phungus420

That's exactly what I'm saying Redlotus. It just seems to me that we have increadible modding power that we should apply, and alot of changes could be made easily to radically alter the game, and make it more of a mars colony game. Also the suggestions I made would still keep the genre as a sim building game, just allow us to have a more SimMars feel. As is I havn't read anything that's practical that would really give this project that magical touch. I'll go look for a thread on this type of brainstorming related to the project. Alos I've been offline for quite sometime, and I didn't see when you got on the mod squad redlotus, but a belated congradulations is in order. So good job, and you deserve it, I definatly saw you making some great contributions.

There is alot we can actually do with modding that make this project possible, and also would allow us to really create a totaly different game based on a Martian scenario. First off I'd like to go over the current game structure, and note what we can modd: 1.All tiles have a zone value of 0-7. 0 is dezone, 1 res, etc. 1a.Zone values of 1-3 have an inherent growth rate that uses the zone manager to determine spontanious constructions 1b. Zone values also determine revenue. This can be modified to create negative revenue or cost, if we decide a certain zone type will actualy cost the colony money (Ie industry would cost more money then it produces) 2.Transportation is set up using networks. Networks exist in various types (I believe there are types 01-0B,) 2.a. Spontanious construction in zone types 1-3 or Zone developement corresponds to rates and values of these transported thingys 2.b.These networks carry various bits of data. Most notable are electricity and water (still unknown value). Also from zone type 1, building create trips that travel to other buildings. These tips can be altered into 9 different carrier types 2.c. Values can be modded easily now in the transportation system. I would like to conclude by saying we could (or even me being a lowly crackerjackbox modder) could easily create a new type of game using simple modding techniques. I'll quickly conclude with an idea using this information that we can modd. First set the water transporatation system to being simply life support, And modd all stage development to require this, (not just stages 3+) This can easily be done. Secondly change the idea of Res being residents. Rather R should be the industry in a Mars model (based on trip information). It works like this, R zones will be food centers, and will produce food, based on thier level of development, this food then replaces sims and travels to the other two zone types in the form of trips. A succesfull trip can be calculated as a Sim in the other zone types, and this would be the basis for calculating population. These new food zone types will actually cost money, as we could modd thier taxation to a negative value. I hope someone is seeing where I am going here. But My point is that if we do create a mars type sim game, we should give it a real Mars Colony feel, and not a total sim city one. The ideas I have just expressed can be done, I could even do them myself. And I'm sure that with other ideas from the comunity we could really create something unique here.

Yeah Toroca I've had train stations at 800% and above, and I see no reason to believe they wol't go over this level at the right densities.

lol, great pics. The donought is the best, I have yet to see one of those, but definatly it shows some sort of error in the path generator. On an unrelated note, I've thought about the NRC and pathfinding some more. It seems to me that we should be able to modd the NRC program to be always true, and allow all zones to assume they are connected to the network. If we do this the whole directional orientation of zones will become unessasary. It will also allow the direct transfer of verying station types w/o an arbitrary network connection. One unfortunate barrier to alot of the work we could do is the fact the sim must enter a network tile, and leave a netork tile when as the first and last things it does. I would like to explore this further, but SimCity_1.dat is huge, and I have no idea where to begin. Any ideas?

I've been doing some testing with the NRC zots. And I have concluded that the pathfinding engine and the zot are completley unconnected. The pathfinding engine aperantly looks for the "best" available path given the program and then gives the sim that route. The NRC looks to see if there is a network connection from jobs to res zones. I modded parks to allow sims to walk through them. This modd makes the parks seem like walking stations and not part of the network. Now if I place a road, separate it by a park, and then place another road on the opposite side of the park the and have a job (in this case a fire station) on the opposite side of the road, the zone developes, makes a pedestrian path to the zone, develops an NRC (while the sim is working) and abandons. HOwever if I make a long curvy road that the sim will not drive along, connecting the two parralel roads, the NRC dissapears. And the Sim maintains his pedestrian path through the park. Next I wanted to see if sims could hop from station to station. Usin the same method I set two parks side by side. I placed a non connected street on either side and then zoned a R zone on one side, and placed a fire station on the other. Interestingly enough with this set up the Rzone did not develope, and instead had an NRC from the jump. Anyway I connected a road along the edge. The NRC disapeared and a ped path developed through both parks. I don't want to entirly trust the route querry, so I looked at commute time. 18 min. Next I took out one of the park. This time the ped path showed the sim as walking through the park that was still there, and then zigging to the road, to get to the job. Commute increased to 22min. So in conclusion sims may hop from station to station directly, provided there does indeed exist a network path connecting the two, however they do not need to use the network. Also it would appear that NRCs are somehow related to this.

This is also to offset the fact that regional commutes are not calculated in commute time. REalistically this game would virtually give no value to commute time if this "bug" were changed. If you want you can multiply all speeds by 10, but it's boring since commutes will never really go above 20 min. It really is too bad regional comute times are not calculated, or added in, I think that is the true "bug".

yep that's the mod where tropod added the extra lines. Since it was doable on the trash/power/water graphs I think it reasonable to assume it could be done on the jobs and pop graph. Unfortunatly I don't know how to do this either, but it would be nice to have a total pop, and total jobs on the graph.

I posted this already in the Walking abandonment thread, but it does relate to pathfinding, and if maxis fixes this it's crucial to everybody, not just those interestead in the specific walking abandonment thread: Maxis has made an official reply to the walking abandonment bug. They are asking for us to upload cities where this has an obvious effect to simcityscape. Below is the reply and link: Author: MaxisFrank Date: Sep-02-03 02:42 PM PDT Subject: Re: Something Maxis Should Read Ralphael (or any others that can help out here), Any chance of getting someone to post one of these problem cities to SimCityScape and give me a clue where it is there? I'd like to tweak the exemplars on our end and understand what you all are seeing in this city. Also, I see reference to tweaking one exemplar with one value. If the walking speed is being tweaked, did you tweak all the walking values in this parameter? There should be at least two (one for roads & one for streets). Thanx, MaxisFrank Link: http://simcity.ea.com/bbs/messages.php?&bbsID=61&openItemID=item.261&threadID=0f9d1749cdef413a65f10da4ebbd5044&directoryID=261&startRow=101

Well currently SCC is home to a few region games. I've recently started a non cheating one if that's what you all are interestead in. Unfortunatly, I personaly have found round by round region games to be too slow for my tastes, but they are definatly a little more interesting, if just for randomness sakes, then toying w/ my own region.