Realistic Cities For Dummies

[smileymk]

Hello.

Firstly, thank you for your responses on the idea of video lessons. They appear to be overly supportive of the idea, and as a result, I can confirm that, providing that I can get the equipment in and working, Lesson 19 (covering transit-enabling lots and adding cosmetic driveways) will be taught as a video lesson. (The lesson about to start is Lesson 16, so you don't have long to wait.)

Secondly,

Flatron: That is very good constructive criticism, and I'd like to thank you for providing it. I'm with you on the church, even though the church used was chosen because it was in keeping with the stone walls, and I will make the change in the Improvements lesson (scheduled for Lesson 28, the last of this project).
I'm a bit confused, however, as to what you mean when you say 'by using a tileset'. What is a tileset? Anyway, I'm not too keen on making an entire duplicate Plugins folder just for historical buildings, or using growable zones when I want specific buildings. I would have to download numerous suitable buildings and hope they grow in the right place. It's much easier IMO to just plop the right buildings down. But that's just my stance on the issue.

yochananmichael: Thanks for your views regarding the video lessons, and the kind words. Regarding your question, it's hard for me to give a good answer because I don't know too much about US history. I would take a look at mike3775's post, that's pretty informative, and beyond that, I would have a look at real-life US historical areas and try to replicate them as best you can.

Durfsurn: I can assure you that the plan always has been to provide voice commentary on any video lessons that I might do. I plan to follow a similar style to that used by Asteconn on his RHW tutorials - i.e. the only sounds you will hear on the video will be my voice, the mouse clicking and the computer making the sound a computer makes when it's running.

mike3775: Thanks for providing that information. It will be useful to a large number of people here. One thing that I would say is that you really need a church regardless of the era your historical area dates from. Religion might not be quite as big as it was 400/500 years ago, but it's still big, especially in the US (southern states in particular).

And thirdly,

Lesson 16 - Marinas

We all know what a marina is. They provide a place for people to stable pleasure boats when they're not using them, and they inevitably provide an attraction to any tourists than might show up in the town.

Before you can even begin to think about placing docks, you first need to do quite a bit of God Mode terraforming to give yourself an artificial 'harbour' on which to place the docks. It's pretty intricate, so it's probably easiest to explain if I first show you what we're aiming to create:


WARNING: With hindsight, you need to make this a lot bigger than what you see here, both the inside 'stubs' and the water areas. I didn't, and it caused difficulties later on putting my marina together. Learn from my errors.

So how did I do this? We start with the outside edges. They should be level and straight-edged, and to do this requires you to use the Quick Level Brush tool in Zoom 5, usually with the CTRL key depressed to keep the affected area from being too large. The basic idea is to drag from the mainland directly out to sea, perpendicular to the coast, so that you get a straight and level stub of land sticking out from the mainland. As with all terraforming, it's imperative that you do this slowly and carefully, using the grid to help you:

Any bits of land that aren't quite straight can be dealt with by positioning the brush just on the flat land or just far enough into the water to only affect the required area:

Any excess land can be dealt with in a similar way:


And any areas that are above water but aren't quite flat can be flattened out using single road tiles:

So when that's done, you should end up with a result that looks a bit like this:


Now to deal with the inside dock areas. You first need to create a small 'peak' of land, which you do by using the Hill tool (in Zoom 5 again) in the water so that a tiny bit of land pops up above the surface:


You then flatten it out with the Quick Level Brush as before, such that it connects with one of the outside edges (or the mainland). You then flatten both the top and bottom land areas (separately!) before smoothing the slope between them with the Rail tool:


And when you're done with that you should get something that looks similar to the first picture (but like I said, make it a lot bigger than I did!)

Now we can focus our attention on what goes on this new land mass. The first thing to be built is a seawall. Now, I did have a picture of it - until Imageshack decided to turn the JPEG on my computer into a PNG when it uploaded the file. I understand that PNGs don't go down too well here, so I'll link you to it:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/194/seawalls.png/

(I hope this link works. If it doesn't, let me know ASAP and I'll do my utmost to sort it out.)

Now you can place your marina docks. To do this I'm using PEG's CDKM Marina set, which gives a good variety of appropriate buildings:


Now you can see what I meant when I said that I made life hard for myself by not making the site big enough. You need quite a big area of both land and water to make best use of these lots, so if you try to make a marina, make sure you create quite a big area of both land and water!

(Oh, and these lots need power, water and road connections. Otherwise you'll end up with an abandoned marina, which is even worse.)

We fill in the areas between the lots, roads and seawalls with filler pieces - be they paths, Ped Mall, grass lots or plazas:


We now concentrate on the area of land between the docks and the main road. In this space we need to build a promenade, some large car parks and some commercial zones.

We will start with the car parks. We're going to copy the example of Brighton Marina in England and build 2 large multi-storey car parks in between the water and the main road, using the 8-level Modular Parking Garage set:


Notice how I have used Ped Mall to represent the promenade, and the space that I've left between it and the car park.

So that's one of the big car parks - the other is built in the same way. On either side I've also added 2 small surface car parks and filled in any gaps with Maxis Grass Park lots:


Now, in that gap between the car parks and promenade, you need to zone 2x2 - 3x3 areas of low or medium density commercial. You do this by holding down the CTRL key whilst zoning, so that the plots are the size you want. The plots should be adjacent to each other as you see here:



And that's your marina completed:



So that's a rough impression of how to build a marina. Like I said before, if you try this, make sure you leave enough space (on both the land side and the water side) to place the lots you want to place.

I think I can say with confidence that I'm looking forward to doing the next lesson, because it's all about beaches, and we all like beaches, right?

See you there,
Chris

[Durfsurn]

Excellent update. Good plan for your vids too! Looking forward to Lesson 19!

[Flatron]

Hi,
Tilesets are: Euro, NY, Chicago and Houston, and if you for example always play in Euro-Style, you may put your historical buildings into NY-tileset using ilives Reader and whenever you want to build a historic town centre, you just switch on NY-tileset and "ye olde town" will grow.
The harbour thing is quite interesting

[mike3775]

Nice Marina, but one suggestion



I would make it a little bigger so that the boats at the top have a bigger area to get out, as they are almost completely blocked right now.  Just lower that one corner a little bit and they have the room to get out.

Also as far as historical goes, you may find some churches post Revolutionary War as the focal point, but they are very rare, even in the bible belt of the US(South and Midwest).  The main reason why, was the separation of church and state that is integral to the US Constitution.  Read the news out of the US in those area's today, and more than likely you will find at least one article about a fight over something religious on Govt land.

Another option for the historical district, is a large plaza/park like setting.  My town was founded in 1868 and formally incorporated in 1895, and at the center of town, is a large park with a statue to the town founder, surrounded by grass and walkways with benches, a fountain, and a gazebo.

[yochananmichael]

Thanks mike that is some good info on historical US cities...btw I think Chris said in his post that in retrospect he should have made the marina bigger and said that we should too when building marinas in our cities.

[mike3775]

I assumed he was referring to his first attempt, but maybe he wasn't.  The one he built to show, is decent, it just needs a little tweek here and there to be fine though.

[smileymk]

Hello.

Durfsurn: Thanks. I look forward to it too, recording the video will be an interesting, and hopefully rewarding, experience.

Flatron: OK, so by a 'tileset' you mean one of the in-game building styles. Thanks for clearing that up. Is it not easier and just as effective, however, just to use the LotPlop command to place the correct buildings down?

mike3775: I only made one marina, and I did say in my lesson that it suffered because I didn't leave sufficient space for it. I know it could be better.
I decided to show it anyway because a) I felt that the pictures as they were gave a good account of the stages involved in building a marina, and b) I want you to learn from my mistakes.
That said, your insight into US historical districts is very interesting and informative. I'll say it again - it will be useful to many. You've certainly taught me something new.

yochananmichael: Thanks for pointing that out. I think it was just a misunderstanding, and we should move on.

Let's indeed move on, and learn how to construct a beach.

Lesson 17 - Beaches

I'm going to be honest with you. Building a beach, especially a long one like the one we're going to build in this lesson, is a lengthy and laborious task, mainly because it involves heavy usage of MMPs. You should not expect to finish it in a day. It certainly isn't something you can do in a quick afternoon session. It is, of course, worth the effort though.

The first stage is, as it is with so many things we build, ground preparation. We have a main road running along our coastline that will form the landside boundary for our beach.
You need to flatten out a 2-tile wide 'path' right next to the road on the water side (if that makes sense) for a promenade, and then to flatten out from the shore itself inwards towards the road for the beach itself, leaving a 1-tile gap in between the 2 flat areas for a retaining wall:


You will notice that there's a bit of a jump between our beach and the sea. Obviously this isn't very realistic, so we want to smoothen this out and the way we're going to do that is by using the Soften God Mode terraforming tool, in Zoom 5, with the cursor placed right on the shore, holding it down until the game won't let you smooth it out any further:


Now what you've seen so far is the 'urban' part of the beach, that which is well within our town and will be fronted by hotels, cafés, tacky souvenir shops, etc.
To the west of this we're going to make a 'natural' beach, which doesn't need any promenades or ground preparation or anything like that - the beach goes straight from the road to the shore.
But what it does need is a smooth transition between it and the 'urban' section of beach - and to achieve that, we use RHW:


That's all of our terraforming work done for this tile. We can now proceed to build the actual seafront - and we'll start with a pier.

For this, we're going to use the PEG Pier Set (follow the link and you'll find the lots in the middle of the list), along with a stone path MMP and some stairs from the wall set we'll be using in a little while to build the retaining wall. This will be a bit of a compromise, because this set requires us to build the pier from the shore when we would prefer to build it from the promenade, but the results are still very good indeed.

I think that the best way to show you how to build this is to show you an annotated diagram of the complete pier showing exactly what lots you need where, so here you go:


Note: When placing the pieces in water, start by moving your cursor to an occupied tile, and then move it in the correct direction. That way you will know that the piece is in the right place.

There are only 3 rules for building piers: 1) They must be straight, 2) They should not be wider than what you see here, and 3) They should extend reasonably far out into the sea.

When that's done, it's time to build the retaining wall. For this I'm using a Japanese wall set, which I won't link to because I don't remember where it came from. The important thing, however, is that this set includes ramps, which will enable people to actually get onto our beach.

You need to build the wall as sections of regular wall sandwiched in between long ramps, which should be placed every 10-20 tiles or so. Use the short ramps only where space prohibits using the longer ramps (for example, on curvy sections):


You can see in the above picture that a little bit of the promenade has sprung up, and from this picture, you can probably guess how we're going to build it. Yes, we're going to create a 1-tile wide path adjacent to the retaining wall using the Sandstone Ped Mall piece.
But what about the second tile in between the wall and the road? Into this go several things that will both serve the visitors to your beach and make your promenade pleasing to look at and to be in. These are things like flowerbeds, cosmetic paths, bandstands, newsstands, food shacks, toilet blocks, etc.:


OK, now to the fun part (and the really laborious part) - creating the beach itself. We will start by building another 1-tile wide path at the bottom of the retaining wall. But instead of the concrete textures offered by the Ped Mall pieces, we're going to use that stone path MMP we used to provide access to our pier, which is much more appropriate for this use:


That's looking pretty good already.  Let's make it even better by adding a proper sand texture. The one I'm using is Heblem's White Sand MMP. The sand needs to completely fill the area between the stone path and the shore, any gaps between the stone path and the wall, and also needs to extend into the sea:


Now we have ourselves a beach! Of course, if you prefer to have a shingle (pebble) beach and have a nice texture for it, then that's fine.
Notice how we have also placed streaks of sand onto the retaining wall. These would appear as a result of windy conditions blowing the sand about, people placing their sandy hands on the wall, etc.

As a small detail, you can also place some reed grass into the gaps between the stone path and the retaining wall:


We aren't done yet. This is an urban section of beach. It needs lots and lots of details to go on it. It needs boats. It needs surfboards. It needs a little bit of garbage. But above all, it needs people. There are plenty of MMPs out there that you can, and should, use to detail your beach. Things like surfers, windsurfers, walkers, sunbathers, kayaks, etc. - these should all be included if you have them. Things like beach huts, deck chairs, parasols - if you have them, now is the time to use them:


And there you have a complete, lively, busy section of urban beach. Now before we head east to complete the beach up to the marina, let's head west and build the 'natural' section of beach.

This is a lot simpler than an 'urban' beach. All you need to do is, going from the road, fill a 2-tile wide section with reed grass, occasionally placing some stone paths for access to the beach, and then place sand from there to the sea:


And that completes our beach for this tile. Let's head east, towards the marina, and learn how we can vary our seafront a little bit.

I've built this section of urban beach in exactly the same way as before, in order to maintain consistency over city tile borders (this is very important!), but when the beach ends at the western edge of the marina, I've decided to add some common seaside features (at least in England) - tennis courts, a lawn bowls club, a playground and a mini-golf course:


You could also add a putting green, a miniature railway and a funfair (those of you west of the pond would probably call it a 'carneval').

Now, let's finish off by having a look at a section of the beach in this tile, mainly the bit where I've included some surfer/windsurfer lots that I happen to have in my Plugins folder:


And that is it. I think we've done rather well there.

In Lesson 18 we're going to look at something that is much more fundamental to a town but still fun to build - facilities. Things like schools, hospitals, town halls, they'll all be there.

I'll also be there, and I hope to see you there too.
- Chris

[mike3775]

Nice beach.  Thanks for the info on the different paths and sand as well(I tend to use Pegs beaches, which are nice) but different options are always nice

[Swordmaster]

I agree, nice beach, although I think the sea is too transparent.

These and these are your walls.

Now, if you remember, where's that stone path MMP from?

Cheers
Willy

[Durfsurn]

Very busy eh? Hot there unlike England then!

[Schulmanator]

I think that turned out nicely. Makes me want to head to the shore!

[smileymk]

Hello there.

I will warn you now, the lesson coming up is a very long lesson - 30 pictures, to be precise. (Lessons 17 and 18 were 15 and 13 pictures long respectively.)
However, the lesson is very comprehensive and covers an awul lot, so it needs to be that long. Take it in slowly.

mike3775: Thanks. I'm not really aware of Peg's beaches, I'll have to have a look. As you quite rightly say, different options are always nice.

Swordmaster: Thanks. Yes, the water could perhaps be a bit more opaque. I have the Edmonton Water Mod installed but I think it's getting overridden by another file which I believe forms part of the terrain mod I use for most of my side projects but is separate from it (hence why we get the water here but not the terrain).[/font] 

And, after a quick STEX search, I found that stone path right here.

Durfsurn: Hey, you'll never get to experience a white Christmas. (Unless you come to England one late December and get lucky.) You'll probably never get to open your window and see everything covered in snow (assuming snowfall is rare in Australia). Trust me, it's something special. Don't fancy that? Well, don't worry, we do get 30-degree temperatures in England... about twice a year...
Schulmanator: Thanks. I guess it is nice to see a beach, particularly when you live about as far away from one as it's possible to get in England like I do![/font]

Now would be a good time to get that tea/coffee/energy drink/ Coke/lemonade/booze ready, and sit down ready to take in a long lesson.

(Note: By 'Coke' I mean the drink, not the illegal drug. I know all of you will probably understand what I mean anyway, but on a web forum, you can't be too careful.)

Lesson 18 - Facilities

Firstly, what do we mean by 'facilities'? For the purposes of this lesson, we mean the essential services and amenities that you would expect to have available in a town - mainly emergency services and education establishments. Things like parks and bus stops could also be considered 'facilities', but we will build these when we build our suburbs. In this lesson we will focus on police, fire, education and health.

We will start by establishing our city's police force, and, more specifically, with the police headquarters and law courts. We're going to build these in what will eventually be the CBD, right next to each other.
These should be placed so that they're easy to get to, although it's not essential. You need to place 4 buildings: a police headquarters, a car impound, and two courts - one magistrate's and one crown:


Now this will cover the entirety of the city tile. However, our city covers 4 large city tiles. So, if we want police coverage for the whole city, we need to build police stations in each of the 4 tiles. Admittedly it's not that realistic, but we have no choice.
We can help the realism out a little bit by using much smaller buildings for these susidiary police stations. Place one per tile on a main road:


I should say at this point that facility buildings are best built on flat ground, so please do a bit of preparation if you have to.
From here on in, I'm going to leave this as an implicit step, because I'm getting pretty tired of saying 'prepare the terrain' in every lesson, and you really should know how to flatten an area by now.

I'm also going to add an extra police kiosk near the stadium, in order to provide additional policing on matchdays. Again, this should go on a main road:


Now we will establish the city's fire service. This is really simple. All you need to do is to place one fire station per city tile on a main road:


The lot you use is your choice. Note that this lot will not cover the whole of the city tile, but it will cover enough of an area for you not to have to put out too many fires.
Also, note that, like the police stations, we are building more fire stations than there would be in a town of this size (i.e. 2 or 3), but again, due to the fact that coverage doesn't carry over city tile borders, we have no choice but to build more.

Now we move on to educational establishments. In this city we will establish a 3-tier education system (i.e. primary, middle and high schools), and we will supplement this with a college, a university, 2 museums, a central library and a theatre.

First, primary schools (called 'elementary schools' in the US). Begin by placing the lot, which obviously needs to go in a residential area (or what will be a residential area):


That building, in case you're wondering, is the Derek Zoolander Centre For Children Who Can't Read Good.

At the back of the school we need to provide a playground and field for the students. We do this using MMPs – specifically, an asphalt texture for the playground and a grass texture for the field. We will also place a fence around the grounds, which I'm going to use the 3RR Ploppable Fences for:


And that is one primary school built. Obviously you will need to build more than just one for a town covering 4 large city tiles like this one – we will discuss exactly how many we need a little later.

Our students are going to want a middle school to go to after leaving primary, so let's build one.
We begin by placing our lot, and creating space for a small car park:


Now we have big hills around the back of this school, where the school field should be. To make this terrain fit to build things on, we first need to smoothen it out with the Rail tool as appropriate:


When you're happy with the terrain, you can place two playgrounds and a football pitch in the area at the back of the school. Prepare the terrain first. Then connect the two playgrounds together with a path:


You can then add a fence and the grass. Now, at middle and high schools, a simple wooden fence won't cut it, as kids, by that age, are more than capable of climbing over such a thing – so we need something a little more sophisticated. Fortunately, the RMIP Airport Fences come to our aid:


To finish off, put in a little car park at the front of the school – whereas people tend to walk to primary school, the car becomes more important as you move up the educational ladder:


OK, now our residents will be educated up until they're 11 years old. But children don't leave school until age 16, at least in England. So we now need to provide a high school. Start by placing the building, which in my case is the Greyveil Secondary School:


Then place some sports pitches and hard courts at the back of the school. Precisely what sports you need to provide will depend on where you are in the world. For instance, in England you will need football pitches, and might also want to provide facilities for rugby and cricket. In the US, you will probably want a gridiron field and a baseball diamond. Here I've gone for football, rugby, basketball and hockey:


(Note: Being from England, the game I call hockey is field hockey, the game played on astroturf with the J-shaped sticks, as opposed to ice hockey, the brutal but much more entertaining (IMO) sport played on ice.)

Now you can put in the school field – and, being a high school, this needs to be big. Don't forget to surround it with a fence beforehand:


And, as with the middle school, you need to build a car park at the front. This should be a bit bigger than the middle school car park, as it's a bigger school you're building:


Now our state education system, at least up to GCSE level (or whatever the equivalent qualification is where you are), is completed. But not everyone is educated through the state system. Those who can afford it might choose to send their kids to private school. Therefore we should provide one for the more affluent residents of Troon.

Here we're building a small suburban private school, and to do this we're going to follow a similar procedure to the one we followed when we were building the middle school. We're going to place the building, a playground and a football pitch, with a fence around the establishment, in exactly the same way as we've seen already:


Now that you know how to build every type of school, I think it's a good time to discuss how frequently you should build them.
In a typical town, a good rule to follow is outlined below:

Primary schools – 1 per 1 square kilometre of residential area (= 1 small city tile)
Middle schools – 1 per 2 square kilometres of residential area
High schools – 1 per 4 square kilometres of residential area (= 1 medium city tile)
Private schools – 2 or 3 for a 64-km² town (= 4 large city tiles, like our town)

Following this rule should give you about the right number of schools for your town. Note that if you're building a village, 1 primary school is sufficient for the entire village.

The location of your schools needs to depend on coverage – you need to cover as much of your residential area as possible as efficiently as possible.

With this important point covered, it's time to move on to post-16 and higher education.

At 16, in England at least, you have 3 choices. Carry on to A-level (or IB), go to college to get some vocational qualification, or get a job. Most high schools have 6^th forms for those who choose the A-level route, so, since we've got a high school, we've got this route covered. Obviously we've got sources of employment, and will have many more as we build our commercial and industrial areas. So that leaves us with college. We have to build this.

Fortunately, it's a straightforward task. Choose an appropriate lot (I've chosen this German-inspired structure), and plop it near main roads. Then provide a car park:


Unless you're building a major city, there should only be one college in your town. You really don't need any more.

Now, many of those who do A-levels (or the local equivalent) do so in order to go to university afterwards. So let's provide for these people by building a small campus university on the edge of town.

The main set we will be using to build this is the University of Clayhurst set, together with a few other choice buildings.

Start by placing the main buildings. At a university, these will be things like the administration building, the student union, the department buildings and the sports centre:


You'll see that one of the residences has already been built. This isn't nearly enough – at my university (Warwick, if any of you want to have a look), there are no less than 12 different residences housing around 6,500 first-years and a good few postgrads. So we need more residences!

This is where the rest of the residence buildings in the University of Clayhurst come in, along with a few carefully chosen ploppable RCI lots. If you need inspiration, look at some real universities and get some buildings that are that sort of style:


The University of Clayhurst set also comes with specially-made pathways to allow us to connect up our buildings, so we'd be fools not to make use of them:


Notice that we have also provided a couple of bus stops to give a means of transport to those who live off-campus.
Now people do work at, and come to visit, the university, so we need to provide a lot of car parks for them.
Some of these will be regular flat car parks (built in the usual way), but some will be multi-storey, and for these we use the 2-level Modular Parking set that we used to build the car parks for the main railway station in the town (Lesson 6 if you don't remember):


We're almost done with our university. We just need to finish it off by filling the gaps with the Maxis Open Grass Area lot, and surround the area with MMP trees:


And that's our town's university done. Our residents now have a comprehensive education system.

But we're not done with educational buildings yet. We still have room to fit in a few extra things into our CBD. Let's start with a central library:


We can also build a couple of museums:




Notice that we have two very different looking museums, which provides a bit of variety and interest in our city.
We can also build a large theatre:


If you have a cinema lot, then you can (and should) build that as well.

Now we are done with educational buildings. It's time to move on to health buildings.

A town of Troon's size would have 1 doctor's surgery (maybe 2) and 1 large hospital. Unfortunately, in SC4, we face the same problem that we do with police stations and fire stations – coverage does not spread over city tile borders. So we have to build more lots than we really should.

The compromise that we make in this case is to build one large hospital somewhere in the city, and supplement it with a clinic in every city tile.

First, the clinics. Construct 1 clinic per city tile. Make sure that it is placed in a residential area, but is within easy reach of a main road, and then surround the building with a car park:


When you have done that, you can proceed to build the hospital.

For this, you need to choose a site that is fairly large and has direct access to main roads. You then need to flatten out an area big enough for your hospital building (which needs to be large, given that it's going to service an entire town), a walk-in centre (for which we will build another clinic), and a substantial car park:


You can then replace the single-road tiles with the appropriate buildings:


And we are done. All of our city's major facilities are complete.

Before we finish, I just want to show you how the facilities are located and distributed within our city. To do this, I've prepared a map showing the locations of all of the facilities in our town. Take it in slowly and study it hard:


I find that map quite remarkable, as it summarises everything we have covered in this lesson rather nicely. It is a fitting way to bring this lengthy lesson to a close.

I've been looking forward to doing the next lesson ever since I came up with the idea for this MD. It's the first lesson on modding.
As this is only the second project and the first time we've done any modding, we're going to start off with some simple stuff – transit-enabling lots and adding driveways to lots.

And, as promised, it will be a video lesson. This will certainly be interesting...

Now after that long lesson, I think we all need a rest. So let's take five and I'll see you in Lesson 19.

Chris

[smileymk]

Alright, time for our first video lesson!

Lesson 19 - Basic Modding - TE and Driveways

WARNING: I am no expert at modding, and I don't pretend to be for one second. For this reason, if I do something that is either incorrect or not best practice then you must say so. Remember that this whole MD is a learning experience, for me as well as for you guys, so let's learn together, and let's get things right from the start.

Now without further ado, I give you the video. You might want to turn up the volume because, being in a residence at university, I can't really talk that loudly (and I naturally talk quietly anyway):
http://www.youtube.com/v/OyIGE0nCo3s

I'll add a couple of pictures to show what you should see if you've performed the techniques outlined in the video correctly:


Notice the paths running through the lot. Let's take a look at our modded school:


That's better, isn't it? Note that you will have to demolish and rebuild the modded lots in order for the changes to take effect.

And that's it for this lesson.
What I'm going to do now is to show you what we have left to cover. If you would like any of these to be done as video lessons, please let me know.
Lesson 20 - Industry
Lesson 21 - Suburbs
Lesson 22 - Inner City and Coast
Lesson 23 - CBD
Lesson 24 - Rural Land
Lesson 25 - Basic Modding - Lots (making small improvements to lots by altering props and textures)
Lesson 26 - Detailing
Lesson 27 - Finishing Touches
Lesson 28 - Improvements

I intend to do most of these as standard text-and-pictures lessons, but again if you think a video would be better for a particular lesson then I want to hear from you.

So the next lesson will be on industrial areas.

See you then,
Chris

[CharlieLord]

Hi smileymk,
This is my first post on this page, but I've been following it for a long time and have found it very useful

My question is: What is the building you have used for your hospital in post #231 (Lesson 18 - Facilities), and where can I find it?

Thanks

[mike3775]

Nice updates Smileymk.

One suggestion though, for the University, I would add a stadium or two for sporting events as well, because most major universities in the US are big into football or Basketball(indoor game), so there usually a separate building for those events along with a parking lot for them.

[smileymk]

Hello.

CharlieLord: Firstly, welcome to SC4D! Secondly, thanks for the kind words. As long as people are finding this tutorial useful, I'll keep on doing it. And thirdly, that hospital is the BSC Mercy General lot. I daresay it's a must-have download, given that it looks exactly like a city hospital.

mike3775: Yes, you would want to add a stadium or two if you were building a US university, such is the popularity of college and high school sport stateside. However, things are very different in the UK. The only university sporting event that gets any media attention at all here is the annual Boat Race in London between Oxford and Cambridge. Therefore building a sports stadium for a UK university would not be appropriate. However, UK universities do take their sport very seriously and usually have a lot of sports pitches on campus, so I'll probably add those in the Improvements lesson. Thanks for the suggestion.

And now it's time to supply our city with some industry.

Lesson 20 - Industry

Industrial areas are, without doubt, a fundamental part of any city. In the game they form the main source of employment for the city's residents. In real life they are an important job source (together with commerce) but also help establish an economy for the city and can also give a city a particular identity - Nottingham, England is a fine example of an industrial city.
So let's make one. The first rule of an industrial area is that it needs to be built as an estate. In other words, rather than plopping factories all over the place, you need to dedicate areas of the city that consist solely of industrial buildings.

If you've been following my MD throughout then you'll have pre-planned the locations of your industrial estates. Assuming this is the case, you can begin to fill your estate with streets. Start by creating a network of 'main' streets that cover your industrial estate and link to main roads:


You then need to fill in the gaps with dead-end streets, which need to be placed such that there is a space of 4-8 tiles between each parallel street. Then provide the estates's water supply, laying the pipes along the streets:


It's important that you keep your streets relatively straight, free from sharp kinks and turns. Remember that these streets are going to be heavily used by lorries, which don't go well with tight turns.
You then need to place bus stops on your main streets in enough places so as to provide ample coverage for the estate:


Now it's time to start zoning. If you remember the lesson from Project 1 on industry, you may remember the idea of 'parcelised' zoning. This is where you hold the CTRL key whilst zoning in order to get a plot that is exactly the size you want. The technique is useful for getting skyscrapers to grow in CBDs, and is invaluable when zoning industrial estates. Maxis doesn't do plot sizes for industry by default, so if you don't 'parcelise', you get that horrible random mess of lots you're all familiar with.
So make sure you avoid that by dragging out plots of between 2x2 and 4x4 tiles using the CTRL key:


(Don't worry too much about the power lines, it's just a temporary connection.)

Now this next part is optional, but I like to do it because I think it helps things on the aesthetic front. Zone 2-tile deep low-density commercial plots along the main roads bordering the industrial estate. This will effectively 'isolate' the industrial estate from the rest of the city, which, to my mind, improves the look of the city in an aesthetic sense. Feel free to disagree with me on this one however:


The next task is to provide eyecandy paths in between streets. These will provide useful shortcuts to allow your Sims to walk through your industrial estate quicker.
It's useful when building these to first smoothen the terrain with the Rail tool, and then place the path pieces:


(I'm afraid I don't remember what paths these are - any links would be appreciated.)

And now your industrial estate has everything it needs. Finish off the look by filling in all the gaps with your favourite grass MMP and surround the industrial estate with MMP trees:


Again this has more to do with improving the look of the estate rather than the realism, but hey, I like my cities to look nice as well as being realistic.

Now obviously our estate hasn't yet developed to anywhere near its full potential because we don't have the residents in town yet to fill the jobs. So, in order to show you what you're aiming for in an industrial estate, I'm going to show you a completed industrial estate from one of my side projects:


Looks good, right? And it's very easy to achieve, so long as you follow all the steps correctly.

And that is that for this lesson. The next topic on the list is one of my favourites - suburbs.

See you next time,
Chris

[sunv123]

Great job on this update! Though you could have used some industrial fillers like these in the links, grass is still fairly well.

http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/12277-industrial-filler-lots/
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1487
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/11315-simple-empty-tiles/

Exited about the suburbs, my favorite.

[mike3775]

Looking good Smiley.  Also I do that with Commercial as well, as it not only adds a sightline buffer from residences and industrial, but also a pollution buffer as well.

[smileymk]

Hello.

sunv123: Thanks for the suggestions. The fillers will be useful and I might include them in the Finishing Touches lesson.

mike3775: I never thought of the pollution advantages, I do it for reasons of aesthetics and realism. I daresay you've convinced me even more to stick with that method of zoning commercial along main roads.
And now we are ready to go, so let's not waste any more time.

Lesson 21 - Suburbs

The creation of a city's suburbs, especially European-style suburbs like what we will be creating in this lesson, is one of the most rewarding and enjoyable tasks in the game in my opinion. It allows one's creativity and aesthetic taste to reach its full potential, and, if done properly, can produce some stunning results.

So let's begin. Create a network of main streets that run through your suburb and connect all parts of it to the main roads surrounding it. I recommend basing your street network aroud the facilities you've built already:


Notice that there is some curvature in the streets, and that there is a mix of roundabouts and flat junctions where they intersect. This is very important - it is this variety that will give your suburb an individuality that will make it stand out. Oh, and use of SAM asphalt textures is mandatory!

Now, our suburb extends beyond the boundaries of this city tile and goes on to the main roads in the neighbouring tiles. So we need to extend the streets beyond the city tile boundaries. But we can't just drag the neighbour connections directly, since street connections are not part of the game. It's also not realistic to convert to a road for 100 yards to make the connection. Therefore we need the following workaround:

First build a road connection in the correct place. Make sure there are only 2 tiles of road poking in to the city tile:[/font]
[/font]
Secondly, plop the Curved Rail under Straight Road puzzle piece (found in the Underground Rail menu) over these 2 tiles of road. Make sure the cursor is on the first tile when you place the piece, otherwise the next step will go wrong:[/font]


Now demolish the second tile (and ONLY the second tile) of the puzzle piece. If all goes well you should be left with only the connection arrow:[/i]

Now place a SAM-7 starter piece, with the cursor over the second tile and the piece extending to the first tile:[/font]


Now you can demolish the second tile (the white one):


Finish off by dragging from the first tile to complete the connection:


And there you have a fully functional street neighbour connection. (Try it if you don't believe me.) This technique can be used to build neighbour connections with almost any network - which brings us to diagonal connections.

It's just like orthogonal connections until you come to plopping the 'anchor' piece (the piece that connects the network to the edge of the city tile, e.g. the SAM-7 starter piece that we used to build the orthogonal connection). For diagonals we have to use a different anchor piece - and in this case it's the construction piece for diagonal streets that should be somewhere in your Roads menu:

After placing the piece it's just a matter of bulldozing the construction lot and you're done:[/i]

Once you've built all of your neighbour connections you can proceed to build the side streets. These should, generally speaking, be dead-end streets, and should be no closer than 2 tiles apart, but beyond that, this is where your creativity has its opportunity to shine. You should create a seemingly random pattern of streets within your suburb - how you do that is entirely up to you.

Here are a couple of ideas. This area sees the use of roundabouts, fan-like layouts, forks in the roads, a mix of straight and diagonal streets, and (because I'm a maths student) the design of a few streets to look like certain important numbers in mathematics (there are 3 in this picture - can you spot them?):[/i]

This next idea is a gem. I take no credit for it, it's an unashamed rip-off of a layout posted by mattb325 in the 'Show us Your Suburbs' thread. But I think it's worth sharing.

If you have the Rural Roads Plugin (an add-on component to the NAM) then you can use the wide SAM curves that come with it to produce something quite unique:[/i]

When you're done, you should have an interesting and unique street layout for your suburb:


You'll notice that we've left some gaps. In these, we're going to build some large parks for the benefit of our residents. One of these includes a football pitch:


In the north of the suburb we're simply going to use MMP grass to create an open field:


Notice how both of these parks are bordered by MMP trees, purely for aesthetic purposes. (It's also pretty realistic!)

Now bring public transport to this suburb with the addition of bus stops on the main streets:[/i]

And now you can start zoning. We will start by zoning commercial zones along the main roads, like we did for the industrial zones:


This is the eastern edge of the suburb. It's away from the city centre, so low density is appropriate here. The southern edge faces our city centre, so it does us no harm to use medium density zoning in this case:


That's not the only commercial we're going to have in our suburb. You can also zone some low-density commercial around your high schools:


Commercial zones can also be placed around health centres:


In addition, we're going to zone a local centre - a small area of low-density commercial where convienience stores, post offices and perhaps a chip shop will serve our suburb:


Before we zone the residential, let's build a few eyecandy paths to connect some side streets in our suburb, and some small playgrounds along them:


Now we can zone the residential, and to this end we need to zone 1x1 plots of low-density residential along every single one of our streets in the suburb:


Once this is done, fill in the gaps in between the zones with MMP trees:


Completing the suburb is just a question of keeping this going. Once done, you should end up with a nice-looking, imaginative, pleasing suburb:


And that is that.

In the next lesson we will construct the inner city and the coastal area - the buildings along the seafront.

See you then,Chris

[cmdp123789]

It looks really good... a nice tutorial for making realistic suburbs... the result is remarkable