T Wrecks and his Industry Revolution Mod

[Shadowstrike]

I think we're on the same page, vortext, which is good, because I thought that idea was too simplistic to have been the correct fix.

With apologies for being pedantic, to find the correct growth stage from the CAM lots to transcribe to the IRM lots, the steps are:

1) Get the building examplar reference from the IRM lot (I noticed I can get it where you specified, and it seems to match the LotConfigPropertyFamily value)
2) Go to the CAM list, search for the lot with the same building examplar, and size, which should have the growth stage listed.
3) Repeat 249 more times.

Right? If so, looks like a project for this weekend.

[vortext]

It's quite simple indeed, albeit repetitive in nature.

With apologies for being pedantic, to find the correct growth stage from the CAM lots to transcribe to the IRM lots, the steps are:

Now, allow me to be pedantic but it's crucial to understand the Growth Stage is in the lot exemplar, not the building exemplar. Building exemplars are not involved in any of this. So the correct steps are:

1) Get the lot exemplar reference for the IRM lot, which conventiently you can get from the name. e.g. I-d1_1x1_90000370.SC4Lot
2) Open the CAM in the Reader, sort by instance and search for the bold number. Once found, write down the Growth Stage.
3) Open the IRM lot at hand and change the Growth Stage.
4) Repeat 249 more times.

Have fun! 

[Shadowstrike]

OK, matching the IIDs as you suggest is much, much simpler than the method I proposed.

This shouldn't be too bad. I DatPacked the IRM (because I understand the plugin load order loads .dat files last, which means that its necessary to do so to make it come after the CAM in any event), and with two instances of the reader open (one with CAM, one with IRM) on different screens, it should be fairly straightforward (if a little tedious). Onwards!

[vortext]

Good luck! And once done you could contact T-Wrecks and see if he's interested to upload the CAM-ified lots. I'm sure many of us would appreciate it! 

[jaredh]

Good luck! And once done you could contact T-Wrecks and see if he's interested to upload the CAM-ified lots. I'm sure many of us would appreciate it! 

...I think that's certainly very true

[Shadowstrike]

OK, so I've copied the CAM growth stages to the IRM lots, packed the IRM lots, and put it into the plugins folder so that it comes after the CAM. Booting up SC4, my industrial lots now seem to be growing only on the correct zone-density (i.e. I-D on medium-density, I-HT on high-density, I-M on both), so it looks like everything is working!

However, I don't have a region that has enough industrial jobs (or population) to really test this out (mostly because I just got back into the game, started a new region, and have been avoiding placing industry until I could get the IRM to work with CAM). Can I ask for some help from someone with a more developed region to test these changes out?

[FrankU]

Oh Shadowstrike,

It looks like you have done a very good job. 
I'm really sorry that I cannot help you with testing. I don't have time nor a region at hand to check your work...

[thinkdude]

Dude you have just made my day, i have been following this thread for like  a year hoping someone finally got this to work since my attempts at doing the same thing led nowhere.  I got so frustrated I stopped playing the game for 6 months!! I'd happily help u test out your modded version if you are still looking for help!

[APSMS]

I would like to test this out; my region is fairly developed and has a lot of industry right now (around 180 000 ID, IM and IHT, and is still growing)

First, however, I would contact T Wrecks at Simtropolis by PM first. I can do this if you like; I know he was open to a CAMified version of his mod, but it would be ideal to have express permission rather than implicit. Redistribution is a sticky topic and can easily cause problems when communication is sparse.

[thinkdude]

According to the release page of his mod he says "Should you want to share and/or modify this, be my guest - just try not to be a jerk and give credit where credit is due. In case of doubt, just drop me a line via PM here on Simtropolis."


It seems pretty unambiguous to me that you can go ahead and release it as long as you credit him "where credit is due".  I would definitely send him a PM just to let him know.  He might be happy that someone finally made a cam patch for it   and could possibly add a link to it from the original version.

[Shadowstrike]

My apologies for the silence over the last few days. I've contacted T Wrecks (he seems positive about the idea), and I just wanted to get his blessing before I spread this around for testing.

[trabman11]

Wow,  I always hoped someone would think of doing this (I'm not really a tech savvy guy). I wish you luck and hope the project is successful! 

[APSMS]

Maybe upload it to dropbox and either leave a link here or post via PM to specific members?

Glad to see some progress on CAMifying an awesome mod. (I PM'd him just after you did, I think, to make sure of permission in case you hadn't.)

[Shadowstrike]

With T Wrecks' approval to go ahead with this project, I'd like to get some testing done to make sure everything works correctly. So let me know if you're interested in trying it out (APSMS - if you're still interested, I can PM the file to you).

A few caveats: since this only replaces all the Maxis industrial lots (same IID), you may want to backup your regions before trying this out. Also, since it doesn't affect any other industrial lots you may have downloaded, you might want to remove them from the plugins folder when trying this out, otherwise it will mess up the functionality of the mod (i.e. a dirty industry might grow on the high-density zone, and kill off the I-HT). Alternatively, you can edit all your downloaded industrial lots in the Reader to work with the mod - it's a simple fix for every lot, but if you have a lot of them, it can take a while. I can provide more detailed instructions, if you're interested in doing this.

I'm particularly interested in seeing whether this works correctly (it should) in larger regions (i.e. >100k industrial jobs), to make sure it works OK with the upper stage lots, but the more testers, the more likely we are to catch any bugs.

[APSMS]

That would be great. I have a reasonably sized region, and of course if I really want to run my region properly with this mod, I'll have to do all of this stuff manually anyways.

Of course, if you have a way of making it simpler (i.e. not having to look through every file in the reader manually to figure out which grouping it belongs in), it'd be nice to know. As it is, I might just be faced with the prospect of developing industry in separate areas of my region (using the existing demand to drive development) and test it that way. I also have some older regions that could use some TLC, so it'll be a good excuse to update them to the latest specs.

[Shadowstrike]

APSMS - could you PM me an email address so I can send you the file? I can't figure out how to attach a file to a PM, and I'd rather not attach it to this post.

I haven't figured out any way to modify all of one's industrial lots to have the correct lot property (and it's only one property that controls this, as far as I know), other than one at a time. I suspect that the Reader's script function could do this, but I haven't tried to figure that out yet (also I have essentially no plugins at the moment, so I'm just modifying each lot as I download it). Using a new city on an existing region (and removing all the extra industrial lots temporarily) should work, as far as I know.

[memo]

I haven't figured out any way to modify all of one's industrial lots to have the correct lot property (and it's only one property that controls this, as far as I know), other than one at a time. I suspect that the Reader's script function could do this, but I haven't tried to figure that out yet [...]

If it is just one property to that needs to be changed and which can be computed programmatically, I'd be willing to come up with a script to transform all the exemplars for you – not for the Reader's script functionality though, since I did not have any success with it, so far. You'd just need to explain the exact requirements to me.

[Shadowstrike]

Well, you just need to look at every single industrial lot, check its type ("LotConfigPropertyPurposeTypes") and change the LotConfigPropertyZoneTypes to I-Medium Density or I-High Density, as appropriate (I-D to Medium, I-HT to High, and then I-M distributed to either both or just one - T Wrecks did it by appearance, a model which I've been following, but there's no algorithmic way to do this; both would be better, assuming no I-M tile has heavy pollution effects, but either would also do). It seems doable, assuming there's some systematic way to open every single lot (packed and unpacked).

[memo]

Ah well, I seem to have misread the previous posts. I had assumed you'd work on a fixed number of lot files (TWrecks' mod), rather than any user's generic set of plugins. If you want to distribute a script that updates a user's entire plugins, it complicates the matter somewhat. I would have used a general purpose programming language like Java and this DBPF library. You could open up every plugin file, filter the exemplars, check if they are industrial lots – but still, if the zone types property is set by appearance, this would be hard to compute algorithmically.

[Shadowstrike]

Such a tool could still be useful if people could somehow input a list of the paths of their industrial lots, or if it could be done recursively within a specified folder. It's pretty fast to make the change in one lot, but if you have many lots you're altering at once, the time does add up.