CoriBoom Partial Mythbusting - Building Style Tilesets Not Locked Down in the EXE

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

We've all heard that SC4 is limited to the original 4 building tilesets. Right? Well, @Cyclone Boom and I have been poking around under the hood. There are some caveats with what we've accomplished and we're still testing, but here're a few pics showing what we've done:

First step is telling the game it can have more than just the original four:

 

To test our idea, CB made 8 separate lots:

 

Each test lot is in its own tileset. Here's what 0x2004 looks like inside its building exemplar:

 

While we have added radio buttons for the additional sets and they can be clicked on and off, so far the game seems to only know that the new sets are available based on the Building Development exemplar setting. That means we have to change the property in there to limit the extra sets. With the setting we are testing (in the first pic above) it does cycle thru the full set of 8.

^ Also, we haven't tested beyond 4 extra sets, but there's no reason to believe we can't have more.

[Propfam 2,295]

What an awesome discovery. I hope it is useful for example, as a building block or to add building style other than the Maxis 4.

Thanks.

[Lucario Boricua 7,048]

Kinda sad that this was discovered 15 years past the initial prime time of the game, as it means that the immense amounts of building content available would be nearly impossible to adapt to this finding, in case it can be developed for use as another mod. 

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

6 hours ago, Lucario Boricua said:

Kinda sad that this was discovered 15 years past the initial prime time of the game, as it means that the immense amounts of building content available would be nearly impossible to adapt to this finding, in case it can be developed for use as another mod. 

Oh. Well, phooey. I guess there's no point pursuing this then.

[bladeberkman 720]

Amazing. So much potential here. For example, this could be a great way to control the types/styles of low density residential development, which can start looking a little haphazard the more custom content you have.

[c4bl3fl4m3 405]

2 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Oh. Well, phooey. I guess there's no point pursuing this then.

I disagree. I think there's still potential for this, for files going forward and for people's personal use (or maybe a push to get the people who have made BATs who are still active on here to update their stuff.) I've long wished something like this was possible (and that more people were more choosy with what tile sets their stuff would grow on).

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

I wouldn't mind seeing a middle-America style set. You know, 3 story high rises. I guess, a sci-fi based set for futuristic maps. Asian architecture and historic sets. It's hard to replicate ancient cities, when all the dwellings have driveways. 

[mattb325 28,890]

St Marys Hospital, London, 1928

Alexander Fleming: "Och aye, I've just discovered Penicillin, think what this'll mean for the world!!!!"

Random peep: "You can't release that, what about all of the trillions of people who have already died throughout the millennia...what will they think?"

 

Anyway, this is a brilliant!!!!!!

Honestly, having only the four tilesets based on arbitrary American time periods (but given geographical names, like 'New York', which actually meant 'art deco' or Euro which actually meant modernist, post-WWII) made the existing tilesets next to useless.

This, to me, is the best thing ever, up there with the NAM and the essential bug fixes: it will finally give us scope for absolute control of what our neighbourhoods look like. Especially if there are more than eight tilesets available.

Just think what is now possible. You can lay down a few streets that you want to appear as a historic area, zone, select the appropriate tileset, mark as historic and move to the next area, which you can give a completely different feel. It makes SC4 just like C:S in the way that a player can control the appearance of a city tile.

To think for all these years, we were told it wasn't possible.

I'd love to know how you got the extra buttons to appear....

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

How do we tell all the buildings in the game that they belong to one or more of the new sets in addition to their old one?

IIRC, we still can't "build all styles at once", so while we're cycling through styles, what happens to the game if it shifts into a style without many lots?

As you continue to poke around, keep your eyes open for a hook that could fix it so we really can build all styles at once 

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

8 hours ago, bladeberkman said:

Amazing. So much potential here.

6 hours ago, c4bl3fl4m3 said:

I think there's still potential for this ...

Yeah, there absolutely is potential here. I feel it's worth looking at this from the perspective of the here and now, rather than what could've been in hindsight.

Let's say hypothetically it was possible to assign custom tilesets to content from the early days of modding. That would've been all well and good, but it ultimately comes down to personal preference really. The task of educating BATters and lotters to go about this would've added an extra step, needing the OccupantGroups exemplar property editing to assign items to a broad community agreed new set of tilesets. After all, this is a method of categorising lots to assign when they should develop in game. Much like menu ordering or structuring using the DAMN and organising one's Plugins folder, it depends on how each of us wish to go about this.

There'd never have been a true one-size-fits-all solution even if this was discovered 15 years ago. The same also applies for anything new which will be developed in the SC4 modding scene through the next 15 years (and beyond). The past cannot be changed, but the present is what duly (and truly) transforms the future.

 

4 hours ago, mattb325 said:

This, to me, is the best thing ever, up there with the NAM and the essential bug fixes: it will finally give us scope for absolute control of what our neighbourhoods look like. Especially if there are more than eight tilesets available.

And what I particularly like is how this can be seen as another option to expand modding possibilities.

If the method Cori has discovered can be implemented in a practical means, I think there is a positive outlook for what this means for SC4 content. As such I wholeheartedly agree it's less a need for sadness and pessimism, but more a cause for celebration and optimism.

 

4 hours ago, mattb325 said:

I'd love to know how you got the extra buttons to appear....

One word can sum it up. As Cori would say:  Magic! 

Here's a preview pic from Reader 1.5.4 with editing the UI panel:
 

 

The ID number corresponds to each additional selection control.

Relating to the identified caveats so far, these controls do appear to just be decorative at this stage, and how the game doesn't seem to recognise when other tilesets are active in a given tile. That needs a bit more investigating to see if there's anything which can be fed into the system. I investigated the XML source view and found how the existing 0x2000 to 0x2003 ones were in the same format, and so it may well suggest that full functionality is asking for a missing piece of the puzzle.

What was cool is how when starting a new tile with the control file setting the newly defined tileset ID number, it was able to only allow that lot to grow (each one of the 8 total we'd made as pictured). This proves how it is possible for additional tilesets to be interpreted from the Tract Developer Available Styles property.

----------

Even if this doesn't work out completely as we all hope, it's always nice to discover new things and realise if they are viable.

Like Cori is also, I'm a big believer in how exploring all avenues is the best approach for succeeding with new discoveries. Until seeing what can be achieved, there's also no way of knowing what is achievable. That process can often take time, and small steps are the cumulative precursor to any accomplishment. Also the things discovered now still have potential to be useful later down the line also in other areas.

Just consider the complex DLL modding and masterful findings @simmaster07 has pioneered, which led to the subsequent saved game editing that @smf_16 succeeded in. Did any of us realistically envision 15 years ago any of that might even remotely be possible?

That's how the SC4 community continues to amaze, and here we still are discovering in this new decade. Let's make use of it.

Also even partial mythbusting goes a long way to fully classifying a given myth as:

[Tyberius06 12,234]

Potentials? Potentials??? Geez, this discovery is gonna make my planned SC4 life way easier. One year ago, when I had that idea, that I'm gonna play with the game in given year (it not really happened), I was planning building a city tile with custom growables only, controlling the different type of buildings by tileset and density. Four tilesets and 3 density meant at that time 12 different controlled building set to be grown in my city. But with this... oh... "Space... the final frontier..."

By the way. I don't know how many of you visited frequently the SC4D site, while @CasperVg has done some experiments with *.dll modding and created this pretty f... cool mod.

https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=18501.0 - AutoSave & AutoHistorical

He had some nice findings with hotkeys, some new extra cheats and the AutoHistorical stuff is awesome!

I think @CorinaMarie's finding is kind of gamechanger for us! 

Thank you so much!

- Tyberius

[Lucario Boricua 7,048]

I'm surprised the AutoSave and AutoHistorical mods from SC4D were never really mentioned here, despite those being fairly high in the priority list of players' wants for functional game modifications!

If anything, what could be useful would be the development of a software tool to actually automate the re-designation of the tileset of particular (or better yet, batches of) lots. If that were doable, then I would retract my pessimistic remark about the relative uselessness of this finding so much time after SimCity 4's modding scene started.

[mattb325 28,890]

Thanks for the detailed explanation, Cyclone Boom.

I am so very excited about this discovery...

4 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

these controls do appear to just be decorative at this stage, and how the game doesn't seem to recognise when other tilesets are active in a given tile

If I am reading this correctly, does that mean if, say, a city has (or had) the Chicago T/S selected and then you also select, say, 0x2005 that it won't recognise it, nor will it recognise an existing city's Tilesets, but works fine on a new tile?

If so and that is the extent of the caveat, it may be limiting, but it certainly isn't a deal breaker for me. After all, if you have the NAM (or any other major mod/tree controllers and so on) installed and then decide to uninstall it, you can no longer play city tiles made with the mod, so I am sure many people would use it, especially if content creators started listing it as a dependency, and even retrospectively adjusted their released files (which I would do, this discovery is something I've wanted ever since I first started making BATs).

Please don't let the pessimists  derail your efforts; after all, CAM, NAM, SPAM etc, aren't used by every single player, but that doesn't make them any less of a mod.

[11241036 5,108]

Wow, after so many years there are still some interesting discoveries with this game. I totally agree with all the people that consider this discovery useful; after all, if you don't like it, you don't need to bother with it, and everything that improves gameplay is worth mentioning and being explored even if it comes very late.

I do agree that it will be difficult, though, to turn this discovery into a widely appreciated mod comparable to CAM, NAM and the like, because of these two reasons:

• A lot of people have their personal way of thinking about building styles, and it would be near impossible to even find a way to please a considerable amount of them.
• This would also either require hundreds of modders, many of which haven't probably been seen in years, to retrofit their plugins to actually make them candidates for a mod that expands the amont of available building styles, or hundreds of "override plugins" which will make any download database confusing.
• If people download two or more mods that deal with the amount of building styles available, there's great potential for messing up a city.

Just a question at this point: Technically speaking, if you install a plugin with a rep at the OccupantGroups property that the game doesn't know, doesn't it just ignore this rep? I'm having so many downloads in my Plugins folder that are BTE-enabled, and I don't even exactly know what that means - but they all have reps in the OccupantGroups property that can't be handled by vanilla SC4 and my game still works fine.

[bladeberkman 720]

Yeah, I definitely see this as a positive. Continuing with the low-density residential example, I’d be thrilled to flip a switch and only have mattb325’s houses grow in one suburban tract, flip another switch and have c.p.’s houses in the next tract, and another switch for jmeyer’s tract across the street. Or, throw a switch for Aaron Graham’s residential high rises in a downtown area. Honestly, if there were a tool or interface that let me assign building styles (on/off switches) to specific custom content creators, I would totally customize those buildings to my preferences (were it that simple). Eager to see where this research takes you, Corina.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

20 hours ago, mattb325 said:

To think for all these years, we were told it wasn't possible.

I have accomplished a few impossible things already (most recently a decade old boat problem resolution) so I've decided to not get discouraged and we'll continue working on this.

 

20 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

How do we tell all the buildings in the game that they belong to one or more of the new sets in addition to their old one?

Edit the property for OccupantGroups in the building's exemplar and add whichever sets you'd want it to appear in.

 

16 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

After all, this is a method of categorising lots to assign when they should develop in game.

Yeah. If this can become viable, it would really be up to peeps to set things for themselves as there'd likely be as many ideas for what should be its own set as there are peeps playing the game.

 

13 hours ago, Lucario Boricua said:

If anything, what could be useful would be the development of a software tool to actually automate the re-designation of the tileset of particular (or better yet, batches of) lots.

Indeed. And no one would even begin to write something like that unless the groundwork were in place.

Should this become something that'll actually be useful then I'd imagine @rivit could code something that would let one select a folder and it could go thru and overwrite the OG tilesets info based on one's preferences.

 

12 hours ago, mattb325 said:

If I am reading this correctly, does that mean if, say, a city has (or had) the Chicago T/S selected and then you also select, say, 0x2005 that it won't recognise it, nor will it recognise an existing city's Tilesets, but works fine on a new tile?

My preliminary findings seem to indicate that which (and how many) tile sets are enabled in the Tract Developer Available Styles property at the time of the city creation (naming it) are what are available in that city tile. The 4 originals are included even if I list only one new tile set. So, if I make it have only one rep of, say, 0x2006 then none of the buttons are toggled on in the Building Styles selection thinger and only lots with an OG of 0x2006 will grow and no others. If then later toggling on one (or more) of the original 4, it then magically starts including those too.

As CB mentioned, the extra toggles we've added don't have any influence on the new tile sets. For the new ones, if they are listed in the Tract property then they are always on. It might be possible that @simmaster07 could work his magic and let the internal code recognize a new, higher amount of tile sets that the toggles would work for. Maybe we could define 24 (or such) total and then that number could be coded in. I suspect coding in a variable number would be way more complicated.

Another possibility with what we know atm is that one could move things they always want to a new set and then use the 4 originals as the things to toggle on and off. That already looks completely possible, but ofc not as exciting as being able to toggle multiple new sets on and off.

 

12 hours ago, 11241036 said:

Just a question at this point: Technically speaking, if you install a plugin with a rep at the OccupantGroups property that the game doesn't know, doesn't it just ignore this rep?

That's correct. If the property doesn't match up to anything the game knows, it does just ignore it and won't grow that lot. That's the principle of the Block All Maxis Content plugin inasmuch as it sets the OG to something the game doesn't recognize. On a side note, it's all kinds of random what @DuskTrooper used in there. Sometimes it's a logical 0x00000000, but other times it's 0x00002005 and many other times it's just a totally random hex value. Currently, any which are not in the 0x2000 to 0x2003 range work as blockers just because the game does ignore them. Should this new concept pan out, then we'd definitely need to rework that mod as the 0x2005 would interfere with the new plan.

 

12 hours ago, mattb325 said:

Please don't let the pessimists  derail your efforts.

Not to worry. CB and I are again discussing ways to poke and prod this and see where it leads. Once we are more confident of what is working (and what exactly the caveats are) we'll post all the test files and explanations of how to do the same as we are experimenting with now.

Ofc, your statement reminded me of the old joke: What's the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is afraid that's true.

[matias93 7,535]

16 hours ago, Lucario Boricua said:

If anything, what could be useful would be the development of a software tool to actually automate the re-designation of the tileset of particular (or better yet, batches of) lots. If that were doable, then I would retract my pessimistic remark about the relative uselessness of this finding so much time after SimCity 4's modding scene started.

The Reader has scripting capabilities, so it should be possible to do some script for it, to auto-change the tilesets of entire folders of lot files. Now, how smart this could be, is more difficult. In the most basic implementation, the modder would still need to manually sort the lot files into intended tileset folders to let the script do the dirty work.

 

Anyway, this is a BREAKTROUGH, in all caps and so. Probably the only limit to a wonderfully granular control of building styles is the variety of stages and densities for all the styles. For example, if I were to do an 'urban' tileset, it wouldn't grow anything on a new city, where the stage of their lowest lots hasn't been reached yet. For an experienced user with enough lots on other tileset this wouldn't be a problem, but it wouldn't surprise me to see lots of novice players asking why their cities don't grow at all by using such a mod.

[Terring 6,476]

Extra tilesets? Now that's something with tons of potentials, such as geographical sets (North America, South America, Europe, Mediterranean, Africa, Middle East, Asia, Far East etc), chronological sets that allow us to see our cities evolve though time (Ancient Age, Medieval Age, Renaissance Age, Industrial Age, Atomic Age, Digital Age, Transhuman Age, Transcendent Age etc), fantasy and -punk sets (medieval fantasy, art noir, steampunk, cyberpunk, commiepunk, solarpunk etc), all in our disposal, allowing us to customize entire regions without the need of modification out plugins every single time. Hey, we can even recreate the tilesets of SimCity Societies and get epic combos, like using the Creative set to make Pinkie Pie's dream cities or mixing Authoritarian and Spiritual to get Warhammer 40000. And since we're there, let's bring all the buildings from SimCity 3000 and give them their one tileset, as well as from SimCity 2000 and SimCity 2013. Wanna play SimCity 3000? Just hit a button. Wanna build a European Solarpunk city? Hit a button. A mix of fantasy and modern? Hit a button. But I'm pretty sure that ramifications of this discovery will affect the architectural style of the city, but also the game mechanics and the way the cities will be growing. For instance, how about CAM? Does the CAM team knows about this discovery? Maybe the additional tilesets could enrich the this mod by some way. Either way...

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

4 minutes ago, Terring said:

I'm pretty sure that ramifications of this discovery will affect the architectural style of the city, but also the game mechanics and the way the cities will be growing.

^ This assumes we can get the buttons to allow selection whilst in the game. We aren't there yet.

Otherwise, I'd've prolly titled this thread: Earth-Shatterning New Discovery

 

5 minutes ago, Terring said:

Does the CAM team knows about this discovery?

They do if'n they read this thread.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

Random fact I believe I've proven to myself:

The codes for the available building style tile sets are always stored in the save game data in the TGI of 2990C142-299B2DB1-00000000 and it is variable length to accommodate however many entries there are in the .dat file which contains the styles listed. The first one starts at offset 0x0000001B in that game data entry.

 

The first one 0x00002004 is found as a proper reverse byte DWORD. Then the remaining ones seem to be in some sort of SPLIT-WORD format:

 

I won't clutter this up with all the other test images, but I've proven how these are a direct correlation to what I put in the Available Styles property and they change order if I change the order in the .dat file.

[rivit 3,402]

Cori, I think we might have to also name you Alice as you keep going down rabbit holes. (which probably makes Cyclone Boom the Caterpillar)

To write something that could edit/update Occupant Groups automagically isn't non-trivial but also not impossible. In the end its defining what needs to be done that will be the hard bit.

To aid a bit of investigation I've updated SC4DataNode (here in my archive v1.08) to list the Building Occupant Groups. Take the TGI View Buildings, and make a CSV of it. Then slurp into your favoured CSV editor. (like Excel)

A few things for people to ponder:

• Building Styles 200x only really seem to apply to R and C buildings - and if they (styles) are not in these exemplars does this mean the building is always or never used?
• If no Style implies will always show why do so many R and C buildings have all 4 known values? 
• If you add a Style to something other than R or C does this have any effect? i.e. restrict its appearance in game 
• Occupant Group 0000 is almost certainly an invalid value and should not be used (but it has been). However - SC4 seems to ignore it safely.
• Occupant groups without descriptions are unknown to SC4DataNode (me) - if you know of more and/or their descriptions please send them to me.

[xxdita 1,097]

I don't know that there is a CAM team, exactly. But I have started taking notes on what a possible v3.0 should look like. 

I remember discussing the possibility of added building styles at the early stages of CAM 2.0 development. We did know that it was possible, and likely intended for a second expansion pack that never materialized. Our thoughts then was that it could only be useful if someone were willing to do the work necessary to define the new styles available, and then to provide enough content throughout the various stages to make it worthwhile, as had been done with the CAM starter packs. None of us involved in that conversation were interested in adding that amount of work to our plates, as we were already still adding content for the new stages CAM allowed. 

New building styles do add possibilities, but there would have to be enough content to allow for proper stage growth, throughout all RCI types and wealths, in various lot sizes, for each new building style created for it to work on its own. At a minimum, each new building style would need the same number of lots available in any of the standard Maxis styles shipped with the game. Because that's what you're trying to replace really. The game ships with 244 Residential building descs, used by 300 lots, 99 CS descs, 129 CO descs, and 92 Industrial building descs. The exact math is further complicated by building families, but even with those numbers, assuming each building style has an equal share, you would need 61 Residential building descs for 75 lots, in order to fully take advantage of a new building style. 

So I don't want to discourage anyone from making a go of this, but don't underestimate the amount of content that will be necessary for any new building style to be viable on its own. Testing will be necessary to show what happens when there is not enough content for the chosen building style throughout the various stages. In an ideal situation, the game would continue allowing all types, giving preference to the building style chosen, but it is more likely that when the game cannot find a suitable lot to grow, then no growth will occur at all, no different than using a Maxis RCI blocker without having enough custom content installed. 

[xxdita 1,097]

1 hour ago, rivit said:

Cori, I think we might have to also name you Alice as you keep going down rabbit holes. (which probably makes Cyclone Boom the Caterpillar)

To write something that could edit/update Occupant Groups automagically isn't non-trivial but also not impossible. In the end its defining what needs to be done that will be the hard bit.

To aid a bit of investigation I've updated SC4DataNode (here in my archive v1.08) to list the Building Occupant Groups. Take the TGI View Buildings, and make a CSV of it. Then slurp into your favoured CSV editor. (like Excel)

A few things for people to ponder:

• Building Styles 200x only really seem to apply to R and C buildings - and if they (styles) are not in these exemplars does this mean the building is always or never used?
• If no Style implies will always show why do so many R and C buildings have all 4 known values? 
• If you add a Style to something other than R or C does this have any effect? i.e. restrict its appearance in game 
• Occupant Group 0000 is almost certainly an invalid value and should not be used (but it has been). However - SC4 seems to ignore it safely.
• Occupant groups without descriptions are unknown to SC4DataNode (me) - if you know of more and/or their descriptions please send them to me.

Right, good points. Industrial has subtypes: Anchor, Mech, and Out options. I'm not sure what adding a building style OG would do. It may be worth testing to see if Industry can make use of building types or not. 

You'll notice that when Maxis used all 4 building styles, they had a building or prop family set that went along with each style. Custom content using all 4 styles generally lacks that ability, so you just get the one building growing in all styles it is allowed in. 

Where have you seen OG 0x0000? I haven't noticed this. Really, I'm not aware of custom OG's being used very much at all, outside the BSC. 

I have recently updated RippleJet's thread at SC4D on Occupant Groups and Types. The code on tables has been broken somehow over the years, so I'm trying to fix that as I can. He does note that Building styles are only for R & C types. I'll take a look at DataNode to check for all the BSC OG's. 

Occupant Groups can be fun though. Whether used to track how many of a particular OG you have in a city, or to use as the prerequisite for a reward lot, there is a lot of potential there. I don't know that the BSC ever ventured into creating custom MySIms, UDI, or Automata Spawning OG's though. Such things should be possible, in theory, but I'm not sure just how complicated it would be. 

[xxdita 1,097]

I think it's important to have realistic expectations here, vs unrealistic demands. Because where does it end? With CAM, there were known technical limitations for just how many more stages could be added. 

Honestly, I think adding even more possible stages for farms in CAM 2.0 was pointless, since there was no update for PIMX to allow these extra stages to be created easily, and I have yet to see any sort of definition for what these new farm stages should be. I don't even know that a Stage 8 farm exists yet. 

I do see new building styles possibly comparable to a CAM-level mod. The potential is certainly there. But it took an entire team of people to update a great deal of existing content to standards that CAM & PIMX defined. 

I think that in order to define a new building style, you have to first see if there is enough custom content available to justify it having its own style. So I could see W2W as a building style, whereas something as specific as 1973 Cleveland might present a problem. 

Once the new building styles have been defined, and new sets of lots from existing content have been made, then BATters and LOTters will see just what's missing from each style, and may be inspired to work on filling the gaps that are left. But there will likely be those that don't jump on the bandwagon as well. 

I've been looking for possible conflicts with CAM. I do see that the Building Development Simulator has been included with CAM 2.1, but I'm not sure for what purpose really. I know this is the same exemplar used for @CorinaMarie's No Kickout Lower Wealth mod, and I have been meaning to get around to checking if that were CAMpatible or not. At first glance, it's easy to say that it's not CAMpatible. But there's more to it. 

The only change I see in the Building Development Simulator for CAM 2.1 is Construction Resources Min/Max modified to 0x2000, 0xD530 from 0x2000, 0x5000. I don't see any benefit to this. I think if anything, it was changed based on the myth that this property determines how much growth could happen per month (or building cycle). And that's just not accurate, as was proven with CAM 1.0, as well as my Turbo mod. This property is simply the Construction Budget, the dollar amount available for construction per Sim population. So it will allow for more expensive buildings to grow, but not buildings with more capacity, which I'm quite certain was the intent. But unless there's a Unionized Labor or Inflation mod out there that has greatly increased the cost of construction, I see absolutely no point in this. Our Sims haven't even gotten pay raises since 2003. Mayors should remember that when they start thinking about raising the taxes. 

But really, how much growth can happen in a building cycle is defined by how much demand can be processed. This is all set in the RCI exemplar types, and is based upon building capacities. 

So I don't see a real conflict with the No Kickout Lower Wealth mod. And the only possible issue I see regarding a possible Building Styles AddOn Mod at this point has nothing to do with the mod itself, but with the stages of any lots to be updated in any new building style pack. That can be addressed when it happens. Of course, this is still in early development, but I'll be following closely. 

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

11 hours ago, rivit said:

To write something that could edit/update Occupant Groups automagically isn't non-trivial but also not impossible. In the end its defining what needs to be done that will be the hard bit.

When/If we get to said end, I can draft a blueprint for this.

 

11 hours ago, rivit said:

Building Styles 200x only really seem to apply to R and C buildings - and if they (styles) are not in these exemplars does this mean the building is always or never used?

I'll continue to test, but it may very well be it's 2xxx rather than just 200x.

Most all custom lots have all 4 default styles enabled by listing them in 4 separate reps in the OG of the Building Exemplar. I believe this is the default in Maxis's LE and PIM-X utilizes the same concept. It is likely they programmed it this way so peeps wouldn't wonder why their new creation didn't show up. If the OG is set to a non-valid Group then they do not show up in the game. That's how the Blockers work.

 

11 hours ago, rivit said:

If no Style implies will always show why do so many R and C buildings have all 4 known values? 

If no Style in the OG of the Buildings Exemplar match any currently turned on, then they do not grow.

 

11 hours ago, rivit said:

Occupant Group 0000 is almost certainly an invalid value and should not be used (but it has been). However - SC4 seems to ignore it safely.

We could just as easily use FFFF, but the 0000 seems to be fine for Blockers. It appears it's simply a matter of whether or not any Style listed in the OG matches those the game knows it is allowed to use. If not, then no growth.

 

11 hours ago, rivit said:

Occupant groups without descriptions are unknown to SC4DataNode (me) - if you know of more and/or their descriptions please send them to me.

The list @xxdita provided is the master list as far as I know. Here's a pre-borked copy: Occupant Groups and Occupant Types (2020-02-03 7_35_46 AM).html

 

9 hours ago, xxdita said:

New building styles do add possibilities, but there would have to be enough content to allow for proper stage growth, throughout all RCI types and wealths, in various lot sizes, for each new building style created for it to work on its own.

I'm going to say: Not necessarily.

For instance, I would set the Cori's Castle Addon Pack to be its own group, add in a few other medieval lots and only use those when I want all stage 1 low density R$ and C$ and I don't need any other upper stages or sizes.

 

Industrial is something else to look into. It uses 0x87CD63A0 as pairs of entries which list the OG and a percentage so one can set how often an Anchor or others grow. I'm guessing the 3000 series of industrial could also be expanded, but that needs its own set of tests. My work week starts again today, so new testing and such will be at a much slower pace for now.

[matias93 7,535]

9 hours ago, xxdita said:

I don't even know that a Stage 8 farm exists yet. 

IIRC, @Fantozzi managed to create even stage 10 farms on his farming modpack.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

20 hours ago, rivit said:

If you add a Style to something other than R or C does this have any effect? i.e. restrict its appearance in game 

I've now had time to test this using Maxis farms. I added 0x2000 to Pumpkin Acres, 0x2001 to Barthelet Stables and Farhan's Farms, 0x2002 to Alvin Acres and Jez Knight Acres, and 0x2003 to Llama Ag. (I didn't assign Pedriana's Plants one of these OGs cause I use a Friendly Killer for that one.)

With no default OGs selected in game, any of them will grow. With one specific one selected (Chicago 1890 in this case) any of them will grow.

So, if there might be a way to confine industrial to groups it'll likely have to be via the other exemplar I mentioned. (And I have little faith we can do the same with industrial as we have hopes for doing with R and C.)

[xxdita 1,097]

Right. Any changes to the RCI developer exemplars would create compatibility issues with CAM, as these are the exemplars that actually enable the extra growth stages. I don't believe that should ever be a factor in the creation and development of any mod, of course.

At the same time, I believe adding the new building styles to the RCI developer exemplars, and allowing them to grow alongside the 4 standard building styles kinda defeats the purpose of enabling the new building styles, as all custom growables can already do that, unless the modding is just horrendous.

So ideally, new building styles would be an addition to any of the standard ones a building already has. Doing this would really eliminate the need for StartUp Manager, or moving files around, to decide what plugins are used each time you start the game. Instead of any of that, you could just click a button once you're comfortably in the game. And then you could move on to another city, where you want a completely different building style, and never have to exit the game because again, it's the click of a button, not moving files around or configuring StartUp Manager all over again. 

I think anyone that's ever used StartUp Manager would agree that this way sounds better. 

Industrial Building types work differently than Residential and Commercial building styles. Whether Anchor, Mech, or Out, this determines how a whole section of zoning grows. The different types also determine the necessary proximity to road access. You'll note that Anchor is not even listed in the Style Percentages, yet they seem to grow just fine. 

Industry is meant to be an incomplete lot, relying on all 3 types to fill in the zones as needed. There is a lot of repetition with Mech and Out buildings simply because they haven't received the same attention as Anchors when it comes to custom content. 

So I don't know that additional Industrial types are necessary, if even viable, or how they would react. 

[rivit 3,402]

12 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

With no default OGs selected in game, any of them will grow. With one specific one selected (Chicago 1890 in this case) any of them will grow.

Yeah, after thinking about it I figured this would be the case too. - also anything Civic, Transport etc etc would ignore styles too. Also I imagine plopping something just overrides/ignores the City Styles for that plop.  So our rules look like :

• Only R and C work with OG Styles
• it follows that if a building is to appear it must be in all OG Styles or one of the selected/selectable OG Styles i.e. no style = no building showing.
• hence suppressing R&C buildings works by picking no valid style i.e. anything other than those in the Tract developer available OG styles. (or no style at all)

~~~~

In my plugins I found this strange one while checking out styles:

TGI: 6534284A-AD4BA465-AEDE862B
Name: SG_Homes_HighGrove02_Grow
Family:  A0000926
OccGroups: 0000,
                     11030=(B) R-$$$,
                     2002=(S) Houston Style,
                     2003=(S) Euro Style,
                    B5C00150=SG: Homes,
                    B5C00B02=BTE: Res. High Wealth,
                    B5C001FF=SG: SG General
File:  SG Residentials\SG_MEGA_Residentials_Vol03_Models.dat

The OG 0000 seems odd - Was this an attempt to kill it or a tpyo? should it have been 1000=(B) Residential I wonder?
Has anyone ever seen this one in-game?

=

PLUGINS:\Portfolio\RCI Residential\SG Residentials\SG_MEGA_Residentials_Vol03_Models.dat

[xxdita 1,097]

That is very strange indeed. But easily remedied as well. 

PIMX showed this desc in the Unknown section, with the big red warning sign at the top, while all others were in their proper place under Residentials. But replacing the OG with 0x1000 puts it into Residential where it belongs. I honestly doubt that any of the 3 lots using this building desc have been able to grow for all these years. 

I'll get the file updated on the LEX. Thanks for the heads up @rivit!