SC4 Devotion Forum Archives

Abajo del Mar is Spanish for "under the sea" and, for those who don't speak (or read) Spanish, it's pronounced "ah-BAH-hoe del MAR".  In Spanish, the letter "j" is called "jota" (pronounced "HOE-tah") and is usually equivalent to a somewhat breathy "h" sound in English, like the "h" in "horse".  I don't know how to help other folks who don't speak English translate or pronounce "under the sea"...English and Spanish are the only two languages I know and I am the first to admit my Spanish leaves much to be desired.  I was raised in Southern California and took Spanish in school every year from the 4th grade through graduating from high school (a total of 8 years) and was once fluent in speaking, reading, and writing Spanish (although I was never very good at conjugating verbs), but I've rarely used the language in my everyday life, so when trying to decide what to name my new region, I had to use an online English/Spanish dictionary to remind myself of the word for "under". 

So, Abajo del Mar is, as you have probably figured out, under the sea.  Or rather, it is a region created from a map I found of an undersea area.  The region itself is not actually underwater...how would I build on it if it was? 

I've had an avid interest in creating maps for playing in SimCity from way back in the beginning of my personal SimCity journey, which began in 1992 (hard to believe it was almost 18 years ago).  I had just purchased my first personal computer with money I recieved for cashing out my profit sharing share from a job I had quit on April Fool's Day of the same year.  After agonizing over the PC/MAC decision, I bought a new Tandy 486 PC, along with a 13" color monitor and a dot matrix printer.  The set up cost me my entire profit sharing check, $1300.  The computer came loaded with Windows, Microsoft Works, and Solitaire.  I was unemployed at the time, collecting unemployment, and living rent free in exchange for cooking and cleaning for a good friend, Donald, and he thought I was crazy to spend my money on such a frivolous thing.  I must have agreed with him to some degree, because I felt a little guilty about the purchase. 

I soon became bored of playing solitaire and so one day went into town (we lived in a small farming community in northwestern Washington State named Conway, look it up on Google Earth) and stopped by the local Egghead Software store (remember them?).  I walked out an hour or so later with SimCity, what we now call "SimCity Classic", after being warned by the store clerk that the "game" could be addictive and he hoped I had a LOT of free time on my hands.

I started making my own very first custom map that very same evening and have never stopped playing SimCity or making maps since.  As the years have rooled by and the maps (and game) become ever more sophisticated, my mapping skills have not kept up, so nowdays I depend heavily on the map gurus who have kinda specialized in that area of the game,  this map of Abajo del Mar included.  I would dearly love to open the Pandora's Box of skills that would allow me to become an expert map maker, and I truly try from time to time, but I keep getting distracted by the maps themselves.  Once made, for some strange reason, I want to build on them. 

It was during a time of trying to make a new map that I found the map of what has now become Abajo del Mar.  I don't remember exactly how I came across the underwater map, but it immediately caught my attention and I downloaded it and saved it.  It had been sitting dormant in my My Documents folder for a couple of years when I decided a couple of weeks ago to dust it off and see if a game map could be made of it.  My desire to upgrade my mapping skills was once again rekindled, so I immediately posted a thread here on SC4 on the Mapping Tutorials forum asking for help.  The name of the thread is "Like a Bad Cold" and if you want to follow my efforts to create this map myself, and read the helpful hints those who know mapping better than I do posted, that's where to find them.  I won't recreate the thread here, except to say that in the end, I did not create the map and my efforts to do so failed rather miserably.  A mapper by the name of toja found the thread and was able to both find a better map data source than what I had, then turn it into a file one could load into either Terraformer or Mapper (or both).  I gratefully downloaded toja's map, manipulated it in TF and Mapper, and this is what I finally settled on (drumroll, please):

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg220.imageshack.us%2Fimg220%2F3673%2Fhudson2.jpg&hash=134db567d5cbb6d091c1f12b89e19bb5b48cef5e)

So, welcome to Abajo del Mar.

In RL, this is a section of seafloor just east of New York and New Jersey.  This is the submarine end of the Hudson River Valley, formed during the last Ice Age.  The region is comprised of 140 large city tiles, 10x14.  Despite having been derived from RL scaled data maps, Abajo del Mar is not accureately scaled, either in area or height...SC4 doesn't have the capacity to display a map the size of the RL data set nor can it display the wide range of elevation differences, so the RL map has been semi-randomly comnpressed in size and height to be able to display in game. 

So what are my plans for Abajo del Mar?  I'm not really sure, other than I want to build on it.  I have some vague ideas and am gaining more as I work along.  First, the high plateau in the NW corner of the map will probably be entirely agricultral and rural.  This is where all the food for the region will be grown.  Second, as much as all cities and areas need industry, I hate it and so am going to stick it way out on SE edges of the region.  Yes, I know that area is all ocean and no I am not going to create underwater industrail areas.  Instead, I think I am going to borrow a page from the book of Dubai and create artifical islands out to sea upon which to concentrate the region's industry.  I'll link the islands to the mainland via bridges.  It'll work, I promise.

Other than that, I'm still thinking.  I have to decide on a climate, but am tending towards warm, because I want to have lots of pretty beaches along the shorelines.  I don't know yet if the region will be plopped or grown or a combination of both.  Most likely a combination of both.  I need to settle on a terrain mod and a water mod.  I'm liking the idea of mostly deciduous trees (including palms) and fairly clear blue water.  I'll probably want a rock mod, too.  Right now the entire region is rendered in Maxis Plain Vanilla and I'm not digging it too much.  There is so much flat land, I am thinking of trying to find some prairie-like terrain mod, so I can have extensive grasslands.

I am very process-driven, so this MD will likely be long on text and short on pics for a while.  Right now I am going city tile by city tile, giving each unlimited funds (I'm broke in RL, don't want to worry about money when playing), assigning each an alpha-numeric name, and taking a data view generic snapshot of each for use in future mapping and current planning.  I'll map out first where all my above sea level water features are going to be, then I'll build those.  I'll need to figure out where to build my major and minor population centers, then how to beuild a transportation network to connect them to each other.  Most likely I'll build the transportation before I build the towns and cities themselves, but I may experiment with letting things grow organically. 

At all points, input, advice, collaboration will be welcome.  Like my sig says, I'm just a bozo on this bus, so help driving along the way will be most appreciated.

Lora/LD

Looks good Lora! The map looks great; It'll be interesting to see what you do with the cliffs.

               -Jordan :thumbsup:

Alright, this looks very promising, and I for one, am all for alot of text.

The map itself looks great, and looks perfect for development. The river, the flatlands, even the hills in the north, all types of development can happen.

i am thrilled you got the map you wanted, and eagerly look forward to further progress.

A lovely introduction to your newest MD, Lora.

Sad to see that this means that, unfortunately, RSF is leaving us. But, I find that's okay, it certainly would have been too daunting a task for me, and I could easily see that situation for anyone. Anyway, I have been lurking in a lot of your help threads for what turned out to be a wonderful map, and I am very pleased that you were able to end your quest. I had looked at it on Google Earth after seeing your requests for this area, and Google's wonderful terrain details for the sea floor showed me how varied this area is. I'm guessing that this area of the ocean floor must be at the 'drop-off', and where the shallow Hudson River bed carves it's way down to the floor of the Atlantic. Is that correct?

As nedalezz mentioned above, I am eager to see a lot of text, I know that sometimes I certainly can give a lot of text (like this reply) and I can relate to the feeling. As for your ideas of a tropical area, I think that would suit this map perfectly, despite it's real world location. For a terrain mod, I would suggest possibly the Cumbres by Eblem. Or the Missouri Breaks by Brian (if you are willing to open up the folder and remove the Olympic Beach mod.) I'm not aware of any tropical water mods, although I guarantee there are some out there. I know that both Dogfight and Mas71 have some less-known water mods on the LEX, I haven't taken a look inside them, though. So, I'm not sure whether there are tropical ones in there. Finally, for rock modds, I would suggest Adam (Ennedi)'s Sandstone rock mod, or the Aubrac rock modd. One of Pegasus' or one of the ones from the 3RREX. I think the idea of industry on artificial islands is an interesting, but yet very inventive idea.

Hope to see some more from you soon, Lora. It's really great to see you back.

Ethan

Great to see you back!  Nice choice of maps, that looks like the edge of a continental shelf to me.  I've always loved how those areas look with the huge dramatic undersea canyons.  You've translated it to the surface very effectively.  I'm looking forward to seeing what you have planned for this MD. 

My only initial suggestion would be to extend a shallow riverbed from that dramatic canyon to the edge of the map somewhere.  It looks like a great spot to have a lot of fun with a plopable water river through that feature! 

Fantastic introduction. I saw your 'Like a bad cold' thread and I'm glad that you are able to get this map. It looks fantastic, and I'm sure whatever you do with it will be just as great as the region itself.

This is certainly an MD that I'll be following and I look forward to seeing how this develops.

Connor

Hi Lora!!! Nice start again in your new MD!!!  :thumbsup:

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Replies:

First of all, I feel I must warn folks that I may not always get around replying to replies and when I do, I may not respond to ALL replies.  It doesn't mean I don't appreciate your comments, your time, your stopping by...my lack of individual responses to readers each time I post is not in any way a slight to whoever chooses to visit, read, or comment.  Because I DO appreciate visitors and comments...I just don't now and may not always have time to get back to all every single time.  That being said, I do have time this evening  :)

canyonjumper/Jordan:  Are you REALLY a canyon jumper????  I had a boyfriend many years ago who was an avid fan of Evil Knieval and drove over to the Snake River Canyon to watch his attempt to jump that canyon and (maybe) we all know how that event turned out.  Myself, I'm not terribly comfy with heights, so I leave canyon jumping to others.  Still, good to see you here, I've seen your posts over at 3RR, where I hang out now and then.  As for the cliffs, I really don't plan to do much with them except, well, let them be cliffs.  They seem to be very, very good at doing that particular job and my motto (or at least one of them, anyways) is: If it's not broke, don't fix it!  In reality, I'll probably sneak a few roads up the the shallower cliffs, along with at least one highway and one railroad, but mostly they will be left as wild spaces.  I'll tree them and create some plop water streams but really, the terrain is too steep to do much with.

nedalezz:  Thanks for stopping by and I'm glad you can get into the text side of an MD, because I am a chatty lady.  And yeas, I think the region has a lot of potential for interesting development, too.

mightygoose:  Welcome good buddy, always good to "see" you again and thanks for stopping by.  Yes, getting a map of this region was a challenge and without lots of help it would never have happened.  Well, maybe not never, but it may have taken me months of dinking around trying to figure out how to do it myself.  I hope you stay eager, because further progress may be a bit slow (as further reading will reveal).

ecoba/Ethan:  Good to see you again, too...how's my favorite student doing these days?  I hope your new MD isn't stealing time from your studies!  As for Recreating San Francisco (one of my other MDs, for those who don't know), it's not going away, just taking a vacation.  And yeah, it was a daunting task.  I have a bad habit of biting off more than I can chew.  I love big, long, time-consuming projects, but I have the problem of either underestimating the time and effort required and/or overestimating the time and energy I have available.  This carries over into my RL, too, which is why with my knitting projects I only allow myself to have one going at a time. 

QuoteI'm guessing that this area of the ocean floor must be at the 'drop-off', and where the shallow Hudson River bed carves it's way down to the floor of the Atlantic. Is that correct?

Give the man a gold star!  Yes, this is the Hudson River Valley as it runs undersea out from NYC/New Jersey.  Scientists are studying it to determine, among other things, how all the garbage that the river washes out to sea affects the local marine environment, which is part of the reason the area has been mapped in such detail.  If you or anyone else is interested, you can go to the NOAA web site and search for Report 2004-1441 and read all about it.

QuoteFor a terrain mod, I would suggest possibly the Cumbres by Eblem. Or the Missouri Breaks by Brian (if you are willing to open up the folder and remove the Olympic Beach mod.)

Great minds work in the same direction, don't you agree?  Cycledogg's "Missouri Breaks" was one of the first terrain mods that came to my mind when I started thinking about them, but we'll get into more about that later, along with water, beach, and rock mods. 

Battlecat: I had hoped you would find my new MD, it just wouldn't be the same without you.  Thanks for stopping by, I hope you come by often, and yes, it is the edge of the continental shelf.  And I am indeed planning to run a major river down through the main Hudson Canyon, but have not yet decided how to "source" it at the upper end.  I could just continue it off the map, but I am thinking maybe a lake up there might be nice.  I was going to use that upper plateau almost exclusively for agriculture, but I've given the matter further thought and now am undecided.  More on that later.

Connor:  Welcome and thanks for stopping by!  Your vote of confidence in the region and my abilities to develope it are much appreciated.

Tomas Neto:  And yet another familiar face!  Glad you found my new effort and let's hope it's longevity outlasts RSF, eh?

Update 1:

Well, first of all, everyone gets the opportunity to learn a hard lesson the easy way, due to my folly.  The lesson is: save often and always create a backup of your region!  Here's why...

Just because I haven't posted in a couple of days it doesn't mean I've been sitting around twiddling my fingers.  I've been busy and I've been busy working on the region, so much so that I'm sure many folks who are used to seeing me in other games I play must think I've died. 

First of all, there was the necessary but very tedious task of going tile by tile to name the cities, give them money, and take a snapshot of the blank data view map for latter archives and piecing together of an overall regional data view map.  Then comes the equally tedious task of cropping each one of the 140 data view maps down to 256x256 pixels using Photoshop and then ever so carefully matching them up with each other.  All the cities got named, monied, and photo'd and I got the entire "A" row of tiles smooshed together into the beginnings of the overall data view map.  Then I got bored doing that and decided to start looking at terrain mods that might fulfill my vision of what I want this region to look like.

The first one I tried was cycledogg's  Missouri Breaks.  My test area was the very convoluted area of cliffs at the upper NW corner of the map, then I also tested it on the lower part of the river canyon and then again on the shore.  It's a beautiful mod, but it has snow in the upper elevations and this region doesn't want to have any snow at all, period.  It's also quite dark, to my tastes.  So then I tried his Italia mod.  Again, very nice, but this one had very heavy snow in the upper elevations.  Both mods are beautiful across the lower parts of the region but don't work well for the upper parts (upper and lower referring to elevation as well as top/bottom region locations). 

With those two mods scattered semi-randomly across test tiles in the region, I then started out experimenting with tree controllers.  Cycledogg's Missouri Breaks and Italia controllers won't plant anything at all across the cliffs and upper parts of the map, which really bums me out, because I really like the Missouri Breaks controller other than it has pine trees at the wrong elevations for my region.  The Italia controller had the wrong kinds of trees and planted too heavily all across the region (well, in the lower parts anyway), so I'm pretty sure I've eliminated that one.

At this point I got an email from my good buddy Heblem who I had written to earlier to request his help with making the map, back when I was still being "like a bad cold".  I was over at "that other web site" looking at terrain mods and came across a couple he had made, one called "Bajio" that I thought might work for me, so I downloaded it and gave it a whirl.  While at ST, I also came across a tutorial by Heblem explaining how to create your own terrain mod and illustrated a new mod of his named "California", so I downloaded that one, too.  Then I emailed Heblem back and asked if maybe he would consider making me a custom mod for this new region.  He said he would, so along with covering my region with 4 different terrain mods and as many tree controllers, I've also been in conference with Heblem over the new mod, which he is naming "Rocky Prairie".  He completed it this afternoon and I gave it a whirl right away.

So my region, as of this afternoon, had 6 terrain mods displaying (including the Maxis default) and as many tree controllers.  In short, it was very much of a mess and I decided that if I was going to come to a reasonable decision, I needed to go about the whole process a little more scientifically.  I decided to restore the region to all Maxis default, but I didn't want to have to reload the entire region from scratch, so I did something foolish. 

I obliderated a city tile.  Then, I lowered the terrain and re-raised it up to get rid of the trees, so I would have a bare naked tile again.  Big mistake, BIG mistake.  When I saved and exited to region, the tile was sunken below it's adjacent tiles.  I tried a couple of bubble gum and duct tape fixes, none of which worked.  Just as I was getting ready to start over from scratch, I found a little yellow folder on my desk labeled "Hudson1" and found inside it 140 rendered new naked city tiles.  I opened it in Region Census and sure enough, it was the freshly rendered backup copy I had been smart enough to make a week or so ago.  So, I pulled the Hudson1 folder out of my game's region folder and slipped A COPY of the backup in and guess what?  It worked.  Mostly.  All the cities are once again un-named and have no money, but that's OK.  Disaster averted.  And really, this early on, it wouldn't have been a true disaster, just a royal pain in the hind end.  But it serves to remind me...and by extension, all of you...be careful about creating backups of your work.  This game doesn't have an "undo" feature and one never knows when one is going to inadvertently do something stupid and ruin untold hours worth of work. 

So, terrain mods.  I've tried 6 now: Maxis, Missouri Breaks, Italia, Bajio, California, and Rocky Prairie.  All have good points and all have drawbacks.  I wish I knew more about how this game works and/or could understand Heblem's tutorial, I'd try to make a terrain mod of my own, probably by combining what I like best of the various mods listed. 

And I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably going to use different tree controllers for different areas of the region, because none of them populate the region with trees and plants the way I envision.  I have no idea how tree controllers work, so trying to make one of my own is not feasible.  Maybe I should start a thread somewhere and maybe draw in some of the modding experts to help. 

But my plan now is to go ahead and find an area across the region where I can take snaps of the various terrain mods and then post them here to see what reaction folks have to them (if any).  In the meantime, if anyone has any interest in trying either a terrain mod or a tree controller, here is a little schematic I made to show what it is I am envisioning:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg214.imageshack.us%2Fimg214%2F7766%2Fschematic.jpg&hash=efcdc55f6009545a2dc9cefba691a96e9dd8da94)

And yes, for those of you who know me, I did draw this in AutoCAD, saved it as a PDF, then opened it in Acrobat and saved it again as a JPG.  Seems Imageshack won't upload PDFs. 

That's the only picture, but I'll post a couple of links to web sites I've visited over the past few days trying to solidfy my vision:

www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/oklahoma/preserves/tallgrass.html (http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/oklahoma/preserves/tallgrass.html)

This is an excellent site run by The Nature Conservancy and explains the importance of prairies in the ecosystem and thier efforts to restore a teensy part of the over 240 million acres of tallgrass prairie lost between 1830-1900. 

www.nps.gov/tapr/index.htm (http://www.nps.gov/tapr/index.htm)

Another excellent site, this one by the National Park Service.

www.kswildflower.org (http://www.kswildflower.org)

An amazing site cataloging the incredible biodiversity of the tallgrass praire flora.  Lots of pictures of plants, incuding descriptions of Bluestem, a grass that grows to 6 feet tall and has roots up to 9 feet deep, the primary grass of the tallgrass prairie.

www.radford.edu/~swoodwar/CLASSES/GEOG235/biomes/tempgrass/prairie.html (http://www.radford.edu/~swoodwar/CLASSES/GEOG235/biomes/tempgrass/prairie.html)

A short essay by (I think) a student at Radford University summarizing the importance and history of America's prairies, tallgrass, shortgrass, and intermediary. 

The American Prairies have always had a bit of a siren call to me.  As a young girl, I read all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, among many other stories of pioneers coming across the nation, and I woed the fact that I had been born 150 years too late to ever see the prairies as they were before "we" came.  My mom's dad's family homesteaded in Dakota Territories back in the 1870's, fresh off the boat from Prussia (now Germany and Austria), and I can't help but wonder what that vast sea of grass, stretching for hundreds of miles in all directions, must have looked like before a plow ever touched it. 

Abajo del Mar has much in common with the American midwest in more than just my imagination.  The midwest was, not so very long ago (in geological time, anyway), abajo del mar...under the sea.  There was a vast inland sea that stretched from the base of the Rocky Mountains almost all the way to the Appalachians.  The Mississippi River drains that great basin the retreating sea left behind. 

I didn't think about this much when I began this project, but it has been simmering away in the back of my mind for a couple of days now.  An MD, unless it's a virtual recreation of a RL place, needs a story to hold it together, but how was I to write a story about land that is underwater?  How would I go about developing both the region and the story that was sure to evolve as I built on it?  And I think knowing and learning the history of the American prairies could be my starting point, my inspiration.  Pretend this is a new frontier, or a small piece of it.  I'll have to think about it more, to be sure, and before there are humans, there will be lots of plants and animals and lakes and rivers.  The land was there, long before human eyes ever saw it.

Lora/LD

Hey, Lora!

    No, I don't actually jump canyons, as exciting as that would be. I have a sneaking suspicion I wouldn't make it to the other side ;D.
About the cliffs, that's exactly what I meant. I was just curious how winding the roads would be. I've deleted tiles before, but in my case, I stupidly forgot to make a backup, y'know, in the rare event that I would mess up. At least you had a back up, and didn't have cities on it. I'm looking forward to seeing the new terrain mod Heblem made you.

               -Jordan :thumbsup:

Well, you are certainly going for BIG. My regions are always 4x4 large city tiles, anything bigger and my old computer would probably just give up on me.
The map looks good and is something quite different to the land based maps we see in most MD's. Your approach in planning future development is again unique. And your love for large and time consuming projects seems quite obvious first with RSF and now this.
I wish you best of luck with achieving what you are aiming for and I look forward to see how you will develop this MD further

I'm okay, Lora. No, my MD certainly isn't affecting schoolwork, we have surprisingly little at the moment, but exams are in two weeks, so that will certainly cause a little break.

I feel that I share that habit of underestimating time and overestimating my ability. There have been many, many projects that I have approached with full confidence and come out with less than satisfactory results, at least from my standards. I think that the creative freedom that comes from not doing a recreation will certainly be good for your playing styles. Oh, RSF is just in hibernation? good. That's a relief, but any project you show us I'm sure will be excellent.

The scientific studies of the garbage deposits is very fascinating, I think that I will have to open up that page and read it. For some reson, I become really interested in this type of stuff really quickly and really thoroughly. I'm surprised I haven't started blogs in the past on similar subjects that have drawn my attention.

As for terrain modds... I personally love all of them, in their turn... but,I definitely have to agree that one of Eblem's customized terrain modds, or good ole' Missouri Breaks will suit the region perfectly.

That schematic of te soil types and growth in the region I think is absolutely wonderful, I know that Brian (cycledogg) has made some small pines that would suit the upper areas perfectly. (The Pinyon, Shore and Junipers, to be specific.) Anyway, that diagram might really be helpful in showing what terrain modds could be suitable, I have a region with similar terrain heights and after rendering it with Eblem's California Terrain Mod I achieved a look that somewhat achieves what you are looking for. I know that the Aubrac Rock Mod, (the one David uses in 3RR, and many other players in the community also use) combined with the California can create a very interesting combo, yet it looks great.

Glad you were able to find that backup, too!. Keep up the good work, Lora.

Ethan

Backups are great to have!  I make them fairly regularly now of both my plugins and region folder. 

It's going to be interesting to see what this terrain mod turns out like!  As always you've put a lot of thought into planning this out!

Sounds promising, hope to see alot soon!

Replies:

canyonjumper/Jordan:  Well, besides being sure to back up our work, another lesson I learned from this last, er, error, is to make sure you know what your backing up with.  More about that later, but leave it to say I am going to have to devise an organizational system better than what I have now. 

As for how winding the roads up the cliffs will be, well, I guess we'll see.  Street and roads should be too much of a problem as they are semi-forgiving of even semi-steep slopes and I do have the slope mod I can use, too.  The problem is going to be highways and rails.  Being as how I want to use the upper plateau as my primary Ag zone, those good, once harvested, have to make it to market and I don't think flying stuff out is going to be economically feasible for either the farmers or the residents of the lower plateau who will be dependent on those goods.  So, There will need to be at least one interstate quality highway and at least one rail line.  I've kinda picked out the slope to the immediate west of the Hudson River Gorge as the slope to tackle for both.  In RL, humans have created some pretty amazing highways and railroads across steep slopes and I've driven my share of them, but getting the game to cooperate could mean some major engineering of the slope.  Time will tell...

Oh and gald to hear you don't really jump canyons...

kwakelaar:  Another familiar face, welcome to my new MD.  If you have followered all three of my MD's, you know that each one had gotten progressively smaller than the last one, so while it may be true that you can't teach a new dog new tricks, it's certainly true that if you beat the dog over the head with a bone often enough, eventually the dog will begin to understand...something.  Bad analogy, I know, because I would never beat a dog (or any animal, for that matter) and would be horrified if anyone else did. 

ecoba/Ethan:  Just remember that if I see you posting here to often, I may run you off back to your studies...just kidding!  Today's update is about terrain mods, so read on for more thoughts and ideas about them. 

Battlecat:  Read on for more about backups.  And, my plugins folder is a disaster, I wouldn't even begin to know how to go about cleaning it up and organzing it.  Are you volunteering????  I do have a separate flder called "SC4 Mods) that I store plugins not in use in and if my Plugins folder is a mess, the SC4Mods folder is even worse.  And then there's all the stuff on my desktop, semi-organized, but not really.  You'd think I'd have a better system in place, being as fanatic OCD as I am, but I don't.  I'm working on it though, little bits at a time.  I finally have all my water mods in the same storage place now, and same for the terrain mods. 

marsh:  Welcome and please, don't be holding your breath!  I'm not fast at building, I thnik things through very thoroughly before I start into a region and this one is brand new, so it may be some weks yet before anything really starts happening.  I hope you are patient and stop by often.

Update 2:

I'm still getting into harness with this new project, figuring out how to make it easy for me to tracj stuff anf be productive with my time.  I decided this update would be all about terrain mods I am considering, so I started out by reviewing the Maxis default terrain, taking maybe 20 pics across about 5 different city tiles with a good variety of terrain challenges.  Then I decided to install c.p.'s Missouri Breaks and render the exact same tiles, comparing them both, Maxis and MB, side-by-side.  This effort was complicated and slowed down some due to the fact that the region was my backup, newly rendered, and backed up BEFORE I had named all the tiles.  The game (at least MY game) doesn't display and entire large city tile from corner to corner, so I've been using region census for those views.  However, I learned that Mapper (or Terraformer or the game itself) doesn't assign generic NewCity designations in any descernible order.  NewCity1 may be in the SE corner, NewCity2 may be in the middle of the region, NewCity3 may be the NW corner, etc.  With a small region this wouldn't be such a big deal, but with 140 city tiles to look through to find the right one, well...it slowed me down and kinda pissed me off.  About half way through photographing the MB tiles, I just noted down the region census map number and continued on. 

I also wanted to get a good feel for what MB would like like across larger areas of the region, so I went ahead and rendered all of the non-ocean region in MB, saving as I went.  This is what it looked like when I was done (if I can find the photo):

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg8.imageshack.us%2Fimg8%2F1987%2Fhudson1.jpg&hash=709d2b733c5a4bda7841586a2d5a73969192f818)

Now before anyone oohs or aahs, scroll back a little and look at the original pic I posted of the region in the Maxis default mode.  Notice any difference (besides the terrain mod) between the first pic and this one?  Shall I make this a contest, to see who figures it out?  Nah.  I'll point it out, because it plays to backing up files, a lesson I hope you all learn from me.

While I was rendering some of the off shore areas in MB, I finally noticed my little island was missing.  And, while I had been searching through all the Region Census cities, there seemed to be a lot more ocean tiles than I remembered.  Finally, late at night, a little lightbulb went off in my head.  Maybe my oh-so-precious backup file was the one I made BEFORE I loaded the maps into Terraformer, before I lowered the sea level 100 meters, before I decompressed the elevations.  I got a sinking feeling in my stomach as I opened Terraformer and loaded the backup file into it, to see what I could see.  Sure enough...this was the backup I made before I manipulated the map and rendered it to the image in the first post.  That was enough to take the wind out of my sails for the evening, but it was already past midnight, so it was bed time anyway.

So yesterday, I redid my backup map in Terraformer and overwrote the older backup.  Now the entire region had to be rendered all over again.  Sigh.  So, to prevent this from happening again in the future, I am going to back up my region with EACH and EVERY update I create and save the backup with the update, so the most work I can ever lose (unless the computer itself blows up) will be one update's worth.  Take note, folks!  Don't let these kinda bookkeeping errors ruin your work!  BTW, did you know "bookkeeping" is the only word in the English language with 3 double letters in a row?  I learned that a long time ago (helps me remember how to spell it) and I think about it every time I use it.  Just a bonus little factoid to wow your buddies with sometime when your all really bored.

So, OK, I now was faced with re-rendering the entire region, AGAIN, so I decided to make a showcase of the various terrain mods under consideration while I did so.  It was actually kinda fun and much less tedious than doing all 140 tiles in the same mod all at once.  I tried out a total of 7 mods, including the Maxis default.  Here is the first pic:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg6.imageshack.us%2Fimg6%2F852%2Fcompare1q.jpg&hash=67d73b265462ae6331c0cc48b1ba7dbcac0d7d42)

Imageshack (or my computer) is being really slow tonite, so while the photo uploads, I'll continue. 

Now, isn't that a bizarre looking region?  Didn't you know stripes are in this year?  From left to right, the mods are:

1.  Heblem's Abajio
2.  Heblem's California
3.  Heblem's (new) Rocky Prairie
4.  c.p.'s Missouri Breaks
5.  c.p.'s Italia

(BTW, are c.p. and cycledogg the same person with different screen names?  I'm kinda confused...I thought MB and Italia were cycledogg creations?)

And now, here's the second photo:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg8.imageshack.us%2Fimg8%2F3700%2Fcompare2n.jpg&hash=f3d5bb21251e403b214f5d96efbc50a0986f1399)

Only two new mods here, both to the left of MB (which is second from the right side, so that makes the 2 new ones, 3rd and 4th from the right, respectively).

The 3rd from the right is PEG's MTP (Mountain Theme Pack) mod and is really a tweak of the Maxis default in that I don;t believe it contains any new or custom textures at all, it just expands the defaults upward and outward a bit, allowing more textures at higher elevations and lighter textures near the coasts.  The differences from the Maxis default, which is the 4th mod from the right, are subtle but visible if you look closely.  I actually kinda like it in terms of overall color distribution.

But I have to admit I am really torn, because none of them is exactly right for what I want.  I love the deep detail and many layers of vegetation in c.p.'s mods, but both of them are just too green, too lush, for the terrain I envision.  Helbem comes closer with his color schemes, especially the California, but the lack of detail and the simplicity of his schemes, while gorgeous, leave me wanting more. 

So now I am tempted to see if maybe I can figure out how to either tweak one of these mods to suit myself OR borrow textures from all of them, kinda like a Chinese menu, and create one of my own, or just create my own from scratch.  It seems like a daunting task for someone like me who knows next to nothing about how to go about this process, so I emailed c.p. last night to see if maybe he would help me out if he had time.  I also re-read Heblem's tutorial over on ST to see if maybe I could make sense of it yet and did gather that I might need to download a couple new software tools and learn thier use.  Today I downloaded FISHman, which is supposed to help folks create textures.  I've had Reader for a long time but have never been able to figure out how to use it, but today I think I made some progress.  Using Reader, I opened a couple of .dats and looked inside them, seeing if I could puzzle out what all the numbers meant.  I was able to open and view 2 BSC texture packs stuffed full of texture files that are dependencies for c.p.'s terrain mods and found a couple I loved and would like to use.  I also opened one of c.p.'s controller files and looked that over and found a couple of things that looked like they could be changed to do things to my region I would like to have done, like wider, shallower beachs on the shore side.  I didn't change anything...just looked at stuff to see what was what, but I think tomorrow I may dive into seeing how all these various files interact with each other...do a little experimenting. 

And don't worry, I'll back up everything BEFORE I start! 

Lora/LD

Wooh, had a scare there for a moment, thought that the region had gone berserk. But, actually it's okay.

Maybe it's just the varied elevations on one side of the map, but c.p.'s (who is the same person as cycledogg) terrain mods are very striped in the upper elevations. Also, one more terrain mod comes to mind at the moment. Alex (Tarkus) has made one terrain mod. Yet, it is unreleased. I do know for a fact, though, that an Alpha of it is attached to the bottom of one of his posts. (This is in his NHP creations thread.) It might be a little too dry for what you are looking for, but I would still give it a try.

I definitely like Rocky Prairie and California the best out of all the terrain mods. The only thing is, it looks like there are maybe 4 different textures. I also do not like how the changes in these textures are not subtle, they don't seem to have a transition. I also think that Pegasus' mod looks okay in the higher elevations, but not so much lower down. I think we may have to do some terrain mod tweaking, Lora.

Ethan

Oh, you really don't want my help cleaning up a plugins folder!   ::)  Mine is pretty messy as well, I just burn the whole works to a DVD on occasion as insurance against a computer crash since my system is starting to get old. 

For the terrain mods, I'd have to say the CP textures just don't work as well for high flat areas, I think any one of Heblem's mod would work quite nicely.  It'll be interesting to see what you choose!

I'll just confirm what Ethan (ecoba) said. c.p. and cycledogg are the same person. I like Heblem's new mod, it looks cool. But whichever you pick, I'm sure it will look great ;D
           
                         -Jordan

Replies:

ecoba/Ethan:  I found, downloaded and installed Tarkus's terrain mod and this is what it looks like:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg222.imageshack.us%2Fimg222%2F1030%2Fcompare3.jpg&hash=94b8bb0d3d4858c861031a9144e784f075684031)

The new terrain mod is the one on the far left edge of the region.  It's quite nice at closer zooms, but seems a bit bland for my tastes and for how I envision this region.  Still, the tip was useful, as you will see further along.

QuoteI definitely like Rocky Prairie and California the best out of all the terrain mods. The only thing is, it looks like there are maybe 4 different textures. I also do not like how the changes in these textures are not subtle, they don't seem to have a transition.

Yeah, the lack of detail is one of the problems I have with them, too, as well as the lack of transition zones. 

QuoteI think we may have to do some terrain mod tweaking, Lora.

Ahem.  "We"???  Is that the royal "we" or the pregnant "we"?  Or are you volunteering to help with the tweaking???  "We" are going to need help, that's for sure, as *I* know little or nothing about modding.  But...I am learning.  Read on.

Battlecat: 

QuoteFor the terrain mods, I'd have to say the CP textures just don't work as well for high flat areas

There's a reson for that, I'm finding out.  I haven't figured out how to change it (yet), but I'm working on it.  C.P.'s mods have height limits set in the INI file that is part of the terrain controller .dat and those values can be modified.  I've been experimenting around with them a bit, but read on to learn more.

canyonjumper/Jordon:  I agree that there are some great colors and textures in Heblem's new Rocky Prairie mod...they look especially good at close zooms, which I have not yet shared with anyone here.  I may "borrow" some of those texture files and use them...tease tease.

Update 3:

So, it's been a long 6 days since the last update and I have lots to share.  This business of chossing a terrain mod for my new region has unleashed the ever hungry curiousity beast within me.  Ecoba's tip to check out Tarkus's terrain mod paid off some very big dividends (thank you, Ethan!).  While Tarkus's original thread was old, I posted a question for him there, hoping he might still be stopping by from time to time and, lucky for me, he was.  He answered my post with a link to a tutorial written long ago by Thalassicus explaining how to create custom terrain mods.  I followed the link, which took me to a download on the STEX.  The download turned out to be a multi-sheet Excel worksheet full of tables and numbers and terrains that I couldn't make head or tails out of and, unfortunately the text portion of the tutorial which I assume explained how to use the tables appears to have long ago vanished into the cyber-ether.  Still, there was a lot of information in the spreadsheets that someone had obviously taken a lot of time to compile, so I saved it with hopes of maybe finding it's explanatory text sooner or later. 

In the meantime, I reviewed a couple of other tutorials, Heblem's especially, and tried to puzzle out how to tweak the existing terrain mods I have.  I downloaded FSHman and installed it, because it seemed a tool I was going to need.  I found iLive's Reader in my program files and created a shortcut for it on my desktop, becuase that seemed like another tool I was going to need.  I didn't know how to use either tool, but figured I'd try to find out.

My hope was to learn a couple of things: 1.) how to create new textures 2.) how to modify or change existing textures 3.) how to substitute my "new" textures for existing textures in existing terrain mods  3.) how to tweak existing terrain mods to cover my region better than they currently did. 

So, I spent a long evening capturing photographs off the web, looking for high resolution pics with grasses in them, thinking I could crop out little sections and turn them into new texture files (which I had learned by this time where called FSH files).  The next night, I perused texture packs for SC4 from at least a dozen different fan sites, downloading a few and also downloading some other cool goodies I found along the way that I may use some day.  And, while looking for FSH files to download (to save me the hassle of making my own from scratch), I came across a new software tool for use with FSH files created by none other than my old friend rivit.

Now, for those of you who followed my RSF project while it lasted, you may remember rivit jumped in to help me with recreating the extensive mudflats found at the shallow ends of San Francisco Bay.  He's been into creating textures for SC4 for quite some time.  He's also a very knowledgable man when it comes to computer code, so besides being a true sweetheart of a fellow, he's also a handy guy to have around when a dummy like me runs into obstacles she doesn't have a clue about.  I had actually been thinking about him over the days previous and seeing his new tool posted on the STEX finally motivated me to email him and see what he was up to these days (and of course, ask him if he wanted to help with with my terrain mod challenges).  And surprise, surprise, he emailed me right back and jumped right in with both feet.  I told you he is a sweetheart!

So since then, he and I have been unraveling terrain mods the way I often untangle yarn my cats have gotten into.  An awful lot of it is over my head, but not as much now as it was several days ago.  Let me share with you what I have learned so far.  It's very likely that, because I could not find a thorough tutorial for making terrain mods, I will end up writing one myself, because slowly but surely, with rivit's patient help, I am figuring it out.

First and foremost, the primary secret to cracking the code appears to lie in the INI file.  We started out by looking at the INI file for cycledogg's Missouri Breaks terrain.  And while this may be meaningless mumbo-jumbo to  most of you (it was [notice the use of the past tense, there] to me, too. 

I was just going to open Reader and copy/paste the contents of the INI here, when I realized that, because c.p. modified it from the original SimCity_1.dat, maybe I should ask his permission before I open his coding up to the general public.  I'd rather err on the side of caution, so instead I'll show you the INI from the SimCity_1.dat:

; This file contains tunable parameters related to terrain.
;
[Admin]
Enabled=ON


[TerrainMiscTextures]
; This is the pool of miscellaneous textures. A texture in this group can potentially be used
; in multiple terrain types
CliffType1=0x00000015
CliffType2=0x00000016
CliffType3=0x00000029
CliffType4=0x0000002a
CliffType5=0x00000043
CliffType6=0x00000044


; The following sections list information corresponding to specific terrain types.
; The terrain types we currently have and their ids are as follows:
; 0 - Desert
; 1 - Temperate
; 2 - Arctic
; 3 - Tropical
;

;[DesertMiscTextures]
;HighCliff=0x00000015
;LowCliff=0x00000016
;Beach=0x0000000f


;[TemperateMiscTextures]
;HighCliff=0x00000029
;LowCliff=0x0000002a
;Beach=0x00000025

;[ArcticMiscTextures]
;HighCliff=0x00000029
;LowCliff=0x0000002a
;Beach=0x0000000f

[tropicalMiscTextures]
HighCliff=0x00000043
LowCliff=0x00000044
Beach=0x00000039

[DesertTextureMapTable]
;
;Different lines correspond to different temperatures. They are listed in the order of
;increasing temperature(i.e., coldest to warmest)
;
;Items within a line correspond to different moistures. They are ordered from dryest to
;wettest.
;
; mapping table
;
;00=0x01,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,
;01=0x01,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,
;02=0x01,0x01,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,
;03=0x01,0x01,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,
;04=0x03,0x03,0x03,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,
;05=0x03,0x03,0x03,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,
;06=0x03,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,
;07=0x03,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,
;08=0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,
;09=0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,
;10=0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,
;11=0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,
;12=0x04,0x04,0x04,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,
;13=0x04,0x04,0x04,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,
;14=0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,
;15=0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,
;16=0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,
;17=0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,
;18=0x0a,0x0a,0x0a,0x0a,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,
;19=0x0a,0x0a,0x0a,0x0a,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,
;20=0x0a,0x0a,0x0a,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x09,0x09,0x09,0x09,
;21=0x0a,0x0a,0x0a,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x09,0x09,0x09,0x09,
;22=0x0a,0x0a,0x0b,0x0b,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,
;23=0x0a,0x0a,0x0b,0x0b,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,
;24=0x0b,0x0b,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,
;25=0x0b,0x0b,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,
;26=0x0b,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,
;27=0x0b,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,
;28=0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,
;29=0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,
;30=0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,
;31=0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,

;[TemperateTextureMapTable]
;00=0x17,0x17,0x17,0x17,0x18,0x18,0x18,0x18,0x18,0x18,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,
;01=0x17,0x17,0x17,0x17,0x18,0x18,0x18,0x18,0x18,0x18,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,
;02=0x17,0x17,0x18,0x18,0x18,0x18,0x18,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,
;03=0x17,0x17,0x18,0x18,0x18,0x18,0x18,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,
;04=0x19,0x19,0x19,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,
;05=0x19,0x19,0x19,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,
;06=0x19,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,
;07=0x19,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,
;08=0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,
;09=0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,
;10=0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,
;11=0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,
;12=0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,
;13=0x1a,0x1a,0x1a,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1b,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,
;14=0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,
;15=0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,
;16=0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x23,0x23,0x23,0x23,0x23,
;17=0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1c,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x23,0x23,0x23,0x23,0x23,
;18=0x20,0x20,0x20,0x20,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x23,0x23,0x23,
;19=0x20,0x20,0x20,0x20,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x23,0x23,0x23,
;20=0x20,0x20,0x20,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x1f,0x1f,0x1f,0x1f,
;21=0x20,0x20,0x20,0x1d,0x1d,0x1d,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x1f,0x1f,0x1f,0x1f,
;22=0x20,0x20,0x21,0x21,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x23,0x23,0x23,0x23,0x1f,0x1f,
;23=0x20,0x20,0x21,0x21,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x23,0x23,0x23,0x23,0x1f,0x1f,
;24=0x21,0x21,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x22,0x22,0x23,0x23,0x23,0x1f,0x1f,0x1f,0x24,0x24,0x24,
;25=0x21,0x21,0x1e,0x1e,0x1e,0x22,0x22,0x23,0x23,0x23,0x1f,0x1f,0x1f,0x24,0x24,0x24,
;26=0x21,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x23,0x23,0x23,0x1f,0x1f,0x24,0x24,0x24,0x24,0x24,
;27=0x21,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x23,0x23,0x23,0x1f,0x1f,0x24,0x24,0x24,0x24,0x24,
;28=0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x23,0x23,0x23,0x1f,0x1f,0x1f,0x24,0x24,0x24,0x24,0x24,0x24,
;29=0x22,0x22,0x22,0x22,0x23,0x23,0x23,0x1f,0x1f,0x1f,0x24,0x24,0x24,0x24,0x24,0x24,
;30=0x23,0x23,0x1f,0x1f,0x24,0x24,0x24,0x25,0x25,0x25,0x25,0x25,0x25,0x25,0x25,0x25,
;31=0x23,0x23,0x1f,0x1f,0x24,0x24,0x24,0x25,0x25,0x25,0x25,0x25,0x25,0x25,0x25,0x25,

;[ArcticTextureMapTable]
;00=0x01,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,
;01=0x01,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,
;02=0x01,0x01,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,
;03=0x01,0x01,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x02,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,
;04=0x03,0x03,0x03,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,
;05=0x03,0x03,0x03,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,
;06=0x03,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,
;07=0x03,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,
;08=0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,
;09=0x04,0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,
;10=0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,
;11=0x04,0x04,0x04,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,
;12=0x04,0x04,0x04,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,
;13=0x04,0x04,0x04,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x05,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,
;14=0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,
;15=0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,
;16=0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,
;17=0x06,0x06,0x06,0x06,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,
;18=0x0a,0x0a,0x0a,0x0a,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,
;19=0x0a,0x0a,0x0a,0x0a,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,
;20=0x0a,0x0a,0x0a,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x09,0x09,0x09,0x09,
;21=0x0a,0x0a,0x0a,0x07,0x07,0x07,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x09,0x09,0x09,0x09,
;22=0x0a,0x0a,0x0b,0x0b,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,
;23=0x0a,0x0a,0x0b,0x0b,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,
;24=0x0b,0x0b,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,
;25=0x0b,0x0b,0x08,0x08,0x08,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,
;26=0x0b,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,
;27=0x0b,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,
;28=0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,
;29=0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0c,0x0d,0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,
;30=0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,
;31=0x0d,0x0d,0x09,0x09,0x0e,0x0e,0x0e,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,

[tropicalTextureMapTable]
00=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
01=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
02=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
03=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
04=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
05=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
06=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
07=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
08=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
09=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
10=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
11=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
12=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
13=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
14=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
15=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
16=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
17=0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x32,0x33,0x32,0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,
18=0x33,0x33,0x36,0x33,0x36,0x36,0x36,0x36,0x36,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,0x37,0x37,
19=0x36,0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x38,
20=0x36,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,0x36,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x38,0x38,
21=0x36,0x36,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x38,0x37,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x38,
22=0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x38,0x37,0x38,0x37,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x38,
23=0x37,0x37,0x37,0x37,0x38,0x37,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x35,0x35,
24=0x37,0x37,0x38,0x38,0x37,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x35,0x38,0x38,0x35,0x38,0x35,0x35,
25=0x37,0x37,0x38,0x37,0x38,0x37,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x35,0x38,0x35,0x35,0x35,0x35,0x34,
26=0x37,0x37,0x37,0x38,0x37,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x35,0x38,0x35,0x35,0x35,0x35,0x34,0x34,
27=0x37,0x37,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x38,0x35,0x38,0x35,0x38,0x35,0x35,0x35,0x34,0x35,0x34,
28=0x38,0x38,0x38,0x35,0x35,0x34,0x35,0x34,0x35,0x34,0x34,0x34,0x34,0x34,0x34,0x34,
29=0x38,0x38,0x35,0x35,0x34,0x35,0x34,0x34,0x35,0x34,0x34,0x35,0x34,0x34,0x31,0x31,
30=0x38,0x38,0x35,0x35,0x34,0x35,0x34,0x34,0x31,0x34,0x31,0x34,0x31,0x31,0x31,0x31,
31=0x38,0x38,0x35,0x35,0x34,0x35,0x34,0x31,0x34,0x31,0x31,0x31,0x31,0x31,0x31,0x31,


[MiscTerrainTunables]
;
; Enable/Disable terrain simulation
EnableSimulation=0


; This specifies how much the terrain is raised/lowered each time the player clicks.
RaiseLowerAmount=80.5






[WindErosion]
; Number of erosion passes performed each time the player issues a "do wind erosion"
; command
NumIterationsPerUserClick=1

; Number of wind erosion iterations performed in each sim month
NumIterationsPerSimMonth=5
;
;If the angle of a face relative to the horizontal plane is greater than this, then, erosion
;occurs. The angle is measured in degrees.
TalusAngle=5
;
;This parameter controls the rate at which erosion occurs.[0-1000]
ErosionFactor=0.05



[Hydrology]
;Number of water erosion iterations performed each time the player invokes global water
;erosion
NumWaterErosionIterationsPerPlayerClick=1

;How far (in cells) we let water flow from its starting place when we do a global
; water erosion pass.
NumFlowStepsForGlobalWaterErosion=20

;The amount of surface water at a cell should be at least this much for it to be
;visible. Otherwise, it is assumed to evaporate.
SurfaceWaterThreshold=2.0

;If this parameter is set to 1, then rain water gets ignored in hydrology simulation;
;so, the only sources of water will be the ones that have been placed by the user. Setting
;this to 1 allows to clearly see what happens to the water that starts at a particular
;source.
IgnoreRainWater=0

; Number of hydrology simulation iterations performed in each simulation month.
NumIterationsPerSimMonth=25

WaterSourceCapacity=10.8
WaterSinkCapacity=10.8








;-----The settings below control cutting erosion for initial terrain generation-----


;Weather layer's 1 unit of rain is taken to be these many units of rain for hydrology
;simulation.
;This sets the starting strength of the erosion
RainFallFactor=0.0001

; Specifies how much sediment can be present in unit volume of water.[0-10000000]
MaxSedimentPerUnitWater=8.0


;Erosion rate changes with the slope of the terrain as follows:
;
;                             _________Max erosion rate
;                            /         
;                         /
;                          /
;   min erosion rate _____/
;
; 
MinErosionRate=0.05
MaxErosionRate=0.4

;
; On terrains having this much or lower slope (measured in degrees relative the
; horizontal plane), "min erosion rate" is used.
HydrErosionRateRampBegin=5


; On terrains having this much or higher slope (measured in degrees relative the
; horizontal plane), "max erosion rate" is used.
HydrErosionRateRampEnd=40

;This parameter controls the rate at which the sediment contained in water gets
;deposited on the terrain causing the terrain altitude at the point to
;rise.[0-1]
DepositRate=0.65



;end erosions controls-------------------------------------------------








;This determines the speed at which sediment spreads in the sea. Specifically, this factor
;specifies how much of the sediment can flow to a neighbor in each simulation step.
;[0.0 - 1.0]
SedimentSpreadRateUnderSea=0.5

;The sediment deposit rate for seabed.
DepositRateUnderSea=0.4

;When a river joins the sea, because of the force of incoming water, the
;flow of water continues a little distance beyond the point where the river mouth.
;This aspect needs to be considered for the desired erosion to happen at river mouths.
;To get this effect, we use the following hack: for the purpose of hydrology
;simulation, we take the sea level to be a little below the actual sea level. So,
;the water at river mouths continues to flow a little distance as if the sea
;hasn't been reached.
SeaLevelLoweringForRiverMouthErosion=20


; Minimum amount water flow needed for a border vertex to be considered as lying
; in a river
MinWaterFlowInVisibleRiver=30.0


;Maximum river depth at border vertices.
RiverDepthAtBorder=60.0

;How muddy the water looks at a spot is determined by the alpha value assigned to
;the "mud color" at that spot. The alpha value is computed as
;  alpha for mud color = sediment per unit volume of water * SedimentInfluenceOnWaterColor
;
;However, the alpha value won't be allowed to become more than the value of
;"MaxSedimentAlpha" parameter below.
SedimentInfluenceOnWaterColor=0.2


;Maximum alpha corresponding to sediment. Higher this number, more influence does
;sediment have in determining the color of water
MaxSedimentAlpha=1.0

;red component of sediment color [0-255]
SedimentColorRed=116

;green component of sediment color [0-255]
SedimentColorGreen=108

;blue component of sediment color [0-255]
SedimentColorBlue=85

I know...it's a lot of gobbledegook, even though most of it is written in plain english.  What rivit and I are most focused on right now are the 4 tables contained within the INI file.  They are labeled Arctic, Desert, Temperate, and Tropical.  It was rivit who figured out that the Tropical mapping table is the game default active one...scroll back and notice the other 3 tables have (drumroll please) a semi-colon in front of thier titles but the Tropical map title is in [brackets].  I would never in a million years have noticed that or thought it had any significance. 

Some things the table tells us:

1.) the game assigns textures according to two variables, hence the tabular format.  The two variables are temperature and moisture.  There are 32 lines in each table and they represent temperature from coldest at the top to warmest at the bottom.  There are 16 columns in each table and they repesent mositure from driest on the left hand side to wettest at the right hand side.  Thus we have a total of 512 combinations of temperature and moisture available in the game and those combinations are what determine which textures go where.  The default assumption of the tables (so far as we have discovered so far, in the tropical table) is that a region's terrain is warmer/wetter near the coasts (or, at lower elevation/altitudes) and become drier/colder as the elevation increases.  The tables found in Thalassicus's spreadsheets hint that it may be possible to tweak that general trend and even reverse it. 

2.)  The entries in each of the 512 cells of the tables are hexadecimals that co-relate to one of the 8 default Maxis terrain textures.  I just learned that a number in game code that starts with 0x means that the numbers after the "x" are in hexadecimal.  Yesterday I learned that all texture files (FSH files, remember) are in hex format, with the last two numbers being the texture file number itself, while the 3rd to last number in the hex string is the zoom level, numbered 0-4 to represent 5 zoom levels.  Also, to the best of my current knowledge, those are the ONLY 3 numbers in the hex string for FSH files.  All FSH files are numbered 0x0000XXX, where the terminal X's are numbers corresponding to zoom and an FSH file.  So, the first entry in the tropical mapping table above, 0x32, tells the computer to use texture #32 wherever the temperature and moisture conditions for that cell occurs in the game. 

*Important*  All FSH files actually have 3 sets of numbers associated with them: Type, Group, and Instance (or TGI...I'm showing off my new lingo).  The hex I am talking about above is the INSTANCE number only.  From my explorations so far, all terrain associated FSH files appear to all have the same Type and Group numbers, only the Instance numbers are different. 

3.)  Rather than having 512 textures in the game for each and every variable combination of temp and moist, the tables above assign one texture to a range of similar conditions.  This is also important to grasp...8 textures to cover 512 conditions.

So, at it's simplest, it's possible to switch out the 8 default textures and substitute your own.  I haven't learned how to do that yet, but rivit has explained to me how to use his software tool to accomplish this.  I haven't tried it, because so far I have nothing to switch.  Notice I said...so far.

Also, we have found that the assignment of the ranges can be varied, as well.  So, if you want a lot more of, say, texture 34, you can change it's range in the table to cover more cells. 

And...one is not limited to 8 textures.  Theoretically, one could use up to 512, one for each cell on the table, because it also doesn't matter what the hex number in the cell is, so long as it conforms to the expected parameters.  How do we know this?  By looking at c.p.'s INI file.  He used 47 textures in Missouri Breaks and they all (well, almost all, anyway) have alpha-numeric designators. 

You can perhaps see the doors opening on this magic box of custom content.  Today, rivit sent me a new terrain .dat that he had made as a teaching tool to help me understand how temp and moist play a role.  He created 8 new textures, each one comprised of 4 blocks of solid color placed opposite each other and representing warm through cold and wet through dry.  He used cyan-red for warm to cold and yellow-blue for wet to dry.  Using the default table and texture numbers, he then switched out the Maxis textures and plugged in his new ones.  I installed the .dat in my plugins file this evening and WOW!  Talk about a great illustration!  I haven't yet taken any picyures of it, but I am thinking I may render the entire region with this new dat, just to get a better idea of how the game is going to assign textures where.  Time will tell, because I have a couple of other terrain things on my mind.

However, I'm running out of time this evening, so I guess this will have to carry over to the next update.  Lots of other cool things to share, like how I have learned to modify existing texture files in Photoshop, how I am learning to use rivit's new FSH tool, and how we, rivit and I, may be able to bring the other 3 terrain mapping tables in the default INI into play.  Right now, only the tropical mapping table is in use, as far as I know.  Rivit thinks that Maxis never completed the exemplars for bringing those tables into use, but he has not shared with me yet how he came to that conclusion.  Maybe the exemplars are missing, maybe they are in the game but empty files, like placeholders.  I don't know.  But, I'm going to see if I can activate the temperate mapping table and see what happens.  If I can get it to activate, it will be interesting to see how it maps terrain differently from the tropical table. 

I still have lots to learn.  I use the word "exemplar" and know it's a type of file, but I don't really understand how they work. 

So, some of what is coming up for this MD may bore some folks to tears, especially if they are looking for lots of pretty pictures.  I'm pretty sure now that I am on the road to creating my own terrain mod and it may take more time than I had originally thought.  Sooner or later, though, Abajo del Mar will have a terrain and then the next phase of the fun will begin...water! 

I hope folks stay tuned. 

Lora/LD

Okay, this update was a little bit complicated. I really tried to read it, it just didn't completely get through. I'm not sure what 'we' it is, I guess it's somewhere in between, if I can get a texture program to work on my computer I could try to help, but if not, I'd be glad to suggest textures and ideas. But, that's if we do that.

Anyway, I think I have had an idea. I think that the abrupt texture changes are caused by abrupt change in the elevation 'level'. (Or, the colours on the greyscale, if it's a greyscale...) Maybe if the 'edges' were smoothed a bit then there wouldn't be such an abrupt change. If this was the solution I would have to go with one of Heblem's terrain mods. If not... I wouldn't know.

Ethan

Just spent an hour catching up on what I missed, hehe.

Im going to go against the flow here and say the Italia Mod looks best I think. I know you mentioned you wanted a tropical feel, and once the snow is removed from the mountains, I still think it suits it best.

I read through it all (took a while  ;)) but i found it quite interesting. My abilities in this area is very limited, and I've always been curious about this stuff, so I am rather intrigued by this.

Looking forward to hearing your progress.

I love the huge amounts of terrain mods you have tried there something maybe I should try when trying to find the perfect combination

Will

Hi again!

This isn't really an update, just a quick stop-by to let you know I haven't forgotten my MD, in fact have been working fast and furious behind the scenes on terrain mods.

Rivit and I are still cracking the code, so to speak, but are beginning to assemble a brand new terrain mod that will be just for Abajo del Mar.  Right now we are working with 16 textures that are, right now, just solid colored tiles, place holders if you will.  I've been working in GIMP to create a base color palette and I'll post it here so you can take a peek and tell me what you think.  Remember what I said about the INI table and how it works.  Upper left corner is coldest/driest areas of the region and bottom right corner is warmest/wettest.

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg15.imageshack.us%2Fimg15%2F5773%2F16texturecolors.jpg&hash=9f421ebc7db36e9e60fae873f6cc4e1c53f936cf)

We have made a new mod using thse base colors, plugged it into the game and I have to admit, it looks pretty good.  My region is a total mess right now, with all kinds of different city tiles rendered in various tests and experiments we have run over the past week or so, so I don't have any pics of the region to share, but I'll try to get some up soon.  Things are moving along pretty quickly...it's nice that both rivit and I are out of work and have the time on our hands to spend fooling around on this stuff all day long.  Well, good for learning and creating a new terrain mod, but bad for both of us in terms of Simoleans. 

Lora/LD

Interesting indeed.  Nice pallet, looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

fantastic work experimenting with terrain mods, this is definately something i wish to look into.

Interesting thoughts on terrain creation here - I'd love to see the results of that "illustration" rivit sent you regarding how the game does terrain mods.

Interesting that there are four terrain maps... Maxis probably intended for there to be a selectable terrain tileset thing like there was in SC3K, but never got around to coding it in...

QuoteI use the word "exemplar" and know it's a type of file, but I don't really understand how they work. 

An exemplar basically is a file (I guess it's a file) encapsulated within a .dat that the game reads and then it takes relevant values out from that exemplar, to use in any functions that the game needs. It's kind of like a .dll, except that functions aren't called from within it, but hex values. It's the most important thing in a SimCity .dat file, as without it, all that other data (FSH files, SC4Model files) cannot be read by SimCity and consequently that data can't be used as the game has no idea what to do with it. (so... it just ignores it)

In the case of .ini files, the game can read the files, but if the data is missing from the exemplars and the .dats... game go crashy-crashy. To see this in action, just remove the CP cliff mod's required file (while having a CP terrain mod installed), and observe the chaos that will occur...

Hopefully that clears up what an exemplar is a little bit... I may be a little off with a couple of explanations, but hopefully it should be sufficient...

Replies:

ecoba/Ethan:  I was just teasing you about the "we", you know that I hope?  Back in the days before folks had to be careful about being politically sensitive and correct, my mom used to tell a joke about the Native American scout that led General Custer to the battlesite of Little Big Horn.  When Custer came over the hill and saw how badly he was outnumbered, he turned to his scout and said "We are in a lot of trouble".  To which the scout replied "Where do you get this "we", white man"?  I was maybe 12 years old when I heard the joke and ever since then I tease folks about using "we" when they really mean "I" or "you". 

But you are right, the last update was a little on the deep side and probably over many folks' heads, mine included.  I was just then beginning to have little light bulbs going off in my head and was overly excited about showing off my newly found lack of knowledge.  My aplogies to you and anyone else who found the update dull.  My buddy rivit critiqued the update for me and basically said the same thing: too much information.  I'll try to do better this time around and in the future.

Elevation does play a role in how the game reads where to place texture, but indirectly, I think.  The game seems to kinda assume that the terrain gets colder and drier as it gains elevation, which is RL is mostly true.  But we (rivit and I) are pretty sure other factors come into play as well, we just haven't yet figured out what those factors are.  The game does a prtty good job of softening the transitions in elevations, so going back and trying to erode of God Mode terraform things softer wouldn't, I don't think, make much difference in how textures were located.  Mostly it all has to do with warm/cold/wet/dry (or w/c/w/d, as we are calling it these days), as I tried to explain in the last update.  But more about that later.

nedalezz:  Hello and thanks for stopping by!  I like the Italia mod, too, but I don't think it's right for this region, even without the snow.  At this point, I am 99.9% certain I am going to create my own custom terrain mod, something unlike anything that has yet been done (or at least, I think so), so stay tuned!

Connor:  I've always been intrigued by all the various ways the game could be added to and modified too and, like you, I started out not having a clue how it works.  For anything other than terrain mods, I still don't have a clue.  But I'm learning!  Thanks for stopping by and be sure to come by often...lots of interesting stuff in the pipeline.

penguin007:  I'm just getting started, not only with terrain mods.  Still on the list are rock mods, water mods, and tree controllers.  Be sure to visit again soon, I'll be moving fast once I get going!

Battlecat:  Thanks!  I've always thought I had a good eye for color. 

mightygoose: Well, if you are interested in learning about terrain mods, this is the place to be over the next week or so, because I'm learning a lot and will be sharing my knowledge.  In fact, I plan to write a tutorial and put together a "Terrain Mod Assemby Kit" for folks so they won't have to go through weeks of hassle to be able to create a custom terrain. 

Shadow Assassin:  I will see if I can upload the little .dat rivit made me, so you can try it out.  It's a good learning tool.  He made me a second one using 16 colors instead of the default 8 that is also revealing, but both, to be truly effective, need a rather varied terrain.  Neither have any dependencies, so they are small and easy to use. 

As for exemplars, well, I still don't know 100% how to describe them.  I've learned more about them this last week and now I think of them as "middlemen".  They talk to the files in the .exe and tell them how to deal with the data in the .dats, among other things.  They're like mini-macros or even maybe like interpretors.  Valuable little bits of code, they are.  Right now I'm not messing with them except to copy them and paste them and rename them.  If data inside an exemplar wants or needs to be changed, I need rivit to help me...that's not a task I would attempt on my own.

QuoteInteresting that there are four terrain maps... Maxis probably intended for there to be a selectable terrain tileset thing like there was in SC3K, but never got around to coding it in...

That's what we figured, too.  We discovered that all three of the "other" terrain mapping tables are identical to each other in the manner in which they distribute textures in the w/c/w/d grid of the mapping table.  The exemplars for the Temperate table exist, but the textures are missing.  I don't know if the exemplars for the other 2 tables exist or not, haven't explored that far.  Maybe I/we will get around to that later.

Update #4:

So, ok, it's been about a week since my last update, given that my last post wasn't really an update.  Lots of emails have been flying back and forth between Seattle and Australia (where rivit lives), despite the fact that he is 14 hours ahead of me in time.  It's kinda strange emailing someone who is already living in tomorrow. 

Using the table of 16 textures I posted earlier, rivit made me a quick little terrain mod.  Understand, there weren't any textures, so to speak, just colored squares acting as holding places.  We both wanted to see, also, how the mapping table and the game would react to the 16 colors.  Rivit located the colors in the Tropical mapping table using a very simple matematic layout...he divided the  table vertically and horizontally into 16 equal boxes, so there were 4 columns of color and 4 rows of color, just like my sample square.  I plugged it in and rendered a bunch of squares in my region and was fairly happy with the results.  However...

I started thinking about how the region might look with 32 colors instead of 16.  So I made a new color smaple rectangle:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg297.imageshack.us%2Fimg297%2F7770%2F32texturecolors.jpg&hash=4f09f7200c878fa91ab29ae0f037b990fa447954)

I numbered each square, as you can see, then created from this sample 32 individual bitmap files which I then turned into FSH files using rivit's new "GoFSH" tool.  I made a lot of mistakes along the way, so this process took several days, but I finally got it done and now it should be much easier next time around.  And yes, there will be a next time around, probably several next time arounds. 

We have found that working with the mapping table in the INI is easiest if we cut and paste it into Excel.  We can copy it out of the INI, paste it as text into Excel, format it into a spreadsheet, change it around however we want, then copy it and reformat it back into text and paste it back into the INI.  How to do this will be in the tutorial so no one will have to mess around with copying and editing every single cell of the 512 cell mapping table (like I did the first time I tried it). 

Once the mapping table is in Excel and formatted, it's easy to pick out the individual cells and color them and see how the game distributes textures across a region.  I've taken screen shots of the two tables, the Tropical and the Temperate, with Maxis default values:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg31.imageshack.us%2Fimg31%2F8584%2Fdefualttropical.jpg&hash=2688db7fc18c91785e68604e5ab4b20875bceea7)

This is the default Tropical mapping table, with each of the 8 textures used colored differently and with borders drawn between sections of textures.  The darkly outlined box in the center of the table will be explained in a minute. 

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg413.imageshack.us%2Fimg413%2F1501%2Fdefaulttemperate.jpg&hash=c3938d479afd4315d08d42318d186d2a686c26e1)

This is the default Temperate mapping table.  You can see right away there is quite a difference in the way the textures are distributed across the table.  Also, this map uses 15 textures instead of 8.  As I said in my relies above, the exemplar for those 15 textures exist in the game, but the textures the exemplars refer to and control are missing.  Again, the dark center outlined box comes in later.

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg156.imageshack.us%2Fimg156%2F4906%2F32excel.jpg&hash=20fc1f298535b0a65e5cd7ffa077816f4214094e)

This is the table I created for my 16 color squares.  It's very similar to the one rivit created for his 8 color test mod...in fact, it's virtually identical except I have 8 rows og colors going from cold to warm instead of 4.  But I still only use 4 column going from dry to wet.  The highlighted center area in this spreadsheet is the same area of the table as the dark boxes in the first two and will be explained momentarily.

Last night, Thursday, I finally rolled up my sleeves and created my first terrain mod using the 32 colored squares.  Yup, I did it, all by myself (well, not really...it's taken poor rivit at least 2 weeks to unscramble my poor dazed brain).  I held my bretah, put my new .dat into my plugin's folder, and booted the game.  And guess what?  It worked!  Well, kinda sorta.  As I tooled along rendering city tiles, I found some of my terrain was loading textures very definitely NOT in my .dat file.  I almost spent hours/days going back over my work to see where I messed up when it occurred to me that maybe I had a conflicting file or two in my plugins folder...I've told you all what a mess THAT is.  Turns out, that was the problem.  Seems cycledogg has some textures with the same exact name as a few I I named, so once I pulled his stuff out of my plugins folder and rebooted my game, my mod worked perfectly.  Amazing, isn't it?  And to think only a week ago I hadn't a clue in the word. 

I spent the rest of my evening rending the entire region, just so I could get a good overview of what I had done and this, my readers, is what it looks like:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg718.imageshack.us%2Fimg718%2F1987%2Fhudson1.jpg&hash=25a67c3de636da18ed84b3d372f5e31547319aeb)

As I was going tile by tile rendering it, I was quite impressed with myself.  In the medium to close zooms, it looks surprisingly good even as blank color tiles with numbers on them.  The transitions between colors looks pretty good, too.  I didn't really like to way the highlands rendered and the shorelines looked a little blah, too, but some of the central areas of the region, which are supposed to be prairies, boy they looked good close in.  Around 1 am I finally completed the region and quickly loaded it into Region Census, so I could see how it looked. 

And man oh man was I bummed.  It's very banded and the color transitions are very harsh.  Not only that but...look close and count the bands.  There are 8 of them.  Folks, there are 32 colors in this map...why are only 8 showing up????  I was of the (naive) thought that I would have 32 bands of color, each one fading ever so softly into the next.  Look at the color sample...some of those colors are so close to each other, it's hard to tell them apart! 

Discouraged, I went to bed and dreamt of textures mods all night.  No lie.

So this morning I got up and after I drank my coffee, I fired up the game and took a closer look at the region, this time taking notes as I went along.  And what did I discover?  Each of the 8 color bands is exactly 4 steps in color above or below it's nearest neighbor.  The primary color bands are represented by colors 81, 85, 89, 93, 97, 8b and 9d.  What happened to the other 24 colors?  They are the pretty little highlights that show up in close zooms within each color band.

So, this explains why I have outlined/highlighted certain areas of the Excel charts shown above.  Those are the areas the game chooses to display as "major" terrain.  I have one more pic to share, a repeat of an earlier pic:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg694.imageshack.us%2Fimg694%2F1517%2Fcompare2x.jpg&hash=38b8f4e846745b43bc444162a52751f2bd64762d)

Remember this?  That's the 8 texture default Maxis terrain, second from the left.  I have annotated the pic to number the major bands of textures.  There are 7.

So, I'm not sure what to do next.  Both rivit and I have been banging away at this pretty steadily for the past 2 weeks, so I am thinking I may take a bit of a break.  I need to think this through a bit and maybe get deeper into some of the existing mods, especially c.p.'s.  We have found differences in the exemplars controlling the textures that appear to be dependent on location in the mapping table, so maybe I need to tweak my exemplars.  There is also a "master" exemplar that seems like the big kahuna controlling all the texture exemplars, so maybe we need to look at that, too. 

But I think the key is the mapping table itself.  I am giving thought to writing a mod that assigns a number to each cell of the mapping table and seeing what the game does with that, especially over an extremely varied terrain such as mine.  It would be a long, tedious, boring job to write such a mod but it could be very useful as a part of the Terrain Mod Assembly Kit as a region analyser prior to creating textures or mapping table.  One could almost design a terrain cell by cell.  Like anyone would want to besides an OCD like me. 

That's it for this update.  Getting late and my teeth have been bothering me, so I am trying to get to bed early...the teeth seems to stay quieter (less painful) if I get plenty of rest. 

Lora/LD

Hello Lora,

it's nice to see that your map has finally become the starting point for a new MD. The name "Abajo del Mar" is really a good choice for this region.

A while ago I played around with the terrain textures myself, but I wasn't patient enough to make my own terrain mod. Anyway, at that time I found all the information I needed here: Ennedi plays Shosaloza: Update 28 (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=2157.msg158183#msg158183). Maybe it will be helpful for you, too.

toja

Looks interesting so far. The only thing I can think of right now is giving each row its own texture, though that likely would take too much time...

Awesome work on the textures shame about how they are working

Will

Haha, yeah I kindof figured you were joking, knowing your personality, but I decided to explain anyway in case you weren't. Anyway, I'm glad that rivit has been able to help you on this and, with a little more work it looks like you're gonna be well off.

Ethan

Hmmm, terrain mods are even more picky than they look on the surface.  Good luck figuring out the issue!  You've certainly put some good thought into it already. 

The choice of colours for your terrain mod are perfect for what you are trying to achieve. It sucked that not all the textures are appearing; I have no idea about the mechanics of the game, so I cannot help you there. But nonetheless, I hope you get it right, because it looks awesome.

Well, i'm always respectfull for the people who go so deep to the game, i'm not really sure to understand everything here  &mmm but as i can see, the result is really good so far, i like what you did with this map and very curious to see more...

Replies:

toja:  Your link to Ennedi's MD proved to be most helpful, thank you very much!   Looking around elsewhere in his MD also was helpful, as he also touches on other points of interest to me, such as plop water to game water transitions.  But yes, I agree with you that terrain mods are more complex than most folks would initially suppose.  In concept they are fairly simple: create textures, plug them into the INI table to locate them on the map, then load 'er up and go!  But in reality, there are many factors that play to how the game uses the texture files.  The Terrain Properties exemplar plays a major role and there are dozens, maybe even a hundred, different parameter settings in it, and each setting has a wide range of possibilities.  The Weather exemplar also comes into play, as Ennedi discovered.  Rivit discovered that the orientation of the region's landscape can be a factor, as the game appears to be hard-wired in the .exe to have the prevailing weather patterns approach from the NW and travel across the region to the SE, much as it does in the San Francisco Bay Area (no big surprise there, being as how that's where Maxis is located).  Height of terrain (altitude above sea level) is another factor, as is over height relief in a particular region.  A fairly flat region will display fewer textures than a mountainous one. 

As for having the patience to figure this all out and create a new terrain mod...keep reading.

Leech10:  Ennedi did an experiment in which he did exactly this.  In one experiment, he made the texture identical across the row of the INI table, but different in each of the 32 rows.  In another, he did the same thing, but with the columns in the table, rather than the rows.  If you are interested in seeing and reading his results, I suggest to click on toja's link...it's pretty interesting (if you happen to be interested in terrain mods).  I also have been running similar experiments, but more on that later.

penguin007:  Thanks for your comment and for stopping by!  I also appreciate your sympathy over my frustration.

ecoba/Ethan:  Glad you are able to know when I am teasing, it's not always easy to convey "tone" in a written message.  And yes, rivit is my guru.  Without his patience in teaching me, I'd have weeks ago given up.

Battlecat:  It's not so much that the terrain mods are "picky" as that they are just fiendishly complex once you start peeling back thier many layers.  Thanks for your encouraging words!

nedalezz:  Thank you for complimenting me on my color choices.  I thought they were pretty decent, too.   ;)

As for not having all the colors appear in the game, read on.

planetchef:  Don't despair about understanding the mechanics of the game...while building a terrain mode IS more complex than *I* originally thought it would be, it's really fairly simple in concept.  And really, in the end, it's all just numbers.  Understanding how they work is more a matter of patience than anything else, kinda like untangling a ball of yarn.  You just kinda start pulling on a string and see what happens.  I'm glad you stopped by and equally glad you are enjoying what you are seeing so far.

In a RL aside, many of you may know that I have been out of work for a very long time now, over 18 months.  While I have not yet been able to find full-time work again, about 10 days ago a client of mine who has not sent work my way in almost 4 years contacted me with a proposal for a fairly decent sized project.  Only problem was, it had to be completed by April 1st.  I gratefully accepted the work and so I have been working like a maniac these past 10 days, which is why I haven't been spending time with SC at all.  And, in fact, I am stealing this time now during my morning coffee and, coffee being done, it's time for me to get dressed and back to work.  I hope to have some time this evening to continue with the actual Update, so please check back soon...I have some interesting pics and news to share.

Lora/LD

Update #5:

So OK, I should be working instead of doing this, but I've spent the day frittering around, I figured I might at well slack until bedtime and then double down tomorrow.  Today I cashed the first 2 checks for this new project...my first earned income in over 18 months.  Too bad I gave up drinking before the New Year, I really feel like celebrating!  But, if I am to stay sober, I am going to have to find other ways to celebrate and it seems to me spending time here is as good a way as any.  I was able to pay my roomie rent today for the first time since October 2008 and I also gave him money for the heating bill.  Now I've got a stash of cash that will pay for some much needed dental work next month. 

This update is likely to be a little bit disconnected mostly because I am looking back over work done over 2 weeks ago and I didn't really take that many pictures to help me remember what I was doing then and what I was thinking.  So I'm going to have to kinda reconstruct things as I go along.

At the end of the last update, I was disappointed and frustrated by the lack of color/textures in my experimental region.  Because I don't want to type out "colors/textures" every time I refer to the colors I used to be place holders for eventual textures, just try to keep in mind that, for this update anyway, the two are words are interchangable with each other, OK?  I don't want to confuse anyone, but I don't want to type two words when one will do, either.  So, colors=textures, for now.

So I had 32 colors which I plugged into the INI table but only 8 of them showed up in my region.  Further explorations into the region display and the INI table revealed that really only two columns were displaying: H and I.  I think I previously talked about how 4 columns, G-J were displaying in my experiments, so by fooling around some more, I was able to get 16 to display by condensing the 32 colors into 2 columns, H and I.  I did this by making each row a different color, but the two columns the same color.  I ended up with a very stripped region which looked ridiculous.

Then I read Ennedi's post, as recommended by toja.  I learned that if I went into the terrain Properties exemplar, I could modify the Max Terrain Height value and so either increase or decrease the width of the color bands across my region.  Using this information and looking at my miserable region, I came up with a new color order.  I had been using the colors in numeric order with color 80 in row 00 of the INI table and color 9f in row 33.  So I re-arranged my 32 colors thusly:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg2.imageshack.us%2Fimg2%2F7655%2F32ctexturecolors.jpg&hash=5da1d3ca6d81a7c206101273490dfd31240e7d89)

These are arranged according to elevation above sea level, with the top most colors being highest elevation and the lowest colors being close to sea level.  I then used Excel to re-write just those two columns (H and I) that I knew where the primary displays:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg403.imageshack.us%2Fimg403%2F1179%2Fexperiment4excel.jpg&hash=313c2ce566d98c5b2018a4ce811e53f2e45a1a77)

The green highlighting in columns J and K represent textures than showed up in my region as "detail" within the greater bands of color, which is also nice to know.  This table above is the maxis default Tropical table, so when I plugged my experiemntal mod into my game, I got a mixture of my color squares and Maxis default textures.  I'll show you the result in a second, but first I want to talk about the terrain height.

The Maxis default for max terrain height is 2500 meters above sea level.  This value is set in the Terrain Properties exemplar and is adjustable.  So...I started adjusting it.  And, instead of having bare rock from the tops of my cliffs to the NW corner of my region (the highest parts of my map), I started getting bands of color slowly creeping across those pesky uplands.  I kept pushing the height value upwards and relaoding my region until I finally had color bands across 100% of my above sea level terrain.  This is VERY handy to know, folks because it's a really simple modification to make and it can really make a big difference if, like me, you are trying to play a region with a lot of extreme differences in terrain heights.  I finally settled on 8000 meters as the ideal max height for my region...that's how high I had to go to get it covered with terrain. 

Some things I learned and am passing on to anyone who is interested:  The game will display colors/textures according to primarily terrain elevation.  Think of a contour map.  Flat terrain has few contours, therefore flat regions will have few textures and the bands of texture will be wide, each one filling roughly the distance between contour lines.  Mountains and cliffs and hills have contour lines closer together, so bands of color in the game are closer together.  If you want to get rid of the bands being so close together across steep terrain, you need to then use the same colors across a wider range of rows in the INI table.  You can use as many colors as you want, up to 512 will fit in the INI table (if anyone is nuts enough to design that many textures for a region), but the primary textures are most likely going to fall within the H and I columns. 

I know this is probably more information than most folks want, but some folks (mightygoose, you listening?) have expressed interest in learning how to mod terrain, so I include it. 

I didn't want ons of bands across my cliffs, so I spread some of the colors I did want over several rows and eliminated those that I didn't think fit very well with what I had envisioned.  This took several days of experimenting and many re-do's of both my color order AND the INI table, but this is what I finally ended up with:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg204.imageshack.us%2Fimg204%2F8949%2Fexperiment4regionmap.jpg&hash=70a0aa568b7813fb8f963bf1580dee9c9db22fba)

I was semi-happy with these results and thinging about moving on to actually starting to develope textures for this mod when the email blipped into my inbox offering me 3 weeks of paying work.  I have not revisited the mod since then but I have been stealing a few minutes with my region off and on since then and have a couple of announcements to make.

I am reneging (for now) on my idea/promise to create a terrain mod tutorial AND a custom terrain for this region.  With any luck at all, this first piece of paying work will be just that...the first.  If I get more work or get a real job, then I am not going to have the time to spend with SC that I have had over the past 18 months and so will want to really PLAY instead of create time consuming "make work" projects for myself.  So, I've made a couple of other executive decisions.

I have chosen to use c.p.'s Missouri Breaks terrain mod for my region.  However, I have modded the mod, so it's a semi-custom mod.  I have removed most of the snow containing textures and replaced them with other textures in his Essentials Pack that I thought were appropriate for those areas where they display in my game.  I raised the max terrain height to 8000 meters so all my region would have textures on it.  I made my beaches wider and shallower.  I'm not using his water mod or beach mod that are optional parts of the MB mod.  The region is greener and drier than what I envisioned it should look like, but it's easier at this point for me to re-write the region's climate than it is to continue to try to develope a new terrain mod for it.  I still have more tweaking to do, but this is what the region looks like and where the next phase is going to begin:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg641.imageshack.us%2Fimg641%2F5475%2Fmb31710.jpg&hash=bb8c435475d6913480976d1cd7ea7bc42264c0ed)

If I don't get more work or a job by the time this current project completes, well then, I can always go back to designing my own terrain mod.  But Missouri Breaks really is a very beautiful mod, deeply detailed, nearly seamlessly integrated, and I can be happy with this for my region.  It looks best in close zooms, where all the gorgeous detail comes through and really, most of us see the detail in our cities and regions way more than the regional views. 

I hope you agree that this will be a good fit for Abajo del Mar.

So next up is water features.  I'm going to need to settle on a water mod, both for game water and plop water.  This will inevitably bring me back to my biggest challeng: transitioning PW to GW.  However, before I get that far, there is some important prep/planning work to do.  I have to map out the above sea level water features before I plop them, so to do that, I need to make a region map.  Way back when I rendered this region for the very first time, I named each city tile and took a data view screen shot of each city tile, so now I have a folder on my desktop with all 140 dtat view maps in it that need to be married to each other and made into a region map.  This is jmore of a tedious chore than a difficult one...time consuming and a bit boring.  However, once the base map is made, it will serve many purposes over the life of the region because some day I'm actually going to have roads and towns, ha!

That's what coming up: the region map, choosing water mods, planning the water features, plopping the water features. 

I'm going to be slammed between now and April 1st, so I most likely won't get time for another update until then.  I probably will have little bits of time, though, in which to start piecing together the region map and play around with water mods, so next update when it comes, will be a good one.

Lora/LD, so very happy to be working again!

Don't worry, Lora. RL always comes first, and considering your case I'm sure everyone completely understands the lack of updates for the time being. Hope that I'll be able to go to the building... I'm sure you're do great.

I hope that in ten years, when I could need a building, (probably not, though, as I would liike to go into architecture myself, I'll get some advice from you though...) you'll still be willing to design it for me...  $%Grinno$%

Ethan

Looks like you're getting pretty close with that terrain mod.  By the time you drop some trees in there, the faint edges will fade out very quickly! 

Glad to hear you've got some work on the go! 

Hi Lora, I can't believe the effort you put in this. I mean, you even develop your own terrain mod! I admire your dedication.

I don't have a lot of time this evening, so I'm going to skip replies for the time being...I hope no one minds.  I won't get this entire update finished tonite, either, as I have quite a bit to share and, like I said, I'm short of time tonite, so I'll probably work on this update some more tomorrow.  I'll edit in replies then.

Update 6:

A matter of what I consider to be of some importance has come to my attention recently while reading another Mayor's Diary.  I have been, until a few days ago, completely oblivious of a phenomenon that can affect our regions and cities that folks have come to call Prop Pox.  RickD, whose MD "Santa Barbara" I have been following, has unfortunately been hit with this problem.  He very wisely posted a link in his MD to the forum thread here at SC4D where the topic has been under discussion and investigation for a couple of years now and I read all 19 pages of posts to see if any of my cities may be at risk.  And I learned they might be.

Prop Pox is avoidable if you follow the suggestions given in the thread, which you can find here:

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=7066.0

However, a city, once poxed, evidently can't be cured.  *IF* you have a backup of the city made before the Pox struck and *IF* you clean up your plug-ins file to remove the KNOWN files that cause the Pox (there are also unknown files that cause it), you can regain your city from the point of the back up, but will lose any work done after.

None of us want to lose the time and effort we put into developing our cities, so I very strongly recommend that ALL players read the thread and take steps to protect thier cities.  And please...spread the word.  The more folks that know about this problem, the more likely it will occur less often.  I went through my own (very messy) plug-ins file and I am about 95% certain I do not have any of the known causes, but no one knows of course about the unknown causes. 

So, I finally completed the creation of my regional composite map, made from screen captures of the in-game data maps.  On a large region like mine, this is a very tedious process...extremely boring.  However, these base maps of each city tile and the entire region as a whole, can be invaluable both for planning out your cities and region, as well as for use with future "road maps" to include in an MD, so the heavy time commitment is worth it, in my opinion.  This is what my region map looks like:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg249.imageshack.us%2Fimg249%2F5232%2Fadmoriginaldatamaps.jpg&hash=e2f2847e107ef44c3f1d1902fad93878d5175333)

There are many ways to manipulate this map, as you all will see as time goes on (and assuming you continue to read this MD).  David Edgren (dedgren), who authors the Three Rivers Region project (and if you haven't checked out THAT beauty, you should) has a bunch of map making tutorials in his 3RR MD, which is where I learned how to do this.  I'm going to have to go back and review some of his other mapping tutorials as I go along, because I've never really gotten much further with my mapping than this initial stage.

So, the first step in developing a region is, for me anyway, creating the natural environment.  I don't build anything until the landscape is 100% complete through out the entire region.  That means I do all my terraforming first, but I decided that with this region, I am not going to God Mode terraform anything at all.  It's just too different of a landscape and I think it will make for an interesting project to leave the basic landforms exactly the way they are.  I'll have to push stuff around once I start building, but for now, I'm leaving it just the way it is. 

After terraforming, the overlying terrain needs to be decided, which is why I spent so much time and effort on terrain mods.  In fact, over the past few days I am revisiting terrain mods and have new stuff to share, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.  I haven't changed my mind about using the Missouri Breaks mod, but I still have some tweaking to do before I am 100% happy, so I have been working on that a bit. 

Once the terrain is in place, next comes water features.  It's really very unfortunate that this version of the game does not have tools that allow us to create above sea level bodies of water, but we've managed to fill the gap with plop waters of many, many different kinds.  Someday some bright fan will figure out how to create a realistic water table for this game and then we will be able to kiss our plop waters good bye, but until then, PW is all we have. 

Abajo del Mar is a very interesting region to create water features on as it is, in RL, underwater.  It was exposed to sky and rain at one time eons ago and it did have running water flowing across it during that time, evidence of which is still very obvious.  The major water feature is the huge Hudson River Canyon...a no-brainer for a mayor to figure out where the major river in this region is.  There are in fact several watercourses visible in this landscape.  But most of the watercourses are faint, having been under the sea for many millenia, and subject to being filled up with sediment (and human garbage).  That's one of the reasons making the map above is handy.  It gives a perspective of the region that would otherwise not be available.  It's like a satellite view that allows me to see features I can't otherwise see in game or in the other various thrid party developer tools. 

So once the map was complete, I began to draw in the beginnings of my water features, starting with rivers/steams/creeks:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg179.imageshack.us%2Fimg179%2F4784%2Fwaterfeatures1.jpg&hash=4c3115e635457648811b3540d9e0b411ad5f3120)

A couple of things I am thinking about.  In the upper left side of the map there is what appears to be the remains of a fairly large alluvial fan at the base of the cliffs.  There are a couple of deep canyons there that seem to be old watercourses.  However, there are no scars in the lower plains of old rivers other than the alluvial fan.  There is also an escarpment that runs along the base of the cliffs in an east/west direction which currently blocks water running down the cliffs from reaching the plains.  So I am thinking about a couple of things.

First, I am thinking about turning that space between the base of the cliffs and the escarpment into a long narrow lake that parallels the cliffs.  The escarpment has a couple of sizeable breaks in it, so I could exit water there.

I am thinking about turning the area of the alluvial fan into a big marsh.  There is another area at the center left of the map that looks like it may want to become a marsh, too.  I can see watercourse scars in this area leaving the base of the cliffs but then they peter out in the middle of the plains before appearing again a little to the south.  I might make a lake there, instead. 

The big question for me now it how to explain the huge Husdon River Canyon that bisects the map diagonally.  I need water on that upper plateau, but there are no scars up there at all to indicate how water funnelled to that spot for it's descent.  A lake could work, especially if it ran off the NW corner of the map...it's size could be implied rather than actually created within the map boundaries.  A wide, shallow river might work, too, again running off the map. 

It also seems that the head of the canyon would be a perfect place for a large dam...dontcha think?

Time for bed.  I'll try to edit more into this update tomorrow, but the deadline on my work project is rapidly approaching and I need to stay focused on work, so no promises made, no promises broken.

Update 6(b):

Ok, I'm being very bad today because I am still playing when I should be working.  However, I think I can "cheat" a little bit and squeeze in time to complete what I started last night.

So, this next section of this update returns to the subject of terrain mods.  Once I finished rendering the entire region in my modified Missouri Breaks terrain, I sent a photo of the entire region (the same one I posted here) to my good buddy rivit, asking for his comments.  He wrote me back and told me he thought it all looked pretty good, BUT that he had kinda envisioned the upper plateau as drier and rockier.  I agreed with him.  After all, I really had not put very much time or effort into modding the mod...I just quickly picked out a couple of c.p.'s textures that I thought just maybe might sorta work with the top band of dark green at the top of the cliffs.

All I really wanted to do, immediately, was get rid of the snow.  Since then, both since rivit's email and since I rendered the region, I've been peeking in at it off and on and still thinking about how to get the terrain of the upper plateau to display better.  So, with the little bit of spare time I've had over the past few days, I've delved back into both my own terrain mod and the Missouri Breaks mod.  One of the first things I did was create a graphic ini table of the MB mod, using GIMP and the MB ini Excel table.  What I did was create in GIMP a new file that was 4096 x 8192 pixels in size.  I know that the BMP files for each texture used in any terrain mod are all 256 x 256 pixels each.  The ini table is 16 columns wide and 32 rows tall.  So if I want to replace each entry in the ini table with an actual picture of it's representative texture, I need a graphic file that is 16 x 256 wide and 32 x 256 tall, hence 4096 x 8192.

Then, and this was just about as tedious as making the region composite data map, I went cell by cell through the MB ini table as it's represented in excel and created a composite texture map that matched it.  This is what it looks like:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg18.imageshack.us%2Fimg18%2F9637%2Fmbtextures.jpg&hash=55fe3ea8b88cc0c0f11988cbcf1bde67a6ab51cf)

And this is the corresponding excel table:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg338.imageshack.us%2Fimg338%2F4594%2Fmbinitableexcel.jpg&hash=cf79fb10f0a8945e2e4490b6b426bc5bc77d3bf4)

I have highlighted those cells which contain the snow textures.  Those entries with red text are the bare rock textures.  Now lets look at MY excel table as it currently exists, so illustrate how and where I modded the mod:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg193.imageshack.us%2Fimg193%2F491%2Fmyiniexcel.jpg&hash=e6160c68bb18477e5ca74aaae926f4755fbc3dec)

I have highlighted those areas different from c.p.'s ini table, areas that I changed.  Once I looked at this again a few days ago, I realized why I still had snow in my region.  If we look at the first excel table and it's graphic representative, we can see there are 3 snow textures: 0x8f which is totally white (all snow), 0xdf which is mostly snow with a little bit of rock showing through, and 0xde which is about evenly divided between snow and rock.  We can also see that there is a band of bare rock without any snow or plant growth: texture 0xef.  I am looking almost exclusively at the upper right hand corners of both the graphic MB and the MB excel. 

Now look at MY excel table and we see that I only subbed out the least snowy texture, 0xde.  I chose to use texture 0xb7 in that area.  We'll get to that in a second.  I also subbed out the 0xef bare rock texture with 0xc2.  Lastly, and I don't know why I did this, I subbed out the 0xd1 texture with 0x97.  Maybe I just liked the 0x97 better, who knows?  Here's a little graphic I made showing my substitutions:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg11.imageshack.us%2Fimg11%2F6164%2Fcurrentsubs.jpg&hash=30484996694a96446949a5ce74eed0be5a44f033)

Now, this may get a little bit tricky to follow, but I'll try hard to be clear.  After I made the MB graphic table, I gridded it and gave each cell/texture alpha numeric assignations:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg23.imageshack.us%2Fimg23%2F4484%2Fmbgridded.jpg&hash=42a9c06c030b18472b53cdf6fe4673e7ba9d320f)

I did this so I could reference the graphic table with the excel table quickly and easily, back and forth.  Problem is, I didn't actually refer to the excel table when I assigned letters and numbers to the rows and columns of the graphic, so of course they don't match each other.  Sometimes I can be such an idiot.  Still...this gridded graphic IS helpful, so long as *I* (and hopefully you) can mentally re-jigger the graphic to correspond to the excel table.  In other words, cell B7 in the excel table is not cell B7 in the graphic.  Given that I only want to revise the upper left corner of any of these maps, I'm not going to bother to go back and rename/renumber the graphic to match the excel.  I know this adds a level of confusion to what is already a kinda deep subject for many and I apologize.  Thankfully, so long as I stay concentrated, I am able to make the adjustments between the tables and figure out what is what.

So.  Today I opened my game to look at those areas of my region where the changes I made to the mod actually display.  Just the top left corner is affected, the far NW corner of the region:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg13.imageshack.us%2Fimg13%2F6997%2Fregion1i.jpg&hash=f1fff292908d666a1d7e8b447a1380300945fec8)

There are 2 bands of textures crossing the far NW corner of the region.  Taking a closer look at where the two textures come together in city tile A3, I see this:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg256.imageshack.us%2Fimg256%2F4815%2Fa3close.jpg&hash=dbd8a8e9f3a662401079c176edf9493839a35021)

These are textures 0xc2 (upper left) and 0x97 (lower right), both of which are my own subs for 0xef (bare rock) and 0xd1 (grass with small rocks here and there).  My subs for the snow texture 0xde doesn't show up at all, at least not in this area of the region.  I didn't take a thorough look around the region to try to find it, all I care about is that most of the snow is gone.

But an interesting and important clue is still visible.  In scattered places across the area where texture 0x97 is displayed, I found these little patches of another texture:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg215.imageshack.us%2Fimg215%2F693%2Fa3wd4.jpg&hash=76389983379edda76f12e60d304e661563467d9a)

Looking at both my graphic and the MB excel file, I was able to determine that this scattered detail of texture is 0xd4.  I did not sub that into my mod...that's from the original MB ini table.  So look at the MB excel file and see where 0xd4 occurs.  It only occurs next to areas of bare roock...it's a "transition" texture that breaks up, visually, the change from bare rock to areas where growing stuff is.  You can see it on the graphic, too, if you look.

But try to remember back when I was playing with just plain old solid colors.  Remember I was able to determine that the majority of textures used by the game fall into either the "H" or "I" column of the excel file (when it's set up like the ones above)?  So, let look at my modded ini excel file and see where 0xc2, 0x97, and 0xd4 occur in proximity to each other:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg710.imageshack.us%2Fimg710%2F6325%2Fexcel2.jpg&hash=93180653875d8eb00abc1e5dda907c96161d138f)

And lookie there (I boxed in the occurance so you wouldn't have to hunt it down).

Another interesting thing to note:  In my region as it is now, that area displaying 0xc2 displays ONLY 0xc2.  There are no other textures in that particlur band.  I think, am pretty sure now, that's because the game (for this region anyway) displays primarily the textures in column "I" and then details that "band" with textures from columns "H" and "J", depending on how the game reads the base terrain conditions (dry or wet). 

I am REALLY tempted to make a little experiment mod that has textures only in those 3 columns and a single solid color in all the rest, just to see what would happen.  I'm betting dimes to dollars that the majority of the test region would be nearly fully textured with just a few areas of solid colors here and there.  I am slo once again tempted to create a 512 item ini table, all just blank white tiles with alpha-numeric indications on them.  It would be really interesting to see what textures are actually used and where. 

But, those kinds of experiments will have to wait for the next time I have too little else to do, which hopefully will be a long time from now  :)

But I do want to make my mod of the mod better, so I am going to be looking into remodding my mod of c.p.'s mod.  Now that I have a better understanding of how the game assignes textures to places, and having a good overview of all the many c.p. textures available to choose from, it shouldn't take long or be difficult.  And, because the subs I am making only affect a few city tiles in the region, I won't have to rerender all 140 tiles in the game, yay!

Anyway, for those of you interested in terrain mods, I hope this information is useful.  If it bores everyone else, of well, sorry. 

And now I really do have to get back to work!



Lora/LD

A dam could work in that canyon!  Very cool to see the terrain in plan format like that.

Making progress is good! Getting closer ;D

        -Jordan :thumbsup:

Really cool little update, Lora. I really do love c.p.'s textures and the way that you have incorporated them into your mods is really nice. I especially love that texture you used for the upper band on the plateau; I use Missouri Breaks in my cities currently, and I get so excited when there are little spots of it popping up.

Hmm, water mods. Of course the first thing that pops to my mind is Brigatine, with a white beach mod, to create your tropical setting. But, I'm sure that there are many other wonderful water mods out there that get little to no traffic, and knowing you Lora, you'll find the best of the best. I must say that for ploppable water, I would get all of them, and use a mix depending on the area and, well, that should create a unique blend. Of course, if you are leaning toward one, I would suggest Jeroni's (jeronij)'s TPW.

I must also agree with Battlecat on one point. That canyon could definitely provide a place for a nice reservoir, or just some wonderful natural beauty.

Hope to see some more work soon, Lora.

Ethan

Hi folks!

This is not an update, just a post to let you know that when I am bad, I am very, very bad.  I did not work this evening, being obsessed once again with terrain mods ideas.  This is definitely the end, as I'm going to catch hell if I don't get back to work tomorrow, but I thought I'd let you know what I discovered this evening.

I made a new terrain mod, an experiment.  I took my own modded mod ini table and filled every single cell with c.p.'s texture 0x8f, which is his all snow texture, EXCEPT for those cells in columns H, I, and J, which I left as they were.  Now, of these three columns, every entry in them is identical to c.p.'s original except for H0, H1, H2, I0, I1, and J1, six cells I changed as shown in the pics above. 

Then I plugged the new mod in and fired up my game.  And guess what?  Across the lowlands, from the sea shore to the base of the cliffs everything was almost 100% the same....no snow anywhere except for a few extremely isolated incidences.  As the landscape began to rise and become more complicated near the clif bases and up the cliffs themselves, I started seeing more snow, which means the game was pulling textures from columns other than H,I, and J.  At the high plateau, I once again had almost no snow anywhere at all. 

I really wish I had time to play with this some more because it seems pretty obvious to me now that a good half of the textures used in any ini table a modder may create go completely unused.  Which is a shame in many ways...it would be really nice to create a landscape that could show the depth of texture ranges the ini table seems to make possible.  But the reality seems to be that only a very narrow band of textures are actually used.  For terrain modders, this could be considered good news, I guess, as it means one could effectively ignore most of the ini table and just create textures (or arrange textures already made by others) for those areas of the table where they actually display. 

Again the idea of making a 512 "texture" mod comes to mind.  It would be fairly simple (but quite time consuming).  One could use it on a new region and see each individual cell of the game displayed with it's corresponding alpha-numeric ini texture assinment.  One could then take note, literally writing down what letter/number combos actually appeared across the region, then fill just those spots on the ini table that actually displayed in the game.  You'd still have to put something in all the blank spots, but it could be anything...bright magenta or a Maxis default...because you'd know it would never display in game. 

Kinda breaks my heart to think of the tremndous time and energy that has been spent by folks creating these gorgeous terrain mods like Missouri Breaks and to find that a lot of that time appears to have been wasted if, as it seems, the majority of the textures never show up in game.  But then, I have only tested the mods on this region and no other, so it's very possible other regions would display a wider variety of textures.  I don't have time to test that out, but maybe someone else will someday.

I did also play around this evening with trying to find better subs for my mod than the ones I originally used, but couldn't really come up with any combos I liked very much.  The big problem for me is the rich, dark green texture that appears at the very tops of the cliffs...there just doesn't seem to be any other c.p. textures that work well with that dark green.  I kinda came to the conclusion that I'd have to re-order a good deal of the ini table or create new textures of my own to get a transition to work well, and I don;t have time for either right now.

So once again, I'm putting the terrain mod issue back on the back burner.  Having spent a good part of the last two days and evening messing with various MD issues, I have backed myself into a corner, work-wise, so I'm really going to have to bear down hard over the next 7-10 days to meet my deadline.  Which means of course another update will happen after the next phase of the job completes sometime next week.  The structural engineering comes back to me Monday and we are scheduled to apply for permits on Friday.

Lora/LD

It's okay for us to wait, Lora. And I'm also telling you that you should get to work if yourdeadline is April 1. RL always comes first and how I'm thrilled by your terrain mod work, I also can't wait for you to finish your design. Maybe you can show it to us here, so if I'm ever in Seattle I can drop by and see it.  :)

Ethan

Lora, you are such a dear to mention 3RR so kindly.  I'm ashamed for not getting out more and looking at work like what you have going on here- things that far surpass in quality and detail the stuff that I did way back when.  There are days when I wish that I had made 3RR just a few quads in size, because that's the only way one person with an active mind would ever have the time necessary to achieve the level of detail (and control, heh!) that folks like us strive for.

I'm hooked- whatever your schedule, I can't wait to see what you do with Abajo del Mar.


David

Well, it;s been a week or more since I last updated, I hope folks are being patient.  I didn't get to replies last update, so I'll do that now:

Replies to Update 5:

ecoba/Ethan:  Thank you for being so understanding about how RL can sometimes interfere with adult play time.  As for wanting to go into architecture, I try to talk all starry-eyed young folks out of it.  It's a very long hard career curve and doesn't pay much ever.  You go to school for 5 years or more, get your master's degree and then end up at the bottom of the heap in an architectural office, making coffee, cleaning the kitchenette, and doing first year drafting projects under the supervision of a cranky old woman like me for at least five years.  Everyone thinks they are goping to be the next Frank Lloyd Wright, but the truth is very few architects ever get to do any design work.  Not only that, but the schools pump you full of sunshine but little real world knowledge of how buildings are built, which is why you spend at least 5 years interning at little pay after you graduate before anyone trusts you to actually draw a building.  By then you're close to thirty, probably married and maybe with a kid or two and still earning dirt wages.  The next 5 years are spent being the drafting grunt, working long, hard, stressful hours, lots of weekends and overtime, slamming yourslef against deadlines you don't set but are held responsible for meeting.  And that mean old lady is still breathing down the back of your neck forty hours a week and slitting her wrists over your drawings, covering your hard work with so much red ink you can barely see the black underneath.  If you are able to hang tough for the first ten years, things start to get marginally better.  You start actually making a semi-decent wage and you might even actually get to design little bits and pieces of buildings now and then.  You also start into the supervisory role, babysitting the kiddies your firm hires straight out of grad school and you quickly learn how the cranky old lady got that way.  At 15 years in, you might make it to project manager and supervise a whole team of drafters.  By this time you are probably licensed and are thinking about striking out on your own (you 40-ish by now) and finally making some REAL money.  After 5 years of working under bad lighting in your den or garage, you look back fondly on your 9-5 grind...at least it was steady money. 

It's an intensely competitive field and most kids who graduate with a degree in architecture end up going back to school 5-10 years later to either add an engineering degree or something related, or else they hang it up and start over.  I'm not lying to you, I'm probably the only person who will ever tell you the honest to goodness truth about architecture as a career choice, so pay heed.  Save yourself money and years of disappointment...make architecture a hobby, not a career. 

Battlecat:  The terrain mod is going to be an on-again-off-again project for a while, as it's too time consuming to approach, for me anyway, and right now, any other way.  Yes, trees will help conceal the transitions bwteen bands of textures, but on my wish list is a new (custom, of course) tree controller.  I've been bulldozing trees off my city tiles this past week, because the controllers available aren't foresting or planting the way I want them to.  I've looked around for tutorials for tree controllers, but haven't found anything yet, and so far I haven't been able to puzzle them out by myself.

RickD:  Well, yes and no.  I haven't actually created my own custom mod, at least not yet.  What I've actually done is modded c.p.'s Missouri Breaks terrain mod a teensy bit.  I have not created any textures of my own, just kinda reshuffled some of his.  But yeah, even that much took a lot of work, as first I had to figure out how the terrain mods work.  Glad you stopped by and are enjoying what you see so far.

Replies to Update 6:

Battlecat:  Yeah, I've pretty much decided to create a dam at the top of the canyon and maybe a couple more on the way down.  It's a steep ravine and I'm not confident I can plop a watercourse down through it as it is now, but at the same time I don't really want to terraform it.  I guess I'm going to learn how to make waterfalls pretty soon!

canyonjumper/Jordan:  Progress is good, I agree.  Mine is slow and if I get busy with RL work, it will be slower yet.  Thanks for stopping by and hope to see you back soon!

ecoba/Ethan:

QuoteHmm, water mods. Of course the first thing that pops to my mind is Brigatine, with a white beach mod, to create your tropical setting. But, I'm sure that there are many other wonderful water mods out there that get little to no traffic, and knowing you Lora, you'll find the best of the best. I must say that for ploppable water, I would get all of them, and use a mix depending on the area and, well, that should create a unique blend. Of course, if you are leaning toward one, I would suggest Jeroni's (jeronij)'s TPW.

I've been looking at and playing with water mods, both game waters and plop waters, a little bit this last week and am still undecided.  I've re-opened my old thread on the Brainbusters forum for advice/ideas on how to solve the PW/GW transition issue, but so far no one has responded, boo-hoo. 

And yeah, the Hudson River Canyon, just about whatever I do with it, should be quite spectacular.  Here in Washington we have a similar canyon at the top of the Skagit River, it has 3 dams on it.  Problem is that all the dams are both for hydro production and flood control, so the gorgeous canyons belows the dams are pretty much off limits, as the dam operator (Seattle City Light) doesn't tell anyone when they are going to release water from the dams, so the canyons are subject to unpredictable flash flooding.  While they are not fenced off, all acesses to the rivers and pools in the canyon are heavily posted with flash flood warnings and, speaking only for myself, *I* wouldn't go down there! 

As for sharing my RL work projects here, sorry, no can do.  All the projects I work on are copyright protected and posting them to a public forum would be a sure way to guarantee I never worked for that client again.  I have some designs of my own, which are also copyright protected, but I'm not worried about anyone stealing my intellectual property, so maybe I'll try to post them here some time.  I'd love to share the SketchUp model I've been working on, but would have to figure out how to do that.  Screen captures, I guess.

dedgren/David:  Hey good buddy, good to see you over here in my neck of the woods.  I hope you stop by often, I could use your advice!  As for details and control, architecture has taught me that I need to know when to let go and move on.  One of the problems with other MD's I've attempted in the past is that they kinda overwhelmed me, to the point where I became creatively paralyzed, so I'm trying hard to avoid that with Abajo.  I keep wanting to dot every i and cross every t before I build a single road or zone a single cell, but if I do that, I'll never get around to building anything, just spend the next 3 years creating a landscape.  I have to keep reminding myself "it's just a game, Lora, not a paying project".  So my OCD works against me when playing, while it (usually) works for me when working.  It's hard to curb.

So, on to the next update, which is short, with just one new picture to share.

Update 7:

So I finished the RL project on time and to my client's satisfaction.  I have a nice little cushion of cash to hold me over until another big project comes through and in the meantime I have a couple of small projects to keep me busy and in pocket change.

As I said above, I've been looking at water and trying some various mods out.  I'm going to go back to my Recreating San Francisco MD and look over my experiments with water there and would appreciate it if folks stopping by here would also cruise over to RSF and look again at the pics of various water mods, this time with Abajo in mind.  I do want something at least semi-tropical, so the slatey, choppy blues of cold northern climates are not going to work for me with this region.  I've always been partial to PEG's "Brigantine", but it's just not going to work well for me this time around. 

I've continued to work a little bit on the water features map and have placed two major lakes into the region.  One is up on the upper plateau and will be the backup of the Hudson River above the dam I'll build there eventually.  Both of the lakes are very large, spreading across several city tiles, so it will take some time to plop these puppies.  I am hoping to get started within the next day or so, and should have some pics in the next update.  In the meantime, here is the waterfeatures map as it now stands:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg406.imageshack.us%2Fimg406%2F4784%2Fwaterfeatures1.jpg&hash=c54dcdf5e7e5c8570b8ac431966eae39ba1f77a1)

This landscape is so flat, other than the cliffs, that's it difficult for me to "see" where declivities already exist that I may be able to take advantage of and make lakes of.  I am pretty certain that the "raw" landscape will be developing a lot of marshy areas as I go along...that's what happens in RL when water comes to a flat place and starts to spread out. 

That's all for tonite, sorry this update is so short.  I'll do better next time.  But right now it's late and I'm sleepy and have a bit of a headache from staring at the computer most of the day, so I'm going to take a couple of aspirin, make myself a mug of hot Ovaltine, and curl up with my new book and the kitties. 

Lora/LD

Again, it is a pleasure to read the in depth information you continue to provide us on the region. I personally think the way you set up the water features looks great. Cant wait to see them on an actual SC playing field.

Architecture had always seemed to me as a career that could go very wrong, or work very well for you; almost an 'all-or-nothing' situation, tuned down a little bit. I personally do understand your points and they are very strong fighting points. I had thought a lot about being an urban planner as well, and I might have to look into that... one problem is a lot of good schools don't tend to have these programmes, so I find myself in a stuck situation...  :)

As for the water situation, I'm sure that you'll figure it out soon. I'll stop by the thread and leave my two cents, as I might have some insight on the situation, although my transitions aren't the best ever. I find it a shame when electric companies dam up such beautiful rivers. I think that there is a similar situation on the Savannah/Tugaloo River in Georgia. One lake begins at a dam, and at the top of the lake is another dam. It feels like it's a staircase, in ways. I feel that Seattle City Light should start telling people when they're going to release the dam, as it seems cruel to restrict visitors from such a landscape. The electric operators don't tell us when they're going to release water from the dam on our local river, but considering that not that many people go in the river (as it's very rocky and shallow) I find it more acceptable then when it's done on major rivers.

I understand the situation about not being allowed to show us your work. I certainly wouldn't want you to lose your job.  :) The two lakes that you have drawn in seem like they will almost fit perfectly in the area that you have designated. Are you going to somewhat flatten the terrain under the lakes before you plop them? Anyway, the large variety of rivers criss-crossing the region seem as if they will create a strong natural setting in the area.

Hope to see a new update from you soon, my friend.

Ethan

Time for me to stop lurking here :) As usual, Lora, your methodical approach to your region is very impressive - a real winner with an analytical person like me. Your updates on your search for the perfect terrain mod have turned out to be rather instructive to me, as I was able to use some of what you've presented in making my own modified version of c.p.'s Olympic terrain mod. Thanks for sharing all that with us!

As for your waterway layout, it looks pretty good, although the rivers connecting the Hudson with another river to its west seem odd to me - not the sort of thing I can ever recall seeing on a map. In this particular case, I can't quite figure out which way those connecting rivers would flow, since they seem to be diverging from both longer rivers. Just trying to help make Abajo del Mar even better than it's already shaping up to be :) You're right that the flatness of the map makes it hard to find suitable places for watercourses to go, so no worries there. Everything else looks fine to me, and your planned lakes look like they'll be great additions to the landscape.

I'll certainly be back for more - you're doing great work here!

Zack

Hi folks!

Well, this is a kinda, sorta update, but it's late and I should be heading for bed, so I'm just going to call this the Preview to Update 8, which will be along shortly.  When I do the full update, I'll get to replies then.

I started working on the lake on the Upper Plateau this evening and am pretty happy with the way it turned out.  Unlike my efforts in RSF some months ago, I didn't plot out my graphic map and transfer that to the game, although I have to admit I was tempted, being the OCD person I am.  Not having a functioning printer right now, though, is curbing my obsessive tendencies, which is probably a good thing.

This upper lake, as yet un-named (suggestions are welcome) is a big one, covering a good portion of 4 large city tiles.  Feeding the lake are a number of decent sized streams, nearly rivers in size.  The lake empties into the Husdon River Gorge at two outlet points, and while I'll probably build a dam here later, so far no one lives in this region so of course there isn't a dam yet. 

I have (2) screen captures to share, one an in-game region view and the other a close up of the water features map, so you can compare them side by side.  First the region view:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg340.imageshack.us%2Fimg340%2F240%2Fregionview.jpg&hash=3b07d03d2b9b47362adb97adbbd0ede57e56ab51)

You want to be checking out tiles A1, A2, B1, and B2.  Sorry about the game icons obstructing the view.  This region is so large it doesn't fit on my screen and the terrain is so high at this NW corner of the region that it runs of the screen, as well.  I don't know how to get rid of the icons in a screen capture from region view, so use your mental erasers, OK?

And now a close up of the water features map, so you can judge for yourself how close I came to what I drew:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg191.imageshack.us%2Fimg191%2F5091%2Fwatermap.jpg&hash=4b39109885c820c59d81ae8106026acab7be1a4c)

I don't think I did too bad for winging it! 

I kept the water features map open while I was working in game and toggled back and forth between game and map as I worked.  It wasn't as easy as it sounds, but it wasn't terribly difficult, either.  The biggest problem was keeping myself oriented in game, as I was rotating and zooming a lot.

I only used a couple of tools.  I started in tile A2, the the top of the main canyon, which barely pokes into the tile.  I chose the lowest elevation in the canyon and plopped a road cell down to level it, then kaboomed the road cell.  Then I used terrain query to see what the elevation was: 2633.6 m.  From there I zoomed way in and used both mayor mode and gode mode leveling tools, set to very small brushes, and slowly carved my lakebed in, tapering it off as it narrowed towards feeder streams.  After I got A2 finished (well, the lake boundaries carved in, anyway), I reconciled edges with the abutting city tiles and then worked my way into the tiles from the reconciled edges. 

You may notice that the snow terrain texture I don't want is showing up along the edges of the newly formed lakebed.  Not sure if I am going to have to go back and change the terrain mod again to get rid of the snow or if it will go away when I go back and soften the edges of the lake and streams.  And yes, I will soften the edges, the leveling tools leave a very abrupt edge, mini-cliffs, that really don't fit in to this particular lake setting.  This is really flat ground, so the sides of the streams and the lake should be very shallow. 

So, that's it for tonite.  Hoepfully tomorrow I will find time to soften the shorelines and start plopping some water.  Not really looking forward to the massive plopping task ahead...this is where a realistic water table would come in very handy. 

Hope you enjoy!

Lora/LD

Hi Lora,

I've been lurking here and before in you RSF region also, and, well, sorry I didn't comment before. I tend to keep quiet if I don't feel I have something new to add.

I think the lake bed looks better than what you drew. It will make for an epic dam!

As for regionshots, I can't help you remove the ingame icons, but you could use Sawtooths Region census to make region shots with out them. Its a small standalone program that you can find on the LEX, and besides giving you a regionview, you can also get census information on the whole region as well as for each individual quad. And it's easy to use.

Thomas

Great job, Lora. I think that you've almost perfectly matched the lake to the original map you showed us. Are you planning on smoothing out the shoreline, though? As right now it appears as if there are cliffs down to the riverbed.  :)

Ethan

QuoteOne of the problems with other MD's I've attempted in the past is that they kinda overwhelmed me, to the point where I became creatively paralyzed, so I'm trying hard to avoid that with Abajo.  I keep wanting to dot every i and cross every t before I build a single road or zone a single cell, but if I do that, I'll never get around to building anything, just spend the next 3 years creating a landscape.

Well, Lora, you'd be a year behind me in 3RR.  We obviously have a common ancestor who passed along that OCD genetic material to both of us.  One thing, though- you are obviously an artist; I'm just a technician.


David

I enjoy paying visits to your MD projects, even though I must confess I do not read all text about your particular "obsession"  :) running at the moment. But I often like the way you are writing your updates, it is quite entertaining and with a very personal touch
Like Zack I was looking at the flow of your rivers, and the connection from one large river to the other. This does indeed seem a little peculiar.

Replies:

nedalezz: Thanks for stopping by and I'm glad you like the way I'm going about creating my region!

ecoba/Ethan: I can see you skim when you read, you missed the part in my last update where I told folks that yes, I was planning to smooth the edges of the lake basins.  Just teasing you...

woodb3kmaster/Zack: I was wondering if and when you'd make an appearance here!  Glad to see you and glad, too that my explorations into terrain mods were of benefit to someone other than myself. 

QuoteAs for your waterway layout, it looks pretty good, although the rivers connecting the Hudson with another river to its west seem odd to me - not the sort of thing I can ever recall seeing on a map. In this particular case, I can't quite figure out which way those connecting rivers would flow, since they seem to be diverging from both longer rivers.

I'm not certain I will have those traverse branches of the rivers when all is said and done.  They look a little odd to me, too, and I'm not sure the terrain itself will cooperate without terraforming.  This region slopes very gradually from the base of the cliffs to the shore, so as long as the streams don't backtrack towards the cliffs, I think they would, in RL, still flow east/west, just flow more slowly as the terrain would not slope much.  However, when I get to that part of the landscape, I'll use the Terrain Query tool to see if there is slope enough.  If not, no streams.

Good to see you here and I hope you stop by again often!

turtle/Thomas: Welcome to Abajo del Mar, thanks for stopping by!  I'm glad you think I did a good job carving the lakes into the landscape...it goes kinda against my usual methods to just activate a tool and go plowing around.  I usually plot things out pretty details, using trees to mark my boundaries, so it's excellent to get positive feedback on this more freeform method.  Hope you stop by often!

dedgren/David: It's so easy to get so caught in details, isn't it?  If I knew all the tools and methods you do, I swear I would build my region one game cell at a time and everything would be custom made.  I just don't have the patience for it, though...I lose interest unless I actually get to "play".  You'll like this update, though...some of your creations are highlighted!

kwakelaar: Thanks for stopping by and yeah, see my response to Zack above concerning the traverse streams.  I'm very flattered that you enjoy my writing style...don't tell anyone, but I harbor aspirations to someday become a published author, so it's nice to know someone likes to read what I write.  I consder myself a writer, but to become an author would be, well, maybe I'll someday find out!

Update 8:

Since the previous mini "preview" update I have used the God Mode "Smooth" tool to soften the edges of the lake and started plopping water.  I am using, so far, 9x12 cell tiles that degren/David developed quite some time ago and which I nearly forgot I had.  For big fresh water areas like this lake, those big plops really come in handy!  Even so, one gets an idea of how big this lake is by how long it takes to plop the tiles and how many I needed, even being as large as they are.  It took me several evenings to cover all 4 city tiles and there is still a lot of work to be done.

These large TPW plops are set at 6m above ground level, just like jeronij's smaller TPW plops are.  In some ways they create a water table in that when the terrain begins to rise at the edges of the lake, the edges of the plops disappear under the ground.  This is nice because it creates a perfect shoreline that ends at exactly the same contour line all around the lake.  However, the plops are very sensitive to the ground level they are plopped on, so if one tries to plop them close to the lake shore and the ground is beginning to rise even a teensy bit, they plop too high and so are no longer seamless with the rest of the lake.  In fact, they appear to "float" over the rest of the lake.  When David made these tiles, he also made smaller ones at 3x4 cells, which I plan to use to fill in some of the areas near the shorelines where a full 9x12 plop wouldn't go. 

So, I have the entire plateau lake filled with 9x12 plops now and am ready to start working with the 3x4 plops and working my way closer to shore.  Things look a little goofy right now, very squared off, but that is to be expected given where I am at in the process and the tools I am using.  Her's what I have so far:


(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg171.imageshack.us%2Fimg171%2F3269%2F79510284.jpg&hash=3d4c02f39a5b767b62d6e8a518c833080cf2a166)

This is city tile A1, far NW corner of the region.  I'm hoping to connect the two portions of the lake seen here with 3x4 plops and use them also to run the lake further upstream into the feeder streams.  Not all of the lake fits into a single screen shot, so here's the western edge:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg338.imageshack.us%2Fimg338%2F4401%2Fa1ak.jpg&hash=6d3b2e9382e65686e8d45c03486f6fb2b0fce34e)

The empty lake area at the far left is too small to get a 9x12 to fit into, so that will be filled in with 3x4's.  Also, this is the other half of a little spur of land that extends down into city tile A2, so I would have a place to eventually build a connection between the two city tiles.  Otherwise, due to the lake being so large, there would have been no way for my eventual Sims to travel back and forth between the two tiles!

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg243.imageshack.us%2Fimg243%2F4786%2F45538975.jpg&hash=d6294603f80c939dc1edadbf7eca7a9ecbf02fc7)

This is city tile B1, just east of the one above.  This is going to be an interesting part of the lake.  When I was doing the leveling to create the lake bottom, I inadvertently grabbed a slightly higher cell before I started leveling the more northern portion of the lake, which I discovered while I was trying to plop 9x12 tiles through the gap between the two portions of the lake.  I could NOT get the plops to be at the same level as the lower protion of the lake, despite many tries, so I finally used the Terrain Query tool and discovered that the upper portion is actually 7 m higher than the lower portion.  Rather than re-leveling, I decided this could make for an interesting water feature and left it as is.  So when I connect these two portions of the lake to each other, there will be a shallow set or rapids or waterfalls.  Bummer for boaters or swimmers, but I'll stick a boat ramp someplace on the upper part of the lake for access.  I'll have to find some bouys, though, to keep swimmers or boaters from entering the danger area!

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg243.imageshack.us%2Fimg243%2F6786%2F54870080.jpg&hash=801fcc1a61c8fe7463b77f5b961b01f7cd1faa9f)

This is city tile B2, immediately south of the above tile.  This will be an interesting tile to develope, too.  You can see the edge of the lake where is approaches the canyon...I'll put a large waterfall here to begin with but later, after the Sims arrive, I'm pretty sure this will be where I'll build a dam.  The smaller waterway to the east could very well function as a spillway, dontcha think? 

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg708.imageshack.us%2Fimg708%2F5724%2F66458823.jpg&hash=629e91a00d78ea23b23e7c3b25e692645da705d1)

This is the eastern half of city tile A2, west of B2 and south of A1.  This tile is almost 1/2 lake, so lots of plops!  That 4 cell strip at the eastern edge of the tile is because I started my plops at the western edge of the tile.  I'll fill that in with 3x4's. 

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg59.imageshack.us%2Fimg59%2F9174%2Fa2as.jpg&hash=71ba3910a257b70945ea5eac547eb7e08990e084)

And this is the western edge of the tile, where you can see the land spur I created allowing me to eventually bridge over to tile A2. 

Lastly, a region shot:

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg180.imageshack.us%2Fimg180%2F2470%2Fwaterregion9x12.jpg&hash=f87bff5cdcb6194904467d004240226c14f4264e)

Things are shaping up pretty good, I think.  Next update will be the lake filled in with 3x4's and maybe even including individual TPW tiles, to complete the waterline.  Even the 3x4's are too big to meet perfectly, so smaller individual tiles will be used to complete the shoreline.

That's all for this time around, hope you enjoy!

Lora/LD

superb plop work.

I do skim!  :D Well, anyway, the lake does look much better now...  $%Grinno$%

Your work with David's ploppable water is really interesting. I've never used any other ploppable water than Jeroni's and Peg's, so this work is really interesting as to how other ploppable water works. I think that it could also be very handy to use this water, as when I'm filling in rather large lakes, like you're currently doing, having to use the 2x2 water tiles can take a loooooong time.

I like the idea of having a small rapid stretching across the lake, and that certainly would be a very interesting water feature to have on this lake. I also can't wait to see how you build the waterfall an the dam; whatever you do, however, I know it'll be great.  :)

Ethan

PS-

I need a LOTer type person to help me develope a *secret* project.  I have the props I need, just don't know how to assemble them and make a new ploppable lot out of them and...no time to learn right now.

My little garage project client has sent 2 more small projects my way, so that is excellent news.  Also, very fun and interesting, my prodigious sewing skills are also being put to work, as I have been contracted by a local non-profit to create costumes for a short movie they are filming here in Seattle called "Star Kids".  Visit thier web site at www.StarKidsMovie.com and look for the beautiful color graphics of the 4 Star Kids...those are the costumes I'll be making (and no, I did not do the artwork...I wish!).  I'm also making a Wizard's costume for the film.  And...also fun and interesting, I've been contacted by a female pro wrestler in training to make her some ring attire.  Now, won't THAT be interesting!

So, if you happen to be an accomplished LOTer, please let me know, I could use some help!

Lora/LD

I'd be glad to help you Lora. I've been working on LOTting for quite a while now, and I'd be glad to help, and actually can this time...  :D

Ethan

very nice, this land look amazing & this canyon,  :o, beautifull  :thumbsup:

Its coming along nicely. Your progressing fast and im glad to finaly start seeing terraforming. Hope to see more  :thumbsup:

Nice to see the terraforming getting started here!  Everything I'm seeing so far says that the highland lake was a good choice!  That massive canyon is a fantastic feature, you've done a great job creating a source for it!  Looking forward to seeing more!

Hi Lora, good to hear that real life is going well for you at the moment. Your latest experiments have encouraged me to take another look at rivit's coastal modd and I decided to use it in my region.
Your work on the lakes looks very promising. I am sure this will be really great once it is finished.

If you need a LOTer, my services are available ;D

Well, this isn't exactly an update, in that I don't have any pics to share or anything, really, about the region.  I take that back...I have been working sporadically on the big lake in the NW corner of the region and have actually pretty much finished one part of it.  But, I don't have any pics, boo hoo. 

What I DO have is news of another sort, more personal, I guess.  The client who sent a nice big fat project my way back in March has sent me and even nicer, bigger, fatter project this last week, or rather...several project all bundled into one.  The new project is 5 (as in "five") new homes, all of which need to be completed and submitted for permits by the end of June, 8 weeks from now.  It's a TON of work in a very short period of time and he's paying me less than half of my pre-housing-implosion fee, but hey, it's still work and enough money to solve many of my most pressing financial problems, so I accepted the work gratefully.  Four of the 5 houses were started a couple of years ago, so I will be able to pick up where the last drafter left off, saving me quite a bit of time.  Of those 4, there are only 2 distinct floor plans, the other 2 are the same basic plans, just with different elevations, so the plans for them will be very fast to complete.  Only one of the five is a completely new house that will need to be drated up from scratch, from designer sketches through to permit documents.  My client estimates the whole shebang, all 5 houses, at about 300 hours, so I am going to be a busy camper for the next 2 months. 

And it's funny but, it seems that when I'm busy, I am able to find more time to play around than I do when I am idle.  My energy level goes up when I'm working, so rather than this MD going silent while I work on this big new project, it's liable to pick up steam again.

In other RL news, my dental woes have been slowly creeping up on me since last fall and are finally at the point where I can no longer hope to put them off.  The last project paid well enough for me to get started shopping around for dentists and solutions.  I was appalled to learn what everything was going to cost and depressed to realize I was going to have to opt for the lowest cost...and temporary...fixes.  This new contract has put the gap-toothed smile back on my face though, as I will be able now to afford, if not the luxury version of dental care, at least a long term solution.  I have oral surgery scheduled for the 17th of this month...gonna lose the last 3 of my upper teeth.  It's depressing to think about, but it's been a long time coming so I've just about got myself in the mental space I need to be in.  In many ways it will be a gift to have the teeth gone...these past 10-12 years I've been losing my upper teeth at the rate of 1-2 a year and they always give me pain and problems for months before I finally resign myself to having it taken care of.  My upper denture has never fit properly, never meshed well with the smaller lower one, and never matched my remaining upper teeth very well, so besides being uncomfortable to wear, my vanity has been wounded as well, knowing the smile that used to earn me many compliments was so very compromised.  I'm getting both the upper and lower dentures remade completely from scratch, brand new, so they will fit with each other and my smille will (hopefully) return to something I will be proud to flash around. 

So...really, lots of good news this past week. 

The region is coming along slowly, but nicely.  I've filled in the entire lake with the smaller 3x4 cell "water table" tiles, so my shorelines are starting to emerge more realistically.  At the far western edge of the lake, in city tiles A1 and A2, I've also completed plopping the smaller PW tiles, so those areas of the lake itself are complete in terms of water.  I worked quite a while one evening on a small section of lake in A1, creating beaches and planting trees and other flora and am pretty happy with how it turned out.  I'm using a lot of eucalyptus in this area of the region...the soil here is thin and rocky, the elevation is pretty high, and I think of it as a fairly arid area, so the dusty greens and grey seem to work well.  I'm keeping most of the flora near the water and leaving large tracts bare or sparsely planted...I want a dry prairie look. 

My good buddy ecoba/Ethan is working on the lots I requested help with and I am thinking they will be my first built sturctures in this region.  I'd like to completely finish the lake area before I do that though, and it's a slow process.  I'm planting everything manually so far, not using any broad foresting brush tools, and getting the beaches right is also time consuming. 

So stay tuned, folks.  I should have some pics up soon.

Lora/LD

I'm about done with these lots Lora, which in my terms means a couple more lotting periods on them, but they should turn out great, I hope. The grid limitations of this game tend to bug me, but I've recently found some good fences and SG does have horses, so there will be a corral. I've yet to add campfires or see if I have an appropriate smoke effect, but I'm about to go into the LE in a minute and I'll see.

Well, this whole new job sounds excellent Lora. I'm certainly glad that you have been getting some work because you sound like an excellent architect, and I think that you'll come up with something great for the fifth house; I've currently been working with my parents on their bathroom renovation and helping them with designs and such, and I hope that our final product will turn out nice, as this whole thing is so they can sell their house.

I'm glad to hear that your work is giving you new inspiration, in some words, I suppose. The process of getting some good work done has given me that feeling that you are describing as well. As long as I finish everything I know I need to before I get on SC4D or open up the game I feel like I can get a lot more done in the game.

I've been using a lot of Eucalyptus trees in my region recently, and if you look on the 6th and 7th pages of my MD you see them a lot. I have however, started to not use them as much as they weren't giving me quite the look that they wanted, and they seem like they can be very overdone very quickly, however you may be using different eucalyptus trees than I had been,  so yours may look great. I bet that they will look great whatever way you use them though, you always seem like you have a thing for great natural settings. Are you using any ground flora in this area as well? Yan has been able to make some great dry looking areas in Corsica, and he really uses the brown rye grasses well, I think that they're an excellent asset to any drier areas.

Ethan  :)

Also, Happy Birthday, my friend.

Well, it's been almost a month since I stopped by or opened my game, so I figured an update (of sorts) is in order.  No pics and little MD news, tho, so sorry, not yet.

I have been incredibly busy, usually working until 11-12 at night, and when I finally turn to an hour or so of play, I'm just too tired for SC.  Many nights I just zone out behind solitaire until I finally win a game, then I go to bed.

Ethan, meanwhile, has been crafting up some custom lots for me and forwarded his finished product to me earlier this week.  I finally got around to unzipping and installing them this evening and bad news, they are not working for me for some reason.  I have an email off to him so figure out what is going wrong, so hopefully we'll get that figured out. 

I feel badly about being away for so long, but really, I have been slammed.  It's wonderful to have work waiting for me every day after almost 2 years with no work at all, and I have really dived into the projects rather completely.  Besides working, I've also been spending a LOT of time in various dentists' chairs, finally able to address the many and serious issues I had regarding my oral health.  I have almost a month of denatl "time off" before the next round starts, which is good because the work projects are beginning to fall rather badly behind schedule and the next month could be very crazy catching up.  My client's client is very slow at giving my client the approval needed, which means we can't proceed with work or have to jump to another part of the project.  Also, my client is personally slammed, juggling his own work load plus that of his equally slammed staff.  I am often working ahead without authorization, praying I won't have to make too many changes later if I guess wrong, just to keep my end of the process moving forward.  So far that's worked well enough that no one is hollering at me for not getting the work done on time and as promised...and I want to make sure it stays that way.  If we fail to make our June 24th deadline, I want to make sure nobody points a finger at me. 

This new set of work projects has really been a godsend to me.  For the first time in over 2 years I'm not stressing 24/7 about money...I'm maybe down to 16/6.  I'm actually able to afford to go out once in a while, so instead of filling my empty hours in front of the computer, as few as they are, I meet my roommate for a late night drink or rent myself a movie.  I've been able to accept a few social invitations as well, so I'm feeling a lot less isolated and out-of-touch, which is very nice.  But it also goes towards explaining my long absence for both the game and this MD.

Tonite, wanting to finally try out Ethan's new lots, and going back into the game and taking a quick peek at Abajo and reminding myself where I was with it, fired up my want to play again.  I just have one small corner of the most northwest corner of the region planted and ready for humans to move into, but it really looks pretty good to me.  I really do want to try to find some to take some pics and post them here, so hopefully that will happen soon.  No dates or promises, but I will try.

Lora/LD

Hi Lora, it is nice to hear from you again and to know that you are still around. I wish you all the best with your projects.

Again, not much of an update and no pics, but thought I'd let you know I AM playing and gathering ideas for the next "real" update.

Ethan (ecoba) and I are still working out why the lots he made for me are not displaying correctly in my game.  He had some dependencies I didn't know about and needed to download, but some things are still not showing up, so we'll keep working on it.  What I am able to see so far looks good though, so hopefully when we get all the bugs worked out, you'll all be happy with the results.

I spent about an hour or so the other night working on a new area of the upper lake, adding beaches and trees.  It had been so long since I worked on the first section that I had forgotten which things I had used and how, so this new area of beach looks a little different from the original, but they are close enough to blend together pretty well. 

One of the things I had been missing was scrub and grasses to fill in the areas between the ends of the beach and the start of the trees.  I knew I had downloaded the files I wanted for that, just could not find them in my plug-ins folder.  I have a second, discreet, folder I call "SC4Mods" in the "My Documents" folder that is kinda my default location for all game downloads, so I was finally able to locate some of the files I had been missing and copy them into my plig-ins folder.  I did this last night and ran out of steam before I could test things out and see if I had indeed acquired the files I had been looking for.  I am running out of steam again this evening, but think I have enough left to load the game and see if what I want and need are there, but not much else.

Blending the beaches into the surround landscape is really the last thing I have left to do before taking and posting pics, so please be patient and check back. 

Lora/LD

Good luck. Hope to see some pics soon. :thumbsup:

,marsh  :satisfied:

Hope to see some pictures up soon, Lora. Sorry for the troubles that the dependencies are causing, hopefully the last eMail will solve everything up.

Ethan :)

this seems like one hell of a project.....if i may make a suggestion i think that a delta at the end of the rivers would look great