Retro's Practice Makes Perfect

[That Retro Guy 321]

17 hours ago, rsc204 said:

It looks to me like the overpass isn't long enough

Questions:

• 1.  What is the shortest length that the Overpass can be and still be able to place the Cloverleaf curve?
• 2.  Is the Cloverleaf curve the only MHO piece that I really need with the rest of the Interchange being made with RHW?
• 3.  How do I plant trees (not seedlings) on one grid square?

I'll attempt to make the Cloverleaf again tomorrow after I get some sleep (It's almost 1AM here  ).  I'll check in here first before construction begins.

 

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

While I'll leave your NAM questions to the experts, I can answer this...
 

2 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

3.  How do I plant trees (not seedlings) on one grid square?

Try using the Shift + # function when planting trees. Hold down the Shift key and then press any number ranging from 1-9 on your keyboard.

This resizes the brush area down to a small circle:

 

Then click and hold to plant them:

 

Then in doing so, the trees will likely jiggle themselves around so they often fit fully into the circular area:

This technique can be particularly useful for precision planting of trees along farm field edges, as with examples in this thread of Cori's farming posts. Another thing to mention also is zooming in makes the brush area proportionally smaller, and in the above I used the closest zoom to do so.

You might also recall from this post I made how the same can apply to the terrain brushes as well.

[rsc204 21,808]

6 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

• 1.  What is the shortest length that the Overpass can be and still be able to place the Cloverleaf curve?

It depends on a number of factors, but the best solution is to start in the centre of intersections and work outwards. So get the necessary parts in place for the cloverleaf and ramps, then trim the overpass afterwards. Using the RHW Disconnector tool is the safest way to do the latter, it's like an advanced bulldozer for network pieces.

6 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

• 2.  Is the Cloverleaf curve the only MHO piece that I really need with the rest of the Interchange being made with RHW?

In theory yes, but you don't actually even need that, since you can make a cloverleaf without MHO, it's just that this piece greatly simplifies things.

[That Retro Guy 321]

Another day, another attempt . . .

At Position A, you can see that the off-ramp is perfect.  3 lanes.  The outside lane becomes the off-ramp while the other 2 lanes go straight.

At Position B, I don't know what to say.  Everything was connected the way that it should be but now it's not.

Between Points B and C is supposed to be 3 lanes, not 2.

At Points C and D, I have no clue why there's only 1 lane going straight..

At Points E and F, you can see that the Highway is exactly as it should be.

What you can't see at the 'intersection' under the Overpass is a complete mess.  No matter what I try, it only makes it worse.

Oh Lord!  I just looked at the pic and saw that at Point F, the yellow line isn't in the middle.  How the heck did that happen? 

How do i fix this mess?!! 

[That Retro Guy 321]

Well, here's an update on the Cloverleaf:

As you can see, I have all of the ramps connected.  Hurray!  

However, as you can also see, the Underpass is still a mess.  Boooo!  

I had a bit of 'fun' (if you can call it that) . . . Behold!

All of the approaches have the Cosmetic Pieces as shown here.

Now I know why I'm supposed to bulldoze all of the Starter Pieces:

You can't put a Cosmetic Piece on top of a Starter Piece!

Now, if I can just figure out how to fix the Underpass, the Cloverleaf will be complete.

Hmm . . . maybe there's a Starter Piece in there somewhere that's gumming up the works. 

Oh, and yes, I fixed the RHW-4 near Point F in the pic from my previous post.  I still don't know how I did that.

[rsc204 21,808]

14 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

However, as you can also see, the Underpass is still a mess.  Boooo!  

I think you've hit a limitation here, you'd need a one-tile gap between the L0 Ramps and the Overpass to make that setup possible, but if you change the D0 ramps to A0 ones (just on the ground level, it will work:

Use the RHW Disconnector for changing things, to save destroying everything in the process.

To give you an idea of why you were having problems, you need to understand a little about how an Override Network works. If many different pieces like Ramps, Overpasses and Transitions take place in a condensed space, it is very challenging for the code that makes this work to keep up. So in your example, the D0 Ramps end on the tile right before the Overpass. This doesn't allow for a single stable tile of RHW-6S to be present, which in turn tells the overpass what piece to show. Whereas the A0 Ramps end one tile away from the Overpass, giving a "signal" to the code that the crossing needs to be other RHW-4, just enough for all the various connected object's code to all configure themselves properly. Usually in this situation the best advice is, shuffle around your build to give that single tile stable piece in between the problem parts or otherwise add starter pieces. However, in this specific case neither of those solutions works, these Cloverleaf pieces can't really be moved without making things super-ugly. Starters don't work, because the only place to put them is under the Overpass, which you can do, but again the combination of all the different pieces of code, simply doesn't have enough information to get things right. Sometimes if you have an issue it can be fixed by randomly clicking around the problem with the RHW tool, but that won't help here. I'm fairly certain at this level the code doesn't actually exist for such a tight setup anyhow.

[That Retro Guy 321]

Well, here goes . . . I made a video!  The only problem is that it's 3.52 GB!.  It's about 31 minutes long, and has commentary.

Any tips and tricks on how to reduce this monster? 

[rsc204 21,808]

Re-encode it using something like Handbrake. Otherwise upload that monster and let Google’s servers do the work for you. 

[That Retro Guy 321]

Where exactly on Google do I upload it to?

When I made the video, I set the resolution at 1080p.  If I lower the resolution, will that make the file smaller?

[rsc204 21,808]

Well when I say Google, I mean YouTube, which they own. If your internet connection can handle such a large upload, YouTube always re-encodes uploads to make them more efficient, so you wouldn’t have too.

But Handbrake is probably more practical for most users. Lower res does equal a smaller size, but you should be able to keep it at 1080p, reduce the quality a bit and find acceptable balance. 

[That Retro Guy 321]

Since this is the very first video that I have ever attempted to upload, I wanted to make sure that I did it properly.

I found a YouTube video entitled 'How To Properly Upload Videos To YouTube in 2021'. 

The first thing that I learned is that I already have a YouTube channel.  I did not know this. 

The second thing that I learned is that are a crapton of Settings I have to go through to properly set up my Channel.  Lovely. 

The third thing that I learned is that it's going to take a while for me to slog through all of those Settings.  Also lovely. 

10 hours ago, rsc204 said:

YouTube always re-encodes uploads to make them more efficient, so you wouldn’t have too.

Questions:

• 1.  Does this mean that YouTube can take this 3.52GB Godzilla and 'shrink' it down to the size of a garden-variety lizard (under the 2MB limit)?
• 2.  On a different topic, do I have the Administrators' permission to mention SimTropolis in my videos?

Watching the video, I decided to turn comments off on my video(s).  There are too many trolls and haters out there.  I figure that I can start a New Topic here (in the Off-Topic section, of course) and viewers can leave their comments there.  If someone starts hating, I just report them to this Forum's Administrators, and they can drop the Ban Hammer on them and delete their post.

 

On 2/17/2021 at 12:37 PM, rsc204 said:

I'm fairly certain at this level the code doesn't actually exist for such a tight setup anyhow.

Hmm . . .      That's something to think about.  (Retro rushes off to start a new Image on Paint Shop Pro 5 (hereafter referred to as PSP5))

Stay tuned, sports fans!

  Edited February 20, 2021 by That Retro Guy  
My grammar, once again, failed me!

[rsc204 21,808]

6 minutes ago, That Retro Guy said:

Does this mean that YouTube can take this 3.52GB Godzilla and 'shrink' it down to the size of a garden-variety lizard (under the 2MB limit)?

You still have to upload the full 3.52GB file, what users then stream will be optimised, I.e. compressed, but this 2MB limit, where are you seeing that? The point of uploading video to YouThbe, is you can then link to it here, we don’t host or stream the actual file, so such a limit for ST attachments wouldn’t apply. But I suspect it will still be a good few hundred MBs to keep it 1080p. Honestly I only know Google/YouTube does it, the ins and outs, I really can’t say. 

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

6 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

2.  On a different topic, do I have the Administrators' permission to mention SimTropolis in my videos?

Absolutely!

And in truth permission isn't needed, since we're perfectly happy for you to mention about anything on ST which you wish to talk about. I'm sure the same is likewise the case for SC4Devoton too, since both sites here and there are integral to the community after all.

 

6 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

If someone starts hating, I just report them to this Forum's Administrators, and they can drop the Ban Hammer on them and delete their post.

I'm confident this won't even happen since ST is a lot different than the nonsense on YT and other social media sites after all. But rest assured how if anyone did give you grief, as staff we'll deal with it as the need arises. So yeah, if necessary, just use the Report function on questionable replies which then informs us.

Also you're most welcome to post your SC4 related videos inside a new topic in this General Discussion forum if you'd prefer.

[That Retro Guy 321]

3 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

10 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

2.  On a different topic, do I have the Administrators' permission to mention SimTropolis in my videos?

Absolutely!

And in truth permission isn't needed, since we're perfectly happy for you to mention about anything on ST which you wish to talk about. I'm sure the same is likewise the case for SC4Devoton too, since both sites here and there are integral to the community after all.

Cool!    I'm just making sure to cross my T's and dot my I's, make sure that all of my ducks are in a row, and other cliches. 

Who knows?  This place might get some new people in the process.  Always a good thing, right? 

 

3 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

I'm confident this won't even happen since ST is a lot different than the nonsense on YT and other social media sites after all. But rest assured how if anyone did give you grief, as staff we'll deal with it as the need arises. So yeah, if necessary, just use the Report function on questionable replies which then informs us.

Also you're most welcome to post your SC4 related videos inside a new topic in this General Discussion forum if you'd prefer.

Very cool!  Thanks! 

 

10 hours ago, rsc204 said:

but this 2MB limit, where are you seeing that?

I thought that I was supposed to upload them here . . . That's what I get for thinking.  Sorry about that. 

 

10 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

(Retro rushes off to start a new Image on Paint Shop Pro 5 (hereafter referred to as PSP5))

Ladies, Gentlemen and everybody who doesn't consider themselves one or the other 

I present to you my latest image . . . The Spread Out Cloverleaf:

It's hard to tell from this image but the yellow lines are on the inside except for the Cloverleaf Curve where, for some reason in-game, it's on the outside. 

I know that I'll have to make the space between the on-off ramp and the Cloverleaf bigger so I can plop the FlexHeight 2-Level Ramp there.

 

On 2/17/2021 at 12:37 PM, rsc204 said:

I'm fairly certain at this level the code doesn't actually exist for such a tight setup anyhow.

What do you think of the image?

More importantly, would this work in-game?  Everything's nice and spread out so hopefully, the Code Congestion will allow it. 

[That Retro Guy 321]

After looking at my last image, I realized that I was missing an opportunity to spread out the setup even further (or is it farther?) to give the Code Congestion a break.

Presenting The Ultimate Spread-Out Cloverleaf:

This thing actually extends another 7 tiles each way.  Doing some research in my Sandlot found that the on/off-ramps need to be about 12 tiles from the end of the road in order to place properly.  Any closer, and the ramp glitches with a hole in the middle.  That's very irritating!  Btw, the dimensions of this monster in the image is 50 tiles x 50 tiles  (you might call them cells . . . I can't remember). 

I'll probably start a new city in my Sandlot to try this out.  I'll lower the terrain so that it is one level above Sea level, so to speak.  I'm thinking of putting a lake in the big square in the middle.  Maybe the entire thing sits on a big lake, and the Sims built berms (I think they're called) to support the Ground Highway system.

Can Elevated Highways make Neighborhood Connections?  If not, I'll have to make this thing even bigger to accommodate the FlexHeight 2-Level Ramps.  Never mind . . . I found the answer.  It's Yes!

What do you think?  It's a big sucker, isn't it? 

  Edited February 24, 2021 by That Retro Guy  
I figured out the answer to the question

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

4 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

50 tiles x 50 tiles  (you might call them cells . . . I can't remember). 

They are more often referred to as tiles, but cells is really better to distinguish them from city tiles.

 

4 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

What do you think?  It's a big sucker, isn't it? 

I think it's pretty cool for what it is. Ofc, that would displace a bunch of farmers in my game and they'd be unhappy.

[That Retro Guy 321]

On 2/24/2021 at 1:40 AM, CorinaMarie said:

I think it's pretty cool for what it is

Thanks! 

 

On 2/24/2021 at 1:40 AM, CorinaMarie said:

Ofc, that would displace a bunch of farmers in my game and they'd be unhappy.

Maybe . . . but just think how quickly they could get their crops to market by taking such a Cloverleaf. 

Question for you, @CorinaMarie:  Do you use highways at all (even a two lane (each way)) to connect the farming cities in your Region?

 

Well, I thought that I had the Ultimate Cloverleaf built.  It was going beautifully until this happened:

As you can see, it's beautiful!  Except for the contents of the white circle.  No matter what I tried, I couldn't get the Ground Highway to connect like it should. 

Well, I thought maybe the Cloverleafs were still too close together, so I separated the Highways by 3 cells instead of 2 like in the picture.  I even tried putting a Starter Piece in the middle of both Ground Highways.  I tried without the Starter Pieces first . . . no luck.  Even with the Starter Pieces, I still couldn't get the thing to connect properly.  After much consternation (read:  swearing), I sighed and waved the white flag in surrender. 

So I wound up building the default Cloverleaf:

It's a little plain for my tastes, but what can you do?

Questions:

• 1.  Over the past couple of days trying to figure this silly thing out, I noticed that there's an A1 FlexRamp, a B1 FlexRamp, a D1 FlexRamp, and an E1 FlexRamp.    What happened to the C1 FlexRamp? 
• 2.  Did the Underpants Gnomes walk off with it thinking they could turn a profit?  
• 3.  Serious question:  Is it possible to put Cosmetic Pieces (specifically the lane arrows) on an Elevated Highway? 

The thing is flipping HUGE!  Since I settled for the plain one, I can definitely make it smaller by pulling the on/off-ramps in closer. 

Looking at both of the pictures, I should have turned the daylight on so you can see the pictures better.  Oops! 

In case anybody's curious, I haven't given up building the Ultimate Spread Out Cloverleaf (USOC) like in the pic in my previous post. 

I started a New City like I said, and lowered the Terrain until I hit water.  Big shock:  it was only 1 level down, so I raised the Terrain back to Terra Firma.  I built a good part of the USOC and got the Highways built.  The big square in the middle was all set.  I tried to dig down to the water level to make the lake.  Geez, I couldn't believe how deep one level is!  I'll keep working on it but I get the feeling that this bad boy might take up the entire City tile. 

  Edited February 26, 2021 by That Retro Guy  
My grammar, once again, failed me!

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

2 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

Maybe . . . but just think how quickly they could get their crops to market by taking such a Cloverleaf. 

That's true! The one single bushel of beans they'd have room to grow could be transported at high speed.

 

2 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

Question for you, @CorinaMarie:  Do you use highways at all (even a two lane (each way)) to connect the farming cities in your Region?

I'm on my 6th or 7th region of all time and along the way I've been getting a feel for what I like. My latest one was in a copy of the Maxis Timbuktu region called (seriously) Timbuktu Too where I made a conscious effort to connect all the little bitty towns (and about four large towns / small cities) via rails. Then, later, I went along and wound avenue thru a dozen tiles (or such) so it made some logical sense at the region level. I've also used regular roads as connections between little backwoods villages which appears nice at the region level.

For me, at this stage, I use very little of what the NAM offers. My impression is all those options allow for very realistic looking transportation networks at the cost of a long, long learning curve to get them to look right. Since it turns out congestion is not a factor in traffic noise for high customer counts, I've tweaked my settings such that traffic levels are no longer an aspect I have to worry about. This is not to say anything against NAM, but just that my own play style doesn't include the difficulty of using all the fancy options it has.

[That Retro Guy 321]

Alrighty!  Since building the Cloverleaf (the way I want it) is (for now) a bust, we'll move on . . .

So I was listening to the in-game music, and I noticed the Custom Tunes (or whatever the button says) button.  I have a couple of music CDs 'ripped' to my hard drive.  I put the tracks for Enya's Watermark album into the proper folder and it worked . . . sorta.  The tracks weren't played in order.  I've listened to that album at least 100 times so I know what the order is.  So I remove the Enya tracks to go back to listening to the default music.  Only now, I'm missing two tracks (at least, I can't select them in the menu).  I'm missing 'Bumper to Bumper' and 'Floating Population'.

Question:  Does anybody know the filenames of these two tracks so I can search my hard drive for them?

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

2 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

Question:  Does anybody know the filenames of these two tracks so I can search my hard drive for them?

I don't know the filenames vs the descriptive names, but here's all the ones I have:

Directory of C:\GOG Games\SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition\Radio\Stations\Mayor\Music

SC4ep1_01_M.mp3
SC4ep1_04_M.mp3
SC4ep1_05_M.mp3
SC4ep1_06_M.mp3
SC4ep1_07_M.mp3
SC4ep1_09_M.mp3
SC4ep1_10_M.mp3
SC4ep1_11_M.mp3
SC4m01.mp3
SC4m02.mp3
SC4m03.mp3
SC4m04.mp3
SC4m05.mp3
SC4m06.mp3
SC4m07.mp3
SC4m08.mp3
SC4m09.mp3
SC4m10.mp3
SC4m11.mp3
SC4m12.mp3
SC4m13.mp3
SC4m14.mp3
SC4m15.mp3
SC4m16.mp3
SC4m17.mp3

Directory of C:\GOG Games\SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition\Radio\Stations\Region\Music

SC4ep1_02_G.mp3
SC4ep1_03_G.mp3
SC4ep1_08_G.mp3
SC4g1.mp3
SC4g2.mp3
SC4g3.mp3
SC4g4.mp3
SC4g5.mp3
SC4g6.mp3
SC4g7.mp3

[That Retro Guy 321]

10 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I don't know the filenames vs the descriptive names, but here's all the ones I have:

Thanks for the list!

By comparing your folder with mine, I'm missing:

• SC4ep1_01_M.mp3
• SC4ep1_10_M.mp3

However, doing a search of the Hard Drive for each of these files came up empty.

Any chance of someone posting these two files, please?

[rsc204 21,808]

On 26/02/2021 at 2:08 AM, That Retro Guy said:

• 1.  Over the past couple of days trying to figure this silly thing out, I noticed that there's an A1 FlexRamp, a B1 FlexRamp, a D1 FlexRamp, and an E1 FlexRamp.    What happened to the C1 FlexRamp? 
• 2.  Did the Underpants Gnomes walk off with it thinking they could turn a profit?  

C and F type ramps, branch off at Fractional Angles, these can be found in the FA-Ramps RHW item, currently no Flex versions of them exist.

Just to note, all of the Ramps on your current interchange are  actually A1 types.

A & D = Ortho / B & E = Diag / C & F = FA

ABC type ramps have one or more lanes (the 1 in A1, indicates how many), which exit or enter a highway. DEF types are the variants of them where lanes branch off from/on to the highway, i.e. those lanes are removed from/added to the adjoining highway.

On 26/02/2021 at 2:08 AM, That Retro Guy said:

• 3.  Serious question:  Is it possible to put Cosmetic Pieces (specifically the lane arrows) on an Elevated Highway? 

Sadly no, a duplicate set for each height would be needed for this to work. At some point, the current ones should get the "Flex" treatment, essentially that's the latest method for making NAM content. So if you think back to the Flex FTLs, the new way these cosmetic pieces will function is by placing a special "Flex Piece". That's planned, but I can't say when it will happen, but once that's converted, I think it will be expanded to Elevated Networks eventually.

On 26/02/2021 at 2:08 AM, That Retro Guy said:

...So I wound up building the default Cloverleaf:

I should clarify about the code limitations, in this specific instance, we simply have no control over where to place the Cloverleaf 270° curves, since they will only properly align in one spot. This is why using the D1 ramps right next to these pieces on one side, whilst also directly beside the Overpass, which in turn is directly next to it's D1 ramp... well I'm guessing you get the gist of this being a very specific situation, the code simply wasn't intended for. Probably because these pieces are intended for the MHO system, not the actual RHW.

In my testing, either the L0 or the L2 sections could use D1 ramps, but not both. So no matter how big a median you give between the RHW directions, the real problem remains, because it's the D1 ramps position behind it. The solution?:

1. Add the additional RUL code so this setup could be recognised
   I'm not really suggesting you do this, but it's something I may look into, I suspect it will be pretty complex though (a lot of work), so really no promises. However if limited to RHW-6S support only, i.e. the D1 ramp will transition between RHW-4 and RHW-6S, it might be a 10-20m fix, which is more viable.
2. Use actual MIS / FlexCurves for the cloverleaf
   This is quite a tough interchange, because you need to get the entire curve to transition in height between the two off ramps (for each transition). Using E1 instead of D1 ramps, you'll only need to build the remaining 180° curve, 2x45° and 1x90°. To make the height change easier on you, make the elevated highway only L1 not L2. Better still, build earthen ramps to get a 7.5m (L1) elevated section where the two RHW's meet. Then use FlexOST (on-slope transition pieces), instead of ramps. 
   
   Here's how that works with half of the Cloverleaf finished:
   
   
   The loops are made from 3 Flex Curves (item name in Highway Menu), the 5th item in this list is an R2 45° MRC, the 6th is an R2 90° MRC. MRC = Multi Radius Curves, these being the tightest, 2nd Radius ones, larger radius pieces, with higher numbers exist too.
   
   Here's a helper diagram of how exactly to put together those MRC's:
   
   The road here represents the highway, the cyan parts show how the 2 E1 ramps contribute to the overall loop. Start by building the E1 Ramps, I've left the grid on, so you can work out the right number of tiles, from the outer edge of the crossing RHW's, the loop encompasses a 10x10 tile area. Work from the upper level down, if you are very gentle, you can get really nice slopes doing this, although a slope mod is preferable. That's kinda the tricky bit to explain, but you do need some experience with controlling slopes to make this work for certain.
   
   As tight as possible, you need to place the 45° curves into each of the E1 Ramp's branches. Next you add the 90° curve between them, I've moved it out of position to show it better, but it needs to be as tight as shown when moved over a tile (yellow arrows). If you placed the E1 Ramps and 45° curves correctly, it should just fit perfectly.
   
   Anyway this is advanced stuff, it's taken me a while to figure out. But I hope you can see this approach allows the Ramps to be away from the overpass, giving the code room to breathe. If this interests you, I'll try to walk you through any problems.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

15 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

Any chance of someone posting these two files, please?

Sadly, no.

While there is considerable latitude with posting parts of Maxis .dat files (like those extracted using Reader) which are of no use to anyone who doesn't already own the game, when it comes to the .mp3 files, those can be played standalone and therefore would likely trample the EULA.

I don't personally like having to say the above, but it's a tricky area where I feel Simtropolis has to decline.

Ofc, reinstalling the game would prolly restore them for you, but I'd recommend extreme caution if doing so. As in backup everything beforehand.

[Propfam 2,288]

There is a topic here in ST exactly just for that:

Reinstalling the game is still a good choice especially if you want to listen to that collection in game. Hope it helps. Thanks.

[That Retro Guy 321]

On 2/25/2021 at 11:00 PM, CorinaMarie said:

That's true! The one single bushel of beans they'd have room to grow could be transported at high speed.

You have a point.  The poor farmers wouldn't be able to turn a profit working a field the size of a postage stamp! 

 

On 2/27/2021 at 5:16 PM, rsc204 said:

Anyway this is advanced stuff

Are you kidding?!!  This is awesome stuff!  I'll give a whirl sometime and let you know how it went. 

 

19 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

when it comes to the .mp3 files, those can be played standalone and therefore would likely trample the EULA.

No problem.  I figured out that if I start Windows Media Player, set the controls to Auto-Repeat, start playing the Enya album, start SimCity 4, turn the in-game Music Volume all the way down, I can listen to the album just fine. 

So, in my Sandlot Region, I made a city called Villages.  These are the farming communities that I was messing around with in Prepping My First Region (Page 8).  For funsies, I started time and let the Village grow.  What happened?  Both farms grew dirt!  So I downloaded and installed two of @CorinaMarie's mods:  Cori's Friendly Pedriana's Plants Killer and No Maxis Dirt Farms (link is in the Comment section of the first one).  I bulldozed both farms, dezoned (just for good measure), rezoned, and let it rip.  Now one farm grows tomatoes while the other grows Rye. 

Now, enough of the appetizers, it's time for the main course!  I remembered that long ago, I read something on ST about using pics of clouds to terraform a Region.  Lo and behold, it turns out to be written by none other than @CorinaMarie herself!  After seeing how her Region ended up looking, I figured 'What the heck!  I'll give it a try!'

First, I found a picture:

Then I created my new Region:  Limistéar.  Yes, sports fans, I'm getting close to actually start playing a Region.

Following @CorinaMarie's instructions, I got to the point where I Greyscaled the pic, and did the first Render thusly:

Holy crap!    Meanwhile, notice the fancy-schmancy 'e' in the Region name.  My brain works when it wants to, and I remember things.

So I went back to her instructions, and I drew a River flowing through the Region.  (I couldn't choose an Acrylic brush because neither Windows Paint or my beloved Paint Shop Pro 5 (PSP5) has this option).  I then tried to Blur --> Gaussian Blur the image.  Again, sadly, neither WinPaint or my PSP5 has this option.  Well, PSP5 has it but when I clicked on Blur, the drop-down menu which had Gaussian Blur on it was unselectable (greyed out).

In Cori's instructions, her pics showed that she uses GIMP.  I tried a Google search for it, but no luck. 

Am I not looking in the right place? 

 

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

3 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

In Cori's instructions, her pics showed that she uses GIMP.

That's correct, and here's the link to the GIMP site.

As of this post, the current release is 2.10.22 and said installer can be downloaded directly from here.

The Gaussian blur will be the key to smoothening out the cloud-based maps as Cori's tutorial explains (which you'd found). The reason being is since the terrain data otherwise is seen as being too pixelated for how the elevations are rendered, and so hence this blurring makes the map much more buildable.

So apply the blur, save the image. Then render the map again, and all should be well.

[That Retro Guy 321]

7 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

That's correct, and here's the link to the GIMP site.

As of this post, the current release is 2.10.22 and said installer can be downloaded directly from here.

Thanks!  I wonder why I couldn't find it.  I typed SimCity 4 GIMP into Google Search with no results that were useful.  I was afraid to type just GIMP into Google Search. . . God knows what type of pictures would have popped up. 

 

7 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

So apply the blur, save the image. Then render the map again, and all should be well.

Cool!   Thanks! 

[That Retro Guy 321]

So I download and install GIMP, load my .bmp, and do the Gaussian Blur.  I save (well, export) the quite blurry image, and load into my game.

First, here's what it looked like after the 1st Render and had painted in the rivers.

And then, after applying the Gaussian Blur, here's what the map looked like in-game

Looks a lot better though that's a lot of hills running through Dublin (Large City).  My only question is:  Where the heck are the rivers that I drew?

I still couldn't find the Acrylic 05 Paintbrush, though. 

The program interface looks totally different from the one in @CorinaMarie's pictures.  Wonder if some things were rendered obsolete and removed. 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

@That Retro Guy

Turns out they have been screwing around with the interface and how the tools work. What I wrote back then for the guide has been made completely unworkable now. I'm not happy about this.

I hereby completely withdraw my recommendation for using GIMP since they are prone to taking something which works perfectly well and messing it up.

Do note tho:

@Cyclone Boom has looked for solutions. One might be in this linky and the other is to find an old version of GIMP before they borked it all to hell. We do know v2.8.22 worked fine following my guide.

[Tarkus 6,932]

On 2/25/2021 at 5:08 PM, That Retro Guy said:

Well, I thought that I had the Ultimate Cloverleaf built.  It was going beautifully until this happened:

 

The way the D1 FLEXRamps work has been redesigned for NAM 40.  We've changed the "base" setup from the RHW-4 D1 to the new RHW-3 D1, which means there won't be overrides popping out the mainline ends of it anymore.  That change is going to improve the overall stability substantially, since it cuts down on "overrides-of-overrides". 

I was able to replicate your base setup with the ramp placement on the ground end (and having an L2 RHW-6S overhead like that), and didn't encounter that particular issue, albeit I did have to place L0 RHW-6S starters in between the two L2 RHW-6S overcrossings, since it doesn't appear I have enough top-side adjacency code.

BTW, if anyone's wonder what adjacency code is, it's basically code coming out the other end of any sort of crossing/ramp/transition/curve to handle any sort of setup that is right next to it that isn't base ortho or diag.  In effect, in order to carry the override out the top of that D1 ramp under the L2 RHW-6S that's on the tile directly next to it, I actually need to write code specifically for "L0 RHW-6S Ortho Type D1 Ramp Top-next to-L2 RHW-6S-over-L0 RHW-6S OxO" situations (OxO = Ortho x Ortho). 

BTW, that code would look something like this:

>
	0x57843000,1,0,0x57241A00,0,0=0x57843000,1,0,0x57241E00,0,0
	0x57843000,1,0,0x57241A00,2,0=0x57843000,1,0,0x57241E00,0,1
	0x57843080,3,1,0x57241A00,0,0=0x57843080,3,1,0x57241E00,2,1
	0x57843080,3,1,0x57241A00,2,0=0x57843080,3,1,0x57241E00,2,0
	

If that's an L2 RHW-4 going overhead instead of an L2 RHW-6S . . . that's another adjacency situation that needs its own code:

>
	0x57843000,1,0,0x57231A00,0,0=0x57843000,1,0,0x57231E00,0,0
	0x57843000,1,0,0x57231A00,2,0=0x57843000,1,0,0x57231E00,0,1
	0x57843080,3,1,0x57231A00,0,0=0x57843080,3,1,0x57231E00,2,1
	0x57843080,3,1,0x57231A00,2,0=0x57843080,3,1,0x57231E00,2,0
	

Anything you can stick next to the top of an L0 RHW-6S Ortho Type D1 ramp is going to need more adjacency code just like that in order to handle it and continue the override.  An equal amount of additional code is required to make the override work in the opposite direction as well.

-Tarkus