zebulon_stonehenge
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How can I increase the agriculture demand?
zebulon_stonehenge replied to Simaniaco1's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
Ah, always something new to learn in this game! I was just playing around with a test city to see what happens if I don't build any higher-education facilities at all, just an elementary school and a high school. And the result was, after running forward 50 years, all the age 0-30 sims have EQ (Educational Quotient) of 200, but all the age 31-99 sims have EQ=100. One of the results of this is that Agricultural demand stays positive! So, one way to have agriculture in big cities is, don't plop any colleges or universities; keeps the sims dumb enough to want to do field work. Check out these two photos: -
Yep, the station worked normally until I re-routed the rails up-stream using "viaduct" rail to separate passengers from freight. And, when I replace the viaduct with grade-level rail x rail crossings, the station works normally again (see attached image). And if SC4 would enforce the restriction that passengers can disembark at a "through-rail" station only from the rail that runs through the station, the "passengers get off in the field behind the station" bug would not be possible. But alas, SC4's programmers had no idea that "through-rail" stations would ever exist, so they wrote the program such that passengers can disembark if a rail gets near any station. That particular station is one of my favorites, "Emu Plains" by "Mattb325". Very pretty little station. Only handles 2000 passengers, but then, it only costs §150 to plop and §10/month to operate.
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I just discovered an interesting bug (not sure if it's in SimCity 4 or in NAM): when diagonal passenger viaduct rail crosses over ground-level freight rail (by using appropriate puzzle pieces) passenger trains can jump to the freight line below! This can be seen by using the "Route Query" tool (see attached image). The passengers then get off the train in the grass field behind the passenger station because their train is on the wrong rail. And it's not just the "route query" data that jumps rails; the passenger-train automata do also. Quite odd.
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That's similar, but not the same. See this image, of my existing "mystery" station (on left), and the two versions of the "Rural Halt" station (on right). Note that both the dirt and gravel versions of Rural Halt are 2x1 whereas Mystery Station is 1x2. Also note that the Rural Halt stations don't have the "time-dependent cars in parking lot" of Mystery Station:
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Ahoy, group. I was just playing around with one of my cities I hadn't touched in years when I noticed the puzzling transit station in the attached image. But I can't find this in my "trains" or "misc transit" menus, and mouse-hovering or clicking it yields no info.The rear half has cars that fade in-and-out depending on time-of-day. It does not even appear to be a train station; looks more like a bus station. But it's (obviously) not a standard bus station, nor is it a DeadWoods, SimGoober, or Cogeo RTMT station (the other bus stations I have installed). It's apparently a station that I uninstalled long ago, and I'm assuming the only reason it's not a brown-paper box is that its props are all already installed, so it renders visually but doesn't function. Anyone recognize what this is?
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Shops Under Raised Rails In Real Life
zebulon_stonehenge posted a topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
My, how one thing leads to another! I was looking at one of the "Spotlight" photos which Microsoft Windows 10 pushes to my computer every day or two, and it was an ornate stone building, clearly the central train station of some country that takes railroads very seriously (obviously not USA!). It turned out, it was the central railway station of Antwerp, Belgium. The north third of the building is all ornate stonework in rich browns and greys and contains the ticket counters and gorgeous main entry hall. The central third is a glass-and-red-steel half-cylinder area with train-boarding platforms on 4 levels. (All trains exit to the south only, except level 4, which has tracks running under the station going north and south.) The southern third is a raised-rail viaduct looking much like the rail viaducts in SimCity4 that it was startling. And they do have shops under the rails! Again the resemblance to SC4 shops-under-rails is amazing. Check out this station on Google Image Search, Google Maps Street View, and Google Earth to see what I mean. I've attached three photos to this post: The rail viaduct leading northward into the station, which shops under rails The main entry foyer (huge! cavernous! gorgeous stonework!) A montage of interior and exterior photos of the station INTENT: I'm posting this to show what these structures look like in real life, so as to perhaps spark people's creativity in their SimCity4 cities. NOTE: This is not a "BAT" or "can't find it" or "NAM support" request. For those who wish to create similar structures in SC4, similar stations and viaducts are part of NAM, provided that one installs all the "raised rail" components. Or, if one wants something closer to this (or any other) particular station, one could search SimTropolis and SC4Devotion (or BAT something one's self and post it to ST or SC4D if one has that skill set, or ask others to do so). -
Ummm... This was never in the "BAT Request" thread to begin with. Nor is this a "Can't Find It" request, so it certainly doesn't belong here. Since my intent was misunderstood, I think I'll repost in "General Discussion", but with added text to make my intent more clear. My intent was, as I state in my text: "I'm posting this primarily to show what these structures look like in real life, so as to perhaps spark people's creativity in their SimCity4 cities." My intent was not to ask any questions of anyone. As for finding things, that's not necessary. Similar stations and viaducts are part of NAM, provided one installs all the "raised rail" components.
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My, how one thing leads to another. I was looking at one of the "Spotlight" photos which Microsoft Windows 10 pushes to my computer every day or two, and it was an ornate stone building, clearly the central train station of some country that takes railroads very seriously (obviously not USA!). It turned out, it was the central railway station of Antwerp, Belgium. The north third of the building is all ornate stonework in rich browns and greys and contains the ticket counters and gorgeous main entry hall. The central third is a glass-and-red-steel half-cylinder area with train-boarding platforms on 4 levels. (All trains exit to the south only, except level 4, which has tracks running under the station going north and south.) The southern third is a raised-rail viaduct looking much like the rail viaducts in SimCity4 that it was startling. And they do have shops under the rails! Again the resemblance to SC4 shops-under-rails is amazing. Check out this station on Google Image Search, Google Maps Street View, and Google Earth to see what I mean. And attached to this post is a photo of the rail viaduct leading northward into the station, which shops under rails. I'm posting this primarily to show what these structures look like in real life, so as to perhaps spark people's creativity in their SimCity4 cities. Mod's note: I moved this here instead of the BAT Request Thread because I know for sure that some buildings like those have been done for the game, but I cannot find a link to them. -matias93
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What is "Blank_CO$$$"?
zebulon_stonehenge replied to zebulon_stonehenge's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
Ah, landmarks growing on zoned lots? How weird. Let me check my landmarks menu. Ah! I found it: a building in my landmarks menu called "Blank_CO$$$". It's an enormous building, 6x6 and twice as tall as the "Mid-Knight Office Suites" building it's growing on top of. I see the reason the "grown" version is invisible: it's a 6x6 building on a 3x3 lot, so it can't "root" itself; it's only visual effect is to make the underlying "Mid-Knight Office Suites" become invisible except for the foundation slab and front doors. I see now how to handle this: I'll bulldoze the "grown" Blank_CO$$$ and plant a real one on an unzoned 6x6 plot a couple blocks away, as it apparently provides a huge number of jobs (whereas most landmarks just eat money and do nothing). Thanks for the links! -
What is "Blank_CO$$$"?
zebulon_stonehenge replied to zebulon_stonehenge's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
HUH! I just noticed something in that photograph: Those 4 doorways at ground level are the exact size, shape, colors, and location as the 4 doors on the front of the building next to it (a "Mid-Knight Office Suites")... but without the building. It also has the exact same cluster of employees taking a coffee break out front (though you can't see it in that photo). It's as if there are 3 "Mid-Knight" buildings there, but one of them got damaged somehow, so that most of the structure, and the name, have vanished, just leaving the front doors, the 4511 employees, and the name "Blank_CO$$$". -
What is "Blank_CO$$$"?
zebulon_stonehenge replied to zebulon_stonehenge's topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
"Modding" as in creating plugins? I looked though everything in my plugins folder, and couldn't find anything like that. The only thing marked "CO$$$" was a 5x7 office park (which I don't even know how to invoke; I've never seen it in my menus or cities, and I don't know if it's a growable or a ploppable), whereas the mystery "Blank_CO$$$" building is 3x3 (height unknown). Now that I think about it, I ran into this "invisible building called 'Blank_CO$$$'" issue once before, in another city, a year or two ago. I ended up just bulldozing it, and it didn't grow back. But in this case, I'm leaving it up, because it's providing 5000 jobs to a job-starved city. Maybe the actual building is in the 5th dimension, and the front facade is a spacetime portal? :-) -
This "building" (if we can call it that) cropped up in one of my SimCity4 cities today, but I don't know what it is. It appears to be invisible except for a 1-story facade store front, but from the stats, it must be a huge office tower, but transparent. Anyone have any idea where this came from?
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3x3 OW Roundabouts Turn Brown & Disappear
zebulon_stonehenge replied to zebulon_stonehenge's topic in NAM & Transit Networks
@Tarkus : I wonder if it could be due to my swapping of plugins folders? About a month ago I was doing a lot of swapping of plugins folders with different NAM configurations (w or w/o MHO; w or w/o RHW; w or w/o NWM; etc). (Eventually I decided on a nearly-complete NAM with everything but MHO. I elected to go with Maxis highways with the new black asphalt texture & added ramps, instead of MHO's modular "symphony" ramps, which I found too complex; I love the Maxis auto-exchanges and auto-ramps for fast highway building.) But I don't think all of NAM is in "plugins", is it? I remember seeing NAM-related folders outside of "plugins". Perhaps some files in those folders no-longer matched the files inside "plugins"? That would explain why I was able to fix the problem by doing an identical reinstall of NAM on NAM, same version (36), same feature set (all but MHO). -
3x3 OW Roundabouts Turn Brown & Disappear
zebulon_stonehenge replied to zebulon_stonehenge's topic in NAM & Transit Networks
@Ramona Brie : Ah, yes, that did the trick! I did a reinstall of NAM-36, right on top of my existing installation. I selected my own current favored setup: nearly-complete NAM, but no MHO, no OWR arrow removal, no RRW. I went into my "Roundabout Test" city, and lo! 3x3 OWR roundabouts are now round with counter-clockwise arrows, and they don't turn brown or disappear. (See attached image.) So you hit the nail on the head: something got screwed-up in my NAM. @Ganaram Inukshuk : In this case, I'm not sure what got screwed-up. It's weird: the 3x3 OWR roundabouts turned brown and disappeared. And yet, they were still there, invisible, because when I bulldozed part, it charged me money, chunks flew, and the non-bulldozed portion became visible again. But when in the "invisible" state, the 3x3 OWR roundabouts were non-functional. I tried driving an ice-cream truck onto them, but the truck slowed down and the tires made gravel noises as if driving on gravelly dirt. And Ctrl-X "drawpaths" showed no paths at all in the roundabout, as if it wasn't there; the paths from connecting roads just ended at the invisible, nonfunctional roundabout. All fixed now, though, whatever the problem was. :-)- 7 Replies
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Check out the two attached photos. In the photo 1, we see a nice tranquil suburban R1 subdivision. But wait, what's that hovering in the middle? In photo 2, we get a closer look: it's a piece of a fractured garbage dump, floating over a bus stop! It seems to be hovering at an altitude of about 20 feet. This is in my second-oldest SC4 city, "Nuketown", a "medium", which I think I started working on back in 2005 or thereabouts. The garbage dump got broken, and I had about 5 pieces of broken dump with no road connections which I'd been unable to get rid of for the last 14 years (in real time) or 127 years (game time). Until tonight. Using various mods & tricks, I was able to get rid of all my dumps except for one, a two-square "floater" hovering 20 feet in the air. I think it's because I "Leveled" the area, and while most of the dump chunks moved with the leveling, this piece didn't, so now it's 20 feet higher than its surroundings. Oddly, even with road connections, the "garbage capacity" graph shows 0 (I'm exporting all the garbage to the city to the south), meaning the SC4 program doesn't know the dump is there. So it's a ghost dump. I tried the landfill eraser mod, zoning more dump next to it then unzoning, terraforming, immortal-lot killers, etc, but the hovering dump chunk persists. The sims don't seem to mind it, though; they cheerfully built homes all around it, though the houses right next to it appear to be redneck shacks rather than frump palaces; not all sims like garbage heaps in their backyards. Anyone have any ideas on how to get rid of it (save obliterating the city)? Or is this going to be here for the long haul?
