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Calidores

Started by 11241036, January 22, 2015, 11:48:08 AM

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Gugu3


11241036

#21



Responsa


vortext: Glad you like it. Lemanticum was quite a challenge to build, especially because of the river junctions there.
metarvo: Thank you! Indeed, I had my doubts about the Norwegian Homes, they really stick out; to temper this effect, I decided to make an entire village only with these houses, and I've made building blockers for them, so they won't grow in any other city.
Gugu3: Thank you too.


Exordium


Today, we will travel to the south of Iramaris, and that is A3, Friganium. I'm actually nearly done with this city tile, only a few parts are missing; however, since it is weekend and I won't have much time next week, I will share now what I've done with Friganium the last two weeks.
But first, there's a little extra information on what I will (today, and probably in futural updates) share with you:

One day, according to Calidorian historians, a great and devastating earthquake occurred, wiping out every sign of civilization in the Valley of Calidores, and even relocating some of the rivers, as well as lowering mountains and hils. Fortunately, the brave population of Calidores has been able to rebuild its small "Simperium Calidorum" from scratch, sometimes making the settlements resemble very closely the former settlements. Numerous research attempts have been made to find out how Calidores looked like in earlier days, but to no avail. Yet recently, after finding out that all attempts have only been fruitless because someone forgot to swap the tree controller back, it has for the first time been possible to retrieve old pictures (albeit in black-and-white) of Calidores - at that time still being named Calidore.

In other words: This is not my first attempt in working on this particular region map. About two years ago, I made my first attempt, however, at this time, I didn't know how to use SC4Terraformer, so I eventually quit working on it mostly because of the high cliffs and mountains. However, there are screenshots of this map in my folders, and I do actually think that they sometimes turned out well enough to share them - at least for the purpose of comparing them with how I build my cities now. Even the entire region does still exist (I'm talking about having two similar regions, an old and a new one), and so I returned to make some more screenshots. Unfortunately, it seems I've removed some plugins in the meantime, so there are brown boxes at various places. Hopefully they won't disturb too much. As already mentioned, I've changed the name to Calidores to make sure this MD doesn't conflict with other MD's.

Let's now stop blabbering and continue with the...


Progressio


As Friganium is located at a small bay, I figured it would be best to design most settlements there to be tourist attractions and based on recreation. Unfortunately, the variety of old town buildings has decreased somewhat, but this is due to the hilly terrain which very frequently only allows the placement of 1x1 buildings. And I had REALLY bad luck this time with the 1x1 low-density residentials the game grew (mostly Maxis bungalows and SimGoobers Sweet Legacy Homes, although the former ones have been removed whenever they have been spotted; sometimes I really want to think what this game is thinking). First will come the earlier pictures, second the new ones.

The first settlement is Orantria, located at the very north of the city tile, close to Castrum Tullae, which we saw in the previous update. As you can see, the road system and the residential, industrial, commercial, and old-town-part zones are resembling their old counterparts.


#1; Click to enlarge


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Next settlement, located at the far east: Inerium. There is a resemblance between the old and the new pictures, however, this is the part where the new village design deviates the most from the old one.


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Third settlement (province capital): Valoriae. As you can see, I've been nearly frantic about copying the road system from earlier days. :D It's the main tourist magnet, so I've spent much time (and money) on creating a beautiful coastline. Among its attractions are the opera house, along with an open-air stage, the House of Innovations, where modern artists from all over Calidores (and hopefully other Simperii) may display their works, and the Guggensim Museum. Several restaurants and parks (unfortunately unfinished) provide relaxation as well. Quite new: the old town parts. Futural updates will also include a marina there - and, of course, a beach. I must admit that compared to the tourist section, the upper part looks like a dozy nest ;D. However, all the peope working in the various buildings there obviously need a place to live, and nowadays, they don't build everything like back in the 19th century.

(Unfortunately, while writing this update, I realized that I forgot to make a larger screenshot of Valoriae. This will be added soon in a futural update. Sorry.)


#8; Click to enlarge


#9; Click to enlarge


The final settlement: A small village with the name of Haerestria, located at the southernmost area of the peninsula here. It has been the most difficult one to build because of the steep slopes (the streets do, according to my calculations, have a maximum grade of 15.625%). I must admit that I miss the mediterranean look of the farms a little, although I'm satisfied with how it turned out. Perhaps I'll change this later.
On the newer screenshots, you might observe that this is the only place where I've started to make a beach. Unfortunately, I haven't really found a way to make it visually pleasing. In particular, I'd like to find some beach accessories (like umbrellas, towels, etc.), and if there was a way to make a beach with other means than texture-based beach lots, I'd also be happy. If someone of you guys and girls knows props, MMP's, lots or whatever you can recommend that would help me creating visually pleasing beaches, I might even be this happy that in return I'll name a road after you: Via (enter your name here) :thumbsup:


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The final screenshot will show my new approach in designing agricultural areas: I've been thinking that in my country, as well as several other countries, only a few people (less than 5% of the population) actually live from farming; so therefore, I figured that it would be unrealistic to have a farming house located at literally any field. So I decided to create blockers for all farming buildings I could find in my Plugins folder; since I've installed the SPAM, now only fields grow (basically 1x1 field lots with workers on them, letting field lots grow along them). I'm keeping some spots empty to place farmhouses there, along with barns, silos, herb gardens, greenhouses, and other stuff. Since Friganium contains a few farm fields, I've already made two "farming complexes" there, a third one will be built close to Haerestria. This screenshot shows both of them. You're welcome to tell me your opinion on this, I'm absolutely no expert in agriculture.


#13; Click to enlarge

That's all for today. Hope you enjoyed this update.


Edit: Improved some expressions and explanations, fixed some typos.

vortext

Your approach to farming makes a lot of sense to me as I fully agree it's annoying to have a farmhouse on every field. I've actually taken it one step further, not only do I use 1x1 'field only' farm lots but in addition I've lotted the farm buildings as residentials. So now I can make fully operational farm complexes. Of course it's more convenient to do this if the entire region is nothing but farms, as mine is. All this to say the farm complexes look really nice.

The various little towns are shaping up nicely as well, will be interesting to see Valoriae develops. Keep at it!  :thumbsup:
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

kelis

All the pictures are great, but number #9 is my favourite !! I love that lighthouse and its location. Fantastic work !!
.                                                                                                                      

                                                                                     || Benelux Team || Windows on the World || My Photos on Flickr || Kelis BNL Projects ||

art128

Agree with the above comments, the farm system you've made is really interested. I like it a lot.

Great pictures as well, I like the town with the large beach.
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

samu64


noahclem

Great update and lots of neat stuff in this region  &apls

As for your beach question, your lot-based approach seems to be working pretty well but there are other options. The first would be to have your terrain mod show beach textures in the types of areas that your beaches are. It's pretty easy to change the factors that control this yourself by going to your terrain mod controller file and editing "MaxBeachAltitude", whose number signifies meters above sealevel, and "MaxBeachWidth", whose hexidecimal number signifies width of beach in tiles. I wrote a tutorial on how to edit sealevel here[/ur] and to edit the aforementioned values just change them instead of sealevel. The problem with this approach is that beaches will appear in any place that suits the criteria you set, including places you might not want them. It's my preferred method but I combine it with careful beach terraforming and I change the beach values whenever I feel like it to get the look I'm seeking. Another approach for creating beaches would be using the JENX [url=http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3077]Poseidon Mod which contains lot-based effects that cover the ground within a few tile radius in various beach textures. You could also use MMPs for beach colors but it would be a lot of work and wouldn't look as good so I'd not recommend it.

As for beach MMPs the ones I most often use are VIP and namspopof IIRC but a cursory search didn't locate them. I think they're on ST and TSC respectively.

Hope that helps  :thumbsup:

romualdillo

I like the way you design the little cities! A whole world in only a few tiles...  :thumbsup:

11241036




Responsa


vortext: Thank you very much! I'm already considering relotting some farming houses in my Plugins folder to make them residentials, but this will take a while.
kelis, art128, samu64: Thank you very much for your comments and your interest!

noahclem: Thank you very much for your comment and your advise about the beaches, I really appreciate it. At the time you wrote it, I've already finished making the beaches, but I took some time to make some experiments in Friganium with your suggestions. This is what I found out:
* Changing the beach altitude and width with iLive Reader gave results that I didn't always like. As you already mentioned, I had beaches at places where I didn't want them. This was especially troublesome in cities like Valoriae and Orantria, where the beach sits at the same sea level as the city. However, it did solve some problems - particularly by removing the beach all together, I was finally able to get pleasing results at those coastal parts of my city where I didn't want to have any beach at all (because I was designing the coast with MMP's, such as gravel, grass, and trees).
* It seems that your suggestion of careful terraforming works out best, as the beaches look more natural and I won't have the clearly cut borders that appear in water when working with lot-based beaches with base textures. It will probably be very difficult to make them reality in Friganium, because, as already mentioned, the beaches are on the same sea level as the adjacent development. As for now, I think I'll stick with lot-based beaches, but it's entirely possible that I'll switch to another option later.
* I tried out the MMP's from toutsimcities.com you recommended (I don't know their exact name anymore), but I didn't like them. Even though the current parasols and towels I'm using (from some Copacabana set from the STEX) have the usual "square look" (they are lot-based), I like them better.
* I've also tried the beach effects from the Poseidon Mod, but the only thing I got was circular patches of sand that gave a nasty circular look when they overlapped each other. I'll pass on them.

Nevertheless, I've included some pictures of my work and experiments that probably couldn't have been done without your suggestions. By the way, a road starting at the roundabout in Inerium and ending at the roundabout in Haerestria has been named "Via Noahclem" now. :thumbsup: To illustrate it, I've turned on the signposts on the pictures in this update, it's a rather long road.

romualdillo: Wow, thank you very much!


Progressio


In today's update, I'll give the finishing touch to the province of Friganium on city tile A3.

I was able to track down the missing dependency that gave me all these brown boxes in Update 6. The affected pictures will later be replaced by better ones.

Before we have a look at the beach development, there's tragic news: Some of you may have noticed that in Update 6 at picture #4 there's another settlement at the bottom of the picture. Sadly, it fell prey to the devastating earthquake and it couldn't be rebuilt, mostly because God (aka Me) decided not to build this many settlements as on the previous region (Calidores already has a population of about 67,000 inhabitants living on 200 km², that equals to more than 300 people/km². And I haven't even started building the capital, my plans are building a city with over 100,000 inhabitants. There are not many countries on the earth with a similarly high population density.). In commemoration of this event, the Calidorian government decided to place a chapel there.

This is a historic picture of the mentioned village (sorry, its name has been lost):


#1; Click to enlarge

... and this is how this area looks today - at least the spring has survived.


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As already mentioned in the answer to noahclem, the coastal development in all 4 settlements has been virtually finished.

Orantria:


#3; Click to enlarge

Haerestria:


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Valoriae: As promised, this update will include more close-ups of Valoriae.


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And the lighthouse:


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Inerium: Since the beach is located on a lower level than the village (below a seawall), I've included a picture of my experiments there.


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This is how the beach would look like without the beach textures from the beach lots. As already mentioned, I'm currently sticking to the lot based solution, but this picture is really making me reconsider.


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This is another, more rural, corner in my city that I wanted to show: A way how I'll be designing forests (at least smaller patches) in futural updates. This time made with girafe's beeches, chestnuts, oaks, and norway maples, and VIP's aesculus and fagus trees. Unfortunately, it's harder than it looks, especially because it's time-consuming and tedious to fill very large areas only with MMP's and nearly impossible to place them on small 1x1 gaps because with my preferred tree MMP's (Girafe's trees) I'm getting clusters of trees that are overhanging and sometimes appear to grow on streets or in houses when I'm doing it wrong.


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We'll conclude this update with an aerial overview of Friganium, as well as a road map (with the Via Noahclem highlighted in blue). Hope you liked it.


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vortext

Great update once again!  &apls

Nice map and I definitely like the lot-less looks of the beach in pic 11 better. It's a more natural transition to water and a better looking texture as well.

As for the population density issue, I couldn't help but notice in the overview the villages are awfully close together. In fact I didn't even realize they're all on the same tile! As a general rule of thumb I stick to one village per large tile so they're at least ~4km, i.e. an hour walking, apart from one another. This corresponds quite well with historic, real world development. As much as I like your building skills I think four well developed villages hundreds of meters apart is too much of good thing.  ;)

time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

gn_leugim

Well, that 4km rule may be true in some places but others is not, all depends on the geography from the place, resources, waterways, mountains etc. etc. and if you check, some places may have villages more closed together than 4kms. also, we may want to adjust things to SC4 scale. I use  1x1km a lot for small (1k max people) villages and only go for large (4x4) for cities and had them placed accordingly on map.

i like this so far, keep it coming

Dantes

The scale used looks good.
You've built a pretty little town.
I like it.

Themistokles

Hic sunt multi bonae oppidae! I just couldn't resist using my very scant Latin :P The cities are really well planned. To my mind, and as gn_leugim said, the mountainous geography makes the placement of the villages look good -- I think the small distances and many details gives the peninsula its (in lack of a better word) quaint/cosy/picturesque look. Although it maybe wouldn't be like that in most real world cases, I think it looks really great in SC4!

And the beach texture: Maybe another solution would be to hide the sharp edge between beach and sea-floor with some underwater MMP:ing?
Come join me on a hike to St Edmea!

Latest update: 7

"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy." - John Sawhill

11241036

#33



Responsa


vortext: Actually, in the country I live, it's not at all unusual to have villages even bordering each other... I've probably expressed myself poorly, I actually meant that by building a fifth village, I'd probably go entirely overboard. However, on a region this small and compared to SC4 scale, like mentioned by gn_leugim, I need to place my villages more close together. This will, however, be probably the only case where I'll have 4 villages on the same city tile (it's just because the bay provides 1. fish, 2. a good view to the ocean, and 3. a lot of money from tourism).
I should BTW mention that I do actually like the natural beaches better than the lot-based beaches. More about that in this update.
gn_leugim, Dantes: Thank you both very much, for your comments and your interest!
Themistokles: Tibi gratias ago! About your suggestion: Seems like a good idea. I've made some experiments with placing various MMP's at the borders of the beaches, and it mostly works out very nice. More about that in this update.


Progressio


Unfortunately, the past two weeks, real life really got me, and I had little time to play Sim City. I haven't been entirely idle, and so there are some pictures of the further beach development in Friganium, as well as a little progress in Teragonis (city tile B1).

As already mentioned, I've decided to camouflage the border of the beaches with MMP's. After trying out various rock MMP's I had in my Plugins folder, I still liked Pegasus' content best because it contains the best mix of gravel, rocks, and boulders of various sizes. I wasn't satisfied with all the other MMP's  because either I didn't like their look or they were too difficult to place (for instance, they didn't allow me to cover the ground entirely, which means that the beach border would remain visible). On 2 of the subsequent screenshots, I've turned on the waves (this wasn't possible in Haerestria because I had to put two pictures together to show the whole beach).

Valoriae:


#1; Click to enlarge


Orantria:


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Haerestria:


#3; Click to enlarge


I've decided to leave the beach in Inerium in a state without base textures, like in Update 7 picture #11. After all, I do think that it's possible and not necessarily unrealistic or ugly to try to make 2 different solutions reality. Since this beach hasn't changed, I don't include another picture in this update.

By the way, please say hello to the "Via Themistokles" in Orantria:


#4; Click to enlarge

Now, let's travel to city tile B2, Teragonis, where development has already started in Update 3.

This is a screenshot of the village core of Castrum Teragonis, capital of Teragonis. This time, I wanted to include far more timberframe houses and make it a little looser, so there's less W2W development, aside from the upper levels (I had nearly no other choice because of the diagonal road and I wanted to make it look like an expansion that occurred later in history). I haven't developed it much; I will later mention why. I have also used New York Rowhouses for the appartments to the west of the river; after all, I wanted to give the central parts of the village - aside from the business district - a rather old look.


#5; Click to enlarge

The suburbs have further expanded into a small valley east of the village core. A place where a small forest lake is starting point for many hikers from the surrounding villages. Two pictures, one of summer and one of fall.


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I've been busy developing the southern parts of this city tile; they are virtually done. These are two pictures of the rural areas of Teragonis. The pros among you may even see two things that make me loathe Maxis because they made farming this difficult in Sim City 4.


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This hill (being terraformed by the sometimes whimsical God of Calidores) will, in a futural update, be developed further; I haven't decided what to build there exactly. It seems like the perfect place for something like a castle, a monastery, or even an entire castle town. If I am to realize the castle town solution, then I'm not sure if I should build cover the entire hill with houses or just the topmost parts. I've turned on the grid for obvious reasons. The tree logs will most likely be the border for the upper old town parts, the rock clusters the northernmost border for the castle/town/whatever development.


#10; Click to enlarge


That's all for today. Hope you liked this update despite of its shortness.

Edit1: Sorry, "benign" was really... not appropriate. :-[

romualdillo


noahclem

I love my road! Thanks, much appreciated :)

You're continuing to do a really nice job with your development. The wooded areas look perfect, and I'm definitely familiar with the problems you mention regarding floating clusters of trees and the like :D  The above sea level water and its transitions has been handled really well and I'm enjoying your shorelines too. I hadn't noticed either that the villages were that close together but ultimately that's a matter of taste and to me it doesn't seem to cause problems for you. Looking forward to what's next  :thumbsup:

gn_leugim

very well detailed, good job!  :thumbsup:

Themistokles

Oh, a road -- what a nice surprise! And it passes both the station and the old city centre, even better! Great work as always :thumbsup: I'm looking forward to seeing what you'll do with the castle hill.
Come join me on a hike to St Edmea!

Latest update: 7

"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy." - John Sawhill

11241036

#38



Responsa


romualdillo, noahclem, gn_leugim, Themistokles: Wow, thank you all very much for your interest and your nice comments! I'm also glad to hear that noahclem and Themistokles like their roads :)


Progressio


In today's update I'll give the finishing touch to Teragonis by adding a castle, as already mentioned.

This is now Teragonis Castle, located at the hill directly north of its namesake village. I decided to create a castle using "puzzle pieces" - such as castle walls and ploppable houses and landmarks. That took up much space, even to the point of being overtly unrealistic, but what the hey, you know me... $%Grinno$%
Castrum Teragonis boasts a monastery, the Wernigerode City Hall, and some timberframe houses. If someone finds out that it is missing something, you're welcome to tell me. I've, by the way, started to develop an override for the Cobblestone and Sandstone PedMall tiles. I didn't like their look much, either, so I've replaced them by a texture by Vortext and one found in the BSC Mega Textures Vol1, respectively. It's of course, unfortunately, not difficult to notice the color difference between the lots and the PedMall tiles; I've already opened a thread on the STEX about that topic and will take care about this issue. But for my personal taste, it's an improvement.

There are three screenshots, showing the castle from different zoom levels and angles.


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A few other pictures show the development along the river to the west of the castle, as well as the old town parts.


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And this is an overview of the entire village of Castrum Teragonis.


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Furthermore, this is an attempt of designing the landscape in the mountains. It's really not a picture that I'm proud of, but this time I did not want to use ploppable grass to cover the floor; please do not consider this particular area to be finished. If someone has an idea how to improve this area, please come forth. My plans are actually to create a hiking path up to the mountain peak, as well as a small spring and a cottage, where you can have lunch. Somehow I can't figure out which conifer trees are being used by my tree controller (Cascadia); I don't seem to have corresponding flora items in my Mayor Mode folder to fill the gaps the tree controller usually leaves and clutters with near-invisible flowers and shrubs :'( Well, at least I found a suitable mountain cross.


#7; Click to enlarge

That's all for today. Futural development in this city tile will most likely only include finishing the MMP work along the hiking path in the mountains; aside from that, this city is virtually finished. But that will have to wait, as the next update will lead us to an entirely different city tile. I'm sorry that this time I could not simply make an overview of the entire city. Since I won't develop the northern parts of this city tile further, I'd only cover it with forest, but I won't do this anytime soon because my PC already has trouble handling Teragonis in its present state - I just don't want to know what would happen if I filled the entire city tile with trees.

Edit: Fixed a link to a picture (sorry, I showed the same picture twice)

art128

Castle looks great!

I think the mountain picture is really cute.
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog