bobbygraves

I have installed several different parking lot plugins and they all feature these blue squares (please see upper-left of photo). I'm assuming that they weren't intended. I think I've got the hang of dependencies, at least in general, and some of the plugins didn't list any dependency requirements anyway. I had thought that maybe they were cars that were being rendered improperly, but if you look carefully in the lower-right, you can still see a bit of a blue square under the brown SUV, so unless two cars can occupy the same space, it can't be that. Any ideas? Thanks kindly.

Wow, you're right, they are handicapped symbols. That should have occurred to me. Some of the lots are a little heavy with them, but they won't bug me as much now that I can account for them. Thanks. Silur, I am going to check out the lot editor and other modding tools, but I only just rediscovered this game a few days ago and would like to get in a little playing time first. The modding community has turned this game from the most disappointing franchise I can think of to my favorite thing in the world. Cheers

MarcosMX's (BlaM) Transportation Utilities Pack - I really love the idea of this package (no more wasting tiles on bus stops), but I'm having issues. The bus stop for roads seems to work okay, but I'm having a problem with the bus stops for avenues. I've attached a picture. Hopefully you can see it. It seems to be turning the avenue (short white lines) into roads (long yellow lines) at the point I plop the bus stop. I've tried running the avenue over it again after plopping the bus stop, but no luck. I'm not sure if this is more than a graphical glitch, but it's annoying either way. There is one listed dependency: BSC Jeronij Textures Vol02 Walls. I found the link at SC4Devotion and installed it. The only strange thing is that the actual file reads as Vol01. I'm starting here because I doubt that's the issue and MarcosMX (BlaM) and his material seems to exclusively reside at STEX. Has anyone had better luck with this than I? Strangely, the readme only mentions the 1 X 1 bus stops (i.e. for roads), but the 1 X 2s are part of the package and so I kind of expect them to work. A question about etiquette: Is it uncool to send a private message or email to a modder if they don't specifically solicit it in their readme? Is this the best way to get help with problems like this? Sorry for all the verbiage. Any help is much appreciated. BTW, is there an alternative to this package (where the bus stops don't require a tile off the road)?

I guess I just don't get it. MAXIS implemented some complicated "traffic simulator" and at the end of the day, your sims would rather drive all the way across town on roads rather than take a freeway path that was maybe three tiles longer. Why not keep it simple? A sim randomly picks a job site for which they're qualified. You calculate the shortest path to that place, but you factor in certain penalties and bonuses for things like roads vs highways, cars vs mass transit. You obviously know a lot and I very little, but I just can't accept that this couldn't be done better in a new game. SC4 seems to require so many false choices. Why must a tile be only one thing? Each tile could have any number of properties. You plop down a road and it changes a property. The behavior and appearance of that tile changes accordingly. I suspect the game already works that way. Now, you then plop down a bus stop on top of it and that adds a wrinkle to the behavior and appearance of that tile, but why must it necessarily change the fact that it's still a road? It seems simple to me which is why I'm probably make a case for my own ignorance...so I'll shut up now.

I started to check out RTMT and got very excited...then I looked at your thread. Yikes. What I think I understand is that roads, avenues, etc. are considered "network tiles" and that when you plop a road-side bus stop on one, while it may still look like a road, it fundamentally changes the way it works. Beyond that, I'm kind of swimming in all of the details, but the idea that my sims are having to recalculate their route to work everytime they drive by one of these sounds very bad to me. NAM has finally made this game useful and I don't want to go back to cities that just don't work. In theory, is there a way to make a bus stop that sits on the sidewalk that doesn't change the network tile to a TE lot? Regards

Thanks Barby. I found my fix there. In case it helps anyone... I originally downloaded (not sure from where) and installed a version of BSC Mega Props that supposedly included all props and textures. That didn't work - grass parking lot. Over at the File Exchance at SC4Devotion, I saw that they had a version of Mega Props with the textures stripped out. I used that version and then added BSC Textures Vol 1 and Vol 2. All is well.

I'm having the same problem with SimGoober's "Large Shopping Center" and I can't even figure out what I need to get. The description calls for the following dependencies (and I quote): 1) Texture packs from PEG (under BSC) and Cerulean available on the STEX. 2) Vehicle_Props-v3.dat To that end, I have installed: BSC Mega Props SG Vol01 (which supposedly includes all SimGoober's texture packs) Cerulean Textures V101 Vehicle_Props-v3 (I've also tried v4) This prop is important to my plans. I would greatly appreciate any advice. Cheers