Airport Action?

[Norm35]

Now that I have Destinations installed, I am dabbling with some of its new features.

I installed a cruise ship pier and every few minutes a cruise ship arrives and offloads a bunch of tourists (I guess).

I installed an airport and so I sit and watch it but nothing happens. I have satisfied the requirements. I have the necessary numbers of every thing, the Sims are reasonably happy but no one comes near the airport. No airplanes arrive or are visible on the ground.

I looked at the user manual and the help but of course found nothing in either place. EA and TM sure didn't pour much money into those parts of the project.

Anyone got any idea how to bring the airport to life?

[Azeem]

The airport should be functioning just as any other travellers' transportation structure - each day, a certain amount of travellers should appear from them. The maximum for the airport is 15 per day. Aside from the Prosperity and Authority societal energies requirements you also need sufficient electricity for them to function.

[Norm35]

Originally Posted by Azeem

The airport should be functioning just as any other travellers' transportation structure - each day, a certain amount of travellers should appear from them. The maximum for the airport is 15 per day. Aside from the Prosperity and Authority societal energies requirements you also need sufficient electricity for them to function.

I've observed the airport continuously for several game days and seen no sign of an airplane.

My societal energies all exceed requirements and there is plenty of electricity. Something is missing. When I set up the seaport, I did not have to provide the ship, one just showed up every so often.

I selected the airport and placed it on the terrain. Now where are the airplanes?

[Azeem]

Not sure what's going on in your game.

I did a quick test. I set down an airport and just within a few game hours, 2 traveller sims already arrived and the plane landed.

Are you getting any increase in traveller counts from the Airport? Traveller counts are indictated by the luggage icon in the lower left corner of the screen. If you are, then perhaps it's just the animations not showing?

[Norm35]

Hovering over the suitcase indicates traffic of about 12 travelers per day but still no activity. No ground personnel or airplanes.

Your idea about lack of animation sounds worth investigating.
What do I check?

[Azeem]

What settings did you put for your in-game graphics quality? Lower graphics quality settings might affect whether or not animations show up.

[Norm35]

Originally Posted by Azeem

What settings did you put for your in-game graphics quality? Lower graphics quality settings might affect whether or not animations show up.

Actually, I had not changed any settings. I was using one of my city bases. Things looked generally OK.

When I examined video settings. Graphics Quality was set at, "custom."
This was not on the options list. I tried low medium, high. Everything now looked like it was under water. I reset to default settings for all settings. Still looks like it is all under water.

I restarted Destinations without saving first. Things look back to normal now.
Graphics look very good. Graphic Quality is now set back to, "custom."

There is still no movement or Sims or airplanes on the airport. Sims animation everywhere else is normal.

Can you tell me how to proceed to investigate this? I am unfamiliar with the program structure.
What triggers the animation and which files do what?

I guess I will set up a city from scratch, using the tutorial, instead of starting with a base that was set up for SCS originally. I am assuming that the tutorial will be different for Destinations.

[Azeem]

You were using a city originally made in regular SCS?

[Norm35]

Yes, but I started with only the terrain. Everything else was added under Destinations. The only problem was the airport. Everything else behaved normally. This city also had a seaport and cruise ships arrived and departed normally.

I set up a new city from scratch and added an airport. This one had airplanes arrive and depart.

At the moment, I don't know why the airport didn't work on the previous city.

I need to know more about how the program works. I will have to continue searching the web until I stumble over some articles about the the Sims program structure and its game engine.

[Azeem]

You've just answered your own question right there. SCS and SCSD have some diffent programming so things might not carry over well if you decide to start up SCSD with an SCS game file.

The Sims game are programmed differently from SCS; anything you get off other sims titles are particular to those games only.

[Norm35]

You are probably right.

I have no save files that are so important that I can't lose them so I guess I will have start from scratch.

I sort of hate to give up the Treasury on my latest city. I had built it up to over a billion simoleons.

[CatMajik]

Originally Posted by Norm35

You are probably right.

I have no save files that are so important that I can't lose them so I guess I will have start from scratch.

I sort of hate to give up the Treasury on my latest city. I had built it up to over a billion simoleons.

Let's not be greedy now, you can do it again

Why don't you post some screenies of your city.

[Norm35]

My main city at this point is more of a laboratory than a showcase to take pictures of. Every time I get what seems like a good idea, I demolish large sections of it and rebuild it in the new way. The latest builds are designed more to see how the numbers look than to win any beauty contests.

That's why I hate to throw away the big treasury. I got out of the habit of worrying about what my experiments cost.

I am looking forward to what will be possible with Destinations with the many additional models and animations. I just wish I could edit the models and animations so I don't have to settle for what is available but could get exactly what I want. I really can't understand why by now someone hasn't come up with a way of using Milkshape to edit Sims models. The graphics don't look that good. There are plenty of graphics editors out there that could do just as good a job without the high price tag.

[Azeem]

The big issue there is whether or not Milkshape can edit XAC files.

If you intend to do lab testing, just start up in freeplay mode.

[Norm35]

I'm reasonably sure that Milkshape cannot edit xac files.

It can edit many, many other formats though. I think the reason it still can't handle xac files may be that there just aren't that many users who want to edit SCS files, so there is no pressure on Mete to add that capability.

I wonder why EA and TM decided on this format in the first place. Why didn't they choose a format that had more reasonably priced editors available? Were they intentionally making it difficult for users to modify the SCS models? If they were keeping the the competition down for their expansion packages, they really pulled the rug out from under SCS users when they decided to discontinue the series. EA won't supply any new models and the users can't afford the only editor that they could use to create them.

Considering the bleak future that seems to lie ahead for SCS, I guess the question is what other active applications use xac files. If there is nothing on the horizon that uses this format there is no demand for an editor. It seems like very few people participate in this forum. Even if the number of us doesn't diminish any further, it certainly isn't increasing.

[Azeem]

Quite a while ago there was quite a bit of discussion a while back on why there's a lack of plugin tools for editing xac files. One of the conclusions reached was that EA probably would not be willing to support a program that could be used for non-EA games.

[Norm35]

What other applications beside SCS does xac support?