Building Realistic Cities

[Jair Crawford 5]

So, I've been playing SimCity 4 for a while now. But I've seen some of the realistic cities posted here and I was wondering... how on earth do you guys do it? LOL

First of all... terrain... It drives me insane! I mean... every time I try to terraform realisticly, it ends up just looking plain weird. lol

Also, I've seen a lot of the screenshots have mods and downloads. Which ones are good for realistic looking cities?

And don't even get me started on roads... >.< lol

So basically, even though I'm pretty good at building a city in the game, when it comes to realism, I'm a total newb. lol So, if anyone who has experience in this area could tell me some tips, that would be awesome. lol

Btw, I am new here. So... um... Hi!

[shaylan221 0]

Welcome to Simtropolis. I suggest for the roads you download the NAM. Really good to use a must have in my opionion. Also the RHW is a good alterative on the stex. You can find both items here at ST or on sc4devotion.com and click lex, you must regrister for it. Also on SC4 Devotion, they have the CAM which provides variety buildings among the standard maxis ones.

EDIT: The NAM can be found here:

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=851

The CAM can be found here:

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1008

The RHW can be found here:

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=853

[staple_salad 0]

I really like SAM, which ads some street and road recolors (like dirt roads and cobble stones) and is really easy to use. I also got some new trees on the exchange here to add some variety (like conifers!!!). I'm still trying to find a good terrain mod so that I get snow at the right height (so far, no luck). There are also lots of neat guides, search around. I found one the other day on I think, SC4Devotion or something that had some pretty nifty tips and now my suburbs look better anyways.

[Jair Crawford 5]

Ah, ok. Thanks! I'll check those out then.

Btw... how come the word 'newb' (with different spelling) is censored? lol

Edit: Checked those links out... but I can't find the download link.

[ecoba 28]

Well, you have to be logged in to the BSCLEX when you download them, so go to SC4D, make sure you are registered, and then click LEX, in the search bar, click on NAM and CAM Files. That'll get you there.

Mr. Beer, who makes great realistic cities, plops everything. 6459978 has some great ploppable things here on the STEX, and raaphaelninja has a complete ploppable set here too. Porkie has made some great Paris style Euro BATS that you can plop for realistic cities. Check out Covington over at SC4D, it has some great realism (link in my sig), and just look at MD's there and CJ's here.

Go to the CJHOF! Edmonton and Digby are both linked in there.

Ethan

[tungston 19]

Originally posted by: Jair Crawford

Btw... how come the word 'newb' (with different spelling) is censored? lol

quote>

Because it was too often used in a derogative manner.

[sumwonyuno 42]

Well, you could start out with easy things to change. For example, terrain textures, water textures and trees. Then move up to transportation mods (automata, network textures and addons).

Unless you're making New York, Paris, Hong Kong, etc., you're unlikely to find specific buildings in the STEX or SC4D LEX for other places with smaller populations. You could try BATing and making custom lots, but improvising with Maxis and custom content is an alternative strategy. Plopping is a popular strategy, but you shouldn't plop for residential and if there isn't the demand for it.

For terrain, you can try to find if your region of choice has already been made. Most likely, you'll have to make your own. There are tutorials out there for using grayscale jpgs, and tools like SC4Terraformer. I only suggest using the God Mode/Mayor Mode tools only for finer terrain adjustments. Foliage (i.e. trees) and development can help hide discrepancies between city tiles.

But, the one reference tool that helped me enormously is, of course, Google Earth. It'll tell you the height of terrain, calculates distances (divide meters by 16 to get tiles) and you can infer land uses for zoning.

[Jair Crawford 5]

@ ecoba: Ah, that would explain it. Thanks

@ tungston: Ah, understandable.

@ sumwonyuno: Thanks! I'll definitely keep that in mind. I have one question though. You mentioned how Google Earth calculates height and stuff. How does that help though because God Mode doesn't give you any measurements, or does it?

[sumwonyuno 42]

Whoops, forgot about that.

I really suggest doing all of the work in Mayor Mode. The God Mode tools aren't permanently gone. Press SHIFT + CTRL + ALT and click the God Mode Button. The tools will be back for you to use. Also, there is a plugin that puts the God Mode tools in a parallel menu to the Mayor Mode tools:  https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=20092

Next, you need to get Buggi's Extra Cheats DLL: http://host.simvision.net/SC4ExtraCheats.zip

Then in game, you can activate the cheat code box (CTRL + X) and type terrainquery . Right click the text box for more options. Then you can use the query tool and it will tell information about the game's coordinate grid. The y value is for height. By default, the game's water is at 250 meters.

So, if you have a piece of land 100 meters above sea level in real life, you can terraform it so the terrain query says y = 350. Now, you don't have to take the 250 meters as the sea level if you don't want to. You can imagine 250 meters as the value of the lowest water level in the region. To get around the game limitation of a single water level, you can use ploppable water or canals to simulate water above the game's 250 meter value.

Good luck.