Show us What you're Working On

[matias93 7,535]

Still needs a lot of work and refinement, but what do you think about this hillside dense development?

 

[SC4L0ver 394]

@matias93 Looks good so far! When I build a city over sloped terrain I always cover up everything with roads to smoothen the terrain as much as possible. I'd drag roads over those empty tiles and then add filler lots to mimic backstreets (with dumpsters, garages, etc). I love that funicular at the bottom, a nice choice to bridge the height difference. I'd make a park by the funicular plopping trees and some staircases, pretty much like the one in Montmartre in Paris. Muy buen trabajo!! 

@Linus van Pelt Wow!! That model looks impressive!! Like many people said above, I'd try to cut it into multiple props (buildings, machinery, piles of rubble and scrap metal) Nice!

 

[Simmer2 23,807]

15 hours ago, matias93 said:

Simmer2 was working on some scrapyard props, but they were mainly focused on scrapped cars, IIRC. This one is much more flexible in that sense, but it really needs to be separated as different props. Anyway, congratulations Linus!!

Actually It will be a complete scrap yard once done. I have many more props ready to assemble but I'm not doing a show and tell yet.  You know the saying..."It will be done when it will be done"

Simmer2

[T Wrecks 10,209]

1 hour ago, matias93 said:

Still needs a lot of work and refinement, but what do you think about this hillside dense development?

[PIC]

I like it, especially you didn't go crazy with terraces formed by embankment lots and ended up turning your city into a huge Ziggurat. The following is something I often fail to remember myself, but instead of using one of the halfways level rows of tiles for the road, you can also drag the road over the steep slope, which will automatically result in embankments. This leaves more space for the actual RCI development, and it isn't unrealistic at all, unless you exaggerate the height difference.

There is also a parameter that can be used to make the game switch from massive embankments to a concrete underconstruction with pillars more often, but I don't remember where that parameter can be found or what it is called.

[SC4L0ver 394]

About the texture pack I said some posts ago I was working on, I want to show you all a pic of the textures that made their way into the pack:

I thought about releasing a reduced version of it, getting rid of some of them (there are a few pixels difference in size in some overlays and their curves compared to others, however they fit seamlessly one each other). However, it's really a PITA to work on SC4Tool deleting all textures one by one and them re-importing them, as I can't load texture previews and I'd like these to have correlative IIDs.

What do you think?  

[Krasner 1,062]

@matias93 That's pretty good I love dense developments on steep slopes as there is many places like this in my birthplace (with indeed, some ridiculous gaps between two levels, sometimes the next building overhanging the one next to it from 4 or 5 floors). The area along the plaza looks very neat But maybe this small 1X1 R$ with the old BYRRH add on one side appears too often... And I used this one for a while, I know it grows like mushrooms after a rainy day and hardly gets competitors...

Apart from that, I really like your choice of buildings, it's nicely coherent in terms of colors and the whole thing gains kind of an atmosphere from that (I guess).

[Linus van Pelt 293]

@SC4L0ver Those Textures look great. It's always great to have matching textures to existing texture mods. You could even do a texture override for some of the existing BSC Textures.

[kschmidt 6,179]

7 hours ago, matias93 said:

Still needs a lot of work and refinement, but what do you think about this hillside dense development?

 

Growable only, all kind of Bat sets will randomly popup Single plot on hilly terrain will work out fine, slope mod working, W2W set´s mostly need some mangament with some embankment and some island area level as a result, well done !

[matias93 7,535]

Giving an update on the hill thing. Thanks to you all for the nice comments :

That's most of what's built by now; as it stands, it still needs some connection to the highway to the left (south) and a more coherent layout on the coastal plains at the bottom.

11 hours ago, SC4L0ver said:

When I build a city over sloped terrain I always cover up everything with roads to smoothen the terrain as much as possible.

I've done that too, and indeed I plan to use that method on other neighbourhoods of the same city, but in this case I found the 'following the slope' a more fitting strategy.

11 hours ago, SC4L0ver said:

I'd make a park by the funicular plopping trees and some staircases, pretty much like the one in Montmartre in Paris.

Is a nice idea, but not for this place, as is a worker class neighbourhood, and there are priorities waiting before landscaping, like funding the police (right now they are vastly outnumbered by petty delinquents and so).

11 hours ago, T Wrecks said:

especially you didn't go crazy with terraces formed by embankment lots and ended up turning your city into a huge Ziggurat

Mind you, I've done ziggurats before, and they are a nice concept too, but you need a lot of money to transform a hill that way, and a lot of central planning. This neighbourhood was basically letting the longshoremen, sailors and their families to claim any plot of land they could fence off as theirs, so the entire thing is a bit more than somewhat chaotic.

11 hours ago, T Wrecks said:

The following is something I often fail to remember myself, but instead of using one of the halfways level rows of tiles for the road, you can also drag the road over the steep slope, which will automatically result in embankments. This leaves more space for the actual RCI development, and it isn't unrealistic at all, unless you exaggerate the height difference.

Is a good idea, but the shape of this hills won't allow it to happen, as there are no deep ravines between the local peaks; also, the slope mod I'm using restricts that a lot.

11 hours ago, T Wrecks said:

There is also a parameter that can be used to make the game switch from massive embankments to a concrete underconstruction with pillars more often, but I don't remember where that parameter can be found or what it is called.

Indeed, those parametres are on the same exemplar as the slope mod, and even if I tweaked myself, I cannot remember how they are called or in which way they are adjusted.

8 hours ago, Krasner said:

I love dense developments on steep slopes as there is many places like this in my birthplace (with indeed, some ridiculous gaps between two levels, sometimes the next building overhanging the one next to it from 4 or 5 floors).

When planning the concept I was thinking more on Lisbon and Valparaíso, and for some reason I ommited the mediterranean France, which has a lot of beautiful examples of this very kind of urbanisation. I'll pay some visits to Lyon and Marseille on google earth to steal ideas, but it seems that they have been copied already on the real cities: now I cannot find the source, but in Valparaíso exists an apartment block that is built on a slope so steep that the street door on one side is on the 6th floor of the other side, and the building is shy of 15 metres deep!

8 hours ago, Krasner said:

But maybe this small 1X1 R$ with the old BYRRH add on one side appears too often... And I used this one for a while, I know it grows like mushrooms after a rainy day and hardly gets competitors...

I noted that already, but if you check the mosaic at the top, you'll note that they are more controlled now. I guess is a growth stage thing, but certainly I'll check the stats of that lot, its growth isn't balanced at all.

8 hours ago, Krasner said:

Apart from that, I really like your choice of buildings, it's nicely coherent in terms of colors and the whole thing gains kind of an atmosphere from that (I guess).

Well... 'choice of buildings' is a too-much-big concept to use here, don't you think? More than a selection, this is what happens when you collect almost every single rowhouse and W2W residential available everywhere for the game and restrict the high class buildings: the styles and colour palettes converge to a nice range of greys and bronzes, even if some middle class buildings are a bit more garish (but dilapidation can fix that, too ). I guess that when the city becomes 'ready', I'll make some photoshopped images on which the most evident deviations from the palette will be fixed, but for that there still are many months, even years, I guess...

5 hours ago, kschmidt said:

Growable only, all kind of Bat sets will randomly popup

Indeed, this is almost 100% growable (the exception are simply civic and transportation lots), and the lots themselves are majoritarily 1x1, 1x2 and 1x3 medium density, keeping the scale really well controlated (that surprised me a little, I was expecting some absurd pencil tower appearing on the middle, but it hasn't happened... yet)

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

@SC4L0ver: Those look great! Have you considered using GoFSH for generating the texture set? Makes it a hell of a lot easier to set up correlative IIDs and you can batch process and pack them all into a DAT at once as well with the scripting functionality. Plus you can template all of your current ones to any kind of pavement texture as well.

[SC4L0ver 394]

@Linus van Pelt I'll have a look, there are nice transitions and stuff in those packs. However, my idea is to create extra textures, not replacing any.

@kingofsimcity I have GoFSH installed in my computer. I used it to export @Bloemkoli's textures from his .dat. I'll fiddle around with GoFSH and see what happens 

@matias93 Nice to see your hillside development is taking shape really well! 

 

[Haljackey 17,355]

3-way interchange in uneven terrain

Edit: Completed

  Edited February 17, 2018 by Haljackey  

[nycsc4 5,250]

Removed one of my older diagonal avenues but didn't want to take down all of the buildings.  My original hometown of St. Louis, Missouri has several little plazas like this where the city's old streetcar lines changed streets by cutting diagonally through a block.

Before:

After:

Thanks!

[kschmidt 6,179]

2 hours ago, nycsc4 said:

Removed one of my older diagonal avenues but didn't want to take down all of the buildings.  My original hometown of St. Louis, Missouri has several little plazas like this where the city's old streetcar lines changed streets by cutting diagonally through a block.

Before:

After:

Thanks!

Very nice, do have used those recently in my Vienna innercity plaza´s ! Think they aren´t pedmall enabled, yet thos Pensionat buildings mirror still have road acces.. Tramway history maybe little difficult as there are nog pieces wich fit into that configuration maybe a Tram On road or street may do with some  twists !

[Simmer2 23,807]

Re: SM2 Trash and Burn

Next piece.....well its 3 pieces. A bit of a shift while gif making so disregard the slight left movement.

Simmer2

[kschmidt 6,179]

First shots of ANNO Europa next to be City !

Railway layout established and on top the connection to the RHW highway network !

Main railway station I was looking for a rather compact design, this on got it all at least a bus station and taxi area !

This city will be the last for the series brake !  Summer will see a comback of Mayon Province on a ecological way !

Enjoy !

 

[ESP15 570]

This is my recreation of Manhattan ( New York City ).

With the new buildings and towers.

Grand Central Station with the new tower. One Vanderbilt.

I hope you like it
 

[DavidDHetzel 1,816]

17 hours ago, Simmer2 said:

Re: SM2 Trash and Burn

Next piece.....well its 3 pieces. A bit of a shift while gif making so disregard the slight left movement.

Simmer2

this prop would also work well on a Pulp Mill or Coal Power Plant

[Dreadnought 8,227]

WORK IN PROGRESS --

THE JADE BIGHT II

WILHELMSHAVEN SOUTH:

(Click to make bigger -)

Yo, guys --

The city I'm currently working on is the third city in my "Tri-City" concept.  The theory is that each city will be dedicated to a specific RCI category -- commerce, residential, or industry -- and that each city will contribute its' expertise to make them all function as a whole.  Sort of like pieces of a puzzle that will share common elements, but could not thrive without each other.  Working along those lines, Wilhelmshaven South is the commercial element of the puzzle -- a heavily commercialized zone with no industry and minimal residential. 

With that in mind, I sculpted the terrain into a rather loose variant of New York City.  And what would New York be without Central park?  But I decided my park would divide the island in half, and that I could even carry the idea to the other side of the bay and stretch the park all the way across the city.  But, to keep it short and simple, this is my take on Central Park on my version of Manhattan.

You will note, fronting the north side of the park, a block of Manhattan-style residentials, with two buildings by Mattb325 -- the Museum of Modern Art, and -- of course -- the Plaza Hotel.  On the south side of the park are commercial and civic buildings -- the City Hall, a re-lotted variant of Carson Plaza, one of Mattb325's rail terminals, and the Eglise de L'Assomption library.

The park is centered around the Maxis Washington Monument, re-lotted to a 4x3 for easy use with the 2x2 system of the avenues.  I created 1x1 fillers for the large paved areas and used modified Paeng park paths for the wooded zones.  Paeng's pocket plazas were tweaked with lighting as were the Neptune Fountains.  The wooded areas were filled in with Paeng's Forest Tweak tree lots as well as my own custom filler tree lots.

 

DETAIL SHOTS

 

And, of course, THE PLAZA HOTEL

 

[nycsc4 5,250]

In the midst of a huge rebuild of large part of my inner city.  So great getting this tile rescued from the Prop Pox!  Been working all weekend to fix this area up.  Thanks to stumbling upon some of the best looking row homes I've ever seen (thanks, @Jasoncw!) and some great modern looking infill from @mattb325, I've been able to give an entire new look to this part of Vancouver.

Below are some before pictures.  The cable stayed bridge was replaced with that diagonal under truss bridge.

Let me know what you think!

Thanks!

[tariely 4,496]

@Dreadnought : That obelisk is... oh my !  I mean, it looks kind of disproportionate to me, compared to the nearest buildings. But otherwise, really nice alternate NewYork/Manhattan ; I like your rosy nights.

[tariely 4,496]

(Me, I'm just finished with my frenzy of passenger stations relottings ; last one : Jenx Railway station.

[tariely 4,496]

Oh, BTW, I uploaded my little relot of Kazuki Street Stalls v1& v2 :

 

 

[Simmer2 23,807]

SM2 Rutger Hauer Station is now available here https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3578

Unfortunately the STEX is on the fritz at the moment. Tried to upload it 3 times but it failed.

I will upload it here once the issues have been ironed out.

Simmer2

 

[Simmer2 23,807]

Next project to complete is SM2 True STR Sidings Vol1

This set will be made with 3 different STR configs, several lengths to choose from and 24 different industrial loads. 

Everything will be in a family therefore every time you plop a siding, you will get different loads and locos.

They allow both passenger and freight to pass through as you can see from one of these pics.

Here is  configuration 1

Simmer2

 

 

[nycsc4 5,250]

New greenway addition in Vancouver.  Will eventually connect the waterfront and marinas with two streetcar lines, the Broadway subway line, dozens of bus lines, and the 8th Avenue Greenway.  At Cambie the 8th Avenue Greenway shifts south to become the 3rd Avenue Greenway.  Combined, these two greenways run the entire length of the city from Boundary Road in the east to Point Grey and UBC in the west, providing a completely protected cycling and walking path through the city.

Thanks!

[RobertLM78 1,598]

29 minutes ago, nycsc4 said:

Combined, these two greenways run the entire length of the city from Boundary Road in the east to Point Grey and UBC in the west, providing a completely protected cycling and walking path through the city.

That's an awesome idea.  Like the close-ups, too. 

[Fantozzi 4,067]

Is it because of graphic card/driver that makes the same bats looking sharper/more detailled in @nycsc4 pictures compared to my game?

[rsc204 21,836]

5 minutes ago, Fantozzi said:

Is it because of graphic card/driver that makes the same bats looking sharper/more detailled in @nycsc4 pictures compared to my game?

Could well be. For starters you want to be sure you are using DirectX rendering, it gives the highest quality experience. What really makes the difference however, is adjusting the "3D Settings" of your GPU, using either NVidia's Control Panel or ATI's Catalyst applications. I think there is something similar for Intel cards, but it's way less useful.

The main thing you'll want to enable is Anti-Aliasing, which uses post-processing techniques to sharpen up the image. You need to force or "enhance" this to override any application settings, since SC4 wasn't designed with it in mind. Of course, you need sufficient resources to handle the extra workload, but it's rarely a problem given SC4's age if you have reasonably modern equipment. Here's my personal settings for SC4:

I use a GTX750ti card personally. Bear in mind not all cards/drivers will work with these settings. Some settings can also cause issues too, so whilst a bit of trial and error can really improve things, best to keep a note of what works and doesn't as you go through the process.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Yup, the last time I attempted to use antialiasing, it resulted in random horizontal lines through the building graphics and, hence, caused more problems than it solved. However, configurations are so varied that one user experience doesn't necessarily mean anything - for what it's worth, you could either share my experience or @rsc204's, or get a result that differs from both. But trying it out sure can't hurt.