Show us your (Classic) Tutorials

[The Milkman 1]

Show us your (Classic) Tutorials

This thread is one of the ST classics, where generations of Simcity Fans have shared their tutorials with the community.

This thread was originally 8 pages long and over 300 posts - as you can imagine it was quite hard to actually find the tutorials in amongst all the chatter. 

The thread has been tidied up, but like many old threads, it is a bit buggy so it has now been locked to be "Read Only".

abcvs
CBC Moderator

[Cjah 15]

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Tutoril 1 "Building Sunken Highways"

First and formost is select an area to do a sunken highway.Then lay down some street tiles to hold the surrounding tearrain firm and to give you a look at the highways future layout.It should be in a 6 tall by 10 long to start off simple.If you already know how to do long sunken highways then skip this and go down to the overpass section.

Now whip out the old mayor terrain tool.Yes thats right no hole digging lots here.I want you to learn something.Anyway you want to set the terrain tool by holding Ctrl and pressing number key 2.Once that has been done you want to begin digging over the street tiles,but keep the outer ones where they are.

Now keep digging until you reach a rather deep spot or until you hit water.Your terrain will also change color as you go ever deeper.Notice my terrain it isn't as snowy as before.Also KEEP the side street tiles!

Now here is the important part.You do not want to use anything other then the street tool when flatting the land.I cannot say that enough.You see it levels the land perfectly and keeps everything smooth.

Now I'll admit in this next picture I was a little lazy.I have the CSX Slope Mod.It makes everything alot easier,but don't fear I know some of the newbs fear mods and such so.....Just lay the street tiles like a few tiles up and you'll get a similar slope.It might not be as good.

Keep the side street tiles.You will need them later and it holds everything in place.Trust me its just easier to keep them and it says you money.

This next techniqe can be used in both making sunken highways and making over passes for sunken highways.Lay down alot of street tiles to level the land ahead of your highway.Then after that lay down highway.Add some walls and you have a perfect sunken highway for your cities and for your C.J.'s....

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TUTORAIL 2"SIMPLE OVERPASS"

I'm very happy you all enjoyed my first tutorail.Thats why I'm posting a second one.

Now break your sunken Highway in half and make sure its still flat.

Now make sure you raise the land with the street tiles.Try a 6x6 style it makes it easier....

Now drag the ground highway out and make a tunnel.Make sure it level to get the same results.

Now drag out a highway to make it appear as an overpass.The avenue being the major road.Then add some walls.I reckomend Jeronj's walls...

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TUTORAIL 3 PART 1 "EASY UNDERWATER TUNNELS"

Before you can even start terraforming you must pick a spot that has a river or some kind of body of water.Then lay out the street tiles in the same way I have done below.

Now enter "God Mode" by pressing Ctrl,Alt and Shift all at the same time and click the mayor tools icon.Now click of the level land icon.Then proceed to make the all famous "Land Bridge".This method has been used since the very begining of SC4.

Before you lower the "Land Bridge" back to sea you must build a highway tunnel.Then once the tunnel is in place lower the land.

Make sure both sides are even or as close as possible to being extact copies.

Once the land is lowered the river can resume its original form.But keep a little land jutting out.

Use ground highways with the CSX Slope Mod to give the back of the tunnel a slope.

Do the same with the other side.

Now add some walls for the highway.Grass for the hill and trees to suround the grass.

Repeat and there you go.

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I got some Naval building tutorials,but I probably will redo them so they look better.....

Aslo my roundabout tutorial is now obsulete due to such an Advanced NAM realese....

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A simple tutorial....

Open land....

Now lay down tiles to flatten future farm development....

Lay street and put a simple Windmill...

Lay out farming zones in a zigzag fashion...

Make an enclosed feild....

Let the farm grow and suround it with Jeronij's trees.

Repeat the flattening process...

Zone again....

Let farm grow and suround with another type of tree....

Fill in with many trees and make it dense....

Above is my farming tutorial.....after about a week of playing that city tiles looked like this.....

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[sloppet 3]

Great work Cjah! You showed 'em!

on the main page!

[Cjah 15]

A Speech.....

Well let me just thank all the little people and everyone who uploads to the STEX.First and foremost are these peoples who deserve thanks.

anyway I made another tutorial and this one is short....lol

The link to the rural power lines can be found here....

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=13897

The link for trees here.....

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=15328

I hope you all liked that simple tutorial....

[bourneid 13]

P1...for some reason I cant see any of your pictures?

Google'ized regions shots:
Over the last fewq months, Google maps has become very popular, especially here in the SC4 community. Its great for seeing real life city layouts and using that to help create more realistic citys ingame. It is also very usefull for those trying to recreate there hometown or cities they like. Wouldnt it be grate now that you have that relistic layout to be able to have your region pictures resemble that Google look? Well now you can.....

I promissed a few weeks ago to write up a small tutorial (and sense Fox has been pationtly wait for it  ) here it is...though I am not very good at them)
for the googlized region shot: Only works for CS and higher
1) open region census (if you dont have the program do a search, there are some threads w/ links) and load up your region....after its loaded under FILE, select save thumbnail...a dialog box will come up...set the thumbnail to the highest setting
 
2)Open that thumbnail in Photoshop and under filters selct Distort/ lens correct
 
3) Adjust the vertical perspactive to 100% , then adjust the scale as you see fit...(think of scale as zoom)
 
4)repete step 3 to change the angle more if you want to....
5) A:now that you have the angle how you want it and the view.....Copy duplicate the background layer so that you now have two layers.
 
B:Now go under the filters pulldown and this time select Guassian Blur...set at 7.0 This is adjustable depending on the image you are using
 
6) now that you have that nasty blurry mess what to do with it......simple, in the layors pallet change the blurred layors mode to soft light...and you should have something like this
 
and that is it....
here is a finished picture:

Creating Animated pictures: the tutorial:
Alright, the first thing that you have to understand is that animated .gifs work much like a slid projector. By turning of one picture and displaying anouther. Becuse of this, the picture file must contain the info for all the seperate frames...so the file size can get rather large. Becuse of the limits of picture file size, this little tick should not be used very often. I try and limit it to one or two a page but that is up to you and the admins. For my journal I tend to strech the upper limits of what is exceptable but I clearly labled my journal with that intention. You also have to understand that by using such large picture file sizes you are limiting somewhat the trafic you will see at your journal, many folks here are still using dial-up (thats so 90's) and so loading up a page with loads of animated gifs on it is like watching grass grow in the sahara.
Now that I have the warnings out of the way lets get on with it.....
What you will need:
A) Sc4.....
B)photoshop imageready....simular app. There my be other programs that can do this but these steps petain to imageready that ships with Photoshop. The concept should be the same for other programs
C)a ready supply of your favorite caffinated bevarge
 
step 1:
Open up sc4 and load a city. Play for a bit and biult something intersting. While building keep an eye out for interesting things....such as the prissoners escaping, kids on the jungle gym....the person falling over sitting at a patio table (seriously, I have the pictures to prove it). The maxis folks added loads of interesting things that you may never even notice but provide for some intersting subjects. Be aware of these small details because most folks dont even think about them so when they see it in your journal they are like "thats in the game, I never noticed that".
 
step 2:
Now that you have the city opened up and you have found an interesting "scene".... type control-x to bring up the cheat pannel. Type in Recorder  That will bring up the recorder control pannel.

You will notice that there is a spot to type in a name for that clip, and below that some other options.
This can be somewhat tricky (was for me anyway). take some time to play around with the settings a bit and see what works best for you.
here is a beter view and I will go though each part for those who havnt played with this yet

here is the breakdown as best as I can figure:
Rate(ms): the time frame between each snap of the camera.
Time(s): the duation of the clip, how long will it record
 
for this eample I used 10000(ms) for 100(s)= 10 frames
Below that is the options for what type of pictures will be created. I use jpeg because png frames are much larger and can bog down when you bring them into imageready.
These settings are adjustable and this example is just what I found worked best for me....
 
Below the recorder pannel there will be a small white bounding box (highlighted red here for clearity). This is your camera view. If you put your mouse over the box it will turn into a hand icon. Move the box to where you want it. If you place your mouse over any of the white lines of the bounding box you should get a doublesided arrow <-->. this will let you change the size of the camera view. In the top left of the bounding box is a readout of the current size of the view (seen above as 800x600). The thing to remeber here is that the recorder take snapshots. So the settings you set up in the rate/time play a roll here. For the example shown above I got 10 pictures at 499k a piece. So for this small clip I have almost 5mb of pictures.
 
Step 3:
Now that you have everything set to go...the "scene" is set, settings how you want them, all that is left to do is call "action" (or in this case hit start). the recorder will snap your frames and when finished you will get a popup asking you if you want to write files. click yes and the frames will be saved in MY doc/sc4/recorded animations .
If you are going to make several clips, make sure that you remeber to name each of them. They are not saved in severate folders in the Mydoc/sc4/recorded animations folder and you will need to separate them in the next step.
Now exit sc4
 
step 4:
To make things a bit easier in the next step, open up Mydoc/sc4/recorded animations and you will see all the pictures you created with the recorder. If you named each clip in the step above you will have pictures labled (name) tutorial 1....2....3.....etc. take all the pictures for each clip and put them into there own separate folder.
 
Step 5: open up imageready. Once it has finished opening go up to file/import/folder as frames . In the popup window navigate to Mydoc/sc4/recorded animation/(clip folder). This is where step three comes in, if you dont place each clip into its own folder....imageready will import all the pictures contained in the recorded animations folder. And believe me...I have made that mistake and crashed imageready trying to bring in to many pictures.
When it if finished importing you will have all the pictures from that folder placed on there own layer and aranged to make each frame.
here is what you should see: (if these pannels are not open go to the window tab and check them in the list)
animation frames bar

this is where you control the frame timing and loop. The play controls are here too. if you have some frames that you dont want to keep just drag them to the garbage can below....the button next to the can creates a new frame....if you want to repeate a frame that is already shown...drag is picture over the new frame button and it will duplicate it.
the bar highlighted above is the time cycle control. You can set the timing for how long each frame is displayed before the next one is shown....to change one frames timing click on the number below it and a dropdown will be shown. If you want to change the timing for all the frames hold the shift key and the start frame and the end frame.....then click on the number and change.
 
Next is the layers pallet. they work just like it does in photoshop.....

 
next is the Optimatation pallet:
this is where you control how the images will be optimized when you save the file. For animated pictures you need to have it set to gif, For the other settings you will have to refer to the guide as to what they do.....they have a good explination for what each setting effects.
 
step 6:
A) I added this step only becuase it can be used for other things but it is not really neccicary. Once you have everything set and your animation is timed right and looks good....go to file/save origional. A dialog box will come up....name your clip and under file type....croll down the list till you find quicktime .mov format. Save the file and image ready will mave a qt.mov file for you.
B)Imageready has the ability to open many types of files...including mpeg,mov,avi and more. That is why I wanted to show this. So for you Bat'ers (3dsmax, dont know if gmax can) out there can show off your creations by making little .avi movies and import them into imageready to make dull pictures that come with readme really pop.
also this tip is usefull in creating sig pictures that stand out. Here is an example...

 
Alright, enough of me taking about it...let me show you how it works...
1. in imageready go to file/open. Find the clip you want to use and open it. you will get a menu like this

The first option is used if you want to import the entire clip....for the small clips we made in image ready in the previous step this is fine, if you are importing something like a movie clip or whatnot you will want to select a range. For selecting a frames range hold the shift key and move the slider along the timeline. this will select all the frames withong that selection. Becuase of there high framerate then we need (remeber file size) we my not need all those frames...so we can limit the frames created.....as you see above we have selected every second frame...so every other frame in the clip will be open...cutting the file size needed in half (give or take).
Click ok and we will have the frames layed out as we did in step 5. For the clip we made with the recorder, instead of having 10 frames we now have 5 frames.....though we now have half the frames...
You maybe wondering why I dont just delete everyohter frame in imageready reather then taking these extra steps...well...though triel and error (again more error) I have noticed that doing this way the resolting clip is less jerky then doing it in Imageready. My assumtion is that when it is exported as a quicktime clip it it fills in the pixel shift from one picture to the next picture. This is just a guess but when you bring the clip in and dont select every other frame you end up with more then the ten frames you started with
 
step 7:
Now that we have the clip back and have nocked off a bit of the fat, we have to make a choice. Sense the clips file size is most likely still to big for us to post "as is" what do we do?
option A) "the easy way" Go to Image/ image size and make the whole thing smaller.
 
option B) "the lot easier then you think way"
 
This is the process you can see clearly (at dudys and pegs sites) done in the skateboarder picture. For ST that image is accually three separate pictures. This process is called Slices. Slices are just what they sound like....small pieces of the whole image.
(by the way...this is also the process used in creating those photo montoges everyone likes so much...hint,hint)
A) if you want image ready to do the slices for you:
Go under Slices/divide slices and a menu will drop down.

in this menu box you have two options...horizontal slices and vertical slices. For both you can set weather you want a specifc # of slices evenly hoz/or vert or slices a specific size....for this example we see three even slices going across the image. These are cuts...they will breat the image into three separted sections (so you will have three gif images) .
this can be a bit tricky...Because the images may not load on a webpage at the sametime (dialup users) the three sections my not sync once you post it.
B) because of that fact you may need a little more control over where the slices are placed then Divide slice and do. So we use the slice tool. this can be found on the tool pallet

this tool can be used to "cut" the image like an exacto knife.\
in the skateboarder picture I used it to cut the center of the picture away from the reast of the image....that is where the most action took place....just above the ramp area there wasnt really and thing going on...so no consern there.....and below the ramp the was only the guy walking by on the sidewalk...his tiiming wasnt important.
 
Once you have created your slices you can save your animated gif......go under File/save for web and in the menu you can change it from HTML&images to just images. In the folder you save to an new folder will be created named Images.....inside there you will find the peices to you animation clip.
 
[align=center]Finally, upload those images to http://imageshack.us/ and there you have it.
I will post the journal update in a following post.

here is the finished project[/align]

Creating Custom actions:
Copyed from ST:
utora replyed....
"Is it also possible to save one particular process of editing an image (say: a certain grainy look to a picture), and repeatingly apply it to other images by using a shortkey or something? (I waste lots of time on repeating the exact procedure on all my images I put in my cj: there must be a shorter way: can you tell?)"

My reply:

Thanks for the replys. As for your question utora, here is a pretty good site for tutorials on some of the things that I have done http://www.good-tutorials.com . Also, the Adobe studio exchange (free stuff) can be found here http://share.studio.adobe.com/Default.asp , there you can find a with range of layer styles, brushes, filters and such to add to photoshop.
is it also possible to save one particular process of editing an image?   Yes, it is called actions.

In the above image you can see the actions pallet. This is where you can run actions and also make new ones.
step 1:
if there is a particular stye of picture or setup you like and you want to be able to repeat it without going though it each time you will want to create an action.
first, open up an image. Then in the actions pallet click on the folder icon, this will create a new action set ( if you have already create a set, and want to have several actions grouped together skip this step) and name your set. For this example I named the set "Bournedemo light cartoonish"
step 2:
The icon to the left of "create new set" (folder icon) is the "create new action" (stickit note). this will create an action and start the recording process. while the actions pallet is set to record every step you take will be recorded.
in the picture above you can see that the first step I took (with an image open) was to resize. If you want to try something that you are not sure how it will work.....hit stop on the actions pallet and it will not record that step. If you decide you want to keep that step go under Edit/undo and hit record and repeat that last step.
Step 3:
Once you have gone though all the steps and you have your finished image. In the actions pallet there is a small arrow in the top right above the scroll bar. Click on it and it will bring up a context menu.....scroll down to "save action".
you have now create your own custom action.
 
 
Alright, now that you know how to make your own.....what if you want to use some for someone else? There are many sites out the that have downloadable actions, some free and some that are not. Once you do find one that you like download it and place the ANT file into you Program files/adobe/adobe photoshop (version)/presets/photoshop actions folder.
open photoshop and in the actions pallet there is a small arrow in the top right above the scroll bar. If you have palced it in the presets folder you should see it in the list in the context menu, if you do not see it .....In the list go to "load actions". navigate to the preset/ actions fold where you placed it click load.....you will get a dialog box......if you just want that action set click load.....if you dont want to loss the actions you already have loaded click amend. this will add your action to the list of avalable actions in the actions pallet.
 
All the other presets can be loaded much the same way. here is the file http://www.dudyconstructor.com/phpBB2/download.php?id=175

an add-on to this is that you can also asign actions to your keyboard so that you can just hit say F2 and it will run the action....I have one that automaticly resizes the open picture to the right size for ST by just hiting one key. Or if you have a particular overlay that you use on all your pictures...you can creat an action that opens that overlay and aplies it as a new layer over your open picture by hitting a single button. 
with the recorder it records every action you make while it is active....

[wouanagaine 83]

Here is a tutorial I had posted in my CJ. It's about  curved  road.

I think it's quite an efficient method. I was somehow inspired by the Curved highway Tutorial by Thalassicus. Unfortunately the move to ST5.0 removed the pics. But for summary, you place signs where you want the highway to pass thru and refine the process and then build the highway between signs. For further explanations ( in correct English ) you can search forum for "curved highway"

What I propose it's a way to have a visual clue for the layout of the road ( or any other network ) so that you can plan for where it go.

First step is to set the "crime" view on

Sorry for the French on the pic.

Now open you police menu.

And place one of your police building on the land

By placing different building you'll see different area and different radius for the curves

So place more building so that the circles get tangent to each other

 

Choose wisely and you'll be able to draw a good looking network

Now it's time to build your network by following the line

That's finish.

Time to destroy the police buildings and see the result

Looks correct at level 2 zoom

Looks correct in the traffic view

And from the regional view ( my favorite )

It's looking good

I hope you have appreciated this quick "how-to". I'm sure that you'll find plenty of use for this. If you try it on your own region I will be glad to see some pics .

You can use this with any network ( highway, rail etc.. ).

Take Care

[mightygoose 92]

dual highways part 1.

dual highways, intro.

what is a dual highway you might ask? well ill tell you it is quite simply two highways side by side. it is not however a multilane highway.

i never have liked multilane highways and im not sure why, i think it was the inflexibilty of them. with duals however you gain the ability to do considerably more.

feel free to gasp in awe at the amazing dual highway. now apart from the visuals there is only one major difference between these two styles of multiways....

directions. the multilane has two left and two right side by side. the dual has left right left right. this is both useful and confusing at the same time. right to change between the two for those who have multis but no duals. two ways of doing it. both relatively condense but require both the NAM and smoncries hole digging lots. also give credit to lakeboy for his wonderful multi tutorials.

this method is twelve tiles long. as you can see one side bulges out. this is unavoidable as otherwise there is no room for the overpass. i'd also advise making sure the area is flat first. the picture shows pretty clearly how to lay out the OWroads. i think this is a more city centre kind of transfer as this arrangement is far more obtrusive than the next. feel free to overlay some of the arrows with road to get rid of them. like the main straight on the far right. although it is best to maintain arrows at the ends near key points such as the overpass ramps and the highway changes top and bottom.

all that remains to be done is to complete the overpass and decorate to taste. here it is done with the vanilla flower gardens to make a nice 12x6 changeover.

now here is another layout used for the more tricky of the two methods. the tunnel method. it is tricky because of the space required for the entrances to the tunnel. once again lay the road out roughly as displayed. i say roughly because you end up demolishing it and rebuilding it  many times before it works properly. id also advise laying the surrounding area with single road tiles to prevent any unwanted elevation changes. after this use the mayor mod height tool to beef up the central divider, destroying that cross over road.(it's only there to show you where it goes). dog the holes with the lots and create the tunnel. use single tiles to lower the overpass bank to normal levels and revamp the surrounding OWroads.

as you can see with the vanilla trees it is a much more subtle change and not quite as economical weith space either. but none the less it does the job. if you have the highway raised in the middle i did at the last minute come up with a way of changing to dual for you too. its surprisingly net and i thing it looks rather cool.

meet the claw.

but i don't have any multilane highways, what am i supposed to do?

well i thought of you people two because i only have three multis in my region at the mo.

starting. this is not the way to start and is wrong so nobody try this. well some people will but it doesn't work. honest it doesn't...

the reason this does not work is because the traffic has not swapped direction and those avenuse and dual lanes are effectively one way. which defeats the left right left right orientation pupose of a dual highway. from a single freeway the start i've come up with is pretty but bulky, any better suggestions please post them i'd be very interested.

meet the heart. it allows for the correct directions and even has some built in on ramps in the shape of those roads. it can also be very nicely decorated. but by far and away the easiest way to start and finish dual highways, to to go off the edge of the map..... no kidding  aside it is...

just use two single motorways and link them up. it allows sims to turn around, go left, go right. do whatever they please.

anyway. thats how to start and end them for now. but what can you do with them. thats the question. well ill start with the simplest of the simple. an overpass and an underpass. the overpass of an avenue is the most common so is first.

this is it. using the NAM. simple as pie. the underpass.

Maximum image size is 800 x 600 - MM

a bit more complicated but not too bad. now your probably wondering, what about the inside lanes.... but you could do this as well... what if.... don't worry. there is at least another three parts to go yet so don't get in a fuss. i'll probably cover it in the next few days but if i don't ask me. also if you do come up with any clever dual interchanges or dual junctions or dual transfers please post them.im always open for new ideas.

thankyou and goodnight JD

[mightygoose 92]

but hey earlier than scheduled

motorway madness, dual highway fun part 2.

first thing to note when dealing with the inside outside lane problem is that they are very easily interchangeable

this very easily changes outside lanes to inside and inside lanes to outside. the fact is that anything that joins the inside stays on the inside and anything that joins on the outside stays on the outside. for this reason i tend to use inside junctions for urban use and outside ones for rural use, a fusion of Rurban if you will. with basic outside junctions covered just now we will look at a selction of junctions more.

to make an inner junction you need to do a split.

this is a two tile split. this is used primarily for elevated junctions and a four tile split for ground interchanges. as with all junctions i recommend levelling the are first.

using a four tile split and elevating the highways as shown, separate two roadways by 6 tiles. counting in from the ends helps centralising the junction. ignore the rail lines, i may talk about dual rail at a later date. p.s. it make no difference whether you elevate before or after the split, it is a debate of aesthetics and entirely up to you.

in the middle of where the roadways will go against he highways lay four tiles each side. this prevents certain ramps being prompted.

as you lay the roads under the highways you will get prompted to build these four single sided onramps. these are the ones we want. without those four tile strips we would have got double sided ones wich would have been wasteful of council budget. (as mr. devalle waves is megawand of freeway construction again).

thereof flavour to taste. i chose flower gardens and peg ponds woot.

there that is how to make a simple double sided interchange, note this is not an inside purebred. those come next.

by now you should have pretty much got the knack of working with my methods and figuring out how i make stuff so i won't go through the next few i'll just let you see what you think.

here is another double, using nam for overpasses. this is a ground interchange with 4space splitting.

here is an outer only roundabout under elevated highways. this simple and effective junction takes up next to no room and looks good wherever.

heres how you handle inner only junctions. this simple arrangement i call the dipper. its neat, small and looks great nestled among the skyscrapers of a busy downtown.

for all you sunken junkies, here is a sunken avenue crossing the motorway. its anoth simple compact design and a pure inner.

simple avenue underpass, called a double 2space, due to its spacing. a suitable alternative to the roundabout but is a double as contains both inner and outer onramps, either of which can ber removed to make it a single function interchange.

here is the double 4space with two additional trunk roads. the great thing about having specific spacings between the two roadways is that you can creat large compound junctions with many different interchanges combined end to end.

ill leave you with another two pictures. one is of another method of changing inner to outer. the other is a sneak peak of next time, how duals interact with other motorways....

this allows people on the outside to join the inside. and if you make the curve a bit bigger you can do it on the outside of the bend as well lol, bad planning.

this little baby is called the TT and is how you split one dual into two, at right angles.

cheers for tuning in. JD

[storms991 0]

A Quick pointer towards the curved road tutorial, If you would like to make curved rail, use the Lower ground lot, and expand the lowered land to around 8 tiles. use the flatten tool to flatten out any land, and you can make the path of the rail in any way you want, I constantly use it, and might make a Tutorial for it.

[mightygoose 92]

as promised part 3 of the motorway dual highway series.

its all very well starting dual highways ending dual highways and joining them to roads, but what about when my dual highway meets another highway, a sunken highway, a multilane highway or even another dual highway... well here goes...

firstly to make one dual turn into two use a TT junction. its just two t's one elevated and one on the ground.

if this isn't possible due to space, alternatives are available. this is my personal usage of theTT

note the same function but here combined with a split overpass and a layered interchange further on.

highway vs dual is very simple thanks to the nam for a clever little thing called a split cloverleaf...

without the joys of nam this combination would have been very messy indeed. although this is technically an outer junction as the inner lanes remain untouched.

if you have amultihighway here is the way to do it. this is quite a complicated junction and requires elevated multi lanes. these are simple. lay two parallel elevated highways and use monorail tracks to bulldoze the middle lanes leaving the outer one intact. then lay a central highway down the middle. any offramps have to be built before bulldozing otherwise they won't work.

using smoncries hole digging lots to dig tunnels for the dual highway and letting the multilane go over the top it allows for a simple outer outer junction. to have the duals on

top is tricky and will be shown in another update.

here it is again from another angle. you can decorate this however you like as well as although compact it is surprisingly spacious.

however i do apologies for the over zealous god mode tree planting. but lets not go down that road.. awful sorry...

 now for all you sunken fans. heres one for you..

using an identical tunnel setup the hole digging lots need to be setup 10 tiles apart if your wondering. you can extend your trench right through the gap and make this interchange easily. i apologies for not having jeronjis highway wall but nam tiles will do for now lol.

now supposing the dreaded meeting of two duals should occur. well

this is an outer inner junction. other variations on ramp positions on the upper highways is entirely possible. i chose to block them out deliberately in this case. again using the ten tile tunnels another simple junction is created.

if however you want to have an inner lane connection and an outer lane connection at the same time without allowing an inner outer transfer, things get shall we say more complex.

this is the neatest way of doing it honest. two concentric ring roads outside and inside with both duals on a 6 tile spacing. if you really want to make one here are some close ups.

the elevated highway ramps can be seem here as can the outer ring tunneling its way under the inner one.

here you can see the outer ring jumping over the top of the lower dual highway and also the inner rings path from the inner ramps.

due to the small core of this junction a very compact system of ramps had to be devised. this spiral is what i came up with. have a go yourself, if you can be bothered. remeber 3 rules.

1. all possible outer connections made, including all roads being able to turn around

2. all possible inner paths also made, including all routes being able to turn around.

3. no possible connections between inner and outer routes.

ok another idea i had. if you run a dual down into a penninsula how on earth do you end it. well if you split it it seems pointless as why have two highways in one outcrop. well you could convert down to a single highway.... or. you could loop the end.....

hows about this for a cul de sac surprisingly simple to do. can easily connect with a normal or sunken avenue and four roads.

here we see the sunken avenue connected to the two feeder roads and the motorway offrun passing over the top.

so what i went crazy with the peg pond kit. it don't half look nice doesn't it.

ill leave you with a picture of a junction whose structure involve Xl you see one lane of the dual stays the same while the other one swaps out for a different highway. oh you'll see what i mean.

quick and easy and very effective.combines both an inner and an outer overpass here. and a train station.

also from my region. have you ever wondered how four parallel rail lines cross a river. well it's thanks to ndex thats how....

when we return there will be another set of road junctions for you to try out. this time a little bit cleverer....

cheers JD MG

[RiverCocytus 0]

No Erosion Tutorial

Search for 'erosion' in the STEX; you will find the 'no erosion' mod. Remove all terrain mods you have, including any import mods. Install EXACTLY the mod that it wants; the mod will say it is outdated; but in this case, just use the outdated mod. It is called Columbus Terrain Mod.

Regardless of what the instructions tell you; this is what to do.

Install Columbus.

Install NoErosion

You should have a folder for columbus; and the noerosion mod. Keep it this way. You may, if you wish, put the noerosion mod in the columbus folder. This way they stay together.

Now, get a new region that you want to render. Here is a good one:

It is a bitmap, not a jpeg; this is fine. SC4 can use bmp's as well, and they have less compression issues.

a config is necessary as well. This one is fine for the job, and in fact, render-wise it now no longer matters in any significant way where the borders are for appearances.

Okay; now lets put this thing to the test.

Load SC4 with the new mods installed, (and again ALL OTHER TERRAIN MODS REMOVED.) and make a new region. I called mine 'Colbur'.

It will give you the default region layout.

There are two ways to do this.

1. Quit SC4

2. copy config.bmp into 'my documents/simcity4/regions/Colbur/'

3. Reload SC4

4. Colbur will not come up; load it from the regions menu.

Or (Windows only, I think.)

1. Instead; load another of your regions.

2. Alt-Tab out. (hit alt-tab and go to a different program)

3. copy config.bmp into 'my documents/simcity4/regions/Colbur/'

4. Alt-Tab until you select SC4 again.

5. Load Colbur from the regions menu.

Okay; now you'll have those 4 large cities.

Hit Ctrl+Alt+Shift+r

select test.bmp from wherever it was;

If all goes well, an hourglass should appear quickly, and it will start 'creating new cities'.

Each city will give you 2 silly messages, so count the silly messages. At the 8th one, you will be finished momentarily.

Provided all went well, this will be the result:

Right click and do 'view image' to see its full size, and the awesomeness of those crazy mountains that I made using Gimp's smudge tool.

Feel free to note that the outer area is just above sea level. The problem that used to happen with areas being pitted along the edges does not happen anymore!

Feel free to use this method for any new map of yours; but right now (since I am not a modder) I can only use it within the limited parameters of the Columbus Terrain Mod.

Extra Info:

Sea Level at 84, 84, 84 (or 33 percent.)

The Gimp is available at www.gimp.org

The NoErosion Mod is currently at https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=15347

Cheers, everyone, and happy mapping!

Note: the gray stone is Peg's Mossy Granite

look for 'rock mod' and you should find it.

[wouanagaine 83]

RiverCocytus, thanks for the tutorial using my mod I can't have done any better.

If more people are interested in it, I can try to figure out how to use it with other terrains parameters.

One more thing, using BMP instead of JPEG is a must. if your grayscale image has large band of same gray the JPEG compression will certainly put some inconsistency in it. With erosion, they won't show up, but without erosion the map will be awfull.

[Cjah 15]

Try to terraform to area as best you can...

Also add some land where as needed,,,,

Now below are the baters lots/bats I've used....

I hope that is simple enough,but the only hard thing is the terraforming itself...I will have more pictures later and maybe some links if needed.,...

[RiverCocytus 0]

I wlll do a request, but first, a Tutorial I've been wanting to do.

Rural Highways Tutorial

Rural highways are the key to a successful rural sprawl. How can you get sims to work effectively across a large map? Highways are too expensive and clumsy. The truth comes out-- like the rest of the world, you need to use rural highways! Cheap to maintain (free as of the writing of this tutorial...) and allowing high speeds, rural highways will connect farmland to low density prefactures, to commercial districts, to industrial parks. All you need is to know how to use them.

Hold that; first you need to know where to get them.

Here's how!

Search forums for "Rural Highway" or

go to this link.

This is a link to directly download the mod, as of the current date (4/21/2006 or 21/4/2006 for you non-yankees )

This mod is a beta, so this tutorial might change as the mod changes. You will also need the NAM.

www.stnam.com

Roll footage!

Basic Tutorial for making split Rural Highways (The mod has this self-contained.)

Simple! Moving on. In some of the images in the mod thread, you will see 3 tile split rural highways. Those are awesome! Question is, how do you make them? Lanes have to touch to be one-way, right?

Sort of

You of course need 1 tile in between, so here's how I do it.

Voila! Now just extend either lane and it will still be a 1-way piece.

Make sure that the original part is long enough, or one side may lose its 1-way-ness. (heh)

Last thing for this tutorial. Making turns! They are essential, of course, but might be difficult to achieve given some of the limitations. Here is a good way to overcome those limitations.

Roll footage!

Whoa!!! OK. Little explanation.

1. Left side: This is a no-no! Move your cursor in the direction of the little blue arrow, and you will get what is on the right side, which is correct. This applies to making a lane go from straight to diagonal.

 Do the inside one first, because it is easier to extend the outer lane than it is to bulldoze the inner one.

2. Extend outer lane, and do the same! The blue arrows indicate the direction that the ruiral highway wants to go. Those nibs are pointing to the right, so if you try to go down from those ends, it will mess up the highway!

3. No special work needed; complete the corner by attaching lanes.

Now, what about problems when going from diagonal to straight again?

4. Curving back... We see that the nibs are facing the wrong way. Green arrows reveal what direction we want to go, but the highway wants to go in the direction of the blue ones.

5. Seriously, just attaching a lane is futile here. We need to reconfigure these two lanes.

6. Start with the same side of the diagonal as the nib...

7. Drag up the lane until you make the nib face the right direction. If you do it right, the lane will still be where you wanted it, but will now be correct.

8. Ah, success!

Rinse, repeat. Same technique applies for the 3-tile wide highways as well.

I hope this gets some more people interested in the Rural Highways Mod (my favorite mod to date!) and allows people to more effectively use it.

Other things to note:

Make turnarounds by dragging across the highway. These are necessary!

No bridges yet...

Rural Highways smoothly transition to roads or one-ways. Use 1-way bridges instead!

No building can face a rural highway. (As far as I know.)

The transition of Rural Highway to Highway does not work quite right as of this tutorial. You will have to transition to avenue first.

Cheers, All! I will show some terraforming tricks for those who want to know. Maybe all of us who are in the know can contribute something.

[RiverCocytus 0]

To the poster above, There is a little secret to get those MPR metals to grow like that. If you were unaware, you must hold 'ctrl' while zoning 2x2. 2x3. or 3x3 med/high density industrial. MPR metals and Dao Chemicals are pretty much the only stage 1 dirty industries that are that size. They do not need water to grow.

[HunterIrked 1]

mightygoose this may be a stupid question, but where do you get this?

[Voar Tok 4]

Hehe, something I can answer.

You get that by running a highway, and then while it is still being built, run a railroad over one side of it. When the railroad is built, destroy it and all you will be left with is what you encircled.

[mightygoose 92]

hunter alternatively you can lay down a dual highway and then lay an elevated highway down the middle ensuring it goes beyond the ends of the two parallel highways. then bulldoze it and you will be left with two...

[mightygoose 92]

and now for the fourth part of the trilogy.hopefully most of you will get the reference.

so up until now we have been introduced, junctioned and interconnected, now we will be combined. for all you CJers out there you have many techniques for making your highways look pretty or novel. now heres how you can do it with dual highways. you see i've been looking around the forum seeing what most people combine together in the way of transit links to create a more arterial feel and i though well surely that can be done with duals too. so here goes.

(to be fair this is only a sort of half update as due to pressing family matters time is short, another update will not occur till friday at the earliest. and then i will have the polished version because of this there are no decorative aspects or miniguides within this part)

 a couple of things i have since thought of to add to previous works....

firstly a moment of inspiration brought forth a new way of starting a dual

highway from a single one. the NAM y stack!!!

it does the job without all those messy traffic lights and avenue junctions and sorts out the directional problems too. but keeping with this updates theme heres how you can combine this changeover....

 ..... with another motorway running perpendicular to it. ok the nam tiles don't match up perfectly but how much space does it save compared to the heart???

next in line for the improvements catergory is avenues meeting a dual in ways not shown before but often occur in cities.

here is a quick simple outer lane junction for diagonal avenues. we all use them occasionally but you can't use vanilla interchanges on them with highways, and that has always annoyed me. here is the solution.

next if you want an avenue to start coming from a dual highway using the outer lanes...

now this isn't a pretty way of doing it and it takes up alot of room. if anyone else has a better suggestion then i am all ears because although it works there must be a smaller version.

now for the combinations... hows about combining the sunken highway idea with a dual highway... here we get dual sunken highway...

sorry no walls at this point but im rearranging my plugins folder so only the nam is in there at the moment, any other time it would have been sorted but as i mentioned things are happening which mean i haven't got the time...

but anyway as you can see there is a sunken dual splitting under a level dual, the peekaboo open air in the middle is optional and the top dual is not required to split at all.

although it would be more fun if nam would bring out highway and elevated highway onslope pieces w00t.

roundabout now there is alot of talk floating about using the nam and multilane highways to create ANT bus expressways using it and bus only tiles. so here is an interchange with the express purpose of displaying this idea in all forms...

this entire section is sunken. on the far left you can see the standard idea of a multilane bus expressway. in the middle is a bus expressway avoidance of a avenue overpass. and on the right is a dual highway sandwiching a bus expressway. now personally i think the bus expressways in the middle of multilanes look better and next time i will show you how to start and end them with reference to duals, i.e. dual to multibus and back again. and i may even do a seperate  tutorial for them if there's interest.

and our final combination for today is an unusual one to say the least. it is very experimental and it was just something i cobbled together. hows about GLR sandwiched in dual highways but not how you would expect me to do it....

here is the elevated method of starting and finishing this frankly mad arrangement of traffic flow. this combination could probably be used as a large artery running through a midrise ghetto.. well thats how i imagine it. now for the central plaza dual highway stopping point.

if you want to slow traffic down next to the central station and allow free passage in and out of the highway network to a busy downtown ..AND... incorporate a GLR network as well then this is probably how you should do it... the right hand tunnel mucked up abit so shouldn't be raised above mean level.

now for combining lots of dual highways together. here is a alternative to the ring roads and tunnels/overpasses ideas for major interchanges. if they traffic flow really ain't fats enough for ya the try one of these.

this one i really like as it only involves actively one highway from each dual. and they fuse into one, combining temporarily into one large changing lane.

alternatively you can reverse this principle.

this time going straight on actually means you go straigt on lol. still with a changing lane but this timed used ofr a completely different set of commuters.

what happens when three duals collide head on well ....

i call this the propeller its big but its got lots of space for peg ponds and plazas or just plain old trees. of course you could just have a double y stack but thats just ugly and a nightmare to set up... i'll show you later on...

but what about four you cry.... weeeeelll heres my foursquare friend to show you the way.... smae principle different shape.

again plenty of room for trees, not quite so much, this time, im yet to figure out five but it will probably be messy, wait, i've got it next time first pic will be a five way working junction with all possible routes.

anyway i'll leave you with this little lot to digest and just a special mention to my great interchanging predecessor  Rochefort for drpooing by and i hope he'll give me some of his experience by posting pics of his own dual highway tinkerings nudge nudge ....

no thankyou to all of you who post replies, i know that for most of you this is a freaky curiosity more than a practical "im gonna use that there" but hey if one person uses it somewhere then it will have been worthwhile..

next week some even more obscure combinations of transport modes and a little showcase of the duals around my region... not to mention the triples..lol

evening folks JD MG

---out---

[spa 970]

I posted this a while back but I figured I would resurrect it from the depths of the forums for this tutorial amalgamation (great idea by the way).

So in this tutorial I will show you how to build realistic suburbs on hills. Most of us are familiar with the plop a road method of terraforming hills which can be quite helpful. However, when it comes to building low density residental areas on hills its not very good because it totally flattens the land. How many low density residental neighbourhoods in hilly terrain have you seen that are completely flat? Not many I'm guessing. Most houses are built to conform with the existing slopes because it wouldn't be cost effective to level the land and there really is no need. The problem in SC4 is that buildings wreck slopes. Below I'll show how to avoid making a mess of things when building suburbs on hills and why gentle slopes are nothing to be scared of.

So our first step is to pick a hilly site for development. Here above the little lake looks nice.

Aren't we lucky to have a helicopter already on the job surveying the site? 

Having picked out hilly location the next step is put down some development. Lets see what happens.

Oh dear. Doesn't that look ugly? Look how much the hill has been altered by the residential zones. Our gentle slope is ruined! This is no doubt a familiar sight to anyone who has tried to build on hills of which many no doubt give up in frustration and play on level maps. Well there is a solution. Lets reload and try that again, but this time lets put some grass around our zones.

Wow! Now that's much better. The hill hasn't been warped and contorted. Why? Because the grass anchors the slope and prevents the zones from altering it significantly. The trick is to make sure that you put grass on all open spaces that will be next to any zoned squares.

 

IMPORTANT: Put the grass down first! It's no good when applied afterwards and only zone one side of a block at a time (more on that soon)

So we've got our slope anchored, but our neighbourhood isn't finished yet. The other side of the street isn't developed and some houses have cut large retaining walls into the hillside. This simply won't do, but, if you build your suburbs like me, nothing can be done just yet. We need to wait for medium wealth sims to move in because their homes make the best looking suburbs.

Success! After several game years the sims on the bottom row upgraded their homes. It's now time to finish the top piece of the block. Why didn't we develop the topside when we built the bottom anyway? Let me show you. 

As you can see, if given the space on a narrow block, high wealth sims will move in and put up 3X3 monster homes and totally smash the slope and leave a terrible mess. So we have to keep them out. To do this wait until after medium wealth develops and then we break out the make historic button. Now it would be tedious to make every home historic, but we luckily don't have to do that. We just have to click enough homes to prevent anything larger than 3X3 lots from being built. In our little subdivision, this is easily done with just two clicks on the two homes that I have marked in red.

With just these two homes made historic there is no room for monster homes to grow on the remaining space. Our little subdivision is safe. See easy as pie.

 

So with the bottom side of the block safely developed it's time to zone the top half. The first thing we need to do is to get rid of all that grass. But won't that wreck the slope you say? Well lets see.

Nope. Nothing to worry about. The existing development anchors the slope. It's true that it doesn't do as good a job as the grass lots, but it's good enough. As you can see, in our little neighbourhood we only ended up with one minor bump/dip. I'm happy with that. Getting rid of the grass is preferable because it lets you fully use the space and it cuts what would begin to become huge maintenance costs over a large city.

 

Our last and final problem to deal with concerns houses with retaining walls

As you can see from this neighbourhood, despite all our efforts some houses with retaining walls will be built and they will make their neighbourhood look quite odd since again, most houses work with existing terrain. It's an easy fix though.

Since the underlying slope hasn't been severely altered you can simply bulldoze (don't dezone) any offending homes and let them regrow. You won't need to worry about protecting the slope because it has already been protected through our earlier steps. Usually, a house won't regrow with the same retaining wall problem and if it does you can always knock it down a third time. That's all there is to it.

 

So to sum up the steps of successful hillside suburbs

 

1. Select the site and lay down the roads.

2. Put down the grass around where the first zones will be.

3. Zone one side of each block (make sure once again that blank spaces next to zones are covered with grass) and let development occur until medium wealth appears.

4. Using the make historic button make the available space too small for 3X3 development.

5. Remove the grass and zone the other side.

6. Remove any houses with retaining walls with the bulldozer repeating when required.

 

Using this method you can build rolling suburbs without too much effort and it's not even that slow a process if you work over a large area all at once. This same method can be broadened, if you wish, for use with low density R$$$ as well. Happy building.

UPDATED INFO 

Since writing this tutorial a year ago I have found that surrounding the area with grass and then using the ctrl key to zone the entire section at once and then dezoning one little piece to break up the monster strip into 1x2 pieces minimizes damage even more. With grass strips and ctrl key I can guarantee you that you'll only have one fairly minor distortion in the terrain. 

When I originally published this a lot of people also commented on the amusing angle that swimming pools ended up on. Well that's not a problem if you're not using any custom 1x2 houses with swimming pools. All the pools in my pictures are on Justanothersims house set. None of the Maxis 1x2s come with pools so swimming at a 45 degree angle shouldn't show up for most users

[mightygoose 92]

well as promised update 4B in the motorway madness series..

thankyou to all readers and i apologies for the delay in updating but here i am back in action.... still with dual highways... although to be fari this update is rather destructive....

firstly for the benefit of Rochefort who was questioning about the elevated slip road in my previous junction this is part of the NAM and can be found here....

here at the bottom of the highways menu, just hit tab until the corrrect ramp appears. don't worry about my double icons, thats just because i have a copy of nam and the temporary copy released on SCcentral when simtrop was down... i hope you find that useful rochefort and anyone else who didn't know.

now why are we here, continuing the combination theme this second half looks at combining dual highways, avenues, railroads, elevated railways, roads, roundabouts, well actually pretty much an entire city downtown....

here is a randomly constructed downtown area, it is all plopped so there are no surroundings... sorry guys...

but anyway as you can see there is a wealth of mid rise structures and the odd biggun as well, there is both elevated and normal railways and avenues including diagonals. but what about....

well here is our dual highway and its going that way....

now the techinique we are going to use is called a scissor split in which one goes up and one goes down. spread you highways by two ensuring the ground level one does not line up directly with any avenues.

use smoncries hole digging lots to dig a trench and then reciprocate the process on the far side of the downtown.

like so. now the next step is easy....

just tunnel right through. now for the tricky part, you have to bulldoze as few buildings as possible and cut a clear path for the other highway to get from one side to the other. with alot of crashing and bulldozing ensuring you leave the transport network intact for now.

then lay your highway through, now you may have to chop and change between elevated and normal as you pass through. feel free. although do not use a second tunnel unless you absolutely have to, like you would have to bulldoze the tapiei 101 or something. even transit stops and roadways are fair game if it comes down to it, just avoid the tunnel as it defeats the purpose of a scissor sp[lit.. well in the end you should end up with something that looks like this...

see i was exceptionally lucky no other transport modifications were required however i did have to bulldoze a station, shame....lol i was quite disappointed that i had to bulldoze the PDA HQ but i must stress you've got to be committed and prepared to trash you pituresque skyline because after the higway is in place you have increased transoprt capacity to the beating heart of you city and even bigger towers and spires can grow in the stead of those demolished. (plus it gives you a whopping commercial demand boost.)

there was one tricky problem i faced when ploughing the road....

things got abit hairy around this station as i had to nose dive the highway to the ground and was worried i'd have to elevated the avenue to make it through but fortunately i had the three tile length space for the transition to occur on the other side making for a slightly bumpy but good looking stretch of motorway... then all you have to do is season to flavour....

adding outer carriageway ramps to both ends of the downtown allows easy access to the avenue ring around it but i said the beating heart. well i meant it. hopefully when you aggressively bulldozed half you skyscrapers you left various gaps between the remaining structures and the highway itself...

this is the real reason you avoid a tunnel and stay elevated because you can utilise the NAM's most compact off ramps and allow commuters to come off the motorway and into the work carpark. here i placed the ramps where the station used to be. notice no onramps. this is because of lack of space and creates a better traffic flow among the urban jungle as traffic flows from the middle out...

today to complete our combinations and to further show off the capabilities of a scissor split here is a simple scissor interchange involving inner and outer ramps in the same space and a ground level inner junction such as the dipper.

this interchange reminds me slightly of oblivion at alton towers UK with the extremely steep highway sections by the tunnel mouths, basically this junction allows the ramps to overlap requiring less space width wise however at the expense of length..

this junction has a very rural feel and looks quite good next to a plop a shop complex or a mall estate. again decorate to taste.

well thats all for now next week we will be setting dual highways loose on real built up areas in my old region of sentria.. it's 6.5million inhabitants won't know whats hit them.... maybe or we may look at other types of highway usage.... i mean, i don't always use duals...

peace out JD MG

[shadow the hedgehog 0]

i dont have a tutuorial but i do have some advice for UDI (U Drive It) which some may find useful

Basics

you drive a certain vehicle round your city for free drives or missions and there is some panels (depending on what you are doing) to help you around

Vehicles... a bit of info

there are 3 types of vehicles: land sea and air, you are able to drive these once you have the necessary buildings, you can drives these in the My Sims-U Drive It option (reward/building based) or when you move a sim into your city (My Sim based)

for cars you drive on any road formations, you can drive on the terrain but its really slow.... unless if youre driving the tank then thats different, for boats you drive on the water and on the water only, and for planes you can fly anywhere including off the map

some require certain wealth residentials (cars in the "My Sim" option) and some for ploppable buildings and rewards (train requires train station, mayor limo requires mayors house etc) 

if a UDI icon is grey you will need to a certain building, highlight the icon to see which building is required, some buildings are easily ploppable (with a chunk out of your budget as well :X) and some are rewards, which you have to have a certain building or level in your city (or simply use the "you don't deserve it" cheat)

UDI Panels

youll see these when youre driving your vehicle

the basic one youll see is the one at the bottom middle of the screen, it shows speed and a map with all the roads

in a UDI mission, there is a panel top right of screen with mission objectives and controls, and theres also a little red & white arrow thing, this shows you where to go

Driving

basics done... now heres the driving tips!

Vehicles (again)... while Driving

each vehicle explodes at certain points and can sometimes disappear as well

land and sea vehicles explode if there is harsh contact with another vehicle or multiple crashes, follow the general rule that fast vehicles are small and weak and slow vehicles are big and strong, so a fast vehicle would explode after many hits with fast vehicles and only one hit from trucks buses etc, and slow vehicles would take some damage from all types (i think) before exploding, the same applies for boats

planes (crop harvester, skywriter, parachute, helicopters etc) are different, they cant hit other planes (as far as im aware) and would bump off many buildings before crashing, but ive never done it so i dunno

vehicles except planes will disappear if you go at the edge of the map via terrain or road, there may be some bugs that cause you to disappear as well like funny shaped roads

Vehicle Health

as indicated by The Sims diamond mood indicator, green means youre healthy, brown youre becoming wrecked and red youre destroyed, keep an eye out on this

crashing into vehicles causes it to go red, slow vehicles makes fast vehicles go red straight away so watch out!

Road Layout

road layout is extremely important when driving especially depending on who takes what route, if youve got skyscrapes expec more traffic on the road, if theres bus stops expect buses, if theres industry expect freight trucks, if youre on the highway/motorway cars can go fast etc

try to go on the quiet bits where theres fast cars that way if you crash youll recieve minimal damage and avoid routes with slow vehicles (buses freight etc)

there are some road layouts where you could hit other vehicles, take note which parts do this and be careful when approaching them while its busy

Road Stick and No Road Stick

this applies to land vehicles only, in the map/speed panel there should be a tire, if the tire is circular you are in stick mode where you can stay on roads and are dictated by a certain path, if the tire is like a 4WD with dirt, you are in no road stick mode and can control the car in any direction on roads or on terrain

it is worth noting that with no road stick you can swerve round traffic and avoid crashes, you can drive on the other side of the road or on paths, i tend to drive on paths in UDI missions as theres no traffic and u cant run over people and get the cops on yer unlike GTA

Speed

there is no real application to speed except it gets ya from A to B faster and you can go very fast along the streets and theres nothing the cops cant do about it

the trains the only one to look out for, if you press the up (acceleration) button for a long while itll go to fast and derail, you can go up to the red but dont press anything then on, just relax and enjoy the ride

Checkpoint Missions

you need to get from A to B in the allowed time

get to the checkpoint then youll probably have to wait a bit (0.5-1 second) before your next checkpoint/mission successful window is shown, simple

in the commerical strike mission for mayor limo, hold down the space bar till its ready before you can go to the next chckpoint (mind this one costs you... literally!!!)

Hover Missions

basically you need to cover some areas shown as yellow squares in the allowed time

the first type is going over them, such as the mayor limo one with the casino or the sky writing plane message, you need to cover them by going over them in your vehicle (note you need to activate the sky writing in the skywriting plane missions and the pesticide for the farm spray planes missions)

the second type is using the right mouse button such as the shine the light helicopter mission and the soak the cats fire engine mission, hold the right mouse button till you covered the yellow squares/lot till the next checkpoint/mission success window appears, what i do for these is i some out to max level then i can complete the mission faster (youre highlighting after all and can reach further distances... imagine a fire hose shootng water over 20 houses... haha!)

Chase Missions

theres 2 types: chase and be chased!

a chase is where you have to catch someone (like cat and mouse), the target is moving so you have to be quick, if youre near it ram them! it ends the mission (id only do that if youre in good health though)

being chased missions is where you have cops onto yer, stay too long in their sight and the mission is failed so watch out, give them a little nudge and you should be okay

Sirens

sirens can cause more harm then good, theyll get cars out of the way for yer but some can crash straight into yer at some intersections, use them wisely

Mission Types

there are 2 types of missions: good (advisors) and evil (Vu)

good missions rarely give you extra §§§ but more mayor rating, fail and youll lose mayor rating and some money

bad missions give you lots of §§§ but the mayor rating decreases and the cops are usually after yer, fail and lose a bit of §§§

both can lead to new reward buildings, for some you have to do mulitple missions for a reward like how you have to do all police missions to get the deluxe police station... or you could just get the necessary stats

Misc

crash the school bus and youll here the kids

you can aduct people with the UFO

the tank army helicpoter and fighter jet have limited ammo, but gizmos fighter jet is unlimited

give away the citys money by pressing the space bar with the mayors limo

make people run to you by putting on the ice cream trucks sirens

make people run away from you by pressing the space bar on the toxic waste truck

other updates shall be updated here

Shadow the Hedgehog

[mightygoose 92]

cough cough ahem, its been a while....

Goosing around with dual highways, special edition.

part6: the hub.

in one of my regions where it was the end of a peninsula i wanted to give the impression of the rest of the nation being connected by some kind of hyperway network. so purely for eye candy purposes i built a great transit artery that blasted into the region from the west. here is a little tour of its nexus point in the area, where the great mighty meets the down right barmy....

here is an overview of the area, excuse the poor city building elsewhere, at the time the rest of the city was a work in progress, i did the transit layout first obv..

here is the western pass into the city. three multilane highways and eight four rail lines. as you can see its very wide, although i would have loved it if it would have been possible to make the entirety sunken lol

as you can see i have used a slight variation on the claw type junction mentioned previously. this is just a claw elevated to ground transition allowing for a clean transition and possible interchanging between each multilane.

here is the other end. showing the narrow band in which i had to build this monster transit artery...

this photo more clearly shows the rail orientation upon entering the region. but that about somes up section a of this nexus point.... now to section b

this is an overview of the conversion of three multilane higways into two triways, six carriageway 18 lane monsters.

while all that lane changing was going on there simply wasnt room for all those rail lines as well so quite simply i took them out of the way.

now we come to my favourite part of this nexus, the twin snakes....

these beauties got quite complicated considering their turning circle and the emergant railways hence the overlap at the top of the second shot. although the carriage ways swap the end the snakes area in the same positions (north, centre, couth) as they began with.

using a triway variation on the TT junction for dual highways you can clearly see the dual highway that scoots of to the south accompanied by two rail lines.

and here again on the northern offramp although this dual plunges under the waves using cjahs method at the beginning of this thread.

this is one of my favourite pictures and is the dual highway on the north side of the river.

as for the rest of the roads

they plow onwards along side the river and form the largest dual highway network i ever devised, maybe one day you might get a chance to see it.

MG JD thnx

[pilotdaryl 25]

Making non transit-enabled lots appear transit-enabled

Here is a simple tutorial  on how to make non transit-enabled lots appear transit-enabled, but in reality are not.

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

First, find the el-rail dual network puzzle pieces in your menu, and plop the el-rail over ____ (any network you don't want to use), in this case road:

Then plop an el-rail over ____(any network that you want) piece, in this case street, next to the road piece.  Don't worry the game won't crash.

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:

Ta-da!  Now connect as you wish.
Hold on--- [chit-chattering over phone] you say you want a T-intersection?  Okay.
To do a T-intersection build another tile of street facingaway from the direction you wish for it to connect to:

Then demolish it, and connect it to a road:

And you got it!!!  Now you can play with it as you wish.
This is how it turned out for me:

Just remember: Plop a puzzle piece of a network you don't want, then one of the network you want, demolish the puzzle piece of the unwanted network, then do as you want!

Be creative, and have fun!!!

Pilotdaryl

[UnkleS27 24]

Tree Method

(for curving or irregular roads)

so say you have a city, and you need to connect your high school to the police station to keep those punk kids in line. The only problem is, they aren't straight across from each other, so how do you connect them?

easy, go into your mayor mode tree menu and pick a tree

 

my personal favorite are the lodgepole pines from cycledogg's terrain mod.

Using whatever tree you picked draw a line inbetween the school and the police station, or whatever it is you are

trying to connect

Once you have got the trees down, use them as a guide to lay your road

Until you get something like this

Say you want a curvy road? no problem

You can use this throughout your cities as an alternative to the boring grids and spice things up abit

I hope you all find this helpful, and if you have any questions feel free to pm me

[aaronperry 0]

How to make a great image.

by Aaron Perry

I find that some people just dont think about first impressions well i do. I am writing a small tutorial on how to make the image you like better. wether it be a good idea or just the functionality of the image u like i can make it better in some very simple steps, And u dont need to be a photoshop wiz neither!!!!!

First of all its all about wat u wana show us! i have taken an example i have from a thread i run on the simtrop forum. cough rate one image cough...

this is the image i posted.

now ill be honest, its ok but as i know from experience it could be made better. now before i posted the image i did a little criteria check i like to call the three criteria checks catchy heh!

1). is every square full!

this is really important, if u want realism then u will know that in real life there is never an area of nothing ness. there will ever be a tree or somin else, if anyone says wat about in fiels, that doesnt count cos sometimes there is bumps and hedges ect ne way. so i go thro all the tiles on the image to check there is at least a tree there.

2). zoom

this is also very important, how can anyone admire or analyse the image when they can see whats goin on. so zoom in and show all!

3). ugly bits!

hide all ugly bits wether it be entrances to car parks road changes or general stupid glitches. put a big tree just infront they will never know!!!

ok so i posted that image and i got my feedback so i had another crack this time changing alot of the general atmosphere of the picture.

and here is image two.

as u can see i have made extreme changes to this image which i thing looks better. i have a large overhanging elevated rail over the rail station. and sorry to spoil the illusion but! at either end of the photo the elevated rail ends.

As u can see i like the long train an i think it adds to the image having it run under the station. only problem the need for jobs so i make them.

but a small train not good. so i make a longer train.

i wish i could of combined these images

so know i have a finished image i have filled every tile checked all the comments andacted on them. havent put low residential housing next to skyscrapers. everything in 2/4 stories high the colours are similiar. same coloured roofing big bonus! ok so we are nearly done here a long train image!

key:

cars blocking glitches lots of traffic and a long train! btw did anyone notice my bril blocking of the end of rail method put loads of trees so the rail stopping suddenly doesnt look stupid!

Finally add some touch ups. all im doing here is smudging key glitches! it may not look perfect but it keep that lil biit of realism.

Thank you for reading my tutorial i hope it helps and try posting ur bril pics on my thread. Rate one Image. thanks!

[Haljackey 17,326]

Multi/Dual RHW (Rural Highways)

Okay, a lot of people have been asking me how to make multi/dual highways for the RHW (rural highway), so I thought i would post a guide here.  This can be used to extend the RHW from 4 lanes to eight or more lanes. 

I am not sure if this should be posted here, as it may be better off in the transit networks forum.  It could even go in the omnibus... I need feedback!

Anyway, heres how to do it

1.  Biud a regular rural highway.

<<<<

>>>>

(nothing)

(nothing)

 2.  destroy the right inner road.

<<<<

(nothing)

(nothing)

(nothing)

3.  biuld a regular rural highway 1 tile away from the road you just biult

<<<<

(nothing)

<<<<

>>>>

4.   destroy the left middle road

<<<<

(nothing)

(nothing)

>>>>

5.  Biuld a regular rural highway in the middle, but several tiles away from the other roads

<<<<

                             <<<< 

                             >>>>

>>>>

6.  extend your middle roads as long as you want, up to or past the outer roads

<<<<

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>

7.  extend your outer roads the length of your inner roads.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Voila!  A basic 4-tile collector/express RHW setup

Now with a little experimenting, you will be a pro!

Over time, you will learn how to biuid overpasses, ramps, and transitions to this layout.

Here is a picture of the new network, fully functional and easy to connect!

You can also leave a tile in the centre of the highways for medians, signs and lights.  An example is below.

*Note: these images have not been photoshopped in any way, and have been taken directly from the game!

Hope this giude helps!

-Haljackey

[ebina 4]

Here is my tutorial. Removing the gap from NAM OnSlope Puzzle Pieces.

For the Rail Overpass...
1.This is a result of the Rail overpass built with Straight Rail OnSlope Puzzle Piece.



2.To remove the gap, Make the flat ground for 3 tiles(Rail + both sides).



3.Place the "T" Rail OnSlope Puzzle Piece.



4.Connect the Rails and Roads, next, demolish the red marked tiles.





5.Maybe, you will see the "Unsuitable grade for construction" message when flatting the ground.



Then, lay the Road like this image.





6.Result.

For the Avenue Overpass...
1.This is a result of the Avenue overpass built with Straight Avenue OnSlope Puzzle Piece.



2.To remove the gap, Make the flat ground for 4 tiles(Avenue + both sides).



3.Place the "T" Avenue OnSlope Puzzle Piece.



4.Connect the OneWayRoads, next, demolish the red marked tiles.
! - DO NOT use the Road. If you connected the roads like image, this construction will be ended in failure. 





5.Connect the Avenues as usual.



6.You will get the "Unsuitable grade for construction" message again. Repeat the STEP.5 of the Rail Overpass tutorial.

7.Result.

[Soapy 1]

Moderator Edit:  Concerns that this technique may cause serious game instability has been raised.

Originally posted by: SC4BOY

Originally posted by: Soapy

Removing Lot Objects & Base Tiles.
quote>

This kind of "edited lots" used in combo with textures from the NAM or Pedestrian lots need to be handled with considerable care. When you do this it makes the lot effectively an "eternal" lot and can cause MANY problems such as

1. If it is a lot such as a school or hospital, you can no longer adjust the radius for the building by adjusting "bus budget" or "ambulance budget" etc

2. The building becomes a CRASH TO DESKTOP invitation. When you hover either the ? enquery tool or the alt-? traffic query tool, it will almost every time crash to desktop..Also while you are moving the tool for "transit enabled lots" will usually crash it..  NOT generally a good thing

3. The lot becomes almost impossible to delete. Even by using the "de-zone" tricks and etc they can literally take you half an hour to figure the right trick to get rid of it and almost always involves RADICAL terrain tool usage by "sinking" or "mountain building" around the building to get rid of it.. normally wrecking other things you have built for MANY tiles around.

Generally I'd advise you to do this only on parks etc and other "landscape" items.. never schools, fire houses, hospitals, libraries, etc etc.. 

Consider yourself warned..  

[Mod edit - Posts combined]

Originally posted by: smstevenms Skram, thanks. SC4BOY I don't get it, how do I get rid of something like this? Is the only way by using the terrain tools? I have to houses that I'm have this same issue.

 

I don't have a "magic solution".. That is why it is such an ugly, risky thing to do.. As I mentioned you may spend MANY MINUTES and destroy MANY SURROUNDING ITEMS in trying to get rid of it. I had played with this, thinking it was a great "toy" to use to modify things and compress them into less space. After developing the city for some time and having several hours invested in building the city, it got so bad that I was crashing to desktop every few minutes.. it had literally became unplayable in my opinion. It took me so long to get these cleaned up that I literally was considering scrapping the whole city and starting over.. luckily I did get it cleaned up after an hour or two... 

Probably the most reliable method is to sink the ground completely below the "problem building" so that they are completely floating in air. Dezone the area just to be safe. Place things under the problem area on the new bottom to completely cover the spots. Use things like the large plazas or something like that.. DO NOT use something that is a texture overlay like mayor statues or ped walkways. Let the city run a while and quit to the region with save. Reload it and  then wreck the whole thing and hope you have "decoupled" the thing. If this doesn't do  it try the same thing but raising the terrain and building the plazas over the top, save and reload.. etc. These don't always work and I don't know what does.. its a pain in the butt.. you either have to scrap the city or keep fooling with it til its gone.

My new attitude is that unless its just a sandbox thing you're just fooling with DONT USE THE TEXTURE MOD TECHNIQUE... PERIOD!!


Followup to my dated  11/02/07 post:

 
[Posts combined]

OK I've learned more about this issue since the last time I wrote about it.. (they are sometimes referred to as "immortal lots")

1. You can fool with the terrain as posted above.. (least effective and messes lots of stuff up)

2. You can try this: bulldoze the lot, then "dezone" it. Next try to draw streets back and forth thru it. After this, dezone again. then plop a "plaza" onto it (or more than one if you can fit them in). Usually when you delete these, the lot goes with it. (Advantage.. does not impact anything around it)

3. Finally, using the same lot that you originally had, place it around the building on all 4 sides (like a cross). When you delete, it takes the original too. This sometimes works if you only place on 2 sides.. you just have to try it. (advantage.. it seems to ALWAYS work)


In addition to this method, I've learned from RippleJet that this "immortal lot" can be caused by improperly designed lots which have a building that overhangs the edge of the lot. Adjacent lots where this overhang is develope odd properties such as being "immortal" under certain conditions and / or  "inheriting" the query for the lot (ie both lots give the same query as the overhang lot). In any case if this happens and it becomes "immortal".. ie "undeletable" you have to apply the same techniques above.quote>

quote>

Use this method at your own risk.

I don't know if anyone else knows how to do this so here's my tutorial...

Removing Lot Objects & Base Tiles.

EXAMPLE 1.

First  you need the Network Addon Mod.  Download that then I can continue to STEP 1.

STEP 1.
I'm going to use the large park for the first example becuase we all have it.
Once you have placed your park, select the pedestrian mall tile and place it anywhere in the park.
You will notice all the base tiles have disappeared, exept for the pedestrian mall tile.


STEP 2.
You can now buldoze the surrounding objects of the lot without the entire lot being destroyed.
Once you have done so you should be left with only the pond.


STEP 3.
To place any other lots around the pond your going to have to dezone the surrounding area.


STEP 4.
Now you can feel free to do what you want with it...
use it as an avenue filler, use it for roundabouts, or just as eyecandy.


You can use this technique for other things aswell...

EXAMPLE 2.

STEP 1.
Now for this one, i'm going to use the fire station.
Once again you place the pedestrian mall tile anywhere you wish on the fire station lot.
And once again you will notice all the base tiles have disappeared, exept for the pedestrian mall tile.


STEP 2.

Again you can destroy all the surrounding objects without detroying the entire lot.
And don't forget to dezone the surrounding area.


STEP 3.
Now feel free to do what you wish with the new empty lot.
Just a note the fire station will still function normaly after completing all the steps.



Well that's the end of my tutorial.

If you have any other questions or problems, pm me and i'll get back to you

[Soapy 1]

Hey Everyone!

miramis & sanantonio: Sorry to hear you couldn't that to work. I don't know what the problem is, i'm looking for a solution.
sc4portugal: thanks, glad to here you like it!

I've got a new one for you all!
Raising Roads (defying gravity)


Ok, first thing first. For this to work you need to download the SC4TerraFormer.

STEP 1:

Terreform a hill whatever size you like, where you want to place the raised road.
Then place a road over the hill...


Step 2:

Exit and save your city, then open the SC4Terraformer.
IMPORTANT!:  Check off the box that sais "new city"(or whatever you named your city), in the window that pops op when you open a city.

Once you have done so, level the hill where you placed your road...


STEP 4:

Save your region. while your region is saving a window will popup.
It illustrat's your city is in mayor mode, and is asking if you would like to revert to god mode.
IMPORTANT!: CLICK NO!, if you don't all your city will be detroyed!...


STEP 5:

Go back to the game, and open your city.
You'll notice the hill is gone and the road is floating(defying gravity)...



Well, that's all folks.

You can use this with anything in the game, anything you want.
If you have any problems or questions, PM me, i'll try my best to help