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Topic Title: Traffic Simulator Z Development
Topic Summary: This thread is for discussing future additions or changes to Simulator Z.
Created On: Apr-03-2009 02:41 AM
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 #1544823 Apr-03-2009 02:41 AM
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z1
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Although the main work on Traffic Simulator Z is finished, from time to time there will be some development. For those who are interested, the initial development history and many internal details of the Simulator Z implementation can be found in the original Traffic Simulator Z Development thread. Support issues for Simulator Z should be addressed in the NAM Traffic Simulator Z Support Thread.

The issue I would like to address right now is street capacities, and especially in the context of SAM streets. Simulator Z has been out long enough now that many people have experience using it with SAM, and streets in general. Do the capacities of the various levels of the simulator seem about right for these streets? Or do people feel they need to be adjusted one way or another? Any feedback you can furnish will be helpful for the next release of Simulator Z.
 #1554346 Apr-26-2009 01:22 AM
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I've now created and tested version 1.1 of Simulator Z.  It's ready for general use, and should be available in the next NAM update.  Until then, you can get it here, at the bottom of this post.  It includes thefollowing modifications:
  • Monorails and HSR have been fixed to contribute to and be affected by traffic congestion, just like all other vehicles.
  • The speed of the el rail trains has been adjusted slightly downward, to be equivalent to the subway speed.
  • The display of the monthly subway cost in the menu has been fixed.
  • The monthly subway tile cost has been increased by an additional 50%, to more accurately simulate the real-world cost of subways.  It is now §1.80 per tile per month, or six times the value in other traffic simulators.
The first change also has the effect of increasing monorail and HSR usage if those travel types are currently underutilized.  If you use monorail or HSR, and still have lower than desired volumes with these travel types, I would strongly suggest giving this simulator a try.  In my tests, the average monrail/HSR line more than doubled in usage with this new version of the simulator.

The zip file contains all eight standard versions of the simulator; you should install only one of them.  The versions containing "_Z_" in their names are the regular versions of the simulator, while the versions containing "_ZP_" are the Park & Ride versions.





Edited: 05/04/2009 at 04:53 AM by z1
 #1557043 May-04-2009 04:54 AM
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After doing extensive testing of the new RTMT SAM stations (which have not yet been released), I made a minor modification to Simulator Z that increases the effectiveness of buses on streets. Nothing else was changed. The new version of Simulator Z can be found at the bottom of the preceding post.
 #1563690 May-28-2009 01:31 AM
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I would like to increase the accuracy of Simulator Z a little more by tuning one specific parameter a bit more precisely. To do this, I will have to have a fair amount of data. If you are willing to run some tests using Simulator Z (any version), if you know the basics of Ilive's Reader well enough to change a single parameter, and if you have a city with at least five monorail, HSR, or BTM stations (in any combination) that have decent usage, please send me a private message. Thanks!
 #1564462 May-31-2009 02:13 AM
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Some people have responded to my previous post indicating that they were interested in the testing, but didn't know how to use Ilive's Reader.  Not to worry!  If you can use Windows Explorer, you can use Ilive's Reader.  What needs to be done is simple enough that I'll give step-by-step instructions, so that even someone who has never used the Reader before can follow them with ease.
 #1566052 Jun-05-2009 06:18 AM
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No monorail/rail pollution!

And why in Z some of the ordinances being tampered with?
 #1566173 Jun-05-2009 05:57 PM
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Originally posted by: rudric
No monorail/rail pollution!

And why in Z some of the ordinances being tampered with?


I would actually use the term "adjusted."    And there's only one ordinance that was adjusted - the Clean Air Act.  Previously, the Clean Air Act did nothing to reduce traffic pollution.  This was not a big problem in the original game, but as higher capacity traffic simulators have come into use, the air pollution along traffic routes became disproportionately high.  In Simulator Z, the Clean Air Act was modified to reduce traffic air pollution to reasonable levels.

 #1567517 Jun-10-2009 12:00 PM
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ah ok, so it's not like a mega mod tampered cheat? but more like reality?

Hey can you help me, i have this question, im now using modified plugin A medium, can you tell what do i need to change inorder to get rid of monorail/rail pollution? I might later change to Z but for now im sticking with A and I do really hate the monorail pollution. A while back these traffic plugins did not have monorail pollution, but now it's back for some reason.
 #1567574 Jun-10-2009 03:44 PM
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Originally posted by: rudric
ah ok, so it's not like a mega mod tampered cheat? but more like reality?


Exactly.

Hey can you help me, i have this question, im now using modified plugin A medium, can you tell what do i need to change inorder to get rid of monorail/rail pollution? I might later change to Z but for now im sticking with A and I do really hate the monorail pollution.


I can only recomment that you switch to Simulator Z now.  It has no disadvantages and many advantages over Simulator A.

Also, for the future, questions about SImulator Z not related to its development should be post in the NAM Traffic Simulator Z Support Thread.

 #1567677 Jun-10-2009 10:17 PM
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Ok i see the sims find their jobs more throughout the city? I see that in A sims find jobs in "blocks" not individually sorta to say.

Is the fastest way to get tow work really that necessary? It seems like a cpu/mem hog. Many people do go shops, doctor etc etc on they commute trips. So I guess the fastest between home - work is not that realistic. Maybe ease it up a bit? Find a balance. But yes, Certainly the NAM traffic plugins are improvement of what the unmodified game offers.
 #1567692 Jun-10-2009 10:58 PM
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Originally posted by: rudric
Ok i see the sims find their jobs more throughout the city? I see that in A sims find jobs in "blocks" not individually sorta to say.


Yes, that's correct.  The reason for this is that Simulator Z uses a more accurate pathfinder than Simulator A, and as a result, sees many more job possibilities than Simulator A does.

Is the fastest way to get tow work really that necessary? It seems like a cpu/mem hog.


Surprisingly, it's not, as I mention in the support thread.  When the pathfinding algorithms are tuned properly, there are certain exponential behaviors which become linear.  In this case, the best pathfinding actually takes less time and less memory.

 #1569901 Jun-17-2009 11:57 AM
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Originally posted by: rudric
No monorail/rail pollution!


I think that no monorail/rail pollution may be realistic. In real life, they use electricity often to run (espeically monorail). The pollution comes out of the fact that they're using electricity.

The only thing that they will be emitting is noise and the fact that they take up land.



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 #1571233 Jun-18-2009 12:20 PM
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Is it possible to make the simulator favor more intracity commuting? It would reduce the chance of getting the eternal commuter bug, and it gets insanely annoying when there is about 40,000 commuters going to another city just for a mere 5,000 jobs when there are about 20,000 empty jobs in the city.


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 #1571915 Jun-19-2009 06:46 AM
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This could be done, but the negative effects would outweigh anything positive that was gained.  Instead, there are simple rules to follow that will prevent the eternal commuter bug from happening (namely, don't create possibilities for such loops to occur).  Also, I'll be making a general release of ESURE in the not too distant future; this includes express subways, which will allow intercity travel without risking the eternal commuter bug.
 #1577775 Jul-06-2009 10:23 AM
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 ESURE?...

Never heard of that at all...


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 #1577808 Jul-06-2009 12:02 PM
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Here's all I could find about it:

sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php


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 #1589802 Aug-12-2009 03:59 AM
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Release of Traffic Simulator Z v1.2 - Beta 1

In the original Maxis traffic simulator, pathfinding was often poor at best - I remember Sims deserting their residences due to lack of jobs even though there were suitable jobs available literally right across the street.  Later traffic simulators improved this situation greatly, but the no-job zots were merely reduced, not eliminated, and it was generally a good strategy to put in as much mass transit in a city as you could afford, and hope that the Sims would find their way to at least a good portion of it.

Simulator Z has improved pathfinding to the point where no-job zots are a rarity in properly built cities, and the Sims can generally be counted on to take the fastest route to work.  The Maxis simulator gave the Sims all of three minutes to get to their jobs; if they couldn't find a suitable job in that amount of time, they were fired, and forced to leave town, resulting in a no-job zot.  Later traffic simulators extended this commute time limit, but it wasn't until Simulator Z that it was extended far enough so that the Sims could take a real-world amount of time to get to their jobs.

Making these improvements had an unanticipated side effect, though.  Since the rails (subway, el rail, commuter rail, and monorail and its variants) were always faster than roads, even highways, the increased pathfinding efficiency of Simulator Z means that the Sims now travel by various forms of rail whenever they can.  The result, as many people have noticed, is that there is much less road traffic in a city running Simulator Z than in a real city, as long as the SC4 city has a fair amount of rail networks.

Right now, there are two ways to remedy this.  Experienced SC4 players often overbuild rail networks, especially subways, as in the past that has been necessary for optimum traffic flow.  With previous versions of Simulator Z, I have increased the monthly cost of subways to discourage this practice, until this cost currently stands at six times the original Maxis cost.  But it is still not hard to have a thriving, profitable city with lots of subways and other rails, and with the roads barely used.

One way to restore balance is to reduce the amount of rail networks in a city, forcing the Sims back onto the roads.  If a realistic amount of rail networks is used, then this will happen.  Another way to restore balance is to use the Low version of Simulator Z, thereby limiting the use of rail networks, and again, forcing more Sims onto the roads.

The only problem with these methods is that they are rather artificial.  Ideally, the traffic simulator should produce a reasonable balance of traffic distribution, as long as you have provided sufficient traffic capacity for your city.  The traffic simulator even has properties that allow the Sims' preference for travel types to be weighted toward cars or mass transit, and these properties can be set for each wealth level.  From its initial release, Simulator Z increased the Sims' preference for cars, and at first, this had a real effect.  But as the efficiency of Simulator Z's pathfinder increased in subsequent releases, it overwhelmed these preferences.  So I have spent a while looking at the dynamics of this situation, doing a lot of testing and seeing where the problem lay, and in the end I have come up with what appears to be a better version of Simulator Z.

Hints of what the source of the problem is can be seen in the problem's description above.  In earlier traffic simulators, rails had to be significantly faster than roads to attract Sims to them.  That is no longer the case.  Simulator Z started with the same speeds for rails as the old CAM simulator, which is what I used as my starting point for Simulator Z.  These speeds were either greater or equal to those of the original Maxis speeds.  Through my experiments, I have found that reducing them significantly helps balance traffic automatically.  And it does so without causing any performance degradation; in fact, cities appear even more robust using Simulator Z with the lower rail speeds.  I believe that this is due to the fact that the game intrinsically likes to see traffic on the roads, and increasing this traffic has various positive effects.

What is a "significant" reduction?  For all rails except monorail and its variants, it's 30%.  This makes most rails slower than highways for the first time.  Monorails were a tricky question; in the real world, they aren't significantly faster than el rail or subway.  (For example, an official of the Seattle monorail recently stated that the monorail's average speed, including stops, was 27 mph (43 kph).  This was in response to a charge that its average speed was only around 20 mph (32 kph).)  However, monorails also serve as the basis of High Speed Rail, and according to Wikipedia, the minimum cruising speed of high speed rail is 200 kph.  What to do?

First of all, in general all the speeds in Simulator Z are based on cruising speed, and do not include stops.  Furthermore, in this new release of Simulator Z, all vehicle speeds are actually around the upper limit of their real-world cruising speed.  But this still leaves a huge gap between real-world monorail speed and the minimum speed of high speed rail.  It's clear that Maxis intended that the monorail be a high speed form of transit, and countless cities are built with that assumption in mind.  So what I did was to use the minimum cruising speed of high speed rail, or 200 kph.  This represents a 20% reduction from the current monorail speed, as opposed to the 30% reduction for other rails.  And coincidentally, it just happens to be the original monorail speed used by Maxis.

In general, reducing the speeds of the rails reduced their usage slightly.  But monorail usage actually went up significantly!  Part of this is undoubtedly due to the fact that monorail speeds were not reduced as much as other rail speeds, but part was also undoubtedly due to the fact that there are fixed time costs in transit that did not change, and a fast monorail becomes even more attractive under those circumstances.

Finally, there's the Bullet Train Mod (BTM).  Technically, a bullet train is just another name for high speed rail, and runs at the same speed.  But in SC4, it has been used to designate an extra-fast form of high speed rail.  I decreased the speed of the BTM by 25% to 300 kph, which happens to be the original speed of the BTM in SC4.  Like the monorail, I would expect to see its usage increase in the new Simulator Z.

Bus speeds were unchanged; as a result, bus usage tends to increase a bit over time along with car usage.

To summarize, here are the speeds (in kph) of the rails in the original Maxis simulator, the current Simulator Z, and the new Simulator Z:

Simulator Subway El Train Freight Train Commuter Rail Monorail Bullet Train
Maxis 150 150 150 150 200 200
Simulator Z v1.1.1 150 150 150 200 250 400
Simulator Z v1.2 105 105 105 140 200 300

I have done extensive testing of these new speeds on my cities using the different capacities of Simulator Z, and I find it to be a distinct improvement, though in general, the difference was subtle, and in no case was it drastic.  But it was always positive.  As might be expected, the biggest difference was in highway usage.  Furthermore, changes were gradual; it typically took about ten years for real changes to be seen.  At the ten year point, change in traffic patterns was continuing in a positive way, but this was as far as I took my tests.

I would like to encourage as many people as possible to try out the new version of Simulator Z, as I think it is a real improvement over the current version.  It's recommended to run it at least ten years (and possibly longer) before evaluating it; the Traffic Volume Graph is one of the most useful tools for seeing what's going on here.  It would be very helpful for some people to run their cities with this simulator for 20 years or longer to see what happens.  Please post your experiences with this simulator in this thread, along with any other comments you may have.  If no problems are found with this version of the simulator, it should be released as the standard Simulator Z in the next NAM release.

To use the new version of Simulator Z, download the attached zip file, which contains all capacities and types of the simulator.  It is important to already have the current version of Simulator Z installed via the NAM installer, as this way it will be in sync with the other files that get installed along with it.  Then replace the version of Simulator Z in your Network Addon Mod folder with the identically named file from the attached zip archive.  If you are using the BTM, you should pick the file that has the same name but also has "BTM" in it.  Good luck!




 #1592005 Aug-18-2009 09:10 PM
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Some of you may recall that a few months ago, I made a request in this thread for volunteers to test a new version of Simulator Z.  People volunteered and did the tests, and my thanks to all of them for their work.  At the time, the tests showed no significant difference from the standard Simulator Z.

In my post announcing the Beta 1 version of Simulator Z v1.2, I mentioned that the simulator's efficiency combined with the large differences in vehicle speed overwhelmed overwhelmed some of the preferences expressed in some of the simulator's other parameters.  But with the speed ranges reduced in Beta 1, I decided to revisit the other change I had been considering.  Sure enough, it now had an undeniable effect, although still small.  And the setting the had the best effect had been hinted at in the initial results a few months ago.  Combined with the speed reductions, there is slightly more road traffic, along with an even greater increase in monorail/HSR/BTM usage.  As a result, I am incorporating this change into what is now Beta 2 of Simulator Z v1.2.  Aside from this one addition, everything else is the same as in Beta 1, including the new travel type speeds.  I expect this to be the last beta for this version of Simulator Z, and I would appreciate it if people would test it out and let me know how it works for them.  Don't be surprised if the differences are small enough in some cities not to be noticeable.  Please see the end of the first thread on this page (the part after the chart) for how to install and test the beta version.  All feedback is appreciated.  Thanks!



 #1593043 Aug-21-2009 08:40 PM
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rudric
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You are making Z way too much bogus. It messed my commute time graph! And now what am I reading? decreased subway speeds...
I think Z is perhaps a good if you use all the RHW HSR etc etc. I want my commute time graph the way it was!
 #1593075 Aug-21-2009 09:49 PM
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Too bogus?  To the contrary, much research has gone into making sure that it is becoming more realistic.

Simulator Z has the most accurate commute time graph of any simulator.  To read the complete technical details behind it, please see this post, along with some of the following ones.

As for subway speeds, they were reduced from the game's standard 150 kph (93 mph) to 105 kph (65 mph), which is still quite high by real world standards.  Generally, subways don't go much above 80 kph (50 mph), and 112 kph (70 mph) is about their top speed.

But that's cruising speed.  It doesn't take into account when subways slow down for sharp curves, or more importantly, when they stop at subway stops.  Taking all of this into account, subway trains in the Boston subway system have been measured to average 33.3 kph (20.7 mph).  In SC4, subway trains never stop; they never even slow down.  (It makes for an interesting scene at the subway stations.)  So their average speed is their top speed, and the "reduced" speed of 105 kph needs to be compared against a real-world speed of 33.3 kph.  So SImulator Z's subways still run about three times as fast as real-world ones.

It's the same with all the other travel types in Simulator Z.  Their speed, alone among traffic simulators, is now approximately equal to the cruising speed of their real-world counterparts.  Why was this done?  Not out of some misplaced aesthetic sense, I can assure you.  Instead, combined with all the other settings in Simulator Z, these speeds produced the most realistic traffic distribution.  And in doing so, they also produced the healthiest cities.

Of course, if you want a sick city, it's easy enough to make one in any simulator.

Then there's the unintended realism of the evolution of Simulator Z.  Subway costs have been rising, while subway service goes down.  What could be more realistic than that?     Yet the overall result is that cities run better, which is the purpose of all of these changes.
 #1593098 Aug-21-2009 11:05 PM
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The game is not anymore realistic by tweaking the commute time graph and making subways really slow. Maxis/EA did not hardcode the game to be 100% realistic and here you whine about IRL subway speeds,, like it would make the game anymore realistic. Ok, i like it very much that the modding community tries to make the game more realistic, I do that too. But you have to take into account that you cant hardcode the game and it becomes very mixed pile if too much tweaking with the plugin files. You cant take a part of realism and put it in and then forget the other realistic aspects thinking now it's realistic because every road and avenue intersection creates congestion, even when there is lots of capacity available, making the overall commute time grow. You see eyecandy traffic lights but in IRL there is no traffic lights in every corner yet again Z acts the way like there is. I could go on and on!

But, Im now using plugin A and I copied some Z values to it. Im liking it now. My commute time dropped because I got rid of the red squares. What I really would like is I want my commute time graph the way it was! like hardcoded one! I want to know what Maxis thinks my commute time is not what you think it is.

Not every aspect in the game can be realistic to the max. OK maybe you get IRL speeds at subway curves but does that really make the game more IRL in overall? No. If you want more realism go with both -> Maxis realism and IRL realism.

Do you know where this custom content community started to measure the realism in the game? By looking at the lenght of the automata car vehicle. Everything was based on that.

And in IRL, people dont go always the fastest way tow work/home. They go to like doctor and shopping and post office etc etc on the way. It is very un-IRL to force them go 100% fastest route.

You are trying too much with Z and you are ruining a perfectly good traffic plugin. I like Z but I dont want red squares on eye candy traffic lights! on every corner! Anyway im now back to A and my commute time graph is messed up! What all the values add to the commute time graph showup?
 #1593129 Aug-22-2009 12:47 AM
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I'm afraid that you have completely missed the point of Simulator Z.  There is way too much that you obviously misunderstand about the workings of traffic simulators for me to address here.  But there are a few points worth mentioning.

If you're using a modified version of Simulator A, then you've got the original Maxis commute time graph.  Maxis intentionally lies to you here, though.

Do you know where this custom content community started to measure the realism in the game? By looking at the lenght of the automata car vehicle. Everything was based on that.


Um, no.  The game scale is based on the fact that a large tile is four kilometers on a side.  At lower levels, such as the car automata, the scaling is inconsistent.  If you look in depth at the BATting threads, you'll see this.

Based on the game's innate scale, the maximum commute time allowed in the unmodded Maxis game is three minutes one-way.  If you take more than three minutes to get to your job, you're fired.  Does your commute time graph always show commute times below six minutes?  No, it doesn't, because Maxis scaled it up.  Meanwhile, the maximum commute time for Simulator A is acutally 8.5 minutes one-way.  Simulator Z treats commute time in a more realistic way; for details, you'd have to read the thread I referenced above.

I'm sorry that you don't like Simulator A, but it's clear you're judging it based on a faulty understanding of what it's doing.  So use your hybrid simulator and enjoy the game!




Edited: 08/22/2009 at 05:41 AM by z1
 #1593182 Aug-22-2009 07:09 AM
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The game is not anymore realistic by tweaking the commute time graph and making subways really slow. Maxis/EA did not hardcode the game to be 100% realistic and here you whine about IRL subway speeds,, like it would make the game anymore realistic. Ok, i like it very much that the modding community tries to make the game more realistic, I do that too. But you have to take into account that you cant hardcode the game and it becomes very mixed pile if too much tweaking with the plugin files. You cant take a part of realism and put it in and then forget the other realistic aspects thinking now it's realistic because every road and avenue intersection creates congestion, even when there is lots of capacity available, making the overall commute time grow. You see eyecandy traffic lights but in IRL there is no traffic lights in every corner yet again Z acts the way like there is. I could go on and on!

But, Im now using plugin A and I copied some Z values to it. Im liking it now. My commute time dropped because I got rid of the red squares. What I really would like is I want my commute time graph the way it was! like hardcoded one! I want to know what Maxis thinks my commute time is not what you think it is.

Not every aspect in the game can be realistic to the max. OK maybe you get IRL speeds at subway curves but does that really make the game more IRL in overall? No. If you want more realism go with both -> Maxis realism and IRL realism.

Do you know where this custom content community started to measure the realism in the game? By looking at the lenght of the automata car vehicle. Everything was based on that.

And in IRL, people dont go always the fastest way tow work/home. They go to like doctor and shopping and post office etc etc on the way. It is very un-IRL to force them go 100% fastest route.

You are trying too much with Z and you are ruining a perfectly good traffic plugin. I like Z but I dont want red squares on eye candy traffic lights! on every corner! Anyway im now back to A and my commute time graph is messed up! What all the values add to the commute time graph showup?
 #1593184 Aug-22-2009 07:26 AM
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The game is not anymore realistic by tweaking the commute time graph and making subways really slow. Maxis/EA did not hardcode the game to be 100% realistic and here you whine about IRL subway speeds,, like it would make the game anymore realistic. Ok, i like it very much that the modding community tries to make the game more realistic, I do that too. But you have to take into account that you cant hardcode the game and it becomes very mixed pile if too much tweaking with the plugin files. You cant take a part of realism and put it in and then forget the other realistic aspects thinking now it's realistic because every road and avenue intersection creates congestion, even when there is lots of capacity available, making the overall commute time grow. You see eyecandy traffic lights but in IRL there is no traffic lights in every corner yet again Z acts the way like there is. I could go on and on!

But, Im now using plugin A and I copied some Z values to it. Im liking it now. My commute time dropped because I got rid of the red squares. What I really would like is I want my commute time graph the way it was! like hardcoded one! I want to know what Maxis thinks my commute time is not what you think it is.

Not every aspect in the game can be realistic to the max. OK maybe you get IRL speeds at subway curves but does that really make the game more IRL in overall? No. If you want more realism go with both -> Maxis realism and IRL realism.

Do you know where this custom content community started to measure the realism in the game? By looking at the lenght of the automata car vehicle. Everything was based on that.

And in IRL, people dont go always the fastest way tow work/home. They go to like doctor and shopping and post office etc etc on the way. It is very un-IRL to force them go 100% fastest route.

You are trying too much with Z and you are ruining a perfectly good traffic plugin. I like Z but I dont want red squares on eye candy traffic lights! on every corner! Anyway im now back to A and my commute time graph is messed up! What all the values add to the commute time graph showup?
 #1593186 Aug-22-2009 07:52 AM
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rudric
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Oops. Dont know how that happened. Delete the dubble posts.
 #1594174 Aug-25-2009 04:16 AM
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z1
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People have probably noticed that my changes to Simulator Z at this point fall into the area of fine tuning - I don't think there's a lot more to be done to improve the basic simulator.  However, there's a whole area of customization that can be opened up, allowing people to tune the simulator to their personal preferences using a special configuration tool (most likely, GoaSkin's NAM Tool).  It became clear from a discussion in the version of the  NAM Traffic Simulator Poll at SC4D that a lot of people would be interested in this type of customization, so I am now tentatively planning to implement it.  Such customization would include the following:

  • A Bus Usage Multiplier, which would allow the player to control the relative usage of buses in the traffic simulator.  The initial setting would be 1, which would reflect the current usage level, and this value would be calibrated in tenths, with a range of 0.1 to 9.9.  (Zero doesn't actually work as expected if valid paths are available.)
  • A Highway Bus Lanes checkbox, which would simulate the existence of bus lanes on highways, although of course the automata would not reflect this.  But this last fact would not necessarily be obvious; you could also call it a carpool lane, to explain the presence of cars, and some buses would be traveling in other lanes anyway.  This could be combined with the Bus Usage Multiplier to produce a multiplicative effect.
  • Allowing the players to tweak the monthly cost of all the networks.  Although the purchase cost for network tiles is accessible, it's often tied up in exemplars with properties that are changed by other mods, so it's risky to modify those exemplars.  But the monthly costs exist completely within the traffic simulator.  And realistically, cities don't have bundles of cash sitting around for big construction projects anyway.  So the monthly costs can be considered payments on interest-only bonds that the cities issue to build the networks.  These costs can be made more or less expensive to suit the player's preference, and each network can be tweaked individually.
  • Similarly, the players could adjust the fares for each travel type any way they wanted.  As an example, you could make your ferries traveling riverboat casinos, and charge the Sims §100 just to board.  That would solve your financial problems fast.  This wouldn't deter the Sims from taking ferries; they just don't know the value of money.
  • The intersection effect could be changed, effectively making more or fewer stoplights and stop signs in cities, making traffic flow smoother, or making a complete mess of it.
  • The commute time graph scaling could be changed by the player.  This is useful because the proper scaling depends on the type of region that the player builds; specifically, it is dependent on the number of inter-city commuters.
  • Finally, the amount of air pollution emitted by vehicles could be tweaked by any amount in either direction.

Comments are welcome.
 #1628216 Oct-13-2009 04:01 AM
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z1
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The Beta 3 release of Simulator Z v1.2 is now available.  It has already been through widespread testing, and will most likely be the final release of Simulator Z v1.2.  Like each of the previous two betas for this version, this beta optimizes a different part of the simulator.  Beta 3 specifically adjusts a parameter that directly affects commercial and residential demand; the result should be a better balance.  The biggest change was made to the Ultra version of Simulator Z; successively smaller changes were made to the High and Medium versions; and no change was made to the Low version.  This change also appears to result in a slight increase in car usage.

Combined with the previous two betas, whose changes are incorporated here, this version of Simulator Z has produced a noticeably better traffic simulation for many people.  If you use Simulator Z, I would strongly recommend that you download the attached zip archive, and replace the version of Simulator Z in your Network Addon Mod folder with the identically named file from the zip archive.  This version of Simulator Z should become standard with the next NAM release.

The attached file contains versions for the Bullet Train Mod, as well as for the standard Simulator Z.



 #1642426 Nov-07-2009 07:12 AM
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z1
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And now for something completely different.  Some people have found that Simulator Z (Low) is too easy for them, and they want something more challenging.  For these daring souls, I present

Simulator Z Classic

This version of Simulator Z has the low capacities of the original Maxis simulator, but without the bugs.  The capacities have been adjusted slightly so that the simulator is completely compatible with NWM; it is compatible with RHW as well.

Since the bugs in the original Maxis simulator are not present here, you no longer get situations where users exclaim, "My Sims are so stupid, they couldn't find a job if their lives depended on it!"  Instead, if you run this in a big city, you get traffic jams.  Big traffic jams.  HUGE traffic jams.  In fact, this simulator allows you to create the worst traffic jams of any traffic simulator in SC4.

Why is this?  In all the other low capacity simulators, excessive congestion leads to abandonment.  So you can't have really big cities with low capacity simulators; Sims will abandon them.  But does bad traffic lead to people abandoning Los Angeles in droves? Or New York?  Or Chicago?  Or London?  Or Paris?  No, people just sit in traffic all day.  And now your Sims can too!  Watch your transportation advisor go absolutely apoplectic as your streets turn to red, your roads turn to red, and your avenues turn to red.  And yet your city will still function, just like the major cities I listed above.  Of course, how well it functions depends on you.  So for those who like a challenge, check this one out!

And for smaller cities and towns, the NAM Tool will allow even lower capacities.  Until then, you can have quite a bit of fun with Simulator Z Classic.  Please let me know what you think of it.  Grin





Edited: 11/09/2009 at 12:01 AM by z1
 #1642759 Nov-07-2009 05:12 PM
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Indiana Joe
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This is what I've been looking for for.....well, ever.  I don't want a city with 50 bazillion people.  I just want a traffic simulator that improves my commute time, but doesn't raise the speed limits or capacities of my networks.  This is perfect for my 180,000 pop. city!!!

I am a cautious person, however.  Just how does it 'slightly adjust' the capacities?  And what is this about lowering them in smaller cities?  Maybe this is too much of a challenge.  If anyone knows more, please let me know.

For more info on what I'm looking for, please read my original thread here.



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Edited: 11/07/2009 at 08:15 PM by Simtropolis Moderator
 #1643477 Nov-09-2009 02:52 AM
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z1
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The road capacities have been adjusted to be compatible with NWM ( the Network Widening Mod, currently under development by the NAM), and also to fit common sense as well. The biggest adjustment has been made to the avenue capacities. In the original simulator, a single lane of an avenue had 2.5 times the capacity of a single lane of a road. This only made sense if avenue traffic traveled at highway speeds, which it doesn't. I think that one of the reasons Maxis made the avenue capacities that high was that the original pathfinding engine was set to such an imprecise level that that extra capacity was needed to keep the game working at all on a large scale. So avenue capacities have been cut significantly, while at the same time road capacities have been raised slightly. Avenues now have a capacity about 17% higher than roads. For a typical city, total road and avenue capacity should be about the same as before. But this capacity is much better utilized than in the original Maxis simulator, and traffic flows much better. Most importantly, those No-Job Zots are essentially eliminated; you should never see any unless your city population is in the seven figures, and even then, they should be extremely rare. (This assumes that you have enough jobs for your Sims, of course.)

I have recently fine-tuned this simulator's capacities to the point that I just described, and I uploaded the version of Simulator Z Classic containing them just a few hours ago. This version also has somewhat higher one-way road capacities than the previous version, although less than Maxis' which were too high.
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