Diagonal Road Hell

[Tristy100 31]

Hey guys. Haven't posted in a while (if ever).

 

I took a bit of a break from SimCity 4 for a while, and have just gotten back into it. I installed NAM (not Custom installation IIRC), and I think I installed everything that was an option to me.

I hate the diagonal roads.

Is it just me, or are they SUPPOSED to change altitude? I can never use them besides on a super flat city because they ruin all the terrain.

Also, I have no real idea if I'm doing it correctly... I drag out part of a road, take the end and go one direction, then 90 degrees to the side, then 90 degrees back, etc, etc. one unit by one unit.

I'm fine doing the roads in this slow pattern, I just wish that it would have the ability to change altitude as it goes. Does anyone have any fixes pertaining to that?

Thanks.

[CorinaMarie 29,578]

6 minutes ago, Tristy100 said:

I drag out part of a road, take the end and go one direction, then 90 degrees to the side, then 90 degrees back, etc, etc. one unit by one unit.

For roads, you can simply drag them diagonally.

What you are describing tho sounds like the method for streets. Those do wreck havoc when done that way on hills as they keep leveling the terrain and then, depending on your slope mod, refuse to go any further.

Try using the Diagonal Street Helper Pieces:

[Tristy100 31]

Thanks so much!

Yeah, it is Streets that I was referencing. Forgot about roads for a second, as I have been going around city by city and putting down basic rural farm roads, agriculture, and some little rural communities to get started in my region!

NAM is incredibly overwhelming. What are some of the most useful things in day-to-day play for you @CorinaMarie?

[CorinaMarie 29,578]

15 minutes ago, Tristy100 said:

What are some of the most useful things in day-to-day play for you @CorinaMarie?

My use of NAM is pretty basic. For the most part I create rural regions and so it's the SAMs and Single Track Rail that are my main go to items.

So I can create something like this:

And it's the drag patterns for Streets (which includes SAMs) that make a big difference. If you aren't familiar with those, go to this page of the online NAM documentation, scroll down to the Draggable Wide-Radius Curves and Fractional Angle Functionality section (about 80% of the way down the page), and look for the drag patterns.

Then, ofc, the diagonal streets combined with some curves and STR for something like this:

 

For more in depth things to do with NAM, check out this list of @Naomi57's content.

[Terring 6,473]

Ah, yes. Diagonal streets. A brilliant addition (I still can't understand why Maxis made diagonal roads and avenues but not streets), but also a pain in anybody's butt. There are two ways to build them, by drawing the street in zig-zag pattern or by using the puzzle pieces, and both have advantages and disadvantages. The zig-zag way is very simple and useful for small diagonal streets, and since it's drag-able you can build road-top TE lots (like bus stops) on them, but they also come with the bad habit of leveling the ground, making them totally slope unfriendly. The puzzle pieces come in various sizes and are totally slope friendly, but to the point of leading into crazy and very bumpy streets, especially if you plop them on irregular areas.

To deal with this problem, first I drag a road to make the path smoother (a slope mod is highly recommended for that), and then I remove that road to plop puzzle pieces of the diagonal streets on the top of that smooth path. The result will be something like Corina's example. I use roads because they are very flexible and slope friendly, so they can create smoother paths without using too much space and disrupting too much the topography of the area. But if you want something even smoother, you can use railroads or monorails instead of roads. It's all up to you

[Tristy100 31]

Thanks guys!

 

That's pretty much answered my question.

[Naomi57 2,985]

14 hours ago, Tristy100 said:

NAM is incredibly overwhelming. What are some of the most useful things in day-to-day play for you @CorinaMarie?

Other NAM features you might enjoy are:

• Pedmalls  
• FLUPs  https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/758813-show-us-your-SimCity-4-quick-tips-twitter-style/?tab=comments#comment-1724778
• Roundabouts  https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Namdoc:Roundabouts

They are easy to use, easy to learn, fun and useful, and they work just as well in urban, suburban or rural.

[rsc204 21,806]

I find the basic grounding for learning to use the NAM, starts with just understanding how most pieces work. Once you are familiar with the concept of a Puzzle Piece (Legacy Items for the most part), Flex Pieces and Starters, you've got a handle on how pretty much every feature works in principle. I've tried my best with a series of YouTube tutorials to explain those and give examples of the most commonly used NAM features.

After that I can highly recommend, opening a blank new region or city, giving yourself a lot of money (cheat) and just going through every new Menu Item, one at a time a place every piece from every menu. It's probably sounds more laborious than it is, but if you do a few at a time, it'll be less boring. Just going through them all really helps to familiarise yourself with what options exist and where to find things. There is a lot of documentation around, but some of it is scattered and not so easy to find. But the online (or offline: included with the NAM Download) documentation is always a good start for gaining a better understanding of most features.

[Naomi57 2,985]

7 hours ago, rsc204 said:

After that I can highly recommend, opening a blank new region or city, giving yourself a lot of money (cheat) and just going through every new Menu Item, one at a time a place every piece from every menu.

If you want to discover more than FLUPs, roundabouts, and pedmalls, just start at the top, and do one menu item at a time, perhaps just one menu item at the start of each SC4 session?

Be aware that Tab and Shift+Tab do special things when you're hovering your mouse with the preview image of the piece.  Home and End keys sometimes do more than just turning the piece around, too.  

After FLUPs, roundabouts, and pedmalls, the next tools I would suggest you become very familiar with are the RHW-2 and NAM Disconnector, on the highway menu.  Both of those are far more powerful, and far more versatile, than they seem at first glance, and they are useful even if you don't use anything else in the NAM.