Raymond's Newbie Thoughts

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

12 minutes ago, Wiimeiser said:

Some interesting ideas, like antigravity. I've been thinking about an eyecandy/landmark narrow-gauge railway set like the Puffing Billy, but I don't really have the skills or confidence to try making it myself...

 

Hiya @Wiimeiser, 

Are you talking about this one? Woww! it's pretty cool, Thank you for sharing your idea, it's not a functional railway, right? I thought it probably to achieve this goal, the eyecandy railway could be modeled and we also have Swamper77's generator, but i have no idea if it's possible to spawn the train running along it, Besides, if the path of railway has more complicated curve, we may also need to modify the path. Anyway, it's a good sharing, Thank you!

Sincerely,

-- Raymond

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

13 hours ago, Raymond7cn said:

GOL : game of life, green splotches appear and "dance" in your city (probably a graphics performance test)

-- Interesting, Should try it and to see if i could use it for other purpose.

This one is best done in a completely flat and empty city tile.

See Conway's Game of Life on Wiki for details of what it is.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Hiya Cori, @CorinaMarie

I have read this wiki article about Conway's Game of Life, I have to say it is sooo fascinating!

Before your sharing, I made some tests with different Terrain and cities, I could see those green squares dancing just looked like they have something to tell me. until i saw those great names, John von Neumann, Ulam (is he the father of simulation games ) etc, Wow, sometimes things are more than they appear. Just like SC4, it turns out they are:

Still lifes

Oscillators

Spaceships

These people want to simulate the source or essence of life with computer, right? Frankly, I haven't understood all of them, but that's really fascinating and i have collected it and prepare to learn more from that someday, Thank you! Cori.

Yours,

-- Raymond

[dmn 134]

Hi Raymond,

Enjoying reading this thread. I have learned some new stuff. 

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

3 hours ago, dmn said:

Hi Raymond,

Enjoying reading this thread. I have learned some new stuff. 

Thank you dmn, Actually, i'm the one who benefit from the help of @CorinaMarie @Cyclone Boom @Terring @rsc204…, as Robin has said to me: "because we too learnt from others. This cycle of giving back has helped to keep the SC4 community alive all this time."

Sincerely,

-- Raymond

-----

It's strange, I have tried most of cheats, but i couldn't get Ghosts appear on the cemetery lots when using the command Casper, Maybe it's just a joke. Anyway, i do have been inspired by it…

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

①② Yellowstone : I thought every boy probably have had a dream of cowboy, And maybe somewhere someone has had a Yellowstone CJ. Anyway, I was shocked when watching this series:

I mean every frames of it is like a painting, I don't know if that is called "pasture", I just want to own it in SC4, Let me begin with those lovely houses and barns first!

[carlosmarcelo 975]

On 09/07/2020 at 23:37, Raymond7cn said:

Now i think i have got what i need, and I just want a tree, but you give me forest, treasures were laying there,

Can I put another small tree in this forest? 

In fact, a very cool topic that you created, with this idea of a diary of thoughts and exchange of free ideas. 

I challenged myself to do something very silly: translate the plugin that releases the city hall upgrade. Only that. 

Upon successfully completing this task, I saw that there were 2 mods: one expanded the current city hall and the other added another larger city hall. 

Then the hand of curiosity itched and I wanted to put both scripts together, asking the user to decide what he wanted: expand the current city hall or build a new bigger one. 

The commands worked brilliantly, however, during testing some bugs appeared.  If I'm not mistaken, he kept asking me if I wanted to expand the city hall even after I expanded it. I would have to resume the project to remember what happened. I intend to do that soon, but if you want to look and help me think, the link with the topic I created about it follows below:

 

 

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

6 hours ago, carlosmarcelo said:

Can I put another small tree in this forest? 

Of course Dear Carlos, Actually, I couldn't have so many thoughts without your inspiration, You're absolutly Welcome!

Frankly, Modeling is something i maybe good at, I was just busy modeling parts of a futurist building, and my mind is actively thinking about them.

However i have looked at your work carefully, what you're doing there is quite terrific! If that's a silly job (as you said), Then i couldn't imagine what a great job is. i thought @simmaster07 @CorinaMarie @rsc204 will be the best answerers for your issue, since they're all masters of programing. Anyway, Please forgive me may couldn't be more helpful on it, I respect your work and looking forward could consult you about them someday!

Yours Sincerely,

-- Raymond

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Today I saw some interesting pics from web:

I thought i could make this in my city.

I remember that there is fog in SC4, can we make a city like this?

This one is pretty easy to model, It seems has been in @Terring 's city.

If i couldn't deal with the overhang of Minas Tirith, then I have to put it into the sky. it's a Joke, Just amazing.

with the trick cori taught me about the background pics, i may could… wait! is there any way prevent the background pics repeating? well, it seems impossible.

Memo:

There are Cloud Effects Tuning and Fog Effects Tuning exemplars. Wiki wanna give them a try someday. Besides, 

 

 

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

24 minutes ago, Raymond7cn said:

is there any way prevent the background pics repeating?

As far as I'm aware, it isn't possible to prevent them from repeating in the tiling effect. A long time ago I made a backgrounds mod which used solid colours, and for this I used a small image which was plain, and then applied for the background as a whole. This was very simple, and in my case I wanted them to repeat.

I wonder if it might be possible some way to make backgrounds not repeating, but it's something I've not looked into personally. I suspect this is the way the SC4 background format is, and not possible to edit via an exemplar property or anything unfortunately.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Dear CB, @Cyclone Boom 

I highly suggest you put a link of great works into your signature, it will remind us that you and Cori are not only our responsible administrators, but also creative BATter.

https://community.simtropolis.com/profile/533355-cyclone-boom/content/?type=downloads_file

I have to give your firework mod a try, Amazing work!

Yes I totally agree with you about prevent the repeating, It's more than likely that it's defined with hardcode. Thank you! and BTW, May i ask that have you ever tried the cheat "Casper – Ghosts appear on the cemetery lots."? I just couldn't see those Ghosts in the cemetery.

Sincerely

-- Raymond

[rsc204 21,808]

2 hours ago, Raymond7cn said:

i thought @simmaster07 @CorinaMarie @rsc204 will be the best answerers for your issue, since they're all masters of programing.

I wouldn't consider myself a master. Not to mention, like with real languages, knowing French won't help you speak Dutch, just like knowing Pascal doesn't help much with Java coding. There are of course some core concepts that are fairly standard, but each new language at the least will have it's own nuances.

I think here, Cori might be best placed, since the triggers for such messages are defined in the LUA code. I understand enough to see what's going on in most scripts, but lack the real knowledge to do anything practical in LUA.

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

2 hours ago, Raymond7cn said:

I highly suggest you put a link of great works into your signature

Good idea Raymond. I added the link named "My SC4 Files" to my files index.

As follows:

 

2 hours ago, Raymond7cn said:

I have to give your firework mod a try, Amazing work!

Thanks! It has been quite a while since I made that too, but I was proud of it at the time. I recommend playing some classical dramatic music on YouTube at the same time, since it adds to the atmosphere of the fireworks display. Setting the SC4 Visual Effects to be "High" is important for the best effects too I recall.

 

2 hours ago, Raymond7cn said:

BTW, May i ask that have you ever tried the cheat "Casper – Ghosts appear on the cemetery lots."?

I just tried that cheat but couldn't see any ghosts at all oddly enough.

Testing at night time and also plopping new cemetery lots didn't make a difference either. Maybe they only make a surprise appearance on special occasions.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

16 hours ago, carlosmarcelo said:

The commands worked brilliantly, however, during testing some bugs appeared. 

I've replied over in your thread about my testing.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

①③ Optional Historical UI: Daydreaming again,, Yes, I had this thought when i was still playing, The Make Historical function is my favorite, I will never get bored of doing that, then one day i thought is it possible to have a UI by which i could make the buildings (especially Residential) meets my particular criteria to historical? I mean when i click somewhere or press a hotkey, then pop up a window, I could input values (capacity interval), then all the buildings which meet my demand will become to historical.

Recently I have learned some knowledge about UI and historical function, but to do this at least i still need a LUA script. And I guess maybe i have to learn from the works of simmaster07. Yeah, so much need to study, I'm kind of excited.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

5 minutes ago, Raymond7cn said:

Recently I have learned some knowledge about UI and historical function, but to do this at least i still need a LUA script.

I'm almost, but not completely, certain this isn't an option which could be done via Lua coding. Many game variables (like ongoing counts of things) are available to Lua, but properties of the grown or plopped buildings are not.

You might be interested in @smf_16's Modifying .SC4 savegames: It IS possible! topic and/or CasperVG's DLL-modding for Hotkeys - AutoSave & AutoHistorical topic over on Devotion.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Thank you Cori @CorinaMariefor the sharing, Honestly, I have to collect them first, that's kind of complicated to me by now, but i agree with you about LUA.

Along with those clues i looked through Casper's posts since i thought he might knew the cheat "Casper".However i found this: @Cyclone Boom RenderProp maxParticlesTarget [value], Then I input "RenderProp maxParticlesTarget 10000", I got these:

Waterfall effect:

CB's terrific fireworks:

Then i change the parameter to 1

The waterfall effect became to this:

I thought this maybe useful to the cheat reference which CB has shared to me.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

[Study journal 2] : 

@Cyclone Boom I thought CB has misunderstood me, It's all my fault, since i guessed nobody would think of all i wanted was so simple:

Let me explain a bit, I was fascinated by effects due to CB's fireworks and also he helped me with adding smoke effect into those depots, and Honestly, I never paid attention to the cemetery before, so careless as i even didn't know the ghosts just an effect of game, (i thought this effect would be appeared after Casper command), until i followed CB's tip and waiting till October…

Along with that I found out the exemplar:

But there wasn't big surprise except some parameters:

Simulator Date Duration  0x0000001C = 28

Simulator Date Start 0x0A,0x01 = 10 1

Simulator Date Interval 0x0000016D =365

Prop occupant class ID 0x2977AA49 

The Occupant class id seemed to be the only clue, but i searched without success, Then suddenly i remembered that couple days ago when i was delving into simcity_?.dat, there was a Effect dir in sc_1.dat, I had no idea what it was at that time, but i thought it maybe relevant to effects.

After hours dazzling, I found this in section 13:

At the beginning, I thought file_pos was a key, however still no luck with it, then my eyes moved over the column index_key, those numbers seemed to be hex, so simply shifted it to decimal, I found it in section 12:

That checkbox is very strange, I thought that shoud be always on IMO, Anyway, there was still not too much content i desired, but with the same way (where says section 1 304,5,6), I went to section 1:

zombie is here too.

That's what I want!!

Finally:

Yes, I thought i can handle it, how about change them to Pumpkin head, Anyway, i have learned a lot and it also reminds me that never give up easily.

Besides, i found out the FSHs of zone tools:

and maybe the font of signpost within an ini file:

I guess that the bg probably is the background colour of the signpost's text, but still need to study how to create a bg_sign…

 

Note: I do remember that somewhere i have seen the word "Particles" in SC4, probably long ago, with the understanding of 3ds max's particle system, i thought there would be more options of RenderProp command. I may go back to find it after the present modeling.

[hugues aroux 3,784]

1 hour ago, Raymond7cn said:

the font of signpost within an ini file

oh oh, the research for signpost is progressing! Cooool!
I had completely forgotten about those Ghosts, thanks for digging up (hihi) that special effect.
If you want to have fun with zoning, I also played with the exemplar (simulator) 0x6534284a,0xe7e2c2db,0xe9482490 and the FSHs, changing the transparency and drawing of the FSHs and on the properties "display alpha zone" and "drag color zone". You can find my examples here. Be careful, don't forget that some other plugins (like SPAM or ZoningMod by Tropod) modify this "simulator" exemplar! They modify kZM_mZoneMinCellSize and kZM_mZoneMaxCellSize properties. CB and Cori have also made a plugin that modifies this simulator.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Dear Hugues, @hugues aroux I'm very glad that you and other veterans have followed my thread, Your precious experience meant so much to a newbie's thought.

I marked dozens of FHSs with a list named 'unknown', I just want to know if there is some interesting discovery by tweaking them, planning to do that every day with one or two of them. Actually i could do that all at once by the help of rivit's GoFSH and batch, but i know slow is fast, less is more. 

Thank you for your wonderful tips, i do appreciate it, and hopefully many more to come.

Yours,

-- Raymond

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

Really nice work Raymond with the Effect Dir investigations!

I've heard how that is a very complicated part of SC4 modding, and you've done well to analyse the data structure there with how it appears to be an index. I don't think many people have looked into this either, so what you've found and presented here is very insightful.

 

50 minutes ago, hugues aroux said:

CB and Cori have also made a plugin that modifies this simulator.

Oh yes, thanks for the mention. Your mod is very well made in what you thoughtfully created with the various options.

For anyone wondering, we likewise included a modified Zones manager in our Deuteranopia mod for color blind people (Cori did the data editing part).

[rsc204 21,808]

6 hours ago, Raymond7cn said:

But there wasn't big surprise except some parameters:

Simulator Date Duration  0x0000001C = 28

Simulator Date Start 0x0A,0x01 = 10 1

Simulator Date Interval 0x0000016D =365

These are Timed Prop Properties

On the date 10/01 (Sim. Date Start US format, i.e. month first), for 28 days (Sim. Date Duration) these props will appear, the cycle repeats every year (Sim. Date Interval). If only timed props with these settings for this effect exist, that will explain why even with the Cheat code, they don't appear all year round.

You could make an alternate RKT1 or non-timed version, but overrides where the RKT type is changed is generally a bad idea (suspected cause of Prop Pox).

3 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

I've heard how that is a very complicated part of SC4 modding, and you've done well to analyse the data structure there with how it appears to be an index. I don't think many people have looked into this either, so what you've found and presented here is very insightful.

EffectDir "data" is rather hard to explain, but it is in no way unique to effects. For example, every menu item in the NAM, must have such an EffectDir file. Again, Xannepann (JenX) was really one of the few people that ever managed to use such files to make some cool new effects. Sadly I don't think anything was documented, but some of his mods like: Poseidon (Water)  Jupiter (Seasonal Weather) Aurora (Celestial Effects), make extensive use of them. If you manage to crack (understand) how these work, we'll soon all be following you instead of the other way around .

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

On 7/13/2020 at 11:35 PM, rsc204 said:

If you manage to crack (understand) how these work, we'll soon all be following you instead of the other way around

Dear Robin, Thank you very much, however i guess it would be a long time.

Hiya CB, @Cyclone Boom I found out those parameters of RenderProp command when i was helping people with Nvidia issue. I suddenly recalled it's in this file:

so I tried some of them:

I hope it would be helpful with the complement of cheat post.

These days, by the help of CB's English lesson, i tried to modify font ini:

You can tell that i have added BGcolor and color statements at the end of every lines, but it seemed didn't work on the color of the game font, I thought this part probably is defined by hardcode, whereas the others (fonts, size,etc) worked.

Hiya Hugues, @hugues aroux I have tried your method about adding cursor files into Reader, but the procedure was different with yours:

Don't know if there was something wrong with the operation, Thank you for your tips anyway!

Hiya Cori, @CorinaMarie Your wonderful rina map! I haven't loaded all of them (100 tiles). but i do like it, i will show you more after i get more progress on it, Thank you!

[hugues aroux 3,784]

Hello, Raymond,
The .TGI file must be named as follows: name_file_bidule.cur.TGI ; and of course, the .cur file: name_file_bidule.cur

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

32 minutes ago, hugues aroux said:

Hello, Raymond,
The .TGI file must be named as follows: name_file_bidule.cur.TGI ; and of course, the .cur file: name_file_bidule.cur

Thanks a million Dear Hugues, I didn't know that before, it works now! ! btw, That tool's name is "Microangelo".

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Dear Hugues, @hugues aroux

Sorry that i want to consult you a further question, I want to use batch method to insert ≈2000 files, I made a list in form of Reader's instruction:

May I ask that what's the next step, Thank you!

[hugues aroux 3,784]

... No worries. With [browse] select your batch file, clicks [insert]. If everything goes well, Reader displays a message like "inserted files" (I don't remember). You can close the insert window, by the cross. And you can see all your files in the .dat! If not it's an error message. Then there is a problem with the .txt file.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Dear Friends, Interesting things again!

Thanks by the help of Hugues's tips, @hugues aroux (your experience is very important to me, without it i couldn't be sure about something), I modified all PNG files of simcity_1.dat, I was confronted with many difficulties, especially the batch insert method, Nevertheless, that worked. by now i'm 99% sure about the texture of signpost is irrelevant to PNG, but there were still dozens of special PNG files need to be delved more deeper.

From above you can tell that the background color of Region map has changed too, and this one:

I didn't expect to change the wind power's textures.

and this one:

the color of Shoreline even changed, I thought it's probably relevant to two special PNG files 856DDBAC-A9179251-0917660D and 856DDBAC-A9179251-0917660C, something like the color of sunshine, so plan to test them someday.

PS, My wife said that she loved this theme.

[Terring 6,473]

PinkCity 4!

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

①④ Colorful UI : Yes, I shoud be thankful to all of you helped me in this thread, During the recent study, I have learned lot of about UI, so I plan to make some simple UIs, It will be done these days, Hope you could help me again for the tests, Thank you!!