Submenus DLL

[Andreas Roth 607]

Hmm, this is interesting. According to the new_properties.xml, 0x00000002 is "Hydrogen",  but if you say that many used the Natural Gas Power Plant as a base, was the property for "Hydrogen" added later, or was it there all the time, since the tools back then didn't allow to create a Hydrogen (or Hydroelectric) Power Plant? I looked up the property and saw 0x00000003 as "Hydrogen" somewhere, but maybe my sources were wrong. I guess for the game, it doesn't matter anyway, but it would be easy to fix PEG's Hydroelectric Dam.

Also, thanks for explaining how the DLL is determing what's supposed to be a tram station and what not, that's a very clever approach! Actually, the BATs in question were some old stations made by morifari, and curiously, the orthogonal stations are sorted properly, but not the diagonal ones. That makes perfect sense now, since the building is just an overhanging prop. I guess I'll simply create an exemplar patch for those, this also worked for a modded Grand Central Station (Maxis Landmark) lot that I made for myself long ago, which now resides in the Multimodal Station submenu (I added bus and subway station transit switch properties back then).

As for the icon, I mused about making the red triangle a bit larger, but opted against it, as it would (in my case) interfere with the SFBT logo. Obviously, it's a matter of taste after all, but since submenues are especially useful for sets of lots, some people might want to include a logo on it. For the sake of simplicity, I just picked one of the icons of the included lots and pasted the arrow and the orange frame on it. Eventually, maybe a template (not necessarily mine) could be included in the SC4 CLI Tool (is there a better name for it, as "SC4 Tool" already exists!?) as well.

[smf_16 1,835]

If there's some kind of concensus, I'd happily add it as a template to my tool. There can even be multiple templates as options.

As for the naming, I know it's not ideal, but it kind of grew historically. It started out as a quick proof of concept for editing savegames, so I didn't really put much thought into it. At one one moment I considered renaming it to growifier, but I thought it wasn't worth the effort. Maybe we can refer to it as sc4cli.

[Tyberius06 12,189]

4 hours ago, memo said:

@Tyberius06 was planning to define a new Occupant Group for GLR stations, but I don't know the ID yet and there aren't (m)any stations using it so far.

Haven't I shared it on Discord? I might have forgotten about it. 

0xB5C00DF9 - BTE: Transit - Ground Light Rail (GLR)

0xB5C00DFA - BTE: Transit - Hybrid Railway (HRW)

The related MTA updated stations in the upcoming Network Addon Mod Version 49 has these IDs where it's due. The GLR/TRAM (including TIA,TIR, TOR, TOS) stations have the above mentioned Occupant Group ID. The Hybrid Railway Stations (HRW) in the upcoming Network Addon Mod Version 49 also have the relevant above mentioned ID. Stations which have both travel type, I believe they have both IDs, but I might used the HRW only as a higher hierarchy network. Outside of the upcoming NAM V49 currently nothing is using these OGs, but future contents are planned to use them and also any kind of update on existing contents will utilize these IDs where it's due. 

4 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

Currently, new classes of power plants cannot be added because it requires a compelte rewrite of the utility simulation. The only thing that can be done is to add a specific OG.

Well you can add either a random ID or use the 0xB5C00EF3 and above for it. 

0xB5C00EF0 - BTE: Utility - Water

0xB5C00EF1 - BTE: Utility - Power

0xB5C00EF2 - BTE: Utility - Garbage

I don't know what the master list was saying for this EF group, but it only has these Utilities and we don't have the master list. And more or less all the used but not listed IDs are recovered by now. 

2 hours ago, Andreas Roth said:

Actually, the BATs in question were some old stations made by morifari, and curiously, the orthogonal stations are sorted properly, but not the diagonal ones. That makes perfect sense now, since the building is just an overhanging prop. I guess I'll simply create an exemplar patch for those

Hm... Andreas I'm gonna send you the V49 MTA update because that contains those SFBT stations (Morifari and the GLR/TRAM stuff) with updated modding. You might want to copy paste those switches and stats. Though as far as I know, @z1 used the same lots/building IDs for the MTA versions as it was released on STEX or on the Kurier. Updating the SFBT related TE lots was always going to happen sooner or later (like with these Commuter Rail Stations) 

[Andreas Roth 607]

@Tyberius06: Yeah, it makes sense to update all lots with those occupant groups (and also fix any other issuse that they might have) eventually. Esp. the older stuff that I released might have some bugs and errors due to the lack of knowledge or whatever. For example, yesterday I found out that the ancient PEG CDK-IND that I still had in my plugins folder was buggy, only six of the ten or so lots showed up in the menu because I must have screwed something up when fixing the transit-enabling (which should have been a network-enabling only) with SC4Tool some 15 years ago. 

BTW, is there a version of new_properties.xml that is compatible with the good old Reader 0.9.7 (which has tropod_properties.xml, but it uses different formatting) somewhere? I know I could use the newer version of the Reader, but as far as I gathered, it still might have some bugs, which makes it a little less reliable than the old one.

[Null 45 3,041]

2 minutes ago, Andreas Roth said:

BTW, is there a version of new_properties.xml that is compatible with the good old Reader 0.9.7 (which has tropod_properties.xml, but it uses different formatting) somewhere?

One was recently uploaded to GitHub. https://github.com/NAMTeam/New_Properties.xml/blob/staging/tropod_Properties.xml

[Andreas Roth 607]

Ah, most excellent, I'll try that one, thank you! 

EDIT: Ah well, I don't think this contains much more than before, except for the submenu stuff, since the filesize is almost exactly the same. Still good to know where you can get an update, though.

[Tyberius06 12,189]

25 minutes ago, Andreas Roth said:

Ah, most excellent, I'll try that one, thank you! 

EDIT: Ah well, I don't think this contains much more than before, except for the submenu stuff, since the filesize is almost exactly the same. Still good to know where you can get an update, though.

For the submenu stuff the PIM-X contains all the OGs and submenu names and IDs. For some reason just copying the relevant lines into the Reader new properties doesn't make them appear the same way as in PIM-X. 

32 minutes ago, Andreas Roth said:

I found out that the ancient PEG CDK-IND that I still had in my plugins folder was buggy

A few years ago I managed to conatact Pegasus and he gave permission to do whatever we want with his contents (like restoration, re-hosting, maintenance etc...), so @rsc204 and I actually started working on the SIMPEG collection to bring them to the new era and as a result the Utopia and the CDK3 collections have been re-released in an updated and reworked form. 
It was planned that we carry on with the Ponds, MTP and SPAM stuff and at the end the CDK Legacy set would have been reworked too, but then lot things happened. Though it is still planned...

[Panda 209]

On 1/18/2025 at 7:02 PM, Andreas Roth said:

I noticed some minor bugs, though: several icons have a slight "pixel shift" when you hover over them with the mouse. This includes the "deluxe police station", "sports facilities" in the park menu and also the new "government" button. I fixed the aforementioned icons and included them into the zip file below. I think some of the ploppable R/C/I icons are also affected.

Thank you for letting me know, I'll double check the alignment. Sometimes the layers accidentally get shifted or the icon image doesn't get perfectly centered for each state. it's easy to miss when they are all sitting side by side when editing.

[rsc204 21,808]

11 hours ago, Tyberius06 said:

but then lot things happened. Though it is still planned...

Yup things, so many things... but indeed the intention is to get back to it somewhen.

[Paulus 195]

Hi guys,

this sounds like a great mod. Unfortunately I cannot seem to get the submenu functionality in game. I have Windows 11, run the game from Steam, and other DLL mods work properly. I have tested the mod in an otherwise empty plugins folder. I even managed to use the command line tool to make a new submenu and added a random lot to a new menu. That seemed to work fine. But the submenu won't show up in game, the lot was still found in it's original menu. So to my understanding the game should automatically place maxis lots in submenu's, is that correct? So that would mean I would be able to see some submenu's even without modding other lots. I also noticed that no .log file is created after running the game. Could this indicate some underlying problem with the functionality of the ResourceLoadingHooks DLL? I have installed the dependency (..x86 redistribute) listed for that mod, but no idea where this went on my pc or how to test it's functionality. I just barely grasp what's happening 'under the hood of these mods, but I would really like to use this mod to clean up my plugins folder disaster.. Any idea what's causing my problem, or am I just missing something obvious?

Thanks in advance for any help

[Andreas Roth 607]

First of all, make sure you're using the correct installation path. The DLL has to be placed in the Plugins folder (like all other DLLs) in the SimCity 4 installation folder (usually C:\Program Files (x86)\...\SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition). Steam might use another default path, though. The ZIP file contains the DLL and also a subfolder named "submenus". This subfolder must be unpacked into the Plugins folder as well, as it contains the graphics and layout of the predefined submenus.

Even if you don't make any custom submenus yourself, you should be able to see the new menu buttons in various menus, such as the Park menu. There is at least one submenu with lots available. Watch out for a menu icon that is divided into four parts with a white border in between, this is the Maxis Community Garden lots. If you click that icon, a submenu should list those four lots.

[smf_16 1,835]

Hi all,

I released an update to my sc4 cli (v0.2.15) which adds two things that are relevant for submenus:

• It's now possible to create submenus for flora as well. Apparently I didn't implement this initially, but it works now.
• The gui for creating an icon now gives you the option to add a hamburger icon in the upper-left corner to indicate that this will open a submenu. It is white by default, but you can customize the color for light icons. Beware that no layers are stored for the icon, so once you add the hamburger and save the .dat file, you can't remove it anymore if you don't have a backup! As you can see on the screenshot below, I've also added the option to save the icon as a .png.
  
  

 

I also made some slight changes to the submenu creation flow. You can now only select a single folder where all the lots or flora items should be located in, and it will always be scanned recursively. This eliminates the questions that were asked whether you want to select more and whether the scanning happens recursively. I found myself practically always just selecting a single folder, and always scanning it recursively, so the questions that were ask were just annoying.

 

 

[Andreas Roth 607]

Hah, using the hamburger icon as an indicator is a pretty good idea! 20 years ago, nobody would have recognized this, but today, it's commonly used everywhere.

[Simizen 1,098]

Okay, so, not exactly sure where to post this, because it affects 2 mods at once, but, wanted to point out that this mod's overiding stuff from AMPS a little bit. So, basically, as you open up the power menu, there's supposed to be a ton of stuff "locked" until ready, but seems there's a bunch that's just auto unlocked.

However, I must also point out some things here:

• I do have a bunch of power utility lots running alongside it
• I also have CAM and a couple other mods running alongside it

in theory, these shouldn't be causing issues, but idk. I'll have to work on doing a deep dive into it later (not really enough time for it atm).

But, because of this, idk if there's any actual conflicts between the submenu mod and AMPS, but I figured I'd at least bring it up, cause from what I can remember, it was fixed (though, possibly only partially fixed), and figured I'd at least bring up a note of it.

So, I guess mostly I'm just needing confirmation of whether or not this was actually taken care of, or if maybe it just never was and I thought it was. This of course may mean that it's not a bug. But, regardless, I figured it wouldn't hurt to document it, so we it can at least be tracked, if nothing else

[Simizen 1,098]

okay, good news!! bunch of the lots that were supposed to be locked, are in fact locked; there's some others that aren't, but I think they're being overridden by another mod. And I think that's what was causing the issues for me

[kergelen 730]

On 29/1/2025 at 11:09 PM, smf_16 said:

Hi all,

I released an update to my sc4 cli (v0.2.15) which adds two things that are relevant for submenus:

• It's now possible to create submenus for flora as well. Apparently I didn't implement this initially, but it works now.
• The gui for creating an icon now gives you the option to add a hamburger icon in the upper-left corner to indicate that this will open a submenu. It is white by default, but you can customize the color for light icons. Beware that no layers are stored for the icon, so once you add the hamburger and save the .dat file, you can't remove it anymore if you don't have a backup! As you can see on the screenshot below, I've also added the option to save the icon as a .png.
  
  

 

I also made some slight changes to the submenu creation flow. You can now only select a single folder where all the lots or flora items should be located in, and it will always be scanned recursively. This eliminates the questions that were asked whether you want to select more and whether the scanning happens recursively. I found myself practically always just selecting a single folder, and always scanning it recursively, so the questions that were ask were just annoying.

 

 

Wow!! Thanks a lot for create SC4 cli Tool.

It makes so easy to create submenus, submenu icon and add lots to it. I've just created my first submenu

[memo 1,445]

On 1/28/2025 at 2:16 PM, Paulus said:

I also noticed that no .log file is created after running the game. Could this indicate some underlying problem with the functionality of the ResourceLoadingHooks DLL?

No, this means the DLL itself didn't load properly. Usually, this means either the DLL is not in the root directory of your Plugins folder, or the x86 redistributable is not installed properly as dependency. Usually it should be pre-installed on Windows 11, but I'm not completely sure, as I don't have that operating system. Which other DLLs does your game load successfully from your Plugins?

[smf_16 1,835]

For everyone following this thread, I wanted to mention that I've created a separate topic for my community submenus project that I briefly talked about already before:

 

[Rady 94]

I have a stunning problem: I've been using this mod for some time now, and have already created a lot of submenus. However, the submenus I created yesterday won't show up ingame. (Beside others) I added a "Breakwater" submenu to the standard Water Transit\Seawalls submenu. I have included an example of both the submenu file as well as the patch file. Happy if I can solve this mistery here :-)

OK: Upload seems not been working for dat files .. so here's the download link.

"Standard" sewall submenu file

Breakwater submenu patch

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

4 hours ago, Rady said:

OK: Upload seems not been working for dat files

Grrr.

Did it throw any specific error?

We have had some combinations when CleanTalk freaks out and gets overly protective. This might be one of them, but it has to be more esoteric for the conditions as someone else uploaded a .dat a little while ago in another thread without the board software interfering.

Edit: It could be something really weird like part of the filename trips it up. There was a previous problem when anything containing "eval" (such as evaluate) was being rejected.

Maybe try a completely different filename and then if that works let us know what the prior name was.

Edit Too: CB did a Cloudflare cache purge which can also help with something like this. Please try your original .dat file attachment and let us know.

[Andreas Roth 607]

Since I don't know which lots are placed in the submenu, and IIRC, a submenu without entries doesn't show up in the game, I can only compare the files with mine. What I saw is that the LTEXT file for the menu description (linked with the Item Description Key) is missing, maybe that's the culprit.

[Rady 94]

9 hours ago, Andreas Roth said:

Since I don't know which lots are placed in the submenu, and IIRC, a submenu without entries doesn't show up in the game, I can only compare the files with mine. What I saw is that the LTEXT file for the menu description (linked with the Item Description Key) is missing, maybe that's the culprit.

Right ... in order to do a makeover of these submenus .. how can I delete a submenu entry? Or will it be sufficient to just re-create a submenu with the very same name?

[smf_16 1,835]

Just delete the faulty .dat files for the patches and the menu buttons from your Plugins folder and replace them with the newly generated ones.

[Rady 94]

14 hours ago, Rady said:

I have a stunning problem: I've been using this mod for some time now, and have already created a lot of submenus. However, the submenus I created yesterday won't show up ingame. (Beside others) I added a "Breakwater" submenu to the standard Water Transit\Seawalls submenu. I have included an example of both the submenu file as well as the patch file. Happy if I can solve this mistery here :-)

OK: Upload seems not been working for dat files .. so here's the download link.

"Standard" sewall submenu file

Breakwater submenu patch

Found out what happened. Upon creation, the custom submenu files are been placed into the plugin root folder, and I just forgot to move them to the submenu folder :-)

[Paulus 195]

On 31-1-2025 at 9:36 PM, memo said:

No, this means the DLL itself didn't load properly. Usually, this means either the DLL is not in the root directory of your Plugins folder, or the x86 redistributable is not installed properly as dependency. Usually it should be pre-installed on Windows 11, but I'm not completely sure, as I don't have that operating system. Which other DLLs does your game load successfully from your Plugins?

Thanks for your help and for this amazing mod. Somehow, after a lot of reinstalling and tinkering with this redistributable, I got the mod to work. So I am happy and will get to work now!

[Rady 94]

I'm experiencing trouble with this mod in combination with custom lot icons. I created custom icons for riigas Asphalt Path Set, as with the original icons you cannot see the type of lot (T, curve, ...). After modifying the SC4Lot-files, I copied them both to my plugins folder as well as to my folder that represents my submenu structure. After that, I startet sc4 tool and added all the lots to the submenu, then copied the submenu_patch.dat-file to my plugins folder. Finally, I compressed everything using DatPacker.

when running SC4, the submenus show up as intended, but the lots still have the old icon.

When running SC4 without the custom submenus, the lot has the new icon.

 

I tried both to have the submenus within the sc4pac folder structure and datpack them, as well as having the submenu folders unpacked in my plugins folder.

 

[Wiimeiser 444]

Seems like it's a case of wholesale file overriding, like how you can only override the controller file once.

[Rady 94]

10 hours ago, Wiimeiser said:

Seems like it's a case of wholesale file overriding, like how you can only override the controller file once.

IIUC, you say that I can either have the Submenu override or the icon override?

[Andreas Roth 607]

You should make yourself familiar about SC4's loading order. Whenever you create a file that replaces other content, you need to make sure it loads later than the original file. This is also true for the submenu patches. When you datpack stuff, it might merge files in a way that not the replacement files get merged, but the original ones. It doesn't really make sense to datpack files that were meant as an override, though. If you want datpacked files, you'll better edit the original files themselves, such as inserting your new icons in riiga's asphalt set first. Ideally, the submenu patch should go into the same folder as the lot files, maybe with a "z_" prefix, so it loads last (though I cannot tell if the DatPacker picks that up properly everytime). Using @Null 45's Startup Performance Optimization DLL should make datpacking superfluous in most cases anyway.

[Rady 94]

Yes, I understand the loading order aspect. What I don't understand is where the Submenu DLL retrieves the icon from. Let me explaing how I'm using the Submenu DLL mod:

As I want to really organize my submenus, I have a folder named "Plugins for submenus". Within this folder, I'm organizing my plugins per type (e.g. Parks, Seawalls, ...). As you can only add a complete folder to a submenu (not a subfolder), I also have different folders e.g. for different seawalls. Thus I'm able to create a clear submenu structure ingame. Within these folders are the respective files of the custom content.

I then run sc4 tool using this folder structure to create the submenu patches that I then copy to the Submenu folder of the real Plugins folder (the submenu folder is located in the root of the plugins folder).

No here comes the point I don't understand: what exactly happens when creating a submenu patch? As far as I understood this mod, the submenu_patch.dat only contains the reference to the respectice dat files that are grouped within that submenu. This would mean the ingame lot icon would be derived from the .dat-file within the plugins folder. In that case, the .dat-file would exist only once, thus the loading order is irrelevant.

Or does the submenu_patch.dat also contain the very .dat-files that are grouped within it?

However, either case - I have the modified SC4Lot-files of riigas Asphalt Paths both in the Submenu folder as well as the Plugin folder. So loading order should be of no relevance.

 

Thanks anyways for pointing me to the Startup Performance mod .. I'll give it a try .. would sure be a big improvement to get rid of the datpacking procedure :-)

 

 

EDIT: They are here! I can see 'em!!!  Seems datpacking was the problem somehow. I would never the less be interested in the answer to my question raised above  Thankyou!

  Edited February 23, 2025 by Rady  
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