CoriBoom 2nd Beta - All 3 City Halls Fixes + 1 for ModPacc Zero

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

All Three City Halls + 1  (for  ModPacc Zero )
With New Data Summary Panel

Background

As many of you know, Maxis shipped the game with Model files, Lots and Building exemplars, some LText, and some Lua code for a total of three City Halls with each building progressively larger than the previous. However, the Lua code to trigger the Phase 2 and Phase 3 versions was commented out when they decided to have them upgrade in place. The code for the latter was never completed by Maxis.

Next came @MrTruesage's All 3 CityHalls Modd Reward fix in December, 2004 to allow all three City Halls to be plopped in the game. This was accomplished by reactivating Maxis's code, creating some new LText files, and additionally tweaking some of the properties in the building exemplars.

It was later in August, 2005 that @Andreas Roth created the City Hall Fix to deal with the custom trees that would sometimes appear on the Phase 1 lot.

Then in October, 2016 @simmaster07 created Real Upgradeable City Halls which has a DLL and Lua code to finally implement Maxis's intention of the upgrade in place.

 

Considerations

For ModPacc Zero, CB re-lotted all three City Halls to improve their appearance so that props no longer intrude on other nearby elements and also preventing the tree oddities. (The original Maxis Phase 2 and Phase 3 were rather scant and boring so he's improved upon that too.)

The mod by MrTruesage has several tweaks such that the population and mayor rating requirements are greater than Maxis defined along with adding CAP relief, spreading the available jobs across all three wealth levels, and changing the lots to Do Construction after plopping. With this being the de facto standard for anyone who wants all three City Halls, we have made the ModPacc Zero versions conform to the same alterations for better compatibility. However, we have also corrected minor mistakes in the Demand Created property and written new Lua code so that entire Lua entries do not need to be overwritten.

(This latter part uses techniques which were apparently unknown back in 2004.)

 

Re-Lotted Versions by Cyclone Boom

Phase 1:

 

Phase 2:

 

Phase 3:

 

And introducing a new Phase 0 (Village Hall) by CB which can be plopped any time in a newly established city:

^ This allows immediate access to all the data in his new UI query.

(Note: All 4 lots use Maxis props, and as such require no dependencies.)

 

Village Hall Background

The Village Hall was the first brick duplex built in a small hamlet founded by Silas Woodthorpe and was dedicated to the community as a place for meetings and other local government business. Ever since, it has become the design favored by Mayors across the land when they need their first source of useful information.

(Lotted by @Cyclone Boom)

 

Building Exemplar Properties

The tweaks MrTruesage made to Demand Created have been updated to Maxis Standards. In each case of Jobs Created they also need a corresponding entry for Amenities and we have added those. The changes they made to Wealth, Demand Satisfied (CAP Relief), Landmark Effects, and Water Consumed are maintained for backward compatibility.

 

Lua Code

The Lua code is where the game checks if the criteria for a reward lot has been achieved and then makes them available in the Reward Menu. It also handles the reward earned popup advisor messages and the fluff news messages. MrTruesage's mod copies those Lua entries in their entirety and while this was the only known method at the time, it's not a good idea because that precludes any other mod from making changes to code in the same sections.

For ModPacc Zero, I've completely rewritten the Lua code as a standalone package. This allows surgical edits which will not interfere with Lua code of any other mod. It is highly advised to remove MrTruesage's mod from your plugins and use the MZ version instead.

 

Reward Triggers

The Maxis code for the first City Hall (Phase 1) is set to 12,500+ population and 20+ for mayor rating. MrTruesage's mod increases this to 15,500+ population and 40+ mayor rating. This can cause a discrepancy for players who have cities they created under the Maxis criteria, but then install the mod. Let me illustrate what I mean.

This city tile was originally played without the All 3 City Halls fix:

 

Playing later with MrTruesage's mod installed, I decided I wanted to move the City Hall because I'd randomly plopped it when it became available under the vanilla rule of 12,500 population.

So, I bulldoze it:

 

But now I don't meet the new requirements!

 

I created some special Lua code to check for this exact situation. If a Phase 1 City Hall exists in a city tile and it does not meet the increased requirements, I set them back to 12,500 population and 20 mayor rating (as originally set by Maxis) so that the City Hall can be bulldozed and re-plopped wherever I want.

With the new code after bulldozing:

Note: If you bulldoze the vanilla City Hall, save, then exit the city tile it will revert to the 15,500 and 40 mayor rating requirement the next time you load it.

The idea is that my tweak only applies to previously plopped City Halls that are in the gap between the original 12,500 threshold and the new 15,500 and which are to be moved in the same play session.

 

In the same play session I can go re-plop the City Hall because it meets the old requirements:

 

And it'll grow:

 

Availability and Menu Placement

The Maxis code (which was commented out) and re-implemented by MrTruesage has the requirement that the prior City Hall must be plopped before the next one becomes available (along with the population and mayor rating requirements). In a city which meets the population and mayor rating requirements where one wants to place only the Phase 3 City Hall, that means one has to jump thru several hoops to accomplish it.

Ergo, plop Phase 1, let it grow, see Phase 2 become available, pause the game, bulldoze Phase 1, plop Phase 2 without running time (or it'll disappear from the menu), let that one grow, see Phase 3 become available, pause, bulldoze Phase 2, and then (finally) plop Phase 3.

This all seems a bit cumbersome to me so I've made it so that the only requirements are the population and mayor rating thresholds. This gives the player the choice to have each one plopped so 1, 2, or 3 are present in their city. Or just a single City Hall if they like.

In this tile created by CB, it meets the requirements for all 3 Halls. We select this area to grow Phase 3:

^ Notice too that I've changed the Item Order property so all 3 are grouped together in the menu.

 

Now we can immediately plop Phase 3 without all the prior plop, grow, bulldoze, plop hassle:

 

Let it grow:

 

And it still has the City Exclusion Group property so you can only have one of each phase:

 

Additionally, I've added Requirements text to the menu items for Phase 2 and 3 instead of using Maxis (and MrTruesage's) code for: return reward_state.HIDDEN

The User Interface (UI) aka the Query Window

MrTruesage added some additional information to the query:

 

We've greatly expanded that for MZ:

CB has also created a separate, optional No City Hall Query Sound v1.0.dat file which makes the query silent.

 

YIMBY not NIMBY

The description for MrTruesage's mod states that the Landmark Effect of each Phase is a NIMBY influence. This is incorrect. The Landmark Effect in their mod (and this MZ version) is a YIMBY for Commercial and completely neutral for Residential and Industrial.
 

Fluff News Removal

MrTruesage's mod also commented out all the Fluff News (without ever mentioning that was done). While this might be desirable for many peeps, we believe it should not be forced on anyone. We've made a separate, standalone mod that will do the same thing so y'all can make your own decision if you'd like the Fluff News items deleted.

(Note: Many other news items are also fluff in nature, but are created in separate Lua code which was not altered.)

 

New Building Names

Rather than Small, Medium, and Large we've named them as follows:

1. Town Hall
2. City Hall
3. Metropolis Hall

Also, LText is included and assigned for each name, which means if you rename any of them that new name will be saved in the city tile data and persist from one play session to the next.

 

New Building Addition

As mentioned above, CB has created a new Village Hall that can be plopped with no requirements so the enhanced data display in our UI can be available even in newly established cities.

 

Compatability With simmmaster07's Mod

This MZ version of All 3 City Halls is fully compatible with @simmaster07's Real Upgradeable City Halls mod. Simply refrain from plopping Phase 2 and Phase 3 and if your city has 45,000 population when loading, his advisor popup will allow Phase 1 to upgrade in place to Phase 2 and if your city has 95,000 population when loading, it'll allow the upgrade of either Phase 1 (if you didn't agree to the phase 2 upgrade) or Phase 2 to become Phase 3.

Simply install his mod according to the instructions listed in the STEX description.
 

Incompatability With Other Mods

@MrTruesage's All 3 CityHalls Modd Reward fix

When using our ModPacc Zero City Halls fix, MrTruesage's mod should be completely removed from your plugins. While it was certainly a brilliant addition in 2004, it does not meet current standards for Lua coding alterations. Look for a folder named CityHall Package and delete it and its contents.

If you've installed their mod in a different folder than the one contained in the original zip file, look for these individual files:

• CityHall.dat
• CityHall_LText.dat
• ConstantsLUA.dat (Overrides TGI CA63E2A3-4A5E8EF6-FF048A3E)
• NewsItemsLUA.dat (Overrides TGI CA63E2A3-4A5E8EF6-FFA79144)
• RewardLUA.dat    (Overrides TGI CA63E2A3-4A5E8EF6-FFA8F301)
• UI.dat

Remove all of the above.

 

@Andreas Roth's City Hall Fix

Remove CityHall_fix.dat from your plugins when using our ModPacc Zero version. (Or, for this one, just be certain our mod loads last and it will safely override their copy of the LotConfigurations exemplar.)

As part of the main MZ release, we will provide a master Cleanitol text file to remove the original mods by file name.

 

Beta Testing Requested

As with our other newly created mods for ModPacc Zero, we'd like y'all to beta test this and provide feedback. Ofc, be certain to test safely. It's best to use only copies of your city tiles so you can restore them to their pre-testing versions. We cannot be certain at this time if there will need to be any additional modifications, and as such you'll want backups of any cities where you test.

Ofc, please do post feedback and/or pictures to let us know your impression of our new creation.

 

The Files Contained in the .Zip:

1.  MZ City Hall Package (Beta v1.0).dat  <--- The main file.
2.  MZ Fluff News Remover (Beta v1.0).dat <--- Optional file.
3.  No City Hall Query Sound v1.0.dat     <--- Optional file.

 

The Download File:
ModPacc Zero - City Halls (Beta v1.0).zip

See new v1.1 updated beta (and better) release to download from our post here. 

 

Thanks!

-Cori & CB

  Edited October 17, 2021 by Cyclone Boom  
Beta v1.1 Update Linky.

[mawendir 53]

Wonderful and revolutionary, as always from Cori and CB. Thank you for your continuous efforts of making SimCity 4 better. I can't wait to start testing it right away.

[XAVERIOS 11]

Awesome, update to the game. Can't wait to download it use it. 

[carlosmarcelo 984]

This is amazing! It must have been a lot of work, but I'm sure right now it was worth it. 

I started to poke the mod of the 3 city halls just with the intention of making a translation to PT-BR and I dared to go further, but I ran into those problems that I reported in another topic. 

Unfortunately now I'm unable to download and test, but I have a huge desire to test, look inside and translate. Who knows in 2022? 

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

35 minutes ago, carlosmarcelo said:

I have a huge desire to test, look inside and translate.

Sounds good for whenever you have time.

There will be new additions CB is creating for the final release which include hover over tool tips (which is Maxis's way of saying info about something when you mouse over it). Once it's all completely ready you can extract all the text entries, translate them, and post that as an override for anyone to use.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,118]

Soooo... it's basically Tropico's pirate king palace?  Upgrades over time?

(Plus some fancy stats?)

[TogaMasterJohn 711]

This looks quite awesome and quite useful, too! Alas I do not know when I'll be able to test this out at this time. Hopefully here in a couple of weeks, perhaps sooner.

Nice work once again (and as always), CoriBoom!

[TheMurderousCricket 5,118]

Great idea. I already did some testing and have several suggestions you might want to take into consideration:

1. When I entered the city hall for the first time, all stats were completely bogus (-9836847914 eco rating?). It stabilizes on the second go though.

2. This is important - stats are displayed in a completely weird numerical format. I've got:

57,44.00% health rating

94,5.00% police coverage

123,57.00 crimes per capita

Haven't got the faintest idea how to read these numbers. 

Also - how is the ecology rating being calculated?

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

Thanks for testing and feedback.

 

3 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

1. When I entered the city hall for the first time, all stats were completely bogus (-9836847914 eco rating?). It stabilizes on the second go though.

That'll likely need to be simply mentioned in the docs that it needs a day's time to have valid numbers. As far as we know atm, that's just how it works.

 

4 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

2. This is important - stats are displayed in a completely weird numerical format. I've got:

Is that after the refresh? Or before?

 

5 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Also - how is the ecology rating being calculated?

EcoResult = 100 - (game.ga_air_pollution / 10)
          - (game.ga_water_pollution / 10)
          - ((game.ga_garbage_pollution / 10) / ((game.g_pollution_funding_p + 0.00000001) / 100))
          - (game.trend_value(game_trends.G_TOTAL_RADIATION_POLLUTION,0) * 2)
          - (game.g_water_pollution_pump_shutdown_count * 10)
          - (game.g_overworked_power_plant_count * 10)
          - (game.g_street_tile_count / 1000)
          - (game.g_road_tile_count / 500)
          - (game.g_avenue_tile_count / 250)
          - (game.g_groundhighway_tile_count / 100)
          - (game.g_highway_tile_count / 100)
          - (game.g_rail_tile_count / 1000)
          - (game.g_subway_tile_count / 1000)
          - (game.g_monorail_tile_count / 1000)
          - (game.g_small_airport_count * 5)
          - (game.g_medium_airport_count * 10)
          - (game.g_large_airport_count * 20)
          + ((game.g_num_parks / 100) * ((game.g_parks_funding_p + 0.00000001) / 100))
          + (game.g_city_ir_population / 100)

[TheMurderousCricket 5,118]

25 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Is that after the refresh? Or before?

How shall I put it... Anytime. 

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

1 minute ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

How shall I put it... Any time. 

And only those three are goofy? That's really weird. I'd expect it to be all of them or none.

For a number like 1000.00 does your country display it as 1.000,00? We are wondering if the game's UI is taking over some of our careful formatting.

If you have time, would you include a couple or three screenshots of the panel from different cities?

[TheMurderousCricket 5,118]

13 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

And only those three are goofy? That's really weird. I'd expect it to be all of them or none.

All of them. This is just an example.

I don't even think the crime stat is accurate. This city has about 60 crimes a year (shooting off the hip) per 17000 sims... So I don't know what this figure is supposed to mean.

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

Ok. Cool. Tomorrow we'll set up a controlled Diagnostic Panel that you can run and maybe that'll shed some light on the problem.

For the per capita crime, remember that's extrapolated per one hundred thousand Sims just like they do in the real world.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,118]

16 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

that's extrapolated per one hundred thousand Sims

Yep. There is the "100k" note but as I write this from a smartphone, I just forgot seeing this.

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

We've created the aforementioned Diagnostic Panel to display numbers in various ways we format them:

 

When changing the language the game uses it also changes the number display of some of them:

 

Further research shows that a few countries (like Great Britain and the United States) use a comma for the thousands separator while other countries either use a dot or a space. Then for the decimal point, it's either a dot or a comma.

So, the game is doing that automatically, but because we've coded many of the displays to allow fixed decimal places and the comma as separators in places the UI normally chops them off this complicates the whole thing.

While you could add a startup parameter of -l:english to your game shortcut to view the display as we see it, that would also mean the Maxis text throughout the game would change too.

This has become a complex mess for what we had envisioned as a very nicely formatted and informative data panel. The project is now on hold and we may simply cancel the whole damn thing.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,118]

20 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

The project is now on hold and we may simply cancel the whole damn thing.

Hey, hey, whoa, hold your horses...! 

I actually run the game in English. I don't mind this extra param. You say that will solve the issue?

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

12 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I actually run the game in English. I don't mind this extra param. You say that will solve the issue?

Hmm. Prolly not then. My game is installed as English. I presumed because when I changed the language to something else and the numbers got messed up that was the cause and so if switching to English would fix it.

Since it's already messed up for you, that parameter is not likely to help. And it still means anyone else without the same setup as when we installed our games is going to see borked numbers.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,118]

Yep. It's still borked.

So what was your installation like anyways?

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

1 minute ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

So what was your installation like anyways?

Just the standard offline version of Gog using Win 7.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,118]

5 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Just the standard offline version of Gog using Win 7.

Same like me, except for Win XP and PL system language.

Speaking of which - could changing the system language help in any way?

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

1 minute ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Speaking of which - could changing the system language help in any way?

Seems possible. It could well be the game looks to that country code or something to decide what number display format to use. (Still won't be a viable option for most peeps tho who use other languages / number separators.)

[TheMurderousCricket 5,118]

4 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Seems possible. It could well be the game looks to that country code or something to decide what number display format to use.

Oh, I understand it. I feel comfortable with both languages but many people don't.

I'll try to get some shuteye (it's past midnight down here ) and check it in the morning.

Don't give up. It's just a beta. Perhaps this can be pulled off after all. 

[rivit 3,404]

19 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

It could well be the game looks to that country code or something to decide what number display format to use.

I think youre right - it doesnt seem to directly use the locale (language settings) on the computer OS itself. It probably means that you would have to have language specific entries like the LTXT works - ending in the right digits to trigger the language specific processing for number formats. 

I would (at least as an interim) reduce all numbers to integer values for display - either by round, truncate or turning into an integer index of something. That is sort of hiding the problem but I think its worth the work (the simplest anyway) because the alternative (15 versions or so) just doesnt justify the effort.    

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

4 minutes ago, rivit said:

I would (at least as an interim) reduce all numbers to integer values for display

That is easy enough as the hidden UI code does a simple math.floor function if just passing it raw numbers. We just aren't satisfied with the imprecision.

[rivit 3,404]

Can you easily force something into two numbers formatted as 'aa.bb' where aa is the integer part and 'bb' the decimal*100?

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

1 minute ago, rivit said:

Can you easily force something into two numbers formatted as 'aa.bb' where aa is the integer part and 'bb' the decimal*100?

Yes. We have that built-in as our own function.

Then if passing that to the UI as a number it still truncates it. A workaround we have is to pass it converted to a string with a hidden ASCII character tacked on the end and for us, that makes it display as we want. The trouble comes up when some of those get borked under other country codes.

[rivit 3,404]

Thats rather annoying - so that means the string is escaped in some way to trigger those (extra) decimals and commas.  That sort of implies the only way to get precision is to express things with ratios that can be integer like the way EQ and similar measures are done.

[CorinaMarie 29,922]

We do have a Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C for how to work around this. One involves a couple hours work and may not do it, but can be tested easily enough. Another is about the same timewise. And the third I'm certain will work, but it's a bunch of coding to do.

Atm, I'm just frustrated enough to set it all aside and go play with trains or something.

[rivit 3,404]

I'd say that was the right thing to do - a week on and who knows how it will look (much like life in general) 

[Cyclone Boom 17,032]

@CorinaMarie

I just want to tell you how I empathise with the frustration about this setback.

As with people here who are helping in reply, I'm motivated to work with you to find the solution (if indeed a solution is worth working towards). To think of how beneficial this can be for everyone to see our data panel displayed properly, if there can be a way forward, I'm sure it would certainly be appreciated by many mayors.