Got a quick SC4 question?... Ask here!

[Tyberius06 12,189]

Hi everybody! 

I have a quick texture issue question.
So I am seeking @rsc204's or anybody's help who is good with custom textures. The default Maxis/SC4 overlay set contains sets of "driveway" or path textures, but they never included a + (4 way crossing) overlay. This was later created by someone from the community and added to the BSC MEGA Texture Pack (ancient STEX version) aka BSC Textures vol01 (the currently available version on LEX).

Apparently this custom overlay (0x25a77000) doesn't really like to show up on growable lots, only on ploppable ones. 

Can anybody help me figure it out, why is this strange behaviour?

Thanks in advance!

- Tyberius

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

I am trying to determine whether 0x30360000 and 0xC0FFF100 sandstone and cobblestone textures are Maxis defaults or a part of some other resource?

I queried Prop&Texture catalogue and received no hits for these...?

[nos.17 5,120]

On 11/5/2022 at 7:46 AM, TheMurderousCricket said:

I am trying to determine whether 0x30360000 and 0xC0FFF100 sandstone and cobblestone textures are Maxis defaults or a part of some other resource?

I queried Prop&Texture catalogue and received no hits for these...?

A bit late, but if I consult my top secret work in progress version, 0x30360000 is part of SFBT Essentials, and I don't know about 0xC0FFF100, but I can confirm it is not Maxis.

[Waro149 0]

What's the best way to get a quick Skyscraper in vanilla SC4?

[rsc204 21,808]

There really isn’t a shortcut to skyscrapers, there is a minimum population level required before you can see them. Plus the percentage of skyscrapers (Growth Stage 7/8) buildings you can have grows with your population. All this is intrinsic to how the game works and whilst mods can shortcut the process, many do this in an unbalanced way that ultimately causes more problems.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

33 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

There really isn’t a shortcut to skyscrapers, there is a minimum population level required before you can see them. Plus the percentage of skyscrapers (Growth Stage 7/8) buildings you can have grows with your population

Which would be somewhere around 128 000 citizens to obtain 20% of stage 8 buildings if I remember well. But that's the highest percentage one can ever get in the vanilla.

[rsc204 21,808]

Right, but if you consider the Stage 7 buildings as well, at the same population you can have 29% Stage 7 in addition to the 20% Stage 8. This is also handled Region-Wide, so once you've grown the Res population of just over 125k sims, almost half your buildings can be the two largest (most dense) types.

[Tubthumper 499]

Quick question - I absolutely love @mattb325's work!  After getting SC4 back up and running - I would like to download some of his stuff again.  Sadly, I see he hasn't been on since April 30th (I pray everything is ok), so I will have to ask the community at large.  Are his projects CAMpatible?  I now have CAM 2.1 installed in my new build - just trying to see if I can still use his works in CAM.  I know he may not have lots for the higher growth stages, but just wanting to see.  TIA.

[Tyberius06 12,189]

4 hours ago, Tubthumper said:

Quick question - I absolutely love @mattb325's work!  After getting SC4 back up and running - I would like to download some of his stuff again.  Sadly, I see he hasn't been on since April 30th (I pray everything is ok), so I will have to ask the community at large.  Are his projects CAMpatible?  I now have CAM 2.1 installed in my new build - just trying to see if I can still use his works in CAM.  I know he may not have lots for the higher growth stages, but just wanting to see.  TIA.

Yes, they are compatible. The larger models were modded accordingly to fall below the CAM stages (if I saw correctly the proper filling degree was halved), but they are campatible. If you read the provided readme files or download page descriptions, at least with the post-2015 non-BSC upload of his, he stated there that they are working properly with and without CAM.

-Tyberius06

[Tubthumper 499]

16 minutes ago, Tyberius06 said:

If you read the provided readme files or download page descriptions, at least with the post-2015 non-BSC upload of his, he stated there that they are working properly with and without CAM.

-Tyberius06

I downloaded a random assortment of them including Eclipse Tower, and the readmes had nada about CAMpatibility...but as long as they are good - I will be happy.  Thanks.

[Tubthumper 499]

Silly question: I am working on laying rails down in my region.  A large river runs through the middle of the region, so gonna have ferries in play.  IIRC, a bridge has to have a height of 285.5 (which is dumb high, if you ask me) for a ferry to be able to pass under.  I also have the DBE and will be placing some diagonal bridges.  I am going to assume that the DBs need to be at the same height for ferries?

On that note - I have looked but can't find if there is a mod that makes the actual ferry smaller or a way to lower the minimum bridge height?  100' above water is really dumb high IMHO

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

42 minutes ago, Tubthumper said:

Silly question: I am working on laying rails down in my region.  A large river runs through the middle of the region, so gonna have ferries in play.  IIRC, a bridge has to have a height of 285.5 (which is dumb high, if you ask me) for a ferry to be able to pass under.  I also have the DBE and will be placing some diagonal bridges.  I am going to assume that the DBs need to be at the same height for ferries?

On that note - I have looked but can't find if there is a mod that makes the actual ferry smaller or a way to lower the minimum bridge height?  100' above water is really dumb high IMHO

Try this-

Works for me.

[matias93 7,535]

On 11/16/2022 at 7:21 PM, Tubthumper said:

I am going to assume that the DBs need to be at the same height for ferries?

If I remember correctly, diagonal bridges simply don't allow ferries to pass under them, because for the game they aren't bridges, but surface viaducts, and ferries cannot go under a road or an avenue.

EDIT: untrue, check rsc204's answer below

  Edited November 17, 2022 by matias93  

[rsc204 21,808]

Whilst it's correct that DBE bridges aren't seen as bridges by the game, that might actually be useful here. A quick test (to be safe at the appropriate height), shows that indeed Ferries continue to operate under the DBE. I suspect because they are not bridges, it might even work at lower heights than actual bridges.

[kkffoo 259]

Garbage deals, puzzlement, am I reading this right?

My region appears to be making a small profit by taking in garbage from one neighbour, and passing it on to another neighbour with whom it has a garbage export deal.

My region does not have a garbage dump of its own.
 

 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

I believe you may be interested in reading these topics:

All in all, it is possible to create such "chain deals". Generally, the producer town will have several "middlemen" which will only forward whatever resources are sold, while the very end of the chain will actually buy the power / water / receive the garbage.

It is a cool way to manage your resources regionally and create power grid systems and water departments. This way you could, for example, have a huge, regional landfill if you wish. However, in most cases you will need @CorinaMarie's modification from the second topic in order to be able to execute this scheme without headaches.

I am, though, a little surprised that you can actually pull this of without having any garbage dump... Usually it is not possible to send any garbage to your neighbor if they don't have any "HODLing" center for the imported refuse.  Having recycling centers or incinerators is not enough for some reason if one wishes to launch a garbage ride.

[kkffoo 259]

Thank you I will check out those links, a quick reply for clarification. The region to which I am exporting does have a garbage dump.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

13 minutes ago, kkffoo said:

Thank you I will check out those links, a quick reply for clarification. The region to which I am exporting does have a garbage dump.

Oh, by region I believe you mean a city tile right?  This is why I was surprised that your entire region has no garbage facilities.

[kkffoo 259]

38 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Oh, by region I believe you mean a city tile right?  This is why I was surprised that your entire region has no garbage facilities.

Aaargh, vocabulary crash! Yes, I did mean that. I can't get used to calling the tiles cities.

[Tubthumper 499]

Don't know if I should post here or "Can't Find It"...but what I am wanting is a "small radius" God Mode flora brush.  The default is still too large for getting into those small 1x1 or 2x2 areas without plopping trees onto parking lots and in the middle of a lot.  I know I could use MMPs, but issue with those is trying to get a nice variety/spacing.  When building roads or zoning areas, I like to keep some space around for natural trees - but BAM - they get knocked down and I have these dumb strips 1 tile wide that I wanted trees in.  To complicate matters even more, I have seasonal flora - so I can only place the trees on the anniversary (for my scenario - Sept. 1st) to keep them all in sync.  TIA!

[rsc204 21,808]

The god mode brush can be adjusted by pressing shift + the number keys, with shift + 1 creating the smallest brush and higher numbers being progressively larger. Using the smallest brush whilst zoomed in will create a suitably sized brush without the need for mods.

However, i would note that whilst you can use the God-Mode brush, you would be better off using MMPs or even Ploppable filler lots in such tight situations. Most tree controllers are optimised to cluster trees such that in open areas they don’t bunch up too much, you really wouldn’t want to alter this behaviour unless you want really dense trees everywhere. So in smaller gaps like this the god mode tool won’t lead to many trees in a 1-tile wide strip. Not to mention that it is still possible to end up planting trees on lots, again due to the clustering.

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

@Tubthumper

You might also find Cori's Flora Eraser Brush handy. This is designed to remove flora items (including MMPs) over a small 1x1 cell area.

See this post for info on this (there's a link to the v1.1 version at the top).

[urbanmosaic 234]

In all the years I've played SC4 I've never seen this before.  The electric tower is smoking and sparking and making electrical sounds.   What is this?   What does it indicate? 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

49 minutes ago, urbanmosaic said:

In all the years I've played SC4 I've never seen this before.  The electric tower is smoking and sparking and making electrical sounds.   What is this?   What does it indicate? 

Not really positive at what could have caused this, but I have a few theories. This happened to me a while back with a substation that exploded and caused radiation. Several explanations- conflict of mods, power company was just too potent for the substation, mod was not meant to do what I tried to make it do, not a fully tested mod or "who knows".

[Tubthumper 499]

2 hours ago, urbanmosaic said:

In all the years I've played SC4 I've never seen this before.  The electric tower is smoking and sparking and making electrical sounds.   What is this?   What does it indicate? 

Another possibility-simple funding issue.  If your slider in the budget is too low, you will have this occur.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

4 hours ago, urbanmosaic said:

In all the years I've played SC4 I've never seen this before.  The electric tower is smoking and sparking and making electrical sounds.   What is this?   What does it indicate? 

What @Tubthumper said. It happens when power funding is too low.

In theory, this "brrzzting" can cause fires but I always have some of them on my power poles (in some cases even in the middle of forests) and nothing like that has ever been happening. 

[rsc204 21,808]

19 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

In theory, this "brrzzting" can cause fires but I always have some of them on my power poles (in some cases even in the middle of forests) and nothing like that has ever been happening. 

I learnt the hard way that when modding Flora you need to be careful to ensure they can’t catch fire. Should a fire start in a forest, fire engines won’t be able to get to it so it will rage uncontrollably. So that might explain why you never saw a fire.

I see this only when I run power lines over water, then I see something similar, although it’s never given me an issue. Like water pipes, roads and various other things, you CAN underfund your power grid, but you really shouldn’t. It’s simply a false economy, the minuscule savings won’t cover the additional repairs, let alone the hassle. Some things are best kept well funded always. 

[urbanmosaic 234]

Thanks to everybody that replied to the power issue (above).  

The city was completely dependent on imported power.  When it required more power the slider indicated under-funding rather than a complete lack of power indicated by flashing zots.  The city needed more power than what could be imported.  When I added sufficient local power the sparking stopped.  I never under-fund power because of the risk of explosions (especially nuclear) so that's why I've never seen this before.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

FINALLY!!!!! After years(literally) of trying to solve this problem and multiple times asking about it on the forum, with no concrete answer, I accidentally fixed this my self. The sparkles(as seen here)-

These little blinking lights that ruin my pics. Everyone thought it was radiation. It was, but it wasn't. Turns out it was a water pollution control lot from this set-

, which totally threw me off because I figured it would be from a power source.

Radiation was 0 on the lot, but the range was maxed out at 255. So I zeroed that stat and the sparkles disappeared. Unfortunately, you can't retro-fix tiles that already have them, but at least anything from here on out will be sparkle free.

As long as I'm in here, I have a question. Is it against forum rules to ask a favor from someone/anyone about getting that set un-datpacked? I don't know of any un-packers or how to do it. Cori did this once for me on another set.

[rsc204 21,808]

There is no such thing as UNDATPacking, it’s very much a one-way process. No information exists within the packed data to Unpack it, it’s just a file full of objects.

Of course you can manually split one file into multiple files, but the key question is what are you trying to separate from the rest? If you can answer this, logically you can probably do it yourself. In practise it’s no more complex than Copy/Pasting items from the file in Reader. But it does require a certain degree of understanding of what the contents of files are. In theory every entry in a file will work if split into individual files for each. But there tends to be a set method for deciding which things to place together. For example a Lot comprises of a Buildings and LotConfig Exemplar, plus maybe an Icon (PNG), and possibly other things too.

Don’t think of SC4 files as files, but as database entries which simply need to exist to work together. Which is exactly what the proprietary DBPF format SC4 uses, a database. This is the basis of why SC4 is so easily moddable.

Explanation aside, it’s not against the rules to ask, provided the resultant changes aren’t shared publicly like on the exchanges. If you want some help and think this is something you may want to do in future. Perhaps I can put together a video tutorial explaining the fundamentals?