Paving the Way: SimCity's Road Tool
When I started working on SimCity, Will Wright had an observation for me. "Roads" he said, "Roads...are hard."
And oh, man, were they ever. What's more, they're fundamental.
In previous SimCity's, the grid controlled spacing and orientation. In the new one, that job is handled by roads. You use roads to structure your city, to space and orient your buildings, to set up transportation networks and to give it shape.
Pedestrians walk on roads, cars, trucks and service vehicles drive on them. Power is carried by them, sewage and water travel under them. Buildings are snapped and oriented to them. Roads are the connective tissue for your city.
First, some technical details.
Under the hood, SimCity's roads are a kind of curve called a Hermite Spline. The spline is how the road is represented in the underlying simulation. All the zoning, traffic lanes, road geometry, terrain modification and the rest is built on top of the spline.
The spline is a full 3D object, so you can have layers of roads on top of each other.
When you're drawing a road, you're really creating a spline network, and when you intersect the roads, you're actually reticulating splines (dividing them into a net or network). Seriously.
You have a bunch of different options for drawing roads. There's a tool for making straight roads that go from point A to point B. There's another tool for making rectangular road squares. Another tool lets you make sweeping arcs, another one lets you make circles. And my favorite is the curvy road tool which lets you draw out freeform wiggling roads.
When you're drawing roads, you can hold down the shift key to constrain them, so that intersections will be perpendicular, or that the square road tool draws perfect squares instead of rectangles.
There are different sorts of roads, too - going from dirt roads up to six-lane avenues with streetcar tracks.
Different roads support buildings of different densities. Dirt roads will only ever develop low-density buildings, while high-density streets or avenues are capable of developing skyscrapers.
Roads come in different widths - there are the 24 meter wide streets and the 48 meter wide avenues. The avenues can carry more traffic.
You can upgrade streets too, so you might lay out your city with dirt roads and eventually turn them all into high density streets.
Going from streets to avenues takes a full demolish and rebuild, though.
When they intersect, the higher capacity roads have right-of-way over the lower capacity ones, stoplights and stop signs are automatically placed accordingly. Keep that in mind as you design your cities.
It's important to know how far to space your roads so that there will be enough room for buildings to develop. For that, you can turn on road guides. The guides appear when you hover over an existing road for a moment.
You can follow them so that your new roads will be optimally spaced.
You can temporarily toggle the guides on or off by holding down the Alt key while you're using the road tool.
Different roads support different density buildings, so the guide distance changes appropriately.
From further out.
Or closer in.
Roads will try and fit the terrain that they're on. If you're doing a road draw that requires a tunnel, you'll automatically get a tunnel.
If both a roadcut and a tunnel are called for, like with this terrain:
Then you’ll get both:
If you're doing a draw that needs a bridge, you'll get a bridge.
But if a road can work with just a roadcut, then that’s all that it will do. It’s cheaper.
You can snake roads up the sides of steep hills.
Or just climb it with roadcuts, bridges and retaining walls.
Roads will automatically make bridges when they cross water. If your bridge happens to pass a navigation channel, it will arch upward to allow ships to pass underneath.
Each road type has its own associated bridges, which can have their capacities upgraded just like roads can.
You can also opt to upgrade your bridges with more attractive ones, if style is important to you.
So there's a quick overview of roads! We'll be giving you tips and tricks for using them as we get closer to ship date. Thanks for reading!
Comments
:))
:))
Can't Wait To Start Playing!
Can't Wait To Start Playing!
AND I
AND I
I am from Bulgaria and I am a big fan of SimCity!
Sorry for mistakes!
Hey, I'm from Bulgaria too.
Hey, I'm from Bulgaria too. We can play together in the future.
Please find me in skype: little_mouse92
ok
ok
wow! I am from Bulgaria, too!
wow! I am from Bulgaria, too! :) How many bulgarians are playing this game? :D
I am the biggest SimCity 5
I am the biggest SimCity 5 fan. :DD
wow that looks awesome!
wow that looks awesome!
Looks awesome! Cannot wait
Looks awesome! Cannot wait to play this game! Hoping the Mac version will be out soon after March 5th.
wow! I am from Bulgaria, too!
wow! I am from Bulgaria, too! :) How many bulgarians are playing this game? :Dhermes outlet
Considering that whole
Considering that whole article was just about roads...it was actually pretty interesting. Epic cookie duster btw.
WOW!! it looks fantastic...
WOW!! it looks fantastic... the tunnels, bridges and roads are looking great. Now I'm not a huge fan of the disasters, but in the last video there was only 3. Will there be more disasters?
Well you get random disasters
Well you get random disasters that happen like ufos attack they take some your sims, destory a building i believe i seen one attack, or zombies invasion. I assume though later on after ship they will add more disasters but probably be a dlc. =/
I hope so!
I hope so!
WOW!! I think using the new
WOW!! I think using the new roads is what I am looking forward to the most in the new SimCity.
Can you have more then a four
Can you have more then a four way intersection? Six way intersections maybe? Any plans for one way streets? Looks great! Can't wait for March.
Articulating Splines? Right
Articulating Splines? Right on! I am getting ready to articulate many splines.
Looks great. Would love a
Looks great. Would love a good update/video on the wonders and how that works across cities too!
I wonder if you can use the
I wonder if you can use the road guide in a way where you can space according to higher density roads, but lay lower density roads on the guides instead. This would be great for planning purposes.
nice
nice
NICE!! Cant wait!!
NICE!! Cant wait!!
down to a month until release
down to a month until release, can't wait! The game's looking good and, by the way, my browser is going crazy because the security certificate on the login page is expired, look into that.
So after all these years, we
So after all these years, we finally know what means "reticulating splines"!!! Amazing. Looking forward to play with that game. Thanks.
I played in one of the beta
I played in one of the beta weekends, and roads were a pain for me. After reading this article I can see where I was going wrong :)
It looks like if one road
It looks like if one road with stop signs and one road with traffic lights intersect, it uses stop signs. I really think it should be the other way around, if even just one road is a traffic light one, then the intersection should use traffic lights. That's how just about every municipality I've seen does it.
SOOOO EXCITED!
SOOOO EXCITED!
that just made me 100% more
that just made me 100% more excited!!! :)
Looks great, but every old
Looks great, but every old school SimCity fan asks for three things: Bigger city tile sizes, terraforming and offlline solo. These things are essential, they are the foundation of every modern SimCity game. I really had high hopes for this game.
Are there going to be
Are there going to be turnpikes on-ramps and off-ramps for two high-density avenues if they intersect? or do they pass one over the other by default?
I'm not serious about this
I'm not serious about this but what about bike-lanes? :D
Can't. Wait. To play. =)
Can't. Wait. To play. =) Thank you for the great post!
I wonder how I'll be drawing
I wonder how I'll be drawing railroad tracks in this game, considering that rails can't quite go in 90 degree angles... Perhaps it won't have the square drawing tool? (I noticed that it was in the beta by the way).
And for those who whine about having "no highways" in this game: Six lane avenue = Rural Highway Mod of SC4. Then again, the only big difference between a highway/freeway and your usual road or avenue is usually a speed limit and some fencing (depending on where you go).
As for Maxis, I hope that we'll get more variety in the bridge styles this time around. I don't really care to recreate real-world cities, but I do like to have some fun in using local flavors (maybe making some kind of North Eastern mining town for instance, or perhaps building a Southwestern boomtown). SC4 kinda lacked in offering a nice large mix of bridges.
This is nice. This is one of
This is nice. This is one of the comments I made after playing beta was that it seemed that the guides were only coming on sometimes and then they just didn't match and I couldn't figure it out. Having this before the beta would have been awesome... ;-) BUT... at least it makes sense now. Looking forward to trying it out!
come on that so ccool
come on that so ccool
I can't help but feel like
I can't help but feel like this has something to do with feedback that I submitted from the beta (as well as other idiots like myself). After my first hour, I failed to notice the different road types you could build and suggested several things they had already implemented and I just didn't look hard enough to find. The oversight was my fault, not a design flaw. I was rushing to do as much as I could before my city got erased.
Still a bit confused even
Still a bit confused even after the short twitter-chat over the weekend: https://twitter.com/oceanquigley/status/298262661915889664
Is development potential based on road classification or based on traffic capacity, accounting also for ped/bike/transit connections? This could enable dense grids of lower-capacity narrow streets & transit connections (à la old world cities: think Rome) to be just as viable for a major high-rising city (block size permitting) over masses of massive arterials (à la new world cities: think Brasilia).
Also- what's the potential for being able to underground highways (as with Stockholm or Boston) &/or rail (it seems subways have disappeared?)
I cant wait. I'm brazilian,
I cant wait. I'm brazilian, played the beta and it was fabulous. I hope I can play in my mac too (will there be a beta for mac?)
Actually I am afraid of this game because it will compromise my productivity.
I think there should be one
I think there should be one lane roads in the final release.
cool I can't wait '_'
cool I can't wait '_'
это просто невероятно) Очень
это просто невероятно) Очень красиво)
просто супер) не могу ее
просто супер) не могу ее дождаться)
просто супер) не могу ее
просто супер) не могу ее дождаться)
Very nice!!! I live in
Very nice!!! I live in Ukraine =)
WOW!
WOW!
Are there 1 way roads,
Are there 1 way roads, overpasses, or round-abouts?
It's so interesting, in
It's so interesting, in others simulating cities games draw the roads, bridges, tunnels and do it fitting with terraforming it's so annoying, a game doing it to you it's really inovador.
This game does look awesome
This game does look awesome and I really want to play again. After playing the beta 23 time over lol, I still couldn't get enough. I really want to see how multicity play is and how multiplayer turns out. Overall I am extremely excited for this game. Also if anyone wants to hook me up on skype, so I can have friends with the game; my skype account is Jack75789. Just put SimCity in the message so I know who you are;) See you in the game:)
-Jack out
Great article! But what I
Great article! But what I really want to know though is the following: If the distance guides between two parallel high density roads is, lets call it, highDensityLotDepth; and the distance guides between 2 parallel lower density roads is, lets call it, lowDensityLotDepth. QUESTION: When a lowDensity road tool is selected, when next to an already exiting high density road, will the game correctly show the first guide at a distance of (highDensityLotDepth/2 + lowDensityLotDepth/2) with subsequent guides at lowDensityLotDepth intervals? Am I clear enough!?
BR? BR? BR? BR? BR?
BR? BR? BR? BR? BR? HUAHAUHAUHAUHUAH
Não, falando sério! Algum brasileiro aí pra jogarmos juntos?
Duvido que algum amigo meu vá comprar, o que é uma pena. :/
come on BETA 2!!!
come on BETA 2!!!
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