Kel9509

This is very well spoken, and again I appreciate it. Though, why Matt325's stuff is forever prohibited from editing to a "modern" update standard, but SimGoober and JBSimio's can be freely updated, I don't understand why. Maybe that's beside the point, but I do wonder. Matt's intent carries forward forever somehow? I wish I had that kind of staying power. I wonder why SimGoober doesn't have it. Or is it because it's ok for a Staff member to modernize, but no one else can (you said I'd need to make an explicit override mod)? That might make sense, if the updates were fair. But what if those staff members start "modernizing" all civics to a CAM standard with high capacities and ratios and forget about out-of-the-box players? Would that be fair? What if they do that by making the modding tools biased to their style? Also, I see things being updated that, were I to do it, I'd probably be given a stern talking to. And it is odd when a creator happens to notice their stuff has been updated without their explicit permission, though maybe they're ok with it in the end. I guess we all dodged a bullet there, huh (we wouldn't want another WolfZe situation, would we)? Still, you are essentially correct that, despite optionality, a person may end up being forced to mod things to how they want them no matter what (maybe the next hot BATter is a full blown CAM zealot or something). I completely agree. But my point is, right now the modding tools are geared towards essentially forcing not only the ERM on everyone now by default, but also using a CAM standard. And this CAM standard might apply for most civics, unless one happens to know the ins-and-outs of writing PIM-X New Properties code, which frankly is beyond almost all of us. @CasperVg may pull a rabbit out of a hat and could bake in some awesome options, as I've seen in the 2026 PIM-X channel, but the options need to exist in the first place. Shouldn't at least the modding tools be neutral here, even if there is a default? If there's a default, then shouldn't we as a community endeavor to not forget about the other half, or third, or quarter of the community, that prefers the non-default? Maybe in fact they're the silent majority, as I suspect they are. Shouldn't we try to accommodate them in the best manner possible, if we're as welcoming as we all claim? I started out by saying that I wasn't going to revisit past decisions and fight over the inclusion of the ERM in New Properties. But maybe I should've. So permit me to be blunt: It was a dumb idea then, and it's still dumb - at least for anyone who actually wants to play this game and not turn it into a painter. All the capacities of educational buildings are CAM-sized (how many 3x3 libraries does a person need with 900,000 books?). Now you, @Tyberius06, may have extra work to update collections like JBSimio's Education Pack, and maybe others. And players need to update their entire downloads to make it work with new packs like SimGoober, again if they actually play the game. In the meantime, players are faced with the certainty that either they avoid all packs with the ERM standards applied, or mod the hell out of their game, or, as someone may intend - to install CAM and its various one-size-fits-all Controllers with zero documentation on how it affects their regions and other plugins. How convenient. The long-term 10+ year regional players are left in the past to rot, apparently. They just don't need to install new BATs, after all. Ultimately, I'm just trying to offer another mod for people to use if they choose. And I'm trying to be fair to the players who want to play, particularly those who have regions they're growing. How fair is it to tell someone to bulldoze their home garden after years of effort and pruning and work to make it look right? That's what re-starting a region would be like. I daresay that if @Haljackey ever lost his region, his interest in SimCity4 would cease to exist. So with all that said: 1. I think it is completely upon us as a community to develop modding tools that are neutral, or fair, or offer optionality when possible. 2. For the ERM, I think it's fair to include in New Properties so long as there's a version without it. I don't think "default" building stats should depend on a mod, or CAM. This is not a "fix" like Private Schools with Sliders, or the Opera House. It's an option on how to play the game being forced in a modding tool, which isn't right. 3. I also think it's fair that, unless a happy compromise can be provided as @memo suggested, an option for civic buildings exists that does not force CAM capacities and a CAM radius. 4. Assuming that the Staff here appreciates their own community and the accepts some principles of neutrality in the toolset, I will be happy to contribute to efforts to make those things happen, as well as possibly modding or editing collection packs to include ERM variants or non-ERM variants, if needed, just like there's IRM variants for Industrial collections and CAM variants and Vanilla variants. Some people like playing the game, even as a challenge. Are we going to up the starting funds, up the capacities, the radius, the effects of everything just because of complaints from Reddit that the game is hard at first? How dumb are we going to make things? Now starting funds for an easy game are at 1 million in CAM. No, thank you. They can play their easy way so long as the tools aren't forcing their playstyle on mine - as they are right now. That is wrong. But more broadly than that, I'm not going to shit on half of the community merely because I prefer a certain type of game style, and I'd hope that the Staff here and those making the tools to mod the game won't do that either. Thanks, Tyberius for all of your efforts to not only update things for all of us, but keep packs alive with variants (IRM and non-IRM, CAM and non-CAM). I think you're a pretty reasonable guy and understand one style of play doesn't fit all. And I hope that things can more forward positively for the players here, a ton of whom are just playing Vanilla and incrementally adding to downloads and do not want to destroy their regions or install mods that conflict with half their plugins any more than a person would bulldoze their home garden.

Thanks, yes I think that'd be nice if I could make that work. I think I'll have to continue with this mod since who the hell even knows what the so-called CAM Vanilla controller even does? Will it work with existing regions? Does it even incorporate the ERM? I looked at it and it seems so, but there are some things I don't necessarily understand about it. Will it wreck someone's existing region? "Screw you! We don't have time for documentation!" I get that people can become tired due to endless newbie pestering, but frankly I'm not sure who appointed someone so dismissive as the decider for all things SC4.

I'm not the only one noticing this is an issue, but that's your choice to muddle things. There's a reason why you renamed CAM Core. It's just confusing if it doesn't involve growth of high-stage lots in some manner. I don't even understand what CAM means anymore. It's a far cry from Tarkus's explanation on his blog. But this is all besides the point anyway if you don't explain what things do, which is part of explaining what they are. Let me understand. You release a mod that affects the simulator, designed for people with existing regions and downloads, and won't even tell them what it really does and if something is incompatible with it? I mean, the CAM 2.1 manual had a very detailed list of common popular mods that were incompatible with it. How do you expect anyone to install this if they have no idea what it really does and whether it will work with their downloads? Trust their luck? I'm not asking for a the formula for the ratio of radius to fill value, or whatever. Heck, even a note like - "hey, this mod is incompatible with X very popular mod. Make sure you uninstall it." That would probably require less effort than the work involved in making this in the first place. And I hate to ask but WHAT changelog? This is brand new. Or are you referring to the entire CAM changelog otherwise? Was I just supposed to know to look at the CAM Controller's changelog if I'm not even using that mod? Why be so dismissive or blase? I'm not a newbie asking about how to install stuff on Reddit, so I don't understand the hostility or dismissiveness. EDIT: Also, part of the problem is that you baked in the Educational Realism Mod's requirements into New Properties without any discussion or consideration otherwise, and now we are still faced with a situation whereby old mods and collections are "obsolete" with these requirements. Whether they'll ever get fixed is anyone's guess, particularly if you are completely dismissive of anyone who asks about a mod's effects at all. @memo suggested that at least a middle ground for things, but New Properties is basically CAM-only at this point and Vanilla users are screwed otherwise. Too bad, @memo. You had a nice suggestion but I guess we're all just newbies or something. @CorinaMarie I appreciate the help because frankly it looks like the entire SC4 world is going to be forced into CAM gameplay at some point (whatever CAM even means anymore - here apparently it means creating a library you need to have a filling degree of 0.01 in order to run it in your game without blowing out all capacity). @CasperVg's new PIM-X will incorporate the New Properties that is strictly CAM only because of a single person's decision.

I see that @Ulisse Wolf released his Vanilla Controller. It's saturated with CAM language (which, despite all efforts, I will always equate with higher stages - please strongly consider abandoning the term "CAM" for anything other than high-stage buildings) and I don't know how it differs from the regular game otherwise. I highly suggest detailed explanations of what goes on under the hood would be useful for all of these various Controllers. Not sure if it incorporates any ERM, or anything else. Also, I'm not even sure if I could use it at all since the documentation doesn't even tell me what mods it may be incompatible with and whether I'd need to un-install a one-off download like Less Abandonment or something else. And finally, I'm not sure if it's any better than what I have right now, absent documentation saying what it really does. Also, does this Vanilla Controller make any ERM I release completely worthless? As for police strikes, I've been stalled in working on what I planned on doing due to real life work. I realized last night, however, that with all my one-off mods installed including your police fixes, that any ERM I wanted to use for myself, let alone release publicly, should be compatible with what I already use. And that's just another way of saying that I'm not even sure what your police station mod fixes and if it is itself a residential controller already, or something else. Same with the Less Abandonment Mod, I-HT fix, or anything else. I don't really mess with these Controller setups myself otherwise like Ulisse Wolf does all the time, so I'm not sure if anything I create for an ERM would override something I'm already using. And then there's the issue of options. I liked that @xBlaze89x had options for the reset value for new residents to be 20, 40, 60, or 80%. Personally, I was going to set mine at 60% but still of course want to offer the options to others. I assume that the new CAM Vanilla Controller has a standardized setting for everyone, probably at 80. Based on what you say above, I assume that the police fixes are baked into the Residential Simulator somehow, right? So if I incorporate any fixes in your mod they'd need to be kept in any Residential Simulator I release as well, correct? This is probably why Ulisse Wolf decided to create a Vanilla Controller, to incorporate possibly your Crime fixes as well as the ERM, and anything else (again, documentation would be really nice!). I recall that optionality but I'll need to read up on how you did that, as it sounds incredibly complex. As I said, I am going to have to bulldoze dozens of my downloaded educational buildings all over my region to make this mod work. It might be too much effort to allow people to keep the old Maxis educational buildings but also encourage them to be bulldozed as well. We'll see how hard it is, if this planned mod of mine even makes any sense given the CAM? Vanilla Controller's existence now.

How big are your cities? Is it possible that you just don't have enough zoned jobs available? I once had a problem with unemployment and residential dilapidation similar to what you describe and ended up fixing it by plopping a giant office tower in that city that provided over 4,000 jobs (keep in mind that the total jobs are really split into low, medium, and high wealth jobs). It seemed to solve the problem and other residents went back to finding jobs normally.

Ok, that clarifies things a lot. The way I see things, Vanilla users start the game with no addons and they may slowly apply addons that still work with the base game, like NAM or even a ton of basic fixes here like I-R, I-HT, even the Universal Commercial CAP fix. I also have the CoriBoom Modpacc Zero Crime and Police Station Fixes, again in a "Vanilla" game. It's people who are incremental downloaders, and do not start a new region with a new simulator like CAM or CAM-SPAM in mind. Also, they are likely people who also are playing on older regions and do not want to destroy their existing regions. People like Haljackey, for instance. If a person wants to apply new things like Advanced Water Management, then yes they may have to re-do their plugins and downloads and start over again, unless that mod can somehow be made for a "Vanilla" game. I suppose a "Vanilla" controller would be useful for anyone who wants to continue to keep their existing regions and incremental downloads, but also take advantage of new features like Advanced Water Management. The main idea is to be able to keep existing regions (bulldozing all educational buildings or police stations isn't as catastrophic as restarting an entire region). The ERM includes an override of the Residential Simulator, since it changes the EQ degradation from 0.2 to 0.1, and the EQ Reset value to either 20, 40, 60, or 80 (depending on the user's choice). It makes sense that when working with a system of integrated mods, like CAM, or CAM-SPAM, incompatibilities are strictly drawn between mods that change systemic things like the Residential Simulator. CAM famously listed a bunch of incompatible mods because they changed things that CAM also changed. An ERM "vanilla" mod that I'm proposing to release would be identified clearly that it conflicts with CAM, for instance. So I guess my answer is - maybe? If a "Vanilla simulator" can take advantage of new things like Advanced Water Management without requiring people to destroy existing regions, then I see no reason against it. There is definitely a group of people who do not want to destroy existing regions to convert to CAM. Many of those people, like me, have to apply individual fixes since that was the way things were done before they were integrated into something like the SC4 System Integration Module. As for me, I'm reluctant to move over to that SC4 System Integration Module because I don't precisely know how it will affect things, and I would really need to know what a "Vanilla simulator" would do before I install it. In the meantime, I'll clean things up and release a version of the ERM that incorporates Private Schools into the ERM (with sliders) and the other reward buildings. @xBlaze89x included CAM 2.1 files in his beta version but I'll remove those since those are depreciated. EDIT: I still think that PIM-X needs an option for CAM and non-CAM buildings, because there is no way that can really be universal. It doesn't scale up properly like growable buildings.

You mean for non-Education Realism Mod private schools? Because New Properties currently has the ERM baked-in. If you're going to bake the ERM mod into New Properties, I propose that it have a slight boost over public schools. With the ERM baked-in, Elementary schools have an EQ effect of 8.5 and High Schools have an EQ Effect of 8. I propose Private Schools have an EQ effect of 9, and apply to all ages from Elementary to Junior College. So their stats would be as follows: Private School Effectiveness cost EQ boost radius age 20 age 30 age 40 age 50 age 60 age 70 age 80 capacity 2320 9 552 5 5 5 2.5 0 0 0 1000 EQxEffect 45 45 45 22.5 0 0 0 I don't know anything else about how the game treats Private Schools but I think they accept all Residents of any wealth level, although they also offer Cap Relief to R$$$ of 6,000 which is fine. If I understand you properly, I don't know if this is strictly needed. Can you be specific about what's involved in the creation of a controller for so-called Vanilla users like me (I'm not strictly vanilla since I've applied the ERM now)? You mentioned water, crime, and education - are those just capacities and radius effects (and the application, or non-application, of the ERM)? If so, maybe what's needed is a better distinction between the creation of CAM buildings that have a large radius and capacities, and non-CAM buildings that do not have such huge radius and capacities. Maybe a New Properties for CAM, and a New Properties for non-CAM. I'm wondering if the new PIM-X can toggle between them somehow, like with a setting or a switch. If so, it might make it very, very easy to convert and re-calculate between a CAM building and a non-CAM building. Maybe the new PIM-X could even apply further mods like the ERM as an on or off toggle as well, possibly. Just thinking out-loud. In fact, if it were easier or standardized somehow, I'd be more than willing to assist in helping to fix building sets that should be converted to CAM or non-CAM, in order to address the distinctions between sets that you and @Tyberius06 noted. Overall, I think the ERM is a fantastic idea because it's just too easy to get a 150+ EQ in a city with merely an elementary school, high school, and library. I never plop a college or university. So I went through the trouble to convert every educational building to the new ERM stats. Since I used New Properties, I lowered the filling degree a lot in order to make capacities realistic for my non-CAM game. Maybe there can be recommendations for filling degree settings for non-CAM users if New Properties continues to be universalized.

I don't think that there is any way for residents in one city to know precisely where they may find work in an unconnected city that is multiple region tiles away. I think the game only aggregates jobs available by what's in the next city. The Eternal Communter bug occurs because each city thinks jobs are available in the next city over and over, and so they keep moving. Essentially, unless residents find a job in a neighboring city, then while they may commute to another city farther away from their home I don't know if the game ultimately understands this. One thing you might try doing is loading and running time and re-saving in those destination job cities, as well as all interconnected cities along the way, to preserve the data, and then going back to the resident's city and running time and saving there as well (keep backups). I generally try to keep jobs relatively close to residents. It's one thing to have jobs in a neighboring city, but I'd never put them farther apart than that in the region. It's asking for trouble.

I appreciate that. I am not looking to revisit past decisions necessarily, and I am only looking to hopefully provide something complete for non-CAM users to use. And yes, you did tell me you didn't update Matt's collection except for the transportation lots, although SimGoober's got the new values. I also did notice the revisions to cost and jobs in New Properties and think those were necessary fixes since things seemed a bit distorted. As you properly note, there is a problem that exists in that some collections have educational properties that take wildly different approaches (Mattb325 vs. SimGoober is a perfect example). I had reluctantly expressed my concern about these new values being included in New Properties, which would mean that anyone who downloaded those newer collections would be faced with the inevitable choice to re-set the values back to the a Maxis-standard, or to go through the lengthy effort and convert all prior downloaded educational buildings to the newer values. I'm also aware of the new PIM-X and had a suggestion for @CasperVg in the discord also, though not as much as you have. The new version is incredibly important (mostly for transportation reasons) and will be the gold standard for new buildings very soon. One thing I noticed, however, is that I believe he is considering auto-updating New Properties in that new version of PIM-X so that it always uses the newest version. So these issues will only persist unless tackled somehow. Not trying to revisit past decisions, but I addressed this by wildly lowering the filling degree for my non-CAM game so that libraries and schools didn't have massive amounts of excess capacity. I wanted to use PIM-X to apply the Educational Realism Mod functions, but not balloon up my capacities so that I would still need to plop some amount of schools instead of merely plopping only one. For libraries I often used a filling degree of like 0.1 or 0.2, very low. Same with schools and colleges sometimes. The standard use of 0.5 filling degree does not apply anymore, at least to these educational buildings, for a non-CAM game. I can guess what @Ulisse Wolf might say: forget all about this and install CAM Core, which takes care of not only this but a lot of other bugs and problems and doesn't alter the RCI mix to have higher stage buildings. But that, to me, is a greater effort that converting my existing downloaded educational buildings. Also, I do not want to destroy my existing region and restart my gameplay. I think that CAM Core needs more documentation of what it exactly does and possibly how it can be tweaked. For now, it's a one-size-fits all solution I'm not comfortable with (maybe I'm too fearful here). Anyway, all I want to do is update @xBlaze89x's mod to include the few reward buildings he didn't edit, as well as the Private Schools (which should absolutely have sliders and I'll make the BSC Common Dependencies with the Maxis slider Override a dependency if necessary). If no one else wants or needs this, that's fine. I am just trying to offer a solution to the community. The Private schools looked curious to me so I was wondering what people thought about them. Personally, I like the idea that they might do all from elementary to junior college, with a slight EQ boost as well. They are rewards, after all.

Thanks! What I want to do is to create a version of the Educational Realism Mod for anyone who is not running a CAM game, of which there are a TON of people. But I also still want users of the ERM to be able to download new or updated educational buildings made with PIM-X, so they're not cut off from modern BATting. They'd still need to go through their downloads and fix older custom educational buildings as I did, but this is all designed to make things easier for people in the future. (Although I note, by the way, that there are very few downloads that actually use these stats. Even the Mattb325 collections on SC4Evermore by @Tyberius06 do not yet have these stats applied to the educational buildings there. I only first saw them applied to the SimGoober collection.) Opera House I did some review and the Opera House doesn't seem to have been affected at all by edits to its EQ stats in New Properties (NP). It has the same EQ effect across all ages and so can probably be removed from this mod. There are some slight tweaks to the Opera House's properties in NP - like # of "students", radius, the costs, and its query and the addition at my request of Catalog Capacity - though none of those affect EQ per se. So I think I'll drop the Opera House from this mod. Private Schools Next are Private Schools. The normal base game treats them as both an Elementary School (for Age 20) and a High School (Age 40), as well as a Junior College (Age 50), with a better EQ boost as well. As @xBlaze89x noted, the base school EQ is 24 for both Elementary and High Schools. But for Private Schools, the base EQ is 30 - probably because it's got resources a public school doesn't have. Following the charts above, a Private School has the following stats: Base Stats Private School Effectiveness cost EQ boost radius age 20 age 30 age 40 age 50 age 60 age 70 age 80 capacity 0 30 512 5 5 5 2.5 0 0 0 1000 EQxEffect 150 150 150 75 0 0 0 But the current version of New Properties (v3.5+) treats Private Schools with the same EQ boost as a public high school. No more boost for being rich, I guess. Also, while they still have EQ effects for Age 50 (the Junior College sort), there is no more education for Age 20 elementary students, and very few of Age 30: Current New Properties v3.5+ Stats (based on 0.5 fill ratio - relevant only for cost, radius and capacity) Private School Effectiveness cost EQ boost radius age 20 age 30 age 40 age 50 age 60 age 70 age 80 capacity 2320 8 552 0 0.5 5 2.5 0 0 0 1000 EQxEffect 0 4 40 20 0 0 0 By comparison, here's xBlaze89's revised High School stats again: High School Effectiveness cost EQ boost radius age 20 age 30 age 40 age 50 age 60 age 70 age 80 capacity 650 8 512 0 2.5 5 0.5 0 0 0 750 EQxEffect 0 20 40 4 0 0 0 So, basically, I'm wondering if this is "correct" or ok, or am I thinking too hard about this? Is it "correct" that Private Schools do not have a slightly better EQ than public schools (maybe make it 9 or 10 instead of 8)? Is it correct that instead of educating both Elementary and High School residents, a Private School now educates mostly High School and some Junior College students? Or should a Private School do it all? Elementary (Age 20) through Junior College (Age 50) - and with a slight EQ boost as well? @Ulisse Wolf since you did some of these edits for New Properties and CAM, I wonder what you think?

Sorry to once again bump this very old thread, but I've finally taken the plunge and re-caculated all of my downloaded educational buildings to the new values in New Properties. I will install the Residential simulator in my game and bulldoze and re-plop all existing educational buildings. However, I notice that @xBlaze89x's mod includes most, but not all, Maxis educational buildings. It is missing the following: Opera House University Main City Library Major Art Museum I would like to update his mod to patch those Maxis buildings without overwriting the original (need to look into how to make a patch via iLives reader instead of editing the values directly). - although maybe I'll leave the Opera House alone since there are other mods that affect it. Once I do that, I'd like to upload a final version of this mod for Vanilla players if that's ok. @xBlaze89x has not visited here since September 2023, but since New Properties in PIM-X now basically requires this mod for anyone who wants to download newer educational buildings, I think this mod needs to be posted to the STEX somehow. EDIT: Well that was easy. Made a patch for the reward buildings (still not sure if I should include the Opera House or not) and it can easily be added to the ERM linked above (the attachment survived the website deletion somehow). Will wait for others to weigh-in, though.

How did you do it? With SC4 CPU Options DLL? That will limit the game to one CPU to prevent crashing. Command line options are depreciated.

I haven't been checking them in-game (that would be too much) but I am checking to see that all files that are reuploaded are in fact the same as the original versions I have. Aside from the addition of readme files and images, most uploads are good to go. There are a select few that have some issues (such as @Barroco Hispano's folder structure for his archives, or some actual file differences) and I've added notes to the files that I have found. In those cases I haven't verified them until the issue is resolved.

Is there any way to verify half of an upload? I tend to only download the Darknite versions, not the regular Maxis versions of most uploads. I can verify the Darknite version of a file but am unable to do the other half.

@Barroco Hispano there's a couple of files you previously uploaded that still need restoration that we're wondering about. It'd be great if you could reupload them or take a look at them in the Restoration Tracker. Your work is so great and it'd be awesome to see it all back!