Auto emergency activity SC4

[Sam4 22]

hello everybody could someone create mode has the ability to making the lights of police and ambulances and fire brighten from time to time in the city? i mean without using the emergency icon in the game.
that will be the best mode for simcity4 at ever

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

Hiya, @Sam4.

I'm guessing this would be done via Batting (tho I'm far from certain about that). I'm going to move it over into the SC4 Builders Forum in the SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop as I believe that'll put it where those techy peeps hang out.

Note to the moderator experts: If I guessed wrong for where this should go, please move it to a more appropriate location.

[rsc204 21,808]

Such automata models already exist, it's just altering the behaviour of when they show the animated parts (lights). Honestly, I would think either they would be on all the time or they'd be off all the time. Because more than likely the trigger for emergencies is something locked away in the .exe we can't alter the behaviour of. But you could in theory make a copy of the existing ones, add them as a generic automata and tweak them to always show the lights. I suspect if you did that and it actually worked, you'd have too many flying around with lights on.

[Sam4 22]

On 10/19/2018 at 2:55 AM, rsc204 said:

Such automata models already exist, it's just altering the behaviour of when they show the animated parts (lights). Honestly, I would think either they would be on all the time or they'd be off all the time. Because more than likely the trigger for emergencies is something locked away in the .exe we can't alter the behaviour of. But you could in theory make a copy of the existing ones, add them as a generic automata and tweak them to always show the lights. I suspect if you did that and it actually worked, you'd have too many flying around with lights on.

ok we know that the working on something related by the .exe will be a little bit complicated to make a auto emergency, but it could be like (automata) the behaviour of the animated parts (lights) as you said, so we are not looking for auto emergency specifically but at least the city would like to have some emit lights from the USpolice from time to time even if it is a visual trick, that what i mean because my city seem like asleep and boring without any lights and which must have to be emitted from the police from time to time in the city.
thank you guys for your efforts 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

Ofc I'm out of my league for knowledge with regard to automata, but are you looking for the flashing lights like when you use the dispatch button for police and fire trucks? If so, we know the game is capable of it.

 

What I wonder is if the .dat file(s) contain two separate automata which look the same for each vehicle yet one has an extra property which is the flashing light and siren effects If so, couldn't one create a special lot which would randomly spawn just the noisy, flashy ones now and then?

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

Well, if you don't mind no police car under the flashing lights, I've figured out how to do that.

[Sam4 22]

4 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Well, if you don't mind no police car under the flashing lights, I've figured out how to do that.

yeah that what i talking about yes you are really clever, ok they need vehicles under them and making the flashing lights temporary and not permanent to be randomly, simply we want to see the police doing her job in the city (flashing lights doing his job hhhh). ok i thik my idea it's clear

and this it is the type of police car which i put in my plugins

LAPD Police Charger.dat

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

2 hours ago, Sam4 said:

and this it is the type of police car which i put in my plugins

I haven't been able to do my latest tweak for the one you use, but I have modified the Police Car Expansion Pack.

I presume you have hardware graphics so I modified the HD version: LA Police Car+CXL SUV+GTA4 Stockade V1.1-256 - Night Crime.dat It only works at night and the ones with the flashing red/blue lights lose their headlights.

(Call it stealth mode.)

 

 

Try it in a test city. Remove the one you use temporarily and be sure to plop a new Police Station.

Edit: This would be a great time for the experts to provide some guidance as I'm fumbling around in unfamiliar territory.

[rsc204 21,808]

3 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

This would be a great time for the experts to provide some guidance as I'm fumbling around in unfamiliar territory.

What makes you think the "experts" are doing anything differently .

By and large Automata have usually two separate pieces (S3D Models), one for the main model, with a second for the lights (Axillary Model Key). It might not be as simple, since we're talking about animations here, but in theory at least, you can use Coego's Model Tweaker to combine two models into one. Do that with the normal headlights (that's the ID that's only active during the night), "Merge" into that the flashing lights and now in theory the police car will show both lights. I can't imagine it's possible to combine more than two such models, but in theory you can with an RTK-4 property. But that leads us into Prop Pox territory and I've no idea how that works in respect of RTK0 (True 3D) models. As such, Merging models would be my starting point.

Edit: Then again, maybe it would be, since two additional properties exist:

• Auxiliary Model 2 Key
• Auxiliary Model 3 Key

I couldn't say how specific the function of those is, but it's probably 2 that's triggered on the emergency vehicles. Which is really the problem we're battling here, so merging that S3D into the 1st Aux Model is still most likely to work.

Triggering this function outside of night-time is probably not possible, but who knows with these things, right? However the game overrides this behaviour specifically during an emergency isn't obvious from the default automata. Hence my guess the .exe controls such things, in which case all we can do is activate it by switching on night-mode.

What I would do, although it's a preference, rather than override the original police vehicles, I'd create a new unique automata instance for this variant. Give the S3Ds a new, unique IID. That way it'd just be another car on the streets, but at night would run around flashing it's lights all over the place when spawned. Because I'd imagine the original police car's function would be affected by a straight override, which could have unintended consequences too. That would be uncharted territory for me too, but I think it just requires a unique IID for the Exemplar of the automata, since the T/G IDs usually tell the game what an object is.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

Believe it or not, I figured this out.

I added property 0xCC21420D (Auto-load Auxiliary Models) set to 0x00000002. The value is which Auxiliary Model (1, 2, or 3) to load when the Automata appears. Now this works for both day and night.

This is still a minor tweak to the HD version of the Police Car Expansion Pack.

 

LA Police Car+CXL SUV+GTA4 Stockade V1.1-256 - Random Crime.dat

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

@Sam4

I've managed to tweak the one you use.

Remember to remove any other police car .dat files and that you need to bulldoze old Police Stations and plop new ones. It seems for each one plopped you get 4 vehicles that will then wander around your city forever. There will be a random number that get the flashing lights. If you want more than you get from the normal amount of stations just plop some extras to spawn the cars and then bulldoze those stations.

I'll leave the testing between saves and reloads to you whether or not they stick around.

 

 

LAPD Police Charger - Random Crime.dat

  Edited October 21, 2018 by CorinaMarie  
Added slightly better night pic

[Sam4 22]

58 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

@Sam4

I've managed to tweak the one you use.

Remember to remove any other police car .dat files and that you need to bulldoze old Police Stations and plop new ones. It seems for each one plopped you get 4 vehicles that will then wander around your city forever. There will be a random number that get the flashing lights. If you want more than you get from the normal amount of stations just plop some extras to spawn the cars and then bulldoze those stations.

I'll leave the testing between saves and reloads to you whether or not they stick around.

 

 

LAPD Police Charger - Random Crime.dat

wow thank you so much i can't believe that, you are one of the best administrators that i met, and i don't know why everybody were scared to talking about this type of topics before.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

3 hours ago, Sam4 said:

wow thank you so much

You're very welcome. How about a screenshot or two from your game showing how it goes?

I've learned that they don't stay around forever and do eventually fade out, but new ones get spawned so that's ok. If they haven't reached their fade time they do persist on the streets between save, exit, and reload. I believe we could do the same thing to have random flashing lights fire trucks and ambulances if you have any mods you use for those.

Here's a well timed one I caught while testing:

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

Some more tweaking and I found a way to make the red/blue flashing lights brighter most, but not all, of the time.

 

LAPD Police Charger - Random Crime Brighter.dat

[Sam4 22]

3 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

You're very welcome. How about a screenshot or two from your game showing how it goes?

I've learned that they don't stay around forever and do eventually fade out, but new ones get spawned so that's ok. If they haven't reached their fade time they do persist on the streets between save, exit, and reload. I believe we could do the same thing to have random flashing lights fire trucks and ambulances if you have any mods you use for those.

Here's a well timed one I caught while testing:

nice screenshot and funny lol
ok i will take a screenshot on my city next time cause i didn't open my game yet
if you want my mods of ambulance and fire vehicles you can find them below

AMBULANCE :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EMT1EMS_2_Add.dat

EMT1EMS_2_Replace.dat

EMT1EMS_SharedFiles.dat

EMT1EMSLogo_Global.dat

FIRE TRUCK :

 

gwl_FDNY_E10_replace.dat

gwl_FDNY_L10_add.dat

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

@CorinaMarie

Excellent work investigating this and finding a way forward. Testing it out myself and I've observed how it adds something extra to a city to see the police cars flashing their lights, as they respond to incidents as common in busy cities. Also I think it's realistic how there's randomness with not all being in active emergency mode.

Just to share an observation I made...

It seems there is a surprising clash here with the Day and Nite Modd, where by the headlights won't show up with said mod installed and overriding. I've checked in DataNode and found in both the original and your tweaked version, it needs to load after SimFox's mod. Then it allows the flashing lights and the headlights to display together properly. Inside Reader I compared the properties and found that it references several from the Group 0xBADB57F1 and one in particular with the Instance of: 0x10642000

From DataNode:

 

Otherwise the headlights will be missing like so:

Spoiler

Just beyond the last street light at the edge of town, a gang of thugs are crossing over from the wrong side of the tracks. Officer Cylde Bloom investigates...

A simple way to make the custom cars function (including your edited version) was to place it and Day and Nite inside the same folder. Then to prefix a z__ onto the start of the file name making the police car mod load afterwards as determined by the game's file loading order for processing custom content.

(Also for anyone wondering about loading order, this post by @T Wrecks contains an insightful summary.)

 

Here's a few Dark Nite previews I got thereafter with the cop cars working as designed (using the new brighter version):

At 01:52, Squad 356 was called to Farley's Farming Inc. in response to a suspected donut overload...

 

Then the very next day, they ambushed yet another car thief...

 

Though it did take them a while, since they were still there handling the situation several hours later, seemingly frozen in time...

 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

23 hours ago, Sam4 said:

AMBULANCE :

Alrighty. I got these ready. You have to zoom all the way in in your game to really notice the teeny tiny flashing lights.

Here's a pic of the S3D file for the flashing lights locations zoomed up a gazillion percent:

 

And here it is in the game:

 

EMT1EMS_2_Add - Random Flash.dat

EMT1EMS_2_Replace - Random Flash.dat

Ofc, remove the corresponding original files when you use the altered version. The other two files do not need any changes, but are still needed in your plugins.

 

I'll start on the fire truck next.

[matias93 7,535]

WOW! This is surely an advancement, yet another occasion on which Cori discovers something new about a 15 years old game, modded unto exhaustion. Don't be that unassuming, girl, you are already one of the few experts!

Now, about those lights, I guess the difference in look is simply because the ambulance ones lack their respective light cones. I guess they would need to be modelled to work, and that the S3D file of the police car ones wouldn't be the right ones, neither on size nor in animation. In any case, they should look ok if used, only with a little light-tearing through the ambulance roof.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

On 10/21/2018 at 6:34 PM, Sam4 said:

FIRE TRUCK :

Oddly, the add version would not display the rear flashing lights so I fixed that whilst I was tweaking. And it seems with (at least Maxis) fire stations the little one produces one truck upon plop and the large one puts out two which will run around town for a while, but eventually disappear. They don't ever seem to re-spawn like the police cars do. I suspect (but it's not something I've ever looked into) that the fire stations themselves don't have a whatever-it-is thinger to randomly send out new fire trucks.

gwl_FDNY_L10_add - Random Flash.dat

gwl_FDNY_E10_replace - Random Flash.dat

[Sam4 22]

1 hour ago, matias93 said:

WOW! This is surely an advancement, yet another occasion on which Cori discovers something new about a 15 years old game, modded unto exhaustion. Don't be that unassuming, girl, you are already one of the few experts!

Now, about those lights, I guess the difference in look is simply because the ambulance ones lack their respective light cones. I guess they would need to be modelled to work, and that the S3D file of the police car ones wouldn't be the right ones, neither on size nor in animation. In any case, they should look ok if used, only with a little light-tearing through the ambulance roof.

great job! it's seem nice like real FDNY which provides less lights,
you know wath? i have tried playing in sc5 and the reason was the lights of emergency which flashing, but in comparison sc4 it's much better than sc5 isn't she? '-'

[Sam4 22]

i have noticed something after install these modes, that the police doesn't go far around all over the city and they stay all the time beside their station ^.^ 
i think this is existed in the own of the game and the first time that i notice that.
thanks 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

8 hours ago, Sam4 said:

i have noticed something after install these modes, that the police doesn't go far around all over the city and they stay all the time beside their station ^.^ 
i think this is existed in the own of the game and the first time that i notice that.

During my testing I was plopping an over abundance of police stations so I'd have more cars roaming around to see how they looked. I, too, noticed sometimes they seem to get stuck at the station.

Most noticeably when I'd placed the stations at the end of a cul-de-sac:

^ I could trigger it way more often if I dispatched a bunch of them and after those faded out the new ones spawned at the stations would get stuck showing the flashing lights only.

Ofc, reverting to the unmodified police car mod and testing will let us know if it's already inherent in the mod or if something about my tweak is responsible. And it's also possible that's just how the game works.

[Sam4 22]

i haven't problem when they get stuck, what i meant is this below

they just stay roaming around the yellow circle, yep as you said maybe how the game works on it is.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

5 hours ago, Sam4 said:

they just stay roaming around the yellow circle,

Ah. I suspect that is then how the game works rather than anything inherent in the mod.

As @rsc204 suggested above we might want to create lots that can spawn them and then those could be placed at your red starred areas. Prolly need the same for Ambulances and Fire Trucks.

Btw, I feel sorry for the Sims who have to patrol that far east red star area:

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

After a bit of tweaking in Reader, I've come up with this...
 

Of course at this stage it's merely a proof of concept to show what's possible, but I've found the LUA (game scripting) files which control how police cars and ambulances spawn from their stations. I believe this is then attached to the OccupantGroups property in the buildings themselves.

In terms of the code involved, there are parameters to control the rate, maximum count, and the radius. For this test I've set these at extreme values (100, 200, and 250/500 respectively). This will need some further fine-tuning, and I'm not yet sure how it works in existing cities containing stations. But since it seems they keep generating after timing out, this could potentially be useful to replicate the effect widespread and more intermittently realistic throughout a large city, even beyond the coverage radius.

[Sam4 22]

[matias93 7,535]

Ok, that's state capacity going way over the top

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

After tweaking a copy of CB's lua code to reference fire trucks (and placing 4 stations).

 

We will prolly want to tone down those test numbers.

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

Update:

We're working on it...
 

 

In the LUA code, @CorinaMarie has been experimenting with some more of the parameters and trying to find a suitable balance.

Our idea is to create 2 or 3 different versions which scale up the quantity generated. One will be "realistic" to replicate regular calls in response to routine daily citywide incidents. Then at the other end of the scale, a more of a "crisis mode" where there is a full-blown emergency response to a situation. Then a happy medium which is somewhere in-between. At least for the "realistic" version, the plan is to have the coverage radius of each station be used as a guideline. So then the emergency vehicles will be spawned within this area, but may venture outside on their missions. In theory they can still travel across an entire large tile, but because they like to wander it's not likely they'll get too far from where they spawn. To have consistent coverage throughout it will depend on station coverage overlapping evenly.
 

Spoiler

 

So we present the preliminary titled "Emergency Automata Generator" in what's still classed as a very beta version:

Emergency_Automata_Generator_By_CoriBoom-v0.1.dat

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

At the current test setting there's generally 2 or 3 visible in zoom 3 every minute or so. My idea is to not overwhelm the city with flashing lights, yet still appear to be an active fire and police force:

^ Ofc at this zoom level a still picture doesn't do it justice, but there are at least two police and one fire truck in this image.