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Bouchacha posted:Coming back to this after years of separation. Can you build a car-free city with the right mods? I believe Network Addon Mod (NAM) allows this, though the specifics of doing so are quite tricky as I understand it. Never play without NAM regardless of your objectives though. Well, unless your objective is to increase your own sense of frustration.
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Jan 26, 2014 05:10
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NAM and other mods have pedestrian tiles, but as I recall (I might be off though) it's problematic to build zones next to them since the game doesn't link them up to the road network properly, so you can only build ploppable lots. This in turn makes it really hard or impossible to build residential stuff, since these cannot be easily plopped - the only way I know is to wait for a building of the appropriate size to grow naturally and then plopping the residential building you want on top of that - it's extremely difficult to build a completely pedestrian only city, though a European-style pedestrian downtown with shopping streets is feasible.
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Jan 26, 2014 05:43
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This wasn't the case with SC3 right? That gently caress-off max population project had no roads as far as I remember.
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Jan 26, 2014 09:03
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How do you guys tend to plan out each of your cities? I tend to do whatever and it looks alright to me, then I zoom out to take it all in, and dear god I've created a monster. How do I make cities that aren't butt-ugly?
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Jan 26, 2014 10:54
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Mister Adequate posted:
The only cheat buildings I have are for schools. Not only does every tennis court employ 10,000+ workers but many of those workers will commute via bus or train from 4 city tiles away. I don't place tennis courts all the often because gently caress tennis so I haven't noticed it until now. Now I'm off to see if I can support a small town with only a tennis court for employment!
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Jan 26, 2014 15:01
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It's Wimbledon?
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Mock and Droll posted:How do you guys tend to plan out each of your cities? I tend to do whatever and it looks alright to me, then I zoom out to take it all in, and dear god I've created a monster. How do I make cities that aren't butt-ugly? I'm still at the very start of "getting" the game, giving me much more access to start playing around with making my city more sparkly. I am in no way a designer, but one thing I found out is don't be afraid to delete and recreate. Once your income is much higher than the expenses, feel free to experiment around.
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Jan 26, 2014 15:07
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Mock and Droll posted:How do you guys tend to plan out each of your cities? I tend to do whatever and it looks alright to me, then I zoom out to take it all in, and dear god I've created a monster. How do I make cities that aren't butt-ugly? MSPaint on a screenshot of the region major city centers and primary transportation arteries then go crazy.
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Jan 26, 2014 15:51
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Mock and Droll posted:How do you guys tend to plan out each of your cities? I tend to do whatever and it looks alright to me, then I zoom out to take it all in, and dear god I've created a monster. How do I make cities that aren't butt-ugly? Try to make a small city with a small downtown and from there suburbs. I like to make the center of my cities the train station, start growing from there. Think in your hometown and try to make it, or use google maps to give you an idea.
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Jan 26, 2014 16:17
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Mock and Droll posted:How do you guys tend to plan out each of your cities? I tend to do whatever and it looks alright to me, then I zoom out to take it all in, and dear god I've created a monster. How do I make cities that aren't butt-ugly? Have the courage and fortitude to break out the  far more often than you do now.Or you just have trouble with the Chopper Dave perspective. No one goes out of their way to plan a city for that in the real world, and when it works out it's a really happy accident.
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Jan 26, 2014 16:24
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I was wondering if anyone in this thread has a good solution for sunken highway embankments. Most of the ones I've found are a little lacking- bad style, missing pieces, or incompatible with NAM roads. Should I just rely on seawall embankments and whatnot? I'm looking for something modern to compliment the Old Fashioned pack. Also do roadside ditch plots exist for rural towns? I was also wondering if there were any good solutions for diagonal bridges for RHW and whatnot. I've used diagonal bridge enabler, but I find the graphics quite glitchy and often faulty, and completely missing for all 2-tile roadways. PoizenJam fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Jan 28, 2014 |
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Jan 28, 2014 05:05
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My roommate's getting into SC4, we're playing on the same computer/region and I'm mostly handling interregional transport, but I don't think she has a handle on RHW yet. Considering using the Maxis Highways instead, but I don't think I've touched them since I started using NAM/RHW- does NAM rebalance Maxis highways, and are there cool things I can do with them using mods?
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Jan 28, 2014 08:47
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Poizen Jam posted:I was wondering if anyone in this thread has a good solution for sunken highway embankments. Most of the ones I've found are a little lacking- bad style, missing pieces, or incompatible with NAM roads. Should I just rely on seawall embankments and whatnot? I'm looking for something modern to compliment the Old Fashioned pack. Also do roadside ditch plots exist for rural towns? Most of the embankments by jeronij are pretty good. I cant remember where, but there was a fantastic set of Japanese style embankments.. maybe by NOB?
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Jan 28, 2014 11:23
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Little update since addonmageddon. Looked at the many regions I have now and Fhuzo actually looked best. After watching many LP's, thinking about city planning and considering the various options, the solution is simple. Everyone here is saying that cities grow organic and that makes sense. Few cities are planned to be a metropolis from the get-go and if it is done, it is mostly a failure. So when you go back a few hundred years, a city grows around a few pretty standard things, mostly an old trade hub: - a river mouth or a lock in a river - a crossroads of main roads - surrounding a high place where a castle was build or surrounding a holy place or a curch - simply the most habitual spot in the middle of huuuge tracks of ... land. When growing, it makes sense to have some sort of center of activities placed as mentioned above and then have some roads go outwards. Another thing is that farming always starts at the easiest and most fertile land, nobody plows the mountains and hills first. Keep in mind that no economy is based on commercial services from the beginning, any society starts rural with small patches of residential seperated by farmland stretching outwards from the town. For the sake of the simulation, you need to have some connection to the outside so you will have to draw a street across the map, avoiding bumps as that is what people who have to walk would do as well. When doing this, avoid long stretches of straight streets, just makes no sense. Make a settlement and build from there and fill up the flat area's first. Anyway, filling up Fhuzo one tile at the time and will post some screenshots soon. Anyone has a nice "create region snapshot" tool or did I miss some sort of shortcut?
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Jan 28, 2014 13:51
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Keetron posted:Anyway, filling up Fhuzo one tile at the time and will post some screenshots soon. Anyone has a nice "create region snapshot" tool or did I miss some sort of shortcut? This is what you're looking. http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=913
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Jan 29, 2014 00:14
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Speaking of Fhuzo, do we know which terrain mods it's using specifically? Or just whatever is in the Old Fashioned Pack?
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Jan 29, 2014 00:55
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ExtraNoise posted:Speaking of Fhuzo, do we know which terrain mods it's using specifically? Or just whatever is in the Old Fashioned Pack? The download I took had the "No dependencies" label, or do you mean mods for terrain manipulation? benzine posted:This is what you're looking. Thanks, will look into it tonight or tomorrow as I feel some sick leave coming up... Another question, but what is the general experience here with cloud-syncing a region folder? The add-ons I will keep synchronized using an external drive, but saves would be nice to have a more frequent synchronization so I can switch desktop / laptop on the go.
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Jan 29, 2014 08:54
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Keetron posted:Another question, but what is the general experience here with cloud-syncing a region folder? For the goon region we used sugarsync and it worked nice. The reason was because you can set the location for the shared folder.
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Jan 29, 2014 17:12
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Keetron posted:The download I took had the "No dependencies" label, or do you mean mods for terrain manipulation? Whatever mods are changing the terrain color, the water color, and the rocks color.
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Jan 29, 2014 18:44
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I adopted a few rules over the years I put into SimCity to help make my cities look better. A lot of it goes along with what's been said here (and might have come from older threads, in fact), but this is what always worked for me. - Avoid grids. Yes, they're efficient and extremely common in modern cities, but it just doesn't look that good. Use diagonals and dead-end streets to break up blocks. Doubly important if you're going for a more European or Asian look. - When zoning suburbs, don't zone out a huge block. Draw some winding roads and place individual 1x2 or 2x2 zones along them with some space in between. You can always lay down more zones if you need them, and this leaves space for later improvements like parks or libraries. - Early on, zone tiny bits of commercial and industrial in with your residential zones. This gives you a nice small-town country look with corner shops and little family businesses. Also has the added bonus of cutting down on traffic, since some folks will just walk or commute locally rather than all going downtown or to the industrial park. - Always zone low-density. When you're ready to move up to apartments and towers, re-zone existing areas near the geographic center of your city. Don't try to build brand new high-density zones unless you want your city to look like modern Beijing. - For a more natural region look, pick out at least two spots in your region for your big metropolises and run rail lines through the empty city plots between them. When you want to develop the smaller plots, start them as little railroad towns and build them up as much or as little as you want. My cities ended up looking a lot more realistic and having a lot more character by following these rules. The only thing I ever really had problems with were highways, because they require some actual planning to use and I never had a good sense of where they needed to go. I ended up leaving corridors of green space around my major avenues in case I ever decided to put in highways, which also kinda helped the look...assuming you want your city to look like Atlanta.
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Jan 29, 2014 20:19
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Will look into the synchronization later, want to play now.
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Jan 29, 2014 20:34
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My googling skills suck, but I know there's a mod out there that increases the amount of workers on a farm. Does anyone have it available or know what I'm talking about?
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Jan 29, 2014 21:39
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Zombie Samurai posted:My cities ended up looking a lot more realistic and having a lot more character by following these rules. The only thing I ever really had problems with were highways, because they require some actual planning to use and I never had a good sense of where they needed to go. I ended up leaving corridors of green space around my major avenues in case I ever decided to put in highways, which also kinda helped the look...assuming you want your city to look like Atlanta. I usually zone for 18k-24k ish population right off the bat, which ends up taking up almost all of the starting cash reserves and makes the city look like a quilt of uncontrolled suburban explosion.  But it cuts down a lot on the re-zoning later (gently caress zone view, it'd be nice if it distinguished between blank terrain and ploppables) and lets you do the "real" suburban thing on the outskirts of the city. Also it makes it considerably easier to place highways because the city gets planned around avenues from the beginning. It's very nice to be able to just draw highways as needed without worrying about funneling traffic into a wrong stretch of road or something.
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Jan 30, 2014 04:22
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It also helps to look at google earth with 3d buildings for inspiration on how to build things, especially if you want to build in a certain regional theme. Just look at where buildings and highways are actually placed and build like that.
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Jan 30, 2014 08:44
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Getting it synched was a special challenge, but it was overcome in true sperg fashion: With a commandline! Basically, check out this link: http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tricks/sync-other-folders It details how to create a junction between two folders, so that one folder links to another. The actual files are now in c:\Users\Keetron\Dropbox\Fhuzo and I gave the following command: code:Now when a city is (auto) saved, Dropbox will sync it and later when I turn on my laptop, that I gave the same command, it will be pulled in. As said before, the addons will be manually synced with a 1Tb portable drive. Edit: Small update on the filled island:  More update, these are huge:  
Keetron fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Feb 1, 2014 |
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Jan 30, 2014 16:53
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Zombie Samurai posted:- When zoning suburbs, don't zone out a huge block. Draw some winding roads and place individual 1x2 or 2x2 zones along them with some space in between. You can always lay down more zones if you need them, and this leaves space for later improvements like parks or libraries. Mixed use good. Zombie Samurai posted:- Always zone low-density. When you're ready to move up to apartments and towers, re-zone existing areas near the geographic center of your city. Don't try to build brand new high-density zones unless you want your city to look like modern Beijing. Sprawl bad. (OK, I guess you can use this method to grow cities organically, but high density mixed use seems to be the ideal way to go for maximum sustainability, in contrast to that "Portland should use market-based solutions" article Keetron linked).
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Feb 2, 2014 07:55
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One little trick I liked to do when trying to develop natural looking cities was to start two to three seperate "villages" on a single city map and over time let them grow into each other.
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Feb 3, 2014 00:33
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Shibawanko posted:NAM and other mods have pedestrian tiles, but as I recall (I might be off though) it's problematic to build zones next to them since the game doesn't link them up to the road network properly, so you can only build ploppable lots. This in turn makes it really hard or impossible to build residential stuff, since these cannot be easily plopped - the only way I know is to wait for a building of the appropriate size to grow naturally and then plopping the residential building you want on top of that - it's extremely difficult to build a completely pedestrian only city, though a European-style pedestrian downtown with shopping streets is feasible. Close, but not quite. The pedestrian tiles allow commercial and industrial zones to grow facing them, but not residential at all, due to some quirk in the game's coding. Also, the pedestrian lots must be "activated" by having a mass transit station connecting them to the road network, otherwise they won't be used. So, for example, a bus station next to/touching, or replacing, the pedestrian tile that touches a road. There's a better explanation (with diagrams) in the NAM's documentation. So yes, it's mostly for older-style downtowns. What you mentioned about the trick with residential lots applies to plopping residential buildings (due to he same aforementioned quirk), but doesn't have anything to do with the pedestrian tiles.
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Feb 3, 2014 02:20
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Stalins Moustache posted:My googling skills suck, but I know there's a mod out there that increases the amount of workers on a farm. Does anyone have it available or know what I'm talking about? SPAM? Sim Peg Agricultural Mod on simpeg.com
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Feb 3, 2014 04:07
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I really want to get into SC4 but it's a horrible slog to get used to NAM with the default interface. Is there a way to mod the interface to be somewhat more usable?
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Feb 3, 2014 04:20
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Anomalies posted:Close, but not quite. The pedestrian tiles allow commercial and industrial zones to grow facing them, but not residential at all, due to some quirk in the game's coding. Also, the pedestrian lots must be "activated" by having a mass transit station connecting them to the road network, otherwise they won't be used. So, for example, a bus station next to/touching, or replacing, the pedestrian tile that touches a road. There's a better explanation (with diagrams) in the NAM's documentation. So yes, it's mostly for older-style downtowns. Oh yeah that was it, I've only really used ped tiles for commercial zones. I wonder if they could make a pedestrian road which works with all zones by just adding a very slight capacity for cars, lower than regular streets (would be pretty realistic anyway, since cars often drive in the pedestrian malls in European cities), and turn them into directional puzzle pieces?
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Feb 3, 2014 04:36
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Terebus posted:I really want to get into SC4 but it's a horrible slog to get used to NAM with the default interface. Is there a way to mod the interface to be somewhat more usable? I gave up again recently trying to make a RHW to Avenue transition. gently caress puzzle pieces too.
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Feb 3, 2014 04:50
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Just buck RHW and use the rest of NAM instead with the stock highways. RHW is a pain in the rear end and doesn't even look that much better and is generally not worth it.
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Feb 3, 2014 05:03
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Shibawanko posted:Just buck RHW and use the rest of NAM instead with the stock highways. RHW is a pain in the rear end and doesn't even look that much better and is generally not worth it. Quoted because I agree with this.
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Feb 3, 2014 09:05
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Anyone have any experience getting SC4 to work stably on a laptop with an intel HD4000? I've followed the advice in the op but it still crashes after about 15 minutes. There's also a nvidia chip but that's less likely to work I think.
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Feb 6, 2014 20:46
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Have you tried running it in software rendering mode? The advantages should include lesser risk of crashing, and better performance. The disadvantages include lower visual quality and not being compatible with some high-res texture mods.
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Feb 6, 2014 20:51
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nielsm posted:Have you tried running it in software rendering mode? When I do this it just crashes as soon as I try to load a region. I'm using the Old Fashioned mod pack form the op and have removed the 'terrainmods' folder as it says that isn't compatible with software rendering. Are there any other ones which need removing? e: I tried removing the whole 'Terrain stuff' folder and it works now. Thanks! distortion park fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Feb 6, 2014 |
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Feb 6, 2014 21:00
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By works I mean only crashes every 30 minutes
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Feb 6, 2014 22:28
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pointsofdata posted:By works I mean only crashes every 30 minutes
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Feb 6, 2014 22:57
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Bouchacha posted:Coming back to this after years of separation. Can you build a car-free city with the right mods? You don't technically even need NAM, but the pedestrian tiles are very useful. What makes it a lot easier is downloading a mod that makes a road buses only or pedestrians only (there's an ugly roadblock, or the more flattering painted street option). Put those down at choke points to prevent sims from driving on your pristine roads. Sims will be forced to walk miles if they want their precious jobs or food. You can sort of make out how it can look in this screenshot:  In vanilla, it's also possible to do this by arranging a 3x3 street with a subway in the middle. Have all residential zones facing the street and connect your subway system up with the outside world. You can pattern these arrangements since they're just plus signs to get super dense residential districts because you've removed most roads. Generally, there's a lot of combinations and options, including small strips of road that hook up only to pedestrian walkways. It's also possibly to create a communist utopia where only government jobs exist! In vanilla, you plop down colleges in long stretches of road, much like eastern bloc prefabs! Then you set their funding to zero or near zero so you can afford them. You can also do this with many other services as well. Pretty soon, the number of teachers will outnumber your students many times over, ensuring the best education in the glorious state. You're pretty much paying people to protest, but I like to think of it as a field trip with signs! And if you manage finances carefully, you can have a car-free, communist utopia in which no one can escape. If you need extra cash, just set up a rich area and place tolls on the exits, which only lead to trains or other walking areas.  Haven't tried it yet, but one day I want to figure out how to financially squeak by with tolls and mass transit while having giant prison walls closing off residential areas with extremely high security and police everywhere.
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Feb 7, 2014 00:05
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I don't know if this has already been asked but are there any special things I should know about using mods in the steam version of the game? Like how would I go about it? I lost my discs in a move and just bought the game off steam.
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Feb 8, 2014 05:24
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