Is there a registration of IID's for models?

[FrankU]

Hi people,

I hope this subject is not that obvious that you start laughing at me. I am stepping on new terrain (for myself) here...

As far as I know there are registrations of IID ranges for textures, prop families and for MMP's. Are there also ranges available for models?
I want to rescale some models that are made by others. I want to add these in uploads. I have understood that if I edit only the S3D files and upload these the original model will be neccessary as dependency, so that the copyrights are maintained. Now there is the question of which IID or GID I should assign to the edited S3D files.
Is there a consistent answer?

While modding some other things, like rewards, I found out that many models have identical IID's, so I think also the GID is important for recognition of the models. is that correct? Would it be wise to use my own GID then for all models that I edit and upload?

Who knows what I should do?

[Badsim]

Who knows what I should do?

I don't ... but having the same problem and questioning , I would be highly interested in some of the greatest Modders point of view . I've read Lowkee33 and Cogeo's methods , but they sound random and finally nothing certify that new adresses aren't or will be taken ...
Is this an unavoidable (even if minimal ) risk ?

Cédric .

[Lowkee33]

Hi Frank, sorry about the delay.

Orange is right, there is no way to insure that you wont mess things for the future.  However, this is the same for everything that we make.  At this moment, I made a prop with instance 0x7ca1813b.  The first digit, 7, was a random odd number.  The other digits are a time signature, down to the second.  If someone happened to make a prop at the same time as me, hopefully we would get a different odd number.  If 9 people made a prop at the same time, we will defiantly have a conflict.  However, the time can only go up to 0x#FFFFFFF.  The second after that, the first digit will switch to being a random even number, and start counting for zero.  This is going to happen in less than 2 years (in October of  2013 I think).  In fact, this will be the end of the unique instance formula that Maxis made.  After that, every item that is made will have a chance of conflicting with one that was made 10 years ago.

Reading through the "Future of SC4" thread, I think that a mass organization of instances would be a good idea.  The work and dealing with copyright is a whole other story.  I would hope that if the time ever comes, those batters no longer active would understand if we did something for the benefit of making the game work (That is one of the reasons this site started anyway).

So, how to pick an Instance for an S3D?  It can't be a Maxis Instance, otherwise a Maxis FSh will be displayed instead of the custom one.  This was an oversight of Maxis when they released BAT.  We started to make instances that were conflicting.  They released the Model Name fix, and now when a model is made it has a unique Group, but Instance 0x0003####.

There are two basic types of Batters, those who leave the Instance as 0x0003####, and those that change it.

The people who do not change it are easier to deal with.  For them, I would find a non-Maxis instance that is tucked away between two Maxis Instances, and use that same one for every model.  The harder this instance is to find the better, as you don't want the Batter to find it. 

Maybe that explanation is bad.  If you go through Maxis, and find Instance 0x1111#### and then 0x1113####, The Instance 0x1112#### would be a top choice to make a modded S3D be.

The same method would be true for Batters to mod their Instances.  However, all of the S3Ds you make have to be the same Group as the original model.  It would be very difficult to say, scale everything that CP has released, finding those instances would be tough.

[NCGAIO]

If it can be useful with respect to id's and their relationships in the game to read the links below in the section of S3D can be interesting ...

http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=InstanceFormats

http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Relations

There is also mention of <GEN> and <mGEN> Generated IDs

The copyright issue I guess just a little sail on the download sites to find a lot of work "Revisited" as they call.

It's easy to find things that are incredible posts in 7 or 8 years ago ... certain that with some adjustments could be revitalized and keep alive the author's work while maintaining the same as addiction or quote from it.

[cogeo]

NCGAIO, we are all amazed!

Anyways, I don't know how much feasible is to buld and maintain an GID or IID index for S3Ds (and other file types - I was always asking for a building/prop/lot registry), esp now that SC4 is a very old game. And furthermore, how much sense it makes, with all this custom content already released.

Instead, I was planning to make a program (Installation Analyzer) which would scan an installation and report conflicts, along with some other operations like finding an object (exemplar, texrure etc) and dependencies or missing items. But the declining number of SC4 players has discouraged me.

[NCGAIO]

Sorry .... I did not understand the sarcasm ...

I only made mention of the wiki to facilitate smart idea to look between the id "s Maxis vacancies mentioned above. And in the idea exchange on the issue of remodeling work of other designers as quoted.

about the decline in the number of players is evident that occurs by the anachronism of the game.

I was an ardent fan of Sim City since launch and I know he was kept alive thanks to the selfless work as you and many others who have maintained interest in the game.

This is the largest site of technical information about the game between all that I visited ... and I know almost all of them ... but could also have the spirit of socializing as some others have done and it was supposed to be able to include comment on matters in general ... even among the most privileged minds.

greetings.

[Lowkee33]

I don't think it was sarcasm at all.  You appeared from nowhere with a wealth of knowledge!

[Tarkus]

The problem I see here is that BAT models of this type are the most ubiquitous items by far, and we're already around 8 years past the release of the Building Architect Tool--in order to properly catalog everything, someone would need to download just about everything ever made by the community, or there'd need to be some way of collecting such data.  Even with the latter, it's problematic in that it'd be an insane amount of work, and really the best you could hope for is something like what cogeo described. 

The BSC Texture and Prop Family indices were created fairly early on in the stream of custom content.  The Texture Index started in May 2004 (almost 8 years ago), and while the original Prop Family Index thread at ST dates to 2006 (6 years ago), it actually goes back farther to my knowledge with internal BSC use.  The amount of content those deal with are also relatively small in terms of sample size in comparison to BAT models. 

It's also worth noting that we haven't even fully cataloged everything in the NAM.  We have a good idea of recent stuff, our IIDs are specifically assigned nowadays (rather than randomly--the NAM system used to use a timestamp), based on project (they have to be because of the RUL file link-in works by IID), and we have means of checking to ensure that we're not creating a conflict.  But there's still a lot to index.

The NAM's timestamp system actually rolled over back in 2008 . . . but it was already not serving our needs, so we replaced it with another system.  But given that we're all very technically-minded folks and the amount of models and such being produced by all the BATers out there far exceeds the amount of stuff we're doing, our manual approach is still feasible.  It wouldn't be feasible for BATs--usually, it's not within the BATers purview to intimately know and memorize the GIDs and IIDs of every single model they produce, whereas it is for us "gearheads" (as Nate (xxdita) liked to call us).  If someone walked up to me on the street at random and asked me the IID of the OXO + intersection between a TLA-3 and a Road, I could tell them "0x51001100" without hesitation.  If you were to walk up to SimGoober and ask him the GID of Simply Pets, however, you'd probably get a puzzled look.

The fact that we're approaching a "Y2K" on the BAT's random timestamp-assigned GID system is quite problematic going forward, however.  I don't think it's catastrophic, given that the timestamp works down to the exact second, but particularly going forward, it increases the chance of there being conflicts, especially when the timestamp gets back to the same range at which the so-called "Golden Era" comes around and there were tons of models being produced.  It can sort of be avoided by manually modifying the IIDs (not the GIDs) of the models to use a different initial 4-digit combination than 0x0003, but even still, the use of that trick can cause conflicts with models rendered before the advent of the ModelNames.ms patch (or models produced by people not using it). 

-Alex

[Lowkee33]

  I guess I might be getting into "future of the community" territory.  I know you, Tarkus, have put way more time into this game than me, but I already feel like I've put enough into it that even if another game is way better, it wont be as personalized.  We never know about RL, but gaming for me is SC4.

  I'm not too concerned about us making conflicting plugins, the chances that we make something on the same second are small, and even then there is only 1/8 of a chance.

  I can think of two ways to deal with the future though (other than just keep doing the same thing).  The first would be a catalog of every model.  I've written scripts for Reader that are pretty close to doing what would be needed to change a model's instance (fix the mat, fix the RKT).  The hard part being collecting all of the files, computing power would take care of the rest.

  The other way is less obtrusive to the past, but requires a lot more thought.  Instead of explaining a bunch of math, say there are 4 variations of wooden fence styles, each with 4 color variations.  This makes 16 models (good number for a range), and is probably all of the wooden fences that anyone would even want.  If someone wants to make a better fence, he/she overrides the model instance.  This will auto-update every lot.

  Maybe the future gets more authoritarian.  We stop keeping texture/family ranges and say something like "0xB0000000 is the prop family for cars".  I kind of like this idea.

[FrankU]

Hmmm, this discussion is getting over my head, especially the info given by NCGAIO. You gave us way to an, at least by me, unknown information base. Although I must admit that I don't know what to do with the info behind the two links. It's over my head. Sorry.

Somehow I am getting to the, lazy, conclusion, that I'll just give my edited models a name and hope for the good...

Thanks for the info.

Frank

[NCGAIO]

My apologies if I interpreted it wrongly ... I thought this information was general domain ... But if they are interested can also visit the links below

http://simswiki.info/index.php?title=Category:Modding&pagefrom=FSH

http://simswiki.info/index.php?title=Category:Modding&pageuntil=FSH

It's a little hard to navigate with respect to simcity .. since now the wiki is all geared to the Sims. But mixed among the files of the two games are the most basic information for moding.

[cogeo]

Sorry .... I did not understand the sarcasm ...

I don't think it was sarcasm at all.  You appeared from nowhere with a wealth of knowledge!

Exactly!
You have come up with unknown information about animations, and then links to specs, again unknown even to knowledgeable modders! And all these by a member registered only in 2011, with only a handful of posts! Shouldn't we be amazed?

[JoeST]

Heh, I didnt realise that the Sims wiki wasn't a commonly know about resource, I've been using it extensively whenever I try and build any tools of any use...always fail to though hehe >.>

[Tarkus]

An FYI: the "rollover" date is not in October 2013.  The timestamp actually goes back to February 2, 1997 at 00:00:00, and is designed to increment a 29-bit timestamp to the second.  Given that Maxis and EA are based in California, I'd presume this would be Pacific Standard Time.

It'll run out on February 6, 2014, by my calculations, sometime before 7pm PST--17 years and just shy of 5 days.  After that point, on a given second, there's theoretically a 12.5% chance of a conflict.  However, that said, SC4 wasn't released until January 14, 2003, and even if you take into consideration that it was probably in development beginning sometime in 2001 (SC3000 was still 2 years out when that timestamp started), it may not actually prove problematic until somewhere in the range of 2018-2020.

-Alex

[Lowkee33]

Indeed, February 2014 does seem closer.  Right now is about 0x#c2efe93, which makes 64029036 seconds (2.03 years) until 0x#fffffff.