SamJam

This was a fun thread to read. Thanks for posting, everyone. :-) Poor planning does not necessarily have everything to do with poor traffic. New York is an excellent example of this--the city (I speak of the central main city of Manhattan) is based entirely on a grid, and there is absolutely no more efficient way to lay down streets. The streets are numbered instead of named, which makes it very easy to know how far away you are from your destination and where you need to go to get there. And they are mostly one-way streets, which means extremely rare left turns with oncoming traffic. Folks, that is very efficient. What went wrong in New York is the speed at which it grew and the density at which it stands now. I'm sure when the city was being laid out, nobody expected there to be 28 000 people per km². From personal experience, I need to disagree with a couple of earlier posts: The fact that the lower-east side of Toronto's urban core is a dilapidated industrial zone does not mean it was poorly planned. Those two ideas aren't even in the same ballpark. Toronto is one of the oldest major cities in North America, and as such it began as an industrial waterfront town. The same can be said for New York, Montreal, Philadelphia, and more. The industrial sections have been transformed over time because rail and water transportation has been de-emphasized in favour of road and air travel. Heavy dirty industry has shrunk considerably over the last few decades. That doesn't mean the area was poorly planned. In fact, Toronto, New York, Montreal, and Philadelphia were all planned excellently in their times. Perhaps it would be better to say that they have done a poor job of evolving into modern commercial cities, but even that's a stretch. The only thing I could say negatively about Toronto's planning was its dumping of the freeway plans of the 1960s. Although the Gardiner and DVP were built and are still absolutely necessary as the backbones of downtown's commuter routes, there were a few other freeways planned (notably another north-south route on the west side of downtown, as well as a crosstown route that would have gone across the areas of what are now Rosedale and The Annex). People will forever argue about the pros and cons of freeways 'til they're blue in the face, but despite the negative effects of such a downtown freeway plan on vibrant, livable neighbourhoods, had those freeways been built in Toronto the city would be a much different place today... possibly easier to get around in, at least. But again, that wasn't poor planning. It was just citizens refusing to have their city divided and chopped up into sections by rows of freeways. You can't blame any city council for something the people wanted--and got. One intersection does not make a poorly-planned city. Winnipeg, like Toronto and New York, is based largely on a grid. Not to mention the fact that many of the core streets are one-ways, and virtually all the core streets are nice and wide. One-ways tend to be three or four lanes, and the two-way streets tend to be four or six lanes. I visited Winnipeg a few years ago and downtown, even in the middle of the work week, was not congested or problematic to drive through. Even Confusion Corner isn't really confusing when you understand the logic behind the intersection. The way the three streets are laid out makes sense. I will admit, though, that the traffic signs don't help. The pictured sign a few posts after your makes it look like there is a ramp or a roundabout, but in fact there is not. It's a misleading sign. As long as a visitor looks at a road map before heading out (which you should always do anyway!) there really shouldn't be any problem at that corner. A quick look at it on Google Maps (satellite view) reveals that there isn't even much traffic congestion there. The advantage that the 'Peg has over Toronto and New York is that it is growing at a very slow pace. That gives city planners lots of time to prepare and make necessary upgrades. T.O. and N.Y. grow so fast that by the time planners have a roadway scheme, the traffic has already grown to be a problem and a new roadway does little to alleviate it. I think Winnipeg planners are on the right track. Upgrading the Perimetre Highway to a full freeway would be a good idea, and the inner ring road (whatever it will be called) should get get moving, too. Overall... I think if there's one place I've visited that really frightens me, traffic-wise, is Vancouver. It is a gorgeous and truly awesome place to see, don't get me wrong--but it suffers from the same problem as many U.S. cities do: it sprawls. Though it is laid out on a grid (even in the 'burbs) you almost have to drive or use public transit to get from A to B. The downtown peninsula is quite dense but it is an excellent mixture of business and residential space so a lot of people actually walk everywhere they need to go as long as they are in that space. However, the suburbs stretch waaaaaaaay too far for what roads or highways (I should say highway--singular) will realistically allow. The TCH is a nice interregional freeway but unless you're already near it, or your destination is near it, then it is as much of a pain (out of the way) as taking any traffic-signaled road. The only other major freeway in town doesn't even connect to it! That said, the SkyTrain is a great public transit option (longest automated rapid transit system in the world, actually) but with only three lines it doesn't cover as much sprawling area as is probably should. If you visit the city as a tourist and do most of your sightseeing on the downtown peninsula, Stanley Park, and the North Shore, you should have an easy enough time getting around. But the suburbs, which are equally as worthwhile seeing, have some work to do.

If we get a SC5 that doesn't expand on CXL's improvements (bridges, curved roads, no grid, etc etc) then the game will fail. They can't just take SC4 and add tweaks and fixes. Because it sounded to me like that's what the article's author was leaning towards--just make it less buggy and add nostalgia. Um, no... it really needs to be big and put CXL in its place (no disrespect to CXL, which gave players what they've been waiting years for to build). If SC5 is to be *the* city simulator, it needs to put CXL in a very distant second place.

There are enough major requests on the parts of SimCity fans to start building a SC5. Losing the grid (like CitiesXL) would be a tremendous start, expand the network types, and make the entire game more modular (taking notes from the makers of the NAM, RHW, and NWM here). The restrictiveness of the game has always been its weakness. But there is clearly a hardcore fan base here, LOL. Having said that, we also need to understand that the *average* desktop gamer with *average* computer components still experience lags with SC4, so there has to be a balance between what the game makers want to give us and what the game players can handle. Would SC5 be realistically compatible to the majority of computer owners?

Originally posted by: mikeld EXCUSE ME FOR SOUNDING AN IDIOT BUT what is CLEANITOL ? is it an exe file or is it some list of things like a txt file? will it take away important files I will need & thus crash my game to desktop? Cause I've usually found its better to double up on things even if your pluggin folder is messy than be missing vital pieces because you were into some spring cleaning. Sure I have 4 or the same highways ped tiles & other stuff at the moment so obviously i have too much of stuff but I have the 19 mbs of this new nam surely by pressing it it could replace the old files with the new ones or is that just asking too much simplicity? We are not all gen Y tech savvy people you know. Why doesn't this 19 mbs exe file have a list of things its going to put in & which folder so i can manually go into those folders & remove it myself. Like an anti virus program; I can let the program get rid of the virus or i can go to where i see the short cut is & delete it manually myself because i can see where it is.quote> Cleanitol is exactly that--a program that uses a text document to find old files which will be replaced by newer and/or consolidated ones. The old files are not deleted, however. They are moved and stored in seperate project folders in Cleanitol's location. If you ever need to retrieve something, you are capable of doing that. I have used Cleanitol since its release and I have never had a problem with it. It is an extremely useful tool.