Default orientation of curved/corner pieces?

[Psiman 177]

Among the lots I am making are some curved/corner pieces. They have two orientations that could be considered the "front" side - the side in which the arrow points and which orients itself to touch a road when adjacent.

I was wondering if there were any conventions about default orientation of lots in such circumstances?

Here are a couple of examples: a park hedge corner piece, and a park path curved piece.

[Silur 3,304]

I think - NOT. Each Artist makes his serial things.

[Psiman 177]

I've been testing out the vanilla lots and have some defaults to compare with. Some points:

1) When a lot is picked from the menu, it will, by default, have its "front" face directed towards North.

2) If one hovers a lot by road/rail, it will turn its front face towards it, but will return to the default of having its front face to North if one hovers away from the road.

3) Manually changing the direction of the lot will override the default facing of North, and the object will return to this new user-defined direction when hovering the lot adjacent to and away from a road/rail.

4) If there is road/rail on both sides of the space for a potential lot, the front side of the lot will face towards the direction in this order of priority: North, East, South, West. So clockwise from North.

Screenshot of default North-facing bus stop turning to East when presented with two adjacent roads:

5) A deep rectangular North-facing lot will turn clockwise to East when squashed against a road.

Screenshot showing a passenger railway station turning to East when pressed against the rail:

6) The vanilla 2x2 Medium Plaza lot is designed in a way such that can be used in modular fashion to create a 4x4 Plaza. While there are a number of configurations that can be used to create different 4x4 Plazas, the best, and I guess, default version is such that the palm trees create a sort of circle, as can be seen in the screenshot below.

That means a Medium Plaza facing default North is representing the top-right part of the 4x4 Plaza. This continues the theme seen so far of going clockwise from a North starting point.

So that would suggest that the 1x1 Park Hedge Corner should follow the pattern of Medium Plaza, and therefore be the top-right corner of the space being filled. That would mean that the hedge is along the North and East-facing sides of the lot by default.

7) When it comes to the park path, I'm not 100% decided. Following the formula so far - default of North and then sides going clockwise - that might suggest that the action sides of the path lot should lead to the North and East sides. This would be the top-left of the four corner tiles on the right of the next screenshot. However, that means that the path itself is going anti-clockwise.

For the path to go clockwise, it would mean using the corner piece below the one just mentioned, with the path being on the North and West faces.

If one is building a path, then the default direction one will want the lot to face will be with the arrow pointing towards the previous piece of the path. So it will be easier to remember that a corner piece by default makes a clockwise turn, and therefore I think this is probably the better option.

Any thoughts on this logic?

[Psiman 177]

A park path piece will turn and face a road, but otherwise will face default North. I'm trying to work out which feels like the right way for default park path building. Should the arrow be facing the previous piece, as if it had turned to face a road, or should it go in the direction one is building in?

In the first option, the arrow of a right-corner piece would face towards the previous piece, and to convert it to a left-corner, one would rotate it clockwise once, so the arrow is pointing to the left in relation to the direction of travel, which makes sense.

In the second option, a right-corner piece would have the arrow in the direction of travel of the path, and to make it a left turn would mean turning clockwise once, so the arrow is pointing to the right.

So I think the first option appears more elegant.

[rsc204 21,808]

I think it probably doesn't matter so much which way you go, so long as it's intuitive for placing multiple pieces. Bear in mind network hierarchy comes into play, for example a lot between and Avenue and Road will turn to face the avenue in the direction of the arrow.

Whilst it would require a dependency, adding some props that disappear once placed, to help guide the placement of paths is a great addition. Suitable props exist in this set:

Others exists, but SPOT is my personal preference.

[Psiman 177]

Thanks, I'm going to finish my parks megapack without use of dependencies.

I feel that this is the most appropriate orientation for corner pieces - imagine the characters pointing towards the side the arrows are pointing:

<A
v>

If one creates a rectangle of road and hovers a 1x1 Small Park Green at each corner of the enclosed space, then, usually, three out of the four corners of the tile will orientate themselves to this pattern, while one corner will always point to compass North.

Also, if one places a Small Park Green in a 2x2 square in this pattern, then the lamp posts are in the optimal position: