PIMX Official support thread

[tamorr]

  My patience has paid off in waiting for this... I have read the guide and only have a dumb question that I really just want to confirm since it didn't mention anything of or about them in the huge readme. You can make a MEGA RCI growable lot correct...? Mainly reason I ask is for Industrial growables, and have only had hints no confirmation that is does. What I mean is making a growable lot bigger than 6x6...?

And great job to all of those that were involved in the developement of this nifty program. I did have a couple other question but were answered from the above post by others....

[RippleJet]

You can make a MEGA RCI growable lot correct...? Mainly reason I ask is for Industrial growables, and have only had hints no confirmation that is does. What I mean is making a growable lot bigger than 6x6...?

Yes, you can make growable mega lots of virtually any size, up to 31×31 tiles.

[tamorr]

That's good to know.... Now that I remembered the last question I had.... Also not clarified in the readme. When making a growable, having the building run through the algorythmn for capacity and stage.... What I am wanting to know is on the LE/Modding side. Of  course the building would have the primary information for that stuff, but I was thinking on props that would have a possibility to adding to those values.... Hence modding the building to be such. I would have too use reader for this correct, as it would be considered advanced modding?

   That is using the building on the same Lot with props of that building also on the lot making it a multiple of that building per say, visually. I would have to referance value in this tool and consider it advanced modding so it must be done in reader right?

   This is the only other question I had even if it is trying to read into what isn't in the readme.

[RippleJet]

Let me use SimGoober's Hanson Hosiery Mills as an example here.
The picture below shows the buildling and the yellow "LOD box":



It's an old picture is taken in Reader, that's why it's deformed a bit... and the LOD box was added by me afterwards...

Whenever a building exemplar is created in SC4 PIM, the first thing I recommend doing is right-clicking among the properties and select "Recompute properties as...".
This allows you to enter the building's filling degree, which is the ratio that the building fills the box outlined in yellow in the picture above.
By default, the filling degree is 0.50 (50%), but that has to be individually set for every building exemplar created.

To estimate the filling degree for this, let's look at the filling degrees separately for the three coordinate axes.

• The width of the building fills the box completely, giving it a filling of 1.00.
• The depth of the building fills the box to some 80-85% plus the small building in front, so let's say 0.85.
• The height of the building also fills the box to some 80%, i.e.. 0.80.

The total filling degree would thus be 1.00 × 0.85 × 0.80 = 0.68.

In this case however, SimGoober wanted the basement to be taken into account as well.
Thus, we increased the filling degree vertically from 0.80 to 1.00,
giving us a filling degree of 1.00 × 0.85 × 1.00 = 0.85, or 85%:



All properties are recomputed based on this new filling degree.

So far this applies to all kinds of RCI buildings.
However, for industries and other kinds of megalots we also have to consider the size of the lot and the type of props on it.
Not all jobs are situated inside the main building, there may be auxiliary buildings on the lot in the form of props.

The picture below is the lot made by jestarr for the Hanson Hosiery Mills:



On this particular lot people work in both those sheds and also as drivers/loaders out in the yard where the trucks are.
Since all jobs have to be given in the building exemplar, the filling degree of the building should be increased,
to include all those props that are indicated with the yellow arrows above.

In this particular case, the filling degree could be increased to somewhere between 0.90 and 1.10.
For megalots (with lots of buildings as props) a filling degree well above 1.00 (100%) may have to be used.

As an example... say you have a megalot with two identical buildings, one as a building and the other as a prop,
and each having an individual filling degree of 0.7. That would give the total building a filling degree of 1.4.
Note however, that you cannot use the same building exemplar on a lot where it would be standing alone!

If you've got several buildings of diffrerent sizes on a megalot, it may be difficult to estimate the total filling degree.
In such a case you can make temporary building exemplars of each separate structure with their own filling degree.
Be sure you give them unique, temporary names, so that you can identify which desc files to delete from your plugins folder afterwards.

When all such temporary buildings have been created, sum the occupancy of them all to see what the total occupancy should be.
Then go back to your original building and increase the filling degree till you get roughly that occupancy.


EDIT:
Read also Barby's recent tutorial, SC4PIM How to make a neighbourhood or mega lot.

[FrankU]

Maybe this post is considered a waste of precious bandwidth, but I want to congratulate everybody on this forum with the availability of this new tool and I want to thank Wou and his team from the deepest of my heart for the enormous feat that has been completed.

Now I will take my time to read the ReadMe and then I will actually use the tool.
And if I have a real bright question I will ask it here.

Thanks people!

[Sam Johnson]

First of all I have to say thank you to everybody who worked on this great tool. It makes everything much easier 

But while I was modding some props everytime when I did a right click I only got this


Does anybody have an idea how to fix this?

Thanks in advance

[BarbyW]

The Exemplar name seems to consist of blocks so I would suggest that is the problem. Is it a Japanese prop? I would suggest changing the exemplar name before trying to do anything else.

[Sam Johnson]

ehm, No I just pixelized the name in Photoshop, because I wanted to hide the projekt, as I showed the picture in another forum 
Here's everything without photoshopping

[wouanagaine]

It seems sometihng is missing in the language file
Can you check with the english one ?
Or you can add the following to the Deutsch.lang:

Code Select Expand


popupPropertyMenuItem36 = "Open lot(s) using this prop/family"


[Andreas]

Yeah, apparently, this line is missing in the German language file; I must have missed that somehow.

Text in German:

Code Select Expand

popupPropertyMenuItem36 = "Lot(s) öffnen, die diese Prop-/Gebäudefamilie nutzen"

[Sam Johnson]

Thank you, now everything works 

[pzl]

Thanks for this tool... but I'm having errors such as :

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "SC4OpenGL.pyo", line 80, in OnPaint
  File "SC4LotPreview.pyo", line 1464, in OnDraw
  File "SC4LotPreview.pyo", line 1867, in Draw2D
OpenGL.GL.GLerror: (1281, '')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "wx\_misc.pyo", line 1342, in Notify
  File "wx\_core.pyo", line 14720, in Notify
  File "SC4LotPreview.pyo", line 1464, in OnDraw
  File "SC4LotPreview.pyo", line 1867, in Draw2D
OpenGL.GL.GLerror: (1281, '')

popping up when I try to use the lot editor .... can't seem to find anything on this in the user doc . Help please ?

[wouanagaine]

Can you tell me what is your Graphic Card ? and on what OS please ?


Edit : After googling for that opengl error I found that:

The dreaded OpenGL 1281 error is thrown when your computer tries to load or draw a texture that is bigger than what your graphics card can handle.

As I'm using at max 512x512 textures ( or more exactly, if a Batter made a BAT with HD Textures ),  it looks like your graphic card or its driver are too old
In that case, try to update your drivers

[pzl]

*   Accelerator Information   *

Graphics Accelerator in Use:      Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family

I'm running this on a HP Pavilion dv6000 under Vista.

[wouanagaine]

Bah, intel GPU are the worst ( from coder point of view )

It is weird as it is reported to be allowed to handle up to 2048x2048 texture
Can you check if you have the latest drivers from here http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/intel945gm/ ?

[Travis]

Indeed...I've been having the exact same problem, as I have an intel GPU as well. (965 express chipset family). I will try updating the drivers and check back.

[RippleJet]

Thanks to caspervg an error has been found in the formula for calculating the Library Bulldoze Cost.
This is fixed in the recently uploaded SC4PIM New Properties XML Update.

That file will be updated and reuploaded whenever another error is found.
Thus, please make sure you've always got the latest updated new_properties.xml file!

[pzl]

Bah, intel GPU are the worst ( from coder point of view )

It is weird as it is reported to be allowed to handle up to 2048x2048 texture
Can you check if you have the latest drivers from here http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/intel945gm/ ?

Installed latest drivers... still getting :


Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "SC4LotPreview.pyo", line 2515, in OnMouseMotion
  File "SC4LotPreview.pyo", line 1464, in OnDraw
  File "SC4LotPreview.pyo", line 1711, in Draw2D
  File "SC4LotPreview.pyo", line 1486, in DrawQuad
OpenGL.GL.GLerror: (1283, '')


a great number of times.....

[wouanagaine]

Not the same error number indeed

I'll try to work on that

[pzl]

Thanks ! 

No rush though.... just let me know if you need the entire error listing.

Cheers.