Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

[mrbisonm]

wow......I just stared at your pictures on the upper page for some 10 minutes now, trying to figure out how you created all the farms so perfectly, and as a farmer myself,  I must say that I haven't seen anything as well done concerning farms in the pictures 16.8 and 16.9 as yours. Man, this is simply great! Congrats for having stunned me, which doesn't often happen.
I hope you don't mind me having stolen some of your ideas and make them partially work in my CJ..... . It's too good to be kept for yourself anyways...lol. 

I'll keep an eye on you.
Very well observed irl. One thing though, we farmers never build round fences unless forced to by natural terrain and even then, the less rounded up or diagonal fences the better, because they always cause problems when using agricultural machinery to either plow, seed or manure/fertilize the fields and pastures.

mrb

[Albus of Garaway]

Such a wonderful update! I love your use of rails...are you, by any chance, a rail fanatic?

[Battlecat]

Update 18 – Details

Hello everyone!  Today I'm going to finish polishing those farms from earlier, along with a few more urban details. 

Replies:

BarbarossaS: There are few developments in my area where the railway tracks run between an industrial area and a suburban area.  More often than not, it's warehouse type industry though!  I'm still pondering on the roads, but I think I agree with your assessment.  Thanks for stopping in!

David (Simpson): Thanks very much for the congrats and the kind words.  Life does get busy for all of us at times, so I'm glad you found the time to stop in! 

bat: Thanks very much!  Glad you like the update!

Evanator: Fortunately, the internet preserves all these updates so you can peruse them at your leisure!  I like you idea of using different road textures for a historical area, although from the looks of this town, they probably re-paved the historical streets quite quickly.  I'll put that idea into reserve for a future city!  Thanks!

Bernhard (Nardo69): Thanks for stopping in again.  I'd completely forgotten about those diagonal filler lots.  They won't solve all the problems I'm having with the sawtooth texture, but it'll help a lot!

Dustin (thundercrack83): Life does tend to happen, so no worries!  Thanks for stopping in! 

Matt (threestooges): No worries about that project we discussed, we all get busy at times.  Let's see about your questions then.  The traffic at that intersection isn't too bad, it's sitting around 350 cars per day right now, and the simulator says that the intersection hasn't broken yet. 

You're also absolutely right about those trees, I did forget to mention that those seasonal trees are indeed David's from the Three Rivers Region.  I haven't actually mentioned it specifically, but this city is getting pretty close to it's maximum size. 

meldolion: Welcome to Adara!  Thanks for stopping in!

FrankU: You're absolutely right about those fences matching up nicely with the Rural Renewal pieces.  Thanks very much!

io_bg: Thanks!

mrbisonm: Welcome to Adara!  Considering how inspiring I find much of your work, I'm honored by your comments!  Ideas are free of course, I certainly wouldn't be sharing them if I didn't want to see other people take them and expand on them!     I'm looking forward to seeing what you decide to do! 

As for the fences, I certainly agree on your assessment of the curves.  Every once in a while, I like to add them in just to break up the monotony of corners though!  Thanks very much for your comments!

Albus of Garaway: Thanks very much!  I do indeed love railways, and the impact they have on all sorts of development.  I fully intend to do some more interesting work with them in the future! 

Now then, on with the update!  Today I've got a handful of detailing to show you as I start polishing some of the areas I've been working on over the last few updates.

18-1: As Bernhard mentioned in his comments, some of the jagged edges from diagonal stuff are quite jarring in the last update.  First, to tone things down a bit, I downloaded the SFBT rail texture mod.  It transforms most of the rail textures from that annoying brown over to a softer green color.


18-2: Secondly, taking the suggestions about the diagonal filler lots, I replaced the tiles along the railway where I could with the fillers.  I think it did help a lot.  I'm not terribly worried about the seasonal vs non seasonal lots, that's just something I'll have to live with. 


18-3: Unfortunately, the rail texture mod doesn't seem to help with the single track railway.  In this case, I'll just have to do the best I can.  A local farmer is using this narrow piece of land between the railway and highway to harvest extra feed for his cows.  Looking at this picture, I think I'm going to have to revisit this industrial area a bit more sometime soon. 


18-4: Moving on back to the farms, I've got an idea to start finishing up this area.  In particular, I'm going to tweak those grassy fields in the bottom right. 


18-5: A lot of farmers in my area run their fences right down to natural waterways so they don't have to provide watering troughs to the cows.  Instead the cows go down and self serve at the river.  Since cows prefer not to swim, it's fairly secure.  So first, I'll extend the fences down and under the river. 


18-6: Next a slightly different set of shoreline details, a very narrow strip of natural vegetation. 


18-7: Finally, after extending the grass texture down to the water edge, here's what it looks like in high detail. 


18-8: Here's another jagged area that needs some assistance.  In this case, the diagonal filler lots can't be used since I've got my powerlines running along the road. 


18-9: So instead, I'll used the brown rye grass to soften the jagged edges a bit.  It's still not great, but it helps.


18-10: Same thing for the powerlines between the grassy field and the road.  It doesn't help much at the close zoom, but it does when you zoom out some. 


18-11: Finally, one new farm today to fill in the empty space up to the main road.  This is one of jmyers2043's new corn farms. 


18-12: Quick application of details along the edge of the farm.  This area still needs a bit more, but for now it will do the trick. 


18-13: This block of farms is pretty much done now, unless I come up with any more tweaks later.   


18-14: Finally, it's been a while since I've done an overview of the entire tile.  Here's what's done so far!


And that's a wrap for today.  Remember, the vote from update 16 is still open to anyone who hasn't voted yet.  Currently option 2 remains the winning tile!  Thanks for stopping in everyone.

[evanator]

Wow what a difference those diagonal filler lots make! The space between the road and rail in 18.2 looks 100 times better.

Your mastery over the RRP flora still amazes me. 

Always a treat to visit Adara.

[BarbarossaS]

I agree with evanator, those lots do make it look better. I trie to avoid diagonals because of it, but now I've seen the SFBT filler lots in action, I just might reconsider 
Lovely idea in 18-5 to extend the fences to the river, it's nice to see you use RL as a inspiration for this excellent MD 
And of course, as always, your eye for fine detail never seems to stop to amaze me. Especially in 18-7 (and everywhere else to, but this pic sort of stood out  ) the shoreline looks terrific! I've used your tutorial from a few pages back a lot now, but still don't come close to your mastery 

-Stijn-

[bat]

Great work there on this newest update! Nice rural part! Picture 18-7 and 18-13 are looking fantastic! But really good 14 new pictures!!

[dedgren]

A scene from real life.



Beautiful stuff, my friend.


David

[Battlecat]

Update 19 – Closing the Gap

Greetings!  Sorry for not updating sooner, but unfortunately I got attacked by real life!  Unfortunately I didn't managed to squeeze one more update in for the OSITM month, but such is life.  Welcome to the new home of Adara in the Bestseller area!  Thanks very much to everyone for your support!

Replies:

Evan (Evanator): I was pretty surprised at how much of a difference those diagonal filler lots make.  It's a huge improvement.  I'll be using those a lot more in the future!  Thanks!

Stijn (BarbarossaS): Thanks very much!  I'm particularly proud of 18.7, the area just came together beautifully!  Some day in here, I'll try to update with some real life photos of this area to give you all an idea of where I get my ideas.

bat: Thanks very much for you kind words bat! 

David (Dedgren): Thanks David!  I like what you did with Photoshop there!  Makes me wish I had some ability with that software.  I'll have to look into messing around a bit in the future.

Thanks for stopping in everyone.  Now without any further ado, here is today's update!

19-1: First, I've got to fix something that's been bugging me.  There was a mess of random little industrial lots here.


19-2: Now, a couple larger businesses and a bit more coherence to the area.  Much better.  Now if only I could figure out how to turn the rail texture to pale green grass in industrial areas, it would be perfect. 


19-3: I always enjoy new plopable textures.  Today, I noticed that Pegasus released his latest effort in the water and associated texture area over on his site.  I think these will be very useful in a future update.   


19-4: The main goal of todays update is to start filling in the gap between the urban area and farmland that's slowly been developing up the valley.  To get started, I figured a couple of good shots at the wide angle street curves created by Dedgren and released in the latest NAM update.


19-5: Zooming out a bit, Here is the area I'm working on for this update.  As you can see, a couple of farms have already developed. 


19-6: And here are the remaining farms.  I'm pretty satisfied with these ones now but more details are necessary to satisfy me!


19-7: First, these two farms.  They aren't bad and I like the simplicity.  They just need farmhouses.


19-8: A couple of homes make all the difference.  The street trees are unavoidable, but I think I picked the right ones for the area. 


19-9: Moving along, this is a new farm to me.  One of the excellent products of the BLS, I really like the farm lot.  But, I don't think I'm a huge fan of this particular field.  Fortunately, we have the technology to take care of that without losing the nice lot!


19-10: Dezoning the fields gives me room to add a whole host of details.  Fencelines, and diagonal filler fences improve the streetside area.  Then to keep with the theme of the original farm, plopable hay bales scattered in a grassy field. 


19-11: Moving along the road, this area just needs a farm home at the corn field and some trees.  There's always room for trees!


19-12: And here we have the same farms after the green invasion. 
   

19-13: Moving back out to the main highway, some detailing to fill in the empty areas along the field.  Hey, that's a lot of diagonal stuff in one area!  I'm pretty happy with this area. 


19-14: Getting close to the end of the line for today.  I'm not completely happy with this particular field type though.  I find it comes up far to often for my tastes.


19-15: Fortunately, we have the technology to take care of that as well.  Soybeans look far nicer than bare dirt. 


19-16: Finally, to wrap things up, here is the same area I showed you in 19-4 with today's work completed. 


That's a wrap for today.  One more thing before I go.  With regards to the vote for which tile to look at next, option 2 won by a landslide!  So once I finish up Alexandria here, I'll be heading back upstream past Delmar Junction to continue. 

Thanks for stopping in everyone! 

[BarbarossaS]

Man, I love it when this MD is updated! The way you let the urban area move into the farmland is incredible!
The use of David's pole thingies and the flora from the RRP are excellent, you're a true master at this!

Can't wait what you plan to do with the new set of Pegasus, but it can be nothing more than splendid!

-Stijn-

[io_bg]

Every time I stop by here I get lots of new ideas for my farm regions... Every picture is so detailed and great looking! (one question though - where can I find that farm field on the left side of 11th pic? )

[FrankU]

Beautiful work every time I see it!
But your struggle with diagonal textures and railroads makes me think you probably could be happy wit the Swamper and PEG's No rail dirt mod. Or did I tell you that before?
Especially with the wide curves, the FARR and the STR I dislikes it that I had dirt under straight and diagonal parts but nothing under the wide curves and the FARR. So now I have nothing at all, which is not always realistic, but at least it is consistent.

[Sciurus]

It's beauitful, wonderful, I love the country you do, as it's so magnificient!!

Guillaume

[Naikon]

Hi , hey im very impressed with your post and your terrain and i would like to ask you if you could make a listo of the PLUGS you use , cause i see that these are the best mods to make rural areas as i like but  i cant find them , welll thanks anyways   go on with adara !

[Battlecat]

Update 20 – Farming Again

Hard to believe I've reached 20 updates already!  I wish I had the time to do something special, but as has been case all month, life has not been allowing me much time to play!  I guess I'll have to plan on something for update 25 instead!

Replies:

Stijn (BarbarossaS): Thanks very much!  The RRP materials certainly add a huge number of options to the game that weren't available before.  The Pegasus materials should add some more excellent options!

io_bg: Glad you find it all helpful.  The farm in question in picture 11 is called Bumkin and Sons Farm by Jmyers2043.  It's part of one of his Agricultural packs and can be found on the lex here.

FrankU: Thanks!  I'll admit, I'd actually forgotten about the no rail dirt mod.  Thanks for reminding me about its existence.  I've downloaded it, but I just plain forgot to install it before working on this update.  I'll take the consistency over the realism in this case as well, it should improve the look of the area quite a bit. 

Guillaume (Sciurus): Thanks very much for stopping in!  Glad you're continuing to enjoy the region!

Naikon: Welcome to Adara!  Wow, that's quite a tall order there!  I'm not sure I can possibly list every single plugin that I've downloaded, mostly because I've lost track of exactly what I've grabbed.  However, I can say for sure that I've downloaded pretty much every single agricultural, industrial and commercial lot pack available on the LEX here on SC4D. 

Additionally, I've snagged most of the items in the Three Rivers Region Exchange in the projects section of the forum.  The Rural Renewal Project flora and fences by Chrisadams3997 are also very helpful and can also be found on the LEX.  For the water, I'm currently using the translucent plopable water by Jeronij, along with a wide variety of plopable tree controllers by Jeronij and Cycledogg (just search their names on the LEX). 

Beyond that, make sure you snag all the appropriate dependancies, which have been thoroughly listed with each entry in the LEX.  Of course, the NAM and the street tree mods by Jeronij and Andreas also help a great deal with the appearance of the urban areas.  Finally, I've also snagged a small selection of the Mountain Theme Pack items from the lot exchange at Pegasus' site.  Truth be told, this is about the best I can do unless you want to know about something specific.  If that's the case, just let me know.  Thanks for your interest and your visit!  Hope you stop in again soon!

Update:

With all the text above, I'm adding this to let you all know when I'm done with comments.  So today, I'm continuing with the rural-urban interface and my trip around the edge of the map.  I think this area will be polished off in about 3 or 4 more updates at this rate. 

20-1: This first farm fills in one more empty gap here before finishing up the river details. 


20-2: A few details really help clean up the edges of the farm. 


20-3: Now for today's major project.  It's time to fill in the farms from the main highway, up to the developed fields towards the top of the image.  The majority of the empty space here will be filled today.


20-4: First, to help define the edge of the urban area, this little corner needs one more subdivision. 


20-5: Here's the final layout of the subdivision.  In a complete absence of thought on my part, there isn't a picture of the finished subdivision, but it shows up quite nicely in several of the later shots.  Nothing fancy here. 


20-6: Moving out a bit, the first set of farms are accessed through the city center. 


20-7: Finally after a couple of passes, I'm mostly happy with these four farms.  In the course of detailing, the fruit farm was a casualty because I just don't like how that one looks. 


20-8: Thus I replaced it with soybeans.  It fits this area much better, and blends nicely with the trees. 


20-9: Next, on the other side of the river we have a series of farms.  The first farms to develop are mostly ok but I decided to get rid of the tiny one by the railway tracks.  It'll make a better set of greenspace. 


20-10: Finally, a set of farms I'm happy with.  The details will finish this up quite nicely.  The dairy farm is in particular need of attention. 


20-11: And here's the dairy farm that was missing in the earlier shot.  A touch of work with the diagonal fillers helps a great deal.  Some of the jagged edges one just has to live with though.  All we can really do is minimize it in this game.


20-12: If you look carefully, you can see the power lines running through this field here.  It's quite common in my area for the power lines to take unusual pathways like this thanks to old legal right of ways. 


20-13: Finally, here's an overview of the entire area in the middle of summer.  I ran out of time again, but the details are getting there now.  You may notice the signs of heavy pollution over one part of the city.  Something has glitched and is created a massive pollution patch at that location.  Despite my best efforts, I can't seem to get rid of it, even if I bulldoze the entire city (believe me, I've tried).  At least it's isolated, and doesn't seem to want to spread beyond a limited range.   


And that's a wrap for today.  As always, your comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated! 

[BarbarossaS]

As always, this update is EXCELLENT! I think you're a true master when it comes to dairy farms, the way you can bring those to life is really amazing! 
The fine detailling of the whole area is just fantastic! A great example of that are those powerlines running through the fields: lovely idea! 

Can't say I ever leave here uninspired, so keep up the great work!

-Stijn-

Edit: btw, congrats on 20 updates, that's really something! 

[turtle]

As always, very convicing landscape. You are a master in fine tuning details on the farms.
Great update, and thanks for continuing to share it with us

Thomas

[bat]

That's a really beautiful looking rural area! Nice work on the farms!

[Battlecat]

Update 21 – Farmer in the Corner

A new update in less than a week?  Hard to believe after the past couple weeks being so slow but here it is!  Before I get started, I've decided it's time to drop the "rediscovering" part of this diary's title.  I don't think I've even scratched the surface of all the possibilities of the new tools available here, but it's time for me to accept that I've successfully rediscovered the game! 

Replies:

Stijn (BarbarossaS): Thanks!  I get a great deal of amusement out of creating those dairy farms, they're quite fun to make.  I still find it hard to believe I'm up to 20 updates already.  It's all kinds of crazy when I start to think about it! 

Thomas (turtle): I'm always glad to share all this work with an appreciative audience!  Glad you're still enjoying it!

bat: Thanks for your kind words!

Update:

So today I've got some more farming for you, but first I have to deal with a bit of the fallout from FrankU's suggestion about the Non Rail Texture mod.  After having loaded it, I have to agree, the consistency is worth sacrificing that small amount of realism.  But of course, now I have to tweak few things to make up for it!

21-1: Here's a typical area I treated with the diagonal filler lots the other day.  I'll still be using them but I'll have to apply them differently.  Looking at this shot, I can already see some things I'll have to plan for in the future.  First, I need to make sure to leave enough space for the filler lots when developing my cities.  There's nothing I can do about the jagged edges here, but that's ok.


21-2: Same deal here for the road directly adjacent to the railway.  It may be realistic, but in this game world, I'll have to leave an extra tile buffer for fillers in the future.  Railway right of ways tend to be quite wide anyhow, so it should be ok as well. 


21-3: Some stuff I can fix though.  I replaced the diagonal fillers on the right side of the tracks with RRP fences and some random trees. 


21-4: Further into town, this area needs some attention, since now the diagonal fillers are creating jagged edges.  This can certainly be fixed.


21-5: First, between the road and railway, the diagonal fillers with the transparent edge facing the railway.  Behind the residential areas, I've just put in a selection of seasonal tree lots to fill in the gap without creating any new jagged edges.  Honestly, I think the grey ballast is sufficient as a track bed. 


21-6: Enough of the redrawing, it's time for some farming.  This is the area I'll be focusing on today.


21-7: To get started, here are the initial zones.  I just couldn't justify another bridge in this area, so this set of farms are accessed via the as yet non-existent neighbor.


21-8: This time around I'm going to zoom in fast and show you some before and after shots!  Here are the first two farms that developed.  As always, these need a bit of attention.


21-9: After adding details: Powerpoles, trees and a couple farm roads help bring the area together. 


21-10: The second set of farms before any tweaking  They're actually both corn farms, but they developed at different times.  The one at the top of the page is going to switch to a different crop though.


21-11: After details: He's working with a fallow field this year, just clover.  It gives me an opportunity to play with the fence lots I found a while back.  These lots have fences with trees attached directly to various farm field styles, in fact some of the same field styles available as plopable lots.  The original design uses maxis trees, but thanks to the SFBT maxis tree replacement mod, they all show up as a mixture of Cycledogg style trees!


21-12: Finally, we've got one of the usual dairy farms here, and I'm going to have some fun with the details on this one.


21-13: After details: The usual treatment here, removing the fields and adding RRP fences.  The interesting thing about this farm, it's in the corner of the city tile.  Some day in the distant future, this farm will extend onto the 3 neighboring tiles.  I've simply laid the groundwork for it today. 


21-14: And here are the five farms I've finished developing today. 


21-15: Moving along, I need to finish detailing along the river today.  I like playing with the details along here. 


21-16: Here's a close up view.  It's a shame most rivers through farmland in the real world don't have nice wide green buffers like this!  But this here is my world, and I like trees!


21-17: Finally, here is an overview of the whole area developed today.  Next time I'll swing around to the right side of this picture and continue the farming. 


That's a wrap for today!  As always, your suggestions and comments are appreciated!

[vershner]

That's a very realistic river!

What are you using for the reeds and marshy areas at the edge of the water?

[Nexis4Jersey]

Holy Cow, that's incredible .....