SC4 question

[Samethana]

I have a question for everyone that knows something of SC4. I just bought a copy of it because I wanted to make my own hood for all the Sims of PV,ST,VV and Bluewater Village. Now I was wondering if there's a way to place those terrains in SC4 and then combine them with a sort of ingame-feature?

[maxon]

With SC4, the city terrains have to be part of a region and I'm not at all sure how that works.  You could try simply renaming a SC4 terrain from TS2 as a city name from one of your regions (smallest city size) and the substituting the file.  but I have no idea whether that would work.  I think the worst that would happen though is that you would get a black square in SC4 where the city terrain should be.

I made a custom region to make TS2 terrains.  You can delete it if it goes pear-shaped and make another.

[jrd]

That would work.
Keep in mind terrains are flipped horizontally between TS2 and SC4, and diagonal roads, streets, and all the RH bridges do not work.

[Mirelly]

It's not difficult to import new terrains into SC4 regions but edge reconciliation will murder the terrain or else, if no edge reconciliation is done the edges will murder the appearance of the region. As for game play cross-over features ... there aren't any. SC4 uses large amounts of recognisably TS1 characters and props (plus the Country Club is taken from the designs used in Sim Golf, a Firaxis product of Sid Meier, which was first released when Firaxis was under the EA umbrella.

Another entirely useless datum provided by me because tempus gravitas manus ... or some such nonsense.

[J. M. Pescado]

SC4 is a TS1-era game, including the ability to import a basic TS1 sim as a resident to monitor your city. SC5 may do the same for TS2...maybe.

[Emma]

SC4 is a TS1-era game, including the ability to import a basic TS1 sim as a resident to monitor your city. SC5 may do the same for TS2...maybe.

Oh that would be pretty cool

[V]

It would be pretty cool. Unfortunately there is no such thing as SC5.

[KatEnigma]

It would be pretty cool. Unfortunately there is no such thing as SC5.

Not yet, but it was announced by EA sometime last year as something that is back to being worked on. It will probably come out with TS2 compatibility in time for TS3. 

[moondance]

I hope that they either find a way to make the feature more than a mildly interesting novelty, or leave it out altogether. In SC4 the feature sounded useful, but when I tried it I found that my sim was just as stupid as she was in her home game.  I did get a giggle out of having a sim hop to work on a pogo stick, true, but mostly I found the constant spamming of her opinions annoying, and not very useful for keeping track of possible problems in the city. 

[witch]

I stopped using the sims altogether after a while, little buggers would never stay where they were put. I'd make them live in the worst parts of town so I could suss out the problems and almost immediately would come a pop up saying they'd decided to move somewhere else. Yeah, really useful feature. And as for those stupid missions, if I'd wanted a bloody mission type game I'd have bought one. Sheesh. I still like building the cities though, had a binge on it over xmas.

[SaraMK]

Sorry to sort of derail this thread, but speaking of Sim City 4, whatever happened to that new game that was coming out, called The City or something of that sort? Everyone was commenting about how similar it was to SC4, only with better 3D graphics. A demo came out last year that was nearly a gigabyte in size (which is why I didn't touch it). And then... it all just sort of vanished. I can't find any reference to it anywhere, let alone anything official.

[jrd]

City Life? Should come out (in a "world edition") this month in Yanquistan. http://citylife.cdvusa.com/

[moondance]

I stopped using the sims altogether after a while, little buggers would never stay where they were put. I'd make them live in the worst parts of town so I could suss out the problems and almost immediately would come a pop up saying they'd decided to move somewhere else. Yeah, really useful feature. And as for those stupid missions, if I'd wanted a bloody mission type game I'd have bought one. Sheesh. I still like building the cities though, had a binge on it over xmas.

You were playing at Christmas--did you get the snow?  The first year I had it I played on Christmas and there were these weird white blobs on my game and I thought my video card was crapping out and panicked and reinstalled the game, only to find that I still had weird white blobs in my cities.  Then I went to Simtropolis.com to see if I could find what the problem might be, and felt like an idiot.
My boyfriend pointed and laughed.   
This year when I wanted to play on Christmas I changed my computer clock so that it wasn't Christmas anymore.

As near as I can tell, when you move a sim into the city the game assumes the sim is young and broke.  As time passes the game assumes the sim gets promotions and wants to live in better parts of town.  This is part of what makes the feature useless.  A sim in a polluted industrial-based city will eventually want to move to the high rent district, and if there isn't a high rent district the sim will actually move out of the town.  I've also tried moving a sim into an already established, commercial-based city, with nothing but high rent districts.  The sim moved out very quickly--she couldn't find an affordable home.  Great feature.   

I'm with you on the U-drive-it missions too.  The first thing I do when I start a new city is to turn off the damned missions indicators.     

All in all though, SC4 is one of my all-time favorite games--and I can occasionally be caught playing SC3000 or even SC2000.  They each have their charms. 

[witch]

Oh no, I didn't know about the snow - though now you mention it, it stirs a vague memory. I was playing over my xmas holidays but I think I didn't start till the new year. I would have though my graphics card was playing up too!

[SaraMK]

City Life? Should come out (in a "world edition") this month in Yanquistan. http://citylife.cdvusa.com/

Aha. Yes, that's it. They sure don't seem to be doing a good job advertising it.

Has anyone actually played this?

[witch]

I went to the link and the Monte Christo site, I couldn't see anywhere to purchase the game or download a trial version anywhere.

[J. M. Pescado]

Aha. Yes, that's it. They sure don't seem to be doing a good job advertising it.

Has anyone actually played this?

City Life is an awful, awful game. Avoid it like the plague.

I'm with you on the U-drive-it missions too.  The first thing I do when I start a new city is to turn off the damned missions indicators.     

I actually like the missions, but always turn off the indicators. I know where to find them. The missions are great for unlocking a new building or getting a quick cash injection without using the cheat codes, though. The cheat codes are dangerous and using them eventually results in a giant earthquake that destroys your city, don't ya know?

[SaraMK]

I'm starting to think Lies & Propaganda.

If the game was out since last year, and is now coming out with a second version, there really should be more stuff out. Fan sites? Modding sites? Hello?



EDIT

City Life is an awful, awful game. Avoid it like the plague.

Good to know.

[witch]

City Life is an awful, awful game. Avoid it like the plague...The cheat codes are dangerous and using them eventually results in a giant earthquake that destroys your city, don't ya know?

Why is City Life a bad game - the reviews seem alright.

Truly, using cheat codes causes an earthquake? I use a mod that makes the money side a little easier - can't remember how, more taxes maybe?

ETA:

If the game was out since last year, and is now coming out with a second version, there really should be more stuff out.

True. I hadn't even heard of this one and I try find new strategy / building / sim type games.

[J. M. Pescado]

Why is City Life a bad game - the reviews seem alright.

From what I recall, the lack of pause, the fact that there basically no management, you just plop buildings at random and forget about 'em, the interface is dogawful, and basically the game was panned in several reviews.

Truly, using cheat codes causes an earthquake?

It does, from what I remember, yes. That's why traditionally, if you're doing a preplanned layout and need more start cash to lay it out, you do all the codes at the BEGINNING, then wait for the earthquake to savage the empty map before beginning.

I use a mod that makes the money side a little easier - can't remember how, more taxes maybe?

Money is really quite easy in SimCity. While initially difficult if you have a large prelaid grid of some kind that drags you down on upkeep, once things start filling out, the money literally pours in.

True. I hadn't even heard of this one and I try find new strategy / building / sim type games.

Because it is suck.

[witch]

It does, from what I remember, yes. That's why traditionally, if you're doing a preplanned layout and need more start cash to lay it out, you do all the codes at the BEGINNING, then wait for the earthquake to savage the empty map before beginning...Money is really quite easy in SimCity. While initially difficult if you have a large prelaid grid of some kind that drags you down on upkeep, once things start filling out, the money literally pours in.

I only found a cheat code that would do a minimal amount of money and I couldn't be bothered entering it over and over even with Ctrl + V.

Huge prelaid grid - that may be why I always have problems starting the cities off.

[SaraMK]

I can't play SC4. I truly suck. I become an ambitiously spending lunatic mayor within about two minutes of starting the city, all my advisors freak out, and nobody moves into my city because they hate it. I've given it a fair number of tries, but I haven't gotten any better at it.The only reason I have it installed is so I can make terrains for TS2.

[witch]

I can't play SC4. I truly suck. I become an ambitiously spending lunatic mayor within about two minutes of starting the city, all my advisors freak out, and nobody moves into my city because they hate it.

I am so with you sister! I should probably run on fast speed, but I want to see the damn thing grow, then I have to borrow more money, then more to pay the damned interest on the loans...

I seem to run always with a small excess of expenditure over income.

That mod I spoke about earlier only makes it a little more easy in the money department, now I can actually get the cities going.

[KatEnigma]

I never have been able to play SC4 without the cheat codes, and have never had an earthquake. LOL

Which is one of the things I don't like about SC4. It's a lot harder to get a good balance struck in the city, compared to the other SC games. It used to be that I only needed the money cheat very occasionally, with SC4, I couldn't run a city without it once.

[kewian]

I love simcity 4. Its one of the few games Im actually good at.  You really just need to start slowly, dont add water for a long time, create a sister city for the pollutant jobs, add things as you can afford them and then adjust their funding.