Jeiman2008

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose I guess you could call me a parsimonious mayor. quote> I had to look that up: "Parsimony is the use of the simplest or most frugal route of explanation available." I'm a bit of a master planner. I lay out all of my major transportation networks first. My cities are ruled by roads. However, I use real world networks as my inspiration.

Verlinde makes an interesting case, and I agree with him. I've long thought of gravity as more of an effect generated by the way matter warps space time, than as a force or "mutual attraction." But if he's right... does it change anything? I don't see any practical difference between the two views of gravity as long as we can quantify it. This topic made me think about a catered event I recently worked where grade school children did a short presentation about the solar system, involving the 9 planets. I turned to one of my co-workers and said "Should we tell them there's only 8 planets now, and Pluto is considered a planetoid?" He gave me a look like he didn't believe me

I think it will end very badly for the bandit. I have a friend who stole an aircraft once for a joyride. He never even got it off the ground. The plane rolled over on the taxiway. He did it as a minor, but he's now got an FBI file and he can never do things like enter military service, earn a pilot's license, or even board a passenger jet. They really, really take this kind of thing seriously. I'm guessing the bandit had some basic knowledge of aviation and got lucky with the weather conditions. I've read a few stories of stolen or errant aircraft receiving F-16 escorts and being forced to land. The more I think about it, the more amazed I am that he isn't dead. The shoeless bandit better get good money for his story, because the rest of his life is going to be very short or very difficult.

@kccl35 That has to be Fly Tampa's Kai Tak. I have that scenery for FSX, it's so sweeeeet!

One of the most famous and infamous is TNCM, Princess Juliana International Airport, also known as Saint Maarten International Airport. If you haven't seen it, check out some of the you tube videos of it. The Runway almost sits on the beach itself and there's a road that runs behind the threshold. Tourists can walk up to the fence and get a big whiff of jet blast as aircraft land here. My personal favorite is KSFO, San Fransisco International. The view on approach is always awesome.

This is really nothing new guys. It's called a show of force. We (The United States) have done this many times in the past. Like others have alluded to, if we hadn't wanted the subs to be seen, they wouldn't have been.

The mindset I began with when I began to create non grid cities = Tell yourself that four way intersections are bad. Try to build an efficient transit network with the goal of creating as few intersections as possible, or at least as few four way intersections as possible. Also try not to make the intersections too close together. I also suggest looking at Google Earth for inspiration. Pretty much all really dense cities are grid like in some places, so it's not always a terrible to go with grids.

I really hate to have to re-develop so I will spend a lot of time laying out the highways and avenues before I begin to zone. I know this isn't natural but it definitely helps me not have to re zone as much. I still achieve a natural look because I design my networks with real world networks in mind. I've found great inspiration from Wichita Kansas in particular. The interchanges there are spectacular! In one region I got so obsessive about it that I spent two months laying out transportation in several cities before I started growing anything.

Originally posted by: GeneralEtrius Okay, back to this discussion. On a Vanilla SC4 game, the automata last a LOT longer before disappearing than a game with the NAM running. So, i guess it is the NAM's fault (I had the standard Automata plugin running.)quote> I'm pretty sure the Rush Hour expansion started the automata behaving like they do because of UDI. The disappearing cars help you get around in UDI missions. Uninstall NAM and you'll find the cars still disappear. NAM didn't create this behavoir, they work with the automata to suit their traffic simulators.

I think different people get different things out of CAM. For me it was all about the additional buildings, not so much about the additional growth stages. There are a lot of really nice CAMeLots that you can't use without the mod.

Originally posted by: z1 Originally posted by: CptStrategy It's like a ping packet. Each car has a Time To Live based on its destination. If you go to the original SimCity site: simcity.ea.com/about/inside_scoop/automata1.php it talks about the automata feature in the engine. It also mentions about the time of day having a factor on the trip. So you can watch early morning traffic going to work, and when they disappear, they have reached their destination or time to live.quote> I just read that article (great reference!), but there is no mention of time to live. Instead, in addition to the time of day that you mention, it simply takes a lot more resources to show vehicles going for long distances, and this can slow the game down noticeably. For those willing to make such a tradeoff, the various automata mods exist, but it's important to know that that tradeoff is there. The amount of any slowdown is affected by a whole range of factors, including the components used in your computer and the size of your city. quote> I just wanted to shed some light on the time of day factor in play. There are two types of commuter spawns going on here. One is called occupant trip, the other is commuter. NAM's radical addon uses the commute clock to generate additional traffic at certain times of the day. The occupant trip clock has essentially the same function, and can be equated to housewives taking lesiurly trips to the mall in the middle of the day. Example: Say you want to have your peak traffic hours begin at 9AM. You could set the commute clock to a value of 1.00000 for 9AM, which will esentially double the baseline spawn. If you set the same value as -1.000000, you would see a reverse commute happen, and a lot of cars going in the opposite direction. Having the occupant trip clock may seem reduntant, but it definately has it's uses. In the Persistent Automata Mod, I use the occupant trip clock to generate a small reverse commute so that it looks more realistic. In reality you'd never see an increase in traffic only going in one direction. z1 is absolutely right about the performance tradeoff. I think this is one the reasons NAM's automata addons behave the way they do. You may not notice it on a high end gaming rig, but on a five year old computer you'll definatly notice a slowdown of the game. One last thing, I kinda went over in my last reply, is that the "time to live" is trumped by the spawn/recall value. It doesn't matter if you give the automata a minimum distance of 10000, they will still be recalled by the engine because of this value.

There are several variables or values if you like.. in the automata exemplar which work together and may sometimes work against each other to determine the overall persistence of automata. The most simple explanation I can give you is that cars have a minimum and maximum distance that they are allowed to travel, dictated by the values in the automata exemplar(addon). The reason that the cars are disappearing so rapidly in NAM's automata mod is because of a value called spawn/recall for streets/roads/avenue..ect. NAM's automata mod spawns an awful lot of cars, but also it recalls just as many. Which means once a certain number of automata have spawned, the game looks to recall them so that it may continue to spawn more. This results in the automata doing some odd things like driving less than their minimum dictated distance, so you see them constantly fadiing in and out. As I said, there are other factors at play here, and I'd need a bit more time to fully explain them. To be honest I've made literally hundereds of tweaks to the Persistent Automata Mod, and I still have a lot to learn about them. Also it's true the mod will incur a marginal decrease in performance compared to NAM's mod, although it is based off of NAM's automata mod. It really shouldn't be much of an issue to gameplay, especially at closer zoom levels, where the game doesn't draw as much automata.

Just checking in to see how this project has been coming along. I'm glad to see people are still showing interest in it. I just came back to SC4 after about 2 months off, but I haven't forgotten about killing civic vehicles. It may take me a few weeks but I plan on re-investigating the issue soon. Any word on the possibility of switching civic vehicles with alternate models? That's definitely out of my comfort zone, but I think it's still a viable solution because I'm really not sure if it will be possible to do it through the automata exemplar.

You could also modify the automata exemplar you're using to reduce the number of commuters it takes to fill a train, if you don't favor using an automata generator lot. If you're familiar with the ilive reader it's fairly simple to do.