NWM (Network Widening Mod) - Development and Support

[bweazel]

Hey all. I'm having a problem here with neighbor connections and NWM.

I have a RD-6 that I want to connect to the next city. So I drag both of the RD-6 sections all the way to the side, connection made on both, both arrows pointing towards the neighbor. I place the RD-6 neighbor connection on top of the road at the edge. The traffic info cursor looks to be working. Cars, buses, peds, freight trucks, all passing over the RD-6 to the neighbor city.

Now here's where it gets interesting. I go to the neighbor city, place a starter piece a pretty good distance away from the edge. Drag the RD-6 to where the normal roads turn into RD-6, plop the RD-6 neighbor connection piece on top again, and the only thing that comes through is bus traffic and ped traffic (at about the same numbers that it said it was going through on the other side. The car traffic is almost completely gone. 2000+ car traffic in the first city then it drops to 3 car traffic in the 2nd city. So this has me scratching my head.

Did I place the pieces wrong? The only tile that seems to have cars on it is the neighbor connection piece itself (the cars are traveling to the commercial buildings touching the neighbor connection piece), but past that, only bus and ped traffic can travel.

Is this normal? Is there something I'm doing wrong? Any help at all would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[fefenc]

Hey all. I'm having a problem here with neighbor connections and NWM.

I have a RD-6 that I want to connect to the next city. So I drag both of the RD-6 sections all the way to the side, connection made on both, both arrows pointing towards the neighbor. I place the RD-6 neighbor connection on top of the road at the edge. The traffic info cursor looks to be working. Cars, buses, peds, freight trucks, all passing over the RD-6 to the neighbor city.

Now here's where it gets interesting. I go to the neighbor city, place a starter piece a pretty good distance away from the edge. Drag the RD-6 to where the normal roads turn into RD-6, plop the RD-6 neighbor connection piece on top again, and the only thing that comes through is bus traffic and ped traffic (at about the same numbers that it said it was going through on the other side. The car traffic is almost completely gone. 2000+ car traffic in the first city then it drops to 3 car traffic in the 2nd city. So this has me scratching my head.

Did I place the pieces wrong? The only tile that seems to have cars on it is the neighbor connection piece itself (the cars are traveling to the commercial buildings touching the neighbor connection piece), but past that, only bus and ped traffic can travel.

Is this normal? Is there something I'm doing wrong? Any help at all would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Unfortunately, this is an issue from Simcity 4 that probably can be solved only if EA gives the Simcity 4 source code to the community, but they won't do it because they're the worst gaming company nowadays and deserves the "third golden poo" for ruining games like Spore.

It seems to happen when we have too much neighborhood connections "close" to each other, try to demolish a neighborhood connection that isn't the RD-6, the numbers might change for RD-6, but the bug will affect the connection you'd destroy.

[bweazel]

Unfortunately, this is an issue from Simcity 4 that probably can be solved only if EA gives the Simcity 4 source code to the community, but they won't do it because they're the worst gaming company nowadays and deserves the "third golden poo" for ruining games like Spore.

It seems to happen when we have too much neighborhood connections "close" to each other, try to demolish a neighborhood connection that isn't the RD-6, the numbers might change for RD-6, but the bug will affect the connection you'd destroy.

Other than a normal road about 30 tiles away from the RD-6 NC I'm trying to get working, there are no other NC's on this side of the map. Are you sure this is a common problem? I've searched a lot and I cannot find anyone else complaining about this. If NCs don't work for any roads larger than 1 square.... then why even have them included with NAM? That's why I'm thinking it must be a problem with my set up, or it must be a problem with the way I'm laying the NC tiles.

[fefenc]

Unfortunately, this is an issue from Simcity 4 that probably can be solved only if EA gives the Simcity 4 source code to the community, but they won't do it because they're the worst gaming company nowadays and deserves the "third golden poo" for ruining games like Spore.

It seems to happen when we have too much neighborhood connections "close" to each other, try to demolish a neighborhood connection that isn't the RD-6, the numbers might change for RD-6, but the bug will affect the connection you'd destroy.

Other than a normal road about 30 tiles away from the RD-6 NC I'm trying to get working, there are no other NC's on this side of the map. Are you sure this is a common problem? I've searched a lot and I cannot find anyone else complaining about this. If NCs don't work for any roads larger than 1 square.... then why even have them included with NAM? That's why I'm thinking it must be a problem with my set up, or it must be a problem with the way I'm laying the NC tiles.

It happens a lot with me when I use too much connections a bit closer to each other. Maybe I'm wrong, but when I destroy one of the connections, the simulation fixes where I want to fix it in exchange of glitching the one where I destroyed. Try to destroy the connections 30 tiles away from your RD-6 and see if you have a subway connection closer to your RD-6 and destroy it. Other than that, I'm stuck with you regarding this problem :X

[roadgeek]

Unfortunately, this is an issue from Simcity 4 that probably can be solved only if EA gives the Simcity 4 source code to the community, but they won't do it because they're the worst gaming company nowadays and deserves the "third golden poo" for ruining games like Spore.

In the case of Sim City, EA has a vested interest in trying to keep Sim City 4 inferior to the new Sim City game as much as possible, or else no one would go out and buy the new game, which imo, still has a lot to be desired when it comes to city size and entrance/exit ramp aesthetics, even with the new UDON mod.

[dragonshardz]

Unfortunately, this is an issue from Simcity 4 that probably can be solved only if EA gives the Simcity 4 source code to the community, but they won't do it because they're the worst gaming company nowadays and deserves the "third golden poo" for ruining games like Spore.

In the case of Sim City, EA has a vested interest in trying to keep Sim City 4 inferior to the new Sim City game as much as possible, or else no one would go out and buy the new game, which imo, still has a lot to be desired when it comes to city size and entrance/exit ramp aesthetics, even with the new UDON mod.

The flaw in your argument is thus: SC4 is the superior city-building simulation. It may be older and have some unpatched bugs that we (still) haven't been able to fix, because nobody has been crazy enough to decompile and fix the source code, but in many ways it is the superior product.

[roadgeek]

The flaw in your argument is thus: SC4 is the superior city-building simulation. It may be older and have some unpatched bugs that we (still) haven't been able to fix, because nobody has been crazy enough to decompile and fix the source code, but in many ways it is the superior product.

Perhaps I should have said that they have a vested interest in not allowing improvements that could rival their product. Which one is superior is somewhat of a judgement call. If the new UDON Mod can improve highway to freeway transitions, avenue to OWR transitions, entrance and exit ramp transitions, and height transitions, it would tilt the scales in favor of the new game. The new game doesn't suffer from grid restrictions, or diagonal/FA intersection or bridge issues.

EDIT: I might also add that there are no issues with Flex-Fly in the new game either. In fact, you can flex fly to any angle you choose. You don't even have to flex over orthogonal. You can flex over diagonal or Fractional of any road or highway type. You can even Flex over another curve, or have multiple layered bridges. I sometimes wonder why more modders don't just move on to improving the new game, and just forget about this one.

[Tarkus]

I sometimes wonder why more modders don't just move on to improving the new game, and just forget about this one.

There's a few reasons for that.  First of all, there's only two NAM Team members who own SC2013, and they aren't developers, nor do they play it with any frequency.  While the price has gone down on that game considerably in recent months, most of us aren't the type who buy games just to mod them.  I count myself in that camp.  It's the same reason you don't really see any of us modding CXL or CiM.  And in all honesty, I don't know that SC2013 or CXL really "compete" with SC4 all that much.  That's not to say one is superior over the others, but more that while they might seem outwardly rather similar, all being city-simulation games, they're actually very different experiences.  Virtually all the SC2013 and CXL modders are people who had little to no involvement with SC4 modding, and those SC4 folks who have dabbled in modding those games have quickly come back to SC4, or move onto something completely unrelated.  I suspect Minecraft has sucked up a lot more SC4 players than any of the other city-builders designed to "compete" with SC4.

Finally, having followed just what the limitations are of SC2013 modding, even with all the apparent improvements that UDON has allowed, the prospect of truly getting rid of the "dead space" around the city tiles in the regions (let alone of getting new regions) is basically nil.  I have played the demo, and while I did enjoy my brief time with it, I got the sense that it wouldn't really hold my interest much beyond that, especially with how the zoning system works.  I respect what the SC2013 modders have done, but I don't really have any interest in purchasing the game, let alone spending my free time modding it, especially if people imply that I should move over to it just because it's "newer".

-Alex

[Indiana Joe]

Not to mention the fact that 10 years worth of modding is a lot of work to "just forget about."  Some company could release a perfect successor to SC4 and I think we'd still hesitate to drop all the projects still going on behind the scenes here.

Take ARMA for example.  ARMA 3 has been out for over a year, considered a great game, but tons of people continue to play ARMA 2 for the mods (DayZ, etc.)  There's even been some SC2k and 3k revival threads over at Simtrop recently.  People don't "just forget about" great games because they are old.

Also those SC13 graphics are still way too cartoon-y they remind me of freakin' Zoo Tycoon 2 I mean where's the texture detail I honestly prefer the 2.5D of many other games.

[GDO29Anagram]

The irony about Zoo Tycoon 2 is that I, 1, tried playing it with mods, and 2, tried modding it myself. The level of modding was on par with using the Reader to, say, increase the capacity of a transit station, and that's exactly what I did: increase the max number of zoo guests.

And I wanna bring up something that I just made up last week: procrastocompletionism. (Yes, procrastination and completionism.) Even if I slack off with SC4 and leave it for, say, Minecraft, there's always something in there that draws me back. Recently I had a few dreams that almost made me wanna play Runescape again, but with SC4, there's always something that draws me back to mod it. That's mostly because of my belief that I have an understanding of NAM development that is so strong and rich that no one else can understand and I'm the only one who can explain it to anyone; not even other NAM Team Members can understand me sometimes. (Though this "accompanies" the "belief" that I "might" "have" "some" "hint" of "autism" "in" "me", but that's "another" "story" that I "don't" wanna "get into".) I'm the only one who can see patterns out of things where patterns don't otherwise exist; dumping that knowledge means that everything would fall into an organisational black hole. My purpose is to make sense out of something that doesn't.

That and complete a long-term personal goal of mine, which is to make a new SC4 UI and/or make a "unified"-"ish" texture set.

(Runescape's a bit of an oddball since it was the first real game I ever played, real in the sense that it exposed me to the magicbane of online gaming and showed how weak the computer I had at the time really was. Zoo Tycoon 2 was because I was bored one day. Recently, I played FATE but with two of its expansion packs, and Gemcraft Chapter 2 to see if there was a new update. None of them, except maybe Runescape, have the same magic that SC4 has on me.)

[gn_leugim]

(...) Even if I slack off with SC4 and leave it for, say, Minecraft, there's always something in there that draws me back. Recently I had a few dreams that almost made me wanna play Runescape again, but with SC4, there's always something that draws me back to mod it. (...)

Ohh if I know that felling so many times, so many times...

[Tropod]

I sometimes wonder why more modders don't just move on to improving the new game, and just forget about this one.

There's a few reasons for that.  First of all, there's only two NAM Team members who own SC2013, and they aren't developers, nor do they play it with any frequency.  While the price has gone down on that game considerably in recent months, most of us aren't the type who buy games just to mod them.  I count myself in that camp.  It's the same reason you don't really see any of us modding CXL or CiM.  And in all honesty, I don't know that SC2013 or CXL really "compete" with SC4 all that much.  That's not to say one is superior over the others, but more that while they might seem outwardly rather similar, all being city-simulation games, they're actually very different experiences.  Virtually all the SC2013 and CXL modders are people who had little to no involvement with SC4 modding, and those SC4 folks who have dabbled in modding those games have quickly come back to SC4, or move onto something completely unrelated.  I suspect Minecraft has sucked up a lot more SC4 players than any of the other city-builders designed to "compete" with SC4.

Finally, having followed just what the limitations are of SC2013 modding, even with all the apparent improvements that UDON has allowed, the prospect of truly getting rid of the "dead space" around the city tiles in the regions (let alone of getting new regions) is basically nil.  I have played the demo, and while I did enjoy my brief time with it, I got the sense that it wouldn't really hold my interest much beyond that, especially with how the zoning system works.  I respect what the SC2013 modders have done, but I don't really have any interest in purchasing the game, let alone spending my free time modding it, especially if people imply that I should move over to it just because it's "newer".

-Alex

Not that I imagine this an appropriate thread to continue such discussion, but my 0.02 cents......
Personally I've considered many times, even recently, to purchase SC13. The most recent of which after reading even yet more information (& reviews) available about the game it just does not garner my interest enough to warrant buying the game let alone spend any time on it. I got into SC4 first & foremost to play & enjoy, because of the reviews; & from there gained an interest into modding (& programming) for the game. Despite SC4s shortcomings SC4 has kept my interest/intrigue because of the underlying simulation. Something which I believe is lacking from SC13 & why I'll never buy it. Some gamers out there don't buy games just because they're made; just because you built it doesn't mean they will come . I'm sure SC13 has its pros but it's just not for me & I'm sure many others out there feel the same, not just about SC13 but SC4 as well.

[roadgeek]

(...) leave it for, say, Minecraft, (...)

    Bought that game for my son and his friend. Now he doesn't want to play Sim City any more. Of course he can't figure out how to keep his cities in the black.

[bobblunderton]

Dear NAM team:

     May you regard this opinion and statement with the weight of someone who's been playing this game frequently since it's original release date.

     Please don't ever give up on this game, not that you're going to, ever; but as I read in someone recently quoting "I don't know why modders don't move on to the new SimCity?"

     Oh, for all the reasons, for every reason, I could write a novel/book on how many reasons there are that this SC4/RH game is so much better than SIMCITY 2013 and CitiesXL.
     NAM, RHW, CAM, and a few other (thousand-some!) mods are the best mods available for any game in my opinion.  There isn't even anything close.   For the city-planning road-builder in us all, this is the only game that even comes CLOSE.  There will never be a better Simcity AFAIK, and as far as I can see.  I will keep playing this game for most likely another 10 years, atleast.  This is one of the most replay-able games there is, with literally limitless design options.  Making large road networks and then building your city and watching it all fall into place like clockwork is one of the most satisfying things there is in a game.  A sense of accomplishment, not unlike that of building your own house, just... in a game.   Please don't ever get discouraged, as folks like myself (even in my 30s) are sitting here drooling over what may come of the next NAM release.

    So, all in all, thank-you, thank-you so much for providing what may have already been tens-of-thousands of hours of fun, and what may be many thousands more!
    Oh, and while it's on my other-wise positive mind... Simcity 2013 sucks.  It's EA and all that is wrong with EA that Need for Speed hasn't already proved to us.  SC4 FTW!
--Cheers & Keep up the good work!

[strucka]

Dear NAM team:

     May you regard this opinion and statement with the weight of someone who's been playing this game frequently since it's original release date.

     Please don't ever give up on this game, not that you're going to, ever; but as I read in someone recently quoting "I don't know why modders don't move on to the new SimCity?"

     Oh, for all the reasons, for every reason, I could write a novel/book on how many reasons there are that this SC4/RH game is so much better than SIMCITY 2013 and CitiesXL.
     NAM, RHW, CAM, and a few other (thousand-some!) mods are the best mods available for any game in my opinion.  There isn't even anything close.   For the city-planning road-builder in us all, this is the only game that even comes CLOSE.  There will never be a better Simcity AFAIK, and as far as I can see.  I will keep playing this game for most likely another 10 years, atleast.  This is one of the most replay-able games there is, with literally limitless design options.  Making large road networks and then building your city and watching it all fall into place like clockwork is one of the most satisfying things there is in a game.  A sense of accomplishment, not unlike that of building your own house, just... in a game.   Please don't ever get discouraged, as folks like myself (even in my 30s) are sitting here drooling over what may come of the next NAM release.

    So, all in all, thank-you, thank-you so much for providing what may have already been tens-of-thousands of hours of fun, and what may be many thousands more!
    Oh, and while it's on my other-wise positive mind... Simcity 2013 sucks.  It's EA and all that is wrong with EA that Need for Speed hasn't already proved to us.  SC4 FTW!
--Cheers & Keep up the good work!

I totally relate to this. Even though it's on a hiatus right now for half a year, this is the best city builder of them all. The variety, the community, the control. This game proves you don't make a game better with better graphics. I support you fully NAM team. I don't know how the finances are, but I already donated to sc4d and will do so again! This is the one DLC that I'm willing to buy and invest in!
GO NAM! Go SC4D! Go SC4 community!

[dyoungyn]

All/NAM Team,

I agree 100% that the new SC 2013 is a not nearly as good as SC4 and the more than a decade of the NAM  Team as made SC4 even better and better.  After playing the game for 14 years it is hard to through it all away.  I  have played Cities XL and the traffic simulator and city realism is jut not there as with SC4.  As for SC 2013, I am utterly dis-appointed that Maxis and EA could not incorporate all the wonderful and stupendous creations the entire hard core SC4 players have created and discovered over the last 14 + years of playing this great game. 

Please I and more than likely others are begging that the NAM Team and other creators keep the great stuff coming.  The only thing that I can see that SC 2013 has over SC4 is no limitations to the grid system.  How ever, with imaginative creators have over come the grid in SC4 and create great thing  such as overlays that fills in the dead space in the grid.

Thank you again NAM Team and entire SC4 players.

dyoungyn

[roadgeek]

All/NAM Team,

I agree 100% that the new SC 2013 is a not nearly as good as SC4 and the more than a decade of the NAM  Team as made SC4 even better and better....

Just imagine how good the new game could be, if it had the contribution of developers that have contributed to NAM.

[jdenm8]

It could be slightly less crap?

[Indiana Joe]

It could be a fantastic game, maybe every Glassbox limitation would be fixed and maybe it would be twice as good a game as SimCity 4.

But by that time the year would be 2030.  Ain't nobody got time for that.  The game servers will be taken down in a few years anyway and the game will either be unplayable or change drastically.

[Zeratai]

Hi there, I dont know if anyone had already asked this, Is there no median or traffic islands on AVE - 6 of the NWM? How can you avoid in having the long TLA-7 median showing through all the lenght of the ave? Also I can't seem to find MAVE 4 and MAVE 6...