Realistic Cities For Dummies

[Risu]

Well, if it is well explained, why ask questions?

What I meant by that is; it's kinda aquard when nobody replies to an MD entry. Even a simple oneliner is enough affirmation to encourage them to continue. Otherwise it could be seen as tho' nobody cares, or that it's uninteresting, or something.

[smileymk]

OK, time to build some surface roads. But first...


Risu: I think the techniques I've shown are known by quite a few people (as is, and will be, the case for some things we do here), but the reason I show it anyway is to give people the chance to learn alternative techniques, and also to teach those who don't yet know how these things are done the tried, tested and simple methods that can be used to create something that they'll be proud of.


I do put a lot of thought into what I write, especially in response to comments where it's all too easy for someone unsociable like me to offend someone!


In the lessons, I make sure to write in a clear, understandable way - and that means using correct spelling and grammar throughout as well as lots of paragraphs.
I also use as many pictures as necessary to document every step of the procedures used, keep the text in between as short as possible, and avoid jargon as much as possible.


Finally, you hit the nail on the head with regards to comments. I can only judge how well the MD is doing by the response you guys give. If there's no response, it does give the impression that nobody's interested. So keep those lovely comments coming!


riiga: I would completely agree with that suggestion, and it has been added to the list of improvements to make at the end of the project - but only for motorways. Expressways (remember my definition) are built to a slightly lower standard, rendering FAR ramps and acceleration lanes excessive.


ricardomiranda: Thanks a lot. It's clear from your frequent posts that you're finding this helpful, so thanks for coming and I'm happy to be of service.


mrbisonm: Thanks for the kind words. As to why people would want to ask questions, well it could be that they want to know if the techniques could be used for other things, or otherwise deepen their understanding of what's been covered. They might also have some ideas for what they want to do and want a second opinion on their work.


n1md4: Generally very good. I like the river and the rolling hills, and also the tree placement and density inland.
A few pointers though:


- Your river gets very wide for a short distance at the top of the picture. I would put some extra land in, either by extending the peninsula on the other side or creating an island / land bridge in the middle so that the water is of consistent width.


- There needs to be a lot more trees alongside the river, to the extent where the river's almost surrounded by trees. If God Mode's giving you a hard time, then use some Mayor Mode trees, which are a lot less fussy. You can also download a lot of Mayor Mode trees and plants off the STEX and LEX to add some variety.


- I'd get a water mod. There's a lot for you to choose from on the STEX and LEX so take your pick. Believe me when I say that your water will look far better for it.


- A presentational matter - hide that menu by using the little white square button at the bottom-left, and also get rid of the clouds. They get in the way and shatter the illusion you've worked hard to create.


Right, before I begin the lesson, I just want to emphasise that the tips I gave about writing posts and tutorials in response to Risu's comments apply to everyone.


Seriously guys, I've seen far too many huge blocks of text that are littered with jargon and/or 'text speak' or are written in a way that's hard to comprehend - and they all just make me think 'What???' when I read them.


Take the time to write properly and in small, clear sentences and paragraphs, and it will help everyone to understand exactly what you're saying enormously, save everyone time and effort, and help them to respond in the right way.


Now, with that in mind, let's learn how to build roads (and if you spot any instances where I haven't written properly, you're more than welcome to bring me to book for it (politely of course)).


Lesson 8 - Roads

Road construction is easily one of my favourite parts of city-building. It's fun, easy, quick (usually) and produces very pleasing results.


It's always best to work from existing infrastructure to start with and go from there, and that's what we're doing here.
You might remember building a flat roundabout in Lesson 6 to end our motorway - that's where we're going to start.


Being an important and busy junction, we want to ensure that traffic flows smoothly through the roundabout - and that means we need avenues to branch off the roundabout, like this:



Creating the avenues is just a simple matter of dragging them out.


As you can see in the above picture, we also need to add turn lanes using the TuLEP pieces that come with the NAM. This will ensure that the cars aren't weaving between lanes on the roundabout, increase capacity and provide a better visual appearance.


It's not a perfect fit - the centre arrow should really be pointing straight on and the right turn lane texture stops when it hits the roundabout, but these are minor niggles and are barely noticeable even in Zoom 4. The setup still looks much better with the turn lanes.


An important rule I need to mention now is that urban roads should be more or less straight, except where they need to curve due to terrain or obstructions.


We're going to continue with the westbound avenue now, where we run into a hill we have to go around.



You can see I've marked out where I want the avenue to end up by dragging it. I've then plopped smooth 45-degree avenue curves down. (Plop one first, then follow the grid diagonally to make sure that the other curve is in line.)


It may seem like the next step is to simply connect everything up - but first we have to sort out that lumpy curve at the bottom.


All we need to do is demolish the curve and then smooth out the area using Rail:



(Note that we do NOT need to flatten here. Just smoothing the terrain will produce a good result in the end.)


Then fill in the avenue gaps - but do NOT build the curve itself:



Now you can rebuild that avenue curve, and marvel at the improved result:



The next obstacle we have to cross is the main railway line, which we're going to do with a flyover.


The first job is to prepare the ground and plop the 15m ground lifter lots:



You can see that I've also had to demolish the railway infrastructure in the immediate area to do this, due to the terrain. Don't worry, it'll be rebuilt soon enough.


Now lift up that ground and create your stubs (they should be 2 tiles wide (because we're dealing with a 2-tile network) and at least 2 tiles long):



Now rebuild the railway (pre-flattening the terrain if necessary) and drag the avenue to your stubs:



Now you can build the flyover:



Then rebuild the catenary masts:



Note that there should be catenary masts on the tiles immediately next to the flyover.


Northwest of here, the plan is to end the avenue at an avenue roundabout, where 3 roads will run off it.


Although it is not possible to drag roads directly from the sides of an avenue roundabout (you can drag road from the corners), there's a little trick you can use to make it look like the road runs into the roundabout.


First, plop the roundabout and drag out avenue along the planned path of your roads. These avenues need to be as short as the game will let you make them:



Now you can drag out roads from these avenue stubs. It's important that you drag them from the correct side, and you'll see why in a moment.


The tiles you need to drag from are shown below, and they differ according to what side of the road your cars drive on:



LHD users need to drag from the tiles highlighted in red (like what you see here.)
RHD users need to drag from the tiles highlighted in green.


You can see from the picture above why it's important to drag from the right side. The roads only curve on one side, and that should be the side where the traffic needs to slow down - hence the curve should be on the inbound side of the road.


Now you can drag out your roads as planned:



(Remember that urban roads should be mostly straight.)


If we extend the road to the north, we'll eventually run into the roundabout interchange that we built during Lesson 7 Part 2. But the road connections to the interchange are slightly out of line with the road we've just built.


The solution is to use the FAR pieces. They can be found in the Wide Curves tab ring in your Road menu.


All we need here is a Road - 18.4-degree FAR Transition at either end, and FAR Straight pieces in the middle:



You can see that FAR has allowed us to bring the two vertical roads in line smoothly, whilst keeping the road more or less straight. It also breaks the Maxis grid, giving a much more realistic appearance to your road network.


Our last job on this road is to build a oneway roundabout to make provision for a yet-to-be-built access road for the city's power plant:



So now we move to the avenue that runs southbound from the roundabout in the first picture, which will run to the coast.


The first obstacle to cross is the railway - but this time the railway is diagonal, the terrain is challenging and the avenue can't go too far out of its way, so a flyover will be difficult to construct. We're also well into town now and can't afford to take up too much space.


The solution is to use FLUPs, which have the advantage of being able to curve under networks.


First, you need to flatten the terrain for the FLUP ramps, otherwise some funny things will happen when you try to build them:



I've also demolished some catenary masts to make way for the new underpass. As before, they'll be rebuilt in time.


You can see why we need to use FLUPs - the avenue to the east has got to go north east to meet the motorway, and the avenue south has got to continue south to run to the CBD and the coast.


So now you need to build your FLUP underpass, and rebuild the catenary masts as best you can:



So now we have an effective, realistic solution to quite a tricky problem. Yes, the road zigzags underground, but nobody will know that or see that, so you can pretend that you've got a wonderful smooth 90-degree curve running underneath your railway.


So now we can continue the avenue south to the coast. Just before the coast, I've built some FA-Avenue in exactly the same way as the FAR so that the avenue meets the coast where I planned it to:



You'll also see that I've built a junction with a road that will run to the main rail station to the east and the avenue roundabout to the northwest we built a few pictures ago. Being in the heart of the city, we have to use a flat junction here because we just won't have room for a roundabout once all the buildings go up.


But that junction just doesn't look right at the moment. It needs turn lanes:



Much better. Now we can turn our attention to a road that is planned to run along the coast.


First, we need to interface it with the avenue, and the tool for that is a 2x2 road roundabout:



Now, within the town we need to make space for a beach we're going to build. To do that, we need to route the road so that it is a consistent distance of 5-7 tiles from the shore. This will require you to use FAR and wide curves:



Towards the west, we can get a bit closer to the coast, as we're moving into the suburbs and out of town and hence don't need to keep a space for a promenade.


That road sticking out to the north now needs to meet the road that intersects the avenue at that flat junction we built.
When 1-tile roads meet in the suburbs or out of town, a oneway roundabout is the ideal choice to bring them together:



The road north of this junction runs into some big hills, so we have to violate our rule on keeping urban roads more or less straight.
Instead we have to route the road around the terrain, using smooth curves where appropriate:



Moving northeast, there's still one obstacle to deal with - the STR branch line, which a road connecting the expressway dumbbell interchange with the marina and historical district has to cross.


This intersection is comfortably in the suburbs, so we have room to build a flyover. For added complexity, a street will run from the flyover stub to the branch station.


Start by creating your stubs:



Now you can build the flyover. You'll need to use the STR-Dual Rail Short Transition piece on either side of the flyover:



I used the T on Slope pieces here so that I could drag out a street to the left. The slopes to the stubs were pre-smoothed using the Rail tool.


And that is all you need to know about building roads.


In Lesson 9 we'll build some infrastructure for our buses, such as a central bus terminal and park-and-ride facilities.


Until then,
Chris

[riiga]

I have to disagree with this picture:

How can you have three lanes entering a two-lane roundabout? Madness I say! Also, the right turn lane makes no sense, since a roundabout is a one-way road going clockwise (counter-clockwise in RHD).

[mike3775]

How are people supposed to go straight at this intersection when every lane is a turn lane only?

[dwilso35]

After reading through the whole thread and being inspired i decided to start my own region called Ayr which is loosely based on my hometown and loosely based on your own plan.


Ive included a river running through the area which the CBD spans, the river is slightly wider than the one you had in project 1 but i like it just slightly wider.
The car park for the stadium doubles as a park n ride on non game days.
There will also be an industrial dock and a marina that aren't marked on the plan.

Purple=Minor roads that i needed to show.
Grey= Major Roads
Green= Dual Carriageway (Expressway in your plans)
Blue= Motorway
Red=Railroad

How can you have three lanes entering a two-lane roundabout? Madness I say! Also, the right turn lane makes no sense, since a roundabout is a one-way road going clockwise (counter-clockwise in RHD).

With regards to the right turn late approaching a roundabout it's quite common where i'm from. I can think of 4 or 5 major roundabouts in different areas of scotland that have them.

[ricardomiranda]

Good job !

[n1md4]

How can you have three lanes entering a two-lane roundabout? Madness I say!

Might have a point there.

Also, the right turn lane makes no sense, since a roundabout is a one-way road going clockwise (counter-clockwise in RHD).

It's because the roundabout is oneway that it makes sense, it's a "get in lane" approach to roadabouts in the UK, and I travel them ever day

Arguably, it should have a straight ahead arrow too though.

[smileymk]

Hey guys. Once again, thanks for your patience.


riiga: Like this:



Or like this:

Notice how an extra lane forms immediately before the roundabout on the approach sides. The idea is simple - left lane to turn left, right lane to turn right, middle lane to go straight on.
This setup doesn't go on for very long, I'll grant you, but because of the grid in SC4, 2 tiles are needed to replicate this as closely as possible.
Of course, this only shows how it is in the UK - other countries are bound to do things differently. This is why it's vital to take a look around your area (and I'm talking to everyone here) and see what happens in real life for yourself, so you can copy it in SC4 and get good results.


mike3775: Because the piece we need to do that junction correctly, a rough sketch of which I've drawn here:

has yet to be implemented into the NAM. But, as you've seen from the real-life screenshots, to recreate a British city there should be arrows on all 3 lanes. So therefore we have to compromise for the time being.
That said, I might change the setup to A1 TuLEPs, which only have an arrow on the right turn lane, as an improvement - if the above piece, or something similar, isn't released between now and the Improvements lesson.


dwilso35: I find it brilliant that this MD has inspired you. I'm quite impressed with that plan - it looks very interesting and the land use structure (i.e. where your suburbs/industry/etc. will go) is very realistic. The terraforming is also good.


A couple of things I would change though:
- Widen the estuary a little bit, so that it is obviously wider than the river. Rivers always widen as they progress towards the sea.
- The road between the expressway and the stadium would be better if it were a continuation of your main road from the CBD. Otherwise, when Celtic or Rangers come to town and you get a sell-out crowd, there will be major gridlock.
- The railway branch to the power station should branch from the north side - not the south as you've got marked down. With your setup, freight trains would have to reverse at the terminus to deliver the goods - which will cause major headaches for Network Rail as they try to fit a busy passenger service around this.


Of course, these are just minor points which take very little away from what looks set to be a very good project. You're in the best position to make changes and improvements, so take the advice, keep going, I wish you the very best of luck, and don't forget that we'd all be happy to see your work in the 'Show us Your...' section at some point in the future.


ricardomiranda: You're becoming a bit of a regular now! It's very much appreciated, so thank you. Once more I've seen some very kind words from you, so thanks.


n1md4: See my response to riiga's comment. Thanks for pointing out the 'get in lane' philosophy to everybody. Again, the lack of a straight arrow is because we don't have the pieces to facilitate that yet.


Thanks for all those kind and sometimes intriguing comments - keep them coming! Debates, acknowledgements and constructive criticism really add to the thread in a way that the lessons can't.
Now, lesson time.


Lesson 9 - Buses


IMPORTANT: As always, this guide is for LHD users. Where directions are involved, RHD users should do the opposite of what is shown here.


In this lesson, we'll learn how to construct a park-and-ride facility, as seen around the edges of many medium-sized towns (such as Cambridge and Oxford), and the basics of constructing a central bus station to go in a CBD.


First, the park-and-ride terminal.


Location is critical - the terminal must be easy to get to, or it won't see any use. It needs to be placed on or near to a major road into your city. In many places, it's the first thing you drive past when you come into town.
Here we've gone for a location just west of the end of the motorway, as close to the junction as we can get.


The first stage is to provide the access roads. From your main road, drag an avenue out 4 tiles, and add turn lanes and slip lanes to the resulting junction:



We're going to follow the standard layout of park-and-ride terminals, i.e. a turnaround lane for the buses in the centre, together with the building, and the car park around it.


So it makes sense to start with the turnaround lane. We first have to flatten an area to accommodate it:



That's an area 10 tiles wide and 8 tiles long, which will give room for the turning circle with a little bit to spare as a reference for the car park and building.


Now you can drag the turning circle using one-way road. Make sure you drag it the right way round - clockwise for LHD users and anti-clockwise for RHD users:



I've left the road tiles there so you can see the dimensions you need to use.


Now you need to extend the flattened area to cover the car park and the building. The car park should be 3 tiles wide and go around the sides and back of the site. The building should go at the back of the turning circle.


Be sure to allow enough space at the back for both the car park and the building. You will also need to add some street corners and oneway stubs to provide access to your car park, like you see below. Do this after flattening:



Now you can demolish all of those tiles and place your building at the back of the turning circle. The building should be of modest size, no more than 2 storeys tall, and should not be too flamboyant in its design.
Above all, it also needs to work as a bus stop. Here, I've used the Trier Station by jasoncw. Yes, I know it's really a tube station, but it also works for buses and it looks the part, so:



The next stage is to build the car park. I'm using Hooha47's Modular Parking lots, which really do look the part, but you are free to use your preferred lot or set of lots.
As stated earlier, you need to make the car park 3 tiles wide (which will give you 6 rows of parking, perfect for a park-and-ride terminal), and have it run around the sides and back of the site:



You'll see from this image that we have some empty spaces, which we need to fill.


In real life, they're filled using concrete or grass, in an unspectacular fashion.
To reflect this, I've filled the gaps either side of the building using the Cobble Stone Ped Mall piece, and the area inside the turning circle using the RMIP Grass lots and Glenni's generic roundabout filler with rails:



Of course, you can use any suitable lot that you have on your system.
You can also go for the aesthetic approach and fill the gaps with trees, plants, fountains and suchlike. It won't be realistic, but it will look much nicer.
This is one of those occasions where you have to choose between realism and aesthetics, and act accordingly - and that's a choice only you can make.


So that's how you build a park-and-ride terminal. Onto the central bus station.


This is very straightforward - you just have to choose a good lot*, plop it in your CBD where it is within easy reach of main roads (but NOT actually on them), and then drag streets to connect everything:



I've zoomed out so you can see the placement. You can see that it's very easy to get to from the main roads, very central, and note as well the street at the back, where the building is, to allow pedestrians to use your station.


* The lot should be fairly small, and should have the capacity to hold at least 8 buses. Beyond that, it's up to you.


You'll notice that the buses have to drive over the pavement to get to the station, yet there are 2 gaps either side of a fence on the east side which appear to be an entrance and exit.
This suggests that the lot might be transit-enabled. I found out that that, sadly, is not the case.


However, we can modify the lot to make it transit-enabled, which will allow us to connect the station to the street, so that the buses don't have to drive over the pavement.
But that is something for another lesson.


And it isn't the next one. The next one will be about pedestrian walkways.
(For those who are wondering, if things go according to my current plan, we'll cover basic transit-enabling, as well as adding driveways to lots, in Lesson 19.)


See you next lesson,
Chris

[mike3775]

Yeah thats the thing with the tulips, there isn't enough different things to make it very realistic, which isn't a bad thing at all, just sometimes you need to sacrifice realistic on some things when it comes to them. 

Still this is looking damn good though, I have started incorporating things from this "guide" into the way I do my cities though 

[Terring7]

Pedestrian walkways, something that I really need some advices
The best way to connect the lot with the road is by overpathing props like BLaM Overpath Props. Having too much transit enable lots will make using puzzle pieces really tricky.

[jmyers2043]

Having too much transit enable lots will make using puzzle pieces really tricky.

Each transit connection is treated like stop light or stop sign. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it will eventually have an adverse affect on travel time.

<edit> Just remembered something.. The PEG chichen ranch farm has two transit connections. I had a situation once where a fire truck could not cross the transit connection to reach a fire down the road. I had to change the street to a road before fire trucks could drive by the ranch.

<edit 2> SimGoober has (or had) a couple of small farms with a transit connections. Drawing a diagonal road across the transit switch caused my game to CTD. Other folk may have different results but I did some re-lotting.

[j-dub]

Blam overpaths, those really came in handy. These days though, when widening a road in areas with existing driveways, if rebuilding with either 3 or 4 lanes, on a single tile road, the driveway may just be hanging into traffic.

[Durfsurn]

I like this very much. After reading all 10 pages I have gained some invaluable tips and information. Would love to eventually see this in the Classics and really can't wait to under take the final project- The region one! I have always embraced plan before you build and watching your planning has given me some advice to add to mine. On the TE of the lot do you intend of having the 2 entry/exits as one way roads as to give dedicated entry and exit points? Or do you plan on using the overhanging props? Either way I think will look great.

EDIT: The new SAM bridges on the STEX might come in handy. There's one bridge per texture bar SET 1 as that would be kinda weird!

[turtle]

Nice park and ride facility! You have a great eye for realistically scaling your facilities.

Regarding TE'ing that lot, instead you could follow this tutorial:

This is a tutorial I wrote back in late-2006.  Hope you guys like it!  I also made a few revisions.
From ST's "Post your tutorials" thread:

Here is a simple tutorial on how to make 'street connections' to non-transit enabled lots.

You'll need the NAM which can be found in the Mods and Downloads section.

Remember to be careful not to place any puzzle pieces next to or on transit-enabled lots, as this may cause the game to crash.  It is recommended you re-plop any nearby transit-enabled lots after you do this.

First, find the el-rail dual-network puzzle pieces in your menu, and plop the el-rail over road (or any network that you don't want to use)one tile back from where you want to make the eye-candy connection:


Then plop an el-rail over street(or any network that you want to make the connection with) piece, in this case street, next to the road piece.    The game will not crash when this happens.  I have found it to be a bug-free solution. 

Note: To do this with a one-way or avenue, you may have to place the road piece a few tiles back and use the overpass puzzle pieces, as those are the ones available.

Now demolish the el-rail over road piece and you get this:

You may now connect it as you wish. 
But this tutorial is not complete yet.  You say you've been having trouble creating T-intersections with this?  Here's the solution.
Drag the end of the street you don't want to connect one tile away from the street tile:


Then demolish that tile of street:

Now you can connect it to a network and play with it as you wish. Dragging any network over the tile will not harm the street.

This is how it turned out for me:

Be creative, and have fun!!!

Tutorial by Pilotdaryl

Neat trick, but you need to do it before placing the building.

[smileymk]

Blimey, now that's a reaction to an update! Thanks for your comments guys, keep this up.


Speaking of which, I've noticed that we're getting close to 200 replies, and, whilst there is no rush to reach this milestone and it won't get this MD promoted or anything like that, it would be nice to get to the mark. So any contributions towards this milestone will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.


mike3775: Sadly that's true. But, on the other hand, sometimes it can be good to sacrifice realism to make your city look better, and I'd encourage doing that where appropriate.
That said, things like TuLEPs need to be as close to the real thing as you can get them, but if you don't have the parts, well, you're just going to have to make the best of a bad job (proverbially speaking).


Terring7: Thanks for the suggestion. I do have that file, but my intention was to use it to improve the look of facilities and some lots that have driveways (you'd need a few to cover the bus station entrance), and TE the station entrance. We aren't using too many puzzle pieces there - only the odd SAM starter, so there shouldn't be too many issues...


You'll be interested to know that I plan to show how to TE lots and add driveways using the overpath props in Lesson 19, so hold tight.


jmyers2043: The bus station will be connected to the street by means of an entrance and exit which won't be connected in the lot. So all through traffic will use the street like they're supposed to, and it should not have too much of an effect on travel time.


With the examples you mentioned, it could just be a problem with the lots themselves, or they could be being used incorrectly (e.g. dragging a diagonal road into a transit connection which could well be straight), or some quirk in the system. I can't say I've had those kind of problems with TE lots before - but then I've never used PEG's Chicken Ranch or those diagonal farm lots. If they don't work then my best advice is to delete them.


j-dub: I see the potential for them too, and that's why they'll be the subject of part of Lesson 19.


Durfsurn: I'm glad you're finding this useful, and I'm happy to be of service. Obviously reaching the Classics board is my goal too - if you could help get us up to 200 posts it would be a good start!
I'm afraid you'll have to wait a bit for the 4th project, it'll take at least a year and maybe 2 (depending on several factors) to get that far. But do stay with us for the duration, you'll learn lots of useful stuff in between.


Like I said, I'm going to TE the bus station, with a oneway entrance on the left and a oneway exit on the right, unconnected within the lot. That way there will be a dedicated and functional entrance and exit, as you see in many bus stations in the real world.


As for the SAM bridges, thanks for pointing those out, and I have downloaded them. I assume you're referring to the street bridge we did in Project 1 - I won't come back to that, because that project's finished and done as far as I'm concerned, we've got to move on. The download may well be used in the future, though...


turtle: I knew about that, but never thought of it. It's a very good suggestion. I'll say again, the plan is to TE the bus station so you know how to do it, but I might adopt that technique to other lots.


Are we all here now? Then I'll start the lesson.


Lesson 10 - Pedestrian Walkways


This will be a very short, very simple lesson, covering pedestrian pathways that you typically find in suburbs, the purpose of which is to connect neighbouring estates. In practice, many of these paths are connected in a substantial network within one city, enabling pedestrians and cyclists to cross town quickly and easily (the redway network of Milton Keynes is a very good example).


The walkway we're going to build will run between the junction station and the yet-to-be-built football stadium, in the northwest city tile of our region, and we're going to use the Ped Mall tiles to do it, so make sure you've got the NAM.


First, you need to mark out the route which your walkway will take. You do this with ordinary road. Drag a route that's direct yet avoids the steepest slopes, using rail to pre-smooth slopes where necessary:



Now, many real pedestrian paths have branches that connect to streets in the estates where they lie, providing useful shortcuts to the locals. So if we want realism, we should incorporate these branches into our work. Mark them out with road, keep them to <=3 tiles, and spread them out:



Now, when I begun to do this lesson, I thought you could plop Ped Mall tiles directly onto a road. It turns out that you can't, so we need to demolish the road before building the path.
But if we just whip out the bulldozer, we won't know where the path needs to go. So, to make sure that we do know what to do, we place single road tiles at the end of each branch, opposite t-junctions, and around curves and crossings:



Now we can replace the road with ped mall, using the Mountain Trail pieces. (The others are too wide, and you'll have to pretend that it's a concrete surface). Keep your single tile markers until you finish the path, then delete them:



That's more like it! However, we're not finished yet. We can make this path functional - but to do it, we have to stick a transit-enabled lot next to it - and what could be better than a road top bus stop?



It also makes sense to place a bus stop where the path meets the avenue to the south. Because the avenue is a busier and higher-speed thoroughfare than the road, we can't force our pedestrians to cross it. So we use the FLUP pieces to create an underpass:



And that completes our pedestrian pathway. Simple, right? Later on in the project we'll learn to add some details to the path to make it a bit more visually pleasing.


But that's enough about pedestrian walkways for now.
Next time we'll cover something far more exciting - power stations.


Until then,
Chris

[apeguy]

Some really excellent updates recently, I may have to use a thing or two from what I've learnt here.


Also, in order to make the mountain trail ped-malls look better in an urban environment, might I suggest using this mod by deadwoods? It replaces the mountain trails and also adds a couple of lots which can encourage more pedestrians to use them.

[mike3775]

smileymk, Completely understand your point 100%. 

When you first started this guide/journal, I stated that I implemented some things from it, and I will say it again.  I don;'t really care for realism in my cities, but I have adapted usage of many of the things you pointed out in this as well whenever I play.  I have noticed that simply placing parking lots near mass transit stations(RTMP) have increased bus ridership, placing them near GLR stations has shown an increase, and even train stations have shown an increase.  SO that is one thing you have shown to do that I did adapt to the way I play the game. 

I have also started doing more elevated RHW's with various styles of interchanges thanks to this guide, and I have started doing more "main drags" where I funnel all the traffic to them to lead to other faster methods of commutes as well. 

This journal/guide is great for new players or even older players such as myself

[smileymk]

Hello. I'm afraid this is just going to be a quick replies post, because as things stand, there's no way the power station will be finished before the 45-day deadline, and I don't want you guys to feel like I'm ignoring you.


apeguy: I do have that mod, but for some reason can't seem to get it to work. It's probably due to where it is in the Plugins folder, so I'll have to play around with the files a bit. Otherwise, thanks for the kind words.


mike3775: Some interesting points there, which will be helpful to a lot of people. It's not too surprising that you got those results, since what you saw is what the game engine is designed to make you see.


The idea of having 'main drags', is, on the whole, a pretty good one, and should prove both effective and realistic. But I would include one or two 'back routes' as well, else your arteries will probably get severely congested, the exact opposite of what you built them to do.


Right, I'll show you where we are with the power station as of last night (Monday 21st):



You can see that the foundations are there, such as the building, road access and rail terminal/access loop, but there's still lots to add, like car parks, cooling towers, transformers, snack vans, and a boundary fence with security gate.


I don't know when it'll be ready, so you'll just have to be patient as usual. Don't worry, I'll soon have a new laptop with a modern-day spec (i.e. Core I7 processor, Windows 7, 6GB RAM, etc.) so I'll be able to do lessons much faster.


Until then, though, I have to make the best of what I've got.


See you in Lesson 11,
Chris

[cmdp123789]

Where did you get those tunnels entrances?

[smileymk]

Hello.



If you've read my updated signature, you'll notice that you can now contact me on Facebook, where I will be more than happy to discuss any and all things SC4 (or any and all things anything) with you guys in a light-hearted manner.


The link can be found in my signature, at the bottom.


(Obviously you need a Facebook account to see the page! You will also need to send me a Friend request if you want to see my wall. Please make your screen name clear somewhere on your page if you do this so I know it's you, otherwise I won't accept the request.)


Now, back to topic:


cmdp123789: I believe that they are somewhere on Simtropolis. I'm sorry to say I've been unable to find them despite an extensive search.


Now, lesson time.


Lesson 11 Part 1 - Power Stations


I don't think these need too much introduction, suffice to say that it makes sense to construct your power supply first as you can't construct any water supplies or estates without it.


In this lesson we're going to build a basic coal-fired power station, as seen throughout the world. The coal supply will be delivered by rail, but the power station will be accessed by road.


We begin by placing the building. As with so many things in SC4, your choice of building is everything. The only real requirement here, however, is size. It's got to be big - far bigger than the Maxis offerings. I found this example from the Japanese site Somy to be perfect for our needs:



You'll see that I've flattened the ground around the power station so we can build a road around it.


I've said already that this power station is going to be supplied by rail, so we need a freight terminal to serve this. Nothing elaborate is needed here, but I've also used Bripizza's snow covers to represent the area where the coal is dropped off the trains:



Oh, forgot to mention - this is a single-track (STR) terminal. That's quite important. Trains will be very infrequent so nothing more is needed.


I'll say now that we're going to cheat a little bit and assume that the coal is brought to the power station by means of an underground conveyor, which will save having to model an overhead conveyor around a freight terminal and across unforgiving terrain.


Now, this terminal is no use whatsoever unless we have some means of accessing it by rail, so we need to build a rail line that loops back on itself (known in the trade as a 'return loop') to link back to the main line to the north.


We're going to use STR to do this, and for maximum realism, we need the wide curves. We also need to accomodate a street underpass to provide access to the coal store, which will go to the left of the terminal.


The first job is to do the preparatory terrain levelling:



This rail loop also has to go over our access road, so we need to build an underpass for the access road. This also requires preparatory terrain work, which is probably easier to explain if I show it to you first:



Firstly, I've dragged out the rail so I know where that's going to go. Then, since I know that the access road is going to go left from the one-way roundabout, I replaced that section of rail with single road tiles to 'mark out' the access road, and ensure that the underpass is at the correct depth. Then I've just stuck a 10m hole digger on the side which will give us a depression of the correct depth to use with the underpass pieces I'm using.


Now the underpass can be built. The easiest way is 'cut and cover', in other words, build the ditch by dragging road through the hole digger, extend it all the way through using single road tiles, replacing the original single road tiles, and then using the rail tool to go over the top.


When done, you should have two flat depressions either side of the rail line. You can then build the underpass as shown:



Also note my use of SAM-7 (asphalt textures) for the access road, which gives a more realistic appearance.


We now need to build a second underpass on the other side of the complex, this one serving the coal store. The procedure is exactly the same:



With the underpasses done, we can turn our attention to actually building the rail loop itself. We use STR to do this:



(We covered using STR in Lesson 6 so I'm not going to go over it again, suffice to say don't forget those wide curves!)


At the top of the loop, we're going to convert to double-track so we can a) build a flyover over the main road and b) link back to the main line efficiently.


This arrangement requires the use of the dual-STR short transition piece together with the 45-degree STR off double track piece:



Make sure you flatten everything first. That also applies to our next step - creating the flyover:



You should already know how to do this - we've covered it enough times and it's exactly the same as it is for roads and motorways.
We'll assume that the junction with the mainline is to the north, outside of our region - this saves us having to try to build a railway over a rather large hill.


Now we can turn our attention to finishing off the power station itself. We'll start by building a couple of small car parks on either side of the main building:



Next is the transformers, for which I've used PEG's lots. Don't forget to flatten beforehand for best results, and to provide road access:



The next thing to build is the coal store, for which I'm going to take inspiration from Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station and use this lovely tailings pile:



Now you need to build some cooling towers. You need at least 3, preferably 4 or 5, for best results. They should be together, but place them wherever you can find room. They need to be huge - this offering is currently the only thing available online that does the job:



Don't worry about the retaining walls - there simply isn't the room to avoid them, and they don't look too bad. (And yes, I know about the missing dependency.)


You'll also notice I've built a security fence, to guard the plant from chavs and terrorists - but there's still an easy way for them to get in, and that's through our access road.


To stop this, we need a security gate - and, in the absence of suitable lots, this SAM-7 toll booth is the perfect substitute:



And that's your power station complete.


However, it's no use if we don't have some means to transport the electricity the station produces - power lines. We will cover the construction of these in Part 2.


Until then,
Chris