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P.R. Crastina's Travels

Started by evarburg, October 06, 2018, 07:09:50 PM

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mattb325

Beautiful! I love the water reflections. They are subtle, but just enough to make your incredible MMP work pop. :thumbsup:

PaPa-J

The ripple effect you have on the water is awesome!
Lighten up, just enjoy life,
smile more, laugh more,
and don't get so worked up
about things.

evarburg

We all have, surely, at least one tile that ran away from us ? Thille was is for me. I was trying the modular airport I had found and... the rest was hystery. (Sorry for the poor qualty of the tile overview...)



1. How Things Change

Thille was once a quiet agricultural community of little hamlets, devoted to their fields and pastures. Then it became the dormitory of Strosswald, the nearby, bigger city east of it. But those vast stretches of flat land also became the target of the region developers : it was the ideal place to put a bigger, more modern [but still not very realistic, ahem...] airport. And so farmers were bought off or expropriated, amidst much anger, demonstrations and civil disorder. But the Juggernaut of Modernization knows nothing too big not to be rolled over and so the airport came to be. And Thille began to Develop.











The Thille airport is a hub of communications (passengers and freight both) for the whole region, and not one but two bus shuttles link it to the city (here's the north one, near Northey Lake, upper right). A heliport and a big passenger terminal, at the end of a short highway, also help commuters.





Thille's farmers have so far successfully kept any highways from coming farther in, as they don't want to loose any more farming land, (especially has they successfully reclaimed the marshy terrain of the ancient riverbed). But it's the subject of heated debates at the City Council. Agriculture in Thille is still going strong and well protected, even though it is slowly gnawed at here and there. The ancient river bed, for instance, is carefully zoned so the residential and commercial encroachments do not become irreparable.







https://photos.smugmug.com/THILLE-HELIPORT-FIELDS/i-7GKLnpG/0/38adf875/XL/5.Farm%20%26%20Energy-XL.jpg [/img]









But the city has developped beyond its mayor's wildest expectations.


89James89

Looks lovely. I love how the farmers are being stubborn despite the fact that theres a load of mid rise apartments on the other side of there hedgerows lol.

The only thing I find a bit off is the height of the bridges but I realise that if you want them ferry proof they need to be that high.

Cheers

evarburg

I was experimenting with Simgoober residentials at the time -- and I was too dumb to a) zone accordingly and b) to bulldoze in order to get or to plop some more realistic res. where I wanted them !

As for the bridges, yes -- in fact, I never understood (and still don't)  why some were like the foreground one and others like the other -- I didn't really choose them so that ferries could pass under, if I remember right...

mattb325

So many great pictures, but I really love the diagonal tree-belt that separates the fields from the residentials...it's like a miniature boundary between two towns

kbieniu7

First time I look at this topic. I tried to read the story and take a longer while to look at pictures, but I must admit, that the amount of content is quite challenging to handle it at once. I'll try to look longer at it later :)

The idea of a story of a person is a neat idea! I like the approach to visit different cities and region toghether with the public :) At the very beginning, after I opened the thread, I had a "maxis-alert" in my head, but after a while I realised that it was a false one! ;) If I have to chose something that I like the most from the "building" perspective, that are forests and nature. Some shots of mountain trails and beaches are stunning and shows this diversity of a countrywide travel.

Also, this oversaturation that is visible in many images reminds me times of around year 2007-2008 when it was quite popular technique, as I remember ;)

Regards!
Kamil

Thank you for visiting Kolbrów, and for being for last ten years!

evarburg

Hey, thanks for reminding me how old I am  ;D

But seriously, the oversaturation of some picts has more to do with my haphazard use of Photoshop than with any way-back-then trend. I went from one computer to the next, i.e. from one graphic card to the next and it changed the way the picts looked and I tried to compensate and...

evarburg

2. Northey Lake

The first area to develop way back then was, bizarrely, away north from the airport : Northey Lake. The lake is a bizarre thing in itself : a small salted water lake, the implausible remnant of the sea that used to cover the region. Some "hippies", as they were called at the time, came to build a Research Institute for Sustainable Fishing Industries (now known as RISFI). And they decided to build it on the water, a decision that made them the butt of many jokes from the locals – but gained them a grudging respect when they pulled it off. The RISFI fish farms now provide excellent, fresh seafood (way inland...) to all Thille's restaurants, as well as to the whole region, and are not laughed at anymore, especially as the Institute brings in tourists and scientific conferences. P. R. was disappointed : no bathing in that lake. She compensated by visiting the Institute and enjoying a hearty bouillabaisse at its restaurant.













3. Work for the walking man (and woman)

Thille is a city made for P. R. who loves walking : almost everybody walks to work – the Thillois are in excellent health ! That was not really intended – industries came flocking in as soon as the airport was built and the city's fatherd scrambled to house all the people that came in their wake, with little regards to city planning. But it worked nicely out for everybody in the end. There is very little car traffic and the buses are almost always half-full at best (but the city has the means to keep them running and does, mostly for outsiders !)















[imghttps://photos.smugmug.com/THILLE-INDUSTRY/i-H4csB88/0/acff1bc4/XL/9Industry7closer-XL.jpg]http://[/img]





As industry is almost all high-tech and low-pollution, its vicinity is not a deterrent, and residentials are in high demand anyway, even near the new recycling center and the PagenTM Water Treatment Plant.



Tyberius06

Wonderful pictures!
What is that ferry terminal on the 2nd picture? Looks pretty good. I like the futuristic part of the bay. Thanks for sharing these pictures!

- Tyberius
You may find updates about my ongoing projects into my development thread here at SimCity 4 Devotion: Tyberius Lotting Experiments
or over there on Simtropolis into the Tyberius (Heretic Projects) Lotting and Modding Experiments.
I'm also member of the STEX Custodian and working on different restoration projects on behalf of non-anymore-active custom content creators.
Current projects: WMP Restoration and SimCity Polska Restoration.
Member of the NAM Team and RTMT Team.


PaPa-J

The past two updates are wonderful! Great work!  &apls The airport in the previous update is outstanding, and I like the fish farm in the last update.  :thumbsup:
Lighten up, just enjoy life,
smile more, laugh more,
and don't get so worked up
about things.

evarburg

#132
Thank you ! I don't have much credit to take for the airport, it is a modular one by SimcityFuturist  https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/27006-regional-airport-v1-road-enabled/ (in nine, easy to plop parts) that you just plop there and tinker with a little on the Freight TE end. Revisiting it now, I am thinking that it could be made more up-to-date with just a bit of TLC lotting, which I might do once I'm finished with my relots backlog. It's perfect for the lazy bones and non-airport savvy like me !  ;D

evarburg

Relics of the Past

Thille is mostly a modern city now, but at least three churches hint at its past : The Old Church (Saint Ermentrude), which was once the main piece of a fortified town long gone since, Saint-Francis, and the smallest, Saint-Apotolska, built by the first immigrants in the region (Polish farmers). Saint-Ermentrude and Saint-Apotolska were the biggest, in fact the only, towns of the place way back then. Only their churches remains. They have been absorbed, as all their much smaller sisters, by the modern city. Those churches' proud spires, once the highest buildings in the region, are now dwarfed by condos towers and such. So it goes.











Easy Living

Thille's citizens enjoy all the benefit of the big city with not too much of its drawbacks. Sports and Culture...



On the Right Bank, in front of City Hall (upgraded many times as the city was booming) one megaplex, aptly albeit unimaginatively named The Megaplex, provides popular films and fun for all ages – having killed most of the city's other small movie theaters in the process ; for good measure, there is also an IMAX theater.









However, The Moondance theater, in the suburbs, has managed to survive by offering quality programming and thematic film festivals.



Closer to Downtown, the Rivard Convention Center (named after the first mayor) doubles as the City Theater and Opera (the accoustics are to die for, the afficionados say). This neighbourhood is in fact the cultural hub of the city, with the Rivard Center, its subterranean semi-open commercial Plaza and the RKO Radio Building, which also sports a much reknown auditorium.











evarburg

(Well, P. R. Crastina's travel album is open again!)

Thille's Entertaining Commercials

Although the fields rather abruptly begin at its suburbs, Thille is a prosperous modern city, where commerce and services are well developped. The airport is no stranger to that, as witnessed by the commercials close to the airport bus shuttle, or the big office and residential building in downtown.









In all modern cities, Malls small and big are often places of entertainment, where you go buy stuff – which can be entertaining in itself – but also to meet friends, have a nice cup of something or other and some fun. Thille's twist on that is that most of its big commercial centers are also cultural centers. The case in point is the Desjardine Commerce Center, only known locally as "Omega Blue". Its architect, Paule-Marie Desjardine, was the daughter of one of Northey Lake's RISFI "hippies", but no one laughed at her when she proposed her plan for the new commercial center. It was instead officially hailed as a splendidly daring project (dissenting voices were drowned in the applauds). Whatever the Thillois thought of it then, they love coming there now and go all the way to the upper floor restaurants and lounges for a look at the river and its banks stretching in both directions.











Last but not least, companion to the small, old City Hall, some distance from Blue on the Left Bank, there is the Public Library – affectionately dubbed "The Spaghetti", another Desjardins's design. It hosts workshops of all kinds, literary festivals (guess what P. R. went to Thille for !) and the Art Department of the distributed regional university.














mattb325

Good to see another entry! That curvy building is so eye-catching. Is it dmscopios?

evarburg

Thank you, Matt, for accompanying me over the 10 000 line mark !  :) And I wish I still knew -- that city is long gone and, at the time, I didn't keep a list of the plugins I used in this or that tile. It may be Di Scorpio, but I don't find any "Heywood" looking like that in his folder (it seems to be what is written on the thing) although there is that gigantic Heywood "Inn".

Tyberius06

Yepp, it is his work! It was restored on STEX a while back by TowerDude.

Heywood In by DmScopio
You may find updates about my ongoing projects into my development thread here at SimCity 4 Devotion: Tyberius Lotting Experiments
or over there on Simtropolis into the Tyberius (Heretic Projects) Lotting and Modding Experiments.
I'm also member of the STEX Custodian and working on different restoration projects on behalf of non-anymore-active custom content creators.
Current projects: WMP Restoration and SimCity Polska Restoration.
Member of the NAM Team and RTMT Team.

AsimPika3172

I loves Sim City forever!

PaPa-J

Nice entry!  There are some wonderful BAT's you are showcasing.
Lighten up, just enjoy life,
smile more, laugh more,
and don't get so worked up
about things.