Hello! I'm glad to be playing SimCity 4 again!

[Turnstyled 486]

Hi, all! I'll start by saying that I'm feeling a lot better than when I was last here. Like, a lot, lot, lot better! I hid my previous thread on the off-topic subforum because it was full of ramblings from someone who wasn't feeling well. All these "hobbies" that I had were to keep me sane; however, they made me feel horrifically unwell. I don't like fiction. I never have. A Mario game or SpongeBob SquarePants is very disturbing to me. I don't get along well with fantasy worlds.

Well, I now feel able to do away with those hobbies. I just deleted most of my personal computer files, but I kept my SimCity 4-related files. SimCity 4 and Cities: Skylines are fine for me. They don't bother me. Thus, I've decided to focus on them and to enjoy playing them. I've been having a lot of fun this past week playing them both. This is the third consecutive January in which those hobbies had freaked me out too much, so I decided to focus solely on city-builder games. The previous two Januarys, though, I wasn't ready to do that. I took things too far. I had to have SimCity 3000, 2000, 2013, Classic, and even Societies installed, too. I had to have all the Tropico games, NewCity, and Cities XL installed. I had to have TheoTown installed from Steam. If you like those, then there's nothing wrong with them. I just couldn't handle things otherwise than to take things too far, though.

I enrolled in an online Computer Science program last fall, but I don't have the mind for Computer Science. I'm working toward getting into an online Computer Engineering program for this fall. Online schooling has been the best thing for me. I never handled being on campus or the classroom well.

I decided to only focus on SimCity 4 and Cities: Skylines because they both have communities that are consistently releasing content for them. It keeps things fresh and exciting. I have all the downloadable content for Cities: Skylines, including European Club Pack: Stadiums, which is no longer available for purchase. I also bought Magicka 2 some years ago just to have the Magicka Theme Park in-game. Over 300 US dollars of additional content for one game over nearly eight years is okay for me because that game is the one thing that "feels right" to me. I also decided to buy 128 gigabytes of RAM because of Cities: Skylines. I bought a 3D mouse last summer because of one of my hobbies, which had been flight sims. It turns out that there's a mod for Cities: Skylines that lets you use a 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse with Cities: Skylines.

I'm going to confess something. In 2019, I asked someone on Reddit for their gigantic plugins folder. Well, regardless of that, I'm no longer using it and I'm instead making my own plugins folder. This way, I know what I'm putting in it, I can weigh decisions myself, and I can be knowledgeable of what works together and what does not. I built the latest dxwrapper code a few days ago and I couldn't really play Cities: Skylines with that gigantic plugins folder that I asked for in 2019 using dxwrapper. Performance was better using dgVoodoo2. Thus, I'm using dgVoodoo2 now that I am using my own plugins folder. I'm playing in 4K, by the way. I made a video here not too long ago about scaling, but it doesn't feel natural to me to play in 1080p and scale to 4K. Things are too blurry. I can still use the user interface with my 27-inch 4K monitor in 4K.

I feel as though it's an excellent time to be playing SimCity 4. The custodial work on custom content that I've been witnessing has been excellent. Thus, I don't feel as though I have to venture out of the STEX or the LEX for content. I'm playing with the NAM, the IRM, and the SPAM. I don't have it in me to play with the CAM.

Below is my work in progress from tonight. It looks like I forgot to disable UDI. I'm using the excellent Terrace, British Columbia map by @WaffleFoxBrie.

[Turnstyled 486]

This morning has been a lot of fun! In the past, I was told here that whatever loads last is what goes into effect and that there are no cascading mod effects. At the time, I wasn't able to grasp what I was told.

I've been editing SimCity_1.dat. I've removed radiation pollution from rewards, set degradation for utility buildings to 0, and changed map movement hotkeys from the arrow keys to WASD. Yes, I even removed radiation pollution from the Toxic Waste Dump.

I also removed Maxis mansions from @PaulSawyer's Maxis Seasonal - Residential & Commercial Lots so that there were no conflicts with @kingofsimcity's Maxis Mansion Overhaul.

I want all of the "essential bugfix" mods, but I had HippoTank Demand Fix and Paeng's Degradation Mod in my plugins folder. HippoTank Demand Fix touches several power plants. Additionally, I removed ParkPays because I play with unlimited money and Maxis Parks to Bottom is too valuable for me.

[Turnstyled 486]

I guess this is just my status thread of how excited I am over SimCity 4!

Last night, I purchased six months of Nvidia GeForce NOW Ultimate so that I can play Cities: Skylines with all my DLC "on the go" as long as I have a good enough Internet connection. Not that it would matter on my laptop, but Nvidia's data centers are currently being upgraded with RTX 4080 cards to enable up to 4K and 120 frames per second streaming. As of writing this post, the only data centers in the United States that have RTX 4080s are the San Jose, Los Angeles, and Dallas data centers.

Yes, I know that I could do the same thing by buying a more powerful laptop or even with my Steam Deck or a GPD Win 4 using the --noWorkshop command line parameter. I don't want to, though. I use a lot of mods and I don't feel as though it would be fruitful to play modded on a computer that isn't my desktop. In fact, you can see my list of currently installed mods right here: (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2922748747)

I also made a batch file to launch Steam, then my playlist of SimCity 4 and 3000 music, then the Load Order Tool launcher for Cities: Skylines, and then to "launch" Cities: Skylines through WeMod after I close the Load Order Tool launcher. "Launch" was in quotes because at that point in the process, it's just injecting the cheats. I paid for a month of WeMod to get additional features through it. The paid feature that was important to me was the feature to remember cheat configurations between game launches. WeMod removes barriers for cheats in games by having all of your cheats in one place and to make using cheats in games very easy. You may wonder what there is to do for cheats in a game like Cities: Skylines where almost anything can be modded. There aren't many cheats available for Cities: Skylines in WeMod, but I liked enabling the cheats to remove water, sewage, and electricity consumption from residential, commercial, and industrial areas. The cheats don't say as such, but they also remove heating consumption from the stated areas. Of course, other building types consume water, sewage, heating, and electricity. Those cheats might make things easier in a bigger city, though. The 81 Tiles 2 mod allows you to not place pipes and power lines, but you still have to provide production of water, sewage, heating, and electricity. 

My batch file is as follows:

start "" "V:\Game Files\City Builder Playlist\City Builders.fpl"

start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe"

start /w D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\workshop\content\255710\2448824112\Tool\LoadOrderTool.exe

start "" "wemod://play?titleId=6375&gameId=6375"

That's a lot of talk about Cities: Skylines on the SimCity 4 forum!

For SimCity 4, I'm launching it through @MarkShot's SC4Ckpt and I paid for a year of Process Lasso Pro to automate setting CPU priority and IO priority of the SimCity 4 executable to High.

I'm not using the autosave feature built into SC4Ckpt when CAS_AutoHistorical exists.

Backblaze is backing up my personal data to "the cloud" and I'm using Karen's Replicator to back my SimCity 4 user folder to an 8 terabyte hard drive every day at 1 am. I have a lot of storage space that I was using for storing data that I didn't want, so I also dedicated a 12 terabyte hard drive to Cities: Skylines screenshots, a 500 gigabyte NVMe solid state drive for output from Screenbits, my screen recording software from the Microsoft Store, and a 500 gigabyte NVMe solid state drive for a Cities: Skylines repack for when I want to play unmodded. I probably just broke a rule by mentioning that. Keep in mind that I happily buy all of the content for Cities: Skylines. I know that is all overkill. Additionally, I have a 1 terabyte NVMe solid state drive dedicated to my SimCity 4 installation, my SimCity 4 user folder, and my Cities: Skylines Steam installation. I also have a 4 terabyte hard drive for all of my personal files. As for my screen recording software, I just like to show recordings of me playing SimCity 4 to my best friend.

As you can see, it was all just housekeeping this past day.

Edit: I have all that I need on my StartAllBack Windows 11 Start Menu! I stress that I much prefer the version of Cities: Skylines that I paid for and that I continue to pay for.

Yes, there is my name on my Start Menu. I don't mind. I've already linked to GitHub repos here that are under my name.

Edit 2: I just had the idea to make a batch file to open SC4Ckpt after Borderless Gaming opens. It makes for a pleasant experience when running the game at my display's full resolution using dgVoodoo2 and using the -w command line parameter to open SimCity 4 windowed. Borderless Gaming will maximize the game window and I can click to a secondary monitor to talk to my best friend or to use a web browser. I looked up how to limit the number of instances of a single program opened through a batch file, but the results were too complicated for me. New instances of Borderless Gaming will be opened depending on how many times you run my batch file.

The content of my batch file, which I run as an administrator, is as follows:

start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Borderless Gaming\BorderlessGaming.exe"

start D:\SC4CkptUser\SC4Ckpt.exe

My new Start Menu is as follows:

And I created an organized desktop portal with all those icons through Portals on my secondary monitor. Stardock Fences 4 is incompatible with StartAllBack for me. Portals does the same thing as Stardock Fences 4.

Sorry if this is rambling. I sure got excited this past day!

And my day of housekeeping is DONE!

I debated whether or not to install Nvidia GeForce Experience for Nvidia Freestyle with Cities: Skylines. I already have Cities: Skylines set up with ReShade and many tell the tales of the evil GeForce Experience. Nvidia commissioned the creator of ReShade to create Nvidia Freestyle. I ended up installing GeForce Experience to have an additional option that was simpler than ReShade is.

Final edit: I was a bit confused by the supposed usefulness of Karen's Replicator until I saw this informative post by @twalsh102:

I have started backing up my SimCity 4 user folder by day as <YYYY>-<MM>-<DD> so that my SimCity 4 backups drive currently looks like this:

Before, Karen's Replicator copied my SimCity 4 user folder to the same directory each day.

[Turnstyled 486]

I was sure busy last night....as well as the night before.

I tried making my playlist into a radio station in Cities: Skylines, but the audio skips. Thus, I'll continue running my playlist in foobar2000. I just edited my keyboard's extra keys above the number pad to be media control keys.

In the screenshot up above is the VIA configuration utility for many mechanical keyboards that currently exist.

I made Steam Workshop collections of every single mod category because the Steam Workshop is messy. If you unsubscribe from all because whatever you had downloaded wasn't working, then you have to find everything again. I made these collections to keep track of my custom content for Cities: Skylines.

Well, back to SimCity 4, because this IS a SimCity 4 subforum, I just saw @Diego Del Llano's Aon Center in a new city journal. It looked wonderful. I found it here on the STEX and I placed it in my plugins folder. 

Now, if I sleep, then things will be tough for later today. I'll see how much "city-builder" I currently have left in me.

[Turnstyled 486]

I did it! I have conquered my plugins folder! I spent yesterday doing that. The only ignored files in SC4DataNode are now from the NAM and the SPAM Core Mod. I won't be touching that with the NAM because the NAM team knows what it's doing, and there is an I-r5_4x6_Elevator_593083cb.SC4Lot and an I-r5_4x6_LargeElevator_593083cb.SC4Lot file that are the exact same file in the SPAM_Core_Lots folder. I hashed them to find that. I'm just going to hope that Pegasus knew what they were doing in regard to that when creating the SPAM. I hope that doesn't sound like it minimizes Pegasus's work.

Otherwise, though, a lot of things have been replaced because they're included in newer versions of texture and prop packs. Some things were just the same file multiple places.

I was wondering why I had two SMART car instances files which hashed to be different files, but it's right here in the description of the BRT Smart Car Dealerships on the LEX. It says: Also included is an update of Mike Seith's MS Smart car new instances dat. If you have this installed please remove the old version. All lots details and linked dependency list are in the Readme.

Thus, I deleted the MS Smart car new instances dat file from Mike Seith's European car pack.

Also, I got rid of SimGoober's Farm Fields Revised. They're clearly not SPAMpatible.

One thing was just a case of me havin' a Maxis Nite and a Dark Nite file together.

And in JP Schriefer's BMDG Headquarters, the description says:

NOTE: if you download both MN or DN .zips, I highly suggest you to delete one .SC4Model file, but never both.

"Both" are the Landmark version and the Commercial Office version. I had the .SC4Model files from both DarkNite zips.

There were the trucks from Angry Mozart and MushyMushy. The Logistics Essentials from KingOfSimCity was meant to override those trucks, so I just deleted the files from the truck packs that had been overridden.

I deleted some files from the LEX DVD Exclusives folder because those files are part of an updated texture pack. Preparations are being made to release the LEX DVD Exclusives for everyone and that texture pack was updated as part of those preparations.

Another thing was Jim's Parking Pack. I was to pick one of four files in the z_Jim Parking MML folder. I didn't know that because the documentation was in Japanese. I translated the documentation within my web browser yesterday.

Finally, there was a R$5_4x2_JB_RUSA_StrattonCenter Entry_Tan.dat and a R$5_4x2_JB_RUSA_Stratton_Center Entry_Tan.dat for JBSimio's Stratton Apartments. I picked the one that was newer. The one that was newer matched the naming convention of the other files in the folder.

Edit: I will now pillage the LEX and the STEX for more plugins! 

Edit 2: It appears that MAPP_Essentials1.dat is no longer needed. It was overriding the Industrial Revolution Mod Dummy Building file. I didn't know if that was a problem, but I tried placing the ancillary buildings from the Modular Amusement Park Pack (MAPP) and there were no brown boxes!

My editing of SimCity_1.dat is limited to removing radiation pollution and age degradation. I couldn't get my hotkey edits to work, so I merged them in with CAS_AutoHistorical_v0.0.2.dat.

Edit 3: The same all applies to MAPP_Props1.dat. It was overriding the IRM dummy building file and the MAPP ancillary buildings load fine without it present in my plugins folder.

I just realized, though, that Area 51 Air Force Base No Exclusion, HippoTank Demand Fix, and Transistor X's Reward Pack 1 were probably reverting the radiation pollution radius and age degradation settings that I had set for certain Maxis buildings in SimCIty_1.dat. Thus, I just edited HippoTank Demand Fix and Transistor X's Reward Pack 1 to how I wanted them. I honestly don't know how to make unique buildings non-unique. That's what Transistor X's Reward Pack 1 does. It makes certain unique Maxis buildings non-unique. Learning how to make unique buildings non-unique isn't really a concern of mine right now.

[Turnstyled 486]

Ah, but some plugins are meant to be overrides! If the author knows what they're doing, then they'll package the files meant to be overrides with a naming convention that will have them load last or they'll instruct the user to create a naming convention that will have the files load last.

As a proud user of the Sudden Valley map theme, I just discovered rsc204's Terrain Grass NAM (TGN) for Gobias Sudden Valley. It is excellent! I was initially nervous to check the box to include the BSC Textures Vol1-3 override, but after reading the readme, I ran the installer again and included the BSC Textures Vol1-3 override.

So...I'm not very good at creating batch files. I think my troubles with SC4Ckpt were due to my batch file and not SC4Ckpt. Thus, I'm not going to use SC4Ckpt. My new batch file is as follows:

start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Borderless Gaming\BorderlessGaming.exe"

start "" "D:\SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" -CPUCount:1 -Intro:Off -CustomResolution:enabled -audio:on -r3840x2160x32 -w -d:DirectX -Cursors:fullcolor -UserDir:"D:\SC4\"

Obviously, my Start Menu is now changed, but I don't need to post a screenshot of my Start Menu again. I've found an excellent replacement for the SimCity 4 desktop icon. It can be found in the comments of this Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/61djxi/sim_city_4_icon_remake_hd_oc/

 

I like making large cities in SimCity 4. I prefer Gobias's Queens Cobblestone sidewalk. I spent some time looking into Paeng's Sandstone Mod and everything that surrounds it. I'm going to stick with Gobias's Queens Cobblestone sidewalk, though.

[Turnstyled 486]

Ah-ha! So the question isn't whether or not SimGoober's Farm Fields Revised as SPAMpatible. Right in the description, it says: These will NOT do anything, unless a farm is downloaded that calls for them.

I've spent today pillaging the LEX sorting by most recent. I needed SimGoober's Farm Fields Revised for FrankU's Dutch Farms.

Edit: When I said "Ah, but some plugins are meant to be overrides! If the author knows what they're doing, then they'll package the files meant to be overrides with a naming convention that will have them load last or they'll instruct the user to create a naming convention that will have the files load last." in my previous post in this thread, ignore that. I was having a tough day keeping myself awake. The crux of it is that I don't like keeping ignored files around, but I'm not touching what's in the SPAM Core Mod and the NAM. That's where all of my ignored files are.

My mother woke me up for me to spend time at my parents' house. Some time out of my apartment is always very healthy for me.

[Turnstyled 486]

Now, as much as I hate ignored files in my plugins folder, some files are better left kept. In Neko's Prop Packs from the Hide-Inoki BBS, there is a Neko_Fountain_Park_OutCornerC-0x5ad0e817_0x1a2d0014_0x30000.SC4Model and a Neko_Fountain_Park_OutCornerD-0x5ad0e817_0x1a2d0014_0x30000.SC4Model. They share the same instance. Which one is "correct?" Well, I'd better leave them both in! So I'd better take care before I do something horribly wrong!

Now, in IDS2's Minneapolis houses with garages Darknite pack, there is a Sheridan-0x5ad0e817_0x9edef4d8_0x290000.SC4Model in the /Darknite/Group 5 folder and a garage1-0x5ad0e817_0x9edef4d8_0x290000.SC4Model file in the /GaragesDarknite folder. As you can see, both files share the same instance. I deleted the Sheridan house because I'd rather have one less house than multiple houses without garages. I don't even know if I got that right. I probably did not and there are more brown boxes at play than I mentioned.

But it's not always ignored files that are problematic! I've been focusing on ignored files. I recently installed the PLEX CDK3 Seaports. Included has been PEG-SUPER_TEXTURES.dat. I already had PEG_MTP_SUPER_TEXTURES_PACK.dat, but it loaded after PEG-SUPER_TEXTURES.dat. PEG_MTP_SUPER_TEXTURES_PACK.dat does not contain everything that PEG-SUPER_TEXTURES.dat contains, so PEG-SUPER_TEXTURES.dat would not have been ignored. Additionally, I had FrankU Farm Prop Families Maxis and BSC  1.0 load after BNL Essentials v2.0. BNL Essentials v2.0 contains more than FrankU Farm Prop Families Maxis and BSC 1.0 contains. FrankU Farm Prop Families Maxis and BSC 1.0 was superfluous; however.

[Turnstyled 486]

The prop pox, phantom sliders, and brown cardboard boxes tied up with string. These are a few of my least favorite things...

Today, I spent time plopping and admiring all of the lovely creations that I've downloaded for SimCity 4. It turns out I did a pretty good job with dependencies and managing my plugins folder.

I'm considering buying a GPD Win 4 for SimCity 4 and Cities: Skylines. The Steam Deck is a little large for me even though you want to be able to see menus within SimCity 4 and Cities: Skylines.

The optical finger navigation that's included with the GPD Win 4 might make for a decent alternative to the Steam Deck trackpads. Plus, I can install Ubuntu on the GPD Win 4 if I want to or I can install HoloISO if I want to replicate the Steam Deck experience as best I can. I can only hope that Intel graphics drivers have been improving now that Intel has launched its discrete GPUs. I'm not certain that matters for something as old as Cities: Skylines, but the GPD Win 4 uses AMD hardware.

I feel a little embarrassed. I have all of these commercialist nonsense things in here that I can do nothing with but sell because I have no interest in them. I don't get them or understand them, but my days have been so scary with no end in sight to scary days that I've bought and sold the same things up to five times since 2020. I've seen a lot and I'm in my apartment for most of the day. I can't make it through an entire day without sleeping. My mother has been helping as best as she has been able to. I'd sell all my things, but then, I'd find that I couldn't live without them. Then, though, I'd find that they'd completely freak me out and that they were just taking up space. Plus, I could make decent money if I'd sell them. It's been tough.

I'm just focusing on SimCity 4 and Cities: Skylines. So far, that has been working this time.

Edit: I just tried to install yay to make use of the Arch User Repository on my Steam Deck. It's not worth it, man. I wanted the latest version of the .NET 6 runtime instead of what was available in Arch's repositories. I need the .NET 6 runtime in order to use Load Order Tool for Cities: Skylines. I'm going to be reimaging my Steam Deck now.

[Turnstyled 486]

Okay, so I installed Cities: Skylines on my Steam Deck, I installed mono for the Compatibility Report mod to work, and I installed the dotnet-runtime package so that I could use the Load Order Tool launcher. Well, Cities: Skylines that installs on the Steam Deck is the Windows build. The Patch Loader mod, which is required for the FPS Booster mod to function, will only work on Linux if using the native Linux build.

So I changed a setting and the files for the native Linux build downloaded. I could launch the Paradox launcher once. The initial launch is an old version of the Paradox launcher. I then closed the Paradox launcher and tried to launch the updated version of the Paradox launcher. That wasn't working. I could launch the Paradox launcher by directly opening its executable, but trying to launch the game through Steam resulted in nothing happening. You can't run Cities: Skylines by opening the Paradox launcher through its executable. If you do, you'll get a message telling you to launch the game from the Steam client.

I'm going to install Windows on my Steam Deck, but you're limited to the AMD graphics drivers supplied by Valve when installing Windows on the Steam Deck. I'm going to get a GPD Win 4. It's going to have a configuration with 32 gigabytes of RAM. The Steam Deck has 16 gigabytes of RAM.

I'm pretty sure that this it's established that this my thread where I get hyped/describe my trials and errors with SimCity 4 and Cities: Skylines. Regardless, this is the SimCity 4 sub-forum. I don't have much to say on that in this post other than that I will also be playing SimCity 4 from within Windows on my GPD Win 4.

[rsc204 21,808]

On 27/01/2023 at 7:16 PM, Turnstyled said:

I recently installed the PLEX CDK3 Seaports. Included has been PEG-SUPER_TEXTURES.dat. I already had PEG_MTP_SUPER_TEXTURES_PACK.dat, but it loaded after PEG-SUPER_TEXTURES.dat. PEG_MTP_SUPER_TEXTURES_PACK.dat does not contain everything that PEG-SUPER_TEXTURES.dat contains, so PEG-SUPER_TEXTURES.dat would not have been ignored.

The PEG CDK3 content was recently refreshed as part of this upload, the new PEG SUPER TEXTURES was created as part of that process. It does contain every texture needed for Pegasus content, with the exception of SPAM. In short, if you have other PEG texture packs you no longer need them.

What's happening here is that content often got made, but as collections/themes expanded, the method of distributing dependencies was altered, usually to have less downloads. Unravelling all that can be hard, especially where most of the original readmes still point to the original files, not the updated or consolidated ones.

Every CDK3 user would be better off using the updated files from the file I linked to previously. We made a huge number of changes/optimisations, aside from the combined Super Textures, I don't believe those fixes exist individually at present. Eventually the plan is to bring the same overhaul to the entire Pegasus content, reducing hundreds of downloads into a small number of smart installers. There is also an intention to update the separated components to use the updated dependencies, but it's a lot of work so it won't happen anytime soon.

[Turnstyled 486]

@rsc204

As always, thank you so much for your corrections. I feel horrible with the idea of spreading misinformation about SimCity 4. I had seen a good amount of what you had told me regarding the PEG SUPER TEXTURES, but I hadn't seen everything that you had said.

Back to progress for Cities: Skylines on the Steam Deck...

I installed mono from Arch's repositories for the Compatibility Report mod and I manually installed dotnet-runtime from the Arch User Repository for the Load Order Mod. I was unable to run the Load Order Tool launcher on Linux. I decided to then carve space out and install Windows on my Steam Deck.

Like I said, you have to use the AMD graphics drivers supplied by Valve with the Steam Deck. I'm going to be purchasing a GPD Win 4. I prefer the size of it compared to the Steam Deck, it has a configuration with 32 GB of RAM, and it doesn't have a weird display resolution. The Steam Deck's display resolution is 800p. The GPD Win 4's display resolution is 1080p.

On Windows, I had the same problem that I had with the native Linux build of Cities: Skylines. After the Paradox Launcher had updated, the Paradox Launcher would not open. Everyone knows that the only purpose of the Paradox Launcher is to gather more user data. I don't care about the companies that are selling my data, but this is preventing me from playing the game that I paid for. I might use the command line argument to bypass the launcher.

Meanwhile, on my desktop, I decided to try a community controller remap configuration for Cities: Skylines using the reWASD controller remapping software. I was very impressed. reWASD is very powerful. The controller that I'm using is the Xbox Elite Series 2 Controller. I'm going to sell all of my controllers except for the Elite Series 2 controller and my Steam Controller. reWASD has special options for the Steam Controller.

Top paddles rotate. Bottom paddles zoom. Right stick is pan. Left stick is moving the cursor.

L and R are Page Up and Page Down for elevation of network nodes. You can see that the back L and R triggers are for left and right mouse click.

B will open the main menu. I can remap that. X is M, which is the default Toggle for Move It! It was also the default toggle for the music mod, so I changed that to Ctrl - M. 

That Select button equivalent is for selecting the three simulation speed steps in sequence. The controller vibrates when you get to Pause. Y is currently K. I don't currently have K set to anything. I'll remap it. I'll also remap R3 because it's currently mapped to autosave. I believe that I'll remap R3 to middle mouse click.

You can set what double presses and triple presses of buttons do. I set double press of the top left paddle to F12 to take a screenshot and double press of the top right paddle to open a shift layer. You can now set up to 10 shift layers in reWASD. With a shift layer, you can set a completely different remap. You can select whether the shift layer is only active when the activator is held or you can select a shift layer activator as a toggle.

And of course, a button can activate a combo. You can select how long you want the combo to be active for. Also, you can select what a combo does! I'm going to have fun with this later.

I'm currently at my parents' house for dinner, so I'm feeling well.

Edit: I found a wonderful project. It's Not Paradox Launcher. It's a lightweight alternative to the Paradox Launcher. The Paradox Launcher has a Chromium browser embedded in it. The only downside is that I'll now have to log in to my Paradox account manually to obtain the Paradox Plaza park. The login feature in the game is used for more accurate telemetry.

Not Paradox Launcher can be found at the following link: https://github.com/shusaura85/notparadoxlauncher

I was wrong about an official command line parameter existing to bypass the Paradox Launcher. The command line argument method is to integrate a batch file into Steam.

Edit 2: Nevermind! All I had to do was click "Login using Steam" to log in to my Paradox account in-game. That was because I have my Paradox account linked with my Steam account.

[Turnstyled 486]

After trying for ages to get the Windows On-Screen Keyboard within Cities: Skylines running fullscreen, I couldn't do it.

I tried mapping buttons to the Windows On-Screen Keyboard shortcut (Ctrl-Shift-O) using Steam Input. That didn't work. Mapping multiple keyboard keys to a button press was only available in Steam Big Picture, which really hasn't been updated since it was first introduced with Steam Machines and the Steam Controller. When checking my configuration that I had set in Big Picture while outside of Big Picture, the button press that I had mapped to multiple keyboard keys was only mapped to the first key that I had selected for my remap while within Big Picture.

Remapping the shortcut to activate the Windows On-Screen Keyboard using Microsoft PowerToys didn't work, either.

So, I joined the Steam Client beta. Currently, if you join the Steam Client beta, Big Picture is now Deck UI. 

By starting Cities: Skylines from the new Big Picture, the shortcut of Steam Button + X brought up the Steam Deck On-Screen Keyboard within Cities: Skylines!

While loading all of the DLC assets and my Workshop assets, I had quickly exhausted my available RAM. The page file was being used. Eventually, though, a map loaded!

I'm using what is currently the most popular Steam community controller configuration for Cities: Skylines. It works well enough.