Hello! Returned to SimCity 4 today, trying to learn modding

[mja09006 15]

Hello everyone, just returned to SimCity 4 yesterday. Got Deluxe version on steam. I'm trying to figure out how to start modding the game and getting NAM up and running but having a really tough time. Also making a first post so I can use the discord. Cheers! Excited to be playing this great game again.

[CaptCity 4,915]

Welcome to Simtropolis! Feel free to asking for any assistance you may need. Lots of folks here who would be glad to help out.

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

7 hours ago, mja09006 said:

Hello everyone, ...

Hiya individual one. Welcome back to the game and to Simtropolis.

 

7 hours ago, mja09006 said:

I'm trying to figure out how to start modding the game ...

A good place to start is with the BAT Essentials Part 1 tutorial. And, there are pinned topics (top of the lists) in the SC4 Modding - Open Discussion and the SC4 BAT & Lot Workshop forums.

 

7 hours ago, mja09006 said:

... and getting NAM up and running

See the instruction section of the first post in the NAM 40 Now Available topic.

[rsc204 21,866]

On 04/04/2021 at 6:06 AM, mja09006 said:

I'm trying to figure out how to start modding the game

It's hard to give good advice, without some idea of what it is you want to change. There are so many different ways to mod the game and all require very different skill sets and tools. Are you looking to change the look of some in-game content?, the Lot Editor (I prefer the third party PIM-X personally), would be the place to start. Want to change the properties and attributes of existing content, for example expanding the number of patients in a hospital, you'll probably need to start with iLives Reader.

[mja09006 15]

Thanks for the welcome everyone! Appreciate it! I'm looking to MOD out a ton of stuff. I just got NAM set up and the traffic simulator. Also got SC4 fix working well. Playing on steam.

 

Was wondering if there are any mods for education and school just cause it seems wrong that a population of like 20K people would only have a few hundred kids in a school although maybe I'm doing something wrong.

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

3 hours ago, mja09006 said:

Was wondering if there are any mods for education and school just cause it seems wrong that a population of like 20K people would only have a few hundred kids in a school...

I've looked thru all the exemplars where I could expect the setting to be for how many will go to school and haven't found them. Ofc, I might be overlooking said settings. If not, then it might be one of those things hard coded.

Empirical data indicates at most 5% will attend elementary schools and 5% high schools. This isn't too far off of real world data in which we would expect 16% of the population to be in one of those two school ages. (I'm basing that from published data showing 21.1% of the U.S. population in 2021 is 0 to 17 years old. Then remove those too young for school and that gives roughly 16%.)

So, 16% expected vs 10% in the game is still about two-thirds of the real life data. However, the game also bases the education on the average age so after a while (with good health care) there can wind up being very few in the lower education facilities.

Maybe other modders know if those percentages can be altered or not.

[twalsh102 1,601]

@mja09006, I doubt you're doing anything wrong. Several things to bear in mind:

(1) Despite the well-known fact that SC4 was not designed to simulate the Real World, many players often run into situations where they wonder why the game doesn't act as one would expect based on their experiences in the RW.
(2) Scale is something else all players need to keep in mind. A large city square is only 16 sq. km. There are airports and industrial complexes larger than this
(3) Many of the game's functions bear absolutely no resemblance to what we experience in the RW. Education is one of those functions.
(4) Outside of the stats in the individual Building Exemplars, pretty much everything we have access to related to Education (and Health) is in the Residential Simulator Exemplar. There is nothing in that Exemplar that addresses percentage of a particular population that will attend a given age-appropriate Education Facility.
(5) Anything related to Age in SC4, actually pertains to a household, not individual Sims. The Age of a household is equal to how long that household has been in existence in your city.
(6) Different types of education facilities target different ages. In SC4, education effectively begins at Age 20 (for the Elementary School).
(7) Don't forget that Maxis Education Facilities tend to have extremely small Coverage Radii and Student Capacities compared to similar Facilities in the RW (an issue of scale that also affect other types of facilities with a Coverage Radius). Only Residents within the Coverage Radius of a Facility will go to that facility.

So what this all comes down to is this: without knowing what percentage of your population resides within the coverage radius of a particular Education Facility, and what the ages of those households are (which determines whether they are targeted by that facility), one can't really determine whether the current number of students at any particular facility make sense, within the current parameters of the game.

There are many custom schools that have increased coverage radii, and/or increased student capacity, that might address your concerns

@CorinaMarie, if you are referring to the nine properties in the Residential Simulator Exemplar titled: "Avg Age to XX Age Group", I believe those percentages are what is needed to reach the Average Age of that particular Age Group. I suspect the purpose of those properties are to trigger the Health and Education Advisor to tell you your Sims want new, different, age-appropriate schools (vs. additional schools of the same type you already have). If this is what you're talking about modding (except in very minor ways that probably wouldn't affect the issue at hand), it wouldn't make sense, or you would no longer have that particular Avg. Age (assuming I'm correct about what those percentages are).

[Propfam 2,305]

Mods that I recommend to try out are https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1384 and https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1382.

[CorinaMarie 29,894]

17 hours ago, twalsh102 said:

@CorinaMarie, if you are referring to the nine properties in the Residential Simulator Exemplar titled: "Avg Age to XX Age Group", I believe those percentages are what is needed to reach the Average Age of that particular Age Group.

For the two 5% numbers, that's from empirical data in the game where I created a residential area all within the radii of a large elementary school and a large high school. I wound up with 25,000 population and I kept track of how many students there were at each school over a long period of time.