Idea for a new mod, connecting cities and sharing pollution

[FeTheC 25]

So I'm fairly (re)New to SC4, and have just about no Modding experience (mentioning this aforehand since what i say might Show this anyway).
I was thinking it might be cool (once I am more experienced) to have a mod which causes Pollution to spread from City to City.
 We all know that one can just plop a coal factory in the Corner of the map and not have to worry about the neighboring City being polluted by it.
My idea/thoughts around the idea is, well, as i stated, this mod would cause it to be noticable that something like a coal plant is on the edge, or whatever form of Pollution (holy sh** a nuclear melt down would now be insanely devestating) which is being caused by whatever would also spread from the neighboring city.

So I'm not too familiar with exactly how it is coded but, I'm fairly certain that a part of the coding must define the current Level (value) of Pollution in an area, and that in the same manner which the Charts Show an incline or decline in Level of Pollution, it would be fairly simple to determine the average rate of Change (i.e is there a steady increase/decrease?). These two values could then be used, lets say values are CP=current pulltion and PR=Pollution Rate (e.g + .00001%CP/Day), oh and i just realized a third value would be Need, call it PT=Pollution Type (e.g Water,Air,Radiation, etc). These values could be used per edge tile (i.e the mod only Needs to determin what the CP and PR of each PT for the outter most tiles is) and then noted and applied to the neighboring cities edge tile (my thought is since a neighboring deal will Auto cancel if the neighbor no longer has water or power this should be possible).  

(ok, lemme just say im gonna tlk about it as though it were simple, but know that im assuming it's not)
Ok, then, in the same way, perhaps even using the same function or method, in which a Connection to neighboring cities is made for/by roads, pipes, electricity etc. one can have an Automatically recognized Connection on every tile (idk if this would require too much processing power, but if so it could be reduced by having an Auto Connection be per every 10 or 20 tiles and then having the inbetweens just be averaged out) and through this Connection in the same way traffic Comes across so will Pollution. So we would have a Connection per tile (imagine a street or pipe Connection on every tile except instead of a street, an invisible one) for every PT, and then (CP value of neighbor x PR value of neighbor)/(CP value of current City x PR value of current City) would travel across in the same manner in which traffic does. So instead of car traffic it would now be Pollution traffic, and instead of visible (e.g street or electric pole) Connections there would invisible but noticable Pollution connections

Now, I'm not sure if it might useful should one attempt this endeavour to use some aspect of the neighboring deals function (I'm just thinkin bout how, if one makes a lot of Progress in one City or lets say raises a huge mountain to block all the Pollution then in the same way which neighboring deals only work so Long as the others continue to have the abilitiy to provide it, this part can be used to apply the Change in CP,n PR to the neighboring cities)

and ooooooooooooooooooomg i just thought of a really cool possible mod which mioght already exist so im gonna have to search for it first, but! lemme know what yall think!

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

Since the game does not have "pollution connections" programmed into it, it is very unlikely that a mod could do this.

Mods can do a lot of things with program features that already exist, but creating new features is probably impossible. For example, the game has buildings, so we can add buildings or replace definitions for existing buildings. The game does not have connections that send freight trucks to other cities (they go to connections, but then they vanish). In 15 years, nobody has ever figured out how to make the freight appear on the other side.

If conservation of freight units can't be implemented, then spreading pollution is very unlikely. Your idea makes world-sense, but it's almost certainly an idea for game upgrade, not a mod.

[FeTheC 25]

how does the game recognize wether or not the neighboring City has sufficient power landfill or water for a deal? I mean it automatically recognizes wether it does or doesn't
(im not asking for the sake of refuting. I dont know much about modding, nearly nothing. and i am geniuinely curious).

sigh...ive got quite a fair bit on my plate already so to speak, but im gettin the Impression i needa learn to mod to pursue Things like this further. If i remember correctly there were a few threads on this already, at least for simcity4 specific modding. Ah yes, now i remember there was a bit mentioned in the ordinances list thread.

but back to the Topic at Hand, when it Comes to deals there is clearly a way in which the game communicates data from and to, i.e across, cities. so, though i mentioned it before, ill do so again, wouldnt utilizing the same method and replacing values and such be a way to achieve this?

that freight doesn't appear on the other side, seems to be a simple matter no? time isn't passing in the otherside, time only passes in one City at a time. so while the freight is still in one City it is still in that City and as soon as it is not, it is not, and once one changes cities the save loads data from a Point in time which is unchanged by other cities' time Progression.

[CorinaMarie 29,919]

Disclaimer: I generally don't post in modding discussion topics because I know so very little about the topic.

However, I believe I know just enough to maybe clarify a point or two. We do know when you save any given city tile all adjacent tiles north, south, east, and west also get an update and are saved too. One can assume each city tile has a handful of variables already set aside to receive some information about the neighbors. It could look like this:

• Neighbor Name
• Residential Population
• Commercial Population
• Industrial Population
• Demand Levels
• Average Education Quotient
• Etcetera

And those could be stored in a table style format so if there is only one neighbor it only gets one set of data. If there are the maximum of 16 neighbors then the table is indexed to have a set of data for each one. For any type of transportation connection it could put those in a table too keeping track of the type, the coordinates, and amount of traffic. The point being that however it is actually set up, it's cast in stone and not moddable. (City save files have a checksum so we cannot modify any part of them once they are established.)

Keep in mind the above is like paraphrasing and it's just my own guesses at that.

[FeTheC 25]

i have an idea for how to possibly not be limited by the cant mod save files Thing, but im pretty tired and needa rest for now so ill post it  later. Can the save files still be read and analyzed (i.e though we cant edit can we view?)