CAM - General Discussions

[RippleJet]

Oh and does all current industry work correctly (Or not??)

Since the industrial stages have more or less been reinvented (Maxis implemented industrial growth stages only for I-D), most industrials should be updated for the CAM.

However, since the occupancies of existing industrial bats in general are rather low, they might actually work pretty well as they are, set into growth stages 1-3.
Eventually you will probably want to replace the old industrial lots with CAMeLots so that the upper stages get more variation.

[dioangel]

wow.. thought were not the only ones having problems with the cam! 

[High5Tower]

A question about page 4 of the manual. It says, for optimum development it is recommended not to leave old stag 8 buildings in your plugins folder. How do I recognize these for removal?  I know your answer to my question is going to be simple and obvious but thats what I am best at missing. At this time I have not started up my new Cam region because of RL commitments but I have all my ducks in a row and am ready to go. I have been looking at the new Cam CJ's and am getting some good ideas of how I want to play the new game.

[RippleJet]

You should use the BSC Cleanitol CAM Remove Lots.
That will remove all existing lots that originally were available as CAMeLots.

Other uploaded CAMeLot sets, eg. Cobb's Updated Residentials include a Cleanitol file for removing all existing lots by Cobb.

If you want to remove those skyscrapers that are not available as CAMeLots yet, you will have to remove them manually yourself.
Or use the Startup Manager to exclude those subfolders you know contain stage 8 skyscrapers.

[High5Tower]

Thank you for your reply but your answer still left me with the same question.  How do I recognize those buildings in my files? For instance how did you recognize the ones in your plugin folder? How are othere people finding and recognizing there old stag 8's? Thank you

[BarbyW]

Technically all growables SHOULD begin with the type, wealth level and stage - for example R$$6 for a level 6 medium wealth residential. Unfortunately not all developers have done that so often is is a case of trial and error to find the buildings. When the CAMeLots were made I just kept the models for those I had made but you would need to check the information provided by the uploader of the original - if any - or the lots in SC4Tool or the Reader. Both of those programs will show the growth stage.

[High5Tower]

Thank you BarbyW I can work with this bit of information and get the job done (slowly) at least now I have a game plan.

[BarbyW]

Basically the lots you need to look for are the skyscrapers as they are very out of line with growth stages. Anything smaller SHOULD be ok - no guarantees though

[High5Tower]

I have looked at my list of skyscrapers and its not going to be too difficult to get the job done. Now what I really want to learn is how to use the new startup manager. This tool I can see is essential for having fun with lots of special  regions and cities. I am trying to figure it out but not getting very far. Is there any special tuturials for this program?  Maybe I should get my son to help me with it. I really want to use that program! Any help from the community on stratup manager would be appreciated. Thank you

[BarbyW]

I can only suggest that you have a look here: http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=121&threadid=70989&enterthread=y&STARTPAGE=5

I am still using v2 of this as I find it suits my purpose so can't help with v3.

[High5Tower]

Thank you BarbyW, I have been following that particulare thread I think my best bet is to get my son involved. I put him on the computer at age 2 and he knows all at age 17. Where did the years go? I noticed the "Lot plop" list does a good job of listing all buildings by there stag size; that was pretty easy. For instance the Cobb 5thAvenue stag 8 pop. is 1064 and the Cobb5th Avenue Camelot stag 9 is 2918. So I guess this stag 8 is ok to keep in the CAM Region?
I listed the wrong stag # its 10 and not 9

[RippleJet]

Thank you BarbyW, I have been following that particulare thread I think my best bet is to get my son involved. I put him on the computer at age 2 and he knows all at age 17.

For instance the Cobb 5thAvenue stag 8 pop. is 1064 and the Cobb5th Avenue Camelot stag 9 is 2918. So I guess this stag 8 is ok to keep in the CAM Region?

As you can see the exsting stage 8 lots has been upgraded, and several properties have been corrected.
The occupancy is only one of them, garbage pollution and water consumption are two other ones that have been corrected.

In every case where there is a newer CAMeLot available, I would recommend deleting the old lot.

And especially (in the case of Cobb), where the new CAMeLots replace the existing lots without assigning new TGI addresses.
If you keep both of them, there would be a conflict and only the one loaded later would be used.

If the old version has already grown in the region, you can still safely replace the lot with the CAMeLot one.
The lot in the game will be replaced by the new one.

[BarbyW]

This applies to the cerulean lots too.

[High5Tower]

Thank you both BarbyW & RippleJet. This little session tonight or is it now morning (Its 5:16 here at Lake Tahoe) has helped clear up some important things for me. Your help is appreciated.

[TheTeaCat]

I have been experimenting with the CAM over the last few days and often the game stalled for want of a better word. Not even ctrl+alt+del worked. A complete reset was required. I figured out what was causing it though.

It only happened in a region  that is being tracked by the BSC regional counter. It didn't matter even if was the very last file to load in its own "zzzzzzz folder" yes that many z's to make sure Once the population reached above 30,000+ it was more likely to happen. If you tracked one city and none else it was a guarantee to happen.

this I did on over 20 attempts with the mod included and 20 without. Each time building the city from scratch
Without the tracker installed in the plugins folder (and its location in the plugins folder didn't matter even if loaded before the cam or not ( this too tested to death ) ) the game runs fine if you are using the cam.

But once you start playing with it and you do use CAM the game would freeze. Has any one else encountered this?



Another thing i noticed was regarding the organisation of your plug ins folder.

Ok i suppose I'm like most of you and rearrange my plugins to suit myself - here's something to note.

I rebuilt my plugins folder over the last couple days and have kept the folder set up the way everything is installed. No moving of anything to a different folder. exactly as the installer do it. verything that came without an installer got its own folder and then placed in a folder marked AAAAA TTC.

I ran the cleanitols as they appeared. and played the game. with cam installed and the
plugins ( 2.6gig with 5092 files in 901 folders)  installed as above the game loaded and played quicker than ever before. 1.5mins to load.  1-1.5 mis city to load. 5 secs for park menu to open.

Moving that perfect plugin folder to the side and playing with my origional folder (same files + everything) organised my way but using all the advice on here and other places and also using a compressed  version the game took longer to load by 2 mins,  cities to open by at least 2 mins and park menu took over 9 secs longer to open.


So I am going to use my new perfect plugin folder and funnily enough it works better and cleanitol but not compressed


Thought you might like to note my observations of the CAM. Overall its a rather large 
and you all deserve a


regards
Derry




TTc

[Pat]

Derry by god i think you gave me an idea of what i can try with my issue. I don't think the
2 relate but I've been having problems again w/CTD's uuuuuugh.. packed vs not packed still
same results CTD. Heres how it plays out game loads great to region any region at that then
i click on a city to start to play OK so far so good.  Then well as if its gonna finally go into the
game it CTD's... 

I tried everything to correct the problem i had finished installing every thing for cam, even the
new CAMelots that was just put out and then thats when it all started... so i tried to restructure
my plugins even more. IE all BSC prop pack's together, BSC textures, essentials, and so forth
grouped everything. still CTD. compressed everything still ctd...

So now with Derry's observations I'm gonna try it his way even though i did clean it all up with
cleanital, but first hand I'm gonna see if i can before reinstalling cam do the restructure to make
sure i have no duplicate file, (see if thats the problem) and install everything one at a time.
not a massive DL and then install too confusing i think that might have been a problem as well. 
I will give an update later on once i gone threw the process and see how it all goes from there - pat

[markham22]

Forgive my ignorance
But is there a special program that is used for creating these CAM lots??
Or do we just use the Maxis PM?
Sorry but I am sure this has been discussed before but I'm just not finding the posts

[BarbyW]

There is a new tool in the making by wouanagaine. We have been using it extensively and are  hoping it will be finished and released soon.

[markham22]

Thank you

[Kitsune]

Colossusal?   My God, I realized tonight, after thinking I'm nearly done installing this huge mod, I still have  135 files (!) left to download. All I gotta say is wow, the impact this is gonna have is huge. And for those wondering, I never really downloaded any buildings before, I was content with the Maxis files. Thats coming back to haunt me now.....