The British Sausage

Entry 31 -- Industrial/MMP Christmas Special After a quiet period of two months I finally discovered some new toys! 1. My industrial experiments continue. 2. Here I'm using Simmer2's rusty industrial buildings to create a fuel depot. 3. I use Simmer2's pipeline set to connect it all together. 4. For dirt ground textures I plop in xannepan's texture overrides which are found in the JENX Poseidon mod. 5. For concrete textures I use a mixture of Heblem's gravel and Chrisadams3997's gravel paths. 6. What I've done is created a fusion of lots, MMPs and ground textures (both terrain based and MMP). 7. I've also worked out to expand out concrete textures using MMPs and getting the appearance to a satisfactory level. 8. Throw in some farm fields -- MMP style -- and the area starts feeling complete. 9. The trinity of some of my favourite things in SC4: industry, farming and MMPs. 10. I even snuck in some of KingOfSimCity's FA industrial walls! 11. 12. Using one of KingOfSimCity's IRM extension avenue gateway lots... 13. I'm also using Simmer2's sound walls and that's something I've never used before- works best when saturated with MMP dirt/concrete ground textures! 14. The money shot... There will be a new year's entry and this will involve further experimental city-building. I have my eyes fastened on Mattb325's FA buildings which he has been very quietly releasing... And now for the replies to the last entry! Scribosilyn: Even though the MMP fields consist of non-HD models the overall look still holds up... Just. It's close up when MMP fields really look good! Belfastsocrates: I try and only because I build tile by tile, city block by city block... Still some things escape me- like adding in false intersections to connect up buildings which have street entrances but won't automatically connect to a road network. sejr99999: Thank you. Fitz-Ailwin: Read away! I pack in a lot of stuff and some of it just comes all together by accident! Takingyouthere: Make SimCity 4 great again! Anyway- I try and spice things up with grid-busting and creating neighbourhood themes. The picture flip can spice up pictures but only sometimes, one liability is writing on signs and billboards being reversed.

Replies: Vigilante1987: Thanks! I also break up the houses with different lotsizes too. Dead_End: No it doesn't, the only graphical "issue" with transparent textures on lots is when you get the background sky glitch after saving. This can be easily removed by switching to the zone view and then switching back to normal. mattb325: Thanks! And I always like the new buildings you churn out, it makes my life easier! It's also cohesive because I extensively use lots which have C.P. trees, plus I use SFBT Street Mod which also has C.P. trees. Takingyouthere: Thanks, I'm still going strong and I have at least several new entries worth of content ready to go. Cindersville is getting closer to being complete plus I'm having a hell of a great time recreating New York (The Big Mango), so there's still plenty of things to keep me going with SC4. I've seen you recently appear so hopefully that means new CJ entries from you too- I like your work! Goldman Sachs: Thanks for your comment! I've seen your first NY building and it's definitely looking promising. Are you actually serious about creating the same building in two angles, presumably diagonal and FA? Because that's a seriously huge amount of work!!! {---} Entry 54: Lower Manhattan and the Projects We're back to The Big Mango and the New York recreation. In about a week I've made a huge amount of progress and the Manhattan part of the city tile is at least halfway complete. So enjoy some more NY goodiness! {---} 1. About a week ago I had completed most of Lower Manhattan and was beginning to build the "skyscraper valley" part of Manhattan- between Lower Manhattan and Midtown Manhattan. 2. Eventually I'll change the driving side and add more NY Taxis to the automata. 3. A little glimpse of the projects I've built. 4. The Projects of East Side (Manhattan) start from Brooklyn Bridge and stretch almost all the way to the UN Headquarters or at least towards Waterside Plaza (which is about two thirds of a mile south of the UN HQ). I used marcszar's NYC Housing Projects Set 3 for these buildings, link here- https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2092&old_comments=true. 5. And here is Chinatown / Little Italy, some of the buildings (the 1x2 lot with two distinctive buildings) I used for this scene are Jumpthefence's NY buildings. Very good in my opinion! Link here- https://community.simtropolis.com/profile/247743-jumpthefence/content/?type=downloads_file 6. And here is the current overview of The Big Mango. As you can see I'm ready to begin work on Midtown Manhattan. Some parts of the rivers will be tweaked, i.e. made a bit wider. 7. Lower Manhattan is now complete. I also found a way on GIMP to smooth over the jagged appearance of JENX Paris' and Marrast's sea walls. 8. A lot of New York is Wall-to-Wall, so it was a question of making the W2W interesting and varied. 9. Every city block is slightly different; some far more so than others. The park to the right is Washington Square Park. 10. West Side has virtually no office blocks or skyscrapers, by it's coastline / (Hudson River) I noticed a large number of rather chunky buildings plus assorted manufacturing. So although it's not an exact recreation it does capture the feel and spirit of the area. 11. Once again, for the large industrial buildings, I used marcszar's buildings. 12. The area around Washington Square Park. 13. If you haven't noticed already a lot of the city blocks have car parks and/or back alleyways. 14. Back to the northwest part of Lower Manhattan; this was a challenging area to create for a lot of the diagonal buildings available don't have that New York aesthetic. 15. Another feature I'm having fun with are the areas around avenue intersections. Now the diagonal avenue is a major road (West Street / 11th Avenue) leading towards the World Trade Centre Complex and one which runs along the Hudson River. 16. The start of the Projects which comprise a good chunk of Lower East Side. 17. Again, this is not a to-scale recreation of New York, this is downsized but the areas created are designed to reveal the general appearance of key areas in Manhattan: Lower Manhattan, East Side, West Side, Midtown, Hell's Kitchen (yes I'll be recreating that area to the best of my ability), etc. 18. 19. Back to the "skyscraper valley", inbetween Lower Manhattan and Midtown Manhattan. 20. To the right is SimHoTToDDy's Studebaker building, a must-have item! It is part of the NYBT ABBT W2W Industrial series, I highly recommend downloading everything that series has to offer! Link to the Studebaker- https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/27209-nybt-abbt-the-studebaker-building/?page=2&sort=newest&tab=reviews#review-448536. Link to NYBT ABBT- https://community.simtropolis.com/profile/467876-abbt/content/?type=downloads_file 21. I tried using Mandelsoft's Light Replacement Mod (V4) but for some reason the ambient street light was not showing on the road/street textures... Disappointing because the night scenes would come alive with that feature. 22. 23. West Side. 24. {---} Next entry will be another update from Cindersville which will have plenty of grid-busting and hilly city scenes! In about a week's time I'll be posting another update of The Big Mango, this time with scenes/progress of Midtown Manhattan and boy do I have plans for Midtown Manhattan!!! Why, today I just finished off a simple hand sketch of key avenues and buildings on a approximately scale map to show where key landmarks go and their distance from each other and their position in Midtown Manhattan. Landmarks and areas to be included: UN HQ, Tudor Buildings (by UN), Hell's Kitchen, Rockerfeller Centre, Chrysler Building, 601 Lexington Avenue, Empire State Building, Time's Square, Madison Square Gardens, US Postal Service building, Hotel Pennsylvania, Macy's, Broadway, New York Marriott Marquis, Grand Central Terminal, Metlife Building, the railyard between 9th and 11th avenue (currently the part between 10th and 11th has been built over so hey artistic license!). Hell if there was a decent Flatiron Building I'd throw that in too!

Entry 81: Pratchit's Top and the village of Kingsley Welcome back to another entry from the countryside- a rather mountainous one! Featuring mosaics and a few other special things too. This is the last time I use PNG for the pictures- this is due to all the HD flowers which would come out blurry or smudgy if rendered in JPG format. Let's get started! Note: The mosaics, pictures 14 and 24 respectively, where too large to upload in PNG form for Imageshack and Imgur. Thus I uploaded them onto my own Google Photo album, the reason for this is too fully capture the fidelity of the imageshack and the photoshop work, which is somewhat lost when rendered in JPG format. The link to the Google album is right here- https://photos.app.goo.gl/bk3M5MHek883TED88 {---} 1. The mountain being explored today is Pratchit's Top. 2. This is a mid-level mountain which borders the western starting point of Maular Valley. 3. The village of Kingsley at its southern-most point. 4. 5. Night-time and diagonals! 6. 7. 8. Moving up Maular Valley we come to Kingsley, the village which both marks a watershed between two major valleys and also a mountain pass. 9. Starting from Pillar, one of the three tallest mountains in the Cindersville area, we move eastwards towards Kingsley. 10. From the village of Kingsley, Pratchit's Top appears quite small. 12. Though from further away it is a dominant feature of Maular Valley. 13. Starting from the north, from Pratchit's Top and moving southwards until we hit the northern fringes of Cindersville's city centre. 14. Going from south to north. High quality version can be found here- https://photos.app.goo.gl/bk3M5MHek883TED88 15. 16. And now for a closer look at Pratchit's Top. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. This is going from west to east. 24. Going from east to west. High quality version can be found here- https://photos.app.goo.gl/bk3M5MHek883TED88 25. Having a look at the western moorland around Pratchit's Top. 26. 27. The eastern and northern slopes impose themselves upon the vilage of Kingsley. 28. The main road running out of Kingsley and moving on to the northeast. 29. Having a look at western Kingsley. 30. There are several paths which start from the village of Kingsley- in all directions. 31. A picture taken from the slopes north of Kingsley (north of Pratchit's Top). 32. Going from south to north. 33. The furthest western extent of Kingsley. 34. 35. Going from north to south. 36. 37. {---} The entry will be returning back to the city. Until then- stay safe and have a good week.

Finally caught up with all the entries from April! The most interesting thing was the updating and tweaking of JENX's plobbable terrain pieces. If their kinks could be ironed and more textures added then the entire game would change.

Looking good so far Kelis. You are a wizard at Japanese urban scenes!

I've been out of the SC4 loop for about a year, though I browse the Show us What You're Working on page from time to time. What happened to Mattb325? He was a BATting wizard.

Duck you Sucker is one awesome film. It's an anti-revolution film about the Mexican Revolution. The explosions in are absolutely crazy!

That's a nice minimalist approach! With a good tree controller and terrain mod MMPs aren't required. I have done that sometimes to save on time. That terrain mod had some great grass textures too!

That industrial area looks awesome!

Replies: kschmidt: No I don't have the No Abandonment Mod. I have found a way to plop in LARGE amounts of residential without triggering abandonment of the plopped residential buildings. Thanks for your comment. IL.: Size always matters... For a CJ... Ahem. Talla 2XLC: Thanks for your comment! Terring: Thank you! TekindusT: Cheers! Green and wide I say! kim026: Thanks! Prophet42: Thank you! Everything I have shown has been done without using the Lot Editor. All it takes is the right BATs, LOTs and dependencies. Entry 4: Plobbable Residential Abandonment Problem now Solved! We are in for a treat today folks! I believe I have stumbled across a workaround which prevents plopped residential buildings (R$, R$$ and R$$$) from becoming abandoned. 1. Here is the area I will be infilling- to the left of the road going northwards. 2. Step 1: zone out a plot which matches the size of the residential lot to be plopped, in this case 3x3. 3. Step 2: Pick -- using the BuildingPlop cheat -- a residential lot. I have picked CP_VictorianSmallRes$$_12_Decid and from that the CP_R$$5_3x3_VictorianRow_12Hses. The lot is circled in red and looks good in medium density areas. 4. Step 3: Let residential buildings grow, make sure every one of these lots matches the size of our plopped residential lot. In this case 3x3. REMEMBER: this step is the MOST important of them all!!! 5. Step 4: Pick the residential lot from the BuildingPlop cheat list and plop in the lot exactly upon the 3x3 plots. Press cheetah speed, watch the months go by and voila! No No Job Zot and no abandonment! As long as there is a residential lot which is grown and matches the lot size of the residential lot you wish to use- your plopped residential lot will not become abandoned. 6. And that's it! Now the next step is to complete this area and one thing with this particular housing lot are the street tile textures emerging from the middle of the lot. I create false intersections using the elevated rail pieces: elevated rail connected to elevated rail over street. Demolish the elevated rail section and what is left behind is a 1x1 street segment which isn't rounded. 7. Looks better with those false intersections doesn't it? Lastly we pretty up the area to the left and add some W2W shops plus carparking on top to finish off this city block. 8. It's a very simple layout which works thanks to the fabulous lotting and batting of the content creators. 9. Here are some examples of residential plopping in action. 10. 11. 12. So to conclude: no more waiting around for the residential buildings you want, no more abandonment of plopped residential buildings AND a chance to use every residential building listed in the BuildingPlop menu. Please let me know in the comments whether you are able to replicate (copy) this in your cities. Please also note that if abandonment occurs due to low desirability, traffic noise, crime, pollution, garbage or radiation then I suspect these plopped residential buildings will remain abandoned even if desirability improves. Whereas normal zoned residential buildings which are abandoned can become reoccupied again. One unknown is how plopped RCI will react on a massive scale or on a ubiquitous scale. I would say at least a third of my residential buildings in Pololomia are plopped and my plopped commercial and industrial buildings have not been adversely effected. So your feedback will be most useful! Thanks, and if this cheat works for you then your whole SC4 gaming experience is about to be RADICALLY CHANGED! Enjoy!!!

That is... Tight. Nice use of wall tile pieces over the avenue- or are they elevated and overhanging carpark pieces/props?

It's going to be sometime in the middle of July. I have an accountancy exam coming up in early July, so that's going to come first... I may start a threat in general topics... The British Sausage's Story Corner or something... That is one seamless of photoshopping!

People: I've been going through entries since April and the work show here has been astonishing More grid-busting! New MMP trees and plants! Amazing new buildings little to large! More diagonal and FAR buildings! Amazing scenes of nature, cities and rural areas! And some amazing photo-shopping at times. I've never seen a year where so many people are firing on all cylinders. This year on this thread there has been some amazing work done here- and it is work getting it all right. I've been lurking in the background for months now focusing on story-writing, coming back to react or leave an odd comment, but I think I need to make time in the weekend, at least on Saturday and/or Sunday mornings to crank up SC4 and post those outstanding CJ entries- and then finish off that New York project and that rural city project. There is the 2023 anniversary of SC4 coming up too... You have inspired me folks! What I've seen has astonished me, thank you, thank you!

Thank you!

Replies: Scribosilyn: Thank you! Anyway the URS is what I wanted from SC4 a year or two ago; 2016 had some great stuff but I can now go even further than that with residential plopping and creating lots with transparent tiles with buildings upon them. Prophet42: Cheers! It's getting easier and easier to detail city areas and give them a certain character to them. BC Canuck: Steal those ideas! If you're wondering the British Sausage is a famous joke from the British TV series Yes Minister. tariely: Oh yeah! Michelle Yukimura: I go to GIMP and use the horizontal flip tool. sejr99999: Thanks! And good luck with your search. metarvo: Yeah the diagonals were a give-away; I am a madman when it comes to creating seamless diagonals and removing jagged texture edges on roads. kelistmac: Make some - ahem! - contributions for the mayor and that house is yours. feyss: Thanks! Entry 9: Highlights from Pololomia In this entry there are some more pictures from Pololomia. I think I can get the whole city tile done by Christmas holiday time. Thanks a lot for the comments- it is good to be back. Anyway, enjoy the pictures and the enjoy the weekend. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

So I haven't posted anything in this forum for months now, perhaps a couple of years! But one item of current news not on this thread is the coronavirus. Like the thread I started four years ago about Donald Trump and his administration, this thread is to keep a track on the coronavirus which is beginning to ravage Wuhan and seems to be on the verge of getting footholds in major Chinese cities. A quick and useful summary can be found here: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/6000-quarantined-italian-cruise-ship-due-virus-scare-russia-closes-border-china My gut feeling is that the cat is out of the bag because of that accursed asymptomatic human-to-human infection- which means you could have contacted someone with the virus, not show any symptoms, and still pass it on to a few others! I just hope the death rate stays in that 2% to 3% interval. Though I feel China, which has a rich history of massaging figures and official data (starting from the Communist Revolution), has been concealing the figures to keep the public calm. One part of me can understand that to stop a panic, on the other hand the WHO and other countries are reliant on Chinese data and if the Chinese government have been fudging the number of infections and deaths... I'm also looking for the percentage rate of infected people who contract pneumonia from this virus- that's what is killing so many of those who died because of coronavirus. So, anyway, any useful articles or videos from inside Wuhan would be much appreciated.

Those oak MMPs are gorgeous as are at least a dozen of your latest work-in-progress tree MMPs. But that gravel texture is beautiful, at least to my eye, and could almost double as a courtyard texture or a dry desert/rock texture. Definitely onto to something here! A diagonal seaport? Go! And very cool. This is art and if MMPs look like art or something seamlessly natural then you've nailed them. Awesome stuff as always! One could build an entire large city tile with only your buildings!

The trees are all from girafe (found on the bsc LEX) and the grasses are MMPs mainly found in chrisadam3997 flora mmps. I mix grass/flower/bush mmps to create fields. It takes a long while but the results look vastly more organic than the 1x1 crop tiles seen in agricultural zones in SC4. https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1886

Nailed it man! And that style is very nice. The tree clusters around the hill tops are a great touch because they emphasise the grassy/flowery terrain textures.

SimCity: Imperial China Nice one!

Look at Israel which has the highest vaccination rates in the world and it has a raging third wave with a significant portion of deaths (about a third of the rate of the second wave). New Zealand managed for a year and a half of zero (more or less) Covid and that's come to an end. Break out the vaccines, the hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for those seriously impacted and ride out the wave.

With the ARDEN tree controller it can at times do all the MMP work for you. Also: "Keep calm and BUILD ON!" I use the Sudden Valley terrain mod and the ARDEN tree controller for the scenery. I then compliment this with a lot of bush, flower and rock MMPs; this process takes hours and hours.

The issue with using high-density 1x1 residential is that it will rapidly gobble up demand which means less buildings will grow. So unless you use a mod to set demand at infinite (which does mess up growing RCI if that is your method) then yes there will be far more diagonal residential buildings popping up but not many of them. This is because density is linked to growth stages and from what I recall high density includes stages 7 and stages 8- the highest possible growth stages. There is another problem too: high density zones are really variable density zones based on city population and the proportion of residents/occupants in buildings from stage 1 to stage 8. This is why for small cities (less than 10000 people) high density zoning will nearly always produce small buildings for growth stages 1 to 3. My trick to cut time is to zone the 1x1 parcels, let the simulator run, some of those parcels will produce a diagonal house- mark those "make historical". Then I plop in the diagonal houses on the squares without diagonal homes and job done. As long as you plop in a residential building on top of a parcel, of same size, which has a growable residential building, then the plopped residential building will not automatically become abandoned. Unless of course there is no demand for residential. My 2 Cs!

I hear ya Dreadnought, here are a few mosaics showing forest transitions from high elevations to low elevations. Yeah there's a whole bunch of MMP stuff but what matters is the layout of the coniferous trees and the deciduous trees. Coniferous forests in clusters. Coniferous to deciduous. ARDEN tree controller- no MMPs. ARDEN Tree controller- no MMPs. MOAR pics of good old ARDEN! Coniferous forest and moorland. Coniferous transitions. The lonely road amidst the pines. Just the Sudden Valley terrain mod and the ARDEN tree controller in action for the higher elevation pine forests. More Sudden Valley / ARDEN combos. The beauty of the ARDEN tree controller is the grassland which automatically spawns. I hope that inspires you!

Beautiful; really, really beautiful. Those MMP river scenes are spot on the tree work, path work and plant work!