Building a city - City streets

[badattitude77]

In a modern city, the streets are usually wide enough to park along the curb.  The game's streets aren't wide enough for this, but this can be done using the Federal Highways in the game and a little scratchbuilding.

Image 1

Image 2 shows some of the pieces you are going to have to build using quaders in the game's "primitives" section.  If you haven't found these yet, they are in the "extra" section in the game menu.

Image 2

 

First, you are going to have to "widen" the roads to create a shoulder wide enough for cars to park along the sidewalk.  To do this, select a quader and adjust the height so it just covers the grass on the Federal Highway.  Working in N Scale, and in inches, I used a height of 0.054.  The length and width of the quader needs to be wide enough so there will be a shoulder on all 4 sides, but to get a smooth texture, you will have to make multiple sections. 

Unfortunately, I haven't found a texture in the game that matches the roads exactly, so I used Strleer.  I set the texture scaling at 1,000 and 1,000, then set the color to the following specifications:

Hue: 160
Sat: 0
Lum: 212

Red: 225
Green: 225
Blue: 225

 

Image 3

 

You will also need to make the sidewalks.  Again, working in N Scale and with inches, I chose a height of 0.01 and a width of 0.5 for my sidewalks.  The lengths will vary depending on how large the buildings are that you use, but in a typical American city, each city block is the same size, and has 2 or 3 buildings.  Using the skyscrapers I built as a guide, I set the length of my sidewalks at 7.2 for the short legs, and used three quaders set at 8 for the long legs.  If you only use one quader set at a length of 24, the texture of your sidewalks won't match.  I chose the Kopfstein Muster texure for these sidewalks and left the color of the quader white.

The game's intersections won't work, so you'll have to make your own crossroads and intersections.  This is done using quaders for the road, crosswalks, limit lines, and roadway centerlines.  To get the limit lines and the centerlines to match the game's roads, I set the colors to the following specifications:

Hue: 160
Sat: 0
Lum: 171

Red: 182
Green: 182
Blue: 182

 

Image 4

 

Buildings in a down town area usually come right up to the sidewalk, as shown in image 5.  This won't be possible using different size buildings, so you will have to make additional pads for the buildings to sit on wherever a building doesn't touch the sidewalk.

Image 5

 

Images 6 and 7 show how additional quaders were used to make pads for the buildings to sit on.  These pads need to be the same height as the sidewalk to prevent there being a "step down" from the sidewalk toward the building.  You can also see where I added a "ramp" from the road to cross the sidewalk going into an underground parking garage between two buildings.  Since you are making your own sidewalks, you will have to make a ramp or a dip in the sidewalk anywhere a car needs to cross the sidewalk to get into a parking lot or parking garage.

 

Image 6

Image 7