Editing lots for menu items

[SIM-ple Jack 17,451]

Is there a way to tweak files so that they appear in menu? I'm talking about things that only appear in Building and LotPlop?

[CorinaMarie 29,899]

17 minutes ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

Is there a way to tweak files so that they appear in menu? I'm talking about things that only appear in Building and LotPlop?

I'm guessing you are referring to growable lots / buildings which are not in a menu. While I don't know the technique, this sounds like something PIM-X is good at doing.

[twalsh102 1,601]

@SIM-ple Jack

For anybody that may not be aware of this:

All Building and Lot Exemplars will appear in the appropriate list for the Building and LotPlop "cheats", regardless of whether they are ploppable, or growable. But only ploppable lots with their associated building will appear in one of the game's menus.

So the big question is: is this an issue of wanting growable lots/buildings to show up in a menu, or an issue of known ploppable buildings/lots not showing up in a menu as they should?

Since the necessary properties and the values for these properties can vary greatly between growable and ploppable for both the Lot, and especially the Building Exemplars, there is no one answer to your question.

If the issue is the former, you would need to generate new Lot AND Building Exemplars, specific to ploppable lots/buildings, to properly show up in one of the menus (not as simple as just tweaking files). If this is the case, I agree with @CorinaMarie that PIM-X would be the best tool to use. The specific process can follow if necessary.

If the issue is the latter, is it possible what you are looking for IS in one of the menus, just not where you expect it to be (since the creator of the Building Exemplar determines which menu the Building shows up in, whether it is logical or not)?

[SIM-ple Jack 17,451]

On 6/22/2022 at 8:16 PM, twalsh102 said:

is this an issue of wanting growable lots/buildings to show up in a menu, or an issue of known ploppable buildings/lots not showing up in a menu as they should?

More of an issue of l/b's either growable or ploppable not showing up. I usually throw out the growable versions, as I don't play the game "by the rules". I'm conditioned to hunt down residential in B/LPlop, but I sometimes forget about things I have. Seeing them in Menu is more reliable than my memory.

[twalsh102 1,601]

On 6/24/2022 at 4:13 PM, SIM-ple Jack said:

More of an issue of l/b's either growable or ploppable not showing up. I usually throw out the growable versions, as I don't play the game "by the rules". I'm conditioned to hunt down residential in B/LPlop, but I sometimes forget about things I have. Seeing them in Menu is more reliable than my memory.

Gotcha, I think. There is no way to make any growable lot show up in any menu, unless you turn it into a ploppable. If known ploppables aren't showing in the menu, there are several possible causes.

1. It's possible that a L/B is there, but not necessarily in the menu you expect it to be. CC creators can specify what menu they wish their creation to show up in. This is specified in the OccupantGroups property of the Building Exemplar.

2. There also needs to be a Item Icon property (this doesn't exist in the Building Exemplar of a growable). The value for this property needs to be the IID of the png subfile that represents to icon seen in the menu (this property also doesn't exist in the Building Exemplar of a growable). If the png subfile has been somehow corrupted, then you will have a glitched menu where it should show up. This can be recognized by having an empty space somewhere in the menu where the icon would normally show.

3. Depending on how you organize your Plugins folder, it's possible that the Lot Exemplar (which also usually includes the Building Exemplar) cannot be read because the path to its location exceeds the maximum path length for Windows (260 characters). For most Windows users, the usable Path Length from the root of the Plugins folder is 208 characters minus the length of their user name. Depending on how many levels of nested folders and subfolders you've set up, it wouldn't be difficult to exceed the maximum path length. The issue with Maximum Path Length is that if any file exceeds this limit, it can't be read by Windows. It it can't be read by Windows, it can't be read by SC4.

4. A tool you can use to determine if there is anything in your Plugins that exceed the limit is SC4 DataNode by @rivit. This isn't what it's designed for, but it will throw an error and abort a scan if it finds a file that exceeds the maximum length.The downside of using DataNode (since it aborts the scan if it finds anything) is that if you have more than one file that exceeds the limit, you have to find and deal with these files one at a time.

A lot of info, I know! Hopefully I didn't confuse the heck out of anyone!