road building tool, key to possible terrain editing?

[Marya Clare 1]

This just hit me as I looking at info regarding modding on SimCity 2013. I remembered that the roads have a feature where land can be raised or lowered. I also remembered someone on YouTube posted a video on taking advantage of the tool to terraform the land. So I was wondering suppose we create a copy of the road tool *, remove the road adding feature, and keep the raise and lower features. Then we can add in some graphic in place of a brush (think blurred red circle). One thing to add is in addition to removing the road, we would have to remove the part that adds supports for bridges. Is this a realistic solution? I really hope it is, because I would love to see some form of god mode in the latest SimCity

 

*I believe this can be found in a package file in data folder

[CapTon 592]

I was thinking about this same exact thing last night we'll have to see if it can be implemented.

[reReticulated Spline 69]

It's certainly the most likely place to look. 

 

SkyeStorme's regional freeway mod and other regional road mods can be build below sea level. So it's easy to use them to create rivers and canals. Although you do see the road at the bottom of the river as well as street lights sticking out of the water. If someone would remake one of the regional roads with invisible objects/texture you already have a river tool ready for use. (Add Xoxide's waterway tools to make the river able to transport boats as well.) (

)

 

The raising is probably more tricky. Raised roads turn into bridges at some point. If someone could 'override' the tool to keep adding dirt instead of turning to bridges than the combination of the these two would be a very useful 'poor man's' terraforming tool.

 

 

 

Until then you add water to your city like this:

 

[reReticulated Spline 69]

Actually, after trying some stuff out I found that the "regional walkway" is perfectly capable of terraforming up and down. If we combine this mod with the invisibility of the regional coastline mod, you can use it as a make-shift terraforming tool. 

 

 

Maybe I could give it a short in a few weeks when I have time.

[Moonraker39 17]

In adition to an "invisible" tool, maybe this same concept could be used to make tools so we could draw different land terrain such as the dirt color under roads, or a grass or possibly a pavement color to fill in around buildings that are ploped outside the city?

[Marya Clare 1]

I read the region package files, it seems likely to make a region from scratch. All you need is something like Photoshop or gimp to make the special grey-scale maps (I forgot the name of them) that identify the terrain shapes. Then you would need to create another special file referred to as terrain brushes of which I believe serve the purpose of matching some of the in-game terrain textures to the grey-scale shades. There is a lot more I could go into so I think it would probably be easier it take the original region files, replace the original maps with new custom ones, and perhaps rename some files. Still a lot of work but the possibilities are endless. I wonder if there is a way we could make a map that has selectable regions highlighted in a grid (I think a bit like SC4?), no blank spaces, and "great works" could be a square that is coloured or highlighted to mark it from the rest of the region. 

[Panther6308 14]

Marya,

 

I suggest you read this blog

 

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/building-edgewater-bay

 

You will find good informations on how they create a region and some layers used to create one.

 

A region is a stack of layers one over the other that contains ressources. Ressources are coal, oil, ore, water, forest, soil and pollution to name a few.

 

Pinky!

[Marya Clare 1]

Marya,

 

I suggest you read this blog

 

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/building-edgewater-bay

 

You will find good informations on how they create a region and some layers used to create one.

 

A region is a stack of layers one over the other that contains ressources. Ressources are coal, oil, ore, water, forest, soil and pollution to name a few.

 

Pinky!

Looks informative:)  I will probably have to go digging to find out more about the plot points.

[Danny50205 71]

hey there. Marya,

 

i am here to say clarify some stuff 

 

​number one using the roads tools for a rising tool in not going to be possible. the roads has it's rule and the rule is once claimed always claimed meaning if you set the hight of the terrain higher you will have a issue with RCI and buildings

on the the next thing i am busy at the moment with making tools for water ways that does use the road tool however it will not support anything but the ability to bulldoze and i won't have to worry about things like RCI  and building so this will work 

 

 

on to the regions 

regions are a hard thing to do there is a lot of processes that goes on 

making a regions will be possible if you are allowed to upload the full (regionterrain.package) file on to ST, because height maps and other stuff is not overridden outside the original packages 

but however to make a custom region would required some debug tools (city box 2048x2048)(unit connector)(great works place marker) and that's 3 out of i think 10 or so 

 

this is this here you can read 

 

enjoy