rsc204

Yes and no, I've done this myself, but I can't find the instructions I used and I'm not sure I can explain it well. !!! Find the folder containing your save files for this region, make a backup of them before doing anything else !!! - You can enlarge your config.bmp file to expand your region, although only to the bottom and right edges of the current map. - After doing this you can open your map in SC4 Terraformer, during the opening make sure to Protect any tiles have have been developed, then you can terraform away as you please with your new land. - Save the files and reopen SC4, hopefully everything appears correctly. That said I'm sure I'm missing something here, but that could be because at the time I was re-sizing a city in an existing region and I think that complicates matters.

Great work on the textures here . I wouldn't worry about the sidewalks, so long as you didn't add any custom sidewalk to the textures, the fact that your textures show Sandstone proves it would work for any sidewalk because the Alpha layers would have to be correct. If you ever want to quickly test this, simply move the sidewalk mod from your plugins folder temporarily and load SC4, textures will automatically update if changed, so there is no need to re-plop anything, and you can quickly test things. There really isn't much to go wrong with textures in a dat, either they work or there is an error somewhere, so you can be pretty confident everything is OK. I'd be happy to give them a once over if that's of help to you.

You can expand your region without destroying a previously built city.

I think at somepoint the texture that connects to this one was changed and this error brought about as a result. Many textures in the NAM are creatively re-used, so you must be careful when making changes to understand what side effects it may cause. You've done a pretty decent job of fixing this one, I attempted it when making the SAM7 textures but I just couldn't get good results. Once you've finished, it could then be used as a template for all the other roundabouts that have the same problem, that would at the very least include each of the SAM networks.

It sounds to me like that backup you refer to is of Registry Files, that should not be related in any way to your SC4 save files. You do realise the instructions given here are for a backup of the default New York (and other) Maxis regions, copying these files will NOT bring your cites back, it will only restore the regions to how they are when you first install the game. If there are differences in the files, those will be your changes, overwriting such files with the originals would mean all your work on the originally installed Maxis maps would be gone forever, be very careful with this. Without any information it is hard to fathom what the problem is here, please confirm if you have a New York folder containing files in the My Documents\Regions folder, also if the New York region can be loaded from Sim City 4. I really can't recommend enough that you take a copy of the Regions folder now before any other changes are made, such backups can be a lifesaver. Simply drag the regions folder onto the desktop (Holding CTRL on the keyboard) and let go of the mouse button, holding CTRL ensures you make a copy. Once that's done you can mess up the real folder as much as you like, but you'd always have the originals to recover from should you need them.

If you use a program like CC Cleaner, does this not make a backup of removed files somewhere, have you checked this, all may not be lost? Assuming you don't have the old files, if there is a folder for New York in your My Documents\Regions folder then the files are already there, why would you need to delete or overwrite these again? Are you sure the files have actually been deleted, perhaps SC4 has already restored the region to the default, have you tried the New York region in-game and does it already work? To explain a little about this, the game installs the default regions in two locations, one in Program Files (a backup of the originals, should not be modified at any time) and the user ones in My Documents which you use for playing/saving your cities. There is an option to manually reset all the Maxis Regions from within the game itself: From the main Sim City region-view window, click the menu in the upper right and select Play Options (last one on right). In the window that appears click on Reset Tutorials. If you copy a folder from the originals (in Program Files) to the user area (in My Documents) and overwrite it, you can restore just a single region, rather than resetting everything, I'd imagine this is preferable here. Whatever you do, simply make a backup of your entire Regions folder in My Documents\Sim City 4\ before doing anything, that way you can recover any mistakes here.

The most important one is really the I-HT fix, without it your Industrial High Tech industries won't actually have any R$$$ jobs, this will kill your game eventually.

There is no viaduct piece to my knowledge, one way or another you will have to put the GLR into a tunnel, either the Subway or FLUPs versions should work. Before placing these pieces you must delete the avenue where the ramp goes first. If using the Subway transition, you can drag avenue from the side with no GLR to reconnect it. However the the side with the rails you must either either place a TIA puzzle piece or click with the GLR tool on each side of an avenue stub to make the connection.

Here are some good tutorials for T-21's, this explains the basics (note: I think the TGI of the texture has changed since the tutorial was written, so bear that in mind if following along with the example), this might also be useful as it explains how to work with more complex networks with multiple textures, some of which is relevant to roundabouts.

:edit: Whoops, missed that you are using a mac there, the instructions below are written for Windows, but assuming the Mac version works the same way they still apply in general. I have the same issue, the HD 4600 I got with my computer is just fine, but the drivers were never made with compatibly for games like SC4 in mind, therefore it just won't work. I think this is the real problem here, that driver, o/s and or hardware is not going to be compatible with the game forever (and this is already happening). Since EA will probably never allow anyone to modify the main code or release an update/updated version themselves, users will either have to make use of software rendering or find a way around the issue. Have you tried using the instructions to make SC4 correctly identify your Video Card? If that's not working check the logfile located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps "computername-config-log.txt". Under strings check that "cardName" and "cardIndentity" correctly show your GPU, then under Numbers check that both "videoMemory" and "textureMemory" show the correct figures. If the card is not identified or the video/texture memory is very low that would cause the problems you are having. Depending on how much you care about Hardware rendering, there is the option of just adding a new compatible video card to bypass the problem, but that's only useful if you are using a desktop PC and of course such integrated graphics are used with almost every budget laptop these days.

Did you also select the Real Realway (RRW) option during install, if so then this currently only supports one set of textures so the overrides are not compatible with it. The RRW in NAM 32 is the first release so there are some compatibility issues still, but the textures are much nicer than the maxis ones. If you keep with RRW then you should download as this improves compatibility a lot.

As far as I know there is a desirability increase for properties near the game water which will help to encourage R$$$ to develop, but you are right in saying that the same effect can be created with parks and other lots. Basically this is how a lot of the steam/pond lots work too, by making the areas around them have a little air cleaning or park effect they make the areas around them more desirable. In terms of which way to go when making a region, well that really depends on what you are trying to do, but if you are going more for realism then water usually features in the mix somewhere. Good use of coasts, rivers, ponds and streams will really make a given city/town/countryside look much nicer if you ask me though.

Nothing more than running the game with and without HT threading and spending a few minutes seeing if any operations seemed quicker/slower, it's not scientific but there was no discernible difference going on.

Let's be fair here, it was probably a reasonably priced PC, it clearly states 3GB memory in the listing you linked to and the practice of using integrated graphics and some lower specification components like a slower LAN port is quite normal for consumer PCs. Assuming you are not running a network, a 10 Mbps connector is probably more than sufficient for most people, it certainly won't bottleneck a typical UK broadband connection, many of which don't even utilise the LAN port for connectivity. I think however it's worth pointing out that the NAM can take quite a toll on system performance depending on how much of it you install. For example a complete install of the NAM on a machine such as yours is not likely to give good performance as you don't have enough CPU power to handle it well. The more extra modifications you make to SC4, the more CPU power you will need to run without problems, at a certain point you may find the game unplayable if you just install mods in a carefree fashion. For better in-game performance go to the Graphics Options menu in game, unselect Clouds/Fog and Waves, reduce the shadows to low and consider reducing other settings here if performance doesn't improve. Graphics really aren't so important for SC4, since the game relies far more on the CPU to run. It's worth going through the tutorial if you haven't done so yet to make sure that SC4 properly detects your graphics drivers and that you are using (if possible) hardware rendering, otherwise your CPU has even more work to do where it also has to perform the tasks usually undertaken by the GPU. If you can't get either DirectX or OpenGL (Hardware) rendering to work with your Intel Card (or just as a neat way to regain whatever system memory is being used by it) you could consider a cheap GPU. Since an older card will be more compatible than a brand new design, I'd go cheap and get a second hand card (NVidia or ATI should work just fine), you should easily find something for £20 on eBay that fits the bill and would be an improvement over the in-built graphics. Once you've got that sorted, start slowly with a custom NAM install, only selecting the features that most appeal to you. During installation the NAM installer should make a custom controller file (so that it only holds data required for your selections). If everything then runs well you can consider running the NAM installer again and adding more features, the installer remembers your previously selected items so it's very easy to change things around. Also bear in mind that performance in SC4 suffers as your cities and regions expand too, so everything may be great with an empty region, but 200k region population later that may no longer be the case. I think it should be possible to make your system run well so long as you invest a little time to get a good balance here.

Firstly thank you for your kind words, I feel much the same hence I wanted to help Catalyst to ensure this project could be completed and these wonderful textures could be available to all. However, this isn't really a request for the NAM team, any decisions regarding this would come down to Catalyst and Myself as the developers of the Mod. Some brief exchanges in this regard have taken place, though nothing has be agreed, in principle though this is something that we hope could happen eventually.

I plan to get around to all the missing pieces, but as soon as you start working with Diagonals it becomes a lot of work to re-build S3D files manually so that the textures will fit. Therefore I released this first set to test the water with only a couple pieces figuring that GLR and CAN-AM are far more used than URail and other features. Given it was around 10-20 hours work for just 5 puzzle pieces, I can't put a timescale on any future updates, but rest assured it's on my todo list so it should happen eventually.

Yeah this is why I'd recommend running Linux of a USB stick, it avoid the issues, Windows 7 likes to think something needs repairing in your boot loader and constantly tries to mess up your boot loader in my experience. @ Mister Giggles: I don't think I could recommend to anyone disabling HT on their CPU, assuming you do other things than run SC4 you are likely to dent the performance of your computer, I did some quick testing with it disabled and frankly I can't see any change in performance over enabling HT running SC4.

Generally speaking it's OK to re-use textures so long as you don't distribute an unmodified version of it, in which case you should add it as a dependency instead, It'd probably be appreciated if you asked the creator first though. As for the T21 mod, I guess I will release it at some point I can give you a copy if you like though. If you wanted to add benches or other props you'll need to learn T21 modding to accomplish that. It's actually possible to have different props with a random chance of appearing. That way rather than making many different versions of a mod, you only have to do everything once. A user would simply click with the road/street tool until the design they wanted appears. This way you could have say three roundabouts close to each other, one with benches, another with a tree and another with nothing at all. You can observe how Maxis did this by finding a street with developments and repeatedly clicking on it, you will see nearby props change as you do so.

If you want to run SC4 almost guaranteed simply buy a Windows XP system, ideally one with a Core2Duo processor (avoid the quad's for SC4, you will pay more and it's the single core performance that really matters, the dual cores have higher individual clock speeds). Have at least 4GB of RAM (3GB is fine if you only use the 32-Bit version of Windows, since more won't actually work) and make sure it has at least a couple year old NVidia or ATI graphics card, so you can use legacy drivers which are pretty much sure not to suffer the problems we're seeing. However performance will be an issue, those CPU's simply can't keep up with SC4 the way a modern system can, I went from 100% load on a 2.4Ghz Core2Duo to 50% load with an i7 4700 running at 3.9Ghz (single core use only). If you don't have a cutting edge graphics card and aren't too fussy about driver updates then Windows 7 is unlikely to cause most owners problems. The issues seem to be coming from a combination of Windows 8, updated graphics drivers and newer cards. As for Windows 10, forget about more backwards compatibility, almost certainly there will be less, and the reason it's free, Microsoft need people to adopt it or they may not survive in the longer term. The world is changing, tablets, phones and portable devices are taking people away from PCs. In a world where people don't buy software, music, games or videos, the only people making money are those who's platforms have a sufficient user base to make them viable. Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft are all vying to be the place you'll rent everything from in the future, since MS have done so poorly in the Tablet/Phone sector and XBox one's not exactly set the world on fire, the slow uptake of Windows 8 is hurting them a lot, giving the O/S away is probably the best way to get as many people to ditch Windows 7 as quickly as possible so everyone can start to enjoy the fabulous MS app store .

I'm pretty sure the glitched tile is because such a sharp 90 degree turn is not supported with the TLA7, you could fix that by dragging out a smoother curve (transition to diagonal and back). This would take out the block on the inside of the curve and also make the next part trickier... To make this work, first you need to demolish everything where the highway meets the TLA-7, then on either side of where the elevated highway will be plop a starter for the TLA-7 network. Next reconnect the rest of the TLA-7 dragging through the new starters also. Drag the Elevated highway across the TLA-7, this will likely destabilise the Avenue, but ignore this for the moment. Now drag your two one way roads leaving a one tile gap between them and the highway. Goto the highway menu, find the option as shown in the picture (you'll need to have the additional interchanges from the NAM installed), press the Tab key 4 times and plop the two entrances, press Tab once more and plop two exit pieces. If you find at this point the TLA-7 textures are still not looking right, select the road tool and click around the intersection until all the pieces match up correctly (as I have done here), but it will work. One drawback of this approach, you will need to make some changes to your current zoning, but without getting stupidly complicated I can't think of a better way to make this work.

I think you are absolutely spot-on with your evaluation of the problem facing many people who want to run SC4 today. Personally I bought a PC with the intention of playing SC4, so when I couldn't use Direct X rendering I went out and bought a new graphics card to resolve the problem. I'd rather keep my system working by not changing to new graphics drivers or versions of Windows if that's necessary to keep everything as it is now. The real problem is that most people will buy a system, then try to play the game and many are finding out that this is not as simple as just installing it anymore. It would seem that simply having the wrong driver could be a problem for many, but I suspect many more will find no driver option available to them to utilise the GPU properly with the game. I personally love HD mods and wouldn't want to be without them, but I guess a number of people aren't so bothered about this and using software rendering may be OK, so long as they can play the game. It would seem useful though if someone made a decent guide available here for a foolproof way of making SC4 run without troubles via a separate O/S. I'm not linux guy, but realising not everyone would have an old Windows disk lying around, that would seem to me the best way to go for the largest number of users. I'd also imagine for NVidia and ATI cards it should be possible to confirm a linux release/graphics driver version that has been verified as working (ideally with at least Open GL rendering, since I'm not sure Direct X would even be possible in Linux). Assuming you get a one driver for all approach in Linux (i.e. you download the same driver package for various specific chipsets) that would cover a lot of ground. I'm unsure if the fate of Intel's driver would be any better under Linux than Windows, maybe someone else is able to verify this? There is also the benefit that you can run Linux off a Pen Drive (booting time aside, it's not that bad) so you could simply plug in the USB drive before booting if you wanted to play SC4 which may be much easier, not to mention removing any chance of screwing up a system.

To show the other wealths you must wait for higher wealth buildings to grow there, this is because anything "plopped" such as landmarks or items from the parks menu will not impart their wealth to the surrounding network tiles, I read somewhere that this was simply not possible, but then the Maxis Open Grass Area piece makes things high-wealth (for some reason the sidewalk but not the grass texture) so I think it's technically possible somehow to influence this. The roundabouts are nice, what I've been playing around with recently though is using a texture from my terrain mod (currently Gobias' Sudden Valley) for the centre of the roundabout instead of the usual grass, so maybe that's something you'd like to consider? I've also adapted Magneto's mod which places trees (or flora) in the middle of the regular Road and Street roundabouts to include all of the SAM streets and the Cull-De-Sac style roundabout you've shown above, which is nicer that just a dead space for me.

Well for starters let's dispel the myth that Intel integrated graphics aren't very good, that's simply not correct, some of them outperform mid-range GPU's that'd cost around $200 if bought separately and this comes for free with the CPU, which in turn uses way less power to run making your PC running costs cheaper. However, there is a problem with Intel's drivers in that they don't work very well with SC4 due to some old Direct X features being unsupported by them which SC4 needs to utilise. It's really not so surprising that Intel who neither specialise in Graphics, nor were they even making GPU's when SC4 was released, may not work with such an old game optimally. However for newer games and running Windows you will likely find it's pretty decent, in reality that is what over 99% of users would prefer support for, we are actually quite a niche if you think about the bigger picture here. If you can live with software rendering then SC4 will still work, it's just usually most users (myself included) can not get Direct X hardware rendering to work with Intel graphics, some users report success with OpenGL, however I've yet to achieve any success here personally. When using software rendering overall performance is reduced and you won't be able to use any 'HD' mods, so if those things don't bother you, it's not something you need to worry about. If however you want to try and ensure Hardware rendering would be possible, you could also consider a Laptop using an AMD chipset which would normally come with ATI graphics on board instead. The problem is that I've also heard many users of ATI cards and even NVidia cards having the exact same problems, it may be before too long that support for SC4 with new systems is gone altogether. This happens with PCs, if you insist on playing an 11 year old+ game and using a brand new PC then you may need to do some work in order to get a better playing experience (or any at all) sometimes. You could dual boot your PC with a Windows XP partition to play SC4, or even run it as part of a virtual O/S within Windows, there are plenty of options available.

Yes it does.