A serious talk about building/item scaling
This isn't exactly what you're talking about but does it annoy anyone else that they make a lot of buildings so they are 5 squares in width? Sometimes I want to place a road right around a building bu...
Forum Discussion
I'm able to live with the different scale buildings because, as someone pointed out, they don't coincide with the characters' sizes anyway. But I find that making neighborhoods of similar use buildings creates something of an illusion that the buildings fit together. I use a grid system where every other row of city blocks is slightly larger or smaller than the one adjacent. That gives more flexibility.
I have a downtown area around a town square. Fitting tightly on one "city block," I have Clausco, Vulgari, Banana Dictatorship, Spiffany's and Gold Navy. Across the street is Cosington's. Behind both blocks is a block with the Aztec Theater, Westerfield Hotel, and Zenith Times. Zenith Times is really disproportionate with Aztec Theater and the hotel, but because it's behind it (and visually "further away") the scales seem to work. Partially obscuring buildings helps with the illusion.
However, I agree that some scale differences are egregiously wrong and impossible to work with. The monorail stations are absurd. I can understand why they had to be long enough to fit the train, but did they have to be so much wider than the track? Especially when there are add-ons? Springfield Mall next to Mall-O-Rail is absurd. Well, Springfield Mall is absurdly small anyway. If they can do add ons for Mall-O-Rail, they could do the same thing for Springfield Mall so it could be built in a more realistic way. Much like we could combine the Monsarno Buildings.
Another neighborhood is the newer shopping area (Sprawl Mart, Abandoned Building, Guitar Central, Springfield Grocery) that ties the stores together with a long parking lot. Connecting them also creates an illusion of same-scale because the parking lot is consistently one size, if that makes sense.
I've got a dive-bar area, an industrial area, a rural woodsy area, etc. I think I can mostly overcome the scale differences this way. The exception is the Monorail stations. Hopeless.
I have a downtown area around a town square. Fitting tightly on one "city block," I have Clausco, Vulgari, Banana Dictatorship, Spiffany's and Gold Navy. Across the street is Cosington's. Behind both blocks is a block with the Aztec Theater, Westerfield Hotel, and Zenith Times. Zenith Times is really disproportionate with Aztec Theater and the hotel, but because it's behind it (and visually "further away") the scales seem to work. Partially obscuring buildings helps with the illusion.
However, I agree that some scale differences are egregiously wrong and impossible to work with. The monorail stations are absurd. I can understand why they had to be long enough to fit the train, but did they have to be so much wider than the track? Especially when there are add-ons? Springfield Mall next to Mall-O-Rail is absurd. Well, Springfield Mall is absurdly small anyway. If they can do add ons for Mall-O-Rail, they could do the same thing for Springfield Mall so it could be built in a more realistic way. Much like we could combine the Monsarno Buildings.
Another neighborhood is the newer shopping area (Sprawl Mart, Abandoned Building, Guitar Central, Springfield Grocery) that ties the stores together with a long parking lot. Connecting them also creates an illusion of same-scale because the parking lot is consistently one size, if that makes sense.
I've got a dive-bar area, an industrial area, a rural woodsy area, etc. I think I can mostly overcome the scale differences this way. The exception is the Monorail stations. Hopeless.
