Need some quick advise and wondering how to hack boarders

[DCMAKER 0]

Alright, I am wondering what useful mods their are that I can use. Right now i have read a few like the double decker highway set up but i am going to avoid that for now because it looks real complex and I rather not deal with that one yet. I am basically wondering what are the most helpful mods you guy's got to offer for a beginner. Like special hospitals police station stuff like that.

EDIT:also looking for good mods that dont make this game even more complex.....I am just starting simcity 4 lol...haven't played simcity since 3000 in like 2000 lol

Also how do you build bigger cities. I read about the config bmp but that only affects the total region size not the city squares. Is it possible to get rid of the individual squares all together? My goal would be to play the New York city map in one city or in like 4-8 pieces. (quadrupling the size or more of each city.

Also any good links to tips on how to build good cities? I got some good ideas but eager to learn more. Also dont worry i plan on reading through the forums for a while but wanted to know if you guy's got any good ideas/tips to highlight for me

  Edited July 4, 2011 by DCMAKER  

[CaptCity 4,666]

Welcome to Simtropolis...

Alright, I am wondering what useful mods their are that I can use. Right now i have read a few like the double decker highway set up but i am going to avoid that for now because it looks real complex and I rather not deal with that one yet. I am basically wondering what are the most helpful mods you guy's got to offer for a beginner. Like special hospitals police station stuff like that.

Well, there's a "top ten" list here for mods that improve game performance and appearance. You might be interested in some. I will ask first, however, whether or not you have regular SimCity 4 or SimCity 4 Deluxe. The game version will make a big difference when it comes to what is available. SimCity 4 Deliuxe is required by most of what you'll find on this site. As for specialized buildings, you might try searching the STEX for items you might want. There are many styles and examples to choose from.

Also how do you build bigger cities. I read about the config bmp but that only affects the total region size not the city squares. Is it possible to get rid of the individual squares all together? My goal would be to play the New York city map in one city or in like 4-8 pieces.

This is a pretty common question. At this time, it is not possible to use any but the three game sizes that currently exist, so it is not possible to make a region into one large city. It is possible to change the config so that there are different sized cities, but doing that will remove everything that is on the cities that are changed.

Also any good links to tips on how to build good cities? I got some good ideas but eager to learn more. Also dont worry i plan on reading through the forums for a while but wanted to know if you guy's got any good ideas/tips to highlight for me

You might check out the tutorial section in the Omnibus, and then ask any questions you still have.

[DCMAKER 0]

yea i just tried SC Scape and i noticed the S M L concept. Really sticks because large feels like a small or medium :/ No one has been able to edit it? The game simply reads the S M L as a size and applies a preset figure to each thing. Has anyone looked into where SC4 gets the values for SML? If you find those values you can edit that and change the sizes of the SML all together. I am no programer so i am of little help but i am sure there is some file somewhere that tells the game what size the SML is.

my guess would be the file that tells the congif file what size the SML is is in here or the apps folder....has

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\simcity 4 deluxe(main folder has lots of config files.)

I have never built a game before but the guy's who mod this should have a better idea where that is located....have they never looked?

Plus if someone knows what accesses that config file you should be able to locate the file that tells the size

Also i got deluxe....have it on steam.

http://www.steamcalc....com/id/DCMAKER ^^ Paid on average $2.85 per game lol

SIDE NOTE: Are they making a new Simcity game? This has been out forever lol

  Edited July 4, 2011 by DCMAKER  

[CaptCity 4,666]

...Has anyone looked into where SC4 gets the values for SML? If you find those values you can edit that and change the sizes of the SML all together. I am no programer so i am of little help but i am sure there is some file somewhere that tells the game what size the SML is.

Well, even if someone found something in a game file, it is not permitted to alter them anyway. Some things just may not be possible to change.

Also i got deluxe....have it on steam.

That means you have a fully updated game and can use most of the custom content available.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, don't be in a rush to change the parameters of a game you don't understand. This one is radically different from its predecessors.

If you look around, you'll find all kinds of tricks to skew this or that, but in the end, I no longer use any of them. I have a couple of cheat lots that get rid of worries about power, water and pollution, but that's it. You can find them on the STEX in my name.

Before you go changing the set up, try running with no changes except maybe the Network Addon Mod. You will need a couple of days to really get your mind around it, so playing without it for a while will make you more appreciative.

You cannot win this game. There is no winning condition, only a losing one. What one does is set a goal, achieve it, set another goal, and so on. I've been playing this for ten years, and believe me, I know.

It is a legacy game, so don't expect slick graphics or newer features. EA isn't interested in making a new edition. They've made two tries and had rather poor results both times. The only things they've done lately is the STEAM edition with all the patches applied. You are lucky there. If you don't have them, you still need two plugins called BldgProps_Vol1 and _Vol2. If you need a link, let us know.

Most of the things you have asked for are bound in the .exe and may not be touched without violating EA's copyright, and this site has agreed not to do this.

If you haven't done it already, please read the pinned threads above, and have a go through the Omnibus.

This game is addictive, so welcome to the club. After you've done some more research, if you are stuck, please ask.

[His Divine Hand 244]

yea i just tried SC Scape and i noticed the S M L concept. Really sticks because large feels like a small or medium :/ No one has been able to edit it? The game simply reads the S M L as a size and applies a preset figure to each thing. Has anyone looked into where SC4 gets the values for SML? If you find those values you can edit that and change the sizes of the SML all together. I am no programer so i am of little help but i am sure there is some file somewhere that tells the game what size the SML is.

my guess would be the file that tells the congif file what size the SML is is in here or the apps folder....has

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\simcity 4 deluxe(main folder has lots of config files.)

I have never built a game before but the guy's who mod this should have a better idea where that is located....have they never looked?

Plus if someone knows what accesses that config file you should be able to locate the file that tells the size

In a thread someone demonstrated that there was no possible way to make cities bigger than the current largest one due to how the game is programed to read each grid square. If I recall correctly, it has to do with the fact that a large tile is a 256 x 256 tile square, which equals 65,536 total tiles. That number is the highest number that hex coding can reach, and since each tile has a hex id code, you cannot have a city with more than 65,536 tiles. In other words, the largest city tile is as large as it gets.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

In a thread someone demonstrated that there was no possible way to make cities bigger than the current largest one due to how the game is programed to read each grid square. If I recall correctly, it has to do with the fact that a large tile is a 256 x 256 tile square, which equals 65,536 total tiles. That number is the highest number that hex coding can reach, and since each tile has a hex id code, you cannot have a city with more than 65,536 tiles. In other words, the largest city tile is as large as it gets.

Quite true. This is the 16-bit limit, and the program was written pretty much before 32-bit addressing was possible, so it is a short integer. If this game were written these days, this limit could be raised to 2³²-1, especially on 64-bit machines with all of memory considered to be one gigantic virtual space.

I think one thing that may prompt at least a re-compile of this game is the introduction of the 128-bit machines. They already exist, but are not marketed to the consumer as yet. Several years ago, I had a lab with an AIX box that had two 128-bit RISC processors running the show.

[DCMAKER 0]

i do wish they would make a simcity 5...its been long enough. They series needs a refresh badly.(i only care about larger maps....nicer graphics would be nice but i could careless. Once I get my laptop back I am pondering on running a virtual box and running two simcity4 side by side so I can build with double the space and save to the same region

edit...this game was written during 32bit era.....i assume they did it for 16bit in order to keep the game manageable.....back when it came out this was a hefty game.

  Edited July 4, 2011 by DCMAKER  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

i do wish they would make a simcity 5...its been long enough. They series needs a refresh badly.(i only care about larger maps....nicer graphics would be nice but i could careless. Once I get my laptop back I am pondering on running a virtual box and running two simcity4 side by side so I can build with double the space and save to the same region

This program drives CPUs at 100%. If you try that on a laptop expect a temperature overload shut down or a melted CPU chip. Most laptops do not have enough cooling to handle even one program running flat out.

As the grandfather's say "One at a time is good fishing". If it is too slow for you, you are missing the point of the game being a leisure activity, not a race. Relax, do some design, and enjoy the animation. This is supposed to be fun, not a heart attack.

[DCMAKER 0]

psh if this pentium D(using integrated graphics :/ ) can run the game at 1280x1024 or whatever than my 720qm and GTX 260m can run it at 1600x1200

also i install radius and industry multiplier...didn't install the dirt industry pollution multiplier ^^ also installed NAM and the rail and NWM and the god mod tools and rain thing. Where do i get the police and hospital stuff? of and school

Also is there an residential and commercial doubler.

  Edited July 4, 2011 by DCMAKER  

[z1 566]

In a thread someone demonstrated that there was no possible way to make cities bigger than the current largest one due to how the game is programed to read each grid square. If I recall correctly, it has to do with the fact that a large tile is a 256 x 256 tile square, which equals 65,536 total tiles. That number is the highest number that hex coding can reach, and since each tile has a hex id code, you cannot have a city with more than 65,536 tiles. In other words, the largest city tile is as large as it gets.

That's not the real reason; if you look at the data files of this game, you'll see 32-bit integers everywhere. This really is a 32-bit game. There are occasionally 16-bit limits on some numbers, but those are rare.

Instead, the real reason you can't keep increasing tile sizes is that the number of buildings, props, and network tiles in the game grows quadratically as the length of a tile grows linearly. But much worse than that, the traffic simulator uses A* pathfinding, which is an exponential algorithm. This is hard to avoid, as the number of possible routes actually does grow exponentially; the A* algorithm is actually pretty good in that it reduces that exponent a bit. So if you had the source code, it wouldn't take much to create a 512x512 tile. But once it started to fill up, the game would run so slowly as to be unbearable, even on today's fastest home computers. And it would be the traffic simulator's pathfinding algorithm that would be doing this.

  Edited July 4, 2011 by z1  

[DCMAKER 0]

i get what your saying and it wouldn't be that today's computers couldn't run it....they can if the game was multithreaded but this game is only single threaded so you wouldn't be able to max the cpu anyways.

plus i wouldn't want a 32 bit map ^^ i just want one 4 times the size that shouldn't be too hard to run

also i figure that all of these are down in god mod piece by piece? This must take days!

http://www.simtropol...ssic-tutorials/

Also where do i get the improved buildings?

  Edited July 4, 2011 by DCMAKER  

[z1 566]

i get what your saying and it wouldn't be that today's computers couldn't run it....they can if the game was multithreaded but this game is only single threaded so you wouldn't be able to max the cpu anyways.

To the contrary, exponential growth is a killer. A fully utilized eight core CPU would still crumble under the calculating requirements imposed by the traffic simulator for a 512x512 square. You would need dozens of CPU cores for this to be feasible. And then someone would have to reprogram the traffic simulator to be massively parallel.

plus i wouldn't want a 32 bit map ^^ i just want one 4 times the size that shouldn't be too hard to run

Four times the size is all I'm talking about here. Don't even think about 1024x1024; it would run slower than real time, regardless of what you threw at it. But even 512x512 won't be feasible for many more years, regardless of how you program it.

[DCMAKER 0]

ha my bad that would be 32 bit....but honestly i can't see how 32bit map would cause a SB cpu that much trouble. If a P4 3.0 ghz can run a 16bit map with no problem than a SB chip could run a 32bit map. A SB cpu is like 20 times faster than a P4. when it comes to dhrystone tests. If the exponential values are that bad than a simple system can be made to fix it.

[z1 566]

A 512x512 map fully filled has four times the networks of a 256x256 map. But it's the number of connections between these networks that grows exponentially, and that's the killer. Look at it this way: According to Moore's Law, computer power doubles approximately every 18 months. That means that since this game was written in 2002, computer power has doubled about 6 times - today's computers are about 64 times as powerful as those of 2002. Yet the game still lags on large tiles.

Why? Custom content has allowed more Sims to be packed into a single tile. This has required some exponential growth in the traffic simulator run time to deal with the extra Sims, and this has almost kept pace with Moore's law. And that has happened without even increasing the tile size.

That's why exponential growth is so deadly.

As for the coordinate system, SC4 actually uses signed 32-bit hex numbers to specify coordinates; these numbers are calibrated so that each increment equals 15 microns, or 0x10000 equals one meter. Such a system could support tile sizes of 2048x2048.

The good news: Such a tile size could support cities of more than 100 million Sims!

The bad news: The game would run so slowly that you would never live long enough to see this!

  Edited July 5, 2011 by z1  

[DCMAKER 0]

its possible but requires an advanced AI to limit random decisions

i am no math expert or programmer but i am sure something using the method of x is at _____plot and can move in one of 8 ways than once that move is done it can move again....like a turn based RPG. and each move has 8 choices which i think would reduce the calculations and possibilities by a lot...but again i am no math pr programming expect. I try to avoid it because its inherently annoying.

Well i played around with some of the new god features and you cna make some cool lakes and canyons ut still sucks limited to such a small space lol. Also if you make a canyon than fill it with rain water than use any other god/mayor terrian feature on it the water disappears and leaves a wall of water lol....reminds me of Moses and the red sea ^^

I still think many of these advance features are way to much of a pain. Also with there was an easier way of doing monorail over roads instead of special pieces. Like bam i made a road now i just drag mono over it and bam its done...too bad.

Also whats the difference between mono rail, subway, rail, and elevated rail?

  Edited July 5, 2011 by DCMAKER  

[Cob92 360]

A 512x512 map fully filled has four times the networks of a 256x256 map. But it's the number of connections between these networks that grows exponentially, and that's the killer. Look at it this way: According to Moore's Law, computer power doubles approximately every 18 months. That means that since this game was written in 2002, computer power has doubled about 6 times - today's computers are about 64 times as powerful as those of 2002. Yet the game still lags on large tiles.

Why? Custom content has allowed more Sims to be packed into a single tile. This has required some exponential growth in the traffic simulator run time to deal with the extra Sims, and this has almost kept pace with Moore's law. And that has happened without even increasing the tile size.

Also, it has to do with the fact that the game doesn't take full advantage of modern hardware. Most CPUs today are multicore, yet SC4 still tries to force itself down a single thread. The traffic simulator should have one core all to itself at least.

[z1 566]

its possible but requires an advanced AI to limit random decisions

The traffic simulator's A* pathfinding method is quite sophisticated and does not make random decisions.

i am no math expert or programmer...

I am afraid that this is the problem right here. The methods already in use in SC4 are far more sophisticated than anything along the lines of what you suggest. The A* algorithm was one of the best pathfinding algorithms available at the time the game has written, and even today it's still used in many games. Advances in mathematics and software engineering do not proceed at anywhere near the speed of advances in computing power.

Also whats the difference between mono rail, subway, rail, and elevated rail?

Functionally, it's just a difference in speed; the speeds are 225, 105, 140, and 105 kph, respectively. (This is in the NAM.) However, each rail type also has its own look and its own stations. The subway is unique in that it has its own view and takes up no real estate above ground.

Also, it has to do with the fact that the game doesn't take full advantage of modern hardware. Most CPUs today are multicore, yet SC4 still tries to force itself down a single thread. The traffic simulator should have one core all to itself at least.

It already effectively does. In a big city, you notice how the game slows to a crawl every few months? That's the traffic simulator grabbing almost the entire CPU. The traffic simulator would have to have access to multiple CPU cores to make any noticeable difference. And of course this would also require SC4 to hand over scheduling to the OS.

  Edited July 5, 2011 by z1  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I can verify this empirically. I have run my system monitor program, which takes about 10% of one CPU to watch the game run. In a large tile, one of the CPUs hovers between 80 and 100%. My machine is an Athlon X2, but I don't think performance would be much better on a Cray X/MP. The program is doggedly single threaded, simply because multi-threading wasn't available on home machines when it was written. When it came out, the game was a marvel of the age. It is getting rather long in the tooth now, but after running it for 10 years, I still enjoy it.

When I make these tests, most of the O/S is doggo, because it has nothing to do. All the processes are sleeping on a signal wait, so the O/S overhead when the program is running is quite small. Nevertheless, both processors are good and busy. I suspect the dispatcher swaps processors quite handily as each slice comes up. I am reluctant to run any program in real-time mode because they re almost impossible to interrupt. Only a drop-dead signal (kill -9) seems to get through. Of course if the program does an I/O that will be handed off in a multi-threaded way, but these are very brief and rare unless you are paging (god forbid). My 4GB has never been filled up by this game, so it doesn't page. I don't go on a rampage with plugins.

To properly multi-thread this program would effectively be a rewrite. Even if one took care to preserve the ability to use present custom content, one could not resist fixing the queuing bugs that cause the CTDs. The much larger address space available now would be very tempting, but if I were doing such a project, I'd move a lot more out into the table space, and make the core code as small as possible, simply for speed. Using modern interprocess communications, I can see the program easily eating four cores, minimum. The problems that would arise would be synchronization of the rendezvous. There would still have to be a very large, possibly paged, shared memory space just to keep the graphics happy. The program is currently written mostly in C, and C++ overheads are not worth the trouble, so I would keep it there with critical sections in assembly. A few tests would determine if the C++ fault processor (try ... catch) would be better than pure C, but the whole OOP algorithm is probably not suitable.

One could go on and on, but one has to catch the weekly trolley to go shopping.

  Edited July 5, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[Cob92 360]

It already effectively does. In a big city, you notice how the game slows to a crawl every few months? That's the traffic simulator grabbing almost the entire CPU. The traffic simulator would have to have access to multiple CPU cores to make any noticeable difference. And of course this would also require SC4 to hand over scheduling to the OS.

I mean in addition to the rest of the game. SC5 should be built to use your entire quad-core CPU instead of just one core. And it needs to be built to be able to use hardware better than what is available to the average consumer so that the game is "future-proofed". I can't help but be annoyed with SC4 when I open up the tiny cities the game gives me and be stuck with 2.5D graphics that have my GPU snoring.

[idcaf 65]

the problem is you are quite a lonely guy being the one able to afford quad core and a neat graphics card.

Usually, people still use some ancient hardware like athlons, or entry level dual cores. And that is the biggest market and that is what EA puts it's money on.

So if this game came out today, it probably would work on multi threading but nothing spectacular. I mean, look at Cities XL, the game came out in 2009, when lots of people had dual core and it doesn't even use both of them. So I wouldn't put too much hope in SC5 to be a marvel like sc4 was when it was released.

[LuapYllier 8]

I have never built a game before but the guy's who mod this should have a better idea where that is located....have they never looked?

These folks have been diligently picking this game apart to its smallest (allowable) pieces for what, 8 years now, I am pretty confident that it has been looked at many many times.

also i figure that all of these are down in god mod piece by piece? This must take days!

http://www.simtropol...ssic-tutorials/

You might be in the wrong game DCMAKER. Some people in here spend YEARS working the same city.

  Edited July 6, 2011 by CaptCity  
Merged posts.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Let us look for a moment at modernizing the game.

We'd like it to multi-process with full multi-threading on as many processors as we have. These days that will soon be somewhere between 1 and 8, inclusive.

The game already forks off one task, the security watchdog that checks for the play disk is actually a separate process that sleeps while the game runs. It doesn't even have the courtesy to terminate when its functions end, probably for good reason. So the game does multi-thread but not in a useful manner.

If the game forked off some of its processes, there would have to be some kind of dispatcher hierarchy, which means the game would probably lock in to one specific operating system in a big way. Either the game would have to turn its scheduling over to the operating system (Ack! not portable) or one of its spawned tasks would have to be an internal scheduler (already has one). Let's assume in this discussion that modernizing also means multi-platform portable. (Farewell DirectX, its been a dump.)

All operating systems do the same thing, namely, operate the hardware. They also have an interface to the storage media. No matter what you call your operating system, these are the tasks. The networking stuff is an application program, and with the Internet this has become pretty standardized on TCP/IP. The game does not do any networking, so this point is moot for now.

Let's pick one of the standard inter-process communications schemes that all operating systems have: shared memory. This means that any process wanting to update this memory would need to set a semaphore to keep other processes out while it was doing this. Since we want to do this a great many times in different areas, we need many semaphores. It won't do to be updating something like the graphics areas when the GPU is selecting it for display, so multiple buffers are needed and the ability to swap them in hardware. Most systems can do this easily, but it has to be done at at least 16 fps for good animation and faster if possible.

Now comes the crunch: We fork the GPU stuff off to a separate CPU which won't do much except manage buffer swaps unless your are running in software mode; also fork the keyboard and mouse I/O to a separate process which means an interlocked queue of commands including zoning commands, etc. We need good response to this or the loose nut holding the keyboard will become impatient and start doing impulsive things like multiple hits on the escape key or scrolling the mouse wheel up and down, overloading the command queue. Whadda ya know? A reason for a CTD, but no excuse. If the command queue is full, make a noise and ignore the input. And so on, forking off as many processes as make sense.

So what happens. All these processes enter the system and get into the operating system's scheduler. Generally processors are assigned by letting each processor take the top process off the dispatch queue when it needs something to do, its last task having been blocked or timed out. In this game, time-outs will be the order of the day, since it doesn't do any I/O or other blocking except wait on semaphores unless you are doing a save or a load. The only I/O during play is the keyboard/mouse, and this has a separate queuing mechanism controlled by a semaphore and an overload algorithm.

Now there is a danger here for the implementor. You have to be sure that all processes don't get blocked waiting on semaphores. This is a deadly embrace, sometimes called "After you, Alphonse". There needs to be a watchdog timer for any process inside a critical section that blows the whistle if some processor is in there too long. Another reason for a CTD, but not an excuse. Just another error to be caught and fixed on the fly. Programs are finite automata, and there is no excuse for a program to crash. BTW, most CPUs have this ability if it is set.

And so on.

I am not trying to comprehensive, just shedding a little light on some of the design consequences of updating this program.