Testing Seaports Potential Conflicts / Ensuring Functionality

[hi_density 17]

Hey all, I have a question about Seaports. I've gone crazy with mods and packs after discovering this whole new world of SC4 through Rob's Red Hot Spot. Anyway, after really loading up on goodies and spending tons of time installing them I have started to finally understand how things work and are organized to a decent extent. Now, here's where the potential problem is...

I dowloaded and installed the BSC Functional Seaports at the beginning of my learning curve. I have Peg and BSC Seaports installed and essentially I want to know how I would go about testing my setup. I have all dependencies, I am asking purely about ensuring proper game functionality...

[twalsh102 1,601]

@hi_density,

The simple answer here is that the two controllers will not work together. The same answer would apply to airport controllers as well.

The why is a bit more complicated. The primary purpose of such controllers is to specify what pieces-parts (listed by IID) would be considered as part of the functional seaport. The original Maxis Seaport controller contained only one Maxis Seaport. You could plop pieces-parts from other content creators, but they would only be eye-candy and not functional.

I have not actually looked at either the PEG or BSC controller, but they essentially work in the same way. So when BSC created their Seaport controller, they added the IIDs of the pieces-parts that the BSC team had developed and probably added the IID of the lone Maxis seaport to create their new Seaport controller. PEG likely did the exact same thing, i.e. they created a new Seaport controller containing the IIDs of all the pieces-parts created by PEG and maybe added the IID of the lone Maxis piece, but likely didn't add the IIDs of the BSC created parts. The end result would be that one of the controllers would override the other, depending on your folder structure. Whichever controller was loaded last would be the one the game uses. You could uses pieces parts from the other set, but they just wouldn't be considered functional. There is a way to make the pieces-parts from both sets be functional, but that may not be simple depending on your level of knowledge on the structure of a Seaport controller, and on the tool that you would need to use, i.e. Reader by @ilive. Essentially, a new Seaport controller would need to be created that combines the IIDs listed in bother the BSC and PEG controllers. Then you can get rid of the other two controllers and just use the single new one.

It really depends on what your intent is. If you want all the pieces-parts to be functional, you would have to create a new, combined controller. If you were happy using functional parts from one set, with eye-candy parts from the other set, you merely pick which controller you want to use, and take the other controller out of your Plugins folder.

Now, one bit of potential unpleasantness that you may potentially run into: if you use the second option mentioned above, once you have built a Seaport using one controller, you cannot simply change controllers should you want to. This would most likely lead to a game crash at start up. To do that correctly, you would likely need to actually remove all the lots listed in the current controller before changing controllers. You may have to remove all lots in order for the former eye-candy lots to be properly recognized as now being functional.

 

[hi_density 17]

First of all thank you for such a detailed response that was understandable even for me relatively new to modding. I want to clarify a few things. I did happen to read as much as could find in the forms about Seaports before posting this. In my attempt to install my files properly, I came across something in SC4Dev forums, RippleJet's "enablers". Is this what you're making reference to here:

On 1/21/2022 at 11:05 AM, twalsh102 said:

There is a way to make the pieces-parts from both sets be functional, but that may not be simple depending on your level of knowledge on the structure of a Seaport controller, and on the tool that you would need to use, i.e. Reader by @ilive. Essentially, a new Seaport controller would need to be created that combines the IIDs listed in bother the BSC and PEG controllers. Then you can get rid of the other two controllers and just use the single new one.

or are you referring to something else?

[rsc204 21,815]

Ergh, this gets murkier the more you dig into it, so sorry for making updates to correct things (in Blue).

On 21/01/2022 at 6:05 PM, twalsh102 said:

Essentially, a new Seaport controller would need to be created that combines the IIDs listed in bother the BSC and PEG controllers. Then you can get rid of the other two controllers and just use the single new one.

Actually whilst this tends to be the commonly accepted view, the simple fact is that the PEG Seaports are included in the BSC Seaport Controller . 

So with some digging, that's not completely accurate, as part of the Controller, there are 16 spare 'slots', which have already been included, but these are blank/template lots, not those actually from PEG.

What isn't included with the download for the set, is both the enablers for PEG's Seaports and the actual lots themselves. The enablers are attached to the 3rd post of the thread linked to, in the previous post.

Those 'enablers' include the PEG Seaport lots, they should be considered replacements for PEG's files, which should be removed in addition to the PEG Controller.

Essentially, the download from BSC includes every seaport that works with the included controller, but they are all disabled by default. In order for them to appear in the Seaport (or other) menu, the appropriate 'enabler' files must be present. You can of course include all the enablers and use all the ports, but this also gives you the option to only use selected Seaports from the set. It's just the PEG enablers that weren't in the main release.

In theory (since it's not documented, I can't really elaborate), if you install everything into Plugins, run the 4 included Cleanitol scripts as per the instructions, it should be correctly setup.

Indeed this is the case, with one caveat, if you want to use the PEG Seaports, you need to have the relevant PEG files in place. Well, I say that I suspect everything you install except the dependencies will eventually be removed again (see below), but to be on the safe side, this is the process.

The Cleanitol scripts do two things, 3 of them check that every file you need is present, whilst 1 removes files that would have been included in the dependencies, which you should not keep in Plugins. That should include the PEG Seaport Controller, which should not be kept in Plugins along with the BSC one.

The 3rd Cleanitol file, removes the following PEG files:

PEG_Master-Seaport-Controller*.dat
PEG_3x5_CSK2_Port-Small*.dat
zPEG_3x5_CSK2_Port-Small_205f.dat
PEG-CDK3_10x5_Container Port*.dat
PEG-CDK3-SP_Break-Bulk_SeaPort*.dat
PEG-CDK3-SP_Pier-Seaport*.dat
PEG-CDK_Seaport_1*.dat

In essence what's going on here is that the PEG Ports have been altered so the IDs now use the spare slots that were included with the BSC Controller, thus allowing the modified versions to work with it. Those files are included in the 'Enablers' for PEGs seaports.

The 4 Peg files use the IDs ending in A through D, so 0 through 9 (in other words, the 10 lots intended for custom user seaports), can still be used in addition to the PEG ones should you wish.

What this does mean however, is that the original PEG Ports (only the functional pieces), must be removed from any saved cities, BEFORE switching to the BSC Seaport Controller. Because they will link to IDs that after this process will no longer exist, but just having old Seaport Controller IDs in the save file, would be a recipe for bad things. 

Update to add, the attachment with the PEG Enablers contains instructions on how to edit the original PEG files, such that they work properly with the BSC Seaport Controller. But then the last sentence reads:

Quote

When you're done, your Enablers should look like the ones included in this zip file.
And yes, if you're lazy or smart, feel free to use the Enablers I've created.

So that suggests the instructions are to make the very files that are included in the Enablers. All in all, not exactly clear, why would you need to mess around with such modifications if you had just downloaded such modified files?

Indeed this is as mad as it sounds, I think I know why but I'll get in trouble if I mention it. But essentially you don't need to follow the instructions, because those same modifications are the very ones already made to the included files.

[rsc204 21,815]

@hi_density: Hopefully the above information isn't too late to be useful, but I figure others will come across this issue at some point.

I've just spent the afternoon installing the BSC Functional Seaports and Airports and the reasons why I'd been avoiding it all this time were very clear. Using a combination of LEX Dependency Tracker/Bulk Download, in addition to my personal folder of dependencies and avoiding all the installers by using this technique, it was at least a sane amount of work.

One thing that always irked me is that I don't want many seaports and airports, I'd maybe like a few options and to keep the dependency count more reasonable. Looking for a solution to missing dependencies, I stumbled upon this excellent thread, which seems to be somewhat forgotten. Sadly the images are probably on borrowed time, but here the dependencies are listed by the individual Seaports. So if you just leave the Enablers outside of Plugins for those Lots you don't want, you can use this guide so you know exactly which dependencies you actually need for the content you want.

But I can't stress enough how much easier this process is when you use Cleanitol to do all the hard work for you. To do this manually by downloading, extracting and installing/cross referencing every dependency, I wouldn't have got to the end I can assure you. Even using as many 'cheats' as I know, this was still a good few hours to bring everything together.

Another tip, since the AC Functional Airports barely require anything that isn't already in the Seaports, you might as well install that while you are at things, I did.

Now I've a lovely .zip file stashed away, if I ever want to use either mod it's all ready to go, dependencies and all.