[Solved] Help to get my Private Schools back

[rsc204 21,866]

So I'm still messing the the Mac game just to try and get a handle on what's going on with that. Every now and again, I actually enjoy just being able to play the fairly-vanilla experience, rather than trying to perfect every nook of a map. Of course, as usual it's not long before I need some comfort (cosmetic) mods to keep going. Whilst updating my tightly DATPacked Plugins, I realised I had forgotten to install RippleJet's Private Schools with Sliders. I also installed overrides for the Cemeteries (Parks 205 Addon) and my own Police Stations mod. I entered every city in the region, removed all instances of these three rewards, saved and then updated my Plugins, as you should. Of course the Police Stations were fine, the Cemeteries were swiftly offered to me again and all was good.

But, I only had Private Schools, all three, in one city in the region. Try as I might, I am simply not offered them again. R$$$ demand seems to be negatively affected by their removal and I've had huge swathes of dilapidation as a result. I thought of plopping many schools to see if that helped, it didn't. I may try to remove all schools from the city, effectively resetting the count to 0 (I hope) :edit: doesn’t help. I do have backups, so I can return to the point before I placed a single Private School. That would be undesirable though, the city was half the size and basically supports the connected cities.

Now this isn't my first rodeo, previously I worked around this issue by using the You Don't Deserve It cheat, then plopping them anew. Sadly, this command doesn't work on the Mac version, I suspect because it requires the Extra Cheats .dll, which I can't use. Has anyone else run into this issue with removal of rewards? I have a nagging feeling it was something that seems to specifically affect these Private Schools.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

Provide less school coverage.  

If game.ga_school_grade > 90 then they won't be offered. Also, the R$$$ pops required are 750+, 3750+, and 7500+ for each of them respectively.

The idea here is that if there are rich Sims living in the area and the mayor isn't providing a decent learning opportunity, then they'll build their own schools. Ofc, when the mayor is doing an excellent job in the edgykashun field there's no need for them to have their own.

[rsc204 21,866]

46 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

less

Really, I wasn't expecting that. Thanks though, this insight explains a lot and now I know what I have to do if I want them back.

Don't suppose you've the exemplar ID to hand, I feel I can cheat my way out of this yet .

[Kloudkicker 4,565]

If you don't have but a few, you should check out the mod. Increases capacity so there no chance of the opera house bug.

 

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

21 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

Don't suppose you've the exemplar ID to hand...

CA63E2A3-4A5E8EF6-FFA8F301

------------ Reward record Private School 1----
--game.g_city_r3_population < 500 or game.ga_school_grade > 85
a = create_reward_cityplanning('03180000')
function a.condition()
	if (not missions_completed( { 'ec0ad275'} ) and ( game.g_city_r3_population < 750 or game.ga_school_grade > 90)) then
		return  reward_state.HIDDEN
else
		return reward_state.AVAILABLE
	end
end
a.once = 1
a.timeout = tuning_constants.ADVICE_TIMEOUT_LONG
a.title   = [[text@ca5d3ade]]
a.message   = [[text@4a5d3ae1]]
a.priority  = tuning_constants.ADVICE_PRIORITY_URGENT
a.mood = advice_moods.GREAT_JOB
a.persist = 1

------------ Reward record Private School 2----
--game.g_city_r3_population < 2500 or game.ga_school_grade > 85 or game.reward_instance_count('03180000') <1
a = create_reward_cityplanning('03790000')
function a.condition()
	if (game.g_city_r3_population < 3750 or game.ga_school_grade > 90 or game.reward_instance_count('03180000') <1) then
		return  reward_state.HIDDEN
	else
		return reward_state.AVAILABLE
	end
end
a.once = 1
a.timeout = tuning_constants.ADVICE_TIMEOUT_LONG
a.title   = [[text@2a5d3ae5]]
a.message   = [[text@ca5d3ae8]]
a.priority  = tuning_constants.ADVICE_PRIORITY_URGENT
a.mood = advice_moods.GREAT_JOB
a.persist = 1

------------ Reward record Private School 3----
--game.g_city_r3_population < 5500 or game.ga_school_grade > 85 or game.reward_instance_count('03790000') <1
a = create_reward_cityplanning('037a0000')
function a.condition()
	if (game.g_city_r3_population < 7500 or game.ga_school_grade > 90 or game.reward_instance_count('03790000') <1) then
		return  reward_state.HIDDEN
	else
		return reward_state.AVAILABLE
	end
end
a.once = 1
a.timeout = tuning_constants.ADVICE_TIMEOUT_LONG
a.title   = [[text@ca5d3aeb]]
a.message   = [[text@2a5d3af0]]
a.priority  = tuning_constants.ADVICE_PRIORITY_URGENT
a.mood = advice_moods.GREAT_JOB
a.persist = 1

^ Do note the commented out parts are different than the actual condition checked. (500, 2500, and 5500 vs the real 750, 3750, and 7500 plus school grade 85 vs 90)

You could easily change to these 3 lines in their respective places:

-- Private School 1
if (not missions_completed( { 'ec0ad275'} ) and ( game.g_city_r3_population < 750 )) then

-- Private School 2
if (game.g_city_r3_population < 3750 or game.reward_instance_count('03180000') <1) then

-- Private School 3
if (game.g_city_r3_population < 7500 or game.reward_instance_count('03790000') <1) then

 

[rsc204 21,866]

45 minutes ago, Kloudkicker said:

If you don't have but a few, you should check out the mod. Increases capacity so there no chance of the opera house bug.

That's exactly how I ended up here, trying to install it in a pre-existing region, I've used it for ages, in conjunction with Paeng's Lot Overrides.

30 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

You could easily change to these 3 lines in their respective places:

Thanks again, I hoped you'd respond, as our resident LUA expert. However, for once it's not too hard to follow, as soon as I can access my modding tools, I'll check out those changes and report back. Just wondering what the value of game.reward_instance_count('########') might be. But presumably those would have been reset after deleting them, since the EQ condition is absolutely preventing them unlocking, we'll find out I guess. Also, you learn something new every day, it now explains the behaviour I'd just lazily bypassed previously.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

1 minute ago, rsc204 said:

Just wondering what the value of game.reward_instance_count('########') might be.

Look in the special_buildings table in CA63E2A3-4A5E8EF6-FF048A3E to see those are simply the hex codes which refer to specific buildings:

special_buildings.PrivateSchool	 = hex2dec('03180000')
special_buildings.PrivateSchool2 = hex2dec('03790000')
special_buildings.PrivateSchool3 = hex2dec('037A0000')

So part of the check for # 2 is if you have to have less than one of # 1 plopped then the reward state is unavailable. Then to get offered # 3 you have to have # 2 plopped as part of the equation.

 

11 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

But presumably those would have been reset after deleting them, ...

And running enough game time, yes that should do it as well.

 

8 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

... the EQ condition is absolutely preventing them unlocking, ...

Almost, but not quite.

The school grade is a completely different animal than the EQ. It's a combination rating based on the number of your residential Sims who have access to various levels of education factored in with the education already in place per tract.

[rsc204 21,866]

4 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

So part of the check for # 2 is if you have to have less than one of # 1 plopped then the reward state is unavailable. Then to get offered # 3 you have to have # 2 plopped as part of the equation.

Super. I was going for that solution anyway, but it's nice to understand things.

4 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

The school grade is a completely different animal than the EQ. It's a combination rating based on the number of your residential Sims who have access to various levels of education factored in with the education already in place per tract.

Right you are, honestly this isn't an area I tend to tinker with much. But it just goes to show, my reward for suffering the Mac version is paying off in terms of my learning.

You know when you need to think of a file name real quick...

 

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

6 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

You know when you need to think of a file name real quick...

Sounds rather painful in the interim.

[rsc204 21,866]

So, it seems it isn't working .

I also tried being a bit more forceful:

-- Private School 1
if (not missions_completed( { 'ec0ad275'} )) then

-- Private School 2
if (not missions_completed( { 'ec0ad275'} )) then

-- Private School 3
if (not missions_completed( { 'ec0ad275'} )) then

But still no good.

I have to test this on my Windows machine tomorrow, just want to be sure it isn't the Mac version doing one of it's 'things'. Otherwise my thoughts are, remove the If statement entirely and just leave:

return reward_state.AVAILABLE

Which should just parse as always make it Available.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

3 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

But still no good.

Grrr.

The conditional is set to decide the reward is not available when true, and is available if false. It really, really shouldn't be a Mac issue as all other Lua code works.

 

5 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

Otherwise my thoughts are, remove the If statement entirely and just leave:

That logic sounds good and seems like it should work. Another option is making it something that should always work as the conditional:

if ( game.g_city_r3_population < 1 ) then

for each of them.

The idea being the unavailable is only true when there are no R$$$ Sims so the else part is when there are one or more R$$$ in your city then the reward is available.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

A couple things to check:

1. After editing, did you click the Apply button before saving?
2. Are you sure on the Mac your mod is really loading last?

I've tested this on Windoze: zzzPrivatesRoundTwo.dat

And this city tile would definitely not qualify for them normally:

[rsc204 21,866]

23 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

• After editing, did you click the Apply button before saving?

Absolutely, double checked it was saved to be certain.

23 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

1. Are you sure on the Mac your mod is really loading last?

From my unpacked Plugins:

No other instances of this LUA file anywhere, so the whole zzz is really more a force of habit than any need. What I was wondering if some quirk was preventing my file from actually overriding the original in SimCity_1.dat. Perhaps there is some problem fixed by the EP1 patch that is behind this?

23 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I've tested this on Windoze: zzzPrivatesRoundTwo.dat

And this city tile would definitely not qualify for them normally:

Thanks for checking into this, it kind of confirms my suspicions that something else is going on. But I'll give your file a whirl, just in case I screwed something up in mine. Doesn't look that way, seems it just needed a bit more 'encouragement'.

:Edit: OK, so RoundTwo for the win, with your file I instantly had my Privates back, it was a relief I can tell you .

Thanks so much Cori for your assistance.