Organizing menus

[Hal917 22]

Is there a way to organize downloads into folders? It's tiresome having to scroll through hundreds of plugins just to find the one file that I want to place.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

10 hours ago, Hal917 said:

Is there a way to organize downloads into folders? It's tiresome having to scroll through hundreds of plugins just to find the one file that I want to place.

It is possible. You are free to organize your content with as many subfolders within "Plugins" directory as you like.

For example, I have my content arranged according to the geographical reach of certain items (BUILDINGS - CENTRAL EUROPE, BUILDINGS - WESTERN US, TEXTURES - SPANISH, etc., etc.).

Just remember that the full path of any given filename should not exceed 250-ish characters.

[Hal917 22]

Will these changes be reflected on the in-game menu?

[CaptCity 4,752]

While it is perfectly acceptable and functional to create your own system of Plugin organization (keeping in mind load-order requirements of some custom content), this will not affect the way items are presented in the menus. That is determined by properties within the files themselves. There are probably a few topics related this in the forums. Will see if I can pull some up...

https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?msg=172467

https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/362-item-order-property/

 

[Hal917 22]

Thank you!

[rsc204 21,808]

It’s not really possible to add new Menu Structures to the game, such as subfolders. The only things you can control are which menu a given lot exists in and its position within said menu.

The Occupant Groups determine the menu in which an item will appear, whist the Item Order property determines it’s place within the menu.

Personally having spent a lot if time reorganising my content, I am pretty happy with things, sure still a lot of scrolling, but things are all neatly together and not so hard to find. Other options exist to help though, MMLs hide a group of lots, until you place one of them in your city, the remaining lots are not shown in the menus. The drawback of this is that every single lot must be selected manually, I.e. you can’t select a lot and place it multiple times. DAMN is the other choice, it allows you to organise everything in the News Ticker by folder and hides the items from the menus. It’s a bit clunky in practise, I never really liked it myself, the idea is a good one but game limitations prevent a really perfect solution to this problem.