matias93

You need to use a terrain mod that includes texture variations by moisture levels, and to activate the seasonality simulation on it. This thread by Cori explains most of what you need about it: Use the resulting tool to see if your current terrain mod is simulating seasons: and if it's not, the thread also indicates how to activate it. Keep in mind that different terrain mods can be more or less expressive in terms of moisture variance. Also, the seasonality simulation, by affecting moisture levels, also affects which trees do grow in which parts of the terrain, so if you have it activated, you might want to plant god mode trees and save your cities in the same month of the year each time, to make it look coherent.

There won't be an updated version, because the source code is lost

It's a known issue when using Paeng's Parks and replacing the sand texture on them. Check for a solution on this thread:

Then, a priority now would be to agree on a common metadata and naming scheme, to avoid file duplication issues between different sites, and instead use them as mirrors. Keep in mind that, to avoid the need to use secondary IDs, we should strive to generate unique names for each file, while also keeping them as simple and human-readable as possible. It would be useful if we could get a small random sample of the STEX database (not the files themselves, only the metadata) as an excel file, to experiment with metadata fields in a way that, if not completely automated, at least allows for a very simple data entry task when applying it to the full exchange.

That's fantastic!! It's exactly what I was thinking about... 5 years ago??? wow I gave it a try, and while it works flawlessly on Windows 10, I cannot say the same about Windows 7, which is the obsolete installation on which I have SC4 running. I don't remember if the results were made public, but I seem to remember that the NAM Team survey showed that it was about 10% of the users that play on such old operating systems, so I guess anything we do should be parallel to the existing way to directly download the files. Thinking on circumvent the issue, I also tried to install Chocolatey on Windows 7, to no avail, but it did work as well on Windows 10, so if Conda proves difficult, we might have a second platform option to develop this. It's biggest downside is that it requires PowerShell to run, so it's tied to Windows. Still, its community packages page might be a good reference of how to offer content this way: just copy and paste a simple command from the file description, or, if the site allows, click on a button to make a list that can run at once when copied.

A reasonable assumption, but no. I'll bet on Abrams124

Not at all, you'll just see more sims using transit and less of them using cars. It is possible, though, that you might get some transit stations overcrowded, if they were too sparse already.

This is really wonderful! Please, CB, make they know, when you both get in touch, that we are here to help on whatever needs to be done. This is the time to show that we are more than just players of a game, that we are a true community. * * * By the way @Cyclone Boom, would you like if I change the name of the thread to Cori's well-being or something to that effect? Given the good news, the current name is a little... jarring.

It would be an interesting change of biome, given that most of your landscapes are quite desertic. For example, the effect of the long shadows on both images is completely different: in the first one it looks like dusk, while on the second it could perfectly be midday, but too far from the equator.

No, those arrows indicate where is the front side of the lot, which, in any case, isn't relevant for transit stations altogether: they all have entrances and exits by all four sides.

You can upload your lot of it without any issue, and it would be a good idea to start from there. Now, the building model availability determines the next steps. If there is another place online where to download it, our policy is that you should only list it as a dependency and to add a link on the description of your new lot. If, on the other hand, the file isn't available anywhere else, and the original creator either authorised you, or has been impossible to contact for several years, we can arrange a custodianship upload, always respecting the attribution to the original author and keeping the model and your lot separate. If you think the latter is the case, please send us (the site staff) a PM with the details, for evaluation.

Wow, this is really shocking. Aside from any and all technical prowesses she has shown, Cori has been the kind of person that makes a group of people with a common interest, a community. In an every day more hostile online world, her tenderness and care with everyone has made this place a sort of refuge. It would be incredibly sad to see that it wasn't of use for her. Cori, if you are reading this, pondering your situation, please know that we can help, we can lend an ear and offer support in many ways, and not just now, if it's necessary. You are not alone on this, and no one will hold it against you if you ask for something; if anything, you have done so much for us, it's only fair that we give a hand back to you. If, regardless, it has happened, I feel is not my place to offer empty platitudes. I could only be grateful to have found in her presence and care a beacon of good in what only euphemistically can be called 'difficult times', and a need and a hope to be able to keep on what she had given to our community. CB, please know that, whatever happens, you have been more than enough, for her and for us, and that we will be grateful, no matter what you decide to do. I'm witness to the way Cori has always talked about you with a kindness that only real friends can grow together. My offer for help is just as good for you as it is for her.

Hi! Recently, @gwada971 took to our attention that this building by @Parisian has a newer version, but the link to it is broken, so we removed it to avoid confusion, but are still looking to restore the file. Have any of you some idea where to find NYBT Morgan Court (Silver) Building v.2?

Ok, I had literally no idea that the terrain itself was capable of projecting shadows. And that final image is just mindboggling. The Matterhorn looks minuscule there in its corner!

you need to download the file MSCVP71.DLL and put it on the same folder the SC4Terraformer executable is. You can download it from here https://www.dll-files.com/msvcp71.dll.html

Yes, your best option would be to use the SC4Terraformer, but you can also get good results by combining the SC4Mapper (that doesn't edit the topography, only the tiling) and editing the grayscale files, or directly terraforming in game. You can go back and forth from terraforming in the game and changing city borders in SC4Mapper without problems, but you have to be careful not to build anything on the cities, as changing the borders will obliterate them.

Depends on the roundabout, but in general, the bigger the intersection's footprint, the lower the congestion in it, unless all the traffic moves in a single direction, in which case it's about the same. With avenue roundabouts, there's an issue with how they were modded originally, that makes of them somewhat of a bottleneck. Luc is working on a somewhat quick fix to it, and considering potential plans for expanding the roundabout set with newer curved pieces, but that's all on the drawing board yet.

On the second section, an Utilities category needs to be included, for power plants and transformers, water pumps and towers, sewage and garbage processing, recycling facilities and other similar things. I would also go with an specific category for terrain, water, shore and background mods, terrain controllers and tree controllers. I would expect that this new categorisation were transversal to those. Maybe we could replace those sections with corresponding tags, to ease the implementation and avoid having mini-STEXs that would be harder to browse. I think it would be reasonable to have categories for cosmetic landmarks, as well as cosmetic fillers, like tree lots and retaining walls that don't operate as parks or plazas. It would be good, as well, to consider suggesting to the creators or custodians of such sets to modify them to remove such effects (but that's another topic altogether). EDIT: Oh, and about thematic sets, or things that fit on the same style, I would say that standard labels are the way to go, not categories. Maybe we could open a parallel topic to agree on some, even if there are a couple that are self-evident, like the Paris buildings, everything too futuristic or antique to appear randomly in a modern city, or certain other regional styles.

That's how I tend to do it, but as Luc says, a correctly tuned simulator should be more lenient. I kept with those old references because I like my cities dense and transit-based. In any case, this is a general model, not something you should necessarily have to repeat continuously in all your cities. Having diagonals and curves and whatnot is perfectly possible if the underlying grid sticks loosely to the same principles, scaled at need.

It depends on how your traffic simulator is configured, but I use this as an easy rule: given square blocks of 6 game tiles, you need a bus stop each 2 blocks, and a rail-based transit station each 5 blocks on their length. Those distances might be reduced on the city centre, where you have more density, and extended on the suburbs, where less density and more car-oriented designs might prevail. In any case, sims do walk to get to their jobs, sometimes quite long distances, but 3 or 4 blocks is a reasonable expectation of walking distance. Consider, too, that distances in the game are ultimately measured orthogonally, so you should count distances as south-north and west-east displacements, not as a straight radius around a given point.

The congestion you are seeing from intersections is normal, just cars, trucks and buses lining before a traffic light. Obviously, it will be heavier if the rest of the road is more congested too, but overall is not an issue, just the NAM traffic simulator working as intended. Here is an example of one of my cities, which showcases the road hierarchy applied in a fairly typical way: in an orthogonal grid. The streets are most of the networking and collect local traffic, conducting it into the roads, then avenues and boulevards, and eventually, to the mass transit stations. The way on which you can direct the traffic to follow the hierarchy is by controlling the zoning density and the position of mass transit stations. Note that I'm only zoning commercial and high density residential on roads and avenues, not on streets, to avoid overloading them, and to promote sims to travel to the biggest networks for work. Also, note how I didn't put bus stops on streets, but only on roads and avenues: I want buses to only go through roads and avenues, and sims to walk a couple of blocks from their house to the nearest bus stop, instead of taking the bus directly in front of their house. For rail networks this is even more marked: this site is a big intersection between a rail line and a subway line, but there aren't similar parallel lines for at least half a kilometre away, because they are the top of the transit hierarchy and are very expensive to build and run: sims should arrive to them by taking a bus first. Here is a more didactic example, with the next train station on the same line, but now showing congestion levels. Note how also intersections and the tiles before intersections are the most congested parts of my networks: is the same principle at work. As you can see, the main roads and avenues are more loaded, while the closest streets are somewhat quaint: that's how road hierarchy looks in practice: you can be at a few blocks from a huge train station, but your local street is mostly silent and has barely any cars going through (I can testify this by experience, because I live at 3 blocks from a huge subway combination in crossing avenues, but here you can only hear birds and dogs). Now, check this data views for the same city: 1. Pedestrians 2. Cars, buses and trucks 3. Buses only Note how the road hierarchy shows: pedestrians use all streets, roads and avenues almost indistinctively, because walking is the main means to arrive to a transit stop. Road traffic is a bit more selective, concentrating on the main roads but still using some streets when located conveniently. Buses, by effect of only having their stops on the main roads and avenues, are only used on them.

@rovas117 I would say that your main problem here is the lack of redundancy: each of those sectors is currently connected to the others by a single road, so no matter the capacities of the other networks, you are poised to get a bottleneck on that intersections. The same problem replicates at lesser scale on the other intersections, because for each residential or industrial lot that is sending sims or cargo elsewhere, there is a single viable route. I will go on a limb and say that you took too strong of a concept of road hierarchy. The point of road hierarchy is to allow different travel strategies by road capacity, but always allowing the commuters (or the simulation, in this case) to choose freely the most efficient route. Here, you aren't giving the simulation any chance to choose based on efficiency, but forcing a single option for everyone. Certainly, some of your sims would use the routes you built anyway, because for their specific positions and preferences, it is the most efficient one, but not all, and with this design, you are making all the ones that would prefer different routes to congest the only available one. If you want, you could experiment with this and try to continue the grid in a way that the simulation gets alternatives, but keeping the road hierarchy intact: in your scheme, roads can intersect with both streets and avenues, but streets and avenues cannot directly, so you could extend the avenues to intersect once again, and connect the roads of each section among them. That should ease congestion significantly. Using your image as reference, this is a possible option: streets are in white, roads in yellow and avenues in orange.

Is that 1 million sims that I see there?

Romualdillo's houses are from much after, about 1850-1920s, but they are still really beautiful and would be ideal to blend older and newer styles. For Spanish colonial buildings, the best options would be @Wallibuk's collections and some LBT buildings by @debussyman, @tcx, @Berethor07 and others, that @Edvarz might have relotted. Some rural Eastern European buildings on the SimCity Polska collection might also blend with Spanish colonial, but overall is a poorly covered segment.

You have to modify the file data, not the file name. There are several tools to do so, and one of the most accessible is the SC4Tool: