Timmystwin

Traffic, my old friend. Part 1 http://imgur.com/a/fuLtx Part 2 http://imgur.com/a/XnJ4v The traffic leading into the second isle becomes unbearable, there has to be a bad junction or a cause somewhere further into town. I think we may have found the culprit... The traffic lights on this junction are the cause, they're not free flowing enough. Solution Roundabout! Much more free flowing, and should solve the problem. The residents and businesses in the way are "politely" asked to move, and most comply, with the rest disappearing mysteriously and leaving empty demolishable buildings. Highway no more Blackwater also turns its attention to this ugly highway section through their city, it's a bit of an eyesore and the land could be used for other purposes. The port area is already as dense as can be, so the land is desperately needed. The first part of the highway is sunk, this might take time. On a rail More transit improvements! This rail line was approved when the roundabout was still in construction, as traffic was still a nighmare. In order to cut commuting traffic to Blackwater Isle, a rail line was constructed between there and the second Isle, which has become known as Kerwan. The line sneaks around the farms and highway interchanges on Rilgar Isle Towards the police station on Rilgar Past the Hospital and school And on to the shoreline of Rilgar isle, opposite the Isle of Blackwater, where land was still vastly cheaper and where Rilgar didn't mind adding a station, due to the possible development and growth. Investment pays off Shh... the first library in the district of Blackwater arrives, along with a university. It's situated next to the station, for ease of access. It's accompanied by another police station, which really starts to make a difference in crime. Rilgar sees high density as the area around the station becomes more accessible. A line is even added to the industrial centre on Rilgar, trying to cut commuting further. Infrastructure section The traffic on Blackwater becomes near unbearable, but not much can be done. All upgrades have been made. Rilgar, seeing the issues Blackwater is having, prepares for the onslaught. The rapidly growing industrial sector needed an upgraded roundabout to cope, so tunnels and an overpass happen. Green belt The highway is sunk, finally. It's taken a while, but looks much better and sound pollution has dropped considerably. Realising its potential benefits, Blackwater council designates the area as a recreational zone, forbidding any construction of other natures. Parks and such pop up, as council funding arrives. Power woes The new quality of life in Blackwater entices more density, and more people to the island, so the power plant is expanded yet again. Rilgar takes yet another hit, as another smog belching plant is added to their land. They may want to consider green energy in the future. At least the crap lake is now cleaned, and desirable to be near now.

http://imgur.com/a/XnJ4vImgur link, for those who are interested. It's identical. Construction begins The new Island, acquired by Blackwater and absorbed in to their council's area of influence, is prepared for construction. A wider road of approach is built, and the trees are cut down. There's an area of Oil on the island that's been left alone for now, as no-one can work out what to do with it. The old owners or occupants are given offers they cannot refuse to leave, so they all did. Green wave The residents of Blackwater Isle start turning their attention to the industry, which is squatting on their shoreline and making a large mess. The recycling centre is also expanded further. Industrial expansion Rilgar Island decides to zone for more industry, in anticipation of Blackwater shunning theirs, to try and take a chunk of those taxes. A highway connection is set up, albeit a temporary one. Construction begins Whilst some of the money to build the roads mysteriously disappeared, the sole construction company managing to get the contracts starts to build on the island. Power situation The power stations are starting to get old, and cannot cope with the new levels of power Rilgar and Blackwater require. So a larger, more efficient station is built on Rilgar, near the industrial zone already present. It's hoped the Industry might expand nearby. Blackwater Isle upgrades The main street becomes 6 lane, to accompany the traffic of the ever increasing density, and to provide for the new buildings. The old Industrial area is dismantled, and the clean up begins. It might take a while, this filth has been there for years. The industry wastes no time moving to Rilgar, where they don't have to pay so much protection money to certain businessmen. They even expand near the coal power station. Expansion High density starts to appear on the second isle, amid lots of union action and more corruption. Blackwater can't seem to shake its roots that easily. Freshly cleaned, residents and businesses start to move to the old industrial port. The oil still hasn't been worked on, and neither has the little tree park. Any construction companies trying to gain the rights start to have unfortunate accidents To accompany these accidents, a new hospital is built over the river from Blackwater, on Rilgar. Industrial expansion continues unabated on Rilgar however, and a train line is introduced to try and lower the traffic on the highway. The Power plant is also expanded to cope with the extra people. High density arrives in the old port area, as we see an insurance sca... accidental fire occur in the foreground. The Cleanup begins Starting to get a bit sick of this overflow of crime, Rilgar builds an actual police station on their border to Blackwater, and starts to invest in education. These attempts encourage more High density commercial to arrive on Blackwater. It also encourages some more expansion on the second isle. Sewage woes The crap lake starts to overflow, so the pipes need to be turned off. It's also started to seep in to nearby groundwater, so residents there aren't happy. The Kogor refinery is built, on a completely uninhabited island in the bay off of the second isle. Hopefully this is a more lasting solution than crap lake. Growth The hills above the old beachfront start to see small houses appearing. With an actual police force nearby, construction starts to begin on the wooden patch and near the oil reserves, as the accidents have mysteriously become less prevalent. Hope Crap lake is becoming cleaner, which symbolises Blackwaters attempts to re-invigorate its corrupt image and past. Will it succeed?

Welcome to the new town, called Blackwater. I hope to continue this CJ throughout this cities life, and then continue it to other C:S maps. http://imgur.com/a/fuLtx This is a link to the imgur album, it's identical. Just in case you want it. This is the Island of Rilgar. Due to an inheritance dispute, the small island off the main island, in the bottom centre by the fork in the river, is no longer considered part of Rilgar, and its already weak council has no say over the land. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=439565708">http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=439565708is the map New Beginnings So, the town of Blackwater is founded. The lower taxes on this island start to attract all sorts, although its lack of government means no real infrastructure is provided Industry arrives too. Gotta have jobs, and a lack of environmental laws means you can get away with higher profits at the end of the day. Government arrived A town council is soon founded, as they realise that chaos is not the best way to run things, and their first measure is to provide an actual main street, which should minimise traffic issues in the future. Main Island expansion A small satellite village founds on the main Island, connected to the newly built road. The road was originally intended to go further, but the money ran out, and Rilgar refused to allow further building on their island, due to the shady nature of Blackwater town at this time. More Growth The relatively low taxes encourages yet more people to arrive, providing more money to improve road surfaces. Developers get involved Land value on the starting island starts to rise, so to cut costs development starts on the main Island of Rilgar, who realise that the money flow from the new development could be just what they need. Traffic This new growth is hell for the Traffic situation of Blackwater. Solution? Bypass the town A new highway is built going around Blackwater town itself, hoping to provide a route in the future. It was paid for by the Government of Rilgar, who is keen to encourage the city's growth as a source of income. Growth The new highway, combined with the low taxes and the increasing image of Blackwater as a respectable town, spurs massive growth on the island itself, and it starts to see its first high density buildings. The lack of planning law allows quick expansion. Farms People need food, and somewhere to work, so they pop up on the main island itself. Clean up People are dirty, and this massive influx made the Rilgar Council put their foot down. A designated lake, off of the island of Rilgar on a currently empty island, is the new sewage dump. No more dumping in to the sea and hoping it washes away. Rubbish also gets out of hand, so Rilgar funds a new recycling centre in the hope the situation doesn't pollute too much. Beachfront Property Rising demand, and a newly clean beach means houses start to get built on the main Islands beachfront. Mass Transit arrives! Blackwater city council starts to get its act together, and starts bus lines between the beach, main city, and suburbs as more people start to arrive. One of the first decent acts of a reforming council. Overcrowding With overcrowding becoming an issue, the tax breaks are revoked by the City Council. New lands The new city council gains control over the sewage island off of Rilgar, and the small shopping district already there will have its infrastructure expanded, and more areas zoned.

Creating functional landmarks EDIT: I am aware the pictures are missing, I shall sort this when I have time, took me a while to realise. This is my basic guide that shows you how to add jobs to a landmark. It will be far from perfect, as I’m doing it from memory. It’s a common question in the Chat room, so im making one that should be easy to follow. This tutorial requires: Ilives Reader (http://www.simtropol...e-reader-0-9-3/) It is possible without creating your own model, as long as you have the .SC4model file. Don’t know if it works if that is compressed in a Dat, I’ll try it later. Right then, to business. I’m going to use http://www.simtropol... Because I like the BAT, and it looks right for a CS$ which is what I’m going to make. (Obviously that’s not all you can do, but I need one and this is a good excuse.) It’s normally an Resi building, but Plop able Resi’s are a bit buggy, so don’t attempt it. First find the model and stick it, and only it, in your plugins. This makes the Lot editor and such open quicker, and it is easier to remove mess after if you want. Landmark Quick hint, add LM and GR to the exemplar names. Makes them easy to distinguish later. The landmark one doesn’t need too many changes from default, Budget cost will be removed later anyway. Change the item name and description if you want a different name in the menu. The only Real area that needs editing for this is the wealth section. MAKE SURE ITS THE SAME AS THE WEALTH YOU ARE GOING TO USE. I set mine to low after this, as I was doing CS$, but for CO$$$ it should be high. This isn’t needed for everything, but I’ve had crashes on some of the ones I didn’t do this to. Best be safe. Growable The only things that need Changing drastically are the in game features. Capacity satisfied is normally MILES higher than a city can provide, so lower that. (If you’re using more than $ the higher values when you click it are the lower wealth.) Don’t worry about the hex code on the left when you click there, ill deal with it later. You’re also going to want to change the Pollution and consumption figures; as if you look there they are incredibly high before changing them. That’s really it; you can change other stuff if you want. None of this is really necessary, but if you want it to have any useful purpose then do it. Lotting Make your landmark Lot, no need for a growable. Just get this done, not really major, but it needs to be done before the modding itself as Lot Editor can strip away the modding you do, leaving the files useless. It may not happen at all, I’ve only had it happen once, but it is a possibility. This is where using an empty plugins folder comes in useful, as if, like me, you have 5 GB of plugins it takes a while to load LE. Now we get onto the hard bit... Modding This is the tricky bit. Open the Lot file in reader. Go to filters and select only the exemplar box. Click refresh underneath the boxes. Once you’ve done that you should get 2 exemplars. For the minute we want the one that looks like this. Remove these ones. These are what ties it to the landmark and interfere. So remove them. A few require editing, but I’ll get onto that later. As ever, you can remove more, and edit more, but that picture there shows the ones that really need to be removed. (Just right click delete property.) Now open the Growable. (If you close remember to save, reader wont prompt you.) You need to copy these properties from that exemplar over into the landmark Lots exemplar you just edited. (Right click copy and paste or CTRL+C CTRL+ V) (EDIT also select growth. Dont know why, but I forgot it in this pic) Now we need to do some cleaning up. This is what the landmark exemplar looks like now. (Or should.) To start with we need to clean up occupant groups. Double click on it. Delete the bottom two, and then go to the Growable exemplar. When you do, you should be able to see quite a few there. We want the second one down. Copy that over, by copying its hex code from the bottom into the other one, separated by a comma, the others aren’t needed as the ploppable shouldn’t grow, and we don’t want the game to think it should. You should get this once you press the apply next to the text box in the bottom. Press the apply next to cancel to continue and save. The next tricky bit. This bit is a bit of trial and error unfortunately, ive not managed to work all of it out. The other exemplar within the Lot has some properties, which also require editing. These are the 3 in question. Zone types is an easy edit. Simply double click, and add the code 0x0F into the box. Wealth types is also simple. Add 0x01 for low wealth, 0x02 for medium and 0x03 for high wealth. Purpose types is harder, they are all different. I’m going to look into various files to find them, but for now this is what I’ve found out. CS$ 0x02 CS$$ 0x02 CS$$$ 0x02 CO$$ 0x03 CO$$$ 0x03 I-D I-M I-HT 0x08 Just for reference, R is 0x01. (Again, dont make a ploppable resi. Not worth it.) So just as an example, if you’re confused, mine now looks like this. Remember I said you don’t want to confuse the game and make it grow this Lot? Well just to be sure make the “Growth stage” one 0xff. This sets the Stage to 255, which even the CAM can’t manage. (No pics, im sure you get how to do it by now.) This Lot is now testable in game, well done. As always, don’t worry about asking me for help, I’m normally found in Chat and if you can’t find me there PM me. Timmystwin. Ill look at this if its put in the omnibus and correct it if theres anything to do, but this is a good enough one to follow.

Holy christ I recognise those walls from ages ago....   (Apologies for not making them any better :P)

This is slightly more advanced than the other one, and requires iLives reader (HERE) and basic knowledge of it to do it quickly. Possible for a complete novice, just a little confusing. <br /> A basic understanding of GMAX is also needed, but i doubt nightlights would be on the menu if you didnt have that.<br /> <br /> 1. Create your scene. Day only, No nightlights.<br /> 2. Create one spotlight, name it nitelite_spot01 and turn it off. (You can put nite- in front of any objects name, and it will only appear at night, but a light is best.)<br /> 3. Double check that you have NO night-lit windows (press h and search for "nite_ or nitelite_")<br /> 4. Do the render as normal.<br /> 5 Remove the .sc4model file from your plugins. Move it to your desktop, or somewhere you can find it.<br /> 6. Open up your day scene. Modify it to Create your Night Scene. Here you can do normal BAT nightlights, or you can use the following method:<br /> 6.1 Go into the material navigator, and press on new. Go to bitmap and open the file that you want it to look like, a drawn window for instance. Apply that material to your object. The links below are good for textures though. You can skip the next step now. Windows textures<br /> 6.2. Click the box next to the diffuse color, (I dont usually do this step)and navigate to a trunite map. Leave the color at a lighter gray.<br /> 6.3. Click the box next to the "Self-illumination" box, and find the same texture you used for diffuse. Set the self-illumination to 100 (Or lower if you want. 70-100 is good. You can also control the brightness with the diffuse color. <br /> 6.4. Apply to your night windows. Use the UVW Map modifier to make it fit into your window. Generally the maps will fit into a 1.5-2m wide by 4m tall window perfectly.(Doesnt have to be a window, be creative) (Or edit the texture or other such stuff)<br /> 6.5. Do a test preview. Medium quality is good. You will still be looking at the Night render in BAT.<br /> 6.6. If you like what you see, go to step 7. If you want to 'spice it up, continue reading)<br /> 6.7. You can also change the geometry around, so long as it fits within the same LOD, and it remains basically the same shape. So you can take down things that appear in daytime , but maybe not nighttime. <br /> <br /> 7. Proceed to Export your new night scene. No need to rename it, as we want the night FSH iid's to be the same. Be sure your day scene was removed from your plugins folder<br /> 8. once finished, open up your day scene in Reader. (download link above)<br /> 9. Go to Filter (Blue). Uncheck everything (Red) , and choose the FSH Texture (Yellow arrow). Click refresh.(Green.)<br /> <br /> EDIT, some people found all this confusing, so here is a pic.<br /> 10. Click the instance tab (Blue in pic below)to get the instance numbers in order numerically. <br /> 11. This is where things get tricky. <br /> <br /> Find all Instance IID's that have an 8 in the middle. For example:<br /> <br /> 000f8000. This is the starting night light FSH instance ID for the Campbell Mithun Insurance buiding. The last one is 000f843d.<br /> <br /> Drag select all of the FSH Files with the 8 in the middle like that, and remove it. Carefully do this, because if you remove one of the DAY FSH files, your model will not appear right in the game. <br /> <br /> 12. Open your Night scene in a brand new Reader. Select all of the FSH Files with the 8 in it using the method explained above, and right click, copy files (Green). Then go into your other Reader, the day scene. Delete the files with the 8 in here, and ONLY them (Red) and paste, after right clicking(Green), your Files in there. You should now have your night windows from your night scene, in your day scene. We do this, because self - illumination works in the day as well. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Remember to save! Put your day render into your plugins, and remove the night render. Test it in game, remember that if you make it a landmark or building it needs power to show nightlights!<br /> <br /> That should be it. Hope you do understand it, and dont hesitate in asking me questions. Im often found in live chat, and if that fails PM me. (May be a slight wait on the reply, but it will come.)<br /> <br /> Timmystwin.<br /> <br /> This is my own heavily edited version. However, I give Credit to Swat Medic Jakemd, who made this article originally, which allowed me work out how to do it and produce this edited version.

...using explosive pasties...

You should come to England, especially Telford Or Milton Keynes.

379 No rain in sunny Cornwall B)

All you need to do is delete 2 lines, that are like config lines. I don't know what the kindof file is, but it's supposedly really easy to do. http://www.cinemablend.com/games/SimCity-Offline-Mode-Now-Available-General-Public-53739.html If you're interested.

The modder that did it has also told us how to play offline, all it requires is deleting 2 lines of code. That's it. He's now working on UI and a redirect to save to hard drive, and how to simulate the little work the servers do.

I hadn't heard the new one being done for single core only, but I know SC4 works miles better if you just run it on 1, maybe there was a bit of confusion there?

You could drop it in a hopper cart, then send it up a track to a hopper that unloads it.

The pixels don't have to be green, red or blue. They need 255 strength of just one of those colours, so a 4x4 square of 255 blue and 254 red will still render a large tile. The same goes with the white, it only has to have 255 of more than one of the 3 colours. (Just incase you have a few cities next to each other and want to differentiate )

Mine isn't even there I spend 99% of my time in the live chat.

Might as well post that while I'm here, sorry for the taskbar and UI but this was taken very hastily for the live chat here, so I didn't bother removing it.

Whilst I am interested in it, it seems to be a game I'd pick up for about £10 just to try it, and forget the DLC unless I like it.

Loads of the people in chat play it, we often get around to hosting a server or two every now and then.

Can we get Valve to buy them? They might actually become a liked company then.

The entry thing shouldn't be a problem, If I recall correctly reader changes it to a number it can read from the number you input, I think it did that last time I entered numbers. If not, just do as the above post mentioned. To create a new lot you must do just that: Make a new one. Use Plugin manager to make a new .desc (With your own building if you wish) with your values, and add it to a lot. This lot can be identical if you want, you just have to make a new one using Lot editor. Links to anything useful are in there.

BEHOLD, the best rail system in the history of simkind.

you might want to smudge the darker grey stripe a little, and not make it so bright grey, that might make the textures less glaring and more appealing. Just a thought.