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CAM - General Discussions

Started by RippleJet, May 01, 2007, 01:35:47 PM

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RippleJet

Not too many rumours should have been heard about the CAM up till now...
This is the first public announcement about what has been developed during the past 2 months.


Development and upgrading in SC4 is based on stages, where each higher stage provides a denser population (occupancy) than any lower one. The percentual distribution between stages changes each time a certain capacity threshold is reached. There are three different capacities, and they are all regional:

Residential Capacity = Regional R$ + Regional R$$ + Regional R$$$
Commercial Capacity = Regional CS$ + Regional CS$$ + Regional CS$$$ + Regional CO$$ + Regional CO$$$
Industrial Capacity = Regional ID + Regional IM + Regional IHT

Residential and commercial development comprises eight stages, while industrial development comprises three stages.
The Colossus Addon Mod (CAM) extends these stages to 15 for residential and commercial development, and to 10 for industrial development.

In Rush Hour, R$, CS$, I-R and I-D were given thresholds that allow them to develop faster than the other RCI types. The graph below shows the percentual distribution between different stages of R$, based on the regional residential capacity. Once this capacity has reached 19,846, the ratio between the stages remains static:

R$ development in Rush Hour


The CAM changes this rather radically. Development will be slower at start (the first threshold is at 800 instead of 300), but new stages will continue to come into play all the way up to a regional residential capacity of 3,085,020:

R$ development in CAM


The CAM changes the graphs for R$$, R$$$, CO$$ and CO$$$ in a similar way.

For Rush Hour, the last residential threshold is reached for R$$ and R$$$ at a regional residential capacity of 125,267.
With the CAM, the R$$ development keeps going from the first threshold of 900 to the last one at 3,469,411.
With the CAM, the R$$$ development keeps going from the first threshold of 1,000 to the last one at 3,856,275.

For Rush Hour, the last commercial office threshold is reached at a regional commercial capacity of 125,267.
With the CAM, the CO$$ development keeps going from the first thresholds of 400 to the last one at 1,540,469.
With the CAM, the CO$$$ development keeps going from the first thresholds of 500 to the last one at 1,925,586.

With commercial service, stage 1 is still rather predominant in Rush Hour, when the last threshold is reached at a regional commercial capacity of 19,846 (for CS$) or 125,267 (for CS$$ and CS$$$):

CS$$$ development in Rush Hour:


With the CAM, the CS$ development keeps going from the first threshold of 300 to the last one at 1,156,233.
With the CAM, the CS$$ development keeps going from the first threshold of 400 to the last one at 1,540,469.
With the CAM, the CS$$$ development keeps going from the first threshold of 500 to the last one at 1,925,586.

CS$$$ development in CAM:


With industrials, stage 3 soon becomes very dominating in Rush Hour, when the last threshold is reached at a regional industrial capacity of 19,846 (for I-R and I-D) or 125,267 (for I-M and I-HT):

I-M development in Rush Hour:


With the CAM, the I-D development keeps going from the first threshold of 200 to the last one at 771,885.
With the CAM, the I-M development keeps going from the first threshold of 300 to the last one at 1,156,233.
With the CAM, the I-HT development keeps going from the first threshold of 400 to the last one at 1,540,469.

I-M development in CAM:


Farming is the only RCI type in SC4 that doesn't upgrade. Thus, there is no reason to extend the number of farm stages in the same way as the others. Instead there will be some other innovations, which are still being developed.

With the CAM, several in-game lots are being corrected. Industrial capacity will generally be higher and the stage of some existing residential towers and commercial offices are being changed in order to better fit into a devlopment comprising all 15 stages. Virtually all existing stage 8 buildings will as such be incompatible with the CAM. They will all need to be relotted and remodded in order to achieve correct occupancies and correct stages.

The CAM will also enable really tall growable towers. I'll demonstrate that by showing the rough minimum heights required for a CO$$$ office in order to fit certain stages:


Stage 8:
107 m
Stage 9:
149 m
Stage 10:
195 m
Stage 11:
247 m
Stage 12:
308 m
Stage 13:
379 m
Stage 14:
466 m
Stage 15:   
571 m

The new stages will naturally also include buildings with higher capacities than we are used to seeing so far. In order to enable them to grow, the demand range might have to be extended (beta testing will see what will be needed). The picture below should tease you enough though:



At the moment the CAM is being tested (Beta 3 is the latest version). Before getting any closer to a release date, the beta testing will have to go on for quite some time. Since we are talking about building up massive test regions (population in the millions), each testing phase is rather time consuming. Along with the testing, we are also making lots to fill out these, now empty, upper stages. You may have noticed the number of skyscraper prop packs that have appeared on the LEX. They are there for a purpose... ::)

For the beta testing we might be needing external help as well.
If you are interested, please tell us in this thread, and we might contact you by PM when the time has come.

BarbyW

All donations oops volunteers considered. Please test this out as it seems to work but we do need more volunteers.
Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened. TP



Barbypedia: More alive than the original

Filasimo

I am highly interested in testing this MOD and seeing its potential. Great work on this latest development and I do feel this will indeed extend the life of this ever so changing game.
Plaza Mall Project
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=2171.0
Coming Soon to the LEX!

NAM Team
What can NAM do for you?
//

jplumbley

I will be around to help with the re-modding of all the lots need.  Glad to be a part of the crowd invovled in this!
"You learn something new everyday."

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Street Addon Mod - SAM

Yoder7652

very cool guys/gals, glad to see development of this moving forward...unfortunately, I do not have a generic city to test this on  &mmm

RippleJet

Quote from: Yoder7652 on May 01, 2007, 03:08:25 PM
very cool guys/gals, glad to see development of this moving forward...unfortunately, I do not have a generic city to test this on  &mmm

Actually, I would prefer if you could test it on an empty region. We need to see how the mod behaves through all the development phases from stage 1 to stage 15.

Yoder7652

in that case, I'll see if I can start a test region in the next few days or so...I'll download the mod tonight!

mightygoose

once this is complete is it relatively easy to extend this mod even further..... to say encompass really tall structures for say some futuristic megatowers???

edit, yes i had heard the rumours... and until i heard the rumours, was thinking of figuring out something very similiar
NAM + CAM + RAM + SAM, that's how I roll....

Sim Shady

wow...holy cow...this really is big.  Any idea how this affects out pluggins?  I if you need testers for this, i could help, although how much time would you need a tester to give to this and play sc4?

Tarkus

Wow . . .  this is an incredible project.  I rather like the name as well . . . CAM . . . it rhymes with NAM. :D

I'm looking forward to seeing more, and being somewhat of a statistics nerd at times, I rather enjoyed all those charts, RippleJet. ;)

-Alex

jeronij

Great to see the project showing to light  :thumbsup:

There is a revolution on the way  ;D ¡¡¡

I am currently not active - Please, contact Tarkus for any site related matter. Thanks for enjoying SC4D :D


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Mallorca My Mayor Diary


MAS71

 :o What a super MODD it is !! :o
&apls Congratulations to starting a beta of CAM &apls

I hope it completes without any big problem, and come a day that open to the public early.  ::)
and
I can finally announce this good news to many Japanese Mayors too now. ;D
(The thing made secret was a painful thing.  :-[)


Good speed to CAM and great CAM's staffs. :thumbsup:

callagrafx

Colossus just about sums up the effect it will have on your game...it's what Maxis should have done but were too afraid to try  :D

With this, NAM, and the other Mods, who needs SC5?..we've already made it!
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it

Sim Shady


cammo2003

I hadn't heard any rumours, but I noticed that there were a heck of alot of MEGA packs going out lately... So I suspected something major was in the works... I can see that this is probably going to make the game a fair whack harder - but a LOT more realistic. It's always bothered me that tall towers build so early on (btw, the CO$$$ heights look about right for a real city as the earliest you'd expect a building of a given height.

I realise this will mean I'll likely have to restart regions, but given how much more realistic they'll become, that's not as bad a sacrifice as it sounds.

RippleJet

Quote from: mightygoose on May 01, 2007, 03:33:00 PM
once this is complete is it relatively easy to extend this mod even further..... to say encompass really tall structures for say some futuristic megatowers???

That wouldn't really be feasible or even possible. For residentials and commercials, the CAM deploys all available 15 stages.
Industrials could in theory be further extended from 10 to 15 stages. But would we really want to have industrial skyscrapers?

The first beta version of CAM did go higher up in population density, but that lead to impossible occupancy levels over 64K (65,536) in some cases.
Traffic will be an interesting and difficult enough problem to solve already with the occupancy levels included in this version of CAM.


Quote from: Sim Shady on May 01, 2007, 08:06:53 PM
wow...holy cow...this really is big.  Any idea how this affects out pluggins?

All lots released for the CAM will be clearly marked. Any lots made for stages above those included in Rush Hour will of course be useless without the CAM.
Virtually all current stage 8 buildings (residential and commercial offices) should not be used with the CAM. Instead new lots will be released for most of them (several skyscraper model/prop packs are already available in the LEX, and more will follow). These lots will assure that the development beyond stage 8 proceeds smoothly.

Many of the lots currently available on STEX for stages 1-8 have occupancies or stage settings that won't fit into a smooth development. For best performance, such lots should be avoided, both with Rush Hour and especially with the CAM.

shoreman905

As a retiree with more time than my wife would approve for SC4, I would like to join the testing squad. I spend a minimum of five hours a day now, with the present system, trying building schemes and zoning experiments. And as a retired civil engineer, I keep detailed notes on all of my cities and regions. That type of log may be of assistance to you. Please consider me for inclusion. Regardless, congratulations on taking that step up, Cal is right, the heck with SC5.

mightygoose

#17
well what kind of occupancies are we looking at for stage 15 lots..... is it considerably past the 10,000 mark, if so how far....

EDIT: and furthermore when i am selecting a growth stage for a building i assume i can just enter numbers up to 15 instead of 8 and the game will deal with it accordingly when the mod is installed. is that correct?

oh and as a matter of fact increasing industry stages to about stage 6 is exactly what i would like to try and do, even if com/res cant/dont need to be pushed any higher....



sorry for not reading what you had written. i cannot wait to here more.
NAM + CAM + RAM + SAM, that's how I roll....

FromTheAshes

Sorry for the silly question, I don't understand english that well. So, what exactly is this mod doing?
Visit Vorsfelde.

scorer

#19
@FromTheAshes: The CAM changes the way of growing cities in Simcity. In short, the density of cities will develop smoother and big skyscrapers will appear later in the game than they do now. Important details of most custom buildings have to be changed, like: How many people/workers will fit in a building? When will the building be appearing in a city? Because of this, most existing downloadable buildings will not be compatible with this mod. Unfortunate, but unavoidable.

@ripplejet: This mod is a great idea! If this will be non-beta, it will be another huge milestone in SC4-history. I have some experience in lotting/modding for personal usage, building lots and modifying custom content using the available tools since pre-RH times. Since I love "balancing" available stuff, I would like to help here, either through testing or by "refitting" buildings.

What kind of additional core data of the mod (occupancies for certain stages, etc) is already defined?