Realistic Cities For Dummies

[smileymk]

Welcome, all, to the last proper lesson of this introductory project in realistic city-building.

In a few moments you'll learn how to add the final touches to that city of yours. But first...

Exla357: Thanks. Make sure you get as many relevant sign packs as you can - the wider the range of signs in your files, the better.

Reikhardt: Well, the road signs certainly are a great example of how very small things can make a very big difference.

And now, it's time to finish the first project with some finishing touches.

Lesson 16 - Finishing Touches

Finishing touches are a lot like detailing, in that they are small things that make a big difference. The difference between detail and finishing touches, however, is that the latter is essential to give a city a sense of completeness, whereas the former isn't.

You've already learnt to do a lot of things in previous lessons that could be considered as 'finishing touches' - eg. adding car parks, turn lanes, security fences, using SAM textures, etc.

However, there are still a few things that you can do. Like detailing, this is a conceptual thing and the more you can come up with, the better. All I can do is show you just a selection of finishing touches.

A good start is to add fillers to roundabouts. If you bulldoze the central tiles of one-way or avenue roundabouts, you're left with a blank space which you can put something in to.
There are many lots around the Web designed for this situation. This avenue roundabout has been touched up with the BlAM Pedestrian Underpass filler:


You can see that the roundabout looks finished now - there's nothing more that needs to be added. You can add signs if you want (and you should!), but you can still look at that roundabout and say it's finished.

Use fillers also for the oneway roundabouts:


I know I've said this several times before, but the rule is to use your preferred lot. Doing this further enhances your city by personalising it.

Another big thing we can do is to add retaining walls in certain places where the hills are steep. Do this only in urban areas - they don't look as good out in the country.
I like to use the Jeronij Residential Walls for this, but once more, use what you like.

You can place the walls alongside main roads to improve the appearance of embankments or cuttings made in the road's construction:


You can add them to suburbs as well, where they do make a big visual improvement:


But where retaining walls really come into their own is in deep urban cuttings, such as what we made for the railway line:


You can see here how a big ugly ditch can be easily turned into something much more aesthetically pleasing using retaining walls.

A tip on lot orientation when using Jeronij's walls:

- When using the straight pieces, the arrow points to the trees.
- When using the diagonal pieces, the north arrow orients the wall to face the north-east. You can use this to figure out how to properly orient your diagonal walls.

Another addition is to add trees alongside the edge of rural roads and railways:


See the small trees alongside the carriageways? These haven't grown just yet but when they do, they'll provide a nice boundary to the motorway.

Do this also for your railways - and don't worry about how close you get to the track. Trees do often stand right next to high-speed main lines, and they often obscure the boundary fence, so you can, and should, place trees such that this happens.

And finally, there is a slight issue with one of our rural roads that we can address:


This road features a long, quite steep climb, which is not a problem for cars, but it will be for the lorries which use the road.
Lorries that are climbing the hill will not be doing it quickly, and will therefore be holding up all of the traffic behind them.

The solution is simple: to provide a crawler lane on the uphill side such that the faster traffic can overtake the slow lorries. We don't need an extra lane going downhill because the lorries going downhill have gravity on their side.

We can use the ARD-3, available in the NWM, to create this crawler lane.

Start by plopping a starter piece. Pay close attention to the orientation - the 2 lanes are going uphill:


And before you ask, I have LHD. If you're using RHD, then the piece needs to go the other way round.

To end it, you can add a simple ARD-3 to Road Transition at the rural end. At the bottom of the hill, however, we have a junction with TuLEP pieces. We therefore must convert this junction to transition from turn lanes to ARD-3.
Here's how to do it:


Again, make sure you get the orientation right, and transition to ARD-3 as soon as the game will let you.

You can then drag between the ends to complete your ARD-3:


Because there are junctions with farm roads, some of the ARD-3 might not materialise. Not to worry - just put a couple more starter pieces in the trouble spots.

And that is a taster of just some of the finishing touches that you can apply to your city.

Before I conclude, though, there is an issue, which is now relevant, that I'd like to talk about.

When is a city finished?

In railway modelling, one of my other interests, there is a very old saying that goes something like this:

"A model railway layout is never finished, because there is always something else to be added, or something more to be done.

I would say that this statement applies as much to SC4 as it does to railway modelling. There is always something else you can do to improve your city.

This can be a big thing, like widening a road, remodelling a suburb or replacing Maxis buildings with custom BATs off the STEX, etc. Or it can be a small thing, like putting up some road signs, creating a pedestrian crossing, or adding a few trees here and there.

You can call a city complete if all of the essential things are there and you're happy with it, but really, when you look at it up close, you will always find that there is something that can be added, removed or changed. This is always a good thing - by making the necessary alterations, you will have improved your city and will be more satisfied with it. Other people will think more highly of it too.

One of the big advantages of membership of a forum such as this is that it enables you to get advice on potential changes or improvements from a wide range of people, each of whom will have their own opinion. Take this advice when it's presented to you - it can't do your city any harm, and you might just learn something new.

So, in conclusion, just like in real life, a city is never truly finished. There are always changes to be made - so make them.

And that, my friends, concludes the lessons on the first project.

In the next update we'll go over all of the important points of realistic city-building that you've learnt so far.

Until then,
Chris

[sumwonyuno]

Details are always a nice addition.   

[Risu]

No, I tend to disagree. I say a city is "finished" when one finally fulfills all the steps you laid out in this thread. It'll become progressively harder to find things to add or improve upon. Once it's at that point, it's time to take a break and start building on the next tile in the region. Of course, if you get an idea later, you're allowed to return to it. But generally speaking, it's considered "finished".

[smileymk]

How much of the past 16 lessons have you forgotten? Well sit tight, because it's all going to come flooding back in a minute.

sumwonyuno: Indeed they are. They're also a very important addition.

SimRisu: What you have raised is the issue of when you're satisfied with a city. I suppose it's like a model railway - at some point you decide that the layout is ready to join the exhibition circuit. When it's done a few shows you retire it and work on the next layout.
However, a lot of layouts change as they're exhibited, either because of problems that only show themselves under those conditions, or because of constructive criticism from viewers. So in that sense, a layout, and indeed an SC4 city, is never done, even when you're happy with it and are showing it to the world. But you're right, at some point you do have to decide that something is done well enough and move on - and this, for the record, applies to MD-ing as well.
However, you could always work on the region as a whole, rather than one tile at a time...

Now, ready to have your memories refreshed? Then gather round for the summary of this introductory project.

Project 1 Summary

Throughout the course of this introductory project, you have, hopefully, learnt serveral things about
various stages of realistic city-building.

It is, however, a lot to learn, and so therefore you need to consolidate your learning, otherwise you'll
end up forgetting it - especially the stuff we covered in the early lessons.

So I thought we'd better just go over the key points that were covered in the course of this first
project. It might be worth you printing this off, as it will provide a simple list of concepts and
rules that you can refer to whilst working on your own projects.

Now let's get started. First, there are some fundamental ideas that you need to appreciate. We didn't
learn these, but these points were the ethos behind this project, so I think they're worth sharing.

Fundamental Concepts

- You can build a very realistic city using only Maxis lots and downloads from the STEX and LEX, without needing to do any modding at all.

- Your playing style (i.e. what lots you use, how you use them, the order in which you build things, etc.) is largely irrelevant. You can get realistic results with a variety of playing styles.

(However, be sensible with the order - you should build the foundations (i.e. landscape and transport network) before you do anything else.)

- It's well worth you putting as much time and effort into each stage of construction as you can.

And now we'll go over the key ideas put forth in each lesson.

Planning

- Planning is the single most important stage of city-building.

- Planning prevents your city from becoming a disorganised, random mess.

- Initial plans are best done on a blank sheet of paper, using a few differently coloured pens.

- Use different colours to show different things, so your plan is easy to follow.

- Keep your plan simple. Include only essential information such as main transport networks, estates and important buildings.

- Planning should not take more than 10 minutes per city tile.

- A young child should be able to follow your plan.

Preparation

- Use Paint to edit the config.bmp file to change the size of your region.

- The size of the image in pixels is the size of your region in small city tiles (and the approximate
size in kilometres).

- A small city tile is made by colouring a single pixel red.

- A medium city tile is made by colouring a 2x2 square of pixels green.

- A large city tile is made by colouring a 4x4 square of pixels blue.

Terraforming

- Fill the landscape with rolling hills, which should be large and not too steep.

- A good height can be formed with two or three clicks of the hill tool.

- Each hill should be linked to the next one.

- Create water bodies, such as rivers, with the Shallow Valley tool.

- Make rivers shallow - you should be able to see the bottom.

- Make your rivers run through the valleys between the hills, and ensure that they're bendy.

- Soften out the riverbank on either side - there should be no cliffs.

- Add trees at the top and bottom of hills, as well as on riverbanks.

- Tree clusters should be dense, especially near water.

- Lower densities can be used on not-too-steep hills (something you could easily climb, for example).

Motorways

- Start with an interchange - it is easier to work from there.

- Begin the carriageway by plopping an RHW starter piece.

- Fork interchanges are good for creating spur motorways.

- Roundabout interchanges are good for most interchanges with surface roads.

- You can end spur motorways at flat roundabouts.

- Use either RHW-4 or RHW-6C for the main carriageway, depending on your preference.

- Use ground lifter and hole digger lots, as well as the NAM On-Slope pieces, to create realistic flyovers over and under the motorway.

- Use RHW-4 for spur motorways.

- Keep motorways relatively straight, and use smooth curves as much as you can.

- Fork interchanges can be created by building an RHW bridge over the main carriageway, adding a ramp on the other side, and connecting everything up.

- Roundabout interchanges can be created by dragging a one-way road oval, adding stubs for the exits, and connecting everything up.

- Make exit slip roads 2 lanes wide (RHW-4), entry slip roads 1 lane wide (MIS).

- Accel/decel lanes for major junctions (like the fork interchange) are a good idea.

Roads

- Drag out the road system according to your plan, using avenues and roads.

- For bridges, the Plain bridge is usually the best choice.

- Use avenue roundabouts at avenue junctions and oneway roundabouts at road junctions.

- The 2x2 road roundabout can be used to end an avenue at a road.

- Roads can cross avenues at flat junctions.

- Flat junctions between main roads should have turn lanes, which can be created with the TuLEP system.

- Be reasonable with slopes - don't be afraid to add curves to reduce the gradient.

- Use smooth curves as much as you can.

- Avoid at-grade junctions with motorways - use FLUPs or flyover pieces to keep the motorway grade-separated.

- Use NWM on some urban main roads, particularly TLA and MAVE, to make things more varied.

Railways

- Railways should be relatively flat, and have only gradual bends.

- Reroute roads to fit in the railway if necessary - the railway came first.

- Use embankments and cuttings to keep the slope to a minimum.

- If cuttings get too deep, use tunnels instead.

- Flat tunnels can be created by digging a level cutting and filling in the middle afterwards.

- Place stations only when needed (usually only 1 per town), and choose the right station for the job.

- Use two parallel rail tiles to create a busy main line.

- Build freightyards by building sidings alongside the main line, and placing a suitable lot at the siding farthest from the main lines.

- Busy main lines should be electrified with overhead catenary.

- Catenary masts should be consistently spaced at 3-5 tiles apart.

- Where the railway passes under a bridge, catenary masts should be placed directly on each side.

- Do not electrify freightyard lots. You can electrify some of the sidings.

- Using pointwork with smooth curves, which can be found in the NAM, is a must.

Utilities

- Build power plants away from towns, and make them big enough to power your region.

- Make sure to add transformers, supplies, car parks, etc. for the power plants.

- Spread out the power lines - build them through towns and to the edge of your region.

- Use streets as access roads, branching off main roads at junctions featuring turn lanes.

- Use the SAM asphalt textures to improve the appearance of your streets.

- Water facilities should be well away from power plants and landfills.

- Water facilities should include the pumps, car parks, and sewage works (although you might want to build separate sewage works).

- Build water pipes in straight lines 12 tiles apart, connected at the ends.

- Landfill makes for a realistic, if unpleasant, waste disposal facility.

- Place landfills well away from towns.

- Make the landfill appropriately sized to the area it serves - something like 20x15 tiles should be enough for a reasonably-sized town.

- Make sure to add an access street to the landfill.

- Surround all utilities with security fencing, including security gates at the entrance to each facility.

City Centre

- Inner cities should have a layout of long, relatively straight streets, spaced about 4 tiles apart.

- Inner cities should be filled with medium-density residential, with medium-density commercial placed along main roads.

- Inner cities and CBDs should not feature too many facilities such as schools.

- Construct bus stops along main roads in inner cities.

- CBD street layouts should be a tight grid, with approximately 4x4-tile blocks.

- CBDs should feature shopping centres, multi-storey and flat car parks, and a straight street lined
with bus stops.

- Pedestrianised shopping streets can be built in CBDs with the Ped Mall pieces.

- High-density commercial zoning should dominate CBDs, with high-density residential in non-important places.

- Ped Mall On Slope pieces can be used to make stepped pedestrian footbridges.

Industry

- The street layout for an industrial estate should consist of a couple of relatively straight main streets, with a few straight branches at least 5 tiles apart.

- Where streets meet diagonal roads, build a street slip lane to make turns easier for lorries.

- Add small car parks around the estate.

- Zone single 2x2-3x3-tile parcels of medium density industrial, holding down the CTRL key whilst zoning to ensure that what grows is one single lot.

- Make sure there is a gap of at least 1 tile between each lot.

- Fill in the gaps with bus stops, pedestrian paths and grass lots.

- Add trees in the gaps, and at the edges of the estate.

Facilities

- Build a main police HQ either in the CBD or on the edge of town. For a reasonably sized town, you don't need much else.

- The police facility should be easily accessible, and have a reasonably sized car park.

- Build fire stations on main roads, running OWR-1 around the back to allow fire engines to come back.

- Add turn lanes at access roads where appropriate.

- Construct one primary school in each suburb, building on a main street, and providing a small field at the back, a small car park, and a perimeter fence.

- Construct a couple of high schools by placing the building on a main street, providing a moderate car park, a couple of sports courts, a large field with sports pitches, and a perimeter fence.

- Add a large library in the CBD.

- Build a hospital off a main road. Make it large, and include a large car park, a walk-in centre, and a landing pad for the air ambulance.

- Make your facilities a bit different each time.

Suburbs

- Start by building a couple of main streets, which connect directly to main roads.

- Build a few streets to connect the main streets.

- Add side streets to fill the suburb. The more random the layout is, the better.

- Experiment with a few different street endings and formats.

- Add 2 or 3 bus stops along a main street.

- Include space for a large field. Use grass parks to create it.

- Add a few pedestrian paths to provide useful shortcuts. Place playgrounds along some of these.

- Zone 1x1 low-density residential plots along all of your streets.

- Zone 2x1 low-density commercial plots along main roads.

- Fill gaps with grass parks.

- Any homes that have retaining walls as part of the lot should be immediately demolished.

- Lots that stray outside of the 1x1 plots should only occur occasionally - excessive noncompliant lots should also be immediately demolished.

Outskirts Shopping Precinct

- Build a car park inside a moderately-sized ring of access street.

- The site should be next to a main road, on the edge of town.

- Add turn lanes on the main road at the access street turn-off.

- Zone 3x3 blocks of medium-density commercial along the outer edges, using the CTRL key. Make the lots
touch each other.

Outskirts

- Build a network of access streets, making them straight and keeping them at least 15 tiles apart.

- Pretty the streets up with gravel or dirt textures, available in the SAM.

- Split up the land into several plots using hedges or trees. Make each plot irregular and reasonably sized.

- Add trees alongside avenues and motorways.

- Zone agriculture in all of the plots.

- When lots develop, add farmhouses using low-density residential, one tile away from the developed building.

- Farmhouses should not have retaining walls (as if you were working in a surburb).

- Place trees alongside main roads, so long as there are no buildings in the way in a particular plot.

- Detail open farms with fence enclosures, animals, and feeding facilities for those facilities.

- Farms with ploughed land or crops do not need detailing, but they should have a processing facility (the building that develops will usually do the job).

- Farms with the Pedriana Plant building and/or flat dirt textures should be immediately demolished.

Completing the City

- Finish your suburbs and rural areas.

- Make each estate different.

- Try building residential streets directly alongside avenues.

- Any street leading to a bridge/tunnel/underpass should be a main road through the estates on either side.

- Add trees at the main road junctions on the edge of town.

- At road branches, create a square and use commercial to fill it.

Detailing

- Detailing adds an extra additional level of refinement to your city, and turns your city from an average city into a great one.

- Place road signs along your roads. Do your best to use them prototypically - if you don't know how, get out there and see for yourself.

- Fill your main roads with traffic by using traffic generators.

- Add advertising billboards alongside main roads.

- Place boundary fencing along your railway lines.

- Plant trees along the back of suburban homes.

- Detail rivers to a very high extent, using rocks and flora.

- Add rural power lines and wild animals in rural areas.

- Add some cameos in the town.

Finishing Touches

- Provide finishing touches to make your city look complete.

- Use roundabout fillers in the middle of avenue and oneway roundabouts.

- Use retaining walls to improve the apperance of urban cuttings, embankments, and steep slopes in
suburbs.

- Add trees at motorway junctions and alongside railway lines.

- Use ARD-3 to add crawler lanes to long uphill climbs on roads.

And that is your definitive list of every important point in realistic city-building we've covered in this introductory project.

I apologise for the fairly big read and the lack of pictures, but I hope that it was helpful to summarise what you should have learnt thus far. You might have been reminded of a few things you forgot. Pictures wouldn't have been appropriate in an end-of-project summary like this.

If you want additional information on a point, then go back to the relevant lesson, where the points are discussed in detail.

I would say that the 3 most important things are planning, detailing and terraforming (in that order).

If you've forgotten anything, then you need to go back to the relevant lesson and refresh yourself.
You'll need all of the skills learnt here for the next project.

Now I think you need some pictures to get over the reading - so next time, I'll show you the best bits of the first project. I think it'll be good to show what can be done.

See you there,
Chris

[Evillions8]

Although I don't comment here very often, I like your concept!  Keep it up! 

[smileymk]

Hey guys. It's good to see the website back online, and as for the new look, well, it's grown on me. I do like the simplicity of it.

Now, returning our focus to RCFD:

Evillions8: Thanks. I'll keep it up alright.

And now it's time for the best bits of the first project.

Project 1 Best Bits

The aim of this is to show what can be achieved in SC4 without needing a high level of skill, or doing any modding. All of what you're about to see has been made using only Maxis items and items that are available to download off the STEX or LEX., using the techniques we learnt in the lessons.

As I made you do a lot of reading in the Summary, I won't provide any commentary of these images. I'll just let the pictures do the talking instead:




















And that's that for the best bits of the first project. That also brings the first project to a final conclusion - and there will be no more updates on this introductory project. It's time to move on.

Before we dive into Project 2, however, I want to do something that moves away from projects but is still SC4-relevant. So the next update will be about myths in SC4 - what they are, why they're false, and how you can exploit them.

See you then.
Chris

[Evillions8]

There's a problem with images 5 and 6, they don't look right in my opinion.

Image 5:
If you're going to make a realistic alley, you might as well add some fillers like the same base texture found over the STEX.  From what you did, you did something out of place.  You added classy plaza fillers in between the low-wealth commercial.  If you used the PEDMALL tiles, I suggest you rotate the buildings towards the street and use fillers to fill up the empty space.

Image 6:
There's one problem with this, the parking lot of the police building has nothing to connect to like a parking lot tile.  Like, how did the police cars get behind the building? (Realistically, you can drive off-road, but for simplicity, its easier to have a smooth surface to the back like a asphalt filler.)
----------------------------------------------------
Besides that, its decent! 

[wallasey]

There's a problem with images 5 and 6, they don't look right in my opinion.

Image 5:
If you're going to make a realistic alley, you might as well add some fillers like the same base texture found over the STEX.  From what you did, you did something out of place.  You added classy plaza fillers in between the low-wealth commercial.  If you used the PEDMALL tiles, I suggest you rotate the buildings towards the street and use fillers to fill up the empty space.

Image 6:
There's one problem with this, the parking lot of the police building has nothing to connect to like a parking lot tile.  Like, how did the police cars get behind the building? (Realistically, you can drive off-road, but for simplicity, its easier to have a smooth surface to the back like a asphalt filler.)
----------------------------------------------------
Besides that, its decent! 

Sometimes using cycle path pieces can be better; they have the correct width for alleyways. Although they are more suited to the suburban areas rather than central locations. They would go well in the industrial estate you have there.

Only quibble I  would have is the bus stops in the commercial district need to be uniform rather than a mixture. Central Bus Stop facilities are typically the same type of shelter and branding, more so if the area has been regenerated. The stops provide public realm improvements for wanton of a better expression.

You can be as varied as you like outside of the CBD as they generally aren't affected by regeneration/pubic realm/image improvements.

[smileymk]

Hi all. Thanks once more for your patience.

Evillions8:

(Image 5) - I wasn't trying to make an alley. It is supposed to be a pedestrianised shopping street, like what one finds in many UK town centres. The buildings are supposed to be bigger than what they grew to be, and are supposed to face the ped mall tiles. Point taken though, and in future, I'll start demolishing lots that don't look as they should.

(Image 6) - Good point, and something I didn't spot until you pointed it out. You will have seen the bigger, more appropriately sized car park built on the other side of the building, which probably caused me to ignore the car park you're talking about. I agree, it's not very realistic, and in the upcoming second project I'll teach you how to tinker with your lots to get rid of those nuisance car parks.

wallasey: Thanks for your suggestions, I will probably make use of them. The SAM bus stops I used came with RTMT, and I used them because they had UK bus stop markings. I agree about the corporate image thing, though. It should be a simple enough fix, and you'll learn how to fix it in the second project.

And now, a little side update, to get away from our projects for a bit, that will still be informative, I hope:

Myths in SC4

What I'm about to do is to prove/disprove (some are true, some not) the validity of some commonly held beliefs as to the game mechanism of SC4, by showing you some simple experiments and the results of those. Some may surprise you, some will not. Either way, you'll hopefully learn some important stuff.

I should say that my game runs with the NAM, CAM and SPAM mods installed, but I assume most of you will have at least 1 of these, so it shouldn't affect things too much.

Now, our first 'myth' under investigation is this:

"Sims won't walk for more than 12 tiles".

We all know how Sims think that a 5-minute drive is a long commute, so surely they'll think that a 200-yard walk is too much to bear, right?

Let's find out by setting up a simple test city. On the south side are houses, on the north side are factories. Connecting them is a road with a HOV lane in the middle, which only allows buses and pedestrians through. There are no buses, so if our Sims want to go to work, they'll have to walk there:


So what happens? Surprisingly, they actually realise that being able to eat is worth a few minutes of exercise, and they do walk to work:


So the conclusion is simple: Sims will walk for many tiles if they have to.

Next myth:

"You have to leave at least a 1-tile gap between transport stations."

This is a very debated statement, so I thought I'd settle it for good.
In this test, the HOV lane from the previous experiment is replaced with 2 back-to-back bus stops, as shown below:


So, do the Sims get to work?


The answer is a resounding no. If you place 2 transit stations back-to-back, they won't connect.

Interestingly though, when the two stops are connected by a separate road to the side, Sims do get to work:


This made me wonder whether putting the stops side-by-side instead of back-to-back would allow the connection to take place. Err... no:


It just doesn't play ball. Our conclusion from this experiment is as follows:

You can only put 2 transit stations next to each other and make them work IF there is a transport network, such as a road, connecting them. Otherwise, you must leave a gap.

So that settles that. Onto the next myth:

"You can't make neighbour connections with streets or one-way roads."

Really?




As long as you have the NAM (and you should), you can make neighbour connections with any network in any form - orthogonal, diagonal, or fractional angle (FA). You will learn how to do this in the second project.

Our fourth 'myth' states that:

"In the early stages of development, industrial zones grow faster than commercial zones."

To find out if this is true, I've set up another test city, comprised of two residential zones, one connected to an industrial zone, the other to a commercial zone. Both areas share the same amenities:


So what happens? Let's fast forward a few game years and see:


The results are clear. The industrial area is comfortably more developed than the commercial area. It is worth building industrial areas before commercial areas.

So our conclusion is thus:
Industrial grows much faster than commercial at first.

And our final myth:

"Poor Sims prefer to use mass transit to get to work, and rich Sims prefer to drive to work."

Again, it's time for a test city to validate this claim (or not). One one side are houses, on the other factories. Connecting them are, from left to right: ped mall (with bus stops at either end for bus users), road, rail, el-rail, subway, and monorail. No amenities, apart from power, are provided, so this should give us lots of poor Sims to survey:


After development, the results come in. I'll show the results for each network, from left to right, in the order stated above:












So mass transport is our clear winner here in terms of usage, as was expected. So if our myth is true, then once amenities are provided and the wealth of the area increases, then the roads should start getting a bit busier.

The city with amenities is shown below:


The area redevelops:


And our commuting route usages (i.e. our results) are shown below:












Eh? What happened? Where have all of our commuters gone?

The truth is that they've shunned the factory jobs for the civic jobs on their doorsteps, and, surprisingly, are walking to these nearby jobs:








What interesting results! It would seem that the time/distance needed to get to their jobs is more important than how they get there. Otherwise some people would still be factory workers.

So the conclusion is as follows:
Your Sims will take any form of transport available to get to work, so long as they get there quickly and don't have to travel too far.

And that concludes this little side update. To summarise:

- Your Sims will walk for as far as they need to.

- You can only put transport stations next to each other if they're connected by a transport network.

- With the NAM, you can make neighbour connections with any network.

- Industrial grows better than commercial in the early stages.

- Commute time and distance are more important considerations than method for your Sims.

And so it is time to move on to our second project! In this project, we will build a coastal city that spans 4 large city tiles. You will learn the following:

- Planning a region

- Regional terraforming

- Adapting your plan to fit the terrain

- Building realistically across multiple tiles

- Building marinas, historical districts, park-and-ride facilities, various road interchanges, a branch railway, and lots more

- Using the Lot Editor to tinker with your lots to improve their appearance (i.e. basic modding)

- Planning, siting and building landmarks

And lots more. The first lesson of the second project will focus on basic planning.

One thing I should say is that this will be a bit more advanced than the first project, and I'll assume you know everything from the first project. I'd go back over the Summary to make sure this is true - and if it isn't, go back and read up the relevant lesson again. I know I keep stressing this but it's really important to do it if you want to learn to build cities to a high standard.

Best wishes,
Chris

[Exla357]

Thanks for clearing this up! I'll use the results in my cities!

[smileymk]

Time to begin our second project, methinks.

Exla357: You're welcome. I'm glad you found the experiments useful.

And now, time to begin building a regional city.

Project 2 - Regional City

Lesson 1 - Basic Planning

Before you ask, there will be an 'advanced planning' lesson, in which you'll take the concepts learnt here a stage further.

You know from the first project the reasons why it's crucial to plan out projects before you dive into them. I will tell you now that the larger the project, the more important it is to plan it out first. There comes a point where you can't keep it all in your head anymore, and pre-planning means that you save yourself all that effort beforehand.

Planning a region isn't any harder than planning a single city, but it is more complicated - mainly because you have to remember one rule that isn't relevant for single cities:

You must build your region as if it is one giant city tile.

REMEMBER THIS RULE. It is Rule No.1, the only rule, the single most important rule of realistic region building.

You have to pretend that the city tile boundaries don't exist. You have to pretend that there is a wider world beyond your region. This means that your region must flow effortlessly from one city tile to the next. It must be consistent in terms of terrain, buildings and general landscape throughout. Your roads and railways must run to the route they need to take and not the route that suits tile boundaries.

So, with this in mind, we can plan our region.

The first step is to get some paper and coloured pens, and draw a rectangle to represent your region. Mark your city tile boundaries with thick lines. Accuracy is not important:


We mark the tile boundaries only for reference, so that we know where they are. We want our estates to flow between city tiles, but these lines prevent us from putting big, important, inflexible buildings (like train stations) in between city tiles.

Next you need to fill your region with essential information on what goes where. For this you need to know what you want to put in it, and for this, you need a brief. You don't have to write it down, but it helps.

Our brief for this project is as follows:

To create a coastal resort town with a population of 100K - 250K Sims, which has its origins as a medieval fishing town. Owing to this, there is a marina on the coastline, near to which is the old medieval town. A more modern CBD has grown nearby, and the town is the terminus of a major motorway to the north and both a main railway line and a branch line to a nearby coastal town.

In short, your brief has to summarise all of the essential goals and information you need to complete your project. Keep it simple.

Once this is done, you can fill your region to suit your brief:


There are a number of points to make here:

- Keep it simple. Include only essential information, such as important transport networks, landmarks and utilities.

- Use different colours to represent different things. I used the following colour code, but use a colour code that you can understand:

Motorways
Dual carriageways
Roads
Railways (line, stations represented as rectangles on the line)
Landmarks (individual, standalone shapes)
Areas (empty boxes)
Marina
Beach
Coastline
City tile boundaries
Footpaths

- Add labels so you know what's going on. Think of it like drawing a map.

- Positional accuracy is not important. You only need to get the general idea.

- Have your city tile borders showing clearly, above everything else.

Now you need to go and plan each tile in turn. This is where you can add a bit more detail regarding types of networks, and estates, and other things that you need to know:








One important point to make here. Use transport networks, NOT city tile borders, as demarcation lines between estates. Remember that rule. You need to make sure that your estates are consistent through city tile boundaries. The best way to do this is to decide where your estates are going to go before you plan each tile individually, and work to that.

Any complicated parts of your city, such as transport interchanges, should also be planned out. Again, keep this simple and include only essential information.
As an example, here are the 4 grade-separated road interchanges that are to be built. These are marked by filled-in circles on my plans, so you should be able to see where they are and from where they come:








Once you've planned all of these complicated areas, you're nearly done. There's just one small, but vital, thing to do:

Naming Your Region

Of course you have to give your region (or in this case, the city it supports), a name. The reasons should be self-explanatory. Fortunately, this is a simple task and the technique I'll teach you will allow you to create an original name that works well.

You need 2 things - a random number generator, and a map. The area the map covers is irrelevant - the important thing is that it has an index of streets and places, because this is where you'll get your names from.

The random number generator needs to generate random numbers between 1 and 26. This can be done on Excel or on certain makes of scientific calculator.

You need to enter one of these formulae, depending on what you're using:

Excel: =INT(RAND()*(26-1)+1)

Scientific calculator: RanInt#(1,26)

Then press Enter or =. The output corresponds to the letter of the alphabet that will be the first letter of your city name, so if you get 1, you look under the 'A' section of the index, 2 then B, 3 then C, and so on.

You then press F9 or = to get the next letters of the name. If there isn't a match in the index with the letter you produced (e.g. Tx), then use the nearest available letter for which there is a match (e.g. Ty). By now you should have narrowed the search down to only a few entries.

You keep producing letters until you have only one entry left in the index that matches your produced letters as closely as possible. For example, you end up with 'Tyd' and the only entry in the index that begins 'Tyd' is 'Tydlesley St.', and so therefore you use Tydlesley as your city name.

Using this method I came up with the name of Troon for our coastal town/region. I think that this is the name of a real village in Cornwall - but don't worry if it's the name of a real place, or if it's the name of anything significant to you - it doesn't matter. You'll still come up with varied and interesting city names.

Once you've named your region, you're done with the preliminary planning, and are ready to set up your region.

You're not done with the planning yet, however. You need to adapt the plan to fit terrain constraints - but that will have to wait until after we've done the terraforming.

The next lesson will be about preparation - getting your region set up properly, ready to terraform.

See you there,
Chris

[Exla357]

This is getting exciting! I plan my cities a lot but I don't as much as I should. They evolve that way.

[Risu]

Finally! The right way to play SC4. This MD really appeals to me. I gotta learn to plan out all my cities before I jump in. That's where I always go wrong.

[wallasey]

Agreed, it doesn't take much to sort out;

Your next project looks very interesting indeed....oddly enough I have just been developing a similar kind of tile, albeit on the shore of a lake rather than a full blown coast.

Good luck!

[j-dub]

Just going to say, neighbor connecting two sets of OWR, the most I have seen is trucks and busses use them in and out. 9/10 out of the times, I have not seen car traffic. However, two OWRs, exactly side by side, I have seen used by car traffic.

[apeguy]

Very interesting and informative, this will definitely help a lot of people, especially those who are just starting out, and I've learned a few things as well. I should pay more attention when planning my cities from now on.

[bat]

Great work on your MD there.

[smileymk]

Wow! The response to that last lesson almost blew me away. Thanks for your continued support.


Exla357: You don't have to plan every last detail - only the bare essentials like what you saw in the lesson. It's always good to have a little flexibility for when the inevitable miscalculations and problems arise.


SimRisu: Seriously, I can't stress enough the importance of planning. It takes only a few minutes, but, like you said, will prevent your cities from going wrong, so it's worth that few minutes.


wallasey: Thanks, and good luck with your lakeside town. It sounds very interesting and I look forward to seeing it somewhere.


j-dub: Interesting, I'll have to investigate that.


apeguy: Well said. Hopefully that's one of many things you'll learn on this thread.


bat: Danke schoen! (Thanks a lot!)


Thanks once more for your continued support. Now let's go region-making!


Lesson 2 - Preparation

In the first project, you learnt how to create a region in-game and then use Paint to modify it to suit your needs.


Well, there is another way to create a region that doesn't involve SimCity 4 at all, and it's that method which I want to show you today.


I should say at this point that this method is for Windows users. I regret that I don't know how it works for a Mac, since I use a Windows PC for SC4, but I'm sure it's very similar. If any Mac users here would like to give us the lowdown, please do.


The first step in creating a region is to understand what it's made of. Let's go to the region we used for our first project and have a little look:

You can see here that there are 3 different types of file.


SC4 files are city files, that are created/modified whenever you save a city in-game. You don't need one to make a region, so we needn't worry about them here.


config is a bitmap image that determines the size of your region, as well as its composition in terms of city tiles.


region is a type of text file (called a 'Configuration Settings' file) that determines the name of your region, and whether it will initially be composed of terrain or water.


Notice also the file directory. Each region has its own unique folder under the following directory (underlined in red in the above image):


(Hard Drive):\\...\My Documents\SimCity 4\Regions


(The path to the My Documents folder varies. Most PCs have a shortcut direct to this folder, so you shouldn't have to worry about this too much.)


When you create a region in the game, the config and region files are automatically created and saved in a new folder under the above directory.


These files and the folder they sit in can also be produced from scratch - which is what we're now going to do.


First, we need a folder. Go to the above directory, then find this button highlighted. It should be on the left:

If you don't have this button, then go to File > New... > Folder, which does the same thing as the button.


You'll then get this (except it will say 'New Folder' instead of 'Troon', and the text will be highlighted):



See that black box surrounding the name? That means that you can change the name. When highlighted, any text you type in will replace the highlighted text.


So all you need to do is type in your region name and press 'Enter'. Your region now has its own folder.


With that done, let's create the config file. Open up Paint. You can find it under Start > Programs > Accessories. When it does load, you'll get this:



If you remember the Preparation lesson from the first project, you'll remember that one pixel represents one small city tile, equivalent to 1x1 km. The above image (shown by the white space) is 800x800 pixels (I think), which means if we use this image, we'll have a whole country for a region.


What we actually want is a region consisting of a 2x2 grid of large city tiles. So we need to resize the image. To do this, go to Image > Attributes and type in the correct size in the Width and Height boxes respectively:



Pay attention to the numbers highlighted. 1 pixel is 1x1 km. 1 large city tile is 4x4 km, therefore it needs 4x4 pixels. We want a 2x2 grid of these large tiles, so the image size needs to be (4 pixels/tile x 2 tiles) x (4 pixels/tile x 2 tiles) = 8x8 pixels.


Press OK and you get this, minus the red circle:



The red circle is there in case you can't see the resized image. It's in the red circle. I think you'll agree that that's a bit small to see - but it has to be that size, or we won't get the region we want.


What we can do is zoom in on the image so we can see it. To do this, go to View > Zoom > Custom... and then click on the 800% radio button, then OK. In addition, go to View > Zoom > Show Grid. The resulting output will be this:



This is much easier to see, and the grid, where 1 square = 1 pixel, helps as well.


Now we need to colour this image in. We leant in the first project that large city tiles need a 4x4 pixel area coloured blue.


Since we have the 8x8 area we need and we're only using large tiles, we just need to colour the whole thing blue. The Fill tool (the one that looks like ink coming out of a jar, second down on the right) is best for this:

Notice the colour. It's got to be pure blue (RGB colour 0,0,255) (which is what you get here) or at least a colour that has an RGB value of <255, <255, 255, because only if the Blue value is 255, and no other values are 255, will SC4 recognise it as a large city tile.


Having done that, we can now save the file. Press CTRL  + S:



It is vitally important that you save this file correctly. It MUST be saved in your new region folder, which MUST be in the directory shown earlier (your Regions folder). It MUST be named config and it MUST be saved as a bitmap image (file extension .bmp). Otherwise it won't work. Once you've got it right, click Save.


You can now create the Configuration Settings file. The easiest way is to open up the file in another region folder. You'll see that it opens with Notepad as a text file:



All you have to do is to change 'Name = (whatever it is)' to 'Name = (your region name)', like so:

You also need to set the Terrain type value to 0, if it isn't set at 0 already. This ensures that you initially get terrain when you load the region.


Now you need to save it. Go to File > Save As (NOT 'Save'). Then find your region folder and save it in there as region.ini. You have to put the file extension in, because Windows will save it as a simple text file if you don't:



Now your new region folder should look like this:

If we go into the game, we should now be able to load the Troon region and see the 2x2 grid of large city tiles that we want:



Perfect! Your region is now ready for terraforming.


But before we do that, there's another important thing we must do. In the next lesson we will cover it - the art of organising your Plugins folder. I know, I can hear the groans already. I know it's a bit boring, but we have to do it - it just makes it easier to do the fun stuff later on.


See you there,
Chris

[yochananmichael]

Gosh, I go away for a short time and look what happens...GREATNESS!!! Good job Chris well done. RL has kept me away and I just got a new Mac (I do have Windows 7 Pro in a virtual machine) so I gotta go and redo a bunch of stuff. But I must say good work as always. 

[dedgren]

Chris, I admire folks who think about SC4 and the questions it presents us as we create our cities and regions.  Doubly so when they take the time time to present what they've learned for the benefit of others.  You have a clear style and a step-by-step approach here that is very well presented.  I certainly have to admit that I'm impressed.

Good luck- it will be interesting to see where you take things from here.


David