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Tips of the Week

For September 19, 1997

Tips of the Week Archives
View the last tips of the week: City Design & Aesthetics

Building a SimCity to match a Real World City
Building a city to match a real one is easier than you may think. But you'll need a lot patience and good maps.

First, the maps. If you don't want to worry about topography (hills, mountains), then an atlas or normal map will do. Topographical maps are available from The United States Geological Survey. Go to their web site for more info. This source will only work for U.S. cities of course. For another country, contact the government for more info.

Now that you have the maps, it's time to start building your city. Start up SC2000, choose "Edit New Map" from the menu.

Here comes the tough part, you need to mark off 20x20 tile squares on the map. Use trees or little ponds to mark the squares off. (I'll have a screenshot soon for an example).

Divide your maps into roughly equal squares to those on the city map. Then begin to fill in each square on the SC2K map to match the maps. Start with natural features (mountains, rivers, lakes), then click "Done" when finished.

Add in highways, roads, and points of interest (stadiums, sea/airports, city hall, etc.) The land left over can be zoned any way you want, but sticking to accurate zoning is reccomended.

If you happen to live in this city, feel free to stick a sign on your house telling the world :-).

To even improve the realism, you can create a SCURK tileset for your city and use it. Even so, using SCURK's "Build and Print" tool during this process is reccomended.

And overall, be creative.