Town modeled like HD OPENING CREDITS!

Of course there's some shortcomings, as I don't have the premium buildings (i made brick facades!)

But my goal became placing the primary SF landmarks as they appear in the HDOS. So, the Plant is in the foreground, with the Tire Fire immediately beyond its left, and the Prison immediately to its right. As the Town Square emerges, we see Jebediah in front of the Courthouse (not Town Hall). Far above and behind on the right is Burns' Manor; the left is SF mountain, KBBL radio tower, and Duff Brewery, in that order.

After camera turns left, we see CBG's store, Lardlad, the BillBoard, and finally the school.

The sequence gets jumpy after that of course, but the last establishing shot is when Marge turns out of the Square, with Zesty's behind her and Moe's on HER RIGHT, in the foreground where Bart skated by. I wanted this part to fit too. It made road placement very tricky.

So, I referred back to a lot of episodes! Some buildings I was able to match to an "establishing shot" just doing a google image search. That's how I got the layout for my Power Plant, which is where I started building out from....

THE SOUTH SIDE


The Power Plant is designed after a drawing i found online that actually has several different color configs.

Restricted to our game's limitations, i went with one that had what looked like a cooling stream around it. That's where you catch 3-eyed fish!

Just beyond the Plant's power line Right-of-Ways are the City Services Dept. and Tire Fire...


the Ah Fudge factory...


and the I & S studios...


I oriented buildings as they appeared whenever possible. This place was on a corner so I added the side road to match!

THE WEST COAST

even though i'm an east coaster my whole life, i read maps north on top thus left is west.

My SquidPort is simple because most decorations are preemie...but still a lot i can do here some day.


And still a lot "to do" in my "entertainment district" with Sir Putz a Lot's Golf MOUNTAIN, the Knowledgeum, Karaoke, and Madame Chao's Asian Bath House.


Plus beach bars on the waterfront: volleyball tourney sponsored by Duff. OH YEAH! The night club next door has an awesome light show!

SPRINGFIELD RFD

You can walk the beach all the way to the lighthouse (if the neighbor's "private security" doesn't stop you first) then past the old beach house up on the cliff, following the mountains toward the orchards; some of which have been developed into condos already.


if you're looking for a little pet to adopt, the 'old timers' at the Retirement Castle out that way will tell you to take the dead-end road past the new cemetery...'til you get to the OLD cemetery..... then turn right and keep going past where the pavement ends....then follow the dirt road to the END. There you'll see the Guinea Pig Rescue Center. And those guinea pigs need rescuing, 'cuz they're also good eatin', 'round those parts!


But If you stay on the main road toward the north mountains you'll pass a sketchy biker bar that looks like it might be hiding some illegal dumping behind its property.


Hopefully the creek near there flows DOWNstream from the infamous Duff Brewery!


You could keep heading north past the radio station and out of town, OR turn around and come back toward the High School, passing through...

PRESSBOARD ESTATES

I really worked hard on making this neighborhood look large enough, and with houses sharing fences back to back as real houses usually do. I placed them as random as possible, decorating each uniquely, making it a neighborhood, not strips of houses all facing the same way. Yes the hard work was worth it to me!


THIS is a shot from the famous "infinite pan-out", illustrating Evergreen Terrace from above. I referred to Simpsons Wiki to check the house numbers, for who lived where. So Wiggum's house is down a few doors right where it should be! Milhouse is around the corner, and the schools are both nearby...

The HS is north:


while the Elementary is toward the south:

I usually try to orient the buildings in the direction we're familiar with from their show. This last shot I cap'd myself from the episode "Bart Stops to Smell the Roosevelts", one of my favorite ever!

Just behind the school is the Church and Retirement Castle...

...while on the opposite side of the neighborhood is the big new SF grocery store...

(Hopefully the "3-D effect" is working for the big concrete retaining wall i built behind it. Groceries always seem to have them near me)

TOWN SQUARE

As soon as I had the plot of land at "dead center", I put Jebediah on it. That's when i paused building randomly and focused on acquiring land. I had to have it all so I could finally push the Power Plant far enough away to build a real Square with the sidewalks up the center as we've seen it, but of course doing it with our limitation of pavement being a standardized large size block!


I figured out that the Courthouse and Elementary had to have complimentary orientation, in order to match the camera's viewpoint of the animation in the HDOS. Most buildings fit in with this plan, except the Aztec Theatre which is quarter-turned. (That building needs 4 sides, and the LardLad needs to move across his parking lot) But Zesty's, KB, Android's D, and PQB's would face correctly this way.

I was waiting to see if Gil's latest deal would offer the Aztec, which is didn't, so I just now shelled out donuts for it. Finally! It looks awesome on the Square!

This HDOS shot shows Zesty's, AD, and Jebediah...

It's been the one bane of my efforts with this. Because this scene shows Moe's then the TV store. But we all know Moe's is next to King Toot's. This contradiction is a bitter pill.

Which is why you'd think I wouldn't have made such a big deal about building a route for Bart to skateboard from school so he could pass this point crossing the street! But I did it anyway. :D

LITTLE ITALY


Between the Square, Uptown and the Mall, and the industrial South Side, is a city block with a lot of character. Or characTERS I could say, but not too loud. Just keep it on "the up-n-up" if you dine at Luigi's. It's a nice "family" place, if ya-no-what-i-mean. So you don't wanna end up having a "chat" with anyone in the back alley next door to the place. The Fortune Teller may tell you your future's shorter than you thought!

UPTOWN

i modeled this area after midtown Atlanta, where i lived a few years ago before it was inundated with hipsters. I liked the challenge that these buildings offered, as many forum members criticize them as unfitting. I didn't want to give them too much real estate though, it's just SF after all. So I paired Clausco and the Grove, and gave Clausco a service drive, plus a valet queue from each tower to the underground parking deck.

Making it look like an incline down into the ground took a lot of trial and error with the cone and barricade placement. The stone walls hopefully illustrate the separation of a lower deck.

MALL


The day the concrete slab came out, i was suddenly motivated to build a parking deck. This was around Easter and I thought i'd be scoring all kinds of good mall stores! Well I missed Blocko (d'oh!) but the Banana is a great anchor store for my higher-end retail center with trendy Irish Pub and Gym!

Of course, the bus stop to KL is there (be sure to visit my KL among the Showcase Section's sticky threads!)
as well as another KB just off the highway exit.
If you're heading south, gas up at Gulp n'Blow before you leave town. If you're heading north, you'll pass the Dog Track and some weird old men's knife club out in the woods.


It's a strange place I don't even know how to get there, but I've heard you have to drive down the dead-end past the mental hospital, but I'm not going down there!

SPRINGFIELD HEIGHTS

If you turn at the road past the hospital, you'll go into a real nice private neighborhood; everyone's got big houses. But too many big fences and even bigger dogs, so i don't go that way too much either.