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[Turnstyled 486]

I'm using the Radical Persistent 24-hour automata from the NAM. When I start a tile, place some roads, and zone a bit, Orange's TGV Duplex appears to be briefly carrying freight on roads before it's all cars, trucks, and the like again. Was it something I said? 😳

[Turnstyled 486]

I found out what was causing the TGV carriages to appear on roads. I didn't think I had any mods that affected the Maxis freight train, but I had the Automata Fix Pack Vol1: 

The Automata Fix Pack Pack Vol1 includes a fix for the Maxis freight engine. It was concerning, if not a little amusing, to see the TGV on roads!

[Turnstyled 486]

Sorry for all the consecutive posts in this thread. I have another question because I want to make certain that I have not been getting it all wrong.

I understand that what loads last is what loads in the game, but is that on a file basis or a "what is being modified" basis?

I'll give an example:

I'm using the Sudden Valley Terrain Mod by Gobias. I really like what the Beach Extend mod offers. The Sudden Valley Properties Low Altitude dat file modifies all that is modified by the Beach Extend mod. Thus, having the Sudden Valley Properties Low Altitude dat file load after the Beach Extend mod will result in the Beach Extend mod doing nothing.

While the Sudden Valley Properties Low Altitude dat file modifies all that the Beach Extend mod modifies, it modifies much more than the Beach Extend mod modifies. Will having the Beach Extend mod load after the Sudden Valley Properties Low Altitude dat file:

a.) only replace the values that both mods modify from the Sudden Valley Properties Low Altitude dat file?

or

b.) replace the values that both mods modify from the Sudden Valley Properties Low Altitude dat file, but prevent all the extra things being modified by the Sudden Valley Properties Low Altitude dat file that the Beach extend mod does not modify from loading?

This may not have been the best example because the Sudden Valley Properties High/Low Altitude dat files were made to go with the Sudden Valley theme, but I was just now looking into how I could modify the Sudden Valley Properties Low Altitude dat file to offer what the Beach Extend mod offers.

Thank you so much.

[rsc204 21,808]

The files themselves and the file names don’t really have any impact, only the internal IDs.

Specifically in these cases, you want to take a look here, by modifying the Terrain Controller with the Beach Extend mod values, you can ditch the additional mod and have things how you want. But if you override the Terrain (SV) with the beach extend mod, it could mess with your terrain settings and more besides. 

[Turnstyled 486]

Thank you so much. So, I've had it all wrong. I've been wanting to ask this for a while, but I had it in me to properly ask it today. Thank you so much for the link.

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

But if you override the Terrain (SV) with the beach extend mod, it could mess with your terrain settings and more besides.

Yes, that was pretty much what I meant by "This may not have been the best example."

This question arose from taking a deeper look at SC4DataNode's scan instead of just looking at what files don't load because all of their internal IDs are loaded by other files that come after in load order.

I sincerely apologize if I have posted misinformation in the forums or file reviews regarding this.

Edit: Unfortunately, I can't quote in an edit, but you said "The files themselves and the file names don’t really have any impact, only the internal IDs." The link that you provided reinforces that in several places. I now understand. Thank you again.

[rsc204 21,808]

Indeed terrain controllers aren’t really typical in this regard. The technical answer is that when two Exemplars or other objects share an identical TGI ID, the later loading one will cancel any others out. But for most items, the override can work for a small part, rather than eclipse it entirely. The reason is because certain Exemplars contain properties that do different things. In such cases you have to mod everything into one combined set of properties to get things to play nice together. But this really is the exception rather than the rule. 

[Turnstyled 486]

Thank you for your answer. I want to make certain that I understand what you're saying properly:

I have File 1 that includes three separate Exemplars: A, B, and C.

I have File 2 that includes Exemplar A where Exemplar A has the same Type, Group, and Instance ID as Exemplar A from File 1.

File 2 loads after File 1.

Thus, Exemplars B and C from File 1 are loaded, and Exemplar A from File 2 is loaded.

But Exemplars A, B, and C all do different things, and Exemplar A from File 1 may not even include the same set of properties that Exemplar A from File 2 includes.

Thus, you have to be very careful with overrides so that you don't end up with something horribly wrong in SimCity 4.

Is that at all correct?

Thank you again.

[rsc204 21,808]

Yeah you pretty much got it, it really depends on what each file contains, if you can split files apart, you can take only those changes/overrides you want and only alter those things you do.

57 minutes ago, Turnstyled said:

Thus, you have to be very careful with overrides so that you don't end up with something horribly wrong in SimCity 4.

By and large if it overrides something, removing the override will revert the changes and nothing bad will happen.

There are exceptions, certain types of changes (particular properties) cause no end of problems if they alter the values whilst existing content exists in save files. This includes things like changing Cap Relief, Radius/Capacities among others. A good rule of thumb is that cosmetic changes are generally safe, but altering how something works is best done by removing all existing instances in save files BEFORE you use the override.

[Turnstyled 486]

Thank you so much. This was good mental exercise before I start school again in early April. I took a term off to try to get into an online computer engineering program, but I'll ultimately be returning to the computer science program that I was in last fall.

8 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

if you can split files apart, you can take only those changes/overrides you want and only alter those things you do.

I'll look into doing this. I've gotten some good practice with iLive's Reader and I've recently started working with SC4Tool to alter those industrial capacities that I mentioned just a bit earlier in this thread.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

Can you Guys tell me where can I find some highway fences, to designate a road clearance?

Also, is it normal for RHW to add no exit / direction signs when built?  I have a bare highway that just feels a little "empty" without them...

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

17 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Can you Guys tell me where can I find some highway fences, to designate a road clearance?

Also, is it normal for RHW to add no exit / direction signs when built?  I have a bare highway that just feels a little "empty" without them...

it is normal because in the initial era of the RHW there was not much thought about the T21 but about the features to be added. That's why there are mods that add road signs manually.

[rsc204 21,808]

49 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Also, is it normal for RHW to add no exit / direction signs when built?  I have a bare highway that just feels a little "empty" without them...

Indeed the NAM doesn’t include T21s for RHW components as a rule. Frankly the mod is so big, probably larger than the rest of the NAM, that creating such mods would require someone with a ridiculous amount of free time to realise.

The better solution is either Plop Lots or my preference, MMPing the signs. Mandelsoft created some of the best RHW road signage out there and it’s easy to add them to an MMP if you can’t find one. I recall Badsim on SC4D made MMPs for Mandelsoft’s various signs but it wasn’t an official release rather forum attachments.

But To my knowledge, lights and small details aside, no one ever made T21 mods for RHW.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

@Ulisse Wolf, @rsc204 - Thanks for confirming guys.

I browsed through Mandelsoft's content and found a set that should be generic enough for my purposes.

As I understand the textures in such bundles cannot be easily exchanged for custom ones? I believe that would involve altering S3D files?

[rsc204 21,808]

SC4 models do not contain the required parts to re-render them, which is the easy method of changing textures.

Whilst still theoretically possible, it’s hideously difficult to change a BAT in practise, since you are working on angled models, down as low as 8x8px textures and each model needs 20 textures to be modified.

However Mandelsoft did release some 3DS Max files (or gMax) with template models to make use of, perhaps worth looking into. 

[Kolossi 4]

@rsc204 Thank you for the assistance and insight! I'll first try the zoning and if it doesn't help, guess some C or I districts are going bye-bye.

I've also figured personally, not sure a hundred per cent, the main cause for the imbalance was the fact I had mostly R$$$ in those cities, the vacant jobs might be for R$$ and R$. Still, odd how those refused to develop nearly at all. Oh well, Cori's No-kickout mod should assist there.

Again, thank you for your help.

[rsc204 21,808]

On 25/03/2023 at 8:53 PM, Turnstyled said:

I'll look into doing this. I've gotten some good practice with iLive's Reader

You want to make use of the Patch (Manger) function, I've just uploaded a short video (YouTube) on how to use it.

[Turnstyled 486]

@rsc204 Thank you so much for the video. I did not know about the Patch Manager function. Altering SimCity_1.dat has not been something that I have felt comfortable with, yet I did it because I did not know of a proper way. I have a backup of SimCity_1.dat and technically, I have backups of those industrial lots that I altered. Many of them are in Clickteam installers, though. I'll probably want to start that over. I have .sav files in a folder of every lot that I edited using SC4Tool.

[rsc204 21,808]

6 hours ago, Kolossi said:

I've also figured personally, not sure a hundred per cent, the main cause for the imbalance was the fact I had mostly R$$$ in those cities, the vacant jobs might be for R$$ and R$. Still, odd how those refused to develop nearly at all. Oh well, Cori's No-kickout mod should assist there.

Note that demand does not consider what your city/region really needs, if the conditions are right then the 'highest' of each type, R$$$, CO$$$ or I-HT will always be given priority for development. Therefore if you don't provide less nice areas for R$ sims to move into, they won't be able to despite demand. A common error players make is to make things too nice everywhere, this raises land values and squeezes out R$ and in some cases R$$ too. If R$ already exist and you use the No-Kickout mod, indeed that would prevent them from upgrading to higher wealths, but it won't necessarily help new R$ to develop. A good plan in this situation might be to look at starting a new city in your region, when no development exists pretty much only R$ can develop until you start adding services. But overall, I find it easier to get a good R$ base before I start upgrading too many areas with services and parks, I also try to hinder higher wealth growth until I'm ready by (not drastically) altering taxes and just generally keeping places down and out.

Another factor is Education or EQ, yours is very high (190 Average), sims will ideally want to work in places that match their EQ as well as Wealth. So at this point the sims in this city will appreciate more I-HT, CO and CS$$$ jobs over other types.

A good general way to look at this is that R$ sims earn the least and need reasonably priced accommodation, but if your city is a utopia of well funded services, parks and other things which give Park/Landmark effects, they simply won't be able to afford to live there. Likewise developers aren't usually looking to stick an apartment block in such nice places intended to cater for the poorer sims, when they could build a luxury one and make a lot more money.

[Turnstyled 486]

Not a question, just a status update. Thanks to @rsc204's video on how to use the patch manager and a little bit of tinkering, I have an even better understanding of certain things. I created a .dat for No Age Degradation + No Radiation Rewards. I saw that HippoTank's Demand Fix modified some of the same TGIs as the .dat that I created. The same with Area 51/Air Force Base No Exclusion. Thus, I integrated HippoTank's Demand Fix and Area 51/Air Force Base No Exclusion into my .dat.

Of course, I copied my untouched copy of SimCity_1.dat to my game's installation folder.

Edit: As per the conversation that warped my brain in this thread about a week ago, my initial No Age Degradation + No Radiation Rewards .dat file modified all the TGIs that HippoTank's Demand Fix modifies, minus the demand fix for the Urgent Care Clinic. Meanwhile, the one thing that Area 51/Air Force Base No Exclusion modified was in a TGI that my No Age Degradation + No Radiation Rewards .dat file modified.

I got a little crash course on merging .dats because I created a .dat with the demand fix for the Urgent Care Clinic and I wanted to merge it into my .dat, then with the power plant demand fixes integrated. Merging .dats was crashing Reader 1.5.5, but it did not crash Reader 0.9.3.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

Is there a "monorail over pedmall" puzzle piece? I can't find it in the menus.

[rsc204 21,808]

33 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Is there a "monorail over pedmall" puzzle piece? I can't find it in the menus.

Sorry, no I don't believe any were ever made for Monorail, however thanks to the new Dragable pedmalls, adding such support should be reasonably simple in future.

[Turnstyled 486]

I thought I had it taken care of, but I clearly did not. What is happening here? Is it something to be worried about? I create a new map, create some neighbor connections, and zone. Then, I see what I think is a single carriage from the TGV traveling backwards on roads. I then speed up the in-game clock, it goes away, and I don't see it again. I'll attach a screenshot and I'll include a video.

 

[JohanD 25]

Quick questions:
If I want to work on different themed maps, is the best approach to put plugins in a themed folder, and move it to the plugin folder when working on that map?
Is there an mod manager for SC4 ?

Is there a easy way to wade thru the long list of mods installed in the game? a search function?

And last, can the cars be slowed down? getting nervous of all those racing cars.

[rsc204 21,808]

34 minutes ago, JohanD said:

If I want to work on different themed maps, is the best approach to put plugins in a themed folder, and move it to the plugin folder when working on that map?
Is there an mod manager for SC4 ?

Having specific Plugins folders for each Region or Map can be a good strategy, but do be careful to make sure you are using the right one at any given time. If you save the game whilst contents needed by that save file are not loaded, that can be really bad.

There really isn't anything like a mod manager, because the game pre-dates all that stuff and by the time it was something people could see would be useful, the vast legacy of content that existed made it sort of unthinkable. But who knows, some good ideas of how to pull it off have been voiced, perhaps that will one day lead to something like this.

35 minutes ago, JohanD said:

Is there a easy way to wade thru the long list of mods installed in the game? a search function?

There really isn't any shortcut, a good scroll wheel and scroll wheel acceleration can be a godsend here if you have it. Likewise nothing beats a boring and predictable menu order, but that takes quite a bit of work usually if you don't want to use the defaults.

DAMN might be a mod you want to look into, it can group items and works through the News Ticker. It's not for everyone though.

35 minutes ago, JohanD said:

And last, can the cars be slowed down? getting nervous of all those racing cars.

Generally automata (cars) will run at the same speed as your are running the simulation, but there is a toggle 'Variable Speed Automata' in the Graphics Options screen, which if you untick, keeps the cars at regular 1x speed regardless.

[JohanD 25]

Thanks for the answers.

Appreciated!

 

[CaptCity 4,753]

5 hours ago, JohanD said:

Quick questions:
If I want to work on different themed maps, is the best approach to put plugins in a themed folder, and move it to the plugin folder when working on that map?
Is there an mod manager for SC4?

Hi @JohanD

Just to add, I use Startup Manager for just that particular purpose. It allows the option to select which plugins/folders are loaded and can be set up with various profiles for different regions. There are two versions:

Startup Manager 2.1

Startup Manager 3.0

Version 2.1 is a little simpler to use, and 3.0 allows more specific options. I've used both on Windows 10.

The programs won't 'sort' plugins, but once you have the folders organized, they do make things a little easier to load. 

[JohanD 25]

Ill take a look!

[Lazarou Monkey Terror 1,819]

I''m playing with a large tile, Pop: 2.3 -2.4 million and my save games aren't always saving. 
Bringing up Task Manager I see so long as I can keep "Private Bytes" below 3.5 gb I'm fine, which has me thinking there's not much else I can do with a 32bit program that doesn't think  beyond 4gb of memory. 

My Plugins are pretty much all compressed, are there some graphics settings I can change in game to avoid the 4gb limit? I save on maximum, zoom in water pipe mode to ease the load, what else can I do? 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

What are "slope mods" and why should I get one?

[Simizen 1,098]

@Lazarou Monkey Terror if you're running on a 64 bit machine, apply the 4GB patch, as that'll solve a ton of problems for you. Unfortunately, I'm not clear on if that fixes the save issues after a certain population size. You may still be dealing with save file issues with higher pops. Though, it's possible that the limit will be pushed much further down the line, cause I know people like @Haljackeyhave pops up in like 30-40 million (i believe), so they don't have too many issues from it all.

Also, double check that you've got all the proper bug fixes/patches, and imo, utilize the save warning mod, as it'll help out with some of it. There's a weird thing in the game where if you hit Save and Exit, it ends up exiting before it saves, and when it's trying to save, it'll save as a blank tile. I'm sure it's got some other weird side effects to it as well.

If you've already got all of that going for you, then I'm not sure how to help beyond that, unfortunately.

 

@TheMurderousCricket slope mods are used, primarily, for rail and elevated rail networks, and it's meant to make the ground and the network much smoother, so you don't have some weird rollercoaster setup in your game when going through hilly, or even mountainous, terrain. There's a variety of slope mods, each allowing for different lengths for the slope, depending on how realistic you want it. I believe it also works for standard road and highway networks too, which is super helpful, so you're not stuck with some weird up/down zigzag enough to make scrambled eggs of your sims (not that they seem to care, as the transportation advisor doesn't seem to tell you to smooth out some sections). Plus, it just helps make the city look so much better, since it's not bobbing up and down like a drunk pigeon, lol