• Welcome to SC4 Devotion Forum Archives.

Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

Started by Battlecat, February 10, 2009, 06:39:50 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

danielcote


Earth quake

Just splendid map. &apls
I'm impatient to see Salmo. :thumbsup:

sumwonyuno

Heh, all the work you've done has been in those several city tiles.  I can't imagine how the rest of the region would look if you are able to keep at it.


The City & County of Honolulu, a Mayor Diary based on Honolulu, Hawai'i.

mark's memory address - I've created a blog!

kwakelaar

Very much looking forward to the continuation of Adara. And it will be interesting to see how you will do a larger town.

danielcote

Nice job on the rivers! I like the trees and the paths you've been making look great.

Battlecat

#565

Tomas Neto: Thanks very much, glad you enjoyed this peek at the long term plans for Adara. 

Stijn (BarbarossaS): Glad you liked it, I was a bit nervous about showing off how little of the region I've actually built!  For me, the benefit here is that I haven't committed myself to a course of action too far in advance.  Winfield will be large, at least by Adara standards.  Exactly how large it'll be overall remains to be seen. 

Geoff (calibanX): Rest assured, I'll be keeping up with the mapping work going forward.  But you're right; it's all about the journey.  I expect this one will last a long time, so glad to have you along for the ride!

djvandrake: I tried working with a premade region one time.  The project didn't get very far, partially because I'd terraformed myself into a bit of a corner.  This at least leaves me the flexibility to add interesting features as they pop into my head.  The narrow, deep river valley that's running through part of Winfield is a good example.  I'll cover more on that later, but you'll get a first good look at it today.  Thanks for stopping in!

Ethan (ecoba): Terraformer is really great to use because it eliminates the annoying reconciling edges problem.  That used to drive me nuts back when I was working on Terra.  It is a bit of a memory monster though.  Williston Lake is an artificial lake for sure, its size and shape is based off many of the monster lakes in Northern BC that are created by the same source.  This one will extend onto probably 3 or 4 more tiles beyond this one. 

The city may not actually be as big as you imagine.  Certainly a fair portion of this tile is still going to be rural in style.  The splashing onto neighbouring tiles is more a consequence of how this region developed, particularly the terraforming layout.  It'll make more sense once you see how the highway and roads run through the area.  I've got some plans to make this quite difference from Alexandria as well.  Interestingly enough, that brown texture you see is actually the results of the rain tool.   

The time I have isn't exactly game time, it's more time that I can play SC4 when I don't have any major chores to do.  Mostly happens when my wife is at work, when she's home we often play World of Warcraft or City of Heroes together.  The conference this week was on Zoonotic and Communicable Diseases, given by the BC Center for Disease Control.  I attend this meeting primarily because I'm responsible for the mosquito control file for the city I work for.  Zoonotic refers to diseases that are carried by vectors such as mosquitos.

Here in the Lower Mainland area traffic is rough on the best of days.  Getting out to UBC is a huge challenge because it's about an hours drive from the highway I take into the city.  This week wasn't particularly different from any other; mostly it was just very rough weather and a fair number of car accidents on my route home.  Anyhow, thanks for stopping by!

danielcote: Thanks!  Glad you like it.

Vivien (Earth quake): Thanks for your kind words!  Salmo is done, so I think you must be looking forward to Winfield! 

sumwonyuno: Yeah, it's hard to believe just how little of the region has actually been built so far!  I'm really excited about continuing this project, thanks for the support!

kwakelaar: This city is going to be an interesting exercise.  I'm hoping that all the rural development I've done has pushed the demand high enough to develop this city the way I'd like.  Commercial buildings can at least be plopped, it's the residential that's the biggest challenge. 

danielcote (2): Thanks again! 

Update 61
Winfield – Transportation Time

Sneaking in one last November update, just under the wire here!  As is always the case with my map tiles, the first thing going into place here in Winfield are the primary transportation networks.   I've got some interesting plans for this area, including adding a transportation type I haven't used in Adara to date.  I just hope I've got the room to put this all into place.

A few interesting things to note about the City of Winfield itself:  First, it's going to be tucked primarily into the corner of the tile, which means it's going to cross the border onto three neighbouring tiles.  Those crossings are going to take some extra planning.  Secondly, it's intended to be a young city, that's grown rapidly as a tourist destination thanks to the lake. 

Thirdly, due to some forethought by the city managers in the past, this city will actually has a mass transit system in the form of a GLR system.  I haven't decided on the exact route yet, but I'm going to try to lay it out with long term growth in mind.  In other words, it's going to extend out to the edge of town, and there will be land reserved for future extensions at the edges where it hasn't been built yet. 

It's important for me to note that it isn't my intent to continue growing this city until it sprawls over the map.  Adara is a snapshot in time, and the GLR network will be laid out with future growth in mind to help keep it realistic.  So here we go! 

61-1: I'm plugging the railway into place first since it's the pickiest network in terms of space requirements.  This is the continuation of the line that runs through Vavenby.  The STR line is another branch line heading up to industry in this side valley. 

61-2: This is the main interchange between the highway from Salmo (coming from the top of the image), the highway from Vavenby (to the left) and the bridge to Winfield (bottom of the image).  Here I'm envisioning some large stores trying to take advantage of cheaper land on this side of the lake.  The small community over her will be called Westside. 


61-3: While it's hard to visualize, here's the site of the future downtown core of Winfield.  The main avenue run will run to the top of this shot up the hill to the neighboring tile.  On the left side of the screen you can see the first bridge I tried for crossing the lake.  It didn't work so well because plopable water wouldn't take around certain parts of the model.


61-4: Fortunately, this one works just fine.  The span across this lake is quite long, and it's a big bridge but it should add a nice focal point to this tile. 


61-5: Among other things, I have to get the cross border streets lined up.  This is the border with Vavenby on the power lines side of the lake.  The main road on this side of the lake is a gravel street.  It'll connect back up to the main high some distance up the lake. 

   
61-6: Oh, you want to see what's on the other side of the border?  Here you go, one early Winfield – Vavenby composite.  Because of the complexities of the border you'll be seeing a lot more of these as I work through the tile.  The only shame about the setup of Simcity will be the high tension power lines on the border producing twin towers like that.  Honestly, I think I'm just not going to worry about it since Vavenby is producing a massive amount of power (yes that was a fully functional power plant).  I plan to continue the pattern of housing along here, with the odd side road just to mix it up a bit.


61-7: Wide radius curves for maxis ground freeways?   Who would have guessed?  The black textures are a nice touch as well; they blend much better with the RHW, which allows me to use the freeway bridges here.


61-8: I've started messing around with the GLR in avenue pieces here.  It's going to take a lot of getting used to, but it's very fun to put together.  Among other reasons, I've been itching to try this stuff out ever since I first saw it.  This is the first city in Adara were it works, at least from my perspective.  Of course this means a lot of planning in advance for Winfield. 


61-9: Among other things, I've started drafting out some ideas for subdivisions.  Everything you see in this shot is subject to change once I start actually zoning the area!  We'll look more at the overall layout of this transit network when I get started on the main development.


61-10: Moving on to something less subject to change, this is over near the south boundary of the Winfield tile.  It's on the west side of the lake from the city and this is the main power transfer for the city.  Power travels through a major conduit under the lake. 


61-11: Similarly, this smaller transformer will power the lines that run through to Salmo and Westside. 


61-12: This is the resulting appearance of the south side of the lake now that all the major infrastructure is in place. 


61-13: Next, continuing with my project of getting everything in synch with the neighbouring tiles, here's the border with Salmo.  The two streets on the border are the extensions of the gravel streets.  I'll be working a lot more here later; for now I'm just clearing up the loose ends to make sure the crossings are done right. 


61-14: A quick bit of rough street sketching for the wrap up of the upper and lower subdivision.  The legal boundary of Salmo will be somewhere in this area as well.  These two subdivisions are technically part of the town of Salmo. 


61-15: One last thing today.  This small hill overlooks the future location of the town of Westside.  I just don't like how it looks.


61-16: After a bunch of messing around, I finally got this result.  It's an oddball, but it looks interesting so I'll take it! 


That's all for today!  From here my first project is going to be to get the town of Westside into place.  It's going to be small town compared with Winfield.  It's mainly going to serve the purpose of building the initial population base before I move to the bigger city. 

io_bg

Very nice update, it's good to see that you've started building a larger town ;) Great use of the MHW as well as GLR! (the only thing I don't like about the highway is that the stretch between the cables is a bit too long).
Can't wait to see more! :thumbsup:
Visit my MD, The region of Pirgos!
Last updated: 28 November

Earth quake

Excellent update battlecat.
Your town planning is really, and i agree with Io_bg, Great use of RHW and STR. :thumbsup:

Dreamcat

Wonderful thing you have going here BC (Battlecat -- not British Columbia).  I am loving your highway stretches.  I cannot wait to see this tile get big, because you have done such a wonderful job on the rural aspect of Adara, now I am excited to see what you can with the urban.  Sorry for the short post, just a quick little pop in here while I have free time.  Expect more of me later! 

kwakelaar

Urban planning in Adara, very interesting to follow. Almost like you are painting a canvas. All seems very logical so far, and I love the shots from over the border. Something I really will have to try in Andau at some time as well.

Schulmanator

Nice! You have the foundations of some great infrastructure here. :)
See the all-new National Capital Region!:http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=15118.0

clearlypowa

I like your M.D  &apls   I've learned so much by reading from page 1 untill this nice update.

Great rural cities u have create from scratch  :thumbsup:

Keep going your excellent work.  :thumbsup:

Can u give me plz the link for dark textures of maxis highway  :)


scott1964

Nice update. Where did you get the power stuff?  :satisfied:

Albus of Garaway

I feel so guilty that I've missed all of the great work here at Adara while I've been on my short leave from SimCity 4! I looked back several updates, and what you've been doing with this region is simply astounding! I certainly look forward to your future advances, especially how you develop downtown Winfield.

-Jason

ecoba

Another interesting update, Battlecat.

Winfield seems to be quite a challenging tile, due to the new networks and all of the transitions. The whole city looks like it will be a nice difference. Are you planning to have any mid-(high?)rises in this tile? I think that maybe having just some mid-rises would be best because Adara really doesn't seem like a huge big-city region. I'm glad to hear that there will still be some farms on this tile. (Seems to maybe not be Adara without 'em.) Are the street connections functional, I was wondering because if not, the suburbs along the lake will not work, and homes won't grow.

Ethan

P.S. Terra, you mentioned, is that your old MD? Perhaps a link could be provided?  ;)

djvandrake

Looks great battlecat.  Lots of good forward planning goes a long way.  :thumbsup:

threestooges

GLR in Adara? I'm really looking forward to seeing how this develops, and how much actual ridership you get from it. The pieces can be a bit tricky to work with, but the end result is usually worth it. Interesting bridge choices. What made you cross the lake at that point? Usually routes tend to go around instead of over. I'll keep an eye out for the next overview picture. Your cross-tile images are always impressive. I'll have to try tinkering with them one of these days; the possibilities are great. Looking forward to seeing where things go next update.
-Matt

Tomas Neto

Whereas this beginning of your work, I can say is coming a major expansion of your region, with beautiful cities, as is usual in your MD!! Fantastic update!!

BarbarossaS

Great update! It's incredible, the amount of planning ahead you have to do with this tile, but I'm sure the results will be amazing!  &apls &apls
I like you're going use the GLR in Winfield, they give a city a more modern feeling imo.

-Stijn-

danielcote

I'm exited to see the first city develop!  :thumbsup: