dobdriver's maps

[Swordmaster]

Great work again, Dobs. The Rosamond map is a gem. 

Look a little further beyond the presentation of these maps and think about it again 

long story short: awesome maps, but the entireness can't be played due to several reasons

Maybe dropping the eastern parts of this map, leaving out San Bernardino? Putting Long Beach and downtown on the same map should not be a problem I guess.


Cheers,
Willy

[Sciurus]

That's excellent!!


And for my BATs, don't worry... they're comming I look after them this week... I just come back from a week of holidays so   As I took a LOT OF photos, I have to make a selection


Guillaume

[GMT]

Great work again, Dobs. The Rosamond map is a gem. 

Look a little further beyond the presentation of these maps and think about it again 

long story short: awesome maps, but the entireness can't be played due to several reasons

Maybe dropping the eastern parts of this map, leaving out San Bernardino? Putting Long Beach and downtown on the same map should not be a problem I guess.


Cheers,
Willy

well if you crop out the map to the east (or west) by a couple of city tiles, you can work around the "horizontal" scroll error which blocks you from scrolling all the way to the right of the complete map.
as this also reduces the number of city tiles, it might just happen that you end up with all tiles on the remaining map.
Well, it'll definitely make the whole remaining map playable at a certain point, but I didn't try it because I was reluctant to decide which parts are "worthy" and which parts are not.
You can make a nice clean down the 57, over to the 71 and along the 91 over to I15 and then down south; this basically excludes San Bernadino and everything east of the Sta Ana Mountains and should free enough tiles to get the rest of the map complete.

EDIT: but even with this cropping, you'll get an ineffincredibly superduperuberlarge map. Ok everyone knows the LA metro area is biiiiig, but being their and/or looking at the map does not at all reflect the true size in terms of sim city 4 dimensions, this map puts a whole new meaning into the word big.

[portlandexpos04]

Hey dobs,

Any update on the Denver and Macau maps?  Looking forward to seeing 'em 
Thanks!

[rstarks]

Hey Dob!


Its me again, coming at you with another challenging request.

Its been almost a while since i requested, and i thought i would present a really good option this time.

I decided that the theme would be " Along the Rivers"~ With that being said, you have the Option to create a map of either:

A.) Riga, Lativa
     Or
B.) Kiev, Ukraine.


Do some terrain research on both of them, I'm pretty sure each one would interest you in a way never done before 

[supremec]

Really good maps! 
My region took a little late 

[tvrcars]

Hi I have never asked for any maps to be done as I have always tried to make the maps myself but I have came up against a problem in making a map of northern ireland co. down area which is accurate in scale with all the hills etc.

Please can you make an accurate of northern ireland the bigger the better as northern ireland has alot of farms and green fields, if you could do this for me it would be so much appreciated

many thanks wayne

[dobdriver]

G'Day Devotees,

Recently I have been taking a bit of a break, perhaps undeserved but never the less and I have been having a bit of a thrash in Train Giant and A-Train 9. It is quite similar to SC4 except for 1 glaring difference: One is not the gumbyment and one has to PAY tax, not collect it! And an awful lot at that.

On the the good stuff and mail.


Thanks Kitsune, Sure that won't be a problem, coming soon.

You're welcome Eugene, I had a squiz at some of those pics by gosh people ducking all over the joint. Great stuff, Thanks.

Ah Cool Epic, I'm glad you found it.

Welcome back GMT, No that's right SC4 does have some constraints. But it is better to find them than never know that they existed. Yes?

Yeah Willy you could probably cut 4 tiles from one side and not have such an issue. Thanks mate.

Cool, cool, cool Guillaume, Thanks mate.

Don't fret mate, just get the scissors and hack, hack, hack. We can deal with the pieces at a later date. What's that song:

You raise the blade, you make the change.
You re-arrange me 'til I'm sane.


Thanks Portie they're coming along nicely and shall be finished soon. Cheers.

G'Day Mr Starks I shall probably do Riga for you as I already have a request in for Kiev. Thanks mate.

Thanks Supremec, Anytime is okay, there's no timeframe or pressure. Cheers.

Welcome Tvrcars, I had a bit of a look at Co Down the other day. Think I can manage it no probs for you. Thanks mate.



Recently in correspondence with Kitsune he linked me to a utility that will patch 32bit executables to allow them to address up to 4GB of memory in the 64bit space. So I patched mapper and terraformer and gave them a whole new lease of life.

To the extent that truly large maps are now feasible. For the first outing and with the musings on the thread about the LA map pack, I had a dabble. Interesting to say the least. Thanks mate it was much appreciated.



Los Angeles is 147.456km x 98.304km.


This map is available on the stex, obviously there are some caveates and one should read the readme as there is important info and links to the patcher.




A few months back I was requested a map of Bruce and Grey Counties in Ontario courtesy of Dev918cfd, Thanks mate. And being quite a large area I was unable to produce it at 1:1. All that has changed.



Bruce & Grey Counties is 122.88km x 139.264km


It's huge and took me four and a half hours to render!


I have always thought that perhaps the date 1/1/00 was used to render the initial map image as I have no problem rendering on 2/1/00. Anyhow this is not so:



Lately I have gone to using the hotkey to invoke the Save and Return to Region. It saves a few second from each render and this can save up to 1/2 an hour on a big map like Bruce and Grey.


Any how that's it for now.

Thanks for looking and have a great day.


Cheers
dobs.

[art128]

Interesting and how huge maps there Dobs, you did an awesome job. Rendering maps is what takes the most time in the custom content I think. Just rendering each tile one by one for the terrain mod to takes place, It's one thing I hate to do when i start a region, ahah. ( That's why I restrain myself to use small regions based on one city instead of many)

Anyway, the song is Brain Damage/Eclipse. One of my favorites Pink Floyd Song overall.

Oh, and what is that UI skin? Looks interesting.

[Kitsune]

Thanks dob! And Bruce/Grey county's are probably one of the most epic area's for autumn colors... there is also the second largest nuclear plant by electrical capacity in the world located in Bruce country too.

[StanislavSoltys1]

How's my map going Drunkapple? I think it's been 4 - 5 months since I requested.

[whatevermind]

And I always thought the maps you use to make were gigantic.  I ran the same patch on terraformer myself to see if I could render LA.  Alas, I forgot my main computer only has 4GB of RAM, and that map sucked it all up and crashed the program.  So now I've got an excuse to go get a new computer, or at least a RAM upgrade. 

Also...custom UI!?!

[vortext]

Wow 

That's really, really, really large. Can't imagine the time it'll take to fully develop the map!

Lately I have gone to using the hotkey to invoke the Save and Return to Region.

Since I've got some rendering coming up myself, I would like to know which key that would be.

[epicblunder]

Recently in correspondence with Kitsune he linked me to a utility that will patch 32bit executables to allow them to address up to 4GB of memory in the 64bit space. So I patched mapper and terraformer and gave them a whole new lease of life.

To the extent that truly large maps are now feasible. For the first outing and with the musings on the thread about the LA map pack, I had a dabble. Interesting to say the least. Thanks mate it was much appreciated.

OH. DEAR. GOD.   

So many new possibilities:  All of Tokyo, a Hong Kong that reaches up to Gaungzhou, Golfo de Fonseca, a truly epic Vancouver BC that continues up the Frasier,  Rotterdam and antwerp in the same map!  The deltas of the nile, indus, and ganges, not to mention the mountains surrounding the pacific!

Curse having an old computer!   

But seriously, i look forward to seeing what you do with bigger maps, and what you find the new 'max size' to be.   

Can't wait for Yakutat, I've got some big plans for that map.  And I too want to know the keybinding for save&exit to region.  It has to be some variation of ctrl-s, yes?

edit:  I just did some testing.  I only have 3gb of ram, but i do have a 64bit OS.  Previously the largest map i was able to load with terraformer and open with SC4 was 68km x 64 km.  After i patched terraformer i was able to load your excellent San Francisco map, 88km x 88km; all on my measly 3 gigs of ram. 

So i save the map successfully, open SC4 with my rendering plugin folder, load the new region and the map is.....incomplete.  Lots of the city tiles were blue blanks.  Close SC4, fire up the 4gb tool and patch SC4, load it back up, and the whole map is there, and i can load the tiles and save out successfully.  Everything works like a charm.  I'm so excited to see what the patched SC4+terraformer can do, and i hope a patched SC4 will reduce load time with a massive plugin load.

edit 2:  I bet you could splice your map of the big island of Hawaii back together....

[whatevermind]

Fire up the 4gb tool and patch SC4

I was just wondering if anyone had tried this yet, and whether or not it would make a difference.  In fact, I've got a whole bunch of these old programs sitting around that could use a performance boost....

[dobdriver]

G'Day Devotees,


What a week, I'm beside myself. Sorted out heaps of stuff and finished a few maps and updated some also. I have also stitched Hawaii and Luxembourg together, both are not rendered yet.


Thanks Art,
Thats the song! Sometimes rendering is the longest but mostly not, Just quite tedious. Oh the UI yes that's my personal UI, I forget just how ugly the original is until I load the game without smoke'n mirrors. It's not completely finished yet and I haven't done anything to it for the last seven or so months, It's the last Visual mod I need to finish.

Thanks Kitsune, By gee Chernobyl here we come again.

Thanks Stan, Your map will be done when it finds the secret door in the map-o-matic  It's progressing beautifully.

Whatevermind, Make sure you buy 4GB modules of ram, you only need of them. It certainly works on others, I patched a proggie Izi put me on to for capturing google pics I could save 10000x10000 pixel images. It would crash saving 12000x12000, but not any more. Thanks mate.

Thanks Vortext, The hotkey is F8, it saves an awful lot of time rendering.

Epic thanks mate, it is a cool patch no doubt with a lot of potential.



So I have been busy on the lex this week!


First Up is the latest escapee courtesy of Vester, Thanks mate.


Blekinge is 114.688km x 57.344km.

Vester's Monster


Next courtesy of Mayorfabz I released the un-rotated version of Malta


Malta is 36.864km x 34.816km.

I had to make a new one as the baby was gone with the bathwater.


Next many had asked to align Toronto, so I did.


Toronto is 40.96km x 36.864km.

Rotated 16.8° clock-wise.


And Courtesy of old mate Things, Thanks mate.


Koh Samui and Koh Pha Ngan is 22.538km x 53,248km.

The sims don't travel.


I updated my Hunza map back to full height.


Karimabad is 45.056km x 49.152km.

This map tops out at an ear splitting 6250m.


Thanks to DrFlex for this next request.


Thimphu is 53.248km x57.344km.

Bhutan is mostly off limits but not in SC4.


And last for today courtesy of Kitsune, Thanks mate


Barbados is 28.672km x 32.768km.

Another Caribbean paradise meets SimCity.



That looks like it for the week. I'll be away for about six weeks so there may not be a lot of news for a bit, fear not I haven't deserted.


Thanks for looking and have a great day.

Cheers
dobs

[gn_leugim]

awesome work! Malta and Koh Samui and Koh Pha Ngan islands, I like those very much, the geography of them

[noahclem]

The maps looks great and that's fantastic that you're now able to create these giant regions 

[Izidor44]

Lately I have gone to using the hotkey to invoke the Save and Return to Region. It saves a few second from each render and this can save up to 1/2 an hour on a big map like Bruce and Grey.

Hi Dob'

These giants maps are AMAZING ! You told that there's a link to patch Mapper and SC4T ? I will have a look at it immediatelly, be sure !

One question about that hotkey (you know how lazy I am at rendering those tiles...), could you say how to do so ?

Thanks for this brilliant work,

Izi

[eldaldo]

Hi Dobdriver,

I have been a huge fan of your maps for over a year now, And I love the big maps you come up with.  However, I have a serious problem in that I cannot play any of them.  I only have XP with moderate memory and terraformer and mapper crash whenever i try to render your large maps.  The max region i seem to be able to render is 12x12 large tiles.

I have a huge favor to ask of you or someone else on here.  Would it be possible for someone to upload just the PNGs of the co mayo and co galway maps?  I could then try splicing them down to a size that would allow me to use them and build cities on them.  I have been wanting to use them for my city journal.  I know it's probably a big hassle, but if you just converted to png in terraformer and uploaded to mediafire I would be super thankful.  for ease . . . the maps are here

http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/27109-co-mayo-ireland/

http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/26495-co-galway-ireland/

once again if someone does this I will be super thankful, and will name a town in the region after them!