content_writer

Hi Everyone. I've recently started posting maps to the STEX and have uploaded two so far: Che Guevara and Heart Isles. Both of these maps started off as greyscale images in the GIMP. Che Guevara was an image that I downloaded and made modifications (texture and height) using a paintbrush, while Heart Isles was made completely freehand. I am now giving SC4 Terraformer a go and I must say it's a great program. I am completely blown away by the results. I've started with a coastline and a mountain. Here is a screenshot of Mount Sterling: I've made no modifications to the Terraformer picture; I only removed the grid/contour lines and moved the camera around to make it appear like I'm really there. I am excited about how real the results look. (I'm referring to the quality of the program as there is so much about mapping I still need to learn.) This portion is only a start, though, as this candid shot of the rest of the region shows: Very rough, indeed. I'll keep you all updated as I continue to create it.

I say "keep trying" because you have a good 2D awareness. I practiced for a while before I uploaded anything.

Hello everybodyhateschris, Welcome to the place to learn how to create better maps. You've asked for comments on this map. I think you need to improve it in three areas: My first suggestion is to make the mountains more gradual. Try foothills, or a leading slope or cliffs to make your mountains more realistic. If you have conical peaks coming out of the ground, with nothing to make it "belong" you have a collection of volcanoes instead of mountains (and even inactive volcanoes usually have remnants of a lava trail--again, a gradual slope). Second, I wouldn't suggest completely ignoring the "city limits" tilelines--it is a city simulation after all--but when you have one geological feature isolated in one city tile here and another geological feature contained in another city tile there, you have geography that has no connection with each other. Your rivers and lakes cross tiles; hills, coastlines and mountains should do the same. Take advantage of this program's cross-tile ability: The main reason why maps are so popular on the stex is because the in-game terraformer only affects one city tile at a time with lousy reconcile edges capabilities. Thirdly, as others have suggested, your land shouldn't be so flat. Just don't overdo it with the land texturing. Most of the time "default" land is gently rolling hills or very gradual changes in elevation, with the occasional big hill, cliff, plains or bumpy patch. Overall, I think you have a good eye for 2D and as you develop more of a sense for 3D your maps will improve considerably.

And going into an altered state, they didn't start a fire.

Why does it have to smell so bad? I really wouldn't care if someone smoked pot in the appartment below me, provided it didn't stink up my apartment and they didn't make a lot of noise.

One of the biggest frustrations with installing SC4 on Vista is you don't have a choice on whether you want to start the game automatically or not, once the installation stops. Vista can be quite tempermental with programs as you can see by all the bugs reported here. There are solutions to prevent "installation crashes". However for them to work, you need SC4 to already be installed on your system. This starts a catch-22 situation: How can you edit a shortcut to a program that doesn't (yet) exist for a program that will crash once it is added? There are two paths you can take, depending on where you are on the installation process: 1. You have added the program and it crashed when the installation finished You saw the progress indicator go all the way to 100%, you saw the bridge splash screen, and boom--the game crashed and you may have even seen a Blue Screen of Death before your computer restarts: The best solution to this problem is leave SimCity 4 alone--in other words, don't uninstall it and try again. It's not an installation issue; it's a gameplay technical problem. The memory dump file has already been created, you don't want to keep making more of them now, do you? You will need to create a manual shortcut, place it onto your desktop, and edit the target field. What to place in your target field? Tungston and N_O_Body have suggested fixes [and if they give me permission I will post them here--otherwise search for "Vista" and "crash"] and they work. I would like to add, in my specific case, that running my game in "windowed" mode solved many problems, and you are not limited to an 800x600 resolution either if you properly create a custom resolution (but I would still start with 800x600, just to make sure the game works). 2. You haven't added the program yet (if your reading this, that's probably unlikely) or you have uninstalled the game and are reading this so you don't repeat your "mistake" Don't worry about it...the only thing you did wrong is mistreat your XP system so badly that you are stuck with using Vista In case if you are the type to skim ahead, Vista SC4 installation crashes are a gameplay technical problem in disguise, since when you've installed the game it starts automatically. This solution calls for quick fingers and good timing. Do this too early and the game won't fully install. Do this too late and the bridge will come crashing down (90% literally). Do this wrong and you'll scratch your play disk: a) Place Disk 1 into your CD-ROM. Let Autoplay do it's thing. Follow all the handy instructions that will appear on your screen. When Disk 1 starts to load its files, go to the washroom, go get a sandwich or glass of water. You don't need to be watching your game like a hawk at this point. Just make sure there are no distractions before proceeding to the next step...and make sure that no other programs are running. b) Place Disk 2 into your CD-ROM carefully...this is your play disk, you don't want any scratches. Once your disk is detected, close the autoplay window and press OK on the install window to continue installation. c) When you get to around 85% loading or so, get your fingers ready. You want you thumb hovering or lightly touching ALT and your index hovering or lightly touching F4 . You will need to make sure that when the time comes you will be pushing the correct buttons AND doing it with only one hand. d) There is a small window of opportunity to press ALT + F4. When the indicator reaches 100% and that window disappears, that's when you press and hold the buttons. It's a fraction of a second before the bridge comes up, but if you wait for the bridge it may already be too late. The bridge will most likely still appear while you are holding, but ignore it. Listen for your CD-ROM to come to a complete stop. Once it does, eject the CD carefully with your free hand, close the tray and then you can let go. (For me it still gave me an error saying the disk needs to be in to play, but I don't want to play, so I cancelled the notification.) e) Restart your computer...call me old fashioned, it's a hang-up from Windows 95 days for me to always restart after installing something new. f) Post a shortcut of SimCity 4.exe and make whatever changes you need to target menu. Might I suggest a customized windows mode? Lastly, don't forget you always need to start your game using the shortcut, not autoplay from the disk. And you really should get the update patch installed before your first game run. Bon chance, content_writer

In my defence, I got my XP second hand and the software damage was already done.

[edited post: The computer specs have since been removed, no need to have them in this message anymore, for the world to see.] Issue 1: BSOD in Vista when install stops and game automatically starts Issue 2: When windows restarts, the game is not installing properly--expected folders in Documents are missing Details: Disk 1 of Deluxe loads fine. Disk 2 loads to 100% with no incident. Then the game automatically starts--it shows the bridge splash screen. Then the display goes dark and then changes to the Blue Screen of Death. Here are the error codes: *** STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0x896503B9, 0xA5CEE538, 0x00000000) *** igdkmd.sys - Address 896503B9 base at 89552000, DateStamp 454f7ef8 [i've googled the whole stop code and can't find anything specific. Also this is the most recent blue screen message, after increasing Virtual Memory to 4095 MB, but I'm getting ahead of myself here...] To fix the problem: 1. Multiple re-installs. Read the installation guide that came with the game: Legal disks, no scratches, bought at Staples Business Depot that I have since tested in another Vista machine [but I want it to work in mine!]. 2. Read this forum, wrote down a few tips. 3. Increased Virtual Memory to 4095 MB 3. Added -w -r800x600 -d:software -intro: off [without the space] to the shortcut target I manually placed on my desktop 4. Tested in Window mode. SUCCESS!...even if it still was in window mode. But then... Issue 2: I noticed that Documents don't have any of the proper SC4 folders or files. It had a SC4 folder dated from months ago (before discovering Simtropolis a week ago, I thought that that Vista and SC4 didn't mix) that only had an "HTTP Cache" folder, with no files to be seen. I saved five-minute city (to where, I have no clue) and exited the game. To fix the problem: 1. Feeling overconfident with my new Virtual Memory, I removed the command line enhanced shortcut, errant folders in Documents and uninstalled the game. 2. Reinstalled. BSOD appeared, at the bridge, with the code I posted above, and no folders/files installed to the Documents. Not even the useless ones. That's where I am now...with a game that if I bite the bullet and only play in window mode that still won't be able to be customized or (probably) even properly saved. Other information: 1. Haven't added the patch yet, as I'm not sure how it will affect my computer when the expected files don't show up in Documents folder. 2. I have no plug-ins or stex items. I read in a thread that I'm not supposed to modify the regions or plugin SC4 files found in the "Program Files". 3. I really don't know much about advanced computer issues--I just know how to read and copy things down--so I need the blow-by-blow account on how to make my game work. I thank anyone who takes the time to read this and help me. [edit: computer specs removed from this post]

It was in high school and my friend got me into it. The internet hadn't really caught on yet and I think it was one of the first PC video games I played that had "real" sound effects instead of completely computer generated sounds. The "ZZZZZZ" sound (for those who haven't played classic, it was a male, slightly robotic voice) as each electrical line went up, still makes me laugh.

If God was more interested in people than he was in objects, than wouldn't people's lives be the effect that could be observed and measured?

Originally posted by: fukuda No. Water does have volume. It can accumulate underground in very porous rocks, but there aren't big enough amounts of porous rock underground for such a volume of water, and if water was forced out of these amounts of porous rocks underground entire continents would have collapsed under the weight of the upper layers of rock... Do you realize the sheer volume of water that is needed to cover the whole earth? Not to say that there is no geologic evidence of such an amount of water covering the earth (huge sediment layers and erosion) which renders such a discussion quite useless. You only start wondering about the causes of something when you have evidence of the existence of that something, not the other way round... 97% of the water the earth contains is already covering the earth in the oceans, only a 30% of that 3% is groundwater. There isn't enough water in the earth to cover it completely.. and no water leaves or enters the planet by magic quote> Just a theory, but we often think of the "flood story" of water levels rising. What if this Atlantis principle you describe was true, and continents did collapse? That would mean that even if water levels remained the same, the relative water-to-land level would rise. In fact, water levels would rise in this scenario, much like what happens when you put stones in a flask filled with water, thanks to displacement. The chart has a flaw. It lists frozen water only under the freshwater category. However, even salt water will freeze if the temperature is low enough...it's a myth that water has to "separate" before it freezes, even if it typically happens this way in the lower arctic region, the Atlantic Ocean and high school lab experiments. This is because in those zones the temperature hovers between the normal freezing temperature of water and the freezing temperature of salt water. My main question is this: If all the water that exists on earth now (including underground, frozen, vapor and even some that's currently absorbed in lifeforms--we don't have any idea what the world's population was at that time) were suddenly made into liquid surface water, would it cover the earth?

Hi, I'm Aaron. I'm a writer living in Canada and discovered Simtropolis less than a week ago. I've played all of the SimCity games up to and including SC4, but I'm usually slow to move on to the next version, so I'm fairly new to SC4. I have always been a big SimCity fan. I even made an edited, five-second version of one of the jazz songs found on Streets of SimCity so that when I booted up my old Windows 98 machine, it would play.

Originally posted by: jammy God is not a real thing as we, the universe, the sun, the earth and the life on it has developed over billions of years.quote> Originally posted by: Eastwinn I personally do not believe in any god. I'm atheist. I've yet to see any evidence at all that convinces my in any way that any sort of god exists, so I'm yet to see any reason at all to believe that a god may exist. It's not a matter of faith, it's a matter of lack of faith brought on by scientific thinking. I am sure of all my beliefs.quote> Radio waves have been around since the universe began. They surround you, travel great distances and can pass through buildings. They can't be seen, touched, tasted, smelled or heard. If the device called the radio (or the early experiments that preceded it) hadn't been invented, how would you be able to prove or disprove that radio waves exist? Faith is nothing more than the ability to discern God, much like a radio (device) is able to tune in a specific frequency and play music. Originally posted by: Patricius Maximus I also believe that many other accounts are exaggerated or fictitious. For instance, the physical impossibility of that amount of water condensing in the atmosphere to produce Noah's flood, as well as my belief that Genesis has effectively been disproven by scientific evidence and theory (i.e. the gigantic evidence gap between the two).quote> Contrary to popular belief, the flood wasn't exclusively the result of "a lot of rain" pouring from the sky. If you read the whole account, it says that in one day "all the springs of the great deep [ie: water that's underground] burst forth..." If you take into account all the current underground, surface, atmospheric water, add what's locked in the form of snow and ice (mountain tops, as well as the polar regions), and even the water contained in us, then there is certainly enough water to cover the whole earth.