Sim City 4: No-Nonsense Metropolis

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Curvature of Earth: Sep 9, 2011; Projected cost of
invading Canada:
$900

Tusen Takk posted:

I installed the JRJ Streetmod with the JRJ sidewalk mod and it looks really, really good in my small town

You: Look at my adorable town.

Me:

Pack em' in like sardines I'm almost at 4 million! :awesome:

# ? Feb 15, 2015 23:21

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# ? May 28, 2024 01:57

FAT32 SHAMER: Aug 16, 2012

Curvature of Earth posted:

You: Look at my adorable town.

Me:

Pack em' in like sardines I'm almost at 4 million!

I have a city like that but it's on a big map that I gave up on filling because I kept hitting caps since I had too many surrounding cities

I tend to use a shitload of elevated rails instead of subways because I HATE trying to get RTMT in good spots instead of just being able to have a station every other city block

# ? Feb 15, 2015 23:26

Subyng: May 4, 2013

Curvature of Earth posted:

You: Look at my adorable town.

Me:

Pack em' in like sardines I'm almost at 4 million!

That's an awful lot of wasted river space that could be used to build more skyscrapers.

# ? Feb 15, 2015 23:33

Curvature of Earth: Sep 9, 2011; Projected cost of
invading Canada:
$900

Tusen Takk posted:

I have a city like that but it's on a big map that I gave up on filling because I kept hitting caps since I had too many surrounding cities

I tend to use a shitload of elevated rails instead of subways because I HATE trying to get RTMT in good spots instead of just being able to have a station every other city block

I cheat: I edited the Air Purifier into a cap buster. It boosts all residential, commercial, and industrial caps (except agricultural, due to some complicated SC4 nonsense I could never work out) by 1 million for each one I plop.

I don't like RTMT either. They're a pain in the rear end to bulldoze; they don't show up in the zone view, so I have to destroy every building surrounding them just to get to them.

I prefer regular rail because it means my commuter transit and rapid transit are one giant network. I briefly tried splitting commuter/rapid transit between regular rail and elevated rail, but I got real tired of having two separate transit networks that couldn't directly interact with each other. I could use subways for everything, but I like seeing the automata, plus subways can't tunnel up steep slopes like regular rail can.

My rail layout:

There are still avenues criss-crossing the city:

The rail network divides the city into small "cells", ensuring that sims actually use them and don't complain about long commute times. (Ignore the over-capacity red. I've mentioned this before, but SC4's data views can't display traffic capacity values over 65,535 properly. Each line you see can actually carry 900,000+ people.)

# ? Feb 16, 2015 00:06

FAT32 SHAMER: Aug 16, 2012

Curvature of Earth posted:

I cheat: I edited the Air Purifier into a cap buster. It boosts all residential, commercial, and industrial caps (except agricultural, due to some complicated SC4 nonsense I could never work out) by 1 million for each one I plop.

I don't like RTMT either. They're a pain in the rear end to bulldoze; they don't show up in the zone view, so I have to destroy every building surrounding them just to get to them.

I prefer regular rail because it means my commuter transit and rapid transit are one giant network. I briefly tried splitting commuter/rapid transit between regular rail and elevated rail, but I got real tired of having two separate transit networks that couldn't directly interact with each other. I could use subways for everything, but I like seeing the automata, plus subways can't tunnel up steep slopes like regular rail can.

My rail layout:

There are still avenues criss-crossing the city:

The rail network divides the city into small "cells", ensuring that sims actually use them and don't complain about long commute times. (Ignore the over-capacity red. I've mentioned this before, but SC4's data views can't display traffic capacity values over 65,535 properly. Each line you see can actually carry 900,000+ people.)

Holy moly, that's actually pretty cool.

In other news, another user has offered to give me a copy of Steam's SC4 :dance:

Now we can really see what the differences are!

# ? Feb 16, 2015 03:03

KaiserSchnitzel: Feb 23, 2003; Hey baby I think we Havel lot in common

Hi; I just wanted to say thanks for the awesome thread; I haven't played this game in years, and because of the well-organized OP I was able to install from disc on my Win 7 machine, patch the game to the latest version, and get the game to run in 1920x1080 without any problems!

However, as an FYI, this: Tai's Pack

https://mega.co.nz/#!u1cknZDY!JVND8...TDB5GBogT0H5rxI

is no longer a working link. I just pulled down the Oldfashioned 3.0 pack and will use that one.

That's all! Thanks again.

# ? Feb 16, 2015 04:14

KaiserSchnitzel: Feb 23, 2003; Hey baby I think we Havel lot in common

Cerebulon posted:

This is the current upload of Tai's pack, posted on page 51ish:
https://mega.co.nz/#!PslTRYhC!IQT10f_24a6un3M0ehbEFjlyXucQyDU_8L57HY6gYms

This link, however, does still work. I just saw it on a few pages back.

# ? Feb 16, 2015 04:18

Imapanda: Sep 12, 2008; Majoris Felidae Peditum

My Fhuzo region has been growing slowly over the past year. I believe this is my biggest, I've owned this game for 11 years but I went through a lot of computers and harddrives so I never had a chance to put this many hours into one region.

# ? Feb 16, 2015 06:07

kinnas: Jan 28, 2008; The Case of Martin Heidegger, Philosopher and Nazi Part 2: The Cover-up

Adderlay old town area:

big link

and a closeup of the castle

big link

The entire old town is car and freight free, only bus and pedestrian traffic gets inside. That crosswalk in the top left corner is a blocker. Three of them gate off the old town at key entrances and there's some additional blockers thrown around inside the old town itself to stop the local jokers from driving to their around the corner tourist guide job.

Some old ruins. Locals grow fruits and stuff in there.

zoomed out view of the town of Adderlay:

bonus shot of the castle from another angle:

# ? Feb 16, 2015 08:41

Communist Bear: Oct 7, 2008

Those corners and curving roads. :stare:

# ? Feb 16, 2015 10:15

Yaoi Gagarin: Feb 20, 2014

That is absolutely loving gorgeous. You actually managed to make buildings on uneven ground look good.

# ? Feb 16, 2015 12:12

FAT32 SHAMER: Aug 16, 2012

Kinnas easily claims most beautiful city award

I've read a shitload of CJ's and very rarely do they look as good as yours man

# ? Feb 16, 2015 16:24

Ms Adequate: Oct 30, 2011; Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling

Sometimes I see this poo poo and I just ask myself why I even try making SC4 stuff because it'll never be close to that good.

# ? Feb 16, 2015 20:40

Subyng: May 4, 2013

Not to diminish the skill involved in making a good looking city, but terrain mods and HD makes a huuuuge difference.

# ? Feb 16, 2015 20:48

Ms Adequate: Oct 30, 2011; Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling

Subyng posted:

Not to diminish the skill involved in making a good looking city, but terrain mods and HD makes a huuuuge difference.

They do, but I have those and most of my cities still look like hot garbage (a garbage export deal notwithstanding :v:

# ? Feb 16, 2015 20:53

FAT32 SHAMER: Aug 16, 2012

Yeah I'm in the same boat. I imagine all these really nice looking things and I lay it out as such but either the terrain won't do what I want it to do or everything goes right, but it still looks like poo poo

It doesn't help that grids are literally hardwired into my brain from living in Detroit Metro for so long and non-grid roads being almost completely foreign to me, and I'm apparently spergy enough that I can't help but feel like windy roads are a waste of space when I could instead toss more zones in there

edit: This map is featured on Simtropolis today, it looks pretty promising since I'm starting to grow annoyed with Vancouver. I have a feeling all the city lots will be the same gently caress off huge tiles that has been the source of some frustration
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/30127-mikawa-bay-aichi-prefecture-japan/

FAT32 SHAMER fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Feb 16, 2015

# ? Feb 16, 2015 20:56

FAT32 SHAMER: Aug 16, 2012

Bad news for Mac users: the Steam version seems to suffer from the same issues as the App Store version (it also appears that the Steam version is the same as the App Store version, but it has Steam features as well). The short version of it is that the Mac port is x86/32-bit, just like the original release, and as I understand it, SC4 loads the entire folder into RAM once you go to load your city, which is why everything is fine and dandy until then. Since there is no 4GB patch for Mac that I'm aware of, this means that we are limited to using <4GB folder if we want to be able to actually play the game. I've read stuff about the number of files, but after dat packing almost 6000 files into a few 500Mb .dats, the game still CTD'd once you loaded your city, which means this is almost definitely due to the architecture being x86/32-bit. This means that we won't be able to be like all the cool Windows users and have massive 8GB Plugin folders.

There does seem to be some truth to the bit about shitloads of folders causing the game to crash, so unfortunately, MacPack v2.0 is very, very messy and completely unorganized. However, on the upside, MacPack v2.0 has pretty much everything you really need and there should be room enough to add little things here and there without causing CTD's.

Tusen Takk's MacPack v2.0

Everything from MacPack v1.0 is in this pack, however due to space, you will want to delete the original MacPack folder and replace it with the new and improved MacPack v2.0 folder
We finally have a terrain mod that is entirely stable, as well as other eye-candy such as the JRJ Street and Sidewalk mods
Added a bunch of stadiums and CAMeLOTs so you don't get as many repeats of the same building over and over
Improved NAM settings so your sims are willing to go farther for work and actually use your Mass Transit system instead of driving past 9 stations on their way to work
Added the Shinkansen mod (which replaces monorail) and increased speed to 300kph or whatever the real-world value was
Fixes all brown box issues from v1.0, however I noticed as I was uploading this that there was a particular bush called "Seasonal Berry Patch" that shows up in GodMode tree painting sometimes. Also, I never could find the dependancies for the PaddyShack farm, so if that grows in your city just bulldoze it or something because I couldn't even find the .SC4Lot files in my plugin folder for it (sorry)
Added most of the SPAM Addons so you have even more variety when building farming communities

Also available for Mac users is the new MacPack Lite. This is just the basics needed to get started if you want to dig around for your own CAMeLOTs and stuff, or if you don't care about CAMeLOTs and just want to play the game with the necessary tweaks in order to make it, well, playable:

MacPack Lite

NAM 32.1 for Mac
CAM for Mac
SPAM for Mac
Various patches that fix bugs such as the OperaHouse bug, I-HT bug, SpacePort Bug, etc
Radius Doubler since we all know the vanilla radiuses are dumb
CrimeDoesn'tPay so your police stations actually work on MegaLots.

FAT32 SHAMER fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Mar 15, 2015

# ? Feb 16, 2015 23:20

PoizenJam: Dec 2, 2006; Damn!!!
It's PoizenJam!!!

For anyone dead set on creating the giant-est, spergiest plug in folder, I had good luck throwing the unpacked Tai, Old Fashion v 3.0, and Grand Fromage packs into a folder, pruning the obvious conflicts (a_cam, nam), install RMIP and dependencies, installing cascades tree controller, then running Fast Duplicate File Finder resulted in a hefty and robust setup that has everything I could imagine.

I really think the RMIP set, especially, is way better than the included custom airport lots. I practically never use the ones that have been included by default in Old Fashioned v3 or Tais pack.

# ? Feb 17, 2015 00:19

Ms Adequate: Oct 30, 2011; Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling

Tusen Takk posted:

Yeah I'm in the same boat. I imagine all these really nice looking things and I lay it out as such but either the terrain won't do what I want it to do or everything goes right, but it still looks like poo poo

All I want is a nice big map like Fhuzo, but where the 'flat' terrain where people are most likely to build cities is actually flat instead of covered in little hillocks and gradient changes and stuff. I still want mountains and rivers and all that poo poo. I could do it myself sure, but :effort:

# ? Feb 17, 2015 04:28

FAT32 SHAMER: Aug 16, 2012

Mister Adequate posted:

All I want is a nice big map like Fhuzo, but where the 'flat' terrain where people are most likely to build cities is actually flat instead of covered in little hillocks and gradient changes and stuff. I still want mountains and rivers and all that poo poo. I could do it myself sure, but

Yeah definitely, ESPECIALLY along the coast. It's so hard to have seaports along the water that look good when the terrain is pretty much a cliff. I read a tutorial on how to make coastal plains so you could have these nice areas but I couldn't find the big lot to be able to do it :saddowns:

# ? Feb 18, 2015 00:48

Peanut Butler: Jul 25, 2003

Mister Adequate posted:

All I want is a nice big map like Fhuzo, but where the 'flat' terrain where people are most likely to build cities is actually flat instead of covered in little hillocks and gradient changes and stuff. I still want mountains and rivers and all that poo poo. I could do it myself sure, but

Yeah I mostly agree- I like little features here and there, and Fhuzo is pretty low-key about them- there are some maps that look like wonderful scapes of plains and rivers, but on close zoom it's all bumpy with nary a flat tile.

I don't even play with seawall/port stuff right now because 1) it's super fiddly, and 2) I've spent like 99% of my life about as far from the ocean as possible and making a rad and massive port that isn't a little river marina doesn't do it for me

# ? Feb 18, 2015 01:06

WithoutTheFezOn: Aug 28, 2005; Oh no

Tusen Takk posted:

Tusen Takk's MacPack v2.0

Thanks for this, especially the gathering of CAMeLots. I've never tried them because of the hassle they looked like. Because of that, I have a couple questions:

1) I don't see a SPAM folder, but SPAM seems to work. Is that incorporated into/with CAM?

2) The large CAM buildings popping up are dependent on Stage, right?

# ? Feb 18, 2015 01:57

FAT32 SHAMER: Aug 16, 2012

WithoutTheFezOn posted:

Thanks for this, especially the gathering of CAMeLots. I've never tried them because of the hassle they looked like. Because of that, I have a couple questions:

1) I don't see a SPAM folder, but SPAM seems to work. Is that incorporated into/with CAM?

2) The large CAM buildings popping up are dependent on Stage, right?

1) Yup, all lot files are in the big-rear end CAMeLOT folder

(I should have renamed that the Everything Else folder I guess v :shobon:

v)
2)Exactly, I was able to grow every building in there at one point or another so you shouldnt have any problems!

# ? Feb 18, 2015 02:17

Subyng: May 4, 2013

Tusen Takk posted:

Yeah I'm in the same boat. I imagine all these really nice looking things and I lay it out as such but either the terrain won't do what I want it to do or everything goes right, but it still looks like poo poo

It doesn't help that grids are literally hardwired into my brain from living in Detroit Metro for so long and non-grid roads being almost completely foreign to me, and I'm apparently spergy enough that I can't help but feel like windy roads are a waste of space when I could instead toss more zones in there

edit: This map is featured on Simtropolis today, it looks pretty promising since I'm starting to grow annoyed with Vancouver. I have a feeling all the city lots will be the same gently caress off huge tiles that has been the source of some frustration
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/30127-mikawa-bay-aichi-prefecture-japan/

Ugh, one thing that annoys me about literally every map on Simtropolis that is based on a real world location is that they forget that the terrain has existing man made "cutouts" on the shore that would not represent natural, undeveloped terrain!

# ? Feb 19, 2015 18:35

Colonel J: Jan 3, 2008

I just started a new game; I've played a bit of SC4 in the past but always kept to grids. This time I've been inspired by the posts in this thread and am trying to give more of an organic feel to my cities with farms, windy roads, defined neighborhoods, etc.

One thing I've done is keep all the dirty industrial in one city, which I amply connected to the neighboring regions with avenues and rail. The dirty industry is developing very well and industrial demand is negative in the neighboring cities, but when I use the route query in my neighboring cities it doesn't look like anybody is actually moving between the cities (all traffic is intra-city). Is this normal?

Also it doesn't look like anybody is actually using my rail. I do have parking next to the stations. Is it something sims will start to do once the main avenue gets too congested? Thanks!

One last thing; I'm on a mac, and I tried using the Fhuzo map. I can access it, but as soon as I try to place a road in any city in the region my game crashes. Any tip?

edit: another last thing. If I have the financial means to, am I shooting myself in the foot by providing basic services to my population really, aka around 3000 population put in water, fire, cops and health? I thought it would make the city develop faster but it didn't really seem to have an impact on development speed. Is it something I should keep for later when development will start stalling?

Colonel J fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Feb 19, 2015

# ? Feb 19, 2015 19:48

PoizenJam: Dec 2, 2006; Damn!!!
It's PoizenJam!!!

Subyng posted:

Ugh, one thing that annoys me about literally every map on Simtropolis that is based on a real world location is that they forget that the terrain has existing man made "cutouts" on the shore that would not represent natural, undeveloped terrain!

Yup, me too. It's why I've never been able to find a map of St. John's, Halifax, New York, or Miami that is satisfactory.

Especially annoying is when the cutouts don't fail on the horizontal or vertical.

# ? Feb 19, 2015 19:53

Subyng: May 4, 2013

Although I suppose one could just terraform them back into a natural looking shoreline, but it's the principle of the matter

# ? Feb 19, 2015 19:58

FAT32 SHAMER: Aug 16, 2012

Colonel J posted:

One last thing; I'm on a mac, and I tried using the Fhuzo map. I can access it, but as soon as I try to place a road in any city in the region my game crashes. Any tip?

Do you have an absolute shitload of trees? Are you using the PNW Tree Controller? Are you using NAM 32.1 for Mac or did you download a generic NAM? Also, what kind of Mac are you using? I have a mate with an older MBP and the game crashes way more often for him than it does for me since he has an HDD but I have an SDD

I'm having a kind of similar issue, I'm afraid. Everything in Vancouver has been fine and dandy, but I'm trying to build a mega-city in an area way south of the rest of my cities, and I already laid out all of the infrastructure and so on and so forth. For some reason, unless I keep the game paused, it keeps crashing (I think this might be due to something trying to grow, or a lot of stuff trying to grow at once, but I haven't the slightest idea what it could be and crash-logs don't tell us much on Mac except that Thread 0 at x00000007 crashed

quote:

edit: another last thing. If I have the financial means to, am I shooting myself in the foot by providing basic services to my population really, aka around 3000 population put in water, fire, cops and health? I thought it would make the city develop faster but it didn't really seem to have an impact on development speed. Is it something I should keep for later when development will start stalling?

Not at all, if you are using CAM then those services are all CAP busters, and most buildings won't go to the next stage without adequate fire protection and rich people won't move in where there is no police or school system. Finally, Universities increase the amount of wealthy people and also increase demand for I-HT and CO-$$$ jobs (and obviously R-$$$ housing)

# ? Feb 19, 2015 22:25

Colonel J: Jan 3, 2008

Tusen Takk posted:

Do you have an absolute shitload of trees? Are you using the PNW Tree Controller? Are you using NAM 32.1 for Mac or did you download a generic NAM? Also, what kind of Mac are you using? I have a mate with an older MBP and the game crashes way more often for him than it does for me since he has an HDD but I have an SDD

I'm having a kind of similar issue, I'm afraid. Everything in Vancouver has been fine and dandy, but I'm trying to build a mega-city in an area way south of the rest of my cities, and I already laid out all of the infrastructure and so on and so forth. For some reason, unless I keep the game paused, it keeps crashing (I think this might be due to something trying to grow, or a lot of stuff trying to grow at once, but I haven't the slightest idea what it could be and crash-logs don't tell us much on Mac except that Thread 0 at x00000007 crashed .

I have a 2014 rMBP, with the MacPack that came out last month... Works fine with official regions, but Fhuzo (only one I tried) crashes always immediately

# ? Feb 19, 2015 23:11

FAT32 SHAMER: Aug 16, 2012

Colonel J posted:

I have a 2014 rMBP, with the MacPack that came out last month... Works fine with official regions, but Fhuzo (only one I tried) crashes always immediately

Weird, I'm using an imported region and it's working fine for me... I'll load up fhuzo tonight and see what's up. Can you show me what city tile it is?

Edit: I fixed my issue by bulldozing all the trees (at least I think that was the problem) after obliterating the city :v:

# ? Feb 19, 2015 23:20

cxp: Mar 27, 2010; Fun Shoe

Colonel J posted:

I have a 2014 rMBP, with the MacPack that came out last month... Works fine with official regions, but Fhuzo (only one I tried) crashes always immediately

Which fhuzo map? With the latest MacPack (Thanks Tusen Takk!) I found that the pretty fhuzo map works, but I don't think it worked with the older MacPack. If you don't want to update the bare fhuzo map would work.

Tusen Takk posted:

Weird, I'm using an imported region and it's working fine for me... I'll load up fhuzo tonight and see what's up. Can you show me what city tile it is?

Edit: I fixed my issue by bulldozing all the trees (at least I think that was the problem) after obliterating the city

Yeah, found the same thing after using MacPack 1.0 with my own tree stuff then moving to the new one. Worked fine until I tried dragging streets through trees.

# ? Feb 19, 2015 23:26

WithoutTheFezOn: Aug 28, 2005; Oh no

Couple of questions about the MacPack:

1) The trees (I'm pretty sure) are killing my performance. Happen to know of a relatively easy way to remove just the tree controller?

2) My new city I started (new region) is up to about 50,000 pop and has zero cars. Like zero, everyone walks, even halfway across a large tile. Doesn't seem to be a practical problem yet, but is that just from NAM being cranked up to Ultra traffic or something?

# ? Feb 19, 2015 23:54

PoizenJam: Dec 2, 2006; Damn!!!
It's PoizenJam!!!

Is there a way to tune NAM variables post install?

Also how might one go about creating custom buildings? Does it require 3D modelling skills?

PoizenJam fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Feb 20, 2015

# ? Feb 20, 2015 01:01

FAT32 SHAMER: Aug 16, 2012

WithoutTheFezOn posted:

Couple of questions about the MacPack:

1) The trees (I'm pretty sure) are killing my performance. Happen to know of a relatively easy way to remove just the tree controller?

2) My new city I started (new region) is up to about 50,000 pop and has zero cars. Like zero, everyone walks, even halfway across a large tile. Doesn't seem to be a practical problem yet, but is that just from NAM being cranked up to Ultra traffic or something?

1) search PNW_TreeController.dat and remove it. Doing this shouldn't cause brown-boxing anywhere you've planted trees, but I'm not 100% on this. I do know that it works fine as long as you don't go HAM and mashed potatoes while painting trees and give everything a light brush, and you can even paint it very heavily in cities that you plan on making small, but yeah I've been thinking about finding a better tree controller, it just wasn't in the forefront of my mind (and since my region is actually in the Pacific NorthWest, I was kind of biased because it makes it look super realistic.) Sorry

edit: I found this on the subject:

quote:

Due to game mechanics there are no such thing as compatible tree controllers. Therefore you must remove whatever existing tree controller you are using (such as Vortext's, CP's, Heblem's, my old one, or a God Mode patch like for the PEG pines). BUT FIRST you must remove all flora planted with that tree-controller. For this reason it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you switch tree controllers only when starting new cities; new regions would be even better. Loading a city tile that has trees on it from a tree controller that no longer exists in your plugins will result in a Crash To Desktop.

2) I noticed that too, I get a lot of car-automata but yeah everyone walks because it's on High (European) public transport usage. I can probably turn the time_willing_to_travel variable down so they're more willing to drive, but I believe since it's on the European setting they use less cars (which means less parking garages) and on the Medium(American) setting they drive to their next-door neighbours for dinner.

Poizen Jam posted:

Is there a way to tune NAM variables post install?

Also how might one go about creating custom buildings? Does it require 3D modelling skills?

Yes, I believe someone itt posted a guide on how to mess with max speeds and such with iLive Reader, or you can download the Traffic Config tool (It's called TSCT.jar) and mess with pretty much everything there.

I can upload it for you since it's normally downloaded and installed after installing NAM, if needed

as for making BATs, yeah it's a lot of work and requires 3d modeling skills

edit: I forgot that if you're getting annoyed with not being able to build roads in especially hilly areas, search "SlopeMod" in your plugins folder and delete all files that are slope-mod related. Less realistic, but less annoying

FAT32 SHAMER fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Feb 20, 2015

# ? Feb 20, 2015 02:08

Yaoi Gagarin: Feb 20, 2014

https://web.archive.org/web/20021201104847/http://simcity.ea.com/dev/3d.html

Paul Pedriana, Software Engineer posted:

After reading the explanation above, you might ask, "Why not simply increase the number of polygons in the buildings and increase the texture detail in the building textures and use mip-mapping to achieve high graphical detail from any viewpoint?" Yes, we could do this, but doing so to acheive a level similar to what we get with a fixed view would require a prohibitively large amount of memory and disk space and would require much faster 3D accelleration than currently available. How much more memory would we need and how much more 3D accelleration would we need? A conservative estimate would be that the game would require about 4-8GB of disk space, the video card would need to have about 1-2GB of RAM, and the video card would need to be about 10-20 times as fast as a current GeForce 4 card. And AGP is going to have to get 4-8 times as fast is it currently is. We are looking forward to the day when such a PC is available, but until then we'll be sticking with somewhat fixed viewing capabilities.

It turns out that even with the simplified texturing and polygon usage that SimCity 4 has now, current PCs still aren't fast enough to draw a large (1024x768+) screen of a complex city viewed from far above. There are simply too many polyons, textures, lighting effects and particle effects for even the fastest GeForce 4 and Pentium 4 to be able to draw. Current measurements are that such a machine draws such a view at about 2 frames per second. You might say, "But my computer can render the same -sized screen in Quake or Unreal Tournament at 90 frames per second. Why is SimCity so much slower?" The answer is that the polygon detail visible in SimCity 4 is 10 or more times the detail you see in a first-person dungeon game. SimCity requires far more textures and far more polygons to draw its view than those games do. On top of that, SimCity's simulation gameplay logic is an order of magnitude more complicated as well and this eats into CPU time needed to draw 3D graphics. See the pictures below for some examples of high density polygons, lighting, and blending that are common in SimCity 4.

So if current PCs aren't fast enough to draw SimCity 4, how is it that we draw SimCity 4? The answer is that we implement a surprisingly elaborate system of "static view preservation," 3D dirty rectangles, billboarded, semi-polygonal, and fully-polygonal models. In essence, every time we update the screen view, we only redraw what has changed since the last draw. As long as you are viewing from the same position and angle, much of the view stays the same as you look at the city. When the user scrolls the view, however, the entire screen is changing constantly. So how do we scroll the view quickly? Well it turns out that because we have chosen to use an orthographic projection, the scrolled view is the exact same as the previous view, only moved sideways on the screen. So we can just copy the view bitmap without doing an expensive 3D draw of it. This is not the case with a perspective projection. Now you know why use use an orthographic projection in SimCity. I have left out a lot of tricky details here, but suffice it to say that the SimCity 4 graphics engine is not simple by any means. There are a lot of translucent texture issues, projective shadow issues, and "Z-fighting" issues that we've had to overcome. In addition, we have a powerful particle and effects system that is significant enough that it warrants an tech article of its own.

It's a really interesting article from the good/bad old days.

# ? Feb 20, 2015 09:25

PoizenJam: Dec 2, 2006; Damn!!!
It's PoizenJam!!!

Made some custom Bus Automata skins for my upcoming region. Canadian goons might be interested:

Orion V - Metrobus (St. John's, NL) Skin

Orion VII - Metroubus (St. John's, NL) Skin

MCI-D4500 CT - GO! Transit Bus (Ontario) Skin

Download Here, lest I upload them to simtropolis and get banned because I didn't make the base model. All original bats were taken from the Toronto TTC Bus Pack and the NYBT NYC MTA bus pack.

PoizenJam fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Feb 20, 2015

# ? Feb 20, 2015 20:02

PoizenJam: Dec 2, 2006; Damn!!!
It's PoizenJam!!!

VostokProgram posted:

https://web.archive.org/web/20021201104847/http://simcity.ea.com/dev/3d.html

It's a really interesting article from the good/bad old days.

Theoretically, does this mean if you could somehow override the in game camera limitations, you could view your city from any angle? Or would the render just break?

Edit: nevermind, I don't think it works that way... The initial description just gave me the impression the rendering was done on the fly.

PoizenJam fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Feb 20, 2015

# ? Feb 20, 2015 23:19

ExtraNoise: Apr 11, 2007

VostokProgram posted:

https://web.archive.org/web/20021201104847/http://simcity.ea.com/dev/3d.html

It's a really interesting article from the good/bad old days.

It always really bugged me that they chose to go with box mapping instead of planar mapping. They could have saved a LOT of rendering time with just two tris.

# ? Feb 21, 2015 00:40

smr: Dec 18, 2002

The only map I play on anymore is something I _think_ I actually got from one of the SC4 threads here called "Yubari-copy". It has a bunch of water and nice hills and mountains but the plains and coastal areas are flaaaaaaaaat, so that annoying "bumpy terrain" issue that plagues damned near every single custom SC4 map is not present and you can build without worrying overmuch about leveling. It's also not like RETARD huge, with 32x32 large tiles or any nonsense. It's got a couple of each size, and together makes a nice big natural region.

It's a 15MB zip and I can toss out a Dropbox link if anyone's interested.

# ? Feb 21, 2015 07:37

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# ? May 28, 2024 01:57

Nition: Feb 25, 2006; You really want to know?

VostokProgram posted:

https://web.archive.org/web/20021201104847/http://simcity.ea.com/dev/3d.html

It's a really interesting article from the good/bad old days.

That's really interesting. And if I'm reading it right, it also implies that modded buildings with tons of polygons should still affect performance when they're first rendered, before the render gets cached.

# ? Feb 21, 2015 08:36

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Sim City 4: No-Nonsense Metropolis

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