Robotica

Greetings everyone, I have setup a new tool called Simple Mapper, which aims to be an alternative to terrain.party for generating heightmaps. It also has the feature of producing transparent road maps which can be used as an overlay in game to help with making roads. Follow the link below to learn more and start making realistic maps easily. https://www.googledrive.com/host/0B_eKj0yj3xkJaDRQOVYxNldueW8

Oh wow that sucks, I haven't really played much SC4 as of late, especially with CS now being the new shiny toy and all, but I hope that it doesn't die out.

Quick question here, did ST incorporate some new ads? Every now and then when on ST and I click on a link for something I get a popup window to some retarded advertisements, it's super annoying. I only notice this on ST but I am worried that I might have caught something and it's not actually ST at all but a stupid maleware program or something. Anyways, anyone notice this? Random links leading to popups for third party adverts? PS... I actually notice this when I was NOT logged in... I just logged in to post this, and maybe that was why... Just a thought.

Greetings, I brought this up on the Steam forums, but I figure I should mention it here too. My biggest concern is that the game will end up producing very repetitive content. Looking at all the various cities people have made so far I feel like they all look very similar. I understand once new unique content comes out it will help to give more variation in our cities... But, this game is missing something critical that SC4 had, which was the ability to set your cities theme. Remember, you could set "Chicago 1890, New York 1940, Houston 1990, and Euro-Contemporary", which allowed us to specifically style which kinds of buildings would grow on a particular city tile. Now, similar to how SC5 worked, no matter what content you have downloaded it will all grow as long as you meet the requirements. On the Steam forums someone brought up a good idea, which was having the ability to set building themes onto districts. So you could have a single city tile that had multiple themes, which would allow you to do things like have a china town in your city. It would also allow us to create whatever themed cities we wanted. Want to have a futuristic city, no problem, want an old 1600 city, no problem. Hell, you could even make a medieval city assuming you had all the buildings and assets setup. Anyways, what do you all think about this? I feel like it is critical to the game, since I am one of those players who's only goal is to design amazing unique cities.

hmm this is a real bummer. In some ways it really helps to plan a city and such because you can pretty much be assured all the buildings will be the same variable size, but it also has the downside of making things all look very similar. I guess having ploppable super large buildings is okay, since you really won't have a ton of them in your city. I can imagine manually plopping 5 or so large buildings in my city.

Nice video, thanks for the tips friend. Just a heads up, your first link for the series playlist is broken, you might want to fix that

I think the big problem here is that city builders are not your typical games. Unlike your normal games, with city builders your average enthusiast will dump hundreds and hundreds of hours into the game. I put upwards of 600 hours into the new SC13 and probably thousands of hours into SC4. I think what developers fail to realize is that for a good city builder that we can realistic foresee playing for over a thousand hours we are, for the most part, willing to also pay more. I would probably pay at least a hundred, if not a couple hundred, for a city builder if I knew it would sustain my creative endeavours because at that point it ceases being a game and instead becomes a tool.

Really Bayonetta did that bad? It was such an incredible action game, probably one of the best I have ever played, what a shame... But, back on topic, I would hate to think that city builders will die out. I am not sure I agree with that since there is definitely a market, even if it is a niche one. Also, unlike other games, city building is more of a hobby than a game and because of that there are a lot of die hard city builders out there. The other thing is that there has not been a grand mesa for city builders since SC4, so it's over a decade now we have gone without a true successor. I feel like even if they do eventually give up on building new city builders it will happen at a time where we have new games out there that take the current place of SC4 and are able to support the players for a decade or two. Also, there are some big city builders on the horizon. We all know of Cities Skyline, but check this one out: http://www.thearchitect-game.com/looks incredible, will we ever see it though, I have no idea. PS: simcity build it is a piece of garbage I wouldn't even call a city builder, it's just a money grab.. a terrible piece of $%&^!.

Great city, I LOVE your last image.... Which I am very curious about... How did you take that screenshot? You have the camera at an angle I haven't seen in SC4.... How???

I will more than likely buy them both, but if you are looking for a city builder that stands out you need to check this game out, it looks unbelievable to say the least. Not sure if it's expected in 2015 or what, but it just looks incredibly amazing. http://www.thearchitect-game.com/

I really liked Cities XL, I actually thought it was pretty good once you added all the proper mods and stuff. I only play city builders to create aesthetically attractive cities, I don't play for the simulation aspect. Cities XL could really make some beautiful cities, just look at xlnation. However, without multi core support it became a nightmare with even medium sized towns. If the game had good optimization I would LOVE IT! Funny enough, I thought that Cities Skylines was actually the next evolution of Cities XL, I didn't really know it was an entirely different game. Hopefully they do it right!

Great showcase, your city looks great and your region shot is amazing. I love it, especially how well placed it all is. I also think  your photoshop edits are good as well, though your tilt shift is a bit off. Other than that though, I would like to make one critique, I would suggest not using the lens flare, at least not on so many of the pics. Maybe one of them at most. I really don't think it fits the design of SC4. I mean you only see lens flares from very bright objects, you wouldn't see it from a reflection of some glass.

I'm actually kind of offended by your post. I always use abandonment and dilapidation mods, but I also don't play SC4 as a game. I think a lot of people forget that there are more than 1 way to play SC4, and for a lot of people such as myself it isn't even really viewed as a game but a artistic tool to produce intricate and complex urban environments. I mean, when you think about it that sense, the games "game" mechanics are really just annoying. In reality these arbitrary game rules don't make sense and just inundate the player with problems that they have to get around. You realize that a lot of the really awesome cities you see are not functioning cities at all, usually the screenshot is all that the city is, and if you rotated the camera everything will look out of place. Some players just design for a certain zoom and rotation. Anyways, I just find it kind of annoying the way you try to make it sound like if people don't play the game the way you play it then they are just dumb and inferior in some way... Well, that's just an ignorant opinion, and not correct in the least.

If you want a pc to just play SC4 with, then don't buy a laptop because you won't be able to really customize it like you want. You will also end up paying more for a laptop anyways. And, what are you computers current specs? You could probably just reuse a lot of the same parts. I recently build a new beast of a computer to play high end games on, and to be honest SC4 ran just the same on my previous computer as it does now, so I really dont think you need much to max out sc4. Your best bet would be to just buy a new motherboard, cpu and maybe a gpu though I am not really sure that a gpu would make a difference for SC4. Some additional ram would be good, but if your at like 4gb of ram now then you probably wont see a big difference with more.

Hello everyone, I am just trying to figure out there is any kind of exit/on ramps for the RHW similar to that of the Maxis Default Highway. Actually, the exit/on ramps for the Maxis Highway are actually part of NAM, but I don't see anything for the RHW. The Maxis part I am talking about can be seen in this tutorial here: https://www.simtropolis.com/omnibus/_/simcity-4/tutorials/sunken-highway-onramps-and-offramps-r98 I would like something similar for RHW. The only way I can do it with the RHW is by building long on/off ramps that have to level the surrounding area rather than just plopping onto the terrain as I have it already laid out. Anyways, I hope this is clear what I am asking, hopefully there is a solution. Thanks friends.

Hi Schulmanator, I have been observing your works for a long time now, and while I haven't seen all of your submissions, of the ones that I have this one is my favorite. Each screenshot is like a painting, the style is very beautiful. Overall I think it is really well done, but if I could give any criticism with the submission overall I would say that it would of been nice to see a zoomed out shot showing more at once. I like the idea of the water behind the town, but it could be fleshed out more, with some mmp's and decor. Anyways, well done.

Thanks for your response, and by the way your tutorials are absolutely amazing. Those tutorials are what got me started on big RHW networks! However, those sunken intersections I don't think is what I am looking for. Don't get me wrong, they are awesome, but I don't think that it would work with what I am going for. I need something more compact and even more important I need something that I can use walls with. I have some walls that work well with sunken intersections, but only when using the maxis highways because they are very compact and don't distort the surrounding ground.