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Scenes from Acua-Dibamba International Airport on the outskirts of Acua, Democratic Republic of Formosa. Grab a ticket today and visit one of Africa's fastest-growing cities.

@PlanetOfHats The only solution I see is to put the problematic ships in a wider lot to avoid interference with other LOD's. You can also reduce the problem if you make the LOD's as tight and low poly as possible.

More grungy freight! This time a REPlacement and ADDs for the first Boxcar, based on various Cargowaggon rolling stock. btw, is there any documentation on how the piggyback car works? Or is just something not to mess around with and just block it out in my packs at some point?

You lost me at British Sitcom. Industrial side of Calandar-

Doing this procedure is not recommended as you only get critical errors because you have two NAM versions. NAM always requires a clean install when making updates My advice is to create a folder ZZZZ_AUTOMATA that is loaded at the end and insert inside all the mod automata

The problem is that these Buildings Exemplars exist, but have no real function. The game just reads all the Buildings Exemplars and presents a list. It only runs into a problem when these Exemplars don’t link to anything. Sure that could be missing dependencies, but that’s highly unlikely, since Lots are rarely distributed that way. Most as Buildings Exemplars that are essentially temporary files for the process of creation. They literally do nothing, the only solution would be to purge them from the .DAT files using Reader. But you need to know what you are looking at, because there very may well be valid Exemplars too that you shouldn’t remove. @Tyberius06 is doing a sterling job of updating these old files and as he does so, removing the useless installers and things like this that should never have been included to begin with. But of course, it’s a lot of work for just one person, so is taking time. Plopped Residential buildings don't work, some may try to convince you otherwise, but the truth is that one way or another, they eventually abandon. Not to mention, trying to Plop everything is actually very bad for the simulation as a whole, Commercial tends to be fine, but Industrial won't export freight and this alone can cause big problems. A really good explanation of the pitfalls is written here, the most important thing to note is that Plopping things without sufficient demand, will ultimately break everything. One work-around is this ‘service’ which can alter your save file having Plopped things, so they work as if they were grown, essential really if you are going down this path.

Lopez Island-

What's the deal with hardware rendering? If it's so hard, why don't they make easyware instead? 20 years after its release, SimCity 4 has aged remarkably well; the graphics engine has not. (The graphics themselves are pretty good though.) The Graphics Rules file has no understanding of newer GPUs and has a bad habit of picking sub-optimal graphics settings. The DirectX driver was effectively obsolete by the time the game came out; errors like "Could not initialize DirectDraw" have randomly come up since release. And if you get that error, your framerate falls off a cliff as the game puts itself into software rendering mode. (We don't talk about the software renderer.) There is a hidden option to use OpenGL instead of DirectX by passing "-d:OpenGL" in the command line options. This isn't viable either since everything falls apart after loading a city: Sad to say this is not a snow mod. What can be done? We could use a wrapper like DDrawCompat or dgVoodoo, and that works fairly well. But adding translation layers also means taking a performance hit, as documented in that thread. There is one other saving grace here, though, which you can probably guess from the thread title. If you know the magic words, the game can load a DLL that upgrades an existing component. So join me on an adventure as we try to write our own graphics driver! (Spoiler: we're not there yet.) SimCity 4 has a couple of components to handle putting pixels on the screen. There's a GraphicsSystem that translates the game state to finer graphical commands, and a GDriver (graphics driver) that sends those commands to a graphics API, like DirectX or OpenGL. The GDriver interface is a target that the game calls SimGL. As the name implies, it's an abstract OpenGL 1.2 target, so the DirectX and Software drivers have to translate OpenGL-like commands to something that makes sense for those APIs (*). Also like OpenGL, GDrivers support "extensions," which are optional but can be leveraged by the GraphicsSystem to improve performance or add features if they're available. For example, lighting support is an extension supported by OpenGL and DirectX, but not by Software. If the abstract machine is based so heavily on OpenGL, then why is SC4's OpenGL support poor? I'm not totally sure, but I think there's a few issues that play a part: A lot of SC4 textures (FSHs) are compressed using DXT/S3TC, and the game was written to target OpenGL 1.2.1 (as far as I can tell). DirectX standardized support for these textures, but texture compression wasn't a standard feature until OpenGL 1.3, and this specific format couldn't be built into OpenGL because of patent issues. Vertex buffers, which would improve performance, were also not standard in OpenGL yet. The DirectX GDriver implements them, but OpenGL does not. There's also an extension for "buffer regions" to boost performance which, again, is not standard in OpenGL. The game does try to provide them as an extension, but it seems this does not work for Intel graphics. A lot of these features became standard or ubiquitous long after SimCity 4's development cycle, so I've made a project called SCGL (pronounced like "sigil") to rewrite the OpenGL GDriver and add these features. I picked OpenGL 3.0 since the game depends on a lot of features that are now deprecated. 3.0 was the last OpenGL version to offer these features for compatibility, and recent GPU drivers still have compatibility modes for it. It's still very early days, but the good news is that I'm at the point where the game loads and we have something showing up on the screen. If you can believe it, this is region view, and those green boxes are clouds. Again, super early days. But it's a starting point for debugging, so the next immediate goal is to fix the texture corruption. Getting region view to be recognizable would be nice, but honestly I would settle for having the buildings in a city show up as untextured white boxes and iterating from there. (*) This has some interesting implications for the Mac port. Since SC4's DirectX driver was the only stable hardware renderer, Aspyr had to write their own DirectX wrapper, even though Macs only supported OpenGL. So it has an OpenGL GPU pretending to be a DirectX card (Aspyr's wrapper) pretending to be an abstract OpenGL API (SimGL).

The NAM Team is pleased to announce the 47th release of the Network Addon Mod, NAM 47. DOWNLOAD LINKS (All Cross-Platform) STEX ModDB What's new in NAM 47? Here's a list: Pedestrian Revolution Mod Features: The NAM Team is pleased to present the Classic Draggable Pedmalls, courtesy of Ulisse Wolf and Lucario Boricua. These come in 8 styles, 6 of which are equivalents to the Pedmall Puzzle Pieces, and introducing 2 new designs: the Retrowave Red Brick, inspired in the old brick texture used for the U-Rail in earlier NAM versions, and the Industrial Style, using the concrete surface typical of industrial lots. The initially supported features of these pedmalls include: Multidirectional draggable starter pieces using the Street network, supporting all orthogonal, diagonal, intersection and roundabout configurations, with the exception of wide radius curves. Intersection support (OXO T and 4-way) in the form of mid-block crosswalks. These support Road, Avenue, and all two-way Network Widening Mod override networks (TLA-3, AVE-2, ARD-3, NRD-4, TLA-5, RD-4, RD-6, TLA-7 and AVE-6). These draggable pedmalls are also compatible with the FLEX mid-block crosswalk pieces. Special underground paths enable residential zone development, while crossings discourage car traffic through restricted car paths. In addition, some enhancements to existing functionality have been implemented: The override code for the size 3 mid-block crosswalks for TLA-7 and AVE-6 have been overhauled, enabling these to be overridden from one side. RealHighway (RHW) Features: RHW-12S A new, 12-lane quadruple-tile RHW network (separable into two dual-tile halves, carrying 6 lanes in each direction) has been added, with the following features: Three height levels are supported: L0/Ground, L1/7.5-meter elevation, and L2/15-meter elevation. Transitioning between these height levels is supported by the ramp-style FLEX Height Transitions (FLEX-HT), as well as the FLEX OnSlope Transitions (FLEX-OSTs), by connecting them to the RHW-12S networks. The RHW-12S features the same network crossings presently available to the other S-Type RHW networks, including crossings in all orientations for all Maxis base networks, all other RHW networks, Draggable Ground Light Rail, and Draggable Road Viaducts (L0-under-Viaduct-only), plus Orthogonal x Orthogonal (OxO)-only support for Network Widening Mod networks, Elevated RealRailway (ERRW) Viaducts, Tram-on-Street, Tram-in-Road, and Tram-in-Avenue. Limited Hybrid Railway (HRW) support also exists. Extensive ramp interface support: supported ramps using FLEXRamps and Draggable Ramp Interfaces (when applicable) include Orthogonal Type A1 (all levels), Type B1 (all levels), Type D1 (all levels), Type E1 (all levels), Type A2 (all levels), Type B2 (L0 only), Type D2 (all levels), Type E2 (L0 only), Type A1-Inside (all levels), Type B1-Inside (all levels), Type D1-Inside (L0 only), Type E1-Inside (L0 only), the new Type A3 (L0 only) and Type D3 (L0 only), plus Diagonal Type A1 (L0 only), Type B1 (L0 only), Type D1 (L0 only), and Type E1 (L0 only). FLEX Width Transition (FLEX-WT) has been added, to support width transitions between RHW-12S and RHW-10S at all applicable height levels. FLEXFly over and undercrossings are supported with the RHW-12S (orthogonal-only, as diagonal undercrossings for FLEXFly do not presently exist for any network). Several bridges have been added (see Bridge section). Support for FlexSPUI is presently limited, and Three-Level Crossings are not yet supported. RHW X3 Ramps: The first two FLEX 3-lane ramps, in A3 and D3 configurations, have been provided for RHW-8S, 10S and 12S. At present, only L0 support is available. General Improvements: Some enhancements, courtesy of memo, have been made to facilitate FLEXFly-over-FLEXFly functionality. Some enhancements, courtesy of Flann, to elevated RHW network models have been added. Various adjacencies involving RHW x RHW crossings next to the base orth-diag curve on the smaller networks (RHW-6S and smaller) have been addressed. Bridges: A multitude of new bridges have been added, courtesy of IDS2 and Kitsune: New viaduct bridges for L0 RHW-8S, L0 RHW-10S and L0-L2 RHW-12S. A pair of new Steel Arch bridges for RHW-10S and RHW-12S. Base Network Features: A new 5x5 90° Wide Radius Curve FLEX piece has been added to the Avenue network. Miscellaneous: A huge number of bugfixes have been done for this release, including: Various RHW situations involving "tile drops", such as the RHW-8S-to-6S FLEX Width Transitions, the RHW-8S Type D1, E1, and B2 ramps, and the RHW-10S Type D2 and E2 ramps, have received considerable stability upgrades. The orientation of the Road end-T on OWR-1 intersection has been corrected. The orientations of certain NWM intersections involving the OWR-1 network with Euro textures have been corrected. Stability improvements have been made to the Ground Light Rail crossings with various wider RHW networks. The Dual Type 230 QCXs with L1 Dual Type 230-over-RHW-8C/6C and RHW-10S/8S have been improved. Issues in which lane drop arrows appeared in the wrong places on the S-to-C FLEX Width Transitions have been corrected. The ramp textures for the RHW-10S Type D2 and E2 ramps, as well as for the RHW-8S Type A2-Wide and B2 ramps have been improved. Orientation and stability issues have been fixed with the Avenue-based AVE-6 and its Thru-T-intersections with Street, Road, and One-Way Road (both Short-T and Long-T). Orthogonal x Diagonal slip lanes involving Road and One-way Road (OWR) have been re-implemented. Several hundred path files across all areas of the NAM have been fixed by memo and Tarkus. More SAM Street crossings with the Rail network have received crossing gates. Euro wealth textures have been added to the Avenue-based AVE-6 network. Additional information, including installation instructions, can be found in the read-first-NAM-47.html document, included in the download, and also attached below. -The NAM Team read-first-NAM-47.zip

*cleaning the cobwebs* Hey, it's been a while, right? I was not having much time to play SC4, and when I had a bit of free-time, I was spending in other things. And, when I could play some game, I was choosing games that didn't take like, half a day just to load the intro But I recently successfully organized my plugins folder and now I can play SC4 again, a bit slow, but playable at least. So, I made this random little town we're going to see today just to get sc4 rhythm again since I forgot how to do basic stuff in this game lol anyway, here's wonderwall the little town of Riutta: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Riutta is a small town located in the southwestern Karelia, in the region where you can find about a hundred lakes per km². it's just a small, quiet, cozy town crossed by one interstate freeway and the railway, the two main ways to get in the village. as usual in Karelian cities, you can find a market square in the center of the town The other point of interest you can find in every single Karelian town is a church, like the one below Thats it :). Kinda lazy update, I know, but I was really wanting to update my CJ. I hope I dont take another 2 years to post my next entry

Summon me?! Why? What @rsc204 said.

Maybe I need to delete a folder or more from these below to rectify the problem since the new NAM installation may not need some of them and causing me all the trouble. I can always create the above folder too. What about the Space Port? That happened with the new installation of NAM.

Hello! I used to play SC4 years and years ago, in fact I used to have a Simtropolis account probably about 15+ years ago but I don't have access to my old e-mail so here we are. Been wanting to get back into the game, very excited to see how much has happened since then! In fact it's been 5 years since I last played the steam version and I remember when I was younger and bought the deluxe edition when it was new. Anyway, happy to be back!

Pop Culture Reference time! EDIT: This would make more sense with an actual image, wouldn't it? Seminal British Sitcom Peep Show, a tale of two men struggling with modern life and relationships and their mutual contempt. co-dependence. When I reference "the Conquest of Corrigan" I of course am referring to the characters' interest in Military History, not his tragic love life. Although the original model for "Apollo House" was for a hospital, it has more than a passing resemblance to residence in the show, which is in Croydon, down the road from me.

We ran into the same problem with ship models. And in all truth -- it would be the same with any model. I sometimes like to add props directly to the models during the lot building process. But the LOD's will get you every time ! I am very happy to see you working with diagonal harbors. For so long, people have simply accepted the limitations of diagonal docks, seawalls, etc, etc. GOOD LUCK, Mate !

That’s funny because all the evidence points to yet another false positive problem. So do you trust your AV software to actually stop a virus from getting into your system? I don’t, because none of them for consumers have even the most basic heuristics capability any more. They all rely on whitelists and blacklists, i.e. the laziest and cheapest method of detecting problems. Of course they are then only as good as those lists, which as this debacle shows, they are not remotely accurate. Sadly the biggest losers in this space are folks like the NAM team, working hard to bring content to users for free, in a way that makes installation as user friendly as possible. People don’t understand security well and assume they have been ‘saved’ by their software flagging a problem. But all the evidence points to a broken system incorrectly determining risk. Ironically this actually drives AV sales, when every computer i ever encountered that had a virus or malware, had AV software that not only failed to see the problem. But also was completely unable to fix the problem too. Yet there will be folks like yourself who may be unwilling to accept the actual reality and refuse to use such files, which I guarantee is perfectly safe to use. All this system does is cause headaches for modders, who have no control over what gets flagged, nor is there a system in place to correct such false information usually. At least not for the little guys. One day unsigned code will be a thing of the past, think Apple App Store on iOS, and the only way to distribute anything will be by paying a fee to certify your content. Which in the world of free stuff effectively means folks will stop releasing mods. This is causing real harm and runs counter to the ‘open’ PC platform. The only winners, the AppStore’s that are making billions off this crap. That’s like some digital future dystopia where you can only eat at Taco Bell (as in Demolition Man).

Note that demand does not consider what your city/region really needs, if the conditions are right then the 'highest' of each type, R$$$, CO$$$ or I-HT will always be given priority for development. Therefore if you don't provide less nice areas for R$ sims to move into, they won't be able to despite demand. A common error players make is to make things too nice everywhere, this raises land values and squeezes out R$ and in some cases R$$ too. If R$ already exist and you use the No-Kickout mod, indeed that would prevent them from upgrading to higher wealths, but it won't necessarily help new R$ to develop. A good plan in this situation might be to look at starting a new city in your region, when no development exists pretty much only R$ can develop until you start adding services. But overall, I find it easier to get a good R$ base before I start upgrading too many areas with services and parks, I also try to hinder higher wealth growth until I'm ready by (not drastically) altering taxes and just generally keeping places down and out. Another factor is Education or EQ, yours is very high (190 Average), sims will ideally want to work in places that match their EQ as well as Wealth. So at this point the sims in this city will appreciate more I-HT, CO and CS$$$ jobs over other types. A good general way to look at this is that R$ sims earn the least and need reasonably priced accommodation, but if your city is a utopia of well funded services, parks and other things which give Park/Landmark effects, they simply won't be able to afford to live there. Likewise developers aren't usually looking to stick an apartment block in such nice places intended to cater for the poorer sims, when they could build a luxury one and make a lot more money.

I'm still around and lurking...slowly but surely working on my region. Here is the town of Landis

As I fuss with diagonal seaport stuff, here's something I picked up on: The scale of existing ploppable ships. Here's a quick side-by-side of some of the notable ones out there, alongside my own little conversion set. The outlier is obviously SM2's supertanker, which comes in shorter than PEG's ploppable freighters. My tanker and container ship conversions come in around 16 tiles long when plopped orthogonally.

Wednesday 24th of March 2038 Today at TV1 City: Shark Beach Suburb, Inner City Complex and Love Boat Bank. Cattle Road District, Bounty City After the establishment of Santoro Golf Resort at Shark Beach in 2037, the area at the southeastern corner of Main Bounty Island became part of Cattle Road District administration, officially Shark Beach Suburb, Cattle Road District, Bounty City. Residents: Back in 2024, 106 families live in Cattle Road District. In 2036 – 2037 Alicja Chapel and what was formerly known as Alicja Park was demolished, replaced by the Inner City Complex and some new smaller middleclass houses. Also, in 2037 the first working class homes was constructed in Shark Beach Suburb, to house the first employes at Santoro Golf Resort. Today 130 families live in Cattle Road District, of those 7 families in the suburb. Other Construction and Ownership: Besides what was already mentioned in connection with the extension of Cattle Road Residential Area, the following changes happened since 2024. In 2027 the new bridge Babette López Crossing was constructed and subsequently Ruiz Strait Crossing was demolished. A bus depot was constructed next to De Luca Family Ranch at Plantation Road in 2029. In April 2037 United Food acquired United Fruit’s cocoa plantation at Shark Beach Road, in September the same year several new greenhouses were ready to produce sugar. Bounty City seen from Shark Beach Production: Despite the fact that Cattle Road District is first and foremost the residential area of Bounty City, there is still some agricultural production at the east, and some revenue from the bank. Over the last 20 years the average years production value was: Bounty Bank 8.237 coins, Bounty Cigar's Limited Tobacco Plantation 1.795 coins, Schubert's Pork Ranch 1.313 coins, De Luca Family Cattle Ranch 1.146 coins. Since the first seeds was planted in 2037 United Food Sugar Greenhouses had a combined yearly production of 3.075 coins. Services: Just as Saint Mary’s, Cattle Road District has many state owned institutions: The Export Department, The Immigrant Department, Bounty Bank, President Smirnov’s School, Industry Rescue, Cattle Road Rescue, The Community House, Holiday Landing and Shark Beach Port. In the private service sector there is Bounty FM Radio Station, The Donkey Mansion, People's Market, Restaurants Cibaria Insulam and Señor Vieira, Cattle Road Clinic, Ruiz Strait Clinic, Movie Cine De Loro and Teatro De Tropico, Hotel America Burger, CityTruck Cattle Road and Ramos Construction. Since the new public transport system was finished in 2029. Cattle Road Metro Station serviced 2078 travelers. Bus line 2A from Cattle Road Metro to Legal Department was used by 1479 passengers, bus line 2B from Cattle Road Metro to Cepero North Metro was used by 1315 passengers and bus line L5 from Shark Beach Port to Cine De Loro was used by 293 passengers. Tourism: Saint Mary's District is by far the most important tourist district in the city and most important tourist destination on Bounty Island, Hotel & Hütten Mutter Gaia got room for 24 families, Hotel America 12 families, Santoro Golf Resort also 12 families and Cruise Ships can be anchored with another 12 families at Love Boat Bank. The district also got some very important attractions. Gaia’s birth of Jesus Monument, Cathedral de Sainte Thérèse, The famous old Donkey Mansion, Movie theater Cine De Loro, Teatro De Tropico, Restaurants Cibaria Insulam and Señor Vieira, The open Tequesta Temple, People's Market and Hotel America Burger. The green breathing spaces Cattle Road Recreational Area, Cattle Road Park and Smirnov Park also attracts many tourists, to relax in the midday shade. Cattle Road District Shark Beach Suburb, Cattle Road District

You've got to admit it gives another meaning to sprinkles. Powders of various sorts can burn explosively - icing sugar can explode under the right conditions. Given we need fuel, heat and oxygen I'd bet on an electrical spark or a gas bottle or line giving up the ghost in an area with lots of particulate matter. Its pretty spectacular and the viewpoint was pretty close.

A new viaduct station on the works:

What's interesting in your latest post among other things, that it marks the city Prop Poxed, yet it doesn't have any disabled props. In your first post, the poxed city had plenty of disabled props, which is what I had when I had truely poxed cities. Bunch of growing number of disabled props. However your non-poxed city already shows 6 disabled props. That something which I experienced too, though I don't know the reason.

Well this is a real bummer: All I did was take the previous backup, pause on the 1st Sep, then re-click all networks (no small task), to add the T21s which currently only cover streets and avenue. As you can see, a lot less (T21) props this time too, yet I could once again feel real performance issues. Something I can't explain, given I have set everything the T21s do such that they don't display in Zooms 1&2, why is there still such a dramatic performance problem in Zoom3 and lower views? I know from before I set the flag, you could still see trees in Zoom2, whereas the signs are invisible either way in Zoom3 already. So the property is working, something doesn't add up here, because clearly the game is having to work a lot harder. This time the save file remains compressed, but it was compressed when it broke again, so that's another mystery. But this really does fit my theory that it is possible to overload a city with too many objects, although that still might be specific in relation to T21s or the use of Flora and/or RKT 4 props. I'm going to switch back to Prop Based trees, albeit with less variety and run some tests, when the T21 prop count goes up, does this consistently cause problems or is this only happening with the Flora. Let's look at B2, the central city in a 3x3 region of large tiles, also by far the most developed with 510k residents and 340k jobs. Perhaps, due to the higher density of development here, things work out better, but you can see the overall number of props is well in excess of the corrupted file. So clearly it's not as simple as just 'too many props' either. Still much to do, including tests on the 64-bit version and doing the same with the newer SC4Fix installed. But two things are conclusive: You can still corrupt a city after the Prop Subfile is Compressed You can break your savefile in a manner that SC4Save deems to be 'Prop Pox', without doing anything that's previously been associated as a cause/trigger.

@gweed123 Interestingly enough, this is something I'm actually planning, not for the near future (do not expect it for NAM 47 or 48), but definitely in my plans. One of my fellow NAM team members, @Ryuu Tenno , is thinking of revisiting the Rural Roads Plugin, to convert it to proper draggable networks. Meanwhile, I'm thinking of doing additional urban road cross-sections to provide multimodal transportation features, like wide sidewalks, parking, or larger rail transit corridors. Your request would actually fall in line with these ideas. In the meantime, there are ways you can reserve right-of-way for road expansions: Frontage streets: along a 2-tile corridor, you can place a street occupying 1 tile, and your Road or single tile NWM (TLA-3, ARD-3, AVE-2 or NRD-4) occupying the other. Then, once the time to widen to Avenue, RD-4, TLA-5 or RD-6 Reserve the vacant right-of-way and avoid zoning against one side: using mayor mode props (MMPs), grass lots, pedmalls or any other small tiles, you can set a side a portion of the road's right-of-way for future widening. Pedmalls do have the benefit of supporting pedestrian access for commercial, industrial and civic jobs. Here's a very rough concept of your idea, done by aligning single tile NWM networks with the centerlines of double tile NWM networks:

I don't really have anything to contribute other than to say this looks like an awesome project and I'm excited to see what comes of it. I really wish an 'OpenTTD' style project of SC4 was possible but obviously that's a pipe-dream for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being the amount of work involved even if it was actually technically feasible. But that fact this works at all so far is cool to see, the awful performance and compatibility of SC4 I imagine is a non-starter for a lot of people, I'm not even sure how it will run on my newer laptop once I get around to trying it, I'm not optimistic. Personally on my laptop, the graphics/performance is pretty bad, shadows in particular are a total disaster, the rendering of them is broken somehow. Trying to find a fix for whatever is happening with shadows is actually what led me to Simtropolis and into modding the game in the first place.

Theoretically yes, but the new version doesn't really do anything different, it just doesn't use compiled C++ code anymore to decompress, but a pure JS implementation that I wrote. In the most optimistic scenario there was a bug in the original C++ decompression which is no longer present in the JS implementation, but I'm 99.99% sure that won't be the case since you're experiencing CTD's both in the game and the SC4 Startup Manager, meaning those algorithms would be bugged as well. That said, trying to decompress with the pure JS implementation may provide a more detailed error of where the decompression exactly fails and maybe that points somewhere.

West Wind (Roads) Streets ... After 3 weeks (+), a test for nothing on fifty textures, just to normalize the design, refine the tints, the color gradient, see where I will meet tile-mirror ... Let's go ! "Work in progress" as you said, ... "c'est parti mon kiki !" (let's go my little chicken) ... and for several weeks. not even scared ! I'll slide 2 or 3 little things between two cross-textures. .. such as .. some "paving" textures that might interest some .. and so on ..

Rather uncanny isn't it? An entire site of friendly, helpful peeps. That's why I stuck around and have tried to emulate them as I learned things. (I started out just as confuzzled as any beginner. The only reason I know stuff now is cause I got from here.)

Please PM Soldyne if you have any questions about this article. With all the plugins and BATs and Lots and Mods we shovel into our game our menus are bound to get full with all kinds of nifty little toys. Unfortunately that list can become quite cumbersome rather quickly. The worst part of it is that when we install a package of lots such as a modular park set, it is quite often the case that not all the lots in the set are all nicely bundled in the same area. Whats worse is when you have many lots that you use over a over again but those lots are stretched out over your ever expanding menus and you spend all day just scrolling through your parks so you can plop a single flower garden. What if you could rearrange your menus? What if you could put all your favorite parks and tranist lots at the top of the menu and all the lesser used pieces at the bottom? well, with a little patience and planning you can. What you will need is ILive's reader and this guide. Step 1 Go into your game and really look over your menus. Look at your parks menu, transit menus, land marks and rewards lists. Think to yourself how your game playing experience could be made simpler and more efficient if only things were moved around a little bit. Make a list of exactly what lots you want and in what order you want them. If you find a park lot that you just dont use, the best thing to do is delete it from your plugins folder. If you dont use it then why spend the time to load it? Step 2 Once you have the order of each menu established, you must start to assign some numbers to them. The smaller the number the closer it will be to the top of the menu. You can use negative numbers as well. The range of numbers that I have experimented with is -10000000 to 10000000 although you really should not need to use such a wide range. I use -10000 to 10000. Granted, I don't have that big of a parks menu, but I have a personal numbering strategy that works for me and allows for future additions without me needing to renumber things later. Lots can have the same number assigned to them (you can assign the number 2000 for example to all of your BSC parks). This will ensure that all those lots will remain together in the menu but their individual order may be random. Please note that the default maxis lots cannot (and should not) be easily altered with this method. Because of that you should assume that all default maxis lots are numbered as 0. Anything with a negative number will be above the default lots in the menu and anything with a positive number will be below. Anything not numbered or numbered as 0 will appear mixed in with the default lots. Step 3 Quit your game (if it is still running) and make a copy of your plugins folder. For now you can just copy it to your desktop if you like. This is to make sure that if you make any wrong or undesirable changes you wont have to worry. Step 4 By now you should have downloaded ILive's Reader. Get ILive's Reader from Simtropolis (or anywhere else you can find it). I have tried this method with SC4Tool and other lot manipulation tools but ILive's reader is the easiest one for this purpose. For those that know ILive's reader you probably know where I am going with this, for those that are new to modding lots, this program can seem a little daunting at first. Just pay attention to the steps and all should be fine. As long as you have a backup plugins folder you might want to experiement with this progam, you may find it helpful! Step 5 Open ILive's Reader and select the "Open" icon from the top left corner. Drill down through the folders until you find the plugins folder you wish to manipulate and select one of the lot files (or a .dat file which contains the lot) you wish to rearrange. Step 6 Now that the lot is loaded in the Reader, you should see three sections of the program on the screen: The left column has the file name with an icon. The middle column has a bunch of cryptic nonsense like LD File, Exemplar File, PNG File. The right column has even more cryptic nonsense which is different depending on what you select from the middle column. In the middle column you should find at least 2 lines which start with "Exemplar File". If you selected a file with one lot there will be two of these. If you opened a .dat file with many lots then there will be two of these lines for each lot in the .dat. Start selecting these "Exemplar File" lines and look at the right hand column. One of these files will produce a large number of "LotConfigPropertyLotObjectData" lines. This is not the correct Exemplar File line. Keep selecting different Exemplar file lines from the middle column until you see things in the right column such as bulldoze cost, park effect, item name, and so forth. When you have a correct Exemplar file line, look in the right hand column for a line that reads "item order". Chances are it will not be there. If "item order" IS in the right column, you can simply double click the line and a new window will appear. In the center of this window will be a box that contains the word "value" and beneath it a strange number that looks like "0x##########". For those of you that are not math or computer science majors this is a hexidecimal number. Dont worry about that. Double click on the "0x#####" thing and type in the number you want to give to this lot which you determined in Step 2. You can enter the number in hex (not recommended) or enter it with a regular decimal number (better). Only use whole numbers and do not include commas, decimal points or letters or leading zeros. You can and must include a minus sign at the beginning if you wish to assign a negative number. When you are done entering the number, simply click on the apply button at the bottom until the small window dissapears. This sometimes needs two clicks (there is a reason for this but it is not worth explaining). The program will translate the decimal number you entered into a hex number. If "item Order" is NOT in the right column, you first need to right click in an empty space of the right column and select "Add Property" from the list. When you do, a window will appear. At the very top of the window will be a box with the label "Name" and a value in the box which reads "!Unknown!". Drop the list down and find the value "item order". The list is very long but is in alphabetical order. Jjust be patient, its there. When "item order" is selected click on the button to the right that says "add" and a box will appear to the left under "value". Enter the number for the lot that you assigned in step 2 above. Use only whole numbers, no commas, no letters, no points, no leading zeros. You must put a minus sign in front of the number if you want a negative number. When the number is entered, hit the apply button at the bottom until the window dissapears. Step 7 Once the "Item Order" line in the right column has been updated to your satisfaction, click on the icon of your lot in the left column and click the save icon at the top left. If you dont save then all this work will have been for nothing. Step 8 You can either repeat the above steps to order more lots or close ILive's Reader and open SC4 to check out your menus and make sure things are working as planned. Continue all of these steps until your lots are ordered to your pleasure or until you go mad - whichever comes first. --------------------------------------- It should be noted that many of the better BATer's and Lotters out there already know how to do this with their lots. So if you have a lot of PEG lots (usually given positive numbers) or any of my Urban Beautification Lots they will already be numbered. I use -6000 to number my lots to ensure they appear at the top of my menu. You may want to put them somewhere else. I say this because you may number a lot with -1000 and expect it to be at the very top. If you use my lots they wont be, so be careful before you think that things are not working right. When you are playing around in ILive's reader you can mess with the other stats, however, many of the stats for a lot should not be changed. Use your best judgement and remember to have backups! Good luck and happy gaming. If you have any questions about this article, please PM Soldyne.