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new traffic experiments

Started by ldog, October 23, 2009, 06:16:28 PM

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ldog

Starting this as a placeholder for continuing discussions that started with my first post at http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=5382.200 and ended with my last on page 12 (maybe, unless someone else posts after me ;D )
Thanks Z for letting me borrow your thread for a bit but now I return it to you.
Also being as this really doesn't have anything to do with the NAM either we will leave them as well.
This is traffic simulator for noobs!

ldog

#1
So with Jason's shiny new adjusted NetworkAddonMod_Traffic_Plugin_A_Hard in plugin directory I boldly go off...to test....stuff...oh yeah...buses...we are going to build a city to test out buses not adding to congestion (the default condition in A) and then we are going to mod the mod to have buses add to congestion and run the same city for another decade or two for good measure and see how we fare. Time and interest permitting I will then take this city and do the same thing with Sims B and Z as well.

So let's start out with laying the testbed. Here is what I had written last night before I went to bed:

Region 20 km square composed of 5x5 large city tiles (although I think I have found something more interesting (to me anyway) see below)
City in center used for test

Plugins installed:
NAM A hard with minimal options
Click for cash and click for reset
God terraforming in mayor mode
Hole digger and raiser lots (I am pretty sure it is the version by NHP Shadowassassin? the one with the big bright blue and red icons that say how many meters you are adjusting by)
My own Maxis MT station patch (which has transit entry costs scaled to current traffic sim)
My own I jobs mod (it is the CAM suggested settings...without the CAM...will allow me to build a bigger city faster)
My own GRR station fix (also per CAM specs...all it is is is a correction to the utilization % required to unlock)
*Not really relevant but listed for completeness*
All Maxis plugins (the landmarks...I figure they are safe enough)
The 3 Maxis building props files (All Maxis building props with proper names, bldgprop_vol1, bldgprop_vol2...I don't need any of these at the moment but I don't want to forget to put them back)
The no area 51/afb exclusion mod (I looked at it and it is clean, just changes the exclusion type so they aren't mutually exclusive)
Operahouse fix (stupid bugs)
My own police station fix mod based off (I got the ideas off this thread http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=3809.0 so what I did was adjust the dispatch stuff to match the fire department, and then I also changed the effect at edge of radius to the fire dept 50 as well for good measure)
Peg's Brigantine water mod (because I cannot stomach the default water textures)

I am torn between stripping every nonessential (obviously we need the NAM (well not really, I guess we could just use the traffic sim, but then life without diagonal roads is no life at all...besides is there anyone who does NOT use the NAM?), and a few of the other plugins will make getting the city going much easier and faster) mod out...because that is really the proper way to test things and the fact that I am going to have to play this city for quite some amount of time and it is going to be a total drag to play with all vanilla content. Especially I am a freak for waterfront, I LOVE LOVE LOVE Peg's CDK lots (and most of his lots in general) but most of them are transit switches and so they would add even more work modding them each time (which really doesn't bother me so much) but that also introduces the risk that I will forget somewhere along the line, invalidating the tests (that does bother me much). RTMT once same as above so none of them. SFBT stations...nixed. :( Kevdan restaurants, SGs commercial buildings...would probably be safe but K.I.S.S. Swampers automata and all the GM cars by mikeseith? Probably safe too but not gonna chance it. A bunch of other content I haven't mentioned. (ok enough with the plugs for some but by no means all of my favorite content)

Ok, so this is below. About the map. A blank map is pretty boring. Even if I do some terraforming in game it is going to be boring. Also who the hell plays on a full 4km flat tile? BORING! I want oceans and rivers and mountains! Besides my goal in testing (right now at least) is not to find the limits of the simulators. It is to see how they play in a "typical" map.

I really love the 3RR map. That is some fantastic work. Unfortunately it takes forever to load. And I've got 3 friggin WD raptors in a stripe for f'sakes. Old games running on new computers you make me cry! Oh...sorry...right...3RR...focus...focus.... Not to mention 256 city tiles? I'd rather get a root canal (and I been putting that off for a year). Also at its current scale you really have to play the bulk of the map to get a mix of interesting terrain in each tile. So I need a shrunkdown version of it.  So today while crossreading some posts I find the original 3RR development thread over at Simtropolis and I think we have a weiner! If I can find the original map (going to look for it now) it is just the size and variety of terrain I want. In fact I don't think I could find a map that is more what I want right now if I made it myself. I will also have to go back and read this entire thread because it was really a lot of interesting design theory that Dedgren had going (and well it shows in the final product).

ldog

Ahhh man!  ??? Who renamed my thread?  :'(
::) I suppose I should go read the CoC before I get myself in trouble.

ldog

Ok...so it doesn't look like we are going to find it. And it also isn't quite the original. It looks like it is an intermediary (around page 32). When he took it from being an 8x8 km to a 16x16 km square.
I could pm Dedgren and ask him if he still has it (which I doubt, but no harm in asking I guess) or go to plan B which is export the image out of SC4T, shrink it down in Gimp and run it back through SC4T. I think I will do both.

Lovely conversation I'm having with myself so far. Maybe I shoulda made an MD out of this. Nah. Maybe some other time. I've got enough on my plate right now.

Also this may seem to everyone to be a really unnecessary amount of work just to test out congestion effects of buses. If that were all I was going to do with it, it certainly is.
Fear not gentle reader (all 1 of you...or is that just my reflection?) I plan on testing out much more.

pierreh

The region I currently play with is based on the "Lakelandia" map that I had found on the STEX. It does not have real moutains but the terrain is not flat either, and it has an interesting layout with a great river and various lakes. If you have not found a map to your liking yet, you may give it a look.

ldog

@Douzerouge, Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check it out.

In the meantime I did find an older elevation map Dedgren had put on the Simtropolis forum 3RR CJ.
I think it was probably his earlier draft. Maps also twice the size, and I am finding when you use SC4T to scale down an image the height gets pretty badly messed up.
So it's either wait for response, edit the map I generated which is still a lot less work than making one from scratch, it also affords me the opportunity to "personalize it"
That may be the way I go. I really love the map.

@Jason ok this is really wierd. I put in the new sim. Since I am still getting the map sorted, and after all this reading and posting and thinking and posting some more I needed to get in some kind of playtime so I dropped back into last nights city for a bit (30+ years actually...no wonder I am tired). The city went berserk. Routes starting pingponging for a bit. As I was running in cheetah I got to see "realtime" traffic updates as each cycle it recalculated all the routes. Bus usage also actually dropped to nothing during this time. Population actually started growing for a bit...I don't really know how since I thought the city was stabilized and not going to grow anymore but the pop went up another 40k. Then things got ugly. We got massive abandonment from commute time. And population dropped the extra 40k plus another 20k or so. Of course then I had a fire in a few abandoned buildings that I didn't dispatch to fast enough for the games liking and it also took out the water main running through that block, which also cut off half of the city. One of the lovely things about cheetah speed is that if you don't catch these things very quickly, you get more abandonment YAY! So actually I think that was the extra 20k, because I had to bulldoze quite a few skyscrapers after that happened. I also had to bulldoze a lot of industrial, but this was good since it was all dirty and it got manufacturing to grow in its place. Then it started coming back up to about where it was before and stabilized again. Bus usage is still nil. Like I said earlier I know this isn't a good testbase since it is too small and also simplistic so route options are very limited. I am sharing the results "just for fun".

Anyway, enough for tonight. Tomorrow I'll start fresh. That or I'll upgrade to Windows 7. Been putting it off.

z

This was on a large tile, am I right?  At what population level did you start getting abandonment?  And what was the reason for abandonment?

ldog

#7
Quote from: z on October 25, 2009, 12:57:49 AM
This was on a large tile, am I right?  At what population level did you start getting abandonment?  And what was the reason for abandonment?

Yes, large tile. It was around 160k.
I figure the extra 40k pop that I suddenly gained when I switched simulators abandoned from commute length (although I didn't click and read every single one, they all got no job icons and when I checked them it said due to commute). I think I lost about 20k from the water main break, which is of course no fault of the simulator; just plain bad luck. Those buildings of course went to no water zots and when clicked said abandoned due to water. And all that was different between those 2 versions was that Jason cut the trip start costs in half on both types.

Since then I had been playing on a map I whipped up from an old greyscale of 3RR in its transition period (it resembles its present form but is 4x smaller) but it was a very rough draft. That and no doubt Dedgren's mapmaking skills have increased greatly through the process. Once again though I didn't get very large, maybe about 200k. I purposely made some areas that I knew would have bad congestion and although it doesn't really have anything to do with the testing I was pleased with the results. I had a mix of road, highway, heavy rail, and bus and the sims adapted very well to the situation. The residential area was south of the industrial park, which was on an island with only 3 road bridges and 1 rail. I had the highway running some distance away in kind of a u-shape on both sides of the river around the industrial island. To get to the east bridge, they had to go south to the highway, take it across the river and then back north and there they were doing it.

So still not having heard back from Dedgren I took the full 3RR, exported image and ran it back through in a 1/4 size. Had to do a bit of terraforming, but it is much prettier. It really is too small to do the region justice, but I like it. It also occurred to me that this is even still far more work than I anticipated (you can say I told you so now :P ). It really is very hard to isolate something with so many variables. I also got dreadfully bored (especially with the default seaport and marina, UGH!) so I put most of my plugins back in. I figure since this is really going to take A LOT of time I need to have fun with it or I'll never get it done.

ldog

Nope. I know better ;) Only changed the traffic plugin.
I didn't change anything in that city until well after a decade. Then all I did was bulldoze abandoned buildings for the next 20 years.
Now one thing that I doubt may be a factor but I am not ruling it out, a couple years before I made the switch, I did raise ind-d taxes from 9% to 11% and invoke the clean air act.
Although I was also bulldozing dirtys during that period but manufacturing was immediately growing in its place. I didn't notice any stressed buildings though.
This is of course Fridays city we are talking about. I still have it (different region).

Yesterdays city, I think I put my slope mod back in before I started playing but no other changes. That was built from scratch with the modified A, and yes I did see increased bus use. Also this city had roads and highways, heavy rail, bus. The other city had only roads with bus. Also I'm not sure what the typical playstyle is but I don't make a grid of busstops. I try to lay out semi-realistic "bus lines" as best as the game can accomodate. So along the "route" I want the bus to go I put stations every few blocks. And if you don't live close to the route it is a bit of a hike. Interesting to note "Steve's sims" are very athletic types. They love to walk everywhere. They have no problem walking a long time to take the bus, and they really like the bus. "Your sims" are very lazy. They will only walk a short distance to the bus. Of course this is just a generalization and I am trying to inject a little humor into it. Also as I said I don't see it as a bad thing. While I may be able to walk 3.5 mph (and that's probably stretching the truth  ::) ) there is no way in hell I am going to spend an hour walking to get to work. I think it was Mott who produced the figure that mass transit stations are designed to be a 5 minute walk for the commuter.

Now for todays city, (which I'm about ready to get going) I'm back to screwing around with my own traffic sim (I just can't resist). This is something new though. I reset speeds to defaults. I extended the max commute a bit from A's 17 to 24 so it still follows at least part of A's design philosophy, namely to allow a large tile to be traversed on an avenue. Actually it can almost be done on a road if there is no traffic because of the congestion effects, which is also something I was aiming for. I rescaled the congestion vs speed a bit. What else? Travel percentages tweaked a bit but nothing as extreme as A or Z (one of these days I am going to find time to look at B as well). I doubled stock capacity for road/ave/owr/highway, bumped streets up to 800, but I left the mass transit at defaults. because if I am trying to drive up care use then road cap needs to be higher but the mass transit doesn't (for the moment). I also cut the MT time (I scaled it up some but not to the same ratio, keeping those walks short) Also using the lower ph of .003 . I am sure everything will need to be tweaked some more.

Ahhh work called. I need to VPN into our servers, so my connection will be severed. Had more to say but will have to cut it short (well short for me anyway :P )

ldog

Quote from: jplumbley on October 25, 2009, 11:45:02 AM
My goal with Travel strategies was to put more emphasis on the "best" route.  My low percentages for Car Preferred and MT Preferred compared to No Preference where 70-80% of all Sims are No Preference helps greatly in providing a balance, in my opinion.  But, this is one of those sets of properties that will be greatly effected by your own personal preference and where in the world you live.  In North America, there will no doubt be a higher preference for using cars so many people here will want something with higher car preferences, whereas in Europe the is a greater emphasis on MT and walking, so there will be many people who would like MT preferred.  And then there are places where people have the ability to choose more easily and would have no preference at all.

Actually, that may have had an impact.  Some or much of your I-D may have "abandoned" or atleast reduced in number of jobs provided, and if you were already at such a population where you were close to equalibrium in your population-jobs, it may have caused some of your R$ buildings to go abandoned.  And then when you were replacing the jobs with I-M jobs, the wealth of your City would grow, but your overall density would fall due to the capacity gap between, R$ and R$$.  For example homes would have 4 sims instead of 6 in you new sections and to gain in population you would have to zone more for the higher wealth in your City.  Does that make sense?  You were growing your City in a positive direction from a wealth perspective, but lowering the overall density of it.  R$$ takes up more space than R$, and they pay more taxes for it.  What would really interest me is if you had taken a look at the change in the population demographics and see if there actually was a decline in R$ and a rise in R$$.  I would put money on that there was.

Well that was just great. I love driving into work on my day off for no good reason. I am about ready to "abandon" this job  :angrymore: Don't think it doesn't happen in real life!
It takes me far too many commute time units to get there and the idiots on the road make me nuts.  Hey! &idea Think there's anyway we can model roadrage into the game?  ;)

Oh, it isn't so much personal preference at this point as I want to see closer up the effects of things. Vanilla is the baseline, but as I think we can all agree it is sorely in need of work, so there isn't much point in trying to actually play with it. I am starting to see some of the relationships that you and Steve no doubt see much more clearly and I can see why it is not easy for either of you to just say "oh well X does X and Y does Y and if you change this then you get that" nothing can ever be easy like that. I am sure there are ways to adjust 2 different variables in the simulator and get the same thing to happen or not happen. Not to mention there are ways outside the traffic sim to also make certain things happen or not happen.

As for the abandonment, it was actually just about all of my R$$$ (who lived on the far side of town) and a smattering of R$ and R$$ (I think, y'know I don't tend to notice a lot of R$$, seemed like I had mostly $ and $$$  &ops ) I got a lot of industrial abandonment of both kinds, but I think that was more due to waterloss. The thing is the traffic abandonment happened first and was probably responsible for the fires.

I'm pretty sure I didn't save over that game so I can always run it again from the other night when I changed the traffic sim and I should get the same results. Just have to remember to run with the same plugin loadout I had before.

ldog

For shitsngiggles I went ahead and reran it with my current pet traffic sim. I didn't get the mass abandonment, although I did see buildings periodicly abandoning and rebuilding city pop slowly but steadily grew over 20+ years. The R$ jittered every year, it looked like a sine wave. R$$ slowly went up. Rising education. Bus use was a bit higher, but then they really don't have any choices in how to get around, the whole thing is just a grid, it is all roads. They can walk, drive or take the bus and along pretty much the same routes. I did put Bones1 less abandonment plugin back in though...because the description intrigues me...it isn't supposed to stop abandonment from happening directly; it is supposed to make the buildings need more desireability to develop in the first place so that they are unlikely to be marginal and start flapping. To me it sounds like something that actually makes it a little more work to develop a city; hence a little added challenge and less annoyance. I could be dead wrong of course but that's my take on it. Poking through (and hey these developer exemplars have ALL kinds of interesting values in them...I bet I could completely screw the game up with them...uhhh...  &ops ....I mean highly tune it) all he did was raise the "desireability threshold growth" he didn't touch anything else. If that works the way documentation says it does I would think it is a good thing.

Hey looky looky "traffic effect" and "trip length effect" so we actually CAN modify not just how far they can possibly travel (via max commute time and speed) but also how pissed off they get when they have to travel. I was wondering if it were possible or not. Hrmm...lemme take a stab in the dark here,  traffic effect is the traffic noise value? Oh the fun we can have.

Yeah, I know I am getting completely offtopic; in my own thread no less. So much to see and do in Ilives reader. I think I spend more time with it than the game.

ldog

Quote from: jplumbley on October 25, 2009, 03:09:32 PM
There are a lot of things in the developer files that need fine tuning... In fact Tage (Ripplejet) did a lot of fine tuning with the developer files with the creation of CAM.  If I remember correctly he did use a tuned version of Bones1's abandonment mod as part of the CAM files.  If CAM is good for anything it is the tuned developer files that come with it, and it would be a good idea to have those files installed rather than Bones1's abandonment mod because it deals with a lot more than just the abandonment issues in the game.

I think many people see CAM as only adding the extra stage levels to the game with the taller buildings.... But it is much, much more.  Even if you dont want the extra stage levels (simply dont download the CAM buildings if you dont want them), CAM is still worth all the tuning in the developer files to create a more balanced game.

Oh, good idea. I did actually download it, although I never installed it and I never went through the exemplars (I dove into simple stuff like the traffic sim first ::) )
There are a lot of good things in the CAM, a few simple little mods I made for myself were things that were well enough documented in the CAM to easily do even just starting out. I was just afraid to install the CAM since population density is already too high and the vanilla skyscrapers while they may be to scale still look ridiculously large to me. Reminds me I need to put RJs census repository back in too.

Oh! Now I remember what I wanted to mention before, you know the A&B data plugin does not match your actual capacitys? Or is that another one of those things like the commute time graph that is fudged? I've been going through and adjusting the ltext files when I change things but I don't know if the multiplier in the exemplar needed to be touched or if it should always be accurate. I see that you can change the ranges and steps but I wasn't ready to start tweaking those values as well (I would like to adjust the "steps" to correspond to each % that changes speed/congestion but that is a project for some other time)




z

#12
Quote from: jplumbley on October 25, 2009, 09:22:40 AM
That result really makes no sense at all, considering both changes would actually make it "easier" to find work and allow Sims to travel further.

It makes a lot of sense to me.  The pathfinding heuristic has a HUGE effect on the whole traffic simulation.  To the extent that it's higher than .003, the other properties in the simulator related to pathfinding have less of an effect than you'd otherwise expect, due to the less accurate actions of the pathfinder as a whole.  This is why, for example, the Travel Strategy Percent properties are skewed more toward mass transit than in typical American cities; this is to offset the randomness introduced by higher pathfinding heuristics.  When I set the pathfinding heuristic to .003, I moved those properties to favor cars more, but the net effect was that mass transit usage increased!  This makes sense, because with the exception of buses, mass transit is always significantly faster than cars, and I had eliminated the randomness factor.  I then had to reduce the rail speeds to bring the usage of travel types back into balance.  But if you're not using perfect pathfinding, the changes made to increase bus usage will have a much smaller effect than you would expect for this reason.  And if you do start using perfect pathfinding, there's a whole group of properties that have to be changed to keep everything in balance.

[All further quotes are from ldog.]
QuoteI think it was Mott who produced the figure that mass transit stations are designed to be a 5 minute walk for the commuter.

I think a 10 minute walk is quite realistic; I've certainly done that enough myself.  But for the sake of argument, let's use 5 minutes, and let's use the Simulator A pedestrian speed of 5 kph.  Then using the standard rule of thumb formula (which I first learned from Jason :)), it takes 1/5, or .20 minutes for a pedestrian to traverse one square.  This translates to five squares per minute, or 25 squares in five minutes.  This should be plenty of time to get to a mass transit stop.  The problem here is that in Simulator A, the max commute time one way is 8.5 minutes, and 5 minutes for walking takes too big a chunk out of that.  And if you add another 5 minutes for walking from your destination stop to work, then you've already significantly overshot your max commute time, even without allowing any time for traveling on mass transit.  This is why you don't see pedestrians traveling very far in Simulator A.

The above analysis applies when you're using a perfect pathfinding heuristic; things just get worse when you use a higher heuristic.

QuoteNow for todays city, (which I'm about ready to get going) I'm back to screwing around with my own traffic sim (I just can't resist).

That's fine, but if you want to have a really useful comparison, and one that will help you with your own traffic simulator, you should try building an identical city from scratch using Simulator Z v1.2.

QuoteI rescaled the congestion vs speed a bit.

Be very careful here.  There's really not much room for changing this without creating problems.  For best results, the top speed should be about 1.3, the bottom speed must be 0.3, and there should be exactly six pairs in the table, with no three adjacent points on a straight line.  For the reasoning behind the last two requirements, read Amit Patel's work.

QuoteWhat else?...

Again, it would be very useful to compare your results against those of Simulator Z's.  But I should warn you that a lot these changes are being made without understanding how these properties are linked.  You might get lucky, though... :)

QuoteFor rubbishsngiggles I went ahead and reran it with my current pet traffic sim. I didn't get the mass abandonment, although I did see buildings periodicly abandoning and rebuilding city pop slowly but steadily grew over 20+ years.

I gather that this is with using Perfect Pathfinding, yes?  It sounds to me like you're slowly rebuilding Simulator Z on your own.

QuoteBus use was a bit higher, but then they really don't have any choices in how to get around, the whole thing is just a grid, it is all roads.

Still, just changing to Perfect Pathfinding will increase bus usage.  Otherwise, the Sims can always use cars.

QuoteI did put Bones1 less abandonment plugin back in though...because the description intrigues me...it isn't supposed to stop abandonment from happening directly; it is supposed to make the buildings need more desireability to develop in the first place so that they are unlikely to be marginal and start flapping. To me it sounds like something that actually makes it a little more work to develop a city; hence a little added challenge and less annoyance. I could be dead wrong of course but that's my take on it.

If you're going to do simulator testing that's going to have real meaning, you shouldn't add in extra mods like this.  They really throw in doubt the meaning of much of your results.  Proper testing means limiting the number of variables changed to an absolute minimum.

QuoteHey looky looky "traffic effect" and "trip length effect"...

Where do you find these?  If these are in that mod you're referring to, that's just another reason not to use that mod, as it will definitely interfere with any simulator testing results.

I would also like to strongly second Jason's comments about CAM.  This is a widely-used and well understood mod, and the traffic simulators are designed to work with it.

QuoteOh! Now I remember what I wanted to mention before, you know the A&B data plugin does not match your actual capacitys? Or is that another one of those things like the commute time graph that is fudged?

Could you explain what you mean here?  The capacities as stated in the examplar are what is used.

ldog

Quote from: z on October 25, 2009, 03:50:35 PM
It makes a lot of sense to me.  The pathfinding heuristic has a HUGE effect on the whole traffic simulation.  To the extent that it's higher than .003, the other properties in the simulator related to pathfinding have less of an effect than you'd otherwise expect, due to the less accurate actions of the pathfinder as a whole.  This is why, for example, the Travel Strategy Percent properties are skewed more toward mass transit than in typical American cities; this is to offset the randomness introduced by higher pathfinding heuristics.  When I set the pathfinding heuristic to .003, I moved those properties to favor cars more, but the net effect was that mass transit usage increased!  This makes sense, because with the exception of buses, mass transit is always significantly faster than cars, and I had eliminated the randomness factor.  I then had to reduce the rail speeds to bring the usage of travel types back into balance.  But if you're not using perfect pathfinding, the changes made to increase bus usage will have a much smaller effect than you would expect for this reason.  And if you do start using perfect pathfinding, there's a whole group of properties that have to be changed to keep everything in balance.

The thing is the pathfinding heuristic (and I am gonna call it PH from now on) didn't change from simulator run to simulator run. It was still Sim A, just with the trip starting costs both lowered. His MT starting is still very high compared to default and he is also using the same value for both of those, and the default ratio was also very different  (I forgot what you used in Z but IIRC you still had similar ratios). You understand the implications of that better than I do, so I'm just throwing it out there. It may be really relevant and it may not be.

Quote from: z on October 25, 2009, 03:50:35 PM

[All further quotes are from ldog.]
I think a 10 minute walk is quite realistic; I've certainly done that enough myself.  But for the sake of argument, let's use 5 minutes, and let's use the Simulator A pedestrian speed of 5 kph.  Then using the standard rule of thumb formula (which I first learned from Jason :)), it takes 1/5, or .20 minutes for a pedestrian to traverse one square.  This translates to five squares per minute, or 25 squares in five minutes.  This should be plenty of time to get to a mass transit stop.  The problem here is that in Simulator A, the max commute time one way is 8.5 minutes, and 5 minutes for walking takes too big a chunk out of that.  And if you add another 5 minutes for walking from your destination stop to work, then you've already significantly overshot your max commute time, even without allowing any time for traveling on mass transit.  This is why you don't see pedestrians traveling very far in Simulator A.

The above analysis applies when you're using a perfect pathfinding heuristic; things just get worse when you use a higher heuristic.

Yeah, even 15 would be reasonable. I was just throwing that out there. It doesn't really matter what you choose to use, since too much reality gets in the way and it doesn't fit the mapsize very well. Still, need some kind of frame of reference so we can relate to the real world. I have been trying to stop myself from making those kinds of comparisons once you guys helped me to get my head around some of the finer points of the insanity called the traffic simulator. I didn't expect to see them walking far either. Of course I would think it should take a lot of congested roads to get sims to walk further since fastest route should win out, shouldn't it? Interestingly even though I set my max commute higher (24 vs 17) I expected my sims to walk the same or less than Jasons since I set the speed back to 3.5 but they seem to actually walk (very) slightly more (like a couple tiles in the same city).

Quote from: z on October 25, 2009, 03:50:35 PM
That's fine, but if you want to have a really useful comparison, and one that will help you with your own traffic simulator, you should try building an identical city from scratch using Simulator Z v1.2.

I would but as you pointed out this city is too small. It really wasn't "the test" just some screwing around. The thing I've seen is that Sim Z makes traffic in a city this size pretty irrelevant, even with a poorly designed network. I'm also shifting my testing focus a because of a few things you pointed out. 1 that you really did do a lot of the comparison and 2 Just what am I trying to accomplish? I need to define that more closely because it isn't just a "I'll whip up a testcase and let it run a few hours and see what I get" building it takes a lot more time than running it. 3 I also need to have some fun in between so as to not just burn out and walk away accomplishing nothing. Right now I don't have a city large enough for Z, and the way I keep obliterating and rebuilding them it's going to be a while lol. This was giving general observations about A since it was the first time I had used it.

Quote from: z on October 25, 2009, 03:50:35 PM
Be very careful here.  There's really not much room for changing this without creating problems.  For best results, the top speed should be about 1.3, the bottom speed must be 0.3, and there should be exactly six pairs in the table, with no three adjacent points on a straight line.  For the reasoning behind the last two requirements, read Amit Patel's work.

Great, why weren't you here a few hours ago when I jacked it up to 9 pairs :P
Well at least I did keep top end at 1.3 (was tempted to go for 1.5, in fact I think thats what I was using in my earlier version) but I got the bright idea to set it to .01 at 400% congestion. I guess I should change that. I'll have to check it out, I've seen y'all mention it in other discussions and so it piqued my interest; it's on my todo list (which gets longer by the minute) Until I have time to do so I will defer to your greater knowledge and trust your judgement and tone it down. To be honest I was thinking all those extra pairs I was adding were probably going to just cause the thing to bog down or at best not even have any truely useful effect. I'm making enough trouble for myself right now that I don't need that kind. Especially since it'll probably be the kind that doesn't blow up in my face until a month from now.

Quote from: z on October 25, 2009, 03:50:35 PM
Again, it would be very useful to compare your results against those of Simulator Z's.  But I should warn you that a lot these changes are being made without understanding how these properties are linked.  You might get lucky, though... :)

Not sure what that is in reference to. Probably something stupid I said. That is why I am making these changes though, to learn how they are linked. I bang on stuff til it breaks and then I look at the pieces and try to figure out at what point it broke. As you yourself have said, you can't believe everything the internal documentation says. As far as Prima guides, haven't owned one in a long time. Back in the day, before internet forums and wikis were so prevalent Prima guides were one of your limited options but most of them were decent. As the years have gone by I find them only good for a few things (namely propping up your monitor a few inches or for when you unexpectedly run out of toilet paper). Unfortunately no one has put together a really kickass wiki, or even really good documentation of what does what it says it does, what doesn't, etc, etc.

Quote from: z on October 25, 2009, 03:50:35 PM
I gather that this is with using Perfect Pathfinding, yes?  It sounds to me like you're slowly rebuilding Simulator Z on your own.

Still, just changing to Perfect Pathfinding will increase bus usage.  Otherwise, the Sims can always use cars.

Yes, I am using the "perfect pathfinding"
You know next I'm going to be bugging you to know more about how the PH works :P
&ops You caught on!  :-\ The one thing that I am really having trouble with is if I should call it Z++ or Z.net , what is your opinion?  $%Grinno$%

LOL. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

I want to make something that works differently though. Something more optimized for a smaller region, lower population citys, and very challenging. You made Z for huge regions, high population, and well I am not in a position to judge whether or not it is challenging at those levels but at the scale I am aiming for it hasn't shown itself to be so far. Like I said though, I am not looking to compete with you. It seems most people here like to do CJs/MDs/whatever you call them which are all about large scale recreations and pretty pictures but not really about playing the game. What use is a to scale airport that takes up an entire large city tile when it doesn't work regionally? Don't get me wrong. I love looking at the MD pictures, and even reading some of the storys, especially the ones where they talk about their design theory as they built it. But doing that myself? Nah, not for me. Tomorrow if I'm bored at work I may even take some google map sections of some of the citys I have lived in and put some game overlays on them and show statistics why I think it would be less painful to have my fingernails pulled out one by one than build any of them to scale. And I've lived in some interesting places, NYC, Seattle WA, Charleston SC, St Louis Missery (ok so that last place is not very interesting)

Quote from: z on October 25, 2009, 03:50:35 PM
If you're going to do simulator testing that's going to have real meaning, you shouldn't add in extra mods like this.  They really throw in doubt the meaning of much of your results.  Proper testing means limiting the number of variables changed to an absolute minimum.
I know. And to change them once a test has begun certainly would.  As it stands, I think I said somewhere up there the other day, considering how much time I am going to be stuck looking at this city I might as well play it with a fairly representative set of mods. (Sim)Life without Peg's container port and marina is just not a (Sim)life worth living after all. Still I cannot deny it will skew results somewhat, but like someone (I think you) said, we have finite resources. The next question after a nonbiased test would be, well now how is it gonna work with the mods I actually use. I think so long as I disclose everything used as well as what was done and keep the variables from test to test the same (not change mods between different simulator runs) whatever test results I get are valid. In other words, noone is interested how it works in vanilla, because noone plays vanilla.

Quote from: z on October 25, 2009, 03:50:35 PM
Where do you find these?  If these are in that mod you're referring to, that's just another reason not to use that mod, as it will definitely interfere with any simulator testing results.

I would also like to strongly second Jason's comments about CAM.  This is a widely-used and well understood mod, and the traffic simulators are designed to work with it.

RELAX! You worry too much lol. I was just pointing out that I peeked those values in those exemplars (the developer exemplars), they weren't poked. Bones only changed the 1 variable, which raises the desireability threshold before the particular type will grow. Defaults have the thresholds set to the same values for both growth and decline. I'm no expert but I think that is a bad thing as it would cause flapping. Bones1 set the growth threshold much higher so that something won't evolve and then immediately devolve because the neighborhood is marginal. Jason said that what Ripplejet did for CAM is derived off of said work. Believe me I have had my game screwed up plenty by blindly downloading and installing, if I know how to do anything it is take someones mod and compare it to the original and see what was changed...it is how I have learned.

Quote from: z on October 25, 2009, 03:50:35 PM
Could you explain what you mean here?  The capacities as stated in the examplar are what is used.

The dataview plugin, for A&B, the capacitys in the ltext files (what displays on screen) do not match what is in the traffic simulator exemplar (for A at least). Z's is correct as far as I remember. It is probably only cosmetic, just me nitpicking again...and also finding something else to learn.


z

#14
Quote from: jplumbley on October 25, 2009, 04:17:44 PM
There was no change in the pathfinding heuristic therefore this would have no effect on the actual pathfinding between current Simulator A and the modified Simulator A.  The pathfinding heuristic will have the exact same effect since it was completely unchanged.

I understand; I was trying to explain some of the observed differences between Simulators A and Z.

QuoteIf you read later on, ldog made changes to how he was playing the game which could easily have contributed to his problem with abandonment.

Reading his responses to the point you just made, the wealth levels involved didn't match up, making that seem unlikely.  But there is some room for doubt here, as interactions can get complex.  That's why I encouraged ldog to repeat the entire city with Simulator Z.

QuoteI hope you start taking a step back soon and realize that Simulator A is not as bad as you are so set out to make it.

Please understand that I am not claiming that Simulator A is "bad"; the fact that so many people used it for so long with very few complaints would seem to be evidence enough that it's not.  I'm just trying to see where things can be improved, which is exactly what you did when you built Simulator A. :)

Oh, now a long post from ldog while I'm writing this.  I'll have to get to that later...

ldog

Quote from: z on October 25, 2009, 05:30:20 PM
I understand; I was trying to explain some of the observed differences between Simulators A and Z.

Reading his responses to the point you just made, the wealth levels involved didn't match up, making that seem unlikely.  But there is some room for doubt here, as interactions can get complex.  That's why I encouraged ldog to repeat the entire city with Simulator Z.

Please understand that I am not claiming that Simulator Z is "bad"; the fact that so many people used it for so long with very few complaints would seem to be evidence enough that it's not.  I'm just trying to see where things can be improved, which is exactly what you did when you built Simulator A. :)

Oh, now a long post from ldog while I'm writing this.  I'll have to get to that later...

LOL yeah, we are crossposting each other. Jason slipped that one in while I was writing my latest novella.
The wealth levels probably don't match up because the idiot who stated them (me) honestly wasn't paying close enough attention. I know I am longwinded but you guys really need to read my disclaimers. I didn't consider it a valid test of anything and didn't draw any conclusions from it other than that it was really wierd. As we've all agreed it is really too small and too limited to be vaild for anything. I need to repeat the other night and pay more attention. Fortunately the city is still saved in the same state it was prior and I posted the list of mods I was using at the time otherwise I'd have no clue. So I will rerun it. I will also rerun it with Z so everyone is satisfied, but I can pretty much tell you what is going to happen because it is almost the same as 1 of the 3 citys I originally had in a region I was playing in when I first started using Z. Many people will walk very far. They will also ride the buses. But congestion will be pretty much nonexistant.

I know you two are a bit competitive with each other but this wasn't "the test" it was just a bit of fun and some general observations with a bit of humor injected into them but they weren't valid comparisons to say one was better or not. It was sorta a prereq for me since I played with Z already but had not played with A to get a feel for A. So I know what to expect. Although it does go as proof that I am learning something that I knew to expect certain things by looking at the exemplar before I even fired up the game.

??? :o You claiming that Z is bad? I'd hope not since you wrote Z. Don't ya hate typos...

z

Quote from: ldog on October 25, 2009, 05:54:26 PM
??? :o You claiming that Z is bad? I'd hope not since you wrote Z. Don't ya hate typos...

Oops.  And I even reread that, checking for mistakes.  Sigh...  ::)

Anyway, off to build a couple of new simulators, but I'll be baaaack.  And yes, I realize we haven't got valid comparisons out of these tests, at least so far.  It might be useful if we did at some point, although that's up to you. :)

ldog

Ok, I think I found the answer.

It was in the CAM manual. When Jason started talking about the CAM it of course prompted me to go off and start looking at it.
As I said earlier, the CAM is probably one of the best documented projects here. Very early in my downloading I grabbed it, read through the manual, decided it wasn't for me, but that there was still a lot of good stuff in it. Some of it was well enough documented that with SC4tool and ilives in hand between the 2 programs I was able to figure out exactly what I needed to do to incorporate some of those features that I did want. One of those things was the industrial jobs. (you guys don't know how lucky you are, I just deleted a very large paragraph of unecessary, and probably uninteresting background info :P )

So I have my little mod which adjusts the industrial jobs to CAM specs. Looking at the appendix in the manual manufacturing has far less jobs than dirty. So the answer is: (drumroll please)

I'm pretty sure I did this myself and it should have happened even if I didn't change the traffic sim and it really should happen no matter which traffic sim I use.
Even though I only did a few buildings and then waited for new buildings to grow before I bulldozed more, that made the city unstable. The full effects of my educational system hadn't been reachedyet either. There were also some residential and commercial lots on high density that hadn't hit stage 8 yet.

I played this city for a night, mainly to get a feel for A. Then the next night I was going to start my new big test city based on 3RR map but I decided since this was already built let me drop the sim in and see what it does, especially since I was tired after laying out grids all day with the game paused and I still wasn't even half done. If you will both remember (at the top of the page, many many words from me ago) I thought in that city performance was a lot more interesting, and I was seeing a lot more about how A actually worked.

I also came to the realization that I was going to have to do a much better job building the city to get any kind of meaningful results. It was going to take a lot more time, and having realized that was when I said I needed to start putting plugins that I would normally play with back into the game and start building that city as if I was "just playing the game". It has to have numerous and varied paths, multiple transit options, large population (I think I am quoting you again Steve). I am not by any means giving up but what I anticipated as being something I could do in a few days is more like a few weeks (probably months if I don't stop finding all these distractions) so for me to see it through I will have to enjoy doing it, and of course as my threshold of boredom lowers over time what would have been bearable for a weekend is unbearable for a longer duration, which is what the job requires.

Quote from: z on October 25, 2009, 07:32:11 PM
Oops.  And I even reread that, checking for mistakes.  Sigh...  ::)

Anyway, off to build a couple of new simulators, but I'll be baaaack.  And yes, I realize we haven't got valid comparisons out of these tests, at least so far.  It might be useful if we did at some point, although that's up to you. :)

You snuck in while I was writing again.
New sims? Yay! Are they RTMT type sims? huh? huh? huh?

See above, I'll get there (me and my big mouth)

z

Go check out my thread; they're posted now.

ldog

A European mod. Cool. Not that I would use it cause I'm not well...European, but I was just thinking the other day I bet the Europeans have a totally different take on traffic than we do and I was wondering why they didn't have their own traffic simulator.
And a...a harder Z mod...I feel all warm and fuzzy now. You decided it would be easier to rewrite the traffic plugin than read any more of my never-ending posts?
I'm not giving up that easy! But I will certainly have to try it out. Should be interesting. In a nutshell I guess that is what I've been trying to say; it isn't that your simulator doesn't work well, it works TOO well.
Now you just made more work for me. Yet another simulator to try out.

Ok, that's it I'm off to bed! Before someone else holds up something bright and shiny that catches my interest.