Impala26

Well sure, Manhattan is a pretty consistent grid, but the city is so massive overall that it doesn't absolutely alleviate traffic. I'm from Pittsburgh and the street layout there is incredibly diverse. You generally have neighborhoods and such adhering to SOME form of grid pattern if you at little local samplings, but there's is no universal large-scale grid pattern like Manhattan. Even downtown has essentially TWO grids, each one following a different river and then you have the two basically meeting each other roughly at 45 degree angles!

I still to this day state the Spore was built upon the concepts in Sim Earth. You had evolution, creatures rising to sentience, and you had terraforming. I can still remember the "Terraform Mars" scenario, and my like 9 year-old brain couldn't comprehend how you could make a dead rock like Mars into what is essentially, Earth. The result was my imagination running wild. That's what I love about the first-generation Sim games. They weren't for people with ADD, they were less games and more toys you could just tinker around with and let your imagination rule. I have owned and played: All SimCity games, SimFarm, SimAnt, SimEarth, SimTower (another favorite), SimGolf, SimCopter, SimIsle, The Sims, and Spore. I pretty much refuse to play newer iterations of The Sims because I grew disenchanted with the series as a whole (So... it's a "game" where you do the same things as your real life?). Spore was a minor letdown for me, but still enjoyable (damn micromanaging space phase!).

However, it appears that Sims will only travel to a ferry station placed in a city ADJACENT to theirs. I had a problem once where a small city tile of just water separated two islands and the ferry would not travel between the two cities! d'oh!

This is Wean Hall on Carnegie Mellon's campus in Pittsburgh, PA: http://lh4.ggpht.com/__hZBoYgotKk/SgZi-xomGcI/AAAAAAAAAIA/jjge7nG8EWc/IMG_1976.JPG Ok, maybe not single-handedly the worst, but the 60's-70's era of these monstrous, brutal concrete buildings is a style I'm hoping is long forgotten, and soon. What's particularly sad is that the building looks as bad, if not worse on the inside. Just way too much concrete on the inside and out. Edit: Sorry, couldn't get the image to appear in the post directly. Any clues as to why this is failing?

Originally posted by: Deathcat001 is there one for elevated highway's because it looks wierd having grass under a highway in the middle of a CBD quote> Oh really? I was thinking of that too, but in all my searches I've never found that. Do you have a link?

The work-around would be to put one-way roads on either side of the elevated rail or monorail. The other option (at least for el. rail) is to use the NAM's el. rail over road pieces. There are even a few stations that can work in perfect conjunction with these pieces too.

If this is the case about sims basically only traversing to adjacent cities, then how have I seen photos of what look like truly enormous commercial city centers?

Is there anything basically just like the Elevated Rail Facelift Mod for Monorails?

Originally posted by: kellydale2003 I'm making it as realistic as possible.quote> Speaking of which, are there any mods for changing the fairly dreadful default Maxis retaining walls that appear in lots? I find it particularly annoying that some buildings nicely conform to their slope, but then they're right next to these heinous ones that unrealistically cut into the slope. Does anyone know about this?

I guess a similar question I have in this vein is directed at airports. Does a large international airport have much an impact on the region as a whole, or again, just on the neighboring cities? I ask this because I saw someone creating a fairly realistic looking Int'l airport that takes up basically half a large city tile, but I was wondering if it's "actual" impact really represented it's large size.

This actually was a fairly simple question, but I assume there's a wealth of knowledge in the Simtropolis community that can help me ou in this matter. I very much understand on a basic level how different cities with a single region interact (people commute between cities, neighbor deals, etc.) My question pertains to the complexity of those interactions. Assume you have a particularly large region. Can you have for example people who commute from one city to another one that is further away? For simplicity sake, could they commute from one city to another one that's beyond their neighbor cities? Are SC4's Traffic simulators that complex or am I just thinking wishfully? In the same vein would apply to neighbor deals. Could you say, for instance, have one "dirty" city or rural area designated as the power producer for the region, or the garbage dump? Thus being able to jerry-rig neighbor deals so certains cities essentially have power, garbage, water moving through them to cities beyond. I ask both these questions because I feel like they're related in that I'm curious if the game allows cities to become essentially "conduits" for power, traffic, commerce, etc. rather than "cities only interact with their direct neighbors. I just haven't seen this discussed anywhere.

This topic would actually be more appropriate in the SC4 Builders - Transit Networks category; I even posted about something like this about a week ago. Yeah, I too have been looking for a good station for the Elevated Rail over Road. However, like you all discussed, not one that INTERSECTS the road, but instead one that works directly over top of the road that you're running parallel to fit with the NAM's El. Rail over road puzzle pieces. Here's the link to that thread I was talking about And like someone on that thread suggested, I will say that this guy has two such lots that may be of good use.

Originally posted by: z1 Originally posted by: Impala26 Also, I think some simple Road-Top station for El. Rail would be a good work-around.quote> I'm not completely sure what you mean here. Do you mean this? quote> Oh wow, that's impressive. How was that accomplished?

Originally posted by: blade2k5 Ok, the Hunnington Oregon map is now available on the STEX and here's what's on deck for tomorrow... Pittsburgh: quote> Ahh, what a refreshing sight to behold! Awesome job, I think the region has a very unique terrain in that there's not really any particularly tall moutains or peaks, but instead hills that appear to roll on forever. I'd love to see what people could do with it, I'm just not so sure "I" could do anything good with it because I'm still pretty "fresh" at the game and terrain is not that easy to work with in SC4 it seems. But anyway, can't wait!

Originally posted by: ch0c0 the NAM itself only has one major issue, and thats when you hover a puzzle piece over a TE lot...like a train station.quote> Actually, this may be a fairly accurate description as to when my game crashes. Keeping this advice in mind, I noticed that when I was more careful with where the cursor was (using the menus in-game and such) this has been noticeably less of a problem. I don't have concrete (hours and hours) proof, but I've been pleased thus far. Thank you for the tip.