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Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

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

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Nanami

Amazing work on these rural area! :thumbsup:

&apls &apls &apls &apls


Luke09

Hey Battle Cat,long time I dont post here huh?(Long time i dont enter in SC4D or play sim city)Very nice rural areas,i think youre really good at building it,and your detailing is at the same level:amazing.  :thumbsup:
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TiFlo

Keeping some life in there. How is life Battlecat, is summer getting busy?
Anyway, I'm sure there are a bunch of us out here patiently waiting for your next update. Take it easy, cheers!   :)

TiFlo

Battlecat


Bernhard (Nardo69): Thanks very much!  I managed to accomplish having fun, and coming back healthy and relaxed. :-)  Jet lag is a killer though, it managed to add pretty tired to the list.  But here I am ready to go.  Good call on the edge of those fields, a few shrubs at the fence line will be a good addition.  I'll see what I can do in the near future.

Jacob (ShultzCity): Thanks very much.  I'm still thinking on that access road, but I don't see any reasonable solutions. 

RickD: Thanks very much for your kind words!  I had a fantastic time on my trip.

Matt (threestooges): That bit with the road stub was a bit odd, but it make sense because of the behavior of the puzzle pieces.  It's preferable to adding an odd pair of corners just to get a clean connection.  Thanks once again for pointing it out.  Glad you enjoyed the last update so many weeks ago! 

Jordan (canyonjumper): An older style retaining wall might be a nice touch, I'll have to think on it along with Bernhard's comments regarding the plants.  Thanks for your thoughts as always! 

Arthur (art128): Thanks for your kind wishes!  I really had a great time.  I've got the waterways update for today, I played around with the appearance of this river a bit.

Gjermund (kwakelaar): It is a bit overwhelming at times, but doing the work in such small bites makes it a lot easier to face.  Also, not committing myself to an absolutely fixed plan helps as well because I  can always dive off in a different direction if inspiration strikes.  The world is a weird place after all.  Thanks very much for your kind wishes, the trip was great!

Cyclone1001: Thanks for your kind words!  It was actually really weird not being on the computer for 3 weeks.  Kind of a nice break in a way. 

Tomas Neto: Thanks very much!

sumwonyuno: Thanks!  I've noticed that there's usually a small handful of abandoned farms here in BC.  I work in a pretty small city and I can easily identify 3 fallow farms in the area.  Glad you like how it fits the area!

976: Thanks!

kalvar: Welcome to Adara!  Glad you like how it's turning out.

Luke09: Welcome back, glad to see you're still poking around on occasion!  Thank very much for taking the time to leave nice comments!  Hope you stop by again soon.

TiFlo: Thanks for giving the thread a poke!  Not to worry, this is far from abandoned!  Three weeks on vacation plus another to recover went by very quickly.  Things should be back to normal now.  :-)  Thanks for your enthusiasm!

Update 117
Greenwood – Back to River Business

Greetings everyone!  As you might have guessed, I'm finally back from my vacation.  It was a fantastic trip, although very tiring.  My wife and I managed to fill pretty much every minute of every day.  As fun as it was though, it's nice to back.  Today I'll get things started back up by detailing most of the small plopable water river through Greenwood.

117-1: Here's the primary area I'm going to work on today.  Actually, I'll be working most of the way downstream to the game water river by the end of the update.


117-2: First thing on the list is getting the water solidified.  This was actually a pretty easy job since all the edge details will clean up the appearance in the end.


117-3: These two farms need a quick dose of detailing as well.


117-4: This is pretty normal detailing, I'm glad to say this didn't take too long to figure out.


117-5: Back to the waterway.  I'm playing around with a new idea today.  The sandy lines extending away from the river are meant to be natural flood channels.  This is just experimental but if it works out I'll play with it more in the future.


117-6: After I get the trees in place, here's what the flood channel looks like.  It would only see water during a flood.  They're a really bad place to set up a tent for camping. 


117-7: Here's a look at the other one future upstream.  This still needs another layer of details before I'm going to be happy with it.


117-8: Further downstream I'm playing with variations in shoreline texture.  I'm trying to get the feel of mixed sandy and grassy shorelines.  It's still missing something though.


117-9: As it turns out, maxis rocks make a big difference in the appearance of the river.  This should help the flood channels as well.


117-10: Here's the first fully detailed segment of river.


117-11: Looking at the flood channel again, the rocks do help a lot.  Breaks up the monotony of the base textures nicely.


117-12: Likewise, the second flood channel looks a lot nicer as well.  Time to move further downstream


117-13: Bridges are always fun to detail.


117-14: This one was a bit troublesome though.  It was quite hard to place the rocks near the bridge for some reason. 


117-15: Like many farms in Adara, the fences extend right down to the river to save the trouble of providing water to the livestock.  There are a lot of sheep on this farm. 


117-16: I now consider this map well past halfway done.  There's just a couple of little corners left as well as the big game water river which I'm still pondering. 


117-17: Just to wrap things up, here's an overview from a different angle. 


That's a wrap for today.  Hope you enjoyed this update!  I'll be shooting for weekly updates at a minimum but I'll be trying for two on occasion.  See you next time!

Cyclone1001

I'll be the first, and hopefully not last, person to tell you how amazing that river is. Worth the wait, can't wait for more.

nedalezz

The detailing on your stream is mind blowing! Sensational stuff. I would love to see a close up of the little town as well. My favorite picture is definitely the before and after shots of the bridge area :)

canyonjumper

Wow Battlecat! The detailing around the river is superb, and makes the river look great! Greenwood is looking fantastic!

                    Your friend,
                                   Jordan :thumbsup:
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ecoba

Welcome back, my friend! I haven't been around the past couple of updates here, I think; so I'll give a longer reply today.  :P I'm glad to hear that you had a good time on your trip, may I ask where all you guys went; just around BC or much farther?  :)

PEG's ploppable water has always been very interesting for me, in that I found it a very different experience to use than Jeroni's. I'm not sure if I don't like it as much or not, I haven't nearly experimented with it as much. You certainly seem to have gotten the hang of it here in Adara, and you use it beautifully ! Starting from the beginning with my post, the immense detail that you manage to squeeze into the grid squares, especially by the farms, is just mindblowing; all the different flowers and weeds, as well as the ploppable power poles just make it look so realistic.

The flood channels are a very nice, very realistic touch. We have lots of those along the sides of rivers around here, and I've walked through quite a few in my time !  :D  I think that you've done an excellent job replicating them, and I'm certainly very impressed. Of course the large amount of trees that form a sort of barrier between the farms and the creek is so very resemblant of Adara, (however it most certainly is not boring ! :D).

The fences heading all the way to the creek is very common in Adara, and I find it very nice and realistic, as well as adding a little bit of a more open feel to it. I like the sheep that have been featured today, I recently picked up that plugin (BSC Plop an Animal, no?) and find it very nice in creating livestock farms.

Glad to see that Adara is back, and I can't wait to see what else you have in store for us now that we can expect weekly updates. :)

Ethan

djvandrake

Gald your back and had a good vacation.  :)  A beautiful update.  Your river is very, very nice and I really like the details you put around the bridge.  Great stuff.  &apls

ShultzCity

Wow!!  &apls &apls

What a great return update. Glad to hear you had a great holiday!

The river looks incredible. It feels incredibly tangible - as if I could walk right down to the river bank...

Great work, can't wait for more!
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sumwonyuno

Glad that you're back, and the river area has turned out quite nicely!   :thumbsup:


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threestooges

Welcome back, and I'm glad to hear you enjoyed your trip. Looks like you didn't pick up much rust on your skills here. The flood channels are one of those things you see along creeks all the time, yet never realized were missing from the game. Very nice touch with them. I thought the one at the bottom of 117-5 was a bit straight (especially considering the likely reason the natural path would curve like that would be due to a rise on the inner corner, making a cut of it a bit more difficult) but in floods, I don't think it really matters what's in the water's way. It'll make its own path. Plus, blended in with the trees like that, the linearity practically vanishes. Nice update for your return. Looking forward, as always, to what's next.
-Matt

Luke09

Welcome back  ;),and nice detailing!The flood areas are a quite nice idea.I hope i see you soon.
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TheTeaCat

I'm impressed. Very impressed.
Very nice work indeed, been a while since I been here and I see I got some catching up to do
but I really do like what I see.

Time for another cuppa and a few pages that I seem to have missed ::)
I'll be back for more of this

:satisfied:
TTC
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Tomas Neto

Fantastic update, awesome work again!!!  :thumbsup:

io_bg

It's great to see you back! The last update is fantastic and the attention to detail (as usual) is on a high level ;)
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metarvo

Nice work, Battlecat!  I like the way you connected the street to those farms in 117-4.  :)  The shorelines and the farm details look good, as well.

:thumbsup:
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Cyclone1001: Thanks very much!  I had a lot of fun putting this particular river together. 

nedalezz: Glad you like it!  I've got a closer shot of the town of Greenwood in today's update! 

Jordan (canyonjumper): Thanks for your kind words!

Ethan (ecoba): We went a very long way for our trip; we spent 3 weeks in Europe, travelling through Italy, France and England.  It was a bit of a whirlwind, but we really wanted to get a chance to see a lot of different things.  The Tahoe style water and the transparent water each have advantages and disadvantages.  I like using both varieties for diversity.  Glad you enjoyed the variety of plants on the river edge; I really like adding lots of diversity.  It takes longer but it's really worth the effort! 

The fences heading into the waterways are pretty common around my area; it really does save the farmers a lot of trouble that would come from installing water systems out into their fields.  Oh and yes, those sheep are from the BSC plop and animal pack.  They give some great options for expanding the number of animals on a live stock farm.  Thanks for all your comments and questions, glad you enjoyed your latest visit!

djvandrake: Thanks very much!

Jacob (ShultzCity): I'm really pleased with how that river came out.  While the flood channels were a bit linear, they show promise for more ideas I'm throwing around for the future.  Thanks for stopping by!

sumwonyuno: Thanks, glad you like how it came out!

Matt (threestooges): I was pretty glad to discover I could still find all my favored tools in that very complex plugins list of mine as well!  You're right about that bend being a higher point.  I probably didn't choose the absolutely ideal locations for those flood paths, but I consider them a proof of concept so to speak.  I'll be playing around with them more on future tiles.  Glad you approve of the results! 

Luke09: Glad to see you still stop by on occasion!  Thanks for your kind words!

TheTeaCat: Welcome to Adara!   Thanks for you very kind words, your work in Tales at Teatime certainly have provided a wealth of inspiration for Adara!  Hope you enjoy your trip through 

Tomas Neto: Thanks for your kind words!

io_bg: Thanks, it's good to be back!  Glad you enjoyed the update!

metarvo: I really enjoy connecting up the farms.  While the result isn't truly realistic, it's a lot less jarring than most of the alternatives!  Thanks for stopping by! 

Update 118
Greenwood – Prep for Game Water Detailing

Well I didn't get quite as far down the detailing road today as I had hoped.  I planned to finish a small section of the game water shoreline, but due to a game glitch and some modding challenges I only managed to do about half of what I tried for.  But on the bright side, I managed to put together a simple version of the water lowering mod for my purposes.  So, let's have a look at what I managed to accomplish this week!

118-1: This is the area I chose to focus on for my first testing.  It helps that the area is almost fully detailed already.


118-2: First things first, there were come comments regarding the retaining wall.  I've got a version of the wall that doesn't have the fencing which will make things much easier.

118-3: I think this fence with the trees fits the area much better.

118-4: The side road here is the site of a small number of waterfront homes.  I'll continue the theme through to the next tile someday in the distant future.

118-5: Here's the waterfront homes in place.  Next, I need to do some testing.

118-6: I spent the next 45 minutes trying to figure out how to make the water level lower without destroying half the roads in the city.  Make a note, the cheat "setsealevel" works quite well, but all your land bridges and a random selection of wide radius curves will be destroyed when you load the game back in.  Finally, I made a copy of my terrain mod and lowered the water that way without any incidents.

118-7: These little spots of gravel will be useful to identify where the shoreline is when I load the game up without any water. 

118-8: After all, when the water disappears, so does the beach texture.

118-9: This is highly experimental, and not at all representative of what my river bottom will look like in the long run.  My goal here was to identify how deep the transparency of the Brigantine water goes in my current setup.  Also, I've just dumped a bunch of random textures in to see how they look in shallow and deep water.

118-10: Well, as it turns out my water is quite opaque, which makes my life a lot easier.  I'll have to play around with adding in sandbars in a future update.

118-11: Even better, the tahoe style water blends beautifully with the brigantine texture.  I'm thinking I might have to look into tweaking the beach though, I'm not entirely happy with its current appearance.  Any suggestions are welcome!

118-12: I think these reef textures will be quite nice to add a bit of texture just at the edge of visibility.  I'll run them right up to shore on rare occasions, but this will mostly be underwater.


118-13: These are a selection of new rock textures recently added by Heblem on the STEX.   There are 6 different styles textured to go with his various rock mods, but they'll be handy in a lot of locations.  Most of the work I'm going to have to do will be extending the beach foreshore and adding an extra layer of detail just under the water at the shoreline. 


118-14: Looking at it a bit further out, I quite like how the visibility falls off on the various textures.  Makes the water feel a bit less sterile than with no details. 



118-15: One last shot here.  Peg's sand and gravel textures should work quite nicely for blending in the beach with these odd bits of grass that extend down to the water.  I've still got a lot of work to do here, but at least I've figured out the mechanics.


If anyone has any suggestions about beach mods, and any thoughts on other textures that work well under game water just let me know.  This is uncharted territory for me, so any suggestions are greatly appreciated.  Just one thing to keep in mind, this is a river, not a seashore.  I'll be applying some fairly different treatments when I get out closer to the ocean, which will nudge onto the Adara region near the southern few tiles of the region and I'll probably build this out into an estuary as we move further downstream.  See you all later! 

djvandrake

 &apls  This update shows some of just how much effort goes into making your creations look so good.  Bravo.