changing farm fields

[vortext]

hello,
for the sake of variety I want to change the type of field on some growable farms but I can't figure out how to do this.
Can anyone explain how this is done, or point to me a turorial?
Thanks, Vortext

[Lowkee33]

By using IlivesReader to open a IR (farm) Building in Simcity_1.dat there is a line:

Field Lots: 0x00024100,0x2A6E4309,0x2A6E431D,0xAA6E4328,0x6A6E4332,0xEA6E4721,0xEA6E4722

This list of 0x######## are the Instances of the Maxis Farm Fields.  To add custom fields to this list you would add the Instances of custom Farm Fields.  You can also remove the Maxis Instances from this list to make custom fields always happen.

[vortext]

thanks lowkee, was overlooking that little son off a line quite some time now    I assume the game picks from these instances at random?

[Lowkee33]

I would think so, but I never graphed it (I am doing Calculus homework right now, dirivitives of inverse functions, hence my quick reply time).

[vortext]

must have been something wrong with my eyes today, I quote from the reader:  'will choose 1 randomly' and indeed it did   
can see how one can get destracted doing math, never was my favorite subject  good luck though

[Lowkee33]

It would be neat to have certain Instances (fields) that repeat to see if that would make them appear more often.

[vortext]

after trying different configurations i think it does, albeit the underlying statistics were sloppy to say the least 
flicking through the threads, i saw your work on the climate / water / terrain properties and it looked very spectacular. Are you still making progress on that? Just started to do modest lotting and found myself using cp terrain's all the time, usually with a lot of overlays to get the kind of variety you're aiming at. Would be wicked if a climate mod could increase the terrain detailing, not to mention possible meltwater rivers. . Keep up the good work. 

[Lowkee33]

Cool.

I am making progress in my own way.  Nothing to show for it except better organization and planning.

The main goal of the mod is to use the Weather Exemplar to the best of it's abilities.  Melt-water rivers and IR desirability based on Moisture are two perhaps possible things I am looking into.  As a long term process I hope to have HD textures, but I have not tested performance issues. If you check out the ENN HD rock mod (which is actually a cliff mod) you will see that HD textures look fantastic.

I hope to have an update on that later today.

[vortext]

already got one of Ennedi's rock installed, it lookes amazing indeed. Though I've noticed my computer can barely cope with large mountains showing a lot of rock cliffs.  Wondering if a full HD terrain wouldn't render effective gameplay impossible. That said, I would definitely give it a go if you were ever going to release such a thing.

Since this thread is off-topic anyway, I once saw a MD which had large dunes instead of a small strip of beach (which imho is unrealistic). Could this also have been done with the reader and if so, what property would one change and where can it be found?

[Lowkee33]

In the Terrain Properties Exemplar:

MaxBeachWidth:  How far from water does the beach extend (in tiles, max: 0xFF)
MaxBeach Altitude:  How high does the beach extent (decimal form).  MaxTerrainHeight is also in the TPE as a decimal, so you can estimate how far up you want beaches.

Beaches are always the same texture, and I believe that texture is defined in the Terrain INI.  If so, it would be simple (not complicated) to make a high/wide beach a more realistic texture.  There are all sorts of variables in there.  Beach extends to a variable amount below sea-level, and so I guess you could have a beach that does not extend onto land be a barrier reef type landscape.

Good to know about the performance issue.  Maybe I should set up an old laptop as a tester...

[vortext]

it worked! Got myself some large dunes which made me want to do a desert region, too bad I just set up an entire mediterranean one. A well, guess I can do both. .

It lookes like there is really fun stuff hidden in these dat files but I'm all new to using the reader and frankly find it a bit intimidating. Is there some sort of document which explains the properties & values?

For instance, the AutoFlatAreaEdgeSmootheningRadius property has a value of 0x00000006 but how does that translate in game? The description isn't that helpfull either; 'to what distance (in cells) around an auto-flattened area we do smoothing'. Uhm ok, but what is an auto-flattened area and by how many degrees is the smoothing calculated, if any.

I guess my real question is how big a change there is to screw things up badly.

[Lowkee33]

The most complete list is found in Reader.  If you click to edit a property there is a "?" button.  This button will list all of the possible known properties and give the Maxis description.

There are many "human" descriptions all over this forum, but I don't know of any lists per-say.  I am working on a list for the Weather Tuning Exemplar that can be found in the "Advanced Terrain Mod" link in my sig.

The best way to not screw things up is to copy/paste the things you are going to change it into a blank .dat.  Using the "navigator" to search for interesting exemplars makes things faster.  There are quite a few that maxis does not use or have one stat that is set to "0".  The stats of this new .dat can be changed with no regard to messing up SC4 permanently.  This is what all mods have done and if you make something makes SC4 function better you are free to share.  If you mod the Terrain Properties Exemplar you would just have to take into consideration that the c.p. terrain mods use it as well.  It's also best to have a vanilla simcity_1.dat and your favorite regions backed up somewhere.

The worst you are going to do is make SC4 crash instantly or perform poorly.

I am not too sure about the property you mentioned.  I would imagine that there is a similar property that defines the strength though.  It could be the amount of land that is smoothed when you place a zone on a slope.  Trial and Error is the best method.  Change one stat at a time and see what happens.

Have fun is most important.