Metro area maps - especially NYC?

[revisit]

Hi all. I used to play RRT3 a lot when it was new, and hadn't thought about it for a few years. But work has been stressful recently, and I thought it would really help me to relax ... to build some trains!

But here's the thing.

Right now I'd love to play with some smaller scale areas. I'd absolutely love there to be a map of the New York metro area - you know, the areas currently covered by MTA (Metro-North and LIRR), NJT and adjacent freight railroads. I can't find any scenario or even a base map that's like that which I could alter into a scenario. (Making my own from scratch seems impossible, as I'm using a Mac.) I noticed there are Boston, LA and Arizona small-scale scenarios. Is there a reason more metro/commuter regions haven't been attempted?

Growing a megalopolis, watching the growth of railroad suburbs, building local industries sounds like fun to me.

Thanks!

[Blackhawk]

I once thought of trying to make something semi-metro based. (it would have the chicago suburbs and parts of surrounding states) It would have been around the chicago area with the Metra rail road, then an amtrak line, and the CTA ("L" train and buses would be represented by a smaller train line) Although I ended up giving up on it. I didn't particularly like the way the map was turning out and I would have had to restart on a new map, and replace all the towns and buildings, and companies and track etc.

To me it just seems like it isn't that easy to make a metro map with RT3 and could potentially require extra time placing buildings. RT2 at least had different types of passengers to transport in a city map.

[brunom]

The LX_suburban is an attempt at what you are describing. It's in beta now, and you can look for the thread in the Reviews forum. In my own experience, you need to plant houses a lot, because the ratio industries/houses is really unbalanced for an urban area. Office buildings, retail shops and department stores need to be planted in the editor as well.

Problem is, the more you plant the less you will see of natural growth. The more you allow for natural expansion (as you say, watching the megalopolis grow) the more you will have to allow for industries. And then, the size of Oil Distilleries, Steel Mills and other will just be under-scaled to the size of the city.

Anyway, curious about what you can come out with. I think it's doable and, as I say, a scenario of that kind is now in final-beta.

As for the map - use the height-map-microdem-photoshop method that is described in this forum.

(As as incentive:)
Attached is one tiff in grayscale with a roughly defined area around Manhattan. Next step (your step, if you are going to make the map) is to covert the .tif to .tga. Photoshop does that, probably other programs do also, and I vaguely remember that there is an option at that stage either to be ticked or "unticked".. once it's in .tga form, the editor will be able to open it.