MallowTheCloud

Original Author: MallowTheCloud Rewrite: Vandy If you are interested in contributing to the OmniMaps section of the Simtropolis Omnibus, please PM OmniMaps. The original information for this article was written by MallowTheCloud and all credit goes to him. Other contributors to this information include the following: blade2k5 hym sim1234 T Wrecks This information has been consolidated, rewrittent and presented in this article. Please note that this article ONLY covers information for installing standard region maps on the STEX. It does not cover how to install a map created using the SC4Terraformer or SC4Mapper application. Information for installing SC4Terraformer-created maps is covered in the Installing a Map Created by SC4Terraformer article. Information for installing SC4Mapper-created maps is covered in the Installing a Map Created by SC4Mapper article. There is a definite set of steps which need to be following in order to successfully install a map downloaded from the STEX into SimCity 4. Faithfully following the below steps will install a map in almost all instances. At the end of these steps, there are a number of caveats and exceptions listed that could occur when installing a map as well as possible solutions for them. Downloading the Map Files from the STEX 1) Find a map to be downloaded by searching the STEX. Note the name of the map. 2) Navigate to the following path: \\My Documents\Sim City4\Regions. (Typically, this path is under the C:\ drive path.) 3) Create a new folder naming it with the same name as the map to be downloaded. Note the name of the folder created. 4) Go back to the STEX, and click on the map link to open the Map Window. 5) Once the Map Window is opened, there typically is a picture of the map image and a picture of the config.bmp file. 6) To download the map image, click on the Download link to display the grayscale image for the map. 7) Right-mouse click on the image and select the "Save picture as..." choice. Navigate to the region folder created in Step 3), above. 9) Save the grayscale map image in the region folder using the default name of the file. 10) In the top right-hand corner of the Map Window, click on the "Back" link. 11) If there is a Config.bmp link (not all map files have a config.bmp file), click on the link to open the File Download dialog box. NOTE: Concerning config.bmp Files. If the map being downloaded does not have a config.bmp file included, one must be created before installing the map. Please consult the Config.bmp: HowTo Make It Yours article for instructions on creating a config.bmp file. 12) In the FIle Download dialog box, click on the "Save" button. 13) Navigate to the region folder created in Step 3), above. 14) Ensure the file name is config.bmp then click on the "Save" button. 15) The map has been downloaded and saved to the computer. Installing the Map Files into SimCity 4 16) Launch the SimCity 4 game. 17) From the Main Menu of SimCity 4, Click on "Load Region" and open an EXISTING region. 18) THEN click on "Load Region" and open the region created in Step 3), above. 19) The configuration of the the config.bmp is displayed. 20) On the keyboard, press and hold the following key combination: Ctrl + Alt + Shift + R. NOTE: Wireless Keyboards Typically, wireless keyboards do not support more than three simultaneous key combinations. It will be necessary to use the appropriate key combination for the wireless keyboard being used to simulate the Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R combination. The normal wireless keyboard combination to use is [Alt Gr] + Shift + R. 21 This will bring up the Grayscale Image File dialog box. 22) Browse to the folder created in Step 3), above. 23) Select the grayscale map image JPG file and click on the OK button. 24) SimCity 4 starts to render the region and a "Creating New City" screen appears. BE PATIENT. Depending upon the size of the region, the number of city tiles and the speed of the computer, rendering of the region takes anywhere from five (5) minutes up to a number of hours to complete. Caveats and Exceptions to Installing a Region. SimCity 4 won't recognize the grayscale JPG map image If this problem occurs in Step 23) above, try typing in the name of the region in the File Name box of the Grayscale Image File dialog box. It has been reported that doing this will cause the grayscale JPG map image to be recognized. Ensure the map image being used is actually a true grayscale image of 256 colors. Open the grayscale JPG map image in a graphics editor such as Irfanview, GIMP, Paint Shop Pro, PhotoShop, etc. If it is not a 256 color grayscale, convert it and resave it. Then, use the converted and saved image in Step 23), above. There are holes in the rendered region or the region stops rendering. Ensure that all screen savers and other minor background tasks are turned off before launching SimCity 4. These type of interruptive applications interfer with the rendering of a SimCity 4 region. It might be desired to turn off the monitor while rendering if there is concern about image burn-in on the monitor screen. If this is done, be sure and periodically check on the status of the rendering by turning the monitor back on. If multiple accounts are being used on the computer, ensure that the logged on account is not exited while rendering. Pressing Ctrl + Alt + Shift + R does not bring up the Grayscale Image File dialog box. Before pressing the key combination, try pressing the "Esc" key on the keyboard a few times. If pressing "Esc" does not work, try creating a different region folder with a slightly different name. Copy the map files into the new folder and follow the installation steps above again. After rendering, the land is at different heights but it is all under water. It is possible there is something installed in the SimCity 4 plug-in folder that alters height. Ensure there isn't a heigh altering file in the plug-in folder. It is possible the downloaded map requires a height mod. Ensure the description has been thoroughly read to determine if a height mod is necessary for the map to render properly.

If you've downloaded a map from the STEX, but are having problems with the region size message, here are a few things you might try: 1 - Make sure the config.bmp file is called 'config.bmp'. Many times, after uploading a map, the config.bmp file is renamed... often to 'config1.bmp'. If it's not called 'config.bmp', Sim City 4 will not recognize it. 2 - Make sure the config.bmp file is in the correct folder. There are two folders for regions, but only one works: C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\SimCity 4\Regions\Region Name\ C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4\Regions\Region Name\ It needs to be in the FIRST one (in My Documents). Sim City 4 does not use the second folder for loading region maps. 3 - Make sure the config.bmp file is the right size. Your dimensions of the greyscale jpeg should be as follows: width minus 1 divided by 64 is a whole number, which we'll call 'w' height minus 1 divided by 64 is a whole number, which we'll call 'h' Your config.bmp file should then by 'w' pixels in width and 'h' pixels in height. 4 - Make sure the config.bmp file has the correct colors. You can't have a completely grey config.bmp file. You need 255-red, or 255-green, or 255-blue tiles. 5 - Make sure the file you're trying to render is a greyscale jpg. If you are unsure, open it in IrfanView, select Save As, save it as a jpg, and in the jpg options, check the "greyscale jpg" box. Make sure to uncheck it before saving other jpgs in the future.

Whether it was expected or not is no excuse. It shouldn't have happened.

I've had soooo many problems with this game, it's just not fun. I was very excited to play it, and had some moments of enjoyment. But my overall reaction is strongly negative. So far, I like every previous iteration of SimCity (even SimCity Societies) more than this game. The following is a non-exhaustive list of "complaints" I've already accrued, after only having played the game for two days. I'm concerned that every time I try a new aspect of the game, I'll find similar issues. 1. City sizes too small, and city-speckled regional landscape looks silly. Everyone has already talked about it. But it's true. If this were the only problem, I could easily look past this and enjoy the game. Since it's not the only problem, it's instead the first of my long list of complaints. 2. Server problems. Of course, this is expected at launch. Again, if this were the only issue, I could live with it. But I'm just starting. 3. Small bugs add up. There are so many small bugs with this game, it might as well have never been beta-tested. Some of the ones I've noticed include: industrial/commercial zones inexplicably being "re-zoned" as residential, then when you de-zone the residential areas the industrial/commercial zones are still there underneath; tiny sections of zoning randomly disappearing; attempting to plop the trade HQ sign doesn't work... it plops, and then disappears... I've noticed this with a couple other ploppables, though for those I could just try again and it would work; some of the longer messages that show up on the top of the screen are cut off, and there's no way to click to read the rest of the message; once, the game randomly made me go through the whole initial tutorial again, or else I couldn't play; there are plenty more that I can't remember off the top of my head. 4. Water. Now we start getting into the big ones. My city of less than 80k ran out of ground water. What's more, nuclear power is unusable because it sucks the water dry in a matter of a couple "years". I have yet to see it "rain" and replenish the water table. The one solution is to take advantage of an odd bug-like feature that allows you to build only one water pump, attach a bunch of filtration systems, and plop it all next to an outflow pipe (I'll get to sewage in a couple points). Importing from neighboring cities would be great, but they'll run out soon enough as well. And more importantly... 5. Intercity play. I must be missing something, because I'm having trouble getting this to work logically. Obviously it can take a long time for one city that's producing, say, excess water to become "available" to send it to another one, which is annoying but I could otherwise look past. But then when I buy water, it costs the buying city money. But I have yet to see a dime of this in my selling city--it's simply not earning money from the water it's selling. Sending safety vehicles must be more complex than I would expect, too, since I haven't been able to do it yet. And annoyingly, I tried to send a gift of 100k simoleons from one city to another. It left the original city, but never arrived in the city it was destined for, even though I waited over 15 minutes in both cities (several times). I'm also having issues with great works, but I'll bring that up in my complaint about sending/trading resources. 6. Sewage. Maybe it's just a bug, but I originally had one main sewage treatment area in one corner of my city. I tried the method to fix number 4 above by adding other sewage options in another part of my city, and deleting some of the original capacity of the first sewage treatment area. Although the game claimed I had plenty of sewage treatment capacity, it was backing up big-time in the original sewage treatment corner. The other corner of the city had sewage going towards it, but it seems having two sewage treatment areas in my city broke the game's sewage treatment algorithms, and it couldn't figure out how to parse the sewage properly. As a result, a large high-wealth chunk of my city deserted because of "too much sewage", when I had plenty of capacity to take care of it. 7. Disasters. They're WAY too frequent, and their impacts can be WAY too significant. I had two monster attacks in less than one "month" of game time. The first destroyed a bunch of important buildings, including my main trade center. Which, after all the other problems I noted from above, was one of the only things keeping my city afloat. If the city tiles were larger, I could have enough economic diversity to recover from this, but with the tiny cities we have, that's just not really a viable option. Now the only option I have is to turn off my few remaining services, which is going to make all my tax-paying residents/workers leave... so a catch-22. All because of one disaster. If they were less frequent I wouldn't mind so much, because I'd have time to recover between disasters... but before I had really even made a dent in my recovery, another monster attacked my city. 8. Sending/trading resources. Some of this is due to my ignorance of the mechanics, but that's part of the problem... this is one of several aspects of the game where there's really no guidance on how it works. There's overarching ideas, but the specifics elude me. Is all my production of alloys coming from my recycling center, or is some coming from somewhere else (industry?)? When I select to export to the global market, does it still allow some local use, or is all of it sold to the global market? If the latter, why don't I have an option to use some (what's needed) locally, and sell the rest to the global market? If I want to send resources to a great work, should I choose "use locally" (where "local" in this case means regional)? Why did a giant chunk of processors get sent to the great work, but alloys and plastics are being sent extremely slowly? And why does it often tell me I have no resources available to send, so deliveries have stopped, even though I do have the resources? And why does it seem to not be correlated to whether or not I have "Sell to the global market" selected? And when does the game decide to send chunks of resources to the great work? Because as far as I can tell it's completely random... play the city long enough and every once in a while, where "once in a while" is some random amount of elapsed time, you MIGHT send something to the great work, if the resource is "available" (even though the resource IS available). I understand so little of what's going on that I can't even tell you whether some of these behaviors are "bugs", or whether it's just that I don't understand what I'm doing and I'm missing some critical point. But the game manual is completely and utterly useless when it comes to answering these questions. ... Considering I've only tried maybe 10% of the game content and I've already run into so many brick walls, I can't imagine how many other "complaints" I'd have if I had a sampling of the rest. Some of the problems listed above are clearly just bugs that can be fixed. Others are minor gameplay mechanic problems that could easily be tweaked to fix the issues. But some are basic, essential gameplay mechanics that couldn't be fixed without a major game overhaul. Obviously having a city I worked on for some time completely broken by all of the above problems has me frustrated, and maybe if I start another new city/region it will allow me to "try again" using what I now know, but when you pile the uncontrollable (disasters) on top of the controllable issues that I just don't understand (in many cases because there's no official documentation that I can find), it's a recipe for frustration, and it's not being balanced by any real fun. So why am I playing this game, exactly?

Maybe that's what I need to get to answer the questions I have? The electronic version is only 9-10 US dollars, but its online only at Prima Games, depends on whether you want to spend any more more money on the game or not, I've only bought the guide at this point as I wasn't sure this was the game for me and I was sure there would be problems on launch so buying the guide was me dipping my toes in the water. Its made interesting reading, so I know not to go burning garbage at the city dumps, unless I like the idea of giant lizards destroying parts of my city, or to think twice when adding wind turbines to any city unless I like tornadoes ... I think it was tornadoes not at home so I can't check -catty I thought those were the ways to unlock the disasters for yourself, not that they would actually make those disasters more common... ? I actually looked this up for someone else who had been visited by a lizard "The guide says all six disasters are locked to begin, once unlocked by completing achievements then a disaster can either be triggered manually, by selecting it from the Disasters menu, or it can occur randomly, as determined by the simulation and certain geographical features" -catty Ya, as Xenocity noted, you still get disasters even when they're locked. I wouldn't be surprised if they're more frequent under certain circumstances, but that would kind of suck if you wanted to build a city based around something that would make a certain type of disaster extremely frequent, but you weren't looking for those disasters.

Actually your city will send them regardless if you can spare them if your neighbor is lacking. You do earn money for it. Well I guess I've just yet to have excess safety personnel. Unfortunately that's probably the least pressing of the issues I listed, at least for me.

Maybe that's what I need to get to answer the questions I have? The electronic version is only 9-10 US dollars, but its online only at Prima Games, depends on whether you want to spend any more more money on the game or not, I've only bought the guide at this point as I wasn't sure this was the game for me and I was sure there would be problems on launch so buying the guide was me dipping my toes in the water. Its made interesting reading, so I know not to go burning garbage at the city dumps, unless I like the idea of giant lizards destroying parts of my city, or to think twice when adding wind turbines to any city unless I like tornadoes ... I think it was tornadoes not at home so I can't check -catty I thought those were the ways to unlock the disasters for yourself, not that they would actually make those disasters more common... ?

As noted in the original post (and as a good troll would do), the city had no money and no buildings. So outside of getting money sent in from another city, there's nothing that can be done. This is easy to achieve. Just take out all the bonds you can, spend all your money, and the destroy everything you built. You have no money and no way of gaining money (outside of a gift from another city), and in fact, due to the bonds, you're losing money, so you have to overcome that as well.

Please elaborate? Many users are mentioning a bug with the water system. Or you dont have anything factual to add? I'd also like to point out that many of the issues I originally brought up (certainly more than half) are neither related to launch issues nor simple game-mechanic-ignorance. Like the fact that my city selling water wasn't earning any money for it. I'm reasonably convinced Mr. Griffith didn't even really read my post. Could be a bug. My Capital City (Main city) sells Power, Water, Sewage to its neighbor. It in turn buys garbage and something else. This keeps my city from completely going under. Ugh, so apparently bugs just like me, then? Yup could just be a bad luck of the draw. Or try rebooting Simcity, that causes your whole region to resync. I would if the servers were working.

Maybe that's what I need to get to answer the questions I have?

I don't think you're dumb, not my intention. 1) Your simcity is basically on an aqufier, But you use up all the water faster than nature can replenish it. So you basically have the exact same choices real cities use. Import water (See California) or Treat your water and reuse it. In the game, your treatment center treats the water and puts it back in your 'aquifer'. I see it as a pretty reasonable simulation, although in reality, the treated water would go straight into your water system. 2) I don't know the threshold anymore than people in real life know the threshold for police protection 3) This is also part of the answer to #2. Your ambulance coverage is broken because the servers are broken (between cities) 1) So you're treating it as a facsimile. Which is fine, but as I just noted in the other thread about water... "1. Treating this as an "infinite" water supply defeats the purpose. If the purpose is to challenge us in water usage, then don't make it possible to completely solve the "challenge" with one easy-to-use trick. 2. There should be some hint that this is what was intended, like showing the water table replenishing under the sewage outflow pipes. This isn't occurring, so there's nothing in their data layers that would suggest this should actually be a thing that could happen." 2) My point is that in real life there is no "threshold" for a neighborhood to send police coverage to another neighborhood. It's a judgment call. I understand that they have to have some limits in the game, but the fact that these game-based thresholds are completely unknowable bothers me. 3) Maybe. But again, how am I supposed to know that it's this reason, and not because I haven't reached this ethereal "threshold"? I simply want to know what's happening in the game so that I can adjust my play style accordingly. How can I adjust my play style if I don't even know what I should be adjusting? Um, you guys do realize that SC4 is one of my favorite games of all time, right? I know how city-simulation games work. I've played pretty much all of them (even Cities XL). Zpike, the city I ran out of water in was a city with "max" water supply. It now has almost zero. As for the sewage->treatment->water not being a bug, that's fine, but there's no way I would have figured out that that's a way of "fixing" my water problems by myself. I would have assumed, logically, that dumping sewage would not lead to an infinitely-replenishing water table. That makes no sense. kgpurrs, it should be a challenge to build a large, successful region. It should take strategy and wise use of resources. There should be moments of frustration, but it should be a moment to learn and recover. That has not been my experience so far. My experience has been that I don't even know what's going on in my city half the time, and have no idea where to even begin looking. How can I learn from a mistake when I don't even know what the mistake is in the first place, and have no idea where to find out? They claim data layers give you more information about your city than ever before. But not all mechanics have a data layer, and for those that don't, you're stuck just accepting that what's going on is intended behavior (if you can even know what's going on). EDIT: I'd also like to point out that I could easily create a large, successful region on my own if I wanted to given what I know of SimCity so far. But I'd have to forego some of the aspects of the game I want to try in order to do so. Which is ridiculous game design... "we have made this available for you, but good luck figuring out how to implement it how you want to successfully, because we're not going to explain how it works in-game". ... some of us know who you are and still have your maps in our region folders, they were and still are great maps -catty Aww.

But it is almost exclusively re-used as non-potable water. In other words, it's a way to put less of a strain on the main potable water supply, not to actually increase the amount of potable water coming in. And if this were to be a game mechanic, there would need to be an actual building called a 'Water Reclamation Station'. They put this issue on a big Reddit SimCity Bug List. Hopefully someone at EA reads that thing. There isn't a need for a water reclamation station. You have wastewater treatment plants for your sewer, and water filtration systems at your water facilities. Yes few places directly transfer treated waste water to a water plant. Most often it is used for irrigation or other non pottable sources. Still it goes back into the water table. Hence in the game if you do not have a sanitation system, you pollute your water source. If you treat it, it should replenish the water table as all water on the planet is recycled naturally. Yes you will see some districts name their wastewater plants as water reclamation plant, it is still in essence a wastewater treatment plant. The add ons to the facilities in simcity reproduce this effect. They need adjustments, and i agree one of the region projects should be a water resovoir as well, for realism. I might not have as much of a problem with this explanation were it not for two important points: 1. Treating this as an "infinite" water supply defeats the purpose. If the purpose is to challenge us in water usage, then don't make it possible to completely solve the "challenge" with one easy-to-use trick. 2. There should be some hint that this is what was intended, like showing the water table replenishing under the sewage outflow pipes. This isn't occurring, so there's nothing in their data layers that would suggest this should actually be a thing that could happen.

Ya, same issue here.

This. Using an illogical exploit is not "challenging" or "stimulating" in any way. If the idea is to challenge us to prevent from running out of water, don't make it to where the only solution is an undocumented method that provides "infinite" water. I disagree. This is exactly the kind of thing I like figuring out and should NOT be documented in the help docs. Half the fun of playing new games is figuring out all the tricks and features and how to use them. I am with you on this one. If everything was just documented than all we would be doing is running the manual and where would our creativity come into being? I like having to figuring things out. I have yet to get my game but hopefully over the weekend I should be playing it and I already have a quiet a idea of the advanced game mechanics just from watching couple of letsallbemayor and other streams. It really is not that difficult to figure things out. Please tell me exactly how I was supposed to "just figure out" that placing a water pump next to a sewage outflow pipe was a good idea. Especially when it doesn't actually register as increasing the water table. I like having to figure things out too, but when you end up having to figure out online that "oh, well, if you do these completely illogical things you can get an illogical infinite water supply", it's not very winsome.

This, this, and more this. It's not like it's unreasonable to have water problems, but right now we have two options in a developed region: 1. Run out of water. Sorry, you're screwed. 2. Dump your sewage into the ground untreated, then pump out the dirty water and treat it for drinking water. And you can essentially get infinite water this way. There is nothing about this option that is logical, it's completely unrealistic, and there's no documentation that suggests that this is a potential solution. If they allowed the aquifers to replenish more frequently (especially in cities with "high" water supplies), this wouldn't be a problem, as you said. You'd still have to work with the challenge of building in cities with "low" water supplies and having the water run out, but at least you could source it from the regions with "high" water supplies. If that's the case, great!

But it is almost exclusively re-used as non-potable water. In other words, it's a way to put less of a strain on the main potable water supply, not to actually increase the amount of potable water coming in.

Ya, I was gonna say, that's for non-potable water. Actually I did find one stat on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewage_treatment See the first paragraph. The ONLY place that even USES this method is Singapore, and it's not their only source of water. No other developed country currently (directly) uses treated sewage for their municipal water supply.

Maybe as a source, but not as their only source of potable water. And as far as I know, there's nowhere in real life where it's dumped into the ground untreated, then re-pumped out and treated. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's treated at the sewage treatment plant (to make it non-hazardous), sent directly to a treatment facility (or dumped into a surface-water source like a lake or river), and re-treated (to make it potable).

Again, someone that apparently assumes I'm dumb and haven't thought of any of this myself. 1. No, it's not realistic. A realistic water supply is a reservoir. Aquifers are secondary. Untreated sewage dumped into an aquifer and then re-extracted and treated is certainly not a large source of our drinking water in real life. "Water problems" are normal for a city. These are not normal solutions. 2. I wasn't asking what's "right" for my city, I was asking what the threshold is (and why it's there) to be able to send an ambulance, say, to another "city" (read: neighborhood). This is something that has to have a definitive answer in the simulation, and there's no "real-life" counterpart to compare it to. And my problems aren't with building a successful city, they're with trying to figure out what's going on in my city and why, and whether or not I'm seeing a bug. 3. That's what I figured, but I wasn't sure. And how am I supposed to know that? Wouldn't it be logical to have some way of keeping track of everything so I know things aren't just getting lost, or so that I know about how long it will take to see the results? 4. That's not why I'm upset. "Figuring it out" from the perspective of "finding a good balance of services, growth, etc" is fine. My problem is "figuring it out" from the perspective of "finding out why the game is doing things I don't think it should be doing, or isn't doing things I think it should". And again, this only pertains to some of the complaints I listed.

No. First and foremost, name a city that gets 100% of its water from treated sewage. It doesn't happen. You can't get "infinite" potable water from your city's sewage, that's not realistic. Secondly, you're talking out of both sides of your mouth. You're claiming this is a realistic solution. So why don't we have the option of the most realistic water solution for a city--the reservoir? In other words, why are we limited to the water table when we have a body of water in our region?

Glad to know I'm not the only one. While it is annoying that bugs like this are in the game at launch, I have come to expect that with games. And really, I would happily look past ALL the bugs if the other problems didn't exist.

Please elaborate? Many users are mentioning a bug with the water system. Or you dont have anything factual to add? I'd also like to point out that many of the issues I originally brought up (certainly more than half) are neither related to launch issues nor simple game-mechanic-ignorance. Like the fact that my city selling water wasn't earning any money for it. I'm reasonably convinced Mr. Griffith didn't even really read my post. Could be a bug. My Capital City (Main city) sells Power, Water, Sewage to its neighbor. It in turn buys garbage and something else. This keeps my city from completely going under. Ugh, so apparently bugs just like me, then?