etatauri

So today I downloaded the Chicago map from the STEX. It is in the SC4M format and I successfully imported it via SC4 Terraformer. I go in Simcity and go into the cities and save thus creating the sim city default colors and textures. But I've realized that the terrain is very blocky. I'm guessing its because of the original image file being compressed creating weird blocks and pixels. Is there a way to smooth these areas out? I suppose I can errode the terrain in Sim City but I'm not sure how that will effect the edges of the cities and whether that will create problems with connecting roads etc. Alternatively, if there is a way to rememdy this problem in SC4 Terraformer I'd like to know. I'm completely new to SC4TF so I''m really not sure what to do other than importing and saving regions so I can open them in SC4. Thanks a lot guys!

After waiting a few weeks since I bought the game the day it came out, I sadly uninstalled it from my computer. I logged in to see if any bugs I had were fixed, but nothing seemed to be addressed so I'm freeing up space for something else. I bought it through steam so perhaps next year when I get a new computer I'll try again but I've almost abandoned hope on this game. Too many bugs, uninspired gameplay, and way too taxing on my computer. Time to move on.

Hi, I have the NAM and would like to use the GLR extensively throughout the city. I like to use the GLR in ave to acheive this and was trying to connect to the neighbors with this but when i place the puzzle peices to the edge it does not ask me whether I want to connect. Is it possible to do this? Or do I need to seperate the GLR from the ave, and then use the el rail to connect? This sounds like it would work but it doesn't seem like a very elegant solution. Any ideas?

Thanks for the replies I'll try that. On a related note, I found that even though the bus systems are widely used through my city and I see a lot of bus traffic going out of the city, when I go to my industrial zones I see that almost none of the mass transit stations are in use. On my neighboring city it says that there are only 20 buses coming in with thousands of cars, but when I go to my residential city I see that there are thousands of buses going to the same city. Is this normal? If it is, should I even bother putting in bus stops and passanger train stations in the industrial only city?

Is there a minimum water depth for the ships to travel or will it be used as long as there is SOME water?

Now, I've seen some Seoul maps as well as some Korean buildings here on Simtropolis, but I think the exposure to Korean topics are limited here. I doubt that not many people have heard of the IFEZ or New Songdo City, even though most may know about Seoul, or even Incheon. Well, currently they are developing a HUGE area in the sea as a reclaimation project and they are planning on developing that as a business hub. I haven't been checking the news too often but I believe they are alost done with phase 1 and will complete the whole city in 2015 or so. The reason why I'm posting this is because this is like the city builder's dream. If Dubai is a city risen out of the desert, this would be the Korean equivalent of that from the sea. Here is a post on skyscrapercity forums with many pictures: https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=1200.0 This city is being built with infrastructure provided by Cisco and will be one of the most advanced cities in the world, only possible by being able to plan the entire city from scratch. On the northwest of the city is the Incheon International Airport which has been rated among the top 3 best airports year after year since its completion. The airport itself is built apun a small island west of Incheon and Seoul and is linked with a bridge, and opening this week is the Incheon Grand Bridge that links Songdo with this airport which is the 7th longest bridge in the world. New businesses are building state of the art, and archetecurally magnificiant buildings on the land and I myself cannot wait till this is completed (hopefully I'l have money by then to visit). If you are a lot designer or map maker, I highly recommend doing some research on this as there are some beautiful buildings and interesting city building concepts are being applied. There will be artifical canals, and a central park in the city as well. If you go to the post there are also pics of buildings, proposed buildings, zoning information, street layout and more! The best thing about this, is that it isn't some dream or concept, but it is actually being built right now, and all things are real. Its like as if you've zoned everything in sim city, and clicking the 3x speed button and see everything pop up all at once!

You have to be careful though if you are going to segregate various industries. Sometimes the sims will complain that the commute is too long.

I disagree with the realism of upgrading streets in city xl. As others mentioned, when you upgrade a street to a wider one, you must destroy whatever is on the adjacent lot, and despite the slight decrease in area, you can no longer build anything there. The lot sizes need to be more efficient like sim city. There are various sizes from 1x1 to 4x4 anything rectangular in between. So, if you upgrade a road to an avenue, Other buildings can move in but with different sizes. Its just unrealistic to have exactly the same lot size for every building. I was hoping that if you make a 5 way intersection that you can plot triangular lots in those places so that they fill up realistically, like small car washes or diners, but instead you get this massive area of nothing. Maybe expecting lots of differing shapes is unrealistic in a game, but I would at least expect different SIZES so that smaller buildings can fill in the gaps that are too small for the regular ones. The inflexibility of the lot sizes is my #1 pet peeve with the game. When you select the rectangular zoning tool, it only comes with the smallest road size so if you want to surround your 3x2 zones with the upgraded road you must painstakingly go between making roads and zoning 1 lot at a time. Also, I must say that making everything 3D doesn't automatically make things better. We can still make awesome side scrollers with sprites. Sometimes 3D environments don't really add to the game and can be just a gimmick. SC4 is beautiful and incredibly detailed because instead of taxing your video card with 3D environments, it instead trades it off with incredible detail on buildings. Because it takes so much effort to display the same amount of detail in 3D, you'd need a really good system to display them. Anisotropic and Antialiasing stresses the video card immensely. Texture detail suffers as well. I think game designers nowadays are a little detached from the consumer these days because they tend to make games that are only playable with a very good system. But most people out there don't have the money to upgrade their computers every 6 months. That is one of the reasons why I love games that come out of Valve. The half life 2 series were visually stunning yet, it did not require a substantially high end computer.

I am running Win 7 x64 Ultimate RC1 and it works fine with hardware rendering. No translucent automata as someone mentioned. The beauty of Vista or XP is that you can also force the software to run in XP compatibility mode and sometimes that solves problems! Sometimes SC4 crashes but so do my other games because my computer is now 4 years old and some hardware, especially the motherboard, is aging. So I think thats just me. Other wise, Win7 is gorgeous and despite it being RC1 and not retail, works like a dream.

I don't think its cumulative. At least until they release a 'service pack'. When I look at the update screen I can see that it needs to sequentially update (361 to 361b to 362.. etc). Whats annoying with this in Windows 7 is that each time a build updates I need to give administrative privilege to each of those updates.

So much for "beta testing"... Is there anything that WAS fixed during the beta period? Sorry, didn't play the beta so I can't see myself, but this retail version feels like such a beta...

I have the same problem. I have a 16:9 monitor so the 4:3 format really stretches out everything. I can't believe they haven't added any wide screen support in this day in age. I bought the game when it came out on the 8th, it is now the 12th and still no updates were issued to resolve this. It seems like a relatively simple thing to fix but I'll still wait because I've already bought the game. But until it gets fixed I can't stand playing it all stretched out. Meanwhile, my 7 day online trial will expire in a couple days

I knew people who lived with 13 other people in a 3 story house. They were all college students and the house was modified to have 13 tiny rooms with a kitchen and a bathroom on every floor. So 15 is possible but needless to say, would be very inconvenient.

Bugs (or inconveniences): 1. Screen resolution only goes up 1024x768 in settings. 2. No widescreen support (unless you're at the default setting - never touch the resolution setting!) 3. Can't adjust graphics as you want. (no options to optimize your performance based on what features you want to have on: water effects, shadows, draw distance etc) 4. Button sound effects (whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh!!!) 5. Must right click out of construction mode to access buttons on menus on top and right. (You end up clicking through the button and build behind the button if you don't) 6. You can only zoom in/out and rotate camera. (Can't shift view point up or down) 7. Camera rotation is way too finicky and sensitive. (Maybe I couldn't find the settings) 8. Uses only one core. 9. Extremely slow when in trade window. (Is it just me?) 10. In the multiplayer planet I was on, there were some areas where the coast line would "cut off" like they mapped it wrong. It was as if a 2 dimensional map was used to cover the surface but they failed so parts of the map were overlapped. 11. Make sure you have a good graphics card. With an nvidea 7800 details on buildings will only be displayed on one or two rows and everything else will look like boxes with chocolate smeared all over it. Not bugs, but some things that frustrated me: Given the fact that road construction is extremely flexible, plots for houses etc are incredibly NOT flexible. You get the same square plot for everything and when there is even a tiny mismatch you won't be able to put a house there. This not only made the houses on curved streets look bad because they weren't flush with the road, but this also meant that once you decide you want a bigger street there you had to destroy the houses around it. Sure, it may be realistic, but in these types of games its just annoying. Because of a couple pixel difference you can no longer plot anything in its place other than those 'decorations'. I'm willing to play more to see if I can get passed this issues and get into more in depth details I have yet to get into, but as of now playing this game is more of a chore than fun. I wish I could have gotten the demo first, but then they wouldn't have gotten my money so I guess it was smart of them to not offer the demo anymore