Three Rivers Region

[buckbeach]

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.

Sooner or later someone will solve the fully functional "surface water" (for lakes and/or rivers at various elevations) and  ploppable residential and industrial buildings that will function like growables.  These items have been said to be impossible over the years but I absolutely believe that the gurus of this game will conquer these issues one by one in time.

EDIT: Fixed the quote tag. -DE

[allan_kuan1992]

Not entirely. Parts of the code that we want to fix are hard-coded in the EXE which makes it really difficult for us people to legally solve some of the aforementioned issues without violating EA copyrights. Most people btw would want to avoid paying millions for copyright infringement instead of solving these problems because in the end... SC4 is a simulation, not something your life really really depends on (like money).

Sad but true.

- Allan Kuan

[ldvger]

Well, I'm kinda surprised my post didn't get slammed and in fact was taken semi-seriously.  Don't know why I'm surprised, I know everyone here likes to play nice, I guess I just figured any hint of standardizing would be met with very stiff resistance. 

Z says:

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.

What I'm doing with my revamped SF region is making my blocks 13 cells square BETWEEN roads and avenues...and yeah, I realize this throws the scale of the city off somewhat, but like you said, what can be done?  I'm pretty sure the "standard" city block of 660' x 660' is from the centerline of the right-of-way, be it road, street, avenue, railway, whatever.  Using a 13 cell grid would work if all one used was roads and allowed for 12 cells between roads...that would place the road in the 13th tile and so would would have the 13 cells from centerline to centerline, becaue roads, rails, and streets are only a single cell wide.  The only way to keep the grid working with wider right-of-ways would be to increase thier widths to 3 tiles from the existing 2, which is actually something worth considering (if it's do-able).  In RL, a 2 lane street has approximately a 50' right-of-way, 25' from either side of the centerline so, per game, given that each cell is 52.5' square, that's about right.  However, that makes avenues and highways, at two cells wide, only 100' wide, which I think sounds a little narrow, especially for a highway, especially in an urban area, where traffic volume would justify at least 3 lanes in either direction.  Heck, maybe highways could go up to 5 cells wide?  And, if we made avenues 3 cells wide, 2 lanes in both directions, that leaves a nice 50' wide cell down the middle to do all kinds of interesting things with: landscaping, transit stations, monorail, light rail, pedestrian walkways...the possibilities are numerous, if not exactly endless.  AND...it would semi-solve the problem of keeping the grid, whatever standard one would choose to use, intact and to scale.  Only immediate problem I see is that the building area between right-of-ways would then vary.  It would still be 12 cells between roads, but would become 11 cells between a road and an avenue. 

And, this totally ignores alleys, which are a big part of urban grids.  Alleys are typically a much narrower right-of-way, say half that of a road, and are usually one-way (at least here in Seattle they are).  We really don't have any way of creating a realistic alley tile less than 1 cell wide (I'm using streets as alleys in my SF region and not liking the results much).  And, even if we did/could, a single cell is still the smallest increment we can design to.  So, between roads set 13 cells apart with 12 cells between them, there is no way to center an alley...it would have to be offset from center by one cell, which annoys my brain (I'm heavy into symetry).  It would work fine in the spaces between a road and avenue, at 11 cells the alley would go in the 6th cell, leaving 5 cells to either side. 

So yeah, it's a conundrum.  That's why I settled on 13 cells between right-of-ways, at least for the time being.  Gotta have those alleys. 

On a totally different track, I'm not liking the 13 cell grid much either, now that I have started to actually build (after laying out all the roads/avenues/rail ahead of time).  I am ending up with "mini-blocks" 6 cells wide between roads and streets and the game "sees" streets as frontage, not rears (rearage?).  I am not able to lay out zones that are 6 cells deep for either residential or commercial, the game automatically adds a road at 4 cells of zone depth, which I find extremely annoying.  I get around this a little bit by laying out my residential and commerical lots 3 cells deep as far as I can before the game tries to throw a street in.  I stop the zone, usually a 3 x 3 cell square, then start a new one, so as to avoid the game putting a street in where I don't want one.  In the early stages of a city this is fine because most early zones develope in single cell widths.  But as the city grows, they start to converge with each other to create larger buildings, especially in urban cores.  I forget the large the game default growable buildings are...4 x 4?  And see, if that's the case, then the 6 x 6 mini-block is not going to work at all.  For that matter, any grid that is larger than a multiple of the largest office building or apartment building foot print, is not going to work.

I just took a quick peek into Lot Editor and it appears the largest residential building footprint is 4 x 4, while the largest Commercial is 6 x 6.  So the 6 cell deep idea would work for commercial zones, and maybe for urban residential zones, too (one could always put a park along the alley, many buildings here in Seattle have done that).  So really the problem I am having is with getting the game to not see my alleys as streets.  A personal problem. 

Does anyone know if anyone has created an alley I could plop that the game would not see and a street?

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.

Yes and another thing I realized last night is that there is no way of knowing ahead of time just where in the grid any angled road may fall.  I mean, if you start/stop the angled road at a grid intersection, then my idea for a standardized set of FABs would work just fine, even if it meant a lot of work to cover all the possible permutations of the many FAR roads.  However, what about those angled roads that don't start/stop at grid intersections?  What if the angle starts between grid intersections?  And, lets face it, in RL they usually do, because the angled roads pre-date the establishment of the grid. 

And then, what do we do with all the curves we have now?  How do we get buildings to work there?

See, just opened another new can of worms...

Lora/LD

[catty]

Does anyone know if anyone has created an alley I could plop that the game would not see and a street?
Lora/LD

Pegasus created a Peg Alley Kit "The PEG Alley Kit now includes 4 different alleys for use in Residential, Rural, Industrial & Commercial areas" which you can find here

http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=11210

Right back to lurking  again 

[JoeST]

I just took a quick peek into Lot Editor and it appears the largest residential building footprint is 4 x 4, while the largest Commercial is 6 x 6.  So the 6 cell deep idea would work for commercial zones, and maybe for urban residential zones, too (one could always put a park along the alley, many buildings here in Seattle have done that).  So really the problem I am having is with getting the game to not see my alleys as streets.  A personal problem.

I was trying to grid a city recently. 5x5 seems the nicest way to do it in SC4. with a few 4 and 6 width/height's interspersed into it.

I previously had a 15x15 set up with a non-intersecting, rotationally symmetric alleyway system, leaving a space 6 in from each side, with a 2x2 square in the middle

also, the new FAR-x system sounds awesome, and those buildings

Joe

[mayorfabz]

I want to express again all my admiration for the fantastic work here. There is definitely no need for a SC5 now. Congratulations to all of you who spend time for the sake of our (we, the non-BATters / non MODders / mainly downloaders) enjoyment.
I downloaded the latest NAM, of course, and have started doodling around with it. It definitely IS fun. Just a little something though:
we now have orthogonal/FAR intersections like these:


But what about these ?


(sorry for the poor drawing, at my age I am afraid I have utterly missed the digital revolution)
Maybe this issue has already been addressed, in which case I apologize for having missed it during my thorough lurking sessions.
Has anyone considered working on it ?
Cheers
Fabien

[Gaston]

(sorry for the poor drawing, at my age I am afraid I have utterly missed the digital revolution)
Cheers
Fabien

Fabien,
    You are doing better than me.   I can't even figure out how to draw that much.   I was trying to suggest an acute angled "Y", but can't draw it and import it here.   LMAO


---Gaston

[dedgren]

Just had a chance to glance at the posts.

Heather and I are spending an hour or so this really fine sunny Seattle afternoon with a couple of thousand of our closest friends at Sea-Tac Airport



enroute to Helena, Montana to see Josh and then next week on to Austin, Texas to spend several days with Tristen.

Thank heavens for iced coffee-



3RR's official summer traveling beverage!

Really big update in the works.  I didn't get it done before leaving, but will have several hours to work on it tonight.

Hope your weekend's been a great one, wherever you might be.


David

338217

[calibanX]

Hmmmmm, 'really big update' huh    Many of us are floored when you pop on to say you were just playing around.

I'm certainly curious. Anyone else?

Geoff

[sithlrd98]

After spending most of the day yesterday, and half of today , I realized that I tend to make things much harder than needed. I have never even really tried to do this before so as a novice to changing models in reader,(which I have even more respect for what BuddyBud is doing with his mod).....I present you a fully wealth dependant 90 degree road curve!





I am attaching this and would like some testing to make sure there are no bugs. I have not changed the T-21 to allow for my previous tree and lamp mod , and the only other dependency is the NAM. The files should load after the NAM , so place them in the NAM plugins folder.

Jayson

David,I hope you don't mind me posting this over here instead of my thread....

[dragonshardz]

As soon as I get to home to my computer (on vacation at my dad's.), I will give this a test for you. I think some applause is in order!

10 to 8200

[Haljackey]

Wow Jayson that's just what we need!  This will make those long, smooth curves just that much better.  Thanks for hard work!

[superhands]

Jayson, I have to say thank you for taking the time to do this.

one thing.
try to make the s3d of the road texture raised to around .1m (i think) - to avoid any noise on sloping land
and have this as the main model not relying on t21.(basically what is in the far plugin already but raise the model)
and have the sidewalk separate form the road s3d.   this should cut back the number of props/models for the t21-and man hours

i had a play with it and couldn't find any obvious bugs.

sorry for the hoohah, but this mod atm is looking promising and again thanks for filling the gap

dave

[girlfromverona]

Sweet! Great work, Jayson. 

Hope you have a safe and enjoyable trip, David. Look forward to seeing what you have in store for us with your Really Big Update! 

EDIT: Just to clarify, Jayson - when we install the Beta mod, we don't have to take anything else out, right?

[sithlrd98]

Dave,you lost me...I am kinda flying blind with these...and up till now haven't really messed with model files. I basically am re-cycling a model , changing what verts need adjusting and making a prop exemplar. I really don't know any easier way , but agree that by the time I'm done doing it this way , I'll have over 100 props.

Oh, and forgive my stupidity ,  I already have the road at 0.006000. If I move it up to 1.000000 , will it affect the paths...meaning will ped/vehicle traffic still travel above them?

Sweet! Great work, Jayson. 

Hope you have a safe and enjoyable trip, David. Look forward to seeing what you have in store for us with your Really Big Update! 

EDIT: Just to clarify, Jayson - when we install the Beta mod, we don't have to take anything else out, right?

Just my WRC T-21 mod , if you are using it. Need to brush up on getting that to work with these!

Jayson

[girlfromverona]

Just my WRC T-21 mod , if you are using it.

Cool. I don't have that installed, so this should work fine! Gonna test it out real soon. 

[wes.janson]

David, for some reason I have always enjoyed those moments stuck waiting in an airport. Maybe it's just the idea of going somewhere completely new, but airports always have a very zen effect on me. Sea-Tac is one of the better ones because the last few times I have been there was coming from Vancouver to go to PAX and that is always enjoyable to a nerd like me.

Jayson: First off.. THANK YOU.  This is perfect for those who like to use the curves in rural areas as well as urban. So fat I haven't found any bugs or whatnot. Too bad it doesn't work with your sidewalk mod though.

[Pat]

Hey David I hope you have a great time in Helena visting Josh and the Tristen in Texarkana... I have to ask while sitting in the airport have you ever studied how people act and interact at all? I was wondering that cause from the pic you snapped there that lady in pink looks kinda well annoyed lol and the kids in the left hand there the young boy looks like he is saying but its my turn to pic on sis!! OK my brain has rambled off enough and I cant wait till that next big update!!!!

[ldvger]

And next time you are stuck at Sea-Tac, give me a call.  I have no problem with catching a bus down to the airport in order to meet you and your family and if your layover is longer than 2-3 hours, we could do some sightseeing.  If your bags aren't checked though to final destination, there are lockers cheap to rent and our new light rail goes into effect in July, 20 minutes to downtown Seattle, only $5. 

Seriously, way more fun to spend time in town than hanging out at the airport!

for some reason I have always enjoyed those moments stuck waiting in an airport. Maybe it's just the idea of going somewhere

I'm not overly fond of airports, but I too enjoy the feeling of being in transit, going someplace, either new or familiar doesn't matter to me.  Movement, travel...feels good to me.  I am an anxious flyer, love take off and landing, but hate the bumps in between.  So airports always pull up a mix of feelings.  I'm a creature of habit and don't like changes to my routine, but for some reason I do enjoy traveling, as nervous as it makes me.  Maybe it's that nervousness that I like...


Lora/LD

[FrankU]

WOW,

I haven't visited this thread since tuesday and I fear I have missed a new game update. Are you really working on SimCity 6 here?
I threw in my remark about FAR angled buildings. I meant this more as a foolish remark, and immediately you start making them!
My first real thought was about free standing residential houses, so that the problem of the diagonals wouldn't show up. But these W2W developenmts are really fantastic.
And about these lots with FAR angled fronts: this is a quite usual way of building in our historical cities.
I present you the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam:



A never ending game!      to all of you!