Problem with custom regions.

[Thorx21 7]

I downloaded a custom region from the STEX called "Suriname" which is a former dutch colony in the north of southern america. It's the first time I try to install and use a custom region. For this I used SC4 mapper with which I imported a SC4M file to create the map. 

There are several problems. The 1st one is what the red text already tells you. The city called "Northest Suri" is orientated north/south according to the region overview as it is shown on the picture.
But when you load the map the small developed area which you can see on the pic in the sattelite view mode is faced to the south (bottom part of the map in city view)

So consequently it rotates the map 90 degrees right changing it's orientated to west/east causing the sea to be rendered on the east side of the map in city view rather then the northern side as the region view displays.

However, the city tile right of it called "Suri - A" is angled in the orientation shown according to the region view and is as it should be.

There is also a 2nd problem which the picture already shows. But the following picture shows it a little bit better.

This is a region from the STEX called the "Soviet Union"

FIrst of all the problem, which is the edge reconciliation that apparently draws water on the southern edge of the city tile.

I have thus far always used edge reconciliation but with these custom regions it seems to be a problem. Does it matter whether I reconcile the edge or not?
And why does it do this?
Is there a fix or method so the map reconciles properly?
Or should I never use reconciliation at all?

I downloaded the appalachian terrain mod. Does that conflict with the region as it was rendered by the author, or does that have nothing to do with it?
In any case, it seems that many of the custom region have different terrain mods or terrain colors used to render the map.

How do I know which terrain mods were used with the custom region that I downloaded, or the ones I'm still going to download in the future.
As for this one, how do I make sure my city tiles match the colors of the terrain the region is rendered with.

Which mods were used by the author to create that particular tint of green?

I don't fervour any particular terrain mod but don't really like the bland vanilla one.

[matias93 7,535]

About the edge reconciliation issue: you need to save the city tiles at least once INSIDE the game to make it recognise them as having their terrain levels. When you reconcile edges with tiles that are just imported from the Mapper, the game interpetates those tiles as having flat, underwater terrain, and lowers the edges of your current tile accordingly.

[Thorx21 7]

Ok thanks. At least that learned me something. 

But I just learned that the floating tiles were caused by me playing on a higher resolution. I play 1920 x 1080 and when you save a city tile when resolution is over 1280 x 1024 city tiles will float once saved as the following topic describes.

I actually play on a 3440 x 1440 monitor so 1920 x 1080 is really what I would want.

I know this to be true because I just checked. I lowered the resolution and the problem went away.
But then how do I even play at a higher resolution at all.

Because I can't. For the resolution to change I have to save the map. But saving the city causes this error to occur when the resolution is over 1280 x 1024. I don't have to get back to the region view, simply saving the city in the city view and then restarting the game causes the city tile to float.

So how do other people then play at higher resolutions I wonder?

 

Whatever I do, I find I can never play at a higher resolution because whenever I play I need to save my map.

[rsc204 21,808]

40 minutes ago, Thorx21 said:

So how do other people then play at higher resolutions I wonder?

Anything over 1200 vertical is not supported by the game (bear in mind it's 15 years old), you will encounter issues. Similarly very large resolution on the horizontal plane would likely not be supported either.

Quote

Hardware rendering (DirectX/OpenGL) only supports resolutions up to 2048x1152. Any resolution that exceeds this will result in crashing upon launch. Software rendering is not affected by this. (Source)

As mentioned, 1920x1200 should be supported, so that's not absolutely the limit, but you won't get proper 4K from SC4 using hardware rendering.

[Thorx21 7]

@rsc204 I never expected 4k in SC4 and played this game when it was released so I was already presuming some issues to have a effect and that clearly is the case. I usually have such presumptions with other age old games of which this one is clearly ancient.

1920 x 1200 may be supported, but if it comes with bugs that makes city tiles float I really think it shouldn't qualify to be designated as something supported as floating city tiles is a very annoying bug. I was browsing this forum to found a way to set the highest resolution. But then I had to find out why my city tiles started to float for which I had to search half an hour for a answer using the search engine only to realize I had to lower the resolution to 1280 x 1024 in order to play the game.

Which makes me wonder why people even want to play at higher resolutions like 1920 x 1024 in the first place.
Don't you all have this problem?
Personally I'm wondering why there are topics online telling people how to put their resolutions over 1280 x 1024 when it comes with this bug.

Maybe others aren't as annoyed by it like I am. But If I intend to build a region using several tiles I wouldn't want them to hover in region view mode because that breaks the immersion I would want to get when gazing into my region once I get one going, or better yet have it finished. 

Meanwhile I think I will play in windowed mode to circumvent this issue and keep it at 1280 x 1024. Fullscreen at 1280 x 1024 on this monitor looks very bad.

[rsc204 21,808]

12 hours ago, Thorx21 said:

Which makes me wonder why people even want to play at higher resolutions like 1920 x 1024 in the first place.
Don't you all have this problem?

1920x1080 (or full HD) works flawlessly, but of course your equipment must support it. Perhaps your GPU/Drivers have problems with the needed DX7 compatibility modes required by SC4. You are manually setting the resolution using a command line switch?

-CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32

If you don't add such a switch, widescreen resolutions are not properly supported. It's also worth trying both -f (Fullscreen mode) and -w (Windowed mode), maybe the results differ?

12 hours ago, Thorx21 said:

Maybe others aren't as annoyed by it like I am. But If I intend to build a region using several tiles I wouldn't want them to hover in region view mode because that breaks the immersion I would want to get when gazing into my region once I get one going, or better yet have it finished. 

If the cost of a higher in-game resolution (not that I have such hi-def monitors), were a buggy region view, I'd personally accept the compromise. I don't spend my time playing in region view, but I do spend a lot of time in-game where those extra pixels have something to offer. The real issue is that the game takes a screenshot of the city for the region-view preview, it's this part of the code which is limited in terms of the resolution screenshot the game can handle. Again this is as much likely because computers couldn't handle much more, as well as not foreseeing such resolutions, from a developer perspective. All things considered, it holds up really well though, it's always easy with hindsight to know what support would have been useful.

[Thorx21 7]

Yes I use custom resolution, I did this by using the SC4 Launcher third party plugin. I have a GTX 1080 TI. Intel Integrated Graphics UHD 630 is on my motherboard and both suffer from the same. I Don't know how well the drivers are compatible with DX7 modes. In all likelihood the newer the GPU is the more glitches I could expect.
I already started playing the game in windowed mode to compensate for the size of my monitor.

I can definitely accept it. But I do feel I want a smaller secondary monitor just for the sake of playing this game.I don't have one lying around so I'm going to look around my neighborhood to see if anyone else does.

Thanks for your assistance.