Idea for S.T.E.X cd2

[shivsood 5]

Ok, I can honestly say that I did not buy the first one. I can , however, say that I will buy the next one for £20 (im a child lol so i can't donate that much), if this idea was approved and included in the next cd:

How about, we ask some of the major city creators to give their developed regions to Dirk and we can have them on the cd with all the required plugins for the city to work + we get loads of plugins and other add-ons. Also, we could possibly have different cd's for different add-ons. Does anyone think this is a good idea and realistically possible to happen?

[Kippis05 2]

It could very well be. Unless Dirk has other plans in mind. (Dont feel bad, though, i didn't get the STEX CD either ) and, yeah, I do think it's a very good idea.

[simzebu 19]

If I ever get a job i'll buy it. That might be a while (I'm 14 and don't spend much)

[Bones1 96]

Yeah, I didn't get the CD either. However, I'd certainly buy a DVD version if it's ever released. Seems to me that almost everyone has a DVD drive, and it would hold 4.7GB of stuff (or over 8GB if it's dual-layer, although that would make the DVDs more expensive). That might be enough for the whole STEX?

If I'm going to buy something, I'd rather it have everything on it, rather than just some of the stuff.

Although, I can see the sales reasons for going with just a CD. It leaves lots of stuff for CD#2, CD#3, etc.

P.S. If there's extra space on a DVD, then that can be used for some fully-developed regions. Those would eat up too much of a CD anyway, at likely over 100MB per region.

[ScruffyDeluxe 0]

I second the idea of having some pre-rendered regions made available. Some of the maps here are so big that they need hulking powerful PCs to render.

[tchaos713 5]

A fully developed region with all associated plugins could easily fill a DVD!!! My plugins folder is up around 2GB or so and it's missing some things.

A pre-rendered region would be awesome (no development, just the naked terrain). However, it would only really be practical with a DVD as the larger regions take up a lot of space. Also, someones computer would have to do the rendering (probably Dirk's...doesn't he have better things to do?)...so...

[Bones1 96]

A pre-rendered region (just the terrain and trees) shouldn't take to too much space on a DVD. No more than 50MB, unless you're talking about a huge region. But I'm not sure of the advantage of pre-rendering, other than it saves a bit of time and you get to include the trees. I'm not sure if that's worth it, considering the jpg for the region is only about 50kB.

[sendarrow 3]

I have the STEX 1 and proud of it. I would like the STEX 2 to have all the plugins included.

But what I really want is to have the entire STEX on a CD, or 2 or 3. But I guess that's not possible, so I'm going to download them all...

[shivsood 5]

gd info from every1, neway well see what Dirk releases for cd/dvd??? 2

[Rayden 7]

I think that this idea will never go ahead. A full region, already built, can be average over 2 or 3 hundred megabytes large, plus the plugins necessary to that region to function well, another several hundred megabytes, to much bytes just to upload to Dirk to be inserted on the cd/dvd. I'm sure no one is willing to upload that huge amount of info to the others. That's why it's so hard to find in here or any other SC4 web site any region already built.

[Bones1 96]

That would only take about a half an hour or so to upload, if you have high-speed. I'm sure there are plenty of people willing to hit "send" and come back an hour later (or do something else on the computer while it's uploading).

So that's not the problem. The problem with uploading regions to the STEX is Dirk's disk space. If too many people uploaded regions, it would fill up ST pretty fast. But we're not talking about uploading for permanent storage on the STEX; we're talking about making the regions available on a DVD which people can buy. I think that makes a lot of sense.

It doesn't make much sense for a CD, since you'd only get a handful of regions on a CD. But a DVD should store a couple of dozen. Remember that many of the plugins will be common across different people's regions.

[shivsood 5]

If it could happen, it would b sooooooooooooo gd, mayb like $10 for a cd wif four regions and den like u can have many different variations

[Constantina 5]

Well, If cities were not allowed in the STEX, then how come it would be possible to write cities onto the Simtropolis CD? There are a few things to consider. A city made with custom content which may not be availible from the STEX or the CDs, or city built with radical modds, which may cause a developed city to go into chaos when you turn on the simulator (without those modds).

[Bones1 96]

Easy enough to include the mods with the region. They're tiny! Or, just include them on the DVD and link each region to its own set of mods and BATs (to avoid duplication).

[shivsood 5]

yh itll convince soooooo many people to buy the cd and will really help the site

[Bones1 96]

It could, but not as a CD. Unless it's a DVD, there's not room to store many regions. Nobody's going to pay $20 for only a couple of regions on a CD.

Figure the storage requirements this way:

Let "R" be the space required by a fully developed region, without the required extra plugins.

Let "P" be the space required for the plugin directory to support all the custom content of a region.

It's clear that R requires unique space for each and every region. Let's say R=100MB.

However, P likely cotains a lot of common plugins and BATs used by different regions. As you add more regions, it's more and more likely that they use BATs that other regions use as well. So, let's assume that P=500MB for the first region, but the additional space is half that for every new region added. (250MB additional space for the 2nd region, 125MB additional space for the 3rd, etc.)

So, the first region needs R+P=100MB+500MB=600MB of space.

Two regions need R+R+P+0.5P=100MB+100MB+500MB+250B=950MB of space.

Uhoh, a CD only holds 700MB of stuff, so a CD can only fit one region! Yuck!!!

Let's figure out how many regions a DVD will hold...

The sum of P's form a convergent series with a limit of 2*P. So 2P, or 1GB is the most space that we will need for common plugins. Let's just assume we use 1GB for all the common plugins. That leaves 3.7GB for the storage of the region files.

# of regions = 3.7GB / R = 37.

A DVD can hold 37 regions, compared to only 1 for a CD! Yeah!!!

It's clear that this idea will never fly unless it's put on a DVD.

[choco1 4]

Its a good idea, but I don't think it would work.  Especially for the best CJers, if you wanted a region complete with cities and such, you would need every BAT in their plugin folders, which can be up to 2 or maybe more gigs.  And while that would fit on a DVD, it still wouldn't be practicle for the users, they would have to completely get rid of all their mods and install all these thousands of ones.  It would take forever for the users, and it is completely unbelievable that dirk could ever arange them off other people's computers.  They would have to e-mail them over 2 GB, which really isn't possible. 

I also don't think there would be many people willing to put 2 GB of data and change almost all their mods just to get someone else's region to work.  Image the hassles of that! 

Its a cool idea, but not feasable for dirk or the users.

[GingerBlokey 30]

I dont think its a good idea. SC is about your vision of a city not someone elses. There is just too much logistics involved. CD2 should be a CD with all the dependancies ever needed on it. Id never have to worry about prop paks again.

[Bones1 96]

While I would much prefer a DVD with the complete list of BATs and mods (and dependencies) from the STEX on it, I can see the desire for regions. It's doesn't have to be one or the other. Once you have all the BATs and mods on the DVD, just fill the rest of the space up with regions. Those regions will be using the BATs and mods that are already on the DVD.

Organizing it shouldn't be too difficult. Each region can have a list of the BATs and mods it uses, and a loader program can simply copy those into a subdirectory in the user's plugin directory. When the user wants to swap to a different region, he can rerun the loader program which swaps to the new plugins.

And I really don't see the difficulty in uploading these regions to Dirk. This isn't the 1980's anymore... there's high-speed Internet. A person only needs to upload the region in any case, Dirk already has the plugins on the STEX. We're only talking about a 15 minute FTP upload.

[toxicpiano 125]

or you could just make the regions vanilla style. Or make a list of the BATs on the CD/DVD and then people would only use those.

[shivsood 5]

Yh it'd be perfect for those who don't have much time to make amazing cities and they can just add to already built ones