Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

[Earth quake]

It's a superbe update Battlecat.
the last picture is 

[kwakelaar]

Always a plesure to have a look here in Adara, and wow! 500 replies, congratulations on reaching the Classics, and very well deserved it is.
Sometimes it is nice to have a look at night lights, and going back to look at everything you have made so far was great.
The work on the scary road is very good and the lake side cabins perfect for the spot.

[Tomas Neto]

Awesome work again my friend!!! Fantastic as always!!! 

[ecoba]

Very nice update, my friend.

The exurbs, as you call them, (I've never heard that term before), are very beautiful, and that's the best place I've ever seen the Maxis R$ homes used. I like those docks, do you happen to know who they're by? I might find a use for them eventually, maybe soon. I like that hairpin section, I really like mountain roads, and I'd expect you know a lot about them, up in British Columbia. Exactly where in BC do you live? we were considering about moving up there a year or two ago, but decided against it.

Good to see that you might be making some smooth curves. I'd happily test them because I'm sure I could easily find some places in my region for 'em. Could we maybe see a region shot of Adara soon? not just the completed tiles too, the whole shabam!

Ethan

[calibanX]

Nice custom work. I like the little docks, and that winding road with the hairpin curves looks quite treacherous. I would hate to see one of those truckers go over with a load of flammable liquid....wait, I would like to see that.

Geoff

[BarbarossaS]

Wow, excellent update. I like the way you made that winding road. Also, it's great you worked out your own textures.
Maybe someone could help to make the TE.
I love your shoreline, but I think two of those docks are way to light compared to the rest of the lake.
Otherwise splendid! 

-Stijn-

[djvandrake]

Very nice update!  I'm always impressed with you skill in dealing with diagonals.  Looks very natural and realistic. 

[sumwonyuno]

That curving road is awesome!

[Battlecat]

Vivien (Earth quake): Thanks very much, glad you enjoyed the update!

kwakelaar: Thanks very much for your congrats!  I still find it hard to believe how quickly this year has flown by already.  I'll be going back to the night lights a bit more regularly going forward, I think of that last update as making up for lost time!

Tomas Neto: Thanks for stopping in and for your kind words! 

Ethan (ecoba): Glad you like the term, it was actually provided by Zack (woodb3kmaster) a few updates ago, apparently he found it in a book.  Glad you like how the maxis homes worked in there, there are also some custom lots in there.  The docks I've used so far come from two different sources.  The narrow, dark brown ones are from one of Simgoober's prop packs, not sure which one though.  They are among the items being modded to mayor mode plopables by hooha47 here though which is how I figured their existence.  The other ones are very old, created by johnb.  They can be found here on the STEX. 

I live in a city called Abbotsford about an hours drive from Vancouver on the Trans Canada Highway.  I've lived in this region most of my life.  My family has always been very into camping and hiking though, so I've traveled a fair bit of the west coast of North America in my life.  I've even made a road trip as far as Monterey Bay in California once.  However, the best experience of BC I've ever had was one summer job about 6 years ago had me driving all over the province, I covered 28,000 km of BC over the course of 5 months.  I've seen some pretty crazy roads! 

Sadly, I've crashed into a wall with actually developing those smooth curves as transit enabled lots.  I've seen plenty that work fine, and I've replicated them faithfully as far as I know, but they still block car traffic.  From what I've read, it may have something to do with traffic flowing out in the opposite direction to it flowing in (the 180 degree turn).  The only way I can think of to get them really working would be creating them as NAM puzzle pieces at this point.  I'll certainly happily provide the textures if someone else wants to take a stab at the modding. 

Your request to see the whole shabam of Adara is actually more challenging than you might think!  However, since you asked I'll put together an overview of the entire region as it stands so far, and my long term plans for the region and this MD as part of my introduction to Tile #5.   As I mentioned a ways back, I've gone a long ways beyond Rediscovering SC4, and what with my arrival in classics it's probably time to clarify my goals here!  Stay tuned, that update should be some time next week assuming I don't get blindsided by real life!  Glad you're enjoying your visits so much!

Geoff (calibanX): Yeah, that road would be pretty treacherous!  An accident like that would be quite impressive, although deadly!  Fortunately for the local trucking industry, I've put a truck traffic blocker in place now.  Thanks for stopping by!

Stijn (BarbarossaS): Thanks for your kind words!  I'll probably go back and make another attempt at the curves in the future.  I'm sure it's something very silly I'm forgetting.  Glad you like the shoreline.  I put in those other two docks to improve the diversity of styles.  I'm still trying to track down additional options for the future though. 

djvandrake: Thanks, diagonals are challenging in this game, but we have a lot of good tools to work with them now.

sumwonyuno: Thanks, glad you like it!

Update 58
Jackson Pass – Finishing Touches

Here we are for the last blast to wrap up Jackson Pass!  Today I'll finish detailing the lake, add in the missing trees and polish off one small patch of undeveloped land with a couple more small farms.  Enjoy!

58-1: To start, I'm going to continue with the lakeshore detailing below Salmo.  You might remember this unfinished trail. 


58-2: I've decided a small picnic area and a fairly sandy beach should do the trick here. 


58-3: Moving along the shoreline, a few outcrops of darker stone dot break up the simple grassy shore. 


58-4: Below Salmo, I added the remnants of a few older rockslides.  Here's a close look at one of them, I've tried a different type of rock here along with Peg's to fill in the gaps. 


58-5: A bit further along, a bit of creative water plopping resulted in this low elevation outcropping.  When the lake is at its absolute highest, this might be covered in shallow water, hence the absence of trees. 


58-6: Zooming out a bit, here's the context of all the details below Salmo.  I've added deciduous trees to the slope because it just looked to empty.  You might notice that there aren't any trees above the two rock fall remnants.  That's partly because the slope is too steep, and partially for realism. 


58-7: Swinging the view around, here's the finished view of the lake from Cliffside Road. 


58-8: And another shot from a bit further along Cliffside Road. 


58-9: Next, I spent almost 30 minutes carefully filling in the treeless areas.  One nice thing about this particular terrain texture is the fact that trees actually look pretty good on it.  Mt Garibaldi is now finished, and while it still has a fair number of bare stone areas, there aren't nearly as many now.  I think I've found a happy medium for this area. 


58-10: Now there's one last area to take care of.  This area has some minor terracing and another minor narrow river flowing through it.  I'm going to put another small farm on the upper terrace and a small set of exurbs in the lower area.       


58-11: First of all the farm.  My goal here is a simple little crop farm tucked onto this outcrop. 


58-12: It took a while, but this corn farm finally grew in place.  I quickly did a batch of detailing including some fences along the steeper slope edges, I figure they'll keep the tractor from rolling off the edge. 


58-13: Before I fire up the simulator to synchronize the farm fields, I'm going to add one small block of exurbs here.  As with the set by the lake, this will carry a small distance onto the neighboring tile. 


58-14: I'm going to be a bit less strict about the home styles here.  These will do the job quite nicely.  You can also see the main power feed for the area approaching the edge of town. 


58-15: Detailing to fill in the trees.  The homes on the edge of the map will look better once there's actually something next door. 


58-16: Here's a look at the corn farm from another angle.  The power line come down the mountain near the place. 


58-17: I'll wrap up today with a quick night shot.  With the truck blocker in place, there's a fair bit of traffic on the highway now.  Here some cars are rounding the corner to the tile edge.


And that's it, that's all!  Jackson Pass is officially completed.  Coming in the next update or two we've got maps, composites and more.  Then it's onto Tile #5, also currently know as Tile 1-4x4.  I'll explain what that means along with the rest of Ethan's request after the next one or two updates.

[Dreamcat]

Hi Battlecat.  Has Adara been getting a lot of love?  Good.  This update is wonderful.  The lakeside houses look oh-so realistic.  Reminds me of a picture on Google Earth, it was so similar to that.  I also love your trail work.  Great job.

I think what I love most about Adara is how you correspond Adara to real life, like in that outcropping with your explanation.  I just looked at that, and I just said to myself, "Wow, I never would have thought of that."  Amazing!

[sumwonyuno]

The landslides and the low elevation outcroppings are pretty realistic to add in.  Heh, the filling of the trees turned out nicely. 

[danielcote]

Nice job on finishing the lake! I especially enjoy the picnic aria and landslide.

[clearlypowa]

Wonderful MD and nice update 

[threestooges]

Amazing work as always, and I'm sorry I haven't gotten in to comment for the last couple updates. 56-6 is an excellently done farm. The way it's nestled right up against the hill is perfect; a hidden little gem on the road. 58-16 caught my attention from this update for one main reason. The right of way clearance you've cut for the poles really stands out here. Nice job on that. It's a subtle touch, but it adds so much to the level of realism here. If I can get around to  it soon enough, I may have something for you and others that can help with things like that in some small way. Nice work as always.
-Matt

[ecoba]

Great update, once again, Battlecat.

I like the way that you completely perfect each tile, going one by one until you complete the region. I wish I had the patience to do this with large tiles, but unfortunately, I don't. I'm working on a small tile at the moment and this is even pushing it's limits with me. So, I feel that a large tile region is going to pose challenges with me, maybe that's why I haven't started development on my newly rendered region.

Jackson Pass has turned out to be quite a different quad than all the other's seen so far, at least in my eyes. (Which may have quite a different view than anyone else on the planet.). I think that this is mainly because of the predominant use of PPonds for Salmo's lake, and the town of Salmo itself. This difference seems that it may also come from the use of the RHW-2 as a highway through the corner of the tile. Nonetheless, even with this being a nice change, I prefer the roads as through routes at the moment, obviously printing itself in my mind as to the lack of RHW-2 smooth curves. Although this problem will be rectified with the release of v4.0, at least accordng to Alex (Tarkus).

I'll be back and reporting for posting duty with the next Adara quad as soon as you're ready for me to be to.

Ethan

[djvandrake]

Great update!    Your landscapes always look so good.   

[Earth quake]

Excellent update.
The lake is just splendid and your landscape is 

[adroman]

Simply awesome, Battlecat!

Sorry I haven't been around much, I've been a bit busy 

That lake and picnic area is something to Envy, I wish I had the time to do something like that, though, it probably wouldn't parallel your work here...

The farming area is stunning... keep it up!

Havva good one,
Adrian.

[Bobbi]

Very great!

[dsrwhat316]

The lake and surrounding forests look amazing! The private boat docks are a nice touch  Great work!

~ Dan