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Realistic Cities For Dummies

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

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Catalyst

You, Chris, you deserve a continuous, gilded place on the home/recent site for this MD!

frukox

#441
Chris, I registered to this site just to congratulate you for this very very good guide. I have been following you for a long time and you already deserved this. Thanks for sharing your knowledge base with us!

Keep up the good work! &apls &apls

isii94

These were some great updates again  :thumbsup:

I always wonder why you use so much MMP grass although the terrain mod already provides a grass texture. The densely placed props make the lot look like the caretaker doesn't like being outside doing gardening work.  $%Grinno$%
Have you tried mixing in different props and using them more to hide the sharp edges between lot and terrain textures and around fences?
MD coming soon...

smileymk

Hey guys.

Vizoria: Thank you.

Catalyst: Thanks. Maybe when RCFD gets into the Classics section that might happen ;-)

frukox: Thanks! You didn't have to do that.

isii94: Thanks for your comment. In response to your questions:

QuoteI always wonder why you use so much MMP grass although the terrain mod already provides a grass texture. The densely placed props make the lot look like the caretaker doesn't like being outside doing gardening work.

It's essentially to complete the scene. If I don't fill empty areas with something like trees or grass, then the scene doesn't quite look finished in my mind. As good as the Meadowshire Terrain Mod is, it does not, in my opinion, provide a substitute for proper detailing. Rather, it provides a good base layer to put additional scenic work on, and helps cover up any bits I've missed.
I know that the grass I use is quite thick, and has quite a large coverage for an MMP so can spread onto other lots, but it is, in my opinion, the best-looking MMP grass that I have, so I'm going to stick with it.

QuoteHave you tried mixing in different props and using them more to hide the sharp edges between lot and terrain textures and around fences?

This is a very good idea, and I will definitely try to use this technique in the future.

OK, it's now time for the lesson. I must warn you that this is a dry, technical lesson that doesn't involve much SC4 work. However, it's very short, and the technique you're about to learn will hopefully be very useful to you, so do please stick with us.

Lesson 26 - Blending Borders

I've stated on many occasions in the past the fundamental rule of building a region across multiple city tiles - that you must build your region as if it were one huge city tile. That means that your landscape has to flow smoothly from one city tile to the next.
However, you can only work on one city tile at a time, and you can't see any other city tiles whilst you're doing it. So to provide a consistent and smooth flow from a previously built city tile into the one you're working on, you need to know precisely what is on the other side of the border - specifically, you need to know exactly what lies on the border of your first city tile and where on the border it lies, so that when you build your new city tile, you know exactly what should go where and can hence plan accordingly.
And the only way to know what lies on your border is to document it somehow, so that you can refer to it in the game.

Let's illustrate what I mean by doing such a documentation from start to finish. We're going to analyse the border between the first city tile of Mapleford and the one we're currently working on - specifically, the city tile boundary at the bottom of this picture:


We need to document everything that lies on this city tile boundary, in the order it appears, taking care to include all of the important details in our analysis.
We can see that there's some hi-tech industry to the left of the river, with some details. Let's see how we document that in a border analysis:


It's probably best to take this step by step. Along the top of the diagram, we have a horizontal line representing our border. We use the vertical lines to divide our border up into sections, with each section representing a different feature (a 'feature' can be a road, river, zone, building, power line, etc.).
In each section, we write a number corresponding to how many tiles that feature takes up, going along our border. (In the example above, the first industrial zone spans 2 tiles, so we write a '2' in that section, and the street on the end spans 1 tile, so that section is labelled with a '1'.)
Below the number of each section, we add a brief decriptive label which describes the feature in enough detail so that we know what it is. For example, the border starts with an I-HT corner filler - we need to know that it's an I-HT filler (as opposed to an I-D or I-M filler), and we need to know where the wall is - so that's been included too by means of a label pointing to the right edge of the first section.

Each label should be written underneath its relevant section. You may, therefore, have to write some labels underneath others, like you see with the industrial fillers above. Like I've done above, you can draw additional lines to connect each descriptive label with its corresponding section, so that it's clear what goes where.

For brevity's sake, you will probably want to use suitable abbreviations for common features where appropriate. In the above diagram, I've used St. for a street, and HDI for high density industrial. The exact system you use is up to you, as long as it is clear and consistent.
In addition, note that I've only described zones by their type - not what's developed on them. That isn't really important, because a zoned lot can't extend into a neighbouring city tile.

Also, I should mention that you can either do this diagram by hand on paper, or on the computer using your preferred image editing software. It's entirely down to personal preference.

Right, that's more than enough text in between two pictures, so let's look at the next feature to analyse - the river:


Firstly, we see that we have one tile of grass in between the street on the left and the river, so make sure to put that on the border diagram.
After that, though, comes the river. In order to mark it correctly on our diagram, we need to know how wide it is. That's where the terrain query tool comes in handy.
We first put our cursor on the first tile of the river (which in this case is a bit of rye grass - since this is our default riverbank style, we count it as part of the river), and, since this border runs north-south, we make a note of the z-tile co-ordinate, underlined in red below:


If the border you're analysing runs east-west, you'll want to look at the x-tile co-ordinate instead.

We now move our cursor to the seawall on the other side, and again, read off the z-tile co-ordinate:


So our river starts on tile 10, and there's a seawall on the other side on tile 28. Since this seawall isn't our standard riverbank, we need to record it separately on the diagram.
Therefore, our river runs from tile 10 to tile 27 inclusive, so we have 18 tiles of river, followed by one tile of riprap seawall. So let's mark that on our diagram:


By now, it should be clear how we denote basic features on the border diagram, so I'm going to skip ahead a little and focus our attention on this diagonal road connection:


It's clear to see that this road takes up 2 tiles of our border, so we need to mark that. We also need to denote on our diagram that the road points to the left, and not the right - there are two ways for a road to cross a border diagonally, as opposed to just one possibility for an orthogonal connection.
Underlined in orange below is how we make that distinction - a directional arrow:


Now we know exactly which way that diagonal road points. Note that we ignore the street meeting the road on the last tile - the street doesn't touch the border, so it doesn't get mentioned on our diagram.
As you can see, I've skipped ahead and marked everything in between the diagonal road and the seawall. MDR, if you're confused, stands for medium density residential, using a similar notation to that used for the industry on the other side of the river. You can, no doubt, work out what MDC stands for.

I should point out at this point that the border diagram is not meant to look pretty. As you can see above, the diagram I've drawn isn't the neatest thing in the world, but it clearly marks what's where, and that's the only thing that matters. This diagram is designed to convey information, so concentrate fully on getting the information on there and don't waste time prettying the diagram up. That way you can get back to doing fun things in SC4.

Completing the analysis is simply a case of continuing what we've been doing until we reach the southern edge of the city tile.
It's pretty boring and tedious work, but there are a couple of ways in which we can speed the process up. Let's look at this section of inner city:


You can see that there's a repeating pattern here - two tiles of medium density residential, followed by a street, repeated 6 times. Recording that in full on our diagram is going to be pretty soul-destroying, so we'd like a way of marking the pattern once and indicating that it repeats.
I've done exactly that here, using the notation underlined in red below:


The notation consists of a horizontal line across the repeating sections, with vertical lines at either end and a 'x6' underneath, indicating clearly the sections that repeat and how many times the repetition happens.

Skipping ahead a little bit, we can take this repeated pattern business a stage further. In our port industry, we're lucky enough to have a nested repeating pattern - a repeating pattern contained within another repeating pattern.
We can denote this in the way you might expect:


Note that I've added a little bit of commentary below the 'repeat' notation to indicate that the second repeat of the big pattern is slightly different to the other two.

Why is this useful? Let's consider what's going on. The small repeating pattern is nested in the bigger one, so for each repeat of the big pattern, the small pattern repeats 3 times - so it repeats 9 times in total - and the extra 5 tiles appear afterwards, before the next repeat.
So it's not hard to see that, since each repeat of the smaller pattern covers 5 tiles, each repeat of the big pattern covers 20 tiles, and so we've covered a whopping 60 tiles of border in a couple of inches!

Patterns and nested patterns are, as you've hopefully realised, an immensely useful way of saving time and paper, so make sure to look for them and take advantage of any that appear.

Now, you may be wondering what that '83' is at the top left of the above image. Well, because we are dealing with a large city tile, our border is quite long, and our paper is only wide enough to cover a bit of it in a single line.
So we have to continue our diagram onto a new line. The first tile of the border that new line covers is the 83rd tile of the border, so we write '83' to denote that, making it clear which bit of the border we're looking at.
As you might guess, we end the first line by writing '82', indicating that the last tile the first line covers is the 82nd tile of the border:


Notice that the top horizontal border marker continues a bit beyond the last section of the relevant line, in order to make clear that our border diagram continues onto a new line.
I recommend using the terrain query tool to get an accurate tile count here. Be aware that the game calls the first tile of a city tile 0, whereas my count for the '82' and '83' starts from 1. As long as you're consistent, it doesn't matter which system you use.

There's one last technique to cover to complete our border analysis, and that is the technique of using the road tool to count tiles:


The idea is simple - to measure the width of something whose width is not immediately obvious, you get out the road tool and hover the cursor over the feature in question. The tile your cursor is pointing to will be highlighted, and a small section of the grid will appear around it, making it easy to count out the tiles.
For longer sections, place the cursor on the first tile of the section, and move it along the relevant feature to the end of that feature, counting the tiles as you go.
By doing this, you ensure an accurate tile count for each feature, and hence an accurate border analysis, which is what you want.

Using the techniques above, we can continue to the southern edge of the city tile and complete our border analysis:


As has been previously mentioned, this is not the prettiest of diagrams, nor is it meant to be, but you can hopefully see exactly what is going on and what goes where on our city tile boundary.
We can use this information to ensure a nice smooth progression from the first city tile to the one we're working on now, which is exactly what we want.

And that's it for this lesson. I'm sorry it wasn't more exciting, but that's the nature of border analysis. It's a dull, boring and tedious task and there's no getting away from that. But it has to be done, and I hope you can see the use for it.

Next time, we'll be doing something a bit more fun - making some more improvements to both the new city tile, and the first one we worked on.

See you then,
Chris

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


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Vizoria

Border analysis... I like it. Now that is how you exactly merge two city tiles together!

packersfan

I don't get that detailed in my border analysis, but I am making sure both sides are at the same terrain level, take pictures to match things up, and do the little trick with underground rail etc to get street connections and diagonal road and avenue connections, etc.  Cool update!

compdude787

Now this is pretty neat! Probably something most of us wouldn't necessarily do, unless we wanted to take a screenshot that extended across the border of our city.
Check out my MD, United States of Simerica!
Last updated: March 5, 2017

My YouTube Channel

smileymk

Hello everyone.

You may have been wondering why I haven't been posting here for a while.

Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, the laptop I had been using to create the content for RCFD went missing whilst I was on my lunch break at university, and Mapleford went with it.
I did report the lost laptop to the police - however, with the area where the laptop was lost being poorly covered by CCTV, there was no video record of anyone taking it. Now that I'm home for the Easter break, I hope to get hold of the box the laptop came in, obtain information such as serial numbers and pass that information on to police, which may help me to get the laptop back, but getting it back is a long shot.

This, sadly, means that Realistic Cities for Dummies is unlikely to continue.

I would like to thank each and every person here at SC4D who has read and commented on this MD over the past 4 years for their fantastic support, without which this MD would never have become the success it has. Special mentions are due for the OSITM committee, for their 2 OSITM awards, and to those responsible for the 3 K-points I've got as a result of this MD.
I would also like to apologise for not posting this sooner. I admit that I've been putting it off for a bit, and university getting in the way hasn't helped, but you guys have been waiting. Thank you, as always, for your patience.

In the meantime, I have a new replacement laptop, and have installed a few games, including SC4, on it. My plan is to do a few things on YouTube - so look out for videos from my channel (SmileyMK93) in the future. In particular, look out for the following SC4 related content:
- Masterclass: A series of short video tutorials covering various techniques in SC4.
- Let's Play: Me building a city in real time in SC4, with live commentary.
- Simtropolis Monthly Challenges: Pretty self-explanatory. I'd like to test myself.
I also plan to do a couple of let's plays of other titles. You'll have to wait and see what they are.

Suggestions for Masterclass videos will be welcomed - feel free to send me a PM if you'd like me to go over something.

So that's it from me (sorry for the long post, although if you're a regular here you should be used to that by now ;) ).
Thank you once again for your tremendous support of this MD over the past 4 years.

- Chris

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


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mgb204

That's a crappy piece of luck, maybe you get lucky and the police find it, but I wouldn't hold your breath, Avon and Somerset police won't even log crimes like this any more, just enter the info on a website and get a reference number for the insurance. If it's common knowledge the police won't investigate a certain type of crime, what exactly is the point of having laws?

Once more thanks for giving a masterful insight into some of the lesser devolved parts of city building, my cities have benefited immensely from your knowledge and willingness to share. Despite it not finishing, the raft of information amongst these pages will stand as a testament to all your hard work and I'm sure it will continue to enlighten many into the future. It's sad to think that this MD will meet such an abrupt end due to petty theft, but I can totally understand your decision and look forward to seeing any new stuff from you in the future.

Gugu3

That's a sad news to hear! :-[ :-[
Thanks for all the amazing updates you provided us with. Looking forward to seeing some new videos on YouTube :P

compdude787

Ouch, that stinks! Getting your laptop stolen seems to be just as bad as if its hard drive crashed. Even if you do get it back, the thief might have re-formatted your hard drive. (or it could have been sold at a pawn shop) God only knows what could happen. Hopefully you can move one from this and continue to produce quality cities.
Check out my MD, United States of Simerica!
Last updated: March 5, 2017

My YouTube Channel

gtaman


[Jö] maddstealth

This may be a stupid prospect, but as soon as I saw that this guide was peppered throughout this thread in parts, I wanted to compile SmileyMK's posts into a single PDF file (It'd be easier for me to read and follow that way).  Admittedly, it'd be my first ever time doing such a thing, and at 20+ pages in this thread, it's bound to take a few weeks with steady work and balancing this project with the remainder of my life, but I think it's a project worth pursuing.  Also, I am aware that the original poster has been inactive here for roughly 1+ years due to the stolen laptop, and it may be unlikely that he'll return to the project, but just in case he comes back to it at some point, I think it'd be cool for him to see that his work in progress is being compiled in such a fashion. lol  Finally, I'll probably see if I can break what's currently available into parts, combining a batch of chapters by theme or something.

If anyone happens to be interested in this PDF, I'd be happy to distribute the PDF(s) once I have what's available so far compiled.

brick_mortimer

Quote from: [Jö] maddstealth on January 19, 2016, 05:03:45 PM
If anyone happens to be interested in this PDF, I'd be happy to distribute the PDF(s) once I have what's available so far compiled.

Hi Jö! I'm very interested in your PDF once it's completed.
RCFD has been an incredible source of inspiritation, but also very, very informative.

Good luck with compiling the PDF  :thumbsup:
Busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest
Me no coffee function without so good

TommyC27

#454
Hello SmileymK - I have come across this realistic cities for dummies a phew months back and I followed your first single city and that was good. When i have tried to follow the next one all the images do not appear and I was wondering whether you uploaded them differently as the images do not appear until around page 20 in this feed.
Thanks Tommy 27.
PS I know it was a phew years back and about your laptop

tomvsotis

Quote from: [Jö] maddstealth on January 19, 2016, 05:03:45 PM
This may be a stupid prospect, but as soon as I saw that this guide was peppered throughout this thread in parts, I wanted to compile SmileyMK's posts into a single PDF file (It'd be easier for me to read and follow that way).  Admittedly, it'd be my first ever time doing such a thing, and at 20+ pages in this thread, it's bound to take a few weeks with steady work and balancing this project with the remainder of my life, but I think it's a project worth pursuing.  Also, I am aware that the original poster has been inactive here for roughly 1+ years due to the stolen laptop, and it may be unlikely that he'll return to the project, but just in case he comes back to it at some point, I think it'd be cool for him to see that his work in progress is being compiled in such a fashion. lol  Finally, I'll probably see if I can break what's currently available into parts, combining a batch of chapters by theme or something.

If anyone happens to be interested in this PDF, I'd be happy to distribute the PDF(s) once I have what's available so far compiled.

does anyone happen to know if this PDF ever did get compiled? this thread is such a wonderful resource, and it'd be great to have it all in one place, esp since half the images are now missing thanks to Imageshack being rapacious capitalist bait-and-switching ********s :(