Want to get back into the game

[wallacet 336]

Hello all,

I've recently been losing interest in Cities Skylines, and want to get back into playing SC4. I've spent too much time on the SC4 forums, and I miss being able to create at will with no restrictions. All these screenshots you all have been posting make me miss that level of detail that will never be obtainable in C:S. But here lies my problem...I used to play SC4 on my laptop, and, sad as it is to say, I did not have my SC4 plugins folder backed up, and when that computer crashed, I lost years worth of plugin downloads. I know you all know what I mean....YEARS worth of downloads...buildings, ploppables, fauna,...everything. This is the only thing holding me back from picking the game back up...I simply do not have the time to sift through endless pages of buildings and trees to re-download everything that makes the game what it is today.

So here's my question...Would anyone be willing to share their plugins folder? I know their are files that come with an installer, and I do not know how those would be handled, but if there was any way that anyone would be kind enough to upload the contents of their plugins folder to a dropbox or mediafire or something....I would buy you a case of beer or something (kinda serious).

Please?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Welcome back.  Now, you must know that sharing plugins can only be done by providing a list. Because of copyright issues. no one can give you their data files for the plugins and you get to download them all again.  That's the bad news.  Now for the good news.

A full restart is not a bad thing.  If you missed the Windows 10 fiasco, you are lucky.  To play this game now under Windows 10 (or anything since XP for that matter) you need a digital copy of the game without the Safe Disk system that comes on the CD.  The digital copy, available from many vendors, comes as a fully patched, diskless version (1,1,641) that runs after installation without any fuss.  The DRM sites have funny ideas about set up (Steam, Origin) so you would be better off to get your new copy from one of the regular sellers.  If you watch for a sale you might get it for as little as $5. U.S.

For openers, you should download the latest NAM.  The current supported release is 32, but you can find a pre-release version of 33 at SC4Devotion at the moment.

After that you need to pick up any plugin from the STEX that contains the word 'fix' in the title.  Use Google search to find these, as the present search is really a bit verbose.  There is one other fix named "Crime Doesnt Pay" [sic] which fixes the police scope problem.  You'll want to pay close attention to any installation instructions for the fixes.

From then on, it is up to you.  It is better to slowly build up plugins as you feel the need rather than to shotgun a bunch that may be incompatible with each other.  Fixing a conflict can be tedious, just to find it.  So remember to test each new add in your sandbox before you commit it (them) to your precious cities.

_______________________________________________________________________

Now, if you insist on running from the CDs, the solution for that is to dual boot a Linux distribution.  I run Ubuntu, others run Mint.  Both will need you to add the Windows Executive, wine, to run Windows programs.  If you need assistance with this, just ask.

[wallacet 336]

Copyright issues on files that are available for free?  

[matias93 7,535]

Copyright issues on files that are available for free?  

Yes, because the most of them say explicitely thay couldn't be redistributed without explicit consent (yes, in the EULA part of the insaller that no one reads, never).

If weren't for that restriction... I wouldn't give you a copy of my plugins folder, because I'm pretty secure I haven't eliminated all of the prop-pox causing plugins, and don't want to contagie more people.

[Indiana Joe 1,752]

Yep, here's a quote from the Chipotle Restaurant upload by DuskTrooper:

Please give the creator credit, if you wish to use the props and or buildings, as well as anything else included in this package.
Do NOT include any of the files in any uploads-instead, link users to the master file.

Also, please place ALL building requests into the official BAT request thread!  Thank you.

Refer to the README for more info

 

Most major file producers with uploads on the STEX and LEX have similar disclaimers.  So, first of all, Simtropolis wants to respect the wishes of its content creators, because of how important they are to the SC4 community.  The game as we know it wouldn't be possible without them.

 

However, in addition, they even retain some legitimate legal rights.  Even though they may not have filed any copyright claims with their government, in most places, creators and inventors are protected by natural copyright.

 

This is why when someone re-uploads something made by someone else to the STEX, it gets taken down.

  Edited September 26, 2015 by Indiana Joe  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

And besides the legal restrictions, why would you want to play in someone else's environment?  It is better for you to develop your own suite to your own taste.

[wallacet 336]

And besides the legal restrictions, why would you want to play in someone else's environment?  It is better for you to develop your own suite to your own taste.

Not necessarily wanting to play in someone else's environment, I just know there's been so much more put out in the 4 years since I've played this game, and I know a lot of the good stuff is on sites I don't even know about.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Depends on what you mean by good sites.  Pegasus has closed.  As far as I am concerned that leaves only SC4Devotion and this site.  Too many others have not demonstrated the assiduous moderation that I require.

[TPB 563]

I simply do not have the time to sift through endless pages of buildings and trees to re-download everything that makes the game what it is today.

Sorry but I can't resist.. haha.

[rant]

[sarcasm]

What are you talking about? Endless pages? Nonsense! It "not hard" to download stuff for SC4 and find all the dependencies, easiest thing in the world. Shouldn't take you more than 2 hours to rebuild all your plugins folder. bwahahaha.

[/sarcasm]

Saying "will never be obtainable in C:S" seems a bit much to me, but whatever. If you think so..

SC4 authors being all high and mighty about their "copy rights" is another reasons I think SC4 is well under way to being nothing but a happy memory.

Imagine if I wrote on my Steam assets: Adding this item to collections is illegal, please link to my workshop page so people can +fav/+rate each individual item. Why the need for people to give you imaginary "credit" for your work? Shouldn't the fact that they use your content be reward enough? We are giving it away for free after all... How does a number in a download counter make our lives better? And if getting "cred" is so important, why not get together and agree to make collective mega-pack-mega-packs where all authors were mentioned and thus all gained credit for their work? I don't get it.

[/rant]

Anyway, sorry to hear you lost your plugins wallacet, hope you can find the courage to build it back again.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

The copyright issue is real.  It applies to any original material created by any means in this country.  It is often ignored, but it is there.  Copyright law is a morass of legalisms and technicalities and each country has its own mess.  I believe there is some effort to create a similar mess at the UN.

The recent fiasco with "Happy Birthday" is a good example.  This little ditty is now in the public domain, but there is an appeal pending.  Greed knows no bounds.  Out an out greed like this should be an indictable offense.

Anyway, one of the rules of this site is to respect the ownership of items donated to the STEX.  I tend to agree with that.  Generally, I put my signature on all BATs as well, sometimes this is quite subtle.

[matias93 7,535]

Also, there are all of those pesky technical errors when migrating plugins. A few months ago I tried to do that from an older laptop, and guess what was the only thing that survived the migration: the poxing plugins!  I haven't restarted with a clean folder because that would mean to condemn my beloved first region to an early death, but I've redownloaded about 1.5 Gb of files.

[rsc204 21,866]

I do agree that the process of starting from strach is one that is daunting and in all likelihood quite off-putting to a number of new users. That said however, until now, no one has come up with a better solution (ideas, but nothing realised).

Say there was an all-in-one download, I'd imagine 90% of it would be redundant for most people. Maybe that's a little high, but the idea of a one-size fits all package simply doesn't work.

The idea of doing something about the dependency dilemma is not a new one, I'm quite sure it's been discussed to death many times. The fact is here and now in 2015 is probably too late to do anything about it. Even if the will was there, which I feel it isn't, who's going to put the hours in on a massive collaboration to make it work? It's beyond unlikely frankly.

The LEX has a dependency tracker that's a real help here, use it, most of the important dependencies are all there anyhow. As for the bulk of the content, well I think you simply need to be motivated enough to go through the motions.

[Star21Sim 5]

This game of SimCity 4 is growing strong in this community..  I absolutely love it, with the lot editor feature...  Over 10 years and just keeps going..

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well, I just had my 13th anniversary on this site and I'd been playing about a year before that.  I've done two or three cold restarts, and I have a separate account with a minimal set of plugins.  I was curious as to what the game was like without any plugins and I found I couldn't play without the NAM.  Here is the plugin tree for that account:

Plugins
├── EA Plugins
├── Fixes
├── Network Addon Mod
├── SimCity 4 Extra Cheats Plugin.dll
└── z___NAM

I hardly ever play this version, simply because I have enough on my plate, and have stopped experimenting.

[ussoldier2002 109]

If I may weigh in here on the copyright thing. I'm no professional but I only recently started BATing and I for one would be livid if someone took credit for something I created. Even though these items are free they really are alot of work.

[dkempel 3]

On the copyright issue, I think the mind set displayed in such restrictive copyright notices where distribution is prohibited is hopelessly out of date. A good copyright notice for a product created voluntarily with the aim of distributing (not capitalizing) should ban commercial use but encourage distribution as far and wide as possible. In this age of over information the challenge is to get your material circulating, it is counterproductive to restrict access by writing strict copyright notices. 

While all the SC4 modders deserves nothing but respect, and to be acknowledged for their work, the copyright practice has, it seems, malfunctioned since it cannot even allow a few standard plugin folder packages with content from different creators to be available for download. That would otherwise be a treat, as the OP argues.

Squeezing profit from a piece of intellectual property is a wholly different matter, but that is not what is at stake here.

  Edited October 2, 2015 by dkempel  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Copyright is complex, mostly due to the general obfuscatory stance of the legal profession complicated by the greed of those who would profit.  The recent "Happy Birthday" case is a glaring example.  However, it is what it is.

Wanting a "standardized set" of plugins for SC4 is like wanting to have a specific colour pattern for your skin.  In the digital world there are 16,777,216 colours.  In the STEX there are several thousand plugins, and that is only one repository.  How can one choose a standard set?  Every player of the game is an individual with his own unique playing style.  I believe this is part and parcel of the game, and therefore it becomes incumbent on anyone wanting to use extensions such as the available custom content to select his own unique set.  Mind you, there are some standard sets already, notably the NAM, CAM, and RTMT for examples.  But these are a drop in the bucket compared to putting together some kind of straight-jacket of "standard plugins" that people would be expected to use.  Attempting such a thing is some kind of slippery slope to mediocrity at best, and a totalitarian set up at worst.

If you want a standard set of plugins, purchase the disks from this site.  It will benefit the site and leave you in a fixed pool of plugins if you don't go to the STEX.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

You know what, among all those years worth of downloads, there was probably a lot of junk, too. Or rather, it was OK when you downloaded it because there was hardly anything better available, but these days there's so much content that you can afford to be picky. That's the charm in a new beginning: it's a good opportunity to prune your plugins and focus on what you really use.

You don't have to d/l all those gigabytes immediately, either. Why not choose a terrain/water/rock combination you like first? Then, get some trees. Then, get the obligatory fixes and the NAM. Third evening, you can think about what you want to build in your region - big CBDs? Mostly rural? Small towns? British style? North American? European? Maxis night or DarkNite?

Start with what you need immediately, worry about the other stuff later. For example, if you want to build a rural North American setting with some big cities, you're going to start small, with farms, fields, and family homes. You can d/l a nice little starter pack of those in one session, then play with it a little. Maybe get more the next day and play another bit. No need to worry about skyscrapers etc. before you actually get there.

This will cut your download chores into manageable chunks, you'll get exactly what you want and test it along the way.

[markussaage 762]

You know what, among all those years worth of downloads, there was probably a lot of junk, too. Or rather, it was OK when you downloaded it because there was hardly anything better available, but these days there's so much content that you can afford to be picky. That's the charm in a new beginning: it's a good opportunity to prune your plugins and focus on what you really use.

You don't have to d/l all those gigabytes immediately, either. Why not choose a terrain/water/rock combination you like first? Then, get some trees. Then, get the obligatory fixes and the NAM. Third evening, you can think about what you want to build in your region - big CBDs? Mostly rural? Small towns? British style? North American? European? Maxis night or DarkNite?

Start with what you need immediately, worry about the other stuff later. For example, if you want to build a rural North American setting with some big cities, you're going to start small, with farms, fields, and family homes. You can d/l a nice little starter pack of those in one session, then play with it a little. Maybe get more the next day and play another bit. No need to worry about skyscrapers etc. before you actually get there.

This will cut your download chores into manageable chunks, you'll get exactly what you want and test it along the way.

Well said!!!

I generally download only thing with a high rating from the members. That cut out a lot of crap. And so you can test it in your game and you can be sure that everything works fine. You'll find out what you need when you need it... Like it was already said before...

Kind regards!

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I think we are all saying the same thing.  The whole idea here is to customize not standardize. 

I can't imagine anyone wanting to play using my (somewhat unruly) set of plugins.  I need to do a step back soon, and get rid of some stuff I picked up but never use, but if I do, to be on the safe side, I'll have to scrap all my existing regions as well.  I think that's called a restart.

Fortunately, I have all the original downloads (zip/rar) that I ever downloaded saved in a separate folder, so I don't have to download anything to get this going.  It is nice having lots and lots of disk space.  Must have something to do with not downloading movies and other huge media files.

[dkempel 3]

If you want a standard set of plugins, purchase the disks from this site.  It will benefit the site and leave you in a fixed pool of plugins if you don't go to the STEX.

Good point.

[Compdude787 916]

Fortunately, I have all the original downloads (zip/rar) that I ever downloaded saved in a separate folder, so I don't have to download anything to get this going.  It is nice having lots and lots of disk space.  Must have something to do with not downloading movies and other huge media files.

Me too. I still have all my unzipped files in the "Downloads" folder on my computer. I don't know if I'll ever need them, but I have plenty of space on my hard drive, so I don't care if they're there or not.

It really is not a big deal to have to start from scratch with your plugins folder. Heck, that's what we all did. I started off on February 18th, 2014 by first downloading the RTMT and then the NAM. Slowly but surely, I've accumulated 1.7 GB of plugins. I still don't have any custom airport or seaport files yet, but when I do get them, that'll probably push my plugins folder close to 2 GB. That'll probably be about it for me. But you never know.... there's always cool stuff being released all the time.

[TheHaso2011 152]

I'm not really into the techie side of steam and SC4, but what goes into making a workshop? Does it have to be done when the game first comes out or is there a way that we could petition for a SC4 workshop to be added in? This is the defining reason why Cities Skylines hooked me, the simplicity of downloading mods and addons because they are all on the steam workshop and require a simple subscribe click.

Anyway, its probably not possible but is just a dream that I have XD

[rsc204 21,866]

There is simply no way for such support to be added retrospectively to SC4. As things stand content is smattered over a number of sites, whilst ST and SC4D are quite big, there are plenty of other fansites too. In addition none of this content is indexed to a database that would make such a thing work. Bear in mind also, many people also do not use Steam to play the game.

Whilst at first the system in C:S might seem preferable, it's simplicity get's on my nerves once you've got a handful of downloads. My biggest irk, no profiles, why is it I can only turn everything on or off or select one item at a time? If I switch between save files, is it so surprising that I might choose to use a different set of content? Having to remember which saves use what and go through a list of simple checkboxes, is not as quick as renaming two folders (what I do for SC4). Frankly for Skylines to be a game I am happy with, this really needs to be addressed.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I'm not really into the techie side of steam and SC4, but what goes into making a workshop? Does it have to be done when the game first comes out or is there a way that we could petition for a SC4 workshop to be added in? This is the defining reason why Cities Skylines hooked me, the simplicity of downloading mods and addons because they are all on the steam workshop and require a simple subscribe click.

Anyway, its probably not possible but is just a dream that I have XD

First of all Steam (Valve as a company) did not exist in 2002, and there was no mod kit of any kind.  The Lot Editor and the BAT were released by Maxis a little later.  Of some note is that the BAT is a gmax game pack, and so you need gmax for openers, and it must be registered and active.

I do not much care for Steam and its little group of friends.  It is just an attempt to extract yet more money from the user base and this includes Origin.  Cursed be the Ori.

Doing work for SC4 custom content is not really all that hard if you have any kind of technical smarts.  The learning curve is pretty steep, but once you have accomplished that you'll see that making a good BAT is not that simple, but there are tools in the BAT/gmax that help you make arrays of windows and such.  You can also develop a library of things you use frequently like the infamous "roof junk".

The starting point is learning to use the Lot Editor to change things on existing lots or to make them into different lots by changing the base model.  In the bad old days before SC4Devotion and the development of things like PIM-X life was a lot more primitive.  Remember the Maxis guys were probably a set of ultimate computer geeks, and were very, very good.  The crew that replaced them were amateurs by comparison.

Those of us who were active in BATting in the early days often, like myself, did it because it was there and we wanted to make sure we understood it.  I haven't made a new BAT in a very long time, and probably won't.  Too much like work, and I've been retired for something like three lustrums now.  Others, however, fell in love with it, and we thank providence for them especially teams who do wonderful work on the NAM and the RTMT.  I think I would have lost interest in the game without those two packages to fool with.

In the early days of BATting, most people that did it were, like myself, older guys who had recently discovered SC4 and essentially took a busman's holiday to get away from the real world of application and operating system programming.  I saw my first computer in 1962 and have enjoyed them ever since.  This means that many of us were more than adept at working on arcane systems and making them work.  These days, not many people know enough to code a "Hello World" application which is 6 lines, including pre- and post-amble of PHP.  The same thing in C takes 5 lines depending on your coding style and, of course, it is two lines of shell script.

Here's the PHP:

<html>
    <head>
    <title>Hello World</title>
        <body>
            <?php echo "Hello, World!";?>
        </body>

 

The C:

#include <stdio.h>
void main () {
    printf("Hi there\n");
    return;
}

and the script

#!/bin/bash
echo "Hello world"
 

Oh, and I did say that most good programmers are polyglot.  I can write a COBOL program in any computer language you like.

So, your friends over at Steam make it easy for you.  Not surprising since the trend these days is to hide all the difficult stuff behind generators.  The only thing about generators is that they are often too general to be able to produce good tight code.

I hope this makes it easier to understand why there will never be a Steam workshop for BATs.

  Edited October 4, 2015 by A Nonny Moose  
Miscellenous fixing