T Wrecks and his Industry Revolution Mod

[bap]

Shadowstrike, let me suggest an easier and quick alternative:

1) Pack all industrial lots you wish to edit in a single .dat file. You can do that either with (i) Files2Dat, (ii) SC4DatPacker, or (iii) SC4Tool (option editors, filemerger). It may be interesting to separate dirty, manufacturing and high-tech lots in different .dat files for the following procedure.

2) Load you merger .dat file in ilive's Reader. Click the 'Analyser' button to open the separate tab, and click 'Search' to fill the list of exemplars. Then click the 'Prop' button to open the 'Find a property' tab.

3) On the 'Name' field, type "LotConfig". It will bring you a list of possible completions for your sentence. Scroll down the list and select the "LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes" property and click 'Find'. It will show you a list of values of that property for all exemplars in your .dat file.

4) You can select all files you wish to change the value of that property (by clicking on each one's line, or by clicking the first one and holding shift key while going down to the last line in the list). When you have all files selected, click 'Edit'. Another tab opens, where you can edit the values of the property of your choice. When you save (clicking the two 'Apply' buttons in a sequence) the changes, they will simultaneously apply to all exemplars (lots) being edited.

5) 'Save' your changes to the .dat file in the main Reader screen.

You can change a property for a large number of lots with the same effort and time spent to change a single lot. 

Hope this is useful info.
Have fun!

[FrankU]

Well, this explanation helps me for a lot of other editing jobs too. Thanks BAP.

Should I have read the manual of the Reader some day?

[bap]

Well, this explanation helps me for a lot of other editing jobs too. Thanks BAP.

Should I have read the manual of the Reader some day?

You are welcome, FrankU.
Don't blaim yourself. Although reading the user manual is always a good start, I don't recall learning that info in Reader's manual. I believe it is more the result of a try-and-learn policy applied along several years of use of the program.

[APSMS]

So I still haven't tested this yet. A lot of stuff going on, but I was wondering if I could change zone types of LOTs on the fly, and what effect that might have on my already built lots. I know you can change growth stage easily (the BSC Maxis blocker does this w/o ill effect), but can you change zone type, e.g. I-Med to I-High withough causing disastrous effects? I don't mind bulldozing offending lots (which is what I'll be doing when I install the IRM; I'm not going to seek out every industrial plot and delete it before I begin, but when I try and organize all my industrials by type, it'd be nice to know if the cities with the changed zone industrials will even open, and if I'll have to do it for them as well.

[Shadowstrike]

bap - thanks for the tip! Actually, my own plugins folder has sorted industrial lots, but only because I just started from scratch. Your technique would work really well for anyone who wanted to make their plugin folder quickly IRM-compatible, assuming they are willing to datpack their entire plugins folder in one go (is it possible to un-pack a .dat file?)

APSMS - I can't say for sure (which is why I advise backing up any cities/regions you are testing this with), but my suspicion is that it shouldn't have an effect, because that property seems to be checked to see if a lot can grow on a certain zone density - it shouldn't affect lots that are already placed (even if they are now on the "wrong" density). But I'd seek a second opinion about this if you have any doubts.

More generally, I've noticed that on the high-density zones, the manufacturing industries seem to be killing off the high-tech ones with their pollution. Aesthetically, they look right, so I'm thinking its just part of the original design of the IRM. I'm musing making a variant where only the high-tech industries are on the high-density industry, and dirty/manufacturing industries are on the medium density industry, which would drop the aesthetic angle, but solve the pollution problem.

[memo]

I know you can change growth stage easily (the BSC Maxis blocker does this w/o ill effect), but can you change zone type, e.g. I-Med to I-High withough causing disastrous effects?

APSMS - I can't say for sure (which is why I advise backing up any cities/regions you are testing this with), but my suspicion is that it shouldn't have an effect, because that property seems to be checked to see if a lot can grow on a certain zone density - it shouldn't affect lots that are already placed (even if they are now on the "wrong" density). But I'd seek a second opinion about this if you have any doubts.

I vaguely recall the same. There was once an SFBT mod by Andreas around that would prevent low density Maxis residentials from growing on medium or high density zones for aesthetic reasons, and a mod that restricts manufacturing industry to medium and high-tech industry to high density zones for the very reason of separating the two kinds; and in neither case I had to demolish anything beforehand.

[bap]

So I still haven't tested this yet. A lot of stuff going on, but I was wondering if I could change zone types of LOTs on the fly, and what effect that might have on my already built lots. I know you can change growth stage easily (the BSC Maxis blocker does this w/o ill effect), but can you change zone type, e.g. I-Med to I-High withough causing disastrous effects? I don't mind bulldozing offending lots (which is what I'll be doing when I install the IRM; I'm not going to seek out every industrial plot and delete it before I begin, but when I try and organize all my industrials by type, it'd be nice to know if the cities with the changed zone industrials will even open, and if I'll have to do it for them as well.

My experience with IRM and similar mods is that no disaster happens. I've played old cities after implementing IRM without problems. There was no need to bulldoze any previous industrial lots (but I must say that I excluded from the IRM mod all lots that changed the size of the original Maxis lots -- this would require bulldozing all occurences of the affected lots before installing the mod). Changing growth stage and zone type affect the next occurrences of that lot, not the already grown ones.

[bap]

bap - thanks for the tip! Actually, my own plugins folder has sorted industrial lots, but only because I just started from scratch. Your technique would work really well for anyone who wanted to make their plugin folder quickly IRM-compatible, assuming they are willing to datpack their entire plugins folder in one go (is it possible to un-pack a .dat file?)

Yes; strictly speaking, this is possible with the Reader. But it would be a very time consuming and boring process (breaking the original lots back from the packed file with the 'save to patch' and 'create dat' options). On the other hand, you don't need to datpack all of your plugins for this collective change process, but only the industrial lots you would be changing. Of course, after the process all these industrial lots would have to stay packed in a single .dat file. This should not be a problem.

[Shadowstrike]

For those of you who are interested, I'd uploaded the CAMpatible version of the IRM:

http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/29669-industrial-revolution-mod-cam-version/

[FrankU]

Wow! Great work! Thanks a lot.

[mrsmartman]

Can get the best of both worlds at once. Thank you.

[vortext]

Outstanding work Shadowstrike! 

Please hold while I arrange a well deserved karma point to come your way! 

[joshua43214]

Is any one having any luck with this?



I installed the IRM for CAM, re-organized my CAM industrials and changed their zone in the Reader per BAP's instruction above. I experimented with trying to make it work on a fairly new city that had a lot of ID demand.



I tried many variations of DAT'd and un-DAT'd IRM, IRM for CAM, and CAM files in different orders, I tried DATPacking everything. I even finally resorted to SC4DataNode to verify load order (turns out a_CAM actually loads after IRM and most of NAM).



IRM seems to work fine. a handful of non-Maxis BAT's appear (all BSC ones as far as I could tell). This is a dirty industrial city with only a single underfunded elementary school and a pop of about 24,000, and had 9 ID CAM lots (7 stage 1, 1 stage 2, 1 stage 3). I-HD zones stay empty except for Farley's Foundry (dunno why), and the McDonalds factory that I left un-modded as a control. The I-MD fills up nicely with a mix of ID and IM, but they all low level, and no new CAM lots develop.



I ran this city up to ~140,00 pop and still no CAM lots developed.

I reloaded the city, added education, parks, some air/water pollution cleaners, etc to one end and raised the population up to ~140,000 again, but this time with a good mix of R$$ and R$$$, the IRM I-HT developed, but no new CAM lots appeared.



I also started getting random CTD's, a problem I never have in the game.



Is anyone else using this mod with "fixed" CAM lots and getting it to work?

TIA

Josh