"Where's my water?" and other stupid questions

[Noobville Mayor 62]

Ok, here's the final rundown.  Sorry it took so long.  IRL stuff and all.

 

Air Pollution DataView:  This is great.  I can see all various degrees in polution where I could not before.  This one is ready to go.

Traffic Congestion and Traffic Volume DataView:  I played for a day with out these again they are such an improvement.  But I have a suggestion.  I can really see the Maxis red when I wasn't using these mods and I'm having a little trouble with the blues which is weird.  So can we use the Maxis red for the max value (300% in Traffic Volume), take out the medium dark blue (100% in Traffic Volume) and move everything down to fill in the missing blue?  On both?  I really think the bright red is still helpful in this case and shouldn't blend with the next two below it.  Seriously though, this one really helps a lot as is.  But I think the red would make it perfect.

Zone Manager v1.2:  Yeah, that works.  My color memory as I move across the map is pretty poor but these are distinct enough shades that it really, really helps.  It took a little practice but I don't need to query these like I used to.  This is ready to go.  But I am curious about replacing the underlying textures.  That could make it better.

Traffic Volume as Bar Graph:  Much like the Jobs & Pop was, I'm torn with this one.  The time data is just so useful.  And I can't think of anything to replace to have both line and bar.  They all have their uses.  It's a bit of a hassle but I can isolate the data if I can't tell which is which.  The bar graph is easier, definitely.  But it comes at a cost.  You might want to include this as optional but I'm not sure I will keep it in my plugins.

Job & Pops as Bar (replaces Ed by Age):  Brilliant solution.  Who needs Ed by Age?  Also ready to go. 

 

Super Thanks again, Cori.  Great work for a great cause.  I hope it hasn't been too much trouble and sorry I dawdled. 

More stupid questions to come.  Lots of them.  I've been reading about load order and datapacking and ohhhh I'll have questions.  I'm glad to have you guys.  Thanks.

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

9 hours ago, Noobville Mayor said:

So can we use the Maxis red for the max value (300% in Traffic Volume), take out the medium dark blue (100% in Traffic Volume) and move everything down to fill in the missing blue?  On both?

Yep, we can do that. The whole idea is to get them tweaked however they work best for you. So, I've removed the color at 100%, moved the others down to fill in, and then added pure red as the highest congestion.

Here's the Traffic Congestion: Deuteranopia Dataview Traffic Congestion v1.2a.dat

 

When I convert that to Deut using the Oracle it seems to me the highest congestion is then less intense in color than the next two below that. And, ofc, if this works best for you that's fine. However, as a second option I'd like you to also test this next one. It has the same blue removed and red inserted as the 3rd most heavy congestion.

Deuteranopia Dataview Traffic Congestion v1.2b.dat

 

And here (using the 1.2b version) I've labeled them using the numbers 1, 2, and 3. for the top 3 levels of congestion with 3 being the most:

 

Here's the same concept for the Traffic Volume with two options:

Deuteranopia Dataview Traffic Volume Test v1.1a.dat

 

Deuteranopia Dataview Traffic Volume Test v1.1b.dat

Labeled:

 

 

9 hours ago, Noobville Mayor said:

But I am curious about replacing the underlying textures.

I tried them as pure white, lighter gray, and then finally darker gray. I believe making them darker is better. Atm this is a separate file which you just add to your Plugins and it changes all the underlying zone textures. Should this be better I can add it into the Zoning Manager .dat file, but for now I'll leave it separate in case it needs more tweaking:

Deuteranopia Zoning Underlays v1.0.dat

 

9 hours ago, Noobville Mayor said:

Super Thanks again, Cori.  Great work for a great cause.  I hope it hasn't been too much trouble and sorry I dawdled.

You're welcome again. Tis my pleasure if'n I can make the game more enjoyable for you. And no worries about taking time to test (and do RL things). When I'm not working on this I have other projects to occupy me.

[Noobville Mayor 62]

A lot of this is really coming down to pros and cons.  Here's my thing with the red, I can see primary colors and we all develop psychological associations to color regardless of how we perceive them.  Red means danger and it really stands out in that color scheme for me making it easiest to ID the highest congestion in the city.  I thought it would be easier.  Yet when I look at your images above I'm reminded of a big problem I have which is the map.  The red really disappears on the green background.  The Yellow works much better.  In fact I may have been wrong about the red altogether.  If it doesn't work well in the top slot, it doesn't make much sense to put a color in the middle somewhere that I can't really see in the map.  Let me play around with these but I fear the first option may have been best.  Color is so confusing for me.  Thanks for being patient.

 

The Zoning underlays look really, really good here but I just can't turn on SC4 today.  Maybe tonight but not tomorrow.   So maybe Wednesday LOL.  

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

39 minutes ago, Noobville Mayor said:

Here's my thing with the red, I can see primary colors and we all develop psychological associations to color regardless of how we perceive them.

And this is where I'm at a disadvantage using the Color Oracle. What I perceive as a dull, brownish yellow (via the Oracle) seems less intense to me, but it makes sense how you'd know what red is even if it looks different to me.

 

43 minutes ago, Noobville Mayor said:

Yet when I look at your images above I'm reminded of a big problem I have which is the map.  The red really disappears on the green background.  The Yellow works much better.  In fact I may have been wrong about the red altogether.  If it doesn't work well in the top slot, it doesn't make much sense to put a color in the middle somewhere that I can't really see in the map

It really comes down to what will be the most useful to you. ( Unlike your ex, I want you to have what looks the best.  )

 

45 minutes ago, Noobville Mayor said:

Let me play around with these but I fear the first option may have been best.

Take all the time you need. I presume you are also testing in your own cities in addition to the sample one I attached a page or so ago. You can use the route query tool to see the actual numbers for the traffic and see how that relates to whichever color scheme you are testing.

 

47 minutes ago, Noobville Mayor said:

The Zoning underlays look really, really good here but I just can't turn on SC4 today.  Maybe tonight but not tomorrow.   So maybe Wednesday LOL.

Cool. At least for me using the Color Oracle I believe they will appear more distinctly different with the exception of Agriculture vs Medium Industrial.

With changing the zoning underlays I notice how those become more different in the non-deut view with the farm zone being more orange. Then using the Oracle the red of the orange disappears and it loses the difference from the medium industrial. I'm going to tweak on that now and see if I can get it to show a more distinct difference deuteranopialy speaking.

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

Zone Manager Update

I believe this combination is even better than before:

Actual colors:

 

Color Oracle simulation:

 

New file: Deuteranopia Zone Manager v1.3.dat (Remove the 1.2 version.) Also keep the Deuteranopia Zoning Underlays v1.0.dat posted above. (And be sure to toggle the zones dataview on and off for this to take effect.)

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

Jobs and Population Line and Bar Graph Updates

For consistency I've altered the colors for residential in both of these:

Deuteranopia Jobs & Pop Line Graph v1.2.dat

^ These will still need you to toggle some off to make any real sense of it same as I do. (Also, you might not notice much difference because the prior version had 3 different shades of gray so the pink to red-ish will prolly look about the same.)

 

Deuteranopia Jobs & Pop as Bar Graph (Replaces Ed by Age) v1.1.dat

^ Here I've ditched the green for residential and replaced it with a maroon which is the same color I used for the medium density residential in the Zone Manager.

And they are using @Cyclone Boom's trick to have them named properly on the User Interface.

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

On 4/14/2019 at 5:10 PM, Noobville Mayor said:

Traffic Volume as Bar Graph:  Much like the Jobs & Pop was, I'm torn with this one.  The time data is just so useful.  And I can't think of anything to replace to have both line and bar.  They all have their uses.

I decided to make it a separate one anyhow.

Traffic Volume as Bar Graph (Replaces Funds) v1.1.dat

 

The trend line history of the cash on hand isn't particularly useful to me comparatively speaking. Now, in order to get the proper name on the UI ( thanks for the help @Cyclone Boom ) I had to overwrite a variable which contained the word Funds. There is the possibility that this will show up weird somewhere else in the game so be on the lookout for something which says Traffic Volume (Bar Graph) where it really should not.

I didn't prefix the .dat file name with Deuteranopia since this one isn't specific, but just a mod anyone might use.

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

Here's another one for you to try out.   (This is going with the same concept that the brightest yellow is bad, blues are mid range, and pink, salmon, and white are the upper three best.)

Deuteranopia Dataview Land Value v1.0.dat

Original game colors:

 

Simulated Deut of above:

 

Tweaked breakpoints and colors:

 

Simulated Deut of above:

^ Breakpoints are as discovered by @Thalassicus as seen in their Dataviews Increased Detail Mod. Colour Ramp and Legend Colours are new by me.

As I see the simulated deut colors there are yellows, blues, and shades of gray so this arrangement seems like a logical progression to me. Ofc, I'm sure it'll take some time for you to get used to the differences from the original game colors if this is worth using. 

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

Another one for you: Deuteranopia Dataview Education v1.0.dat

Maxis colors:

 

Simulated deut of above:

 

Tweaked colors:

 

Simulated deut of tweaked colors:

 

And a teeny, tiny update to the Traffic Congestion dataview: Deuteranopia Dataview Traffic Congestion v1.3.dat (This is still based on the original 1.0 version, but I fixed the goof on the Legends Colours where I had light pink as the lowest and now it correctly shows white there.

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

Aquatic Contamination Indication: Deuteranopia Dataview Water Pollution v1.0.dat

Maxis colours:

 

Simulated deut of above:

 

Tweaked colours:

 

Simulated deut of above:

 

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

Another one: Deuteranopia Dataview Mayor Rating v1.0.dat

It's actually a bit of a challenge to get an extremely low Mayor Rating so I dug up an old city where I deliberately made my Sims's lives a living hell. These pics are showing only the tweaked colours.

Tweaked colours where the Sims are outright angry:

 

Simulated deut of the above:

 

Tweaked colours where my Sims attitude ranges from pleased to adoration:

 

Simulated deut of the above:

 

(Breakpoints are as discovered by @Thalassicus as seen in their Dataviews Increased Detail Mod. Colour Ramp and Legend Colours are new by me.)

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

Dihydrogen Monoxide Locations: Deuteranopia Dataview Water Coverage v1.0.dat

Tweaked colors:

 

Simulated deut:

 

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

Here we have the flammability one: Deuteranopia Dataview Fire Hazard v1.0.dat (This one requires you to run 3 to 4 months for it to fully settle in on the display colors.)

This one might seem odd as the low to medium flammability is basically all I've ever seen in my game and so it always appears to me as lower yellows up to orange. For the Deut version I've used blue in the mid range reserving the yellow for the higher end.

With the tweaked colors and normal flammability:

 

Simulated deut of the above:

 

Then to be sure the upper range could be displayed I tweaked the Simulator such that unwatered and abandoned buildings would be significantly more hazardous. I also tossed in a large multiplier for the summer months. Use this mod for testing the colors only: Flammability Simulator - Extreme.dat

This test file goes hand in hand with the Dataview above. Run the game on high speed and watch the extreme changes start in July maxing out in late September to early October and then declining again as winter rolls in.

Tweaked colors mostly showing the unwatered residential along the west side of the map south of the river:

 

Simulated deut of the above:

 

And here it is with the extra summer flammability:

 

Simulated deut of the above:

 

Note: From a game play standpoint, anything with flammability 0x05 or above can catch on fire so anything which doesn't show as white should prolly have fire coverage.

After you've run a year or two to watch the colors change, remove the Flammability Simulator - Extreme.dat as its only purpose is to be able to see the full color range of the new Dataview.

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

Just what the doctor ordered: Deuteranopia Dataview Health v1.0.dat

Original Maxis colours:

 

Simulated deut of the above:

 

Tweaked colours:

 

Simulated deut of tweaked colours:

 

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

Solar Orbit Enumeration: Deuteranopia Dataview Average Age v1.0.dat

Maxis colours:

 

Simulated deut of Maxis colours:

 

Tweaked colours:

 

Simulated deut of tweaked colours:

 

[Noobville Mayor 62]

My, my you've been a busy little bee.  I had a chance to look at the latest zoning tools and WOWSERS!  That really did the trick.  

Although I haven't been able to test all of these, they work in the traffic vol/cong so they should be fine. 

Good move on the Traffic Vol Bar Graph.  I cheat.  I'm never broke.  No need to keep track of never being broke.

I'll give these a final run through the next few days.  But everything seems to be on track.  Good work, Cori. 

[Silur 3,308]

Hi Corina!

How do You take such amazingly clear pictures of your monitor screen?

Thanks.

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

3 minutes ago, Silur said:

How do You take such amazingly clear pictures of your monitor screen?

I use Clip2Pic which lets me just press the PrintScreen button and it saves the images as consecutively named files for me. There's nothing special about that particular program. Any screen capture utility should do the same.

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

11 hours ago, Noobville Mayor said:

I had a chance to look at the latest zoning tools and WOWSERS!  That really did the trick.

Yay!

Here's the update for it: Deuteranopia Zone Manager v1.4.dat (This is the same as the 1.3 version, but with the Zoning Underlays embedded inside it.)

So, add the 1.4 and remove:

• Deuteranopia Zone Manager v1.3.dat
• Deuteranopia Zoning Underlays v1.0.dat

This next one is rubbish. Or rather a view of same: Deuteranopia Dataview Garbage v1.0.dat

Maxis original colours:

 

Simulated deut of Maxis colours:

 

Tweaked colours:

 

Simulated deut of tweaked colours:

 

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

And the biggie: Desirability: Deuteranopia Dataview Desirability v1.0.dat

The pictures are Maxis original colours alternating with the Tweaked colours. I didn't do any simulated deuteranopia pics since there's 24 already. I'm also not going to label them since you can tell which is what from the radio buttons on the dataview selector thinger.

(New breakpoints based on @Thalassicus's discovery as seen in their Dataviews Increased Detail Mod. Colour Ramp and Legend Colours are new by me plus I added one more breakpoint for finer tuning.)

 

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

I believe this is the last of the ones I can alter: Deuteranopia Dataview Zones Data v1.0.dat

As you will have already seen the changes to the Zoning Manager make it show the zone colors like this:

 

For tweaking the pop up smaller map I cannot change the colors it uses in the map part, but only the Legends Colours:

(The only thing the above attached mod alters is the Legend Colours.)
 

Of the remaining dataviews the Crime is also one which seems to be locked down in the .exe and there's nothing in it I can change. That leaves the Power and Radiation views and using the simulated deut colors those don't appear to need any changes.

So, the full list of plugins for Deuteranopia is:

1. BannanaPeppers Transportation Modd Ver 2.3.dat (Available here.)
2. Deuteranopia Dataview Air Pollution v1.0.dat
3. Deuteranopia Dataview Average Age v1.0.dat
4. Deuteranopia Dataview Desirability v1.0.dat
5. Deuteranopia Dataview Education v1.0.dat
6. Deuteranopia Dataview Fire Hazard v1.0.dat
7. Deuteranopia Dataview Garbage v1.0.dat
8. Deuteranopia Dataview Health v1.0.dat
9. Deuteranopia Dataview Land Value v1.0.dat
10. Deuteranopia Dataview Mayor Rating v1.0.dat
11. Deuteranopia Dataview Traffic Congestion v1.3.dat
12. Deuteranopia Dataview Traffic Volume v1.2.dat
13. Deuteranopia Dataview Water Coverage v1.0.dat
14. Deuteranopia Dataview Water Pollution v1.0.dat
15. Deuteranopia Dataview Zones Data v1.0.dat
16. Deuteranopia Jobs & Pop as Bar Graph (Replaces Inc-Exp) v1.2.dat
17. Deuteranopia Jobs & Pop Line Graph v1.2.dat
18. Deuteranopia Zone Manager v1.4.dat
19. Traffic Volume as Bar Graph (Replaces Funds) v1.1.dat

Any of my previous ones should be moved out of your Plugins (or deleted).

And as an all in one zip file of the mods I created: Deuteranopia Pack of 18 Files - 2019.04.19.zip

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

Slight tweak: Deuteranopia Dataview Traffic Volume v1.2.dat

Since my initial version 1.0 was based on the capacity I selected in NAM, the numbers in parenthesis relate specifically to my game. Until the deuteranopia option is included in NAM, I've made my mod be generic with the percentages only. This does not change the capacities you selected during the NAM setup or via the TSCT.

Before:

 

After:

 

And I've edited my above post to reflect this change. Also, I updated the STEX entry for @BannanaPeppers's mod to include the color fix for monorail so it is not included in the full pack as it should be downloaded separately. Do note that my Deuteranopia Dataview Traffic Volume v1.2.dat needs to load after the one in the Network Addon Mod folder in Plugins. That can be done as simply as making a folder named x Deuteranopia and placing all of my files in it.

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

On 4/18/2019 at 2:40 AM, Noobville Mayor said:

Good move on the Traffic Vol Bar Graph.  I cheat.  I'm never broke.  No need to keep track of never being broke.

This gave me another idea. Since the Income/Expenses isn't as useful as the Education by Age I've altered the Jobs & Pop Bar Graph to go there instead of replacing the Ed by Age.

Deuteranopia Jobs & Pop as Bar Graph (Replaces Inc-Exp) v1.2.dat (Remove Deuteranopia Jobs & Pop as Bar Graph (Replaces Ed by Age) v1.1.dat)

 

And I've updated the full zip a couple posts up.

[PaPa-J 778]

@CorinaMarie I really like what you are doing here, a lot of these colors stand out better than the in game colors for me.  Are you planning on putting all these mods on the STEX once you have all the bugs worked out and all the tweaks made?

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

5 hours ago, PaPa-J said:

Are you planning on putting all these mods on the STEX ... ?

Yes indeed. It'll be a single zip file with the 18 mods I've created included so peeps can pick and chose should they not want every single one of them installed.

 

Here's a sneak peak of the start of the description @Cyclone Boom has written for it:

Quote

In our 3rd official CoriBoom™ release to the STEX, @CorinaMarie and I are pleased to present a mod which transforms the game's UI elements, for greater optimal contrast for those who have Deuteranopia color blindness.

There is, ofc, a lot more detail written which is in the final proofreading stage and pictures for it are in the works. In case you are wondering, CB and I split the tasks on things like this where I often do the under the hood modding while he specializes in the presentation part. ( I tend to lose interest once the problem part is solved. )

[PaPa-J 778]

@CorinaMarie This is good news! Thanks for working on this, it will help a lot.

[Noobville Mayor 62]

So awesome, Cori.

 

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Here it is, now uploaded to the STEX!
 

We really hope this will be useful, and thanks again @Noobville Mayor for all your feedback and testing to make it possible to create.

-CB & Cori

[PaPa-J 778]

Thanks for this! Already downloaded and installed.  I'll have a chance tomorrow to see it in the game.  Thanks again.

[Noobville Mayor 62]

6 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

We really hope this will be useful, and thanks again @Noobville Mayor for all your feedback and testing to make it possible to create.

-CB & Cori

You guys did all the work.  It sure is awesome - really made inaccessible aspects of the game accessible.  Thanks.  4REAL 

Now if you guys can just code some Matrix level NAM mastery programs I'll be good.  Today I almost had a full scale meltdown over a stupid bridge.  Then my RHW 4-way interchange became an exercise in starting over and over and over.  Getting there though!