Historical Mod

[Lowkee33]

I like to make all of my buildings historical so that I can control the way my city grows.  I am getting tired of doing this one building at a time.  Is there a way to make buildings grow historical?  If someone could make this that would be awesome, but I am also trying to do it myself.

So far I am looking for where the historical data is stored.  There appears to be no difference in wouanagaines save game explorer between a historical or non-historical building.  I was also thinking that this mod could be an ordinance.  Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks

[RippleJet]

Unfortunately it's impossible to make buildings grow, readily marked historical.

So far I am looking for where the historical data is stored.  There appears to be no difference in wouanagaines save game explorer between a historical or non-historical building.

There's a very small difference... one single bit to be precise.
This is the beginning of the structure for the lot subfile (Type ID 0x09BD5D4A):

DWORD	Record Size
DWORD	CRC
DWORD	Memory
WORD	Major Version?  (only seen 0x0008)
DWORD	Lot IID
BYTE	Flag byte 1

Flag byte 1 has the following known bits:

• 0x01 (00000001b) might have with road access to do
• 0x02 (00000010b) might have with road (job?) access to do
• 0x04 (00000100b) might have with road access to do
• 0x08 (00001000b) means the lot is watered
• 0x10 (00010000b) means the lot is powered
• 0x20 (00100000b) means the lot is marked historical
• 0x40 (01000000b) might mean the lot is built

[Lowkee33]

Ok then.  Can you explain to me how you got the stats you posted?  Is there another thread with people who have explored this?

I have done some testing.  Res and Com save the historical status after being bulldozed, but not after de-zoneing. Industry does not save status after bulldozing.  This would make me think that Historical status is saved in the zone and not the building or the tile.  I would imagine that if zones could be modified like that then we would see all types of zone mods.  hmm.

[cogeo]

If someone could make a dataview, showing historical lots in a different colour (or highlighted), this would be extremely helpful (I too use the historical feature to control city growth).

[RippleJet]

Ok then.  Can you explain to me how you got the stats you posted?  Is there another thread with people who have explored this?

Long-term ongoing research on the BSC board...

I have done some testing.  Res and Com save the historical status after being bulldozed, but not after de-zoneing. Industry does not save status after bulldozing.

Do you mean that you bulldozed a (res or com) building that was marked historical,
and the next building that grew on that same lot was readily marked historical when it grew?

[Lowkee33]

@ Cogeo:  That would be helpful.  I have no skill, but am trying things.  I have a pre-existing data view mod, and am using IlivesReader to try to understand how to tweak it.

@ Ripplejet:  That is what I mean.

[cogeo]

Dataviews need a "datasource" to get the data from, and these aren't made with mods or scripts, they are implemented in the .EXE, I'm afraid.

[RippleJet]

That is what I mean.

Would that same apply if you save the city after bulldozing, exit the game, restart it and return to the same city?
Would a newly growed building in that same lot, at that stage still be marked historical?

[Lowkee33]

Yes. 

Commercial taxes were set to 20. When demand dropped I bulldozed my store.  Cheetah speed for a year. Pause.  Resident bulldozed.  Save and quit.  Restart. Drop taxes on commercial.  Unpause.  House grew historical and then the store (which grew as a different model) was also.

I have been playing with my data mod, which can show higher demand values.  I can change the source of the info and so far ResDemand$ shows up blank .  Perhaps I can get into the power view, which displays data as either a 0 or a 1, instead of a demand value   

[RippleJet]

Restart. Drop taxes on commercial.  Unpause.  House grew historical and then the store (which grew as a different model) was also. 

Quite interesting...
My guess is that the bulldozed lot's record was still in the lot subfile (but marked as bulldozed),
and then reused (not recreated) when another lot grew on it... with the "marked historical" bit still set.

[Lowkee33]

After playing with my DataMod in the Reader I can change the name of the title (R$ desirability is titled Mayor Rating), and can make the R$ desirability view show the ID desirability.  On the data view front I would need help to understand how this mod was made in the first place, as well as how the creator found the 0x... IDs for the different data views.  I feel like if I knew how to find the ID for Historic then I might be able to continue.

For the Historic Mod I would need a lot of help.  If I could understand the IDs that Ripplejet has talked about then I could make steps in that direction.  Perhaps there is a Readme somewhere, or a program I could DL.  I have no knowledge about these things.

Thanks for the help.  I will get back to some gameing.   

[Andreas]

Commercial taxes were set to 20. When demand dropped I bulldozed my store.  Cheetah speed for a year. Pause.  Resident bulldozed.  Save and quit.  Restart. Drop taxes on commercial.  Unpause.  House grew historical and then the store (which grew as a different model) was also.

I've noticed this behavior as well - if you bulldoze a building that was made historical, the next one that will grow (not necessarily the same one) is already marked as historical. I cannot tell if this is always the case, but I've seen it happen quite a few times.

[Lowkee33]

@ Ripplejet (or anyone) :

0x20 (00100000b) means the lot is marked historical

Does this mean that a lot will have 0x20100000b somewhere in its data if it is historical?  what is the b?

[Lowkee33]

...So I guess I didnt play the game.  I built a road up a hill and then had an idea that maybe part of a Lots ID would be that it grows historically.  So I used the editor to make a custom lot that I could force on a new map, and then messed around with what was in my knowledge to do so in the ILivesReader.  After a bunch of failures I thought of adding properties to the lot instead of modding the existing ones.  I came across the long list of things that can be done.

Is this list the entirety of what we can moddify in the game?  I have to give extreme credit to everyone who has modded this game.   

One possible solution I have found is to set the rebuild demand to a very large number for every building.  This way no SC4 construction company would tear down a building to put up a new one.  If there is a building we want to replace, then we could bulldoze it. The problem would be that there would be no assurance that a higher stage building will take its place.

I will think about this, and also work with messing around with data views.  Is the BAT editor the way to make new buildings from scratch?  I might have figured some things out tonight.

Thanks everybody.  Thanks Ripplejet, your interest kept me motivated.       

[RippleJet]

@ Ripplejet (or anyone) :
Does this mean that a lot will have 0x20100000b somewhere in its data if it is historical?  what is the b?

They are different representations... the following three are all the same number:

• 00100000b is the binary representation
• 0x20 is the hexadecimal representation
• 32 is the decimal representation

Binary representation is easier in the case above, when we want to distinguish single bits from each other.

[CasperVg]

Dataviews need a "datasource" to get the data from, and these aren't made with mods or scripts, they are implemented in the .EXE, I'm afraid.

There's actually one dataview in the exe that was never implemented in the game, the Moisture Dataview. I haven't tried implementing it as a wholly new dataview, but replaced the Health Dataview with it instead.

Either way, good to see the developments here, as I'm also a big-time Make Historical afficionado 

[thingfishs]

interesting. What are the in game advantages of knowing where areas of high/low moisture are?

[Lowkee33]

I wouldn't think it would be possible to change the words for which data view you want.  That would be on the lines of changing the font of the game.  However, where your view says All Off, that can be changed.  How do you know that is moisture?

I suppose there is no need for moisture in game.  My guess is that it could theoretically effect water pumps ("gets its water from the aquifer"... what aquifer?).  It may be that this is a value that can effect farm desirability.  It would be neat to mess around with that.

As a side note.  Can someone point my in the direction of making mods by scratch?  I can add an exemplar property to the blank .dat that ILIvesReader starts up with, but I basically copied it from another .dat.  Does that mean that it is full of data already.  Where can I get crisp .dat files?

[CasperVg]

I suppose there is no need for moisture in game.  My guess is that it could theoretically effect water pumps ("gets its water from the aquifer"... what aquifer?).  It may be that this is a value that can effect farm desirability.  It would be neat to mess around with that.

Well, as you've said there's, as far as I know, no effect in terms of functionality when it comes to moisture in-game. However, the moisture level is fairly important for Tree Mods and Terrain Mods, I think.

[Lowkee33]

If that is true then that is handy information.  I would like to know the code for moisture (Data Source = 0x.......).  For that matter, I would like to know the codes for everything.  Is there a list somewhere, or is all of this figured out through trial and error?

Is there a way that we could make our own data sources?  We are not allowed to alter the .exe files, but can we read them?
   
Sorry if this thread is getting far from historical mods.  I am basically trying to learn where Historical is stored in the game's data, and how other data is used by the game.  Perhaps there is some way to put these things together to at least get a data view.  Today is nice outside, so I will be outdoors and not able to play with the Reader.