city naming scheme

[ussoldier2002 109]

I might be posting this in the wrong place because it's not a bug or technical issue per se. When you import a city from a region is there a way to get them in alphabetical order in the drop down menu? I hate that they are always out of order and have to search for the city I need. Thank you.

[ussoldier2002 109]

Oh and in a different order everytime I open the drop down menu

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I am confused.  What are you doing?  Is this an in-game function?  What do you mean import a city from a region?

 

Really need more context to understand your difficulty.  The file system generally sorts lists if you ask it to.

[ussoldier2002 109]

Sorry I didn't realize I was being so vague, I will try and explain better. What I am doing (still) is re-creating the US (on a much much smaller not even close to accurate scale) but my map is way to big to create in SC4 Terraformer. What I have done is create each state individually and then import from the state into my major region the United States. When I am done I go to my US map to import the cities from the state. When I go to import the city from the state and click on the import button, then click on the state and the cities drop down. The cities are never in order and in a different order every time I move on to import another city.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Ah.  I hope you realize that the 'import' function is a move and not a copy function.  The file will be moved from whatever folder it is in to the target region.

 

To accommodate this, the game creates a folder named Downloads in the C:\<your account>\Documents\SimCity 4\ folder for your use.  You should copy the city files you want to import into this folder using windows explorer (which can sort by name) into this folder.  You also need to be aware that you can only import a city into one in a region that is the same sized tile.

 

I expect that in the end you won't be able to load your national image because it will be too big.  Were you able to render this map at all?  You'd probably have to create it as a gray-scale .jpg file with corresponding config.bmp.

 

Good luck with this.

[ussoldier2002 109]

Well I can load my national map, and it is huge lol. I cant remember the size off the top of my head. I have Hawaii, and Alaska done as well as Washington. I will load some pics tonight if you are interested. Thank you for your help btw. I was pretty sure there was no way to alphabatize the city import tool but worth a shot right?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Can you actually get this on a single monitor?

[ussoldier2002 109]

Yeah I can get it on just one monitor. I think I am going to have a problem with the east coast tho. When I am down by Florida it stops scrolling east. I haven't tried to scroll to the Massachusetts area yet. I may have to split my country in half lol.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Unless you are running this on a very big, fast CPU I think you'll have a problem doing anything with it.

[ussoldier2002 109]

I am begining to see what you are saying. Question. If I reinstalled the game on a 1 terabyte hard drive would that work at all? I am doubting it would.

I am begining to see what you are saying. Question. If I reinstalled the game on a 1 terabyte hard drive would that work at all? I am doubting it would. But I have seen alot of your posts and you seem like you really know your stuff.

I am begining to see what you are saying. Question. If I reinstalled the game on a 1 terabyte hard drive would that work at all? I am doubting it would. But I have seen alot of your posts and you seem like you really know your stuff.

Wow I have no idea how my last post posted 3 times in one post. Sorry about that.

Wow I have no idea how my last post posted 3 times in one post. Sorry about that.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

This size of the storage device is irrelevant as long as it is big enough and has the space.  The problem will be having enough CPU cycles to run the simulation and the GUI with a decent frame rate.  Huge regions need a lot of storage to store, but not really that much.  For example, one of my largest regions, which isn't anything like the size of yours takes 119.8MB including cities containing about 2.2M Sims total with all the supporting stuff.  This region is only 1024 x 1536 which is well within standard parameters.

 

You could consider the function to be linear for all intents and purposes and compute the disk space needed, approximately.  But that really isn't relevant.

 

What is relevant, perhaps, is that my biggest city in that region uses about 120% of one CPU.  I have dual CPUs, and the program appears to use about 60% of each one according to my system monitor.

 

Now, when CPUs get maxed, the program slows down because it needs several time-slices to get around its loop.  The CPU curve for this type of statistical simulation is a hyperbola.  The knee where this starts heading for infinity is more to the right as the CPUs get faster, but eventually you do run into the game hiccoughing, then appearing to pause as you get further to the right along the curve.  So, don't be surprised it you get one of your city tiles behaving in this way.  It becomes a matter of how patient you are with this kind of behaviour because the state of practice right now is just about as fast as it can go with current technology.

 

And by the way, the chances are that your machine is much faster than mine because mine is about five years old.  It is an Athlon X2 dual core processor.

[ussoldier2002 109]

 

Ah I see that makes sense, yeah my comp is like 6 moths old but I bough it at walmart so it for sure isn't a gaming system but its not to bad at all. Thank you so much for your help. I really appreciate it.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You are most welcome.  Hope you get it all working, but be prepared for making adjustments.