Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

[metarvo]

Good as usual, Battlecat.  It looks like Greenwood is going green with the wind farms.  As far as the strategy you're using with the power lines goes, I admit that I've started experimenting with that myself.  Not only does it keep trees out the power line right-of-way areas, but it adds flavor to these otherwise clear-cut zones.  I know you'll have no trouble with the trail, since you do city borders so well.

[TiFlo]

This has become quite the open area ! Although I've kind of lost track, where would that patch of land be located inside your entire region? It looks as if we're getting out of the mountainous forested area and are coming closer from mainland and a big city.

[canyonjumper]

Awesome update Battlecat! It's sad to see Greenwood go, but it's calmed by the fact that you're starting a new tile soon

                      Your friend,
                                     Jordan

[calibanX]

I love the shorelines Battlecat. You have honed your skill at both game water shorelines and plopped shorelines. Nice work as usual. Sorry for not posting for a while. I'm still checkin' things out from time to time though. Keep up the great work!

Geoff

[RickD]

The tile overview is amazing. Great to see how all the work from the last updates comes together.

[TrebuTa]

I love it! I'd absolutely love to live there! 

[kalvar]

combination of valley and beautiful landscape, I like how you armonisa with eolic turbines.

[djvandrake]

   You make some of the best shorelines I've ever seen.  Bravo.

[bat]

That is looking really beautiful!!!
Fantastic work on that part of your region...

[Nardo69]

Nice one. We seem to have the same soft spot for the larch because of the same reasons.  Thinking of the larch trees at my parents' village in autumn I just wish MM trees could be seasonal ... 

I am really envious about your shores. Wish mine would be half as marvelous as yours. And that overview is - as always I might say - great.

Take care my friend!


Bernhard 

[marsh]

Looks great! I love the shoreline's (as always)

,marsh 

[Schulmanator]

Wow! It's all good but the shorelines are super-duper-good. Excellent work 

[Tomas Neto]

Great update!!! Fantastic again!!!

[kwakelaar]

The Greenwood overview is a nice one, and busy weekends can indeed be a problem for all plans concerning SC4.

[FrankU]

I may be kind of late wih my reaction, but I must add: this has always been a marvelous project. And it still is, so keep on plopping!

[Gayowulf]

Wow.  I've finally managed to make it through all 73 pages.  This is one impressive MD - all those details!  I take off my hat to you and your incredible patience.  Or I would, were I wearing a hat.

[Battlecat]

Thomas (turtle): Thanks very much!  Wow, hard to believe it's been that long.  Guess it's been a pretty busy summer!  I'm sure hoping the next tile doesn't take me 8 months to finish!

MattyFo: MattyFo: Glad you like it!  I'll be posting a pair of regional composites sometime in the next week or two.  I think you'll particularly enjoy the zoom 2 series.  Hope they don't take you out for too long! 

By the way, when I say zoom 2, I'm thinking that zoom 1 is the furthest out zoom.  Zoom 5 and 6 are the close zoom levels when I'm talking about them.  It really just depends on where you start counting I suppose! 

Cyclone1001: Thanks!

io_bg: Thanks for your kind words!

metarvo: Yeah, the whole region is pretty green between the hydro electric dam and wind energy!  Glad to hear you like the grass under the power lines, I really do primarily use it to keep trees under control.  Besides, that's what the power companies do in reality as well! 

TiFlo: This patch of land is directly north of Alexandria.  The river that flows through Vavenby and Delmar Junction exits into a much larger valley at Alexandria.  The large game water river flows just to the West of Alexandria in fact.  It'll be much clearer when I post the regional composite images and maps in a week or so. 

Jordan (canyonjumper): Glad you enjoyed it!  I will indeed be started a new tile, but not quite as soon as you might expect.  I've got some itches to take care of before I build the next set of regional composites.  I think I'll be moving to the tile directly south of Alexandria next though.

Geoff (calibanX): Thanks for stopping by!  I'm really pleased with how the shoreline turned out on this tile.  There are still some things I'm going to do differently moving forward but it's working nicely.

RickD: Thanks very much, glad you enjoyed it!

TrebuTa: Thanks, glad you like it!

kalvar: Thanks!

djvandrake: Thanks very much! 

bat: Thanks!  I'm really hoping it fits in with the rest of the region nicely. 

Bernhard (Nardo69): I just started using the larch recently after seeing how they looking in Urland!  Thanks for the inspiration on that!  It would be really cool if they were seasonal, there's nothing quite like the color of a Larch forest in the fall.  Thanks for stopping in, glad you enjoyed the update.

marsh: Thanks very much!

Schulmanator: Thanks, I'm really exciting about how the shoreline turned out. 

Tomas Neto: Thanks!

Gjermund (kwakelaar): Yeah, and the last few have been particularly busy!  Glad you enjoyed the overview of Greenwood!

FrankU: Thanks very much!  Glad to see you're still stopping by! 

Alafel: Welcome to Adara!  I'd take my hat off to your patience in reading all 73 pages if I was wearing one as well!  Glad you enjoyed the read! 

Update 132
Adara Rapid Fire Revisions - Delmar Junction

I finally got in a good/frustrating round of Simcity 4 this weekend.  The frustrating part can entirely be blamed on clumsy and foolish decisions on my part resulting in having to reload and repeat some work.  4 times in one case.     

Granted it turned out fine in the end, but it was still a pain.     

Anyhow, as indicated by the title, we're making a brief return to Delmar Junction.  Ordinarily, this would be the final update for Greenwood and it would be ended with the presentation of the newest regional composite.  However, in looking at the older composites, I finally got tired of some of the glitches left behind by my early work.  I also want to clean up a couple details that were left out by the absence of technology released over the past months as part of the NAM. 

Fresh zoom 1 and 2 tile composites of all three will be posted at the end of each update, culminating in a pair of regional composites including the Greenwood tile.  Each one will be relatively short but I hope to have everything done this week.  Hope you enjoy! 

132-1: This image was taken from the most recent zoom 2 composite of the region. You are looking at the joining of four separate tiles.  Specifically this is the corner boundary between Delmar Junction, Vavenby, Jackson Pass and Winfield. The problem really stems from the inconsistent placement of trees by the god mode controller way back near the beginning.  It's gotten a lot better since I started using the Mayor Mode controllers. 


132-2: So starting with Delmar Junction, this mountain side is the worst offender for a shortage of trees. 


132-3: Once I splice the tiles back together again, this will look much nicer.  But I'm not stopping here.


132-4: Way back near the beginning of work on the Vavenby Tile, FrankU made a comment about the tulip farms.  I created a series of non-random plopable lots so I could do proper rows with my tulip farms.  Sadly, that technology came into being after Delmar Junction and Alexandria were completed.  An issue which I am going to correct now.



132-5: It really makes all the difference in the world.  There are two other tulip farms on this tile, but I'm not going to revisit them.


132-6: The other big issue I can fix now is the distress caused to farms by the air pollution from heavy traffic on my highways.  Back when I was working on this tile, I hadn't found the plopable farm fields yet. 


132-7: It just adds a nice bit of polish to the area by getting rid of that annoying black distressing.


132-8: What's old is new once again.  Here's the zoom 1 composite looking North West.  Before you say anything, that mountain in the upper right corner actually does match up fine with the reduced tree cover.  I actually was pretty careful matching up that part of Jackson Pass. As usual, you can click the image to see a larger version of the composite. 


132-9: And the zoom 2 composite looking South East. 


That's all for today but stay tuned, because I'm not going to take a month to do this.  We'll be returning briefly to Alexandria sometime in the next two days.  See you soon! 

[Jayster]

Very nice update, I would love to see some sort of region view from you 

One quick question though, how did you manage to get rid of the pollution by the roads affecting the farms?

Jayster

[cubby420]

Hey Jayster, I'm pretty sure he's using ploppable fields, which are available here and there around the community though I can't sem to find them right now. Now what's really gonna be a thing is when battlecat gets around to packaging up his field filler lots for use by the unwashed masses    I'll be cleaning up messy old farm creations for weeks!

Really a great update! The composite shots show just how realistic and natural your creations look from high vantage points.

[Battlecat]

Jayster: Thanks!  There will be a new regional composite coming very soon!  Cubby 420 is right, I replaced the distressed fields with the equivalent fields from uroncha's plopable farm field pack which can be found on the STEX.  Since the simulation doesn't apply that pollution effect to parks, the plopped fields are unaffected by the pollution.  Hope this helps!

cubby420: Thanks for answering Jayster's question.  The field pack is on simtropolis and is usually most easily found by using the STEX google search.  It's usually a bit more efficient than the default version.  Glad you enjoyed the update!

As for the fields I'm working on, I'm hoping to have them done soon.  I managed to get a rough set of guide markers working, I just need to create some decent icons for the set so we can tell them apart.  I'll probably post them on the STEX but that remains to be seen. 

Update 133
Adara Rapid Fire Revisions - Alexandria

I wasn't kidding when I said rapid fire!  I really want to get this job done.  Today I'm giving Alexandria a bit of polish.  The problems are pretty much the same as the ones from Delmar Junction except for the scale.  The entire boundary with Delmar Junction needs more trees.

133-1: This image is from the zoom 1 composite.  The boundary between Delmar Junction and Alexandria runs through here.  It's not as bad as the previous border, but the big issue here is the abrupt change in the quantity and quality of trees across the border. 


133-2: Here's a typical swath of Alexandria forest before the revision. 


133-3: And the same area after adding a lot more trees.  Again, this is to improve the consistency of the cross border images. 


133-4: The other issue is once again the tulip farms.  These are the only two tulip farms on this tile.  There are also some flower farms that also use the random field setup but I'm just going to leave those alone. 


133-5: Here's one of the farms after the revision.  It really does make a big difference. 


133-6: I also did some distress prevention work but I don't really need to go over that.  Here's the zoom 1 composite.


133-7: And the zoom 2 composite.


That's all for this update.  I've got three more tiles that need brief visits.  Vavenby, Jackson Pass and Winfield all need a small amount of attention.  Tommorow we'll be visiting both Vavenby and Jackson Pass since there wasn't a lot of work to do on either of those tiles.  Then on to Winfield on Thursday and if all goes according to plan, the new and improve region composite images will be up on Friday!  See you tomorrow!