The Viceroyalty of Perseus

[Vizoria]

What a cool-looking railway station; fantastic architecture. Did you re-lot it?

[belfastsocrates]

What a cool-looking railway station; fantastic architecture. Did you re-lot it?

It's the Helsinki Railway Station by prepo, I have relotted it though. http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=849


In other news....I was able to keep the game stable for a short period and used that time to snap some images of the rail depot. I'll post an update this weekend. Going to reload the game and see about getting a few more images.

Once I post the rail depot update I'm going to commence intensive development of Passau Island area as the instability of the current tile is frustrating me to the point where I'm losing interest, so I need a break as such and work on a new area of the city.

[art128]

Great news about the stability. Hopefully you can manage to keep the game stable enough for you to enjoy it.

That last picture was really nice. Helsinki station is really a beautiful landmark. A shame though that we can see the pillars through the trains.

[belfastsocrates]

A shame though that we can see the pillars through the trains.

I know, that's really annoying me but there's nothing I can do to address given how the station was BAT'd, the pillar placement is somewhat annoying as some are very close to the track edges and they're really thick.

[kelis]

I love that train station, is one of my favourites of the game...I always use it when I build something with a European style. Great job and I hope you can solve all those issues.

Greetings

[belfastsocrates]

Situated in the Illford District of Passau City is Perseus Rail's Illford Depot. This depot is owned and managed by Perseus Rail and is the largest in the country. Its primarily role is to maintain, clean and service the large custom-designed Bombardier Electrostar commuter train fleet. The depot is also utilised as a marshalling yard for trains when not in use.

The depot comprises a range of buildings and areas with specific purposes. The largest area is dedicated to train servicing and maintenance. The two large depot buildings are capable of accommodating eight 4-car trains simultaneously. Two of the eight maintenance tracks are designated for heavy maintenance (overhaul) and typical maintenance tasks such as repairs, bodywork and repainting. In addition it will be used for maintenance work on rail-borne wayside maintenance vehicles. The 30 ton overhead crane moves large sub-assemblies, e.g. bogies, motors, couplers, to and from the respective repair areas. The maintenance building also contains facilities for inventory storage, workshops, staff offices and amenities.

In addition to these maintenance buildings this area also benefit from a large parking hanger which allows for the night time cleaning of the trains and lighter maintenance work.

The second important area of the depot is that set aside for external cleaning. Train pass through a modern and sophisticated washing and drying system to ensure trains are clean and fit for service. Trains are washed every day before they are despatched for service on the network. The washing system is split into two sections, the first contains pressurised water jets which mix with biodegradable and non-harmful detergent to clean the exterior of the trains, waste water is collected, filtered and recycled for reuse on-site. The second section incorporates compressed air jets which dry the surface before the train departs the washing area.

In addition to the washing and maintenance area the site contains a plethora of warehouses, storage units and workshops which serve the Perseus Rail network and particularly requirements of the network in the Passau metropolitan area. The depot also has electrical generation capability and is connected to the national electrified rail network, however, while in the depot area trains do not have access to catenaries and use their on-board batteries for off-grid movements, upon leaving the depot trains reconnect to overhead lines.

The facility is also home to some research and engineering companies which focus on rail development. Perseus Rail also have administrative and research offices as well as the Passau Central Signalling Centre, which controls railway signalling within the Passau Metropolitan area

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[kelis]

If the main theme are trains, I will like it because I LOVE trains... but this update is a step forward. You made a nice LOT here, very realistic and is really nice to see this mix of real - game pictures.

Great job my friend 

[carlfatal]

Late but...

I totally agree with kelis. This update is absolutely great for all of us train fans. All the nice little details are perfect. Also I like your relot of Helsinki Station, one of my favorites too, as it is not too big for a medium city. 

Away from that I hope, that you were able to get SC4 running smoothly again. It can be so annoying, if one is used to long loading times and has to face crashes too often. 

[manga rivotra]

Agree, this is really excellent loting, and something very original 

[belfastsocrates]

belfastsocrates: I used to have problems of unstable city tiles when they reached a certain threshold of size. There is a way of maximizing stability but at the cost of load times.

Go to the start menu and type in msconfig in the search box. This opens system configuration. Next click the "Boot" tab. Click "Advanced options", check "Maximum memory" and set it to 1/3 of your available RAM. The available RAM figure is giving inside the maximum memory box.

I run Windows 7 and this method has always worked for me and stabilised the game. I don't know why SC4 becomes more stable, all I know is that with this method it simply does become far more stable.

p.s. Also datpack your plugins to, datpacking works best when you have an organised plugins directory.
p.p.s. I would not recommend this method if you HAVE NOT datpacked your plugins.

Thank you for this! 

I've been giving this a go over the past few days and playing stability has improved immensely.

I had a plugin folder of around 13GB (I know...) so I tidied that up and DATpacked it, it reduced it to around 11GB. I played the game after DATpacking and before trying the max memory adjustment and although the game was super fast it eventually stalled and became unstable.

I've noticed over the past few months that the game would become unstable when it began to utilise around 1.5 or 1.6GB of memory. A problem I never had until I upgraded my RAM from 3 to 8GB in May.

I did as you suggested and limited the amount of memory the laptop could use while I played the game (reverting back to full memory when not playing) and although I've not had the chance to play for hours I have been able to play, save and exit without instability or errors. The game is also still relatively fast to load.

My sanity and enjoyment has been restored and I can now go the the industrial area I was creating and finish that.

[Vizoria]

Thank you for this! 

I've been giving this a go over the past few days and playing stability has improved immensely.

I had a plugin folder of around 13GB (I know...) so I tidied that up and DATpacked it, it reduced it to around 11GB. I played the game after DATpacking and before trying the max memory adjustment and although the game was super fast it eventually stalled and became unstable.

I've noticed over the past few months that the game would become unstable when it began to utilise around 1.5 or 1.6GB of memory. A problem I never had until I upgraded my RAM from 3 to 8GB in May.

I did as you suggested and limited the amount of memory the laptop could use while I played the game (reverting back to full memory when not playing) and although I've not had the chance to play for hours I have been able to play, save and exit without instability or errors. The game is also still relatively fast to load.

My sanity and enjoyment has been restored and I can now go the the industrial area I was creating and finish that.

That's great to hear! I did not expect my method to work on another computer so perhaps I may have stumbled into something? Does you computer use windows 7?

With my method you can play for hours on end, but on large city tiles, which are filled up quite up a bit, the game can still crash during the 4th or 5th save, on average, based on my experience. To make saving more reliable reduce the draw speed to its lowest setting- I think it's called draw speed, the feature where the game adds all the models and props on top of the textures after a rotation or zoom change.

[belfastsocrates]

I've been a very busy bee working on my logistics and distribution area around the Illford Rail Depot thanks to much improved game stability. A full update and replies should be available this coming weekend, still a couple of things I want to tweak. Here's just a small teaser though.

[vortext]

  

[Vizoria]

'Dem industrial areas look finger-licking delicious!

[Tyberius06]

Wow! Nice pictures!
Where can I get that TNT Depot building? It looks simple but quite nice, and I worked before for that company in Hungary, but I haven't found any SC4 content about this delivery company yet, only DHL.

[belfastsocrates]

Wow! Nice pictures!
Where can I get that TNT Depot building? It looks simple but quite nice, and I worked before for that company in Hungary, but I haven't found any SC4 content about this delivery company yet, only DHL.

It's available from Simcity Polska - http://www.simcitypolska.pl/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=192

I've edited the original lot slightly, but that's easy enough to do in Lot Editor.

[belfastsocrates]

I took over 40 images of this area so I'm breaking it up and will do two updates as loading 40 images is asking a bit much. I also had to drop the 6-lane NMW road and revert to standard avenue as I couldn't get automata to appear on it, which is a shame.

Secondly, this distribution and logistics area was only possible thanks to the memory solution posted by Vizoria earlier in this MD, it has provided much greater stability and I can build and save without issue for a considerably longer period than previously, so my sincere thanks to him.


Passau does not have dirty industry or much heavy manufacturing, most of the latter is confined to the second city of Axehaven. Passau does however have a very large clean and high-tech manufacturing and research sector as well as sizeable logistic and distribution capability. This distribution area below is only part of that and it will extend onto the neighbouring tile where I'm working on tasty lots such as the massive Perseus Post Mail Centre for the Passau city region, that'll be a huge lot and Mushy (ST) is working on some custom vehicle props for that also.

This type of building is relatively new to me, so I welcome feedback and constructive criticism


(Click on the images for a larger size)

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[kelis]

Great update !! I like all the picture, but man the last one if just...No words for that huge deposit train. I like the transport system as well...I think you did a great infrastructure plan with those train lines and highways.

Fantastic update once again 

[Vizoria]

What a lovely industrial estate. Above all else the carparks and loading areas are spot on.

[vortext]

Fantastic update!   

You did a great job, for me all the fencing around the lots really make it shine. So easy to overlook how ubiquitous fences are in RL.