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Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

Started by Battlecat, February 10, 2009, 06:39:50 PM

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ecoba

A really nice update, Battlecat.

I like the detail that you are showing us on how you are making the borders as seamless as possible. The way that you are growing the farms to match is really interesting, and it seems like it must be troublesome to grow the farms as they won't have road access or an anchor building if half is on one side of the border, and the front is on the other.

I also really like the details on the RHW and Road right-of way. The power poles and grasses really add such a level of detail that I can swear some of your pictures are from real-life.

Ethan

canyonjumper

Great transitions Battlecat! Some of those shots you've got... Keep up the excellent work!

              Your friend,
                             Jordan :thumbsup:
I'm the one who jumped across the Grand Canyon... and lived.

Battlecat

#1142

Joe (JoeST): Yeah, maybe we'll find a solution to that issue someday.  The easiest one I can think of would be the single tile fillers like what was done for the SAM street curves, but I have no idea how simple that solution is or if it's even possible.  Thanks, glad you liked the update!

Cyclone1001: Thanks very much!

kimcar: Thanks for your kind words!

Jacob (ShultzCity): Thanks!  When it comes to the FAR stuff, there are three things I've found to deal with them.  Either I'll ignore the gaps, fill the gaps as best I can with diagonal fillers or create some custom fractional angle fillers.  I'll probably be doing all three of them here depending on the situation!  Hope you find some inspiration when I start working on those areas. 

18 degrees C is exceptionally warm for this part of BC; it's been a very warm and dry winter by BC standards.  As such we've had much the same shouting about climate change!  I've always preferred to think of "global warming" as climate instability.  A warmer atmosphere means more energy in the weather system and more flow of energy from the equator to the poles.  While the weather theoretically would tend to be warm across the globe, what we'll get at the local level is more extremes.  In short, wet weather is wetter, dry weather is dryer, warm weather is warmer and cold weather is colder.  Interestingly enough, this will be the case whether the global temperature trends are natural or human caused!  And hey, I'm babbling again, I find way too many things interesting! 

djvandrake: Thanks very much!  I've always been very happy with how that plopable river turned out.  I really got the rough style of the detailing right pretty fast!

Ethan (ecoba): Actually, the farms are only grown on one side of the border.  The other side is matched using plopable fields.  The plopable fields are park lots which don't require road access at all so it's really easy to fill things in.  They also come in handy for replacing the inevitable parts of farms which dilapidate due to lack of road access.  Hope that helps clarify the approach I'm taking; I'm glad you're still enjoying your visits!

Jordan (canyonjumper): Thanks very much!  Glad you like them!

Update 105
Greenwood – Farmers Moving In

Time to get some actual grown farms on the ground.  I'm finally getting rolling with the details in Greenwood.  Interestingly enough, at the end of today's update, the population of Greenwood will remain at zero! 

105-1: First thing on the list is getting a larger buffer along the city border.  In getting the streets in place, I realized that the access road I'm putting in doesn't warrant a flyover.  So I've created the rough draft of a street that was chopped in half by the highway construction. 


105-2: For the moment, power in this area will be supplied by a simple windmill.  This is just a temporary measure, but there will be a power supply source on this tile.


105-3: In the end, I decided to grow the farms from the highway to the hillside. 


105-4: This is the first block of farms that grew.  I'm reasonably satisfied with most of what is here as a first draft now. 


105-5: This area is my first target today.  Most of the farms here are keepers, except for the algae farm.  But I'm not going to destroy the algae farm, I'm going to repurpose it instead. 


105-6: Looking at that odd farm, it struck me that it would work very nicely as an expanded wine packaging facility.  So the old winery and house is on the left, and the commercial winery is on the right. 


105-7: A few roads and diagonal fillers clean up the area quite nicely.  I examined a number of local corn farms and how they're planting.  Turns out, they really cram the corn cobs together tight and right up against the fences these days.  That means that my fenced corn fillers still work quite nicely! 


105-8: One last shot of the same space, even after all this time, it never ceases to amaze me how much nicer things look with the grass and foliage in place. 


105-9: Remember those poplar trees I mentioned during the last update.  Here some of them are just starting to reach mature sized.  By the time I polish off one more batch of grown farms this should be done. 


105-10: This area on the minor highway is next.  With diagonal fillers and plopable farm fields, it's a lot easier to control farm placement by leaving a large buffer along the highway.  I'll fill it in afterwards. 


105-11: Right after the diagonal fillers are in, this is what the area looks like.  It takes about a year for the seasonal fields to show up.


105-12: This is right next door to the poplar trees.  A simple roadside area with the good old power poles!


105-13: Once the fields are grown into place, it all comes together very nicely.  I decided against adding any extra foliage here. 


105-14: As much as I'd love to continue, I'm out of time for today's update.  So I'm going to leave you with a couple overviews of the area to date.  You can see I've added trees along the property boundaries in a few places. 


105-15: Here we are zoomed out a bit further.  Once I get a bit more detailing done, I'll post a shot like this cross border. 


OSITM Bonus 11: Continuing with the theme of super high resolution city composites, we're stopping in at Jackson Pass.  Hope you enjoy this 3.9 megabyte jpeg image! 



That's a wrap for today, next time I'll be doing an RRP treatment on a few farms in the area.  See you Friday!

jpj_starfleet


ecoba

A really nice job, my friend.

The way that you grow (or plop) Adara's farms in such detail really amazes me. The idea of repurposing grown farm lots with ploppable fields seems new to me. I'm sure that someone has done it before, but not showcased it. Anyway, I think that your idea could come in really helpful to others, or me, someday soon.

The details (such as the diagonal fillers, flora, etc...) make such a difference. Really, by plopping a couple of diagonal fillers, the area seems to improve by 150%.

Great job, once again.

Ethan

ShultzCity

Great work again Battlecat! I'm loving the way this tile is coming out. Your work with the fillers is super - such a small detail often over-looked... I can't wait to see what you do with the RRP flora on the farms - I've never thought about using that way before :)

Quote18 degrees C is exceptionally warm for this part of BC; it's been a very warm and dry winter by BC standards.  As such we've had much the same shouting about climate change!  I've always preferred to think of "global warming" as climate instability.  A warmer atmosphere means more energy in the weather system and more flow of energy from the equator to the poles.  While the weather theoretically would tend to be warm across the globe, what we'll get at the local level is more extremes.  In short, wet weather is wetter, dry weather is dryer, warm weather is warmer and cold weather is colder.  Interestingly enough, this will be the case whether the global temperature trends are natural or human caused!  And hey, I'm babbling again, I find way too many things interesting! 

Agreed ^^ - IMHO, I don't believe that global warming is man made, rather this is just a simple climate fluctuation. In another 50 years the global mean temp might be -1.5deg and we'll all be dying from global cooling  :D. It is a great publicity stunt though!
I'd love it if you could check out my photography! Click on of the links below:
http://www.jacobshultz.com.au
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jshultzphotography/

Connor

I've been in lurking mode reccently, and haven't commented on the last few updates, so I decided I'd definitely have to make the effort to reply this time.

Fabulous work with the farms, and as others have said the details (fillers, flora etc) do make a big difference and you use them very well.

Nice OSITM bonus once again. 11 bonuses now? Shows just how regularly Adara is updated, and never does an update dissappoint. Great work.  &apls

Cyclone1001

Can you do ugly work?! I don't think you can. :thumbsup:

kimcar

Quote from: Cyclone1001 on March 24, 2010, 03:10:51 PM
Can you do ugly work?! I don't think you can. :thumbsup:

Ha! Ha! I like this post and i agree ;D :thumbsup:

canyonjumper

Great update! The farms look great with the diagonal lots!

             Your friend,
                            Jordan :thumbsup:
I'm the one who jumped across the Grand Canyon... and lived.

RickD

Great update again. Pic 105-1 does not show up for me, though. I like how you hide the jagged edges.
I find it interesting how you either have farm fields or dense wood in your region. Is this what it looks like where you live? Here I am used to seeing some empty grassland in between.
My name is Raphael.
Visit my MD: Empire Bay (My old MD: Santa Barbara County)

Tomas Neto


nedalezz

Another fascinating update. The plopped trees look great, as do the rest of your farms.

Where are the people going to live on that map?

djvandrake

Quote from: kimcar on March 24, 2010, 03:23:23 PM
Ha! Ha! I like this post and i agree ;D :thumbsup:

I'll second that!  :D  &apls

Great stuff as always.

Battlecat


jpj_starfleet: Welcome to Adara! Thanks for stopping in!

Ethan (ecoba): I've been playing around with repurposing fields increasingly during the game.  Sometimes a farm building I like grows but with a field I don't like.  With the plopable stuff it's really easy to keep the building and change the farm!  Glad you like the idea, thanks for stopping by!

Jacob (ShultzCity): Thanks very much!  I love the RRP flora and using it for farms.  Combined with the plopable fences, it produces great results.  Hope you enjoy this update! 

Connor: No worries, I always appreciate it when you take the time to delurk and stop in!  Thanks for your kind words on the last few updates.  I have to say, I'm pretty sure the update pace is going to drop off a bit after the end of March.  A few life things are starting to get busier so I'm going to have a bit less time for SC4.  Glad you've been enjoying the bonuses!

Cyclone1001: Thanks very much for your kind words!   I certainly try not to do anything ugly!

kimcar: Thanks very much!

Jordan (canyonjumper): It is amazing how much of a difference such a little thing makes!  Thanks for stopping in!

Raphael (RickD): Thanks!  I've fixed picture 105-1, thanks for letting me know!  The transition between farm and forest is pretty abrupt in my area.  In the lowland areas we have a lot of fast growing tree species that will tend to start sprouting very quickly in undisturbed areas.  Have a look at this picture:


This is an aerial image of the Fort Langley area of the lower mainland of BC near Vancouver.  This is a pretty representative look at the farmland in my area. 

Tomas Neto: Thanks very much for stopping in! 

nedalezz: I'm shooting for one or two small urban clusters on this map.  The only one I'm sure about so far is at the north side of the map near the plopable water stream that I've roughed in.  Glad you like the update!

djvandrake: Thanks! 

Update 106
Greenwood – Detailing Some More

My limited gaming time of late means that I'm not making a great deal of rapid progress on Greenwood so far, but the detailing has been a lot of fun. 

106-1: Today my primary goal is to finish the details right down to the highway.  A lot of farms are getting the RRP treatment here.


106-2: At least one of these farms is going to wind up just getting a different field type instead of RRP. 


106-3: These three are all getting fences.  I want each of them to be slightly different.  I'm going to start with the one on the left side of this shot.


106-4: Here's a closer look at the farm before I get the details in place.  This one is going to be a dairy farm. 


106-5: The spot around the tree is just me playing around with details.  The grass around lone trees on farms here tends to get bashed down leaving a dirt patch.  This was just a little experiment. 


106-6: As always, one of the main goals with this treatment is to blur the edges of the functional lots.  This one is done.


106-7: Moving one with number two.  This farm is going to be a fairly inactive one.  The owner is only keeping a few horses for recreation and otherwise is just harvesting a bit of feed off the fields.


106-8: For this farm I'm adding in a dirt track where the owner takes his horses for a run.  It's an area he'd check over pretty carefully and regularly for holes so he can run the horses fast safely.


106-9: It blends in fairly nicely once I get the grass in, but it still stands out.  On real aerial imagery you can pick out details much like that quite easily. 


106-10: This third farm has llamas spawning on the farm.  Interestingly enough, there are a few farms in my area that keep a couple of llamas with their sheep.  Llamas will fight off small predators like coyotes that would otherwise kill the flock. 


106-11: The sheep are being kept close to the main farmhouse today. 


106-12: Moving along, The farm that's blank right now went under the cutting block when I realized I didn't like it.  I'll be detailing it next.


106-13: While I don't like the field that grew, the barn will do the job. 


106-14: The farm up near the highway got the new growth green field, and the one from 106-13 has wax beans. 


106-15: One last farm to work on today.  This one is going to have a slightly larger extent than the rest of the RRP farms today.


106-16: The powerlines run right along the edge of the property and across the highway here. 


106-17: Pulling out at bit, here's an overview of the area developed today. 


OSITM Bonus 12: It's interesting to note that there are only two more updates after today for my time in the OSITM forum.  I've got something pretty huge planned for Wednesday and another large composite image for Monday.  For today, I'm just short on time but I'd like to preview a little texture project I'm playing around with.  I'll be interested to hear what you think of this, I'm hoping to implement these for use in Greenwood. 


And that's a wrap for today!  Have a good weekend, I'll see you all on Monday!

djvandrake

 &apls &apls

Those textures look fantastic!  Very realistic for a farm field.  Outstanding.

I can't wait to see what you have in store, this has been an awesome month in OSITM.  :thumbsup:

Tomas Neto


Yan077

Another fascinating work, really, really great update  :thumbsup:

ShultzCity

Another excellent update! I love what you have done to those farms - each one looks a little different. I especially like the horse track you implemented, it looks extremely realistic, and blends perfectly with the RRP flora.

Those textures you made look brilliant, however I'm not sure how realistic they are - The idea of the curves is spectacular, but usually (at least in Australia), the rows of crop run right to the end of the fields. Maybe something more like this would look even better? :

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I'd love it if you could check out my photography! Click on of the links below:
http://www.jacobshultz.com.au
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jshultzphotography/

canyonjumper

Looks great, Battlecat! Can't wait to see what you do with those textures.

          -Jordan :thumbsup:
I'm the one who jumped across the Grand Canyon... and lived.