New to the forum, could use some help

[TM 0]

Ok, first off, I don't know if this is even the right place to post this up; this forum is huge compared to the one I usualy play around with. I mean, this has over a 100,00 users I think, while the other one had only 4000.

I recently bought Sim City 4 Rush Hour for my iMac G5. I played around with it for a good 50 hours or so, and I'm having little succes.

I've been looking through the member showcase thread at this site, and I'm wondering how did you get those modifications to the game? Some of those Skyscrapers are so big they look like they can topple upon themselves, whereas the tallest ones so far that I've gotten are about...oh 30 stories or so. Now I don't know if you can unlock more stuff as you progress through the game or not. I'm assuming those are all from modification expansion packs or something. Or train tracks that are submerged in a tunnel.

Or another thing that really got my attention was the airports...I take creating a realistic city as something that should be stressed with the upmost importance, I'm all for making a realistic airport, highway system, and propper zoning.

I don't know if those are compatible for Macs or not. I need to know, and if they are, could someone give links to the downloads?

I don't know if my computer's memory has anything to do with it, I read a lot of talk about memergy. My iMac came standard with 512 MB RAM and a 250 GB hard drive. It runs at 2 GigaHertz with a PowerPC G5 chip. That's the basic stuff I konw. I'm just thinking to myself....it always happens to me too. Everytime I make a big investment in something, the same product comes out with something better and less expensive relatively right after I buy it. I mean....I spend 1900 hard-earned dollars on this thing, and now there's a more powerful dual intel chip version for only 1700? No fair!

And also, where would I post for city building strategies and whatnot? What people have done with their cities and regions brings the holy **** factor to my head.

I have a city that takes up half of the big tile on my region. The poplulation is 130,000. It's super-plain compared to all these I'm seeing, I guess becasue I don't have any mods yet. The biggest problem I have is commute time. I check the trafic congestion in my data view option, and for the most part, everything's green. There's only one or two roads in the residential area that are red. I try to keep an organized and realistic transportation system. All my highways are elevated for more flexiblity; and they all have one way roads on alternating sides, just like in real life. I have a couple of avenues here and there in the residential zones and downtown. Downtown and the industrial section (which is across the river) have one-way streets in a city-block format..... And yet, I find a lot of no job zots, I think they're called, over buildings and whatnot.

I just don't see how all these cities with huge skycrapers can take the trafic, when I barely see any streets or highways at all. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

Anyways, enough of my blabbering, I first need some basic information of the site and if these modifications are available for Macs. There's just no use in going through the whole site, which would take countless days. I'd rather introduce myself first and see if someone "high-up" here can help a fellow gamer out.

Also, how do you get screenshots? I know how to upload images onto photobucket, and all that good stuff, as I've been doing it for a long time now. I know how to take screenshots of my computer (apple, shift,3) but when I try that when the game's on, I just get a black screen. I could always resort to using my digital camera; but then I'd get crap resolution compared to my computer's capture device.

I appreciate any help.

[Voar Tok 4]

Welcome to ST!

A lot of what you are asking for is on the STEX (which you can access by clicking on the Exchange button above).  You'll have to do some searching for buildings on it, because there are scores of skyscapers on the exchange.  A good way to get started is to search for stuff with BSC or NDEX in the name.  It sounds like some of the other things that you were looking for are found in the Modds section, which Dirk (the webmaster) has not yet been able to get online.

If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me.

[TM 0]

Thanks for showing me where all the downloads are. I must say, there's a whole lot of crap to choose from too. I'm very worried though, if they are Mac compatible or not. About the city development problems with all the traffic and commute times....For the most part I have found that developing your city as a region and breaking it down into residential, comercial, and industrial sectors works wonders.

[Meg 368]

Have you checked out the Mac users forum?

[Kevin 101]

I'm almost positive that there are programs you can download that convert files so that they will work on a Mac. Like SkiGeek said, check out the Mac forum.

[TM 0]

I'll look into that stuff. While I'm at it though, I'll manage a quick $%&^! question. I've heard a lot of this NAM mod, so it creates turn lanes for every avenue intersection. Doesn't seem all that important, but am I missing something here? And...what about the instructions on how to take a screen shot?

[Voar Tok 4]

The NAM is absolutely awesome.  It can give you new highway interchanges and a whole host of other things.  Unfortunately, the Modds section is not online yet, so I'm not sure about how you could get it.

[Micah 16]

Originally posted by: TM

I'll look into that stuff.

While I'm at it though, I'll manage a quick $%&^! question.

I've heard a lot of this NAM mod, so it creates turn lanes for every avenue intersection. Doesn't seem all that important, but am I missing something here?

And...what about the instructions on how to take a screen shot?quote>

It is actually very important. A lot of transit mods require NAM. Also, it provides a new highway piece puzzles (lots), and tons of other cool stuff like Round-a-bouts.

[sim1234 62]

Welcome to Simtropolis! I hope you enjoy yourself here at this fantastic website!

[Tolomar 5]

for the most part all the files are useable on the MAC....there are some exceptions here and there and ....there is a MAC section in the Simcity4 forum thread that for the "mac" users...it will deal with issues that the MAC user come up with

[TM 0]

Thanks for all the help my fellow SimCity players.

Voar Tok:

Oh, so now I see. Although I had only had one or two experimental citeis and regions before I make my "big" project; I already have found to dislike the confinement that the game gives you, transportation-wise. So these mods and custom buildings and whatnot will be very beneficial; this is truely candy for perfectionest such as me.

Micah:

Yes, thank you for your reply on the NAM too. I'll soon see how good all the new customs are. Although I'm not sure what you meant by "lots". Either it meant a lot more; or a lot like a parking lot. I did see some screen shot of actual parking lots; which is a big jump in realism, as my current experimental city's major league stadium has no lots. I'm assuming that it was not the latter though.

sim1234:

Thanks for the welcome! This is indeed a fantastic site from what I have seen so far. Such a plethora of high-quality information...and not to mention the awesome pictures of peoples' works. I have taken the time to read one of the CJ's (I'm still confused as to what CJ stands for as of right now.) The only CJ that I read so far, was the one made by frndofyaweh. I'm sure there are a lot more great ones to read; which I'll get to sooner or later. And yes, when I first saw your avatar, the first thing that came to my mind was the sun. Mine's the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur. I'll probably end up making some photoshoped one later though.

Tolomar:

This is great news, I appreciate the good omen. When I first saw these far-out cities and rural areas that members have created, I wondered how they got those uniqe-looking morsels...that I later found out were customs that people made themselves. I had a period where I thought I would be cursed for liking Appple, as these customs would not be compatible. I have checked some of the Mac sub-forum out. I'm not very computer-literate yet, so...for the most part, it's still very confusing on how to install the files right now.

Again, thanks for the feedback and warm welcomes! I'll try to get more involved in this forum as my knowledge and experience of the game evolves.

Is there any reason as to why my posts are all congested and not spaced-out neatly like I originaly inteded?

[Trigger_tre 1]

Welcome to Simtropolis TM!

I would just like to ad that your messages would be much easier to read if you corrected your carriage returns so you could type in normal text.

You have 2 options.

1st Option: is to type messages normally, how you would in Microsoft Word or Word Processor. Basically pressing enter and having it work properly. To do so go to the "Personal Options" section in your "Profile" and select "HTML" not "WYSIWYG Editor", then press the "Update Profile" button at the bottom. This will fix the carriage (Return) problem you are currently experiencing.

2nd Option: is to keep the "WYSIWYG Editor" selected then learn how to code in HTML. It takes a little getting used to but it will allow you to do some neat little thing that others will not be able to do. (Such as create buttons with words or pictures, columns, etc.)

Feel free to visit my tutorial to better explain what I am talking about. You will automatically be linked there by pressing the button at the bottom titled "HTML & BBCode Tutorial.

NOTE: The "Editor Type" is only visible in Internet Explorer. You will not see the "Editor Type" option if you are in Firefox.

-trigger

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[Voar Tok 4]

I would contact Tropod.  He is the resident NAM expert, and if anyone could get you a copy, it would be him.

[TM 0]

Trigger_tre:Unfortunately I have Safari and don't have access to that option to change my text editor type.

Voar Tok:I will do that, as I read more about NAM, and it's too intriguing to pass up. Do you by any chance know how much RAM these modifications take up? Currently my computer has a half gig of RAM. I will soon get another gig to add-on to it. I heard that RAM plays a major role in game speed.

[Trigger_tre 1]

Trigger_tre:Unfortunately I have Safari and don't have access to that option to change my text editor type.quote>

Only users of Internet Explorer have that option. You can still use safari after you select HTML with IE. Just go to my tutorial to see the picture of what is displayed while using IE. Go to the first step in the "Internet Explorer" section. Just select HTML instead of WYSIWYG Editor. Once you select HTML and press the Update Profile button simply close IE and open your Safari browser. When you post again you will notice your "ENTER" key will now work properly.

I guess I should go ahead and add the safari section to the tutorial.

-trigger

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[TM 0]

Thanks for all the assistance so far, everyone.

Trigger_Tre: I do not have Internet Explorer at all, only safari. Is there any other way to fix the problem?

I also have a few more questions. I figured out where the screenshots were on my computer, now I need help resizing them. They're PNG file, and take up too much memory for Photobucket, and Photobucket always ends up resizing it to a very small size. I noticed everyone elses' photos were huge, so is there any way to fix that problem?

With the NAM, is it possible to make big, realistic highway conjunctions? The biggest conjunction in the regular game is the cloverleaf. I was wondering if there is any waay to customly make a big one conecting multi-highways and whatnot. If anybody has an example, please post the picture.

EDIT: I guess someone fixed my spacing problem.

[Trigger_tre 1]

Originally posted by: TM I guess someone fixed my spacing problem.quote>

Well actually you probably fixed our own problem if you happened to press the update button in the "Personal Options" section. Here is why......

Although you do not see the Text editor options in your personal options menu, it is still there (just invisible to all browsers except IE). By default HTML is selected so if you pressed the "Update Profile" button at the bottom (even without making any changes) the site assumes you selected that Text Editor option and enables it.

The result is that now returns work for you however the ability to use HTML Codes is not available. But thats no big deal. You can post with ease now and people will actually be able to read your posts easier.

Congratulations on Unknowingly solving your own problem.

-trigger

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[TM 0]

Originally posted by: Voar Tok

I would contact Tropod.