Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

[Albus of Garaway]

First of all, congratulations on your one year anniversary here at SC4D! I've really enjoyed viewing your MD despite my frequent absence. Your work just keeps getting better!

Your shores looked incredible this update. I think those mudflats and marshes really added to the variety. 88-12 is especially great.

Jason

[threestooges]

Happy Anniversary Battlecat! Sorry I haven't posted for your last few updates, but I've certainly been keeping an eye on them. Your trick with the marshes has meshed with something I saw at the railroad museum today. Your results look so good though, I hope I can do justice to what I'm thinking. 88.13 looks like it would make a great blending method from game water to plop too (or at least river to lake). Nicely done.
-Matt

[kwakelaar]

I have had a little catching up to do, and as always it has been enjoyable looking through the updates I have been missing. Winfield turned out very nice, and the overview's both with maps and satellite compositions are very good.
I think the new style of marshes is a clever way of doing the lake embankments both for realism and for breaking up areas that can become too monotone.
I am impressed that you have managed to keep going for now over a year with this very detailed style of building in simcity.

[warconstruct]

your job is very great 

[Stray Cat]

OK.  I have finally made it through all the previous 45 pages and wow...you are truly one of the great masters of this game Battlecat.  You have an uncanny ability to capture the essence of a scene.  You remind of that painter...Bob Ross with your jaw-dropping ability to visualize a scene and just make it appear.  A big thank you for the inspiration of your MD.  I think I might just have to try one now.

Cheers!

Scott

[Bobbi]

Great update! And congratulations on your one year anniversary.

[Battlecat]

Ethan (ecoba): The large composites are really just mosaics on a grand scale.  It's not too hard, you just have to be very methodical about taking the pictures!  Glad you like the new detailing, I'll try to continue improving my techniques.

mightygoose: Glad you like the marshland, I'm pleased it turned out so nicely!  Thanks for the congrats!

Nardo69: I agree entirely on your sentiment, sometimes things come more easily than others!  In this particular case, it is one of those things I really hope I'll be able to follow up on!  Ideas are free, so I'm looking forward to someday seeing your take on the concept! 

Uniform shorelines are a hard thing to avoid.  Near the end of Winfield, I got a bit wrapped up in a personal style and wound up forgetting to vary that style much.  I did make the mistake of leaving far too much shoreline until the last minute though.  I plan to take a much more scenic approach to Ellison Flats.  Thanks as always for visiting and for your thoughts!

Tomas Neto: Thanks very much!

canyonjumper: Thanks for your kind words!  Yes, I do find Riverholm by ShultzCity particularly impressive.  There's also fantastic work in many other MD's that have started up recently, it's nice to see new ideas continuing to enter the community!

Jacob (ShultzCity): Thanks very much for both you kind words and for providing excellent inspiration!

sumwonyuno: Thanks very much for the congrats!  I'm glad you like the city tile picture, I'll try to put more of those together some day in the future.

Connor: Thank you for the kind words and congrats! 

bat: Thanks very much!  Good to hear you enjoyed the special items for today's update!

metarvo: Thanks for your congratulations!  There's so much good flora to choose from now it's getting hard to decide some days!

nedalezz: Glad you enjoyed the anniversary update!  That marshy area did come together nicely.  Thanks for stopping by!

djvandrake: Thanks very much! 

Fred (mrbisonm): Thanks for taking the time to stop in, glad you like the farms!  I'm really happy the swampy area is getting such a positive response!

turtle: Thanks for stopping in, hope things are going/went well for your trip!  Glad you like the improvements to the shoreline technique.  I've still got more I want to tweak, but I'm getting happier with the results!

Scott (Stray Cat): First, welcome to Adara, glad to make it official!  Thanks for your congratulations on the anniversary!  The effect you describe seeing at those lakes near Calgary is very much what I'm shooting for.  I've got a couple islands on the lake already, but you're right that there could be more.  Fortunately I'm not committed to the rough shoreline, so I can add a few more in!  Also, that is an amazing photo, a very beautiful scene indeed!

There is wildlife in the game attached to a lot of the forest brushes, but they don't tend to stand still.  There are brushes for cattle and other farm animals, maybe there is also on for wild animals.  Glad you found the farming advice helpful as well!  Hope to see you around again soon.

Daryl (daryl7478): Adara is primarily rural, but I do intend to have some major cities in here in the future as well.  They really aren't a priority though; Winfield is the largest I'll be building for a while here.  Scale is a bit quirky in this game; I've got a discussion planned on that in the future which should be interesting.  I've always found thundercrack83's Commonwealth of Marathon quite inspiring, particularly how he carefully fills in every little corner.  Thanks for stopping by!

Geoff (calibanX): Thanks very much for your congrats!  I'm pleased you're still finding the step by step style interesting after all this time!  The marsh experiment is going quite nicely, actually I think I've got an idea to mesh this style with game water as well, but I'll play with that when I actually get to a tile where there is game water!  Glad you like the results so far.

Jason (Albus of Garaway): Thanks, glad to see you still stopping by on occasion!  I appreciate your enthusiasm and kind words!  Also, thanks for providing the 900th post in Adara!

Matt (threestooges): Thanks very much!  No worries, I know how life is!  Glad you've enjoyed the marsh work; I'm looking forward to seeing your interpretation in Greenacre!

kwakelaar: Thanks for stopping in once again, glad you enjoyed catching up!  I'm really hunting for methods to break up monotony, I've got some more ideas I'll be playing with on shorelines here in the future!  I'm pretty happy I've managed to keep up this pace as well, even if I've only managed to finish 5 large city tiles so far! 

warconstruct: Thanks!  Glad you've enjoyed it!

Scott (Stray Cat) #2: Thanks for stopping in again!  Very cool, it's quite the long trip to read through all of Adara!  Thanks for taking the time to look at all those old shots!  I really appreciate your praise, it means a great deal.  Although, I have to say, I'm really glad I'm doing this and not painting!  At least I can use the bulldozer when things don't work out!  Glad you found this all inspiring, I certainly hope to see you take a shot at making an MD sometime! 

Bobbi: Thanks very much for your kind words and congratulations!

Update 89
Ellison Flats – One more Set of Farms

Despite my best efforts, there was just no way for me to get an update of any sort put together for Friday.  And even worse, I lost a couple hours work because I forgot to save and then the game crashed because I did something dumb!  But I've got a small update for you today in spite of all that.  Today I'm going to push the last few blocks of farmland up to the approximate location of the future urban edge.  I'll also be getting started on the suburban road networks. 

89-1: Here are the farms I'm going to manage to develop and detail today.  I was hoping to get a bit more done, but the computer crash messed that up. 


89-2: I added one more farm.  The one on the right side took a while to develop something I liked in the location.  It's really annoying because I got the perfect farm on the first try last time.  That'll teach me to remember to turn on the auto-saving utility.


89-3: The farm down by the railway tracks has been converted to strawberries.  All I need now are some details right along the retaining wall here.  I've already started adding a few, but more is needed.


89-4: Some more shrubs and a few trees really makes the wall fit in better.


89-5: I very quickly detailed in this area, nothing fancy here just the usual details for under the power lines. 


89-6: Finally something that I like.  I'm not always a fan of the maxis apple orchard, but it just feels right here.  Also, I'm getting tired of bulldozing farms that don't work here.


89-7: There's a fair amount of machinery that has to travel through orchards so the grassy edges are necessary.


89-8: And the details are even more important here.  No trees here though. 


89-9: You can see I'm pretty much done the area on the far side of the stream.  I'll be getting that stream in and detailed as I start getting the first bits of residential suburbs in place.  I've already got a couple of streets in place.


89-10: This is going to be the edge of urban development, pushed right up to the farmland.  It's going to cross the border here, so I'm quickly getting the streets in place.  This is how things look before I apply the cross border street trick.


89-11: And here we are afterwards.  This trick really makes all the difference for me, it removes a lot of major restrictions for styles of development and it makes creating cross border mosaics so much easier!


89-12: Last shot for today, I finally managed to get the rail, street and powerlines completed through the length of this tile on the rural side of the map.  It might not look like much, but it has been a huge pain getting those streets in place over there! 


Sadly, that's all for today.  I'll have more for you on Wednesday but I'm not sure what it'll be yet!  See you then!

[Cyclone1001]

Very nice! I can't wait to see more.

[Stray Cat]

I love the attention to detail you use with your farms and how the details around the farms are considered.  The use or exclusion of foliage around the overpass walls is a prime example of that masterful attention to detail.  Great work Battlecat.   

[Nardo69]

Okay, there's one thing VERY FUNDAMENTAL in this update I had to criticize but before I'll tell what I like:

I do love the flats that is cut through by railway and the RHW and I do love that creak meandering its way throught the flats.

I would love the thoughts you made about the fields to the left and the right of the retaing walls of the overpass. I could have even accepted that green embankments would be more logical that rather expensive retaining walls.

BUT

IT IS NEVER THE RAILWAY THAT GOES OVER OR UNDER any street/road/highway!

It's a question of history - railways usually have been built before highways - and adhesion - rubber tires on asphalt is way better that steel wheels on steel rails - and of maximum weight. Thinking of European dimensions it's the 40 (metric) ton truck versus the 4000 (metric) ton freight train (but only on perfectly flat terrain - it's way less on even the slightest slope!). In the USA not only trucks are heavier but especially freight trains!

So - I am not really happy to say it that drastically - you might think about the whole oberpass's and RHW's layout ...

Sorry ... but being Nardo69 I cannot do different ...

Take care my friend!


Bernhard 

[kimcar]

I did a sneak peak overview of your work , cause it`s the first time that i do a comment of your work and i have to said that you have a great skill for build realistic area and layout  looking forward . Sorry for not comming before

[sumwonyuno]

Heh, demolishing farms, especially diagonal ones, are    There has to be a better way to determine what grows on an agriculture zone.

[ecoba]

Ellison Flats' farmland is really turning to be out more dense then the rest of Adara's, but I'm feeling that it serves it's purpose as being just out side of Adara's large city.

I have to disagree with Bernhard on this topic, though. I think that rail overpasses are fine as long as they are properly graded, which yours is. I also think that the retaining walls have been blended in perfectly in the area, and the area looks very natural, IMO. I also can't wait to see the suburbs on Winfield, so I hope that we can go there soon!

Ethan

[Albus of Garaway]

I'm not quite sure where I stand on Bernhard's issue, but I would like to make a comment on one of your road intersections.

In picture 89-5, the turning lands look slightly out of place. I don't think one would expect to find them in a rural area such as this. Everything else, however, looks fabulous. I especially love how you blended in those retaining walls.

Jason

[ShultzCity]

Wonderful! I love the way you can create a scene without restrictions by the borders. I think that is what makes this MD so special. Not many people will go to the effort to do what you do. 

As for what Bernhard said, I don't mind the overpass. In Australia there are many times where rail goes over major (and only major) roads.

Great work, loving what you are doing.
Jacob

[djvandrake]

Looking great!  Really making progress and it's coming together nicely. 

[canyonjumper]

Excellent update, Battlecat! Those retaining walls look great!

                -Jordan

[Nanami]

As always I say: great! Nice job!

[Tomas Neto]

Nice update, great work again!!!

[io_bg]

Excellent update, however I'm afraid I'll have to agree with Nardo about the railway overpass.