McDuell

22 years and counting ... (When does one get the 'historical' status? )

Oops, missed my 21st anniversary by 1 day, oh well ... (At least, it's the 21st today, so there is still a reason to post. )

Today, I hit my 20-year membership! Yeah, there are certainly more active members than me here, and my last post is from over 3 years ago, but I'll still be here, always lurking in the dark.

@Naomi57: You show great promise here with the RHW! The OWR-2 has 60% (not 30%) capacity of a RHW-4 per tile in all simulator configurations, except classic, so you might be on the safe side here, even with more traffic . Also, you can put the MIS ramp one tile closer. If the MIS turn breaks, try clicking with the RHW tool on the network around the curve. I managed to have the curve properly rebuild by clicking on one of the marked two tiles (don't remember which one it was). There is a draggable method for a MIS folded wye which isn't shown in the newest RHW guide iirc. I don't know if this is shown in any of the common videos, so I've shown the draw pattern below. Just connect the two open end for the wye to appear. Happy interchange building! M.

I'm with @jeffryfisher here. Land bridges are perfectly possible if the parameters fit. With the slope mod I use, Avenues, Monorails and El-Rails were doable in my test, given the right terrain, while e.g. roads weren't. After modifying some parameters in the road file to match those in the Ave file, I also could build road based land bridges. I don't really know which parameter(s) all have to be tuned as I only did a quick and dirty test. M.

Some random interchanges I have lying around on my disk. Most of them are relatively basic compared to some of the monsters I had done in my past. I'll start with a ... cloverleaf. Simple as it might look, it was quite painful to build. This one has a maximal length of only 22 tiles. In fact, I dare you to make an even smaller 100% RHW based 4-way full interchange. Here is a 3-way that I like for its simplicity and for managing building something not entirely grade separated for a change. And now I even begin to cheat. Who can spot those 4 practically invisible non-RHW lots? Ok, ok; getting serious again. How about a 2-level whirlpool? Or a night shot for a change. Technically this is a roundabout interchange, but if you pretend to not being able to change any lanes while in the rotary part (it's forbidden by law!) it turns into a whirlpool. I can't leave without showing a >4-way interchange, now can I? M.

Never thought about TLA-5, good thinking here @jeffryfisher. The connection can also be done with the base Avenue and the use of the disconnector piece to be found in the RHW menu. First, place the Avenue right to the shoreline, Next, disconnect the end pieces, leaving the avenue 'open' at the end. Then place the ferry terminal.

Both, the 2-tile RD6 and the 3-tile AVE6 can go diagonal. However, as there are indeed no diagonal starters, you'll have to start orthogonal and then make a 45° curve. You can then continue to draw at 45° for a diagonal stretch. Keep in mind though that the present NAM doesn't support diagonal intersections for RD6/AVE6 at all. The intersection will either not be possible at all, or the RD6/AVE6 will revert to its basic road layout. This also means that these networks have to start or end orthogonally anyway to connect them to other road based network, making diagonal starters superfluous.

As Tarkus just said above, it's not possible to make neighbour connections by dragging OWR networks, this is hardcoded and may probably never be possible. Furthermore, the widest possible draggable and usable connection is 2 tiles (MHW, EMHW, Ave). However, all is not lost, as we can cheat/hack together an approximate workaround. For this to work, you need to have the RHW installed, as we'll make use of the disconnector piece in the RHW menu. Tutorial how to cheat/hack OWR4/5 neighbour connections: 1: Draw 2 adjacent ground MHW over the edge to create neighbour connections. Then, disconnect (with the disconnector piece) all tiles in the rectangle. 2: Draw another ground MHW between the two existing half-MHWs. It won't let you create a new connection though, so just stop right before the edge as shown. Afterwards, bulldoze the marked tile. 3: Redraw the middle MHW over the edge, creating a connection. Again, disconnect the network pieces at the edge (those with the arrows). The rest you may either disconnect or bulldoze. Just make sure you don't accidentally bulldoze a tile containing a connection arrow, else you'll probably have to restart the whole procedure. 4: If everything went right, you will have 4 tiles of connections without any underlying network. 5: Put down OWR4 (or OWR5) starter pieces right on the tiles with arrows. Don't worry about wrong direction, just put them right at the edge (you will have to put one piece the 'wrong' way). Now, begin to draw base OWR from or into the starters (as it's OWR, you won't be asked about making a connection). 6: The final OWR4 setup should now look like this. 7: Dito with the final OWR5 setup. 8 (not shown): Repeat this with the other city tile. Always mind that although we visually have a 4 tiles wide connection, only the inner tiles will actually work as a true returnable connection for traffic other than pedestrians. I visualized this in step 6. - The two inner tiles work as a true 2-way, 2-tiles connection. Cars and Buses will only use those 2 tiles. Additionally, there may be outbound fright trucks. - Please acknowledge that in the OWR5 setup, only the middle lane gets used by cars and buses as the two leftmost lanes point in the wrong direction. - the "out outer tile" may only carry freight trucks, as freight doesn't need a return path. Once freight reaches the border, it simply vanishes into thin air. - the "in outer tile" will never carry any traffic other than pedestrians. Pedestrians can only travel the border when the connection has been made with Ave; MHW doesn't allow ped border travel. When playing one city, it may seem that peds will travel to the neighbor city (there are peds going out in the morning and in in the evening). But when playing the other city, the are simply no incoming peds. To make sure that pedestrians can travel the border, you should use the Ave network in step 1. The inner connection in step 3 should still be made with the GMHW for additional capacity. Every other step stays the same, and the visuals don't change at all.

It's not exactly as you described it; but I think it comes pretty close.

Is there still a home left for a (momentarily not very active) interchange designer? name: McDuell gender: male sign: aquarius

It's been a looong time since I last was logged in here, but today is the day I go into my 16th year since I joined Simtropolis.

>>> Announcement: This is no official entry! <<< There are two reasons for this: 1. I wanted too much, so time was simply running out. As I said before, it's been years since I last built a city from scratch, so I actually had to re-learn parts of the game again. I also wanted to let the city grow gradually, so no radical demand mods were used. Furthermore, I'm not really a fan of grids, so I used quite a bit of FAR, which took more time than I first thought. Especially the FAR-FAR cross- and T-roads were time consuming, and I still often don't get a crossroads right on the first try, which means: rebuild the crossroads with a shift to the right (or left, or double-shift, or up, down, blah, blubb... ). Item: my city has only about 20'000 inhabitants, which put me out of the race per definitionem. 2. From the rules: I'm afraid that I can't fulfill this one either as I seriously lack ideas for a possible challenge. Interchanges? This is what I do best, but we already had two challenges dealing with them. Anything other? But what? It makes more sense to leave this decision to someone more suited than me. But as I have already put some time into the tile, I'd like to show my city anyway . I spoilered my pictures as to not disrupt the real entries. BTW: Sometimes I just hate trees! No way that I'll redo this transition again! So how to get rid of the trees then? (answer: see spoiler ) The result is shown at the right.

I'll most probably not be able to fulfill this challenge as there is less than a week left and I just managed to finish the interchange and bridges so far. Not having built a real city from scratch since many years and generally not really having much of talent in city building, time is running short too fast for me. And there is the fact that I've never built a seaport other than the prefab one at all. The interchange has a small flaw as well as there is weaving in one part of it, but I couldn't be bothered to resolve this without making that part considerably larger. At least it features a full connector to and from every direction to the local network. Anyway, here is a preview of the city tile.

There is indeed a way to manipulate the terrain without destroying anything developed on it: the SC4Terraformer. But you won't be happy with the outcome. While the terrain can be lowered, objects being built on it won't change height with the terrain. They stay right where they are, leaving them hanging in the air at exactly the same height as before. This is how I recently built FAR highway and curved 'bridges'. ( is an explanation of the trick). Contrary to your problem, I wanted to lower the terrain without lowering the development built on it. So yes, you can, but unfortunately it will do you no good.

OK, time for revelations. Give this man a cookie! Indiana, you guessed it about right in your first assumption already. As I said before, you don't need any plugin in the game to achieve this kind of bridges, floating tunnels, et al. All you need is: - SimCity4 (duh!) - The big magic wand: SC4Terraformer (get it here from the SC4D LEX) The Terraformer allows you to change the terrain in mayor mode cities without destroying anything that might been already built there. It does not touch any existing trees, flora, building, networks, etc... A note of warning: As the SC4Terraformer was programmed for Windows XP, I don't know if the Terrafomer will work on your machines. I somehow remember that some people had troubles running the program on newer systems and Windows versions. A number of them managed to get it to work with the compatibility mode, others couldn't. So there is, unfortunately, no guarantee. Fact is that the Terraformer works on my Windows7 64bit version without any problems at all; I don't even have to use the compatibility mode. So all I can say is that it might also work on your machines. Having said that, it's finally time to build something. I'll take the floating tunnel as a (short) tutorial example. First, lay down your network (or lot, flora, whatever ...) you want to manipulate the terrain underneath it. The important part here is only the highway, you don't actually have to place the El-Rail and Train networks yet. Save the game and exit. Now, backup your region in case anything goes wrong. Start SC4Terraformer, select your region and unprotect the cities where wou want to change the terrain. Scroll to the part to be modified ... ... and flatten the area. Save the region. Mind the warning and be sure to choose 'no' in this case, else your city or modification is gone. Start SC4 again and load your city. It should now show like this. Build something. The DrawPaths cheats shows a fully working tunnel. In this case, I started with a flat terrain and built the FARHW part first. Then I dug the river trench with the Terraformer. Back in SC4, I put down the rest of the networks and the other bridges over the now existing river. Have fun exploiting. (And I really hope that I have avoided getting run over by the Angry Mob Fun Run ... )

I haven't that much time at the moment, but I promise that I'll explain the trick in a later post (if it'll still be necessary until then). Just this: Technically, you don't even need any plugin in the game for this 'magic'. Meanwhile, I have two more pictures (same technique as with the bridges):

This is why "Diagonal Bridge Enabler" should be called "Draggable Bridge Enabler". Theorteically, this can work with variable-width, variable-direction, and curved bridges, all of which can, theoretically, be draggable. You're gonna make a curved bridge now, because I said so, aren't you? Ganaram was first of you both, so a curved bridge it'll be. One thing I can assure you: There is absolutely no photoshopping involved! And another picture. No FAR trickery this time, but I put in some slopes instead. The technique for building this one is the same as before. Nope, as this would be waaay too advanced for me. I'm no modder, just trying to do stuff with whatever already exists.

Just me fooling around and exploiting the game ...

Some new interchanges from me, most of them are standard designs. Sorry, no grandes complications today. Normally not really a fan of cloverleaves because of the weaving, I nonetheless like the design of them. So here we go: Not quite as symmetrical as before, but this one is completely de-weaved instead: A 2-quadrant cloverstack with a narrow footprint. Not meant for heavy traffic though: Diagonal Pinavia style: A simple T-interchange that I like for its FARHW branch: While we are at FA: Not a full interchange this time, but a junction with a local network: And last but not least, a windmill:

Just press CTRL while zoning to prevent any terrain modification. This will create a single lot of a specific desired size. Repeat this procedure for every planned lot to get a smooth zoned slope.

I just tested this out. It seems that the all the exit paths of the FLEX ramp type A1 for RHW8C are buggy. (The entrance pieces are fine though.)

This might give some ideas for the Place de l'Etoile btw. :

Fatjuice, kingtai: Thank you! Btw: I started building interchanges about 7 years ago when the RHW 2.0 came out and may well have built around 600 or more interchanges since then. Each incarnation of RHW gave a few more possibilities, so I rebuilt some of the earlier interchanges over and over again, together with new designs. For a long time (until NAM 30) building complex interchanges was often like solving a big puzzle: put the right pieces into the right locations. As jigsaw puzzles (>1000 pieces) were a kind of hobby for me in earlier times, I seem to have got a flair for the puzzle pieces in the RHW as well. kingtai: If you want to keep the tunnels, you could also use the FLEX Ramp type D1 piece and put it one tile nearer the tunnel entrance. As the FLEX piece has no MIS starter, there should be enough space to put the wide 90° curve in afterwards.

Have you tried to set the date further into the future than a few days? What about 06/30/02 and 07/01/03 (or 10/01/03) for checking if there is indeed a relation with something seasonal? What about setting it forward 1 whole year (10, 100, 1000 years)? Another question which may be dumb/needless: you did put in the cheat in the following format ? SimDate MM DD YYYY Sorry of being no real help here, just throwing ideas at a wall and see what sticks.