Realistic Cities For Dummies

[smileymk]

Alright, time for Part 3. But first...

thebagleboy: Thank you. I'm pleased to hear you're having success building your bridges now. The game does make bridge construction far harder than it should be, but, as you're no doubt seeing, it's still a straightforward and rewarding task.

Ralfger: I'm afraid I can't get a bigger version of the image to come up, but I can still see it well enough and I have to say I like it. The rivers are placed and routed well, the landscape is varied and interesting, and there's a bit of everything, which always helps make a region attractive. You've got a lot of potential with that map.
To improve, I suggest the following:
- On the big lake in the north, removing the water that sticks out to the south will turn your lake into a realistic-looking tributary.
- Add some small hills to the flat area in the south-west, especially near the river and even more especially next to the meander in the river (the bit where it looks like a backwards 'S'). This will give the impression that your river runs through a natural depression in the landscape, as they tend to do in real life.
- (Optional) Remove the small islands in the bay to the south. The peninsula is good and should stay.
However, I'm no expert on geography, and if there's a good reason for keeping any of these features then please feel free to keep them. It's your region, so how it looks is completely up to you.

Republic: Thank you. The NAM does take some getting used to and it takes a long time to master. Of course, the scope of what the NAM has to offer makes it well worth putting in the effort, and I'm happy to help you along wherever I can.

Gugu3: Grazie! (For those who don't know, that's Italian for thank you.)

And now, we continue Lesson 9 with this short part about surface roads.

Lesson 9 Part 3 - Surface Roads

In this part we're going to build the surface roads we've planned for the tile of Mapleford we've been working on these past few lessons. I'm going to run through this part pretty quickly because it's easy stuff and a lot of it has been covered in previous projects.

There is one road bridge planned for this tile, so let's build that first and work from there, as well as the surface roads we already have from our work on the port and airport.
The bridge is built in the way hitherto described, with the abutments set at 15 metres above ground level, as with the urban motorway:


On the left side, the road is brought down to earth through a smooth transition, built in the ususal way by dragging rail out from the abutment before demolishing it and putting a road in its place. On the right side, there are north and south connections to the main road that runs along the north coast, bordering the airport:


The junction to the east is quite interesting, so let's look at it more closely:


Now I hope you remember how to make one-way road roundabouts and how to use turn lanes. Note that to build the turn lane we've created a short stretch of TLA-3 and placed TuLEPs on that. This was covered in Project 2 so I won't go into more detail here.
The point of looking at this junction is to illustrate how both roundabouts and turn lanes can be effective in bringing multiple roads together, and when to use one or the other.

The choice between turn lanes and roundabouts very much depends on your playing style, the situation and where you come from. There are a lot of roundabouts where I come from, and that reflects in my cities in that I like to use them for most situations, reserving turn lanes for tight spots such as very dense urban areas or near obstacles.
However, roundabouts are not favoured everywhere. Those playing in the US, Canada, Japan, Oceania or Germany will want to use turn lanes in most situations, using roundabouts sparingly if at all. In the UK, France and Ireland, the roundabout should dominate.
As with most things transport-related, it's vital you do your research and find out where roundabouts are preferred to turn lanes and vice versa.

The roads can now be dragged out in accordance with the plan, connecting to existing roads where appropriate. It's important to use the most direct and logical route within the scope of your plan, making sure to use not only orthogonal roads, but diagonals and [/b]draggable FAR[/b] where necessary to get the road routed as close as possible to how you planned it.
Remember to always use smooth curves, preferably dragged as these give you wealth textures on the curves. Also, remember not to use more curves than necessary. The shortest route between two points is a straight line, and the road should only curve if obstacles such as buildings, transport networks or terrain make it necessary, or if the planned route necessitates it.

Terrain-wise, as you know, ordinary roads are far less slope-sensitive than other transport networks. But that doesn't mean we should drive our roads up steep hills just because we can. As with all networks, you should pick the best route through the terrain. For example, go around hills instead of up them.

The above paragraph is more general advice than anything else, as the roads in the tile of Mapleford we're building on run through relatively flat terrain. However, that doesn't mean we won't run into the odd obstacle or two, like here:


Railway lines present an obstacle as, with the exception of little-used branch lines or industrial spurs, level crossings are to be avoided where possible. There are two ways to do this: either by putting one network (preferably the road) on a flyover over the other; or, as we've done here, and as generally should be done in urban areas where there's not that much space, use FLUPs.
We've used FLUPs enough times before, so this should present no problems. However, other obstacles, like this rail viaduct, just might at first:


Note that road can be dragged straight underneath elevated Project Symphony, although you will be prompted by the game to put in Maxis motorway ramps. Make sure to click Cancel when these prompts appear.

Back to the rail viaduct. Since the NAM rail viaducts are still puzzle-piece-based for the time being, we can't just drag the road through it. We can build a rail over road piece over the existing viaduct pieces, but we still won't be able to drag a road through it, and no stubs will be produced to drag from.
The only option is to demolish the existing setup, then drag our road through:


After that we can rebuild the rail viaduct, putting a rail over road piece on top of the road:


And we're across this particular obstacle, although the work here will have been familiar if not routine to a lot of you.
Sometimes, though, we can't just rebuild things a different way. The next obstacle is the freight rail line curve connecting the bridge system to the port. No puzzle piece will cover this situation, so we have little option but to resort to a tunnel:


Tunnels are easy to build - you just need to ensure you have enough of a height difference to take the tunnel mouth at both ends, that the height difference runs through the length of the tunnel (i.e. the terrain in between the tunnel mouths is no lower than it is at the tunnel mouths), and that you leave one tile of clear space in between the tunnel mouths and any fixed objects (in this case, the rail curve pieces). In this case, this required me to extend the embankment by a tile on either side, as you can see above.
If you can't build the tunnel, it will be because of one of two things:

- You've tried to drag the tunnel with RHW or street. You can't build tunnels with these networks.
- Your terrain isn't high enough at some point along the route of the tunnel. (This is the most likely cause.)

In the first case, use road, one-way road or avenue to build the tunnel and transition to the network in question at the other end. In the second case, you'll need to either lower your tunnel mouths using hole diggers, or raise the terrain in the middle.

Anyway, with the tunnel built, all that remains is to connect up any loose ends, and we're done for this part.

Part 4 will be the final part of Lesson 9 and will go over metro lines - that's elevated rail, GLR and subway, as well as what network should be used where, station selection and station placement. It should be an exciting lesson.

See you there,
Chris

[agunter999]

Are you going to do a road through the mountains?

[Gugu3]

Very nice

[smileymk]

Hey guys.

agunter999: Yes, but not until a later lesson. There aren't any big hills/mountains in the tile we're developing at the moment, but there are to the south and the west, so we will be running roads and other transport routes through those when we come to do those tiles.

Gugu3: Thank you!

Thanks for your continued fantastic support. Now let's finish off Lesson 9.

Lesson 9 Part 4 - Metro Lines

In this lesson we're going to build two sections of the planned metro system for Mapleford. The first is the section of line serving the airport, which features a branch to the suburbs to the north. The second is all-subway and runs straight through the port, terminating north of the ferry terminal. We'll also build a depot to serve this line.

We already have a section of elevated rail next to our airport, together with a station serving the airport. At the eastern edge of this lies a flyover taking the line over the rail viaduct and main road, so we'll start by extending the line from there.
Since this section of line wil run through a suburb, it's best to use GLR for this part of the network. That means constructing a transition.

This is similar to constructing a transition from NAM viaduct rail to regular heavy rail, but there are some slight differences. The first is that the embankment for the transition needs to be 15 metres high, compared with 15.5m for rail. The second difference is that it is the elevated network (in this case el-rail) that can be dragged straight out from the transition, as opposed to the ground network (like rail in a transition to NAM viaduct rail). The third is that, unlike transitioning to viaduct rail, it is necessary to use a GLR starter piece on the appropriate end of the transition:


When building the on-slope piece, place the cursor on the slope with the network pointing towards the elevated section of track.

Note that we have used a grass-like base texture for the GLR, which will look more at home in a suburban setting than the standard white GLR base texture. This grass-like texture is part of the NAM and is found under the Draggable GLR - Alternative Styles tab ring, which is located in the Misc. Transport menu, just below the GLR puzzle piece tab ring.

Our GLR line now needs to curve eastwards to run along its planned course. This means that we'll have to drag diagonally down from the embankment. However, as long as you use the rail tool to smoothen the slope beforehand, this should not present any difficulties. After that, we can continue the GLR along the planned course:


You can see in the bottom right corner that we have an obstacle to cross - the freight railway line. It would be daft to put a flat crossing here, so we're going to have to get over this obstacle by briefly going back to elevated rail. Two transitions need to be built, leaving enough room for the embankments, and the bridge can then be dragged across:


Note that since we're crossing a diagonal network, the embankments can't run right up to the railway line. You'll just have to take the embankment as far as you can and then use el-rail to do the rest.

After crossing the railway line the GLR continues for a couple of hundred yards before terminating, so we'll move to the other end of the line. Again, we're going through a suburban area, so GLR is the network of choice. Again this requires a proper transition, but this should be easy work for you now:


We continue the GLR along the airport fence. The light rail networks do not have smooth curves yet, so we'll have to make do with the standard sharp curves for now. This is unfortunate, but we can neutralise the effect of this by keeping our routes direct, with no unnecessary corners. Of course, you will need to build some curves to keep the metro line on course or to get it around the terrain, but that's the only time you should be building a curve.
At the edge of the airport, we face another obstruction:


There is obviously the road to get across, but there's also the water beyond it, and the dense urban area that the metro line is planned to run through after that. Therefore the best option here is to use subway for this section of line.
That means, as you might have guessed, constructing a transition. Normally this would involve constructing a 12m ditch, smoothing out the slope and then placing a Hillside GLR-Subway Transition in the ditch. However, in this situation, because we are very close to sea level, this is what happens when we dig the 12m ditch:


Argh! Fortunately it's an easy fix - just place a 12m ground lifter on the tile that was lowered.

It does mean, however, that we'll have to take the alternative approach to this - that of using a transition lot to do the job. Ideally the lot should be chosen so that the slope is as smooth as possible, and I found this example to fit the bill nicely:


There is, however, a problem with this - it is a rail-subway transition, not a GLR-subway transition.
To fix this we'll have to change the transit properties of the lot to take el-rail instead of regular rail. (GLR is just a ground extension of el-rail, hence the use of el-rail when transit-enabling GLR lots.)

So let's quit the game and open up Lot Editor. Yes, Lot Editor. For you see, we're going to create a copy of the lot and mod that. This is so that we still have that nice rail-subway transition available to us should we ever need to use it.
To create the copy, we simply open the lot in Lot Editor, click Save As, and give it a name that will make the copy easy to locate:


Here, the creator has used a numbering system for his transition lots, so it makes sense to extend that system here for easy recognition.

Having created our copy, let's close Lot Editor and open SC4 Tool - specifically, the TE Editor - and open our new lot:


You can see now that the lot is transit-enabled for rail, as indicated by the big G on each tile. We need to get rid of this transit-enabling before we can add the new transit-enabling. To do this, you will need to right-click each transit-enabled tile and then click Remove transit on the tile that appears:


You need to do this for each tile in turn. You can then put the correct transit-enabling in place.
To do this, first ensure the directions are set correctly. Go to the top of the menu on the right and you will see a compass-like figure with tick boxes - you need to tick only the ones on the left and the right.
Then go down the same menu and find the elevated rail (network H), and drag from there onto each of the 3 tiles that were TE'd to begin with:


We have made it possible to drag el-rail into this transition, but in order to make it fully functional as a GLR-subway transition, we need to alter the transit switch properties as well. To do this, go to the middle tab:


I've underlined the capacity in red, because we need to change it. Clearly 100 isn't enough, so click the pencil next to the entry cost/capacity reading and enter a more sensible capacity into the box that appears - ideally at least 10,000. Note that the Entry Cost value should remain at 0.
What is the 'Entry Cost', I hear you ask? It's the degree to which traffic is slowed down by using the lot. We therefore set it to 0 because trains won't be slowed down by the transition in real life.

To complete the transit-enabling, we need to add the information telling the game that the lot is to behave as an el-rail - subway transition. Two such lines are already included - they're the ones that say 'outside to inside, ...'.
We need to add some more lines. To do this, click the star at the top-left of the window, and add the required information. You need to create 4 lines, and they need to read as follows:


(Be aware that 'tube' will probably appear as 'subway' for you, because I changed the language settings on my copy of SC4 Tool to make the text more British.)

When you do this it will mostly be self-explanatory. The directions, however, may not. There is a compass on the window that appears when you press the star, and some tick boxes. You need to ensure that they are all ticked.
The above is probably more lines than we technically need, but producing the above will ensure the transition works as intended, as I now prove by installing the new transition in Mapleford:


Looks nice. We can now build the other branch north of the airport, which is also a GLR branch that goes to subway before meeting with the airport branch:


Note that, since GLR is just an extension of el-rail, we can just drag out neighbour connections, like we can with Project Symphony. We'll need to put a starter piece on the other side when we come to it, but that's a five-second job.
Now it's time to move on to subway. Our plan calls for the GLR lines we've built to meet up as subway just before the main road, before the merged line crosses the river.
Subway is, of course, a transit network in its own right and is simply dragged. Again, it's a good idea to stick to direct routes, building curves on;y where necessary. Also, although subway can make 90-degree turns on the spot, we're not going to make use of this feature. Instead we'll just use 45-degree turns, which will give a little more realism and help us create more direct routes:


As you can see, a big advantage of subway is that we can simply drag it any way we like, even under water. This means that we can simply drag subway neighbour connections through water, which makes it much easier to route the subway where we want it, and also gives us much more flexibility when planning the routes in the first place.
We're going to put a junction station on the main road, although not yet. You can see that the split is after the main road, and hence the station. It makes sense to do this as it means we only need one small station to serve the junction, as opposed to a bigger complex.

The above section of metro line is now complete, so let's move on to the other line through the port.
Because there are a lot of obstacles on this route like ports, railway lines and a power station, as well as a dense industrial area, we have little choice but to use subway for the entire route in this city tile. This does, however, have its advantages - namely that we can keep the route as direct as possible:


That was easy enough. It's now time to think about stations.

The first consideration is station placement. Obviously your stations have to have a reason to exist, so you don't want to be placing too many. In particular, stations should not be too close to each other, otherwise you will have multiple stations serving the same area, which is pointless.
The spacing between stations will depend on where in the city you are. In the suburbs, you don't need lots of stations, and to that end I suggest, in general, a minimum of 25-30 tiles in between stations in suburban and outskirt areas. But this is a minimum - the gaps can be as much as one or two miles in certain areas if necessary.
In dense urban areas, you will obviously need to put stations closer together, so I suggest a minimum of 15 tiles between stations in dense urban areas. But again, make sure your stations have a purpose. Don't put a station every 15 tiles just because you can. It's important to think about the most useful places to put stations and act accordingly.

We also need to consider their location. A lot of light rail stations tend to be on or near main roads, although this is not always the case. Important road junctions are good places to put stations as well. Furthermore, you will want to put in connections to heavy rail stations, especially in dense urban areas where people will be getting off mainline trains and going to wherever they work. In the suburbs it's less important to do this, as the rail line will most likely run to the city centre anyway.

Finally, we need to choose the right station for the job. Remember that we are building metro lines, not tram lines. Many GLR stations are designed as tram stops, making them unsuitable for metro line stations as they are too short.
Metro lines have proper trains running on them, as opposed to trams, so the station needs to be long enough to take the train. For that reason, any metro line station you build needs to be at least 5 tiles long. Ideally it should be longer (around about 8 tiles is ideal), but there aren't many el-rail/GLR stations that are this big, so we'll have to shorten the trains a little bit to compromise.
This restriction means that you don't really have that much choice when it comes to diagonal GLR. This Marrast creation is one of the few diagonal GLR stations I have in my Plugins folder that are long enough for use as metro stations, so we're going to have to stick with these:


It's a good idea to keep a consistent style to your stations on a particular line. You don't have to use the same lot every time, but the lots you do use should have a similar feel to them, and fit into the area they serve.
For example, the airport line will be a fairly modern part of Mapleford's transport system, so it makes sense to use modern-style stations, like this through station east of the airport:


At the junction between the airport branch and the branch to the north, I've gone for this modern London Undergound-style station by Ill Tonkso:


And at the terminus of the airport branch, I've gone for another of Ill Tonkso's lots, the Brenntia Suburban GLR Terminus:


For GLR and el-rail metro lines, it's always better to use a proper terminus station like you see above. It's possible to make a terminus by building a through station with tracks entering in one direction only, but this looks a little daft. There is also the GLR loop piece included in the NAM, which looks cool, but isn't really seen in real life with metro or tram lines (at least in the UK).

The other line serves a port and a dense industrial area which has been there for centuries. Because of this, we're going to put older-style stations on this line. For the terminus north of the ferryport, I've gone for this London Underground Sub-Surface Station by mcdrye:


The eagle-eyed may have noticed that we built two subway tracks at the northern terminus when we built the subway line. This was precisely because this station has 4 tracks, as you can see above. Building the extra spur makes it look like all 4 tracks are in use, as indeed they are.

For the through stations serving the port, I've gone for a compact old-style station - frogface's Walford East Station:


And finally, for the station serving Mapleford Power Station, I've gone for this mcdrye station, as this is small and not very conspicuous, making it good for what is a relatively minor station on the line:


The stations in the port area are quite close together, but the stations serve the different docks and the power station, so we can get away with close gaps between stations because the stations each serve their own useful purpose.

This city tile's metro system is complete in terms of routes and stations, but we're going to build one more thing before we finish the lesson.
The port line terminates in an industrial area, so it would be a good idea to put the depot for this line here. Each line will need its own depot to service the trains running on that line, but they only really fit in industrial areas. They don't fit in suburbs, which is why we're only building a depot for the port line in this lesson.

To build the depot, we first need to build a connection to it from the mainline, and bring the line to ground level. Underground or elevated depots simply do not exist, so we're going to use GLR for the depot:


After the transition, place a GLR starter piece, and then from that, drag out a fan of tracks like you see below. In order to provide enough capacity to serve all of the line's trains, you will need to build at least 20 tracks (one line is 2 tracks, so this equates to at least 10 separate branches of the GLR). There needs to be at least 5 tiles of straight GLR at the end of each branch to take the trains:


At the end of the branches, you can place the depot lots. These should all be the same lot for a consistent look. The choice is up to you, but an older-style lot is best, and I've gone for this old-style offering:


And that's it. Obviously the depot needs road access as well, but that's easy to provide.

That completes the main transport network for this tile of Mapleford. Let's go to the region view and see what we've done in Lesson 9:


Roads are in white, railways are in red, the Project Symphony route is in black and the metro lines are in blue (as is the airport, but it should be easy to distinguish the two). Looks pretty good, doesn't it?

And with that, Lesson 9 finally comes to an end. In Lesson 10 we will be looking at oil refineries.

See you then,
Chris

[agunter999]

Brilliant,

at least in the UK

Blackpool

[APSMS]

Perhaps it's worth it to note that the diagonal is a lie in SC4; a route from one corner to the opposite (e.g. SW to NE) via diagonal takes the same amount of time in game as it would if you were to go along the edges (e.g. SW to SE to NE). Realism is nice, but I also like to take into consideration the limitations of the game; if you want usage along those metro lines, you're going to want lots of parking nearby, since a distance of a mile is farther than the average sim will walk to a station. The NAM corrects behavior of pedestrians somewhat, so they're more willing to walk to MT, but only so much.

I usually space my stations out, but not usually by a mile; in game this makes for two stations per large tile, which is just asking for non-use. It might be worth it to find some cosmetically invisible stations (stations that don't look like stations) and place them in between so that the GLR looks like a real one, and also functions like one, too (which it wouldn't with so widely spaced stations). It might be a solution to that compromise of realism over functionality.

Nice update, though. Very useful and informative.

Finally, for a metro rail line, perhaps the Rural GLR texture would have been more appropriate than the grass underlay one, since you're really using it as a defacto heavy rail line for passenger trains (and the Rural texture shows sleepers and such)? Just my thoughts.

[smileymk]

Hello everyone.

agunter999: Ah, I see. I've never been to Blackpool, so that's probably why I didn't know about the turning loops there. Still, the turning loops for tram lines only. I think you'll agree that the sight of a tube train going round that loop would be a little daft.

ASPMS: You have raised some very good points. Regarding station spacing, I didn't say that the stations should be a mile apart - in fact, the 25-30 tile minimum I suggested is, in practice, the distance between most of my stations (although it can be longer sometimes). I said they can be 1 or 2 miles apart in the outskirts, because, as the London Underground shows, this can be the case in real life. 1-2 miles is really a maximum distance. However, stations do need a reason to exist, and putting too many stations too close together wrecks the impression that each station serves a purpose.
To counter that you suggested invisible stations. It's a good suggestion, and if they work for you then I strongly encourage you to use them. However, without meeaning to sound dismissive, I'm unlikely to implement that system, mainly because a) being aesthetically focused, I like my stations to look like stations, and b) my GLR lines often run away from roads, and where they do meet major roads, I nearly always have an actual station there anyway. Furthermore, I complement my metro lines with bus routes and place parking near suburban stations, meaning commuters can travel further to stations. These will be incorporated into Mapleford as we progress with it.

Regarding the textures, I didn't realise that the rural GLR texture had sleepers, thinking instead it was just regular GLR on a transparent base texture. Following your post, however, I decided to have a look at the rural GLR and I agree now that it is more suitable than the grass texture, so I've gone and relaid all the GLR with the rural texture. Here's a secton of the new GLR:


I've also relaid the GLR at the depot, after seeing through research that the standard concrete texture would fit with the depot lots and would look better in a depot situation:


I also intend to re-do the GLR I've built in one of my side projects, and might even mod some GLR stations so that they show the rural texture instead of the standard one. And that's all happening because of your comment, so all I can say is thanks.

Now, who wants to build some oil refineries?

Lesson 10 - Oil Refineries

I have to say, oil refineries are a lot easier to build than I thought. Much of it simply comes down to choosing the right lot for the job, as well as correct and well-executed detailing.

For this lesson, I'll be using lots from the Newman Inc Oil Refinery, which are very good indeed, especially for the processing units of the refinery. We'll also be using lots from the NBVC Oil Port series, which we've used before, both in the power station and the port.

As well as choosing the right lot for the job, size is an important consideration. Real-life refineries can be huge - Grangemouth, the biggest refinery in the UK, is more than a mile across.
Now, since we're going to have to squeeze a refinery complex into a dense industrial area of a major city, the refineries we'll build in this lesson aren't anywhere near that kind of size, and is on the smaller end of the refinery scale. But we're still going to be covering a fair bit of ground, so if you do decide to place a refinery in your city, make sure to plan for it and leave enough space. You'll be able to judge the space you need from the upcoming pictures.

With that in mind, let's crack on. Looking at real-life British refineries, I've found that many feature a processing area, where the crude oil is turned into all sorts of products, surrounded on 3 or 4 sides by a lot of storage tanks. So I've tried to replicate this layout as closely as possible.
For the processing area, I'm going to use buildings from the Newman Inc set. There is a large main refinery lot that should definitely be built, as it is the main lot in the set and also features a rail connection. Other lots in the set should be included as far as space allows. Remember that these lots are functional industrial lots so require road access. You'll also need to leave space for a security fence:


The main refinery should be placed first, because by doing this, we enable a smooth rail connection to the marshalling yard to be built, as you can see above. For the streets, I found that many refineries have a grid layout of streets, with the refinery units placed in the grid squares. I know, grids are boring and unimaginative, but real-life refineries make frequent use of them, so if we want realism we've got to use them too. We're a little tight on space here, so the grid systems you see here won't be as griddy as they might otherwise be, but I'm sticking to straight roads to try and get the grid effect as far as possible.

With the main buildings placed, we're going to build a security fence around the refinery before we do anything else. It's important to give as much room for the refinery as you physically can, but remember that you will need at least 2 road accesses as well, so give yourself room to put those in:


Next up is the storage tanks. Try to get as many as you can in, but remember to leave room for pipes and the odd road connection, and put in the pipes after you place the tanks:


The pipes should connect each storage tanks to the main refinery. You'll need to make good use of the connection to underground piece included in the NBVC set, and having 'mainlines' of pipes to serve the different areas, like you see above, is very realistic.

You can see a few empty areas within the perimeter of the refinery. What should we do with them?
As you might imagine, leaving them blank isn't an option! The answer is to use industrial fillers and small car parks as appropriate. There are two industrial fillers I've used here, depending on the situation. The dirt lot found in this set fits well with the Newman Inc processing lots, whereas the concrete lot found here perfectly matches the textures used on the pipe and storage tank lots:


That's a perfectly good small refinery we've got there. We've also got a fair bit of space to the north. Shall we put a second refinery there? I think so.

As before, the main buildings are the first to go in, with the main refinery lot carefully positioned to allow a rail connection to the main marshalling yard to the south to be built, as well as a security fence around the complex. The grid network of streets goes in next, followed by the security fence:


Note that this time we have a connection to the main road at the north end of the complex, and another one will be built to the south shortly. The reason for connecting to the main road should be obvious.

The next item to go in is a scissors crossover on the rail line leading in to the second refinery, so that both tracks can be used. There wasn't room to put on in on the first refinery, but there are crossovers on the marshalling yard the trains can use instead, so although not ideal, the tracks won't get too congested:


For this refinery, we're also going to put in a flarestack, which is essentially a chimney that burns otherwise dangerous chemicals and releases pressure in the tank. There are plenty of chimneys included in the Newman Inc. lots, but it never hurts to have another one. However, don't build too many, for too many chimneys will overpower the rest of the refinery and create an unrealistic appearance:


The storage tanks and pipes go in next:


You may notice we've built a few pipe connections that appear to be redundant. Well, they're not, because to fill some space in this refinery, we're going to build some lorry terminals using industrial fillers and MMP lorries, like we did in the Ports lesson for the oil port:


A detailed explanation of how to do this is given in Lesson 7 (Ports), but if you can't remember, you place the filler lots first, and then place the MMP lorries so that they point away from the pipes, like you see above. It's best to do it one lorry at a time, and you may have to bulldoze and start again several times to get the lorry in the right position, but it's worth it.

To finish off, as with the first refinery, we use the appropriate industrial fillers together with some small car parks:


That's quite impressive. To finish off, let's sort out that road connection in between the two refineries.
The problem is that we have to cross the rail line. This is easy enough, we'll just use the FLUP system to build an underpass. The tricky bit is that we'd quite like the tile of plain street in between the underpass and the main road to have the same asphalt texture as all of the other streets:


So to build this underpass, we'll need to first place a SAM-7 starter piece so that the stub that's left over is right next to the main road:


As you can see, the cursor needs to be on the second tile from the main road. That tile will disappear, leaving a stub of SAM-7 which you can connect to the main road, and put an underpass right next to:


I would also have liked to included turn lanes here, as we're going to get a lot of lorries turning into the refinery complex here, but the presence of the starter piece right next to the road stops the TLA-3 I use for turn lanes carrying on through the junction. That's unfortunate, but there's not much we can do about it so we just have to move on.
However, we can put in turn lanes for the direct connection at the north end of the second refinery, so let's do that now:


There's also a bit of empty space in between the two refineries. It's a shame to waste it, and also inappropriate given that we're in a dense urban area. So why not stick some industrial zones in the gaps? We can also make use of some concrete filler lots that are found in the same pack where you got your dirt fillers from to fill in the areas the zones can't reach:


Remember to hold the CTRL key down when zoning industry in order to get the clearly defined plots with arrows you see above.
There's also a small area in between the rail line, motorway and second refinery that's been cut off from all else by these constructions. There's no development on this small patch of land, and it's unlikely anyone's ever bothered to go under the motorway to keep it in order. Hence this small patch of land will be wild, with rough grass and plenty of weeds, so we can use MMPs to incorporate this as a bit of added detail:


And that was the last thing that needed doing. Our refinery complex is now finished, so let's have a look at it:


The complex certainly looks impressive, and although it's on the small end of the refinery scale, it's still pretty sizeable and certainly dominates this part of town.

It's also functional - well, the Newman Inc. lots are functional - and that means we have thousands of industrial jobs to fill. To fill those jobs, we need people. And to get people, we need houses for them to live in. So the next lesson will see us building the suburbs for this tile of Mapleford.

See you then,
Chris

[threestooges]

On behalf of the OSITM Committee, welcome back. We're looking forward to seeing what you have in store this time around.

[benedict]

I've been enjoying these mega-lessons a lot lately - congratulations on being OSITM again.

[Harry29]

Congratulations on your second OSITM!

[rooker1]

Some interesting stuff in here. Congrats on making it into the OSITM for a second time.

Robin

[veger]

Congratulations! I am still enjoying your lessons a lot!

Keep up the good work!

[thebagleboy]

Very nice oil refinery. Looks beautiful.
Also congratulations on your second OSITM award

[Kergelen]

This is an interesting MD where I can find some useful ideas and ways of doing things.

Congrats on the OSITM 

[metarvo]

 

My jaw's on the floor now, so I have to stop to pick it up.    Impressive update, Chris.    I notice that each refinery is almost as big as a small town, and so they should be.  Being from a state that has a large oil industry with many refineries, I must say you've done a good job.  The variety of oil structures you use makes each refinery look real, and the non-grid building style helps a lot, too.

This is not to say that your prior updates about the metro rail systems should be overlooked.  I'll have to refer to them when I'm having trouble getting rail lines to go through areas that already have roads (or vice versa).  The method of dragging a road into an avenue roundabout is quite useful to me as well.

With all of that being said, your second OSITM award is well deserved, Chris.

[smileymk]

Hey guys.

As you may have noticed, Realistic Cities for Dummies has earned a place in the OSITM section for a second time, so a huge thanks to the OSITM Committee for giving me the opportunity to have another go at OSITM is in order, as well as to all of you who read my lessons and comment on them, for this MD wouldn't be in this section if it weren't for all of you. Your support is fantastic and is what keeps this MD going, so thank you once again and long may it continue.

Obviously, this also means that we won't be in the Best Sellers section until November - we'll be in the OSITM section instead, so please remember to visit the right section if you're looking for this MD.

And now to respond to the latest comments:

threestooges: Thank you, and I'm happy to be back. You won't be disappointed.

benedict: Thank you. I'm happy that my comprehensive approach to the lessons is working - I think it's important to tell the whole story with all the gory details rather than give a short and sweet summary, especially as it's usually those gory details that make all the difference.

Harry29: Thanks. It's a privilege to be here.

rooker1: Thank you. I'm glad you're finding some interesting content here, as it tells me I'm posting the right things and delivering the lessons in the right way, and to keep doing as I am doing, so I will do exactly that!

veger: Thanks! I certainly will keep doing things to the same high standard we've been doing things to up until now.

thebagleboy: Thank you. I agree, it certainly looks the part, and is beautiful in the sense that it exhibits the power, scale and grit of industry.

Kergelen: Thank you. One of the original purposes of this MD was, and still is, to teach everyone who reads it something they don't know or to give them new ideas, and from your post I see it's still serving that purpose, which is a great thing to know.

metarvo: Thanks. I had a good look at a few British refineries on Google Maps before building Mapleford's refineries, so I got an idea of what I needed to do. However, it's good to have someone who sees real refineries regularly give positive feedback, as England's refineries aren't anywhere near me and so Google is the only resource I have, so thanks once again.

Now, it's about time we got this second OSITM show on the road.

Lesson 11 - Suburbs

If you've read this MD from the beginning, then you'll probably know a fair few things about creating realistic suburbs. So this lesson will discuss how to take suburbs to the next level in terms of detail and realism.

However, the fundamentals are still the same. First build a network of main streets through your suburb, including at least two connections to main roads:


As with all streets, use of SAM textures is not optional. Note that the GLR terminus is served by the main street network, as it should be - stations are often located on or near important roads for obvious reasons. We've also constructed a couple of 7.5m road overpasses over the GLR line to provide extra routes for traffic, helping to avoid congestion.
And, as in previous projects, interesting street layouts are one of the key components in making a realistic suburb, so include a good few curves, diagonal sections and (particularly if it's a European suburb) the odd roundabout.

At this point it may be tempting to go and build the side streets, but hold on a second. People need things like schools and a doctor, and if we go and stick our side streets in, we won't have space to build these essential facilities realistically. So let's build these now, starting with a high school:


The BAT is the Madison High School if you're interested. There are, however, many good choices of high school, so as always it's up to you to pick your favourite lot in this situation.

Is that it? Of course not! We need to add some transport features, namely car parks and a bus stop to serve the students and teachers coming from fairly far away. In addition, we also want to discourage truants and burglars, so we need a fence around the school, leaving enough room for a large field:


Yes, those are the RMIP fences we used for the airport. We use them because their appearance is similar to that of many modern school fences, despite them being intended for bordering airports.

So far, this is just like the high schools we've been building in previous projects. It's time to step it up a gear, and we'll start by creating a plaza with a few benches for students to sit and eat at break or lunch, a regular feature at high schools:


Next up are the sports pitches - and you need a good few of them. Which sports you choose depends on where you come from - if you're unsure I'd suggest having a look at your local high school, as it'll most likely be representative of other schools in the area.
The grass pitches can be left alone, but the concrete areas need a path to the school building. In previous projects we've used path lots from our Parks menu, but not any more. To raise the standard up a notch, we're going to use an MMP path texture instead:


The obvious advantages of using MMP paths are that we can route them absolutely any way we like, completely breaking the grid, and that we can make the path as wide or as narrow as we want. Both of these advantages have been fully exploited above, as they need to be. Fail to exploit these advantages and you might as well be using fixed grid-conforming park path lots.

Unfortunately, the game won't let you place MMPs too close to buildings like astroturf pitches - hence why we've had to resort to filler lots next to the astroturf pitch. Oh well, that's just one of those things.

Going back to the plaza, we're going to use MMPs again, but this time to create a bush/tree border to the plaza, inspired by that found at my old high school. It's another one of those beautiful things that's both realistic and aesthetically pleasing:


That's nice. All that's left is to fill in the rest of the school field with MMP grass:


Nicely done. The high school is complete and has been done to a high standard. Let's try to maintain those high standards in constructing a primary school. You need a small school building, a small car park and a fence with space for a small field. I've also put a bus stop here, but this is optional:


Note that 'small' is relative here - whereas UK primary schools really are low-key affairs, US elementary schools can still be quite sizeable. As a general rule, your primary school should be significantly smaller than your high school - and that applies to the grounds as well as the building. However, it's up to you to do your research and choose the right lots for the job.

Primary schools are easy to detail - just a small area of MMP path for use as a playground and MMP grass to fill in the rest are all that's required:


Schools aren't the only thing we need. A clinic wouldn't go amiss in this suburb either. Place one in a central area of the suburb - on a main street near an important building like a metro station is a good choice:


As with the primary school, a small clinic is enough. Note that a fake street connection has also been added here to connect to the car park, providing that added level of realism we're looking for.

Going outside of the suburb for a short while, we need to place fire and police stations. The fire station should go on a main road, and the police station either on a main road or an important side road:




Back to the suburb, and one thing that we need to do to make it look complete is to add a religious building. Precisely what religion is up to you, but it makes sense to go with the predominant local religion in most cases, which for a UK-style or US-style city would mean building a church:


We're also going to put in a small park, which will consist of a playground and a field. Let's put in the playground now, as well as an MMP path to run through the park, which will look a lot better than using path park lots:


Lastly, let's throw in a few bus stops around the suburb. Except we're not going to just throw them in at random - instead we're going to come up with a couple of routes through the suburb, such that all areas and important buildings are covered, and place bus stops along these routes. Distance wise, I'd say about one stop every 15-30 tiles should do it:


Note that in particular there are stops right next to the metro station. This is an important thing to do, as it will create a combined integrated transport system which is both realistic and effective.

Right, enough with amenities already! Time to get back to the fun stuff - the side streets. In case you've forgotten, randomness in the street layout is key - but keep at least 2 tiles between streets. I also like to leave at least 1 tile in between houses and main transport routes like railways and major roads, forcing me to design my street layouts with that in mind:


Shortcut paths between side streets are next, with playgrounds placed along them where space allows. Again, we want to take our work to the next level, so we're going for MMP paths and not fixed path park lots. We also need to make sure that our shortcuts are actually shortcuts which serve a meaningful purpose. There's no point building a path between two tiny side streets that branch off the same main street:


With all the paths complete, the preparation side of constructing the suburb is finally complete, and we can begin zoning.

Firstly, let's get a little commercial zoning put along the main roads. The plots don't have to be big - they can be 1x1 plots if you want - but there should be at leat one tile of clear space between your commercial plots and the houses you will build (which will be 1 tile deep):


Doing this gives added realism, as small shops are often found on main roads, and also helps to create a visual separation between estates, which I like to have.

I also like to zone a few commercial plots around transport stations, as this also happens in real life, and, with the volume of people using the station on a daily basis, it's just a good location to put some shops as potential customers will be higher here than in a more quiet area of the suburb:


To clarify, by a 'transport station' I mean an actual proper station with platforms, like a rail or GLR station. I'm not talking about bus stops - indeed your suburb, and indeed your city as a whole, is going to look pretty daft if you start putting shops next to every bus stop.

Now we move on to the fun part - the residential zoning.
If you've been reading this MD from the beginning, you'll know that another fundamental component of a realistic suburb is the use of 1x1 low density plots to get houses of the right size. However, in Mapleford, we have a residential population of 0 at the moment. This causes a problem for us, because none of the 1x1 lots we have will grow with a population this low as a result of SC4's game mechanics. As a result, we'll have to grow some bigger residential lots first.
Fortunately, there's an area of the suburb where we can justify doing this, and that's along the coast. People like to live by the sea and coastal homes are in very high demand, and hence very expensive. This means that coastal homes are in the high-wealth residential bracket, and so along the coast we can justifiably zone 2x2 plots of low-density residential, which are more conducive to producing the nice, large and expensive homes we expect to find by the sea:


Although they won't grow at first, we might as well start zoning 1x1 plots now so that it's done.
However, to ensure that 1x1 lots grow on these plots eventually, we need to put a bit of technique into our zoning. The problem is that if we just go about zoning every plot, we're going to have lots of adjacent plots, which gives the game an excuse to combine these plots and put lots larger than 1x1 on them, which will ruin the effect we're trying to create.
To stop this from happening, we don't zone every plot straight away, but instead zone alternative 1x1 plots, such that no two undeveloped plots are adjacent horizontally or vertically. They can be adjacent diagonally, however, as lots in SC4 must be rectangular. The following picture illustrates this technique:


By doing this, you force the game to build 1x1 lots in these plots when the population is high enough, instead of allowing it to build bigger lots. This will mean that the suburb's houses are of an appropriate size, maximising the realism of the suburb.

Now, growth may be a little slow at first, and one way of encouraging the game to speed things up a bit is to add flora. This is a great excuse to add some scenic detail, and we're going to do exactly that in between the coastal houses and the shoreline, which is currently a huge empty space just begging to be filled. Let's start by covering the coastline in rye grass and cattails:


Note that I'm treating this bit of coast like a riverbank, which we can get away with seeing as the water is part of a bay, as opposed to a full-blown sea, and hence won't be getting barraged by waves. Proper seas and oceans have to be dealt with differently, with either a beach, cliffs or rugged grassland. In any case, it's important to take your time and be thorough whilst doing this, because any missed or underdone spots will be very obvious.

The remaining space between the rye grass and the houses should now be filled with regular MMP grass. You can also add flowers and plants if you wish, although this is optional and I haven't done it here:


You can see in the pictures that this has had an effect, and the 2x2 coastal homes are developing nicely, and the population has risen to about 800. However, this isn't quite enough to get the 1x1 plots to start growing.
So, to get the population up, we need to cheat slightly and add some extra 1x1 plots that are adjacent to existing plots. This will effectively create bigger plots that the game can grow 2x1 lots on. You don't need to zone too many of these - the idea is to zone just enough to get the population up to the level where the 1x1 lots will start growing, which is usually around 2-3,000 people:


Even at this early stage, it's vital to ensure the houses that do grow are appropriate. Flats like this one circled below are not suitable for a suburb and should be demolished:


Sure enough, our extra plots technique works very well, and pretty soon we get to 2,000 people and our 1x1 lots begin to develop:


At this point you need to dezone the 2x1 plots and revert back to the alternative 1x1 plots we've got everywhere else. Don't worry about the population dipping below 2,000, because once the first 1x1 lots start to grow, it sets off a chain reaction and the rest will start growing pretty quickly:


As your suburb develops, you can begin to add the remaining plots only when all of the plots horizontally and vertically adjacent to each unzoned plot are developed:


Most of the time the game will behave itself and fill these plots with the 1x1 lots we want to see. However, occasionally it will try to break the pattern by developing a bigger lot, such as the one circled here:


It's important to be disciplined about this and remove these bigger lots as soon as you see them. It's best to dezone these plots and then refill them using the alternate plots technique described earlier, to help make sure it doesn't come back. Although we could prevent this from happening in the first place with the 'Make Historical' tool, it's impractical to do this because you would have to protect every other house, which is far too laborious.

With most of the plots developed, it's time to think about finishing off the suburb with some more scenic detail. A good way to do this is to use seasonal trees to fill in the gaps between the plots.
In case you don't know, seasonal trees are MMP trees that change their appearance depending on the game date, so they look lovely and green in the summer, colourful in the autumn, and bare in the winter. They're a little more advanced and higher-level than regular MMP trees, hence why we're introducing them properly in Project 3 and not earlier.
They are slightly more advanced because you can't just place them whenever you feel like it. In order to get the seasonal effects to work correctly, you need to wait until the game date is September 1st before pausing the game and planting the trees:


In case you can't read it that date is 1/9/105, i.e. September 1st, year 105. (Remember I'm from England, so my dates are in the DD-MM-YYYY format, as opposed to the MM-DD-YYYY format used in the US.) Once you reach this date and your game is paused, you can plant the trees. For maximum effect, you need to use several different species of tree. Here I've gone for ash, birch and maple trees:


Looks good, doesn't it? Note that the trees continue along the eastern edge of the suburb, which is also the edge of Mapleford, creating a visual separation between the city and the countryside beyond it. At the coast, the trees should continue along the coast like so:


You should also extend the grass at this point so it extends as far into the trees as the game will allow, to give the impression that the grass continues smoothly into the trees.

We also need to fill in the grass areas of our park, again extending right into the trees, so let's do that now:


You can see we're in winter now and the seasonal trees have gone bare. By the time we've filled in the countryside east of the suburb with grass, spring has arrived and the trees are a lot greener:


Once everything has been filled with trees and scenic detail, our suburb is complete. Let's have a look at it in autumn, winter and summer:






Stunning. That'll do for now. There are other suburbs to go in this tile, but I'll do those in later lessons. Being in the OSITM section I want to get some different topics covered whilst we're here.

Our suburb has given us a good opportunity to do just that, because it's created some healthy commercial demand. We're going to take advantage of that in Lesson 12 by building some business parks around the airport.

See you next time,
Chris

[Swordmaster]

Cool neighborhood you got there. I like how the "beach" turned out.

And congrats being in OSITM


Cheers
Willy

[art128]

You've done an incredible work on this suburbs. Everything is well arranged.

[bucksie]

Long time lurker here.

I must say. ABSOLUTELY AWESOME.

also being from the UK, i can totally understand everything about what you have mentioned.
One slight gripe though, the Tudor Houses are a little unrealistic for size and proportion.

But still freaking awesome. Shame i havent got a clue how to use the Lot Editor, because i would love to make a proper housing estate with the random house placements we have nowadays.

[SimEurocat]

I'm just getting back to this game after a long time away. I am still at the end of Project 1. I can't figure out why my farming areas will not develop. Do you still want us asking those questions at this point or have you started a new thread to post these to? Tried to follow your suggestions to the letter and have dropped my taxes to 2%.

Kelly