T Wrecks

Well, don't I wish that, too! Seriously, all that I have been doing (and that PIM-X does) is create a progression where there was none, hoping that the curve of that progression doesn't warp the game too much. Maxis values are so over the place... It starts with the buildings: put three of them next to one another, all similarly sized with minor differences - one has ~250 occupants, the other one ~500 and the last one more than 800. Some building sizes (in terms of occupant numbers) simply don't exist in the first place. A CO$$ building with anything between 400 and 700 jobs? Lolnope. Well, anything in the 2000's, then? Nope - take 1991 or 3307. What's true for one category, however, may not apply to a different one. CO$$$ has buildings in the 400-700 range, and in the 2000's, too. The stats don't progress, they jump. How much garbage for 12 CO$$$ jobs? 4 tons. How much for 60 jobs? 4 tons. And for 2,400 jobs? 4 tons. Ok, this means that for 840 jobs, it's... yes, 10 tons. What? Or CO$$$ water consumption. 251 jobs and 286 jobs, respectively. Pretty close, right? The smaller one consumes 423 units of water. A building with ~1,000 jobs consumes 541 units of water. So, if you need 423 water for 251 jobs and 541 water for 1,000 jobs, the one with the slightly higher occupant figure (286 jobs) should be roughly at... 450? 460? 440? Well, make that 3,049. Dafuq? Of course, you might need to factor in growth stage, lot sizes (more surface needed = lower values per tile), and maybe more factors. However, if Maxis had some secret formula, it beats me. For every pattern I seem to see, there's another bunch of buildings that ruins it. Either their formula is very complex, or I'm stupid, or it's just pretty much a mess. At this point, I have ruled out neither of these three possibilities. So basically I'm drawing a (relatively smooth, albeit not strictly uniform and somewhat wavy) curve through a sparsely populated point cloud with extreme outliers, hoping that I won't warp the overall result too much. My last plugins folder was somewhat encouraging in that respect, all in-game graphs were pretty smooth and without any odd jumps. Difficulty seemed to be okay as well - it was possible to stay in the green, but I couldn't just afford anything and never look at the balance. I still think it's more "educated eyeballing and shrugging" ("well - it seems to work okay") than anything scientific. Back to topic once again, the ziggurat in the bottom left picture really stretches the building vertically! I generally have the impression that those Art Deco highrises have pretty delicate massing - something that some of the earlier International Style highrises seem to have adopted with their "wedding cake" structures. Add a little feature here, introduce a slight asymmetry there, and bam! Different overall impression. I think I like the "derby hats" #1, 2, and 4 most.

I guess you can read this a bit as follows: "This simulation that's supposed to help us in times when people are dying and supposed to be a serious, scientifically sound, and reliable instrument turns out to be less sophisticated than a simulation made for a computer game, for mere entertainment!" Even when games become complex for a game, there are very few that come even close to reality. Microsoft's latest Flight Simulator close to real-world flying? Yes, maybe. But SimCity close to a real-world city? Sorry, no. An airplane cockpit is complex enough, but an entire city is so infinitely more complex that no simulation that is suitable for a game (i.e., it does not choke all entertainment value) will ever come remotely close. And even if we assume that MS Flight Simulator is pretty darn close to the real thing, can you imagine the outrage if a pilot crashes a passenger plane, dozens of people die, and it turns out he didn't have an actual pilot's licence but only lots of practice in MS Flight Simulator? You think people would shrug it off and say "Well, that's a pretty good and complex simulation, I don't see a problem here"? Entertainment is one thing, science is another, especially when human lives are in danger. So yeah, I'd agree with @twalsh102 here.

This is pretty much spot on. Garbage is a teeny tiny bit on the high side (but perfectly within tolerance), only water consumption is indeed a little low. However, this is certainly better than too high, just like you say! TBH, I make most tweaks for consistency so I get a smooth progression. This helps me mod new buildings. For example, I have recently modded DK1's TSBD Building into a commercial office. Now let's assume I'D set a newly modded building to 300 occupants of any given category. If I can open my spreadsheet and see that I already have a building with 250 occupants and another one with 400 occupants completely modded, I know I can set the values of the new one to something between the other two, and preferably closer to the lower one because 300 is only 50 away from 250 but 150 away from 400. The more buildings I have, the easier it gets. While doing so, I'll tweak values fully knowing that the tweaks are completely inconsequential for the game - 5 units of air pollution or 6? Pffft, doesn't matter at all for the game. However, it helps me a lot if values are progressing smoothly rather than jumping all over the place. This is, in fact, something I have been preaching to newcomers overwhelmed with all the downloads: play the vanilla game first, find out what you feel you are lacking, and get that rather than going on a download spree and stuffing everything into your plugins that looks cool in the screenshots. I mean, I do appreciate much of the stuff that expands on what Maxis gave us: big box retailers, large service stations... I must confess that I dig wall-to-wall, too. [Well, I even made an attempt at making W2W industry more accessible, so I guess that last bit is not exactly a secret!] However, what bothers me most is obvious repetition. And this repetition is most severe in low-rise and mid-rise stuff because - unlike skyscrapers - these are the categories of which you'll have more than a handful of buildings, and in pretty much every city, not just CBDs. And, in an attempt to get back on topic finally: Isn't this the place where a "crown" (maybe a water tower enclosure and/or elevator engine room?) adorned with some fancy-pants ornament would go?

First of all, that comment was not meant to be that serious, as I tried to indicate with that smiley. Secondly, please don't use straw man tactics on me. Either quote the part where I said that... or just let it be. What I meant to say is that it can't hurt to have several McDonald's BATs because every major city will have several McDonald's and it's not unrealistic to have several of them. I could totally see myself adding several Starbucks or McDonald's BATs to my plugins. On the other hand, buildings like Antwerp Central Station (or the Eiffel Tower that you mentioned) are unique, iconic landmarks, and I can understand that a BATter would be more reluctant to make a second version if a good BAT already exists. Chances are if I have one good BAT of these buildings already, I won't see any reason to add another. You could very well say "Oh well, why not two or five Mickey Dees? After all, these thing are all over the place, and there tend to be differences between them." It's true. But you can't say "Oh well, why not two or five Eiffel Towers? After all, these thing are all over the place, and there tend to be differences between them." There is just that one. That's really all. Nobody "should" make a replica of anything. I never said that and never meant that.

Well, how many McDonald's restaurants are there around the world, and how many Antwerp Central Stations? I'd still say your point is valid, though - if you as a BAT creator are worried about making something that already exists AND if a good BAT already exists, chances are you will see it - in CJs, screenshots, or via a quick online search for [building name] + [SimCity]. If you don't find anything, chances are there is no existing BAT, it's an outdated and/or not so great BAT, or it has never been released. In all of these cases, a new BAT won't hurt. There is a remaining risk that two BATters may be working on one and the same building in parallel. However, given the low number of BATters left in the community, the risk is negligible IMO. On the other hand, it can never hurt to ask and make sure. However, I wonder if the thread "Can't find it? Ask here" can be used for that purpose, too. It's a rather well established thread that is frequently visited by people who know a lot about stuff that has already been made, even if it's only available on smaller Japanese sites.

Well, I'm still busy assembling a plugins suite - which will be focused on the Chicago 1890 / NY 1940 tilesets for the time being. This has more consequences regarding BAT choice than I thought. With residential, I found out that single-family homes are okay-ish (not least thanks to Cycledogg!), W2W stuff (small and mid-rise) is pretty well covered, non-W2W apartments are almost nonexistent except for some beautiful wooden ones by spa and preciously few others, and highrises are there, but spread rather thinly. In terms of commercial, 95% of all those hundreds of (more or less) big-box retailers and restaurant chains are too modern even for NY. Especially commercial services will have to be covered by different building types. Looks like low wealth (CS$) will be mostly small suburban stuff. There's not much low-rise stuff for CS$$, though. This will probably be covered by more urban W2W shops - maybe not unrealistic at all. Low-rise CS$$$ for the tilesets in question is pretty much inexistent. Urban buildings will have to compensate for that. Now, commercial offices are plenty on the STEX - but I guess the concept of "suburban offices" is also a bit more focused on the modern tilesets. Standalone (i.e., non-W2W) office buildings for the first two tilesets aren't that many, either - you might be one of the most prolific authors in this department, in fact. This means that your "silly little BATs" are currently not just some nice-to-have fillers, but form the actual backbone of some commercial departments in my plugins, mainly suburban low-rise and probably non-W2W low-rise to mid-rise offices as well. The overall situation with mid-rise offices is not clear yet because I'm working on this category. However, I'm hoping that NY 1940 will be covered by a mix of NYBT and Jason/nofunk/BSP/mipro whereas Chicago 1890 will be covered by a mix of Jason/nofunk/BSP mipro and your mid-rise office packs. This makes your uploads really substantial parts of my plugins, both in numbers and in function. Some categories would be awfully sparsely populated if it weren't for your buildings. What makes the overall process take so long is that I tweak every single item I put into my plugins: I re-lot them all, check/adjust stats, assign the buildings to (a) specific tileset(s) wherever it seems appropriate (although some remain all-purpose) and occasionally change a colour hue somewhat for a more coherent look, re-center or rescale a model somewhat, fix any S3D glitches, change exemplar names to make it easier to find stuff, and so forth. One thing I can tell you: the more I work on your BATs the more I appreciate just how good and how useful they are all around. Some BATs can be hard to work with or will reveal stats that would have been totally off if left unchanged, inconvenient LODs, or any other more substantial problem. With your buildings, I always know it will be smooth sailing, changes will be minor, and they will be so useful. I really can't thank you enough for making these! I wish I was further along so I had cities to help you testing, but right now I don't have a region or anything.

Well, the first, foremost and easiest practice is: Make a full backup copy of your plugins folder as it is. Then use DATPacker on your active plugins folder, and if you mess up something, you have a backup. A general rule of thumb: You should not DATpack files that are subject to change/update. The prime example would be the NAM. You may want to change your NAM setup, or maybe a new NAM version is released and you wish to update. If your NAM is DATpacked, this won't work properly. All static stuff (RCI buildings, landmarks, civics, and so forth) can be DATpacked without problems in general. Typical problems that might occur there are as follows: You find out that you dislike a particular building or that a particular building causes problems. But now it's stashed away somewhere in a huge DAT, and you don't find it any more. [This is where you want to have a backup so you can kick out the building in question there and DATpack again!] You realize that your menus are too crowded and you drag a lot of stuff around that you don't really need in every city. You want your plugins to be modular to some degree. But now it's all bundled into one enormous DAT, and you don't know what to do. [This is why it can make sense to DATpack by wide categories, e.g. make one DAT with all airport-related stuff and put this DAT in your plugins only when you play your airport city. Leave it out when loading all other cities for slightly faster loading times and less crowded menus]

Hiya Fred, I must admit I'm somewhat familiar with modding tools but totally unfamiliar with analysis tools. Your screenshot showed names and descriptions of the buildings in question. Both of these must be in LTEXT files inside the items in question. Does anybody know if there's an analysis tool out there that is capable of parsing SC4 files for certain text strings? This would make it super easy to find them. Failing this, a binary search is always a last resort, but it's tedious as well. At 13 GB, it would take 4-5 iterations to bring the total plugins folder size down to something that could be sent over the net for somebody else to poke around... depending on your internet connection, of course!

Hi Aarsgevogelte, good to see you're back! Even better to hear you've been active all along. As for your question - upload or not - here's my take on it: I'm not too much into Scanline BATs (not because the renderer is "worse", but because they look different) and I love night lights. Even so, I'd love to see you upload them! Yes, sure, some people might say "Oh, pity there's no night lights, I'll pass" and end up not downloading them. On the other hand, if you never publish them, nobody will ever download them, and that would be a pity. Even if they end up being a niche offer, you will make some people in that niche very, very happy. Besides, you can never know what happens. Had you expected nos.17 to compile a creator pack with your buildings long after you uploaded them? These things can happen anytime. Whatever exists may be used years later in ways you had never imagined. Someone may find a forum post useful that you made in 2011, another one may dig up an old BAT and do amazing things with it. If it's not there in the first place, this cannot happen. Besides, you have found a hobby you enjoy (which is a very valuable thing!) and you want to keep the game alive - what better way is there to combine the two things than taking what you enjoy to make anyway and using it to contribute to keeping the game that you love alive and kicking? So what if the content doesn't cater to my personal preference? This place isn't about me, it's about everyone. If you make a positive, constructive contribution and make the guy next to me happy, then that's something good as well, isn't it? I'd certainly be glad if you did.

I haven't looked at the building in question, no idea how it's modded. In terms of the stuff I do, you can relax because what I release on the STEX is, has been and will always be my and the STEX admins' business and nobody else's. Basically all of my IRM stuff is also "personalized modifications with existing content", both Maxis and custom (which I wouldn't have done if I didn't intend to use it for my own gameplay as well), and it's on the STEX alright. Complaints have been few as far as I can see.

I would guess that the LOD (the invisible box) around your building is too big, and that your building is not properly centred inside this box. The building should be in the centre, and the box should be only slightly bigger than the building - just enough so the building fits inside. There should be a button or menu option called "Refit LODs" or very similar in gmax.

Could be anything - power consumption, garbage output... add one or two zeroes and make it building value... anything. Just to illustrate the basic principle that differences below a certain magnitude won't really be felt in game. That may come a little late. And I'd rather people "unleash" their things on the STEX than do without so much fine stuff that can be tweaked to do what I want it to.

@nycsc4: Congratulations, oldtimer! (I should talk, eh?) Seriously, 15 years in an online community, that's a lot. Here's to the next 15 years and many more awesome city shots! @Raymond7cn: You really make pretty amazing and unique stuff! I'm not sure if I'll ever use any of it because I go for a different style, but it's good to have these futuristic options for the people who like to play that way - no wonder Terring, for example, is so happy. Regardless of personal taste and preference, though, it's always fascinating to see your progress!

Well, just two little things... Firstly, I wanted to clarify real quick that that sentence about judging was intended as an absolutely general remark and not aimed at anyone in particular. Could apply to whomever looks at something and thinks "Jeez, why didn't they...?" - happens to all of us occasionally, I guess. I could have formulated that better. Secondly, "right" or "wrong" in terms of stats is a tricky one IMO because some of Maxis' vanilla building stats are pretty wacky as well. Maxis apparently didn't use a fixed formula at all - or if they did, it's more complicated than just "as a function of occupant size & XYZ" and I didn't get it at all. Anyway, I have come to think about building stats in terms of an "acceptable corridor" with fuzzy edges. Let's face it, whether a commercial mid-rise consumes 6 or 9 units of energy means practically nothing. What matters is when all comparable buildings genrate 4-6 units of waste and your BAT generates 160. That's a difference you might actually feel in game. Not to mention the famous "EQ straight to 200" effect. I mod my personal stuff to a halfways logical, fluent progression that is aimed to stay inside the "acceptable corridor" as far as I can derive it from the (sometimes spurious) Maxis stats. However, I'm aware that many of the finer adjustments and considerations will not have a tangible effect in game. It just makes it easier for me to determine stats in the first place: If the next bigger building is set to 30 and the next smaller building is set to 28, setting the one right between them to 29 is a no-brainer. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that 28 or 30 (or even 25 or 35) would be a problem in any way.

Ah, okay. So you were referring to modding in general. I thought there was some connection I wasn't aware of. Well, I guess many BATters are pretty much exhausted and relieved when they have finally rendered everything and just give it the fastest possible run through the required programs to release it at all. That explains why the default values often go unchanged. For example, I remember many older landmark lots that all had the Big Ben chime, even if they were an office tower. If the underlying problem is not so much lacking a tool or not understanding a tool, but not wanting to learn and meddle with yet another of those pesky tools, you can preset and program as much as you want, some people will still do anything they are familiar with because it feels like the least effort for them (even if learning the tool once and then applying it properly would actually be less effort). Oh well. It's easy to judge others, but harder to walk in their shoes. What sometimes baffles me is that PIM(-X) and LE aren't all that difficult to learn and there are thousands of BATs floating around just waiting to be remodded, relotted and adapted to so many different playing styles, and yet hardly anybody seems to do it any more. Even the good old NDEX team had several very productive BATters, but only one lotter/modder (who burnt out eventually, go figure). You should think it would be the other way around: The majority sticks with PIM and LE, and a minority makes all-new BATs.

I guess I'm mostly the type "Before I go back to playing, I would like to mod and re-lot these 5,987,633,728,869 items, and then... oh wait, I found something more to mod!". At this point, "which kind of player" is a question I could only answer in theoretical terms. I'm having fun, though.

Please help me out a little here... I fail to see the connection with the issue being discussed (and hopefully fixed) here. I thought the filling degree is only an aid in calculating a suitable occupant number, or does it do more than I thought it does?

Hi cyberott! First of all, I'd like to say that either game is a good and solid choice if your son is into this genre (planning and building up something). Obviously, Cities:Skylines (C:S) is by far the more modern game. From what I have heard, it also emphasises city transportation (road network and public transport) a bit more whereas SimCity 4 is more focused on the development of the city's buildings. I'd say that SC4 has a great long-term playing value especially if your son is the type to enjoy fiddling with fine details (maybe even playing the game with mods created by the - still very active - user community) and can live with a certain "retro charm". On the other hand, I'd wager a guess that Cities:Skylines is probably the more polished overall experience, though, and it also has an active modding community. If you do decide to go for SimCity 4, I'll second @SIM-ple Jack: get it from Good Old Games (gog.com). The Origin version cannot be fully patched! That's really an unexpected disadvantage, so I guess a warning is in order. I have the GOG version myself, and it comes fully patched and runs fine on my 64-bit Windows 10 system. Being a hardcore SC4 player and modder and never having played C:S myself (only watched a friend play a little), it's really hard for me to decide, especially since I don't know your son. Still, I'd say that Cities:Skylines might be the safer choice because I can imagine for someone who hasn't grown up with it, SC4 as a 17 year old game is a bit of an acquired taste. One thing that may help us a little: Do you happen to know some of your son's favourite games? In any case, unless you're in a hurry it's probably best to wait for some other members' input, though, because other people are more familiar with C:S than I am and my perspective may be too one-sided to be a good guide.

It's great to hear that you managed to fix the problems and didn't have to spend money to buy the game again. Congratulations and have fun!

Oh wait, you uninstalled KB3086255 already? Well, this should have re-enabled the Safedisc support (although it is not really recommended because it also undoes the fixes to a few other Windows vulnerabilities). In this case yes, re-installing the game from scratch may be worth a shot. Are your plugins in Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Plugins or in My Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins? The should be in the "My Documents" sub-folder. In any case, your plugins folder should not be removed when you uninstall the game. And since "should not happen" is always a dangerous thing to say, you can easily back it up somewhere. It's just static files that can be moved in and out of the plugins folder between game starts and don't need to be installed. If you run into problems with too long folder names, you can simply make a folder like D:\backup\ and copy your plugins there. That's a lot shorter than C:\Users\[Username]\My Documents\Plugins\ and should help to prevent the problem.

Okay, so you got a phyiscal copy, then you definitely have a version that should be patchable - in theory. In practice, there is one annoying issue that I forgot to mention: The physical copies have a copy protection called "Safedisc" on them. This used to be fine because Windows had drivers to support Safedisc - until a while ago, when Microsoft decided to remove these drivers. Since then, games that rely on the Safedisc copy protection are no longer supported. Now, theoretically you could redeem your game by showing EA proof that you have an authentic copy (serial number on the disc/case), BUT even then, they would grant you the right to download a free digital copy from the Origin store - and this digital copy would indeed be unpatchable. Sucks really hard, but that's EA for you. I used to be in the same situation - had the original physical discs, legally bought and owned. All down the drain. I ended up purchasing a new, digital copy from GOG.com when the game was on sale for $5 or something. I'm afraid you will have to repurchase as well, sorry to say so.

So, if I understood you correctly, you have the following major problems: The game says it is "fully patched", but in fact the EXE says its version is 1.1.638.0 and NOT 1.1.640.0 or 1.1.641.0 The game crashes to desktop after playing for a while (mostly 15-45 min) After restarting the game, the sound becomes choppy (occurred only recently) Does this sum it up? If so, maybe let's start with the first problem because that should be easiest to analyse and, hopefully, solve. Do you remember where you acquired the game? The only version that is actually unpatchable is the online version from EA's Origin store. All the other ones - CD and digital, Steam or GoG - can be patched just fine. Another little thing that can be checked quickly and easily: Does anything change if you run the game as administrator (right-click shortcut and select "Run as administrator")? In terms of hardware / system specs, your PC should be capable of running the game just fine, that's for sure.

*siiiigh* Way to turn a user's question into a big mess. Why guess and speculate, though, when things can be tested? Helpful people have provided test cities precisely for the purpose of testing for prop pox. The ones in the first post of Simmaster07's thread are still freely available for everyone. Want to prove a point? Take the allegedly non-functional fix, apply it to the test city and grow the test city beyond the critical save game size and look at the save game: does it or does it not show prop pox symptoms? Feel free to share the save game here for public scrutiny. It's as simple as that, really - provided one's honest intention is to be certain.

Ah yes, this explains the rounded area. That thing with the 14-sided cylinder turning int a 16-sided texturing area could very well be a gmax thing - that piece of software isn't exactly famous for being bug-free. Still, apparently you managed to wrestle with that tool and its shortcomings impressively well. I'm looking forward to seeing your progress!