Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#1 Old 2nd Jan 2023 at 7:56 PM
Default Scaling a neighborhood/lot and building sizes
I'm feeling a bit puzzled lately when I am trying to build neighbourhoods up with either new houses or existing ones.

My problem is that everything often seems to be out of scale or out of proportion. For example, I love tiny lots and I'll place several of those, but then they end up looking ridiculously small when in conjunction with a standard middle class type house. These houses can sometimes even look huge compared to a community lot that I've built such as an indoor pool or shopping centre. The shopping centre (mall) in my current hood actually looks absurdly small... And then I have some hood Deco shop fronts which I love but look completely wrong next to actual houses. I'll make a block of flats and it will look great and then I'll put a house nearby and the house is almost as big as the flats!

I don't know if this is because I'm using a mixture of American house plans and British, with British houses tending to be smaller in size. I just wondered, do others have this same issue, and if so, how have you resolved it? Is there a clever way to plan a neighborhood for a mixture of housing sizes without it just looking bizarre and mismatched?

I can add some screenshots later if you can't picture what I mean.

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
Advertisement
Mad Poster
#2 Old 2nd Jan 2023 at 8:07 PM
I think part of it is just the limitations of the game- like, the modern city I'm gradually putting together out of my creations has a skyscraper-filled downtown meant to imitate global cities IRL, but since TS2 is limited to 15 levels those skyscrapers are probably only about 150 feet tall- or about 1/10th the height of some skyscrapers in real downtowns. The best way I've found to make it not look weird is setting up different districts or neighborhoods within a neighborhood- that way a bunch of smaller houses will be grouped, and larger houses will be grouped, etc., and if nothing else, it'll look like maybe there's zoning regulations or historical reasons for differences in size.

Some of it's also going to stay a suspension of disbelief thing too though- and since it's your game, you can rearrange things however you think looks better, even if it might not be the type of urban planning you'd see in the real world!

Welcome to the Dark Side...
We lied about having cookies.
Inventor
#3 Old 2nd Jan 2023 at 8:37 PM
I've run into this issue in the past because I also love small lots. I especially have the bad habit of filling large maps with hundreds of them. While my computer runs well with small lots, it doesn't much like if I use that many of them in one hood map. Lately, I've been trying to just stick with either using small lots with a small map, or using regular lots with a regular or larger map. Occasionally, I might mix in a regular lot with small ones, or small ones with regular ones, but I do what Zarathustra suggested. I tend to keep groups of them in the same place, to look more cohesive, unless I specifically want the odd lot to stand out.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#4 Old 2nd Jan 2023 at 9:40 PM
So first question will be what size are these lots? When you say tiny, do you mean 1 by 1 or some other size? How large a lot is the pool and shopping centre? Shopping centres can be small through to pretty huge in real life. I would try and group similar sizes together.

I prefer small lots in a suburban setting as to me it looks more realistic. I've always thought sim hoods with 3 middle size lots down a road to look odd unless the surrounds are rural. Even here in Australia where we have massive amounts of room and very low population you don't find large blocks of land like that in cities or deep into suburbia. You expect to walk down a road and see one house after another each one sitting on a small block of land. You need to drive further out to find large blocks and further out again you have stretches of bush and farm land. It's quite normal here to have that since Australia is massive and we are few, but in England there are no gaps except in rural areas. 41 million people on a piece of land about the same sizes as one of our small states vs us at 26 million on the size that is the USA minus Alaska. So think about the world you are creating and it's size and its population as well as the type of area its set in.

Screenshots would be good. You might find only using small lots for the majority of the housing and small to medium for com lots looks best. Unless you are building something massive like a stadium but then you may need to think, would a huge stadium realistically even be here, probably not.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#5 Old 3rd Jan 2023 at 6:44 PM Last edited by simsfreq : 3rd Jan 2023 at 7:13 PM.
Yes, 1x1 are my tiny lots. I have some medium (semi-detached) houses on 2x2 lots which look enormous compared to the 1x1s!

The swimming pool is 2x3, shopping centre 3x2. Then I have a downloaded house that is 2x4 and that looks a normal size from lot view, but huge in the neighbourhood.

I don't mind so much about floor height restrictions, honestly I dislike playing lots that are more than about 4 stories high because the camera is SO annoying, so I just use hood deco for tall buildings, since I would never play them anyway.

Having looked at them all again and looked at Elsewhere, I think you're both right that grouping similar sized lots and creating little sort of mini-districts or "zoning areas" makes sense.

I do want my hood to seem British style because that's what I'm used to and want to try to recreate; you're right that the lack of gaps is typical. I think that might be where I'm making a mistake by trying to butt all these houses up against each other, when there should be some separation - fields, trees, or a commercial area or something.

I have found that in my council estate it looks better and less strange, probably because I have tried to do that. I changed the terrain of the suburban area and so I have a bunch of random buildings that I need to find new homes for.

Here is an example (first picture) - the row of shops (left side of image) looks too small and the terraced houses near the front of the image look strange to me. It might just be because there is no landscaping or anything in-between.

Edited to add, picture 2:
Top left is what I think of as an out-of-town shopping centre, large warehouse-like shop units surrounding a car park. Has a McCheesy's. Backing onto this are some terraces with 4 houses each and opposite those a block of flats I found a plan for online (these need moving closer together).

The thing that looks like two letter Hs stuck together is the shopping centre/shopping mall. To the left of that is a restaurant that looks purposefully unusual and above that, a pub, which looks like it belongs in the countryside by a canal.

On the right of this picture, you can see the four middle-class homes on the 2x4 lots. These, I think, will need to be much further away because they look out of proportion to the shopping centre. Behind those is an orphanage in a terrible, awful, McMansion type building that I need to completely tear down and rebuild
Screenshots

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#6 Old 3rd Jan 2023 at 9:01 PM
I've moved away from the 1 by 1's due to practicalities of growing families, tending now to 1 by 2 for joined housing so they go back further rather than wide and 2 by 2 for detached housing. I still love how Elsewhere looks since its the base for my favourite hood Coral Bay, and has that English feel to it but ran into room problems nearly straight away with playing families. I did empty most of the houses and redo with space saving CC, removed fire places (very few people have fireplaces over here) and extended some houses by a tile or two which did help but the tiny housing was just not that practical for playing families and given that I am a family player I should have thought of. Likewise high-rises are horrible to play because of camera bounce and are better off as deco as you said.

The 2 by 2's DO look enormous compared to the 1 by 1's, I know from my own game, You could try going to 1 by 2's. They are my compromise for size and play but still achieve that narrow frontage.

I think part of the issue in the picture unlike Elsewhere that is all filled in, your hood is new and it looks like its sitting out in a rural area. Probably because the map is too big and not filled in enough.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Inventor
#7 Old 3rd Jan 2023 at 10:09 PM
Yeah, I agree with Jo. Putting 1x1s in a map with lots of empty space will make them look even smaller, especially when compared to larger lots with no visual breaks in between. I can't speak to British architecture or lot planning, but putting middling lots between the tiny lots and the larger lots will help with easing the visual transition. 1x2s, as she suggested, make a good in-between. I find that hood deco walls and hedges also help to define distinct sections within the map.

I do love the look of your lots in the first picture. If the terraced houses you mention looking strange are the ones with the alley in between, I think it's because they don't actually seem to back up to the alley. They would probably look best if you could scoot it all together, but since that's not an option due to the roads, maybe extending the backyards to border the alley might work?
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#8 Old 3rd Jan 2023 at 11:39 PM
As Devon Aster said it's that grass gap at the back of the row houses. The roads are too far apart for the size of the lots. Either the lots need to be longer to fill the gap or some kind of hood deco is needed. Given that the ally has rubbish indicates a slummy area, but slummy areas don't have grass areas like that. You need to decide slummy or nicer? If you want slummy I would add a fake road against one of the rows and then an ally against the other. You may still have some grass but maybe some kind of brick hood wall could be used. Or if its meant to be nicer remove that ally and use a long skinny lot attached to the other road (1 by 4 or 1 by 5) and maybe have it be a park.

Did this is paint looks pretty horrid, but grey for road and brown for ally.
Screenshots

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#9 Old 4th Jan 2023 at 3:35 AM
I start froming a town with only two of the largest lot size available in the game like I've done in my Pleasantview game and one is the communty service center and the other is the homestead farm the Jankowskys call home and they are about to begin their house build in the next few days and the service center's buillding is already under constrution.I start with setting up rules about lots and mixed lot sizes is fine as the town starts out since it won't have any shopping districts or downtowns added in until later on.
I do start setting rules about allowed lot sizes when the town grows like Pleasantview will have the larger lots in the first shopping district once it's added and smaller lots go downtown for the dowtown single family homes while apartments are common downtown.
Theorist
#10 Old 14th Jan 2023 at 12:43 AM
My solution is to place various hood deco in empty spaces. There's default hood deco that looks like alleys: both trash and posh.





Another solution, in case deco refuses to be placed, is to use various unconventional lot sizes (e.g. 1x6) and change their grass ground to whatever you think fits in.
Scholar
#11 Old 14th Jan 2023 at 2:59 AM
My Solution. (not a good, stable or practical one)
Screenshots
e3 d3 Ne2 Nd2 Nb3 Ng3
retired moderator
#12 Old 14th Jan 2023 at 3:29 PM
So this is the way I approach it when making a hood:

Decide what kind of neighbourhood it's going to be (are the lots going to be spaced out, like a rural farming community, or clustered together like a city?).
Do you want the lots to be built and unaltered (sims move to a larger lot as their needs change), or do you want them to be expandable (sims build extra rooms as their needs change)?
Do you want sims to have gardens/ yards?
Do you want the town to have a central point, like a park or city hall or plaza, or to sprawl in a decentralised manner?

Once you've answered these questions, you will know what sort of lot size and layout you need.

I always build my SC4 terrains around my lot sizes, and design the terrain to appear natural as regards to how communities really develop. So, you'll have a small settlement, that starts off with a few buildings and then grows in a cluster. And you'll then maybe get another little area start up somewhere else nearby- such as a commercial area, where sims can go to shop and work. And likewise, that will grow in a cluster, too.
And after a long while, the first cluster has reached it's limit in size, so maybe I'll go back into SimCity and add a few roads, and use Mootilda's Hood Replace to get these changes in-game. Or, perhaps I'll start adding lots to the road that connects the two clusters, so that they join up. It will grow almost organically.

This is how I did it with one of my neighbourhoods that I played for around 7 years.

Forum Resident
#13 Old 14th Jan 2023 at 7:13 PM
I usually do it by intuition, and many times I change lots of places until the whole thing seems pleasing to the eye. I usually build houses that are way too big and when I scale them down they look so much better. In the photos that you put I miss some trees or neighborhood decoration to unite the buildings with the environment.

In any case, I don't think your buildings look very uneven, I see harmony in your neighborhood, it's just that it lacks many more lots or decoration. When you build everything very close together you must continue until the end.
Mad Poster
#14 Old 14th Jan 2023 at 11:43 PM
I also get strange mixesn of lot sizing when starting a town out in the early stages as lots get placed wherever there's a clear space for it and that's going to be true of my Pleasantview as the town is forming from it's origins as a 17th century colonial settlement into it's modern day form with a number of external districts.I've got a few pictures of Pleasanview in it's original form when it was in it's earliest formative years way back in the early 17th century.
Screenshots
Mad Poster
#15 Old 15th Jan 2023 at 2:19 AM
Well, I do it to make the neighborhood seem more natural. Because my neighborhoods are small they don't need a lot of land around them.
For example:
Old Town (PV) on the left, Arundel on the right.

PS-I just discovered why the picture for Old Town wasn't showing in SimPE: it's a JPEG. Not the PNG format.
Screenshots

Receptacle Refugee & Resident Polar Bear
"Get out of my way, young'un, I'm a ninja!"
Grave Matters: The funeral podium is available here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/e6tj...albits.zip/file
My other downloads are here: https://app.mediafire.com/myfiles
Mad Poster
#16 Old 15th Jan 2023 at 3:11 AM
@FranH -It looks like we've both taken a similar path in making our towns look like they're gtowing naturally though mine is much newer because the colonial settlers only arrived a week ago and are just sorting themselves out and will need to start a house build on their homestead soon.Nobody's home lot has any house built before they move in and build it themselves.It's like they way things were in the colonial settlelemts in 17th century Amerca.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#17 Old 15th Jan 2023 at 8:12 AM
Thank you all, especially SimSample for the detailed breakdown of how your hood grew over time!

I think I need to do this. I get frustrated with SC4, but perhaps I should persevere. I think the problem with this hood is that I've been trying to fit it around a specific hood template and it's not really fitting my needs like I thought it would. I think what I have in my head is lots of smaller areas connected by longer roads, but the downloaded hood templates I have are all based around a central area of development.

I do normally put a lot more hood deco down, the reason there is none here is because I recently hoodreplaced the whole thing.

I am thinking lately, I started this specific hood to play with the idea of classes (middle class suburb vs rural vs council estate) and "British style" building and starting off with sims with existing relationships, but there are so many things that are difficult to fix about it (The main one being 2x sets of AL social townies, that I've had to makeover and rename, but they are all Maxis face templates, and I have custom ones now which I prefer) - I could always just port the buildings that I like into a completely new set up, and clone any sims who are particularly interesting to take with me, and just start again, perhaps with my own SC4 terrain. I keep holding onto it because it's older than my eldest child (who is 14!!) but perhaps at some point it's sunk cost fallacy.

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
Mad Poster
#18 Old 16th Jan 2023 at 11:09 PM
I would ony start to worry about sorting out the lots after the town starts expanding into shopping districts and later even downtowns.That's when the mess of lots mixed together starts to get sorted out over time.I don't mind a mess of mixed sizes mashed together when there's only the central district of the town and nothing else because it's not always possible to place everything neatly at that time.
Forum Resident
#19 Old 21st Jan 2023 at 1:15 AM
Quote: Originally posted by TadOlson
I would ony start to worry about sorting out the lots after the town starts expanding into shopping districts and later even downtowns.That's when the mess of lots mixed together starts to get sorted out over time.I don't mind a mess of mixed sizes mashed together when there's only the central district of the town and nothing else because it's not always possible to place everything neatly at that time.

That is happening to me with my downtown, I think I will have to organize everything again.
Mad Poster
#20 Old 21st Jan 2023 at 10:50 PM
That mixed up mess of lot sizes is what happens in a new town when it's just starting out and growing enough to start adding more lot sizes though still too small for adding that first subhood.My first is always a shopping district since I'd start with moving the farming lots outside the town center to begin origanizing the lots.
Lab Assistant
#21 Old 22nd Jan 2023 at 11:23 PM
this is something i tend to struggle with as well. i agree that it's largely a matter of positioning and transitional zones. i'm from the city so i'm used to buildings and townhouses all crammed up against each other, and find the sims' default suburban style to look strange and sparse. alleys, driveways, and patios can be used to fill space between the small-medium lots, and more spread out areas can utilize trees and shrubs to create a cohesive environment. i'm a very visual person, so everything comes down to composition and proportion imo.
Back to top