Thinking about city journal

[Matthias King 348]

So I recently experienced a hard drive failure and lost everything. Every asset I customized, and there were a lot, but more than that, I lost every city I had, including two I put multiple hundreds of hours into.

One was more of a test city. It was the third or fourth city I started after learning a lot on the first ones. My first city was understandably awful in a lot of ways, but I learned a lot. Same with my second. I took what I learned and applied it to my third city. I did a lot of experimentation and learned a lot more about the game and city design/planning in general.

Then I started the next city, which was a rough draft of the one I really wanted to build. I put a lot of time and effort into it, putting a ton of detail into it, the kind that's easy to miss, which is what I like. Then my drive failed and I lost all of that.

Basically that's all preamble to say I've finally gotten at least a little motivation to start over, and I'm half thinking about doing a city journal, since I'm not very far along. The only thing is, I build really slow, and I don't know if anyone's going to be interested.

Anyway, I'm mostly just thinking out loud with this post.

[Roadman20 601]

Don't worry about how fast you build, it's more about what you think looks good and putting a narrative behind it.  Everyone's CJ is a bit different and is a source of inspiration for others to pick from. 

I've been building on the same map for over a year and I find that pretty slow for my CJ.  

[omnivoreceo 54]

Yea just start building. Don't over think it or anything, just start sharing what you're building as you get there and you can include what you want or whatever. Don't feel pressure to ascribe to whatever people here are doing...you can do what you want it's your city. Looking forward to seeing your handiwork! 

[Matthias King 348]

Ok, so here's the start. I've got a bit of progress going, but it's been very slow going.

I'm doing my best to recreate from memory a city I built before the hard drive failure. There were a lot of things about it that I liked, so I've been trying to recreate that. There are some places I've been able to recreate it pretty close to the original, and others where I don't remember exactly what I did, so it ends up different.

Here's an area view of what I have so far:

The city is my attempt to realize the city from a novel series I'm writing. The actual city is too big for CS, but I'm doing what I can. It's made up of three main boroughs and a few smaller islands in between. This is the start of the northern borough. I've started as the city itself started, with the historic oldtown.

That bridge off to the left looks terrible, I know. It's only temporary to get over to the water/sewage buildings. The borough to the west is supposed to be closer, but thanks to Natural Disasters, I can't terraform without destroying my entire city with tsunamis.

The city looks sparse and crappy right now. I haven't plopped/spawned half the buildings I have in mind, as I've been trying to recreate the parts I remember better, then I'll move on to the other parts.

Here are a few pictures:

I haven't had a chance to do a lot of detailing, but I've done a little in just a few places:

And this one has a little detailing in a few places, though it's far from finished:

So that's what I've got so far. It's far from spectacular, I know. I don't know when I'll have another update, or if anyone will even get anything out of what I'm doing. Anyway, there it is.

[Lost Gecko 481]

I don't know if you've converted growables into RICO or if you've been vercareful wit the zoning but I like the buildings layout, low level vanilla buildings used differently than in a fully zoned 8-tiles wide grid is a welcome sight  Maybe you could try lowering the sea level to terraform, I haven"t tried it yet though. Nice start!

[Matthias King 348]

Thanks. No, I haven't converted any vanillas to RICO. I've thought about it, but I'm not sure how to do it.

I'm very deliberate with every building I place, and where it's placed. If it's a growable, I zone for a single building and make sure it grows, then lock it so it stays. I don't zone and let anything grow randomly. That's one of the reasons I build so slowly.

I thought about draining the ocean and terraforming, then bringing the water back up when I'm done, but I'm not quite sure how to do it. But when I figure it out, I'm hoping that will eliminate the problems with tsunamis.

[Lost Gecko 481]

That's some dedication! To convert a growable into a RICO building you have to go into the "settings" tab of the mod, select the building you want to convert and press "add local", create appropriate settings then save. However the RICO version will only appear next time you load the game. If you want to stick with growables you can use "search it!" to plop the growable you want on a zoned area (maybe that's what you already do). "Disable zone check" allows you to move growables with "move it!" without them disappearing (maybe you already know all of that).

The option to change sea level is located in the water tab of the "extra landscaping tools" mod.

Unfortunately that's a lot of mods of course if you try to limit their use.

[Matthias King 348]

I have most of the ones you mentioned, except for 'Search It' and 'Disable Zone Check.' I heard about both of them and they sounded interesting, though I didn't know about the growable thing with search it. That sounds incredibly useful. Thanks for the info. I'll check it out. That might save me some time.

[Matthias King 348]

I've made some progress. The Historic District has grown.

There are still plenty of empty spots, but I'm making progress. I've expanded, and I got some of my highway infrastructure in place. Here's a three-way interchange a ways north of the Historic District.

Some places have been detailed, some haven't. Here are a few that I've spent time on:

Liberty Square, with the historic Dover Building behind it.

A mall, movie theater, shopping center and plaza in Linden Heights.

A few high-rises in the center of Oldtown, with the bus station in front on Stone Street and Mercado Boulevard.

On the same corner, on the west side of Stone Street.

On the same corner looking north.

Overhead view of Stone Street, between Buffalo and Puma Streets. I like the alley behind the three loft buildings.

The Travis M. Smith Business Center complex on Mercado and Broadway.

Some offices and parking west of there, along with Reflection Plaza across Mercado from the TMS Business Center.

A city office, parking, a small strip mall and some waterfront apartments on the east side of the TMS center.

Jubilee Park in the center of the Oldtown, with a view of the back of the Dover Building.

Looking north up Sorrento Boulevard in Little Italy.

A view south down Mercado in the northern part of Linden Heights.

The same corner looking east along Montenegro Boulevard.

The north side of Montenegro.

Looking south on Oldtown from Liberty Circle at the intersection of Liberty Boulevard and Stone Street.

There's still a lot to do, and I need to start terraforming to shape the coast along Ocean Drive, and get the power plant and a small dock in across Brickyard, what's left of the old industrial district. And I have to start shaping up the other boroughs.

I just have to figure out how best to terraform without tsunamis demolishing everything I've built. I think I'm going to have to drain the entire ocean dry, do my terraforming, then worry about bringing the water back without causing massive waves.

My next update will most likely be after I've gotten my terraforming project done.

[barcasam7 185]

I really like this city. It had a bit of an LA vibe on some of the shots as it feels long and dense. Keep it up!

[Matthias King 348]

Thank you. LA is certainly an influence, so I'm glad it's coming across.

[Matthias King 348]

It's been a while, but I've made some progress.

I finally got around to doing some large-scale terraforming to adapt the map into the islands I needed:

Here's a cloverleaf I built to connect the main highway known as the Loop and the parkway that runs along the western shore called the San Carlos Parkway. I'm fairly satisfied with how it turned out. I've done some detailing with road lines in some places and pretty much all the signage like merging and exit signs, though they're not visible here.

Here's a trumpet interchange connecting the parkway to a major thoroughfare. I'm not real satisfied with how it turned out, but it was the best I was able to do. The terrain added a lot of complications and problems given that it slopes significantly upward from south to north, and downward from east to west moving toward the river.

It's not terrible, but I wish it had turned out a bit smoother in places. I worked on it for hours, but this was the best I came up with and I'm not sure what I can change to make it work better. The on and off-ramps from that road going over the avenue aren't connected yet. I was debating cutting the avenue back a ways and coming the rest of the way with parallel one-way two or three-lanes, otherwise the ramps create an awkward intersection. Suggestions for changes or modifications are appreciated.

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Here's a place off to the west of the parkway where I want to make a nice riverside park, but I'm not sure quite what to do yet:

I have the foot bridge going over the highway to the other side, but beyond that I'm not sure where I want to go, or what other walking connections I should add. Suggestions are appreciated.

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And here's the coastline of Oldtown:

I still have a lot to figure out for how I want to do the rest of it. I may end up moving the cruise ship harbor to the end of that pier, because as it is now the ships don't know what to do and just spin there in the water. Also I might like to have some extra room between that pier and the next one over to create another, possibly with a fish market and small marina. This area still needs a lot of work. Again, suggestions are appreciated.

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And lastly I have a few nice night shots:

Here's the Loop going into the Historic District. This is Oldtown on the left side of the highway:

And Little Italy on the right:

And finally the neighborhood of Coronado, the business district of the southern borough:

Coronado is mostly low to mid-rise, with only a small handful of high-rises, none of which are particularly tall. At 100 meters, the Wells Fargo building is the tallest building in this borough. This is an old area, much of it almost as old as the Historic District. The blocks surrounding the fountain plaza saw some attention and money infused into redevelopment over the late-90s and early 2000s, resulting in the new buildings now overlooking the plaza, along with a few new or renovated street-level parking lots, but development has all but ceased, first stalling during the recession following 9/11, then halting completely with the economic collapse of 07-08. With economic recovery still slow, and the epic mismanagement of the city's former mayor, this little bit of rejuvenation is the most the neighborhood has seen, and is likely to see for some time.

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I'm not sure when the next entry will be. I work on the city fairly regularly, but I work very slow and oftentimes wonder what I actually got done after several hours of work.

Until next time.

 

[Matthias King 348]

It's been quite a while since my last post, obviously. My asset list kept growing and was starting to get out of hand. It was getting to where my computer could barely run my city with 24 gigs of RAM. I went through and trimmed the fat, going from 236 pages of assets down to 199. I still have a few things, mostly older trees, I'm planning to get rid of as soon as I've had a chance to edit a few assets to replace them.

But I wanted to post to ask advice. I'm planning to do express lanes on the highway running through the downtown/CBD of the biggest borough. I've just barely started it and haven't put down any streets or buildings yet. The highway will be sunken pretty much all the way through the CBD. The thing I'm trying to decide is whether I should have the express lanes sunken along with the rest of the highway, running through the center like other express lanes I've seen, or should I make the express lanes elevated, creating a kind of double-decker highway with the main lanes sunken, and the express lanes elevated to where they're basically at grade with the street-level roads.

Suggestions and examples are much appreciated. And once I decide, I'll get to work and post some pics of my progress.

Thanks in advance.