Lot - Resources / Help

[nickvon 161]

18 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Btw, I moved your thread to this forum since it's where said experts hang out.

Oh excellent!  I only briefly thought about forum placement.  But totally forgot about this forum, because I never go there.  Thanks for your answers!  It gives me much hope for the future of my SC4 gaming.

[Tyberius06 12,261]

Hi!

I have no idea of the GMAX related question. 

About the textures. I used a default maxis base texture and SM2 NSB rail tracks overlay combo on those lots. PEG however created a custom base texture with the rail tracks on the concrete. As I see, you wanted to place back the PEG version (which is base texture). In Lot editor first remove/delete all those overlay and the underlaying base textures which you want to replace. Then place your choosen base textures with the rail tracks. Among the PEG props or it's maybe in the Tammor Essentials, there should be timed forklift props. 

About the custom UI. You need to have additional Ltext properties attached with the UI property to make the custom texts (like the "wind industry" one) appearing. You can copy the custom Ltext out from files which using custom UI (like the original PEG Seaports), but you need to give them new unique Instance ID. After that in Reader in the UI editor you need to give the same Group and Instance for your additional text line as the Ltext property has. And of course the Ltext property needs to have the same text line, as in your IGZWin Text. See the following image:

I used the newer Readers for this, which is a bit different. 

But as I linked in the other thread, follow the steps of this tutorial:

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=79

- Tyberius

[mattb325 28,891]

Nice props!

If you made these props using the Maxis Plugin Manager, they are likely set to 'Is ground model = false' which doesn't cast shadows on the ground. The Maxis PIM is fine, but very basic....I would recommend using the PIM-X for custom content creation as it will set that value to true as a default.....

So for your existing props, in the reader, if the property isn't already there, you need to add the property 0x8A5E5DB8 and set the value to 0x01. If the property is already there, over-write the existing value of 0x00 to 0x01. That should make your props start casting shadows.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,099]

Burning trash cans on the beach by night. SERIOUSLY??

I want that abomination out of my game. 

Could you guys lend me a hand and tell me what should I modify to get rid of this "feature"? After all, this is SimCity. Not a goddamn GTA...

[Kloudkicker 4,565]

8 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Burning trash cans on the beach by night. SERIOUSLY??

I want that abomination out of my game. 

Could you guys lend me a hand and tell me what should I modify to get rid of this "feature"? After all, this is SimCity. Not a goddamn GTA...

That's funny. Maxis had a sense of humour I guess. This is an option I went, and not use those very much. Try these, " They're Great" as Tony the Tiger would say...

 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,099]

Excellent! Looks very promising! Thank you!

[TheMurderousCricket 5,099]

Eh, damn... Looks like my enthusiasm has been a little premature.

PEG's set is very nice but it only contains boardwalk beaches and every section of it still has bonfires on it.  It would be okay to see them popping up the beach occasionally. But not on every inch of the coast.

The worse problem yet is that I keep seeing people... swimming in the sand. 

All in all, not much change, except for the nice transparency this file offers.

I'd love to just edit the bonfires and sand-bathers out of the PEG's beach sets. I don't really know how to do it though... 

[rsc204 21,866]

On 08/01/2021 at 11:28 AM, TheMurderousCricket said:

The worse problem yet is that I keep seeing people... swimming in the sand. 

With a ridiculous amount of fussing, it is possible to have those swimming in actual sea.

On 08/01/2021 at 11:28 AM, TheMurderousCricket said:

I'd love to just edit the bonfires and sand-bathers out of the PEG's beach sets. I don't really know how to do it though... 

Have you never used the Lot Editor? Actually if you haven't, don't start there, instead download PIM-X, which is a much more flexible tool. From there, you simply open the relevant lots, where an interface to modify them appears. You can alter the textures and props used by lots, to your hearts content pretty easily and without fear of breaking anything.

[RobertLM78 1,598]

On 1/7/2021 at 1:11 PM, Kloudkicker said:

That's funny. Maxis had a sense of humour I guess. This is an option I went, and not use those very much. Try these, " They're Great" as Tony the Tiger would say...

 

This is not to cause a flamewar over the subject, but i seem to remember PEG's BDK lots had been tied to prop pox

[RobertLM78 1,598]

On 1/8/2021 at 3:28 AM, TheMurderousCricket said:

Eh, damn... Looks like my enthusiasm has been a little premature.

PEG's set is very nice but it only contains boardwalk beaches and every section of it still has bonfires on it.  It would be okay to see them popping up the beach occasionally. But not on every inch of the coast.

The worse problem yet is that I keep seeing people... swimming in the sand. 

All in all, not much change, except for the nice transparency this file offers.

I'd love to just edit the bonfires and sand-bathers out of the PEG's beach sets. I don't really know how to do it though... 

Try bulldozing the (vanilla) beaches and replacing them to see if that takes care of the trashcans - I seem to remember those props were randomized as lots are placed

[Kloudkicker 4,565]

3 minutes ago, RobertLM78 said:

This is not to cause a flamewar over the subject, but i seem to remember PEG's BDK lots had been tied to prop pox

From what I remember reading, the problem was posable with one file only. I have not had one issue with it and maybe fixed with the SC4Fix.

[RobertLM78 1,598]

14 minutes ago, Kloudkicker said:

From what I remember reading, the problem was posable with one file only. I have not had one issue with it and maybe fixed with the SC4Fix.

I don't remember anything about a particular file (it's been a while now), but it is definitely nuanced (seem to remember something had to be done to trigger the pox, and then of course, saving the city).  Anyway, I didn't wind up using the BDK, even though I use nearly all of PEG's other water stuff.

[rsc204 21,866]

Indeed it’s the BDK Resource kit that was linked to the problem. Want a little irony?, those same modifications were intended to resolve the very issue of this thread.

Anyway the file on the STEX doesn’t override the Maxis Props, instead it uses Props with new (unique) instance ids. In other words, it is no longer an issue. As such, it would be appreciated if any further discussion related to Prop Pox were not discussed here. If anyone really wants to dig-up the history of this, there is plenty to be found already. 

[Uhus 22]

Hi there,

I could use a helping hand with lot editing.

I've found two  pretty nice lots of the CNA Plaza in Chicago.

One is a LM and it's like I need it (CNA Plaza), the other one has been build as a growable (CNA North Tower).

Both have been made by Darknono35 (thank you for these nice buildings).

I didn't like the growable and so I decided to create a LM with jobs.

I've downloaded PIM-X and ILive and created the LM which worked pretty good for me.

Now I've a big problem, the building is sitting on the middle of the lot but in reality it's wall to wall with the CNA Plaza.

I've tried everything (smaller lot) but I can't move the building to edge of the lot.

Does anyone know how to solve this problem?

I've attached some pictures.

(Sorry if my English isn't as good as it should be, but as a native speaker I've lost much of my language by too much talking and writing German)

 

[nos.17 5,250]

PIMX uses primarily keyboard-based controls. Press 'B' to enter Building mode. The manual contains the rest of the shortcuts.

[RobertLM78 1,598]

6 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Indeed it’s the BDK Resource kit that was linked to the problem. Want a little irony?, those same modifications were intended to resolve the very issue of this thread.

Anyway the file on the STEX doesn’t override the Maxis Props, instead it uses Props with new (unique) instance ids. In other words, it is no longer an issue. As such, it would be appreciated if any further discussion related to Prop Pox were not discussed here. If anyone really wants to dig-up the history of this, there is plenty to be found already. 

That's interesting that  BDK was intended to get rid of it - didn't know that was the intent.  And for sure best to go  look it up.  I just felt I should warn Mr. Cricket.

[Uhus 22]

Thank you @nos.17!

Somehow I've missed the LE part in the guide.

 

[nickvon 161]

First time experimenting around with editing.  I'm using the SC4 Tool posted by Andreas.  Very uneducated when it comes to computers but I'm trying to learn.

Anyway, if one wanted to change the amount of growth stages how would that look?  Like putting the actual numbers of individual growth stages separated by commas?  I don't see an opportunity at the moment for an addition button to add more.  Please see attached picture for reference, and I will gladly answer any questions.  Thanks in advance for your time.

[rsc204 21,866]

You can’t add more than one property for Growth Stage, the game only expects a single value here. 

[nickvon 161]

5 hours ago, rsc204 said:

You can’t add more than one property for Growth Stage, the game only expects a single value here. 

Interesting!  Thanks for your swift reply.

[rsc204 21,866]

Just for being thorough, you probably could add additional ’Reps’ in Reader. What effect that would have, I couldn’t say. But somewhere between ignoring all but the first value or just not working is my guess.

I’ll add, SC4 Tool is a great choice to start modding, it’s GUI really helps aid clarity over say Reader. But if your goal is tuning Growth Stages and Occupancy, PIM-X is more automated a process. Simply using it to ensure all your growables have a balanced set of properties, can do wonders for using a set of content together.

Remembering your goals, the other thing you may want to look at is ensuring in a given situation, there will always be competing buildings. For example, if you only have one 4x4 lot at Stage 5 R$$, you’ll get a lot of repetition. But if the game had say 10 or 20 choices, you’ll have a more diverse city. Expanding that to cover every set of values is not easy. On that note, I can highly recommend all of MadHatters Commercial models. They blend in so well with the Maxis stuff, and in most cases were modded specifically to add such competition where it is lacking in game. If more creators saw how Maxis made things and worked with it, like he does, we’d all be better off.  

[twalsh102 1,601]

@nickvon, I am a bit curious as to why you would want to add additional Growth Stages. In case you weren't aware, the configured Growth Stage is the point at which a given Lot can start to grow. It does not specify that a Lot will only grow at that Stage. It will continue to Grow as you advance through later Growth Stages.

The way Growth Stages work is as follows: There are Developer Exemplars for each Developer Type (12 in total). Put altogether they comprise what could be considered a series of 4 charts (one each fro R, CS, CO, and Ind) that delineate the percentages of Lots from the current and all previous Growth Stages that can exist in your city. As an Example (I'm using the CAM 2 Extended Play Style Growth Stage charts here), as you hit R$$ Stage 5, the percentages of R$$ Lots that can be allowed to exist are:  20% Stage 1, 26% Stage 2, 28% Stage 3, 25% Stage 4, 2% Stage 5. So even as you hit the highest Growth Stage  (8 for Vanilla Maxis, 15 for CAM 2), there is still a small percentage of Stage 1 lots that can exist.

Everything  must stay in balance according to these "charts." If Lots from a particular growth stage exceeds the allowable percentage, then no more Lots from that Growth Stage will be allowed to grow until everything re-balances with Lots from the other Growth Stages.

One question that often arises is "What happens when everything is exactly balanced? Does that mean that nothing else can grow?" The simple answer to that is everything is never exactly in balance. The longer answer:  If you see any Growth Stage "charts", either in the Prima Guide, or that someone has derived from those 12 Developer Exemplars, all you will see is whole number percentages, when in fact they are almost all rounded numbers (looking at whole numbers is just easier on the eyes, and easier for the brain to comprehend). So although what the chart shows may be 23%, the actual percentage used by the game may be 22.6000038%, or 22.79999924%, or 23.29999924%

Hopefully, I didn't confuse you.

[nickvon 161]

54 minutes ago, twalsh102 said:

Hopefully, I didn't confuse you

You didn't!  I very much appreciate your time and thoughts.

1 hour ago, twalsh102 said:

I am a bit curious as to why you would want to add additional Growth Stages. In case you weren't aware, the configured Growth Stage is the point at which a given Lot can start to grow. It does not specify that a Lot will only grow at that Stage. It will continue to Grow as you advance through later Growth Stages.

Now that I think about it, at some point in my gaming I could have seen the same lots just doubled, or tripled, etc.  As in, having identical buildings with different growth stages attached to them.  Anyway, my goal is to find some sort of equilibrium regarding groups of growables.  I will attempt to detail my goal, premise, and assumptions more fully in a response to @rsc204.  I would appreciate any feedback!

 

[nickvon 161]

4 hours ago, rsc204 said:

I’ll add, SC4 Tool is a great choice to start modding, it’s GUI really helps aid clarity over say Reader. But if your goal is tuning Growth Stages and Occupancy, PIM-X is more automated a process. Simply using it to ensure all your growables have a balanced set of properties, can do wonders for using a set of content together.

Excellent!  PIM-X is on the list to download, but reading this makes me want to download today.  I hope it comes with a manual.  There's a fair amount of built in intuition with SC4 Tool that I seem to be able to get what I want out of it, I'm curious and excited to see how PIM-X is a more automated process, because that could really help alot.  Ilives reader appears daunting, especially because there is no images to accompany the beginners guide, which is frustrating because the guide references the images the entire time!  Perhaps there is a technical error on my part as well, being able to view the referenced images and such.

Onwards...

My goal is to have different groups of buildings that compete fairly well with each other. 

For example, say I have 20 different rowhouses, all custom content, that I would like to grow a large neighborhood out of.  If I don't alter anything, I tend to have one or two extremely weedy rowhouses grow, a few random others that grow, and several rowhouses that don't even show up.  Even when the area is fully matured, with 50,000 people, this is the case.  Also I would like to note that I am definitely using a maxis blocker mod, and all building styles are on.  I am assuming that this scenario unfolds the way that it does because of the following factors.  Growth Stages and Occupants Allowed (or capacity satisfied), additionally I would think that these variables can also be correlated to strength of demand.  Is there any other criteria, in this particular scenario, that would affect growth probability?  Actually, now that I think about it, does pollution affect this?  Or how fire prone a building could be?

My remedy, on the surface, I think(?) is a logical response.  I would appreciate it so much if you proofread it, and detail flaws.  I would not be surprised at all if I can't really accomplish what I'm setting out to do.  If I make one group of 20 rowhouses, all custom content, that all have the exact same number of max residents (or capacity satisfied, what exactly is the difference here?) per wealth class, and the exact same growth stage, all in the exact same building style.  Would they all have a fairly decent chance of growing in relatively the same amount of numbers?  I may be forgetting a variable here, but you get what I'm talking about. 

My other goal is less interesting, and that is just to lower the occupant size of these buildings.  I'm trying to make this game as real as I can without creating too much of a burden and this seems like an easy one to accomplish.  Perhaps there would be some unforeseen consequences of this though.  Take for example this lovely building from marcszar:

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1936

Now this lovely group of duplexes has max occupants of 91 R$ and 52 R$$.  Which I think is ridiculous.  I've lived on a few different blocks of West Philadelphia where you find thousands of buildings exactly like this one.  They all have 3-4 bedrooms.  I think that changing this to 9 R$ and 6 R$$ per unit would be much more appropriate.  So specifically 18 R$ and 12 R$$ per building.

Anyway, these are just some thoughts I've had recently.  Whether or not I can get closer to accomplishing these things, I still relish the opportunity to have more experience with this software so I can begin to build BATs myself.

 

 

  Edited January 23, 2021 by nickvon  
Forgot a number, and a few words.

[twalsh102 1,601]

54 minutes ago, nickvon said:

Now that I think about it, at some point in my gaming I could have seen the same lots just doubled, or tripled, etc.  As in, having identical buildings with different growth stages attached to them.

Gotcha. That in fact would not be unusual. Ultimately, it's the content creators final decision as to what Growth Stage to give to a particular Lot. PIM-X, when creating a Lot, will give you a range of Growth Stages to choose from. There's nothing to say that if PIM-X recommends Growth Stage 5 for a particular Lot-size/Building Exemplar combination, the content creator can't decide "No, I want my Lot to be available first thing, so I'm going to set it as a Stage 1 Lot (Did I mention that. To be totally technically correct: Buildings do not have Growth Stages, Only Lots have Growth Stages.)

One of the beauties of how we can modify the game is the way we can mod Buildings and Lots with the tools we have available to us. It all revolves around the Model (the visual representation of the Building). Using a tool like PIM-X, you could take a given Model, and create Building Exemplars for a CO Building, an CS Building, an IHT Building, an Educational Building (say of the Specialty College/University type), or even a Police Station - all using the same model. So you may be seeing the same model many times, but that doesn't mean it's the same type of Building.

[nickvon 161]

3 hours ago, rsc204 said:

PIM-X is more automated a process

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2260

is this the correct file?

[twalsh102 1,601]

That's the one. The User's Guide is a separate download at https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2257.

 

[rsc204 21,866]

2 hours ago, nickvon said:

Growth Stages and Occupants Allowed (or capacity satisfied), additionally I would think that these variables can also be correlated to strength of demand.  Is there any other criteria, in this particular scenario, that would affect growth probability?  Actually, now that I think about it, does pollution affect this?  Or how fire prone a building could be?

Growth stages/caps ---> Higher stages by percentage of region

2 hours ago, nickvon said:

If I make one group of 20 rowhouses, all custom content, that all have the exact same number of max residents (or capacity satisfied, what exactly is the difference here?) per wealth class, and the exact same growth stage, all in the exact same building style.  Would they all have a fairly decent chance of growing in relatively the same amount of numbers?

Basically the factors that the game decides comes from a combination of the following:

• Demand
• Desirability (R$$$ lots won't grow for example in areas which aren't very nice)
• Zoning (including available sizes)
• Tileset
• Wealth
• Density
• Growth Stage
• Occupants

Essentially the game selects what it can and wants to build from all those, then looks at what content meets these criteria. If some buildings have a few more or a few less sims, that can actually be advantageous, the capacity satisfied numbers don't have to be absolutely identical for this to work. The content that matches can be considered a "pool", from which the game then randomly picks one to grow.

So in your example, those 20 lots should "compete" with each other, growing under the same conditions.

2 hours ago, nickvon said:

My other goal is less interesting, and that is just to lower the occupant size of these buildings.  I'm trying to make this game as real as I can without creating too much of a burden and this seems like an easy one to accomplish.  Perhaps there would be some unforeseen consequences of this though.  Take for example this lovely building from marcszar:

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1936

Now this lovely group of duplexes has max occupants of 91 R$ and 52 R$$.  Which I think is ridiculous.  I've lived on a few different blocks of West Philadelphia where you find thousands of buildings exactly like this one.  They all have 3-4 bedrooms.  I think that changing this to 9 R$ and 6 R$$ per unit would be much more appropriate.  So specifically 18 R$ and 12 R$$ per building.

I think you'll find most of the content out there doesn't have particularly realistic numbers, but with good reason.

Let's take as an example the Industry Doubler and Quadrupler mods, to see how doubling or quadrupling the number of jobs for all your Industry changes how the game works. If your industry would normally have 5,000 jobs, you'd need a residential population of 10k sims to work in them all, since roughly 50% of your sims work. But if you double that to 10k jobs, you need twice as many sims, 20k for the same number of Industrial Buildings. Likewise, using the Quadrupler mod, you now have 20k jobs which need 40k sims. So if you adjust buildings from 52 to 6, which is a large change (8.5x +), you'll now need a lot more Residential buildings to balance your game.

But I really think too many people focus on pure numbers, without realising there is a reason why these numbers are what they are. SC4 is simply a simulation based on lots of math and it was balanced by Maxis with the intention of spreading the R/C/I balance to make what looks more realistically like a city. If you want to manually set all these values, you are going to have to do it in a balanced way or potentially break the game. But if you balance all your custom content instead, it will all work together well, that's really the benefit of PIM-X'ifying all your content. Rather than having to work it all out, it uses formulas to do it for you, it takes a lot of potential pitfalls out of the equation. Bear in mind I'm greatly simplifying all of this, manually getting an entire set of content to work well together, is a likely going to involve a lot of trial and error. Honestly if I were you, right now I'd focus on balancing what you have, I think you might be pleased with the results, you can always work on more custom tweaking later if you decide that's how you want things.

But problems come, especially when you add that Maxis Blocker into the mix, if your custom content doesn't cover every scenario. If that list above of conditions, isn't matched by a single custom lot, you are slowing down the simulator. Obviously a single area of zoning at a time is looking at the options, but you can get to a stage of the game, where because of some gaps in your content, nothing much will grow and everything stagnates as a result. Growth spurs more growth and the game is designed to get things ready for grow it sees as likely. Much like the real world, if a load of things happen, based on growth that doesn't materialise, it can negatively affect your overall economy and growth in general. In the worst case scenarios, it can lead to something much like a recession.

It's not enough to have one building per growth stage/density/wealth, ideally each of these will have some options to choose between. But all told, you'll need probably at least 500 lots, just to get back to the sort of mix that the base game has. As we all know, that isn't always particularly random. The more choices you can offer the simulator, the more random things will be, but again an overall harmony is a must for all the pieces to work together. So I mentioned MadHatter's content before, in terms of how it works like Maxis content does, let's be a little more specific. If you have a building, with a single lot, it only conforms to one set of the above conditions. But if each building had 3 or 4 lots of varying size and growth stage, which will also look less samey in game too, you are adding more options. Build that up with 25 buildings, maybe you've satisfied 100 potential choices, not simply 25, it makes a big difference. Building Families are another useful feature, it allows one lot to share multiple buildings, picked at random, which works best when the buildings are all similarly sized. These two things alone introduce quite a bit of additional randomisation, for a little work. When I made a little Convenience store, I used three variations of the building, with 3 differently sized lots and then the branding too could be randomised, meaning even when a few of these growth in the same area, they still don't get too repetitive. Couple that with modding them so they don't grow out of control, for one download, it adds a lot more than a single option. But of course, doing all this adds a lot of extra work, not all creators want to mess about with such things, it doesn't always make sense either. I mean, some of the big towers you probably are only gonna want one of in a given city. But, you can always take any models you find and customise them with additional options, it's just the work of doing so.

[twalsh102 1,601]

I'm an "iteration" behind on your questions.

First let's talk a little about PIM-X. Be prepared for the User's Guide as it's not the simplest thing to use, primarily as there is no real table of contents. PIM-X creates Building and Lot Exemplars that are optimized for CAM (i.e. it allows for Growth Stages up to 15 for all R and C Lots, and Stage 10 for all I Lots; also the calculations used to determine many of the stats in the Exemplar are different than those used by Maxis with its Lot Editor). So you might as well get ready to add CAM your mix to take full advantage of PIM-X.

A plug here. If you don't already have a copy, I would recommend downloading Prima's Strategy Guide for SimCity 4 Deluxe. There's a free download at https://archive.org/details/SimCity_4_Rush_Hour_Prima_Official_eGuide. I have to laugh here as I've seen paper copies of this for sale for as much as $70 US. The original price was only about $20. This book is indispensable for answering many questions about the the mechanics of the game

There are a large number of factors in play when determining what particular building will grow where and when.

Growth Stage is certainly a factor; Capacity Satisfied vs. available Demand; Wealth of Lot; The large number of factors that fall in the category of Desirability, beyond the few you mentioned; The effect of the various Desirability factors generally vary with Wealth. Is a particular Lot powered and watered. Nothing will grow without power, Nothing will grow beyond Stage 3 without water. R$ Sims are much less picky about where they live than R$$$ Sims.

The Capacity Satisfied numbers you see quoted and in Building Exemplars do not mean that residents of those wealth level and numbers all live in a Building at the same time. By default for R buildings, those numbers represent an increase in numbers of residents that will move into a building when it downgrades from its original wealth level to a lower wealth level. Thus you will generally see numbers for the original wealth level of the Building and all lower wealth levels.

Capacity satisfied is Maxis-speak for maximum numbers of residents (or workers for non-R buildings).

2 hours ago, nickvon said:

My remedy, on the surface, I think(?) is a logical response.

I do get what you're talking about, but I don't think its going to be that simple. There's no guarantee that you will end up with a row of Row Houses. There is generally no guarantee, you will end up with buildings of all the same wealth level on a given street. There is no guarantee, you will end up with a row of Row Houses of all the same style if there are others in your Plugins folder with roughly the same stats. One strategy I've heard of people using when they want to get a certain look to their neighborhoods is "whatever grows, grows; bulldoze what you don't want and cross your fingers that what you do want will eventually grow." You would still have the problem of buildings upgrading as Sims wealth grows, unless you tag the buildings you want to keep as "historical" (which keeps a building from upgrading). Otherwise there's no telling what you might end up with. As lots combine upon upgrading instead of say a row of 10 Row Houses, you could end up with something like row house, small mcmansion, small condo, row house, small condo.

Capacities that bear no resemblance to RL was started by Maxis for a specific reason. SimCity 4 was never meant to simulate real life. It all comes down to scale scale. Remember that the largest City square in SimCity is 4 x 4 kilometers or roughly 2.5 x 2.5 miles. Many large university campuses are larger than that. Dallas-Fort Worth Airport built to scale in SC4 would not fit in two large City squares side by side. Over all, all its facilities take up a space more than 6 x 9 km.

Interpose a 4 x 4 kilometer square over a map of the city where you live and imagine what it would have to look like to fit in multiple millions of residents in that area. A SimCity large City square with a population of  just 1 million Sims would have a population density of 62,500 Sims / square km. The city with the highest population density in the world as of 2019 (Manila), had a population density of 41,500 residents / square km.

So changing the capacity satisfied for Residential, would also mean having to change capacity satisfied for all C and and I buildings as well, or you would run out of space long before you were ever able to zone enough space to meet all R demand. Or you would have to create numerous R only cities to be able to meet all the R Demand for your Region. Another way of looking at this issue using your example building: if you changed the capacities of all R buildings by the same percentages, you would need 10X as much residential-zoned area to house the same number of Sims in the same-sized buildings.

Sorry for the wall of words, but I think I've touched on all your questions.

[nickvon 161]

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Growth stages/caps ---> Higher stages by percentage of region

Basically the factors that the game decides comes from a combination of the following:

• Demand
• Desirability (R$$$ lots won't grow for example in areas which aren't very nice)
• Zoning (including available sizes)
• Tileset
• Wealth
• Density
• Growth Stage
• Occupants

Essentially the game selects what it can and wants to build from all those, then looks at what content meets these criteria. If some buildings have a few more or a few less sims, that can actually be advantageous, the capacity satisfied numbers don't have to be absolutely identical for this to work. The content that matches can be considered a "pool", from which the game then randomly picks one to grow.

So in your example, those 20 lots should "compete" with each other, growing under the same conditions.

I think you'll find most of the content out there doesn't have particularly realistic numbers, but with good reason.

Let's take as an example the Industry Doubler and Quadrupler mods, to see how doubling or quadrupling the number of jobs for all your Industry changes how the game works. If your industry would normally have 5,000 jobs, you'd need a residential population of 10k sims to work in them all, since roughly 50% of your sims work. But if you double that to 10k jobs, you need twice as many sims, 20k for the same number of Industrial Buildings. Likewise, using the Quadrupler mod, you now have 20k jobs which need 40k sims. So if you adjust buildings from 52 to 6, which is a large change (8.5x +), you'll now need a lot more Residential buildings to balance your game.

But I really think too many people focus on pure numbers, without realising there is a reason why these numbers are what they are. SC4 is simply a simulation based on lots of math and it was balanced by Maxis with the intention of spreading the R/C/I balance to make what looks more realistically like a city. If you want to manually set all these values, you are going to have to do it in a balanced way or potentially break the game. But if you balance all your custom content instead, it will all work together well, that's really the benefit of PIM-X'ifying all your content. Rather than having to work it all out, it uses formulas to do it for you, it takes a lot of potential pitfalls out of the equation. Bear in mind I'm greatly simplifying all of this, manually getting an entire set of content to work well together, is a likely going to involve a lot of trial and error. Honestly if I were you, right now I'd focus on balancing what you have, I think you might be pleased with the results, you can always work on more custom tweaking later if you decide that's how you want things.

But problems come, especially when you add that Maxis Blocker into the mix, if your custom content doesn't cover every scenario. If that list above of conditions, isn't matched by a single custom lot, you are slowing down the simulator. Obviously a single area of zoning at a time is looking at the options, but you can get to a stage of the game, where because of some gaps in your content, nothing much will grow and everything stagnates as a result. Growth spurs more growth and the game is designed to get things ready for grow it sees as likely. Much like the real world, if a load of things happen, based on growth that doesn't materialise, it can negatively affect your overall economy and growth in general. In the worst case scenarios, it can lead to something much like a recession.

It's not enough to have one building per growth stage/density/wealth, ideally each of these will have some options to choose between. But all told, you'll need probably at least 500 lots, just to get back to the sort of mix that the base game has. As we all know, that isn't always particularly random. The more choices you can offer the simulator, the more random things will be, but again an overall harmony is a must for all the pieces to work together. So I mentioned MadHatter's content before, in terms of how it works like Maxis content does, let's be a little more specific. If you have a building, with a single lot, it only conforms to one set of the above conditions. But if each building had 3 or 4 lots of varying size and growth stage, which will also look less samey in game too, you are adding more options. Build that up with 25 buildings, maybe you've satisfied 100 potential choices, not simply 25, it makes a big difference. Building Families are another useful feature, it allows one lot to share multiple buildings, picked at random, which works best when the buildings are all similarly sized. These two things alone introduce quite a bit of additional randomisation, for a little work. When I made a little Convenience store, I used three variations of the building, with 3 differently sized lots and then the branding too could be randomised, meaning even when a few of these growth in the same area, they still don't get too repetitive. Couple that with modding them so they don't grow out of control, for one download, it adds a lot more than a single option. But of course, doing all this adds a lot of extra work, not all creators want to mess about with such things, it doesn't always make sense either. I mean, some of the big towers you probably are only gonna want one of in a given city. But, you can always take any models you find and customise them with additional options, it's just the work of doing so.

Thank you so much for your insight.  I very much appreciate it.  I am in the process of transferring my plugins folder at the moment.  I may end up getting a close to desired result with just tweaking a few buildings that never seem to materialize anyway.  I like the building families idea.  Which is kind of what I've been working on/getting at this whole time anyway.  I can't wait to begin experimenting. 

Speaking of which...

When I try to run PIM, I get a response telling me to see the log file.  When opened, this is what it says:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "SC4PIM.py", line 1, in ?
  File "SC4PIMApp.pyo", line 96, in ?
  File "wx\__init__.pyo", line 45, in ?
  File "wx\_core.pyo", line 4, in ?
  File "wx\_core_.pyo", line 12, in ?
  File "wx\_core_.pyo", line 10, in __load
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

Any idea what this means?