Simtropolis Omnibus

Using Photoediting to Enhance Ingame Pictures

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 20:02:13 +0000

For those of us who enjoy showing what we have accomplished in CJs or in the Forums, I thought it may be a good idea to form a tutorial. I am no professional at photoediting, but after much experience, I have gained a decent amount of knowledge that I thought would be a good idea to share incase you are new to the concept. You don't have to be an expert either to understand this tutorial. If you find that this is hard to follow, PM me and I'll do my best to help you out. Just remember though that photoediting is sort of the icing on the cake and really isn't essential to provide amazing pictures. Remember to enjoy the game, and if photoediting feels like to much of a burden, its not a necessity.

Before:

After:

Getting to Know the Basics:

Dependencies:

What you get out of this tutorial is what you put into it.

-Knowledge of how to navigate through your photoediting program (I'm using Photoshop CS5 64-bit for this tutorial)
-Creativity and Patience, Don't overdo the effects and make your picture unique through them.
-Yellow Pause Thingy Remover

Ok, so now that we have that down, let's start with the basics. Pictures taken ingame appear in "C:\Users\-----\Documents\SimCity 4\Albums" for Windows users (Not sure about Mac, sorry). To take a picture, minimize the menu completely and click Ctrl+Shift+S. Simcity 4 provides several frame sizes for you to take pictures with. I reccomend you use either the full screen frame or the frame size right before it (5 Spacebar Taps from the full screen frame). Why? These two frames automatically size images at 1024x768 (Full Screen) and 800x600 (Frame Size Before). Since the maximum size of pictures you can post onto Simtropolis (and many other forums and sites for that matter) is 800x600 pixels, you are set to go. This is helpful to the reader who doesn't want to strain their eyes looking at smaller pictures. You can resize smaller resolutions to a higher resolution, but this may distort the image or cause blur.

Resizing Images:

The first thing we want to do is to understand how to resize an image before we upload it to an image hosting site (e.g Imageshack). This prevents the grey "Resized to _%, was (-x-) Click to Enlarge" border from appearing around our pictures that are not 800x600.

1. Open the image that is larger than 800x600.

2. Click Image-Image Size...

3. Change the Width to 800. If you have the "Constrain Proportions" box checked, you will see the height automatically adjust proportionally. Otherwise type 600 in the height box.

4. Click OK and then File-Save (Or Save As if you wish to keep the original size and make the resize a new image)

And that's it! Not bad right?

General Photoshop Knowledge:

1. You should know that if you place an image, place a shape, create a new layer, etc. while editing an image, you will need to flatten it out (right click background layer 2. Don't overdo image editing. Oversaturating or making an image to bright can hurt the eye instead of please it.
3. You should upload only images in jpeg format. Png formatted images can increase page loading times. Since the game naturally saves ingame taken pictures in png format, please use File-Save As-File Type-JPEG for ALL images you upload.

Touching up on Images:

So now that we know how to make all our images the same size (unless you crop your images which can change the dimensions), let's look at other things we can do to make our image more generally appealing. We'll start with the basic ones.

-Brightness: Changes the levels of white emitted in your picture. Play around a bit with it and find an appealing amount.
-Contrast: Changes the levels of black emitted in your picture. I personally enjoy increasing the contrast a bit in almost all of my pictures.
-Levels: Not sure how to state this one. Crossing the white and black slider can turn the image negative. Mostly only handy when photoshpping mist in rainy pictures.
-Curves: Adjust Brightness, Contrast, and Levels all at the same time.
-Exposure:Adjust the amount of light your picture was taken in. I don't mess to much with the exposure slider, but sometimes I move the gamma correcton slider a bit in my day pics.

Before (No Gamma Correction-Raw Image from Game)

After (Gamma Correction)

-Vibrance and Saturation: Adjust the levels of all color emitted. I wouldn't mess too much with these, but a little bit more (or less) vibrance always looks great.
-Hue: Changes the definition of your colors. Red pixels can turn purple and green ones can turn yellow by a simple adjustment of this slider. I don't reccomend you do it at all though if your going for a realistic feel.
-Color Balance: My favorite ones to adjust. You can make day pictures look like morning or sunset ones. You can also change the atmosphere the picture creates.

Before: (Raw Image from Game)

Adding some Yellow: (For that sunny afternoon effect)

Mixing the Red and Magenta: (For that early morning -dawn- effect)

Mixing the Red and yellow: (For those sunset shots)

-Black and White: Turns all colors into black and white hues.
-Photo Filter: Changes the Amount of a specific color emitted
-Channel Mixer: Adjust hues individually
-Invert: Inverts colors into their negative form
-Posterize: Gives a poster resembling feel to pictures (somewhat of a propaganda creator in my opinion)
-Threshold: Adjust the detail provided in black and white pictures
-Gradient Map: Applies a semi-transparent gradient to your pics.
-Selective Color: Adjust the color-balance of a specific set of color tones
-Shadows and Highlights: Adjust several aspects of your picture at once here.
-HDR Toning: Adjust several aspects of your picture at once here. You can accomplish great pictures using some of the preset options alone.
-Variations: Get selectable previews of color balance adjustments until you are satisfied.

There are many more options available. I reccomend experimenting with the Dodge, Burn, Sharpen, Blur, and Sponge tools available on the left hand column. You can also perform many adjustments by using a paint brush on a low opacity (transparency-solidness) setting. The more you experiment with these tools, the more efficiently you'll be able to use them.

Let's go through a step by step process so you can get an idea of how to use photoediting programs. This will be the beginner tutorial where we go over the basics and add some special touches here and there.

Beginner Tutorial:

So we have this picture of a train passing by some farm fields in a fall setting. The picture itself isn't all that great (not much that's interesting), but with some photoediting we can make it alot better.

First Thing I want to do is to raise the contrast. We want to bring out those fall colors.

Changing the Gamma and Exposure a bit, I recieve the desired effect, but the train loses some of its textures, no problem of course.

I change to the Burn Tool at an exposure of 87% and a brush size of 37.

I then touch up on the train to make it a bit more textured and darker. After 2 coats, the train looks much better.

Now what's better than a sunset train ride? :P

We can use the blur tool at a very small exposure setting to reduce some of the grain and give it a softer look.

I think that's enough. Time for the before and after shots!

Before:

After:

The editing itself only took me about 5 minutes, but I've become better at photoshop over the months. This may take 30 minutes or more depending on how good you can follow. If it takes a while don't worry, you can always take a break and come back later (or quit) if you don't feel your enjoying this. That being said, let's move on to the Intermediate Tutorial!

Intermediate Tutorial (1):

Here we'll go a explore Photoshop's tools a bit more and even add some special effects to our pictures. The only part that is harder is that we will have to set a goal so that we can touch up on the picture according to our goal.

In the Intermediate Tutorial, you'll learn how to add rain effects (from drizzles to heavy rain), fog, lens flare, motion blurs, and designs to your pictures. This will provide you a sturdy base to start editing pictures with.

Let's Begin! Here we have another raw image.

We'll open it up in photoshop. I want to add a light rain and make it a bit more dull with some of fog. This way we can make the picture seem a bit more interesting, let's begin with giving it a more dull feel.

Now we can edit the color balance to kill any remaining bits of out of place color.

So far so good. Here I will introduce the filter section. The filter section provides several filters that you can use to enhance your images such as posterization, watercolor filter, glowing edges, and several other effects. For this image, we only need Filter-Distort-Diffuse Glow...

Take note of that I don't want any grain to be added and am using a very light glow for the fog.

Alright, so now we need some rain. I made my own rain overlay which can be found here:

Rain Overlay

Save the image (a temporary spot such as your Desktop will do):

Go back to Photoshop. File-Place...Then navigate to where you saved the picture and place it into Photoshop.

You should recieve something that looks like this:

We'll use the Screen Filter to get rid of the black while leaving the drizzle unharmed. Right Click on the image and select place to get rid of the crossing diagonal lines.

Select the (paint) brush tool and "attempt" to paint over the layer. You will be asked to rasterize it. Click OK.

Now we are free to edit the layer (placed image, in this case the rain) as we wish without changing the look of the background layer (foggy beach picture). I'll raise the brightness to make the drops more visible.

Although the water doesn't look to bad, I want to add another effect to it. Let's find a nice overlay from Google. Using the same steps as the rain, we can place the overlay into photoshop. I'll cover all of the existing water up with the new overlay:

Then I'll select the Lighter Color filter.

Set it at a 30% Opacity,

Select the (paint) brush tool, make sure you still have the water layer selected. Rasterize it by clicking the image with the brush tool.

We can then select the Clear setting at an Opacity of 100.

I then clear all areas of the overlaying water that overlap with the shore, rocks, waves, cattails, etc. Notice that I've duplicated the layers on the bottom right. You can do this by right clicking on a layer and selecting "Duplicate Layer" You can then move the duplicated layer around by holding Ctrl and moving your cursor. I used this because on the left of the overlaying waves was a slight blue tint I wanted to get rid of. I realized that was the hard way. You can just make the layer black and white by going to Image

The image is then flattened and finished.

But of course I have to add in two more cents.

Hehe...

Before and After anyone?-I realize now the effects were a little overdone.

And that concludes the first section of the Intermediate Tutorial.

Intermediate Tutorial (2&2.5)

Here we will examine the motion blur and lens flare filters.

First we'll start off with this picture of a car by the water. I want to make the setting more sunny and more tropical.

Thus, I will adjust the brightness and contrast first.

Then we can make the picture a bit more yellow, this is always a good photoedit tip for pictures taken in bright sunlight.

And then a little bit more colorful:

Time for the Flare! Although I don't like using the Lens Flare filter alot, it can help when trying to naturally brighten up an otherwise rather low lit picture.

Under the following settings:

And then I'll adjust the Shadows and Highlight settings to make the trees brighter.

That is all! I think further editing would be overdoing it...

Before:

After:

And that concludes this part. Now we'll look at motion blurs. So we have this nice picture of a high-speed train passing by a snowy setting. The only thing is, the train doesn't look so high-speeed...

First we'll touch up the image:

Make it a bit more cyan to give it somewhat of an icy effect:

And now we'll duplicate the layer in order to start working with the motion blur:

Filter-Blur-Motion Blur...

And now we'll make sure it is in the direction of the moving train by setting it at an angle of 63.

And then we'll select the brush tool with a size of 25 at 100% Opacity and change the mode to "Clear".

Running this over the entirety of the train, we erase the section of the motion blur layer and recover the original background layer for the train alone. The surroundings still remain blurred.

Before:

After:

I may have brightened it up a bit too much but anyways...Now we'll flatten, save as, and finish. This concludes Intermediate (2).

Intermediate Tutorial (3):

In this part of the intermediate tutorial the only thing we'll really cover is how to use the (paint) brush tool effectively.

So we start with this standard picture in the suburbs. Since the trees are in their seasonal winter setting, I want to add effects that would make the picture seem as if it were a snowy Christmas Eve.

We'll start by making the picture a bit darker (since winter nights aren't very bright) and raising the contrast so the original lighting still shows through the darkness.

Now we can reduce the exposure and gamma correction to make it reflect the winter season a bit better.

I then lower the saturation and vibrance to make the christmas lights on each house (that I'm about to add) stand out more.

I choose a very small brush size (2 pix) at an Opacity of 35%.

Using different colors with the same brush settings, I add some lights to this house.

And then the next one as well, the process is already beginnning to get a bit tedious.

I took a break by only adding white lights to this house. Not everyone puts up colored lights...

Added some to the other side of the street. One house only has lights on the bushes.

More were added to the houses on the top left.

And then to the ones on the right of the intersection.

Many lights were added to the houses at the bottom to finish the lighting.

Now for some snow! I like this texture...

We'll place it with the settings "Lighter Color" and at an Opacity of 78%

The snow had some colorful edges. After rasterizing, I decided to put a black and white filter on it.

And then adjust the brightness so that it fits in better with the surroundings.

Next, I add finish it off with a nice little subtitle before flattening and saving.

Before:

After:

And with that, we conclude this section of the tutorial.

Advanced Tutorial:

In this tutorial, we will cover;

-Mosaics
-Special Effects

Let's start with Mosaics! First we need to understand some basics:

Full size Mosaics are composed of 800 by = 600 pictures. Mosaics are pictures that are vertically aligned over the same area. We can align these pictures by taking them with a common area that we can use to overlap the pictures.

So Here we have one picture:

And Another:

We open the first one up in Photoshop:

Go to Image-Canvas Size...

And then make the height at least 5x Bigger:

So it then looks like this:

We then "Place" (File

Set the layer to a temporary "Hard Light" Filter and Align the Pictures. Zoom in to make sure they are aligned perfectly.

Switch the layer back to Normal After this. Rasterize it.

Then Crop the Picture like so:

Now we do all the editing...I'll tell you the last few steps to making the mosaic after the editing.
So I go to google images and find a couple of explosions that I like...

And then place them using the method shown before. I used the clear mode on the brush tool to blend it in. After Flattening, I then added some green and yellow tints and reduced the saturation to make it more depressing.

I have made a New Layer and then Clicked Filter-Render-Clouds. The Opacity of this layer is 31% on Vivid Light.

I added Fireball Effects...The result is not as great as I would've liked but it's not terrible...

Using a texture off of google, I made the rotors spin. The layer was set to multiply and free transformed (Edit-Free Transform) to make it fit with the angle.

Using another picture off of google, I made some rockets.

I think that's good enough. This tutorial was supposed to help you to learn about mosaics, so let's get back to that...

Go to Image

The information here is important, it tells me I only need to use two vertically aligned pictures since the height is less than 600 times 2. Instead, I need one 800x600 picture and one 800x404 picture. I can crop out these portions of the picture and then upload them separately (one on top of the other) to form the mosaic. So we select the crop tool and set the width and height to 800x600.

Crop the area.

And save the 800x600 area we just cropped to a temporary folder.

Clicking Ctrl+Alt+Z once or twice should take us back to the full mosaic. Set the Crop dimensions to 800x404 this time and crop out the bottom part.

Save this as something else. Now we can upload it to ST by using the following format:No spaces in between.

TopHalfDirectLink
BottomHalfDirectLink

Please note that if your mosaic pixel height is greater than 1200 (involves more than two 800x600 pictures) than use this method:

1.Crop out top 800x600 pixels: Save As: Click Ctrl+Alt+Z until you get back to the full mosaic
2.Crop out top 800x1200 pixels: Crop out Bottom 800x600 Pixels: Save As: Click Ctrl+Alt+Z until you get back to the full mosaic
(if needed)3. Crop out top 800x1800 pixels: Crop out Bottom 800x600 Pixels: Save As: Click Ctrl+Alt+Z until you get back to the full mosaic
(if needed) 4. Crop out top 800x2400 pixels: Crop out Bottom 800x600 Pixels: Save As: Click Ctrl+Alt+Z until you get back to the full mosaic
5. Keep going until the last section of the mosaic is 800 by(less than or equal to) 600 pixels. Then use the method above...

So Before:

After:

That's it! Your good to go. Now for Part 2, the special effects section!

Here we have a dogfight. (Yes this image is raw as well) Let's spice up the action!

First adjust the brightness and contrast...

And then the Color Balance...

I'll make it less vibrant so it gains a more formal look...

And then I created a New Layer, Filter

Duplicated the background layer and added a motion blur to the duplicate. I used the brush tool on clear mode to recover the previously blurred planes.

And then I'm done!

Before:

After:

And with that we conclude the tutorial. If you stuck with me until the very end I thank you. Please remember that photoediting should not be abused. Do not photoedit pictures and claim you have created something that really doesn't exist. Use it only to help get the point across that you want people to recieve when looking at your pictures. I've actually never used GIMP before, though I hear its a great tool. I am not familiar with the interface, but I think the concepts in this tutorial will still apply. Thanks and I hope this was helpful.

P.S If there is any formatting error or something that comes up, please don't hesitate to let me know. I had some trouble with the formatting of the tutorial (like less than and greater than symbols and some other stuff).

Building a more realistic highway interchange...

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 13:05:25 +0000

To build this interchange you will need the NAM and a slope mod. I use BRF_TunnelAndSlopeMod-bJERONI.

Insider's Look: GlassBox Game Engine (Part 1)

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 03:40:26 +0000

Maxis has released the first video in a video-blog series entitled "Insider's Look: GlassBox Game Engine." It seems like we've heard a lot about the engine since SimCity was announced, but Dan Moskowitz, Gameplay Lead for SimCity takes the time in this video to walk us through some specific examples of what the engine actually does:

As Dan notes, the video isn't intended to be representative of the game's final graphics, so it's important to keep that in mind when watching. Still, the video does show off some gameplay aspects that we can hopefully look forward to when the game launches. I was particular drawn towards the ability to customize and upgrade certain buildings, such as a fire station, from within the game itself.The extent of possible customization is unclear at this point, but any customization at all will be nice for us non BATers who still want to change how certain buildings look and function. A quick glimpse at terraforming and zoning abilities look promising as well.

The main purpose of this video is to show off the Glassbox engine, and it seems every bit as powerful as we have been led to believe so far. As the video explains, the simulation consists of several interacting aspects, from resources like coal and workers, to resource-carrying "agents" like pedestrians and vehicles. All of the effects and animations are directly affected by the simulation rules, so nothing that you see is without a purpose.

Check out the video below, and stay tuned to Maxis's developer blog and Simtropolis for the game updates.

Maxis AMAA Transcript

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:24:58 +0000

Kevin's Note: Maxis conducted an AMAA on Reddit on March 8, 2012, and Firebird took it upon himself to compile the questions and answers in an easy to read format. He graciously agreed to allow us to reprint his work here. I have only changed the formatting so that it is compatible with the Omnibus, and I edited out some of the internet's more "colorful" language. Thanks Firebird, and thanks to Maxis for engaging with the community!

1) Misantrope:

Will we see a return to the relatively sophisticated planning required in previous titles, or just another example of the dumbed-down, "casual" gameplay we've seen in SimCity Societies or the Cities XL franchise?

Maxis:

[Dan] Great question! The integrity of our simulation is first and foremost – without a good simulation under the hood the game wouldn’t hold your interest. Yesterday Ocean, Andrew, and I gave a presentation at GDC explaining exactly how our new simulation engine, GlassBox, works. Here’s a recap of the talk that took place yesterday.

2) QuickTactical:

SimCity is what inspired me to seek a career in architecture and urban planning. I know the game doesn't quite reflect reality, but how much focus will there be on the new sustainability trends with mixed-used zoning, complete streets, public-transit/pedestrian friendly development, waste management/recycling, etc? I've heard a lot of concern that the game will appeal too much to casual players like Societies; how will the level of gameplay depth compare to SimCity 4?

Maxis:

[Ocean] We’re making SimCity, not some dopey casual game.

The most important thing is the integrity of the simulation underneath it, the stuff that represents the systems that make up a real city. I don’t want to enforce sustainable design principles in the game – I want them to emerge as natural consequences of your interaction with the simulation.

If you don’t deal with your sewage, with traffic congestion, with walkability & transit, with ground and air pollution – your city will reflect that! And there are lots of people who will want to explore the simulation and see what happens when they do. Making some polluted, congested, urban nightmare is a total win condition, as far as I’m concerned.

joshwoodward:

Is this an admission that Societies was a dopey casual game, and that this will be back in the classic vein?

Maxis:

[Ocean] Maxis didn’t develop Societies – we did SimCity 2k, 3k & 4 (and the original of course!)

I’m not going to bash Societies, but I will say that this new SimCity was built from the simulation engine up, and is the one that I wanted to make after I finished working on SimCity 4.

3) Whats4dinner:

Societies was great for a few hours and then it was boring. The best moment I had in that game was when I built a trailer park next to a dive bar with a gun range down the street. It was great to see the little sim sit in his lawn chair outside his trailer, walk into the bar and then wobble down the street to the gun range.

Maxis:

[Andrew] I think the reaction to SimCity Societies made it pretty clear that something was missing, and we're looking to bring back that 'secret sauce' in the new SimCity. Where we can though, we're definitely interested in getting those kinds of vignettes in there to bring life to the city. We started down that path on SimCity 4 with our automata system, and we're making further strides within the current game.

4) halfbakednco:

Maybe I missed it in all the released details but I am hoping there is an offline mode that is full featured with region play similar to SC4. Online play is a nice gimmick and could prove to be really interesting, I would just prefer the option to play offline and develop my region of neighboring cities when I want. I'm getting tired of games that work perfectly well on their own as solo play trying to force online play. Its fine to have as an additional feature but your primary focus should be the strength of the game at its core; a powerful and robust city builder that can be enjoyed for hours/years without the need to be online.

Also what are your plans in regard to custom content development? I'm sure you're aware of the communities that have been supporting SC4 all these years with not just cosmetic but game improving mods. Releasing a product that ignores this will be a huge disappointment to those most dedicated to the franchise.

Maxis:

[Ocean] Yeah, like SC4, you can build out a region by yourself, and make all of the cities serially. There are lots of players who just want to control their own world, and they don’t want anybody to interfere with it. But even those solo players are going to be participating in the flow of resources that constitute the core of the games economy – the economic landscape that they’re operating in will be shaped by the actions of other players, even if they are only playing solo. In addition, there will be regional challenges and opportunities that you’ll be competing against other regions for. So you can play by yourself. More social players can play with their friends and accomplish more, faster, but that’s their choice.

As for custom content – think back to SC4 - first we just need to get the game out, and make everything work robustly.

[Andrew] As we said in the talk yesterday, we're very much aware of and appreciative of our mod community. We don't have specific plans yet beyond general good intentions, and the fact that we're using similar tech to our previous games. Basically, stay tuned.

[Andrew] We've addressed this elsewhere, but I just want to repeat, single player is definitely still a big focus. And if you want to play all the cities in a region yourself, that's absolutely possible. I think there's some research somewhere showing that, even with strictly multiplayer games, people wind up soloing for the majority of gameplay hours, so you're not alone!

5) Question:

Limited Edition vs. Collectors Edition.

Maxis:

[Kip] Trust me when I say the base game is going to be loaded with content. We wanted to give our hardcore fans an opportunity for something extra if they decided to pre-order the game. We came up with the Heroes and Villains for our hardcore fans. Inspired by SimCity lore, Super Sim or Maxis Man as he’s sometimes called, was first seen in SimCity 2000. We decided to bring him back in a much bigger way in this SimCity.

The Collector’s edition is jammed packed with content. We have 3 new landmarks that will serve a function in your game, helping to boost tourism. They will also influence the building around them. The base game will include plenty of landmarks as well.

To clarify, the Limited Edition is a pre-order special of the base game and priced at $59.99, just like the base game. The Collector’s Edition is an Origin exclusive, priced at $79.99.

6) One-Two-Woop-Woop:

I have seen reports that you are taking out all the tables/charts and other hardcore aspects for the next game... PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS. It is so much easier to just leave them in the game and put a "simple mode" on for newbies and let hardcore players enjoy their statistics and such!

Maxis:

[Dan] There’s no lack of data present in our simulator, we’ve been experimenting with playful ways of representing that data to the player. That doesn’t mean you’ll have any less detailed data on your city, in fact, in a lot of ways you’ll be able to explore your city data along other dimensions that weren’t possible with previous SimCities. We’ve taken a lot of inspiration from modern data visualization techniques/style and we’ve built in the notion of ‘data layers’ into the game. For example, if you want to know everything about how power is flowing through your city, you can click on the power data view, you’ll be able to see electricity flowing down the wires, buildings will change colors representing power stored, plus you’ll get global stats about your cities power system (output/usage, etc).

7) DoubleButt:

SimCity MMO is a [bad] idea. I don't want some 12 year old... messing up my cities.

Maxis:

[Kip] I can relate to you on this one, since I have a 12 year old myself and have seen firsthand what’s she capable of when playing online games. This SimCity is tailored to many different player’s and play styles. You can choose what’s right for you when planning out your city or region. You can choose to play in a region entirely by yourself, being the Mayor of each city. Or you can open up cities and invite your friends, so it’s a more controlled environment. If you’re feeling adventurous, hop into quick play and join others in a preexisting region. It’s really up to you.

Venius157:

To go a little further with this question, will there be different difficulty levels so that those who want sophisticated challenges and micromanagement will get it, and at the same time those who want to just casually build up a pretty looking city can also do so?

Maxis:

[Ocean] Well, you’ll be able to build up a modest and attractive city without too much trouble, but the simulation is going to start pushing back at you and you’ll need to respond to it. You won’t need to respond by building a huge teeming metropolis! But you will need to respond. Cities are dynamic, with dynamic problems.

But I should say that we’re avoiding “micromanagement”– you’re not going to be setting the price of burgers in the diners in your city. You’re going to be making the infrastructural and economic decisions that will drive the state of your city. And it’s really important to us that you can see what the simulation is doing – that way the simulation can be sophisticated without becoming mysterious or opaque. If you can see the cause and effect relationships, then you can respond to your city.

9) ironfortified:

Are there going to be bike lanes/bike paths/walking paths as transportation choices? Or are we going to just have roads, bigger roads, and really big roads?

My favorite cities were always the ones that had neighborhood stories. This housing area next to the industrial park is going to be low-rent but I'll separate the 2 with a bunch of trees, these dead end streets are going to have lots of green space between low density housing to look like gated neighborhoods, and this commercial area around the college will be perfect for fast food places and laundromats. I tried to simulate bike paths by building roads that didn't go anywhere other than between parks, but I'd much rather see people walking and biking than an empty street.

Maxis:

[Andrew] We can support a much richer set of transport options this time around, in terms of what agents (cars/people/bikes) can travel along what kinds of routes. (Hilariously so sometimes -- due to forgetting a line in a data file we had cars driving in the air along power lines at one point.) What will be in there for ship, I honestly don't know at this point. I'd love to see you building that housing area for real though!

10) remmycool:

If you could identify one aspect of SimCity 4 that needed improvement, what would that be, and what are you doing to fix that for SimCity 5?

Maxis:

[Andrew] Well, there's definitely more than one. (And it's great reading through threads on reddit and elsewhere to see what we may have missed.) However if I had to pick one, one of the biggest issues after ship was with the transport system, and the fact that people really didn't have a clear idea of what was going on with that system. Traffic was failing to get from one point to another, and people simply didn't understand why. We put in place some fixes for that after ship by adding new transport layer visualisation modes, but that issue has definitely driven a lot of our thinking about how we make it much clearer to people what's going on under the hood this time around.

11) AJRiddle:

I have been playing SC4 for 7 years now and my number 1 annoyance with the game is the inability to build buildings at angles and around curves, along with the few options on intersections and road pathings.

Maxis:

[Andrew] I think we've got the game for you, then! Curvy roads!

12) adam87morin:

Can a city (or region) run out of resources such as water and oil? And in the case of oil. Can a city (or region) develop technologies that will allow it's vehicles and plants to run on other resources?

Maxis:

[Dan] Yes absolutely, resources in our simulation engine are finite. As you extract oil or coal out of the ground it doesn’t get replaced, it’s gone. So if you’ve built up an entire city on the economic basis of extracting a certain resource, when that resource runs out your economy will collapse. For resources like water it works the same way, but can be replenished by environmental factors like rain.

13) cxcv:

Can you bring this guy back? [picture]

Teruyo9:

Somewhat related note, I loved SimCity 3000's news ticker.

Maxis:

[Andrew] The news ticker was a great idea. We're trying to update it a bit for the new SimCity, move it from the era of print to today's online papers and blogs. But it's a great way to get a bit of personality and humour into the game, which I think is a lot of what makes a Maxis SimCity game.

[Dan] You have no idea how many email threads around the office were ended with that image

14) toddgak:

This needs to be answered. I pray for a game like SimCity 4. I love the complicated mechanics, the very difficult to manage budget, traffic problems because of poor design. I want a simulation. SimCity 4 had an impressive amount of behind the scene metrics it use to calculate land value, traffic volume etc... I know there are these young kids who think building a big city with cookie cutter tools and no consequences is some how a fun game, but there are already a ton of these awful dumbed-down games.I crave the complexity of SimCity 3/4 not because it is difficult, but because I'm in awe of the simulation. I love knowing that every citizen needs to find their way to work and back. How roads have realistic volume limits and how bottlenecks have serious consequences. How every piece of infrastructure will require maintenance, how pollution affects land values. How it is more about zoning and allowing the city to grow organically. I mean that is in essence what made SimCity incredible right?

Watching how citizens reacted to your choices and having to work through those obstacles. And please please don't split up housing zones into lower class and upper class bullshit. This is a perfect example of something that was handled by the simulation and replaced with nonsense. You don't need to tell rich people where to live. In the real world they are perfectly able to find the most valuable land and live there. In SimCity 1-4 they could do that too!

Maxis:

[Ocean] Yeah, I agree. You’re describing SimCity. It’s a live simulation that reacts to what you do. It’s a game of indirect control, and the Sims vote with their feet.

If (for some reason) you don’t want rich Sims in a neighborhood, plop down a sewage treatment plant or an incinerator, or just don’t pick up the trash. Trust me, they’ll leave. If you want rich Sims to move in, make sure that there is employment for them and that there are amenities to attract them.

The important thing to add though, is that a deep simulation is only valuable if it’s sufficiently transparent – if you can see what’s going on. (reminds me of the observation that there are 3 kinds of fun in games – things that are fun for players, things that are fun for developers, and things that are fun for the computer). If the player can’t see what’s going on in the simulation, if they can’t understand it and change it, then it’s merely fun for the computer. Rich simulation only matters if you can do something with it.

15) WazzuMadBro:

This is the most important question which needs to be answered. The Launch video already gives me the impression its a cartoony "casual" game like Simcity societies. Only its probably gonna be a browser based facebook game this time around which means it'll be even worse.

(╯°'□'°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Maxis:

[Kip] We are going for a stylized look which has a mesmerizing charm about it. We are building a more accessible SimCity, one that has all the depth, the puzzle solving, the challenge that you love from the greatest city builder ever. We’ve updated the gameplay by adding missions, but maintained the sandbox. We still have a deep city simulation game, but we’ve removed the spreadsheets and explain the details of the simulation through fun info graphic style data layers. This SimCity will be a rich 3D client based PC game and not browser based.

16) teslasmash:

There's a lot of excitement about the Glass Box engine... was it designed to be a little more extensible than just Simcity? Perhaps with other future games in mind?

i.e. DICE's Frostbite engine is being used (or planned to be used) in other EA games. Was this in mind when developing Glass Box?

Maxis:

[Andrew] Definitely! In fact, it started off life as a general simulation engine we could use to revisit previous titles (SimAnt!), and explore new sim game ideas with. The idea to do a new SimCity came later. We have some ambitious plans here, but for now SimCity is the main focus.

17) ProbablyNotCanadian:

Does this new game promise to reticulate any splines?

Maxis:

[Andrew] Our paths (e.g., roads) are fully spline based. Thus, all you have to do is draw out a network of them, and you will have reticulated splines yourself. How awesome is that.

More seriously, thinking up those load screen items was a lot of fun on SimCity 4 for the whole team. I'm looking forward to that process already.

18) MrSnoobs:

Will buildings be procedurally generated, or at least each appear unique? One gripe I had, even with SC4, was the sheer number of identical buildings everywhere.

Will there still be disasters, and how will they manifest in multiplayer?

Maxis:

[Dan] The buildings aren’t procedurally generated, the geometry for each is modeled by our artists. However, to minimize repeats there’s a decal system for adding random signage to the buildings, and we can also drive building colors by tweaking color palettes. All of that combined is designed to minimize the number of repeat buildings you’ll see. Of course, at one point in development we only had one asset for each of the 9 Wealth/Density combinations... everyone’s commercial sector was road after road of gas stations .

As for disasters, oh yes, there will be disasters. Disasters + physics engine == awesome. As for details about how disasters work in multiplayer, we’ll be talking about that at a later date, but it’s clearly something we’re thinking about and driving towards.

19) nos*****subreddits:

Who are you targeting: those of us who grew-up playing simcity games as kids (aged late 20s to 30s now) or the new generation of teenagers? From the trailer video it seemed to be on the cartoonist/ goofy side of things, which to me is somewhat disappointing (but not a deal-breaker).

Maxis:

[Kip] We’re targeting the fans who grew up with the franchise for sure. We’re very happy with where we landed with our art aesthetic. We decided not to go hyper real, but hyper fun. We able to get more detail and are able to tell true simulation states through the art, which is critical for a city simulation game.

20) DamnForgotUsername:

I know it's early and probably not in your control, but I still need to ask, will this game be released on Steam?

Maxis:

[Andrew] We have no idea. We'd like you to be able to get the game from as many places as possible. The exact details invariably depend on legal and business negotiations that are above our pay grade, and likely won't get hammered out until close to ship.

21) xippilli:

How different is it now having Will Wright off the team? (As in the Maxis team.)

I understand that being able to individually interview sims (and even being able to plop sims into your city), was a great way to learn about concerns in certain areas. With regards to gameplay elements around that and what SC4: Rush Hour had, will we be seeing much implementation of vehicle driving, exploring the city through missions, and just overall hands-on interaction with your city?

Any new utility management elements we'll have to worry about (such as SC4 bringing Garbage to the mix)?

How is the software looking performance-wise? I know that even with SC4 Rush Hour, my rig (Intel 3.4GHz i7, 16GB DDR3, Nvidia GTX 580) had a lot of issues loading the different zoom levels. This was a common issue that I've found throughout the community.

What benefit will the Digital Deluxe edition's "building themes" have aside from aesthetics?

Maxis:

[Ocean] Let’s see – I worked with Will on the Sims, Spore, SimCopter, and Streets of SimCity.

But I’ve never worked with him on SimCity! By the time I started working on SC3k, he was pretty much done with it. I did get him to play SC4 and give me feedback, but I’d have to corner him first. He’s come by a few times since we started working on the new one, he’s seen it as its progressed, he’s given some suggestions – and I think he likes where we’re taking it, but I can’t put words in his mouth.

22) craxxis:

Will zoning be similar to SC4? Or does every building need to be placed individually?

Maxis:

[Andrew] Zoning is pretty much the same as SC4. Without that it's not SimCity! You do plop key buildings like fire stations as usual (unless you're okay with your city burning to the ground every so often), but most buildings are simulator generated.

23) Doctorevil2425:

A few questions...

Are there any developers left at Maxis who worked on Simcity 4 that will be working on this version of Simcity?

I know this is a bit early to ask, but are you planning on having an open(ish) beta for the game?

Although your team wasn't involved in the production of simcity: societies, what have you learned from the game based on its reception?

Maxis:

a) [Ocean] Yes! A lot of us.

Lucy Bradshaw was executive producer for SimCity 4, and is very much involved with the new one I was creative director and art director for SimCity 4, and art directed SC3k. Andrew was SimCity 4’s lead graphics engineer. Kip was test lead on SimCity 4. Guillaume Pierre (our scripting lead) was another lead tester on SC4, Venkat Ajjanagadde did roads for SC4 and he’s doing them for the new one. There are a lot of SimCity veterans on the project, but we’ve also got new people who grew up playing SimCity and are bringing fresh ideas to it. It’s a good mix.

b) [Ocean] Open beta? I have no idea.

c) [Kip] City games need a true simulation under the hood to be viable. There were some great ideas in Societies, which fell flat because of the lack of depth in its simulation. For this SimCity we started with simulation first, by building our GlassBox engine.

24) biyabo:

Is it possible for you to outline any details about DRM and DLC? And, a more fun question: What kinds of catastrophic city destroyers will there be? Come on, Godzilla... fingers crossed

Maxis:

[Andrew] We actually legally can't talk about G******a, it's not our IP! There may be... giant lizards. Fun disasters are definitely in our thoughts, suggestions welcome!

25) Zakerias:

Hello Kip, Ocean and Dan,

I have two questions:Could you tell something about the maximum size of a city? Will it be the same scale as a massive city in 3 & 4, or should we expect final cities to be a bit smaller because of the new Glassbox engine?

What do you think will be the biggest gameplay improvement over Simcity 4?

Maxis:

[Dan] The size of our new cities are roughly equivalent to the SC4 medium sized city (2 kilometers square). That said, you can connect cities together inside a region and build out a network of connected cities - each city providing different resources and abilities to its neighbors and the region. For example, one city could be a residential suburb which provides workers every day to a nearby industrial city. The industrial city could be providing power to the suburb. You can play both of these cities yourself, or even run the entire region by yourself, or invite a friend to help out.

As for the biggest gameplay improvement, we’re moving from a purely statistical simulation model to an agent based model. So one example of how that’s different would be that the vehicles you saw in SC4 were just visual representations of ‘traffic density’ at that location, they weren’t real, if you watched them long enough they’d fade out as they turned corners. By contrast, with our new simulator, each and every vehicle and person is a real simulation entity heading to some real destination.

So traffic jams occur naturally – it’s really fun to build out a road structure, start zoning, play for a while, and ‘discover’ where your busiest intersections are. Thanks for your support, we really do take our community seriously and are trying to deliver the game that we all want to play!

26) respectfully:

Will SimCity5 be a "return to roots" like SimCity 4 in terms of complexity and management, or the casualness featured in Societies?

How do you feel about the relationship between your games and the players? Meaning, do you think SimCity and the Sims would have an impact on how an emerging youth view the growth of cities, culture, and people?

Maxis:

[Ocean] SimCity is all about creating and controlling a pretty complex simulation. The trick is to make the simulation intelligible, so that the cause-and-effect relationships are apparent to the player. So that you can see what’s going on.

It has to be accessible to people who have never played SimCity before. Just because the simulation is complex doesn’t mean that it should be hard to understand.

And we’re doing our best to model real-world systems with some degree of integrity, so that you’ll understand something of how they actually work. And you’ll make the tradeoffs that real cities have to make.

For example: sure coal is filthy and will sicken & kill Sims who live down-wind, but man is it cheap! And it makes plenty of power! And it works at night! And when the wind doesn’t blow! Sure, I can put up with air pollution and increased mortality for that!

So we’re not trying to lecture people and tell them what to think, we’re building a game that lets them try stuff out for themselves, and see what happens.

27) nhexum:

What do you expect the hardware requirements to be for your game? I remember when Sim City 4 came out, which I absolutely loved, even with a relatively good computer I was having trouble playing it when the city got large.

How are you planning to keep hardware requirements accessible for large cities? What kind of music can we expect (loved Sim4 music especially "ElectiCITY")?

Maxis:

[Andrew] Like most of the games we make, we're targeting a broad audience with this game, we don't want to limit ourselves to only those who have the latest-and-greatest graphics card. What we do is scale our graphics options depending on what hardware you have, so it's playable on our min spec, but we can still turn on all the cool bells and whistles on the high end. (Did someone say tilt-shift?)

SimCity 4 was unfortunately the victim of changes to GPU drivers. To support the high building count and detail, it was a so-called "dirty rect" based game, where only stuff that actually changed from frame-to-frame was re-rendered. This required being able to copy the depth buffer around on the GPU, particularly when panning the camera. There was a standard path for doing this at the time, but it became deprecated in later versions of DirectX, and drivers started falling back to slow paths which copied the depth buffer down to the CPU, shifted it around, and then copied it back up. Even with today's cards and PCI-X buses, this is still a pretty slow process.

28) ReyDelLaCiudad:

Would I be able to build a real transit friendly walkable city, because the sims in simcity 4 would never walk up the block for anything and hardly use mass transit to go anywhere.

Plus will there be mixed use development in the game like big apartment buildings with stores at the bottom or something like the time warner building in NYC?

Maxis:

[Dan] Yes, you can build a walkable city! To geek out about our simulation for a moment – when buildings with jobs need workers, they actually send out invisible “Help Wanted” requests for that travel along your road network looking for residential buildings. First they send out a request for walkers that only travel a few blocks, and if that goes unanswered they send out another request for drivers that travels much further. This means that by mixing up areas of residential with commercial and industrial in close proximity, you’ll tend to get much more foot traffic. If you want, you could build a city where everyone is forced to drive, by putting a lot of distance between homes and businesses.

29)  johndoe42:

WHEN IS THE NEXT SIM COPTER COMING OUT!

I do not kid (I'm not even using a question mark). I want this to happen, more than any other game ever made. I want my aliens, I want my Apache, I want to save people from burning buildings and I want to fly around my ridiculously designed cities and I want to shout obscenities at idiots causing traffic jams through my megaphone. Unfortunately, the old game has not aged too well and is a pain to get to work in modern systems.

With the next Sim City, it would be great to be able to create magnificent cities in it and then explore them and interact with them. What better way than a helicopter? Simcopter + SC2000 was such a brilliant thing at the time.

Cmon, the obvious market niche is there, make this happen. You are basically making Grand Theft Auto for people who want to play the good guy.

Maxis:

[Andrew] The general enthusiasm for flying/ driving/ boating/ swimming/ hot-air ballooning around your city has been noted =). But first we need a SimCity you can explore, so that's what we're concentrating on right now.

I will say this is the kind of thing we love doing -- enabling players to build and explore their own worlds, if that doesn't sound too foofy.

30) Cloudsx:

Please don't dumb the game down, like 99% of the other games these days.

Maxis:

[Kip] Our goal for this SimCity is to deliver on a robust city simulation game but also make it easy to play and understand. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be “dumbed down”. I equate it to what we did with our Spore Editors. We put a complex modeling tool in the hands of kids and turned them into 3D modeling experts. We want to serve information in quick and simple to digest ways and offer tools that are powerful, but painless. Curvy roads alone will up the complexity of your city planning power. That’s just the start!

31) BenStrike:

I know a lot of Urban Planners and Geographers love your game, so my main question is will there be some sort of multiple use zone? In previous SimCity games it is practically impossible to have commercial and residential mixed, but modern planning uses a lot of multi-use structures and districts for more efficient use of space and minimization of driving times. Will there be any of these in SimCity 5 or does it still work on the older planning model?

Maxis:

[Andrew] The underlying simulator definitely supports this. It's more of a gameplay/UI question to be honest, namely, how we handle designating mixed use zones, and how much that would impact the gameplay in the core game. Would the resulting game be as fun for all players? It's something we'll try and see how it works out.

Even if it doesn't make sense as part of the core game, you make a good point. Because the sim is completely data-driven, maybe in future we could think about releasing an "urban planning" version of the game that emphasises urban planning tools over the more traditional SimCity gameplay.

32) seifd:

Can we expect another excellent jazz soundtrack?

Maxis:

[Kip] We’re going full orchestral on this one! Kent Jolly is the Audio Director on the project and was sound designer on SC 3000, SC4, and Audio Director on SC Rush Hour.

33) Clovyn:

Dear Kip, Ocean, and Dan: If there was anything I could ask, are your hands tied to dumb this down? I really want this to be like the complex simulator that was Simcity 2000. If that is lost and freemeals are given out (like loans without dire consequences), many new players won't understand what this franchise really meant to them. If you want a legacy, please keep the one you have going.

Also, could you attach a beautiful soundtrack? Believe me, those make -amazing impressions-, just look at Minecraft.

Maxis:

[Ocean] We’re making this the richest, most sophisticated simulation we can. SimCity is only as good as the simulation underneath it –that’s what makes it worth caring about.

And as for music – Yes! Kent Jolly is our sound designer, and he’s very, very good, another long-time Maxis veteran.

One cool thing I can say about the game’s audio is that we’re binding it to the pulse of the simulation. When buildings are running simulation rules (like generating power, for example), they’re driving music and sound effects (that are synced to the overall beat of the simulation). The audio is telling you what the simulation is doing, it’s not just filler. And that’s a general aesthetic rule for us – there shouldn’t be any filler in the game, everything is there to show you what the simulation is doing. Everything you see is doing a job.

34) piderman:

Will roads be curvy enough to make European-style city centers? The American block system gets boring after a while

Maxis:

[Andrew] I live in London, so I'm very aware of this. The road part of this is pretty straightforward, what makes it an interesting problem is getting buildings to follow the roads, particularly when they all join together as you traditionally see in the town centre, e.g. We're working on it!

35) newp:

Honestly, if you re-made Simcity 2000/3000 with modern graphics just enough to not require the best of the best computers, and same gameplay, I would be happy (and available on OSX).

I enjoy an intermediate level of gameplay. I know the hardcore gamers are the most vocal but they are also the minority I think. I don't want something too dumb but I don't want the barrier of entry to be so hard because of a really complicated user interface or a user interface 'made so easy that grandma can play'. Grandma doesn't want to play simcity.

I want to be able to play casually and have fun and work on my city, and think about what I'm doing wrong and how I need to grow my city, etc.

I think that mentality in itself is enough to encourage the most hardcore gamers because they want to optimize everything.

Also lots of easter eggs, more llamas and funny news headlines.Remember it's a game, too much realism is not that much fun.

Cities are extremely complex entities in the real life. I don't want to  simulate a city exactly as they are in real life. That's too complicated. Draw a line somewhere with this because this is where people are like "this is too hard" or "this is too easy" -- this is not where the game gets fun or boring.

What makes simcity fun is all the cool things like getting new buildings, humor, and city optimizations.

Maxis:

[Andrew] We hear you. Definitely from 2000 to 3000 to SC4 the game got progressively more complicated as we added features for the biggest fans of the game, and I think we did lose some people along the way because of that. We're aware that if you survey people, typically 2000 is the overall favourite in the series. So we're definitely trying to recapture the sense of whimsical fun in the original, while still taking advantage of the speed of modern machines to make the simulation deeper where it makes sense.

36) Venius157:

The unveiling trailer suggested to me that all buildings will be dropped specifically into place, as opposed to placing traditional zoning (Residential, Commercial, Industrial) which grows more unpredictably and dynamically. Will the game still utilize traditional zone placement?

I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I really hope there will be traditional zoning because it allows your city to grow more organically instead of feeling lifeless and static.

Maxis:

[Ocean] Yeah, you still zone for RC & I (among other things) and things construct in them. You plop civic buildings (like water towers and police stations) that effect the Sims’ buildings. The biggest change is that zoning isn’t on the “grid” anymore. Now that we’ve got curvy roads, zoning is all road-relative.

37) UtopianComplex:

Here is how I am imagining it. (Referring to SC5’s news ticker.)

Different political groups have their own media. So you can see the environmentalists blog cheer the addition of some bike paths, while the drudge report equivalent talks about how terrible it is that the city is making it harder for people to drive and spending tax dollars on this, while the AARP affiliation complains about how old people can't ride bikes and all money should go to old people.

So interesting to see each segments take on what you are doing in this fashion!

Maxis:

[Andrew] Yeah, this is exactly the kind of stuff we've been thinking about! We've even moved our UI system to being mostly html and javascript based, so we can more seamlessly integrate the game with the general internets and drop this kind of stuff in. (Also, so it's easier for people to customise, a la WoW's lua approach.)

THE END.

SimCity 4 traffic Layouts

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 12:44:54 +0000

Adoxx's Traffic Tutorial

Hi guys, I'm running some tutorials on YouTube and got some questions to go deeper into my latest tutorial.

I'm going to show how I make my layouts, metro connections, highways, .. in a way they are used at fullest.

I prefer to make a layout with a grid of Avenues and One Way Roads. We are focussing on getting a Metropolis so we need to get everything right so we don't have to change anything later on.

I make blocks of 9 x 13 or 9 x 15 Tiles, This way you can zone 4x4 buildings and place some transport inbetween.

If you want to get your Sims to their jobs, and I mean fast, the GLR won't do it.
As you can see I replaced all the Avenues with the GLR, added stations on every block. This makes it easy to travel short distances very fast.
The stations uses Trams and Busses.

But what if your sims works at the other side of the city?
Well, we need to create a Subway Traject.

Add a subway station every 3 Blocks, close to the GLR Stations.
Connect them to each other by making a Traject like this:

You can drag the Subway all the way to the other side of the City.

More Coming Soon!

Cities XL basics

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 17:30:47 +0000

Ok so you want to know the basic of Cities XL eh? Alright, let's get started by showing how to get started!

When you start making a city, make sure you have lot's of resources and good amount of flat land. Then, you build your road connection, but build it in a flat area so you can zone. Now what you do is start building your residents, but have it near your town center. Now you start zoning industry, but remember that it pollutes, so build it far away from you city. You will want to zone offices now, as well as commerce, but don't add to much commerce. Now you should start zoning farms and lots of them, but be quick or they will go bankrupted due to no silo and fertilizer. Now sell any farm tokens you got, but keep some of them.

Now your probably still zoning, which is good, but you should stick to office and not heavy industry, but zone manufacturing when you get it. Now you need a hospital and leisure, but you only need on of each. Now continue zoning and placing what they need if it turns red orange, not yellow orange or orange. The only way to make money in this game basically trade tokens so trade any office you have. When you get landmarks, make sure they are spread out or it won't be as effective and will only cover one area if you place them next to each other.

open resource panel and see what is required to run the city, if it's green then you don't need to zone that resource, but if it's orange start zoning it, but keep zoning office no matter what, because you can sell the tokens, but when you run out of passenger service, make another connection or if you get the airport, then place one, but be warned of the cost, and if you run out of freight, then build a port, but also be warned of it's cost and they do in fact pollute, airports do noise and ports do air pollution, but there's a mod to where you get both passenger and freight, but only for Cities XL 2011.

When doing elites, be warned of their requirements, as they will probably cost you a lot of money, but required for high density offices and other high density stuff, also medium density high-tech, but this is the only medium density that they will work in. you can also sell off extra tokens of any resource that you have so you can continue to make money.

Now when zoning high density, be weary of traffic problems, so place them on higher capacity type roads, like avenues. If you don't, then their satisfaction goes down, but you can still have good satisfaction, but it will make it hard to get above 80%.

When zoning high density heavy industry, be warned of major pollution, so it's best to put them on the opposite side of the map so they don't affect the people in the city. When you get high density offices, you want to give them express ways since they cause a lot of traffic. Also give them a good place to build or you won't make the maximum profit or they might leave if the environment is to bad. It's ok if you have traffic in the office area's, but you can't have to much or people will continue to complain about traffic.

Now the real trick is trying to reach 1 million people, this is hard to do, but it's not impossible. Now in order to do this you need to keep the elites in the city, if you can keep them above 50%, then they will stay. If you reach 1 million, then good job you managed to get all high density buildings and now you can take a break.

Good luck on creating your city in Cities XL!

How to Use Demand Mods Wisely

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:27:19 +0000

A work and investigation by myself

A number of people pass though the HD (help desk) door and ask about links to demand mods and stuff related to demand mods. But what do they actually do? How do you use something like a ID boost to fix up a city? These questions shall be answered in this mini-tutorial.

1. What is a Demand mod?

A demand mod is a mod designed to "explode" the demand on a particular demand. For example, a demand mod for residential $$ will explode that particular demand to 6000, the in-game's maximum demand cap, and thus, you will have highrises in no time.

2. Where can I find such mod?

There are several:

http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/files/file/26720-radicle-rci-demandgraph-mod/
By gamzdude, works on CAM, no manual file plugin.

http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/files/file/22391-super-demand-mod-not-demand-ordinance/
By RadicalOne, unknown if it works on CAM, manual file plugin use.

http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/files/file/20114-un1-graph-enlargement-mod/
By Un1, no demand mod, increases the demand cap to 12000 and 8000

That is it. ( though I have seen several I have not found, if found, please PM me)

3. Useage and warinings

The demand mods are powerful, sometimes too powerful, they can turn cheap saloon towns into metropolis in a few game years, or turn a desert into habitable heaven. However, if your intention is to "have it real" you should not use it alot.

The way to use a demand mod if you want it that way is to open a city, build your city up to a point, then when the city is still a bit new ( when you don't have so many highrises) you remove the demand mod and leave it alone (though you still mantain it). The city should stay with the same numbers for a while and then plumment because of growing buildings. When that happens you should either choose to fix the demand by adding "demand boosts" or in other words parks and attempt to play the game as it should be.

A word of warning, sometimes the mod grows residential $$$ and then go bust because of lack of CO$$$. This happens because of logic. Ever thought of RL? Well it works this way, $ and $$ are mostly the larger population that work in a city and usually $$$ are a few (though some 20 sometimes go into a building). Well, what happens if you got more of that? you get no jobs sots! and thus you get problems.

One way to fix this is to remove the demand mod for residential $$$, that way, you can avoid more problems in a city. If you need those $$$, they will grow alone by the $ and $$ demand and the CO$$$ mods.

If you can't still figure it out PM me or go to HD in chat and call for me that way I can help you, any other questions should go to my PM box.

As always,
LC

How to Make a Region-Wide Google Style Street Map

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:37:34 +0000

How to Make a Region-Wide Street Map (Google Style)

In this tutorial, I will show how I put together a region-wide street map with a Google map style. I used an HTML editor, Paint, and GIMP to achieve this result - District of Wenzel Street Map - look around the whole page and you will see the images straight from SC4 and others that are more complete with Google style.

Part 1 - Preparing Base Image
Now we will gather the necessary map images from your region, so we can put together an accurate street map based on your SimCity.

First, go in-game and take pictures of the street traffic data map in each city of your region.

Now edit each of those images through this process:

Open Paint or your favorite editing program and open the SC4 picture.

Now take the select tool and roughly cut out the actual map. Copy the selection.

Now open a new image and resize it to 512x512 pixels. Your selection will be about half this size.

Paste that selection into the new image.

Do not click off the selection and resize it, not the entire image, 200% of the original. This will make the actual map 512x512 pixels.

Now adjust the selection so that no white is showing on the edges. Do not stretch! Just reposition until the map is all on the image.

Now deselect everything and resize the entire image to the appropriate size of the city. For example = SMALL = 256x256 pixels, MEDIUM = 512x512 pixels, LARGE = 1024x1024 pixels. You can use your own sizes depending on how large or small you want the map, but the scale must be the same, 2 x SMALL = MEDIUM, 2 x MEDIUM = LARGE.

At this point, I would suggest creating the HTML page that will take all these image tiles and place them together like your region. It will make lining things up and checking while working on the Google style much easier later.

Part 2 - Stitching Together a Region-Wide Map

Open an HTML editor or a text document. I use HTML Beauty, since it has an in-program preview and many tools to write HTML for you.

We will create a table to put the images in the appropriate places within the region. Open your SC4 region config file or have SC4 open to region view.

Now let's create the table. First put in the code for a table

. Remember to always close your tables, rows, and columns. Make sure to make the cellspacing and cellpadding and border all "0", otherwise you will have white space between each map piece from your cities.

Now in your region or your config map you must figure out how many SMALL tiles across your region is. My region is 32 SMALL tiles by 32 SMALL tiles. So I will have 33 columns and 33 rows. Why 33? When I designed my page with only 32 x 32 things were jumbled for some reason, so this is what works, so you should put an extra blank row and column.

The first row and column doesn't need to be a certain size though you can designate a size with

[TR height=""]

[TD width=""]

So now we will make the first row (the blank row). Look at the picture and copy that code. For width put the size of your SMALL city map image, in my case 256 pixels. Make sure you have 32

, plus the first

.

I added a border, change that border="0" to ="1" in the TABLE line and then I previewed to see the row. The boxes are not really 256 pixels wide yet, but they will be once content (pictures) are added.

Make sure after all the

(Columns) you close the row with

. We now have the first row (1/33). Copy everything

and paste on the next line. That is your second row!

Now remember how we designated the width of each of those 32 columns at 256 pixels. Now you must designate the next 32 rows at the same

HEIGHT=256

Now copy the entire

and paste 31 more times or the appropriate number of rows you need.

Here is another look at the result (with borders on!). You can see that the second row and every row beyond the first one are 256 pixels in height. The columns still are not the right size, but don't worry about that right now.

Now you must make those boxes resemble your region config. To do this start in the second

, leaving the first row blank. Edit the second

. Now for example in my region the upper leftmost tile is a LARGE tile. So I will change the column width to

. Now that I've done this, I've bumped three other columns out of alignment, so I will span those columns to fix it. Add

colspan="4"

. Now immediately remove the next three

in this row. Now we also want this box to be 1024 pixels in height so add rowspan="4". Now we must eliminate four

from each of the next three

. I didn't do it this way, but a great way to remove the unnecessary code is to use the comment code

. This way you can see how many columns you have removed.

To check your work, view your HTML document in your internet browser, it should resemble your region. If things look wrong, go back and make sure each row

has 33 columns taking into account the colspans and rowspans. I am not sure if the preview will look right with just blank tiles, so insert your pictures into the right spots before previewing. If they do not line up, make the appropriate corrections to your rows and columns, rowspans and colspans.

If you preview it with the borders on there will be many white spaces but you will see your region the way it looks when you have the borders on in SC4 region view. Turn off the borders for your final product. Now you have a stitched together regionwide map. You can stop here like I originally did and just label your streets right on the SC4 view, or you can continue and place layers over it to make a slick looking map of any style you wish.

Next, I will show you how to do a google-style overlay using GIMP.

Part 3 - Adding a Google Map-style Overlay
Now you will need GIMP or a similar picture editing program for this next part.

Now select any of the "tiles" you created earlier and stitched together to form the region map. You may do the overlay with any and all tiles, even if there is only one road running through it.

Open it in GIMP. Note the file type is .xcf. ALWAYS save a version of your map as this, so you can easily edit it in the future. (I just saved my downtown map as an .xcf and the program for some reason merged all the layers, so I must go back and rebuild the entire map to make future editing possible again, SIGH.)

To start you will have just a background. Now we must create the Google grey background, COLOR CODE: ede6dc. Create a new layer as shown on in the picture.

Once created, your picture will be completely grey. Go to the layer task bar on the right and press the eye next to the Grey Background to hide it for now.

Now create a transparent layer called Water. Make sure it is "above" the Grey Background and the base Background. Now pick a water color, COLOR CODE: 99b3cc, and paint over the water in the SimCity data view. Make sure you do this on the Water layer. You can add your own waterways that aren't shown in the dataview, for instance if you use ploppable water lots.

You can hide the water layer to your liking. Now create a Streets layer "above" the water, grey, and background.

I zoom in 200% to lay out the streets. To lay the streets, use the paths tool.

Now set the first anchor point of the street. Note the circle on the right edge of the map just north of the river. In the lower left corner, you can see the coordinates of the point (1025.0, 258.0)...the 258 is important to note to get a straight line (if your street is straight, that is).

I placed the other anchor at the end of the street at the same vertical coordinate 258.0. Now right-click, edit, stroke path...

I use a 4 pixel line for one-tile in SimCity. This only applies to streets and roads. For rail, I use 2 pixels.

Stroke and there you go. A street. MAKE SURE THIS IS ON THE STREET LAYER. Now when working at the edges of the map section I would suggest saving as .xcf, but also saving a .jpg after each stroke to check if it lines up with the adjacent sections. Just open your HTML file and refresh everytime.

I unhid all the layers and now the map looks nearly finished. Now we must add the grey outlines to the streets. Duplicate the Streets layer.

Alpha to Selection on the higher Streets layer.

Select the lower Streets layer. Right click on the picture and select Stroke Selection. Set your stroke for 1 pixel and COLOR CODE: c1b59e.

And there you go. Now just add in street names, etc. You can create more layers for parks, universities, etc. Just remember to place in the right order. ALWAYS save a copy of your work as .xcf with all the layers, so you can edit later!

Save as a jpeg and upload your HTML and pictures to a website for viewing by the general public! Good luck.

Check out the District of Wenzel Street Map for examples of all I talked about. Use your browser's zoom out ability to see more of the map at once.

Tropico 4: Developer Q&A

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:17:10 +0000

Tropico is one of those games with enough uniqueness and personality and shares just enough kinship with SimCity that it's hard to not be won over by its charm. We were able to exchange a few questions with Bisser Dyankov, Political Liaison of El Presidente, Haemimont Games to see where the latest Tropico title is headed and what's in store for island dictators, old and new.

1. Tropico 4 looks a lot like Tropico 3 in many ways, which itself was both a reboot and technology upgrade for the series. What are some of the gameplay features unique to Tropico 4?

The player is now no longer restrained by the resources on the current island. Raw materials, luxury goods and of course, food can be now imported in Tropico. This allows for radically different society and industry structure. El Presidente can also receive offers to establish private industries on the islands.

The political factions are now even more outspoken. They have their own agenda and demands from El Presidente, and permanent representatives to push for their own goals.

Numerous foreign nations now have taken an interest in Tropico. Now it's not just the two Superpowers, but also China, EU and the Arab league that want the attention of El Presidente. He can juggle between those foreigners to achieve his goals.

There are also interactive disasters – such as oil spills, volcanoes and hurricanes, all of which you’ll need to respond to appropriately to keep the citizens happy, and keep your economy (and Swiss bank account) flourishing.

2. Can you give us a few examples of the type of campaign mission objectives this time around?

The new campaign now tells a coherent story which overarches all the 20 missions. El Presidente is, of course, the central figure, yet several other characters - or adversaries - also take their part - the secret KGB agent with codename "Sasha", the elderly lord Chuffney and the rebel legend Marco Moreno (The Flame of La Revolucion!). They all have their own agenda and are after their own goals.

The specific objectives themselves are funny in their very Tropican way - El Presidente will become "The Most Awesome Person in the World", steal the Olympics and even move his island to avoid a nuclear missile strike!

3. Tropico's focus has always been on growing your island economy while maintaining power over the people while international politics always felt peripheral. Are there any new ways to interact internationally and dealing with the world's super powers?

El Presidente now has more partners in the international stage (including China and the Middle East). Tropico will enjoy favorable trading with partners throughout the world, suffer embargoes and even receive camels as personal gifts to El Presidente! The UN will also play a distinctive new role in the campaign.

4. Can you tell us how disasters are handled? Are there ways to mitigate them? Can you ask other nations for disaster relief?

Oil spills, volcanoes, tornadoes, tsunamis and good old earthquakes and llama flu epidemics are all lining up to hit Tropico one after another. El Presidente will be able to choose different approaches to dealing with disasters, or even preventing and mitigating them if the Tropico weathermen are true in their forecasts. Not to mention dealing with the stranded oil tanker in the middle of the city...

5. Are there any new construction tools for building your island? New building types or structures that we haven't seen before? (ie. Terraforming?)

Tropico 4 features a comprehensive map a mission editor that allows terraforming of the island, creating and sharing complex custom challenges. So yes, you can make a custom island and change the map landscape and resources with the mission editor.

Terraforming is not available during actual mission play, but you have the new option for quick construction that allows finish your urgent constructions almost instantly. This action is costly and should be used sparingly, especially without a strong economy to back it up.

6. Will there be more options to customize our El Presidente?

Of course! There is a more detailed trait system for the upcoming political season as well as several new costumes and accessories for various special editions of the game.

7. How does the Social networking aspect work in Tropico 4?

By spreading the word and image of El Presidente far and wide! The player will be able to inform his Twitter followers on his achievements, mission successes and in-game events like rebel attacks, which, of course, officially never happen in sunny and peaceful Tropico. El Presidente will even be able to share images from Tropico to his friends on Facebook.

8. What do you think a SimCity player would like most about Tropico 4!

Tropico 4 remains at its core a city builder game with the fundamental basics to balance population size, people's needs, economy, income and growth.

The SimCity player will surely enjoy the macro level of Tropico 4 - housing and economy, crime and pollution management, power consumption and power grid construction, as well as the roads and the transportation system.

Last but not least, the unique political aspect and the struggle to remain in power in Tropico will encourage the SimCity player to consider all the above known elements from a new perspective.

Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions!

How to make a custom lot with the Lot Editor

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 03:21:48 +0000

How to make a custom lot with the Lot Editor

What you need:
• SC4BAT
• Plugin Manager
• Lot Editor Make sure you download all 3 files on the page.
• Gmax

1st: Open the SC4Bat.

Zoom in on the Top view in the Top-Left corner. Make a box that is very small.

See? Very Small.

#2: Click on the hammer button on the top-right corner of the right part of the screen. Click BAT>Quality(Select Draft)>Export. Make sure you save it as draft quality.

Save it as anything you want but I will save it as project001. This is very helpful for later. After you press save it will show pictures of the little box in different zooms and angles. Do not X out of the box. When it is done it will tell you.

When this comes up press yes.

#3: Open the plugin manager

Find your item and drag it into the parks category.

Then follow the instructions in the following picture.

When you are done with that click Apply. Then close the Plugin Manager.

#4: Open the lot editor. When it asks you for a lot to edit, search pz1x1 and click the one selected in the picture.

Change the highlighted areas to 90 and 50.

Now delete all of the props by dragging a box over them on the right part of the screen. And change the base texture.

Go to the building tab and press “replace item”. Find a select your building, I named it project001. Then put it in the back corner of your lot.

Now add props and trees and you're almost done!

Then click the Save As button and save your new park.

And that is how you make a custom lot using the lot editor! You can do this with other things like editing police stations or schools. Just drag your building into the right category in the plugin manager and open a building (in the lot editor) in the menu that you want your lot to show up in.

Have fun making parks and buildings!

Basic Lotting Tutorial

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 20:42:05 +0000

Basic Lotting

For those who want a good CJ, you might as well take up on custom content creation. For example, you're building a Middle Eastern city and want a filler for the empty spaces such that it fits the environment. Before we start making growable lots, lets start something smaller.
=======================================
Disclaimer: This tutorial assumes that you know some of the basics of the lot editor including rotating objects and textures.
=======================================
First, I used the grass green lot provided by maxis.

Let's change up the base texture, I don't want a grass lot in my Middle Eastern cities especially if its somewhat far from a water source. I'm going to make this a concrete texture by going to the Base Texture tab and click Add Item. From there, pick a concrete texture. Remember this, use a base texture so that it fits with the surrounding environment such as other building's / lot's base textures.

I want a dirt path, but you might be wondering how if I just selected a texture. The answer to that is going to the Overlay Texture tab. Then, you need to look through the menu for a dirt texture. Don't worry, this won't delete the base texture as this type overlaps the base texture.

See? No harm done to the base texture. But I want to add more than just that, maybe a prop (object) or two?

A prop is basically your objects where things like cars, streetlights, and other things that can be placed on the lot. In order to place a prop, you go to the Prop tab and click Add Item. Although the pop-up menu has no object viewer like the textures. You can go through each prop and select them to see what they look like. Besides that, there's a type-in box above the menu. From there, you can type an object you want such as a car. Remember, the results will be highlighted and you can press the Enter key to see more results. Pick a prop, any one. Don't worry, if you don't like it, you can always delete it by pressing the Delete key while selecting that prop. Alright, I picked my car (junker) and now able to place it on the lot.

Like so, after I selected my desired prop such as this junker.

I don't want to end there, I want this to be gritty as possible. If you downloaded a couple of prop packs, your prop menu will be much larger than the original Maxis' one. If you play around with the props, you are able to make something like this.

Complex? Nope, I just added a few props such as Shanties (by onlyplace4), Maxis garbage and a few street lights and that's it! Don't worry, you can overlap props and even make them out of bounds if a prop allows it.

I'm done my lot and ready to save this, (and edit for the future). Click Save As and name it whatever you want. I'm going to call it Slum_1.

Congratulations! You completed your good looking lot and ready to plop wisely in your cities. Look how much gritter it looks with some lotting.

Hope this helped you out!

Notes:

If you want to get more serious with your lotting, I recommend using the SC4 Plugin Manager and make buildings suited to your liking. You can use this tool to even create growable custom lots by using a building. I haven't covered this because I just want to get the basics down before I can move onto more advanced things.

The Sculpture Creating Tutorial - batting a simple sculpture in 15 steps

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 06:38:14 +0000

The Sculpture Creating Tutorial

Hi folks,

after some requests i decided to try to write a short sculpture creating tutorial. Sculpturing often seams to be one of the hardest parts of batting a building. But at all it's not that hard a lot of you might think. Here i'll try to explain how to create a simple sculpture in just 15 steps. I just hope with a satisfying result. Our testing object should be this logia from munich i did some time ago for a CJ.

As you can see, we need two sculptures on the left and the right. The material should be bronce. But lets figure out, how to create them.

Let's start with a simple sphere which we scale a little. The radius in our example is 0,955 but that should not be so important. Just select a size in which it is confortable for you to work with the basic bodies. Go on scaling down the y-axis by clicking with the right mouse on the scale icon above. This is our torax.

Now just clone the sphere to go on modelling our sculpture. Next we'll do the head.

Just scale the sphere down to 100% on all axis and now change the z-axis to get the shape of a head. Next you should scale down the "head" a little.

Now we'll change the x-angel of the head, so that it fits better with our torax. In our example we choose the value -15,5, this is always a good value.

So this were two of the essential steps. Now we go on modelling our sculture by repeating this three steps. Just change the angels and the scale of your spheres to simulate all the parts of the body. For the legs and the arm should always be the scale on the z-axis higher.

For the lower parts of legs and arms the z-scale should be almost three times the x and y-scale to get a good reasult later. Just go on cloning the spheres and put your sculpture together until you got all parts you need.

At next, well do the shapy dress of the sculture. Let's create a cylinder first. Now we choose edit mesh in the modyfier menu and the symbol for the polygon connections.

Now go on moving every single point of our cylinder. Just think, that you don't need to work so exactelly, it's just to create the impression of a organic body. But it's not so important to really create a perfect copy of the real thing.

After creating the dress of our sculpture just change the angels as you like and copy the modified cylinder as often, as you need it to create more variety, in our case two cylinders should be enough.

At next, just select all the bodies of our sculpture and group them. Thats just more simple for the future steps.

The next important part is the texturing. The combination of the simple sculpture modell and the right texture is the secret of creating scultures in my opinion. For our sculpture we choose a texture from a picture of the logia. By clicking on apply all the bodies of our sculture are pasted by the texture, but that still doesn't look so well.

Thats why we put a UVW-map on our modell.

As you see, the taxture now covers all the sculture. Now we just modify the hole thing a little by selecting cylinder for the UVW-map and change the values of the cylinder so, that it covers the complete modell.

And here we are at the last step. Just move the sculpture on it's position and scale it down until it fits good in it's place.

As you see we got a nice result in our render. I hope, this was usefull for you and it blows a little bit away the fear of creating sculptures. Just try it your own and you'll figure out that it's not so hard at all.

saludos

Peter

Creating Functional Landmarks

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 20:47:26 +0000

Creating functional landmarks

This is my basic guide that shows you how to add jobs to a landmark. It will be far from perfect, as I’m doing it from memory. It’s a common question in the Chat room, so im making one that should be easy to follow.

This tutorial requires: Ilives Reader (http://www.simtropol...e-reader-0-9-3/)

It is possible without creating your own model, as long as you have the .SC4model file. Don’t know if it works if that is compressed in a Dat, I’ll try it later.

Right then, to business. I’m going to use
http://www.simtropol...~~~~_____~~~~~ Because I like the BAT, and it looks right for a CS$ which is what I’m going to make. (Obviously that’s not all you can do, but I need one and this is a good excuse.)

It’s normally an Resi building, but Plop able Resi’s are a bit buggy, so don’t attempt it.

First find the model and stick it, and only it, in your plugins. This makes the Lot editor and such open quicker, and it is easier to remove mess after if you want.
Landmark
Quick hint, add LM and GR to the exemplar names. Makes them easy to distinguish later.

The landmark one doesn’t need too many changes from default, Budget cost will be removed later anyway. Change the item name and description if you want a different name in the menu. The only Real area that needs editing for this is the wealth section. MAKE SURE ITS THE SAME AS THE WEALTH YOU ARE GOING TO USE. I set mine to low after this, as I was doing CS$, but for CO$$$ it should be high. This isn’t needed for everything, but I’ve had crashes on some of the ones I didn’t do this to. Best be safe.

Growable

The only things that need Changing drastically are the in game features. Capacity satisfied is normally MILES higher than a city can provide, so lower that. (If you’re using more than $ the higher values when you click it are the lower wealth.) Don’t worry about the hex code on the left when you click there, ill deal with it later. You’re also going to want to change the Pollution and consumption figures; as if you look there they are incredibly high before changing them. That’s really it; you can change other stuff if you want. None of this is really necessary, but if you want it to have any useful purpose then do it.

Lotting

Make your landmark Lot, no need for a growable. Just get this done, not really major, but it needs to be done before the modding itself as Lot Editor can strip away the modding you do, leaving the files useless. It may not happen at all, I’ve only had it happen once, but it is a possibility. This is where using an empty plugins folder comes in useful, as if, like me, you have 5 GB of plugins it takes a while to load LE.

Now we get onto the hard bit...

Modding

This is the tricky bit. Open the Lot file in reader. Go to filters and select only the exemplar box. Click refresh underneath the boxes.

Once you’ve done that you should get 2 exemplars. For the minute we want the one that looks like this.

Remove these ones.

These are what ties it to the landmark and interfere. So remove them. A few require editing, but I’ll get onto that later. As ever, you can remove more, and edit more, but that picture there shows the ones that really need to be removed. (Just right click delete property.)

Now open the Growable. (If you close remember to save, reader wont prompt you.) You need to copy these properties from that exemplar over into the landmark Lots exemplar you just edited. (Right click copy and paste or CTRL+C CTRL+ V) (EDIT also select growth. Dont know why, but I forgot it in this pic)

Now we need to do some cleaning up. This is what the landmark exemplar looks like now. (Or should.)

To start with we need to clean up occupant groups. Double click on it.
Delete the bottom two, and then go to the Growable exemplar.

When you do, you should be able to see quite a few there. We want the second one down. Copy that over, by copying its hex code from the bottom into the other one, separated by a comma, the others aren’t needed as the ploppable shouldn’t grow, and we don’t want the game to think it should.

You should get this once you press the apply next to the text box in the bottom. Press the apply next to cancel to continue and save.

The next tricky bit.

This bit is a bit of trial and error unfortunately, ive not managed to work all of it out. The other exemplar within the Lot has some properties, which also require editing. These are the 3 in question.

Zone types is an easy edit. Simply double click, and add the code 0x0F into the box.
Wealth types is also simple. Add 0x01 for low wealth, 0x02 for medium and 0x03 for high wealth.
Purpose types is harder, they are all different. I’m going to look into various files to find them, but
for now this is what I’ve found out.

CS$ 0x02
CS$$ 0x02
CS$$$ 0x02
CO$$ 0x03
CO$$$ 0x03
I-D
I-M
I-HT 0x08

Just for reference, R is 0x01. (Again, dont make a ploppable resi. Not worth it.)

So just as an example, if you’re confused, mine now looks like this.

Remember I said you don’t want to confuse the game and make it grow this Lot? Well just to be sure make the “Growth stage” one 0xff. This sets the Stage to 255, which even the CAM can’t manage.

(No pics, im sure you get how to do it by now.)

This Lot is now testable in game, well done.

As always, don’t worry about asking me for help, I’m normally found in Chat and if you can’t find me there PM me.

Timmystwin.

Ill look at this if its put in the omnibus and correct it if theres anything to do, but this is a good enough one to follow.

For the Eager, Yet Overwhelmed Newcomer

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 22:08:44 +0000

New to SimCity, Simtropolis, or been out of touch for a few years? Wondering what the heck a NAM or a BAT is? And just what the heck is up with those brown boxes?! This article will take you through the basics of registering your game, whether from a hard copy of the disc or from Steam, the essentials of Simtropolis, and a jumpstart into the world of Custom Content, to bring your game to a level beyond what you could imagine is possible.

I would like to thank A Nonny Moose for his contributions and influences on the creation of this article.

Rush Hours, Deluxe Editions, SimCity Boxes, Oh my!
Before starting on registration information, we should make a clarification on just what the differences in these versions are. The short answer is nothing. When Maxis released Rush Hour, the expansion pack to the original SimCity 4 game, they released two versions: one simply the expansion (SimCity 4: Rush Hour); the other, a version that included both the original game and the expansion pack (SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition). It makes absolutely no difference to the game whether you own the Deluxe Edition, or Rush Hour.
Now, just what is the SimCity Box? After the release of SimCity Societies in 2008, EA released this version which contains SimCity 4, SimCity 4: Rush Hour, SimCity Societies, SimCity Societies: Destinations, and The Sims Carnival: SnapCity. The story here is the same with Rush Hour and the Deluxe Edition: it makes absolutely no difference.

In the event that you happen to be a long time player who does not own Rush Hour or the Deluxe Edition, it should be noted that the expansion pack is required to make use of 99% of the custom content available on this site. I will explain that further later on.

Registering and Updating the Game
Before playing, you need to register your game on the EA site and pick up the two (2) necessary EA-released patches to your game for it to work correctly. Here is the site you need. After you have registered you will be able to see the updates you need in the right hand frame of the home page. In recent months, we have noted some errors in the registration system of the official SimCity 4 site. So as not to leave these players hanging, some mirrors have been set up containing the assorted official updates.

For the standard, PC version updates, check out here:
SC4Devotion

Own the Mac edition and can't open .exe's? Check out this thread:
Get your Maxis files here!

Bought your copy off Steam?
Steam comes pre-patched! Yay!

You should apply the two updates to the game in this order: EP1 to fix bugs, and the BATupdate to allow nightlights.
When you are finished, you should check to see that the version number of the .exe file for the game in Program files/Maxis/Apps has been updated to 1,1,640,0. This is proof that your updates worked.

Optional Upgrades and Tools
You may notice, both on the Maxis site, and on the mirror sites, a number of other downloads available. Among these are new landmarks, new rewards, the Lot Editor, and Building Architect Tool (BAT). These are all optional, and are not necessary for the games function or the addition of but do add content, and functionality.

So, just what do these BAT and Lot Editor things do?
The Lot Editor allows you to construct new lots, using the buildings, textures, and assorted prop pieces included within the game. The Building Architect Tool (BAT) allows you to construct new 3D models, and is what is used to create new buildings, trees, seawalls, spaceships, and everything inbetween. Using the Lot Editor and the BAT in tandem, the world is yours to create.
It should be noted that both these tools have a sizeable learning curve. We do have a number of tutorials here to get you started, the most notable of these being the BAT Essentials Tutorial on the Omnibus.

Unleashing the Game
At this point, your game is ready to go! The appropriate patches are in place, and the game is as optimized as Maxis and EA could make it. So where to now?

Many players are happy to play the game without any custom content, relying simply on what Maxis has provided. It is indeed very possible to create beautiful cities using only what content Maxis provided. But, many would also point out that the game can be so much more. In the 8 years since the release of the game, the amount of custom content available brings the game to an entirely new level. Players can recreate their hometowns with stunning accuracy, watching roads twist and curve, with even the correct corner market in place. Players can build in the desert, in futuristic settings, or on Mars. The custom content community has taken a finite game and given it infinite possibilities. And the question I'm sure you're asking by this point is, where do I begin?

There are a number of exchanges available for you to browse. Here on Simtropolis, the STEX is perhaps the largest, and one of the oldest exchanges devoted to SimCity 4. The other primary English exchanges are SC4Devotion and SimPeg. You could say that SC4Devotiion is the high-tech site, and that Pegasus is the theme site, and you wouldn't be far wrong. These sites both require free registration in order to download, as Simtropolis does. The SimCity community expands far beyond English speakers, however - other communities include German and Japanese sites.

You may have noticed when downloading the patches that the official SimCity site also has an exchange. We do not recommend the use of that site. As EA dropped all support some time ago for SimCity, the exchange was allowed to run rampant. Many files contain viruses, and other such things that your computer may not enjoy.

Growable? Ploppable? What?
As you browse the exchanges, you'll notice these phrases on assorted files throughout. The answer to this could not be simpler. A growable lot means that it will grow on its own with the appropriate zoning, as if it were any building created by Maxis. Ploppable lots allow you to plop the building as if it were a landmark. Some ploppables retain their commercial/industrial nature and provide jobs as though they were grown.
It should be noted that at early points in the exchange, you may run across residential ploppables. These do not work, and will abandon some time after plopping.

So, I've Downloaded Some Stuff. Now what?
Installation of downloads really is simple. This article by our fearless Dirktator outlines the process of installation. Some downloads now come with .exe installers, which simplifies the process even more - the installer does all the work for you.

The next question you may have is where the heck do I find my ploppable items in the game? Some items will be pretty intuitive as to where they are located - Educational facilities are located in the Schools menu, policing facilities in the Police menu, etc. But what about that great skyscraper advertised as a ploppable? Those will generally be located in the Landmarks menu. Nearly everything else (parks, churches, etc.) will be located in either Parks or Rewards. And if you just can't find it anywhere, consult the ReadMe that should have been included with the download. It should state where it is located in the menu system in game.

Brown Boxes, Everywhere!

Uh oh! This may look tragic, but it doesn't mean your game is wrecked. You just missed downloading some dependencies. Wait, what? Dependewho?

Dependencies are separate files that a lot uses to complete itself. If Download A cannot find the appropriate dependency, it reverts to the lovely boxes you can see in the picture above. It may not look like it, but each lot is actually filled with bits and pieces of other files to make the bigger picture. The trees, the benches, the garbage cans, the swimming pools you see on assorted lots are all individual pieces, that come together to create a house, a park, or a shopping complex.
All downloads on the SimTropolis EXchange are required to list all dependencies needed to work properly. If you've looked everywhere and just can't find that dependency, or if the dependency package is locked, please make a post here, and one of our friendly members will help you out.

You may have further questions in regards to dependencies. As with installation, I would like to refer you to another article that goes into much further detail. The Dependency Debate by north_country_dude goes into great detail about the pros and cons of dependencies, and answers a few of the common questions you may have about them.

So what should I download?
Building tastes vary from person to person. Personally, I prefer the drab, 1970's concrete buildings, while many prefer the sleek, glass modern skyscrapers. Because of this, I'm not going to recommend any particular buildings - but I can recommend some mods that are considered the best and the greatest.

* Network Addon Modd, or the NAM. This mod was first conceived with the discovery of an unfinished road network Maxis left in the game. The talented modding community has taken this and turned it into entirely new road networks, gave us roundabouts, and allows us to create true metropolitan cities with roads to match. This can be found here on the STEX, or at SC4Devotion.
If you're interested, here is the "official" NAM thread with links to the different parts used with NAM and some FAQ's. If any issues come up while using NAM, there is a support thread here. Various NAM Team members frequent the thread and gladly help out.
* A terrain and water modd. When you first launch the game, the grass and water seems realistic enough. A bit off perhaps, but hey nothing can be perfect. Not true - modders have been able to create new textures for the terrain and the water, which makes the Maxis textures look like off-colored drawings. Cycledogg has made a number of varying terrain modds, and there are assorted water textures on the STEX, each varying for the kind of water your city needs.
* SimMars. Certainly this modd is not for everyone, but this article would be deficient if it weren't mentioned. SimMars transforms SimCity to Mars, complete with textures, buildings, road networks and music to match. The work done on this is exceptional, and it sits with the NAM as the greatest projects to improve the game that SimCity has seen.
* Everything else listed here. Livin in Sim has created this top ten list of great modd's that should be essential. A few other members have listed their contributions as well, and I would highly recommend them all!

From there you could look through the CJ section to get ideas or run through the STEX and other exchanges to see if anything "jumps" out at you. As I mentioned before, if you can't seem to find something, make a post here and someone is bound to help you out.

How do I win?
SimCity is different from most games, as there is no set end point. Your success is based on goals you set. For many, a balanced budget and proper governance of a successful city without "godly" intervention (ie. cheats) makes a successful game. For many, the accurate recreation of a real life city is the goal, generally with the assistance of assorted budget cheats. For others still, it's simply to create the best city they can. Set your own goals and adjust as you achieve them.

For all flavors of player, however, we do have an assortment of tutorials here on Simtropolis to help you on the Omnibus. The sections that will interest you most are SimCity 4 Tutorials and SimCity 4 Reference. Check back from time to time, as we do continue to add articles!

Hopefully, this article has helped you get started. If you have any further questions that this article didn't answer, the folk in the forums and the chatroom are always eager to help, and any member of the Simtropolis Help Squad would be more than happy to give you some tips to the right direction.

Synekism: A new City Builder, Developer Interview

Fri, 06 May 2011 20:09:34 +0000

Synekism is an indie city-building game with some ambitious goals to redefine the city-building genre.

From Synekism.com:
Synekism is a city simulation video game focused on dynamically generated content. The project was started is currently maintained by three university students in Canada.

The game style is that of an open sandbox. The player can designate residential, commercial and industrial zones and watch them grow. One can also zone government lots to raise desirability.

The key features of the game are grid less environments and dynamically generated buildings. The lack of a grid means total freedom when placing lots and roads allowing more realistic looking cities. Procedurally generated buildings allows for more visual variability. Instead of pre-created models a building is generated depending of location-based desirability and city-wide demand.

From Wikipedia:
Synekism^[1] is a concept in urban studies coined by Edward Soja. It refers to the dynamic formation of the polis state - the union of several small urban settlements under the rule of a "capital" city (or so-called city-state or urban system). Soja's definition of synekism, mentioned in Writing the city spatially, is "the stimulus of urban agglomeration."

I got a chance to discuss the project with Damian, the Synekism team leader to get a better sense of what Synekism is about, and where it's going.

---

Who are you guys? How many of you are there? What do you guys do?

Nobody really, just three friends from olden times, all full-time under-grad students at various universities in Ontario.

Whose branchild is Synekism? What motivated you to create it?

So I (Damian) triggered this project almost two years ago and it was for a combination of having some fun, learning something, and stirring up some heat in this somewhat forgotten genre, industry wise. I thought that even if we don't end up big we could at least encourage some more development, more competition.

How long have you been working on it?

Development officially started on May 18, 2010.

What makes Synekism distinct from city-building games that have come before it?

We're *trying* to remove as many restrictions from the user as we possibly can. We started on a gridless and dynamic foundation to begin with which is why the game lacks detail at the moment. We'll eventually go further and remove the map size restriction as well and basically try live up to the sandbox nature of our genre. Synekism is also being designed with dynamic content in mind. For example, once the buildings actually look like buildings they will not be static pre-made models that simply plopped here and there, rather, from a set of puzzle pieces each building will be generated according the type, density, class, neighborhood, time period, and the shape/location of the lot, and probably many other factors. Naturally, lots can already be many different sizes and shapes.

Of course, we are building on the shoulders of the giants that came before us and so we'll also include the successful features that made previous city-sims great.

Downtown

Downtown 2

The notion of removing as many restrictions from the player as possible intriguing, so the question is: if Synekism is intended to be more than just a sandbox toy, how does a "game" dynamic fit within a game-world devoid of restrictions?

I think that's the beauty of city sims (and simulators in general): that you don't need to worry about gameplay per-say as long as you are accurate in your simulation. I like to compare city simulation to painting, the only difference being that the paint is alive and can thrive or die off depending on which paints, brushes and canvases you choose to use and in what proportions. Makers of paints, brushes and canvases don't specify precisely what you may and may not do with them.

However, there will still be restrictions. For example, just like good quality paints are expensive so will the various tools in our game cost the player dearly. Equally, keeping one's city alive will require a delicate balance between taxes and public spending. Total freedom is obviously not desirable.

So is the idea eventually then that the buildings are generated procedurally?

Yes, but also with support for static buildings like landmarks or player-made buildings.

So with dynamic content in mind, what are the ways you envision users creating and contributing content?

So the procedural generation part (and this is still up in the air at the moment) will use puzzle pieces to generate the buildings. These pieces will simply be wall and window types and they will be used to create each floor of a building by repeating (and possibly scaling) the 3D model of the piece as many times as necessary. More complex but similar logic will be used for lobbys and rooftops. The point being that, as with real life, buildings should look like they were built specifically for the lot they are on and not simply "plopped" there. Players will be able to create custom puzzle pieces as well as restrict the building shapes their puzzle set will work for.

With that in mind, there will still be the option to create full static buildings by selecting that puzzle set and shaping the building manually. Such creations will simply be ploppable (maybe with limitations on the number of duplicates per city).
We are also looking at in-game customizability of the transportation network tool. So for example, you could create a "brush" that paints a 4-lane avenue with streetcar rail in the center and using a specific type of street lights. You can then share this with other players, just like you can share Photoshop brushes.

Gridless

How would you address performance concerns when it comes to these massive and potentially limitless complex cities?

Let's just say the box buildings will be in the game for a good while. When we do introduce higher quality buildings they will only be turned on for the closest buildings to the camera, with the rest of the city still just boxes. As we improve our performance you'll be able to see more detail at once. As with limitless city sizes the exact approach is still being debated. Content will of course be loaded on a per-need basis but in steps, so you might go to your second city on the other side of the planet in a couple of seconds but that city will slowly load up all it's buildings. One thing I will stress is that we really want to avoid any loading screens. I know we are failing that goal now but that's our aim anyway.

In terms of the simulation of entire planets we working on a way to "approximate" the running of a city that is not in the player's focus. Not too much detail on that yet.

What kind of things do you have in mind that you guys would definitely want to see in a city-building game?

Where do I begin? For one, the game should be able to accurately reproduce any real city (as in, trace in exactly the map of that city). Furthermore, one should be able to, without excessive plopping, accurately re-create the density, wealth, and zone type distribution of the real city, as well as its traffic patterns and public transit use. All this while looking picture perfect.

I am going over the top here, a bit, and I should say that there are a lot of sensible features that are currently either missing or not properly implemented. Multiplayer is one. I think Minecraft proved that sandbox games not only can be multiplayer but can excel at it, if done properly. A truly accurate and flexible transportation network, including traffic simulation and public transit, is another big one. And what we are trying to do, which is to remove the size restrictions and create huge and persistent regions. I think we can do better now-days than individual city file loading and saving. Naturally, there is a lot more to add here.

Highshot

What can you tell us about the actual city simulator at this point? Is the intention to remain close to the SimCity recipe?

For the most part, yes, we are sticking to SimCity's recipe. Why change something that worked so well? There will be some differences which hopefully fix some of the minor annoyances that the SimCity simulator created (like the infamous NO JOB zots). One major difference will be the way we approach public services. Basically, if you don't touch it it will balance itself, moderately well. So for example, if you don't build any schools whatsoever, the simulator will spawn private schools which will address some of the educational needs of the area. If, however, you decide to take matters into your own hands and see if you can do better - the simulator will back off and give control over to you (in degrees of course). Beyond this we'll just have to see.

I have to say, that's a pretty awesome set of goals! So if I get what you're saying, it sounds like Synekism, the concept as it is right now, is leaning toward a more sandbox-type toy than objective-based game? Maybe a loaded question, but would you say that you're catering to hard-core city simulator fans more and casual players less?

So, in short, yes to both questions. I should, however, expand the second "yes" a bit. So, although the core city sim players are our focus, we are trying to make the game as "automatic" as possible. So, take my example above. If you just want to zone and zone and just worry about the balance between the three major types then you can very well do so. The rest of the game will be automated at some adequate level. Some examples of automated aspects of the game may include education, healthcare, police, and even fire protection services. However, player-controlled (or state-controlled) services have the potential to be a lot more efficient than the vanilla automatic implementations.

You'll see the first attempt at covering levels of complexity in our next major release (May 1st) with lot density controls.

Overview Mode

What and when is the next milestone?

Well, this coming release in May will start looking at multiplayer in an experimental sort of way as well as introduce lot density control. The summer will mostly see fixes, stability and performance updates as we prepare our code for bigger features (but we will always have new features each release, even if minor ones!). As for the next major milestone, I think it will come towards the end of the year with an engine upgrade. After that, the predictive reliability becomes negligible.

Once again, I could go on forever on the subject. We will likely start a blog soon to expand some more on our plans as well as get feedback.

Looking forward to seeing where this project goes! Thanks for taking the time, and keep us posted!

Suburbs

Town

Zoning

Zoning

---

If you're interested in checking out a city, you can load the save game file here. To download the latest build of Synekism, check out: http://www.synekism.com/

If you have your own questions, feel free to post them below.

Nightlighting in GMAX for objects and windows.

Tue, 03 May 2011 20:00:44 +0000

This is slightly more advanced than the other one, and requires iLives reader (HERE) and basic knowledge of it to do it quickly. Possible for a complete novice, just a little confusing.

A basic understanding of GMAX is also needed, but i doubt nightlights would be on the menu if you didnt have that.

1. Create your scene. Day only, No nightlights.

2. Create one spotlight, name it nitelite_spot01 and turn it off. (You can put nite- in front of any objects name, and it will only appear at night, but a light is best.)

3. Double check that you have NO night-lit windows (press h and search for "nite_ or nitelite_")

4. Do the render as normal.

5 Remove the .sc4model file from your plugins. Move it to your desktop, or somewhere you can find it.

6. Open up your day scene. Modify it to Create your Night Scene. Here you can do normal BAT nightlights, or you can use the following method:

6.1 Go into the material navigator, and press on new. Go to bitmap and open the file that you want it to look like, a drawn window for instance. Apply that material to your object. The links below are good for textures though. You can skip the next step now. Windows textures

6.2. Click the box next to the diffuse color, (I dont usually do this step)and navigate to a trunite map. Leave the color at a lighter gray.

6.3. Click the box next to the "Self-illumination" box, and find the same texture you used for diffuse. Set the self-illumination to 100 (Or lower if you want. 70-100 is good. You can also control the brightness with the diffuse color.

6.4. Apply to your night windows. Use the UVW Map modifier to make it fit into your window. Generally the maps will fit into a 1.5-2m wide by 4m tall window perfectly.(Doesnt have to be a window, be creative) (Or edit the texture or other such stuff)

6.5. Do a test preview. Medium quality is good. You will still be looking at the Night render in BAT.

6.6. If you like what you see, go to step 7. If you want to 'spice it up, continue reading)

6.7. You can also change the geometry around, so long as it fits within the same LOD, and it remains basically the same shape. So you can take down things that appear in daytime , but maybe not nighttime.

7. Proceed to Export your new night scene. No need to rename it, as we want the night FSH iid's to be the same. Be sure your day scene was removed from your plugins folder

8. once finished, open up your day scene in Reader. (download link above)

9. Go to Filter (Blue). Uncheck everything (Red) , and choose the FSH Texture (Yellow arrow). Click refresh.(Green.)

EDIT, some people found all this confusing, so here is a pic.

10. Click the instance tab (Blue in pic below)to get the instance numbers in order numerically.

11. This is where things get tricky.

Find all Instance IID's that have an 8 in the middle. For example:

000f8000. This is the starting night light FSH instance ID for the Campbell Mithun Insurance buiding. The last one is 000f843d.

Drag select all of the FSH Files with the 8 in the middle like that, and remove it. Carefully do this, because if you remove one of the DAY FSH files, your model will not appear right in the game.

12. Open your Night scene in a brand new Reader. Select all of the FSH Files with the 8 in it using the method explained above, and right click, copy files (Green). Then go into your other Reader, the day scene. Delete the files with the 8 in here, and ONLY them (Red) and paste, after right clicking(Green), your Files in there. You should now have your night windows from your night scene, in your day scene. We do this, because self - illumination works in the day as well.

Remember to save! Put your day render into your plugins, and remove the night render. Test it in game, remember that if you make it a landmark or building it needs power to show nightlights!

That should be it. Hope you do understand it, and dont hesitate in asking me questions. Im often found in live chat, and if that fails PM me. (May be a slight wait on the reply, but it will come.)

Timmystwin.

This is my own heavily edited version. However, I give Credit to ~~Swat Medic~~ Jakemd, who made this article originally, which allowed me work out how to do it and produce this edited version.

How to create Puzzle Pieces Part 2

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 21:00:24 +0000

[Part 1]

7. The RUL 0x10000000 file

Now the SC4Path-files are all saved you are finally finished editing your DAT-file of your puzzle piece. Close the DAT-file, but don't close the Reader yet. We will uncover the magic file of SimCity 4 Transit Modding: the RUL 0x10000000 file

7.1. What is the RUL 0x10000000 file?
The RUL 0x10000000 file, also known as the "Intersection Ordering RUL", defines the puzzle pieces and places them in so-called Rotation Rings, which are part of TAB-Rings. This file was originally meant for Maxis Highway interchanges, since Maxis didn't make puzzle pieces for other transport networks. That's why the demolition costs of puzzle pieces are the same as the demolition costs for Maxis Highway sections.

7.2. Where can I find the RUL 0x10000000 file?
The original RUL 0x10000000 file, as Maxis created it originally, can be found in "SimCity_1.dat". But since "SimCity_1.dat" is way to big to update and for download, the NAM Team has created a separate DAT-file, containing the RUL 0x10000000, RUL 0x10000001 and the RUL 0x10000002 files: The NAM Controller. This file can be found in the NAM Folder. The filename of this file is "NetworkAddonMod_Controller_RIGHT_HAND_VERSION.dat" of "NetworkAddonMod_Controller_LEFT_HAND_VERSION.dat", depending on your driving side.

7.3. Editing the RUL 0x10000000 file?

7.3.1. Important notice before editing the RUL 0x10000000 file
The RUL 0x10000000 file is a quite delicate file and may cause CTDs on error. It's strongly recommended to let a NAM member know that you're editing the RUL 0x10000000 file. Not only can the NAM Team prevent errors, but they can also help you with editing the RUL 0x10000000 file and give you tips. Also, there is one Golden Rule:

DON'T RELEASE YOUR OWN VERSION OF THE NAM CONTROLLER IN PUBLIC! EVER!
ONLY THE NAM TEAM SHOULD RELEASE A PUBLIC VERSION OF THE NAM CONTROLLER.

We like to keep things central to make sure the files contain as less bugs as possible and that everything is compatible with each other. We don't like to have a dozen NAM Controllers hanging around with minor changes, but with no compatibility with each other. Following this Golden Rule will prevent much trouble and people asking why their mods don't work. An advised way is to post the RUL 0x10000000 code on the corresponding topics, so the NAM Team can incorporate it in the Controller and debug the code. Also, as said in Chapter 3, you should reserve IDs.

7.3.2. Importing/Exporting the RUL 0x10000000 file
The RUL 0x10000000 file is quite big (over 2MB uncompressed). The Reader contains a RUL editor, but it's advised to use an external text editor. This requires the RUL 0x10000000 file to be exported (this only needs to be done once):
- Right-click on the RUL 0x10000000 file.
- Select "Save decoded file"
- The NAM-folder now contains file_dec00000000.rul (or any other number) and file_dec00000000.rul.TGI. You can edit file_dec00000000.rul by simply dragging it into Notebook.
- You can edit the RUL 0x10000000 now. Don't forget to save when you're done.
If you're finished with editing the RUL 0x10000000 file, you have to import it into the Reader again:
- Open the NAM Controller.
- Delete the old RUL 0x10000000 file.
- Go to "Sub Files/Insert File"
- Select the external RUL-file you just edited.
- Now the new RUL 0x10000000 file is added to the NAM Controller. Don't forget to save!

7.4. The structure of the RUL 0x10000000 file?

7.4.1. Introduction
In general, the RUL 0x10000000 file contains two sections: the TAB-Ring Section and the Definition Section. SimCity 4 interpretates all RUL-files one line at the time. Lines or parts of lines starting with ";" are comments and will be skipped by SimCity 4. In theory, you can use all characters you want in these files, but uncommon characters may have a weird effect in SimCity 4. One example is the Sinkhole-to-China-bug, where a deep hole appears when you placed a puzzle piece. Therefore, it's advised only to use numbers, capital and normal characters without any accent in notes. (even an quite innocent comma could cause problems.)

7.4.2. The TAB-Ring Section
The TAB-Ring Section contains definitions of the location of puzzle pieces. It defines in which Rotation Ring in which TAB-Ring a puzzle piece can be found. It also contains definitions which puzzle pieces are at which location and order in a Rotation Ring in which rotation (or mirrored varieties of the puzzle piece). In SimCity 4 a menu button gives access to a TAB-ring, containing one or more Rotation Rings. With the TAB-key on your keyboard you can navigate through TAB-Rings and with the Home and End-key you can navigate through Rotation Rings. Each Rotation Ring contains one or more items, which will refer to puzzle pieces in the Definition Section.

In the TAB-Ring Section each line defines one Rotation Ring. Every line contains a series of hexadecimal numbers, which refer to certain HighwayIntersectionInfoIDs (H3IDs). These refer to puzzle pieces in the Definition Section. The first line of a Rotation Ring starts with "RotationRing = " and looks like this:

Code:



RotationRing = 5100, 15100, 25100, 35100, 45100, 55100, 65100, 75100, 85100, 95100, A5100, B5100, C5100, D5100, E5100, F5100 ;RHW-4/MIS Ramp A

Rotation Ring can be enlarged by adding one or more Rotation Rings. To do this, you can add one or more lines starts with "AddTypes = ", like this:

Code:



AddTypes = 5101, 15101, 25101, 35101, 45101, 55101, 65101, 75101, 85101, 95101, A5101, B5101, C5101, D5101, E5101, F5101 ;RHW-4/MIS Ramp A-DiagonalAddTypes = 5102, 15102, 25102, 35102, 45102, 55102, 65102, 75102, 85102, 95102, A5102, B5102, C5102, D5102, E5102, F5102 ;RHW-4/MIS Ramp A-InsideAddTypes = 5103, 15103, 25103, 35103, 45103, 55103, 65103, 75103, 85103, 95103, A5103, B5103, C5103, D5103, E5103, F5103 ;RHW-4/MIS Ramp A-Wide

One TAB-Ring should contain one Rotation Ring at minimum, but the maximum number of Rotation Rings is practically unlimited.

NOTES:
- It's common to add a comment containing the (code)name of the puzzle piece at the end of a Rotation Ring. This is not necessary, but it makes this section easy to overview.
- The minimum number of items in a Rotation Ring is 1. The maximum is quite unlimited, but the NAM Team holds a maximum of 16. Usually the number of items in a Rotation Ring is a power of 2: (2, 4, 8 or 16)
- It's important that every Rotation Ring in a TAB-Ring has the same number of items. When this is not the case, the TAB-Ring becomes unstable, resulting in duplicates or missing rotations or mirrored versions, or worse: it could cause a CTD (Crash To Desktop).
- The first H3ID of a TAB-Ring should be four characters long. Otherwise you can't assign a menu button for that rotation ring. The other H3IDs may be up to 8 characters long, but usually a Length of 5 characters is enough.
- Every H3ID can be used only once! Otherwise you'll get CTDs.

7.4.3. The Definition Section
The Definition Section defines puzzle pieces for each H3ID. Every H3ID where a new puzzle piece is defined has the following structure in theory: header, layout, properties, rotations. In reality it seems that rotation is a separate section that applies rotation and mirroring to puzzle pieces. So we have two sections: one to define the new puzzle piece and one for rotation and mirroring.

7.4.3.1. The Header
The Header usually gives a description of the puzzle piece, gives information about the author and date of creation and also defines the preview of the puzzle piece by referring to the S3D and EffDir of the preview model. Here's an example:

Code:



[HighwayIntersectionInfo_0x00005100];Added by Tarkus 8/13/2007.;RHW-4/MIS-1 Exit Ramp-Style A--OrthogonalPiece = -16.0, 0.0, 0, 0, 0x5ceb0005PreviewEffect = preview_draggable_mis___001

Now let's examine this piece of code line by line.
The first line defines the H3ID of this puzzle piece. This must be 8 characters long. This H3ID, "0x00005100", refers to the H3ID "5100" in the TAB-Ring section.
The second line gives information of the author and the date of creation (format MM/DD/YYYY).
The third line is the (code)name of the puzzle piece.
The fourth line contains five values, divided by commas:
1. The X-offset of the preview model
2. The Y-offset of the preview model
3. The rotation of the preview model
4. Mirrored version ("1") or unmirrored version ("0") of the preview model
5. IID of the preview model. This is usually the AutoTileBase IID + 5.
The fifth line refers to the EffDir name of the puzzle piece. This makes your preview model to appear in game.

7.4.3.2. The Layout section
The Layout section defines how your puzzle piece is constructed. Here you can add starters and draggable stubs if you want to. Here's an example:
Code:

CellLayout =.......CellLayout =...a...CellLayout =..+b<..CellLayout =..cd...CellLayout =..be...CellLayout =..f....CellLayout =...^...CheckType = a - dirtroad: 0x02000200 Road: 0x01000001, 0xffffffff optionalCheckType = b - dirtroad: 0x02000200 CheckType = c - dirtroad: 0x02000202CheckType = d - dirtroad: 0x02020000CheckType = e - dirtroad: 0x02000200 Road: 0x01000001, 0xffffffff optionalCheckType = f - dirtroad: 0x02000200 OneWayRoad: 0x00010100, 0xffffffff optionalConsLayout =.......ConsLayout =.......ConsLayout =../|<..ConsLayout =../|...ConsLayout =..|....ConsLayout =.......ConsLayout =...^...

As you can see, this section contains three types of lines, which should always be in the same order: first the "CellLayout"-lines, then the "CheckType"-lines and finally the "ConsLayout"-lines.

Every character after the "=" in the CellLayout, as well as the ConsLayout, represents one tile of the puzzle piece or the surrounding tiles. The "<" and "^" point out the position of the cursor when you place the puzzle piece. As you can see, in the CellLayout these characters point to "b" and in the ConsLayout these point to the topmost "|". Often this is also the position of the AutoTileBase IID. In this case however, the AutoTileBase IID is positioned one tile to the left. The game recognizes where the AutoTileBase IID is located and constructs the piece around it. But by placing the cursor not on the AutoTileBase IID, the preview will appear offset. To correct this issue, you change the value of the X-offset and/or the Y-offset of the preview model in the Header section to a multiply of 16 (since a tile is 16x16 meters large)

NOTES:
- The "<" and "^" should point out the same tile in the CellLayout, as well as in the ConsLayout. Otherwise you get some unexpected results.
- The "<" and "^" can only be used once in the CellLayout, as well as the ConsLayout.
- The "<" and "^" may never point to a "." . You should move them to the first tile that doesn't contain a "." . You should also need to change the offset of the preview model.
- The CellLayout, as well as the ConsLayout, have a minimum of two characters after the "=". The maximum is unlimited, but you'll never need more than 20, and usually a number of characters lower than 10 is enough.
- Every line in the CellLayout, as well as in the ConsLayout, should contain the same number of characters. Otherwise you get some unexpected results.
- The CellLayout, as well as the ConsLayout, should start with an introduction line, which only contains dots after the "=".
- The last line of the CellLayout, as well as the ConsLayout, always contains a "^", but there can be other characters placed on that line than dots.

The CellLayout defines the layout and design of the puzzle piece. They describe which tiles are occupied and with what. In the CellLayout you can use any character defined in the CheckType-lines. One character from the CellLayout refers to one character in the Checktype-lines. Beside these characters, you can also use these two characters:
- "." Unoccupied tile.
- "+" Occupied tile with no reference in the CheckType-lines. (an "empty" occupied tile)

The CheckType define which networks are located "under" your puzzle piece. You can also define starters and/or draggable stubs of various networks. The CheckType-lines effects the way how and where you can place a puzzle piece in SimCity 4. When the CheckType-lines defined right, this can lead to "autoresolving": a neat feature that makes it possible to place a puzzle piece over an existing network without demolition.
Every character after "CheckType = " may only be used once in one H3ID, where a puzzle piece is defined. The characters used for the CheckType lines are any of the letters of the alphabet without accents. Capital letters are however allowed. Each character refers to the same character in the CellLayout of the corresponding H3ID.
As I said before, the CheckType can define which networks are located "under" your puzzle piece, as well as starters and/or draggable stubs. But how do you know which CheckType line you should use? The answer is quite simple.
- Search for the H3ID of a puzzle piece which already contains the starter(s) and/or draggable stub(s) you want for your puzzle piece.
- Examine the CellLayout and search for characters from which you think they refer to the desired starter(s) and/or draggable stub(s).
- Copy the corresponding CheckType-lines of these starter(s) and/or draggable stub(s).
- Paste them in your own CheckType-lines of your puzzle piece.
- You may have to change the characters, since they can only be used once in one H3ID.
- Now you can use these starters for your CellLayout.
You can also use this method to define the transport networks "under" your puzzle piece.
Of course, the CheckType-lines have their own structure, which I'll not explain in detail here. If you still are interested in the details, I'd reccomend you to read chapter 11 of this tutorial.

The ConsLayout-lines define how the puzzle piece handles unequalized landscapes. The way SimCity 4 will equalize the terrain of the puzzle piece, correspond to the ConsLayout. Slope Mods also have effect on this. The following characters can be used in the ConsLayout:
- "." Unoccupied tile.
- "+" Resolve slope between neighboring tiles, which effectively means conform to terrain. The Sinkhole-to-China-bug is related to this, having a + next to a + with certain neighboring patterns will cause that. # is intersection, it will flatten the area.
- "|" "-" Orthagonal sections
- "/" "\" Diagonal sections
- "#" Intersection
NOTE: Although the ConsLayout is quite flexible with their input, in some cases they prevent that the puzzle piece can be placed, even on the best equalized terrain.

7.4.3.3. The Properties section
The Properties section defines the AutoTileBase IID, the possibility the automatically add a puzzle piece in an already realized transport network (rarely used), the IID of the Placement Query LText file and the costs of the puzzle piece. A common definitions section looks like this:
Code:

AutoTileBase = 0x5ceb0000ReplacementIntersection = 0, 0PlaceQueryID = 0x5ceb0000Costs       = 400

Every line defines one property. All properties have the same structure: [name] = [value]. The following properties can be used:

NameValue, Max lengthDescriptionAutoPathBase"0x" + 8 hexDefines the AutoTileBase IID of the pathing files only. When this property is not used, SimCity 4 uses the standard AutoTileBase IID of the puzzle piece. When you use this property, it should be defined before the AutoTileBae IID, otherwise this property will not function properly. This property is often unused.AutoTileBase"0x" + 8 hexDefines the AutoTileBase IID of all files of the puzzle pieceReplacementIntersection"0, 0"This is an depreciated part of code.PlaceQueryID"0x" + 8 hexDefines the IID of the LText file used for the query when placing a puzzle piece. Usually this is equal to the AutoTileBase IIDAutoPlace"0" or "1"Defines wether a puzzle piece is automatically placed ("1") or not ("0"). This property is used to construct a road over an Maxis Ground Highway. It automatically places a bridge. This property is optional, but be carefull: if you already used AutoPlace, you may not use ConvertQueryID for that puzzle piece, and vice versa. One of the two should be deleted or disabled (by placing a ";" at the start of the line)ConvertQueryID"0x" + 8 hexRefers to a LText-IID to be shown in a window when certain transport networks are placed in such way that you can place a puzzle piece here. This window only appear when you used transport network tools nearby the section. This property is optional, and is used for Maxis Highway On/Offramps:
Handle OffsetTwo values, divided by a commaOnly Maxis uses this property. Offsets the cursor position from the defined position in the ConsLayout and CellLayout arrays. Syntax: X shift, Y shift. Can be + or -. For example: Say you have a 3x3 piece, all tiles occupied:
###.
###<
###.
.^.
The handle is at the very center. But if I use HandleOffset = 1,0 then the handle will be located 1 tile to the right. -1,0 goes to the left 1 tile, 0,1 goes up 1 tile, and so on. You can have handles outside of the piece boundary by doing this.Costs8 hexDefines how much a puzzle piece costs when you place it in Simeleons. Not included are:
- Terrain equalisation costs.
- The costs for construction of starters and draggable stubs.OneWayDir1 character (see description)This option is only used for puzzle pieces containing One Way Roads and tells SimCity 4 in which direction the One Way Road goes. Use one of the following values:
- 0: West
- 1: Northwest
- 2: North
- 3: Northeast
- 4: East
- 5: Southeast
- 6: South
- 7: Southwest
NOTE:
The AutoPlace and ConvertQueryID are quite hard to handle and may do thing you don't want to. If there are one of more AutoPlace/ConvertQueryID properties in conflict with each other, only one of them is used and the rest is ignored. Also AutoPlace/ConvertQueryID can convert CTDs at TE Lots, because the game tries to place a puzzle piece into a TE Lot, which causes the crash. This is happened before and is known as the Car-Ferry-bug. So be very careful with AutoPlace and ConvertQueryID.

7.4.3.4. The Rotation Section
The Rotation Section makes it possible to rotate and mirror a whole item and copy it to another H3ID without changing the other sections. A example of a Rotation section:

Code:

Rotate =	1Transpose = 1

Again, one line defines one property and both functions are optional. "Rotate" rotates the puzzle piece and can have the following values: "0" = 0°, "1" = 90°, "2" = 180°, "3" = 270°. "Transpose" mirrors the puzzle piece horizontally ("1") or not ("0"). Unfortunately, the "Transpose"-function doesn't work for starters and puzzle pieces with vertically asymmetrical paths, such as the RHW networks (with exception of the RHW-2). Again, all properties have the same structure: [name] = [value].

7.5. Defining rotated/mirrored versions of your Puzzle Piece

7.5.1. The basics
After you've defined your puzzle piece in the Definition Section, you only have one variation of your puzzle piece. Of course you want to use multiple versions of you puzzle piece, namely all rotations and mirrored versions. As you read in the above section, you can easily rotate and mirror your puzzle piece. The question is: How do you use the previous code to define the different rotations and mirrored versions of your rotations? The answer is simple: the whole code of the H3ID needs to be copied. Fortunately, Maxis provided a command that does this particular thing: the CopyFrom-command. This command functions quite similar to the "include"-command in various programming languages. The structure of the CopyFrom-command is simple "CopyFrom = 0x[H3ID that needs to be copied]".

NOTES:
- Only one CopyFrom-command per line is allowed.
- You can use an infinite number of CopyFrom-commands
- The length of the H3ID that needs to be copied can be 1 to 8 characters long. To simplify the process, you can use the H3ID from the TAB-Ring section.

The CopyFrom-command, which can be seen as a Header, a Layout and a Properties section at once, is always placed at the start. Then you add the rotation code. An example:

Code:

[HighwayIntersectionInfo_0x00015100]CopyFrom = 0x5100Rotate =	1

This part of code can be read as the following code; the result is the same:

Code:

[HighwayIntersectionInfo_0x00015100];Added by Tarkus 8/13/2007.;RHW-4/MIS-1 Exit Ramp-Style A--OrthogonalPiece = -16.0, 0.0, 0, 0, 0x5ceb0005PreviewEffect = preview_draggable_mis___001CellLayout =.......CellLayout =...a...CellLayout =..+b<..CellLayout =..cd...CellLayout =..be...CellLayout =..f....CellLayout =...^...CheckType = a - dirtroad: 0x02000200 Road: 0x01000001, 0xffffffff optionalCheckType = b - dirtroad: 0x02000200 CheckType = c - dirtroad: 0x02000202CheckType = d - dirtroad: 0x02020000CheckType = e - dirtroad: 0x02000200 Road: 0x01000001, 0xffffffff optionalCheckType = f - dirtroad: 0x02000200 OneWayRoad: 0x00010100, 0xffffffff optionalConsLayout =.......ConsLayout =.......ConsLayout =../|<..ConsLayout =../|...ConsLayout =..|....ConsLayout =.......ConsLayout =...^...AutoTileBase = 0x5ceb0000ReplacementIntersection = 0, 0PlaceQueryID = 0x5ceb0000Costs = 400Rotate = 1

7.5.2. Be creative!
You can also apply these rules in a creative way. For instance, what if we want to copy the code from H3ID 5100, rotate the puzzle piece 90°, change the preview model to 0x5ceb0205 and we want to use the EffDir "preview_draggable_mis___002", we can apply the following code:

Code:

[HighwayIntersectionInfo_0x00015100]CopyFrom = 0x5100Piece = 0.0, 0.0, 0, 0, 0x5ceb0205PreviewEffect = preview_draggable_mis___002Rotate =	1

Now we actually have two lines of "Piece" and "PreviewEffect". Since SimCity 4 has an unwritten law that what's loaded last will be used in-game. So the EffDir "preview_draggable_mis___002" is loaded instead of "preview_draggable_mis___001". The same goes for the "Piece"-line.
Reading the above text, you might guess why the following code copies the code from H3ID 5100, rotates the puzzle piece 90°, but doesn't change the preview model to 0x5ceb0205 and uses the EffDir "preview_draggable_mis___002".

Code:

[HighwayIntersectionInfo_0x00015100]Piece = 0.0, 0.0, 0, 0, 0x5ceb0205PreviewEffect = preview_draggable_mis___002CopyFrom = 0x5100Rotate =	1

This is because the code is in the wrong order. First the right "Piece"-line and "PreviewEffect" will be loaded, but then it gets overridden by the CopyFrom-command, which results in no change.
There is no further information about how this applies to other code, like the CellLayout and the ConsLayout. The only way to find out is experimenting. So be creative!

8. Mirroring Puzzle Pieces Horizontally

Some puzzle pieces need to have a whole new horizontal mirrored version. This is required for pieces where the "Transpose"-function can't handle the piece, such as most RHW and NWM networks. To make a mirrored version of your puzzle piece, you'll need create the same files as for a new puzzle piece, except you can still use the same FSH-files. Also, the mirrored version has a different AutoTileBase IID as it's non-mirrored counterpart. These IIDs need to be reserved too (see chapter 3). To mirror your puzzle piece, follow these steps:
1. Open the DAT-file with the non-mirrored version of your puzzle piece.
2. Export all files to a random empty folder by using "File/Export All Files".
3. Pack that same into a ZIP-file. All files should be in the root directory of the ZIP-file.
4. Open the Puzzle Piece Maker.
5. Fill in the AutoTileBase IID of the mirrored puzzle piece in the "AutoTileBase IID"-field.
6. Fill in the AutoTileBase IID of the non-mirrored puzzle piece in the "AutoTileBase IID textures "-field (skip this step if you want other textures for you mirrored version).
7. Fill in the width and the height (in tiles) of your puzzle piece in the "Width"- and "Height"-field.'
8. Check the "Mirrored version"-checkbox
9. Select "A-E" at "End Format IID"
10. Choose 0 or 3 at "Resource Key Type". It's advised to use the same RKT as the non-mirrored version.
11. Fill in the text that's shown in-game (when placing the puzzle piece) in the "Description (LTEXT)"-field. This should be very simmilar to the non-mirrored version.
12. Fill in the EffDir name in the "Effect Dir name"-field. This must be an unique name. So you have to use a slightly different name as for the non-mirrored version.
13. Fill in the Exemplar name (the name each exemplar of your puzzle piece gets) in the "Exemplar Name"-field. You can use the EffDir name for this (without "preview_")
13. Make sure that "Use my own uploaded SC4Path files" is selected in the "SC4Paths"-section.
14. Select "Mirror-X" and "Reverse" in the "SC4 Path files options" section.
15. Upload the ZIP-file you just created
16. Make sure every file type is selected.
17. Fill in the download location in the "Download Location"-field. This is the location where your ZIP-file is saved.
18. Click on "Build DAT Entries". A ZIP-file is now generated.
19. Extract the ZIP-file. Make sure it's extracted in a directory with the same name as the ZIP-file.
20. Open the Reader and open the DAT-file where you saved the nom-mirrored version of your puzzle piece.
21. Select "Edit/Insert (Batch Method)". A new screen appears.
22. Click on "Browse" and go to the location where you extracted your ZIP-file and select "batch.txt"
23. Click on "Insert." You get a message all files where succesfully imported.
24. Don't forget to save the DAT-file!
25. Add the code for the mirrored version of the puzzle piece to the RUL 0x10000000 file. Don't forget to update the NAM Controller DAT-file.
26. Start SimCity 4 and check if everything works as desired.

9. Creating New Menu Buttons

You can always add your puzzle piece to an existing TAB-Ring. Howerver, you can create a new TAB-Ring when required. A new TAB-Ring requires a new menu button, which gives access to the given TAB-Ring. A menu button requires four files to work properly.
- A PNG-image for the menu icon in four states (unavailable, normal, selected and hover state)
- An Exemplar file.
- Two LTEXT-files: One for the Item Name (shown in bold text in SimCity 4) and one for the Item Description.

These files always have the following Type and Group IDs:

FileTIDGIDPNG-image866DDBAC6A386D26Exemplar File6534284A2A3858E4LTEXT Item Name2026960B123006BBLTEXT Item Description2026960B123006AA
De IIDs of these files always starts with "6A47". The last 4 digits are the same as the first H3ID of the TAB-Ring in the TAB-Ring Section of the RUL0x10000000-file. For instance, the RHW Ramp Interface button uses the IID "6A475100", since the first H3ID is "5100".

The PNG image of the menu icon contains four states of the button. This section also applies for LOT menu icons. The image always has a resolution of 176x44 pixels. The image is divided in sections of 44x44 pixels. You see four images, each in a different state. The order of the states is the following:
1. The menu button is unavailable. You have to gain access to this function. Mostly used for LOTs, but rarely for transit items.
2. The 'normal' menu icon.
3. The selected menu icon.
4. The menu icon shown when your cursor hovers on top of it.

The Exemplar file makes the menu button functional. It defines the PNG image, as well as the two LTEXT-files for the menu button. The menu location is also defined here. You may want to copy an existing Exemplar file of another menu icon (for instance, the Exemplar for the RHW Ramp Interfaces) and edit the file. The first thing you need to change is the IID, so it corresponds with the IID-format as explained above. You can do this by clicking on Tools/TGI Editor. A new screen appears. Select the file you want to change its IID and fill in the IID in the text box under "Instance" and hit "Apply".

Here's an example of an Exemplar file of a menu button. The following values need the be changed:
1. Replace the Exemplar Name (marked dark blue) with another name. This is for reference purposes. It's not neccesary, but it's wise to do so.
2. Replace the item marked in green by the name of the sub-menu you want the button to appear in. You can choose a wide variaty of variables, but you may only use four:
- SubmenuKey: Networks: Highway Ramps Menu
- SubmenuKey: Networks: Miscellaneous Transport Menu
- SubmenuKey: Networks: Rail Depots Menu
- SubmenuKey: Networks: Road Menu
3. Replace the red marked items ID with the IID of your menu button.
4. Normally the menu buttons are sorted based on their IID. The lowest IID is located at the top of the menu, the highest IID at the bottom. When you're not satisfied with the location of your menu button, you can change the item marked in light blue. The higher the value, the lower the button will appear in the sub-menu. You may want to change this value for other menu buttons too.

10. Q&A

10.1. Pathing problems
Q: When I use the "DrawPaths"-cheat, one or more paths are showing up red and blinks. What does that mean?
A: it means that these paths have an incorrect entering and leaving wind direction and therefore can't be used. Change the entering and leaving wind direction of the corresponding SC4Path-file to solve this issue.

Q: When I use the "DrawPaths"-cheat, I discover that some of the tiles of my puzzle piece has no paths. What's causing this?
A: There could be two things that cause this problem:
1. The SC4Path-file has a wrong GID (GroupID). Check if the GID is "a966883f". If not, change it to that ID.
2. Two or more paths with the same entering and leaving wind direction have the same Path ID. Make these IDs unique to solve this problem.

Q: When I use the "DrawPaths"-cheat, I discover that some of my paths are missing, although I defined them. How is that possible?
A: In the header of the SC4Path file, you've entered a too low value for the number of paths. Change it to the correct value.

10.2. RUL 0x10000000 problems
Q: Why can't I place my puzzle piece, even on a perfectly flat surface?
A: There could be multiple things that cause this problem:
1. The ConsLayout is defined in such way that the puzzle piece can't be placed. Change the ConsLayout.
2. The "<" and "^" characters point to a "." in the ConsLayout, as well as the CellLayout. Replace the "." by another character or move the "<" and "^" characters so they point to another character.
3. In the CheckType-lines, the combination is not defined in the RUL 0x10000001 file. Change these CheckType-lines, or add new lines to the RUL 0x10000001 (not reccomended for new users). For more information read chapter 11.
4. The Definition section contains some comments with uncommon characters. Try to delete these comments one at a time until the piece can be placed.

Q: Why doesn't SimCity 4 show all tiles of my puzzle piece?
A: Check the CellLayout-lines if there is a "+" or a character reference to the CheckType-lines at the position of the missing tiles. If not, change them to a "+" or a character referring to a CheckType-line.

Q: When I place my puzzle piece, it has a different layout then I defined it and terraforms the landscape in a unwanted way. How to solve this problem?
A: The Definition section contains some comments with uncommon characters. These can cause unexpected effects on the layout of your puzzle piece Try to delete these comments one at a time until the piece can be placed properly.

Q: When I try to place my puzzle piece, why can't I see the preview model?
A: There could be two things causing this problem:
1. The Header in the Definition Section contains a incorrect IID of the preview model.
2. The Header in the Definition Section contains a incorrect EffDir name of the preview model.

10.3. Other problems
Q: When I place my puzzle piece, one or more tiles are gone. How can this be?
A: You might miss an exemplar file for that tile. Create an exemplar file for this tile to solve this issue. This problem shouldn't occur with the Puzzle Piece Maker.

Q: Some tiles dissapear at one or more zoom levels. What's wrong?
A: There could be two things causing this problem:
1. There are some S3D missing. Check if there are one (RTK 0) or five (RTK 3) S3D-files for every tile of the puzzle piece. If not, create new S3D files for the missing pieces. This problem shouldn't occur with the Puzzle Piece Maker.
2. You might have forgotten to add some textures. Check if you have five FSH-textures for every tile of your puzzle piece. If not, add the missing textures

11. Further details

--- PLACEHOLDER ---

How to create Puzzle Pieces Part 1

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 22:20:35 +0000

[Jump to Part 2!]
How to create Puzzle Pieces?
A basic tutorial about making Puzzle Pieces in SimCity 4

Original written by Joris (jmvl), NAM member
Edited and translated by Maarten (mrtnrln), NAM member

1st edition (Dutch): August 2009
1st edition (English): August 2010

Contents

1. Introduction
2. What's a Puzzle Piece?
3. Requirements
- 3.1. What does SimCity 4 need?
- 3.2. What do I need?
- 3.3. Reserving ID's
4. Creating textures
- 4.1. Creating PNG files for your textures
- 4.1.1. Transparency
- 4.1.2. Cut you texture down to size
- 4.2. Convert PNG to FSH
5. Fill up the DAT-files
- 5.1. General
- 5.2. Empty tiles
6. Creating paths
- 6.1. Where are paths saved
- 6.2. The structure of a SimCity 4 Path File.
- 6.2.1. General
- 6.2.2. Header
- 6.2.3. Paths
- 6.2.4. Stoppoints
- 6.2.5. Other important notices
- 6.3. Pieces without paths
- 6.4. The SC4 Path Creator
- 6.4.1. Introduction
- 6.4.2. Single Frame View & Multi Frame View
- 6.4.3. The "Path View"
- 6.4.4. Saving path files
7. The RUL 0x10000000 file
- 7.1. What is the RUL 0x10000000 file
- 7.2. Where can I find the RUL 0x10000000 file
- 7.3. Editing the RUL 0x10000000 file
- 7.3.1. Important notice before editing the RUL0x10000000 file
- 7.4. The structure of the RUL 0x10000000 file
- 7.4.1. Introduction
- 7.4.2. The TAB-Ring section
- 7.4.3. The "IntersectionInfo" section
- 7.4.3.1. The Header
- 7.4.3.2. The Layout section
- 7.4.3.3. The Defenitions section
- 7.4.3.4. Rotating/Mirroring your Puzzle Piece
- 7.5 Defining rotated/mirrored versions of your Puzzle Piece
- 7.5.1. The Basics
- 7.5.2. Be creative!
8. Mirroring Puzzle Pieces Horizontally
9. Creating New Menu Buttons
10. Q&A
- Pathing problems
- RUL 0x10000000 problems
- Other problems
11. Further details

1. Introduction

This tutorial mainly handles the technical aspect of "flat" puzzle pieces. "Flat" pieces are two-dimenstional objects, for example the RHW ramp interfaces, the NWM transistion pieces and the Smooth Curves. "Non-flat" pieces are for example the elevated networks and the Maxis Highways. The only difference between the two is creating models for the pieces. "Flat" pieces are far more easier to create than "non-flat" pieces.

Why did we write this tutorial? Joris (jmvl): "When I was learning how to make puzzle pieces in SimCity 4 back in March 2009, I discovered that the available information about this subject was scatterd and not clear enough at some places. Therefore, I wrote some notes about creating puzzle pieces back then. However, I learned more about puzzle pieces and applied my knowledge immediatly, I had no time and motivation to keep up my notes. Therefore I decided to write a document for myself (and maybe for others too) in May 2009. However, I didn't write a thing until june 2009, when Maarten (mrtnrln) asked me by PM at SC4 Devotion what technical aspects there where for creating puzzle pieces. I said to myself: 'It's now or never!' Then I wrote this document about how to create puzzle pieces for Maarten, for others and for myself. Thanks to this manual we shall never forget the procedures for creating puzzle pieces."

Maarten (mrtnrln): "This tutorial was really helpful to me at the time. Back then I made a few puzzle pieces for the RHW v4.0, like the B-style RHW Splitters and the Cosmetic Pieces, that are now used a lot by people. In June 2010 people ask how to create puzzle pieces. I have this tutorial around on my harddisk for months, but it's in Dutch, so the majority of the community isn't able to read it. Therefore, I translated the whole document and posted the translation at SC4 Devotion, so anyone can read it. We'll never have enough tutorials, and never enough custom content creators either."
I hope you find this tutorial usefull. If the document contains any mistakes, unclear or missing information, please send me an PM. I will correct these issues as soon as possible. You can also contact me for any questions or suggestions.

Notice about the Y and Z co-ordinates
In this tutorial, the Y-axis or Y-co-ordinates are always used as the height-axis of an object. This is because in the Reader, the Y-axis is also the height-axis. However, in gMax and the SC4 Model Tweaker, the Z-axis is the height axis. See table below:

Reader axis:gMax axis:XXYZZY

2. What's a Puzzle Piece?

A puzzle piece is a ploppalbe (placed manually) transit object. It's fully fuctional for traffic and UDI vehicles. Because puzzle pieces have their own paths, you can determine how traffic is going to move over these pieces. Sometimes, a more technical term for puzzle pieces is used: "Interchange-base Related Item" (IRI). Puzzle pieces often used for objects you can't just simply drag some sort network to create it. Puzzle pieces can be placed in TAB-rings, which contain rotation rings. Thanks to TAB-rings, more than one puzzle piece can be accessed by one menu button. Technical speaking, all puzzle pieces are 3D-models; each section of a puzzle piece is one S3D model. The puzzle pieces and their location in TAB-rings can be determined by codes in the RUL 0x10000000 file.

Puzzle pieces should not be confused with Transit Enabled LOTs (TE-LOTs). Both have their own paths, and both pieces can be accessed by traffic. However, there's a big difference between a TE-LOT and a puzzle piece. Puzzle pieces are ploppable sections of transport networks, whereas TE-LOTs are LOT-based. TE-LOTs are ment to look like transport networks, but in fact they aren't transport networks at all. TE-LOTs are often used for toll boths and "Transit Switches" (like stations). In the Zones View, TE-LOTs are invisible, whereas the puzzle pieces are completely visible.

3. Requirements

3.1. What does SimCity 4 need?
In order to make a puzzle piece working in SimCity 4, the following is required:
- New codes in the RUL 0x10000000 file.
- One S3D model for every tile of the puzzle piece.
- One S3D model for the preview model of the puzzle piece, containing all models from every tile.
- One path file for every tile of the puzzle piece.
- One EffDir file for the preview of the puzzle piece.
- One LTEXT file for the description (shown in-game) of the puzzle piece.
- FSH-files for textures. (Without textures, you would barely notice the puzzle piece. That would be a waste )

3.2. What do I need?
In this section, you can find software and web applications you can use to create your SimCity 4 puzzle pieces. Some programs (marked in bold text) are essential, others are mere tools that make creation of puzzle pieces easier. All of the following applications are used in this tutorial. There's a difference between software and web applications. Software requires to be installed on your computer, whereas webapplications can be used by a webbrowser (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, etc.)

Software:
- SimCity 4 + Rush Hour or SimCity 4 Deluxe. Without this program, creating puzzle piece has no use.
- iLive's Reader 0.93 (or higher)
- SC4 Path Creator 1.60 (or higher)
- Batch PNG to FSH Tool
NOTE: After installing the PNG to FSH tool, open the directory where you installed the tool and open groupid.txt. Replace the entire content of the file by 1ABE787D and save the file.
- A text editor, like Notebook.

Web applications:
- JMVL SimCity 4 Online Transit Modding Tools

3.3. Reserving ID's
To prevent any conflict with other pieces and NAM plugins, you require to reserve unique ID's for each puzzle piece you make. We always reserved our ID's for the RHW Mod by contacting Alex (Tarkus). In fact, it's quite unclear in the NAM Team who can be contacted for reserving unique ID's. The best place you can request for free ID's is at the corresponing topic in the NAM Creations section. The ID's you have the reserve are Instance IDs (IIDs) and HighwayIntersectionInfoID (HIIID or H3ID).

IIDs are used for identifying the files packed in DAT files. IIDs have to be unique, because otherwise they overwrite eachother. You'll need a whole range of IID's, because your puzzle piece contains more than one model or texure. It's important that you reserve a start-IID and a end-IID. Every puzzle piece has a AutoTileBase IID. This is the first IID from the tile in the upper left corner of your puzzle piece. The size of the IID range depends on the size of your puzzle piece. You can easily dertermine your IID by using the IID Grid Table Maker. You simply fill in the AutoTileBase IID, the width and the heigth of your puzzle piece and after clicking "Show IID Grid Table", a table appears on the screen.

H3IDs are used in the RUL 0x1000000 file. These IDs are required for linking the technical layout of the puzzle piece to the models, paths, etc. and for placing puzzle piece in different rotations (and mirrored versions). Usually 4 H3ID's are required (one for each rotation), but when puzzle pieces can be mirrored, you require 8 H3IDS, and ever 16 H3ID's when one way traffic is involved. Please check first how much H3ID's you actually require before reserving them.

Most of the times, the IDs are assigned projectwise. All NAM features and related mods have an IID that start with a 5, since this whole IID range isn't used by Maxis plugins. Each project has their own IID range. The RHW Project for instance has an IID of 5C###### to 5E######. The H3IDs are also assigned projectwise in a simillar way. Also, before reserving IDs, it's wise to say what you're creating. Maybe someone else is making something simmilar and we can try to fit the piece into the existing IID scheme.

A third thing that has to be unique is the name of the Effect Dir (EffDir). This links the correct preview model to the RUL 0x1000000 code. In theory, this name ought to be reserved, but in reality this is not the case. There's a huge combinations of names that can be used, and the chance that someone uses your EffDir name is very small. One syntax you can use for your EffDir name is:
preview[puzzle piece name or filename without extension][left or right]
Some examples:

EffDir Name:Puzzle Piece Name:preview_rhw4misrampsstyleaxdlRHW-4 to RHW-6C with 2 MIS sections leftpreview_rhw4misrampsstyleaxdrRHW-4 to RHW-6C with 2 MIS sections rightpreview_rhw2_to_2misRHW-2 to 2 MIS sections
As you can see, there's a logical connection between the EffDir and the puzzle piece name

4. Creating Textures

4.1. Creating PNG files for your textures
A puzzle piece is nothing without textures. It's quite important to create the textures before starting to make the rest of your puzzle pieces.

After you have reserved IDs you can start making textures. You can use any advanced image editing program (not MS Paint, but PhotoShop or the GIMP) to create textures. It's also wise to make a dedicated directory where you can save your textures. Then you can easily find them. All textures should be eventually saved in PNG-format (you may want to keep an multi-layered PSD-file or something similar for later texture editing). Depending on the quality of the texture, one tile has the following size in pixels:

Quality:Size (in pixels):SD128 x 128HD256 x 256
Usually, SD textures are used, due to smaller filesize. Also, the difference between end results of HD and SD textures is not that big.

4.1.1. Transparency
FSH-files are the texture files of SimCity 4. FSH-files contain two layers: the colored texture layer and the black-and-white transparency layer. White parts of the transparency layer show the color image of the texture in SimCity 4, while the black parts are invisible. Technically speaking, you need two images of your puzzle piece for your textures. However, PNG-files can contain transparent pixels. If you want to have transparent parts in your PNG-image, do the following:
1. Open your texture with an Image editing program.
2. Fill in the transparent surface with a color that's unique in the image (only the transparent surface has this color). Try to make it similar to the puzzle piece, so any errors later are less visible.
3. Check the RGB value of the background color and note it somewhere. If you can find a hexadecimal code (a numbering system that goes from 0-9-A-F), skip the following two steps.
4. Open the Windows Calculator and enable the Scientific Mode (View/Scientific),
5. Fill in every value separately in decimal mode (Dec) and convert it into a hexadecimal value by selecting "Hex". Note the values down.
6. Open the Alpha/Color Blender from your web browser.
7. Click on "Browse" button next to "Alpha/Color Blended image file" and select your puzzle piece PNG file.
8. Open the "Advanced settings" tab and change both hexadecimal values to the Hex values you noted down.
9. Click on "Get Color PNG" and overwrite the puzzle piece PNG file you just edited.
10. Presto! You now have a PNG file with an transparent background.

4.1.2. Cut you texture down to size
Puzzle pieces can be no bigger than 16 x 16 tiles due to the limitations of SimCity 4. Also, a puzzle piece texture must be 1 x 1 tile big. Fortunately, the Image Cutter can do the job for you:
1. Click on "Browse" button next to "Image" and select your puzzle piece PNG file
2. Fill in the AutoTileBase IID
3. Fill in the resultion in "Maximum height per image" "Maximum width per image" (default settings: 128 x 128)
4. Click on "Get Cut Images" and save the ZIP-file.
5. Unpack the ZIP-file, and there you have it: Your puzzle piece cut into pieces with a size of one SC4-tile.

4.2. Convert PNG to FSH
PNG files can't be used for textures in SimCity 4. Therefore, these files should be converted into FSH files. The
Batch PNG to FSH Tool converts PNGs to FSH textures and saves them into DAT-files. The Batch PNG to FSH Tool recognises transparancy in PNG images and uses them to build the transparency layer of the FSH file. Let's create some textures:
1. Open the Batch PNG to FSH Tool
2. Click on "Add" and select the textures you want to convert:

3. Check if your PNGs are really transparent. If you see this, your image is really transparent:

4. Fill in the corresponding Instance IDs and set the End format to A-E. This prevents the "Sidewalk Bug" to occur.
5. When you are finished, select "Save dat" to save your DAT-file. IMPORTANT NOTE: create a dummy DAT-file where you save your new textures (give it a name like "Textures_Add.dat" or something simmilar). Otherwise the Batch PNG to FSH Tool overrides the complete contents of the file.
6. Copy your textures into the DAT-file where you save your final puzzle pieces somewhere in the NAM folder.
7. Save the file and you're done!

5. Fill up the DAT-Files

5.1. General
Now our DAT-file only contains FSH-files. But there are more things required to make a puzzle piece working in-game. We are going to generate some S3D, EffDir, Exemplar, LTEXT and some dummy-SC4Path files (we are going to define the paths in the SC4Path-files in the next chapter).

The Puzzle Piece Maker generates all the files you need for "flat" puzzle pieces. The Puzzle Piece Maker currently has no support for "non-flat" puzzle pieces. The only thing you can do when creating these pieces, is copy the models from another file, re-index it and edit it manually in the Reader, but this method is not recommended for beginners. We simply start with creating a "flat" puzzle piece with the Puzzle Piece Maker:
1. Fill in the AutoTileBase IID in the "AutoTileBase IID"-field
2. When the textures have another AutoTileBase IID (which is often the case for mirrored pieces), fill in the AutoTileBase IID from textures in the "AutoTileBase IID textures "-field.
3. Fill in the width and the height (in tiles) of your puzzle piece in the "Width"- and "Height"-field.'
4. In case you make a mirrored version of your puzzle piece, check the "Mirrored version"-checkbox
5. Select "A-E" at "End Format IID"
6. Choose 0 or 3 at "Resource Key Type". RKT 0 uses one model for all zoom levels, while RKT 0 uses a different model for each zoom level.
7. Fill in the text that's shown in-game (when placing the puzzle piece) in the "Description (LTEXT)"-field.
8. Fill in the EffDir name in the "Effect Dir name"-field. This must be an unique name. You'll need this name later when creating the RUL 0x10000000 code for your puzzle piece. If you forgot the name of your EffDir, you can find it in the EffDir file under Section 13.
9. Fill in the Exemplar name (the name each exemplar of your puzzle piece gets) in the "Exemplar Name"-field. You can use the EffDir name for this (without "preview_")
10. Make sure that "Use 'default' SC4Paths" is selected in the "SC4Paths"-section.
11. Make sure every file type is selected.
12. Fill in the download location in the "Download Location"-field. This is the location where your ZIP-file is saved.
13. Click on "Build DAT Entries". A ZIP-file is now generated.
14. Extract the ZIP-file. Make sure it's extracted in a directory with the same name as the ZIP-file.
15. Open the Reader and open the DAT-file where you saved your textures.
16. Select "Edit/Insert (Batch Method)". A new screen appears
17. Click on "Browse" and go to the location where you extracted your ZIP-file and select "batch.txt"
18. Click on "Insert." You get a message all files where succesfully imported.
19. Don't forget to save the DAT-file!

5.2. Empty tiles?
Often you don't want a square puzzle pieces. Some tiles of your puzzle piece may be empty. If they are, please follow these steps:
1. Find the S3D files you don't want to use and note down their IIDs
2. Now also select the SC4Path and Exemplar files.
3. Right-click on the selection and select "Delete Entries."

6. Creating paths

Finally we have our DAT-file filled with the required files. But it's not finished yet; The SC4Path-files should be defined, as said before in chapter 5. Since we've selected "Use 'default' SC4Paths" in the Puzzle Piece Maker, all path-files have dummy paths. In this chapter we're going to change that.

6.1. Where are paths saved?
Paths are defined per tile, just like the S3D-models of the puzzle piece. Paths are saved in ASCII text in SC4Path-files. The IID of these files correspond with the S3D-model with the same IID (these two are linked together). With the IID Grid Table Maker you can make a table with all the IID's of your puzzle piece, which may help you to find the right IID for your SC4Path files.

6.2. The structure of a SimCity 4 Path File

6.2.1. General
A SC4Path-file has in general the following structure:
- Header
- Path 1, path 2, path 3, etc.
- Stoppoint 1, stoppoint 2, stoppoint 3, etc.
SimCity 4 always reads the SC4Path-file one line at the time. Commentaries always start with "--". This line will be skipped by Simcity 4.

6.2.2. Header
The header defines properties that will have effect for the whole SC4Path-file. The header is the only section in the SC4Path-file that should not contain commentaries. Only in this tutorial, I'll ignore this rule just to explain what everything does. The structure of the header of a SC4Path-file looks like this:
Code: (SC4Path-file Header)



SC4Paths           	-- Introduction line. All SC4Path-files start with this line.

1.2                    -- Version number of the SC4Path-file (1.0, 1.1 or 1.2)

1                      -- Number of paths in this SC4Path-file.

0                      -- Number of stoppoints this SC4Path-file contains.

1                      -- The "3D-Key" (0 or 1)

Notes:
- SC4Path version 1.0 and 1.1 don't give as much support as version 1.2 does. Also, the structure of version 1.0 and 1.1 is different compared to version 1.2. It's recommended to use version 1.2 for your path files to prevent any confusion.
- The "3D-Key""defines if you can choose your own path in the U-Drive-It mode. "0" enables this option, while "1" disables this option. It's advised to use "1". Technically speaking, "1" stands for 3D network pieces and "0" for draggable network pieces.

6.2.3. Paths
Depending on the number of paths, the SC4Path-file has a seperate section for each path. The paths define how people and vehicles move on a puzzle piece. The structure of one path section looks like this:
Code: (SC4Path-file Path Section)



-- car_1_2_a           	-- This comment is used for the name of the path by several modding programs

1                          -- "Transportation Type Identifier"

1                          -- Path ID. This must be unique!

1                          -- Entering wind direction

3                          -- Leaving wind direction

0                          -- "Junction key (0 or 1)

2                          -- Number of path co-ordinates.

2.5,8,0                    -- Path co-ordinates no.1 (x,z,y)

4,-8,0                 	-- Path co-ordinates no.2 (x,z,y)

Notes:
- The path name has the following structure: -- [vehicle name]_[entering wind direction]_[leaving wind direction]_[identification letter (this should be unique)]. You can leave the path name out of your path-files, but it's advised to use them anyway, because you can easily have an overview of your path files.
- The "Transportation Type Identifier" tells SimCity 4 which vehicle will be using this path. There are six known "Transportation Type Identifiers":
- 1. "car" (all road-based traffic, except for pedestrians and GLR)
- 2. "sim" (pedestrians)
- 3. "rail" (heavy rail vehicles)
- 4. "subway"
- 6. "el-rail" (elevated rail and GLR)
- 7. "mono" (monorail and (G)HSR)
- The Entering and Leaving Wind Direction tells SimCity which direction a vehicle enters the tile and which direction it leaves. The wind directions are:
- 0. West
- 1. North
- 2. East
- 3. South
- 255. Special (Neighbour connections, dead ends, etc.)
Fortunately, the SimCity 4 Path Creator has these wind direction IDs on the sides of the screen, so you can easily what the Entering and Leaving Wind Direction of a path is. For instance, the red path in the image below enters the tile at the south (3) and leaves the tile at the north (1).

- The "Junction Key" determines if a switch appears for this path in the UDI mode (1) or not (0). Although this feature is only used for rail networks, it should always be present in the SC4Path-file!
- Every path should start and end at the edge of the tile, except if the Entering and/or Leaving Wind Direction is 255. Otherwise, this path will not appear in SimCity 4.

6.2.4. Stop points
Depending on the number of stop points, the SC4Path-file has a seperate section for each stop points. The paths define where vehicles stop to prevent colisions. It's very important that the stop points are defined after all paths. Otherwise SimCity will crash. The structure of one stop section looks like this:
Code: (SC4Path-file Path Section)



-- stop_car_1_2_a 	-- This comment is used to recognise the stop points for users.

1                 	-- Left Hand Drive (2) or Right Hand Drive (1)

1                 	-- "Transportation Type Identifier"

1                 	-- Stop point ID. This must be unique!

1                 	-- Entering wind direction

255               	-- Leaving wind direction

3,6,0             	-- Stop point co-ordinates (x,z,y). There's always one stop point co-ordinate!

Notes:
- The path name has the following structure: -- stop_["UK_" in case of left hand drive paths][vehicle name]_[entering wind direction]_[leaving wind direction]_[identification letter (this should be unique)]. You can leave this note out of your path-files, but it's advised to use them anyway, because you can easily have an overview of your path files.
- Stop points also determine which vehicles give way to other vehicles and controls which traffic flows may go at stoplight intersections.

6.2.5. Other important notices
- Paths that contain errors don't show up or are red flashing when using the "ShowPaths"-cheat from ExtraCheats.dll.
- The Path and Stop Point IDs are 1 or higher.
- The Path IDs and Stop Points IDs don't depend on each other. That means you can use an ID twice: one for a path and one for a stop point. They both will have an unique ID.

6.3. Unpathed pieces/Dummy Paths

Sometimes there's no need for a puzzle piece tile to have paths. Unfortunatly, when a tile has no SC4Path-file, SimCity4 will be laggy during the construction of the puzzle piece. To prevent this from happening, you can make a Pathfile only containing a header and a dummy path. Fortunately, the Puzzle Piece Maker makes these dummy path files, so you don't have to edit the SC4Path-files for the tiles you don't want to contain paths.

6.4. SC4Path Creator

6.4.1. Introduction
In the early days of SimCity 4 Transit Modding, we didn't have any visual application for editing path files. Fortunately, one of our members, Daeley, has created a Java-application for this job, the SC4Path Creator. This tool significantly simplifies the creation of paths. The program also contains some very useful functions, such as flipping and mirroring paths, the ability to see multiple SC4Path-files at once and using a texture as background, which makes the creation of paths even easier.

6.4.2. The Single Frame View and the Multi Frame View
The Single Frame View contists out of a Path Editor, which I'll explain in detail in the next section. The Multi Path View is ment for puzzle pieces that contain more than one tile. When your piece only constists out of only one tile, you can skip the next paragraph.

In the Multi Frame View, you can see all the path files at once. You first have to define the size of the grid to the size of your puzzle piece. It's advised to use '128' as rect size instead of the standard value '150', so you have the right scale. Every tile opens a new Single Frame View window when you click on it, so you can edit the paths.
NOTE: When you open a Single Frame View window of a tile and then return to the Multi Frame View, you can add or delete pathing co-ordinates by simply clicking on the tile.

6.4.3. The Path Editor

With the Path Editor you can edit any path in any desired tile. Each path has it's own color, so they can easily be recognised. In the menu "Path Options\Select Texture", you can select a texture image as background, to simplify the path creation. Most other functions are speaking for themselves. Still I want to bring some other things to notice:
- When you have more than 6 paths at one tile, some paths will appear in the same color.
- When you flip or mirror a path, the Entering and Leaving Wind Direction aren't changed automaticly. You need to edit those manually.
- When you create a new path, the Path ID is set to 0 of that path. You need to set this ID manually to an unique number.
- When you add some pathing code into the Code Editor, check the header if it's set to the right number of paths. If not, the path you just added will be deleted when clicking on the "update"-button.
- When you've added some code and clicked on "update"-button and you see no change, then there is a bug in your code.
- Although SC4Path files can contain notes, the SC4Path Creator only allows it at the first line of a new path. When you make notes at any other place, you'll see no change when you hit the "update"-button.
- The SC4Path Creator 1.60 doesn't support stoppoints. Any stoppoints made will be deleted. It's advised to make the stoppoints at the end.
- The SC4Path Creator 1.60 unfortunatly has no save function. When you shut down the SC4Path Creator and didn't save the code anywhere else, you can start all over agian.

6.4.4. Saving path files
Of course, you'll need to save your paths somewhere! When you finished creating paths with the SC4Path Creator, you can save them with the Reader in a DAT-file by following these steps:
- Select the text from the Code Editor in the SC4Path Creator. You can use CTRL+A (Select All) to be sure everything is selected.
- Copy the code (CTRL+C).
- Select the corresponding SC4Path-file in the Reader.
- Click on "Edit".
- Select the code that's already in the SC4Path-file to override it (NOTE: CTRL+A doesn't work in the Reader).
- Paste the new code (CTRL+V).
- Hit "Apply"
- Save the DAT-file when you're done.

CitiesXL First Impressions Hands-on preview

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:13:00 +0000

CitiesXL is Monte Cristo's attempt to evolve the city-building genre to the next level. If you have been following Monte Cristo's developer blogs, you will already have a pretty good idea of where they want to take CitiesXL. Monte Cristo graciously invited me to Paris to meet the development team in person and to play a build of the game for myself. Here, I'll share my impressions.

First, I think it's worth mentioning since I am speaking to mainly an audience of SimCity devotees here, that it's fair to say we all have a collective expectation of what a city-building game should be. It is a genre that was established – and has since been largely defined – by SimCity. While I feel it would be unproductive to always cling to these preconceived notions of what a city-building game should be, it will be too irresistible to draw comparisons between SimCity 4 and CitiesXL.

Having said that, my initial impression of playing CitiesXL was that I was playing something very new, and yet, something that was actually very familiar. Speaking as a devotee of the genre; this is a good thing.

Now, to say that CitiesXL is just an improved version of SimCity would be doing a huge disservice to Monte Cristo, and the implication is not only unfair, but I think misses the bigger picture.

CitiesXL really is a strikingly different game, but founded on some well-established principles of city-building. To be fair, these principles are really universal for any type of economic simulation: managing supply, demand and growth. These are intuitive concepts, and are easily familiar to anyone. Monte Cristo has taken advantage of that, instead of creating a new set of complex rules which would need to be explained, rationalized and then learned by the willing player.

So, starting with a familiar foundation, CitiesXL seems to take us in some new directions. Some of these are options that we have always wanted in a city-building game; like freeform roads, a true 3d engine, complex transport options, and yes, even online play (I'll get to that later). As well, CitiesXL brings some pretty ambitious new ideas to the table.

Gameplay Highlights [Top]

Let's get right down to what it's like starting a new city. You're given a sizeable swatch of land, about 10 x 10 kilometers. As far as I know, this is the only size available at the moment. I will say that 10km x 10km seems like a pretty sufficient area to play.

The first thing I did was check out the new road tool. As you might have seen from some of the movies Monte Cristo has released, the ability to draw roads at any angle, curved or straight, is indeed liberating and fun. I drew a rather impractical road layout, and connected it to the highway nearby.

Then, it was time to zone. We have Residential, Industrial, Commercial and Leisure. Each zone type has three density options. I created some low density Residential and Industrial zones, and almost immediately, houses started to grow.

Then it was on to creating jobs and starting up the city economy, and balancing the need for growth against budgetary and other concerns. The fundamental concepts should be instantly familiar to city-building players, and traditional SimCity players will find a nice comfort zone.

As Mayor, you set the conditions for your Private Sector to grow and thrive (which include businesses and residents). You are directly responsible for planning and deploying infrastructure, and public support services, such as schools, police stations and hospitals. Each support service has an area of effect, which take into account the speed and efficiency of your transportation networks, instead of simply calculating distance. So, as long as your service is well served by your road networks, you'll enjoy optimal performance, even if it isn't necessarily located in the centre of your city.

If your city doesn't have a power plant, then the simulation will assume that you will import it, and as a result your citizens will pay a higher rate. If you do decide to power your own city, your citizens will be happier by paying much less, although you will have to deal with pollution. The same concept applies to water and waste treatment.

The City Simulator [Top]

As I played, the game offered as much information as I cared to see. There are overlays to examine things like pollution and traffic to help plan city expansion. There are advisors who will give tips when invoked, but were otherwise non-intrusive. The Population Stats screen tells me how many citizens I have for each citizen class (Workers, Qualified Workers, Executives and Elites), how many homes are being filled, immigration rates, available jobs and unemployment. If there are lots of jobs available for Qualified Workers, that usually means I don't have enough Qualified Workers, so I would work on bringing more to the city, for example. I can check on my Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Leisure zones to see the demands for each. The Budget screen shows my expenses and lets me set taxation levels. All the tools seem to be there for the fiscally responsible mayor, but Monte Cristo has abstracted the actual values into percentages.

As my city grew, more options opened up for me which kept things constantly interesting. I didn't see any notifications, so I had to go in and check my menus to see what new options became available, for example a bigger school or hospital or higher zoning densities. I expanded my city, not always intelligently, drawing absurd road networks and wasting money on bridges to nowhere. Admittedly, it was just fun to do. I did not see any candy-cane lanes.

Roads [Top]

Let me take a moment to say that drawing roads and bridges and tunnels was pretty satisfying and easy. Drag the road tool over a hill and if you have the funds it'll create a tunnel or draw over the surface and bridge any gaps. Use the SHIFT key and you can make bridges manually anywhere. I imagine, theoretically you can have a raised road system traveling over your city, with the only limitation being that you have sufficient space beneath for the supports.

Terra-forming [Top]

The build I played had a terra-forming menu option, but was not functional. Monte Cristo has yet to determine the extent of terra-forming options for the player. My sense is that there will be basic terra-forming options while in the game such as leveling terrain, but the ability to do map-level terra-forming is unclear.

So, back to the game. As time went by, I always felt like there was something to do, some issue to resolve or new expansions to plan. In the time I played, nothing became so pressing that it dominated my game play. I felt like I could pursue my own goals, if I accepted the repercussions. The simulator had its own mind, but I never felt forced to go down any one direction. In this way, I think CitiesXL might become a much more flexible city-builder, allowing you to really specialize your city as you see fit.

So, after a couple of hours my city grew to just over 10,000 citizens. While there was no chance of it being mistaken for a great city, or even a good one, I have to say there was a certain gratifying sensation about the whole experience. I felt that the city seemed to be exactly the product of my own handiwork, as poor as it was.

Complexity [Top]

That is to say, I felt that the simulator gave me the kind of result that I deserved. It didn't insist that I win, and it didn't seem punishing, either, though I had been given plenty of challenges to occupy myself. (I didn't notice any difficulty options, so I'm not sure if there will be any when the game ships.)

Of course I can't be too conclusive after only a single session of play, but it felt like the simulator was doing a pretty good job overall. Being a staunch SimCity devotee, I felt relieved to see that the level of complexity we expect from a city-building simulator seemed to be intact, and had not been sacrificed in an effort to appeal to a wider more "casual" audience. I am not implying that more complex games are more "fun", but it is fair to say that a certain pedigree of city-building gamer expect a certain level of sophistication from a city simulator.

Graphics [Top]

Visually, the game looks pretty good, but I would expect to see more polish when the title ships. With a truly 3d city, you can now go right down to street level and walk around and see everything from a citizen's perspective. You can click and follow any car around, too. There is a postcard mode for the camera allowing you to take glamour shots of your city. I would expect that there would be other options to customize your city, such as naming your streets or putting up signs to name your districts.

I was told that there will be different building styles for European, North American and Asian type cities, with the potential to refine even further; for example, you might have Chinese, Japanese or Middle-east styles.

I think I could have easily played for the rest of the day, and it was a surprise when Philippe mentioned how much time had passed.

Transport Options [Top]

So we ended the game session, and debriefed a bit, and then I got a sneak preview of some new network options that were being developed. Specifically, the bus system, and the way it works is pretty straightforward. First, you plop down a bus terminal which will designate where you bus line starts, then you plop down an end terminal. Along the way, you plop down bus stops. It's worth noting that a bus stop will occupy the road and sidewalk tile so you don't need to destroy any buildings. The system seems very precise and knowing exactly how your bus routes are set up is going to be immensely useful in planning your transportation network. The same deployment system would apply to trains, subways and other types of rail.

Traffic, as you might have read, is simulated on a per lane basis, and further control of allowing you to control direction and add special lanes should please network enthusiasts. There will be plenty of modes of transportation, which include many options for local transportation as well as intra-city transport.

GEMs [Top]

Additional gameplay mechanics will be available with the introduction of GEMs or Game Enhancement Modules. If you haven't read about GEMs, the basic concept is this: You have your city, and GEMs are modules that you add to your city which gives you more micro-management options. For example, the Ski Resort GEM will let you plop a ski resort, and then you would actually be able to go into the resort and manage it like a "Tycoon" style game. While you're playing your GEM, your city is not developing, and if you are successful with your ski resort, you'll enjoy a bonus to your city. GEMs are self-contained, you can buy the ones that interest you, and you do not need to be online to play them.

Expand this concept further and GEMs could add all kinds of complex details, and continue to expand CitiesXL. One of the scenarios we discussed was a traffic enhancement module, where you would be able to get right down and really fine tune your transportation network, micromanaging lanes, traffic lights, and so on. The possibilities here seem pretty expansive, just take a look at how many "tycoon" style games are out there (Monte Cristo have been responsible for a lot, themselves) and imagine that kind of game now integrated into your city. Think airports, seaports, casinos, zoos, prisons -- I'm just imagining here, but the possibilities seem pretty vast.

These are just some of the meaningful innovations CitiesXL is bringing to the genre, and it's shaping up to be a heavy-duty and detail-rich city simulator. But so far, we've talked only about the single player offline version. So let's talk about the online component – I know, I can already hear the scraping of eyeballs rolling in their skulls, but stay with me for a bit, you might even be surprised.

Before we get too far along, let's reiterate something that Monte Cristo has taken great pains to establish, and as they have found it important enough to emphasize to me, I'll repeat it here: CitiesXL is designed to be a solid, single-player city building simulation game first. The online component gives you a new horizon to explore and new ways to interact, although it will cost you a few bucks a month. So here's what they have in store.

The Online Planet Offer [Top]

Monte Cristo will host several "planets" – persistent online worlds on dedicated servers – capable of hosting thousands of cities. Once you choose your planet, your first task will be to select a site for your city. You'll be able to toggle overlays on the planet to select the type of terrain you prefer, such as mountains, grasslands, coastal and so on. You'll see coloured dots where a potential city site could exist, showing which sites have been claimed, which sites belong to your friends, and which ones are still available.

The online component ties heavily into the CitiesXL website, which seems intended to become not only a social platform, but a portal into your city when you're not directly in front of the game. You'll be able to access your cities' trade agreements, "Blueprint Proposals", as well as your stats and the activities of your friends.

As a socializing tool, you'll have your own Mayor profile, and a dedicated section to create your own City Journal. The CitiesXL website becomes an accessible way to check on your city from anywhere (say, from work, or school).

Building a city online is more or less fundamentally identical to playing offline, as all the same rules and principles apply. However, now that you are playing in a populated world with other real people, you get some interesting gameplay additions. The most obvious is trade. If you're situated within reasonable transportation distance to another player, you can offer up a "contract proposal", or trade deal.

Click for a larger view

Online Trading [Top]

These deals are mainly comprised of city resources, such as water, power, waste management, jobs, workers and even vacation spots. "Tokens" are the currency for your resources, and you sell and swap them as you please. The game engine does not impose any inherit value on them, so their value is entirely subjective. For example, you might have an excess of power, but you are short on Qualified Workers. You open a contract proposal with a nearby city, offering your surplus power tokens, in exchange for Qualified Worker tokens (or whatever else you might need). If the other player accepts, then you have a deal. The deal will be set for a certain number of days, and you would each be responsible for holding up your ends of the bargain. So, for the duration of the contract, you are obligated to provide a certain number of power tokens, and you would expect to receive your Qualified Workers.

But, just like in real life, situations can change. What if you're unable to fulfill your end of the contract? What if, with the help of incoming Qualified Workers, your city has grown to such a point that your power is no longer a surplus? When you are unable to meet your trade obligation, the other player will have the option to cancel the agreement, or renegotiate the terms with you. Maybe you'll offer something else, or come to a new agreement altogether. In theory, I think it sounds like it could be a pretty interesting dynamic, so we'll have to see how it actually plays out.

Click for a larger view

Blueprint Proposals [Top]

Another reason to check in to the CitiesXL website is to see if you've received any Blueprint Proposals. I've been told these appear randomly every day, and you'll get anywhere from zero to three Blueprint proposals. A Blueprint proposal is a project plan, say, for a special building, or a landmark that you can build in your city (e.g. The Statue of Liberty). Each blueprint project will have a set of objectives that you will need to meet in order to progress. You might require a certain number of tokens for several types of resources in order to complete one phase of the project.

Once you've embarked on a project, it will appear in a kind of "progress track" showing what you have done, and what you need to do in order to accomplish the project. Here, again, is an opportunity for you to interact with other players. You might make trade deals and buy or trade for the necessary tokens you need to complete your project. You can complete the project entirely by yourself but it will take you longer.

Mega structures are extra large and elaborate projects that might require several smaller projects in order to be completed. An example we discussed was the Space Shuttle. Given that such a project is large in scale and complexity; motivated mayors might cooperate to accomplish the project together instead of attempting the whole project alone.

Click for a larger view

The Avatar [Top]

With all the online interactions, you will need a way to represent yourself, and that's where the Avatar Studio comes in which was demoed a few weeks ago (much to the bemoaning of some players). I think once you get passed the idea that it looks like a "Sims" creator, and think about the online component, the social interactions, the ability to stroll through a friend's city in person, the Avatar concept starts to make sense.

Custom Content
[Top]

Yes, there will be support for custom content, the question is, to what extent will players be able to customize? At the very least, there will be an official toolkit to create and design new assets, such as buildings. I asked Monte Cristo if the content users create would be limited to only visual or cosmetic enhancements, in other words, will users have the ability to add and modify features to the buildings they create.

The answer is that they do not have a firm answer at this time if they will officially support the actual modification of the building property and game mechanics. They have said that they will wait to see where the community wants to go, and will respond accordingly.

Ideally, they said, they want to work with the community, that if there were modifications being made because the game engine was lacking, or bugged or otherwise deficient, then obviously, they would consider these alterations in an official patch or update.

When it comes to a game where there is an online interactive component, allowing players to freely modify building properties and core engine rules, can be dicey, and would impact the balance of the online world. Monte Cristo has emphasized that they intend to fully support CitiesXL, listen to feedback and provide updates as they become necessary. For me, this was a reasonable answer, and we'll just have to wait and see how custom content will fully play out.

Overall Impressions [Top]

After SimCity 4, there has been a vacuum in the city-building genre. SimCity Societies did not meet the interests of this particular community. I have a very good feeling about CitiesXL, and a very positive impression even with the unfinished build that I played. Monte Cristo has been active in our community across the many sites dedicated to the genre, and they are obviously listening to what fans want. For example, they said that the Network Addon Mod (NAM) has really inspired them, so kudos to the NAM Team.

Talking with Monte Cristo, I really did get the sense that they do know what goes into a good city-building simulator: complexity, sophistication and realism, and it all has to be fun and rewarding.

There is certainly a business motivation to include as many old and new players to the genre as possible, and I did have some concerns that when developers try to appeal to the "casual" player base, they tend to err on the side of simplicity. Spore, is a pretty good example of what is clearly a technically complex game, having very little gameplay sophistication (in my opinion). And Societies is an example of a city-building "theme" game that is far too casual for a long-time player of the genre. CitiesXL is shaping up to fill the gap, and to offer some pretty new innovations.

I hope that gives you a pretty good idea of what CitiesXL is like from the perspective of a traditional city-building game fan, and I think we can expect to see and hear more in the coming weeks. CitiesXL is due out some time this year.

Discuss CitiesXL

More SimCity Societies Impressions

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:10:14 +0000

SCS is primarily a resource management game. Each "Social Energy" is either produced or consumed by the buildings you decide to place in your city. So if you want to build a (cliché from overuse of the term) "Orwellian Society" you must build most of your city with buildings that produce and consume that social energy while not using many of the others.

SCS is non-judgmental in that it will not tell you that what you are doing is wrong. The goal is to make each of the social energies as valid as the next so that the player doesn't feel forced or that they're wrong to build in any specific way. This leaves the player to make up their own mind about what kind of city they want to build. The danger of this is that the player will have no direction, guidance or goal to strive for and might start wondering what the point of it all is. Scenario modes may be in the works but nothing concrete was revealed.

The game rarely if ever challenges the player to find a solution to a problem. For example, the lumber mill is a workplace that includes a risk of injury to the sims who work there. Now just because you plop a lumber mill doesn't mean you care if the people who work there get hurt but you'll lose production in your city if the cities sims are injured. The problem is, unless you see people wandering around in crutches you won't know why you lost that production when a multitude of other buildings can cause a lack of production for many other reasons. The game doesn't make the suggestion to build a hospital to heal your injured sims. This lack of feedback from the game leaves you simply placing buildings you find in the build menu that you like the look of or have a need of the social energy benefit they provide.

Buildings seem not to gel well with buildings in different social themes. Oppressive overpowering structures look out of place next to the garish "fun" buildings. Tilted Mill has for the most part abandoned the realistic look that SimCity fans enjoyed in SimCity 4, instead opting for a more cartoon like artistic style for their buildings. Things tend to get mixed up between the styles and can cause the whole city to look like an underwhelming patch work.

Thankfully the game is built with Modding in mind. XML drives the buildings stats and most of the rest of the game and according to EA the C# is well notated for the more adept coders among us. A BAT was also discussed and is planned for release maybe with the game but more likely shortly after release. The specifics of whether the BAT will continue to use GMax or be something entirely different were not revealed. Based on the simplicity of the building models in the game, Gmax isn't necessarily going to be the best tool.

Transportation in SimCity Societies currently includes Roads, Dirt Roads, Subways and Bus Stations. More transportation options are not planned for the release of SimCity Societies though they seem to be an option for an expansion pack. Diagonal roads have not been implemented and may not be in the final release, but the buildings do rotate to 45°. More transportation options in SCS seem unimportant given that the goal isn't to build and manage traffic networks. Still it seems like quite an oversight to not include more network types even if they're functionality would have only been cosmetic.

Buildings all have cards displaying the buildings properties. Click on a building and its card will pop up. The cards feature icons that you can mouse over to learn what unexpected attribute that building causes and the percentage chance that the event will take place. For example, certain buildings have a chance to injure a visiting sim or produce a drunk. The icons are nice but will take a player a long time to associate their affect with their graphic mainly because there are so many of them.

This leads to the learning curve. Plop and play is very easy to figure out. You pick a building from the list and plop it in your city. Finding the building you're looking for can still be difficult because the building menu is cumbersome even though it can be sorted. After you get familiar with the simple control scheme and get over the building menu, you'll be plopping buildings with relative ease. Once you get in-depth and start trying to build for a specific goal, the games learning curve seems to sky rocket. Maybe that's because you have to come up with that goal yourself and attempt to reach it. While this style of play is rather open ended, it can also be a turn off if there isn't anything cool for the player to do.

With all of that said, if Tilted Mill can come up with a goal or scenario mode that is compelling enough, SCS could be a very entertaining strategy game. It's not the SimCity we know, but there is the making of a potentially fun game of another sort altogether.