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Wheezy

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Everything posted by Wheezy

  1. About my system: Samsung NP530E5M-X02US laptop, i5-7200U CPU, Nvidia GeForce 920MX 2GB graphics card, upgraded to 16 GB ram. (Although stock hard drive.) Not a high-end system or anything, but it should be more than enough. I have CPU's set to 1 and SC4Fix, so it doesn't crash, but game takes maybe 6 minutes to open. Plugins folder is 3.75 GB and partially datpacked, so it shouldn't be that bad considering how many players have twice that and don't report issues. I've also used that patch that allows 4GB virtual memory. This region is entirely large tiles, and lower-population cities are fine, but the one I'm currently working on is an almost built out large city tile with 700,000 people. I know you won't be getting peak performance with a city that size, but people have been building far bigger ones for years. And the way it's acting is very strange: Menus open quickly, and it usually runs perfectly smoothly, but then it'll randomly freeze for anywhere from 2-6 minutes; it can also take that long to rotate or perform random functions like unpausing - but only sometimes - and maybe 5-7 minutes to save. Meanwhile I'm running Chrome and Spotify just fine and using just half my RAM total. It drives me mental. SC4 Launcher was making it even worse, so I went back to opening it through Steam. Automata-increasing mods made it absolutely unplayable. I still haven't figured out how to change the graphics settings to run it off the graphics card because the process looks very complicated. Would that help? Edit: Solved. See below.
  2. Last time I tried Datpacking all my plugins into about 10 different files, it caused all the residential growables in one of my city tiles to disappear, but that might have been because I did it incorrectly. I'll try again at some point soon. Maybe it had something to do with the way my residentials folder was organized? Either way, thanks.
  3. Original post. So, that solution worked really well for a while, but when I bumped it up to 4.2 GB plugins (since it was running fine on 3.75 once I fixed it) and built a large skyscraper complex with a bunch of custom towers and parks, I think it made my CPU just tap out. Now, loading times are fine and scrolling is smooth, but when I plop or demolish anything - even a 1x1 open grass lot, the game hangs for almost exactly 30 seconds. (I repeatedly counted.) TBH, this might my cue to quit playing and do that webcomic I keep putting off. It literally hurts to give up a project I've spent hundreds of hours on, but it's not feasible to finish this region if every city tile's going to do this when it gets big, and since I have a laptop, just popping in an SSD in my second slot isn't an option.

  4. Can't find it?... Ask here!

    Wheezy replied to JakeMD's topic in SC4 - Custom Content

    Are these hologram projector roundabout fillers real or Photoshop? (Credit to @MilitantRadical's amazing CJ.)
  5. Update: I crossposted this to SimCity Reddit, where iambecome_dog solved it. I'll quote him here in case it helps anyone else.
  6. No, I'm using hardware rendering. When I switched to software for a while, I think it was actually slightly faster. Looking at task manager, it's taking up only 1/4 the CPU, and I'm running Chrome smoothly at the same time. However, I'm guessing it runs off Intel graphics by default

  7. Persistent Automata Mod

    Wheezy commented on Jeiman2008's file in Gameplay Mods

    Cosmetically, it's an awesome mod. But - this might be unique to me, or it could be a conflict with another automata plugin I have - it made the game unplayably slow. I thought it was a hardware failure or I'd just installed too many mods, but when I removed this one, it went back to running smoothly. Just wanted to let y'all know that might be an issue.

  8. Philadelphia

    Wheezy commented on korver's City Journal Entry in True Earth

    As someone who lives in Philly, near Center City, the modern versions are... Wildly inaccurate, but they look very cool. As a standalone SC4 city, this looks awesome, and at least you got the important buildings for the west side of CC in place. Not to mention some of the buildings you used as replacements are pretty clever. The historical ones are phenomenal with no criticism, though.
  9. Excuse the sardonic title. My goal is to be able to take a city block I've made in SC4, recreate it in Sketchup, then retexture it myself. I could just do this using Sketchup's downloadable models, but since SC4's divided into a grid of 56-foot tiles, it makes an excellent layout tool. So, whether it's Maxis's buildings or custom ones, I'm just looking for 3d models that fit the game's proportions. I can use substitutes to fill in any gaps. However, I have no idea if it's even possible to view the game's original 3d assets, and even more vexing, it seems all the 3d files on the exchange are .max. I've never had an .edu email and I'm not a professional CG artist, so I'll pass on the $3,700 program. So, in short, is there any way to find any in-game buildings as 3DS's, OBJ's, or any format readable by any non-Autodesk program? Or is there any way to download files I could open in BAT itself, so I can at least get their proportions and rebuild them quicker? Thanks, everyone.
  10. That would be fine if this was, say, a city journal, but it's for actual illustrations: Sketchup renders everything as line drawings, which I hope will mix seamlessly with my own lineart. Have you heard of the manga Goodnight Punpun? Its creator uses a mixture of toon-shaded 3d renders, photo tracing, and digitally pieced-together drawings to create backgrounds that wouldn't be possible by hand. His work is a (final boss, god-mode) example of the effect I'm trying to create. It goes like so:
  11. I thought Cities Skylines was gridless, which was one of my main objections to buying it. (The other is that I don't know how smoothly my PC can run it. I don't want it to play like SC4 did back when it was first released.) But knowing it's gridded just like SC4 will really help. To elaborate, I'll be using Sketchup to recreate small portions of the cities I've made in-game, but at life size and with more details like specific car models and signs, then use them for digital painting backgrounds. I'll add more photo elements, filters, and lighting thingummies (to use the technical term) in Photoshop to make it more convincing. Thanks!
  12. Thanks! So what I'm learning is that Cities Skylines is a better choice for this project.
  13. On further thought, since I was just going to use the game to lay out city proportions, I might be happy if there was just a way to figure out building heights. Width and depth in the game are easy since each tile is 56'6" by 56'6" IIRC. So if I knew how tall each building was, I could just find or make models of similar buildings and scale them to the exact same size. I'm sure there's a simple way to calculate distances in trimetric view that I'm not aware of because I'm bad at math and have never studied 3d modelling, though. Any thoughts?
  14. Thank you very much, that's the best answer I could hope for. I'd forgotten BAT and SC4BAT were two different programs, since it's been several years since I've used either. Yeah, GMax will definitely do, as long as I can view the models from all angles. If there's a way I could export to an OBJ or 3ds from Gmax, perfect, but if not, this is a good start.
  15. 100% sandboxer. Plop cheat all day.
  16. First of all, if the title's offensive to anyone, we can change it to "Show me your cityscapes" or something like that. I noticed a while ago that all of the picture threads here relate to specific cities or topics (favorite skyline, etc.). I've never seen a topic dedicated to all-around cityscape shots (which make excellent SC4 refences, BTW.) First of all, let's hold it to 5 pictures per post, just to keep people from flooding the thread from being flooded with poor quality pictures they took of skylines. Here are my first 5: (Sorry for the direct links. They don't look as good when reduced.) img.photobucket.com/albums/v48/Taiyou/13nw7.jpg A Tokyo morning. (Found on Skyscrapercity) img.photobucket.com/albums/v48/Taiyou/IMG_4003.jpg Rio De Janiero from an amazing perspective. (Skyscrapercity) img.photobucket.com/albums/v48/Taiyou/IMG_3246.jpg The Roosevelt island cable car over Midtown Manhattan. (Skyscrapercity) img.photobucket.com/albums/v48/Taiyou/SaoPaulo2.jpg A stunning shot of Sao Paulo (I'm not sure where I found this one...) img.photobucket.com/albums/v48/Taiyou/IMG_0954-2.jpg Tampa, Florida- Taken by me on 2/13/09
  17. It's easy. He wants to know how to go far even as to decide to use even go want to do look more like. (Seriously though, I think he's looking for a tutorial.)

  18. Show me your Cityscapes

    Wheezy replied to Wheezy's topic in Architecture & Urban Planning

    Shanghai 20 years ago. Shanghai now.
  19. Favorite - When a city comes out looking exactly like you imagined it, or better. - The NAM and everything about it. - That feeling you get when you find something on the STEX or LEX that's exactly what you need to fill a space that you had no idea what to do with. Least Favorite - Plugins with folder names like QUIGNST_FLRP_030328828832DOSASJJSSA and no pictures, leaving you with no idea what it is when you clean out your plugins folder. - Accidentally deleting a file that can't be found on the STEX anymore. - When your game starts crashing to desktop every five minutes because of one wonky plugin, forcing you to comb through the whole folder to find it. - Great buildings on crappy lots.
  20. I probably will rearrange my plugins folder to make it easier on myself soon. Anyway... Favorite: Building airports. Least favorite: Building airports.
  21. Cash Park, Radical Demand Mod, Industry 40x-er, You Don't Deserve It, and Buildingplop/Lotplop. Every city.
  22. Least favorite: INSTALLERS. I like to organize my plugins folder by building/mod type, and installers add several steps to it. You have to unzip it, choose a folder, agree to the terms & conditions, close the readme, reassure Windows 7 that the plugin did indeed install correctly, hit back, delete the installer folder, then try to find the building in the new folder maze the installer created, open a second window with the folder you want to drop the building into, then finally put the building where you want. Not to mention that sometimes, I’ll unzip the folder, then have someone call me, and I’ll forget to install the plugin before I start the game next, so I’ll have a few megs of dead weight slowing my game down. Or I’ll install a 10 MB dependency pack, forget to delete the folder, see it a few days later and think I never installed it, and end up installing it again if I forget to run a search for the filename first. Also, this might be why I have menu duplicates of a few buildings. I see how they’re necessary for complicated addon mods like the NAM, where you have to choose which features you want installed, left or right hand drive compatibility, and so on. But is there really any reason we need them for one 2x2 building with no dependencies? (Well, I’m pretty sure SC4Devotion enforces it, but why?) Right now, I have about 20 buildings to install in a row. Grah. Urgh. Ack.

  23. Show us your Oddities!

    Wheezy replied to borntoboogie's topic in SC4 Showcase

    - "So how'd you say you get to work?" - "Well, after I leave the wormhole on Birch Rd., I cross the train tracks, then go through the parking lot and into that rip in the fabric of spacetime on Jackson Ave..."
  24. At least every 15-20 minutes lately, SC4 will freeze up, and I have to Cntrl+Alt+Delete, close it, and restart it. When I enter task manager say the game is using 70-80% of my physical memory and CPU power, as opposed to the usual 10-30%. I really have no idea what's causing this, but it's just started recently, so it might be a plugin I've installed. I'm running Windows 7, if it helps.

  25. Freezing up at random.

    Wheezy replied to Wheezy's topic in SC4 Bugs & Technical Issues

    It's started CTDing again, so I'll give that a try. BTW: I have twice that many plugins (2,071 sub-folders in my plugins folder, to be exact), so that's going to take a while. I'll get to it this weekend, maybe. Also, if it helps at all, the CTDs almost always happen when I'm trying to change the zoom level. Usually when I'm zooming out.
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