Synergy67

Have you ever played or terraformed a map tile in a region, saved it, and later wanted to restore it to the original, pristine state, but were still playing the region and had other maps there you did not want to lose? There's no ready way to do this without replacing the entire region folder with your saved maps in it with a pristine copy found in the Game folder itself. Well, I wanted to try. I'm on a Mac using the cd version of Rush Hour, but I am guessing that this will work essentially the same for anyone else who can navigate to the different folders which contain SC4 game data. In my quest to restore select altered maps, I discovered something very curious and very useful for finding and recovering them. I had terraformed and started small cities on four maps in the SF region I wanted to revert back to original unplayed form. There are two different SC4 data folders, at least on the old Mac version: one in the User: Documents: SimCity 4 folder, and one inside the SimCity 4 game folder wherever you install the application itself. Inside the game folder is a SimCity 4 Data folder. The Regions folder inside that Data folder is the one with the original unplayed map regions inside it. The game duplicates that region set of maps when you start playing a region, and all of your changes and saves go in that duplicated Regions folder which is in the SimCity 4 folder in the Documents folder. So, knowing that those four maps were in the original folder somewhere, and really wanting to restore them, I went hunting for a way to isolate them. There were a list of 71 maps, identified only by number in the SF region! I couldn't isolate any by creation date either, which I tried first, comparing each set of maps in each Region folder. In comparing the two region map sets, I noticed the numbers which were missing from the saved cities folder set, because their names had been changed from the numbered cities to the city names I gave them. So, I now had 8 options to check to find the four maps I wanted to revert, but no way to figure out specifically which was which from the files alone. Four missing numbers were for cities I was playing and keeping. Four were for cities I had saved, but wanted to delete now. I wasn't sure what would happen if I swapped in a city number which was a city tile I was keeping. I was worried what might happen, so I duplicated those maps and kept the copies outside the folder elsewhere, just in case it would corrupt them somehow to have duplicate maps in the region folder. Next I pulled out and set aside the four named saved cities I wanted to delete/restore from the saved regions folder. When I loaded any of those map tiles from the region view now, I got a green flat tile. OK. That makes sense. Next, I started reinserting the missing numbered maps into the saved maps folder one by one, and reloading each of the 8 possible maps from the region view in the game to see which one, if any, had changed/reverted. I tried counting tiles across or down to see if that seemed to match the tiles I wanted to change, but I was having a hard time finding the missing maps, and the numbers didn't seem to match the tiles any way I could ascertain. I started getting worried that I had messed something up or there was going to be no way to make this work. Then finally a changed map showed up when I reloaded a map-it was reverted back to original unplayed form. Yay! One down, three to go. Next, I dropped three of the remaining likely candidates into the region folder at once. They didn't change -any- of the maps (they should have represented three of them), and that made me more worried, because I was running out of maps to swap in, and it didn't make sense that none of them would change. Even if having duplicate maps in the folder (my saved keeper cities + their original numbered maps) would result in only seeing the changed save map and not the original, sooner or later I would have to hit the other three missing maps, like I did with one of them already. When I went back to the saved regions folder to remove those three maps I had just dropped in...I couldn't find them!!! I thought maybe I accidentally dropped them into another folder or to the trash by accident. But I could not find them anywhere. Puzzled, I dropped the rest of the candidate maps into the saved regions folder. I finally got the rest of the missing maps to show up in their original state! Hooray! When I went back to start testing for/locating the extra dropped map numbers out to eliminate any that were cities I was keeping...to my amazement, all the numbered map files which were ones I still had named cities for...had disappeared. The game itself, when reloading the region, deleted any duplicate maps for ones I had saved named maps for still stored in the saved regions folder, meaning I could have dropped all 8 missing map numbers in at once, (re)loaded the region, and all the ones which were for maps I still had in the folder would just vanish. Only the ones I wanted to change would remain. Amazing! This means you don't even have to hunt and peck and swap in one possible map at a time. Just locate the missing map numbers and drop all those into the region saves folder. Load the region in game. The game will do the work for you and keep/reinsert the map files for any renamed maps you have pulled out of the saved regions folder and leave any named maps untouched which you have left in the folder, and will delete those duplicates. Poof! So if you try this, use duplicate maps from the pristine Game>Regions folder, or you will lose those files for good.

I am experimenting on the very last unbuilt neighborhood in my Vulcan Vale huge tile city, which is nearing 100K Sims with nowhere left to build but up. I have constructed this high density housing shown below, so that in order to get out to jobs, the Sims have to go by, first, the subway, and if that doesn't grab them, second, a Park Here lot. I'll be curious to see what percentages each captures and what percentage ignores both and heads out by car. I see I still have to break connection to that side road on the left, oops.

I have tested these. They seem to be appearing and working fine along with the seasonal trees with one small exception I will show. I get identical results for all with or without merged.dat included. This is a nice plaza @tariely! Nicely done. I'm going to start using it. I still need to dig up some nice parks and plazas again. (I just started playing again after a five year gap). I noticed that Merged.dat is included inside each of the TL-Obelisk Place 4x5 and TL-Obelisk Place 4x5 1.01 folders. If your other friend used both of these or included an external merged.dat separately, it means merged.dat would be duplicated. I doubt that would cause any problem though. First, below are the TL-Obelisk Place 3 + LLB-Tariel Obelisk Plaza Modular 2 (I assembled the modular one on the right from the four pieces in your modular set). It all looks good and works. I only saw one animated person, the rest are static. The fountains work and the trees change seasons. Next, below, is the TL-Obelisk Place 4x5 version. It's hilarious that it caught fire as soon as the trees grew! Ha ha. Everything also looks and works fine with it, best I can see. Lastly, below, is the TL-Obelisk Place 4x5 1.01 version. Everything about it was also fine except for this one brown box in the very corner. Comparing it to the previous lots, it looks like it is being caused by the little group of people that are supposed to appear in that corner? Unless this version has a change there. I don't know. Maybe you can figure that part out. If I had to guess, I'm thinking it might be Tamorr_Family_Props_V210. ,

I see the merged.dat is pretty tiny, and you say it is or was a dependency for your lots. I'll just remove all my other added plugins and try your Obelisk lots with and without the merged.dat. But not tonight. Tomorrow I should be able. I'll report back here with the results.

Ha ha, it's true, isn't it. Well, it's as easy as understanding what is lost when you convert a 16-bit png to an 8-bit jpeg, which apparently is required for in-game rendering along with the config.bmp. I never realized jpegs were only 8-bit. I learned something new.

Oh my, soooo many dependencies. So very many. OK, I downloaded everything needed from the Obelisk Place link and its dependencies, but your merged.dat link is dead now. How about you post any remaining necessary files in one zipped file somewhere I can download, and I will be happy to test any configuration which would be helpful. Please note I am running SC4 on Snow Leopard OS 10.6 on a MacPro 1,1 and the original cd version of Rush Hour, not the newer Universal Binary edition, if that makes any difference to you. Also, there are three versions of the Obelisk Place park through the one download, so I need to know which of these you want tested. Also also, is merged.dat a file of data -you- put together for your lots, or something the general community here uses. If so, I need to know what it is, what it does, and if it might conflict with anything else I have installed. Is it a replacement for the SimCity_1-5 files?

Thanks. I'm glad to have a good understanding what the difference is and why we can't just convert an SC4M map using the old-school grayscale jpg for rendering through SC4 itself. And that's a real bit of bad luck for everyone, wouanagaine's laptop theft.

I live within eyesight of this beautiful behemoth. It absolutely looms over everything around here, even from 90 miles away.

As a followup to my original thoughts on isolating swaths of residential neighborhoods and/or commercial downtown districts to force commuters onto subways or other mass transit, I realized that you don't want to eliminate -too much- road traffic or your commercial zones, which love having lots of cars and buses drive by, will suffer. So, I can see using this isolating technique to help keep roads out of the red, but not to create a utopian "no cars" society entirely. Though, now that I think about it further....I wonder how commercial zones would develop with no car traffic, but plenty of customers? Does the game count pedestrian traffic as traffic that promotes business? It seems like it should, actually. I might have to test this out.

Yeah, this suggests what the update was about primarily, but it also looks a bit different. "Dependencies: NONE (fixed texture dependency problem)"

Ah, I found the article I was looking at here on tax rates before, linked below: The summary chart with the pertinent info, originally offered by Cogeo. Clearly you can leave a developing city's tax rates untouched for a very long time to no ill effect. Here is the neutral tax rate as a function of city population: Population (≤) Neutral Tax Rate 150000 9.0% 450000 8.9% 600000 8.8% 900000 8.7% 1050000 8.6% 1350000 8.5% 1500000 8.4% 1650000 8.3% 1950000 8.2% 2100000 8.1% 2400000 8.0% 2550000 7.9% 2700000 7.8% 2850000 7.7% 3000000 7.6% 3150000 7.5% 3450000 7.4% 3600000 7.3% 3750000 7.2% 3900000 7.1% 4050000 7.0% 4200000 6.9% 4350000 6.7% 4500000 6.6% 4650000 6.5% 4800000 6.4% 4950000 6.2% 5100000 6.1% 5250000 5.9% 5400000 5.8% 5550000 5.6% 5700000 5.4% 5850000 5.1% 6000000 4.8% >6000000 4.0%

@CorinaMarie You made the plunge! I like those dirt roads for farms too. Where did you get the covered bridge?

Without changing whatever you've got in your plugins, I'd do this to get those roads connected: 1. Remove the road coming down the hill several tiles back up from where it ends now, maybe even all the way to the top of the slope. 2. Run the road at the bottom from right to left to the tile where you want it to join the road running down the hill. On the hill side of that tile, make one road dot to flatten the tile next to the road where the hill road will run across just before it joins the left right road. By road dot, I mean hover only over that one tile and drop one road dot onto it. This should not connect the road dot to the left right road, but exist as a separate piece of road next to your road. Doing this will make that tile the same height as the road tile next to it, and will level it also. (This is a great way to level out swaths of terrain precisely and control how intersections will connect. You can extend that flat plane as far as you can, making more such sequential dots tile by tile in any direction from that point. You won't be doing that here, though, just the one dot.) 3. From one spot up the hill from that flattened empty tile now run a rail line up the slope to one or two tiles away from whatever point you removed the hill road back up to. Especially if you have a slope mod installed, the rail line should create a nice smooth, even grade up the hill between your two intended connection points. 4. Delete the rail line. 5. From bottom to top, run your road. it -should- create one flat spot at the bottom where you already flattened one tile, and follow the nice smooth rail line up to the top. You can tweak more than once how far up the hill you run the rail line to smooth it to get the result you want, and then drop your road into that spot.

It is my understanding that lowering your tax rate below the neutral rate of 9.0 percent before your city reaches ~130K Sims only causes a very brief bump in behavior, but does nothing lasting to make something more attractive in the long run. In other words, they will be just as likely to develop ongoing hi tech industry at 9% as at 0%, though you might get a flurry of it started at 0% for a few months. After that, you might as well reset it to 9%. So I've read around somewhere.

I found out that you can drive right through these little garages, out the back side, if there is a road/street right behind it. It effectively operates as one tile of road. No wonder I was getting weird results with it on my route queries. So, for anyone using them, be sure there is no other road as a means out touching it on the other three sides. I also found out that Sims can walk or drive into the back side of a commercial building. Each of these shops is built facing the avenue, but they are driving their cars to work to the back side of the buildings, whether they visually have a parking lot in rear or not.

Yeah, I don't consider it a cheat for me, because it's just the symbolic representation of all that work I'd do on an isolated neighbor tile and all that endless jockeying around of Neighbor Deals I'd be doing, if I were playing the real world conditions dealing with trash (and sometimes power). I'm not pretending the garbage isn't a real horrific issue like it is in real life. I just don't want to deal with it in this game most of the time, since it requires so much micromanagement, if you want to ship it off somewhere else. You have to keep remembering to up the amount of garbage you are shipping out, and I keep forgetting that kind of thing. I'm too busy building and organizing the city!

Nice detective work, @Cyclone Boom. If I encounter any more sav files with lot sets and such, I'll just remove them. I suspected they weren't needed, but had no idea what they were for when I first noticed them with the parking garage sets.

Right on. Good idea. I tweaked it appropriately. I'll start making more separate threads for specific topics, including starting a city journal post when I get around to showing what I have been doing for the last couple weeks with the Pacific Rim National Park region.

@Cyclone Boom: I do love how I keep learning new facts, tricks, and strategies for this game. In the last month since deciding to resurrect my playing, I have learned numerous things I did not know before, making it more fun and rewarding than ever. I didn't know that about landfills either. I haven't used one for a while, though. I usually use the Black Hole Waste Management lot, because dealing with trash is one aspect of the game I don't enjoy micromanaging. I -could- go through all the bother of setting up an isolated trash/dirty power city tile and continually adjust intercity deals to keep it all out of my proper cities...or I could just pretend I am doing all that, but not actually spend the time and bother on that and get to spend it focusing on the parts of playing I do enjoy. Good to know if I want to get more real again at some point. @CorinaMarie: That is some especially useful information on running subways. I had been noticing how running them under streets might be confusing how much actual congestion is on the street, or giving me proper volume counts, but I hadn't thought yet to make a point of making sure not to run my lines under them at all. And also not running the subways through the stops...that seems obvious now, but I hadn't thought that far yet either. Yes, even with my cities of 50K-90K right now, I am getting certain subway stops or intersections/roundabouts which are already going over 100-300% capacity. These new tricks will do much to alleviate that, I think. I'm going to start implementing them. Traffic is by far the most critical element to design and micromanage well in order to have cities in a region keep growing, and it was the hardest part for me to control successfully in the past.

Well, how about that. That's a high wealth condo too. They're the fussiest ones about wanting to use their cars. Whole new strategies for city design developing now. I've got some neighborhoods to rework...