Stairs TE Mac bug?

[simster007 403]

I´m using the MAC version of SC4 and actually don´t have access to a pc system with reader installed. I experienced an issue with these stairs:

1. Simcougs Stairways

https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/30425-simcougs-stairways/

2. Stairs form MAS71 Wall Set V2

There´s alway just a few pedestrians using the MAS71 stairs. I recently switched walls in one location to the new wall set from scoty and pedestrian traffic rised significantly.  So i tried a couple of available stair lots: uroncha - traffic high, marrast - traffic high, Simcoug´s stairways - traffic low?

So I suspect that these stairs form MAS71 and Simcoug maybe have a very low capacity, caused by the TE MAC rep bug.

Is anybody able and willing to do a quick check?

Thx

[hugues aroux 3,877]

I have not opened all the "stairs" Lots of Simcoug and MAS71, but indeed, the TSEC is at 0 and the Capacity is at 2500. I do not have in mind the "good values" and what I have put for my Stairs. It seems to me that it was double the capacity. But if no one comes to do it before me, I can watch it this weekend.

[rsc204 21,869]

The TSEC/Capacity isn’t the problem, rather it’s the data type using 1 as the value for Rep instead of 0 which typically affects these properties. Any data type which is float32 but has only 1 Rep of data must be set to 0 reps.

I’ve already fixed the MAS71 walls, see the post here. But it wouldn’t take long to fix this for Simcoug’s stairs. 

[rsc204 21,869]

On 05/01/2024 at 1:15 PM, simster007 said:

So I suspect that these stairs form MAS71 and Simcoug maybe have a very low capacity, caused by the TE MAC rep bug.

So I dug into the Simcoug stairs and lo and behold there are no TE Mac Rep bug errors present in those files. Actually I had a hand in their development so I am certain they work fine, although I was using Windows exclusively at that time.

I think you've confused this with a more general issue of the TSEC/Capacity values used, which can affect just how much usage a TE lot gets. For clarity if a lot has one of the TE Mac Rep problems it will either cause the game to CTD upon loading or CTD when attempting to plop a lot.

However, Capacity only affects usage in the event that too many sims are using the stairs, it might stop working. Having 0 for the TSEC means that there is no delay for sims 'transiting' the lot, i.e. it should make it more attractive to pedestrian traffic. So unless you have over 2,500 sims using the stairs, increasing the capacity isn't going to make any difference. Likewise, I'm not sure adding a specific TSEC value is going to improve things either. @Tyberius06: What say you on the TSEC subject?, I know using 0 is a 'cheat', but for a lot such as this it should only improve the number of sims willing to consider using it, right?

On 05/01/2024 at 9:38 PM, hugues aroux said:

I have not opened all the "stairs" Lots of Simcoug and MAS71, but indeed, the TSEC is at 0 and the Capacity is at 2500. I do not have in mind the "good values" and what I have put for my Stairs. It seems to me that it was double the capacity.

For your walls did you use a specific TSEC or keep it at 0?, it would be handy to know what differences exist.

[hugues aroux 3,877]

12 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

walls did you use a specific TSEC or keep it at 0?

I always base myself (maybe I'm wrong!?) on these values for TE: info from RTMT.. And for Pedestrian I estimated that I could try 5000 for the volume.

[Tyberius06 12,274]

19 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

So I dug into the Simcoug stairs and lo and behold there are no TE Mac Rep bug errors present in those files. Actually I had a hand in their development so I am certain they work fine, although I was using Windows exclusively at that time.

I think you've confused this with a more general issue of the TSEC/Capacity values used, which can affect just how much usage a TE lot gets. For clarity if a lot has one of the TE Mac Rep problems it will either cause the game to CTD upon loading or CTD when attempting to plop a lot.

However, Capacity only affects usage in the event that too many sims are using the stairs, it might stop working. Having 0 for the TSEC means that there is no delay for sims 'transiting' the lot, i.e. it should make it more attractive to pedestrian traffic. So unless you have over 2,500 sims using the stairs, increasing the capacity isn't going to make any difference. Likewise, I'm not sure adding a specific TSEC value is going to improve things either. @Tyberius06: What say you on the TSEC subject?, I know using 0 is a 'cheat', but for a lot such as this it should only improve the number of sims willing to consider using it, right?

For your walls did you use a specific TSEC or keep it at 0?, it would be handy to know what differences exist.

4 minutes ago, hugues aroux said:

I always base myself (maybe I'm wrong!?) on these values for TE: info from RTMT.. And for Pedestrian I estimated that I could try 5000 for the volume.

That's an interesting question. The specific TSEC would be 0.067 for pedestrian based network enabled lots based on the Tutorial. I checked the mentioned Uroncha Starways and they are on TSEC 0, Capacity 5000 and all the lots have bad REP value for the Float32 type TE properties, so those lots will make MAC based SC4 to CTD. As I see the difference between those and the mentioned SimCough stairs seem to be the capacity. 

I don't know why the specific TSEC values were used or recommended for pedestrian traffic, probably it has some relation how the traffic simulator is working, but without testing it which way is the better I have no clue. 

 

[rsc204 21,869]

1 hour ago, hugues aroux said:

And for Pedestrian I estimated that I could try 5000 for the volume.

Honestly for this type of lot, which isn't really a station, it's not all that important, 5000 should be more than enough. Although I guess if someone had a car less city, something that's only recently become easily possible, it might get congested.

However, when I said TSEC, that's the Transit Switch Entry Cost property and I wondered if you had used 0 for this property? Again, for a station that really needs to have a correct value, but even I stuck with 0 when modding such lots, because I actually want sims to use them as 'shortcuts'. Whereas for stations, there are scenarios where you don't want pedestrians using the lot as a shortcut because it can lead to funny commute options.

1 hour ago, Tyberius06 said:

I checked the mentioned Uroncha Starways and they are on TSEC 0, Capacity 5000 and all the lots have bad REP value for the Float32 type TE properties, so those lots will make MAC based SC4 to CTD.

Hardly surprising given it's a 2005 upload, but now it's on my radar I'll fix it up.

Just to reiterate, the capacity is a bit of a red herring and the only way a higher capacity would result in higher utilisation would be in a scenario where so many sims were using the stairs that it went way over capacity and stopped working. But honestly, my first guess is that this is not the case here, because that would cause cascading problems with Pedestrian commutes (possibly). It's tricky because these are more NE than TE lot, since traffic simply passes through rather than switching. That said, TE settings to ensure sims can enter/exit are needed, so technically it's a TE lot. It gets gradually more complex as you start opening up this can of worms.

[simster007 403]

@rsc204 @Tyberius06 thx for your interest in this topic, @hugues aroux thx as well and thx again for your great wallset!

I wasn´t online during the last two days,  so I couldn't respond earlier.

To clarify: I´m playing the old 32bit version of the mac game to avoid the CTD problems (I hope this will last since Steam stops MAC OS 10.13 support in mid february..... - maybe it will still work offline?), so the rep bug in my case just decreases capacity significantly to just a few sims.

I doublechecked my original post and had to realize that I made a mistake:

- Simcoug´s stairways are working well

- Stairs from uroncha and MAS 71 (one tile stairs as the fit on slopes below 15m) show a significantly less usage, which should be caused by capacity/ TE bug with even lower capacity

 

Here some pics, as you see I like to see high number of sims taking the short way to work by feet:

1. Scoty:

 

2. Marrast:

 

3. Simcoug´s stairways:

 

4. MAS 71 (1 tile stairs as the slope is below 15m).

 

5. Uroncha´s stairs:

 

@rsc204:

I  didn´t know about your MAs71 walls update, just installed it but even updated there are just 100 sims using the stairs:

Does your update include the 1 tile stairs or just the bigger ones?

[rsc204 21,869]

Okay, so this explains why you weren’t experiencing CTDs despite not using patched versions of the walls (mas71). As the 32-bit Mac version doesn’t necessarily crash, but with certain values I believe the actual capacity somehow gets incorrectly calculated or usage is somehow borked.

As a matter of fact, the 64-Bit patching has only really been intended to resolve the CTDs. I need to do some digging because I remember these lots did cause problems before the 64-But update, but I can’t immediately recall the specifics. Seems like that problem was overlooked when solving the CTD issues.

I’ll do some checking too, but the reason I say it’s not simply capacity, because it shouldn’t matter. As your tests show, limiting capacity to 2500 (in the case of the Simcoug stairs), doesn’t stop many more sims from using them. It also has a TSEC value of 0, so presumably that isn’t the issue either.

But it could be as simple as upping the capacity, but I’ve no idea why lots with lower capacity can’t exceed them as least by the same factor as those with higher values. Might take a few days to dig into it all. 

[rsc204 21,869]

17 hours ago, simster007 said:

I  didn´t know about your MAs71 walls update, just installed it but even updated there are just 100 sims using the stairs...

...Does your update include the 1 tile stairs or just the bigger ones?

Yes if you have the updated version of op_Walls2 Option_01-Rampsop-090924.dat, this covers both the single tile and wider stairs (both lots in same file). However, with the update you should have the correct Rep value of 0, plus the capacities are 2,000 and 3,000 respectively, so sitting just 500 either way from the SimCoug lots which are working well.

Best guess, maybe you need to delete/re-plop the Mas71 lots (if you haven't already), to refresh the save data regarding these Lots?

[simster007 403]

3 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Yes if you have the updated version of op_Walls2 Option_01-Rampsop-090924.dat, this covers both the single tile and wider stairs (both lots in same file). However, with the update you should have the correct Rep value of 0, plus the capacities are 2,000 and 3,000 respectively, so sitting just 500 either way from the SimCoug lots which are working well.

Best guess, maybe you need to delete/re-plop the Mas71 lots (if you haven't already), to refresh the save data regarding these Lots?

I doublechecked that: the last pic in my post shows the updated version of the MAS71 on tile stairs. Just 100 pedestrians are using them. I replaced the file "op_Walls2 Option_01-Rampsop-090924.dat" by your version and installed the set directly in my plugin folder without any subfolders and not datpacked. Afterwards I deleted the Scoty lots and replaced them by the updated MAS lots.

Running the game shows decreasing traffic down to 100.

 

5 hours ago, rsc204 said:

 I need to do some digging because I remember these lots did cause problems before the 64-But update, but I can’t immediately recall the specifics. Seems like that problem was overlooked when solving the CTD issues.

So maybe you are right?

The updated version of the bigger stairs (2 tile/ 3 tile) works fine (usage around 10.000). I did not check these without your update as I never used them before. Could it be helpful if I give that a try on this spot?

To be honest until now the traffic on all plopped stairs didn´t bother me as it was just a side effect. This is the first place where I really tried to force pedestrian traffic - unfortunately without the new pedmalls due to their textures, which IMO doesn´t fit in there.

[rsc204 21,869]

The question is why do these behave so differently, i've cross referenced the TE settings between Scoty's Walls, SimCoug's Stairs and MAS71's walls. All of them have identical Transit Switches, only the Scoty set included a TSEC value that wasn't 0 (note I'm not talking about the Rep value here). However SimCoug's work well, so this shouldn't be the defining factor here. Capacities vary, but again if SimCougs work well with 2500, why shouldn't MAS71's work similar with values of 2000 and 3000?

I've attached a further modified version for MAS71's Wall Pack 2, these have the same values as the Scoty ones, so should behave the same.

op_Walls2 Option_01-Rampsop-090924.dat

If that works, then I won't spend to much time worrying about why, but we can do a similar update to the Uroncha walls and hopefully at least gives you better functioning lots.

17 hours ago, simster007 said:

To be honest until now the traffic on all plopped stairs didn´t bother me as it was just a side effect. This is the first place where I really tried to force pedestrian traffic - unfortunately without the new pedmalls due to their textures, which IMO doesn´t fit in there.

Totally follow that, until recently I just used these for Pedestrian short cuts and was happy if they got used at all. But some of the recent changes in NAM have made walking a much more viable method for sims to use.

[simster007 403]

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

I've attached a further modified version for MAS71's Wall Pack 2, these have the same values as the Scoty ones, so should behave the same.

I´m sorry to tell you that even this version doesn't change anything. There are still just around 100 pedestrians using the MAS71 Stairs. As I'm not the one with capabilities to find out what's going on I´m ok with that, even with not just one but a couple of great new wall sets with working functional stairs by @hugues aroux

But as you mentioned it's really an interesting question why they behave so differently, sorry that I cannot help in digging into it.

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

until recently I just used these for Pedestrian short cuts and was happy if they got used at all.

Exactly the same by me.

[rsc204 21,869]

Really odd because outside the TE Properties, functionally they should be identical. I have to look at the pathing and LotConfigs then, try and see if anything there explains it.