Colossus Addon Mod 2.5 - Development Diary #1

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

Colossus Addon Mod 2.5 - Development Diary #1

Hello everyone and welcome to this development diary where we are going to go over all the changes we are making in the Colossus Addon Mod. The list will be long so there will be more developer diaries but now let's look at this diary where we go over the first changes and new features we have added

• INSTALLER

The first changes we implemented is the installation procedure. In fact in the new zipper file find the java file that allows you to run CAM 2.5 Installer and find a folder where there will be the mod DLLs and a folder that contains Simcity_1.dat with the implemented fixes. 

The new contents of the CAM 2.5 zipper folder.

Also included in the zipper file is documentation about CAM and Cleanitol File that allows you to clean and uninstall old versions of CAM. CAM 1.0 and CAM 2.1.1 are considered deprecated and therefore obsolete. These versions will no longer receive support when CAM 2.5 is released. 

The installer has been modified reflecting also the new features that will be implemented in fact we have introduced a folder that contains all the necessary files that are needed for advanced simulation

The new CAM 2.5 installer

 The installer will be of Java type and thus allow us to have a crossplatform installer. 

• CAM CONTROLLER

There are not many changes in the CAM Controller but the version that CAM 2.5 is the Extended version of CAM 2.1. The Standard - Rural - Midrise - Skyscraper controllers are made obsolete as they do not give a deep simulation and we want to have an easier installation process as well as a single controller that is compatible with PIM-X. That is why that we have decided to remove the CAM Rural, Standard,Midrise and Skyscraper controllers from version 2.5.

Here is a full explanation of why we decided to make this decision

• MAXIS BUILDING

With CAM 2.5, we modified the civic and utility maxis buildings by revising their statistics and enhanced the utilities by increasing the productive capacity in addition to the building's durability. These changes have been implemented on PIM-X and therefore when CAM 2.5 comes out along with the new PIM-X version it will be recommended to update the mods related to utilities with the new statistics.  Also it is recommended to uninstall mods that alter the durability age such as Paeng's Age Degradation Mod as it has already been included in CAM

For the Maxis Civic Buildings we fixed several problems related to statistics, we also fixed the bug plaguing Farmer's Market and Opera House. In fact with CAM 2.5 Opera House Fix will be included and PIM-X has also been updated to include the fix

• NUCLEAR BUG IS NOW A FEATURES.

For those who do not know, the nuclear fission power plant has a prorpeity that goes to modify local Health Quotient. The nuclear bug occurs because Health Effect Strength is set to the positive values which goes to increase the health quality of the sims. For this bug, we have introduced a new feature that goes to impact gameplay if you use coal, oil, natural gas, waste to energy, and fission nuclear power plants. In fact these power plants will cause the Health Quotient to worsen due to pollution. We are currently testing the values as we set them up like thisù

Coal -150 | Oil - 125 | WTE -100 | Natural Gas - 75 | Nuclear - 50

We are currently testing these values to see if they are agressive or not but this bug discovered by accident on SC4D Wiki allowed us to introduce a new mechanic that makes the game complex

https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Nuclear_Power_Plant#Bugs

• ADVANCED WATER MANAGEMENT

The new feature that will be a momentous change in SC4 (Not overcoming the ongoing changes in NAM) will be advanced water management. Freshwater and saltwater will finally be available but it requires a DLL Mod in order to work corectly. With this mod we have introduced the ScanPumps cheat that goes to check if the pumps are placed corectly. If a pump set for saltwater or freshwater that is not placed corettamente the player will receive this warning

The new alert system

To avoid this popup bait appearing and alerting you that a pump has no access to water but considering that bodies of water are both freshwater and saltwater due to technical limitations we have introduced a separation mechanism that the following.

 

For salt water the system is activated after 4 titles from the water body.

For fresh water the system is activated after 10 titles from the body of water

The limits in which once exceeded trigger the alert system for advanced water management

If the pump is below this limit, the pumps will operate dispensing fresh water and salt water and the alert message will not be displayed. The introduction of this feature will be a momentous change in the simulation of our cities.

• MAC SUPPORT

Unfortunately we also have to be honest with the players and that is why we have to talk about MAC support. Currently the core mod of CAM is compatible with MAC but the advanced simulation will have limited support because MACs cannot run the Mod DLLs. For this reason that we have decided that MACs will be considered legacy and in the future CAM will be incompatible with the MAC version of SimCity 4 because of the lack of running the Mod DLLs.

These conclude the first development diary of CAM 2.5. See you in the next episode where we go on to discuss other changes in CAM 2.5

[Membrillo 56]

Can't wait for this!

Will Maxis RCI buildings receive an update too? Their "filling degree" is quite stable, but there are some oddities here and there.

[Membrillo 56]

Regarding the Health Quotient for Utilities, even the greener power plants could have a negative impact on sims' health, albeit much smaller. They disrupt the landscape and environment, produce noise, etc. This could be simulated too. Pretty much the same effects as for nuclear, which IRL won't affect people's health unless something goes terribly wrong, but still disrupts the environment, not to mention placebo effects and nuclear waste management.

Even power lines could be considered.

[matias93 7,535]

16 hours ago, Membrillo said:

Even power lines could be considered.

Power lines, being considered by the game as networks, could (IIRC) be modded to produce air pollution, but for it to actually happen they would need to experiment congestion, which would still be impossible because they aren't pathed for any sort of traffic. I don't know if it's possible to make a network produce air pollution even at zero congestion, but that could do the trick.

[Jackspital 391]

Absolutely amazing work! 

CAM ha salways been im my top mods for the game. It's been about 8 years since the last work on CAM if i'm not mistaken? I think that was CAM 2.0 in 2016. I'll definitely follow along with these updates. It's amazing seeing such progress with .dll mods. While we don't have the source code, there is still a lot of very clever workthroughs for adding features.

Bravo Ulisse! 

 

[AsimPika3172 1,136]

I will waiting! 🤩

[meme1 1]

What are the system requirements for this?

[LivingInThePast 364]

So, after doing some reading, and remembering the original CAM--basically rebalancing the game with Stage 8 happening later, the only thing I'm confused on why the water mod is incorporated into this. I mean, with CAM basically playing around with stats, that's kind of outside the realm of the original intent, right...? I mean, if it were up to me (and I don't know if CAM does this) it would be rebalancing RCI so residential has to be WAY bigger than it should be. The old R=C+I paradigm was broken with SimCity 4, but from adventures in Houston (which I wanted so desperately to recreate in SimCity 4, back to some of my earliest 2005 posts), there's a LOT more residential than anything else.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

On 18/1/2024 at 5:34 AM, Membrillo said:

Regarding the Health Quotient for Utilities, even the greener power plants could have a negative impact on sims' health, albeit much smaller. They disrupt the landscape and environment, produce noise, etc. This could be simulated too. Pretty much the same effects as for nuclear, which IRL won't affect people's health unless something goes terribly wrong, but still disrupts the environment, not to mention placebo effects and nuclear waste management.

Even power lines could be considered.

Power Line are part of NAM in that they use RUL Code and are also Network and therefore NAM has to make experiemnts on this field. 

Regarding green power plants we decided to exclude for the time being because the introduction of this bonus is planned but it will be when we release Advanced Energy Management and we don't know if it will also come out for CAM 2.5 because it requires very extensive changes on PIM-X

On 22/1/2024 at 5:12 PM, meme1 said:

What are the system requirements for this?

CAM 2.5 will only support SC4 versions 1.1.641, 1.1.640, 1.1.638, and consequently CAM 2.5 will not support SC4 versions 1.1.613, 1.1.610.

For Windows we recommend Windows 7 or higher although for the Steam version it is mandatory to have Windows 10 as a minimum since Windows 7 is no longer supported.  We recommend a 64Bit operating system with a minimum of 8GB so you can install the 4GB Patch and have a better performace 

Same with Linux as it is recommended to have a 64Bit Linux with a minimum of 8GB RAM to run the 4GB Patch

For Macs CAM 2.5 works corectly for 32 Bit MACs while 64 Bit MACs and ARM CAM 2.5 will be in legacy support as it cannot run the Mod DLLs we are developing

1 hour ago, LivingInThePast said:

So, after doing some reading, and remembering the original CAM--basically rebalancing the game with Stage 8 happening later, the only thing I'm confused on why the water mod is incorporated into this. I mean, with CAM basically playing around with stats, that's kind of outside the realm of the original intent, right...? I mean, if it were up to me (and I don't know if CAM does this) it would be rebalancing RCI so residential has to be WAY bigger than it should be. The old R=C+I paradigm was broken with SimCity 4, but from adventures in Houston (which I wanted so desperately to recreate in SimCity 4, back to some of my earliest 2005 posts), there's a LOT more residential than anything else.

CAM 2.5 is an extended version of both CAM 1.0 and 2.1.1 in that we are upgrading the whole area not only RCI but also Civic and Utilities because they are interconnected and these areas have always been neglected and no longer reflected the anadment of CAM. So we decided to include Advanced Water Management which involves improvements not only on water output but also energy and garbage as well as improving utility degradation. Rightly so, we did several experiments that led us to enable salt water and fresh water.

There will be more development diaries but it will be communicated when we have efected the last tests

[Max4k 721]

Glad to see this being updated

[atreides_99 16]

This is great news!  We'll wait for the release.

[TiepiNL 182]

Love to see that CAM is still being improved! I like the health effect feature, but I want to make a remark regarding the proposed decrease for nuclear power plants. Nuclear reactors are also the source for medical isotopes. I don't have the data but I would expect that the overall health effect of nuclear energy is a positive one, if the benefits of isotopes are included in the calculation. Of course just having a nuclear power plant wouldn't increase health effect without the medical facilities to use it, but for me it would be a nice addon if the health quotient boost of the Medical/Disease Research Center would be increased if the city - or even better: the region - had a nuclear power plant. (or perhaps easier to develop: that the by default negative health effect of nuclear power as proposed for CAM 2.5 would decrease or even turn positive if the city/region has a disease research center).

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

23 minutes ago, TiepiNL said:

Love to see that CAM is still being improved! I like the health effect feature, but I want to make a remark regarding the proposed decrease for nuclear power plants. Nuclear reactors are also the source for medical isotopes. I don't have the data but I would expect that the overall health effect of nuclear energy is a positive one, if the benefits of isotopes are included in the calculation. Of course just having a nuclear power plant wouldn't increase health effect without the medical facilities to use it, but for me it would be a nice addon if the health quotient boost of the Medical/Disease Research Center would be increased if the city - or even better: the region - had a nuclear power plant. (or perhaps easier to develop: that the by default negative health effect of nuclear power as proposed for CAM 2.5 would decrease or even turn positive if the city/region has a disease research center).

Disease Research Center already has the paramter that allows you to increase HQ of the city (For the region you cannot do it without a rewrite of the game code). You can change the paramenter but currently it does not have priority as we are putting in new patches and  new features that have priority.

Also, SC4's simulation is simplified and considering the original purpose of Health effect strength was to simulate the effects of environmental pollution on sims' health. Currently simulating the beneficial effects of medical isotopes cannot be done as there are too many constraints we have to meet. Mod DLLs are in a beginning stage and making the simulation complex requires rewriting code that would be more suitable for OpenSC4

 

[trar 334]

Is this still going to be compatible with the CAM-compatible version of the Industrial Revolution Mod?

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

4 minutes ago, trar said:

Is this still going to be compatible with the CAM-compatible version of the Industrial Revolution Mod?

Yes

 

[Propfam 2,288]

16 minutes ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

Yes

 

Will the IRM be reworked too?

[trar 334]

8 minutes ago, Jidan said:

Will the IRM be reworked too?

I'd personally love for that to happen, but that's T Wrecks's thing, not Ulisse's AFAIK.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

27 minutes ago, Jidan said:

Will the IRM be reworked too?

It depends on the development of the Mod DLLs. If we can include the medium density industrial zone then yes. But for the time being, I'm leaving things as they are. They are already perfect

[Corrino 3]

Do I need more assets or other mods to test this ? I liked CAM in the past.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

2 hours ago, Corrino said:

Do I need more assets or other mods to test this ? I liked CAM in the past.

CAM 2.5 contains the files needed to run CAM. You can extend gameplays by installing CAM packages but for now I do not recommend using CAM 2.5 RC 1 for normal gameplay

[Corrino 3]

Are the older CAM packages still available ?