Some help for an Ultra Newbie! :)

[mattias333 3]

I was wondering that similar to you richie99.

 

My residental demand for R$ is still huge. My city is over 112,000 now and the demand is still huge. Sadly many businesses keep going abandoned due to lack of demand and I still have this one little patch of $$$ apartments that keep abandoning. I took Nonny (apoligies for incorrect name spelling previously my friend) advice and when that happens i've rezoned as commercial. That eases the problem for a short while then the same little patch of no job icons appear.

 

Sadly now my game has started the dreaded lag issues. Only in my main city though (around 112,000 sims). It is like an intermittent freeze/lag every 20-30 seconds. If I try speed up to cheetah speed I may as well forget it. Just suddenly happened while ive been trying to figure my no job lot problem out.

 

Luckily I've seen some helpful people like Nonny on this site giving advice and ill attempt to follow those instructions later to try speed the game up.

 

I have tried re-running the nam installer on a less setting but it didnt make any difference really. So odd how it went from brilliantly running smooth then suddenly laggy when I went over 100,000 sims in one city. I cant really afford to run the installer on the lowest setting anyway as when I tried I noticed it removed alot of my road networks I'd used to easy my commute time problems.

 

I saw someone mention on this site about the simcity4 launcher? You guys who have replied to thread so far have been incredibly helpful so ill trust your opinions on this or any other ways of speeding the sim up again. 

 

Saw others mentioning running the game in Hardware rendering mode instead of software as well? Also turning the shadows off etc...Will give it all a try when home from work and got the little man off to bed. Trial and error I suppose.

Also at the risk of sounding even more of a Newbie can you explain exactly what you mean by -CPUCount:1 option nonny. Apologies again, I just lack the knowledge to make use of some of the advice given at times. ha!

[Richie99 159]

Let me drop this observation to see what the masters of the game think:

I've noticed that when I get the no job zots and I demolish the buildings whilst providing closer jobs,the occupants of the new building try going for exactly the same jobs as the former occupants leading to the same problem.But when I de-zone them and rezone,the new residents start life afresh and pick new jobs that I have provided.Is it then more appropriate to dezone than demolish?

That depends on several things. If your demand is high (for example if the area is residential and residential demand is high) it's better to demolish the building. However, if you have too much zones it might be better to de-zone and zone something else. If your commercial demand is high and your residential demand is low you could de-zone a residential area and zone a commercial area. This way the commercial demand will be (partly) satisfied and residential demand will rise because you're creating a scarcity in residential zones. This is a very effective method to control demand in your city. It doesn't really matter whether you would rezone or demolish buildings, the difference is mainly the effectiveness of the method while dealing with your demand-problems.What I was tryin to say is that considering a house with its occupants going far for jobs and end up getting no job zots so I now demolish the house(to get rid of that black stuff)and then provide jobs nearer,as time passes,a new house is built in place of the demolished but it kinda looks like the data about the previous sims still exists on that tile and they actually repeat the same jobs the former occupants had.But then when I dezone and rezone a fresh resd zone the new sims now detect the new jobs close to them.So am suspecting houses are just eyecandy and the real data is on the zoned tile.Anyone understand my dilemma?

@Mattias333

I heard running the game in hardware rather slows it down.But I run in hardware in order for certain custom contents to function.

[mattias333 3]

Well thats what i'd naturally assume as well buddy. But read an article on http://attendthis.net/cba/tutorials/article/4-simcity-4-getting-the-best-performance-and-eliminating-ctds/ which states

 

"Also, always - always - run in Hardware rendering mode. Contrary to popular belief, software mode will actually make your game run slower than if in hardware mode. The misconception arises because of the aforementioned unoptimized shadows, as the degree of lag they cause is lessened in software rendering, leading people to believe software rendering is faster. However, if you were to compare the two modes with shadows set to off, you'd notice the game running much smoother/faster in hardware rendering."

 

If anyone can confirm if the above is factual please let me know. Will to try anything to get the game playable as its game breaking at the minute.

[Richie99 159]

Yh some experienced gamers needed to clarify that as well as giving us game speedup tips:)

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

And bear in mind that the pathfinder runs only about 3 times per Sim Year.

[mattias333 3]

Grrrr ive tried as many ideas ive read on here possible. but the games virtually unplayable now. so frustrating. takes forever to navigate round the map or progress a day because of the stuttering stop.start just cant get my head round it

[Ltw 401]

Grrrr ive tried as many ideas ive read on here possible. but the games virtually unplayable now. so frustrating. takes forever to navigate round the map or progress a day because of the stuttering stop.start just cant get my head round it

 

The problem is that Simcity 4 is designed for one core, playing it on more cores makes it unstable. If you have a multicore processor you could set your cpu-count to 1, you could do this in the or you could use Another thing that might help is turning the render mode on DirectX. This is also possible in the SC4 Launcher. The render mode option in the in-game isn't working properly, thus it might be better to do it this way. 

[mattias333 3]

Ok thankyou chap, ill try the direct x route this evening. Everything else ive tried has marginally helped but its anything but smooth anymore. Stuttering and starting. Such a shame as a bit of a game breaker at the minute. Even tried turning every detail to low and it looks blooming awful now on top of taking forever to play an in game week lol!

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Mattias, try cleaning up your Plugins suite as I mentioned in another thread for you.  A huge Plugins suite costs a bundle every time you change the POV or scroll.

[Turjan 1,048]

My main perfornance jump during scrolling came when I edited the respective game files to know my ATI card as a fast card. Otherwise, if the game detects an ATI card in your system, it will mercilessly strangle your performance and ignore most advanced graphics settings you set in the options.

 

The SC4 Launcher claimed to do this for me, but my success with manually editing the files was much better.

[mattias333 3]

Many thanx Nonny. Ive not been about much over the weekend but Ill look into my plugins suite you mentioned this evening.

 

Too be fair I had a tweak of various settings and its running fairly well now. Occassionally stuttering etc....but living with it for now. Up to 145,000 sims. Rapidly running out of room on my main tile so will likely move onto another soon. All a good learning process anyway Ive only got NAM installed though and im getting to the stage where im tempted to install a bit more of a fuller installation of NAM. My rail network is fairly basic lol! My whole city is to be fair! All part of the learning curve though

Many thanx Nonny. Ive not been about much over the weekend but Ill look into my plugins suite you mentioned this evening.

 

Too be fair I had a tweak of various settings and its running fairly well now. Occassionally stuttering etc....but living with it for now. Up to 145,000 sims. Rapidly running out of room on my main tile so will likely move onto another soon. All a good learning process anyway Ive only got NAM installed though and im getting to the stage where im tempted to install a bit more of a fuller installation of NAM. My rail network is fairly basic lol! My whole city is to be fair! All part of the learning curve though

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

If you are running out of room, try rezoning for higher density.  If you rezone for the same class of lot, the changeover will happen gradually.