Impossible to have some lots grow

[art128 4,622]

Hello,

I've been having trouble to get some lots to grow for some time now:

http://hide-inoki.com/bbs/archives/sc4_0781.html

I cannot get these house to grow at all. I even tried to remove all other Residential lots to see, nothing comes up.

I've opened the lots in Reader and compared the stats to other lots that grow, but I cannot find anything wrong. Mind you I'm not an expert.

 

Any help on that matter would be appreciated, I would love to be able to use these without having to relot everything...

[Ke|is 3,337]

Hello friend,

Do you happen to have any maxis lot blocker among your plugins?

In the past I faced a similar situation, and it seems that some moders just replaced the Maxis lots instead of creating new lots, so, in case that you have a blocker in your plugins, it may affect and that may be the reason why those lots are not growing in your region.

From my experience, I use those lots very often, it is very easy for them to grow and appear. Try to look for any blocker, remove it and then test it again.

[art128 4,622]

Thanks for the reply Kelis, I removed the maxis R blocker, and was able to get some Japanese houses to grow..... Kei old japanese houses... Which I then removed from the plugin folder to try and get Kori's to grow.

I've then let a city grow to 40K citizen but still no Kori house, I was only getting Maxis buildings.

I'm completely puzzled as to why I can't get them to grow.

[art128 4,622]

Just to add some information: I've tried removing everything from my plugins except the houses Lots, descs and models and running a city for some time, with all tilesets enabled, i was not able to get the houses to grow.

[rsc204 21,866]

I’m pretty sure I have these in my Japanese region and they grew just fine. The problem with these questions is that the behaviour i see won’t necessarily be the same, because we inevitably have different Plugins contents.

I’ll double check that they can indeed grow, but I suspect you’ve simply got something else in Plugins that is more appealing to the simulator that uses the same basic template (growth stage, lot size etc). This is a common problem when not everything in your Plugins is modded to work harmoniously as one. The only real solution is to run everything through PIM-X or manually alter the stats (really just the occupancy) so that everything plays nice together.

Lots with excessive capacity can grow like weeds because more sims in the same sized parcel is preferred by the simulator. Likewise lots with low capacity might get lost if others with higher capacities exist. Perhaps giving the lot a lower growth stage might be a quick fix in this situation. 

[art128 4,622]

@rsc204 Thanks for the info! I still find it odd that the game refuses to use them when nothing else but maxis lots are available.

What do you suppose would be the easiest way of doing things?

Also is there a guide somewhere for lot occupancy and growth stage? I'll admit I'm really not well informed on this subject and I'd need to rework my other lots..

[sejr99999 8,370]

On 4/30/2023 at 10:14 AM, art128 said:

Hello,

I've been having trouble to get some lots to grow for some time now:

http://hide-inoki.com/bbs/archives/sc4_0781.html

I cannot get these house to grow at all. I even tried to remove all other Residential lots to see, nothing comes up.

I've opened the lots in Reader and compared the stats to other lots that grow, but I cannot find anything wrong. Mind you I'm not an expert.

 

Any help on that matter would be appreciated, I would love to be able to use these without having to relot everything...

I noticed there is a correction file further down the page on the hide-inoki site     Maybe that is needed for this to function correctly?

[Ke|is 3,337]

17 minutes ago, sejr99999 said:

I noticed there is a correction file further down the page on the hide-inoki site     Maybe that is needed for this to function correctly?

Yes, that's exactly what I was going to say, I know that you need all the files for those lots to grow correctly, try to make sure that you have all the lots in your plugins as well.

Have you tried to open the lots using lot editor? I use to try that, if you are able to open a lot using lot editor, it means that the lot is available in the game itself, otherwise, if you are unable to open the lot using lot editor, that's a good clue that the lots are not going to be present in the game...

[art128 4,622]

@sejr99999 Thanks for pointing that out. I did download these as well and retried to download and replace, same result.

@Ke|is I use the PIMX: The models appear correctly, but the lots do not show up under the RCI section. They do appear and can be opened in the lots section. In-game I cannot see them in the Buildingplop cheat menu.

[rsc204 21,866]

So I checked and it turns out the houses I had were some similar looking ones from Neko, so not actually the same ones here.

How these work is that the lots are linked to six possible Buildings Exemplars, all of which utilise a dummy or blank model. The lots themselves use prop families to randomise which house will appear. With the update/patch installed (I haven't checked without it), everything seems in order and they appear under the relevant Stage/R$$ as lots in PIM-X.

So perhaps it was simply failing to install the update that was behind your problems in the end?

18 hours ago, art128 said:

I still find it odd that the game refuses to use them when nothing else but maxis lots are available.

What do you suppose would be the easiest way of doing things?

Also is there a guide somewhere for lot occupancy and growth stage? I'll admit I'm really not well informed on this subject and I'd need to rework my other lots.

Right, but the conditions still need to be correct for anything to grow, using Maxis Blockers can seriously stall development if you don't have content that covers all the scenario's Maxis did. In other words you need to have content for every growth stage/wealth/density combination, ideally with many suitable options of lot sizes and other stats to choose from. I'm not saying that's a problem for you, but it is something I think a lot of folks underestimate just how much custom content is needed and the diversity of it, to use it without consequences.

If you start manually adjusting Growth Stages and Occupancy values based on some system or other, most likely you won't get it right. This sort of free-for-all was the inevitable consequence of having the sheer variety of content and options for mods that we do, every modder is trying to do things their way. But, one of the core reasons for PIM-X's existence, is an attempt to provide an automatic method of harmonising the modding of these values. In other words a consistent system of values based on the actual occupiable size of the building and size of the lot, which gives a reasonably reliable 'sims per square meter' if you will. So if all creators just used this system, everything made with it would conform to the same standards or would work harmoniously together without users having to do anything.

Existing content can be altered to this system by opening the Buildings Exemplar, right clicking it and selecting Recompute Properties as XX, where XX is the zoning type, for example R$$. However there is a hiccup that occurs when dummy models are used, which is that PIM-X doesn't know the size of the building, only the dummy model, so it won't properly calculate these values. What you need to do is find the Occupant Size of the actual building model/prop, give that value to the Buildings Exemplar, then use this function of PIM-X. You will then need to enter the filling degree, based not on the dummy, but the actual model again. This could be harder considering the use of Prop Families, although in this case they seem to be mostly colour/visual variations, so should remain consistent. But the fact that dummies were used totally complicates the entire process, which isn't ideal if you are just learning it. If you don't have it, the PIM-X user guide contains everything you need to know about how this function works.

Whether any of this is necessary or not is hard to say, given the variety of content everyone uses. For example most of the Japanese content was modded very consistently (I find), although differently to the system used by PIM-X. The original Maxis PIM served a similar function, but not everyone made use of it. As such you may find that everything already works well together, but if you come across something that doesn't seem to work well with everything else, providing it's all working, this is something worth considering.

[art128 4,622]

@rsc204 Thanks for the information! I will look into it when I have more time on my hands.