Quest To Make A SimNation

[megasuperfly 0]

lets follow the idea of sim(states) to its logical conclusion

1. large regions of more than (144) 12X12 large cities
OR
2. a modification of the current simcity 4 region system

#1 is only usefull to people with powerfull computers
#2 hard to accomplish but i have faifth in our modding community
a. cosmetic changes like a (state) view or hud reworking
b. programming changes to accomplish a (state) view and (state) level editing

if we are going to be mucking around inside the internals of the game i suggest a new region editing menu to design a region before naming it

als new folders will be needed and new designations for states regions and cities


to sum it up you would open up a menu create a new state (named) with several small 4x4, medium 8x8, and large 12x12 regionsthen you would select a region and edit its landscape/ name. you would then select an individual ciy to edit

[Screwballl 196]

for the dimensions, try a 10250x10250 pixels greyscale image and a 160x160 config.bmp, and expect it to take around 24-48 hours for rendering of this size region with a regular 2.5 GHz machine

[TheKnifeThrower 0]

To create a region as big as a country is probably impossible because:

1 We would need a supercomputer (these are expensive and hard to steal from someone)
2 There are probably limitations in the programming of sc4
3 The most powerful computers will NOT run a microsoft operating system (too many processors)
4 Do I need to say anything else

However with todays hardawre it may be possible using something called distributed processing power where people download a small program to utilise their processing power. A central server would store the maps (hard disk space wouldn't be a problem as I've heard of computers with 10 360GB drives). But to do this we would need to create a brand new sim city game.

[MothMaiden 1]

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On 9/16/2003 1:52:32 PM TheKnifeThrower wrote: To create a region as big as a country is probably impossible because:

1 We would need a supercomputer (these are expensive and hard to steal from someone)

2 There are probably limitations in the programming of sc4

3 The most powerful computers will NOT run a microsoft operating system (too many processors)

4 Do I need to say anything else

However with todays hardawre it may be possible using something called distributed processing power where people download a small program to utilise their processing power. A central server would store the maps (hard disk space wouldn't be a problem as I've heard of computers with 10 360GB drives). But to do this we would need to create a brand new sim city game.----------------

1 You are probably posting from a super computer. Your average Pentium PC or G4 Mac is at least as speedy as the average Cray back in the day, and takes up a whole lot less space.

2 The only limitation I know is that your nation has to be small enough to fit in a region. The USA won't cut it, but there are lots of tiny nations that would.

3 True. Heck, I don't even run a Microsoft operating system on my G4 iMac, and it runs SimCity just fine. A nice dual 2 Ghz G5 would probably give you loads of power for running SimCity.

4 Well, you haven't covered why you can't have a SimNation the size of a city park (Vatican City) yet. I can't wait to hear it.

Your distributed computing idea sounds good, and would make it possible to do continental sized countries. But countries, like cities, come in all shapes and sizes, all the way down to a city park, so you can find one that your computer could handle.

Here is an idea: Sao Tome and Principe. It is a tiny African island country consisting of two main islands. The biggest city, Sao Tome, has just 35,000 people. The Lonely Planet page on it is here. Don't forget to put that ancient volcano in while you are in God mode.

[yamaneko 2]

The Northwest Ordinance (USA), passed in the 18th century, divided the Northwest Territories (WI, MI, OH, IL, IN) into 6x6 mile townships, and each square was split into 16 40-acre parcels. As a result, there exist many county maps conveniently gridded into squares one-half mile on the side. A large SimCity city map is a bit over 2.5 miles on a side, which holds five such boxes. From there, terraforming is relatively easy. It helps that many county road departments were not that creative and came up with names like County Road 425N (4.25 miles north of Division).

Unfortunately, my county requires 100-110 boxes, which is approaching the limit of what my computer can handle. Under disk space, at 2 MB per square, it would take up 210 Mb. That's about 20GB for a state and perhaps 2 TB for the US (my state's not a large one.)

Canada from Quebec's Eastern Townships to the Rockies is largely gridded in a similar manner, but in Ontario's agricultural regions the street grids are largely aligned with county limits and are not always perpendicular. (And all bets are off over the Canadian Shield.)

[Shockey 0]

Well, I just got this really fanfukintastic idea, In 2010, Think, You could beable make your own city, Then play in it 3rd person like "Grand theft sim auto" That would be the sweetest game.

[Vatt3 8]

Actually I think that it wasn't really ever possible to fit a whole country in one region, but rather a bunch of regions which, when put together formed the country. If you get what I'm saying.

[Dippit 0]

yeah, you could make a bunch of regions say five or six or even more, and try to get the terrain to match at the edge of those regions, and then one day, when your computer can hack it, create a region that encompasses all the regions that you have created, and import each city from each of those regions into the new super region that you hve created, but by then, we will have probably moved on to sim city 5, or 6 or 7!

[simmax 0]

Anyway, what is the point in creating HUGE regions? It would take years to fill them up.

[yoseph 0]

Yeh! That's true, unless you were terraforming the whole region! Then it would take you maaaaaaaany more years than expected!!!

[flamesrock 6]

I agree with Vatt. Split the Huge region up into smaller, manageable pieces (something like the size of the current CRDP). Each piece would be governed by a smaller authority say, a governor, and they would coordinate with the president of the region (maybe an elected governor.)Simple concept.

The only problem with this is that it would take massive amounts of effort and coordination to be successful. To maintain it, we'd need specially written programs and schedules. That sort of thing.

Keeping in mind that projects like the CRD or SCC regions need more interest and support before something 20-50x its size Can ever become realistic. Instead of jumping the gun, it might be a better idea to *plan*, get up a streamlined and self-sustaining system that works, and then sign people up. I can't see this working unless you guys plan the snot out of it and, by that I mean 2-3 months at the least. Not to be a pessimist.

Also, start out small. If theres one thing that I learned from SCR its thats you need a core dedicated group of members to run it. People that dont loose interest. And then a nice solid foundation of mayors that don't suddenly go MIA. I know its a cliche, but you're only as good as your weakest link. To keep people from bailing, I'll give one last piece of advice: Expand the scope of the game and make it more interesting. Add something like an economy, olympics or something like that.

Anyways, good luck.

[burropeludo 0]

Simprovince
Hawaii?

[Splintercell 1]

Why not just make up nations like I have.

or make Tropico.

[Djohaal 121]

Tropico would be a large city, look at the size of it https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/images/smilies/22.gif>

[steveg 0]

An update:

fredval has taken on the idea - and has begun creating the country of France. It is disturbingly impressive. He has full region views, and the city of Paris is barely noticeable.

Check out his City Journal:
Rebuilding France with SimCity 4 - fredval

[godsend 1]

ForkBoy site had a L.A region forget how big it was but it was big and took forever to load. It took a while to render also.

The region was unplayable cause of lag times. Started the game 10 mins later the Maxis logo would come up then it took like 5 to 10 mins more for the region itself to apear. It looked kewl.

http://www.rebel13.com/SimCity/Home.html

I think it the one by Rebel 13 3/19 not sure. It may have been removed cause he even admited his machine couldn't handle it.

[godsend 1]

I found it. It will bring your pc to a crawl. I have an AthlonXP 2400+ 2.0ghz with 512mb of pc2700

Here the information

Region: Los Angeles
Config.bmp: 24kb

all Mid size city

http://www.rebel13.com/SimCity/Home.html

Creator the7trumpets

7/17 Los Angeles

Download that and it takes forever to load the region. This should be a test even on the most powerful machines. Not sure how big it is but I use Landscaper to make a 4097x4097 config file and it was only 12kb and this is 23kb.

[sabzeh 0]

How about the netherlands, lol.
Dense population, small, lots of water

would be cool if possible

[MrVegetable 2]

Impossible! I don't know about the USA cause I live in Britain but with England it's a no no. Places on the south coast are usually small and crammed together and would need more than one city on a small map even and this is unrealistic as there would need to be an unreal or complicated name.

 

 

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On 8/2/2003 3:25:24 AM Dukee101 wrote:This idea is awesome, but instead of taking a real country, make your own imaginary SimNation. That way you get to make the size you want, create wherfe you want forests, coastal, and built-up city areas to be, and just have a whole bunch of fun with it. Think outside the box! Don't limit yourselves ever!

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This however is a better idea, instead of using a country that already exists, why not make your own, to your scale and desirable building styles.

[Endureth 37]

This is kinda what SimCityScape was suppose to be, but that fell through I guess....

It's a shame really.

-E

[flamesrock 6]

Its more than possible now with new simcityscape like software: SCORE --

http://sc4ore.sf.net


I'm even willing to host it. The biggest problem right now is finding people who are willing to take part...which probably won't happen until the summer.

Anyone interested in multiplayer simcity should visit:

http://www.simcitysphere.com

[Andy-PIXEL 0]

Id be more than happy to help out if you can devise a way to host it.

[whateverwhatever24 0]

ooo... is simcityscape still around? i remember that... hated it!

[TheeLord 42]

cause everyone has their own building styles.. thats why multiplayer doesnt work with SC. I am a realism freak, and love making things as realistic as humanly possible, and im also a historical freak and try to make my cities grow, so im always demolishing and rebuilding areas of the city. Others just make skyscrapers in the middle of a forest.. then there are people who make forests and medium density stuff dotted around it and call it realism.. just lots of styles and me having my thick head cant stand watching a megatropolis pop out of the bushes with no surrounding neighborhoods, or historic development or agriculture, just skyscrapers in the middle of nowhere.

[TheeLord 42]

I am however going to try to scale down the country and see if I can make a scaled version sorta like those cool colorful pop-up maps you can buy in gas stations, kinda just showing the landmarks and highways and major streets and such. See if I can get it to work at all, if it works out Ill post a bunch of pics and ask for some help

[Parasites 0]

Well... even to simulate my small country wich is 65 000 km

[bobucles 0]

Vatican city is the smallest country in the world, placed in the middle of Italy. It'd only need a few large maps, compared to every other country.

[Joesocwork 4]

I really think a SimNation (on a smaller scale of course) can be done with the Regions we already have, providing mechanisms for greater intercity play.  I've suggested this before on SimCity.Com & Sim City Central and candidly I do not know what the software and hardware requirements would be to implement this.  I think, at least hypothetically it could be done here. Here are my ideas:

I believe that cities should be more diverse and specialized than just R/C/ I.   The topics in this forum, including transportation and utility cities are great  ideas.  In addition, I propose four more: 1) a capitol city, 2) tourism cities, 3) education cities, and 4) trade cities

The capitol city: would delegate and keep track of resouces  between cities.  For example it could take funds from cities that are heavy into commercial/ industrial & generate simoleons hand-over-fist with nothing to spend it on to contribute to a city that consists of a national forest (or any other region-unique landmark) with minimal tax generating r/c/i.  It could keep also track (but not necessarily control) transportation and zoning needs across the region.  The jobs would governmental.    

The other three types would be linked to three types of desirability including  entertainment, education, and trade
that spans across cities in a radial fashion like police stations/fire stations/ hospitals.

Tourism Cities:  These would be cities that have a desirability and jobs based on diverse leisure businesses such as skiing, national parks, beaches, gambling, etc.  The jobs would entertainment.

Trade Cities:  Would include traditional C & I but would also  include two sub-types:  1) cities devoted to specialized resources (i.e. coal/oil/gold mining towns) or types of specialized agricultural trade (i.e. cattle/llamas vs. corn/  bananas);  The jobs would still be traditional Commercial & Industrial  and 2) cities devoted to transportation of trade (i.e. harbor towns, or airport hub cities).   The jobs would be transportational.

Metropolises would feature blended versions of the four to a variety of extents. Washington, D.C. , where I work at, has 12 consortium universities (6-8 are in towns that are a part of the greater metropolitan area), a workforce/trade that consists of >50% government employees (most the industry is in outskirting suburbs and hi-tech),  NO casinos, and plenty of landmarks.  Washington is located on the Potomac River with its share of tour boats;  Baltimore, MD  is a major harbor city with its own entertainment ambiance and is <50 miles away;   and there are several state parks, including Skyline Drive along the Shenandoah Mountains within a 100 mile radius.  Washington D.C. is unique and other metropolises would have their own completely different mixtures, but that is the point!

In a SimNation (and in the real world) not every city at a town level (or below a metropolis level) is going to be a college town, nor a mining town, nor a regional governmental work center, nor a seaport/harbor town;  nor will every town feature casinos, multiplexes, ski resorts, nor wilderness-like state parks.  But a SimNation can feature all of these types of town/cities/ metropolises that add to the region as a whole while maintaining their respective uniquenesses.

[+Guest JetRanger]

Date:11/16/2003 10:06:47 AM
Author:yoseph

Yeh! That's true, unless you were terraforming the whole region! Then it would take you maaaaaaaany more years than expected!!! height=15 alt=Insert smilie ' src='https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/images/smilies/6.gif' width=15 border=0>

 

Yes, Thats because you have to terraform every single plot of land one at a time! That can be very very very very tedeous and many people would just lose interest, unless you had a tool in which you can terraform an entire region at once, that could cut the time.

[Former User 225 1]

Well this idea I have does not requiere any supercomputer. What I think a great way to create a SimNation is to take our best citys and take a blank map that is made on a computer, possibly a bitmap, The map would only show the borders of the SimNation not the geography, but will have were the seas are for City's that are near the sea or on it(island states perhaps). then we put where our citys would like to put our citys, with acceptions like a city built on islands would not go well in the middle of some mountains. But here is the fun part, we decide what the geography of the land between our citys looks like and there you have it, a SimNation. But this would not be done in SimCity, it is on a map.