Research work

[didactic]

Hello everyone!

We are 2 students in town planning at the University of Tours, France.
Within the framework of a research work in our last year at the university, we've chosen to do a search on the capabilities of Sim City 4 as a city simulator.

We are both not used to this game for the moment, and this forum seems to be occupied by a large number of devotees.
Our work initially focus on:
- The study of different mechanisms / interactions taken into account by the game (discuss their realism)
- The creation of an existing city (in this case Tours) realistic as possible. Then, we want to see if it can be a prospective tool.

Although the forum is very complete with information of all kinds, we will use this topic to request information, which I hope has not been asked before (we've already read a lot of issues here especially tutorial topics).

[didactic]

First, I wonder about the "grid theory" of Michael, on the "sim city central" forum : http://www.simcitycentral.net/knowledge/articles/the-grid/

I tryed to ask some questions on the "sim city central" forum, but it is'nt very busy anymore...

In fact, some of his "grid" examples aren't really clear to me, and I want to know if it's possible to illustrate it with picture...

Do you have build some cities that can illustrate different type of grids, like in the article?

[Jmouse]

Welcome to SC4D, didactic. First of all, I must ask that you not double post - simply use the modify button you'll find above the upper right hand corner of your previous post.

Now with that out of the way, if you are unfamiliar with the game, explanations about things like RAM, NAM, SAM, CAM and custom content will make no sense to you. I suggest you go buy a copy of SC4 Deluxe and play it for a while. You might also be interested in seeing the work of more experienced players here.

This is a complex game - not something you can master in an hour. If you will familiarize yourself with the game and game engine, though, I'm sure there are plenty of players who would be willing to answer your specific questions.

Joan

[emilin]

There is no one answer to your question. I would say that the game in "vanilla" version (without any plugins) doesn't have a very high level of realism built into it.

On the other hand you could just aswell claim that the possibilities for realism is near infinite if using all the tools available (and having enough time).

Making recreation of a real city is perfectly possible, and there are many journals on this board exhibiting just that. The level of realism possible is basically a choice made by the creator.

I'm guessing the first thing you will need is an accurate region map of Tours. Something I would be happy to supply if you could PM me with the coordinates of the city.

[CasperVg]

In case you are looking for such recreations of real-life cities, I suggest that you view Edmonton (by TheJerseyDevil73 - Simtropolis) and Recreations (Ruhr-area) (by ejc - SimCity 4 Devotion).

[Nardo69]

If you want to know how the Sc4 grid is working, I would consider a look of the great "grid secret" - thread of frndofyahweh from 2005 over at Simtropolis: , AFAIK noone before and after made such a thorough elaboration ...

Bernhard 

[threestooges]

All of the advice you have received so far is quite a good place to start. If you are looking for a good representation of grid systems and the tricks mentioned in that article about how to break them up, I recommend looking at Condor Bay by Masochist in the inactive board of the MD section. He does an amazing job with his transportation systems. I don't know how efficently they work, but they do demonstrate some of the styles  referenced in the article. Notice the road/street setup for the residential areas in Update 9.

[emilin]

Somehow I find this subject very interesting... it's not that often that someone takes an interest in this game for the mentioned reasons, and I had an additional though after having a brief look at Tours in Google maps.

I think your research project might have a bit of a problem when it comes to recreating that particular city: the end result will probably either LOOK very much like Tours OR function like Tours, but look like a very standardized SimCity simulation. If your primary concern is the simulation engine you should probably have an easier time recreating an American city of choice - cause that is what you will have if you simply draw the streets and start growing it. Making European style cities require a much larger set of plugins, and most likely a bit of convincing the game engine to grow those particular buildings and not others.

Furthermore, Tours seem to have a lot of rather narrow waterways that aren's placed in a straight angle against the street pattern. This is not at all impossible to overcome, but it will definatly requier very careful zoning.

I think we are all interested in knowing what will become of this, so please report back on the progress later, thanks!

[tag_one]

Hi Didactic, if you want to know more about how the game works and how it simulates the growth of a city I suggest you contact RippleJet. He's quite an experienced modification maker and knows a lot about the game simulator. 

[RippleJet]

The main limitation with recreating an existing old European city is the fact that streets can only be dragged orthogonally or diagonally 45°, and nothing in between.
Besides, buildings only grow orthogonally, they cannot even grow facing a 45° diagonal street.
Anything not orthogonal would need to be specifically batted for this purpose.

You would need to simplify the grid layout to square grids perpendicular against the river Loire, with only a few diagonal streets.
Unfortunately it won't even be possible for the A10 to cross the river diagonally.

Hi Didactic, if you want to know more about how the game works and how it simulates the growth of a city I suggest you contact RippleJet. He's quite an experienced modification maker and knows a lot about the game simulator. 

Regarding the simulation, there is indeed a lot to read among the tutorials.
However, do feel free to ask in this thread whatever you'd like. No guarantees I can answer all of them though.



I understand the simulation will cover how Tours has developed so far and how it will develop from this day on.
The hardest part is to recreate Tours of today.
To get this you'd need to run the simulator historically from the first settlers arriving to Turones and Caesarodunum.

The historical development would need to maintain a balance between residential, commercial and industrial.
The EQ (education), HQ (health) and security (police and fire) also need to correspond to RL development of Tours.

Luckily the timescale in SC4 is a lot shorter than in RL though...

You will need to carefully select what custom buildings to use, and let the development reach the state of current Tours.
Knowing how Tours developed in RL is good, as it helps you decide which areas to develop in what order and what density to zone.
Normally you would start with low density, and not zone more than medium density anywhere.

Use parks and/or plant trees to get medium and high wealth houses to develop in designated areas,
but avoid them in areas you want to stay low wealth.
Also be sure not to keep the game's (American) high wealth taxes too low.
Otherwise you'd get a shift into too much R§§§ and unemployment following that.

You will probably have to experiment a bit to achieve Tours of today.
Thus, it'll be important for you to save and backup your city/cities once in a while.


After that, it's all up to your imagination on how you want to see Tours develop in the future...
Just be sure not to rush things too fast, and make sure you're not spending more money than you earn.