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

[Ulisse Wolf 4,456]

9 hours ago, MstrFox1982 said:

Hey Wolf, i recently used sc4pac to obtain all of the latest plugins, the latest NAM, after a fresh Windows 11-reinstall. I then did the 4GB patch and installed the mods from your "necessary mods" post including voodoo2. Not only does it take 5-7 business days LOL to reach the EA sports load screen, it still crashes at city load screen.  If i'm following all of your recommendations and using NAM lite as recommended with the 4GB patch, i shouldn't be crashing still. All plugins have been installed and the maintenance and repair capability in sc4pac has indicated no issues with the plugins installed. What else is there to do? 

Make sure you're using a legitimate version of SC4 (Steam, GOG, or the EA App) and that you're not using a pirated version, because the patches won't work. Also, make sure you install the 4GB Patch only once.

[MstrFox1982 10]

hey Wolf, i got it from GOG offline installer which has been the recommendation. turns out that if i install the plugins first via sc4pac before i install the game and then do the 4GB patch, there's no issue. Wish me luck buddy

[Turnstyled 539]

Using sc4datanode yesterday morning, I was looking at which of my own installed plugins were completely overriding each other....and I noticed that BSC-VIP Girafe 4 Rue Des Lilas v2 that's on SC4Evermore has two files outside of the .SC4Model files. These files are R$$2_2x2_Grfe_4_rue_des_Lilas_3f521521.SC4Lot and R$$2_2x2_Grfe_4_rue_des_Lilas_fedb4ec4.SC4Lot. I tried comparing both files in reader. I would think that the file of the two that comes later in alphabetical order (fedb4ec4) is the one that loads. That file has a last modified date of 2013, and the file that ends in "3f521521" has a last modified date of 2024. Which file should I keep? Both files have similar data in reader, but the "fedb4ec4" file has more entries. Thank you in advance!

Edit: Now that some days have passed since I posted this, I won't touch the file structure for files from SC4Evermore. I deleted some complete duplicate files between sc4pac and SC4Evermore within the 075-my-plugins directory, but I'm not stressing over those.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,097]

Hi Everyone,

I went through Rob's real-life SC4 map tutorial but I'm stuck. Whenever I try to import a, seemingly, greyscale .png into SC4 Mapper, the app tells me it is not a valid greyscale image... Trying rgb input returns the message it is neither an rgb... Great...

Anyone run into this and managed to solve this issue?

[CorinaMarie 29,881]

10 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Whenever I try to import a, seemingly, greyscale .png into SC4 Mapper, the app tells me it is not a valid greyscale image...

I seem to recall almost no image editing software supports true 16 bit grayscale. GIMP is one that did long ago (and prolly still does) and maybe the high dollar version of Photoshop. I believe many programs try to pawn off 16 bit color with all the saturation drained out so to us humans it looks like 16 bit grayscale, but at the bit level it's not.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,097]

11 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I seem to recall almost no image editing software supports true 16 bit grayscale. GIMP is one that did long ago (and prolly still does) and maybe the high dollar version of Photoshop. I believe many programs try to pawn off 16 bit color with all the saturation drained out so to us humans it looks like 16 bit grayscale, but at the bit level it's not.

Cursessss! 

Too bad. GIMP doesn't seem to handle this either... But in the meantime I discovered that the image can simply be exported as .jpg and selected as greyscale with good result...  How nice...

Thanks anyway Rina.

[philforhockey51 4,220]

How to start?  ..   I edited the ModPacc Zero City Halls lots, only after realizing there is a Beta v1.2.  I'd like to copy the lot layouts over to the new version but it's not really like other lots that can both be opened in PIM and just copy paste properties. Is this possible? 

[nos.17 5,249]

1 hour ago, philforhockey51 said:

How to start?  ..   I edited the ModPacc Zero City Halls lots, only after realizing there is a Beta v1.2.  I'd like to copy the lot layouts over to the new version but it's not really like other lots that can both be opened in PIM and just copy paste properties. Is this possible? 

Yes. PIMX (not the old Maxis PIM, to be clear - the naming is confusing) lets you copy and paste textures/props/flora between lots. There's even a new version of PIMX in the works with a number of neat new features, one of which makes it a single click to copy all of these properties.

[Propfam 2,303]

3 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I seem to recall almost no image editing software supports true 16 bit grayscale.

Pretty ironic since most modern editing software now support 10-bit color. I don't know why they don't prioritize that. Even Hollywood sometimes relies on grayscale (I forgot the movie, but it's something close to Spiderman: Noir. Dune or other movies?)

[philforhockey51 4,220]

2 hours ago, nos.17 said:

Yes. PIMX (not the old Maxis PIM, to be clear - the naming is confusing) lets you copy and paste textures/props/flora between lots. There's even a new version of PIMX in the works with a number of neat new features, one of which makes it a single click to copy all of these properties.

I meant PIMX just didn't add the X. 

[Null 45 3,106]

10 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I went through Rob's real-life SC4 map tutorial but I'm stuck. Whenever I try to import a, seemingly, greyscale .png into SC4 Mapper, the app tells me it is not a valid greyscale image... Trying rgb input returns the message it is neither an rgb... Great...

I saw something like that reported on Rob's Discord and passed it on to @CasperVg on the SC4E Discord. From a brief look at the SC4Mapper source code, it appeared to possibly be a bug in the 16-bits-per-channel check SC4Mapper is using.

10 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I seem to recall almost no image editing software supports true 16 bit grayscale. GIMP is one that did long ago (and prolly still does) and maybe the high dollar version of Photoshop. I believe many programs try to pawn off 16 bit color with all the saturation drained out so to us humans it looks like 16 bit grayscale, but at the bit level it's not.

A lot of imaging software and monitors are 8-bits-per-channel, so would have to down sample the image data to display it. Besides GIMP, another free and open source tool that supports high bit depth images is Krita. Krita is more focused on digital art, but IMO its UI is miles ahead of GIMP.

I have mostly used Krita to generate test images for my Paint.NET AVIF and Jpeg XL FileType plugins. While Paint.NET currently lacks high bit depth support, it is on the roadmap for a future version.

6 hours ago, Propfam said:

Pretty ironic since most modern editing software now support 10-bit color. I don't know why they don't prioritize that. Even Hollywood sometimes relies on grayscale (I forgot the movie, but it's something close to Spiderman: Noir. Dune or other movies?)

IIRC 10-bit color is the limit of common monitor/display tech, although I expect that there are studio-grade displays with the full 16-bit range or higher.

When dealing with an image format that is 10-bit or 12-bit, most image editors would just promote it to the larger 16-bit or 32-bit range and deal with the down sampling to 10-bit/12-bit when saving/exporting.

[philforhockey51 4,220]

Maybe I should start over, I'm terrible at explaining myself lol 

I used PIMX to edit the props and textures on the four Lots in ModPacc Zero City Halls Beta v1.1 before I knew there was a Beta v1.2. I'm not able to open both versions of the Lots in PIMX in order to be able to copy paste the properties from the v1.1 to the v1.2 Lots. 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,881]

@philforhockey51 

How about doing it in Reader?

Make a spare copy of v1.2 named to something else. Open that in Reader and delete the Lot Configurations exemplar. Then in the same session open your version (with your props and texture edits) and right-click and copy the Lot Configurations exemplar. Now click back to the new working copy of v1.2 and paste that in. Save and you should be all set.

[Propfam 2,303]

Anyone have insight to SC4 technical details? I'm craving for more. Last, we discussed about the hydrology system and unfortunately, it's a bit hard to resurrect. Can we ask more? Let's say about the pie graph UI component and the general response curve.

[Null 45 3,106]

8 hours ago, Propfam said:

Let's say about the pie graph UI component and the general response curve.

I have never managed to figure out the general response curve, other than it being used in a bunch of places and Maxis having a visual editor for it. I have never seen a pie graph used in SC4.

[CorinaMarie 29,881]

12 minutes ago, Null 45 said:

I have never seen a pie graph used in SC4.

I believe it's just a stub of code they barely started. See here and then the next post there too.

Spoiler

^ That's a Type 3 graph.

[Null 45 3,106]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

I believe it's just a stub of code they barely started.

That makes sense, a lot of the UI code is from a common framework shared by many Maxis games. The game also has an unused Pie Menu, which isn't surprising given how The Sims used them.

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

^ That's a Type 3 graph.

I took a quick look at the code, the supported graph types for the game's graph view appear to be:

• Type 1 - Line graph
• Type 2 - Bar graph
• Type 3 - Pie graph

There is also a scatter graph, but it doesn't appear to be accessible for user code. It is only used by an internal cGZWinGenDlg class and the built-in editor for general response curves. No idea why cGZWinGenDlg wasn't exposed publicly.

[Propfam 2,303]

6 hours ago, Null 45 said:

scatter graph,

I highly argue it's unfinished, so Maxis didn't expose it thru their API.

Also, WinGenDlg sounds like the internal API for generating windows. It's reasonable that is not exposed intentionally. We have to dig thru undocumented functions.

[Null 45 3,106]

3 hours ago, Propfam said:

I highly argue it's unfinished, so Maxis didn't expose it thru their API.

That or no one bothered to register it in a way that would make it available to DLLs, that would be far from the first case where Maxis made APIs without considering how it would work for DLL plugins. I expect that wasn't helped by the fact SC4 was built as a single executable, wheres they would have had to be more careful with the API design in SC3K and other earlier games that were split across multiple DLLs.

4 hours ago, Propfam said:

Also, WinGenDlg sounds like the internal API for generating windows. It's reasonable that is not exposed intentionally. We have to dig thru undocumented functions.

WinGen (or cGZWinGen) appears to be the core class for most/all of the game's UI,  WinGenDlg is a subclass that only appears to be used for the cheat code dialog.

[Propfam 2,303]

28 minutes ago, Null 45 said:

WinGenDlg is a subclass that only appears to be used for the cheat code dialog.

Yup, confirming that's an experimental feature that can only be accessed from the cheat box.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,097]

Hi. I would like to ask a thing about submenu mods. I never really understood how they are organized.

Are they just a scaffolding upon which I can add my own categories and groups?

Or do they contain predefined categories to which I need to adjust, relying on the authors' organization?

Otherwise, is there any "empty" specimen that I could use to organize items my way?

Thank you.

[Propfam 2,303]

1 hour ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Are they just a scaffolding upon which I can add my own categories and groups?

Yup. It's the first decision made by the people who are interested in submenus, @memo, @Panda, etc. They eventually added predef submenus, but it's not something fixed. You can do whatever you want.

[ncamferdam 1,503]

I'm running into a problem with some of the NDEX collections over on SC4Evermore. These are dependencies that are meant to replace the separate models that are in individual lot downloads, but in a few cases the lots don't "connect" with the new models included in the collection.

For example, Belton Lofts by DuskTrooper. According to the cleanitol in the DuskTrooper Dependency Pack, the models included in that download are superseded. However, the Belton Lofts lot is now missing a building. The models are definitely in the dependency pack, but the lot file is not pointing to them for whatever reason.

What is the best way to rectify this? I can of course just create a new lot from the models in the pack, but this would lose the props and textures of the original download. Is there a way to "reconnect" the existing lot file to these new models?

[Tyberius06 12,260]

40 minutes ago, ncamferdam said:

According to the cleanitol in the DuskTrooper Dependency Pack, the models included in that download are superseded. However, the Belton Lofts lot is now missing a building. The models are definitely in the dependency pack, but the lot file is not pointing to them for whatever reason.

Ah... The reason is that the DAT that contained the models also contained the building exemplar for the growables too.

However I would like to point out that I detailed this on the download page and in the readme under the "special note" section. Is there a reason why you did not manage to read it?

Quote

**Special Note:

These NDEX legacy dependency compilations aim to address past and possible future demand to cover the main model file dependencies for different CAMeLot sets that used to be available on SC4Devotion LEX or yet to be made as future projects. When you run the cleanitol it will remove original DAT files that might have been holding essential growable building exemplars to the original uploads (released mainly on STEX), if those were bundled into the DAT file.

Bear in mind that the plan is that the original LOT collections would be reworked at one point in the future, when the old/original building exemplars would be taken out of said DAT files. These building exemplars are not part of these dependency compilations, and since the removal of those original DAT files (by the cleanitol) could cause issues on the lot files in form of missing buildings, I provided the growable building exemplars in case the original DAT files got removed. If you need any of these, you can find them in each NDEX Legacy Dependency set in the ~DocumentsNDEX_ReadmesBack-up Temporary Growable Exemplars folder

I don't think I can explain it more clearly... 

There is a reason for the description and special notes and notes in red. Maybe @Ulisse Wolfis right, we should just stop wasting our time to provide information if people don't bother to read it... 

[ncamferdam 1,503]

Sorry, I should have specified what I actually have of the downloads. I have those growable DESC files, which I guess makes me more confused. It doesn’t seem to be a problem with the other ones included in that set. For example, the Jacinto and Greywood lots appear just fine, but Belton and at least one other one do not.

I’m away from my computer at the moment. Let me get back and get a more specific list of what the disconnect is