Show us your Hillside!

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

some are really cool, but most of them work to hard against the terrain imho.

 

btw, matt, that's awesome work on these lots, love the custom foundation idea

I guess that's part of the challenge, trying to keep nature happy whilst building well. I try to use 15m "steps" and terrace my way in steep areas. Also wrapping the roads around the contour instead of forcing a grid also makes it look better.

Speaking of, here's another picture!

Although not as evidently hilly as the last, this road runs through a gully in the mountains with the surrounding buildings well clear of it. Because of the steep nature, there are limited access points to this road and hence it seems to function more as an expressway.

 

[КaZZ 203]

lastone very nice!

[lhrob 213]

some are really cool, but most of them work to hard against the terrain imho.

 

btw, matt, that's awesome work on these lots, love the custom foundation idea

I guess that's part of the challenge, trying to keep nature happy whilst building well. I try to use 15m "steps" and terrace my way in steep areas. Also wrapping the roads around the contour instead of forcing a grid also makes it look better.

Speaking of, here's another picture!

Although not as evidently hilly as the last, this road runs through a gully in the mountains with the surrounding buildings well clear of it. Because of the steep nature, there are limited access points to this road and hence it seems to function more as an expressway.

 

 

May I ask...where did you get the stairs in the left-center part of that screenshot?  I'd love to have something like that for my city.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

They are from the Mas71's WP2 Addon Highwalls from the LEX, which also contains the grassy embankment walls.
If you want the guardrails on top, then you will need this file as a dependency, although these are just the walls I used in my other pic.

[lhrob 213]

Thanks.  Your hillside looks really cool!  Good work.

[Cottoncandy Cyanide 145]

Off topic( I'm sorry, I was tempted to! :C ):

Hills hills hills~! Let's roll down the hills~! So many hills. God so many awesome hills.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

Off topic( I'm sorry, I was tempted to! :C ):

Hills hills hills~! Let's roll down the hills~! So many hills. God so many awesome hills.

I wouldn't roll down these hills... you might find yourself in the path of an oncoming car or hitting a tree! 

[cogeo 960]

Building on hillsides is a little more challenging, but with some terraforming, a proper slope mod and some... effort you can zone and develop the area really efficeintly, without wasting much space - I would rather say without wasting space at all, as some space between lots would have been required even on flat areas (for small parks or trees). While most lots are allowed to grow on sloped terrain, the result is often not very good aesthetically, as they may use those unsighty "foundations" or "retaining walls". So the goal is to flatten the lots' area before you zone and grow them (zoning on a sloped area itself causes some terraforming, often not the way you would like).

 

And there's another feature that many players don't know, higher elevations (up to some point) enjoy increased desirabilty, so it might be beneficial to try to grow R$$$ on hillsides.

 

Below is a part of the R$$$ area in one of my cities:

 

You can see only lowrise development here (villas), on 2x3 lots. This lot size is very convenient and versatile. Later on, as the city grows, they can be upgraded to palazzos, condos, or even hirises (two lots can be aggregated to form one 4x3).

Unfortunately jeronij's walls were made a long time ago, and have undergone very few updates. Also the set is incomplete (eg no corner lots) and their effect is strong - they are modded as the ingame Small Park Green, but having so many of them put together has an extremely strong effect (and monthly cost). The pics above are from my modified set (which I'm going to release some time). It addresses a lot of issues, including aesthetics (fewer trees, better slope-conforming fences), more types of lots like corners and those with trees only (like the ones you can see along the city's edge), useful in cases where the terrain is sloped, but not enough, to justify "Walls".

 

 

Another pic (from another city). I grew this $$$ neighbourhood in a separate area from the begining, on a nice hill (I have just got my first condo, but the area is not yet covered-up, even many of these walls are missing); a work in progress so far. Take a look:

The road at the base of the hill will be upgraded to an avenue at some time, with commercial development along it. Take a look at the road layout, sims are forced to use this road section to get to their workplaces, ie all traffic created by these residents is funneled through this road. This creates favouravle conditions for commercial developmemt (C benefits from the high traffic). The more the residences grow, the higher the traffic, and therefore the commercial development to expect, which means that those sims are more likely to find jobs near their homes. Also no major arteries are run through the residential area, which means less noise and pollution there.

[nos.17 5,256]

Some of the steeper hills in Silent Springs are near the coast.

 

 

The 2nd one is hard to see, but the middle with the Porkie's trees is about a 20% grade:

[KonstantinII 1,106]

The hills are completely developed into terraces!

[Knn123 0]

hope that worked!

[korver 27,686]

[korver 27,686]

 

[korver 27,686]

[korver 27,686]

[korver 27,686]

[korver 27,686]