What to do when your real city doesn't look like a real city?

[MarkShot 631]

I am currently living in Taipei, Taiwan.

I was driving around yesterday thinking about this place doesn't look like anyplace else ... meaning even in a flexible game it might not be easy to capture the feel of Taipei:

(1)  The lanes don't line up across intersections (and some cases the streets as well).

(2)  I learn from SC4 and CS that roundabouts (not common in the USA) are to keep traffic moving.  There are many in Taiwan except that they all have traffic lights which seems to defeat the whole purpose.

(3a)  Multizoning.  Like LD/MD residential with LD shops on 1F and 2F.

(3b)  Multizoning.  Little farm patches simply stuck here and there.  (I suppose a ploppable vegetable path would cover this.)

(3c)  Multizoning (underground).  Huge underground shopping complexes at major subway junctions.

(4)  Roads within city limits which wind up mountains with slope and turn sharpness hard to reproduce in a game.

(5)  Motorcycles everwhere (yes, on side walks)

(6)  Tons of two way short residential blocks not wide enough for two ways; not gridded; often deadend

(7)  Large amount of vacant real estate not abandoned (Chinese invest in real estate like in The West people invest in financial markets)

[twalsh102 1,601]

Markshot,

Not sure why you would consider any of these items as being "unreal."  Every city around the world has its quirks.  I don't think any of these "issues" are unique to Taipei.  There isn't one item you have listed that I haven't experienced (or at least seen pictures of) elsewhere in the world. 

Unfortunately there are many situations that happen in the real world, that the game just can't replicate.

1)   Such an offset intersection can't be created with plain vanilla Maxis streets/roads.  It might be able to be done with the NAM equivalent, but usually there are a number of hoops to jump through trying to create intersections where streets cross at other than 90 degree angles.  Even if possible, I'm not sure how "realistic" it would look once the area is zoned, or once buildings are plopped.

2)  The NAM team might be able to replicate something similar.  Whether they would decide to do so would depend on the "payback" for the work necessary to do so.

3a)  While there are many downloads that replicate the look of such buildings, actual multi-use buildings just can't be created in-game.  The existence of at least one particular exemplar property suggests this is something the SC4 design team at least considered, but it was never implemented.

3b) This is the one thing on the list that might be replicated in-game at least visually, with some planning.  You couldn't successfully mix agricultural zones in with other zones because of desirability and pollution factors (although I've seen indications that there is at least one mod available that allows agriculture zones to be placed anywhere).  But you could visually replicate this somewhat, by using some of the Maxis park/garden lots, or some of the other downloads available that replicate neighborhood vegetable gardens.  You might also want to check out the latest version of CAM, or SPAM (by Pegasus) as these mods change how agricultural zones interact with other zones.

3c)  Trying to create something that can't be seen would add nothing to the game.  Jobs for a particular lot can only be created through building exemplars.  As far as I know, you can only have one building exemplar per lot, so stacking buildings/structures with jobs isn't possible.  For a particular lot, you could just simulate underground space providing jobs, by adding those additional jobs to what would be appropriate for the aboveground space, and telling a story about what notionally exists underground.  Another way to do it would be to create say a subway station lot (or taking any existing such lot), and then create a building exemplar with jobs that represents whatever commercial space you envision being underground, and again telling a story about what notionally exists underground. 

4)  Limitations of the game are, what they are.  Unfortunately, the mere act of trying to lay a road on steep terrain, dramatically changes that terrain.

5)   I'm not even sure how someone would go about creating a mod that would replicate this in-game.  My guess is that it would have to be purely a visual mod, as the traffic simulator wouldn't be able to handle something like this.

6)  While this can probably be replicated visually with one-way streets, the traffic simulator wouldn't work as you would want it to.

7)  This would be easiest to replicate (I would think) by just choosing random areas to not zone.  Of course, you might want to find some other empty lots you could plop to disguise the grass, as not every undeveloped piece of property looks like a golf green, or is rectangular in shape.

Bottom line is you can only do the best you can when trying to capture the look and feel of any particular town/city.  Some things just can't be done.

[MarkShot 631]

One correction.  Not undeveloped land.  Fully, completed buildings.

Unlike the USA, units are sold here as empty shells.  But there are many more or less vacant buildings with owned units being held as investments.  They add significantly to the city scape footprint, cost of real estate, ...

They have every attribute of normal housing except the absence of people.  This situation exists in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, China, ...

[twalsh102 1,601]

Very interesting.  Something similar does often occur here in the States.  But usually its a function of developers overestimating the market, rather than building a "shell" as an investment. 

Couple of possibilities off the top of my head since we are talking about a building with no occupants:

1)  Use LM version of buildings if they exist.  If only LM with jobs versions exist, remove the jobs.  If only RCI versions exist, convert to LM.

2)  I'm not sure if the following would work; it might require some experimentation.  If you would prefer "empty" buildings to grow in an appropriate zone, use an existing growable R or C building and remove the occupants.  My thought here is that if a building has no occupants to begin with, there are no occupants to move out and trigger either dilapidation/downgrading or abandonment.  I'm not really sure how the game would handle this. 

3)  As an alternative to 2), change the jobs/residents numbers to a very low number to maybe represent an small on-site leasing office/maintenance team.

4)  As an alternative to 2) and/or 3),  have multiple versions of a particular lot with differing building exemplars (NOTE:  the IIDs of both the Lot and Building exemplars would need to be different to work):  one representing a "full" building, and one representing a "shell."  This way both versions of the building might grow. 

[MissVanleider 1,851]

4 hours ago, twalsh102 said:

1)  Use LM version of buildings if they exist.  If only LM with jobs versions exist, remove the jobs

Do you know if there are specific instructions / tutorial for how to do this? I have some beautiful LM buildings badly modded with too many jobs. I'd love them to display just a monthly cost instead of 7000 gamebreaking jobs!

Basically I know that i probably have to edit more than one exemplar to change the job count to 0, and also whatever gives the lot the monthly 'cost' so i can presumably set that to 1 as well, but i'm slightly reluctant / scared of messing with lots (esp. Crazy japanese ones) where i dont really know what i'm doing! I've never found a thread that covers this so if you know one please let me know

[f3cs 1,063]

I feel like I am a little late, but here's my 2 cents: I feel you. I live in South America, and we have a little different concept of what is real here. Cities with a fixed clean skyline like Santa Rio DO NOT exist in our culture.

For example, this is Campinas, one of the greatest cities in the Brazil that is not a capital: 

This is Nova Iguaçu, the city that I live:

We don't build giant skyscrapers, our type of urban development is a superdense cluster of midrises. 

Having a full highway through a city center in Brazil is just insane. Somebody could actually kill the engineer if High five interchange would in Brazil. You can't have more than 2 visible levels in a interchange. If you do so, you're giving the preference for the car and forgetting about people, even if nobody would walk there in the first place.

It is actually pretty hard to define what is a real city. It depends on culture and how you want your city to look like.

[twalsh102 1,601]

MissVanleider,
Sorry I didn't reply earlier, but somehow I missed your post.

There are a number of tutorials about modifying things using Reader, I'm not aware of one that specifically addresses your issue.

Be that as it may, this is actually one of the "easier" things to mod if you are comfortable with Reader.  There is only one Exemplar involved (the Building exemplar).  Note that for any given lot, it is the Building exemplar that provides all the stats for the building (jobs, pollution, costs, flammability, costs, menu the lot shows in, etc.). If you give me an idea of how comfortable you are with Reader / knowledgeable you are with the structure of a building exemplar, I can tailor a set of instructions on how to do this (FYI, all we are doing is removing two properties from the Building exemplar to remove jobs from a LM with jobs, and possibly modifying one or two more depending on what else you want). 

Also, if you do want instructions, what version of Reader you you have?   Reader can look very different from version to version, so it might help (depending on the level of detail in the instructions) if we're using the same version.. 

Tim

[MissVanleider 1,851]

@twalsh102 Thank you Tim. I have used the reader before, although I don't know which version, I will try to find out and update. I have I think only used the reader to edit my terrain mod parameters by following this tutorial:

Whilst I'm not sure this counts as anything impressive, it does mean that I have seen the screens before and not totally intimidated! If I can find out the version I am using a couple of pointers would be great. I have looked for tutorials before on this but found them a bit too general - probably because this is a reasonably simple thing to do by 'advanced user' standards!

Thanks,
Abbi

 

[twalsh102 1,601]

If you followed that tutorial without any problems finding things, you're probably using an older version since the tutorial was based off version 0.9.3

I'm using v1.5.4.  I don't think it's changed much from the past few versions (v1.4 or above).  If your version is fairly close (maybe all versions have this), on the main screen, there is a blue circle with a question mark in the upper right hand corner (this is the About button).  Click this and it should give you your version number.

Another way involves finding the Reader executable file in the C: \Program Files (x86) folder ( by default - C:\Program Files (x86)\ILives\ILives Reader\Reader.exe) and looking at properties for the file.

If you want to upgrade to the latest version, now would be the perfect time (I've run into issues helping a  couple of other people with older versions of Reader not showing all the properties for a given exemplar).   The latest version (v1.5.4) is here:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/7g06tdc313xmkxx/Ilives Reader_v154_Release.zip?dl=0.  There might be a couple of hoops to jump through to get it working (unlike earlier versions of Reader, versions newer than 1.4 require a couple of Microsoft "dependencies" to work properly

If you would rather avoid the hoops, and keep what you have, I think we can work with that.

Tim