Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

[Jmouse]

Outstanding mosaics you have there, and the maps aren't too shabby either! You've done a fine job on the farms - an element which still eludes me - and incorporated our wonderful transport features well. I see an interesting and unusual arrangement of RHW on/off ramps in 26-5, but it looks like it would work OK. Wondering which tree controller(s) you're using - I really like the results.

Later...
Joan

EDIT: Welcome to page 200!

[art128]

Hey Joan, are you sure this is the page 200 ? 
Congratulations on making 200 post Battlecat !! It's a real pleasure to see this MD growing ! 

[FrankU]

FrankU: Thanks very much for your kind words!  I would love to have more varieties of plopable grass to work with, it would certainly open up additional options for the fields.  I do agree that the colors I'ves used aren't ideal, but one must work with what one has available. 

In fact you have other options: in the same set (by Chrisadams) you have the yellow rye grass. I think that will perfectly fill the need.

Nice maps. I like the third, althought I would choose another color for the highway. It looks too much like a canal now...
The mosaics ared great!

[Speedbump Joey]

Fantastic work. Simply stunning. It is great to see your work with the farms, and then developing a small community within the area. I cannot wait to see what your further updates have in common. Seeing your work has really inspired me and ultimately I am forcing myself to do bigger and better things, after viewing your work. I cannot see what "Option 2" ends up looking like. I do have a question. What does the future hold in terms of a tile that will be predominantly urban, with little or no farming on it? I am particularly curious as to what short term and long term goals you have set and have pretty much stayed with from the get go of this wonderful project.

[Battlecat]

Thanks for the push past 200 replies over the weekend everyone! 

Arthur (art128): Thanks very much for stopping in and for your comments!  I'm really enjoying the plopable water, and I plan to make even more use of it in this next update. 

io_bg: Glad you like it!  Thanks for stopping in.

kwakelaar: Thanks very much for your kind words!  I really get a kick out of the variety of trees available in the game now. 

Geoff (calibanX): Glad you like the 26-3 map!  I wound up tweaking it a bit more for this update, I think I'm finally getting towards a style that I'm satisfied with.  Thanks for the visit!

bat: Thanks very much! 

Corey (Nexis4Jersey): Thanks very much, glad to hear you like them!

Joan (Jmouse): Welcome to Adara!  The rural highway interchanges were more a fact of necessity, since there wasn't enough space between the corner and the over pass in the spot you would ordinarily expect it to be.  Such is life though, the end result is interesting as you say!  I'll have do some digging to find out where to get the tree controllers I'm using, I'll let you know as soon as I figure out where I got them!  I believe they were created by Jeronij, using a mixture of his and Cycledogg's trees.  They should be available on the LEX.

FrankU: Thanks for stopping in again!  Good point on that highway color, I totally missed that, so I'm posting a corrected version today, along with a few other tweaks that were bothering me.  I think I've missed noticing that yellow rye grass texture, I'll have to do some poking around and see if I can find it.

Speedbump Joey: First of all, welcome to Adara!  I appreciate the kind words and I'm glad you found this inspiring.  That's a very interesting set of questions that you've asked there, let me see what I can provide.  First, I can say that there are plans for a city that will cover multiple tiles in the future, I'm not sure how far out, or exactly how large that will be, but I do intend to shoot for it. 

My short term goals have pretty much been met, which was to regain a feel for Simcity 4 and begin rediscovering what can be done in the game.  In the long term, I intend to continue exploring the visual possibilities provided by the diverse mods and lots available for the game now, and use them to build a coherent, visually appealing region. 

Update 27
Third Stop – Welcome to Vavenby

Today, I'm going to give you all a first look at Vavenby, the third tile in Adara.  Unfortunately, life didn't provide me with enough time to get a great deal of work done on it, but at least I can give you a first look at an idea I'm throwing around for this area.   But first, one last stop in Alexandria:

27-1: FrankU made an astute observation about the color of the highway in image 26-3 in the previous update.  I happen to agree with his observation, and I've also made a few more changes to help reduce the clutter on the map.  Among other things, I'm no longer going to draw the two halves of divided highways separately; instead I'll just use a single centerline except in cases where the two halves of the highway are separated by an unusual distance.  I tweaked a couple other colors that were bothering me and increased the font sizes a bit more as well. 



27-2: Moving right along, here's a first look at Vavenby in context with Alexandria and Delmar Junction.  I'm going to focus particularly on my future plans for the elevated flat area in the bottom right corner of this map today.



27-3: Here's a quick shot of the center of the valley.


27-4: And a shot of the elevated flat area mentioned in 27-2.


27-5: So first, time to get the rough draft of the rivers in place.  In this picture, the right fork in the river leads up into a narrower valley.  That valley may have some mining industry in it in the future, but that's a project for a different tile.


27-6: The main river comes from the elevated flat area.  You may all be looking at this, thinking it looks a bit odd and slightly uniform.  Well, I have a plan to deal with that. 


27-7: Thanks to careful use of the slope mod and road based leveling, I'll make this slope even more uniform!  I'll explain my reasons below with the next couple pictures.


27-8: Hydro electric dams have always been a challenging feature to replicate in Simcity 4.  I'm going to make an attempt at replicating one of the larger scale designs, known as an earthen or embankment dam.  These dams have a large impermeable core in the middle, covered in layers of earth and rock for support.   


27-9: This particular earthen dam is called the Bennett Dam, and it is located in Northern British Columbia.  I'm going to have to give some careful thought and experimentation into to how I'm going to detail my version of this structure.  These photos should give you a pretty good idea about my future goals in terms of textures.   


27-10: First things first, time to get some water in place.  I've decided to use Peg's water style here rather than transparent water since it gives the impression of deeper water. 


27-11: I decided to add a small island in the lake at the last minute, just to break it up a bit. 


27-12: There's still a lot of work to do, but now you can see the late in context with the river it drains into. 


And that's a wrap for today.  I wish I had more time to get the roads into place, but I'll get those on the roll along with the first batch of details for next time!

[Speedbump Joey]

Nice update, I like where the possibilities can go with this one.

-Joey

[Simpson]

Hi !!
I'm so sorry that I missed all these udpates, my friend. Your region picture is incredible 
Also, the last update is superb, this new city is looking amazing !!

Take care,

David

[io_bg]

Great terraforming! It'll be nice if you upload your region when you finish it, I think it'll be fun to build on it. And the maps are really nice!

[tooheys]

Hey Battlecat, I know the timing of my visits is somewhat irregular, but I can confidently say that the standard of your work is not. Particularily like the maps, the latest terraforming is nicely done and looking forward to seeing the finished product.

Very nice indeed 

Dave

[jmyers2043]

Hello Battlecat

"Time worth spent." That's what I said to myself after reading through ADARA this morning.

I like the maps you are doing. And the two recent mosaic pictures are beautifully done.

Cheers - Jim Myers

[woodb3kmaster]

Great update! Vavenby looks like it will be another fascinating tile to watch you develop, and I can't wait to see how you'll tackle making a realistic earthen dam (perhaps a heaping helping of draggable paths to give it that earthen look? I'll just have to wait and see). Keep up the terrific work!

[Jmouse]

Once again, the level of detail in your maps is awesome. The landscape in 27-3 and -4 is just stunning – made even more so with the addition of rivers. I simply must find the time to try that method myself.

It will be interesting to watch your earthen dam become a reality. The many new elements we have to work with now are wonderful, but even more amazing is the level of skill demonstrated by MDers who have emerged more recently. You're doing a fine job here, so I hope you and Adara will be around for a long time to come!

Later...
Joan

[calibanX]

Wow, I'm anxious to see how your earthen dam project turns out. The water features are looking quite natural. The map mosaic is great as well.

Very nice update.

Geoff

[FrankU]

Ha, that's an interesting plan, a large hydro dam.
You stir my curiosity, that's for sure.

And: beautiful landscaping.

Nice map changes also!

[Albus of Garaway]

It's been a while since I've been here!

Nice update, Battlecat.

[Battlecat]

Speedbump Joey: Thanks for stopping in again!  I'm looking forward to seeing where I wind up with this one as well!

David (Simpson): Glad to see you back, life happens to all of us!  Thanks for your kind words as always!

io_bg: Thanks very much.  I'm actually terraforming the region in small bites.  It gives me some flexibility to add things like the terrain necessary for the future dam in Vavenby.  But once I'm done, I'll see what I can do, particularly since it's quite easy to do with the SC4 terraformer. 

Dave (tooheys): I always appreciate the visits, glad you find the time to visit occasionally!  I'll certainly continue to shoot for high quality updates, glad to hear you enjoy them! 

Jim (jmyers2043): Welcome back!  Thanks very much for taking the time to visit!  Thanks very much!

Zack (woodb3kmaster): Thanks for stopping in!  I actually haven't entirely figured out how I'm going to approach this project.  It's going to require some experimentation to figure out a visually appealing solution.  There are also a number of important structures, such as the spillway and the actual powerhouse which will have to be added to the current design as well.  I'll let you know how the texture experiments go!

The odd thing is that despite their name, earthen dams are usually covered in a coating of very coarse rock to prevent erosion and significant plant growth.  While plants might help stabilize the soil, their roots also provide pathways that water can follow, which can lead to a breach if they are allowed to get out of control. 

Joan (Jmouse): Welcome back!!  I'm certainly looking forward to getting the details in place on the earthen dam, but it's going to take some time to figure it out!  Thanks for the kind words!

Geoff (calibanX): I certainly hope the dam comes together like I'm visualizing! 

Interestingly enough, the map only looks like a mosaic because I put the tile boundaries on it.  All the linework you see on that map is actually unified together in the raw AutoCAD file.  Doing that ensures that all the lines match up nicely when I start zooming out to look at the bigger picture. 

FrankU: Glad you approve of the modifications for the maps!  Thanks very much for making the suggestions that prompted them!  I certainly hope the earthen dam comes together like I hope. 

Albus of Garaway: It has been a while indeed, glad to see you stopping in again!  Glad you like the update!

Update 28
Vavenby – Roads, Rails and Towns

As much as I'd like to jump right into the work on the dam texturing, I've got to give some serious thought about how to texture this thing.  As such, I'm going to start with a few standard things, namely the main roads and the railway, which are going to be an interesting challenge since the main route goes up above the dam.  Finally, I'm going to start working on the main townsite for Vavenby. 

28-1: First as always, I've got to get the core roads and railway in place.  As I was working on it, I noticed this gem from the NAM.  It comes in both STR and DTR versions. 


28-2: My assumption would be that the railway used to travel along the valley bottom and was moved up over here when the dam was built.  I'll be putting in an abandoned spur line somewhere at a later point.  These wide radius curves are very hard to manage on slopes, but it can be done! 


28-3: Likewise with the main highway.  Part of the challenge is created by the slope mod I'm using, but I partly just did this because there might be some odd, quirky reason why highway engineers decided to go around the mountain this way instead of the more obvious route.  There will be a branch off to a minor road on this side of the lake. 


28-4: And here we have some of the FAR intersections from the latest version of the NAM.  This is going to be part of the modern townsite.  I finally wound up replacing the FAR-FAR intersection on the right with a second FAR-Ortho intersection.  I'm still goofing around with all these options in some of my test tiles, and you can be certain I'll be doing more with them and non-ortho towns in the future. 


28-5: Down the hill from the main townsite, this will be a future business/industrial area. 


28-6: And here's a quick shot of the area so far. 


28-7: The next thing that occurred to me is that with a hydro dam of this size, there's probably call for high tension power lines.  Fortunately, Pegasus recently did a small edit on the standard towers and eliminated the red.  The galvanized steel appeals to me more. 


28-8: Moving back to town, it's time to explore some of the quirks of developing along the FAR network.  The first thing I discovered is that only 2 of the three tiles adjacent to the FAR network can actually support residential housing.  The third one gets a no-road zot.  This wouldn't be such an issue for industrial and commercial as long as they are more than one tile wide.   


28-9: Moving along, and trying to figure out how to make the roads and zones fit together nicely. 


28-10: A bit of development, and a few plopable commercial lots later, here's a small part of the town, now fully developed.   


28-11: And zooming out a bit to see the entire town as it stands now.  Still a long way to go but it's coming along.  The road cut down to the lower industrial area on the right side of the picture will get a retaining wall later. 


28-12: In the meantime, back to some railway, I realized I'd forgotten the STR line up the narrower valley.   It might look a bit odd, but this is the best solution I could find within the limits of the wide radius curves and the available switches. 


28-13: Finally, a preview of a future update, I'm just goofing around with this so far.  This is part of North Country Dude's modular railyard system.  This particular one is intended as a holding area for trains waiting to climb up past the dam.  It's a steep and winding slope, so large trains would have to be broken into two sections before making the climb.  They'll also have to wait for the section to clear, and that might create a small backlog of trains waiting in the queue to go up the hill.  It's quite far back from the slope, which gives the trains significant space to get their speed up before hitting the first steep section.  I'm going to keep looking at the styles available and I might tweak the exact design in the future, but the concept is certainly staying. 


28-14: Finally, one more quick zoom out to look at the entire area as it stands to date.  Looking at my future plans for the farming in this area, I'd love to get my hands on those FAR – SAM intersections Dedgren is working on in 3RR, but hopefully they'll come out in a future SAM release.


Anyhow, that's a wrap for today, I'll see you all next time!  Thanks for stopping in!

Edit: Apparently we've passed 10,000 visitors today, thanks very much for your ongoing support everyone! 

[Earth quake]

Nice update.
Your MD is really superb and the road and railroad system is excellent.

vivien.

[threestooges]

Nice developments so far. I like the dam idea, and being from Southern CA, I can only think of the Tehachapi loop and the Cajon Pass after seeing your railyard idea. I've tried those railyard pieces myself, but haven't had much success. I'll be keeping a close eye on your tests. Nice choice of bridges too by the way.

[nedalezz]

Thats a quiant little village..all thats missing is some trees! Its gonna look fantastic once you complete the detailing of the square.

[Nardo69]

So there is another one hooked on hydro power plant like me - glad to know I'm not alone out there!

Nice work with the STR Line. The S-curve after branching of the DTR might be too much but on the other hand be alright.

And slopes and NAM pieces are definately a chapter of its own.

Nice town you added next to the road. Your approach is different than mine but I like it.


Bernhard