Update 5.0 discussion

[MOWS 4 U 169]

Details here

[tnobles 38]

That is the notes for fixes that are in development for Update 5.0, which was posted by Maxis on 06/05/2013 on the EA Forums. That is, Update 5.0 is Currently in Development.
 

[simmfx 34]

All servers will be taken offline this morning 06.18.13 at 9:00 AM PST-USA

[Screwballl 196]

I didn't get the game until just after 4.0... how long are the servers usually down, or at least how long were they down for them to release 4.0?

 

 

edit: never mind, servers are starting to come back up now 2PM Central time http://harding.ae/simstat/

[Dj_oj_1980 0]

I've just logged on in UK and its downloading something mighty big...

[RRtexasranger 45]

I've been waiting 10 hours for the server I'm playing on to come back up, but it is one of the only ones still down...seriously EA?

[Screwballl 196]

I've been waiting 10 hours for the server I'm playing on to come back up, but it is one of the only ones still down...seriously EA?

 

The only 2 I see still down is Europe West 2 and 3.... the rest all show are up.

[RRtexasranger 45]

 

I've been waiting 10 hours for the server I'm playing on to come back up, but it is one of the only ones still down...seriously EA?

 

The only 2 I see still down is Europe West 2 and 3.... the rest all show are up.

 

 

The server I'm waiting on is Europe West 3. And we're going on about 11 hours now. 

[Screwballl 196]

Thats actually why I have regions on 2 different servers, in case 1 is down

[Snugies 91]

update 5.0 took my white line grid away woohooo!

[infoman96 27]

My game doesn't even work anymore..Anytime I try to start it, it says something like "Render 32-bit".

[Superbacon 380]

Is it telling you to render 32-bit or is it saying it can't render 32-bit?

[Screwballl 196]

Since 5.0 was released, traffic went from bad to friggin WAR ZONE. My cities that had heavy but reasonable traffic are now completely gridlocked, AND the nice little additional touch where now heavy traffic TRIGGERS fires and criminals to spawn. And not just one or two, some cities that had clean and clear traffic, nice balanced budgets all of a sudden now with 0 changes, turn into war zones and turn the entire city unusable whether its a city of 30,000 or 300,000. A balanced city with all specialties turned off and all tax rates at 10% STILL cannot afford proper police, fire and hospital/clinic coverage.
After i saw this in a few cities, just after i loaded others that i had not used yet since 5.0, as soon as i load the city, I switch to police view that shows all the police and all the criminals. The first few minutes are fine, but as soon as the traffic piles up, it goes from 0 criminals to 10+ criminal icons running around town and keeps increasing as traffic gets worse. Same with fires, a city that had great coverage is soon reduced to rubble only now after 5.0, and the ONLY difference being that 5.0 was released.

They REALLY screwed the game up with this patch. Even my best laid out cities are turning into flame engulfed crime infested cities. Even after turning off every single possible mass transit, turning off every piece of specialization (which WAS making me loads of money before the traffic bug exploded), reducing a city of 100,000 down to a single low end police station with no extras, fire station with 1 extra truck, and 2 clinics full at 40 each, and it is STILL in the red...

They need to fix things before releasing these bug infested patches. i literally had to abandon an entire region because of these bugs.

  Edited June 22, 2013 by CaptCity  
Reason: Merged topics. Let's continue discussion on the 5.0 update here.

[tnobles 38]

Haven't hit any gridlocks yet but, I did notice that all "red" roads were 60% or more Sims leaving the city (why, I have no idea). If this weren't the case, I would have a city of almost 400K and almost no traffic. I also followed a few and they go to the next city and dissapear on the highway. That city has roads and nothing else (no zones or buildings), guess he started and forgot about it.

[potorium 17]

Haven't hit any gridlocks yet but, I did notice that all "red" roads were 60% or more Sims leaving the city (why, I have no idea). If this weren't the case, I would have a city of almost 400K and almost no traffic. I also followed a few and they go to the next city and dissapear on the highway. That city has roads and nothing else (no zones or buildings), guess he started and forgot about it.

its because they can't find a residence with enough space to accept their happiness. they leave the town to 'die' and a new sim inherits his city spot as far as population goes. But as a new sim has zero happiness tokens so can fit into a home. 

[Snugies 91]

interesting point when they are happy. But how do you make happy residences do they need higher land value? And my traffic still seems okay so I think screwball just hit that traffic trigger point from a previous discussion.

[Xr3iracer 5]

I had my oil refinarys and smelting factories and trade ports close because I had the relevant divisions closed at the HQ's! Yet before the patch they would work despite the divisions being closed to save money! Very annoying!

[Jons511 12]

This patch has caused seemingly huge delays in trade via rail/sea as well as strange influxes in traffic in my cities.

[Snugies 91]

the traffic triggers I think everybody is still trying to figure out. But ya I swear there is more dam cars on the road than population, i'm imaging there is an invisible rural population that lives out of their cars.

[tnobles 38]

interesting point when they are happy. But how do you make happy residences do they need higher land value? And my traffic still seems okay so I think screwball just hit that traffic trigger point from a previous discussion.

You can't make happy residences, shoppers make them. I believe the point was missed. By the way, screwball was right on.

[Screwballl 196]

I have been battling this "traffic triggers crime and fires" with so many of my cities now... here I have a city of 40,000 filled with mostly medium denity, and only the one main stretch that is the highway connector has just a few high density commercial and 90% of the city is gridlocked... which means half my city ius burning and crime infested.... the day before the update traffic was manageable with the fires and crime were under control...

[Snugies 91]

I think those few high density commercial buildings at the freeway entrance may be the trigger remember before you said that you think once you get a high density commercial building it triggers traffic.

[Screwballl 196]

The entire point of high density avenues is to handle large amounts of traffic... try putting a high density building long the smaller roads and it makes it 10 times worse. The issue is not the roads but the pathfinding, all the loops and circles and crap the vehicles and agents do just to get from point A to B that is causing the traffic and the problems.

You can leave the entrace or main route completely void of any buildings putting all the HD back in a corner somewhere and the traffic is still jam packed city wide because of the useless pathfinding of the agents.

 

edit: so far the ONLY layout I have found that effectively routes traffic around once high density comes into play is the sectioned circles. I've used this layout with all avenues and almost no smaller roads, and even over 200K with 5.0, it seems to work very well once you get past the initial surge of construction truck and moving vans coming in (slowing traffic, triggering crime and fires like usual)... But once you get past the initial surge, I've found tojust upgrade one small stretch at a time and let the buildings upgrade completely. Once they're done, go to next stretch. Trying to upgrade 5 or more stretches of road clogs the roads and send things into chaos quickly since it starts with construction and moving trucks, and ends with a dead city (more or less).

 

[majorblack 0]

 

Thats actually why I have regions on 2 different servers, in case 1 is down

You say that like it is supposed to be a good thing?

OK sorry, I'll keep out of this..

I never said it is a good thing, I HATE they require the always on... like right now they took down US East 1... so now I have to play the ones on US East 3.

---

Since 5.0 was released, traffic went from bad to friggin WAR ZONE. My cities that had heavy but reasonable traffic are now completely gridlocked, AND the nice little additional touch where now heavy traffic TRIGGERS fires and criminals to spawn. And not just one or two, some cities that had clean and clear traffic, nice balanced budgets all of a sudden now with 0 changes, turn into war zones and turn the entire city unusable whether its a city of 30,000 or 300,000. A balanced city with all specialties turned off and all tax rates at 10% STILL cannot afford proper police, fire and hospital/clinic coverage.

After i saw this in a few cities, just after i loaded others that i had not used yet since 5.0, as soon as i load the city, I switch to police view that shows all the police and all the criminals. The first few minutes are fine, but as soon as the traffic piles up, it goes from 0 criminals to 10+ criminal icons running around town and keeps increasing as traffic gets worse. Same with fires, a city that had great coverage is soon reduced to rubble only now after 5.0, and the ONLY difference being that 5.0 was released.

They REALLY screwed the game up with this patch. Even my best laid out cities are turning into flame engulfed crime infested cities. Even after turning off every single possible mass transit, turning off every piece of specialization (which WAS making me loads of money before the traffic bug exploded), reducing a city of 100,000 down to a single low end police station with no extras, fire station with 1 extra truck, and 2 clinics full at 40 each, and it is STILL in the red...

They need to fix things before releasing these bug infested patches. i literally had to abandon an entire region because of these bugs.

 

This is quite realistic though. I noticed traffic backing up a little bit so I watched as a car stopped at a junction on my main avenue (only one lane had traffic the other two lanes were empty.) red, green, red and so on. Still not moving and still cars and more importantly coal trucks for my power station backed up onto the freeway, all caused by one car. At this point had I been in this jam I would of probably got out and smashed his car up and set fire to it.

[MaxisGuillaume 289]

 

Haven't hit any gridlocks yet but, I did notice that all "red" roads were 60% or more Sims leaving the city (why, I have no idea). If this weren't the case, I would have a city of almost 400K and almost no traffic. I also followed a few and they go to the next city and dissapear on the highway. That city has roads and nothing else (no zones or buildings), guess he started and forgot about it.

its because they can't find a residence with enough space to accept their happiness. they leave the town to 'die' and a new sim inherits his city spot as far as population goes. But as a new sim has zero happiness tokens so can fit into a home.  A bug? no. Stupid design ! yes.

 

 

It's a bug that should be fixed in the next simulation update.

[potorium 17]

 

 

Haven't hit any gridlocks yet but, I did notice that all "red" roads were 60% or more Sims leaving the city (why, I have no idea). If this weren't the case, I would have a city of almost 400K and almost no traffic. I also followed a few and they go to the next city and dissapear on the highway. That city has roads and nothing else (no zones or buildings), guess he started and forgot about it.

its because they can't find a residence with enough space to accept their happiness. they leave the town to 'die' and a new sim inherits his city spot as far as population goes. But as a new sim has zero happiness tokens so can fit into a home.  A bug? no. Stupid design ! yes.

 

 

It's a bug that should be fixed in the next simulation update.

 

you;re d3 residence have a max capacity on happiness, once filled they cant take more. leads to sims having no available sink to return to. i can replicate this with any density / wealth building. w1d1 will and do exodus the city if i cap their happiness cap lower then their density expansion threshold(as all d3 is now by design as there is no d4 obviously), d3 simply has no were to expand and no capacity left to take the population returning. city wide = exodus.

 

buildings need to be able to accept excess happiness but discard any over cap.

[potorium 17]

 

 

Haven't hit any gridlocks yet but, I did notice that all "red" roads were 60% or more Sims leaving the city (why, I have no idea). If this weren't the case, I would have a city of almost 400K and almost no traffic. I also followed a few and they go to the next city and dissapear on the highway. That city has roads and nothing else (no zones or buildings), guess he started and forgot about it.

its because they can't find a residence with enough space to accept their happiness. they leave the town to 'die' and a new sim inherits his city spot as far as population goes. But as a new sim has zero happiness tokens so can fit into a home.  A bug? no. Stupid design ! yes.

 

 

It's a bug that should be fixed in the next simulation update.

 

 

 

Btw are you allowed and if so willing to say if its server checks or how we build packages that use the script's files that cause rollback? I 'm hopefull you haven't written checks such as checking all my buildings are under or equal to the games 'recommended' happiness token capacity ? Although i only had one RB with that fast w1 density mod. Not played the other for more than 5 mins just to check UI was live

 

edited just to add i'm more than happy to figure out how to build packages if it is that that causes random RB, just rather not waste hours building mods that use the script files if they will all fail due 'anti cheat?' checks

  Edited June 22, 2013 by potorium  

[MaxisGuillaume 289]

you;re d3 residence have a max capacity on happiness, once filled they cant take more. leads to sims having no available sink to return to. i can replicate this with any density / wealth building. w1d1 will and do exodus the city if i cap their happiness cap lower then their density expansion threshold(as all d3 is now by design as there is no d4 obviously), d3 simply has no were to expand and no capacity left to take the population returning. city wide = exodus.

 

 

buildings need to be able to accept excess happiness but discard any over cap.

 

 

Exactly -- the solution is just to have a secondary sink that accepts shoppers based on population in the building rather than happiness.

[potorium 17]

 

you;re d3 residence have a max capacity on happiness, once filled they cant take more. leads to sims having no available sink to return to. i can replicate this with any density / wealth building. w1d1 will and do exodus the city if i cap their happiness cap lower then their density expansion threshold(as all d3 is now by design as there is no d4 obviously), d3 simply has no were to expand and no capacity left to take the population returning. city wide = exodus.

 

 

buildings need to be able to accept excess happiness but discard any over cap.

 

 

Exactly -- the solution is just to have a secondary sink that accepts shoppers based on population in the building rather than happiness.

 

no idea how its coded behind the scenes, but i'd have had a hard and soft cap on happiness. soft cap as in what you got now for player UI etc, and hard cap that just accepts endless happiness tokens. then once every x cycles just purge excess happiness. player sees no change in data as its ties to one cap. game. houses accept more happiness that gets thrown away every so often just so the number stored dont ever gets out of bounds.

 

just assuming you have a line of code that basically says

 

if happiness + what agent wants to bring <= capacity then allow agent to enter else reject agent (edit reject not reget)

 

simply change that capacity to

if happiness + what agent wants to bring <=  capacityV2_that_nothing_else_needs_to_ever_use then allow agent to enter else reject agent

 

 

and once a month if happinessstored_capacityV2 >happinessstored_capacityV1 then happinessstored_capacityV2 = happinessstored_capacityV1

  Edited June 22, 2013 by potorium  

[tnobles 38]

 

 

 

Haven't hit any gridlocks yet but, I did notice that all "red" roads were 60% or more Sims leaving the city (why, I have no idea). If this weren't the case, I would have a city of almost 400K and almost no traffic. I also followed a few and they go to the next city and dissapear on the highway. That city has roads and nothing else (no zones or buildings), guess he started and forgot about it.

its because they can't find a residence with enough space to accept their happiness. they leave the town to 'die' and a new sim inherits his city spot as far as population goes. But as a new sim has zero happiness tokens so can fit into a home.  A bug? no. Stupid design ! yes.

 

 

It's a bug that should be fixed in the next simulation update.

 

 

 

Btw are you allowed and if so willing to say if its server checks or how we build packages that use the script's files that cause rollback? I 'm hopefull you haven't written checks such as checking all my buildings are under or equal to the games 'recommended' happiness token capacity ? Although i only had one RB with that fast w1 density mod. Not played the other for more than 5 mins just to check UI was live

 

edited just to add i'm more than happy to figure out how to build packages if it is that that causes random RB, just rather not waste hours building mods that use the script files if they will all fail due 'anti cheat?' checks

 

 

 

 

you;re d3 residence have a max capacity on happiness, once filled they cant take more. leads to sims having no available sink to return to. i can replicate this with any density / wealth building. w1d1 will and do exodus the city if i cap their happiness cap lower then their density expansion threshold(as all d3 is now by design as there is no d4 obviously), d3 simply has no were to expand and no capacity left to take the population returning. city wide = exodus.

 

 

buildings need to be able to accept excess happiness but discard any over cap.

 

 

Exactly -- the solution is just to have a secondary sink that accepts shoppers based on population in the building rather than happiness.

 

I play with no mods.

Uh, huh? So you're saying that it is possible to make 300K+ sims too happy. If that is the case, it is definitely a bug - period.

 

 

Haven't hit any gridlocks yet but, I did notice that all "red" roads were 60% or more Sims leaving the city (why, I have no idea). If this weren't the case, I would have a city of almost 400K and almost no traffic. I also followed a few and they go to the next city and dissapear on the highway. That city has roads and nothing else (no zones or buildings), guess he started and forgot about it.

its because they can't find a residence with enough space to accept their happiness. they leave the town to 'die' and a new sim inherits his city spot as far as population goes. But as a new sim has zero happiness tokens so can fit into a home.  A bug? no. Stupid design ! yes.

 

 

It's a bug that should be fixed in the next simulation update.

 

Just a side note they are all shoppers and they do come back (from wherever they went).

Looking forward to the fix, thanks.