zeb_fisher

Hey SimGoober, Really like Peter's Pipes... I'm hoping you will create a nice set of real world industrial buildings. This one would be cool: Ford's Piquette Avenue Model T Plant Thanks for all the great buildings! It definitely helps to keep the game interesting...

How about an El Train that has an actual road below it? Is that possible?

That looks like the tank factory in Battlefield 1942!

Another sklyine photo...

Ooops, got a little ahead of myself there and missed this important news item!

Just a few more pics of the city... Here is the current skyline. What a big difference from the first picture that started this CJ! A shot of an area downtown. You can see it in the picture above if you look for the red building The opera house at night. This is located along the canal. If you look hard you can find it in the skyline picture near a bridge. This is De Paul University area... I do have some of your BATs ardecila... I know right off hand I used the Wrigley, Boston Market, and I think the Reliance Building.

I'll try to get a map of the roads, elevated train lines, freeways, etc... Does anyone know a good way to get that though? I remember struggling with it a while back. For now, here are a couple of pics: That old 60's color film, just doesn't seem to capture blues like good modern film. This shows a part of the downtown area and a piece of Grant Park. The people of Chicago are hard at work constructing the park. This next picture shows Meigs Airfield, Adler Planeterium, The Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, Soldier Field, and McCormick Place which is currently under construction (due to be completed in 1972). Still wrestling with the city and getting everything in order...

So, my first step is catching up on all of the new mods and buildings that are available. There's over 1,200 in the BAT Exchange...SimGoober pumps these things out faster than I can download them! I've finally downloaded, tested, and filtered through everything so far and have decided on the following changes: 1.) Added 141 new lots. All added lots are growable versions only (except for obvious landmark lots like the Sears Tower). I chose to only use growable lots because that is one of the goals of this CJ, to grow a city the hard way. Also, I hate having my menus cluttered up with tons of plop buildings. 2.) Added the Beta Transportation Add On mod found here on Simtropolis. I was really happy to see One Way bridges, essential for Chicago's downtown transportation network. From the Beta Add On, I've used the following file for modifying transportation and path finding: NetworkAddonMod_Traffic_Plugin_BetterPathfinding_2xCapacity_10xSpeeds_10xCommute I'm hoping that this will fix some of the commute problems I'm having. For example, people only willing to travel 3 blocks to work and never boarding a train to go down town! Now, I need to wrestle with the city and get it back up in good working order. Currently I'm adding in the freeways, planetarium, meigs airfield, etc... (I need to put in this airfield for commercial growth). This bumps the time line to 1961 or so. I'm hoping to have some kind of update either later this afternoon or tomorrow. So get ready for the first color shots. I'm going to have to fool around with Photoshop to figure out how to make them look interesting. Laterz

OK... This CJ just might come back to life. So what happened? In April, I was placed on a project in Denver. I live in California, which means I was flying every week back and forth. Well, that pretty much eats up a ton of my time, and what little time I have left over gets devoted to my GF. For now, it looks like I don't have to fly anymore (hopefully now that means I will get more time). I think I'm going to have to skip a few years and speed this up though. I really want to finish this city. I was going to do the whole Al Capone thing by lowering funding to police and boosting crime in the city. It's tough trying to actually get a screen shot of a crime happening though. Not sure exactly what year I'll start back up at, maybe the 50's when the freeway and the airfield are built. They had color film in the fifties right? P.S. I'm also newly engaged

I'm sorry about the massive delay on this journal! This is one busy month for me... I'm at the end of a software project, and anyone who works software knows what that means.. In addition, I'm moving to a new apartment in about 15 days....uggghh Finally, I'm getting work done on my car and also dealing with the DMV ... arrrgghh So don't worry, I haven't forgot this journal... will be back in business soon...

A skyline view ... It is really cool to see the city in motion... trains, cars, el trains, busses, ships, pedestrians, all moving in every direction. Downtown is very noisy with the el train stations. First... there was no update last week (Super Bowl). So next weekend might be slow as well. Now I must say, SimCity 4 is really tough. It took me a good amount of time to figure out how to get the few stage 7's and 8's that I have there in the photo. These damned sims don't like to drive more than a couple blocks and dealing with stage caps... arrrggh. To my amazement though, I've been able to get this far without a single airport! I think the sim engine has a hard time keeping things fresh as the city gets larger and more complicated. I can place a road, a bus or train station, or zone an area and it takes months before the engine seems to pick it up. Because of this I can't keep the actual game year in sync with history as I had hoped. So now, the game is about 40 years ahead. ONE other thing ... has anyone encountered this... the city is crunching along and all of the sudden out of the blue it's out of water? You look at the water graph and demand has sky rocketed to almost double what it was. You go to your budget and increase your neighbor deal for more water. demand continues to go up until all of the sudden it drops to nearly nothing. Now, if you exit without saving and then start again... it doesn't happen and everything is all right. I'm calling it the Water Bug in my own head.

Well finally, an update on Chicago! This image shows the location of various points of interest that tourist to the windy city seem to enjoy: Constructed in 1886, the Auditorium building combines hotel, office, and a theatre space for an opera company. Near the Auditorium building is the Fine Arts building. Built by the Studebaker company to display their carriages, the building now contains studios housing some of the cities finest artists and craftsmen. Near the University of Illinois campus is the Jane Adams Hull House. Jane Addams helps immigrants settle into the city. Reid, Murdoch & Company, a wholesale grocery company, built this building to combine their warehouse and offices into a central location. Housing some of the world's most famous paintings, the Art Institute of Chicago serves as both a school and a museum of fine arts. On the north side of Michigan Avenue rests the Library and Cultural Center. Made of fine marble and Tiffany Glass, this building serves as a permanent, public library. This fine building along the north bank of the canel was built by William Wrigley Jr. of the Wrigley chewing gum company. And in the news! Stay tuned...

The worlds busiest corner... Hopefully I'll get time to put some updates tomorrow.

Wow... thanks for all the great comments, they truly are what keeps a CJ author going... Yes that little blip to the left there is the config I'm using with the Chicago region map from the MEX. You will need to convert it back to a bmp file though. I think it does a fairly good job at capturing the borders of the city. Like I said tho, the regional map in the MEX isn't so great and needs a lot of God Mode work. Of course I'll make Meigs airfield. I'm thinking the standard airstrip will work pretty well. Unfortunately the field doesn't come until the 40's or even 50's I think (have to look it up). For Midway and O'hare, I was just going to use the game's metro and international airports. I haven't played with any of the airport mods. I'll check them out, and if they don't detract too much from the game, then I'll consider them. To get shots with out cars... first while the sim is running, go to a location far away from where you want to take the snapshot. Wait for cars to show up on the roads there, then pause the sim. Scroll back to where you want the picture and there will be no cars there. Now, the disasters are another issue. Cars show up no matter what, so there (for the Great Fire) I had to paint over them or hide them behind 1800's photo scratches and imperfections. Merchandise Mart shows up in the early 1900's if I remember. Speaking of landmarks... I've been paying so much attention on the sim, getting the city to build, that I haven't paid attention to landmarkshttps://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/images/smilies/23.gif>. So the next update I'm planning on really focusing on landmarks and trying to find some way of creating a transportation map. Yes Al Capone! I've got some plans... I don't know much about him, but part of the fun of this CJ is learning all of this history about Chicago... it is really quite amazing! Perhaps your conjestion problems are simply reflecting the reality of the time? I.e., the need to add a section to the loop? It's nice to think so, anyway. Hmmm... I like that!