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A little question about game engine limitations

Started by Unconstantean, April 15, 2018, 04:18:39 AM

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Unconstantean

I am curious, just for argument sake. Let's say that EA and Maxis release the full coding for the exe to be modified. Can we achieve something like:

-real curbes
-real diagonal and curb plopping
-moving objects around
-more MMP options
-some declas stuff like in skylines
-no more city tiles
or we are limited by the game being not full 3D

Also is there a mod limit untill the game stops working?

fantozzi

#1
I'm far away to be an expert on this - but those, I think, are different things: a) having the code, b) being able to read the code and c) understanding the code in that detailed way you are able to change things without breaking something else.

Who should do all the work suggested?

I personally think the approach could be to make a city builder from scratch - working multicore and on modern machines - that can use sc4 custom content: the bats and props. The specifications of bats and props are manageable. But you will always have the fixed zoom levels and the fixed angles. And therefore you can overcome the grid also only partially - f.e. implementing a more detailled sub-grid that allows more flexibility on the network - or implement the network as fully 3d and leave only certain areas sc4 content compatible - or something like this.

Even if I think, the things you mentioned are basically possible to do - and it would be helpfull to have the original code - at a certain point it wouldn't make much sense to stay on this code and to expand it or modify it, but instead beeing only good like a stone quarry to pick certain parts from it. And developing a completely new 'framework' for sc4 custom content instead.

It's because to make the old code fitting the language of modern processing technology it requires so much research and rethinking and fixing - it seems much more efficient to start from scratch. Imho.

So at the end – who could do that, from where recruiting the personal could be the most tricky part of the project. At the end there are priorities that make up life. Some people make climate change top priority, some to get married and have children, some to care for elderly people and so on. Regarding those many priorities to pick in RL, it could be difficult to find experts making sc4 their priority no. 1
 

[EDIT]
To my knowledge there is no explict/exact mod limit. Limits are given by the city tile size, the lot sizes/LOD size and the max amount of props on a lot. In result - regarding base game - you can build only a limited total amount of data (models and description) on the space loaded into memory. In addition also network capacities are limited quite strict in the base game, so these set limits for the simulation engine.

The amount of data to be read when you load a city tile is independent from your plugin folder size but only dependent on the data used by the city tile. Therefore an empty city tile will always load fast, no matter how many plugins there are present on the hard drive. So it's somewhat logical not to limit the amount of plugins in your folder but the amount of data that can be loaded 'per session' (active city tile) from this folder. 


Unconstantean

Thank you for your detailed explanation. I'm still dreaming about a game with SC4 quality of mods and CS physics  :D

Indiana Joe

#3
I honestly don't think that anyone has the full set of development code/files for the game anymore.  Maxis studios have been shut down and moved multiple times since the release of the game; it is unlikely to have survived all of this intact.  Someone somewhere was in charge of sorting through and cleaning out these various Maxis offices, different people each time probably; and somewhere along the way I'm sure the dev work from the game was lost, partially or completely.

EA isn't concerned with that part of the game.  They only need what is necessary to keep it up for sale and do basic marketing.