441 replies to this topic

[TheDR]

The indented highway always looks cool. Its a shame the duel carriageway doesn't split off into symmetrical roads

I don't know what to think about the gray walls, they just look a bit out of place, maybe they need a bit more infrastructure around them.

[Ion Cannon!]

Heres some newer shots of the same area.


Some close ups.




And this is what it currently looks like

[Ion Cannon!]

Had a bit of a disaster, tried to compile most of my simcity plugins into one file which then led to simcity 4 being unable to load. The reason I did this is because as you gain more plugins (Not the size, the amount) the game becomes less stable. I had 6600 files.. split into 1500 folders. I am happy to say though that after reinstalling simcity 4 and packing my plugins in a different way, as well as manually deleting alot of unneccessary files my simcity is once again stable and alot more playable than before. Its down to 4200 files into 1100 folders.

Heres a nice image.

[Ion Cannon!]

Not seen anyone else post anything for a while, anyway here is more progress of my suburbs. I cocked up the rail a bit, it should flow freely into the other track but instead I had to give it a sharp s-curve. I could fix it, but it would involve relaying most of my railway, and I can't be bothered to do that as of now.

[Ion Cannon!]

Here is a few pictures from my latest city, I'm really trying to make it look realistic, striking a balance between organisation and nonconformity. It's making a small profit as well It's still a WIP, but I really like how its turned out so far.

Hope you all like it, and comments are welcomed.

First an overview of the currently developed area. Though this is slightly outdated now.


And now some closer shots. This is the latest development, the rest is older. The housing project is only 3 years old.


The same area-ish, but from a different angle.






These two pictures are the newest ones, they show off the most recent developments. Newbury Industrial Estate and the small growing office centre known as Surbiton.

Newbury industrial estate.


A growing small suburban office centre.

[Ion Cannon!]

Here is some more from The Spire. Thats the city I showcased in the post just above this.

[Sgt. Rho]

Double roundabouts? You want to torture your Sims. Admit it

Looks nice.

[Ion Cannon!]

It's alot more efficient than having double intersections, plus I like roundabouts, possible side effect of being British

[Ion Cannon!]

In case anyone wants to see what 3.5GB of plugins looks like, here it is. It shows only the buildings, and not the lots, and obviously all texture mods / other random items are not included. I used to a script to plop every single building in my plugins folder, there are some duplicates due to different versions, total loading time was about 15min.

[Ion Cannon!]

To save me linking many many images and to save you bandwidth, here is a slideshow, the newest slides are the newest pictures. This is all taken from the city journal I now have at simtropolis, have a look if you want

-Actually the first pic in the slideshow means nothing, it was illustrating that age demographics have no effect on demand, anyway..

Slideshow - http://s1218.photobu...mview=slideshow
City Journal - http://www.simtropol...2871-the-spire/

Edited by Ion Cannon!, 13 September 2011 - 13:28.

[Ion Cannon!]

Well I haven't updated or played this for ages, but I will again soon, but heres some of the stuff I have done since. This is just a small sample.. I apologise in advance for destroying your bandwidth.. I don't think I'm actually expecting any comments, but they would be well recieved, still.. 12,500 views speaks for itself And of course, if anyone else has been playing this, I would love to see what you've all gotten up to.


































And theres alot more where that came from, though I think I'll grant your bandwidth a rest for now.

Actually, just to put this in context most of these pictures are from this city below.

Edited by Ion Cannon!, 28 November 2011 - 20:14.

[Warbz]

I gave up, I just can't seem to get the basics down. Gonna stick to my mindless shooting games.
Although after seeing what you've done it does make my fingers itch to install the game again, it looks awesome.

How do you actually plan out your zones? I was just slapping down a Residential zone and then throw down a Commercial zone next to it with an Industrial zone a little way away. Doesn't seem to pan out so great in the long run though, I guess I just need to play a lot more and get some trial-error feedback to see what's best?

[Ion Cannon!]

The first city is always the hardest, my first city is a mess to be honest - functional, but not pretty to look at. However once you get that to a sufficiently large size you can use the demand it creates to kick start cities in whatever way you want in the region.

This city was sort of planned, though really I was just experimenting with interesting and functional transport networks initially.

I started the city something like the below image - first image I posted in this thread incidentally. However this is after upgrading the medium residential to high residential I believe. You can get a good idea of how I started it though. If you find you get strapped for cash, you don't need to actually provide all services, poor sims will still move in even with no healthcare or education. From the picture you can also see I have a large no jobs problem, but over time its possible to sort such things out.

Edited by Ion Cannon!, 29 November 2011 - 01:05.

[Admiral FCS]

When I can get a new desktop (probably a year from now for uni...) I'm off on PC gaming, but yeah, they look gorgeously elegant as always. Planning would be my big issue since my cities would either be too flat or too dense.

[Ion Cannon!]

They always are to start, don't worry most of my 25 million population region lives in horribly dense unrealistic areas, it has only been the past 6 months I have really tried to make anything look aesthetically pleasing really.

Here is another slightly older - 11 years later - closer shot of the same area Warbz, I used the avenues to channel traffic, which although space wasting was quite effective IIRC.

And a top tip for when you're starting a city, keep an eye on the traffic overlay. Streets will very quickly become congested with even a small amount of development, upgrade them often to roads - which have 10x the capacity. I should also note that I have used the Ultra NAM traffic simulator for most of my cities, as it ups the max capacity of each transport network so that it is actually able to handle large populations. Although the default game is built so that your supposed to dense up, the traffic simulator was not built for it.

Edited by Ion Cannon!, 29 November 2011 - 01:20.

[Warbz]

Is there any reason why you have many varying types of bridges on the left? Seems like iw would be better just to have 2 or 3 of the more high capacity bridges to make it appear more aesthetically pleasing?

[Ion Cannon!]

No reason no, except to provide more options to get over the river. I probably would have just joined it with a few avenue bridges now. Bridge capacity is all the same, its based on the transport network that you use. I also had a small and completely unused rail system - because at this point I had no idea how to use one properly, now my inter-rail network boasts about 200k passengers travelling between 12 cities.

[Ion Cannon!]

As my more recent updates should show, I've become a bit of a rail fanatic. Heres something I did today - well yesterday.

[Sgt. Rho]

That's...railing awesome

I think I'll reinstall SimCity 4. I should still have my cities and all the downlloaded content.

Edit: Yup, still have my cities.

Edited by Sgt. Rho, 03 December 2011 - 15:23.

[Ion Cannon!]

Thats one of the best things about this game, you can always go back and do more. I have been back and forth on this game for so long now. Usually what gets me back into it is seeing pictures of other peoples work.

Anyway, heres some more. You may recognise this, but its been redeveloped significantly, still lots to do though.

[Wizard]

Seeing these screens always makes me want to play this game. Shame that it fuxxes up hugely on my system :(

[Ion Cannon!]

There are certain things you can do to normally stop those issues. Do you have graphical artifacts?

And here is another picture, now comes the fun part. I have to try and integrate rail into my old cities - they're denser than a chav who has just had a lobotomy. Time for massive restructuring methinks...



And to give you an idea of the region atm, and the task ahead of me.. here is a current region overview. You may notice the highways appear black and red, and the same for the rail, this is because tiles that haven't been opened and saved since I switched the legend will display the old colour scheme. These probably won't be full size, as I imagine forum software will shrink them.

aerial view.


transport view.

Edited by Ion Cannon!, 05 December 2011 - 13:41.

[Wizard]

Ion Cannon!, on 05 December 2011 - 13:29, said:

There are certain things you can do to normally stop those issues. Do you have graphical artifacts?

I believe I do, amongst other issues. Do you have the solution or a link to it?

[Ion Cannon!]

Have you tried turning shadows off and using software rendering? Additionally, what resolution does it play at?
Oh, and you have the steam version correct?

Edited by Ion Cannon!, 05 December 2011 - 13:56.

[Wizard]

1. Doubtful, I'll try it.
2. Best resolution that it offers me, not sure what it is.
3. Yes.

I'll take a look tonight.