Oversized growables

[Kaschperl 92]

Hello folks!

Now I'm going to throw an idea in here that's about solving the growable size restriction as well, although not using overhanging parts of buildings. This is an idea I had when thinking about how to overcome the game's 4x4 growable limitations and the overhanging buildings thing.

Now since I couldn't get into modding this game myself yet I don't know if this would be hard to do, or possible at all, or maybe even totally mad as it somehow interferes with the building spawning behaviour, which I know is a bit of a problem. I'd try putting my hands on this myself, but I'll be stuck with a 5-year old 32 bit notebook for the next 3 months :/

The idea is fairly simple, and someone else might already have thought about it before. As I said it isn't based on overhanging buildings but rather on modular buildings that grow in a previously defined pattern so that they form one large building.

A building that has a larger footprint than 4x4, say 6x6, would be modeled in smaller pieces that fit the standard lot sizes. That means that the 6x6 building would be broken down into maybe four 3x3 buildings, as which they would be put into the game. They need to be prevented from spawning separately, of course, which is problem number one - you don't want a fourth of 40 Wall Street or whatever growing in your city after all

Now we have our orthogonal 8x8 street block in our city. This is where the mod that controls the spawning behavior of these oversized buildings has to detect that there is enough space for the oversized building to grow, orient the 6x6 footprint in the block, and force the game to spawn the four separate 3x3 buildings in the correct pattern, which is problem number two. Problem number three is that some of these separate buildings would have to be spawned without a road connection. I thought about if it would be easier to have an anchor building among the separate modules that has the stats, road connection and everything for the the complete building, and the other modules just complete the building visually while being non-functional themselves.

Problem number four is that this would all have to happen on flat terrain, because obviously you want all the separate modules to be created on the same ground level, or the modules must be tricked into using the same elevation level somehow.

I remember that Sim City 3000 used to do this when you had a high-wealth low-density residential area. The game would create a villa in the middle of a lage fenced-in garden if there was enough space for it, with all segments of the whole lot being individual 1-tile buildings.

 I don't know if you get my point and if my description is good and detailed enough. I know there's some issues with how I imagine this would work, but I just want to hear your thoughts about it! Maybe you come up with some improvements or simplifications, or maybe this could be combined with the ideas you had about overhanging buildings.

  Edited September 8, 2015 by Kaschperl  

[Ocram's Razr 963]

As much as I would love to see growable buildings bigger than 4x4 tiles, I would be content with CO throwing us modders a bone and allowing plopped buildings with occupants (I believe there are currently 21 occupant types: 5 residential wealth levels, 3 low density commercial levels, 3 high density commercial levels, 3 office levels, 3 generic industry levels, 4 specialized industry) so we can make oversized RCIO buildings.

 

--Ocram

[Attercap 123]

Yes but some people dont like to "plop" buildings. For me, it's like a cheat. In SC4 I was spending hours to destroy ugly or repetitive buildings to allow new assets to grow. But personnally I dont like to create a perfect city, building by building. There is no magic.

It's why I think we need bigger growable. Actually there are three sizes : 2 tiles, 3 tiles, 4 tiles... = boring cities.

But obviously, plopable with jobs is a good thing. But not enough

[Judazzz 1,936]

Found a perfect application for this!

4x4 garage with 4x8 size. You can find it here for those who are interested: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=511604483

Actually, in the situation above it's possible to place a 8x4 ploppable on that spot: if you place it on the four roadside units (where the residential building is standing in the first pic), the remaining 4 units needed will cover the wasted space. The only requirement for this to work is that the immediately adjacent units (where the fugly-ass green sci-fi tower is) are in use, so the game will automatically snap the 8x4 asset in the right place, making it cover the four roadside units as well as four units in the wasted space.
This will work with any sided ploppable, as long as you have at least half the asset's width available on the road side (so it has sufficient road side access for service vehicles): for a 12x4 unit ploppable, you'll need at least 6 roadside units available - the rest will cover the wasted space.

Long story short: to use unused space in the way the example above shows, there's no need for overhanging buildings: the game will allow ploppables larger than the amount of units available, as long as certain requirements are met. In other words: that same garage would also fit if it had a 8x4 footprint.

  Edited September 8, 2015 by Judazzz  

[GC_Vos 714]

That's interesting and definitely something I have to look into, because last time I checked you can't build beyond a 90 degree bend in the road. But I guess I'm wrong if the zonable area on the right is filled. This method however means that area does not need to be in use.

[ReneXL 16]

I'm pretty ok with the 4x4 lots - I'd much rather take Skylines without that much object limits than large textures :/

[Judazzz 1,936]

That's interesting and definitely something I have to look into, because last time I checked you can't build beyond a 90 degree bend in the road. But I guess I'm wrong if the zonable area on the right is filled. This method however means that area does not need to be in use.

That's true, but it is sufficient to temporarily plop an asset (1x1 is enough - the adjacent cells need to be developed, but it doesn't matter with what kind of asset, growable, ploppable, even roads will work) on that spot to make sure the asset for the corner location snaps correctly to the road. Once placed, the 'helper' asset can be bulldozed again. It's a bit more work that having assets with built-in overhang, but the end result is the same either way.

Oh, I'm pretty sure there are situations where 'my' method won't work, and your approach will - so keep up the good work

  Edited September 10, 2015 by Judazzz