The Edge's city building discussion thread

[The Edge 215]

Quick update:  tightest clearance yet between two neighbouring streets - look how close the trees are on the left hand side (since renamed to Ogdenville, inspired by one of my boys)

Still keen to hear any suggestions people might have - even if you think I'm doing okay and just keep on doing what I'm doing

 

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

@The Edge

I like the way you've made the main transport routes and connecting bridges, and then the residential rows are like branches. I can imagine inside the rectangular area there in the middle there could be some green space like community gardens, or even just open grass with a few scattered trees. Something you may find is that the power pylons might not be needed eventually once all zones within an area are connected to the electricity grid.

Beside the high school I notice you've placed the OpenBooks Library there which goes well. I remember using that years ago when first getting into custom content.

Keep up the great work!

[Whte_rbt 1,431]

About the power pylons, there's always the old "ctrl-click while zoning" trick to make an invisible power channel.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

6 minutes ago, Whte_rbt said:

About the power pylons, there's always the old "ctrl-click while zoning" trick to make an invisible power channel.

Oh yes, very good point to mention that indeed!

I remember Cori made a post that presents that technique for the various zone types. By this method it effectively makes power cables be laid underground.

[The Edge 215]

Oh I had no idea about that one! Thanks so much, I will give that a shot.

And thanks for the feedback too

And that is an awesome library too - makes a nice substitute for the main library (of which there is only one) around the city.

[The Edge 215]

Is there any way to do a proper roundabout on the roads? I know I can make 4 roads intersect and put a sub-busway station in the middle but is there a plugin for it or something?
I have one for cul-de-sacs and that looks fine and works well (as shown in the image above), but would be nice to have a roundabout too.

[Whte_rbt 1,431]

The NAM contains all the roundabouts going generally (I think they did some others many years ago), use one way road to draw a square 3 tiles to a side around a normal road tile to create one, use normal road to link a 2x2 tile area in a circle and there's the avenue roundabouts in the menus too.

If you mean the statues, parks and whatnot that goes in the middle of a roundabout then try these:

 

[The Edge 215]

Thanks heaps! I'll look at that over the weekend.

[The Edge 215]

I decided to try something new for my next city. This one was formerly a mostly flat map with not much else on it.

I used the Erode tool in God mode and am in the middle of placing trees (see pic) but does the Erode tool make any difference to the city? I applied it here but I found it mostly just creates rolling hills (like you see here in Marlborough or Canterbury) - mostly in the patch where the trees are yet to be placed (top right).
Otherwise, does Erode do much else in the way of landscaping?

[The Edge 215]

Also - still on the tree thing (this city seems to have a tonne more trees than the other one, maybe due to the hills); I know I asked about them earlier but I'm sure I saw a thread somewhere with very pretty red/orange/yellow Autumn-looking trees, but I can't seem to find it anywhere. @CorinaMarie I think I saw you post in the thread I'm thinking of, but I could be wrong.

Does it sound familiar? I was thinking some different coloured trees would be nice in this city

Edit: sorta like in this thread:

or this one:

(I know the latter is a building file but I'm more interested in how the trees around it came to be).

Thanks

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

Hiya @The Edge,

Hope @CorinaMarie doesn't mind i ring the bell before her,  Are you looking for some beautiful trees? Maybe that thread you are looking for is this by @Toby Ferrian and Cori:

In terms of Maxis trees, I use @T Wrecks 's replacement mod

And it seems @mattb325 used some HD mmd trees of @Girafe, Here are links of her works and Orange's (You could find out more HD trees of them there):

Girafe SC4D

Orange_o SC4D

Furthermore, If you're not satisfied with the pollution, You may could modify it with Reader by Cori's tips :

 

I hope it helps.

Sincerely,

-- Raymond

[The Edge 215]

Thanks Ray, I'll have a look

Edit: I'm looking for a new bunch of trees that appear when I'm building in God mode, not a ploppable lot. Sorry if that wasn't clear before.

[The Edge 215]

Okay, I'm never doing that again! I tried installing some of the tree packs but didn't like them so just deleted the plugins. Then I found that some icons were not quite correct (reward buildings were showing up under the parks, etc - is this normal?)
Anyway long story short, I uninstalled, reinstalled and copied over my plugins/regions folder. However, now when I try to load one of my legacy cities (not a new one) I get this:

Help anyone have any idea what plugin pack this is? Google doesn't tell me much.

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

20 minutes ago, The Edge said:

Okay, I'm never doing that again! I tried installing some of the tree packs but didn't like them so just deleted the plugins. Then I found that some icons were not quite correct (reward buildings were showing up under the parks, etc - is this normal?)
Anyway long story short, I uninstalled, reinstalled and copied over my plugins/regions folder. However, now when I try to load one of my legacy cities (not a new one) I get this:

Help anyone have any idea what plugin pack this is? Google doesn't tell me much.

Hiya @The Edge, 

I thought The 'Plugin pack' number there is actually the decimal representations of the hex IID, So you're looking for a building with instance 0x645e467b, Can you find out it from your Plugins(Or backup)?

[The Edge 215]

Ray, you are clearly the man. Thank you so much!! It was the Census Repository Vault. I reinstalled it and everything is working now. Phew!
Thanks again, time for me for me (Monday morning now)

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

5 hours ago, The Edge said:

Does it sound familiar? I was thinking some different coloured trees would be nice in this city

Maybe it could be this excellent post by @BartonThinks in the Tree Shoppe that @Raymond7cn linked to.

In terms of the "Flora Blast" option, I remembered this thread which explains about the option. Only certain tree controllers are compatible with this though.

[Whte_rbt 1,431]

With regards to what you've said about wanting new trees in god mode, I think you need to consider a tree controller.

or the Arden controller from SC4Devotion:

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2959

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

12 hours ago, Raymond7cn said:

Hope @CorinaMarie doesn't mind i ring the bell before her,  

I don't mind at all. And it's good you and others have replied since trees are not my specialty. (I still use the Maxis ones in God mode.)

[Max4k 727]

On 8/14/2020 at 8:46 PM, CorinaMarie said:

I believe those'll be one or more of:

• PEG MTP God Mode Tree Mod
• PEG MTP Mayor Menu Pine Tree Clusters
• PEG MTP Mayor Menu Pine Tree Mod
• PEG MTP Mayor Mode Old Pine Tree Mod
• PEG MTP Snow Pine Tree Mod

And prolly the PEG MTP SUPER PACK for the dependency. (Likely the PEG-MTP_GM-TreeMod_RESOURCE therein.)

 Oh this is soo perfect and exactly what I wanted.  Thanks soo much.

 

Earlier today i downloaded this, and it says OLD, but not sure if this is same.  I don't know if any conflicts.

 

 

[The Edge 215]

Sorry, just curious if anyone knows exactly what the Erode tool does? I didn't notice too much when I used it, apart from it creating a few rolling hills. Or is that about it?

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

9 minutes ago, The Edge said:

Erode tool does?

It basically removes some of the land as if wind and water carried some of it away.

Here's a random tile with 10 clicks of the Erode Tool in between each:

And if you keep going, it just gets flatter and flatter.

[Whte_rbt 1,431]

The erode tool effects can be best seen on sharply defined mountains, It'll round off the sharp cliff edges and turn a sharp V valley into a much shallower U-shape. It works by averaging the height(?) variable(s?) inside the radius of the tool and pulling the values towards a theoretical middle ground. It can be massively helpful when detailing beaches with MMP's and you need to set a VERY shallow gradient going out to sea.

Edit: Damn, Cori beat me to it.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Putting the previous info from @CorinaMarie and @Whte_rbt to good use, here's another example of using the technique:

Starting with this cliff scene I made by hand terraforming:

 

Next clicking the master Erode option 10 times:

 

And another 10 times so it becomes eaten up more:
(It must be rather hungry.)

 

Then I restored back to how it was initially, and instead used the Erosion brush like so:

 

This is a separate option to the master Erode button, since Erosion is a brush which is applied to specific parts of a tile (like any other terraforming tool).

It's possible to resize a brush by holding down the Shift key which is a size modifier. Then press any number from 1-9 and the brush will be made a smaller size at each of those increments. The same can be done for tree planting too, and any terraforming brush in fact. Then there's the strength as well which can be adjusted, as my post here also refers to. These are all what alter the behaviour of each brush, and are ideal for fine tuning when wanting extra control over how terrain appears.

A big tip I recommend for terraforming is when happy with something, make a checkpoint save of the tile (Ctrl+S). There's nothing worse than messing it up from how it was, and since there's no Undo function in SC4 to reverse back a few steps.

Also this file is really handy to have the God Mode tools available in Mayor Mode too.
(I chose the Mac file since it contains a zip instead of an installer as the other file does.)

----------

By the way...

For how I kept the trees still planted while terraforming there in the above pics, there's a little trick which can be used.

When running the cheat command:

flora preserve on

What this does is makes trees withstand all terraforming (disasters excluded). It also persists after saving the tile too, and so if not wanting this to happen anymore, just be sure to toggle it off instead. Then trees would be removed when terraforming as per the default.

This works without even needing the Extra Cheats DLL also since the flora command is built into the game as standard.

(For a useful cheats guide reference documenting this and others, see this article.)

[The Edge 215]

Awesome thanks...and cheers for the tip (and screenshots!)

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

What a thorough tutorial by CoriBoom™,  Sorry for interrupting @The Edge, i'm really enjoying those shaped forest, and CB, @Cyclone Boom the last pic reminds me of a scene in this movie.

Evil Under The Sun.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

20 hours ago, Whte_rbt said:

The erode tool effects can be best seen on sharply defined mountains, It'll round off the sharp cliff edges and turn a sharp V valley into a much shallower U-shape. It works by averaging the height(?) variable(s?) inside the radius of the tool and pulling the values towards a theoretical middle ground.

I think you're describing smoothing, not erode. IMU that erode only wears elevations down.

[Pafufu 0]

On 10/6/2019 at 10:14 AM, cogeo said:

From what I can see in the graphs and census data, it's not a caps problem, not low-EQ related, neither a desirability one (low pollution, garbage and crime). And with the taxes at 0%, it's obviously not an overtaxation one either. Btw I don't know, with the taxes set to 0%, what the development mix will be. I would try average to below-average tax levels, and see where the thing will settle - for the first 6-9 months demands may hit a low, but it will recover slowly. And it's not necessary to make permanent/irreversible changes to your city, you can simply backup the region (copy the region's folder somewhere else), to test a new strategy.

As for not having enough I-HT demand, I have noticed that you don't have enough CO$$$ or even CO$$ demand either! On the contrary you rather have high residential demand, which you don't satisfy. This means that there are many vacant jobs, and from what I can see in the graphs many of them are for $$ and $$$ workers. Or else, all your highly-educated sims are employed in the existing office and civic buildings, there are no highly-educated workers available, and therefore you get no new I-HT and CO$$$ demand. So my suggestion is try to satisfy the residential demand first (grow more residences), esp the R$$ and R$$$ ones.

And as a sidenote, do not snub C$/$$ and R$ development. At some point demand will reach a plateau and further growth will not be possible. New development - with the drivers now being CO$$/$$$ and I-HT - requires new educated and available workforce, which unfortunately cannot be "imported" (newcomers have a very low EQ), it has to be prepared locally. So you need full educational coverage - schools and libraries locally, college/university and museum (these have a citywide effect), and over time EQ will rise and so will CO and I-HT demand. R$ and C$/$$ development will provide the (initially uneducated) workforce and the jobs needed to support it for some time. So this kind of development is necessary to achieve continued growth for your cities, providing new residents and workers.

Unfortunate that there is no sort of high-skilled immigration program that one could implement. That would be a good mod.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

2 hours ago, Pafufu said:

Unfortunate that there is no sort of high-skilled immigration program that one could implement. That would be a good mod.

Sounds like an ordinance. It could have some prerequisite such as building a university. However, I don't know how to implement newly-arriving sims having better than baseline education. Still, it stands to reason that education exists elsewhere so that at least some sims can arrive with something already in their heads.

[CorinaMarie 29,895]

4 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

However, I don't know how to implement newly-arriving sims having better than baseline education.

That, itself, would be a relatively simple mod which would apply overall.

As far as having it altered via an ordinance, I'm not at all certain if it could be done. Both the starting EQ and HQ are defined in the data files. I do believe altering these might have a cascade effect so I'd suggest leaving them as Maxis set them.

[The Edge 215]

Question for @CorinaMarie - is parks aura positively affected by having an art museum nearby? I just noticed this