Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

[turtle]

Nice job on Winfield. I love your transportation layouts, somehow you always succeed in making them interesting to look at. The GLR mod seems to work out great.

Also, the tutorial you did in the last update is very good. It seems that even I would be able to do that  Adara is turning out to be a very good place to come looking for tips and tricks!

Looking forward to seeing new developments in Winfield. Have a great Christmas!

[Battlecat]

Ethan (ecoba): Glad to hear you like the urban core.  It's been a huge challenge, particularly with putting the GLR mod together.  I love green cities; even my densest urban areas will be as green as I can make them!  The really big part of the park system is going to be the lakeshore.  I plan to have a massive park along the lake in this area.  I've got to build the finalized development down to the shoreline first through, so it's going to be a few updates before I do much with the lake at this point. Thanks for the feedback!

Jordan (canyonjumper): Thanks very much, glad you like how this is coming together.  The issue I'm actually running into is mostly related to triggering growth and stage caps.  Demand is high, it's just a case of building up high enough local populations to allow access to the buildings I want to see in the urban core.  I've actually tried demand mods in the past, and while they are handy under many circumstances, I do enjoy the challenge of building this region within the rules of the game to a certain extent.  Thanks for the suggestion! 

sumwonyuno: Thanks!  I knew I forgot one factor for triggering high wealth growth!  I completely forgot how handy trees were for that.  That'll make the next phase after today much easier. 

danielcote: Thanks, glad you like it.  I expect that by the time I'm done, this tile will have more people than the rest of Adara.  It's amazing how quickly your population rises when you have apartment buildings!

Luke09: Glad you like how it's coming together.  It's going to have a CBD to some extent, but I'm really taking a firm hand on how big.  While there will be room for high stage growth elsewhere in Adara, this particular town is still sitting firmly in the Medium density range. 

Thomas (turtle): Glad you're enjoying the start, this business of urban development has been a significant challenge.  It doesn't help that I'm pretty particular about keeping control over the style and character of neighborhoods, such as the high wealth area.  While the result is nice, it takes a lot of time to put everything together!  Glad you enjoyed the tutorials as well, I hope to keep offering more as they come up!  Thanks for stopping in, have a great Christmas!

Update 71
Winfield – Urban Growth

Today is mostly going to consist of incremental growth of the urban area.  I've started making buildings in the central core historical once I'm happy with them to prevent unexpected towers from showing up.  To make up for the fact that I won't have time to update over Christmas, this will be an extra large update.  Hope you enjoy it!

71-1: This is one of the many problems I'm dealing with, the repeating lot issue.  This particular commercial building shows up far more than anything else right now. 


71-2: That's why I make things historical once I'm happy.  The building I pointed out seems to be the pinnacle building for low density commercial zoning.  I'm happier with this look here.


71-3: This is what I call perfect serendipity.  These three buildings all grew exactly as you see here.  By the way, I'm only using the Maxis city hall because I haven't found a better alternative yet.  Anyone know of a few good city hall options?


71-4: From the macro to the micro.  I'm putting in a small park here. 


71-5: Just for kicks, I decided to use the wide BSC trail park sections.  The new buildings on both sides popped up as soon as I unpaused the game. 


71-6: It's slow going, but I'm getting started on this area near the high wealth neighbourhood.


71-7: Looks like a good place for a high school.  And hey, a good old Canadian flag right there!  Funny though, I wound up rotating this pretty much as soon as it was placed.


71-8: The rotation was to improve access to the parking on both sides of the building.  A nice recreational complex to complement the school as well.  I'm sure this was funded by the wealthy people here.   


71-9: Time to start trying to get some good style apartment buildings in place.  I'm going to develop this road here.


71-10: A few extra streets, here's the rough draft of the medium density layout. 


71-11: A lot of these buildings are going to wind up being replaced several times before I'm satisfied here.  But this is a start. 


71-12: Moving along, the wealthy people are finally starting to cooperate.  The main high wealth neighbourhood is going to drift down to the waterfront.  It'll give way to medium/low wealth development here.  This was all done before sumwonyuno's suggestion. 


71-13: Here's the rough layout of the development.  I actually went through and removed alternating lots.  I intend to make half the buildings here historical to block mansions from popping up. 


71-14: Here we are on year later at the halfway point in development.


71-15: The high wealth neighborhood is coming together now.  For something different, I'm using Shadow Assassin's cycleways as a trail through this area.  I'm going to run these down quite close to the waterfront in this area.


71-16: Just a quick example of how I'm going to improve the appearance of my low wealth apartment buildings.  This is a pair of typical buildings that I'm actually satisfied with.  Poor people need somewhere to live just like everyone else!


71-17: A few trees and a proper access road to the parking lots really do help a lot, even if the parking textures don't match perfectly.  And then of course, the trees always make things better!


71-18: Finally, the mansions are getting caught up, mostly because I'm not giving them a choice in the matter.  I think one of these might be medium wealth, but it fits in just fine.


71-19: The urban core is starting to get towards the finished stage on this side.  There's just a couple more buildings to develop here. 


71-20: This is one gap that needs attention.  Odd shaped spaces are great candidates for the small, plopable buildings floating around.


71-21: A blockbuster and a starbucks fill in the space nicely, and some tree lots will finish it up when the seasons turn.


71-22: Near the school, it's time to start getting our moneys worth.  A trail leads up to the highlands here as does a GLR branch.  The central fire hall is across from the school.


71-23: This is going to be a very simple closed in subdivision.  Before development we have this simple street.


71-24: And then afterwards.  Trees, businesses and some homes fill the area nicely.


71-25: On the south side of town, some convincing gets three excellent looking low wealth buildings to pop up near the edge of the urban core.


71-26: Some of these are probably being eyed by developers, but for this point in time, they'll do the trick.  The highway really reduces appeal for wealthier people.


71-27: And here we are, the rapidly sprawling City of Winfield.  You might notice a fairly familiar high wealth apartment tower up and to the left of the bridge in the shot.  I haven't decided if I'm going to keep it there or not, but for the moment it isn't hurting anything.  I'm thinking it's a bit too tall for this city though. 


That's all for today!  Still lots to develop, especially the extensive suburbs this city will have.  I might slip one update in between Christmas and New Years, but if not, I'll see you in early January!  Have a great Christmas Season everyone! 

Oh, I almost forgot one last thing.  Toichus Maximus and I are just about satisfied with the results of this GLR texture mod.  In addition to the entire collection of possible GLR pieces, it's also going to modify the textures of all FLUP pieces that use the old Maxis style sidewalks, and a small selection of GLR and RTMT stations, including the RTMT V3.  If things go well, we should have something up for LEX candidacy early in the New Year. 

[Schulmanator]

Nicely done... and, as for a city hall alternative, try the LEX civic buildings... a good number of museums and libraries make fine city hall substitutes.

[Luke09]

Nicely done... and, as for a city hall alternative, try the LEX civic buildings... a good number of museums and libraries make fine city hall substitutes.

I agree with schulmanator,some museums and libraries can be very nice city halls.I hope this GLR texture be released soon,i really want that!And about the highrise,let it be there.

[threestooges]

Excellent news with the mod, and a great showcase for it too. I think I may be adding something new to my plugins soon, if things go well. I like your approach to the downtown area. Very office-centric, yet it still seems to retain touches of service-oriented buildings (the gas station, Wendy's, etc). Things look more balanced that way. Not every building has its own cafeteria.

As for city hall options, I know JBSimio did a town hall a while back. I believe one version of it even functioned as a police station. I can't seem to find it right now. I'll have to shoot him a PM and see what it's listed under.

The school does look good, and yes, with the clay tennis courts, it certainly seems to have a touch of the wealthy folk in the area. Looks good though. Looking forward to seeing a finished shot of it up close.

Your GLR seems to be taking off, and the brick under the tracks is excellent (part of the sidewalk mod I assume?) and something I've been looking to do for a while. The white tiles are nice, especially considering they match a number of buildings' base textures, but the brown brick just looks classy.

Nice work on this update Battlecat, the area is really coming together. Merry Christmas, and if I don't see you before then, Happy New Year too.
-Matt

[Tomas Neto]

Another great update! Very cool to see the development of your cities!!! 

[dsrwhat316]

I agree with Matt: Jon (JBSimio) has a great city hall that is bounds and leaps above the Maxis one. Here's the link to it: SmalltownUSA Town Hall

I really enjoy your step-by-step process you have with your MD. It can give a player great insight on how to plan, maintain and beautify their own cities just by looking at your pics and great tutorials. I'm eagerly awaiting the next update from Winfield!

~ Dan

[sumwonyuno]

The historical seems like the only way isn't it?  Demolish, hope, demolish, hope, demolish... historical!    Plus it's not a wieldy strategy for an area larger than your patience. 

One way I try to lose repetition is to do a combination of lot sizes, zone density and (lack of, or putting in) water.  In your region, you do separate the residential building lots from one another, and that's another good strategy.

Now, I didn't do that as a widespread strategy in the Capitalis suburbs because there's so much area to work, and I got lazy.  

[clearlypowa]

WOW, 2 nice Update.  

I like how you plan your city. Very Helpfull. the GLR is going on, and the side track textures looks good.

Merry Chirsmas and long life to your Great M.D  

[calibanX]

I like those high wealth suburbs Battlecat. The low wealth apartment buildings look great too. Why is it that all the low wealth residential stuff has more character than the high wealth stuff? Oh well, I love it. That region looks like it'll have a lot of water going in. Should look fantastic.

Geoff

[djvandrake]

Nice work with the sloped avenue / GLR.  That looks great and had to be tough to get right. 

[canyonjumper]

That's just pure awesomeness! I really like the way that's turning out! 

                  -Jordan

[Nardo69]

Nice Update (as always ...)

My most hated repetetive and always popping up building is that black Maxis low density R$$ building ... its German name is "Schindelhaus" ... Guess you know that, too. One of the many great things of mattb325's mansions is that the popping up probability of these Maxis lots has quite decreased ... 

BTW in 71.10 there is only one residential (next to the commercials) oriented to the diagonal road while all others are oriented to the grey streets. Just happened like this or is this intended?

I like those low wealth buildings in 71.17 / 71.18 that are hust separated by some trees from the highway. Noise immission protections is for the riches ...

Take care my friend

and

Happy New Year!


Bernhard 

[Nexis4Jersey]

Another Great update , i can't wait till see when ur lake is completed

[Cyclone1001]

This is truly amazing! I can't believe I missed this for so long... but then again I did go to downloading the stuff on the front page the first time I visited, so I guess it kinda makes sense Anyways, great work, I'm always ready for more

[Battlecat]

Schulmanator: Hmmm, I hadn't thought of repurposing an existing building as a city hall.  Good call, I'll have to expand my search conditions.  I'm actually going to have to mod whatever I download, I actually need the city hall to be functional in this case!  Thanks very much for the suggestions!

Luke09: Thanks for your thoughts on that highrise.  I really do like that high rise style and as a bonus, it'll actually fit with my plans for that part of town quite nicely!  I want to get this texture out as soon as possible as well!  Toichus Maximus and I have been working quite hard at it, there's just a few touch ups left and then I've got to gather the bits into an installation file.  Thanks for stopping by!

Matt (threestooges): Thanks very much for your thoughts!  I prefer the slightly more mixed development style.  Of course in a real downtown urban core, you'd have a small bit of service commercial on the ground floor of many buildings these days and then offices on the floors above.  I'm not sure that's possible in SC4 though.  Thanks for mentioning JBSimio's lot, Dan (dsrwhat316) linked it shortly after you mentioned it.  Not sure it's right for Winfield, but it'll find a home in other places in the future!

The mod that's in the works is an attempt to hit as many of the remaining non-sandstone textures in the NAM and a number of the associated mods such as road top mass transit.  Sadly, unlike the normal streets, the GLR pieces have their textures baked in.  So while this mod I'm putting together will work with Sandstone, it won't work as well with many of the other sidewalk modifications out there. 

Interestingly enough, I've noticed a number of buildings that appear to be directly referencing the maxis sidewalk texture for their base.  As a result, they've also been converted to the new sandstone texture.  The white bases of other buildings don't match, but that's ok, and actually surprisingly realistic!  Have a great holiday season!

Tomas Neto: Thanks very much for your kind words as always!

Dan (dsrwhat316): Thanks for linking that lot by JBSimio!  Glad you enjoyed your visit and particularly the step by step process I use!  I actually get a great deal of enjoyment out of putting the tutorials together.  It's great that you and others are finding them helpful!  Thanks for visiting! 

sumwonyuno: Sadly, there doesn't seem to be any other solution available in the game.  There's a layer of detail missing from the game that exists in real life.  Local government has the ability to define and control the characteristics of a neighborhood to a certain extent during the process that leads to a building permit.  It can get tiring, but at the same time it's necessary to keep visual control over a community. 

Your method is one that works nicely.  I like how well the half zoning method works for suburban areas.  At least then you can keep track of which lots need to be made historical!  Considering how much suburban area there is in Capitalis, I can't blame you for not worrying about it. 

clearlypowa: Thanks very much, glad you enjoyed the updates!  Hope you're having a great season as well!

Geoff (calibanX): Thanks for your kind words!  Not sure why the low wealth stuff has so much more character, but I'm glad the buildings came out so nicely.  There will be a lot of water on this tile, and soon I'll start putting another batch down on paper. 

djvandrake: Actually the slopped avenue wasn't too hard to get right.  Because of the slope mod I'm using, I just dragged a couple of roads down the hill until it worked.  It just happened to raise the terrain instead of creating a cut which works fine for me.  Thanks for stopping in!

Jordan (canyonjumper): Thanks very much, I'm glad you enjoyed that update!

Bernhard (Nardo69): I know exactly which house you're referring to.  It looks good in small numbers, but boy it used to dominate the landscape if you let it.  As for the residential lot, yeah it pretty much just happens like that.  Lots seem to prefer roads over streets for orientation.  On the bright side, most apartments are direction neutral so it works out pretty nicely no matter what happens. 

It's interesting you know, trees aren't actually a half bad sound barrier, as long as the highway isn't too busy.  And hey, as long as the locals don't complain to loudly, there shouldn't be a problem right?  :-)

Corey (Nexis4Jersey): I can't wait to see this lake completed either.  Considering it's going to extend onto at least 2 or 3 more tiles beyond this one, it'll be a little while before I manage to pull that off though!  Glad you like it so far though!

Cyclone1001: Welcome to Adara, I'm glad you've enjoyed your visit so far! 

Update 72
Winfield – Small Stuff

Greetings everyone!  As you all may know, while Christmas is called a holiday on paper, it rarely means one has much spare time!  Originally I was going to have a large suburban update today, but instead it's going to be a smaller update leading up to our first return to the lake in update 73. 

72-1: To start, I finished laying out the low elevation loop road that's eventually going to have a handful more mansions on it. 


72-2: Granted, I'm going to have to wait a long time for the simulator to cooperate with this plan, but it'll work out eventually I'm sure.


72-3: Out past the end of the loop, the main road has to wind around the point.  At this point we're getting out towards the edge of town.  Somewhere near here the main road is going to be reduced to a single tile road instead of an avenue. 


72-4: Another little detail, I realized I'm a bit sort on access points to the highland.  Rather than adding another one, I decided to expand the capacity of this GLR slope a bit.


72-5: The GLR in road textures should do the trick quite nicely


72-6: There we go.  I'm going to add a station at the bottom of the hill to serve the neighborhood I'll be adding shortly.


72-7: Up at the top of the hill I had to do a bit of juggling to ensure that the GLR could actually be connected to the neighboring city.  This is just the ongoing issue with the 5 tile minimum for texture modifications to persist.  It made for a potentially interesting looking neighborhood in the future though. 


72-8: For the big development today, I'm going to get this block of suburbs in place. 


72-9: Here's the road network, it's just something quirky I threw together. 


72-10: This seemed like a good area for a small public swimming pool and a nice little park.  I'll be trying to add in additional public recreation options as the city continues to push outwards.


72-11: After the first phase of development, all the homes that I'm happy with are made historical, all the ones I don't like are demolished and replaced until I am satisfied.  This will ensure that there won't be any mansions in this area 


72-12: Here's the finished suburban block.  I'm quite happy with how this came out.  In the trees there's a long flight of stairs that leads to the highland area. 


72-13 At the south edge of town, I'm continuing to slowly expand the urban core.  These two buildings were plopped into place. 

72-14 And finally over by the avenue bridge, the last few buildings are now in place in anticipation of the next update.  The one on the left is a plopable medical research facility.  Fits the neighbourhood quite nicely actually. 


That's all for today.  I really wish I had taken a couple extra shots but such is life at this time of year.  At least I managed to slip one more update in before we hit 2010!  From the looks of my schedule the next one probably won't show up until Monday.  I've got a lot more of those unavoidable family commitments since my sister is out for the week from Massachusetts.  I'm not complaining to much though, it'll be nice to see her. 

So, I hope you all have a great time with your New Years celebrations!  I'll see you all in the new year!

[Tomas Neto]

Fantastic city!!! Really a very nice update!!! Happy new year my friend!!! 

[Schulmanator]

I like how you are adding green space to the neighborhoods instead of packing houses in. If only that was done in RL!

[Fabian93]

Fantastic Update
This is one of those few MDs where I enjoy watching the development step by step
The City of Winfield looks really good, I can't wait to see how you continue

I wish you a happy new year, too
Fabian

[Luke09]

Nice update you have there,and what a very long stairs at picture 72-12  i hope sims dont are too lazy