Help Making Farms

kaos78414 · March 02, 2008, 04:28:12 PM

okay the only other question i have is how do i assign that field to my specific farm?

Andreas · March 02, 2008, 06:17:43 PM

The building exemplar files of the farms (the lot with the farm building) has a property called "Field Lots". It contains one or more instance IDs of the associated farm field lots.

kaos78414 · March 02, 2008, 07:30:57 PM

i changed the IID of the field lots to the one of my field and now the farm won't grow at all...sorry for asking so many questions im very new at this.

cogeo · March 03, 2008, 09:47:12 AM

Make sure the Field Lots property contains the instance ID of your lot and building farm-field.

This property is not a simple integer value, instead it's an array of values. It can contain a list of farm-field IDs, and the game will select amongst them randomly. If the list contains only one element, the rep count shown in the property list should be 1, not 0!

kaos78414 · March 03, 2008, 10:05:02 AM

do i put 0x before the instance id?

cogeo · March 03, 2008, 10:11:45 AM

No, just the Rep Count (4th column) in the properties list should be 1 instead of 0, and the list should contain one element. Just see my (or any other) lots, you can copy and paste this property (and of course delete the number of field references to 1 and change the ID to yours).

kaos78414 · March 03, 2008, 10:21:21 AM

again im sorry im so confused but before i test i wanna make sure i have this right:
When I open the exemplar for the farm's desc file i get this under field lots:

Name: Name Value: Data Type: Rep: Value:
Field Lots 0x29B55F73 Uint32 1 0xB4D4E843

The IID is correct (I double checked a bunch of times) and the rep reads 1 so I don't know why it wasn't growing. I had tested the farm with maxis' farm fields before and it grew (infrequently but it grew)... I have no idea whats going on. Maybe I should just do another test run and see if it just didn't grow by chance.

cogeo · March 03, 2008, 10:40:42 AM

It looks OK. Then check for duplicate lot files: open your Plugins folder, select View->Details and sort items by modification date. Go to the end of the list and check the last few plugins one by one, there may be duplicate/older/trash/temp/etc plugins there.

If everything is OK you can attach everything (lots, plugins etc) except models, if any, in this thread in order to be tested. There may be something wrong with modding the farm lot(s) or the farm-fields.

BarbyW · March 03, 2008, 10:52:56 AM

I started with one of the farm fields I made for the CAM farms but it isn't a CAM field

First of all in LE I selected my field:

I made some changes in LE, selected Save As and gave it a new name:

I opened the field file in Reader and changed the name:

I then opened the Sphynx CAM farm (the only appropriate one for this field) and found the property Field Lots in the Building Exemplar. I added the IID for the new field. reindexed, rebuilt Directory and Saved.

There is no problem using any BLS field as a base but the best ones are the set I made for CAM as they are not in a dat file. These have virtually the same properties as Maxis fields as they are all made from a template that GrampaAl made for me 4 years ago and that I have used ever since.

I hope this helps.

cogeo · March 03, 2008, 11:11:43 AM

Thanks for the tutorial Barby!

@kaos, just got an idea, first try growing your farm using Maxis or BLS farm-fields (or any farm-fields that are known to be working). This can help you identify the problem more easily.

kaos78414 · March 03, 2008, 01:00:29 PM

It worked! Omgzors! Cogeo, it worked! Good news! Now, onto working on the other farm field lots so it won't be so consistent, and I think I need to improve on the farms model itself. Anyone care to tell me how to make seasonal farm fields? =P

That might be worthy of its own tutorial eh?

RippleJet · March 03, 2008, 01:43:12 PM

Quote from: kaos78414 on March 03, 2008, 01:00:29 PM
Anyone care to tell me how to make seasonal farm fields? =P

That might be worthy of its own tutorial eh?

The props on the field need to be timed props, e.g. two separate props appearing half a year each.
Read more about it here: Timed props ...

kaos78414 · March 03, 2008, 02:17:53 PM

Thanks RippleJet, I'll check it out.

Diggis · March 06, 2008, 08:36:22 AM

Quote from: kaos78414 on March 03, 2008, 01:00:29 PM
It worked! Omgzors! Cogeo, it worked! Good news! Now, onto working on the other farm field lots so it won't be so consistent, and I think I need to improve on the farms model itself. Anyone care to tell me how to make seasonal farm fields? =P

That might be worthy of its own tutorial eh?

This is what makes this site great. Even after so many years people are still learning new things and getting excited about seeing their work in the game..

Go for it Kaos.

kaos78414 · March 06, 2008, 03:25:25 PM

Haha well I was so excited in fact, (and I have never done 3d modeling before now) that I bought 3ds max today, and have just installed BAT4Max and can't wait to get started trying it out. Although the process of exporting an sc4 model file with bat4max seems rather tedious... I'm still pretty excited.