Lukfi

Now that's some bad weather coming to my cities... Happened after I alt-tabbed out of the game, then back in after a while. It seems as if there's a "cloud storage" on the left side of the screen and the game sends them flying one by one... now all of them have set sail in one moment and there are no other clouds behind them :-D

Hello. First I want to apologize for a duplicit thread, I know this has already been discussed somewhere, but I can't remember where. So here goes: if I build a rail station (a custom one, with track in the middle, transit enabled) and then a road adjacent to the station, crossing the rail, the station can only receive trains and not send any in the direction where the road is. What's weird is that I have used stations like this in the past and never had problems, now suddenly I do. And only some stations suffer from it, some are fine. How can I solve this?

Yes they do. If the road/street crossing is at least one tile away from the station, the traffic is unaffected. Some stations are unaffected altogether, even if the road/street crossing is right next to the station. For example the "Modern Train Station" by Xyloxadoria that can be found on STEX. I don't know whether the reason is that it has a smaller footprint, or that it has two tracks. The "Newman Inc Modern rail Station Single Track" also from STEX does have this issue though, notwithstanding it actually has two tracks because the parking lot is transit enabled for rail. // Update: Retested with the Newman Inc station on flat terrain and it works. So does the Maxis Grand Railway Station. HSRP hub, however, doesn't work...

If this is not flat, then I don't know what is: If the street isn't there, it's working. On the other side there's an elevated rail line that feeds passengers to the stations, however it doesn't work during evening commutes as there's a street on the other side as well.

So apparently the problem remains. I installed the refurbished HSRP hub from the STEX, bulldozed the old one in my city and built it again, just to be sure. Didn't help

Ummm... I do now. I have reinstalled the game and don't know if the problem will be back (will try with the other stations), but that doesn't matter, I like the HSRP hub the best. Thanks a lot!

I prefer to have a fixed grid, the planning is easier and road traffic more fluent thanks to less intersections. I use 8x6 for high density, but I don't really know how good it is.

Just search STEX for rail stations, you'll find plenty. Rail capacity in vanilla SC4 RH is 3000. If you have NAM, it depends on the traffic simulator you're using.

I don't think it's necessary. I have already found where the issue has been mentioned: in the HSRP thread, here: https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=124&threadid=74279&STARTPAGE=47&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear#1432404 You can find pictures there, apparently the same problem applies to HSR, and it seems to be a bug in SC4. I have reproduced it with heavy rail. Stations affected are the HSRP hub, Newman Inc. Modern station, and maybe (I can't remember) Zurich Stadelhofen. All of them are quite big stations; I also have a Modern Station with a 6×2 footprint that is not affected.

I agree with you, but... single player content drives multiplayer content?What year are you living in? World of Warcraft doesn't have any SP content, yet it does perfectly fine. It is therefore completely safe to assume the same will be true for a city builder... . . . ...NOT. As for custom content, that's basically a dead end there. If you used custom buildings in your online city, noone else would see them because they wouldn't have it installed on their PC. And that's very, very bad, because custom content made SC4 what it is today, made it grow to a whole new level of both gameplay and eye-candiness. GEMs sound like a good idea, but of course MC will not do it for free. The community, on the other hand, sacrificed hundreds if not thousands of man-hours to creating custom content for SC4, completely free. That's business I guess.

Originally posted by: mrtnrln I completely agree with that. I think when you compare CXL to SC4, you should compare it with the standard version (SC4 vanilla without Rush Hour). Even then it beats CXL handsdown, as far as I know.quote> Don't forget that you're comparing a full game to a demo version.

If I may ask, how do you prevent a Maxis building from appearing with the use of SC4Tool?

Commercial zones thrive if road traffic flows around them, that much is obvious. In my city, the highest traffic volumes are achieved between the residential and industrial zone, which are on the other side of a large map and I have set up a railway so everybody takes the train. Which means that I don't get congested roads in between, where the commercial zone is. So how do I bring customers to these shops? Is it even possible?

Just that I don't come to Simtropolis often doesn't mean I don't know the advisors are a bunch of douche-bags I don't have much time right now, but in a couple of days I should be able to test whether a heavily used elevated track helps the customers rating. // So actually all I needed to do was to take a look around the city. Elevated rail (or GLR) really does create traffic noise and customers. What reasoning Maxis used to do it this way is really beyond me.

At a glance, it seems commerce and industry doesn't want to come into your city because it has a lack of workforce. About the No Job problem, check your traffic for any problems, maybe they can't get to work. Or they are high wealth sims and your city doesn't have jobs for them, but has jobs for low and medium wealth sims.

=>Shlarin: You'd think they need to go shopping, and in fact residential development creates demand for commerce, but I don't think the traffic simulation takes shoppers into account. =>SC4BOY: Mono, el and rail do count, you say? Something interesting has happened in my city of Mendocino: for the first time I decided to build a two-level transport system, GLR/el feeding a commuter rail. I have approximately 8k Sims travelling from the residential zone, the railway is fine, but the GLR/el creates totally badass air pollution. As far as I know, network capacities should be the same for el and rail. So I could put C buildings along the most congested GLR lines, that would be realistic as well. I'll try it in my new residential zone. A little off topic: why am I getting so much CO§§§ built when CO§§ demand stays a lot higher?

Okay, so I can just keep the pollution, crime, garbage etc. low, land value high and that's about it? :-/ I looked at the traffic simulator file and it says there that traffic noise is computed from traffic *volume* (and customers is noise × a multiplier). If anyone could provide more knowledge about the way traffic noise is computed, we might be able to make it work in our advantage. Do pedestrians create traffic noise? Does railway? (logic says it should be pretty anoying next to houses, but since the customers data is derived from it... ) I'm thinking I could channel freight trucks through the commercial district, if that would help.

For a small residential zone, I lay the streets in advance into a 6×6 grid (in a circular area defined by the coverage radius of a small school). Then I build railway tracks and stations. In big res zones I don't build the streets and rail at once, but I plan accordinly as they will eventually be there. The industrial and commercial zones always grows in a kind of organic manner, wherever new space is needed, I expand them.

Hi. In my city I have an industrial district (I-D, I-M mostly) with air pollution in the yellow to green levels. I have built another zone, closer to my residential area, for high tech industry. But even though there's polluted air in the industrial zone, the I-HT buildings keep appearing there and they have less workers than they potentially could. So the question is: is there a way to separate I-HT from the polluting industries, apart from bulldozing?

Originally posted by: z1 Assuming that you have a well-designed city, this is not true. Buses are often used as feeder lines for rapid transit, such as subways, el trains, commuter rail, and monorail. All of these travel types are faster than cars by a considerable amount. Yet most of these travel types do not have attached parking, so the Sims can't just drive to them. In such cases, turning off your bus network will increase your commute time substantially. Road congestion will increase, since Sims now have to drive all the way to work instead of taking the bus to the train. So buses are far from useless.quote> Sorry, you're right, I am a moron. I use railway stations with parking so I didn't realize.

Originally posted by: N106 We'll probably be using SC4 for a few more years until computers advance to the point that we cannot play it. Then, Simtropolis and other SC4 sites will die. One by one, users will become inactive, as they can no longer play Sim City 4, and are left without a replacement. By about 2015, the loud voice of SC4 fans wanting a good SC5 will have been silenced.quote> That won't be happening. SC4 doesn't need 3D acceleration (getting old 3D games to work can sometimes be a b*tch), current PCs handle software rendering without a problem. SC4 runs on Windows 7, which will be good for at least another five years. After that, we have virtual machines... no problem there. Sure the number of people will diminish in time... but I think SimCity 4 has at least until 2020 before the biggest international communities are reduced to a handful of the most hard-core followers. Okay, back to topic. Biggest failure of Cities XL? Communication with the community. The community were never told "we'll do this", "this is not possible" or "don't expect much there". Then people expected too much and now they feel that their ideas have been ignored. Also, pricing. People don't feel like paying for content that in SC4 was included from the get-go, or is available for free as a community addon. Well, everyone wanted a better city builder than SC4, but maybe SC4 with custom content, especially NAM, is just impossible to beat.

More double decker pieces for el rail over road/street: - el rail curve over road intersection, current version offers only cross over cross and T over T (that means curve over T, curve over cross, T over cross - three puzzle pieces in total) Nice to have, but can live easily without: - more el rail over street pieces, like the aforementioned, or transition from el rail over road to diagonal el rail, which is available only with roads - doubledeck monorail? :-) Base dirt texture for long railway curves in developed areas (currently there's only grass). I've seen something similar for long road curves on the STEX, so maybe this is already done as well. If so, it would be nice to include it in NAM. Smooth 2×2 curves and T/cross intersection puzzle pieces for rail and el rail. Double decker el rail has these nice curves, so why not have them available on blank terrain as well?

Thanks for your replies. I do have clean air in the zone for I-HT, but apparently the air in the I-D/I-M zone is not dirty enough to drive I-HT elsewhere Sure I could use air cleaner lots to clean the dirty zone, but that's very unrealistic. I also don't want to kill I-D and I-M with high taxes, they're a good source of revenue now. Anyway, I'll try to raise land value in the new I-HT zone. Maybe some kind of landmark would look pretty in there?

Originally posted by: z1 You've just answered your own question. According to assumptions built into the traffic simulator, all Sims don't have cars. Other Sims have cars but prefer not to use them for various reasons, including expense. Taking a bus is generally much cheaper than driving a car, especially for commuting in a city. In the traffic simulator, bus usage is highest among low-wealth Sims.quote> I see. But try what happens when you shut down your bus network. Since you're counting buses towards road traffic, congestion would stay unchanged. Nothing will happen, that's what! Sims will just take their cars, because even if you make them prefer mass transit, they do have cars. SimCity is, after all, an American game, where the concept of not needing a car is very foreign, if not impossible to grasp. In the city where I live, if buses stayed in their garages for one day, the city would be severely paralyzed; if subways, trams and trains also stopped, that would mean a Hollywood catastrophic movie scenario (the unions are planning a strike so we have something to look forward to...) Anyway, to the point: since nothing will happen if you shut down buses, they're useless. Except maybe as a sort of a local transit system in your industrial and commercial zones, where Sims arrive by train. But you can always use more rail stations and I have observed Sims walk relatively long distances from the stations, so there's really not much use for buses.

On a slightly different note, I think one-way roads and avenues should have a higher per-tile capacity than ordinary roads. The reason being that not all vehicles have the same speed. Freight trucks and buses have slower driving speed than cars. So in reality, the cars wouldn't be able to overtake the slower vehicle and would have to reduce speed. On OWRs and avenues, the faster car switches to left lane and overtakes the slow truck easily. Another thing: buses. Counting them towards the traffic is just plain wrong. You get the same congestion and pollution as from cars, while the bus is slower. Why would anyone take the bus then, if all sims have cars? If they do take the bus anyway, something is probably wrong with the traffic simulator :-P I'm afraid, though, that this problem doesn't have a solution. Except not using buses at all and instead use the GLR.