• Welcome to SC4 Devotion Forum Archives.

NAM Request - distance penalties

Started by sobol, October 16, 2007, 07:39:35 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

sobol

Is there a way to turn down the penalties for travel when moving from one region to the next???


For example, let's say a large grid city is mostly residential, can the adjacent regions be commercial and industrial without the 50% commute addition when moving???  that goes for rail and subway.. and road should be 25% at most for the slowest.
I've got nothing.

flame1396

Why any penalty?

Completely unrealistic. Unless the simulator doesn't add the additional time spent in the new city.
The most astounding and unique aspect of the human race is our fervent application of our ingenuity to kill each other, thus completely defying the near-universally proven fact that the ultimate goal of a member of a species is to ensure the survival of the species.

sobol

Quote from: flame1396 on October 16, 2007, 07:44:01 AM
Why any penalty?

Completely unrealistic. Unless the simulator doesn't add the additional time spent in the new city.

I am not sure what you meant by that, but here is what I meant.. when leaving one region and going into the next.. there is a penalty added unto the time travelled which means many times your sim will not get to his jo and a no job zot appears over his home...  I am asking if it can be significantly reduced for the transitions from one zone to the next.. at least for adjacent zones.. because it makes growth very difficult without job multipliers and the like.
I've got nothing.

Diggis

The 'penalty' is there to simulate time traveled from the boarder to their job, as the simulator doesn't carry that information between cities.

mott

Quote from: Diggis on October 16, 2007, 08:47:34 AM
The 'penalty' is there to simulate time traveled from the boarder to their job, as the simulator doesn't carry that information between cities.

Are we sure there's really a static penalty?

jplumbley

@mott, I am sure there is a penalty... I just dont remember where.  Unless I saw a post about it, there has been soooo much information that has passed through these eyes.

OK... My take on this...

The penatly for crossing boarders is there for a reason.  When sims goto a new city to find jobs, they are do not continue to "actively" look for a job in that city.  What happens is, in a purely residential tile there are no jobs so the jobs are supplied by a neighboring tile.  But these are not "real" jobs, they are fake jobs representing the real jobs within that city tile.  When the sims reach teh city border, for all intensive purposes they are considered as employed.  It doesnt matter whether they actually go and reach a job in the neighboring tile or not, they are still considered employed.

Now, what if you had a main Residential area in a large city tile and on two neighboring medium city tiles you had CO and I?  Well if your downtown busniess district was centered in the middle of the tile and the Industrial was covering most of the other tile.  And if your highway connection from the R to the CO city was close to the border between the C and the I cities with another connection that was a shorter distance compared to driving to the CO jobs downtown.  Those sims are now almost considered "new sims" what will happen is it will recommpute the path cycle and attempt to look for jobs again, if it finds it is faster to goto the I city then they will.  This is how eternal commuters start to become apparent.  Now, because these sims are sorta, somewhat considered new sim they screw around with the demand, and it means that some sims will then take up two jobs or 3 jobs or more depending on the number of times they cross a city border.  This is why eternal commuters are BAD because they will circle and circle and circle, never finding a job but eating your supplied work force.  With too many of the same wealth sims circling, it causes the demand for the wealth of sim to be -6000 forever, almost, there are ways to get it back but very annoying and difficult.

How does the Inter-city Border cost come into this?  Well it add a cost which MAXIS really intended for it to simulate the sims reaching their jobs in the adjacent city, well it also deters sims from wanting to cross the city border for new jobs.  In my opinion if we want to diminish the effects of "eternal commuters" we have to raise this Cost Value, but first we must find it.
"You learn something new everyday."

http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/169/nhpjplumbleykv3.gif
Bringing the new horizons closer to reality.

Berethor ♦ beskhu3epnm ♦ blade2k5 ♦ dmscopio jplumbley ♦ moganite ♦ M4346 ♦ Dedgren ♦ Ennedi Shadow Assassin ♦  Tarkus ♦ wouanagaine
Street Addon Mod - SAM

sobol

The algorithm is stupid.  If SC4RH is a simulation of a real model, let's look at a real model.

How far will you travel for a good job?  what about traffic? what about trains and subways?

Even with the modified pathfinding, they are still pretty stupid!!!  they still take less efficient modes of transportation, and the whole R$$$ refuse to ride subway/train is ridiculous.

Sometimes this game is extremely frustrating.
I've got nothing.

JoeST

QuoteThe algorithm is stupid.
Nice and constructive... lol

Anyway yep thats why we admire the NAM team soo much, they make it so much more realistic
Copperminds and Cuddleswarms

wouanagaine

Quote from: sobol on October 16, 2007, 12:49:37 PM
Sometimes this game is extremely frustrating.
Tss, tss. See it as challenging

New Horizons Productions
Berethor ♦ beskhu3epnm ♦ blade2k5 ♦ dmscopio ♦ dedgren ♦ emilin ♦ Ennedi ♦ Heblem ♦ jplumbley
M4346 ♦ moganite ♦ Papab2000 ♦ Shadow Assassin ♦ Tarkus ♦ wouanagaine
Divide wouanagaine by zero and you will in fact get one...one bad-ass that is - Alek King of SC4

JoeST

LOL, only you sir wouanagaine ever sees it as "challenging" and you probably don' t at that lol
;D
Copperminds and Cuddleswarms

sobol

I am not admonishing anyone.  The NAM and other mod peeps are amazing.  It's just frustrating...  um, I meant challenging.  I wish the algorithm was better, that's all.
I've got nothing.

Shadow Assassin

Maybe you'll be one of those people who'll find this useful.

It might be a good solution. But it seems to only be dealing with travel within the city, as for the region... I don't know.
New Horizons Productions
Berethor ♦ beskhu3epnm ♦ blade2k5 ♦ dedgren ♦ dmscopio ♦ Ennedi
emilin ♦ Heblem ♦ jplumbley ♦ moganite ♦ M4346 ♦ papab2000
Shadow Assassin ♦ Tarkus ♦ wouanagaine
See my uploads on the LEX!

mott

Quote from: sobol on October 16, 2007, 03:46:09 PM
I am not admonishing anyone.  The NAM and other mod peeps are amazing.  It's just frustrating...  um, I meant challenging.  I wish the algorithm was better, that's all.

The algoirithm is the best one that can exist.  Given sufficient information, it can and will find an optimum path every time, on the first try, and do it in the minimum RAM and CPU usage possible for *any* algorithm.  The A* implementation is beautiful.  The only problem is, it looks to me like it was re-tuned at some point, by someone who never sat through a Calculus class in his life, but decided to "improve" it by making the heuristic "bigger" so it would "run faster" anyway. 

sobol

Quote from: mott on October 17, 2007, 02:12:56 PM
The algoirithm is the best one that can exist.  Given sufficient information, it can and will find an optimum path every time, on the first try, and do it in the minimum RAM and CPU usage possible for *any* algorithm.  The A* implementation is beautiful.  The only problem is, it looks to me like it was re-tuned at some point, by someone who never sat through a Calculus class in his life, but decided to "improve" it by making the heuristic "bigger" so it would "run faster" anyway. 


Can you fix it?
I've got nothing.

sobol

Here is my beef....

These stupid, just like myself sims prefer to travel slowly...  they hate the train and subway...  commercial vehicles would rather take a traffic impacted tiny road instead of a two lane avenue, or a frieght train which is shortest with the least amount of traffic...

Don't even get me started on buses...  these stupid sims couldn't find a job of their life depended on it.. even if it is across the street.. some of their trips are mind boggling...
I've got nothing.

jplumbley

Quote from: sobol on October 19, 2007, 10:40:36 AM
Here is my beef....

These stupid, just like myself sims prefer to travel slowly...  they hate the train and subway...  commercial vehicles would rather take a traffic impacted tiny road instead of a two lane avenue, or a frieght train which is shortest with the least amount of traffic...

Don't even get me started on buses...  these stupid sims couldn't find a job of their life depended on it.. even if it is across the street.. some of their trips are mind boggling...

Go check out the Commute Engine Tuning Thread.  Mott and I have been re-tuning the Pathfinding Engine to work a little more realistically, now you still have to make sure the shortest physical path isnt using a lower speed street, but the Pathfinding Engine we are working on will prevent overcongested routes and spread traffic out more evenly amoungst the city's roads.  We are not ready to release anything, but there are a couple of pre-alpha files posted in the thread for testing purposes, you could downloaded these and check them out to see how they effect your road systems.  But beware these are not intended for widespread use yet as there are no formal tests done with them, just experimental tests.
"You learn something new everyday."

http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/169/nhpjplumbleykv3.gif
Bringing the new horizons closer to reality.

Berethor ♦ beskhu3epnm ♦ blade2k5 ♦ dmscopio jplumbley ♦ moganite ♦ M4346 ♦ Dedgren ♦ Ennedi Shadow Assassin ♦  Tarkus ♦ wouanagaine
Street Addon Mod - SAM

sobol

Quote from: jplumbley on October 19, 2007, 10:54:46 AM
Go check out the Commute Engine Tuning Thread.  Mott and I have been re-tuning the Pathfinding Engine to work a little more realistically, now you still have to make sure the shortest physical path isnt using a lower speed street, but the Pathfinding Engine we are working on will prevent overcongested routes and spread traffic out more evenly amoungst the city's roads.  We are not ready to release anything, but there are a couple of pre-alpha files posted in the thread for testing purposes, you could downloaded these and check them out to see how they effect your road systems.  But beware these are not intended for widespread use yet as there are no formal tests done with them, just experimental tests.

I will wait for an official release.. but I am definately interested.
I've got nothing.

mott

Quote from: jplumbley on October 19, 2007, 10:54:46 AM
you still have to make sure the shortest physical path isnt using a lower speed street,

It'll figure that out eventually.  When a city is first starting, the "a02" pathfinding prefers straight-line routes just because there's no other traffic so Sims can ignore the speed limits.  Once the city starts to mature and congestion slows the traffic down toward the speed limits, the pathfinder gets smarter and smarter about avoiding the slower routes.  The more trips and the more congestion on the map, the better it gets at finding the time-fastest, not distance-shortest, path.  And the less CPU/RAM needed to do it, too. 

The "a01" file I attached was a bit of a botch; that's why the "a02" followed so shortly behind it.  My a02 file should be quite safe in existing cities - it's roughly equiivalent to a NAM "better pathfinding, 2x capacity, 2.5x commute" mod, if such a thing existed.  Plus it makes buses and trucks hate driving on streets.  They'll do it, but they'll avoid it if they can.  The other neat thing about a02 is that you see real-life commute times on the Commute Time graph, but this is just a graph display hack, it doesn't mess with the underlying game engine.    If you want to play with it, it should be quite safe in existing cities.

Avoid my a01, it eats too much CPU compared to a02.

JPlumbley's attachment is an interesting alternative, just be warned that it doesn't support RHW/ANT networks, and probably won't do anything to fix problem with Sims not using bus stops that are behind them.  It does have a beautiful congestion/speed curve, which I "borrowed" from him mostly unchanged.  ;)

sobol

Guys, I will wait for you all to work out the bugs and download an official release...  there has to be a way to force the retards to take a train/subway when it is the shortest and quickest path.. especially when a little walking is involved...  isn't that better than never making it to the job due to distance/traffic??

They also need to stop using slow ass roads when they can use an avenue..  I haven't even put in freeways yet.. those are even worse.


What a bunch of stupid, just like myself sims.
I've got nothing.

mott

Quote from: sobol on October 19, 2007, 05:38:18 PM
There has to be a way to force the retards to take a train/subway when it is the shortest and quickest path.. especially when a little walking is involved...  isn't that better than never making it to the job due to distance/traffic??  They also need to stop using slow ass roads when they can use an avenue..  I haven't even put in freeways yet.. those are even worse.

All you have to do is use one of the NAM's "perfect pathfinding" plugins - there's one that's just the default game settings, with your requests satisfied.   It's perfect every time.  If you've got a modern computer, give it a try.  It should work every time, even in the most pathological cases.  By now it has millions of hours of play-testing behind it.