Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

[turtle]

Wowsers, fantastic MD. Congrats on the OSITM!

Absolutely beautiful maps and rural areas. One is never in doubt that your job is cartography. Also interesting with the mosaic over two tiles, they fit really well together, even when you get this close up. Well done! 

[Schulmanator]

Congratulationson your OSITM recognition. Great job and glad to see your work recognized. 

[Albus of Garaway]

First of all, you completely deserved the OSITM award. Your work here is incredible, inspiring, and creative. When I saw that cross-border mosaic, I thought to myself, "Wow, this guy is insane!". I don't think I've ever seen anything like that before, and it must've taken some real skill.

[tooheys]

OSITM, well deserved   

I like the way the river and surrounds is taking shape. Nice work with the farm, I'm impressed with how you convert the growable field into something a lot more impressive   

Have a great month

Dave

[evanator]

Congrats on the OSITM Battlecat, for the things you've done here you truly deserve it!

As on aside, I really like your cross-quad mosaic. It brings a great sense of continuity.

[Battlecat]

Update 14 – Wandering down the River

Hello!  First of all, I have to say I was absolutely floored when I discovered my journal was picked for OSITM!  It really is an honor, especially after such a short time.  I'm going to attempt to finish up Alexandria this month and I'll have a special feature to bring up in an update or two.

Replies:

BarbarossaS: Glad you like everything and thanks for the congrats!  I'll have to see what I can do about creating some step by step image sets that might help.  Ironically enough, it's the fact that I don't have a huge amount of time to play that really helps.  I tend to focus down really tight on a small portion of the map for an update, thus I wind up with lots of details! 

io_bg: Thanks very much!  Happy to hear you're enjoying this!

Dustin (thundercrack83): Thank you very much for selecting Adara for OSITM.  I am truly honored that I was selected!

Robin (rooker1): Thanks!  13.5 is just one of those pictures that came together perfectly after a number of false starts. 

FrankU: Hello once again and thank you!  It always does come down to that difficult choice, although agriculture is kind of funny, it never seems to run low on demand so you could make a hinterland around a larger city. 

bat: Welcome back!  Thanks very much for you kind words!

kbieniu7: Thank you!  I'm glad you like them!

Fabian93: Welcome to Adara!  Thanks very much for the congrats!  Actually the pictures weren't that hard to match in the cross border mosaic, it's very similar to making a normal mosaic.  The really challenging part was getting rid of the background pattern in photoshop.  If you look carefully, you can see some bits I couldn't get rid of without destroying other features. 

turtle: Welcome and thanks for the kind words!  Glad you like the maps, I certainly enjoy making them!

Schulmanator: Thanks for stopping in again and thanks for you kind words! 

Albus of Garaway: Thank you very much!  The challenge with a cross border mosaic is making sure to keep the details of your theme consistent across the boundary.  In my case, I refer to screenshots of the area when I'm doing my details.  Depsite that, there are still some things I could have done better.

Dave (tooheys): Thanks for stopping in!  Glad you're enjoying this!  While a lot of the growable fields are quite nice, that pale green one seems to appear way to often for my tastes.  Glad to hear my efforts to make it go away are effective! 

evanator: Thanks very much for the congrats!  I've been having a blast doing this journal.  Since the cross-quad mosaic has been such a hit, I'll probably do more of them in the future! 

Wow, that was a lot of replies!  Thanks very much to everyone for your kind words.  Hope you all stop in again soon!  Now on with the pictures!  Unfortunatly, I don't have time tonight to prepare a full update, so instead I'll go through a quick sequence of pictures showing the detailing of a part of the river.

14-1: First, here is the area I'll be detailing today.  It's the next section of river in the area I presented in update 13. 


14-2: I certainly can't understate the value of the rural renwal project flora to the detailing.  I start by using the rushes, and reed grass (green and brown respectively) to soften some of the odd edges in the plopable water.  There is also the johnson grass model as well.  These are great because they actually are taller than the depth of the transparent plopable water.  I also use the marshy plop to create some muddy edges to the area but not too much because of how steep the sides are.


14-3: In this step I plop a small number of cycledogg's cottonwoods.  In crowded area it creates small bushes.  More importantly, when I apply the riparian tree controller later it keeps the area varied in style.


14-4: Same reasoning applies to the weeping willow trees which I've now added.  It keeps the tree variety high, and keeps the controller style programs from overwhelming the area.


14-5: Now I can start using the tree controllers.  I believe most of these were created by Jeronij and use a variety of trees and shrubs made by jeronij and cycledogg.  First I use the riparian controller carefully along the edge of the river.  It places willows, occasionally cottonwoods and some nice shrubs which help blend the shoreline nicely.  I try to vary the distance from the river so the shore isn't too uniform.


14-6: And now the oak / dryer terrain (relatively speaking) tree controller for further up the bank.  They are similar but different enough that it create a subtle transition from the water up to the dryer terrain.  Now if you compare the left side of the river to the right you can also see the difference before and after plopping small rural renwal flower areas in the forests. 


14-7: Finally, I've now added flower to the other side of the river.  I don't always put flowers in but it does add a nice touch to the forests, hinting at age and locations where trees have fallen down to create a meadow. 


Other things you could consider adding are rock and logs.  I don't use them much down here since there isn't much slope to this river and larger rocks usually get covered up with fine sediments on slow flowing rivers. 

Anyhow, that's all for today.  Next time, I'll show you where I've gotten so far on the creation of the Alexandria townsite itself.  Thanks again for stopping in!  See you all again soon!

[BarbarossaS]

Ironically enough, it's the fact that I don't have a huge amount of time to play that really helps.

LOL, I'm gonna give this a try one of these days: not playing for to long, but hopefully get a detailed enough area afterwards.
Seeing how you do it explained step by step is really helpfull, thanks for that!

[FrankU]

Yes, it's a beautiful tutorial for ploppable props turning SC4 terrain into a realistic river going through a forest.

[tooheys]

It's always good to see how different people construct areas in there own way. For instance with the river I generally work towards it but you do the opposite and work outwards. Regardless, the result you have achieved is very nice indeed.  Can I ask where you got the flowers from. I've been searching but with no luck.

Looking forward to more

Dave

[bat]

Nice river there, wonderful pictures of it!

[Battlecat]

Update 15 – Enter Suburbia

Hello once again everyone!  It's amazing how life can go from quiet to crazy in such a short time.  Despite the slight insanity of late, I have a new update for you all and hopefully I'll get some time to play over this long weekend in among family commitments.

Replies:

BarbarossaS: Glad you found the last update helpful!  Thanks for stopping by again!

FrankU: Glad you like it!  I hope to play around with some other river locations in the future. 

Dave (tooheys): The flowers in question are part of the Rural Renewal Project by Chrisaadams3997.  They are available along with a number of the other shrubs I use here.  Glad you like the results.

bat: Thanks very much!

Thanks to everyone for stopping in to have a look.  Now, onwards with the update.  Today I'll be showing you all the first efforts at getting the urban core of Alexandria started.  Urban areas tend to drive me nuts; I always have trouble achieving a satisfactory result (at least for me!).  If anyone has any suggestions or ideas for me, just let me know, I'm always up for them. 

15-1: First a look at the initial subdivision here.  I got about this far before I realized I was forgetting to take screenshots!  Oops!


15-2: Moving along, this area is going to need a high school so the area will develop more interesting industries.  I'm going to use the default high school here.


15-3: However, the default high school certainly needs some assistance.  Some sports filds and trails get things started. 


15-4: I realized the school needed to be adjacent to the road, so I flipped it around and put a parking lot in front of it using Peg's Scenic Drive parts of all things. 


15-5: Moving along, here's the initial development at the intersection with the main highway.  The main fire hall is here simply because I needed to build it in a hurry when a farm from update 13 caught on fire!


15-6: Filling in the gaps, the fruit farm there probably made quite a lot of money selling this block of land off. 


15-7: Zooming out a bit, here the subdivision is now fully developed. 


15-8: And in case you're wondering what kind of trees those are between the homes, they are the seasonal lots by Dedgren from the 3RR project.  They look excellent and I like the dichotomy when compared with the plopable trees I'm using elsewhere. 


15-9: Up the side road from the commercial area is the railway junction.  This seems like an appropriate place for the initial industrial development.  That empty lot will be filled in some time in the future. 


15-10: Finally a larger overview of the area now developed, except part of the industrial area.  The roundabout is the approximate location of the future downtown of this area. 


Wish I had more to add today, but that's all for now folks!  Thanks for stopping by, I'll see you later!

[Nexis4Jersey]

Wow , that rural town is giving me ideas , great job 

[BarbarossaS]

Indeed, it's developing nicely. It's got this nice rustic feeling to it 

[darraghf]

Cool Update. It looks so layed back and cool!

[Sciurus]

This is very nice, but on the second pic, the school should feel alone

Guillaume

[bat]

Wonderful update! That suburb looks great!

[io_bg]

Looks great! I can't wait to see how will this small town develop!

[rooker1]

Fantastic update. 
I like the sprawl and the layout of everything.

Robin 

[turtle]

That will be a great suburb. Nice work with the highschool I will look forward to more of this.
Thomas

[Albus of Garaway]

Everything is looking very nice, Battlecat. I love the layout of Alexandria. Everything flows smoothly. I do, however, have one thing to say:I don't really like the style of streets you used (They are shown in 15-1. They sort of look like asphalt). I would prefer the regular Maxis streets. My main problem with those asphalt streets is the sidewalk texture that appears when they are used. The green makes the surroundings look dry and bland for some reason.

Just constructive criticism, friend! I really do like how Alexandria is unfolding so far.