Hello, I'm (Somewhat) New - Custom Content Questions

[SimQuestria 7]

Hello Simtropolis SC4 Fans.

I've been playing SC4 since 2009 or so, and have installed and reinstalled it multiple times as my life situation has changed. It is only this year, however, that I have discovered the Simtropolis and SC4 Devotion forums, and I have been downloading and enjoying so many of the great new buildings and mods this community has provided. 

I do have a couple of questions that keep bugging me now:

1. A few buildings that I have downloaded allow me to change the name in-game, but once I exit and reenter the city, the name reverts back to the original. Often times if it's a ploppable building, the name change also appears in the Landmarks menu or wherever it came from, and also reverts when I exit and reenter the city. Is there a way I can make the name changes more permanent like other buildings in the game? (This may have something to do with the .dat files--how do I open those, by the way?)

2. I am currently using the most recent version of NAM and the Extended Invisichem CAM. Once I build a city up to 60000 residents, the game starts to get really slow, such that it may take several months for an undeveloped lot to build its first buildings, and, of course, the date doesn't change as fast. I've tried tinkering and cutting down the display settings but it hasn't made that much of a difference. Do I just need a more powerful computer (I have a Dell Inspiron 13 5000 Series with an Intel Core i5, with 157 GB free on Drive C), or is there some trick to working with NAM and CAM that I have missed?

 Thank you all in advance for any help you can give.

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

12 minutes ago, SimQuestria said:

(This may have something to do with the .dat files--how do I open those, by the way?)

(Yep, they do.)

I'm not certain why some do and some don't save the in game renaming, but you are correct that the names they appear with initially will be set within a property inside the .dat file. (Or in the .sc4desc or .sc4lot depending how it was packaged by the creator.)

For peeking and poking around inside those files you'll want to get iLive - Reader 0.9.3 and I also recommend perusing The Reader, Beginners Guide. In the files, you'll be looking for LTEXT entries for where the actual name a building uses is stored.

 

For your questions about CAM and NAM and city running speed, I'll leave that for the peeps who know more about it than I do.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Hi @SimQuestria and welcome to Simtropolis!

The Reader by iLive certainly is a comprehensive tool should you wish to get into modding custom content. This allows the properties controlling the various functions to be edited individually. As an alternative, you may find the LEProp a useful little tool for basic editing. This allows the name of custom lots to be set, along with the menu description. Just be sure to click the Apply button to set the changes, and then the Save DAT which commits them to being written to file.

As follows:

 

[rsc204 21,866]

13 hours ago, SimQuestria said:

Is there a way I can make the name changes more permanent like other buildings in the game? (This may have something to do with the .dat files--how do I open those, by the way?)

Nothing to do with DAT files BTW, all SC4 files are identical, SC4Lot, SC4Desc, SC4Model & DAT all work the same. The only reason for these formats is to help a user determine what they are. DAT files usually contain mixed content or properties and the like, the only way to know is to look inside them. Of course, you need to know what you are looking at. For now though this isn't important.

There are two methods for adding names and descriptions to lots (Item Name / Item Description properties). The first is simply using the properties, this is the default method for all custom content. Maxis however, used a second method using something called LTEXT files, these are little text files that you can link to, to display the text within them. The second method carries a number of benefits, first it allows for multiple LTEXTs in different languages, it also allows the re-naming of items to remain after re-loading a city. So long and short, you need to take your existing lots and convert them to use LTEXT files, thankfully there is a very easy method to do this. You'll need a copy of PIM-X, from here, in order to follow along. Pay close attention to the information on the download/support pages. You'll need some DLL files to make that application work, then follow along:

Open PIM-X, making sure your files will be loaded on startup. Note PIM-X doesn't like it when you load an entire plugins suite and is designed to load specific folders, from which you can select during startup.

Select the "Buildings" Category, since all the edits we will make are within "Buildings Exemplars":

Above is an example Buildings Exemplar, the Item Name (which displays in game), is "LTEXT Lot Example". You need to find the correct Building from the list in the top right, upon selecting it, the properties in the lower right appear. Once you've the correct one, right click somewhere on the properties (Buildings Exemplar) and select the option "Convert Item name/Exemplar name to LTEXT - multilingual". Once you do, the Item Name property will disappear, but a new property in green will replace it.

The property "User Visible Name Key" exists here. That is actually an ID that links our Buildings Exemplar to a separate LTEXT file. PIM-X keeps this easy by simply showing the LTEXT as part of the Exemplar. You can double click this property to bring up an editor window, here you can modify the text / name of the lot, should you desire. Now, save the Buildings Exemplar. The next time you play, if you alter the name of this Lot, those changes will remain. You'll need to repeat these steps for all such lots where you want this functionality. Note that some may already include LTEXT files, it's just not all that common for custom content. The key benefit to this approach is that you can have unique names for each identical lot you place. For example, if you have placed 5 train stations, each can have a unique name that will remain when you re-load the save file.

13 hours ago, SimQuestria said:

Once I build a city up to 60000 residents, the game starts to get really slow

There probably isn't anything wrong happening here, I have a similar issue when a city gets large and the explanation is multi-faceted.

To begin with, SC4 as a game is very CPU intensive, as the population of your city and region increases, the number of calculations needed increases exponentially. Adding the NAM in particular can add as much as 1.5 million lines of addition RUL Code to your game. RUL Code essentially tells the game what to do when you place/drag (network) pieces and when networks intersect. Whilst most of the toll of that additional code only takes place when drawing or refreshing networks, this does add a certain overhead too.

When SC4 was released, computers were not anything like as powerful as they are today, meaning the game should run fantastically on a modern CPU, right?

Well, there are two other issues that get in the way of this. Some people, wrongly, would see a 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 chip and a 2.8Ghz i5 as similar in terms of speed. But clock speed it just a marketing tools, an i5 technologically speaking, is words away from a Pentium 4. But to take full advantage of certain architectural changes in the CPU, applications must be coded to do so. Long and short, SC4's older code simply can't take advantage of modern CPUs, meaning broadly-speaking, we don't see much better performance. Likewise the other major change in CPUs since 2003, is multi-core computing, which has long-since become standard. SC4 again runs into a problem, in that it wasn't coded to support multi-core processors either. In fact, worse still, if you try, you'll make your game unstable with CTDs, because it lacks the code to synch up multiple Processes running simultaneously. All of this means, no matter how much power you throw at the game, eventually everybody will end up with lag, it's simply inevitable.

Of course your CPU is not the only factor here, there are three others:

• RAM
  SC4 has very minimal RAM needs. If you are running a 64-bit version of Windows, have 4GB or more of system RAM and have installed the 4GB patch, you need not worry about it. Note that 4GB Patch is handled for you when installing NAM.
• Videocard (GPU)
  Again SC4 doesn't require anything special. It was designed to work with 256MB cards, almost certainly your modern PC is overkill for it's needs. With one or two caveats. If you have an onboard GPU, performance may suffer as a result of the use of shared RAM (slower than dedicated VRAM). If your GPU's driver doesn't support running in Hardware (DirectX Mode), game performance will be far worse than under DirectX. Software Rendering is often advised as necessary to make the game work, that is only sometimes true. Most users can and should use DirectX, although it can take a bit of messing around to make it work on some hardware
• Disk Access Speed
  The other thing SC4 needs to do a lot of, is shuffling textures between your Hard Drive and RAM. The more objects in your city, the more work it needs to do when scrolling and zooming. If SC4 is installed on an SSD and all your Plugins reside there two, you will get much better performance, since SSDs can read files much quicker than a traditional hard drive.

One other thing that only affects Laptop users, you need to bear in mind that the increased cooling needs of putting hardware in a confined space, will reduce performance. Both the CPU are GPU will be throttled (scaled back), when running games, to prevent overheating. There isn't a lot you can do about that, a proper PC will always outperform similar mobile hardware, because they can remain cool even when pushing hardware to it's limits, provided a suitable cooling system is installed.

[Toby66 155]

HELL-O!

Want some jello?

Nah, good other knowledgeable persons can make more sense and help you with this.

I generally have a problem to behave on the net but so far so good! (So what, Megadeth).

Enjoy your stay and the game and over and out.

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

5 hours ago, rsc204 said:

SC4 again runs into a problem, in that it wasn't coded to support multi-core processors either. In fact, worse still, if you try, you'll make your game unstable with CTDs, because it lacks the code to synch up multiple Processes

You're right about the ultimate effect, but I have some doubts about the precise cause. I actually suspect that SC4 was coded to use multiple processors but has at least one bug in the synchronization. In other words, it has just enough multi-thread coding to be dangerous.

The reason I suspect this is because if it were truly a single-threaded program, then it should always run on exactly one core no matter what settings one uses. And for that matter, why would the program's command line parser handle a CPU_count parameter unless the program had some kind of multiprocess coding paradigm inside?

Anyway, the internal working is academic. The result for us players is what you said: We must constrain the program to one CPU to avoid concurrent data access (crash to desktop). In a perfect world, we would find the bug in the code and repair it (another DLL someday?)

[twalsh102 1,601]

@jeffryfisher, what you are saying makes a lot of sense once one stops to think about it.  I can't think of any other program that will only use one core that requires you to set parameters such that it won't try to use more than that one core.  I think you are right that the instability has another cause (coding errors most likely as you state).

When I got my new PC (Core i7 - 8700:  6 cores; 12 logical processors), on purpose I set the parameters in SC4Launcher to use all 12 cores.  Things ran blazingly fast (set to cheetah speed) without any problems until they didn't.  After about 2 1/2 hours, it finally had the CTD I was expecting based on the commonly prevailing wisdom.  But for 2 1/2  hours, I was in heaven!

It would certainly be wonderful if this were the next problem that @simmaster07 chooses / has chosen to try and tackle!  Of course, it all starts with him being able to find where the broken code is, and being able to decipher it (I'm guessing that's not a trivial exercise)!

[Lucario Boricua 7,052]

The day SimCity 4 is patched to support multicore processes would be the day when it'd be one step away from computational perfection, the other big step (and probably more complicated and off-limits to the most talented modders) would be shifting to a 64-bit architecture. And we're running into a real risk of unplayability as OS manufacturers move away from supporting software with 32 bit architecture.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

12 hours ago, Lucario Boricua said:

shifting to a 64-bit architecture

That would require recompiling the entire program (and finding x64 versions or recompiling all DLLs too). That's not going to happen until sometime after the source code is released, which will probably be after Hades buys ice skates.

[SimQuestria 7]

@CorinaMarie @rsc204 @Cyclone Boom @Toby66 Thank you all for your advice and warm welcomes. Interestingly enough, soon after I complained about the 60,000 pop slowdown, the system started to speed up again (though there are still delays here and there).

I have another custom-content related question: There are a number of lots that I have downloaded, most notably SimGoober's, that 1) don't allow a query when grown, and 2) seem to have a parking-lot texture that is not included in the dependency list. Do you know where I can fix this and find the texture?

[rsc204 21,866]

Both the missing query and texture problems suggest you have some necessary files (dependencies) missing.

The query is most likely in this package, whilst I would hazard a guess the textures would be from one of the Texture Mega Packs by BSC:

Vol1, Vol2 or Vol3

Of course to be more specific, we'd need to know the exact lot you are having problems with, a link to said items is always helpful too .

37 minutes ago, SimQuestria said:

Interestingly enough, soon after I complained about the 60,000 pop slowdown, the system started to speed up again (though there are still delays here and there).

In which case it's probably just the commute simulator running, which can be as much as 4 times per in-game year. This process is very CPU intensive and so a noticeable slow-down while it's running in the background is to be expected.

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

On 6/9/2019 at 7:34 AM, rsc204 said:

... select the option "Convert Item name/Exemplar name to LTEXT - multilingual".

Mine doesn't have that choice.

 

And idea what I might've done wrong?

[rsc204 21,866]

3 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Mine doesn't have that choice.

Looks like that's because there is no Item Name to convert to an LText file. Try adding that, then you should be able to do it.

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

3 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

Looks like that's because there is no Item Name to convert to an LText file. Try adding that, then you should be able to do it.

Cool. That did it.

Now I'm wondering why it's got that triangle warning with the exclamation mark in it.

[twalsh102 1,601]

Often, the orange triangle points to mismatches in properties, or properties with null values where something else is expected, or properties that are expected for a particular type of building are missing. 

Possibly Wealth and Purpose don't match Occupant type.

Another possibility (although I don't have anything definitive to go on here):  is this building meant to be a reward?  Are you possibly trying to circumvent the usual issues with ploppable Residentials.

Possibly PIM-X doesn't find the properties it expects to find for a Reward (or finds properties that aren't expected).

Except for the OccupantGroups property listing the Building as a Reward, the majority of the properties shown would be those expected for a ploppable, and almost all the properties that make a reward, a true reward, are missing.

Just my thoughts, with no specific experience with what I'm seeing with this exemplar.

[rsc204 21,866]

I concur that when I've seen this myself, it's because something wasn't right with my exemplar. That's not to say the content won't work in game, just that it might not fit neatly into the right hole as far as PIM-X is concerned.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Sounds like then it might be a way the PIM-X checks to see whether an item fits within the constraints of what's expected for a given configuration. Then if it finds something even slightly not what it's looking for, the orange exclamation icon is a way of highlighting this. As @twalsh102 said and it seems likely how this isn't necessarily a cause for concern, and for a plopped residential in the Rewards menu it might see that as an "issue" just because it's not what it sees as normal.

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

5 hours ago, twalsh102 said:

Are you possibly trying to circumvent the usual issues with ploppable Residentials.

Yep. That's exactly what I did since it's not a cluttered menu on my system. Now it makes perfect sense why PIM-X would raise a red flag (or triangle as the case may be).

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

I did have a skim through the PIM-X User Guide (previously downloaded) and couldn't see any mention to this.

But I agree it seems logical to believe it's not a guaranteed issue.

[SimQuestria 7]

Okay, new question: I'm using the Census Repository Facility mod (Version 3.1) to track the demand and such for my city, and something seems off about the claimed neutral tax rate. For example, in a city of 2.25 million, the Facility claims my neutral tax rate for all the sectors is 8%, but demand is terrible for virtually all sectors even at a 4.5% rate--I brought my tax rate to 2% and then things are normal. Is there an update to it I don't know about for CAM 2.1.0 (At least according to the SC4Devotion forums it seems not to have been updated since 2010)?

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

@SimQuestria

Are you using the updated Controller file? When you click the Download button for the Colossus Addon Mod it's the second file:

 

If you scroll down to the change log of the CAM STEX entry you'll see: What's New 2.1.0a with information about the updated file.

[SimQuestria 7]

7 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

@SimQuestria

Are you using the updated Controller file? When you click the Download button for the Colossus Addon Mod it's the second file:

 

If you scroll down to the change log of the CAM STEX entry you'll see: What's New 2.1.0a with information about the updated file.

i just redownloaded it just to be sure. That info does seem to address my problem.

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

1 minute ago, SimQuestria said:

That info does seem to address my problem.

Woot!

[SimQuestria 7]

10 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Woot!

Unfortunately, it didn't make a difference. I think it has more to do with the way the Census Repository app represents the neutral tax rate itself.

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

5 hours ago, SimQuestria said:

Unfortunately, it didn't make a difference.

Well, phooey.

This is prolly going to get more complicated than I can help with since I create mostly rural regions with little cities interspersed. (My largest is around 60k population.) One thing to keep in mind is the tax rate is only one portion of what affects demand. Perhaps you could post a screenshot of what the Census Repository shows and the experts will be able to help figure this out.

[twalsh102 1,601]

@SimQuestria,

There are several problems going on here.
1.  When ripplejet designed his version of the Census Repository, he hard-coded a Neutral Tax Rate table into a LUA subfile which is part of RJ - Census_Repository_Model_and_Query_3.1.dat.  Unfortunately, this hard-coded table did not match the Maxis Demand Simulator Exemplar, which is the exemplar the game uses to determine the Neutral Tax Rate.  So the game applied a Neutral Tax Rate based on the Exemplar and the Census Repository reported a Neutral Tax Rate that differed from the one the game applied
2.  To further exacerbate the issue, CAM installs an override Demand Simulator Exemplar, which matches neither the original Maxis tax table, nor the one used by the Census Repository.  To my knowledge, no one has created a Census Repository that is compatible with CAM.
3.  The CAM 2.1.0 Demand Simulator Exemplar was itself flawed as @CorinaMarie pointed out. 

According to the Prima Guide for SC4 Deluxe, Neutral Tax Rate is determined solely by Residential Population.  Neutral Tax Rate for all Sectors will be the same.  Where are you getting what your supposed Neutral Tax Rate is?  From what I can tell, the Census Repository is only showing the current tax rate.  According to the Demand Simulator Exemplar included with CAM 2.1.0, a Neutral Tax Rate for a city with a population of 2.25 mil would actually be 5.64%.  Also note that the difference between the current Tax Rate and the Neutral Tax Rate can affect Demand positively (by as much as +35%) or negatively (by as much as -500%) depending on whether your Neutral Tax Rate is higher or lower than your current Tax Rate and what the difference is between the two.

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

8 minutes ago, twalsh102 said:

When ripplejet designed his version of the Census Repository, he hard-coded a Neutral Tax Rate table into a LUA subfile which is part of RJ - Census_Repository_Model_and_Query_3.1.dat.

I'm skilled in LUA coding. With the appropriate lists of the correct tax rates for both Maxis and CAM I could easily update the code for the Census Repository tho I'm sure you could as well if you wanted to. We could then post those as patches similar to the one you created for the borked zeroes thinger in CAM.

[twalsh102 1,601]

3 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

tho I'm sure you could as well if you wanted to.

Not so sure.  Updating an existing table wouldn't present a problem.  However, my thinking was that If we could get the UI / Query to recognize whatever version of the Demand Simulator Exemplar is currently being used by the game, it wouldn't matter whether one was using Vanilla, or CAM 2.1.0, or CAM 4, or some other Mod that modifies this Exemplar.  Otherwise, I'm guessing that we would either need to code the LUA to somehow determine what Mods are being used and include separate Tax Tables for each different Mod, or create separate LUAs for whatever different Mods might exist.  However, I'm not sure it's necessary, as I couldn't find any place in the UI / Query where the Neutral Tax Rate is shown (which doesn't necessarily mean it isn't there), nor is Neutral Tax Rate mentioned in the ReadMe.

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

5 minutes ago, twalsh102 said:

However, my thinking was that If we could get the UI / Query to recognize whatever version of the Demand Simulator Exemplar is currently being used by the game, it wouldn't matter whether one was using Vanilla, or CAM 2.1.0, or CAM 4, or some other Mod that modifies this Exemplar.

Ah, yes. Very good point and that ought to be possible since LUA supports IF/THENs. I could just check what is set for the particular fields of that exemplar and then have it act accordingly.

 

6 minutes ago, twalsh102 said:

However, I'm not sure it's necessary, as I couldn't find any place in the UI / Query where the Neutral Tax Rate is shown (which doesn't necessarily mean it isn't there), nor is Neutral Tax Rate mentioned in the ReadMe.

The only part I remember seeing last time I peeked inside (several months or more ago) was his long list to round the actual tax rate currently set in the city to match that of the game.

I'm currently doing some server maintenance so it'll likely be this evening before I have a chance to take a peek.

[twalsh102 1,601]

I saw that as well.  I found in the variable definitions where this function is called.  He created another function labeled RJCR_NeutralTax() that encompasses the (inaccurate) Neutral Tax Table, but I looked through the definitions of all the variables used in the UI and couldn't find anything that referenced this function or anything related to Neutral Tax Rate (which doesn't necessarily mean I didn't miss something).

If I didn't miss anything, then there would be no need to do anything to the LUA even though the existing Neutral Tax Rate table is inaccurate.  If we wanted to include anything about Neutral tax rate in the UI, it would have to be redone or modified. 

If someone has an overriding need to know what the current Neutral Tax Rate is, it's just as easy (and probably make more sense) to look at the whole table (as opposed to only what the current Neutral Tax Rate is) by looking at the Demand Simulation Exemplar in DataNode.  Is it more important to know what the current Neutral Tax Rate is, or that if your Population increases by another 15,000 your Neutral Tax Rate will go down again?

When you get the chance to look at the LUA again, if you could also take a look at the UI and make sure I'm not missing something important.