rsc204

The slope problem is down to a setting either in your terrain controller (assuming you have one) or a separate Diagonal Jagged Edges mod that relates to how high the ground must be before a diagonal shows a sheer face. The problem here is that changing this setting so that walls and such look optimal can mess with the look of your terrain, especially mountainous or hilly regions. You can read up on that here, you want the part "Max normal Y for cliff".

You know this is an old lot by Briplazza I've retextured? It was made at a time before most pieces were changed in respect of realistic slopes. I like it though, it's unusual and has some neat uses.

As for the traffic simulator, if Windows is holding onto files, either it's running somewhere or perhaps you don't have permission to edit/delete the file. Since there should be no reason for this file to be in-use or loading on startup, my guess is perhaps windows has locked the file, check you are logged on with full administrator privileges. It would be worth checking if you can manually delete the file you refer too, I'm sorry to say I don't know which file exactly that would be, but Windows might give you an explanation for why you can't remove it.

System restore is not going to help you, it does not deal with user files, only the system and programs themselves. There is no explanation for files moving themselves/being deleted that could conceivably be the result of a mod/plugin for SC4. Something else has happened here, either something has been run (with or without your assistance) that has caused this, or possibly someone with access to your machine? It's also possible that a malicious file did this, but that's very unlikely. I'd open My Computer, do a search for *.DAT on the entire machine, see how many come up that are not in your plugins folder. If they have been moved about, they should still be there somewhere. If they've been deleted, you might find them in the Recycle Bin. If they are not there or in the recycle bin, without a backup you are going to have to start over. However if you do find them scattered, do a couple more searches for *.SC4Lot, *.SC4Model and *.SC4Desc. There four file types are most common, if you find where all those are, you should be able to track everything down with some effort.

Yeah, I chuckled at the "NVidia, the way it's meant to be played" tagline knowing my ATI could outperform it running OpenGL, the first couple Unreal engines used to work superbly with OpenGL for me. I switched to NVidia this time around (after 10 years + ATI cards dating back to a 9600 Pro Fire XL I think), but this was because the GPU from my old PC was dying and I needed to bypass the Intel graphics to render my game in hardware. At that time the new range of ATI cards were in short-supply and the premium to get one sent me towards NVidia because I didn't want to wait many months to get one or pay vastly more for the less in demand expensive models.

Heblem's sand MMPs from pack, has made 2 small brushes for each which compliment them too. JenX's Poseidon mod has an interesting take on this, I highly recommend checking it out if you haven't yet.

Actually that rather depends more on your GPU and it's support for OpenGL than anything else, results can be mixed, ATI cards historically tend to play better with OpenGL than DirectX. I've had OpenGL running fine, some people can run HD mods that way but I'm not sure why some people can do this where for most people it simply doesn't work (I got the same as Nonny when I tried). If it looks all white, that's because your setup doesn't support Open GL the way SC4 utilises it just like the screenshot posted is a similar problem that depending on a particular set of hardware/drivers/os may or may not be fixable.

Paeng's mod doesn't alter a single transit network, I know, I've altered every transit network to add Paeng's sandstone onto it . If a texture is multi-wealth (one that can display either three types of grass or sidewalks) then the wealth level is determined by the lots which are next that tile. However, if every wealth variant had no grass textures, then so long as it is a developed tile, you should always get the full-sidewalk effect you are looking for. Whatever roundabout textures you have (the default nam ones are multi-wealth I think) that is what is behind the difference.

I think what you want to do is remove the mod from AtmosGuy. Back before I made the SEN, I was using a hybrid setup of that and the Jap NAM facelift mod to bring Paeng's sidewalks into more of my game. I kept seeing US textures in certain places, eventually I understood what was going on and the mod isn't really made with full Euro support (not that I can complain, conversely mine isn't made with US support). To my knowledge, if installed correctly my SEN mod should cover every piece from the AtmosGuy set and more besides, so there should be no negative effect from removing it. Unless perhaps you prefer the GLR design or some other difference? I'm a bit vauge right now on the exact detail, the mod is still very much in development, I don't use any textures from the Jap NAM facelift now, I've made my own to get improved colour-matching. There are quite a few updates to be released at some point, but it's one job that is very nearly coming to an end, so I'm working on the last few mismatching items I use.

But if roads had infinite capacity, would there be much reason to build avenues or highways? Though I suppose they can go faster on highways. Ah, perhaps I misunderstood, the bug here is specific to the transit switch points (basically bus stops, train stations, pretty much any place a sim switches their method of traveling). Avenues only advantage to roads is the capacity, but they are both the same speed, so sims will always take the quickest route, if that's the road running parallel to an avenue, that's what they'll use (at least before congestion gets into the equation. OWRs I think are 50% quicker than roads/avenues, this is so that when placed they would make the route more efficient representing the more efficient design of using them in the right places. Motorways are the fastest route, and provided the interchanges are located well they will usually be the fastest route for cars and buses. Ultimately the traffic simulator works out the quickest routes, but designing the transport networks with how you want the different networks to be utilised and taking this into account you can get quite a bit of control over which roads get the most use. I would also think that 17,000 is not so high when you have 1/2 million residents in one city, if you cluster 5 or 6 highrises into a close group, roads around them can get pretty busy until the sims disperse.

I installed everything because when it comes down to it I'm more interested in the transport side than the city builder. And the huge capacities are not cheating, much of what the traffic simulator does in reality is fix what is otherwise a broken game. If one of your bus stops has say 1,000 capacity, but there were 5,000 sims using it then your entire bus network could simply stop working. The same with all transit stations, these updated capacities take into account the difference in the way the game is played today, using what seems like very high numbers is really just a precaution to prevent a bug. Having a higher capacity offers you no benefits, sims will only use a network that is quickest all the same, but by comparison having it very low could seriously mess your game up.

Usually this means something is overridding your Euro Textures that loads after it. I should think the z___NAM folder is doing it's job as most of the textures display fine. Do you have something like the Japanese NAM Facelift mod or a mod for your sandstone textures installed, it may be they are set for US textures if so?

Graphics corruption I would guess, usually this would be a rendering issue. If you'd like to fix it, then the following information would be useful: - What operating system are you using - What Graphics card do you have - Which rendering setting you are using (DirectX, OpenGL or Software). I'm going to take a guess you're using DirectX, in any case check this thread if you haven't already done so you may need to add your graphics card information to make it work. If that doesn't solve it, change the rendering setting to OpenGL and then software and see if either option is any better. Note that when using Software Rendering you will have sub-optimal performance and so called HD mods will not be compatible with your game.

Curse my attempts to save space on photobucket (I compressed the image), oh for the good old days when my ISP gave me some hosted storage as part of my subscription I could do with as I please, I yearn for an old fashion FTP server again... I've added the roads (including FAR/WRCs) today to the mod, here's a close up 1920x1080 (edit: sorry the full size image is long gone) image that clearly shows things, I really think this works best with the single $$ Wealth grass, but for now I'm using all three as that's the base mod: Both of the latest Gobias Terrain mods; Sudden Valley and Berner Oberland come with an optional mod eg. SV Base Textures.dat that does this for the Maxis grass. I've combined it with my custom Maxis base and overlay textures, an override for the half (triangle) Maxis grass overlays and prop overrides. I have most of my custom content (assuming it was lotted with all Maxis items) already showing the terrain grass, my sidewalk, my custom Girafe trees and some other props I've been slowly overriding. I personally think lotting this way is more beneficial, you can make a single lot, and provided people have override mods in place they magically transform to fit every users preferences. Of course when you release such an empty lot Mr Troll will come along and tell the world how pointless it is, so you think sod it I won't bother to release any more lots then. Anyhow, back to the textures - or maybe I should go to bed, it's like 6am here .

To add to TPBs comments, if you are using Paeng's Cemetery, you might find trying to delete these lots causes a CTD. As it states in the readme for this mod, before installing you should enter each city and remove the Maxis cemeteries, then you can replace the mod in your plugins folder and plop the new modular ones from his set, the actual cemetery rewards lots should now be only 1x1 in size.

Every time you fall for the trick of making you pay for a new game (because from everything I'm hearing, this is like the 3rd time they've done this) it presents the opportunity of such shoddy business practices and the exploitation of everybody. The simple facts of business are if you don't get paid, you don't stay in business, so if as consumers and fans of games we demand a little more, perhaps the industry wouldn't be in the sorry state it is where all the big game releases are just rehashes of the same tired old games I played 10 years ago, but somehow made worse?

As usual I find myself attracted to certain projects at certain times, that's a nice way of saying I can be unfocused, however, my motivation is ripe right now for some heavy-duty texture work for the Gobias SV NAM mod I'm working on. This would have been too mammoth a task if I had to make the textures, but Memo from the NAM team kindly gave me his custom wealth texture tool that makes most of them for me, so thank you so much, there are just too many files to have asked someone else to run it for me. Currently I'm working out how best to package everything, but I've got working textures for Streets and 4 SAM variants, roundabouts and a few of the RHW networks, here's a very early preview to show what to expect: I envisage two options, the usual Multi-Wealth arrangement or the option of using a unified single texture ($$ works best, so that's what I plan to make). I don't know at what point I'll become sick of the sight of textures yet, so to begin with I'm looking to cover all Streets, Roads, Avenues and some puzzle pieces. The sudden motivation comes from finding the missing piece to completely automate the process of unpacking and repacking dat files recently. This makes working with textures (after the initial setup) very quick, for the most part it's just the job of any texture changes and packaging right now. That said, with such a large mod, that's a fairly daunting thought just thinking about it, ergh. I'll write up a tutorial at some point on my process for textures, here's the short version without much explanation: - Open dat in reader, use the File, Export All Files function to put the entire dat into a Temp folder. - I've made a .bat file which removes everything that's not an FSH, and also deletes the MipMaps I don't want. - Batch process them with FSH2PNG MkII into PNGs. - Batch re-name the files to the following format 0x00000000 (one operation only is required). This takes all of 30 seconds to do, maybe a couple minutes with a really large file tops. I now have a complete set of all the textures I could want to work with, and they are all named so that when I re-import them using PNGtoFSH Batch the TGI's are taken care of. Given my improved processes, I will consider doing US textures for this mod, but don't take that as a promise I will work on the EU version first.

Indeed it's motherboard. Did the re-install fix the problem, or when you say it's running fine is that without the NAM or Traffic Simulator?

They really should only be in two places, both the SimCity folder inside Program Files and the second inside your My Documents folder is all that the game itself is using. Could all these files be mod's you've downloaded that got scattered around? I'd create a new folder, place everything not in the SimCity folders in there, if after a few weeks nothing seems missing, create a zip containing the contents of the folder, put this somewhere safe and delete all the scattered files.

You could just avoid all the hassle, use the modular set to build exactly the same thing and drag the street down the middle, same effect except for the working roundabout. Anyhow, attached is a new texture and path file which covers the missing parts of this mod, to be clear these are my own files (having no access to the originals since my download is also missing them) but with the correct IIDs. I'll try to find a more permanent home for the fix at some point, but feel free to distribute it too. JRJ Breakwater Fix.zip

An easier way is to level a small "land bridge" over the river, plop some road studs to make an embankment on either side, then you can demolish the land bridge in the river. Quick tip: to make the foundation of the bridge look best, level out two embankments to the waters edge, but stop with one free tile of land (which is at the lower water-line level) before dragging the bridge over. This will give a free tile for the BAT of the bridge to show the foundations as they were intended, picking the right bridge to match the bridge height can produce some great effects with this.

I agree with Nonny here, echoing Coego's post from above it's a real a shame that after all the years of modding, such fundamental parts of how the game works are not being complimented by most of the available content.

Usually you don't want to delete any files formated as follows "City - New City (##).sc4" where is a unique number, these are currently undeveloped city tiles, the name would change when you start the city and give it one. If you delete these you can screw up a region. As for the dump/log files, you might have many of them, but I bet they are so tiny in the grand scheme of things that deleting them saves little more than the space of a floppy disk, which isn't worth messing with unless you really know what you are doing, I'd leave everything as is and be safe in the knowledge it will work.

By and large the game is designed in such a way that for any such transport infrastructure to work properly, you need to have more exits/entrances that would usually be realistic, but then Sim City doesn't have a scale, so this is not too surprising. Many people who are going for realism will happily build massive stretches of motorway that go completely unused because the sheer distances a sim has to travel should they enter one can make it a very poor choice for the traffic simulator. Personally I try to find a balance between some sort of realistic feel whilst still complying with the way the game works, but of course you can go any way you like here. It is possible to force (within some limitations) sims to use your long motorway, usually by giving them no other route, but more often thatn not you can end up with a empty motorway and sims all taking the small roads to get everywhere.