Guide: How to create your own (complete) building style

[boformer 3,169]

There are many nice building themes in the workshop. Most of them only contain small 1x2 buildings, and only buildings of one zone type and 1 or 2 levels.

The problem is that these houses are really small, and you need more roads because the ideal zone block length is 4 instead of 8.

For a working, balanced building theme (soon "building style"), you need the right mix of footprint sizes, ranging from 1x1 to 4x4. The 2 default styles of the game are a good indicator how many buildings of every size are needed (see the table below).

Upgrades

The basic requirement for a theme is that all buildings can upgrade properly. Buildings can upgrade to a growable with the same width and a length that is equal or smaller:

Example: 3x3 can upgrade to 3x3, 3x2 or 3x1

You have to make sure that every building can upgrade to the maximum level (5 for residential, 3 for other zone types, 1 for industrial specialisations).

When a building upgrades, the footprint says always stays the same, and the front-/backyard of smaller assets will be expanded to match the size (see next section).

For a style that covers all levels of a zone type, you will need at least 70 assets.

Backyard Expansion

It is important to know is that the front-/backyard of any growable asset will be expanded if there is enough free space so that the footprint length is 4 (e.g. 1x1 → 1x4). The expanded size is the one that matters when the building upgrades (a 4x3 building that is expanded to 4x4 may upgrade to a 4x4 building).

In general you should always choose the smallest possible footprint size for your building, and put extras like parking lots and gardens into the expandable front-/backyard.

Randomization

You can create a good-looking style with only a few models. The key is randomization:

• Use the color variation system to vary the wall or roof color of your asset
• Use the Prop Probability Changer to randomize the appearance of trees and props (the vanilla houses also use this)

You can also use the same building for multiple levels or zone types. The default European style contains only 17 (!) shared models for high density residential, commercial and office buildings. The rest are duplicates with different props (solar panels, pools), different color variations and sometimes a different texture.

Of course, a style without duplicates looks better.

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