my humble metropolis

[mjgawthrop 0]

well, this is my first attempt at a city journal, so any contructive criticism would be appreciated.  Sadly I didn't start until after my city was already pretty far in development, but i still think that it is pretty cool.

First a shot of the region altogether

and transportations

 

the central city is Getter Started (named for being the first city in the region) with over 100K sims

and here is the newest section of freeway (at the time I took the pics for the journal) in the region, it is in Getting Started and acts as a new connector out to the suburbs.  THis part of the pic shows where the old and new meet.

 

Just north of Getting Started is Bayton, which also holds over 100K sims

 

to the east is Making Money (the first city that actually made money on its own w/o subsidy... at least that's the story... ok so i still used cheats)

 

and to the south is Bayview Island, which holds a large manufacturing center, one of the top universities in the region, and the region airport (which can't be fully seen in the picture)

 

well, that's all i have for now, i look forward to comments and suggestions

[Vitruvius 0]

Well, I wasn't able to see the pics right away, but I'm sure one of the more technically adept members will point you in the right direction there. I cut-and-pasted the URLs and it looks good - you must have spent a lot of time! The tiny pictures make it a bit hard to see, but your downtown was just a forest of towers, and you've plainly spent a lot of time on the region. Show us more!

[mjgawthrop 0]

ok, i think i fixed the problem

[mjgawthrop 0]

TIme to update, I'll give a closer look at Bayview, the town south of the city center

Here is the Penensila, it is the oldest part of the city.

 

And this is Old Main Hill, the oldest part of Bayview Island.  THis area is a traffic nightmare, despite multiple projects to ease the traffic congestion.

 

And here is the University neighborhood.  It is actually one of the newer neighborhoods in the city, but already it is rich in traditions started at the University.  If you go at just the right time at night you might catch a student riding the Bull statue naked as part of their initiation as a True Blue Bayviewer.

 

Anyway, i hope you all are enjoying this little tour of my humble metropolis

[jacqulina 162]

very nice keep it coming

[mjgawthrop 0]

well, time for another update, this time the central city of Getting Started

in the past couple of years the city started it's Industrial Lands Reclamation Act, converting the unprofitable, polluting industrial sectors to high profit high rise commercial.  This is the result of all this effort

as you can see the city is now an uninterupted forest of skyscrapers

 

this is the F-2 exit at Industrial Blvd, this was the first area to be reclaimed from the industrial wasteland in the city, as you can see, the reclaimation has been a success

 

this area around the F-2 exit at Seaport Way was the second area to be reclaimed, this area was one of the most difficult to keep public support on, as it was one of the areas that had began to develop hightech industry, but the cities determination did not waver

 

and the final area to be reclaimed from idustry did not happen until F-3 extension went all the way through town (and now halfway across the region)

 

Now for some of the more historic places in the city, as the oldest city in the region there is plenty that we can talk about.

The first place of Interest is at the Airport Avenue exit on the F-3.  At one time the regions airport was here, before being moved to Bayview Island.  This is also the exit used to get to Getting Started University (GSU), I'll talk more about the university later.  It is hard to believe looking at this area today that this used to be the outer limit of the city

 

Now we come to the intersection of University and Convention (named for obvious reasons).  Here you see the main convention center for the region (though not the only one), and GSU.  Getting Started University is the oldest university in the region.  Their proud mascot is the Aggie, a reference to the regions humble beginings as a farming community, and the colleges original purpose as an Ag Science school (though now you are more likely to go there for engineering or business, the two largest schools on campus, but they still do have a strong Ag Science program, even if there hardly is any agriculture in the region anymore).  The highrises you see around the convention center and the university are the oldest in the city, this area was the first area to be swept up in the Urbanization Movement that has swept across the whole region.

 

And now our final stop on this brief tour of Getting Started is New Main Street.  Right here is were New Main goes under the freeway and then widens into it's broad avenue.  New Main goes from just about the center of historic downtown (which I will update on later) to the terminus of Seaport Avenue.  Old Main Street was long ago replaced by the F-2.  New Mainstreet was intended to be a area to compete with the Ramblar in Barcelona, fortunately this dream was never fully realized, it is a very nice part of the city, but the soul of the city still lies in Historical Downtown where it belongs.

 

thank you for visiting my Humble Metropolis, I hope you have been enjoying your stay.

[Fee_Nicks 7]

Very realistic! However, get yourself a water mod.

[MayorTim 16]

Well, I am not sure how you could call this realistic, but it is a nice skyscraper forset anyway.

[Thut 0]

Very nice your buh i would recommend making the pictures a lil bigger (i appreciate you trying to make pages load faster thou)

 

[Nardo69 51]

Some technical remarks about your presentation:

1. Nice to think about poor members like me with 256kbps (there are even a lot of 56K users around here) but the pics could be a bit bigger.

2. You can turn off those pesky UDI icons by clicking the mysims menu and then the UDI menu. I think it is the button on top - just try it.

3. You can make screenshots without the SC4 menu: Turn it off by clicking the small rectangle in the lower right corner. Then press Ctrl+Shift+S for makıng snapshots - believe me they will look much better!

Okay, to your metropolis: Looks nice but also a bit ... nostalgique ... I saw neither a BAT nor anuthing from the NAM (but you DO have either the DeluxeEdition or the RH XP since I saw avenues). Actually your region looks like the towns I made 2 years ago - okay your looks a bit better than mine of that time.

Try to download some nice BATS / LOTs from the STEX and the NAM - you'll love it! I would recommend you for the beginning:

- PEG's different CDK plus their addons for a nice coastline
- Marrast's embankment set - a 150 % must-have
- PEG's seasonal and random woods
- all Simgoober stuff
and since you love highrises look for NDEX and the good ol' BATs from Cobb and PDA.

Hope I could help you a bit

Nardo

[mjgawthrop 0]

Thank you for all of your suggestions, sorry about all the small pics, for some reason my photo hosting site is resizing all my pics, does anyone know of a website that doesn't do that?

[djrules5454 5]

http://imageshack.us

[Thut 0]

Its resizing them because some websites dont allow each picture to be over 250k and in your case they are since they are in PNG format. So try opening them in an image editing program... changing the size and then save as JPEG (i recommend).

 

For most sites files over 250k will be automatically resized.

[jacqulina 162]

nice work love what you are doing

[mjgawthrop 0]

Hey all, i finall fixed the problem with small pics (i think) 

So, this time we move north of Getting Started to Look at Bayton

 

There are three main parts to Bayton, the first part is The Island.  The Island is an extremely crowded part of Bayton, with bridges connecting directly to Getting Started and to The Narrows.

 

Then we move onto the Narrows, this area is not that crowded, but the roads are, there is but one small two lane road the moves through this area that all people wishing to go from The Island to The Mainland must take

 

 

And finally there is the mainland, this area is adjacent to Getting Started, and is highly sought after for people who can afford to live there.

 

Once again, I hope you all are enjoying your visit to My Humble Metropolis.

 

[Thut 0]

Great you fixed it... Its a great start although I am tempted to give u some tips (dont take them the wrong because there is nothing better than seeing a humble region becoming into a marvelous place on later pages) 

Here something i would recommend:

 

• Download alot of bats and stuff from STEX
• Get some mods like NAM
• Flatten some reas because your city is like a rollercoaster... people must be exhausted walking 2 blocks....

Thats about it and this has been mention by previous member posts already so i hope they dont get mad at me for repeating them. But anyways look forward to seeing this region evolve...

[mjgawthrop 0]

Thut, thank you for your comments.  I've downloaded a lot of mods and lots, the pics I've been putting up first have been from my older cities that I built before getting NAM and more lots.  And as to the flattening them out, I appreciate your reasoning behind that suggestion, but after growing up in the hills outside of Reno, and spending many a weekend in San Fran, the hills in my cities don't seem that bad, but there are some areas in my region that are flatter that you should enjoy.  And fear not, as soon as I get more screenshots I'll be updating again.