Ordinances and other rules

[IanB]

Guess I have the honour of opening this forum... 

I can't find a tutorial on modifying ordinances, I guess most people are into Lot modification and BATting so that's what's more generally available. I was checking out Buggi's Parking Fines Ordinance mod from the STEX and while he'd offset the CS depressive effect, lower mayor ratings and cost with some income, it still isn't very useful even for a larger city. In particular it didn't in any way address the reality of why cities enact parking laws (yeah, cynically we know it's actually to cream money off motorists who are easy pickings, but I mean the "serious" reason): to  help reduce congestion and improve traffic flow by preventing double parking etc..

So I'd be interested in seeing a tutorial that would show how to recreate this ordinance mod from scratch, including its creative rewriting of the Carpool Incentive mod, but also incorporating some subtle effects to improve speeds and capacity slightly on streets, roads and avenues (obviously useless on highways). I'd also be interested to see whether there's a way to do this that would allow other network-affecting mods (significantly NAM and CAM) to operate correctly and then to add this mod afterwards, changing the existing capacity/speed by a small percentage (eg. + 3%) rather than by a hard-coded value that would overwrite the non-CAM or modified CAM setting, to improve compatability.

There's another reason too - the installation method for this mod requires an RPatch installer for which the given URL is dead, which isn't very helpful. So recreating the mod from scratch might be the only way to use it. But a tutorial on how to do it would benefit more people than just me I suspect, so I hope someone will take the time to do this.

[RippleJet]

There's another reason too - the installation method for this mod requires an RPatch installer for which the given URL is dead, which isn't very helpful. So recreating the mod from scratch might be the only way to use it. But a tutorial on how to do it would benefit more people than just me I suspect, so I hope someone will take the time to do this.

You must have a very old KBI (Karybdis-Buggi-Ilive) version of the Parking Fine Ordinance.
The Parking Fine Ordinance currently in ST's modding section is a DAT file uploaded by RalphaelNinja.


The best way to check what is changed and added to the Parking Fine Ordinance, is to compare it to the in-game Carpool Incentive Ordinance:

Carpool Incentive Ordinance by Maxis:		Parking Fine Ordinance by Buggi:

but also incorporating some subtle effects to improve speeds and capacity slightly on streets, roads and avenues (obviously useless on highways). I'd also be interested to see whether there's a way to do this that would allow other network-affecting mods (significantly NAM and CAM) to operate correctly and then to add this mod afterwards, changing the existing capacity/speed by a small percentage (eg. + 3%) rather than by a hard-coded value that would overwrite the non-CAM or modified CAM setting, to improve compatability.

There are only a limited number of properties available for ordinances, unfortunately.
And none of them allows the change of network capacities or speeds.

The table below lists all properties available for ordinances:




The best way to learn how these properties function, is to change them yourself in Reader,
and test the effect of the changes by enacting the modded ordinance in game.
I'm enclosing a dat file (Maxis_InGame_Ordinances.dat) including all in-game ordinances for you to look at and play with.

I'm also enclosing another Ordinance mod that I've been playing with:
Buggi's Super Demand Ordinance (RJ - Super Demand Ordinances - Separated.dat)
In the version I've made the original demand ordinance is split up into nine separate ordinances,
one each for CO§§, CO§§§, CS§, CS§§, CS§§§, IR, ID, IM and IHT.
You can play around with that one as well to see what you can do.

The Super Demand Ordinance by Buggi changes all affected ordinances into income ordinances.
If you want to reset the ordinances back to how they are in game,
you would normally just remove the dat file from your plugins folder.

However, since ordinances are saved in the saved game file as well, the income part of the ordinance would not be reset.
That is because the in-game ordinances do not contain that property telling whether it is an income ordinance.
Instead they rely on the default state that an ordinance is not providing income.

In order to reset the income ordinances back to their default values you would need to use the third file attached to this post.
Just place it in your plugins folder, open your city, save it, exit, and remove the RJ - Reset Maxis Ordinances.dat from your plugins.

[IanB]

My mistake, I'd been looking at buggi's gambling ordinance as well, and the version of that still on the STEX is the .kbi Rpatch version, not the parking one you linked.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'm still finding my way round references to all the various modding tools, and I'm not planning to get my feet wet until I've done a lot more reading, so I'm guessing that the screenshots you posted were from the ILive Reader. While obviously the Reader has to be pointed at the DAT to read the modified ordinance, which game file should it read to see the original version, where the carpool ordinance is?

Hmm, OK, the network capacity isn't directly modifiable, but there is the Travel Strategy that could be tweaked. Less Sims might prefer to use the roads if they are being dogged by traffic wardens, just like most city centres (I work in central London, so I'm very familiar with that) so it could have the effect of reducing congestion that way...

Just playing with ideas really. I'm simply astonished at the range of modifications that are being developed, and that's without having access to the SC4 source code. I have far too many RL projects of my own, but as an ASM programmer I might be interested in helping with some of the more code-based problems, or help write better tools.

[RippleJet]

Side-by-side, here's the in-game gambling ordinance (to the left) compared to Buggi's Gambling Ordinance (to the right):



Buggi's Gambling Ordinance also makes some changes to the in-game casino reward.

I'm enclosing Buggi's Gambling Ordinance to this post, converted from KBI to a DAT file.

In order to see the in-game ordinances in Reader:
  1. Open Reader (do not click Fill the list)
  2. Click the Simcity DAT tag in the bottom of the left pane
  3. Click the first file, simcity_1.dat
  4. Click the Analyser button on top
  5. Click the Tree button in the Analyser window
  6. Click the Search button
  7. Click the + to the left of the line saying Ordinance
  8. Click the ordinance you want to check (the Carpool is number 6)
  9. The content of that ordinance exemplar opens up in the right pane.

[Tarkus]

Reattached files from second post.  Credits to RippleJet.

-Alex