cammo2003

Well, they reduce desirability for a block or so. Overall though, decent phone coverage tends to be a slight plus for desirability.

Heeey! That'd be a great idea!! Zoning for one then say Control-Click-Drag to zone commercial onto the same lots too, allowing for multi-use. Though it'd have to be restricted so that Residential-Industrial lots are only available for low-wealth sims if at all. I have already expressed my desire for mutli-purpose zoning/building across these forums (especially when buildings in SC4 and the modding/downloading community clearly had the look of it but were forced to choose either resi or comm) and really like the idea(s) proposed here! How genius! I really WhereisSC5 exemplifies how it would feel in the game and how PTPLauthor gives a technical example of it working in game. Heck, even the way Gillsman breaks down the zones (which, I really like the extra layer of complexity and control when shaping your city) can really illustrate how it could all come together. As far as it collaborating with the simulation, for example, you have a commercial shop, ground floor, w/ apts. above. The agents could send out the "come work today" signal to the apts. 1st, and then to the rest of the city. I mean, as a developer said in the Reddit answer session, the simulation DEFINETLY supports it - I just am praying they'll include it! I mean, realism, right? I actually think a simpler way to handle multi-zonal concepts is something like this: LD Residential: Uni-zone, homes, small villa complexes (which aren't uncommon even in quite low density suburban areas. Many are often aged care facilities, which are generally higher density than most surrounding homes because of the cost of providing the extra facilities they require). MD Residential: Technically dual zone, 10% (say) of buildings dual zone (this basically represents smaller apartment towers that have a couple of shops on the ground floor. HD Residential: Technically dual zone, up to MD commercial podium with a MD tower on top. Maybe 15% dual zone structures. For dual-zone structures, the likelihood of the dual-zone being applied to a building plot would increase in proportion to proximity to a highly trafficked road, or a PT stop (this is realistic). LD Commercial: Uni-zone. Mostly big box stores, petrol/gas stations, mom and pop stores, with a few small two-three storey office buildings. MD Commercial: Technically dual zone. Mixed developments would be equivalent to a MD Residential structure HD Commercial: UNI-ZONE (very few large commercial buildings feature residential components, and those would be covered in HD Mixed: Consistently dual zone. Near equal parts Res/Commercial (usually serviced apartments with a residential component). Industrial zones would mix only with commercial, not industrial, and these would mostly be big box stores (many such stores locate in such areas for logistical reasons, and such stores are often dedicated to primarily servicing other businesses). They'd also follow the same Rural/Light/Heavy schema for the most part as SC4, mainly because this is for the most part how it is in the real world. Rural/Agricultural zones are usually zoned as such; Industry is usually either high/low intensity. Both Light and Heavy industry would allow light commercial within their bounds. yeah, it'd be nice. I'd also not mind a way to get real world terrains directly into the game with a minimum of fuss. With water level data if available.

I know you've probably been flooded with questions regarding the online/offline dilemma, but here's a different one. I am forced by personal circumstances to use a 3G internet connection (no physical line to the granny flat I live in, although that particular issue should be fixed within the next 10 years what with our NBN under construction). While it can be reasonably quick, it can also be intolerably slow at times, and is notoriously unreliable at times too. I don't intend to play multiplayer much, but I do like the idea of having my city's economy connected to a global economy, subject to market fluctuations, as real world cities do not exist in a vacuum, and are subject to and affected by such fluctuations (higher oil prices, in the longer term, for example, tend to create a greater shift towards the use of public/mass transportation). How much data is involved in these communications, and how often does the communication occur?

Will there be a mechanism to import regional terrains from external data (bitmaps, DEM data, etc.)? I almost exclusively use region maps generated by others, or myself, from real world terrain data. Furthermore, would there be a way to easily specify areas you want wooded from the terrain generation scheme? "treeing" is a tedious (but worthwhile) task in SC4.

Handling multiple tiles as financial entities could probably be handled pretty easily in code. You'd simply include a mechanism to designate Administrative regions (this would be accessed from a planning mode. In planning mode, simulation would be stopped, releasing resources. Planning mode would treat the whole city organism as one contiguous area. Within this could be several overlays: -Administrative Regions/Councils/Local Government Areas. This could be a standard overlay in a region view. You could group tiles together by, say, Ctrl-clicking (this seems like the most intuitive method) -Transport planning overlay (within this could be a sub-section for network diagramming. There's no reason this couldn't be generated, given the agent model's being used (this could be useful for designating stations marked as key interchanges. This would affect scheduling). This would be a region-wide overlay with simplified graphics. -Utilities Overlays I do hope we aren't limited to only 2x2, if only for the sake of Airports. It may be irrelevant if tile switching and airports are designed properly (if it's possible to drag runways and taxiways across borders (Terminals I could deal with not being able to go over borders; It'd be simple to plan your airports accordingly, and Terminals would rarely if ever be more than 1.5-2km long) for instance, or perhaps if airport "zones" were laid out in a planning view which allows you to work across tile borders).

Yeah, I keep getting that #2000 error as well (You are not allowed to access this forum) as well. There has to be a glitch somewhere, because I can't think what I would have done to warrant banning. Heck, I've never raised so much as a warning in all these years. My warning level has always been 0%.

Just a quick shot to whet the appetite. Apologies that I haven't produced updates. I've been having trouble with my internet (gotta love wireless - NOT!), and have also been a little busy. Update should come in the next few days, connection standard pending.

I often use the MHW to cross important avenues over rivers (the idea being there'll be no need to upgrade later). I also use them in hillier regions (as the side barriers act as an additional safety feature). Senatoria doesn't have many hills, so the use of the MHW is pretty much limited to being used as avenue bridges in certain locations, short "quasi-freeways", as tunnels for the RHW in certain situations, and a few situations where things are too tight to use the RHW.

Looking pretty good, but I just can't help but feel it needs *something*. Perhaps raise the reflectivity of the glass on the tower ever so slightly? It's *this* close to looking like a real stunner.

Oh, there'll be plenty of skyscrapers in the next update. That's the HSBC Arena. It's on the STEX somewhere... Can't remember who it's by though.

I haven't included an orienting image this time. You'll recognise the plaza from the last update (it's the same one). South City One of the more recent redevelopments in Senatoria is the resumption of the former South City industrial district for commercial. There is still some industry in the area: You can see the old airfield as well with still a few planes there; that's going to be demolished soon; the nearby airfields have more than enough capacity to compensate. The old grid layout from the industrial days was retained throughout the redeveloped area. Seha's toying with the idea of some sort of landmark for the lower headland (bottom left). I can't say I'm opposed to the idea; being at the junction between the Loudon River and the Inlet, it certainly has a standout location. Whatever it is, it won't be an observation tower; we already have one of those in downtown. Walking down the fairly freshly paved streets of South City is quite a different experience from downtown. The road layout in this part of the inner city (to be fair, it could be considered an extension of downtown) is much neater thanks to the industrial legacy. One of the more successful parts of the redevelopment was this: The inletside stage of development wasn't originally planned to be anywhere near this height, but there has been a lot of pent-up demand for office space in the city over the past few years. This continues at a somewhat more moderate pace to this day. As you can see, the South City district is best viewed at night: You can see the South City Plaza in the background, which we've already visited. The district of small shops visible just to the left of there is working itself into some sort of Chinatown. This wasn't expected, but it's quite welcomed by the authorities, as it's generated some life for the precinct. You can also see the heliport; Senatoria's inner city has four or five of these, and this is the newest. One of the more unfortunate problems the district has is a problem with problem drinkers. Night after night, they crowd Chinatown (also a popular bar district), and invariably make an awful mess. Brawls aren't uncommon, although it's generally considered safe. Seha's passion for law and order was obvious when he opened the South City Local Command (not visible, but you'll see it later).This was one of his earlier moves towards the right. At the time I, and I'm sure many others, wrote it off as just another example of the typical politicking that goes on. Sadly we were mistaken. Seha has consistently pushed for tougher laws, tougher sentences, and in general a tougher society. Too bad, he says, if you have a drug problem. Too bad, he says, if you had a poor upbringing. If you did the crime, you'll do the time. In addition he has pushed for, and in a number of cases successfully so, the cutting of prisoner rehabilitation programs. Needless to say recidivism* rates in Senatoria have risen dramatically in the past few years. To finish, here's a final shot with an overview of the main area of the South City district: The Local Command is smack bang in the centre of the district, seen above (the building on the corner with the bluish nightlights not far from Smith Tower. NEXT TIME: You've probably been waiting for it. Downtown and its environs. =========================== OOC: As you can see folks, I did get the nightlights fixed up at last. Turned out the exe was patched. It was just in the wrong folder

The major problem with SC4Mapper in Vista/7 as I recall has to do with the fact that your documents folder path points contains a \U in the file path (right at the beginning, as it's normally located in C:\Users\username : I believe that wouanagaine used this as one of the command switches, and so the program interprets the C:\Users\username\Documents\SimCity 4\Regions path as a command switch when it hits \U. I moved my personal Documents folder (which moves the SC4 plugins and regions folders as well by default) (terraformer I believe does NOT use such a switch, and that's why it works by default as long as you have the required .dll files). (note that username above would be replaced by the name of your user account on the computer. You can move this folder using the following technique (this technique should not cause any problems, but you may need administrator privileges to perform this action: If this doesn't allow the program to run, it's fairly simple to move the folder back using the same process (except you'd use the original folder location at steps 1 and 5). This process also changes the registry entries for your personal documents folder, which SC4 and most modding programs read from (I believe SC4Terraformer and SC4Mapper both do this, as do most of wouanagaine's programs, and most modding programs for SC4 in general. As such, it is important to follow the procedure for moving the folder above; just moving the folder in Explorer as you would any other folder doesn't update the registry, and programs will still look for C:\Users\username\Documents\... unless you edit the appropriate entry in the registry (and I'd only do this if you know what you're doing - A badly composed registry entry can really screw up your computer). You may need to change a few settings in some other programs, but you'll only have to do this once for any given program. It should be a relatively small number of programs that will require you to do this however; most programs these days read from the registry entry and should update the location of this folder internally themselves without any intervention. Note also that you still require the files that wouanagaine says you need in the readme/his support thread over at SC4D/the relevant thread here on ST. Note also that I can't verify that this works on Win7, but it does work on Vista (I used this workaround to get it working myself), and there are reports in the comments on the download for SC4Mapper at SC4D that this trick does indeed work in Win7 as well).

As far as the hospitals, there's a few on the STEX. Ill Tonkso's St. Addieline's Hospital I believe has quite a high capacity (not 100% sure on that; I may have modded it for personal use). There are a few other high capacity hospitals by other folks as well, but can't remember their names, but you should find a few by searching 'hospital' on the STEX. I noticed you have large treed areas near the edges of the area; these could be used for your highways: . The one going across would require some demolition, but this is actually fairly commonplace in real-world cities, and it wouldn't be too much, especially given I read you were going to rezone some of that area anyway. I've also given a few other ideas here as food for thought; I'd relegate that island to industrial uses and move the commercial that's there onto the main area (in cyan above). The avenues in yellow should have regular bus and subway stops along their length; the orange lines are just to give an idea what you could do with one-way roads through the inner areas. Keep the airport where it is; being oriented away from the main area in the above image, you shouldn't have too many troubles. Do you have a region shot? It'd be helpful in providing further advice. The round things are highway-highway junctions, I missed a few, sorry about that. Just some food for thought.

Here's my current one: Theme: ClearScreen Sharp; Rainmeter for the desktop, using the Omnimo 3.1 style. May be best to right-click: view image or similar on the above. Gets cut off by the ST theme if you just click on it normally.

To be honest, I use a bit of everything. Downtown these days is usually some sort of near-grid. It's never a perfect grid because... well, how many cities have a perfect grid layout? Very few is the answer. Things then generally break down into suburbs, where I use 60's type sprawl (with roads that do cross each other), then into more modern suburbia - dead ends and such. Although often the last two intermix (These are meant to simulate "redeveloped" areas). When it comes to zoning, I do tend to follow the road hierarchy, with many ribbon centres forming near significant road junctions, however, I do sometimes build ribbon areas on "isolated" roads, but these are usually justified by nearby transit stops, this is more common in my inner cities. In the suburbs, there are large areas of low density residential interspersed with the odd huddle of shops (and sometimes a supermarket lot). However there is one other area relevant here; My cities are invariably polycentric, having many "little downtowns", although there is always a strongly dominant one roughly in the centre of the city. Density increases fairly gradually as you get closer to the main CBD (and to a lesser extent the same happens with the smaller centres and around transit stops. Industrial is scattered throughout the city, usually near significant rail and/or motorway infrastructure or junctions to facilitate more efficient freight movement. Transport: I build my cities with "interchanges" in mind. The entire network is "designed" (which means plopping a stop every so often on most roads, avenues, and one-way roads - there are almost never stops on streets) so that one can get on a bus, and it won't be too long before it gets to rail or metro (I treat subways and el-rail as if they are a metro standard service), where sims can (and do; My metro lines in particular are quite successful; my downtown congestion map is mostly green as a result). That's of course not to say that drivers don't occur; I provide extensive, interlinked orbital motorway networks. Sydney is probably a good real-world example of how my zoning looks. My motorway network however is a bit more American (Senatoria has three orbitals; inner, middle, and outer).

Where are we today? Motorways in the Inner City (and some Parks, too) I woke up bleary this morning, which is never a good sign. I hate Wednesdays, which doesn't make things any better. Senatoria's inner city motorways are, for a city of our size, quite extensive. The city actually has three orbital routes: The Inner (which consists of a number of freeways with a number of names, which is an historical artefact of the fact they were built as planks in a larger system) The Middle, which again has a number of names, and the Outer Senatoria Orbital Motorway System, which only has three different names along its length despite its' astonishing size (we referred to this in the last update as the M57). Today, we'll see a lot (though not all) of the Inner Orbital. Motorways on the Northern edge of the CBD; The M3 and M31 (which flirts with the CBD's Western Edge. We've already seen another part of the M3; It featured in my intial message. The CBD's motorways form quite the labyrinth around the CBD, flirting with its southern edge also. One area I want to show you before we move on to the other motorways is City Island: As you can see, the island is bookended by two landmarks. The one on the northern end of the island (top of the first image above) is City Hall. Yes, this is the building I referred to in the first update. City "Island" is a bit of a misnomer these days as works in the 60s (when much of Senatoria's inner city motorways were first constructed). It got its name mainly because of the fact it plays host to City Hall. In the second image above this text you can also see Island Stadium. It was rebuilt much more recently than the 60s (in the late 90's in fact), but the name has stuck. I believe it has a sponsorship, so that's not its official name, but people always call the place either Island or City Stadium. The construction of the M33 was a controversial chapter in the city's history. It severed the what was then the city's largest contiguous parklands. Tempers at the time flared on both sides of the arguments. Planners explained that the link was an essential leg of the Eastern Motorway, which now links Senatoria to Oesthaven, one of Senatoria's larger ports on its eastern shores. Without it, it was argued, traffic would snarl along the city streets. Not a favourable thing when trying to promote your nation. You can also see one of the city's smaller convention centres above (about centre). It's usually used for live music performances rather than conventions (thanks to its location; the park and Eastern CBD area ensure a good buffer against noise complaints from inner city residents). NEWSBREAK We interrupt this broadcast to announce that Seha has officially announced the North East Infrastructure Program. "It's hoped that this project will enable the city of Senatoria to better handle its freight needs." He added, "the NEIP is stage one of a much larger plan to segregate freight movements from passenger rail movements, to the benefit of both. The project isn't yet in its final form, and further details will be available through the usual avenues. We urge you to comment if you have any suggestions or objections to the project." And so it went on. It's very odd for the President to announce such a project... Normally this sort of stuff is handled by the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Planning, not the President. Very peculiar. "The President will now take your questions." From the SPAN (Senatoria Political Analysis Network): "Is it true that this is all a vote-buying exercise to try and push through the referendum? We've heard this from more than just a few sources. They seemed to be very uncomfortable with the power shift involved." Seha: "This is absolute nonsense. I don't know if you should trust your sources." SPAN reporter: "I trust my sources, Seha." The look on Seha's face at this moment was telling. He knew who was responsible. And from the look in his eyes, they were going to pay for this... The rest of the questions were bland, no need to report them here. Today was a short day at work for me, and on my way home, I decided to stop in Northside Park. I love its' fountain; it's one of the city's finest: Apparently the management at that Marriott hotel was horrible. Before I go, here's a shot of South City Plaza at night: NEXT TIME: We'll see more of the South City area... -------------------- OOC: folks, that's probably the last night shot you'll see for a while. It's noticeable, but not glaringly so above: I've lost BAT nightlights. And yes, the BAT patch has been applied to the game post re-install (I had a computer problem since last update). In good news however, I now have an additional 4GB of memory.