How can I block certain residential Lots from growing anymore?

[Hotwheeler 409]

Is there a Way of blocking some Residential Lots on one City Tile without affecting Lots from the same Set that are already in the City and landmarked?

For Explanation,i have Odd from Sweden`s New York Houses  

in my Game and they grow pretty well...sometimes too well.I landmarked some of them where they fit in but they constantly come up like Weeds everywhere else.

So by removing certain Files from my Plugin Folder,can i block them from growing any further but with keeping the ones already in my City or will those Lots all disappear?

 

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

59 minutes ago, Hotwheeler said:

Is there a Way of blocking some Residential Lots on one City Tile without affecting Lots from the same Set that are already in the City and landmarked?

This'll be a bit of guessing on my part so wait for the gurus to confirm whether this will work.

I believe you would edit the building's .dat file in iLive's Reader and find the OccupantGroups variable. It can have 4 different reps with values from 2000 to 2003 which correspond to the tile set the building belongs to. If you delete that then I believe it will no longer grow. I'm guessing the ones you have already grown and made historical will stay in place.

 

1 hour ago, Hotwheeler said:

So by removing certain Files from my Plugin Folder,can i block them from growing any further but with keeping the ones already in my City or will those Lots all disappear?

No. If you remove the .dat file from your plugins then you will get brown boxes on the already grown ones. However, new ones would not grow as you suspect. So, I would guess you would want to keep one copy of the original .dat and one copy which you have modified. Then if you do later want some to grow you would swap in the original file and remove the modified one. Once you have grown the new buildings and made them historical, you'd switch the files back so the one with the deleted OccupantGroups is in your plugins and the original is out again.

[Manuel-ito 322]

There are a few ways to restrict growable lots, but I believe the most common method involves using the Reader to edit the lot stage to a number greater that 8 (For residential and commercial) or 3 (Industrial).

You can also use either the Reader or PIM-X to allow the building to only grow in certain tilesets, or sometimes even rebalancing the exemplar capacity can solve the "growing like weeds" problem, although that last one may not be save-friendly in terms of simulation if you had the growables already built.

Hope any of this helps

[Edvarz 1,985]

7 hours ago, Manuel-ito said:

sometimes even rebalancing the exemplar capacity can solve the "growing like weeds" problem

This

Sometimes when a building seems to grow everywhere, it is symptomatic of improperly balanced stats like capacity or growth stage, I'd advise you to take a quick look at the building and the lot exemplars, if you can. If you haven't built an entire neigborhood with these, you can bulldoze them, fix them and then re-grow them.

And about blocking the lots. You can also use Reader to change the MinSlopeAllowed setting, and then set it to a high value: this property is the minimum slope required for a lot to grow, so a very high value will ensure you don't get this building unless it is on a steeply sloped road. However, I don't know how this will behave with buildings that have already developed in your cities.

Whatever method of the previously mentioned you use, there is a neat trick you can do with the Reader. As @CorinaMarie mentioned, you can create a 'blocker file' that you can move in and out of your plugins, much like the Maxis blockers.

1. Open the exemplar you want to modify (be it building or lot) in Reader. Don't make any changes to it at this point.
2. Select it, and then right-click, in the options menu that appears click "Add to patch."
3. Open the 'Patch manager' option in the "Tools" tab, in the upper part of the interface.
4. You will see the file you added on a list, you then have to click 'Create DAT'
5. Reader will prompt you to name the new .dat file, and specify the location where it will be put. You have to make sure this new file loads after the original one for this to work. The easiest way to do that is to put the new file in the same folder as the original, and name it something like z_weedybuildingblocker.dat;  the z_ at the start of the name is what ensures that it loads last.
6. Now you have to open the .dat file you just created. If you did the previous steps right, you should see your lot or building exemplar in the list. You can now select it and make whatever changes you want to it, you will be modifying your .dat file, not the original one.
7. Rejoice! you now have a blocker file for your invasive building.

Since I assume you don't want to block this lot forever, this may be a useful solution, and it will also work if you want to create more temporary blockers for other buildings. Also, if you train your Reader-fu you can create a blocker that works for several buildings at once.

I hope this helps, any assistance you need with Reader, we're here to help.

 

  Edited March 7, 2017 by Edvarz  
Didn't realise Corina had already noted the blocker file method... sorry

[APSMS 1,893]

9 hours ago, Hotwheeler said:

So by removing certain Files from my Plugin Folder,can i block them from growing any further but with keeping the ones already in my City or will those Lots all disappear?

 

8 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

No. If you remove the .dat file from your plugins then you will get brown boxes on the already grown ones. However, new ones would not grow as you suspect. So, I would guess you would want to keep one copy of the original .dat and one copy which you have modified.

If you delete the .DAT file, and it contains the LOT file of the plugin in question, you will not get brown boxes, but only because the city will CTD upon loading. Missing buildings cause Brown Boxes, but missing LOTs cause CTDs. Since nothing happens when you install a building without a lot, this problem rarely comes up, but obviously LOTs installed without their building dependencies is far more common, and nothing in the game stops LOTs from growing without proper models.

Alternatively, you could simply open up the files and edit the growth stages of the lots in question to be outside of the range of possibility. A number like 20 or higher would work just fine, even if you have the CAM installed (or install it later). I agree that often weediness is either symptomatic of improperly modded stats, or a lack of competition in the simulator at that particular growth stage (usually the former). As with all games, there is a tendency to maximize efficiency, so buildings that appear even slightly more profitable to the simulator (improper growth stage fit, or optimized LOT size characteristics, etc.) will tend to grow significantly more often, and variety gets edged out in the name of optimization.

A run through the PIM-X may solve your problem, but if you just want to stop them growing a simple edit, like that outlined by Edvarz, would probably be an easy short-term fix.

[His Divine Hand 244]

On March 6, 2017 at 11:25 PM, APSMS said:

 

If you delete the .DAT file, and it contains the LOT file of the plugin in question, you will not get brown boxes, but only because the city will CTD upon loading. Missing buildings cause Brown Boxes, but missing LOTs cause CTDs. 

Perhaps because I play the Mac version their is a difference here, but I have found that for growable lots this is not the case.  Their is no negative effect on game play if you remove a grown lot from your city, and can be used to prevent weed lots from growing again.  But, if the description file is removed, the lot becomes blank.  This is partly because the game save file records lot textures and model placements, and so long as their is a sc4.desc file to reference, it will work.

But!

There is a catch.  Certain data views , or changing to low quality for textures and props, will result in the textures disappearing for good, which makes it less than ideal tool to use.  Plus, while I observed no issues arise from removing lots that had already grown,  there is always the chance something will come up unexpectedly in the future.

[rsc204 21,855]

Yeah, I'm not aware of a CTD issue either, you can remove such files... BUT!!!

You really shouldn't. There can be little worse for your save file that trying to load/save content which no longer exists in your plugins folder. If you can't set up a system whereby you can be sure all of a given lot/building/prop/mod is removed from your region BEFORE removing the files for it, you are better off leaving it be. Otherwise the potential for file corruption is always hanging over you.

Some things in game are dynamic, such as textures and the models themselves. I.e. things which when altered or overridden automatically change.

But many things are not, requiring removal/replacement before such changes occur. This includes props on a lot, lots themselves and other aspects which don't change easily. The reason for this is that the data for them is stored in the save file for the city. So you alter the item in some way, but the save file doesn't check for changes, it just uses the information is has already saved. This is why for example you can't alter the radius/capacity of buildings with sliders without removing them all from your region beforehand.

Since the save file is little more than a memory dump, any object using the latter method should not be removed if the data relating to it remains in the save file. Because in such cases, it's very unlikely that the save file will be updated to reflect the change. Frankly, who knows what potential havoc that could wreak, but it's certainly possible that bad things could occur as a result of doing so. By comparison, when you remove items from the game before saving, the save file is updated to remove or alter the necessary data. So you can be confident that problems should not arise.

That's why when modding or trying out new content, I only ever use test cities/regions, which are disposable. On the off chance I don't, I simply do not save the game. It's the only way to be sure. Of course, it really depends how important to you your save files are. But if you've a huge amount of work that's gone into a region, a bit of extra care is a sensible precaution.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

You could have a collision of mods, like CAM and a non-CAM-patible mod that grows too easily given CAM's reworked stages.

[kschmidt 6,195]

Great, instrument for allowing only low, medium or hight wealth might be setting taxes such way that only there´s room for a certain residential , busines or industrial way ! Low wealth be encouraged with no taxes at all set medium and high at 30% busines small 15%, medium at 30% industry 30&, agiculture should be by plopping as otherwise we would have big farms. This way restrict housing to stage 1 ! Sample, inidan reserve i like to have only mobile housing, grow stage 1 no industries, little business, some agriculture ?