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Realistic Cities For Dummies

Started by smileymk, November 29, 2010, 09:14:46 AM

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trabman11

#380
Hello Chris,

   I've been following your MD for several weeks now and I really appreciate the work you've done for people like me (in other words, helping design an effective layout and design and with cosmetic advice, plugins organization advice, and etc.). I thank you.  &apls ()flower()

I have a question to ask  however, and the issue has driven me crazy (looking for it that is  &dance).
Where can I find the tram to subway transition in this picture?



I appreciate any help and wish you happy journaling. :thumbsup:

RISE UP AND FIGHT WITH SUPER BUNNY AND BOB!!!
  (\_/)           ☻/       /  \       
\(='.'=)/        /▌        |☢|       
(")_(")         / \       //||\\
*whispers* ...For what I don't know...I think they are anti-Google+ anarchists  ???

cmdp123789

Oh... so you are looking for the ramps huh? What if I told you I know where to get them? How much will you be willing to sacrifice for that BIG secret?

LOL just kidding... Here... http://www.toutsimcities.com/downloads/view/1422

Hope that calms your spirit!  :D

compdude787

This is a really nice MD! I've been reading through the whole thing over the course of several days and just finished reading it. I just got back into Sim City 4 after having stopped playing for several years due to my inability to make money in my cities and just general lack of interest. This time, I figured out how to make money and discovered the amount of mods/ custom content you can add to enhance this 11-year old game. Mods are so awesome!

Anyway, I know you weren't originally planning on putting a freeway interchange to serve the industrial area, but I think you should. I say this because currently the only other way for Sims to drive across the river is via that road bridge, and that will get crowded pretty quick. Plus, they currently have to go way out of their way to get to that bridge, so an interchange would allow them to use the freeway for a quicker, more direct way to get to work. What do you think?
Check out my MD, United States of Simerica!
Last updated: March 5, 2017

My YouTube Channel

smileymk

Hey guys.

Schulmanator: Thank you!

Gugu3: Thanks. That look is what I was aiming for, on top of making the area look like it's been around since the Industrial Revolution era.

r4ndi and kassarc16 (I'm replying to your comments as one because you commented on the same thing): That is indeed the 'transparent base bug'. For those who don't know, this is a graphical glitch causing transparent base textures to turn into the 'out of city' texture when a data view is activated or the city is saved. There is, as far as I'm aware, nothing that can be done about this, sadly, save of course for not using transparent textures - but where's the realism in that?

thebagelboy: You, sir, are a legend. I wasn't previously aware of those lots, and have rebuilt that coastline in this lesson using them, as you will see. That link is very much appreiated, so thank you.

mgb204: You're welcome. I'm pleased to hear you're putting the techniques outlined here into practice. Your findings about the wealth-dependent pavements are also useful, and I obtained the same results when I tried it myself. I'm sure that will come in useful at some point, so thank you.

benedict: Thank you. It was an honour to hold that number one spot, and I hope to hold it many more times. As for the rail network, well, wait 'til you see what happens when we apply the RRW, RUM, signalling and some other changes to the network in this lesson. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

mungojerry311: Welcome to SC4D! To answer your question, yes, you can use SC4 Terraformer to recreate the Project 1 region if you like. I terraformed that region by hand because I wanted to demonstrate how to use the God Mode terrain tools, and because it was a small region. (Also, I didn't have SC4 Terraformer at the time.) However, be aware that SC4 Terraformer does not eliminate the need to put a lot of time and effort into your terraforming to get good results, so you'll still be spending plenty of time on that river.

trabman11 and cmdp123789: I spent quite a while trying to find that transition without success - mainly because I didn't think to look on ToutSimCities. My thanks go to you, cmdp123789, for providing the link, and also to you, trabman11, for your very kind words.

compdude787: Thank you. It's good to hear you're getting into SC4 again. To answer your question, I have considered building a junction at the location you suggested, but have decided against it on the grounds that there isn't any room for it. If you look at the pictures, you'll see that the motorway is squeezed in between an oil refinery, part of an old industrial estate, a railway line, and the coast, and so there is no practical way of fitting a realistic junction into that space. There isn't any space to build the ramps on the delta to the east either. If traffic gets too bad, we will extend the underground line that runs through the port/southern industrial area to join up with the GLR line serving the airport on the other side of the delta, which should solve the problem.

My word, that was a lot of comments. Thanks once again for your continued fantastic support. It's now time for Lesson 15:

Lesson 15 - Upgrades and Improvements

Those of you who have been following this MD since Project 2 or earlier will have read the last lesson of Project 2, and so will understand the importance of continually trying to find ways to improve your SC4 creations. Improvements can be inspired by the release of new mods, the discovery of new techniques, or by simple observation of your city.
In this case, I decided to make this lesson an improvement lesson as a result of NAM 32's release, and, as part of it, the Real Railway Mod, so let's start with improving Mapleford's railways.
The most prevalent task is to convert the network to the new standards provided by the RRW. Puzzle pieces are automatically converted:




However, this automatic conversion does not extend to dragged sections of line:


These sections of line must be converted manually by redragging the network:


Be sure to convert every bit of line you can, especially short sections of dragged line around puzzle pieces. That said, there are some situations which can't be converted yet, like diagonal rail under Project Symphony motorway:


The simple reason for this is that this crossing is not supported by the RRW, so we'll just have to leave this as is for the time being.

Crossings with SAM streets, which we have around the port area, are not supported either:


However, crossings with roads do work, and so we can get around this problem simply by converting the stretch of street crossing the railway line into road:


In this case, I also had to re-transit-enable the dock so that a road could be run into the entrance rather than a street.

The street-road conversion must also be done for diagonal crossings:


Having improved the track itself, we can turn our attention to lineside details - in particular, signalling.
With the recent release of droric's signals, we have the tools at our disposal to create at least a basic signalling presence on our railways, and so should not neglect this vital part of the railway.
Now, railway signalling in real life is a horribly complex business, and practices vary from country to country and even differ between different types of line - high speed lines typically use different signalling systems to regular lines. Therefore we cannot possibly expect to create anything like an accurate system with only a few basic structures. However, with carefully considered placement of lots, we can at least create a visually believable system.

But first, let's go right down to the bare bones and place our first signal. We're going to place it on a line which is about to converge with another line at a set of points, which, as we will see in an upcoming discussion, is generally a good place to put a signal:


This would be fine if I was using RHD here (aside from the fact that the signal would have to be on the other side of the track). But, being a proud Englishman, I'm using LHD, and so this signal is facing the wrong way round! This needs to be fixed.
Now, if you're an RHD user, the signals as provided are correctly orientated, so you can skip this next bit. I'll tell you when to resume reading.

Unfortunately, the position of the signal prop in the lot prevents us from simply rotating the signal in Lot Editor so that it overhangs on to the side of the line like you see above. So we are left with two options:
1) Make an MMP of the signal model, so that it can be placed exactly where we want it in the correct orientation.
2) Move the signal prop in Lot Editor so that it is on the rail tile itself, and transit-enable the lot in SC4 Tool to allow trains to pass.

1) is what I would do in one of my side projects, and is the most preferable option as it allows us to place the signal exactly where we want it. However, making MMPs is difficult - it requires the use of ilive's Reader, and so falls under the scope of advanced modding for the purposes of this MD - and hence is reserved for Project 4.
So for now, we will go with option 2) - make the signal into a TE lot. This is nothing we haven't done before, and you should be able to produce something like this:


That's much better - the signal is oriented correctly for LHD operation.

RHD users, please continue reading from here.

Now that we know how to place a correctly oriented signal, it's time to place down a few more. To do this believably, we need to understand a little bit about real-life signal placement. There are two main principles that we need to be aware of in order to place signals realistically:

The first principle is that railway signals are not like road traffic lights. They are not solely placed at junctions to prevent conflicting movements causing collisions. Instead, railways use block signalling - the signals divide the track into block sections, and operate such that no more than one train is in any one block section at any one time. This means that, unlike on roads, we need to have signals even on plain track so as to create enough blocks to operate enough trains efficiently. We also do not need signals at every entrance to a junction like we would on a road - only on the converging lines (i.e. lines that join with other lines, as opposed to lines which split into multiple lines).

The second principle governs the siting of signals - they need to be placed so that they can clearly be seen from a long distance, as far as possible. That means that placing signals after sharp curves or behind buildings is to be avoided, whereas long straights are ideal places to place signals.

Having covered a good few lines of hard theory, let's see a couple of examples, starting with the signalling of a junction near the port - the signals are circled in red:


Note that the signals are only placed next to tracks which are about to run into other tracks, and not necessarily next to tracks which are about to split. In particular, on a junction like this, these signals would cover all possible movements of trains using a series of lights called 'feathers', at least in the UK. We don't have feather signals available to us in SC4 though, so we'll just have to pretend that the basic signals have the feathers.
Notice also that there is a signal gantry placed over the exit from the marshalling yard as part of that lot, so we are taking advantage of that and using that gantry as our signal for that entrance to the junction, negating the need to place another one.

This next example shows how to place signals to ensure good visibility. Notice that there are no curves near the signals, and equally importantly, that the signals are placed before bridges rather than after them. This is to stop the bridges from blocking the drivers' view of the signals:


In addition, notice that on this electrified stretch of line, we place signals immediately before catenary masts. This, like with the bridges, is to stop the masts from obscuring the signals.

Another factor to consider when deciding to place signals is that of spacing. A very easy mistake to make is to place too many signals because it may look like there aren't enough. But in real life, signals may be anywhere between 0.5 - 1 mile apart on plain track. That's enough to create enough block sections for efficient operation.
This means that, on plain track, there should be between 50 and 100 tiles in between signals, in each direction. The exact distance can and should vary, because easy visibility is a much more important consideration than spacing when choosing signal sites.
Let's have an example. The red circles below show where I've put the signals for the westbound freight line going over the delta into the port area:


You can see how there are only four signals present on a 2 mile stretch of line, and how far apart they are. This might seem like surprisingly few, but really, four signals for this bit of line is plenty.

That's not all we can do to improve our railways. The Rail Upgrade Mod was released whilst I was creating the content for this lesson, meaning that, as well as RRW/FLUP crossings being supported, we have some nice new base textures for our rail lines. One of the available choices is the moss texture, which I quite like, so I've decided to make use of it:


It's quite a subtle effect, and you have to pay attention to notice it, but it does look good.

Another thing the RUM provides is some nice new viaducts for us to choose from. The style you go for is ultimately down to personal preference, but I've decided to use the dirty brick version, which gives the viaducts a dirty brown brick apperance that is very much representative of real railway viaducts I've seen, and fits right in to our industrial area:


The new viaduct style comes into its own at the bridge end of the industry, where the aracde we built to take the catenary masts blends in perfectly with the new viaducts:


That's a massive improvement over what we had before, both in that last image and in general.

The railways have now been improved to our satisfaction, so let's move on to other things.

You may remember that in the last lesson, due to the lack of suitable lots in my Plugins folder, we were forced to create this concrete industrial coastline:


However, thanks to thebagleboy, I now have diagonal extensions of the NBVC riprap seawall we used for the orthogonal seawall sections, so we can get rid of that lousy-looking MMP coastline and replace it with something much more refined.
Placing the diagonal seawalls is very similar to placing the orthogonal ones. First comes terrain flattening:


Once that's done, it's time to place the seawall lots. The following picture illustrates the pieces needed for diagonal sections:


Note that there is no inner corner piece - we go straight from the diagonal to the straight/outer corner piece.

After the seawalls are built, we need to push inland any bits of land protruding beyond the seawalls - a couple of examples of which can be seen above. The technique for doing this was covered in the last lesson - as before, do it slowly and carefully, finishing one section before moving on to the next one.
Once this cleaning up of the coastline is completed, you should have a nice diagonal extension of the existing seawall:


Now, we have a fair bit of usable space in between the road and the seawall, so what should we do with it? Well, we're in an industrial area, so putting in a few extra factories won't hurt:


Again, this is a massive improvement on what was there previously. Let's move on and look at a couple more improvements, starting with the fences I've added to the elevated railway line:


This was included in the previous NAM, but I didn't use it. However, having seen the fences and base texture used elsewhere to great effect, I used the new NAM as an excuse to install them, and I have to say the elevated rail looks much better as a result.

Another improvement we can make concerns our car parks. You may remember using SAM-1 streets to construct car parks for the business park offices. Well, we can make them look a lot more like car parks now, thanks to this recently released texture override:


That looks much more like a car park. Let's move on and turn our attention to this:


This junction was built using the old avenue roundabout, which wasn't really designed to have roads running into it - at least, not in the way you see here.
Fortunately, the new NAM has provided us with Avenue/ARD-3 roundabouts to help us improve the appearance of this junction.
But 'hang on', I hear you cry, 'that's a road, not an ARD-3'. Well, we can get around that with ease. Let's start by demolishing the existing arrangement. You'll need to demolish an extra bit of road on one side as well to make way for an S-curve:


To get that avenue stub to stick out of the motorway like it does, you'll need to drag avenue out from the motorway, and then back to the tile after the motorway ends, all without letting go of the mouse.
Right, now we can place the roundabout. The piece we want is called the Four-way Avenue x ARD-3 Full Roundabout, and is found in the Avenue Intersections tab ring in the Roads menu:


Be careful not to confuse this with the turbo roundabout, which appears just before the full roundabout in the tab ring. If the three-way version of the roundabout appears, simply press the End key repeatedly until the 4-way version appears.

The next stage is to connect the roads to the roundabout. We can't simply drag them into place because the roundabout is a puzzle piece. Instead, we make the connections using TuLEPs:


Don't forget to drag out that S-curve to connect the roundabout with the road to the right.
This new roundabout offers two main advantages over the old one. The first is that the new roundabout isn't a workaround, so it doesn't look like one. The second is that the TuLEP connection system allows us to add turn lanes onto the road before the roundabout, massively improving realism.

However, the above picture reveals a major problem plaguing our transport networks. If you look to the left of the roundabout, you'll see that there are trees on the road!
Clearly this is an issue we need to fix. Let's start by getting rid of the offending trees:


We want to replace the trees, but in such a way that they don't encroach onto the road.
The technique we're going to use is to place a thin layer of MMP grass along the side of the road to create a buffer between road and nature, and then place trees beyond the grass:


That's better. Note that we've not placed any trees in between the road and the car park. This is because there is only one tile of space between the two pieces of tarmac, which is not enough space to stop the MMPs spawning onto the tarmac.
Also, these are seasonal trees, so remember that they must be planted on the first of September in game time.

We can also apply this technique to trim back trees from other networks:






Generally speaking, for roads, we just need the tree stump to be off the tarmac. It doesn't matter if some of the branches overhang. However, it does matter for rail and GLR, so you'll need to keep trees further away from these networks.

Now, whilst we're improving our transport networks, why not add some road signs?


We've covered road signs before, so I won't go into too much detail on them. Just make sure you use the right signs in the right places for the area you're setting your city in.

To finish off this lesson, let's deal with some abandoned buildings that have crept up:


First we need to check that this wasn't due to low demand. In this case, it was a result of water shortages that arose as Mapleford was expanding - shortages which have since been fixed. Hence we can simply bulldoze and replace these buildings:


If buildings do abandon due to lack of demand, then you'll need to either reconsider your land use, or just zone a plot in place of the abandoned building, so that it regrows once demand picks up.

Anyway, that's it for this lesson. Next time we'll be filling in a small corner of inner city to the north of the industrial area, to take advantage of substantial residential demand.

See you then,
Chris

Realistic Cities for Dummies
Step-by-step tutorials on every single aspect of realistic city-building.


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benedict

Click on the banner to celebrate!

smileymk

Hey guys.

benedict: Thanks.

And now, let us delve into the world of inner cities.

Lesson 16 - Inner City

In this relatively short lesson, we'll be constructing the inner city area in between the industry we've already built, and the river to the north.

Now before we build anything, I should point out that it's useful, although not essential, to leave this kind of development until you have an established residential population in the city tile you're working on - about 10,000 Sims should do it. By doing this, you'll be able to grow buildings of the right density for an inner city straight off the bat, instead of having to wait ages for your growth stage to rise.
At the time of starting the content for this lesson, Mapleford's population was around 21,000 - making this a good time to start the inner city development.

So let's do it. We'll start with some facilities - a small school and surgery. These need to be built with compactness in mind - this is an inner city, so we don't have room to build large, expansive schools like we'd build in a suburb. Instead, we have to squeeze everything in so that the facilities take up as little space as possible, whilst remembering to include all the essential extras like car parks and perimeter fences:


With the facilities built, it's time to consider the street layout. I think that the easiest way for me to explain how to do this is to show you the zoning technique we're going to use for this part of town, as the basic principle for laying out the inner city streets follows on from there:


This looks like the technique we used to zone our suburbs - and it is. The only difference is that the zoning should be medium density to get the denser development we're after.
The idea is the same as with the suburbs - when these initial alternate plots develop, we fill in the gaps to complete the zoning.

You can also see that we're generally zoning houses back-to-back, with 2 tiles of housing in between streets. This, along with the medium density zoning, will really emphasise that 'squeezed-in' look that is an identifying feature of any inner city.
It also makes our strategy for laying out streets clear. We want to lay out relatively straight through streets that facilitate this back-to-back zoning, leaving no empty spaces, except for some short straight 1-tile wide corridors which will become alleys - the locations of which need to be decided by you before you zone:


Note that we can vary the directions of our streets to break the grid and create a little bit of interest, as well as adding small side streets where necessary to access areas which aren't covered by our initial street layout.
In addition, note that we've zoned 1x1 medium density commercial plots along the main road, which can be extended to 2x1 where necessary to fill in any unused space.

Zoning along diagonal streets needs to be done carefully, because we don't have diagonal inner city houses available to us, and so to obtain a consistent appearance, we need to zone along diagonal streets such that the houses face the fronts of the houses on the other side of the street. This means that all of the plots on a diagonal section of street should either face horizontally or vertically - there should not be a mix of orientations:


Note also that, because this particular street is immediately above the industrial estate, I've left some space between the industry and the inner city plots for us to put some trees in, to act as a visual separation between the two estates.

After filling in the zoning and providing water, you should begin to see some development:


What you see in the middle of the above picture is the kind of development we're looking for. The houses are tightly packed back-to-back, and are a little taller than suburban houses but not a lot taller. This is exactly what you'd find in a typical inner city, and hence we've created the effect we want.
Now, by the way, is a good time to put in bus stops. Remember that residential development can't face transit-enabled lots, so a good strategy is to place bus stops next to alley entrances. However, as always, think about the routes you want your buses to take when placing stops.

However, we need to keep a sharp eye on what's being developed. Buildings like these 3x2-tile structures are not suitable and should be demolished:


The reason for deleting these is that they are too big, and don't fit in at all with the wall-to-wall effect we're trying to create.

With our inner city coming along nicely, it's time to fill in the area around the power lines with MMP grass, as well as fill in the concrete area where the power lines cross the railway, and put in the trees in between the inner city and industrial estate:


Remember to add pavements to the street tiles where the power lines cross as well, using the technique outlined in Lesson 14 - they won't appear otherwise. Also remember the grass barrier in between road and trees - this was covered in Lesson 15, and will prevent any trees from spawning on the road.

Now, I've mentioned alleys a couple of times already this lesson - it's time to build them.

Narrow, poorly-maintained alleyways, filled with weeds and short grass, are an integral feature of any inner city, even if they're not the nicest of places to be.
We'll build our alleys with MMPs, starting with a narrow path lined with short grass:


To complete the look, add some weeds along the side of the path:


That's fine when our alleys end on orthogonal streets But what about diagonal streets? If we were to continue the alleyway straight into a diagonal street, we'd have weeds sandwiched in between the pavement and the alley path. Not a good look.
The solution is to fill the tile before the alley hits the diagonal street with paving. Any concrete MMP texture or lot will do - but for a consistent look, try to choose your tool so that it matches the pavement texture as best you can:


You can see how bad it would look if we had pavement parallel to that alley. Using the paving tile technique makes for a much better-looking result.

With all the alleys built, our first inner-city area is more or less complete:


So now it's time to move to the area above that which we've just developed, in between our existing development and the road bridge.
Our first task is to deal with the coastline. The simplest realistic way to do so is to simply extend the seawall. So before we build anything, we're going to have to do some terrain preparation, flattening the coastline with single road tiles and smoothing out steep areas with rail:


We can now demolish all this and construct the seawall - use the right diagonal overlap lot to get the seawall under the road bridge.
Now the inner city in between the seawall and the main road can be built in the same way as we built the area across the road:


An important thing to bear in mind when zoning inner-city development along a coastline is that there should be a street in between the seawall and any houses, as far as possible, like you see above. This applies to CBDs as well, and will further the realism of your work. Note that this is the opposite of what we do in a suburb, where we have the houses in between the shoreline and the street.
Note that we've also put road signs along the main road, remembering what we covered in Lesson 15.

Now that we've done that, it should be a simple enough task to fill in the area above this new estate, to the north-west of the road bridge, with some more inner-city development, using the techniques we've covered above, to complete the inner city in this tile:


And that's it. That's a very satisfying bit of development if I say so myself.

Next time, we'll be doing the modern industrial estate above this inner city, on the other side of the river.

See you then,
Chris

Realistic Cities for Dummies
Step-by-step tutorials on every single aspect of realistic city-building.


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Schulmanator

I think it turned out quite nicely, if I do say so myself!  &apls
See the all-new National Capital Region!:http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=15118.0

kelis

#387
wow, you got an incredible talent to create cities, maybe there is not a lot of small details, but anyway everything looks realistics and the result is really good, congratulations !!

# Jonathan.
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                                                                                     || Benelux Team || Windows on the World || My Photos on Flickr || Kelis BNL Projects ||

Gugu3


art128

I like the inner city with the Mattb325's Sydney houses.
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

smileymk

Hello everyone.

Schulmanator: Thank you! I agree entirely.

kelis: Thank you. I'd like to think the standard of my work is quite high but I'd put that more down to a few hard years of experience, observation and practice rather than pure talent - after all, talent in any field means nothing unless you're prepared to put the time in to harness it.
As for the small details, I take detailing of my cities very seriously, and emphasise the importance of doing so in my lessons. Therefore I will look for ways to add more small details in future lessons.

Gugu3: Thanks! It's always nice to hear from a regular here.

art128: Thanks. I like it too, those houses are of the perfect size and style for creating a proper inner city look.

Now, let us finish the urban development of the first tile of Mapleford:

Lesson 17 - Modern Industry

This is a very short lesson in which we'll be filling in the modern hi-tech/manufacturing industrial area we have planned to build across the river from our inner city.
The lesson will mostly consist of applications of techniques covered in earlier lessons, so, as always, I recommend making sure you're well-drilled in everything we've covered so far in this project before proceeding.

Assuming you're up to speed, let's get started. We begin with the street layout and zoning. This works just like any other industrial area - we should have mostly through streets with no kinks.
To get the hi-tech development we're after, we need to zone high density industrial plots that are 3x3 tiles or larger in size, although you can zone the odd smaller plot to fill up unused space. The parcelised zoning technique you should all be familiar with by now applies as much to modern industry as it does to more traditional industry, so don't forget that either:


Now it's time to add the fillers. Being a more modern industrial area, the brick wall and concrete fillers we used to make the older industrial area by the port will look out of place here, so we're going to have to use alternatives - namely the IRM hi-tech industrial fillers and car parks:


Here you can see the latest improvement we've made to our car parks. Using these overhanging car parks and connecting them to the grey version of the car parks we've been using previously (using T, 4-way junction or corner lots as appropriate), we can seamlessly add diagonals into our car parks, and extend them right up to the pavements of diagonal streets. This obviously has a massive positive effect on the realism of our work.

Now you may have noticed that some of the tiles in this modern industrial area currently remain empty.
These are the awkward corners of this particular industrial estate. We had them in the dirty industrial estate too, and we filled them with concrete or weeds.
Both of these options, however, would look out of place in the high-tech estate we're currently building, so instead, we're going to use grass fillers, as well as adding bus stops - all examples of both in our estate are circled in red below:


The grass fillers give a clean look to the industrial estate, which is what we're looking for.
You can also see some of the plots have developed, which means that, as usual, you need to keep a sharp eye on what's growing in your city. Here, all of the lots that have grown are appropriate to the modern industrial area we're trying to create. However, it is possible for the game to grow an obviously dirty and/or brick factory, such as the Breadline Bakery lot. These need to be removed as soon as you spot them.

With that, this part of town is complete in terms of development. Let's move on and fill in the northwest corner of the city tile with more of the same. This is just an application of what we've done so far, and is a useful exercise to practice the techniques involved:


That's the development done - now it's time to detail the surrounding landscape and riverbank. To detail the riverbank, we're going to extend the MMP rye grass and cattail riverbank we created in Lesson 11. At the same time, we're going to fill in the land under the power lines with MMP grass, like we did in the suburbs, as well as replacing any grass that was destroyed during the development of our modern industrial estate, and adding pavements to the roads where they're missing, as far as possible:


Beautiful. With that, the urban development of this city tile is complete, so let's zoom out and have a look at what we've achieved:




That's it for the lesson, but before I leave you, it's time to make an important decision.

Since all we have left to do on the city tile we've been working on so far is to detail the delta with MMPs, the next lesson, in which we will do that detailing, will be the last in this city tile, because after Lesson 18, we will have completed it.
So we will have to move on and do another city tile from Lesson 19 onwards. This is where you come in. Since it makes logical sense to continue the project by filling in a neighbouring city tile to the one we've been doing, there are 3 candidates for the next tile to be developed:


The city tile we've been working on so far is circled in red. The tiles labelled A, B and C are the candidates.

Tile A will be a continuation of the suburbs and modern industry we've built in the current city tile, but will also feature a ruined castle and extensive MMP detailing of the undeveloped hills north of the castle.

Tile B will feature the city centre and all of the landmarks within it, as well as extensive inner city, suburban, heavy industrial and transport infrastructure development.

Tile C will be a tile of two halves. North of the river, we'll be continuing our heavy port industry, filling in around the port we've already built. South of the river, however, we'll be constructing high-wealth suburbs featuring very fancy and expensive housing, as well as a stately mansion which will form the main landmark of this city tile.

I need you guys to decide which one of these tiles we should develop next. Please post your views as part of your comments, and the tile that gets the most backing by the time I publish Lesson 18 will be the one we do from Lesson 19 onwards.

Bear in mind when casting your vote that we will have to develop all of these tiles at some point to finish the project, so there's no point in not voting for a particular tile for the purpose of avoiding covering it, because we'll just have to go and do it later.

So with that, Lesson 18 will involve detailing the delta in the city tile we've been working on thus far, and will complete our work in that city tile.

See you next time,
Chris

Realistic Cities for Dummies
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thebagleboy

Well firstly I should mention that 3 additions in 2 weeks must've kept you pretty busy. Good work with everything so far.  This addition turned out nicely as well. &apls
As for my views on which tile to work on from 19 onwards, I'd have to put down a vote for the northern tile (A). I love seeing suburbs. ()stsfd()

Gugu3


trabman11

Quote from: cmdp123789 on March 01, 2014, 02:21:49 PM
Oh... so you are looking for the ramps huh? What if I told you I know where to get them? How much will you be willing to sacrifice for that BIG secret?

LOL just kidding... Here... http://www.toutsimcities.com/downloads/view/1422

Hope that calms your spirit!  :D


This is a bit late (me replying to you), but thank you.  ;D
RISE UP AND FIGHT WITH SUPER BUNNY AND BOB!!!
  (\_/)           ☻/       /  \       
\(='.'=)/        /▌        |☢|       
(")_(")         / \       //||\\
*whispers* ...For what I don't know...I think they are anti-Google+ anarchists  ???

trabman11

Great work! You have +1 reputation in my book, (though, I can't give you any, you can have the knoweldge that people appreciate what you do.)  &dance
RISE UP AND FIGHT WITH SUPER BUNNY AND BOB!!!
  (\_/)           ☻/       /  \       
\(='.'=)/        /▌        |☢|       
(")_(")         / \       //||\\
*whispers* ...For what I don't know...I think they are anti-Google+ anarchists  ???

veger

Still reading your tutorials, they are very nice!

My vote is for tile B: city centre and transport infrastructure!

compdude787

I'd also vote for you to work on tile B next since I'd be quite interested in seeing you build a downtown area. Anyway, great work so far; I'm looking forward to seeing what you have in store in the future.

And regarding the lack of a freeway interchange on the west side of the river, I understand that you have no room for it unless you completely reconfigured the oil refinery. I would have put one there if I were you, but then again, this is your city design, and we can all do things differently.
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Wodong

I'll cast my vote for 'B'.

Really like the progress so far, by the way.

yochananmichael

Nice work as always Chris. I vote for tile B.
Greywolf (John Michael)
If you can't run with the pack don't run at all

kelis

You did it again ! I'm very impressed about how you've managed the delta of that river to create all those bridges connecting that industrial zone with the airport and the result is just magnificent, congratulations once again and keep up the good work, I'll be looking forward to see more of your fantastic work !!

# Jonathan

P.S: My vote goes to tile "B"  :)
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