Appearing/Disappearing Cars

[Livin in Sim 83]

Thanks guys, this is still working great.  If you find it slows down your game a bit (I have 3.something GB RAM) you can take it out to develop, then replace it for taking pictures, hanging out and enjoying your city, udriveit, whatever.  It's nice not to have those "phantom cars" in your pics.    I agree, might make a worthwhile STEX upload.

Edit: Ah, you read my mind.  https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=23362

[City Planner 121]

I can't get it to work unfortunately.

All my vehicles suddenly appear out of nowhere, and disappear aproximately a half inch later (as measured on the screen), as you might imagine this is downright frustrating to see cars and trucks appear from nowhere and then disappear again 2 seconds and half an inch later.

I've put the TrafficFixes.dat file in the root directory of the plugins (i.e. My Documents\Simcity 4\Plugins\

I've checked the name folder for the automata file listed on page one of this thread but no file with that exact name exists so not sure if it's been renamed since this thread was launched in 2008 or if it was removed or what.

I'd sure like to get this functioning so that the vehicles stay on the streets longer than a half an inch. it's actually quite distracting to see so many cars suddenly appear and disappear, I have to physically make myself not look at the cars, it does something weird to my eyes seeing them come in and out so fast.

Any assistance to get this working would surely be appreciated.

Thank You,

Edit: My apologies if you were notified that there were two new replies to this thread, I quick replied but then couldn't find a way to subscribe to the topic in the edit message feature so I had to delete the original message and post it again as a new one to subscribe to this thread.

[thingfishs 417]

It's not enough to be in your plugins folder, it must load after NAM to work. Check this...

[yamsi3467 0]

I am loving this so far. I used the high version of the two. I don't know if this was an intended effect, but it appears to make the crimes more persistent so you can actually catch crooks again occassionally. Can we tweak this a bit more to make them even more persistent?

[Jeiman2008 21]

@ yamsi3467 I know for sure pedestrian persistence can be modified separately from vehicles, but in the same way. I believe it's also possible to increase the number of crimes spawned.

[Jeiman2008 21]

I think i've solved the UDI issue.  I'm testing these 2 at the moment.   PersistentAutomataHiUDI.dat is an improved high traffic UDI version.  There should be much much less traffic now during UDI.

PersistentAutomataMed.dat is a Medium traffic version.  The automata spawn should be right in the middle of the Hi & Low versions.

Someone with a large city or heavily congested traffic please let me know how well this mod is showing congestion for you.  I don't have a lot of traffic nightmares in my cities, so i'm not quite sure of how well it is scales.

PAM.zip

[e_ssen 0]

Originally posted by: thingfishs

It's not enough to be in your plugins folder, it must load after NAM to work. Check this...quote>

Can you explain me how we can change the load order. I have NAM 3.0 installed but I see cars appearing and disappearing randomly but would like a more realistic traffic or moving cars and trucks.

Thanks for your help. Should I install any other MOD to have this functionality? Thanks.

[jim 546 43]

e_ssen: Put a couple of Z's in front of the filename, ie: ZZZ_"filename". Simcity will load this last as it loads items alphabetically.

[yamsi3467 0]

So, can we put our heads together on the crime persistence thing? Just wondering...

[Jeiman2008 21]

Originally posted by: yamsi3467

So, can we put our heads together on the crime persistence thing? Just wondering...quote>

Sorry, i've been working on the medium version and UDI enhancement.  It seems the persistance of the crime sims is tied to the pedestrians, but it could also be affected also by the number of crime sims spawned / crime.  I can make a quick version to test it out.  Would you perfer a Hi, Low, or Medium spawn version?

[yamsi3467 0]

Can we try all three, Hi, Med, and Low?

[Jeiman2008 21]

Here's the latest 3.    I've tweaked UDI traffic for all 3 versions, and doubled pedestrian persistence.  I made no changes to the number of pedestrians that spawn.  Some observations on UDI so far:  The decreased traffic seems to work out well, however it does take a few seconds for the game to actually remove the extra traffic.  Also it takes the game a few seconds to bring all of the traffic back once I exit UDI.

@Yamsi  this might be hit or miss as the number of pedestrians globally is limited, and it looks like the game may just arbitrairly remove the crime sim due to global volume.  I can increase the global limit of pedestrians as well, but that might make your sidewalks look a bit too crowded.

PAMTests.zip

[yamsi3467 0]

Thanks! I was playing around in ilive Reader the other day and saw something about Crime Persistence. If I knew what to do I would play with that.

[Jeiman2008 21]

I'm still working on tuning my medium spawn version. The look I was going for was moderately busy traffic, but not so much that it becomes ugly gridlock on a road that has "green" levels of congestion/volume. I think I'm getting closer to that result, although it's been a struggle to get it to look just right. A few of my assumptions about how persistence works were wrong, but I'm learning more every day. I think I like working on this more than building my cities, it's given me an excuse to look at a lot of my older cities. Every city seems to respond to this mod a little differently. If anyone interested in helping me test, here's the current medium version.

PersistentAutomataMedTest.zip

[City Planner 121]

Does this take the place of the TraficFixes dat file or should they both be in the plugins folder?

What i noticed about the trafic fixes file is that it too works differently in different cities. In an established city it barely if at all was noticible that it was doing anything at all. Where as in a new city it was easy to see that cars were staying longer on the roads to get from the city to the industrial center I could watch cars go all the way over there, although sometimes one of the cars would turn into a u drive it car half way between the city center and the industrial center which I thought was rather strange.

[Jeiman2008 21]

If you're using any version I put up on this thread, it's basically a 'beta' version, so it should replace trafficfixes_.dat

I'm pretty happy with how UDI works at the moment, and as soon as I'm satisfied with the traffic in the medium version, I'll update it on the STEX. After testing it this morning I have an idea that I may be able to achieve the result I want by simply lowering the amount of commute traffic generated because it seems to be fine until the commute hours, when there's just a bit too much gridlock.

[Jeiman2008 21]

@Yamsi I hope the increased pedestrian tweak helped in your UDI pursuits. I've made some discoveries as to why automata disappear in the first place.

These values in the exemplar are the most important for making them persistent:

Spawn/Recall for Streets(Roads Avenue Highway) 0xCBA5895B    Float 32    4            .01,0.8,0.1,0.6 <--- NAM's standard automata plugin has these values at 0.4, 0.3, 0.4, 0.3

The first and third values relate to recall or de-spwan rate. If you set the first and third at 0.000001 you would in theory never see them disappear at all until their destination.

The second and fourth relate to spawn rate, and I'm not entirely sure yet how to manipulate them to get the spawn rate 'just right' It seems like the higher you set these two the less spawn you'll get, but they shouldn't necessarily be equal.

You can see the difference in these values between the Hi & Low versions of the mod.

Vehicle(Pedestrian) Lifespan range - also tied to persistence. "Number of cells occupant trip vehicles should travel before disappearing" Minimum-Maximum travel distance for automata. All three versions of the mod have the same values: 0x0A, 0x30 (10, 48)
NAM's standard controller has these values set to 0x0A, 0x14 (10, 20)
I haven't really tried to increase this much because I'm satisfied with the distance they drive at the moment.


 

[Jeiman2008 21]

I've just about perfected my medium version.   I made the commute time a little shorter and greatly reduced the commute spawn.  This had the desired effect.  Traffic still looks more busy during the commute but causes far less pileups on low volume / congestion streets.
Commute hours for freight trucks and buses have also been changed.  Trucks now spawn more at night, afternoon and early morning.  Buses have a similar commute to cars and have been reduced as well.

PersistentAutomataMed3.zip

[yamsi3467 0]

I didn't see much of a change as far as crimes, but I didn't get a chance to play with it much.

[Jeiman2008 21]

Updated to version 2 on the STEX - https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=23362

I worked very hard on improving this mod and I think it's much more realistic now. Those who have asked for specific tweaks or different versions, thanks for being patient with me, I'll be working on a few custom versions this week.

I would like to take a moment and address a couple of questions about the mod.

-"Is this supposed to work on all vehicles in the game or only the cars?"

The only vehicles that aren't affected by the increased persistence are buses and trains. They seem to be exempt from the minimum travel distance, and will most often choose to de-spawn at the closest stop. So far I have been unable to change this behavior. I haven't yet tested the mod with GLR.

-"does anybody know how much it affects your PC?"

This mod will incur a marginal decrease in game performance. I believe this is one of the reasons NAM's automata controller behaves the way it does. There can be up to 506 (Same as NAM's standard) maximum vehicles in the city with this mod, all of which are being drawn and given paths by the game. That being said, unless your PC is 5 or 6 years old, it should be fine. You will probably notice a slow down/stutter effect briefly when you zoom in or out, and also when commute peak hours begin.

-Can I make a version that's even more persistent?

Well yes and no. The trade off of persistence is that you never want to create too many cars for too long. For example, 60 cars a minute that must travel a minimum of 60 tiles would easily create a state of perpetual gridlock.  There is no  time limit (that I know of) for automata.  Their lifespan is dictated by distance.

-"Their(automata) persistence is tied to only one variable." <-- I said that, just a correction here:

I was quite wrong. Several variables work together, and can sometimes oppose each other to determine the overall persistence. Also no one version is more persistent than another. The difference between hi/med/low versions is in the scale of the spawn.

[City Planner 121]

It may be working a bit "too good" now.  I've got the high dat file in my game and I notice on many of these (see image) small roundabouts the vehicles start to run in circles until the roundabout is full of cars all running in a circle, then comes along new cars down the street until it's just a huge parking lot and nobody's moving or disappearing.

Just wanted you to know if you hadn't yet experienced this

The image attached is actually a little bit old, the traffic has already lined up down the street where you see the last car in this images line up of cars, and the line up of cars is heading for the highway LOL.  It will be interesting to see if it backs up onto the highway offramp and the highway itself too.

Yah, sure enough it's all the way into the neighborhood now LOL

http://i47.tinypic.com/o710lk.jpg

[trixin 2]

This looks like a wonderful mod, but unfortunately I have not been able to get it to work. I kept the standard automata file that comes with the NAM but added a "Z" at the beginning of the persistent automata mod to ensure it loads after.  Unfortunately, the cars still disappear quite rapidly. Help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

[Jeiman2008 21]

City Planner  Yes I have noticed this, even in the medium version sometimes   I don't see it so much in roundabouts that are connected with more than one street, just the ones I used as cul-du-sacs.  There isn't much you can do about it unfortunately.  The best thing to do is not use roundabouts as street ends.  I also recommend getting the Maxis Street End Cul de Sac Modd.  www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm.    Keep in mind the high version is tuned for high density cities with very few streets.  Perhaps the low or medium version would work better in that city.

trixin  It's possible the sub folder you have persistent_automata_.dat  in is bieng loaded before NAM's.  Check the name of the folder you have the mod in.  The plugins are loaded alphabetically by folder also.

edit:  I was thinking about this more, and what you may be seeing is the leftover spawn from your previous save.  When you save your city, the state of your automata is saved with it.  So when changing versions it's normal for it to take a little time for the automata to adjust to their new rules.

[Jeiman2008 21]

I've been growing my cities a bit and thinking about single exit roundabout problems. I got an idea from krenemo, who asked about trying to slow GLR around corners, which got me thinking about vehicle curve speed. I think part of the problem is vehicles seem to go a bit too slow around curves. So if I increase their curve speed multiplier, maybe they would get out of single exit roundabouts fast enough not to lock them up.

[Jeiman2008 21]

Could someone tell me if they have any difficulty with this mod and are using a "Left hand drive" version of SC4? I will test for it this weekend but was hoping someone could tell me for sure. If it is conflicting with Left Hand drive, that's a very easy fix.

[Mr.Feinstaub 0]

Hi there,

a big thanks for the modification! Its great

Edit: By the way it didnt worked the way by renaming the selected file to "Z..."

I had to delete (by my way packed it to .RAR) the NetworkAddonMod_Automata_Plugin_Standard file.

Is the same feature possible with pedestrian?

[Jeiman2008 21]

Thanks Mr. Feinstuab,

I will have to be more clear about install instructions in the future because a few people were a little confused about that. I can modify pedestrians to an extent and will probably do so in the next update along with tuning buses trains and trams.

[Jeiman2008 21]

Attached  Version 1, uploaded by request for Krenemo for debug purposes.

Persistent Automata.zip

[krenemo 81]

 thank you jeiman2008  now sc4 should work like it always has 

[alienmonster 0]

when I zoom out in mayor mode the cars don't show up.But when i zoom out a little bit the cars are there?dose anyone know how to fix this??????