Submenus DLL

[Marcelconstrutor 11]

How do you install the submenu dll mod, I can't do it at all? I put it in the plugin folder in sc4 and the submenu icons don't appear! Could anyone tell me how to install this?

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

5 hours ago, Marcelconstrutor said:

How do you install the submenu dll mod, I can't do it at all? I put it in the plugin folder in sc4 and the submenu icons don't appear! Could anyone tell me how to install this?

To help you need to have more information of the problem and other details such as Operating System, Version of SC4 etc.
 

[Wiimeiser 444]

8 hours ago, nathkel said:

And I'm wondering if this would be the best motivation and time to standardize our thousands of user-created Lots so that this and other future DLLs can easily accommodate older lots and ploppables.

As my experience just now might have suggested, yes, I do think some standardization is needed.

5 hours ago, Marcelconstrutor said:

How do you install the submenu dll mod, I can't do it at all? I put it in the plugin folder in sc4 and the submenu icons don't appear! Could anyone tell me how to install this?

The dll needs to go in the main plugins folder, not a subfolder. How is your plugins folder set up?

  Edited June 14, 2024 by Wiimeiser  
ninja'd

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

8 hours ago, nathkel said:

I have a feeling this new DLL will soon become an integral mod in the same way NAM has become. And I'm wondering if this would be the best motivation and time to standardize our thousands of user-created Lots so that this and other future DLLs can easily accommodate older lots and ploppables.

What if we started a "task force" to apply standard exemplars to old lots to bring them up to date, as well as provide standardized instructions for modders of new lots to follow so that this and future DLLs can easily include all types of custom material?

If this sounds good in principle, then i suggest we start a new thread to debate what the lot standards should be if the author wants them included 8n the "canon," if you will.

Mod standadization processes are already underway also because of the LEX disaster however if we have to to create a task force we have to take into consideration some things

1. NAM Manages transport standards that have already been defined.
2. CAM has its own standard so it makes it incompatible with possible vanilla standards
3. PIM-X Standard would be the standard for CAM even for vanilla versions
4. IRM, Colossus Farming, AMPS have their own standards and only IRM and Colossus Farming are compatible with CAM
5. The development of Mod DLLs is implying that specific new standards will be created 

So if we are to consider taskforce development we need to have a cross discussion between the moderators and admins of STEX and SC4E as well as with the members to come up with a common plan of action but it will take time because with Mod DLLs things can change radically

There is already an internal discussion for additional styles but things are slow because things are evolving rapidly and still there is a lot of content that needs to be restored

 

[Wiimeiser 444]

So my takeaway from the above is:

1. CAM and AMPS have some incompatibility somewhere, though I'm not sure where, and this needs to be sorted out.

2. The dll revolution will force a reexamination of modding standards.

3. Some sort of task force needs to be set up to determine the best course of action.

 

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

1 hour ago, Wiimeiser said:

CAM and AMPS have some incompatibility somewhere, though I'm not sure where, and this needs to be sorted out.

I think it will be difficult because CAM 2.5 has completely revised the power plants and the amount of energy they produce.

To give an example, the nuclear fusion power plant in CAM 2.5 will cost 316000 to produce 158100 MWh in addition to having a water cosumption of 4160 m^3 h and a plant life twice as long as the Maxis version. Which conflicts with the calibration of AMPS.

Also, CAM 2.5 should introduce new classes of power plants (one of which will be real while the others are only virtually because of the constraints of the power plant array and I don't want to risk players a memory corruption). In addition there are also development divergences because CAM would point to a Mod DLL that performs all the necessary calculations in game engine, in addition to performing additional calculations on a regional scale avoiding using too much LUA and ID 

 

[nathkel 31]

The different mods can of course have their own standard. I think it would be best, however, if we had what you might call a Vanilla standard, or perhaps Vanilla + NAM. All custom lots that do not require one of the mods would be the ones included in the standard or vanilla canon. If we start standardization from the vanilla/NAM mod, then the exemplar standards can be kept separate for the other mods, and assembled at their own time by their own teams.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

10 minutes ago, nathkel said:

The different mods can of course have their own standard. I think it would be best, however, if we had what you might call a Vanilla standard, or perhaps Vanilla + NAM. All custom lots that do not require one of the mods would be the ones included in the standard or vanilla canon. If we start standardization from the vanilla/NAM mod, then the exemplar standards can be kept separate for the other mods, and assembled at their own time by their own teams.

The problem is complex because the current situation is chaotic. Many contents have PIM-X statistics which implies that they are calibrated with CAM statistics. (PIM-X was born to support CAM 1.0.) This creates an imbalance in the simulation. Then you add the SPAM issue, which instead has its own calibration that is slightly different from vanilla. 

So you end up with this situation

1 CAM has its own standard
2 SPAM has its own standard
3 AMPS has its own standard
4 IRM has its own standard
5 Colossus Farming depends on the CAM standard and extends it
6 Many buildings use the PIM-X standard (which would then be the CAM standard applied for all)
7 NAM has its own standard applied in the transportation sector (Which has PIM-X & CAM statistics for some parameters)

Going to solve this problem also carries high risks because you can trigger many bugs including Phantom Sliders Bug resulting in the elimination of the region due to too many problems

 

[Wiimeiser 444]

Yes, there are a lot of standards that conflict, it seems. At least one SPAM pack conflicts with the Buildings as Props mod. I'll have to figure out which one specifically, but I believe it's one of the official extensions. If you saw my Big Ben farm, that's why.

[nathkel 31]

In order not to hijack this thread with the discussion of standardization, i have started a thread here.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

These days I finalized the airport submenus. The following will show the various submenu (Also due to too much airport content there is a need to develop a more complex tree structure the bold submenus identify the primary submenus)

 

• Prefabricated Airports (0x9AA4D78A)
• Runway (0x96352C05) ---- (Standard Runway 0x5507E37F - Runway 4x 0x362DF012 - Diagonal Runway 0x9BC3C8D0 - 48m Runway 0x11C72FD3)
• Taxyway (0x30591F2A) --- (Standard Taxyway 0x1D3F6CFF - Rapid Exit Taxiways 0xF0FA4773)
• Airport Road (0xF8E4A0AC) --- (Light Asphalt 0x7FB307BB - Dark Asphalt 0xA327BA89)
• Airport Terminal (0xA9E90D2C) --- (Terminal Generation 1 0x4BAE81AA - Terminal Generation 2 0xDEA72CE1 - Japanese Terminal 0xE862310C)
• Airport Passenger Gateway ( 0x27831B85) --- (Airbus 0x2FE8A371 - Boeing 0xF6C97E9D - Supersonic 0x1F7A6A03 - Embraer E-Jets 0x002B8842 - ATR 0x0DA6E4AD - Private Jets 0x017B56C4 - Cesena 0x6DFFC2FD)
• Airport Cargo Gateway (0x5F36595F) --- (Airbus 0x7159FC0C - Boeing 0x3B207165)
• Taxiway Markings (0x8307E44D) -- (Light Asphalt 0xD97BF216 - Dark Asphalt 0x22E80E08)
• ATC (0x803DA728) --- (ATC Tower 0x414EFA54 - ATC Lights 0x6C60BABA - ATC Radar 0x0CF1B7C9)
• Airport Civic Services (0x3BB451B) - (Logistics Buildings 0xBDF1FEFE - Tanks and liquids 0x562947DF - Parking lots 0xE89059B5 - Emergency Services 0x95343F80 - Fence 0xD08F61D6)
• Filling lots (0xBF8DB3CD)

This diagram is a preliminary version of the airport submenu but before implementing it I would like to get your feedback and suggestions. 

[JoelMk2 332]

There can never be too much airport content!

Thanks for your work on this.

My suggestion for the aicraft section of the submenus - separate out Boeing and Airbus, and combine others into 'others' - because Airbus and Boeing are the most numerous and the others are quite low in number (and likely to stay so)   

• Airport Passenger Gateway
  • Boeing
  • Airbus
  • Other Passenger Plane Makers [combine here all ATR, Embraer, old jets]
  • Private Jets and General Aviation [combine here learjets, cessnas, etc]

• Airport Cargo Gateway 
  • Boeing
  • Airbus
  • Other Cargo Plane Makers 

[atsf189 460]

Hello @memo

I am trying to add some airplanes to the Airport Menu.

The Airplanes were done as Flora. Can Flora be added to the airport menu?

I tried 

### Adding flora or network items to a submenu

Add the properties `Item Submenu Parent ID` and `Item Button Class` to the catalog item Exemplar.
The latter property is set to `2 = Network Item in Submenu` or `4 = Flora Item in Submenu`.
(The `Building Submenus` property is not used for these items.)

Is this not possible for the Airport menu, I am using the Exemplar Patching method.

Below is the file that I tried to add to the cohort file  6534284A     E83E0437     FD160380 

all I get is a blank menu

[memo 1,445]

9 hours ago, atsf189 said:

The Airplanes were done as Flora. Can Flora be added to the airport menu?

Flora is only supported in submenus of the Flora menu, at this point. Try to move the submenu to the Flora menu.

By the way, the Flora menu doesn't have standardized submenus yet, but they should be added in the future once it becomes clearer how best to divide the Flora menu into submenus.

[Max4k 721]

What exactly is considered Flora in the Parks menu ?

@11241036 did an amazing job updating their Plaza set with Icons for Submenus with more Submenus.

I have a bunch (ton) of 1x1 Flower beds by different people - CSX, and others .  There are so many ideas I have, but no clue how to do this.  I'm willing to learn but may need Youtube demonstration with brief overview how to do this.
 

 

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

On 28/07/2024 at 6:14 AM, memo said:

Flora is only supported in submenus of the Flora menu, at this point. Try to move the submenu to the Flora menu.

By the way, the Flora menu doesn't have standardized submenus yet, but they should be added in the future once it becomes clearer how best to divide the Flora menu into submenus.

I think as the primary submenu of the flora menu should be the following

• Flora
• Fauna
• Natural Landscape (Other submenus such as Marine, Mountain, River & Lakes etc could be created here)
• Urban Landscape (Other submenus such as Car, Industrial Prop etc could be created here)
• Airport (Because of the airport content could be handled by the airport submenu)

[Panda 209]

@memo It's been a busy several months, but things have finally started to slow down. I will have more time in the near future and am planning to finish working on the submenu icons.

[Simizen 1,098]

been a minute since I've read this thread, but I'm liking the airport list for sure. Minor nitpick, but my suggestion regarding it is to shorten the names for: Airport Passenger Gateway and Airport Cargo Gateway, to just Passenger Gateway and Cargo Gateway. Imo, seems a bit excessive/redundant to have the word 'Airport' in front of them.

Otherwise feel free to ignore the comment, lol.

So far though, the submenus are doing wonderfully. But I did see some talk earlier about divergences with other key mods. My issue with this is that I generally hate that it's likely to be split according to each key mod, rather than keeping everything unified. Like, I know there's an issue with getting SPAM and CAM to work together properly, simply due to a split in the community early on in regards to farming stuff. But I feel that if we could unify all of it into one, that'd be great. Only catch though, is that I don't think everyone would really want to go the CAM route, so it would likely create a 3rd major split. So, this would inevitably lead us to CAM, SPAM, and Vanilla versions.

If there's a way to effectively make it universal, except for the key things affect by CAM and SPAM. Then the only things that would be different should be found in those two. Though, I am aware that there's going to be a ton of work involved with multiple groups to get everything unified, so that could very well be an issue.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

On 28/06/2024 at 12:02 AM, JoelMk2 said:

There can never be too much airport content!

Thanks for your work on this.

My suggestion for the aicraft section of the submenus - separate out Boeing and Airbus, and combine others into 'others' - because Airbus and Boeing are the most numerous and the others are quite low in number (and likely to stay so)   

• Airport Passenger Gateway
  • Boeing
  • Airbus
  • Other Passenger Plane Makers [combine here all ATR, Embraer, old jets]
  • Private Jets and General Aviation [combine here learjets, cessnas, etc]

• Airport Cargo Gateway 
  • Boeing
  • Airbus
  • Other Cargo Plane Makers 

 

On 24/09/2024 at 10:21 PM, Ryuu Tenno said:

been a minute since I've read this thread, but I'm liking the airport list for sure. Minor nitpick, but my suggestion regarding it is to shorten the names for: Airport Passenger Gateway and Airport Cargo Gateway, to just Passenger Gateway and Cargo Gateway. Imo, seems a bit excessive/redundant to have the word 'Airport' in front of them.

Otherwise feel free to ignore the comment, lol.

So far though, the submenus are doing wonderfully. But I did see some talk earlier about divergences with other key mods. My issue with this is that I generally hate that it's likely to be split according to each key mod, rather than keeping everything unified. Like, I know there's an issue with getting SPAM and CAM to work together properly, simply due to a split in the community early on in regards to farming stuff. But I feel that if we could unify all of it into one, that'd be great. Only catch though, is that I don't think everyone would really want to go the CAM route, so it would likely create a 3rd major split. So, this would inevitably lead us to CAM, SPAM, and Vanilla versions.

If there's a way to effectively make it universal, except for the key things affect by CAM and SPAM. Then the only things that would be different should be found in those two. Though, I am aware that there's going to be a ton of work involved with multiple groups to get everything unified, so that could very well be an issue.

There already seems to be a consensus on content for airports so here is the second round for the airport menu and this time it also includes the airport menu for MMP

Flora Menu (These menus can be safely placed in the Submenu mod)

• Airport MMP (0xC8458A2) -- (Civilian Aircraft 0x7AD22CFE - Military Aircraft 0xF58635F7)

Airport Menu (These menus can be safely placed in the Submenu mod)

• Prefabricated Airports (0x9AA4D78A)
• Modular Airport (0xC1E9138F)

Prefabricated Airports Menu

• Maxis Airport (0x723EBDA0)
• AC Airports (0xD13B301B)
• BSC Airport (0x9474DEBA)

Modular Airport Menu

• Runway (0x96352C05) ---- (Standard Runway 0x5507E37F - Runway 4x 0x362DF012 - Diagonal Runway 0x9BC3C8D0 - 48m Runway 0x11C72FD3)
• Taxyway (0x30591F2A) --- (Standard Taxyway 0x1D3F6CFF - Rapid Exit Taxiways 0xF0FA4773)
• Airport Road (0xF8E4A0AC) --- (Light Asphalt 0x7FB307BB - Dark Asphalt 0xA327BA89)
• Airport Terminal (0xA9E90D2C) --- (Terminal Generation 1 0x4BAE81AA - Terminal Generation 2 0xDEA72CE1 - Japanese Terminal 0xE862310C)
• Passenger Gateway (0x27831B85) --- (Airbus 0x2FE8A371 - Boeing 0xF6C97E9D - Supersonic 0x1F7A6A03 - Embraer E-Jets 0x002B8842 - ATR 0x0DA6E4AD - Other Passenger Plane Makers 0x017B56C4 - Private Jets and General Aviation 0x6DFFC2FD)
• Cargo Gateway (0x5F36595F) --- (Airbus 0x7159FC0C - Boeing 0x3B207165 - Other Cargo Plane Makers 0xC3268285)
• Taxiway Markings (0x8307E44D) -- (Light Asphalt 0xD97BF216 - Dark Asphalt 0x22E80E08)
• ATC (0x803DA728) --- (ATC Tower 0x414EFA54 - ATC Lights 0x6C60BABA - ATC Radar 0x0CF1B7C9)
• Airport Civic Services (0x3BB451B) - (Logistics Buildings 0xBDF1FEFE - Tanks and liquids 0x562947DF - Parking lots 0xE89059B5 - Emergency Services 0x95343F80 - Fence 0xD08F61D6)
• Filling lots (0xBF8DB3CD)

If we all agree with this organization I can make the submenu and publish with the new version of the SC4D LEX & STEX Legacy Ultimate Airport Pack while waiting for its final expansion that contains many contents such as those of Bripizza etc...

[Simizen 1,098]

I love this.

So, I take it, that the ones in bold are the first submenu options, and the names next to it are the submenus below that?

looks absolutely elegant imo

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

2 minutes ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

I love this.

So, I take it, that the ones in bold are the first submenu options, and the names next to it are the submenus below that?

looks absolutely elegant imo

Yes. 

 

[memo 1,445]

@Ulisse Wolf I'm not familiar with the existing airport plugins, but I'm wondering whether it would make sense to keep it a bit simpler. Keep the Maxis airports as well as individual pre-fabricated airports in the top-level menu. Create a first level-menu for each major airport pack and 2nd-level submenus for each pack as you see fit. I assume the different packs don't really match in style, so grouping by pack (instead of function) might be more natural?

On 8/10/2024 at 7:27 AM, Max4k said:

What exactly is considered Flora in the Parks menu ?

Flora refers to mayor-mode ploppables (MMPs) which only exist in the respective menu. The Parks menu, on the other hand, only contains ploppable lots.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

9 hours ago, memo said:

@Ulisse Wolf I'm not familiar with the existing airport plugins, but I'm wondering whether it would make sense to keep it a bit simpler. Keep the Maxis airports as well as individual pre-fabricated airports in the top-level menu. Create a first level-menu for each major airport pack and 2nd-level submenus for each pack as you see fit. I assume the different packs don't really match in style, so grouping by pack (instead of function) might be more natural?

Flora refers to mayor-mode ploppables (MMPs) which only exist in the respective menu. The Parks menu, on the other hand, only contains ploppable lots.

I, too, would like simpler management but unfortunately, a lot of airport content has been developed over time and all of it follows the same style making it necessary to separate based on functions than in style. There is also the Airport Controller issue which makes things more complicated. On the positive side that the submenu mod should only introduce the flora submenu system and only the primary submenu of the Airport menu because they are the primary domain.

Excluding the parts specific to the various Airport mods, the primary submenu should be this

Flora Menu

• Airport MMP (0xC8458A2) -- (Civilian Aircraft 0x7AD22CFE - Military Aircraft 0xF58635F7)

Airport Menu 

• Prefabricated Airports (0x9AA4D78A)
• Modular Airport (0xC1E9138F)

Modular Airport Menu (Optional for Submenu mod but in the case that it will not be implemented in the submenu mod it will be implemented in the Ultimate Airport Pack submenu.)

• Runway (0x96352C05)
• Taxyway (0x30591F2A)
• Airport Road (0xF8E4A0AC)
• Airport Terminal (0xA9E90D2C) 
• Passenger Gateway (0x27831B85)
• Cargo Gateway (0x5F36595F)
• Taxiway Markings (0x8307E44D)
• ATC (0x803DA728)
• Airport Civic Services (0x3BB451B) 
• Filling lots (0xBF8DB3CD)

[Rady 94]

Hello all, I just reinstalled SC4 after years of not playing, and - searching for the DAMN - stumbled over this mod. After installing, I wonderd why the additional content still is dispersed over different standard menu items instead of showing up in the respective custom submenue. But as I understand now, this mod is still under developement, and we will have to wait for it t be finisehd, right?

HOwever, I wonder how to proceed onece this is finalised? How will the existing files in my plugin folder then show up in the right submenue? Will I have to edit them manually using iLIves reader to contain the specifiv information that makes them show up in the right submenue? Or do these files already contain the relevant information?

 

 

Thank you

[Kel9509 1,363]

4 minutes ago, Rady said:

After installing, I wonderd why the additional content still is dispersed over different standard menu items instead of showing up in the respective custom submenue. But as I understand now, this mod is still under developement, and we will have to wait for it t be finisehd, right?

I guess it depends on what content you mean.  A lot of the game's original lots are automatically placed into submenus by this mod, like police stations and the education menu.  Are you sure you installed it properly?  Even with no custom downloads, the DLL and the added submenu DAT files should work to categorize things within the stock game already.  If that isn't working, you probably don't have it installed properly.  Also, just to be clear, this won't work on a Mac and you need the latest digital version of SimCity.

[memo 1,445]

On 10/18/2024 at 7:35 AM, Rady said:

After installing, I wonderd why the additional content still is dispersed over different standard menu items instead of showing up in the respective custom submenue. But as I understand now, this mod is still under developement, and we will have to wait for it t be finisehd, right?

The main open points for this mod are:

• adding the flora submenus,
• adding a few missing icons that currently use placeholder icons.

That shouldn't stop anyone from using the mod though, as the rest of the functionality is already there and not going to change.

Custom content that includes the right metadata will automatically appear in the correct submenu. This works very well for some submenus (e.g. schools, hospitals, ploppables with jobs), most of the time (transport submenus), rarely (churches) or not at all for other submenus (parks).

When this doesn't work, the custom content just hasn't been modded to include suitable metadata for putting it into a specific submenu. This means that either the files themselves need to be updated (as has happened for several STEX entries as well as files at SC4E, during the last months), or third-party patches for existing content need to be created and uploaded, or you modify the files in your plugins folder directly to move them into submenus.

[Simizen 1,098]

also, heads up for this mod, and maybe a disclaimer should be added to the page it's on: don't attempt to run any of the tutorials with this installed. The game locks out anything but the stuff it requests, so you can't access what it wants (found out by accident when working on one of my charts, lol). But, you can still play the city in question, if you hit "Exit and Play City" or whatever it's labeled.

So, for anyone who's new and has this and wants to go through the tutorials, or anyone who's played for a while but want's a refresher, you'd need to remove this to run the tutorials. You can, however, still play around with the city if you just quit the tutorials.

[Propfam 2,288]

1 minute ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

So, for anyone who's new and has this and wants to go through the tutorials, or anyone who's played for a while but want's a refresher, you'd need to remove this to run the tutorials. You can, however, still play around with the city if you just quit the tutorials.

Or just rewrite the tutorial sequence by either modifying the city tile or by DLL. And it's not just submenu. You can induce this by using a slope mod. Heck you can even do this with no mods at all, like you draw a bridge in the Rush Hour tile partially enough to build a bridge but not enough to continue to the next step, which is to toggle building styles (cmiiw).

[Rady 94]

On 18.10.2024 at 7:41 AM, Kel9509 said:

I guess it depends on what content you mean.  A lot of the game's original lots are automatically placed into submenus by this mod, like police stations and the education menu.  Are you sure you installed it properly?  Even with no custom downloads, the DLL and the added submenu DAT files should work to categorize things within the stock game already.  If that isn't working, you probably don't have it installed properly.  Also, just to be clear, this won't work on a Mac and you need the latest digital version of SimCity.

Yes, some content is already located in the respective submenue as you stated. I was wondering how to handle the remaining content. So, to sum it up - what I need to do is to either wait until the content has been modified and is avaialble on the STEX/SC4E, or modify every single file by myself. The latter seems the way to go for me then ...

[11241036 5,097]

As a content creator who has already made some of his uploads submenu-compatible, I just came to a point where I'd like to ask some questions:

1. I've seen that there are submenus for the Residential/Industrial/Commercial menu, but usually, these menus just contain the zoning functions. How can I actually place a ploppable building there? I know, with the availability of the Growify DLL, this makes sense, but I just don't know how. Is it actually enough to put a ploppable lot into the respective submenu?
2. Did I understand this right that there are ongoing efforts to sooner or later place all available lots here on the STEX in submenus? Are you planning to update the existing lots, or are you doing that differently? How does that affect any upload that is already submenu-compatible?
3. I may be able to give you some help by at least updating the files I've uploaded. But I hope you understand that I don't feel like updating all of my files whenever a new version of the Submenus DLL comes out. Is there a way to make that process easier in case the Submenus DLL mod is greatly altered?
4. I've gotten an overview of the submenus uploaded by memo. Is that a big problem when I'm just putting some of my content into their own submenus? I just think some of my uploads don't fit into any of the currently available categories, e.g. my tunnel relots, traffic blockers, waterfall lots.