Need Help on train overpass without water

[haukkeiv 2]

Hello

I am a newbie at Simcity 4 (I did play simcity 1 though) taking time break from Sims 3 )

 

I need guidance on a problem of developing a terrain part of my city, I am trying to have the train go across my city with three different area's that the train tracks goes over the road(s) (note: the roads are 2-3 levels deeper 1x? tile or can be an avenue 2x? ) like a bridge (overpass) something like what you see in a city not a highway area,. I have tried to lower my terrain and made it 1x6 tiles striaght (long) with each end point in an upward slop to get it to level of the rest of the city, but i cannot seam to put a train bridge up with out there being water under it  and when I try to remove the water (Raise the terrain to the leve i desire) the bridge is demolished.  

Can any one help either with a link to a bat / mod that I can get, that will do this. or a link or explaination on how to do this please.?

Here is a picture I found that shows what I would like to do.

 

Thank you in Advance

Please, if this is in the wrong forum Section please redirect it to it's proper location Thank You

[timmie 988]

Have you downloaded the NAM (Network Addon Mod)? You'll need that for train viaducts/overpasses. (Here it is.)

It's a large mod, so take your time when installing it and take a look at the documentation, and maybe try it out first in a new region. It adds tons of functionality to the game, like trams, new highways, other road types, but the most important feature is the improved traffic mechanism (it's broken in Simcity 4, and NAM fixes that).

 

With NAM, you'll be able to make stuff like this, but you need to have patience and practice a bit.

 

 

[GeometryMath Algebra 614]

Hello

I am a newbie at Simcity 4 (I did play simcity 1 though) taking time break from Sims 3 )

 

I need guidance on a problem of developing a terrain part of my city, I am trying to have the train go across my city with three different area's that the train tracks goes over the road(s) (note: the roads are 2-3 levels deeper 1x? tile or can be an avenue 2x? ) like a bridge (overpass) something like what you see in a city not a highway area,. I have tried to lower my terrain and made it 1x6 tiles striaght (long) with each end point in an upward slop to get it to level of the rest of the city, but i cannot seam to put a train bridge up with out there being water under it  and when I try to remove the water (Raise the terrain to the leve i desire) the bridge is demolished.  

Can any one help either with a link to a bat / mod that I can get, that will do this. or a link or explaination on how to do this please.?

Here is a picture I found that shows what I would like to do.

 

Thank you in Advance

Please, if this is in the wrong forum Section please redirect it to it's proper location Thank You

I think what you are trying to do is to drag a rail bridge over a sunken avenue, and that's impossible. As what timmie said, download the Network Addon Mod to get the rail viaducts, if you haven't already.

 

About the bike thingy, but it's eyecandy only. We can't make functional bike paths, and if we want to do, we have to go into the game's EXE, and that is illegal and can mess up your game.

 

[haukkeiv 2]

Thank you both,

 

   Yes I have the  Network Addon Mod first thing I got lol,  I seen Timmie's last picture this is simular to what I want only difference is no highway and I want the surrounding area to be the same level as the train rail and only have about 5 -10 tiles on both side of the bi-duct in which  are sloping upwards to the surrounding leveled area, as for the bike thing "not an issue"

   

The reason I am asking is because I have tons of individual rail systems (traffic) in my city tranporting industry and they pass thru my city and with the rail crossing the road on flat level with all the rail traffic it tends to bog up my road traffic waiting for the trains to pass, so my Idea was to have a few bi-ducts / overpass rail system and just slop the road area.to keep the road traffic moving.

 

   I just want 1 road/street and the other two are avenues going under the rail system is this possible? can the  Network Addon Mod help with this or do I need another bat / mod to accomplish it?

 

PS. not to offend but a good avatar icon for Timmie would be Timmy from South Park

 

Thank for you response and Thanks in advance 

[haukkeiv 2]

Just A thought I notice that in some area's in USA they have bike paths inbedded (next to) in the side of the roads, part of the road system not the side walk. I had gotten a few bike paths that all take up 1x? tiles beside the road, but not part of the road.

 

 simular to the road with side parking like in this picture 

 

 

 

Would be cool to have a bike path there (at least on 1 side instead of parking,  Especially have a bike path for highway areas too.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Bike paths would be strictly eye-candy.  To make them active would require a change to the basic .exe which is forbidden by our agreements with EA.

[haukkeiv 2]

Yes I understand that what I was thinking was to have plopable roads like 1x3 with an animated biker or few (couple) bikers starting from one end of the 1x3 road to the other end of the road, then repeat like an animated gif without the automata destination, The only thing that would be useful in the game would be the usage of the road itself for vehicles like the real Nam roads,  with a few of these plopable roads placed with the maxis roads it would give the illusion that there are bikers using the road simular to the bike paths that make it seam like there bikers but only pedestrians are active.

[APSMS 1,892]

It would be more effective to change all of the network textures. Lots (TE or otherwise) cannot provide zone access; this problem also occurs for MS parking LOTs. Changing all the network textures would be exhausting work.

 

If you only want static bikes, it is possible to create the illusion of bikers sharing the road using T21 network props (the same thing that adds trees to roadsides and medians). Alternating tiles, as well as some RTK4 (whatever that means; the term is correct though) use would allow timed bike props to display on the road at various times. It would also be possible to illustrate marathon events this way without having to use TE-lots as the standard workaround. This is also how many historic CJs get carriages and horses on the non-MMP accepting road networks.

 

Not sure I understand what you want from the train network pieces. An illustration would help, perhaps? There aren't any rail pieces available (lots or otherwise) that are more effective than the NAM offerings. (I can't recall any rail LOTs that are even close to the kind available for roads)

 

EDIT: if you're trying to lower the terrain and sink the roads into the ground under the rails, be aware that water exists at 250m and below; if you're to close to sea level (the extra cheats mod with the TerrainQuery cheat will tell you the height of the gound under the y-value) sinking the gound below 250 meters will always result in water; in this case it is absolutely necessary to raise your terrain (and your rail network); this is not a NAM related issue at all, but a current game limitation. Temporarily lowering the water level to put in the pieces will also only result in underwater road networks once you put everything back to normal. If you build on sufficiently high ground (generally above 265m--15m above sea lvl), then this should not be an issue.

[Ro-Bo 183]

   I just want 1 road/street and the other two are avenues going under the rail system is this possible? can the  Network Addon Mod help with this or do I need another bat / mod to accomplish it?

 

Have you looked into flexible underpasses (FLUPs)? It is a NAM component.

[haukkeiv 2]

As I said before I am a newbie,

As I was trying to lower the level of the terrain using the small valley tool @ most zoom view, it took me 3 clicks of the mouse to reach water level, another attempt  I tried to use the shallow canal tool

then raising the terrain around it to level the surrounding area, then using the smooth tool to slope the lower terrain to even to the level surounding,  trying to give it the dip type slope ,.

 

this gave me the terrain that I wanted.  then i tried to put a rail across, it was always red so then I lowered it until i seen the water , the bridge was built but when i tried to raise the land in the dip area, so that i could place the road the rail bridge demolished. Aaaarrrggg

 

Is there any -keys like Cntrl, Alt, Shift etc.  that I need to hold to control how the terrain tool performs, like able to go 1 level down instead of 1 click making it go 3-4 levels down?

 

I was watching a youtube video of someone making an area for there raised water canal and they where using roads to lower/level the terrain, I am going to try to learn and accomplish that technic to see if that will work

i am still figuring out things, just hope i can figure out how to make a bridge that doesn't need water (bridge over land not water) to do so  

 

  My goal is to plain a whole city in a large region lot, by building all the roads zones etc. at ounce then deleting the city giving me the proper terrain I need then i can start developing my city slowly (without getting into debt  )

I have one city in mind  for my 1st large lot  Springfield, IL  this has at least 2  slop type area that the rail system goes across they also have a few overpasses, and the surrounding farm area (the city sits in a bowl like terrain)

 

the second large lot is a combination area of Granite City, IL (Steal factory town) and Alton, IL (very hilly) and the surrounding area,  

 

my last large area I am going to try to combine parts of California.Coastline - beach area,  Los Vagas -  downtown,  Grand Canyon - Colorado River,  and  Chattanooga - Southern Railway.

Ounce I accomplish this all the medium and small lots will be a breeze

 

thank you all for your help I will try my best to not make your help be in vain.

[APSMS 1,892]

Well,firstly, to differentiate from in-game LOTs (which are the land that building grow on), cities are built on tiles.

 

Secondly, I think you misunderstood. The rail viaducts are not bridges. They are puzzle pieces that currently need to be plopped one-by-one for a complete elevated heavy (not EL-) rail network. Secondly, you can't raise the terrain under bridges after they are built. The occupy the entire space underneath them. If (when) you get further into custom content, esp. the network items, one of the biggest limitations is the fact that all networks are flat and two dimensional. What this means is that while the road appears as a bridge, and the cars travel across the top, the bridge actually acts like a large wall/embankment that occupies the entire span; This has two primary implications, the first being the issue that you've run into, where trying to edit the terrain underneath a bridge demolishes it.

 

Secondly, it also means that other networks can't pass under the bridge, like road, rails, etc. Any such things that you may have seen on the forums and development boards are either viaducts (not bridges) which are subject to the terrain underneath them (i.e. slope of the ground affects the slope of the elevated road/network on top) or are blantant lies, and are created using visual tricks only possible because of the fixed 2.5D camera of SC4 (optical illusions, so to speak).

 

Now, for some actually useful advice, you probably noticed (in the tutorial I think it mentions it) that shift enlarges area edit tools, and ctrl shrinks said area.

What is not mentioned is that Shift+# (where # is any no. from 1-5) changes the size of the tool/brush, and Shift+F# (again, and of the F1-F5 keys) adjusts the strength of the tool. It is possible to adjust either one independently of the other, though ctrl and shift have their own settings which override any you may have set if you push those keys down after you adjusted the brush strength to your likeness. Testing these functions explains much more than words, so you'll need to try it yourself.

 

As for the city planning bit, I just use money cheats (moolah changes your funds to whatever value you want, but you'll need Buggi's extra cheats mod first to do so) to build my infrastructure, and by the time the city is up and running I'm already making money. The best part about moolah is that if you don't want that cash around once you're done with it (viable city and so on...) just use the moolah cheat and get rid of it all (type something like moolah 50000 which will change your city's funds instantly to 50000 regardless of how much you had before).

 

Though I couldn't bear to play the game without the NAM now, I did spend a lot of time playing vanilla SC4Deluxe (didn't know mods existed for games; I'm not much of a gamer). These things I mentioned above, with the exception of the Shift+# thingy, quickly became apparent because there wasn't some wayward plugin to blame it on.

 

EDIT: thinking about it, a good example of a network viaduct that is draggable is the MAXIS Elevated Highway. It conforms to the ground beneath it, and lets networks cross. Bridges are a whole different animal.

[haukkeiv 2]

Thank you Verrrry much APSMS for that, it explained a lot to me,  I also am not much of a gamer

 

Heck for a very long time I had been playing Sims3 Just to build the houses and stopped at that

 

 I was watching another video  "SimCity 4 Tutorial How to build canals" at 2:15 it was talking about hole digger and at the time I thought, ' I could use it to make the slop and then place a road,  then place a bridge '. lol

 

Now that you have explained that I need viaducts NOT bridges, I will look around for Bat/mod to help me in my work.

I have downloaded alot of Stuff from SimPeg4,  SC4D LEX , STEX, and other various sites. I like to be prepared

now I believe the main task is to educate myself in learning how to implement what all of the helpers advise into practise

[timmie 988]

You already have viaducts, they come with NAM. Do take a look at your rail menu (If you can't find them, re-install the NAM with a custom installation and click the check box to install rail viaducts.)