designing a Suburb, Need some advice

[Glitzer]

One of the projects I'm working on is a contmorary/SciFi suburb. The main problem I face is the street layout. I wish to make the table modular, but there the problems begin. I don't want an American style straight street cutting through the whole table because of aesthetic and gaming aspects. I also want to have some gardens, complete with sandpit, trees toolshed and (of course) a gazebo. To keep the thing real looking no estate should be touching more than 2 streets.

While this sounds easy enough, I'm racking my brains on that for over a year now and still have no clue how to do it.

I would be very glad if someone could share her or his experience with similar projects or at least point me to some websites.

[PeteMurray]

What are your modules? 1' x 1' tiles?

[Glitzer]

So far I've not decided on module sizes, or even shapes. I might as well make modules without streets and fitting pavements. Or I might build trapezoidal modules for a more organic look and a table with fitting slots.

The material I use is 30cmx60cm corc (about 1'x2'), but I fear 35cm(about 1'2") squared is the minimum size I need for estates (with larger ones buildt on more than one tile)

[Aaron]

I just did a google image search with "suburban plan" and it came up with a pretty good range of photos. Here is one example: http://www.tfhrc.gov/safety/pedbike/pubs/05085/images/fig51.jpg

[Glitzer]

that's a pretty good exemple of what I want, I just wonder how to get it modular

[Aaron]

What scale is this for? How big is the table?

For more interest you could make it a plan still under construction. When we moved into a new plan in the mid 80s there were still a couple of unsold lots and some in various states of construction. It made life fun for us kids playing in the excavated ditches and basements!

[matakishi]

If you have a basic table painted 'road' colour (not black, roads are grey) then you can design modular terrain to go on top. If the edge of each terrain piece is a pavement/sidewalk then you can place them anywhere.



For my city I have a piece of pavement/sidewalk along the fronts of the buildings so that I can place them side-by-side to delineate the roads and then I have several separate pieces to put along the sides when the road ends and needs to turn a corner.

Although my buildings tend to be singles there is no reason why each of your bases couldn't include several with gardens etc.

[Cory]

Each board should have either
A) a through section of street
B) a cul-du-sac or
C) an intersection

For a through section choose two board edges for entry points. The center of the road should match the center of each of the chosen sides. From there curve and loop it however you want.

The cu-du-sac is even easier, just have the road match up to the center of one board edge.

This method makes the street the focal point of each board. A 2'x2' with a 4-6" street would still have room (albeit a compressed ground scale)for a house with a small front and back yard on either side.

[Aaron]

In addition to Cory's ideas you could use seperate fences and hedges to mask the seams where the boards join if that sort of thing bothers you.

[Braxandur]

Or you could do as the guys from skank game did and paint a table on vinyl. Easy to store and as long as you just change the layout of the buildings the game will look different each time. (though you'd still need to make bases for parks and so on)

http://www.skankgame.com/Vinylmat.html

[Glitzer]

It's in 1:50 and I want to use it for the Infinity Wargame. There is no table yet as I first have to decide how it should work. I didn't plan to build empty lots but I thought about a road construction corp (OK it's just an excuse to buy all those road construction vehicles) which would be more or less the same (an empty space with some fence arround it, and a lot of mud in the middle)

@Matakishi I thought about a square layout before, but straights are real killing fields in Infinity.

I just might use an approach with an irregualar tile layout like the following

Now... F34r My 4SC!! skillz ::

Code: [Select]


   ___   ___   ___
  |   | |   | |   |
  |___| |___| |___|
___   ___   ___   ___
   | |   | |   | |   |
___| |___| |___| |___|

Or even

Code: [Select]

           _____
  __  |  | |     |
 |  | |__| |_____|
 |  |  _____   __
 |  | |     | |  |
 |__| |_____| |  |
  _____   __  |  |
 |     | |  | |__|
 |_____| |  |  ___
 _   __  |  | |
  | |  | |__| |___

@Cory I was stupid enough to build the houses first... Now I have one house that needs almost a minimum of 2' squared. I could try to figure out a way to build it as very short cul-de-sac though (5cm of Pavement and nothing else)

[Cory]

@Cory I was stupid enough to build the houses first... Now I have one house that needs almost a minimum of 2' squared. I could try to figure out a way to build it as very short cul-de-sac though (5cm of Pavement and nothing else)

Ground scale without compression can be challenging, especially in 28mm. At 1"=5' or 1/60 a standard American street is 8" across with 3/4" of sidewalk on either side. A 60x120' home lot would take up 12"x24".


As to building the house first, I had a client do that a few years ago - he had forgotten to allow room for the street in a four lot subdivision when he designed the houses. By the time he realized his error there were already three semi trucks enroute from Texas with preassembled panels for houses that didn't fit.

[matakishi]

@Matakishi I thought about a square layout before, but straights are real killing fields in Infinity.

That's my point. If your buildings are based with their surroundings you can have them at any angles you want. I only have pictures of my city in a grid shape because it's a city. I was relying on your innate Lead Adventurer ability to extrapolate from the information given and match it to your needs.