Is it possible to mod the hover query?

[HappyDays]

That's question 1. Question 2 is, is it possible to mod it such that it displays the stage of the building being hovered over?

Question 3 is, if the answer to both is yes: Where is the hover query file in SimCity_1.dat?

I'm somewhat doubtful, even if the answer to all three is "yes", that I have the ability to even do the changes...though it doesn't hurt to try, eh? At least learn something new.

Thank you for your assistance.

[Lowkee33]

I have been working on something similar.  There may be better answers, but this is what I understand so far.

Question 1)  Nope.  However, I believe the hover query gets the info from the Lot Query (UI in Reader), so editing the UI will change what the hover says.  Of course it doesnt display all of the UI info, so it discriminates somehow.

Question 2)  There is no way to get the growth stage (although I am thinking about that one)

Question 3)  I would guess that the way the query acts is in the .exe, but you dont need to change that. See #1.

I think the best bet would be to change the name of the building (in any modding program) so that it has the stage of the lot in it.  That way when the hover showed the name it would also show the stage.

I have been trying to get stage info also in my game.  The most accessible functions are in the LUAs where missions/adviser pop-ups get their basis.  These commands can be put into queries, and this is how the Census Repository and other complicated queries are made.  There is nothing about stages that I have found.

I have one route that I am going to try to get the stage info from, but I am going to have to learn much more.  I will let you know if I get anything. 

[HappyDays]

1: Darn. And yes, I came to recall the data priority once I was back in game. The strongest positives and negatives seem to be the ones that are listed, with strongest negatives having priority. Yet another issue, since we don't know what controls this...

2: Since the stage of the building is kept in its lot file, and the game stores this information during the simulation, I would reckon it MIGHT be possible to add this information to the query UI...but this is just a wild guess. Even if possible, still the above issue...

CAM buildings tend to mention their stage in the name of the building, and I find this less than immerse. Having its stage mentioned in the hover query would be ideal, in my mind, since then the buildings could have their proper name while I still know what stage they are.

I'd offer my assistance in your quest, but I'm completely in the dark about the issue...thus why I asked.

Well, thank you for your help no less. Perhaps someone else will come in and have the puzzle piece needed to put everything together. We can hope, at least.

[RippleJet]

As noted, the hover query only displays the name of the building.
Whatever other information that the hover query displays (e.g. crime rate), cannot be controlled. That's from within the exe.

The ordinary query can only show properties which are given in the building exemplar.

The growth stage of the lot exemplar isn't even available in the savegame file...
The truth for this can be found in the BSC Blockers. These change the growth stage of the blocked lots to 255 (0xFF).
By thus changing it in the lot exemplar, all lots that have already grown in the game also get this growth stage (and will thus be blocked from upgrading).

In other words, to see the growth stage in the query, would require it to be available in the building exemplar.
This is not that straight forward though.

First of all, the same building can be placed in lots of different sizes, and thus the same building can grow on lots having different growth stages.
This applies above all to all ingame growable RCI buildings.

The only feasible way would have been to make it the same way as the growth stage is shown for the AC Functional Airports and the BSC Functional Seaports:



As you can see, the query does show the growth stage.
For all these ports, the growth stage has been given in an (for growable buildings) otherwise unused building exemplar property, the Goofy Stat Response Curve.

That property requires pairs of numbers, normally at least 4 of them,
where the first value in each pair sets the limits for a randomly generated number,
and the second value provides the actual value of that property.

For the ports, only one pair of values has been used, e.g. 0, 3.
That would randomly generate a number between 0 and 0, and the result would in this case always be 3.

In the query, this property can be shown by a GZWinText having id=0x0000106B.
It's a pity I didn't think about this when we started to make CAMeLots... the functional ports were made about a year after CAM.

[Jonathan]

It is definitely with in the EXE, I have seen other hover querys in the EXE that are far more useful then the 3 hover querys we have now (Now query, terrain query, and the Ctrl-Alt-Shift Query), like a network query that tells you about the a network tile such as it's rotation flip and IID which would be very useful in making mods like NAM. sadly though it seems these more advanced querys aren't enabled in game.

[SC4BOY]

I believe the stage is not even reported in the extensive data available in the SC4 Query.txt written on query into the apps install directory

[HappyDays]

The ordinary query can only show properties which are given in the building exemplar.

Well, darn.

It's a pity I didn't think about this when we started to make CAMeLots... the functional ports were made about a year after CAM.

It seems to be a relatively simple modification to make (At least with your instructions!). For CAM, only a few different UI files need to be changed to display growth stage information. The issue is, obviously, the growables themselves...too many to count, almost.

I'm not sure it'd be worth the effort, personally, since I'd replace one compromise for another...correct names, but I'd need to actually examine the building to know the stage.

[Lowkee33]

Little bump here.

In the query, this property can be shown by a GZWinText having id=0x0000106B.

About this, is there perhaps a list of GZWinText Ids?

I am fairly certain that 0x00001016 gave me Power Consumed.  Since I started at 0x1000 and that was the property I was looking for, I think that is as far as I am going to go today...

Edit: not quite.  0x1016 is more like Water Pollution... Looks like it's back to testing.  Though that last run, the only thing in my city was a building that consumed 4, yet the power station only displayed 3 consumed...   


~ 0x100A was 4107 on my ID buildings, 0x1012 seemed to be Capacity/10, 0x1014 returned "72", which, during cheetah, changed to 73 for no apparent reason.

All others were either NA or nothing distinguishable~

[HappyDays]

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=9300.msg377004#msg377004

RippleJet already answered your question, silly.