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I've been working on a small buildingpack based on 42nd street in New York for when we'll be able to make some leisure buildings. So far planned: The lyric Theatre, a 2x3 theatre and 4x3 version.The New Victory theatre, will be 2x3.Foxwoods theatre, a 1x3.The Candler building, a 4x3 The lyric is pretty much done, just need to do some final UV mapping. I combined the colormap and illuminationmap. Looks pretty cool I think.

True, I'm starting to come round to the idea that the complexity of the geometry is sufficiently offset by the skintness in my texturing. In other news, I'm done with the solid color texturing of the building's base, outside of the ceiling plates that'll get some rest-space in my atlas: To me, this is genuine progress, because I'd held off on doing anything with this area before the rest of my model was done

Don't go for a sea of skyscrapers.

One of the joys of doing that other CJ/Mayor's Diary was interacting with the folks who stopped by and left comments. I'm pleased to say that not a small number of those folks remain friends today- and not just people I see around on the Internet, but friends who I have now hung out with in RL. There was an incredible sense of community in the city builder world ten years or so ago that was mainly centered around Sim City 4. Websites like Simtropolis and SC4Devotion were busy 24/7 with just amazing things going on. You could ask a question on your CJ/MD if something in SC4 had you stumped and, usually within the hour, you had folks offering solutions or at the very worst some other people saying, "Yeah, I've run into the same thing." Those were great times. I'm pretty stunned that, as successful and apparently popular as Cities: Skylines is, there isn't the same sort of buzz in the City Journals section here at Simtropolis. There are some really good CJs out there; ones that are well worth your time whether you are, like me, a N-0-0-b just figuring the game out or are already a C:S city creator extraordinaire. I have made my way through about 50% of the currently active CJs and have tried to leave comments wherever I have visited. Hopefully without making myself a pest, I will continue to do that. Please note that, if you are the recipient (or victim, depending on your point of view) of one of these comments, I am meaning to be constructive, even if I tell you that something you've done doesn't work for me. I would hope... no, expect that you would do the same thing here at TRR. If you think you see something that I could do better, or that I have missed the boat altogether, tell me. But don't just say, "Well, that really sucks" and stop there. What would you do different? How would you improve on my failure? Or, you can just say that it sucks and stop there, I guess. At least you've taken a look. And, that said, I'm not trolling (in the "gone fishing" sense) for folks to leave comments. We used to do "Lurker's Day" every so often at 3RR where I would dare those who would otherwise just just silently pass through to take a minute and just say something. Many readers did, and a few went on to become some of those close friends I noted above. If you do lurk here, be my guest. 3RR wound up with over a million page views before I stopped actively maintaining it. About two percent, around 20,000, of those lurkers posted. But I do appreciate every post, even if you just stop by and say hi. There's also no shame in asking questions here. If I know the answer, I'll try to respond with it. If I don't, I'll tell you and we'll both hope that some other reader comes along that does. Finally, and this is one of the few rules, please call me David. As far as I'm concerned (unless you would wish it otherwise) this is the kind of community where we all should be on a first name basis. If we don't know each other, you are just a friend I haven't had the chance to make yet. So, having said that, here's the mail from TRR'S first page. _____________________________________________________________ On September 5th, the day we started TRR, APSMS said: Hey, you are too kind. If TRR doesn't meet expectations, I'll count on you to let me know. _____________________________________________________________ On the 6th, my long-time friend Cathy (catty-cb - Citybuilder's Website) wrote: Great to see you back and posting and am looking forward to seeing where you go with this, as for trees its worth checking out Mr_Maison C:S files https://community.simtropolis.com/profile/11505-mr_maison/content/?type=downloads_file as hes' been mainly concentrating on trees, I wish I could play Cities: Skylines my computer can start it up and I can play with the basics, etc but anything more that is to much for my computer, I must tell Jmouse know you are back and posting she will be really pleased to hear it, we have both sort of moved on from SC4 Devotion and can be found most days over at CB and are mainly into playing Banished these days (I'm still with the RTMT Team so still play a bit of SC4 but more for testing purposes than anything). Its really good to see you back -catty (I used to have a bee avatar) Cathy, yes, and you used to have a Discworld quote by Death about cats (R.I.P. Sir Terry Pratchett) in your sig. It's great to hear from you, too. I've been a lurker over at Citybuilders - shame on me. _____________________________________________________________ On that same day, rsc204 said: Thanks. I think a lot of folks are doing just what you described- I know I was very tempted to. I'm beginning to figure out, though, that Cities: Skylines has two tracks for those who would play it. There's a track where there's almost no learning curve to deal with at all, and the game is immensely fun for even a little bit more than the proverbial 15 minutes. Then there's the road less taken, and the learning curve on that route is huge. We had a decade and more to learn pretty much everything about SC4 and in the process make the game both amazing and completely ours (take that, EA). C:S started out mostly amazing, but mastering it right now is like drinking from a firehose. I'm working on that and will know I'm making progress when you let me know you are scratching that itch. _____________________________________________________________ The 6th of September was TRR's biggest day for comments so far. We heard on that day for the first time from boformer, who has, along with a couple of others, become a regular commenter. I responded in the thread here [linkie]. As we'll be looking at other recommendations by our friend, let me just say that the past couple of weeks have shown them all to be spot on. My next TRR will address and discuss many of the mods boformer has identified as useful. _____________________________________________________________ And on the 6th we heard from my old SC4D friend Joe (fbstj): But who would have thought, my friend, that SC4 would still be completely playable going on 12 years after its release? It would run on Windows 98, it ran on Windows ME (to the extent that anyone other than me owned Windows ME), it ran on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 (to the extent anyone could figure out how to get past the goofy GUI) and now, even though Microsoft seems to be trying to kill it as a disc-based game, on Windows 10. Something tells me that, if a game stays amazing, people will continue to figure out a way to play it. Thanks for the kind words, my old friend. And yes, I did change my sig. _____________________________________________________________ Ln X (My Cities: Skylines CJ Scrapbook) also commented on the 6th: It's very cool to hear that from the creator of the most successful C:S city journal to date. Thank you very much! I am going through what is now Thornabary a page or so at a time and looking at your pics very carefully. I promise not to steal any of your ideas unless I think I can get away with it. _____________________________________________________________ Still on the 6th. And old SC4D friend, Art (art128 - Okushiri) commented: My dirty secret is that I still think, Art, that SC4, as currently modded and given the wealth of great custom content available, is still the better game. It's not eleven years better though, and probably needs to be looking over its shoulder. Thanks for following TRR, my friend. I'll do my best to make it worth your while. _____________________________________________________________ Cathy (catty-cb) wrapped up the 6th with two comments: and, after I responded here [linkie], And thus began the conversation here about ploppable rocks. Cathy was doing what I hope you will all do when you know something and I don't- pointing it out complete with a link. Please don't ever assume that I know anything, folks. As far as C:S is concerned, I can almost assure you that I know very little. SC4? Well, I've probably forgotten more than I still remember- I look at the NAM stuff that is going on now and wonder how anything I did back in the day was taken seriously. Alex (Tarkus) and those guys are geniuses. I'm embarrassed by comparison. As far as the Discworld is concerned I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried when I heard the news. _____________________________________________________________ On the 7th, my great friend Silvio (Rayden) stopped by: I'm looking forward to that too. Right now, I have no idea, but that is no different than last time, and look where 3RR went. _____________________________________________________________ Old home week continued on the 8th when my old friend Pat (patfirefghtr) commented: Pat, I hope you do. You'll love the flowing water, and I'd be really interested to see what you would do with it. It's great to see you here- please don't be a stranger. _____________________________________________________________ After I posted some eye candy, Cathy (catty-cb) dropped back in on September 13th and noted: I try to change things up every so often with RL photos and other content, as you'll recall from years past. I have a nascent photography/photo art business on facebook here [linkie] if you'd like to take a look. Tain't never seen a Godwit though, ma'am, but I am sure they take a break after their commute [linkie]. Thanks for liking what you see- more about that tweak list in just a moment. _____________________________________________________________ A day later on the 14th, Azurespecter dropped by: I'd love to see it =) and welcome back! Thanks for giving TRR a look, my friend. As for the list, it was right around mid-September, 10 days after I started this CJ, that I began to realize that I didn't know diddly-squat about Cities: Skylines. I had three years and a couple of months of playing SC4 under my belt when I started 3RR here in March of 2006. With all the compliments I'd gotten, I felt pretty inadequate. The list was quietly put on the shelf. _____________________________________________________________ A little later on the 14th, another friend from SC4D, Mr_Maison (Steam Workshop), showed up for the first of several times to date. Mr M, thank you for these and all your more recent suggestions and observations concerning the game. Your reward for going above and beyond, of course, will be to have me pestering you for more of the same. As I am immensely jealous of your ability to create in-game content along the lines of what is most interesting to me- trees and other flora, that sort of thing- I may be asking to sit at your feet and learn. Be warned. _____________________________________________________________ Cathy (catty-cb) commented for the second time on the 14th, remarking on Mr_Maison's recommendation of Atys' video. I did and I liked Not sure about the flowers tho a bit too bright and strange looking, but otherwise I can see why you recommended it I watched the video too and was both impressed with Atys' work and in basic agreement with Cathy. I think that it's unrealistic to expect perfection overnight in both detail and scale of custom content. The SC4 experience tells me that will change for the better as time goes by. _____________________________________________________________ Mr_Maison returned with the last comment of September 13th. I did and I liked Not sure about the flowers tho a bit too bright and strange looking, but otherwise I can see why you recommended it I know what you mean. Not all veggies on workshop are to my taste either. But I enjoy seeing people push for intentional aesthetic beauty and design when building a city and not just skyscraper forests. And I can feel the intent with this CJ........... Ahh, my sense about my take on the game gets confirmed. Of course, my take is generic to city builders- it was the same one I had when I was playing SC4. Anyway, the intent is meant to be felt, and I'm glad that's getting through. _____________________________________________________________ On the 14th, boformer returned with this advice. A combination of fine road height mod and precision engineering does the trick: First decrease the road height step size to 1m (CTRL - DOWN).Now draw the bridges (PAGE UP / DOWN to change elevation of nodes).Use Precision Engineering's "extra info mode" (press SHIFT while building road) to see the elevation and other useful information.Never build segments which are longer than 12 units.Extra trick: You can force the bridge mode (useful for the bottom road in your last image) by pressing CTRL + LEFT/RIGHT multiple times. You can also force ground mode with the same command (useful for eleveated and sunken roads - no tunnels will spawn). I hope that modders will create better tools for this soon... I experimented with a "road smoother mod" a while ago. But right now I don't have the time to release it. We will look at the Precision Engineering, the Fine Road Heights, and the Configurable Slope Limiter mods in a TRR post I'm working on tonight. This is stuff that offers a SC4 degree of precision. boformer's post, though, was a real eye-opener for me at the time _____________________________________________________________ Cathy (catty-cb) returned to post on September 20th. Cathy is referring here to my wife Heather, who was hospitalized for about the last two weeks of September. I'm happy to report... heh!, the "Heather Report... that she is doing well at this time. She had some serious issues with medication she takes, but those seem to be sorted out. Thank you to everyone who had her in their thoughts. My skills with streams may be reaching the "vanilla" game's limits. It appears that some of the limitations can be addressed through mods. There be much more about creating streams and rivers in future posts, and perhaps a tutorial. There are now a number of seasonal trees, including Mr_Maison's excellent ones, on the Steam Workshop. They are not difficult to find. Sim City 4, however, has left me with higher expectations. As far back as 2006, I was saying that there were two holy grails in that game: the ability to build a "game" bridge over a working (as defined by the ability for automata to pass through) road or railroad and flora that changes with the seasons. Cities:Skylines does the first out of the box. As for trees and other stuff that would change with the seasons (snow and ice!), there appears to be a big problem. The first is that, while C: S now has night and day periods, it does not appear to have meaningful months or seasons. Someone tell me I'm wrong and thaqt it can be reached through a mod- you'll be my hero. _____________________________________________________________ boformer chimed in later on the 20th. "Orange and red trees...." Check! "Maybe CO will add seasons...." Sounds right, but I'd bet even money some modder beats Colossal Order to it. "Does that not work on water?" A-ha, the 64 dollar question. With iLive's Reader, you could change in about 30 seconds an attribute of a SC4 ploppable prop so as to allow it to be placed in water. We need a Reader for Cities: Skylines. _____________________________________________________________ And Cathy (catty-cb) then returned on the 20th to note: If you mean this one https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=505480567 he says he's removed the "Terran Tool and Water Tool functionality" I looked at the More Beautification mod, Cathy, and the creator was just referring to the terrain and water terraforming tools, that's all. _____________________________________________________________ Dennis (Mr_Maison) wrapped up the 20th with: New bridges are huge on my list of must-haves as well. Several modders have indicated that they are close to accomplishing this, but it must not be an easy task. Ploppable boulders? Atys has to be a Cities: Skylines player after my own heart. Thank you for asking about Heather, my friend. My best wishes for good health to both you and your wife. _____________________________________________________________ boformer checked in on the 21st of September with what turned out to be a great workaround for plopping boulders in streams: That's right. But with that mod you can place props ingame, e.g. rocks, road arrows, street lights etc. I just don't know if you can place rocks in the water. If that is not possible, you could reset the water to sea level, pause the game, place the props in the riverbed and then wait until the water is back. I also don't know if props collide with the water. It is clear that, for now, the boulder and rock ploppables that are available cannot be placed directly in the game water. As my post immediately following boformer's suggestion shows [linkie], however, resetting the water to sea level and placing them on the dry streambed works perfectly, as the water flows over and around them when it returns. My respect for the game developers at Colossal Order, already high, went up another couple of notches- Bravo, folks!! _____________________________________________________________ Our friend Cathy (catty-cb) wrapped up the first page of comments on TRR with this, also posted on the 21st: are right it makes a big difference I look at the images I posted as proof of concept, Cathy. Real game superdetailing of streams will come later. It took a couple of years to get there in 3RR. _____________________________________________________________ So, thanks, friends, for all the great comments. As each page fills, we'll do another "We've got mail..." post to keep everything up to date. David 1499/41 - These numbers are the page views and comments as of the time I started the post. They will appear at the bottom of my posts from this point forward.

Another considerations, mainly for realism, that adds to good looking cities: Prioritize realism: I know this is a game, but some things never look good: a slopped street with rowhouses climbing softly looks gorgeous, but an stadium hanging from a cut hill, with a horrid vertical wall is just not right. Try to think: I could drive a car safely on this road? I could PARK a car safely here? If the answer is no, it is time to use a Slope Mod to resolve it (look on the STEX for a good one). The same rule applies, way more strictly, for railways.Mind the distances between buildings: no matter the concept of your city (american, north-european, south-european-latin-american, asiatic, in order of growing density), the buildings never overclump totally, nor jump aleatorily from high to low rises. If your buildings had small lots, add some plazas around to give walking space.Respect sectorial uses: most cities aren't a mix of diverse uses, but are thorougly sectioned. The Hoyt's Sector Model, not being perfect, is widely accepted as a fair approximation: Drag rail lines grouped into concrete directions (northbound, southbound, etc.) and zone industrial around it (or use causeways as railroads, as in Chicago). Envolve industrial zones with poor residential ones, and put high wealth residentials and commercials in a line dragged from the centre to the opposite extreme of the industrial lines, maybe even partially isolating the sector with parks (which are the perfect places to insert american-styled universities or stadiums). As a mantra, repeat after me: airports should be on the oustkirts of the cities.As a consequence of the aforementioned, armonize the scales: start with low rises all around, and increase density in the centre while extending the suburbs, making population enough to sustain the high office buildings at the CBD. If you want a more european look, keep the mid-rises at the centre and use high-rises only in the high-wealth neigbourhoods (as in London, Paris, Madrid or Rome); if you prefer an american feel, redevelop the entire centre with high rises and sorround it with high-rise residentials (adecuately spaced) and acres and acres of suburbs in the periphery.To get some of the nicer buildings, you will need to trick the game: most of the high-rise office buildings that you see on CJs do not grow, even if you have installed it, but are landmarks. You can safely plop any commercial and non-functional landmark, but residential buildings deprecate almost instantaneously, and industrial ones can't manage traffic, so it's recomendable to avoid plopping it.By the way, you can trick the game once again plopping custom parks and flora, all of which is downloadable in this site. What is more, you can even mod the game to make trees to grow on the sidewalks, or to change the sidewalks textures. Navigate the STEX thorougly and learn to work with overloaded menus.I could be on this for hours, but I hope those little advices could be useful to begin.

Windows handles multitasking properly, since the very early versions of Windows NT. It does allow running tasks concurrently, and will give applications more than one cores or CPUs if they are available, and the application runs more than one thread, or instead will use time-slicing if there are more active threads (of the same priority level) than CPUs, requesting CPU time. This is of course transparent to the application, which should not assume availability (or not) of any number of processors. SC4 creates a big number of threads (just check the Task Manager). Now what could be run simultaneously (to take advantage of the architecture), is beyond me, it all depends on the implementation they have chosen. Simulation may (or "should") rather not, maybe they could run all simulation in one thread only, and have the others handling the user interaction, the graphics etc etc, but who knows. Fact is that their implementation obviously has problems, as you can see high CPU utilization even if you stop simulating your city, only for having the application loaded. Not to mention that players have reported that you have to set CPUcount in the command-line to... 1, or else risk crashes. You can't have concurrent processing with only 1 CPU (or core). Quite weird, why have the application creating so many threads then? It's obvious that they never tested the application thoroughly enough, under a multi-processor system (or tested it, saw that it wasn't working well, but rushed the game's release(s), possibly planning to fix these at some later patch, which they never did - just put the CPUcount option for players which really used multi-CPU/core computers and had troubles; my speculation, but who really knows?)..It's not that no multi-core CPUs existed by the time. There were no multi-core CPUs, but there were multi-CPU boards, Windows could use them (and as mentioned above, indeed allot multiple CPUs to an application) and they were not really supercomputers, actually quite affordable. And it's harder to make a multi-threaded application running correctly on a multi-CPU system rather than on a multi-core one. The reason is that CPUs have (internal) cache memory, and the data they are working on may actually be in their cache; so, if the application does not use synchronization objects properly, each CPUs may "see" a different copy of the (same) data. This does not happen in a multi-core CPU (the same cache is used by all cores). That is, if a multi-threaded application runs correctly on a multi-CPU system, it should run on a multi-core one too (while the reverse is not necessarily true). This means that SC4 most probably never employed parallel processing correctly. And SUPERMESSI, the features you are asking for are not possible to be implemented in SC4, and the reason is the graphics engine. BATs have only four aspect views (North, East, South, West), and lack "full geometry" - they are made to be viewed only from a certain angle and viewpoint. The game is NOT truly 3D. Changing this would require changing the application itself.

The Garden City tile got crash bugged from some conflict with new addons. Oops. Boom. Updating the config.bmp for modeling a real region is hard! Here, I am trying to make sure that bridges, highways, and highway interchanges, as well as major urban centers, towns, airports, railyards, ports are all on appropriate city tiles.

And now an updated screenshot from our alpha build - featuring a bunch of different offices, restaurants, utilities, and other things you build. (Oh, and we haven't messed with NPC shadow contrast... yet... )

Time for a new chapter for the CJ of the Bright City, the last one featuring the northern part of Maya Bay. But as usual let's start with your comments, that this time were quite numerous! FEEDBACK CORNER Before showing you the two new districts I want to share an aerial comprehensive view of what has been shown of Maya Bay till now. As already told it's just the northern part of the whole thing! SIGNAL HILL If you want to buy a family house and live in the immediate vicinity of the city center there aren't many choices. One of these is definitely the neighborhood known as Signal Hill, that despite being very close to all major arteries of the heart of Aurora still manages to be a quiet and peaceful place for its residents. The district takes its name from the high telecommunications tower serving the entire bay and dominates the hill. To buy a house here is not for everyone: even if this is not one of the most expensive districts of the cit, certainly is a lot less cheap than the popular neighborhoods that surround it. In the district shops and leisure are virtually absent, there are two bus lines that connect the district with the rest of the city, although residents can certainly afford one or more vehicles per household! The most fascinating feature of the neighborhood, as well as having the Red Lights Districts easily reachable even by foot (with all that implies in terms of drinking and saving the taxi fare), surely is the amazing view of downtown skyline you can enjoy even while sitting in the pool or during a picnic in the garden with your friends. But if in the evening you don't want to sit at home, taking the car is just a matter of a minute to get into the city! HAWTHORNE If you are then asking yourself where the residents of Signal Hill go for shopping, the spontaneous answer can only be in the neighboring district of Hawthorne, that in its streets offers an enviable array of commercial activities. It's also necessary to cross Hawthorne to get to one of the most important railway and highway junction on the whole city. If you do not know well the city it's pretty easy to get lost here! And past this maze, to the east the district ends with one of the most unique train stations of the whole region: Keep followin' and you'll be surprised!

Already done from a different point of view. The two files BldgProps_Vol1 and BldgProps_Vol2 are the SC4 buildings as props. Both of these files are available in the Lot Editor download page. You can place any of these buildings in any lot configuration you like. I would refrain from cluttering up the MMP with even more junk than is in there now. Just create some new lots with the lot editor, and if you make them growable, you don't need to worry about menu entries. I consider C:S a flash in the pan. SC4 has been around for something close to 15 years in spite of many attempts to kill it. It is probably one of the better if not best examples of state of the art programming for its time. The limits of the x86 paradigm have been reached and it would appear from doing a little research that increasing bandwidth (128 bit) won't be an improvement. The coupling problems with chip components are the problem, and things are coming to Peter's Pretty Pass. I have suggested a new architectural approach in another thread that is, essentially, a throwback to more advanced technology that exists in some main frames since the 1950s. The era of the single bus PC has gone to the end of its capability.

Well my initial binge was over 200h in two weeks after downloading the game within an hour of launch. So I totally agree with the fun side of the game, I think that's it's big appeal over SC4. Newer, shinier and much more accessible to the average person. If I'm honest, more than anything I enjoyed stalking sims and following trains . But what fun would that be without a pretty city as it's backdrop. I'm a long time simulation fan, but SC4 just passed me by until I installed it a few years back. Since then I've regretted not trying it sooner and I always feel like I'm playing catch up with the long-timers. But I'm doing things I'd never have dreamed I was able to. Making textures and 3D modelling for example, I'm really more of a technical person, I never have the eye for these things that the more artistically inclined do. On a personal note, thanks for your MMP tutorial, it was one of the most well-explained tutorials I've come across. After my initial binge with CS came the first game update. I quickly found the game frustrating and limited without mods, despite trying to be careful with the number of them I installed. One of my biggest annoyances with CO/Paradox and Steam is that I can not simply choose to decline a title update. The update without warning killed two saves with 400h of work invested in them, this really is buried in my sub-conscience every time I think about CS. Every other game I've ever played, I'd have uninstalled the update and not started any new projects until I was finished with them. Knowing I could play sans-mods or repeat the same problem again, I decided to put CS to one side at least until all the updates are out of the way. In the meantime I see many things people are doing with CS that do make me feel like starting it up again. But SC4 holds so much promise for me right now, I'm happy just to follow CS's development from the other side of the fence. I lost my initial saved games when patch 1.2 was launched.....but BloodyPenguin brought his mod to my attention and I have them back. Give this a go to try and get back your 400h of work if you haven't tried it already http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=529129546 The update thing is a peeve of mine too. With any software, I like to let the crowd go in while I have some tea and look for any confirmed complaints I can't live with before I dive in. That's why I haven't touched any other city builder since SC4....those last few train wrecks were easy to spot miles before they crashed in the same manner and in the same spot. Since the game is still young and wet behind the ears, it's wise for us to see this like the beginnings of Earth development where things are unstable and cataclysmic events are imminent until things settle down. I only put up with it because I know for the most part that inner core parts are in our hands and we can make it what we want it to be eventually. David- At the fork of the road, I chose the road less taken......I feel like I volunteered on an exciting expedition in uncharted lands we been hearing about for many years. I also got myself into the deeper water by entering the world of "Organic Modeling". Right now I'm contemplating my next move with nature assets because I think the latest update changed the way leaves are displayed on the trees....not very happy the way they look right now but it will get worked out. When I see players like Atys and the way you start this CJ, it makes me want to make more and more nature assets because I feel like I'm helping you make that awesome landscape. -Dennis

Concept experimentig (posted also at the mayor dairy):

One more livery for the day, a fictional one, now available on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=532117509 If you've seen The IT Crowd, you might like it. "Established by the great Denholm Reynholm with a simple dream and 6 million pounds, Reynholm Industries has been conquering the world of business, science, and industry for the past several decades, and now sees profits exceeding eighteen hundred billion billion pounds. It is with that in mind that Reynholm Industries is proud to present its latest venture: Reynholm Airways. Tired of those old, dreary airlines? Try Reynholm Airways! Reynholm Airways boasts the widest isles, cushiest, fart-free seats, and the sexiest flight attendants. We serve the best meals and the best Rohypnol-free alcoholic beverages. Using our own Reynholm Industries Ultra-Thrust jet engines, our fleet of Boeing 787s thrust through the sky, pounding the clouds at 35,000 feet, and gently caress the tarmac when they land. They're painted in the standard Reynholm livery, which includes the company colors on a shiny background, because it's statistically proven that people prefer flying on shiny aircraft. Our fleet's autopilot systems are unique to our airline, designed by the genius Maurice Moss, and a man from Ireland. So, the next time you want a safe and comfy flight, choose Reynholm! Reynholm Airways - If you're not sexy, you fly coach. Find out more about Reynholm Industries at our corporate website: http://www.reynholm.co.uk/index.php"

I was working on this part of interchange and curent results is like "What the hell you did Domo?.."

Sorry about the hiatus. The "After Dark" update pretty much brought my work on TRR to a screeching halt. I waited until yesterday to see if someone would step in and revive the 81 tile mod, but have joined a lot of other disappointed people in moving on when that didn't happen. My original region is viewable but not playable, so that doesn't get us anywhere. So I decided to start more or less from scratch and apply some of the lessons I learned over the past half-year or so since the game's release. I decided that I needed to spend a lot more time working on the map so that I could eliminate a lot of "on the fly" in-game terraforming. I also started with no mods installed in order to learn more about the "vanilla" game's capabilities and limitations so that I could be better informed (and more skilled at using what CO has made available) about expanding my horizons in that regard. I decided not to create my map's terrain from scratch this time, either. That was another decision related to terraforming. I had imported some heightmaps and created custom maps through the "Terrain.Party" website right after I bought the game last spring and was less than excited by the results. Since then, though, I've seen some really outstanding heightmap-based maps and thought that I would give Terrain.Party another look. I chose the Gorge of the Kentucky River southwest of Lexington, Kentucky as an area that would offer nice relief and a lot of interesting topography. There's also some interesting historic stuff there (I went to college at University of Kentucky in Lexington in the early 1970s and know the area well) such as the Louisville & Nashville Railroad's High Bridge over the gorge, the Shakertown village south of the river, and Dix Dam and Lake Herrington. While I have no intention of doing a realistic re-creation of the road and rail network, it is fun to "play God" with a part of the country I know something about. The terrain in the area is, as you can see, pretty dramatic. It's mainly rolling hills incised by the gorge and many streams that drain into the Kentucky River. One of the first decisions I made after looking at the map was that I would try to create natural stream flow as accurately as I could with the water tool. (The damn bird gets it as soon as install my first mod) I placed a size=50 water capacity=0.01 source at the head of every significant stream. Pretty much every source is set to the lowest output. Playing with the output gives you some interesting insight into the terrain. My map has over 100 water sources and, after everything ran (sorry about the unintended pun) for a while, I found myself with a hydrologically not-too-bad model of the area. The Kentucky River filled up from the streams flowing into it and ran in the proper direction. If anything, it is too full. I am spending a lot of time as this is written trying to fine-tune all the flows, but overall I'm pretty happy. And there's the requisite freeway regional connection. It's fun to pay attention to stuff like smooth grades and cleared rights-of-way. I'm calling this corner of TRR "Jessamine" after a major creek in the area. I think this will be fun. Next: More water stuff, and we'll start looking at mods. David

This photo dump contains my best work with railways so far, looping in and around the cities of my region; Lindin City Highway 700 crossing Gravenhurst Evermore Dresden Cisco Bay

Abandoned for quite some time

Well, I'll add my penny to this convo. First, beauty is in the eye of the beholder; some of what I thought was beautiful work on my part shared here at Simtrop wasn't received the way I had hoped. Some of what I've seen from others as beautiful wasn't necessarily so to me. It's subjective. But, I'd recommend you form your own vision first, looking at the work and getting ideas that you can tweak to your own suiting is really an asset here as well. Water features are nice; but not necessarily mandated for beauty. A sea of skyscrapers can be beautiful in and of itself---depending upon what you do with it. Preference, preference, preference. Try to setup your own first over the evaluations of others...that's beauty...wish you luck and hope you share some pictures of what you've come up with.

Post #6 - Click here [linkie] or on the image to see the content.

I'll add some more within the hour I just can't get that many good one since my computer isn't that great Updated pictures for both towers on steam

Lock added for water transition... Asset: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=532088908 Prop: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=532083398 You need both for this one to work.

Indeed! It is in my hometown!

There are a sun and moon around the globe in the lower left corner which position themselves according to the time of day, though I have yet to find a proper clock.

GUAUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!! Great images! Great work.

Hey, that's only like a week and a half by SimPEG time.

Well my initial binge was over 200h in two weeks after downloading the game within an hour of launch. So I totally agree with the fun side of the game, I think that's it's big appeal over SC4. Newer, shinier and much more accessible to the average person. If I'm honest, more than anything I enjoyed stalking sims and following trains . But what fun would that be without a pretty city as it's backdrop. I'm a long time simulation fan, but SC4 just passed me by until I installed it a few years back. Since then I've regretted not trying it sooner and I always feel like I'm playing catch up with the long-timers. But I'm doing things I'd never have dreamed I was able to. Making textures and 3D modelling for example, I'm really more of a technical person, I never have the eye for these things that the more artistically inclined do. On a personal note, thanks for your MMP tutorial, it was one of the most well-explained tutorials I've come across. After my initial binge with CS came the first game update. I quickly found the game frustrating and limited without mods, despite trying to be careful with the number of them I installed. One of my biggest annoyances with CO/Paradox and Steam is that I can not simply choose to decline a title update. The update without warning killed two saves with 400h of work invested in them, this really is buried in my sub-conscience every time I think about CS. Every other game I've ever played, I'd have uninstalled the update and not started any new projects until I was finished with them. Knowing I could play sans-mods or repeat the same problem again, I decided to put CS to one side at least until all the updates are out of the way. In the meantime I see many things people are doing with CS that do make me feel like starting it up again. But SC4 holds so much promise for me right now, I'm happy just to follow CS's development from the other side of the fence.

Always enchanted by your cities Schlumy!

Hamburg U gotta love it, took the pics myself (pretty obvious, taken on different days), Hamburger Schietwetter

Seasons ? I hope they will begin by resolving the current bugs which are running since six months... tourism, for example, or the yellowish LUT. (I have basic whishs but I'm loosing confidence.)

Baltimore , Maryland

Cool projects everyone . Here's a little something I'm working on .Thanks to Twrecks for the IRM Filler pieces .

Construction site in downtown Sycamore.

This slope mod I use is a real P.I.T.A bread slice to work with.

"East of Michigan Avenue is an industrial park," grandpa said.

You know how long it's been since I last made an entry? Too long, that's how long. And now I can't play Sim City 4. That's just wonderful. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For many, their day in the city starts in a quaint suburban home, and then progresses to vibrant areas. These neighborhoods are calm, but empty. A train is one of the most effective ways to get back into the city. Afterwards, the train will eventually reach downtown, which is always a pleasure to explore. For most, the day continues with work. Head on over to the office, where you will contribute to meetings, paperwork, and all that jazz. It may not be the best thing, but doing it in the city is better than out in the 'burbs, am I right? One of the upsides of being downtown is that there's a wide variety of restaurants. If you want whatever kind of food you want, you can get it.

I've made a small suburban pond using mmps. I also discovered there are more uses for freeway lights than just lighting up freeways.

EDIT: changed image to one at object limit

Replies: Schulmanator Thanks mate! Always nice to see a familiar face, sadly haven't seen seen/heard from some of the regulars on the CJ forum in quite a while. philforhockey51 lol no worries, never gets old. Thanks and I'll try my best. The rest of the city may sleep at night but the power plant is very active. Normally only two units are required at night, but on this humid night all units are active while another nearby power plant is down for maintenance. The stacks for unit 3&4 weren't built with a maintenance/rest platform so aside from a single high-intensity xenon discharge flasher on the north side they do not meet the current aircraft warning safety regulations. Rather then spend the money to built a platform on a structure that wasn't designed for one, the PRPA simply illuminated the south side of the stacks with spot lights from the roof of the boiler building. The port facilities are also usually abuzz at night. The residents of Dresden have a love-hate relationship with the big plant which dominates the city's skyline. Those who work there and their families love it because it provides over 750 well-paying full time jobs and a trickle down effect in the local economy. There are also those who appreciate the vital role it plays in the regions economy and others who simply admire the structure because of how massive it is - like me! . But most local resident who don't directly benefit from the plant, aside from getting their electricity from it, resent the plant because of scenes like these; Even after the recent modernization project which significantly reduced overall sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulates releases, the plant is the second largest source of air pollution in the region after the ICON smelter facility. Previously it had been the #1 source by a large margin and independent studies have shown that local levels of air pollution(within Dresden) have been reduced by over 80% since the construction of the superstack and the conversion of units 3&4 to peak only usage. But coal power can never be completely clean and people will understandably never be happy with air pollution. However the often forget that plant came first - Dresden's pop. was 28,000 in 1954 when the first phase of the plant was completed(1000 of whom worked there), today its over 92,000. They were the ones who chose to move into the city despite the power plants presence and after just having spent 1.6 billion dollars refurbishing the plant, she's not going anywhere. And with the tour of the Dresden Generating Station is concluded.

Making my first interchange with NAM 33. Click images for full size. Project: Upgrade and expand this junction. Clearing the area Rough concept of my goal Getting the loop in and playing with some new FlexFly Loop rework and progress Complete in rough: Fully complete in raw form With eyecandy The upgrade also included building a new interchange to the east Zoom out showing the project limits. It parallels a RHW 5.0 era highway.

women with beards. I love it.

Here's a newer screenshot with a bunch of recent additions: - Weather - it's a dreary, rainy workday afternoon - New tenant types: - Diner restaurant and a salad bar (for workers to grab lunch or dinner) - Convenience store (for both workers and residents) - Several office types - Decorations and plaza sculpture that will keep people happy and contribute to the building's "buzz" (Click through for full size) We've also been working on a lot of gameplay systems, like prestige, media buzz, and political favors, but those are all programmer art at the moment and don't look very good...

Suburbs of East Sault Ste. Marie known as Manitou.

Tokyo, Japan Shot taken from the Tokyo Skytree

Belo Horizonte, Brazil The downtown was planned circa 1850-1880. The city was built for be the new Minas Gerais' state capital.

Still lots of work to do. The industrial buildings appear to use the custombuffer slots, so I'm in bad shape in that regard. But they do function. The pollution doesn’t appear to render very far out. I used boformers new mod. The foundry is 34x21, the blast furnace on the left is 20x10, the power station next to that is 9x13, and the coke oven batteries in the middle are 20x20.

There is a tree brush mod in the workshop