Is in-game lot editing possible?

[Frolius666]

Hello,

I can live with most limitations on realism in SC4, but one thing that always freaks me out is parking lots appearing at the back of buildings where no car can actually go.
When it's a nice building I tend to make it historical and I try to add some realism with paths leading to them.
But what I would like the most is to be able to change the lots base- and overlay textures, street allignment, building position, aso... to make the parking lots look like they are actually accessable by cars.
Most of the buildings however are growables and many are already grown.
Demolishing all of them is nearly impossible with the risk of overlooking one, and with some it could even affect my city's economy and growth.
So the question is... how far can i go with editing lots that are already in the game without messing up my cities??

[jeronij]

You should be able to edit the city saved file to make any changes to ploped lots. As far as I am aware, there is no tool for such a purpose  .


What you could do is to remake all the Maxis lots ( a huge task btw ¡¡¡), and for that to work, you should need to extract them one by one from the core dat files, save them as individual lot files in your plugins folder, and edit them there. If you simply change them in the LE, the original files do exist yet and will be used.

Not an easy answer for a not easy question  ¡¡¡

[Frolius666]

Not an easy answer is better than no answer... thanx a lot!

So I extract them and save them individually, I could do that... one by one... over the years 
But if i change a lot that is still in my city, what would happen with it?
I would like to edit when a building appears that I want to keep, but the textures bother me.
So I save the city, exit SC4, find and edit the building and save under the same TGI, open SC4, open the city... and then what happens??

[jeronij]

Im sorry, I have no idea how the saved file structure is. I dont know what to change and/or how to change it. It was just a suggestion. If you decide to try it, dont forget to make a backup from your original file first ¡¡¡

[wouanagaine]

What I think you're asking is :
"If I relot a maxis building that have already grown in my city, will the changes be apply to them"

I think no, but I'm not sure at all, someone ( Barbyw ?, Badsim ? ) may be 100% sure of the answer

What I'm sure is that if you "save as" a maxis lot in LE, the change won't be applied. You need to extract with ilive Reader the individual lots from simcity_1.dat ( make a backup as jeronij said ), and I'm not sure of the result.

[BarbyW]

If you change a building that already exists in a city then the changes will not be seen in those but only in newly grown lots.  You would need to do a Save As for all lots redone but even then the old versions may grow. The only way to really do this would be as Wou said and extract all the lots from simcity_1.dat and remake them all then use a Maxis blocker to make sure only your edited lots grow.

[Badsim]

But what I would like the most is to be able to change the lots base- and overlay textures, street allignment, building position, aso... to make the parking lots look like they are actually accessable by cars.

The only precision I can add to BarbyW's reply , is that if you change a CUSTOM Lot and use "Save" , new base textures and overlays will be changed on these already used Lots in your cities , but not the changes about props or BAT position ... that said , I don't advise to use "Save" for any original MAXIS Lot (growing or not) , but "Save as" a new Lot ...and as new Lots aren't your purpose , I'm sorry to don't be able to help you more than that ....

So I extract them and save them individually, I could do that... one by one... over the years 

That's exactely what I'm doing ...