live_cows

I find great joy in sharing my city creations and exploring others. I've been playing SC4 since it's launch and this game never gets old (sometimes I overplay and have to take a break). I've wanted an interactive region since the beginning, but the internet wasn't ready yet hahaha. I've browsed through these forums for a while regarding multiplayer setups or people's attempts at a setup. The ones I have come across always involve invasive installations or complicated coding to setup and always run the risk of a player ruining someone else's work. Sometimes even the software being used to synchronize across the devices loses support or suddenly isn't free. It seems there is an interest in multiplayer as the topic is brought up every few years. So, I wanted to toss around the idea again and propose a new way that I have done previously with some close friends of mine and see if there is any interest in this community to do one like it. I haven't come across someone else doing it this way yet, at least on these forums. Basically, a fully rendered region is "prepared". The way I've prepared a region was to add trees, clean up errors from the rendering and establish cities with placeholder names. The placeholders were identification in nature like "A01, A02, A03, etc". Next we used Google Drive to coordinate. The region was zipped and uploaded to the drive. All the agreed upon pluggins were also uploaded to a pluggin folder. Then we generated a spreadsheet which we used to claim city plots and keep expansion organized. As we worked on cities we would upload the city files to a separate folder on the drive. The next player would go to the drive and download the newest updated cities and then move them into game. The safest way was to move them into the "Downloads" region that the default game has and then import the city plots using the SC4 import option in the region view. Another player had success just dropping the updated cities into the Region folder. The means and methods could be detailed out better if there is interest in doing this. Benefits: Working on adjacent tiles or opening the same tiles wouldn't corrupt cities because each game is running independently and offline from each other. Opening any city would be possible to explore other peoples work, because each game is running independently and offline from each other. Player has total control of their game aside from using the agreed upon pluggins for this specific region, (personal pluggins can be moved to a temporary location). At anytime a player could "end multiplayer" and just continue with the region in a single player way. The remaining multiplayers could then decide what to do with the abandoned cities in the map, either erasing them or transforming them. Anonymity, no direct connections between computers or using third-party software (aside from Google, but players wouldn't need a Google account if they didn't want one). Negatives: NOT AUTOMATIC. It is extra work to upload everyones updated cities every time and then remember to upload your own work for everyone else to see. This is a major negative however, I'm assuming that those of us still playing this game 18 years on are willing to work a little and understand the basic mechanics of the file systems. Transportation connections to neighbors would still impact adjacent cities when uploaded, so coordination on connections would be required, but is less important as with other multiplayer setups which could have resulted in a corrupt save game. If the Google Drive is set up with public links (to keep anonymity) there is no way to stop someone from causing havoc by deleting files or other lame disruptions in the spreadsheets. If this happens it would effectively end this experiment and my remaining hope that people are kind. 15 gigabyte limit on storage (Google), but I would be shocked if a region went over that hahaha. Asypr's 64 bit Mac version of the game (v1.2) is not compatible with the PC versions. The cities will not load on PC's. Great thanks to @CorinaMarie for helping me figure that out last year! I used a backed up version of Asypr's version 1.1, and this multiplayer method works for me! If there is interest in this community for setting something like this up I'd love to do it! Or if anyone has any suggestions. Maybe I'll just do it and see if anyone joins. Take care,

Wow! I didn't realize SimCity could be politicized! I think you all summed up good responses. The structural problems and mistakes of the previous century of actual urban planning influenced the algorithms of the game. The game does/did not influence current urban planning. However, as mentioned they did inspire a generation of urban planners, myself included.

I reinstalled NAM37 and this issue went away, so it has to do with NAM38. I tested NAM37 and NAM38 without any other plugins.

I'm having a hard time figuring out how to fix the monorail pylons displaying on the Ground High Speed Rail network. I have NAM38 and everything else seems to be ok, just this graphical issue. See photo. I've been very careful with plugin compatibility.

I constantly create new regions on a Mac. I am not using Mojave but I am using SC4 version 1.2.1. This Simtropolis thread from 2014 helped me figure it out. The path I manually type is in bold /users/computer-name/library/containers/com.aspyr.simcity4.appstore/data/documents/SimCity 4/filename.jpg note that everything is lowercase. Make sure your image file is in grayscale mode, usually I use photoshop to convert if it is not. Your config file needs to be the same size as your image file, but the game will tell you if the image file and config file don't match, which is nice because then you can go edit the image file to match the dimensions of the config file. oops one more important thing, the image file needs to be in the main SimCity folder, not in your regions or plugin or a separate folder, just like the directory I typed above notes. It doesn't work for me if it is in the Region folders even if I type that extension into the image loader thing. Sorry, I'm not familiar with some of the technical terms.

Well the wireless card broke on my old computer so I'm not worried about it updating. I'm kinda annoyed Aspyr automatically updated my game on the new computer, but I guess thats how things are done now. I was aware new MacOS' didn't support 32 bit which is why I never updated to a new OS. @CorinaMarie Thank you for the offer! I've already rendered it on my old computer, it wasn't as slow as I was expecting. Mac made a good computer in 2009.

@Cyclone Boom I did what you suggested loading "Imperiel Valley" on my old Macbook and got the flat version @CorinaMarie and my friends got in the beginning. So, at this point the 64bit change would be the only thing that makes sense, because like what @Raymond7cn said, I also was sharing files in the past including just a year ago when I gave my brother a region. I may play this "shared game" in my old macbook since it works, just not as good as my new one (obviously). We'll see how it goes. Thanks again.

Thank you @CorinaMarie and @Cyclone Boom for your responses. Now I have to go investigate if I can roll back my Aspyr game without the 64bit. I am still using an old operating system because originally they said they were not going to upgrade SC4 to 64bit. What's the point of having a computer if SC4 won't work?

yay solved! Did Valley Marineris open too? I like the way the cliffs look with your plugin

Ok here is a link to a region I just pulled off the old Macbook. The last time it connected to the internet was 2018, so it does not have the 64bit update. Sorry, I couldn't do a smaller region it is too slow now for me to do much. Plus I thought it might be a good idea because there are some city files in this region that I haven't opened and saved since High School when I used a PC. The city "Los Angeles" is one of those files that was last opened and saved on a PC. The city "Valles Marineris" and "Argyre" were made on my Macbook. https://www.dropbox.com/s/2rthh3jarm9tu8w/Southern Katerack.zip?dl=0

@Cyclone Boom I was wondering that myself, and tried looking into it. I think Aspyr automatically updated my game when they released that version. I have cities on a old 2009 Macbook (bless its soul) that wouldn't have the new update because it can't connect to the internet. Let me pull a region from those files and see if @CorinaMarie still has issues (if available to keep testing, that is). I wish I had a PC to do these tests,.

I was able to load up your file fine and I added a new neighborhood and saved it. Attached is a zip of my save. Lua Small Region.zip

wow so weird. I was going to ask if importing individual cities would work, but you were one step ahead (and confirmed it doesn't work lol). I wonder if I should try reinstalling? I'm just afraid that will do something else. This old game is so finicky with our new advanced computers. Thanks for taking the time to investigate! That was very nice.

Oh man, so weird. I'm at a loss of what to do next. My game works totally fine with no glitches except for a crash every once in a while. I don't know why it would be doing this. A side note, a long time ago I downloaded a region that looked like that, as I opened and saved cities the colors would normalize. However, the fact my test cities were wiped out isn't encouraging especially since we wanted to keep sharing each others progress.

The City - New City type names are in all my regions. Here is a new zip file, I made two quick test cities in this version. https://www.dropbox.com/s/8kil69986xgppbr/Imperiel Valley copy.zip?dl=0 and also a proof of my render, not that you don't trust me.