Three Rivers Region

[ldvger]

Well, I know I said I was going to go into lurk mode here but I guess anyone who knows me at all would know I just can't keep my mouth shut for very long (just like I can't sit or stand still for very long...was a hyperactive child but you'd never guess, would you?). 

The new PW you displayed is incredibly awesome.  I am SOOOO glad I have not yet plopped a single creek or stream or pond or lake into my pristine wilderness region.  I think the color and transparency is absolutely perfect and completely amazing.  I especially love the way you can see the terrain of the shoeline continueing a teensy bit under the waterline, it gives such a realistic look and feel.  I'm ready to download this right now!

And of course I know you are thinking about these things to, just wanted to update my wish list publicly:

1.  realistic (i.e. flat terrain) transitions between PW and game water.  It's really rare that rivers and streams meet the sea via waterfalls, rapids, dams, land bridges, culverts, etc.  A quick peek at any map of any river will quickly show us that shallow braided tidal deltas are the norm. 

2.  waterfalls that can fall more than 1 tile.  I think this would have to be some kind of waterfall "paintbrush", but what do *I* know?

3.  rapids for this new PW

4.  small tile plops, like jeronij's .5 tile transparent water.  I'm so anal, I also want one at .25 tile, maybe even .125 tile (I have my fingers in my ears so I can't hear anyone screaming). 

5.  diagonals of everything

6.  PW that gets darker as it gets deeper.  Don't know if that is possible...

Just wondering, has anyone done any research into finding out at what degree of slope does nature flowing water begin to form rapids and whitewater?  I'll volunteer to do that, if the info would be of any help to anyone. 

Ya know, and this is probably for the folks at Maxis rather than the gamers here, what SC5 is really going to need is a realistic water table under the landforms.  Yeah, now that's the ticket...

As always, fantastic work, David.  When can I download it, tee hee.

Lora/LD

[bob56]

SC5? This is SC5, in my opinion. Just for fun, I played SC4 without any plugins. It's amazing how different (worse) it is[i'm not saying this to bash Maxis, I played SC4 for years and loved it before I discovered plugins]. I don't even know if i'd want to play SC5, It would lack all this great ideas and plugins and community that have made this my favorite game...

Great work to 3RR and all modders, BATters, LOTers, and anyone who has made this a great place.

[ldvger]

Hello again-

Well, I just finished reading to the end of the ST version of 3RR (73 pages) and am now ready to start on the even more daunting task of catching up to the next 377 pages.  Given that it took me the better part of two weeks to accomplish the first task, I don't even want to begin to think how much time will be involved in completing the second task.  However, I am a Taurus, and I am not easily moved off my chosen track. 

I love the work you did with the FAR and FARR, as far as I have learned about it so far.  I know there is a bit of overlap between what I read at ST on the final 20 pages or so and what you have posted here, so while I expect to see and learn more here, I have a clue as to what I will find (I think).  And it's all very exciting stuff. 

I posted a couple of days ago about my desire to expand my own region to something close to 3RR in size but am meeting with frustration at all points, at least so far.  Perhaps if I exercise patience I will find the information I read someplace among the yet to be read 377 pages.

This is my specific area of frustration right now and while I know you are crazy busy,David, you may be able to help me with this.

My region, unlike yours, is an actual physical place on the planet.  As such, I can supposedly download a USGS map of the region and turn it into a grey scale image, and then load it as a region into my game.  Over at ST there is a tutorial for how to do that, but it is badly out of date given that the USGS site has changed a lot since the tutorial was written and the screens I see at the USGS web site no longer match the screenshots in the tutorial.  Also, the USGS dialog boxes are greatly expanded from 5-6 years ago and now I find myself unable and/or unsure of how to navigate my way through them to acquire the necessary information.  I tried for several hours a few days ago to find my way, to ""wing it", but failed completely. 

On top of which, I'm not entirely certain that this tutorial ("How to Make Scale Accurate Realistic Regions From USGS Data") is even applicable given today's mapping tools like Mapper and Terraformer.  Seems there other ways, perhaps easier ways, to accomplish the same ends, but no one seems to have posted anything anywhere, at least that I have been able to find, that says how.

And yet you did it David.  Without any of the tools...you made it up as you went along.  Yet, in the end, you used the same basic processes.  You converted a game developed region into a contour map, turned the contour map into a grey scale, enlarged the scale of the grey scale map, used Mapper and Terraformer to hone the map, then exported that map back into your game to end up with 3RR^16.  Maybe I have misread the posts and processes, but I've read them several times over trying to grasp the concepts and I think (not entirely certain) I have the basic gist of it.  I guess I'm kinda like Gaston in this regard. 

I guess I am trying to skip some of the steps you took.  Rather than using a Paint program to laboriously hand draw contours  across my existing region, I would rather download fron USGS the maps I know exist of my RL region.  As an architect, one of the things I stand hard and fast on with my clients is that they provide me with a surveyor's topo map of thier lot, with 2' icoclines.  And the map must be digital, as in importable into AutoCAD.  I spent 25 years of my career manually enlraging contour maps from one scale to another and it's a royal pain.  There is no client on the planet that can pay me enough money to do it now, and I certainly won't do it "for fun" because for me it's not fun at all. 

The game provides us with a contour tool.  There has to be some way to be able to display our regions or cities in a 2D flat manner with the contours still turned on and showing.  I have read your tutorial for turning region census maps to 2D maps and I think that is a clue I need to follow up on.  I also see a lot of possibility with the little screen captures we can get from the data views in game, as they are color coded by elevation (or so it seems to me).  It may be possible to translate those captures from PNG to JPG, resize them as required to match thier city tile size, match them all up together to for a region, and then grey scale it.  David has found the contours to be 64m apart, while in my region I have found them to be 128m apart.  My region is way steeper than 3RR, so maybe that has something to do with the difference, who knows.  Maxis doesn't tell us and we are on our own to discover it for ourselves (which I don't mind).

Terraformer also has a contour tool built into the 3D view, with contours displayed at 5m intervals (per both personal observation and research into Wouagainie's (sp?) notes).  I don;t know anything about the coding or work that went into developing either the Mapper toll or Tearraformer, but I know they work together (if you open Terraformer, the Mapper map pops up automatically), so I can't help but think that it just can't be that difficult to  get the contours to show up in the Mapper 2D view. 

I just don't want to have to draw the millions of contour lines in my region by hand.  I know you did it david, but at the time you really didn;t have any recourse.  Things are different now and I don't want to spend time doing anything that will take me away from what I really want to be doing, and that is playing SC4. 

Sorry for the long post...not trying to highjack your MD...just lots of thoughts and questions.

Lora/LD

[ldvger]

Is this a bad?  Am I bumping my own thread?  I don;t know, so if I am being bad, let me know right way and I will not do it again.

I am reading now the early days of the SC4D posts and a bunch of folks bring up the issue of trees above the snow line.  I had this with my region too, so as a semi-educated dendrologist (tree hugger), I thought maybe I could lay this issue to rest once and for all.

Tree growth really has little to due with elevation.  If there is ample soil and water and sunshine at high elevations, trees (or for that matter any plant) will grow. 

Trees ( or any other plant) will not grow, however, in the absence of nuturing soil.  Mountain soils are by nature very shallow.  They are the "womb", if you will, of all the soils on the planet.  As rock is degraded/eroded by water, it slowly becomes soil.  Elevation of this degradation process of rock is immaterial.  There are seaside rock faces totally devoid of any plant life in many places on this planet.  This lack of plant life is more noticeable at higher elevations, though, because beside the lack of a nurturing soil, there are many other factors that limit both plant and tree growth.  Lack of water, lack of pollinators, extreme temps.  It's a harsh environment at high elevations.  But treeline is not so much predicated on elevation as it is on the steepness of the terrain.  Because soils cannot develope on steep terrains...water washes it downhill. 

But even in the steepest and harshest of most terrains, life clings.  To the best of my knowledge (which I admit is not huge) there is no single centimeter of this planet that is 100% devoid of life.  Think about that for a minute.

So you folks who think that snow topped mountains shouldn't have trees on them, now you know.  There are treeless mountains/hills only 1000 feet tall and that have never known snow.  Conversely, there are trees at tens of thousands of feet of elevation which endure 10 months of winter. 

Life endures, people, life endures.  It's all about the microclimate...and the plant in question.

Lora/LD, up too late on a Sunday night, time to go to bed

[shoreman905]

Gotta  to Bob56, when I was testing CAM we had to start with vanilla SC4 and it was boring,I mean I had forgotten how soft the regular SC was, without my regular plugins, it was begging for more, had to request additions to at least make it interesting visually. Think about that, no Goober, no CSX, no Citynut, no D66, no Cal, gosh no Barby, Wow, I put up with a lot to get CAM done, once Ripplejet opened the gates  it was pure heaven. But thats the way you test new ideas. Once I had the visuals, man, it was great fun.

[dedgren]

Did anyone else know that you could offset a long-ago BATted prop by hand-editing the "Vert" property in the object's S3D files?



Well, now you do.

This is not fun- took about half an hour and it is mind-numbing work.  Since my friend John (Pegasus) is notorious, though, for a "take it or leave it" attitude with respect to the fine work that he does, when you need something bad enough... well- that's how it goes.


David

277081

[nerdly_dood]

I was in fact already aware that this is possible, and from having a decent understanding of what it involves i can definitely understand the tedium involved.

[girlfromverona]

I haven't been in here for a few days (I'm on a Sims kick) and look at all the new eye-candy that's popped up - what a treat! David, you've really been busy. Hope your trip is going smoothly. Josh looks well! 

[Jonathan]

Great work on the PW, although I'm not exactly sure whats different,as I haven't used ploppable water before 

David, did you modify each point manually, because you can copy and paste into excel, then use formulas to do the work

Jonathan

EDIT:  Jonathan, if you could zip an example and PM it to me, or better yet attach it to a post here so everyone could benefit, that would really be appreciated.  Thanks in advance. -DE

[Pat]

Hey David that is sweet!!! So are you planning something along a Dam Line for a wonderful Dam Tour???   

[BarbyW]

David, where did that Hydro Dam Gate come from? It doesn't look like the Peg Hydro Dam that I have.

EDIT:  This might put it in perspective, my friend.



Just a barrier to keep the gawkers from driving on John's nice clean concrete. -DE

[threestooges]

Almost looks like something out of the security fences pack, Barby. Nice work on it David (and nice tip about the Excel spreadsheet Jonathan).
-Matt

EDIT:   You are right, Matt.  It's John's (Pegasus) ortho BW gate, shown there on a lot named "3RR-Peg_Hydro_Dam_Gate," which I made up in order to be able to functionally group stuff.  It's now through the Plopperizer^TM along with several other sections, so I can plop security fence wherever at this point. -DE

[dedgren]

"It doesn't look like the Peg Hydro Dam that I have."

Barby, ma'am- we haven't been in Kansas for a long, long time here.  If I can take something familiar and bend it into an unfamiliar, but aesthetically pleasing shape, hey... that's success in my book.

Like aspens.



I love aspens.



Especially in the fall.

A winding gravel road up the side of a mountain climbing through aspen groves on a sunny October day- for me, that's about as close to heaven as it gets down here.

I'm off to bed- I moved several things a bit further down the road today.  Tomorrow's a rough day at the office, but I have 3RR to look forward to when I get home.

'Til then, I guess.


David

277266

[wouanagaine]

Did anyone else know that you could offset a long-ago BATted prop by hand-editing the "Vert" property in the object's S3D files?
277081

You know you can also use a RKT4 and make the prop offseted ? I think it is easier than modifying all verts for all rot/zoom
the only drawback is that the game and LE didn't show them the same way

[BarbyW]

Thank you, David. I thought I was seeing an old, old BAT there for a while.

[metarvo]

Nice work, David!    This is certainly a fresh new look for a BAT that's been around a while.  Where did you get the idea to offset the gate?  This shows that one seemingly small difference can make a picture so much better.

[Darmok]

That gate really is something that I could use, and it look simply fantastic...
But your new project of ploppable water takes the cake, an I mean THE CAKE!!! 

WOW,  I'm trying to imagine all I could do with such a thing David, and I'm drooling all over the keyboard...
(that's another kind of ploppable water ain't it?)

One thing is always bugging me.... are you sleeping at night?
Because for all that I see here It certainly look as if you're working on your projects 24/7.

I'll follow that project (PW) with great interest!

-John

[Rayden]

One thing is always bugging me.... are you sleeping at night?
Because for all that I see here It certainly look as if you're working on your projects 24/7.

He doesn't play the guitar John

[choco]

This is not fun- took about half an hour and it is mind-numbing work. 

precisely the reason i uploaded the track models......i dont wanna ever have to do that again...

[Battlecat]

Amazing work in these last few updates as always!  I'm particularly looking forward to seeing more on that new plopable water you and jeronij are working on!