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Realistic 4-Laned Roads For Cities or Highways
ThomsonJamie
Posts: 392 New Member
Hi CAW Forum people! 
Firstly, I'd like to say that this is still quite experimental, and I'm not trying to step on the toes of anybody else making highway or wide-road systems. I loved Jasumi's Highway and without it, I wouldn't even be experimenting with this now.. Oahu was the world that inspired me to create worlds in first place!
Secondly, sorry for the messy world. It's very unfinished.
Here it is:
Granted it doesn't look like much, but I think it really opens up possibilties for more realistic city worlds. The only problems with Jasumi's aforementioned highway system is that sims drove on the wrong sides of the road, and it was quite hard to create realistic intersections.
With this method, sims drive on the correct sides of the road, different patterns can easily be added to either side (like a bus lane, or a cycle route) and you can create however many lanes you would like (I think you can only see the 4 and 2 lane variations in the pictures but it is possible to create roads from 2 lanes up to a gazzillion lanes really)
It's basically made up of a few road and sidewalk texture variations. It probably breaks some routing "rules" but when I exported it to test today, everything worked fine and there was absolutely no foot-stomping or lag, which was a relief! It doesn't require any mods or CC to work.
Pictures from my test run today with bob:
A slightly rotated intersection showing how roads at awkward angles can join more realisticly than EA's intersections can:
Overview:
Some papparazzi decided to join in the fun:
So there it is! I'm going to create a tutorial as soon as I get more of the world done so I can test this properly, but at the moment it is working great.
I might upload the CAW files if you want to play about in it, but please PM me first. If you're going to use this as a 'starter world' for your own world, there are steps you need to take with S3PE to differentiate it from mine so the exchange won't reject it.
PS Sago Bay is still under development! I'm waiting to buy Supernatural so I can add the elixir store, supernatural hangout etc.
Happy simming!
Firstly, I'd like to say that this is still quite experimental, and I'm not trying to step on the toes of anybody else making highway or wide-road systems. I loved Jasumi's Highway and without it, I wouldn't even be experimenting with this now.. Oahu was the world that inspired me to create worlds in first place!
Secondly, sorry for the messy world. It's very unfinished.
Here it is:
Granted it doesn't look like much, but I think it really opens up possibilties for more realistic city worlds. The only problems with Jasumi's aforementioned highway system is that sims drove on the wrong sides of the road, and it was quite hard to create realistic intersections.
With this method, sims drive on the correct sides of the road, different patterns can easily be added to either side (like a bus lane, or a cycle route) and you can create however many lanes you would like (I think you can only see the 4 and 2 lane variations in the pictures but it is possible to create roads from 2 lanes up to a gazzillion lanes really)
It's basically made up of a few road and sidewalk texture variations. It probably breaks some routing "rules" but when I exported it to test today, everything worked fine and there was absolutely no foot-stomping or lag, which was a relief! It doesn't require any mods or CC to work.
Pictures from my test run today with bob:
A slightly rotated intersection showing how roads at awkward angles can join more realisticly than EA's intersections can:
Overview:
Some papparazzi decided to join in the fun:
So there it is! I'm going to create a tutorial as soon as I get more of the world done so I can test this properly, but at the moment it is working great.
I might upload the CAW files if you want to play about in it, but please PM me first. If you're going to use this as a 'starter world' for your own world, there are steps you need to take with S3PE to differentiate it from mine so the exchange won't reject it.
PS Sago Bay is still under development! I'm waiting to buy Supernatural so I can add the elixir store, supernatural hangout etc.
Happy simming!
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Comments
Click here to download my "City World Kit"
Open the .rar file and copy all of its contents into your CAW/Usertooldata/Worlds folder then open the .world file in Create A World.
The kit is entirely base-game friendly and includes all the roads required, a template showing how the road and intersection is made, resources which recolor the long traffic light (as of the showtime patch) so that it matches the late night "traffic signal" for smaller roads, and some city-friendly textures (all EA recolors apart from "city concrete" which I made
If you wish to upload a world using this template please PM me first. The WPID has been changed but if you do not change it again before export, others will not be able to upload worlds using this template.
I will be uploading a tutorial in the next week too!
Happy simmming!
I have found that one has to play a fully populated world for at least one generation (although with Midnight Falls, it has been considerably less) for lag to rear its ugly head.
It does not sound like this technique has been playtested anywhere near enough to declare it safe. The fact that the OP says is may cause lag should raise alarms. The last thing wants to do is to put a kludge like this in place, spend months or years creating a world, only to find that it borks worlds.
And making your world cc free will not fix the borkage caused by routing problems.
I didn't declare it safe. As I said in my first post, "it's still experimental".
And I know that making the world cc free will not fix routing problems. Even I'm really not that silly.
Now what I meant by saying there were no routing problems in my first test is that I drove down every road, forwards and backwards, walked down every sidewalk and across every crosswalk, and my sim was able to do so without foot-stomping or the game pausing to think.
It's still experimental
If I were to use CC in create a world, I would create various recolors of the "mesmorising mosaic" to use as road markings, which would eliminate the need for using sidewalks pushed up against eachother, because the 'road paint' would be a footprint-less object rather than a sidewalk, which has routing data in it. Maybe that's something to implement in a future version or if this prototype does cause big problems.
Happy simming and thanks for the feedback everyone!
Click on my signature to access my tumblr blog!
Hehe, thanks :P
That's what I thought, and why I was urging caution.
To fully test this, the world really needs to be fully populated (150 to 200 sims) and you need to play it for at least a generation. That, on the average, is what it takes before problems will start to appear.
It is practically impossible to have routing problems with an empty world. You also have to give it time, so the sims have a chance to get stuck. Also, using a mod like Overwatch tends to defeat the purpose of the play test.
Then, of course, if there are problems, you have to determine whether it is the roads, or something else. One approach would be to start with a problem free world, and add the roads to that.
And I am not saying don't do it. I am saying be careful. I am also saying that anyone thinking of doing this should also be warned about being careful.
http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/592222.page
Maybe if enough people could test we could be confident to use the ideas in-game.
RUSH
My Worlds
It's included in the world file I uploaded. You can delete everything else and just use the traffic light.
And it would be great if people would like to test this - I'm still finishing another world and I've not had much time to play with this recently.
I downloaded your city kit and there was one thing I had some thoughts about... the use of sidewalks in the four-lane layout. The way you have built it there are a total of six sidewalks on the four lane-road and four of them are actually IN the streets. I can put up a picture if other people want to know what I'm talking about
Mostly a realistic issue, I wouldn't want to find my sims walking around on the actual streets, lol. Also, I don't know if there is possible routing issues when it comes to sidewalks next to each others?
Yeah, there are 4 there, but when I did my test run, my sim didn't ever use them unless he was walking across the road. What I did like about having them there was that when the car stopped in the actual road, my sim had to walk across the road and the "fake lane" (sidewalks) to get to the lot he had stopped for, unlike in EA worlds where one's sim just teleports from the middle of the road to the front of the lot.
On the traffic light texture, if I can find it on my hard drive I'll upload it, but the one used in this world has been replaced with a different texture for a different world so I don't have an uploadable copy yet. If you want to make one yourself, all you have to do is copy the texture from the late night traffic light, paste it into the showtime traffic light texture and import that.
Edit... Can you tell me how to do it xD? I tried but I cant't find LN traffic signal in the workshop... Sorry if I'm bothering you :P
TSR Workshop? Don't use that, S3PE and/or S3OC is all you need for recolouring
I'll upload it soon.
You can't, sorry. You can split the lanes off into 2 seperate bridges if you so wish. It's just an illusion really, as cars can't travel in the 2 outer lanes. I'll be putting up a tutorial soon but I'm busy with my world at the moment.