Alien Love Secret

[LakeTrash311 0]

Alien Love Secret

 

Well, after looking at some of the work by a lot of you guys and girls, I thought I'd make my contribution.

 

Welcome to Alien Love Secret - a city rapidly approaching 150,000 residents. The city is built on Skippydam's huge Tacoma region, found at simcitycentral.net.

 

Mods used: NAM, Traffic Cop, Sim_Idiot's residential slope mod, timotheus4's rich blue water mod, and joerg's bridge height mod.

 

Cheats used: Hirachi's school/hospital mod, and Buggi's Super demand ordinance. I consider the mods as cheats since the school/hospital mod dramatically frees up my budget expenses and the super demand one, is, well, self explanatory. However just because there is an incredible amount of demand, don't expect to see a really dense vertical megalopolis. You'll see some gargantuan skyscrapers when I'm ready to let them be built.

 

I'm going for a city of very realistic proportions; hopefully we'll see something about the size of Houston. Many of you from Texas may notice that I'm taking some design cues from Houston and Austin.

 

Now for a little teaser, I suppose.

 

A little (updated) road map of the area, I put together just for you:

Stay tuned.

[dev 47]

This looks so cool! I hope to see more soon!

[dudyconstructor 40]

this looks so cool!! nice job! cant wait for more!

[LakeTrash311 0]

dev, dudyconstructor: Thanks guys, I really do appreciate your comments, this being my first CJ and all...

 

I might start diving in and throwing in a little bit of history tomorrow, but chances are I might not be able to till the day after. Even though it's early, and all I have for right now is the region view, again I appreciate the encouragement. More will come.

[Shadow Assassin 336]

Pretty cool. (so far)

 

How did you get the map like that? Do you use a special program or do you spend hours trying to make it look good via the roads view?

 

If you used a special program, can I have a link to it?

[Superstar 69]

Wow! great region, can't wait to see this start growing out!

[ChicAgo333 2]

that road map is amazing

 

bunnies for you

 

[Mistro 0]

Wow! that road map looks amazing!   I have to agree with Shadow_Assassin! How did you do that? if you did that yourself, great job! if not... well still... Great job!

[vidioman 21]

Someone needs to make a program that automatically makes those roadmaps. It would make planning easier.

[LakeTrash311 0]

 

First, I'd like to give you a peek at what's been happening in the downtown area.

--Oh yeah, I updated the map in my first post; made up some highway numbers.

 

The area which is now a respectable financial center was once a small farming community for many decades. (I have no pictures of that though, so I'll have to describe it as best I can).

 

A birds-eye view of the entire borough...

 

...a closer view of historic downtown...

 

...and a shot of the center of it all.

 

You may notice that the actual downtown section has smaller blocks than the rest of the city, which are bounded by three avenues and highway 20 to the north. This was the whole city during its early years. Then, as the SimNation's version of the interstate highway system began consruction near town, a new generation of settlers saw great promise in the city which not only sits at the intersection of three major highways but also on a gorgeous region...thus Alien Love Secret's economic boom began.

 

There would be no way that the new highways could actually cut through downtown, so a small loop was constructed around the area and the old highways here were perserved.

 

As the city grew outwards, the standard size for blocks grew, as developers thought, Well, why not? The place has plenty of space to grow and big boots to fill, regardless of the boundaries put forth by the water.

 

A lot of people moved here within the next few decades, and as of today, the boots haven't even begun to fill.

 

--(About any kind of map drawing program: To be really honest with you I'm just as interested in one as you guys are. But for now, all I'm using to make the road map is SC4's traffic maps, Paint, and Photoshop.)

[+Guest]

Looks nice. Where did you get the name from?

[Nugget699 0]

i was about to ask teh same thing! lol

[bravoj 0]

good work!

i love the way the zones are growing only through the boulevards, i think that's very realistic...

kudos!

[LakeTrash311 0]

I finally found time to put an update together. 100th post too - the ST addiction must be taking hold.

 

A new roadmap of the metro area - I changed the colors to make it not stick out like a sore thumb so much.

 

As of the last update, the population has risen by over 100,000 sims, and the first phase of the new Loop 207 has been built. The actual freeway will be built as the city continues to grow.

 

Today I'm gonna show you the part of the city just south of downtown.

 

The most notable thing here obviously is the airport, and just to let you know, I'm calling this monstrosity a municipal airport. That means whenever the time comes for an international/intercontinental airport, I'm actually gonna set aside a large city plot to build it. Of course, it looks huge in the game, but again I'm trying to get the most realistic proportions that I can.

 

 

I want to say that a large city plot such as this is around 16 square miles. Please correct me if that's inaccurate. If that is right, the runways would be around 2 miles long each, which is a pretty realistic length for a municipal runway.

 

The terminal and parking lots:

 

and the control tower, cargo facility, and hangars:

 

 A few blocks to the east is the odd intersection of SimNation 7 (N-S) and state highway 150 (E-W). This is the only true freeway section of 150, although it is a expressway/ mini freeway through the rest of the city.

 

A major intersection on the mini freeway (running N-S):

 

Of course, as the city grows, this will likely be upgraded to a true freeway.

 

cctoide, Nugget669: I get most of my city names (including the name of this city) from my record collection. The rest I think up myself.

 

Thanks again for the comments. More to come, hopefully sometime late next week (after my philosphy final ).

[LakeTrash311 0]

*bump*

 

Due to RLS (and a little bit of laziness) I haven't updated this thing in quite a while. But my city isn't dead; I've been working on it steadily since the last update. I'll put up some new close up pics in a little bit, but for now I'll show you an updated region view just to show that this city is still alive and kicking.

 

 

[sc4player 1]

I like the layout. the aerials look pretty realistic.

[Ninja12 3]

sounds like you got high while naming the cities lol j/k nice road maps looks amazing

[K_m_H 0]

the map looks awesome and the ity looks like it's proceeding well.. good luck

[Boggy1 45]

Really nice region and I love the city, one thing though, where can I get Sim_Idiot's residential slope mod?? I can't find it anywhere....

[Chris M 406]

Thats a very nice city you have there

[Rickk 16]

Hey, I can see the hill I live on!

Glad someone is doing a CJ using this region, it's an excellent place.
And this looks like its going to be an awesome CJ! Keep up the great work!

[brett_131 0]

Looks great--I really like the mid density downtown, and the commercial lining all major avenues.

The grid system is neat too, realistic.  because its not a PERFECT grid.

 

I would try to grow some slightlly taller buildings downtown in a bit, when your city gets around 200k, but thats ultimatley not my choice.

[MsCharamut1969 8]

HOLY *censored* look at that airport. Dang there chickie, thats an awesome CJ. one of the better ones I've seen and I'm picky when it comes to CJ's. You have done and AWESOME job so far. Gave me some new ideas. I LOVE your downtown area! Very very detailed and planned out! Can't wait to see the future updates!

 

MsCharamut1969

[LakeTrash311 0]

Wow - thanks for the comments.

 

boggy1: I found this mod in a thread a while back; I did a search for it but I couldn't find it either. It's also appears to be too big to put in an attachment, so try PMing Sim_Idiot or me.

 

brett_131: I do plan on building up the downtown pretty soon. But as with anything else, I'm gonna try to keep it proportional and not go overboard on the skyscrapers.

 

MsCharamut1969: I really dig your comments. but check my profile.

 

I have the day off today, so expect an update.

[PhilsCafe 8]

Creative name. You really know how to catch views...
I'm not gonna ask how you did that street map. But I have to know how you did that impressive airport. I was thinking of creating a more realistic looking airport myself (for my Acorn Creek region)... And your city, I guess I haven't seen such a huge city before... I like your playing style.

- Phil

[LakeTrash311 0]

PhilsCafe: Check out joerg's Airport Pack. You can get it here .

 

And speaking of the road map - I've almost finished a new version of it, which I'll post with the rest of the update. So keep your eyes peeled.

[LakeTrash311 0]

Ok, I finished a small version of the new map. This thing took forever to put together. Therefore, I'll post the small one tonight and put up some close up pics and link a higher res map tomorrow. So check out the new map and I'll hit you up with an update tomorrow.

[LakeTrash311 0]

In this update, rather than show some of the more typical city landscape, I thought I'd go off the beaten path to a couple of the resort communities around town.

 

But first - I finished the BIG version of the new map. Cutting and pasting the surrounding terrain was absolute torture, but at least I won't have to do it again unless I build on an area. But even then I'd only need to paste in the modified area.

Now click on this.

Believe it or not, this map still doesn't include every part of the region. One area that isn't on the map, on the northern end of Shalla-Bal Island at the end of highway 13, sits Point Exodus.

Point Exodus is a retirement community with a 9-hole golf course and a small touristy downtown loaded with antique/novelty/collectible/useless junk shops.

The establishment of this town was actually a bit of a gamble. The developer bought the land and developed the infrastructure and golf course without building a single house through a big name homebuilder. Here, new residents would buy an empty lot and have a custom built house constructed on that lot. Therefore it took many years for this city to generate a tax surplus. As Alien Love Secret continues to expand, more people will trickle into this small town - more than the current residents would want to see. 

Another resort town is Arrowhead Point:

Arrowhead Point is a larger town accessible either by highway 177 to the east or by the ferry which crosses the bay to highway 13 north of downtown. The ferry itself and the hotel are two of the place's main attractions.

Well that's it for now. Gotta go back into lurking mode to continue messing with the city. Once I have all the small towns and highways established, I'm thinking about doing a couple of updates in the form of road trips along one of the highways. Stay tuned.  

[Duke87 1,070]

What exactly are historic routes?

[LakeTrash311 0]

Duke87: When an interstate highway or other freeway is built near a town, it splits away from the original highway to form a bypass rather than go straight through the town. I would say the best example of this is old Route 66. It was replaced mostly by Interstate 40, but as the highway approaches a town the original Route 66 still exists in the town's downtown area, while I-40 skirts around it. Route 66 is probably one of the only historic highways in the US that is actually marked as such, but just about every Interstate has a historic route, they're usually marked as business routes.