Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

[evanator]

Wonderful stuff here as usual Battlecat. Your rural areas never cease to amaze, and now you show off your maps, and they are quite fantastic. On par with the best in the community, if not better!

Keep it up,
Evan

[DarkLoki]

Awsome maps  . I'm always interested in maps, and also in Simcity so this is a very good combination  . Must be a lot of work.

[tooheys]

This is the first time I've dropped by and I'm kicking myself for not doing so earlier.

Your agricultural and landscape work is very nice indeed  And your maps really add to the MD.

This is certainly worth following.

Cheers

Dave

[Battlecat]

Update 12 – First look at Alexandria

Greetings everyone!  Time to back away from the technical stuff for a bit and return to actually playing the game!  Today I've got a shorter update for you to provide a first look at the terrain of the Alexandria tile. 

Replies:

Matt (threestooges): Glad you found the summary useful.  Outside of FME, the ArcGIS package is capable of create shapefiles from scratch.  The short description of how starts with loading up the ArcCatalog component.  Next, navigate to your working folder and right click to create a new shapefile.  You'll need to set a coordinate system and create at least one data field or the shapefile tends to become unstable.  I recommend a UTM coordinate system since they approximate the geography as a localized square grid similar to SC4. 

Evan (Evanator): Thanks for stopping in again!  Glad you like the maps, I certainly enjoyed preparing them. 

DarkLoki: Hello once again!  Thanks for your kind words.  The maps aren't quite as time consuming to make as they look to make.  I've gone to some lengths to ensure I won't run into trouble with them like I did in Terra.  There were a lot of behind the scenes problems with the way I was handling the maps back then. 

Dave (tooheys): Welcome to Adara!  Thanks for taking the time to stop in!  I'm glad you've enjoyed the diary so far, I hope I continue to keep the quality up as we move on here!   

Ok then, here goes today's update:

12-1: Of course I can't completely abandon the mapping!  Here we have a topographic shot of Alexandria and part of Delmar Junction with the terrain and transportation showing.  It's a nice preview of how the two areas will fit together and of the new modified version of my terrain map.  I've overridden all the lower elevation colors with the pale green you see now.  Let me know what you think! 

As always with my maps, clicking on this one will bring up a slightly larger version (about 1.2 megabytes).     


12-2: And here's our first look at the local terraforming.  This picture shows the boundary with the Delmar Junction tile.  The roads and railway cross the border just to the right of the depression that will become the bed of the Denara River on this tile.  Of course it figures I would forget the grid again on these shots. 


12-2: And turning around to look the other way, there is a subtle escarpment in the flatlands here.  It's not terribly visible in this picture.  The majority of the town of Alexandria will be between the hillside and the river in this area. 


12-3: Just like last time, I'm going to get started with a rough strip of plopable water in the main riverbed. 


12-4: And the first draft roadworks.  I certainly may move the roads a touch as I continue developing the area.  You may also notice my latest addition to the growing number of plugins for Adara along the right side of the image. 


12-5: Yup, it's the latest Rural Highways.  If I recall correctly this network was just in its initial phases of development 2.5 years ago when I last played the game.  It's come an amazingly long way since then!  So, thanks for all the hard work from this area as well!  The highway runs along the edge of the escarpment. 


12-6: The textures on this network are just purely amazing.  This particular interchange structure is very common in my area except it's often built on top of dirt piles instead of on concrete supports.  In fact I may replace this in the future just for style it might actually look better than this once I start terraforming here.  This particular interchange is in the flat area in the southwest corner of the map above (alternatively, bottom left corner of the map).


That's all for today.  The first round of detailing in Alexandria is coming this way very soon!  Thanks for stopping in everyone!

[BarbarossaS]

Looking really good there, can't wait for this tile to develop!

[Simpson]

This is looking very good  the river is incredible, nice RHW 

[Splime]

This should be a good development to watch... What I do have to say is that your maps would probably take up less space if you saved them as png files. Images like maps that don't have that many colors tend to be best as png.

[tooheys]

The terrain is looking good and I particularily like the narrow TPW river. Nice work 

Dave

[Albus of Garaway]

Wow, I've missed so much while I was gone!

My favorite update so far has been the update where you styled the lake. You did that so perfectly! It reminded me of a lake I went to in the Adirondacks, with the campground next to it and all. You're so very talented with maps, too. As David said, I envy you!

[Battlecat]

Update 13 – Back on the Farm

Hello everyone, here we are at the end of another month!  It's been a busy week, but I've still managed to put together a quick update. 

Replies:

BarbarossaS: Thanks!  Hope you like the first bit of development

David (Simpson): Thanks for your kind words!  The rural highway is very nice to use.

Splime: Welcome to Adara!  Thanks for reminding me about png format.  With these maps the file size is a few kb larger, but more importantly, the compression system doesn't blur the lines.  Today I've got a png map that should be a significant improvement. 

Dave (tooheys): Thanks!  Glad you like it so far.  I may widen the river in spots, the initial plop of water gives me some guidance for placing the initial roads and railway.

Albus of Garaway: Good to see you again!  The beauty of these forums is that all the updates are here waiting when you get back.  I really love that lake too.  It reminds me of several campgrounds out here in British Columbia as well. 

As always, thanks to everyone for taking the time to visit, even if you don't have time to comment!  Now, one with the pictures!  I'll be honest, I've had a bit of builder's block this week with respect to starting the urban area, so I fell back to something I'm familiar with, namely farmland. 

13-1: First things first, here's a context map showing the location of today's update.  I should be able to use these to improve the clarity on which part of the area I'm working on in a given update! 


13-2: So here's the initial zoning out in this area.


13-3: And the first batch of satisfactory farms.  I like most of them; this and the next shot were actually taken in winter.  But the farm with the pale green field needs some work.


13-4: I think some Rural Renwal Project fences, trails and cows should help brighten up that one farm. 


13-5: And here's a close up of the farm homestead area with nearly finished detailing. 


13-6: Now the river needs some work.  Here's the river after the first pass with some of the Rural Renwal flora.  Specifically I'm using the marshland, bulrushes and the one of the tall grasses.


13-7: And here's a quick overview of the area as it stands now.  Still a long way to go here, but it's coming along.  These shots were taken in the summer, so all the fields look much nicer.


13-8: Finally just for something different today, I've got my first mosaic.  This particular mosaic is a cross border shot along the highway from the new bulb farm today through to the neighboring area on the Delmar Junction tile.  There are a couple of small mistakes that I can see here and there might be something I can do to polish up that seam next time.  For now It should to, and with these pictures I can go back a polish it up for next time. 




That's all for now everyone.  See you again soon!

[BarbarossaS]

Wow, my jaw just dropped to the ground. I'm trying to create the same look as you when it comes to my rural area's
but can't seem to get it to work for me 
and then I come here again and see you do it, and you make it look so easy, everything's in balance. (though I doubt
it's really that easy for you either, you've probably just got a lot more patience than me  )

I really like the mosiac, nice how you made it cross border, don't think I've seen that before 

[io_bg]

Great update. Your MD always inspires me (even when I'm fed up with the game)

[thundercrack83]

Congratulations, Battlecat!



- The Staff

[BarbarossaS]

Congrats on special interest of the month, you certainly deserve it!

[rooker1]

Congrats on the move to OSITM.

13.5 is one of my favourite farming pics of all time, I think.  I hope to see alot more pics like that one this month.  If this is going to be the case, it's going to be a special month indeed.

Robin 

[FrankU]

Congratulations from me too!

And indeed beautiful pictures and really nice rural work... Almost makes me want to do a rural area again...

[io_bg]

Congratulations on this well deserved award!

[bat]

Great rural area there! And wonderful pictures there in your MD! Also congrats for that award!

[kbieniu7]

Congratulations  You're making beautiful rural areas.

[Fabian93]

Congratulations to being an "OSITM"  
It's really deserved, and I've never seen a mosaic over two city tiles yet, must have been pretty hard to match the pictures well.
Well done