Three Rivers Region

[mrbisonm]

Well, happy birthday 3RR, this CJ is amazing, was and probably will be for a long time to come. And it surely has become a solid landmark in the SC4 world. Great work David. I don't comment much in CJ's/MD's but when I do there is a reason, it must be better than just very good!    Good luck.

mrb/Fred 


Edit: Now you have more pages than a year has days.

EDIT:  Welcome to the Double-O Club, Fred!  Your ID card and exclusive newsletter are on their way. 

[dragonshardz]

Ding ding ding ding ding!

Welcome to the 00-Club, Mrbisonm!



Yet another update for me to catch up on...woo! Something to do over spring break!

[thundercrack83]

Well, I don't really know what to say, David.

Three years of 3RR is such a remarkable accomplishment! But even more important than the three years of hard work and incredible things you've shown us here and at ST, is the friendship and camaraderie that is ever-present here at 3RR. I know that it has been said many times before, but it's worth repeating--3RR is like a home away from home.

I am so proud to have been a little part of things here, and even more excited to see where things are going next!

So congratulations, David! You have a one-in-a-million thing going on here and to say that we appreciate it is a gross understatement!

Take care, my friend, and here's to three more years and more!

Dustin

[Ryan B.]

David, congratulations on three years of Three Rivers Region.  I have thoroughly enjoyed our journey through all these amazing custom stuff that is being shown here . . . and I look forward to another year of it.

I hope all is well with you and yours in Wasilla, and I look forward to part two of your 'birthday' post!

-Ryan

EDIT:  David, I see you've recently cracked the 3,000 post milestone.  Congratulations!

[dedgren]

We headed into May, 2008, with a bang.

I'd been playing around with ways to break the lock of orthogonal/diagonal on the game's transit networks since early in 2008, and on May 1, 2008, I decided it was time to pull back the sheet [linkie].



Note that, from the get go, we called them fractional angle roads.  So much for my career in advertising- your product doesn't stand much of a chance when people hear its name and their response is, "Wuzzat?"

Within a week, Alex the NAM God (Tarkus) had made them both functional and ploppable [linkie].



I then took a bit of a break and posted some pics of Silvio's (Rayden) collaboration quad Pink SW [linkie].





Going back through May, I found the perfect example of why those of you who think I'm such a fountain of good ideas need to rethink that position.  Here's our great friend Marisa (girlfromverona) [linkie]:


[tabular type=4][row][data]I've been wondering the last couple of days whether it would be possible to do curved puzzle pieces for streets, too.[/data][/row][/tabular]

We have Marisa to now thank for wide radius SAM curves in the most recent NAM.

By mid-May, we were showing off the FAR...

...two weeks out from showing it to anyone in the first place...

...off in a collaboration quad [linkie].



We also created one of a growing number of 3RR "orphans."



Folks, you have no idea how much of this stuff is on my hard drive.  I have long-planned to do a post that asked for votes on which one I would work on first- watch for that soon.

I probably ended the chance that collaboration would happen in 2008 by promising that I was about to start it [linkie].





While I was saying

[tabular type=4][row][data]I plan to send out a few a week spread over a couple of days, take a breath, then send some more.[/data][/row][/tabular]

the more I was thinking that things were just not ready.  I will say, though, that this today remains the plan.  I will be in touch in the next day or so with the collaborators about scheduling, but you can be assured this time that the first quads will be out by the weekend.

What I did in May, 2008, though, was pretty shameful.  I changed the subject [linkie].



Now, I have to admit- it was a heck of an attention-getter.  It worked, too.  Within just a few days, we segued seamlessly into making wide radius rail curves [linkie].



I felt pretty guilty, but I had seen a glimpse of the future at that point, and I just, as alluded to in the post I just linkied didn't have a good way to explain it to folks.

Anyway, it's almost unthinkable now, but on May 18, 2008, my computer was the only place in the entire world where this pic could have existed [linkie].



We worked on fleshing out the FAR and the FARR during the last weeks of May [linkie]



but I suddenly found myself, along with the creators of a number of other long-standing MDs, desperately working to repair the damage that a hack-attack on Simtropolis caused [linkie].



We still found time to eat well [linkie]



and explain the math behind the FARR [linkie]



while closing out May with a review [linkie].

[tabular type=4]
[row] [data]Three Rivers Region is a relatively new CJ by novice CJer dedgren.  It is only his first effort at city journalism, where many of our more experienced CJers are already on their third or fourth journal.  Over the past seven months or so dedgren's CJ has wandered all over the proverbial map, and does not display, from page to page, any consistent theme.  The author admittedly cheats, and openly encourages others to do so, as well.  The CJ starts well, with a table of contents linked to the content on various pages, but the titles of the links are so arcane that they are almost worthless to any reader not "in the know."   The author also provides a list of mods, but his choices of these important game components are so eclectic that it is difficult to understand why anyone would follow his lead.

The CJ has no urbanized areas worthy of note, and lacks any high-rise development altogether.  Seemingly endless tutorials occupy many of Three Rivers Region's pages, and the tutorials often are more detailed than would seem necessary, at least to this reviewer.  The CJ has an extreme amount of non-SC4 content, which is frequently distracting.  Unrelated RL pics frequently appear and, while they are nice, this is a city journal, not MySpace.  In the last ten pages or so, the journal has seemingly become sidetracked on what appears to be an endless discussion of "scale," which is often at a technical level that is of little interest to the general reader.  Here again, the author admits that his region is grossly deficient in terms of representing any sort of realistic area, and it seems he is simply "treading water" while looking for a fig leaf behind which the whole thing can be mercifully dumped.

Lots of folks, seemingly inexplicably, do comment at Three Rivers Region.  It is difficult to understand why, as the author has the habit of repeatedly and insufferably referring to his "urban planning" education and foo-foo professional qualifications- an obvious and insufferable effort to make his readers feel small and awed by his "know it all" persona.  When that gets him nowhere, he whines about his advanced age...[/data] [/row]
[/tabular]

Your responses, my friends, were priceless.

I'll pick this up in June, 2008 [linkie], tomorrow before I head off to work.


David

259855

[CaptCity]

David,

Am really enjoying the history lesson here. Makes me want to go back to the beginning and read it all over (again!). It is hard to believe that the time has passed so quickly (even quicker than SC4 'Game Time'). It is truly a testament to your creativity, dedication, and being an all around great guy! And while I am a relative newcomer to posting here, 3RR has become a relaxing, informative 'get-away' for me. For that I thank you and all the Regulars...

Congratulations, happy birthday, and may the journey continue long into the future!

-Charlie

[ldvger]

David-

My apologies for having been so long absent from 3RR, but you know why via my private email to you earlier this evening.  Now that I have cruised around here again, I have to say you do amazing work and I hope to renew our earlier conversation about using ploppable water on sloped terrain.  I have two copies of my region Apocrypha saved, one which I am building on now and which lacks any water other than game water and which is semi-boring.  I also have a "virgin" region which is waiting for me to learn how to make streams, lakes, etc. before I begin to actually build anything on it. 

I am terribly flattered that you credited me with inspiring any part of this gorgeous region you have been so carefully and painstakingly building.  Time is short tonite (I just regained my internet access this evening, lots of catching up to do), but I promise I will post back again soon.  Hopefully you will be able to help me finally gain the skills I need to finish the creation of my region!

Lora/LD

EDIT:  If folks reading this want to get any sense of how special a day today has become, check this post out [linkie].  Lora, you are too modest by way more than half- and to come by and post today is just an incredible thing for you to have done- thank you so much. -DE

[Livin in Sim]

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Cake gives me a sugar rush,
And it's hot in here, too.

(Can I jump out now?)

OK, Happy 3rd to 3RR, one year for every river!

EDIT:  That, ma'am, takes the cake.  The Too Much Fun Alarm just keeps getting louder and louder- and we have the best part of the past year to go.  Liv, it's always great to see you here! -DE

[meldolion]

Happy 3rd birthday 3RR!!! 

[girlfromverona]

We have Marisa to now thank for wide radius SAM curves in the most recent NAM.

Ah, but they wouldn't have become reality without YOU, David! 

Thanks for posting the history - it's a very interesting read and shows how far things have come in the past year. What will the next year bring, I wonder?!

P.S. So looking forward to receiving my quad!

[BarbarossaS]

Hehe, I really like this overview, seems you've accomplished a lot last year!
And seeing how you're not really about to quit, there's still a lot of wonderfull stuff
we can expect from you 

[bob56]

WOw, I joined only in September, and it's amazing how much was going on!

I love this overview, Happy Birthday!

[bakerton]

Happy Belated Birthday 3RR 8). Here is to more years to come. JKB

[superhands]

happy birthday 3rr. david the texture work you did for the fa_ projects and the latest rural roads is magic.

dave

[BigSlark]

All these years with 3RR...wow. I was just thinking about it, David, and I've begun to realize how much of an impact you have had on my style of playing the game. Without your inspiration, every flat area was perfect for high rises and the top of a cliff was just meant for some R$$$ homes.

Thank you for showing us all that rural is beautiful.

And here's to another decade of 3RR!

Cheers,
Kevin

[Battlecat]

Wow, having only re-joined the community last month, I didn't realize how insane 2008 had been for changes to the game.  Among other things, it was the work you've done here that inspired me to come back.  So thanks very much for all your hard work and inspiration! 

[dedgren]

June, 2008, started out with a side project that has become, like the FAR intersections, another 3RR orphan [linkie].

current Streets and Trips map


morphing into Google map


That was just a momentary distraction- later in the week the first of the prototype long radius switches showed up- with a twist [linkie].



I'd come a ways in my ability to foresee the future since the completely wrong predictions of March and April- when this pic appeared nobody was talking about single track rail.  Now many of you are using it in the game.

By the end of the first week of June, though, health stuff was again catching up with me.  I let everyone know that, while I'd be working on things, there might not be that much going on in 3RR for a bit [linkie].



You, being the great folks that you are, all took this pretty well.  Of course, my guess is that nobody believed I'd be able to stay away for too long.

Or maybe it was the mojitos...



...or possibly that I'd finally gotten around to setting up the first phase of the 3RREX [linkie] and that had everyone distracted.

I did take a minute to remind those who had missed the post over at ST the dirty secrets of editing 3RR maps [linkie]



and recycled one of my favorite posts from 3RR-ST about SC4 and snow [linkie].



Then, of course, I couldn't resist going out and playing in it [linkie].



I took some time to catch up on Chris's (chrisadams3997) Rural Renewal Project ploppable flora, which I had never used before [linkie].





In mid-June, I was getting reading ready to travel for several weeks to Helena, Montana to visit my adoptive sons Tristen and Joshua, who were both receiving treatment there at the time.  Three Rivers region was getting ready to celebrate reaching its 200th page and 4,000th post and I was in a contemplative mood, so I recycled an old Simtropolis post where I confidently predicted...

...darn that crystal ball, anyway...

...that 3RR was probably a "dead-end" [linkie].

A bit later, while waiting for the 4,000 bell



to ring, I ruminated, by recycling yet another 3RR-ST post, on the Alaskan landscapes that have inspired my particular SC4 vision [linkie].





Our great friends Andreas and krbe notched the first post on page 200 [linkie] and 4,000th post [linkie] respectively, and we noted five great friends of 3RR who had been regularly posting here since day one way back at ST: Daniel (Shadow Assassin), John (Darmok), bat, Fred (freedo50) and Jacky (jacqulina) [linkie].

The second half of June started with, among others, cows out on the road [linkie].



We took a few last looks at Silvio's (Rayden) collaboration quad Pink SW [linkie]



which, at that time, I thought was done and ready to ship.  Today, of course, it has been updated with wide radius SAM curves and it is really ready to go [linkie].



As the month of June began to wind down, and 3RR continued its steady march toward 100,000 page views, I took a shot at answering the age-old question "why are we here?" [linkie]  I was referring, of course, to 3RR, and finally got the chance to give credit where credit was due in attributing pretty much the entire current approach to our great friend Lora (ldvger), who picked up and probably retired the award for the longest time between 3RR posts when she stopped by yesterday [linkie] after a hiatus of about two and a half years.  In responding back in the fall of 2006 to several very thoughtful posts she had made, I said

[tabular type=4][row][data]My intention is to completely terraform the region first.  That will include fairly well thought through placement of particular types of trees, placement of all ploppable water, rapids and waterfalls, and lake, river and stream shoreline detailing.  I'm estimating about a month to do this. .... After the terraforming is completed, I would develop a basic plan for the development of the region: such things as locate the urban and suburban city areas, outlying towns and villages, and place the skeleton of a pre-freeway era road system.  I'd also place main rail lines.

Then I would open 3RR to you-[/data][/row][/tabular]

Disregarding that "about a month" part, I'd say that the rest is pretty much history.  Lora, it made a great day all that much better when you posted yesterday- we hope it won't be near as long the next time around.

The last week of June found Heather and me in Montana visiting the boys [linkie].



I continued to work on a few small projects, including making Chris's (chrisadams3997) excellent culverts ploppable in "game" water [linkie].



These are on the 3RREX here [linkie].

June ended with me posting from Yellowstone National Park [linkie]



and the Beartooth Highway [linkie].



Some break, eh?  Oh, well- things picked back up in July, which we'll cover in this post here [linkie].


David

260420

[Kokopelli]

I have to come in here with my happy birthday wishes. I remember reading that negative review and said to myself, "This guy just doesn't get it." From those of us who do "get it", Thank you! And keep up the good work. I think I have said here someplace that I find it fascinating that this game can bring so many people together from all over the world and make us all feel like friends. It is a great place to visit and learn. Best wishes.

Bob

[Ryan B.]

Wow.  It sure was a heck of a year, wasn't it?

The best is yet to come, folks.  Just y'all wait and see.

Oh, and David - I dig the bison picture there.  Reminds me of a place just an hour west of here . . . the best small city in the world.

[Pat]

WOW David talk about a blast from the past there with all that and scary I remember all to most of that as it was yesterday!!! OOoh hey congrats on breaking in the post mark of 3K Mark!!!