zurrabear

Originally posted by: mitsos A church in a very small island in Dimland quote> Mitsos, that's some excellent landscaping; it really looks 'windswept'--chilly and lonely and poetic. The church is great--Greek Orthodox?--I'd love to get that.

I definitely relish both urban and rural about equally, but I feel like creating realistic rural settings is much harder to do. The palette is open-ended, you don't simply fill in every square with a lot of some kind; and the tools aren't geometric. You can easily have multiple landscape objects plopped in a single square and completely out of the grid lines.

I've been scouring the STEX and the LEX and can't find a single station designed for NAM tram-in-street. Can anyone send me a link to such a thing? I will be eternally grateful!

Originally posted by: CaptCity If this is the one you found, then that's the only one I know of that's available. Tram-on-Street is fairly new, so there probably isn't much to add onto it yet.quote> Yes, that's the one. Thanks for the confirmation CaptCity.

Okay, I did find one at the SFBT site--awfully plain for my purposes but at least it works. If anyone knows of a more elaborate one, I'd love to see it.

Daan, I'm wondering where you got the various pier and boardwalk components? The docks look like Pegasus but the rest is fancier-looking. I especially like the green-roofed building near the bottom of the image.

Originally posted by: ChaosEmerald The problem I find is that 99% of the growable buildings on the STEX are high-end skyscrapers, which is great for making downtown areas look diverse but doesn't help suburbs and small towns.quote> Pegasus has done a great deal of content for rural and small town locales--you might try searching his user name. Also, I have a number of files preceded by "JB Smalltown" that provide excellent "main street US"-style small commercial lots.

I don't think there's any inherent difference in the file type between a ploppable and growable lot; but you might examine the file names closely; they'll often have "plop" or "grow" in there somewhere.

Some recent GLR work. I like this alternative with the built-in side-rails--seems a bit more realistic. A lot of this replaced el-rail, which seemed a little unrealistic for a city of only 250,000. Tram in avenue for the government district. The diagonal GLR to the left is entirely bordered with railing for safety. GLR running next to a plaza next to the riverwalk--accessible by that 'alley' ending at the station. A wider view of the above location.

Originally posted by: i_love_lamp omg, i wish I could do that!quote> Anyone can do this. I'm using the most basic software available, the Paint program that comes with Windows. You know how to do a screen print, right? Knowing how to that is sort of a prerequisite.

I have a couple...not nearly as impressive as most I've seen.

Originally posted by: un1 Don't forget about mine!quote> That looks like the best of them--downloaded and thanks!

I would just add to all this incredibly good advice that it really pays to experiment with the custom material you download. To maximize its potential you have to know what it looks like, what it can do, and how you can combine it with other game elements creatively. I also strongly second the suggestion to obtain items that will enhance your terrain's realism. There's a LOT of it out there, and can really pick how you want your undeveloped land to look. To me, landscaping has become half the fun of the game, and it's every bit as challenging as making the city itself. One big aspect of urban eyecandy is, to me, retaining natural landscapes within the city. May not be necessary so much in a small city, but with some of the tools available you can create some really nice little oases the mesh well with more planned elements like park tiles. A modest example from one of my cities:

Originally posted by: Moonraker0 Here's one of my coastline: quote> Really nice, Moonraker--I like the simplicity of the image (a quality which usually denotes greater realism, to me).

@dimipol006: Wow, your beaches are flawless! I never have quite gotten the hang of doing beaches. @computerguy890100: Very nice. I didn't realize you could use Peg's boardwalk lots with plopped water, I thought they only worked with game water. Are those OWW or OWW2 lots?

Originally posted by: asteconn I'm liking the circular encompassing road in that complex there. Where did you get those from?quote> If you mean the roundabout with the fountain, that's a standard item from the NAM (the road, not the fountain--it's a separate item which I'm sure is on the STEX). You can find many different custom lots to fill in avenue and street roundabouts. If you mean the circular avenue going around that round building, that's built into that lot, which is called the Bourse de Commerce, also on the STEX, no doubt. Those avenues are tansit-enabled, so they connect up with regular avenues seamlessly and you can see traffic moving through the complex.

Very nice night lighting on that church, heitomat.

Recently completed...

Some closeups of recent developments (in San'tessana, pop. 250,000). New 'goverment zone' Some medium density commercial with GLR An area combining natural watercourse, canal and irrigation ditch. A mostly still natural pond. A downtown park

Originally posted by: 1994 Thanks for the response . @zurrabear: hmm... I can't seem to download anything at LEX. Did you have to register to download them? quote> Yes; but it's well worth your time to do so. SC4 Devotion has tons of high quality custom content (as does this site).

Thanks very much diamonddog_74--yes, I agree. For a science fictional city that 'glass curtain' look is okay, but not so much for what I think of as realism. 1994--you might like a mod that you can get from the STEX (sorry don't have the link handy) that adds a white plaza underneath raised rail wherever there are commercial zones adjacent to the rail (as you have a lot of). It gets rid of that annoying empty look under the rails and gives it a much more 'urban' look. Edit: I was wrong, this is at the LEX at https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1423--nice little mod.