Allow More Building Styles - DLL Plugin

[Kel9509 1,363]

55 minutes ago, Null 45 said:

Currently the Building Styles property makes a building act as if all of the Maxis styles have been unchecked, but I may change it to allow the Maxis styles to be included in the property.

(We might need to move this discussion over to the Allow More Building Styles thread)

What are the benefits of excluding them if the Building Styles exemplar exists, versus including them?  Are other properties of the OccupantGroup also excluded?  

I think it might be better to include the Maxis styles, unless I'm misunderstanding the purpose here.  Is the idea that, for users of the DLL, the 4 legacy Maxis styles are basically entirely replaced by new Building Styles that are supposedly more accurate or better defined?  I am certainly going to continue to use the New York 1940 style, and even if I add several buildings to a new style I believe I will mostly retain any building that is currently NY 1940.  But others practices' may vary.

 

[Null 45 3,041]

26 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

Are other properties of the OccupantGroup also excluded?

Yes. Memo described the behavior in the Allow More Building Styles thread, which I am quoting below.

On 10/12/2024 at 1:05 AM, memo said:

On the topic of backward compatibility and exemplar patching: Instead of defining the previously proposed not-Maxis building style OGs, another idea would be to define a completely separate property "Building Styles" from which the DLL would read the building styles (instead of the occupant groups property) if the property is present. From a modding perspective, this would allow to create exemplars that can be used with and without the DLL installed. If exemplar patching is used, this would have the advantage that you just patch in a new property, which would avoid any potential conflicts caused by overwriting unrelated occupant groups. For industrial buildings without the new property, the DLL could default to the vanilla behavior.

Rereading the quote, I may have misunderstood the behavior of the Building Styles property relating to the Maxis styles. Rather that ignoring the Maxis styles entirely, it sounds like the intended behavior is simply to ignore the Occupant Groups property in favor of whatever styles are defined in the Building Styles property.

26 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

(We might need to move this discussion over to the Allow More Building Styles thread)

I agree. Perhaps a mod or admin can split the topic starting with this post and merge it into that thread.

[matias93 7,535]

18 hours ago, Null 45 said:

I agree. Perhaps a mod or admin can split the topic starting with this post and merge it into that thread.

Done

[Null 45 3,041]

On 10/10/2024 at 11:29 PM, Kel9509 said:

Industrial building styles are tricky, because it's either on or off.

This is no longer the case for the next version of the mod. Industrial buildings that don't have the Building Styles property are treated as compatible with all styles, which is the base game's behavior.

The main issue with that for your UI mod is that it could produce a very long style string for those buildings, as it is printing the name of every supported style in the UI. I may change that behavior, but I am not sure what text I could use instead. I looked through SimCityLocale.dat, but unless I missed it Maxis didn't have an "All" string in their UI other than All Off.

21 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

I think it might be better to include the Maxis styles, unless I'm misunderstanding the purpose here.

I changed the behavior, it will include the Maxis styles if they are listed in the Building styles property.

[Kel9509 1,363]

On 10/15/2024 at 6:00 PM, Null 45 said:

The main issue with that for your UI mod is that it could produce a very long style string for those buildings, as it is printing the name of every supported style in the UI. I may change that behavior, but I am not sure what text I could use instead.

You mean Industrial Buildings will default to displaying all 4 of the Maxis styles, plus any others that are added to any building's Building Style exemplar?  I don't think that's so bad.  The Query does have a lot of extra space, after all.  

I'll test it out once the new version of the DLL is available.

[Null 45 3,041]

1 hour ago, Kel9509 said:

You mean Industrial Buildings will default to displaying all 4 of the Maxis styles, plus any others that are added to any building's Building Style exemplar?

It will display every style that the user has a check box for in the Building Style Control.

[Kel9509 1,363]

1 hour ago, Null 45 said:

It will display every style that the user has a check box for in the Building Style Control.

I think I understand you.  UNLESS you're using the Building Exemplar that assigns a specific style to an industrial building, the DLL will assign industrial buildings to "all styles."  And "All styles" are all the base Maxis ones plus any new ones.  Yikes.

I'm not sure what to think about that.  Essentially, it extends industrial buildings to every style out there (like now, but also in a more radical way with new building styles).  I wonder if that creates its own host of problems.  Instead of needing to patch the Maxis lots to use them for industrial styles, we'd probably need to patch a bunch more industrial lots and start assigning them styles to get them out of an "all" category.  Or a player would need to do it for all their downloads.  I think community input on this sort of behavior from the DLL might be advisable.

[Null 45 3,041]

2 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

UNLESS you're using the Building Exemplar that assigns a specific style to an industrial building, the DLL will assign industrial buildings to "all styles."  And "All styles" are all the base Maxis ones plus any new ones. 

Correct.

2 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

I think community input on this sort of behavior from the DLL might be advisable.

Yeah, I am not sure what the correct approach is here. In the base game, industrial buildings are implicitly compatible with all 4 Maxis building styles.

I had originally made industrial buildings without a Building Styles property compatible with the 4 Maxis styles, but then I changed it to be all styles to prevent stalling industrial growth if only custom styles are selected.

[Null 45 3,041]

Release version 3.0, which has the following changes:

• Added support for new Building Styles and Building Is Wall-to-Wall exemplar properties.
  • These properties remove the need to modify the Occupant Groups property when adding building style support.
  • When the Building Styles property is present the styles in the Occupant Groups property will be ignored.
• Simplified the process for creating industrial building styles.
  • The DBPF INI system for custom industrial building styles has been replaced by the Building Styles property.
  • Industrial buildings without the Building Styles property are compatible with all building styles, this was also the previous behavior when industrial building styles were disabled.
• Added a reserved range for UI controls in the style panel.
• Added support for a Kick Out Lower Wealth check box.
• Fixed a bug that could prevent the Build all styles at once feature from working.

[carlosmarcelo 975]

5 hours ago, Null 45 said:

Release version 3.0, which has the following changes:

Thanks, @Null 45!  With this dll, I don't need "SC4Growify.dll"?

There is a UI to use "support for a Kick Out Lower Wealth check box"? I coudn't found in this topic. 

@CorinaMarie and @Cyclone Boom thanks to UI (link to post)!!!  I translated english ltext to PT-BR and I attached below to brazilians users. But, maybe I will new changes if you can modify somethings in the interface:

1. It's possible reduce font size of the year ("anos(s)" yellow) to avoid line break?
2. In ltext there isn't "Keep Lot Zone Sizes" to translate. It's possible tranlate it?

Ltext translated to pt-br (and updated): Building Styles UI v0.42b for use with dll ltext ptbr.dat

[Null 45 3,041]

18 minutes ago, carlosmarcelo said:

There is a UI to use "support for a Kick Out Lower Wealth check box"? I coudn't found in this topic. 

@CorinaMarie needs to update her UI template to add that check box.

18 minutes ago, carlosmarcelo said:

In ltext there isn't "Keep Lot Zone Sizes" to translate. It's possible tranlate it?

The LTEXT id is documented in the linked post, but it may not exist in the file.

19 minutes ago, carlosmarcelo said:

With this dll, I don't need "SC4Growify.dll"?

Yes, if the Auto-Growify check box is present and checked it will replace the feature provided by the Growify DLL.

[carlosmarcelo 975]

1 hour ago, Null 45 said:

The LTEXT id is documented in the linked post, but it may not exist in the file.

Thanks, I tried but I couldn't, it didn't work. I think I did something wrong. 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 hour ago, carlosmarcelo said:

1. It's possible reduce font size of the year ("anos(s)" yellow) to avoid line break?

Even better. CB checked and there's room to extend the invisible box the text can go into. That can reach to within a couple or three pixels of the checkbox.

 

1 hour ago, carlosmarcelo said:

2. In ltext there isn't "Keep Lot Zone Sizes" to translate. It's possible tranlate it?

Oops! I made provision for it as {6a231eaa,8aa4f9fb} within the UI itself, but I forgot to add it to the LText download .dat. You can wait for my update or just copy the last LText in the file then paste it right back in, then go to File Info while the copied entry is highlighted and change the IID to 8aa4f9fb then make your translation in that one.

 

1 hour ago, carlosmarcelo said:

There is a UI to use "support for a Kick Out Lower Wealth check box"? I coudn't found in this topic. 

1 hour ago, Null 45 said:

@CorinaMarie needs to update her UI template to add that check box.

Yeah, I just got a beep for the new DLL version earlier today and sometimes RL has to take precedence. I have downloaded the update and I'll take peek when I get a chance.

[carlosmarcelo 975]

40 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Oops! I made provision for it as {6a231eaa,8aa4f9fb} within the UI itself, but I forgot to add it to the LText download .dat. You can wait for my update or just copy the last LText in the file then paste it right back in, then go to File Info while the copied entry is highlighted and change the IID to 8aa4f9fb then make your translation in that one.

Yes, I did! 

41 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Yeah, I just got a beep for the new DLL version earlier today and sometimes RL has to take precedence. I have downloaded the update and I'll take peek when I get a chance.

Sure! Don't worry and don't rush. 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

12 hours ago, Null 45 said:

Added support for new Building Styles and Building Is Wall-to-Wall exemplar properties.

• These properties remove the need to modify the Occupant Groups property when adding building style support.
• When the Building Styles property is present the styles in the Occupant Groups property will be ignored.

 

I think things with this .dll are going too fast for me this time... Could you please explain what does it mean in layman terms?

[Null 45 3,041]

58 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Could you please explain what does it mean in layman terms?

The Building Styles and Building Is Wall-to-Wall properties are simply an alternate way of accomplishing the same things that could be done by patching the Occupant Groups property.

The new properties make bulk patching existing plugins easier as you can add those properties to an exemplar patch/override instead of modifying the existing Occupant Groups property. Many existing plugins store their own data in the Occupant Groups property, which can be accidentally changed or deleted when modifying it.

When the Building Styles property is present, any styles in the Occupant Groups property are ignored. This allows for things like having a building with custom styles for people that have the DLL installed, while keeping the Maxis styles in the Occupant Groups as a fall back for people without the DLL.

[Kel9509 1,363]

On 10/17/2024 at 2:21 AM, Null 45 said:

I had originally made industrial buildings without a Building Styles property compatible with the 4 Maxis styles, but then I changed it to be all styles to prevent stalling industrial growth if only custom styles are selected.

I wonder if this could be fixed with another UI control?  A controller to specify whether default industrial lots use only the 4 maxis lot styles by default, or all styles by default?  I'm just thinking out loud here.  Or maybe not, since that seems to offer little benefit.  Plus, as you said, if you aren't using the Maxis styles in the future when playing then your industrial lots will not grow unless you do a lot of editing to your downloads and the base lots of the game. 

So defaulting the industrial lots to "All styles" seems appropriate.  But if there are people who want to build industrial lots only of a particular style without the vanilla lots growing, how would they do that?  Wouldn't the vanilla lots still develop?  Maybe a controller is needed after all...

As for the Query displaying all styles if there are none defined for an industrial building: I agree it makes sense to possibly shorten the text instead of showing a gigantic list.  Does the referenced text need to be from SimCityLocale.dat, or can you customize it?  If you can customize it, then I'd use "All styles" or something.  Maybe the text could also be customized or translatable by allowing it to be edited in the INI file?  Not sure if that'd be possible but it might be the best solution if it can be done.

[Null 45 3,041]

4 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

But if there are people who want to build industrial lots only of a particular style without the vanilla lots growing, how would they do that?

They would have to use an override that assigns the Maxis building to a specific style, or just use a Maxis blocker. The Maxis industrial buildings don't fit in any specific style, it is possible that industrial buildings didn't have building styles in the base game to reduce the amount of work for Maxis's artists. That would be an interesting question to ask Ocean Quigley (SC4's Creative/Art director), his blog and YouTube channel are a gold mine of stuff related to the art of SC4.

3 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

Does the referenced text need to be from SimCityLocale.dat, or can you customize it?

My reason for preferring text from SimCityLocale.dat is that it would already have been translated by Maxis. I could define a LTEXT group and instance id for the localized string and fall back to using a hard-coded English string if the localized version doesn't exist, that would save me from having to ship a DAT file with the DLL.

[Kel9509 1,363]

9 minutes ago, Null 45 said:

I could define a LTEXT group and instance id for the localized string and fall back to using a hard-coded English string if the localized version doesn't exist, that would save me from having to ship a DAT file with the DLL.

Eventually, a DAT will need to come with this DLL in order to make it useful.  The UI edits by CoriBoom will probably need to be a dependency, or included in this DLL to make it one complete package.  I totally understand why you'd want to use an existing string though.  But the solution itself is obvious.  The answer is right in front of us all this time.  Just use the phrase "Build All Styles At Once."  

 

[Null 45 3,041]

Release version 3.0.1, which shortens the style name for industrial buildings that are built under all styles.

[Kel9509 1,363]

Success! Here's the result:

I might make the Industrial Query a bit smaller since it's unlikely there will be a ton of styles for each building...  Or maybe I'll just leave it alone. 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

7 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Or maybe I'll just leave it alone.

That's a similar amount of empty space to the residential and commercial queries so it does allow for the unknown future better.

[Kel9509 1,363]

For those who use Reader 0.93, I've augmented @Panda's patch for the Submenu DLL mod.  His patch adds values to Reader's Exemplar list to define the Submenu exemplars.  Since Null 45 has created new exemplar values (the Building Styles exemplar and the Building Is W2W exemplar), I've added those on top of Panda's patch.  I didn't see the need to create a new file since Panda's patch is so popular, so people can overwrite it with this one.

Here it is: submenu_properties.xml

As @Panda noted, it's very easy to add to Reader: 

Quote

To show the properties in the Reader, you will need to add it to the list of xml property files.

1. Open the "Option" menu and then select "Options" (not shown) to open the Option popup.
2. Click Add next to the XML Property Files, it will open a new dialog box.
3. Select "Browse" to open the file browser. (Or type in the path to the XML file directly and skip step 4)
4. Navigate to where you saved the submenu-properties.xml file (I placed mine in the same folder as Reader.exe for convenience.), select the file and click open. Click okay to close all open popups and dialog boxes.
5. Restart Reader, the program should now recognize the new "OccupantGroupsAlt" propery.

Note: This XML file only adds the additional properties used in the Submenu DLL, you will also need to enable "tropod_Properties.xml" to populate the rest of the general properties.

And I have a question about the Building Styles Exemplar, since I was looking closely at the documentation in the file for the description of the new Exemplar in the attached XML.  I copied the description from the first page of the Additional Building Styles DLL mod, but I believe it should be fixed: "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)."  I know you said that the Building Styles Exemplar now includes the Maxis styles in the OccupantGroups exemplar.  Is it correct to say that the property still ignores the Occupant Groups styles?  And if not, does the Building Styles still exclude anything?  In particular, does it exclude W2W categories in the OccupantGroups, requiring people to add the W2W exemplar instead?  I just want to be clear before I start going crazy with my downloads and editing the exemplars.  

If needed I will also patch the XML file with the correct description.

[Propfam 2,288]

1 hour ago, Kel9509 said:

For those who use Reader 0.93, I've augmented @Panda's patch for the Submenu DLL mod.

Finally, the hero that we need. I've put your XML into my reader and it can now recognize the submenu stuff in my mod and I can create a new building style, all at once.

[Null 45 3,041]

3 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Is it correct to say that the property still ignores the Occupant Groups styles?

Yes. When the Building Styles property is present, it will ignore building styles that are present in the Occupant Groups property. The wall-to-wall OG values will still be read from the Occupant Groups property if the Building Is Wall-to-Wall property is not present.

If both the Building Styles and Building Is Wall-to-Wall properties are present, the Occupant Groups property is not used at all.

3 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

I know you said that the Building Styles Exemplar now includes the Maxis styles in the OccupantGroups exemplar.

What I was trying to say is that the Building Styles property can have both Maxis styles and custom styles, but the Occupant Groups styles are ignored when the property is present.

With the introduction of the Building Styles and Building Is Wall-to-Wall properties, the Occupant Groups values are depreciated and intended only for compatibility when the More Building Styles DLL is not installed. For example, by having the Maxis styles in the Occupant Groups.

If someone whats a building to use the Maxis styles with the Building Styles property they can add those styles to it, but it can also be used to remove a building from the 4 Maxis styles when the DLL is installed. In both cases, residential and commercial buildings should have the Maxis styles in the Occupant Groups property for compatibility with users who don't have the DLL installed.

[Kel9509 1,363]

1 hour ago, Null 45 said:

What I was trying to say is that the Building Styles property can have both Maxis styles and custom styles, but the Occupant Groups styles are ignored when the property is present.

Is it ok that the game ignores the wealth values of the Occupant Groups?  For instance a high-wealth residential building will include in the Occupant Groups the 0x00011030 property, to indicate it's for high-wealth residents.   

Overall, though, I understand your point.

However, something is wrong.  I was testing out my new version of the Query and noticed several things.  I reverted back to my older working query and the errors still persisted:

1. The W2W exemplar doesn't appear to work.  I added it to a Building's exemplar list (0xAA1DD401) and set the value to 0x01 (True).  The new Query reports that the building is NOT wall-to-wall.  However, when I remove the W2W exemplar, and add a W2W Occupant Group (in this case I added 0xB5C00B05), the Query reports correctly that the building is W2W.  I don't know if this is an issue with the Query DLL or the Building Styles DLL.  I tried to see if W2W would grow despite the query saying it was not W2W (even though the exemplar said it was "True") but nothing grew.

2. The building styles are displayed incorrectly in the Query.  First, there is no space and comma after the first of the styles.  It will read: "Chicago 1980New York 1940, Houston 1990, etc."  So the first style is not correctly spaced from the second style.  This didn't exist in older versions of the DLL.

Additionally, the styles are cut off.  It's not my Query (I reverted back to my old one that showed all styles correctly to test if it was my mistake).  The styles are cut off all the time, no matter how many are displayed.  If you display 2 styles, it will read: "Chicago 1980New York 19".  So the "1940" is cut off and only reads as "19".  If you display 4 styles, it will read: "Chicago 1980New York 1940, Houston 1990, Euro-Contempora".  The word "Contemporary" is cut off and only reads as "Contempora".  

3.  Not sure if this is intended or not, but the Query will display custom building styles prior to the Maxis ones.  So for instance, in my case it says: "Paris 1890Berlin 1910, Rome 1750, Eastern European, Hong Kong Contemporary, Chicago 1890, New York 1940, Houston 1990, Euro-Contempora".  This is despite the fact that in the exemplar properties, the new building styles are listed after the Maxis ones.  The display in the Query seems to have no relation to the order of the styles in a Building Exemplar property.  I think in the older versions, the styles were displayed in the order they were listed in the Exemplars.

[Null 45 3,041]

1 hour ago, Kel9509 said:

Is it ok that the game ignores the wealth values of the Occupant Groups?

That is checked separately from the building styles data in the occupant groups, and I don't know if it those occupant groups are checked at all by the game. IIRC SC4 uses separate Purpose and Wealth exemplar properties to retrieve that data.

1 hour ago, Kel9509 said:

1. The W2W exemplar doesn't appear to work. 

Fixed for the next version. I forgot to update that section of the code, so it was only checking the occupant groups.

1 hour ago, Kel9509 said:

2. The building styles are displayed incorrectly in the Query. ... Additionally, the styles are cut off.

Fixed for the next version. I rewrote the code that handled multiple styles, and never checked its behavior on a building that has multiple styles.

1 hour ago, Kel9509 said:

The display in the Query seems to have no relation to the order of the styles in a Building Exemplar property.  I think in the older versions, the styles were displayed in the order they were listed in the Exemplars.

I changed the code, and was unaware that it broke any perceived order. The exact order that the items are displayed is undefined, but you are correct in how it behaved.

[Null 45 3,041]

Release version 3.0.2, which fixes a few regressions related to query UI DLL data.

[Kel9509 1,363]

20 hours ago, Null 45 said:

Release version 3.0.2, which fixes a few regressions related to query UI DLL data.

This appears to have fixed all issues.  The building style query is now showing properly and neatly, and the Wall-to-Wall query works as well.  

I tested the W2W exemplar on a custom growable Tudor City - Tudor Tower R$$$ residential building, which not only had the W2W exemplar added but also several new custom building styles using the new Building Styles exemplar.  Here's the result:

However, there were several issues.

The game doesn't seem to easily switch between the W2W options in the Building Style Control UI.  At first, I loaded up the game and set it to W2W and standard, but then I decided to switch while unpaused to W2W only (to test if it would work).  Nothing grew, for several years time.  So I exited to the region and re-loaded the city, and this time prior to unpausing the game I set the style to W2W only and after a very short while after running the simulation the building grew.  So I'm not so sure if the game can immediately switch so quickly between the options.  I'm not sure what others' experience is with the new Building Style Control UI and using the W2W options, and whether pausing the game, exiting to the region, and then re-loading a city (in some combination) prior to switching to a different W2W option, is necessary or not.

I'm not sure if my experience was my own user error, or the result of the game just having some issues "remembering" the UI options.  Maybe you need to pause before switching first?  I tried that but it didn't seem to work so I exited to the region.  Maybe the game got confused because I was switching too fast?  Not sure.

(Also, any thoughts on the new query?  I bolded the Building styles but I wonder if I should revert that back)

[Null 45 3,041]

31 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

So I'm not so sure if the game can immediately switch so quickly between the options.

As far as I can tell, SC4 essentially picks new lots to develop at random. So it is possible for it to take a while for the game to find a match when the W2W and/or Keep Lot Zone Sizes options are enabled, both options can severely restrict the pool of lots the game is allowed to use. You can turn on the BuildingStyleSelection and/or LotStyleSelection logging options in the INI file to see what buildings/lots the game is rejecting. Currently the state of the W2W and Keep Lot Zone Sizes options are not logged, that may be something that I should add when those debug options are enabled.

Reloading a city shouldn't be necessary, I have switched the W2W options while the game is running without issue.