Allow More Building Styles - DLL Plugin

[Kel9509 1,363]

I noted that when you add a title to the tooltips, it changes slightly the style of the tooltip itself.  I noticed it immediately since I've been working on tooltips for my DOT building for a short while now.  

Here's the style of a regular tooltip in the game, with your standard slightly beige box:

But when you merely add a title, the entire style changes.  First, it has a pointer to the text it refers to.  Second, the box is no longer beige but is the color of the query box (I think). 

I never noticed this before.  I wonder if there's a way to possibly manually select the style of tooltip you want to use (aside from inserting a header with a pipe separator)?  And if there are other styles of tooltips available as well?

[Null 45 3,041]

4 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

I wonder if there's a way to possibly manually select the style of tooltip you want to use (aside from inserting a header with a pipe separator)?

There doesn't appear to be. SC4 is simply using 2 different styles of tool tip. The basic Rizzo-Gonzo tool tips have an API to set the background and text colors, but I don't think SC4 is using them.

When the user has the extended tool tip option enabled and a title is present, SC4 uses a different background PNG and changes the display location for the tool tip so the pointer lines up correctly. Otherwise it uses a background image for the yellow box tool tip, and displays the title (if present) or the body.

[Vico93 6]

Just discovered this mod, amazing!

But i don't understand how to make a custom building style. This can be done only editing the BuildingStyles.ini or more effort is needed?

Would like to make a custom "brazilian" style with SimcityBrasil's buildings.

[Null 45 3,041]

3 hours ago, Vico93 said:

This can be done only editing the BuildingStyles.ini or more effort is needed?

You also have to edit the building exemplars to add the new styles.

If you haven't already done so, you will need to request a style id range in the following thread:

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

I'd like to ask what were the old W2W id values and why did you change them?

Now I have to re-edit all of my w2w buildings in order to make them work correctly? I haven't updated the dll in a while and just found out that 0xB(something) is no longer valid...

EDIT: Never mind, I found them.

[JoelMk2 332]

Hey all, I started experimenting with this DLL, and have a question. 

Can you assign building styles to I-R buildings? I hope to set up a mod that allows me to control farm styles - e.g. to specifically grow vineyards in a selected area to create a 'wine region'. I made a start, but so far I haven't had much success.

This is what I did: 

• Started with an empty plugins folder, installed DLL and CoriBoom UI
• Created/edited a limited test set of I-R buildings and lots (anchor I-R growables, and their farm field lots) in two categories (pine forests, and grape vines)
• Added the Building Styles property to my I-R building exemplars with a unique ID for each of my two categories*
• Edited the UI INI so that my category names would show up 
• Added a 'Block All Maxis I-R' mod to the plugin folder (so my new lots are the only ones available to grow)

Went into the game, everything looked as expected in the UI, so I zoned some I-R areas.

However, no farms grew at all, and my yellow I-R zones were empty. 

I did some troubleshooting:

• Used the 'ActiveStyle' cheat, the dialogue box showed the ID of the desired style. 
• Removed the DLL to test my lots. They grew normally, both categories growing at the same time. 
• Reinstalled the DLL, and also reinstalled some other I-R lots (not modded with new Building Styles at all), these grew as expected, my new lots did not grow with them. 

It's quite possible I have done something wrong - but wanted to check in case maybe it's not compatible with I-R at this stage? 

*I confess I used IDs in a range not assigned to me, only for me to experiment and learn, I would request an ID range properly before going further!

[Null 45 3,041]

18 minutes ago, JoelMk2 said:

However, no farms grew at all, and my yellow I-R zones were empty. 

That is the expected behavior. SC4 picks lots to grow at random, and the building styles will block the game from growing lots that don't match the active styles. If the selected styles have too small a pool of lots, it can make the game fail to grow anything.

[JoelMk2 332]

4 minutes ago, Null 45 said:

That is the expected behavior. SC4 picks lots to grow at random, and the building styles will block the game from growing lots that don't match the active styles. If the selected styles have too small a pool of lots, it can make the game fail to grow anything.

Thank you for the fast reply - however, I don't think that is the problem. I only created one I-R growable lot per style (so two in total at this stage of testing), and I can grow them easily (filling several I-R zoned blocks, all zoned areas) by either:

• Removing the Building Style property from the building exemplar, or
• Removing the DLL from the plugins folder

I've used the same test tile throughout which has high demand for I-R. 

I guess it is partly working, as I do want it to block development when the relevant style is not selected. It's just that I can't seem to get it unblocked by selecting a relevant style. FWIW they didn't grow when I selected all the checkboxes and 'Build All Styles at Once' either. 

I will look again tomorrow and see if I've made any mistakes that I'm not noticing now.

[Null 45 3,041]

40 minutes ago, JoelMk2 said:

• Removing the Building Style property from the building exemplar, or
• Removing the DLL from the plugins folder

Both of those options would SC4 see the industrial lots as compatible with all building styles, which is the base game behavior. I can't explain why the lots would grow under all styles, but fail when under a specific style.

One thing you could try is using the BuildingStyleSelection and/or LotStyleSelection debug logging options in SC4MoreBuildingStyle.INI, see the documentation in that file for details. Those log options provide detailed info on what SC4 is doing with the style selection process.

[JoelMk2 332]

I took my two lots and added them just to a single custom building style (0x2860), then used the options to log the outcomes. This is still with no other I-R plugins, and Maxis I-R blocked. 

Upon opening the new city before selecting any custom styles (near the top of the log file): 

0x14d88851 (I-r1_1x2_FOR_D_Shed) doesn't have any supported building styles.
[...]
0x3a892a43 (IR$1_1x1_SFBT_Weinberg_Huette) doesn't have any supported building styles.

I think this looks good(?) as this is the expected message at this point? I assume this means doesn't have any supported building styles [active at the time of logging that line]. 

Upon selecting my custom style (temporary ID 0x2860) and using the debug cheat:

1 active styles:
0x00002860
[...]
0x14d88851 (I-r1_1x2_FOR_D_Shed) supports building style 0x2860.
[...]
0x3a892a43 (IR$1_1x1_SFBT_Weinberg_Huette) supports building style 0x2860.

In theory this looks good too, as they now appear supported by the active building style. However still no growth, despite having demand, power, road connection etc. 

I'm not sure where I am going wrong. Has anyone else here developed custom I-R styles and hit any hurdles? 

 

[Null 45 3,041]

3 hours ago, JoelMk2 said:

In theory this looks good too, as they now appear supported by the active building style. However still no growth, despite having demand, power, road connection etc. 

Those log options look fine. It appears that the building may be rejected after the style selection step, but I am not sure.

There is one more debug logging option you could try, GrowableFunctions. This option logs the status codes returned by various functions that are part of the game's growable algorithm, and provides a broader picture than just the styles side. Unfortunately, the names of those status codes is something that would only be known to Maxis.

[JoelMk2 332]

5 hours ago, Null 45 said:

There is one more debug logging option you could try, GrowableFunctions. This option logs the status codes returned by various functions that are part of the game's growable algorithm, and provides a broader picture than just the styles side. Unfortunately, the names of those status codes is something that would only be known to Maxis.

Thank you again for engaging with me about this, and for the suggestion.

I have tried this to see what patterns I can observe, and noticed a few things. I haven't found anything that could help me fix it yet. The below sections contain excerpts (not the full log) because if I leave the game running for any length of time, many many more lines are generated. 

In all circumstances, these lines repeat a lot (the numbers vary, though 27 appears often). 27 seems to correlate to positive/successful result in this log, perhaps.

Spoiler

TakeOverAbandoned returned 1
ListPossibleLotConfigurations returned 27
ListCandidateLots_Existing returned 27
ListCandidateLots_Aggregation returned 5

When the farms are not growing it returns a "BuildFarm returned 0" message which repeats. I assume 0 means negative/failed result. 

Spoiler

TakeOverAbandoned returned 1
ListPossibleLotConfigurations returned 27
ListCandidateLots_Existing returned 27
ListCandidateLots_Aggregation returned 5
BuildFarm returned 0
BuildFarm returned 0
BuildFarm returned 0
BuildFarm returned 0
TakeOverAbandoned returned 1
ListPossibleLotConfigurations returned 27
ListCandidateLots_Existing returned 27
ListCandidateLots_Aggregation returned 5
BuildFarm returned 0
BuildFarm returned 0
BuildFarm returned 0
BuildFarm returned 0

[... further repetitions]

When the farms do grow (e.g. if I remove the Building Style property from my custom building), it returns "BuildFarm returned 27"

Spoiler

TakeOverAbandoned returned 1
ListPossibleLotConfigurations returned 27
ListCandidateLots_Existing returned 27
ListCandidateLots_Aggregation returned 27
BuildFarm returned 27

When other lots (e.g. Commercial) grow the return is slightly different as the return is just "Build" not "BuildFarm". In the case below I grew a single commercial building on a 1x2 tile. 

Spoiler

TakeOverAbandoned returned 1
ListPossibleLotConfigurations returned 27
ListCandidateLots_Existing returned 27
ListCandidateLots_Aggregation returned 5
ListCandidateLots_Subdivision returned 6
Build returned 13
TakeOverAbandoned returned 1
ListPossibleLotConfigurations returned 27
ListCandidateLots_Existing returned 27
ListCandidateLots_Aggregation returned 5
ListCandidateLots_Subdivision returned 6
Build returned 13
TakeOverAbandoned returned 1
ListPossibleLotConfigurations returned 27
ListCandidateLots_Existing returned 27
ListCandidateLots_Aggregation returned 5
ListCandidateLots_Subdivision returned 3
Build returned 27

 

[Null 45 3,041]

1 hour ago, JoelMk2 said:

In all circumstances, these lines repeat a lot (the numbers vary, though 27 appears often). 27 seems to correlate to positive/successful result in this log, perhaps.

That is what I have observed.

1 hour ago, JoelMk2 said:

When the farms are not growing it returns a "BuildFarm returned 0" message which repeats. I assume 0 means negative/failed result. 

It is. I am having a hard time trying to figure out the potential failure conditions that could trigger it (there appear to be several). There may be something in the game code that makes agriculture lots incompatible with building styles, industrial building styles are uncharted territory due to it not being a feature of the base game.

IIRC all of my industrial style testing was done with ID/IM lots, and the only testing I did with agriculture lots was checking if incompatible styles would act as a blocker. Which would have behavior that is identical to styles not working at all for that building type.

[JoelMk2 332]

11 hours ago, Null 45 said:

There may be something in the game code that makes agriculture lots incompatible with building styles

I will be slightly sad if this proves to be the case, but still excited about other uses of the DLL.

I’m not sure what else I can change to further test. Interested to hear if anyone else has tried making I-R building styles. Thanks again. 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

33 minutes ago, JoelMk2 said:

Interested to hear if anyone else has tried making I-R building styles.

I haven't, but I am following along with high hopes Null will work his powerful magic, slap the code around a few times, and make it work flawlessly.

[Null 45 3,041]

Release version 3.3.1, which fixes a missing occupant group value for industrial buildings that use building styles.

[JoelMk2 332]

4 hours ago, Null 45 said:

Release version 3.3.1

Initial tests suggest... it works! Thanks @Null 45. Amazing stuff. 

[Null 45 3,041]

49 minutes ago, JoelMk2 said:

Initial tests suggest... it works!

Good to hear.

While investigating that bug, I stumbled across some code for an abandoned game feature. At one point, Maxis intended for the game's residential and commercial developer exemplars to have a 'Style Percentages' property (property id 0x87cd63a0). The code to check that property was implemented, but they didn't add the property to the exemplars.

Here is the lightly edited documentation of that property in Ingred.ini: Pairs of occupant group IDs (style IDs) and percentages showing how often they should be used.

I am not sure what their intended use case for that property was, but it sounds like it could have been used to bias 'Build all styles at once' to favor specific styles.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 hour ago, Null 45 said:

At one point, Maxis intended for the game's residential and commercial developer exemplars to have a 'Style Percentages' property (property id 0x87cd63a0).

Sounds like that might be related to:

0x27812836 = Bool, "Allow Joint Occupancy", "if true, different types can occupy the building simultaneously"

Several peeps have tested setting to 0x01 and found it did nothing at all by itself.

One rationale for such a setting is that in Smalltown, USA it was common for commercial buildings to have their business on the ground floor while the upper one or two stories were living ares for the store owners and sometimes hired workers.

[Null 45 3,041]

25 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Sounds like that might be related to:

0x27812836 = Bool, "Allow Joint Occupancy", "if true, different types can occupy the building simultaneously"

AFAIK the two are only related by the fact that they are abandoned features. The two features are handled be separate game systems,  0x87cd63a0 is a growth developer property while 0x27812836 is handled by the building development simulator.

A 'SimCity 4 planned/abandoned features' document would be fascinating to read, but I doubt anything like that would ever be made public as EA would consider that information proprietary.

31 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Several peeps have tested setting to 0x01 and found it did nothing at all by itself.

It appears that the 'mixed use' value is only read by 1 method related to lot capacity, I expect that it would need to be used in a bunch more areas in order for it to affect the simulation.

[Propfam 2,288]

21 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

One rationale for such a setting is that in Smalltown, USA it was common for commercial buildings to have their business on the ground floor while the upper one or two stories were living ares for the store owners and sometimes hired workers.

Same in southeast Asia. They're often called shophouses here and any wall-to-wall SEA commercial buildings should have that setting enabled.

20 hours ago, Null 45 said:

I doubt anything like that would ever be made public as EA would consider that information proprietary.

Or we could only dream to buy a portion of SimCity's code. I don't know how much but it certainly above in the millions.

[jabezscratch 159]

Thanks to everyone involved in creating this amazing update to SC4, which I've been playing since its release to this day. But I have to confess that I am completely lost as to how to implement this mod. I've read through the forum and instructions and my head is spinning. I know that the download page has instructions but it seems that there is so much more to getting this working. Is there a simplified list of instructions for people (like me) who have very little knowledge about the more technical side of this mod? I have a feeling that I can't be the only one who is dazzled by this game-changer of a mod but don't have a clue how to proceed. Any help would be appreciated greatly!

[JoelMk2 332]

At this stage you have to have a degree of modding skill - in particular to update the custom buildings you’ve downloaded to be assigned to your custom building styles. In other threads there is discussion about community building styles (a shared approach to a number of new styles) and I suspect downloads will become available in future to add buildings to the new styles without needing to do your own modding. It just hasn’t got to that stage yet. 

[simmering 2,637]

I am not sure if this came up before. I was wondering if it was possible to create a flexible filter for building styles.

I assume that each building in the Vanilla Game is allocated a single tile set. And so the UI allows us to pick one or more and that would result in all buildings belonging to the ones checked growing.

But many content creators allocate multiple tile sets.
I am thinking, would it be feasible (assuming the UI can be changed accordingly) to have a filter that can both include and exclude building styles. If buildings then have both an architectural style (say Art Deco) and a geographical style (e.g. North America, East Asia, South America), one could choose to include Art Deco buildings but exclude North America.

Is this too far fetched?

[Null 45 3,041]

8 minutes ago, simmering said:

I assume that each building in the Vanilla Game is allocated a single tile set.

That isn't the case for Cs buildings, Maxis tagged most (all?) of those buildings as compatible with all styles to prevent the user from being able to stall Cs growth.

18 minutes ago, simmering said:

Is this too far fetched?

IMO it is. The style ids are opaque numbers, and trying to classify styles based on the checkbox name is out of scope for the DLL. That type of filtering would be done externally, either by not including styles in the UI or removing the styles from the building exemplar.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

@CorinaMarie Is it possible to have the version of the UI with 128 or more styles?

 

[Null 45 3,041]

1 hour ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

Is it possible to have the version of the UI with 128 or more styles?

Cori posted a screenshot of a 128 style UI in the following post:

I don't think it would be very practical to have more than 128 styles in the UI.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 hour ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

@CorinaMarie Is it possible to have the version of the UI with 128 or more styles?

The limitation would come from the DLL side of it atm. I believe @Null 45 reserved up to 127 (or 128?) slot IDs, but that likely could be bumped up to a full 255 (or more) if needed.

I don't believe anyone seriously considered that size (except me) cause when I introduced a panel with 100+ everyone ran away screaming that it was too cluttered and way overkill. Well, mostly they just ignored it as if I didn't spend several hours creating it, but that was my interpretation from the silence.

The key part for the UI side itself is: Yes, we can make the hidden control frame (as I call it) as big as the screen can hold and the rest is just assigning coordinates for the radio buttons and the text rectangles. However many you'd want would only be limited by how many Null's code could handle and I suspect that is unlimited up to the range limit.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

2 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I don't believe anyone seriously considered that size (except me) cause when I introduced a panel with 100+ everyone ran away screaming that it was too cluttered and way overkill.

Not even that but the fact that it might be hard to fill this many styles with buildings... I can also hardly imagine anyone taking a decision which of the 184 styles the building is a part of. 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 minute ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I can also hardly imagine anyone taking a decision which of the 184 styles the building is a part of. 

The reason I was so excited for it is because how I used styles in a demo somewhere. I had an entire Building style for a singe type of W2W and then I had 4 different ones. I was able to grow each type on their own streets in close proximity so that it just looked like minor style changes over the years.

I feel the panel should be as large as possible and the names could be relatively short and peeps could have separate documentation for what each is really all about.