Terring

This is one of the most beautiful and heartwarming posts I've ever seen in Simtropolis. I'm very happy with the way you feel about us and glad for being part in our community. And of course I want to thank you for all the kind words you've spoken for me By the way, your post reminds me something similar that I did many years ago, in 2004, when I was 19 years old, in a Greek website that doesn't exist anymore. And that was a similar topic I made just one month after being subscribed in this site, being thankful for anybody who welcomed me, talking to me and helping me about some cases

TSC TER Train Automata is using this idea, I think. You might want to download and study this file.

Very cute station

@Josh6, I remember I had similar problems 2 years ago when I got SimCity 4 on Windows 10 for the first time and I made a topic about it. Maybe you'll find some solutions there

Yes, it's from Halo 4. Looking forward and with patience

Hi, @Raymond7cn Halo is a series of games and each game has a different version of Cortana, so my suggestion is to find the version you like the most and try to search and find for more about it, something like "Halo 4 Cortana" for example. With so many variations you might want to stick with one of it. YouTube can help you on that, because many gamers upload there scenes from various games, such as Halo. Since you've never played Halo, use those videos to get more angles.

@thingfishs, that O-Bahn network looks great and interesting, something that mixes the flexibility of the bus with the speed of the light train. It actually looks like an idea I had suggested many months ago in this topic about car-train hybrids and I remember @Raymond7cn made a model of a pod that can be used on network systems like this. So, is it possible to release it, if not as a part of NAM, at least as an external add-on?

New networks? Now you have my attention

Very nice and cozy train station And I can't wait for the SimMars buildings

@ohdude: It's a mod that adds trees on streets, roads, one ways and avenues. You can get it from here. @sejr99999: Thanks. You can get those buildings from here, which has its own copy of SimMars containing all the necessary buildings, props and textures.

Note to yourself: Next time go full screen

A new entry for my CJ is coming soon

We have holograms now!

Your hologram is so awesome and hot it's a fire starter

The previous entry was originally made some days ago, but it was unfinished so I just saved it without publishing it. I did this because I was busy with a personal work of mine and I was too tired to finish the edit. This entry and the next ones will be saved and published at the same time, not after a time period. --- Today we're going to finish the construction of Dawnville by building the utilities and the civic services, among other things. Let's begin with the most important resource, energy. Without electricity you'll have a dead city, but the last thing we want are power plants that burn fossil fuels. So let's go green and let's go solar. It's a solarpunk city journal, so of course we'll begin with solar energy. We also need water. Fortunately Dawnville is next to a lake and above an underground source of water. We need this water supply but we don't want to drain it. This tower can pump, clean, store, and distribute enough water to cover the town's needs. Everybody wants access to useful products, but nobody wants to deal with waste material. Those products need resources to be made and you get them by mining, logging etc, and everybody can understand the size of their environmental footprint if we let them uncontrollable. A recycling center can help a lot by dealing with the garbage problem and by reducing the need of extracting new resources from nature. But the technology of 100% recyclable materials is not here yet, so we also need a solution for the non-recyclable materials, such as the bio-hazard waste from the hospitals. And no, don't even think about using landfills. What we need for now is a waste-to-energy incinerator, but not one that brings too much damage to the environment. We need a plasma gasification plant, a technology that already exist. The plasma gasification process can vaporize waste material and the resulting steam & SynGas can both be used to power generators to produce electricity and reusable green fuels. This process is extremely clean and environmentally friendly, making it perfect for our eutopian future. Unfortunately this facility takes plenty of space and some extra terraforming process was nessesary to be constructed, but fortunately there was an area which was flat and large enough to minimize the environmental footprint of our project. Something that many people doesn't realize is that the natural environment and the system that constitute it are so complex, and the challenges we need to deal with are so many and different, that sometimes an idea can solve a problem and create a new one. This is something we must always have in our mind, that environmental problems are not as easy to be solved as we might think, but if we don't solve them we'll be doomed to perish. And to solve them we'll need well established strategies, team working, and reconsidering everything we have taken as granted. And now that we have the utility services we need, it's time to remove the rail pieces and start building and zoning. Our Sims need food, but most of the farms we have today are not as clean and efficient as we want them. They consume plenty of resources and have such a huge environmental footprint that they even contribute to the man-made climate change, especially livestock farming. The current agricultural system has led to a significant loss of biodiversity and disruption of ecosystems, with millions of hectares of forests, grasslands and wetlands have been sacrificed to be converted into farmland. And the less I need to talk about the chemical deterrents used by farmers that have contaminated the surrounding nature and public health, the better for my sanity. That's why we need something to produce enough food with the most efficient and environmental friendly way possible. Enter the skyfarms, also know as vertical farms. The idea is very simple. Instead of spreading out our farms, why not stacking them up in tall "greenhouses" buildings? These farms-in-a-skyscrapers applies modern technologies such as hydroponics and robotics (and yes, we already have robotic farms) to produce large amounts of food by using less space and resources. Those farms can also recycle the water they use, and since they're practically big enclosed greenhouses there's no need of using pesticides and other chemical deterrents. And if that's not enough, vertical farms can be build in the middle of the city, providing easier access and eliminating long commutes and their environmental cost. So expect plenty of them in Fairview. Now let's start building our civic buildings. Our Sims need -and deserve- to be safe, healthy and educated. By placing them in the center Dawnville, everybody can have better access to them no matter where they live. This clinic might looks small, but it's efficient enough to support our town by using technologies such as telemedicine. It can also produce some of the medicines it needs to help both the sick and injured. See the domed garden behind of it? It's an underground laboratory that researches for and creates new medicines. We all know how awesome trees are, but we also know how flammable they're too. We need trees for plenty of reasons but we don't want a fire in our hands. This is one of the reasons we need fire protection, which can be even more advanced by deploying firefighting drones that patrol the town and detect and extinguish any source of fire. What's the best way to eliminate crime? Adding more police officers sure does helps, but if you need to solve a problem you'll need to find its roots and begin from there. If it's true that crime is made by lack of access to the needs (such as scarcity or/and unemployment), by not enough education (something that can lead to bad decisions), or by psychological problems (go watch The Joker to see what I mean), start from there. Still having some police officers looking around to see if somebody needs help is always welcomed. And yes, I like having my police and fire stations next to each other, especially since they usually have the same range. Speaking about education, here is our educational corner. The elementary school (the yellow building) and the high school (the black one) uses new technologies such as holograms to make learning interactive and more fun. Thanks to e-learning, children can attend their lessons even from the safety of their homes, during emergency situations such as bad weather or serious pandemic, or when somebody is too ill to go to school. But the most important is that those schools uses new methodologies and strategies to teach the new generation of Sims not just what to think, but mostly how to think, making them into thinkers instead of just future workers. As George Carlin said "Don't just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything". Jiddu Krishnamurti said that there is no end to education and the whole of life is a process of learning. You just can't stop discovering new things and remembering what you've discovered. The Public Library of Dawnville (the silver building) has a nice collection of both physical and digital books of any kind, such as literature and encyclopedias. A small server can hold plenty of digital books to read, but nothing beats the lovely smell of the old books. The Dawnville, Cultural Center (the yellow building with the dome) acts like a museum that holds in the form of various exhibits the memories of the past and the visions of the future. After a long day in the school or in the library you'll always have a nice park waiting for you to relax and breath some fresh air. If this park also has a playground or a skateboard track to have some sun and burn some calories, that's even better. Diagonal streets and roads makes my cities for flexible and interesting, but I don't like the teeth-like jagged edges. That's why I always build some diagonal fillers to hide as many teeth as possible. Which means even more parks in our town. After all, having plenty of mini parks scattering across the city is way better than having a single but huge park in a specific point of the city. But if you can have both of them, why not? And now it's time for zoning. Because it's the very first town of Fairview, it's not easy to predict what they want and when they want it, so I needed to made some guesses based on what they want now and what they might want later. Yeah, good luck with that. Of course this means that all of the zones will stay the same, so expect changes during the development of Dawnville, like replacing homes with shops or with rewards. But there are some zones that are very likely to stay as they are right now. For instance, since industries need a way to ship their goods outside of the city, it make sense to have them close to the north entrance/exit of the town. It also makes sense to have some of them close to the recycling center. I think it also makes sense to zone for some extra agricultural buildings close to the south entrance/exit and surrounding the vertical farm. I don't know if all of those zones (or any of them) will be developed. Maybe some of them will be replaced by homes. We'll see. And of course it makes sense to have a nice neighborhood close to our schools and parks. Let's add some commercial zones in the center of the town too, close to all those important buildings and parks. A drug store close to the clinic? Why not? Remember when I said in my previous entry that some extra streets might be constructed? This is what I meant. In some residential zones I made some extra streets with dead-ends for better access in the entire area, allowing even more homes and parks to be build. And this is how Dawnville looks like right now. As you can see and imagine, this is not its final form. In the next entry we'll see it fully developed with extra civic buildings, and surrounded by an entire forest of pines and deciduous trees and many other things. See you there

@mitsos, @Raymond7cn, @Dgmc2013, @Tonraq, @Dead_End, @ByeByeBayou and @tomz16: Thank you very much for your comments, your likes and your follows. I hope you enjoy the rest of the CJ as well --- Alright, let's go back to Fairview. As you can understand from the previous entry, not all of the map's tiles will be build and developed, so I planted trees and made entire forests in those areas to mark them as no man's land, were no sights of civilization will be there. This reduces even more our available land for construction, and even this land has already its own limitations by water bodies, hills, cliffs and other natural features. Of course we're not going to colonize the entire map and build an epic metropolis anywise, so that's not such a big deal for us. Our first city will be build in the easternmost empty piece of land which is close to the small lake at the east. This is our land. I choose it because it has enough building space, is close enough to a water source, and can be connected to the rest of SimNation by road and railroad so it can get supplies and not being isolated in the middle of the region. Since it's the dawn of a new age and area, let's name our first town Dawnville. This is from where our solarpunk eco-futuristic wackiness will begin. First, let's give Dawnville its shape by building the backbone of it. Roads are flexible enough to be build in many ways and provide a fast access to most of the town's areas, making them useful for marking the edge of Dawnville as well. No avenues here, they're too big and noisy, and just unnecessary for our project. Now we can connect Dawnville with the rest of SimNation in order to be supplied by people, food, products, energy etc, as well as with the rest of the map to pave the road for our next towns. It's also a good moment to build our holistic transportation system. The street layout follows the shape and the size of the town by mixing the American grid style with the European organic one, providing to our town both enough building space and enough road access for everybody. If necessary, extra streets with dead ends can be build in some of those building blocks. We want to give a faster way for our Sims to commute in the region but we also want to encourage mass transit instead of car using to reduce our environmental footprint. Highways are big, ugly, noisy, consume too much space, and cause a lot of air pollution. With such a heavy environmental cost, highways are out of question. Railroads, on the other hand, are faster, quieter, cleaner, doesn't use too much space, and can transport plenty of Sims in no time. My first thought was using heavy railroads because are beneficial for both commuting and the transportation of industrial goods. But how about using magnetic monorails instead? Magnetic trains uses magnetic fields instead of wheels, making them even faster and less noisy than the standard ones. They're also not very popular in most of the CJ I've seen. So, let's give them a chance. And let's build some magnetic train stations that can also serve buses and subway trains. The transportation system is ready, so let's building and zoning. Right? Not so fast! If we start building and zoning now, we'll eventually get an ugly and funny mess of bumpy roads, lot and building foundations, and retaining walls. Of course we can level the entire area to make our town absolutely flat, but this is an example of excessive terraforming we want to avoid. So in order to have a pretty and stable town while respecting the landscape, instead of one big plateau, our town will be made by plenty of smaller plateaus, giving Dawnville a stair-like look. To make the small flat areas, I use the railroad tool instead of the road one. Railroads are more restricted that the roads, making our terraforming process more limited and challenging, but it also gives us a result much closer to what we want to do. This is very important because we want to adapt the landscape just enough to cover our needs, without utterly messing with it and destroying it. This gives enough space to both the natural landscape and our town to breath, without conflicting each other. This picture might gives you a good example of why Dawnville and the rest of our towns in Fairview will have a stair-like looking. Why making our town absolutely flat when we can make it hugging the landscape? The small plateaus will be filled by homes, shops, parks, civic services, farms, industries, and anything else we'll need. When necessary, small extra streets will be build for even better access. By making smaller flat areas we get plenty of narrows gaps, so it's time to fill them by planting man's best friends (after dogs, computers and each other). Trees. Lot's of trees. We're building a solarpunk town of the future and we can't do it without plenty of trees. I'm using @Pegasus' plop-able trees, both the random woods and the pines, to have a nice variety of them. Seeing the same type of tree over and over again can be a little boring, right? The plop-able trees work as park, so by just having them we'll get a huge boost in our city without the need of building extra parks. But of course we'll build actual parks with playgrounds etc. Magnetic trains are more quiet that the standard ones, but of course they're not absolutely quiet. Those tall pines are perfect for absorbing the extra noise and reducing the visual pollution of the railroads. Trees are just too useful to be ignored. They reduce air, visual and sound pollution, provide fresh oxygen, prevent floods by absorbing the executive water and by working as barriers, reduce the heat with their shadows, increase the psychological morale of the citizens, and provide privacy for the homes. Every city must have plenty of trees and green zones to give us this contact with the nature we need, especially nowadays. If your city has more buildings than trees, I'm not going to live there. Magnetic railroads are perfect for regional transportation, so how about the intercity one? Every corner and cross of Dawnville will now have bus stops. A bus can replace a large number of private cars, reducing traffic jams and road rages, as well as the air and sound pollution, so every Sim must have easy and fast access to an efficient enough public transportation system. Those bus stops can also work as mini parks that give our Sims a small bench to sit down, relax and enjoy the moment. My bus stops are actually a variation of @hugues aroux's mass transit stops I made for myself. My version has traffic signs and lights on a traffic island in the middle of the road. I did this to clean up a bit the sidewalk and to discourage my drivers from over-speeding. I like using those bus stops because they can be placed on top of cross and tee intersections, using even less building space and providing an even easier and faster access to public transportation. If we can't build our bus stops on the top of our intersections, we can at least build them next to them. We have plenty of bus stops in our streets, so why not in our main roads as well? By the way, did you notice something different with our on-road bus stops? They are subway stations as well. One very common idea for public transportation system is the Personal Rapid Transit, which features small automated vehicles operating on a network of specially built railroads, kind of a mix between an automatic taxi and a small elevated tram. We can't have PRT in SimCity 4, so we'll use the next best thing, which is subways. Plenty of subway stations for even faster transportation to connect even more areas of our town, and they can connect Dawnville with the rest of Fairview as well. It's like PRT, just underground. Let's add some nice details in our road system by building slip lines and wider turns for smoother and safer transportation. I think we've made some good work, so let's call it a day. In part 2 we'll be building the utilities and civic structures, add some extra details and start zoning. In part 3, we'll see the town fully developed and ready to be explored. See you there

Hi, @Raymond7cn. I'd love to see your new vehicles in action. Because of their unique design, those pods (this is how they're usually named) can have many uses in our cities. For instance, you can make then available as additional cars for your Sims, which can be driven in the My Sim mode. Or you can turn them into taxis, either additional ones to give some variety or as replacements for the Maxis ones. Or you can even make them car-train hybrid pods that replaces the green track checkers, so our railroads will have passenger trains, cargo trains, and these: If it's possible, give them many varied versions and let the players choose the ones they wish. Someone might wants them as taxis, another one might wants them as mini trains. Variety is the spice of life

My cities varies from small settlements to huge cities, but all of them are what you get if you mix MTP with SimMars