Information from this thread is now on the wiki ; please post all further discussion in this thread.

Please see this tutorial for details about enabling world type flagging within the CAW tool.

Note: This thread is largely discussion and discovery about the code needed to flag a world as a city; for ease of use I have amended this initial post to summarise the information found so far. Thank you to all who contribute to this thread!

The resource responsible for determining the characteristics of a world is UNKN 0x296A6258.

Here is a comparison of how this resource appears in each of the the EA Worlds:



The relevant byte for determining the world type is byte 06, which defaults to 00 (suburb) but could also be 02 (City) or 01 (Vacation world).



It is byte 06 that you will need to change if you wish to flag your world as a city- you will need to import UNKN 0x296A6258 and set it to 01 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00. If you wish to try this yourself you can obtain a copy of UNKN 0x296A6258 from any of the EA worlds except Sunset/ Riverview, and modify it yourself. Alternatively, I have made a copy of this resource set to 01 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00, download it HERE. .
Note: Twallan has made a mod to enable the traffic manager in non city worlds, you can get it HERE, if you would rather not mod your world. However, Sims MX points out that there may be more to a city than just the traffic manager, so it may be worth while modding your world!

The other bytes in the resource appear to identify specifics about the world, and so will identify a specific world. If you import UNKN 0x296A6258 from one of the EA worlds into a custom world it will have the side effect of obliterating the world description, possibly due to the EA worlds having a referenced description.

If you copy the information in bytes 02, 03, 04 and 05 from the vacation worlds to a custom world, it has the effect of flagging that world as a foreign locale, and hence changing the name database, clothing, transport, music, nationality etc., of the world.



You cannot mix and match- you either have an Egyptian world, or a Chinese world, or a French world- you can't have a combination (as a nonstandard combination breaks the resource).

The locales are set by the following in UNKN 0x296A6258:


Please note that the following adverse effects have been noted:


So, it is possible to flag your world as a chinese, French or Egyptian suburb, and of course you could also have a chinese, French, or Egyptian City too. However, it is not possible to have a City vacation destination, since byte 06 has to be set to EITHER 02 (City) or 01 (vacation), and cannot be both.

Further information:
https://sites.google.com/site/hugelunatic/ts3-misc

This information was discovered by the many contributors to this thread, and by Tamlo31here:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...ighlight=france
Thank you to everyone, and please continue to add information, research and discuss!

Thanks alot! I've tried doing this myself, but with no luck. Glad you managed to find it. I noticed the neighborhood description was dropped, too. But, save files of the older version of the neighborhood do register as a Late Night town after the world file is changed.

Great work simsample, thanks. Looking forward to seeing how this develops, it would be great to apply the LN features to more custom worlds.

thanks a lot!that was fundamental....traffic will be much needed for NY World

Well, I'm not sure whether that flag is the only thing marking a world as a city. As mentioned, I haven't had any luck making the food trucks work in Sunset or a custom world, it seems that I must be missing some kind of spawner or perhaps another flag/ resource for that. Shame, as the food trucks were what I was trying to fix!

Also, as Jasumi said, the WDDT string doesn't display correctly in a custom world with this resource added. You can see that on my first image above- the 'Jericho' world has a descripton which doesn't display, although it is there in the WDDT:


The WDDT for Sunset does display correctly though, even if I add the 'city' resource. The WDDT however takes a different form to that of a custom world, referencing something in the game files, or perhaps elsewhere in the World file, instead:


Bridgeport is similar to Sunset, having a reference instead of a text string:


All I know at this time is that the resource I isolated adds city traffic (those fake taxis with no driver), adds the city icon in the world selection screen (as well as the 'this is a late night city' tooltip) and breaks a custom world WDDT. More research is needed, as I'm not sure what else is different in a city to a suburb!

So, if any of you would like to add this file to Sunset, Twinbrook or a custom world and see what happens, or if you can get food trucks to work, please do! I could use some help!

(Food truck and parking space available here. )

great discovery!

well after adding the resource to my already installed custom world, first 5 few minutes of game play I see this baby rolling the the street.







the same truck I placed at the bridgeport sports bar parking lot a few days ago. I never noticed it driving around before, but I cant say for sure it had anything to do with the resource being added

(sorry for the big pictures)

I too have seen the food truck driving around on one occasion, but I've never seen one parked :/

Where do we put the file?

x.Tone.Def- if I place foodtruck parking spaces with a foodtruck on them, the trucks will drive off eventually, but not come back. Are the trucks driving around and then re-parking in your game? Perhaps I didn't wait long enough!

Yuffi3- you need to import the resource into the .world file using S3Pe. You can import either to your CAW raw world file, or into a packed world file (for example, in your Installed Worlds folder). Be sure to backup any files before you alter them- if you were to do as I did and edit Sunset or Twinbrook, I can guarantee that the patch installer will complain next time, so you'll need to keep an unedited backup.

Thank you for reply simsample.

I have S3PE installed but have not got round to using it yet so i am compleatly new to S3Pe.

I have started a city world i am building with CAW and its coming along realy well, so i would realy love to set this world to a city.

Can you please explain how to do this with S3PE to set the world in to my CAW world or point me to a tutorial, i realy would appreciate the help.

well one thing I noticed after playing a little while last night, a parked truck will eventually drive off then show up on an empty truck shop parking space I placed on another lot like in actual Bridgeport. I'll definitely check if it comes back next time I'm in game

It's ok i worked it out how to do it (Yay for me ).

I instaled the world and tested it out and the taxis are moving around the streets.

i noticed the same as X. Tone that the food truck moved off from a parking bay on a lot and drove off up the street, then it got to a junction and disapeared, but i only have the one lot with a food truck parking bay.

Thanks a lot for sharing your info and the file, you have made my day.

a couple of questions: how do you get the pidgeonsto show up on the lots i couldent see them in caw or buydebug.
Also i built my own apartmen building from scratch, not using a higrise shell, i put the call box and mall box and made several empty room using the room markers but no other sims moved in to the building, any idea on this?

x.Tone.Def- thanks for the info, I tried it again in my 'city' Sunset Valley and it works! What I had to do was to place more food truck parking spaces- I placed one on most of the community lots (around 15 in all I guess) and then after a few hours I had trucks parking. I kept seeing them driving around but it took a long time for one to arrive at the two spaces I was watching, but when I paused the game and checked I found several other places where they were parked too. So, place lots of food truck parking spaces with food trucks on them, and it will soon work!

Yuffi3- well done for figuring that out! Perhaps this little bit of data is all that's needed for a city, after all. For your apartment question- leave it for a few days, I've heard people say that it can take a while for neighbours to move in to an apartment.
For the pigeon question- you can easily place pigeons on a lot, they are effects from the 'fog generator' as outlined here:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=424256
If you want pigeons outside of a lot in the actual world file, then that's a little more complicated- I couldn't find them in the game data files (although I did find the Twinbrook swamp mist effect), so I had to import them from Bridgeport into my world. I obtained the lighthouse beam effect the same way- that's easy to get on a lot but I wanted it in the world, dammit! It involves a bit of hex editing and a bit of searching, but it is possible- you just have to add a layer from another world to your own.

Hey simsample thanks a lot for your help buddy.

i can now carry on with my city world and have it work as a proper city world with all functions.
with a hell of a lot of searching, i found out how to get custom built apartments working, you have to set the doors to npc doors so npc's can move in.

thanks for your pigeon link

sorry but maybe i'm doing something wrong...i download your source file, i open my .world and choose "import"...then i import your file, say ok to the window that pops up then save and exit.
but the world is still a suburb....help please

manustyle90, is this a packed world one you are using in CAW? As you can see from my screenshots, I didn't compress the resource when I imported it, so try importing with the 'compressed' box unticked. Also be sure to delete your caches (including world caches) in case something there is affecting it. If you are amending the EA worlds (Sunset or Twinbrook) you need to remove the original before placing your copy.

Ok, thanks to everyone for the info.
On my custom hood I've got the city flag with taxis and food trucks zooming around, and slowing down at truck spots, but not parking back in them. I have placed 6 truck stops, all with trucks (Sim2Kid405_carTruckFood) and no joy, I've fast forwarded like 4 days but nothing.
I'll keep testing though.

Very cool!! Thank you. What changes do you see in the world when you change this? I have a custom world that is a small town and I wouldn't mind having the food truck and maybe a bit more traffic in town. But I don't want subways and all that. Would it still be worth making this change even if the world is not a big city? Even small towns have more foot traffic than I am currently seeing in my world.

Thanks for this, Simsample!

Tizerist- I had to place around 15 before I could get it to work, and even then I had to wait for around 8 sim hours before the trucks began parking. So try placing more! The food truck you are using states that it is a clone, so therefore the game may see it as a different object. Try using my food truck and parking space instead- download here - as they are just a modified OBJD and not a clone.

rian90, I think subways will function in any world- it's not dependent on the world being a city. As far as I can tell, changing the world to a city causes 'fake traffic' (i.e, the taxis with no-one in them) and allows food trucks to function correctly. There are a whole bunch of xmls to do with how the subways are routed, so it's possible also that there are differences in the way sims choose to travel in a city. Not sure if there is any impact regarding opportunities, lot types or population though. So this modification would definitely give you the impression that your world was busier. Bear in mind though that this is still experimental, so backup your files before you change them.

Still nothing.
I replaced my files with yours and started all over, placed 16 of both objects, removed all my hacks once I found out one of them moved your truckstop from buydebug to vehicle misc, and camped a camera next to a 'hotspot' for 4 days. But they don't appear on the slot. They pull over and pull away often enough, but not on the lots.

I'll keep my savegame this way in the meantime anyhow.

Do you have the 'fake' taxis appearing as they do in Bridgeport, Tizerist? I just tested this again in another of my custom worlds which is large sized, and it worked fine. I placed 16 parking spaces with trucks and then watched in a place where there were two truck parking spaces (both community lots, zoned to visitors allowed). In three sim days one of the spaces got visited seven times (I noticed that it would stay longer if there were sims on the lot), but the second space did not get a truck visit at all. I wondered if this was due to the fact that the second lot had a rabbithole (spa) on it, but of course it could just be random. So perhaps try on different lots, with different zoning?

Haha, it works now.
Awesomemod cleans the town of the food trucks as part of its housekeeping it seems. I started again and the first few have appeared.
I haven't noticed any patterns yet, and the process needs to be simplified somewhat but it works. Nice one.

Edit : so far Hangout, Visitors allowed and big park are working . And now gym.

Ahh, glad it's working now! So- if we have a mod that cleans up these vehicles, it looks like we need to manually replace them as they don't respawn?

Hi all,

Thank you all VERY MUCH for this GREAT JOB!... I was really waiting for something like this about editing a city game in CAW...

But I've questions to simsample or anybody who masters this subject. On your first screenshot, it's easy to see that the ressouce you've edited in SPE is a 0x296A6258.
I've tried to locate this resource in *.world whithout succes...

So my followings 2 questions:

1 - Where can I find this resource ? Is it in a EA made world like SV or RiverView or else or is it to find in a self custom World ?
2 - the resource S3_296A6258_00000000_0000000000000001%%+UNKN.bnry you give us to download is it to add to a clone of SV (for example) I should like to modify ?

Is it some important information I missed in your post ?

Thanks a lot for answers.

zano972- sorry to not make myself clearer! The resource 0x296A6258 was extracted from Bridgeport World, which as you know is the first EA world we have which is marked 'city'. The others, Twinbrook, Sunset and Riverview, all show as Suburbs, which seems to be the default setting for any neighbourhood. It is only by adding 0x296A6258 that the world becomes flagged as a city.

So if you want to find this resource for yourself, look in Bridgeport World file which is located in Electronic Arts\ The Sims 3 Late night\ Game Data\ Shared\ NonPackaged\ Worlds.

To flag a world as a city, import 0x296A6258 into the world file. You can either do this to a completed, packed world (for example, one from your Installed Worlds folder) or you can add it to a World file you are working on in Create-a-world.

I tried it on a custom worlds I have made, and I also made Sunset Valley into a city. If you do this please remember to backup your files, because the game checks your files each time a patch is installed. Also, we don't fully know the implications of making a world into a city, so it's best not to share any cities yet. If you can test your cities and let us know if there are any problems, it will be very helpful!

Is there any chance of overcoming the issue with the dropped city description? The way EA have integrated this feature so poorly into the game makes me worried that this will become a regular issue for CAW users. Will weather, for example, be exclusive to a particular town just as "citydom" appears to be for Bridgeport?

An another BIG THANK YOU simsample for these explications. Now i really understand what you mean.

have a nice day.

Not sure what you mean. Awesome clears derelict cars from the hood to save on bloat and bugs, but it is accidentally also wiping out the food trucks in a non-bridgeport city.
Another way AM appears not to understand the modification is apparent when you go to neighbourhhod view. It flags all taxis as derelict, resulting in 50 - 60 ugly extra markers on your map.
This will presumably be fixed when Pescado (and Twallan?) get wind of the problem.

we have the food trucks and parking spaces unlocked over on pretty sims. Bill did it a couple of days ago, only problem is that the food truck stays there all the time, that's not a problem for me and likely not a big problem to anyone who wants them.

How do we import this resource into a world? I mean I can't find a way to import anything in CAW. I'd like to give this a try

kiwi_tea- I've been trying to fix this but with no luck yet. Sunset Valley will keep the correct world description when changed to a city, but custom worlds will not. The difference between custom worlds and Sunset/ Twinbrook/ Bridgeport is that custom worlds use a text string in the WDDT:

Whereas Bridgeport, Twinbrook and Sunset reference the game data files:


The differences in 0x296A6258 are as follows-
Suburb:

City:


So far I can't figure out what it is that this change does that would affect the WDDT. If you have any ideas or information, it would be much appreciated! For the weather bit, if you mean the 'weather' in Bridgeport then that is just as with Twinbrook and created with ini files in the world file.

tizerist- I think Twallan is aware of this, and is (or perhaps has?) dealing with it in Overwatch. What I was meaning was, if the trucks are deleted by a mod, will they respawn? The answer seems to be yes, although you need several truck spaces before this occurs, and I can only make it happen in a city.

fluttereyes- the one you are referring to on PrettySims is a clone of the food truck and parking space, which means that the game treats it as a new object. If Bill's intention was to just 'unlock' the food truck then he/she has done it wrong- to do that all that should have been done is to extract the OBJD and change that to flag it to appear in the catalog. Bill's truck and parking space will behave differently to the in-game food truck, as it is not the same object- it may also not be future proof, as any changes made to the food trucks in future patches will not be present in Bill's trucks.

For importing this resource into a world, I explain how (using S3Pe) in my post above- just import it to a world file. Please don't share changed worlds yet though- we don't know if they are 'safe' yet- we know there is a problem with the world description, so there may be other problems we haven't discovered yet. It would be good if you could try it out and let us know of any glitches you find, though.

I was more concerned about future implementation of seasons, snow etc. It just baffles me that they would make making cities so much less accessible, and an aspect of the very world file itself. It seems odd to take these features, which were largely in the hands of players in TS2, and put them firmly in the hands of the more technically-minded.

I'm hoping they will build it in to a future release of CAW, but don't hold your breath!

I don't suppose this is any different to a vacation hood in WA then. They won't want us to be able to build them as then they couldn't sell worlds to us, like the Barnacle Bay one. I hope you guys crack this, good luck.

Something I just noticed that had flew right under my radar because of windows lack of a 'sort by folder size' filter or to display folder sizes in windows.
My save game has shot up by 130 mb since doing this trick!! I happened to randomly check the folder size and it was 370 mb!
Still, fine by me. As long as it is playing smoothly.
Anyone else had that??

That's most likely due to the traffic in a city- also, perhaps more townies generated. That does sound like a lot though- I'll check it out.

Would this flag effect the ambient sounds played at all? I've only just booted up LN for the first time and have noticed that there seem to be a lot less bird sounds in Bridgeport. Or I suppose it could just be that there is extra traffic sound.
I'm going to give this resource in my CAW world a go sometime soon.

ETA: I CANNOT get the food truck parking space to show up in my game no matter what. Do I need the city resource added first? The truck shows up fine in the debug catalogue but not the space for it.

Menaceman44- not sure whether this gives differing ambient sounds, but there is definitely a lot more noise from traffic (the 'fake' taxis). Perhaps you could listen out for that when you test, and let us know?

Regarding the food truck space- it should show up in buydebug> Misc, in catalog the thumbnail looks like a regular parking space. Are you using the ones I enabled or someone else's? You don't need the city resource for them to show up.

I was using yours. I'll give them another go and see if I can find them.

ETA: I found the food truck space. I had been overlooking it as I expected it to look like it does in game, not like the firetruck parking space.
I'm yet to test my world in the game properly as either a city or suburb.

Menaceman44- don't forget to backup before you do test this- I haven't had a chance to look into the WDDT problem, and also there may be other glitches which I haven't discovered yet. So keep a safe copy of your world!

Hi

Just tested it in Simsville and it worked! I used this person's version of the food truck and parking space : http://nene.modthesims.info/download.php?t=424758

It worked with trucks moving about the city and parking!



Cheers

Simbil

Will play more to test.

The traffic seems to work fine and game performace was fine but I did come accross a major glitch. It seemed to interfere with school and telling me that it was not in session and no way to get to it even though earlier it said one hour to go. Not sure if it also affects jobs.

I just tried, made a copy of a game I've been playing. When I saved the modified it went from 161mb to 240mb. I did not notice any performace hits yet.

Thanks for the info, Yeabil- have you had any luck with the school yet? Try deleting and replacing the lot.

Thanks for the info!

Guys would you mind telling me EXACTLY and CLEARLY how can I turn my custom world into a city? If you can add pictures would be great :p

First you will need to download the resource from the first post on the first page.
Then, as I understand it, you need to open your .world file with S3PE. When you have done that, right click and choose 'import from file'. Then select the file you downloaded from the first post.
Save your file that now has the new resource in it and that should be your world changed to a city.
I hope I got that all right.

Got it ... at first I opened the downoaded file then I imported it into the world file without opening it XD

Just wanted to you that AM has been updated and doesn't wipe out the food trucks anymore.

Stupid question: would injecting the needed city resource/tag into the food truck itself or in the parking space itself would work? I guess the game would implode but hell you never know with EA...

It works... but when I tested on my new world, it was empity... and when I placed one building, no car were around the world... should I wait to populate my city to see cars??

Works like a charm. I put it in a custom world and instantly there were taxis around and food trucks.

Thanks Menaceman, the only bit you missed out was FIRST backup YOUR FILES!


Thanks for the information, MiniMimi! Also, thanks for volunteering to test out your idea. I'd like to know if that would work, too! Don't forget to FIRST backup YOUR FILES though!

LS_Bari, I noticed the fake taxis right away in my unpopulated world.