I'm kinda curious as to if anyone here has thought of doing an exe replacement for sc4. Of course the primary goals would be able to use sc4 data files but be a brand new exe that is community driven and can be enhanced with any 'additional' content and or options that may be needed.
There is some serious talent here and i think its more then doable. I myself have over 35 years of programing experience but lack the understanding of how the internals of the game works.
Any thoughts?
The problem is that one does not simply build a new SimCity4. The coding is just way too complex to do that, or they can even break the game. Heck, we don't even know how the great majority, if not, all of the code works....
It seems to me that most aspects are understood by various people. Correct me if i'm wrong but people have written traffic simulators that mimic sc4's internal traffic, thus thats one area thats understood. I've also seen CAM that means people understands the growth, and how it occurs, including desirability, caps, ect.
The rest seems to be mostly about statistical data and probabilities, water, trash, and power seem fully understood. What isn't understood?
Modding is a totally different field that programming. We understand the game, but most of us don't understand the code.
Hi Guys
Sorry I'm putting on my moderator hat and locking this topic, back when SimCity 4 came out and we were given the keys to add to and mod SimCity 4, one of the things that we promised as a community was the EXE wasn't to be touched, and that includes replacing it.
And I know some of you have joined the community long after that agreement, and also most of the people that were around then have long since moved on to other things, but that doesn't change the fact that one of the founding principles of this site was the EXE is untouchable.
-catty (Global Moderator)
After some discussion among the staff over the past few days, this thread has been relocated to Other Games and unlocked.
-Tarkus (Admin)
Very nice, I want to thank the admins for giving me a chance to discuses this with SC4D users, and its my hopes that we can all come together, share our ideas, goals, and whatnot and create a new executable, one that will enable us to do everything we would like to do in SC4 now only perhaps a little bit better.
Over the past few weeks i've been very busy banging out code to create a crude but ever evolving simulation. At first it was just to see if i could mimic what was going on inside the exe, but slowly things have been changing, evolving, I found myself with others input, shaping the simulation to have different ground rules than what SC4 has right now. Things slowly started tieing together.
As its very late for me, I'd like to officially state that i am with YOUR help going to create a new executable, that will somewhat use SC4 data files, to create a 'different' simulation. What this will encompass, is totally up to us, I will take all the feedback, and support I can and tie it in where possible.
I've been made aware that others have tried, and fell to real life issues, and rest assured as long as support, and encouragement is present within the project i'm not going anywhere. This is not the first major project i've taking on in respects to older games, and probably won't be the last. All I ask is for your support, and input.
Tomorrow i will detail what I have done in respects to new zoning for the three types and detail how they are tied to each other. I'll also list all ideas, concepts and goals of the project in detail, as well I'll detail exactly what area i'm working on at the moment. I realize that many of you feel a project like this is a massive undertaking that should take years, but thats not the case, trust me developer tools have come ALONG ways since SC4 time, and you guys have done a good 70+ percent of the work for me via your game units. I'm hoping for a early primitive beta release in about 2 to 4 weeks, with simple 'sticking' support, and thou i've never been great with release schedules i'll do my best.
I will try to answer as many questions as I can, however right now this isn't about me answering questions, but more so picking your brains to see what ideas you all have kicking around that you have always wanted to see in SC4 but just was no way to implement it.
Once again thank you SC4D for giving me the chance, I won't let you down.
++Cire
Hi Cire360
If you haven't already done so I would suggest you spend some time over at the old "CityMania - Open Source Sim City " project here on this site
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?board=365.0
it pretty much covers everything we as a community wanted in a simcity replacement
-catty
It's clear to me that you don't promise us anything except your perseverance in trying to finish this job, otherwise I'd have said: this sounds like a very good promise! &apls
I don't even know how to write the word exe, so I cannot help in that respect, but I will surely follow your project as far as I can. And maybe I will be of some help now and then.
Greetings
Frank
Sweet thanks catty, I took a glancing look at a few of the threads there, and am pleased to report that I have some of those ideas already in play.
The exception to the rule is curvy roads, as I'm just not sure how to go abouts handling them. Its not a matter of actually coding or displaying a curvy road its more a matter of, whats touching them as well as intersections that connect to a curvy road while in the middle of a curve.
Another user suggested a new 'lane' road, Think of a lane as a one way road, with only one lane, there would be2 lane road, which would be identical to a one way road, as well as a 3 and 4 lane road. The beauty of this system is that they will 'combine', to form super roads, ie placing a 4 lane road, in one tile and on the next tile placing a 2 lane, would combine to form a 6 lane road. If a options were created, ie dividers, sidewalks ect, this would allow some pretty amazing results i think. I still need to give this some thought but I think it would scale, and work well. Especially since I allow users to set 'speed limits' on roads. (more on this later). This could be applied to highways as well.
As I mentioned in my previous post i already have the basic simulation running. I decided to work primarily with the simulation first, by using a simple console application I can simulate construction via console commands, and view simulation results without a GUI getting in the way of debugging. Though very clunky, bloated and crude I have the simulation running, and working well. Including zoning and growth of res, com, and ind, with primitive traffic and garbage simulation in place as well.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So without further a due i'm going to discuss whats going to be different over sc4.
The first thing you are going to notice is that you will no longer be responsible for multiple cities. There is no 'region' anymore per say, instead you will be working with the entire city, of whatever size you want, limited only by the amount of memory and speed of a users computer. The format of the map I finished last night, it will be based off a greyscale image, which is more or less a height-map, white (255) being the highest point, and black being perhaps 25 feet below sea level, giving maps a high different of something like 200 feet, which seems reasonable. This allows slopes of 1 foot, which should be subtle enough. Each pixel in the hight-map will be 1 tile on the map, the size of the map again is limited only by the speed, and memory of a users computer. I'm going to include 4 different types of textures for different types of maps including, desert, green, rocky, and northern. I'am also hoping to implement various weather effects, which each type of map. Creators of maps should be able to set the weather types and control the frequency off, which will include fog, sunny, rain and snow.
When working on your city you will not be editing the entire city, instead you will be working on a smaller section of the city, but any changes taking place within the area you are working on may effect the entire city depending on what you do. Think of this as zooming in on a large image, and editing that area, you are still effecting the entire image, but working on a smaller portion of it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zoning changes:
Zoning will change considerably in this new exe. When you lay-down a new zone you will have the 30 seconds to 'alter' the zone, If you don't alter the zone the game will develop the zone naturally, the type that develops will be based on the environment that is in its nearby surroundings. One MUST take great care with these types of zones, because as the environment changes, the zone may change from $ to $$$, when this happens all current $ RES are evicted, if they can not find new $ housing they will become homeless within your city. This will have a negative effect on the area they occupy, which could cause that new $$$ residence that just grew to change to $$, and from there it could spiral outa control. $ Citizens are the only ones who can become homeless. If no housing exists for $$$ they will drop in wealth level to $$, if no housing exists for $$ they will change to $, and finally to homeless. New homeless shelters will retrain and get homeless people off the streets. (Civic building) As the mayor you will be able to 'limit' new citizens arriving into your city by limiting incoming population. However this will NOT effect sims who are currently residing in your city from breeding.
Otherwise regardless to what type of zone you are placing be it RES, COM or IND you will have 30 seconds to specify and 'lock' the zone'. What this means is suppose I lay down a 4x4 tile of RES. For 30 seconds the game will not develop on it, waiting for me to 'specify' further details on the zone. Clicking on the zone once will cause the timer to reset giving me 30 more seconds to make further changes, You will now see a signal '$' placed over the zone, meaning that it has been locked to 'low wealth' development only, and will NOT change regardless what changes i make to the environment. Click on the zone again and it will place a '$$' on the zone, reset the timer, and its now locked to 'medium wealth residential', Another click and it changes to '$$$', finally 1 more click will remove specific type of zone and develop it naturally. For commercial and industrial, one can 'right' click to change the type, in case of commercial 'co/cs', industrial 'f/d/m/h', note that for industrial wealth level will effect its volume.
unhappy sims:
===========
Unhappy sims will cause crime to rise in your city, will have a negative effect in the area they reside, and may cause in them to move away.
RES Zones:
For RES to grow and develop you MUST meet certain demands, that are different for each wealth level. All RES sims require 4 basic needs, food (which they get from commercial services), water, power, and a job.
$, or low wealth Citizens will complain, and not be happy until they receive elementary school education. These citizens will tolerate traffic noise, and high levels of pollution, will use whatever means of transportation available to them, will not complain about heavy traffic and commute times. Will require commercial services at least 100 tiles from thier home. Will be happy if given standard television, and phone services ( new civic utilities).
$$ wealth Citizens, require elementary and will not be happy until they receive a high school education. These citizens will tolerate upto medium levels of traffic noise, and medium levels of pollution. They will use all means of mass transit transportation, whatever gets them there the fastest. Thier job can be no more then 400 tiles away. If thier job takes more then 1h to get to they will become upset and attempt to move closer. They require commercial services as well as commercial office at least 100 tiles from thier home. They require standard civic services television, phone, and will be happy with internet service, as well as cell phone services (new civic). They must have fire coverage.
$$$ wealth citizens require high school education, and will not be happy until both a collage is located at least 100 tiles from thier homes, and a university is located within the city. They tolerate only low levels of traffic noise, and pollution. They will NOT use mass transit at all. Thier job can be no more then 200 tiles away. They require commercial services and offices nearby at least 50 tiles. They require all standard civic services including television, phone, internet and cell phone carriers. They must have fire and police coverage, with max funding.
Unemployment: Any $ wealth citizen can remain unemployed and will be a drain on your cashflow, $$ classed citizens will remain unemployed for upto 6 months, and then move out of the city, $$$ citizens without a job will move after 1 month of not having a job. $$ will take $ jobs if no $$ jobs exists. $$ which takes $ jobs which remain employed with a $ job will change to $ wealth citizens and move into a $ wealth house after 1 year. $$ changing into $ wealth citizens with a job will evict $ with no job and create homeless people if no housing exists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COM development:
Like RES, COM needs to have a number of basic needs meet before growth and development takes place, thier basic needs are water, power, CS needs goods, CO produces office services, (more on goods/services in a bit), as well COM needs a workforce.
Commercial Services as mentioned needs a workforce, the workforce will consists of number of workers depending on the type of wealth level the zone has been created for. However most commercial will employ a number of each type of residential wealth level. Commercial services, provide goods to residential, these come primarily from industrial, but also can be acquired from trade( more on this later).
Commercial offices run industrial, and provide key commercial office to the public, such as lawyers, doctor offices, public works, ect. A city will need to meet commercial office demands, which will grow based on residential, commercial services and industrial sizes. There are high paying wealth jobs located in this sector.
Commercial services is influenced by high volume traffic areas, they prefer high volume areas, which depending on the wealth level is relatively pollution clear, as well as good police and fire coverage. Commercial is also influenced by landmarks, and also trucking distance from industrial, farms, ports, warehouses, with a commercial office being nearby.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IND development.
All industrial zones require power and water (Except farming which can produce its own water). They all require a workforce, which is made up of mostly $ level, except high tech which mostly consists of $$ or $$$ wealth sims.
Farming will be needed, and will produce food, which will be sold to consumers via commercial services, you will need to carefully balance farming in this game revision, as residential zones will require a certain amount of food, the bigger the zone and density, the more food that will be required.
Dirty industrial processes raw materials into materials. These are the heavy pollution hitters in your city.
The materials created by dirty industrial are then sold and shiped to either manufacturing buildings, or warehouses. Manufacturing in turn takes materials and produces consumer goods, which are sold to consumers via commercial services. Manufacturing does produce pollution but on a much smaller scale then dirty industrial.
Finally high tech produces high end goods, but requires materials from dirty industrial, and produces very little pollution.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trading:
Once a city establishes either a rail connection with the edge of the map, a seaport, or an airport, they will be able to open up trade negotiations with simcentral, and exchange one service for another. For example I could have extra 'co offices' in my city and trade additional office services for food, materials or goods. When trading one must have adequate warehouse storage, trades work on a 1 month supply.
Warehouses:
Each factory, and farm, will be able to store a number of produced goods based on its size, trucks will then ship these to warehouses, warehouses then will ship these to the correct destinations. Placement of warehouses is key to growth. If there is not enough storage the goods will be 'trashed'.
Police and fire protection changes:
Police and fire stations will now have three distinct rings that encircle the station in question, The first inner circle is green, and represents maximum response time and effectiveness. The next color past the green is yellow and is known as a medium response time and effectiveness. The final circle is red in color and represents its maximum range, where response and effectiveness is at its lowest. Alerts that happen within the green zone means that response is quick arriving moments after an incident occurs, within the yellow means some 10 to 15 mins may have passed before the response time arrives, and within the red is 20+ mins before they can arrive. Anything outside the red zone will be ignored.
Parks:
Parks will now absorb a certain amount of noise pollution.
Accidents:
The traffic simulation, allows users to 'set' speed limits on roads, depending on a number of factors accidents will happen, on slower roads, they will be minor bumper skirmishes and will delay traffic by approximately 10 to 15 mins, High speed crashes can delay traffic by more then 2h.
Unit LUA expansion:
I'll be adding LUA support for all custom units, units will be able to 'interface', with the game and query and adjust in game data at any given time. This should allow users who create units, much more diversity over what they can do now, for example, this means that those who created for example a house bat, could in thoery query in game time/date, and adjust thier unit to 'put up Christmas lights', or maybe put out Halloween directions. They will be able to query the type of map, and adjust props as needed. Another idea one might have is to be able to create a building that 'creates' power during the day via solar panels, but drains power at night, ect.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some users have requested that I add 'sewage' simulator to the system as well, I'm a bit worried about this as I understand that many don't like laying water pipes, and adding a new pipe to the mix may turn many off.
However one user mentioned creating a new type of 'utility line' where one could connect power, water and sewage lines to this utility line and then use the utility line where needed. Perhaps voting on this at a later time.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pollution :
It now makes your sims sick, sick sims can't work, or purchase any commercial services, and will require medical attention. Were sorry to report that your city has medicare, and that you will need to pay the doctor bills of your sicks sims.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I apologize about the length of this post, but needed to put forth most of the ideas, for the game on the table. Many parts of this are already in play, albeit not many units in the game, and with no GUI. I hope i didn't forget anything.
Any comments, suggestions and ideas are welcome.
P.S. I am not solely responsible for these ideas, many of them are from other users on different forums, I am keeping a 'contrib.txt' within the project which will give everyone thier proper kudos.
This sounds very interesting!
However it's a lot of info to take in at once so only two questions for now. First what stood out to me is the regional aspect.
You say 1 pixel in the 'heightmap' corresponds to 1 tile in the region and/or city. So how big is this one tile? Also with simcity, I prefer to play 16 small tiles as opposed to 4 large tiles precisly because of computing power, or the lack thereoff. When you say there aren't going to be any citytiles that actually seems a disadvantage. Because as I read it, it won't be possible anymore to divide a region and/or city into manageable chuncks.
Now lets see if I got the big picture. You're in the proces of creating a brand new executable file with altered rci and traffic simulation which will tie into the already existing custom content and GUI?
Yes? No? Somewhat on target?
Anyhow, looking forward to learn more.
1 tile is the same as it is in SC4, where its one unit. If your hight-map was 20,000x20,000 pixels, then your city size would have 20,000 by 20,000 tiles in it. Think entire region in this aspect.
Now based on your configuration settings as you move your mouse over this map you'll see an outline of the area your going to be editing or working with, this can be any size you want, so if in SC4 you like to work with smaller cities, then you'd set your editing zone to something like maybe 160x160 tiles. And your are correct there is no region anymore, its one massive city which you edit at any given location you wish, effectively altering the city on a global scale.
This allows you to per say place a hospital at the corner of the area your working on, and that the hospital coverage extents into the neighboring area even thou you can't at this point in time see it.
Right now my simulation is running on a 200,000 by 200,000 grid, and is populated by more then 6million sims, and using up a total cpu power of 35%, which I might add is bloated and not optimized and in DEBUG mode. You have to remember that SC4 was written almost a decade ago, if it was to be recompiled today in a modern compiler, with slight tweaks to allow it to work with multi-core cpus, and hyper-threading models, it would run sooooooooooo much more efficient then it currently does.
As for tieing in the GUI, no, a new GUI has to be created, and all existing custom content obviously will not all work, I won't really know what will and won't work until I start importing but for the most part models and properties there off should be readable by the new application.
Hope this clears things up.
Quote from: Cire360 on July 04, 2012, 01:56:19 PM
Unit LUA expansion:
I'll be adding LUA support for all custom units, units will be able to 'interface', with the game and query and adjust in game data at any given time. This should allow users who create units, much more diversity over what they can do now, for example, this means that those who created for example a house bat, could in thoery query in game time/date, and adjust thier unit to 'put up Christmas lights', or maybe put out Halloween directions. They will be able to query the type of map, and adjust props as needed. Another idea one might have is to be able to create a building that 'creates' power during the day via solar panels, but drains power at night, ect.
&apls I must say I am very impressed considering what you posted yesterday on another forum ...
Quote
quote name='Cire360' timestamp='1341352561' post='1259949'
Does anyone have a list of functions that SC4 calls in LUA scripts? .........
I'm just curious as to what type of LUA support SC4 has. Is there a set of function callbacks that SC4 supports into LUA and visa versa.Thanks in advance.
Really develop this feature with which you did not count that fast and that upon becoming aware of the information only yesterday ... deserves congratulations.
I'm anxious to see the first information on the code development. Let's wait
&apls
I..um...WOW! When I first saw this, I got you were trying to create a whole new game that can import existing SC4 content, saw it locked and figured, well there goes another one, saw it unlocked (cheers to free speech!), and then read your update. This is amazing work. As you've gathered, there's been momentum behind something like this for a long time, but a lack of anyone with the time and knowledge to tackle the challenge, so it's great to see that you're doing this.
I think so far I agree with nearly everything you've proposed in you posts. Some thoughts I picked up along the way:
- Do I gather that there is now noise pollution? What about light pollution?
- Sewers. The great question of what exactly happens when a Sim flushes a toilet. I like the idea of a bundled utility pipe - especially for ease of gameplay. On the other hand, one thing none of the SimCities have ever had is a sewage system. SC4 has by far the most developed utility concepts, but it still ignored sewage. I wouldn't be opposed to the addition of a sewage utility, but I worry about it's added value.
- More on Bundled Utility Pipes (BUP). The more I think of this, the more it sounds like a great idea, especially as you increase the number of utilities. In new development, all the utilities are buried, and often in a relatively compact space underneath the streets. For a game, simulating this with a single network would make sense. You might also consider having utility-specific alternatives though, for those that only want certain utilities in certain places. Keeping to realism, you might have: water pipes (underground), sewer pipes (underground), electric wires (above), phone wires (above), cable/fiber/telecom (above or below), cell phone (radius). These can share the same tile, for example you could drag telephone wires over your existing power lines to add to the current network, or place your sewer and water pipes on the same tile. The BUP would be more expensive than any one of these options, but cheaper than the sum of them - attractive if you're building a dense area and need most or all of the services, overkill if you just want to power a farm.
- I would keep the SC4 concept though of effective areas for utilities, either by way of 1) zones carrying utilities, so you merely need to attach zones (ie Power in SC4), or 2) utility lines being required, but simply dispersing their effect over so many tiles in all directions (ie Water in SC4).
- CS should have an impact on Happiness. Depending on just how detailed your Sim's preferences are getting in your simulation, they can even have mixed effects (ie NIMBY vs love of shopping).
- I would like the option to not have to oversee warehouses. I like the concept of needing them, but how often are they really owned/managed by the city? Instead perhaps there is a warehouse demand and they are able to grow on any D/M/H industrial lot, and are simply overseen - maybe you have the option to use a Warehouse Slider to "subsidize" their development, or maybe you have some "public" warehouses that you can plop if the private sector isn't able to keep up with demand.
- Military. This has always been an afterthought in SimCities, and I think most people just ignore it, but it's an area you could expand upon, or even build unused functionality for into the game, leaving it as an expansion for those who want to use it.
- There is a lot that can be done on the transportation side of things, as you seem to be getting into - I'd take a good look at how to integrate NAM, HSR, RTMT, and the functional airport and seaport projects into the simulator.
On the big picture side of things, I gather that you are creating this to accept existing SC4 content, but you will probably need to make some hard choices about just what exactly will work. For buildings and other essentially aesthetic addons, this might be minor. Mods will be where the biggest conflicts arise, especially as you integrate things into this simulation that require a mod in SC4, and add new features (such as the changes to utilities, pollution, resident wants and needs, etc.) I guess a lot of it comes down to how you code for each of these items within the simulation, and whether this allows you to take an SC4 plugin and load it into the game, or whether it will require modifying the plugins first (similar to those who relot their downloads, or CAMpatablize them). I would be interested to hear more on how you intend to handle this, and if you are using the current file system and types that SC4 uses for plugins so that the existing suite of modding programs would still be useable.
To this end, and also tackling the graphics side of things, you could probably set up the game to be more black box, requiring certain plugins to be installed before anything can be done. For example, you release the simulator without any default graphics (not GUI, you'll need those, but game graphics), and the game prompts you to install a terrain mod, some buildings (ideally released as packs so you don't miss any components), a flora pack, etc. As an exception to this, you may wish to have things like some basic utilities and civics and transportation built in. Something to think about as you move forward.
NCAGIO, As I mentioned before In that other thread LUA has been something that I have worked with before. I was just kinda supprised at how little LUA support game units actually use it. In another game I have worked on every unit how detailed LUA support, including animations, custom inputs, which had bi-direction communication layers, Allowing units to query and act, and the set data.
Suppose just for fun someone wanted to create a game unit called the weathernator something silly, that would query the game for what the current weather is, and then provide the user with a menu, where they can click a button and suddenly it starts raining, ect. This will be possible with LUA, in essence if you can dream it, and the game supports it, it should be doable.
As for custom content, I doubt that 'mods' suchs as NAM, HSR, NWM will be able to use, this mods I truely don't understand nor to be honest have i really looked at, even cam mod. I really won't know until I get that far, but for the most part the game should be able to read most of the simple units with properties and act upon them. However down the road I may add utility that will read in units, and write out a new version that this game will understand and be able to use at a more efficient level. I can't make any promises as to what level this will go at this point in time.
Truth is at this point in time its just toooo early to set anything in stone, i'm still working hard on prefecting the core simulation. Theres alot going on under the hood, and i want to get that right before i move into implementing the GUI, and start expanding by implementing various models, objects, props and what not. Oh and i've already made the game 'cam' style, so the maximum growth level is 15. However I've yet to even mention density, which i'm very supprised no one has noticed yet. Density will increase as surrounding land becomes 'used up'. You can lock densities, but generally its not need as a city grows outwards its inwards zones become higher density.
Perhaps I can get permission to use a poll to see how people feel about a sewage system.
In respects to communication lines, like phone and cable and what not I doubt that any lines will be required, as I'm not a modeler, nor do i have any graphic artists abilities what so ever, unless you consider drawing stickmen an artist :) Right now I have one person doing additional models for me that I will need in the game, covering cell phone towers, and cable tv provers, internet providers ect, I can't weight him down too heavily with too many else may scare him off.
If sewage did end up being passed then an additional model would be needed, a sewage treatment plant, perhaps grow-able as the city grows.
One user made an excellent suggestion that utility lines could be set down under a road before the road construction begins, when you ready to place the road instead of left click dragging the road, you would right click drag the road which would also do the utility lines under the road.
In respects to black box, i think most things can be done this way but if 'lane technology' was used that would probably have to be hardcoded, as these are special as they need to 'bind' to each other. Will need to think about this some first.
Hope I covered all your questions, comments and concerns.
Back to the code window, cyas soon.
So a pretty productive night last night.
Managed to write command line parser, which will read arguments passed on the command line.
Wrote Mutex for thread locking, where critical data alters must be thread locked.
Laid support for error handling.
Ripped the simulation apart and placed it in two distinct threads, laid support for hyper threading if its available. Growth and development now occurs in one thread, while traffic simulator runs within its own thread.
Laid early support for various platforms. First version will probably be written to use Direct 3D, since its my mode of choice, however later versions I will add Open GL to, which should work on most platforms, with not much changes to the source. Thus it should run under linux and mac once GL support is implemented. Windows users will eventually have a choice to which GHandler they wish to use D3D or OpenGL.
Tweaked the simulation, reducing loads from 35 to 38%, to around 24 to 26%. Still lots of room for improvement here, This is also a 'debug' version, I haven't had a chance to check a retail build yet.
Made changes to the traffic simulator, in that those working in 'industrial' except high-tech now leave for work at 7 and finish at 5. Those working in CO, and high tech ind leave for work at 9 and finish at 5. Those working at farms leave for work at 4 and finish at 7. Those working in CS, leave for work at 6 and finish at 8. $$ in CS leave at 7 and finish at 5, $$$ in CS leave at 9 and finish at 5. Buses pick kids up going to elementary and high schools at 8 and arrive at 3. 30% of population will do shopping 2 hours after work. 50% population will be shopping on saturday. 20% will visit some attraction in city each night it a library, museum, watch a sports game, ect. These numbers are NOT set in stone yet, just numbers i'm plugging into the traffic simulator, hopefully soon i'll have some statistical data that i can dump here soon for analysis. During shopping 10% will buy goods, 25% will buy food. Trucks restalk CS with goods and food when A) stalk falls below 35%, or each night at 12am traveling from nearest warehouse.
Accidents at high speeds, now have a 50% chance of killing those involved in the accident. It is always a 'working' member who is killed, as well depending on the volume at the time, accidents now involve multiple vehicles.
It is now assumed that 70% of the population is 'married' or living with a spouse. All immigrants arriving into the city are now given an age of 20 + random 10, and paired 70% of the time with a mate. $ wealth will have 1 to 4 children during their live span, $$ will have 1 to 3 children during their lifespan, $$$ will have 1 to 2 kids during their lifespan. Kids aged 6 begin 'elementary' school, and remain there until completing grade 8, where they will begin attending high school till they graduate with grade 12. Attending school only if its available to them. $ at age 19 to 20 will move out on their own. Citizens retire at age 65, and are no longer considered part of the workforce. Citizens die of old age between the ages of 70 and 90. Citizens can now be killed if crime levels in the area they are located in rises to extreme levels. All citizens work even if they have kids. Citizens under the age of 20 do NOT work. $$ and $$$ citizens attend collage at age 20 to 22, at 22 $$ citizens enter the workforce, $$$ spends an additional 2 years in university and enter the work force.
I think that about does it for tonight.
I am truly impressed.
Is it really possible that one person can build a complete game simulator? I never knew. But who am I. I know what a computer looks like. On the outside. :D
I have not very many remarks.
The sewage system. I don't like the idea of laying water and power lines in SC4, because I always need them everywhere. So it's not really a choice that is to be made and hence the result is that I have to do extra things that consume time, but give me no useful game fun.
If the presence of certain systems does not make a difference in the game I'd say: leave it out. If the choice has effects on the game, then it may be useful.
Please don't think the farmers are only stupid. In fact a contemporary farmer is playing a kind of RL-simcity in his ofice with cattle, food, food prices, manure, mineral deposits, mineral emissions, product shipping etc.... It requires at least medium knowledge. So I'd say that education level of higher stage farms should be something like you need for manufacturing industries.
And another thing: what we miss in SC4 is the ability to make our own menus and submenus for ploppable items. It would be very practical if you could think of a system where everyone would be able to add extra menus in some kind of way.
You keep me on the edge of my seat!
Quote from: FrankU on July 05, 2012, 04:47:23 AM
I am truly impressed...
Is it really possible that one person can build a complete game simulator? I never knew. But who am I. I know what a computer looks like. On the outside. :D
If you're referring to things like this...
OpenCity (http://www.opencity.info/) - or maybe this...
Lincity (http://lincity-ng.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)- maybe is possible despite being a selfless work then has to have same vocation for it.
Now when it comes to a simulator such as SC4 and all its complex graphical representation only if it had all the time in the world available for this and don't have to do anything else to survive. Calculation about one to two years to have something plausible working based on the same characteristics of the game and working around 4-6 hours per day.
Now the question is...
there is this selfless?
Quote from: FrankU on July 05, 2012, 04:47:23 AM
And another thing: what we miss in SC4 is the ability to make our own menus and submenus for ploppable items. It would be very practical if you could think of a system where everyone would be able to add extra menus in some kind of way.
That would be the best news it will affect everyone who play regardless of their particular tastes. But unfortunately it has become impossible to make without modifications in the game executable ... modficiações who also became impossible without access to original exe ( for RH on Windows ) as you can understand by reading this topic...
Adding features to the exe (http://community.simtropolis.com/topic/16356-adding-features-to-the-exe/page__hl__scripts%20lua)
Quote from: Cire360 on July 04, 2012, 10:22:53 PM
but for the most part the game should be able to read most of the simple units with properties and act upon them....
How make this ?? ... this would be the response of one million dollars buddy.
SC4's internal simulation isn't that complex. For example kids in sc4 is just a percentage of the total population.
In respects to the comment for 'one man creating' comments, thats just not true, you guys have already done all the hard work for me, the models or game units is what takes the time, art, and modeling is a good 50% if not more of the game, and that part is mostly done.
Quote from: FrankUPlease don't think the farmers are only stupid.
First please forgive me, I in no way consider anyone 'stupid'. There is a lot to farming, I know as when I was younger i used to work on a farm, way back. However lets face it the farmer himself maybe knowledgeable but most of the workforce he employes are just general labors.
Moving on to 'in game menus', using LUA you should easilly be able to handle this, Units will receive in game notifications when the mouse moves over the unit, and when the unit is clicked on. Then can register themselves with the game for timer interrupt calls, more details on what LUA functions units will support will be added once i actually begin on GUI.
In respects to water and sewage pipes, including power lines, I think i'm going to have this as an option. If you don't want to run the pipes you'll be able to set an option and distribution will be 'automatically' global to the map.
Anyhow I left the simulator running last night, and while city growth took place at expected paces, i'm having some serious problems replicating SC4 traffic, even with 200,000 sims running amunk, traffic doesn't seem to get as 'bad' as it gets within SC4. I'm only using avenues and roads right now, and can't seem to get the serious overloading of traffic. At certain times of the day it can get heavy, especially at 5pm when a good chunk of the city gets off work, but for the most part it remains relatively calm. I may need to think of some ways to add traffic during other times of the day.
Thanks for taking the time to answer all of our questions and remarks. It did clear things up for me and it sure seems like you know what you're talking about so here my two cents, starting again with the gameplay at large (regionwise so to speak).
Would it be possible to let go of predefined tile sizes alltogether? Lets say, for example, I wanted to contruct a railway through the city. First I would select a narrow but tall area from the citymap, covering the entire stretch of railway. This area would then be loaded into 'game' mode, maybe with less detail or something to ease the burden on the cpu. When done with laying the tracks, I would save and exit to the citymap. Next I want to work on an area surrounding a train station so I would select a much smaller area from the citymap and load that into 'game' mode with full details.
Actually I imagined this kind of workflow a long time ago. It would be so nice if one was able to switch back and forth between different levels of representation and detail, depending on the project at hand, e.g. constructing a highway or landscaping a citypark. Which brings me to another point, in part because of this remark by FrankU.
Quote from: FrankU on July 05, 2012, 04:47:23 AM
And another thing: what we miss in SC4 is the ability to make our own menus and submenus for ploppable items. It would be very practical if you could think of a system where everyone would be able to add extra menus in some kind of way.
Overcrowded menus are notorious in SC4, especially the park menu. So what if instead of plopping parks and plazas, one was able to designate an open area as public space and a menu would appear where one could choose which pavement to use, where to put benches, trees, planters, fountains, kiosks etc. Or maybe it's a small open area in a residential neighbourhood and one wants a public garden, or a soccer field tailored to the space avaiable. What I'm proposing is basically an integration of the LotEditor into the game. Of course that isn't feasable for growable stuff but it would still be pretty neat to have for public spaces.
Quote from: Cire360 on July 04, 2012, 03:31:28 PM
but for the most part models and properties there off should be readable by the new application.
That would be awesome! Over the years there have been a number of attempts at an alternative city simulator (btw, are you familiar with BoomTown (http://community.simtropolis.com/forum/81-simcity-5-boomtown/) over at Simtropolis?) and as I see it, the biggest challenge is to get people to actually play it, i.e. develop a critical mass of users so other folks will also let go of SC4 and start creating content for the alternative game. Though SC4 is almost a decade old, the main reason it's still around is the abundance of custom content. If only a part of that would be usable in the new application, it would make the transition that much easier and atttractive.
QuoteWhat I'm proposing is basically an integration of the LotEditor into the game. Of course that isn't feasable for growable stuff but it would still be pretty neat to have for public spaces.
I don't see why that wouldn't be possible, considering simcity 2000 you zoned airport and seaport like you do with R,C,I in SC4 where you set the size and the game determines what is built. I can't see why all the different types of parks that are available couldn't be grown in an area zoned for parkland
Quote from: mike3775 on July 05, 2012, 12:22:19 PM
QuoteWhat I'm proposing is basically an integration of the LotEditor into the game. Of course that isn't feasable for growable stuff but it would still be pretty neat to have for public spaces.
I don't see why that wouldn't be possible, considering simcity 2000 you zoned airport and seaport like you do with R,C,I in SC4 where you set the size and the game determines what is built. I can't see why all the different types of parks that are available couldn't be grown in an area zoned for parkland
While it's true sc2000 probably was the best version (well apart from the sound effects, just ask my parents ;) ) it kinda misses the point I was trying to make. Growing parks would still require one to do lotting
outside the game for a custom park. Instead I wish to be able to lot a park or plaza
ingame. No more going back-and-forth to see how it fits the surrounding area but build it on the spot.
If 'props' are 3d objects, I can't see any reason why i can't create a new 'park zone' and allow 'ploping' of props within this zone. Can't make any promises right now but i will defantly look at the possibilities of implementing custom designed parks, this actually sounds similar to how i want to work with the new lane technology.
Trust me when i say i'm quite aware of the issues within the game menus. I've already given it considerable thought. And I've come up with 2 minor solutions that im thinking of working with, the first is that you can 'right' click on the item and it will popup with 'Pin to top', 'Add to Favorites', the pin to top option will move the object to the the top of the menu list, the Add to Favorites, will add the item to your favorites menu, so that you can place all your favorite plopables and what not in a new 'favorites' menu entry. I know its not the perfect solution but its something to start with, we'll know more once GUI work starts.
Quote from: vortext on July 05, 2012, 12:30:05 PM
...Instead I wish to be able to lot a park or plaza ingame. No more going back-and-forth to see how it fits the surrounding area but build it on the spot.
you can do that in Cities in Motion see here
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=10196.msg414264#msg414264
I took some pictures of doing just that, as everything in CIM is ploppable and you paint the ground
-catty
Instead of fixed rules for who uses which kind of transit, why not give the user the freedom to set up transport preferences, something akin to the NAM Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool? Mass transit vs. car usage varies a lot from city to city and between different cultures. Such config options may also help you tune the traffic sim to your liking.
In present-day cities such as Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Beijing, a significant part of the workforce commute to work on bicycles. I realise adding bicycles as a functional transit option is not a trivial matter, stuff like roadside bike lanes and bike paths need to be implemented, but this would imo be a much more interesting addition to the game than having to deal with sewage pipes.
Quote from: Cire360 on July 05, 2012, 11:47:44 AM
Quote from: FrankUPlease don't think the farmers are only stupid.
First please forgive me, I in no way consider anyone 'stupid'. There is a lot to farming, I know as when I was younger i used to work on a farm, way back. However lets face it the farmer himself maybe knowledgeable but most of the workforce he employes are just general labors.
Oh, you probably thought I felt insulted. No no. Don't fear. I just meant that I do not like the SC4 effect of education. Above 40 points nobody wants to work on the farms anymore. It would be not good and not realistic. On a broader scale the farming option is a bit underestimated in the original SC4. It would be nice if you could give this industry type a more mature role in game. But seeing your explanation about food being a neccessary resource, I think you won't disappoint me there.
Options, variables, constants, game-flow can all be debated over later. While I agree that 'constants' should be avoided as much as possible, except where applicable.
I'm going to take a few moments to 'explain' in detail exactly where I am on the project, so that you have an idea, of whats been done, and whats next, ect.
Many of you have run 'command prompts' or something similar on other systems, where you pretty much get a black window with a input, where you can type in a command and some result will be printed back to you. This many refer to as a 'console window'.
I've written the simulator to use a console window (for now). Why? Its lightweight and compiles quickly, its super easy to debug in as you don't have alot of additional libs to compile, link, step through, ect.
The downside is its hard to get a 'visual picture' of whats going on. Also think of when you zone an area using a mouse, doing this in a console window i must pass 'commands' via the window that it will understand, for example 'Using RESZONETOOL construct_zone (4,3,8,7)' which means to starting at x,y (4,3) construct a 4 by 4 zone, of residential. Another reason is that I can set this up as a service, and keep passing in commands to it, i can also query it for any information i want, such as a small text map visulaizing whats going on, a population census report, ect.
Keep in mind when I first started this it was more or less, just a simulation to see if i could get a better understand of whats going on under the hood, so that if i could replicate it then i'd should be able to build the best city as i'd have complete understanding of the internals.
About quarter into the simulation I got thinking you know this is gona work, I wonder if anyone else has thought of doing this. And thats when I brought it up here in the forums.
So why Haven't i converted it to a regular app yet? Well as I said its still MUCH easier for me to debug and monitor variables in a small console application or service.
That said i haven't stated the best part yet, when its running as a service, i connect to it via telnet. Thus I'm thinking that the GUI and simulation might be a very smart move to keep them separate, simulation would run as a service, while the GUI simply queried for data, or passed in commands. Can anyone guess what this might enable?
Obviously anyone connecting to it would need the 'hosts' to set permissions on incoming users, but it should allow full multiplayer support. Only issue i foresee is that users on connect would need to do some type of 'unit sync' to ensure that the connecting user had all the units the host did. Its certainly something to think about.
So what is complete? Well most of the simulation is now complete, i can zone, they will build (imaginary houses/shops/factories/offices) which increase in density as population growth takes place. Growth aderheres to the rules of the zones I mentioned way above. Sims generate garabage, and commute around on roads and avenues which i've set up with temp variables, enuff to get around on.
sims marry, have kids, age, retire and die. Kids in turn goto elementry school, then on to highschool, collage and unversity, enter the work force and the cycle begins again.
Sims look for work, and if no work is there results will vary pending on the wealth level. Sims make food, goods, buy goods and food, and produce office services. Growth occurs when sims are happy, and the right enviroment for them is present. Fire and police protection both work. Though i need to do alot more work on crime.
Map format has been finished and i'm making progress on a map creator/editor. Once the map editor is finished the gui will begin, at that point hard decisions will be upon us all, and i'll know whats going to be possible and whats not.
Tomorrow i plan on optimizing much of the code, and working on the crime simulation, once that's done the map editor will have my full focus.
Thats all for now.
++Cire.
Quote from: FrankU on July 06, 2012, 12:49:27 AM
Quote from: Cire360 on July 05, 2012, 11:47:44 AM
Quote from: FrankUPlease don't think the farmers are only stupid.
First please forgive me, I in no way consider anyone 'stupid'. There is a lot to farming, I know as when I was younger i used to work on a farm, way back. However lets face it the farmer himself maybe knowledgeable but most of the workforce he employes are just general labors.
Oh, you probably thought I felt insulted. No no. Don't fear. I just meant that I do not like the SC4 effect of education. Above 40 points nobody wants to work on the farms anymore. It would be not good and not realistic. On a broader scale the farming option is a bit underestimated in the original SC4. It would be nice if you could give this industry type a more mature role in game. But seeing your explanation about food being a neccessary resource, I think you won't disappoint me there.
That is a big problem with the game. If you want farms, your people have to be stupid. If you educate them, you end up with all big cities.
I have seen lots of big cities surrounded by farms, so finding that happy medium would be best.
Quote from: Cire360 on July 06, 2012, 01:03:03 AM
'Using RESZONETOOL construct_zone (4,3,8,7)' which means to starting at x,y (4,3) construct a 4 by 4 zone, of residential. Another reason is that I can set this up as a service, and keep passing in commands to it, i can also query it for any information i want, such as a small text map visulaizing whats going on, a population census report, ect."
++Cire.
%confuso Interesting ... I would like to understand how their coordinates x, y are related to the
GRID (assuming you are developing on the grid to use only two coordinates) and as a result of the command console returned to zoning.
I'll dump the function soon, right now i'm in the process of doing an upgrade to my toolsets.
What the hell .... was very interested in this subject.
Anyway good luck with the upgrade your's toolsets.
I'm eagerly waiting here for new informations.
- - Ncgaio
I haven't upgraded my environment in awhile, and have been using some older SDK's. I've generally used 2008 VS, however recently a workorder has come around which has finally forced me to upgrade to 2010. I figured while i'm at it i might as well do all SDK's, ive got 6 down and 2 more to go.
I detest upgrading but when your hand is forced sometimes you gota do what you gota do. As a developer we get used to our toolsets, our configuation sets, and so on, and then with 1 upgrade they like to switch everything around. With SDK's its not to bad, but the coding environment often changes dramatically. Anyhow once its finished these last 2 sdks, i've just gota install the SP1 update for MS and i'm good to go.
Amazing progress. I like the idea of a park zone, and I'll be interested to see if/how that ends up being implemented. On the topic of the map editor, I think SC4TF is a great example to work off of, and implementing something similar to that would be great. After the increasingly worthless terrain editing options from SC2K>SC3K>SC4, the Terraformer was a godsend. I'd also suggest built in support for loading existing greyscale and .SC4M maps - both because they're the community standard, and there's already a lot of them out there.
Finally finished my upgrades.
As promised heres the dump of the zone creation function that is a direct well after it parses my input call.
/*
** CreateZone( uint8, sint16, sint16, sint16, sinit16, unit8 )
** Creates a RES, COM or IND zone.
** returns a ZONE_? error ()see sc4_ProccessCmds.h for zone errors types
** TODO: x1,y1, x2, y2 should be converted to vector for easier working with 3d gfx
** TODO: already zone should 'convert' the previous zone to the new one.
** TODO: Possibility to change BAD SLOPE, to query user to see if they wish to 'pay' to flatten area.
** TODO: if it contains an object, be it a road, park or whatever, zone around it.
*/
sint16 cSC4CMD::CreateZone( uint8 iZoneType, sint16 x1, sint16 y1, sint16 x2, sint16 y2, uint8 ZoneType )
{
sint16 w, h, z;
if( ZoneType < SC4_RES && ZoneType > SC4_IND )
return ZONE_ERROR_UNKOWN_ZONETYPE;
w = ( (sint16)max( x1, x2 ) - (sint16)min( x1,x2) );
h = ( (sint16)max( y1, y2 ) -(sint16)min( y1, y2 ) );
cSC4_Engine *sc4 = GetSC4Engine();
if( sc4 -> IsAreaZoned( x1, y1, w, h ) )
return ZONE_ERROR_ALREADY_ZONED;
if( !sc4 -> IsSlopeOkForZone( x1, y1, w, h ) )
return ZONE_ERROR_BADSLOPE;
if( sc4-> CountAreaForObjs( x1, y1, w, h ) != 0 )
return ZONE_ERROR_CONTAINSOBJS;
if( sc4-> ZoneArea( x1, x2, w, h, ZoneType, ZONE_ONLY_ON_LAND ) != 0 )
return ZONE_ERROR_UNKNOWN;
return ZONE_SUCCESSFUL;
}
As to using sc4 terrformer, not sure i'd really have to look at the map format, all I need for my maps to work is 1 small texture, and a greyscale bmp. Coupled with a LUA script if you want to do something unique and scriptive for your map, probably compressed with zip and extension changed to something like sc4e or something, they should be very lightweight.
The problem with greyscale maps as they exist now is i'm unsure what 'depth' factor they used. Greyscale is used because it contains 255 max value for each pixel, thus its VERY small when next to a truecolor image of the same size. Each pixel in the greyscale map is not representative of anything but the height at that point, 255 being the highest point, 0 being the lowest. If I set '55' being ground level, then maps would have a max height of 200 feet, and at 0 would be 55 feet below sea level. You should be able to load any greyscale image into the editor but what it will look like is anyones guess.
To put the size of a map in perspective, I just created a simple 1000x1000 greyscale bmp, with a 16x16 truecolor texture, and a 10k lua test script, compressed it with zip, and the size is 1.08 KB (1,106 bytes), thats pretty small for a map imho, and it does NOT need to be unzipped to be used. Using this would give you 1000x1000 map (small map but at least you get the idea. You can tile maps as well, meaning that i could take the map.bmp inside this file, and rename it to map4b4.bmp and it will tile 4 images by 4 images, giving the total size of 4000 by 4000 tiles for use in your city. I hope I explained this in enough detail that is understandable if not i'll try to produce a better example.
Quote from: Shark7 on July 06, 2012, 07:11:32 AM
Quote from: FrankU on July 06, 2012, 12:49:27 AM
Quote from: Cire360 on July 05, 2012, 11:47:44 AM
Quote from: FrankUPlease don't think the farmers are only stupid.
First please forgive me, I in no way consider anyone 'stupid'. There is a lot to farming, I know as when I was younger i used to work on a farm, way back. However lets face it the farmer himself maybe knowledgeable but most of the workforce he employes are just general labors.
Oh, you probably thought I felt insulted. No no. Don't fear. I just meant that I do not like the SC4 effect of education. Above 40 points nobody wants to work on the farms anymore. It would be not good and not realistic. On a broader scale the farming option is a bit underestimated in the original SC4. It would be nice if you could give this industry type a more mature role in game. But seeing your explanation about food being a neccessary resource, I think you won't disappoint me there.
That is a big problem with the game. If you want farms, your people have to be stupid. If you educate them, you end up with all big cities.
I have seen lots of big cities surrounded by farms, so finding that happy medium would be best.
I have to disagree with this. I have a farming city with a population of 8K on a large map with an Education of over 120 and I still manage to get stage 7 farms to grow. The key in my city is the fact that I have 1 city as farms, with small housing(usually 1x1 and 1x2) and I place the large elementary school, large high school, museum, library, city college and a few other educational buildings in an area that covers everywhere I intend to zone residential, and I have a city to the south as the main industrial city where the ones who are educated can go work at the factories or high tech(which itself gets fed by another low res city to the south.
Basically, as long as I keep the population below 30K(60K w/Census Repository), education has never hurt my farming community.
First guys remember one thing schools don't work like the do in SC4. In sc4 i can plop down a elementary school and it will slowly educate all sims to certain level, regardless if they have high school or not available to them, if I add a collage to the city and a university thier eq will soar, even if the zone only has access to a elementary school. It won't work this way anymore.
Instead 'elementary' will slowly educate sims raising thier IQ from 50 to some set number, perhaps 75? Checking the school level on residences will display that they have 'Elementary school education'. This is all the education that '$ wealth require' to enter the work force. It will take approximately 8 years to educate sims to this level. $$, $$ will require a elementary school to grow, without it they will degrade, and eventually move.
Should you provide the same zone with a high school, They will enter the school once thier IQ reaches 75, and raise it to say 100? Check the school level on residences will display that they have a 'high school education'. $$$ requires this to even start to grow and will degrade and move if not preset. $$ will become unhappy if not present. $ citizens will receive +2 to thier growth if present. It will take approximately 4 years to complete this level of education. Unlocked RES zones which are '$' will attempt to convert themselves to '$$' by attaining '$$' jobs at this point. Locked RES zones will remain '$'. A high school education allows $$ to enter the work force.
City collage, will have range limits like regular schools, if present will raise EQ from 100 to perhaps 140? Take 2 years to do this, will add +2 to $$ growth, required for $$$ to grow, Will display 'Collage level education' on residences whom have completed this education. '$' will not attend collage.
University, has no range limit, $$$ will not be happy until university is in city. If present $$$ receive +2 to growth. Willl educate sims from 140 to 200, and take 4 years to do this. '$$' will not attend university.
Libraries, will add +1 to all $,$$,$$$ zones growth, will increase school ranges by 10% per library, and give all sims a +5 to thier IQ, must be present bfore a high school can be placed.
Museums will add +1 to alll $, $$, $$$ zones growth, will increase school rages by an additional 10%, and give all sims a +5 to thier IQ, must be present before a collage can be placed.
IQ will effect 'product output' but i havn't decided yet on a factor.
If anyone has a better education level i'd be more then happy to listen to it (see the rest of this post for more information)
-----------------------------------------
LANE Technology exposed
-----------------------------------------
I've begun working on a new lane technology which i think many here will be able to come up with some pretty sharp looking intersections. Those who have used 'RHW' think of a lane as 'MIS type in RHW' 1 car lane, or better yet think of it as 1 lane of a one way road. Its the only type of road we will actually need. Because I allow users to set speed limits of the road system this is the only type of 'road' we will need, it will allow one to design highways, roads, 1 way roads, avenues, ect.
This is my purposed interface.
If you were to lay two lanes ran side by side, It will be 2 tiles in width, however once you use the 'doc or merge' tool to 'bind' these lanes together they will use 1 tile, and effectivly you have created a '1 way road, with 2 lanes'. Running 2 lanes 1 way, and 2 lanes the oppotiste way with 1 space between the two, docing will create an 'avenue'. Using 3 tiles in width.
Run 4 lanes 1 way, space, 4 lanes another way, doced, becomes 4 lane avenue, using 5 tiles width. Highways can be built the same way, There is no limit on the amount of lanes you can combine. The rules are 2 lanes doced will use 1 tile space, 3 lanes doced will use 2 tiles, 4 lanes doced will use 2 tiles and so on.
Enter props, I think that before you 'doc', one could add 'curbs', and other props such as sidewalks, ect.
Once you 'doc' its finalized, and can't be changed, selecting 1 tile of this road will allow you to 'add it to your road system menu', so you'd be able to have templates of already created roads to work with so one won't need to create an avenue each time.
Because we are working with only 1 type of road system, I should be able to get pretty complex with the rules for creating them, allowing some pretty cool sloping, and intertwining, and curve systems.
Obviously this is only 1 part of the transportation system but I think it has a good design goal.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've begun to get rather in depth in some areas of programing, and its beginning to require alot of my attention, I just don't have time to read ideas, and make all details exposed and collect and organize ideas.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HELP ME PLEASE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What i'd like is if someone can 'collect, organize, submit to me, ideas, in certain aspects of the game.
For example:
I've pretty much decided that the current 'stage max' needs to be looked at in more details. I believe the current stage system needs to be looked at. I think that for each 'type' of zone we need to look at overriding population and job supplies, and balance it a bit more in detail. Stage 1 to 8 seems to work well, and I think applying this to all zones would be a good idea. However skyscrapers seem to enter around stage 9, upto stage 15, for RES and COM. However like real life, skyscrapes are not 'cost effective' to produce for one type of zone. Most skyscrapers in real life are either mostly com or a mix of com and RES.
So i was thinking that I will display the 'stage' level of buildings on a query, once they reach stage 8, The user will have either 'a' set a option for upgrading the zone to a special zone type, or something along the lines of that. At state 9 a building becomes 'unique', allowing both COM and RES, at a 50/50 share ratio. Thoughts on this and or other systems would be nice.
I need someone to organize this part, this area should cover also cover the amount of jobs available at each stage level in COM/IND/FAR, including the goods produced at each level, food ingestion levels for sims, ect. The more details the better.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If someone wishes they can also take on the school/education system and discuses ideas, and how it would be applied to the current simulation. Don't forget libraries, museums, and thier effects. You don't have to use 'my system' but can come up with a total different system if you wish. IQ's, and thier effects on goods produced would be nice a well if any.
For both systems remember that zones can be 'locked' in which case will only develop to some point, they can also be free open, and there is no density. The game changes density automatically as the land surrounding he area becomes used up. Thus density still exists but its more so for internal use only.
Apologies for the length of this. Anyone wanting to take on these areas let me know, thanks so much in advance.
Quote from: Cire360 on July 06, 2012, 10:29:21 PM
...... I hope I explained this in enough detail that is understandable if not i'll try to produce a better example.
;D It is not necessary because everyone is so excited about discussing the design of the game that will not be paying close attention to technical details. ( suggest to refrain from detail the subject to discussion survive for more time)
As I said before your very well thought hobby ... congratulations. :D :) :D
Quote from: mike3775 on July 07, 2012, 09:13:11 AM
Quote from: Shark7 on July 06, 2012, 07:11:32 AM
Quote from: FrankU on July 06, 2012, 12:49:27 AM
Quote from: Cire360 on July 05, 2012, 11:47:44 AM
Quote from: FrankUPlease don't think the farmers are only stupid.
First please forgive me, I in no way consider anyone 'stupid'. There is a lot to farming, I know as when I was younger i used to work on a farm, way back. However lets face it the farmer himself maybe knowledgeable but most of the workforce he employes are just general labors.
Oh, you probably thought I felt insulted. No no. Don't fear. I just meant that I do not like the SC4 effect of education. Above 40 points nobody wants to work on the farms anymore. It would be not good and not realistic. On a broader scale the farming option is a bit underestimated in the original SC4. It would be nice if you could give this industry type a more mature role in game. But seeing your explanation about food being a neccessary resource, I think you won't disappoint me there.
That is a big problem with the game. If you want farms, your people have to be stupid. If you educate them, you end up with all big cities.
I have seen lots of big cities surrounded by farms, so finding that happy medium would be best.
I have to disagree with this. I have a farming city with a population of 8K on a large map with an Education of over 120 and I still manage to get stage 7 farms to grow. The key in my city is the fact that I have 1 city as farms, with small housing(usually 1x1 and 1x2) and I place the large elementary school, large high school, museum, library, city college and a few other educational buildings in an area that covers everywhere I intend to zone residential, and I have a city to the south as the main industrial city where the ones who are educated can go work at the factories or high tech(which itself gets fed by another low res city to the south.
Basically, as long as I keep the population below 30K(60K w/Census Repository), education has never hurt my farming community.
Your having better luck then me...somewhere I have a big population growth with dilapidation of my farms. The plop and MMP farm crops are a solution, and that is what I usually turn to.
Quote from: Cire360 on July 04, 2012, 02:11:16 AM
As its very late for me, I'd like to officially state that i am with YOUR help going to create a new executable, that will somewhat use SC4 data files, to create a 'different' simulation. What this will encompass, is totally up to us, I will take all the feedback, and support I can and tie it in where possible.
I am very impressed not only with what you have proposed, but what you have already done. However, I think it's extremely important for you to become quite familiar with the SC4 and related EULAs, as otherwise, EA may put a quick end to your plans. For example, you mention above using SC4 data files, but EA claims to own the format of these files. This would seem to preclude their use in a non-EA game, and thereby render all our custom content unusable to you. EA also claims to own the output of all its tools, such as the BAT and the Lot Editor. Notice the following from the SC4 EULA:
QuoteE. Your Contributions. In exchange for use of the Software, and to the extent that your contributions through use of the Software give rise to any copyright interest, you hereby grant EA an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferable and sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use your contributions in any way and for any purpose in connection with the Software and related goods and services including the rights to reproduce, copy, adapt, modify, perform, display, publish, broadcast, transmit, or otherwise communicate to the public by any means whether now known or unknown and distribute your contributions without any further notice or compensation to you of any kind for the whole duration of protection granted to intellectual property rights by applicable laws and international conventions. You hereby waive any moral rights of paternity, publication, reputation, or attribution with respect to EA and other players use and enjoyment of such assets in connection with the Software and related goods and services under applicable law. The license grant to EA, and the above waiver of any applicable moral rights, survives any termination of this License.
The use of the word "exclusive" early on seems to imply that creators of custom content for SC4 cannot allow it to be used with any other game. This particular paragraph seems to open a rather big can of worms, but I think it would take an experienced attorney to determine exactly what it means in your case, and how much of it is enforceable.
Do you know how much public ridicule EA would suffer over attacking a non-profit enhancement to their game?
Every time I turn around topics are being locked and discussions are being closed down because someone says your breaking EULA agreement, and what not. I wonder if the other teams that tried to create an enhancement suffered this type of harassment.
I've been in the business of software development for over 15 years, and i've yet to see any blaint attacks on non-profit enhancements. It might and does happen when people try to sell a product they have altered but thats not the case here.
When you speak of EULA, I can condemn everyone here of breaking it, just because the 'DBPF' file system was never 'publicly' released, someone at some point in time had to do some reverse engineering to figure it out. There are still parts of it that are 'unknown'. Does maxis care no, does EA care, no. But we are all using it, to alter and enhance our game right?
Please cut me some slack.
I apologize for coming off so strongly. Just becoming a bit frustrating to having become under so much fire with a product that EA doesn't even list as an IP anymore.
The point to this is that the 'site' feels they could be in jepordy over breaching EULA agreement. Rest assured that this is highly unlikely to occur over a 10 year old game. If one was to take the time and do some research on just about every game out to date they would likely find that nearly all of them contains mods, enhancements. From skyrim to Total annihilation. The older the game the more detailed and in depth modding becomes, and the less developers care, especially when projects may cause additional sales for them.
The worse case scenario I have seen is where a game company contacted a group whom was doing modding and requested that the project be terminated, case in point was a Japanese group whom was creating a starcraft clone that did not require the user to have purchased starcraft. However many starcraft mods exists, but can't be used on blizzards bnet.
If this game was brand new off the shelves, i could see being a bit tight about it, but this is not the case.
The company I work for has a team of 3 software lawyers, I stopped by their office today and spoke to them about such a project, and thou they agree that if this was being perused and developed by a software corporation, then EA's lawyers would likely seek litigation, but being that is being developed by an 'individual' and not tied to any corporation with no monetary gain, that it would do more harm to EA's image to shutdown a project of this nature. That the negative press it would generate would be far more damaging to them then to just ignore such a project.
One of these lawyers is a good friend of mine whom has a lot more contacts within the industry then I do, and is going to contact EA reps to see where they stand on a non profit game enhancement project such as this. I'll know more in a few days, and will post in details here once I do.
Anyhow once again i apologize for coming off so strongly.
You are wrong about greyscale maps, most of the ones out there today use far more than 256 colors - 65536 colors I think is what the SC4M files and PNGs use, which from memory is something like a 0.1 meter resolution. Of course these can become large files themselves, so I'm not saying there aren't better ways to do this. The point about greyscales though is merely backwards compatibility with what's already out there. More important is the range of terrain editing tools - being able to both import real world terrain, as well as tweak and sculpt to your heart's delight.
Which brings to mind a note about units - SC4 is in metric, so if you're laying out things in feet, there could be issues with existing content.
You get into the point above about higher stages and mixed use zones/buildings. One of the
major deficiencies of SC4 (and all previous SimCities) is the lack of mixed use buildings. Should you find a way around this, that would be amazing. Regarding stages, you may have already read these, but if not, you may be able to build upon research and ideas previously done in developing CAM:
Stage Limits (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=3578.0)
Density Limits and Caps (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=1987.0)
Workforce and Occupation Demands (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=1878.0)
To the note of keeping us all up on the details of the development - I think you might find it worthwhile to keep a lot of notes and work on essentially a manual to be released with the game, and leave a lot of the nuts and bolts to be asked during the public testing and rollout. Not that we don't like hearing the details, but I can understand that it's a lot of work to keep us all updated. I have some thoughts on the education system as well, I'll try to elaborate later.
I'll throw my two cents in on the whole EULA/Legal side of things, since it is (and will be) and ongoing issue, as you've already noticed. I don't think there is any doubt that you are building off of SC4 and the things that have been created for it over the years. However, this is no different from what the rest of the community does day in and day out - particularly those who have created modding tools for SC4 that innately have to be able to read and write the (proprietary?) DBPF formats used by SC4. To that end, I see nothing wrong with creating another program that can read/write DBPF files. As it happens, EA has generally been very supportive of the community's attempts at cracking the file formats and using that knowledge to create new content and tools for the game. Additionally, the DBPF format used by SC4 is deprecated, if not obsolete - as seen in TS3 and Spore, so they may not care what is done with it at all.
Quote from: z on July 08, 2012, 02:51:31 AM
The use of the word "exclusive" early on seems to imply that creators of custom content for SC4 cannot allow it to be used with any other game.
I read this to imply that you are waiving any and all rights to anything you create for SC4 - essentially anything and everything ever created to add on to/work with/modify/etc. SC4 is entirely and only owned by EA, and they can do whatever they want with it whenever they want, whether or not you know what they're doing, and whether or not they feel like acknowledging you had anything to do with it. It says nothing about how
you can use the content you generate - and considering how widely accepted the practice of sharing custom content is, it hardly seems like EA cares about what you do with it. The biggest gray zone here is selling your custom content, but both BSC and Simtropolis have sold DVDs of content, so it apparently can be done. However, my understanding so far is that you intend this game to be freeware, so money shouldn't even matter.
The only point where there seems to be a line drawn is cracking the exe itself. And even here, EA has supported development of dll addons to the exe. In your
Traffic (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=14919) thread, there is some debate over whether what you are doing is reverse engineering the exe. Considering the drastic changes your software is making from how things work in SC4, it would be hard to say that this is true. You've admitted to so much as essentially peeking under the hood to see how SC4 runs, but don't seem to be then using that knowledge to copy it, as much as better understand why SC4 does what it does. Personally I see this as being more in line with standard software development practices of seeing a problem and finding a better way to do it than anything that would fall into a questionable legal area (such as if you were trying to replicate the game for profit). The reality is that what you're describing is in many ways closer to the descriptions we've gotten about the new SC5 than the existing SC4. EA may view you as competition in this regard, but the reality is you are but a fly agitating in the vicinity of a very big elephant. The risk, and what has the community so worried, is that should the elephant swat, it will necessarily hit the surrounding flies as well, to complete the metaphor.
To that end, I can understand the fears of the staff and community about attracting the wrong sort of attention from EA, and I think that should EA actually take action against you or the site, nobody would question for a second the decision to shut this project down if it would save the site and/or community. All the same, you appear to be aware of the legal issues at stake, and taking pains to note just how different what you are creating is from the current game. Considering that, I think it would be wise to take a more passive approach, informing you of grey areas and danger zones as you hit them, but otherwise standing back and letting creativity bloom. Consider for a moment that if it were not for the efforts of similar people who weren't afraid to poke around and explore uncharted territory, our understanding of the DATs would be limited to only what EA gave us in the form of BAT and Lot Editor, and we wouldn't be able to enjoy nearly the variety of tools and content that form the basis for this community.
Since the main thread for this project has been unlocked, the SC4D Staff has continued to discuss the ramifications of this project, after seeing its overall trajectory, and receiving input from additional staff members. Suffice to say, the project has gone in such a direction that we do not feel comfortable with the legal liability.
When this project thread was unlocked, it was under the strict condition that its creator would not attempt to reverse-engineer the executable. However, this condition has been violated. Given that this project entails creating a new game that would compete with EA Maxis' SimCity 4, there is no doubt that this is a violation of the EA Maxis End-User License Agreement (EULA) for SimCity 4, regardless of whether or not profit is being derived from said new game. As such, the staff has made a decision to lock all threads dealing with this project. Unless legal clearance is obtained from EA Maxis, specifying otherwise, we will not be unlocking the threads, or allowing new threads of this sort to proliferate at SC4 Devotion.
While some have tried to defend this project's legal stature by invoking the community's decoding of the DBPF file format as a precedent, this is not a valid argument. The work done with DBPF files was, in fact, done with the blessing of Maxis employees back in 2003, when SC4 modding pioneer the7trumpets discussed traffic simulator modifications with MaxisFrank on the defunct, official SC4 forum run by EA Maxis. The work with DBPF files has enhanced SimCity 4, and increased its salability, rather than detracting from it. EA Maxis employees, in fact, have complimented the community's efforts on this front several times recently, in interviews regarding the upcoming new SimCity game. The lead programmer for the game has even passed along files to aid the creation of DLL-based plugins.
There has, for many years, been a quiet, mutually beneficial relationship between the SC4 modding community and the game's creators, and we'd like to keep it that way. Efforts to enhance the existing game will continue to be encouraged here, but reverse-engineering the game to create a replacement does not fall within those confines.
Thread locked.
Tarkus
SC4D Admin