North American City Set v0.1c [2 Jan 2008] - ** Bug Fix **
Posted: 24 Dec 2007 18:25
Well, it is Christmas ... usually that means presents can be found under the Christmas tree ...
May we present to you the new North American City Set by Oz and lifeblood (artists), wallyweb (testing) and myself (coding).
At this point, I'd also like to acknowledge Aegir's early work and involvement with the North American Buildings Set (NABS); after all it was his work with NABS that inspired me to create NA City, the successor of NABS. Without Aegir's support, we would not be able to release this set publicly.
It is an absolutely new set, if you believe you've seen something like this before, you probably must have been dreaming ...
It is another one of the sets in the Canadian/American suite of graphic sets; which already contains North American Roads, Canadian Trains and Stations. It is of course equally at home anywhere in the world.
Major features of NA City are :
. Urban sprawl; a fully developed metropolis, should have in zone 0 and 1 (outermost) suburban residential buildings (aka houses); zone 1 and 2 flats, shops and offices, country hotels (more places to live, shop and spend your hard earned cash); zone 2 block of flats; zone 3 and 4 large office blocks (a choice of 80); zone 4 tall office towers, hotel tower and department store.
. CBD (Central Business District); the set will build tall office blocks, hotel tower and department store, at the time of construction, in the innermost zone only, starting with zone 2. With large office blocks being built in the 2 innermost zones only; thus creating a CBD.
. Multi-directional buildings; such buildings will align themselves according to streetscape. The buildings will have one side that would suit street frontages. The alignment is automatic and may change, if roads are built/removed. Currently we have one such building, a residential house with 8 variants and 128 paint schemes, now the letterbox need not be in the backyard any more.
. Unique buildings; the hotel tower, department store and 'Flatiron' office tower are unique buildings, numbers are restricted but the likelihood is very high they will be built. They are also protected, once built they should hang around forever.
. Tourist industry; the hotels 'accept' and 'produce' tourists, without having such industries located in the city. You may use the internal tourist industry (part of NA City, enabled via parameter) or any 3rd party industry/cargo set, that has a tourist industry defined [cargo label = TOUR] but not both. Use trams, buses or trains to provide transportation for tourists; each individual hotel is capable of producing and accepting tourists.
. Building restrictions; almost all buildings are restricted in one way or another, i.e. whether they can be built. The restrictions range from town zone, game year, city population, number of same buildings already built, either in the city or on the entire map. Some buildings face tougher restrictions, the more of them have already been built on the map.
. Building protection; there is extensive support for building protection. Unique buildings are protected from demolition by the AI and town, players can still demolish them but at a high price and bad ratings with the local authority. Other buildings have a nil chance to disappear when 'young', but that chance increases with age (5 levels; i.e. nil, 1 in 4, 1 in 2, 3 in 4 and finally in any case they can be removed by the AI or town).
. Cargo Acceptance; all buildings accept (a choice of up to 3 per tile) passengers and mail as well as goods and food in all climates (as long as the relevant industry is available in game). The same goes for tourists, the tourist industry must be available in game for the hotels to support tourists. Once that is the case, tourists can travel from town to town, city to city, as long as there are hotels to stay at.
. Snow; it is fully snow aware naturally, in both temperate and arctic games. Variable snow line feature is included in NA City (it has the same functionality as in NA Roads and Canadian Stations sets).
. Climates; available in all climates, including sub-tropical for those that insist on it.
This set is far from finished, there are plans to add many more buildings, including services such as banks, petrol stations, places of worship, waterside mansions .... If an industry/cargo set developer has a product that could be of interest to our residents and/or businesses; we would be more than happy to provide outlets for them.
For the time being, you may enjoy this taster set ... downloads in the next post ...
Any problems and/or suggestions are most welcome here ... if you believe certain buildings appear too often or not often enough; too early or too late, then any such parameters can be modified with ease [by me]. The user guide contains a list of all available buildings including stats.
May we present to you the new North American City Set by Oz and lifeblood (artists), wallyweb (testing) and myself (coding).
At this point, I'd also like to acknowledge Aegir's early work and involvement with the North American Buildings Set (NABS); after all it was his work with NABS that inspired me to create NA City, the successor of NABS. Without Aegir's support, we would not be able to release this set publicly.
It is an absolutely new set, if you believe you've seen something like this before, you probably must have been dreaming ...
It is another one of the sets in the Canadian/American suite of graphic sets; which already contains North American Roads, Canadian Trains and Stations. It is of course equally at home anywhere in the world.
Major features of NA City are :
. Urban sprawl; a fully developed metropolis, should have in zone 0 and 1 (outermost) suburban residential buildings (aka houses); zone 1 and 2 flats, shops and offices, country hotels (more places to live, shop and spend your hard earned cash); zone 2 block of flats; zone 3 and 4 large office blocks (a choice of 80); zone 4 tall office towers, hotel tower and department store.
. CBD (Central Business District); the set will build tall office blocks, hotel tower and department store, at the time of construction, in the innermost zone only, starting with zone 2. With large office blocks being built in the 2 innermost zones only; thus creating a CBD.
. Multi-directional buildings; such buildings will align themselves according to streetscape. The buildings will have one side that would suit street frontages. The alignment is automatic and may change, if roads are built/removed. Currently we have one such building, a residential house with 8 variants and 128 paint schemes, now the letterbox need not be in the backyard any more.
. Unique buildings; the hotel tower, department store and 'Flatiron' office tower are unique buildings, numbers are restricted but the likelihood is very high they will be built. They are also protected, once built they should hang around forever.
. Tourist industry; the hotels 'accept' and 'produce' tourists, without having such industries located in the city. You may use the internal tourist industry (part of NA City, enabled via parameter) or any 3rd party industry/cargo set, that has a tourist industry defined [cargo label = TOUR] but not both. Use trams, buses or trains to provide transportation for tourists; each individual hotel is capable of producing and accepting tourists.
. Building restrictions; almost all buildings are restricted in one way or another, i.e. whether they can be built. The restrictions range from town zone, game year, city population, number of same buildings already built, either in the city or on the entire map. Some buildings face tougher restrictions, the more of them have already been built on the map.
. Building protection; there is extensive support for building protection. Unique buildings are protected from demolition by the AI and town, players can still demolish them but at a high price and bad ratings with the local authority. Other buildings have a nil chance to disappear when 'young', but that chance increases with age (5 levels; i.e. nil, 1 in 4, 1 in 2, 3 in 4 and finally in any case they can be removed by the AI or town).
. Cargo Acceptance; all buildings accept (a choice of up to 3 per tile) passengers and mail as well as goods and food in all climates (as long as the relevant industry is available in game). The same goes for tourists, the tourist industry must be available in game for the hotels to support tourists. Once that is the case, tourists can travel from town to town, city to city, as long as there are hotels to stay at.
. Snow; it is fully snow aware naturally, in both temperate and arctic games. Variable snow line feature is included in NA City (it has the same functionality as in NA Roads and Canadian Stations sets).
. Climates; available in all climates, including sub-tropical for those that insist on it.
This set is far from finished, there are plans to add many more buildings, including services such as banks, petrol stations, places of worship, waterside mansions .... If an industry/cargo set developer has a product that could be of interest to our residents and/or businesses; we would be more than happy to provide outlets for them.
For the time being, you may enjoy this taster set ... downloads in the next post ...
Any problems and/or suggestions are most welcome here ... if you believe certain buildings appear too often or not often enough; too early or too late, then any such parameters can be modified with ease [by me]. The user guide contains a list of all available buildings including stats.