JShoota

I think it means they bet the farm on this game and it's terrible (hence, only 100k copies sold). I would be surprised if they last the summer.

Try turning the shadows down to low as well.

Turn hardware rendering back on, but turn shadows down to low. I am running windows 7 64 bit with no issues.

Thanks to Simtropolis for this! Hint: I got my key from the chat rooms.

Setting my virtual memory to system managed solved all of my random crashing issues. Give it a try.

Check the readme file that came with the file you downloaded and look under the "dependencies" area. You will need to download them and put them in your plugins folder as well.

As Constantina stated, this is a computer issue. It seems like the game is working on background things like traffic routing, etc. while this happens. I have a large map that has around 400K sims in it, and whenever I change anything to do with the road or transit systems, time stops for about 30 secs. Try the virtual memory thing as she suggests.

The way I read his post, he is asking if he can place anything under the bridges under normal circumstances. Hence, the answer is no. As prince_of_sims stated, there are a few lots out there that make it look like there is something under the bridge, but they don't actually allow you to build anything that you choose under it.

Right.

I usually only start with a bus system because, as Peorth stated, it's just too expensive to go all out in the early stages of the game. I always, however, leave plenty of room for future transit systems. I try to create transportation corridors (basically, an avenue with 2 blank squares on each side) that will allow for future highways, GLR, monorail, etc. I always feel guilty bulldozing a developed plot of land to make room for transit. Another trick I use, is to build just bus stops at the beginning, but then upgrade them to SubBusway lots later (subway and bus station in a 1 x 1 lot, found on the stex).

Originally posted by: cnystrom1 i dont really understand why a ring road would reduce traffic... they seem to work though... anyone care to explain why they are so effective? yes, im a little clueless with road building... lolquote> Assuming you are talking about real life, ring roads are effective because they route a lot of "just passing through" traffic around the outside of the city. For example... as I originally posted, I had recently been in Texas on vacation. We drove from Dallas to Galveston, going straight through Houston along the way. Instead of driving directly through Houston we took the ring road around the outside of town. Taking the ring road probably added 15 or 20 miles to the actual distance of our trip, but travel time was way less. Take this example, and imagine tens of thousands of trucks and cars doing the same thing, and you can understand why this works. As far as Simcity is concerened however, it doesn't seem to work as well because sims aren't intelligent enough to know that there is less traffic on the ring road then the freeway that goes through the city center. The freeway that goes straight through the city is always a shorter route distance wise, so they take it instead. I think the only way it would work in game, is to force the sims onto the freeway by cutting off any other routes. This could be disaterous however, as commute times would probably soar.

Wow, great responses. Thanks a lot! I agree that the game was not really designed to handle massive amounts of urban sprawl, like I saw in Texas. I think I will still do some experimenting with it however. I recently started a new region using the main island of Hawaii as my map, and am going to try to implement some sort of ring road concept.

After recently going to Dallas and Houston as part of my vacation, I find myself considering how viable ring-roads are in SC4. For those that aren't familiar with this system, it basically consists of a freeway that circles all or most of a large city, with arteries that travel from the ring, into the city center. The completed project tends to end up looking like a wagon wheel. Most large cities in North America have at least one, some with 2 or 3. Anyway, I am wondering what your experiences have been with this type of road network. I first thought, is that it will not work very well in the game because of the way sims travel. (shortest route, as opposed to quickest). The ring road works in real life because it is often much faster to travel around the outside of a city instead of fighting the traffic in the city center. This is a concept Sims can't seem to grasp. Any screen shots would be appreciated.