Cam-l21 Custom Rom

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Recaredo Latreche

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Aug 5, 2024, 2:12:09 PM8/5/24

to reralbuyxi

XDADevelopers was founded by developers, for developers. It is now a valuable resource for people who want to make the most of their mobile devices, from customizing the look and feel to adding new functionality.

If you are asking about game mods that would conflict with CAM, then probably any mod that affects growth stages - such as SPAM and the Industrial Revolution Mod come to mind (although the IRM has a CAM 'fix' I believe).

If you are asking about custom content (lots) that would work with CAM, then I think most things would 'work' but not all will be able to take advantage of CAM's new growth stages. For lots to grow at the higher stages set by CAM, they would have had to be made with CAM in mind and set to grow at the newer stages. On SC4D's LEX, these are often indicated by being a 'CAMeLot' and would grow at the growth stages added by CAM.

Any growable lot made for the regular game will still be able to grow using CAM. However, you'll want to be careful with high density lots, specifically stages 7 and 8 for residential and commercial lots, and stage 3 for industrial lots. These lots might not match up with the CAM growth stages. They will still grow, but they might have a lot more jobs/residents than they're supposed to have for the CAM growth stages, and they could throw off the balance of the game.

So I would just create a folder with the same name as Cori's mod, and place the .dat file in that folder. If you just took that dat file and placed it as is at the root of your Plugins folder (not inside any other folder), it would install before CAM.

As @Cyclone Boom and @twalsh102's tips, To put NKO mod in a folder that comes alphabetically after the CAM folder. so I guess you're right to put NKO in a three ___ folder to make sure the loading order is correct, In regard of alphabetic sort, I found this website is helpful to me.

Or use SC4DataNote by @rivit and select Override when you open the app. There are green and red items on the list. Click on those and check either the "Overrides" or the "Overridden by" section. Now you know your order is wrong or not.

I feel like this might be getting a little too complicated? CAM gets installed in a folder labeled "a__CAM". You just need to create a new folder with the NKO mod and name the folder something that comes after "a__CAM" alphabetically. So long as the folder name starts with a letter of the alphabet that comes after the letter "a", you'll be fine.

I would recommend against putting the NKO mod into the "a__CAM" folder itself. It doesn't need to go in that folder, it just needs to load after CAM does. It will be easier to keep your plugins organized by putting the NKO mod into a different folder.

I would also strongly suggest reading the Prima Strategy Guide for SC4, which you can find here. The NKO mod can be really useful, but in this case, I think it's a bit of a band-aid solution to the problem. There are a bunch of possible reasons why you're getting jobless icons, but each of those reasons can be boiled down to something in your city being unbalanced or poorly configured. Patching this up with a mod might help in the short-term (and that's a big "might" -- there's a strong chance that something else is causing your jobless rate). However, if you want to grow healthy, well-functioning cities long-term, the Prima guide is your best bet.

@CaptCity could you eleborate on the IRM fix for CAM a bit more? I really can't imagine playing without the raised demands of CAM anymore and was very sad to learn that I cannot use IRM with it. But maybe this info is not correct?

EDIT: I just found this:

Keep in mind that using NKO does not magically fix a city. As mayor, it does still require proper balance between job availability and the Sims who live there. The key difference is if you set up a successful low wealth arrangement where Sims and jobs are nicely balanced and then add amenities like medical and schools, this is going to greatly increase demand for R$$, yet the the jobs present are not to their liking.

Yup. All CAM does at its core is add additional Growth Stages and differently balanced stats, this means content not modded with CAM in mind, simply won't grow as per the CAM changes. The modified version of IRM simply takes into account the additional Growth Stages and alters the stats to fit better with CAM.

But the same is really true for any R/C/I lot you might find, all such buildings should be ideally modded specifically for use with CAM. In fact an argument for modified Civic Buildings is also reasonable to make, since with CAM you may eventually need more capacity for those buildings to support larger populations. When it's just a few downloads, it's easy to CAMify them by using the dedicated function in PIM-X to modify the stats for you. Of course there is also a lot of ready-to-go CAMpatible lots, mostly on SC4D's LEX.

Outside of R/C/I stuff, the difficulty with working out what works with CAM and what doesn't, comes from knowing which things CAM modifies to begin with. So if a mod alters something that CAM also alters, you will have a conflict, i.e. only the Properties of the last such mod to load will be used. Sometimes this is desirable, you can just load other mods after CAM and they essentially inter-operate. But, some settings that such an override of CAM might use, may be incompatible with CAM in the sense that changes made as part of CAM get messed up by them. Without really understanding how to dig into files in Reader it's hard to be sure what may cause problems. But generally speaking if the changes another mod makes relate to anything CAM also does, it's probably best to avoid using it with CAM.

Do you like custom textures, but don't like all the work involved creating them?, take a look at the Texture Automation options here. Change the look and feel of your transit networks, with the minimum of effort, for example customised versions of my Sidewalk NAM (SWN) and Terrain Grass NAM (TGN) mods, and much more besides.

@rsc204 Thanks for your reply and explinations. Looking at the download numbers of CAM and IRM the download numbers of Industrial Revolution Mod - CAM Version seem far too low. I would assume that not many people know this actually exists since quite a few places say these two mods do not go together, since the creators of these mods were last online a long time ago maye a moderator could add that to the CAM and IRM download hints?

As far as what's compatible with CAM 2.1.0 and what's not, the best place to start is with the documentation. It has a list of what mods were incompatible with CAM at the time it was published. Of course this doesn't help with any mods that were released after that.

As @rsc204 stated, you need to know what CAM modifies. You will also need to know what specific mod you're worried about modifies. It also helps to understand the load order the game uses. To get specific, CAM modifies 100+ Simulation-related exemplars. If any mod you're interested in also modifies any of those exemplars, then there will be issues. CAM is by default installed in the a__CAM folder so that it will install after all Maxis content, but before almost all other .dat files (which is the format used by all Mods).

There is a simple way to determine if the Mod you're interested in modifies anything CAM modifies. You have to use @rivit's SC4 DataNode. With CAM installed in its default folder, and the Mod you're interested in installed in a folder that comes alphabetically after a__CAM, use DataNode to scan your environment. Once the scan is done, change the viewpoint to TGI View, then click on Simulation. This will show ALL Simulation-related exemplars and any overrides. So it will first show the Maxis version from the SimCity_1.dat file, then the the CAM version (if there is one). If you have any Mods that override CAM, they will be listed after the CAM version. By doing this, you don't need to know what any of the exemplars actually do (unless you're interested in learning some of the inner workings of the game), but you can quickly see if there is anything that overrides CAM.

On a side note, CAM also modifies select Maxis Lot and Building Exemplars (here's where the conflict of the original IRM comes in). @T Wrecks explanation in the original documentation for the incompatibility of IRM and CAM is actually incorrect. He stated that the Lots included in the CAM package have been given different IIDs. That is not the case, else they couldn't override the Maxis Lots. The incompatibility is because of how the IRM files were packaged, and Load Order. The IRM lots were packaged as individual .SC4Lot files, whereas the Lot and Building Exemplars in the CAM Mod are all packaged in a single .dat file. As a quick review of load order, the game actually goes through your Plugins folder twice. The first time, it loads all non-dat files in alphabetical order by Folder and File name. The second time it loads all .dat files in alphabetical order by Folder and file name.