Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

[Nanami]

Awesome, I like your landscape.

[JoeST]

oh WOWOWOWOWOWO!!!

Joe

[Battlecat]

Dreamcat: Indeed it has been getting a lot of love and attention.  Those lakeside houses were inspired by a number of large lot lakeshore developments I've seen.  Many of these are mostly forested, with small cabins in the woods.  Glad they work for you!  I'm also glad you enjoyed the little outcrop, and the explanation behind it.  My main background is in geography, so the little details like that appeal a great deal to me.  Thanks for stopping in!

sumwonyuno: Thanks for stopping in!  I think these rocks worked a bit better for the landslide thanks to their color.  Glad you like how the trees turned out as well!

danielcote: Thanks very much!  Glad you like the lake!

clearlypowa: Welcome to Adara!  Glad you enjoyed your visit!

Matt (threestooges): No worries, life is busy, particularly with your week in OSTIM!  Thanks for your kind words, glad you're enjoying the small details.  Glad you like the way the power right of way turned out.  I'm interested to see what you're working on!

Ethan (ecoba): It's requiring a great deal of patience on my part to develop the region this way as well, but it's also very rewarding.  The large tiles actually make it easier for me, it gives me greater context to work with, and more space to detail.  Also, since I'm playing with border matching, this setup does have a lot fewer boundaries to worry about. 

The RHW2 is an interesting system, one that has a lot of potential.  As you say, it'll look a lot better when the wide radius curves are released, but I couldn't resist using it for this particular highway.  I like the roads as a through route as well, but there's going to be a need for bigger highways in some future parts of this region!  Thanks for all your interest!  Last stop before the next tile coming right up!

djvandrake: Thanks very much, glad you like it!

Vivien (Earth quake): Glad you like the lake, we're going to be spending a lot more time around another section of Williston Lake on tile 5! 

Adrian (adroman): Welcome to Adara!  As I always say, life happens without warning!  Thanks for finding the time to stop by.  Don't sell your abilities too short, you're doing very impressive work of your own in The Real Australia!  The reason my work here is so detailed is also the reason it's taken me 9 months to finish 4 tiles!   I'm certainly glad you like what you see though, makes it worth all the time!

Bobbi: Thanks! 

Dan (dsrwhat316): Thanks very much!  I'm really glad you and several others seem to like those docks!  I'm planning on continuing that theme through to the other side of the boundary in that neighborhood. 

976: Thanks very much, I have a lot of fun with the terraforming in this game.  I'm always tweaking things as I get these tiles on the go. 

Joe (JoeST): Thanks for your enthusiasm!  Glad you enjoyed the visit!

Update 59
Jackson Pass – Mapping, Odds and Ends

As is the tradition here in Adara, I've got a batch of details for you all to polish up our visit to Jackson Pass.  Rather than dividing this up among several updates, I've got the works for you right here! 

59-1: Today I'm going to start things off with a couple of mosaics.  This was surprisingly challenging, mainly because I don't want to bore you all with a massive mosaic showing nothing but trees.  This one cuts southward across the town of Jackson Pass from the nearby clearcut through to the hot springs at the foot of Mt Garibaldi. 







59-2: This mosaic is high detail and runs from near the east border of Salmo west to the industrial park. 








59-3: The city street map for this one wasn't too complicated.  As a result, I've decided to pass on updating the gmap version this time around.  Considering the uploader is a free service, I'd rather not abuse it too much!  I'll provide more details when I wrap up the next tile. 



59-4: There's still a few more things before this update comes to an end.  First of all, the traditional tile wide composite.  As is always the case, click to view the larger version!

59-5: Last but not least, here's the regional composite map, now with four tiles in place.  Hope you like what you see!  Again, the larger version can be accessed by clicking this map. 


That's all I've got for today.  Next time, we'll take our first look at Tile #5, along with some discussion about my long term plans for Adara.

[Fabian93]

Two wonderful mosaics and a beautiful region shot

All in all:
Another fantastic Update. I especially loved that 2nd mosaic with that highway running through that town - I always love such scenes .

Keep up the fantastic work - it's always a real pleasure to view your pictures ,
Fabian

P.S.: It might sound strange, but I'd also like to congratulate you on your 3rd place in the HoF voting - you almost made your way into the HoF and I'm sure you will do so next time. You can be really proud of that .

[sumwonyuno]

I'm not going to be bored of a huge mosaic of trees.   

Good job and combining the city tiles.  It's not an easy thing to do. 

[Tomas Neto]

Woww my friend, awesome update again!!! Fantastic work!!! 

[kwakelaar]

I think Jackson Pass is my favourite tile so far. The mosaics are great, I still enjoy looking at the details in your forests with the different bare patches. Level of attention to detail is very high here.

[Schulmanator]

Fabulous work on the natural areas... it all looks so good... makes me want to go hike in the woods 

[danielcote]

Nice! I like the arias where they show where they were logging the treas and the forest is very nice!

[ecoba]

Good to see our traditional, end of Adara tile wrap-up!

Adara really is a beautiful region!

Ethan

[Dreamcat]

Hmm, Adara is getting quite big.  Beautiful mosaics you have there, never realized how awesome the RHW looks in Jackson Pass until I saw that mosaic.  I'm staying in touch!

[BarbarossaS]

It's always lovely to see the completed tile fit in the region! Can't wait to hear what your plans are for the future of Adara.

-Stijn-

[calibanX]

It's great to see that composite map Battlecat. I also enjoyed seeing the clearing with the lumberjacks working hard in your mosaic. Those creative touches give the scene character. So much to like here. Excellent as always.

Geoff

[Earth quake]

Wow, these mosaics are really impressive and splendid.
The city street map is just Fantastic.

[Battlecat]

Fabian (Fabian93): Glad you enjoyed the final shots of this tile.  These results are what makes the slow, careful development all work while for me!  I'm really happy with how Salmo came out, and that second mosaic really brings it together. 

Thanks very much for your congrats, I'm honestly amazed that I placed that high considering the high quality of the MD's that made the nomination!  Having read through the selection criteria, it really is an unexpected honor to have even been nominated!  Thanks for the vote of confidence!

sumwonyuno: Glad to hear it, I might have to put one together in the future then!  I suppose about half my region shots are forest already as it is.  Putting the city tiles together certainly isn't easy, sadly they're really not designed to match perfectly.  Having seen your work, I'm certain you speak from experience!

Tomas Neto: Thanks very much!  Sometimes I wish I had more opportunities to make mosaics like you do, but my development style isn't really as effective for large volumes of mosaics, unlike your excellent work.  Here, they seem to work better as a wrap up treat!

Kwakelaar: Thanks very much!  I'm extremely pleased with how well this tile came out, I was quite worried about how to keep this one diverse.  Glad you found it appealing!

Schulmanator: Thanks very much!  This tile reminds me a lot of places I've gone camping.  It's entirely possible I'll be creating tiles that are even more isolated in the future!

danielcote: Glad you like how the clear cuts came out.  I think I've finally hit on a satisfactory technique for creating them.  Thanks!

Ethan (ecoba): I find this wrap up to be excellent payoff for all the hard work!  Especially seeing it added to the regional composite.  Glad you enjoyed it!

Dreamcat: It's slowly growing, tile by tile.  At this point, it's four large city tiles in size.  Today I'm going to share the future scope of the region!  I really do love the RHW, it's got some of the nicest transport textures.  I'm really looking forward to the upcoming release since it'll have wide radius curves for the RHW2! 

Stijn (BarbarossaS): Thanks very much, glad you like how it all came together.  Hope you enjoy the first glance at Winfield today! 

Geoff (calibanX): I love putting the composites together.  Glad you enjoyed the mosaics as well.  Thanks for stopping in!

Vivien (Earth quake): Thanks very much for you kind words!  Glad you enjoyed the wrap up!

Update 60
Adara – Long Term Plans and First Look at Winfield

Sixty updates isn't a special number in any particular way, except for the timing and events of the past month.  Since update 50 on October 29th, this MD has grown by 6 pages, been moved up to Classics, nominated for the Hall of Fame, winning 3rd place.   It's been a busy month indeed, so thank you all for your amazing support! 

Ethan (ecoba) made an interesting request a few updates ago.  It's pretty much the inspiration for this update, so I'll quote the question here:

Originally posted by ecoba:

Could we maybe see a region shot of Adara soon? not just the completed tiles too, the whole shabam!

It's actually interesting that nobody has asked that question before.  It's a very interesting question, and really ties into how I'm handling the development of Adara as a long term project.  So I thought I'd give you all a quick tour of the entirety of Adara, and the rough structure of my long term plans.  And I'll give you a first look at the next tile while I'm at it.  So here we go. 

60-1: So first, here's Adara as seen by SC4 Terraformer.  This was taken this past weekend shortly after doing the final touches on Tile #5 (Winfield). The area in the foreground is Alexandria, Jackson Pass is near the tall mountain in the background (Mt Garibaldi). 


60-2: The first thing you'll notice about these shots is that there is a large amount of area blacked out.  It's only black because there truly is nothing there yet.  These shots hide nothing.  Here's a shot with the tile boundaries on from above. 


b]60-3: [/b]And here's the same shot with the tiles labled just for clarity. 


I don't like to commit too much of my region ahead of time because you never know when inspiration will strike.  The idea of creating this massive lake behind the dam was inspired by something, not sure what exactly.  The idea just came into my head, and since Vavenby was barely terraformed, it gave me time to implement the idea.  Likewise, the idea of extending the lake as far as I have has been an ongoing inspiration as the various plopable waters have developed over the past few months. 

So as new ideas strike, I'll be able to expand and terraform the region appropriately.  Now, that's not to say that I don't have a larger, overarching plan for this region.  For example, I know approximately where the coast is and what will be there.  I've got plans for the next city south of Alexandria on the highway and the community hiding up Lehman Valley south of Vavenby.  But those plans are flexible if something turns up that will work better!

Hopefully this should help to answer your question Ethan.  There really isn't an entire region to show yet, although there will be someday.  Thanks to SC4Terraformer, I can make it available once that day comes. 

60-4: So if I throw all of Adara into Region Census, here's the shot you get.  Adara is composed of 7x7 large tiles so 49 tiles in all.  I don't intend to expand this region at all for performance reasons.  However, I do have some longer term plans if this region as you see it now is ever filled up. 
   

60-5: The longer term plans have to do with the numbering system I mentioned.  Tile #5 is also known as 1-4x4.  I've pre-numbered every single tile in a grid in Autocad.  I use that reference information to keep track of alignments and adjacencies.  Here's a shot of the grid from Autocad along with the raw map data underneath.  Delmar Junction for example is 1-3x3.


So with the pre-numbering and planning, I've got some theoretical ideas for expanding the region "visually" without actually doing it technically.  Ideally when/if Adara 1 is full I can create an adjacent region called Adara 2.  If I carefully copy over the border cities, I can use them as reference information to start terraforming the second tile.  In theory I could just keep going, an ever growing region with room for many styles of development. 

Just so you know, I fully intend to 100% complete this 49 tile region before I consider moving on to another tile, no matter how tempting it is!  Anyhow, this idea is still just pie in the sky.  If it seems a bit overambitious, don't hesitate to let me know, particularly if you have a better idea how to manage it.  We'll see if it ever becomes an issue, but my hope/plan is to keep pushing forward, growing an ever expanding region. 

So with all that being said, here are the major goals for Adara now that I've got the game well in hand: 

1: The main goal here is to develop a region that on a glance looks fairly realistic while remaining visually appealing.  In other words, I'm shooting for an idealistic but not utopian development style.  So dirty industry and suburban sprawl exist, but I'll be making an effort to make it look really nice.  With the huge amount of space available, I'll be hitting on all realms of development eventually, but only as appropriate to the aesthetics of the region.

2: As I've continued to do, I'll be doing my best to showcase and mention as many different plugins as are available.  I'm going for a wide diversity of towns as we go forward, so there should be room for some pretty diverse looking cities.  As an addendum to that, I'll be sticking with game based growth wherever possible, but I'll still be plopping commercial and industrial lots where appropriate. 

3: The third and final goal is to completely and utterly ignore the existence of the tile boundaries except as a convenient way to focus the growth of this region.  In terms of the final layout, those tile borders might as well not exist at all.  No matter where any community falls on the map, appropriate space will be assigned for good quality transitions between different types of development, such as the rural-urban interface. 

60-6: Anyhow, now that I've broken my own brain getting this down on paper, let's lighten things up and have a first look at 1-4x4, now also know as Winfield.  The core feature of Winfield will be the lake; this map should help give you an idea of how it fits into the local area.  I've sketch in the rough shoreline already based on the contour lines. 



60-7: Here's the east side of the lake.  This area will be a major urban area, probably a fair bit larger than Alexandria.  As you can see, I've used the rain tool in preparation for the land bridges that will be going in during update 61.  This water will be replaced with the Tahoe style water later.  This city is going to cross onto three addition tiles as it grows.   


60-8: This shot is looking towards the town of Salmo.  The flat area by the lake here is going to be a continuation of the shoreline exurbs from Jackson Pass. 


60-9: And here's the border with Vavenby.  The main railway crosses the border here, along with power lines and two roads.  There will be a lot more boundary issues in this tile both with existing areas, and with the growth across boundaries.  The techniques for street borders will be very useful in the near future. 


I'd add more, but this was a pretty technical update.  Wouldn't want the first steps towards Winfield to get totally lost.  Plus not to mention my usual game time was fried by 5 hours of driving to and from a conference at UBC yesterday.  Next batch of shots coming up soon though!  See you then!

[Tomas Neto]

Impressive again, my friend! It's very cool you to show us all the refinement and concern with every detail in your region! Phenomenal update and awesome region!!! 

[BarbarossaS]

Nice! It's great to see it all in the bigger picture. I like the way your handling things, expanding as inspiration hits you. It'll make for a very interesting overall region once you've finished it!  
Love the look of the lake, and I can't wait to see the city develop. It's gonna be a large one, isn't it  

-Stijn-

[calibanX]

I think you're handling things just fine Battlecat. It would be interesting to see the entire region of Adara mapped in Autocad after you've finished developing it. Then again, I'll enjoy the journey much more than the destination.

Geoff

[djvandrake]

Wow, that was very impressive.  I like the idea that you don't terraform out your region in advance to allow inspiration a free hand.  I've never done that and it's a very appealing idea.

Your attention to details and planning is outstanding. 

[ecoba]

Ah, that's a really nice Terraformer view!

I don't have Terraformer, my computer can't handle it. I usually use greyscale regions or, I build on flat, or hand terraformed terrain.

That seems really interesting, how large that lake is. Do you think it will be a glacial lake, or part of the lake that was dammed up in Vavenby? Both of these options seem suitable, considering the way you present Adara to be in a British Columbia sort of environment. Now that the STEX is working for me again I think that I will download Tereisu's Rain Tool. I havn't been able to download it before, s building Land Bridges has been an extra challenge for me. I think that the continuation of the Exurbs along the shoreline will be a good feature.

You say that there will be a large city that will encompass space on three tiles coming out of Winfield? Imagining a big city in Adara is proving a challenge for my mind. I think that it must be from my usual starstruckedness from your amazing farms, but I know that your cities must be just as amazing. Although, now that I'm considering that there will be a city on this tile, I'm wondering if there will be any rural areas at all. I like the way that you have layed out where the lake is going to be with the brown texture, it's very helpful when trying to predict the final product.

You have usual game-time? Aaargh, you are lucky. I'm lucky if I can manage some time in either the LE or the Game each day. What conference was it? Business, or other? You don't have to answer it^^. Is traffic bad in British Columbia? I know that Canada has already had Thanksgiving. But, considering that down herein the US of A, I don't dare leave the house to go anywhere further than 10 miles aways this week.

Ethan