Question about IRM Addons, CAM and Quadrupling

[JimC 159]

Greetings denizens. I hope you're all well.

I am in the process of rebuilding my plugins folder. I've installed CAM and the IRM base pack (CAM version). I am tossing up about whether to install the IRM Addons.

I gather from this thread over at SC4Devotion (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=16824.0) that it is not possible for me - an average schmuck SimCity player - to modify the buildings in PIM-X. So I've given up on that ambition. At this stage, I have four questions:

1. I don't need these addon packs, do I? My understanding is that they introduce new varieties of mech and out lots. But I will already have the benefit of the mech and out lots that came with the IRM base pack, right?

2. If I do install these addons, how out of sync will they appear relative to the CAM growth stages? The thumbnails show some tanks and small buildings that, I imagine, would look fairly reasonable when placed next to an anchor building of any growth stage.

3. Is the standard edition, or the quadrupler edition more in line with the CAM growth stages? I assume the quadrupler version aligns most closely with the CAM.

4. Finally, I took a look at some of the addon lots in PIM-X, and I'm a little confused. I looked at a random lot, for instance the I-D-3 small tanks lot (Standard edition) and it said it contained 10 jobs (that's what capacity satisfied means, right?). Then I looked at the I-D-3 small tanks lot (quadrupler edition) and it said it contained 40 jobs. Now, if I had the quadrupler mod installed alongside the quadrupled lot, wouldn't I end up with a lot that has 160 jobs?

Thank you in advance. I've been playing for years, and using other people's mods for years, but I've only just started using PIM-X and the Reader in the last week, so this is all very new and terrifying to me.

[rsc204 21,866]

First off, the basic addon fillers are not affected at all be these issues, so you are good to go with those.

I guess your question is most prevalent in regards to both the single I-D and I-M addon sets? The W2W and other addons would of course be a separate matter, although the changes are in essence the same.

7 hours ago, JimC said:

I gather from this thread over at SC4Devotion (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=16824.0) that it is not possible for me - an average schmuck SimCity player - to modify the buildings in PIM-X. So I've given up on that ambition. At this stage, I have four questions:

It's not so terribly hard, if you have a basic grounding in using PIM-X, you would be half way there already. PIM-X will still be able to automatically calculate the correct values for you, only you need to use the trick outlined by GNLeugim to temporarily modify the occupant sizes. If you need some more step-by-step instructions to do this, no doubt someone would be able to walk you through it if you're motivated. It would be nice too if you'd consider releasing them back to the community for others to make use of. @T Wrecks would probably be OK with that if you asked. But not to get ahead of ourselves, I'll do my best to assist with your other questions.

7 hours ago, JimC said:

2. If I do install these addons, how out of sync will they appear relative to the CAM growth stages? The thumbnails show some tanks and small buildings that, I imagine, would look fairly reasonable when placed next to an anchor building of any growth stage.

I think it's more to do with the lack of jobs that using them as-is may cause. Ideally you want to keep them close to CAM values, otherwise you'll need far more of such lots to provide a similar workforce. It's never going to be game-breaking, it just isn't optimised for use with CAM. Do bear in mind though, due to the way Anchor, Mech and Out lots work together for industrial, we could be talking a lot of jobs here.

Also consider how only growth stages 1-3 are used by IRM. CAM extends this to 10. What I can't say for sure is the correlation between Anchor and Mech/Out lots in all this. I.e., does a given Mech/Out lot need to match the growth stage  of the Anchor in order to appear? If that is the case, it would make it much more important that you adjust the growth stages. Otherwise you'd simply never see the additional content on buildings above stage 3. Given that's 7 new stages, you simply might find that jobs aside, you rarely see the newer set of Addons appearing, especially as your cities/region are more developed.

7 hours ago, JimC said:

3. Is the standard edition, or the quadrupler edition more in line with the CAM growth stages? I assume the quadrupler version aligns most closely with the CAM.

I would hazard a guess the Quadrupler ones would lessen the impact of the problem. None of this affects the growth stages, but it's still likely to be the better of the two options. Since we're talking about Mech and Out lots (so far as I can see), that may not actually be a huge problem. Provided the growth stages didn't need to match those of the Anchors.

In short, a large industry building will usually grow first in Industrial areas, called an "Anchor". Next you will have smaller "Mech" buildings which attach to the Anchor, lastly some usually small lots "Out" will fill in any gaps, to create a varied Industrial area. You'll notice that in game, all the jobs/traffic to/from such a complex, are generated only by the main Anchor building, the sum total of all connected buildings are given to the Anchor. Such Mech and Out lots allow for much more diversity, even when the main Anchor lot is identical.

7 hours ago, JimC said:

I looked at a random lot, for instance the I-D-3 small tanks lot (Standard edition) and it said it contained 10 jobs (that's what capacity satisfied means, right?). Then I looked at the I-D-3 small tanks lot (quadrupler edition) and it said it contained 40 jobs. Now, if I had the quadrupler mod installed alongside the quadrupled lot, wouldn't I end up with a lot that has 160 jobs?

Like IRM, the Industry quadrupler mod simply alters each individual Industrial lot. Only to have 4x the number of jobs rather than changing the lots. As such, using it with IRM is possible, but that is not the case on a global level. So having that mod installed will not further alter the values of any custom or additional lots only those based on the original Maxis ones. The original IRM lots are affected, because they are overrides of the original Maxis Content, just like the CAM includes a set of similar overrides for the Maxis lots.

So if you've installed CAM, the CAM for IRM and the quadrupler mod, you've now four variants of the same lots floating about in your plugins folder. So long as you make sure the Industry Quadrupler mod loads after IRM and CAM. Plus ensuring IRM loads after CAM, you should be OK. But for any custom lots, these figures need modifying manually. Of course, if special versions exist for the quadrupled jobs, using those will be sufficient. Which in the case of the IRM Addons is true. Of course if you do take up the task of properly converting them for CAM usage, you might as well update the number of jobs in addition to the growth stages, since it's all part of the same process.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

47 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

It's not so terribly hard, if you have a basic grounding in using PIM-X, you would be half way there already. PIM-X will still be able to automatically calculate the correct values for you, only you need to use the trick outlined by GNLeugim to temporarily modify the occupant sizes. If you need some more step-by-step instructions to do this, no doubt someone would be able to walk you through it if you're motivated. It would be nice too if you'd consider releasing them back to the community for others to make use of. @T Wrecks would probably be OK with that if you asked.

Sorry, I just came back home and can't really focus on pretty much anything right now - the only thing I wanted to leave here immediately for you, @JimC, is that you are definitely very welcome to make any modifications you like and redistribute freely, as long as you don't parade around and claim you had done the original lots, too. No need to ask me first - I give stuff to the community for everyone to enjoy as they please. If people tweak my stuff to their liking and maybe make it more attractive for like-minded folks in the process, all the better.

Nice Tina avatar, btw!

[JimC 159]

Thank you both for your responses! You must promise to be gentle with me because I am very new to all of this.

So, I've put those addon sets to the side for the moment because I find them a little difficult to understand, and also because no building appears in SC4PIM when I open those. On the other hand, the IRM W2W set is easier to understand, and a little picture of a building pops up in PIM when I load these files.

So, I want to CAMify this fella: "IRM W2W Willmott Widget Assembly". I right clicked in the bottom most menu, pressed recompute, said that it had a filling degree of around 0.9, which made the jobs go from 288 jobs --> 890 jobs. Then, the lotconfig box came up and I accepted the stages it suggested (namely from 2 --> 7, or 3 --> 8, depending on the lot). Then I saved the SC4desc and the SC4lot files.

Is this what I am supposed to do? I am happy to convert the IRM W2W pack to CAM files and then submit them for upload if that hasn't been done already, as long as I am on the right track. 

EDIT: also, I see down the bottom left that the building comes from simcity_1.dat. I'm not editing that file though am I? I assume that only contains the model file, and that I am editing the SC4desc and SC4lot files.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

This sounds about right to me. I'm not too familiar with either CAM or PIM-X, but the list of properties shown in the bottom right window clearly belongs to a building exemplar, i.e. the file that holds all the properties related to a building plus a reference to the building model it's supposed to use (called Resource Key Type 1), but does not alter the referenced building model in any way at all.

[rsc204 21,866]

1 hour ago, JimC said:

So, I've put those addon sets to the side for the moment because I find them a little difficult to understand, and also because no building appears in SC4PIM when I open those. On the other hand, the IRM W2W set is easier to understand, and a little picture of a building pops up in PIM when I load these files.

Just bear in mind that every lot must have a building upon it. But how that really works is simply that this item upon the lot links to the Buildings Exemplar. So when you select a Building in PIM-X, what you are seeing is the Buildings Exemplar or properties of the Building upon the lot.

In your screenshot, you can see a property Resource Key Type # (where # is usually 0 or 1). This is simply a string of three 8 digit IDs, or the TGI of the model to display where this building appears on the lot itself. However, whilst every lot must have a Building upon it, because otherwise there would be no actual properties for the lot. That Buildings Exemplar does not itself need to link to an actual model. Those you see without one are either because PIM-X did not load the model or because an invisible model was used in the lot's creation. That last option is fairly common, but functionally it works fine, instead of using one model as a building, it's invisible (to keep the properties we need), but Props are used instead for the visual items on the lot.

I know it's a little complex, but getting your head around the correlation between a Lot, Buildings Exemplar and linked models is vital to really understanding this sort of modding. So if there is something here I've not explained well enough, please do ask for clarification.

Filling degree is basically the amount of a model that encompasses the "Bounding Box", i.e. the rectangle around the model. SC4 models are generally larger than the actual part we see, because the LOD needs to cover every extremity of a model to work. A LOD is basically the 3D model (in SC4 terms), the object you see is simply the textures mapped to that LOD. It's much simpler to make this is a simple rectangle, than craft every edge to the actual edges of the model. Put simply, the LOD tells the game how big an item is, but if the building doesn't completely fill the LOD, that will end in incorrect values. If we judge the model takes up 90% of the LOD, i.e. a filling degree of .9, using such figures gives us a more accurate figure to calculate both the number of jobs and growth stage to use.

3 hours ago, JimC said:

I right clicked in the bottom most menu, pressed recompute, said that it had a filling degree of around 0.9, which made the jobs go from 288 jobs --> 890 jobs. Then, the lotconfig box came up and I accepted the stages it suggested (namely from 2 --> 7, or 3 --> 8, depending on the lot). Then I saved the SC4desc and the SC4lot files.

So as per my last post, you can see the correct values for # Jobs and Growth Stage were pretty far off those for CAM. Certainly this is the correct workflow, just bear in mind different creators work in different ways. So whilst here the Building is most likely in the SC4desc file and the Lot in the SC4lot file, that won't always be the case. You don't need to worry about this too much with PIM-X, provided you save each page where you modify something, it will update those changes to the right file. Just note that you could have all files in one .DAT file, or for Plop lots, the Buildings Exemplar is usually embedded into the SC4Lot file.

3 hours ago, JimC said:

EDIT: also, I see down the bottom left that the building comes from simcity_1.dat. I'm not editing that file though am I? I assume that only contains the model file, and that I am editing the SC4desc and SC4lot files.

So this is pretty much what I mentioned at the beginning of the post. The actual file with the properties for the Building, the Buildings Exemplar is a separate file, but via the RTK value it links to a model elsewhere, in this case inside the games files. Of course that doesn't have to be the case, the model could come from any file, or even be invisible. The important thing to know is that a Buildings Exemplar is NOT the model, it just links to one. Similarly a model is not a Buildings Exemplar. An SC4Model is just a model, we can make it a Building, a Prop, a Flora item, lots of things. To do this we make an Exemplar of the appropriate type, which links to that model. This way, with only one model, we can re-purpose it many times over for different uses. For example, we could make 5 Buildings Exemplars, all with different properties, but would only ever need one model.

At this point, I'll come back to those invisible models and how to work with them. From a PIM-X perspective, you won't see the LOD/Bounding Box, nor a model within it, so how then would you calculate the filling degree? It gets worse, because there is no model, likely the Occupant Size will not be accurate either, complicating matters. So in your screenshot, the Occupant Size is set to 41m x 38m x 57m, that's the size of the LOD/Bounding Box. This value is part of the process of creating a model, so should be automatically populated. When you apply the filling degree, of say .9 or 90%, PIM-X takes the bounding box size, reduces it by 10% and can work out the other stuff for you. But for an invisible model, the Occupant Size is going to be either really small, or set at a default that's very wrong. You need to ideally look at the lot and make some estimates of how big the actual parts where people might work would total in size. Then you can adjust that later with the filling degree until you feel the figures are right. Comparing such lots with similar sized-ones, will help you to see if your values are going to be similar or not. This method is unlikely to be 100% perfect, but you should be able to find a nice balance with a little trial and error.

So I'll use the Building Named "IRM_I-M_Open Metal Building" as an example for this. The default occupant size is listed as 2.00000000,1.00000000,2.00000000 or 2m x 1m x 2m. If I right click on the Building, then select "Open all Lots using this Building/Family", it will open all the Lots using this buildings exemplar. In this case, that covers 4 actual lots, because many lots can re-use the same Buildings Exemplar. If we open all four lots, you can see how the actual Open Metal Shed is the key building on this lot, so we should set our values based on this common item:

It's not just Buildings that have an Occupant Size, all Props do too. See on the right above all those yellow rectangles?, those come from the Occupant Size used in a Prop Exemplar. Which is just a set of Properties that relate to a Prop, which links to a model. A word of caution, because again a creator can alter these values, so you can't assume they are correct. There are good reasons for this, but here we can see the Bounding Box of the shed is pretty accurate, so we can get the Occupant Size of the shed from the Prop:

In PIM-X's Lot Editor, under Lot, here we can view the Props upon the lot. Take a note of the name of the Prop in question, then in PIM-X's main interface, we can find this Prop's Properties (Prop Exemplar):

That gives us an Occupant Size of 32m x 8.7m x 16m. Not also how as a Prop, we now see the Bounding Box, so we can decide on a good filling degree, probably .95 or .9 I'd say, but I always adjust this a little until the # jobs seems right. This takes a bit of time to get a feel for, but if you are going to be altering a lot of these, that hopefully will become more obvious.

So now you return to the Building itself, where you can input these values. VERY IMPORTANT: before you save the Building, ensure you put the original Occupant Size back. We are ONLY using it to temporarily calculate the correct values, keeping the altered Occupant Size can lead to a number of annoying problems. It's not a terrible idea to open a spreadsheet, take a lot of all the changes you will need, then use that as a reference. But at the very least, keep a backup of the original unmodified files, in case you need to refer back to the original values or make a mistake.

Also, pay no heed to the File Names shown in these images, I've DATPacked both the IRM mod and all my Dependency files. I don't have access to my usual files, so I couldn't switch to unpacked ones for taking pictures. But note for this to work, PIM-X would need to load the relevant dependency containing the Prop, in this case one of the JES files, I couldn't tell you which right at this moment. Just holler if you get stuck or need anything explained further .

[JimC 159]

That is an exquisitely informative post. Thank you very much. It's near my bed time so I won't embark upon this journey tonight, but I look forward to giving this a try tomorrow, that's for sure.

[CT14 2,486]

Chiming in to ask, what are the consequences of not restoring the original, smaller occupant size? Let's say you had  8,1,8 for the blank vs 8,12,24 for the size of a BAT. What else does this affect? Thanks.

[rsc204 21,866]

The problem is that the Occupant Size is embedded into the LotConfigurations Exemplar when an object is placed on a lot. If you don't then remove and replace that object, the actual Occupant Size will not be refreshed. Since you can't do this in PIM-X for a building (OK you can in the Maxis Lot Editor), it can lead to a mismatch.

Ultimately the main risk is creating an Immortal Lot, which is far from ideal. You can edit the values as Hex, if you find the correct LotConfigPropertyLotObject and edit the relevant Reps. But I fear that's already getting way out of hand for the average modder. Especially since, the original values used are there for a reason. You don't want an invisible model, to reserve huge chucks of space on a lot, especially since that pretty much prevents adding MMPs on them. It's simply a work-around to get PIM-X to calculate the values, based on the actual model. Since the model is used as a prop though, there is nothing to be gained from keeping it's occupant size for the building as well.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Another downside of using an invisible blank as the actual model (to which the building exemplar relates) and a prop as the visible building (but otherwise totally inert) is that the construction scaffold that you see when the lot grows will adapt to the dimensions of the invisible blank. Once the construction time has elapsed, the visible building will then pop up out of nowhere.

If you mod the invisible blank to the same dimensions as the visible building [prop], you can alleviate this - purely visual - issue to some degree. The scaffold will then grow upwards, and when it disappears, a proportionately sized building will pop up there. However, you will still not see how the building gets pushed out of the ground.

Mind you, all this is really nothing important at all and, hence, nothing you should be worried about right now. Chances are it'll only confuse you if you attempt to take it all in at once. I guess you'll be better off focusing on the key points for now and bearing in mind that it is generally preferable to "use the building as the building", i.e. make sure that the building exemplar relates to what you'd say is the key structure on the lot.

EDIT

When it comes to occupants, you will probably have noticed that Maxis buildings don't always seem to follow a stringent and obvious formula. They are inconsistently scaled and, in many cases, inconsistently modded. Still, this doesn't break the game. Therefore you also have some wiggle room and don't need to be afraid of breaking anything if a stat is a few numbers "off", if that can even be defined. You'll typically have a rather wide corridor of acceptable values, and in most cases there is not a hard limit between "still OK" and "no longer OK".

This means that eyeballing occupant numbers is definitely a possibility. I typically do that. I'll plop the candidate between simlarly sized buildings of the same type and try to find a suitable number. Then I base the other stats on this eyeballed occupant number. Even there, a few gallons of water consumption more or less or twenty Simoleons tax income more or less won't matter much in the end. What matters is whether waste generated is 4-6 tons or 20 tons for a building that will grow often, for example.

In my old plugins folder, all BAT stats were eyeballed and corrected by me loosely based on Maxis references. That stuff was far from exact, and yet all curves in game were smooth and without any odd phenomena. No sudden waste plague, no insanely high or low consumption, no inexplicable pollution hotspots, no peaks and plunges in average tax income during city growth, all smooth sailing.

To wrap it up and as a word of encouragement: Try to get the basics right, but take it easy otherwise - you're neither juggling with nitroglycerine nor calculating the landing trajectory of a Mars rover.

[JimC 159]

What happens when the prop has been duplicated/triplicated on the lot? 

Say, the building prop has dimensions 5 wide x 50 long x 5 vertical.  When I go to input the occupant size in the building exemplar, do I say the occupant size is 10 wide x 50 long x 5 vertical, I.e. two boxes sitting next to each other?

 

Also, what happens if one building prop is taller than the other? Is the filling degree calculated based on a bounding box that encompasses all of the building props within (i.e. a box based on the three axes i've highlighted in blue below)?

 

Thank you!

[CT14 2,486]

Adding the dimensions is what I have done to arrive at sensible figures, yep. If one prop is taller than the other, you can average the height of the two.

It's all just a guesstimate as T Wrecks said - if you examine Occupancy Size exemplars on Maxis lots you will find they didn't do a very consistent job of measuring their own bats.

As for filling degree, I leave it alone but perhaps someone can tell us what is best there.

 

[rsc204 21,866]

5 hours ago, JimC said:

What happens when the prop has been duplicated/triplicated on the lot? 

Since we're manually inputting the Occupant Sizes, if you don't adjust that to include all the props/models used, it won't reflect that actual usage. So indeed, simply trying to adjust the Occupant Size to account for all three (or however many there are), would be the best solution in these cases. If you wanted to be super-accurate, although it's probably overkill, you could take the exact dimensions from each model, then calculate the total width/height/depth for the whole. But, simply multiplying one value is probably going to be very similar.

5 hours ago, JimC said:

Also, what happens if one building prop is taller than the other? Is the filling degree calculated based on a bounding box that encompasses all of the building props within (i.e. a box based on the three axes i've highlighted in blue below)?

The Filling Degree is nothing to do with the Bounding Box, it's a factor of the Occupant Size. So if the correct dimensions are not included, that will mess up the calculations.

Quote

The following taken from this post on SC4D (sadly images are no more):

Whenever a building exemplar is created in SC4 PIM, the first thing I recommend doing is right-clicking among the properties and select "Recompute properties as..." This allows you to enter the building's filling degree, which is the ratio that the building fills the box outlined in yellow in the picture above. By default, the filling degree is 0.50 (50%), but that has to be individually set for every building exemplar created.

The difference here is that we are manually setting the Occupant Size, but otherwise this holds true:

To estimate the filling degree for this, let's look at the filling degrees separately for the three coordinate axes:

• The width of the building fills the box completely, giving it a filling of 1.00.
• The depth of the building fills the box to some 80-85% plus the small building in front, so let's say 0.85.
• The height of the building also fills the box to some 80%, i.e.. 0.80.

The total filling degree would thus be 1.00 × 0.85 × 0.80 = 0.68.

So, we could do this for each component part, then use the average value of the sum of them, giving us the right Filling Degree for multiple buildings.

In this case however, SimGoober wanted the basement to be taken into account as well. Thus, we increased the filling degree vertically from 0.80 to 1.00, giving us a filling degree of 1.00 × 0.85 × 1.00 = 0.85, or 85%.

All properties are recomputed based on this new filling degree.

But I hope you can see how filling degree can be calculated for each component, then totalled to give a single value to use.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

See? Now you know why I eyeball the occupant values.

In this particular case, I may have chosen a number for the 1x4 single version first, which I then simply multiplied for the other lots.

[JimC 159]

Hang on a tic, now I'm confused.

Filling degree has nothing to do with the bounding box? What's the difference between an LOD and a bounding box? I thought that the LOD = bounding box = the basis upon which you estimate the degree of filling?

Why couldn't I use a cube of roughly this size (which is meant to be a sum of the three individual prop sizes, taking in the tallest, widest and longest point of the three props) as a basis to calculate the filling degree, which I would estimate at approx 0.5. Then I let PIM-X work its magic before resetting the occupant size for the building before saving.

[rsc204 21,866]

3 hours ago, JimC said:

Filling degree has nothing to do with the bounding box?

Sorry, probably not the best wording on my part. What I was trying to convey is that you are adjusting the Occupant Size, so the LOD doesn't factor in here. Manually inputting the Occupant Size compensates for this, but it's an important distinction.

Usually the Occupant Size is automatically generated from the size of the LOD, this is related to 3D modelling and necessary for every model. That LOD must encompass every part of the model. PIM-X uses these figures to set up the Bounding Box, but the specific property that determines it's size is Occupant Size. It should be noted that the Occupant Size does not have to match the actual size of the LOD, because we have the option to manually alter this value.

So the Filling Degree only applies to the Occupant Size for calculating stats, however under the default settings, that would match the LOD, just not for examples where the Occupant Size had been manually set.

3 hours ago, JimC said:

Why couldn't I use a cube of roughly this size (which is meant to be a sum of the three individual prop sizes, taking in the tallest, widest and longest point of the three props) as a basis to calculate the filling degree, which I would estimate at approx 0.5. Then I let PIM-X work its magic before resetting the occupant size for the building before saving.

Absolutely that's exactly how you can get working figures. So I think you've got the gist of things, but I threw you a curve ball along the way.

[JimC 159]

Hah. Thank God. I thought I was getting the hang of it then I was like wha?