A few questions about custom content.

[cristi25med 1]

Hello everyone. I'm not actually that new to Simtropolis, but in never posted before. I strongly support the ideea of actually looking yourself in older threads to find common answers, but since it's my 5-th fail, i have to ASK so....here it is.

Basically i am intro realism. I want to build towns and cities, agriculutral landscapes and large downtowns using a specific feel, american ,european, asian, and so on. So, i try to customize my Plugins folder the way it does match what i look for. Well ,the problem is, after 2-3 hours of downloading i do get every time the CTD and after 2-3 CTD's it just closes the game without warning. The main issue, i think it's conflict between custom content, so...here it goes, my questions.

1) Custom content in the STEX had been around for 10 years or so. From what i had seen, a lot of them developed from small prop packs to giant prop packs, but there is a lot of custom content that has a specific prop dependency (that might be or not included in a superpack by now). If i click the download link, it just puts me to the front page of the STEX. Where i can find those files? and if i do find it somewhere else, would there be a conflict between those older small prop packs and the new, updated super packs?

2) Are there to be found threads or tutorials that manage to gather all the custom content one needs for developing a specific city? The main issue here is the dependencies and the conflicts they might generate. What i do is downloading all the dependencies, and then download the file i want, but in game experience is a bit frustrating because of CTD's and crashes and ocasionally brown boxes. Is there anyone that made a GUIDE of what to download to have (for example) a comunist city : comunist roads, buildings, utilities but tested so that each and every download it recommends will have common dependencies and will not crash?

3) The NAM is way too cool, but in my case, in my last town everyone was using mass transit. I live in Bucharest, ROmania, wich has the 3'rd largest, most expansive mass transit system in Europe. Virually no block is left without a bus, trolleybus, tram ,light rail, heavy rail, minibus or subway (surface and underground) station. Even if so, the city is truely congested with road traffic because...well....people like them better than mass transit. Hate the beggars in it, the lowlifes that forget tot take a shower for weeks, the packed trains in the morning, etc.

What do i have to do for a more realistic mass transit use? where people are using it, and should use it more, but in this packed medium density towm i made, people are using 400% of the buses and virtually no road use!...Or maybe a pack of incentives for the city hall that cost a lot and increases ridership...like we have 100% off the pices for college students, and so on.

4) How do i eliminate original maxis growable buildings? i love to grow not to plop a landmark...i like to create the conditions for my town to build them. But even with 300 custom buildings, the town still builds a lot of it's own ,and give a weird feeling to the town. 2$$ res in commie style looks much worse thant 2$$ maxis style!...but still ,they grow togherer.

5)Again, please....did anyone packed this stuff in a thread? I had seen tons of CJ's ....if they made it...why not share the plugins folder?

Thnaks a lot everyone.

PS: my version is bought via steam, so i do have the lastes version.

[jason leo 485]

Hello everyone. I'm not actually that new to Simtropolis, but in never posted before. I strongly support the ideea of actually looking yourself in older threads to find common answers, but since it's my 5-th fail, i have to ASK so....here it is.

Basically i am intro realism. I want to build towns and cities, agriculutral landscapes and large downtowns using a specific feel, american ,european, asian, and so on. So, i try to customize my Plugins folder the way it does match what i look for. Well ,the problem is, after 2-3 hours of downloading i do get every time the CTD and after 2-3 CTD's it just closes the game without warning. The main issue, i think it's conflict between custom content, so...here it goes, my questions.

1) Custom content in the STEX had been around for 10 years or so. From what i had seen, a lot of them developed from small prop packs to giant prop packs, but there is a lot of custom content that has a specific prop dependency (that might be or not included in a superpack by now). If i click the download link, it just puts me to the front page of the STEX. Where i can find those files? and if i do find it somewhere else, would there be a conflict between those older small prop packs and the new, updated super packs?

I usually look at the name of the dependency and then, search for them using the search tool. I also suggest you to read this.

If you still unable to find them, you can ask about where to find them in the ' thread or search for them using the Google Search.

2) Are there to be found threads or tutorials that manage to gather all the custom content one needs for developing a specific city? The main issue here is the dependencies and the conflicts they might generate. What i do is downloading all the dependencies, and then download the file i want, but in game experience is a bit frustrating because of CTD's and crashes and ocasionally brown boxes. Is there anyone that made a GUIDE of what to download to have (for example) a comunist city : comunist roads, buildings, utilities but tested so that each and every download it recommends will have common dependencies and will not crash?

As I know, no one ever make something like that. Of course, many members ever ask about top mods or something like that, but the answer is always same, do you want your game to be same with someone else or to be just like what you want ?

The main reason for no one ever make such guide are it will not become very useful, they might be wrong, it will take long time to be done, and because there are so many buildings, it will be just too long to be listed. I suggest you to search around the STEX by using the search tool.

3) The NAM is way too cool, but in my case, in my last town everyone was using mass transit. I live in Bucharest, ROmania, wich has the 3'rd largest, most expansive mass transit system in Europe. Virually no block is left without a bus, trolleybus, tram ,light rail, heavy rail, minibus or subway (surface and underground) station. Even if so, the city is truely congested with road traffic because...well....people like them better than mass transit. Hate the beggars in it, the lowlifes that forget tot take a shower for weeks, the packed trains in the morning, etc.

What do i have to do for a more realistic mass transit use? where people are using it, and should use it more, but in this packed medium density towm i made, people are using 400% of the buses and virtually no road use!...Or maybe a pack of incentives for the city hall that cost a lot and increases ridership...like we have 100% off the pices for college students, and so on.

I will just let this question to be answered by someone else like z1.

4) How do i eliminate original maxis growable buildings? i love to grow not to plop a landmark...i like to create the conditions for my town to build them. But even with 300 custom buildings, the town still builds a lot of it's own ,and give a weird feeling to the town. 2$$ res in commie style looks much worse thant 2$$ maxis style!...but still ,they grow togherer.

This may be able to help you.

5)Again, please....did anyone packed this stuff in a thread? I had seen tons of CJ's ....if they made it...why not share the plugins folder?

Someone else ever ask this question and it is impossible because usually, Plugin size is very big. And then, there also possibility of missing dependencies and you can't use them, and then, this thing already prohibited by the site rules (distributing a file that not created by the distributor itself without any permission is not allowed). Be patience, look around using the search tool, and also make sure if you are registered in BSC and PLEX, many files that used in CJs come from these exchanges.

[cristi25med 1]

thanks a lot for the swift reply. I will look in the mod's and threads you pointed ,for some of my questions....

I do build original looking towns.But there are many towns in Europe, eastern or western that do look the same, even if the commercial layout and industrial ones are completely diffrent. In my country in the 70' there were build over 1.000.000 housing units, and there were a little over 15 types of flats, so, actually except the historic center, most of E-european towns look the same!.

[Cefien 361]

Another humble suggestion, you can simply avoid conflict after downloading dependencies by using the Cleanitol

[cristi25med 1]

thanks for the suggestion but i did that. I just find it hard to use ,since i am not a old member and i am updating my content but rather new and downloading old,new,mixed content

[Cefien 361]

Well, It would be very simple if you just read the readme and also some guide of using cleanitol.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I don't know if your computer experience is very deep, but I am an old shikari, as they say. So far, you've received good advice, and I hope that z1, who is the transportation docent, will chip in a reply to your NAM concerns.

Plugins are fraught with complications. For this reason it is important to have a "sandbox" region for testing. In fact, I have one named exactly that. Here is my region list, and you can see it there:

SimCity 4/Regions

├── Downloads

├── Houghton

├── NewHarbour

├── NewYorkCity

├── Sandbox

└── timbuktu

I also keep a Downloads folder especially for downloads related to SC4. Here are to be found anything I download organized usually by source (author). My Plugins folder reflects this structure within reason. This makes it much easier to do maintenance.

Other members keep plugins organized by function, but I find the author is the root when it comes to updating.

I do not have a great many plugins as I don't feel the need to specialize in any particular way. If I were doing a CJ or what you are doing with themes, I think I would have a separate user account for each theme so that I could have a unique plugin set in that account's user area.

Good luck with what you are doing.