HomerSPC

Hello everyone and welcome to my city journal/lets play. First off, I was told this would be the best place to put this. I've looked at quite a few city journals and this one will be quite different from every one that I've seen. First off, there will be few to no pictures. I apologize for this. My medium is video, and my YouTube channel is dedicated to playing games. Recently, I started a Sim City 4 lets play on my channel. I figured I'd post it here to ehar what you guys would have to say. I want to do a lot to the region. I am absolutely willing to add BATs (preferably growables) to my game, so request away! Anyways, I told you guys this wasn't going to be a conventional city journal. A lot that I see already have a start or already have a region picked, or things like that. In mine, nope! We will create the region as we go, building slowly through the region. The cities don't have names; they have numbers and the reason for the numbers is simple (Besides the fact I am not creative). Everything is part of YouTubia; Everyone should be closely connected as a community (SImtropolis, YouTube, etc.) should be and you can't create that feeling with special names for every city. The region is the city. So without further adue, welcome to YouTubia. Hope you enjoy your stay! Episode 1: "Lets Get To It" Summary: We create our first city, aptly titled "1". Also, Terraforming is fun! Episode 2: "Let My People Drink!" Summary: We give the people something everyone needs: Water!

It's taken me a long time to update this and I apologize. Lot of things going on including a trip to Mexico, working a lot and getting a new computer. So now without further adue I'll present the next couple entries in the series. In Episode 27, we build an airport. In Episode 28, I fix up the budget and make sure I'm making money. And finally in Episode 29, I continue tweaking the city.

So, with a little hiatus, I'm back. Eh, even with a fully planned out city, I don't think I'd be able to get that good of a result haha. In Episode 24, I ask you guys what should I build on the waterfront. In Episode 25, I reach my goal of 90,000 sims. TAKE THAT samima! In Episode 26, There is a weird circle in my pollution data view. Why?

Thanks NO WAY. Well I feel less special now. So, in Episode 22, I realize I don't like the environment very much. And maybe it's because of my somewhat polutted air and bad environment rating, but Episode 23 brings out the fact that apparently my sims are getting stupid. Damn public school systems.

Another day, another couple videos. I actually have like 5 to post, but I won't psot them all today. I'll give people time to watch these ones before I post the other ones. In Episode 20, I start to expand the city more. In Episode 21, I reach 60,000 citizens in a medium tile. That is a milestone for me! Questions/Comments? Leave 'em below

Easy to use? Also, now that everything is fixed and I can record again, two more episodes! First off, in Episode 18, I work on getting some of my city's problems under check. And the directly after, in Episode 19, I re-do everything I did in Episode 18. I hate when games crash.

Okay so, two weeks ago I upgraded to Windows 7. When I tried to re-install Sim City 4, my install disc wasn't working so I had to rebuy the game on Steam. However, fraps can't recognize Sim City 4 as a game anymore for some reason. It initially shows the fraps overlay on screen for a brief milisecond and then it disappears. I can't record at all. Being a Sim City community, I'm wondering if anyone might know of any solutions to this problem possibly having experienced them previously. Other information: My friend who also has Windows 7 and bought Sim City 4 on Steam can record with the same version of fraps perfectly fine. He thinks it might be the fact I play in Windowed mode, but I played in Windowed mode on Vista and it worked fine. I'd prefer not having to play fullscreen, for the video files will get larger and it will hog up more system resources with fraps running.

Figured out a fix. I remembered that when I ran Sim City 4 with Vista, it rendered inside of DirectX. Apparently something about my game was mucked up this time and was rendering through another system (most likely just through the software itself). Thus thats why Fraps couldn't read it as a game -- Fraps can record DirectX and OpenGL games. So, as soon as I found this page (link), I realized that I could do the following code: [CODE]-d:DirectX/Software/OpenGL[/CODE] Changing it to DirectX fixed the problem. So the thread can be locked if necessary.

Fraps works fine recording some other games/programs, just not SIm City 4.

No success.

Absolutely. 3 is probably the largest city I have ever created in such a small area. Even after using only about 1/2 of the city tile, I have what? 30k+ residents? My plan, as you can see the map in the first video, is to create a sprawling metropolis over the entire region screen. Right now I'm just doing ths starting areas so obviously they'll be a bit more blocky than suburb areas. But everything is culminated up to the only Large tile in the region. I want that the be the capital, and hopefully by the time I reach there I will have enough demand for the large skyscrapers. To be honest, This is probably the best I've ever played Sim City. Im glad it's on film now, and I hope to be able to film more soon.

ABSOLUTELY. I came into the Ubisoft Conference just in time to see that, and currently thats the talk of the show. I must have that game. *throws money at screen* Also Sim City. Even if I'm a big Halo fan, Sim City is much more wanted in my books. Actually probably gonna pre-order it soon.

Hey guys, sorry about the long delay here. Two weeks ago, I upgraded to Windows 7. When I tried to re-install Sim City 4, my install disc wasn't working so I had to rebuy the game on Steam. However, fraps can't recognize Sim City 4 as a game anymore for some reason. It initially shows the fraps overlay on screen for a brief milisecond and then it disappears. I can't record at all. Being a Sim City community, I'm wondering if anyone might know of any solutions to this problem possibly having experienced them previously. Other information: My friend who also has Windows 7 and bought Sim City 4 on Steam can record with the same version of fraps perfectly fine. He thinks it might be the fact I play in Windowed mode, but I played in Windowed mode on Vista and it worked fine. I'd prefer not having to play fullscreen, for the video files will get larger and it will hog up more system resources with fraps running. (Posting this as a thread as well for optimal help) Now, having said that, I did post a couple more videos in my absence. I really need to get in the habit of checking back here. In Episode 13, I finish off the port and I'm actually pretty happy about it. Looks nice and functional I'd say, even if I am only using default Maxis things. @City_Master : I think you might be happier with this episode and the cleanliness of my port. In Episode 14, I start making the city POP more. First step: Noise walls around the train tracks. Functional as parks (and thus also increasing high density demand), but also nice to look at. Really happy about it. In Episode 15, I finally face some traffic problems thanks to newly developed high rise buildings. In Episode 16, I think my sims deserve a better edumacation. In Episode 17, I show off the U-Drive It mode, and fail horrible a couple times. Overall, I think the city is going really well.

So, I started my first major piece of specific land development today. I created a nice little sunken port. It's actually pretty nice, although again not as nice as some of the stuff I see here. Would love to hear some opinions or get any tips on how to improve it. Would love to have some links to some great port pieces!

So, another couple videos. I'm actually much happier with the turn out of how this city looks. Really glad I TNT'd the other one. But then the game crashes on me. Thank god I saved somewhat recently. Great to hear! I really like the way the city looks too. It's pretty well done, even for me!

Hey all, sorry about the long wait between episodes. I've been very busy and I just needed some time to catch up other things and play different games, etc. Anyways, I'm back and I have some episodes which I'm quite happy with and I think my city is turning out much better than it was prior. Anyways, on to Episode 8, titled "TOTAL ANNIHILATION".

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. Been very busy with other things. Anyways, On to the next set of videos! In these next three videos, I start my next city, aptly titled 3. Watch me struggle immensely getting everything I need!

So first off, a quick update. Thank god, it was only my power supply fried. Got a nice cheap $24 dollar one and we're back in buisness. Now, on to Sim City: I decided that the first city had enough in it and that it was time to move on. So this episode, I decide to build a small beach city of maybe 1,000 people.

Yeah its fine for me. Uhm, try testing your speed at speedtest.net. If its less than 0.10Mbps down, theres a problem there. Best would be over 1.00Mbps down.

Well, this was fun. First update, and I already have to tell everyone that there won't be any more updates for a while. Yesterday there was a power outage, and the initial surge must have messed up the power supply (hopefully). I don't actually know if this is true because I was at school, but this is what I'm hoping. Anyways, I'm on my phone. Thank god Simtropolis has a good mobile site. But, because I needed to update you guys, here's Episode 3:

How did you manage that? A million sims on 2/3 of a large tile seems not possible, at least for me.

Awesome. Thank you. Great to hear it. I will try to update at least once a week (I'm quite busy and it's hard to record every day). Omnibus you say? I never would have figured it to be Omnibus material. I never would have thought something like this could be thought of as a tuorial. But thank you for the comment and the good wishes. Hope this turns out pretty well.

I'm an Xbox, although I do own all three, Xbox gets the majority of my time. My playstation (broken disc drive) is sued as a media centre and the Wii is mostly my 7 year old brother's system, but I do watch netflix on there as well.

Thanks. I'll try to have a new one every week at the least. For the most part, it doesn't take too long. I record in sessions, so I'll maybe play and record for an hour and then I can cut up the video and sync the audio. The rendering and uploading is the worst because my computer and internet speeds are so bad. One 20 minute episode takes about 5 hours to render and then between 2 and 3 hours to upload. I do it at night though so I don't actually have to get annoyed with the long render/upload times. As for the auto-ordinance message, I fixed that in the next recording session. Apologies.

I'm HomerSPC. You can call me Vince. I'm a 17 year old High School senior from Saskatchewan, Canada. I'm a gamer, of course, and I mostly play Xbox and PC. I love to play games like Mass Effect and Call of Duty, however I also am quite into other genres. One of the oldest games that I play is Sim City 4, but I do play other "city builders" like Caesar III. I'm a YouTuber, and if you know who Machinima, Inc. is, I am a partner for them. I make Lets Plays and post-commentaries in a variety of games, one of which just happens to be Sim City 4 as of a few days ago. I've been a member of this community for years but only really started browsing alot in the past week. So, I decided to introduce myself. Anyways, when the new Sim City comes around, I hope to be a valuable member of this community. I do have a question though. A "Lets Play" is a type of video series in which I play a certain game. I would like to post my Sim City 4 lets play somewhere to get feedback from players of Sim City. Would it be best to post a thread in City Journals for the it?