Raymond7cn

Thank you @chfzdn, Sorry that I forgot to leave a note about the next plan. I was learning Python(advice from CoriBoom™), After finishing most of models for that secret project, I begun to learn it with my boy, It's his summer vocation, so we could learn and make mistakes together. It did remind me of that time when I started to learn modelling, @Cyclone Boom @mattb325 (Do you remember that, CB and Matt.) I made 5 mistakes on printing "Hello World", Ha-ha. Frankly I have tried to learn a programming language for many times before, but gave up easily, since I couldn't find out an aim that why I need to learn programming, Now, I got a good one. This Special game has inspired me in many ways, I got a feeling that I probably can succeed this time, After trying to solve those puzzles Maxis left to us, Including guessing Hardcode, I thought I could understand some theories more better than before, same thing happened on PS's mask and painting as well. Anyway, There is still a long way to get to the level of Xannepan or Lowkee's, I have written some simple code to read and edit binary file, but have some bugs and need to learn more about functions are related to GUI etc. Thank you so much Cori! It will be super helpful, Since I was just stuck in guessing what that "2 Bytes - End of Section" was in section 13 and the structure of 13.5. May I ask a question about your LUA code, you knew how random my thoughts often can be. From your The C.O.R.I. Reports and MySim Thought and Speech Balloon Dictionary(your thoughtful comments are more like a tutorial), I could see this "building_groups.????", (???? for RESIDENTIAL or BUS etc), so I presume that this is some built-in functions which can filter out certain type Buildings or Automatas by Occupant Groups in every Building's Exemplar, Is it correct? If so, I get some random thoughts about Lua and Effects(All because of you so that I knew there were possibilities), since I saw some words in tutorial and hardcode as well, (coverage_cells or cell_coverage, target_sequence, target_list, target_destroyed). Anyway, My friends, I'll be away on vocation for about two weeks with my boy, sand and beach and Fish&chips! See you soon! Yours, -- Raymond

It brings back some memories as I did the same thing during the class, Then my teacher took it away. Very nice draft TMC, I'm just not sure about the road between main road and the seaport or ferry. Anyway, Looking forward how it looks like when building in game. oh Wait, Is that a board underneath of my favorite chess [Go]? Sincerely, -- Raymond

Learning Note about Effdir: It's not very hard (but tedious) to hex edit Effdir, We can get most of the definition as below: I used to try to modify it before, But I made a big mistake about "DWORD", Get confused with "Word", (8 bits=1 Byte, Double Word=32 bit=4 Bytes=8 hex bits, eg. 10 00 00 00), Then If we'd like to write an Effdir with a blank Section 1, We should write " 04 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 ", 04 00 = Major Version EFDIR 4 02 00 = Minor Version EFDIR 2 00 00 00 00 = DWORD (Number of Entries) -- Since we want no record in this section 01 00 = 0x0001 - End of Section -- I have no idea how to say it more precisely (In English) , But In my experience, the Long HEX value in binary is always reverse, eg. In Hex editing, a resource key "4a8b8ec5" should be written as "C5 8E 8B 4A".

Hiya Alejo,@Barroco Hispano I could only find out these (a1.dat) may be related to Tank's fire or shoot effect, I hope it helps. @City_Slider Hiya Oliver, Thank you for your powerful and encouraging words, Actually, I was just learning along the step of giants (CoriBoom™) @CorinaMarie Yes Ma'am, I could understand your words very well, Especially in this case, we need to parser and figure out most of infos in Effdir, as one of alternative option which came from the tests I made today, This effect maybe useful: It's in section 13 named "stream_cut_fx_terrain", I used cheat code (CB's tea) 'effect' for a efficient test, then you can tell it seemed to only demolish the network and flora, whereas the growable lots kept the same. I couldn't figure out the mechanism within since it simply points to section 4 - 24, Anyway, It maybe useful by tweaking some arguments there. I also played a bit of disasters today, Indeed we can create more of them if the puzzle of Effdir is solved someday, Besides, I found they all have been defined in hardcode in a way, the ManagerID and item Button ID there invoke specific function of hardcode, by effect name property we can also call effects in section 13 with the same name, some of them could have some impacts on terrain as well: I wanted to add a pipe_burst disaster, but It crashed to desktop everytime.

My first Effdir mod, Well, though I didn't achieve my goal, However I did learn some hex editing skills and basic structure of Effdir. It started from a request about @CorinaMarie's splendid Flora Eraser Brush. (I failed to carry out it finally @junspud) I can use Brush (OperationID=4) to active effects, Meanwhile, I have seen flora burn or demolish effects before, so I wondered if we could use some effects to burn those flora but keep the others same, But there were not enough effects in section 14 suit to this. most of them are in section 13, then after a bit digging in Wiki, I tried to write a new one. Trails and errors is the best way to solve puzzles, Especially to me, It's not that hard if writing the hex data according its special format. (No doubt that I learnt all of these from CoriBoom™) But this was just a burning effect which doesn't help on demolishing exact objects such as flora, then some other effects. whereas there were still some effects which could have some impact on the Terrain and objects, such as : @CorinaMarie Hiya Cori, Do you think there is still possibility to achieve this by assembling a new effect from other sections? If so, I want to give it a try one day after my Python course. This 'tank shot' may be excess. @Barroco Hispano Sorry Alejo for being late on this, I'll check them out tomorrow.

Please do teach me this, CB, I don't know how to move it or the Label. @mattb325, Frankly, Matt, Though I haven't fully understood the importance of your finding, However, I really thought it deserves a dedicated thread. Congratulations! Thank you Cori and Barton, You were probably correct here, whereas I didn't make significant progress today, when I dragged those hidden Zones, still couldn't see the color there, I have tried many approaches to get some changes, but to no avail, How do those FSHs work is also a secret to me by now. Anyway, I will dig more deeper into hardcode someday, Here is those Hidden zones I made : HIBI.dat You could find them out from the zone residential menu if you have interested in this. @Terring @Cyclone Boom @CorinaMarie, I believe Cori's judgment and CB's conjecture about typo were reasonable, I got some clues in Effdir: I have no idea about the connection or resources of pothole and pothole rail, but the selectorls resources have been found in Simcity_2.dat, Just as Cori mentioned, (I have never experienced this while playing before, what a Newbie), About If we could have more flexible applications of them(paint the network by these Effects @Barroco Hispano), I thought it seems promising since we have CoriBoom.!

@BartonThinks Hiya Barton, You reacted my post I wrote with a bad Internet (proxy), Please check it out again. @junspud Oh my old friend, Sorry that I forgot to reply you, Thank you so much for helping me with testing of those Brushes. Sincerely looking forward to your suggestions. Thank you in advance.

"Low Density Residential" Item Button ID = 1 "Medium Density Residential" Item Button ID = 2 "High Density Residential" Item Button ID = 3 "Low Density Commercial" Item Button ID = 4 "Medium Density Commercial" Item Button ID = 5 "High Density Commercial" Item Button ID = 6 "Resource Industrial" Item Button ID = 7 "Light Industrial" Item Button ID = 8 "Heavy Industrial" Item Button ID = 9 "Military" Item Button ID = A "Airport" Item Button ID = B "Seaport" Item Button ID = C "Spaceport" Item Button ID = D "Landfill" Item Button ID = E "Plopped Building" Item Button ID = F @BartonThinks, Yes, Barton, it has possibilities, IMO. But I can't ensure it, since everything is possible in a Newbie's world. Anyway, Above is a list I have confirmed in hardcode (tough digging) that the whole zone types we have, as far as I can tell it seemed there wasn't any difference between them and other types existed. But I'm not 100% sure about this, Further and deep research are required. BTW, These types have been defined in Query.txt as well. Furthermore, within the same function, This seemed to be another hierarchy definition: "Residence" =1, "Services" =2, "Office" =3, "Tourism" =4, "Agriculture" =5, "Processing" =6, "Manufacturing" =7, "High Tech" =8. Besides, I dimly remembered that @Terring has metioned some hidden transit types as well, Anyway, I got this two Unknown (probably just me): Pothole_Rail Dirt_Road May I ask what's a Pothole or Pothole Rail? It's not rail or other I have seen in vanilla SC4, since I could see other names there. As for the Dirt Road, I guess that it's probably SAM, Right? I want to dig more deeper tomorrow about Decal, as @chfzdn said, I have looked forward it for a while, way back to signpost, But the Decal system in SC4 is more interesting, It can stretch along with Terrain forming, less burden to game's performance. But the only problem by now was that I couldn't save it, But today, I found that I could save this textdecal just as Labels, Meanwhile from wiki, I got the zone is also a Decal, so tomorrow I'd like to start from @CorinaMarie's Deuteranopia Zone Manager, Just a little question, Why most of those Properties in Zone Manager simulator have 16 Reps?

Actually and Honestly, I have no idea what you are talking about exactly even if you speak my language. But I do remember this mod many years ago while only playing the game and knew nothing about Modding, I can still vaguely recall that it could make sims working at home and some other crazy functions. This is a posts maybe related to it though it seemed that they were talking about another version of SC. There were some Properties which didn't exist in any Exemplar, I simply split them into two parts, whether or not in hardcode(Only for private study purposes) This "Allow Joint Occupancy" mentioned by @mattb325 appears once. It's in a function as a condition for determine statements, and this function is invoked by another one. I couldn't understand the whole functions, There were only some human readable key words within as below: [Building, Item name, Wealth, Building %s has a bad wealth property, Purpose, Capacity Satisfied, Allow Joint Occupancy, Construction time, Occupant Size, Plop Cost, Static Occupant Families.] I don't think this will be helpful, and I don't have that amazing perseverance @GoaSkin mentioned to guess out the specific function. However, I'm very glad to see some Veterans talking about their good memories and experiences. Anyway, I have totally understood the Item Button ID, as its name implies, This Item (Exemplar(Brush, zone tools,etc)) invokes function (hardcode) by a Button ID, most of these IDs have been defined in UI's Button elements, some of them in Exemplars, as for the others, we have to guess such as that 4 hidden zone types (0X0F worked as well, and when if click the Seaport and Airport zone, its property panel will pop up.). This feature & wincustom & captions will be extremely useful to my UI Mod. Along with digging Puzzle X, I came across Puzzle Y again, @Cyclone Boom Hiya CB, Was this Cheat spotted before?

I just couldn't help exploring these days, Everyday my head is full of Puzzle ABCDEF…, when I was digging Puzzle F, Then a new Puzzle G came out, You can guess out why there're so many Puzzles, since I'm a Newbie. Let's skip those countless tests I made, since most of them were to no avail, even as for some success tests, I found that I just followed the steps of those Giants, Nevertheless I did learnt a lot of basic principles of the game. I just could understand some of @smf_16's great works recently, Then threw some questions to him, Thank God we have Specialists on almost every areas. I tweaked Cori's code a bit to get all Exemplars which haven't used in game. I haven't gotten notable finding, However this one (exist) was interesting, Item Button ID. The agriculture and commercial and industrial and residential zone (low, Medium, high) occupied the range from 0x01 to 0x09, then landfill is oxoe, so I wondered why doesn't have 0x0a ~ 0x0d there? then I copied high industrial's Exemplar but modified the ExemplarIID and Item Button ID to 0x0a ~ 0x0d. It's Interesting, when I queried those area I dragged with these new zone types, You can tell they were : Military Base, Airport, Seaport, Spaceport. What's your thoughts about this, My friends. Besides, The Item Button ID also exists on some UDI transports and Terrain forming (erode, smooth, raise, lower, ) and even a disaster (fire) and Mayor Floras, I have tried to modified 4 flora's Item Button ID to Palm's, Then They all planted palms in game. Still couldn't figure out specific function of it. Actually, I was designing a whole new UI mod as well, Not just modifying different color themes this time, But a different layout and new icons, I know it's a big challenge to me, Especially some issue were related to hardcode, Nevertheless, I did find out some new PNGs and got some skills of UI, so… It looks promising.

Oh my Goodness, @chfzdn @Whte_rbt @smf_16 This is not a Real functional submenu!! It's just only a draft, since I was designing a new UI mod, I just got the background pic (png) and made it to transparent, Yes, I was trying to make many columns, But then unfortunately, I found that the game invoke these PNGs in hardcode, and also there was a value 0x35, decimal is 53 which is equivalent to the pixel of background. whereas @OrSpeeder 's list gave me a little hope, Well, Anyway, There is still a long way ahead, I will let you know whenever I get some improvements, Sorry for this unrealistic illusion!! ----- Thanks a million @smf_16!! it's kind of embarrassing that I couldn't understand all of your professional elaboration, (I need to learn a bit subfile first,) I can only tell the size of them are different, by @wouanagaine's tool and Reader (Thank you @Cyclone Boom for the new version), I could also see there are three files within the savegame have changed a bit on size, I copied and pasted them by Reader (before and after rain), then the city could be loaded normally but still couldn't preserve the water, I didn't know what's that supposed to mean. I have looked through some articles by Paul Pedriana, Just as @smf_16 said, First of all, This game has never been finished, They were told by Maxis or EA when they were still designing that either to publish SC4 tomorrow or never, It means we were supposed to have a SimWorld 4 without this annoying interruption. Second, Paul also metioned that the basic logic of game is … sorry I forget that word, whereas with my understanding, He wanted to say that most of information are saved into each tiles, such as when we query them, There shows unzoned land or city owned land or Terrain etc, so I presume that the tile's type did change after I spread the rain water, no matter the water itself is effect or decal or S3D, but the land has shifted to water, since we can drag bridge, the seaport and the ship can be functional there. But whenever we enter a city, Just as @smf_16 said, The game probably generates the water basing the sea level in Terrain exemplar or other settings. So, I have a little hope that we may can stop this simulator by some cheat code or Button to trigger or toggle some functions, Thanks to @smf_16 and @OrSpeeder, I want to give them one last shot. Ofc, Learn your splendid codes first, (well btw, If you're not an expert, who else I can consult when I can't understand them.) Sorry that I didn't make this purpose more clearly, Yes, I mean If I have a savegame which only contains a Lot which generated by IGLE, Can we extract it from this savegame file, I'm not sure if it has to be a sc4Lot or dat file, Anyway, If you still couldn't get my awful English, I can send this file to you, Or hope CoriBoom can help me on this, They are good at Newbie's language. @CorinaMarie @Cyclone Boom. Thanks again, Seba, I just began to learn Python with my boy couple days ago, and have learnt some basic programming from Cori before, so by now, You can only count on me for some Models and some Newbie's wild ideas. Sincerely, -- Raymond

It's really knid of late to me to get on this train, since I was quite a Newbie when this thread started. What a Marvelous achievement! @smf_16, I just have readed to Page 2, However enough and valuable information I have gotten, Thank you Seba! Don't want to ruin here too much with my Newbie questions, so I will try my best to ask them as simple as I can. 1. Rain or water. I learnt some about Terrain Brush recently, The Rain Brush made me curious about the game's water, What's the essence of them? sometimes they look entirely different, but sometimes not, Anyway, I really want to know why the game couldn't keep or save the water. SaveGameAnalysing.zip There are three savegames within which belong to one city, "Original" stands for the city before applying the rain brush, "Rain" was the city I applied the rain then saved, "Again" was when I reentered again, the water has gone, then I saved. May I ask how to analyse the difference among them. If it's possible to see the info of tiles like coordinates etc, I'd like to figure out what happened on this as well. 2. IGLE, I have made tons of tests on this amazing finding by @CorinaMarie, managed to save the Lot I created in In-Game LE, but to no avail, But after reading this thread, I understand that @smf_16 can add some Lot into the savegame file, then since we can still save the Lot made by IGLE in savegame, so Is it possible to export it from savegame to a Lot? ----- Frankly, I still have many Newbie questions, For example, After got these valuable infos from @smf_16 and speeder's selfless sharing, I made some simple tests on some of them. They're the result of CreateTextDecal and ToxicSpill, The game just put them into the Up left corner, I couldn't see the text clearly due to just part of it, and the placebuilding and flora seemed work as well with some arguments. and some others are probably useful to UI modifying: kSC4MessageAdvisors_AdviceDebugCheat_DebugShowGUID = 0xEA917750; kSC4MessageAdvisors_AdviceDebugCheat_DebugRefresh = 0x8A917759; kSC4MessageAdvisors_AdviceDebugCheat_DebugTrigger = 0x4A91DD6E; kSC4MessageAdvisors_AdviceDebugCheat_DebugPrint = 0x4A92ECEF Besides, I want to make further tests on these below to see if they prevent the water in different altitude levels. kSC4MessageRedisplayTerrain = 0x870BC918; kSC4MessageTerrainDoErosion = 0x470BD214; kSC4MessageToggleTerrainGridDisplay = 0x277A9364; kSC4MessageLongTerrainOperationBegin = 0xEA3B0AF1; kSC4MessageLongTerrainOperationEnd = 0x6A3B0AFD; kSC4MessageTerrainHeightsChanged = 0x278E6003; kSC4MessageWaterHeightsChanged = 0x678E6E3A; kSC4MessageSeaLevelChanged = 0x89171496; kSC4MessageTerrainTypeChanged = 0xC922EB91; kSC4MessageTerrainReconcilation = 0xCA63D517; kSC4MessageWaterSurfaceStateChanged = 0x6AB97795; Furthermore, I really hope to see this (many columns) in game, But I must learn all of them before more wild thoughts. Sincerely, -- Raymond