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MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




*PUNCH* posted:

Because the terrain mods are HD (greater resolution than the base game technically supports,) they are unfortunately incompatible with software mode. Delete the terrainmods folder and you should be good to go.

And this is a pretty drat bad thing because Hardware mode in SimCity 4 uses a bunch of DirectX functions that were removed from the spec soon after launch, and the legacy support for the functions on any modern graphics card is very dodgy and much slower than software rendering because of the way it goes about faking the function. (Although the degree can vary between manufacturers and setups)

And because SimCity 4 runs graphics and logic in the same thread, it means that this grinds the whole simulation engine down in speed as well as the frame rate falls.

This is still a problem in software mode, but it's worse in hardware. Either way, it's why the game runs so slow on systems 20 times more powerful than it was designed for.

MikeJF fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Mar 10, 2013

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Banjo Bones
Mar 28, 2003

I have started playing this, and am wondering how do I satisfy/reduce demand for low income housing? I guess since I'm not very creative, I've just been building sprawling upper-class suburbs, but in all my regions all they want is cheap houses which always get supplanted by nicer houses. I've filled up 3 regions so far, and I'm wondering when do I start zoning more densely because I want to build big buildings.

Chlorine
Aug 27, 2004

Wow, look at that!
Wow, that package from Grand Fromage. There are plugins in there I haven't seen in a decade. Stuff from modders personal websites that don't even exist anymore. This will be backed up on an external drive for safe keeping. The only thing I added to it was SOMY's Microwave Rectenna Plant.

Samopsa
Nov 9, 2009

Krijgt geen speciaal kerstdiner!

bromplicated posted:

I have started playing this, and am wondering how do I satisfy/reduce demand for low income housing? I guess since I'm not very creative, I've just been building sprawling upper-class suburbs, but in all my regions all they want is cheap houses which always get supplanted by nicer houses. I've filled up 3 regions so far, and I'm wondering when do I start zoning more densely because I want to build big buildings.

Low income does not mean small buildings per se. Density of the zoning decides the size of the buildings allowed on those lots. If you have sufficient citizens, you can put a bunch of high density zoning somewhere and watch the giant towers grow. Iirc you need about 150000 residents to start getting the larger buildings.

Sevalar
Jul 10, 2009

HEY RADICAL LARRY HOW ABOUT A HAIRCUT

****MIC TO THE WILLY***
I love SC4 [rebought it on Steam ages ago] but It literally is a crashaholic. Short of being an anal saver or using that 3rd party auto saving program, have there been any advances on that front? Either some crazy fix or some obscure notepad fix?

I always love the idea of getting into the game but the crashing really breaks it for me.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Have you set it to single core? If it's trying to run on multiple cores it'll crash like hell.

aethyr
Mar 2, 2013
In addition to the CAM bug (see bottom of last page), the Gobias texture conflicts with the Marrast embankments. Specifically, this file:

GB Plaza Txt Replace HD.dat

With and without this file:

aethyr fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Mar 10, 2013

WastedJoker
Oct 29, 2011

Fiery the angels fell. Deep thunder rolled around their shoulders... burning with the fires of Orc.
This is not reviewing well, is it?

Baron FU
Apr 3, 2009

WastedJoker posted:

This is not reviewing well, is it?

Wrong thread.

nielsm
Jun 1, 2009



Okay, is there any way to make the game be less ugly around diagonal roads+plazas/paved areas?



Specifically, those loving roadside flowerbeds. Can't they just pave that poo poo like the adjoining square?

WastedJoker
Oct 29, 2011

Fiery the angels fell. Deep thunder rolled around their shoulders... burning with the fires of Orc.

Baron FU posted:

Wrong thread.

oops, soz!

MLKQUOTEMACHINE
Oct 22, 2012

Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill
So Sim City 4 is running slow like hell for whatever reason. I'm using that Fhuzo region and whenever I go into a region tile to build up a city the game runs, but at a kind of stuttery pace. I upped the resolution to my native one (1680x1050), would it help to bring it down?

This is so weird, because my computer's a good computer. I play most modern games at their super-ultra-max settings, but Sim City 4 refuses to play ball.

turn off the TV
Aug 4, 2010

moderately annoying

nutranurse posted:

So Sim City 4 is running slow like hell for whatever reason. I'm using that Fhuzo region and whenever I go into a region tile to build up a city the game runs, but at a kind of stuttery pace. I upped the resolution to my native one (1680x1050), would it help to bring it down?

This is so weird, because my computer's a good computer. I play most modern games at their super-ultra-max settings, but Sim City 4 refuses to play ball.

Set your game to exclusively run with 1 core and have high CPU affinity. That's all you can do.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


You have to get used to some chugging. SC4 does not use modern hardware very well. It never ran well and the improvements in computers haven't helped all that much.

Samopsa
Nov 9, 2009

Krijgt geen speciaal kerstdiner!
Also: use software rendering mode if possible.

Sam.
Jan 1, 2009

"I thought we had something, Shepard. Something real."
:qq:

nielsm posted:

Okay, is there any way to make the game be less ugly around diagonal roads+plazas/paved areas?

See the old thread title.

Speaking of diagonals, how do you get diagonal RHW-4s to work? If I try to put both sides right next to each other, they intersect and turn into RHW-2s instead of working right. I could put them on separate tiles, but then I'd have to demolish a bunch of stuff. Is there any way around this?

Banjo Bones
Mar 28, 2003

How are you guys building those traffic circles?

nielsm
Jun 1, 2009



bromplicated posted:

How are you guys building those traffic circles?

Roundabouts?
They come with NAM.

The smallest (2x2) appear automatically if you just build a 2x2 circle of roads or streets.
The larger (3x3 roads with an empty space in the middle) appear if you build a circle with one-way roads.
The biggest ones (including avenues) are special items in the road construction menu.

odiv
Jan 12, 2003

Bah. I can't get the Old Fashioned pack to work. Either hardware or software with and without the terrainmods directory, I get sent to desktop.

If I have only NAM installed I can use either hardware or software. I guess I'll try Grand Fromage's or maybe just throw in what's considered "essential" by myself.

edit: Hey! Grand Fromage's pack works! Now to figure out how to play. I tried to make a highway to start and I'm confused as hell.

odiv fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Mar 11, 2013

Starhawk
Mar 28, 2003

I am leaking dangerous cargo.
Is there a way to keep certain custom lots (from the OP pack) from taking over every single space? Specifically the Cap and Cork liquor store causing neighborhoods like this to pop up all over my city.

Koesj
Aug 3, 2003

odiv posted:

Bah. I can't get the Old Fashioned pack to work. Either hardware or software with and without the terrainmods directory, I get sent to desktop.

I'm having the same problem, although the game does work from time to time :(

Canuck-Errant
Oct 28, 2003

MOOD: BURNING - MUSIC: DISCO INFERNO BY THE TRAMMPS
Grimey Drawer
Hey, I found and edited the file that makes the Glenni Taylor slab apartment pop in low and medium-zoned 3x3 lots - it's the R$ Glenni Taylor House 3 SC4LOT file. I can upload it to my Dropbox if anyone wants it.

Edit: The changes didn't stick. Going to try some stuff.
Edit 2: There's something glitchy in the SC4lot file that's keeping it from working properly, and I don't like the building enough to bother rebuilding.

Canuck-Errant fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Mar 10, 2013

Elukka
Feb 18, 2011

For All Mankind

Starhawk posted:

Is there a way to keep certain custom lots (from the OP pack) from taking over every single space? Specifically the Cap and Cork liquor store causing neighborhoods like this to pop up all over my city.
Do you have all the building styles (NY/Euro/etc.) enabled at once? You probably should or the game just might not have enough buildings of a certain type for any single style. And I think the Old Fashioned Pack has a consistent visual style regardless of which building style the modders decided to place each building in.

turn off the TV
Aug 4, 2010

moderately annoying
Is there a reason that after a certain point my city stops having any demand for more jobs, but a never ending demand for more residential zoning? I have a population of about 20k, and around half that many potential jobs but people keep wanting to move in.

nielsm
Jun 1, 2009



Giggily posted:

Is there a reason that after a certain point my city stops having any demand for more jobs, but a never ending demand for more residential zoning? I have a population of about 20k, and around half that many potential jobs but people keep wanting to move in.

Are you making connections (road or rail) to neighbors, existing or not? I believe that's an important demand buster for industry.

Drone
Aug 22, 2003

Incredible machine
:smug:


Giggily posted:

Is there a reason that after a certain point my city stops having any demand for more jobs, but a never ending demand for more residential zoning? I have a population of about 20k, and around half that many potential jobs but people keep wanting to move in.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free?

Do neighboring cities in the region have a lot of jobs? If your city is more attractive for living than the other ones, Sims may want to move to your town and commute to work elsewhere.

turn off the TV
Aug 4, 2010

moderately annoying
I don't have any neighboring cities. Just farms and like a 8x8 blob of factories.

e: Oh, okay. The neighbor city I just made now has an incredibly high demand for industrial jobs, but there's no demand in the original city. :psyduck:

turn off the TV fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Mar 10, 2013

Inverness
Feb 4, 2009

Fully configurable personal assistant.
I'm just getting into SC4 for the first time. I knew I was in for hell went I wanted to avoid NAM 31 and had 20 tabs open trying to find NAM 30 which was split into a bunch of different things. Luckily, I remembered that I should be looking here and lo and behold, mod packs! Going to download Grand Fromage's pack and get angry about cities. :yotj:

Happy Fun Bollocks
Aug 4, 2007

by Ion Helmet
Does anybody know more about / have a solution for the broken seaports in vanilla? (Industrial demand CAP is supposed to be relieved in proportion to freight shipped, but seaports don't count towards this due to a bug.) I ended up poaching 3 files (out of the over 100 available) from BSC Functional Seaports:

X-Ports Automatic Upgrade.dat
BSC Functional Seaports, Version 3.1.dat
v3_Enable Maxis Seaport.dat

But I don't know anything at all about modding this game, so I don't know if those files are sufficient by themselves or if they require any of the six million dependencies listed in the readme.

*PUNCH*
Jul 8, 2007
naked on the internet

Giggily posted:

I don't have any neighboring cities. Just farms and like a 8x8 blob of factories.

e: Oh, okay. The neighbor city I just made now has an incredibly high demand for industrial jobs, but there's no demand in the original city. :psyduck:

It sounds like you've hit a demand cap. I'll write something coherent about these for the OP because they're a pretty annoying game mechanic, but in the meantime:

Every city has a certain base capacity for growth. Go beyond these and you'll start hitting these caps, which are entirely artificial. Try placing some reward buildings; the minor and major stadiums are particularly good cap busters. Other things you can do are neighbor connections, like previously mentioned. All of these things help increase the capacity for industry on a given tile, or to look at things the other way around, the bust the cap.

For the record, OldFashioned has a LOT of reward buildings so you've got a little more choice in how you want to bust through these caps.

edit: http://strategywiki.org/wiki/SimCity_4/Zoning_and_Demand This guide will tell you a bit more. Apparently the deal with industrial demand is allowing your freight to leave the city; if you do this, demand should be self-sustaining. The more you know!

*PUNCH* fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Mar 10, 2013

turn off the TV
Aug 4, 2010

moderately annoying
I actually didn't hit a demand cap. Earlier I had replaced a road with an avenue, which bordered my city's garbage dump, which removed the adjacency. I added a road branching off and now everyone and their mom wants some good old fashioned dirty industry. I guess my Sims were just living off of the trash that was piling up in the streets or something.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



I may have hosed something up. I have Sim City 4 Deluxe, and I've only installed the NAM mod.

My schools and clinics don't seem to be actually effecting education/health.

They're there, they're not over capacity, they're covering the whole town, but my Education and Health overlays are just showing red. Did I miss something?

null_pointer
Nov 9, 2004

Center in, pull back. Stop. Track 45 right. Stop. Center and stop.

AlphaDog posted:

My schools and clinics don't seem to be actually effecting education/health.

They're there, they're not over capacity, they're covering the whole town, but my Education and Health overlays are just showing red. Did I miss something?

I'm seeing the same thing and thought that this was just the game's way of showing that the earlier generations weren't terribly educated.

I expected that the map would show increasingly educated Sims as time went on.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



It's with medical clinics too though.

Also, it seems that if I zone residential, and then put the clinic/school directly into that zone, it services the zone that was present and only that zone. Adding to it later means that half the residential area isn't getting education.

I've missed something important, I'm sure of it.

Edit: Or else I'm looking at it completely wrong, which is likely. I haven't really played a Simcity game since Simcity 2000.

Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Mar 11, 2013

James The 1st
Feb 23, 2013

AlphaDog posted:

I may have hosed something up. I have Sim City 4 Deluxe, and I've only installed the NAM mod.

My schools and clinics don't seem to be actually effecting education/health.

They're there, they're not over capacity, they're covering the whole town, but my Education and Health overlays are just showing red. Did I miss something?
It takes a lot of time for health and education improvement.

Cantorsdust
Aug 10, 2008

Infinitely many points, but zero length.
Yeah even in SC2K health and education took a generation or two to noticeably rise. I wouldn't worry about it yet.

Breetai
Nov 6, 2005

🥄Mah spoon is too big!🍌
So my region is coming along nicely:



I'm attempting to make a relatively consistent aesthetic between cities as I go, with farmland/industrial/residential zones carried on from border and zones lining up with one another. Pictured is a couple of tiny agricultural towns, Greenfields and Podunk (both with a pop of about 1000 and both of which are running off a single wind turbine), Breadbasket which is my main Ag zone with a smattering of dirty industry, and my first real population centre Sardu, which I'm looking at making a burnt-out wasteland of a polluted industrial zone. I'll develop another Dirty Industry city above sardu (though not connected to it so as to avoid the transit loop bug) connected to the central map, which I hope to eventually turn into a high-tech/commercial city.

Greenfields links only to Podunk which links only to Breadbasket, and Breadbasket links to the main central city and sardu. sardu will link to all of the little regions that border it (likely mostly agrarian/small town).

Here's Sardu as it stands now.

It's a very standard residential + industry town, with commercial zones interspersed amongst the rez zones. About 95% of its inhabitants use rail to get to work, with massive usage of foot/bus to get to the rail stations. There's about 50,000 citizens at the moment, and while a lot of streets have congestion, it's nothing they can't handle.


Close-up of the Residential area:



Note that while every house is car-accessable, the various sections are split up into discrete zones, each of which has a dedicated rail station. High-density zones are generally towards the edges, further alleviating traffic density issues. I've also played around a lot with various street orientations to get away from boring griddy suburbs.

benzine
Oct 21, 2010

The region is coming nice, although I'd hate to live in the apartment on the rail loop.

Edit: What are your plans for the central city?

benzine fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Mar 11, 2013

Breetai
Nov 6, 2005

🥄Mah spoon is too big!🍌

benzine posted:

The region is coming nice, although I'd hate to live in the apartment on the rail loop.

Thanks! Lucky for the residents there's no traffic around the loop itself - while occasionally you'll see a train loop around it, it's essentially decorative.

benzine posted:

Edit: What are your plans for the central city?

Not sure, yet, beyond 'purely commercial/res/high-tech'. I happen to have a city from the last time I went on a Simcity jag that was a perfect representation of the city I live in (Adelaide, Australia) down to each and every individual sidestreet, so I might import that and see if I can't make it match up with what I've done. I can even put the mayor's house exactly where I live!




Who's in the mood for a tutorial on rail placement?

Here's a little example of a bog-standard train station. As you can see, there's a road leading up to it, and a rail leading away from it.



Now this is perfectly serviceable: it'll work, but there's a problem wiht it due to the way that Simcity models station capacity.

The general gist of it is that rail stations counts every train that passes by as part of its capacity, whether that train originates from/stops at it or not. The effect of this is that traffic that happens to be just going past causes your stations to gum up, and contributes massively to usage.

What you should be doing is creating a sliplane for your rail, like so:



Note that the only trains that will go past the station are the ones going to it; traffic that happens to be passing by on the main track will not divert. It's a little less efficient space-wise, but you'll get a net gain by way of not massively overloading your transit system.

The above is what it should look like in your residential/commercial zones, but what about Industrial Zones? Industry can make use of rail transport as well as road transport, and it's preferable to ease the pressure off your streets. In order to minimise the footprint your transit stations have, I'd suggest this:



Note that the sliplanes have multiple entry/exit points. This further alleviates pressure on your stations by helping to ensure that trains don't always need to go past both stations.

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benzine
Oct 21, 2010

Breetai posted:

Not sure, yet, beyond 'purely commercial/res/high-tech'. I happen to have a city from the last time I went on a Simcity jag that was a perfect representation of the city I live in (Adelaide, Australia) down to each and every individual sidestreet, so I might import that and see if I can't make it match up with what I've done. I can even put the mayor's house exactly where I live!

You can't say that and don't post some images, how rude of you.

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