Commuters from/to SimNation

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

19 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

So maybe v3.5 can still be hosted somewhere for those who don't use DLLs, but unsupported.

Maybe I've gotten lost.

A version which needs a DLL should be a completely separate animal and available to any who want it.

But also your upgrades to the current v3.5 should (IMO) get a version number bump and yes, it should become the defacto standard. My only complaint might've been me misunderstanding that you intend to keep the v3.5 number for the new version. That's the only part I'm against. Make it 3.5.1 or 3.6 or something so then as peeps upgrade in all their plugin folders they will know which are which.

[Kel9509 1,479]

1 minute ago, CorinaMarie said:

But also your upgrades to the current v3.5 should (IMO) get a version number bump and yes, it should become the defacto standard. My only complaint might've been me misunderstanding that you intend to keep the v3.5 number for the new version. That's the only part I'm against. Make it 3.5.1 or 3.6 or something so then as peeps upgrade in all their plugin folders they will know which are which.

Then we agree.  I'm not insisting on keeping the same version.  But I didn't want to overstep and just republish the entirety of the Census Repository since for a while in my mind it was just a patch and I was concerned with republishing it all.  But now it's clearly beyond a patch and really fixes some things that needed fixing.

I guess I'll work on a new or edited readme file for the Census Repository and see what the hosts of the current version want to do?  Or should I just publish all of it here as a new version?

[Kel9509 1,479]

For the 3-month and 12-year amounts on Anticipated Regional Growth, here's a revised tooltip for Industry: Anticipated Regional Industrial Growth over the past 3 months, based on 3 months of residential growth and unmet industrial demand in #city#.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

2 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

I guess I'll work on a new or edited readme file for the Census Repository and see what the hosts of the current version want to do?  Or should I just publish all of it here as a new version?

I presume at some level you have either RJ's express permission to tweak the file or via whoever has the authority to say it's ok. From @Tarkus perhaps? And, as I recall, only the original by @RalphaelNinja is on the STEX here on ST. So my guess is for whatever reason, @RippleJet didn't want his hosted here.

If that is all correct then I believe a full replacement of the original is the way to go. (But don't just take my word for it. While I am an Admin here, that doesn't give me jurisdiction over everyone's files. )

 

7 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

Anticipated Regional Industrial Growth over the past 3 months, based on 3 months of residential growth and unmet industrial demand in #city#.

Based on my limited testing watching the new graphs while I zoned and grew stuff, I believe it's only the first part of your statement. The unmet industrial demand in #city# is always an influence on actual demand in any adjacent city tiles (and even further beyond if propagated properly).

So?: Anticipated Regional Industrial Growth over the past 3 months, based on 3 months of residential growth and unmet industrial demand in #city#.

[Kel9509 1,479]

21 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I presume at some level you have either RJ's express permission to tweak the file or via whoever has the authority to say it's ok.

RippleJet hasn't been here since 2011 and there is no express permission at all.  That's why I only made mine a patch with the original as a dependency, like Null45 did when he included a version in his SC4MoreDemand DLL patch.  I was trying to be cautious since these are other people's files.  If there are others with authority to say it's ok, then I'll follow their lead.  Until then I suppose it'll have to be a patch?  

24 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

So?: Anticipated Regional Industrial Growth over the past 3 months, based on 3 months of residential growth and unmet industrial demand in #city#.

Well.... I had no industrial extrapolation, but there was commercial extrapolation.  They're both tied to residential growth, but the reason for one extrapolation occurring and the other not has to be due to something.  Wouldn't that something be unmet demand in the city?

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

1 minute ago, Kel9509 said:

RippleJet hasn't been here since 2011 and there is no express permission at all.

In that case and if the file was here, CB and I would assume the authority and give you permission to update their original. It would stay under their name, but you'd get credit in the description for all the work you did tweaking it.

I'm sure there's someone who can give you the OK to proceed. Maybe @Tyberius06 would know since he works on file updates on both boards?

 

6 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

They're both tied to residential growth, but the reason for one extrapolation occurring and the other not has to be due to something.

That's certainly correct and we could prolly track it down if we had to. In one of my tests I would get Extrapolated Industrial when R$ grew and I believe that is because in the adjacent city tile the industrial was closer to the neighbor connection.

It won't really hurt to say and unmet demand, but I feel it'll be more misleading than not saying it at all.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,458]

Only authorized personnel (@Tyberius06, @Tarkus @Ulisse Wolf) can upload a mod to SC4Evermore. So authorized personnel must access the new version of the mod in order to upload it. One recommendation is to publish a version of the mod that already contains the submenus (it will most likely end up in the government submenu), cleanitol file, and an updated readme. (If you need help let us know)

The current policy is to use Mod DLLs where possible, so we know that there will be a small part of the community that will not be able to use Mod DLLs, but the advantages that Mod DLLs give us outweigh the costs and so that we have decided that from NAM 50 onwards the use of NAM DLLs will be mandatory to make NAM work

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

11 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

The current policy is to use Mod DLLs where possible, so we know that there will be a small part of the community that will not be able to use Mod DLLs,

So we are completely shunning all the Mac users? And potentially Windows 7 peeps?

[Ulisse Wolf 4,458]

3 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

So we are completely shunning all the Mac users? And potentially Windows 7 peeps?

Microsoft ended the support of Windows 7 in 2020 and only in 2024 all applications (Steam,Chrome etc.. ) are ending the support of Windows 7 so using Windows 7 in 2024 carries too many security risks.

For mac users it's a bit of a special issue as the specific Mac version is not supported by the mod DLLs but you can use the Windows version on Mac using wine wrappers like whiskey.

 

[Null 45 3,113]

5 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

only in 2024 all applications (Steam,Chrome etc.. ) are ending the support of Windows 7

I am surprised those apps supported Win7 for so long after Microsoft dropped support, especially Chrome as having an unsupported Windows OS with Internet access is risky.

[Kel9509 1,479]

@Ulisse Wolf, I'm working on revising the Readme and the Cleanitol files.  Let me know how to send everything over to you privately for you or others to review.  

Also, I note that @Null 45's SC4DemandInfo on SC4Evermore is only v1.10, and the Census Repository Facility v4.0 would require v1.2 of the DLL, posted here.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,458]

1 hour ago, Kel9509 said:

@Ulisse Wolf, I'm working on revising the Readme and the Cleanitol files.  Let me know how to send everything over to you privately for you or others to review.  

Also, I note that @Null 45's SC4DemandInfo on SC4Evermore is only v1.10, and the Census Repository Facility v4.0 would require v1.2 of the DLL, posted here.

You can send the zipper file in the PM or use a cloud drive like google drive and share the link of the file in order to access

 

[Kel9509 1,479]

On 12/9/2024 at 10:05 PM, CorinaMarie said:

It won't really hurt to say and unmet demand, but I feel it'll be more misleading than not saying it at all.

After further testing, you are in fact correct again and I was completely wrong!    I re-ran my city that had experienced industrial growth, dezoned all of the blank industry zoning it before running the game and added a bunch of commercial zones instead.  The commercial zones all grew, and even despite that afterwards the city still experienced Residential Extrapolation and Commercial Extrapolation.  So frankly, I have no idea what really triggers it to be honest other than residential growth.

Also, I'm not sure if I'm overthinking this at all, but the graph showing that "extrapolation" that you made (as well as the Census Repository #s) is now confusing me.  I'm not sure if that's showing the effect of loading the city and then the regional demand coming IN to "sprout" growth in the city. (As the prima guide says: "When you enter a neighboring city, it gradually adds this extrapolated growth (and demand extrapolated from all other inactive cities) to its own and satisfies as much of it as it can with its available zone capacity".) 

Or, does the graph and CR #s show the effect of the game running with the city growing and then showing the assumed regional demand that will eventually be tossed to other cities to export demand that they'll eventually satisfy?  (As the Prima guide says: "At the end of a month, demand not satisfied by building construction in the active city is tossed to other cities in the Region. The active city looks at the inactive cities, analyzes their presumed growth, and decides how much of the active city’s demand each could satisfy if they were simultaneously running.")

OR, is it the original basic concept that it's showing the assumed amounts that the city will grow when you save ("In other words, the city says to all other regional cities, 'expect me to grow my population by 10% in the immediate future.'")

These three concepts are all under the Prima Guide's section on Extrapolation, but deal with completely different concepts.  The first is the effect of regional demand coming IN to grow the city, the second is regional demand going OUT to Export Demand, and the third is just a simple 10% extrapolation concept.    

And honestly I'm not sure if I'm overthinking this and getting entirely confused, or not.

Needless to say, until I understand it entirely (or good enough) I'm not confident in updating the documentation in the Census Repository.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

15 minutes ago, Kel9509 said:

Needless to say, until I understand it entirely (or good enough) I'm not confident in updating the documentation in the Census Repository.

Yeah. I can fully imagine how frustrating it is.

You could simply label them as: Extrapolated Data (which doesn't really mean much and you are free to ignore).

One thing to keep in mind is that both the game and the Prima Guide were published on 14 Jan, 2003. What that means is some of what's in the guide didn't actually make the final cut for the game.

Based on my own regional play experience, this is one of those data groups which don't amount to a hill of beans (to use an ancient dad phrase). There aren't any dire consequences from them as they predict. There's no wide spread stagnation from ignoring them. When that does occur it's all a part of over zoning and growth as well as taxes and stage caps.

[Kel9509 1,479]

I have done extensive testing on this in a new region with new cities and have figured it out.  Essentially, I made an attempt to recreate the example from the Prima Guide, which involved creating a city of Residents, a city of Industry, and a city of Commerce.  I kept things basic, with 1 police station, 1 elementary school, some wind power and some water pumps in each of the cities.  That was it.

I got the idea of testing this regional example from reading RippleJet's posts from a hidden CAM forum, which were quoted in a public thread here.  That link is to a large post, but the point is RippleJet's quote, which said (I bolded parts for emphasis): 

Quote

Quote from: RippleJet on April 29, 2011, 11:21:56 AM

Quote from: Korot on April 24, 2011, 09:03:09 AM
And what about negative demand? Shouldn't that be extrapolated some way as well?

Nope... 
It isn't demand that's extrapolated, it's surplus capacity.

First, let's assume a city has too many residents, i.e. there aren't jobs enough for every worker.
In that case there's a negative demand for residents...

However, this is extrapolated to the neighbouring region as surplus (positive) residential capacity
(the Census Repository shows this as residents commuting elsewhere for jobs).

The surrounding cities will see this extrapolated residential capacity,
and the demand for commercials and industrials there will be raised.

Secondly, let's assume a city has too few residents...
In that case there's a positive demand for residents (come and take the available jobs in the city).

However,unless new residential houses are allowed to grow within the city,
this is extrapolated to the neighbouring region as surplus (positive) commercial and industrial capacity
(the Census Repository shows this as commercial and industrial commuters coming from elsewhere to work here).

The surrounding cities will see this extrapolated commercial and industrial capacity,
and thus the demand for residentials there will be raised.

There's never any extrapolation of "negative surplus" (insufficient) capacity...

Therefore, I wanted to see if it was true that a city with too many residents and not enough jobs would result extrapolation numbers that showed changes in commercial and industrial amounts.  And I wanted to see if a city with too few residents would result in changes in extrapolation amounts for residents (and anything else).

My mission was to watch the extrapolation amounts to see what they might represent.  RippleJet never said what the amounts meant, only that surplus capacity resulted in an inverse demand.  From the Prima Guide, I thought the amounts might mean any of the following:

• Extrapolation numbers could represent: "[w]hen you load a city in which extrapolation has occurred, the growth we presume was occurring while the city was inactive sprouts."
• Extrapolation numbers could represent: "demand not satisfied by building construction in the active city is tossed to other cities in the Region. The active city looks at the inactive cities, analyzes their presumed growth, and decides how much of the active city’s demand each could satisfy if they were simultaneously running."
• Finally, extrapolation numbers could represent: "looking at the city’s current state and presuming 10% growth for extrapolation purposes."

Based on my testing, the bottom line is: Extrapolation amounts in the line graph and Census Repository represent the "tossing" of demand outward every month based on the unmet demands of the city, according to an unknown formula.  I think, however, this formula involves the 10% number as I discuss below.  RippleJet is essentially correct.  However,  he completely messed up by analogizing this to commuters, and instead it should represent anticipated regional growth in X, as Cori had surmised.  Basically, this experiment proved him right and our new terms correct.  The confusing Prima Guide was somewhat right, but only in part.

I am 100% certain that these numbers do not represent ANY "incoming growth" sprouting at all, because:

• Cities would be saved at a point in time when there was no growth for a month or so.  After switching to other cities, I'd eventually re-load the original first city.  Growth then typically occurred immediately after loading a city, and extrapolation numbers NEVER occurred prior to growth.
• Extrapolation amounts almost always occurred after a sprout of growth began.  It was important not to be confused by construction time, but the growth would occur and buildings would begin construction.  And then after or close to them being finished, the extrapolation would occur.  As a result, the extrapolation amounts always occurred AFTER a sprout of growth occurred (some legacy growth would happen sometimes during extrapolation, but it was minimal).  I was actually able to witness and take screenshots of two separate sprouts of growth in my Residential City in one play session (not exiting the city), and in each time after the sprout of growth occurred (prior to construction finishing), only then did extrapolation numbers appear.  

I was able to conclude that the extrapolation numbers represented a formula of "tossed" demand outward every month, but only after growth, based on the following:

• The extrapolation numbers, when they did occur, changed monthly, and it was a clue that this was consistent with what the Prima Guide discussed about monthly tossing of demand after growth occurred.
• My cities were specialized.  The residential city ended up with 20,000 residents and only had 84 commercial jobs and 1,000 industrial jobs.  The Industrial city had 186 residents but 6,500 industrial jobs and 0 commercial jobs.  The Commercial city had 180 residents but 3,500 commercial jobs and 0 industrial jobs.
• This specialization allowed me to see that unmet demands constantly resulted in extrapolation numbers when growth within a city occurred.  The unmet demand that resulted in extrapolation was not 100% consistent with the ACTUAL demand amounts, and usually was a lower figure.  Extrapolation must be some formula or equation representing the interplay between actual demand, demand drives, and how much specific growth occurred (possibly at a haircut amount of 10% actual growth, as suggested by the Prima Guide).  For instance, my commercial city grew from 2,200 commercial jobs to approximately 3,500 jobs in about 2 months.  After this growth, it had a demand for 3813 R$ and a demand for 5974 IR and 1564 ID.  But extrapolation was (over 3 months) 1032 for residential and 960 for industry, probably because commercial growth was only approximately an increase of 1,300 jobs. 
• Extrapolation always being smaller than active demand was consistent with the Prima Guide saying it was limited to 10% or so of growth.  But the Prima Guide never discusses the inverse relationship between residential growth and industrial and commercial extrapolation, or industrial growth and residential, commercial and industrial extrapolation, and finally of commercial growth and residential and industrial extrapolation.  But basically, the section of the Prima Guide on "Exporting Demand" is basically correct.
• Specialized cities made this very easy to understand. After a while, it was easy to predict that I'd get extrapolation of industry and later commerce (once I built my commercial city) from the Residential City.  I'd expect extrapolation of Residential, Industry and Commerce from the Industrial city.  And I'd expect extrapolation of Residential and Industry from my Commercial city. 
• But in a city with lots of residents, and some industry and commerce, it will be next to impossible to predict how growth in any one of those 3 could result in extrapolation throughout the region.

As a result, I have concluded that these numbers are useful for regional play, in that when playing a growing city they DO predict some either or all of residential, commercial, or indistrial growth upon loading another city.  But if the city you load is not specialized and has a mix of zones, and has other issues with demand, or things like crime or other factors, the extrapolation will not be very useful and could be just part of a larger mix of factors either causing or not causing growth.  Also, since extrapolation is ALWAYS positive, it means it's only a beneficial thing for a city.  It is always an indicator of future potential growth.   

Also, I think I can fix RippleJet's insistence to let a city grow up to 10% before quitting.  I think that's a bit high and there are other problems with that number.  Growth typically occurred IMMEDIATELY upon loading a city after regional play of another city.  The growth might take 8 months or a year, but the idea of growth being a percentage of existing city size might be incorrect.  It's probably a time thing instead of a size thing.  Also, I think RippleJet's 10% number is a guideline and unfortunate because that number seemed to be linked to the Prima Guide, when it has nothing to do with it at all.  I propose to change this to make it less strict, and based on a sense of time or a factor of letting the city grow naturally first upon loading before making changes as a Mayor.

Moreover, this entire exercise is useful to forever remove "commuters" from being linked in ANY way to extrapolation.  I will also be fixing the "Extrapolation" line graph to correct its description to Anticipated Regional Demand and remove the terms "incoming workers" and "external commercial" and "external industry". 

Finally, after doing this, I realized that there's a very easy way to determine the amount of commuters in any given city.  The answer is so obvious I don't know why RippleJet or anyone else didn't fix the Census Repository in the first place (probably because he thought extrapolated demand might represent an idea of commuters).  

The formula for commuters is: Total Commercial Jobs (aka Workers) + Total Industrial Jobs (aka Workers) - Total Workforce (aka Residents who work) = Commuters (as an absolute, or non-negative, number).

In my case, I had a city of 20,169 residents.  The workforce was 8,332.  The total commercial jobs was 84, and the total industrial jobs was 1,114.  84 plus 1114 minus 8332 equals -7134.  That means that there are 7,134 commuters in my city.  

For the Census Repository, this would mean the following equation: #game.trend_value(game_trends.G_C_POPULATION,0)# added to #game.trend_value(game_trends.G_I_POPULATION,0)# and then subtracting #game.g_city_workforce_population# to get the total, which should be a positive number.

Of course, this doesn't take into account Civic Jobs, which aren't represented in these numbers.  But it's good enough for Maxis Math.

And RippleJet basically was SO CLOSE to getting it right.  He almost had it, in Available Vacant Jobs.  The formula for that number is:
#game.trend_value(game_trends.G_C_POPULATION,0)
+game.trend_value(game_trends.G_I_POPULATION,0)
-game.g_city_workforce_population
+RJCR_ComCommuters()+RJCR_IndCommuters()-RJCR_ResCommuters()#

So it incorrectly takes into account extrapolation amounts over 12 months for each of residential, commercial, and industrial figures (adding C and I, and subtracting R).  I don't know why he'd involve extrapolation (a regional concept) into those numbers, which are only for the city.  So this probably can be easily fixed.  

I am hopeful that a simple math formula can be built into the Census Repository to finally provide a realistic number of real commuters in a City, which might very close to the Route Path Query which shows the real numbers or workers traveling across city lines to a new city.  I might need help with this part because the equation needs to be positive and I'm not sure how to do that in the coding.  It'll be a slight altering of "Available Vacant Jobs" which shouldn't use Extrapolation.  If you take it out, I wonder if it'd be more correct to call that number Commuters instead of Available Vacant Jobs.  

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

6 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

That link is to a large post, ...

I'm glad you did quote its contents here cause clicking either linky leads to a Log In screen instead of the posts. I'm guessing @Tarkus had to exclude guest readers for security purposes. It's a shame to lose such a large collection of useful info.

Also, I edited your post to remove the horrid dark text on a dark background so it's more reader friendly.

 

6 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Based on my testing, ...

Looks like your experiments are very thorough and that'll make the resulting Repository update much more accurate for peeps. Nice work!

 

6 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

I might need help with this part because the equation needs to be positive and I'm not sure how to do that in the coding.

To always force a positive answer from an equation, you can use the abs() function, but that might not be what you are asking for. I'm uncertain. It would work like this:

A = 20
B = 7
abs(A - B) = 13
abs(B - A) = 13

Which means it simply forces the answer to be positive either way.

I may be misunderstanding your intention tho. It seems to me you'd want one way to show a net influx of commuters and the other way to be the net outflux and as such having a positive or a negative answer would each provide valid data.

[Kel9509 1,479]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

I may be misunderstanding your intention tho. It seems to me you'd want one way to show a net influx of commuters and the other way to be the net outflux and as such having a positive or a negative answer would each provide valid data.

The numbers can show several possibilities: 

• Available vacant jobs (always a positive number).
• Unemployment (a negative number).
• Commuters (a negative number for workers out, a positive number for workers in).
• Both commuters and unemployment. 

Assuming 10,000 industrial jobs capacity, and 10,000 commercial jobs capacity, the total jobs capacity is 20,000.  If the workforce is 5,000, it could show 15,000 available vacant jobs.  Workforce is always a function of existing residents.

But if the workforce exceeds available jobs, it means that workers are finding jobs outside the city, or unemployment.  So when the number is negative, in my example, it meant commuters out. A city of 20,000 residents had a workforce of 8300.  The total available jobs was approximately 1200.  So approximately 7100 workers were commuting out.  I knew they were employed because no lot had a "no job" indicator.

My industrial city had a workforce of approximately 80.  It had 6500 jobs. The available jobs were there but it be wrong to call them vacant, since they were occupied by workers from outside the city via the Route Query.  That meant commuters of approximately 6400 commuters coming in.  

My commercial city was similar. 80 or so workforce. 3500 jobs. The available jobs were there but it be wrong to call them vacant, since they were occupied by workers from outside the city via the Route Query.  It meant approximately 3400 commuters coming in. 

We can see if the total jobs available exceeds the workforce, meaning workers are coming in (maybe - see below) or if the workforce exceeds available jobs, meaning workers going out (maybe).

But I don't want to make the same mistake RippleJet made.  The number may mean commuters in my case, but for a non-specialized city, it may also mean unemployment.  It likely might be a combination of both.  And given the nature of regional play, "available vacant jobs" might be true in limited cases. But its much more likely to be commuters for this game.

I'll test this out a bit more before I do anything with the census repository. 

  Edited December 14, 2024 by Kel9509  
More details.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

5 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

I'll test this out a bit more before I do anything with the census repository.

Good plan. You are now our foremost expert on it.

Another random thing which can happen is a Residential city tile can send workers to another tile. For this example, let's say 1000 Sims are seen taking a passenger train across the border and that will stay steady all the while you are running time in the Residential city.

However, let's save and exit then enter the Industrial city tile those Sims were traveling to. We might see all 1000 of them as incoming on the Route Query, or some number less, or none at all. While in the Jobs city it then depends on the exact locations of the work and whether or not they can get to it.

Remember from the Res side it sends them out knowing only the average distance to the jobs, but once you are in the Industrial side it can then calculate exact paths.

All that to say that outgoing from one tile doesn't have to match incoming from the other side and yet nothing is actually wrong.

[Kel9509 1,479]

I really don't want people to consider me an expert in this at all.  The only thing is, it can be initially confusing and I'm trying to understand it in the best way I can.  One thing is, anyone can recreate what I did by having a small residential city, with an industrial city on one side, and the other side with a commercial city, to see what I'm getting at.  It is easily replicated for verification by anyone.  Frankly, I welcome criticism here to ensure I'm getting it right, because I don't want to make it "more wrong."

Here's a composite image of the Jobs & Population graph, overlayed on top of the Extrapolation graph, from my Residential city.  The image is faint because I used transparency a bit to get them on top of each other, but hopefully this provides a good timeline comparison. The extrapolation lines are the sharp angular blue and yellow lines.  The smoother green line is residential growth, which occurred first.

Similar results were seen in the other cities.

6 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

All that to say that outgoing from one tile doesn't have to match incoming from the other side and yet nothing is actually wrong.

Yeah that's definitely true.  And I hate to wonder how this might all work under a city with an Eternal Commuter bug...

Right now I'm going through the Census Repository to assess all instances RippleJet used for his "Commuters" and if it makes sense.  I'll post some updates when I finish.

[Tarkus 6,933]

On 12/14/2024 at 6:52 AM, CorinaMarie said:

I'm glad you did quote its contents here cause clicking either linky leads to a Log In screen instead of the posts. I'm guessing @Tarkus had to exclude guest readers for security purposes. It's a shame to lose such a large collection of useful info.

The links there appear to be malformed.  Even being logged into SC4D, I also get a login screen, and I own the darn site.

That said, after cleaning up the syntax, it does indeed link to a thread on a private board, discussing the "rural" version of CAM 2.0.  That wasn't a recent security measure--RippleJet set up that board as a private one from the outset in 2009, for internal use by CAM 2.0 developers and beta testers.  While it's never been visible to the general public, save for Korot quoting bits of it on a public board, it's also not lost in any strict sense, thankfully (unlike the BSC Board-based internal workings on CAM 1.0, which are almost entirely toast, since that site hit the bit bucket in 2012 with no backup).

-Tarkus

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

16 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Here's a composite image of the Jobs & Population graph, overlayed on top of the Extrapolation graph, from my Residential city.

Wicked cool!

With that in mind I've made you a new graph you can use that will do that right in the game.

 

To make this work I combined some of the data by simply adding them together. R$$ and R$$$ are now one additive entry. Both Commercial Office Wealths are added together. And Industrial Manufacturing and High Tech get a combined graph line.

Then I've made three versions with the only difference being whether or not the data for the Extrapolated info is shown at a 1 to 1 relationship or they are multiplied by 5 or 10. I made the two extras since we don't seem to be as concerned about their data values, but the shape of their graph compared to the Jobs and Pop. This'll let you pick the best for the size city you are testing in. (And when you peek inside the .dat files you'll easily see how the multiplying is done should you want a different factor.)

All three are in this zip: Extrapolated Data Combined Job & Pop Graph v0.06.zip

[Kel9509 1,479]

7 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

With that in mind I've made you a new graph you can use that will do that right in the game.

Very cool!  This is the sort of stuff that makes testing the game awesome.  I get to see all these new graphs and stuff.  Excellent!  

[Kel9509 1,479]

Here's the graphs from my testing Residential City.  As you can see, at 1 and 5x the amounts, when you start to get into population beyond 10,000 or 20,000, the 10x multiplier is the best.  

But I'm basically done testing Extrapolation.  I understand it pretty well now, at least enough to fix the Census Repository.  In fact, I've already done that.  For the record, here's the comprehensive list of changes so far:

As previously seen in my screenshots, the line item for "Commuters" has been replaced with Anticipated Regional Residential Growth, Anticipated Regional Commercial Growth, and Anticipated Regional Industrial Growth.  I've fixed the initial "city" data set with an Extrapolation figure for 0 months, or current amounts.  Finally, I've replaced the tooltips with proper descriptions.

The extrapolation tooltip for Anticipated Regional Residential Growth reads as follows:

Quote

 

With growth in #city#, Anticipated Regional Residential Growth (extrapolation) will naturally manifest itself as additional Residential Demand in a connected city tile the first time you load it after saving and exiting #city#. If there is sufficient unfulfilled zoning in that connected city tile then the growth (whether new or upgrading) can sprout when you run time.

If the conditions in that other city are not conducive to using that extra demand during the current play session, or if you exit too early, it will be lost. Other cities in #region# interpret this as a reduction in that city's size.  However, even if you lose this extra demand, if you keep your other city's demands and growth in balance the minor difference should not be missed.

Anticipated Regional Residential Growth occurring depends on the availability of zones in neighbor connections and the demands and drives within #city#, and may not always occur upon growth in #city#.

 

The tooltips for Commercial and Industrial Anticipated Regional Growth are nearly identical, with just the proper names used.

The tooltip for the 1, 3, and 12 month entries are adjusted as well.  Here's an example of the 3-month tooltip:

Quote

Anticipated Regional Residential Growth over the past 3 months, based on 3 months of growth and demands in #city# and neighbor connections with available residential capacity.

Again, the rest are similarly worded.

Additionally, I've fixed "Available Vacant Jobs" calculations, which improperly used Extrapolation amounts.  I've changed the line item to now read "Commuters or Vacant Jobs".  The tooltip now reads as follows:

Quote

More jobs than the available workforce are needed for residential growth.
If this number is positive, you have either available vacant jobs, or net commuters into your city taking those jobs.
If this number is negative, you do not have available jobs in the city and this amount may represent the net commuters working outside of #city#, or else unemployment if there are no commuter paths.
Note that this number is not exact, since civic jobs are also not counted.
People working in civic services are in that respect considered unemployed and always reduce this number.

The tooltip for the City, 3-months and 12-months entries are similarly fixed.  Here's an example from the 3-month tooltip:

Quote

Change in net commuters or available jobs over the last 3 months.
Positive numbers may indicate net commuters into #city#, or available commercial and industrial jobs.
Negative numbers may indicate net commuters outside of #city#, or unemployment.
Note however, that since civic jobs are not counted, people working in civic services are considered unemployed and always reduce this number.

Here's how things look so far:

I'm now in the process of fixing other small things, if possible:

• For some reason, the Census Repository doesn't really work (nor does my RCI Query DLL mod) when starting a new city until you save, exit, and re-load a city.  Otherwise, lots of numbers that are sourced from @Null 45's DLL mods are blank (unlike the native Maxis numbers).  I wonder if that's just the nature of DLL mods or something else when starting fresh in a new city?  In any event, I'll probably include this somewhere in one of the initial tooltips as well as the documentation just to make people aware of it.
• I added "N/A" to the CAP status for all CS categories.
• I will clarify the relationship between CAP status and actual demand (subject to further testing).  In my research, I've found people claiming that the game decreases demand based on the CAP percentage.   Meaning, even though you can build more of a particular zone if it's well under the 100% cap (like if CAP is only at 20%), demand is still more reduced if a CAP is at 20% than if the CAP was at 0%.  This is not clear from RippleJet's documentation or tooltips.  Frankly, it was a surprise to me.  I had always thought that so long as you were under 100% of CAP status, even if you were at 50% or so, you still had plenty of demand.  I had no idea demand was tied to cap status, and instead only thought of it as a ceiling you might hit at some point to prevent future growth beyond that point.  However, this claim is entirely consistent with the Prima Guide, which says: "With every increase in the population, you move one step closer to the cap and the maximum demand pushes down. The closer you get to the cap, the lower the demand maximum drops until, at the cap amount, demand registers as zero no matter what’s going on in your city."
• You may notice in the screenshot above that my "Farm City" has 471 people working in Industrial-Agriculture, but the stats show 0% industrial job supply.  If I zone and grow commercial jobs, it will show 100% commercial job supply status.  Apparently, the game does not include IR job amounts in many of its calculations.  It knows that people are working in IR, since the workforce is there.  But many calculations do not include IR workers.  RippleJet knew about this issue, but the sources of the data are from "game.g_city_i_population", which excludes Agricultural workers.  I wonder if this can be fixed (and if it should be?) with further DLL mods?  Or perhaps a DLL mod to create a new variable that takes into account Farm workers along with the others, like "game.g_city_i_plusIR_population"?  RippleJet thought there might be a way to include them in the #s, but it might involve some heavy coding that I do not know how to do.  I suppose it could be done by counting the base workers of each type, instead of using variables like "game.g_city_i_population" and "game.g_city_c_population" and then doing the math.  But I wonder if it's worth it?  
• In an attempt to make Farming slightly easier, I modified the tooltip for the IR CAP status to indicate that all buildings except IR and CS$ buildings contribute to the cap.
• I'm considering how to re-write the overall tooltip hover for the City Name, which tried initially to discuss Extrapolation.  A lot of it is now fixed with my other tooltips, but those didn't include some details that RippleJet had entered in an attempt to avoid repetition.  Here's what I have so far:

Quote

All census data is stored with #city#'s savegame file.
Now, while playing #city#, inactive connected cities can satisfy #city#'s demand with their unused zone capacity, but only to the tune of 10% of their existing populations and only if the demand cannot be satisfied in #city#.
At the end of each month, demand not satisfied by building construction in #city# is tossed to other cities in #region#.  This is known as Anticipated Regional Growth.  Demand will fall in your city as Anticipated Regional Growth occurs, and if you run time long enough without additional actions as mayor you may experience demand satisfaction without any construction.
When returning to another city in #region#, in which such Anticipated Regional Growth (extrapolation) has occurred, the presumed growth will sprout. 
Always when entering a city, give it some time to grow (either 10% or several months of natural growth) before leaving it. Otherwise the growth that was anticipated from other cities in the Region will be lost forever.
As far as other cities are concerned, that city has lost its anticipated growth and has actually shrunk in size, possibly leading to recession and abandonment in other cities.

• Finally, the Census Repository discusses demand amounts for the Colossus Addon Mod, both for v1.0 and 2.0.  If any demand amounts are going to be changed for CAM 2.5, @Ulisse Wolf, please let me know and I'll include them as well.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,458]

3 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Finally, the Census Repository discusses demand amounts for the Colossus Addon Mod, both for v1.0 and 2.0.  If any demand amounts are going to be changed for CAM 2.5, @Ulisse Wolf, please let me know and I'll include them as well.

CAM 2.5 focuses more on general bugfixes and a few advanced feature additions. No demand changes are planned at this time.

For this kind of work, it is more suitable for a future CAM 3.0

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

9 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Here's the graphs from my testing Residential City.

For that particular city, even 20x would work fine. No need tho since you've finished your testing.

 

9 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

As previously seen in my screenshots, the line item for "Commuters" has been replaced with Anticipated Regional Residential Growth, Anticipated Regional Commercial Growth, and Anticipated Regional Industrial Growth.

This will be a significant improvement.

In my time on ST I've seen a few peeps who spent hours and days trying to eliminate those mysterious extra commuters which we now know didn't ever exist, Everyone trusted the Census Repository as infallible and we see that was a mistake.

 

9 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

People working in civic services are in that respect considered unemployed and always reduce this number.

This is a tiny personal nitpick (which you can ignore), but I believe they are Sims and not People.

 

9 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Change in net commuters or available jobs over the last 3 months.

For this one, it's not a change, but simply the 3 month total. So: "Total net commuters or available jobs over the last 3 months."

As an example let's say the January Population of a city is 10,000 and 3 months later it's 12,500. The change over the last three months is 2,500, but the more useful information is simply the new total of 12,500.

And your formula is adding months ago 0, 1, and 2 to get a total. Right?

 

9 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

I added "N/A" to the CAP status for all CS categories.

Very good. And I presume the tooltip says: "Low Wealth Commercial Service does not have a CAP." (or such)

 

9 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

I will clarify the relationship between CAP status and actual demand (subject to further testing).

The Prima Guide is totally correct for this one.

Elsewhere in the forums it's been described like the available building permits are dwindling and so builders are much less likely to invest in construction in that city tile since they cannot buy material in bulk at a huge discount cause now they can only build a handful instead of thousands so they'd rather not build at all.

 

9 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

You may notice in the screenshot above that my "Farm City" has 471 people working in Industrial-Agriculture, but the stats show 0% industrial job supply.

The Commercial also shows 0%. Additionally, the CO-$$ shows 471 in the Region. Is that a coincidence? Or accidentally the same underlying variable (or calculation) as the Ag workers?

For the in city numbers are you/RJ getting those from the game.g variables or from the more accurate data arrays? (I'll dig out the repository again and take a peek too.)

 

9 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Otherwise the growth that was anticipated from other cities in the Region will be lost forever.

I seem to recall Prima (and many forum posters) like saying lost forever and while technically true for that exact instance of the anticipated growth which will disappear, it's not as dire as lost forever sounds. Just go back to adjacent city tiles, run a bit of time, save, and then return to the one where that data was presumably lost and it's suddenly back again.

I suggest something less foreboding. Maybe: "... lost for this session in #city#."

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

8 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Apparently, the game does not include IR job amounts in many of its calculations.

The game.g_city_i_population variable does not include agricultural as you've found.

So, presuming you do want Ag to be industrial (and it was simply low density industrial in prior iterations), we can revise the calculations as follows:

TGI: 2026960B-8BFCA741-58276007 (Commercial Percentage)

# 0.49
+ 100.0
* (game.g_city_co2_population
+  game.g_city_co3_population
+  game.g_city_cs1_population
+  game.g_city_cs2_population
+  game.g_city_cs3_population)
/ (game.g_city_ir_population
+  game.g_city_id_population
+  game.g_city_im_population
+  game.g_city_iht_population
+  game.g_city_co2_population
+  game.g_city_co3_population
+  game.g_city_cs1_population
+  game.g_city_cs2_population
+  game.g_city_cs3_population
+ 0.00001)#% Commercial

TGI: 2026960B-8BFCA741-58276009 (Industrial Percentage)

# 0.49
+ 100.0
* (game.g_city_ir_population
+  game.g_city_id_population
+  game.g_city_im_population
+  game.g_city_iht_population)
/ (game.g_city_ir_population
+  game.g_city_id_population
+  game.g_city_im_population
+  game.g_city_iht_population
+  game.g_city_co2_population
+  game.g_city_co3_population
+  game.g_city_cs1_population
+  game.g_city_cs2_population
+  game.g_city_cs3_population
+ 0.00001)#% Industrial

And that'll correct the mistakes in RJ's originals while still keeping the same delay inherent in the game.g variables.

The other option would be similar, but update everything to use the most recent month of the data arrays and then we wouldn't have to wait for the game.g's to be re-populated. OTOH, maybe they are good enough. The rule of thumb is it takes up to a game month for them to get the new info whereas the data array versions are constantly accurate.

Anyhow, here's an override to test with: zz Cori's Commercial and Industrial Percent Calcs for Census Repository.dat

And if you like those, you can copy the LText formulas into your main file.

[Null 45 3,113]

6 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

The rule of thumb is it takes up to a game month for them to get the new info whereas the data array versions are constantly accurate.

All of the Maxis game.g variables update once per month. The demand variables I added currently update when loading a city, saving a city, or when the active demand changes for that RCI group. The loading a city portion could explain the issues @Kel9509 is seeing with newly created cities, I will have to run some tests.

[Propfam 2,305]

As a guy with literally 10M+ population region (and done it multiple times, mind you), I still can't wrap this thing up especially after the turn of the topic to something more serious. I know what's cap, demand, extrapolation, etc (and yes, I read and understand the Prima guide). And yet, I'm still feeling very little in this regard. I don't know if this is just a Dunning-Kruger or whatever, but that's literally what I'm feeling. I even bought up the idea of extrapolation is lost forever, to the point I realized 10% of the city growth every time, to turn out to be not completely true. Again, I have so many new knowledge with this topic. I never felt so little in life before this topic, literally.

Anyways, may I ask, can you summarize what've happened in the topic? Preferably in a simpler and tidier language. Like seriously, I just want to catch up. And before you said, "Well, read it first," I did. It's just I have so many questions than answers.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

1 hour ago, Jidan said:

Anyways, may I ask, can you summarize what've happened in the topic?

Sure. I'll give it a go:

1. @DeeKayOut checked the Census Repository and noticed of their 621 residential Sims living in Landing Place South, forty thousand of them had jobs (27k commercial, 13k industrial) in SimNation. And they (correctly) concluded that 40k was higher than 621. Their research made them believe (as has happened to other peeps too many times) that they might have the Eternal Commuter Bug. However, even after bulldozing all connections to that city tile and running multiple years there as well as in adjacent city tiles, the problem persisted. Nearly at their wit's end, they posted asking for help before taking the drastic step of nuking the whole city and starting over.
    
2. @CorinaMarie (that's me!) peeked under the hood of @RippleJet's mod and found the formulas used to calculate these supposed commuters going to and from the rest of the region were really an underlying calculation using Extrapolated Demand, yet she still believed that represented commuters simply because the great RJ had said so. She created a simple graph to track them and DeeKayOut did some thorough testing. Their results are attached to this post as a PDF.
    
3. Along the way @Kel9509 popped in responding to a question Cori asked of them. (Kel worked with @Null 45 previously and created a massive update to the Census Repository in the form of a DLL (Null's) and a patch (Kel's). As the discussion continues, Kel lays out ways to make corrections to the Repository and also began their own testing.
    
4. The next day Cori updated the new Graph to include all three types of Extrapolated data (Residential, Commercial, and Industrial) and color coded them as well. She also showed the only two times the original Maxis LUA code referenced said data. In both cases it was presented as evidence of commuters either leaving the current city tile or traveling into it. This was likely the basis for the original unquestioned evidence that the numbers were commuters.
    
5. More testing ensued and spiky graph pics were posted.
    
6. There was a side discussion about the Neutral Tax Rate that was resolved by Cori and Kel which eliminates the need for the two patch overrides created in conjunction with @twalsh102 from long, long ago. Kel updated the Repository with the new code and made the Neutral Tax Rate display prominently on the top green banner.
    
7. The remainder of the topic discussion was useful back and forth ideas deciding how to describe things for the hover over (tooltips) with Cori being rather nitpicky about individual words or phrases.
    
8. Next was Kel's discovery that the percent of Sims working in Commercial and Industrial did not account for any Farm Hands. Cori peeked at, and then completely rewrote, the underlying formulas and presented them for use.
    
9. And that's where it stands for now awaiting updates.

(Or such.)

[Kel9509 1,479]

On 12/16/2024 at 10:44 AM, CorinaMarie said:

And that'll correct the mistakes in RJ's originals while still keeping the same delay inherent in the game.g variables.

Very cool.  This is excellent!  

However, I'm a bit crazy and I also noticed that "game.g_region_i_population" doesn't take into account IR jobs.  I don't know if there's a way to account for that other than a DLL mod.  The line in the Industrial section of the Census Repository bottom total under "Industrial Jobs" for "Region" will show 0 if you only have farm jobs.  

Now, I rarely if ever play farms.  But I know people do.  Lots of people love the rural aspect of the game, and frankly I find it crazy that Maxis built Farms but really didn't do much with them and also apparently didn't even account for them in their own stats.  Crazy!  Also, with CAM 2.5, Farming might be more appealing to more people.  So I've asked @Null 45 if it's possible to work his magic again to see if new variables can be made that account for IR jobs.  I'd also update my RCI Query DLL mod as well, if possible.

I've got another idea for an update to the Census Repository regarding tax revenue, which I've also asked Null 45 about.  But I sense I'm nearing completion with this project.

@Jidan, Cori basically summed things up pretty good.  If I had to say it in simple terms: the Census Repository incorrectly called something Commuters, which in reality was really Regional Demand numbers that are created by city growth (aka: extrapolation).  So we re-wrote things to describe Extrapolation in simple terms, and in the process I also noticed that "Vacant Jobs" could also possibly result in a better explanation of Commuters, and so the description for that was re-written too.

And in the process of doing this, I'm trying to enhance the Census Repository with some new items like the Neutral Tax Rate and some other new ideas.