Submenus DLL

[Simizen 1,098]

So, couple things

1: didn't know the zones menu could house ploppable lots, so, that's pretty cool! That would free stuff up greatly elsewhere. Though I wouldn't have any objections to them being in the Landmarks menu if it ever comes down to that.

2: the transit ones are definitely looking good. But for sure, before the mod is made or, at the very least, whenever it is made, we should certainly leave out the transportation stuff till the NAM team catches up with it on their end. (beginning to sound like a broken record here, forgive me for that). But only bringing this up, cause, while we've probably only got a few things left to sort out, we could probably enable certain ones to test out.

Basically, idea would be that we could probably make a good chunk of this already.

But, of course, something else to consider is that, for me personally, I'd love to see this mod become universal. Like, as in, it shouldn't matter how you play or any other mod, it should be an easy thing to grab and toss into the game. Sure, CAM and SPAM conflict if you use them, but I'd love to see this be useful immediately for CAM, SPAM, and Vanilla, straight out of the box. I know @Ulisse Wolf mentioned previously that he'd like for it to not be finalized yet, or for our stuff to go too far (and I completely respect that), but I do feel that his work with CAM should definitely be included if possible, so as to help make this mod more universal.

Now, granted, I did say we could start making this mod kinda soonish even without being finalized properly, I do have to say though, that if the CAM project is rather extensive, then we should absolutely wait until we've got clearance from that before starting.

Unlike NAM, CAM is rather extensive and affects quite a bit more of the game at the start. NAM is primarily relegated to the transportation menus, and at that, strictly everything that isn't either Seaports or Airports (with maybe an exception or two due to Maxis design somewhere). So, leaving all the NAM stuff to NAM, as well as the Airport stuff to the airport guys, is pretty easy to do in comparison to CAM, where we pretty much can't leave CAM to anything "CAM" at that point, since the majority (if not all) of the menus would then be affected.

Of course, there's a good possibility that SPAM could cause issues too, but if I'm understanding the current CAM project correctly, it's aiming to merge and/or correct stuff regarding SPAM as well. Though that could potentially still leave vanilla SPAM out in the process. Though, I'm also not quite sure of how popular SPAM currently is, due to the fact that on both here and the SC4D forums (if they're still accessible at this point, not sure), there's plenty of people wishing both were merged together so they could take advantage of everything and enjoy it all with a minimum amount of side effects. So this could alter the priority regarding vanilla SPAM.

Thankfully AMPS and IRM are both pretty well self contained, and with my understanding of how the Power Menus are going to be, it'll pretty much contain everything nicely. Worst case, we'd need to add a couple minor submenus post-release, and even then, it'd only be for those using AMPS anyway.

also, fyi: if any of this sounds stupid or ridiculous right now, I'm pretty sure my brain is fried, and that it's just not caught up to me yet, lol. So forgive me for that if so.

 

5 hours ago, Jidan said:

tho we defo really need something like a DAMN Manager for submenus

I have a thought on this

Super simple if I'm thinking clearly enough for this: .ini files

Okay, so, basically @Null 45's made a handful of DLLs for us already, but they all come with INI files. In these files, we just turn things on/off as needed. So, like, for example you get the GraphicsOptions.dll, but also you get the GraphicsOptions.ini. So in the ini, you can change the Intro Video, Screen Res, etc, and you can customize it to what you feel comfortable with.

So here, if we did the same thing, we could probably have options to turn on/off ALL the different submenus. So, it wouldn't matter if we gave you some reasonable ones, like what the Power and Garbage menus have, you could still turn them off if you so desire. But of course, as more, common submenus pop up over time (probably the level 2 submenus), they could all be added, and many can be left in a default "off" state until a player wishes to activate them.

So, for example, lets say we've already got all the key ones done, but then, someone adds in a "Zepplins" or "Airship" submenu under the Airports menu. While this may be a L1S, we could still turn it on/off as needed.

 

Oh, which reminds me actually:

7 hours ago, memo said:

Landmarks:

• Government
• Entertainment (theaters, operas, cinemas, stadiums, night clubs, etc.)
• Religion (Churches cemetries)
• …

so, possible addition here, or, alternatively under Utiliites: we should have Telecoms. Basically this would cover all the TV, radio, cellular, etc, structures.

Unfortunately, idk if there's really that many lots like this. I can think of @Simmer2's radio and cell tower lots that could fit this easily. I'd also put the Doppler Radar in here too, but that may also be best sitting in with the Airports menu.

But I am curious, is it possible to add an extra menu option to the main menu?

Like, under utilities, we've got: Power, Water, Garbage, is it possible to add one for communication, or is there a protection in it?

[memo 1,444]

7 hours ago, Tyberius06 said:

With the landmark menu it's hard to decide a good approach. […] but what about the rest? Just asking. I have zero idea how it would be good to organize them.

I, too, am not too sure what our requirements for the landmarks menu are precisely, as I used to keep that menu short for my own game.

7 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Basic submenu options should be provided that cover most areas.  But the idea of editing all of the popular lots to fit a preordained category is exhausting and, frankly, probably not necessary.  Anyone using this mod is probably going to use it to customize their game.

Indeed, it sure sounds like an incredible amount of work to update existing uploads to fit into these submenu categories. Though, if many people customize the menus for their own use, I hope we can collaborate and share the work, so that everyone can benefit from it. A standardized set of menus would be the basis for that.

41 minutes ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

But I am curious, is it possible to add an extra menu option to the main menu?

Like, under utilities, we've got: Power, Water, Garbage, is it possible to add one for communication, or is there a protection in it?

Yes, in fact this would have been much easier to implement, but it has a massive drawback. The appearance of each static main menu is defined in a single UI file. You can only load one UI file per menu, so this is not extensible – you cannot have two independent mods adding different buttons – there can only be one such mod. Additionally, UI replacement mods would need to be updated accordingly. So currently I think this is best avoided.

[Propfam 2,288]

1 hour ago, memo said:

The appearance of each static main menu is defined in a single UI file. You can only load one UI file per menu, so this is not extensible – you cannot have two independent mods adding different buttons

What about if we use the same code as building lists? I mean, you could make the listing as 1 column like we have now or 2 columns. Afaik, Cori and Raymond experimented this in the past when trying to add submenus. So, we essentially implement dynamic loading menu options. The problem is again, it requires UI tweak. But once done, it should be compatible with every UI mod and of course, extensible.

Sorry if my explanation sounds like cyclical.

[Panda 209]

11 hours ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

so, possible addition here, or, alternatively under Utiliites: we should have Telecoms. Basically this would cover all the TV, radio, cellular, etc, structures.

I agree that those types of objects don't really fit with the base game categories well. However, right now my understanding is we are trying to reach a consensus on broad categories that will have the most impact with the fewest categories. I think something like communication towers and other telecom equipment might be so narrow in scope that it would be better as a nested subcategory.

Main Tools Menu - by Maxis - Landscape, Zoning, Utilities, Civic Menu, etc.)

↳ Base game Categories - by Maxis - Landmarks, Rewards, Parks, etc.)

↳ Tier 1 Submenus - by consensus - Broad categories to be discussed and decided for general adoption and included with the Submenus DLL

↳ Tier 2 Submenus - by individual mod authors or users - Narrow categories, not included with the DLL base pack, for specific mods, packs, categories, or whatever. Go wild!

So hypothetically, for telecom towers the menu might look something like this: Civic -> Power -> Substations/Poles/Misc -> Telecom

[Simizen 1,098]

That's fair. It was just a thought that came to mind last night when writing. I kinda figured it'd be a bit too narrow a selection for it's own L1 submenu. I just know occasionally, I have to remember not to go too deep into the possible submenu options cause of how general we're attempting to be with them.

[atsf189 460]

I tried to make this submenu the first item in the garbage menu but it will not go above the garbage zone icon.

Does the game reserve spot 1 for the zone in this menu?

[Simizen 1,098]

quite possible. But more likely, it's got an ID of some kind that always puts it up top.

I think it's in conjunction with our understanding of the Zones menu, where we were sure you couldn't add anything to that one, until it was mentioned in a previous comment that we actually could add submenus to that list. Just the zones would inevitably take maximum priority.

[nos.17 5,120]

On 3/7/2024 at 5:24 PM, Tyberius06 said:

Ploppable items doesn't really have density. The Density would show up for growables in the LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes line, but for plops it's just simply Plopped Building. So the wealth would be better and in that case for example the Commercial Officies start with medium (Co$$) they don't have low wealth. 

The idea I had for grouping these by "density" was more of a visual one than anything related to a specific game property. If I'm plopping buildings, do I want a "low density" gas station, corner store, shop, etc, a mid rise building, or a high rise building. I was going to say that to me that would be more important than the wealth, but now that I'm writing this I'm not so sure any more.

[memo 1,444]

8 hours ago, atsf189 said:

I tried to make this submenu the first item in the garbage menu but it will not go above the garbage zone icon.

Does the game reserve spot 1 for the zone in this menu?

Have you tried to use negative numbers for the Item Order property yet? You can use them to move items to the top, by counting down from 0xffffffff (-1), 0xfffffffe (-2), etc.

[Propfam 2,288]

11 hours ago, nos.17 said:

The idea I had for grouping these by "density" was more of a visual one than anything related to a specific game property. If I'm plopping buildings, do I want a "low density" gas station, corner store, shop, etc, a mid rise building, or a high rise building. I was going to say that to me that would be more important than the wealth, but now that I'm writing this I'm not so sure any more.

Not to be that guy but ploppable growables should stay in a modified buildingplop/lotplop dialog. It's just a huge can of worms if we put it into the standard/Maxis menu.

[nos.17 5,120]

3 hours ago, Jidan said:

Not to be that guy but ploppable growables should stay in a modified buildingplop/lotplop dialog. It's just a huge can of worms if we put it into the standard/Maxis menu.

I agree with this, but I was talking about stuff that was modded as a non growable building and was thrown into the landmarks menu just because there was no other good place for them to go.

[Simizen 1,098]

On 3/6/2024 at 5:28 PM, Panda said:

I'm working on the parks menu buttons and would like some input on the plazas. I started with a more symbolic representation but I didn't feel like it is reading as strongly as I'd like so I created an option with more context. I've mocked up a few prototypes and am curious which option people prefer.

1. Square paving pattern

2. Wavy paving pattern

3. Rotated wavy paving pattern

4. Plaza with urban context

So, was looking at some other lots on the STEX, and it just occured to me that there's a better icon that we can use for these: Fountain. Plazas typically have fountains. While some parks will, they typically have ponds for their water source, but businesses everywhere, when they've got a spot for hanging out, it's almost always a fountain.

Otherwise, still sticking with #1 xD

[Panda 209]

Here's an update on the sub-menu buttons:

Ploppable Commercial:

Commercial Services - low wealth

Commercial Services - medium wealth

Commercial Services - high wealth

Commercial Office - medium wealth

Commercial Office - high wealth

I split the buttons by wealth category rather than density, but I think they could work for either. If the final list is split by density, I can add an extra low density commercial office later on.

Industrial:

Industrial Agricultural

Industrial Dirty

Industrial Manufacturing

Industrial High Tech

I received some feedback on the University and College button. Previously I had a stylized "U" in a typical American collegiate lettering. The alternative button is more in line with the other building icons I've been creating and is a symbolic representation of a typical university building.

Alternate Colleges and Universities

Original Colleges and Universities

As always, I appreciate feedback. Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions. I'm currently using the 2nd revision of the submenu master list as updated by memo as a guide. While I understand this is still a work in process list, at this point I think most of the categories are close enough to give me direction. In the next few days I plan to work on the parks sub-menu items.

 

[Panda 209]

14 minutes ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

So, was looking at some other lots on the STEX, and it just occured to me that there's a better icon that we can use for these: Fountain. Plazas typically have fountains. While some parks will, they typically have ponds for their water source, but businesses everywhere, when they've got a spot for hanging out, it's almost always a fountain.

Otherwise, still sticking with #1 xD

A fountain would make an excellent symbol for plazas. I'll update the plaza button when I work on the other parks items.

[Kel9509 1,363]

6 minutes ago, Panda said:

While I understand this is still a work in process list, at this point I think most of the categories are close enough to give me direction. Int he next few days I plan to work on the parks sub-menu items.

Those are excellent icons!  I think your efforts are going a long way towards moving this mod along for a lot of people, and it is greatly appreciated.

[Simizen 1,098]

7 minutes ago, Panda said:

Here's an update on the sub-menu buttons:

Ploppable Commercial:

Commercial Services - low wealth

Commercial Services - medium wealth

Commercial Services - high wealth

Commercial Office - medium wealth

Commercial Office - high wealth

I split the buttons by wealth category rather than density, but I think they could work for either. If the final list is split by density, I can add an extra low density commercial office later on.

Industrial:

Industrial Agricultural

Industrial Dirty

Industrial Manufacturing

Industrial High Tech

I received some feedback on the University and College button. Previously I had a stylized "U" in a typical American collegiate lettering. The alternative button is more in line with the other building icons I've been creating and is a symbolic representation of a typical university building.

Alternate Colleges and Universities

Original Colleges and Universities

As always, I appreciate feedback. Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions. I'm currently using the 2nd revision of the submenu master list as updated by memo as a guide. While I understand this is still a work in process list, at this point I think most of the categories are close enough to give me direction. Int he next few days I plan to work on the parks sub-menu items.

 

these are looking great!!

I do love the design you chose for the Colleges & Universities. While there's not necessarily anything wrong with the typical lettering, it just kinda sticks out a bit for me.

Something I'd like to suggest is to keep the extra versions, and then set them aside as a separate option so that people can grab those and use them if they wish. I'm not entirely sure how easy/hard it is to change things like that, but if it turns out that all we need to do is just swap out a file name either in a potential '.ini' file or even just the image name itself (say for the university icon to load it must be named "university.png" for example), then people could switch out to whatever they'd like.

10 minutes ago, Panda said:

A fountain would make an excellent symbol for plazas. I'll update the plaza button when I work on the other parks items.

looking forward to it!

lol, I legitimately don't know why this never came to mind before, but it's kinda like the thing for plazas. Simple, yet informative imo.

[trar 334]

This is an incredible mod, I've basically cleaned out my plugins of everything that's not NAM/IRM/game fixes for this. I guess you guys are still working out the details of how it'll work, and I'll admit I'm a bit out of the loop; will it be something that's automatically applied to mods (which would be an absolute dream), or something the modder will have to configure, or something players will have to configure, or something of all three?

[Propfam 2,288]

19 minutes ago, trar said:

will it be something that's automatically applied to mods (which would be an absolute dream), or something the modder will have to configure, or something players will have to configure, or something of all three?

More like the 2nd. We can't even figure out auto-DAMN, let alone this mess called submenus. If everyone here has a skill in machine learning, feel free to make such feature.

[Simizen 1,098]

32 minutes ago, trar said:

I'll admit I'm a bit out of the loop; will it be something that's automatically applied to mods (which would be an absolute dream), or something the modder will have to configure, or something players will have to configure, or something of all three?

currently, it's a bit of a mix. My understanding is that it's not an automatic feature, or at least, it won't exactly be an automatic feature. But, to try and keep it simple:

• anyone can make their own submenus for anything they want (primarily for personal use; though common repeats might get merged in)
• modders will need to configure their own lots, MMPs, etc to fit if they so desire
• the current version intended for public release is meant to be relatively universal, by being rather broad in it's categories
• NAM will make their own submenus
• CAM likely will make it's own submenus
• the Airport gurus will make their own (and omg how do y'all live with that menu, jesus....)

my (personal) hope is that this mod will be as universal as it can get for the game. Meaning that it shouldn't conflict with any of the other mods be it CAM, SPAM, NAM, IRM, AMPS, etc, save for DAMN and the DAMN Manager, as they'll be made obsolete by this. However, if there's a serious conflict within the topic regarding the menus, it may result in CAM relying on it's own submenus, which would mean that you'd have to swap them out if you play CAM vs vanilla or anything else.

I'm inclined to have CAM, NAM, and the Airport team sort out what they want before anything we suggest gets added, so as to help it become more universal in nature.

And to clarify a couple things (just in case):

While anyone can make whatever submenus they want, there's basically only going to be one officially supported submenu mod. However, if certain submenus are used regularly by enough people, then I believe they'll end up getting merged into the official set. Though, I should say, since I'm not the one doing it myself, I do not know the accuracy of this. But it was brought up in a previous post, so it seems reasonable.

And the only other thing to say is: I ended up needing to download one of the airport packs cause someone posted a link to a couple zepplin mods, and I wanted to check them out, and one of them required the airport pack, and omg, I've never seen such an endless menu before, lol. So, yeah... just gonna let the airport guys do their thing. xD

Oh, but one other thing, basically, from my understanding, most of the mods that people use, will end up getting updated in someway, to allow for proper sorting in the submenus. It won't be all at once due to so many mods, but I think quite a few will be done pretty quickly. But after that, anything new can very easily be given the matching information in it's file with very little issue/effort.

So once the initial public version is complete, we'll likely see a handful of new mods be given submenu info upon release.

Anyway, hope that helps clear it up

[atsf189 460]

On 3/9/2024 at 12:24 AM, memo said:

Have you tried to use negative numbers

The negative numbers worked.

Thank You

[11241036 5,097]

Forgive me to just butt in into this conversation, but there's a little issue I've stumbled upon that I'd like to report.

In the last days, I've been trying out this new DLL, and as for buildings, it seems to work pretty fine so far. However, I can't get it to work with MMP's. I made sure that all submenus have an Item Submenu Parent ID property pointing either to the ID 0x4a22ea06, as mentioned by the Readme, or to other submenus. Also, I gave all submenu exemplar files the Item Button Class property with a value of 4. Furthermore, some MMP's also got a Building Submenu property pointing to an existing submenu.

This doesn't seem to have any effect at all. The MMP's are still listed in my mayor mode menu, and the submenus themselves don't show up at all in my MMP menu. Below are some screenshots, if this is of any help.

 

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

18 hours ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

my (personal) hope is that this mod will be as universal as it can get for the game. Meaning that it shouldn't conflict with any of the other mods be it CAM, SPAM, NAM, IRM, AMPS, etc, save for DAMN and the DAMN Manager, as they'll be made obsolete by this. However, if there's a serious conflict within the topic regarding the menus, it may result in CAM relying on it's own submenus, which would mean that you'd have to swap them out if you play CAM vs vanilla or anything else.

 

Currently the current proposal of the various submenus seems good to me for civic services but for public services it seems very messy and so there is a potential risk of separation between the mod that is supposed to be universal and the CAM that I am working on to perform the merger with AMPS (Currently under consideration is the possibility of creating a DLL mod that succeeds in reducing the use of LUA and thus IIDs for power plants.)

So, trying to come to terms with everyone, I came up with this

Energy

• Non-renewable power plants ( from this primary submenu, CAM will have secondary submenus that separate power plants based on the resource used)
• Renewable power plants ( from this primary submenu, CAM will have secondary submenus that separate power plants based on the resource used )
• Substation
• Power lines
• Miscellaneous (Here we can put other unclassifiable things like telecommunications although with a mod DLL we could introduce the mechanics of telecommunications but doing so will greatly delay the release of CAM 2.5)

Water

• Aquifer
• Fresh water
• Salt water
• Wastewater treatment
• Miscellaneous ( we can put accessories such as aqueducts on the surface)

Garbage

• Recycling center
• Incinerators (?)
• Waste-to-energy ( I think it can be put in the energy section)
• Air purifiers
• Miscellaneous

18 hours ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

And the only other thing to say is: I ended up needing to download one of the airport packs cause someone posted a link to a couple zepplin mods, and I wanted to check them out, and one of them required the airport pack, and omg, I've never seen such an endless menu before, lol. So, yeah... just gonna let the airport guys do their thing. xD

The next expansion of the modpack will be more ugly that is why the release of the submenus was a good thing. But the airports submenu will only be released in the airports modpack for obvious reasons.

Now this is my personal opinion as with the introduction of submenus I had thought that we can completely dismantle the current vanilla UI to create a modernized version of the UI and release a UI Development Kit so we can create different UI styles and include support for 2K and 4K resolutions

[trar 334]

19 hours ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

Anyway, hope that helps clear it up

It's sounding like I'll have to go and edit all the ploppable mod buildings I have to fit into submenus.

[atsf189 460]

1 hour ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

Waste-to-energy ( I think it can be put in the energy section)

I keep mine under garbage since the original game had the game one there.

The other categories look good.

[atsf189 460]

2 hours ago, 11241036 said:

Button Class property with a value of 4

Did you try 2 instead of 4?

I have not done any flora items but I would try a value of 2 and see if that works

[Simizen 1,098]

2 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

Now this is my personal opinion as with the introduction of submenus I had thought that we can completely dismantle the current vanilla UI to create a modernized version of the UI and release a UI Development Kit so we can create different UI styles and include support for 2K and 4K resolutions

I do like this idea, cause I've felt that we've needed to kinda push more towards encouraging HD and 4K/UHD resolutions for the game. The idea with that was more for the OpenSC4 projects, but I figured having higher res stuff in general wouldn't hurt in case we could convince the game to accept it for like trees and lots mostly.

If we're able to completely overhaul the UI and give it HD/UHD resolution/textures, that would be absolutely wonderful.

2 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

So, trying to come to terms with everyone, I came up with this

Energy

• Non-renewable power plants ( from this primary submenu, CAM will have secondary submenus that separate power plants based on the resource used)
• Renewable power plants ( from this primary submenu, CAM will have secondary submenus that separate power plants based on the resource used )
• Substation
• Power lines
• Miscellaneous (Here we can put other unclassifiable things like telecommunications although with a mod DLL we could introduce the mechanics of telecommunications but doing so will greatly delay the release of CAM 2.5)

Water

• Aquifer
• Fresh water
• Salt water
• Wastewater treatment
• Miscellaneous ( we can put accessories such as aqueducts on the surface)

Garbage

• Recycling center
• Incinerators (?)
• Waste-to-energy ( I think it can be put in the energy section)
• Air purifiers
• Miscellaneous

This seems pretty reasonable imo. And you might be right about moving the Waste-to-Energy plants being moved to power rather than kept in garbage. Kinda seems like it belongs there more than in garbage really, lol

Bout the only thing I can really think of here would be merging Power Lines with the Miscellaneous menu. I'm assuming it's referencing the power line lots in this instance, which most seem to be more or less eye-candy type stuff anyway. But if there's enough power line lots, I could definitely see them having their own submenu. It's been a while since I used the power line stuff so idk how big any of that actually is.

The only other concern I've got, is just the extra menus that might not necessarily be filled in a typical modded non-CAM game. But, I feel that this could be easily solved if it's possible to get the DLL to allow internal switches to turn everything on/off and let the lots that use the code that sorts it into the then unused submenus, to be allowed through. Uh, basically, if say there's a lot that shows up with the submenu ID of 5, and that option isn't active due to being a CAM submenu, then a player could switch the CAM part off, and the DLL would flip the lot from 5 to 0.

So I guess maybe the concern is more with just being able to switch things on and off really, cause the menus themselves don't seem to have any problems.

2 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

Here we can put other unclassifiable things like telecommunications although with a mod DLL we could introduce the mechanics of telecommunications but doing so will greatly delay the release of CAM 2.5

I'm content with waiting on this being added until after CAM 2.5. I imagine there's already quite a bit of work involved with just the 2.5 version, nevermind the fact that we just complicated it with the Submenu.DLL mod, lol

[Panda 209]

I worked on additional buttons for the parks menu:

Green Spaces (I'm not quite satisfied how this turned out and may revise it in the future)

Green Spaces (An option with a pop of color. Most of the Maxis buttons are white, but some icons, such as in the zoning menu, use color sparingly.)

The revised plaza button, now with a fountain.

Sport fields

Modular paths and park pieces

Filler Lots

Any thoughts are welcome. I'd especially like feedback on the green spaces button. I've tried several iterations and have not found a solution I'm happy with yet, so I'm open to suggestions.

[Propfam 2,288]

Just now, Panda said:

I worked on additional buttons for the parks menu:

Green Spaces (I'm not quite satisfied how this turned out and may revise it in the future)

Green Spaces (An option with a pop of color. Most of the Maxis buttons are white, but some icons, such as in the zoning menu, use color sparingly.)

The revised plaza button, now with a fountain.

Sport fields

Modular paths and park pieces

Filler Lots

Any thoughts are welcome. I'd especially like feedback on the green spaces button. I've tried several iterations and have not found a solution I'm happy with yet, so I'm open to suggestions.

The plaza is a bit un-Maxisy. I'm not saying we should go back to square one. But, maybe, make it a bit simpler.

For the color pop, I disagree since again, un-Maxisy. Would be reserved for custom UI, tho.

[Simizen 1,098]

my idea for the green spaces: just give the tree a trunk really, lol

But I've got a question: there's 4 icons, grey means disabled, and the white outline meaning active/currently selected. So I imagine the following from left to right:

• disabled (grey)
• enabled?
• highlight?
• selected (white outline)

If so, then my question is, would it be possible to give these icons their color when we hover over them and highlight them? I feel that giving these icons some slight color would be nice, rather than to stick with just the default white. I mean the white of course would be themed accordingly, but I think maybe the colors would help people identify what they're working with a little better.

I imagine the colors would simply activate on rollover and when the icon is active/selected, and then the inactive and disabled would remain their default colors.

Granted, this would end up meaning that more icons would need to be made to have everything match accordingly, but of course, that magnifies the amount of work needing to be done.

And an alternative for the green spaces menu is you could use the 3k Parks menu icon, which is just 3 balloons, lol. Found this over on SimCity Fandom, in case you need a reference for it.

[Propfam 2,288]

4 minutes ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

Found this over on SimCity Fandom,

And got a picture of placeholder with some shine for some reason. Don't believe it? Check it lol.

Btw, this is the correct link: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/SimCity/images/a/a9/Example.jpg/

Anyway, nice suggestion. I agree that color should pop when hovered and clicked.