SSPTool

[Stefan79]

Hi together,

its done! 

I have uploaded the new version 1.3.3 to the LEX.
You will find it quick when you search for uploader/creator "Stefan79".
Special thanks to Quesh who did the whole french translation!

If you find any bugs, please don't be afraid to post here and I will try to fix them.

In meantime I implement a fully new plugin for DAMN management, which will give you a complete overview of your DAMN menus, your choosable lots and use the whole space of your screen. Beneath these things you can change some properties of your lots and of course create/edit your DAMN menus. This new  plugin is called DAMN Manager and will completly replace the DAMN plugin. I'll try to give you some screenshots in near future and finish this as soon as possible (maybe christmas?).
If you want to be a tester for the DAMN Manager please PM.

Best regards,
Stefan

[thingfishs]

Excellent stefan , I am a new subscriber to DAMN but am VERY excited by what I've seen so far, keep up the good work. DAMN Manager sounds DAMN fine, look forward to seeing what it can DAMN do.

[slystone2]

Great, can't wait to take it for a spin - one problem though, your name "Stefan79" is not included in the uploader/creator list. Or maybe I'm just missing it somehow?

anyway, I'll look for it under "Tools" or go through the pages of the latest downloads. Thanks for your hard work on this! 

[Stefan79]

Great, can't wait to take it for a spin - one problem though, your name "Stefan79" is not included in the uploader/creator list. Or maybe I'm just missing it somehow?

anyway, I'll look for it under "Tools" or go through the pages of the latest downloads. Thanks for your hard work on this! 

For some reasons I'm not in the uploader/creator list (because I havn't any Lots/Buildings, just the tool).
But if you enter "Stefan79" on the left side of LEX in Quick Search textfield, you will get the tool.

[Diggis]

It is near the end of the tools list, and you can also put Stefan79 into the search on the side too.  

I've passed the missing info off the power search list so hopefully we can get that added soon.

[tamorr]

   Oh boy a new version. This is good to hear, and also nice to hear there is a better way to make DAMNs coming soon. I like that idea, better to see how you are adding and where with the customizations you mentioned than guestimating. I will definately be awaiting the plugin, so I could more easily use the tool for the few things I have in mind for my own personal use.

   What's the difference between news ticker and Advisor Dialog style? I am not sure of look or what makes it different... Sorry I haven't really played in a while, due to my own development of Lots...

[RippleJet]

For some reasons I'm not in the uploader/creator list (because I havn't any Lots/Buildings, just the tool).

You should definitely be in that search list, and we are aware of the problem...
no new uploaders have appeared in the power search since an update a while back.

Now we're just waiting for someone to actually fix the software...

But if you enter "Stefan79" on the left side of LEX in Quick Search textfield, you will get the tool.

You can also click "Collection Ranking" in the left pane, and then click the heading User to sort all uploaders alphabetically.
After that it's just a matter of finding Stefan79 (on page 6) and selecting Click Here For Lots By Stefan79.

[Stefan79]

   Oh boy a new version. This is good to hear, and also nice to hear there is a better way to make DAMNs coming soon. I like that idea, better to see how you are adding and where with the customizations you mentioned than guestimating. I will definately be awaiting the plugin, so I could more easily use the tool for the few things I have in mind for my own personal use.

   What's the difference between news ticker and Advisor Dialog style? I am not sure of look or what makes it different... Sorry I haven't really played in a while, due to my own development of Lots...

The news ticker style is for those who prefer the news ticker to select items from DAMN. So you can turn off the Advisor dialogs, but you have to pause the game or the items will be grayed out in a second.
The Advisor Dialog is the popup dialog you also get when e.g. a reward is available. But you have to turn on the Advisors, so you could get many dialogs which you always have to click to go on. But the game can still be running and the dialog disappear when you choose an item from DAMN.

I prefer the way with Advisor Dialog 'cause on a normal 22" monitor with a resolution of 1680x1050 pixel you can install DAMN with 5 columns á 300 px and you will see 45 items in one dialog view without any scrolling. And if you install DAMN with more than 50 items, e.g. 150, you have to scroll only a little the mouse wheel and see all 150 items. This is the perfect overview for me.

[tamorr]

   Wow that is a big monitor.... How many columns would it be for a 1024 x 768 & 1280 x 1024?

As the first is my default res, and the second is my max. I want to know so I know my own limits to this when I decide to make some for my own personal use...

[SC4BOY]

As a rule I'd say designing the tool to utilize massive monitors and high resolutions will miss a huge portion of the SC4 community.. design it for "standard web interfaces" unless the tool can be "adjusted" to fit the individual's need.. not everyone wishes to sink $2000 or more into a pc for playing a game..

We all realize time marches on, but one of the appeals of SC4 is you don't need massive pc or hardware setups.

[City Builder]

Yes, if at all possible try for the adjustable format.  Much like people that have a smaller monitor don't usually want to scroll through a great deal of data to see it all (many would rather not scroll at all and have it all visible to them on the screen), there is also many people that have large monitors that don't want to have to click multiple times to see all the data on different "pages" within their monitors.

I've got a couple games that the developers built for the lowest common denominator with regards to interface objects (like an online almanac)  that don't scale, they are just set to take up the entire screen when the resolution is set to like 1280x1024.  However, this means those folks that have a 24 inch monitor running at 1920x1200 can barely make out the text in the almanac because it doesn't scale up to the larger size monitor, it just stays the same size as it is on somebodys 1280x1024 monitor which makes it as you can imagine a real pain to read at times.

So obviously adjustable is almost always best to accomodate as many as you can.  I'm actually kind of surprised that so many people are still running ancient relic computers playing Simcity 4.  I mean I have my own fair share (ha, maybe more than my own fair share) of old computers sitting out in the garage that could play SC4 on them, but I figure why dig out an old relic when SC4 will play perfectly fine on my new(ish) computers.  However, people never cease to amaze me on other forums for other games when they announce that they are trying to run a particular game at 1024x768 on a 15 inch CRT monitor.  Not everybody can afford newer technology unfortunately, I think many would be thrilled if they could and be overjoyed at how well they would find their games (even the newer and older ones) run on newer technology.

When I was a website designer by trade, I use to have to build websites to the lowest common denominator (i.e. make pages no wider than 800 to accomodate those people that are running really low resolutions on their computers, but there came a time when we have to make the jump up to the next stage and unfortunately irritate some folks with an extra bottom scroll bar because the websites layouts used to look terrible at 800 pixels wide when somebody was viewing it with a monitor that was 1920 pixels wide.  No I don't pretend to know what today's standard is, some folks have tried to convince me that 1280x1024 is the current majority standard and others have tried to convince me that 1680x1050 is.  I don't know what really is, I only know that I'm lucky enough to have two 24 inch monitors sitting in front of me which makes doing things like building maps for games and or building websites so much easier than when I was running a single 1280x1024 resolution monitor about 3 or 5 years ago.

Anyway, sorry I'm very verbose (too much so at times), all I really wanted to say was please make what ever you can adjustable to try to accomodate all the various systems that we have out here in play land.

[tamorr]

  Today's standard definately varies due to fact there are a whole lot of people out there. I mean I am one of those people that run on a 15" monitor, with a max resolution of 1280x1024. Even though I have a tendancy to run in the other I mentioned. I do have to agree with the market of have versitility for all if not most ranges in size. Adjustible is definately a plus.

I still am wondering how many columns will fit on my Resolution... 1024 x 768 & my max 1280 x 1024?

As I would probably only make my custom menus to acomidate myself, as to release what I have in mind with it would well be infringing on rights/respect of others and would cause a bit of confusion in the process. That is why I will only being making for self, um I mean the DAMN menus that is.

[Stefan79]

Hi together,

I think you misunderstood my answer about the monitor resolution and columns of DAMN menus, so I try to give you here a detail info.

The DAMN consists of three parts:
1) The first part is in the file DAMN/Support/damnControl.dat, which consists of two LUA entries which give the DAMN menu the functionality.
2) The second part is the file DAMN/Support/damnDesign.dat, which gives the DAMN its design, e.g. the size, the columns, the layout.
3) The third part are the DAMN menus which are in DAMN/Root/....dat and includes the menu icons of your created DAMN menus.

(In old original version from DAELEY the 1) and 2) were together in customMenu.dat, but I separate them to give you more flexibility.)

So, when you start the SSPTool and choose the DAMN tab, press on the button "DAMN Installer". This will bring up a dialog, where you can choose your personal options for your DAMN control and design. You can choose your preferred view (described in my prior post), the number of your columns (1 to 6), the width of the dialog/news ticker and ,if you choose news ticker view, the height. Below it will give you the dimension of the dialog/news ticker, so you can realize which screen resolution you need.
For example: 3 columns with 300 px (for normal text length in DAMN menus) will need 1014 pixel in width to show on the monitor. Good enough for the resolution of 1024 x 768. But you can also choose only 1 column with 350 pixel which is nearly the original size of old DAMN layout.
The maximum number is set default to 50, but for some reason or your personal use, you want to show more items in the DAMN menu. So you can set this number to your personal like. When you create new DAMN menus you will still have the default number of items, but you can change this in the DAMN options. But be sure to mention this, if you give your DAMN menus to others or they will only see 50 items (or more, if they change their number of items also).
The program then will create your personal DAMN configuration (damnControl, damnDesign) and save this in your DAMN/Support folder.

Your created DAMN menus are fully independent of what you choose in your installation (except the number of items, I mentioned before). And they will be saved in your DAMN/Root folder. You can distribute this folder to other persons without any problems.

So, you have all options to customize the DAMN layout as you want for your screen size and create DAMN menus for all of us.
I hope, I have explained the DAMN Installer in detail and you have realized with this new version more options that are given to you.

Regards, Stefan

P.S.: If you want to give a friend your DAMN layout, you only need to give him the file DAMN/Support/damnDesign.dat. But be sure your friend have the same or bigger screen resolution.

[tamorr]

   Thank you that explains quite a bit, and thanks for the column answer as I was only wondering.... And it is definatley made more flexible than the original which is nice to hear.

[hooha47]

I just installed and tested the new version, and saw that we can now create DAMN menus for mayor mode ploppables.  This is outstanding.  Thank you so much for all your work on this wonderful tool. 

[Rady]

Hi, I'm using the SSPtool /DAMN menus quite extensive by now, but sometimes I encounter a problem: when creating the menu using the SSPtool, I usually click the "hide items" checkbox in order to hide them from the normal menu. However, sometimes that doesn't work and the menue items are stille there.

Can you just tell me what I need to do to hide these items afterwards? Ther are some options in the "DAMN extras" part of the SSPtool, like

"LTEXT method --> hidden items folder"
"Convert old DAMN lots"

but since I dont know in detail what will happen whe using this options I refrain from using it.

So possibly you could give me some advise on that ...

Thanks!

[Stefan79]

Hi together,

It seems I should write a manual for my program to explain all the things of my program and discover some background. But I will completly redesign DAMN in the next version, so I will do this for next version. For now, I will explain the things here in the thread.

In the old DAMN tool till version 1.1. the technique to hide lots from the menu was to add a property "Conditional Building" with the value "true". This is normally used by Rewards which disappear from the menu and only appear, if a condition is true. But in the hide lots there are no LUA script which describe the condition and so the icon stay disappear. But for Rewards which should stay disappear this technique wouldn't be possible so a new technique needed.
Since version 1.2. the new technique was implemented, which removes the LotResourceKey property from the exemplar file. This will function with normal and Rewards, so it was the better method to hide lots from the menu. But if you want to reappear the lots in the menu, you will need to undone the LotResourceKey and so two options to hide from menu are possible:
- The default is, to create a duplicate of the exemplar file, remove the LotResourceKey and save this in a folder which will be loaded at last (zzz_DAMN Remove)
- The second option will remove the LotResourceKey from the original exemplar but will add a new entry LTEXT which stores the value of the LotResourceKey property, so it can be undone.
You can choose the method with LTEXT under DAMN Options - Step 4: Modify original lot, if hide.
There are advantages and disadvantages for each method, but modifying the original lot is only allowed for your personal use! So, if you want to share your hiding please use the default one.

To convert lots from the version 1.1. to 1.2. technique the Button "Convert old DAMN lots" can be used. This will scan your plugin folder and convert the lots. It will scan for LUA files and leave the conditional property if found or remove the conditional property and use the new hide technique.

So there are two options for the new hide technique it is possible to convert the lots with the LText method to the option which saves a duplicate in a separate folder. This allows easier reappear from menu by simply deleting the duplicate. To convert you can use the "LTEXT => hidden items" button.

Hope, this second "Tutorial" will give you a little overview of the hiding technique.

Regards,
Stefan

[Stefan79]

Hi, I'm using the SSPtool /DAMN menus quite extensive by now, but sometimes I encounter a problem: when creating the menu using the SSPtool, I usually click the "hide items" checkbox in order to hide them from the normal menu. However, sometimes that doesn't work and the menue items are stille there.

Can you just tell me what I need to do to hide these items afterwards? Ther are some options in the "DAMN extras" part of the SSPtool, like

"LTEXT method --> hidden items folder"
"Convert old DAMN lots"

but since I dont know in detail what will happen whe using this options I refrain from using it.

So possibly you could give me some advise on that ...

Thanks!

Hi Rady,

if you use the DAMN to hide icons and it will not function, let us check possible failures:
- Have you select "Hidden" for all selected items in Step 3? With the checkbox you only hide the actual item. If you want to do this for all items, use the MultiTool "Set hidden for all lots".
- What kind of hidden method do you use? The default one or the LTEXT method?
- For default, be sure the "hidden folder" will be loaded at last: SimCity will load from A-Z, so the folder should be like zzz_DAMN Remove.
- For LTEXT be sure, you have choosen the right file and will not be overriden with later loaded files.
- Other options are more difficult: Open the file with iLive Reader and check, if the LotResourceKey is removed. Or use the SSPTool-LotEditor to manually hide a lot in Step 2 - Hide item from menu.

Perhaps you can tell me the lots (and where to find them) and I will try to figure out, if there may be a problem.

Stefan

[slystone2]

Hello!

I am having the exact same problem as Rady. I cannot get any of the items I put in the DAMN menu to hide in the regular menu system.

-I used the Multitool to select "Hidden" for all items before proceeding to the next step. (the "Hidden" box was checked on all items before I proceeded)

-I used the default method (I do not know what the LTEXT mthod means, or what that is)

-the zzz_DAMN Remove folder is the last to load in my Plugins

None of the items have been hidden (I used the Multitool on all of them), so perhaps it is unlikely that the LotResourceKey has been removed?

Would love to find a solution, as this is a great tool and everything else about it seems to be working just fine. Thanks!

[hooha47]

I am having the same problem, none of my menu items are hiding.  I tried to load the dat files created in the zzz_DAMN Remove folder, and they appear to be empty.