Looks like the Crown has been passed....

[rmjohnson144 42]

My cities.exe gets to 16gb.  when I load my game without  mods & assets it maxes out around 4.5GB on my 25-tile 450k pop. city.

It seems all the memory usage is all mods & assets related.

[chocolate_city 93]

Sorry I took so long to respond... how much memory do you have in total...do you have any lags like CXL (not UNLIKE the infamous memory leak)  Do you have a high end video card with its own memory???

[boformer 3,169]

Coming back to topic:  I think we are slowly getting closer to SC4...

First of all, the game is still actively developed. First mentions of draggable flood walls, canals and quays have been found in the source code!

And then there are the infinite possibilities of the C# modding capabilities. Like the larger zones I am working on (and this is just scratching the surface):

 

 

[iDestroya 6]

Yes the crown has passed. this game seems more complex. My head hurts figuring it out!

[chocolate_city 93]

14 hours ago, iDestroya said:

Yes the crown has passed. this game seems more complex. My head hurts figuring it out!

I feel you on that one, try making a simple non-prefab freeway to freeway interchange.  Just make sure you've brought your patience with you, cause it ain't easy.

[chocolate_city 93]

On 2/23/2016 at 2:06 AM, boformer said:

Coming back to topic:  I think we are slowly getting closer to SC4...

First of all, the game is still actively developed. First mentions of draggable flood walls, canals and quays have been found in the source code!

And then there are the infinite possibilities of the C# modding capabilities. Like the larger zones I am working on (and this is just scratching the surface):

 

Download Video as MP4

 

That's really amazing, it'd be wonderful when you get the buildings to grow in the areas you've created... I definitely want that mod... excellent work....

[Marc Collins 36]

On 2/23/2016 at 5:06 AM, boformer said:

Coming back to topic:  I think we are slowly getting closer to SC4...

First of all, the game is still actively developed. First mentions of draggable flood walls, canals and quays have been found in the source code!

And then there are the infinite possibilities of the C# modding capabilities. Like the larger zones I am working on (and this is just scratching the surface):

 

 

Wow, this is what I was talking about way back at the beginning of this thread.  Executed exactly as I had hoped.  With free-form zones as well, all that is needed are buildings that are designed for the larger lot sizes and we might finally have something that will resemble a normal city.  At that point, the crown might actually get passed.

Have you experimented with some larger and smaller (placeholder) buildings to see if they actually work in these new zones?  The devs should be supporting this officially--or otherwise even if you can get it to work, there won't be enough people making suitable buildings to take advantage.  But very exciting!!! 

[boformer 3,169]

16 hours ago, Marc Collins said:

Have you experimented with some larger and smaller (placeholder) buildings to see if they actually work in these new zones?  The devs should be supporting this officially--or otherwise even if you can get it to work, there won't be enough people making suitable buildings to take advantage.  But very exciting!!!

The building spawning algorithm is still not ready. I will work on that in april. There is nothing that can stop us at this point. The biggest problem were the zones.

It does not look like they will ever support this officially.

[Darf 1,439]

Yeah, that's what I get from the modding Q&A... Still a shame, because for many that's the biggest gripe with the game. Essentially it's a city painter, with no real rewards for going beyond 35k citizens. Another thing I find anoying is that for example a 3x3 lot with expandable backyard won't upgrade from a 3x4 building lot, but it has it's seperate upgrading tree. There's tons of nice little buildings, but you 'simply won't see them, because the whole neighbourhood will upgrade to lvl 4 or 5. Although that's 2 seperate problems there.

[boformer 3,169]

16 hours ago, Darf said:

Another thing I find anoying is that for example a 3x3 lot with expandable backyard won't upgrade from a 3x4 building lot, but it has it's seperate upgrading tree.

That's not correct. The only thing that matters for upgrades is the width. I plan to remove the upgrading system, so it does not really matter.

[lucidus 69]

With the latest update, I think the crown has been passed. Quays, flood walls, and canals are now part of the vanilla game, along with neat little extras like the castle walls. Skylines may not have everything just yet, but it raises the bar on what a city builder should be.

[chocolate_city 93]

I agree with you, but so far, the learning curve on this game (or maybe its my cursed attention span) leaves me unimpressed, despite the fact that there are some pretty impressive cities accomplished.  Time will tell.. 

[Linoa06 1,374]

On 3/26/2016 at 3:50 AM, chocolate_city said:

I agree with you, but so far, the learning curve on this game (or maybe its my cursed attention span) leaves me unimpressed, despite the fact that there are some pretty impressive cities accomplished.  Time will tell.. 

Use a no money mod or something. I know I struggled for a very long time with Simcity 4 and starting up.

[Marc Collins 36]

On 3/20/2016 at 0:21 PM, boformer said:

The building spawning algorithm is still not ready. I will work on that in april. There is nothing that can stop us at this point. The biggest problem were the zones.

It does not look like they will ever support this officially.

Well then, they are colossally stupid  If you can make this even half work as a modder, they should be able to either support a mod, or do it themselves.

And sorry, but 1,000 new features can be added and it still won't make the slightest difference to me.  If you cannot grow a normal variety of normal-sized buildings, and you always end-up with something that is not a plausible or recognizable urban form, then there is no point playing.  And it's as infuriating as CiM2 being 95% of the way to perfect, but a few stubborn decisions destroying that title, too.  This is now a trend.

[boformer 3,169]

On 1.4.2016 at 9:32 PM, Marc Collins said:

 If you cannot grow a normal variety of normal-sized buildings

It's a design decision they made. At least we are able to fix it...

[Cool_Z 1,547]

On 21/3/2016 at 2:57 AM, boformer said:

I plan to remove the upgrading system

[chocolate_city 93]

I can hardly believe that its been just over a year, and this thread is still going on... Surely Cities Skyline is the front runner up.. but Sim City 4 is still king... or queen depending on how you look at it..

[crishy 57]

Personally, SimCity 4. Region size is imperative for me, and as much as CS is a big improvement over SC13 in that area, it still feels too small for my liking, modded or not.

[boformer 3,169]

2 hours ago, crishy said:

Personally, SimCity 4. Region size is imperative for me, and as much as CS is a big improvement over SC13 in that area, it still feels too small for my liking, modded or not.

Really? The maps are so large that you can barely see the border when you are in the middle. With the 25 tiles mod, you have an area of 25 (!) medium SimCity 4 tiles (or 6.25 large tiles) to build your city on. A single city.

That's enough for a large chunk of O'ahu:

A region view could be implemented by a mod developer. Unity provides everything that is needed. Just wait a year or two

[crishy 57]

4 hours ago, boformer said:

Really? The maps are so large that you can barely see the border when you are in the middle. With the 25 tiles mod, you have an area of 25 (!) medium SimCity 4 tiles (or 6.25 large tiles) to build your city on. A single city.

That's enough for a large chunk of O'ahu:

A region view could be implemented by a mod developer. Unity provides everything that is needed. Just wait a year or two

25 x 4km2 = 100km2. Enough for 6 and a quarter SC4 large cities.

Enough for most people I guess but not for me. You can make Mannhatan with that but I want to make the rest of NYC and its metro area as well if you know that I mean.

The largest airport in my region alone would fill more than half of that 100km2 (think DFW or DEN but even larger).

My SC4 region I am working on in comparison has 10k+ km2 spread over hundreds of large cities.

Yes it has been a project for me since I got the game in 2004 or so, and very likely will remain so for the next decade or two.

However, I would say that, if regional play is implemented (through mods or updates) to permit potentially unlimited (in size) metro areas, rather than just rather small expanded city boundaries, that SC4 has finally met its match. We will wait and see about that.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

21 hours ago, crishy said:

However, I would say that, if regional play is implemented (through mods or updates) to permit potentially unlimited (in size) metro areas, rather than just rather small expanded city boundaries, that SC4 has finally met its match. We will wait and see about that.

Take into consideration that in SC4, we have to load each tile separately. I think a region the size you have as one huge simulation would kill any PC. There are the pros and cons. For  81 tiles, in CSL, we do not wait for city tiles to load. But maybe one day it will become a feature.

[crishy 57]

27 minutes ago, Mr_Maison said:

27 minutes ago, Mr_Maison said:

Take into consideration that in SC4, we have to load each tile separately. I think a region the size you have as one huge simulation would kill any PC. There are the pros and cons. For  81 tiles, in CSL, we do not wait for city tiles to load. But maybe one day it will become a feature.

Take into consideration that in SC4, we have to load each tile separately. I think a region the size you have as one huge simulation would kill any PC. There are the pros and cons. For  81 tiles, in CSL, we do not wait for city tiles to load. But maybe one day it will become a feature.

Well, maybe one day separate city tiles as well? *wink wink*

Personally I think that multiple manageable chunks (of decent size of course) are actually better than one huge single city tile, because of aforemented performance issues.

Once I finish up one neighborhood, city, etc, they are finished, so no need for them to drag the development of the rest of the metro area, due to the above, if you know what I mean.

[Marc Collins 36]

Larger regions, if made up of cities with exclusively unrealsitic itty-bitty footprint growable buildings because boformer hasn't yet finished with CO should have implemented in the first place doesn't interest me.  But I have made that point already.

Larger regions made up of cities with identifiably realistically different lot sizes (think the largest farms and factories versus the smallest dwellings and everything in between) would be worth something because you could end up with a recognizable urban form at the end of hours and hours (or years) of growing a city.  IF boformer accomplishes what he is attempting, then there will still be months and years needed to create all the realistic lot-size buildings to take advantage of the realistic lots.  I'm encouraged, but not holding my breath at this point.

[Koesj 659]

Well, outside the fact that you seem to have already made your mind up about C:S' suitability (which is fair and square of course), I feel that there are a couple of workarounds to give us better recognizable urban forms: a focus on North American-style Euclidean planning (which IMO the game handles best at the moment), heavy use of real-sized line infrastructure (sweeping road and rail can make your city look vast), using ploppable RICO to simulate  larger-scale activities, etc.

Looking at Wheeler's International Typology there's a couple of categories where the game's base mechanics already work pretty well (1): allotment gardens, degenerate grids, garden apartments, garden suburbs, hillsides long blocks, loops and lollipops, new urbanist, rectangular block grids, rural sprawl, trailer parks, and upscale enclaves. All these are decently well-served by a 32x32m max lot size, provided that you don't use the godawful vanilla assets for them, of course.

With mods like airport roads and ploppable RICO there's ample opportunity to go for (2): airports (logically), apartment blocks, commercial strip, heavy industry (though we lack the assets right now), malls and boxes (ditto), superblocks, urban grids, and workplace boxes (again, assets...).

Which leaves (3): properly differentiated campuses (though I've seen a lot of people try and do them visually at least, with unique buildings), civic areas (non-square/rectangular monumental architecture is nasty to build within the current grid system), incremental/mixed (argh why this zoning system? whyyy?), organic (see the previous two remarks), and quasi grids (ditto).   

How well does SC4 handle category (3), to keep us engaged with the original topic at hand? I haven't touched the game in years so I can't appreciate the work that's been done through mods and BATs well enough to make any sweeping conclusions.

 

Anyway, to toot my own horn a bit, below's my boring (and highly WIP) take on only a handful of realistic urban forms, combined with a heavy focus on realistic road infrastructure (my personal favorite thing that you can do in this game ). If I had a bit more creativity and the patience to hand-pick nice growable assets for separate themes, I think a way wider variety in typologies would be possible:

 

 

 

[andreharv 1,197]

SC4 has held the title as best game period for longer than any other game I have ever played.

That said, CS is still better...

I have owned the game since it came out and up till then I was hooked on SC3000 Unltd.  My favorite part of SC4 was regions (nod to @crishy).  I loved how sims would drive out of the city to larger city centers for work or just pass through a city altogether.  CitiesXL had some form of intercity trade but imo it fell short.  CS map sizes are big enough for anything I intend on doing for a while.  With the 81 tile mod (which seems to be working rather well), you get 324km sq (NYC is a little over 300km sq) *Edit: NYC is about 300mi sq not km sq.  A closer representation would be Memphis, TN which is virtually identical in size at 324km sq*.  The most promising thing about CS, however, is the pace of development and the potential for deeper mechanics and simulation.  What would have taken years or is taking years to be build on SC4, can be made in weeks on CS.  My advice would be to try CS for a few hours and get some decent mods and if you still feel SC4 is #1, so be it.  Vice versa with SC4.  Play that too!  I think both games are def great to play.

[Macronomicus 128]

I have to agree, Cities Skylines takes the crown handily.  For what its worth, I didn't acquire the last simcity release, even though I loved all the simcities previously, it was simply all wrong from day one for me.  Then came Cities Skylines... it was without question I wanted the bigger, fatter, and uncut city builder!   over 1200 hours of fun so far, and im only recently getting into making mods/assets, which is likewise tons of fun & more capable than any previous city-builder.

The issue of small lots has been handled & there are many massive building complexes now.  The modding community is prolific, and the game devs have supported the community well, that's certainly one reason why its progressed and grown so much.  Looking at images of my first cities from when the game came out is almost unrecognizable lol... it's as though they skipped doing CS2 and instead rewarded all the happy customers with tons more features/content via free updates and some great DLC sprinkled on top.   This game has yet to even reach its peak abilities and already its highly addictive and loads of fun, definitely worth getting IMO.

[Marc Collins 36]

On 4/18/2016 at 0:24 AM, Macronomicus said:

The issue of small lots has been handled & there are many massive building complexes now.

There are now growable lots/buildings larger than all the ones that ship with the game?  If so, I will take back all I have said.  But then I don't know why boformer would be bothering to attempt what he is doing if that was the case.

 

[Smokytoks 8]

There are no growables larger than the original 4*4 lots (yet)...

But with mods like Sub-Buildings Enabler & RICO, you are now able to plop larger buildings behaving like growables...

[Marc Collins 36]

Well, when a normal or remotely plausible range of growables arrives, hopefully as a result of boformer's great project, I will fire-up C:SL again.  Until then, I just can't bring myself to invest the time into it.  It's so close to being great, it's frustrating.  In hindsight, I would have preferred a literal copy of SC4 with a new 3D graphics engine.  The items they left out compared to SC4 are critical to realism and the items they added all seem to have controversial functionality issues (based on reading other threads), or, are window dressing (and window dressing is great IF there are not still fundamental sim issues to be addressed).  So we have the new graphics engine, but not all the core issues sorted.  As mentioned, it may come with time.  At least there is a large and enthusiastic user base to keep improving the game.

[chocolate_city 93]

Haven't been on this thread in a while, has anything new come about... I'm seeing some of the same questions being asked...