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Adara - Update 184 - March 26, 2012

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

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Sciurus

It's a very beautiful rural place, I love your river, but I don't really like the industrial estate, and good luck for the continuation :thumbsup:

Guillaume
L'atelier d'architecture
* * * * * Longwy * * * * *

Feroxx


Simpson

Hi!!
Nice update 3 there, this is looking so beautiful. The river is incredible my friend, it's superb :thumbsup:
Also the general picture is fantastic  :)
My new city is now here
The région of Kaikoura

Teaser of Lopsas[+ How did I do it?]:Lopsas

thundercrack83

Hi, there, Battlecat!

Adara is off to a great start! Your farm areas and the ploppable streams are just exquisite, my friend!

I'll be keeping an eye on what's happening here, that's for sure!

Dustin

Battlecat

Update 4: Farms and Forests

Hi everyone!  I think as of this update I've almost finished half this map tile.  All the map tiles are going to be largest size, I really do prefer them that way.  Anyhow, on with today's messages:

Dedgren: Welcome to Adara!  Ahh yes, the maps!  I haven't decided how I'm going to handle them this time around.  The big problem I'm facing is make sure it doesn't feel like I'm back at work when I'm building them, since I'm employed making maps for work as well.  But I'm sure I can figure something out, I think I've got some better software for the job this time.  But I think I'll hold off until at least this map tile is finished.  Thanks for visiting! 

antimonycat: Thanks for your kind words!  Ironically, seeing your urban areas in your journal makes me quite enthusiastic about heading in that direction later in my diary here! 

io_bg: Welcome!  The transparent water is a real pleasure to work with, especially when combined with the Rural Renewal Project flora!

rooker1: Thanks for stopping in and for your kind words!  Thanks for your glowing assessment, I'll be trying hard to continue to please!  I'll have to look at the SC4 pictures contest at some point in here.

nova vesfalo: Welcome to Adara!  I've always found that the details really bring out the best in a region.  And these days there are so many potential options for details it's almost overwhelming!  Those cow feeders are one of my favorites though!

Sciurus: Hello again!  Glad you stopped in again.  You're absolutely right about that industrial estate; I appreciate your honesty about its appearance.  Honestly, aesthetically pleasing industrial estates have always caused me grief, especially when demand is still low.

Feroxx: Welcome to Adara!  I'll try to up the photo quota, but I'm shooting for a minimum of 8 per update here.  Thanks for your enthusiasm! 

Simpson: Glad you're enjoying all the picture!  Thanks for stopping by again!

thundercrack83: Welcome!  Thanks for your kind words! 

On another note, it would appear that this diary received it's 500th  view sometime on February 19th.  Thanks to everyone for visiting!  Now on with the update!

4-1: First of all, here is the area I plan on developing today.  You can already see the first farm is in place here. 


4-2: The treed areas are intended to be a small pair of streams that are completely forested over.  Of course, by the end of the update these will be completely blended into the edge of the farmland, but that's about how these areas would look in the real world, at least in the area I live in!  Here's a small pond just up in the hills along this hidden stream.


4-3: The issue I've encountered recently is what should the mountain forests look like?  I like diverse forests, we've got those here in the Vancouver area of BC, but in terms of gameplay, my goal is blending many types of lots together in the mountains.  I'll be particularly making use of Mountain Theme Pack components created by the talented Pegasus in the future.  As such, it is necessary to include some of his pine trees in the area so they don't look completely out of place. 


4-4: Combining the above  trees with Jeronij's Elm Forest controller that I've been using on the lowlands (except the streamsides) yields the following. 


4-5: And higher up in the mountains, I'll be using the west coast rainforest controller by cycledogg, to get this result:


4-6: Naturally the style above is fairly involved but strangely the blend you see there does occur along the boundary between human impacted land and natural landscapes in this part of the world.  It's even more common in second growth forests where logging occurred in the past 100 years. 

4-7: Anyhow, with that being sorted out, its time to zone some farms in the valley.  As FrankU pointed out a while back, the Mediterranean style homes don't quite fit this region, at least not in large numbers.  It hadn't quite clicked when these shots were taken.  As I mentioned, I'll be allowing a couple of oddballs, but not to many.  The one visible in this shot will stay.


4-8: And on to the detailing of the farm. This is the farm I showed in the first shot.  The power supply for the valley runs up a right of way beside the farm. 


4-9: And here is a shot of the finished valley from a different angle.  I'll be revisiting the two Mediterranean style farms in the upper left corner of this image in a future update. 


As always thanks for all your comments and suggestions!  See you all again soon! 

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Simpson

Hi!
Again a fantastic update my friend, those fields are looking superb.
The last picture is incredible  &apls
I'm looking forward to the next update

Take care,
David
My new city is now here
The région of Kaikoura

Teaser of Lopsas[+ How did I do it?]:Lopsas

Sciurus

That's a very beautiful place!
An I love the Olympic Terrain Mod, which is very good with those fields ans trees &apls

Guillaume :thumbsup:
L'atelier d'architecture
* * * * * Longwy * * * * *

Battlecat

Update 5: More Farms but also with some new stuff!

Greetings everyone!  Welcome to the fifth update.  You all many have noticed that I've been managing two updates per week.  I'll try to keep it up as long as possible, or at least as long as my picture buffer holds out!  Today I've finally managed to get the opportunity to show a couple of new things in Adara.  Before I get to that, first things first:

David (Simpson): Greetings once again!  If you like that last image, I have high hopes that you'll also like what's coming up in the next update! 

Guillaume (Sciurus): Thanks for the kind words!  The Olympic terrain mod has been my favorite from the day it was released.  I actually live in the Vancouver region of BC and the mod does an excellent job of approximating the ground texture around here. 

One more thing before I get started today.  I've noticed that many of you use your real first name (I'm assuming that's the case at least ;)) in your signatures at the end of your posts.  As such, when I respond to your comments, I'll use your real name if you are providing it just like I did above.  If you would prefer I didn't do that, just let me know either in the thread or by PM and I'll edit it out.  Now with that all done, here goes the update:

5-1: Today I'm going to move along the railway track away from the urban areas, and in the upstream direction along the meandering river on the valley bottom.  First things first, I'm continuing to detail the waterway.  I'm particularly happy with how this one looked prior to the trees.


5-2: And here is that area now that I've finished up the details!


5-3: Moving further upstream to parts of the river that aren't done yetThis street here is a long gravel access road to a number of farms in the area. Here are two of the farms in this area. 


5-4: Near to those farms, there is a small residential community.  The distance to the main highways is large enough that a small, profitable freight station can operate here.  The traffic is high enough that there are some issues with getting cattle across the railway, so that field in the middle of the junction hasn't been used in a while.  Oh and hey, doesn't that single track railway there look cool!  This will certainly be used more by me in the future!  Thanks very much to the RAM team for all their hard work on the STR, it's just too awesome not too use and I'm certainly looking forward to future incarnations of it. 


5-5: Wondering where that STR branch line leads?  If one was to follow that railway along the road that parallels you, you'd find yourself on a forest service road (MTP logging roads by Pegasus) and eventually at a loading station where raw logs are loaded onto trains.


5-6: The log loading area is quite a classy lot by Pegasus. The fact that the rail is double track through his lot doesn't matter much, with the switches available with STR, it starts to look quite a bit like a pair of sidings to me.


5-7: Of course, we need some more trees to start blending this all together, here's the start on in, along with a bit more of a forest service road that leads to a relatively new cut. 


5-8: And to wrap things up, here's the new logging site, with plopable logging scene details again from Pegasus.


As always visits, comments and criticisms are greatly appreciated!  Thanks for taking the time to stop by! 

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thundercrack83

Wow, you've got the ploppable water use down to a science, my friend! Excellent work! And your forested areas are equally as beautiful. One request, though, and I apologize if someone brought it up already--I'd love to see some of your wonderful shots without the grid on, if you think of it. I just know they'll look all the more stunning!

Can't wait to see more!

Dustin

dedgren

Ploppable water goodness and the STR- I've died and gone to heaven!

I should've guessed you were in the carto trade- I still head over to Terra every so often to look at those maps.


David
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

rooker1

Super job on the ploped stream.  The farms and the curved rail pieces all fit together real nice.  Sorry to sound like a broken record, but it is too bad that you left on the grid.  Ctrl g to turn it off.  ;)
Anyways, I look forward to the next update and mybe some higher views to get a better idea how everything fits together with your town.

Robin  :thumbsup:
Call me Robin, please.

evanator

Great job here Battlecat! Your rural areas are most impressive.  &apls

I like how you manage to tie everything together, ie; STR, Rural Renewal and Pegasus, seamlessly.

Battlecat

Update 6: Grid Removal, Farms and Polishing Older Material

Hello once again!  You know that sinking feeling you get when you realize you've forgotten something?  When I looked at the recent replies I realized I completely forgot about turning the grid off for most of my updates.  I can't go back and fix everything but at least I can fix it going forward.  I've managed to fix about half of todays update with grid free pictures.  I've also added a couple of bonus shots of older material sans grid at the end.  So there is a ton of pictures today! 

But as always first things first:

Dustin (thundercrack83): Thanks for stopping in and for reminding me about the grid.  I can't believe I didn't even notice it again.  Glad to hear you're still enjoying everything.  Hope you like the clean shots below! 

David (dedgren): Couldn't have created that scene without the efforts of you and the rest of the RAM team!  Thanks for your efforts and for your comments! 

Also, thanks for your kind words on Terra particularly the maps.  I recently have had some ideas on an improved method to make maps.  With any luck I might be able to figure something out soon! 

Robin (rooker1):  No worries about sounding like a broken record, I'm more worried about my broken brain!   ;D Apparently it takes a few pokes to get concepts through my thick head.  :-)  I'll try to remember going forward, thanks for mentioning it.  Coming up is the reward for your efforts to pound the idea in to my skull!  Thanks very much!  Also, I'll be putting up an overview of the area in one of the next updates. 

evanator: Welcome to Adara!  There are so many fantastic options for creating excellent rural regions now it's hard to restrain myself! 

6-1: Alright then, here we go!  First on the list, here is an overview of the second urban area.  You can see the ugly industrial area on the right side of the picture, that's going to be fixed up later.  The commercial center of town is built around a roundabout.


6-2: Here's a closer look at some of the residential subdivisions in this area.  An asphalt pathway provides a walking route across town.  One section of it is in the center of this picture in the trees.


6-3: Here's the first draft of the commercial area.  It's not bad, but I want to tweak a few things.


6-4: A couple of parking lots and street connections improve the area significantly.


6-5: I'll come back to the urban core in a future update, just outside of town on a dirt road there is a bulb farm.  Looking at it now, I think I could improve the appearance of that entrance area. 


6-6: And a bit further down the road there is a pair of dairy farms.  One is accessed through town, the other off the highway outside of town.  This is the one on the highway.


6-7: And here's an overview showing the bulb farm and one of the ranches next to the urban area.


6-8: Continuing onwards, on the highway, there are a couple more farms that just got zoned.  They still need some tweaks and details of course though.


6-9: The finished details along the highway near the ranch.


6-10: And here I've finished up another section of the river between the highway and the railway. 


6-11: Another farm near the edge of the detailed corridor.  The fruit farm from earlier has now been detailed with birch trees as a windbreak.


6-12: Next, I finally got a chance to replace a few of the farms that were out of place.  First, the lavender farm from one of the first updates . . .


6-13: . . . becomes a nice little fruit farm.


6-14: And the Mediterranean winery . . .


6-15: Is transformed into a much more appropriate cattle feed supplier.


That would have been all for this update.  However, as I promised, here are a few fresh versions of earlier shots, this time without the grid active!

6-16: A random bit of forest, just because the terrain is so much nicer without the grid.


6-17: This is the original urban core.  I'll be revisiting the second one next time.


6-18: And finally, from update 5, this is a shot of the small community near the STR.


I was hoping to do more, but I don't want to tip my hand on a few areas coming up too soon!  There's still a fair bit more to do on this map tile, but it's coming along faster now that I'm getting the hang of the detailing techniques.  Thanks once again for visiting everyone and for peeking in!

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thundercrack83

Just as I suspected--no grid makes things look that much more spectacular!

Though, I have to say that even with the grid on, things are looking mighty great here, my friend! And don't worry about forgetting, I do it all the time. I've even caught pictures once I've uploaded them that I went back, retook, re-edited, and re-uploaded! I don't suggest you go that far, I'm quite strange!

I can't wait to see more of you work here, my friend! You're doing a splendid job!

Albus of Garaway

Fantastic couple of updates! This is a very inspirational MD, and I think you should be crowned ploppable water god! (Maybe after David...Ha ha!) Great work, and I really look forward to seeing more. :)

guurgkud

Wow... that nature... so realistic!

Looking forward to more!  :thumbsup:
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FrankU

Oh Adara, your ruarl area is really getting perfect!
Beautiful details.

I have one advice: the windmill. I don't know where you got it, but I advise you to take a trip to Simcity Central and download the winmill there: it is by Oppie and it is, in my humble Dutch opinion, much more realistic. But that is maybe only becaus Oppie's mill is a Dutch one....

Swamper77

Quote from: FrankU on February 27, 2009, 12:24:21 PM
Oh Adara, your ruarl area is really getting perfect!
Beautiful details.

I have one advice: the windmill. I don't know where you got it, but I advise you to take a trip to Simcity Central and download the winmill there: it is by Oppie and it is, in my humble Dutch opinion, much more realistic. But that is maybe only becaus Oppie's mill is a Dutch one....

If you are referring to the big windmill with tulips around it, that is a building on a farm lot, not a park/landmark. Oppie's is a park/landmark lot and can't fulfill the same function as the farm one.

-Swamper
You can call me Jan, if you want to.
Pagan and Proud!

io_bg

Really nice work. Every time I check your CJ I get inspired! I'm looking forward to more!
Visit my MD, The region of Pirgos!
Last updated: 28 November