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

[thornp113 54]

When importing a city,  how are the cities organized?  I feel like it changes depending on the location of the tile you're importing to, unless it's just my imagination. 

Does anyone have a trick to knowing how far you'll have to scroll down to find the city you're looking for? I'm tired of scrolling and scrolling, especially on that tiny window.

Thanks!

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

3 hours ago, thornp113 said:

When importing a city,  how are the cities organized?  I feel like it changes depending on the location of the tile you're importing to, unless it's just my imagination. 

Does anyone have a trick to knowing how far you'll have to scroll down to find the city you're looking for? I'm tired of scrolling and scrolling, especially on that tiny window.

Thanks!

Import cities are organized according to sizes- small, medium, large. If you, for example, have 2 small tiles in 1 region, and 0 small tilies in the region you are trying to put them in, they will not list. A trick I use is to give a tile a temporary name like "1", "2" etc.or whatever so it wont list as "New City". You can change the name again later, once it's moved. I also make a dummy region to deflect mistakes, if you have a lot of tiles of a particular size. You can import them back and forth as many times as you want.

[kschmidt 6,164]

6 hours ago, thornp113 said:

When importing a city,  how are the cities organized?  I feel like it changes depending on the location of the tile you're importing to, unless it's just my imagination. 

Does anyone have a trick to knowing how far you'll have to scroll down to find the city you're looking for? I'm tired of scrolling and scrolling, especially on that tiny window.

Thanks!

Indeed, you can;t put any tile into a differentsize tile. Exporting a city to a other region erases the city completly from that region, remember to make a backup boefore doing so ! I experiencced this when moving Mayon to the Mayon 2.0 larger region. I maid a backup so I could replace the old erased region with the original region before the move ! What may occur might be issue between the  terrain level inbetween old and new region, issues regarding mods like folora, tree controllers i it's a maxis or a scm region. So watch out !

[thornp113 54]

3 hours ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

Import cities are organized according to sizes- small, medium, large. If you, for example, have 2 small tiles in 1 region, and 0 small tilies in the region you are trying to put them in, they will not list. A trick I use is to give a tile a temporary name like "1", "2" etc.or whatever so it wont list as "New City". You can change the name again later, once it's moved. I also make a dummy region to deflect mistakes, if you have a lot of tiles of a particular size. You can import them back and forth as many times as you want.

Thanks guys.  I've actually had a lot of experience importing.  I label the region in the corner 1A and then go 1B 1C for a certain direction and the 2A 3A 4A in the other and continue that as needed.  What I noticed is that the order of the cities changes depending on which tile you are importing to, but I can't figure what the rhyme or reason is, so Im always scrolling and scrolling and scrolling having no idea how far down ill have to scroll to find the right city.  It's very frustrating if your trying to move a whole chunk of a region.

It would be helpful if the import window wasnt so tiny.  Is there a mod that could make them larger?

Also, does Teraformer not work on a region with imported cities?  It's working with other regions except the one I'm working on.  There could be other reasons for that I guess.  It loads all the way but then the program doesn't pop up.  Also for half the cities that should say "New City"  say what I'm guessing is New City in either French or Spanish.  I'm suspicious of that.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

18 minutes ago, thornp113 said:

Also, does Teraformer not work on a region with imported cities? 

If memory serves, Terraformer auto-protects any tile that has been opened and saved. You must un-tick the box to open it to the app.

[QuantumChicken 82]

Heya! Am I crazy to like SimCity 4 more than Cities Skylines?

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

46 minutes ago, KillrChicken said:

Heya! Am I crazy to like SimCity 4 more than Cities Skylines?

Insufficient data. Please provide more details. 

[QuantumChicken 82]

1 minute ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Insufficient data. Please provide more details. 

I like the mass-scale and region of SimCity 4. I also have a problem with hitting the user-agent limits in Cities Skylines. If that helps.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

5 hours ago, KillrChicken said:

Am I crazy

You waited 20 years to ask this loaded question? Welcome back!

[QuantumChicken 82]

6 minutes ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

You waited 20 years to ask this loaded question? Welcome back!

The only problem with SC4 is windows 11 IoT Enterprise does not play well with this game. Windows 10, I never had lag issues. Still loving SC4.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

Is there an origin to the Tahoe plop water color? I seem to find it laced through various canal/pond/stream sets. A bit confusing.

[rsc204 21,808]

On 08/01/2023 at 11:11 PM, KillrChicken said:

The only problem with SC4 is windows 11 IoT Enterprise does not play well with this game. Windows 10, I never had lag issues. Still loving SC4.

Isn't that just a enhanced set of tools for business use, but otherwise identical to other Win11 systems? Honestly I suspect your problem lies elsewhere, drivers may well be the issue, but I would highly recommend using a DX Wrapper to see if things improve. Note too, SC4 can wrongly detect many GPUs and cause them to run poorly because it doesn't realise they can run the game really well. In such cases, a few modifications to the Graphics Rules/Videocard .sgr files can resolve the issue.

3 hours ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

Is there an origin to the Tahoe plop water color? I seem to find it laced through various canal/pond/stream sets. A bit confusing.

The way the Pegasus team often worked, was updating and renewing existing content, so for example before the CDK3, there was a CDK2. In a similar manner, the PPonds, Steams, Canals (CSK) had various different water colours over the years. Tahoe was one of the last to be created, but people liked it so much that a lot of the other sets were updated with an option to use the same water, so they could create a single harmonious system.

Yes, some of the PEG stuff can be a little tricky to setup, but all the information is there in the documentation, it is easier if you are familiar with it nonetheless.

Just as with the recent CDK3 package, similar packages are intended for other PEG themes, including one for the water-related stuff like Canals/Ponds/Steams. I can't give a release date, but when we get around to this, the installation will be greatly simplified in a similar way to the CDK3.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

The way the Pegasus team often worked, was updating and renewing existing content, so for example before the CDK3, there was a CDK2. In a similar manner, the PPonds, Steams, Canals (CSK) had various different water colours over the years. Tahoe was one of the last to be created, but people liked it so much that a lot of the other sets were updated with an option to use the same water, so they could create a single harmonious system.

Yes, some of the PEG stuff can be a little tricky to setup, but all the information is there in the documentation, it is easier if you are familiar with it nonetheless.

Just as with the recent CDK3 package, similar packages are intended for other PEG themes, including one for the water-related stuff like Canals/Ponds/Steams. I can't give a release date, but when we get around to this, the installation will be greatly simplified in a similar way to the CDK3.

So, there isn't what you would call a "ground zero" set for this water. It just eased it's way into various sets. I see.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

Does "Diagonal bridges" mod work on the same premise as water removal cheat?

In other words, will activating it destroy all extant bridges and coastal installations in a city?

[simster007 370]

4 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Does "Diagonal bridges" mod work on the same premise as water removal cheat?

In other words, will activating it destroy all extant bridges and coastal installations in a city?

Short answer: No it doesn´t. At least as far as I experienced using it.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

7 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Does "Diagonal bridges" mod work on the same premise as water removal cheat?

In other words, will activating it destroy all extant bridges and coastal installations in a city?

Slightly longer answer: Yes, they both temporarily drain the terrain, but the DBE allows the bridge pieces to appear, which only can install on dry land. Using regular road will severely damage the landscape, depending on the slope mod you use. I usually avoid DBs but if I have to have one, there are cosmetic bridge sets available. Somewhat of a pain to fetch that mod every time I need it, anyway. Can't really tell you if DBE destroys anything. Have only used it on empty tiles.

[rsc204 21,808]

16 hours ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

Using regular road will severely damage the landscape, depending on the slope mod you use. I usually avoid DBs but if I have to have one, there are cosmetic bridge sets available. Somewhat of a pain to fetch that mod every time I need it, anyway.

It's got nothing to do with the slope mod you have, because the DBE at its core uses a modified slope mod to force road and other networks to build flat, regardless of the terrain whilst draining water, because otherwise the game wouldn't allow you to build diagonal networks. This trick essentially allows you to build diagonal networks which in combination with a special overrides using starter pieces, then convert the parts between them to show special bridge models. The only thing you should be doing with the DBE installed, is building a diagonal bridge. If you need to do some light terraforming, use Street stubs, since Street isn't covered by the included slope mod, it doesn't have the same restrictions. But generally speaking it's better to set things up as required by terraforming things beforehand.

Note that the DBE is considered an advanced user feature, it can be tricky to get really good results, but it offers functionality that is otherwise impossible. A tutorial for the DBE exists as part of my NAM Tutorials Series here.

[Turnstyled 486]

A while back, Cori told me that the CPUPriority command line flag would have no effect on my Windows 11 (Perhaps, then, 10) PC. I have a high-end PC. Would anyone know if it would be better for me to install Process Lasso, which is subscription-based, and set SimCity 4 to always run with a High process priority using Process Lasso, or would installing Process Lasso just be more bloat? Is the CPU scheduler in modern Windows able to really do anything with something as old as SimCity 4? This is an OS question. I don't think it requires you to be familiar with Process Lasso because all that I'm thinking of doing with it is automating what is already built into Windows. Thanks in advance! I have no problem paying the subscription fee if it helps. Well, I already have a month's subscription, so I'll see for myself and witness the placebo effect in action!

Edit: I found a utility that would allow me to assign CPU priority to the game's executable. It's called AIO Per-Game Tweaks. It can be found on GitHub here: (https://github.com/amymor/AIO-per-game-tweaks)

It is on GitHub, but the source is not available. Also, it will modify the game's executable, so I am using it at my own discretion. Use it at your own discretion as well.

My question is answered! I'll be uninstalling Process Lasso now.

Edit 2: AIO Per-Game Tweaks applies all changes to the registry, not the game's executable. My disclaimer to use it at your own discretion still applies.

Edit 3: AIO Per-Game Tweaks is not applying High process priority for SimCity 4. I tried running AIO Per-Game Tweaks as an administrator and I tried rebooting my computer. I also tried Process Hacker 2, which is open source and source available, and Process Hacker 2 is not applying High process priority for SimCity 4. Thus, I will keep using Process Lasso.

[rsc204 21,808]

Long and short, this is a mode of Windows that’s effectively been depreciated, hence even under Win7 this command gets ignored. You can manually set it using Task Manager each time the game runs, then take note of how nothing is any different. In other words this isn’t going to increase performance, even if you managed to enable it.

Modern multi core systems will split workloads into separate cores. Unless you are running a ton of background apps and really stressing your CPU, SC4 simply isn’t going to benefit from being prioritised. In such a scenario, the solution is not forcing High Priority, rather not running everything else whilst trying to play a game. 

[Turnstyled 486]

I see. Setting the option was recommended in the past. Now, I see why that is no more. When I was trying to play all games, I had many more background tasks running on my system than are currently running. I had Daemon Tools, my controller remapper, VirtualMIDISynth for soundfonts, Munt for Roland MT-32 emulation, and so many more running.

Yes, I saw your response that "it won't make anything faster" while looking things up two nights ago. As for the "gaming" peripherals that exist now, it's a total mess. Razer has a bloated utility, Corsair has a bloated utility, MSI has a bloated utility, Logitech has a bloated utility, Steelseries has a bloated utility, Asus has a bloated utility...

I find that people who are into mechanical keyboards can be overwhelming for me, but I ditched my Corsair keyboards and I bought a Keychron keyboard, my own keycaps, and my own keyboard switches. I also bought an open-source macropad called a duckyPad. As for that RGB lighting, I downloaded OpenRGB and I set it all to be a static color. 

Thanks so much the answer!

[vw_oklahoma 308]

Can someone point me to a good tutorial on how to take a decent picture of the region view? 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

3 hours ago, vw_oklahoma said:

Can someone point me to a good tutorial on how to take a decent picture of the region view? 

There is no "decent" picture of the region view. Whether you use an image grabber on your device, the in-game capture, or the enlarge option in the Region Census tool, you will get exactly the same resolution of mushy pixels. The last option is slightly better, as it removes the dash buttons from the pic. Copy and paste is your only way of getting higher quality imagery.

I have learned a few tricks over the years, to make the process less painful. It starts with laying out my region map. I avoid large tiles, as it is a real pain to get a complete tile shot with shadows on. So most of my regions are laid out in medium or small sizes. I use a black sky mod(no stars even), and a mod that turns the soil side-view black. That way I can isolate and separate the background from the land in photoshop.

I've made a grid that I use to paste these region pieces into. They are saved in .png format. They can get quite huge, some weighing in at 80-90MB. I've formatted the grid for medium tiles. It also works for small ones.

This is the largest grid I can make with my programs. If your map is larger than this, obviously you'll have to make your region shots in sections- 1,2,3,N,S,E,W,A,B.C etc. In second zoom, a medium tile will need 4 pics, one for each corner. If you go with a closer zoom, obviously, you will stray out of the grid borders and require many more pics per tile. Once you have your pics, remove the backgrounds and start pasting the land into the grid. Wash, rinse and repeat, as they say. Once the grid is as full as you want it, click on the black background and flood fill it with black, or any other color you want. I would make a back-up till you get the hang of it. You should now have a higher definition png region pic that you can transfer in to a smaller easy-to-use jpg. Once it's in that format, you can crop it any way you want. Or, in png format, simply enlarge an area and take a screenshot. From there, you can add any variety of filters and enhancements.

Hope this helps.

[Turnstyled 486]

I just did a PlopAllBuildings and I did a visual search for brown boxes. I found three. I think I needed the Alexander Column Roundabouts for the Concorde Fountain in the VIP vnaoned monuments pack. I don't know what the dependencies are for the CSX WFK - Katanga from the LEX DVD are and they're not listed in the readme on the disc. Would anyone please know what its dependencies are?

The third brown box, as seen in the screenshot below, was for a building that queried as "UnderPass." I did a search through my plugins folder and I found nothing with "UnderPass" in its filename. I just datpacked my plugins in an attempt to find what this "UnderPass" is through Ilive's Reader. I cannot find what it is. You can see from the icon that it is a rail transportation building with a maximum capacity of 2,000. I'd like to please ask if anyone would know what it is or what its dependencies are. Thank you so much in advance.

Just for funsies, below is the entire map. I'm going to try a PlopAllLots next. I don't think that there will be enough space on a large map for that.

[Turnstyled 486]

I'd like to provide a quick update to my question. I'm still wondering what the dependencies for CSX - Katanga are, but I worked on refining my Reader skills now that I'm home. This "UnderPass" corresponded to instance 0x9958768a. It was in UnderPlop.dat from Neko in the Neko Prop Sets from the HIDE-Inoki BBS. 

[rsc204 21,808]

8 hours ago, Turnstyled said:

I think I needed the Alexander Column Roundabouts for the Concorde Fountain in the VIP vnaoned monuments pack.

I hate to say it, but the link is there clear as day in the Readme for the monuments, which should always be your first point of reference in these situations.

https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/20103-alexander-column-roundabouts/

[Tyberius06 12,189]

7 hours ago, Turnstyled said:

I'd like to provide a quick update to my question. I'm still wondering what the dependencies for CSX - Katanga are, but I worked on refining my Reader skills now that I'm home. This "UnderPass" corresponded to instance 0x9958768a. It was in UnderPlop.dat from Neko in the Neko Prop Sets from the HIDE-Inoki BBS. 

It would be extremely helpfull if you plop just the affected lots or sets instead of mass of buildings. I haven't even managed to eyeball all three of your brownboxes from the first image. Also, please install the PEG OOPS/OPPS mod, which would turn the brownboxes to colourfull flags, so we could see the full lot without a brownbox covering it completely. 

The LEX DVD contents will come eventually onto the public LEX, it's just matter of time. I'm busy with NAM stuffs and the LEX dep tracker is down at this moment and the Katanga set has a s*** load of dependencies. I list them here, but I assume that the missing stuffs could be the SNM based models which are now in the BSC Mega Props SNM vol01 and vol02. I would highly recommend to re-download the dep packs again if you don't have the "project ZIPped" version of them (the ones without the exe installers). 

Quote

 

Dependencies for the CSX - Katanga Wall set

BSC Essentials 2021 or above
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=443

BSC MEGA Props SG vol01
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=746

BSC MEGA Props - RT Vol01
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=398

BSC MEGA Props - RT Vol02
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=228

BSC MEGA Props - CAL Vol01
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=469

BSC MEGA Props CP vol01
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1180

BSC MEGA Props swi21 Vol01
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=403

BSC MEGA Props - Gascooker Vol01
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=397

BSC MEGA Props MBEAR Vol01
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=345

BSC BATProps D66 Vol10
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1261

BSC MEGA Props MISC vol01
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=426

BSC MEGA Props MISC vol02 v2
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1771

BSC MEGA Props SNM Vol01 (BSCBATProps RT SNM Vol01.dat)
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=4154

BSC MEGA Props SNM Vol02 - Naval (SNCoastguardRescueStation.dat)
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=4155

CSX MEGA Props Vol02 v2
https://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=460

CSX MEGA Props - Vol03 v2
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=461

CSX MEGA Props - Vol06 v2
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=633

CSX MEGA Props - Vol07 v2
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1574

BSC Textures Vol01
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=90

BSC Textures Vol02
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=638

 

In addition there is a Katanga Distric Police station too. These are its dependencies:

Quote

Dependencies for Katanga Distric Police

BSC Essentials 2021
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=443

CSX MEGA Props - Vol03 v2
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=461

CSX MEGA Props vol04 v2
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=462

BSC MEGA Props - Gascooker Vol01
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=397

BSC Textures Vol01
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=90

I hope this solve your brownbox issue.

[Turnstyled 486]

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

I hate to say it, but the link is there clear as day in the Readme for the monuments, which should always be your first point of reference in these situations.

https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/20103-alexander-column-roundabouts/

Thank you. I believe that I overlooked that when I installed the LEX Superior Collections about a year ago. I wasn't asking in regard to the Concorde Fountain because I had that one figured out.

@Tyberius06

Thank you so much for that list as well as for your efforts! I have most of those dependencies from Project Zipped! Yes, I know about the plans to release the LEX DVD content. I've had it around for ages. Heh. When I had to trade all my games in in 2016, I left my STEX/LEX/PLEX DVDs and CDs at the store. Not that they could've done anything with them, but I had ripped them into ISOs and I've kept them those ISOs for all these years. Other game files have gotten deleted, but I can't dare delete my SimCity 4 files.

Also, thank you for the info on that mod from PEG.

[DouglasLew 0]

Hey! technical question: is the Gigabyte q2532 laptop good enough for this game? 8gb ram, 250gb ssd drive installed.

[rsc204 21,808]

Assuming the search I did shows the right model, then I would expect it to run fine with SC4, one caveat make sure it has the NVidia dedicated GPU. Internal (discrete) GPUs from that era may work, but have a ton of problems. In fact I've seen more issues relating to the HD3000 model than any other Intel iGPU, so if it only has that, I'd look elsewhere.

Likewise you may still need to do some special setup to get SC4 working well, for example you may need a Wrapper to force use of the NVidia GPU. That said, such things are almost mandatory for users with new systems now.

[Turnstyled 486]

On 1/28/2023 at 6:48 AM, Tyberius06 said:

It would be extremely helpfull if you plop just the affected lots or sets instead of mass of buildings. I haven't even managed to eyeball all three of your brownboxes from the first image. Also, please install the PEG OOPS/OPPS mod, which would turn the brownboxes to colourfull flags, so we could see the full lot without a brownbox covering it completely. 

The LEX DVD contents will come eventually onto the public LEX, it's just matter of time. I'm busy with NAM stuffs and the LEX dep tracker is down at this moment and the Katanga set has a s*** load of dependencies. I list them here, but I assume that the missing stuffs could be the SNM based models which are now in the BSC Mega Props SNM vol01 and vol02. I would highly recommend to re-download the dep packs again if you don't have the "project ZIPped" version of them (the ones without the exe installers). 

In addition there is a Katanga Distric Police station too. These are its dependencies:

I hope this solve your brownbox issue.

It has been a little while since you had posted this. I was missing one prop pack needed for the CSX - Katanga Wall Set. Thank you so much!