TM

Hi, long time player of the game, and just recently got back into the world of sim city. Planning on starting a whole new region, but my goal will be to be as realistic as possible-- which I know a lot of you strive for. It has come to my realization that much cities/ regions in the U.S. are gridded way more than the average eye sees. One such major aspect of this network of endless square is the way in which most farmland is laid out. According to most satelite images I've seen iva google maps, the farmland is perfectly laid out in 1 square mile squares with small roads bordering them. My question to the public here is, how can I determine what equals a square mile in the game? Is it set up to where the maximum area I'm alowed to develop agrictulture is a square mile? Is there some kind of landmark I can use to determine the length of a mile in the game (back to back empire state buildings etc)-- or is there just a number of squares on the in-game terrain grids that equals a mile? Sorry if the question has previously been covered, but the forum's search option seems a little out of whack currently, saying any word I type in is "common and deleted."

could I get the link to that topic?

Wow the default regions are small then. By the looks of it, for the sheer magnitude I want, I'll have to install a custom region off the stex. If I have any trouble with that, I'll consult the mac forums on simtropolis.

thank you! I did the math and it's basically 100 city tiles for a mile.

I've had a mighty mouse for a while too and I'm too accustomed to using the scroll ball for panning safari pages and zooming in and out while holding command at the same time. For me the scroll ball stops working every 2 days or so, from mostly which is probably true, oil from one's skin. For me it usually just takes a rag damp with water and rubbing vigorously for a good minute then rubbing it again (very hard) for another minute, with the dry part of the rag. I wouldn't dare use anything besides water on my electronics. I'm glad to know that you've found an easier way though.

Ok nevermind, I just tried a different folder, (Home > Documents > Sim City 4 Data > Regions.) I took a config.bmp image that was 16x16 from that folder and put it into photoshop again, making sure I had everything aligned. I turned it into a 96x96 image and put 36 of the original images into it. I loaded the region on Sim City 4 and it took my "state of the art in terms of two years ago" computer a couple minutes to load it. Now the only problem is the region viewer keeps the same viewing elevation as it did with the default size region. So my only question is how does one change the viewing elevation to encompass the whole region?

God damn that Chicago Spire looks so fake that it has to be real. I never thought the Egg building in Europe would be topped. This is my first hearing of it, when was it erected? Never mind just Wiki'd it haha.

Ok apparently I'm doing this wrong haha. I tried it two different times. Once I did Sim City 4 Data > Regions > Berlin > Congfig.BMP. The BMP file was this 16x16 image that was green and red. First attempt I copy and pasted it into a bigger image using photoshop, then put it back in the same folder, nothing happened. Second try I copy and pasted the file a couple times in the folder, nothing happened. Am I missing a fatal detail?

I nice new CJ. I will be sure to follow this one since it's brand new.

how does one do this with mac version?

Well in reality, cities are for the most part, gridded. If you have google earth you can witness this first hand. Most of the U.S.'s cities are old and established over the years, so they'll be composed of a grand series of grid boxes in differing shapes and sizes, mostly rectangular shaped. Bout the only thing that isn't grid like in most major cities are the major highways. But even in regions like dallas-fort worth, the suburbs are all gridded. And in Phoenix, even the highways are to an extent, gridded. Here are some recent pictures of my region I've been working on for the past couple years, but had a big 1 year break, so I guess I'll continue with my CJ if it's still here. edit: I fixed your photos for you so that they would be right on the post instead of having people copy & paste. ___idiotbox

Almost every large city is based on a grid. I'd consider gridding a city is one of the most realistic things one can do. Even most suburbs of major american cities like Dallas and Pheonix are gridded. On the other hand some old European cities like Paris are based off of roundabouts and start-like road patterns. That bridge is pretty sweet.

This is one of the few city journals that I enjoy reading. Great job.

Wow a lot of these regions blow me away, what time and effort you guys have put into them. I just got done terraforming mine piece by piece, the Kirby metropolita region.

Wow, such a plethora of great maps. On one had some are ridiculously creative, and on the other hand, some are ridiculously realistic, great maps you guys. David1314 That's one mean region you got there. SanAntonio Love those farms and the farm road layout. Anyways, here's mine, a work in progress.

Well the juicer has been very helpful, as I've already downloaded some juiced modds and my Sim City was able to recognize them. I still don't know about the BSC Texture Mega Pack though. And it's a sigh of relief, that after my trial period expires, the files are still recognizable. I better get busy at downloading then haha.

I've used the Juicer to juice the BSC Texture Mega Pack, but I can't find them in my game. Am I missing something or are they not recognizable. Also, when my trial version of Juicer expires, will the Juiced files still be recognized?

Love it, your industrial section is the thing of genius.

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.

Originally posted by: Voar Tok I would contact Tropod.

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: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.

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?

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?

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.