Top 10 most desired info/mods

[LivingInThePast 364]

5. Distinct sections of a city (Art, Chinatown, Uptown, etc)

6. Light Industrial.

7. New transit.

8. New disasters.

More soon....

[mayormot 4]

Since computers are a lot more powerful now, in no particular order:

1) Fix the horrendous regional-commute system. In particular, make sims favor jobs inside their current city, so they don't commute off-map unless they have to. If this also applied to commuters coming in to the city from a neighbor connection, that would be great!

2) Patch the pathfinding engine to calculate the true distance of a diagonal as being 1.4 tiles, rather than 2.

3) If the original patch to SC4 Vanilla that introduced "disappearing cars" could be rolled back, so that traffic once again originates at a sim's house and travels the true computed route to the sim's job (and back in the afternoon), that would be great too. Computers now can handle this - make it be the high detail setting for traffic automata maybe?

4) Lift the transit network code out of the EXE and make it into a system of plug-ins. Pie-in the sky, I know, but it might be possible.

EDIT: Just found Buggi's post on page 2 describing what's likely, altered my list to remove regional request stuff that can't/won't happen.

[Keiran Halcyon 0]

@Buggi: Wow. Just wow. Didn't read every line of everyone's posts, just yours. No content requests, promise.

Now, where to begin.... (in roughly my order of importance)

1) Transit network code. Multiple purposes, including (but not limited to):

- Making entirely new transit networks loadable from pluggins. Draggable GLR, draggable elevated networks, underground highways (perhaps stretching it, due to the views required), "real" dual-network solutions instead of the hackish solutions we have now (el-over-road, double-decker bridges, in-street cable cars a maybe).... the list goes on and on.

- Fixing remaining transit-related bugs, including the infamous puzzle-piece/TE-lot bug and some pathfile interpretation issues (applicable to interchanges and some highway/road overpass configurations), but of course not limited to that.

- Deeper understanding of how the original transit networks were created and what all the data means, so that creation of new transit items can be streamlined.

- Improvements to the pathfinding engine, including fixes for some bugs involving regional commutes, and possible (though unlikely) algorithm optimizations. The pathfinder is a beast, and it might be possible to improve it. Probably not doable, at least not without extensive rewrites beyond the scope of what we'd be given permission to do, but it can't hurt to try.

- The code dealing with bridge drawing and pathing, to allow *real* bridges to be drawn over other networks/networks to be drawn under real bridges. I suspect that it would take a massive rewrite to get anything besides another non-parallel network under a bridge, but again, it can't hurt to investigate this either.

- Finally, there doesn't appear to be any actual reason why streets shouldn't be allowed to be dragged diagonally, other than that Maxis didn't make textures for it. Should be an easy fix.

2) The menu UI code, with the intent of loading menu specifications from external files, thus making the menus infinitely recursable and fully customizable. This would be particularly important if new transit networks could be added.

3) The dataview code, to add two types of views:

- Dataviews broken down by subtype of building, particularly for education buildings. I would like to see a map of just my elementary schools, or just my highschools, or just my libraries, instead of all of them lumped together in a mass of overlapping circles. Even just color-coding the dots & radii would be a tremendous help.

- A view similar to the zones view (or perhaps a straight mod of it) that lets me see all RCI buildings as their parcels, and everything else as the actual buildings, instead of blank land. This would really help for finding all those bus stations, and so on and so forth. (Actually, for finding bus stations, see above point on color-coding of building sub-types.) This view was present in SC2k and SC3k, IIRC.

4) Persistent above-sea-level water. For this to be done right, it would require a massive overhaul of the UI for placing it, the so-called "rain tool", possibly to the point of being infeasible. It would also require tweaking out the saved game format to store the extra data, which may break all old saved games.

EDIT (after reading your comments on the subject): The built-in rain tool, combined with the built-in flowing water tool, would be sufficient to create rivers & lakes and such, but to do it well, we'd need some new terraforming tools to create the land just so, and to fill up the holes to just the right height without flooding into areas where we don't want a lake, etc. But basic functionality here shouldn't be impossible, if the data can be saved & loaded. (and if that gets done, then we'll worry about hydro dams....)

Those are what I consider high priority. Things that would be nice that aren't so important to me:

- The code that deals with why residents (or anyone) abandon, to get a more accurate assessment of the situation in the lot query. Includes fixing the "Abandoned due to commute time" fallacy.

- The crime code, for fixing the problem with large structures (airports, universities...)

- Ability to add new ordinances, in the same fashion as transit networks and menus described above.

- The civic building code, for making various tweaks. I think it would be cool if, when say a school reaches capacity, it asks if you want to upgrade it (like the airports). There's also the funding bug which could use fixing.

And finally, in jest, the code for the advisors, so I can give them an extensive lesson in realistic expectations.

[Romaq 18]

I enjoy tracking this list. Would it help if there was a 'static' web link to organize and prioritize the list? 'More Menus', and 'NAT Bugfix' seem popular, but there are other good ideas. Some ideas are distinct yet related. Would someone be in a position to 'munch' the list as it is current, organize by similarity (and how likely it is to be around the same code) and indicate the strength of the request? Or would Buggi happen to have a web page of this info already prepared for reference? Or could Buggi edit the very first post in this thread with a table summary for review? If it's better someone else do it, that's fine too so Buggi can focus on the talks with EAGames rather than the specifics of organizing the data. I can give it a shot this weekend if someone else doesn't already have a list pegged.

[deadwoods 542]

Menus!!!!! Can't think of anything else just now.

[Buggi 685]

WHOA! I pulled SimGoober out of the woodworks! W00t!!

[baertooth 330]

I was thinking about what you said concerning regional budgets. My idea for a budget was less a simulation item and more like a neighborhood deal type thing. You take two tiles side by side, and in the neighborhood deals section allow one tile that has amassed a sum of money to be able to push some of that money to the other tile. When you start up the receiving tile, the money that was pushed will be in the coffers. This will allow the construction of highways and other mass-transit across empty tiles instead of having to cheat or setting the difficulty level to easy due to money constraints.

Another thing I think would be great is a zoom tool for the regional map. I hate the static distance and wish I could zoom in on my city.

[LivingInThePast 364]

10. UDI so you can drive into other cities.

11. Realistic water with flow.

There, I'm done. For those of you that missed the other parts...

1. Seperate tools for Mac users.

2. Better code work to run faster.

3. Knowledge of cancelled expansion packs.

4. Single track railroads.

5. Hot swappable ground textures.

6. Weather.

6. Distinct sections of a city (Art, Chinatown, Uptown, etc)

7. Light Industrial.

8. New transit.

9. New disasters.

Oops. I put 11.

[BarbyW 40]

@baertooth: that is already available in Daeley's Shady Banking Mod available here: http://www.jphayden.com/pegprod/forums/dload.php?action=file&file_id=324

[Buggi 685]

Originally posted by: LivingInThePast 10. UDI so you can drive into other cities.

11. Realistic water with flow.

quote>

 

LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Exsun 0]

My lurker list:

1 Adding Sub-menus or more top level menus is my biggest want; basically an overhaul of the menu system.

2 Zooming on the regional level would be really nice! Good idea though probability is low being a regional item.

3 One thing that I really miss from the original SimCity is the ability to print a city (or region). I know that taking pictures could make this happen but if there is a way to do it natively I think it would be nice.

4 Improvements on path finding

5 Data views broken down by subtype of building as Keiran Halcyon mentioned above

6 Fix the known issues/bugs that we have information on (I have not really experienced any other then the Opera House bug).

[Frankie_Grove 32]

1. Multi-unit trains

2. longer trains

3. more transit networks

4. even mor transit networks

5. 8 to 10 lane highways

6. 3 lane on each side avenues

7. more biulding styles

8. ablility to choose a site for new skysraper

9. 30 angle roads

10. more broad highway curves

that's definately not all, but top 10

[755 0]

My list of desires:

1) The ability to add new networks and easily copy the existing ones so they can be easily tweaked, like being able to have multiple types of roads or streets availble with only one difference, such different vehicle speeds or textures (being able to choose between concrete, asphalt, gravel or dirt).

2) The ability to toggle random disasters on and off, and select the type of disasters you want to randomly occur, like having only lightning strikes occur randomly and not have a city killing earthquake.

3) Better freight traffic simulation on a regional level; trucks and freight trains wouldn't dissapear at the city limit if there is another city on the other side.  Instead, they would try to reach the nearest region boundary.

4) The ability to set the land area of cities.  Instead of having only a few sizes to choose from, one could set the size themself, especially to get cities larger than currently allowed.

5) More zoning types, like an ability to zone low pollution industry, more density controls (to block those 3x3 R$$$ lots that keep popping up after zoning and then rapidly decaying in my cities) or maybe recreational zoning instead of having to plop parks section by section.

6) The ability to add more types of signs (the ones under the mayor menu in the same section with adding trees).  It would be nice to have different categories, like natural feature or road signs, possibly with different shapes/designs for each.  Also the ability to have filters for the different types.

7) Ploppable residential, with the transportation query accurately reflecting the occupancy shown in the other query tool (this goes for commercial and industrial also).\

More options for the region views, like being able to show new networks like the ANT.

[dogscarletnyc 0]

what is Sub-menus?

[Menotyou 0]

Menus in menus.

[NetPCDoc 1]

A few more thoughts - having just re-read this thread:

Philosophically - City Streets really should have City-Side-Walks; Country/Rural roads, however, are an entirely different issue. We currently have the tools to implement control over the wealth-level-sidewalk issues on a city-by-city basis (simply mode the appropriate transit textures - and switch these mods in-and-out). For better "intra-city" control however - we really need to fully develop additional RURAL/Country transit networks.

A better understanding of the "Transit-Lot-Property" (0x00000007), the various record types that make up RUL files, and how the RUL file (& SC4Path files) values relate to the Transit-Lot-Property - (if I am correctly understanding what has been stated) IMHO - should allow the NAM modders to fix the so-called transit crash-to-desktop bug.

The Diagonal shift/drift issue - is mainly due to where control over the height/elevation of a particular side of a tile is located - proper understanding of this "elevation-control-location" - IMHO - should allow our modders to compensate for this.

Elevated-and-Nonelevated versions of a transit network - with proper switching/converting - between these versions (& height-control of the elevated version), should allow for over-land (vs over-water) bridges.

On the terrain-bug / black-hole issue - when you replace the background3d?.png files (where ? = zoom-level) with Brightly Colored Pictures - you should see the black-holes turn into Brightly-Colored-Pictures (as seen through an overlay-texture).

FYI - on the water above sea-level issue - it appears that MAXIS (although I expect they/EA might deny this being the TRUE reason) took away the "flat" water (from SC2000 & SC3K) due to the numerous problems with getting various bridges to properly cross both the so-called-flat-water and sea-water. In other words, as it was apparently too much trouble to implement multiple versions of each bridge and trigger the appropriate one based on water-level, they (MAXIS) decided to limit the water to a single "sea" level. This reasoning needs to be properly understood by anyone advocating for other than sea-level-water.

And, as it can not - IMO - be said too often, Better - more mod-able - Menus!!!

GOOD LUCK Buggi,

-NetPCDoc

No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

[____----____ 37]

ok got another one something that has long annoyed me is that when a tower is made say CO$$$ it is

incredibly unrealistic (that is 1,000 high wealth jobs) come on what about the average office drones, secretaries

janitors, cafe workers ect. In any major office building even a high weal th company most emplyees aren't

high wealth, it would be sweet if one building (that previously had lets say 1,000$$$ jobs, could employ like 300Cs$

500CO$$ and then 200CO$$$ that would be much more realistic

[Xilef 0]

It has been suggested before and I want to suggest it again.

One reason why I don't play SC4 as much as I did before is because of the menus. Can't stand scrolling, though removing plugins isn't that fun either. Sub-menus.
And the ability to add new types of transit networks. 

[BC_Rich_Warlock 1]

i would like to see not only more and longer trains but a car selection tool so u can make ur own train for maybe a railroad themed cj ie. passenger/freight

another would be regional time doesnt any body think that if u start a city in 01/01/2000 and save it at 11/23/2010 then u start a new city next to it it wouldnt start back at 01/01/2000.

[Romaq 18]

Other issues of code, while I think about it. If you can get access to the read/write of cities, I have an interest in the following problem.

I'm using CVS to manage my region. This lets be do 'rollbacks' of my region as well as share the building of the region with my wife on another computer. Unfortunately for me, when I set cities on 'unedit' (the city file is set read-only), when I load in the region all the read-only flags are removed. It would also be necessary that, if a given city file is set readonly, it would be very helpful if SimCity would warn of what file SC4 is attempting to write to, and that it is set readonly. That way, if I forget to 'Reserve Edit' a city, I'll have a chance to correct the situation without SC4 simply crashing. And, of course, that city may be set 'read-only' for a reason, so I need to be able to 'ignore' the error of attempting to write to a readonly city file.

In connection with the use of CVS, it would really help a great deal if the Plugins file would ignore */CVS/* directories. I'm gradually moving the *.html, *.jpg and *.txt files out of plugins, but CVS requires the CVS directory and files within the directory to work. That, of course, drags my loadtime of SC4.

If /plugins/ could be used within a region directory, it would be much easier for someone to set up a CVS server and invite friends to participate in a CVS managed group region building project.

[hamsterTK 93]

I'm using CVS to manage my regionquote>

that is seriously hard-core....

(i mean that in a good way of course)

[Asimov 0]

The upmost important thing: The possibilty to customize the menus and submenus and to create as many of them, as I want, combined with the possibilty to choose into which submenu a certian object should be sorted. It takes like 2 minutes at the moment to scroll through my Landmarks-Menu...

Draggable Buslines: At the moment the buses just randomly appear at the busstations and drive around with any sense. It would be great if I could drag busroutes along the roads in special View, a bit like the subway-dragging-mode.

Would it be possible to use the Disaster-Scripts as a starting point for simulationg Weather and Seasons? Just imagine a mighty blizzard leaving 3 foot of snow in your streets

Diagonal bridges and tunnels

Mixed use-buildings. Why shouldn't a large trainstation offer jobs? Why shouldn't a large skyscraper contain offices and flats combined?

And something completly weird: Old Age Citys. Back in SC2k you could choose in which year you want to start with your city. The later, the more possibilitys you got. Something like this, but more drastical. Imagine starting in 1500, no Electricity, water just out of wells, only dirt- and brick-roads. With the passing time, you have to master the Industrial Revolution, the electrification, the car and so on.

So much for the start, I'm sure more Ideas will follow.

[Romaq 18]

(using CVS) ... is seriously hard-core

I have two copies of the game, and my wife and I enjoy playing, though I've been deeper into it than her. CVS was the only way I could think of to 'share' working on a region. ;-)

Anyway, I keep getting back to the 'above ground water' issue. I'm not sure we necessarily want 'textured channel with a water level that may or may not be deep enough to permit ferry traffic'. I know what I want, and I specifically want 'flat tiles where I put 'em that explicitly allow ferry traffic above sea level'. So... what if on the 'transport' menu we could flag a tile that made SC4 consider that tile as viable for ferry traffic? My current 'BellBaker' region has under ocean levels from NOAA DEM data at 30 meters per unit resolution (scaled to fit SC4's 16 meters per tile) and above ocean detail at 10 meters per unit resolution (scaled to fit 16 meters per tile). Water that's over sea level is dead flat, just fine for me to place tiles that happen to look like water. Two problems:

1) I have ZERO waterway traffic options. A 'ferry' isn't necessarily ideal, but it would be nice. Although for my particular region, we don't use ferrys on any freshwater waterways. The need isn't there for the size of the water. There is boat traffic on Lake Whatcom, perhaps what I need is a 'large size ploppable that looks like boat traffic' on my lake. The more I consider the situation, the less I think 'above sea level water' really helps what I'd like to see.

2) Even if I do not need water *traffic*, I still have serious pain creating the *appearance* of above sea level water. Would it be possible to create a new 'above sea level zoning tool'? This solution would let me use the 'zone creation interface' to select a sizable patch of terrain and 'plop' that area with something that happens to look like water. We could tell the other interface tools such as transit and zone creation UIs that 'special flagged area looks like it is under water'. Maybe we could fool ferries into traveling on this 'special flagged area that happens to look like it is under water'. And, of course, we can tell the display interface that 'see special flagged area? Figure out a way to make it look like it is under water'.

This 'water flagged terrain' technique may be an approach that will get what we want without the pain of making actual water levels above sea level within our terrain. Comments?

[Nik-nik 3]

Great thread!

1) Submenues

2) Diagonal bridges

3) city to city connection by bridge

4) Submenues

5) Ordinances

6) Combo's R$+CS or R$$+C$$

7) Submenues

Transit network options such as underground roads & highways

9) fix the jagged edge at transit networks (Jeronij mentioned this one too)

10) Submenues

I am not sure if I made a point but SUBMENUES would be a great game tool allowing some order in the HUGE Park / Landmark and alternative transit menue we have nowadays!

Good luck in getting through to EA Buggi!

EDIT: I thought of one that I did not see before. An UNDO button would be nice.

Nik-Nik

[1973tr6 0]

I want to throw in a vote for TE above sea level water, whether its rivers, lakes, or canals (would need functioning locks)!!  I'm currently working on a river delta style region and make extensive use of ferries.  I know, I think, there is a water taxi somewhere, but really need the ferries for vehicle transport.  And I would love to be able to set up a ferry route to a neighbor city (kinda like what was suggested above for bus routes - another good idea btw  ).  It would also be good if they would support bigger ships, so I can have seaports "upriver."

[Romaq 18]

Yeah, thinking on 'water flagged tiles', I can see two main ways of doing the flagging. One is to select an area like the garbage dump, or any other zone. This would be for lakes. Another way would be to use the transit interface and lay out streams (single tile like roads) and rivers (two tiles, like highways). I'm thinking that 'rivers and streams' would not be ferry enabled, but area selected 'lakes' would be deep enough. One problem is going to be making shorelines and textures look right. But until access to actual code starts to shake out, we can't be certain of what we'll get.

[jeronij 13]

So Buggi, can you already make the final top 10 list that will be (tried to) fixed / discovered ?¿. Is there some (even the smallest) progress with that great opportunity to enlarge the game´s life ?¿

[bfairin 1]

I'm sure these items have already been addressed but I figure I'll put my two sense in here.

Customizable menus. At least if we could have a scroll bar would be a big improvement.

Being able to have other transit networks cross under bridges.

More and better under-bridge scenery. I was driving through Austin, TX and noticed that under the elevated section downtown they have parking lots. Other bridges will still have grass, shrubs growing under them because there is still enough light for them to grow. How about some extended lots to work with other parks and lots.

Interchange Editor. For customizing interchanges for specific situations.

I love what Jeronjji and Buddybud have done with the embankments, but some better transitioning lots at the ends of the walls or near bridges.

More realistic ordinances and/or business deals.

Fix the water bug so water side embankment lots are easier to develop.

How about a larger city square. 512X512 tiles.

And last but not least: What ever happened to the new NAM that was supposed to be released back in April? Sorry just had to get that one off my chest. No disrespect meant I appreciate everything that people do to make this game better and more enjoyable, but it was reported back in April that it was going to be released then and I'm still waiting for those double-height puzzle pieces.

[Hanson784 165]

Hi Buggi. It's good to see you back at Simtropolis.

First let me give you an enormous thank you. It's very encouraging to see a Maxis employee’s dedication to the community years after the game has been released. All this time I wasn't even aware you were an "inside man."

Secondly, it's great to see some SC3000 legends here. I thought some of you had retired from the community, thankfully that's not the case.

Okay, on to my list. I don't really have much to request other than what's being requested.

1. Animated props (I have a feeling this is more along the lines of BAT than the game code)

2. Roads, streets, highways under bridges.

3. The ability to choose which region downloaded automata, mods, etc... will effect. For instance, I downloaded Mikeseith's NYPD police car mod, which is appropriate for New York, but not L.A. or any other city. I know it's nit picky but it kinda bothers me to see them cruising around my other regions.

4. Ground level water.

[Romaq 18]

I'm considering the possibility that 'water flagged roads/ highways' and 'water flagged zones' are not going to be possible. Another approach that would help a great deal would be to have the means to use software such as SC4TF to 'paint' single street tiles on a surface. I can have DEM data tell me where waterways are and create a 'water only' template. It *might* be possible in a future version of SC4TF to read in such an overlay and insert road tiles to mark out where water tiles ought to go. The current problem is to identify the 'single road tile' object and insert it into an SC4 file. If we understood the SC4 file format well enough to do that, then software such as SC4TF could be made to allow 'painting' of the tiles, and then they can be removed within SC4 and replaced with overland canals, river lots, highways, streets, or whatever the 'paint template' happens to designate. I could make an overlay that fits my BellBaker region image that tells me where I-5 goes through, but that's a very different issue from loading up SC4 and laying down the highway with something approaching accuracy. Opening the SC4 file format could mean a great deal.