Got a quick SC4 question?... Ask here!

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

9 hours ago, rsc204 said:

If you want some help and think this is something you may want to do in future.

I just want to separate the whole set. I have no use for the self-destruct power lot or the money park, but the rest is quite useful, and functions very well for my needs.

[rsc204 21,808]

10 minutes ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

I just want to separate the whole set. I have no use for the self-destruct power lot or the money park, but the rest is quite useful, and functions very well for my needs.

A quick glance and the file is a bit of a mess frankly, turning everything into individual lots would be too time consuming for me to volunteer for the job. If you want a modified version which removes a bunch of needless junk and the two specific lots you don't want, then I am willing to make that happen.

[atsf189 460]

I have downloaded some older files of fast food restaurants and noticed that they appear to have xml files with codeing that duplicates the items that are in the building exemplar files. Why do they have this extra xml file? The files are growable and plopable lots?

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

A quick glance and the file is a bit of a mess frankly, turning everything into individual lots would be too time consuming for me to volunteer for the job. If you want a modified version which removes a bunch of needless junk and the two specific lots you don't want, then I am willing to make that happen.

If you can do that, these would be the priorities I'd want to keep-

High Priority:

High Output Power Plant (called Good Power in LE)

Pollution Reduction (actually a universal water mod)

Garbage Reducer

Very High Priority:

Whole City Police and Fire Coverage

Demand and Intelligence Increasers Elementary Schools and Main Library(I wouldn't mind having the High School too)

So I could do without Exploding Power lot, Money Park, College and Museum(and High School if need be).

If you do this, I'd take back some of the things I've said about you in the past. (probably shouldn't have reminded you)

[rsc204 21,808]

Yeesh... 141 entries in the original file, reduced to 37 without any change in functionality or the number of lots. Granted, most of that was clearing the unnecessary XML, PNG and other junk files, but it also included removing a bunch of Buildings Exemplars which linked to nothing and had no place being there. I'm going to make the fix suggested by Jack too and update the STEX version because that issue alone is something that should be fixed for new downloads at least.

Second version attached, with the two lots you don't want removed:

Cheater Lots_Modified.dat

Frankly I'm not sure I'd trust the remaining lots to work without problems, there are a whole bunch of issues, for example the Money Park will inevitably lead to a bug where you have a negative amount of cash, no one should need this much money each month, it's overkill. But it's too late to get into all that for me now.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

On 12/1/2022 at 6:28 PM, rsc204 said:

Frankly I'm not sure I'd trust the remaining lots to work without problems, there are a whole bunch of issues, for example the Money Park will inevitably lead to a bug where you have a negative amount of cash, no one should need this much money each month, it's overkill. But it's too late to get into all that for me now.

Any city can be built in the 100-500k range that the game gives you. And the Moolah cheat will give you anything you want, without having a menu-gobbling park.

To the hard-core simmer, these cheats probably seem trite, but they are essential to sand-boxers like me, trying to make realistic functioning cities without gobbling up essential real estate on multiple power plants, water, police kiosks etc. I have better uses for my "canvas".

Thanks for the assistance!

[rsc204 21,808]

On 03/12/2022 at 12:42 AM, SIM-ple Jack said:

And the Moolah cheat will give you anything you want, without having a menu-gobbling park.

Exactly my philosophy, anything that isn't essential gets dumped, a clean organised menu makes a large set of items bearable.

On 03/12/2022 at 12:42 AM, SIM-ple Jack said:

To the hard-core simmer, these cheats probably seem trite, but they are essential to sand-boxers like me, trying to make realistic functioning cities without gobbling up essential real estate on multiple power plants, water, police kiosks etc. I have better uses for my "canvas".

There is no such thing as an invalid or 'wrong' mod, sure a lot of what I personally do/release tries to balance any cheating with the natural order of gameplay, but that shouldn't be taken to mean I think outright cheating is a problem. The real issue is not the cheating aspect, but the modding itself and when going to extremes like this, the potential to introduce unforeseen errors that can affect player's games negatively is where my concerns lie.

Whilst I did give one specific example as the money park, any such cheat lot has the potential to cause problems if the modding is too out of whack. For example, as you discovered previously with the radiation particles on the water treatment plant, it's easy for a single property to wreak havoc. There are lots of similar stats throughout the set that have just been pushed up to the Max, but there are limits to what does and doesn't actually work. Given two glaring issues and the overall state of the file itself, I wouldn't be particularly confident that these were tested, so it's very much caveat emptor at this point.

[Rev1395 0]

What are some small regions that you know of that are for download guys?

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

On 12/12/2022 at 3:45 AM, Rev1395 said:

What are some small regions that you know of that are for download guys?

The fairly new Ready Made Regions STEX category might help for what you're looking for. All of these (currently 27) regions are available to download and install, and some of them also contain development in the city tiles. An example of this is the Suleburg region which is made using the vanilla game.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

On 12/11/2022 at 10:45 PM, Rev1395 said:

What are some small regions that you know of that are for download guys?

If you like to walk on the wild side, check out some of these maps-

 

 

[atsf189 460]

Is there a way to make a plopable IM building generate freight traffic?

Can you add the Workers & Freight Query to a plopable IM building?

[rsc204 21,808]

16 hours ago, atsf189 said:

Is there a way to make a plopable IM building generate freight traffic?

Not really, by making or plopping a building the connection that allows sims/freight to leave it just doesn’t function. However sims can work at ploppables since entering a building  only requires a valid transit connection such as a road.

16 hours ago, atsf189 said:

Can you add the Workers & Freight Query to a plopable IM building?

By default if you convert a lot to a landmark, it ends up in the landmark Menu with the landmark query window. But there is nothing to stop you from changing the menu it is in or using the industrial query instead. Just look at the value for a normal Ind building and copy the Query Exemplar ID, then give that if to the building you want to change. You’ll probably need to do that in Reader. 

[atsf189 460]

4 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

landmark query window

Thank You

I was referring to the hover Query. This Query seems to be associated with the occupant group you choose.

[rsc204 21,808]

The occupant groups ultimately control which menu an item sits in. As such whilst you can change it, certainly not to the default industrial one because that isn’t a menu you can use for such lots.

I also forgot to mention the Growifier Tool, which is a utility that can modify your save file, turning all propped buildings into regular grow Ankes that work. This would be the only real workaround to having freight use them. 

[atsf189 460]

Ok Thank You I was messing around with the Joerg Auto plant trying to get it to work like the regular IM game buildings. I did get it to stop growing vacant lots.

I wanted it in the Rail menu with the SM2 autorack yard but then it wants to act like a freight station so the hover query shows it not functioning correctly. I just will settle with it as a IM landmark with long freight times and no trucks.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

One of the custom BATs I have downloaded has a texture which goes black or "blue hell" when the night comes. Then it stays that way.

It does display the first time a city is run and the BAT is supposed to have no dependencies. Any ideas what is the cause of such behavior?

[Tyberius06 12,189]

15 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

One of the custom BATs I have downloaded has a texture which goes black or "blue hell" when the night comes. Then it stays that way.

It does display the first time a city is run and the BAT is supposed to have no dependencies. Any ideas what is the cause of such behavior?

Ingame image and or the name of the BAT? Possibly a link which BAT you have the issue with... That would be really helpful 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

1 hour ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

One of the custom BATs I have downloaded has a texture which goes black or "blue hell" when the night comes. Then it stays that way.

It does display the first time a city is run and the BAT is supposed to have no dependencies. Any ideas what is the cause of such behavior?

Missing base texture and/or parking texture, most likely.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

9 hours ago, Tyberius06 said:

Ingame image and or the name of the BAT? Possibly a link which BAT you have the issue with... That would be really helpful 

Okonomyiaki is the one I'm having trouble with.

I trust Davide's resources but this one seems to have some kind of a glitch.

7 hours ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

Missing base texture and/or parking texture, most likely.

This was usually the case indeed with other BATs. You may be right.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

Does anyone know which plugin pack is this train engine in?

 

I actually want it OUT of my game!

Yes, I know it's lovely but it simply doesn't mix well with the the rest of the environment / historical realities of the region. It's definitely not a custom download (I only have five automatas) so it's probably a "gift" burried into one of the dependencies...  Which one?

[atsf189 460]

The freight train most likely can not be removed from the game. There are several redskins available to change the engine and freight cars. I think sm2 has some more modern locomotives that you can use. Try here 

 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

1 hour ago, atsf189 said:

The freight train most likely can not be removed from the game. There are several redskins available to change the engine and freight cars. I think sm2 has some more modern locomotives that you can use.

I believe there might be yet another explanation...

A few days ago I have been hunting to delete the so-called "O'Lantern Manor" from my game and was going nuts trying to. It is normally available here. Except, it kept appearing in my game despite me having NOT installed it in my "Plugins"!!

Then, I realized that this strange house started to appear in my game upon downloading some dependencies. Finally, I was able to confirm that this house has been attached (as a dubious "present") to the "CSX Mega Props - Vol06_v2" dependency...

So now I am, distrustfully, back into the same dependency pack and look what we have here...

 

I just cannot wait to delete the strings pertaining to "TRAINS_Default_SteamEngine". I bet it solves the problem and removes the steam locomotive. 

Sorry to say that, but after the lessons learned with "O'Lantern Manor", CSX06 will be my prime suspect for all unexpected in-game apparitions / cameos.

[Tyberius06 12,189]

2 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Except, it kept appearing in my game despite me having NOT installed it in my "Plugins"!!

Oh yeah! Thanks for bringing this up. Ok I know what's happening. The original DAT file with the OLantern contains an unused 19 years old building examplar with one of the maxis building family, that's why it keeps popping up. Something that I was not aware of when I assembled the new version of the prop pack. I hate these ancient stuffs... they are full of badly/experimental modded properties and they keep screwing up my brain... 

Ok, there's gonna be an update on that CSX file (it was planned anyway, but some NAM duties kept me busy in the past few months) and the wrong properties will be removed. 

By the way if you are having issues with the Project ZIP contents or you run into similar stuffs, please report them (politely), and I will investigate them. I've not been playing the game for years, but even if I were playing I wouldn't catch this because I always play with NO Maxis RCI mod, so this would not have showed up for me.

- Tyberius

[kkffoo 259]

That weasel Fairbanks keeps taunting me with an offer of an imaginary Mosque.
I don't know what scam he is running, but I keep falling for it.
Desert or city setting, I've picked them both. He doesn't deliver.

Can I report him to SimCity Trading Standards, or is there already a class action that I could join?
Any advice welcome.

[rsc204 21,808]

10 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I just cannot wait to delete the strings pertaining to "TRAINS_Default_SteamEngine". I bet it solves the problem and removes the steam locomotive.

Look at the Exemplar Type property, it’s a Prop, removing it or its values won’t alter Automata in any way. But you might now get brown boxes or missing props anywhere that Prop is in use.

The train comes with the base game, you can’t disable it, but there are practically speaking two solutions. 1, make it invisible, I’m not certain this works with Automata, but you can do it with most objects and the item still appears, only you won’t see it. 2, just install a replacement you do like for the Steam Engine, plenty exist. It looks to me like you might have some custom ‘wagons’, for the freight train each is an individual automata in it’s own right. But the same applies as the train, you can find overrides for each that look different or try to suppress them. 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

7 hours ago, Tyberius06 said:

they are full of badly/experimental modded properties and they keep screwing up my brain... 

I genuinely thought that this was supposed to be some kind of an easter egg. In fact, I wouldn't even mind it growing in my city, were it not for the improper foundation that it has. Which causes this house to look super goofy on a slanted terrain - like Baba Jaga's house if you know what I mean.

8 hours ago, Tyberius06 said:

By the way if you are having issues with the Project ZIP contents or you run into similar stuffs, please report them (politely), and I will investigate them.

I'll remember. Sorry for flaming up but it's just another case of something appearing while, according to all logic, it shouldn't. I'm really not as annoying and irate as I seem at times!  Thank you for confirming my findings.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

24 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

t looks to me like you might have some custom ‘wagons’, for the freight train each is an individual automata in it’s own right.

Yes, this is creepy as well because I did not install them. 

EDIT: In any case I am browsing through the automata section these days, so I'll definitely grab something from there. Are you sure though that the steam engine is a vanilla thing...?

[atsf189 460]

20 hours ago, Tyberius06 said:

By the way if you are having issues with the Project ZIP contents or you run into similar stuffs, please report them (politely)

The Joerg AutoMobile Fab Facility has some issues. I posted a fix and you can combine my file with Joerg's if you would like.
 

 

[atsf189 460]

Does anyone know what car props Kevdan25 used on his fast food restaurants.

All the car props for Taco Bell, Mcdonalds, Whataburger, Wendys etc are missing

[atsf189 460]

17 hours ago, atsf189 said:

Does anyone know what car props Kevdan25 used on his fast food restaurants.

All the car props for Taco Bell, Mcdonalds, Whataburger, Wendys etc are missing

They use the default maxis cars. I had this plugin overriding them The Jim CarProp Pack 1.2