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Siilijoki

Started by noahclem, December 07, 2010, 06:41:52 PM

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c.p.

#1260
That's a pretty intense interchange :o  It will be interesting to see this develop with a tropical/subtropical theme :popcorn:


Thanks! Have a few more intense interchanges up my sleave I think ;)  Hopefully the theme works out; I'll be fairly happy if I just manage not to fall into the same pattern that I almost always seem to end up in :D

-Noah

Vizoria

#1261
That diagonal area does look promising. And that diagonal fire station is MASSIVE.


Thanks! Diagonal areas are always fun, at least when you can get them to work. Could probably learn a thing or two from you in that area. The fire station is a favorite of mine and I don't think I can remember the last time I had a region without one :D  One of the great JENX Paris bats.

-Noah

Themistokles

#1262
Great to find you in action again! The overhanging platforms look spectacularly awesome :o I'm glad you reduced the number of highways as well. :D I imagine this city to be massively dense, which I am very much looking forward to seeing more of.

Thanks a lot man! I actually have you in mind about all the time when thinking about how extensive highways get and how pedestrian-dominated various spaces can get :D  Certainly the various roads going to FLUPS around the central station had something to do with you. Since you're part of the "problem" of needing to maximize walkable and mass transit-friendly places perhaps you could offer a suggestion about how best to handle the layout of roads and trams around the central station ;)

-Noah
Come join me on a hike to St Edmea!

Latest update: 7

"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy." - John Sawhill

reddonquixote

#1263
Oh how did I miss that impressive update.. great work  :thumbsup:

I love the spaghetti   :popcorn:

Thanks man, glad you enjoy my spaghetti ;)  Will probably be a few more servings :D

-Noah
Pay heed to the tales of old wives. It may well be that they alone keep in memory what it was once needful for the wise to know.

art128

#1264
Nice to see some activity around here. :D

That sure is a massive interchange, well nothing surprising coming from you but still a big one! Perhaps a bit too big? Well it's your choice, I know I would have done it smaller if possible.
Am looking forward to the La Defense-esque CBD... Do you think you will create it like the original with grade separated roads/pedestrian areas?

Thanks buddy! The towers around the bridge approaches were actually my attempt at La Defense-esqueness, especially with it's grade-separation, but I plan to do something similar with the other set of bridges into the city center. I do wish that interchange ended up a bit smaller but don't see an easy way to make it like that. I'm hoping it doesn't seem so large after adding the trees and decorations. I guess one option would be to try to make yet another La Defense-esque area :D

-Noah
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

Tyberius06

#1265
Wow! Your works on cities are always one of my favourites, players can get a lot of inspirations. The train station above the canal... I'm realy speechless... how??? and that elevated road? Is it part of the lot? Well I'm looking forward, I would like to see more. (Have you thought about releasing some of your relots (Amsterdam station relot is so beautiful)... it would be nice, even if you would just share it on a cloud drive - google, dropbox etc...)
Oh, You showed other WIP cities previously, can you show more pictures from them as well, I saw a very nice one with RDQ Flinders Street Station and there was an other one from last summer with a nice airport terminal and lots of highways... :) &apls &apls &apls :)

- Tyberius

Thanks for such a nice comment! For the train station I just moved where the props were to overhang the canal and the road is actually real and not part of the lot because of that prop overhanging. If I actually succeed in altering the transit enabling of this lot than I will probably release it and I'm always willing to share these things if someone requests it. In the case of the Amsterdam Centraal relot, I'd planned to release it but when I lost the last changes to it because there were too many props I got frustrated and then never got around to redoing the lost changes. Am definitely happy to send you a copy of it if you like and I do hope I'll get around to finishing those changes I meant to add, mainly HD bikes IIRC. Keep an eye out for more updates and do shoot me a message if you want any of my custom lots :)

-Noah
You may find updates about my ongoing projects into my development thread here at SimCity 4 Devotion: Tyberius Lotting Experiments
or over there on Simtropolis into the Tyberius (Heretic Projects) Lotting and Modding Experiments.
I'm also member of the STEX Custodian and working on different restoration projects on behalf of non-anymore-active custom content creators.
Current projects: WMP Restoration and SimCity Polska Restoration.
Member of the NAM Team and RTMT Team.

TheTeaCat

#1266
This will be interesting! I look forward to seeing what you do with the area!
(Very left of the map, 3rd tile down, just below the river is where I grew up :D)


Thanks Derry! Had no idea my map was your old home :D Will have to have some TTC home over there.

-Noah
Kettle's on. Milk? Sugars?    ps I don't like Earl Grey  $%Grinno$%
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - If you're not part of the solution , you're part of the problem!
"Never knock on Death's door: Ring the bell and run away! Death really hates that!"
Tales at TeaTime      Now A proper NUT      TTC plays GRV II

brick_mortimer

#1267
Wow, very nice.
I like big interchanges (and I cannot lie)

I really like the FLUP setup around the central station, very interesting :thumbsup:

Hehe, also can't lie about my big interchange fixation :D  I'm working on another that has almost as many ramps but in a much more compact setup and only interchanges between the motorway and surface streets. Glad you like the FLUPs around the central station too; I just wish I could get the FLUP models to match my trams and tram-in-avenues better  &mmm

-Noah
Busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest
Me no coffee function without so good

metarvo

#1268
It's good to see you back around, Noah!  :)  That gigantic rail station is nicely placed here with the rail bridges; it's really pleasing where it is.

I think I spy an interesting trick with that highway bridge couplet.  ;D  If you did what I think you did, well, that's really cool!  $%Grinno$%

Thanks man, glad to be seen  :)  Glad you like the way the station area turned out; I've tried using it a couple times before and never quite been happy so hopefully this is the time it will work as perfectly as I'm hoping for. As for the highway bridge couplet, I think you're right about the trick I used  $%#Ninj2

-Noah
Find my power line BAT thread here.
Check out the Noro Cooperative.  What are you waiting for?  It even has electricity.
Want more? Try here.  For even more electrical goodies, look here.
Here are some rural power lines.

kbieniu7

#1269
Hey, I wanted to comment earlier, but... we've discussed an idea a PM (I'll write you some more later), but that's the first time I looked closely at your pictures. We can see you still like large intersections, urban highways and huge bridges as well as putting alltogether with a one consistent plan  :thumbsup: The idea to put a railway station in such a manner looks really demanding, fingers crossed for this part. And by the way - tramways are perfectly pedestrian-friendly, I don't see a contradiction there ;)

Thanks for the comment of course and it's nice to check everything over well before doing so :)  I think I may do the large highways almost compulsively; every time I try to make things a bit simpler for highways in a less North American style setting they keep growing into the big monsters I'm probably best known for :D  I'll leave it to you to announce what we've been discussing but it's certainly an exciting project that I've no doubt will attract a lot of interest ;)

-Noah
Thank you for visiting Kolbrów, and for being for last ten years!

noahclem

A huge thanks for all the comments, guys  :bnn:  Very pleasantly surprised so many people were interested; I really appreciate it.

Today is just a little WIP progress update--I'll easily wait several weeks to post next if I start on a perfectionism streak. It's taken me a ton of time to figure out how I want to run the rest of the major transport things through the tile and that's been the vast majority of what I've been up to. That mainly means the rest of the motorway in the tile which has been planned to be a complex interchange with the at-grade roads in the area and also the rest of the rail in the tile. Trying to keep much of the rail hidden is necessary because the central station is basically in the exact center of the tile and city and rails would otherwise take up a ton of the most valuable real estate. I have at least satisfactory solutions for those problems now though. First, here's the last bit of graph paper planning for the interchange:

All images are at least FHD resolution with click



The result ended up almost exactly like the last bit of planning. I couldn't fit the whole thing on the tile though so the last ramps to the left (east) extend outside of the tile.
click for over 3000px width


I've often encouraged batters not to include the base in their models but, somewhat ironically, I've found myself searching for exactly that type of bat in an effort to hide parts of the transit network. In real life I'm a big fan of buildings built over highways as it basically removes the problem of highways disrupting neighborhoods and land value but without the expense of building tunnels. I'm considering (at least hoping) more possibilities to cover bits of highway and rail with other buildings. But in the case of this interchange I've planned a building hovering over it almost from the start. It will also be the first time I've used this beauty:

Of course, to get it to actually work I'll need to place the building on a very small lot and have it overhang.

As mentioned, the other big puzzle to work out is the core of the passenger rail network, including its connection to the central station. Unfortunately, after putting the water back into the tile it's become apparent that the underwater tunnels are still visible, I guess something to do with LODs rising high above the actual model. Any suggestions for help there would be much appreciated.


I could fix half the tunnels by running them straight from the tunnel portals adjacent to the Gare du Nord and Amsterdam Centraal stations rather than having an intermediate section of rail running along the riverbed. For the set running from Gare du Nord to Flinders Street it's much tougher though because of the 90 degree turn needed. Doing that above ground with a reasonable turning radius would take up a lot of space and look stupid because in RL something like that would usually run on one large viaduct rather than 3-5 separate DTR viaducts. Would be fantastic if something like that were possible, presumably using TE'd lots, but just doesn't seem realistic considering the amount of effort required. There's a further problem there caused by the layout of Flinders Street with the tracks running underground at one end of the station. Flinders Street has a modular layout that offers multiple different implementation possiblities which, among other things, may prove handy with my desire to integrate HSR with these stations. The suggestion is to use rail-to-subway lots though I've been trying to avoid that for automata purposes. Unfortunately though, when I tried using tunnels instead of that approach in my previous region, I couldn't get sims to use it. My original plan for the current region was to use the underground rail pieces, which I thought was kind of a middle point between the other two options. The disadvantage there is that, despite the fairly large size of that set, there are big limitations in what can be done with the land above the underground rail tiles, especially if several lines run parallel to each other. Given my problem with tunnel portals though, unless putting them another 15m or so below the surface fixes the problem, I'll be faced with a choice of either using subway or underground rail to connect those stations. Can't really run underground rail along the canal bottoms either as that would make bridges impossible. So we'll see where I get with that anyway, surely something can be figured out. This is the water-removed view of what I'd tried to implement so far:


I feel like I'm fairly close to sure of at least the basics I want in the final layout, which means I can start construction on non-transport stuff in these areas. Changing the tunnel plans may cause big changes in the area between the three great stations and it's possible I'll switch the two secondary ones if I decide on a plan to enlarge Amsterdam Centraal somehow. I've been wanting to do so for a long time but the way the train shed is aligned precludes a simple addition of a second one behind the first. A more complicated TE lot solution to that, with the rails and platforms on the second train shed not aligning with normal tiles could be a possibility and is at the least very interesting to me. I'm starting to feel like I need to move on to something else before getting myself too frustrated with the current stuff :D

Anyway, hope you guys liked the update, despite its few pictures and unfinished nature. I'd love to hear ideas and suggestions for how to accomplish what I'm struggling to do here ;)

Tyberius06

#1271
Oh, Dear, You always give me inspirations, how to use stations, but now with this "hanging buildings above the railways/highways" idea... It's amazing, I can't find the words, so many possibilities, just need to find proper and large buildings for this. What is that beauty anyway? It's kind of familiar, but I don't know where I have seen before...
Sadly I lack of knowladge about undersurface networks, I've never really used the underground rail pieces.
Anyway that complex railway system looks very nice. In modern cities, or in cities which improved their inner city railway system in the last couple of decades lots of tracks go under the surface, which is always amaze me, but I actually really like the on surface solutions as well, like in my home city, Budapest (sadly still there is no enough political will for a better usage for those tracks...).
Thanks for sharing these pictures, they are really nice!

- Tyberius

P.S: I didn't forget about your offer to sharing some of your lots (Amstardam Station Relot for example), but recently I've got motivation (again) to work on the next phase of my Industrial SeaPort Project and doing that keeps me busy. :)
You may find updates about my ongoing projects into my development thread here at SimCity 4 Devotion: Tyberius Lotting Experiments
or over there on Simtropolis into the Tyberius (Heretic Projects) Lotting and Modding Experiments.
I'm also member of the STEX Custodian and working on different restoration projects on behalf of non-anymore-active custom content creators.
Current projects: WMP Restoration and SimCity Polska Restoration.
Member of the NAM Team and RTMT Team.

Seaman

#1272
Quote from: noahclem on May 12, 2017, 11:30:28 AM
Anyway, hope you guys liked the update, despite its few pictures and unfinished nature.

Thank you so much for sharing. I am frequently lurking this thread for some serious inspirations in layout planing (my favourite part of SC4 :D).
So, the recent post is a true goldmine for inspirations. I really like the scetchup as this is what I am doing for myself. Therefore, I wouldn't say "the unfinished nature" rather than focussing on the general layout :D

The trick with the building and the "underwater tunnels" is quite interessting. I'm curious how to solve this problem...

Quote from: Tyberius06 on May 12, 2017, 12:36:29 PM
Anyway that complex railway system looks very nice. In modern cities, or cities, which improve their inner city railway system in the last couple of decades lots of tracks go under the surface, which is always amaze me, but I actually really like the on surface solutions as well, like in my home city, Budapest (sadly still there is no enough political will for a better usage for those tracks...).

oh boy, I've just checked the railway layout of Budapest. It's a wonderful example of a late 19th century terminal "clusterfuck" :)
thanks for the nice hint

APSMS

Quote from: Tyberius06 on May 12, 2017, 12:36:29 PM
What is that beauty anyway? It's kind of familiar, but I don't know where I have seen before...
IIRC that is the UN headquarters complex (along with the Secretariat(?) building) made by Cockatoo, SimFox, and others in a collaborative effort.

Noah, a quick test should answer the question of appropriate tunnel depth to avoid the bug, if it's avoidable.

I was thinking, aside from the realignments that occur underwater, some long extended tunnels should satisfy the problems with the 5 Western (?) routes headed to the left, and since the ones on the right transition directly to subway before making it to Flinders Street, it would seem to me not inappropriate to find some on-slope subway converters and use those right after the station, since we won't be seeing the trains after that point anyways until they emerge from the subway conversion lots underneath FSS.

That would, of course, require some realignment at the eastern end just after the departure from the terminal, and I'm not sure how doable that is, but it doesn't seem to me to be totally unworkable.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

My Mayor Diary San Diego: A Reinterpretation

kbieniu7

#1274
You're talking about planning the network in a way to save "valuable real estate"...? Dude, your junction is almost of size of Kolbrów's historical Old Town! How you can talk about saving the land?  $%Grinno$% But seriously, that an amazing piece, with all those smooth curves, flex flies and viaducts at different levels it looks gorgeous  :thumbsup:

The building over a highway, I think I have never seen that before in SimCity! Fingers crossed, I'm really curious how it will look like at the end!

It's a pity that the railway tunnels don't hide underwater. You could use subways, but a true-railway could give some possibilities in the future... or at least some fun with underwater/underground UDI rides  ;D So, for the moment, I'd just try make one tunnel without halfway-oveground stretches, leaving just few portal clusters. Couldn't they be hidden by some seawalls?

While staying around railways... I have a feeling that three historical railway stations almost one by another, isn't it a bit too much? Of course, one can point at London with several terminus stations just one by another :D But there two of them seems like designed as non-terminus... hmm...
Thank you for visiting Kolbrów, and for being for last ten years!

Nanami

#1275
Thats really nice interpretation of plain planning on the paper toward the game, I find myself really hard to do this... so it's a great work! :thumbsup:

The building over highway reminds me of that Chicago Old Post Office or maybe Osaka Gate Tower Building? anyway I wonder how it would looks like in game with some complicated RHW network :D.

As for that rail network, I guess an interesting solution is by using the FLUP puzzle pieces when its underground. This method is found by me and my brother like 7 years ago or so when we messing around with NAM puzzle network  $%Grinno$% . As much as I remember, the automata should working fine as long as the track is continous alongside the area.

edit: I just read that using this method not works with the bridge planned for the area. I guess the only possible solution from my point of view is using subway network orjust ignore it which is literally same from the update post. ()sad()

greenbelt

#1276
Hello.  Just returned to this wonderful game after 4 or 5 years of playing MMORPGs.  So sad that Photobucket is being nasty.  I have had the same problem.  I wanted to see your CJ from the beginning but the pictures are gone.  Reading backwards from the end instead.   :bnn:

EDIT1:  oh my my.  page 13 June 2010 post.  so many more things for me to download. 

Themistokles

Good god, I missed the last update!

I really like the idea of the overhanging bat. It will look fabulous, but I think you would probably need some wall/tunnel models for the edges, where the elevated roads are.

And the idea of the underwater rail is fabulous. Maybe the bugs are possible to hide with some extensive seawalls, as Kamil suggested? The water texture is also quite similar to Jenx's lake paint but I'm not sure how to use that similarity. Or maybe you could use some more overhanging bats combined with offset retaining wall props (I know Calligrafx made some good ones)?
Come join me on a hike to St Edmea!

Latest update: 7

"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy." - John Sawhill

noahclem

I've been working on a project for several months now, first almost entirely on paper and now moving into the actual game, though the region itself has yet to be transferred from paper to a real one in game. The premise is a Nordic or Finnish medium-sized city of around half a million people. Most of my work has been with the airport and basically all in game work has been on that. I've managed to incorporate the JENX FA runway alongside the EN wide runways that I've used before. The taxiways have mostly been traditional stuff but I'm wanting to incorporate the overhanging JENX ones that get plane automata to use them and have recently made some pieces that interchange between the two different systems. I've also started on my own set of textures for runways and taxiways that feature the wider shoulders that are increasingly common these days and also high-speed exit ramps from runways and FA3 taxiways to parallel my JENX runway. Most of the texturing process is actually done but chopping it up and lotting will be a big process.

I've also recently realized that the JENX runways are modular in the sense that they consist of multiple props and that makes it possible to extend my FA3 JENX runway from its current 2000m lenth to between 2250 and 2500m--which would then require significant changes to the surrounding highways that I spent so much time on.

I've worked on a number of lotting and resizing projects for the airport and, while I still have a long ways to go, I have made quite a lot of progress. A key thing remaining to be done is to try to convert the dmscopio arena and swimming bats into concourses, half-sized and thus HD. Problems to overcome there include the nightlights making it clear that they feature an arena floor and swimming pool respectively but I'm optimistic that it can be done and make possible a very futuristic satellite terminal to replace most of my current one.

Anyway, I want to post a couple pictures now instead of just working on forever until things are perfect. So here's a bit of what I've been up to:

Overview of the airport


Closer view


A T interchange in the tile with a basket weave and local access.

bladeberkman

#1279
Wow!!! That's incredible! That FA runway is sooooooo cool! Not to mention those expressways. Great concept!

Thanks man! Glad you enjoyed the FA runway and expressways--had a lot of fun trying to do things differently and taking advantage of the new NAM ;)

-Noah