Hello old friends!

[DarkMatter 21]

Hello everyone! Old friends, and all! It has been a long, long time since I visited this site. I was kind of surprised the modding forums and all the old discovery threads were still around, but it was a pleasant surprise. I don't have much time, trying to wind down for the nite, but I thought I would drop a message and say hi to everyone...particularly anyone who might remember me. Let me know how you are all doing, what you've been up to, and how SimCity modding is these days. Seems the forum is still alive and well.

[jon7985 3]

Hey there! Don't know you, but glad to meet you!

[Yuu Caa Sim 55]

Oh my goodness it's DarkMatter.

Well, I only registered this account an year ago, but I've had this game almost since the beginning. I never really got into modding or creating things though. Never had enough time unfortunately

I still use your Datgen, mostly to look up variables in growables to sort them by type, but sometimes I use it to modify the slope mod. Unfortunately, the S3D viewer is broken in Datgen under Vista, so I use the Reader for that.

Definitely hope you stay around.

[warrior 169]

Wow, your back that's amazing!!!, hopefully you can stay?

(jon7985: DarkMatter made DatGen and FiSHMan tools and helped to understand the SC4 File Formats)

Jonathan

[GMT 389]

wow.... can't quite believe what I've just read.

is it really you darkmatter? or am I daydreaming?

[Sam 163]

DarkMatter! Welcome back!

[JakeMD 107]

Welcome back!! Will you be staying?

[MrCinatit 30]

Always nice to see one of the legends come back. Nice to see you here, DarkMatter.

[Glenni 1,444]

Weehee, now we can make space travels to the moon with SC4!

[Keegan V50 15]

welcome back DarkMatter....hope youll stay here!...

Victor

[Neddiggis 1]

Hey Dark Matter, good to meet one of the original Modders back. Just a quick pointer, a lot of the work has shifted to www.SC4Devotion.com now, worth checking out. Hope you stick around.

[psander5 195]

Hello! I don't know you personally, but I know your name of course. Welcome back!

[cogeo 960]

Welcome back DarkMatter!

Surely enough, there are a lot of people remembering you!

One of the projects you were involved in was RTMT (Road-top Mass Transit). Initially included in a transit mod, it was subsequently separated, as all those transit mods were later incorporated into or superseded by NAM.

I took up the took up the project from here, and (with the help of many other members) made improvements and additions in versions 3.00 and 3.50. RTMT currently has stations for most network types and features like textures and props selection, and translations to most SC4 languages.

Version 4 is currently under development, More on this in the RTMT Place on sc4devotion.

Hope you stay around!

[Ryan B 35]

Wow.  A legend returns.

Welcome back, DarkMatter!

[Haljackey 17,243]

Welcome back DarkMatter!

Its always great to see one of the legends return.

[pagenotfound 53]

your back

wow. Welcome back man!

[Tarkus 6,932]

Hi DarkMatter-

Welcome back--it's always great to see an old modding legend pop in!  I arrived on the modding scene after you left, but you've basically played a large part in making what I do possible, and for that, you have my most sincere gratitude.

If you're wondering what is up with the NAM end of things, I'd encourage you to check out the NAM Place forum over at SC4 Devotion.  We've particularly expanded our understanding of RUL 0x10000002, and have basically figured out a way to sort of create "new" networks.  Even in the past 2.5 years or so I've been involved with transit modding, I'm amazed at what all has gotten developed.

Also, we finally figured out what to do with the old ANT plugin . . .

-Alex (Tarkus)

[DarkMatter 21]

Wow! Quite the welcome back. Thanks everyone. Some of you guys I do remember, MrCinatit, ryanb, sam (and everyone else who's name I havn't remembered yet). Its really good to see that some of the old projects are still alive, like NAM, RTMT, SimMars, etc. And the RHW...with an installer and everything...definitely props for that. Props for all of it! Looks like I'll have to go register an account over on SC4Devotion.com...lot of work going on over there. Looking around at all the stuff thats been going on with SC4 still has made me quite nostalgic. I may not be the super active community member I once was, but I'll definitely try to stick around and drop a line more frequently. I'll help out wherever I can, too. I've thought many times about reviving the DatGen project, but something always comes up or gets in the way. I've also thought about starting anew, with a better product that DatGen could ever have been...and if I can find the time, I'd at least like to try. Good thing is, all the hard work has generally been done, so it would really just be putting something together based on the specs that exist. I'm probably 100 times the programmer I was back in the day, and it seems there is still a need...guess we'll see what time decides to permit. Well, anyway...thanks for the warm welcome back! Its great to know I'm still remembered here. [[ EDIT EDIT ]] Alright...I seem to be a bit of a twit, but how come my posts arn't formatting? I'm loosing all my hard returns...

[JakeMD 107]

Hmm, your losing all your returns, interesting!! Try editing again, and making necessary adjustments.

It would be real great if you could continue DatGen!! In fact, I beg you

[buddybud 63]

Hey welcome back.

Your a big influence on the modding community my friend! None of us could of done half of what we do with out the knowledge people like you provided. I think you will be happy with some of the progress.....

Cheers

Bud

[beebs 129]

Originally posted by: DarkMatter [ EDIT EDIT ]] Alright...I seem to be a bit of a twit, but how come my posts arn't formatting? I'm loosing all my hard returns...quote>

Are you using Opera or Chrome? Those guys don't seem to like the message editor too much.

And welcome back indeed! Perhaps you'll pull another wonderful discovery out of your hat.

[Duke87 1,070]

Return of the Dark Matter....

Sounds like some horribly cheesy sci-fi movie.

[DarkMatter 21]

Duke!! My man...omg, you have 15 thousand posts!! You always were a post-fanatic. I am indeed using Opera. I bet I can flip my user agent to FireFox and everything will work fine. I have been chatting with that other legend most of you will know, Karybdis. He linked me in to Cities XL...any of you seen it? Look veeery promising!

[Andreas Roth 607]

Wow, quite a blast from the past. Welcome back, DarkMatter! It's great to see the old "legends" still being around from time to time - and yes, I do use DatGet now and then as well, although there are quite a few other tools around by now. Unfortunately, everyone has its quirks, so sometimes it's easier to switch to another one for a special purpose. Anyway, I guess you got a brief glimpse what we were doing with the game over the past few years, and I'm glad it's still going strong, after six years since the original release. There's still a lot that can be done, and we make new discoveries all the time. For some reason, I was dreaming last night that EA released another SC4 patch that fixes the remaining issues, but unfortunately, that was just wishful thinking, I guess...

[MrCinatit 30]

Originally posted by: DarkMatter Duke!! My man...omg, you have 15 thousand posts!! You always were a post-fanatic. I am indeed using Opera. I bet I can flip my user agent to FireFox and everything will work fine. I have been chatting with that other legend most of you will know, Karybdis. He linked me in to Cities XL...any of you seen it? Look veeery promising!quote>

I believe Karybdis was briefly into Spore for a while, as well, but I could be wrong (and if I am not mistaken, he like many have lost interest).

However, you are correct about Cities XL - it does look like the next best thing. The graphics look rather amazing. I've played City Life, which was made by the same company a few years ago. All in all, not a bad game with some pretty fair game play, but it sounds like they are almost completely reworking the concept, so time will only tell what the game play will be like. Of course, it will also be interesting to see how much the game can be modded...but, again, that is something we will have to wait until August to see.