Crissa

I have several Macs, but mostly they're identical. A 2 GHz iMac, a 2 GHz Mac Pro (which I don't get to use) and a 2 GHz Macbook (but it does have 4G ram instead of the 2G on the other two). They're a bit old. I do know that the video card on the iMac and Pro is better than the Macbook, and that they don't make horrible wheezing (fans) when playing the games. However, SimCity is slow on any of them, since day one. Does anyone have experience running SC4 on other Macs? Looking at it, it should run much better on a core than has a flat faster clock - so while going to a 4-core won't do anything, going to the 3.6 GHz would give a 50% performance boost, as would doubling the graphical memory to 512. -Crissa

Can we skip saying that it's 'illegal' to patch a program? It's not. It's inconvenient and near impossible. Even recently the US Supreme Court even issued a ruling that it was legal to patch programs to no longer use a dongle or other hardware control if doing so would be for the normal use of programs, <i>even if the copyright holder still sold the original product</i>. Personally, I didn't understand this ruling, as it was way outside their previous settings - but it was a series of industrial clients, dongles used to be big in the factory-floor software, and the majority on the Supreme Court are really business-friendly. So even if Aspyr is still selling the old program, the fact that technology has moved on and they haven't provided that particular patch basically means it's legal to do so. Legal, but very difficult. And unlikely that anyone would sue you, as you'd be adding, not subtracting, to the value of their product. Honestly, I find the Mac so slow (nothing to do with the Mac, as the game is single-threaded) that such things are kinda annoying to have turned on. *grumble* -Crissa

I downloaded Gizmo_Effects-V2.dat, under the impression this was the addon that added god-mod rain. But I can't seem to get it to work. Does anyone else have this one working, or know any conflicts with it? -Crissa

The difference between SC 2K, 3K, and 4 are the rendering engine and options available. 2K was the best there was... And 3K was a huge disappointment. It had less options, added farms, and attempted to be 'realistic' in the presentation. While it was very pretty... And I loved the automata, it was a huge waste of money. 2K sold more units after 3K was released than 3K did. It was released on more platforms, and in more versions. 4 has all the options, expandability, that 2K has, and more. It still ended up being unfinished, but here we are, years after its released, it still sells for top dollar. We still have expansions for it being made. It rocks. Sure, I miss seeing the little girl riding her horse from the city to the farm and back, but really... If you want less options in SC4, it's possible to do that. -Crissa

I'm using simoncre's hole-digging lots, and it seems like they worked flawlessly when I tried them out at first... ...But now that I'm working on the site I want to work on, I can't get anything to work right.

They should've assumed a tunnel if a tunnel was possible, and then not a tunnel if not possible. But instead they forced tunnel only if the path wasn't possible otherwise. Argh. Anyhow, it's solved, so far. Just tunnels are far more easy to use than puzzle pieces... -Crissa

Okay, for some reason hills are often too steep when I draw roads over them. I'm using simoncrie's hole-digging lots, and these are fine, except my busses can't always climb out of them. Is there a way to smooth grades that I'm unaware of? Most of the tools seem to destroy everything around... Hole digging lots like simoncrie's that were half the amount would be nice, but other methods would be good to consider. Any suggestions? -Crissa PS: Why does the board sometimes not parse the end of lines? So annoying...

Does anyone know what the fix on the PC was? -Crissa

I don't know about puzzle-pieces, but it's possible to make that intersection with tunnels and dryland bridges from the EXE. You merely need some cover-up pieces to hide the tunnels (see under-bridge road pieces). -Crissa

RHW needs to be turned into avenue or one ways to appropriately interchange at this point, yth. Interchange pieces and offramps are apparently next release... -Crissa

I'm hoping they'll solve the repetitive building plop problem... To meet goals, you have to plop many of the same building, and because the city eventually changes towards one tile set or another, it will gain another repetition problem again. I'm also worried about the scale; it looks as though it'll have a Populous: The Beginning type scale, and that's just tiny and silly. I want something big without me having to micro-manage every building - I hope there will be campus plops and randomized plops like we have in SC4. -Crissa

What the heck is the ilive reader, anyhow? If someone would just make some sample slopes draggable, I'd be fine with it, I don't mind reloading my game (my machine is pretty fast) but the read-line display usually tells me what it'll look like. That'd be faster than trying to remember what grade rail and road and highway was... Though I usually have to plop down dozens of Levellers before I do an intersection, anyhow. It just seems there's nothing between 'busses won't go up hill' and flat in tools. Any suggestions? (Rail works for most bus applications, anyhow...) -Crissa

How's you get the one-way road to spawn off the avenue turn, C. Sean? -Crissa

You would need to make a new lot to represent the different types of station, and have those lots specifically call for a different type of car. ...So you'll want to ask about making new police stations in a different modding forum. -Crissa

Regions seem to have a mystical setup. While I'm sure someone has done this test before, I didn't see an article on it. So! Here it is: The numerical order of cities in a new map is based upon the X,Y position of the center point in this order: ( X+Y ) with ties won by the lower X value. I wanted to change where my cities were on the map - I had too many small towns on the map, and yet I'd already started edited the towns! But never fret, this is indeed possible to rebuild a zone. There's basically two methods: Rebuild region with the texture-loading menu. Open New City where your city belongs; Name the city the same as your city; Save; Swap files. That's pretty simple, right? What if you've edited un-named cities? Archive your region! (copy to another directory away from SimCity Regions directory.) Rebuild the region. Archive the new region. Find the number of the city(s) you're rebuilding by opening and naming and saving (per above) Delete that city(s) from your city. You can use the numbering rule to not need to open too many cities. That's left to right, then top to bottom for visual people. Copy your region to the new region. No cities should now overlap, right? Yay! I used this to change around the positions of some cities in my Bullfinch Bay region. -Crissa

Originally posted by: tungston What is this "terrain file"?quote> An image in which the region's terrain height is described via 256 levels of greyscale. -Crissa

There is a spawns-one-way exit in the base NAM... I totally used one in an experiment recently. ...I'm totally wrong, it's in Perpendicular Ramps: Elevated Highway Straight Ramp ...But, uhh, why isn't there a ground highway straight ramp? That'd be like, uhh, easier to make o-o And solve all these questions of avenue bypass ramps and suchnot thatpeople've asked over the last year. -Crissa

Originally posted by: SWAT-MEDIC your hills are probably too steep, try flattening then you will be good i think!!quote> Yes, that's what I was asking how to do... o-o Oh, laying rail first is a good idea, thank you! -Crissa

This is for rearranging or recreating cities based upon a terrain file you created. With this method you can alter the config.bmp and even change the total number of cities or size of neighbors you haven't started yet. It's always important to archive your regions and to note the plugins they were created with; but this is just some info I would've found helpful a few weeks ago ^-^ -Crissa

I download everything to a directory outside my plugins, so I always have a copy of the documents and relevent files - noting down things I change. That way what I put in my plugins directory is only want I use in this particular region -Crissa

cecil: Search for 'CP' on the STEX. There's about a half dozen downloads under cycledogg's work. Those are the trees I use ^-^ Jeronij's other trees are all on SC4Devotion and are... Umm... Hard to find. But I eventually found them, I'm sure you can, too. He only has about thirty things there to download, so if you just search by author, you'll eventually find them. -Crissa PS: Oh! And SC4Devotion had a collossus statue on their front page yesterday...

Why oh why? I guess five is the shortest tunnel? Entrance, above slope, one space, above slope, entrance. -Crissa

Oh, those are awesome interchanges. The first one is possible with the current puzzle pieces - I think someone called it a 'dumbbell' interchange. The latter looks like something that would have to be modeled, but things that look awesome are usually fun to model ^-^ -Crissa

Then my tunnel isn't too short... ...Why won't it trigger the darn tunnel, then? -Crissa