DarkSoul

I have the "Modular 8 Level Parking Garages" plugin, but the names and descriptions aren't exactly "complete" so to speak. I wanted to fix them, but this one is a little over my head in how it works. It's a single DAT file with all f the stuff inside of it, and I can't figure out what I need to change to fix the names. For instance in game there is the "parking garage bus stop" with the description "insert ploppable description here" I'd like to fix this so all of the names are consistent, and I'd like to add descriptions where they don't exist, but when using iLives Reader, nothing obvious works. I've searched through the exemplars, and XML, and LD (I honestly don't even know what those are aside from XML) and made changes to the obvious instance of "parking garage bus stop" but whenever I make the changes it doesn't appear in game and simply remains as "parking garage bus stop" instead of "8 Level Parking Bus Stop" that I change it to. How can I make these fixes so it looks nice in game and the tiles all have the titles and descriptions I set?

Yeah I'm familiar with the load order stuff, but what I meant was, why wouldn't the original version just be deleted, and then replaced by one of the two versions above?

Wouldn't the one you fixed just overwrite the original mod?

Thanks for all this man, I was going to figure out and how to do it all myself but as usual I ended up diverting my attentions elsewhere lol so no worries about it taking long haha. Appreciate the work you've put in to fix this lot because it's a really damn cool mod. I still haven't tested the other piece with the airport spawner in the garage entrance so I don't know how that will behave, but if I understand right there is that version above, and then what you posted now which will have the airport spawner on the park tile like it originally was?

Does the vehicles using it a lot have an actual effect on it or is it just a visual thing?

I want functional purposes for sure, I just wasn't sure if this was "normal" or not, so now I know. I think it can be mitigated if the kiosk is placed on a different road from the entrance.

Also wanted to clear up the driving into the garage thing. I didn't mean all traffic, but specifically the police kiosk garage tile. If it's placed near'ish the garage entrance then the cop cars leave the kiosk in droves and just drive immediately to the garage entrance. It's weird not only in that they're only going from kiosk to entrance, but also the sheer amount of cars generated that are driving directly to the garage and only the garage. I don't know how far this "effect" applies and if it stops if the kiosk-garage is placed X distance away from the entrance. I know what you mean about balancing stuff though, I too am in the middle of other things lol. I've stepped away from this briefly since the airport spawner "bug" came to light and I can't figure it out. I'll keep checking in here for sure though, overall I'm still going through my plugins from my old game and cleaning things up and/or updating them as necessary. I want things nice and organized this time around

again, no worries man, I was just curious if you'd found anything, I wasn't aware that you'd gone that far into it though lol. I'd definitely be interested in it though because that's why I'm trying to "fix" it for my game, and yeah I agree, it is a bit cheaty and I didn't want that myself. I used to like that sort of thing but I want to try and build a little more realistically now and being able to construct custom sized parking lots that are functional is a great mod but it doesn't make sense for it to be providing such a park effect for every tile. it's a parking garage lol.

did you ever end up taking a look at the airport spawner? I'd like to try and sort that out if possible but I have no idea what I'm doing in that regard lol. Also I noticed that the police kiosk tile will send out cars that will then immediately drive right into the garage entrance. I think this only happens if the kiosk is too close to the entrance though but I'm not really sure as I haven't actually sat there to test it all that much.

wow, thanks a ton man that's amazing stuff. I've used datpacker once but I'll run that single 8 level garage dat file through it and clean those things up then I guess. No worries on trying to get back to me today if not possible. I'm just messing around and trying to learn what I can for now. When I look at the lot editor for the "8 level shuttle spawner" lot(open park area tile) down under "Lots>Props" it has a bunch of props in there, like the garage level pieces. the entrance (8 lvl new entrance) doesn't. Not sure if that's relevant, but really the only other change I want to make here is to move that spawner after that I think I've got everything about this one covered in terms of naming things "properly" etc.

found the spawner, it is a prop not a building. I put the spawner in the entrance lot and it doesn't spawn any vehicles. but on the open park area it spawns TONS of airport shuttles.

So now I want to put the airport spawner in the entrance of the garage instead of in the park area because honestly that makes way more sense to have airport shuttles coming from the garage instead of a park lmao. I've got the entrance open, but I'm not sure where I'd find that spawner though. It's in the 8 level garages.dat file though I think....but it's a building?

oh.... I think it is the airport spawner....along with the entrance too. Damn.... how many shuttles are needed to go to the airport lol EDIT .... It IS the spawner lol

all done with it..... looks great now thanks to your help. I was going to edit the "garage open park area" tile that we talked about above, but I can't locate that one? I thought it would be the PZ1x1Grass exemplar but that just opens up the airport spawner lot...... Where is that open park tile?

I just realized something, way up above you said, and I quote "You say you aren't a visual learner" ..... I can't find where I might have mistyped something but if I did I meant to say that I AM a visual learner. Anyway I have the prop placed, I'm just slowly going through the video and I've been pausing, doing stuff otherwise and then coming back, which is why I'm still in the middle of it this time lol. I'm almost done now I think.

I had to change what I was working with to overlay. I saw what you did there I have the "Maxis Prop Names Query Fix" which apparently replaces those two files... I also have those two files though(Moved out of the dir) so I guess it doesn't completely replace them.......anyway, I put them back, reloaded and there was the Kiosk. Will I need to keep those there, or can I delete them again after I modify this lot? I'm asking because of the supposed "replacement"

I've done something wrong it seems.... I don't have the kiosk available in the props. it ends at CV8x8x2...... then just moves on to elevated rail

I saw the keyboard shortcuts, but the problem seems to be that I can't select anything? perhaps I'm in the wrong mode, I must've overlooked those shortcuts in the manual. I am looking in the manual as I go also, it's making a bit more sense now.

ok, I've become stuck.... I can't seem to rotate the overlay like you did.....

I'm following along now and it's already been considerably helpful. I couldn't make sense of what the tutorial was trying to get me to do, but it was easy to see that you clicked on "Lots", picked the building and it showed up down below. I also happened to notice the exclamation mark, which I gathered meant unused or something wrong with that one. So there are a couple of extra things in the plugin that aren't used and can be deleted just for cleanup purposes. Again, thank you for the video.

I've been looking through the manual, and it isn't making a lot of sense. It's showing me how to make a new growable lot, which isn't what I'm trying to do, and even following it word for word just so that I've gone through the tutorial and things still don't make any sense in any applicable way to what I'm trying to achieve. I don't learn like 99% of people, hell I might be neuro-divergent for all I know, but I could spend all day reading about carpentry, starting with the basics right up to the very advanced and I would still barely be able to stick two boards together. I could however *watch* a carpenter build a cabinet and then make the same cabinet with a better understanding of how to do it than anything in the book. I also can't ask the book questions. That being said I greatly appreciate the time you've taken to not only try to help me here, but also going so far as to put together a video. You've shown just in this post that it clearly isn't an incredibly hard thing to do..... you must understand that it makes me feel incredibly stupid not being able to figure out what is a simple thing, especially after spending an entire day trying to do just that. I'm trying to learn how to do this stuff, but it isn't as easy for me as it seems to be for most people. It's especially difficult since there doesn't seem to be much in the way of videos about it that I can find.

ok seriously I have no idea how to do what you did in PIMX..... I don't know where to drag the what to do what with what to modify the existing piece already in the dat file I also can't even find the "parking garage police kiosk" piece to add the kiosk to it, such as you've shown in the picture so I\m guessing it's already made of pieces......

I feel like I'm missing something or using the wrong PIMX or something because all I can really do is just see lists of the (exemplars? files?), there's like literally nothing I can do.

It only goes one folder deep in my plugins folder though, so I can load "buildings" but not "buildings\8 Level Garages" and I can't even find the police parking garage tile in PIMX for some reason. I can see the "buildings" which are just two cylinders, but I can't find the actual parking garage piece with the tree.... the one in your picture above.

ok, PIMX isn't making a lot of sense to me....how do I load just the dat I want to work with?