[brian51]

Pierre , this is what tibi just showed me now -




He says because these have become draggable, you no longer need to use puzzle pieces,,

he was able to turn this 180 degrees with only 4 tile radius

[Tyberius06]

Hi Pierre,

ok, I made an account here. Ah, I just saw, that Brian brought the image here from discord. I think, Alex slowly will be taking out all those Puzzle Pieces, which have a flex version or can be made by dragable patterns, like these MIS curves.
By the way, nice image! Keep up the good work!

- Tibi/Tyberius

[Darvince]

Good news about the draggable pieces! I always found the many many puzzle pieces to be an annoyance because they made building anything with the NAM take ages and ages compared to all the draggable networks. Hopefully the puzzle pieces are compatible with the draggable pieces?

[pierreh]

Very good news, thanks to all. I tend to forget about this draggable stuff. And I agree with Darvince, it will be much more convenient than looking for puzzle pieces in menus and plopping them one by one. Long live NAM!

By the way, my RHW bridge issue was solved yesterday. It was a matter of the terrain around the extremities of bridges having been ever so slightly modified (mainly by building embankments), so that it was no longer perfectly flat. This caused the bridges to 'disappear' after the NAM 38 upgrade, and I had trouble rebuilding them until I flattened the terrain.

[pierreh]

I’ll show here an interchange that I created recently in Parnal. It replaces an old parclo interchange. I am not entirely satisfied with the result : I find that the new interchange takes too much space, and contains some not so good-looking curves.

The challenge I set to myself was to keep a 6-lane 90 degrees curve between the west and the south branches. There are no FLEX pieces for RHW-6S, so that the curves consist of 2 times a pair of 45 degree RHW-6S curves with short diagonal filler pieces to link them.

Such curves do not support placing L1 or L2 FLEX stuff over them and adjacent to them, so that those FLEX parts have to be placed away from them. Another limitation is that the FLEXRamp Type A2 is not supported for RHW-8S because of the overhang, so that only Type B2 can be used.

Anyway, this is the ‘tightest’ interchange I could implement :



It should be possible to do better and use less space, in which case I would be interested by the solution.

When all curves are implemented as FLEXFly pieces, a more compact interchange is possible. Using a version of RHW prior to the one available starting with NAM 37, I had created the following interchange in Jonolray :



With the latest RHW the interchange could use a tad less space. In any case, I have a few more old parclos to upgrade, and I’ll continue to look for better interchange designs.

[brian51]

oh Pierre, i think this looks fantastic as is !

I mean any highway interchange builders who would be better than you are,
would be on a very short list indeed..

I would give my right arm i think to even have 50 % of your ability to build these master pieces of yours

Also it looks like this have 3 levels so as such would qualify as a "stack interchange"  as well..

But sure, if you feel you can still improve this further, i am quite sure all of would love to see it and envy it

[pierreh]

In this post I document what I consider an anomaly in the Talaran cluster : an excessive amount of surface used by commercial areas. I don’t think that it is caused by the notoriously weak support of region playing. Rather, I think that the culprit in this case is the Colossus Addon Mod (CAM), that is demanding too much commercial zoning.

For too long during the development of the cluster I have yielded to the continuous requests for more commercial space, by zoning such space with abandon. The result is bloated commercial zones and an abnormally high number of commercial ‘jobs’. For example, this is the zoning of Marlande :



The commercial zone occupies nearly half of the constructible land in the city square. This is clearly too much.

When selecting a city to play, we see a little rectangle with the name of the city, of its mayor, and 3 numbers that indicate the population, the commercial ‘jobs’ and the industrial ones. (What exactly those last 2 numbers represent is open for debate, has already been discussed in this CJ, and the discussion is not over yet).

For the 9 cities of the Talaran cluster I put side by side the numbers of the population and of the commercial ‘jobs’, in the following table :



The numbers of the commercial ‘jobs’ are clearly excessive. In total they represent 79 % of the population. In one case (Arcens) there are even more commercial jobs than there are Sims in the city.

Only lately I have ceased to zone more commercial space in the cities, in spite of the repeated requests to that effect. Some commercial buildings are getting replaced by higher ones. But the commercial zones don’t grow anymore ; the population keeps increasing though, at a moderate rate.

[brian51]

Pierre,

thanks for your very informative postings on CAM,  commercial zoning and jobs..

Yes, I agree ( since i suffer from this same issue ).. that we should try just ignoring the requests for more commercial zoning
and than also the high demand bars, Which I often use to make my decision on (zone types)..

I did want to ask you , if you are using Steve's CAM fix ?

It does not seem to work for me.
Although oddly enough i do have one city where it does appear to be working, because I have some blue commercial demand bars
which are much smaller in this city. I have never been able to reduce the size of these blue bars in any of my larger cities, seemingly
no matter how much I zone commercial .. ( especially commercial services )

[pierreh]

I did want to ask you , if you are using Steve's CAM fix ?

Good question. Inasmuch as I can remember, I did install that CAM fix at some point, it is now quite a long time ago. I could find out by searching into my notes. Also, I don't remember what the fix consists of, in other words, what it fixes.

I have a negative commercial demand in one of my cities; when I see it I'll show it, it is very odd, I don't know what causes it, the city is not developed differently from the others.

Also, it is quite possible that this abnormally high demand for commercial areas, and the high numbers of 'jobs' shown, are also responsible for the very high intercity traffic that I have between some cities. I'll come back to that issue soon.

[brian51]

Pierre,

thanks so much for your quick response here !

One way you can find out if your currently using the CAM Fix-

1) go to plugins and find the A_CAM folder

2) in this folder you will have dat file called ColossusAddonMod_1.0z.dat

its the 1.0z that denotes the cam fix

And so I think the regular cam dat  would be ColossusAddonMod_1.0

see it does not have the "z"-

And so what is the cam fix supposed to do ?

It should correct the high demand of commercial . Where the cam demand bug creates 2X s much commercial demand
than what is needed for sims seeking jobs..

i hope this helps ?

[Darth-Apple]

Woah, fantastic updates! Truly amazing work!

Very detailed city you've laid out. Love how you've very nicely organized your zones and very densily packed the space available. Extremely well designed, has to be one of the best layouts/cities I think I've ever seen in SC4.

[pierreh]

Many thanks to Brian for the info about the CAM fix, and to Darth-Apple for the praise. There will be more posting later.

Well, I checked the name of my CAM dat file, it doesn't contain the 'z', meaning that I never installed the fix. This most likely explains the unreasonable demand for commercial zoning.

Brian, do you remember where the fix can be d/l'ed from?

[brian51]

I should be able to upload the cam fix file for you on discord..

Please check the Help desk channel for your file

[pierreh]

A milestone has been reached: a first city in the Talaran cluster, Salveille, has reached a population of 1,5 Mio Sims.



This was one of the goals I had set a while ago. Another city is very close to that number of Sims, with 1,495 Mio Sims. The next goal will be 1.6 Mio and should be rather difficult to reach, since the cities do not grow much any longer, and are running out of constructible space.

I installed the CAM fix, but I am not sure yet that it has an effect. As can be seen in the above picture, the demand for commercial zoning remains high. At any rate, there are still some empty commercial lots in the city and I am not zoning any others.

-------

I have another little gripe: the City Hall provided by the game is ok for a city of a few ten thousands Sims. It is woefully inadapted to a city of 1.5 Mio Sims:



Is there a better/larger City Hall available, that of course has the same effect (demand, desirability, etc) as the one provided by Maxis?

[brian51]

Pierre,

I am very proud of you, that you have reached a very important mile stone of 1.5 million !

I am not sure its possible for the way you build your cities but do you think 2 million is possible ?

I am not sure on the city Hall alternative.. I am going to ask Tibi

Also , I wanted to thank you for trying out the CAM Fix file

[pierreh]

I am not sure its possible for the way you build your cities but do you think 2 million is possible ?

I do not think so. However, I could be surprised. Let's say that this is not a goal at present. Because of the region playing, with the increase in population, the inter-city traffic becomes very difficult to manage - I'll post more about that aspect of the game later.


Aside from the City Hall, there is another building that is also way too modest in large cities: the Mayor's Mansion:



The poor Mayor has to rent larger facilities when he is organising receptions, celebrations, etc. And, in the case of private events, he pays from his own pocket, because he is, ahem, honest. (Any resemblance with real life mayors is purely fortuitous).

[Guardian]

Nice looking area! Thanks for the little backstory too. Always interesting to see how others play their cities in terms of personality.

[pierreh]

A week ago, as we discussed the matter of excessive commercial demand, and the use of the CAM fix, Brian made the following comment:

 I have never been able to reduce the size of these blue bars in any of my larger cities, seemingly
no matter how much I zone commercial .. ( especially commercial services )

I have at least one city (Deliambert, in the Sambey cluster) where the commercial demand is negative (and also the industrial demand, but I don't bother about that one):



Nonetheless, if I place new commercial zones they get built rather rapidly. I have put a moratorium on commercial zoning in that city like in the others.