-
Announcement
-
Simtropolis Returns! 05/26/2026
See here for details about our site recovery efforts.
-
Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'aesthetics'.
Found 6 results
-
Meandras, obsessed with creating a realistic satellite view
Adamskisc4 posted a topic in SC4 City Journals
I'm new to this forum and community so if this is the wrong place to post I do apologise and stand corrected. It was really great to discover and play the Maxisland region uploaded here by member catty-cb. It gave me the idea to create one of my own, with the aim to reach roughly the same regional population but with a more european look to it. Like flying in and viewing the region from the cockpit of your little Cessna at 4,000 meters of altitude, and thinking “Oh man! I’m gonna land over there and get a rental car to drive around, discover… explore.. and meet potentially interesting sims.” In Meandras we have some clearly outlined urban and suburban areas, and some that have merged over the years due to high-capacity transit routes, just like in real life - bigger urban landscapes that consist of several municipalities. The urban areas in Meandras follow the contour of the terrain, and neighbourhoods have their natural structure, mostly a mosaic of residential and commercial with industrial areas kept to themselves. To avoid the typical square urban structure that emerges in SimCity, I would start each city tile with a road following the terrain, encircling flatter ground to be built, and then zone with a criss-cross of diagonal roads, streets and avenues to counteract the typical american grid structure. I found that I could just drag i big zone over the area and then chip off/de-zone the tiles that ended up beyond the road contour, a little bit like chiseling away on a piece of marble, hoping it’s going to look like Aphrodite. Tedious work, but coupled with some diagonal roads or even avenues this gave quite an interesting street layout with some “no road connection” tiles perfect for parks, playgrounds, plazas and whatnot. Then, to finish a city off I’d sneak into God mode for a touch of re-forestation - sparsly on hillsides and mountains, more densely in valleys. On the whole it’s been like painting the Timbuktu landscape with settlements, infrastructure and vegetation. and I’m so pleased with the result I just had to share it with this community. Using mostly Chicago and New York tile sets and BATs with Europan origins, the satellite view offers lots of red, orange and yellow, mostly medium density buildings and only a few high rises, which in my opinion corresponds well to the aerial view you get from flying around Europe, staying clear of Frankfurt... This on the visual, aesthetic aspects of Meandras from high above, which has been the main goal. On the functional level it is an integrated region, with most cities living in symbiosis - sharing their space and livelihoods. Since the challenge was not to succeed in the game as such, but to get this satellite view, I played all cities on the easy level but mostly without cheats (oh I did cut a corner here and there to steal a reward building… sorry for that - but no "weakness pays" …) NAM has been very useful to help me manage mobility, but for interurban transit I have used Maxis standard items. Things like Real Highway need a lot of space for offramp, onramps etc, more adapted to an american model with urban sprawl and lots of open space to spare. Have you ever driven on the peripherique around Paris or the Autostrada through Naples? Although it has sometimes miscalculated regional growth and intercity impact, The Census Repositary Vault ( I never understood the difference between the vault and the facility - if someone cares to explain it to me..) has given me invaluable information for my city planning. The most common bug has been that in a mainly residential city that obviously has lots of sims commuting to Sim Nation, the Census guys set that numer to zero. Even so, it was not too hard to balance offer and demand between the cities concerned. Of course there is still a lot of commuters crossing borders around the clock never to go back home, but that’s a known bug. Lastly if wish to thank this Simtropolis community for sharing their knowledge and creations for us to learn from or download. Sadly some really good-looking w2w buildings and other lots would cause my Mac to CTD, like the ones uploaded by WannGLondon, but others - such as the BAT files uploaded by koumus corporation, and Odd from Sweden to mention a few, have given the cities their nice atmosphere. So, is Meandras now perfect? Maybe looks OK from the cockpit of a Cessna at 4,000 meters altitude, but can it grow its population without sprawling further and pushing mother nature out of this idyllic picture? Even with so many graveyards in cities that have since long stopped zoning new residential areas, we still get loud (!!) protests from schoolteachers against any budget cuts, so yes - new little sims keep coming and we need to accommodate the growing families. My job will now move from macro to micro level, from regional "governor" to arrondissement mayor, and fine tune each little neighbourhood, downtown commercial street, government block, parks and recreation, and our responsibility as elected officials - law and order, education, health, utilities and transportation. Of course sims will keep moving from town to town, seeking new opportunities, and as mayor, no longer too concerned with that regional harmony that has so obsessed me as governor, the gloves are off and the weapon of choice is going to be tax policy, coupled with this wonderful word: desirability. Unity will have to give way to competition, even if we also remain interdependent. A delicate balaning act to follow, so: Stay tuned if you like the approach and more importantly, pls offer feedback - always welcome! -
So, I was encouraged to make this topic/thread after essentially compiling a list of mods for someone on the SC4D Discord server. This is primarily just a list of links for people to follow to grab some neat mods. There was a guy over on the Discord server who was asking about some road construction mods, so, that's primarily what this thread is about, however, it's honestly open for construction mods in general. The neat part is, typing "construction" into the search bar/box you can find most, if not all, of these. I sorted the links into two groups, one for dedicated road themed construction, and one for general construction. This was because the extra links could work to add detail to cities and some even have extras that could work rather well alongside the road themed construction lots, as well as just along road networks in general, implying some form of road construction, as not all road construction is necessarily on the road directly, due to installing culverts, surveys, etc. Please note, however, that many of these may have dependencies, and I suggest checking each one you're interested in grabbing. On a side note, while it seems somewhat counter-intuitive, I feel that having 'growable' construction lots would be good, since i'm sure there's just spots where people want a lot that's perpetually under construction, and what's a better way than for it to also give you money every month? But, certainly the construction equipment could at least be found in industrial zones; or even commercial zones, as there's always some kind of equipment that's for sale/lease to those who need it. Certainly, there's a sim out there ready to borrow that road grader for their driveway, no?
- 1 Reply
-
- 2
-
-
-
- roads
- transportation
- (and 6 more)
-
I have a city that's been running for some time, and the style of the parks is kind of annoying me. Is there anyway I can either change the building style entirely, or else, specifically change the style of the parks, without starting a whole new city? I can't find an option to change the building style in the preferences, and when I click on the parks and then the replace button, I can't find the parks from the other building styles on the list of possible replacements.
-
Hope not to bother, as I use the word "philosohical" often to hide the word "naive" behind it. I have a great need for residentals, in my cities the biggest demand is always residentials. And I have a big bunch of goodlooking commercials. So I converted some commercials to residentials. But I can't help - some of those converted buildings still look like commercials, they simply don't look well as residentials. But others do. So I converted some of them back again to commercials. A friend of mine would call this doing a WOMBAT. I don't get it. There must be an aesthetic difference, some characteristics I should look for, that makes commercials definitve commercial. But I can't name them. It's something I'm doing by gut instinct, and it's like lottery, sometimes its good, sometime not. So even the question may sound strange: what makes the aesthetic difference between commercials and residentials, any characteristics named that help me use more brain and less "gut trust", I really would appreciate.
-
Radio masts/towers: Aesthetics and practicality
former_member 665840 posted a topic in General Off-Topic
Lately I've been thinking about the relationships between telecommunications masts/towers and their surrounding environments. They can easily fall into the NIMBY category, but I believe that the positive possibilities they present are often not even considered. Considering the amount of vertical real estate they bring with them, I'm much more fond of masts that are not strictly limited to telecommunications purposes (compared to ones that are). There's a plethora of things to do with that space, ranging from commerce/leisure/tourism (e.g. shops, restaurants, theatres, observation decks), ecological integration (e.g. artificial nesting for birds and other flight-capable creatures like bats, sky gardens), electricity (e.g. PV1 panel arrays, potentially even small-scale CSP2), miscellaneous utilities (e.g. active closed-loop SWH3 systems for heated water, something that could be useful for urban areas situated in colder climates - especially so if most of the area's water mains run beneath roads and railways)... all sorts of nifty stuff. For practicality, two examples would be the Stuttgart TV Tower and the Tokyo Skytree. As for aesthetics, an example would be San Francisco's Sutro Tower; There was quite an amount of opposition from its proposal to after its completion, but today (for the most part) it's considered one of the Bay Area's landmarks. Personally - while I think there's a lot more to be done with it - I agree. It already gains points for its unique appearance (in other words, not looking like an excessively-long support girder jutting up from the ground with a plethora of cables tethering it to the ground). Heck, it's even colour-coordinated with the nearby Golden Gate Bridge courtesy of air safety regulations (even if the specific shades of orange slightly differ). If you don't know what to reply with, here's a question: What's your favourite telecom mast, if any (or multiple)? Ones that have been destroyed, demolished, or exist as concepts are also allowed. 1. Photovoltaic 2. Concentrated solar power 3. Solar water heating -
It's been a while since I've been here. During that time I've lost my password, so I had log in via Google. Anyway, I've seen some people around here are sceptic towards the new SimCity game for not using semi-realistic graphics. My question is why so? Why is realism such an important aspect in this specific context? Is there some sort of "colour allergy" going on here? Maybe you have good reasons to feel that way. Perhaps these cartoonish aesthetics give you bad vibes for reminding of SCS. It could otherwise be that you want a simulation rather than a game. Idon't know, you tell me. Personally, I'm not that keen on realism in that regards. The muted colours and gritty textures would bore me to death, as it gives me the impression that I'm not supposed to have fun playing it. Also, I'm looking for a city creator rather than a city simulator, my experiences with SC4 were rather frustrating and hair-pulling. So maybe I should look elsewhere, like Minecraft.
