Desirabilty Influence by Growable Buildings

[Eusebio Ptolomeu 24]

I was wondering if it was possible to alter some configurations in the game, so growable buildings could influence the desirability around then as well (like parks and other amenities do). For example, a high-wealth mansion could impact the surrounding desirability data by making it more appealing for other high-wealth residences, and less appealing for low-wealth sims. The idea is that, this way, you would group sims based on their wealth more: large concentrations of low wealth sims, aka slums, would be an undesirable place for the rich to live or open it's bussiness. I think you could even simulate the process of gentrification for neighborhoods this way: take a low wealth block, and improve the desirabilty factors around it (parks, healthcare) making it more appealing for medium and high-wealth residents; even though they dislike the idea of living side-by-side from their less gifted fellow sims, the influence of amenities should be able to overcome this, so more and more upper class would make it's way there. However, the R$$ and R$$$ buildings that would grow would create that negative desirabilty for R$ sims around, perharps "convincing" some of them to leave the area.
 

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Such a property actually seems to exist, but it appears to be undertuned to the point of not being noticeable at all in the default game.

I also remember it has been discussed here in late 2018, but I suck really hard at finding threads again. I'm paging @CorinaMarie because she may have been involved as well and, unlike me, she seems to have a better memory than a goldfish.

However, what you suggest should basically be possible. I've been playing with that thought myself for quite a while. It might be hard to strike a healthy balance, though.

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

@Eusebio Ptolomeu

From the modding I've done I believe your idea is absolutely possible, but would be a long, involved task of editing some 200 or so residential exemplars and that'd be just for the Maxis vanilla homes. Also, as @T Wrecks indicates, it'd take an enormous amount of testing to strike the right balance for all occasions. The questions would be: How much time you are willing to put into such a project? And how familiar you are with iLive's Reader?

I believe the NKO setting puts one in similar control for creating slums, middle class areas, and wealthy neighborhoods all without the need to toggle any of them historical. As mayor you can then also spur gentrification either by bulldozing homes in a slum once the area has better desirability or be more creative and cut off the Sim's access to jobs causing the homes to abandon and then re-connecting roads and seeing who moves in.

The NKO sets one single toggle which tells the game to not Kick Out a lower wealth property with a higher wealth. It was first discovered by @J_McSim and mentioned in his topic apparently anomalous exemplar reveals new type. Oddly, IMO, it received almost no attention at all until I started poking around and made the mod. It is the holy grail of the game if you play it as a simulation rather than as an artist painting a city with ploppables.

Some other places where NKO has been discussed are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

And the file for direct download is: Cori's_No_Kickout_Lower_Wealth_CAMpatible.dat

[Eusebio Ptolomeu 24]

Since it iss possible to apply for growable buildings parameters that normally comes from plopable ones, is it possible to give a "parking garage" effect as well? Like a private parking garage lot that grows as a commercial service building, but it affects the transit kind of like the public parking garage?

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

13 hours ago, Eusebio Ptolomeu said:

Like a private parking garage lot that grows as a commercial service building, but it affects the transit kind of like the public parking garage?

While I'd never considered this, it does appear to be doable. I created a Stage 1, CS$ growable and added the following properties:

 

Then in game I let it grow and set up my streets such that Sims would have to travel thru it to get to the bus stop to go to work. I gave the garage one single job opening so at least one of those two cars is parking there and then walking to the bus.

^ Ofc, it's a no frills lot just to test the concept.

 

And here's the file if you want to experiment with it: CS$1_1x1_Growable Garage_49c4d9f4.SC4Lot

[Eusebio Ptolomeu 24]

10 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

While I'd never considered this, it does appear to be doable. I created a Stage 1, CS$ growable and added the following properties:

 

Then in game I let it grow and set up my streets such that Sims would have to travel thru it to get to the bus stop to go to work.

^ Ofc, it's a no frills lot just to test the concept.

 

And here's the file if you want to experiment with it: CS$1_1x1_Growable Garage_49c4d9f4.SC4Lot

HOLY JESUS, THIS IS ACTUALLY POSSIBLE?!?! O_O I'm going to play with this in the future, but for now, I want to focus on the desirability side.

I've been messing around with the iLive Reader, as you suggested. I've discovered some properties that I would like to see how they work. So, apparently, there is no direct way to specify the desirabilty for each wealth-level (you can't have a place undesirable for low and high-income sims, but desirable for medium-income, as far as I know). But I did notice some properties relating to land value, and they might work. 
First I would tinker with the "Land Value Range" to specify suitable ranges for each developer type (lower values for low-wealth sims, high values for medium-wealth, etc.). Then, I would increase the "Land Value Effect", which, according to sc4 Devotion, increases the influence land value has on the desirability, so out-of-range values would be undesirable for the developer. The only thing missing is a property wich allows me to define the influence the existence of a building has on land value. There might be something like this, because I'm sure buildings like parks increase the land value of the surrounding areas as well.

What would be great right now would be a list explaining the properties. For example, the "Land Value Desirability IDs" might be useful, if I knew what exactly it does. Do you know some list where each property is explained more in depth? The sc4Devotion is good, but I get some ambiguous descriptions sometimes
http://www.wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Exemplar_properties

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

21 minutes ago, Eusebio Ptolomeu said:

There might be something like this, because I'm sure buildings like parks increase the land value of the surrounding areas as well.

My guess would be to use that same park effects property and set the value to a negative. You'll need to use the hex value in 2's complement for that. For example you'd use 0xFFFFFFFF to be decimal minus one, 0xFFFFFFFE to be decimal minus two and so on. I use this site for the conversions: RapidTables Hex to Decimal converter

One thing odd in Reader is even if it expects a 16 digit hex number you need to enter it as 8 otherwise if you put in 0XFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF it'll convert that to 0XFFFFFFFFEFFFFFFF and be all goofy. Just check after you enter your hex number and apply it that the value shown doesn't have that E stuck in the middle.

 

That Devotion's Wiki page you found is the basic list. Other than that I copy the property name I'm curious about, add quotes around it, and paste it into Google. Many times that brings up an in depth discussion here on ST or over at Devotion (or both). I don't know of any better way.

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

I've tested the concept now and I can report it does influence the Land Value (and correspondingly the Desirability).
 

First I plopped a bunch of Open Grass Area around the original Growable Garage:

 

Then I ran enough time for the Transient Aura Affect to wear off and here's the Land Value view:

 

I then bulldozed the building, saved and exited:

 

Then I added a Park Effect of minus 4,096 (0xFFFFF000) over 3 cells:

 

Load the game, let it re-grow, and run some time. Here's the Land Value now:

 

In conclusion, this idea is perfectly tenable. It's just how much time do you want to spend modifying every single Residential (and/or Industrial (and/or Commercial)) Building Exemplar and what value and radius will achieve your end goal?

File if you want to test with it: CS$1_1x1_Growable Garage_Neg4096Park.SC4Lot (Note: Use one or the other. Don't put both in Plugins cause the IID is the same.)

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

Oh. Another idea to reduce the number of exemplars which would need changing might be to put the negative park effect in a Cohort.

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

Yes, it's me yet again.

Turns out the Cohort idea is the way to go and this whole thing now becomes relatively simple.

Before:

 

After:

 

So, all I did was add the 4,096 negative Park Effect (over 5 cells this time iirc) to the Master R$ Cohort and then added a positive one of 256 over 5 to the Master R$$$ Cohort. I left the R$$ alone in this test.

Here's the file: Residential Master Cohorts.dat

I included all the sub-category Cohorts as well in case you want to test with varying degrees of positive or negative for any of the residential families rather than all in one fell swoop per wealth level. Be sure to remove the Park Effect from the Master Cohort if you start testing the sub-category Residential Cohorts. And, ofc, I've no idea what values you really ought to use so trial and error will be the way to go. Also, remember to bulldoze any grown buildings between value tweaks.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Superb testing! It's basically the same modding that SimGoober and @madhatter106 have already used for commercial buildings with NIMBY effect. I don't recall this type of modding ever being used for residential, though.

Wasn't there a property somewhere in the Simcity_1.dat that defined desirability effects of RCI/wealth categories in general, though?

[Eusebio Ptolomeu 24]

1 hour ago, T Wrecks said:

Superb testing! It's basically the same modding that SimGoober and @madhatter106 have already used for commercial buildings with NIMBY effect. I don't recall this type of modding ever being used for residential, though.

Wasn't there a property somewhere in the Simcity_1.dat that defined desirability effects of RCI/wealth categories in general, though?

From what I've seen so far, you can differentiate desirability for residential and commercial sims: park effects basically affects residences, landmark effects affect the commerce, so you can diferentiate between one and the other. However, I could not find a way to specify the desirability based on the wealth type of the developer. If something is good for high-wealth sims, it's good for medium and low-wealth as well. Hence my idea to use the Land Value as a propertie to differentiate between them

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

2 hours ago, T Wrecks said:

Wasn't there a property somewhere in the Simcity_1.dat that defined desirability effects of RCI/wealth categories in general, though?

Looks like it'd be these general properties:

 

Which can be found in the Developer Exemplars for R$, R$$, and R$$$:

 

Also, @Psiman did some interesting testing in Modding / Recalibrating Land Value which might be useful.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

16 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

File if you want to test with it: CS$1_1x1_Growable Garage_Neg4096Park.SC4Lot

I recommend changing the transit switch entry cost to some non-zero value before finishing. Driving through a parking garage should slow you down, not teleport you (unless you have redefined "speed bump").

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

6 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

I recommend changing the transit switch entry cost to some non-zero value before finishing. Driving through a parking garage should slow you down, not teleport you (unless you have redefined "speed bump").

There're several aspects of that lot which would need tweaked for actual use in the game. As a proof of concept, however, it functions as intended.

[Eusebio Ptolomeu 24]

I'm changing the values of the Land Value Effect property right now. If I understood correctly, there are 36 values to set here, alternating between the local Land Value, and how much this local value means for the desirabilty, is that correct? What is the range for the desirabilty value in the game, is it 0-255? Because the disclaimer says we can use values as big as 10,000,00 here

Based on that, I created a basic line graph in Excel that shows the bahviour each wealth type has with each Land Value... value. The behaviour is as expected, with Low Wealth sims favouring cheaper lands, and High Wealth sims doing the opposite. However, the ammount where each value affect desirability seems to be pretty low (I believe a maximum ammount of 10 doesn't impact that much in the final desirabilty score). Also, if I want my idea to work, I'll have to put some negative numbers here, so High-Wealth sims don't mix with Low-Wealth. I should leave a little interlap beyween 2 wealth levels, though, so we can have a Land Value which is acceptable for Low-Wealth sims and some Medium-Wealth, so the transition doesn't need to be too discrete (sometimes you can have a little more wealthy family in a poor neighborhood). Another thing to look for is to not make the Land Value Effect so high that it would overcome the influence of parks, schools and other amenities, otherwise no amount of public police would ever improve a poor area.

  Edited January 18, 2019 by Eusebio Ptolomeu  
Just to add a few things I did so far

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

15 hours ago, Eusebio Ptolomeu said:

If I understood correctly, there are 36 values to set here, alternating between the local Land Value, and how much this local value means for the desirabilty, is that correct?

It certainly seems right and based on your graph it's really the only logical interpretation.

Do note that in many cases when Maxis provides the options for additional repetitions of variables you can have more or less of them than they used. In this case you would add or remove in pairs.

 

15 hours ago, Eusebio Ptolomeu said:

What is the range for the desirabilty value in the game, is it 0-255? Because the disclaimer says we can use values as big as 10,000,00 here

(Edit: I just realized I got completely side tracked with Land Value and answered about that. Just ignore me.)

Yes. And maybe no. Look up a couple a properties from the Land Value Effect (0x87cd6340) to see Land Value Range (0x87cd6333) which is set to 0x00, 0xFF (0 to 255 decimal). Those variables are Uint8 meaning an unsigned integer of 8 bits which can only hold a maximum value of 11111111 in binary which is the 255 decimal. However, the Wiki notes also say (0, 0 disables) so it seems like Maxis put in options to have a higher range based on the Land Value Effect you are working with.

In that Land Value Effect property you'll see those are Float32 which means a floating point decimal and that can handle numbers between -3.4E+38 to +3.4E+38 with about 7 decimal digits of accuracy. The disclaimer in Reader saying -10,000,000 to 10,000,000 is likely just iLive's way of saying it can handle big numbers and would be referring to what the variable type can hold rather than a range that Maxis used throughout all settings.

Also notice the Land Value Use Intrinsic (0x87cd633f) which is a Boolean size meaning it only accepts 0 or 1 to represent False or True respectively. I would guess if you set the Range to 0,0 and then Use Intrinsic to True the game would start considering a full range of values rather than topping out at 255 for the maximum. Keep in mind making such a change could have an influence on a few zillion (and 3) other variables the game uses and could have unpredictable consequences.

 

15 hours ago, Eusebio Ptolomeu said:

Also, if I want my idea to work, I'll have to put some negative numbers here,

That should be perfectly acceptable by the game.
 

Your research and testing could prove quite insightful. Good luck!

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

So, I got curious about something. (Click an image then use the right and left arrow keys to toggle between the images for the best visual effect.)

I picked one of my city tiles which already shows a range in Land Value:

 

Here's the Maxis default Land Value Data View overlay:

 

Then I modded said view (0x4a0b6802) such that each breakpoint in the Color Ramp is double the original value so instead of interpolating between points in the range of 0 to 255 (decimal) it now goes from 0 to 510. (Do note that this is not changing any of the land value itself, but merely the scale of the color representation of said values.)

 

Then I plopped some Open Grass Area parks in place of one of the cow pasture farms and let time run for the Transient Aura Effect to trigger:

 

And the zoomed in pic of said area where I replaced every field cell with park:

Spoiler

 

This mod might be useful if tweaking Land Value Range (0x87cd6333) to be 0,0 and Land Value Use Intrinsic (0x87cd633f) to True.

Land Value Data View - Dbl Color Ramp Range.dat