November 10th, 2019 at 4:33 PM
Thanks for your comments, Brian. Let's continue this interesting discussion.
Unlike you, I have little experience with abandonment. In fact, the second to last time this happened on me was several years ago, when I did sever the inter-city links in a city in order to deal with the 'eternal commuter syndrom': the residents close to where I severed the links all went away and the buildings got abandoned, but there the reason was quite obvious.
This is not happening in the current case. The 'culprit' is quite probably the traffic simulator. I remember the discussions you had with Steve about the simulator being unable to cope with large volumes of "things" to handle (Sims, means of transportation, bus stops, subway stations, railway lines, etc etc), and therefore 'dropping the ball', as it were. I tended to side with Steve on that.
In fact, nobody, even Steve at the time, knows how the simulator works, because it is part of the game's code which was never released. All we can do is conjecture how it works, based on observations of how it handles the various traffics in the cities we play. Steve and others went very far on those observations and deductions, so that we can say today that we know rather well how the simulator works - but exactly how, we'll never really know.
When a computer has a lot to do, it doesn't 'drop' arbitrarily some instructions, it simply slows down, so that the work to do takes a longer time, but eventually all instructions in the code that have to be processed get processed. On the other hand, it is possible that the simulator's code contains a kind of 'threshold' where, when it is reached, the simulator 'gives up' on the work it is doing, and leaves things in an unstable, incomplete state, that causes various malfunctions including abandonment 'because of excessive commuting time'.
For example, a 'time limit' could have been coded in the simulator; when that time limit (either in actual seconds, based on the computer's clock, or in game time) is reached, the simulator drops its work and doesn't 'clean up'.
In the current case, the abandonment occured in the largest city in the cluster, that had just reached a population of 1.3 Mio Sims. That city has an extensive subway/GLR network with many stations, plus bus stops, railway lines and stations, highways and a good road network, as well a links to another city in the cluster. Clearly, when the simulator runs, it has a lot to do. I'll keep watching the development of the city, and generally monitor closely the simulator's works in other cities.
Btw, I have another nasty syndrom in a few cities: I think that it could be a case of prop pox. I'll document it later.
Unlike you, I have little experience with abandonment. In fact, the second to last time this happened on me was several years ago, when I did sever the inter-city links in a city in order to deal with the 'eternal commuter syndrom': the residents close to where I severed the links all went away and the buildings got abandoned, but there the reason was quite obvious.
This is not happening in the current case. The 'culprit' is quite probably the traffic simulator. I remember the discussions you had with Steve about the simulator being unable to cope with large volumes of "things" to handle (Sims, means of transportation, bus stops, subway stations, railway lines, etc etc), and therefore 'dropping the ball', as it were. I tended to side with Steve on that.
In fact, nobody, even Steve at the time, knows how the simulator works, because it is part of the game's code which was never released. All we can do is conjecture how it works, based on observations of how it handles the various traffics in the cities we play. Steve and others went very far on those observations and deductions, so that we can say today that we know rather well how the simulator works - but exactly how, we'll never really know.
When a computer has a lot to do, it doesn't 'drop' arbitrarily some instructions, it simply slows down, so that the work to do takes a longer time, but eventually all instructions in the code that have to be processed get processed. On the other hand, it is possible that the simulator's code contains a kind of 'threshold' where, when it is reached, the simulator 'gives up' on the work it is doing, and leaves things in an unstable, incomplete state, that causes various malfunctions including abandonment 'because of excessive commuting time'.
For example, a 'time limit' could have been coded in the simulator; when that time limit (either in actual seconds, based on the computer's clock, or in game time) is reached, the simulator drops its work and doesn't 'clean up'.
In the current case, the abandonment occured in the largest city in the cluster, that had just reached a population of 1.3 Mio Sims. That city has an extensive subway/GLR network with many stations, plus bus stops, railway lines and stations, highways and a good road network, as well a links to another city in the cluster. Clearly, when the simulator runs, it has a lot to do. I'll keep watching the development of the city, and generally monitor closely the simulator's works in other cities.
Btw, I have another nasty syndrom in a few cities: I think that it could be a case of prop pox. I'll document it later.
