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CAM 2.0 Restart

Started by InvisiChem, December 26, 2015, 02:00:04 PM

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InvisiChem

Hello RJ and any currently active CAM Team members,

I know this is my first post. I have been using the CAM 1.0 for several years and been lurking the forums for just as long. I have utilized z1's CAM Patch file to extensively mod the original CAM. At this point, I have made changes I found through research on the forums and some balancing of the census and workforce tables. RJ, PM me and I will provide you a copy of what I have already done and am continuing to work on. I wish to continue the development of CAM now that it has stalled. Coupled with the NAM, this is my personal favorite expansion to ever be developed. I do wish to bring the CAM back to the forefront of Simcity 4 expansion and gameplay freedom for all.

That being said, I would need two things. First, your permission to continue what I have been doing. Second, after a review by you guys of course, a general release on the LEX with proper credits provided. A copy of the tables or files that were developed for the CAM 2.0 (rural, standard, ultra or skyscraper as they were known, euro). My thoughts here are to combine most of them with a massive change to farming to allow flexibility by play style. Also, make the Euro a different setting to install for those that would like a more European feel. Unfortunately, I cannot think of a way to make American and European styles compatible. The development curves are too far apart.

This list is what I have already done.

  • Started with Z1 patch of CAM 1.0
  • Set tax modifiers vs difficulty to make the game more difficult (Optional Install)
  • Adjusted census tables (also fixes the I-HT Bug)
  • Adjusted the workforce tables (All now add up to 165% and farming has been expanded through the lower educated and middle class).
  • IR CAP Relief added to the Industrial Connections exemplar (Unfortunately, The CRF will no longer be able to correctly report the IR CAP)
  • IR now summed in the industrial totals.
  • IR Cap added to the IR development, removed from other development.
  • Max Simultaneous Build Capacity raised from 20480 to 24576.
  • IR Water Cap set to Stage 1 only.
  • I-HT Demand Range raised from 12000 to 24000
  • Demand graph modified to exist with the demand ranges planned.

Next planned so far:

  • Spread and increase the thresholds for growth stages
  • Farm fields will use water, create a small amount of air pollution.
  • Farms will produce less water pollution
  • Reduce (not remove) the traffic effect on farms
  • Farms will now have Anchor, Mech and Out lots to perform like other industry
  • Neutral Tax vs. Population will change to make the game harder (optional install)
  • Maximum slope of 16,20, 24 vs. density
  • Decrease initial IR CAP from 30000 to similar other industrial levels. Thinking 12000

As I stated, I have done a ton of research of what was already planned. I am confident I can implement most of these changes pretty easily, the difficult part is the complete farm overhaul, which I may put off as a secondary optional install. Utilizing Z1's original patch removes the need to merge the files with simcity1.dat. At least that made this much easier.

I hope to hear from the developers and see if I can do my part to continue this beautiful mod.
Everyone has something to offer, most do not possess the courage to offer it.

vortext

At this moment I'm not sure there even is such a thing as an active CAM team. RJ hasn't been online since January and the same goes for a lot of members who were knowledge on this front. That said, I agree it would really great it the CAM finally got an upgrade, a successor if you will, and applaud your effort!

For one it really is a rather big flaw IR capacity isn't accounted for in Industrial capacity and I for one definitely want to see this rectified. In addition I read somewhere in a private CAM development thread Carl (Lowkee33) actually managed to get proper growth stages for farms - i.e. automatically upgrading like any other growable. I tried briefly to replicate this some time ago but failed. Did you managed to get that working?

At any rate, this has my interest for sure and I'd be more than willing to help out. :)
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

InvisiChem

IR being totaled is working now. I haven't started the IR upgrading yet, but after viewing the structure of the exemplars, I'm pretty sure that by changing the Occupant groups in the building exemplars, possibly the lot exemplars, I can get them to act like all other industry. After I get the main CAM set up to speed I can focus on that part. Once I can get permission and get it more complete, I will most definitely accept your help. Your experience would be invaluable. :)
Everyone has something to offer, most do not possess the courage to offer it.

FrankU

Hi InvisiChem,

Indeed I fear you are the only one working on CAM at the moment. This does not mean your work will be useless. Probably most of us just don't feel like working on it, but an improved version will certainly be welcomed widely.
So, althoug I will probably be of little use, I gladly help you where I can.

mgb204

As has been discussed, development of CAM has been inactive for quite some time. I'm not sure it's realistic to expect any of the original authors to get on board or even give you express permission to continue.

If that doesn't put you off and you are capable of continuing your work, then I'm sure releasing it would not be a problem. Provided you are not merely re-distributing unmodified files you should be OK.

I don't use CAM myself, but I too would offer you any assistance I can with this project. I'm sure such improvements would be a welcome addition for many.

InvisiChem

Frank, thank you for the information and the encouragement. I have been working on this for quite some time already and am glad to have more information on the status of previous members. I am glad to be working on a wonderful mod that really enhances the gameplay for many.

mgb204, thank you as well. The files are being heavily modified. :) For now, I must do some more research on stage tables and get the farms upgrading like other industry.

Thank you guys. The information is invaluable and I have been more than happy to take on this task. The last several months of developing this have reminded me why I originally became a programmer.
Everyone has something to offer, most do not possess the courage to offer it.

FrankU

Hi InvisiChem,

There is one thing that I should tell you: I am working on a fairly large set of farm lots in all CAM stages. It would be interesting for me to know what you are planning to do with the farms and their upgrading capacity. I am not sure I will be fond of that, by the way. I think farmland should look like some kind of mixture of old small and new large industrial looking farms. At least: my RL region does and I'd like my SC4 regions to look like that too. But maybe it could be a feature that can be put on and off?

But anyway: if there are certain prepostitions needed for upgrading farms (like same lot size, to name an obvious one that comes up while writing this) it would be good if I knew a bit more. Maybe we could arrange a nice set of CAM 2 farms together with the release of your Mod.

Frank

InvisiChem

I'm not 100 percent sure on how I am going to make it happen quite yet, but my initial thoughts should not mess with your ideas at all. Minor changes in the occupant group line. I will definitely provide you full details as soon as I get that portion functional. I would be proud to work on some with you.
Everyone has something to offer, most do not possess the courage to offer it.

FrankU

Ha, well,
I'd like to make use of the full advantages you are going to provide! That is something else then worrying if my lots will still be useful.
So what would the use of Anchor, Mech and Out lots mean in farming terms? I have never worried about those industry types of lots: I just made some main ID, IM and I-HT lots, probably the Anchor type then. But what with Mech and Out? Well we'll see!

InvisiChem

All your other industries use three types of lots. The main building is the Anchor lot. Some support buildings, such as chemical tanks are mechanical lots and the rest are out lots. Farms, from what I've seen, are the building and the fields are all out lots. My idea is to change the occupant group slightly to match other styles of industry. So far, the hierarchy of the IR exemplars, all the way up to the Developer exemplars, is almost exactly the same. It's at the lot exemplar and building exemplar level occupant groups I see any changes.

If this does work for me, this will not be difficult to keep all your lots basically the same. Just have to modify the occupant group to match the new style.

I agree, for the first part this would have to be a pluggable and unpluggable extension to the CAM, until more farm lots could be brought into compliance with the new version and to see the reviews on the idea. Not perfectly sure how far I will have to take it, but I'm pretty sure it is not going to be difficult. I've been very lucky so far and had very few failures with my ideas in my personal plugin folder.

Cheers man, develop away. I'll do my best to keep everything compatible with the previous CAM
Everyone has something to offer, most do not possess the courage to offer it.

FrankU

It would be fun if we could release a set of farms that comply to the new standards that are being developed by you. I just might be the guy who feels like making these farms.... Think about it.

Anyway: the Anchor, Mech and Out types. If they are implemented in farms, can I think of Anchors being the farmer's house or main building plus a small yard, then Mech being several different sheds and barns, and Out being the farm fields?
That would require sets of main building lots, sets of shed/barn lots and then the already existing farm field lots. There should be some way to connect certain Mech lots to certain Anchor lots, because I would like to have e.g. traditional barns with traditional main buildings and high tech barns to recent main buildings. Is that possible? I guess by using certain occupant groups?

InvisiChem

That is exactly along my lines of thinking. Still working the core parts of CAM right now. The next couple of days are the main stage tables (Which are massive and require a lot of out growth before up growth :) ) Then, make sure I implemented Z's patch correctly. Right after that, time for some farming modifications. :)
Everyone has something to offer, most do not possess the courage to offer it.

InvisiChem

Just an update on the progress. Got most of the changes completed now. Working on the farming side of things now. Some experimentation to get the results I'm looking for.

Current changes to farming will not cause a need to relot any existing farms. The changes that will effect the growth of farms, are all being developed at the lot and building exemplars, so original and current custom IR content is still fully CAMpatible.

I have implemented an expanded set of stage tables from the CAM 2 tables originally developed by RippleJet and greatly extended and blended by me. It now takes a lot of development to get to the higher stages. This really is expanding the game into a more regional development game.

Since farms are being developed more like normal industry, I have upgraded the number of stages to 10. This should be more than enough stages for even the most creative farming ideas. Yes, reality states there are no farm skyscrapers, but the future creativity could bring about changes in the future. Plus, having these extra stages should give developers greater possibilities for large greenhouses and current corporate mega farms.

Thinking about expanding other industries to stage 13 to handle the larger capacities that don't fit in some current IHT lots. This also provides developers to create larger ID and IM buildings to match the current focus on IHT.

I felt, like RJ in the past, the workforce tables made things too easy in cam, so the values have actually been reduced to balance the drives. I'm still tooling the farming side of the workforce tables though. It should be the more people, the greater the need for farms region wide. People have to eat.

This is not all the changes, but a good overview of what I'm working on. I am still dedicated and look forward to a great addition. Cheers everyone.
Everyone has something to offer, most do not possess the courage to offer it.

CasperVg

Seems like a pretty good set of changes. I'm wondering if it would be possible to eliminate/reduce the effect that high levels of education have on agricultural desirability. It seems that every time I start building some schools, my IR desirability drops to 0 after some time. I find that quite annoying, and fairly unrealistic. It's not like the Midwest has no educated people, right?
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InvisiChem

QuoteIt's not like the Midwest has no educated people, right?

Very true. I consider myself pretty sharp, but those guys know their farming technology enough to make me feel foolish lol.

QuoteI'm wondering if it would be possible to eliminate/reduce the effect that high levels of education have on agricultural desirability. It seems that every time I start building some schools, my IR desirability drops to 0 after some time

A big pet peeve of mine as well. I remember I edited the spam for myself a few years ago to solve this problem. I kind of considered it cheating, as I completely removed the effect completely. This is done through the workforce EQ tables. I will definitely implement it, very simple. I would like some input on whether there should be a slowdown on drive with $$$ EQ3 and EQ4 sims to keep the city moving towards more commercial or allow the simulation to utilize both?

Everyone has something to offer, most do not possess the courage to offer it.

InvisiChem

Quick update before work.

Farming is  beginning to grow like other industry. Strangely, farm fields are the only things growing currently. IR does not like the Industry:Anchor setting. Have to work on this some more.
Everyone has something to offer, most do not possess the courage to offer it.

vortext

Oh this is so exciting!!!  &hlp &hlp

Really looking forward to the day farms upgrade stages on their own! Keep up the great work!  :thumbsup:
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

owlsinger

I find this exciting as well......I love CAM, and would love developing CAM farm communities!

Thank you for your work on this!
'Luminous beings are we..'  - Yoda

'Hints of Gold'
by Jasmine Becket-Griffith

FrankU

Yes, this is really great!  &hlp  :bnn:

InvisiChem

#19
Update:

IR drives updated so education should not effect the demand as much. $$$EQ4 still does not like farms. All others will provide a pretty big push toward farming. One should not run out of demand for farming now. :)


After spending the last quite a while trying to get Dirty industry to grow on IR zoning, I have determined IR zoning is not just a light density version of all industrial zoning. This does bring about some problems with my ideas. Not all is lost though.

I will maintain the current standards I have implemented with IR - It is now part of the industrial connections, summed in the totals, drives residential the same as all other industry now. The CAP has been taken out of all other development and added to IR development, but is now relieved by the normal industrial connections. Unfortunately, there is no game variable to report IR CAP, so the CRF cannot currently report current IR CAP status correctly. Some cleanup work to do to finish what I will call a depricated version of farming, such as changed field pollution settings and workers. Currently, the query on farm fields is working and reporting correctly. I'm adjusting the values of field workers to match those provided by medium density dirty and/or manufacturing Mech and Out industries. This should make current farms more viable to the game.

Now, what I am proposing will be a plugin to the new CAM. I will only have 2 densities of industrial to work with, so I am going to get a little creative with my OG's and Purpose types. This will let me get a standard version out faster to get rid of the annoying patching of the simcity_1.dat file. Current tools are not necessarily compatible with newer versions of windows, so this is a necessary patch to keep the CAM alive and well. All of my proposals will keep current CAM buildings valid, and only make some incompatible if the plugin is installed (I.E. Twrecks IRM CAM version, and many medium density Industrials). This should be an easy fix, but I cannot be sure until I get into the nuts and bolts of the plugin.

For now, time to do some cleanup on a basic version, get this thing tested, and work on a release candidate quickly.

Note: There does appear to be a bug with some of the changes I have implemented. A good bug, and one I want to dig into once I complete the plugin. Current changes have caused Farms to automatically upgrade on some machines or versions. Since this is a positive bug outcome, I do not want to correct the bug. 
Everyone has something to offer, most do not possess the courage to offer it.