Post Modding Requests Here

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Hi folks.

Is there a mod that pauses cities when you load them ?

And if not... could somebody please make one ? 

Thanks in advance  

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Oh and a mod that plops all lots like the "PlopAllLots" command from the extra cheats plugin... but only the custom ones. 

[TrickyMario76543 67]

Can some make a Melbourne 'Hitachi' trains automata in SC4? Here's some pictures... (photographs by`Chris Gordon on http://vicsig.net  & Peter J. Vincent at http://www.pjv101.net) Hitachi's ran on Melbourne's suburban rail network from 1972-2014...

Motor cars (M)

     

Trailer Cars (T)

Ex-D (Driver Trailer cars) partly converted to Trailer cars.

[Fantozzi 4,067]

Oh, if I had only followed math lessions better ....

Could some good soul be willing to write a simple calculatorr or extract it from some of the existing tools, where I put in lot size in tiles and growth stage and it tells me the occupant size for each occupant class? I think on the algorithmic level this isin't too complicated.

I'm revisting all my growables at the moment to adjust their occupant size to their visual aspect, but then i have to adjust growth stage too. Doing the calculation again and again for each lot is exhausting. Such a calculator could really be useful to quick check occupation stats. Or some plausibility checker for occupant sizes vs. growth stage would be nice.

 

[rsc204 21,806]

What you are looking for is PIM-X, which does just that when you are making lots.

[Fantozzi 4,067]

Yes, I know, but as I learned it does it on base of the LOD and then it doesn't allow me to adjust the growth stage and I didn't understand why it sometimes throws grow stages about 8, when creating a lot from a modell. Well, I want to have more control, about the visual aspects of the residential part of my cities. There are still some scyscraper growing to early on medium dense zones.

To get away from the LOD, as I understood, you have to create a lot from the model first, so PIM-X can calculate on base of the tiles.

After several aproaches, I did some manual edditing and it works, I could separate the stages (visually) better and stage 1 begins to look a little bit more different (on stage 1 mostly only maxis grew as most of my custom content starts at stage 4 and almost everything is stage 6.  I don't know if it's Pim-X, but its sad if you have gigs of content and it's concentrated on three grow levels.

But if I change grow stages I have to adjust occupation, otherwise, I think, I kill the simulator. But I can see that my cities simply look nicer if I spread out grow stages manually on those rural or urban looking lots - as you mainly can control on witch state of city/region development they appear by this. It's even a question of the ground texture - if there's concrete or grass, to which level they belong, and I would even reduce the occupant size on some bigger buildings, if they look more rural and therefore should grow on lower stages. Not that a big villa, covering a bigger lot must have many occupants.

PIM-X follows the games logic - bigger is more capacity. This causes a little bit (visually) stereotyped cites as at growth stages buildings have almost the same volume - and shure, visually, this must leave to dreary skylines. 

So what I wish is to say - I want this building to appear in grow level 'x' - and the calculation had to start from this point, not from the size of the building. It's the approach, the variable to ask for, that is different, not the term, the rule of three (stage, occupation, size) itself. Pim-X calculates on base of size, the other two, me I want to calculate on base of the growth stage. As from my point of view, this is the important parameter for how a city looks and changes during the game.

I think this I can't do in pim-x?

 

[Fantozzi 4,067]

Another thing I missed today in SC4:

A sailplane airfield and a sailplane replacement for the glider and a driveable sailplane too.

[rsc204 21,806]

On ‎04‎/‎08‎/‎2016 at 5:41 PM, Fantozzi said:

Yes, I know, but as I learned it does it on base of the LOD and then it doesn't allow me to adjust the growth stage and I didn't understand why it sometimes throws grow stages about 8, when creating a lot from a modell. Well, I want to have more control, about the visual aspects of the residential part of my cities. There are still some scyscraper growing to early on medium dense zones.

To get away from the LOD, as I understood, you have to create a lot from the model first, so PIM-X can calculate on base of the tiles.

Well the LOD should dictate the size of the model, coupled with the Filling Degree (the amount of the LOD area that comprises the model), you can adjust the filling degree to alter the stats. A building that takes up more of a lots real estate will usually find a higher growth stage.

Quote

After several aproaches, I did some manual edditing and it works, I could separate the stages (visually) better and stage 1 begins to look a little bit more different (on stage 1 mostly only maxis grew as most of my custom content starts at stage 4 and almost everything is stage 6.  I don't know if it's Pim-X, but its sad if you have gigs of content and it's concentrated on three grow levels.

But if I change grow stages I have to adjust occupation, otherwise, I think, I kill the simulator. But I can see that my cities simply look nicer if I spread out grow stages manually on those rural or urban looking lots - as you mainly can control on witch state of city/region development they appear by this. It's even a question of the ground texture - if there's concrete or grass, to which level they belong, and I would even reduce the occupant size on some bigger buildings, if they look more rural and therefore should grow on lower stages. Not that a big villa, covering a bigger lot must have many occupants.

PIM-X follows the games logic - bigger is more capacity. This causes a little bit (visually) stereotyped cites as at growth stages buildings have almost the same volume - and shure, visually, this must leave to dreary skylines. 

This is a common problem unfortunately. Much of the custom content was modded based on wholly different and conflicting ideals.

A fundamental part of the philosophy behind PIM-X was to try to balance custom content better. Assuming all lots you used were created with PIM-X, they'd work together harmoniously. There is a caveat of sorts, PIM-X is also designed for use with CAM. Sometimes I want to manually alter the growth stage, but rarely by more than 1 lower or higher than the defaults.

In some ways, it does seem that you might find CAM beneficial. So with the base game having only 8 growth stages, there isn't a whole load of wiggle room between them. 1-3 are always very small buildings, hence little in the way of custom content ever seems to compete here. That leaves just five stages for all other buildings. If you consider that 7&8 should really be tall skyscrapers, everything else must fit in just three stages, 4-6.

CAM extends this to 15 stages, allowing much more breathing room and realistic play. However, to take advantage of it, all your lots should really be designed to work with CAM.

But CAM or no CAM, it's my belief that it's better to go through all your content and set it up in a balanced way. This is obviously a lot of work, but you really can't rely on the content you download to play nicely together.

Quote

So what I wish is to say - I want this building to appear in grow level 'x' - and the calculation had to start from this point, not from the size of the building. It's the approach, the variable to ask for, that is different, not the term, the rule of three (stage, occupation, size) itself. Pim-X calculates on base of size, the other two, me I want to calculate on base of the growth stage. As from my point of view, this is the important parameter for how a city looks and changes during the game.

I think this I can't do in pim-x?

No, PIM-X has a rigid system in place as you surmise. But what I really meant was that if you use PIM-X as the basis for your properties. You can always tweak things, such as altering the growth stage a little, based on your preferences. Without the existence of a tool to calculate things for you, this would be the path of least resistance.

[avenumaster 39]

 

 

my one and only request is for someone to make some LACMTA skins for maxis, and custom buses as udi... ok, and maybe a SCRTD set

 

 

well, who is going to? i would like them soon.

[MayorBCL 11]

I have two very simple building requests that I hope someone can help me with.  I want two landmarks (simple high rises or something).  One that supplies 100,000 industrial jobs, the types of which can be mixed.  And the other is a commercial job hub that supplies 100k commercial jobs, the types of which can be mixed.  (On both, high-wealth is preferable).  I know this is a big cheat, but I'm just humbly asking.  

 

Thank you again.

MayorBCL

[Fantozzi 4,067]

Plagues ....

would it be possible to create plagues? Not working like desaster but like pollution, crime etc.

A rat plague f.e. in districts not well covered by garbage trucks. You would need to plop a rat catcher lot to fight it. Trees dying where's too much water pollution. An epedemic killing those far from hospitals. Brain fag/burnout syndrome if no parks in the city. Etc.

Also:

Sabotage acts on network. Terror attacks on civics. Or maybe: mass transit can go on strike.  

???

[francot514 0]

Thinking of a multiplayer mod with city sharing and some other extra features, do you like the idea?

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 1/22/2017 at 5:01 PM, francot514 said:

Thinking of a multiplayer mod with city sharing and some other extra features, do you like the idea?

If I'm reading you right, you're suggesting a file-server from which many widely dispersed players could check-out and check-in segments of a region shared over a WAN. Depending on what OS one has, that might already be possible. As for modding and adding features (such as config management), that might be a matter of system admin and scripting.

[rsc204 21,806]

Players have come together to play shared regions, it's totally feasible. However, adding that functionality into the game itself would be ridiculously complicated and require a very dedicated bunch of people with the knowledge and time to realise it.

But, you can share a region, along with a plugins folder using a service like OneDrive, DropBox etc. If you do, everyone MUST keep their personal plugins folders in synch. It's also imperative that if one player modifies a city in the region, that no other player modifies that city or any tile that touches it at the same time. So long as you have a system in place to follow these golden rules though, even without a dedicated in-game feature, you can achieve the same thing.

[Applevorous 0]

Would it be possible to make HOV Bus lanes (like the available STEX lot), but with underground rail, as well? 

Thanks much

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 6/13/2016 at 4:35 PM, Cool_Z said:

Is there a mod that pauses cities when you load them ?

If you can spare a day, there's a hotkey for pause (control-backtick). If that's not fast enough, then you can recover by using the "Extra Cheats Plugin". It has a SimDate command by which you can reset the clock to 12 31 1999 (I think that's the format).

[rsc204 21,806]

10 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

If that's not fast enough, then you can recover by using the "Extra Cheats Plugin". It has a SimDate command by which you can reset the clock to 12 31 1999 (I think that's the format).

I'd be wary of using that, especially if you use seasonal flora. In my experience it can mess with the seasons, causing real problems. Not to mention, it doesn't take your cities back to that point, it just alters the date you see.

The simplest solution would be to pause the city before saving it. That way when you next enter it, it will be paused.

[matias93 7,535]

On 02/12/2017 at 5:11 AM, Applevorous said:

Would it be possible to make HOV Bus lanes (like the available STEX lot), but with underground rail, as well? 

Thanks much

 

Can you describe what you want to do with this? It sounds as really difficult to mod, and as a configuration that can be achieved by simpler means...

[Applevorous 0]

On 2/13/2017 at 8:09 AM, matias93 said:

Can you describe what you want to do with this? It sounds as really difficult to mod, and as a configuration that can be achieved by simpler means...

Basically, I was hoping to replace a rail line I have in a dense city, which runs alongside a main avenue. I was looking into running it underground in a dual network, but didn't want to just have another regular road above it. I figure a dedicated bus route would be a perfect surface replacement for the track, but maybe I'm not thinking of it in the right way. 
 

Thanks for the feedback.

[matias93 7,535]

Is the avenue perfectly straight and you don't need any stops under it? If it is, you can simply draw a rail tunnel under it (giving you terraform the entrance and exit with the required height and slope, and give the tunnel entrance and exit enough distance with the avenue, one tile normally). It will be much more flexible for every thing you would want to build superficially, be it an avenue, a BRT line or anything; as opposed as this, the U-rail demands you to use its pieces , restricting you to a couple of intersections and not much more.

On the other hand, if your avenue (and the rail line underneath) aren't completely straight, the tunnel solution wouldn't be as optimal, but the best option will depend on your needs:

• Do you need to move freight by rail on that line? If not, you can use an U-rail to subway converter and to drive the rail as a subway line, which can be bent easily and has stations for the underground section. Mind that subway, while being of high capacity, is also expensive to build and mantain.
• Do you have some right-of-way to spare? Maybe you can do a little segment of 'sunken rail' to allow the rail line to take the curve in open air, be it on the median of the avenue (splitting it on two one-way roads to make space). This would only be useful if your avenue is orthogonal all the way.
• Do you need a diagonal tunnel with freight loads? In this case, I guess U-rail is the best option, but to resolve the issue of having the BRT over it, you can just move the U-rail under one of the lanes of the avenue, after replacing it by an one-way road. Surely it won't look seamless, but will work as intended.

As you can see, there are several options (this ones are just a few on the top of my mind now, but the permutations are almost endless!). It would be much more easy to recommend you an specific approach if you upload some images of your current situation and a more clear description of the desired result. BTW: to upload images, use Ctrl + Shift + S in-game, then look on /Documents/Sim City 4/Albums/ for the images, and upload them as .jpg to some image server (flickr, photobucket, imgur, whichever), and paste the full URL (the one with the .jpg at the end) on your post.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

2 hours ago, matias93 said:

Do you need to move freight by rail on that line?

Has there been any advancement of underground freight since 2013? Back then, when I started playing SC4, there was no hope.

I tell you truly, I have seen a freight train pull through a London Tube station late at night, transiting the city from south to north near midnight (It was even being drawn by a diesel locomotive blowing stinky diesel smoke inside the tunnel). That was in 1999.

If I search back at my own posts from 2013, I might even find the thread where my hopes were dashed.

[rsc204 21,806]

On 20/02/2017 at 4:20 AM, jeffryfisher said:

I tell you truly, I have seen a freight train pull through a London Tube station late at night, transiting the city from south to north near midnight (It was even being drawn by a diesel locomotive blowing stinky diesel smoke inside the tunnel). That was in 1999.

Really? On very specific parts of the tube, the tracks might be shared with the regular rail network. But in all the visits I made to London, the only thing on the Underground were dedicated underground trains. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but if it did, it was very unlikely to be a regular service. Frankly, I'm trying to envisage how the typical UK rolling stock could even fit in the cramped tunnels of the Underground, that barely fit trains uniquely designed for the purpose.

Closest thing I can find is this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVE8LBedx5Y

Incorrectly labelled as a freight service, that's actually one of the maintenance trains. I'd imagine it's electric too, makes no sense to use diesel down there, the system's been electrified since they stopped using horses.

On 20/02/2017 at 4:20 AM, jeffryfisher said:

Has there been any advancement of underground freight since 2013? Back then, when I started playing SC4, there was no hope.

U-Rail works just like the regular rail network, so freight trains will happily use it. Tunnels are just normal rail too. But subways, not likely to happen, too intertwined with the code in the .exe, sorry.

[matias93 7,535]

Just to go along with the fun offtopic: here in Santiago is impossible to have freight trains on the Metro, because the lines are totally detached from each other, and don't even share gauge (not even between them, just like on Paris, from where the entire system is replicated); but in Valparaíso the 'metro' is more of a commuter rail, on the lines of the S-Bahn, Crossrail or RER, and the only way freight can go by rail from the seaport itself (that got stuck on the city centre for lack of suitable terrain elsewhere) is over the Don Nortino (Mr. Northern, literally) train, through the subterranean stations, using a tandem of diesel locomotives on the urban tunnels to reduce costs! You can see a very resumed video of the train route here.

***

And going back to the original theme, I've always been reticent of using U-rail because of its inflexibility with the surface and tedious construction method; for no reasonable motive, I'm the kind of person that likes to put houses over a rail tunnel (the Don Nortino, BTW, goes under houses, an university and a park on its last kilometre to Santiago). In any case, I can understand that sometimes legacy design causes the need to fuse roads and rails, and in those cases the U-rail acts as an elegant solution.

And about the subway (and just for curiosity), how hardcoded it is? I've known of some mod to reskin the subway automatas (that, strangely enough, aren't the same ones than on the El-rail), but I have no more idea. Could, for example, the tunnel models be changed? Or can be created wide radius curves for it? Evidently nothing of it would be seen a lot, and it is reasonable to give much more attention to other elements to mod, but on this 13 years somebody has to had tried something, I guess.

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

21 hours ago, rsc204 said:

U-Rail works just like the regular rail network, so freight trains will happily use it.

Sounds interesting. I'll see what I can read about it.

[APSMS 1,892]

On 2/22/2017 at 6:28 PM, matias93 said:

Just to go along with the fun offtopic: here in Santiago is impossible to have freight trains on the Metro, because the lines are totally detached from each other, and don't even share gauge (not even between them, just like on Paris, from where the entire system is replicated);

Interestingly, in San Diego, the trams/trolley system is actually built on top of the San Diego & Arizona Eastern Railroad, built by John D Spreckels at the turn of the century. Every night, freight trains pass over the main lines of the trolley system (a few, trolley specific lines have been opened since the system went live in the 80s) running goods to the cities they service. If you look at the map of San Diego's trolley system, it explains why it services those particular areas instead of heading for more logical or heavily populated use areas; the tracks and right of way were already secured for them.

It's really something else to see a decently long freight train pass over a rail bridge that you ostensibly know as a light rail bridge (during waking hours). In fact, this shared rail setup is the only way San Diego was able to afford to build the trolley system in the first place (well, aside from dumping all it's light rail in 1951, of which there were many routes and they were fairly extensive for the time).

[rsc204 21,806]

On 23/02/2017 at 3:28 AM, matias93 said:

And about the subway (and just for curiosity), how hardcoded it is? I've known of some mod to reskin the subway automatas (that, strangely enough, aren't the same ones than on the El-rail), but I have no more idea. Could, for example, the tunnel models be changed? Or can be created wide radius curves for it? Evidently nothing of it would be seen a lot, and it is reasonable to give much more attention to other elements to mod, but on this 13 years somebody has to had tried something, I guess.

Altering the tunnels as the appear, probably just a texture override. WRCs, doubtful anyone would bother, I mean, it's not like you see it or post screenshots. But how it functions is quite different from a lot of the rest of the networks and mostly inside the .exe we can't touch.

On 23/02/2017 at 3:28 AM, matias93 said:

I've always been reticent of using U-rail because of its inflexibility with the surface and tedious construction method; for no reasonable motive, I'm the kind of person that likes to put houses over a rail tunnel

U-Rail transitions smoothly to Subway, of course at that point you loose the freight support. Like FLUPs, puzzle pieces are limited and must take up the tiles they are upon. PPs might be tedious to place, but I've never had a problem with them. Whilst URail can go on the surface without a transit network on top, that's really the scenario where they are most useful. As such, they don't take up any additional space if used this way.

[Fantozzi 4,067]

How I hate when the years fly by!

Could someone please, please do a timespeed mod where normal is slow and slow is ludicrous(*) slow?

I mean, a mod for the game, not for my life. Or, if you are that skilled, well, do it for my life too. But for now, I'd ask only for the game..

 

(*) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk7VWcuVOf0

 

[Fantozzi 4,067]

Just a thought - but when I'm browsing through CJs, I notice that many players try many tricks to hide those ugly seams caused by different greens and the tiles.

And as I try to make lots to combine diggis streams with paeng parks (mainly some foot bridges) I was wondering what could be done about those rectangular seams between different gras patterns/ground textures.

So I was wondering if it was possible to make one or a couple of MMPs (similar to gravel, sand) that sprays some simple green there - just to make the colour change less steepy? If there could be a terrain painting tool to cover the tile seams of different greens? Basically this would be made from (or similar) to the colour of the different terrain mods - so to paint terrain colour on the seams?

[Moses Zal 46]

I really need a mod that let you determine the coverage area of a custom school and hospital at 0% funding. The reason for that is that whenever I download a custom school or hospital that has a very wide coverage area, it can cover a large area at 0% funding where maxis ones can cover the same area at 90% funding. I don't feel comfortable with this as I feel it is kind of cheating or in other words making the game really easy. Can a modd like this be made in the first place? Please tell me if I haven't made myself clear.

[CorinaMarie 29,574]

@Moses Zal

I'm kind of guessing, but I believe that's something you can alter using Reader. First load a Maxis school or hospital and see what they have for:

• 0x691b42b3 School Coverage Radius
• 0x091b42a2 Hospital Coverage Radius

Then load the custom one and set it to that distance.