Fun with SAM (NAM36)
Fun with SAM (NAM36)
My recent conversations on farming with @CorinaMarie and @Cyclone Boom, on the Farm Stuff thread, have made me much more interested (temporarily), in cosmetic aspects of SimCity 4, and so I decided it was time to have some fun with SAM. No, I didn't misspell, SAM, not SPAM. 
If you're new to the Street Addon Mod, or you think you might be able to get more out of it, then this post is for you.
The Street Addon Mod (SAM), is one part of the NAM which is entirely cosmetic, so I put it on the backburner when I started learning the NAM. Today, I took it off the backburner, to see what SAM could do for my Brownsville, New York large city tile. What the Network Widening Mod (NWM) does for Maxis Roads, with starter pieces for single tile AVE-2, TLA-3 and ARD-3, the Street Addon Mod does similar for Streets, with eleven different Street styles, SAM 1 to SAM 11! Read on, to see screenshots of what SAM can do for lifting the image of your SimCity 4 neighbourhoods.
Street Addon Mod only has 1 menu item, for all eleven SAM starter pieces, which work very similar to the NWM starter pieces. Press tab to cycle through from SAM 1 to SAM 11, then plop, and then drag your Maxis Street tool through the starter piece:
- SAM 1 - Parking Lot Textures. Note however, that while these look like parking lots, they are functionally identical to Maxis Streets! Sims only look like they are parking their cars there.
- SAM 2 - Herringbone Brick Streets – Good look for bicycle paths, I think, if only SimCity 4 had bicycles!
- SAM 3 - PEG Dirt Roads – Again, functionally, these are streets, not roads, and sims are also quite happy to walk on them, despite their rough-hewn look.
- SAM 4 - PEG Gravel Roads - A little bit more civilised than SAM 3.
- SAM 5 - Trolca's Dirt Streets – Sim's are quite happy to walk on these, or drive, but I gotta hope it doesn't rain!
- SAM 6 - Klinker Streets – These look great for sprawling parklands.
- SAM 7 - Hableurg's Asphalt Streets – Kinda looks like roads with no lane markings, but once again, functionally these are Streets, not Roads.
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SAM 8 - Cobblestone Streets – Actually, I like the look of these better than the Cobble Stone Pedmalls! Next time I feel like putting two Cobble Stone Pedmalls side-by-side, I'll be reaching for SAM 8 instead.
- SAM 9 - Brisk Red Brick Streets – Very fancy!
- SAM 10 - Moonlinght's Japanese Streets – Streets with yellow lane markings.
- SAM 11 - MGB IndustriSAM – Industrial style, clean sterile lines.
I'll use red arrows to point out each SAM type in my screenshots below. Click on the images to expand.
Okay, now you know what they all are, let's have some fun plopping and dragging these in my Brownsville city tile! 
Army Base and Federal Prison
- Arrow pointing left at the SAM 4 (Gravel Roads), which totally fits the Army Base look and feel.
- Arrow pointing right at the SAM 11 (IndustriSAM), very official and sanitised look for the Federal Prison.
- Arrow pointing down at the SAM 1 (Parking Lot), which simply provides pedestrian and traffic access between Passenger Train Station and diagonally adjacent Bus Stop. BTW, diagonal adjacency is actually the closest distance at which you can plop any two transit lots. There's a bug that prevents sims using both transit lots that share one side of a tile, but there's no trouble if they share a corner!
Succulent, Juicy Farms
- Arrow pointing down at SAM 3 (Dirt Roads).
- Arrow pointing up at my transition between SAM 4 (Gravel Roads) and SAM 3 (Dirt Roads). Transitions are not a supported feature in SAM, unlike NWM which does super clean and convenient transitions between quite a few road types. However, transitions can be done in SAM, if you are prepared to fiddle with it! That kind of transition between gravel near the highway, and then dirt for the rest of the road, is quite common in rural Australia.
- Arrow pointing right at ... no, that's not SAM! I installed the "Australian Euro Road Textures" NAM feature today, which you can read about in this other post of mine. It alters the look of the roads and highways, and this one is useful for anyone who suffers nearsightedness or has trouble with low contrast colour schemes.
- The two arrows pointing down mark the transitions between SAM 4 (Gravel Roads) and SAM 8 (Cobblestone Streets). Lot's of fiddling to get these to line up with zone boundaries.
- The arrow pointing up at two tiles of SAM 8 (Cobblestone Streets), shows how nicely SAM 8 transitions to a Street underpass. That screenshot is worth clicking on to see it at full resolution.
High Wealth Residential
- No arrows needed to point out this SAM 9 (Brisk Red Brick Streets). See, I told you it's fancy!
Industrial cobbles
- Now why do cobblestones always look ideal for industry? Two tiles of SAM 8 (Cobblestone Streets) are definitely a better look than a pair of Cobble Stone Pedmalls, and they are totally suitable for freight trucks, too! While most of the SAM types will handle a street roundabout, I think SAM 8 (Cobblestone Streets) roundabouts are the best look.
Police Station and Bus Stop access
- That east-west road is no road, it's a RHW-2 highway! To allow pedestrian access between Bus Stop and Police Station, I needed a street intersection, and it's the perfect spot for two tiles of SAM 1 (Parking Lots), as shown by the arrow pointing left. Doesn't that look MUCH better than a Maxis vanilla Street!
Marina access
Now, did you know that a Maxis vanilla Marina employs 12 to 334 sims? Impressive for such a small plop, though at §90/month each, they're impressively expensive, too!
- A Marina must have RCI access, and SAM 6 (Klinker Streets) delivers the perfect parkland feel for this spot.
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SAM 1 (Parking Lots) next to the Marina is functionally the same as a Street, but it looks oh, so appropriate. Lots of fiddling to get just one SAM 1 (Parking Lots) tile. A definite war between SAM 6 (Klinker Streets) and SAM 1 (Parking Lots), but I prevailed!
A Day at the Game
Parking, parking, and more parking. No wonder the local residents consider a Stadium to be NIMBY, even though the Commercial zones love it. Curiously enough, a Maxis vanilla Stadium doesn't actually need parking, but cosmetically, it seems extremely appropriate, and SAM 1 (Parking Lots) is perfect for the job.
- Four arrows point up at various pieces of SAM 1 (Parking Lots), which provides RCI access (and Bus Stop access) just like any Street does. Notice the clean transitions with the adjacent road. I was pleasantly surprised at how nicely SAM 1 (Parking Lots) handles lots of transitions. SAM 1 (Parking Lots) also alters the wealthing of the sidewalks, for a better paved look along the eastern side of the Stadium.
- Arrow pointing right at SAM 10 (Moonlinght's Japanese Streets), click on the screenshot below to see the yellow line markings.
- Arrow pointing down at the intersection of Maxis vanilla Road RD-2, SAM 10 (Moonlinght's Japanese Streets) and SAM 1 (Parking Lots). The cleanness of that intersection was my primary reason for choosing SAM 10 (Moonlinght's Japanese Streets) in this case. Not all SAM styles intersect cleanly!
- Arrow pointing left at the transition between RD-2 and AVE-2, one of my favourite transitions from the Network Widening Mod (NWM).
Bicycle Paths, perhaps?
- Now, evidently, this is no bicycle path, but this very red SAM 2 (Herringbone Brick Streets) certainly looks the part, don't you think?
That's all folks. I've got ten out of the eleven SAM styles in my Brownsville city tile now. I couldn't find a suitable spot for Trolca's Dirt Streets (SAM 5), so I'll leave it with you to check that out for yourselves. Enjoy!
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