Realism Project / Mod Development

[xiziz 11]

well id say plymouth, tho ive never seen a map of the city, it is very beatuful, have realtivs(and a lot of em) living ther, so ive been in town sevral times... tho i live a long way from there and its inacsessible really being on the island of britan and me living 2000km away in stockholm(oh and dont even try to metion building stockholm, it would be a nightmare)

 

Cheers

[goldiva 86]

Goldiva: will you be one of our batters?? Please!!

quote>

Huh? Do you need specific BATs for this project? Due to my erratic schedule in real life I better not promise anything, but you bet I'll help whenver I can. I like the idea, brings SC4 to a different level.

[dolphin66 5]

I was able to print the list from email. Here are my top 5 picks....

 

Portland Oregon

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Fresno, California

Austin Texas

 

I will try to copy and paste the list from my email.

[Spic 1]

What about doing Toronto, Canada?
The City has lots of Highways, subways, light and heavy rail, as well as now a ferry service.
I am surprised that this city was left out. It has a central core, with majority of commuters tarevling into it.
I think it would be too large of a task to do the entire GTA (from the lake to richmond hill), But the city proper can be done very easily i think (lake to Steeles Ave. in the north.

I hope that you guys can take this city with considerations.

Dave

[the7trumpets 10]

I wanted to include Toronto as well, but the more I looked at the area, the more I realized that it would be too large of an area to do. The problem is that the suburbs of Toronto (Oakville and Burlington, specifically) most likely have quite a few commuters who work in Hamilton, to the southwest. This means we would have to create the region between Toronto and Hamilton, which is just too big for the first project.

Again, we're all going to have to make compromises. I know we would all like to do Tokyo and see amazing subways and high-rises, but the scope of this experiment is to allow us to build those cities in a realistic manner, by using a smaller testing-bed as a starting point.

[Konquest02 0]

How about Qu

[the7trumpets 10]

Point taken, that is a nice reasonably sized city, and fairly isolated. It has been added to the list of possible cities on page 3 of this thread.

Any other comments about the cities on the list? Ideas? Keep making your opinion known until we put the poll up in a few days here.

[davidhogan 1]

Portland Oregon

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Fresno, California

Austin Texas

quote>

Oklahoma City - Great choice, looks like the freeways would be fun to rebuild.  The west side of town still could be a little weird.

Austin  - Too many grids at different angles.  It might not be that hard to re-do, but it still looks like it'd be more time-consuming that most of the others.  Plus it's still pretty close to San Antonio.

Tuscon - Looks like it'd be pretty easy, and it has rail lines running through the city.

Fresno - Has no interstates (but penty of state freeways.)  Definitely a good option.

Portland: Good option, bigger city, might need to do Salem also?

Dave

 

[joerg 278]

Ok if your thinking of staying in the midwest here you will pretty much have to eliminate mass transit from the scope unless you move toward the great lakes. And i think that mass transit is probbably the most important part of this project. As is simcity has a very crappy mass transit system.

 

My vote is going to have to go to vancouver. Its probably the smallest city we are going to find that meets as much of the criteria as it does. Plus it will be a city i think we can all enjoy working on.

 

Also we havent really even looked at any latin american cities or anything from russia or the middle east or affrica. So there is still alot of research to be done.

[Fairlane500 8]

Portland would also have to include Vancouver, WA, they are essentialy the same.

Just have to see Washington stuch in there somehow.

If I could make another suggestion, it would be Spokane, WA, it is relatively isolated, with only a couple major suburbs, is home to a major airbase, plus international airport, has a decent skyline, and is built on a grid. With approxamately 200,000 people, it could be used as a test bed before going on to another, larger city.

[dolphin66 5]

I do agree that Portland would have to be done at a later date. It would have to include Vancouver Wa. I like the idea of starting with Vancouver BC and working towards Portland-Vancouver area. The coast line itself would be a job all by itself. We have to remember to do Portland-Vancouver, we would need damns because I do believe that's where they get their power from.

[mikeyb66 30]

Well seeing as I promoted plymouth lets weigh up the pro's and cons.

PRO's:
Quite isolated and self-contained, not many commuters at all.
Population of 250,000. A population density of 3246 per sq km
Quite small area, will fit onto a few large maps.
Wide variety of interesting landscapes and features.
Lots of buses for MT. One of few cities where we can integrate ferries.
I know the areavery well as I lived there for 15 years.
Historically important to Americans, it is where the Mayflower set sail from after all.

CON's
Lack of MT options. Except for buses.
Non-uniform roads.
May be difficult to terraform accurately.
Not known very well by you guys.

Well as you can see the PRO's outnumber the CON's however two of the CON's are big ones. (Non-uniform roads and terraforming.)

However I did a little feasibiliy test on the city centre and here are the results (no terraforming tho, well only a little):





The zones are just the for representation of the areas and not finished. I think it looks quite a lot like the proper road layout.

I let you guys decide if we should take this further, btw this is a medium city map.

[xiziz 11]

Date:6/3/2004 6:11:50 AM
Author:mikeyb66

Well seeing as I promoted plymouth lets weigh up the pro's and cons.

PRO's:
Quite isolated and self-contained, not many commuters at all.
Population of 250,000. A population density of 3246 per sq km
Quite small area, will fit onto a few large maps.
Wide variety of interesting landscapes and features.
Lots of buses for MT. One of few cities where we can integrate ferries.
I know the areavery well as I lived there for 15 years.
Historically important to Americans, it is where the Mayflower set sail from after all.

CON's
Lack of MT options. Except for buses.
Non-uniform roads.
May be difficult to terraform accurately.
Not known very well by you guys.

Well as you can see the PRO's outnumber the CON's however two of the CON's are big ones. (Non-uniform roads and terraforming.)

However I did a little feasibiliy test on the city centre and here are the results (no terraforming tho, well only a little):


The zones are just the for representation of the areas and not finished. I think it looks quite a lot like the proper road layout.

I let you guys decide if we should take this further, btw this is a medium city map.

quote>

 

the terraforming might be able to be taken directley out from a webpage, shoulnd be impossible to find. and then converted.
BTW. i coulnd se any images, they came up with a fancy logo saying Angel city or similar, well seing that id like Plymouth to, il go look for a heightmap

Cheers

[Fairlane500 8]

Date:6/2/2004 5:02:51 PM
Author:joerg

 

Also we havent really even looked at any latin american cities or anything from russia or the middle east or affrica. So there is still alot of research to be done.

quote>

The problem with most African cities and some Latin American cities is that they have a slum type even below $ residential.

[the7trumpets 10]

The poll is now up!!!

Go voice your vote. It ends next tuesday, so vote this weekend and we'll get this thing on the road!

[Morhavoc 166]

The problem with most African cities and some Latin American cities is that they have a slum type even below $ residential.

quote>

 

But that is easy to do with the LE/bat, i already have a couple of lots named 'little haiti' lol, they are basically shack type slum lots for RS$. I used them a lot in my Cuba region.

[davidhogan 1]

morhavoc: so people that live in these slum houses are modified to go to the dump to pick through the trash to find something to sell in the open-air markets?

 

a 3rd world economy isn't built into the game.  afaik there's no way to add a R0.  let's just leave 3rd world locations out of it.

 

dave

[ElectroClash 0]

I think people should take a closer look at syracuse, NY. many of the cities in upstate new york are pretty isolated because they are well spaced across the state. Syracuse is a decent sized medium city of about 150,000 in the city and 700,000 metro. It is like 70 miles from rochester and over 100 miles away from albany. The nearby stuff like cortland, oswego and auburn are very small. It is self contained, has a good balance of industrial comercial and residential areas of every income level. The downtwon area is relatively gridlike. There is industrial and commuter railways as well as buses, a large university campus and stadium as well as an airport and military base, several golf courses and many nearby lakes. The best thing is, It has a lot of interesting roads. It is at the point of intersection of 2 interstates, 81 north to south and I-90 east to west. It also has a beltway within itself with 481 as well as 690.This is unusual for a city its size and this could be used to reflect properties about a bigger city. All of these roads connect to a healthy amount of suburbs like liverpool dewitt, fairmount, etc. that spread out in all directions. I think this is really ideal for the simulation adjustment we are looking for here.
It is going to be impossible to find a city in the scope we need with a subway,it just is. The smallest city with a subway might be almaty, kazakstan. Who cares about or would ever want to build that?

[Catcher_of_Cats 0]

Attempting to recreate the Greater Toronto Region would be one of the biggest pain in the a**** ever for a group of people to spend their time. I am currently recreating Toronto (the megacity) which is 680 km sq and it is taking for ever just to get the transportation grid in the correct location. I currently spend one entire day creating on large city site in the suburbs and I do not even want to think about the inner city.

My advice for those that choose the city region is to stay away from any place with many curved roads, essentially those that are not perfectly north-south, east-west.

I would choose Vancouver BC due to its fulling the factors and its shear beauty. There is no point in spending months replicating a stick-in-the-mud.

[dolphin66 5]

Only two days left to vote for your favorite city. Go to the poll and Vote!!!!!

[DonD13 0]

Ok, since the poll finished almost a week ago and nobody has said anything here, I will. Vancouver is the winner of the vote. I suggest we get started soon, before people start to lose interest and move on to other projects.

The first thing to be addressed is exactly how much of Vancouver do we need to model and simulate. If anyone can come up with a good map showing the whole metropolitan area, we can figure out where the boundaries of our regional grayscale map will need to be. Anyone who lives in the area or is familiar with it will be of great help. Any city or town who's residents primarily work in the city will need to be modelled as well to get a realistic representation of the city as a whole.

As soon as we determine the exact boundaries of our SC4 region, we will need to create a grayscale topographic map of that exact area, and decide the city configuration (e.g. which areas should be large city maps, which should be medium, etc.) and then start dividing up the work for people to model the various city maps in SC4.

Just thought this post needed bumped and the project needs to move on.

My $.02
Don

[TheJerseyDevil73 13]

Visit my link to Edmonton below. This is as real as it gets. For anyone who hasn't seen it this is the ultimate challenge and at the same time the perfect model for what you are trying to do. But with one person trying to accomplish it. Good luck with this project...

[flamesrock 6]

7trumpets! Welcome back. I noticed you registered at SimCitySphere. Will be as actively involved in simtropolis as you were last year?

[mcarch 15]

Well, there are some good votes out there. The Chicago area is quite large for any reference.

Here are some cities to add:

Omaha, NE: For info since its in the midwest go to www.eomaha.com. I live in Omaha, and to date we have about 800,000 people. Commuting is about 30 minutes from the downtown area. We are sometimes known as the 20 minute city. It is one of our rules; Anywhere in the city on a normal day, should only take only 20 minutes! For traffic types, we mostly have Interstate 80. Omaha is in a grid shape pattern, so it is easy to recreate. The location of the Missouri River at the feet of the Downtown area. An Old Market Area. To be honest, really I havn't found a City with a Country feel with City Advances! Please, check out www.eomaha.com!

Kansas City, MO: I don't know much about this city... but when I have visited its mostly old and trashy in a way. That is my opinion, but is a good City to do!

St. Louis, MO: A great area! I have went through it once, and everything I saw was well taken care of. However, the downtown is not much to be desired... not very many tall buildings!

Sacramento, CA: I don't know much about it, but it is very isolated!

How about any city in Ohio Ex: Cleveland or Columbus, I have looked at the map each city is mostly alone by itself.

[Pitfall 0]

they alrdy have their 5 choices but ill reply anyways to mcarch, omaha probably isnt the best since it does have quite a few commuters from the surrounding region, pop. is actually only about 380,000 (city) and it doesnt stand very tall as a city in general, all your other points were true and good + id love to see a bat of the zoo ,

K.C. , very feasible, around 650,000 city population, river splits kansas, missouri border, like u said not to much of a good looking city, not many great landmarks, has an international airport not to many commuters although the metro area (including overland park and olathe etc) probably has over 2 million people, very diverse wealth and industry, no subway

St. Louis, again quite a few commuters from surrounding area, maybe to small once again only about 340,000 city population, good looking city many attractions , lots of casinos on the miss.

Sacramento , duno never been there

Duno, i voted for Salt Lake on the actual vote, both it and Portland are very do able and not to big of projects but Portland does include a lot of surrounding area commuters and both lack mass transit, another problem with salt lake is that it might not be big enough for the project as well as i think it only has around 160,000 but u could include ogden maybe , and portland u have salem to the south and vancouver (washigton) to the north
duno much about vancouver canada other than pop. is about 470,000 lots of water , and if ive heard correctly it has a very diverse asian population including the 3rd biggest china town (n.y., s.f.) , oh well hope the project goes well ill definetly be following!

[rewright 804]

Sacramento does have mass transit; a light rail system running from the Southeastern suburbs thru the downtown and back out the the Northeast. It also has an inland seaport, lots of freeways, military bases and outlying suburbs in the foothills.

 

Most of it's commuters come from the immediate area, and being the state capital, it has some nice gov buildings and a nicely laid out downtown with pedestrian mall along it's main street, and a broad park-like mall leading up to the capital building.

 

With a population of around 1.5 million it would be a very doable project.

[bobucles 0]

What about Vatican city? It's a tiny country in the middle of Italy, the smallest in the world.

[alexr15 2]

What about Atlanta, it has about 425,000 and densifying in the city and over 4 million in metro area. I-285 beltway, I-75N-S, I-85N-S, I-20E-W, and other state highways (SR 400, US 78, etc.) Multiple skylines with edge cities (Downtown, Midtown, Buckhead, Perimeter, Cumberland). Some mass transit (Marta trains and buses in suburbs) The only thing is that is very spread out I think about 6000 sq miles not sure though.

[DragonFire1380 0]

First Id like to admit that I havent read all 4 pages of this post yet.

However, Id like to add my comments about the suggestion of St.Louis.

I wouldnt use it, I live 40 miles west of it and there are tons of people that drive to the city from 40-60 miles away, lot dont even live in STL county. Not to mention all the people that come from IL and vice versa.

There is no subway, no monorail, or heavy rail....at least I dont think so. You have metrolink wish I suppose comes close to above rail but I dont think its all that to even consider...

Just my thoughts..

[cirugo 1,889]

Calgary, Alberta
Approximately 1,000,000 people in a relatively compact, self-contained area (at least in comparison to similarly-sized U.S. cities).
Very impressive skyline for a city its size. Has a fairly extensive light rail system and the major portions of the city are laid out along an east-west axis with enough variety in the terrain to make it interesting.



I disagree with Edmonton...JerseyDevil is doing an incredibly painstaking re-creation of Edmonton in the My City Journals section and I think it would be redundant.