Confusion around modding the regional transport view

[Leo -- 186]

I've always been annoyed that the RHW Regional Transport Map Plugin changed the Freeways from red to black so, I decided to try mod the transport plugin myself as I had done some reading about iLive's Reader and created 1 examplar mod so far. The plan was to temporary recreate the Maxis transport view with the RHW functionality, then readd stuff like light rail. However I still have no idea what I'm doing and I stumbled across examplars which I could not modify and a CLSID which from my understanding is a Class ID for the Windows registry.

So, here's what I did so far I modified the "DV/RegionalTransport: Color table" to the same value as in simcity1.dat.

Results:

(Great I just noticed I misspelled Palm for all of my cities) So I was getting most of my networks black now, so I decided to dissect other RHW compatible transport view plugins and saw that they didn't "DataView: Color ramp (the non-highlighted one)" so I removed mine and got this:

So I have a few questions and those are: whats the CLSID for?, why can't I mod "DataView: Color ramp (the highlighted one)" And why was the Highway color changed in the first place?

[Tarkus 6,935]

It's been awhile since I've messed with the Regional Transport Map, so I'm probably not much help with that question at this point, but as far as the history of why the Highway color was changed, I think your experiment shows part of the reason for it. 

The original RHW-compatible Regional Transport Map plugin that was done by @jondor 11 years ago uses a workaround.  Instead of using the map's default display method, which excludes the RHW, the plugin is designed to utilize the game's Traffic Volume Data View to trigger the display of all the networks in the Regional Transport Map.  The particular color scheme that jondor's plugin uses was designed specifically to hide the colors from the Traffic Volume Data View.  You can read more about the development of the plugin in the original development thread at SC4D.  There's also a dedicated FAQ section about it in the NAM Documentation's RHW Feature Guide.

Below is the entirety of that FAQ (which was taken largely from jondor's original readme).

-Tarkus

Quote

The NAM includes the popular RHW Regional Transport Map Mod by jondor as an optional feature, which can be selected via this option in the NAM Installer. This mod utilizes a workaround to display RHWs on the Regional Transport Map. It also contains an updated and expanded map legend to reflect the new network colors as well as the addition of Monorail as a separate color from El-Rail/GLR. This mod is NOT compatible with any other Regional Transport Map mods.

There is one requirement for the mod to function correctly: You MUST activate at least one dataview in game before saving for the game to render the map correctly. It does not appear that this issue can be fixed.

After installation, each city tile must be opened and saved (after opening any dataview) in order to update the region map. Similarly when uninstalling the mod, each city tile must be resaved to update the region map.

FAQ:

Q: Why are highways black instead of red?
A: Because of the way this workaround functions, the red color would show up as a halo around diagonal roads, bridges and certain puzzle pieces. The black color does as well, but is less noticeable.

Q: Why do the diagonals look weird?
A: Again, because of the way this workaround functions, the diagonal roads, avenues and streets show up intermingled with the highway color. This is not possible to fix but the map colors were chosen to make it less noticeable than other color combinations.

Q: Why are all my roads black?
A: If you do not open any of the dataviews before saving the game, the map will be rendered incorrectly resulting in all car traffic networks showing up as the highway color.

Q: Will you make a version with my favorite colors?
A: Sorry, but no. Anyone who can use ilive's Reader can easily change the colors to their liking.

-Tarkus