The "You Be the Critic" Thread

[mrgscottc]

On Alek King:

I would have used Marrast's embankment set since I think it looks better in commerical areas.  You have a lot of row house repetiton.  I take it that you a row house fan?    A bit too many marinas for my taste.  That transportation network... I bow in your presence and wish to aquire the knowlegde to put together a network like that.

On Mulefisk: It looks like you have a lot of avenues packed into a small space that might be better served by roads.

[sam]

mjig_dudy: your picture looks very nice, but I can't see enough of your city to critique it. A more zoomed out shot would be better   

Mulefisk: Nice screenshot, you have quite a few large buildings there. Someone mentioned too many avenues, but I don't know about that. I think if I had a city with that many tall buildings I would have a lot of traffic problems, even with the avenues you have there. I find as soon as there are three or four large buildings on the one road the congestion builds up a lot.

My only criticism is the sea walls, the terraforming of the coast line looks a little too square. I know its a game limitation with batted sea walls, though, as its difficult to bat them on angles.

[emilin]

mjig_dudy: I'm searching depseratly for things to compalin about, but it's really hard. All things considered the shot is very near perfect.

Let me try anyway:

1. No cars? It doesn't really affect the quality of the building, but the street life looks a little weird with only pedestrians.

2. Heavy industry in such a developed area? It could work, but I would have liked to see more of that industry building to know how it fits the environment.

3. That line of parked cars on the side of the railroad tracks, where are they supposed to drive out?

Bah! I'm really struggling here, I'll just leave it at that and with a big 

[Masochist]

mjig_dudy: You sure do make things hard!  Only thing I can say about it is that the dark blue building on the left doesn't really match the realism of the rest of the shot.  I think it may have something to do with the textures of the lot that it's on.  Oh, and that one spot of niceness on that street where the rail goes under it.  Don't know if you can change that, though.  That's all I got...I'm sorry.

<Edit>:



Aaaurgh!  I've been waiting for someone to post in this thread for half a month so I could post again.  So...ahh...I'm going to bump it, because I think it's a really good thread.  And also because I have a picture to share:



Have at it!...please?

[Giligone]

It's a great looking pic. My concern is that a couple of those houses look like they are falling off the cliff! haha. Surely a big storm would cause them to all tumble into the sea?

[threestooges]

I would second the cliff remark from Giligone (especially with the house on the 2nd roundabout down, the fence seems off) but I have seen houses in such precarious positions before in rl. What I also notice, from a realism standpoint, is that that seems to be a dangerous place for a playground (being so close to the roads, and surrounded by them for that matter). Otherwise it seems pretty good.

[dedgren]

I'm going to bump a thread that hasn't had a post for almost a year and a half because, as so many have said here, this is a really good idea.  If you have a pic of something SC4 that you've done that you want honest, straightforward feedback on, post it here.  I invite folks who really think about how things can be done better in the game to stay tuned here, and to give us your insight on what you see.  I bet we'll all learn something.

So, okay- how about this...



What could I have done better?  What, if anything, do you really like?


David

[threestooges]

You've done a fine job with the rain tool it appears. However, it looks like the top edge of the water shows a bit on the right. I've noticed that plopping rocks (and other such large things) back from the bank a bit helps to ensure they cover the space instead of appearing to sink into the water. I might recommend using more plant life there, but not every part of a pond is bordered by plants. It also looks like you've done a good job of mixing flora varieties too (trees, plants, rocks, etc) it's not just all one type of each.
-Matt

[etherian]

I think its a great idea reviving this thread David, I'll second what Matt has said of the rocks and flora. Perhaps a larger patch of reeds (not too densely packs) will help hide some of the shoreline better as ponds and lakes on gentle slopes are usually dominated by them - I've also been experimenting with Chris's excellent flora and am really surprised at its versatility. Another idea would be to increase the gradient of some of the slopes to create small "cliffs", so that a hard edge against the raised terrain might look a little more natural.

[wouanagaine]

Yes, great shot, and as others commenters, the only thing that can be work more is the straight bank of water, maybe add some patch of TPW and as etherian said, change some slope near the water to avoid the straight line effect

[Ennedi]

Great idea with this thread! I didn't see it earlier. Thank you David for reviving it!

1. I have a strange feeling that rain water behaviour is different that "normal" water, never have I seen such straight water edge on irregular coast. It seems that ingame water gives more irregular edge, also without ripples (ripples can additionally mask some straight edges).
So making a nice looking lakeside is more difficult in this case. In addition, we can see straight edges along rocks placed in the shallow water, it looks odd too (and it doesn't happen both in ingame water and in TPW).
What can be done here?
- We should make very soft, almost flat terrain along the projected lakeside, even if we want to have bigger cavity in the centre of the lake.
- We should use more higher plants along the edge (not only cattails, but also Reed and Johnson grass from RRP set, Jeronij's bushes, maybe something from Gizmo Water Flora set). But not too much! We should visually break the straight line in many places and force the viewer to concentrate on other lakeside elements than the straight edge. So we should make groups of plants and rocks.
I would suggest to make an experiment only with rocks but on very soft lakeside, look what will happen, if it will look bad, then use flora first and then place rocks in free spaces.

2. We often arrange only the lake/riverside placing plants and rocks along it and leaving the rest of terrain as is. It looks bad. Everything should look reasonable. For example if you use grass at the lakeside, it would be good to plop some grass (maybe a different kind, with flowers, bushes etc.) away from the lakeside too, between trees etc. If you use rocks along the lakeside, you can also create a little talus field or make a small canyon and use it as a riverbed of a small dry stream putting stones along it.

3. Using the rain tool we must fill the cavity every time when we open the game. It would be good to check if we are able to put exactly the same amount of water and reach exactly the same water level every time. If yes, how to do it?

I have another suggestion to this thread: If we really want to learn something, it would be good to show a picture, read comments and suggestions and then try to follow them, remake the picture and show the result. This way we can see if our suggestions were good or not 

Adam

[Sam Johnson]

Here is an old picture out my City Oceans City (at this time I had no RRP, so i can't use them on this pic)

What could I do better on this Pic ?

[dedgren]

Hey Sam Johnson-

What could I do better on this Pic ?

Very little, if you ask me.

As a big proponent of the "wide curve" approach, I find your use of one here the only really "out of place" element in the pic, and that's because the catenary poles are discontinuous at the curve, which in turn then makes a jarring contrast with the "game" curve at the lower right.  We need to add that to our list of things to ask the transit modding gods to do- add electrified railway support to wide curve and FARR trackage. Jan (swamper77) appears to be the go-to guy here.  For right now, I actually might, had I been you, have left the wide curve out in favor of having a continuous line of catenary poles.

I really like the willow trees (at least that's what I'd imagine them to be) on the shores of the ponds.  I think that the pond at the center of the pic, is more effective as a result of the more sparse spacing of the trees.  I've never seen in RL a willow "thicket."  The pond at the lower right also has a not really very natural "ring" of flora in it.  Again, this is just a placement issue- I would have use less flora more irregularly.

It's a very fine pic, on the whole.  You should rightly be proud of it.

* * *

Thanks to the folks who criticized mine- I'll be back with responses and follow-up over the weekend.


David

[JoeST]

I like what you did to hide the puzzle-iness of the NAM curve, and the trees are nice... except the ones on the bottom edge of the bottom pond they look far to regular

Other pictures are good to, David's water is nice but a bit straight

Great idea for a thread, will be keeping upto date with this in the future

Joe

[tankmank]

Ok apart from the fact it's not finished i'm not sure what would make this city better

[klaascornelis]

A good terrain mod to start off my help.

[threestooges]

One suggestion I would have would be to consider adding parking lot/garages. Even dense areas have a few here and there. I like your inclusion of some smaller buildings too, as opposed to every single building trying to out do the other.A little more development of the surrounding area will help to further define the area (I hope you will show another picture when you have built a bit more). Aside from that, nothing really jumps out at me to improve the pic just yet.

[dedgren]

tankmank, hey!  Loved your CJing way back when over at ST and I've been keeping an eye on Toright.

Anyway, with a PhotoShopped pic it's always hard for me to separate the P-Shopping issues from the game issues.

I like the overall look a lot- It brought Abu Dhabi (sp?) to mind, as I've never been there but imagine these gleaming towers on an island of irrigation in the desert.

The layout of everything sort of has that "built all at once" almost Stalinist planned city look to it.  I like the way you've used repetition to good effect.  The walls at the base are nifty, too, in a way I really can't account for.  It may be that they visually anchor the city to its surroundings.

I'd hate to guess what the street traffic issues are, but I presume you probably have a Class "A" subway system.  A monorail might actually have been worth considering around the perimeter.

Overall, another really nice pic.  Thanks for showing it to us.


David

[wouanagaine]

I can't emphasis more on putting some parking / park around
My personnal tastes are not forest skyscrappers, but I think adding green parks will make it great, your choices about which skyscrappers to build are good, and I'd like to see it by night
Anyway I have another thing that is quite strange from my point of view, there is some low/medium buildings in the center of the city, which I found a bit weird, I usually see skyscrappers at centers and low/medium in the outward

[lerist]

Every time I enter the SC4 Picture Competition with an image from one of my cities, I hardly get any votes and I walk away with the impession that people hate my work. I would like to know what I'm doing wrong.