Curved Highway tutorial

[Thalassicus 33]

 

Tri asked how to make highways follow more natural curves and bends like in my CJ, so here's a tutorial on how to do it

 

~ Curved Highways ~

 

1) Regional layout

To start out, use Region Census (downloadable from the mods -> programs section) and an image editing program (or paste it into Word), to print out a page-size copy of your map.

Mark out the major cities your region has/will have and draw the connecting highways. Drawing by hand is often more natural-looking than attempting to draw on a computer, mostly due to the limitations of mice. Make your highways follow the terrain in the manner real highways would. Avoid areas with steep inclines, hills, or valleys, since those are expensive to build along in real life. On the (scanned) map above, red is highways and black is rail lines (railways are are usually straighter than highways in my area) 

 

 

2) Signs

In city view, place signs at major points along your highway. If possible, use terrain features as guides to accurately align the highways with your drawn map.

 

 

After marking the major points, place more signs along the road to help in construction.

 

 

3) Smoothing

If your city is perfectly flat, you can skip to 4)

If your city has rough terrain, use CTRL+ALT+SHIFT & Click on the God Mode button to re-open God Mode tools. Select the soften tool and set the tool size to about 3 (SHIFT + 3). Use larger sizes for flatter terain, and size 2 or 1 for very steep terrain.

 

 

Smooth along the whole length of your route to ensure the highway isn't unnaturally bumpy.

 

 

 

4) Building the road

Now comes the hard part. Starting at one end of your route, begin constructing the road. Make small turns along the way to ensure that the highway reaches the next sign in a graceful manner. If you've ever looked at a line without any anti-aliasing in an image file, this is exactly the same concept. A series of jagged edges will smooth out at a distance into a single curved line.

 

 

5) Gentle curves

When your highway begins to turn another direction, start with a few bends before it reaches the curve. Orthogonal (straight) avenues and highways can make one-tile jumps sideways, diagonals require slightly more space.

 

 

 

6) Tight curves

As your higway begins to curve more sharply, increase the frequency of the sideways jumps. Soon, start make the jumps more than a single tile, and eventually you'll be running in a more diagonal direction. WARNING: The game is very tempramental when destroying segments of highway along sections like this. If you think you might need to destroy parts later, keep the signs in place, and just hide them. Then you can replace segments in the future if necessary.

 

 

 

6) The finished road

The area you'll want to be careful around is destroying segments at an angle similar to the bottom. A good thing to do is to have small areas that give the segments a sort of buffer space where you have at least 3-4  tiles of road without any bends, like at the second sign from the bottom.

 

 

 

7) Adding exits

It's very easy to add road, street, or one-way exits to curved higways. The game requires at least a 1-tile amount of space between each bend in the highway, just the right size for crossovers and connections. Avenues require just one extra tile. Overpasses for highways would obviously require more space than this, take it into account when building the highway.

 

 

 

8} Extending the highway

To connect to neighboring cities, simply extend this process into the next city. The finished segment can be seen here in the transportation view, with the next segment marked off in red. I havn't been able to get diagonal highways or avenues to form neighbor connections, however, so you will need to connect straight off the map (and turn back onto the route in the next city) If anyone knows how to connect diagonally I would be much obliged

 

 

~ In Action: Smooth Corners ~

 

Often, highways don't make sharp bends, since that can produce traffic accidents. Here's a standard highway turn:

 

Turns like this are common in parts of the world, especially in urban areas where highways have to fit into a small space and are constrained by development. Experiment with what areas look best with this style of construction. Here's another version of the same curve, softened using the methods described:

 

 

This could be used for rural or suburban areas, or even urban areas, depending on the part of the world you live in and the city layout you want to use

 

 

And here's the curve in region view.

 

 

~ Example: Rural Town ~

 

Finally, here's an example of a developed community along the same highway, out to the west:

 

 

It's areas like this where you have to be careful with your bulldozer tool

[Teddah 1]

That's awesome! Amazing that it looks so good in the region view.

[savio 0]

nice job! iam definately gonna try it out!

[ed_diaz 10]

it looks good in the region view..but not good in the city view..too many curves..i think i'll get sick driving on that LOL..also your commute time will sky rocket with all them turns...its just not worth it

[Thalassicus 33]

Commute times can always be overcome, to produce a more realistic city Perfect grids are the most efficient network in SC4, but in real life things often follow curves (especially out in the country )

It largely depends on the area of the world you're from. If you're used to straight highways, then that probably looks more natural for your cities. In my area highways curve around, so I use that method alot in SC4

[+Guest]

Good job on the tutorial.

[Romie 1]

That was great! I'm gonna try it with highways instead of avenues.

[newy2 0]

very interesting Thal, better than those boring straight ones.

[Dutchdragon 74]

Cool tutorial! I think the curved highways look the best in the region view.

[eyehavenomoney 0]

Did any of you 3  realize you bumped a thread well over a year old.  I also think it looks like cr@p up close.

[Romie 1]

Yep. I realized. I found it in tutorials on search. People should make tutorials on the zoning of our cities like greviele did. Did I spell his name wrong? SORRY!

[the_crispbread_witch 0]

eyehavenomoney: Ok, you're a grid lover. Nothing wrong with that.

I think this tutorial was really good and a good tutorial should be right to bump, right?

It would be nice to see it in the omnibus.

[Traffic_Jam 0]

nice tutorial!

[rusty_777 0]

I know this isn't recent at all (for a post), but none of these pictures are showing up!

[mayormommy 8]

I'm going to to lock this topic - those pictures have been gone for a long time. If Thalassicus comes back, he can repost the pics in the "Post Your Tutorials" thread.