TogaMasterJohn

Oh my! Fairly big updates here. Big changes to lives of the Businesspeople! Small business is always nice to see, so I wonder how it will continue to play out for them. It is good to hear that all seems to be well between the Altruists and the Localvores. Hopefully it stays that way! I wonder will happen next - will contact be made by the Businesspeople? Regarding the tremors... an earthquake? Or is it a volcano that is about to form and cause havoc (along with earthquakes? "Tune in next time! Same Udanani time, same Udanani channel!" Excellent work as always! I love to look at all of the scenery - such detail is always cool to see! By the way - Thank you for the report! Over. *

I wouldn't say it was poorly designed, but rather it was kind of the first of its kind - a first-person interactive action adventure game for children ages 4-5+. It wasn't like Putt-Putt and similar games in the sense of movement. Sure, the game hasn't aged well in some cases (and this is coming from a fan of the game, who is now an adult), not just in terms of visuals. The game relied a lot on dialog from various characters, particularly the Infomaniac. There were some visual things, such as clicking on certain icons and such to go into different buildings and areas. Kind of like a first-person Myst. In a way, I think the game also tried to teach children how to listen and visually look for details and clues.

"You just gotta do it, brick by brick!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXfDoplXLjA

I'm by no means a technical expert regarding the game, but I'm not sure if that would be possible. I could be wrong, as I do not think every part of EFFDIR has been documented yet, either. The closest thing I can think of would be to make animated tree props, but that is out of my league. Even then, the animation would have be triggered somehow. If this is not possible with SC4, it would be perfect for the OpenSC4 project later on down the road, once more things are implemented. With luck, we could then see new disasters such as hurricanes and other weather-related disasters.

I have not had time to play SC4 for the past few months due to RL things, but I look forward to trying this out! I'm still using Windows 7 and I'm happy with it. It's the latest (and last) Microsoft operating system that I will ever install on my personal devices. Which is fine by me - I prefer Linux anyways! Linux Mint and GalliumOS are my daily drivers. You too!

Now that you mention it, I agree. It still looks nice, however!

Where did you get those awesome looking high voltage electrical pylons? Anyways, really nice work! That looks like something I would see in some shape or form around my area (northern Indiana).

It is possible to unlock the spaceport while playing on the medium difficulty as well.

Have fun!

One thing that should be kept in mind though is that certain plugins need to load in a particular order. Sometimes a plug-in might have a 'Z' at the beginning of the file name so can it load in last. For those plugins, it's best to leave them be in their own folder, put them in a a special 'Z' folder, or carefully structure them in the root of the Plugins folder. It really all comes down to the plug-in.

Thank you for the port information for Flapjack's Stormalong Marina and Country Club! I'd love to know the current wave height, and what the wind direction and speed is (from around the shoreline to about five nautical miles outward)... Keep up the excellent work as always, @TheMurderousCricket!

Thank you for the update, CB! I'm very glad and thankful to hear that Cori is doing better. Sucks to hear about the back pain though. Hopefully some more people can help you out, Cori! With luck, the pain will ease soon. Take it easy and rest when you can! I'm sure everyone will be cheering and celebrating on here when you return! (Simtropolis toga party, anyone? ) Of course, take all the time that you need! We'll all be impatiently awaiting your return in the mean time. TOGA! TOGA! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyl3ZvIz8vI Also CB: please give all of the reputation that I've earned from this topic to Cori as well. Thank you in advance!

Wow I am impressed by the level of detail in this! Very well done... excellent work Daeris! Where did you find the moor and the windmill? Those really help set the theme. Nice choice! "We're about 200% sure that this forest is haunted" that had me laughing!

It sounds like you're running the game at either the game's default resolution (800x600) or one of the preset resolutions (like 1280x1024). You can change the resolution to your liking via a target command. If you're using a non-Steam version of the game, you can right click on a shortcut of the game and select Properties. Under the Target field, at the very end of the string (after the last quotation mark), you can set a custom resolution. Example, if your screen resolution is 1920x1080, you can set it to this: -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 If you haven't already, you may want to also add in the following target commands for stability purposes: -CPUCount:1 -intro:off SimCity 4 doesn't run very well with more than one CPU core, so it's best to set the game to use only one CPU core. And sadly, the intro video apparently can cause stability issues on modern systems, so it is best to turn it off. I can't confirm that myself, but I've seen it being recommended on here in the past. If anyone knows how and/or why, or they can confirm that it is an actual issue, I'd love to know personally!

As a user and a fan of Linux (I primarily use Linux Mint on my main machine and GalliumOS on my modified Chromebook aka "Tuxbook"), I still use Windows 7 on my main machine for what I can't run under Linux via Wine or Proton, and for what I can't do under Linux in one way or another. I have no interest whatsoever in upgrading to 10 or 11. I can run SC4 on either Windows 7 or Linux (SC4 on Linux can be interesting to setup and run; I won't get into that here). Anyways... I love the Synaptic Package Manner. As catty-cb said and demonstrated above, it is incredibly easy to use. Package managers can be quite helpful and quite awesome. I think it would be awesome to see a class-platform package manager for SC4 (or a Windows program that works just fine under Wine). I wonder if it would be possible to develop one for the STEX and the LEX, or have it be based around them. Select the plugin(s) you wish to download, and have it download any necessary dependencies. Of course, checking to see if you already have said files might be interesting. I can of two possible options off the top of my head as of now (besides having a download history of sorts, like the LEX has): 1) You could have a master folder for all of the plugins you have downloaded in a separate folder (the user could select where the folder should go), so that way the package manager could check and see if you already have those files. This could be a good idea, especially if the user wishes to DAT-pack files. {Of course, DAT-packing is generally recommended if you have a mechanical hard disk drive and not a solid state drive OR if you are playing the Mac port of the game} What happens if the master folder gets deleted by accident or the drive it is on fails? Perhaps the package manager could periodically (or each time on startup and/or shutdown) check and make note of the files that is in the master folder. Would these notes (or a note file) be stored on the user's computer? If so, a reminder to back up the note file somewhere from time to time could be useful to some users. 2) You could have the package manager check the plugins folder itself, if the user does not wish to have a master folder to contain all of their downloaded plugins. However, having a master folder shouldn't be too much of an issue for most users, unless the user does not have a lot of space to work with. How would the package manager manage the downloaded plugins? Either it could extract (if necessary) said files and then place them in the user's plugins folder, or the user could manually do the work themselves after everything has been noted and saved. There are a few possibilities here alone. How would the package manager deal with DAT-packed files? Well, this is where a download history feature could come in handy (or something like option 1). I can't remember if JDatPacker creates log files for what all gets DAT-packed in a file (I haven't used it in forever). If so, maybe the package manager could make note of what the user already has, assuming the log files can be read and/or if they exist. If such a logging feature in JDatPacker or another DAT-packer does not exist, maybe one could be modified or even developed for this purpose... perhaps a DAT-packer could be built into the package manager. Perhaps a backup feature for the Plugins (and even the Regions) folder could be a handy feature as well - make a copy of the folder and store it somewhere on the user's machine, on a flash drive, etc. Of course, this is all just an idea... and there is a lot of 'how?' questions. This really is just the tip of the barrel. While I have taken classes that were related to programming logic and I have had some experience developing things, I do not have a lot of experience with big programming or scripting languages (except for JavaScript; even then I am by no means a pro). I often tend to think like a programmer. I often tend to draw out GUIs, write code, and/or design flowcharts all in my head. It's complicated for me to explain how I process such things I really think such a solution could be useful to a lot of players, as well as our community.

Sadly. I wonder if someone has a made a lot or something that generates a lot of garbage each month to cover that. Definitely a 'cheat' to some, but in some cases (like stories for city journals, etc), something like that could possibly be helpful.

Hmmm... that is strange. The only thing I can think of is this: if not enough garbage gets produced, the less power a W2E plant can produce. This is why powering a city with W2E plants alone can be quite tricky (if not possible). That's odd! I have never ran into that issue myself. (edit - are power lines connected to the zones or is close enough to a building?) To quote the SC4Devotion Wiki: "A bug in the game means that the funding for these plants can be lowered to the minimum, meaning that it will produce no power, minimal pollution and cost nothing, but still consume the maximum amount of garbage as if it was fully funded." (If you're only seeing around 470 MW/h demand, you could use some windmills or a natural gas plant for power [coal is cheaper, though], and then exploit the game's bug to use the W2E for garbage only! [I haven't used the exploit yet, as 5,000 MW/h is 5,000 MW/h]) That's the only bug I know of... so you may have a lead on something there! However, I am not an expert on this, so this could be a known issue or there could be a fix. I think Cyclone Boom or Cori (once she returns!) might be able to help here, too!

TOGA! TOGA!

What a very thoughtful idea, Terring! I am sure Cori will love this. The mix of 'old'/traditional/today and your futuristic style is awesome. I love the detail!

Command and Compare... as soon as I saw the top most portion of the box art, I lost it that is very clever! The amount of detail on the box art is awesome - I loved the system requirements... SmileEX! I never thought about using raiser lots and hole diggers for making the road-to-bridge transition a lot more smoother and more realistic. I will have to give that a try sometime! Nice work there! As always, please keep up the wonderful work here! I look forward to these!

You're welcome! I find this city journal/story to be quite interesting. Keep it up!

This is fantastic news! I am literally very relieved by this news. We as a community are here for you, @CorinaMarie! Stay strong!