Cities: Skylines (the Sim City we deserve)

[eran0004]

Finished SSR11 and laid out a couple of roads to start creating a grid, Not sure what to do with SSR5, perhaps build a grid connecting to the start/finish straight? I'm thinking of using the roundabout as a highway connection.

Here is the map overlaid on the reference picture, it's not a perfect match, but pretty close I think.

 

[MatskiMonk]

@eran0004 Looks good so far 👍

Meanwhile, I'm just making traffic jams. Can't post pictures now, but the fully smoothed 'square-a-bouts' that make for better looking roundabouts, don't seem to deal with heavy traffic so well. Because the it shifts the effective giveway point so far back from the roundabout, traffic gives way when the way is clear, and enters the roundabout when it isn't, it didn't take long to gridlock pretty much my entire map, which lead to much death, crime and abandoned buildings.

The excess traffic as come from the station which I've managed to connect to a rail line on the other side of the map, not massive amounts of people (70-100 per train), but it seems enough to tip things over the edge. I din't want to mess too much with the road network, so I've put in a 2 stop metro to ferry people from the station to the local town centre on the far side of the river, and I might go for a tram to connect the station to the town centre on the station side of the river. And then I cheated a bit. I've built some pedestrian walkway tunnels linking a couple of areas together, and disguised the hideous automatically generated tunnel mouths as either part of PO constructed metro stations or bus stations. Works quite well to reduce traffic at a couple of junctions. I'll post some pictures later.

 

[eran0004]

@MatskiMonk Yes, unfortunately the squareabouts mess with the traffic simulation a bit. I disabled the “don’t enter blocked junction” and it flows pretty well. Another top tip is to rotate the roundabout slightly, so the exit lanes get a straighter path. If cars can leave the roundabout faster than they can enter, it should flow a bit better.

I’m going through some old Gran Turismo games to get references for the special stage city. Turns out the roundabout wasn’t actually a roundabout, but rather a couple of intersections.

Also, the point that connects the two tracks seems to be some kind of square - not a highway.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I’m going through some old Gran Turismo games to get references for the special stage city. Turns out the roundabout wasn’t actually a roundabout, but rather a couple of intersections.

Which version are you treating as the template, GT3? Are you planning on including the Clubman R5 roads as well?

@MatskiMonk Yes, unfortunately the squareabouts mess with the traffic simulation a bit. I disabled the “don’t enter blocked junction” and it flows pretty well. Another top tip is to rotate the roundabout slightly, so the exit lanes get a straighter path. If cars can leave the roundabout faster than they can enter, it should flow a bit better.

I might try rotating them a bit, if I don't allow them to enter blocked junction then eventually a tail back forms because the flow rate of the roundabout just isn't high enough. Switching to 3 lane asymmetrical roads leading onto the roundabout might help, or just using timed traffic lights. The latter will slow things down, but at least it can be tuned to limit the tail-back-length even if it can't remove them.

 

[eran0004]

Which version are you treating as the template, GT3? Are you planning on including the Clubman R5 roads as well?

I'm using the GT5/GT6 version for SSR5. Not sure what to use for SSR11, the only game I have where it's featured is GT1, I might look at some youtube videos instead. Clubman R5 is included


Turn 1 of SSR5, heading into the tunnel:

The Clubman Route 5 section:

This is a pretty cool part of the track, where Clubman Route 5 rejoins the main straight. In the background you can see the actual configuration of what I first thought was a roundabout. The dirt road at the end will be replaced with a highway connection.

It will be interesting to see what roads will be used by the AI, since the highway network is highly asymmetrical and tends to run in loops rather than going from A to B.

 

[eran0004]

It’s hard to create a road layout that makes sense, but I tried my best. It looks cool, but I guess it would be a nightmare to navigate

 

[eran0004]

The city is connected to the highway and I've placed the first couple of buildings. Traffic seems to be flowing well so far, here's a first person view of what it looks like arriving to the city and doing half a lap around SSR5:

 

[VXR]

That is incredible! Love the tunnel section, and it seems to flow exactly.

 

[eran0004]

Added a whole bunch of buildings around SSR5, mostly the more noticeable ones (the Gherkin is supposed to be the tall building with the GT logo). I found a wide gate pillar on the workshop that is pretty much perfect, you can see them just to the left of the Gherkin. Also, the disaster response building (in the bottom right corner) is actually fairly similar to the building that occupies the same spot in the GT6 version of the track.

The park on the left in the picture is not there in the game, but I thought it would be a nice location, it kind of makes sense to have it there given the surrounding roads.

I also removed a ramp from one of the highway interchanges of the map, to force some of the highway traffic to go through the city. They now have to go via the SSR5 pit lane to reach their destination.

I fired up my copy of GT1 to look for some references of SSR11. Didn't find a whole lot, but I learned that one segment of the track is actually a tunnel, so I made that change at least.

Some night pictures:

 

[eran0004]

It's starting to look like a proper city. Still have some gaps to fill, especially around SSR11.

 

[eran0004]

Here is Clubman Stage Route 5, except the car is taking the exit ramp to the right instead of going left onto the main straight at the end of the lap. The city is still work in progress, but quite a lot has happened since the previous video.

 

[eran0004]

When I've finished this city I'll print and frame the map view. It's pure art!

 

[MatskiMonk]

View attachment 986970

What's funny, is if you'd just presented the map and a couple of screen shots, without context, I'd probably be sat staring at it for 30 minutes thinking ... "There's something awfully familiar about all this..."

 

[eran0004]

I started developing the residential area on the island. I demolished the collector road and made the highway the only option for cars to access this area. For the pedestrians I made a number of bridges by combining an elevated park path with a stairs prop. Gave the bridge a slightly arched shape with the node controller mod.

The idea is that this area is going to be very modern and exclusive apartments. I took inspiration from a block in Oslo for this.

A skate park underneath the highway seemed appropriate.

 

[eran0004]

I built an entertainment / shopping / tourism district in the city. It has the intercity bus station, a cinema, an opera house, a couple of shopping malls, the city hall, hotels, a comedy club, restaurants, parks and plazas, a metro connection to the airport and a ton of parking space. SSR11 goes through this district and now I'm finally getting a lot of traffic on that part of the map.

The traffic did lead to some issues though. It took a long time to solve the parking situation, here's a total meltdown from an early attempt. I downloaded a bunch of JDM cars from the workshop, to get that Gran Turismo vibe. You might be able to spot some Mazdas, Nissans, Hondas and Toyotas somewhere in this mess.

A traffic analysis of SSR5. The whole layout is being used, including the Clubman stage, which is nice to see.

The skyline in daylight:

 

[eran0004]

I built an embankment dam to justify the large body of water in front of the city. The dam is loosely based on one in Michigan that I found on Google Earth. I've got a water outlet at the base, which I would like to connect to a water pump, but unfortunately the vanilla water pump is too big to fit this build. Hopefully there is a smaller version somewhere in the workshop.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I built an embankment dam to justify the large body of water in front of the city. The dam is loosely based on one in Michigan that I found on Google Earth. I've got a water outlet at the base, which I would like to connect to a water pump, but unfortunately the vanilla water pump is too big to fit this build. Hopefully there is a smaller version somewhere in the workshop.

View attachment 988785

View attachment 988786

Grady from Practical Engineering would be proud

 

[Samus]

So that Playstation wrap-up thing came out yesterday, no big surprise on my number 1.

Not played it recently again though, need to get back into it.

 

[PJTierney]

That's more than I've put into the game in total

At least 200 of that was me idling the game for the final few Achievements

 

[Samus]

I think a fair few of mine are idle as well, just because it's an easy game to leave on and walk away to do stuff. It was literally the only game I played since March/April time though!

 

[MatskiMonk]

Been too busy to spend any time on C:S so far this year, but not far off 1000 hours now.

Cooper county has come on a bit, but so much needs detailing I'm not bothering to post anything.

 

[eran0004]

I won't reveal my total
Let's just say that I've been playing this game since 2017.

Here is a new video, this time in daylight. Driving from the airport to the financial district.

 

[eran0004]

This weekend's project has been to build a highway interchange. This one was a bit tricky because of the angle between the roads, I wanted fairly high radius turns to maintain the flow of traffic, and at the same time I wanted a compact design that doesn't take up too much land area. I ended up with this design, in three levels:

It's the link between three outside connections and one of the city connections so it handles a lot of traffic.

Meanwhile in the city, I decorated the area by the art museum. This is near the end of SSR5, in GT5 and GT6 the trees here have lights but I couldn't find any similar asset on the workshop so I went with these rowan trees instead.

Next step is probably to create some kind of industrial area. So far I have exactly one industrial building in the entire city, acting as a power station by the dam.

 

[eran0004]

No industry yet, instead I built a supermarket district with tons of parking space. The plan is for the future industry area to go next to this district.

I named this roundabout the Swingsan Roundabout, although it's a bit bigger than the original.

With the Shuto Expressway from the workshop you can make some really nice looking roundabouts, thanks to the narrow width. This one is the main access point to the supermarket district.

 

[Samus]

My past cities were mostly complete except for detailing so after a bit of a break I thought I'd start something new. Still the same problem of most maps not suiting my ideas, in particular so much water in every map. Since custom maps obviously aren't possible on console I figured I'd see how much I could do with unlimited resources and a LOT of terraforming to create a starting land more suitable. Just how much terraforming and 'moving' water can you get away with without flooding everything?

I first tried Lavender Lake, seemed ideal because you just have to drain the lake and that's gone permanently, no flow of water or flood risks. Then you're just left with a bit of the river, but 95% land. Only problem was the rest of the land didn't suit me, had some pretty big terrain height differences, I wanted something more level.

Next try was Murky Coast, chose the nine tiles close to the sea and then tried to reduce all the rivers as much as possible, just leaving one bit of coastline. Took a few hours and trial and error but I think it worked out quite well.

Before. My nine tiles extend to just after where the river splits into two at the top.

After:

Still got a lot more terraforming of land to do, lower it down gradually towards the sea and then reintroduce some features so it's not boring, but I'm happy enough with how the river turned out. Would've preferred to just have the sea water and no river at all but none of the maps I have access to would've worked for that. Well, not ones where I liked the rest of the terrain anyway.

 

[eran0004]

@Samus That terraforming looks great, even with mods that smooth river would be hard to achieve!


Meanwhile, in Special Stage City: I finally built an industrial area, more precisely an agricultural one. Inspiration taken from the countryside around Tokyo. I also added a rail connection, with a cargo depot here and then extending the line into the city for the passenger train station.

The best way into the city, believe it or not, was to go straight across the dam.

The station itself is a monorail-rail-metro hub overlooking the city. I picked a dark brown colour, imagining it being built in wood. I got creative with the bridge, the spiral was needed to gain enough height before crossing the motorway.

I scrapped the metro line to the airport and replaced it with a monorail line.

 

[redhed17]

Don't think it's been mentioned before, but I watched a video earlier about the Node Controller mod, and found it does a little bit more than I thought.

 

[eran0004]

Don't think it's been mentioned before, but I watched a video earlier about the Node Controller mod, and found it does a little bit more than I thought.

If you haven't already, you should watch his Aurelia series (futuristic) and his Altengrad series (early 20th century style). It's far from vanilla, but he achieves some pretty nice designs!

Also, here is a train / monorail ride to the new central station in Special Stage City:

 

[Samus]

@Samus That terraforming looks great, even with mods that smooth river would be hard to achieve!

Thanks. I had a few attempts at it but in the end the process was:

- Use earth to divert the water to temporarily all go down the central branch, drain the right path entirely.
- Level off the land around the planned path to roughly match the highest point.
- Draw two parallel roads in my desired shape, using the freeform tool to ensure they stay parallel.
- Excavate the land inside the roads as deep as possible.
- Carefully bring any bits of earth lowered outside the roads back level without adding any earth back inside. Bit tricky with the round "brush".
- Remove the roads and redirect the water back in. Fill in the central river.

 

[Liquid]

New computer means I can finally play this... several years after actually buying it.

Can anybody recommend some good mods to help me along the way? Nothing fancy, just anything that makes the QOL easier whilst playing. Any "always make sure you do this" style tips would be appreciated too.