CAMpatibles?

[King Dee]

What are the compatible patches or mod for CAM? Is it true that PEG mod is incompatible? because I'd like to include Peg's seaport to my game. thanks in advance.

[Korot]

PEG's MTP and SPAM mods are inCAMpatible. However, PEG's seaports ARE CAMpatible. They DON'T work with the BSC Functional Seaports however, but that is another mod altogether.

Regards,
Korot

[HappyDays]

Ugh, deleted all of it. I was wrong on one of the main points, so it's better to total it all rather than lead people astray. See below discussion for other ideas.

[jmyers2043]

It's possible to make CAMmed SPAM (Yes, there's your goofy name). After looking in PEG-SPAM_MOD-MAIN_b200.dat, I found that the exemplar controlling stages (Instance 4100), when they appear can appear, etc, just needs to be modded to allow the 2 additional stages used in CAM. In theory this exemplar can just be replaced by the one in CAM, allowing SPAM and CAM farms to grow together.

I have SPAM farms and the CAM2 (beta - rural version) in my plugins. @ HappyDay's. You're correct that most of the heavy lifting is done in PEG-SPAM_MOD-MAIN_b200.dat. But don't start adding extra stages just yet. Having the SPAM load after the CAM will not crash the game. But just so as you know ...

I removed the IR Developer exemplar from the mod.



Why? There are 5 properties in the exemplar called Stage Growth vs. Size. They determine what stage farm will grow at a particular point of the regions development. PEG's mod favors stage 4 and 5 farms in well developed regions. In fact, a 75% chance that a stage 4 or 5 farm will grow and all the other stage 1,2, and 3 farms will fight for the last 15%. I would have made Stage vs. Size more like 20% each at the end if it were up to me which obviously it wasn't.



My opinion is: There is more balance with the CAM. Stage 1, 2, and 3 farms have about equal chance to grow at the start of your region/city. Did someone say variety? Stage 4 farms require water too. I have some control where a stage 4 farm might grow, same for a stage 5 that needs a nearby volunteer fire department. etc. . . Stage 7 farm is very difficult - did someone say challenge?

"Well, Jim why don't you just mod the SPAM to grow farms at different stages?" There's another problem. I think that the SPAM screws up the demands and jobs. The below shots are taken from my SPAM test region. No NAM, no CAM. Only Maxis Vanilla + SPAM. There is only 1 city in the region and the population is about 10,000 mostly R$ Sims.



Yet the game is reporting that I have over 50,000 workers! What's with that? Ask this question someplace else and you'll be advised that these are undocumented laborers that have always been there but are now being counted. You can decide for yourself. I don't buy it.



Back to my test city. There are no fire trucks, police, schools, medical clinics, parks, churches, mayors home, etc. Nothing that would encourage R$$ or R$$$ Sims. There is a gas fired power plant and that is the reason for a small R$$ populatin. There is no industry as I wanted to only grow stage 1 farms. Look at the residential demands. They are skyrocketing for no reason. Simply put - I don't trust the mod.




In addition of taking out the IR developer examplar I also removed these files. And guess what. It works. The game didn't crash. I have the best of both worlds. SPAM farms (more variety) and the CAM.




Oh - I also got rid of all the Cohort files too for good measure.



Don't forget to right click to "re index" and "rebuild directory". In the end I am left with buildings, props, and some fields. Click Save.

What are the compatible patches or mod for CAM? Is it true that PEG mod is incompatible? because I'd like to include Peg's seaport to my game. thanks in advance.

Back to topic. Basically, PEG's toys sometimes do not play well with others. So be aware. PEGs eye candy plop seaports are ok. The BSC upgradeable seaports and PEG's upgradable seaports are NOT compatible. You'll have to choose one or the other but not both. Although, I think there is a thread somewhere that tells the gamer how to make them compatible on your computer but I don't know where it is. You'll need to know how to use iLives reader.


Good Luck



- Jim

[travismking]

Have you tested this? I kind of like how the SPAM adds workers for R$$ and R$$$ as well, but I agree it has WAY too many jobs... Maybe Ill play with reader and see if I can work something out that I like.

[HappyDays]

Jmyers2043,

"Yet the game is reporting that I have over 50,000 workers! What's with that? Ask this question someplace else and you'll be advised that these are undocumented laborers that have always been there but are now being counted. You can decide for yourself. I don't buy it."

It shouldn't be giving out numbers like that. At one job per tile, you'd need to fill up an entire large tile for there to be 50k+ farm jobs!

I've done some testing myself, and yes, I get the same odd numbers. Very, very odd. Might need to wait for Ripplejet before we can get an exact answer on the cause. He does know the game backwards and forwards, after all.

"Look at the residential demands. They are skyrocketing for no reason. Simply put - I don't trust the mod."

This is more easily explained; The farm lots generate high demand for residential. Excessively high demand, yes, but this is apparently intended behavior as explained in the SPAM manual.

[Lowkee33]

Having functional farms at the same time you have a skyscraper city.

True, though CAM slows the rate of such skyscrapers.  SPAM doesn't touch the non-farm exemplars, so your city grows up much faster than with CAM.

Nice info there JM.  Judging by the graph and population report, you are pretty much done with your stage growth after only developing one tile.  Not very rural if most every farm is the highest stage if you ask me (and no one is   ).

Removing the cohorts is probably a good idea, though you loose the custom query sound effect when you remove 0x00000002 (For your farm buildings at least, looks like the field buildings double up that property).  Most of them tie into the Maxis Cohorts as well, so it is worth checking out that you have the needed properties (Though I guess you ran them through PIMX).

Also to note is the Maxis Group ID, A7BDDF17.  Other than the Maxis Farms in SPAM, I would hope that this doesn't conflict with other Maxis Buildings.  Good measure may be to change all of these Group IDs to the one PIMX gives you, or perhaps the same Group as the LTEXTs (though these I would guess are also the Maxis Group ID).

It shouldn't be giving out numbers like that. At one job per tile, you'd need to fill up an entire large tile for there to be 50k+ farm jobs!

Didn't mean to quote you, but that's what happens when you post

Pretty sure Maxis was counting the field workers.  The route query can show more commuters than the capacity of the farm building, and the Jobs graph reflects this amount accurately.  SPAM fields have Capacity Satisfied between 14 and 17 for IR.  These buildings/fields also provide ID and IM jobs between 11 and 14 people.  This means that your one field tile can have at least 36 people working on it... Near one person per square foot (Edit: Not close, 1 person per 7 square meters).  While I can believe that you would have 50,000 available jobs, I don't understand why they are visible on the graph.  Maybe the circular nature of the Capacity Satisfied Vs Drives has something to do with it?   Perhaps this is something to leave to RJ, though I'm not going to be the one to ask him to do that.  

One last note:  If you have 127 R$$ sims, you should have some IM demand, but I guess this is taken care of in the farms.  Why is it not negative?  The basic CAM strategy is to not connect your farm tiles to the region until you have what you want.  Will this now be necessary to have IM grow with SPAM?   There is much that I do not know.

[ScottFTL]

Thanks for the info, Jim.  I was getting ready to try my hand at CAMifying the SPAM, but I was worried I was a little over my head. 

I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind.

(1) I assume that removing these exemplars also removes the changes to the effects of pollution and traffic on the farms.  I have a huge problem with farm and field dilapidation without SPAM.  I've tried to get clever with the road layout, but I can't seem to avoid the problem.  I also agree that the water pollution generated by farms is excessive in the game, although I'm sure some would argue that it is realistic.  I know that spa has been working on a farm mod, but it is sadly not CAMpatible yet.

(2) Does the SPAM still change the Maxis pasture texture?  I remember you pointed out that some of your farm lots looked strange once the SPAM was installed.  I'm just not sure it was corrected before the release.  I haven't had the courage to mix and match my farms yet.   

[HappyDays]

Answering 1:

I would wager that Pollution Effect Air/Water/Radiation/Garbage determines the hardiness of a lot to pollution. Instance 4100 contains these variables, and I believe all you need to do is replace CAM's numbers with SPAM's.

Of course, I've been wrong before. So wait until someone confirms. <_<

[King Dee]

Thanks a lot Korot! 

[jmyers2043]

I have a huge problem with farm and field dilapidation without SPAM.  I've tried to get clever with the road layout, but I can't seem to avoid the problem.

@ Scott      I used to do that as well. I had all sorts of traffic patterns that funneled trucks and cars where they did the least damage.

Within the IR developer exemplar is a property called Traffic Affect. It determines the positive and negative affect that traffic will have on farming.

A comparison between the various mods:



The CAM and Maxis: They have the same traffic affect. This makes sense as the focus for CAM was not on farm development per se.

SPAM: There are things that affect farm growth. Such as not enough neighbor connections. But it won't be traffic. It has a diminishing but always positvive affect on farm development.

CAM 2: Currently takes a different approach. Traffic can still have a negative affect but it's not as drastic.

SPA: This mod which is still in beta has traffic as neutral. No positive or negative affects on farming. 

It should be noted that I can still have farm field dilapidation with the SPAM. The threshold is much higher than CAM or MAXIS. It took nearly 1000 vehicles to drive desirability below the point where fields turn to crud and the strawberry U-Pick went grungy on me.



SPA's mod on the other hand? I had 1,500 vehicles traveling past these farms. There was no field or farm anywhere in my test city that went to crud. I think SPA's mod is kind of clever. But it's only for generic MAXIS. My opinion is that SPA's mod is the better of the 'Farm Field' mods right now. One could certainly apply his idea with a little knowledge of iLives reader.






Good Luck

- Jim

[ScottFTL]

Thanks for the interesting info, Jim.  I looked at the Traffic Effect property, but I wasn't sure how to interpret the long string of numbers.  This makes more sense to me the way you've formatted it, but of course I have more questions.

I've also discovered some of the other "tricks" SPAM is using.  However, I think we're starting to hijack this thread.  Should we move this discussion to its own thread?

[Lowkee33]

The numbers there are a series of ordered pairs.  The first of the pair is how much traffic there is, and the second is what effect that has.  There are quite a few properties "turned off" (0,0,255,0).  The budget exemplar has a property turned off that gives/takes income depending upon land value.  This property would be "turned on" by making the value 0,0,255,1000 meaning a land value of 0 gives $0, and a land value of 255 gives $1000.  In this case, I believe a land value of 128 would give $500, but not too sure.  Pairs can be added to make the curve more smooth, such as 0,-1000,128,0,255,1000 (The stage vs size properties are in similar fashion). 

I had pretty good results with this in the Terrain Texture Exemplars in my Terrain Thread (Link)

[legoman786]

I just had a massive stroke of genius.


Why not have 2 folders in the SPAM folder? One with the vanilla DAT and one with the 'fixed' DAT for CAMpatibility. Using the SUM, we'd be able to switch back and forth without ever having to switch the files!


Yeah, that just made my day.