linamishima

Edit: I spoke to soon However, you can find a link below to the file listings. NOTE: The download links themselves don't seem to work What's this, I wonder?

Updated links again - looks like a few interesting things may well be hiding on the STEX!

Wouldn't smaller, more regular podcasts be easier for you then, and make the production of transcripts easier? And Voar, I tend to avoid downloading anything large nowadays without a good knowledge of the content. To me, a podcast would be more about the listening than the content, and on that note, it's also worth noting that I don't have much free listening time to hand. I seem to spend most of my days manning the helpdesk (this was only supposed to be a part time job ), the rest looking after my lass at home. I don't have a car, and living so close to work/uni using one would actually be silly, and I don't like the loss of sensory input when listening to a player whilst walking. However when I'm at the desk, reading something between callers isn't an issue at all

Somewhat of a bad practice to effectively bump a thread, but it seems we have another person or three looking for modds and downloads about. I'd also like to encourage more people to donate additional locations for any tools, if any actually exist. They'll be right up there once I see them - I come online normally once each UK evening

Dear TankMank, Yes, I'm being formal, I've found it to be a good way to get noticed. You see, it tends to be polite to check for other threads before posting, to see if there is any better news around. And if you had looked, you would have found this alternative modds and downloads sources thread, which might help you get what you need, and prevent you from annoying any mods, by containing any posts on this matter to one single constuctive location. I want it back up soon too, but intill then, let's try and create the best alternative we can

Sounds like the podcast was very interesting Unfortunately, I don't have internet at home, and hence I have to use my university & work internet facilities to get online. Not wantingto cause myself any issues, I'd rather not go using these for aquiring podcasts. Hence there's another person who would love a transcript, especially of the discussion of the future of everything On that note, I'd like to remind people that there is an official discussion thread on the future of Sim City availible over in the SimCity 4 general forum

GMax link added, as I know this is one that is aksed all the time

Originally posted by: Gnargenoxp.s. i think most ideas about what people would like to see in a new simcity game can be handled with the same system requirements that this one needs. They could easily make a flight simulator add on that could fly thru these cities, just like they made that drive thru add on for simcity3000. Maxis is just waiting for everyone to upgrade to 4gb ram and 8ghz processors then they will release a bigger game. quote> Unfortunately and very sadly for me (my system is about four years old ), I really doubt that is the case. With some simple maths you can actually show that detailed, per-sim calculations for each hour of a day (which would be nice) would really require at the very least an nice new up-to-date and rather powerful system to be able to run at any sort of decient speed. And RAM requirements also follow suit. With respect to graphics updates, I believe that the key word here is 'options'. Modern game engines are really approaching a very high level of realism indeed, and I'm a big fan of things looking shiny. But I'm also an oldskool gamer, who often simply prefers to have the needed information without pointless effects. Having options would allow anyone with medium systems to play the game but up the settings for screen shots, and those with older systems to still join in the fun.

I wasn't planning to include things like terrain and vehicle skin mods in the listing, since I was under the impression most of these were still availible via the STEX. However, since I am fairly new here, just let me know otherwise (and importantly, when something was previously on the "Modds and Downloads" page), and it will be added SC4Tool should have already been listed, and I've put the link to the plugin manager up there now, thanks

EDIT: The file listings are back up, but sadly it has trouble finding the files themselves if you try to download: Modds and Downlods Due to the upgrade, the "Modds and Downloads" page has been down for some time now, and a few people are starting to ask as to how to aquire the content once availible from there. To save the forum any further hastle, I've decided to collect together links to those resources availible from elsewhere, untill such a time as the "Modds and downloads" page is up once more. SC4TOOL (Mod development tool) http://www.simszone.de/simcity4/downloads/sc4tool_en.php SC4 Startup Manager: http://www.simszone.de/simcity4/downloads/sc4startupmanager_en.php NAM (Network and traffic mod to SC4) http://www.stnam.com Landscape Designer - found hiding on the STEX! https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?page=1&keyword=Landscape%20Designer&type=all Moganite's hieght calculation spreadsheets for MallowTheCloud's plugins (Just scroll on down to his first post within this thread) Other useful resources: BAT, Lot Editor, etc http://www.simcity.com GMax (needed for BAT) http://www.turbosquid.com/gmax I shall try to keep this list updated daily, post any other useful links in a reply and I'll add them in I might be a newbie here, but I've been around online a while, and hopefully this will help some people. Might want to sticky/pin this thread for reference, and prevent any further threads on this topic

Edit: There are new lines here, it's just not rendering them...

Dirk, to be honest, rawks completely. Having worked for a major website before, ran student organisations, and done a few other related things, I can totally sympathise with him. At no point would I have ever given him personally any trouble, as we humans tend to (1) be unable to help being ill, and (2) work too hard for things we dearly love As far as I know, ST is the only place hosting most of these files. I had assumed that they are held physically as files on the server (as opposed to being within a database), and hence simple links to them could be offered to allow us to get to work. NAM certainly looks interesting, but as I have said before, I have experience in using mods, and have learnt the hard way that if you are able to understand and use the modding tools, get the tools first and examine every mod to make sure it does exactly what you want. I personally want to investigate the all changes NAM makes before installing it. I'm building up my experience with BAT in what little spare time I have at the moment, but a lot of my ideas will need the more advanced modding tools that the modds and downloads page once linked to. Having not yet found explicit information on the return of that page, it is quite understandable that many of us, eager to get more involved with the community, are getting a little frustrated

Having just read through all this thread, I've decided to make my own thoughts known. First, though, a compliment - Having worked over at UO Stratics as the ideas den moderator, I know how rare it is for people to actually stick to sensible, viable and balanced suggestions. I'm now terribly impressed with all of you! I'm going to leave the "More..." type ideas off the following list, as they're all kind of obvious, and wouldn't significantly effect the simulation or modding communities. Kill the grid: Common amongst almost all the posts was the suggestion that the grid based system should be done away with once and for all. Whilst I might be an oldschool gamer, with no issues with grid based games, I'm also a huge fan of pretty I can see removing the grid to have all kinds of wonderfull effects on realism, too. More but Less Micromanagement: So there you are, developing your city, when you get a message saying that a school is striking. You fix that, and find yourself forgetting your building plans. Yet those building plans relied on turning down the funing on a large health centre! Micromanagement is both a blessing and a curse. It lets us do what we want to do, yet also requires that we pay attention to things which are just plain boring. Many games end up in the dire situation were only one type of play (no micromanagement, or heavy micromanagement) is actually practical. Ideally your own choice of playstyle shouldn't effect the end outcome that much when it comes to micromanagement. One solution would be make the city advisors actually do more. Each one of them can look after all the services that fall under their remit. You can tell the education advisor "Keep school funding at 50 pupil capacity over and above their current usage". You can then set individual schools to not follow this funding scheme if you want to manage them more carefully. The same applies to services such as water, for which some people like to lay pipes, and others just don't want the hassle. Perhaps, if they really wanted to get technical, the game could see how you like to lay out your roads, water and power systems, and try to replicate it automatically. Maybe then we'd actually use the autoroads more often Mixed buildings: In the real world, a lot of buildings serve a mixed purpose. They may well have shops opening up to the street, dentists and doctors on the lower floors, perhaps even a small workshop around back, and whole upper stories filled with homes. Obviously, this would be a great addition. Water, water, everywhere: Real rivers and lakes, that flow downhill. If we're not careful, we might empty them completely, or have servere flooding. Would also bring true roles back for hydro plants and the like. Chains of industry: High wealth residents want fancy cars. Fancy cars are sold by car dealerships. They buy the cars from car manufacturing plants. To make fancy cars, car manufacturing plants need microcontrollers, furnishings and shaped metal. Microcontrollers are made by high tech plants and need various rare ores. Furnishings are made by another plant, wanting cotton. Shaped metal is made elsewere, and needs good metal. Good metal results from a dirty industry place that combines two different metals to create an alloy. One of those metals is sourced from another city. The other comes from a smelting plant. The smelting plant needs ore to run, which comes from open pit mining (or perhaps closed, if you've banned them in your city). All of this should happen automatically without requiring the player to join the dots. Hopefully then the traffic being created would be more logical and predictable. Enhanced Region Play: Let's go one step further than most people... A lot of people are calling for seamless region play, or a greater ability to see other another city's limits to aid in planning. But I'm suggesting a Nation. You can combine your regions together to influence an entire SimNation together, within SimWorld. Dynamic Lots: Currently, once you've created a building, it's entirely down to the designer to lay out the car parks, gardens, etc. Looking though the lots in the lot editor, many of them are the same building in different surroundings. Surely this process could all be simplified, and hence also reducing the need for storage and design at the same time! I suggest the idea of "feature sets", those small common arrangements on lots, such as car parks, gardens, etc. These "feature sets" then go into "feature families", and buildings themselves have a number of "feature families" assigned to them as their grounds. Then, when the building grows, it will try and find room to fit in a feature set or three. The reason I suggest it like this is so that all those wonderful lot designers out there still have something to do - rather than designing the entire lot, they can now design the set pieces which can combine to make the end result. Advanced Ordanances: "People earning above 50k a year will get paid a significant ammount to use public transport" "Industry which causes high air polution in areas with low crime rates and high traffic have to pay triple tax" Let us come up with our own ordanances from the raw data, like the above! We don't all want to be stuck to our country's policies: Over in the states, there is no real equivalent to the National Health Services that exist within Europe. Perhaps we want to have free healthcare, or perhaps we want to charge the poor sims horrendous ammounts! Let's go... Downtown: Within cities, there has always been districts. Areas set apart from the rest. Perhaps the Mayor has enacted a tax break in one of them to high-tech companies. There's a chance that a police station's duristriction is closely bound around a block. Let us define certain sub-areas in our cities, and apply things to only those sub-areas we choose. Hi Fidelity: Currently, if Mr. Sim Blogs wants to live in a small shed, he has to use up a huge patch of land in doing so. Building scales are all out of wack. The easiest way to fix them is to increase the scale of the simulation. Likewise, there are more times in the day when people are traveling than morning or evening. Have an actual timer, or perhaps simply hourly simulation. And let us choose to only have a toll on a road between certain times. Traveling through time, inventions: Imagine starting a settlement before the industrial revolution, just a few farms and houses for the workers, connected by dirt tracks. Then in moves a blacksmith. A stable then turns up, and you need better tracks. You get your people thinking, and soon, they suggest a communal hall. Then they come up with the idea for a water wheel to help grind corn. A water wheel makes someone invent a textile mill, and the industrial revolution kicks off! SimCity 4 is always more fun for myself and my partner if we try to mimic real town development, starting off small, enlarging, trying to fit services in. A timeline with work needed towards inventions would help to give this far more meaning. Imagine if then your entire region acted as one when it came to research! Individual cities would have to meet certain criteria to be the place to come up with an idea or to utilise it, but it's the region's combined EQ that effects the invention process. This, combined with a resource chain, would radically increase the importantance of region play, and bring entirely new meaning to all of it. Without a doubt, it is that final point, a passage of time, with the mayor's decisions effecting what gets invented, which is what I would most really love to see.

Micah, We are well aware that Dirk has been unwell, and is working on the homepage. Given that no time for the return of the mods and downloads page has ever been mentioned, I personally assumed this to be part of the homepage project. Indeed, having checked on the main upgrade thread regularly for the first week or so afterwards, little or no information was given about that service previously offered. It has now been quite some time since the upgrade, and the lack of the modds and downloads page is actually making it quite difficult for newcomers to get properly involved in the community. The tools availible there are important for making the most of the STEX and getting involved in contributing to it, as far as I can gather. Many people have been directed at this site specifically for those said tools. We're not asking for a fully detailed and well designed page, just some links to the files previously listed would let those of us yet to aquire them quite happy indeed.

I'm a new person here, and I'm very eagerly awaiting the return of the mods and downloads section indeed! I've learnt from my experiences with other games, such as the fine Morrowind, that it helps to have the modding tools to hand when aquiring mods, as this allows you to properly check them out, tweak them as you need, etc. Plus, I'm eager to be able to do more than the BAT and such allows!