leaves you no choice but to bulldoze these buildings.  This situation becomes very difficult to deal with in large city tiles, because it is easy to miss.  This is especially true if the city contains many taller buildings that can often hide such buildings.

I will continue to try to figure out how such modds could be created.  CorinaMarie did mention in her original reply that she saw an exemplar line of Tract Developer Kick Out Lower Wealth, and this she indicated could be true or false.  This now makes me wonder if my redevelopment modd suggestion may not be possible in the game.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

@spaced5 You can call me Cori if you like. It's what I go by IRL.

 

On 12/22/2016 at 5:37 PM, rsc204 said:

Where are you reading the IID from?

The wrong place. I was looking at the Name Value of 0x00000020 on the line that has the Building Development name in the right side pane.

 

On 12/22/2016 at 5:37 PM, rsc204 said:

The one you show in the screenshot has the IID E8DA7677.

Yeah, I see it now as the third one on the lower right.

 

On 12/22/2016 at 5:37 PM, rsc204 said:

To see that you'd need to right click the heading "Building Development" in the Analyser and select Synchronise with File. This will put the selected entry on display in the main Reader window, then you can find the TGI of the actual exemplar.

 

Ok. Let's start with what I have done successfully when I modded the cost of the Open Grass Area. I went thru the steps to get the list in Tree View in the Analyser and I did right click and say Sync. with file ?

Then I closed analyzer, right clicked on the exemplar in the 2nd pane, selected copy, then clicked Blank.dat file, pasted it, tweaked the Budget Item: Cost to be minus one in hex, then did a save as. That worked just fine.

 

However, when I try the same thing with the Building Development:

I still only get the short list with 7 variables and none of the extras I'm supposed to see.

 

So then I wondered if you meant to do that over in the right side pane:

 

But that just upsets Reader:

 

So, I'm still confuzzled as to where those extra variables are to be found and how I can extract them so I can tweak and test.

 

[twalsh102 1,601]

Cori,

Hmm, which version of Reader are you using?  It looks totally different from the version I'm using (1.5.4).  I didn't use the Exemplar Analyzer at all.  I used DataNode first to determine the IID of the Building Development Simulator Exemplar (I can give you the exact steps I used if you don't use DataNode a lot).  You can also read all the properties and their values in DataNode. 

Once I had the IID, I just opened Reader to the main window, sorted the list of objects by IID, and scrolled down to the one I was looking for (see image below).

spaced5,

So programmatically, what you would like the game to do is something along the lines of:

     If   high-wealth building downgrades and is reoccupied by lower wealth occupants

          then   bulldoze existing building

      Go to  redevelop lot using a lower wealth building

Since the development process itself  (the process the game uses to determine which particular tract of land gets (re)developed and which particular building gets built there during a given development cycle) is hard-coded (I think), there is nothing that anyone is going to be able to do with exemplars that would create the behavior you are looking for.

As far as the abandonment issue, first to use your example:  "This situation becomes very difficult to deal with in large city tiles, because it is easy to miss.  This is especially true if the city contains many taller buildings that can often hide such buildings."  Not to be facetious, but rather to play devil's advocate:  If a building is hidden, how can one know what is happening with it? 

As far as what might be done to affect the behavior you're describing, other than tweaking the numbers in the above exemplar, I'm not sure what else could be done.  Looking through the list of available properties, I don't see any properties other than those Cori points out, that might  have any impact on abandonment.  The hard part isn't going to be creating the mod (creating a new dat file containing a "replacement" exemplar with tweaked numbers would take less than 5 minutes).  The hard part will be testing to verify what the mod actually does.  In this case, one would need a well developed city that one is willing to sacrifice as a test city.  In order to thoroughly test, one would also have to grow a city from scratch to determine what if any effects the mod has on early city development.  Further complicating matters, I know of at least one major mod (CAM 2.1.0) that overrides this particular exemplar.  So one would have to test both with and without CAM, possibly create both CAMpatible and non-CAMpatible versions of the mod, or declare the mod is not compatible with CAM.  Even worse, CAM has 6 different install types (essentially 6 play styles) that might have slightly different versions of the above exemplar (the resultant exemplar for the install I chose shows no appreciable difference from SimCity_1.dat; I can't speak for the other install options).  And then re-do all of the above for each different tweak that is tried.  Are there other currently available mods that might also tweak this exemplar??  I don't know.  In my Plugins folder, CAM is the only thing that overrides this exemplar as it exists in SimCity_1.dat

My intention is not to throw a wet blanket on this issue.  But a question that now needs to be asked is:  Knowing what you know now about what the possibilities are for any tweaks that might affect this issue, would the potential cost in time and effort be worth the intended outcome, if you were to attempt such a mod (even if only to have it work with your particular game environment)?

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

On 12/22/2016 at 11:58 PM, twalsh102 said:

(I can give you the exact steps I used if you don't use DataNode a lot)

I appreciate that, but it's one of the programs I downloaded but haven't even unpacked yet. It's on my agenda with about a zillion other things.

On 12/22/2016 at 11:58 PM, twalsh102 said:

Hmm, which version of Reader are you using?  It looks totally different from the version I'm using (1.5.4).

0.93. I was told later versions corrupt the dat file(s) when saving and it was best to stick with the old one. I did find the exemplar directly in SC1.dat and it looks the same as in the Analyzer Tree:

 

So, at this point I'm going to guess it's one of the more complicated exemplars that is nested or something and 0.93 just doesn't see all of it. I'll have to track down the later version of Reader if I'm going to try anything with this.

On 12/22/2016 at 11:58 PM, twalsh102 said:

Not to be facetious, but rather to play devil's advocate:  If a building is hidden, how can one know what is happening with it? 

Well, I believe that is the main point. The building is all sad and dingy cause no one lives (or works) there and it is affecting the game but goes unnoticed. The ideal mod (or patch) would do something to remedy that. I'm starting to get some taller buildings in my game and, for example, if I need to adjust funding for a tiny, short building I have to turn the world around this or that way to get to it.

On 12/22/2016 at 11:58 PM, twalsh102 said:

As far as what might be done to affect the behavior you're describing, other than tweaking the numbers in the above exemplar, I'm not sure what else could be done.

From my limited knowledge, I'm guessing the most I might be able to do would be to delay the abandonment using one or both of the first two variables I mentioned to allow more time to notice the problem. Or, getting a bit silly (or maybe not), would there be a way to combine part of @Cyclone Boom's Timed Fireworks mod to be triggered from a building that is thinking about going bad? Like have it use just red ones like flares to say: Hey! Pay attention to me. I need help.

So, in conclusion for me, I can see I need to find that later version of Reader (and I will want that at some point). However, since this went from a few minutes project to a longer one and no real chance of doing what @spaced5 really wants, I'll just hang out to see what other knowledge I can gain if there are more replies. Otherwise, I'm going to toss it on a back burner for someday maybe later.

[twalsh102 1,601]

Cori,

From my experience with Reader 1.5.4, yes, there are occasions where it will corrupt some subfiles (usually one or more of the png files, and sometimes one or more of the LTEXT files; occasionally an XML subfile or one of the exemplars; never seen it corrupt the entire file) during a save.  However, I think I've narrowed down the cause to only certain circumstances:   I used to see corruption a lot.  It turns out that I was in the habit of saving the file after every little change (i.e. make a change in the lot exemplar, save the file; make a change in the building exemplar, save the file; make a change in one of the LTEXTs, save the file).  Since I've changed to just saving the file once after making all the desired changes to subfiles, I don't experience corruption.  Or,  if I do "accidently" save the file before I'm done making changes, if I close the file, and then reopen it before making further changes, this also prevents any corruption.  So, saving the file multiple times while still open invariably leads to corruption in my experience.

I downloaded and took a look at the only two mods I could find that deal with abandonment and dilapidation globally:  the Less Abandonment mod by Bones1 and the Abandonment Dilapidation Modd 1.2 by RalphaelNinja.  They took two completely different approaches to the issue of abandonment and dilapidation:

Abandonment Dilapidation Modd 1.2:  RalphaelNinja took a two pronged approach.  First, he modified the Lot Developer Stay New Time property in the Building Development Simulator exemplar to periods from 1 year to 180 years.  Second, he modified the Capacity Satisfied property for all the Maxis medium- and high-wealth R, CO, and CS building exemplars to include only occupants with the same wealth level as the building.  The end result is he neither prevented downgrading of buildings, nor abandonment.  He really only hid the visual aspects of both.  Changing the Capacity Satisfied properties prevented buildings from be re-occupied by lower wealth occupants.  In effect, once conditions changed such that a building needed to downgrade to a lower wealth level, instead of lower wealth occupants moving in, the building abandoned.  Note:  This mod is not compatible with CAM as both modify the same exemplars.

Less Abandonment:  The approach taken by Bones1 was to modify the Desirability Threshold Growth property in the Developer exemplars for the various medium- and high-wealth residential and commercial developer types along with I-HT.  He changed the value so that the threshold for growth is much higher than the threshold for decline, whereas previously both thresholds were the same.  In effect he prevented buildings from developing when desirability was borderline (previously with the thresholds the same, a newly developed building could start to dilapidate with only a minor negative change in desirability).  NOTE:  While this mod is not compatible with CAM, the changes instituted by Bones1 have been included in the latest version of CAM.

Like I said, creating the mod isn't the hard part.  Testing is.  Of course, one could always create a mod, throw it out on the exchange, and let everybody that downloads it test it for you.  It's not like that hasn't been done before.  Another thought along those lines though:  ping Cyclone Boom to see what he thinks of the idea of conducting a Beta Test for something like this.  Maybe throwing it on the exchange clearly labeled as a Beta, cautioning downloaders (maybe multiple times) to save any cities before trying the mod, and asking for feedback as to whether or not there is any detectable change. 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

A third approach would be for abandoned buildings to mysteriously burn down (if a mod can even cause that to happen). I'd call it the arson mod, and the story would be that the building owner, pushed to bankruptcy by his failed investment, torches his building to collect on the insurance. Perhaps police and crime levels could help determine whether a developer turns to arson.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

twalsh,

Great info there. I've bookmarked this for when I'm ready to delve into it such things. If I can tear myself away from playing long enough, I do intend to explore the various other tools like DataNode and the latest version of Reader. Question about the file corruption: Does it give an error so you immediately know there is a problem or is it only later when you try to use the newly altered mod in your game? If the former, then that'd be no big deal cause I could immediately re-do whatever I was working on and take your advice of skipping little incremental saves. However, if it's the latter then I'm concerned about unknown random things occurring in the game or just not working as intended for hidden reasons.

As for a mod I might've created if this was going to be relatively easy, it would have been specifically for @spaced5 with the caveat to thoroughly test in a sandbox.

 

4 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

A third approach would be for abandoned buildings to mysteriously burn down (if a mod can even cause that to happen).

That's an interesting approach. How could it work tho if one has full fire coverage to prevent fires from even starting? Would this override that? And could it be tied specifically to a building that was getting ready to abandon?

[twalsh102 1,601]

Cori,
There is no error  thrown.  You only find out later.  If an LTEXT or xml subfile is corrupted, you probably won't notice any difference.  Since PNG subfiles are really only important for plopped lots (one of the two normally found, determines what shows in the menu), you may only notice when you browse the menu that particular lot is found in.  It will show up as a blank spot on the menu, and it could freeze the game.  If an exemplar gets corrupted, I'm guessing a lot would depend on the type of exemplar, and whether it is ploppable or growable.  I've gotten into a couple of habits:  once I've finished testing  and alterations of any new downloads, and before movingthe lot to its final resting place in the Plugins folder, I reopen the file and double check that LTEXTs haven't turned into Greek, that the PNG files aren't ether blank or turned into Japanese, and that any exemplars haven't had all their properties wiped out.  The other thing I do on a semi regular basis, is just start scrolling down the menus where recent additions should show up and verify that nothing has gone awry.

Jeff (if I may call you that),

Interesting thought, but a more politically correct name would be the "Drastic Urban Renewal" mod!

So, programmatically, we would be looking at something like:

     If Crime Lot Condition Filter property = 0x03 (abandoned) (Note:  This property does exist in the Arson Crime exemplar.)
          and
     If Time since abandonment >= (pick some time period)  (Note:  No such property exists.  If this is even tracked by the game, any value is hard-coded.)
         Then, commit Arson Crime    (Note:  Since we don't have the source code, we have no way of directly causing any action to occur.)

I looked at this from the Crime standpoint.  We know that the Arson Crime only occurs on abandoned lots from the Crime Lot Condition Filter property mentioned above.  We know from the Crime Relative Occurrence in the Arson Crime exemplar that without any modifiers, Arson as a crime will occur about 1.5% of the time when the conditions are ripe for a crime to actually occur.  We could tweak the Crime Relative Occurrence property to increase the chances of Arson occurring as a crime.  Since Arson will only occur on abandoned lots, changing this value shouldn't affect any other aspect of the game.  Of course the chances of any crime occurring on a particular lot is also affected by such things as Police coverage, local education level (which also affects overall wealth levels), and any ordinances and/or mods that are designed to have an affect on crime

Looking at it strictly from a Fire standpoint, we know the following:
1.  The Flammability property in building and prop exemplars has a maximum value of 255.
2.  From the Flammability Multiplier Abandonment property in the Flammability Simulator exemplar (value = 1.5), we know that abandoned buildings have their flammability increased by 50%.
3.  From the Percent FireStart vs. Flammability property in the Flame Simulator exemplar, we know that any Flammability property value >= 160 has only a 50% chance of actually starting a fire.

We could safely tweak the Flammability Multiplier Abandonment property (as this would only affect abandoned lots), but everything is based on the Flammability value given to a particular building.  I did a random sampling of buildings in my Plugins folder and found values ranging from 0 - 50.  Of course 0 multiplied by any number is still going to be 0.  A small value multiplied by another small value is till going to result in a small value.  Any Flammability value below 75 has a 10% (or less) chance of having a fire started.  So no 100% chance of such a mod causing a fire to occur.

The Percent FireStart vs. Flammability property could have additional values added above 160 that increase the chances of a fire starting.  But since this would have a global affect on all lots, it could cause unwanted effects elsewhere in the game (probably not a good idea).  Of course the chances of any fire occurring on a particular lot is also affected by such things as Fire coverage, and any ordinances and/or mods that are designed to have an affect on Fires.

Of course there ARE the god-mode disasters!  Nothing like a massive lightning bolt from the blue, or a meteor plunging in from directly overhead at supersonic speeds to not only get rid of some unsightly buildings, but to also really liven up what might otherwise be a boring game-play session!

This is starting to get like solving puzzles.

Cheers,

Tim

[spaced5 1]

This has been a great topic, because I am getting all sorts of ideas for possibilities and if the possibilities would be feasible to pursue. The idea of having abandoned buildings have a much increased chance of burning is an interesting possibility.  I have not had any time to play the game or explore other mods, as I have been busier with holiday preparations than I expected.  I have been finding time to read the discussion here and ponder all the ideas.

When I was looking to choose a modd to decrease abandonment and distress, I did look at the Abandonment Dilapidation modd, but instead went with the Less Abandonment modd as it seemed to adjust functionality to be more realistic, instead of reducing necessary game management.

If I try to develop a mod, all the testing aspects I read here will be very helpful.

[NCGAIO 562]

On 22/12/2016 at 8:41 PM, spaced5 said:

Looking at the real world, .....

Well  to be simple ....forget it

As simulation the SC4 is only a complex calculation worksheet that tries only some similarity with the real world but can not be treated as I.A.

Although some variables, such as those discussed above, can be adjusted thanks to the work of G.O.  this is not going to change behaviors that now some persons maybe consider as erratic but which were not considered of this way when of the development.

I tried to explain a little more about this in the topic - Query tool information on the industrial buildings  - but the reaction  was not very positive and the subject died, maybe due to the fact that everyone prefers to think that the Sims are actually powered by some intelligence implemented in the simulation.

Alias is the same logic brought to SC13 where producers said that each Sim would have an individualized life and at the end we discover that it was not exactly that way.
 
However, there is an important information missing in this topic about the existence of an occupancy limit per Tract (4 x 4 tiles - unit considered in the worksheet for variation in occupancy desirability) for all RCI wealth levels.

This limit is diminished by each tile that does not represent RCI occupancy ( a Lot ) in space of the Tract and sometimes this fake simulation of reality  occurs in strange calculations on the overflow of these capacities as well as on the extent of negative and positive influences over the same Tract

That is why the RCIs developed by plugins that bring inadequate values in their properties are so damaging to the said simulation and why it is recommended to use Pim-x that does the batch with the automatic calculation by the volume ( Bounding Box ).

Anyway, this was supposed to be a game ... although the desire of some to seem more real made it too complicated for most players

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

Tim,

My adventures included searching for iLive Reader 1.5.4 via Google. The linky I found got me v1.4 from SourceForge. Then I clicked a linky there for the latest version and got v1.4 again. I went ahead and installed that one and it, too, truncates the variables in the Building Development thinger. So, after more searching I finally found this post at Devotion which had the linky I really wanted. After mistakenly downloading the source code (cause that one stands out more prominently) I then noticed the itty-bitty linky and got the Release Version. Whew!

So, now I see this:

 

And in the SimCity_1.dat it now shows all the variables:

 

And then I extracted that exemplar and opened it:

 

So, @spaced5 we are back in business if you want to do some tests. Let me know which variables you'd like altered now that I can make a mod for you. Or, ofc, you can do it yourself since you've used Reader before. Just be sure to have the 1.5.4 version. If I do it, this would be totally untested by me and up to you to determine the viability of it and whether or not it causes goofy things to happen or makes your entire computer explode.

Here's the ranges of the variables under consideration:

 

[NCGAIO 562]

Despite the evident willingness to help and always good to inform that this research follows the same path of several moders at the beginning that draw their  conclusions by the interpretation of the auxiliary text for the properties.

Unfortunately not always the text is well interpreted as many of the properties were not even implemented for inclusion in the calculations although in this specific case this has already been discussed here in the past

 -Apparently anomalous exemplar reveals new type

As a good hunter of the old posts  might already have knowledge of it but it seems that the search stex no longer finds the.post of J_McSim

As I said before, the dilapidation also suffers from a set of unpredictable factors ranging from the form of allotment of the area, division of lots by the game, placement and road access to plop lots, amount of occupancy defined, etc ... then no solution and total And there will always be the possibility of a certain lot to be a distressed 1 or 2 although there seems to be no reason for this.

The practical placement of the factors that could cause such influences would be long, and surely no one would want to play in a way that would have to observe all these nuances unless he was an extremely perfectionist.

In order to avoid all these "rediscovery of the wheel" it would be good for those with time available to return to the idea of a compendium of all this information already available although I think that currently the interest in the game no longer compensates the effort but would certainly avoid many repetitions of research.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

@NCGAIO The first post there shows:

Quote

Hi guys,

  Made an interesting discovery on the weekend

And that's it in that post, yet the replies show extreme excitement. I'm guessing there was an attached image or file which has since gone missing. I briefly looked over the other replies and it does appear this particular Building Development exemplar is the topic there. I'm guessing that was before iLive Reader could display it like it does now.

4 hours ago, NCGAIO said:

In order to avoid all these "rediscovery of the wheel" it would be good for those with time available to return to the idea of a compendium of all this information already available although I think that currently the interest in the game no longer compensates the effort but would certainly avoid many repetitions of research.

^ This is a wonderful idea.

I'm guessing there aren't enough peeps still around who could accomplish this who have the time or dedication it would take.  I'm so new to the whole thing I get confuzzled by it all fairly quickly. I'd love to see everything known about the game consolidated into one place. And that it could have everything from the simple how to start and play the game up to the most technical revelations found over the years. Then peeps could read the parts which match their own interests.

[Tarkus 6,932]

On 12/24/2016 at 6:44 PM, CorinaMarie said:

I'm so new to the whole thing I get confuzzled by it all fairly quickly. I'd love to see everything known about the game consolidated into one place. And that it could have everything from the simple how to start and play the game up to the most technical revelations found over the years. Then peeps could read the parts which match their own interests.

That was kind of the intent with the SC4 Encyclopaedia, AKA the SC4 Devotion Wiki.  It hit a big reef when it was made publicly accessible before proper access controls could be initiated.  There's no way to register for it through the Wiki itself, due to it going to lockdown after troll issues just after it opened, though with my Admin powers over there, I can manually create accounts for anyone who has knowledge and wants to contribute.  There's only about 2-3 of us who edit it at all anymore, and only intermittently, but there's a fair bit there (heck, I routinely reference it in my NAM work), and with some TLC, it could become something more.

-Tarkus

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

27 minutes ago, Tarkus said:

there's a fair bit there

Indeed there is. I've found lots of useful stuff there.

 

27 minutes ago, Tarkus said:

I can manually create accounts for anyone who has knowledge and wants to contribute.

If you would want to set up a login for me for the Wiki, I might be able to help. Right now the only thing I would add is about the Water Min/Water Max in Region.ini. Last time I looked, it still showed their function as unknown. Beyond that I could just let peeps know I can edit it and they could submit things for me to do. I don't have enough knowledge myself to contribute anything useful.

Edit: Oh, and I could add what the hex values in the filter list do in the Zones Data View if that's not in there.

[MeMyself&I 379]

4 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I don't have enough knowledge myself to contribute anything useful.

Sure you do!   And you definitely have the skills and tenacity for research and analysis to give it the love it needs - or, at least a hug now and then 

 

[Tarkus 6,932]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

If you would want to set up a login for me for the Wiki, I might be able to help.

Done!   I've sent the details to you via PM as of a few seconds ago.

-Tarkus

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

On 12/26/2016 at 10:45 PM, Tarkus said:

I've sent the details to you via PM as of a few seconds ago.

Since they say a picture is worth a 1000 words, here's my lengthy reply:

And yes, I changed the password from the temporary one you assigned. Please don't expect anything major or right away as I want to get familiar with it before I go making any changes or additions.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 12/23/2016 at 7:29 AM, twalsh102 said:

From the Flammability Multiplier Abandonment property in the Flammability Simulator exemplar (value = 1.5), we know that abandoned buildings have their flammability increased by 50%.

Sweet! Someone at Maxis was thinking the same way I was (which is sort of twisted). If we wanted less urban blight, then ramping up that multiplier to maybe 4.0 would give arsonists some accelerant to work with.