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[rsc204 21,808]

12 minutes ago, Aka said:

Based on this conclusion, I tried a new approach: I took the .path 0x51030200 file and simply modified its instance, but even this way it doesn't work... No path is displayed on the diagonal batch of the OWR-1 station. I tried comparing my batch to those of other creators or those of the NAM, but I'm really struggling!

It's not the instance but the Group ID you might need to alter, because there are different path types that use 69668828 or a966883f as their GID. See how the NAM file contains both for 51030000, but only the 1st GID for the Diagonal IID. Long and short, copy the path, switch to the a966883f GID and that should work.

IIRC, essentially TE Lots use a different GID from actual networks, for base straights the LE ones were included in NAM (not necessarily all), but that probably wasn't extended to diagonals. Let's face it, it took this long for anyone to want to make use of such a path.

[Aka 412]

During the tests and comparisons earlier, I noticed this detail, but I didn't think it was that important!

Spoiler

Now there's no excuse not to get to work.

Thank you for your help @rsc204 !

Aka

[matias93 7,535]

On 1/5/2026 at 9:51 AM, TheMurderousCricket said:

I'm sorry for such an unorthodox question but... How do I cause MORE abandonment in my cities...?

It seems that I just never experienced any ever since I installed NKO mod.  Perhaps only in some exceptional cases in which I forgot to connect power or water to a zone.

So? Any help on that...? 

You would need to manually promote what the NKO mod prevents. The easiest way is to demolish well established low or middle wealth buildings, plop a bus stop and plant a ton of god-mode trees near (or directly over) the now empty zones, until a shiny new high wealth building grows. As both the bus stop and the god mode trees have mostly transient positive desirability effects, the new building should tend to get abandoned soon enough.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

On 9.01.2026 at 3:42 AM, matias93 said:

You would need to manually promote what the NKO mod prevents.

Thank you for the suggestions. I was aware that this question might be considered as a joke, so I really appreciate that you took it seriously! 

Another thing that I need to ask about...

I often experience an annoying behavior of the game in a situation in which I quit it - I close the game normally, but it still remains visible as an active process in the task manager... Essentially, I later need to close it from the task manager because otherwise my CPU whirs on, as if the game was indeed still running.

Do you guys have any suggestions for that? Ever experienced a similar thing? The problem doesn't seem to cause any further havoc or glitches appart from being annoying.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

6 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Ever experienced a similar thing?

Yes. When I was playing and modding and testing every day this would happen about one in fifty to a hundred times. I'll say consistently with the meaning it will always happen sometime in a long series of playing. There would even be twice in a day now and then, but also go weeks and weeks without that happening.

[memo 1,444]

@TheMurderousCricket It's a known issue that is triggered when you click on an ordinance to see its description.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

1 hour ago, memo said:

@TheMurderousCricket It's a known issue that is triggered when you click on an ordinance to see its description.

Whoa... That's a little crazy. I would have never guessed this could be the case.  It must have been an elusive glitch!

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

49 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I would have never guessed this could be the case. 

Same for me. I never knew that anyone knew the cause. I wonder if this means our DLL gods will patch it up? 

[ncamferdam 1,490]

Looking at the exemplar for a submenu.dat file in the Reader, how do you tell which in-game menu it will appear on? I see Item Order, but my understanding was that an object's menu location was determined by the Occupant Group property, which I don't see.

I'm looking at one of the KRG submenus, for reference.

Thanks again.

[DrFrankinStein93 42]

With the new NAM 50 beta and its eternal commuter fix, it opens so many questions for me.

- Like is there an in depth explanation of the eternal commuter in a thread in here? I know CorinaMarie shown a 20+ loop in another thread, so it can get pretty complex it seems.

- Cutting off west/north transfer help with eternal commuters because you cannot form any loop anymore. But what does it mean exactly?
Does this only affect input from north from output to West and the reverse (West -> North). But direct simple travel between 2 cities are unaffected?
Does that mean its a sacrifice to avoid the issue, like if you have a simple 3 city group in an mirror "L" , does it mean the north city C pop will no longer be able to travel to west city B through middle city A? You need to move through other tiles to make it?
       
        (C)
         |
(B) - (A)
 
- And another simple question, does NAM still have an option to only include QOL options like the better traffic manager and other fixes without adding all the new content. I like to keep my game as close as the original. 

  Edited January 12 by DrFrankinStein93  
Formatting issue

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

3 hours ago, DrFrankinStein93 said:

And another simple question, does NAM still have an option to only include QOL options like the better traffic manager and other fixes without adding all the new content. I like to keep my game as close as the original. 

It's called NAM Lite.

[memo 1,444]

@DrFrankinStein93 Valid questions. Your understanding is correct. The answer to all of your questions is: yes. See also:

 

15 hours ago, ncamferdam said:

Looking at the exemplar for a submenu.dat file in the Reader, how do you tell which in-game menu it will appear on?

Check the Readme of the Submenus DLL. All the relevant properties and IDs of standard submenus are listed there.

[Benshannaboy 23]

Are there any mods that allow just 1x1 tiles of low residential so they don't develop into mansions? Hard to explain, but like if i just did low density, click and drag that includes the streets. Is there a mod that just has 1x1 tiles for blocks of 10 so it only grows low density. For instance, 1 "block is surrounded by a street that takes up 4 squares by 12 squares. The street being the outer portion then inside that is 1x1 low residential zone each facing their respective street like in real life with small residential lots in neighborhoods. Is there anything like that out there?

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

9 minutes ago, Benshannaboy said:

For instance, 1 "block is surrounded by a street that takes up 4 squares by 12 squares.

There is a reasonable workaround, but not an ideal mod, afaik. If you draw your perimeter streets first, then grab the low density zoning tool and hold the Shift key as you click and drag, you can get 1x1s facing one street. Then repeat for the other street.

[SneakyDeaky 1,128]

Hi guys. Whenever I add a prop or change a texture on a seawall I then cannot place that new lot on water, is there any way around this? 

Many thanks!

[EastChapel 115]

7 hours ago, SneakyDeaky said:

Hi guys. Whenever I add a prop or change a texture on a seawall I then cannot place that new lot on water, is there any way around this? 

Many thanks!

I suspect when you're altering the tile, the 'tag' that allows it to be placed on water is removed. In Loteditor theres an option to allow you to pick which tile(s) can be placed on water - I'd make that you're starting point. There are a few released sea walls that have this problem - if editing doesn't work, you can always use the no water component of the diagonal bridge mod to remove water and plop where you'd like (but I suspect the above is your problem).

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

My big question of the now is...

Is it ok, or is it not ok, to edit properties of the items (BATs, ploppables) that already exist in the saved cities?

The way I always did it was to eradicate all instances of an item with such and such properties and only then edit them.

However, I risked edits to some of the BATs, ploppables and even public service buildings that already exist in my cities. What I noticed, is that the edited items instantly took on the new properties without any fuss at all. The cities work just like before, are fully functional and free of glitches and crashes.

My edits mainly concerned occupancy numbers (for BATs), bulldoze costs and demand satisfied values (for ploppables) and capacity (for public services).

I always worked under the impression that "what is done is done" and that you cannot edit items in the game that already exist in your cities. However, my tests seem to proove that at least some properties are instantly updated in the game after edits are made and there is nothing wrong happening with or in the game after such adjustments. 

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

6 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Is it ok, or is it not ok, to edit properties of the items (BATs, ploppables) that already exist in the saved cities?

Don't do this because you can trigger Phantom Slider Bug (PSB) and Immortal Lot Syndrome (ILS).

The best solution is to use Exemplar Patch, which prevents you from directly modifying Exemplar Buildings and avoids these bugs.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

3 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

However, my tests seem to proove that at least some properties are instantly updated in the game after edits are made and there is nothing wrong happening with or in the game after such adjustments. 

Academically this is correct.

Some properties are read from the exemplars in the data file every time which is why you can see instant changes, but there are others in the same exemplar which are recorded in the save city sub files at the time of plopping or growing. It's these latter ones that can cause phantom sliders and other goofiness when making exemplar changes without pre-bulldozing. And some of the properties only have an adverse affect when bulldozing while a different exemplar is in place.

I don't know of any list which tells which are which.

Then, as @Ulisse Wolf states, it's potentially dangerous to alter the exemplar properties for already plopped or grown buildings.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

55 minutes ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

Don't do this because you can trigger Phantom Slider Bug (PSB) and Immortal Lot Syndrome (ILS).

The best solution is to use Exemplar Patch, which prevents you from directly modifying Exemplar Buildings and avoids these bugs.

Generally, I do not edit public service buildings nor any buildings that use sliders anymore. I did it just once to test something and then used a backup to cancel the changes but I did notice that the changes I made took effect in the already existing instances. I am aware of the PSB.

Somehow I overlooked its use (the exemplar patch) in this particular instance. Thanks for the reminder. So if I understand correctly, it's just a "post-it note" for the game to execute slightly different values for a building that does not influence the original file? (and which can be written over and over again without any consequence?)

EDIT: By the way, in which place should the patched .dat be stored then?

46 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Then, as @Ulisse Wolf states, it's potentially dangerous to alter the exemplar properties for already plopped or grown buildings.

If ILS is the worst that can happen, then it isn't too bad.  Immortality killer will take care of such problem!

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 hour ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

If ILS is the worst that can happen, then it isn't too bad. 

Yeah, true for that. I'd say the phantom sliders are about the worst and there is a DLL to fix that now too. Still, it's prolly better to not create that trouble in the first place.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

Next question then - how do I make a lot immune to crime? So that it neither generates nor hosts any?

I have some forest lots that shouldn't actually harbor crime but they do and I need to make adjustments to avoid "false" crimes being reported.

[rsc204 21,808]

20 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

If ILS is the worst that can happen, then it isn't too bad.  Immortality killer will take care of such problem!

It is not, the worst that can happen is corrupted or broken save files that can not be recovered by means other than a backup. But if you can't restore the Plugins folder to match the backup save file, that won't save you either.

I have spoken about this before and whilst it's really hard to pin down a specific set of do's and don'ts, the bottom line is doing this is rolling the dice. Whenever you edit items that exist in your save files (cities), including installing mods that do this, the only safe method is to remove existing instances from your cities, before you add the changes to Plugins. Which is in and of itself quite tricky to do and easy to miss something, once you save the file once with a mismatch, that problem is now 'baked-in' to the save data.

As someone who mods a lot, I quickly learnt if you are going to be messing with files, only do it in cities you don't care about. Even being super-careful, I've a couple cities that are effectively broken because I messed up or missed something.

Can you mostly get away with doing this?, sure it's totally possible, but ask anyone who tinkers a lot and all will have lost cities at some point.

[memo 1,444]

18 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

The best solution is to use Exemplar Patch, which prevents you from directly modifying Exemplar Buildings and avoids these bugs.

17 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Somehow I overlooked its use (the exemplar patch) in this particular instance. Thanks for the reminder. So if I understand correctly, it's just a "post-it note" for the game to execute slightly different values for a building that does not influence the original file? (and which can be written over and over again without any consequence?)

No. Saying that Exemplar Patching avoids Phantom Sliders is very misleading. If modifying an Exemplar directly would cause Phantom Sliders, then you also get Phantom Sliders if you apply the same change using an Exemplar Patch. Both approaches are effectively the same for the game. Exemplar Patching simply injects the changes before the game loads them.

The safe approach to avoid Phantom Sliders is always to copy the building to a new unique TGI and deactivate the old one. And that's where Exemplar Patching is useful, as it allows you to deactivate the old Exemplar with minimal chance of conflict. To deactivate an Exemplar (e.g. to hide a building from the menus), you need to modify some property in the Exemplar, but all other properties should remain unchanged. If you distribute such an Exemplar, it's difficult to be sure that a player had the same version of the Exemplar you had prior to deactivation – if they differ, this introduces changes in unrelated properties (again risking Phantom Sliders, etc.).

To give an example, think of the opera house. Some players have the Maxis opera house, some have toroca's opera house fix. If you want to hide this opera house from the menus by modifying the building exemplar, you'd have to create two variants of the deactivated Exemplar and ensure players install the correct one and that the files are loaded in the correct order. In contrast, with an Exemplar Patch, you just need a single patch that modifies a single property and nothing else. It works for both versions of the opera house, and doesn't depend on load order.

[paulmc 391]

I need a little help, I just loaded a city I had completed a time ago to check on something, and this (see the pic) happened to some airport textures, and that warning that you re missing plugins, does anybody know why this happened? I have not deleted anything from the airport folder,  and what can I do to solve this ? Thank you in advance !

[Kel9509 1,363]

10 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Next question then - how do I make a lot immune to crime? So that it neither generates nor hosts any?

I have some forest lots that shouldn't actually harbor crime but they do and I need to make adjustments to avoid "false" crimes being reported.

Why shouldn't forest lots harbor crime? A lot of nefarious activities can happen out there in the woods....

Anyway, I think crime is something like the Mayor Rating, which can overlay an entire city but also have specific properties per cell and would be modified by properties local to that cell (like police stations or educational levels).  So I don't know if there's a way to eliminate crime for any particular lot.  What you can do, though, is make a forest lot into a semi-functional police station so that it works to counteract crime.  There are lots that also produce crime, with the Crime Effect property (like the Casino) but so far unless a lot is a police station there's not a way for a lot to have a direct negative Crime Effect.  There's also mods like Crime Doesn't Pay, which work to eliminate crime effect overall to the city.  Certain police station lots are also modded to try to eliminate crime problems that can occur with large lots, where the normal Maxis police stations do not have the ability to penetrate deep into larger lots to fight crime. 

[paulmc 391]

1 hour ago, paulmc said:

I need a little help, I just loaded a city I had completed a time ago to check on something, and this (see the pic) happened to some airport textures, and that warning that you re missing plugins, does anybody know why this happened? I have not deleted anything from the airport folder,  and what can I do to solve this ? Thank you in advance !

I just fixed it by reinstalling the texture dependency . Thank you !

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

5 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

Why shouldn't forest lots harbor crime? A lot of nefarious activities can happen out there in the woods....

In suburban woods or municipal forests, I do agree. But in a total wilderness or rugged mountain chain that is accessible to few people (and statistically even fewer criminals)? 

8 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

So I don't know if there's a way to eliminate crime for any particular lot.

No biggie if there isn't. I can always just create a park ranger or all-terrain trooper station with a large coverage area and lowered cost to get these huge spaces under some protection umbrella.

[rsc204 21,808]

On 25/01/2026 at 7:38 PM, TheMurderousCricket said:

But in a total wilderness or rugged mountain chain that is accessible to few people (and statistically even fewer criminals)? 

Right, but this isn't the Real World, it's a videogame which means it was coded to simulate the real world, so not all logic from real world applies.

So, if you don't want your forests to attract crime and other things, plant them with the God Mode and Mayor Mode tools which are intended for this purpose.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

18 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

So, if you don't want your forests to attract crime and other things, plant them with the God Mode and Mayor Mode tools which are intended for this purpose.

With these tools I am only limited to use certain types of vegetation that are in any given tree controller and I have no way to, say, change the altitude on which I want some trees to appear from city to city. It is much quicker though, I admit.

Besides, any forests planted will always look the same from city to city and AFAIK, there is no possibility to have, say, four God Mode "brushes" that stand for coni, deci, mixed and jungle forests and that means that I still have to use forest lots to add diversity to the natural areas.