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[rsc204 21,808]

On 29/12/2022 at 9:36 AM, TheMurderousCricket said:

Yes, this is creepy as well because I did not install them. 

EDIT: In any case I am browsing through the automata section these days, so I'll definitely grab something from there. Are you sure though that the steam engine is a vanilla thing...?

You may not have realised you installed it, but these things don't materialise out of nowhere.

I've been messing with my Freight Trains today and decided to dig into why the Steam Train was still appearing. I have a replacement for the Steam Train automata, but until now I never got around to looking into why it didn't appear to work fully.

There is only one Steam Train in the base game, I had successfully overridden that, but I had a second instance of the Steam Train with a new ID, which exists in the AirForceBase Plugin from Maxis (Plugin_007_AirForceBase.dat). Such additional instances aren't generally covered by third party mods and I don't think it's well known about either, having never seen it crop up in all my time around here. Anyhow, to suppress this additional instance all I needed to do was modify the exemplar to effectively remove it as an option:

z_Block_Maxis_SteamTrain_AirForceBase.dat

Provided you have a working override for the regular instance, adding this should prevent any more Steam Trains from appearing.

[Xenzoic 0]

im just wondering if theres a thread where NAM isnt the only answer lol i got xbox game pass and can only play thru EA launcher. so no NAM allowed as far as ive read.

[rsc204 21,808]

If by this you mean you can only play SC4 using the EA release from Origin, then you are stuck with an unpatched version. Considering third parties like GoG and Steam have included these, and EA in the past, the problem lies firmly with EA’s shoddy service. The solution is not an alternative to NAM, because the bugs EA/Maxis themselves fixed almost 20 years ago, remain unfixed without said patches in place.

The simple truth is EA won’t even acknowledge the issue any more. So your options are the crappy free broken version or stump up for a decent copy. GoG and Steam have sales a few times each year with SC4 costing 5 $/£/€, if that’s too much for you, well then you are stuck with the broken one.

I will add, you can install/use the NAM with the EA version, but we can’t offer support for such users due to the known issues. 

[Nero55 313]

Doesn't SC4 work properly on Win10? I can enter the game normally, but as long as I use NAM, the game will  quits automatically. By the way, I use NAM46. Pls help me,Thanks!

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

1 hour ago, Nero55 said:

Doesn't SC4 work properly on Win10? I can enter the game normally, but as long as I use NAM, the game will  quits automatically. By the way, I use NAM46. Pls help me,Thanks!

Install 4GB Patch

 

[Nero55 313]

@ulisse I have, but nothing changed, still quits automatically when i use NAM.

[rsc204 21,808]

27 minutes ago, Nero55 said:

@ulisse I have, but nothing changed, still quits automatically when i use NAM.

This is a common problem, you may have used the patch, it may say it worked, but that's not always 100%. One simple test will confirm this problem, temporarily remove the Network Addon Mod folder from your Plugins folder, then open the game and try to load a new or blank city. If this works without the NAM installed, but doesn't work with the NAM present, then almost certainly your game hasn't actually been patched properly. If you are using the Full / RHW controller, this exceeds the 2GB RAM limit whilst loading a city tile, which is causing the game to CTD.

The most common reasons for this are non-default Windows security settings being enabled or 3rd party security software, both of which can wrongly assume any .exe modification is harmful and block it, sometimes without notification. In the case of 3rd party security, you should ideally whitelist SC4 and the Patcher app or otherwise allow the necessary modifications somehow. You could alternatively temporarily disable any such software whilst patching things, if you do this I highly recommend disconnecting from the internet whilst doing so.

Some users report that by moving the SimCity 4.exe (found in the Apps folder where SC4 is installed), to a location outside of Program Files (x86), allows the 4GB Patcher app to correctly add the required LAA flag. This is because Program Files and its (x86) derivative are considered Protected Locations, so it works around those by doing the operation in an ordinary folder. Thereafter you can move the .exe back to it's original location and it should then remain patched, allowing you to use the Full/RHW controller. Note too if you do not use RHW, installing the Low RAM/No RHW controller would not only be better for you, but doesn't have a mandatory requirement for the 4GB Patch to be present. Although as a general rule, players of modded SC4 are all recommended to have this patch. Since it allows SC4 to access more RAM, which becomes necessary if you've a lot of mods.

[PeniG 2]

I have been playing SC4 Rush Hour for a couple of months, experimenting and trying to get some game mastery before I muck around with mods other than bug fixes. I’ve been lurking around the forum reading threads and picking up tips as I could, figuring out how to solve problems as they arise, but both my search fu and my experiments have failed me on this one,  but it’s probably something simple I’m overlooking. 
 

Traffic being a recurring problem in most of my cities at the moment I decided it was time for light rail. I have good bus networks, but some of my intersections have more than a hundred buses going through them. So I chose a congested straight route touching concentrations of industrial, commercial, and residential zoning and placed three elevated rail stations along it in a straight line across town. In the residential space closest to the stations I placed parking garages and bus stops. I altered the street layout in the vicinity to accommodate the tracks and made sure everything connected. Which sounds like a silly thing to assure y’all of, but my eyesight is poor and this is exactly the kind of error that tripped me up most in the earliest stages. I thought it was working because congestion along that corridor virtually disappeared. But I saw less reduction of traffic in the redundant routes than I had hoped for, and when after 20 years I checked it’s traffic in the rails and stations, there was none at all.

This bewilders me. It’s probably something very simple that for some reason is counterintuitive to me, or a game mechanic I haven’t grasped yet, but the experiments I’m thinking of are all expensive, time consuming, and will have serious knock on effects. Most of the development along the route is medium rather than high density, for example, and I don’t feel I have enough give in the budget to upgrade the health and education facilities to accommodate that without triggering a disaster cascade; I certainly don’t, if the problem is something like the orientation of the stations denying access to them. (Orientation is a consistent problem of mine; I keep trying to rotate plop items as if they were Sims 2 furniture. I can’t always make out the little arrows. )

So the question is: what do I need to check to make sure I’ve set up correctly , and what conditions do I have to meet, to make light rail functional?

[matias93 7,535]

9 hours ago, PeniG said:

I have been playing SC4 Rush Hour for a couple of months, experimenting and trying to get some game mastery before I muck around with mods other than bug fixes. I’ve been lurking around the forum reading threads and picking up tips as I could, figuring out how to solve problems as they arise, but both my search fu and my experiments have failed me on this one,  but it’s probably something simple I’m overlooking. 
 

Traffic being a recurring problem in most of my cities at the moment I decided it was time for light rail. I have good bus networks, but some of my intersections have more than a hundred buses going through them. So I chose a congested straight route touching concentrations of industrial, commercial, and residential zoning and placed three elevated rail stations along it in a straight line across town. In the residential space closest to the stations I placed parking garages and bus stops. I altered the street layout in the vicinity to accommodate the tracks and made sure everything connected. Which sounds like a silly thing to assure y’all of, but my eyesight is poor and this is exactly the kind of error that tripped me up most in the earliest stages. I thought it was working because congestion along that corridor virtually disappeared. But I saw less reduction of traffic in the redundant routes than I had hoped for, and when after 20 years I checked it’s traffic in the rails and stations, there was none at all.

This bewilders me. It’s probably something very simple that for some reason is counterintuitive to me, or a game mechanic I haven’t grasped yet, but the experiments I’m thinking of are all expensive, time consuming, and will have serious knock on effects. Most of the development along the route is medium rather than high density, for example, and I don’t feel I have enough give in the budget to upgrade the health and education facilities to accommodate that without triggering a disaster cascade; I certainly don’t, if the problem is something like the orientation of the stations denying access to them. (Orientation is a consistent problem of mine; I keep trying to rotate plop items as if they were Sims 2 furniture. I can’t always make out the little arrows. )

So the question is: what do I need to check to make sure I’ve set up correctly , and what conditions do I have to meet, to make light rail functional?

This probably will not match your plan to avoid mods, but after years of tests, we can be quite conclusive on the fact that the game's traffic simulator is very much broken. Fundamentally, the problem is that the simulator calculates commuting by the shortest route, regardless of congestion, but is still sensible to congestion in terms of travel time, so any relatively straight route will become congested enough to make impossible for the sims to arrive to their work in time, causing residential abandonment, all the while alternative routes stay underutilised.

The Z simulator included with the NAM fixes this fundamental flaw by making the game to calculate commutes according to the *fastest* route. This obviously is influenced by distance, but allows for sims to choose uncongested alternatives, change transportation modes more often (when it makes sense) and allow for the simulation to be more responsive to the city planning overall. If you want to try the Z simulator without using the NAM yet, you can install the NAM Lite, which only includes it, a handful of network bugfixes, and small additions (like roundabouts and diagonal streets).

Now, about station orientation: unless the station includes tracks or streets/roads in one side of the lot (which in the base game is only the case with the grand central station), orientation is not an issue, aside from your cosmetic preferences. It is so in fact that you can even build a parallel line to an station that's not meant to do it (like el-rail or monorail) and it will still convey passengers. It's the same with the bus stops, and you can even use them as traffic filters, building roads and streets that touch the bus stop but not each other, and you'll have only pedestrian and bus traffic moving across is.

I would recommend you to have a parallel region for tests and experiments, to better learn the techniques and strategies to use on your definitive city, and to allow money cheats there. Actually, most players don't care much for money in the game, because of the whole sandbox thing, but obviously you can play the game as you see fit, and many others make a point of building economically sustainable cities, even with bigger constrictions than usual (like lower taxes).

[PeniG 2]

I have no objection to mods that fix unpatched game bugs, which I think this counts as. I just want a good experience-based grasp of the mechanics and what I do and don’t enjoy about them before I start complicating things with mods to customize the experience. I don’t have an ideal city or region in mind. I want to see them develop and to challenge myself to make different kinds of cities within the parameters of the game. The cash flow is an important part of that, and there’s nothing like a funds hemorrhage to tip you off that you haven’t balanced all your elements correctly and need to quit without saving.

So, thank you and I’ll see about installing the NAM lite before I play the next big city in the region (I’m taking a leaf from my Sims 2 experience and playing rotationally, cycling in new regions as I gain experience and think of new strategies for starting a neighborhood and planning for future development), and see how that changes things. 

[Lu 5]

The electrical cables are not showing, what could it be? in JPN Sidewalk Mod

[rsc204 21,808]

@Lu

Really only two possibilities, you either accidentally installed the 'NotDensen' patch, which removes the wires from the mod, or simply don't have the necessary dependencies required (NekoPropSet01 / Dentyu) for them to appear. The latter seems less likely since if it were missing, you'd expect a lot of the mod to be missing too, for example the GaurdRails you can clearly see in the screenshot.

Note, I moved your question here since it isn't really anything to do with Magneto.

[violins77 4]

Quick question: I looked around, but hasn't seen anything yet on a bigger UI to make playing at 4K actually possible. Has anyone discovered anyting that could help me make the UI readable in 4K? The game itself runs super well with a wrapper...

[rsc204 21,808]

This question has been asked a number of times before, whilst I believe it would be possible to create a custom UI with some larger elements, for sure no one has done so to date.

Ultimately the UI files that exist are relatively easy to find in the SC4 files and so it's clear they can be modded, for example you may have seen some re-skins knocking about.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

Is it possible to raise the elevation, in LE, on a textured lot, to skin a cliff this high? I'm trying to create parapet walls around a city, with a block or brick pattern. I've gone up to 120, but I'm still getting indenting-

Not really sure how high you can go with it. Anybody know the sweet spot formula? Rock textures aren't really cutting it, as they all have a wallpaper pattern to some degree or other. And I sure don't want to do this in photoshop if I can help it, as we're talking 50+ tiles.

[rsc204 21,808]

1 tile = 1 texture, so whatever you use is going to get stretched more the higher you go. You can use at least 256x256 lot textures, perhaps higher, but that’ll only look better in zoom6 so isn’t a perfect solution.

if I were to photoshop this I’d want to add a solid colour (texture), perhaps black, if that worked it’d be easy to create a layer mask to fit the bit you want to alter. 

[Kolossi 4]

This has bothered me for eons and finally decided to come to experts to give some insight on what's going on: Residential development in large cities, especially on large tiles, becomes slower than the tectonic plates move. I've checked and it is not a CAP issue, they're usually at 10 - 30 per cent range, got healthcare, parks, schools and there are plenty of jobs available, near on 80 000 C and I jobs combined in one instance.

Yet people move in so slowly. Can anyone explain why is that?

[rsc204 21,808]

Bear in mind that demand is generated by fulfilling demand, so if you don't have demand for Residential, something else needs to be built to increase it. That could be as simple as zoning more Com/Ind to create jobs. But if you've 80k unfilled jobs in your city, that could be a problem, but it's the regional figures that are actually more important. The Census Repository was designed to provide a whole bunch of useful stats when queried, many of which may provide insights into this problem. A screenshot showing the Census data could very well help to better understand what's happening.

There are potentially many other reasons why even with demand and desirability, you may find development itself feels like it's stalled. The key to working this out, is to use the available tools and graphs to try and understand the problem better. A long read for sure, but the official Prima Guide is available to read on the internet, it explains so much about the underlying game mechanics, which is helpful for those who want to completely understand the simulation.

[Kolossi 4]

Thank you for the reply, I'll have to have a read about the Prima Guide at some point, thank you for the link.

Here's the city I was referring to, and it turned out there's way more jobs vacant than the aforementioned number. I'd also like to point out the region has two other large city tiles mostly filled and each have the Residential slow growth issue. If you want, I can upload their Census data as well, though I personally suspect similar data.

[Turnstyled 486]

I have two files from Neko's Prop Set 02, Neko_Fountain_Park_OutCornerC-0x5ad0e817_0x1a2d0014_0x30000.SC4Model and Neko_Fountain_Park_OutCornerD-0x5ad0e817_0x1a2d0014_0x30000.SC4Model. They have the same hex IDs, so one overrides the other. They hash to be different files. If I'd like both to load, is there anything reasonable that I can do? I'm not certain how to handle it. I know that Neko's Prop Sets were used as dependencies. Thank you in advance.

Edit: As for the point of me doing this, ugh, I'm back at my apartment after an afternoon at my parents' house, so I feel a lot better. I have a hatred of overriding files in my SC4Datanode file. That's what this is about. If these files are dependencies, then they're better left untouched. I'll cause actual trouble trying to do something about "it," whatever "it" is. Thus, I suppose that my question can be ignored. Thank you again.

[rsc204 21,808]

Do we trust the numbers, that's always the conundrum in these cases... let's look at some key numbers and try to make sense of them.

Region-wide you should have 878k workers (not population), but there are 986k Com and 1.017m Ind or approx 2m jobs. So when it states you've 1.126m vacant jobs, that seems to tally, but this is more vacant jobs than actually fulfilled ones.

Generally speaking the ratio of sims (population) to workers is around 1 in 2 or half, this accounts for children too young to work, pensioners that no longer work and is how the simulations works to keep it short. If your region does have 1.254m population, 878k of them working is on the high side, honestly CAM may very well be altering the defaults here. The big problem I see in this, is that Residential Development has probably stalled, because there are so many unfulfilled jobs. Until you re-balance the population to jobs ratio, you may not see much improvement, especially considering the extreme imbalance present.

Part of the explanation for this is that when business grow, they tend not to abandon very easily, even if they don't have workers. Like with Residential buildings, the actual occupancy varies, when everything is going well, Res, Com and Ind buildings will all have high occupancy rates, leading to more tax income and other benefits. But it's equally possible to go the other way, with many low occupancy buildings not ever being properly utilised. You need more residents to fill these open positions, but it could well be that because so many positions are not getting filled, new residents don't want to move in.

Sadly, things are rarely this neat, there are a lot of other potential reasons why buildings might not grow, not to mention res demand is strong, so what I wrote before probably isn't the whole story.

I think I'd try one of two things to see if it starts to alleviate your problems, but I would recommend making a backup of your Region you can recover should they not actually help.

• If you've new or very undeveloped cities which neighbour those with a high number of jobs, start zoning large amounts of residential there. Even though a lot of things are calculated regionally, in undeveloped cities, demand will be high and nothing exists to put a drag on that demand. Ergo, you should have no problems quickly amassing a very sizeable residential population.
• Start bulldozing large Industrial or Commercial areas and see if this makes a difference.

You could even go for both approaches at once, the idea here is to find a way to improve the R/CI balance, but right now it's so out of sorts, it may take more than a nudge to get things equalised.

[Turnstyled 486]

Alright, as compared to my previous question, this question is real. I'm currently making my way through the LEX. Is girafe's Agripack (https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=4003) compatible with the SPAM? I'm aware that Fantozzi's Colossus Farming is not currently compatible with the SPAM. Thank you again.

 

[Turnstyled 486]

Hmmm....So I decided to add the ploppable fields included in girafe's Agripack to my plugins folder, but not the growables. I was too afraid that the growables would conflict with the SPAM.

I'm eyeing some non-agricultural industrial growables that were created well before the release of the IRM. If I use the IRM, then do I have to use IRM-conforming industrial content?

 

I'd like to use these apartments by GaroudWolf that were hosted on SimCity Brasil:

The description says that they're MaxisNite. I choose DarkNite buildings whenever possible. What is the consequence of mixing MaxisNite buildings with DarkNite buildings when only MaxisNite is available?

Thank you so much.

[nos.17 5,120]

46 minutes ago, Turnstyled said:

I'm eyeing some non-agricultural industrial growables that were created well before the release of the IRM. If I use the IRM, then do I have to use IRM-conforming industrial content?

Only if you are concerned about aesthetics. The bigger thing to watch out for is if you're using the quadrupler version of IRM - you might need to make changes to these custom lots otherwise you might never see them growing because they have 1/4 the jobs.

46 minutes ago, Turnstyled said:

The description says that they're MaxisNite. I choose DarkNite buildings whenever possible. What is the consequence of mixing MaxisNite buildings with DarkNite buildings when only MaxisNite is available?

It depends on how they are modded, but again it's an aesthetics thing at night. There's two different ways to do the maxis nite lighting and they will either appear just fine or too light. Here's a recent example I saw - the buildings at the corners and the ones at the very center are maxis nite. Just give it a try and find out.

[Turnstyled 486]

@nos.17 Thank you so much. I'm not concerned with aesthetics. I use the quadrupler version of the IRM. You said that "you might never see them growing because they have 1/4 the jobs." Would a good rule of thumb be quadrupling the amounts of jobs on these lots? Thank you again.

[nos.17 5,120]

54 minutes ago, Turnstyled said:

@nos.17 Thank you so much. I'm not concerned with aesthetics. I use the quadrupler version of the IRM. You said that "you might never see them growing because they have 1/4 the jobs." Would a good rule of thumb be quadrupling the amounts of jobs on these lots? Thank you again.

Whether or not you have the industry quadrupler is personal preference; either way it is best if everything is consistent. If the simulator is choosing between two lots to grow, it's going to choose the one which is best suited to meet demand, which probably means the ones with the most jobs. This would be the exact opposite of "weedy" lots, where the standard lots will rarely grow compared to quadrupled ones.

[Turnstyled 486]

@nos.17 Thank you again. I'm not currently familiar with what the job capacities are for the Maxis lots or with what those capacities are quadrupled.

I had initially typed more in my previous post, but I wanted to make my inquiry simpler. My other questions were going to be "Should I set the amounts of jobs in these lots to be quadruple the Maxis lot values? Does it depend on lot sizes, or does that not matter if the creator had set a sane amount of jobs?"

I understand that creators are free to set whatever values they want to set for their creations. I'll look into what the Maxis lot values are to help me make everything consistent. I see that this information can be found on the SC4Devotion Encyclopedia.

Edit: After editing the Capacity Satisfied values on some lots using SC4Tool, and after seeing some lots that obviously did not need their job capacities changed, I understand what this all means. Thanks again!

[Turnstyled 486]

Not a question. Just a follow-up.

I just quadrupled the job capacities of all of the non-agricultural industrial lots currently in my plugins folder. I did not follow conventional wisdom/common sense and work on a copy of my plugins folder. I hope my game doesn't explode. I'm prepared to "roll back," if necessary.

[matias93 7,535]

On 3/18/2023 at 10:44 PM, Turnstyled said:

I'm aware that Fantozzi's Colossus Farming is not currently compatible with the SPAM

Small nitpick only: Colossus Farming is actually compatible with the SPAM, but only partially: it includes many farm lots with the stages 1-5 that will work with SPAM without issue, but to grow the 6-10 growth stage farms you need the CAM, which isn't compatible with the SPAM. So you need to choose which one of the two to use to get Colossus Farming working.

[Turnstyled 486]

@matias93 I understand. Thank you so much.