What frustrates you about sim city 4

[LivingInThePast 364]

The U-Drive-It feature is just not fun. The controls are stiff, it comes with all these limitations that make it useless...on Maxis Highways, it locks on to the streets whether you have it or not, you can't get near water, you can't go off bridges, and you can't even get on railroad bridges.

Most vehicles are just too slow.

[Jazzmaster 716]

Unsuitable area to build network.

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Unsuitable area to build network.

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Unsuitable grade for construction.

Cannot place on reserved tiles.

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Unsuitable area to build network.

Unsuitable area to build network.

Unsuitable area to build network.

Unsuitable area to build network.

Unsuitable area to build network.

Unsuitable area to build network.

Unsuitable area to build network.

Unsuitable area to build network.

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ASDFAKLJDKLADJKLKLK!!!!!!! RAWRRRR

I spend a lot of time laying out single road tiles to level the terrain for several square tiles, to save the frustration of all this. I hardly even work with hills and such, I do raise and lower the terrain with the digger/raiser lots I have to add interest and such, but I really can't be bothered to mess around with this stuff, especially since a lot of my content doesn't look good on hills (e.g., the 'hollow base' issue with just a random brick wall around a lot on a sloped hill, formed under the LOD of the building).

  Edited May 6, 2011 by Yoshiisland  

[Kusajika Yachiru 9]

I dun like when the advisor yells at me to construct aditional pylons... or I do not have enough resources. I also don't like that sometimes the game wont let me transfer power/trash across many city titles from once center source.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Unsuitable area to build network.

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Unsuitable area to build network.

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Unsuitable grade for construction.

Cannot place on reserved tiles.

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Unsuitable area to build network.

Unsuitable area to build network.

Unsuitable area to build network.

Unsuitable area to build network.

Unsuitable area to build network.

Unsuitable area to build network.

Unsuitable area to build network.

Unsuitable area to build network.

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ASDFAKLJDKLADJKLKLK!!!!!!! RAWRRRR

Annoying feature of some things in the NAM and other plugins. Some features lock the terrain (e.g. Ped mall tiles), so you may have to bulldoze part of something, place what you want, then put the feature back. I regularly have this problem when I want a ped mall next to something like a monorail station. You have to place the station before the ped mall, and if you have to change something, you have to uproot part of the mall in order to make things happen, then lay it back down. Someday maybe the plugin developers will solve this one, but its one of the things we currently have to live with in order to use some of the extended features. This also seems to apply to RTMT stations, and there is sometimes a conflict where you really can't have two different plugin features adjacent to each other. One good example of this is the street beside a Jacsoncw rail station. You can't have an RTMT on road station along with it because you can't repair the street afterwards. So I put my bus/subway station a couple of tiles away.

[airman15 4,113]

Several things:

1. You can't build under bridges

2. The out of bounds grid is depressing (i don't download any of the mods because it gives the illusion you're in purgatory)

3. Not much variety with buildings (there are so many other buildings that could have been included, especially landmarks)

4. When the UDI kicks you and says you failed the mission even though you didn't hit anything.

5. If cars and boats can crash and burn, why can't aircraft do the same and re-spawn at it's starting location when it does crash?

6. The snow feature isn't automatic so you have to cheat or set your computer date to Christmas.

7. When you plop an airport, the whole thing goes below the altitude you wanted.

8. When AI ships keep crashing into things even though you cleared a path for them.

9. When AI cars keep appearing for a few seconds then vanish (i downloaded the Persistent Automata Mod, but the computer that had everything else like my cities died on me)

And 10. Lazy reward layout! I hate the way some lots like airports are laid out

[Kusajika Yachiru 9]

Several things:

1. You can't build under bridges

2. The out of bounds grid is depressing (i don't download any of the mods because it gives the illusion you're in purgatory)

3. Not much variety with buildings (there are so many other buildings that could have been included, especially landmarks)

4. When the UDI kicks you and says you failed the mission even though you didn't hit anything.

5. If cars and boats can crash and burn, why can't aircraft do the same and re-spawn at it's starting location when it does crash?

6. The snow feature isn't automatic so you have to cheat or set your computer date to Christmas.

7. When you plop an airport, the whole thing goes below the altitude you wanted.

8. When AI ships keep crashing into things even though you cleared a path for them.

9. When AI cars keep appearing for a few seconds then vanish (i downloaded the Persistent Automata Mod, but the computer that had everything else like my cities died on me)

And 10. Lazy reward layout! I hate the way some lots like airports are laid out

1: Check the LEX, for some lots that fix that now, well for roads and stuff.

2. Yeah, but what is the other option? To show the whole region but blackend out while you play that one tile? Make long loading times.

3. LEX fixes that.

4. Yeah some glitches happen...

5. Um...

7. It picks the lowest point and levels all the land to that level, or sometimes the highest... I suggest saving first, doing some level work, and then plop. Or build a custom one.

8. Most of the time they only crash into custom stuff that was not in the orginal game, but sometimes Maxis stuff too... also a glitch.

9.They've either reached there destination or, it's a cycle. If cares stayed on the map 24/7 it would be very demanding to the computer. It's fine the way it is for me. Also sounds like you had a conflict and didn't fully read the read-me.

10: What do you mean? And the airport is not a reward, unless you mean the Airforce Base... don't like the look, try your hand at building your own, takes pratice but can be rewarding to have full control.

[CahosRahneVeloza 385]

The U-Drive-It feature is just not fun. The controls are stiff, it comes with all these limitations that make it useless...on Maxis Highways, it locks on to the streets whether you have it or not, you can't get near water, you can't go off bridges, and you can't even get on railroad bridges.

Most vehicles are just too slow.

I kinda agree on this matter.

The first SIMCity game I ever played that has a "Drive around the city" mode was SIMCity 2000 on the Playstation. I have always been a console gamer up 'til 2007 when I got my first computer & the first PC game I ever bought was SIMCity 4 (Vanilla version, no Rush Hour expansion pack) as it was very difficult to find SIMCity 3000 in my country so I feel I've left out a whole chapter in the franchise's history.

Anyway, the first thing I wanted to try out immediately was the drive around the city bit, too bad that wasn't available on vanilla version so I had to get Rush Hour for it. And when I did get RH I was initially bummed out I was really hoping that UDI was like in 2000 where the drive by is seen on first person perspective but it wasn't & it took me a long time before I finally started enjoying UDI to which the missions were the deciding factor that lead in me enjoying the feature.

Nowadays I've forgiven UDI's 3rd person overhead semi isometric view & I've accounted the reason for Maxis choosing this mode was because of hardware limitations at that time SC4 was released. Which leads to a question I want to ask.

I've seen CitiesXL but have yet to play it as my rig's not up to even minimal requirements. From demo & let's Play videos on Youtube it seems you can zoom into street view in that game giving you your SIM's (I don't know what people on that game are called) eye view of whatever is happening in town. My question now is, does that game have a similar mode to it like UDI? And if there is such a feature, is it in first person view as well?

[airman15 4,113]

1: Check the LEX, for some lots that fix that now, well for roads and stuff.

2. Yeah, but what is the other option? To show the whole region but blackend out while you play that one tile? Make long loading times.

3. LEX fixes that.

4. Yeah some glitches happen...

5. Um...

7. It picks the lowest point and levels all the land to that level, or sometimes the highest... I suggest saving first, doing some level work, and then plop. Or build a custom one.

8. Most of the time they only crash into custom stuff that was not in the orginal game, but sometimes Maxis stuff too... also a glitch.

9.They've either reached there destination or, it's a cycle. If cares stayed on the map 24/7 it would be very demanding to the computer. It's fine the way it is for me. Also sounds like you had a conflict and didn't fully read the read-me.

10: What do you mean? And the airport is not a reward, unless you mean the Airforce Base... don't like the look, try your hand at building your own, takes pratice but can be rewarding to have full control.

Explanatory notes:

I understand that some of these can be edited myself, but i'm taking defaults and lack of editing programs into account.

# 1 & 3- I Haven't checked the LEX

#2- I thought it would be a good idea to make the grid around each city to look like it's part of the region like you are in region view. But later I realized that even if it was made, it wont work because the geography of each city (unless it is a water city on water region for example). I guess I'll have to live with it, even though it resembles flat earth.

#5- Its a realism matter. Cars and boats can only take so much abuse before they explode or sink. Planes on the other hand can bounce back and forth between buildings and their health still stays perfect. This is also a common problem with the Fire Plane when it's trying to land itself and it keeps bouncing against something before touchdown.

#7- This happens on hilly areas and I'm trying to get the main terminal to match street level. Leveling helps, but sometimes it does that even when i do level the terrain.

#8- I haven't seen a fix for this, but if someone can make one i'd be happy. Again, this is a realism issue because most of my ships keep crashing into cliffs and beaches like the captain is drunk.

#9- I already have a fix for this, but my hard drive with everything I had on it is in a plastic bag and I'm trying to figure out how to get it running.

#10- Again, realism issue. I say this because some lots look like somebody hadn't put much effort into them. The cruise ship port for example looked plain and boring. It was a white building that sat on light-colored base and overlay textures and overall looked plain and depressing (for it's lack of coloring, even the cruise ship itself is mostly white).

  Edited May 7, 2011 by usfighter15  

[Kusajika Yachiru 9]

1: Check the LEX, for some lots that fix that now, well for roads and stuff.

2. Yeah, but what is the other option? To show the whole region but blackend out while you play that one tile? Make long loading times.

3. LEX fixes that.

4. Yeah some glitches happen...

5. Um...

7. It picks the lowest point and levels all the land to that level, or sometimes the highest... I suggest saving first, doing some level work, and then plop. Or build a custom one.

8. Most of the time they only crash into custom stuff that was not in the orginal game, but sometimes Maxis stuff too... also a glitch.

9.They've either reached there destination or, it's a cycle. If cares stayed on the map 24/7 it would be very demanding to the computer. It's fine the way it is for me. Also sounds like you had a conflict and didn't fully read the read-me.

10: What do you mean? And the airport is not a reward, unless you mean the Airforce Base... don't like the look, try your hand at building your own, takes pratice but can be rewarding to have full control.

Explanatory notes:

I understand that some of these can be edited myself, but i'm taking defaults and lack of editing programs into account.

# 1 & 3- I Haven't checked the LEX

#2- I thought it would be a good idea to make the grid around each city to look like it's part of the region like you are in region view. But later I realized that even if it was made, it wont work because the geography of each city (unless it is a water city on water region for example). I guess I'll have to live with it, even though it resembles flat earth.

#5- Its a realism matter. Cars and boats can only take so much abuse before they explode or sink. Planes on the other hand can bounce back and forth between buildings and their health still stays perfect. This is also a common problem with the Fire Plane when it's trying to land itself and it keeps bouncing against something before touchdown.

#7- This happens on hilly areas and I'm trying to get the main terminal to match street level. Leveling helps, but sometimes it does that even when i do level the terrain.

#8- I haven't seen a fix for this, but if someone can make one i'd be happy. Again, this is a realism issue because most of my ships keep crashing into cliffs and beaches like the captain is drunk.

#9- I already have a fix for this, but my hard drive with everything I had on it is in a plastic bag and I'm trying to figure out how to get it running.

#10- Again, realism issue. I say this because some lots look like somebody hadn't put much effort into them. The cruise ship port for example looked plain and boring. It was a white building that sat on light-colored base and overlay textures and overall looked plain and depressing (for it's lack of coloring, even the cruise ship itself is mostly white).

Some bugs and glitches will always exist and absolute realsim will not exist in this game, some things ya just gotta bite your lip, grit your teeth and try to make it work.Yes some Maxis builds seem a little... lacking is a nice way to put it. But again that is what the LEX is for, with over thousands of uploaded lots/mods if you're willing to take the time to look and download the files, the rewards are great. Look at some uber realstic city journals and if you ask them how they did it, they will most likely say three things, paitence, pratice, and downloads. Hope this helps ya.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

In a word folks, UDI isn't worth the candle. It was a tack on dreamed up my EA marketing to promote the Sims series, and in SC4 it is an utter flop. I always turn it off.

[Kusajika Yachiru 9]

I like UDI, it has it's flaws. But I rather be able to at least drive around my city then not at all.

[CahosRahneVeloza 385]

I like UDI, it has it's flaws. But I rather be able to at least drive around my city then not at all.

Agreed, it's kind of rewarding to be able to "explore" the cities we create even if we do it in third person perspective

[RedImperator 16]

Without question, it's the lack of an "Undo" function. I can't tell you how much time and how many Simoleons I've wasted thanks to one lousy little mis-click that manages to completely screw up some major project.

[poshbakerloo 186]

I would also say that the level ground tool is a pain! I hate the fact that you only get a free draw circle for it. It is only good if your trying to do natural looking landscapes. BUT, if you're trying to level ground to make something look straight and flat such as building an embankment along a river its so hard and time consuming and usually ends in buildings being demolished. It was so much easier in SC3000!

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I would also say that the level ground tool is a pain! I hate the fact that you only get a free draw circle for it. It is only good if your trying to do natural looking landscapes. BUT, if you're trying to level ground to make something look straight and flat such as building an embankment along a river its so hard and time consuming and usually ends in buildings being demolished. It was so much easier in SC3000!

Try placing single road tiles. It does the trick if possible.

As for undo, careful use of the in-game save CTRL+s is the answer. Do it often, especially when you are starting something and want to keep it from being messed up. If you goof, you just quit and reload.

If you were a programmer and had ever done anything that needed a "kill ring" for editing text, you would know what it would take to back up each mouse move that created anything. You don't have enough CPU or disk space for this.

  Edited May 8, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[Duke87 1,070]

Is lag still a problem on newer machines?

'cause that was a big complaint back in the day.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Is lag still a problem on newer machines?

'cause that was a big complaint back in the day.

Depends on your definition of lag. It runs fine for me, and I am using a JIT compiler for windows calls. I don't think it was ever designed to run under wine on Linux, which changes all DirectX calls into OpenGL and makes Windows requests into Linux requests. This happens on the fly, and is transparent as far as I am concerned. I sure wouldn't want to try this on a Pentium III, though.

Of course I almost never run in Cheetah, most often Turtle or Rhino. It is a program for leisure time, not type A behavior.

Just for interest, my machine is an AMD Athlon X2 (64-bit, dual core) with an ATI 3000 graphics processor. I have 4 GB of real and 10 GB swap space. I do not run with any affinity settings, but only some window controls due to a bug in fglrx (the ATI driver) that want to run the game in hardware I haven't got, namely an HD monitor. Because of this and a buffering problem in wine, I have to run in Software rendering, which doesn't seem to lag at all.

[Zeck180 18]

One thing that annoys me the most is that the cars don'normally stop when the crossing gates go down on the railroad including trams.

[Jazzmaster 716]

Getting more into the RHW there's something that really came to my attention, and it's probably been brought up here before but away I go anyways..

It feels like the traffic simulator is really lacking it's commercial and leisure aspect. Not sure how to word it better, but I just mean that the only people traveling are those going to work.

I feel like the beaches should be crowded in the summer months, maybe even spring to account for spring breakers, and less crowded during the winter months. Commercial service sectors should also be busier during the summer, weekends and holidays to account for the shopping rush. Hell, if they incorporated Black Friday into the game with a mad rush of shoppers that'd be pretty swell. University campuses should be more crowded in the fall winter and spring, and less in the summer but not completely empty. Roadways and airports should be busier on certain weekends, like Memorial Day, Labor Day, etc. weekends.

See it now? I sort of dislike that you have to either cleverly place your zones or use traffic generators to make/show Sims actually USE the highway...as beautiful as the game is, a lot of it remains static eye-candy...

[Cob92 360]

Is lag still a problem on newer machines?

'cause that was a big complaint back in the day.

The simulation clock still lags in larger cities (and you need to run it that fast because it can take a Simyear for anything to build on Hard; playing the game leisurely means that I will have time to matriculate and graduate from college before my city even reaches half of the 10 million Sims that I want it to have), and this is on a machine running an AMD Phenom II quad-core OC'ed to 3.2 GHz with a Radeon HD5770 and 4GB of RAM. It's not the most powerful machine out there, but it's a full blown gaming PC and still can't run the simulation algorithm with zero slowdowns.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Yoshi, no matter what the box says, this is still just SimCity 4 Rush Hour. The emphasis of the the whole program is on getting to work. No provision is made for momma to take the kids to school, the zoo, the beach, etc. It would take an expansion pack to even traffic loads over the day. It doesn't even account for weekends when most commercial buildings would be closed.

Cobhris96: You have a commendable goal, but since the game doesn't multi-process your quad cores are doing nothing but running the background stuff. Unless we get a rework of the exe to allow this, it will always lag at these levels. The nature of simulations is that as things get larger it just takes longer to examine all objects. If we could multi-process we should wish the graphics off to a second CPU, and the path finding to another, but I don't think this would help much unless the code was set up with many and frequent rendezvous to make sure everything stayed in sync. I suspect most of the slowdown is the graphics presentation. I believe the most efficient communications mechanism would be shared memory, since shared pipes would take too much time.

To save your frustrations, maybe you should put that goal in the background and only run that city once in a while, while working on some newer stuff to take ennui away. Build a farming community with the SPAM. It is a different point of view, and can be a lot of fun.

  Edited May 11, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[Cob92 360]

Cobhris96: You have a commendable goal, but since the game doesn't multi-process your quad cores are doing nothing but running the background stuff. Unless we get a rework of the exe to allow this, it will always lag at these levels. The nature of simulations is that as things get larger it just takes longer to examine all objects. If we could multi-process we should wish the graphics off to a second CPU, and the path finding to another, but I don't think this would help much unless the code was set up with many and frequent rendezvous to make sure everything stayed in sync. I suspect most of the slowdown is the graphics presentation. I believe the most efficient communications mechanism would be shared memory, since shared pipes would take too much time.

Doesn't SC4 process the graphics through your GPU if you have it set to Hardware rendering? I always thought that Software rendering was for CPU-generated graphics and Hardware rendering was for GPU-generated graphics.

[z1 566]

I suspect most of the slowdown is the graphics presentation.

Virtually all of the slowdown is from the traffic simulator. In big cities in Cheetah mode, you can tell when the traffic simulator is running because the whole game just slows down horribly. The problem is that the traffic simulator algorithms take exponentially longer to run as the size of the city increases.

[Androgeos 73]

I really do not like freight trucks in U-Drive-It mode. They drop their trailers when you hit them or switch on your siren near them. This is made even more annoying because emergency vehicles are disturbingly fragile and tend to explode upon contact with most heavy vehicles. The only road vehicle I feel safe in is the tank.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Cobhris96: You have a commendable goal, but since the game doesn't multi-process your quad cores are doing nothing but running the background stuff. Unless we get a rework of the exe to allow this, it will always lag at these levels. The nature of simulations is that as things get larger it just takes longer to examine all objects. If we could multi-process we should wish the graphics off to a second CPU, and the path finding to another, but I don't think this would help much unless the code was set up with many and frequent rendezvous to make sure everything stayed in sync. I suspect most of the slowdown is the graphics presentation. I believe the most efficient communications mechanism would be shared memory, since shared pipes would take too much time.

Doesn't SC4 process the graphics through your GPU if you have it set to Hardware rendering? I always thought that Software rendering was for CPU-generated graphics and Hardware rendering was for GPU-generated graphics.

Yes, but something has to load the GPU's shared memory. And z1 is quite right. I am not sure it is an exponential curve but it is at least quadratic. In any case, the more objects in the city, the slower. Off loading some tasks to other processors would be beneficial, and a CPU dedicated to looking after the GPU would take off a considerable load. Unfortunately, the program senses monitors and won't run if one is present.

Posted Today, 06:48 AM

I really do not like freight trucks in U-Drive-It mode. They drop their trailers when you hit them or switch on your siren near them. This is made even more annoying because emergency vehicles are disturbingly fragile and tend to explode upon contact with most heavy vehicles. The only road vehicle I feel safe in is the tank.

I dislike UDI so much that I turn it off at the beginning of each city.

  Edited May 12, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[iuri99 48]

What frustate me in ALL City simulators its unrealistic build in slope terrain.

[Zeck180 18]

What frustate me in ALL City simulators its unrealistic build in slope terrain.

That's why I build on plains.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You might want to check into slope mods.

[Jazzmaster 716]

If you search the STEX, you'll find a wide variety of additional civic buildings, among many other things. There's thousands of downloads spread out across here, SimCity 4 Devotion and Simpeg as well as other sites.

[gamzdude 57]

that wren insurance grows constantly in my cites image wish there was a way to take it out of the game permanently not just using to go away wren mod. take it out it makes me & as well as ctd,s even when i have my game patched

  Edited May 16, 2011 by gamzdude