Ennedi plays Shosaloza

[amapper]

You're a outstanding example for the community. 

[paroch]

Hi Ennedi,

I have heard many good things about your MD, and I have peeked once or twice, but never managed to look at it all.  I must confess I have not READ all the words (one day, maybe), but I have very much enjoyed looking at your creations.

I think much has already been said of the level of detail and technical expertise you have delivered.  I am really enjoying publishing my own MD but I have to say that when I discover an MD such as yours I feel somewhat humbled to be on the same site!   If I can learn some small part of what you have shown us I'll be happy.

My favourites from you.  The bridges are great, the winding mountain roads, the rivers (wow) and the forests really catch my eye.  They way you blend the trees together and the way they work with the mountains - superb.  Oh, and that picture looking at the lighthouse on the peninsular - AWESOME   

So, I think you now have another new fan, I'll make sure I visit more regularly from here.

Well done,

Paul

[Ennedi]

Hello my friends,

First of all:
Thank you very much!

Thank you for your congratulations on qualifying Shosaloza to the Classics section and for all kind and warm words said at this occassion (I'm not sure if I really deserved some of them). Thank you also for all your comments from the beginning of this MD, it's a great pleasure for me to talk with you.

I'm very glad some of you can find something interesting and useful here. It's a great satisfaction to show something and then to see that somebody can use it in his/her own work, and his/her work is easier and more pleasant.
Thank you all masters who helped me many times and gave me some grat advices and a lot of support - Badsim, Travis (beskhu3epnm) and others. I only hope I will be able to help you in future.

I want to tell something all my visitors who make MD's, BATs, MODs and other own work. I would like to visit you all after your every update, but it is simply impossible. Every day should have not less than 10 hours more. So I only want to say I look at your work, enjoy with you, learn from you (also from many beginners, they have often very good and fresh ideas) and I will try to comment your work as often as it will be possible. Concentrating on my own work I don't forgot about you!

Today I will continue the presentation of terrain mods and after this update (in fact there will be again two updates in the same day) I want to return to developing cities. The Terrain mods Gallery will be continued in future and it will be enriched by forests, water and other interesting things, but I must make some further experiments and preparation. And in fact, most of you would like to see cities!



TheTeaCat: Glad to see you again, Derry! Thank you very much for a cuppa, my explanations must be simple, because it could be funny if I would try to say something complicated in English - and I think it happens sometimes. Thank you also for congratulations!

patfirefightr: Thank you Pat, I was thinking about you making this stream and I would be glad if you would find here some ideas for you!

thundercrack83: Thank you Dustin, not only for your kind words, but also for your great and continous support! Many ideas I show are for
beginners, I know more experienced players can feel boring sometimes reading my MD, but I do it intentionally - some of present beginners
will become masters in future, so it is good to help them now.
And these terrain mods look great by themselves, I only try to find a good way to present them

jplumbley: Thank you very much!
As for these rapids - I promised a tutorial, but didn't find time this week - sorry! But I can make a short explanation:
I use Jeronij's Rural Culvert and Water Effects set (I sent a link yet). Making this stream I planned it's shape first and put 1x1 Jeronij's Ploppable Water anlong it's edges first. I planned also where the stram divides and forms little islands (such form of a stream can be often visible in mountains, when the water level is low, in spring all stream bed is filled, and sometimes it isn't enough). I put Water Drop pieces at the upper end of each island/ stone group. Then I placed JRJ ploppable water pieces, and at the end - stones. This plopping was made carefully, to leave some Water Drop visible and create a rapid effect. If you would cover the Water Drop by ploppable water pieces, you would see only small waves on the surface, without white foam splashes. I did it in another places.
These rapids are difficult to control, waves appear sometimes outside of the stream bed (especially on curves) and it is necessary to hide them - by bigger rocks and dense bushes planted along the riverside.


bat: Thank you very much, your comments are short but it's always very nice to read them!

Shadow Asassin: Thank you very much for all interesting discussion and very useful advices! These themes - Photoshopping, horizon, light
and many others - are not finished, they will appear here in future. I know many people don't like photoshopped images, they say it would be better to build something good, but the game itself have particular graphic settings and all what we see in it is a kind of photoshopping too. My first edited pictures showed on this site were very primitive, but I slowly learn (from such people as you) and I know that really good photoshopping can emphasize your ideas and intentions, and graphic effects don't need to be visible. Everything depends on what somebody want to show, and tools can be various.

About freaking time, I say.

Freaking? Why? 

Jmouse: Hello Joan, I'm glad to see my constant visitor! I will make some further experiments with snow, maybe I will achieve something
satisfying and useful for you...
And thank you for your beautiful congratulations, I feel a bit embarassed...

capo: Nice to see you here, it's great you found some time to visit me! I'm glad you like my pictures, I have the same pleasure looking at
yours!

meldolion: Thank you very much!
I also use Brigantine Water! I'm not satisfied with it's transparency too, but I want to do something with it (there are some water parameters in the "Terrain Properties" exemplar wchich is a part of the Terrain Mod, I will show what can be done as soon as it is possible). If you have the Gizmo Water Flora - it increases the water transparency. But it is possible to solve these problems, give me some time please.

rooker1: Hello Robin, I always enjoy if I see you here, I know I can expect interesting and constructive comments. I know you have a lot
of work in your own "Mind Scape", so big thank you!
It was a great playtime with this picture for you, and I learned something at this occassion.

tkirch: Thank you very much! It's nice you like this picture with the horizontal horizon, it would be difficult to say that it is still SC4, but in my opinion it shows this game is closer tho the rality than we think sometimes - I changed only one element using simple tools and all picture looks completely different. Maybe it is good to play this way from time to time?

Badsim: Hello my friend, thank you for this beautiful message!
We don't need to compare our skills, I could say I will never reach your skills in lot editing, and in your last updates you show a great mastery in completely different field - you are a really great landscape designer! The main intention of these experiments with terrains, textures and so on is to help such people as you in making even more beautiful things (of course I will try to make them too)
I'm honoured you shared your feelings with me, and you sent me this beautiful picture... I'm thinking about it...

beskhu3epnm: My another good friend and master - thank you for your visit!
I'm not sure if learning terrains and terraforming theme will be such easy, especially after last experiences (you can see some results in this update). But thank you for your nice and encouraging words!
I will definitely look at Shadow Asassin's work and I hope I will learn a bit from him, he gave me some precious advices yet.
And first of all I want to thank you for your help and all advicves in your PMs, without them it would be very difficult to start with learning terrain modifications.
I would be very happy if some of my observations would help you in making next amazing maps!

calibanX: Thank you very much, I'm honoured of your opinion!
These pictures are definitely not like National Geographic ones, but it's SC4 - and it's simply another kind of reality. This virtual world is full of real meanings, ideas and feelings, and sometimes it's a more flexible way to tell something one to another.
I'm glad if you had some pleasure looking at these pictures!

Danthe: Hello Mariusz, very nice to see you again! I hope you will have less work now and we will meet more often here and of course in
Isengard!

sebes: Thank you very much for your congratulations, I will try to deserve a place in"Classics" in future too!

M4346: Hello Marius, what you say is a great compliment for me! ("a classic example of a MD and what it should be")
Many people have much better skills than me, they make better cities, better roads, better stories... I only want to play SC4 - with you all!

figui: Hello Mauricio, thank you very much and I hope you will find something interesting here also in future!

amapper: Thank you very much, everybody's work is an example of something - high skills, creativity, original point of view and many other
things. Your MD is also a good example of these things

paroch: Hello Paul, thank you for these kind words!
As I said a few times in previous replies, all of us make something interesting and in fact it is not good to compare our work - yes, we have some competitions, but it is a play and something wchich motivate us to improve our work. But in fact most of our work is incomparable. None of us can make everything perfect. The best thing we can do is to meet on this site, to work together, to help one to another and beautiful things will appear in various places - in your MD, in my MD, in somebody's map or BAT thread... And we all will enjoy them.



Last few days I was trying to understand how work terrain mod and how can I modify them. Every terrain mod has some exemplars, the biggest and most complex one is the Terrain Properties exemplar. But it has about 70 properties and looking at them I was feelig a bit confused.
So I asked Travis (beskhu3epnm) for help. He answered immediately and gave me somegreat advices (thank you again Travis!).
He suggested me to play with the TemperatureRangeFactor and MaxTerrainHeight. One of his advices was to keep the Plugins folder empty
during testing modified terrain mods. But I has some other plugins and I decided to leave them - I was going to show modifications in the same city tile I showed in previous updates. So I had to leave trees, ploppable water and some other stuff. I was simply a bad pupil.
And... I lost Friday evening and almost all Saturday. I made about 20 modifications of these 2 properties in various combinations (btw it was my first serious meeting with Ilive Reader), and I didn't see any changes.
At the Saturday evening I removed everything from the plugins folder and then started to add plugins one by one. At last I found 4 plugins:
- Limitless Beach
- Extended Beach
- Gizmo Water Flora v2, and...
- Monolith Night Water Textures!

All these mods have the Terrain Properties exemplar. All of them modify only a few properties in it, (not the Temperature Range or MaxTerrainHeight), but because they consist a complete exemplar, they of course fix all properties. All these mods have the following values:
- TemperatureRangeFactor: 0,3
- MaxTerrainHeight: 2500 m

And of course my every modification of the terrain mod was overwrited by these values. In addition, the unmodified terrain mod was also
overwrited (of course).
I removed these mods and started modifications.
But before showing results I have a conclusion:
- Modifying properties is really easy in Ilive Reader. Simply open the .dat file in the Reader, find the exemplar (it's name will be showed in the property "Exemplar Name", go to the property you want to modify, double click on it (or right click and choose "Edit property") and you will see a window in wchich you will be able to change property value. After doing it, click "Apply" (two times, you have two buttons) and save the .dat file. It would be wise to change it's name or choose another method to avoid any mistake.
- Instead of using both beach mods you can simply change two properties: MaxBeachWidth and MaxBeachAltitude, they are near the end of
properties list in the exemplar. Making MaxBeachWidth 0xFF (=255, default 4) you achieve the "limitless beach", it can cover all 255 tiles of your big city. Changing MaxBeachAltitude you can adjust your beach to your terrain shape and your intentions (default value is 7, you can make for example 50).
- If you want to use Gizmo Water Flora or Monolith Night Water Textures and use the terrain mod in the same time, you must remember, that
the game will use values from the last mod in the plugins folder. You can think it is possible to add "zzz" before the terrain mod name, but in this case the terrain mod will overwrite every other one and you will lose property values in this other mod. This is also the answer why some people using Gizmo Water Flora notice the change of water transparency (Gizmo's mod increases it), and some people don't see such change. If you have the terrain mod after Gizmo's one, you will not see the transparency change. Saying in other words, if you have two different mods using the same exemplar and you want to modify the particular property, you must modify it in the last mod.
Anyway, I think Gizmo Water Flora (used by many people) will look enough good without increasing the water transparency, so if you want to
use it, simply put the terrain mod as the last one (adding zzz).

OK, maybe it's a time to show some pictures...

1. I start from my basic Italia Terrain Mod with the Olympic Beach and Red-Brown Granite. Now I show an unmodified version (to remember

how it looks).
TemeratureRangeFactor: 0,3
MaxTerrainHeight: about 1916 m

Winter - hills about 400-500 m
13.1


Winter - around the lake
13.2


Summer - around the lake; changes between winter and summer are subtle but visible, look above the lake and to the right from it:
13.3


Now I change the TemperatureRangeFactor to 0,1 (Max height is the same as earlier):
General view
13.4


Lake - summer
13.5


Lake - winter
13.6


As you see, the snow is much lower now, but on higher elevations it looks identical as earlier, it covers the terrain in the same way. you can see straight edges of snow fields - I choosen this mod intentionally to show you that modifications don't help to improve it. The conclusion - it is necessary to work more with the snow to remove these stupid edges.

Now two closeups to relax for a while:
13.7


13.8


Now we go even lower, to 0,01:

13.9


13.10


13.11


As you see, we have a real winter now, the snow covers almost everything

Now I change the TemperatureRangeFactor to the higher value than in the original mod: now we have 0,7.

13.12


Textures on lower elevations are in fact the same. The snow goes higher, now it begins about 940 m (in the original mod about 720 m).

Now I set the temperature to the original value (0,3) and start to modify the MaxTerrainHeight: the original value is 1916 m, now I make 6000 m.

Hills about 400-500 m:
13.13


The lake:
13.14


As you see, the snow has gone away. All textures are now stretched between 250 (sea level) and 6000 m. On the hills you can see textures
wchich were previously on much lower elevations, near the seaside. Around the lake we see textures wchich were previously on hills, about
400 m. Max elevation in this city is 1499 m, so we will not see a big part of textures now!

Now I change the MaxTerrainHeight to 1550 m, slightly above the maximum elevation in this city.
You can see another textures now. In fact, now we can see all available textures. Of course the snow goes lower.

13.15


At the slope you can see the yellowish texture wchich was not visible earlier, it is characteristic for higher elevations.
13.16


Let's try to move the snow higher. We leave the MaxTerrainHeight at 1550 m, but we change the TemperatureRangeFactor to 0,7:
Look at the slope - the yellowish texture is not present yet!
13.17


The hills - comparing with previous picture of this area we can see that rocky textures from CPT No5 are not present now. The temperature
change moves not only snow, but also other textures.
13.18


Around the lake: as you see the snow looks much better now
13.19


These flashy green textures are characteristic for high alpine meadows, slightly below the snow level. They were not be visible earlier,
when we had the Max height set at 6000 m.
13.20


And now I will show something else: an extended beach.
My settings:
- MaxBeachWidth: 0xFF (255), default 4
- MaxBeachAltitude: 50 m, default 7

A view of the TerrainProperties exemplar (to show where are these properties)
13.21


...And the result
13.22


At the end - a few pictures for your pleasure

13.23


13.24


13.25


My first conclusions:

- If you will set the MaxTerrainHeight slightly above the maximum elevation on your map, you will have most textures and most diversified terrain.
- If you will set this property to 6000 m, you wiil lose a part of textures. You can go lower with the snow and some textures, but not all. In addition, if you will lower the temperature, snow will move lower, but it's bottom border will be on the green grass instead of rocky texture, it can look stupid.
- If you will set the TemperatureRange Factor too high, you will lose some textures too. It is better to have some snow on highest peaks, even if you are not a snow lover.
- If you will make soft hills slightly below the snow level, you will achieve rocks/stones from CPT No5. It is very interesting texture and it is a good transition from grass to rock (Cliff or Rock Mod)
- If you want have a "rocky" terrain, don't make too high mountains. You can use only valleys and a small part of slopes to build cities, and all interesting and "not flashy-green" textures go higher and you can't use them to anything.
When I was younger, I made many trips across various mountains. In fact, rocks are not the main part of mountains. the main part are valleys, grassy slopes and talus fields, rocky ridges often have only 100-300 meters. Of course there are also great walls, 1000 m or higher, but it would be difficult to see and appreciate them in SC4.

- Do you want to have diversified and playable map? Make a flat (or almost flat) terrain to build cities, some soft hills and rocky ridges 100-200 meters high. Try to keep an elevation range from 400 to 1200 meters, set the MaxTerrainHeight about 300 meters higher than your highest elevation, and you will see how playable and diversified you terrain will be.
(Edit: to avoid any mistakes here - my intention was to say: an elevation range 400 meters means from 250 (sea level) to 650, range 1200 meters means rom 250 to 1450 meters)

That's all for today, next update: three terrain mods different from these I showed: Painted Desert, Grand Canyon and Heblem's Desert Mod
(soon but not today - sorry, it's very late and I must go to work).
Nex week: roadworks in the biggest Shosaloza city (it's a pity the MIS is not available yet ), preparation to making a seaport.

Cheers
Adam

[Shadow Assassin]

Well, this is great experimentation. I'm just gonna leave my terrain mod alone, since it's basically customized for the map I'm using (courtesy of Besk).

But in all seriousness, this is explained in language that anyone can understand, and goes a long way towards demystifying what terrain mods are all about, not just the looks, but the mechanics behind them.

Freaking? Why?

Because this MD deserves to be in the Classics section, why else?

[figui]

wow Adam, another excellent update! you make me want to experiment with terrain mod, but that won't be really soon  .
i really want to see more development in shosaloza, but this tutorials are great and i'm learning a lot. thanks 

mauricio.

[Travis]

Seems I've missed a lot. 

These mountain scenes are simply breath-taking. My region is built almost entirely on reclaimed marshland, so I envy you a little there. 

However, on that fourth pic, something just doesn't seem right. Down by the river, the trees are in leaf, everything is all nice and green, it appears to be a comfortable 70 degrees (21 Celsius) or so. But a short walk up the road, it looks to be an entirely different season. 

Not really your fault, but for deciduous trees, I'd explore some of the seasonal options out there. 

Looking forward to more, Adam. 

[Pat]

Adam wonderful stuff here... I just browsed it and will be back a wee bit later to give a full review here on this update - pat


basicly what im doing at this time is pulling a David lol......

[Jmouse]

Adam,I don't have to completely understand what you're doing to realize it has all the earmarks of greatness.
I DO save all the wonderful tutorials appearing here and there, and plan to study them at length ASAP. Right now, my current project is consuming all my time, but when it's done (or farther along), I plan to try my hand in some of the more advanced areas.
Once again, thank you for sharing your discoveries with the SC4D community.

Until next time...
Joan

[Badsim]

Hi adam ,

Firstly ...

I want to tell something all my visitors who make MD's, BATs, MODs and other own work. I would like to visit you all after your every update, but it is simply impossible. Every day should have not less than 10 hours more. So I only want to say I look at your work, enjoy with you, learn from you (also from many beginners, they have often very good and fresh ideas) and I will try to comment your work as often as it will be possible. Concentrating on my own work I don't forgot about you!

That's true for everybody but not unneeded to tell again sometimes about these pieces of evidence ,  and you did that very well .


Maybe the most part of the informations available here are already somewhere in Simtropolis' forest where each tree is hiding the forest ... SC4Devotion has this advantage so far to be extremely more limpid and fluid , but that could change in future with the success and growing activity.
This MD should be pinned . Or another MDs section is required ... something meaning like "Third Level Education" , as I can feel like at shool . You're rising the bar not only of this MD but of the entire site as well .

I'll need more than a single reading to assimilate your demos (  ) but you give me the needing to assimilate ...It's one thing to be a master , another to be a good teacher .

Ok , I've never shown a beach so far , but I'm going to get a personal enlargement of them immediately ... 

Thank you , Adam .

[capo]

Hi Adam,

I must compliment you again. What a great idea to show us in your MD your experiments with these terrain mods, you are doing things that are still way above my head, but I really like that you don't see a mod as a limit, but instead you think "ok this looks nice, what can I do to make it look even better?"

Thanks to a previous update from you I switched to the Italia terrain mod, however some parts of it I still don't like. I think that perhaps with your step-to-step update, I might even be able to make some adjustments so it will be completely to my likings. It will take time though, I'm not as good with editing as you are..but I really want to thank you for taking the time and sharing your knowledge, please know it's well appreciated!

I didn't even know there was such a thing as Gizmo's Water Flora v2. That must explain all the wonderful flora I see sometimes, but I didn't know where it came from..and all this time I've been browsing through CP's and JRJ's packs to find them Would you mind giving me a linkie where I can find this? After reading your last update I'll be sure to move my terrain mod to the zzz folder after I have Gizmo his flora, I also like the watertextures just how they are.

Thanks for putting in so much time to make gameplay even better for others (and ofcourse yourself), not only is the tutorial easy to read and completely understandable for people who don't speak English as their native language, the pictures that come along with it are from a quality I do not see often.

The eye-candy pictures in the end are all so beautiful, you are a master my friend, the master of tranquile rural scenes!

[rooker1]

Very impressive.  There's mot much else to say my friend.  You did some testing and showed us your results.  The actual task must have taken you a very long time and that alone I'm sure is appreciated by most.  Your pictures are like advertising for these great modds.  Very well shown and I love to come here and see what you have for us.

 

Robin   

[beskhu3epnm]

First off, Adam, Superb work!

I see the experimentation is going quite well! Of course, once the other conflicting plugins were removed, you were able to finally begin working your magic.

- Limitless Beach
- Extended Beach
- Gizmo Water Flora v2
- Monolith Night Water Textures

You can keep those plugin values, and the way you do is to copy the values of the exemplars that the mods change directly into your terrain mod. You can then remove these plugins, as their data is stored directly in your terrain mod.

I really enjoyed the max beach change you made. It makes that area of the map look really unique. It's the first time I've ever seen an image like that, and I'm fascinated at your results. It's the little changes like this that will make your MD truly stand out from the rest. You will have the people asking "HOW?" all the time!

I am going to be keeping a very close eye on this MD. I see that it is becoming one of the most popular MD's out there. Your replies to comments are very detailed and heartfelt, your updates are superb and precise, and the time spent generating the images must be lengthy and spirited. All in all, it is now my absolute favourite.

I will try to keep this short, perhaps... I could go on for hours. Perhaps we shall communicate the rest via PM...

Here's how I felt after viewing this last update:

beskhu3epnm's official seal of approval!

[bat]

Beautiful pictures there! Also the river is looking beautiful!

Looking forward to more...

[Ennedi]

Hello my friends,

Thank you for all new comments!
My time is very limited today, so I will answer as soon as possible - maybe tomorrow.

Today I want to present the last part of the Terrain Mods Gallery: three desert mods and some combinaions with rock mods.
This theme will be continued in future, but now I must learn a lot and make some further experiments.

I'd like to say one important thing: It is easy to change some property values in the Terrain Properties exemplar, as I showed. But there is something wchich knows everybody who use any graphic program: if you are trying to find best settings of the tool you use (for example a filter), you see that there are a lot of possible settings and only a few of them are interesting and useful.
And the real mastery of our best map makers (and of course Cycledogg who arranged these mods, and this game creators) is to find these good settings, and it should be highly appreciated.



All mods I will present today have original settings.
The first one today: Painted Desert Mod.

14.1


14.2


14.3


Look at this grass, it looks really interesting!
14.4


Not much rocks appear in this mod. It looks really good, and the rock texture is very interesting.
14.5


14.6


And the general view:
14.7


In my opinion it is one of the most interesting terrain mods. I'm not surprised emilin choosen it in his excellent MD. Looking at it I remember red ground on Ibiza - it looks beautiful with mediterranean flora. I will show you some images in future (but I must scan it ).

Now the Grand Canyon Terrain Mod.
Both Painted Desert and Grand Canyon mods use the same CPT No5 (Moab Rock Textures) and the Moab Beach. But now we will see much less grass and more stone/rocky textures.

14.8


14.9


14.10


14.11


Look at this picture. Textures show you every little change of the gradient (I think their settings are different than in other mods, or textures are more contrasting), so your terraforming mistakes and tool tracks will be clearly visible!
14.12


Now something new: The Heblem Desert Mod. Look at it, it is worth of it!

14.13


14.14


14.15


As you see, there are much rocks here. Heblem used the Maxis rock and I think it looks very good here.
Please appreciate the Maxis Rock, it is still one of the best rock mods! It isn't repetitive and it look great on steep slopes.
Look at the picture below. I think all dirt paths will look very good with this mod.
14.16


Great work, Heblem! 

Now let's make a little experiment: what will happen if we will change the rock mod? But wchich rock will be good here?
I think it will be the Gray Marble Rock:
14.17


14.18


I showed desert mods yet, but I want to show you something else: Missouri Breaks Mod with Jeronij's modification of the Maxis Rock.
Interesting, isn't it? 
14.19


14.20


14.21


14.22


14.23


In my opinion tese textures look very good together, and what do you think?

I think you can be a bit tired of these repetitive landscapes. Sorry, but I had to show everything in the same place to make a comparation, in fact it was a scientific research 
It was also a reason I didn't change trees, I know some of them look stupid on the snow, but my intention was to put some trees and to
how how they look in various surroundings. I was another, side experiment. So don't worry Travis! 

OK, now a little addition - something completely different.
I noticed the Gizmo's Night Mod becomes very popular, many people like it a lot. But there is a little problem with streetlights in it. They often look too dark.
A few days ago shanethemain asked me for help in this theme. He was trying to use Highway Light Towers, but in many situations they are simply too big. But I answered him we have another big lights from the MIC Airport Set. They have smaller mast.
Look at this picture:
14.24


From left to right: Big Highway Light Tower, Small (Rural) Light Tower and the MIC Airport Light. As you see it is significantly smaller.
As you see it has a concrete base - maybe any of our BATers could make a transparent base version?
Look at them at night (it is default night).
14.25


The MIC Airport Light has one specific feature: the light cone is higher than the tower. It can look strange, but if you think a bit how to place it (you must think about background) it can look good.
14.26


And now we install the Gizmo's Night Mod.
A highway before placing lights...
14.27


...And after
14.28


On the closeup above you can see that if we place additional lights, streetlights and automata lights become brighter!
Please remember my pictures are not a finished product this time. I want to show you an idea. You can see the concrete texture and other
disadvantages, don't take care about it!
The general view:
14.29


14.30


14.31


14.32


This mod is really great, looking at it I remember my attempts to alter night looking of the city shortly after I registered on this site - of course I had to use Photoshop:
14.33


It looks different, but my way of thinking has a similar direction.

At the end: Maybe you would like to see how looks the Somy's Fishing Harbor at night?
14.34


What do you think?
Look at one detail: Maybe streetlights look too dark in the city, but in the rural/village landscape they look excellent!

That's all for today, thank you for our attention!

[Pat]

omg adam simply wonderful comparision from night to night mod wow!!! even with the desert mods man talk about a biiiiiiig diffrence great job on this adam and we will see you next update - pat

[Jmouse]

Oooh, give me the Heblem desert mod with gray marble rock. I love it.
And your discussion on the night mod alternatives is excellent as well.
There are many MDs and countless players, but you have distinguished yourself as one of the very few who take the game to new heights then share your work with the rest of us.
You deserve the gratitude of the entire community, and you certainly have mine!

Until next time...
Joan

[bat]

Wonderful pictures of these mods! Also fantastic pictures at night!

[rooker1]

More super work my friend with all these terrain modd comparisons.  It is really good that someone took on this task and I couldn't think of anyone better than you.  now everyone has a very good comparison of all the different terrain modds out there and how they work.  I say fantastic job.



Robin   

[Heblem]

Wow, I didn't know how well my terrain mod is!! thank you very much for the ideas!  and of course the variation of different rock textures and terrain its really good. This inspires me in making more terrain mods

About the night mods, that new night mod its really impressive even more the photoshop effect you did, thats an inspiration 

Im not sure, but i think this is my first time commenting at this incredible MD, and of course will be back for another update, even more i like those comparisons you make

Take care

[tkirch]

13.25 and 14.33 are two of my favorite pictures.

I absolutely love these updates.  Its amazing when this game first came out, it was mainly a City Building Game.  Now after all the years and the custom mods and content we have a game that has transended all of that and we get these pictures which is way more than I think Maxis ever could imagine.  This game has become so much because of great custom batters and you show their unique skills with your amazing way to mold it into all one seamless picture of beauty.