Interface / item browsing mod ?

[crasse 1]

Hi there !

I've been playing SC4 since more than a decades, and restarted recently ! I've found back my mod directory and there is tons of them, most come from here and sc4devotion (so first, thanks for all the hardwork of creating those mods and maintaining those sites up and running ! )

As I got lots of mods, like everybody here I assume, I was always bothered with the menus in the game which aren't designed properly to handle all those BATs ( like I have more than 200 BATs in the parks and misc category for example ) and so browsing them in the tiny 8 items column window is a bit of a hassle...

I've looked in the tool section but didn't find what I was looking for (maybe missing it) 

So here is my question :

Is there a mod to replace or improve the base item browsing window in SC4, for example with a similar window but with a bigger column and rows than can display a lot more item thumbnails ?

[rsc204 21,866]

At this time, no. This is something many players suffer with, at a certain point menus become too full and a big ungainly. Realistically, there are three viable solutions to this problem:

• Menu Management Lots (MMLs)
  An MML would typically be made for a set of modular lots. It's an optional file, that hides every item from a set from the menus. Instead, a single "Construction Lot" appears in the menu. When this is placed into the game, it unhides all the items from that set. It's a good idea with a few drawbacks:
  • You must wait a month or more (game time), after placing the Construction Lot, until the items appear.
  • Removing the Construction Lot does not remove the items from your menu until you next load the city.
  • To place the same item multiple times, you must re-select it from the menu for each subsequent plop.
    Very annoying when you want to place say 100 Ortho park pieces.
  • MMLs exist for many popular sets in ready-2-go form, but not all. You can of course make new ones, it's not terribly difficult, but a basic understanding of modding would really help.
• Daley's Advanced Menu Navigator (DAMN)
  DAMN looks to hide everything and organise it by re-purposing the News Ticker for the the task. It's reasonably automated, you just place the lots you want to work with DAMN in the right place, run some scripts and it does it's thing. Afterwards the lots will no longer appear in the regular menus. Instead you'll use the News Ticker window to use them, this has the option of nested folders and much better organisation. There are downsides to this approach too, but DAMN isn't something I'm terribly familiar with.
• Manual Organisation
  For the dedicated or OCD player, nothing beats having your own system or organisation. Changing the menus items appear in and the order of them to your own preferences. Not hard in any way, but just a hideous amount of boring repetitive work. With a bit of planning though, you'll only need do this once. Your reward, having things where you want them and know them to be, actually makes the number of items less of an issue. Pair that with a mouse with a good-quality scroll wheel, you can get through a couple hundred items in 3-5 flicks of it's wheel. Note you might need to adjust the relevant property in control panel for scroll wheel acceleration too, but I promise you it can really be that painless.

Of course no one solution need apply here, nothing to prevent anyone from using a combination of the three.

[crasse 1]

Thanks a lot !

I've looked at DAMN also, seems to be a good thing, There is a clear tutorial here so I'll go with it. (I'm really tired of scrolling 80 planes items in my parks menu to reach the first parks x| )