discussion SC4 STEX New Categories Proposal

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

With the STEX approaching 20 years old (containing 23,459 files and counting), we believe the categories are due for an overhaul to make browsing much easier for all players. The current structure is way too broad and we believe that can be improved. Therefore, we've outlined a proposal to enhance the ease of finding SC4 files on the exchange.

The poll question is simply whether or not you agree changes would be a good idea without needing to agree specifically with the following suggestions. Then when you reply, you can agree with the outline or make suggestions of your own.

The following is a replacement for "Lots" and "Buildings" categories as well as other tweaks:

Proposed New STEX SC4 Categories

• Residential:  Houses, apartments, and tall towers with residential use.
• Commercial:  Shops, shopping malls, office blocks, and skyscrapers with commercial use.
• Industrial:  Factories, manufacturing facilities, and high tech buildings.
• Agricultural:  Farms and other rural themed lots, including fields.
• Civic & Urban:  Primary city civic structures, including fire, police, school, hospital, churches, rewards, and stadiums.
  Also anything urban themed in general, including other misc ploppable structures.
• Utilities:  Power plants and transformers, water pumps and towers, sewage and garbage processing facilities.
• Parks & Plazas:  Ploppable lots themed as park sets for city beautification purposes.
• Transportation:  Items themed around transport networks, including stations, road and rail mods, tunnels, airports, and seaports.
• Automata:  Cars, trains, planes, boats, which travel on game transportation routes.
• Gameplay Mods:  Modifications which alter aspects of the simulation parameters.
• Graphical Mods:  Modifications which enhance graphical aspects, including water, terrain, beach, rock, and tree mods, and UI elements (e.g. data views / graphs).
  Also includes MMPs which add details to the landscape.
• Cheats:  Mods or lots which are designed to radically alter the gameplay, such as for city funding boosts.
• Tools:  Programs to use for working with SC4 data files, along with map making utilities.
• Maps:  Files to allow custom regions to be rendered for use in game.
• Ready Made Regions:  Complete zips of playable pre-rendered regions (~50 MB max). These are either terrain only or with development in place.
• Dependencies:  Files to use which add props or textures on custom lot designs. These are intended for using in the Lot Editor or PIM-X tools.
• 3ds Models:  Gmax source model files which can be used for modifying and rendering as a custom BAT design.
• Obsolete & Legacy:  These files are not recommended for use, but are kept here in case someone has a reason to need them.

----------

By creating this topic, we'd like to gauge community opinion about the idea for these new categories.

Do you like these, or have suggestions for other categories which might even be worth adding additionally?

Remember, the poll is for a Yes / No opinion meaning:

Yes:  Make some sort of changes.
No:  The SC4 STEX categories are perfect as they are already.

We also encourage discussion about this so we can refine the implementation. We plan to keep this open for a few weeks (depending on input), and after such to commence the reorganisation if there is a two-thirds majority in favor (Yes) for changes.

Thanks everyone.

-CB & Cori

  Edited July 5, 2022 by Cyclone Boom  
Updated category list.

[CaptCity 4,695]

Nice list... Definitely would make things easy to find when looking for specific uploads. One question... would plazas be ‘Civic’ items or beautification items that could be in a category ‘Parks/Plazas’ (slight re-name)? Just a quick thought...

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

42 minutes ago, CaptCity said:

One question... would plazas be ‘Civic’ items or a beautification item that could be in a category ‘Parks/Plazas’ (slight re-name)?

Good point there. I believe plazas would best fit into the Parks category, and so that would go well to include both in the same.

I've updated the list to tweak this.

[Golan0 277]

Great idea! Browsing STEX for files (especially older ones) was extremely time consuming. What if file fits into several categories (e.g. building sets, IRM fillers etc.)? Can file have multiple categories? And where we can fit jobless ploppables?

 

[CaptCity 4,695]

Maybe this is a can of worms that doesn't need to be opened, buuuut....  

Is the reorganization only for the main STEX section, or will the other SC4 content sections (PLEX, SCPolaska, SCB, WWP) be incorporated somehow?

Also, might there be a category for terrain and plant related things (terrain/forest mods, etc.). Maybe 'Floral & Fauna'...? Or would they just go into the Mods group? Peg's MTP stuff made me think of these possible considerations, but there's other things like that that might fit such a category.

Just another 2 cents...    

[matias93 7,535]

On the second section, an Utilities category needs to be included, for power plants and transformers, water pumps and towers, sewage and garbage processing, recycling facilities and other similar things.

39 minutes ago, CaptCity said:

Also, might there be a category for terrain and plant related things (terrain/forest mods, etc.). Maybe 'Floral & Fauna'...? Or would they just go into the Mods group? Peg's MTP stuff made me think of these possible considerations, but there's other things like that that might fit such a category.

I would also go with an specific category for terrain, water, shore and background mods, terrain controllers and tree controllers.

39 minutes ago, CaptCity said:

Is the reorganization only for the main STEX section, or will the other SC4 content sections (PLEX, SCPolska, SCB, WMP) be incorporated somehow?

I would expect that this new categorisation were transversal to those. Maybe we could replace those sections with corresponding tags, to ease the implementation and avoid having mini-STEXs that would be harder to browse.

1 hour ago, Golan0 said:

And where we can fit jobless ploppables?

I think it would be reasonable to have categories for cosmetic landmarks, as well as cosmetic fillers, like tree lots and retaining walls that don't operate as parks or plazas. It would be good, as well, to consider suggesting to the creators or custodians of such sets to modify them to remove such effects (but that's another topic altogether).

EDIT: Oh, and about thematic sets, or things that fit on the same style, I would say that standard labels are the way to go, not categories. Maybe we could open a parallel topic to agree on some, even if there are a couple that are self-evident, like the Paris buildings, everything too futuristic or antique to appear randomly in a modern city, or certain other regional styles.

[CaptCity 4,695]

9 minutes ago, matias93 said:

I would also go with an specific category for terrain, water, shore and background mods, terrain controllers and tree controllers.

Yes... A 'Floral & Fauna' category might be a little confusing since there's an 'MMP' category already. Maybe a category named 'Surface Mods' for water, rock, beach, terrain, tree mods...? Probably not that great of name, but something like that. 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

"Residential:  Houses, apartments, and tall towers with residential use.
Commercial:  Shops, shopping malls, office blocks, and skyscrapers with commercial use.
Industrial:  Factories, manufacturing facilities, and high tech buildings.
Agriculture:  Farms and other rural themed lots, including fields.
Civic:  Primary city civic structures, including fire, police, school, hospital, churches, rewards, and stadiums.
   *Parks & Plazas:  Ploppable lots themed as park sets for city beautification purposes.
Transportation:  Items themed around transport networks, including stations, road and rail mods, tunnel sets.
    Automata:  Cars, trains, planes, boats, which travel on game transportation routes.
Seaports & Aquatic:  Themed items of seaport sets and harbor dock, along with seawalls, ploppable water, ships.
    *Airports & Runways:  Themed items of airport sets, including pre-made and modular runway packages.
Mods:  Gameplay modifications which alter aspects of the simulation parameters, or tweak visual UI elements (e.g. data views / graphs).
    *MMPs:  Mayor Mode Ploppable items, including trees and anything which add details to the landscape.
    *Tools:  Programs to use for working with SC4 custom content files, along with map making utilities.
    *Cheats:  Mods or lots which are designed to radically alter the gameplay, such as for city funding boosts.
Maps:  Files to allow custom regions to be rendered.
    *Ready Made Regions:  Complete zips of playable pre-rendered regions (~50 MB max). These are either terrain only or with development in place.
    *Props:  Dependency files to use which add visible objects on lot designs. These are intended for using in the Lot Editor or PIM-X tools.
    *Textures:  Dependency files to use which add textures on lot designs. These are intended for using in the Lot Editor or PIM-X tools.
    3ds Models:  Gmax source model files which can be used for modifying and rendering as a custom BAT design.
Obsolete & Legacy:  These files are not recommended for use, but are kept here in case someone has a reason to need them."

 

I'm solid on at least 10 categories. But with these opinions-

Civic should include parks/plazas, as all in that category contribute to a city's Aura(as Cori would call it) and mayor approval. They don't do much for anything else.

Transportation should include Airports and their parts, as there aren't really enough of them to warrant a separate category. Most are not really transport anyway, just eye-candy,
 but they give the illusion of transpo, anyway.

Mods/Cheats/Tools should be lumped together. They are all game-altering utilities, and, by themselves, too small to warrant 3 categories.

Maps are fine as is. The small handful of Ready Made Regions wouldn't justify a 4000 file deep-dive to ferret them out.

Dependencies would be a category that could include sets, mmp's, props and textures. Even including them all would make for a small, easily navigable category.

 

Automata- are there really enough for their own category? Cows in Agri, boats in Sea, planes and cars in Transpo, etc.

As for Utilities, could they not be lumped in with Civic, as they are basic requirements to even have a city.

I'm also wondering about potentially re-bundling sets. Reba Lynn's ARS canals and the Underground Mall immediately spring to mind.

If the STEX becomes too compartmentalized, it becomes disorganized. Too much confusion will bring it right back to what it is now.

My 2 cents.

[CaptCity 4,695]

31 minutes ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

If the STEX becomes too compartmentalized, it becomes disorganized. Too much confusion will bring it right back to what it is now.

True enough... I'm sure most have experienced an automated phone menu that was either too generic (too short) or too specific (too long)...

I think using the menus/terminology used in the game for categories (plus a few other necessary custom content categories), as most of those in the list are, would result in a happy median... Easy to use and easy to understand. 

[madhatter106 3,903]

If the categorization means a fix for the STEX search function, then I am all for it.
(Truth be told, I'm all for it either way.)  

[catty-cb 4,381]

Really like the category list as suggested and can see most of the suggestions working for the omnibus as well, which would make searching across the site a whole lot easier and more consistent.

[20huskies 4,693]

Love the category suggestions.  I would echo earlier comments on some way to filter by different cultural architecture or location- and thanks to @chongjunxiang3002’s excellent work on the maps this I imagine would be easier than before.  Another thing about the maps is now I’m finding files I didn’t know about because this category is in one place.  Could we do the same with this revamp?  Doesn’t mean ditching the proposed categories necessarily but enhancing them.

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

Thanks everyone for the input so far. We've updated the list incorporating your ideas.

The changes are...

Addition of:
Utilities:  Power plants and transformers, water pumps and towers, sewage and garbage processing facilities.

Props and Textures consolidated for simplification into:
Dependencies:  Files to use which add props or textures on custom lot designs. These are intended for using in the Lot Editor or PIM-X tools.

Mods separated into two distinct categories (which removes the need for an MMPs category, while including all graphical type mods):

Gameplay Mods:  Modifications which alter aspects of the simulation parameters.

Graphical Mods:  Modifications which enhance graphical aspects, including water, terrain, beach, rock, and tree mods, and UI elements (e.g. data views / graphs).
Also includes MMPs which add details to the landscape.

Consolidated the Seaport and Airport categories into:

Transportation:  Items themed around transport networks, including stations, road and rail mods, tunnels, airports, and seaports.

Expanded Civic to include Urban themed items too, as a bit of a catch-all for other types of ploppable lots:

Civic & Urban:  Primary city civic structures, including fire, police, school, hospital, churches, rewards, and stadiums.
Also anything urban themed in general, including other misc ploppable structures.

----------
 

Spoiler

Proposed New STEX SC4 Categories

• Residential:  Houses, apartments, and tall towers with residential use.
• Commercial:  Shops, shopping malls, office blocks, and skyscrapers with commercial use.
• Industrial:  Factories, manufacturing facilities, and high tech buildings.
• Agricultural:  Farms and other rural themed lots, including fields.
• Civic & Urban:  Primary city civic structures, including fire, police, school, hospital, churches, rewards, and stadiums.
  Also anything urban themed in general, including other misc ploppable structures.
• Utilities:  Power plants and transformers, water pumps and towers, sewage and garbage processing facilities.
• Parks & Plazas:  Ploppable lots themed as park sets for city beautification purposes.
• Transportation:  Items themed around transport networks, including stations, road and rail mods, tunnels, airports, and seaports.
• Automata:  Cars, trains, planes, boats, which travel on game transportation routes.
• Gameplay Mods:  Modifications which alter aspects of the simulation parameters.
• Graphical Mods:  Modifications which enhance graphical aspects, including water, terrain, beach, rock, and tree mods, and UI elements (e.g. data views / graphs).
  Also includes MMPs which add details to the landscape.
• Cheats:  Mods or lots which are designed to radically alter the gameplay, such as for city funding boosts.
• Tools:  Programs to use for working with SC4 data files, along with map making utilities.
• Maps:  Files to allow custom regions to be rendered for use in game.
• Ready Made Regions:  Complete zips of playable pre-rendered regions (~50 MB max). These are either terrain only or with development in place.
• Dependencies:  Files to use which add props or textures on custom lot designs. These are intended for using in the Lot Editor or PIM-X tools.
• 3ds Models:  Gmax source model files which can be used for modifying and rendering as a custom BAT design.
• Obsolete & Legacy:  These files are not recommended for use, but are kept here in case someone has a reason to need them.

 

This now brings the list to 18 total, so is slightly more condensed while not losing anything.

Replying directly to a few of the questions raised...
 

6 hours ago, CaptCity said:

Is the reorganization only for the main STEX section, or will the other SC4 content sections (PLEX, SCPolaska, SCB, WWP) be incorporated somehow?

For now the idea is just for the main SC4 STEX categories indeed.

The PLEX and other categories can remain as they are, at least up until a time when they might be considered being sorted too. One advantage with the PLEX is knowing they're all consolidated, since it's their dedicated home after the sad demise of SimPeg.

 

1 hour ago, 20huskies said:

Another thing about the maps is now I’m finding files I didn’t know about because this category is in one place.  Could we do the same with this revamp?

Yeah, there are merits to a broad category like Maps in general.

In terms of further filtering, what @matias93 said here I believe is logical:

6 hours ago, matias93 said:

Oh, and about thematic sets, or things that fit on the same style, I would say that standard labels are the way to go, not categories.

So within each category, the tags on files can narrow down different themes. Whether architectural styles from different parts of the world, to specific map continents, and then for mods there's the whole different purposes. In this way tags can be the sub-categories, since something we want to avoid is having too many categories buried in a deep tree structure, which would only become a maze to dive down and locate anything.

A tagging project was an idea several years ago, but failed due to lack of a decisive plan of action, and not enough volunteers. This can be something looked into later on in months ahead, once we've got all the files categorised into the new categories structure.

[MarkShot 631]

I voted YES.

But I think a richer taxonomy is not the answer.

Leaving online/offline tools aside ... there are sets of assets which are meant for integration either by theme (cultural flavors) or function (like seaports).  I don't think STEX handles this well at all.  I own 2 offline copies of STEX ... it's all mine, and yet I am overwhelmed mainly.  I also own a database of every official chess match played over the last 500 years, but without some presentation on what is to be learned; even with search facilities way better than STEX, it fails to speak to me.

On the first lecture, one of my professors asked, "What is the difference between 'data' and 'information'?".  STEX for me as it stands is data.

No disrespect for all the efforts invested.

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

Thanks again all for the feedback so far.

Since it seems there's a consensus for the RCI categories (with Agricultural as its own), I've created those four:

• Residential
• Commercial
• Industrial
• Agricultural

This now allows ST staff and helpers to begin moving files to them right away.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Everything about the way categories was before was confusing and unuseful and I think this will be a big improvement.

Is there a reason that automata should not be included with transportation?

 

This is slightly off topic but I would personally prefer if the main STEX page had "featured" at the top like it currently is, but beneath that just had all of the STEX files unfiltered, by upload date. I think that is a more straightforward and user friendly way to quickly see what is new and to browse everything generally, with the categories on the right helping with more specific browsing, in addition to the "Sort By" options.

[Barroco Hispano 26,671]

What category does this fit into? 

 

[Tyberius06 12,184]

46 minutes ago, Jasoncw said:

Everything about the way categories was before was confusing and unuseful and I think this will be a big improvement.

Is there a reason that automata should not be included with transportation?

 

This is slightly off topic but I would personally prefer if the main STEX page had "featured" at the top like it currently is, but beneath that just had all of the STEX files unfiltered, by upload date. I think that is a more straightforward and user friendly way to quickly see what is new and to browse everything generally, with the categories on the right helping with more specific browsing, in addition to the "Sort By" options.

Thanks, @Jasoncw!
I could not find this topic, but since you commented now I have it!  
I would not put automata with either dependency or the lot based stuffs. It could go under the mods (probably rather gameplay) or preferably to their own category, however there used to be some crosslinks between automata and automata based props. 

25 minutes ago, Barroco Hispano said:

What category does this fit into?

This should be a dependency I guess (even with the offered MMPs), but the Enviromental DLC should go under the proposed Graphical Mods. The cars, aircrafts, tanks should go under the dependency/props too. At least I would organize them like that. 

One request towards @CorinaMarie, @Cyclone Boom and others who have the powers to move stuffs around STEX: the Polska, PLEX and WMP stuffs should stay where they are right now, until I figure out some stuffs with them. I'm not sure if they should go under any of these categories, rather have their owns. I mean for the polska and for the PLEX stuffs for sure.

Anyhow, the new categories and groupping is a great idea. I really like it. It will be much easier to filter stuffs.

- Tyberius

 

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

3 hours ago, Jasoncw said:

Is there a reason that automata should not be included with transportation?

The idea for a dedicated Automata category is to group moving vehicles like cars, trains, planes, and boats into a standalone location. They could be placed inside Transportation which would be more related than simply Mods or Props. The thought is to avoid automata being bundled with ports and stations, etc.

If keeping them inside Transportation it'd be where an "automata" tag could go onto each as an alternative approach. For now, we'll give the dedicated Automata category a try and then we can consolidate later on if that then seems better. It's quite hard to estimate how many files each category will contain, since the current categories have such a mishmash of content with not all making sense logically. The biggest discrepancy is with Props in particular, which are arguably what are Dependencies really.

 

3 hours ago, Jasoncw said:

Everything about the way categories was before was confusing and unuseful and I think this will be a big improvement.

2 hours ago, Tyberius06 said:

Anyhow, the new categories and groupping is a great idea. I really like it. It will be much easier to filter stuffs.

Glad you both agree too, and it's one of those things which has taken way too many years to be implemented for category refinements.

Better late than never!

 

2 hours ago, Tyberius06 said:

One request towards @CorinaMarie, @Cyclone Boom and others who have the powers to move stuffs around STEX: the Polska, PLEX and WMP stuffs should stay where they are right now, until I figure out some stuffs with them. I'm not sure if they should go under any of these categories, rather have their owns. I mean for the polska and for the PLEX stuffs for sure.

Yes, we absolutely agree about this also. Those sections will remain as they are, because they're independent as mini file exchanges in their own right. People can look inside the PLEX for the Pegasus files from their former SimPeg home. Same for Polska and WMP and also SimcityBrasil too.

Over the coming days new categories as per the list will be appearing, and one by one with special styling on each too.

This has been implemented already for the RCI & Ag categories right now, which is still subject to being tweaked for the styles.

Here's how they look as of writing:
(The background images are from the royalty free Pixabay media repository.)
 

 

 

 

 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

Aren't automata basically in the same realm as timed props, and should be treated as props. At best, you'd get a category with 5 pages. At best. My 4 cents(up from 2 due to inflation).

[Tyberius06 12,184]

2 hours ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

Aren't automata basically in the same realm as timed props, and should be treated as props. At best, you'd get a category with 5 pages. At best. My 4 cents(up from 2 due to inflation).

Well in the most ways, these are totally different creations. Timed props/seasonal props are actually static props based on models (either on BATs/SC4Models or more rarelytrue 3d/single S3D+one wrapping FSH based models). Making them timed/seasonal aka "non-static" is just a matter of adding releavant properties to the prop exemplar (and changing the Resource-Type-Key), but it's still a fake movement. Automatas have "real" movement driven by controllers and LUA scripts as far as I know, plus they are always true 3d/single S3D+one wrapping FSH based models. Timed props like most of the props are decorative elements, though automatas can be considered as similar decorative graphics, they can have more gameplay-like functionality. You can place props onto lots, you can not place automatas, however you can "attach" automatas via LUA scripts to lots. But these are different modding methods. They are not the same. Props as timed props, seasonal props and static props are closer to be dependencies, while automatas are likely not. There could be a few very rare cases with advanced modding when automata could become dependency, but that's not the general way...

[MarkShot 631]

On 7/6/2022 at 2:51 PM, MarkShot said:

I voted YES.

But I think a richer taxonomy is not the answer.

Leaving online/offline tools aside ... there are sets of assets which are meant for integration either by theme (cultural flavors) or function (like seaports).  I don't think STEX handles this well at all.  I own 2 offline copies of STEX ... it's all mine, and yet I am overwhelmed mainly.  I also own a database of every official chess match played over the last 500 years, but without some presentation on what is to be learned; even with search facilities way better than STEX, it fails to speak to me.

On the first lecture, one of my professors asked, "What is the difference between 'data' and 'information'?".  STEX for me as it stands is data.

No disrespect for all the efforts invested.

So, I would like to expound as I see this as a problem of turning data into information.

In the 1960/70s all computer database were HIERARCHICAL DATABASES.  This means they were absolute taxonomies similar to what some are attempting here.

I spent most my career on RELATIONAL DATABASES which could represent taxonomies, but were far more flexible.  Every American citizen has an SSN (social security number).  Now we can create smaller tables of business employees, race/gender categories, age demographics, etc ... in fact, this was almost perfect.  Almost ... most designs began with data modeling, and the designs tended to be brittle when new data concepts were to be added.  Of course, one advantage for STEX is that its best days have already passed and it is more static than dynamic.

STEX is not a taxonomy, but a collection of sets.  Something may fall into an ethnic/regional asset/commercial RICO/LUT set intersection aka a new set.  Your existing site software does this well in part with tags, but the tags are too much the Wild West and I notice CB and Cori constantly playing tag clean up.  (and the tag system lacks any natural language ability; so, I see "backup" and "backups" ... this is too rigid and wasteful)

So, the heart of the problem is the definition of sets and a good UI that makes these sets accessible.  Also, I know this may not go over well with producers, but some form of ranking based on downloads should figure into presentation (maybe it should be time scaled for fairness as opposed to lifetime).

This brings us again to technology.  A new technology has been introduce know as ASSOCIATE DATABASES since I left the work force which works very well with big data and less structured data or more dynamic sets.  Even with RELATIONAL DATABASES we have two ways to access:  SQL and QBE.  SQL = structured query language and QBE = query by example.  They can be shown to be isomorphic.  But QBE is certainly far easier for non-programmers.

So, I might look into basic principles of ASSOCIATIVE DATABASES, and how to create good grouping of foundational sets, and they could be front ended with a GUI.

Another thing which adds to the power of GUI QBE tools is that users may save queries.  We have all been there having to re-enter criteria over and over again.  So, the ability to save queries and output sets is very useful.  The ability to iterating over output sets is useful.  The ability to define variables within a query is very useful where :CITY: will result in a prompt every time you use the saved query, "Enter CITY?".

STEX if it was me ... this would be what I would be looking at.

---

Edit

The ability of the Admins to promote certain saved queries for global access is another thing we would want in the design.

  Edited July 10, 2022 by MarkShot  
design refinement

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

@MarkShot

That sounds like an incredibly useful idea, but one which simply isn't available with the board software. There's also only so much can be tweaked within the technical constraints of what is realistic, and so we're limited in what can be done (this also applies to the idea @Jasoncw posted above too about the STEX index page).

While there are aspects which can be looked into, what's beyond the scope of this revamp is a total redesign of the STEX entirely. This is determined by the Invision Community board software which provides the framework for template editing, to allow certain design and styling adjustments. The whole idea of the new categories is for an improvement in accessibility over how it was, and so that's what we hope to achieve here. As in improving the STEX using the tools we do have at hand.

Update:
The new categories are live, and files are beginning to be moved into them. It'll take a while to move them all, and then the plan is to retire the old categories, and add suitable redirects to the new ones. The styling of each I'll work on progressively, in a similar theme to the RCI & Ag categories.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

There are several directory threads here already, such as Cori's assorted shoppes, my military and western threads and several others. You're always welcome to amass theme links and make a thread. But with various SC4 international forums, to be truly inclusive, you'll find that suggestions are much easier than the task itself.

[catty-cb 4,381]

On 9/07/2022 at 8:34 AM, Tyberius06 said:

Polska, PLEX and WMP stuffs

It might be nice at some stage to change the PLEX files to the SimPeg files as a nice way of remembering the site, and I notice the other sites are catalogued under their website name, rather than their exchange name

[CorinaMarie 29,576]

7 hours ago, catty-cb said:

PLEX files to the SimPeg files

How about SimPeg (PLEX) Files? (This would help peeps who only previously knew them as PLEX.)

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

@catty-cb

With your reaction, we've done this renaming now for the PLEX category.

In other updates...

More files have been moved to the new categories by those volunteering.

There's also been a structural change with having all the new categories inside a "SimCity 4 Files" parent.

This means they currently look like this:

 

This is still subject to adjustments, and increasing the font size is one thing I have in mind. The total at the top (3,357 as pictured) displays the total files for all the categories. Unlike how it's been previously, clicking the SimCity 4 Files itself will lead to an index page which is still a work in progress. As of writing it leads to this activity stream, which is only temporary as it isn't the most useful. The general idea is to provide a new summary page which lists SC4 files between categories.

(Note: Once this transition is all complete, the "(New Categories)" text can be removed from the name.)

Another thing I'd like to do is add a tree listing from any category, allowing any of the others to be more easily navigated to.

[catty-cb 4,381]

8 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

@catty-cb

With your reaction, we've done this renaming now for the PLEX category.

Thank you and much appreciated 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

Civic and Urban is confusing. Civic isn't. My 6 cents.

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

On 7/12/2022 at 11:59 PM, SIM-ple Jack said:

Civic and Urban is confusing. Civic isn't. My 6 cents.

We're open to tweaks to the new categories.

It's a tricky one really. The dilemma with only Civic is which category includes other items with an urban theme. In terms of Civic items in the game menu, this is for fire, police, education, and medical. So for any other lots which don't fit into those (including Landmarks or Rewards), that's what Urban attempts to include.

As few other ideas might be:

• Civic & Landmarks
• Civic & Misc
• Civic & Other

The other option is name it to Civic only, and then create a new category to cover the other urban items.