pickled_pig

Looks pretty epic. Like those sprawling suburbs and huge exurban office parks. Tons of detail in these past few updates -- they are loaded with a true sense of "place".

Vanilla as in base game, no rush hour, unmodded? Playing plain vanilla can truly be a challenge, and it's cool to see people up for it. With so many mods out there these days, it's easy to forget precisely how powerful and open-ended even the base game was! This looks pretty nice. Keep it up!

There's some nice features to this game, and the simulation itself is pretty nice, but where SC4 was "a way of life" this new SimCity seems like at the end it will be a "diversion". Last week's beta got rid of a lot of concerns I had about the game but added some new ones. I had loads of fun -- probably the most "fun" I have had in a SimCity game since SC2000 -- but I don't think we're going to get the dedicated community and level of realism we eventually got out of SC4. We could argue, hey, it took the modders many many years to unleash the power of SC4. I stopped playing SC4 reguarly in 2008, when I went to college, and the modding work I've seen from post-2008 blows anything I had to play with out of the water. But the question still remains on how custom content will be implemented. Modern games are awash in a sea of DLC and always-on DRM and any EA game will clearly be no exception. Whether this can live in symbiosis with a living fan-made community is still an exercise to the reader.

Looks like a good start. My understanding is the main simulation is single-threaded, though the game does take advantage of multiple cores. The i3 should be a sufficient processor. 8GB of RAM is good, and 1600 MHZ is the standard nowadays. I'd upgrade the graphics though. The two betas have indicated the game is really GPU-intensive and can use quite a bit of graphics power. I'd up to a 7850/7870, but that might also mean you have to up your PSU wattage. A 7950 would be ideal but if you're not gaming regularly it might be overkill. I have a 6870 and it ran the beta on high, though with some hiccups. Edit: I realize you're trying to stay under $600. Your main goal, then, should be to look for savings on the other parts to spend more on the GPU. 7850s go on sale for $150, so if you're able to cut $40 off your build you can throw one of those in easily. To hunt the sales, have you ever used www.pcpartpicker.com? I used this when building and it was super useful. The only challenge is the sales on the main sites, like newegg, can change on a day-by-day basis.

Negative. I live in the suburbs. The next person knows how to play a (musical) instrument.

I'd make sure the prison's far away from the tourist area in the mountains. Wouldn't want tourists on their nerves all the time due to escaped convicts. The prison should have tons of extra security features. Guardhouses, maybe a couple electric fences, stuff like that. It would be unsightly, I think, but far away enough it might work. We do have to watch out, though: with all the pubs and brothels this could become the Wild West really fast!

I think I'd rather drive the Toyota. Acoustic guitar or electric?

I was guessing the cartoon graphics were there more to reduce the load on the video card. If you're not going photo-realistic, you can have less detailed textures, lower poly counts, etc... If so, I imagine all of that can be fixed when we start modding the game. I remember when they announced the release of the game and the Origin site had some (tentative?) system requirements. I think it said minimum sys reqs with respect to the graphics was a Radeon X1800 or the like. Compared to a game like Battlefield 3 (they recommend a Radeon 6970) or Max Payne 3 (recommend a Radeon 7970) this is pretty mild and will mean that even if you last built a gaming PC several years ago you'll still be able to enjoy this game. Hence I won't complain about the graphics yet. The thing that worried me about the E3 video was that there didn't seem to be much in terms of scenery surrounding the buildings. Part of the allure of the modern, fully modded SC4 is stuff like mayor mode ploppables that give full control over the scenery.

"Change Your Mind" by the Killers. I'm having a mindless pop music day so far.

I suppose I'll take a cupcake. Sure. Yum! The next person lives in Europe.

Mods are difficult to get into. I'd start out with the NAM -- and if you're interested in a more diverse array of roads, the Rural Highway mod and the Network Widening Mod. When it comes time to start downloading BATs, the dependencies give a tight learning curve -- I'd say start out with something you'd like to put in your city and follow the dependencies back. You might find some people whose BATs you adore that way. I'm trying to get back into SC4 after years of not playing due to computer issues. So I've been spending a bit of time with mods & dependencies myself. Ages ago there were some good tutorials on managing your plugins folder. If you can find one that's good reading as well -- it's critical that all the mods are properly organized. Looks like a great 'vanilla' SC4 city, though. Just goes to show that even without the mods there's a ton of potential in SC4!

Really nice eye candy. There's something meditative about a CJ focused just on bridges. It also shows how much fantastic custom content we've amassed over the years. I'll be keeping a watch on this one.

Looks nice. I've not looked at Nyhaven yet, so I can't comment on the similarities and differences.

Well, I've not constructed a city journal in ages, namely due to getting a new computer - preloaded with that great pleasure we have come to know as Windows Vista - and henceforth starting my plugins folder from scratch and dealing with the infamous Crash To Desktop bug that plagues seemingly most modern dual-core or quad-core machines. Now that the CTD bug is seemingly out of the way, it's time to get started on a new City Journal. I believe this is my sixth of these, following the Northern-themed Jackson County, the Mid-Atlantic inspired Winston County, and the Southern-fried Travels Down I-85, and two others that were so rudimentary in playing style they aren't worth mentioning. This journal, Kanneberg County, will follow in the legacy of Travels Down I-85, examining the urban, suburban, and rural sprawl that has shown up on a stretch of an Interstate highway - namely, here, a fictional I-77. The real I-77 travels from Columbia, South Carolina up to Ohio via North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. In this journal, we are going to be considering a fictional slab of I-77 somewhere in the center of North Carolina. It should be noted that there will be a major deviation from reality in this journal that I have made is every one of my other journals. Despite the handy 50-feet-per-tile metric, my city journals don't follow the United States convention of mileage-based exit numbering, instead using the simpler sequential exit numbering that I believe only exists as of now in Connecticut, Massachussetts, and Rhode Island. Thus exit 46 on I-77 doesn't mean we are 46 miles from the southernmost point of the Interstate, but we are 46 exits (and thusly closer to, say, a hundred miles) from the southernmost point. Unlike previous journals I've made, I'm not entering this one with a master plan. I've built two small rural towns that are fueled by agriculture and manufacturing, and plan to improvise the region as I build it. We'll still see a lot of roadgeekery - just not all those elaborate planning maps that were most of my last CJ. We're going to start in Watford. A town of about twenty thousand people, it is in a very difficult economic time. Potatoes and hardware products have been its major economic contribution, but with threats of factories moving to China and Indonesia, this town's stability is in question. The Watford Bypass (NC-198) snakes around the city proper, about a mile and a half from the city center. The vast majority of it is limited-access, but after four exits and about two miles, it suddenly becomes a two-lane highway with at-grade intersections. But that's for later. For now, let's prepare to go on a tour of Watford itself. We'll have a real update in due time.

I'm still playing SC4, despite college... A real update, along with replies to comments and all that jazz, is on its way.

This is looking amazing. The street patterns look realistic, especially in the bit you showed us on the region map where you went in and filled in the streets. I also like the inner loop interstate on the region map. I hope you keep this CJ going and we see some good roadgeekery.

Cedarburg reminds me of many a small town you travel through on your way between Charlotte, NC and Myrtle Beach, SC... that is, if their downtowns were still active and not completely replaced by extreme '80s/'90s plaza-and-parking lot sprawl. For that matter, in the Carolinas, it's not impossible for a town the size of Cedarburg to have a mile-long or more stretch of shopping centers, motels, and gas centers attached to it. And it's the compactness I like about Cedarburg - it actually feels livable due to the close proximity of everything.

It's not vista. It's your dual-core processor. The classic fix for this is to run the game in single-core compatibility mode. I run SC4 using a shortcut with the following path: C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C START "SimCity 4" /high /affinity 1 "(path to SC4 application in quotes)" Since I learned the fix not too long ago and am not concerned with why it works, I can't explain it via a 'techie' perspective. But I can vouch that single-core mode has made SC4 playable again, after a year of crashing to desktop.

As a Scrabble player, I like names that have Qs and no Us - so, naturally, I enjoyed all of the Arabic-esque names for your places in this CJ. It captures the post-Soviet feel well, as well, I must add.

As a Scrabble player, I like names that have Qs and no Us - so, naturally, I enjoyed all of the Arabic-esque names for your places in this CJ. It captures the post-Soviet feel well, as well, I must add.

As a Scrabble player, I like names that have Qs and no Us - so, naturally, I enjoyed all of the Arabic-esque names for your places in this CJ. It captures the post-Soviet feel well, as well, I must add.

Currently moved into college, so the slow trickle of updates through the cliched pipeline will narrow and narrow. But they will still be here - there's enough stuff for five or six more as-is without doing any more building in SC4. But the whole point of this CJ is to take some travels through Kanneberg County - so staying only in the Northeast part of the region will defeat the point. Hawkeye9 - Good to see you agreeing about the map quality. I've fired up Adobe Illustrator and am redoing the map using vector graphics. We'll se it soon enough - it's missing route numbers, town names, the like as of yet. Jacquilina - Hey there. Long time, no see. Hope your visit to Kanneberg County went well. Dan - You kinda sorta do - but then, the simulator is based on the notion of "stages", so after a certain population the simulator is prone to constructing higher density buildings. So I don't blame you, especially if you like to grow your cities. Packersfan - I remember you & your CJs from the olden days. Good roadgeek-oriented stuff, I remember. When doing Travels, I picked 85 and 17 because, well, those were real routes in the NC piedmont. This time around, I'm not going for that sort of parallel to reality. Shaylan221 - I'm using Kurumi Signmaker, which is a wonderful Java app for building US-style signage in seconds. A quick search on the Intertubes should give you the program. Don't forget, that some people also build their signage by hand; for the seemingly limitless possiblities that gives, you might want to check out dfnva's journals, which are based on some gorgeous custom-built signage. TmiguelT - for the win, indeed. Thanks for the visit. bluemoose - Looks like we got another roadgeek in our midst. Thanks for visiting! crazychickensc12 - I also remember you from way back when. Thanks for the comment! Anyway, we're going to take a left onto the multiplexed NC-67/112, and use the highways to do some more exploring after that. Hopefully all this ends with a nice stay at one of the motels in either Watford or its neighbor city, Hastings. I hope to have one more update before Monday, but no promises. -Aaron

Currently moved into college, so the slow trickle of updates through the cliched pipeline will narrow and narrow. But they will still be here - there's enough stuff for five or six more as-is without doing any more building in SC4. But the whole point of this CJ is to take some travels through Kanneberg County - so staying only in the Northeast part of the region will defeat the point. Hawkeye9 - Good to see you agreeing about the map quality. I've fired up Adobe Illustrator and am redoing the map using vector graphics. We'll se it soon enough - it's missing route numbers, town names, the like as of yet. Jacquilina - Hey there. Long time, no see. Hope your visit to Kanneberg County went well. Dan - You kinda sorta do - but then, the simulator is based on the notion of "stages", so after a certain population the simulator is prone to constructing higher density buildings. So I don't blame you, especially if you like to grow your cities. Packersfan - I remember you & your CJs from the olden days. Good roadgeek-oriented stuff, I remember. When doing Travels, I picked 85 and 17 because, well, those were real routes in the NC piedmont. This time around, I'm not going for that sort of parallel to reality. Shaylan221 - I'm using Kurumi Signmaker, which is a wonderful Java app for building US-style signage in seconds. A quick search on the Intertubes should give you the program. Don't forget, that some people also build their signage by hand; for the seemingly limitless possiblities that gives, you might want to check out dfnva's journals, which are based on some gorgeous custom-built signage. TmiguelT - for the win, indeed. Thanks for the visit. bluemoose - Looks like we got another roadgeek in our midst. Thanks for visiting! crazychickensc12 - I also remember you from way back when. Thanks for the comment! Anyway, we're going to take a left onto the multiplexed NC-67/112, and use the highways to do some more exploring after that. Hopefully all this ends with a nice stay at one of the motels in either Watford or its neighbor city, Hastings. I hope to have one more update before Monday, but no promises. -Aaron

Currently moved into college, so the slow trickle of updates through the cliched pipeline will narrow and narrow. But they will still be here - there's enough stuff for five or six more as-is without doing any more building in SC4. But the whole point of this CJ is to take some travels through Kanneberg County - so staying only in the Northeast part of the region will defeat the point. Hawkeye9 - Good to see you agreeing about the map quality. I've fired up Adobe Illustrator and am redoing the map using vector graphics. We'll se it soon enough - it's missing route numbers, town names, the like as of yet. Jacquilina - Hey there. Long time, no see. Hope your visit to Kanneberg County went well. Dan - You kinda sorta do - but then, the simulator is based on the notion of "stages", so after a certain population the simulator is prone to constructing higher density buildings. So I don't blame you, especially if you like to grow your cities. Packersfan - I remember you & your CJs from the olden days. Good roadgeek-oriented stuff, I remember. When doing Travels, I picked 85 and 17 because, well, those were real routes in the NC piedmont. This time around, I'm not going for that sort of parallel to reality. Shaylan221 - I'm using Kurumi Signmaker, which is a wonderful Java app for building US-style signage in seconds. A quick search on the Intertubes should give you the program. Don't forget, that some people also build their signage by hand; for the seemingly limitless possiblities that gives, you might want to check out dfnva's journals, which are based on some gorgeous custom-built signage. TmiguelT - for the win, indeed. Thanks for the visit. bluemoose - Looks like we got another roadgeek in our midst. Thanks for visiting! crazychickensc12 - I also remember you from way back when. Thanks for the comment! Anyway, we're going to take a left onto the multiplexed NC-67/112, and use the highways to do some more exploring after that. Hopefully all this ends with a nice stay at one of the motels in either Watford or its neighbor city, Hastings. I hope to have one more update before Monday, but no promises. -Aaron

Have you searched the STEX for the work of JBSimio? His "Smalltown USA" is the gold standard for those type of buildings. You might want to take a look at spa's BAT work as well; though all the buildings are based on Canadian buildings, they are all low-rise and may work out.