Cori's Growable Residential Freight End Point Tutorial

[CorinaMarie 29,618]

Cori's Growable Residential Freight End Point Tutorial

^ Initial test lot with 32 freight truck capacity.

 

In response to @Terring's and @jeffryfisher's questions in this thread, I successfully created a growable residential inland seaport which I'm calling a Freight End Point. The idea proposed was a way to simulate small amounts of freight being delivered to homes or commercial locations. Here I'm illustrating how that's accomplished for a growable Residential lot. The same steps work with a growable commercial lot, but (ofc) you start with a commercial lot instead of a residential one.

* * * Warning! * * *
This is for testing only so use a disposable sandbox region and be sure you have no other Seaport Controller installed. Do not even enter a saved city in which another seaport controller was present when the tile was saved, even if you never plopped a seaport in that city.

 

Starting from scratch we use Reader, load SimCity_1.dat, open the Navigator, and find Seaports under General - Developer. (Note the s on the end.)

^ Right click it in the left hand pane and select Add to patch.

 

We also need a copy of the sub controller for the Maxis Seaport so Right+Click and add it to the patch too. (Note the lack of an s on the end.)

 

Now go to the Patch Manager and Create DAT:

^ I named mine: Maxis Seaport Controller With Cori's Example Residential End Point.dat

Open this newly created .dat in Reader plus your already created growable residential lot. Copy the sub controller 0xCA2D8CE6 exemplar and paste it into your residential lot file. Then delete the 0xCA2D8CE6 exemplar from the controller .dat, and add a new rep to property 0x8A270FC3 (Port Type Exemplar IDs) with the IID of your Lot Configuration:

Right click in the white space of the left hand pane, select Re-Index, and then save the file.

 

Now back in your already created growable residential lot. You'll notice I deliberately made my LotConfigurations exemplar have IID 0x48DB8F53 whereas my Building exemplar is 0x48DB8F55. The first number is just randomly generated, but the point is I then made them different so it's easier to see what's going on controllerwise. Change the sub controller exemplar IID from 0xCA2D8CE6 to that of your LotConfigurations exemplar.

This pic is showing the LotConfigurations exemplar with the IID highlighted:

 

Here's the Building exemplar showing the different IID:

 

Now we need to add the additional properties required to our Building exemplar to make this home believe it's a seaport which can receive freight trucks. (They are already shown in the above pic.) This first property is because we are going to use a very low maximum freight truck capacity and the efficiency will become zero which causes the building and props to flash to the dirty, black distressed graphics for a split second a few times per month. Visually that is distracting and ugly so we add property 0x09F00E59 (Ignore lot state effects) and set it to True (0x01). This will only apply to the building on the lot so later I extracted and set all the props used to have this same property.

 

For the cap relief. Add property 0x27812840 (Demand Satisfied) with six reps. These work in pairs such that the first is a Demand ID and the second is the amount of cap relief. So reps 1, 3, & 5 correspond to:

• 0x00004A00 = Industrial Dirty Cap
• 0x00004B00 = Industrial Manufacturing Cap
• 0x00004C00 = Industrial High-Tech Cap

Shown here in Reader 0.9.3 with value 5 (reps 2, 4, & 6) for each cap relief:

And shown here in Reader 1.5.4 for better clarity:

 

Add property 0x27812844 (Demand Is Variable) set to False (0x00):

 

Next add property 0x8A0B4103 (Freight Receiving Capacity). This one needs to match up with the value in property 0xCA271784 (Trip Capacity List) in your sub controller exemplar (6534284A-67CD5FA1-Your Lot IID). I made my lot IID be 48DB8F53, but yours will be whatever your lot has assigned.

I've set the value to 5 since we want to simulate only a few deliveries.

 

Add additional OccupantGroups after the already existing ones:

• 0x00001519 (Water Transit) prolly not needed, but it works.
• 0x00001004 (Utility)
• 0x00001003 (Transportation)
• 0x00001509 (Seaport)

 

Add 0xAA60E745 (Goofy Stat Response Curve) with value 0 for the first rep and 1 for the second. I've no idea what it does, but the samples I investigated had it like this.

 

Here we decide how much it'll cost per month. Add property 0xEA54D286 (Budget Item: Cost). I set mine to 1 simoleon per month.

 

Move on to the sub controller exemplar mentioned above. Note that I've set its IID to match my Lot Configuration IID. This is OK to do because the Group ID is different.

^ Of note in this exemplar:

• 0x00000020 (Exemplar Name) I changed to Cori's Farmhouse Cargo. Name yours whatever you like.
• 0xCA271780 (Num Growth Stages) is set to 1.
• 0xCA271781 (Lot stage template IDs) is set to the IID of your LotConfiguration exemplar. (0x48DB8F53 in my example.)
• 0xCA271783 (Budget Requirements List) is how much it will cost per month. I set this one to 1 simoleon. I set this to 10 (0x0A hex) and in game that is the cost per lot in the Transportation Budget, so that shows this property overrides the one in the Building Exemplar. (It might be if this property is removed here then the other one might take effect.)
• 0xCA271784 (Trip Capacity List) controls how many freight trucks can arrive at the lot. I set this to 5. This property corresponds to 0x8A0B4103 (Freight Receiving Capacity) in your Building exemplar.
• 0xCA271785 (Efficiency Distress Threshold) this one doesn't matter as the usable values are from 0 to 100% with the lower ones meaning it can handle a greater percent of the maximum freight before showing in a distressed (dirty black) state. As my last test I set it to a very large negative number (as shown in the image above), but that still didn't alter the split second distress view so I fixed the visual appearance by setting every prop I used to also ignore the lot state. So, just set this one to any value such as zero.
• 0xCA271786 (Stage Upgrade Cost) I set this to zero because I only created one stage.
• 0xCA271787 (Port Size) I set to one. I'm not sure what this controls, but this value works.
• 0xCA271788 (Port Width) needs to match your lot's width.
• 0xCA271789 (Port Height) needs to match your lot's height.

 

Save the file and go grow your Freight End Point lots in a test game. If using my attached sample, you should set building style to Chicago only and use Ctrl+Zoning to create 4 x 4 low density residential zones for it.

Here's the Route Query view with the grown residential lots set to handle 5 freight trucks each:

 

As mentioned above, do not use this in any city tile where you've ever had a previous Seaport Controller installed while saving and be sure there is no other Seaport Controller installed. (Additional loose files in the attached zip are where I set all of the props I use to have the Ignore lot state effects be true.)

Cori's Farm House as an Inland (Seaport) Freight End Point.zip

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

Very cool!

This is a marvellous modding development, and to see the functionality implemented this way is such an excellent proof of concept.

The great thing especially is how the CAP relief is present. There could be uses for this technique to be applied to either (or both) residential and commercial too. How with certain lots modded as such, they can have this multi-purpose usage which would add an extra gameplay element. Of course, it would be a big task for many buildings, but I don't think it needs to be either. How by having this with selected ones, it can be setting the Trip Capacity List property to something suitable, and then those lots can provide a specialist desired function. Considering the distribution from warehouses, and what the freight trips represent when querying the road network where they're grown.

As ever with all your tutorials, this is thoroughly well explained at each and every step.

(Topic featured for greater visibility.)

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

IIRC, BSC Seaports controller has spare slots left in it for new ports to be added. So if anyone knows how to coordinate with that project, they could make a growable mall or something that soaks up a modest quantity of freight.

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

I've followed Cori's steps successfully and created a test functionally freight Commercial CS$ End Point lot of my own.

As follows:

CB's Commercial Warehouse with Freight Receiving Capabilities as Outlined in Cori's Tutorial

(They distribute boats to local suppliers, but just leave 4 of them moored out the front for some reason. I've no idea why.)

I created it as a Stage 1 lot with only 4 occupants so then it was easy enough to grow in an early developed test city.

The only additional prop was for the warehouse which I made set with the Ignore lot state effects property to False which prevents it becoming intermittently distressed. The others are prop families as used by Cori's Freight Farm House lot which I've tried to fit on the lot in a somewhat logical fashion. For encouraging it to grow I used the Ctrl+Zoning method for allocating the 3x3 parcels as per the lot's size.

One thing I noticed is how the concrete base textures flicker into a distressed dirty state every game month or so. I'm not too sure why this is or if there's any way to avoid that other than if choosing another texture. Does anyone have any ideas of why that might be?

Still, that's just a little cosmetic thing. What's especially cool is for an extra functional RCI gameplay element with the freight trucks and CAP relief.

Being aware how Cori wrote hers as a proof of concept, a small adjustment I made is by altering the freight capacity to 11 (instead of 5). This explains how 7 freight trucks are the total supported for this End Point as received. Then I made the Demand Satisfied slightly higher.

Like so:

ID = 25 (60%)
IM = 13 (30%)
IH =  4 (10%)

(This adds up to The Answer which needed Deep Thought.)

 

Here's the zip containing the files if anyone's interested in giving it a whirl too:

CB's Commercial Warehouse with Freight Receiving Capabilities as Outlined in Cori's Tutorial - v1.0.zip

Note: This has been designed to be used in combination with Cori's concept Freight Farm House lot.

As such I've included the file named:
z_Maxis Seaport Controller With Cori's EREP (And CB's CWWFRCAOICT).dat

If curious to test my lot, use ALL of Cori's files except her original controller. That's because my new controller file contains the IIDs for both of our lots. The .dat files which toggle over the ignore state are needed for my lot too since I've used the exact same prop families (the trees, bushes, and boats). Also just remember how this is still very much a test only intended for use in an isolated city, and also without using an existing Seaport Controller, nor having a Seaport plopped.

For anyone else, feel free to share your own inspired creations too. I think there's plenty of potential here.

[CorinaMarie 29,618]

I tweaked mine to be growable Industrial this time and sure enough it accepts workers, sends out trucks, and receives trucks:

[Terring 6,473]

So industries can receive trucks too? That's a great discovery because it would simulate the logistics between industries. We can actually do what Cities: Skylines can do with the Industries expansion pack, following our products from harvesting to processing, storing and production, and then their transportation to commercial and residential zones or their export to other cities by road, boat or plane (or spaceship). Farms can sent corps and milk to the nearest factories to turn them into bread and cheese, while mining operations (and SimMars has plenty of them) can sent their ore to the nearest smelter to turn them into building materials. By simulating supply chains and making industries supporting each other, we can reduce (but not eliminate) the need of road connections and seaports, allowing us to build our factories wherever we want, even in the middle of the city.

Looking forward for more discoveries and possibilities

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

2 hours ago, Terring said:

We can actually do

With the caveat that each and every "port" needs to be listed inside the one port controller you're allowed to have. Or do they need to be listed within any old port controller, and it's the port controllers that need to be listed within one master port controller?

Anyway, we won't actually have a publishable mod until we can make the new "ports" play nice within an existing family of ports (e.g. BSC seaports). But then we will have something really cool.

2 hours ago, Terring said:

Farms can sent corps and milk to the nearest factories to turn them into bread and cheese

It would be nice if such meaningful paths turned up, but in SC4, freight is freight. You're just as likely to see farm produce taken to an oil refinery or steel mill output taken to a department store.

 

[CorinaMarie 29,618]

8 hours ago, Terring said:

So industries can receive trucks too?

Yes, indeed.

 

6 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

With the caveat that each and every "port" needs to be listed inside the one port controller you're allowed to have. Or do they need to be listed within any old port controller, and it's the port controllers that need to be listed within one master port controller?

There are technically two separate controllers. The one named Seaports (note the s on the end) with TGI 6534284a-67cd5fa1-ea29ad92 is the one I'm calling the Master Controller and it's the one with property 0x8a270fc3 (Port Type Exemplar IDs) which is simply the master index of the sub controllers it expects to be present. If a sub controller is in this list then said sub controller must be present in your Plugins.

The sub controller TGI 6534284a-67cd5fa1-xxxxxxxx (with the x's being whatever IID you assign as long as it's not ea29ad92) is the one which will contain specific information for the new port such as the number of stages, the IIDs of Lot Configurations for said stages, the cost per month, the maximum number of freight trucks it can receive, and some other various items like lot size (that needs to match the size of the lot configuration itself). The key part here is that its property 0xca271781 (Lot state template IDs) is a list (with a minimum of one) IIDs which point to the Lot Configuration file. This simply tells it that when that lot is plopped or grown that it inherits the Seaport Freight Truck receiving ability and uses the parameters set for it.

The part which complicates this with the BSC one I downloaded from your linky (and I presume, Peg's too) is that they combined the Master Controller and all the sub controllers in one .dat file. It would be much more logical to put the sub controller in with the lot and building exemplars so then the Master Controller could be updated by simply pasting in a new CSV list into 0x8a270fc3  and distributing it with the complete new Seaport lot as a separate .dat file. Should whoever is in charge of this repackage the .dat files it would then be super easy to mix and match which seaports one wants to use. Ofc, you still have to decide ahead of time because changing the list later by altering IIDs or removing IIDs causes a CTD. However, new ones can be added to the end of the list without a problem provided the corresponding sub controller is added to Plugins at the same time.

For the purpose of this thread I'm personally only interested in the proof of concept whereby I've created the template such that other peeps can experiment. That needs to be done in a sandbox region without any other seaport controllers installed.

 

So, back on topic: One could create separate base lot configuration files for Residential, Commercial, and Industrial and if using Building and Prop Families, have multiple variations grow in the game with as little as 3 Lots and their associated Building exemplars. All would act as a Freight End Point because that's married to the Lot Configuration by listing it in the sub controller.

 

6 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

It would be nice if such meaningful paths turned up, but in SC4, freight is freight. You're just as likely to see farm produce taken to an oil refinery or steel mill output taken to a department store.

This could be more a matter of strategic zoning and growing your preferred Freight End Point lot in close proximity to the type of industry you want the goods to go to. By using either DuskTrooper's Maxis Blockers (edited accordingly) or creating your End Point with a specific (different than standard) size such that only it grows when using Ctrl+Zoning to create the right size footprint.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

13 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

The part which complicates this with the BSC one I downloaded from your linky (and I presume, Peg's too) is that they combined the Master Controller and all the sub controllers in one .dat file.

Ah but you said that if a sub is listed in the master, then the sub needs to exist. So I reckon that the BSC master listed a bunch of placeholders and then included sub stubs to make them legal. To add a port to BSC then, I guess one overrides one of those stubs and finds a way to tell other modders so nobody else utilizes the same one. Have I got it, or am I confuzzled?

BTW, there's an "unofficial" mod out there that brings PEG ports under the BSC umbrella. Whatever we add here should aim to avoid colliding with the sub-stub range that it occupies. It's an attachment in the BSC + PEG Ports thread.

[CorinaMarie 29,618]

11 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

To add a port to BSC then, I guess one overrides one of those stubs and finds a way to tell other modders so nobody else utilizes the same one. Have I got it, or am I confuzzled?

To know for sure one would have to check every entry in their master list against the sub controller exemplars present. If there are blanks provided then using their method I would expect to find the sub controllers in the same master .dat file (prolly with the default Maxis settings for the properties). Sure, I get enjoyment from figuring out new things like the details of modding these growable Freight End Points, but to create the lots well and integrate them would take way more time than I can invest in this. I'm only concerned with the proof of concept where I've shown growable residential, commercial, and industrial can be made to be an inland seaport Freight End Point. So, I've done all I intend to do.

From this point on it'll be up to any creator who wishes to use this concept to figure out how to integrate theirs with BSC, Peg, or whoever the Seaport Authority is.

[Simmer2 23,786]

Hi Cori.

This is extremely interesting. It opens up a whole new Universe of possibilities.

Thank you for the detailed tutorial and thorough investigation of this concept.

I can already hear my cerebral gears clicking lol

Simmer2

[carlosmarcelo 979]

That's awesome!!! 

Everything this is very complicated for me.  But, let me see if I understood: you said to the lot with "hypnotic" ilive reader  , fooling him: 

"You are a seaport!!! You are a seaport!!! You are a seaport!!! You must receive trucks." 

But, you have a problem: seaport is not a simple lot, it has a controller behind (I don't know why it need a controller, but ok ).

So, let me do my noob question: could you use a freight train station instead seaport to fooling RCI lots and they receive trucks?  

I believe that the freight train stations was done to have a many and multiples in the city, so, you didn't have problem with conflicts. I may be mistaken but I believe there are more seaports mods that freight train stations mods.  

That make a senses? 

[CorinaMarie 29,618]

8 hours ago, carlosmarcelo said:

Everything this is very complicated for me.  But, let me see if I understood: you said to the lot with "hypnotic" ilive reader  , fooling him: 

"You are a seaport!!! You are a seaport!!! You are a seaport!!! You must receive trucks." 

Yep. It's mostly magic.

 

8 hours ago, carlosmarcelo said:

But, you have a problem: seaport is not a simple lot, it has a controller behind (I don't know why it need a controller, but ok ).

Based on how Maxis programmed it, the game needs the sub controller to tell the base Lot Configuration that it can accept the Freight Trucks and (this is the critical part) it can see said trucks as having reached a final destination (or End Point as I'm calling it).

 

8 hours ago, carlosmarcelo said:

So, let me do my noob question: could you use a freight train station instead seaport to fooling RCI lots and they receive trucks?

That is an astute question and the answer is: Yes, the residential (or commercial, or industrial) grown lots can be hypnotized to believe they are a freight train station. The problem here is they won't act as an End Point (final destination) for those trucks. As a station, there has to be an exit too for the freight, such as the railroad. So, a freight station is more like a transfer station. The trucks arrive, the Sims inside grab all the cargo from the trucks, and toss it on a train as it flies by.

You can, instead, have the trucks arrive and exit the other side of a lot using the same freight train station idea, but make them come in as trucks and leave as trucks:

Additionally, they can be overwhelmed with the amount of traffic using them just like any street, road, bus stop, subway station, or other item which is transit enabled. Setting a low entry for the transit quantity of trucks doesn't actually limit how many will try to use a Freight Station. It'll simply get overwhelmed and create a congestion bottleneck. That in turn will show as red in the traffic congestion data view. With a seaport, the controller allows one to say: Accept this many trucks and no more.

 

8 hours ago, carlosmarcelo said:

I believe that the freight train stations was done to have a many and multiples in the city, so, you didn't have problem with conflicts.

Precisely correct. And it's the fact that they are not a final destination so there is no conflict. They simply work by having a few Transit Switch properties which tells the lot what can come in and what can go out.

 

8 hours ago, carlosmarcelo said:

That make sense? 

Yep. It does. It's the part about freight train stations not being an End Point for freight (which is what the Seaport does inherently) that keeps it from being the easy solution.

[Terring 6,473]

It's always nice to see a humble idea getting flesh and bones and having a tutorial to make your own grown-able freight end points is awesome, but how about a global mod that adds freight capabilities on all buildings? We already have mods that multiply the number of jobs that all commercial and industrial buildings can over, and even a mod that add jobs in residential buildings. Heck, we have CAM and SPAM that changes a lot of parameters for so many buildings, both Maxis-made and custom-made. So is it possible to make a universal mod that add freight end points based on the number of the residents/jobs and the type of the building? Something tells me that a mall needs more supplies from the factories than an office building and even more than a family home.

Also, @Simmer2 is in da house too? Put sunglasses everybody, because soon the Universe will be exploded from awesomeness

[CorinaMarie 29,618]

5 hours ago, Terring said:

So is it possible to make a universal mod that add freight end points based on the number of the residents/jobs and the type of the building?

Technically yes, provided there is no limit to the number of Seaport Sub Controllers one can have in the game. The problem is that the sub controller has to be married to a specific Lot Configuration exemplar and the building exemplar needs a few things added to it. So, you'll need to extract every single building to add the information, create a sub controller for every single lot configuration by reference, and then list all of those in the Master Controller. Then it'd be universal for all Maxis content.

Additionally, the distressed view which occurs a few times per game month means all props on the lot also need set to not follow the lot state. Those prolly need to be duplicated and assigned new IIDs so they don't affect non-seaport lots.

It appears there isn't any magic exemplar to add the Seaport stuff like job multipliers does because the hard coded rules tie it to individual Lots. So, realistically, no it's not possible to make this a simple global effect.

[Terring 6,473]

That's sad, but at least now we know how we can make grown-able seaports. Hmm, I wonder if we can make grown-able parks, airports, hospitals, bus stops etc. That would be very interesting and fun

[CorinaMarie 29,618]

7 hours ago, Terring said:

Hmm, I wonder if we can make grown-able parks, airports, hospitals, bus stops etc.

Prolly. Just add the necessary properties and values to the Building Exemplar.

[doldrum 67]

Has anyone told you that you are one smart cookie?

CORI, 2020! (Again, in 2024!)