Bombardiere

I did not use the same ID. Mainly because I was lazy. SD and HD need separate rendering so I did not bother to copy the ID as it would need to be done in Reader or similar. Making and espcially lotting a BAT was overwheling project enough, so by the end I was usually so exhausted that I did not energy for small details. Nice BATs. Your style looks great. After couple years I have recently opened SC4 again. Yes, I think too that Z6 was after thought from Maxis. It is shame as there are pros and cons SD vs. HD. I almost daily based swicht my mind which is better

I would not think that is too surprising. Once a while I have been thinking that should I try this game but idea of Steam or Paradox launcher kills the joy.

I do this with a paint program. GIMP. I use brushes or even cropped images which I superimpose over the base texture. If I feel like it, I can add burns or penstrokes as I choose. Usually to the roof texture as I said I feel that the roof is most important and will get most attetion. It is perhaps more complex work, but I would say that it is essentially same than your salt map. I also do grading with a paint program. I feel that I am more confortable with the paint programs rather than 3D aplication. I have been told that bump map would not in GMAX. I don't know as I have not used it in GMAX. Nowadays I use 3DS MAX and I find pump and displacement useful if I want to do a stone effect. But I have not really used it for brick or tile roof. Your modular factory looks good. I would have not spotted the seams unless I would have knew what to look at. Although I do agree with T Wrecks that the roof texture should blend in better. ideally you should soften the texture edges so that each side is fairly even and there would be no dramatic change in the colour shade.

Your are doing interesting things. I am building a Chicago with Chicago 1890 tileset so you have many useful things for me. Thank you However, if I may to do a suggestion. I would like draw your attention to roof texture. For example, lets look your red brick warehouse. I think you have used one plain rooftile texture, which is repeated e.g. tiled. Well tiling may look fine in 3D program, but in SC4 it often looks unnatural. In some time repetition is just too obvious. Due the Sc4 viewing angle, we see mostly the roof. So it is where the eye most naturally wanders. In 3D program one is probably spends most time looking at the facade, the roof is sometimes a little bit forgotten. So I would suggest that you would add some "effect" to the texture. With word effect I mean shading, streaks and grime. Even small "effects" can break otherwise monotonous texture and it would give to the building more alive feeling. Maxis used shading and grading and I think that was a nice touch for their models.

Cori Do you have a thread where you discuss your findings? I want to learn more. I often play with historical style and I want to create slums. Whitechapel you see. But I don't necessary want to choke my sims with pollution or kill the education.

I am also reading this with great interest as this is what I would have like to see for Plugin Sharing Discussion. Ok you will not provide ready download package for plugin folder, but this is almost as good. Well thought extra content set up for a North American City. It will certainly be useful for me. Thank you. I have made separate plugin folder for different style cities I play. Such, London, Paris, Chicago 1890 or modern vaguely North American Style city which is essentially a Mattsville @mattb325 This way I have been able to keep my average plugin folder around 1 GB. But that has meant a lot of work and as I want to keep dependencies in minimum, it means that I have to do a lot of relotting. I agree that with Modern North American and perhaps with Euro and Japanese/generic Asian one can be picky. Usually good content to choose from. I have been looking for historic building and with those the selection is more limited. Also it is an issue that some Euro Batters have used different scale than Maxis based, I believe that most Batters did follow Maxis scale and because of that, it is kind of annoying to see a great Bat which does not fit into general building lineup.

I don't recognise the tree props, but looks like you are using seasonal tree props. Meaning that tree props have different models which change for season. Winter, summer, autumn. SC4 is not built for seasonal variation, so modders are using a trick with timed props. This means that a tree prop or other flora has between 2 - 4 models which alternate in the game. To me it look like that you have only summer version in the lot. You must add other versions in the lot or use non-seasonal version. Are the tree props by Girafe or CP? They are the main creators of the seasonal flora. But I think that both have included non-seasonal versions.

I like your attitude. You seem to have a realistic idea of what can be done. That is why I am so interested of this project. Of course I would want immediately that beautiful car and mere skateboard will not satisfy me. But I realise that it is not possible to jump right into final Super SC4. So there must be a process. At the moment I am not much of help. I am no coder and thus I can’t help current work. I can only download the game and do some testing. If you are able to reach graphic level, then perhaps I can give some concrete input. I have been thinking about this upgrading. ( this is in red on the left side of the chart) I understand that you want to do 5 wealth levels. $ - $$$$$. SC4 has only three, but change is not issue. I see these 5 levels as; Poor, Working class, Lower Middleclass, Upper Middleclass and Rich (aristocracy.) I think that you write that land value will cause levelling up. I think it should be one factor, but not the only. I know that poor people may not own the land but lets assume ownership. After the land is bought and own, then even if rise in the value, does not cause immediate need to move. Sure a developer may want that real estate and a poor person may be tempted to sell land for profit or other pressure may drive him away. Illegal pressure is not unheard especially in developing countries and at least in my country councils and the government has certain expropriate rights if land is “useful” for public need. So I would say that rising land value should cause unhappiness, but leveling up should happen only after certain limit is reached. And perhaps the rise in land value does not mean that wealthier people occupy the land plot but poor will be packed more tightly and the result is a large council estate. In a simulation it is not needed to know what caused people to leave. The game does not need to know if person gives up his/hers land willingly or under pressure. Just that conditions plus perhaps a random element is needed for levelling up. Ok, I don’t know well how SC4 upgrades. Certainly, the land value is one factor. But here I don’t have enough detail knowledge. Schools and parks rise desirability and these of course affect the land value. Another thought about leveling up. A lot has a building with 50 poor people. A levelling up happens and it is replace by a house with 30 middle class people. So for game simulation purposes, lets assume that these 30 new middle class persons were former poors. I would assume that this means that people has become richer. Social movement. In real life this would not happen within same building and in real life person's incomes would slowly increase all over the city. But for game purpose it is enough to assume that these 30 new middle class people came all over the city and those poors who stayed poor just moved away. So now I think what happened to those 20 who were left out? Should the simulation include those? I have feeling that SC4 just lose them. I have seen stagnation in population level while my tax income rises a lot in SC4 game. SC4 lots are upgrading into $$ and $$$ but as these have fewer persons per lot, the population does not increase. May be SC4 puts these extra people in to census drive. Still I would like that these extra people would still be included in the game. Even as homeless persons if they can’t find new accommodation. Five wealth levels did make me think that what if there would be five residential and commercial density levels too. Rural, sleeping suburbs (1-3 floor singles and semis) urban sprawl (terraced rows and small apartments 3-5 floors), midtown (8-10 floors) and Skyscrapers (from 16-20 floors upwards.) This might even the city growth. It is bit too abrupt in SC4 sometimes. Of course badly modded BATs can affect this. For industry I would take inspiration from T Wreck Industrial revolution mod. Instead of SC4’s light and heavy industry, he divided industry in to Dirty and High Tech. (Manufacture could grow on both zones.) So my idea for industry zoning would be Agriculture, Dirty Light, Dirty Heavy, High Tech Light, High Tech Heavy. This neatly would make five industry zone types too. This is no issue for 2D as you would use icons only? For Graphic phase Five wealth levels and five density zone would mean need for more building models. However, I do not think that it would be too bad, because some models could be recycled with different lots and props into many categories. I have modelled mainly old buildings. Buildings that have been in that spot for hundred years. During that time the wealth level of the neighbourhood can have changed many times. One of my earlier Bats were Georgian houses from London's Spitalfield area. When these were built in late 18th Century, those were occupied by Middle class artisans. During 19th Century the area went down and was part of some London's worst slums. After the Second World War the area was settle by Asian emigrants and today old the richest can afford a house in Central London. So a basically same building, but many wealth levels. I have sometimes difficulties to decide into which wealth group a certain model belongs. Thus a little bit of creation can go very far. Sorry this turned out to be a long rant. People will give all kinds of input and one of your may task is to sort out what is useful and what is not.

That is true. And it looks nice, but for a building buff like me, the models are too crude. The Dev team is fellow Finns and they are nice people and I know that I should support my countrymen (women) But they probable were overwhelmed about their success and as I said are not really into hard core city building. I do not have C: S and I probably wait until I can get a cheap bundle with all DLCs. DLC are of course an idea of their publisher, so I am not really blaming the dev team for it. I have their first Cities in Motion game. I like it altought I would describe it as "light." Still there are lot of good thing in CiM I and sometimes I think Colossial Order would have done better if they would have based their C:S on Cim I instead of second of the series. Besides of the subway, I would like to see that roads and heavy rail could go underground at will. SC4 is bad in that. So that I could make a urban underground highway. Like there is in Montreal or Hong Kong's cross harbour tunnel. These are doable in SC4 but it would be better if the code is ready for it. I mean in new NAM you can drag fractional angle road, instead using puzzle pieces. Same with elevated heavy rail. They have to use work arounds so it will easier if it is in the code. This will help to break the grid. Others have suggested that grid should be 8m. I think that could be a good idea. I think that you could fit a street or narrow road into it and larger roads would use two or more tiles. Even if you don't go into graphic now, I think that you need to decide the scale now. It might be difficult if you would want to introduce or change scale later. This is good. Simple enough for now, but gives a new dimension. You may want to add an input "raw material" for industry. This is interesting- A major change from SC4. I say it needs heavy testing to get balance right. Oh I have forgotten to ask. Are you doing really large maps, or regions like in SC4? I kind of like regions and cities inside of it, but region should be implemented better than in SC4. A major weak point in SC4. Even if you are playing in one city, the game should "see" what is in the other cities. Even if those are not "live". No need for precise traffic paths inside of "unlive" city, but the game need to know if there really are jobs etc in that city.

All righthy. You got me interested. You seem to want same things that I do and have right kind of dictatorial attitude. People will have ideas and input, but one must be realistic what can achieved and someone has to make the final decision to what include. Yes, I want a beefed up SC4. With improvements and fixes. A complex game, but still something playable and enjoyable. So many things should be abstractions and the game should not try to simulate a full real life economic model, but perhaps simulate a simulation. So in this second post I will ignore the graphics and comment your chart. I guess that that is where you want input. I will mostly focus with reds. I already said about the roads etc. I think the best source of inspiration is the NAM work. It is the oldest and perhaps most respected SC4 team. It has been going on over ten years and I believe that they have thought every possible variation. So I have a little add here. However I would say that even 2D Kotcity should be flexible enough to support elevated and underground networks. So that roads and rails can go underground and above the streets. I believe that Cities Skylines is basically a grid based game. So I believe that a lot can be done if draggable is included in the base game. I would not need super curvy roads. The NAM has shown that a lot can be achieved with fraction angled roads and smoothed curves. "Nation" I like that the "Nation" is included. It should be still an abstraction, a very light model. But it could be a source for some raw materials. And population too. SC4 has an endless population pool, but what if it would not be limitless? So that mayor may not always get population growth if the conditions are not right. Also the Nation could be the source of the rewards. Some of which would be negative. @matias93 I have very similar ideas of what the Nation could do. I think this is advance, for Kotcity 3.0 or beyond. SC4 has one economic model. Capitalist with heavy influence from Social Democracy. (schooling improves wealth and lowers the crime) It would be interesting if there could options or scenarios for different models. Communist planned economy, socialist, ultra market economy, may be even fascists / dictatorship. These would have bonuses and negations for economic, happiness etc. For example Communist system would give a boost to heavy industry and police control, but lowers happiness and commercial. Perhaps nation could pass laws. Some beneficial and some negative. Ultimate nation disaster could be a war, which could cause damage to the city. But this is mostly for later development. "Supply and Demand" Yes, I would like to see raw materials and manufactured products. Inputs for industries and commerce. I would keep these light. Use only as "points". Or divided into simple categories such agricultural products, minerals (ore, oil) etc. Nothing complex. There are multitude of Transport Tycoon games. In SC4 the buildings have maxium capacity and actual capacity. Which is based on desirability. For example. A farm lot close to main road will produce less than one in cleaner environment. That is good. However one thing I don't like in SC4 is that the building can produce full tax value even if it has no workers. So I would like to see that input supply, materials and workers, would affect tax income. An empty factory could produce some tax, but less than a "happy" factory.

As I said, 2D for Kotcity 1.0 is the right choice. If you don't have a core game, then there is no point to talk about graphic. @matias93 pointed out that SC4 does not use 3D models. Expect automatas. Cars, trains etc are real moving 3D models. That is why cars fade away. To conserve computing power. As far as I understand, the buildings in the game are just LOD boxes. Mostly squares. And the buildings are basically images, which are attached to the box. Four images per zoom level. North, East, South, West. With 5 zoom level, it means 20 pictures. (Ok larger building may need combine several picture to make a one view.) Rush Hour expansion gave level 6 zoom. For driving. But that is not fully supported and while it is possible to do HD buildings, it is a compromise at the best. This method makes easier to create buildings and props for SC4. Making a full 3D model with polygon count limit and mapped textures is more complex. I have two main reasons for wanting isometric (2.5D) view. One is performance. I want large cities. Really large cities. Huge sprawling metropolises. Second is that while Cities Skylines look beautiful from distance view, the close up does not match details that can be achieved with SC4 HD. As I said, I like architecture. Talking about the Cities Skylines makes me creep as it reminds what is bad about modern, post SC4, city builder. Small maps, agent based economy and micro DLC, which offer little and every time break the game. (the mods) So talk about the graphic will finish later. I can't contribute 100 % isometric models. I don't have time, skills, nor patience for that. But I can contribute something for 2.5.D isometric game. So i try to be around to see that stage.

Btw few random comments. I would not need culture and region as such, but I would like to see some progress through time. Sim cities start on 1900s and I would like to see earlier start. 1800s Victorian times with horses as on option. There was an interesting game Urban Empire, but I think they missed all that is good in city building. And if I want tech trees, I play Civilation, so I would things like periods as light. And later in development stage. I think that "happiness" is a good idea to simulate the demand. Of course the employment is probably the main happiness drive in this kind of city simulation. The sims (kots?) should tolerate some degree unhappiness, but when conditions are met abondonment etc should happen. I would like to see other traffic that commuters for work. Commuting should be main form of the traffic, but perhaps there can other "randomly" selected traffic. Schools, shopping, tourist (so that airports and Sim Nation connectios would have functional use) and import / export freight. Simulated is good enough. No need of agents for every role. Cycling is nice, but I would integrate it with walking. Unless you live in The Netherlands or Denmark, the cycling is minor from of commuting. Even Chinese are trading their cycles into cars. The NAM team probably want multiple forms of Highways and besides of the Road, lower speed Streets and Dirt Roads could be nice options. The rails I would like to see as four levels. Instead of the Monorails a High Speed Rails. (most of today's monorails are really into light rail category) For SIm Nation connection and inter region traffic (if there would be regions as in SC4) Futuristic monorails are of course different matter. Then "normal" heavy rail for passenger and freight. Metro would be for traditional urban underground and light rail / fast trams. Passenger only. Final and lowest speed / capacity would be street trams. These would intregated into road network. Would be cheap and but suffer from road congestion.

Very good ideas. Then again, in my opinion, you can't go wrong if you take SC4 as baseline. I think it is the pinnacle of Maxis city building series, although I believe that the basic structure has changed a little since introduction of original SimCity. There are many things I would want to improve in SC4 and perhaps some things were left unfinished, but for me it represent the best base for an ultimate city builder. I think EA / Maxis made a serious mistake with SC2013 when they "went out" from the original series. And Cities Skylines' credo was that "they wanted to do a better game than SC2013". Ok they did succeed, but with SC2013 the bar was not too high. I would have been more impressed if they would have said that they would want to better SC4. Well they are a small team and from Cities in Motion series I can see they like light simulation / problem solving games, but are not hard core city builders. Anyway. So I like what you are doing. However besides of the simulation, I like buildings and architecture. So to me graphics are must. No full 3D. It is a wrong direction if one wants to play simulation and large cities / regions. But I would like to have SC4 style with isometric view. (faked half 3D with pictured boxes as buildings.) This user discovered HD level 6 zoom is enough graphic detail for me. So that the game would have 6 functional graphic levels. (Even with HD option, current SC4 has only 5 zoom. If one uses HD model then level 5 zoom is distorted) Actually Level 6 HD zoom has more details that 3D in Cities Skylines. I understand that you want set up core mechanics and simulation first. If ever go in to graphics. That is right thing to do. But until you (or some one else) can get graphic, I will just follow the development. If you get into graphic and use SC4 style isometric models, then I will gladly donate all models I have made to this project.

I have only now noticed this topic. I know that I would be best to remain silent, but against better judgement, I will share my experience. About a year ago was this Challenge Season and I took part in Content creation competition. My work was a modest small diagonal lot, but it was my own modelling and creation. It is not a super great Bat, just a decent model with a niche idea. Ok, so I did not expect to win and I made it for fun. However the reception was confusing. I think that few days before closure of the competition, I have second most likes, but I ended up with second lowest rating. I did calculate some of the votes and while I got a number of 5 stars I also get many 1s and 2s. This was contradictory. The feeling I had that people purposely downvoted my creation not because it was a bad model but because it was not a shiny skyscraper. I was not worst affected and I noticed same with @JP Schriefer competition entry. It was a real shame, as he had done most work for his submission. If I remember correctly we were only ones who made original Bats for that competition. But yes, I don’t think most people understand how much effort a good Bat really requires. I know Matt makes it look easy, but I know what a real effort he has put into his creations. Kudos for that Matt. This challenge competition did affect me. I am not going to stop to Bat. I will do what I like and what is useful for me and most likely I will share those. I do not expect high ratings or download numbers. I will just do what pleases me. However, I did decide that I will not participle Simtropolis competitions anymore. Perhaps when admins check voting they see that there were no wrongdoing, but my personal feeling was that it was malice. So that is why I have not been very active here in Simtropolis. So sadly @mattb325 is right, this kind of thing do affect content creators. Don’t get me wrong, I do get good advices from Bat thread and in general Simtropolis is a friendly place. However, star rating, reviews and most comments are useless to me. Those do not help me to improve and hardly give motivation either. Most people review by the preview picture and have not even played with Bat, lot etc. Not a very useful review. I understand that many veterans think that the community is stronger than one or two members. Be they content creators or down voters. May be so, but this is late years of SC4. I have to say that I am lucky to witness as such high profile content creator as Matt. It may very well be that a few skillful newcomer can’t replace him as his passion to game is obvious in his Bat. I do not have to worry about graphical glitches or bad stats. I can put his Bats right into my plugin folder and expect that they work out of the box.

A very good guess. This indeed can be a reason for excessive tax income. If original poster have PIMX it is relatively "easy" to go through R$$$ buildings and to see which has high value. PIMX can in many cases fix it, if you use it to recalculate values. Doing so can help many other balance issues, such as residence number. I have had opposite problem. That user made Bats do not create tax revenue. This is issue with many Japanese made Bats, as it has been a habit to use invisible boxes for buildings. That invisible box is often small, so it lead to undervalued buildings. I noticed this when I wondered why my sprawling Asian city was on red and nowadays I check user made Bats in PIMX unless I know that the content creator is careful about balance issues.

New Model Army and Levellers. Wow. Two of my old favourites from 90's. I was really into these two bands. I have seen New Model Army once and the Levellers four times live. Superbs shows. Very energic. I did not know that NMA is still active. Thunder and Consolation is my favourite album from them although I guess it is their "pop" album. From Levellers I like their Mouth to Mouth, but them again it is "pop" according to their standards. I lived in London when they released Mouth to Mouth and I have lot of London memories everytime I listen that album. Past couple weeks I have listen almost exclusively Swedish Indie-pop group Pale Honey. I did see their gig about three weeks ago and I became instant fan. A small gig in a small bar, may be only about 50 people attending, but I was in heavens. One of the best concert ever for me. They were brilliant about their playing and I got up and close with the band.

A lot of suggestions and true that error message does not tell much, but I would too focus to audio. If you don't have any audio devices plugged in (including headset) the SC4 crashes right about ten seconds after loading screen. This was a huge problem to me when I bought a new computer about a year ago and for a while I thought that the game is unplayable with my new rig, but then I plugged headset in and everything was solved.

GoG has introduced something called GoG Galaxy. I have not tried it but it looks to be similar launcher than Steam. So far it is optional for GoG games and most that are on sale there are DRM free and can be used stand alone. It think GoG claimed that their Galaxy is for gamers to connect each other, but of course if you are suspicious mind like me you might think that it is a first move towards DRM control.