Tutorial: Building large residential blocks along non-orthogonal networks

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

Due to a SC4's hardcoded rule, all residential lots are required to have an adjacent road tile in order to develop. Unfortunately, this means that in most cases it is impossible, or at least challenging, to develop a large footprint (e.g. 4x4 or 2x3) residential block along such networks as diagonal roads or NAM's fractionally angled roads. This is because, two or three residential "slices" required for such blocks to be born, will always lack road connection. Only a part of such 4x4 (or any other large building) will have actual access to the network.

This, of course, results in less-than-appealing visual effect. For residential areas near non-orthogonal roads will oftentimes contain only low-density houses that can be directly attached to the nearby road tile. At the same time, residential blocks will always have to be built along orthogonal networks.

However, there is a workaround for this problem which can be used until a more "orthodox" solution is found. This tutorial discusses said workaround and shows how you can build fully developed residential blocks and skyscrapers, seemingly "without" a road access...

It will be of most use to those who wish to build large residential buildings along non-orthogonal roads, while keeping the immediate area visually / artistically appealing.

If you'd like to know how to build succesful residential areas like the one below, I invite you to read the entire post in detail.

 

Introduction

Network Addon Mod has transformed the way our city quarters look and allowed us to build industrial and agricultural areas into irregular and very interesting road layouts, like so...

 

It is also possible to create commercial districts in a similar fashion, within whimsical roadscape around. However, commercial buildings tend to be large at times and may not be perfectly aligned with road tiles. A commercial zone that you intend to put down next to these networks may have some "loose" lots that will display "No road connection" zots. Unless, you supplement this gap with a nice PedMall, which ensures connectivity and also has a park-like appeal...

 

One would think that a similar solution could work with residential zones... But it doesn't...

Due to the game's hardcoded rule, which has been explained by @Tarkus in this post, residential zones simply need to be built adjacent to a road. Otherwise they never develop or quickly fail. This is why, if you hope to have a section of nice 3x3 homes along a FAR or diagonal road, you will probably be severely disappointed and end up with this...

 

Of course, in order to desperately pull it through, you may just make a concession and run a tiny road or street that reaches the lots lacking road access. Unfortunately, it looks neither pretty nor realistic... It is somewhat doable for FAR-2 but may become weird when combined with FAR-3. But to be honest, littering your entire neighborhood with tiny road stubs does not look too good one way or another.

 

But have no fear - International Rescue is here. The tutorial below will help you make a setup like this in a way which is technically valid, consistent and far more pleasing to the eye. As a result, you will never again have to reserve your residential blocks for orthogonal road tracts only!

 

First things first

In order to execute my hack, you need:

• Network Addon Mod (version 44 or higher)
• Paeng's Parks (only one file is needed - "Siding_busstop" in "ADDONS_205" folder)
• My "Mimicked bus stop set" file (a slight modification of Paeng's file above and a derivative work based on his lot)

 

The theoretical part

As of 2022, the game forces us to provide a road access to each residential lot, making apartment blocks next to and facing some roads hard or impossible. However, with the use of NAM tools and some simple modding, it is actually possible to do it in a painless way.

NAM has some special puzzle pieces which act as underground roads. Notably, when such a road is placed next to a residential lot, the game thinks that such lot has an access to the road network, which means that the hardcoded rule previously discussed is met. @Naomi57 is probably one of the first people who discussed underground roads in detail and once I recalled her experiments, I already had one foot in the door...

Unfortunately, such underground roads cannot exist independently. In other words - if there is a road underground, it has to go above the surface somewhere. Otherwise, a "No road" zot will stay over any given lot. Interestingly enough, underground road does not have to exit to the surface through a tunnel entrance/exit... It can use a bus stop as a way out...

Do you see my point now?

To put it simple all we have to do is to run an underground road next to "unroaded" lots and connect it to the city network via an empty tile with bus stop properties. Then, we can enjoy building large stuff along non-orthogonal networks...

 

Read on if you'd like to know how to pull this trick out.

 

The practical part

Carefully follow these instructions.

1. Open SC4 (thanks Captain Obvious...)

2. Build a FAR or diagonal road of your choice.

3. Zone a straight or several straight residential area(s) along your new road (any density you like).

• Something akin to this. "No road connection" zots will start popping up for disconnected lots.

 

4. Open "Transportation tools" menu. Click "Build roads".

5. Scroll down to "Flexible underpasses (FLUPs)" and click it.

6. Press TAB to scroll, until you see the "Straight underground route under pedmall".

7. Now, plop this puzzle piece along all of the lots that display "No road connection" zots.

8. Make sure they all run perpendicular to the lots. Just as normal roads would (rotate with "Home" or "End" keys if necessary).

9. Open "Miscellaneous transportation" menu

10. Scroll down and find the "MBS Tex#" icon.

11. Click it. Note that you can choose one of the four textures which are consistent with those that the pedmalls use.

12. Put the MBS between "Underground route under pedmall" and the nearest surface road tile. See the reference image...

 

All done - watch your residential areas thrive along non-ortho and "without" a direct road connection!

 

Caveats and things to remember

I hope that you liked my tutorial and I also hope that you will find my hack useful. I would, however, like to mention several caveats that come with my proposal as I believe you need to get the full picture regarding the benefits and problems this hack entails.

• Please remember that this workaround is mainly intended as a visual trick which enables you to develop large residential projects along non-ortho in a cohesive and eye-pleasing manner. Silly street and road stubs every 5 meters do not look good, so I hope you appreciate my tip, especially if beauty is what you are after in your cities.
• Although there is no bus stop building on MBS, the MBS is technically still a bus stop. This means that using it en masse in your cities, may significantly increase mass transit usage which is especially true with the new traffic simulator in NAM 45. If you like robust communication networks in your towns it will probably be fun and beneficial to use these plops, killing two birds with one stone. If, however, you have some very specific and prescriptive plans for your communication networks, it may get in the way. Note that all Sims that have no direct road access will exclusively use busses to travel around! Keep this side effect in mind.
• The MBS comes with a monthly cost. However, given the fact that my workaround is supposed to mainly be an artistic helper, it has been reduced to $1 from the regular $5 that bus stops normally cost. It seems fair and you won't go bankrupt, which is especially true when you plan to use these fillers often.
• The underground road connections are always visible in-game as small "clips" on top of whatever Pedmall texture is used. So, if you choose to employ my solution, you'll have to live with it somehow. Personally, I am not too bothered by this and simply perceive them as rainwater grates. 
• For some reason I don't understand, the grass-based underground routes cannot be mixed with underground routes which use different textures. This causes the entire road to loose continuity and everything before (or after) the grass-textured underground road will lack road access. I believe this was not the intended way and it might be a glitch. Still, it is perfectly fine to mix, say, cobblestone, red brick and cement-textured underground roads without any problems. Luckily, that the grass-textured MBS will always work fine with all underground roads!

 

That would be all for now. Good luck and have a nice day! If you have any questions, doubts or especially if you have discovered a bug in the MBS files, leave a comment and let me know! TMC, out. 

[Vitoraju 675]

I thought your idea was interesting!  👏👏👏

I'm going to test her in some town of mine in the future. I want to try to break the GRID of the game and make my citizens more realistic. FAR roads often have difficulties with zoning, but gradually new constructionis emerging to fit this type of road. Oh, thanks for sharing your idea!

[Edvarz 1,984]

Whoa! This workarond is great! Something tells me this could also be a neat way to build pedestrianized residential districts, I definitely need to try it.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

6 hours ago, Edvarz said:

Something tells me this could also be a neat way to build pedestrianized residential districts, I definitely need to try it.

Cool idea! I tried to make a simple setup like this and ended up with something like in the image below. Note how well Paeng's "sidings" work with the rest of this zone. All this in a truly elegant fashion and seemingly without bus stops or roads. 

The cement-textured MBS pieces are located on the very left and "liaise" between OWR and the underground road under pedmall.

 

I have also discovered another small glitch when building the zone above. It seems that after such zone and underground road is built, some plants may become clipped underneath the underground route... It looks like it happens sometimes near freshly-built underground networks.

Luckily, reloading the city or the game itself is enough to solve the problem. Once this is done, rendering goes back to normal and stays this way from that point on.

[kkffoo 259]

This is really clearly written, thank you!
In the area we live there is an ongoing controversy about bus stops, those which are functional but don't look it because they have no signage or timetable, those which have been completely removed, and are defunct but still apear on the web timetables, and those 'ghost bus stops' which are neither functional, nor appear on the timetable but are fully present, complete with a fictional timetable and non existent bus number.
So life follows art!

[rsc204 21,808]

On 08/11/2022 at 8:14 PM, TheMurderousCricket said:

It will be of most use to those who wish to build large residential buildings along non-orthogonal roads, while keeping the immediate area visually / artistically appealing.

Zoning with Fractionally Angled (FA) networks works just fine, if you follow the intended method, the following screenshot shows the correct zoning patterns for FAR2 (top) and FAR3 (bottom) road networks:

As you can see the above setup leads to fully functioning connections for residential (or other) zoning, whether you have single or larger width lots:

This is done using the draggable FA-Roads, but essentially so long as the network tile touching a zone has the correct pathing, they provide a suitable connection for sims to enter/exit lots. Whilst the method I'm showing does mean you are somewhat restricted, since depending on the FA type used, you can grow at most 2 or 3 tile wide buildings. However it's worth considering that these are very commonly used footprints, which allow for all but a select bunch of the very largest Maxis buildings to grow.

The problem in the examples you've chosen to use, parts of your zones literally fail to touch any Network directly, you will always need some sort of work-around if your zones don't physically touch a network. Pedmalls are usually the simplest work-around for almost every scenario, but with a few caveats:

• For a pedmall to provide a valid route, the network tile that meets them must have had special path modifications, to enable the sims to walk between the two.
  In practise this means your pedmall network must connect with a standard ortho or diagonal section of a network. Although in theory any connection could be made to work by simply modifying the path of the relevant network piece, to include these pedmall connections.
• Where the above is not true, simply add a functioning transit stop, for example a Bus Stop or Subway Station, somewhere that touches the Pedmalls.
  Note this works with Roadtop stations like RTMT too, which often looks nicer/works better.

Of course with custom content, even more flexibility exists, for example I made a huge Residential FA complex which works by growing three lots together, it's pretty easy to grow as it doesn't use common zone sizes:

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

Good morning Robin and thank you for your contribution. Of course, the zoning you present is absolutely valid as well. However, my workaround is intended for many other situations where, for some reason, one cannot or simply does not want to build their cities this way. If you don't mind, I would like to address some of the points you brought up.

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

Whilst the method I'm showing does mean you are somewhat restricted, since depending on the FA type used, you can grow at most 2 or 3 tile wide buildings.

This is precisely the problem my method is addressing. It is impossible to, for example, build one of Matt's 4x4 luxury houses, 4x4 Brown Hi-Rises or some exotic residentials like these prefabs along either of the FAR types. That's because, as I mentioned already, some of the "slips" required for such buildings to grow will not have any road access. As a result, part of the area required for such buildings to develop will be unavailable to the game.

Likewise, one will not be able to construct the 3-tile wide buildings along FAR-2, let alone diagonal roads which can connect a mere corner of a building.

One of the reasons I started to work on this project was the fact that I couldn't get some of the larger buildings to work with non-orthogonal networks due to the limitations you describe. Of course, it is possible to build some other types of building near them but it's always some sort of an "either-or".

So while what you are saying is true of many Maxis buildings, one is indeed still significantly limited to just certain building or footprint types when zoning near such networks. As far as I can see (I don't know, I could be wrong but it doesn't seem otherwise) it is not doable to have fully developed, larger than 3x3 housing without resorting to my proposal.

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

The problem in the examples you've chosen to use, parts of your zones literally fail to touch any Network directly, you will always need some sort of work-around if your zones don't physically touch a network.

This is actually fully intentional as a way of illustrating that one does not have to necessarily zone right along the "front-end" road tiles in order to be able to build up. The zoning you mention has been made on purpose and I personally believe that areas like these can have a tremendous positive impact on how a city looks like and be another way of "effing the grid". 

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

Where the above is not true, simply add a functioning transit stop, for example a Bus Stop or Subway Station, somewhere that touches the Pedmalls.

Yes, but then you have an actual bus stop building every now and then, while the MBS serves as en empty tile which blends in with the surrounding pedmalls. Essentially, becoming a transit station which is indistinguishable to the outside viewer. Like @Edvarz says, creating (at least visually) "roadless" residential zones is a very tempting idea so it helps to have some extra tools and instructions to make it happen.

I believe that both solutions are valid and there really is no one right way to obtain the fractionally angled residentials! It really depends on what one intends to do and what they feel more comfortable with. In some cases, careful zoning will do. But in other cases where one wishes to push their imagination or designs beyond the game's limitations, the MBS and the instructions provided here can be a welcomed change.  

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

Important notice!

It looks like, as per my initial post, the grass-textured straight underground route under pedmall does not seem to "talk" to any of the MBS lots in any of the zoning settings discussed in my tutorial.

Upon further investigating this issue, I determined that, for some reason, the grass-textured underground routes under pedmall will simply not work like all other underground routes do and ignore any traffic that would otherwise end on the MBS lot.

I completely don't know why an exception like this exists. As you can see in the example below, all other underground routes and MBSs work just fine and in different combinations too.  However, the grass-textured routes simply refuse to work the same way and cannot be connected with any of the MBS pieces. Any residential lots along these grass-based underground roads will display either "no job" or "no road" zots and will fail.