Town design tips

for me i work in themed areas when i do a redesign. for instance, i really like my "apartment buildings" area next to the pier entrance, so i start there. I also plan to have the town "square" as the landing so i figure out where center is and try to put it there and then build around that. as the areas start merging together i fit in buildings/decorations that seem to fit... right now i have my "downtown/town square" area merging with my "rich people mansions" area, using spiffanys and the sushi spot to ease that transition.

but make sure you do your buildings first.... multiple decorations are a pain to pick up and move if you change your mind, like fences or rows of shrubs, so make sure you're happy with your building placement before you lay that stuff down.

also hide any ugly decorations with multipliers behind tall things.

Thanks :D

In my past towns I had a forest area but it took like 25% of my town.

I'm now looking for a way to get shops and such together without making a mess. I always put them together and it looks too cluttered. Way to much together.

Just to not make any more new threads about this... but, when you design your town just do it randomly or based on some criteria?

At the beggining I was just putting stuffs everywhere and expanding lands such a crazy and desorganized person, but few days ago I started to redesign the whole town and if you have the chance to visit me you'll see (at least what I tried) to make a part of the town residential, other part industrial, other part commercial and so on and on.

How do you do it?

You really have to plan it. When I nuked my feeder town, I knew roughly where I wanted everything to go. I didn't draw it out, but I did have a pretty clear image in my head. The hardest part was the monorail. Because the tracks end up blocking other stuff and it's frustrating, so you have to play with where you put them so they're in town, but not directly blocking anything. The other thing is, don't worry too much about decorating around buildings at the beginning. Just plop them down where you think you'll have enough room to decorate around them, and move on. The buildings are the most important things to get out first, because that way if you do end up running out of room and having to move stuff around/squeeze it in, you won't have to put away a bunch of decorations first.

I make my own aera's, and mostly setting things togheter from event or download.
In the 4 corners the monorail offcourse :mrgreen:

Still dreaming of a "Mall" area butt no inspiration enough for the moment... :cry:

I think its nice :P

It's easier for me to start with a specific area or building. Trying to add the monorail as well and it's made me quite unhappy with an existing design. Will take some time so I'm only doing a few things at a time.

To design a specific area I normally start with:
- picking colours
- then look in decorations to see what will match
- i normally place all of them out beside the building then narrow them down to a few items
- then I place roads/pavement to see where everything will fit.

Just did this with the fortress of lonelitude (wanted purple and white to go with the green, then felt like some gold would look good too). Pavement wouldn't fit how I wanted, so just paved the whole thing. Might add gold torches...

http://i.imgur.com/BaoBP2vl.png

King Toot's goes next to Moe's.

After that, you're on your own. :thumbup:

An important question....do you plan a full road network which looks great but can be a nightmare when tappable eventthings are running round, or do you plan a single defined road area and the rest using concrete as roads?......

evrod20 wrote:
Just to not make any more new threads about this... but, when you design your town just do it randomly or based on some criteria?

At the beggining I was just putting stuffs everywhere and expanding lands such a crazy and desorganized person, but few days ago I started to redesign the whole town and if you have the chance to visit me you'll see (at least what I tried) to make a part of the town residencial, other part industrial, other part commercial and so on and on.

How do you do it?

I prefer the more realistic, "city zoned" method as well.

So as i add new properties to town, i shuffle things to stay "in code".

The latest addition was the bowling alley, which i wanted on the divided highway along the outskirts of town. Also in that area is the strip club, drive-in, and giant castle-themed restaurant (something i made to utilize all the bonus wailing walls).

The launch pad is being built on the most expensive squares of real estate out in the really rural area.

I've also got industrial zone, waterfront zone, old town square zone, mountain zone, residential zones, medical zone, and of course SH. So factories, higher-end houses, lower-end houses, commercial buildings, govt buildings, each are in appropriate zones.

I prefer to integrate new stuff into their zones, rather than have items grouped by when they were released in-game. Looks much more realistic, which is my primary design goal. I want things to look like they "FIT". You have to feel it.

tiger10036778 wrote:
An important question....do you plan a full road network which looks great but can be a nightmare when tappable eventthings are running round, or do you plan a single defined road area and the rest using concrete as roads?......

I think using concrete as roads looks really really bad. I mean, to each their own...if you really prefer the "convenience" of having only one strip of road over having a nice town, by all means use concrete. Frankly the eye-sore bothers me more than finding the characters (which I really don't think are that hard to find anyway).

Actually during the last event, a few of my friends had their one strip of road far away from their landing zone, so finding characters there was a real pain. If you're going to only have one strip of road, please at least put it in your LZ. :roll: