Three Rivers Region

[exziviben]

Hi

I see that you guys are planning FAR-Buildings. For a month i start with a Set for these type of buildings. Now i  want to show  you my work  to these stuff.

I plans follow pieces for my set:
For the positive 18,4 degree:
-3 Types of Buildingblocks
-3 Groundplates
-1 Tile for the Innercorner (the small)
-1 Tile for the Outercorner (the small)
-and some pieces for the intersections of the new NAM.

And for the negative 18,4 degree the self pieces but in an other style!

Why i speak at positive and negative degree?
-Because one angle is either for 2 streetdirections of the 4 variations. 


The follow picture show these problematic:


The red house is the positive 18,4 and the blue one is the negative 18,4. Both houses are plop in all of the four directions of the rotationring.

Now follows two previews of the the first two buildings. Both of them are with positive angle and complete with the groundplate:





The textures are not completly and i must work on these a little bit. For people who wants to play with an sidewalkmod, i render the groundplate and the building seperate. At the backside of the buildings you must work wit the great stuff from RRP.
Now i have a picture at front of building with the groundplate on the leftside, and without groundplate on the rightside. For example with a sidewalkmod by Sithlrd98:



At the moment i work at the third block of these set.  I post this step here, because that we don't batting all the self style of buildings and we have in the future different styles of buildings. I hope everybody understand what i mean and sorry for translation.

And now i want thanks dedgreen and the others for that great stuff they make for us.

[dedgren]

Ohmigosh!  It just gets better and better.  Those are spectacular!

Welcome to the world of being a 3RR Regular^*, exziviben, and let me have the honor of adding your first karma point to the one I sent Jon's (JBSimio) way a bit ago.


David

^*  A 3RR Regular, of course, is anyone who has ever posted here or over at 3RR-ST at least once.

336498 - We'll probably squeak out another 20k views this month- not bad when you figure I took a little more than two weeks off.  You folks are forever the greatest!

[shanghai kid]

@exziviben
I'm speechless , wow i love these to buildings with the great looking backsides of these two buildings and the opening/gate in the first building so cars can drive in to the backside is just magnificent.

I look forward to see more like these angled buildings.

[bakerton]

I bet Maxis wouldn't recognise their own game if they saw this picture...

Maxis, I thought 3RR was Maxis. (LoL)

Everything looks great. They are the things that was never thought of until now. I do envy everyone who is working on the FAB. You are all FABulous baters. JKB

[mayorfabz]

All right guys, I tip my hat to you. I almost fainted. This is what I have been dreaming of these past months AND YOU'VE JUST NAILED IT !
Where will this stop ?
Steamy greetings from Montreal (23°C and 25% Humidex yuck feels like Cambodia here)
Fabien

[z]

I bet Maxis wouldn't recognise their own game if they saw this picture...

Not to mention the pictures following.  Heck, I barely recognize this game.

Where will this stop ?

Stop?  Did someone say it was going to stop?   

For all those people doing the fantastic work on FABs, sidewalks, and everything else, I just wanted to mention that the additional FAR pieces I proposed a while back are now a NAM project, and will eventually see the light of day.  So in addition to the current FAR piece, which I have called FAR-3 and which has an angle of 18.43°, there will be a FAR-1.5 (33.69°), a FAR-2 (26.57°, originally called an HDR), and a FAR-6 (9.46°).  Like the current FAR-3, these will all have complements, whose angle is 90° minus the angle of the FAR.  As for how the numbering of these pieces and their angles are related, the number is simply the cotangent of the angle.

For those people creating models and textures, it may be easiest just to create those for the additional FAR angles as well when you make them.  And it doesn't look like you'll run out of things to do any time soon. 

[CCFC]

I have commented on this in a while, but this is like SimCity 5 and if I bought out EA/Maxis (If I ever could) I'd force them to halt the series of 'The Sims' and 'Spore' to make a SimCity 5 with 3D graphics while looking at the NAM for what to include while also forcing them to look at this wonderful region called the 3RR. Keep up the good work, David.

[rooker1]

Holy Mackerel!

I second that!!
One for Jon!
and one for the new guy,  exziviben! 

I almost fell out of my chair when I saw those.

Robin 

[Pat]

Hollly Smokin Oken!!!

OOooh my goodness WOW David you have soo inspired many folks to go above and beyond and to break the rules here!!! Jon and exziviben you both are doing wonderful jobs, I am soo speechless here!!!

[CaptCity]

Dropped just a little under the radar recently while doing some testing, and what do I find upon my return - new FAR, FAB, HDR - but what else should we expect from the magical world of 3RR?

Absolutely awe-inspiring work here... It is amazing how something is suggested, and what seems only a few posts later, there it is!

Riviting... Mesmerizing... 

[Darmok]

David, see what you've done...
you're like the proverbial pebble, (yeah right some pebble!) who started the avalanche!
Hats off to you again.

exziviben, man those are the best textures I've seen in a very long time! Spectacular work!     

Sorry for the lack of comment David, but I'm always there.... drooling...

John

P.S. Great work on your tile floor by the way... tried it once, and quickly realized that it really wasn't my forte... left it to the professionals after that.

[z]

Dropped just a little under the radar recently while doing some testing, and what do I find upon my return - new FAR, FAB, HDR - but what else should we expect from the magical world of 3RR?

More acronyms.   

[sithlrd98]

What this first pic shows are the first 3 "test lots" with props that will be turned into a T-21 exemplar. I am piecing together the technique , mainly from what BuddyBud is doing on his mod. I have tried to get the pinkish texture as close as possible....





Of course this will take me a little while as this is completely new to me , but the plan with the first mod is for the WRC/FAR to look/act as close to the basic Maxis wealth textures. If all goes well , the sky's the limit!

Jayson

[girlfromverona]

I think I have an idea of what is needed to make these and my other mods Wealth dependant.

Awesome! That will add another very much needed aspect to the game. Thanks, Jayson!

JB: That looks terrific! I'm so glad you're working on this - your buildings are some of my personal favourites and they really match the style I go for in my cities. 

exziviben: Amazing! Even though I don't think I'd use these (I like to make American-looking cities), these are absolutely beautiful. Well done!

[ldvger]

Interesting and excellent work by all parties, I must say.  And not to be negative, but to offer some helpful hints toward adding more realism:

The intersections of dirt/gravel roads to paved would most likely have an asphalt or concrete "apron" that extended into the less finished road for at least a couple of feet.  Most paved roads in rural areas (where the instersection with dirt/gravel roads would exist) are built at a slightly higher edge elevation than the surrounding landscape, so when one leaves the paved surface, one drive down hill just the slightest bit to reach the less finished road surface.  As there are no curbs or sidewalks in rural areas, this edge of the paved road surface needs to be protected from erosion by both weather and auto traffic.  The paved surface is usually the right of way with the greater speed limit, so vehicles entering the paved road often have to stop at the intersection (whether it is marked with a stop sign or not).  With the slight angle upward to the approach to the paved road, that means a vehicle starting it's entry to the paved road after a stop is likely to dig a bit at the slanted surface it was stopped on, creating a rut at the paved road edge that will eventually start eating into the actual road bed itself and not just the slight shoulder.  That's why there's usually an apron extending down from the paved road to the lesser finished road. 

I wrote a post last night on the subject of the FABs and some ideas I had, but I guess I forgot to hit the post reply button, because when I revisited later my post was no where to be found.  Old timer's disease. 

If we page back 2 pages or so to look at the map David posted of Ogden Ave in Chicago, we can see how RL cities deal with angled roads that exist within an otherwise rectalinear grid street system.  Most orthagonal roads predate the grids, which is why the lots that abut the orthagonal roads align with the grid and not with the angled road.  Lots (and often buildings) abutting orthagonal roads are usually trapezoidal in configuration until the grid reasserts itself.  Look at the Chicago map and you will see this is true.  Alleys are eliminated when the trapedoizal lots become small enough to cover the distance between the orthagonal street and the next street in the grid.  So, if we are to have realistic FABs, I'm of the opinion we need to figure out a way to conform to this idea.  The work being done so far is excellent, I am not being in any way critical, but we have opened a rather large can of worms here, one on a magnitude of ploppable water, methinks, so there is likely to be a LOT of development of FABs as we study RL and take clues from there.

Because see, this opens up a brand new can of worms and that is the city block concept.  I have been stuggling with this a little bit with my attempts to develope the San Francisco region that Maxis included with the plain vanilla game and which I started playing on during my visit to SoCal last month.  Last night I dumped my first try and started over again, this time without the slope mod that was carving up all the nice hills in the city.  I also took some time and researched city blocks to discover wht, if any, standard existed for city blocks.  And I found that indeed a standard does exist, sorta kinda.  A "city block" is 660' x600', or 1/8 of a mile square, or 10 acres in approximate size, or 8 city blocks to the mile...except where it isn't.  For example, I found that the City of Manhattan is gridded on a city block of 264' x 900', which are termed "short blocks" and "long blocks" (you gotta love the Dutch for thier extreme practicality).  Chicago also has a unique city block grid system using short and long blocks, but they are of different dimensions are more closely conform to units of the "standard" city block of 660' x660'.  Both cities use rectangular blocks, not square blocks, and both cities employ alleys dividing the blocks along thier length rather than width.  Here in Seattle our blocks are square, not sure of dimension, and our alleys run parallel with the waterfront, in a general north/south direction. 

So why does city block size matter when considering designing FAB's?  Because, as RL shows us, orthagonal lots conform to the grided cities they exist in, regardless of what city block system the city uses.  If our cities and FAB's are to be realistic, then they, too should conform to whatever underlying grid we build our cities to.  The city grid system is much more prevalent in the USA than in Europe, as the cities here are all much newer and were all gridded relatively early in thier lifetimes, in fact some cities (such as Phoenix, Arizona) were completely designed to a grid before a single road was ever laid down (my kinda place...I like grids, so logical!).  And while I know the whole exercise of designing all these angles and curves is to "bust the grid", the fact remains that if anyone (like, ahem, me) whants realism in thier gameplay, the grid remains important. 

So.  My idea, as unpopular as it will no doubt be, is to design FABs to conform to the overlying city grid.  I like the idea of square blocks rather than rectangular blocks, simply because that's the way my brain works...I like all sides equal, just makes me happy.  Last night I started a new San Francisco and started laying out my roads every 13 cells: 13 cells, a road, then 13 cells, a road, etc.  My city has alleys (streets) in the center of each "block" of 13 cells going both ways, so now I have development areas 6 cells x 6 cells.  I'm not certain I like this arrangement yet and I may yet again dump it and start over in favor of some new city block size.  I know for our European players the entire city grid concept may be alien and perhaps offensive, while many of my American counterparts will find it stifling to thier sense of creativity.  As an architect, however, I recognize that there are ALWAYS parameters one must design around.  And yes, this is a game, not RL, I know that.  I'm just trying, if you think about it, to make life easier for the folks designing the FABs to work for the greatest amount of people.

IF we, as a community of devoted players and game content designers, were able to agree upon a "base" city block grid, how much simpler would that make designing FABs to fit?  The basic city block wouldn't have to apply to the entire city, perhaps, maybe only to those areas abutting the orthagonal roads.  I have not used the curves or angled roads in the NAM yet, because I know I can't yet build next to them.  Also, being a grid freak, they upset my sense of order.  So, I don't know what the basic cell plop footprint of the road puzzle pieces are, and I'm too lazy to page back right now, but I seem to recall they are 2x4 cells?  If we adopted a city block size of 13 cells x 13 cells (which I am not recommending, just giving as an example) with an alley in the 7th/center cell (again, just an example), then folks designing FABs would have either 6 or 13 known cells configurations to design to and that could be used by all folks across the areas they used the orthagonal streets in, regardless of whatever grid, or lack thereof, existed elsewhere in thier city. 

I wish I knew how to draw the pretty illustrations others have posted here, but the only drawing software I know how to use with any expertise is AutoCAD and it doesn't translate to JPEG or any other graphic standard format (although it does translate to PDF, hmmm).  Maybe I'll try to draw something to show what I mean, but hopefully those doing the designing will understand what I am attempting to propose.

Lora/LD, too many ideas

[thundercrack83]

I...I'm speechless...this stuff is just mind-blowing!

Dustin

[z]

A very interesting post, indeed, Lora.  Right now, there are only a few aspects I want to comment on.

First of all, in add addition to the four FAR types I mentioned in my previous post, there's actually a fifth, which by the naming convention I used would be a FAR-1.  This is none other than the 45° diagonal that's built into the game.  It's certainly one of the most common diagonal roads in cities, much more so than the new FAR-3, and any comprehensive FAB design would need to include it.  Then, of course, there are the other four FARs as well.

So, I don't know what the basic cell plop footprint of the road puzzle pieces are, and I'm too lazy to page back right now, but I seem to recall they are 2x4 cells?

Here are the footprints of the various FAR puzzle pieces:

FAR-1.5:   3x3
FAR-2:      2x2      (Originally known as the HDR)
FAR-3:      3x2      (David's original FAR)
FAR-6:      6x2

If we adopted a city block size of 13 cells x 13 cells (which I am not recommending, just giving as an example) with an alley in the 7th/center cell (again, just an example), then folks designing FABs would have either 6 or 13 known cells configurations to design to and that could be used by all folks across the areas they used the orthagonal streets in, regardless of whatever grid, or lack thereof, existed elsewhere in thier city. 

I certainly recognize the 13 cell number, as it shows up again and again in my made-to-scale Chicago reconstruction.  But one thing to keep in mind is that the use of avenues can throw that number off by one, since we're working on a much coarser scale than real-world builders.  I suppose you could say that you would have to just take that number 13 into account when placing your avenues, but then your cities don't come out quite to scale anymore.  I don't see any obvious solution of what to do here.

Finally, with five different FAR types (including the 45° diagonal), that would be a lot of work to make standard sets.  And although Chicago is one of the most grid-based cities around (it was designed from the beginning to have all the major roads separated by exactly one mile), there are still many diagonal roads of all angles.  And the diagonal roads, of whatever angle, are almost always major thoroughfares; for one thing, in RL they actually represent a shorter distance for getting from place to place.  So any comprehensive FAB solution has got to take such roads, and by implication their corresponding FAR types, into account.

I don't have any real solutions for these issues, but I thought it would be good to raise them.

[BourneID]

Dude!!




I mean... wow...  I admitt that I havnt been hardcore into the game in a long time.... but I played with the far stuff.... and now seeing those far buildings....  thats cool man

[calibanX]

Wow, FAR buildings?! Very nice job guys. Whenever I'm wondering what is new and exciting with the game I log onto 3RR.

Geoff

[dedgren]

Lora/LD, too many ideas

Well, ma'am, around here you are in good company.  And, frankly, you've had some of the best ones that have come along.  It's great to think that 3RR provides a place where you can toss out all the ideas you want and almost nobody ever says, "well, that just can't be done- let's move along."  SC4 is, six years and tens of thousands of BATs and MODs and LOTs on, our game in that we pretty much do what we want with it.  We're getting to the point where we aren't just adding to and improving Maxis/EA's content anymore- we are refining and building on things that we created two, three or five years ago.  The experience is unmatched, and probably couldn't be duplicated even if someone really set out and tried to.

Heather and I went out to eat with some friends who are leaving Alaska and moving south, so I'm back home getting a late start on my planned update.  Not to be philosophical, but I've known these folks, who I will likely never see again, for less time than I've been doing 3RR, which is now well into its fourth year.  You never know where things are going to wind up, but it's hard for me to imagine what life would be like without the great friends I've made here.  Over 1,000 page views today... wow.


Mt. Gaston across Twin Glacier Valley, 2009

Off to work on that update.

Later.


David

337017