Realism Project / Mod Development

[the7trumpets 10]

First things first, this is NOT a thread for any discussion or arguing about the realism or non-realism of SC4, or whether it should be realistic or not. This is only a thread to see whether there are enough driven indivicuals to make this dream of many simtropolis members' a reality. If you dissagree with this project, simply don't post here. I don't mind people having opinions, and that's great, but please let those of us who want to do this project continue unimpeded in this thread. These are the assumptions about realism in SC4, and what we will try to do about it:

There are certain things which we cannot control which limit the realism. These mostly have to do with region play and region boundries. The main offenders are pollution, desirability effects, and civic services not bleeding into a neighboring city. Since real cities are not built in SC4, much of this should not be too much of a problem.

The things we can control are seemingly endless however. Travel speeds, MT favoring logic, building capacities, demand created, etc etc.


So what will we do?


This project will approach the development of a true realism mod in the following process:

1. Choose a real life city to emulate

This MUST be a self-sufficient metropolitan area, which has large office buildings down to small houses, and has almost no commuters coming from outside the region to work within the region, or residents from the region going outside the region to work. It is also desirable if the chosen city has some of all transportation modes available to us: Heavy Rail, Elevated Rail, Subway, Street, Road, Oneway, Avenue, Monorail, and Ferries. Because of the scope of the project, we should choose the smallest land area of a city which fulfils these requirements.


2. Create region

This is easy. We will simply use USGS data (if within the US) to realistically terraform the region to scale.

3. Separate region into SC4 city sizes and assign different cities to people involved in the project.

This will require some communication. We will need all of the streets to line up correctly, so you will have to communicate with your 4 neighbors to find out exactly where thier streets are intersecting the map. Once each person has created thier city with transportation, civic buildings, and zoning, we will post them to this board, or somewhere, and move to the final stage. We will do this with cheats for money simply to get it done.

4. Modding

Now comes the fun part. Those of us with a hand at modding will collect all the pieces of the region and place them in our region. We will then all make an attempt to modd the game's files so that the eventual development of the city is as close to real life as possible, including commute times, where different wealth levels live, etc etc. We will use this thread to communicate ideas and suggestions about how to modd the game to become more realistic.

5. Testing

Once we have agreed on adjusted settings for the myriads of exemplar properties, we will submit it as a beta modd to some of the best city builders interested in building ultra-realistic cities. They will give us feedback and we will adjust things if necessary. A final modd will be created and posted on the modd page for all to enjoy.



Is this really possible?

I hope so, but it will take quite a bit of man power. If you are interested, please PM me and I will add your name to the list below. I estimate we will need to create at least 400 medium sized cities(depending on the city chosen), so if each person does 4 cities, we'll need 100 people.

What's Next?

Please post your ideas for the city to choose. I have no problem with doing a non-US city, but with the USGS data, sattelite imagery, and maps available for the US, a US city might be our easiest option. If you nominate a non-US city, please provide links to satelite and mapping resources on the web which would be usable. Once we narrow down the choices, we'll try to come to a concensus, or a vote if necissary.

Nominate away! (and PM me to add your name to the list below of participants willing to design cities to be true to life compared to a street map/satellite imagery)

One more note, I'm a little busy with life and the transit development stuff at the moment, so if someone REALLY wants to see this happen, and can lend a hand or take over this project, just PM me.




List of City Builders:

the7trumpets
DonD13
xiziz
Chris

[DonD13 0]

Count me in. Here's my vote for the Chicago metro area.

[EmperorSatonine 0]

My vote goes to Boston. If we want to capture a realistic city, we need to model one with a depth of life that will be IMO, very difficult to create. Older cities would be a better option for that.

[Norwegian Neko 12]

Here is my reply - Chicago is a really large city, but it is situated in the midwest of the United States, and is fairly isolated. From what I understand there are no/few commuters arriving in the city from other major cities or regions.
Unfortunately, it is a really, really large city, with millions of people living in suburbs and commuting to the main city. That may be a bit unwieldy to work with.

Boston - this is probably not such a good choice, since it is located in the New England megalopolis area, which includes approximately 135 million people.
Talk about hard to model - some people commute from Washington, DC, to Boston, everyday. Good luck modeling 135 million commuters!

I would suggest modeling a city in the world that is fairly isolated away from any other major cities. For example, Vancouver, BC. Portland, OR. San Francisco, CA. Those are just cities I know of on the west coast. There are thousand of other cities in the world that could be used. The added advantage of those I listed also have a good mix of industrial, commercial, and residential, as well as seaports.

[xiziz 11]

I was thinking London as far as the City, its quite mixed up with a lot of diffreent Zones, it shoulnd be to hard to find any topo of london.

 

I sent you a PM the7trumpets.

 

Cheers

[ardecila 124]

New Orleans, LA or St. Louis, MO gets my vote.

Southern cities work well, since most have newer construction, a variety of wealth levels, and would fit within the bounds of a region.

[eklinsb 1]

Boston has commuter rail lines now that go 50+ miles outside the city...commuters in SC4 would not travel that far, plus that'd be a HUGE region. However, there are very few people who commute to Boston from much further than that, because once you get past Providence, people would rather work in New York City. And Boston is the very top of the northeast megalopolis, so people to the far north are generally not headed to Boston every morning.

I'd nominate Boston if you were going to do a region like 50 miles left to right and 80 miles top to bottom.

A lot of big cities have the problem of commuters coming from too far away to make it feasible to duplicate in SC4. Washington, DC is the same way.

[+Guest]

I don't have the motivation to participate, but how about Pheonix, AZ.  You don't get more isolated than that. (small numbers of outside commuters, but not enough to be relevent in the sim)

 

-ACE

[joerg 280]

Sounds interesting.  As for finding the perfect city thats not going to be easy. Im thinking that Portland might be the best choice. Its smaller than alot of cities with the same diverstity and has a decent amount of transit options with a farily large mix of wealth levels. 

[the7trumpets 10]

Thanks for all the support and the great ideas on the cities, guys!


While doing Boston would be cool, those who have said it is quite large are right. Even at 40x80 miles, that's arround 1500-2000 medium sized cities. It's simply too big to be able to complete before Simcity5 comes out .

Portlond sounds interesting, what type of transportation options does it have? I'm not sure if it has subway, el-train or monorail. Can anyone educate us? Oh, and please mention what transportation options your city has when nominating it. I like the idea of Chicago. It definately has a large downtown area, and many transportation methods, but I'm not sure how large it is in land area. I think Phoenix AZ might not have enough of a downtown area with subway, skyscrapers, etc. to simulate correctly, but correct me if I'm wrong.

One more thing: While it would be cool to choose a city with a seaport, it's not necissary. We can't get around the fact that as far as sc4 is concerned, the edge of a map is just as desirable to Industry as a large seaport.



So, looking over the nominations so far, these look most promising. If you have any more info or comments to add to these, or another city to add, please keep the suggestions coming:

Portland, OR
Chicago, IL
Vancouver, BC
San Francisco, CA
New Orleans, LA
St. Louis, MO

[+Guest]

Hmm.......Los Angeles would be very interesting. Btw, I'm from Philly and have never been further west then around Pittsburgh, so I'm not biased LOL.

[dolphin66 5]

My vote goes for Portland Oregon. It has the main river, Columbia, that goes through it and empties into the Pacific Ocean. It has mountains, lakes, rivers and the ocean not far from it. It has heavy rail, bus, not sure on the subway but it does have light rail now.The only thing that might be against it is that there would be commuters from Vancover Washington and visa versa. If this city is chosen, I would love to help out anyway I can. Oh, it also has the seaport.

[rvz3000 8]

new york is the obvious answer

[jtportland 184]

i live in vancouver washington, and i would really like to see portland and vancouver in simcity, there have been couple portland buildings made already . so i vote for portland oregon also. portland doesn't have a subway, there is one like at the zoo, but it is really an underground light rail that connects to the main lightrail system. (cus the zoo's on a hill), so it just pops out of the hill...if that made any sense lol

[brtim2 11]

I nominate Baltimore, MD. Most people look at the East Coase Megalopolis and think lots of commuters. But really that is not the case. Most of the people that live south of Baltimore work for the Federal Government, aka, D.C. Only those workers North, East, and West work in or around Baltimore. The area of the Region I was thinking would be the southern part of the Beltway north. Maybe all the way to the PA line, but I don't know how far that is. The East West boundaries could be the Chesapeake Bay to the Liberty Reservoir. The region is very diverse with a city core, ports, lots and lots of brick rowhouses, single family residences of all wealth levels in the city and suburbs, and in the north and north west there is farmland. Transportation options include commuter rail in the suburbs becoming a subway near the city, at grade rail lines in the city, massive freight lines in the south, highways, avenues, one ways, busses, and if we want to go into the future, we can put in a monorail (Baltimore is one of two locations vieing for Federal money to build a MagLev. The route would take it from Penn Station in Baltimore to D.C.) I realize Baltimore plays second fiddle to the other major cities in the Eastern Megopolis, but i think Baltimore would be a very diverse region to recreate.

[wickert III 0]

I don't have enought time, and I don't know a thing about modding but Vancouver BC, would be a really neat city to recreate, it has almost no outside commuters and if you do the whole fraserValley area its about 100km long and 45km wide(at the widest part), Vancouver it self has plenty of water around it, and lots of ferries, also the skytrain, and plenty of rail, and busses, no subway though (similar to alot of the cities on the west coast, ex. portland, LA, SF, Seattle, none of these have subways because of the earthquake risk) and the area of land I am talking about only has like 2.5million people so its not that big, also if you live in the Chilliwack area of the Fraser Valley you wouldn't be caught dead travelling all the way to the Vancouver area(would take about 1 hour commute time minimum in real life) Vancouver is also Canadas bussiest port, so their is plenty of industry and seaports to construct, and the landscape around Vancouver is breathtaking.

their is also a to scale map on the exchange (it only extends out to Langley) so if you want to find a map that goes all the way out to Hope your gonna have to look on the internet or you might try contacting the guy that made the Greater Vancouver map.

btw, I used to live in Vancouver, so I am a little bit biased, portland would also be another cool city to recreate, but the other cities don't sound as interesting (never been any farther east then Utah in the states, so I don't know much about any cities on the east coast) however if you tried to recreate boston you could recreate the Boston tea party-that would be kind of neat!

[BigRedFish 21]

Rather than San Francisco (which has been done, quite well), how about Oakland (Alameda and Contra Costa Counties)?  There's a large seaport, el and subway (BART), heavy rail (Amtrak California), and lots of freeways.  Even passenger ferry service.

 

[BauerME 2]

Aside from selecting a city to model, I would just like to add my two cents about something that may be worth addressing within the scope of this project; how to represent in-game surface water at elevations higher than 'the baseline'? For example, while attempting to model the regions of Seattle, Tacoma and Bellingham in Washington state, I have found many instances where I have valleys that are open to development (in-game), but in fact I know that a river, stream or small lake actually inhabit that part of the map.

This shows up frequently while modeling regions like these, because they sit near to the coast and also near higher elevations. In fact they are close enough to them that both types of terrain show up in the same region map (depending on scale), as opposed to someplace like Boston or Chicago which are generally low enough to sea/lake level that rivers and lakes can be 'fudged' by lowering the land down to the waterline without losing too much realism.

The core mechanics of the game will not allow us to add 'true' water at any elevation other than at sea/lake level, but I have wondered if it might be worthwhile/possible to come up with custom lots that can be used to model/simulate streams/rivers and lakes at higher elevations?

This may be just one of the things that the realism team has to workaround during the course of the project, and perhaps it is outside the scope of this discussion. But, I thought that this is probably as good a place as any in which to address it.

[BigRedFish 21]

Date:5/21/2004 7:23:11 PM
Author:BauerME

I have wondered if it might be worthwhile/possible to come up with custom lots that can be used to model/simulate streams/rivers and lakes at higher elevations?

quote>

Oppie's Canal Kit (at SimCityCentral) can be used for this purpose.  It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. 

 

[SimMaster 17]

Sounds like a great idea.

 

I vote for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

[burlesona 26]

You should go with a southern or midwestern city in the 1 million people range, such as Austin, Atlanta, St. Louis, Albuquerque or Phoenix. Phoenix or Austin would probably be the easiest to recreate because of the limited connections into and out of those cities. Austin in particular would be a good test city because it's pretty small in land area, but it has the disadvantage of no light rail/subway.

I think the reality of the project though is that there is not going to be a city small enough to model accurately which features all the transit options available. It might be better to try some smaller cities which rely more on roads and then when you have the system working in realistic equilibrium you could apply new transit to the city and observe/tweak the effects until you were happy with the results.

If you were to take that route, I'd suggest modeling a city like Corpus Christi Tx. or Springfield Illinois.

The biggest reason to go with a smaller metro like these is that the model could be completed in a few weeks as opposed to a few months, and I suspect it will be difficult to maintain a large number of contributors to a project which is stretched out over a long long development period. If you got a city's road model to perform highly realistically you could easily base the other MT values on the model roads.

[+Guest]

If you wanna do a southwest/southern city, maybe Dallas or Houston or somewhere in Texas.....

[BauerME 2]

Thank you for the tip, Big Red. I will check it out. :-)

[Tunafish 48]

My vote is deffinatly for New York. It has everything on the transpotation list and ,ost commuters live within 15 miles of manhatan

 

About Portland. I lived there for a year. 1, The river is the Willamite not the columbia. 2, the light rail (no subway) is called MAX. They have Buses Which are also MAX. The airport is close to the city. It's suburbs, Tigrid, Beaverton, Clackamus are very close. But NY is better

[themallard12 55]

New York, I would like to see you all try to emulate MTA's vast mass transit system. Now that would be a challenge.

[Mexicanboy13r 12]

!~San Francisco~!

How about that?

[Arphaxad Locus 0]

Try to make a realistic suburbia. That would be intresting.

[mayormaddness 0]

You say Chicago is a huge city and all, and it's true I've been working on my model for about a month and 1/2 and all i have so far in the region is 1.5 mill i have almost all of the subway down and the downtown section. All the cities are large so my game runs a little slow at times, but i still have comutters from 3 cities away that take the highway, lightrail, or subway downtown. My subway stations dowtown on the blue and red lines are way over capacity almost 50,000 each. Im not from the city, but i took on the project to test some transportation plans out. People said to build Boston and thats I live around there and i know it would be very difficult to do. The subway systems arent really conjested, but the highways are since people come from so far out. The Boston subway system( if you wanted it to look realistic would be very hard) A lot of the subway is level track, unlike the chicago
subway which has about 45% or more in total that is elevated. I've made part of that system ground level but its hard to do. Well if you want a city that people travel to from suburbs and go to a center downtown area it will be really hard, but it all depends on how you set up u transportation system. I would choose Miami it has the monorail and also has highways to help out.

[rewright 804]

Most large cities - 2 million or more - reach out for miles, sometimes into other states, so constructing an accurate model in the game would be unlikely. Commuters around New York for instance travel from as far away as central New Jersey, Connecticut and the Hudson valley, 60 to 70 miles.

 The suggestion of a small to medium sized city seems to be worth considering, and would give the group plenty of challenges and opportunities for modding and collaboration. Many have diverse topography, interesting architecture, suburbs and a variety of transportation systems. Some cities to consider might be: Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Columbus (OH), Jacksonville (FL) and Austin.

I would be happy to help in laying out a section of your final choice.

[dolphin66 5]

Date:5/21/2004 10:00:47 PM
Author:Tunafish

My vote is deffinatly for New York. It has everything on the transpotation list and ,ost commuters live within 15 miles of manhatan

 

About Portland. I lived there for a year. 1, The river is the Willamite not the columbia. 2, the light rail (no subway) is called MAX. They have Buses Which are also MAX. The airport is close to the city. It's suburbs, Tigrid, Beaverton, Clackamus are very close. But NY is better

quote>

Yes, the Willamate River does run through Portland. But the Columbia River is what seperates Oregon from Washington. You have to cross it to get to Vancover Wa. I didn't think they had a subway yet but I'm sure it will be there one day. I think it's the best choice but I'm bias because I was born and raised in Oregon and know Portland pretty well.