City Planning Tool

[MayorAnonymus 0]

Hi folks,

I wonder wether there is some kind of planning tool (can be very basic) that allows the gamer to plan the city without having to play the game. Some kind of programme that shows the squares (corresponding to small, medium and large city size) and allows us to simply fill in the squares with colours (say light grey for roads, normal grey for streets etc).

Has anybody come across something of that kind?

[hawkpride147 1]

i would suggest graph paper, and colored pencils...it's what i use.

[thecross21 3]

I just design it starting with the interstates, then the avenues for the ramps and then the sort. I know it's in the game, but I try to get the best looking city with that!

[Gn_leugim 853]

I don't plan the city to much.. just go in while it develop..

[castironpigeon 1]

I agree with hawkpride, graph paper is probably the way to go. I don't know of any computer program that lets you simulate graph paper.. The closest thing to that would probably be to go into MS Paint (I'm assuming you use a PC), create an image 64x64, 128x128, or 256x256, and then have your way with it (zoom in at 800% and turn on the grid).

That said, graph paper is highly preferable if you need to plan something out. I wouldn't plan out the entire city, but rather just sections that need specific planning before you lay them out. The trouble with planning out an entire city in one shot is that you'll never know specifically what you need until you get there. The simulator isn't as simple as it was in SC2k where you could plan out the entire city ahead of time and go square for square off the graph paper. But maybe that's just me. If anybody can accurately predict the outcome of an entire city ahead of time, I'd love to hear about it!

[Qaxpla 0]

For me personally, I only ever plan the simple things. I like to get the basics first, I'll draw out the region on some plain A4, plot where my CBD is going to grow from (in the future, naturally) and any key areas, like my key roads, connections and other transport. I then consider things like the direction i'd like my city to grow in (where the most construction-friendly land is haha) and then just carry on playing. I'm a bad planner personally and I think you can't really be too specific until you're playing your game and know how things are going. At the moment i'm building a really good city (touch wood) and everything is going great so far and its quickly getting to the 100,000 mark whereas some others of mine recently have struggled to get to 50,000 for some reason.

In this city I've just gone with the game and how things seem to pan out when i'm playing it. I think it's good to plan some cities though and know the jist of how you'd like things to turn out.

[soccerkicker266 0]

If you want a program that can simulate grid paper you could use Microsoft Excel. Just shape the cells into squares and then you can hightlight certain cells and tell them to be whatever color you want.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: soccerkicker266 If you want a program that can simulate grid paper you could use Microsoft Excel. Just shape the cells into squares and then you can hightlight certain cells and tell them to be whatever color you want.quote>

Or, if you have a web design program or even an HTML editor, you can create a city-sized table then color it.  This would be on-line graph paper.  Much easier to alter or erase.

Similary, a grid in MS-Paint would do the trick.  Just blow the image up to pixel size (800 x), and use the pixels to represent city blocks.  Then you could use, say, black for roads, gray for streets, dual width black for avenues, dual with gray for highways. and the usual Blue/Green/Yellow for lots.  You could even develop a palette to give you the various lot flavors.

For something printable, you probably could use a real photo editor like the Gimp or Photosuite and draw the grid.

[MayorAnonymus 0]

Thanks for all the replies. I was looking for a programme for the very reason N_O_Body stated, so much easier to alter than any work on graph paper.

My problem is, that I don't really like remodelling whole city areas once they're built up, on the other hand that's how it's done in reality...I'll probably just have to gest used to do that, after all, my planning rarely works out in the game (damn commuters).

[TEP 0]

Originally posted by: soccerkicker266 If you want a program that can simulate grid paper you could use Microsoft Excel. Just shape the cells into squares and then you can hightlight certain cells and tell them to be whatever color you want.quote>

 

That's what I do. You can make notes or write text in cells as well, and it is really simple to copy/paste, move stuff etc.