nerdly_cities

nerdly_dood · June 01, 2008, 12:34:54 PM

This is the first update to my CJ that is not only posted at SimCities.net. SimCities is a small website, so I figured that I'd show it on a bigger site so that more people could see it. (And I'm lucky that SimCities and SC4Devotion use the same forum software, so I just copied all the code for this update and post it there with a few changes

)

This is Update 3. The first update can be found here, and update 2 can be found closer to the bottom of the same page.

Jeez, why didn't I upload my CJ images one city at a time? I have way too many to look through to get these in order...

I'll start out with Alicianta, a small rural town (I do have a lot of those, don't I?) in a whole new region that I made by filling the San Francisco region that came with the game with dirt and a couple mountains. (Yes, I killed San Francisco Bay!)

Don't worry, this town was already on dry land when the Bay was still there

(The towns in my previous updates are in a region that is completely filled with incorporated cities, and the landscape is rather featureless and flat, considering I handmade it a long time ago when my skills and attention to detail was much less than it is now)

Like many of my cities, it started out as a little bit of untraveled highway, because there was nobody there to travel it. (Alicianta was the first city I made in this region, but I have a LOT more coming, believe me!)

Then of course, a tiny bit of development began: (And I am beginning to realize that I took too many pictures of this city...)

And the town gradually grew...

...and then a house burned to the ground before I could even take a picture of it!

Two weeks later, a fire station was complete and operational

Farmers moved in, increasing the town's population and adding to the food supply (This is a very isolated area)

On May 10, four years after the town's founding, I was called to the hosue of a resident who claimed that several bears were in the vicinity. I was armed, but since the bears made no move to threaten the resident (who did not own a gun at the time, but did fifteen minutes later), I was reluctant to use it. the bears eventually wandered away from the town and did not cause any more trouble.

A few weeks later, I began receiving a few complaints from confused drivers about the roundabout where the two main highways that go through Alicianta meet. IN particular, they were complaining that they could not find a single guide online or in the driving manual on how to navigate them. Later that day, the roundabout...

...turned into a standard 4-way intersection:

People liked the new setup a lot better.

The new intersection setup helped development acquire a startling pace:

Certain members of the population, particularly one who has the local title of "mayor" and goes by the online screen-name "nerdly_dood", have been recently disappointed in the education level of the town. By mid-september, a school house was complete, about two weeks behind schedule. Since most of the town's population could easily drive or walk to school, a bus was not necessary.

I hear thunder outside...
Ok, back on topic..

Since some prospective residents wished for their children to walk to school, and also so that they could be safer playing in the yard, they requested taht the highway in front of the lots their houses were going to be on:

...have its speed limit reduced, passing prohibited, and have a sidewalk. Two days later, that was completed, and a street light was added for extra safety (and a few mayor approval points

)

Along with the added safety and educational benefits came an increase in the demand for housing...

which also resulted in a similar traffic-calming measure near the schoolhouse.

Of course, when development increases, traffic also increases. When you live at the end of a cul-de-sac and there are plans for the street to be extended, it is natural for you to protest, and that's what Old Man Jones did. I had to drive to his house in that yellow Ford Focus of mine and personally offer him a hundred thousand Simoleons if he would move out of his house until new houses could be completed in the area. He had no local family, so I offered to let him sleep in my own house, which he grudgingly accepted. (It's a good thing we get along well...)

Me at his house doing my persuading:

The next day:

Development didn't only increase in that particular part of town, it also increased on the outskirts where there weren't any farms in the way:

And of course, there was demand for jobs, mainly farming jobs, for which zones were promptly provided:

Development continues...

And of course, I, with all my mayoral duties, must be comfortable to do my job well, so I sold my Ford and had a nice mansion built and a black Lincoln limousine bought

It looks like a lot of people turned out for the opening ceremony...

Ok, there's lightning outside, so I'll post this now and work on it with less fear of power outage, but of course whit a warning to please go away until I'm done working on it...
Back on topic:

Along with increasing population and farming comes demand for more jobs. The products of the farms need to be processed. I put two and two together and came up with medium-density industrial zones:

And along with more jobs comes more wealthy residents:

A desire for more houses near the center of Alicianta has led to the requirement for a new street. Unfortunately, there was a house in the way. Again. I didn't know this resident well, but she had someone to stay with until a house for her was complete. (She was more persistent, and it took 150,000 simoleons, along with a lot specially zoned for her own house, instead of the ones already planned, for me to persuade her to let me have her house replaced with a street. The image below shows the house she was living in which was to be destroyed, along with the residential zone for her "replacement house" right next to it.

Development continues on the south side of town:

Several dozen residents are devout Christians. So naturally, they wanted a church,which they insisted had be in the middle of town, right where a car dealership happened to be:

The car dealer was persuaded with 163,5617.43 Simoleons, which includes the exact value of his entire building and landand everything on it that could not be driven away to make way for the church, which was promptly built:

And on my birthday, August 4, ten years after the founding of Alicianta, here's an overview of the central majority of the town:

And we'll wrap this up with an aerial picture of the entire town of Alicianta and some of the beginnings of the mountanis to the southwest nine days later:

Next up is Bend in the River, which came from my old region which I will never return to again! (at least not in the game, but there are a few cities that I will show in my MD in the future)

Pat · June 01, 2008, 01:56:32 PM

Hey Nerdly glad to see you bring your CJ here as well and dont worry I will follow along at both locations

nerdly_dood · June 01, 2008, 02:01:29 PM

I can guarantee you that they will be almost identical here and at SC, and with respect to the images and stories, they will be entirely identical.

CasperVg · June 01, 2008, 08:49:05 PM

Looks great, I really like the rural setting.

nerdly_dood · July 17, 2008, 12:59:51 PM

I'll make this update prettier, or more appealing, or whatever you want to call it, either tomorrow or the first chance i get after that.

It may be smaller than the previous update, but hey, it's an update...and I'll try not to wait as long between updates, too.

Preliminary planning...

People need jobs...

Random pictures of the rest of it...

[/img]http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd138/nerdly_dood/BendintheRiver-May9061178929272.jpg[/img]

bat · July 18, 2008, 08:32:15 AM

Great start there on your MD! Wonderful first updates with nice pictures!
Looking forward to more...

mbsimcity · August 20, 2008, 06:21:48 AM

Hey Nerdly,

I hope you have more updates coming...
I like the sense of humor you incorporate in your narative...

QuoteOf course, when development increases, traffic also increases. When you live at the end of a cul-de-sac and there are plans for the street to be extended, it is natural for you to protest, and that's what Old Man Jones did. I had to drive to his house in that yellow Ford Focus of mine and personally offer him a hundred thousand Simoleons if he would move out of his house until new houses could be completed in the area. He had no local family, so I offered to let him sleep in my own house, which he grudgingly accepted. (It's a good thing we get along well...)

Me at his house doing my persuading:

Anyways, hopefully this late comment will inspire a new update

nerdly_dood · August 27, 2008, 12:18:38 PM

Update coming later today (or perhaps in the next few days...)

~~Teaser coming in the next few minutes.~~

Teaser:

Of course you will be able to see the image without the ripple effect soon enough.

Pat · August 30, 2008, 12:55:35 PM

doood that image is sweet there for a teaser and I cant wait to see the update that goes with it!!

Pat · August 30, 2008, 09:21:55 PM

That bites Nerdly, all I got to really say is patience is a virtue well earned here with CAM... I noticed it takes time to develop higher class residential..

Rodney99 · August 31, 2008, 12:58:37 AM

Nice work so far!

I really like the suburbs and highways.

nerdly_dood · September 14, 2008, 10:05:11 AM

Okay, so I'm having problems with low-density development in the very place where I DON'T want single-family houses, so I'll have to use the LotPlop cheat from Buggi's Extra Cheats DLL and plop some medium-size apartment buildings... You'd think that the CAM would help restrict medium-density zones to condos, apartments and tenements...

Okay I'm finally making progress on the edges of the CBD of this nerdly_city of mine. I've gotten most all sides of the CBD/burbage transition done, but I need to take a look at the northwest corner before I'm satisfied, and I might need to add another layer of burbs around the entire city just to make it feel burby...and then you'll get another update, and maybe I'll actually split this update into smaller pieces so it's easier for you all to digest and (more importantly) less tedious for me to upload to my PhotoBucket.

amapper · September 17, 2008, 08:32:04 PM

Very nice work you are doing. The town is growing quickly and will soon be a small city.

Pat · September 20, 2008, 01:06:50 PM

Hey N_D I can't wait for that next update!!!!

papab2000 · September 20, 2008, 01:10:15 PM

Looks like it is developing nicely.

Every good thing takes time.

Heblem · September 20, 2008, 03:52:29 PM

Fantastic work i like your use of the SAM street asphalt also the turnabout on the first update looks great!

That tease makes me wonder... is that your city downtown or something

nerdly_dood · September 20, 2008, 06:38:21 PM

Amapper: I do a different city with each update. I'm about to do the finishing touches to the city in the next update and then I'll post an update.

Pat: All I have left to do is do some lengthening of the airport to give its runway a more sensible length and then it's time for the update.

papab2000: If it was developing nicely I would have like 8 more updates by now and well on my way out of the "Recently Published" category

But seriously, I am making progress slowly but surely.

Heblem: Well... most of these towns.. yeah that is the closest thing to their "downtown" so to speak...

But the next one I'm working on has more of a defined CBD with my best efforts at a transition from CBD to suburbs. If I ever get another gigabyte of RAM for my computer then I'll add a more realistic amount of suburbs to this city and update it again, but I don't see another gigabyte coming soon... My SC4 performance is really pretty crappy with only 1gb RAM and Windows Vista...

EDIT: I've merged all of your individual posts together. Please use one post to reply to all comments, not to each individually, since that is considered spamming your MD to gain advancement through the forums. - Dustin (thundercrack83)

THE USER RESPONDS: I don't mean to advance my MD by making a bunch of my own posts in it to increase the reply count - i've got no reason to advance something I don't see advancing anytime soon as far as MD greatness goes.

Pat · September 20, 2008, 07:24:03 PM

LoL N_D you got more ram then I do, but then again I am running XP... I know either way what you do for your transition it will be good!!!

Heblem · September 21, 2008, 01:59:19 AM

the problem is that vista consumes alot of RAM and makes the game slower, you should "downgrade back to XP" for me XP is the best operative system yet...

Its a shame, hope you get more RAM in a near future

nerdly_dood · September 26, 2008, 07:16:05 PM

The city I'm putting in my next update needs an airport. It should be a medium-capacity local airport - we'll get into huge international airports later.

I am of the opinion that the Maxis airports have runways that are unrealistically short... cause you see, it's hard for airliners to take off on runways that are [does some math and research] not much longer than the runway of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier so I broke down and violated my policy of refusing to associate with modular airports, and I ended up downloading the RMIP from the STEX. This is what I did with it:

but of course it's not done. This is what I intend to do with it:

I don't know what I'll do with the red area to connect the terminal etc. area (blue) to the runway next to it. (No, really I have no idea!) I am reasonably sure that I can find some matching taxiways of the diagonal variety to fit in the orange areas (the pack I downloaded is RMIP v.1 so there must be diagonals in v.2, I don't know)
On the bottom left of the last image on the very edge where you can see a road with a sidewalk: That is a security checkpoint oops - hint... never mind...
Moderators and admins: You can find out what that actually is by clicking the "modify" link...but that would take all the fun out of it so I don't recommend it.

THIS IS BY NO MEANS FINAL. Don't be surprised if I use a whole different RMIP version.
I'm just exploring all these airport things I've surrendered myself to like I surrendered myself to the CAM and maybe the HSR mod but I'm not sure about that one yet.