Parking lots

[videosean]

I've been doing so much reading around here since installing the CAM and related things.  One thing that's always bothered me in the game is parking lots.  I've been looking at the JRN parking lots mainly (because I like their look better than the NDEX parking lots) in the reader and have experimented with transit enabling them using the SC4Tool with what I think is some success.  This isn't something I plan on releasing... just doing it for fun/education.


I had to limit car-to-car traffic to only the south side of the lot (where the visible road connection is made for the entrance) in order to stop vehicles from driving through the lots because it just doesn't work with the visual style of these parking lots - these are my latest settings in sc4tool's TE editor:


The JRN lots don't have a query window at all... so I need to work on that. I'd like to be able to see how much income these PAY lots give in the query.  The amount they bring in goes up with useage, correct?  Any advice or links to other posts regarding pay lots and query window stuff would be appreciated but I'm sure I can find the info on my own given enough time... I've done okay so far with transit enabling the lots.  I can't seem to dig up the maxis parking lot in the ilive reader   I found it in the lot editor, saw 0x4e1fb0d1 in the list for it there, searched for that string in the reader and found nothing - maybe I did something wrong in the search though.

I also need to work out an appropriate capacity strategy for the lots.  The capacity (which affects the red-yellow-green congestion overlay in the game) is the 1200 number I put into the TE editor, correct?  I arrived at that number from reading here somewhere... believe it is the capacity of a road.  I'm thinking I could multiply 1200 x number of tiles in a given lot since a bigger lot should have a bigger capacity so the 2x3 lot would be 1200x6=7200.  Am I wrong or crazy with that thinking?

*edit*
in the 2x3 lot, 2 tiles are entrances leaving 4 yiles for parking, not 6, so 4800 for capacity not 7200.

[RippleJet]

The JRN lots don't have a query window at all... so I need to work on that. I'd like to be able to see how much income these PAY lots give in the query.  The amount they bring in goes up with useage, correct?  Any advice or links to other posts regarding pay lots and query window stuff would be appreciated but I'm sure I can find the info on my own given enough time... I've done okay so far with transit enabling the lots.  I can't seem to dig up the maxis parking lot in the ilive reader   I found it in the lot editor, saw 0x4e1fb0d1 in the list for it there, searched for that string in the reader and found nothing - maybe I did something wrong in the search though.

There is no functional parking lot by Maxis, only the garage and the toll booths.
If you want your parking lot to generate income, then you need to make it a toll booth.
If you make your parking lot like the in-game garage, then it will be costing money every month.

In order to find the in-game transportation buildings in Reader:
  1. Open the Simcity DAT tag in the left pane
  2. Click Simcity_1.dat, but don't Fill the list
  3. Click the Analyzer button on top
  4. Click the Tree button (third from the left)
  5. Click the Search button (first on the left)
  6. Now click the + next to Transport and you will find all ingame transport lots and buildings.

I also need to work out an appropriate capacity strategy for the lots.  The capacity (which affects the red-yellow-green congestion overlay in the game) is the 1200 number I put into the TE editor, correct?  I arrived at that number from reading here somewhere... believe it is the capacity of a road.  I'm thinking I could multiply 1200 x number of tiles in a given lot since a bigger lot should have a bigger capacity so the 2x3 lot would be 1200x6=7200.  Am I wrong or crazy with that thinking?

You should compare the capacity to the in-game Public Parking Garage, which is 5000 on a 3x3 lot.

[jeronij]

If you make your parking lot like the in-game garage, then it will be costing money every month.

You can always try with a negative value and see what happens ...

Edit: I am amazed to see these old lots being reworked to be functional 

[videosean]

You should compare the capacity to the in-game Public Parking Garage, which is 5000 on a 3x3 lot.

Hah I just did that but didn't like the numbers too much   Capacity of maxis parking garage is 5000, the garage has 5 levels and the garage part covers 2x3 tiles.  5000/5= 1000 per level, 1000/6 tiles = 166.667 capacity per tile so... the JRN 2x3 with 4 actual parking tiles would be 166.6667 x 4 = 666 capacity which is lower than 1200 that I based on the road capacity number and is the capacity used in the pics I posted 

I have about 10,000 - 14,000 sims using the monorail station (BrendaXNE made that) in my pictures and I'm pretty sure it's capacity is 10,000.  The bus station in the pics (from RTMTv3) is at 500%+ it's capacity of 1000.  If 4500 sims get to the monorail via car, then using 166.667 per tile would mean I need a parking lot that covers at least 26 tiles.  Looking at it like this, I think I may need to make a new parking lot in the lot editor.  If I made it 6x3 tiles and used only 2 tiles for an entrance (or 3 entrances... but where to place the entrances so they'll all be used in a way I like lol) that would give me 16 tiles x 166.6667 = 2666 capacity. 2 lots on both sides of the bus station gives me 5333 capacity over 32 tiles.

Regarding income from the lots... this is from the JRN lots' download page description:

Code Select Expand


LOT Plop Bulldoze Monthly Income
1x2 80   50        200
2x3 100  70        300
3x3 110  80        400
2x6 110  80        400
I found this in the JRN 2x3 lot's exemplar file:

Code Select Expand


Budget Item: Department 0xEA54D283  Uint32 1 Business Deals
Budget Item: Line       0xEA54D284  Uint32 1 0x00000000
Budget Item: Purpose    0xEA54D285  Uint32 1 Business Deal Income
Budget Item: Cost       0xEA54D286  Sint64 1 0x000000000000012C

Taking what you said about toll booths, I would have to use the toll booth method in order to have income tied with useage... as that business deal method there is probably fixed regardless of useage.  I assume the cost property ending with 12c = 300 and in the 2x6 lot the cost property is 0x0000000000000190 = 400.

I looked up goldiva's electronic tollbooth because it was easiest for me to find in my files:

Code Select Expand


Transit Switch Fare 0x0BFC0A4C Float32 0 0.2
Demand Created 0x27812841 Uint32 12 Jobs $,0x0000005F,Jobs $$,0x0000005F,Jobs $$$,0x0000005F,Amenities $,0x0000005F,Amenities $$,0x0000005F,Amenities $$$,0x0000005F
Transit Switch Capacity Effect 0x4BFC47B0 Bool 0 True
OccupantGroups 0xAA1DD396 Uint32 4 Building: Transportation,Building: Strikable Transit,Building: MiscTransit,Building: TollBooth
Transit Switch Entry Cost 0xE90E25A2 Float32 0 0.30000001
Transit Switch Traffic Capacity 0xE90E25A3 Float32 0 30000
Lot Resource Key 0xEA260589 Uint32 1 0x8D5E25CF
Budget Item: Department 0xEA54D283 Uint32 1 Roads
Budget Item: Line 0xEA54D284 Uint32 1 0x00000006
Budget Item: Purpose 0xEA54D285 Uint32 1 Toll Booth Maintenance
Budget Item: Cost 0xEA54D286 Sint64 1 0x000000000000000A

Do I need to use all of those properties or just the budget item ones?  Sorry for being such a noob... if I knew a better/shorter way of asking without pasting stuff from other files I would!  And thanks for the help on finding maxis stuff in the reader!

Edit: I am amazed to see these old lots being reworked to be functional  thumbsup

Out of the 3 or 4 different parking lot downloads I've found in the past month or two I like the look of yours the best I guess

[videosean]

I had very little problem getting a query window using Daeley's guide for copying the UI file - I copied a UI file from the RTMT series of bus/subway stations.

Of course... Goldiva's tollbooth has little car icons instead of bus or subway... and his lot has no UI file nor a png file of the cars that I could see LOL  As far as I can tell Goldiva did everything with an XML file... I may need to look for more info on how that stuff works :/

*edit:  Also back to capacity... it LOOKS like the maxis garage has 8 parking spots per tile and JRN's are 10 spots per tile...
167/8=20.875x10=208.75 per parking lot spaces tile for the JRN lots so... 3x6 lot with 16 parking space tiles would be 3340 capacity instead of 2672 capacity

[RippleJet]

Taking what you said about toll booths, I would have to use the toll booth method in order to have income tied with useage... as that business deal method there is probably fixed regardless of useage. 

Exactly!

Of course... Goldiva's tollbooth has little car icons instead of bus or subway... and his lot has no UI file nor a png file of the cars that I could see LOL

The images used are those that are available in-game, and referenced by the "image" field in the query:

<LEGACY clsid=GZWinBMP iid=IGZWinBMP id=0x00001041 area=(147,46,267,68) fillcolor=(222,232,227)
winflag_visible=yes winflag_enabled=yes winflag_moveable=yes winflag_sizeable=no winflag_sortable=no
winflag_pbuff=yes winflag_pbufftrans=yes winflag_pbufferase=yes winflag_pbuffvid=no winflag_alphablend=no
winflag_acceptfocus=yes winflag_mousetrans=no winflag_ignoremouse=no image={46a006b0,1441620f}
imagerect=(0,0,24,44) notify=no transparentbkg=yes edgeimage=no >

[videosean]

I appreciate everything you're telling me so much... I got lost in the lot editor after doing the math on parking spaces but eventually found my way through - I still need to put all the car props back into it.  Pics: new lot, new lot without all my plugins in test city, new lot without all my plugins in test city, 5 of the new lot after at least 6 game months with all of my plugins in the area that made me want to get serious about some decent parking lots.

In the transit editor I removed all of the car-car properties.  Pics of the current TE settings just in case someone sees something there that could be a problem:

I experimented with making the arrows at the outer edge of the lot be FF (culdesac) and my game crashed... quite probably because I had placed ped mall tiles (grassy tiles around bus stop in the traffic overlay picture) right next to one edge of the parking lot?  I wasn't able to plop the parking lot next to the ped mall tiles when I had culdesacs at the outer edges but I was able to place the ped mall tiles after placing the parking lot.  Don't know if this info could help someone... I probably should have searched up on FF/culdesac before trying it

Parking space math refined:
Maxis garage= 5000 cap / 5 levels / 6 tiles / 8 spots per tile = 20.75
JRN lots= 10x10 = 100, 6 x 9 = 72, 72 + 100 = 172 parking spots x 20 (can't park .75 cars) = 3440 capacity.
There are 10 spots per normal tile (10) and 9 spots on the tiles that make 3 internal path connections (6 along north edge of my lot)... yeah I'm a little anal about some things when I can be.  I still think I should just make an even bigger lot lol but I don't want it to be overly customized for one specific area in one city.

4c47800e... I actually wrote that down earlier but haven't yet tracked down how to use it in the UI file and the new lot is currently queryless... I spent too much time in the lot editor getting rid of props I some how duplicated too many times 

[RippleJet]

In the transit editor I removed all of the car-car properties.

Good!
You will still have a few pedestrians shortcutting the parking lot, but that's unavoidable.

4c47800e... I actually wrote that down earlier but haven't yet tracked down how to use it in the UI file and the new lot is currently queryless...

4c47800e is the query for the toll booth (not garage as I said above).
If you made your lot to function like a toll booth, then use this (Query exemplar GUID = 0x4C47800E).
If you made the lot like a garage, then use Maxis' garage query (Query exemplar GUID = 0xAC3B72F6).

[videosean]

I don't mind pedestrians shortcutting the lot... that can happen IRL much easier than cars shortcutting through a fenced-in or gated parking lot... when I worked in downtown Columbus Ohio I would shortcut through 2 parking lots walking to my job from the parking lot I parked in
I have it functioning as a toll booth and used the same values as the Maxis toll booth for fares or whatever it was, I have no toll booths in this city so it must be working... 5 of these 3x6 lots and they're all over capacity:


I have it using the query sound from the maxis garage even though LEProp crashed every time I tried to use that app to make the query sound stick... no postable proof lol
Problems still beyond my grasp: the mouse hover query?  It's obviously getting this info from the lot I built this one from?  Can't find where I'm messing this up and I assume it's a TGI problem somewhere  nope!  Got rid of the UI file and did something different!


Again in the main query window... "Parking JRN 2x3" must be coming from an LTEXT file from the original lot I built off of.
Somehow along the way I messed up the car image/graph for the service quality. nope!  Got rid of the UI file and did something different!

Now... when I hover my mouse over the icon for the 6x3 lot in the game menu to select it, I get the "Parking JRN 2x3" heading from the wrong file AND the "Park your car all day..." line from the proper LTEXT fileItem Description property... So I've got something almost right but not quite and I hope I make sense. User Visible Name Key was cauding this problem - it was referencing the old 2x3 file

I have only 1 GZWinBMP line in my UI file... I didn't add an additional line... thinking maybe it had something to do with the car image/graph being funky but maybe not.  I think the image/graph being messed up is something I'm going to have to just spend more time comparing codes on... I think it has to be an imagerect or area problem in another line of the UI file somewhere... getting rid of that pesky UI file certainly helped a LOT!  Using Item Name and Item Description instead of messing with the UI file works fine!

ParentCohort            0x05342861,0x07BDDF1C,0x00000002   
Exemplar Type   0x00000010   Uint32   0   Buildings   
Exemplar Name   0x00000020   String   0   JRN-VS Pay Paking Lot 3x6   
Bulldoze Cost   0x099AFACD   Sint64   0   0x000000000000000A   
Transit Switch Fare   0x0BFC0A4C   Float32   0   0.1   
Occupant Size   0x27812810   Float32   3   1,0,1   
ResourceKeyType0   0x27812820   Uint32   3   0x5AD0E817,0xBADB57F1,0x0E110000   
Wealth   0x27812832   Uint8   0   Medium Wealth   
Demand Created   0x27812841   Uint32   12   Jobs $,0x00000002,Jobs $$,0x00000000,Jobs $$$,0x00000000,Amenities $,0x00000002,Amenities $$,0x00000000,Amenities $$$,0x00000000   
Landmark Effect   0x2781284F   Sint32   2   0x0000000F,0x00000014   
Park Effect   0x27812850   Sint32   2   0x0000000F,0x00000014   
Pollution at centre   0x27812851   Sint32   4   0xFFFFFFFF,0x00000001,0x00000001,0x00000000   
Power Consumed   0x27812854   Uint32   0   0x00000001   
Flammability   0x29244DB5   Uint8   0   0x00   
Query exemplar GUID   0x2A499F85   Uint32   0   0x4C47800E   
MaxFireStage   0x49BEDA31   Uint8   0   0x00   
Plop Cost   0x49CAC341   Sint64   0   0x0000000000000064   
Catalogue Capacity   0x4AA60EBC   Uint32   0   0x000003E8   
Pollution Radius   0x68EE9764   Float32   4   3,1,1,0   
PluginPackID   0x6A871B82   Uint32   0   0x750ABC92   
Item Name   0x899AFBAD   String   0   JRN-VS Pay Parking Lot 3x6   
Item Description   0x8A2602A9   String   0   Park your car all day and use mass transit or walk to work!   
Item Icon   0x8A2602B8   Uint32   0   0x750ABC92   
Item Order   0x8A2602B9   Uint32   0   0x000000E0   
OccupantGroups   0xAA1DD396   Uint32   2   Building: Transportation,Building: MiscTransit   
SFX:Query Sound   0xAA1DD397   Uint32   0   0x6C08D959   
SFX:Default Plop Sound   0xC9B93A56   Uint32   0   0x4A5EC571   
SFX:Default Plop Sound   0xC9B93A56   Uint32   0   0xEA5EC59F   
Transit Switch Point   0xE90E25A1   Uint8   16   Outside-to-Inside,All Sides,Walk,Walk,Inside-to-Outside,All Sides,Walk,Walk,Outside-to-Inside,South,Drive Car,Walk,Inside-to-Outside,South,Walk,Drive Car   
Transit Switch Entry Cost   0xE90E25A2   Float32   1   0.03   
Transit Switch Traffic Capacity   0xE90E25A3   Float32   1   3440   
Lot Resource Key   0xEA260589   Uint32   0   0x750ABC92   
Budget Item: Department   0xEA54D283   Uint32   1   Roads   
Budget Item: Line   0xEA54D284   Uint32   1   0x00000006   
Budget Item: Purpose   0xEA54D285   Uint32   1   Toll Booth Maintenance   
Budget Item: Cost   0xEA54D286   Sint64   1   0x000000000000000A   

but right now *last edit still one problem left with the wrong heading when I hover over the in-game menu icon but I still need some NOW
Appreciate all your help!

[RippleJet]

Appreciate all your help!

Sleep well!

If you want to learn more about naming conventions and the item description, read this:
Names and descriptions of buildings and props

[videosean]

bah!  I do have one tiny problem... when placing pedestrian mall tiles (from NAM) if I move over one of my parking lots the game CTD.  I can avoid it if I'm really careful but is there a fix?  I'm pretty sure I've read about this problem before and there isn't a fix.

[wouanagaine]

No unfortunatly there is no fix to the TE Lot bug

[jmelvin]

First, let me apologize for bumping a thread that hasn't had any new comments for a couple of months now but I was just browsing the thread and have a question.

I notice that paired entries have been made for the transit switch allowing outside-to-inside car/pedestrian and inside-to-outside pedestrian/car. Is that really necessary or even wanted? I seem to have noticed something I call the "stolen car effect" with this type of pairing used in conjunction with an outside-to-inside pedestrian/pedestrian entry. I have noticed pedestrians enter the lot and leave in cars during the morning commute.

I have experimented a little with removing the inside-to-outside pedestrian/car entry on some lots I found that were modded this way. The "stolen car effect" seemed to disappear and transit through the lot seemed to work for both the morning and evening commutes.

I think I have noticed this with more than just parking lots. I will have to go back and look at some of the train stations I have downloaded in the past. I did look at the transit switch property for the default passenger rail station (TGI: 6534284a, c8dbccba, 035b0000 in simcity_1.dat) and see that it does not have an inside-to-outside pedestrian/car entry while it does have an outside-to-inside car/pedestrian entry.