Returning after graduating with my bachelor's degree!

[Turnstyled 539]

Soooo....I disappeared quickly after I was last here. However, I got my students loans relieved due to disability, and I graduated with my bachelor's degree as of today! I also wanted SC4PAC and everything surrounding it to mature a little bit more. Holy smokes, though! I don't see any reason for me to mod the game outside of SC4PAC outside of some exceptions such as exclusives or timed exclusives (such as the LEX DVD exclusives, the NAM Christmas sign, and the Shattermore Novelty Lights Store), Maxis files, and various UI mods by @hugues aroux! I decided to go with the Appalachian terrain mod because Sudden Valley isn't currently in SC4PAC. I might end up liking the Appalachian terrain mod better because I remember editing Sudden Valley with iLives reader to get certain parameters right for me. I'm tired of messing with iLives reader, though.

If managing your plugins folder otherwise works for you, that's great! For me, though, there was too much involved with it. Anyway, I'm currently scouring through SC4PAC!

Edit: I see now that the Maxis DLC files are included in SC4PAC!

[nos.17 5,256]

Congratulations and welcome back! I'm really glad you're liking the content in sc4pac. 

Adding hugues' content into sc4pac is on my WIP list. Haven't touched them in a while but perhaps it's time to revisit them.

[Turnstyled 539]

So...no need to create another thread. Basically, I spent the past six years under a lot of stress...and it showed here! I even think that I hid a thread that I created that consisted of me just freakin' out while under stress. I was told to "stay well" in that thread, which wasn't at all mean. In fact, it was kind!

After I moved into my apartment in 2019, I had to get adjusted to my new life...and then, I was finishing my associate degree while COVID-19 was certainly an awful, awful thing. And I was participating in a program for "the best STEM students," whatever that means, at my community college while COVID-19 was that awful, awful thing AND while I went through college before then on my own. I had to cooperate with the other students, and that really stressed and exhausted me.

Then, I had to figure out where to take things next after my associate degree, so I spent an extra year at my community college. I spent two years in an online Computer Science program that really wasn't working out for me. But then, I found the bachelor's program that I graduated from! It was just like what I did at my community college, which worked for me! Both programs were full of classes that mapped to IT industry certifications!

But then, I went applying for student loan relief through disability. THAT was scary...because I was scared that it wouldn't work out due to political matters occurring in the United States right now. My stress was REALLY bad until May of this year when I contacted my local New Jersey state representative's office. Soon after that representative's office, my federal student loans were relieved! And then, you know, I just needed some time to wind down after that. I'm now nine credits into a master's degree at the school that I just graduated from. Of course, I'm not taking any further student loans for that master's degree.

And sc4pac certainly does make things less stressful when it comes to SimCity 4! Along with sc4pac and SC4Evermore, @simmering's list of links to find SC4D LEX content in 2025 and @pikachu_SQ's efforts to preserve lost content, as well, as @Tyberius06's efforts to restore legacy content, have made modding SimCity 4 such an easy task compared to how it was in the past. I was a little stressed a few days ago setting up hugues aroux's content, Swiss & European Network Textures (SENT), and SAM addons compatible with @hugues aroux's WestWind Streets and SENT in my new plugins directory. If all that would've been the entirety of my plugins directory, then it wouldn't have been manageable for me to maintain a plugins directory!

  Edited November 9, 2025 by Turnstyled  
Edited to tag the users who I mentioned

[Turnstyled 539]

I think that I'm going to step back from posting here so much...

I really overwhelmed myself doing that. I'll still be around. As you can all see, I love SimCity 4!