Itsukushima

[Diamond 42]

Introduction

I've had this dream for quite a while. A city, no, actually even an entire region, modded to look like Japan. I already did quite a huge region before, in which i tried to build as realistic as possible. The goal was to get a huge city which spans across several large maps with a cool looking skyline, which is made entirely from crystal white skyscrapers. I put quite a lot of work into it, searced for bats that would fit into it, and created a nice CJ on it on simforum.de. I was pretty pleased with it, and when i got too frustrated, i used to flatten the region and start all over again. After several attempts, i came up with a result which i liked, but which got infested with PropPox. This is the last shot of the region view i have before i dropped it and quit SC4 for quite some time. Now, i'm back. And i've got a lot of ideas i want to try.

Goals

I want my city to have the look and feel of Japan. Therefore i switched all the trees to seasonal ones which fit, while also throwing in some cherry trees to give my region a Sakura feel once a year. Due to this, i also blocked pretty much every Maxis lot in the game and made my own lots. I already did this quite a lot in the past, but only to complement my plugin folder, never to give the game an entire new look. So far, i've done around 200-300 (civics, R$/R$$ low density, some industry) for this region, but i still have many, many more to do until i can finally build at my heart's desire.

I also want to build it realistic and try to avoid the grid to a certain degree. I used to make my roadwork really curvy in the past, but it neither looked good nor was in any way realistic. I realized that in fact most cities do have gridlike structures, but they arent orthogonal to each other, but in all kinds of angles. And so that's what i aim for. This picture of my old CJ is a good example.

Difficulties

Yeah, i guess there will be quite a lot of these. First, it will take a tremendous amount of lotting and modding work, with even more searching fitting bats on top of it. A big reason why i write this CJ is to keep me motivated so i'll finish this project. Another is how i can get all bats to grow evenly. In the past i always had Maxis lots as some kind of backbone of my cities. So all plugins were just additions, not replacements. This time, it will be different, which forces me to mod quite carefully. On the other hand, SimCity4's mechanics on how to get new buildings into the game are quite complicated, and i have no real idea how to balance out of much which lot will grow. That's why i decided to make one single, invisible .sc4model to act as all buildings i'll add. I created sc4descs for each type of growable and stage, and i will add buildings as props on these lots. So basically there's only one building for each type of growable, but with a lot of varying lots. I hope this will work out how i imagine it. Please let me know if you know better or have doubts.

Pictures

Yeah, i have some of these and i can show what i have done so far. I can offer to upload the lots, but i won't be able to add readmes/provide links to the dependencies.

R§-Buildings. I have made around 48 lots in total for this type: 16 1x1 stage 3, 16 1x2 stage 2, 16 1x3 stage 1. The pictures show spring, summer and fall.

These show several civic buildings i lotted so far. The first shows a huge coal power plant. I kinda missed to add a parking lot though... I have to add that later. Also i already found a bat of fukushima power plant made by SOMY, so i'll just have to use these. The second picture shows the two big railway stations i'm planning to use for regular rail and HSRP network in my region. This spot will be quite near the downtown of my city. The third picture shows all the education/health lots i've done. elementary schools (small/big), a library, a hospital (top right) and museum (temple building bottom right).

To finish, i've got two shots of the region:

Hope you like my project .

[vivapanda 422]

You have been trough a lot of thining before acting, always a good sign. I wish you all luck and hope to see more soon! Viel Glück!

[SimCoug 5,973]

I like the non-grid approach.

[Diamond 42]

Currently i'm busy creating CS§ lots for low density zoning. It's pretty tedious task, but it's true: no pain, no gain. I'm kind of pleased with the result, but it doesn't really any japanese look to it yet. And i still need a lot more to add variety.

i also switched to another terrain mod:

[vivapanda 422]

That region has a lot of intereting potential! I wonder how you'll use the lake with those steep cliffs.

Those cherry blossom trees look pretty awesome too!

[Diamond 42]

@vivapanda:

I'm afraid i kinda flattened some of those steep cliffs O:-). At the moment i'm trying out different kinds of seawalls and also lotting a lot of industry and R§§§ (this one's hard... i find almost no villa/mansion type bats), but i've also some more things to work on. I try to build from time to time to get some distraction from all the lotting and modding. Here's some more pictures of the region as of now.

[Markus J 242]

I am curious, is this going to be an inspired by Japan look and feel, or an attempt to recreate it exactly?

[Diamond 42]

Just an attempt to give it a "japan-like" look and feel. If i'd want to recreate it exactly, i'd have to make the residential areas much more crowded than i have so far.

[Diamond 42]

Update!

I have continued my city a bit and also created quite a lot of more custom lots to go on. Especially low density CS§ and CS§§ are almost complete. Even though it looks quite generic and could be found anywhere on the world, i'm really happy with the result. Yet, i still have to add a lot more hypermarket/supermarket lots to offer more variety. Also, i still haven't really touched CS§§§ so far. I tried my luck in creating some R§§§, but i haven't been able to find any Villas that looked Chinese/Korean/Japanese, yet. villas/mansions/manors in general seem to not be very popular amongst batters i guess. I turned my focus on medium/high density residential for now. I'm quite curious what all the exchanges have to offer in this regard.

View of the suburbs in Spring. I love how the cherry blossoms look. The MMP are a great addition to make the railway blend better with the suburb. But i still have to work on how i use them. I'm pretty sure that the transition from suburb to seawall could be done better, but i don't have any idea how to do it, yet.

Here you can see some R§§. They look quite wealthier due to richer colors. It's also noticeable on the region map!

Some CS§/CS§§ in the upper right corner. I found some kind of mega pack on a japanese site, which featured around 30-50 similar bats of good quality and varying heights. I sorted them by amount of floors, and used the 2 story high ones for CS§/CS§§ along with madhatter's liquor stores.

Closeup of the R§-lots. I tried to put a lot of detail in there. The top left building is a library.

A shot of the industrial area. I relotted all of my previous I-D/I-M and I-HT lots to use japanese cars on their parking lots and also created some more lots of sizes 2x4 and 4x6 to add some variety. Industrial lots are pretty much done by now, i've got 87 in total now, should be sufficent . Maybe i'll add some filler pieces if i find the time.

A relotted version of Frosch Elementary on a small hill inside the suburb.

region view, overall

transportation map

the vision

[Markus J 242]

Good progress, and you got a huge map to build on!

[SimCoug 5,973]

I love those region views and the winding roads and streets. Your suburbs are impressive!

[Schulmanator 5,799]

Sounds cool! I would love to see some bigger pix of your work.