Wishing for animals

[Schulmanator]

A while ago, some fine folks created a "Wishes granted" ploppable cows and horses and llamas. I think it would be great to have ploppable wild animals, like giraffes, zebras, lions, etc. I always hope when I put them in in God mode they will appear in game, but they never do. I would enjoy seeing a variety of animals.

Thanks! :-)

[jeronij]

Static plopable animals are easily doable by any BATter. Animated plopable animals can not be done. You can always use a blank lot and add some fauna effects to it to get something like you are looking for, but the animals are "alive" so I am not sure if they will stay on the lot 

[BarbyW]

Unfortunately I could not get the other animals to stay on the lots as they disappear and do not re appear after plopping.

[SáT]

I think it would be great to have ploppable wild animals, like giraffes, zebras, lions, etc. I always hope when I put them in in God mode they will appear in game, but they never do. I would enjoy seeing a variety of animals.

Okay, I may not offer the ploppable exotic animals here, but am I right to assume that you mostly just want to see exotic animals trotting around? In that case, here you go:

Exotic animals are never created by the wildlife generator. That's why they never appear in the game. But this can be helped all right.

The wildlife generator is in the aptly named wildlife.lua (located in the simcity_1.dat). The generator's first row says that automata = { "deer", "bear", "horse", "moose","llama" }", missing the exotic stuff. The missing animal automata, however, are all defined in the constants_sit.lua. A quick & dirty patch will ensure the exotic animals are all generated in the game. In other words, rhinos roam 'round the city.

If you have ever touched the Reader, you'll be able to tweak the values (i.e you can make it so your cities generate nothing but giraffes): open the .dat, and in the lua inside, simply enter the desired animal's name in the automata array. Possible animals that I'm aware of are: deer, bear, horse, moose, llama, chimp, elephant, giraffe, lion, rhino and polar_bear ("and there may be many others but they haven't been discovered"), but the polar_bear is outright bugged (AFAIK). Anyhow, you may also consider changing the amount of animals generated. The original may be a bit too low for the fun, if realistic.

Link to the plugin

The usual caveats: this may conflict with other modded wildlife.luas; it works for me, but may not work for you; etc, etc, etc. And, well, this all may be common knowledge since ages. I'm new to this, you know  .



As for the ploppability, at least some semi-ploppability... well, here I'm risking I may seem like the naive & angry youngster stubbornly going against the advice of his wise elders, but... Well, anyhow, as I see it, the reason the animals go off and fade off plopped lots is that fauna are avoid_lots=true, meaning that "automaton will fade out as soon as it detects it's on a lot". The "timeout=60" is also suspicious: a quick observation makes me think animals do fade off after roughly 60 seconds. Anyhow, what if we created the new automata group "tame_fauna", without these restrictions; and what if we tied a generator and an attractor to a certain lot through the use of custom properties, perhaps? Absolutely stupid?

[jeronij]

I am not familiar at all with the automata, but all what I read sounds somehow logical. Why dont you start a modding project for this ? 

[Badsim]

I have a request about animals too ... maybe not totally in this subject but I don't think that needs to open another thread .
D'you know a mod or can you explain me how to modify the existing one for a more realistic fauna ... I mean , I just think llamas & wild horses have nothing to do in an european countryside & mountains ... and sometimes (that's exceptional )I can see an eagle .
So , IMO , the best european fauna should be ; a lot of moose (they can figure stags and roe-deers ) , a few bears and eagles .

It's a pity there's no wild boar , (and inexcusable from Maxis there's no sheep . )

[sam]

Yes I'm surprised there are no sheep. But if what SáT is saying is correct you could have a different LUA mod for say African animals, and maybe one for north american etc if ther are enough animal automata. I think there might be a kangaroo somewhere too.

But I'm interested in knowing where the whales are. I would like to be able to have whales appear more often or in more shallow water for example. But they seem to be different to the other animals and I can't find them.

[SáT]

Yes I'm surprised there are no sheep. But if what SáT is saying is correct you could have a different LUA mod for say African animals, and maybe one for north american etc if ther are enough animal automata.

Absolutely. Badsim, just download the dat I posted above, and edit the lua so that the automata array lists the animals you wish to see.

I think there might be a kangaroo somewhere too.

Yes, but the kangaroo is missing a "walking" model. Or maybe it's just not named corrrectly, or missing a texture. Either way, it's just a floating shadow that occasionally switches into a kangaroo looking around, then disappears as the "walking" animation is called. Worse, it's part of a group named something else (I believe the quick&dirty patch of mine actually calls the faulty kangaroo automata -- sorry about that, it's Maxis' fault; I should find the kangaroo exemplar to fix that.)

But I'm interested in knowing where the whales are. I would like to be able to have whales appear more often or in more shallow water for example. But they seem to be different to the other animals and I can't find them.

My guess is, they're effects, not automata. Same for the eagles and the seagulls. But this is just a guess.


Anyhow, we could most certainly create a more realistic wildlife. The automata model is quite powerful indeed. Herds are entirely possible, for example: basically, we create a leader set to random_walk (or something more specific), then set that leader to attract animals of the same kind. Stampede! We can also create animals at night, who are then attracted to garbage cans and venture into light residental areas. We could create hunters shooting animals (and each other). Heck, we could (theoretically) create animals who are attracted to a chemical plant, drink the industrial waste and turn into sim-eating monsters. We could entirely deviate from the Maxis model of wildlife-generators (that seems massively unfinished anyways: why can we plop exotic animals in God mode if the generator we place is the same as the others?). But at the very least, we could separate the animals and tweak the frequency of their appearance so that deer will be more frequent than bears (or whatever is realistic. I'm a city boy, actually; perhaps that's why I'm attracted to these absolutely rural things. Ever told you I'm working on a cowboy vehicle? But I digress...). There are limitations, of course, and some issues about performance (i.e. we don't want too many automata); it requires attention and some care, that's all. Oh, and we can create new animals all right: we only need the animated models (which is not something I'm capable of creating, but I'm certain someone around here is; though I'm not sure if they want to waste their talent on modelling sheep ).

I'll look into the matter, then report back about the findings   (SáT said, and he was never seen again)

[Badsim]

Thanks for these informations ! I think it's time to give a little more time and energy on these details ...

About whales & eagles .... I don't think they're effects but automata(s) . I know these effect props available with LotEditor like Effect_pigeons , Effect_ seagulls , Effect_cows ans so on ... so I think I would already found a effect_whales or eagles , plus , in game they randomly appears for about 60 second exactely like others automatas .

I have downloaded your file , Sàt , now I'm going to see all that closer ...

See you later .

[jeronij]

Badsim, those are effects indeed. Maxis did not put the things easy for the lotters about effects, and most of the effects DO NOT show in the Lot Editor    BUT, you can extract any effect from the core dat files, and make them useable for the LE....just check that file:
JRJ Rural Culverts And Water Effects

[Badsim]

Hi jeronij 

Thanks for the link , I had missed that too ... . So far , I have just seen the Lots and these effects were unknown for me  , indeed ... I'm impatient to try the 45 water effect props : it's Christmas ! And I wonder if this game will cease one day to surprise me ...



Hi Sàt , I have tested your file ,  but If I try to modify the automata list (removing all except deer, moose and bear )I've got no result in game . I'm not an expert Of IlIve Reader ...but the changes I made have been saved ... Is there a special location where to put this file or did I miss something ?

[sam]

I've often searched for different effects in the core dats, but have rarely been able to find anything other than the standard ones. Any ideas what I should be looking for? I can usually find quite easily what I want with other file types but not most of the effects.

[SáT]

Hi Sàt , I have tested your file ,  but If I try to modify the automata list (removing all except deer, moose and bear )I've got no result in game . I'm not an expert Of IlIve Reader ...but the changes I made have been saved ... Is there a special location where to put this file or did I miss something ?

I'm no expert either  . The attached file works for me all right, try it out; if you have problems, make sure you have wildlife generators placed on the map, i.e. that you have plopped animals in God mode; my observation shows the generators need to be placed on flora (so: plop trees in God mode, then plop animals on top of them); also, give the animals some time to appear; if all things fail, you might check the instance ID for conflicts. Aside that, I have no clue. That said, I'm going to make a modular version that, supposedly, will be less dirty and accordingly more reliable.

[Badsim]

When I said "no result" , that's meaning I've got still all animals ....wow , and a myriad of eagles .

[jeronij]

I've often searched for different effects in the core dats, but have rarely been able to find anything other than the standard ones. Any ideas what I should be looking for? I can usually find quite easily what I want with other file types but not most of the effects.

You wont find them because they do not exist as effect props by default  .

If you check the file that I linked before for Badsim, you can see some new exemplar declarations, ( clones from existing exemplars), which I made, copying one existing exemplar and changing the Instance ID. ( dont use the range I used, please  )
After that, you point the effec to to the exemplar by the effect's name. No more, no less.
You can find all the effects names in the effectdir file.

I hope this helps. If you need more info, just let me know 

[SáT]

When I said "no result" , that's meaning I've got still all animals ....wow , and a myriad of eagles .

Err. Okay. I apparently forgot to make a dofile() on the wildlife.lua  . Well, theoretically it shouldn't be a problem, though, as the package number is way higher than that of anything Maxis... But oh well, what the hell. Attached is a corrected version.

But, wait, do you get the giraffes and everything?

Anyhow, I'll gotta work on that modular version really fast to make up for this stumbling I'm doing here  .

[Badsim]

Dozens of giraffes & elephants ... They seem to enjoy mountains ...

Edit : I've downloaded this new file . Don't worry too much about all this .

[Badsim]

Tested Sàt , exactely what I was searching for ... Thank you so much !
You should realize different fauna mods and upload this to the STEX / LEX .

[sam]

You wont find them because they do not exist as effect props by default  .

If you check the file that I linked before for Badsim, you can see some new exemplar declarations, ( clones from existing exemplars), which I made, copying one existing exemplar and changing the Instance ID. ( dont use the range I used, please  )
After that, you point the effec to to the exemplar by the effect's name. No more, no less.
You can find all the effects names in the effectdir file.

I hope this helps. If you need more info, just let me know 

Thanks 

I found the list (in section 13 of the effects dir) and I managed to extract a few and some of them even worked. Others didn't seem to at all and some didn't persist. Others seem to be composed of many parts.

[jeronij]

I didnt say it was going to be easy  The effectsdir is a very complex file,there is really very little information about that file...I am sure that all the effects are set to show at determinated times of the day/year, and also to show under determined circumstances only....if we could have the full documentation about that file...

This is all the information I am aware of:

http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=EFFDIR

....if someone could have a look and see if a decrypting tool would be feasible....some codemaster....