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BSC Prop Family Index

Started by BarbyW, September 26, 2007, 07:55:41 AM

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Tyberius06

Hello!

May I have a prop family range?

Thank you very much in advance.

- Tyberius06/Tibi
You may find updates about my ongoing projects into my development thread here at SimCity 4 Devotion: Tyberius Lotting Experiments
or over there on Simtropolis into the Tyberius (Heretic Projects) Lotting and Modding Experiments.
I'm also member of the STEX Custodian and working on different restoration projects on behalf of non-anymore-active custom content creators.
Current projects: WMP Restoration and SimCity Polska Restoration.
Member of the NAM Team and RTMT Team.

catty

Issued: Tyberius06

Range1: 0x5F85F100 thru to 0x5F85F1FF
Range2: 0x5F85F200 thru to 0x5F85F2FF
I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?" DEATH thought about it. "CATS," he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE.

spritesftw

Hi. I would like a range please. Also, requested a texture range some time ago but still no reply.

catty

Quote from: spritesftw on October 24, 2016, 01:55:37 PM
Hi. I would like a range please. Also, requested a texture range some time ago but still no reply.

You will have to ask for a texture range again in the texture range topic as this isn't something I have access to, as for your prop family range am quite busy so haven't had a chance to issue you one yet, its now  :sleeping: here

... will try and remember to do it in the morning for you  :thumbsup:
I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?" DEATH thought about it. "CATS," he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE.

catty

Issued: spritesftw

Range: 0x5F85F300 thru to 0x5F85F3FF

NOTE to self update CB website Index before issuing any more ranges   "$Deal"$
I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?" DEATH thought about it. "CATS," he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE.

khimera

Hi, could I have a prop family range please?

I see how important this is after having several lots very confused about props, for example the BSC 1x1 playground, which displays industrial props instead of playground toys!

vester

#406
Been working on turning automata into props.

Been using and plan to use the range: FFA10000-FFFF9999.
I know its a big range, but as there is a lot of modding in these packages I need a system to get it working.

mgb204

Quote from: vester on January 10, 2017, 08:12:40 AM
Been working on turning automata into props.

Been using and plan to use the range: FFA10000-FFFF9999.
I know its a big range, but as there is a lot of modding in these packages I need a system to get it working.

By my calculations that's a seriously high number of IDs you are asking for (millions), are you really going to need that many? Even with a large number of items to make, surely one hundred families would be plenty, no?

vester

#408
No using it all the way through.
I have a model that is rotated in 12 angles.
These angles I have add to to the TGIs. For the GEvo I used the following IDs:


After looking it over I plan to use the following for the EMD E9

Moved the angle one digit to the left and moved the Prop serie number from the 4th digit to the last digit, compared to the GEvo engines.

So my range can be spilt up into small ranges with first range being:
ffa1000-ffa7875f (reserving for two extra set of props: last digit: 6-a; b-f)

After that I plan to use the following ranges:
ffb10000-ffb7875f
ffc10000-ffc7875f
ffd10000-ffd7875f.

That is going to cover 9x5x12=540 props.

mgb204

Well I'm not in charge of dishing out the ranges. But logically I think you may have to revise your plans. The only way to manage a database of IDs is by giving out ranges that are in numercial sequence. In the case of Hexidecimal, that means the last digit should increment from 0-F (16 IDs), then you increment the next digit to the left. This way your 540 props can be neatly confined within a range like so XXXX X000 - XXXX X2FF. Note a range with all the last three digits availible produces over 4,000 unique IDs.

On the other hand, if this is for S3D props (3D Models), I wasn't aware they used the same ID system as Prop Families? Are you making families for these props? In which case, you shouldn't need all 540 IDs, just one for each group. Assuming that was one for each angle, that would be only 12 IDs. But if you just want to reserve IDs for the models, I'm not sure there is any official registry of IDs for those.

Perhaps you may have to use some ID's ad-hoc and hope they don't conflict with others. Frankly, there isn't a ton of 3D-Model stuff out there on the exchanges. Statistically speaking, you are very unlikely to run into an ID conflict.

vester

#410
Maybe you could have a look at the VDK Proppack 3 - GEvo Engines.
As far as I see it I have one prop for each 3d model and a family for each angle.
That gives 60 props and 12 families.


EDIT: Figure out if I change the coding for the angles from four digit to one digit.
The 3th last digit would represent the angle going from 1 to c.

That will make my range: ffa10000-ffa10cff.

Beside that earlier mention ranges use for the GEvo engines:
ffa10000-ffa17875
ffa20000-ffa27875
ffa30000-ffa37875
ffa40000-ffa47875
ffa50000-ffa57875

mgb204

#411
Sorry Arne, I've been totally side-swiped between computer issues and other tasks. I should have gotten back to you sooner.

Firstly I should point out that Catty is no longer maintaining the Prop Family ID ranges, so we'll need to find a solution for that. I will see about taking over responsibility for it, Catty has passed on the master list, which I intend to move to an online host where all can VIEW it at least.

I've looked at the file you mentioned in your last post. Note, I'm only interested in the Prop Families. Props themselves should use random IDs, if you wish to manually assign them, that's your business. But there is no need for an assigned range. Using non random numbers, will increase the odds of your props conflicting with other objects though.

In this file you've used 12 Cohort files, which is 12 Prop families, which need simply 12 unique IDs. I know you are trying to keep a system for these prop IDs, but I don't understand why? In any case, here are the ID's you've used:

Family: FFA0
-0000
-1125
-1834
-2250
-2656
-3369
-4500
-5631
-6344
-6750
-7157
-7875

What I think you fail to understand is that you've just basically used up around 30,000 IDs for just 12 families. I'm sorry, but this cannot simply continue, you need to change how you are working. Assuming you have the range FFA0, here are the 12 ID's you should have used, in order:

0000, 0001, 0002, 0003, 0004, 0005, 0006, 0007, 0008, 0009, 000A, 000B.

See the difference? You might think those IDs would conflict with your props, but they won't. Because all prop families are unique from prop exemplars. But because they don't have either a Type or Group ID (the cohort might, but the families do not), there is not an infinite supply of IDs.

I can clearly see that you are trying to bring some organisation and patterns to your numbering scheme. But, it's ridiculously inefficient when you look at how the game/hex numbering works.

Here's another example of that... open calculator in Windows, set it to Programmer mode from the View menu. Select Hex in the left side. Then enter your second used ID from the GeVo Prop Pack:

FFA01125 Then we take that (minus) from the first ID FFA00000, click Dec to convert the result back to Decimal.

This gives us 4,389. What does this mean? It means that your IDs, which should be used sequentially, are actually in some cases up to 4,500 numbers apart. So in decimal you've used the IDs:

0
4389
6196
8784
9814
13161
17664
22065
25412
26448
29015
30837

When all you really needed to use was 1 - 12.

(note: for the sake of an example. I'm just showing counting from Hex 00000000 upwards (numbers shown are decimal order), otherwise it would only confuse the issue.

Now imagine we (the guardians) had to maintain a list of 4.3 billion IDs in a spreadsheet? It can't be done. So we give a range to everyone, usually with between 4k and 65k IDs. If you stray out of this range, others peoples stuff will conflict with yours. This problem isn't simply solved by giving you more IDs. It must be solved by refusing you more. Because if everyone wanted to pick and choose the individual IDs they used, we'd have run out of them years ago. Or simply had such an unmanageable system that by now it would be chaos. We are happy to try and explain this, to help you understand the problem. But there really is no solution that involves allowing users to be so wasteful that can be considered.

It might be helpful, but I'm in the middle of writing up a guide to using Hex IDs, it's still a WIP, but hopefully that will help illuminate the issues here. Assuming that is you still have questions?

Respectfully,

Robin.

vester

#412
Quote from: mgb204 on February 01, 2017, 09:26:02 PM
What I think you fail to understand is that you've just basically used up around 30,000 IDs for just 12 families. I'm sorry, but this cannot simply continue, you need to change how you are working.

Quote from: vester on January 11, 2017, 01:34:39 PM
EDIT: Figure out if I change the coding for the angles from four digit to one digit.
The 3th last digit would represent the angle going from 1 to c.

That will make my range: ffa10000-ffa10cff.

Maybe you overlooked this part.


I can see I could save a lot of numbers moving the angles to the last digits, but it will also give me a lot of extra work and opening up for errors.
Last think I like to avoid as well.

mgb204

Quote from: vester on February 02, 2017, 08:27:25 AM
Maybe you overlooked this part.

I can see I could save a lot of numbers moving the angles to the last digits, but it will also give me a lot of extra work and opening up for errors.
Last think I like to avoid as well.

I haven't overlooked anything, I assure you. The system is what it is, we must work with it.

You have an assigned range I assume? So long as you keep to the IDs from that, you can use them however you like. But, if you want more IDs, that isn't going to happen unless you have used the ones given to you.

If you don't already have an assigned range, I am happy to provide you with one. But that will be a small range based on a family, you must use the IDs that are part of that allocation, not just the IDs you think make most sense.

In both cases, that means rather than IDing your items based on a system that works for you. That system must also take into consideration using the IDs given to you, in such a way that you make use of them all. If you have 65,000 IDs and can demonstrate you've used them, i.e. 65,000 released prop families, then you can apply for another range. If you can demonstrate that you need more than one range, because of the number of families you are creating, you can have more than one range too. But, if you've used a fraction of those IDs or simply used them for things other than Prop Families, then you can not. Similarly if you want to have more IDs because you will use them inefficiently, that's not happening either.

I'm sorry, but I'm having this conversation all too frequently these days. If you are going to be inflexible in your demands, you can expect an inflexible response. Because I've tried my best to explain a very technical thing as simply as possible. I spent hours doing this trying to keep it easy to follow. If you don't understand why you have to work differently, I'm sorry. You cannot take an assigned range of 65k IDs, use 60 of them and ask for 65k more. We also can not give out individual IDs, because that's impossible to keep track of.

Let me re-iterate. You are numbering objects, think of that as a list. Instead of using a system where 1 is the first item, then 2, 3, 4 and so on. You want to utilise the numbers 1, 4389, 6196, 8784, 9814 and so on... This is totally illogical, even if I can see why you might think it is better, trust me, it's not.

It would only be more work if you've gone ahead and ID'd your content before a range was allocated to you. Which is kind of like booking a holiday and being mad that there is no flight available, having turned up at the airport without a ticket to fly.

To be absolutely clear. I respect you and your work greatly. The last thing I want to do is annoy you or prevent you from being able to continue the great work that you do. But you are missing a very important point about how IDs, ranges and their allocations work. Simply throwing out IDs to appease people is not a solution, they are limited and must be used sparingly to ensure we don't end up running out of them entirely.

omgitskosc

Hello, I would like to request a prop family ID range.

Thanks in advance!

mgb204

#415
Before I give any range out, I just wanted to explain a new thing I'll be doing as I take over management of the Prop Family Ranges.

From here on out, when I issue one, I'll be attaching a .txt file (zipped) to the post. This will include a complete list of all your allocated IDs. That way, rather than having to work out which IDs to use and all that Hex malarkey, you can just tick them off from a list made for you. I hope this will prove beneficial for some users. Here's an example of the contents of the file:

0xXF85F40x
==========
   XF85F400
   XF85F401
   XF85F402
   XF85F403
   XF85F404
   XF85F405
   XF85F406
   XF85F407
   XF85F408
   XF85F409
   XF85F40A
   XF85F40B
   XF85F40C
   XF85F40D
   XF85F40E
   XF85F40F

The top line represents an ID grouping or family. Then the 16 IDs for that family are listed thereafter. My advice would be to add an X or other marker on the left, after using an ID, then saving the file as a reference. You can also add a description if you like too, to keep everything in alignment, I'd do that on the right side, for example:

X   XF85F400 - Llamas on Fire

Of course you can use it any way you like, or not at all, it's just intended to make things easier if you want it. In order to avoid such attached files from remaining on the server forever, I will keep these attachments live for a minimum of one calendar month before removing them. Unless you confirm you've got the file beforehand.

KOSC Prop Family ID Range:
0x5F85F400 --> 0x5F85F4FF

fantozzi

Hello mgb204,

may I have a family ID range please?

Thank you.


mgb204

#417
Sure.

Fantozzi Prop Family ID Range:
0x5F85F500 --> 0x5F85F5FF

Find a complete ID listing attached (zip file) for reference.

fantozzi

Thanks, that was quick. And for the text file.

praiodan

Hello mgb204,

I'd like to request a family ID range for a couple of buildings I'd like to work on in the future.  :)

Thanks in advance!