lots

In response to the circular road post. I thought I'd add my own method of doing this, since I managed to do it with less.. First create a road using the road that snaps at 45 degree angles. Draw a plus sign like so: Next, go to the residential tab and select the unqualified worker houses. Choose the single lot option (for this pic I used the high density one since i wanted to make a larger circle, but anythign will do really). Drop down the lots as in the pic: Take the road tool once again, using the same 45 degree angled road and cross the plus where the tool snaps to the lots. Try to make them even on both sides, I also try to make them as small as possible, since the curved road toll will take care of the rest: Delete the lots and then take the curved road tool and connect your little road stubs: If you want, delete the "guide" roads as well... I just deleted the inner part in this pic... Using this technique, I have created half circles, layered circles, quater circles, etc. You can also expand this to make other shapes, such as perfect squares, tirangles, etc. The main idea is that you use lots to create exact measurements, mark off the bit of road, and then delete the lot and connect your bits together with whatever type of road you desire (curves, straight angles, whatever)

IMO, the website leaves alot to be desired. For the kind of site it is (highly interactive..) its pretty slow and clunky as a whole. For example, changing drop downs and such in the trade window causes the entire page to refresh. This shouldn't be the case, and it would greatly streamline (and improve performance since you're transferring less data) the process if the webpage was designed to use more dynamic webpage design techniques. Don't get me wrong though. It's great that we can even access and keep tabs on our cities via the page. I just think this is an area that can greatly improve with relatively less effort than other improvements to the game would need

heh you think? Looking at the error, it seems like the roads aren't conforming to the terrain well enough, and so if you have terrain that is really noisy (lots of small dips and hills), the road doesn't sample the height frequently enough to follow them exactly. Thus you have small hills where the road cuts through on its way to its next segment. Remember the roads are essentially straight. Curves are just made of a bunch of straight lines. At least as far as computers are concerned

As I said in my first reply, I'm using 7 as well. I've not experienced any issues except for the one crash. I expect it may be related to something else. Additionally Win7 has been pretty solid for me, with just the RC. I've probably had more crashes in the same amount of time on XP than I have in 7, tbh... Anyway do you experience crashes anywhere else? done a memory test? All your cooling is working properly? How's your CPU temps?

I was seeing this just a few hrs ago. So it certainly still exists. It sucks when you have a one way road that has a good chunk below the terrain. You can't see which way its going at that point

Can't you just manage your trades in planet mode before jumping into your city? That's how I do most of my trades anyway, since "in game" trade seems alot slower....

What are your hardware specs? Cities has only ever crashed once on me. And I've had several sessions that the game was running for over 5-6 hours straight (not playing the whole time mind you). I'm also running Win 7 Build 7100.

Don, just a side note: PSU efficiency drops off at a certain point, depending on how loaded (or underloaded) the unit is. So even if the unit can deliver, if you run it outside its optimal operational range, you're causing bigger power bills than you need Most PSUs have a sweet spot. Anyway, in regards to the OT: This game, to me, feels much more CPU bound than GPU bound. So, as long as you meet recommended GPU I'd say don't worry about upgrading that...

Since when did amount of power affect how fast a CPU was going You either have enough power to run the CPU or you don't. It doesn't get faster or slower depending on power available (ignoring power saving features...) If you have a good enough power supply, as long as it delivers the right amount of amps where it counts (the 12v rail for example), then wattage is less important. Heck I ran an over clocked Athlon XP back in the day with a Geforce 4 and 7 hard drives, two cd drives, two TV tuners, a pci IDE card, and an extra network card. It was pretty loaded. It all ran off a 350 Watt PSU What killed that system was dust... dust got in the CPU fan and clogged it up good. Let that be a lesson. Computer in living room where cat loves to climb on things = dust the insides of the computer regularly.... haha *sigh* Anyway I have to agree with Don on this. a 375W PSU should be plenty, if it is a good quality unit. If all he has is a CPU GPU 1 HD 1 CD/DVD/Whatever and the rest of the usual components. I could see a 375W PSU going a long way.. Though I will say, people tend to over recommend PSU wattage mainly because of all the BAD PSUs out there. Often they would under perform and not really deliver the 500-600W they promised, stable power, or high amperage across the various rails. This meant that if you got more than you needed on these poorly made units, you'd actually have a better chance of running it within its actual performance margins

My biggest want is make the core gameplay you have now solid, stable, and fast. I can run the game at max detail, yet because of some overhead on the CPU my framerate is pretty much stuck in the sub 20s no matter what graphics setting im at. Mostly only on my larger cities, but those cities are only 120k pop at most... Get the roads to work better (as some of these suggestions have mentioned), fix the various services, leisure, whatever so that they behave correctly (for example i hear schools are kinda funky). Fix the performance problems Fix performance, and then for me the rest is icing on the cake... Did I mention performance? EDIT: I forgot to mention: Thanks Mathew for getting this list to the devs!

TBH, I'd be more concerned about the CPU than the GPU Since we're listing credentials (I work in the video game industry) But yeah, if its an upgrade just for a single game, don't bother. Generally I upgrade hardware when there are alot of things I'd like to play that my current system just can't. I like getting mileage out of systems. I've had my current one for close to 6 years now.. its gone through a couple minor upgrades (new GPU: Geforce GTX 260 Core 216, and another 2 gigs of RAM). But my CPUs are still the same two 2.0GHz Opterons I got back in the day... Even on my system CXL gets pretty unplayable at times thanks to the inefficiencies in the game, and my slow CPUs by today's standards. Kinda sucks, because, like you, I'm in the same boat. I can't upgrade the CPUs without swapping out the Motherboard and RAM.... Though I suppose I could go to dual core Opterons and contemplate what on earth i'd do with the other two.. haha

CXL seems to suffer from some major efficiency issues. Just from my own experiences playing, it seems that once i get a sufficiently complex road network up, crap hits the fan. To me, it appears that whatever algorithm they are using for traffic annalysis, path finding, etc for the road networks starts to break down the more complex the roads get, and the more people that have to use them. Its painfully obvious something is up as you try to build new roads under these conditions. The system slows to a crawl as the new road is connected and added and new traffic flow computed. This also doesn't seem to be limited to just slower CPUs. Even the beefier CPUs out there seem to have issues with the game eventually. Granted they can probably handle it a bit more . Anyway for your problem, have you gotten the latest drivers for your GPU and such?

I design my big main roads with park areas on either both or one side. That way, when i come back to upgrade, I just need to delete the park and main road I am upgrading. There is no problem upgrading a road made like this if it is touching buildings.. The real issue is when one of my "super blocks" ( a 2 x 3 collection of regular sized blcoks [ which is 2 x 3 buildings each]) needs to be revamped for traffic flow because the small streets can't take the traffic. At that point though, I think i would delete the middle row of the middle blocks and rebuild with an avenue or something... Anyway, the idea is the smaller roads can get traffic from residenes to my big roads, and the big roads can get to useful places. Health, Edu, shops, work, etc. I do have some complaints about the expressway. It should be like a real interstate or whatever, in that I can say "be this many lanes wide." I say this, because I just got used to the smaller roads having all kinds of 1 way traffic, 2x3 lane traffic, and more configurations. Clicking on an express way reveals no alternate configurations. It would be nice to add a few more lanes, or configure their directions, carpool lanes, etc. to the larger roads.... I've also been considering tunnels for direct route connections between my residential areas and work. That way I can keep the work traffic isolated from the rest of the surface traffic. But long tunnels like that cost alot Not to mention the size of the area I'd need at each opening of a tunnel... Tunnels can't make very sharp turns

The resolution stuff doesn't really do anything for me either. I cant set windowed mode from the options panel, however I do see resolutions higher than 1440x900. To get Windowed mode, hit F2. Unfortunately this option doesn't stick. Why are all these options there and never saved?

Actually, I have been experiencing this framerate issue as well. As best I can figure it, the game is CPU bound. For example, when your framerate is dead, ramp your graphics all the way up to max. For me, there is no difference between low setting and high setting in terms of performance, however I at least now have a nicer slide show to wtach As best I can figure without any sort of debugging tools, the game is CPU bound, and only utilizes one core. I have: Dual Opteron 246 (that's like a 2.0GHz Athlon 64 X2) <-- i know bad match for the GPU, but one thing at a time 4GB RAM nvidia Geforce GTX 260 core 216 The awesome thing is, on a fresh load of the game, I can enter my larger city and run everything maxed out without any problems at all. So its gotta be something to do with some kind of runaway process (perhaps the process that computes traffic flow [path finding] is a bit too much, or something). In either case, a 2.0GHz Athlon 64 class CPU isn't enough to cope... I monitored RAM for a while, and it never goes above 600MB, so it can't really be a memory leak, but it was hitting the CPU pretty hard. A friend has similar issues, but after a MUCH longer time of playing than me. Then again he's got a Mac Pro. so there's a bit more CPU power there.. i think its a Core 2 @ 3.2? I don't remember off the top of my head. Anyway, hopefully the MC guys read this and it helps out