Sorry for the thread but I'm kindof lost with SC4

[Lach77]

Hey firstly sorry that I'm making this thread but I feel like I need some advice.

I got back into Sim City 4 Deluxe in 2010 and discovered the huge world of modding. I had a vision to build a large region with a big metropolis, sprawling suburbia with vast agricultural and industrial districts with lots of monuments and eye candy to gaze at. Some time back I even started a mayor diary which can be found here for those that want to see my work.
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=15384.0

Personally I'm continually amazed by what people in the community keep producing. The work that has gone into the BATs, the NAM etc and seeing members like Maarten use these tools to make amazing cities is very inspiring.
Here's a couple pics of things I worked on to show where I was up to



One of my crazier creations was this, ugly I know and not very practical but interesting


But the problem I've found maybe it's got something to do with my plugins folder bursting past 1.7Gigs but the performance of SC4 for me has become terrible. My cities often take a full minute to load into, stability is poor and it seemed to get worse once I installed the newer NAM packs (I think the latest one help things a lot but I'm not sure right now). My PC isn't bad either, I run an E8500 dual core cpu at 3.16GHz with 4G RAM

The infinite commuter  loop is frustrating and then there's another bug on my main zone that if I try and put anything for example a road down on several bugged tiles I get an instant CTD. And this is right in the path of one the freeways I want to build. I like the new NAM and its heading in a good direction but I often spend hours just trying to get a decent looking functional freeway running around my metropolitan areas and I'm having trouble with the motivation to do that.

My main city largely looks like a mess and I took to trying to demolish and rebuild it but with the slow performance it really has turned into a chore more than a hobby.

Currently my main zone looks like this.




As you can see from the 2nd picture I got a lot of the roads down and I really love the new RHW bridges but I never feel completely satisfied that I have it right. Haha I guess I'm too much of a perfectionist. Part of my problem is i've tried too hard to squash too much into too small a space.

Also there's a lot of tricks out there that I want to use for example the diagonal bridges and the 3 lane tunnels but often they're often very tricky to implement and take a lot of extra reading. I wish that the game developers didn't dump Sim city 4 so early and had hardcoded some of these things in as well as fixed the bugs.


So I guess that leaves me with 3 choices
I can either
1) continue trying to fix the current region but with the poor performance etc its really become to hard to do that
2) Just delete and start over again from scratch. This would require having to spend countless hours downloading mod packs again etc as well as terraforming a new region, and I don't even know what causes the bugged tiles that cause a CTD. I don't think I have the patience to build a whole new region again.
3)Quit SC4 for now and maybe pick it up in future when things like the NAM, RHW and RRW become more developed.

Don't get me wrong I love Sim City 4 and I've had a lot of fun building a region but its just the poor performance and bugginess just saps any fun for me. Does anyone have any thoughts on how to deal with this?

I resized your pics, max size is 1024 pix wide please - Robin.

[thebagleboy]

Well first thing; I feel I should compliment your second image. It looks really nice and inspired a design for one of my cities.
But more to the point here, if you are getting frequent CTDs then it might be caused from a rapid zoom out/in or you might be hovering a transit enables lot over another transit enabled lot. Unfortunately both of these things are known to cause CTDs and to the best of my knowledge there is no solution to this as of yet. The best thing to do is to save regularly.
I am currently starting from scratch and re-downloading my plugin collection so I know just how long and tedious it can be. It's also very fun going through the vast libraries of plugins that have been made over the years. This will defiantly speed up your game experience though. It's also a good opportunity to remove buildings that you no longer use or reduce the amount of plopables found in your landmarks. If you do decide to start from scratch, make a backup of your region & plugin folders so if you ever change your mind you don't loose anything.
Defiantly don't quit if your having fun though

[art128]

1.7GB of plugins is almost nothing. For comparison, I've got 7GB of plugins.

As Simcity4 is an old game, sometime you just can't guess how it'll react. For Example the game is very very laggy on my new CPU (FX 8350) with the shadows on, but worked really well with the shadows turned on on my previous CPU (E5300). It may be the case here, who knows.  This link will help to completely turn off the shadows, try it. If it doesn't lag anymore, good. If it does, it means the problem comes from somewhere else.

Do a backup of your plugins. You don't have a massive amount but it still is annoying to go and download everything again. One thing you can do is clean the NAM and install it again to make sure you have a clean installation of the NAM.

[APSMS]

Firstly, like art128 said, 1.7gb isn't a lot. In fact, it's precisely the reason why it takes over a minute to load up a city tile (which isn't a long time--sometimes it can take me up to five, and I've got a better computer); secondly, it could be shadows or some other related graphics properties that are causing lag in the game. Crashes are hard to prevent other than with very frequent saves, but lag can be amended.

If you have a graphics card, try going into the settings and adjusting your AA settings and pre-rendering. Sometimes increasing certain settings actually makes the game run faster rather than slower (strange, I know). Like art128, I noticed that the game ran better on my Intel Pentium powered laptop (top speed 2ghz, pushing 6 years old now) than it does on my new i7 laptop that actually has a discreet graphics card (as opposed to the CPU graphics chipset on my old laptop).

So, definitely try a fresh NAM install, check out your graphics options (with your card if you have one, or with the graphics rules if you don't--or both) and try DATpacker for all your plugins and see if that doesn't help stabilize things.

The zoom crash bug and the TE-lot/puzzle piece crash unfortunately have no fix.

[noahclem]

Great pictures and networks    Do those overpasses in the 3rd picture work? Last time I tried that I was disappointed to find traffic wouldn't connect between those lots and puzzle piece overpasses     As you touched upon, SimCity 4 really wasn't designed either for the amount of plugins people often run or more importantly for the level of transit complexity now available through the NAM and both problems can lead to major frustrations playing. If it's an option I'd suggest getting an SSD--it makes an absolutely massive difference in loading times. Large plugins folder will slow you down but I'd call 1.7GB on the small end of things--I run around 3GB in Siilijoki and around 5GB in NORO, both with more or less maximum NAM options, and know of people that play with plugins folders much larger.

You've got a lot of neat stuff from the look of it so I can imagine you being reluctant to start over. My biggest recommendation is that if you do start over keep backups of your old stuff and be very careful building and managing your plugins to avoid errors. The last thing you want to do is start fresh only to find you need a fresh start not long after.

[Simcoug]

...then there's another bug on my main zone that if I try and put anything for example a road down on several bugged tiles I get an instant CTD.

A similar problem happened to me a little while ago, which was the result of using an MMP in the city, and then removing the MMP file from my plugins without first bulldozing said MMP.  It appeared that the MMP had disappeared from the city, but whenever there was any elevation change to the affected tile (dragging roads around it, for example), it would generate an instant CTD. The only solution was to add back the MMP file and then bulldoze it from the city (at which point you can then remove the MMP file, as long as all instances of the MMP are removed from your region). 
It may not be the problem in your case, but your symptoms sounded similar to what I experienced.

[cmdp123789]

I want to know how is it possible to make those overpasses next to a tunnel, making the wall without occupying an extra tile.. WOW  I do know those are like the basic restraining walls... but how?

[noahclem]

Just to add something to what Simcoug mentioned: removing things other than MMPs with out removing all instances of them in your cities also causes errors. This is particularly dangerous with growable lots as you won't be able to remember where you put them all because they put themselves there. The best way to avoid problems with that is not to install lots/buildings you're not going to like and just as importantly, to only install properly modded lots that won't grow like weeds everywhere. If you make a mistake and install a growable you don't like or that grows too much the best way to fix the problem is the increase the grow stage in reader to something impossible to grow.

[Lach77]

Thanks for the kind feedback guys. I need to go through and digest some of these things you mentioned a bit more slowly and see if they make a difference to performance. I've not really heard of SSDs before and killing shadows might make quite a difference. That might partly explain why the bigger zones tend to perform worst. But I think I still may still need to start over again. I think I have a better idea of what mods and BATS to stick with now though. The quality of material is much better than what was around in 2004-5 and I probably need to stick with the newer things.

Thanks bagleboy, the inspiration came from Sydney's Eastern Distributor Motorway. I have more pics of that on the thread I linked above.

cmdp123789 - they can be found here.
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1178

They take a bit of work getting used to them but they are fantastic if you use lots of tunnels and want your cities to have a more denser feel. 2 Things though. I haven't found a way to connect them together that functions correctly so if you want to join 2 you'll probably need a puzzle piece in between. Secondly I don't think sims can access these roads by adjacent lots but if you first zone land facing the MTEL then build a street behind the zone you will see traffic will successfully connect to the zone.



To answer your question Noahclem. Firstly my apologies that 3rd picture is a bugged network - . Below is what happens if you join it up. Notice how the North-bound traffic on the overpass is doing a 15m plunge to go left?


So the solution is to have a 1 tile elevated OWR puzzle piece between the crossing. This can all be done with viaducts of course but personally I prefer the look of MTEL lots, even if they take a bit more work to get right. Keep in my mind also that these are just concept pictures so they just demonstrate that the traffic works. I haven't incorporated anything like this into my cities yet. But it's not a bad concept for a compact 3 stack intersection.





Also while on the subject of retaining walls and embankments this is something else I've had sitting around for a while that hasn't made it past concept stage. And sorry about the yellow borders. We have lots of complex junctions like this in Sydney with cramped roads and intersections built on top of railways lines.