I think that was either feigned ignorance or they really think if is a 4 level building is all the same and is not "apartments". But yep for me is "fake" ignorance, like they won't even notice, is all the same. That pissed me off so much.

Yeah, they went for a very specific style with their buildings. But the weird thing is that Bridgeport's buildings don't really bear resemblance to any real architectural style. They can't really be defined in a real-world style.
They're not really "classic" though; they're kind of a weird mix of Art Deco and 80s-90s postmodernism, but without really committing to either style. I suppose it's part of why Bridgeport fails to look like a real city.

I'm using a few ITF shells for a more modern look, and a few Roaring Heights shells for a more classic look, but they're both too out there. Bridgeport is bland. And bland is ugly, but mixing the outspoken with the bland is even uglier. So I've taken to building CFE skyscrapers now; particularly in the aforementioned postmodernism. I find the 80s trend of essentially building giant mirrors to be quite fitting in Bridgeport.

Bridgeport was made by the Redwood Shore team, who never really had a knack for building lots. Twinbrook is likely the most fully composed of any of the worlds, as many of the elements sensibly come together.

With some time and solid art direction, Bridgeport could have been phenomenal. A prime example is all of the lobbies - they look incredibly simple and don't actually commit to a style with which the building with have. It's most often than not a hallway.

The Bay Area is also a very west coast kind of place, and Bridgeport very much isn't. There are big differences between west coast cities and east coast cities, the way they're built up and laid out is vastly different. Either way, the devs never really cared about this sort of thing - as long as it vaguely looks like a city.

This is how you do Bridgeport; some of this.


Some of this.


Maybe some of this.


Oh, and have them mirrors.

I've never thought Bridgeport failed at being a city, it's just not supposed to be a sprawling metropolis. It's kind of dark, musty, eerie even. It has a story to tell if you explore it, which is something I appreciated a lot about worlds in Sims 3. A major part of the world design was that Vampires were a prominent inclusion and frankly I don't think Vampires really fit in a super modern utopia such as SM.

I never had any major problem with Bridgeport. It is clearly a modified version of San Francisco and the Golden Gate and Marin County. It has to be less city than real ones as Sims. I like the somewhat grungy feel as realistic. It is a good city for Vampires IMO also. And as stated it can be redone from the ground up. The real city is a mix of styles from 1906 forward. It is not all modern by any means. I know as I have lived in the Bay Area and worked in San Francisco. I think EA accomplished what was wanted.

San Myshuno is mostly show and no substance. At least we have some room and can redo Bridgeport to our liking, and use most of it. A big plus for me. And we can do even more if we tweak it in CAW.

Those buildings all look terrible to me. I would not let buildings like that anywhere near a world I was making, Or if I do, in VERY limited quantities. What are some of those? Hundreds of thousands of offices? There's more people working in one of those buildings at any given time than the entire population of my city.

This is what I recognise as a city; some of this.







You can see the architecture here is extremely diverse and it works. It's like the place was built in layers super-imposed onto each other, each one it's own little time-capsule. I wanna build a city like this one but GDI, no, they have to give us this un-editable, sterile, post-modern artistic crap. x.x

There's plenty of postmodernism going on in your pictures, @ShigemiNotoge. It's just mixed in well with the rest.
And I see Bridgeport as a truly gritty, American city like New York and Chicago in the movies I loved when I was a kid. Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, Coming to America, that sort of stuff. So I have a somewhat narrow-minded and dated idea of what a city like that should look like. And as with everything, for me "the big city" is a feeling, not a defined thing. I know what I mean when I see it.
Some images from my "Bridgeport inspo" folder:






So yes, indeed, Bridgeport sucks in that regard. It fails to look like a city and if I could get Create-A-World to work, I'd probably be working on a completely new version already.

By the way, for your consideration, the world's greatest map:

I always though Bridgeport was the Sim equivalent of Seattle, with the flora, mountains and climate.

Graham has gone on record to say that the primary source of inspiration for Bridgeport was Pittsburgh. But climate-wise I guess it does bear some resemblance to Seattle.
Either way, I just can't help but shake the idea of it being a smaller version of NYC with some Chicago thrown in. But then again,
I only know America from the movies, and old movies at that. For good measure, the America-est American urban setting I can think of in that context.

I think they never really planned for Bridgeport to be like any real world city (their concept art shows it as a Genericville) much like San Myshuno, but it ended up looking like Seattle anyways via the bunch of coincidences above.

Anyway, if I'd personally redo Bridgeport it'd be a scaled up version of the main landmass, with the bridge also scaled up, maybe or two streets at the other side of it, but the rest would all be decorative. Decorative buildings, and then a distant terrain with thousands of little low-poly boxes painted like buildings. Doesn't your urban world sort of have that @jje1000 ?

Do post pictures!

Simblr, Wordpress, Reddit, the picture section....those sorts of places.

IDK if we're allowed to post images but the "What's happening in your game right now" thread has like 50 million pictures and no one's shut it down yet xD

Well if it's relevant to the current conversation here, why not just post them here?

o.o Is that the CN tower?

Also while I'm not a particular fan of the building style that's used, I'm absolutely blown away by the quality. God I miss what was possible in the sims 3.