SC4Fanatic

Hi all, I have an issue with railway bridges. No matter what I try, they never seem high enough to allow ferries to cross underneath them. I tried a lot of stuff but nothing seems to work. Any solutions?

As weird as it may sound, an upgrade to NAM 32 prerelease 1 seems to have solved this issue. I could build a few railway bridges and none of them was too low for ferries.

Ok folks , My CJ got a big delay and here's why: The first reason was a reinstall of my PC, the second and most important reason is that I first intended to use only RHW (no MHW anymore). Although I really like RHW with all its flexibility and possibilities, it turned out that RHW also has it shortcomings. I'm not saying this to criticize the NAM-team. I think they do a wonderful job. I've been testing and trying out RHW for quite some time, Diagonal overpasses and on/off ramps on diagonal RHWs that have more than 2x2 lanes still don't seem to work. Besides, on/off ramps and intersections between highways take a lot of space. Not a problem in a rural area, but in big cities this causes problems. I've now decided to use MHW in areas where I can't use RHW and I will use RHW where I can. The other NAM feautures are great and I will use them wherever I can (nice curves, NWM, Tuleps, etc.). I will start my CJ or better said, my region journal soon. I built a lot of stuff already and made some screenshots.

Thank you for your reply. I downloaded this prerelease and will try it tomorrow. I really like RHW. MHW is often not looking realistic, but sometimes you don't have a real choice when there's not enough room for RHW )especially on/off ramps, intersections, etc.)

Hi all, The transportation map here often looks weird. Distorted colors, etc. Satellite view works OK. I have the latest NAM installed and the game is fully patched. At first I thought power deals might have something to do with this, but some tests showed no difference, Parts of the map look ugly, distorted colors (like some white and black layer on an avenue), The game itself runs perfectly. No CTDs. It's not really important, but if this could be fixed, that would be great.

Sorry for my late reply, but that doesn't appear to make any difference. The transportation map still looks weird. SC4 runs very fine, no CTD's or whatsoever. Fully patched, latest NAM (31.2)

WOW!!! Looks good to me. Great job.

Looks promising. Can't wait to see some more .

Hi all, Just a question: I have the lastest NAM installed (31.2). It's a custom installation. Of course RHW and NWM are included and I also made the choice to override the Maxis standard highways. I was just wondering if there are any bus stops and toll plazas (booths) available that work fine when using RHW and NWM (and no, I don't mean the standard very oversized Maxis bus stops). I have always used a bus stop mod that replaced the Maxis bus stops (well, not really a replacement but an add-on) and that looked really nice on streets, roads and avenues, even on diagonal ones. These bus stops don't seem to work anymore when I use NWM. The same applies to toll booths (they don't work when I use RHW, of course I could get them to work on a four lane RHW by replacing a bit of the RHW by a standard Maxis avenue and then plop the booths there, but it looks ugly). I'd really like to know.

Your imagination and your computer specs (after applying the 4GB patch) are (at least part of) the limit. But, with all due respect, I don't think you would like to rebuild Texas. It would cost you ages and even your great grandchildren would be playing to finish that SC4 region I'm now working on a 20x20 large city tiles region and I know this will take me at least some years of my spare free time. I really like this game but to spend the rest of my life's spare free time to build one SC4 region would be too much for me .

When I'm busy with one of my cities I save every time after I finish some editing (like upgrading a road, some new zoning, adding schools or changing funding). It's annoying and costs some time, but at least nothing is lost if the game crashes (which is very rare right now, Haven't experienced a SC4 crash for months). When I save a city and want to return to the region, I always use save and then exit to region without saving. It's a ritual that comes from the times that SC4 regularly crashed. If your region is really large, like mine, you should apply the 4GB patch which is part of the latest NAM. If you don't apply that patch the game may crash when you want to save a city. Also make sure that you use the CPUCount parameter in your SC4 shortcut if you're using a multicore processor.

I always try to find some nice names for my mayors, something like Mr. Smith for my city named Garden City and Mrs. Elliott for a city named Golden Bay. Each city has its own mayor and that means that each mayor should have his/her own name. I make an exceptions for metropolises. All boroughs will then have the same mayor (the same for New York City where Mr. Bloomberg is the mayor of all of the city). It's not realistic when all cities share the same mayor.

Cheers! SC4 deluxe rules and it is still such a great game today! I really like it. The mods like nam and all other addons are so great. A big thank you to all people who worked had to provide us with great mods and addons!

Hi all, OK, here's the problem: neighbor deals are just working partly. The city I'm working at now can perfectly sell water and power to neighboring cities, but collecting and recycling garbage appears to be a problem. The sims in that one particular city are complaining about garbage, but I can't make a deal with that city. I know some plugins can cause this type of behavior. I removed AutoToggleOrdinance and RadicalOrdinance. This helped me fix power and water problems before, but right now I don't know what to do. Anyone some hints?

Well, The problem fixed itself more or less. I hadn't been playing SC4 long enough and forget about solutions for this particular problem. The problem has been resolved and the receiving city has enough capacity to deal with the garbage. I had to construct some recycling and waste-to-power plants to deal with all that garbage. Right now they're complaining about education, etc. Anyways, my CJ will start soon. I'm looking for a place to post pictures.

Dear fellow SC4-enthousiasts, I just wanted to let you know that I will soon start my own CJ. The country/region is called Albion and it is a huge region (20x20 large city tiles). It took me a whole lot of time to think of 400 city names. The region is based on the Melbourne (Australia) map, but I terraformed a lot. The nation of Albion will have seven big metropolises (at least that's my planning; you never know how things work out while playing ). I had some PC-troubles a while ago, but I think I fixed them all. So, in my spare free time I will be playing SC4 again. Even when I'm 40+ I still think this is such a fantastic game. I don't like violent games. I'll keep you informed. Finally I can play my new region and I'm very happy about it. It will all be pretty standard in the beginning, but when my cities are making money I will add special buildings, add more very nice NAM-stuff, etc. I hope I can start the CJ in about a week.

I know CJ stuff has its own subforum, But...., since I was just announcing a new CJ I thought it could be posted in the "general discussion" forum. Of course I will post a CJ in the appropriate forum.

Hi all SC4 players, A while ago I downloaded a great looking region map (Melbourne region, all credits go to whom uploaded it). I did some terraforming on it (a big central island where I want to build the capitol city) and I believe it's an excellent region to build great looking cities. I've experimented a lot with this region, obliterated cities many times, but now it seems things are going well and I already built some nice looking cities (IMHO). I would like to turn this into a CJ, but it is a huge region that will keep me busy for years (I think) (20x20 large city tiles). Napoleon Bonaparte wasn't big friends with what was then to become the UK, so he named it "Perfide Albion". I liked the Albion part of it, that's why I named my region "Albion". And no, there's nothing wrong with the UK. Actually, it's one of my favorite holiday destinations Been there many times . I may be an old fart, but (LOL) even in my 40s I still enjoy this game very much. It's so much better than war games or other agressive games. I like constructive games where you need strategy, creativity and other skills to build something good/beautiful. Any hints/suggestions would be appreciated.

WOW!!! The weather mod is an absolute must have! Very impressive. Can't wait to test it.

Hi all, I know it's impossible to build a bridge between two cities if they are seperated by water (basic SC4 knowledge ), but is it possible to connect two cities by ferry, or do some same-kind limiatons apply?

Sounds like an interesting solution to fix SC4 crashes. On my PC, a Windows 7 64-bit PC, SC4 rarely crashed. But sometimes it crashed 4 times on a single evening. I found this solution: SC4 was made at a time that dual and quad cores still didn't exist. SC4 can't handle those processors very well and that can result in sudden crashes. After starting SC4, go to task manager and set the affinity of the SC4 process to one of the cores of your processor. Too bad you have to do this each time when you start SC4, but the result is an absolutely crash free SC4.

The more RAM, the better. However, there are limitations. A 32-bits Window version can only handle 4 GB of RAM (including video RAM and other RAM that is reserved for other things). Any 32-bits application running under Windows 32 or 64-bits can only handle files that take up less than 2 GB when opened. So if your region is very large you may run into memory limitations even if you have a zillion of GBs of RAM installed.

No problem on my PC. Checking email, having multiple browser windows and tabs open, listening to music via winamp and doing a lot of other stuff while having a SC4 window open.

Well, SC4 is a simulation game; it was never meant to replace reality in any way. Roads/streets are way too wide in SC4 and there are many restrictions in the game: ever tried to build a diagonal street that crosses or connects to a diagonal one-way road? It's impossible in SC4. Even with additions like the NAM. SC4 uses a grid-system and for sure this has its limitations. Having said this, it's still a fantastic game and I really enjoy it. The perfect game to build cities would be a mixture of SC4 and Cities XL 2011/2012. SC4 for region play and Cities XL for the maximum flexibility (all types of road possible, no grid system, all angles available when building roads/streets/highways). And even then there would be restrictions and limitations. It is still a game, not a replacement of the real world. My personal list of annoyances is (for SC4): 1. You can't connect diagonal streets to diagonal one way roads; 2. You can't make a connection to other cities with one way roads (normally not a problem, but it sometimes is when you want to build a megapolis); 3. You can't build diagonal bridges (NAM puzzle pieces help a bit, but still then there are many limitations); 4. Diagonal road (road, one way road, avenue, highway) connections to other cities are impossible; 5. Street connections to other cities are impossible. 6. In many ways the game is not realistic. Why do I have to build so many hospitals, police stations, fire stations? In the real world a town I live in would only have one hospital, one police station and one fire station. 7. Why do I always have a full red box in the environment section (city polls) even after adding many trees, parks and handling the garbage? (I even get the message that the sims take pride in the clean streets). 8. Last and certainly not least: building don't align with diagonal roads/streets (they do in Cities XL). Apart from these annoyances, SC4 is still a great game and I really like it.