Calidores

[art128]

Once again, thank you for an awesome OSITM.

This new update was really nice. I enjoyed quite a bit the danchi area.

Good luck with the diagonal section...

[belfastsocrates]

I'm loving seeing how you are developing and progressing. Some really lovely work in this MD. I'm particularly fond of the W2W old town and the river.

[11241036]

Responsa

c.p.: Thank you very much! I appreciate your thought, however, I've never liked kayaks and boats and the like on my rivers, so I'm not sure if I'll include them in this MD.
romualdillo, manga rivotra, art128, belfastsocrates: Thank you very much, too!

Exordium

One day, when the denizens of Calidores woke up, they could barely believe their eyes: By some divine prank, all the grass has changed its color to a more pale green; furthermore, the sea looked much more opaque and dark blue. Fearing that this may cause serious landscape deforming, they prayed to the gods, particularly the one already being infamous for his whimsicalness, aka ME , to ensure that by whatever means the colors have changed, this may not seriously impact neither their everyday life nor 11241036's MD. It took a while for the gods of Calidores to make this sure, in fact, and so the denizens of Calidores had to wait patiently for being displayed in Update 16.
Now, after all those days, and sorting out the issues the color shift has caused (by simply backuping Calidores and trying around), the Calidorian population hereby want to present you with a few new pictures from Calidores, or, to be more exact, still the province of B3 Vella.

In other words: I've switched to the Sudden Valley Terrain Mod. However, it has the side effect of raising the entire terrain. Fortunately, I found this out while working on another region. I seriously don't know why and how, and opening a thread on the STEX didn't give me an answer that helped me. So, I hope you are not annoyed with me that this update took a while, because I didn't want this issue to affect Calidores. Fortunately, it does not seem to affect Calidores, but just to be on the safe side, I will backup my region after each time playing SC4. As of now, I think that this terrain raising issue does not affect cities where either a save file exists already (the testing region has simply been given life by clicking on the in-game "Create new Region" button; it had a lot of city tiles but only a few save files), or where the city has already been switched to mayor mode prior to installing the new terrain mod, but I haven't been able to confirm either of these theories.

Let's now stop rambling around and continue with the...

Progressio

In this update, I will give the finishing touch to Mithrax, capital of Vella. This has been bugging me for a while because there were some unfinished corners, mostly where I haven't placed MMP's. So the changes don't look like much because barely anything crucial has changed. Therefore, I will now present you with a few aerial shots of Mithrax and its environment. (In all aerial screenshots, north is located at the bottom.)

A forest river to the southeast of Mithrax, at the road connecting Mithrax with its neighbor village Tyrsalis. Two pictures, one during fall and one during summer:


#16.1a; Click to enlarge


#16.1b; Click to enlarge

The reservoir lake and the valley to the south of Mithrax:


#16.2; Click to enlarge

And the city itself:


#16.3; Click to enlarge


#16.4; Click to enlarge


#16.5; Click to enlarge


#16.6; Click to enlarge

And now a few close-ups. First, the bay with the marina and the passenger harbor.


#16.7; Click to enlarge

Next, this is what I did with the diagonal section. Fortunately, after a little relotting, I had enough buildings to place there, but more troublesome than the building part was the fact that there's an elevation difference of 7.5 m between the avenue and the road beneath the railway. So, simply a big lawn and a park there.


#16.8; Click to enlarge


#16.9; Click to enlarge

I've also built a business section close to the railway station:


#16.10; Click to enlarge

Finally, a monastery and a former castle with a park, located on one of the islands of the delta:


#16.11; Click to enlarge

That's all for today. I'm proud to say that Vella is now nearing completion, with only one thing being missing:


#16.12; Click to enlarge

This is really bugging me because I want to make it something special, not the usual river arms. So, this will take a while.

[art128]

You did a great job with the diagonal part. The use of the corner buildings like that is very cool and ingenious.
Nice work on the port too, I just realized after a second viewing where the passenger harbor is, subtle.

Good luck with the river arms...

[manga rivotra]

I really like the way you builds you city by keeping many greenery even in the central part of your business section ( 16.10 ) and it' s a good way of managing slopes.
Very nice 

[vortext]

Great couple of updates, you really have a knack for rivers and marinas! 

Looking forward to see what you come up with for the last watery bit. Fingers crossed for another amazing swamp area! 

[romualdillo]

I love the market place, and the rest of the city looks great!!! Looking forward to the river development!!! 

[c.p.]

Coming along nicely

[11241036]

Responsa

art128: Thank you very much! It's just a shame that the passenger port isn't working. I guess I'll keep it, however, it's not that it is the only possible connection to other cities.
manga rivotra: Thank you very much! It's a honor to hear this from you, as I've always liked the way you are developing the hillsides in your cities
vortext: Great to hear from you again Making the delta swampy sounds like a good idea, and I'll definitely give it a try in a futural update (I haven't had an idea yet how to make a swamp, I've never done this before and I'm sometimes suffering from a serious lack of patience to make good MMP scenes).
romualdillo, c.p.: Thank you very much, too!

Progressio

It's again time for another update. Like already mentioned to vortext, I had no idea how to make a swamp, so the completion of Vella had to wait. In the meantime, I've started developing a city tile we've already visited before, C3 Hadria, located to the east of Vella.
Most parts are horribly VIP at the moment, mostly because the MMP work is barely done. I'm sparing this for last mostly because MMP's are sometimes removed when plopping buildings or dragging roads and I don't want to do the same work twice. Sorry for that. Also, I've already noticed that SimGoober's Sweet Legacy houses are flooding my entire city tile; they are literally the only houses that seem to grow on 1x1 low-density residential zones. I guess I'll have to look for a solution.
There are 3 settlements in Hadria: We've already seen the village of Lithicum in Update 13, and since nothing has changed, there is no point in sharing a picture of it - other than the northern part (north is at the bottom of this picture), where a small pond has formed close to the highway. I just noticed while making these screenshots that Neko's brooks, the Sudden Valley water textures, and Moonlight's Suburban Canals actually fit very well with each other, I guess we'll see this combination more often in the future.


#17.01; Click to enlarge


#17.02; Click to enlarge

Most screenshots are from the capital of Hadria, Tigris. Large parts are already done, at least regarding basic design. Surprisingly, this time I seem to have trouble developing the hillside suburbs; I'm either getting low-wealth residentials or nothing at all. Again, getting the brooks past the railway seems to be a challenge of sorts. I should mention by the way that all settlements are surrounded by farmland. It's mostly composed of rectangular fields, separated by rows of trees, and a few farms. It's not really interesting to look at at the current stage of development, and I'll share pictures of it later when I've finished adding MMP's.

We'll start with the industrial section.


#17.03; Click to enlarge

Suburbs are mostly done, except for some spots where I couldn't grow buildings so far. This is the northeastern suburb, located at the large river there. It's winding its way through a valley to the southeast of Calidores, hence the name of today's update. The empty spot at the bottom of this picture will later be filled with an office park or the like.


#17.04; Click to enlarge

And a close-up of the Peace Memorial park of Tigris. I'm developing an own park system plugin, but at its current state, it looks rather spartanic. I just couldn't stand the BSC park system due to all the prop stuff being placed there. I hope I'll find a solution for this soon.


#17.05; Click to enlarge

The suburbs in the southwestern part of Tigris.


#17.06; Click to enlarge

And the suburbs at the south of Tigris. This picture already shows where I'm going to place the central business section, as well as the old town parts of Tigris.


#17.07; Click to enlarge

A little deeper in the valley, we are quickly encountering the next village, Vallis Moriae. It has a lower part with the most shops and civic buildings and an upper part with the church and a little housing.


#17.08; Click to enlarge


#17.09; Click to enlarge

And that's all for today. I hope you liked it. Futural updates for this particular city tile may include:
* Placing MMP trees and plants, especially at the rivers and brooks
* Designing the rivers and brooks
* Doing something about the building repetition, caused by the Sweet Legacy homes
* Creating the old town and the office park of Tigris
* Improving the suburbs and filling the last empty spots there
* Further foresting the mountains to the south

[manga rivotra]

Very nice use of the MMP, specially for your forest. 
I'm agree with you, neko brooke fit very well with all your MMP work, the sudden valley water and the ground texture too.
To avoid the repetitions of the Simgoober lots, maybe you should download others house fit 1X1 lot, as IDS2 ones on STEX (modern as the ones of Simgoober) or c.p. ones (new england style) ?

[belfastsocrates]

I love seeing your progress images and it's nice to be given an insight to how you plan and develop each area. Lovely update as well, I like the work being carried out for the peace park, the bridge and river scene will look superb once completed.

[noahclem]

A lot of exciting stuff going on here since I last visited    I continue to enjoy your work with water of all kinds and am really looking forward to seeing how the delta and swamp areas turn out. I have very little experience with swamps, which seem quite tricky, but I'm sure I'll pick up some ideas from here   Keep up the great work!

[Vizoria]

I like the MMP work with the river(s), it is going to look pretty amazing once it is finished.

[carlfatal]

I really should write more often, your MD is wonderful. Although I like your work with water, I´m still totally impressed by the pictures of your towns. 

[art128]

Yes indeed, Neko's brook, moonlight canals and several other water mods blend nicely together.
Nice work on this update too, the industrial park is well done, I like it a lot.
I'm eager to see more of Tigris' peace memorial, seems like a nice place to relax.

[romualdillo]

The industrial area looks great!! Don't worry too much about repetition in the suburbs, I think it is quite normal in real life!!! 

[Themistokles]

Those parks -- I don't think they look at all spartan, some lamps and maybe benches and I think they are up there among the good park systems! Oftentimes I think less props is better, because then one can add details and make every park unique with mmps. Actually, I hope to see a release of the park set, since you've really made me eager to try it out!

(And, on a side note, with that name I was almost looking for Gandalf and the fellowship trying to open a mysterious door somewhere... )

[11241036]

Responsa

manga rivotra: Thank you very much for your comment and your recommendation! It turned out that I accidentally left a building blocker in my Plugins folder, preventing all Maxis content from growing . After removing it, things "returned to normal". But I'm actually glad about your recommendation, since it can't hurt to improve my building variety in my cities.
Themistokles: Thank you very much too! I've been thinking too that less props would be better because it would facilitate placing MMP's on my own. I'm not entirely sure if I should release this park set because it's in fact really rather simple. I've included screenshots of all lots I've made so far in this update.
belfastsocrates, noahclem, Vizoria, carlfatal, art128, romualdillo: Thank you very much, too, for your comments, I'm always happy to see you again.

Exordium

Unfortunately, the last weeks I've been more busy with lotting than playing SC4. I've made an interesting discovery here on sc4devotion that allowed me to finally solve a lot of MMP problems in my cities, but it took me several days to make experiments with it. I thought it might be interesting to use this update to share with you what I've been doing so far.

You've surely noticed so far that I'm fond of the RFR Plopwater System found on the STEX. It allows creating rivers and creeks with a versatile and realistic look while being intuitive to use. However, MMP's can't be placed below the railway viaducts and the road overpasses from the NAM, and their placement below bridges is also somewhat complicated and limited (see screenshot below).
So I was quite enthusiastic to finally find a solution to these problems (these pictures are not photoshopped):


Click to enlarge



Credits in this regard go to FrankU who described a way to make props offset in two tutorials found here:

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=13351.0
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=9146.msg386022#msg386022

So, to make sure to place the RFR water below the viaduct and the bridge (regarding the bridge, I can't place MMP's close to the pillars), I've turned the MMP's into props, switched from RKT1 to RKT4 and set the x offset to 0x0010000 (= x+1), which means that it'll be offset by 16 m (= 1 tile). As FrankU alredy mentioned, the props move but the shadows won't, but this doesn't bother me with two-dimensional objects that lie on the ground and therefore don't have a shadow, anyway.
I've had to make some experiments, however, because the Lot Editor displays the offset in a wrong way: The prop will always be sidplayed as overhanging to the same side, whereas in-game, the side where the prop will overhang changes in accordance to the prop orientation. To illustrate this (and to find out on my own), I've made this screenshot. I've created 4 lots and placed a water prop with an offset of x = +1, placed with a different orientation on each lot. The lot has been placed with the orientation arrow facing the road. The letters show the prop orientation in the Lot Editor, assuming the road there is under the lot:
L = links (left)
O = oben (up)
R = rechts (right)
U = unten (down)


Click to enlarge

Needless to say, I immediately had to create an entire lot set to help me finally getting rid of these annoying empty spaces below railway viaducts and NAM overpasses. This took a few days, you can surely imagine...


Click to enlarge

I'm thinking of sharing this, if enough people are interested, however, I need to make some adjustments and of course English description texts and menu icons. More difficult could be getting permission by Der_Gammler to release them; since I had to turn his MMP's into props, I require his permission. But he hasn't been online on the STEX since January. I'll contact him, however, I'm not sure if I'll get an answer.

Now, as already mentioned to Themistokles, here are some screenshots that display most of the lots I've made for my own park system. (Just to make it clear: The Peace Park of Tigris is composed of several modular lots, not a single one.) In this case, I also need permission of whoever made some of the BSC textures because I used and modified them to make my own overlay textures. By the way, I'm using a default Maxis texture for the grass, it's just adjusting to the Sudden Valley terrain mod.

Pathways (both simple and decorated):



Grass lots:



Lots with hedges:



Specials:



Please look for yourselves.

Progressio

Despite all of this, I had some time to make progress with my MD. Today, we will pay a visit to even three city tiles.

My first visit: A2 Iramaris. I haven't worked on this city tile in a while. After finding out that the Sudden Valley water texture can be well combined with Moonlight's canals, I reworked the water there a bit. This is a picture of Iramaris, as already shown in Update 5:


Click to enlarge

You may notice that Diggis Pond system water doesn't really match with the in-game sea water. Back at this time, I refrained from creating a sea channel with in-game seawater because the water was rather transparent and I did not like this look. Please note that this is supposed to be ocean water, not tap water, in the channel. However, since the SV water is more opaque, I tried digging out the seabed and making a sea channel with in-game water instead of ploppable water. For this purpose, I've lowered the sea level in the Reader.


18.01; Click to enlarge

At this place, I'll let the river flowing into the sea.


18.02; Click to enlarge

The result, however, wasn't pleasant:


18.03; Click to enlarge

I tried to remedy this zigzag corner effect by placing MMP's there, but to no avail (sorry forgot to make a screenshot). So, I've instead resorted to Moonlight's Canal water. Unfortunately, it lacked an overhanging 3x3 piece (there's only an overhanging 1x3 piece), but since Mayor 11241036 has recently learned how to make props offset, it was a piece of cake to make one by himself.

The result: Not all I could wish for (especially because of the water ripples), but at least from afar it look much better now.


18.04; Click to enlarge


18.05; Click to enlarge


18.06; Click to enlarge

But since I was still frustrated with the outcome of this, I decided to build a gravel road to the east of Iramaris (on the island), leading to B2 Inistri Laviarum, eastern neighbor of Iramaris.


18.07; Click to enlarge

A small bay there contains the shortest brook of Calidores, fed mostly by subterranean water which emerges through a small cave not visible on this screenshot just to flow into the sea:


18.08; Click to enlarge

I should mention that I recently decided to resort to a mixture of girafe's ashes and norway maple trees, as well as the VIP orange aesculus and fagus trees. This combination has been a product of coincidence, as the Cascadia tree controller I'm using places these trees sometimes. You may notice why I do this by observing this screenshot - the warm fall colors made me nearly fall in love, even though I lost a picture competition over at the STEX with this picture (even 7:1 ). Despite this, it really shows how much the work of girafe and whoever made the VIP Orange trees is outstanding compared to Maxis trees:


18.09; Click to enlarge

Inistri Laviarum itself is uninhabited (and will remain it) because the Calidorian government has transformed the entire province into a national park. However, a small research station has been erected to watch the wildlife (connected to Iramaris by the aforementioned gravel road). It contains a headquarter (the Chalet Edelweiss), employee homes (Halifax Boxes), as well as a storage shed, an observation tower and even a small pier for the guard boats. If you think that something is missing, you are welcome to tell me. I need to improve the MMP'ing a bit, so stay tuned for further updates:


18.10; Click to enlarge

And since I'm still not done, we will now travel back to Hadria. Unfortunately, there's only a few screenshots, I haven't had much time to work on this city. I've improved a few bits here and there, but it doesn't look impressive. However, perhaps you might like my next gravel road, leading all the way through the forest to the western province (Vella), and leading past my newest game experiment: cow pastures and dairies. Since cattle requires much space in real-life, I've only placed 3 pastures there, surrounded by SPAM fences:


18.11; Click to enlarge

The Calidorian population at least likes it much enough that the people decided to commute all the way through this out-of-the-way gravel road from Mithrax to Tigris instead of taking the railway which would actually be 1. closer, 2. faster, 3 better for the environment and 4. make more sense (this game... ). The Calidorian government has even received petitions to upgrade this road to RHW-2, but since the cows didn't agree with this plans, the mayor of Tigris decided to issue a driving ban there instead.

Auto = car
Straße = street

18.12; Click to enlarge

The old town of Tigris is also nearing completion. I'm trying more and more to place a few more modern buildings there because it would actually make more sense (if a building is destroyed, it is most likely being replaced by a contemporary building). It's not complete, since I unfortunately had no idea of what to do with the riverside.


18.13; Click to enlarge


18.14; Click to enlarge

And that's all for today. Admittedly, the pictures say little because, as I said, I mostly made minor adjustments which can't be well displayed, and I've been fooling around with offset props. I hope you liked this update, though. Futural updates may include:

Inistri Laviarum:
* Filling everything with MMP's (I want to make something special there, being worthy of my audience and a national park)

Hadria:
* Finishing the tree MMP work
* Finishing the last rivers and creeks
* Foresting the last bits to the south of the city tile
* Giving the finishing touch to the buildings, especially around the old town parts.

Edit: Translations added

[art128]

Don't mind the sims, they're stupid.
I think there is a way to block the road circulation on roads but let trucks/buses through.
As for the riverbed, maybe make a park with sports fields?
Otherwise, excellent update again, love the gravel road along the farms.

[belfastsocrates]

Excellent work. I enjoyed the section on lot editor work, the offset seems to be working well and the park pieces look very nice.