mittfh

As a side-issue to that of modding the game, a couple of related technical things it would be nice to see: a) a better exception handler! If the code's robust enough to avoid a CTD if something goes awry, it would be great! b) if a base texture is unavailable, treat it as transparent: display the ground texture rather than the 'out of bounds' texture (in SC4, the blue 'graph paper' that usually appears outside the city boundaries). c) if a plugin's missing, display the filename / exemplar name rather than an ID number, so you've got a better idea of what you accidentally deleted (or failed to reinstall)... d) terrain reconciliation between two 'Mayor Mode' cities that doesn't destroy half the infrastructure of your city! Ideally the damage should have a radius dependent on the altitude change of the boundary, or cities are separated by a 'buffer zone' of tiles through which infrastructure runs and auto-reconciles - you'd be prohibited from making altitude changes significant enough to extend the impact beyond the buffer zone.

I've downloaded all parts and plopped them on an mp3 cd for in-car entertainment (yes, I am that sad)... ...together with my self-produced collection of Lemmings! and Oh No! More Lemmings! music (Acorn version, mp3'd)... (Even sadder?!)

Actually, it makes sense from a modders' perspective to initially release the game without modding support, then add it at a later stage. It gives people opportunity to play with the 'raw' game, get the 'feel' of it, and thoroughly assess its capabilities / limitations before being allowed to run amok with modding tools. It of course also gives them plenty of time to roam around the game files and speculate on how it's built.

That's a useful point, and the distance travelled can easily be worked out from the distance between the house and the nearest suitable job - multiply that by 12-14 to get the weekly distance (assuming they work five days a week, that would be 10x the distance - then add a day or two's worth at the weekend to handle shopping / visiting attractions etc.).

There are a couple of single carriageway motorways in the UK - although they tend to be very short and are generally used as a glorified sliproad. The exception, of course, is Aston Expressway. While it is theoretically a seven lane single carriageway for much of its length, in reality it functions as a six lane road, with an empty lane separating the two halves (as the central lane contains the gutter, motorcycles are barred from it for their own safety). Morning rush hour: NNNN-SS Between times: NNN-SSS Evening rush hour: NN-SSSS Another concept increasingly being used over here is ATM (Active Traffic Management), also called Managed Motorways. This includes a combination of VSL (variable speed limits) enforced by numerous gantries, VMS (variable message signs) and cameras; hard shoulder running (hence at intervals there are buildouts for emergency refuges); and CCTV mounted on the gantries watching the hard shoulder, so if a car breaks down on the hard shoulder and can't reach the emergency refuge, the hard shoulder behind the car is closed and traffic diverted onto the three 'normal' running lanes.

Just been thinking about what GlassBox could theoretically be capable of (but probably won't do). For example, on the cars front it would theoretically be possible (although this may be a level or two of abstraction too detailed for EA/Maxis' liking!) to factor in car size (average / maximum number of occupants), fuel tank size (the size of the fuel 'bin') and efficiency (assuming the engine knows how far the car has driven, it should be possible to factor in the number of tiles it takes to use up one unit of fuel). Then you can program in rules about what type of car Sims will drive - namely the bigger their family, the bigger the car they'll use; while the wealthier they are, the less efficient car they'll use. So a wealthy singleton may drive a fancy sports car that can hold a maximum of two and need to visit a fuel station almost every day; while a family on moderate incomes may drive a seven-seater MPV with reasonable fuel economy. Of course, depending on the extent to which GlassBox is opened up when the game's matured enough for them to allow modding, it may be possible for statistics freaks to implement this kind of detail even if it's not provided natively. Of course, adding too many simulations may cause performance problems if you don't have 32 GB RAM

"A separate program" So something akin to a reincarnation of "Streets of SimCity" and "SimCopter" then? Actually, it might not be a bad idea - use SimCity to create and develop the city, then the alternate program that takes your city at a snapshot in time and allows you to roam around it by whatever form of transport you choose. However, if it was to be done as a standalone product, it would probably only be able to work on 'baseline' (i.e. completely unmodified) cities. Alternatively develop something that could either be completely standalone or integrated into SimCity (to take advantage of mods). Even then it needn't be as seamless as UDI - clicking the activate button would save the city and load the new interface, then when you were bored you could either exit to desktop or reload the city builder.

I meant a Wine version from several years ago - it may have been somewhere around the 1.0 mark. My box has been upgraded / reinstalled a few times over the years, from Mandriva 2008.0 running GNOME 2 to Mageia 1 running Xfce (albeit with a tiny GNOME panel for Webilder and gcdemu as xfapplet's no longer supported). Back then it was a 32-bit install with 2 GB DDR2, now I'm running a 64-bit install with 8 GB DDR3 (hence I can allocate 2 GB to VirtualBox so allowing both Linux and Windoze to run simultaneously and be [relatively] happy). So once I've sorted out which particular native dll is currently causing wine to crash, I'll have a go at installing SC4 in my wineprefix...

Not to mention the M49, which is a glorified 5 mile long pair of sliproads...

Well, the 3LSR can theoretically be done on two levels (even with standard Maxis highways) - albeit with a rollercoaster ride of a roundabout, which by necessity would have to be fairly large to accommodate the NAM ramps from ground level (under the one highway) to bridge it over the other highway You could even do something approximating the bizzare Great Barr roundabout, where both sets of sliproads are attached to the same part of the roundabout (either because the housing had already been built and there wasn't enough room to squeeze in the sliproads on the Western side of the roundabout, or because in their correct location they'd be too close to the sliproads for the M5).

In the UK there's an entire community of road geeks called SABRE (Society of All British Road Enthusiasts)... I've occasionally participated in the forum there but I'm not geeky enough on the subject to warrant spending significant amounts of time there. Oh, and to avoid performing necromancy on the "cool interchanges" thread, one of the members has produced this guide to common interchange types (the three level stacked roundabout is as common as muck over here)

Here in the UK, someone's written a comprehensive guide to the UK's Bad Junctions, including the truly amazing (*cough*) M50 J3. Meanwhile, we also have a junction that looks absolutely fiendish from the air but isn't actually that bad to navigate: Gravelley Hill Interchange, a fiendish bit of engineering since a river, a railway line and a couple of canals also pass through the site. The road to the south west also has a feature that can't be modelled in SC4: tidal flow. During most of the day, the seven lanes are divided into three inward bound, a separator lane, and three outward bound. During the morning rush hour it's reconfigured to four in, two out; while the evening rush hour is four out, two in (always keeping one lane clear - although the aerial photo suggests not everyone takes notice...).

Amusingly, the BSOD screensaver for Windows was provided by... ...Microsoft themselves! Evidently some of their developers have a twisted sense of humour Meanwhile, one day I'll have a go at installing SC4 under my wine prefix - I once had it working several years ago, then a Wine update broke it, and I haven't tried since... I currently run it via a Virtualbox Vista install (running directly from the HDD of a laptop whose MoBo borked after 18 months - HDD extracted and installed in my desktop box). Just as one day I'll figure out how to get Rosegarden to play the music I'm editing...

Note to self: if removing images from a region folder, make sure you take a backup first... Anyway, yesterday I decided to remove the images and other non-essential stuff from the folder of a region I've been playing for a while (3x large cities + 1x medium city in progress, plus numerous others that had been re-terraformed in God mode but not 'started' yet)... except I obviously removed something I shouldn't. Started SC4 to be greeted with an empty region. Uh oh. Exited the game, looked in the region folder, most of my cities had disappeared. Ack! Immediately launched Priform's Recuva, only to find that two of the cities have already been partially overwritten (mainly by the MFT and $Extend) and the rest have been completely obliterated. Not bad going Windows, considering the gap between deletion and overwriting was about 10 minutes and no other programs had been run in the meantime... Now I know why many Linux installations use separate partitions for system data, programs, swap file and user folders (I might be tempted to back up C:\Users\Ben, thoroughly defrag the drive, then create a new partition for that location). It's particularly annoying as I like working with "interesting" terrain (read: mountains + crater lakes + islands) which requires a fair amount of tweaking just to run roads up them - never mind sculpting areas of sufficiently low gradient to allow development! -oOo- OK, has anyone else done anything so stupid? I've also had my fair share of times spending three hours since the last save redeveloping an area of a city, then zooming out to take a look before saving... only to be greeted with the inevitable CTD.

Update: found everything except the city I was working on at the time in the Downloads folder. So I used SC4T to regenerate the region in a different folder, imported and tweaked the missing city, and have restarted it again. Yeah, it was slightly annoying to lose it, but since it was only a couple of evenings' worth of gameplay (and there were a couple of aspects of the city I'd developed I wasn't too happy about), it wasn't a big deal. Yeah, so in future, before mucking about with region folders, back 'em up first! Oh, and take the occasional backup of the entire Documents\SimCity 4 folder

There were various images in the region folder (one for each city, showing the terrain in the bright colours of SC4 Terraformer), I assume left over from when the region was first created...

How about a hybrid model - 99.99% of the Sims are created at the start of a sim day and destroyed at the end of it, but you can also select a limited number of buildings and ask the game to make a Sim or a family of Sims persistent and able to be tracked across time (so a similar concept to SC4's "My Sim"). So, just as in real life data analysis, the vast majority of the Sims are faceless statistics, but you can home in on an example and track them. Even with faceless statistics, the game model could store a handful of different work patterns - for example, the majority would commute to work M-F, go shopping on Saturday, and either stay at home or go out on a Sunday - the frequency of the latter depending on the time of year (more likely in summer, less likely in winter). Actually, tracking a Sim Family rather than a Sim Person would be useful - it wouldn't use much in the way of resources, and you could either track them via viewing a representation of the table (family composition, jobs, wealth, etc.) or view a snapshot of their life (not so much following their commute, but for example having a 'time of day' slider and viewing the routes they take to / from their daily activities: work / school / lunch / shopping / recreation etc.)

I used SC4D on Windoze until about a week ago, when my laptop's Motherboard decided to die on me (nice and inconvenient!). It's out of warranty, and I don't fancy faffing around waiting for HP to ship a return box, then waiting several weeks until HP get around to shipping it back (with a puny 3 month warranty). Good news: I have a Linux box (ECS GeForce6100PM-M2 / Athlon 5000 X2 / 1GB RAM) running Mandriva 2009.0 & the packaged form of Wine 1.something) which I could potentially run SC4 on. Bad news: My SC4D CDs are sitting in an attic 45 miles away. I've been running SC4 courtesy of a CD image. Good news: I successfully installed it, courtesy of cd-emu. Bad news: "Could not initialize DirectDraw". Click OK, and I get a nice black screen for a few seconds, after which Wine / SC4 promptly exit. I've tried both gl modes in regedit to no avail - any ideas what I could try next?

A couple of other tracks that fit well: New Stories - Highway Blues (one of the default Win XP tracks - so probably in WMA format. But most media players can convert to mp3. And very SC3k-ish) Watermelon Man (obviously, you'll need to find an instrumental version - again, very SC3k-ish) I did have an SC3UK CD, but I've since donated it to my sister, who currently lives over 40 miles away... So what I might do is P2P a copy, extract the audio, then delete the rest (since I won't be playing the game!). IIRC, there may be plugins for a Nullsoft media player that can cope with XA, so converting the tracks (including the ones included but not in the default playlist) to mp3 shouldn't be too difficult... Oh, and the downloadable version of the SC3 soundtrack (which we all know isn't identical to the soundtrack on the original CD) is still available at EA's website. Perhaps the easiest way to find it is to ask a search engine..."SimCity Soundtrack" feels lucky

Here's what my Quick Launch shortcut does: "C:\program files\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" -intro:off -CustomResolution:enabled -r1280x800x32 O/T, but in case you haven't discovered it yet, -intro:off disables the intro movie

So, six months later, what's the situation? April 9th saw the release of SCS Patch 4: 2 new disasters, 6 new events, 2 new crises, new building abilities, a mod management tool, additional variants of 15 home types, 2 new venues, 2 new workplaces, 15 bug fixes, 1 memory reducing fix. Microsoft would call that a Service Pack... IGN also mention something about "Update 5" - how much maintenance does this game need??? June 23rd saw the release of "The SimCity Box": Societies, Societies Destinations, SC4, SC4RH, Sims Carnival Snap City, Spore Creature Creator Trial Version. Does anyone think even EA have relealised SC4 "ain't dead yet"?! Amazon's prices: SC Box: $27.99 SC4D: $19.99 SCS: $18.99 Spore: $49.99 Spore Galactic Edition: $79.99 Creature Creator: $9.99 Game (UK games high street & online retailer): SC Box: (Doesn't appear to be in the UK yet, neither Game nor Amazon have it) SC4D: £9.99 (also part of a 2 for £15 multibuy)(~$17.79) SCS: £14.99 (also part of a 2 for £25 multibuy)(~$26.69) Spore: £29.99 (~$53.39) Spore Galactic Edition: £39.99 (~$71.20) Spore Creature Creator: £4.99 (~$8.88) -oOo- The last top selling PC games table published on the UK IGN site (using US data) is for the week September 7th to 13th. Surprisingly enough, neither SimCity is in the top 10, although EA are still laughing all the way to the bank (assuming their bank still exists!), with Spore and The Sims 2 dominating the table, plus Crysis propping up the bottom. Then again, Blizzard Entertainment aren't doing too badly either, especially as you have to pay a subscription to play WoW on top of the cost of the CD/DVD/download... 1. Spore 2. Spore Galactic Ed 3. The Sims 2 Apartment Life Expansion Pack 4. Spore Creature Creator 5. World of Warcraft: Battle Chest 6. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe 7. World of Warcraft 8. World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack 9. Warcraft III Battle Chest 10. Crysis

I was about to say the source probably won't be made available, since the DLL is actually a Maxis creation. IIRC, it was created and used by the SC4 developers for testing purposes, and wasn't originally intended to be made public. We've only got it because Buggi happens to know one of the SC4 developers... But then I looked at Page 1 of this thread and Buggi announced he had the source code. So I guess it might be made available if/when Buggi acquires sufficient free time

Since I've just uploaded five lots, it might be a good idea to explain my unpronounceable nickname... Mad IT Techie From Hell, inspired by the legendary BOFH. You'll also find me on SimPeg, SABRE (Society for All British Roads Enthusiasts), the blog for BBC Radio 4's PM programme, and a well-known social networking site (FB). I'm also registered at SC4D but haven't posted there for yonks. If you're daft enough to try and pronounce my nickname out loud, the most popular pronounciation appears to be "mitt-fuh". Alternatively, call me Ben