Allow More Building Styles - DLL Plugin

[Null 45 3,041]

This DLL mod is intended as a dependency for other mods that add new building styles beyond the 4 that Maxis included, it does not add any building styles to the game by itself.

Maxis programmed the Building Style Control UI to only recognize the check boxes of the 4 built-in styles, no matter how may check boxes are actually present. This mod patches the game's memory to remove that restriction.

Build all styles at once

The DLL fixes a game bug to make this feature work as Maxis intended.

Adding More Building Styles into SC4

The building style IDs are assigned in the SimCity 4 Building Styles Index thread, you will need to use the Maxis/community styles or request your own public and/or private building style ID range in that thread.

Modifying the Building Styles UI

The easiest way to get started is to download the Building Style UI template, but you can also create your own Building Style Control override plugin.

Building Style UI Template

A UI template is available here, which supports all of the new controls the DLL adds.
The UI Template can be configured using either BuildingStyles.ini or the Building Style exemplars.
Once you have configured your styles in BuildingStyles.ini or the style exemplars, see the section below on assigning buildings to custom styles.

Creating a Custom Building Style UI

1. Create a patch that overrides the default Building Style Control UI, TGI 0x00000000,0x96a006b0,0x6bc61f19 in SimCity_1.dat.
2. Edit the UI to add the style check boxes, and optionally the new check boxes and radio buttons that the DLL supports. The check box or style ID (e.g. 0x2003) identifies the building style to the game.
3. See the section below on assigning buildings to custom styles.

Adding Buildings to Custom Building Styles

This process is performed with ilive's Reader or PIMX.

The building's intended styles should be added to the building exemplar using the Building Styles property (property id 0xAA1DD400). The building will only grow when one or more of the custom or Maxis styles in that property is selected in the game's UI. The DLL will ignore the building styles in the Occupant Groups property (property id 0xAA1DD396) when the Building Styles property is present.

For compatibility with players who are not using the DLL, the Maxis styles in the Occupant Groups property should be left alone. If you are creating a new building, add the Building Styles property for users with the DLL and set the Occupant Groups property to one or more of the 4 Maxis styles for users without the DLL.

For Wall-to-Wall (W2W) buildings, add the Building Is Wall-to-Wall property (property id 0xAA1DD401) to the building's exemplar with the value set to true. If the Building Is Wall-to-Wall property is not present or the value is set to false, the building will be treated as non-W2W.

See the Building Styles Exemplar Property (0xAA1DD400) and Building Is Wall-to-Wall Exemplar Property (0xAA1DD401) sections for more details.

New Building Exemplar Properties

Building Styles Exemplar Property (0xAA1DD400)

This property allows the building styles that are active when the DLL is installed to be specified separately from the Maxis building styles in the Occupant Groups property (0xAA1DD396).

Residential and Commercial Buildings

The Building Styles property is optional for custom building style support in residential and commercial buildings.

When the property is present, the building will use custom and Maxis styles specified in the property and ignore the styles in the Occupant Groups property (0xAA1DD396).
When the property is not present, the building will use the custom and Maxis styles specified in the Occupant Groups property (0xAA1DD396).

Industrial Buildings

The Building Styles property is mandatory for custom building style support in industrial buildings.

When the property is present, the building will use custom styles specified in the property.
When the property is not present, the building will be treated as compatible with all styles.

Building Is Wall-to-Wall Exemplar Property (0xAA1DD401)

This is a Boolean property, a value of true indicates that the building is W2W. If the value is false or the property is not present, the building will not be considered W2W. This is the preferred method for identifying W2W buildings that do not already have one of the W2W occupant groups.

Building Style Check Box Tool Tips

The individual building styles can have a tool tip that describes the style when the user hovers over that check box.

When defining styles in a Building Style exemplar, the tool tip can be set with the Building Style Exemplar: ToolTip Key property. For styles that are defined in BuildingStyles.ini, the tool tips must use the LTEXT group id 0x3EE5B610 with the style id as the LTEXT instance id.

The group id supports the standard language offset scheme. The style id is used as the LTEXT instance id. For example, the 0x2004 building style in would use the following TGI in German: 0x2026960B, 0x3EE5B614, 0x00002004.

Tool tips can optionally have a title in addition to a body, this is done by placing both on a single line with a pipe separator. For example: ToolTip Title|Tool tip body
Note that how the game displays tool tips with both a title and body will depend on the user's game settings. If the user has unchecked the expanded tooltips check box in the play options dialog, the game will display the tool tip title (if present) or the body, but not both.

Building Style Exemplars

These exemplars provide a way for building style mods to define the style check boxes without requiring the user to edit BuildingStyles.ini.

See the Building Style Exemplars page for more information.

Cheat Codes

The DLL provides the following cheat codes:

ActiveStyle shows an in-game message box with the ID of the currently active style when Change building style every N years is selected. When Build all styles at once is selected, using this cheat will display a message saying that mode is active.

DebugActiveStyles writes the IDs of all the active/checked styles to the plugin's log file.

BuildingStyles INI File

This file allows styles to be defined without editing the Building Style Control UI file. When the check box button ids for the Building Style Control are in the range of 0-127, these ids can be mapped to a specific style and style name in BuildingStyles.ini.

The style entries are placed under a BuildingStyles section and use the following format:

<UI button id> = <style id>,<style text format>[,<style name>]

<UI button id> is a style check box id in the range of 0-127.
<style id> is the building style id assigned in the Building Style Index, or
the text Show (case-insensitive) to display a disabled placeholder check box.
<style text format> is one of the following values: N (normal text) or B (bold text).
<style name> is optional, when present it uses one of the following formats:
<name> or CaptionRes:<LTEXT group id>,<LTEXT instance id>.
If <style name> is not present, a default name will be used.

Examples:

0 = 0x2005,B,Mediterranean & Tropical
1 = 0x2006,N,CaptionRes:0x6a231eaa,0x6bbbd875
2 = Show,N,Placeholder Check Box
3 = Show,B

SC4MoreBuildingStyles INI File

This file contains settings that control whether the growable debug logging code will write to the plugin's log file. It is recommended that you only enable these options for experimentation. They will slow down your game and quickly produce a large log file.

As an example from one of my tests, a 22 second run with the BuildingStyleSelection and LotStyleSelection options enabled produced a ~2 MB log file with ~15,500 lines.

Lua Functions

The DLL provides a number of building style related functions for use by Lua scripts. See building_style.lua for a list of the provided functions, and building_style_tests.lua for examples of their use.

Download: https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/36112-allow-more-building-styles-dll-plugin/

Source Code: https://github.com/0xC0000054/sc4-more-building-styles

System Requirements

• SimCity 4 version 641
• Windows 10 or later
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 x86 Redistribute

The plugin may work on Windows 7, but I do not have the ability to test that.

Installation

1. Close SimCity 4.
2. Copy SC4MoreBuildingStyles.dll, SC4MoreBuildingStyles.ini and BuildingStyles.ini into the top-level of the Plugins folder in the SimCity 4 installation directory or Documents/SimCity 4 directory.
3. Start SimCity 4.

Troubleshooting

The plugin should write a SC4MoreBuildingStyles.log file in the same folder as the plugin.
The log contains status information for the most recent run of the plugin.

	If you would like to make voluntary contributions to support me in continuing to create more content for SimCity 4, I accept donations via PayPal: https://paypal.me/0xC0000054
	Thanks to the few people who have donated to me.

[Null 45 3,041]

Release version 1.1.0, which adds a cheat code that shows an in-game message box with the ID of the currently active style when Change building style every N years is selected.

[Kel9509 1,363]

This is incredible.  Thanks so much for your efforts in making these incredible mods. 

One related question I had regarding building styles - as we know from experimentation the checkbox "build all styles at once" doesn't actually work, and instead rotates the styles.  Is it possible to actually mod the building styles control so that "build all styles at once" actually works without rotating through the styles?  

[Null 45 3,041]

4 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

One related question I had regarding building styles - as we know from experimentation the checkbox "build all styles at once" doesn't actually work, and instead rotates the styles.  Is it possible to actually mod the building styles control so that "build all styles at once" actually works without rotating through the styles?  

I already posted about the build all tilesets issue in the SC4E Discord's Programming channel: https://discord.com/channels/383313438065033228/1109216796688535582/1200884074131226634

To summarize that post: I located the code in the game that I believe is responsible for picking the tilesets, and I did not see anything wrong with it. When Build all tilesets at once is active it appears that the game will loop through all of the active/checked tilesets and only build the lot if it supports one of those sets. Whereas if Change building style every N years is checked,  it only builds the tileset that is active for those years.

It looks like that code is also responsible for Cori's findings about Industrial lots not supporting tilesets, it only checks the tilesets if the lot is Residential or Commercial.

[Membrillo 56]

May I ask why it's not compatible with CAM?

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

1 minute ago, Membrillo said:

May I ask why it's not compatible with CAM?

In the next CAM 2.5 development journal there will be a specific discussion on this topic but for now I can say that CAM uses the 4 maxis styles by default and you have to tamper with the CAM controller for you to unlock new styles. But the situation of new styles remains complex and there is an in-depth discussion in the SC4E discord server

[Null 45 3,041]

45 minutes ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

you have to tamper with the CAM controller for you to unlock new styles.

This mod does not require editing the Building Development Simulator controller file.

[Kel9509 1,363]

I was thinking of this mod the other day, and was wondering if there's a query or a way to click on any particular building (obviously growable) and see which tileset(s) it belong to?  Would it be possible to edit Equinox's Expanded RCI query mod to see which tileset(s) a particular RCI building belongs to?  

I figure querying particular buildings would be useful when multiple tilesets can be used other than the 4 we have now.

 

[Null 45 3,041]

10 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Would it be possible to edit Equinox's Expanded RCI query mod to see which tileset(s) a particular RCI building belongs to? 

SC4's code that shows the query dialog would have to be patched to get that information from the occupant that is being queried, and that is outside the scope of this mod. It would be appropriate for some kind of  'extended building query' DLL, but I can't think of any other useful building occupant values to add.

It also looks like that mod could be updated to use the my More Demand Info DLL, which provides variables with the IR active demand and cap values.

 

[Membrillo 56]

I was also thinking about this. What is the situation of this mod now? Submenus have been taking a lot of attention and discussion going on, while this one is radio silent. Is there any movement behind the scenes?

[rsc204 21,808]

2 hours ago, Membrillo said:

Submenus have been taking a lot of attention and discussion going on, while this one is radio silent. Is there any movement behind the scenes?

I think to some extent the foundations for submenus is much more clear and easy to implement (well the menu's themselves). Whereas before this becomes really usable, a set of Building Styles needs to be agreed upon and that is much murkier when you analyse it.

For example I'm hearing many ideas for new Styles that frankly don't seem all that useful to me, if you think about it. Who for example actually has a Plugins folder interspersed with Asian, European, American and many other differing styles of building? Over the years I would say most people concentrate on one particular style of buildings, with the goal of making an approximation of that style for their city/region. So how much time should we spend adding new styles and updating every lot to work with them in the face of this?

That's the complexity here, when you drill into it and ask what options would be genuinely useful to be able to switch between on the fly for the average player? I should have thought something more situational or controlling would actually be of larger benefit. So for example situational things would be the ability to limit development to Diagonal Buildings or FAR/WRC. Whereas control in this context could be forcing development of larger or smaller buildings. Basically a system like this would be analogous to how many blockers are used presently, it allows us to dictate what can grow on the fly in-game. Of course this usage scenario doesn't have to depreciate also having some new categories like the originals, but given most people won't be able to edit the UI, it's super-important that those chosen will remain generic enough that they are usable.

But my opinion is that whilst new Building Styles could be useful, SubMenus are so much more obviously so. Modders latch onto the things they want to mod, and for me there is a better return on investment right now in making SubMenus work. I have in one week removed all the tedious scrolling from my game and better organised the menus than I could having put countless hours of effort into doing so previously.

[Null 45 3,041]

3 hours ago, Membrillo said:

What is the situation of this mod now?

As far as I know, nothing has changed. The mod works, but the steps required to set it up are complex and the created styles can't be shared. I have not heard any news about the ID assignments or other testing that would allow the new building styles to be shared.

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

But my opinion is that whilst new Building Styles couldbe useful, SubMenus are so much more obviously so. Modders latch onto the things they want to mod, and for me there is a better return on investment right now in making SubMenus work. I have in one week removed all the tedious scrolling from my game and better organised the menus than I could having put countless hours of effort into doing so previously.

I agree that SubMenus are probably more useful to the majority of players. In my case I am having too much fun modding SC4 to actually play the game beyond what I need for testing.

I recently wrote an experimental DLL that hooks SC4's resource loading code and logs the TGI of every exemplar that game loads. In theory, a similar trick could be used to inject properties such as the submenu data into an exemplar before it is handed off to SC4, without needing to create a plugin override for that specific exemplar.

[rsc204 21,808]

46 minutes ago, Null 45 said:

In my case I am having too much fun modding SC4 to actually play the game beyond what I need for testing.

Well my menus are super organised so I can continue to not actually take advantage of it playing… someday!  

[rsc204 21,808]

48 minutes ago, Null 45 said:

In theory, a similar trick could be used to inject properties such as the submenu data into an exemplar before it is handed off to SC4, without needing to create a plugin override for that specific exemplar.

Wouldn’t that require having some sort of master list of all the Building Exemplar IDs categorised by SubMenu type? I guess that would be quicker to make this accessible than any previous suggestion? Does seem inefficient over a one time update on the exchanges by comparison. 

[Null 45 3,041]

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

Wouldn’t that require having some sort of master list of all the Building Exemplar IDs categorised by SubMenu type?

I don't know. Quoting this post from memo from the SC4E Programming channel:

Quote

My idea is to set up a special kind of cohort files that includes a list of target Exemplar TGIs in a property. The rest of the Cohort's properties would then be added to the target Exemplars whenever the factory creates an Exemplar for one of those TGIs.

I got the impression that this would be used to increase compatibility for the exemplars which have properties that a large number of mods alter, thus would have a lot of file conflicts if you were to override them using a DBPF plugin. The DLL could add/modify individual properties when the game loads the target exemplar, while leaving other ones untouched.

[Kel9509 1,363]

12 hours ago, Null 45 said:

It would be appropriate for some kind of  'extended building query' DLL, but I can't think of any other useful building occupant values to add.

There's a cheat to show building or lot values like the amount of power used, amount of water, amount of garbage, etc.  You're right that its outside the scope of this mod.  But such a mod, if it showed tilesets and other hidden building values, might be very useful.

 

8 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Who for example actually has a Plugins folder interspersed with Asian, European, American and many other differing styles of building? Over the years I would say most people concentrate on one particular style of buildings, with the goal of making an approximation of that style for their city/region. So how much time should we spend adding new styles and updating every lot to work with them in the face of this?

While you're right that a tileset for items like situational items like diagonal or FAR grown less buildings is useful, I wouldn't discount the need for more pure styles.  I'd love to build little neighborhoods in NYC like Chinatown, Koreatown, or Japanese styled buildings on the fly without using a broader European tileset. Another use might be more rural or suburban style control for housing sets.  So a neighborhood with duplexes might be in a different tileset from ranch style houses, or modern villas distinct from colonial homes.  

In this regards, tilesets would be more narrow in scope and focused to allow particular building styles for newly zoned areas without going through the trouble of blockers and other lot specific mods outside of the game.  

I think there's more of a need for uniformity for submenus than tilesets.  What's needed for this mod are UI updates to show 2, 4, 6, or more additional graphical options for tikesets and then people can maybe customize the rest of the artwork.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

I just made a test and added some buildings to an additional 0x2004 building set and it looks like it works just fine. Good work on part of @Null 45!

I edited out the UI so it could fit a checkbox for my additional building set and put some of Matt's BATs and two commercials there. I then ticked 0x2004 as the only building set to be used during the gameplay and the buildings assigned to the new set developed successfully.

There were (and still are) a few hickups along the way however.

One thing is that when I edited the UI, my new building set ended up under a wrong "branch" and failed to be recognized as a valid checkbox by the game. I had to open the UI as a text file and cut-paste data pertaining to the new set in the correct section. Only then the checkbox behaved correctly - it was possible to tick it and it has correctly greyed out after all other sets were turned off.

Another issue I have is that, for some reason, I cannot change the name for the new building set. In other words, I have two building sets that display the "Chicago 1890" name, despite one of them being a confirmed 0x2004 collection. I don't know why it happens. I changed the name twice - once in the UI editor and then one more time in iLives but to no effect.

Generally, my idea was to put some of the buildings into separate sets so there is more probability for them to appear during gameplay as they are otherwise quite rare. However, from what I can see, attaching them to new building sets is not really a good solution and it has to do with the quality of buildings as such, rather than the game's (in)ability to choose them for construction. Still, it means that this DLL can also be used as a diagnostic tool to see if a building works or not. One just needs to create a test building set and try away.

Apart from that, all quality custom content can really benefit from this mod as it will sure offer better diversity of architecture. Far better than can be achieved through folder-switching and tedious building family editing. Bottom line - it seems to work just fine for my needs! 

[Kel9509 1,363]

27 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

One thing is that when I edited the UI, my new building set ended up under a wrong "branch" and failed to be recognized as a valid checkbox by the game. I had to open the UI as a text file and cut-paste data pertaining to the new set in the correct section. Only then the checkbox behaved correctly - it was possible to tick it and it has correctly greyed out after all other sets were turned off.

Another issue I have is that, for some reason, I cannot change the name for the new building set. In other words, I have two building sets that display the "Chicago 1890" name, despite one of them being a confirmed 0x2004 collection. I don't know why it happens. I changed the name twice - once in the UI editor and then one more time in iLives but to no effect.

I'm hopeful these issues can be resolved somehow.  I have great hopes for this mod.  But you're right, the UI needs to be built out to enable checking the boxes properly.  I haven't had a chance to look at the UI to see if the names of tilesets are part of the UI, or if they're LTEXT edits that can be made.  Hopefully if they're text edits, then once a UI is settled upon it's just a matter of making an override mod to display the additional tilesets.

29 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Still, it means that this DLL can also be used as a diagnostic tool to see if a building works or not. One just needs to create a test building set and try away.

Apart from that, all quality custom content can really benefit from this mod as it will sure offer better diversity of architecture. Far better than can be achieved through folder-switching and tedious building family editing.

I've never envisioned this mod as just a test platform for new buildings, though that can be done too.  I've envisioned it as creating entirely new tilesets.  We've got a gigantic selection of buildings for Parish, Poland, China/Japan/Asian, and even Russian or Eastern European in general.  Also, old English, futuristic, etc.  The biggest use will probably be for a Parisian tileset, since there's lots of options there.

 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

4 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

I haven't had a chance to look at the UI to see if the names of tilesets are part of the UI, or if they're LTEXT edits that can be made.

All displayed text are properties within UI and you can edit them either through UI editor or in iLives. However, like I said, it doesn't seem to take effect. I believe it stems from the fact that you need to copy a checkbox in order to add a checkbox for the new set. Perhaps some properties get copied that I am not aware of or fail to notice and this is why I end up with another Chicago.

But in all honesty... all you need to remember is which checkbox corresponds to which building set. Even if they are all displayed under the same name.  After all, what happens under the hood is what counts!

8 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

I've never envisioned this mod as just a test platform for new buildings, though that can be done too.  I've envisioned it as creating entirely new tilesets.  We've got a gigantic selection of buildings for Parish, Poland, China/Japan/Asian, and even Russian or Eastern European in general.  Also, old English, futuristic, etc.  The biggest use will probably be for a Parisian tileset, since there's lots of options there.

I agree. This is my primary interest too. I still need to think of the names and commonalities for the buildings in my collection before I create new sets though. 

I just say it as an example, because when I download new growables, I usually try them out on a clean-unmodded game to see if they indeed grow as they should. So an extra test-set could save the trouble of disabling, then, enabling everything back and forth.

[Null 45 3,041]

Release version 1.2.0, which includes the following changes:

• Add support for an optional check box that automatically marks the growable residential and commercial lots as historical when SC4 creates them.
  • This Auto-Historical check box uses the reserved id value: 0x9476D8DA
• Fixed an issue with the style changed messages not firing after loading a second city.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

Another step towards perfecting this plugin. Great! Thank you. 

Do you plan to also include an expanded style choice window in the next update? Like Rina showed us in this other thread? Or is it up to CoriBoom team?

[Null 45 3,041]

51 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Do you plan to also include an expanded style choice window in the next update?

No that is a separate issue from the plugin, and the CoriBoom team already has a much better dialog than the one I made for testing.

But I will attach the UI file for my testing dialog, as it may be useful to some people as an example. As I have previously mentioned, I use ilive's UIEditor to modify the UI file before importing it into an override DAT.

more building styles UI.zip

Do you have any other suggestions for improving the plugin?

One of the suggestions I saw recently is region-wide styles. I am not sure how that would be implemented, probably with a file in the region folder that is synchronized when opening or exiting a city.

[Null 45 3,041]

Release version 1.3.0, which adds a GZCOM class that other DLLs can use to get information about the available building styles.

[Null 45 3,041]

Release version 1.3.1, which removes the trailing separator from the last building style.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

So upon continued testing I discovered that the game does not save additional building styles that have been turned on during gameplay. Upon reopening a city again the four, default styles are the only ones that remain checked while all other are deselected again.

The question is whether the cause is in @Null 45's mod directly or in the @CorinaMarie, @Cyclone Boom UI expansion adjustment. Sorry for putting you guys on the spot - can't really tell who should take a look into this issue, so I included all.

Regardless of this, the additional building styles of course work fine. However, it is certainly tedious having to recheck the building styles, each time one opens a city. Especially if a region consists of 40 of them... 

EDIT: One more thing. It also seems that it is no longer possible to completely uncheck the default building styles which I'm sure was perfectly possible before version 1.3.1. So now, I'm not entirely positive whether tilesets work...

[Null 45 3,041]

1 hour ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

So upon continued testing I discovered that the game does not save additional building styles that have been turned on during gameplay. Upon reopening a city again the four, default styles are the only ones that remain checked while all other are deselected again.

I am not able to reproduce that. In my testing the game is loading the correct styles after saving and reloading a city. The active styles are persisted in the save game by the SC4 system that handles building styles (the tract developer).

2 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

One more thing. It also seems that it is no longer possible to completely uncheck the default building styles which I'm sure was perfectly possible before version 1.3.1. So now, I'm not entirely positive whether tilesets work...

That also is working for me. Note that the game requires that at least one style be enabled at all times, so if only one style is selected the checkbox will be disabled.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

EXPLAINER EDIT: I noticed that my last edit did not make it through, due to page error. 

I explained that the problem was the result of my antivirus considering SC4MoreBuildingStyles.dll as a threat and removing it from the drive without even asking me.

[The Mayor of Hiversbridge 341]

I'm having a bit of trouble getting custom buildings to grow reliably.
I change the building style to 0x00002004 in the Exemplar and then make a new lot (which is the only way I've managed to get custom buildings to work) and sometimes it works fine. For others, however, it's not working at all. I've tried testing them in isolation on a different style and they still don't work. I'm a little stumped to be honest. If it didn't work all, I'd accept that and keep trying to find a solution, but the fact that its partially working just adds to the mystery

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

4 hours ago, EastChapel said:

I'm having a bit of trouble getting custom buildings to grow reliably.
I change the building style to 0x00002004 in the Exemplar and then make a new lot (which is the only way I've managed to get custom buildings to work) and sometimes it works fine. For others, however, it's not working at all. I've tried testing them in isolation on a different style and they still don't work. I'm a little stumped to be honest. If it didn't work all, I'd accept that and keep trying to find a solution, but the fact that its partially working just adds to the mystery

I'd recommend downloading extended UI mod by CoriBoom and then try whether additional buildings grow or not.

Not saying that you did something wrong by doing the modifications yourself, but the resource mentioned is well-written and generally saves a lot of trouble. All you have to do then is to assign buildings to style families.

[The Mayor of Hiversbridge 341]

3 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I'd recommend downloading extended UI mod by CoriBoom and then try whether additional buildings grow or not.

Not saying that you did something wrong by doing the modifications yourself, but the resource mentioned is well-written and generally saves a lot of trouble. All you have to do then is to assign buildings to style families.

Ive download the UI but didn't test the lots. I'll give it a shot later this evening. Do you mind if I ask you how you got yours to work?