Turning CAM buildings into non CAM

[monkeywater 910]

How simple is this to do in ilive's reader?  Is it as simple as editing the growth state parameter?

 

 

[Spamoidutout 124]

Interesting question. I wish every creator offered a non-CAM version and as it's not the case I'd also like to know how easy or hard it is to go back to the "vanilla" stages.

[Psiman 177]

I've only skimmed the CAM manuals so far, but it says it changes the amount of jobs for various buildings.

[rsc204 21,808]

CAM supports not only additional growth stages (9-15 for Res/Com, 4-7 for Farms & 4-10 for Industrial), but also increases in the maximum demands too. I believe that it goes from 6,000 to 18,000. Any lots/buildings using the CAM-only growth stages or with more than 6,000 residents/jobs, simply won't grow without CAM installed.

So whilst in theory you can just take anything over the regular growth stages and give it the highest non-CAM growth stage, in addition to capping the Capacity Satisfied at 6,000. Those changes will mean these lots will now work without CAM, but that doesn't mean such buildings will work properly, because the properties may not be ideal.

Just as with addiing any other custom content into you plugins folder, getting the stats right, such that everything melds together, is not always so simple. One of the key principles of PIM-X, was to provide a standard for doing this, based on the Occupant Size / Filling degree of a model, then consistently applying that calculation to the Lot Size to calculate the ideal Growth Stage.

It should be possible to re-make the properties by opening the Buildings Exemplar, then clicking "Recompute Properties As X" (where x is the building type). You have to manually select if you want a "CAM" stage, so doing this process normally, should keep working values for the vanilla game.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

To make non-CAM versions, I just truncate the stage to 8. (and also truncate the residents/jobs if there's that many)

It's true that the stage system is broken at stage 8 in a non-CAM game, but that's what a person is asking for by asking for a non-CAM version.

For lots that are naturally stage 8 or lower, the CAM versions fit into a non-CAM game even better than the default Maxis lots do.