Idea for one of the best mods ever! Almost as good as bigger cities

[FeTheC 25]

ok ok, so know that I wouldn't use ''one of the best'' lightly, especially for this community, but I'm rather convinced that should this mod be created it may just bring a whole new aspect to the game and it is one that might just be nearing as good as a mod for larger City tile numbers (which ironically is how I came across simtropolis, anyone else remember the mod whcih finally let us build bigger cities?  )

So my thought is this. A mod which causes time to run simultaneously accross all cities in a Region. The only way I imagine this would realistically be possible in a relatively simple manner is this... It doesn't actually happen simultaneously, but rather the mod just keeps track of time passed while in one City, and when one saves and Exits this value is kept track of and upon entering the next City that value for amount of time passed while in the other City is the amount of time the City runs before one can do anything to interfere! so basically one spends, let'S say, 2 years (730 days) in City 1A and then saves and Exits.

scratch that above kinda, i just realized, it would actually Need to Keep track of not time passed, but rather the date, or some value like that. I might think of exactly how later but basically it would Need to be done in a manner which accomodates the fact that one might pass 2 years in City 1 another 2 months in City 2 and then 3 months in City 3 and all that time will Need to add up and be passed upon entering City 4.

but basically, like i said, there Ends up being an amount of time for which the City one just entered will run, before one can interfere (pause Option off, you got News? it'S gonna be treated as though ignored. The landfill filled up? too bad you can build more once the time has passed. Oh no your Budget suddenly went down due to a powershortage because ur landfill is empty and chaos errupted and ur about to go bankrupt causing all your neighboring deals to no longer be in effect? you're gonna have to watch it happen  )  The only Thing which would Need to be implemented is either a way for available firetrucks to be sent out automatially, or fires still causing the game to pause and allowing one to send out firetrucks- but you wont be able to build a firestation so ya better have enough)

so while time passing might nt be a big deal for an empty or unstarted City, It will get more and more difficult the more built up the Region is since all the cities will Need to be in a state which causes them not to ''go to hell'' so to speak, for Long enough. One can still build across all of them since while paused no time passes for any

the other Thing i just realized, is this...(just a lil note here, I came across this idea while htinkin about how neighboring deals can easily be abused--i know i know, if one is willing to do that one might as well use a Money cheat simply-- but anyways) So the other aspect is that if possible, there should be a value for how Long one can continue to do something, or to what extent. What i mean is this...lets say you got a landfill and ur gettin garbage shipped to you, well, there is an amount of garbage which will come in at a certain rate, and the landfill will fill up (or maybe u got a WTE plant so it stays the same). So there is still an amount of garbage space left, which would Change though relative to how the neighboring cities' Situation changes and it would be nice if These values could be applied (i.e if i spend 10 years in City 2 which is sending garbage to City 3 and after 8 years at the current rate City 3's landfill is full then the deal Auto cancels at that Point--after which one can notice this and go to the other City)...idk im not tryna think more about how right now, but ill prolly touch on this later again.

for now I'm just interested in the Responses.
P.S
(I'm fairly newish to sc4 though sc2k n 3k were some of the first vid games i ever played) and I have as good as no actual modding experience

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

Difficult, but it might be possible to create a region-view hotkey that will find and open the city has the youngest date in it. I don't know if we can script something like that. Maybe DLL magic can call the in-game function to open a city.

Then the trick would be to automatically unpause, eventually detect when the city has passed the next-youngest by a month, auto save, then exit without saving. I don't know if a mod can do those things. It's unlikely, but there are buttons in the UI for those functions, so the functions might be scriptable. After the exit to region, then the region-view function could repeat (find and open the now-youngest city).

You'd want another hotkey to break out of the loop after leaving it to run for a while (like overnight).

Another long-shot might be to install a GUI-automation package on your PC and write an external GUI control script to drive the SC4 program while you sleep. That's something you could learn to do yourself.

[FeTheC 25]

This method seems like it might make sense to someone who knows more about modding, but from my perspective inefficient, and confusing, and like it wouldnt achieve the intended Goal. firstly since all of the regions start at the same time the ''next youngest'' will be all but one at first and how does the program differentiate then, also there are dift amounts of cities for dift regions. But that aside, this doesn't seem like it would lead to them functioning the equivalent of simultaneously.

Ima give it a coupla days to see what some of the other Responses are (if any) but it seems like id just needa learn to mod if really wanna pursue this. I'm guessing the GUI stands for graphic user Interface? and what it basically does is the equivalent of using an algorithm/some coding to cause the consequences which would happen if one were to physically move the mouse n click certain Locations as well as press certain Buttons on the Keyboard? which if one knows the layout of say the sc4 menu could lead to desired results? 

[FeTheC 25]

i apologize if it seems im not interested in putting much effort into this, I am, I've just got quite a few matters which require my time/Attention/and efforts more (hey if anyone wants to offer me Money to learn to mod, I'll consider it but, for now, this doesn tpay the bills). And i needa not stress myself too much by takin on too many Things at once