Moonraker0

Here's one of the downtown of my newest city, showing a couple of new skyscrapers. Here's another one!

@Markhoz: Looks like to me.

Trifort, work in progress Downtown will stay contained on the island/peninsula; the mainland to the north will be the suburban area. I'll post more pictures of it when it's nearer to completion, and I'm thinking I'll also start a city journal of this region sometime soon.

Here are a few pictures of the railways in New Concorde, my latest city: The main station: 1 2 2 Eastland Grand and a smaller commuter rail station further down the tracks: 1 Bridge past the marina further south from the last image: 1

Wonderful...I had been planning on starting a new multiplayer region project after I stopped playing Blue Hope, and I even organized the necessary files and found software to synchronize everything, but never actually went public with it. This feature should make easier and more organized.

I love the SC3000 soundtrack, and in general I like it more than SC4's, even though I don't play 3000 anymore. South Bridge is my favorite song of all time.

I had lots of good times with Fallout 3 back in the day. Mine would crash to desktop every 15-30 minutes, and I never found a solution to that, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I just can't get myself interested in games like that these days; I bought New Vegas on a bargain recently, but I haven't played more than a few minutes of it.

Sure, I'd love to see the recreation.

Is there even going to be another RHW release? I thought all the NAM sub-mods were being integrated into the base package. Those Cities XL interchange are pretty awesome; makes me wish I could play that game. Hopefully one day SC2013 will be able to look like that with mods, although I suppose that image would be the entire city tile or more than the whole thing with the new map sizes. Here's an interchange that I really like, or rather half of it because it's divided by the city border. I'm not sure if it will get used on the other half; I just made the through route into a subway tunnel and put a bunch of MIS neighbor connector and invisible loop connector pieces. I first made a curved 3-level roundabout, but it turned out to be way too huge and I wasn't satisfied with that result, so I started over and this is what I got. Interchange between the Cross-Island Skyway (T1) and the Central Concorde Expressway (T2): And who says large interchanges have to be a waste of space? Hybrid partial cloverleaf on the Central Concorde Expressway: Kind of makes me mad, though, that I was able to have huge amounts of traffic showing up at rush hour around this interchange earlier, and now it doesn't seem to be showing nearly as many automata. Also, here is a sort of mosaic I made because I wanted to show all the ramps on this whirlpool interchange on the CCE as well as the T interchange on Ebony River Drive (left of image) where T3 passes under it and becomes the Tranwell Link at the beginning of the causeway.

Like I already mentioned, CXL doesn't even run on my computer due to developer laziness/unwillingness to fix the problem, so I have every reason to choose SC2013 and not CXL. I have tested the SimCity beta, and it does in fact run on my computer.

Yeah, it kind of bothers me; I usually just connect the intersection with another road, but it's not good to have such little space between a highway ramp and the intersection because of people weaving/changing lanes to turn after merging. I'm pretty sure that the only way to avoid it is to continue a six-lane avenue out from it instead of the four lane one, but the six-lane avenue isn't in the beta. However, I saw that in the neighboring town in the tutorial, there wasn't an intersection there because the six-lane avenue continued from it. I tried to make some odd five/six way intersections, but it didn't seem to work...not that that's something I'd normally consider a good idea, but just to test it. In Cities XL they're possible, but the traffic lights in that game are the kind where you can make any turn from a green light because only one direction is green at a time, so it works out there.

SimCity 4 is my favorite of all time, since it has basically infinite replay value. I can always try harder and harder to create a "perfect" city. I like Elder Scrolls RPGs a lot too, but still, I've always ran out of things to do after several hundred hours of playing them. Morrowind (Elder Scrolls 3) would definitely be my second favorite, though, and I grew up playing that game.

Cool...but couldn't you just put RHW-4 starter stubs in those empty tiles in the middle to make the override stick?

They're

So, about one week ago, my game started lagging terribly. It seems to have a mind of its own with these kinds of problems, considering that my graphics settings definitely did not change shortly before it started happening or anything like that; I have no idea why this suddenly started to happen, and it's really annoying me. I searched about this problem first, naturally...but I guess most other people who have this kind of problem are having a different kind of lag, which I used to experience myself: that which is caused by hardware rendering plus shadows. This is different because I have been running the game with hardware rendering and shadows on high without any lag for a long time. The lag is pretty unbearable. I thought it would be one of those unexplained "easy come, easy go" problems, but it hasn't gone away. It's not like I used to get with vertical scrolling with shadows and hardware rendering, which I understand is a common problem on new systems. That kind of lag was consistent, but when I scroll (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal), it just skips horribly, not like the frame rate is actually lower, just jumpy. It also happens when I'm not scrolling and I just observe traffic on the roads; the traffic skips around too. It seems like the game is re-drawing all the objects in the city at a slow pace and that's what's causing the stuttering, but I don't know that for sure. I mean, it seems to peak in severity after I zoom in or out or rotate the view. I wish there was some obvious explanation to this, but I don't know of any graphical setting that changed in the game or on my computer. It basically happened overnight. Also, it seems to come and go during long play sessions...well, not come and go, but get better and worse in severity. Sometimes it's tolerable, and sometimes it's quite horrible. I thought that maybe if I restricted the game to one CPU core, it would stop. However, that option is already enabled in SC4 Startup Manager. I have also enabled it in the batch file I use to launch the game, just to make sure it's working. My system specs SC4 setup: using a program called Reso to lower my desktop resolution to 1930x800 to match the game's maximum res on my setup. "windowed fullscreen" setup; I can't run in fullscreen because it's DX7 and portrait mode monitors, which would mess everything up. Starting the game with: "D:\Users\Sam Korson\Downloads\reso.exe" "C:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SC4.bat" 1930 800 32 60 ↓ @echo off "SimCity 4" -intro:off -w -CustomResolution:enabled -r1930x800 -CPUcount:1 pause

What I mean is that I have three monitors, each in portrait mode, and that seems to mess up fullscreen with this game. 1930x800 is the total resolution that SC4 runs at. Also, I do have DirectX 9.0c installed. The textures aren't used very heavily in my city. It originally had a large Maxis highway network, but I replaced the majority of it with RHW, and now there's only a small stretch of highway that uses those textures. I tried what you said to do about removing all my plugins, and I noticed it was still lagging like it did before. I also tried loading another city in a different region, and that had the problem too.

Thanks for the replies. @yuuka221: I don't know if I'm willing to make the game look terrible with lowest settings, or mess up some of my automata mods with software rendering. The thing is, I've been using hardware rendering for years and haven't had a problem like this. @A Nonny Moose: I must have added some sort of custom content at the time. Right, I added Marrast's embankments and Samerton's Maxis Highway textures. I don't know how a ploppable lot or a texture pack could do this, though. I don't think it could be my city becoming too complex, as I've ran much more complex/developed cities than this one before; the (large) tile isn't filled with development yet. Actually I haven't played any cities besides this one since the issue began. I'll have to try loading up another. Ah, no, I don't mean I'm running DX7 on my PC; I meant that's what the game uses (I think). I say it won't work with portrait mode because I've ran another DX7 game (Deus Ex) and had the same problem, and fixed it by installing a D3D10 renderer mod. Funny how I can't seem to find any other information on that particular problem (the screen is divided into half-rotated squares) on the internet, but I would think it has to do with a game using DirectX 7. Checker-boarded disk, as in fragmented? Drive C, which SC4 is running from (including regions, plugins) is a solid-state drive. I don't think it would help to use software rendering and full screen; as my screens are in portrait mode, I get problems with fullscreen, and the aforementioned problem happens with both hardware and software rendering. When I use software, the image flickers rapidly between normal and 90-degrees rotated.

I just made another trio of images for before/after. It's showing developing suburbs.

Interesting experiment indeed, but it would require too much micromanagement, so I afraid it's not gonna happen. You're saying that setting a speed limit is too much micromanagement? Seems pretty simple to me. Also, I think there should be as much micromanagement (options) in a simulation game as possible, such as the whole bus route drawing thing. Interesting experiment indeed, but it would require too much micromanagement, so I afraid it's not gonna happen. You are getting into transportation engineering then, too detailed for any game. I don't see how it's bad to have as realistic of a traffic simulation as possible; this is a city building/simulation game after all. All macvirt is saying it that he wants to study how speed limits affect other things, which is a player's choice of what to pay attention to in the game, nothing to do with the game being too detailed. There should definitely be effects on pollution, maintenance costs, and traffic jams caused by speed limits. It would just be a more complex simulation, but not any harder to play, just more realistic.

This one's kind of...odd? I built it this way so that when the freeway to the right side of the picture ends, cars can still stay on a long ramp and directly interchange with the elevated freeway instead of a normal intersection to get onto it. I guess my image also unintentionally shows a two-level roundabout interchange on the left, which doesn't actually involve freeways, it's just because I needed to do something other than a normal intersection there. @Dragonxander: I agree that left exits can make more sense a lot of the time, although I wouldn't want a left entrance without merge space to a freeway. A left entrance could be okay if it forms a new lane, like with the RHW-6C puzzle piece.

Not really; they could do it right rather than eliminate it. There's nothing positive about eliminating the subway network, if they are even doing that, when they could just make it less easy without eliminating it instead. If I'm not mistaken, the way it is in real life is that they need to be built under streets because you usually can't tunnel through building foundations (pretty sure, haven't studied it much), but it SC4 and CiM you can build it just about anywhere. I've read about it a little; there is either the option of tunneling underground without disrupting street traffic, which is more expensive, or tearing/digging up the whole street and putting it in, then rebuilding the street. If they added subways that had to face these problems (traffic disruption or high expense), and needed to be built only under streets, that would take care of the easiness problem.

As you have not yet seen the entire city, here is a picture of Attabar. The original planners of the city followed the ideas of New Urbanism. There are streets in a grid pattern, and public transportation is an important part of the city's infrastructure. The highways were intended to encircle the city instead of cutting through it, also providing a clear border for urban growth. For the most part, the metropolis has not been developed outside of the highway ring; the surrounding areas are reserved for industrial zoning. Click on the thumbnail to see the full-size image. A major construction project has recently taken place in Attabar. The location of the city's only rail terminal caused a lot of problems for passengers. It is located in a suburban commercial area with a significant distance between it and the central business district. The terminal also was overcrowded, as the number of platforms at the station was not enough to keep up with the rise in rail traffic resulting from the city's rapid growth in recent years. In addition to this, passengers who wished to pass through the city on a north-south route had to make a significant detour to do so. Those who wished to travel past the city from the southeast to the northeast borders and vice versa had to ride a train all the way around the city, to the terminus, and then transfer to another train at the end of the line. From there, they needed to make another detour around the northern half of the city. A north-south rail line along the coast was never planned for. It was decided that something needed to be done about the problem. A few different plans were considered by the city's transit authority, including one to utilize existing highway right-of-way to replace the ring section of highway with a through railway. It was eventually decided that the best course of action as far as having a railway station be central to the urban core was to build a terminus station. Planning began for the station's exact location. The final plan was for a terminal with several underground platforms and a bus terminal as well. It would be located with the tracks facing west and ending in that direction. Three city blocks' worth of buildings would need to be demolished. The ideal area was chosen, which was central to the downtown core. Click on the following diagram to see a rough outline of the location of the station and the rail lines: There was some debate among the members of the Transit Authority on whether to have most of the railway be at ground level and close the inner lanes of the highway to accommodate six tracks, or leave the coastal freeway undisturbed and tunnel beneath it for the tracks within the city limits. It was eventually decided that the second option would be chosen, as the city had a lot of money to spare. After a long construction period, the station is finally complete. It is, to this day, the most expensive construction project in the history of El Mundo Nuevo. Entering and passing through the city by train is now a very attractive option for commuters and travelers. The rail tracks to and from the station split apart and curve in opposite directions (north and south) under the highway, and a through route bypassing the station and city also exists under the ground beside them. What exists in this project's future? More lines will be planned and built as part of new growth in the city in the future, connecting to this station. The city's tramways have two stations on different sides of the terminus; one future possibility is to connect the tram lines to the station with a tunnel, allowing trams to directly enter the station and use some of its platforms. This has the potential to make transferring from train to tram much easier for passengers.

Thanks for the compliments. I am not sure why the image attachments refuse to both work at the same time. I will upload them somewhere to fix it.

Thank you.