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Alpen Shinjuku progress

Imagine I would have got just 1 cent when I joined back in 2003, then I'd earn a whopping $83,886.08 this year...

More BTM routing- and working on finalizing road networks

New Server Backup System I'm pleased to confirm that ST now has fully functional daily offsite backups. This means the backed up data is entirely separate from the ST server. Each day the system creates a fresh database export to 2 different storage vaults, and syncs across the entire site files. This includes system files, and everything inside the /objects directory, containing all user uploaded files from the STEX and the site. We've made this work by only copying what's new, so the process is very efficient. If for any reason a backup fails, the process will send us an email, so we can promptly rectify any issues. As of this post, the system has been functioning flawlessly for 5 days. The backup is on a Hetzner storage box, and we're making use of their automatic snapshots feature. This allows us to easily rollback to a previous backup if need be. Additionally, Cori and I will be making periodic local backups of the files, and copying them to external HDDs. We've learned from the mistakes of not having full offsite backups. This now means the future of Simtropolis has rock solid foundations. There's a notable difference:

I made a recap post once. (CB delved into the forum posts database to easily find the linkies.) Long, long ago I wrote CorIndustry - A Look at Vanilla Traffic and the odd thing towards the end was when I bulldozed the connection my residential had to the rest of the local map. Then when I reconnected it, many of them picked new jobs and locations. I believe part of the coding is that all Sims with jobs don't reevaluate unless they are forced to. I suspect over time that results in an internal convoluted map and, perhaps, it loses integrity over the (sim) years. Oh! And never, ever run faster than the middle speed.

I think the idea is fairly similar to the extension to memo's 3D camera DLL that I toyed with a few months ago. It was mostly for experimental reasons so I never really tied it in to the middle mouse movement, just a cheat code to open a dialog where all the view angles and zoom/magnification could be tweaked with sliders. But perhaps there's code here that you could re-use/integrate in your work. https://github.com/caspervg/sc4-render-services/tree/main/src/sample/camera-view-input

Just my 2¢ for this part. As soon as the file is restored we've been removing the banner so peeps can download it. That's what the Delete Me thread was for prior to getting the Team assembled and CB posting his fancy tracker. And that's still fine. The verifying is a separate pair of steps and it's there that we want to hold off giving the OK if anything is missing. Edit: It does seem some peeps aren't aware of that other thread to request banner removal. That'll explain ones with a restored file while still having said banner. For those, feel free to nix it.

Very cool. This should make it easier to go back and add images, if we need to recreate them for files we've uploaded. This is very good. By the way, on images is it ok that we start recreating them? I fear those that are lost at this point will never be recovered, unless the original authors return with them.

/me arrives and sees his secret editing is still in the bag... Originally I thought to not show who'd partially restored files (as in those with file entries, but still missing images). I felt it might cause embarrassment to those who'd be listed, thinking they've only done half the work. But considering what @Kel9509 said about wanting to find items they'd restored, I think that's more important. So yes @CaptCity you're right, and just the naming you saw was after I'd done the editing, while still working on the functional tweaks. To surmise, what I've done now is: Renamed the "Restored By" column and filter to be "Processor" instead. Made the filter list show all the files you've processed, even if not fully restored. It now lists them all per user like so. By the way... Please note as a formal point of order, there has been the addition of a graph to the upper portion of the tracker.

WE ARE BACK, BABY!

Ok so I've run a bit the central tile with the most jobs, saved, then run the tile in-between and saved, then run the tile with the recent residentials, and... they still can't get any jobs. Now I'm not sure whether I've run the tiles for long enough, but in case sim months of play are required for every tile and back every time I want to add a few more streets, any development becomes not just an ordeal but even unfeasible, as my laptop is prone to CTD for overheating or who-knows-what whenever I play for quite a while and switch between cities. Since the jobs in the central tile have been there for ages, and meanwhile I have saved all the other tiles multiple times, it would seem to me the entire region should by now be aware of the available jobs anyway? Also, even the latest residentials I'm trying to develop in the very tile with jobs can't find jobs. Data propagation shouldn't be an issue in this case?

Thanks a lot, Cori and CB. I'll have a good read of those. I never do! Always the lowest speed, as I'm afraid my laptop might not cope otherwise. I still hope some modder will pick up the challenge, or I won't be able to develop my region much further.

Thank you, I plopped the residential cap lifters and those lazybones of my sims still cannot find a job. Meanwhile two maps away there are a few commercials decaying for lack of workers. Ha! UPDATE: I also tweaked a bit the traffic simulator to increase the max trip time to 800, plus the speed of cars, buses and trains. Result: precious nothing, still the no-job zots coming up. When you think about it, it's quite ridiculous: the developed region itself only measures 20 km from West to East and 12 from North to South. Even if a sim had to commute 30km, with the walking speed set at 15km per hour he could cover the distance in 120 minutes. The central tile alone offers over 1 million spare commercial and industrial jobs and is reachable by road, train, and el-rail. There are thousands of jobs ready to be taken just opposite the stations. And yet, here I am stuck with 5 tiles out of 13 where the new growified residentials won't find a job, including the central tile full of extra vacancies! It is puzzling also because there aren't any bottlenecks or major congestions, the number of sims is overall low (less than 1 and a half million spread over 13 tiles, with the most populated one counting 220,000) and desirability seems to be high. When I query the buildings, they read "high school grade, high hospital grade, low pollution, low garbage", with the only downside being "Commute: LONG". Interestingly, commute is never a problem until a map reaches 40 - 50,000 sims, after which they start failing to find their way to work. What can I say? There is obviously a lot I don't understand in the dynamics of commute, but I don't think it should be this hard to match sims and jobs. Can we please develop a mod so that when you build commerce and industry and then build residentials, the residentials find the available jobs instead of being abandoned for no reason? Can we at least try?

Just to note, the system only allows clearing message banners once all recorded downloadable file entries are restored (excluding images). Another quick tip for clearing message banners... Firstly, filter by With Message Banner. This sorts first any which can have banners removed. Then click the corner checkbox: Then click Clear Banner from: And finally the confirmation of how many will actually be cleared: It sure saves a few clicks this way.

(By the way, I've moved all our posts here to the Processing thread. This one had no replies in yet, so was feeling lonely!) I think initially we can have a new thread where any info about files after Feb 28 can be compiled. These will be the most challenging, since there's no database record of them, and unfortunately the Wayback Machine hasn't archived many ST pages from March or April. A few authors have re-uploaded content since, but we'll have to try and identify any gaps. Perhaps I could develop a slightly different tracker once we have some info. That'll be a big help @CaptCity for the collection of files you downloaded. That will build strong foundations of a files list. Once there are no more missing downloads, at that point it's fine to remove message banners, to make the download button available to click. Images might take longer indeed to fully restore. Longer term the more images we can get added the better, but I think the key is visually communicating what a file is so downloaders are aware. As long as we achieve that with what's seen (for one or several images), that'll be a success I believe. Yeah, that sounds reasonable. The verification can only be completed once there are no missing downloads or images. As Cori said, the idea with the banners is to prevent people clicking Download and running into File Not Found errors. So this way whenever seeing the Download button, it gives confidence it should work. Very much so, and we ought to be mindful about that. While it'd be ideal to restore all images we can, the key is presenting file entries in a well enough way for the downloader to fully appreciate the creation prior to downloading. Of course for many very old STEX files, they only have tiny thumbnail images. I believe that was due to the small file size limit at the time, or perhaps something got lost for the originals? For files which have a main pic but missing thumbnail, it'll be because the Wayback Machine restoration only found one and not both. On entries with a full sized image, I'm inclined to create something to fix those up in batch. So I think for now, best focusing on replacing missing files and full sized images. It might be a future project to add better images to older content. But for sure, one thing at a time...

It's always been ST policy for Moderator's salary to double every year so I'll go ahead and authorize the same for you now.

Found a few more lingering on old readmes: 3970 = https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/33621-wmp-mega-props-vol-01-misc-general-props/ 3975 = https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/33620-wmp-essentials-v10/ 3976 = https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/33626-wmp-mega-textures-v102/ 3979 = https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/26171-wmp-the-bridges-of-shoreline-county/

When recreating images, should we not add the recreations as new ones and leave the old placeholder images? That way creators can still see the name of their missing images (unless this is not necessary as the information is kept somewhere else, like in the tracker).

Yes, I thought of that and have made sure to check that. I haven't spent a lot of time worrying about it yet. I'll keep trying that on different things. Maybe I didn't wait long enough.

Great! It just occurred to me, and figured it'd help for motivation with seeing the totals increasing when verifying the 1 of 2 files. That seems odd. I presume you've downloaded those files before trying to Verify them? That's built into the system as a prerequisite before the option is available. If a file entry has more than one download, it'll also check that each file has been downloaded.

Oh that will help out a lot! I've been trying to find an easy way of doing that... On the subject of Verifying... I've come across an issue that I don't know if it's just me. There have been many items that seem to be complete that won't give me that option to Verify when I select them. And yes, they do indicate a 0 out of 2 for verified. The only pattern I seem to see is that it almost always happens if they've been restored by the 'File Author', if it is a map, or if it is a SC3000 file. It does pop up on other things, but it seems more random for that.

I've just added a new filter option: One More Verification This lists all files which only need 1 other person to verify, before becoming Fully Verified.

Yep. GFI And if original authors return later and want to restore their own, that's fine too. For now it's all about damage remediation so it's all being done in good faith to be as true to the original intent as possible.

Well then, the joke must be on me... I thought that was something I had noticed before today while checking my own things. I guess I was actually doing something else... That's the best kind of secret - when your confused and already think it's not a secret.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but if I select you as the 'Processor' and then select 'Any Missing' in the 'Filter by' category, it shows you as the Processor. I don't think they show in either Restored (verified or not) category untill all the 'Missing' components have been addressed. At least that seems to be what I've observed...

Hiya from Central Indiana. I still have my hand-me-down original game boxes for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in the SC series (tho the antique computers they ran on are now gone). I forget if the first was 3½ or 5¼. I'm not sure where mine are stored, but I could check some day. (I also have the originals for 4 and RH, but I bought those myself at the store.) Anyhow, welcome to Simtropolis.

Howdy from NE OK. I still have my original DVDs from the early part of the century. I can remember playing the original version from 3.5" floppies (or was it 5.25"?) At any rate, I've been playing a lot of OpenTTD over the last few years but recently started thinking about SC4, so I sprang for the $20 on Steam and here I am.

@justforfun Yeah, it sounds very much like you've handled the propagation well. (And I've later come to believe you don't even need to run time in the interspersed city tiles, but simply load, save, and exit to region, but I've never 100% tested that so I've not yet mentioned it.) I wonder if it's similar to that Corindustry test I did where many jobs local to the new residential are taken by other long term employees and so the new Sims only get to see distant jobs and get discouraged?

I went back to check on some files that I uploaded in the Restoration Tracker, but it doesn't show that I uploaded them. For instance, Rott's Dairy Distributors isn't showing in the Tracker that I restored it. Is it because that's not verified? The download page shows that I uploaded a new version. I hope the filter is working correctly because I was going to go back and double-check some items I uploaded. The only way for me to see that activity for now seems to be in the Activity Log.

As the creator of the after mentioned mod, I honestly also don't really know since I haven't used demand mod since forever (you can have high demand with CAM by growing insane population on a tile). But if the load order is correct, it shouldn't have any problem. Go ahead and let us know what's your result.

I don't honestly know. The time I really kept track of them was playing the original Timbuktu (or my Timbuktu Too version thereof) and that was using NAM 36 wherein I tweaked the Traffic settings to way beyond Double-Ultra. For long distance travel (when I created the 22 tile eternal commuters loop), it was using the standard railway, but I did modify some stations to handle up to 65k passengers. And it was 65k as the top end I could ever get on a query of the rail lines themselves. Otherwise my mods were minimal. I didn't use any demand mods, but I do always use my NKO and @Bones1's Less Abandonment. Then the rest is possibly attributed to my play style. I develop small towns and villages and farms on all the flat ground. (I used a C program that I added tweaks to to make maps SC4 compatible to generate them with lots of flat terraces between the hills and mountains.) Then I build up bigger towns just by playing each city tile for a few hours and going in sequence one or two away from that day's start and then also propagate the info back to the original tile each time. I've written a couple or three detailed posts on the importance and methods of said data propagation. I imagine you've seen those over the years. So, for me, it just sort of naturally happens. Growify wasn't yet a thing when I did all that so I don't really know if it would change any of the techniques.

I'm getting there, I just can't formulate a precise request until I identify the cause of those no-job zots. As of now, I would only be able to ask for a mod which forces sims to pick up any jobs available in the region. I realise this might complex, if possible at all. The DLL that makes you choose which specific demand to maximise or to suppress, can't find the author's name in the readme. As I mentioned, the no-jobs zots only appear in some of the maps, so I tend to think commute might be the problem. I have tried all the No-Kickout mods available and somehow none works, as the abandoned buildings keep redeveloping without requiring demolition first. But that obviously becomes a nuisance only because there is some abandonment, even if I do use the Less Abandonment mod too. As mentioned, that's my policy on all maps, and yet. Well, yes. I have been using it since the first version became available, my region is 100% plopped and growified and paradoxically the most populous maps work fine, possibly because they are more centrally located. Which brings me back to the question: can the sims actually find their way to jobs available beyond the adjacent tiles, or is there some Maxis bug related to commute? If there is a bug, that's what my mod request would ask to fix - though I can imagine all things related to commute are a headache. Thank you, is that compatible with the dll Demand Mod? And may I ask, Cori, do you manage to get your sims commute more than one tile away? UPDATE: Plopped the residential cap lifters, still getting the no-job zots. It seems the problem really is about finding the path to work.

@Kel9509 All at your own pace with this, and you (and others) are doing a fantastic job. Slowly but surely we'll get there! The Activity Log has a running list of who verified what, but I just added this to the table: So then it's clear who did the verifying when hovering over.

@Propfam Yes, I created a higher resolution version for modern favicon standards. The original still shows in 16x16 size on browser tabs. Here they are:

@Tyberius06 @monicadm @TheMurderousCricket @ilikehotdogsalot @911Diva Thank you all very much for your kind comments!

Guess what, row houses are back! Let me see how many new-ish designs I can come up with:

@JulianMIA @justforfun -----------------------------------------

Here're a few of those tested in the game: Street: One Way Road: Avenue: Avenue with a Street making a crossing: Street crossing Rail and Avenue: Street under Elevated Highway: Street under Monorail: And, ofc, you can easily test the other scenarios in a sandbox city tile. For the plopping of bus, subway, and other stations the direction of the arrow does not matter so long as one cell of the station touches the network the Sims need access to. It's the same for any of the buildings in the game. Like you can grow them facing a street and later draw a road touching them from the side or back and bulldoze the original street and they will still be happy. For the NAM stuff like roundabouts, I'll leave that for the gurus to answer or you might find out by testing.

I noticed I overlooked this: The only file type which is critical for placement is the .dll files such as SC4Fix.dll and SimCity 4 Extra Cheats Plugin.dll. Those need to be in the root of Plugins and cannot be in a sub folder. Many peeps (myself included) put the dlls in the install folder plugins rather than in the documents folder plugins. Otherwise for most everyone, no other mods, lots, bats, etc should go in the install folder's plugins. (Yes, there are modders who use it for a specific reason, but they are intimately familiar with why they do that.) For general organization of your plugins folder there are multiple topics on that and as I know your Google-Fu is excellent I'm sure you've found said topics already.

Every time you save the neighboring Job City tile the game calculates the average distance to all jobs in said tile and that is all it tells the neighboring tiles in that regard. So if the J city has jobs right at the border and none elsewhere they can even be seen as a short commute to the Rs in the adjacent tile. (I did a specific test disproving the old wisdom that neighboring jobs are always long.) I'm 99% certain all the way around the edge in J1 for the return trip will be fine. I doubt it'll work for sending them thru city tiles they did not originally travel thru on their way to work. I believe if they find they cannot return home they quit that job and look for another. One thing to keep in mind with regional play is you need to propagate the city info back and forth. Let's say you have city tiles all in a row called R1, E1, E2, and J1 with the Es being basically empty tiles in between. The Es will need at least one accessible job in them to convince the Rs they can travel thru them and beyond. So, you would start in R1 and grow some residents, save then exit, open E1 run the road thru and add some place at least one Sim could work, save then exit, same in E2, then in J1 the residential demand from R1 has arrived and you can grow jobs there. However, once you've grown the jobs you need to go back thru tile by tile running a wee bit of time (like a year) and saving then exiting until you get back to R1. Now in R1 they see the jobs in J1 and your demand for more Sims goes up. You grow them. Now you need to propagate that info back to J1 via the tiles in between. And this reminds me of the number one tip about saving a game. Never, ever use the Save and Exit or the Save and Quit choices. Always Save first then select Exit (or Quit) without saving afterwards. There is the potential to corrupt a city tile if using the and option.

Yes, it would do that. especialy if I made a Word doc or PDF rather than just a text file (although that is rare). I usually focus on the date listed as submitted or last updated for the appropriate file. I almost always downloaded the files within a day or two of being uploaded.

I am only still laying out transportation backbone but I'm keeping in mind all the places to incorporate these beautiful statues! Every big city train station for example...