staple_salad

I live on a low density R$ (maybe R$$, but given that it's a small house that has weeds greener than the grass, I think it's R$ in SC4 terms, R$$ IRL), but the part of low density where you know you're going to need to start zoning medium density, and the lot is 1x2. I work at a ploppable and am intending to move into a R$ medium density lot within the next year, and am moving into a R$$$ medium density dorm next week.

My computer is a Gateway, which was bought out by Asus, so it doesn't surprise me. Mine LAGS like mad too. I'm playing on a big city tile now and I get the same lag and low framerates I got on my dad's old computer (that has like a 128mb video card, probably about 1g of ram and a Pentium 4 processor). My only guess for you would be to try to run it in windowed mode with a lower resolution or maybe turn down the graphical settings a bit? I dunno... Our computers should be more than capable of smooth gameplay.

Yay that works! Thank you so much!

I did my research before posting this, so... I'm running SC4 Delux (the one that came in the SimCity Box). I'm using Vista 64-bit for my operating system. I right clicked the desktop shortcut, and selected properties. In the "target" box, I have written this exactly: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" -w But everytime I try to start up the game, it starts in fullscreen. What am I doing wrong? I tried -window, but that didn't work either. Thanks in advance!

How did you get your sims to abandon their cars and use mass transit in an effective way? My best, so far, has been a massive bus network where pedestrian and bus traffic is tripple that of cars. (my highway leading to the industrial district has something like 400 cars and 5,000 buses). I put buses about every 5-6 tiles in my zones, and in strategic locations (like right at the "exit" of a roundabout). I'm using RH and NAM. So... what are yours, and how did you do it?

Clean air ordinance, educate sims more, and plant a bunch of trees and plop down a bunch of parks. Use the cleaner power buildings when you get them, and start with natural gas instead of oil or coal (less pollution, but a decent power output for your buck).

I usually forget to put in police stations and get a crime rate of about 12. Maybe try putting in more playgrounds and parks and generally cleaning up the area, rather than a whole bunch of police? Or cut police funding so they aren't arresting random people in addition to the criminals?

Thanks! I installed the patch and no crashes yet! (and I've been saving like mad, just in case).

Parks aren't that bad. I go park-crazy and can still have an appropreately funded health and education system (on easy at least, I like my game more sandboxy ) AND get a "profit" every month.

I really like SAM, which ads some street and road recolors (like dirt roads and cobble stones) and is really easy to use. I also got some new trees on the exchange here to add some variety (like conifers!!!). I'm still trying to find a good terrain mod so that I get snow at the right height (so far, no luck). There are also lots of neat guides, search around. I found one the other day on I think, SC4Devotion or something that had some pretty nifty tips and now my suburbs look better anyways.

I didn't know there was a patch (haven't checked the official site in ages, and this is the only community I've seen for SC4 that really seems active, and I found it yesterday). I'm just now getting CC, but have had two crashes without any.

Yay! Thanks! I managed to find NAM earlier today (but haven't gotten to play around with it yet), and I'm checking out the links you sent me right now!

Hello! I'm not new to SC4, but new to the community and modding the game. I've been reading tutorials and seeing a bunch of really awesome looking mods (like the digger and lifter lots, terrain mods, dirt roads... , and some that make the terrain actually look like it should (coming from Oregon with a view of Mt. Hood and seeing mountains made of dirt with no snow or trees is really weird). Anyways, I've been having difficulty finding the mods I want. I don't even know what categories to look for them under on mod sites, even as good of ones like this site! Could someone help me or point me in the direction of how to search for them? Please? Appoligies for my newb-ish-ness. (edit: the 1337 version of the harsher version of newb is a banned word here? Weird. I didn't know people used it hatefully enough to qualify it as a swear word)

1. Provide some alternative routes than just highways. And buy RH, it's not THAT expensive (heck, I just bought the SimCity Box for $20 at Wal*Mart, and that's SC4 + RH +SCS + SCS: Destinations + some random game), and it makes transportation more fun (and over-all enhances gameplay a lot... it's a fun expansion). Plopping down a few one-way roads makes controlling trafic a lot easier. Basically, instead of randomly plopping roads all around in grids, put some flavor to them. It often can make traffic a lot smoother. And if you still are confused, there are some good tutorials out there to help you. As for education, I've found it's easier to make little neighborhoods out of residential zones that fit inside the radius of a school. Also, education will remain relatively low EVEN if you have high schools, elementary schools, and colleges in your city, if you don't put in libraries and museams. 2. That's probably partly due to pollution. If you're having a lot of trouble getting traffic under control, your cars are probably polluting a lot and thusly making life expectancy go down. Same with having industrial zones too close to residential. Try putting in a few parks and planting some trees. Also, plop down 3 big hospitals to get the diesease research center, which also works to up life span (but keep the hospitals, your advisor will yell at you if you try to use the disease research center as a cheap alternative). Maybe even do the free clinic and CPR city ordinances. 3. Traffic sucks, and commute times are a pain (and sims chose REALLY weird routes... in a city I was playing earlier today I made a nice route from one neighborhood to the industrial district. There just so happened to be a commerical building near the on-ramp and next to the neighborhood exit. The sims that worked there went on the highway, got off at the next ramp, went into the next neighborhood [which was rather far], turned around, came back the same way, and went to work... and I even made them a quick route incase they were having trouble crossing the avenue and highway). (just realized I replied to 3 in 1, so re-read that) For buses though, make them at intersections and make sure that they are within 6 tiles of a sim's home and work. I put them on every corner, and my bus useage and pedestrian traffic usually exceeds the number of cars. Hope this helps! And there are a lot of great tutorials on the internet if you do some searching.

Hey! First post on this forum! It's good to see that there are still active SimCity4 communities out there (loved the game since I bought it, but I'm sad that the official site is dead and then some by the looks of it a couple years ago). And I appologize that this isn't in the Technical forum... I didn't see many active threads there, and as a newcomer to this site, I'm not sure how active it ever gets (so appologizes to the forum moderators if I'm making more work for you). Anyways... I just re-bought SimCity4 Delux Ed. after my original disks had some problem and wouldn't install. The game runs great, however, it keeps crashing and I can't think of any reason for it to. I have a graphics card with 896mb RAM, 9gb DDR3 RAM, and an Intel i7-920 processor with 2.67ghZ speed and my OS is Vista 64-bit. My computer more than exceeds the minimum (and maximum) specifications. It can't be a memory problem seeing as I have more than enough, and a fast enough processor most deffinitely. And the game ran fine on my older computers. Seeing as I can run any new game on the shelves fine, why does one that's 4 years old have problems? Does it have to do with Vista 64-bit (I know that has more problems than the 32-bit version that I'm running on my laptop)? Thanks in advance! Moved from General Discussion Forum - CaptCity