Concurrent multi-user region

[Romaq 18]

I did a search in the forum for 'multi-user' and 'multiuser', and I didn't see anything. My wife and I would like to share a region where she does some cities, and I do others. I recall reading somewhere that unless EVERYTHING in a user's folder is on a shared drive (/Documents Settings) then it is somewhere between complicated and impossible to 'share' a region. I did see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=175474 which looks like something I want to do, but only between my wife and I on a region I've already created.

I couldn't figure a *simple* way around hooking the regions and plug-ins directory to a shared drive, so I attempted using CVS (http://www.wincvs.org/) which I have used in the past, and I'm quite comfortable with it. The problem *THEN* is that if I edit a file with networks, and I commit changes, those changes 'touch' adjacent cities even if you didn't do anything to them. If I then commit everything 'changed', it will overwrite changes that my wife made so we loose synchronization.

I did attempt setting *my* cities read-only in her area, so updates in her adjacent cities are unable to make writes to my cities. This works out well, and in fact that is how you CAN use CVS to avoid making accidental changes to files. You have to deliberately reset the readonly flag on files you claim the right to edit. The problem *then* is, SC4 flips all readonly flags on all cities to writable.

I'm still working through how to make things work. If someone ELSE has thoughts along this line, I would be very interested. If SimCity and CVS can be made to behave with one another, then I could publish a tutorial for anyone to set up a CVS server and do something like http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=175474 either on a 'family server' at home, where everyone in the family can putter within the same region, or easily open it up to anyone in the world.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The most basic problem in this is that the game isn't designed for multiple users.

If you tried to share the region list, you also have to share the plugins list.  Because each plugin will be "busy" this means two copies of it, and two copies of the game, too.

I expect you will have extreme synchronization problems with sharing.  If you have two computers, why not just take a region, and each of you work on a different city.  Then, when you are happy with them, one of you can insert the other's city into the region.

[Romaq 18]

We both have copies of the game, and you are correct about plugins. I am using CVS to share that as well. CVS is designed to share multiple copies of files and keep track of changes. I have 256 'big cities' in the region (4096 * 4096 tiles). Plug-in sharing is trivial. SC4 doesn't write to them. Even if SC4 *did* happen to write to the plugins, there is no notion of 'adjacent' with plug-ins, only the issue of dependencies.

SC4 files have the notion of 'adjacent', and if you have any transit link (including ferries) then SC4 writes to the files, causing CVS to recognize 'something changed'. When I go to commit changes to the city I'm working with, the part of SC4 touching adjacent cities will cause the sync trouble.

But I'm hoping to resolve the problem, and if anyone is interested in having multiple concurrent people working out of the same region, I would like to hear from you and find out what solutions you have explored.