civic buildings broken after editing with LEProp

[rummtata]

What went wrong? I've just finished editing some custom lots from the LEX and now they won't work anymore; they don't seem to accept any students/patients. I merely changed the values for coverage radius, plop cost, maint cost and capacity with the Ilives LEProp Editor, then hit "apply" and "save". Ingame, they just stay at zero students/patients. What have I done wrong, do I need to edit something else in order to make the changes work?

Please help =/

[mattb325]

LEProp editor is known to have some issues; I have only ever used it as a tool for quickly swapping out the custom menu icon (for which it works like a charm).

I would recommend using Ilives reader to alter values, or, if you prefer an easier interface, then the SC4 Tool enables basic to mid-level editing of values.

[CasperVg]

Were those buildings in-game before you edited the values with LEProp? In that case, you might be suffering from the "phantom sliders bug", that appears when there are suddenly inconsistencies with the stats of a plopable/civic lot that was already present in the city (the game saves those) and the same civic lot with edited stats in the plugins' folder. Here's some extra info:

It's a phenomenon known by the name of Phantom Funding Sliders Bug.
It is triggered if you, or someone else, changes the monthly cost for any civic building that already exists in your city. Normally that would be one of the in-game civic buildings. If that civic building's monthly funding can be set by a slider in the query (e.g. schools, hospitals, police stations, fire stations and power plants), then, after installing such a mod, the funding won't match what is saved in the city's save file.

The save file (*.SC4) includes the monthly funding AND the slider's percentual setting for each civic building. If the percentual setting for the slider won't match the funding, then the game will automatically change the slider, and thus increase or decrease the funding. Since they will never match, this will continue every month till the funding is either 0 or at its maximum value (at 120% funding).

There are two ways to remedy this...

1. Bulldoze all schools that have been plopped after you installed the mod that changed the monthly funding for those schools. Then save the city, remove the mod and restart your city. This option naturally requires that you know what mod you've installed, which schools have been modded by it and which of those you have plopped after installing that mod.

2. Bulldoze all school of that type in your city. If the school having a funding going down is an elementary school, you need to bulldoze all elementary schools in that city. If it's a high school, then you need to bulldoze all high schools, and so on... Save the city after you've bulldozed all school, exit the game and re-enter.

[rummtata]

I started a new (empty) region for testing, so it's definetly not the phantom slider bug. Neither is it a general bug; I have confirmed that unmodded civic buildings still work.

Thanks for the tip matt, I guess I will try the SC4 Tool instead, then. I do wonder, however, why you guys keep recommending the LEProp Editor in the modding forums if it's broken ;-)

While we're at it: I've also had problems editing callagrafx' "Bywater Springs" Hospital, and it appears I'm not alone. Someone hinted the cause of the problem could be that it's modded to work like the disease research center, but I don't know if that's true. If it is, how do I remove that property so that it works like a normal hospital?

cheers

[rummtata]

Ok, I've reinstalled all the lots I had tampered with, everything good so far. Then I used the SC4 Tool to change some values of an educational lot and tested the whole thing. The changes are represented ingame, but the same bug still occurs - the school isn't used 

I took care to change nothing but the most simple stats, and well within the allowed range. Why isn't this working for me, it shouldn't be that difficult, right? Am I doing something fundamentally wrong?

Grateful for ideas...

[vortext]

I took care to change nothing but the most simple stats, and well within the allowed range.

Which stats exactly did you change? And which lots specifically? Maybe they're fundamentally flawed or something because it shouldn't be that difficult indeed.

[FrankU]

I had the same question after I had edited the values of my schools. I edited quite a lot, at least all JB Simio schools.
No students, or hardly any, but my education level did rise. I never found out what happened, but it did not feel OK. On the other hand: my kids got smarter, so I didn't really bother. My style of game play is hardly to be called trying to do it realistic. It's more like: trying to get the nice images I have in my mind. And I fail terribly... Therefore not CJ/MD by me.

But the question stands. So maybe I will find out in the end after all?

[rummtata]

I'm glad I'm not alone with this, at least  Well vortext, let's take an example. I took the "Lil Red Schoolhouse" from JBSimio's schoolpack vol01 and only changed the coverage radius from 1k-something to 500. Then I loaded a clean region and built up a small village, and it didn't work.

The strange this is, as FrankU mentioned, there *is* some educational effect within the coverage radius, but

a) the number of sims using the facility remains zero
b) the effect of the lot is significantly smaller than it should be (for comparison: with the unmodded lot on the map, the query reports a "high" schooling level for the adjacent houses, whereas the broken version manages only a "medium" level)

I did the same test for barbyw's "Old Albert's Multishop" hospital lot and several other lots from different authors, it doesn't seem to matter which one I'm editing.

My only theory at this point is that I either somehow have a conflicting plugin installed or that the editors don't work with my system.

I'm using 32bit-Win7 and the steam version of the game, if that helps.

I guess, as a next step for testing, I could install the editor on a different computer and do the editing there. If it works that way, at least the plugin-theory could be ruled out.

Still open for other ideas, though ^^

[vortext]

I took the "Lil Red Schoolhouse" from JBSimio's schoolpack vol01 and only changed the coverage radius from 1k-something to 500. Then I loaded a clean region and built up a small village, and it didn't work.

The strange this is, as FrankU mentioned, there *is* some educational effect within the coverage radius

That's strange indeed because I haven't been able to replicate the bug with Lil Red School. I've used both the SC4Tool and the Reader and didn't notice anything different from the unmodded file.