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Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

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

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woodb3kmaster

Well, I guess I'll post the 500th reply... Welcome to the Classics, Battlecat! You definitely deserve this honor.

Salmo is quite the town! I wasn't expecting the final product to be so big, but there it is. And boy, does it look good! Everything is well-placed; it all looks so real! You've really outdone yourself here. Although I'd have to agree with mattb325 that it appears you're missing the BAT nightlighing patch, but that doesn't really detract from the town's beauty. It actually makes sense for a small town like Salmo to be pretty dark and quiet at night.

Congratulations, my friend, and great work!

Feel brand new. Be inspired.
NYHAVEN - VIEWS FROM WITHIN
Nuclear City - 5/8

Earth quake

Another splendid update.
The village near the lake is just fantastic. &apls
Your commercial aera is really beautiful, as well your industrial aera.
Excellent work battlecat.

Fabian93

CONGRATULATIONS ON 500 REPLIES &apls &apls &apls
You really deserve it - I'm looking forward to what you've got for us in the next 500 replies ;D

That recent Update looks fantastic and I really like the way the highway runs through that little town :thumbsup:

Keep up the great work,
Fabian

Nanami

Congratulation for reach 500 post.
For the night light patch, well you are same like me. I don't have it too. So I don't to care about that, This town realistic, great job!

djvandrake

Looks wonderful!  Another great update and congrats on getting to the classics!  &apls

dsrwhat316

Seems like we've had quite a few MD's move up to the Classics section lately, haven't we? Congrats, my friend!  :thumbsup: &apls &apls

I do like your planning shots; they give us a method to your madness, so to speak  $%Grinno$% The town overview is nice, surrounded by all those trees. I can't wait to see how the lake shore is finished off in your next update!

~ Dan
Custom Lotting at its Finest:

Last updated: 2/9- I'm Back! +  A Teaser (of course...)

threestooges

Speaking of moving up to the Classics section, that move is now taken care of. Congrats on that Battlecat. It's been an amazing 55 updates, and here's to many more to come.
-Matt

Battlecat


Tomas Neto: Thanks very much, glad you're continuing to enjoy your visits!

mattb325: Welcome to Adara!  I'm certainly glad you stopped in, particularly considering your recent contribution to the quality of my low wealth subdivisions! 

Doh!  :-[  I thought I'd managed to get all the patches, I'd completely forgotten about the night light patch!  I should have known something was wrong once I realized that the maxis lots were the only ones working.  Time to have a peek at your homes now that the lights are on!

kwakelaar: Thanks very much!  Glad you like this little town.  I'll be repeating that shot one more time once the lake is fully detailed!

Dreamcat: Thanks for suggesting the night shots, I'll be including many more in the future.  Those security fences are actually attached to the parking lots that I've added.  I find them a lot easier to use.  Those lots are here on the STEX, they're a very early creation by Swamper77, from way back in 2005.  Don't ask me how I managed to unearth them when I was doing the initial work to populate my plugins folder!  They appear near the top of the parks menu. 

Unfortunately those grass tiles are pretty much unavoidable as soon as you plop something next to any road.  However, there are methods to mitigate the problem.  I think I'll try popping some diagonal filler lots in there to see if they help at all. 

I can't believe I forgot about that maxis lighting update, I ran into the exact same problem a few years back!  At least I've got it fixed now, so there will be a bunch more night lights today.  Hope you enjoy this update!

Ethan (ecoba): :-) It's a good line, nothing wrong with borrowing a good line like that.  Yup indeed, Salmo is a real place, just like Vavenby.  The real Salmo is located here in the Kootneys Region, east of Trail at the junction of Highways 3 and 6.  It's a small place, but I like the name. 

Two things about the farming.  One is that I am using the CAM, which may or may not be having an impact of the job supply from farms.  Secondly is the interesting thing, farm demand is fairly continuous as long as the population of other industries is low.  In other words, you can fill the entire map with farms, even though you don't have nearly enough people to fill the jobs available.  Considering the number of farms in the first three tiles, that's probably where this runaway demand came from! 

Glad you enjoyed the night shots, I've got a massive batch of them today!

sumwonyuno: Glad you like the expansion of the town.  The black under the trees is a result of my ongoing battle with the dreaded transparent texture bug.  When a lot is modded to have a transparent texture, if you breath on the game wrong the texture turns black since the game isn't actually intended to have transparency of that sort.  It's easy enough to fix just by switching the zoning data view on and then off again.  Unfortunately, that switch takes upwards of 2 -3 minutes to run at this point on the map tile, so I tend to just ignore it for the construction shots.  Thanks for stopping in!

Matt (threestooges): Yeah, the darkness appears to be caused by the absence of the maxis patch to make night lights work.  I'll have some new shots today!  The "work" I did on the maxis industrials really makes them look good.  There's no lot work done here, just the application of a very old set of lots by Swamper77 (circa 2005), which can be found here on the STEX.  Glad you enjoyed the update. 

danielcote: Thanks very much, glad you are continuing to enjoy your visits!

Zack (woodb3kmaster): Thanks very much for providing the 500th reply and for your congrats!  It did wind up a bit bigger than I expected, but I'm quite happy with the results!  Glad you like it as well.  Yup, I did indeed forget completely about the night lighting patch!  That's fixed for today's update!

Vivien (Earth quake): Thanks very much, glad you like how it all came together!

Fabian (Fabian93): Thanks very much for the congrats!  There's plenty more to come, I have grand plans for the long term growth of this region!  Hard to believe I'm only on the fourth tile though!

976: Thanks for the congrats!  You know, the honest truth is I did the same thing way back when I was working on Terra, my old CJ at simtropolis.  But I've fixed it now.  Very silly that maxis doesn't have that one in the same place as the other two patches. 

djvandrake: Thanks very much for your kind words and congrats.  Hope you enjoy this massive update!

Dan (dsrwhat316): It has indeed been a busy week for MD's, both moving to Classics and to Best Sellers.  Glad you're enjoying the planning shots, I took my inspiration for this style from Anduin Valley Revisited by Darmok.  The lake shore's been delayed a bit by today's celebration, but rest assured, I've got some interesting plans for it, including a custom lot or two. 

Matt (threestooges) #2: Thanks very much for stopping by to make the move.  Thanks very much for your ongoing support through this journey!  I've planned this pretty carefully in advance, and there are grand plans that will take me a long time to execute at the rate I'm going! 

Update 56
Adara – Classics Celebration
Nighttime Tour of Adara

Well here we are past 500 posts and into the Classics section for Adara.  Hard to believe I've made it, this truly is an honor!  Thank you all very much for the amazing support you've provided over the past nine months since I started this mayor's diary. 

To show my thanks today, instead of the originally planned update, today I'm going to make a quick journey back through the four tiles of Adara!  In fact, it'll be a full scale night time tour of all the named communities in the region!  Be prepared, there are over 50 pictures in this update, I hope you all enjoy it!

Delmar Junction

56-1: Our first stop today takes us right back to the very beginning.  Welcome back to East Delmar Junction! 


56-2: Not a lot of lights to see here, this half of Delmar Junction is pretty poor compared with it's counterpart on the West side of the river. 


56-3: But when we zoom in a bit closer, there are some lights, and a small bit of activity on the streets even at night. 


56-4: West Delmar Junction wound up a bit more sprawled that I'd originally intended but it's provided an excellent anchor for medium wealth development in the region. 


56-5: It seems to me that the higher the wealth of a town, the more lighting there is!


56-6: The industrial and commercial core of this town is awash with lights.


56-7: A diverse set of businesses can be found on the corner by the local clinic.


56-8: Here's a fairly typical medium wealth development near the local elementary school.

56-9: Moving along, there's one last community on this tile.  Yarrow is a tiny little community, but there's a reasonable amount of wealth here. 


56-10: Not a lot of lights at night, but that's to be expected considering its size!


56-11: This is a small farm near Yarrow.  I just really like the lighting on this lot for some reason! 


Alexandria

56-12: Next town on the list is Alexandria, the biggest town in the region to date.  There will be a competitor for that title starting up soon though!


56-13: And of course as you would expect from a town this big, it lights up quite brightly at night.


56-14: The urban core has a lot more development.  Although most of it is actually maxis, it still turned out fairly nicely!  One of the only two medium density developments are in this shot.


56-15: Here's the other medium density residential area! 


56-16: Moving along, near the high school there's apparently a well lit McDonalds. 


56-17: The strip mall at the foot of Alexandria Lookout is very well lit indeed.


56-18: And like most industrial areas, there are lights everywhere.


56-19: One last shot here before we move on, this is the gateway road to the industrial area.


56-20: Before we leave the Alexandria Tile though, there is one more small community.  This high wealth neighbourhood isn't actually part of the town of Alexandria.  Rather it's part of the as yet unrevealed town on the neighboring tile to the south.


56-21: And at night it lights up very nicely.  Those waterfalls are pretty bright at night as well!


56-22: These two are my favorite mansions so far. 


56-23: Of course just down the hill is the fallow area I developed around a high wealth looking farm.  This one looks pretty cool at night as well!


Vavenby

56-24: Vavenby is still my favorite tile, partially because of the dam, but also because of the fun I had with custom lots here.  Our first stop in Vavenby is Brewer's Junction. 


56-25: Another cosy little town at night, it's got a lot in common with East Delmar Junction. 


56-26: The old brewery lights up quite nicely!


56-27: And the power station at the dam practically glows!


56-28: Of course, the most dramatic community on this tile is the town of Vavenby itself.  It's currently the second largest community in Adara. 


56-29: It's got a lot more green space than Alexandria so it's not quite as bright at night.


56-30: The in main industrial area, with the Safeway at the bottom of the shot.  I love the lighting on some of these industries.


56-31: This is the small residential development just outside of town. 


56-32: This shot is up the hill in the first part of Vavenby I developed.


56-33: Outside of town, there are some very interesting lights on some farms.  There's a bright orange light illuminating a roadside stand here. 


56-34: The main house of the chicken farm has some nice subtle lighting as well.


56-35: But the brightest non urban shot has to be the campground.  Nearly everyone has a campfire tonight!


56-36: I was quite fortunate to notice this train just entering the tile (thanks to an automata generator).  Here it's crossing the bridge near the railyard.  Let's follow it through the tile!


56-37: At Brewer's Junction it takes a quick detour through the siding.  It didn't stop, so there must be some work going on at one of the crossings here.  Fairly dangerous working at night, but sometimes the works has to be done in whatever window is available!


56-38: Just outside Brewer's Junction, it's just about to cross the culvert underpass at that small farm that Nardo69 pointed out as being a problem!


56-39: Apparently it's heading up Lehman Valley to another as yet unrevealed community.  Gotta love the STR, it really makes for some fantastically realistic shots!


56-40: Coming around the bend next to the powerlines and Lehman Creek. 


56-41: Here's one last shot as it rounds the bend near the edge of Vavenby.  Hope you enjoyed this little side trip!


Jackson Pass

56-42: This part of the update could also be called redemption!  Thanks again to everyone for pointing out the existence of the BAT patch.  Our first stop on this tile is the town of Jackson Pass. 


56-43: At night now it's a lot brighter, there really is lighting on those beautiful homes by Mattb! 


56-44: At the main intersection with the highway, Wilson Foods is still burning the lights while the crews restock the shelves and clean the place.


56-45: A fairly typical subdivision in Jackson Pass, the lights on those homes really make all the difference.


56-46: Outside of town in the Valley near Garibaldi Mines, a train is departing the mine. 


56-47: Once again, this train will eventually wind up crossing the tile boundary to another unrevealed tile! 


56-48: Because there's so many of them around, here's what a typical exurb looks like at night!


56-49: Finally, one last stop before we wrap up today.  Here's the town of Salmo once again. 


56-50: Looking much better now at night with 85% more lighting!


56-51: The lights on these homes look excellent, obviously a lot of attention went into the details here!


56-52: The industrial area looks a lot nicer as well.  That warehouse at the top of the shot looks particularly cool.  I think that's one of Simgoober's. 


56-53: And across the street at the other half of the industrial area, the maxis building is no longer the only light source here!


56-54: Finally, just one last shot for today, here's the Denny's and the electronics store, now with proper light sources! 


Whew, and that's a wrap.  Thanks once again to everyone, commenters and lurkers alike for all the support!  I always appreciate you taking the time to stop in and let me know both the good and bad that you see here!  See you all next time for that promised scary road! 

sumwonyuno

Heh, and I thought I post a lot of pictures at once :P

The zoomed out views of Alexandria and Vavenby look really good!  Is that "thing" that is covering the top right quadrant of the dam picture the dam itself?


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Earth quake

Wow, Impressive update. &apls
My favourite city is Alexandria (I really like the 56-20 picture). The railroad is just splendid and the city of Jackson Pass is really nice.
The rural aera is splendid, great work. :thumbsup:

Tomas Neto

Hard to say which of them is the best picture!!! They are all fantastic!!!!
Awesome update my friend, and welcome to the Classics!!!  &apls &apls

ecoba

Oh, my, what a wonderful first update in the Classics, Battlecat!

All of those night shots are so beautiful. Adara has really had so much attention to deatail put into it and it's really noticable in the night shots. I like the way that all of the villages are shaped differently, and the way that they are are once again really brought out in the night. Alexandria really is larger than I noticed before, but you say there will be something larger soon, (a city perhaps?), I want that to happen soon. The contrast in the farms seem to be really brought out in the night too.

Hope to see some more night (or day.) shots, soon, anything seems to do if it's in Adara!  :)

Ethan

Dreamcat

Everything looks beautiful, Battlecat.  Love the recap you've done -- those towns look great with the nightlights!  I particularly enjoyed the Alaxandria tile, especially the high-wealth suburb.  It looks much better now.  I must say, congratulations on 500 comments!  You completely deserve it and more!  I look forward to seeing the progress on Adara and am eager to see what's up next!

djvandrake

Very impressive showcase of your great work.  Fitting for your 500th and entry into the classics.  &apls &apls &apls

I really enjoyed all the train shots and that campground is my favorite!  :thumbsup:

BarbarossaS

Congrats on making it to the Classics!  &apls &apls
I'm sure you'll make it to the HoF too one day  :P

Love this flashback on all you've achieved so far! It's also nice to see Adara by night, I don't think I've seen a night picture here before.
Anyway, keep amazing us with your brilliant updates in the future!

-Stijn-

danielcote

Great job on the town! I see you added more big box stores  ;D . Keep it up and I'm looking forward to it getting bigger.

Schulmanator

Impressive! And I really like your rural and natural areas. Good work.  &apls
See the all-new National Capital Region!:http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=15118.0

calibanX

Congratulations on entering the Classics Battlecat. Very well deserved. I love your rural towns. Those zoomed out shots of Vavenby and Alexandria are great. The flashback is a great idea too.

Looking forward to your journey toward the Hall of Fame!

Geoff
Where City and Country Flow Together

Nexis4Jersey

Wow , that update blew me away , i love the ruralness &apls

Battlecat


sumwonyuno: Indeed it is a lot of pictures, not something I can afford to do on a regular basis, but it was worth it to say thanks for pushing me through to classics!  Glad you like those shots of Vavenby and Alexandria, I really am very proud of how those two towns came together. 

The dam is a massive structure, and yes that is it covering the top right quadrant of that particular picture.  I've been to quite a few dams through out the West Coast of North Amercia and they really are monster structures. 

Vivien (Earth quake): Glad you enjoyed the update, it was fun to put together.  Thanks for your kind words!

Tomas Neto: Thanks very much for your kind words and support! 

Ethan (ecoba): Thanks very much!  It is really interesting how different each town wound up looking.  There's quite a range of sizes and shapes, and I really do try to take terrain into account when I'm building cities as well.  The night lighting really does highlight the urban boundaries effectively!

I'm not sure if this next city will be much larger, but it's going to be in contention at the very least.  Among other things, I have plans to include a mod I've never used in any MD or CJ in the past.  More on that when I move on to the next tile in a week or two. 

Dreamcat: Thanks very much for your ongoing support here.  Glad you enjoyed the improved night shots.  If you hadn't mentioned night shots, I never would have discovered the absence of the BAT patch, so thanks once again for suggesting them in the first place! 

djvandrake: Glad you enjoyed the update, I certainly enjoyed putting it together.  I'm actually really surprised by how much light there was in the campground, it looks pretty cool.

Stijn (BarbarossaS): Thanks very much for your congrats and for the vote of confidence!  I still find it hard to believe how far I've come in the last few months.  Glad you enjoyed revisiting the rest of the region!

danielcote: Thanks for the kind words!  There's a slightly bigger town coming down the pipe soon, hope you enjoy it when it arrives!

Schulmanator: Thanks for stopping by and for your kind words!

Geoff (calibanX): I had a lot of fun putting the flashback together, it was a lot of fun revisiting the previous tiles.  Thanks for the congratulations and for your ongoing support!

Nexis4Jersey: Glad you enjoyed that monster update! 

Update 57
Jackson Pass – Lakeside Exurbs

Well, I must say that I'm utterly floored by the last week.  I thought making it into classics would be the highlight of the month!  At this point all I can really say is thanks to the Hall of Fame comittee for the nomination.  Beyond that, I'm completely speechless, so I'll just move on with this update!

Today I'll be creating most of the remaining development in the Salmo area of the Jackson Pass tile.  I've finally got the job situation under control, which is handy since I'll be developing a final batch of exurbs in this area as suggested by the title.  Plus, I'll be making my first stab at detailing some of the shoreline of this tile.  There's a batch of other things to sort out today as well. 

After today, there is one more update to polish up Jackson Pass!  Then as always I'll make a quick detour through mapping, mosaics and composite images while I get the initial prep work done on Tile #5!

56-1: So I mentioned at the end of the last update that I'd be building the scariest chunk of road in my region yet.  Well here it is, at least in draft format.  This is the initial terraforming to get the slopes cleaned up before I convert it to a rural road. 


56-2: And then carefully replace it with streets.  The curves are pretty sharp though. 


56-3: I've replaced as many streets as possible with wide radius curves but apparently my spacing was as careful as necessary since the smallest curves are 2x2.  Hmm, a 2x3 hairpin turn would be pretty handy for projects like this.  I'll have to look into that.  For the moment, this will do though.  One other thing I've done is connected these streets to the neighboring tile.  This area will carry across the boundary.


56-4: Before I actually develop the housing down here, first I'm going to fill in this gap.  The left side of this image is the edge of town.  While I was considering putting another industrial area in here at first, I came up with a better idea.


56-5: I haven't built a farm in quite a while, and this area is actually pretty appropriate! 


56-6: It's a fairly simple RRP style cattle ranch, nothing to fancy, but it adds a touch more diversity to the area.  I'll add more like this in the future. 


56-7: A quick look at the entrance to the farm.  I went a bit lighter on the grasses here since the ground texture was pretty cooperative.  It's kind of nice, I haven't made a farm in quite a while!


56-8: The main power supply for this town comes in along this route.  The power lines cut across the field to a substation I added to the edge of the industrial area. 


56-9: Poles line the highway and will lead right out of town to the neighboring tile.  I decided early on that the main high tension circuit runs along the opposite side of the lake. 


56-10: Before we go back to the development on this road, here's a quick look at the scary road!  Apparently the industries in the area have decided that this is the fastest route to the edge of town.   This is really inappropriate for the area, so I'm going to snag a truck traffic blocker to fix this at some point.  On the other hand, at least it provides clear evidence that the street connection works like a charm!  Additionally, I'd really like to do something about those two turns that don't have wide radius curves. 


56-11: But unfortunately, it's way beyond my abilities and knowledge.  I managed to get as far as a set of textures that I'm showing below.  Following Dave's (Dedgren) excellent tutorial on creating smooth curves I made my first attempt at creating something.  The textures worked out fine, particularly after a few rounds of touch up to remove repeating patterns. 


Beyond this, I'm stumped.  It's intended to be a 2x3 lot or puzzle piece, to account for the narrowest possible hillside curves.  Currently the narrowest we can do with wide radius curves is 2x4 using a pair of 2x2 curves.  I tried a transit enabled lot, but those seem to block car traffic or at least the ability of the simulation to find jobs for sims.  That makes it impossible to develop the housing down at the bottom of this hill.  As for puzzle pieces, that's way out of my league, and I don't have any interest in risking messing up the NAM! 

Of course, that paragraph above represents about 2.5 hours of frustration on Saturday!  I'd keep trying, but I've got a limited amount of time, so I've got to move on for now.  If anyone on the NAM team wants to take this idea further, I can finish up this one and the other network textures as necessary.  Just drop me a PM and let me know what I can do!

56-12: In the meantime, here's the area I'd like to work on next.  Waterfront cabins are the goal here.


56-13: As nice as Mattb's homes are, this particular update calls for smaller houses.  I carefully picked and made historical a selection of small homes. 


56-14: To really add to the feel of these homes, I needed some new custom work.  I dug around the LEX and STEX for a selection of small wood docks and crafted a handful of simple custom lots.  I'm probably going to go back and redo this sooner rather than later, but they'll do for now.  At least these came together better than the hairpin curve!


56-15: The simple plopable dirt paths are perfect to connect these up to the homes. 


56-16: And the shoreline textures just wrap things up nicely.


56-17: Here's an overview of the area now that it's done, complete with trees.  If you look carefully, you may notice that I've used a deciduous tree controller around the hairpin curves to reflect the fact that the native forest was cut down.  Deciduous trees are the logical colonizers of an area like that; in fact they may have even been planted for stability. 


And that's all for today.  The next update is coming right on schedule though.  Next time, all the remaining details on the Jackson Pass tile will be done!  Thanks again to everyone for their support here!