NAM 47 and NAM Lite 3 Now Available

[Tarkus 6,934]

The NAM Team is pleased to announce the 47th release of the Network Addon Mod, NAM 47.



DOWNLOAD LINKS (All Cross-Platform)

STEX

ModDB

What's new in NAM 47?  Here's a list:

• Pedestrian Revolution Mod Features:
  • The NAM Team is pleased to present the Classic Draggable Pedmalls, courtesy of Ulisse Wolf and Lucario Boricua. These come in 8 styles, 6 of which are equivalents to the Pedmall Puzzle Pieces, and introducing 2 new designs: the Retrowave Red Brick, inspired in the old brick texture used for the U-Rail in earlier NAM versions, and the Industrial Style, using the concrete surface typical of industrial lots. The initially supported features of these pedmalls include:
    • Multidirectional draggable starter pieces using the Street network, supporting all orthogonal, diagonal, intersection and roundabout configurations, with the exception of wide radius curves.
    • Intersection support (OXO T and 4-way) in the form of mid-block crosswalks. These support Road, Avenue, and all two-way Network Widening Mod override networks (TLA-3, AVE-2, ARD-3, NRD-4, TLA-5, RD-4, RD-6, TLA-7 and AVE-6). These draggable pedmalls are also compatible with the FLEX mid-block crosswalk pieces.
    • Special underground paths enable residential zone development, while crossings discourage car traffic through restricted car paths.
  • In addition, some enhancements to existing functionality have been implemented:
    • The override code for the size 3 mid-block crosswalks for TLA-7 and AVE-6 have been overhauled, enabling these to be overridden from one side.
• RealHighway (RHW) Features:
  • RHW-12S A new, 12-lane quadruple-tile RHW network (separable into two dual-tile halves, carrying 6 lanes in each direction) has been added, with the following features:
    • Three height levels are supported: L0/Ground, L1/7.5-meter elevation, and L2/15-meter elevation. Transitioning between these height levels is supported by the ramp-style FLEX Height Transitions (FLEX-HT), as well as the FLEX OnSlope Transitions (FLEX-OSTs), by connecting them to the RHW-12S networks.
    • The RHW-12S features the same network crossings presently available to the other S-Type RHW networks, including crossings in all orientations for all Maxis base networks, all other RHW networks, Draggable Ground Light Rail, and Draggable Road Viaducts (L0-under-Viaduct-only), plus Orthogonal x Orthogonal (OxO)-only support for Network Widening Mod networks, Elevated RealRailway (ERRW) Viaducts, Tram-on-Street, Tram-in-Road, and Tram-in-Avenue. Limited Hybrid Railway (HRW) support also exists.
    • Extensive ramp interface support: supported ramps using FLEXRamps and Draggable Ramp Interfaces (when applicable) include Orthogonal Type A1 (all levels), Type B1 (all levels), Type D1 (all levels), Type E1 (all levels), Type A2 (all levels), Type B2 (L0 only), Type D2 (all levels), Type E2 (L0 only), Type A1-Inside (all levels), Type B1-Inside (all levels), Type D1-Inside (L0 only), Type E1-Inside (L0 only), the new Type A3 (L0 only) and Type D3 (L0 only), plus Diagonal Type A1 (L0 only), Type B1 (L0 only), Type D1 (L0 only), and Type E1 (L0 only).
    • FLEX Width Transition (FLEX-WT) has been added, to support width transitions between RHW-12S and RHW-10S at all applicable height levels.
    • FLEXFly over and undercrossings are supported with the RHW-12S (orthogonal-only, as diagonal undercrossings for FLEXFly do not presently exist for any network).
    • Several bridges have been added (see Bridge section).
    • Support for FlexSPUI is presently limited, and Three-Level Crossings are not yet supported.
  • RHW X3 Ramps: The first two FLEX 3-lane ramps, in A3 and D3 configurations, have been provided for RHW-8S, 10S and 12S. At present, only L0 support is available.
  • General Improvements:
    • Some enhancements, courtesy of memo, have been made to facilitate FLEXFly-over-FLEXFly functionality.
    • Some enhancements, courtesy of Flann, to elevated RHW network models have been added.
    • Various adjacencies involving RHW x RHW crossings next to the base orth-diag curve on the smaller networks (RHW-6S and smaller) have been addressed.
• Bridges: A multitude of new bridges have been added, courtesy of IDS2 and Kitsune:
  • New viaduct bridges for L0 RHW-8S, L0 RHW-10S and L0-L2 RHW-12S.
  • A pair of new Steel Arch bridges for RHW-10S and RHW-12S.
• Base Network Features: A new 5x5 90° Wide Radius Curve FLEX piece has been added to the Avenue network.
• Miscellaneous: A huge number of bugfixes have been done for this release, including:
  • Various RHW situations involving "tile drops", such as the RHW-8S-to-6S FLEX Width Transitions, the RHW-8S Type D1, E1, and B2 ramps, and the RHW-10S Type D2 and E2 ramps, have received considerable stability upgrades.
  • The orientation of the Road end-T on OWR-1 intersection has been corrected.
  • The orientations of certain NWM intersections involving the OWR-1 network with Euro textures have been corrected.
  • Stability improvements have been made to the Ground Light Rail crossings with various wider RHW networks.
  • The Dual Type 230 QCXs with L1 Dual Type 230-over-RHW-8C/6C and RHW-10S/8S have been improved.
  • Issues in which lane drop arrows appeared in the wrong places on the S-to-C FLEX Width Transitions have been corrected.
  • The ramp textures for the RHW-10S Type D2 and E2 ramps, as well as for the RHW-8S Type A2-Wide and B2 ramps have been improved.
  • Orientation and stability issues have been fixed with the Avenue-based AVE-6 and its Thru-T-intersections with Street, Road, and One-Way Road (both Short-T and Long-T).
  • Orthogonal x Diagonal slip lanes involving Road and One-way Road (OWR) have been re-implemented.
  • Several hundred path files across all areas of the NAM have been fixed by memo and Tarkus.
  • More SAM Street crossings with the Rail network have received crossing gates.
  • Euro wealth textures have been added to the Avenue-based AVE-6 network.

Additional information, including installation instructions, can be found in the read-first-NAM-47.html document, included in the download, and also attached below.

-The NAM Team

 

read-first-NAM-47.zip

[Tarkus 6,934]

In addition to the new full version of the NAM, NAM 47, we've also issued an updated version of the new NAM Lite Package, NAM Lite 3, as a standalone download. 



DOWNLOAD LINKS

STEX

ModDB

What's new in NAM Lite 3?
 

• The Maxis RUL2 code has been restored.
• The FLEX Road Overpasses have been added to the Additional Network Features. These overpasses allow one to easily cross over railways and other surface streets with their Roads, One-Way Roads, and Avenues.

For more information, see the attached read-first-NAM-lite-3.zip document.

-The NAM Team

read-first-nam-lite-3.zip

[Propfam 2,311]

Finally, finally RHW-10S! Like this was there in the doc for like 10 years at this point. Glad you achieved it!

[AsimPika3172 1,156]

Oh yeah! RHW12S, pedmalls etc

[Tarkus 6,934]

Just a heads up for some of you out there . . . Windows Defender has, for some users, been hitting the NAM 47 .jar file with a false positive for a Trojan (Trojan:Script/Wacatac.H!ml).  These false positive reports are not only hitting a lot of noncommercial software packages (such as the NAM) in increasing numbers after a recent Windows Update, but also, apparently, a recent official update to Microsoft Flight Simulator is even getting flagged, as have other commercial pieces of software and drivers.  Our research has turned up Windows Defender has, in recent days, also flagged ArchLinux and a Native Instruments plugin as having Wacatac as well.

VirusTotal gives NAM 47 a clean bill of health, as do other AV programs, like MalwareBytes.  We're investigating what we need to do to clear the file with Microsoft, though if they're flagging their own software for having this Trojan, it seems they have bigger issues to resolve.

-Tarkus

[Rene 0]

This vesion has a Trojan! Oh never mind, Tarkus already posted about this... I still don't trust it however...

 

  Edited March 28, 2023 by Rene  
adding stuff

[Terring 6,476]

@Rene, NAM has been around since the early days of SimCity 4 and it's been under non-stop development by some of the most trusted and talented tech savvies of our community. I think you can trust it

[CaptCity 4,919]

8 hours ago, Rene said:

This vesion has a Trojan! Oh never mind, Tarkus already posted about this... I still don't trust it however...

After asking about this in another topic (and checking with other AV programs), I tried running the installer on a backup computer I have (on Windows with the Defender warning). It presented no issues, so it is more than likely a false positive. Installing on my regular system also did not produce any negative effects. For what it' worth...

[rsc204 21,868]

16 hours ago, Rene said:

This vesion has a Trojan! Oh never mind, Tarkus already posted about this... I still don't trust it however...

That’s funny because all the evidence points to yet another false positive problem. So do you trust your AV software to actually stop a virus from getting into your system? I don’t, because none of them for consumers have even the most basic heuristics capability any more. They all rely on whitelists and blacklists, i.e. the laziest and cheapest method of detecting problems. Of course they are then only as good as those lists, which as this debacle shows, they are not remotely accurate.

Sadly the biggest losers in this space are folks like the NAM team, working hard to bring content to users for free, in a way that makes installation as user friendly as possible. People don’t understand security well and assume they have been ‘saved’ by their software flagging a problem. But all the evidence points to a broken system incorrectly determining risk. Ironically this actually drives AV sales, when every computer i ever encountered that had a virus or malware, had AV software that not only failed to see the problem. But also was completely unable to fix the problem too. Yet there will be folks like yourself who may be unwilling to accept the actual reality and refuse to use such files, which I guarantee is perfectly safe to use. All this system does is cause headaches for modders, who have no control over what gets flagged, nor is there a system in place to correct such false information usually. At least not for the little guys.

One day unsigned code will be a thing of the past, think Apple App Store on iOS, and the only way to distribute anything will be by paying a fee to certify your content. Which in the world of free stuff effectively means folks will stop releasing mods. This is causing real harm and runs counter to the ‘open’ PC platform. The only winners, the AppStore’s that are making billions off this crap. That’s like some digital future dystopia where you can only eat at Taco Bell (as in Demolition Man). 

[Propfam 2,311]

Why is NAM (both 47 and generally) so slow? I mean, it takes at least 1:10 to enter to the city. Meanwhile, stock and NAM Lite has been able to achieve loading time of just under 3 sec. And that's with

Quote

i3-10110u
10th gen Intel UHD graphics (thanks for Intel for not disclosing the model)
4 gigs of DDR4 RAM
256 gigs of NVMe PCIe 3.0 Kingston (shipped by Asus) probably-DRAMful SSD
Windows 11

I tried with 4-cores enabled (not recommended btw but for this test, it's okay) and it still produce the same 1:10. This is the worst game I ever played with an SSD, outside Win95 SC2k within OTVDM (more like OTVDM fault, not the game). The loading time is almost similar to my old HDD laptop. Heck, even Asphalt 9 loads much much faster with 3D graphics and much more advanced animations, VFX, online interaction, etc. And that's only with 4 gigs of RAM. And yes, the difference using HDD and SSD playing A9 is much much more drastic, cutting it to even just 10%. The only time I had problem with Asphalt 9 is on my internet, not on the game itself. SC4 with full-blown NAM however is much different. I think either NAM doesn't like low RAM or whatever. Can you elaborate on this, please? Thanks.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,464]

3 hours ago, elfrjz said:

Why is NAM (both 47 and generally) so slow? I mean, it takes at least 1:10 to enter to the city. Meanwhile, stock and NAM Lite has been able to achieve loading time of just under 3 sec. And that's with

I tried with 4-cores enabled (not recommended btw but for this test, it's okay) and it still produce the same 1:10. This is the worst game I ever played with an SSD, outside Win95 SC2k within OTVDM (more like OTVDM fault, not the game). The loading time is almost similar to my old HDD laptop. Heck, even Asphalt 9 loads much much faster with 3D graphics and much more advanced animations, VFX, online interaction, etc. And that's only with 4 gigs of RAM. And yes, the difference using HDD and SSD playing A9 is much much more drastic, cutting it to even just 10%. The only time I had problem with Asphalt 9 is on my internet, not on the game itself. SC4 with full-blown NAM however is much different. I think either NAM doesn't like low RAM or whatever. Can you elaborate on this, please? Thanks.

Full NAM adds content and thus you get to more than 1GB of content. In addition, NAM modifies the RUL code of the game and therefore takes longer.

In total we can divide two types of loading

1. The loading before the EA screen that the slowest ever because it has to load all the contents (Prop, Buildings etc ...). The more mods there are, the slower the loading will be
2. The loading of the city instead is slow because it has to load all the RUL code

obviously there is a solution and it is called DATPACKING

Performing mod and NAM datpacking saves loading time because SC4 will read fewer files than more files without datpacking

There are tutorials on how to perform NAM DATPACKING

and a video tutorial on DATPACKING

Consider that if you want to save more time SC4 and mods must be installed on an SSD (Better an NVMe SSD) because the loading phase is an intensive I/O operation for the amount of data that must be read

[rsc204 21,868]

The simpler answer is that the NAM (full  controller) adds in the region of 5m lines of code. SC4 is not (initially) limited by the speed of your hardware, rather by how fast it’s internal code can process it. Being 20 year old software, that means practically speaking it’s using a fraction of the theoretical speed/capabilities of a modern system.

The only way to resolve that is to re-write the game to take advantage of more modern technology. Otherwise all you can do is try DATPacking which may make a small improvement when using an SSD.

[Propfam 2,311]

4 hours ago, rsc204 said:

The simpler answer is that the NAM (full  controller) adds in the region of 5m lines of code. SC4 is not (initially) limited by the speed of your hardware, rather by how fast it’s internal code can process it. Being 20 year old software, that means practically speaking it’s using a fraction of the theoretical speed/capabilities of a modern system.

The only way to resolve that is to re-write the game to take advantage of more modern technology. Otherwise all you can do is try DATPacking which may make a small improvement when using an SSD.

Yikes, it doesn't work! I follow the instruction correctly. Still takes 1:10, which is totally unacceptable. Better for me to use NAM Lite, I guess.

[rsc204 21,868]

DAT Packing is not a miracle solution. Older HDDs had to seek ‘find’ files and that process adds up to a lot of seeking with a reasonable number of files in Plugins. DAT Packing was created because it is more efficient to have the same data in less files, because it negates to need to seek them all out. But with an SSD there is no seeking anymore, contents are indexed and can be accessed in a fraction of a second. Sure with many thousands of files v.s. a handful, DAT Packing can be quicker, the gains are nothing like they are for regular HDDs. 

Ultimately if the load time is too much with the Full NAM and you don’t mind ditching RHW, using the LowRAM controller or NAM lite may be preferable. 

[Haljackey 17,403]

While I am not trying to gatekeep, is waiting a minute or so for a city to load that much of a big deal? Sure it takes more time with the full NAM than without, but I for one would take that trade-off every single time. It just makes the game that much better for me.

Back in 2003 when this game came out it could take me 15 mins or more to load some bigger cities, and that was without any mods installed at all. While it may still take a little bit to load my super dense cities with gigs of plugins, I don't really mind the wait. Besides there are many things you can do in the meantime in the age of smart phones, or perhaps you have dual screens to browse the internet or something in your other monitor while the city loads.

 

[Propfam 2,311]

6 minutes ago, Haljackey said:

is waiting a minute or so for a city to load that much of a big deal?

Ofc yes, if you just installed the NAM and few other mods like mine. For those with massive plugin collections (which I had before in HDD-equipped laptop, damn so slow), it's worth the wait. Each to their own I guess, and entirely depends on plugin collections.

[Max4k 727]

I can't wait to check this out and see the new features.   I just got a new Laptop with Windows 11, and purchased SC4 from Steam.   Have not really messed around since NAM 42 and 43, can't wait to see all the new bridges added too.   It's a good think I looked at the other version notes,  It looks like the Traffic Simulator was updated with NAM 45