Hey there Hoppereenos!
Bouncing on by with a lil fun run down of some design ideas that have been in the game a while.
We have been seeing an influx of comments from Players wanting areas to put their Cars. Whether it is finding a way to “Park” them or a way to make the “Drive” around town. We have posted similar ideas in the past, but it seems like the perfect time to put up a new and fresh perspective on them.
For more on the “Bumper Cars”, see post HERE. You can also give it and any path or road a “curved” look to it by adding a few small shrubs or other small items to the corners instead. 😉
PARKING LOTS
There are lots of different ways you can create a Parking Lot or even a Parking Structure to place your cars in.
For a 3D Tutorial on a Parking Structure, tap HERE
Let’s just look at a few basics for making a generic Parking Lot to put your cars in. First, you have to figure out just how big you want to make the Lot. The easiest thing to do is start with just a small square of Pavement to play around with until you get the general idea of what you want.
Then figure out just HOW you want to place your cars. Then place a couple down to play with. What direction? How many? Turn them both ways so you can decide what direction you feel they look best. Sit a few side by side as, you can see, the sizing is a lil off on a few of them so you will want to place them so they look proportionate.
Now that you have an idea of what cars you want to use, place a few into your Pavement Square. Leaving a few open spaces in between. You can move them later into better position.
Now, add a few Parking Lot Stalls. As you can see, the stalls don’t necessarily go the same direction of the cars. EA changed them a long while back so we don’t have a 360 degree turn option on them anymore. Kinda bites as it looks better if they seem pulled in. Now most will look like they “backed into” the Parking Stalls.
You can then finish it off by placing some decorations around it, adding an entrance, even putting it by the Krustyland Shuttle so it looks like a Parking Lot for it. Anyway you want to decorate it to match the theme of the area you are placing the Parking Lot at.
“DRIVING” CARS
Now for a little more fun. Many of us want our cars to actually look like they are driving around our Springfield Towns. As the actual Road Squares in the game are coded to carry the Characters, cars can’t really go there too. But where there is a will… there is a way.
Let’s take a look at some solutions to help you make it look like your cars are “Driving” around town.
The first option is again, using Pavement. Pavement can have pretty much anything go on top of it. Cars too. So instead of putting roads in front of your homes and businesses, put Pavement.
Make sure there is enough room for the cars, maybe some Parking Stalls, and some decorations.
Then start just adding decorations and cars.
Now for a little trick to make the cars look like they are “Driving” on the actual road. Similar to “forcing” Pavement under items that might not be coded to allow it, you are going to “force” the Roads under your cars. NOTE: so far this ONLY works under Powers Car. Update 7/30: This post was written at the time the Powers Car hit the game. Now with the addition of Homer’s Ice Cream Truck, you can also use the same methods below to put it on the Roads too.
First, get an idea where you want your car located. Putting down Pavement first may help as it fits into the same grid layout as the Roads. Then, time to put the Roads down. Start at one end where the game allows you to place a Road.
Now, “Drag” the Road along a the path… going under Powers Car you placed already all along the length that you want the Road. (You will want to keep the Powers Car kind of to the further Left or North side of the square as if you put it closer to the other side, it will look like it is driving on the Sidewalks.)
Now you have a car “Driving” down the Road of your Springfield. Sadly, it is only the one. Keep in mind, this is NOT supposed to go there. So if EA changes the coding, you may have to leave it where it is or be forced to move it.
Ice Cream Truck & Powers Car on the road.
Myself, for now, I prefer to stick with the Pavement for my roadways. As it not only allows me more options of placing the cars, but with Characters attracted to Roads I prefer to keep them in places I know where they are and can easily find them. So I have limited amounts of Roads in my town for the Characters.
Here are some very basic empty Paved Roads, Parking Structure, and Parking Stalls examples that you can see how adding a car here and there will give the impression they are on the Road… without actually using the Road Squares.
There you have it. Some simple design ideas of places to put your cars around Springfield to give the impression cars are parked or “Driving” around on streets.
What ideas have YOU used to Park your cars? How about Parking Lots or Structures? What do you use for roadways in town or in the residential areas? Create any “Speedways” or “Tracks”? Feel free to share in the comments below.
~Bunny
Edit Bunny:
TODAY’S KEYWORDS: Eat My Shorts!
I prefer the roads to the pavements because they have have a nice ‘finished’ look to them. I find that with no edge the pavements look unfinished. I’ve used roads everywhere as a result, so the character finder was a fantastic addition for me!
My main problem with the way they’ve done cars is that the parking bay decos are too small. I’m not sure if they oversized the cars too much when they designed them or what, but they seem huge. There’s no way, for example, that Homer’s car would fit in his own garage. They also take up far more than half the width of the road or pavement piece you put them on. Lots of wiped out door mirrors in Springfield!
For what it’s worth, you should always ‘back into’ a parking bay. You never know who will park up next to you and it’s much harder to reverse out of a bay completely blind than it is to reverse into one. At least in Britain, reversing into a parking bay is a required manoeuvre during your driving test. Obviously many drivers are lazy and unsafe as a result.
I agree with you on that completely! I always back into a parking stall, and I frowned to myself when I read Bunny say “Kinda bites as it looks better if they seem pulled in. Now most will look like they ‘backed into’ the Parking Stalls.” Well, it is true that here in the States most Americans are very lazy, and many are just simply not capable of reversing into a parking space. Oh well, that’s just how it is.
I was thinking that too! I didn’t have to do the reverse park thing on my test, but did have a ‘reverse round tight corner’ which they may have changed. 🙂
I disagree.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when people don’t park between the lines and people who back into parking spaces (especially people with SUVs/vans) are far more often guilty of this than people who drive headfirst into them.
Either way, you’re gonna have to drive backwards at some point, and it’s much easier to do that into a big open space (which you’re doing when you’ve parked headfirst) than in the much narrower area between two cars.
Sandra,
It’s pretty darn easy backing into a space, especially between cars for easier guidance. I can do it first try everytime in a matter of seconds between the lines with a manual transmission… Just as easy as going headfirst… Some people just don’t know how to operate their vehicle
This feels like the toilet paper roll direction thing. I was wondering if anyone besides me preferred the “over the roll” direction… I mean, the “parking forward” direction. I agree with all of your reasons.
It’s funny that the declared American called it a parking “stall”. My stalls are in the bathroom, buddy. lol. I call them parking “spots”. Sandra calls them “spaces”. The British get all Star Trek and call them “bays”. hah. I never knew the names on these things were so diverse.
Simp – I also call them spots (as a born New Yorker, it would be weird if I didn’t)…I guess I use those two terms relatively interchangeably.
And, fortunately for our martial harmony, my husband and I both agree that over the roll is the correct way to hang toilet paper.
Which side are you actually on? Or is that part of the marital agreement too, to not mention ever again?
(Was it martial? Like, martial arts? I was trying to ignore a possible typo but what if that’s what you mean. That you’ve put down your arms lest one of you put the roll the wrong way….)
Over the roll…that I did say in my original post.
As for marital/martial….yes, it was a typo, but there are times…. 😉
What about at the grocery store? It would be tough to pull the cart with your bags right next to the trunk to load it if you’re backed in instead of pulled in.
Another good point!
On the subject of vehicular traffic, I wish we could have a Pretzel-Wagon 🚝 👏
Few questions about people:
1. I have seen people have 2 squid port entrances how do you do this?
2. How do you have more than 1 lemon tree I have seen people with 6 lemon trees while I only have 1
3. I have seen people with tons of cars on the roads is there a way to do this?
P.s. If any of these have to do with lvls I am lvl 49
Question 1 & 2… not possible without a mod/hack. Question 3… so far, only the Power Car and Ice Cream Truck can be forced on to the road… if you’re seeing others… see the answer to 1 & 2.
http://tstoaddicts.com/2015/08/01/tsto-101-parking-lots-and-driving-cars/
Have you noticed that you loose Cash in The game? I took a printscreen last night and this morning and over 300 000 Cash was gone.
Nope but usually when people day they’re losing cash it’s because they’re doing burns money mountain and forget
I wish i could blame it sunstroke but since The sun has been conspicuous by its absence here in sweden, It has to be The age;-)
lol it happens 😉
I can barely play on my phone, works fine on iPad. The hone is just frustrating now, it’s been going on for weeks….I just want to say I’m not thrilled with having to build 10 parking structures in SH. I see they can be stored but not sold. I think it’s excessive….also, I’m debating whether or not to nuke. I want to redo everything but I’m chicken…..
Don’t nuke! Just rearrange! I nuked recently and redoing the entire thing is so much work.
Don’t know where to ask, but it is at the end, when do we submit for the contest?
Like it says on the Contest Post… wait for the Submission Form to go live on the site. 😉
http://tstoaddicts.com/2015/07/24/25th-anniversary-simpsons-giveaway/
Oh I missed that part, sorry. But thanks for you’re help. 🙂
Here are some things I’ve done with vehicles….nothing fancy, but works for my generally simple town, I think:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0hj274zdol6bq0q/file%20aug%2001%2C%203%2029%2028%20pm.jpeg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lloyxkouipsd4mg/file%20aug%2001%2C%203%2032%2030%20pm.jpeg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qnd1bte311mofa7/file%20aug%2001%2C%203%2028%2009%20pm.jpeg?dl=0
Looks nice to me.
Thanks! 🙂
I like the cars behind buildings idea (especially the big rig)!
Thanks! 🙂
This is genius Bunny! I don’t have a lot of vehicles but I’ll definitely keep this in mind for when I do. Especically love the first parking lot with the brick walls.
I never got why EA called the road, road, instead of path/pathways/walkways, as that is all it is used for. They could have called the pavement road or hard standing or whatever the US equivalent is. In my game I just swap it in my head anyway and have lots of parking spaces made with what they call pavement, and paths using their road.
I had totally forgotten that I wanted to make a bumper car rally next to the crazy golf…thanks for reminding me!
I’ve done it!! Finally found a way that the Obstacles truck, and obstacles from the last event can “block” a road. Got it just off the end of a road intersection, and yes there is sidewalk going along the length of the truck and obstacles, so to block that from view, I placed the Lemon Tree. An extra block behind the truck to make it look like the road continues to Springfield Heights, and voila, my truck and obstacles are blocking a road 😀
Oh….and “under” the Truck I placed a pavement piece to make it look like the road was going under the truck as well…forgot to include that part 😀
can you post a picture please I wanna see it …sounds great!
I picture would be nice. I’m not understanding what you did.
Sorry all, was trying to discribe it the best I could. Tablet is charging right now but will post a pic in an hour or so once it’s done.
I’m not picturing what you’re describing…how about sharing a picture of it?
Ok, this is my first time using Flickr, actually just created an account for the purpose of showing y’all the screenshot. Hope this works.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/135107150@N03/20218133911/in/datetaken/?cr
If it shows, should be a pic of what I was trying to discribe.
For the record my town is in shambles, that is why you only see part of a road, wanted to figure out how I was going to set the Obstacles truck to be blocking a road, and work around it for the rest of my town once I rebuild. The Ice Cream truck I just put there as a trial for the time being, was trying the suggestion on this forum of putting it on a road.
Ah, I get it now. I didn’t know what an Obstacle truck was and so forth. Yeah, I love how it worked out, especially the cement under the truck. Well done.
Consider posting it at your full resolution for the image. This one was thumbnail small and now my eyes hurt. 🙁
I went into Flickr and saw another image to choose. It was higher resolution. Yay! So, nevermind.
I have most of mine set up at the drive thrus of the fast food joints. Also have them at the gas stations. I made a neat gas station in front of a qwick e Mart using the red pumps.
I’ve always liked the look of placing a car at the ordering menu of a Krusty Burger so it looks like its driving thru.
I do the same thing! Also at Gulp and Blow.
I do that, too! Homer’s car is driving in the wrong direction (EA’s fault? Or Homer’s?) And one at Gulp ‘N Blow.
I place Ch.6 trucks near the stadium and the nuclear plant, newsworthy locations.
I don’t have any other cars.
TSTO servers are dropping me every few minutes. Is this happening to anyone else? Frustrating when trying to accumulate Springfield Heights stuff.
My game has been VERY laggy today. Lots of graphic juddering and stalling when collecting $$ or moving acorss the town. Could just be a busy weekend with everyone going mad on the SH crafting