Realistic Cities For Dummies

[rooker1]

Here is one of the finest Tutorial MDs ever done.  Even if you think you know everything there is know about SC4, after reading through this you may find yourself wrong.  Ebjoyable read every time and I'm sure this will be a very interesting month with Chris and his MD.

Congratulations from The SC4D OSITM Committee.

[bat]

Congrats on your 1st OSITM-award!
Looking forward to more in this month...

[Tomas Neto]

Congratulations on the OSITM!!! 

[nemanjanv7]

Hi, I've just found your tutorials, congratz on the received achievement.
After reading through your tutorials, I've decided I'd give it a try and start from the beginning.
- And I already have questions:
  1. How did you create diagonal RHW so close to each other. I have to leave at least a tile of space between them and must build them separately. I don't have a diagonal piece with all 6 tracks.
2. I can't find Flup peace - road under RHW, or anything else under RHW. I even tried to install Marrast underpasses and still no use. Can you please tell me what I am missing.


Here is your post:
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=12096.msg356425#msg356425

[CrossSide]

Congratz with your price! Was nice reading trough everything again and easy to begin with SC4 for me after I did not play it for a long time. Only advice I can give to you is to watch your details, because I think in the later pictures you aren't watching them enough (like building houses on steep slopes).

[Framly]

Congrats for OSITM

[smileymk]

Hey guys. Well, it seems I don't need to tell you about the OSITM thing. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to all who've given their support, and to the OSITM Committee for the unexpected surprise of their recognition.


yochananmichael: Thanks for your kind words.


dedgren: I have to say I'm flattered. I'd like to think I'm bridging the gap between the great players and the 'nearly' players who want to play like the greats but don't know how. And judging by the response, it seems like that's happening.


rooker1: Thank you for the recognition. I'll do my best to do the OSITM section justice.


bat: Oh, there'll be more, I can assure you of that.


Tomas Neto: Cheers.


nemanjanv7:


1) From straight RHW-4, use the RHW-4 Double Curve piece to convert to diagonal RHW-4, and then drag out from there. Your diagonal RHW-4 carriageways should be right next to each other. You might have to use filler pieces on the diagonal sections, though.


2) The RHW FLUP pieces are located at the end of the Road over RHW Puzzle Pieces set, which is found under the Roads menu. (The icon is a road going over RHW-4).


Hope that helps.


CrossSide: Thanks, both for the congratulations and the advice. I know the importance of details, and will be encouraging you guys to pay attention to things like houses on slopes.


Framly: Cheers.


Now, a lesson which I know a lot of you will find useful.


Lesson 3 - Organising the Plugins Folder


You might not think that you need to organise the ever-growing mass of files in your Plugins folder, but you'd be mistaken. Not for functionality reasons - as long as the files are somewhere in the folder, they'll work - but for accessibility reasons. You might need to get at some of those files one day, for whatever reason, and it's far easier to do this if the files are easy to find without a long trawl through the Plugins folder.


Also, we're going to be doing some modding in this project. This makes it even more essential that you organise your Plugins folder. You need to be able to find your mods easily, so you can make changes if you need to.


The first thing to note is that there are 2 Plugins folders stored on your computer - and SC4 reads them both. You can find them under the following directories:


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


(Hard Drive):\\...\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Plugins


(If you don't have Deluxe, that 'Deluxe' will be omitted.)


To keep your downloads organised, it's best if you keep as many as possible of them in one of these folders. It doesn't matter which.


Let's have a look at that first Plugins folder:



Only things which need to be under this folder are here. This path is the NAM's default installation path, and because the NAM has plenty of subsidiary items, it makes sense to keep it here.  Also, it's important to note that new buildings and lots are saved here - this is why the 3 SC4 Model files are there.


Obviously I have more downloads than shown here. The rest of them are in the other Plugins folder:



More specifically, the majority of downloads I have are in the 6 folders highlighted in the blue box. We'll check them out in a moment - but first notice the files. These files are only here because they have to be. If you have these files, do NOT move them from this directory (underlined in red). Otherwise they won't work.


The rest, the majority of the downloads, can be placed under as many folders as you want within this directory.


We want to organise these downloads logically. You'll notice that the folders follow the Maxis method of organising items in SC4 - landscaping items in one folder, zoned buildings in another, etc.


You should be able to figure out what's in most of the folders above - but in case you're wondering, RCI stands for 'Residential, Commercial and Industrial and covers all zoned buildings/lots, and Other_Mods covers everything that doesn't fit into the main Maxis lot categories, such as props, textures, etc.


Let's take a look at one of these folders. Here's the Civic Tools folder:



Look how all the civic tools have been subdivided into their Maxis sub-categories. As you'll see, this is the core principle to adopt when organising your Plugins folder:


Use the Maxis menu system that you get in the game (i.e. the menus you go through to build lots) as the file system for your Plugins folder.


Think of these folders as your menu options, which get you to your downloads. If we want to find a school, then we look under the Education sub-menu in the Civic Tools menu. If we want to find a hospital, we look under the Health folder. And so on.


Looking at the rest of the 6 main folders shows how this file system follows the Maxis menu system:






Notice how the RCI folder is grouped into the 3 types of zoned buildings. Continuing on...



Maxis doesn't subdivide landscaping tools very well, so instead for this folder we group files according to what aspect of a landscape they change. The Plugins folder contains the Extra Terrain Tools mod. Next please:



Again, most of this should be self-explanatory. The Maps folder contains a mod to determine the colour scheme for the regional transport map. The NAM Extras folder contains additional downloads for NAM components (such as RHW tolls, GLR stations, etc. - NOT core NAM addons like the RHW, which are saved in the NAM folder in the other Plugins directory). Moving on:



So those are our main folders and subfolders. And for the most part, this works very well, such as in the Fire Service folder:



These are actual downloads, and illustrate another rule of organising the Plugins folder:


Do not use more subfolders than you need to.

There is no point in subdividing this folder any further because all that's in there is a few fire stations. We can't categorise these any further, so we'll leave them here.


But on some occasions, you will need to subdivide further. One of these occasions is with the Education subfolder:



You don't have any more Maxis sub-menus to guide you, so you need to be logical in your subdividing of downloads. Grouping according to the purpose of the lots, as shown above, is a good system to use.


One folder you will definitely need to subdivide further is your Parks folder. Many downloads you have, and many of the lots you have in the game, will fall into this category. For example, my Parks menu in the game has over 1,000 lots in it. That just goes to show the importance of subdividing this folder. Let's see how it's done:



Simple enough. Let's have a look at some other cases, starting with the Commercial folder:



That should explain itself. Now let's look at the NAM Extras folder - if you're anything like me, you'll have a lot of these, and so it makes sense to subdivide them:



You'll see I've grouped the downloads into the NAM component they cover. A similar idea is behind the Public Transport folder - the downloads are grouped according to what form of public transport they cover:



Sometimes, you will have a lot of downloads in a certain category that are made by the same creator - for example, a lot of the props you have will be from BSC. In cases like this, it makes sense to create a folder for items in the relevant category that are by this creator. The Props folder is a good example - each folder highlighted in blue in the following image contains props from the creator indicated:



So that pretty much sums up what you need to know about organising the Plugins folder. I thought it might be helpful to show you the complete file system I use to organise my downloads, so here is a diagram showing just that:

(It would seem that this image has been compressed, because it was bigger than this when it was uploaded. I hope you're able to read the text.)


If you can see it, then notice how the structure is logical, and as few subdivisions as possible are used.


And that concludes the lesson.


Next time, we will make a start on the terraforming. The next lesson will focus on coastlines.


See you there,
Chris

[Terring7]

Congratulations for a well deserved O.S.I.T.M.

As about the today lesson about plugins... I'm a very bad student
The "Program Files" plugins folder has all Maxis made stuff, like the extra landmarks. You can also see some non Maxis creations as well. Now this is what I call "mess"



The "My Documents" plugin folder is a bit organized through



And yes, they have subfolders
Tell me what you think :

[Jmouse]

Congratulations, Chris. OSITM is the perfect place for Realistic Cities for Dummies. I've always liked your playing style although I suddenly found myself too busy to visit as often as I wanted to. Hopefully that era is behind me now.

You have an organizational system similar to my own which has always worked well for me. I have two more folders I don't see mentioned here, though, and they have come in handy several times. One is called "Plugin docs" where I can find the READMEs, and the other contains the original zipped downloads. Both are structured in exactly the same way as the in-game plugin folder for easier reference.

And, mmm...er...there you go again! I'm trying to create attractive coastlines right now and need HELP!

Good job on this update...
-Joan

[yochananmichael]

AMAZING as usual Chris. Getting an OSITM is certainly an accomplishment and I must say well deserved. Keep it up!!!!

[Battlecat]

Congratulations on being selected for OSITM!   

Your tutorial style of MD a very valuable resource for new players and rather unique as well! 

[smileymk]

Hey guys.


Terring7: Yes, you did smell a new OSITM, and thanks for the kind words. Regarding your Plugins folder, I'd like to say a couple of things:


- With the first folder, I'd put all of those landmarks into their own folder. You might also want to create a folder for the US flag lots.


- The second folder is better, but you could put the 'Growable Buildings' and 'Ploppable Buildings' folders into a single 'Buildings' folder. Your Extra Mods folder could be moved into the Mods folder, and the 'Automata Essentials' file should really go into the Dependencies or the Vehicles folder.


The system for the second folder is good, though. Make sure you stick with it.


Jmouse: Thanks. Don't worry about visiting here too much, I know you've got other, far more important things to do. I like the idea of a readme folder, although I tend to just give readmes a quick look before deleting them (they take up valuable space).
I personally wouldn't have a zipped download folder - it's not really necessary, and it takes up a lot of space. But that's just my opinion - if it helps you, then it's well worth using it (otherwise you'd be defeating the purpose of organising your files).


yochananmichael: Cheers.


Battlecat: Thank you. I do think this was needed and I'm happy that so many of you are finding it useful.


Now, who wants to learn how to terraform coastlines?


Lesson 4, Part 1 - Coastlines


This part of terraforming is actually rather simple, and it's very enjoyable and satisfying to do. But you do need to put time into it to make it look right.


It's important to remember, not just with coastlines but with any terraforming, that nature does not do neat patterns and regular arrangements of landscape features. Your landscape should be irregular. Again, this is a rule to remember.


With regards to coastlines, this means that you need to get out of your head the idea of those long ruler-straight edges that you see in a lot of pictures. Yes, they look nice. Yes, they do make absolutely sure that waterfront lots will plop correctly. But they aren't realistic. At all.


To start with, we'll work in the south-west city tile of the region (see the Basic Planning lesson for the plan we're following). All the coastline here is going to be a beach, so we want a smooth, not too curvy (but not too straight!) coast.


The first step is to create the water. The best tool for the job is the Shallow Valley tool. Go into Zoom 1 and hold the Shift key to make the brush size larger, ensuring a good-sized water body. Hold it down for a few seconds in the position shown below to get a good depth of water:



Notice the depth of the water. You want it to vary, because it varies a lot in real life, but this is a coastline, so it shouldn't be too deep here.


Drag the tool along your coastline, taking care to keep the water depth appropriate and varied. Eventually, you'll get something like this:



It looks OK, but you'll notice that, because the terrain tool is circular, your coastline ends up forming a 'wave' pattern like you see here. This is worse than those long ruler-straight edges. We need to do something about it.


The solution is to use a smaller sized Shallow Valley tool (the regular size will do) to convert the 'peaks' of land into coast. You do this by positioning the tool such that the circle touches one trough of land (i.e. where the water reaches furthest) and dragging it in a straight line to the next trough of land, like this:



If all goes well, your whole coastline should look like that bit to the left of the circle does. But even then, there's another problem:



You'll see from the gridlines that the terrain slopes down rapidly to meet the water. This sort of thing isn't really realistic, and it doesn't suit a beach at all. It needs to be smoother.


No problem - the Smooth tool will do the job (found under the Level Terrain menu). For a job like this, the regular Zoom 3 brush is fine. Use the grid to help you, and smooth out that coastline as far as you can. You want a nice big gap between where the grid stops and the deep blue starts, like so:



Keep doing that until your whole coast is completely smooth. If you look at the map in the bottom-left corner, you'll see a layer of yellow indicating your 'beach', shown below:



Once you get this, your coast is smooth enough. That's one tile done. Time to move to the south-east tile. The first job is to use the Reconcile Edges tool (highlighted in red in the image below) to carry the coast and the water into this tile:



Click 'Accept', and you should get this:



You'll see that this gives us a nice reference point to work from, to make sure that our coastline is smooth between tiles. Remember out Rule No. 1 for region play? It applies to terraforming too.


From here, it's like with the first tile. Drag out the coast with the Zoom 1 large Shallow Valley tool and then use a smaller brush to sort out those 'peaks' of land:



Now it's time to smooth it out. However, the plan states that the beach is to continue only a little way into this tile, where the landscape will then change to cater for a marina.
(Remember that your Sims built a marina and a town around the beach because of the friendly landscape that's there, not the other way round.)


So we're only going to smooth about 1/4 of the way into the tile from the west. The procedure is the same as for the first tile:



Now, east of this, we need the land to come to an abrupt halt when it meets the water. To do this we need to use the Quick Level Brush tool, as it will give us a consistent level.


Unfortunately this tool is big and powerful, so we need to go down to Zoom 3 and keep to the regular-sized brush to keep it under control.


Position the cursor on land so that the edge of the circle meets the edge of the water. Hold the cursor down until the area of land affected is level and you have an abrupt end to the land:



Try to get a smooth transition between the beach landscape and the marina landscape, as shown here. The Quick Level Brush, if you position it like shown, will do this for you.


Keeping the Quick Level Brush cursor the same distance from the water, drag across. Our plan calls for about 1/2 of the tile to have this marina coastline, so we'll drag it that far. Use the map in the bottom corner to guide you, and don't worry if you're a little bit off - your coastline is meant to look natural, after all.


When done, it should look something like this:



Now I know I said at the start that long ruler-straight coastlines were bad, and they are. But you'll see that this coastline is a bit bendy and follows a consistent direction, which greatly improves the realism of the coast, and is how you should design your coastlines. Also, we won't see this when we come to build the marina, so the overall effect will not be compromised. In fact it will be enhanced.


At the eastern end, transition back to beach:



And, since we inevitably changed the western end, we need to reconcile that edge again. Press the Reconcile Edges button, tidy up any sharp bits, and keep reconciling until you're happy with your coast and you get this message:



And that is your region's coastline complete. Let's go to the Region View and take a look-see:



It's really important that your terrain transitions as smoothly as possible between city tiles. That includes the seabed as well as the coast. Small, barely noticeable jigs are OK, but anything significant should be smoothed out.


So that's how to make coastlines. When you do yours, make sure you put a lot of time and effort into it. The more time you spend getting it right, the better it will look.


In Part 2 of this terraforming lesson, we will look at creating hills.


Until then,
Chris

[bat]

2 nice new lessons...

And congrats on the OSITM-award!!!!

[Unassigned]

Congrats on your work being justly recognized!

Re:  "Project 2 - Regional City; Lesson 1 - Basic Planning" will you share your thoughts on realistic transit network layouts vs. the Eternal Commuter issue?

Sorry about going several lessons back, but I've been catching up after some months with no SC4 capable comp.

[smileymk]

Hello. I'll admit there's been a delay in getting this posted, mainly due to the new NAM coming out, and the great urge to play around with all the new features which inevitably follows.


Now then, comments!


bat: Thank you.


Unassigned: What you have raised is one branch of a much bigger question of realism versus practicality, which will be one of my 'side topics' (like the Myths in SC4 post) and will come after the 3rd project. With transport networks, I'd advocate realism as far as possible. If eternal commuters become an issue, then do make changes - but make them as realistic as possible.


Now let's continue our terraforming journey.


Lesson 4 Part 2 - Hills

Like the coastlines, hills are fairly straightforward to make to a good standard - but you must put the time in to get the best possible results. The hills are the most important part of your landscape and it's important to get them right. After all, it's impossible to build a realistic city on an unrealistic landscape.


We're going to start from our coastline and work our way inwards.


As we have a smooth coastline, we want to keep the terrain relatively flat for a bit. Many seaside towns are pretty flat (Brighton, Eastbourne, Morecambe, etc.) and we don't want too many hills until we get about 1-2 miles inland.


Starting in the south-west city tile, we'll begin our hills in the north of the tile. Use the Hill tool in Zoom 1 and hold down the shift key for a large brush. Position the cursor and click once:



It looks rather low, but this is what you want. You don't want huge mountains right next to the coast, because it won't look right. This kind of hill above is the small hill you see all over the place, and looks the part.


Now it's time to make more hills. The trick with hills is to make them link together and flow smoothly from one hill to the next. This creates a range of 'rolling hills' which provide the best possible realistic effect.


Place the cursor (same tool, same zoom, same size as before) so that it overlaps with about 1/3 - 1/2 of the existing hill. Then click once again. Keep using this technique to create other hills, and make sure you plop them in random positions - nature does not do patterns, so your hills should reflect this:



Keep going and you should end up with something like this:



Notice the random, irregular contours, and how the landscape flows effortlessly between hills. If we go into Zoom 3 and turn the grid on, you can see the effect we're after more clearly:



You can see how smooth it is. This also shows how the grid is helpful in terraforming hills - so use it to make sure your hills are how they should be. (You can show/hide the gridlines by pressing G on your keyboard.)


Now, at the coastal end, it's a good idea to smooth the hills down so that they flow more gently into our coast. Use the Zoom 1 large Smooth tool to do this, positioning the cursor on the southernmost hills like so:



Also, smooth between your hills to ensure your terrain does not rise and fall sharply between hills. Stay in Zoom 1, but use the regular brush to make sure you still have hills and not just higher terrain:



That's one tile completed - now we move on to the south-east city tile. First job is to reconcile the western edge to get a consistent flow between city tiles and provide a reference for further terraforming - you should remember from the coastlines lesson how to do this:



From here, you keep doing what you did in the first city tile. Do NOT reconcile again at the end though, as you haven't done the north-east city tile yet.


Moving on, let's go to the north-west city tile and reconcile that to start with:



Then, for the southern half of the city tile, continue to sculpt your small rolling hills:



Now that we're a good 3-4 miles inland, we can make the hills a little bit higher. The procedure is exactly the same as for the small hills - but instead of clicking once, you click twice:



Then, just like the smaller hills, plop more high hills down in random positions (but make sure the hills are linked), then use the Zoom 1 regular Smooth tool to give a smooth roll between the high hills. When done, you should have something like this:


Again, do NOT reconcile. Instead, just move on to the north-east city tile and do it there instead. Then create your rolling hills, small in the south and high in the north, just like we've just done:



Now reconcile once more. Having done all 4 city tiles, you'd think we'd be done with the hills now. Let's have a look at the region view:



You can see there are still 2 things to do. We need to reconcile the south-west tile again, for reasons that should be obvious in the picture above, and we need to go into the north-east tile to sort out that awful spike at the north of the region.


The first problem is easy to fix. Just go into the SW city tile and reconcile the edges. It's a good idea to smooth the terrain when doing this, just to get consistency between city tiles. Remember that your landscape should completely ignore city tile boundaries as far as possible.


Dealing with the spike in the north of the region is fairly simple too. Smooth out the spike and then reconcile, like so:



Keep repeating the technique until you've got a consistent landscape and the game doesn't feel the need to reconcile any more.


When these improvements are made, you should end up with something like this:



That's better. You can still detect the tile boundaries, but the landscape flows smoothly over them - which is the result we were aiming for.


The main bulk of the terraforming is done - but not all of it. The final part of our terraforming lesson will focus on adding trees and plants.


See you there,
Chris


(PS - On October 1st this MD will go back to the Best Sellers section - I'll try to post the lesson before then but in case I don't, I'm telling you this now so you know.)

[Unassigned]

I'll probably be referencing this if I start making my own maps. How come you're not using the Terraformer?

[Jmouse]

I personally wouldn't have a zipped download folder - it's not really necessary, and it takes up a lot of space.

I should have done a better job of explaining my reasoning. One of my greatest game-related fears is suffering a complete meltdown. And I've heard about and experienced enough computer problems to know it could happen to anyone at any time.

I could rebuild my plugins folder by using a recent backup. It  wouldn't keep me from having to spend countless hours downloading all those files again, though. As for space, I have a matched pair of 500GB internal hard drives in my main system, one of which I use for storage. Also I have a 400GB external HD used for critical-file storage and moving groups of files back and forth between one of the other two computers when the transfer won't fit on an 8GB flash drive/memory stick. So a DL folder that's less than 1 GB is a bargain to me. However, as you said, it's a matter of personal choice.

I hope this explains the reason behind the DL folder...
-Joan

[Risu]

The chapter about organising my folder helped me abunch! The game still is able to read where everything's at. Thanks!

[smileymk]

Hi guys.


Unassigned: Two reasons: 1) The region is small enough to be terraformed in-game, and I want to teach you the relevant techniques for that, and 2) my game PC is pretty old and doesn't meet the required spec for the Terraformer.


Jmouse: Yes, BSODs can happen. With that in mind, the system you've got is pretty good. As I always say, if you've got a system that works for you, then use it.


Risu: Thanks. It does work rather well...


And now let us conclude our journey into terraforming.


Lesson 4 Part 3 - Trees and Plants


As with all terraforming, this is rather straightforward in terms of the techniques required. However, this stage of the process takes a long time. However, as you'll see, it's worth the effort.


To start with, we'll plop some trees.


On flat terrain, this is very simple. Get out the Tree tool (in God Mode) and change the view to Zoom 2. Then drag out trees along the flat, being careful not to get too close to any coastlines you might have, or to plop too many trees on the hills (a few are OK, but keep it at that):



When done, you should be looking at a similar scene to this:



Now it's time to plop trees on the other relatively flat parts - on the hilltops and in the valleys between the hills. We'll start on the hilltops. Using the same brush as before, and the grid to show up the contours, create a relatively thick cluster of trees on each hilltop. Again, be careful not to get too many trees on the hills themselves:



It's the same idea with the valleys - but you might want to hold the CTRL key to keep the trees under control:



When complete, your scene should look a bit like this:



That's the Maxis trees more or less done. But it's still looking a little dull - so we're going to go into Mayor Mode and put down some ploppable trees.


IMPORTANT: If you're planning to render your region for uploading, then stop here. Do not enter Mayor Mode on any tile before you've rendered your region, or it won't render at all.


Assuming you aren't planning to upload your region, let's put some ploppable trees on our hills.


The idea here is to create thick lines of trees going straight up the hill and connecting 2 clusters of trees. Using the grid to guide you, and your favourite tree models, drag straight up like so:



You need to do this in a few places to get the best effect. Choose your places randomly and make sure they're not too close to each other. Also, make sure to use a variety of models - I've got about 5 or 6 going here.


With this done, it's time to sort out those over-dense Maxis tree clusters. Whip out your bulldozer and click within the tree clusters, and you should end up with something like this:



You might have noticed that some trees are standing all alone in the landscape, sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb. Trees are sociable things and hence should be with other trees. Any lone rangers should duly be paid a visit by the bulldozer:



Now you can enhance your Maxis tree clusters by placing ploppable trees in amongst them. Again, use a variety of your preferred models:



You can also detail your beaches with some rocks. They're best placed in random clusters at reasonable distances (about 10 tiles should do it, but vary it and use your judgement) apart, like you see below:



It's now time to add grass. The objective here is to cover, as far as possible, every inch of your land (NOT coastlines) with grass. Once you do this, you can add some flowers as well to complete the scene:



You can see what a difference it makes.


And that is a fitting way to conclude our terraforming lessons.


Next time, we'll learn some advanced planning techniques.


See you then,
Chris

[Schulmanator]

This is a great idea. It is my first visit here but I definitely see how this could be of value to the new city developer. Nicely done