Show Us Your Anti-Grid!

[david1314 44]

Long has the square grid of Sim City been the bane of any true city-builder's existance.  Anyone who has ever dreemed of connecting their cities with a striaght line rather than an akward 90 degree angle with cardinal direction-bound roads knows this too well.  The thought of crossing water in any direction but North or East baffles the SC4 gamer.

There are a few ad-hoc ways to work around this 2D hangover, and if properly executed, they can look quite picturesque and even contemptuous of little compass in the top left corner.

Pionneers like EJC in the world of City Journaling forged new paths (both literally and figuratively) across the sim city 4 landscape.  All too often however, a city-designer has fallen into the mundane grid pattern again, giving the sinking feeling that you've seen this city before.

This is a place for you to get out of the lines and showcase your defiance of the grid!

(There's nothing wrong with showing off a grid that doesn't conform the the 90 or 45 degree lines, they look quite cool too)

This is a bridge from one of my CJ's cities.  Currently it's semi-functional, being fully transit enable, but not pathed (this is more of a volume-based challenge than technical one).  I'm not sure if I'm going to path it as the bridge spans 20 tiles and crosses another 13.  The fact that the bridge doesn't conform to the grid at all makes the number of path files required astronomical, so I doubt I'll ever undertake that endevor.  And I forgot the stays for the masts, I'll add that in latter.

Edit: This is just a pic to give a better example of what the thread should be (the bridge pic was more a personal concept...this is something we can all relate to).

Because of the extremly limited applications for this bridge, I don't see any real reason to release it.

I'm sure some of your are familiar with my CJ, so I have a ton of these pics.  I'll post my favorites in here.

[GMT 389]

i must say, this bridge looks quite amazing, to be honest.

ok, I'd cosider it rather as a beta than a release version cuz of texturing and little flaws here and there, but basically, it's a wonderful bridge, nice design and last but not least, it's curved and it goes cross over the river.

maybe you should contact the NAM team, they can give you a good hand at pathing aswell.

btw: maybe you know it already, but over at sc4devotion.com is a visual path editor. very easy to handle (once understoond entirely) and way faster than the try and error principle of parameter-editing.

again, wonderfull bridge, worth the effort. really, contact the nam team, it's worth it

[webmaster76 1]

hey, this bridge is great! we need some curved stuff to break aout the grid... i would use it for eye-candy!!!

[Voulpiotis 4]

Wow, great bridge, just saw it in your cj! You can call E.J.C. who builds cities with curved roads!

[Pixelrage 34]

that could be a very important step into making some non-grid conforming bridges

[tommiej 0]

nice bridge! it surely is off the usual and i like it!!

[UnkleS27 24]

that bridge is very cool, but my favorite part about it isn't the fact that its curvy, but its those sweet exit ramps at either ends. Those are great!

[Pixelrage 34]

I would love to see regular highway pieces that take the curve of that bridge. I just hate making highways that wind up looking like they were cut by a jigsaw.

[david1314 44]

I know the textures don't line up well... that was just a first-run render to get something into the game... Drawing the LOD takes an ungodly amount of time in the render (thanks to the 19x13 tile size), and that's just a low quality render. I need to adjust the textures this evening, give it another render, and if all goes well, I can do a better quality render. Also, the cables take a huge amount of time to render (there's acutally quite a few more polygons in the cables than the bridge), but fortunately there's no textures there to mess anything up.

Anyway, hopefully a new pic of it soon, but until then, here's something to keep the thread going. My personal favorite picture showing a grid-free area:

[shinkansen1 84]

NO GRIDS?!! How will people find the quickest routes!?! Actually, Genesis is famous for having grid-like road networks. However, there are still some cities in my CJ that may have a few crooked roads, and these are the roads that get used the least because of the complex layouts caused by the no-grid rule.

A new residential district in Motrey is a good example of this:

To me, it looks like a piece of crap. Out of all the cities, Motrey used to have the largest grid layout which severely reduced traffic congestion compared to cities smaller than Motrey, whose buildings were being abandoned due to commute time.

[david1314 44]

Originally posted by: shinkansen1 NO GRIDS?!! How will people find the quickest routes!?!quote>

By going straight there rather than North, take a 90 turn, then go west...

[shinkansen1 84]

I forgot to mention: In the image I posted, the camera is facing south.

[UnkleS27 24]

heres a pic of my most anti-grid city

[tommiej 0]

stil grid, but some pieces are really non-grid and i have to say, the non-grid part looks much better then the grid part! much more european!

[Gnargenox 6]

Really neat bridge!. The exit ramps look slick too.

I've always loved the idea of breaking out of the mold. The grid life is for people like Tron, not me. Here's a little sumpn sumpn from a ring road town experiment.

Thank for the invite!

[tommiej 0]

nice! really like the railroad! you can see the orange line going very nice!!

[david1314 44]

Originally posted by: tommiej stil grid, but some pieces are really non-grid and i have to say, the non-grid part looks much better then the grid part! much more european!quote>

My point is not anti-city grid, it's anti-SC4 grid...UnkleS27 has done a FANTASTIC job at defying the SC4 grid, in spite of the overall grid of the city.

[capitol1 1]

The bridge is amazing mann, only thing i wouldnt like about is its only one size

[TM 0]

Almost every large city is based on a grid. I'd consider gridding a city is one of the most realistic things one can do. Even most suburbs of major american cities like Dallas and Pheonix are gridded.

On the other hand some old European cities like Paris are based off of roundabouts and start-like road patterns.

That bridge is pretty sweet.

[JanYpe 17]

On the other hand some old European cities like Paris are based off of roundaboutsquote>

Because 2000 years ago, it was all about the traffic flow, right?

[david1314 44]

I think roundabout were developped in Rome 2000 years ago....well, a rotary traffic pattern at intersections anyway.

And, Washington DC predates the Paris Blvd. layout. The Paris road layout dates to 1853, more than 50 years after the Washington DC design of which paris is a blatent copy (Again, France was first, like democracy and flight )

And thanks to everyone for the kind words about the bridge

[Krio 624]

Isn't Paris based off or roundabout because Napoleon liked curved streets and that's why destroyed old griddy medieval Paris?

For the bridge; my first thought was: what the bloody hell paint-editing is this, then I saw how genious it is!

[ilikehotdogsalot 307]

ohhh i hate grids!

[sanantonio 0]

Originally posted by: ilikehotdogsalot ohhh i hate grids!quote>

me too.

Bacon Pond - Old Turquesa County

Photo by High Times Aerial

---

No one can remember where then name Bacon came from.  Some say it's actor Kevin Bacon,

but seeing as the pond has had the same name for the last 113 years, others think otherwise.

Wherever it came from, the police officers on the corner don't think it's very funny...Oink! Oink!

[the olive 0]

Originally posted by: ilikehotdogsalot ohhh i hate grids!

quote>

That pic is CRAZY, looks really good, you should make a CJ if you don't aready have one. 

[shinkansen1 84]

ilikehotdogsalot: I'm afraid that for jealousy reasons, I'm going to have to confiscate some of those buildings that are in your possession, such as the tall historic building in the lower left-hand side of the image, and I don't mean the subway station.

[daniel01 0]

great pics everyone.

a question though. where can i get that curved bridge?

daniel01

[CKSmooth 0]

Woahhh funky pics guys, great work! Especially your's ilikehotdogsalot! That shot is **** sweet!

[ExiL3 10]

daniel01: read the first post.

Everyone - great pictures, oh and I don't think this is all about whats more real or less real.

Cities are mostly a mix of some grid looking areas, and some non grid areas. I have never seen a city that is 100% grid, or 100% non-Grid.

take care,

[Camaron 1]

I have tried escaping from the grid a few times, I usually end up with the same results as sanantonio, streets that go no where that connect to a main road twice, which can look good.  Anyway, good pictures, very creative.