CoriBoom Local Hospital Pockets Picked and Other FUN Dialog Boxes

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

Here's a FUN little mod CB and I have crafted. No, really. It's our Fixed Underfunded Notices mod.

 

 

Introduction

It all started as a simple fix for a bug in the Local Hospital Pockets Picked message wherein the linky to jump to the troublesome hospital or clinic would most times select the wrong one. Then as CB and I tested and tweaked we came up with more enhancements as well as improving other messages and reviving (and rewriting) a couple of unused ones. So along with fixing that issue, we've made these more useful by providing new options to manage low funding for Civic lots.

 

Who Will Benefit

This mod will likely only appeal to peeps who use narrow margins when budgeting for medical and educational facilities like CB and I do. If your itemized master budgets are tweaked to have sufficient funding with no wasted expense, then this will be an ideal enhancement for your game.

For example, my funding is tightly managed, but as local area population grows they can exceed capacity. Here we see there is good funding for all except one of the clinics.

^ This can then trigger that Hospital Pockets Picked Message.

 

The Original Bug Illustrated

So, I'm over here playing and I notice a red message in the News Ticker. I open it up to find an explanation.

 

Now, the trouble (bug) comes in when you click that local hospital linky in the message. It'll jump to the lowest funded medical facility and most times that's not the cause of the problem. Clicking the money linky (or just querying it yourself) can show there's no problem at all inasmuch as the # of Patients is less than Patient Capacity and so the funding is actually fine for this specific building.

^ So, at this point it leaves one wondering WTF?!?

See, the real problem is over here:

(Btw, a Hospital in those messages includes the Clinics by Maxis's design.)

 

The Solution Included in our Mod

So, I've rewritten the LText and its embedded code to give multiple options as well as fixing the Lua trigger. Here's how it looks now also showing the real location to be concerned about:

 

This is what the linky options do:

• Jump to the Medical Facility
  • This takes you to the building, but leaves the game in the current running speed and changes your cursor to the Query Tool.
• Same with Pause Toggle  (on the same row of the message)
  • Takes you to the building, changes your cursor to the Query Tool, and Toggles the Pause Button. (If the game is already on Pause, use the regular Jump or it'll start time running.)
• Adjust Funding without Jumping
  • This is my fav. It opens the building's Query Box, but doesn't move the world which allows you to handle the problem without losing concentration for whatever you were working on. It also leaves time speed alone and does not change what's on your cursor.
• Jump to and Adjust Funding
  • This one is good if you want to fix the problem, but also go the location to see what might be growing nearby. It changes your cursor to the Query Tool as well and leaves the game running speed alone.
• Same with Pause Toggle  (on the same row of the message)
  • Like the one above, just that you've Jumped and the Query Box opened, but also this stops time if it was running. (Remember this will start time if the game was Paused so use the prior option.)
• Adjust Master Budget
  • This one does not jump, but simply opens the Budget Overview where you can then get to the Master Budget. This is handy if you'd like to scroll thru all the facilities checking for funding discrepancies throughout your city.

 

Interlude

In the vanilla game, the Pockets Picked and the Teachers Threaten to Strike messages are set to a Medium-High priority. This means they will show in the News only (unless playing on Easy Difficulty in which case they will be popped up by the Advisor).

Our mod comes in two flavors. One with Medium-High priority for the Underfunding (non-strike) messages and one which has them all set to Urgent priority. This latter Urgent one is my preference since I play on Hard Difficulty only. This way I need not keep an eye on the News Ticker and I can deal with funding situations immediately.

 

Back to What's in our Mod

(From here on in this narrative, we are using the Urgent version because I like it more.)

This shows the same Pockets Picked proclamation popped up with the Adjust Funding without Jumping selected so the Query Box opens to deal with it right where you are. (We were deliberately at the underfunded clinic to make a better pic, but you can be anywhere else in your city and still use it.)

 

This is our redesigned version for an actual strike at a medical facility:

 

Here's a School Underfunded message:

 

School Strike message:

 

Now we have two which have never been utilized before.

Maxis had partial code in place so that Libraries and Museums could have their own strike separate from the schools, but they didn't finish it. I grabbed the incomplete code and re-purposed it to give warning messages for underfunding. (It's not possible to finish up the separate strike idea for these two because that needs functions written on the C++ side.)

Here's a Library which is underfunded:

 

And a Museum:

 

Back to tweaked messages. Here's our enhanced one for a Fire Station Strike:

^ We reassure you this fire was all for dramatic effect like a movie, and no Sims were harmed.
   (They did toast marshmallows tho.)

And one for a Police Station Strike:

 

Considerations

• Any time a message in the News Box expires (when the main text turns dim gray) the linkys are no longer clickable.
   
• If you are running the game on Cheetah speed, the timeout for messages occurs quickly.
   
• And on Cheetah speed a Strike message might pop up again and again when closing if you don't pause time. (That's Maxis code so it's not something we can fix.)
   
• Also, the underlying code for Strikes is the way Maxis created it which means if you have more than one strike for the same facility class, it's only going to jump to one and you won't get a new popup for the other strike(s) for a very long while. However, my underfunding one will still trigger so that works as a fix for their code.
   
• I've set the Library and Museum Underfunded messages as News only no matter which difficulty you play (when using the Medium-High version.) In vanilla the game never even notices underfunded libraries and museums.
   
• Underfunded Hospitals/Clinics and Schools (in the Medium-High version) are popups in Easy difficulty. They are News Items for Medium and Hard difficulties.
   
• Strikes are popups for all difficulties just like vanilla.

 

Appreciation

Special thanks to @Cyclone Boom.

The Banner Logo up top and all other images in this post were created by him. He spent hours testing each separate mod as I created them, added the HTML tags for the color coding in the LText, found innumerable tpyos for me to correct, and helped proofread the new Lua code. Without his dedicated assistance, this mod would not have been finished. Thanks!

 

The Files for Download and Testing

Fixed Underfunded Notices (FUN) - Med-High Priority - by CoriBoom v1.0.dat

Fixed Underfunded Notices (FUN) - Urgent Priority - by CoriBoom v1.0.dat

Note: Use one or the other, not both.

[Kloudkicker 4,562]

Cool stuff Agent 42 and CB! Give it time and there wont be any bugs left. 

[Raymond7cn 6,775]

It is Incredible!  I mean incredible amount of work behind this to bring incredible benefits to many people, I'm one of them, This is something that bothered me for quite a long while, Thank you CoriBoom™! Couldn't wait to get start testing.

Yours,

-- Raymond

[Paulo S.M. 321]

LOVE IT !!
Thank you guys for this amazing MOD.
It will help a lot of us.
Can't wait to prove it
Keep it up guys <3 
Another job well done  

[20huskies 4,699]

Wow this is great!

[Propfam 2,295]

I thought this mod allows me to automatically set the funding appropriately just with a click, but no. Still a nice mod to have especially with the fact that some computers are laggy when you jump from one location to another and this mod allows you to bypass that jump.

[Simizen 1,100]

This seems like a really great mod. Definitely need to check it out.

Though, now, would love to have an extended time limit between the threat of strike and the actual strikes themselves.

I think I've experienced this bug before, cause, I'd get the notice for it, then try to jump to it, and then wonder what the game was going on about. And, while trying to find it, it then jumps to being an active strike, which, has always bugged me.

[Mayor Failure 21]

Thank you for illustrating this bug, I always wondered why the game is bugging me about facilities with sufficient funding.

Considered it to be a bug, but never realized what kind of bug it is really.

Interested in this mod, looks useful,  I hate scrolling back through half of the city to where I was before the message, especially in case of mentioned bug

So might give it a try. 

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

12 hours ago, chfzdn said:

I thought this mod allows me to automatically set the funding appropriately just with a click, but no.

Hopefully I've not implied that anywhere in my post.   That sort of modding would be in DLL programming's class and beyond my ability.

 

12 hours ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

Though, now, would love to have an extended time limit between the threat of strike and the actual strikes themselves.

While this would be ideal, it's not going to be something we can mod because when there is significant growth which surpasses capacity enough to throw the building into strike territory, both the pre-warning and the message of the strike will be triggered and added to the queue of things the advisor wants to mention.

 

5 hours ago, Mayor Failure said:

Interested in this mod, looks useful,  I hate scrolling back through half of the city to where I was before the message, especially in case of mentioned bug

Yeah, that's why the Adjust Funding without Jumping is my fav option.

Ofc, there are times I use the first option to jump to the building without auto opening the Query Box just so I can look around at what's causing the trouble. Ofc, I like the Pause Toggle when time is running since I know if there was explosive growth nearby I'll likely have other civics which have become underfunded too. By also changing the cursor to the Query Tool automatically with this choice, I'm ready to investigate without the need to select it myself.

[City_Slider 2,716]

Thanks a lot my Angle and CB ^^ 

That´s really cool... i love it!

And now a German Translation :-D Is Andreas Roth on Board?

Thank you both again, for this really helpful Mod, Oliver

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

2 minutes ago, City_Slider said:

And now a German Translation

Oh! Speaking of translations, we only know English, but if anyone wants to edit our mod for other languages, that's fine by us. Just attach the revision to a post in this topic.

[City_Slider 2,716]

1 minute ago, CorinaMarie said:

Oh! Speaking of translations, we only know English, but if anyone wants to edit our mod for other languages, that's fine by us. Just attach the revision to a post in this topic.

That´s why i´m asking for Andreas Roth. He is NAM Team Member.´Guess the only German at this Time.

And sure, i could do it... but i don´t know how :-D

Oliver

[Tomatobird8 7]

Yet another amazing and essential mod. I rarely had this issue but it was very confusing when it did happen and I ended up ignoring the news messages because of it. I'm very glad to see that this is now fixed!

I find myself using the Master Health Budget way more however since it allows me to access the funding of all healthcare and education facilities without panning around and looking for them in the city. It works fairly well, but there is one main issue I have with it and fixing that would ease a big part of maintaining the city.

Currently the master budget menu does not warn or indicate the major of any underfunding. It takes a little bit to view and check the demand vs capacity of every facility and it's easy to miss an underfunded facility especially if you have a large tile and many facilities all over it. What would considerably help managing the budget easier is to have some sort of a visual alert for every facility that is currently over capacity, as well as maybe have a less alarming warning for facilities that are close to capacity. Example of what it could look like:


Just any visual indicator that differs the row from all the other bland-looking rows would be a great quality of life improvement. I don't have any SC4 modding experience at all so I don't have any idea if such mod would even be possible to create, but I guess I'm just throwing the idea out there just in case someone can and wants to make it real. I would greatly appreciate a mod like this.

Another (very small) issue I have with the master budget menu is that you cannot set a facility's funding to 100% from there. For example you can set the funding for a Large Medical Center to $1190, not to $1200 like you can in the facility specific menu. The tiny amount missing from what you can set it to via master budget menu isn't really a major bug at all and I doubt even most long-time players of SC4 noticed it, but it would eliminate the need to locate to that facility and squeeze those last simoleons into the funding when the facility is nearing max capacity.

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

5 minutes ago, Tomatobird8 said:

Just any visual indicator that differs the row from all the other bland-looking rows would be a great quality of life improvement.

Your suggestion matches CB's while we were testing and I agree that would be wonderful. However, as best I can tell, all the Master Budgets panels are built up dynamically on the C++ side and there's no way I know of to even get to them.

 

7 minutes ago, Tomatobird8 said:

eliminate the need to locate to that facility

You can do this part from that Master Budget. Just click the name of the facility on the left side. That's a linky which will take you right to it. The nuisance part is you have to close the master budgets to then query the building.

[Kloudkicker 4,562]

Fascinating mod! I thought I was the problem and not the bug in question here. Like I was late at reading the news ticker announcement and the problem solved itself or so. Click on the link and no problem, errrr. But now, with this sweet new FUN mod, the game experience is better. Your more in control, as you should be.

My first loading of a city with the mod installed, immediately I was warned of a slightly underfunded museum. Normally, I would not check this facility until there was a big problem and by then there would be some damage done already. 

Now I am little worried that many other cities are going to get the royal treatment with this new FUN mod. It's one awesome upgrade to improve your mayoral duties.

Thank you Cori and CB.

[Simizen 1,100]

8 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

8 hours ago, Tomatobird8 said:

Just any visual indicator that differs the row from all the other bland-looking rows would be a great quality of life improvement.

Your suggestion matches CB's while we were testing and I agree that would be wonderful. However, as best I can tell, all the Master Budgets panels are built up dynamically on the C++ side and there's no way I know of to even get to them.

If y'all do manage to figure it out, I have an idea: a red, orange, or yellow triangle, either up (modeled after the one for the Emergency menu button), or down (like the classic Yield sign); this would be good for alerting people to being underfunded. And, maybe an X, or possibly even a stop sign icon, for those that have gone on strike. Or maybe a white sign for the strikes.

Although, color blindness comes to mind, so, maybe sticking with either red or yellow would be doable for the warning one.

But, this is only if you're able to later. I figured that icons would be able to identify the appropriate structures in need, though, that itself would likely require an extra column, imo.

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

8 hours ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

But, this is only if you're able to later.

Considering this seems to be DLL programming territory and we have no idea how to do that, I believe we can safely say it's not going to be possible by us. We rather do hope peeps might find the mod we did make of some use.

[RobertLM78 1,598]

I could see this being *really* handy if you're using vanilla Maxis service buildings.  I've since abandoned them for ones with bigger footprints, so it's pretty easy to tell which one needs the funding.

Nice work though...! 

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

1 minute ago, RobertLM78 said:

I could see this being *really* handy if you're using vanilla Maxis service buildings.

You can use it with custom content as well.

[RobertLM78 1,598]

39 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

You can use it with custom content as well.

I thought so --- i just mentioned it since the footprint (and in the case of the hospitals, capacity) seems to be the most common complaint about vanilla service buildings.   Considering the scale of maps a large map is only 6.25 sq mi it seems having one hospital is more realistic.

But, for those who don't mind or would rather use the vanilla, this mod i would think is a must (some of my early skyscraper pincushion cities would easily have a couple dozen hospitals over a large map - no easy task to keep track of).

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

2 minutes ago, RobertLM78 said:

I thought so --- i just mentioned it since the footprint (and in the case of the hospitals, capacity) seems to be the most common complaint about vanilla service buildings.

Ah. The concept is that with much larger custom content there's never even an issue with underfunding or strikes. In that case, I agree. No need for this then.

[RobertLM78 1,598]

1 minute ago, CorinaMarie said:

The concept is that with much larger custom content there's never even an issue with underfunding or strikes.

Well, the funding slider is still in place in the custom content, so technically you can have funding issues, just finding them is easy since in the case of hospitals, there is only one to worry about. 

[AsimPika3172 1,148]

Best mod ever! 🤪🏥

[jabezscratch 159]

Wow -- great upload -- thanks!

[Hal917 22]

I hate to sound stupid (not that that is going to stop me.)

I cannot find the link to download this anywhere. 

[Kloudkicker 4,562]

29 minutes ago, Hal917 said:

I hate to sound stupid (not that that is going to stop me.)

I cannot find the link to download this anywhere. 

Bottom of the first post.

Better to of asked then never know!

[Nathaniel Herapen 17]

So that explains why it kept popping up. Yet another fantastic addition to my game.

[Hal917 22]

52 minutes ago, Kloudkicker said:

Bottom of the first post.

Better to of asked then never know!

Typical. I tried every combination of search terms I could think of, and the solution was right in front of me. Thanks!

[CorinaMarie 29,852]

1 hour ago, Hal917 said:

I tried every combination of search terms ...

Later on that will work to find it as we do intend to add this to the STEX if peeps deem this test version suitable for full time use in their game. We do believe it's completely ready and when we have time to actually play the game, we are using it ourselves. What we don't know is how well it works with every combination of plugins other peeps have.

As always, feedback on its usage is appreciated.

[vw_oklahoma 308]

All the years I've played this game, I didn't know this was a bug. I thought the medical advisor just liked to complain because her funding wasn't 100% across the board. I will try it out. 

 

ETA: after playing with this mod, I may have found a bug. I had one city with a population around 20k. One elementary school was over-capacity. The max capacity was 500, and the student count was 1500+. I knocked down the small school and replaced it with one that had a max capacity of 3000.  I continue playing for a while, and the city population grew to 100k. I started getting "over capacity' notices. When I clicked on the 'jump to the school' option, it goes to the new school. New school still has plenty of capacity. (1500 students of 3000 capacity, funding for 2000 students.) But, when I click on the second option, the pop up box is for the old now demolished school. Third option brings me to the new school, but shows the pop up for old school. Forth option brings up the budget panel, but the new school is fine, and old school is not listed. Bettina continues yelling about the old school being over capacity. Clicking X on the notice gets rid of it, but it comes right back. Not sure what to do here to resolve this issue. 

I hope this information is helpful. 

  Edited May 30, 2021 by vw_oklahoma  
more information added.