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A community dedicated to SimCity 4 and all city-building games. (About Simtropolis)
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City Journals
Our community City Journals
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One Year Later
HOLT: ONE YEAR LATER It has been one chaotic year. It has been a full year since I lasted posted an update here in Holt. When I posted that Holiday shopping update a year ago, I didn’t expect there to be a full year gap in updates. But, as they say, life is what happens when you’re busy making plans. So, you might be wondering what has been going on in Holt for the past year… Unfortunately, not much. A lot has been going on in RL, basically everything has been keeping me busy. It’d be easier to list things that haven’t kept me busy. Needless to say I haven't been around here much this year as RL kept me more than busy... So, Holt. Unfortunately not much has been going on there. In all honesty I have probably spent only a few hours in Holt the entire year. Certainly nowhere near the amount of time I have in years past. Little has been developed/achieved. That's certainly not to say I haven’t been messing around in SC4, I have, just not so much in Holt. Call it creator’s block, if you will. There are certainly some ideas floating around, but few seem to really work out. I think I am, more or less, “stuck” with where to go in Holt, or at least not sure how to get where I want to go. I think, like some of my other projects, I worked myself into a corner. Some things I have done in the past in Holt have set me in a direction I can’t totally change, and unfortunately some of what I want to go with Holt, can’t be achieved without totally changing the dimensions of Holt. (By that I mean the realism of things built not being suddenly scrapped, minus that one CBD, of course. ) People who play any sim-style game will know the desire to try something new every now and then. Which brings us to now. In essence, there is nothing new to show from Holt from this past year. Part of that is the creator’s block described above, part of that is RL keeping me immensely busy. Unfortunately for Holt, it doesn’t look like the busy part will get any better. In fact, it will probably only get worse. Those two facts, and several other factors, lead to one hard decision: One year after the last Holt update, I am officially ending Holt. These past 3 (!!!) years have been absolutely amazing. Okay, so the last year may not quite count, but you get the point. When I started Holt I had a general idea of where I wanted to go, but I never did fully expect how much it took off. The sheer volume of likes, views and comments received exceeded my expectations exponentially. The feedback has been great, and I have had so much fun sharing the progression of Holt with you. Recently, I took a look back and read through the updates I have published. I don’t often actually go back and look at updates that are too far back. It was a great trip down memory lane. I can still picture preparing some of the updates, particularly larger ones (like the census) or ones outside my normal comfort zone (Helllooo Amusement Park!)… but all in all it did make me smile a bit. So too did everyone’s feedback, even when people were pointing out things that were a little, off... things I needed to work on. (How else would I know how to get better? :)) This past year, well past several really, have been exciting and challenging. A lot has changed, just as a lot of things changed here too. It was definitely not easy to officially call this the end, but here we are. While this certainly is not good-bye (I plan to still be active in the community, despite 2015 being a mostly non-existent year for me), it’s the end of a big chapter of my time here in the community. It is time to officially close the book of Holt. It has been an absolute blast publishing Holt for the past 3 years. Hopefully I will see many familiar people around the community for some time to come. And as any avid book-lover knows, just because you’ve closed a book doesn’t mean you’ll never read it again. All the best,
simlink Thank You, for coming on the journey through Holt for the last 3 years. - 83
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Rickport Memorial Bridge
The Rickport Memorial Bridge was built in 2001 for conmemorate the 4th centenary of the inauguration of the city. The bridge has 2 miles of lenght, it unites the city center with the new airport and the old fishing village. Rickport Memorial Bridge The northern ramp has a spiral form in memory of the architect of the bridge Richard Rampson: Some night shots: The illumination of the bridge has 3 colors, blue, red and white, symbol of the french emigrants who built the first buildings of the city: I hope you enjoy! - 3
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Greatest Misses
Is it me or has the talent in the CJ section reached a new level lately? There's amazing stuff out there. Some notable journals that have inspired me recently are: Pretoria Metropolitan Area by takemethere, My SC4 CJ Scrapbook by Ln X, Vista Del Mar: Simcity 4 Artiste by gviper, The Jade Bight by Dreadnought, Nyhaven Lower Columbia (AIN) by woodb3kmaster, New SorGun by SimCoug, P.R. Crastina's Travels by Tariely, and a few others. I decided I need to up my game, so I started a new region. Here's what I'm working on, if anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them. After the first four shots of the new region are 11 of my "greatest misses." These are pictures I either forgot to add to an entry, there's something that bothers me about them, or I didn't want to make the entry too long and they didn't make the cut. Last are my favorite 5 shots from this CJ. Thanks for the comments everyone! US Route 101 Greatest Misses: The back of Kingdom Animalia Zoo & Aquarium (didn't make the cut) Puerto Anejo (I never finished this city and therefore didn't feature it in a CJ entry, here's a few good shots that came from it) Mosaic (this was actually in an entry but it was small, here's the full size mosaic) Kroger is unexpectedly closed the day before thanksgiving... Accident at the corner of Avocado Road and Spring Street in Playa Verde Downtown Playa Verde The Cal-State Green Beach Mafiosi (blue) vs. the UCPV Prospectors (gray) Via Verde Farmer's Market Open 7 days a week, 6:00 am - 4:00 pm Famous stalls include: Smokey Joe's Santa Maria Style BBQ King Tubby's King Crab Legs Oishi Sushi Pancho's Flautas Accident at the corner of Avocado and 19th Street, Playa Verde Best of Here are some of my favorite shots from this CJ
Thanks everyone! One more favorite: (Click to enlarge, then click Full Size, then zoom in) - 12
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Living next to the highway
A small residential area between a coastal forest and a highway - 7
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Entry 6 - Fujiwara Takumi..
Thanks for the comments. It's time to continue our little story. I warn you, it will contain spoilers of Initial D. Fujiwara Takumi is just a normal highschooler. Like all the students, he got his driving license not long ago during the his last year of high-school. He always looks bored and distant, with a look on his face as if he was always day dreaming. Despite all that, Takumi holds a secret he hasn't told anyone yet.. This is where he lives, with his father who runs a tofu shop, not far from the central station.
After school Takumi works part-time in the town's gas station with his classmate Itsuki. It's there they met Iketani and Kenji, two street racers who run the local friendly amateur team Akina Speed Stars.
Every morning, Takumi wakes up very early to help with his father's delivery. He has to drive the fresh tofu all the way up the mountain pass to deliver the hotels.
Nobody knows it, but it was his father's intention to train him to get better at driving..
Everyday for the past five years Takumi has helped his father, driving illegally by all weather.
He knows better than anyone every corner and straightway of this road. For the past five years he has become the legendary "Ghost of Akina" despite nobody knowing it was him..
For Takumi, helping his father is a hassle, he wants to finish the delivery the fastest way possible.. Which is why and the reason he got to the level of driving he is.
More to come soon.. - 7
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Latest Entry
Behold, the region
Thanks for checking out my scrapbook project, "Myrrh". Myrrh leverages the Red Sea region, the CPT Italia mod, and the Brigantine water mod. I'll try to keep things short and sweet, but I will mention this journal's focus will be on rail-based mass transit, education, entertainment, and (hopefully) awesome farms. And with that, here are some shots of the region before development: Thanks for checking out my journal. Keep coming back! -
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New Residents and New Jobs
Now that I have started to build up the shoreline and how my city may be shaped, I need to start thinking about moving more Sims in and build more jobs into the area. So I have switched tactics to build industrial jobs into the area, and I've extended the size of the agricultural zones toward the center of the city. I have zoned an area so that some dirty industrial jobs may be created. In this picture, it's just before 8 o'clock while construction is just being finished in the new industrial park. Now that I have built a path for my citizen's to travel between their work and their homes, I have found that the traffic congestion has increased dangerously. About sixty cars pass on the road according to the data view. Soon I will need to start thinking about upgrading the street. Construction is finishing up on the newly founded Beach Street and Spring Street. Because of the new industry that has been zoned, new sims are flocking to grab the jobs while they can. Now that I am passing a new threshold, I will also need to start thinking about safety. I wouldn't be surprised if I start seeing red. I have upgraded the street to a road and built a business area for retail shops near the intersection to see if customer traffic makes up for the 90 cars that pass through the road at any given time. I also have seen a cliff appear in the upper left hand corner of this picture after paving the new road. I wish to see that cliff disappear over time. End of Year 01 Funds $72,977 Residential Population 348 Commercial Jobs 26 Industrial Jobs 360 --- Volume 1, Issue 4 - 0
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Vanilla Traffic vs Improved Ai Traffic
This isn't an actual post, because I've been having TONS of issues with a pesky mod, and I've only ~mostly gotten the game back the way I want it. Was previously using Traffic Manager with Improved AI mod, with no problem for quite a while, when suddenly yesterday opened my save to an infinite series of object reference errors, and cars jumping around like mayflies on wheels. Still haven't figured out what caused it to freak out out of nowhere, especially since i am now using the Traffic Manager Plus mod combined with the standalone Improved AI mod (which is essentially the same thing in two parts.........why should it work differently???) with no issue. Only caveat is that, as separate mods now, the AI doesn't follow the Traffic Manager custom lane flags, so I'll have to tweak a few intersections if I want them to work closer to the same way. Much better than what I expected, which was that my save was corrupted. Thanking the gods that at least that didn't happen. So anyway, in honor of my traffic managing modding woes and the despair they cause me, along with my focus being drawn away too much by this to care about much else in the city for the time being, here's a comparison of traffic between what the base game does and what Improved AI does. I only did a tiny bit of stuff other than letting the simulation run for a bit (added a bit of residential zone because a perfectly timed death wave started during all this mess! ugh!) while I let the traffic work itself out. I disabled despawning so I could get a very real sense of how well the Improved AI actually cleared out jams, and the results were incredible. Hopefully this is all over for now, so I can get down into the neighborhoods and work on stuff. I'm loving my new theme with a mix of Feindbild's and others' NY styled buildings, mixed in with European style blockhouses. I honestly didn't think it'd work very well, but so far it's looking great! Stay tuned! - 2
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Underground Service Roads
Another Jamestown from the dead post! Was looking through old screenshots and found a series showing the small but immensely effective service road network below downtown Royals. The service roads are somewhat inspired by Chicago's stacked streets, such as Wacker Dr, Michigan Ave, Columbus Dr, Randolph St, etc. In Chicago the street level as you typically walk on it isn't actually at the level of the natural ground. Chicago, as some of you might know, is a lovely swamp. Americans for some reason LOVE to build cities on swamps. I don't get it. I will never get it. But alas, something at one point needed to be done about the water levels in the Loop, and the street level was artificially raised in many areas. The original streets were left down below and are now used as service roads that enter directly into the basements of buildings and garages. Some of the lower levels are simply grade separated arterial roads; shortcuts through and around the Loop. Now, since we can't really change the level at which a building enters off the street, a true replica of Chicago's system is not possible. So I went for the next best alternative, which is to keep the spirit of the idea of these streets, and build them to the best of CS's abilities. As you can see, it doesn't work nearly as well as in real life. Because of how the ramps had to work to be able to come back to ground level, as well as the horrible difficulty created by having editable things neatly vertically stacked, the lower level streets are actually parallel and next to their upper levels instead of being directly beneath them. Other than looking physically different, and the buildings not actually having service levels, they operate much the same. There is still a ton of traffic on busy streets, but a lot of people get to benefit from the shortcuts created to the busiest areas. Stay tuned for another Jamestown from the dead post! I'm working more with cimtographer and now using an app called maperitive to display and style the OSM data. It may be a while though due to attempting to use a very ornery windows app using the mono framework on mac OS...tons of fun. - 11
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Cyprikuyucak #4 | Road Improvements
Expansion continues, and I decided to go with this version of BigRedFish's tunnel and slope mod. It has made navigating through the more hilly terrain very challenging, but the roads are much smoother. A new road built from Soyuk City to the northern coast required a creative use of switchbacks to navigate over the mountain range: Here are some before and after improvements, along with some expansion timelapse:
Stay tuned! In coming updates I'm going to start focusing individually on some of the towns. - 4
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Latest Entry
Pine Tree Hills and Conifer Point East.
The First area I started on this city is Pint Tree Hills on the bank of the river. The idea is to try and make this into a suburb of a larger city in the future around the river. Here’s a picture of Pine Tree Hills with a bridge connection ready to be placed on the East bank once construct starts in that area. (We also have a British tall ship parked of the marina) Pine Tree Hills This Area of the city is current served by Pine Tree Hill High School as the main education centre for both areas of town. This school is fed by a number of smaller elementary school placed around both Pine Tree Hills and Conifer Point. As Alderley Rivers currently lacks any major sports teams, the High School Football team is well supported. Parents and fans flock to games at the High School Football stadium located just outside. Pine Tree Hills is also a religious centre currently featuring the city’s first church. The church holds a number of services during the week along with Sunday mass. As well as being used for funerals within the city. Next to the church is the city main cemetery, however smaller crematoriums are located in Conifer Point a little to the south. It’s said that this Church is one of the oldest buildings in the area. Pine Tree Hills also as a number of green spaced areas located within. These make handy connection between roads without the need of a car. Due to these green spaces and other city services Pine Tree Hills is one of the more desirable places to leave with high land value across this area of the city. Conifer Point East As you reach the shoreline you enter Conifer Point, thats split into two sections East and West. This is the central business district for this part of town. Residental life falls away and is replaced by a number of river front bars and clubs. Heres a shot from the top of one of the late night clubs. If you are looking for a good night out heading down to the river side. There is always something going on in this part of the city. It’s not just fun and games down in Conifer Point however. Conifer Point east also features the local town hall that services both Conifer Point and Pine Tree Hills. Here a picture of the tax office with the central plaza out front. This area also plays host to the areas main bus station. Bus routes from connecting the city up start here allowing residents to interchange from local services running up to Pine Tree Hills, of to the Industrial sector to the north of the map. These Bus connections play a vital part of the city’s transportation plans. With the Future in mind the city’s main North to South highway passes through the middle of Conifer Point. This highway drops underground as it approaches the cost tunnelling south towards to high density areas of the city. There is also a foot bridge places across the highway. This is rumoured to lead across into Conifer Point west where planning permission has been granted for a main line train station. The hope is this Train Station will provide Conifer Point with quick access to major parts of the city along with appealing to tourists wishing the stay. This is a quick look at the first two area of my city. Hope you have enjoyed the screen shots. From now on this city journal will go into more details about the areas as we build them. -
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Mustang, Masavera
This is a short introduction to my region of Masevera (mass-ev-air-ah). It is a very rural region inspired by the Midwest of the United States. I chose to develop my region on a relatively flat plain with very little variations in elevation as I'm not really a fan of building cities on unstable or non-flat ground as I don't particularly think it's the most aesthetically pleasing in terms of realism (which is something I strive for) This is the small town of Mustang; inspired by Mustang, Oklahoma. It's a fairly typical (boring) town ^ Downtown Mustang ^ Just a small shopping area with a Sam's Club and a K-Mart ^ Interstate exit that gives direct access to Mustang ^ Thank you for viewing my (very) short introduction entry. More updates are to come in the near future. - 5
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Bankruptcy???? | SimCity 4 (Deluxe) - Part 4
Find out if I go bankrupt or pull out the miracle!- Read More
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The Start of The Beginning
Here is Radnia.
And here is Siroki.
Coincidently, for the first time since the war, the town council election has occured within in the same year. But recently the towns have been in decline and the hope is that the new leaders will usher in a new era. The projects have already started. Here are the first airbone wind turbines.
These produce more power while also do not stand in the way of the view (kind of).
The highway intersections have been upgraded to dumbbells in preparation for heavier traffic.
The Siroki Banana Co. has also created a facility which employs nearly all of the residents of these towns.
The Sirokese are not happy that the Radnians are working at the Banana Co. even though it was the Sirokese goverment which had set it up. And these are some overhead pictures. First Siroki. And Radnia. Have Fun!- Read More
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Busy
Busy
It's been busy in Evean Vansop. Take a look at these numbers:
This is from what was our busiest day at Evean Vansop on Simtropolis... People are moving in... and moving up... but not moving on!
It's been busy at the Performing Arts Center -- Grumpy Cat is in concert!
It's always busy here at lunch time...
The neighbors are busy wondering why this dude lives in a big box...
The shopping center has seen better days, but the Sonic is still busy. That's because they have good onion rings and milkshakes half price from 2-4 on weekdays!
Busy buying me a present? You should be!
The kids are busy planning their trick or treating. Someone needs to cut me in for some Snickers!
It's quiet here... everyone's busy playing paper football in the office! Speaking of trick or treat... this is a kid's dream neighborhood: houses close together so you can score LOTS of candy!
Snickers... and Twix would be nice. Kit Kat and assorted Hershey would be good...
Apartments will keep kids busy getting candy all night long... candy they, in turn, will bring to me! It's a busy week... start getting me your candy NOW! - 28
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City Pictures
Marina Bay: Harbor: Airport: Downtown: Sunken Highway: Suburbs: ST. Mary Hospital Complex Aerials: Street view: Satellite picture: Others: Sorry for the blur effect -
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Even more suburbs
kschmidt - thank you tariely - thank you gviper - thank you - 10
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Saturnia's Grand Finale - Part 2
(continued from last entry) #21: *Preview* Saturnia International Airport #22: Life of a Saturnian: Henry Mason #23: Preview 2: Saturnia International Airport #24: Saturnia International Airport #25: A Big Announcement #26: Saturnia: An Educated City #27: Saturnia: A Faithful City #28: A Commute in Saturnia #29: A Rainy Day in Saturnia #30: The View from Above
#31: Some Typical Suburbs #32: A Little Taste of Paris #33: The Saturnia Subway #34: One Year of Saturnia #35: An Afternoon at the Park #36: A Vacation in Saturnia: Day 1 #37: A Vacation in Saturnia: Day 2 #38: A Vacation in Saturnia: Day 3 #39: A Vacation in Saturnia: Day 4 #40: A Commute in Saturnia Remake ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And so that concludes the grand finale of Saturnia. The first entry was published on Sunday, May 11, 2014, and it seems the final was on Saturday, October 17, 2015. It's been a pleasure to work on Saturnia for such a long time, and to let the creativity it takes to conceive an entire metropolis in my mind flourish. And I thank you all for reading Saturnia, whether you started with the first entry, or if this was your first. It's always nice to get some feedback, and you guys were great. So I suppose this is how it ends... Does anyone remember today is Founder's Day? - 43
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Asgard by request!
Greetings once again from Asgard! Thanks for all the comments and the constant private messages I receive from everyone .. it's still much appreciated.. I'm so disappointed that all my images have been lost since Majhost went down earlier this year, and I hope to one day start uploading them again to share with you all. Although I no longer play SC4 .. I never showed off some of the work I was doing with the remake of Triton City. I'd never done a large sprawling Uni before and was quite inspired by another member after seeing theirs, I once again I got the Lot Editor out and started relotting things to my own style .. unfortunately it got a little out of hand as you can see from the mosaic I am posting .. over two city tiles and a mosaic of 9 different pictures.. University of Asgard, Triton. tariely: Nice to hear you've found a new home to help keep you playing.. The building you ask about is a subway, you can find it here on the STEX: http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/23040-federation-square-station/?tab=comments#comment-544593 I'm still playing Cities: Skylines .. but no doubt SC4 will eventually draw me back in one day, I'll just have to get around to installing it again and looking for some new bats. Best wishes to everyone, stay creative. - 57
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Old quarter, train station quarter
The next pictures, the old quarter next to the train station :
The start of the university
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Dublin City - The dark days
Before the Celtic Tiger of the 1990's, Dublin was a cultural backwater on the edge of Europe. Indeed, one German academic who visited famously commented "Hey, you weren't bombed by the Luftwaffe.... how is there so much dereliction?" Such was the state of the Dublin in the 1970's and 80's. Anyway, apologises for the delay.... this project is turning into a nightmare. Trying to get the right buildings to grow, avoiding abandonment and getting the street grid vaguely correct is wrecking my head. So it is taking a loooong time. And in between work and education as well....so I will hopefully have another update sooner than previously. O'Connell Street, 1965. This is the main thoroughfare of Dublin and the premier shopping street of the 1960's. The historic General Post Office, to the left is where republic rebels staged a rebellion in 1916 against the British - this eventually led to Irish freedom. Nelsons Column, in the centre of O'Connell Street, stands at 120 feet and has a viewing platform at the top. The River Liffey dissects the north of south of Dublin. Looking south towards Westmoreland Street you can see the bulky O'Connell Bridge House, built in the 1960's. Through the 1960's - 1980's Dublin fine Georgian architecture was under attack by corrupt city officials and developers. This can be seen by the ugly office blocks on the south banks of the river. To the lower left is Liberty Hall, the highest building in Ireland. O'Connell Bridge at night with the famous Heineken neon sign. By the 1980's, parts of the northside of the city were almost in ruins. Developers bought large chunks of land and let them waste away, while other areas were purchased by the city council for roads that were never to be built. A stagnant economy didn't help matters. This photo sums it up. No this isn't the 19th century, this is Dublin city centre in the mid 1970's! Nothing but dereliction all around. Smithfield market square is one of the old industrial hearts of Dublin. As cheaper labour became available abroad, manufacturing in the city died off and areas such as Smithfield fell to ruin. The large building in the centre is the home of Jameson whiskey. Smithfield square is now a glorified car park, and is used for horse markets every first Sunday of the month. A traveller camp at the northern end of Smithfield. The area effectively became a no go area after dark. Much of inner city Dublin is made up of public housing projects. Many of the red brick terraced housing was cleared to make way for rows of flat complexes such as this one close to Smithfield. The heroin epidemic of the 1980's was soon to sweep through these housing estates. Along the Royal Canal, on the northside of the city, some traditional industries just about survive. However over the years thousands have been laid off, causing massively high unemployment and huge levels emigration by 1990. Light at the end of the tunnel. By the late 1980's, the government realised something seriously had to be done to stem the flow of youth out of Ireland and attract inward investment. The old docklands were to be transformed into the International Financial Services Centre. The project began in 1989 and would kickstart the transformation of Dublin. Well thanks for having a look - any comments welcome! - 5
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Inverness
Inverness, a nice medium sized city
however, a catastrophic event caused this once peaceful city back to the stone age
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