Let's write our own SC4 Building Styles

[Propfam 2,292]

On 28/10/2024 at 10:11 PM, matias93 said:

I thought of Mexico City 1965 as an alternative, which could serve as a proxy for brutalism as an architectural style, but I don't know if that would be adequately representative of the region at large, though certainly there are buildings of the style in almost every Latin American capital.

Or maybe, Brazillia 1950 since it's the place of Oscar Neimeyer's works, including the city itself, which is part of the World's Heritage. He's so influential not just in his region, but also almost single handedly kickstarted the entire brutalist movement along with the famous Le Corbuzier.

[matias93 7,535]

2 hours ago, Jidan said:

Or maybe, Brazillia 1950 since it's the place of Oscar Neimeyer's works, including the city itself, which is part of the World's Heritage. He's so influential not just in his region, but also almost single handedly kickstarted the entire brutalist movement along with the famous Le Corbuzier.

Thought of it, but it's not very representative of the region at large, and very similar to the other styles that Jason proposed. It has the advantage of a better name recognition though.

[Jasoncw 11,933]

@matias93 The main distinctive kinds of buildings I think of for the Latin American tileset are colorful residential pencil towers, houses with walls/fences, townhouses/shops, and also building materials, like concrete frames with exposed blocks, or plastered or tiled, and metal or tile roofs. When I looked closely at Latin American cities in Google Maps I was surprised at how many cities were lacking in one of those things or another. Mexico City is almost entirely lowrises, and Rio and Santiago's towers look European.

La Paz is appealing because it avoids the name being too Brazil-centric or Mexico-centric. The central area of La Paz does seem to have all of the elements I think of, although everything outside of that area seems to be dominated by those R$ block houses.

Sao Paulo seems to have a lot of the buildings that I personally think of when I think of Latin American cities. Spots like here or here. It also has more name recognition. On some level, as long as it is a Latin American city, people will understand what the tileset means, and La Paz isn't a very well known city internationally.

 

Aside from the name, there's an issue with the two regional tilesets on how to handle non-regional buildings.

So right now, Latin American Contemporary buildings are just placed in either the Houston 1990 or Euro tilesets, and players exclude non-compatible buildings by taking them out of their plugins folder. But once they do this, they have more fine grain control over what grows, because with the Houston 1990 or Euro tilesets they can control what kinds of Latin American buildings grow.

With this tileset mod, they'll still get non-compatible buildings growing if they use the non-Latin American tilesets. So they still have to control what grows by taking things out of their plugins folder. But once that's done, they don't have control over what kinds of Latin American buildings grow, because they're all put into the same tileset.

For me as someone who is making American cities, this tileset mod means that I can keep regional buildings in my plugins folder and then grow them in selective areas where they make sense, and then turn the tileset off for the rest of the time. So it's good for someone like me. But idk how good it is for someone actually building a Latin American city, and whether or not there's something that can be done to improve that.

[matias93 7,535]

9 hours ago, Jasoncw said:

@matias93 The main distinctive kinds of buildings I think of for the Latin American tileset are colorful residential pencil towers, houses with walls/fences, townhouses/shops, and also building materials, like concrete frames with exposed blocks, or plastered or tiled, and metal or tile roofs. When I looked closely at Latin American cities in Google Maps I was surprised at how many cities were lacking in one of those things or another. Mexico City is almost entirely lowrises, and Rio and Santiago's towers look European.

La Paz is appealing because it avoids the name being too Brazil-centric or Mexico-centric. The central area of La Paz does seem to have all of the elements I think of, although everything outside of that area seems to be dominated by those R$ block houses.

Sao Paulo seems to have a lot of the buildings that I personally think of when I think of Latin American cities. Spots like here or here. It also has more name recognition. On some level, as long as it is a Latin American city, people will understand what the tileset means, and La Paz isn't a very well known city internationally.

 

Aside from the name, there's an issue with the two regional tilesets on how to handle non-regional buildings.

So right now, Latin American Contemporary buildings are just placed in either the Houston 1990 or Euro tilesets, and players exclude non-compatible buildings by taking them out of their plugins folder. But once they do this, they have more fine grain control over what grows, because with the Houston 1990 or Euro tilesets they can control what kinds of Latin American buildings grow.

With this tileset mod, they'll still get non-compatible buildings growing if they use the non-Latin American tilesets. So they still have to control what grows by taking things out of their plugins folder. But once that's done, they don't have control over what kinds of Latin American buildings grow, because they're all put into the same tileset.

For me as someone who is making American cities, this tileset mod means that I can keep regional buildings in my plugins folder and then grow them in selective areas where they make sense, and then turn the tileset off for the rest of the time. So it's good for someone like me. But idk how good it is for someone actually building a Latin American city, and whether or not there's something that can be done to improve that.

My main impression is that most cities here have enormous amounts of foreign architectural influences, so it would never be weird to find a Neotudor house, or a Italian Neoclassical palace, a small Art Deco tower, a Le Corbusier-clone apartment complex, a Brutalist government building or a postmodern commercial tower. In fact, for all of those I could think of a handful local examples, just on this city.

So, I don't think I'd be really necessary to make something to block those buildings from growing to make a Latin American city. Maybe, and just maybe, it could be useful to have other non-western styles separate (as they are), because even if you can find a North African mosque or an Indian temple or a Russian Orthodox church in a Latin American city (again all real examples), those are the kind of buildings that are plopped, not grown.

Now, if someone comes and says "hey, but I'm building a city in a fantasy country that's premised on the Catalans conquering Madagascar and thus need a mixture of Latin American, Mediterranean, Southeastern African, Persian Gulf and Indian styles", then they can, easily and tediously, make their own private building style to match.

[Edvarz 1,985]

On 4/11/2024 at 9:14 PM, Jasoncw said:

But idk how good it is for someone actually building a Latin American city, and whether or not there's something that can be done to improve that.

Hey, maybe I can offer my two cents on this, since this is basically what I've been doing for the past, like... ten years. I haven't been following the whole discussion so correct me if I get anything wrong. I think basing the tilesets by style and not historical era is the way to go, at least as someone trying to build an authentic LatAm city. The post is too long already so I'll just focus on the historic districts.

I basically group everything looking stereotipically "colonial" on the Chicago tileset, with buildings like these, these, these, or these. These technically wouldn't all be pre-industrial, since a fair amount are from the 19th century (example) and look clearly neoclassical and there's even some contemporary buildings baked into the models. With the styles proposed, these ones could either fit between the "Rome 1755" for the older more colonial looking ones and "Berlin 1915" for anything with european neoclassical/eclectic inspiration.

On the other hand, anything looking more clearly neoclassical or eclectic, like these, these or this goes to the New York tileset, where they can mix with european and suitable american BATs. With the original four tilesets these styles have to mix with art deco and some modernist buildings, but it's honestly no big deal; my reasoning is this one: these styles tend to be fairly urban (think Buenos Aires, Santiago, Colonia Roma/Condesa in Mexico City) and you tend to find them all together anyway. With the new styles we'd gain the ability to group anything looking like it's from, say, the 1800's to 1920's in the "Berlin 1915" style with the european buildings they take inspiration from. On the other hand, art deco buildings like this, or some of these. would be at home in the "New York 1935" tileset where they can mix with neoclassical US buildings if players want.

There could indeed be some overlap with buildings like these, these or this which aren't technically colonial or preindustrial but kinda look at home with both the colonial and the eclectic buildings, plus some of the ones I mentioned earlier. So, the conflict I see would be between deciding if something looks "colonial", "19th century" or both. However, I think this would be more of an issue for people who want a clear-cut separation of styles or want to grow period-accurate cities. If, say, you wanted to aim for an authentic LatAm city you would have both blended together anyway, so it wouldn't really matter and you'd gain the ability to separate and more accurately group the pre-1920's styles and the modernist-onward styles.

So... all this essay just to say: great idea! Of course, I'm basing most of this on Mexico, where there can be said to be a bit more marked historic separation between the period before the 1920s and the period onwards (the event separating the two being the Mexican Revolution) I'd say this would apply to architectural styles too, but I'm no art historian or architect. It'd be worthwhile if someone trying to build a different city style like Rio, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires or Santiago (I'd say @matias93 for the latter) could shed more light on this.

[Kel9509 1,475]

2 hours ago, Edvarz said:

I think basing the tilesets by style and not historical era is the way to go, at least as someone trying to build an authentic LatAm city.

That sounds fine to me.  A lot of the buildings in your examples make a lot of sense being grouped together, at least visually.

Separately, once the list of community tilesets is defined, I'd love some help on figuring out how to reclassify a lot of my downloads.  BECAUSE I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE.

[smf_16 1,836]

@Kel9509 I'm planning to add a command to my sc4 cli tool in the future that will allow you to bulk add lots to certain building styles, just like I've done with the submenus.

[Kel9509 1,475]

17 hours ago, smf_16 said:

@Kel9509 I'm planning to add a command to my sc4 cli tool in the future that will allow you to bulk add lots to certain building styles, just like I've done with the submenus.

That would be very useful.  To date, I haven't really edited any buildings to have a new style other than to show off the RCI DLL Query I made.  I'm waiting on the community styles before I go through a massive edit of my downloads.

But my concern wasn't the ability to edit as I know how to do that.  Instead, my concern is that I have no idea whether any particular building is best categorized as Modern, Post-Modern, Neo-Classical, Colonial, etc.  I mean, I see those words yet have no idea what the heck they mean.  I know enough that Art Deco is like the Empire State Building (maybe?).  But that's about the extent of my knowledge.  

[Ulisse Wolf 4,426]

Since we have been waiting to see if there is any proposal to unite everyone but so far there is not at this point we have to unblock the situation and quondi here is the poll that will have to decide the 16 community styles.

Currently there are only two proposals which are shown below.

If anyone has another proposal please write here by February 1, 2025 at 00:00 Pacific Time. All proposals received after February 1 will be discarded and a vote will be taken

Option A - Maxis Logic (@Jasoncw's proposal)

0x00002010 - Chicago 1895 (Chicago 1890) - American styles of the period. Chicago School, Beaux Arts, Richardsonian Romanesque, etc.

0x00002011 - New York 1935 (New York 1940) - American styles of the period. Art Deco, Craftsman, revival styles such as Neo-Gothic, Neoclassical, etc.

0x00002012 - Houston 1995 (Houston 1990) - Postmodernism (including "modernism as a surface aesthetic").

0x00002013 - Frankfurt 2005 (Euro Contemporary) - Modern architecture of the period. Previous Euro tileset minus what was split into others. 

0x00002014 - Rome 1755 - Pre-industrial European-based styles. Baroque, Renaissance, etc.

0x00002015 - Paris 1895 - Haussmann Paris. Second Empire, etc.

0x00002016 - Berlin 1915 - All European-based eclectic styles.

0x00002017 - Los Angeles 1965 - US-centric modern architecture. Midcentury Modern, New Formalism, etc.

0x00002018 - Rotterdam 1975 - European counterpart to LA 1965. Structuralism, high-tech, megastructures, communist, etc.

0x00002019 - Taipei 2005* - Contemporary building styles and types unique to East Asia.

0x0000201A - Sao Paulo 2005* - Contemporary building styles and types unique to Latin America.

0x0000201B - Copenhagen 2025 - Current modern architecture.

0x0000201C - Other - Catchall for all of the rare regional or historical styles. Default style for niche things which don't belong anywhere else but need a tileset assigned.

0x0000201D - Futuristic - Fictional styles of the far future.

-/-/-

Option B - Hybrid Architecture & Geography ( @Ulisse Wolf 's proposal)

0x00002010 - Commercial & Neoclassical (Chicago 1890) - From classic wooden buildings to early brick skyscrapers inspired by chicago's first school

0x00002011 - Art Deco (New York 1940) - All the buildings and styles of architecture that were inspired by the Art Deco style with luxurious and glitzy forms

0x00002012 - Post Modernism (Houston 1990) - All the buildings and styles of architecture that developed from the end of World War II to the beginning of the Third Millennium (2000)

0x00002013 - European Contemporary - All the buildings and styles of architecture respecting the current contemporary European style

0x00002014 - Mediterranean - All the buildings and styles of architecture that have shaped the Mediterranean basin

0x00002015 - West Europe (Alternatively, you can use Art Nouveau as an alternative name) - All All the European buildings and styles of architecture styles before World War II.

0x00002016 - Eastern Europe (Alternatively, you can use Soviet European as an alternative name) - All buildings and styles of architecture that characterized Eastern Europe including the Soviet style

0x00002017 - East Asia & Southeast Asia - All the buildings and styles of architecture that characterized East Asia and Southeast Asia before World War II.

0x00002018 - East Asia Contemporary - All the buildings and styles of architecture that characterized East Asia and Southeast Asia after World War II.

0x00002019 - American Contemporany - All the buildings and styles of architecture respecting the current contemporary American style

0x0000201A - Africa & Middle East - All the buildings and styles of architecture that have characterized Africa and the Middle East

0x0000201B - Latin American and Caribbean - All the buildings and styles of architecture that have characterized Latin American and Caribbean

0x0000201C - North Europe - All the buildings and styles of architecture that have characterized North Europe

0x0000201D - Central Europe - All the buildings and styles of architecture that have characterized Central Europe

0x0000201E - Hong Kong Contemporary (Alternatively, you can use Chinese style or China & Hong Kong as an alternative name) - All the buildings and styles of architecture that have characterized Modern Hong Kong and Modern China

0x0000201F - Futuristic - All the buildings and styles of architecture that have characterized Future

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

3 minutes ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

February 1, 2025 at 00:00 Pacific Time.

Once this arrives, I believe there should be a separate Poll thread.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,426]

1 minute ago, CorinaMarie said:

Once this arrives, I believe there should be a separate Poll thread.

I have already planned this.

[Andreas Roth 614]

After translating the LTEXT files for the building styles UI, I've been skimming through this thread, and the proposals that you wrapped up above seem both valid. Personally, I like Maxis' approach to name them after cities associated with a specific decade (even though they broke that scheme with the Euro contemporary style), so @Jasoncw's approach looks more friendly to the eye, I think.

Maybe the year figures could be more "rounded", though, such as "Rome 1750" or "Frankfurt 2000". I'd also say that the Maxis styles "Chicago 1890", "New York 1940" and "Houston 1990" shouldn't be renamed either. "Taipei 2005" could be "Hong Kong 2010" or so, in order to reflect the name of the HKABT better. Depending on how may BATs have been created, I'm missing a "Dubai 2020" style or similar in order to reflect the African/Middle East architecture or a "Warsaw 1950" one for the "Soviet" BATs of the Polish BAT team.

Alas, I don't know the newer content of the STEX well enough for thinking up a definitive list, but for a proper city development, each building style would have to include enough buildings from all stages and lot sizes. Most of the proposed styles surely have more than enough skyscrapers, but some of them probably lack enough small buildings. This could be fixed by assigning those to several styles in oder to fill the gaps, but obviously, this is a pretty enormous task...

[Kel9509 1,475]

35 minutes ago, Andreas Roth said:

but for a proper city development, each building style would have to include enough buildings from all stages and lot sizes.

Maybe there should be some requirements for a new building style, before they're voted on?  Like a minimum number of growable lots?

Also, I wonder if these styles should require that buildings of each zone category be grown?  Or is it ok if they're mostly residential for one and/or commercial for another?  Just throwing it out there.  There's no sense including a style that has no buildings for it.

[simmering 2,706]

8 hours ago, Andreas Roth said:

Maybe the year figures could be more "rounded", though, such as "Rome 1750" or "Frankfurt 2000". I'd also say that the Maxis styles "Chicago 1890", "New York 1940" and "Houston 1990" shouldn't be renamed either.

If I understood @Jasoncw's proposal correctly, the years end on 5 to distinguish the custom tilesets from the Maxis standard ones, which I thought, is a very elegant solution. Here is the post:

 

[amrdonna77 14]

12 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

Option B - Hybrid Architecture & Geography ( @Ulisse Wolf 's proposal)

I'm all for anything. The mod itself is to die for. 

But if I had to choose, then option B is the better choice imo. It’s way more inclusive for modders,  easier to fit different architectural styles without unnecessary restrictions and covers a much broader geographical range, including Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and different Asian regions.

It’s also just simpler and more flexible. Instead of being locked into specific historical timeframes, modders have more freedom to categorize buildings in a way that makes sense. This means it’s future-proof and can easily adapt as more content gets created.

If the goal is a system that works for everyone and allows for the most creative possibilities, I'll be voting option B. 
 

[Null 45 3,064]

11 hours ago, amrdonna77 said:

But if I had to choose, then option B is the better choice imo. It’s way more inclusive for modders,  easier to fit different architectural styles without unnecessary restrictions and covers a much broader geographical range, including Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and different Asian regions.

It’s also just simpler and more flexible. Instead of being locked into specific historical timeframes, modders have more freedom to categorize buildings in a way that makes sense. This means it’s future-proof and can easily adapt as more content gets created.

I agree. The fact that it explicitly preserves the 4 Maxis styles is also necessary for compatibility with existing mods that have not been updated for the new styles.

@Jasoncw's proposal didn't include the intended ids for each tileset, so it isn't clear how compatibility with existing mods would be handled. Based on the style names it sounds like the id mapping would be something like:

Quote

0x00002000 - Chicago 1895 (Chicago 1890) - American styles of the period. Chicago School, Beaux Arts, Richardsonian Romanesque, etc.

0x00002001 - New York 1935 (New York 1940) - American styles of the period. Art Deco, Craftsman, revival styles such as Neo-Gothic, Neoclassical, etc.

0x00002002 - Houston 1995 (Houston 1990) - Postmodernism (including "modernism as a surface aesthetic").

0x00002003 - Frankfurt 2005 (Euro Contemporary) - Modern architecture of the period. Old Euro tileset minus what was split into others. 

0x00002004 - Rome 1755 - Pre-industrial European-base styles. Baroque, Renaissance, etc.

0x00002005 - Paris 1895 - Haussmann Paris. Second Empire, etc.

0x00002006 - Berlin 1915 - All European-based eclectic styles.

0x00002007 - Stockholm 1945 - Humanistic modern styles. Suburban Stockholm, UK Council Housing. Brick boxes with sloped roofs, etc.

0x00002008 - Los Angeles 1965 - Midcentury Modern, New Formalism, etc.

0x00002009 - Rotterdam 1975 - European counterpart to LA 1965. Would also include the styles associated with Team X. Also communist styles.

0x0000200A - Taipei 2005 - East Asian Contemporary, including HKABAT and Japanese content.

0x0000200B - Copenhagen 2025 - Current modern architecture.

0x0000200C - City XXXX (Latin American Contemporary) - Building styles and types unique to Latin America.

0x0000200D - Other - Catchall for all of the rare regional or historical styles. Default style for niche things which don't belong anywhere else but need a tileset assigned.

0x0000200E - Futuristic - Fictional styles of the far future.

That list also has room to include one additional style, 0x0000200F is not used.

[Wiimeiser 445]

42 minutes ago, Null 45 said:

That list also has room to include one additional style, 0x0000200F is not used.

Might be useful as a second miscellaneous category if needed.

 

 

Will probably go for option B.

[Kel9509 1,475]

I don't view this as a consequential decision, frankly.  Anyone who doesn't like the vote here can always do things their own way in their own plugins folder.  This should really be viewed as a way to assist BATters and lotters with style choices, if needed.  And the defaults will always remain.

[Jasoncw 11,933]

1 hour ago, Null 45 said:

I agree. The fact that it explicitly preserves the 4 Maxis styles is also necessary for compatibility with existing mods that have not been updated for the new styles.

@Jasoncw's proposal didn't include the intended ids for each tileset, so it isn't clear how compatibility with existing mods would be handled. Based on the style names it sounds like the id mapping would be something like:

That list also has room to include one additional style, 0x0000200F is not used.

This is something which I did bring up earlier and which I assumed was understood to be needed for all proposals, so I haven't been paying attention to the IDs. The tilesets used for this mod need to be completely separate from the original tilesets, by the nature of the mod.

Right now all content is already in the 4 vanilla tilesets. If the mod adds a tileset for historic European buildings, and you add that tileset to the lot, then if you have the vanilla Euro tileset off and the new historic European tileset on, you will grow only historic European buildings, as intended. If you want to grow modern buildings (so you turn the new historic European tileset off and the vanilla Euro tileset on), you will grow modern buildings AND historic European buildings, because the lot still has the Euro tileset. The new tilesets break the old ones. To solve that problem you need to remove the Euro tileset from the modded lot. Which means having two separate versions of every single lot, which are incompatible with each other.

If you make the new tilesets completely new and separate from the vanilla ones (new IDs for all of them), then there are no problems. There only needs to be one version of the lot. If the player uses the mod, the new tilesets are recognized and used, and the tilesets work according to their descriptions/intents. If the player doesn't use the mod, the extra tilesets aren't recognized or used, but the vanilla ones are, and everything works fine. It would even be possible to include the vanilla tilesets in the new mod's UI, as a sort of legacy/compatibility feature (although now I'm thinking about the Change Building Styles of X Years option, which might not make how I was thinking about it work, as that would also include the vanilla tilesets in its cycling).

So my proposal is:

0x00002000 - Chicago 1890

0x00002001 - New York 1940

0x00002002  - Houston 1990

0x00002003 - Euro-Contemporary

0x00002004 - Rome 1755

0x00002005 - Paris 1895

0x00002006 - Chicago 1895

0x00002007 - Berlin 1915

and so on.

This is why my dates all end in 5, so that there's a clear distinction between Houston 1990 (the vanilla tileset) and Houston 1995 (the new one), which will have a lot of lots separated into the new tilesets.

[Null 45 3,064]

33 minutes ago, Jasoncw said:

The new tilesets break the old ones. To solve that problem you need to remove the Euro tileset from the modded lot. Which means having two separate versions of every single lot, which are incompatible with each other.

It is not longer required to remove the original tilesets when modding a building, I added a new building exemplar property (Building Styles) to solve that conflict. When the Building Styles property is present, the legacy style info in the Occupant Groups property will be ignored.

My suggested workflow for modders adjusting building exemplars for the new building styles is as follows:

For a new building: The extended styles would be placed in the Building Styles property for users with the DLL, the appropriate Maxis building styles would be placed in the Occupant Groups property for users without the DLL. Add the Building Is Wall-to-Wall property with its value set to True or False as appropriate. If the building is W2W, add one of the W2W OG values to the Occupant Groups property

For an existing building: The extended styles would be placed in the Building Styles property for users with the DLL, and Maxis building styles in the Occupant Groups property are left alone. Add the Building Is Wall-to-Wall property with its value set to True or False as appropriate.

Feedback on the above workflow is welcome.

[Jasoncw 11,933]

@Null 45 Are you saying that there will be two independent sets of tilesets, the old vanilla ones in Occupant Groups, and the new ones in the new Building Styles? And that if you use the DLL, the vanilla Occupant Groups tilesets are automatically ignored? This is a lot more elegant than the solution I was imagining.

But now I don't understand your comment about preserving the Maxis styles or why specifying the IDs matters?

[Jasoncw 11,933]

15 hours ago, amrdonna77 said:

I'm all for anything. The mod itself is to die for. 

But if I had to choose, then option B is the better choice imo. It’s way more inclusive for modders,  easier to fit different architectural styles without unnecessary restrictions and covers a much broader geographical range, including Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and different Asian regions.

It’s also just simpler and more flexible. Instead of being locked into specific historical timeframes, modders have more freedom to categorize buildings in a way that makes sense. This means it’s future-proof and can easily adapt as more content gets created.

If the goal is a system that works for everyone and allows for the most creative possibilities, I'll be voting option B. 
 

A geography based system of tilesets means that all architecture styles which exist in one geographical region will grow at the same time. If you're working on your historic CBD and you want only old buildings to grow, glass skyscrapers will also grow. When you're working on your suburbs and you want only new buildings to grow, a bunch of very old buildings will also grow.

With a style based system of tilesets, you choose what kinds of styles you want to grow, based on your vision for your city and what areas you're working on. If you're working on your historic CBD, you select the historic styles that you want, and no glass skyscrapers will grow, because you haven't selected any modern styles.

 

[Null 45 3,064]

3 hours ago, Jasoncw said:

Are you saying that there will be two independent sets of tilesets, the old vanilla ones in Occupant Groups, and the new ones in the new Building Styles?

A modder could use the vanilla tilesets with the Building Styles property, so they are not independent.

The new properties were added to make it easier to adapt buildings to the extended styles, and avoid the issues that can arise from mistakes when editing the Occupant Group values. But If a building does not use the new properties, the DLL will read the building style and W2W info from the Occupant Groups property.

3 hours ago, Jasoncw said:

But now I don't understand your comment about preserving the Maxis styles or why specifying the IDs matters?

Currently at least 99% of existing residential and commercial buildings use one or more of the vanilla styles, and I expect that some new buildings will continue to use them alongside the extended styles. If a community UI does not preserve those 4 Maxis styles (0x2000-0x2003), it will break the game by blocking every building that uses only those 4 styles. Of course, a player could also get the same effect by unchecking those styles in the UI, but at that point any game breaking is their choice.

[Andreas Roth 614]

Thanks for the additional information about how the DLL is using the properties, and also for the explanation why @Jasoncw came up with the "odd" year numbering. So from what I understand, the system is preserving the four legacy building styles and adds 12 (instead of 16) new ones (although we could probably add a lot more with further IDs, but let's not make it overly complicated). I'd say this is the best way to keep everything backwards compatible, and if you want to put a building in, say, the "Copenhagen 2025" tileset, you'd also add an "Euro-Contemporary" Occupant Group as the most similar one for those who don't have the DLL installed.

I can see your reasoning about more neutral geographic names, but then again, Maxis thought up those names because the styles are typical for a certain city or region. Most people would recognize the skyline of New York or Chicago, and would see the difference to the Houston, London, Hong Kong or whatever other skyline, with certain iconic buildings that define a typical look. It doesn't really matter if a South-East Asian tileset is named "Hong Kong", "Taipei" or "Singapore", but it surely looks different than a "Rio de Janeiro", "Sao Paulo" or "La Paz" tileset. The "Soviet"/"Eastern Europe" tileset could be named "Warsaw", "Prague" or "Moscow" with the same reasoning, but all of them would create a similar image in your mind.

[kaimai 1,053]

Option A seems to work better for custom content as it already exists. This is particularly true in cases where scale is different (eg haarlemmergold/VDA/AGV buildings are almost invariably underscaled relative to SFBT buildings; BSC buildings are almost invariably overscaled relative to NYBT buildings; etc.). On a macro scale "Mediterranean" just means red tile roofs, "Paris" just means mansard roofs, etc., seeing as those are going to be the most visible parts of any building from a SC4 point of view.

[Null 45 3,064]

3 hours ago, Andreas Roth said:

So from what I understand, the system is preserving the four legacy building styles and adds 12 (instead of 16) new ones (although we could probably add a lot more with further IDs, but let's not make it overly complicated).

That is described in the first post of this thread. The community styles will take up half of @CorinaMarie 's 32 slot UI, as shown below, the image is from this post.

The intention is that the user can fill up the remaining 14 slots (0x2012-0x201f) with other styles.

With hindsight, I think the Maxis range should have been reserved but not counted as part of the extended styles. That way we would have 16 community styles (0x2004-0x2014 in the UI), and 16  user-selected styles (0x2015-2025 in the UI). Of course, that would also require another revision of the style UI.

But now that the Building Styles Master IID is public and the 0x00002010-0x0000201F range has already been assigned to the CoriBoom team. I am not sure that is possible to adjust the community range to use 0x2004-0x2014.

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

11 minutes ago, Null 45 said:

But now that the Building Styles Master IID is public and the 0x00002010-0x0000201F range has already been assigned to the CoriBoom team. I am not sure that is possible to adjust the community range to use 0x2004-0x2014.

If we cut ours down to 0x2015-0x201F, does that solve the problem?

[Andreas Roth 614]

I'd say that restricting the "official" styles to 16 (4 Maxis and 12 new ones) makes sense, since the Occupant Group IDs are easy to remember in the hexadecimal system, and any custom styles may take the next 16 slots.  IIRC, texture and building family IDs were handed out in similar ranges, so every new range would start with a multiple of 16. Also, as mentioned above, filling 16 tilesets with a good amount of buildings might be hard enough anyway. 

[Null 45 3,064]

3 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

If we cut ours down to 0x2015-0x201F, does that solve the problem?

It would. But I also think it is wise to wait for more community feedback on that idea before acting on it.

I am not sure how difficult the required UI edit would be, I have always found the UI editing tedious and I have no experience with edits involving the background PNGs. It would probably require making the building style portion a little taller to fit the 2 new check boxes in each column.

Revising the style ids in @Ulisse Wolf's post for this idea:

The 4 Maxis styles would remain at the the top of the UI, with 32 extended style check boxes underneath them. For a total of 36 style check boxes in the UI. Since the Maxis styles are now separate, there is no longer a need for the 16 community styles to maintain compatibility with the Maxis style format. The 0x00002004-0x00002007 ranges below could potentially be changed to other styles.

Option A - Maxis Logic (@Jasoncw's proposal)

0x00002004 - Chicago 1895 (Chicago 1890) - American styles of the period. Chicago School, Beaux Arts, Richardsonian Romanesque, etc.

0x00002005 - New York 1935 (New York 1940) - American styles of the period. Art Deco, Craftsman, revival styles such as Neo-Gothic, Neoclassical, etc.

0x00002006 - Houston 1995 (Houston 1990) - Postmodernism (including "modernism as a surface aesthetic").

0x00002007 - Frankfurt 2005 (Euro Contemporary) - Modern architecture of the period. Old Euro tileset minus what was split into others. 

0x00002008 - Rome 1755 - Pre-industrial European-base styles. Baroque, Renaissance, etc.

0x00002009 - Paris 1895 - Haussmann Paris. Second Empire, etc.

0x0000200A - Berlin 1915 - All European-based eclectic styles.

0x0000200B - Stockholm 1945 - Humanistic modern styles. Suburban Stockholm, UK Council Housing. Brick boxes with sloped roofs, etc.

0x0000200C - Los Angeles 1965 - Midcentury Modern, New Formalism, etc.

0x0000200D - Rotterdam 1975 - European counterpart to LA 1965. Would also include the styles associated with Team X. Also communist styles.

0x0000200E - Taipei 2005 - East Asian Contemporary, including HKABAT and Japanese content.

0x0000200F - Copenhagen 2025 - Current modern architecture.

0x00002010 - City XXXX (Latin American Contemporary) - Building styles and types unique to Latin America.

0x00002011 - Other - Catchall for all of the rare regional or historical styles. Default style for niche things which don't belong anywhere else but need a tileset assigned.

0x00002012 - Futuristic - Fictional styles of the far future.

0x00002013  - Free

0x00002014  - Free

Option B - Hybrid Architecture & Geography ( @Ulisse Wolf 's proposal)

0x00002004 - Commercial & Neoclassical (Chicago 1890) - From classic wooden buildings to early brick skyscrapers inspired by chicago's first school

0x00002005 - Art Deco (New York 1940) - All the buildings and styles of architecture that were inspired by the Art Deco style with luxurious and glitzy forms

0x00002006 - Post Modernism (Houston 1990) - All the buildings and styles of architecture that developed from the end of World War II to the beginning of the Third Millennium (2000)

0x00002007 - European Contemporary - All the buildings and styles of architecture respecting the current contemporary European style

0x00002008 - Mediterranean - All the buildings and styles of architecture that have shaped the Mediterranean basin

0x00002009 - West Europe (Alternatively, you can use Art Nouveau as an alternative name) - All All the European buildings and styles of architecture styles before World War II.

0x0000200A - Eastern Europe (Alternatively, you can use Soviet European as an alternative name) - All buildings and styles of architecture that characterized Eastern Europe including the Soviet style

0x0000200B - East Asia & Southeast Asia - All the buildings and styles of architecture that characterized East Asia and Southeast Asia before World War II.

0x0000200C - East Asia Contemporary - All the buildings and styles of architecture that characterized East Asia and Southeast Asia after World War II.

0x0000200D - American Contemporany - All the buildings and styles of architecture respecting the current contemporary American style

0x0000200E - Africa & Middle East - All the buildings and styles of architecture that have characterized Africa and the Middle East

0x0000200F - Latin American and Caribbean - All the buildings and styles of architecture that have characterized Latin American and Caribbean

0x00002010 - North Europe - All the buildings and styles of architecture that have characterized North Europe

0x00002011 - Central Europe - All the buildings and styles of architecture that have characterized Central Europe

0x00002013 - Hong Kong Contemporary (Alternatively, you can use Chinese style or China & Hong Kong as an alternative name) - All the buildings and styles of architecture that have characterized Modern Hong Kong and Modern China

0x00002014 - Futuristic - All the buildings and styles of architecture that have characterized Future

2 hours ago, Andreas Roth said:

I'd say that restricting the "official" styles to 16 (4 Maxis and 12 new ones) makes sense, since the Occupant Group IDs are easy to remember in the hexadecimal system, and any custom styles may take the next 16 slots.

The issue with that is the UI actually only has 28 custom style check boxes, because the 4 Maxis styles are included in that count. So if someone wanted to use 32 custom styles, they would have to edit the UI to remove the Maxis style check boxes. Preserving the Maxis style check boxes is also necessary compatibility with existing content.

Treating the Maxis range (0x2000-0x2003) as separate from the extended style range solves that conflict. The ids are still assigned in blocks of 16, so the community styles would use 0x2004-0x2014.

The community style and custom style ranges can be thought of as subsets of the Maxis styles. As I mentioned in another post, all buildings would continue to have the Maxis styles in their Occupant Groups property for compatibility with the base game. The Building Styles exemplar property allows modders to remove a building from the 4 Maxis styles when the DLL is installed and transfer it into another category.

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

5 minutes ago, Null 45 said:

It would. But I also think it is wise to wait for more community feedback on that idea before acting on it.

Consider it done if'n y'all decide it helps.

 

6 minutes ago, Null 45 said:

I am not sure how difficult the required UI edit would be, I have always found the UI editing tedious and I have no experience with edits involving the background PNGs. It would probably require making the building style portion a little taller to fit the 2 new check boxes in each column.

Don't let this hold anyone back. I edit the UI in text source code only so it's no big deal and I can make said edit before turning it over as community property.