Do 1-size only, Square Zones Defeat the Purpose of Curved & Omni-Directional Roads?

[PLB82 0]

First off, I love the road tool for the CXL demo.  The curved roads, angled intersections, etc, are great.

BUT, they highlight what I think is one of the biggest flaws: the square-only, one-size-only residential, industrial, etc zones.

What is the point of making anything other than a square city block if you can only place square buildings?  I went for a more true-to-life city in the demo, with curved roads rather than the grid from SC4, but I ended up having huge empty spaces because I either couldn't fit another whole residential "square", or because there was so much space between lots on the curve or angle of a road.

And even if MC were going to go with square zones only... why make them all the same size?  So regardless of whether I build a trailer or a multi-story hi-rise, it's going on the same sized, square piece of land?

IMO this was a huge mistake on the part of MC.

[rtil 1]

i agree. there's a lot of potential for it, but if they're keeping the strict 3x3 grid regiment from anything to small rural houses to skyscrapers, it's nothing more than a novelty tool.

[poshbakerloo 186]

I sooo agree!!!! bu its only 10% of the buildings, so maybe the other are different sizes? I HOPE

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Trailers to MIDrises are the same 2x2 node/tile size, large zones are 3x3. Did you not pay attention to any of the latter tutorials?

[PLB82 0]

Either way, they are all squares... without much variance in size. Which is going to leave a lot of wasted space in the city when combined with roads on anything other than 90-degree angles.

[soldyne 111]

I too dislike the one size zone for all, but, it can be added on to later with patches and such (I hope).  anyway, I made what I think was a nice looking city in the demo with lots of curved roads.  use the park paint fill tool thing and it looks alright IMHO.

but from what others above are trying to say is that perhaps the demo did not show everything?...

[thecross21 3]

Wow that looks really nice! It seriously looks like you've been playing the game for years

[kevinj319 0]

Yes, absolutely.

The filler is just a band-aid to cover the larger issue, which is all the wasted space created by the huge, square lots.

Oh, and the high density plots are a different size... so even if you demolish your old plots, you can't replace them with high density without moving roads all around because they don't fit.

[morriswalters 16]

Before I retired I worked in a high rise condo as a Maintenance manager.  To build the condo it required demoing six residential lots, six rather large lots in an affluent neighborhood.  High rises take space. The building was surrounded by wasted space.  The owners called it the grounds.  It looked very much like a park.  There is less of this in dense downtown area.  But it still happens.  Look at New York, or Hong Kong.  The game will never have the variety of building tiles that the real world shows us.  On the other hand the real world doesn't have to count polygons.  Since I'm an optimist by nature, I've already preordered, ya'll just sit on the sidelines if ya want to.  This ole boy is gonna jump in.

Enough fun.  Think for yourself , I do.

This is my very humble opinion and not to be confused with truth or the  facts.

[DazzaDazza 35]

Originally posted by: morriswalters

Before I retired I worked in a high rise condo as a Maintenance manager.  To build the condo it required demoing six residential lots, six rather large lots in an affluent neighborhood.  High rises take space. The building was surrounded by wasted space.  The owners called it the grounds.  It looked very much like a park.  There is less of this in dense downtown area.  But it still happens.  Look at New York, or Hong Kong.  The game will never have the variety of building tiles that the real world shows us.  On the other hand the real world doesn't have to count polygons.  Since I'm an optimist by nature, I've already preordered, ya'll just sit on the sidelines if ya want to.  This ole boy is gonna jump in.

Enough fun.  Think for yourself , I do.

This is my very humble opinion and not to be confused with truth or the  facts.

quote>

that is true but where in the world do they bulldoze the roads and move them 10 meters across, in the processes bulldozing all the buildings around it,  just to put a new building, they don’t, they build in the available space, 

they design the building around the lot not the lot around the building   

[morriswalters 16]

So now were going to run in to each other here.  How cool!.  We could bat this around forever, but let me conclude with something I have come to believe about this game.  Some times the game we want isn't possible  with the technology that we have.  It may be as simple as that.  Again my plan is to stay in the game.  A lot of things can happen and who knows......

I almost forgot. Try this.  Use 2 lane streets and the right angle tool.  Make zone six houses by three houses.  Accept the wasted space, use green fill.  When your ready to upgrade you have a four by two high rise lot.  You can do that with the straight road tool but you have to be really careful.  You can vary which streets you use.  Learned that trick right here at Simtropolis for use in SC4.

[DazzaDazza 35]

are yes "isn't" sounds just like "can't" well sorry to sound lame but winners say "can" losers say "can't", I 100% agree with you that the game the every one wants is not possible, I new that right from the start. But if a little more planning went into the "Lots" they could have came up with a better solution to it. Any way we will see what custom content will bring, hopefully odd shapes lot (maybe)

And yes your trick is a good one I have used it many times all ready, the game is growing on me that is foreshore. Also that pic above it a good one it shows people how much potential this game has, it looks strangely realistic

[TigerXtrm 0]

No matter how I try to look at the square lots, I can't help but think MC has been extremely lazy when it came to zoning. They put in curved roads and stuff like that but now that we finally get to play the game we notice how we can't use them for anything since we can't place any kind of building beside it without it looking completely retarded. Even Simcity 4 had a more intelligent zoning system where the same building could grow on multiple sizes of zoning. How hard could it possible have been to make the zoning mechanic somewhat decent instead of going back to a mechanic which sucked in City Life and still sucks now.

I thought the game was pretty cool until I discovered every single building has the same size on the grid and that is a deal breaker for me. I'd like to see this fixed even before they put in the public transport. Biggest flaw of laziness in the history of game making right here.

[knightrider 0]

The lot is what gets in the way. In real life, a square house can still sit on a triangular lot. In the game, lots serve no actual purpose other than eye candy, as well as a buffer between houses, yet there is no way to "knock a corner" off of a lot to make it fit into a space that is plenty large for the house, yet too small for the lot.

The first thought that comes to mind for me is separate the buildings from the lot. The zone tool should flood fill an area. In effect, the whole area becomes one big "lot." The game would stick buildings within that lot until there is no more space. Before the game decides to build a new building, it would go through a quick check: Is there enough room for this building in the space that is left? If no, it will choose a smaller building.

Also annoying are the so-called high density lots, which are even more huge than the standard lots, and just as square, making them even harder to place if you're using omni-directional roads. In reality, not every high density building sits on a huge lot... that's why it's called high density. More people in the same space.

[morriswalters 16]

This thing about square lots comes up often, and is one of the things that bugs me about the game.  But after having given it a lot of thought and looked closely at the demo I have come to some conclusions.  Uneducated conclusions.  There are objects exactly like what you describe in the demo.  The farms.  Look closely at them and you will see one of the limitations at once.  No driveways, sidewalks, and the field textures are the only ground textures.  They even run into buildings if they dont have floors.  We can draw a conclusion from this, there can only be one floor texture.  What you can get away with on a farm won't work on a house.  I neither cheer or jeer this, it appears to be a fact of life.  And there is one other thing.  I have yet to see a farmer on the farm. Nor have I ever seen and person anywhere but on a tile or a road.  I have no idea why any of these things are as they are but I suspect some kind of limitation of the engine.  Limitations drive creativity.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I have seen people on lots. Even in the tutorial, I saw a man walking out of and later into his house. By the way, the large lots are 60mx60m so that is 3.75 SC4 tiles. One CitiesXL unit is 20mx20m but parks, farms, roads etc are not confined to this, only lots are. This should mean that small houses should eventually be added that are only 1 tile (20mx20m) and some triple row houses could be 2 tiles wide by 1 tile deep, and malls that are 4 tiles by 4-5 tiles. That is if Monte Cristo releases odd sized lots or allows odd sized custom lots.

[8elhaj 0]

They should give us the option to choose a zone but leave it all free and random (with some restrictions of course) so whenever a building grows it will take a specific place on the zone and the game can now whats left and analyze the restrictions and the shape/form/space available and grow one of the buildings with the exact characteristics.

[knightrider 0]

Originally posted by: morriswalters

The farms.  Look closely at them and you will see one of the limitations at once.  No driveways, sidewalks, and the field textures are the only ground textures.  They even run into buildings if they dont have floors.  We can draw a conclusion from this, there can only be one floor texture.  What you can get away with on a farm won't work on a house.  I neither cheer or jeer this, it appears to be a fact of life. 

quote>

It behaves this way, not because it's a fact of life, but because they programmed it this way.  They could have programmed it any number of ways, but they chose to go the current route.  The discussion hinges on the fact that they should have been more innovative when they came up with the concept. 

[Darth Apple 54]

I have no idea why they didn't just use the maxis approach for zones. placing and general size, type, etc... it doesn't make sense to try and re-do something that already works perfectly. I think they should have kept their competitor in mind a little more when coding, they ended up with a lot system that didn't work any better than the maxis system, actually, it was just a pain to use. They should, in my opinion, take a few more months, re-do this zoning thing.(much like the maxis system.) and make multi-size lots available. I get that they were trying to do something different than maxis. They need to focus only on what actually needs to be changed, not what worked fine before.

hope this helps. -blakesterville.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]