Retrofitting NAM into your city

[qazzy1122 2]

Now that NAM 32.1 is out for Mac users, many SC4 players (including me) are getting their first taste of NAM in all of its glory.

 

From you seasoned NAM veterans out there, what are the best ways you can improve your already-built cities with NAM?

 

 

[Compdude787 916]

Well, one thing you could do is put in smooth 45-degree curves on your roads by placing a single road tile on the inside of the curve. This also works with streets. This is explained in the NAM manual. You can also use a bigger variety of roads with the Network Widening Mod (NWM) component of the NAM. For example, there's six lane avenues and roads, so you can use this to upgrade any avenues that are over capacity but you weren't able to put in a freeway nearby. There's also a 4-lane road with turning lanes and another without. This will provide more variety to your four-lane roads than just using Avenues everywhere. 

 

You can also have elevated road networks to take an avenue or road over, say, a railroad track. These can be dragged out when you place an elevated starter piece or height transition. You can even make the avenue or road go under said railroad by using Flexible Underpasses (FLUPs). Or you could make the train track be elevated and go over the road. It's all up to you.

 

Oh, yes, and then if you really want to have some fun, use the Real Highway. It gives you a more realistically-scaled freeway network where you can create your own custom interchanges where your only limit is the puzzle pieces available to you. Keep in mind that it requires LOTS of patience, and the resulting interchanges and freeways take up much more space than the Maxis highway. However, the space increase is more in keeping with the scale of the game, and will really give you an idea of how small the city tiles in the game really are.

 

Oh, and there's lots more features of the NAM that I haven't even mentioned here. For example, you can use Draggable Fractional-Angle (FA) Roads to break up the grid in your cities, make diagonal streets and draggable/clickable smooth curves to make more realistic-looking suburbs, put in a ground-level light-rail network (even in your streets like a streetcar or tram), make high speed rail networks, build a wider variety of bridges, and much, much more...

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

From you seasoned NAM veterans out there, what are the best ways you can improve your already-built cities with NAM?

From the get-go, you should have access to two things: the Traffic Simulator and a set of bugfixed transit stations. That alone should get you started. Everything else (NWM, RHW, Diagonal Streets, Roundabouts, GLR, and everything that every video tutorial has ever glorified whilst ignoring the two most important parts of the NAM that are intended to actually fix the game) is just icing on the cake.

Though if you really wanna get your hands dirty, you could start with roundabouts and turn lanes. They're pretty simple and don't require you tear all that much out of an existing city.

Oddly enough, this is one of the few Youtube tutorials that still applies to the current NAM, despite being, what, 10 versions behind? And I can't even call myself a NAM veteran, I'm a NAM developer.

There's some more advanced stuff that does require you bulldoze parts of your cities, partly because you need to make room to fit them, but depending on how much your city is already developed, it may also be because you want a blank slate to play with all of the new stuff. I'll leave that to others to post their thoughts on the matter.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Make a sandbox region and experiment with the parts that interest you.  You may want to install NAM incrementally by using the custom installation.

[DavidB_ 83]

Finally been able to enjoy a native and stable SimCity 4 experience with the latest NAM (for the first time since... forever!) on an up-to-date Mac. Previously I'd made it to NAM 30.1 on a number of PowerPC Macs, just before the discontinuation of the Mac .zip download due to the '31' monolithic repackaging. Coincidentally I'd lost my playing region again, and meanwhile my focus had dropped off anyway. But luckily I kept a backup of my plugins for such a day like this; in fact I might well attempt dumping a latest NAM 32.1 installation on a PowerPC just to see if it works.

 

Sometimes I enjoy 'retrofitting NAM' into a pre-built city more than my usual' settlements around a pre-built regional (RHW/rail) network', which grates on me when I can't get my layout *exactly* right. Somehow I feel a tad laxer when it comes to demolishing old cities, 'for the greater good' xD

 

In any case, my commendations go out to memo, Tarkus and the NAM Team on the hard work they have done for us Mac addicts, even where it (admittedly) only benefits a minority of players! Many thanks for your diligence, we owe you one

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

The idea of retrofitting the NAM to anything sounds like a big job, but with the current installer package it is just another computer run.  Then it becomes a matter of running your city/region long enough for the revised controller to take full effect.  It sure isn't like the old days (not long ago) when you had to drag in each piece vary carefully.

 

So, have fun with this, and congrats to the NAM team who have done their usual yeoman job,

[rsc204 21,865]

I think retrofitting the NAM could be much like revisiting a city and improving it, sometimes you will tear town what seems like a lot, but often the improved results compensate for your losses. Many people for example have retrofitted RHW to replace their existing Maxis Highway, it really depends on whether you perceive it as work or play, and how willing you are to demolish and re-build parts to do it. Personally I quite enjoy the extra challenge of retrofitting stuff in existing cities as it forces you to find more creative solutions as you are always trying to use the least amount of space. When you build these networks in empty tiles, you can be much more free with it and so the results of each method can vary hugely.

 

If you aren't so familiar with the NAM though, I'd sure recommend getting a test region or play region setup and just try all the new pieces out. It really helps to have some idea of what pieces are available when building, with all the wonderful NAM options it can take a little while to become familiar with everything.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Hey guys.  Initially your NAM installation using the custom mode in the installer should only be with the standard controller.  Adding stuff that will cause you to make other changes, like urban renewal projects to fit in RHW items is a separate deal.  Urban renewal is done manually by the mayor and there is nothing automatic about it.

 

Seems like rather a lot of worry, when you have full control.

[starlightshimmers 0]

If you're a lazy player like me that aren't so concerned about realism, I like NAM for the roundabouts (because you can put fancy monuments and stuff), increased road capacity, fewer pollution (I don't know how I did this but I think NAM does something with the Clean Air Act ordinance that significantly reduces it), pedestrian boost (people are more inclined to walk, again I think its an option on NAM but I can't remember how I added it in it's been a while since I installed it), upgraded 4 lane roads and the fancy 2 lane avenues (these are basically roads that are cosmetically modified to look like small 2 lane avenues, there are mods that put trees on the middle of them and even railings, it looks fancy).

 

The rest of the features I don't really use since they're all just cosmetic but maybe when I'm finally satisfied with my city maybe I'll start adding more realism to it.