Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

[canyonjumper]

Wow! That region view is spectacular! I followed Ioan's footsteps  ! And the mosaics are awesome too! Waiting eagerly to see Ellison Flats or whatever you end up naming it.

Hey Jacob, those sports fields are SFBT Sports Pitch Set by T Wrecks, found here !

Ethan, you should look at prices for Surrey...

            -Jordan

[djvandrake]

Absolutely first rate work!!! 

You've done a fantastic job of bringing together your entire landscape and cityscape, and making them harmonious.  I really like the water and the bridge. 

[bat]

That is looking really beautiful again! Another great update...
Looking forward to update 85!

[Tomas Neto]

Awesome update!!! Fantastic city and region too!!!

[sumwonyuno]

Heh, I've missed so many updates as they were created!   

That is a lot of water to plop!  Winfield has turned out nice, and the median housing price is a bargain. 

[FrankU]

Hi,
I haven't posted for a while, but by seeing the latest developments I cannot keep silent.
It is a real fine region that you are building here. In every picture so many beautiful details.

Just one point of comment: the shores of the lake look a bit too uniform in my opinion. I think the sight would be even more realistic if the shores would be wider or narrower at several points.

[Battlecat]

io_bg: Thanks very much!  Every overview is really started to add depth to the region, I'm really happy with this one as well!  It's really taking all my willpower some days not to go nuts with rapid development.  But the slow and steady approach has worked well for me so far!  I would love to do a higher detail regional composite, but I'm really worried about the file size.  Maybe I'll try one tile and see how it turns out.   

ShultzCity: Honestly, this is taking incredible patience on my part as well.  I'd love to be finishing these tiles faster, but my detailed approach doesn't make that possible.  At least there's a lot of room for variety on these large tiles, particularly since most of the tiles are split between several different terrain styles.  For example, the next tile is going to have urban suburbs, urban industrial, rural farmland and rural logging/recreational forest at a minimum.  I can just switch from one to another when I get bored.  That's what keeps me going, the incredible variety of options.

One thing to consider though, you don't have to approach the region the way I am.  The only critical thing regional realism really requires is some care when you approach the border.  Everything else is flexible!  You can leave large undeveloped gaps and leap around the region like the traditional method, just take some care to think about how various things cross the border.  One major reason I do things this way is for the payoff ever time I finish the tile.  These updates showing the completed tile are among my favorites!

Those orange fields were part of the massive SFBT Advent Calender release through the Christmas Break.  The plopable European style farms were also part of that same release.  The sports fields are here on the LEX.  Thanks very much for your support! 

Cyclone1001: Thanks, that was my goal!  Glad it worked! 

Rady: Thanks very much, glad you found some inspiration here!

Ethan (ecoba): Thanks!  Quite a few aspects of Winfield Westside do make them stand out.  It's far larger and more urban than any other city in the region.  It's also got the highest concentration of custom single family homes in the region since I acquired a lot of new house mods relatively recently.  And as you pointed out, there are more commercial and residential towers anywhere else in the region so far. 

The relatively small number of farms here also makes a difference.  I'll be transitioning back to farmland at the south end of Ellison Flats and also further up the valley east of Winfield in the future.  Most of the land through Jackson Pass and Winfield is either not terribly suitable for farming or it's been run under by urban development. 

Housing in Kelowna is incredibly expensive.  You're right that there are some affordable homes around.  The cheapest I found on a quick mls search was about 179k.  It very quickly ramps up though, and the average home does fall around the 400 – 500k mark. 

Jordan (canyonjumper): Thanks very much for the complement!  I love large scale views!  Also, thanks for taking the time to answer ShultzCity's question!

djvandrake: Thanks!  Glad to hear I'm achieving the goal I've set out for myself!

bat: Thanks very much for your kind words! 

Tomas Neto: Thanks very much!

sumwonyuno: I've been dropping these updates in pretty rapidly of late!  It was a huge amount of plopable water, but I think the result was well worth it.  It's really nice to be able to make a large lake at elevation!

I supposed a 400K home would be pretty cheap by your local standards!  Thanks for stopping in! 

FrankU: Good to see you stopping in again.  I agree on your assessment of the shorelines, I've been working on improving my techniques further and I plan to do some more variety on the next tile.  Thanks for the kind comments and suggestion! 

Update 85
Winfield – Maps

Here we are at the final major update visit for Winfield!  It's been a fun trip and a lot more fun that I expected.  I'm looking forward to more urban work in the future, but there's also a lot of room for rural work!  Today I've got some maps of Winfield, the region and a quick preview look at Ellison Flats! 

85-1: Here is the map of Winfield and Westside.  The only problem with the technique I'm using to make these whole tile maps is they are a little hard to read. 



85-2: Fortunately, I'm not limited to showing you the entire tile at once.  This is Westside.  Sadly, I just don't have time to put road names together for you this time around.



85-3: And the completed portion of Winfield.  I just stretched the map design to obtain a nice high resolution view. 




85-4: This map shows the entire region with all the cities highlighted in context.  Clicking this map will take you to a high resolution regional shot using the gmap uploader.  Even more fun, I've included Ellison Flats on this version of the map.  It's a rough draft, subject to change as I begin getting the region sorted out.  There are a couple other glitches that I'll have to fix, but that can wait until I polish off Ellison Flats.


That's all for today!  Next update will be the first full update for Ellison Flats.  Time to get back to the basics!  See you later!

[ecoba]

A very interesting update. The maps of Winfield are very interesting. The highway through the city makes for a very nice touch to the map.

Short comment today, I hope to see some in-game pics of Ellison Flats soon...

Ethan

[canyonjumper]

Your maps are well done! Westside and Winfield actually remind me of Kelowna and Westbank West Kelowna (I know they renamed it but I don't recall what to ). Looking forward to Ellis Flats!

               -Jordan

EDIT: Google is your friend

[djvandrake]

Great map! Really interesting and well done.

[scott1964]

Nice update and maps. One question, how did you make the maps? 

[Tomas Neto]

Fantastic map and great update!!!

[sumwonyuno]

The maps are  .

[nedalezz]

Loving the maps! I always wanted to do something like that for my regions but I have no idea how, or where to begin. Great update.

[Battlecat]

Ethan (ecoba): Thanks!  I'm having a lot of fun with the highways here; the RHW really does look fantastic these days!  Hope you enjoy today's first look at Ellison Flats. 

Jordan (canyonjumper): Yeah they really went with the simple name there, but I suppose it does link them to Kelowna nicely!  Glad you found them similar, Winfield and Westside were inspired by the relationship between those two real cities.  Also glad you enjoyed the maps!
 
djvandrake: Thanks, glad you like them!

scott1964: Thanks very much!  I use several different mapping programs that I use for my work as well.  I described the software and basics back in Update 11.  The raw data is traced from in game screenshots of the various data views, and the contour lines are extracted from the black and white PNG that can be exported from SC4 Terraformer. 

I tend towards a slightly more complex process than most other map makers here simply because that's the approach I'm comfortable with from my work.  Beyond that, the map production mostly involves choosing the right colors, and line styles.  I'm still experimenting to try and find a satisfactory appearance.  Hope this helps answer your question!

Tomas Neto: Thanks very much! 

sumwonyuno: Thanks! 

nedalezz: Thanks very much!  It takes me a fair amount of time to put these maps together, glad you like the results!  A screenshot of the transport network map makes a pretty good starting point, which you can trace on a clean layer in photoshop.  Thundercrack83 put together an excellent tutorial that covers using photoshop to make transportation maps.  Hope this helps you out!

Update 86
Ellison Flats – Introduction

Welcome to Ellison Flats!  As you all voted, this will be the sixth tile to be developed in Adara.  This is going to be an unusual tile since there won't actually be a new city called Ellison Flats introduced here.  Ellison Flats is simply the name of the southern portion of the City of Winfield, specifically the industrial area which first began it's existance as a major lumber mill.  Unlike the land in Westside, this industrial site has slowly moved to warehouses and a bit of high tech industry to support the rapid growth of Winfield.  But that's only one small part of a fairly large tile, so let's have a look at what's coming up. 

86-1: It's a bit challenging in these first couple of shots to orient to the region since there are no reference points.  We are at the south end of Ellison Flats facing North West.  The lake would be in the center of this shot and beyond the ridge to the top of the shot is a small valley that will be served by a gravel road and an STR line.  I like these clean shots, but the next one should help illustrate things a bit better. 


86-2: What you see here is a shot with the contours on.  I swear I didn't plan this, but as it turns out, Williston Lake is just barely at the elevation of the top of one of the contour lines.  As a result, it happens to spread out across the area giving the impression of a rough lake bed.  This isn't exactly what the lake will look like, but it has been a really nice guide! 


86-3: Right here you can see all the transport networks crossing the border from the Winfield tile.  There's going to be some fun with border matching in this area. 


86-4: From a bit further out with the lake on, it's a lot easier to see exactly where the lakeshore falls. 


86-5: Here we have just a quick shot to illustrate the sheer diversity of networks crossing into this area.  Everything here has been converted to the appropriate styles already and is ready to go!


86-6: For fun  I decided to go with a fraction angle railway on the West side of the lake.  The orientation of the mountainside is appropriate for this railway style and it was actually easier to put together than I expected.  Somewhere in here I'm also going to have to cross the railway tracks since I need to provide access to that border crossing clear cut.  I'll do more with that when I work on the border matching in this area.


86-7: The railway will wind its way along the lake shore.  I've used wide radius curves as much as possible, but it's just not doable in a couple places due to serious space limitations.  I'll have to think on alternate solutions, but this is probably just a location trains will have to slow down.   There's also the stub of a branch line in this image, I'll be added a small lumber mill here. 


86-8: Another interesting thing to note, there is a railway line through Winfield at the south side.  This line will run through to the highlands in the tiles east of Winfield, taking advantage of the long distance to help keep the grade clean through the rough steep terrain at the north end of Williston Lake.  For the moment, it also provides the option for a nice rail served industrial site in the area.  Here it crosses the highway on it's way up into the highland area.


86-9: From a bit further out, it's much easier to see the railway entering this area.  The main industrial site will be down near the water.  I'll be branching the line off somewhere in here.  The terminus and maintenance yard for the GLR system will also be in this area.  I think I'm going to tweak the layout of the railway there though.


86-10 The other border crossing location is the STR and gravel road valley.  This is a very isolated area.  There will both mining and logging in this valley, both served by small rail facilities.  I'm going to try replacing those corners with wide raidus curves later, but time was running out when I took this shot.


86-11: Further up the valley, the railway branches here and there.  This is mostly just me sketching out ideas.  I may change the layout here later.  It also crosses the border to the Lehman Valley tile (south of Vavenby).  This connection here is one of the reasons Lehman Valley wasn't one of the options provided in the vote.  I'll be trying to avoid the annoyance I ran into in Salmo when the town wasn't actually connected to the rest of the region. 


86-12: Originally I was going to leave the update at 11 shots.  But instead I have one more map for you.  This map shows the rough plan for the southern part of Winfield and the Ellison Flats industrial area.  Naturally this is subject to the whim of change once I actually get to work and it doesn't mean that every square inch will be filled in the area.  It should give you all an illustration of where I'm going with this though.  I'm not committing to anything on the West side of the lake; I'm really not sure where I'm going with that area yet.



The farmland is preparation for the area I'll be moving into on the next tile.  The south end of Williston Lake will be on the next tile. 

I wish I had more shots for you today, but sadly real life just didn't make that possible.  On the bright side, I think I'll be getting started on the farmland for the next update since the simulator prefers to develop farms first.  I'm also going to try to streamline growth on this tile, with the idea of finishing this tile more quickly.  On the other hand, I don't want to sacrifice quality, so we'll see what happens.  See you later!

[bat]

The Maps are really nice! Also nice introduction to that new part of your region!

[nedalezz]

Man, cant wait for the actual development shots. I like the idea of having an area developed, then the area across the river (lake) completed undeveloped and filled with trees. It would make one heck of a panoramic shot!

[canyonjumper]

Nice intro! Like Nedalezz said, you could have the West side undeveloped, like the real location. Great plans, and I'm looking forward to whatever you do !

                       -Jordan

[Cyclone1001]

Very nice, I like farms...

[TiFlo]

Mmmm, that sounds interesting. I'm looking forward to see what you're going to do with that industrial area. And to the regional shot when that lake is finally completed (I'll be patient).