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My city is still tiny, but you can see the initial habits that should help avoid extreme gridding in the long term: The most important thing for me is to draw outlying roads before filling in with denser blocks. When you think about how you'd place small roads leading out of town, you find yourself laying them in fundamentally different ways from in-town blocks: They radiate out from the center, they're widely spaced and connected at uneven intervals, and they have a mix of straight sections and broad curves. They might head more or less directly for some real or imagined destination, like an outlying hamlet, piece of infrastructure (e.g. power plant/water pumps), or natural feature instead of conforming to a grid orientation. Then, as you grow the middle of town outwards, you find yourself having to slice up these weirdly-shaped parcels in all kinds of fun ways. (Use a light touch with the eminent domaining for best results.) In my case I'm still making mostly grid-like divisions of the larger country blocks, but the lack of consistent orientation means there are a lot of quirky interfaces between small gridded segments. As this city grows outwards I'll probably come back and actually make the downtown core more uniformly gridded on the micro level - straighten out some slightly curved roads, move some intersections, redraw a few roads for maximum density - because that's just the way it seems to go in the real world (or anyway the US). But at least that mix of directions will still be there to guide me away from building one big mono-grid.
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Apr 1, 2015 17:23
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Part of the problem is that, though you can lay your roads out in non-straight paths, your buildings still occupy square blocks. It becomes a lot harder to get regular 3x3 and 4x4 blocks for larger buildings down the road with curves or even angles, because of the way zones get assigned to facing streets. I've found the Toggle Zoning Mod to be amazing for helping with this. I draw my main non-fronting roads without zones as terrain-fitting curves or angles, then I will draw some angled in/out to fill the adjacent space as my actual fronting streets. I still end up with grids (and thus the better density they afford) but they're fairly local and more organic. It's really the best of both worlds.
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Apr 1, 2015 17:29
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The most attractive use of grids I have seen is by someone on Simtropolis:  Which kind of reminds me of Paris or something like that with the way there are big squares with boulevards shooting off. Definitely going to emulate this style with my next city.
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Apr 1, 2015 17:37
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Metrication posted:The most attractive use of grids I have seen is by someone on Simtropolis: It's very Paris, or Washington DC (which is not co-incidentally similar): L'Enfant Plan  I definitely want to do a city like that.
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Apr 1, 2015 17:45
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Also, I made a collection of basic UI enhancements and functionality mods that make things nicer without actually altering the gameplay, and have proven to be stable for me: Basic Functionality Mods Are there any I should add? I've noticed bad behavior with Toggle Traffic Lights and Lane Change Controls so they're not in there. I'll do one that has some gameplay changes and/or some GFX changes next. I'll probably also throw together some themed building packs, and a map pack.
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Apr 1, 2015 17:48
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Crap. Why do I always feel the need to start a fresh when I see screenshots like that 
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Apr 1, 2015 17:48
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My city of 60k almost died because every commercial space was complaining about a lack of goods. Turns out trains and trucks had spontaneously begun to ignore my cargo rail depot. I built a second one next to it and a flood of trucks and trains resumed. Replacing the old one and the tracks around it does nothing. Everyone just got together one day and started boycotting it. Why?
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Apr 1, 2015 17:51
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Since we're on anti-grid chat here's Hamina. And here's the original city plan from the 18th century:  The idea was to make it into a coastal fortress city after renaissance ideas. I recall they also had some interesting plans to make into a sort of city state within a state with it's own economy and industry and special trade rights, but can't find the source. Of course the population is currently only ca 21 000 and much less in 18th century so you don't have to be that efficient with space. There are similar cities in France and Spain, but here they didn't finish the actual fortifications and the city grew from the original street plan.
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Apr 1, 2015 17:52
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Hubis posted:Part of the problem is that, though you can lay your roads out in non-straight paths, your buildings still occupy square blocks. It becomes a lot harder to get regular 3x3 and 4x4 blocks for larger buildings down the road with curves or even angles, because of the way zones get assigned to facing streets. And you just plain can't place service buildings (really any ploppable) on the inside of curves if they're too sharp. Which is to say anything more than a very gentle arc.
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Apr 1, 2015 17:54
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People also seem to have different definitions of a grid. For me it's any layout with a lot of paths/intersections and nothing to do with right angles. You could have a curvy grid for instance. Basically are there many fairly evenly spaced intersections forming blocks? Then you've got some form of grid. The alternative is more tree-branch or root style roads with one path in and out of an area like a lot of suburbs have.
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Apr 1, 2015 17:54
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Arrath posted:And you just plain can't place service buildings (really any ploppable) on the inside of curves if they're too sharp. Which is to say anything more than a very gentle arc. What we really need is a pack of flat-iron buildings that can occupy triangular lots.
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Apr 1, 2015 17:59
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Arrath posted:And you just plain can't place service buildings (really any ploppable) on the inside of curves if they're too sharp. Which is to say anything more than a very gentle arc. poo poo I'm finding it impossible to place ploppables on the outside of curves.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:01
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Hubis posted:What we really need is a pack of flat-iron buildings that can occupy triangular lots. Yeah that would be neat. Some kind of procedural setback function that generates a bit of driveway/parking lot or something to fill the incomplete squares between the road edge and the thing you're trying to place would be great for the inside of curves problem.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:01
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Funny, for all my "boo grid" remarks, guess what Firston is? Oh well, its not a hellishly uniform grid at least.   Also, even without textures, the game still looks pretty.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:02
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So there's a cool new mod called Cimtographer that can import and export open streetmap files. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=416064574 I wanted to use it to export my city and get cool screenshots of the map, but being open source there's eleven bazillion programs to render OSM, and 90% of them are poo poo. I still haven't found one that looks decent. Here's my fanciest city in the JOSM editor though. 
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Apr 1, 2015 18:08
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Baronjutter posted:People also seem to have different definitions of a grid. For me it's any layout with a lot of paths/intersections and nothing to do with right angles. You could have a curvy grid for instance. Basically are there many fairly evenly spaced intersections forming blocks? Then you've got some form of grid. The alternative is more tree-branch or root style roads with one path in and out of an area like a lot of suburbs have. Sure, but I think what most people mean when they ask "how do I avoid grids?" is a highly regular rectangular grid. At least in terms of aesthetics. Galaga Galaxian posted:Funny, for all my "boo grid" remarks, guess what Firston is? Oh well, its not a hellishly uniform grid at least. For example, even though this is indeed pretty griddy, it doesn't feel supernaturally rigid. You've got different angles coming together, different block sizes, and waterfront roads that actually follow the shoreline instead of just running the grid right up to the edge. Could you do the whole island as a series of concentric ovals or fractal tree-structured neighborhoods? Yeah, I guess, but for my money this is a nice mix of simplicity, realism, and visual variety. Not to say that aggressively non-gridded layouts can't be awesome. Just that you can get nice visual results even with something that's topologically a grid. Supraluminal fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 18:13
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What the - I've never seen Chirpy do that before.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:20
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That's a pretty great april fools if that's part of their joke. they also had some reddit stuff http://www.reddit.com/r/citiesskylines
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Apr 1, 2015 18:23
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There's also the main menu:
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Apr 1, 2015 18:27
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TheQat posted:they also had some reddit stuff http://www.reddit.com/r/citiesskylines Also implies they know just how much people dislike chirpy. The funny thing is, I hate it, I always turn it off, but if it was reformatted into a ticker or part of the main bar at the bottom I'd love it. It's just so... badly UI'd where it is. (I know, there's a mod)
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Apr 1, 2015 18:28
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EA lawsuit in 3... 2...
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Apr 1, 2015 18:29
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MickRaider posted:EA lawsuit in 3... 2... Yeah, goddamn, they went all in on that.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:31
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I'd like to see how this holds up under real heavy traffic
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Apr 1, 2015 18:31
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These actual-size gifs are so loving relaxing, I love them.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:32
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It would be nice if SA would implement HTML5 gifv's and such so we could embedd them
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Apr 1, 2015 18:34
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Roundabouts are too elegant and non-confrontational. Give me a SE Asia traffic simulator. Just need another mod to replace all the cars with scooters. Plenty of clearance under those freight trucks apparently.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:38
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drat, shots loving fired for April Fool's. I could honestly see EA getting shirty about some of this stuff.MikeJF posted:Also implies they know just how much people dislike chirpy. Yeah, it would be perfectly enjoyable as a ticker, but popping up messages for two seconds at a time then making you click the bird to see anything, and the lovely scrolling behavior, and individual X-to-close buttons that are impossible to click on... it just sucks rear end as-is.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:49
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TheQat posted:That's a pretty great april fools if that's part of their joke. quote:Disasters are now available! Download Origin for the full effect Holy crap they're not pulling any punches
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Apr 1, 2015 18:49
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I tend to make the early phases of a city pretty griddy, which eventually evolves into a high density downtown. For low density neighborhoods and filling in empty spaces around terrain features and freeways I use a lot of curves and it ends up looking reasonably organic. I have yet to get a city past 40-50k and I don't know if I'll ever make one of those giant skyscraper farms some of you guys have built.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:55
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Does anyone outside of an official corporate PR twitter actually use hashtags? I see them used "ironically" on facebook more than anyone on twitter.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:55
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Enos Shenk posted:So there's a cool new mod called Cimtographer that can import and export open streetmap files.  This is really cool.
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Apr 1, 2015 19:03
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Baronjutter posted:Does anyone outside of an official corporate PR twitter actually use hashtags? I see them used "ironically" on facebook more than anyone on twitter. Some of my friends do and I hate it.
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Apr 1, 2015 19:12
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What does a #dead #person smell like? I started a new city after getting my first major one to about 14k pop. I ran into a lot of issues that would require me destroying everything anyways, so I figured I would start over with a bit more foresight this time. I currently have a nice residential block on one side of my highway and am keeping all industry on the other to prevent trucks from loving over my traffic. It seems to be working surprisingly well so far, I'm just wondering if I should also keep Commercial areas sectioned off like that, or if the little vans tend not to cause much for traffic.
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Apr 1, 2015 20:06
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I found chirper to be annoying at first, but the ticker mod really makes it usable/helpful. Why they didn't do it this way, I don't know, but I expect CO to steal that idea in short order.
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Apr 1, 2015 20:15
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Baronjutter posted:Does anyone outside of an official corporate PR twitter actually use hashtags? I see them used "ironically" on facebook more than anyone on twitter. Occasionally. If I want people other than my followers to see it, perhaps if I'm asking a general question, I'll use a category-specific hashtag like #yyc or #abpoli. Sometimes I'll search those, and sometimes I'll search other ones like #yycfood just to see what people are discussing.
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Apr 1, 2015 20:26
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Is there a mod that lets me name roads?
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Apr 1, 2015 20:27
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simosimo posted:Crap. Why do I always feel the need to start a fresh when I see screenshots like that This is me and why I have never had a city with more than 30k people. I get jealous of everyones ability to make these cool functional cities while mine look like randomly placed crap.  Im starting to think part of it is because where I live is very poorly designed so its all I know.
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Apr 1, 2015 20:27
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Furnaceface posted:This is me and why I have never had a city with more than 30k people. I get jealous of everyones ability to make these cool functional cities while mine look like randomly placed crap. Agreed. I live in Boston and the layout here is basically a cluster gently caress because when the city was founded something like 75% of the landmass didn't exist
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Apr 1, 2015 20:31
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I'm amazed no one has photoshopped the CEO's face into the chirper as a mod.
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Apr 1, 2015 20:32
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PT6A posted:Occasionally. If I want people other than my followers to see it, perhaps if I'm asking a general question, I'll use a category-specific hashtag like #yyc or #abpoli. Sometimes I'll search those, and sometimes I'll search other ones like #yycfood just to see what people are discussing. Yeah, but you're using tags that are ad-hoc categories that usefully filter stuff (even if I can't decipher what yours mean specifically...). I don't even use Twitter to speak of, and I'm sure nobody is going there and searching for #person or #electricity. Why not tag all your prepositions while you're at it?
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Apr 1, 2015 20:40
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