Lot Creator

It would seem odd at this point to bump this but considering I've had the same ava for the past 5 years, I think it's good enough (tm) Name: Lot Creator Sex: Male Sign: Virgo

As someone who has been here from 2009, I have pretty wide views as to how things have been going here. I've met a lot of people here and sort-to-speak "grew up" with chat-goers from here and have made a lot of self-expansion from those times. Simtropolis has been and would be my only social interaction website aside from some channels on Discord, primarily because I only seek out communities that aren't flooded with modern-day issues. I am someone who has only used chat as a major component of being here in ST. I would say that about 80% of the time I've spent here has been through the chat, the other 20% spent on the STEX or such, I've rarely used the forums because it wasn't as satisfying for interaction. That's without saying the chat system has had several interesting problems over time. The problems being social, integration, and confusion. The peak of chat's function I would say would be between 2010 - 2011 (the so-called golden age of SC4), back then a lot of things were not so broken and people were not as confused as to what ST's function was. As time passed, 2012 - 2013 brought some demise. Things slowed down and people got angry for justifiable reasons and left. Things got complicated over time and people just hold a grudge from other members. I would admit I had strong grudges against some members from the time period, but I would not dwell on this. Primarily I would say that the reason things have slowed down for ST has not really been due to the shift towards CSL, I would say instead that it is its lack for innovating towards keeping those members that have been around ST for a while. If ST were to continue to be a thing, changes should be done that would expand on the scene for CSL, whether this be by keeping a chat or streamlining the mod-producing process or by making an Omnibus for CSL, I am just throwing that out there. Donations are what is keeping ST afloat on these times. Floating down the conversation of donations, I would also like to point out that several major modders, city journalists, and groups have shown great discontent against certain practices that are done here in ST. This comes from all parts of ST (Chat, City Journaling, forums, etc.) with complaints against several moderators of which many believe nothing has been done to mitigate this. I do not want to bring a flame war on the subject, but really this should be a matter of concern, especially when ST depends on the few content makers and people who are active at present. Think ST like a US mall, with content makers as Macy's, JCPenny's, etc. When the major content makers shut down, the possibilities for maintaining ST dwindle, and it's not like we get content maker by the batches as we used to. SC4 is a game that is nearly 15 years old with a steep learning process for modding, people who want to get into it have to be comfortable and appreciated in dedicating time and effort towards it. BATforMax is nearing its service expiration date and someone has to code that as well. With that out of the way I would end this with a closure. Think beyond the chat room, think what's coming and what should really be for the best in the long run. If the idea is to slowly phase ST out of existence, well, I'd argue we're doing that as evidenced by some of the things we've been doing so far. TLDR: In a short recap, I do want to maintain a sort of chat system here.

I feel this is more of an updated Banished with the micromanaging of food and resources - which is fine and dandy but not really my cup of tea for city building. Considering this trend into micromanagement in city builders, I would dare to say it's a slightly different thing than city builders. Feel free to debate into this, but honestly it's a different game-play mode from games like SC4, CXL, or CSL. The house-bonding looks interesting, but I would need more convincing to come into the theme. I hope Ostriv's future will change my opinion, however history says otherwise...

Sounds like a graphics mod, perhaps adaptive prop visibility thingamagic? I've not encountered this so far, but there's been a couple of mod that updated recently and they've not been working like Theme Mixer. Presumably they're going to be updated. As far as I know most of the graphics mods are not updated nor working, even if they seem to be updated. I don't know if this also applies to the LOD distance render view as well.

I am well aware of the hard-coded limits, I was mainly trying to explain why those limits were placed there in the first place. I am not as well aware of the interior of CSL so I am not completely familiar with how it works. I do agree that the limits are also related with the amount of available instance IDs available to the game itself. Considering 65535 is a number related with 16 bits, wouldn't it be time to upgrade to 32 bits now (with some sizable game redesign)?

If you already got those, try changing your theme textures. Here is a list of some popular and well-off textures. You can dig down a bit to find some rarer and also decent ones as well. While you are at that, I would also suggest this to change your textures on the fly (a word of warning: does not change sky textures). This also loads your map with a specific texture pack if you want to overhaul all the textures (use with caution as it might sometimes break textures).

Exceptional work my friend. I do not have much of a criteria in European buildings, however I do have experience with building placement and appearance. My suggestions would be: For placement, as a suggestion I would make the buildings RICO compatible for manual placement. I'm not a top-class expert in texturing, but some of the textures seem a bit sharper than usual. Probably it's something with the UV mapping. Just some food for thought. Randomize night lighting. Although I've not downloaded the buildings, the picture from @vladsch gives some impression of symmetrical windows at night for the yellow-ish building. Just my words of constructive critique. Otherwise, great job at your first buildings for CSL!

@CT14Glad I could help.

Sounds there's a lot somewhere spawning the buses around those diagonal paths. From seeing the photo, it also seems that the bus is being spawned under the streets, suggesting that there's something else at work. While I suspect the PEG rural alleys may be at fault, check for landmarks, custom transportation things, or for anything in the path of the bus parade which has a bus Zot in its description when you look at the properties. Some landmarks have secretly installed subways and bus stations, and this might as well be something related to it. If all fails, you could try to replace the maxis bus with something else... although I am pretty sure it's something to do with a lot or something like that.

Those CSX, KCS, Ferromex trains are pretty spot on. Brings back childhood memories of the grey beasts. One word of detail: Those are actually a bit more dirty and bashed irl. Not sure if you're adding in the optional "smoke n rusted' edition. Great job everywhere!

This just in, hot from the press!

@CrumbsMcGee Your work is making me wonder what else should I implement into my interchanges, even though they're for a different theme and purpose.

the big old...

Nineteen eighty four George Orwell

burning house of

I can't even fathom...

I have a "top of the line" rig with an Intel 6700k and well, FPS kind of sinks and stays around 24 - 30 FPS even at that level. GPU power really has nothing to do with it and RAM can only save your computer from crashing and toasting your OS. This is all when you bite the mod bullet and with a sizable city. My recommendation for a 'potato' build would simply be to keep an eye on your RAM use and city complexity. Your city calculations can dramatically change when you have a lot of industry in the city and imports/exports.

geese started walking

The problem is proportional: Trees are a simple model, usually just around 300 trigs and a texture to go about them. (I would also remind people that while the limit for trees was increased, the amount was finitely increased by some 200% from 200k so around 600k with the unlimited trees mod) For increasing the amount of buildings available in the game, the increase will be three ways: increased tris count, increased prop use, and a retexture of the lot (usually negligible). A building's trigs count floats between 1500 on the low end to around 5000 - 9000 trigs count. The high end isn't an issue for landmarks or buildings EXPECTED to be used once. However, when an increase of buildings using either count of trigs is done, no matter how low your trigs count goes, it will proportionally increase the use of trigs on the game engine. For equation lovers: n = amount of buildings, m = trigs count, p = props Your equation of game engine load will be something like: n*(1000 >= m < 9000)*(1 > p < 20) While it might not provide much of a meaningful graph, it does give you an idea of the proportional growth of increasing the amount of buildings. The other fact is that we don't know what is the limit for the unity engine. Sure it has 64 bit support and it kinda seems to work under stress (20+ GB of RAM) but we don't really know how far does it go in computing and refactoring. It already kind of dies once a city reaches a point and all the agents seem to suddenly freeze and kaput. But always keep your hopes up, maybe one day we'll be able to flatten entire maps with cities.

silently but noisy...

Since I had some time to take photos this week, I decided to post some.