How to make city tiles bigger?

[carolstott 0]

Hi,

How do I make a city tile bigger than large? I am exclusively working with large city tiles in my region, but I still find them way too small. Is there any way to make bigger tiles, or if I did would it just overwhelm my processor?

Thanks,

Carol

[Whte_rbt 1,431]

Hard coded in the .exe i'm afraid. Someday someone like @simmaster07 might make progress on it but I wouldn't hold my breath.

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

Hi Carol and welcome to Simtropolis.

As @Whte_rbt said, unfortunately there is no known way to make large tiles any bigger than the size they are. This is because 256 x 256 cells is a defined limitation built into the game, and it is believed how this cannot practically be changed. The only thing which resembles what it might look like is an April Fools mod.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

4 hours ago, carolstott said:

would it just overwhelm my processor?

It would be this old game's memory model that would overflow first I think, though path-finding in a fully-developed extra-large city could be a CPU challenge too. What CPU challenges do exist owe to the lack of multi-threading (SC4 must run on a single core) and some machines' GPU/driver incompatibility (requiring software graphics rendering).

If could wish for one DLL magic spell, it would be a multi-threading fix that would unleash all of the CPU cores that one could bring to bear

[Propfam 2,288]

The clear answer is big no. If you ran out of space in large region, the only solution is just using more large tiles. For add more tiles in an existing city, I don't know how should be done. Maybe, region experts can reply here.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

Simple solution to this problem- make the region your city. You can make it as big as you want then. I do this all the time. Real cities are not perfect squares usually.

[rsc204 21,808]

On 19/10/2020 at 7:54 PM, jeffryfisher said:

If could wish for one DLL magic spell, it would be a multi-threading fix that would unleash all of the CPU cores that one could bring to bear

Anecdotally at least, it appears this is true of the Mac version of SC4 these days, certainly as a native 64-bit App, it's very capable of utilising much more RAM. But a couple posts round here support that the Mac code does not have the same limitations for CPUs and GPUs as the Windows one does.

Of course, that's not exactly a great solution and doesn't help with using larger tiles. Honestly, people shout '.dll fix' like it's some sort of magical solution to everything we'd like to see changed in the game. But .dll modding doesn't allow us to change the code, so much as redirect and supplement it. This may seem like a trivial difference, but practically speaking there is a huge gulf between the possibilities from the two.

Adding full multi-core support where it didn't previously exist, capable of freeing up the extra power of such CPUs, is just impractical via a .dll mod. To do this, the entire code needs to be altered so it communicates differently with the CPU, at the very least it would need recompiling with a Programming Language or API that would enable it. That's the difference with the Mac version, because changes in Mac OS have necessitated altering the APIs/compilation, such that the limitations inherent in DirectX 9 don't apply. Note too, the Mac edition doesn't support DirectX, but instead a working version of OpenGL.

It's far more realistic to think of a .dll mod preventing the CTDs that occur when using multiple cores, offering a slight performance improvement. The only reason SC4 has these problems is actually OS based and not necessarily anything to do with SC4's code. Windows Vista onwards can offload separate processes onto different cores, intended to offer better performance for applications not coded to work with Multi-Core CPUs natively. However, since this makes the two processes SC4 uses loose synchronisation, we need to tell Windows not to do this.

[Whte_rbt 1,431]

29 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

Honestly, people shout '.dll fix' like it's some sort of magical solution to everything we'd like to see changed in the game. But .dll modding doesn't allow us to change the code, so much as redirect and supplement it.

Very, very true. I feel this is probably because we are still in the infancy stages of .dll modding at the moment for this game and the defined boundaries of the technique are not fully known. Personally, I have not a clue about the capabilities of this type of modding, I got out of coding like this a looooong time ago.

The original intent of my statement was that it would probably take the intervention of someone with access to the game code like simmaster07 has to make any progress and even then I wouldn't hold out much hope.

[rsc204 21,808]

Specifically in the case of Multi-Core support, it simply isn't going to happen without recompiling if not altering the code. Just as removing the 2GB Memory limitation can only be done in the same way, because a .dll mod can't turn 32-bit code into 64-bit code. This is more about how Programming / Applications work than anything else, it simply isn't possible to go this by re-routing or altering the code on the fly, the technique used by .dll mods.

That said, it's still an exciting possibility, I'm sure in time we'll all see some nice surprises come out of what's been made possible.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

in the case of Multi-Core support, it simply isn't going to happen without recompiling if not altering the code.

I have a hunch that SC4 was actually designed to be a multi-threaded application, but it was pushed out the door before it could be thoroughly tested (in other words, it could have multi-thread design but with a synchronization bug in one function that could someday be isolated and supplanted). One of the hints is the mere fact that it was designed with that CPU count switch on the command line; that suggests that at least somebody was thinking about multiple CPUs even way back when.

And just to be clear: I am a programmer with ~30 years experience who has done multi-threaded coding, so I don't chatter about such things blindly. So I knew all of your objections before I made the wish, and I knew it was a long shot that SC4's issue could be patchable, but I don't think it's impossible, so I can still dream can't I?