cardwellent

Hi Everyone, Just thought I would share one playing style that I have. I start out with a blank region. After setting up the terrain in the region, I will build interstates. 1 or 2 interstates will come from SimNation and pass through my region. My individual cities will have small country roads set up as U.S. routes and/or state highways. These roads in every region are lined with huge farms as you would see in rural America. Occasionally, I will put a little town in with maybe a 100 to 200 population. These towns only provide minimal services as a real rural town would. They are far and few between and my region will only have 2 or 3 of these towns to start. I then pick a spot along the above mentioned interstates and I will build a few services such as gas stations, places to eat, and so on. Of couse, with this I will have a low density housing community where the people that work in these places live. Along with these services I will build entertainment such as playgrounds, small sports parks, and other custom lots I find right here at Simtropolis. I will also build a couple hotels for the travelers to stop overnight in. I will also have one city area set aside where I build what is the equivalent of national or state park that is heavily wooded and contains lots like what you find in the PEG MTP or some others that are on this site. This park area is set away from my interstates with only a small state highway running to it. Along the road will be little corner stops for gas and food. After all this is done and I switch back and forth between city areas enjoying the peacefullness of country living, I will go back to my interstate exit and start build a small town (population of about 1000) to act as my county seat. I will also build a rural freight station to allow all that food being grown to be shipped out. I build additional exits in different city areas with services. As you can probaly guess, my county seat starts becoming a bigger town and my other little towns grow as I add more little towns. To skip way foward, I eventually have to build a beltway that goes all the way around my region as it becomes a metropolitan area with my county seat being the biggest city and the surrounding cities acting as suburbs. The custom lots found here, on the bsc site, and on the PEG site are fantastic for finding just the right lot to go on just the right place. I posted this because I wanted to start a thread to hear about how other people will build in a new region and hear about different playing styles. Special thanx to Simgoober and his wide range of real life commercial service lots which add unbelievable realism to the simulator.

Oh I forgot to mention, I will be gone for about 4 days starting tomorrow as we are moving the motorhome to a new camp spot. I wish I knew how to do textures and props so I could put some RV parks in the game. If I post some pics on my site of our motorhome, can anyone make them into a prop for a RV park? Also I need some chicken wire fence sections or I guess barbed wire fence sections to go along the interstae and around some of the farms where they meet other types of zones. I guess I need to learn how to make everything myself.

That's a great idea to develope from east to west. I would love to see some pics of that. Does that include your agriculture too ? The story of my region does not even begin til the whole region is filled up with farms and little farming towns. That is to say I like to pretend that the farms, little towns, and 1 or 2 lone interstate systems already exist. Oh yeah someone asked how I keep my budget going. I jst fill up a whole region with farms, farming towns., and small residence that act as kind of houses where the farmers live. Also each area will have at least 1 little town that serves as a farming town. That's part of the reason why you don't see any rail yet because it would take my budget down at first. It's hard to keep the budget balanced while I try to build a farming region so I can really begin the simulation at the point where evry city area is filled with farms. Eventhough I would love to cheat sometimes, I have to bite my tongue and say "there's no government bailouts in my simulation." LOL I will do what you sugested and start keeping a city journal as soon as I get to a point where I can start my simulation. Right now I'm playing with the RHW to see how to add even more realism. It's really a fantastic add-on with almost an unlimited amount of configurations. Thanx for sharing your playing style with us. I saw some old west building on the stex that look like they could be used to create almost an 1800's type of enviroment eventhough I think money just might be a problem with that because the areas really would be barren.

I can see the point here, but I must point out that sometimes a simple service established at an interstate exit can lead to development. Such is the case in Strafford, Mo where originally there was nothing but an exit to nothing but a small population of people doing nothing. The exit then got a truck stop. That boomed into another truck stop and a convience store after which another convience store opened. The last time I checked, the exit was getting a little strip of storefronts of which one was going to be a subway. Now I will admit that Springfield is not far from strafford but in my playing style the interstate highways are not just built coming from nowhere and goin to nowhere. They actually simulate real interstates that run from city to city over which my counties do not determine thier route. I like to simulate what happens when exits in the middle of nowhere aquire just a small service and eventually this does lead to the growth of that area. All over the U.S., this is happening, mostly in rural America. In my simulations thier may be big cities in neighboring counties but I liike to start with a rural county and since the rails in america, after losing the biggest percentage of passenger traffic, no longer could offer prosperity to regions in the U.S. Thats the time when trucks took over the transportation of goods. Only in the last decade have we seen the rebirth of the rail system because of the super inflated price of fuel. Lets just imagine for a second that we have a major route travelling through a rural county. A business realizes the business potential of building a service at an exit where no services exist and where the nearest services are quite a few miles away. They buy a corner lot from a local farmer and build thier service. Other companies see the same chance and do the same thing. You now have an exit with services. Since the employees have no place to live close then housing is built. Employees need things like groceries and basic living items to survive. Now here comes a small grocery store. Since the grocery store needs employees, more people move into the area. So here we go, the development of a small town that on down the line will become a big city, but I am no hurry to see that happen. It takes me a month just to perfect the first service area I have in my county. This actually happens right here in the U.S. I have travelled this country extensivly and have seen this time and time again over the last 30 years. Yes I am probaly alot older than most you. Don't get me wrong, I love the way Dixby did his region but his region is based on a time before the roosevelt interstate highway system existed. The interstate highway system was preplanned and wasn't determined by small towns and rural counties. It was originally set up for the fast transportation of military troops and supplies. After World War II, the interstate highway system become a transportation system to handle the growing number of commuters who were travelling by car, hense the death of passenger rail service. The smaller towns that existed on the old U.S. routes died a quick death. New services and towns popped up along the new interstates. The interstates were not built for access to these towns but the towns were built around the new interstate system. As a matter of fact the interstates were built so people would no longer have to go through these towns. They were built to completely bypass these towns. So goes the long story of the system. Cities and towns can not just build interstates. They can build limited access highways and beltways but they must apply to the federal government to have them become interstates. Now also keep in mind , that my regions are played as small middle America counties and these are undeveloped areas where the heart of American agriculture exist. It's hard to find these areas along the East coast anymore and since the west coast doesn't have 100's of miles of suitable farming land you probaly wouldn't see counties like this there either. I think the comment above reflects a macro style of region play where as I concentrate more on a micro style. This doesn't mean that small towns do not already exist in my county because they do. My real simulation starts after these towns and farms are built. I hope this sheds some light on my playing style. But the purpose of this thread is not to say one style is right or wrong. I simply want to know how other people play. Its so great to see all the different playing styles.

Yes that was a very nice region. I spent a lot of time studying the different pics. The style is like mine in that it deals with a rural area. It really makes me think about a time when passenger trains dominated the transportation sector and towns would boom up around these routes. I also noticed that this region was made in 2003. Not a lot of textures and props then so this creator really put some time into working with what was just aviable then. The idea of using just county and state roads is pretty kewl. It gives it a feeling of what it was like before the massive interstate highway system existed. These were the days of the old route 66 stops and when quarter theaters were everywhere. Thanx so much for sharing this thread.

Can all of these work together and with the NAM? I like the shoulders on the one pack. This should add a little realism. Why Maxis put those stupid walls on the side of highways I'll never know. Maybe in other countries that might be how the highways are, but not in the United States and I think Canada. The dirt roads will be nice as an addition to the Peg logging roads. I took a peak at the RHW tutorial. Looks very interesting. I see it allows alot greater variety for someone like me that likes to take the time to make sure everything looks right. I will keep my questions about it limited to the support thread. I'm going to start reworking the highway first then I'll post another pic of it after I'm done. Not to get too far ahead here, another thing I will be changing is the occupant count in the houses. Some of them are way too much. I would presume in a normal house you would only have a family size population (4 maybe 5 on average not counting the dog LOL). I must be the first person who has ever wanted a decreased occupancy. I just get into the realism.

Ok let me figure out how to insert an image here band I will post 2 pics from a new region I call Rutherford County. The county seat is South Demont. Interstate 2 runs through the southern part of the region. This is a brand new county (region) so I am still working on the big farms that will occupy this area. - I will explain more when I get the pic posted- For right now you can view a couple pics at http://www.cardwellent.com/pics.html I will post a lot more pics on my site as I take them but nderstand that I like detail so some images may look the same but there will be some added stuff.

Is it all right to post a couple pics up here? I know that bandwidth is becoming a precious thing on Simtropolis.

I've noticed a common thing among a great many custom lots, narrow beams of light from street lights that make them appear to be more like spot lights that street lights. This appears to be a SC4 problem to me. I don't know about outside the US but commercial lots in real life have street lights that light up the whole parking lot with about the same amount of street lights that are used in the custom lots in SC4. The lights in the game only light up what appears to be a 7 or 8 foot wide circle. I think this is almost 3 meters in metric. Also these stores have soffit lights that completely light up the sidewalk close to the building and usaully a spotlight or 2 around the rear of the building for security. The windows and doors of these buildings are usually brighter also. Ok my question is : Is there a way that I can modify the light these objects put out in custom lots for use in my own cities? I will not modify these for reupload nor will I share them. I want to do this for personal use only. Please note that I am not interested in whether other people think the lights are too dim, just right, or too bright. I just want to know how to adjust them for my own personal use. Thanx!!!!!

Wow, there is alot involved. I did notice too that the post said that the overlaps would be brighter. That creates a bigger problem. I guess I will just have to add more poles and lights to compensate unless someone has created a model that has a wider beam.