PhantomSoul

As said, I'm not sure that expecting mass transit to be commercially viable is missing the point. In my mind, the primary purpose of mass transit, whether buses, railroads, subways, etc, is to relieve road traffic in neighborhoods where further widening the roads is not a good option, like residential neighborhoods; no one wants to live on a freeway or boulevard, right? Or at the very least, the higher levels of traffic found on boulevards is better used for commercial purposes. To me, how many people - other than 0 of course - use a particular transit stop is less important as whether it is adequately managing traffic congestion in the area and ability for residents in nearby neighborhoods to get to work.

You know, I find that most people who whine about DRM are the same people who often counterfeit software. In the old days, in order to get an album, movie, or software, we had to get authentic media, be it a record, tape, CD, or DVD, from a licensed distributor, and having that authentic object basically demonstrated that we were licensed to use that product, and the license would pretty much last the life of that authentic product - if your record or DVD got damaged, you had to go out and buy another one. Now that the world has gone digital, where anything can be copied and distributed pretty much effortlessly by anyone, the concept of authentic media - as well as that license to keep using things for the life of that authentic media - no longer exists. Instead, software has to be checked, at least periodically, for 1) being licensed and 2) verifying the system used to check for licensing hasn't been defeated, which itself is digital and subject to tampering as so. DRM is just one way, to leave a receipt for a piece of software for a specific computer that has been verified so that it doesn't have to be actively checked as often. Let's face it - gamers are the most notorious group of software users for counterfeiting software. I'm not accusing anyone here specifically, but the stats clearly show that you're out there. Maybe that's why gamers are so loudly opposed to DRM. And, yeah, you're free to not buy the game if that's not cool with you, but let's also not forget that, at the end of the day, a company like EA is far more likely to just not bother with future projects if DRM is rejected than distribute something that can easily be copied and redistributed with basic operating system commands. The days of owning a program or game for the life of a disc that you got it on are over, largely because we don't get those discs anymore. As for mods, let's not forget that the community content for SimCity 4 is almost a decade in the making, none of which was available at its launch either. As with any software (ask any of your programmer friends), mod-ability is never a high-priority launch feature, and is almost always retroactively introduced, as it was with SimCity 4. Once again, you're free to not buy the game if that's not cool with you, but don't expect future game projects - by any commercial company - to be much different. As for me, I'm all in. This looks like an excellent game, and I can't wait to get my hands on it. It is kind of sad, however, that with DRM concerns, the lifespan of the game is now determined by EA, namely how long they run their authentication service for, rather than by how well I take care of my disc, but that's just a side effect of this digital internet world that we've created and something we're all going to have to learn to live with, because it ain't going away anytime soon.

The patch does make the game runnable on OS X Lion, but unfortunately, is not compatible with the hardware of the Fall 2010 MacBook Air, as the patch causes the game to crash as soon as you try to load or start a new city, or very soon after. Game worked fine on this computer with OS X Snow Leopard without the patch, but with the absence of Rosetta in Lion, the game will not run without the patch. :-( The Macbook Air has limited storage space (128 GB) since it is all flash memory, making it impractical to install a Windows partition on it, Boot Camp, Parallels, or otherwise... Anyone have any other ideas?

Mmm... vector-based transit networks, complete with a z-axis... (sorry, that's the just geek in me getting over-excited)... Insert ludicrous amount of drool here...

Don't forget that if you want R$ development, especially in dense urban areas, you probably shouldn't make the neighborhood conditions too ideal. If your schools, police, fire, medical, parks, etc. are too ideal, it will create an overwhelming demand for R$$ and R$$$, which the poor R$ cannot keep up with. Further, after moving in and completely saturating your town, the R$$ and R$$$ sims will realize that there are no R$ sims anywhere around to serve them and will leave searching for better pastures, thus leaving your neighborhood abandoned. So in the end, maybe ideal living/commuting conditions aren't appropriate in all parts of town, but maybe just "good enough" based on what kind of sims you want to attract... How's that for a good helping of irony?

I get a 404 error -- the file in the link seems to be missing.

Suburbs are traffic messes and can also be very polluting; a very inefficient means of development. But that said, who said anythingi about America doing anything efficiently? Suburbs are a way of life around here, and have become a quintessential part of the American Dream. Remember envisioning that nice house with a picket fence? So at the end of the day, its kind of a love/hate relationship -- poor developmental style, but very desirable.

What I like to do when I initially zone out neighborhoods is that i try to make them a fixed maximum size -- typically about the bussing range of the Elementary school for residential neighborhoods -- and try to border it on 2 sides by crossing avenues. The neighborhood consists of streets -- laid out any which way you want -- but I would recommend either a grid or something that can be later upgraded to a grid without destroying zoned buildings if you're planning on upgrading the neighborhood to something denser at a later time. Two crossing roads connect the neighborhood to the bordering avenues as close to the middle of the neighborhood as possible, keeping in mind that the neighborhood streets should never touch the avenue (otherwise Sims may try to use them to funnel their way to the avenue, creating a traffic nightmare). Further neighborhood streets should never cross over and touch the streets of bordering neighborhoods either. Initially, the access roads shouldn't cross into bordering neighborhoods either (thus forcing the sims to use the avenues), but can be later installed as a quick fix for alleviating congestion problems at the avenue/road intersections. This forces the majority of Sims to go out to the road and avenue (and eventually freeway later in the game) to get to work in a realistic-looking way. Only avenues should connect to major commuter hubs train stations on railroads leading to another town or (later in the game) freeway interchanges. Avenues can also be upgraded to a freeway for a section intersecting another freeway to create a really high-volume intersection that can move ridiculous amounts of traffic well. Confused yet? Here, I'll try to draw an ASCII diagram: A=Avenue, R=Road, r=residential neighborhood w/streets*, c=commercial (installed later as demand dictates) *A block should be left open near the middle of the neighborhood cell for future civic structures (schools, parks, etc.) rrrrrrrrrrrrrr ccAA rrrrrrRrrrrrr ccAA rrrrrrRrrrrrr ccAA rRRRRRRRRRccAA rrrrrrRrrrrrr ccAA rrrrrrRrrrrrr ccAA rrrrrrRrrrrrr ccAA R ccAA cccccRccccccccAA AAAAAAAAAAAAA

The problem with most of the immediate New York City area highways (in both New York and New Jersey) is that most of them were built before the big traffic boom of the 1950's. As a result many of them are badly outdated and can no longer safely carry the amounts of traffic that tries to use them on a continuous basis. I'd look for New York City to become one of the first in the US to deploy a wide-scale revolutionary transit system. Congestion Pricing might be a start, but you have to make sure that you can affordably move people into the city and back out who might not have the disposable income to dump $10 every time they need to cross the bridge. How's that for off-topic? Anyways, that said, my vote for the worst highway ever is actually a tie between two roads, both in New Jersey -- go figure: 1) I-95 for, well, it's non-existence. If you ever head north on I-95 out of Philadelphia and cross into New Jersey, you'll notice that it just kind of abruptly ends just north of Trenton. You either take an exit onto surface roads, or it become I-295 and heads back down to Philadelphia. Confused? Evidently the New Jersey Turnpike Authority didn't think so, as they're the ones who halted construction on it, fearing that a freeway paralleling the toll road would cost the toll road too much revenue. Funny though, how I-295 heading south from Trenton parellels the Turnpike so closely though that you can acutally see other other road in places. 2) Ozzy Osbourne sang about the road to nowhere. What he might not have known is that way before his time, the New Jersey had already implemented that and labeled it the Garden State Parkway. Folks this road actually goes from nowhere to nowhere. Yeah it goes near Hackensack, Paterson, Newark, Perth Amboy, and Atlantic City -- but it doesn't actually go to any of those cities. In fact, it doesn't even go to any city really. So destination-less is this road that the signs on it just say "Parkway North" or "Parkway South", because there's really no city or town to list that you're bound for. No wonder everyone complains about getting lost in New Jersey all the time.

The company I mentioned above is called Parallels Inc. and will soon be releasing (Beta version already available) a program called Workstation, which can run a fully-functional Windows virtual machine within a fully-integrated (seamless mouse, can copy/paste, etc) window in Mac OS 10.4 on your Intel-based Mac. And, all it costs is $50, and you no longer need that PC -- which is convenient, because you'll need its Windows license for this virtual machine. The best part is that there's no emulation, no interperting, or any other additional layers of complexity as we may have seen in the past with products like Microsoft's Virtual PC. Because the hardware in the new IA32 Macs is the same type as in PC's, the Windows virtual machine can make calls directly to the actual hardware as it would in a normal PC. The Workstation software really just provides drivers and integration into Mac OS. Check it out: http://www.parallels.com -- you can even get a free trial key for 30 days. As long as your Mac has video hardware that can decently handle 3D graphics, SimCity4 should be a go on this.

You know the new Mac Minis have Dual Core IA32 (Intel) hardware, so they can run both OS 10.4 and Windows XP. The Mac Minis sell for about $500, which is unheard of for Apple computers. Now I just saw a preview about this the other day (and can't remember the name of it for my life right now), but what's even better is that somebody is working on Virtual-PC type emulator for OS 10.4 so that you can install a Windows applications, like say MS Outlook for those pesky Exchange services, or even our beloved SimCity4, on OS 10.4 and when you launch it, it will automatically launch a Windows instance within OS 10.4 to run the application in. The end result will look like you're running a Windows application in OS 10.4. Bestill my heart...

I don't think freighter ships are routed, meaning that they are just drawn in for aesthetic reasons. I'm pretty sure that each seaport in the city has a fixed impact on the demand cap relief regardless to which neighbors its waterway connects.

Plant an elementary school and a clinic down somewhere near the center of your town, but in area where the land in the entire circle around them is developable. Fill that land within that circle with residential neighborhoods (from the beginning, you will need to cram as much residential per school/clinic as possible in order to turn any kind of profit). Surround that residentail area with some industrial lots so that those people have somewhere to work. Add in a few commercial tiles in between the residentials and industrials to provide basic retail services. Add a power plant and firehouse and watch your town grow. Once it begins to turn a profit, add some water to further develop your lots. You may also want to pass ordinances to encourage education, health and safety (youth reading, smoke detectors, and cpr come to mind off hand). The bottom line from here is that as long as you continue to promote health, safety, and education, your city will continue to flourish within your demand caps. On a medium sized tile, you can get up to about 50,000 people like this. Beyond 50k, you'll need to do things to raise your demand caps, but that's a whole other topic that I'm sure plenty of other threads discuss. Good luck!

Not too many Interstates here in NY/NJ; I guess when it came to building Interstates, we already had quite the bit of highways, as we still have many pre-interstate grade highways still in use, on which traffic is horrific these days. In New Jersey: US9/Garden State Parkway go South to Atlantic City, NJ US1/NJ Turnpike go Southwest to Trenton, NJ/Philadelphia, PA US22/I78 go West to Allentown, PA US46/I80 go West to Delaware Water Gap, PA NJ17 goes Northwest to I87 and the NY State Line In New York: US9/US9W/I87 go North to Albany, NY US1/I95 go Northeast to New Haven, CT I495 goes East to Riverhead, NY US6/I84 just barely skirt the metro area on the north side en route between Scranton, PA and Hartford, CT Interestingly enough, I95 is missing about a 30-mile section between Lawrenceville, NJ and Edison, NJ because the state will not allow a free Interstate to parallel prior-existing the NJ Turnpike toll road. This is also the reason that I76 ends at I295 in south NJ, as the free Interstate is not allowed to parallel the prior-existing Atlantic City Expressway toll road. Oddly enough, the DOT got away with building I295 in South NJ, which parallels the Turnpike for over 60 Miles from Trenton to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Also, there is a section of I495 missing that would cross Midtown Manhattan between the Lincoln and Queens-Midtown Tunnels. I guess it just wasn't feasable to build a thru highway underneath Midtown Manhattan...

I usually just use roads and streets until I start to get some office commerce developing in a downtown area. Once a downtown starts to form, avenues/boulevards are good for getting people from your residential neighborhoods downtown. I've found that freeways are initially useful to supplement railroads in connecting those dense industrail areas near the center of your town to the neighbors (remember, industry needs neighbor connections to thrive). Once you start getting an entire metro area going, commuters from neighboring towns will start to use the freeways. Finally, if you keep developing and your roads, avenues, and freeways start to get congested, you'll start to see commuter rail use as well. But if you have no congestion on your local roads (ie, green on the traffic map), there's really no reason for anyone to get on the freeway or railroad.