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Show us your . . . . current projects

Started by keithsed, February 08, 2007, 07:44:42 PM

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APSMS

That is an incredible looking seaport, at least from a distance. I admire your patience, as I do not really have the kind of stamina it takes to build a proper one of those.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

My Mayor Diary San Diego: A Reinterpretation

Moe31

FrankU: Thank you! I used a lot of your material (we can see the famous portainers)! I'm currently on travel for work and i'll be back next week, i'll post a few pictures in the shoreline/seaport section, but only a few, I'm thinking about opening a city journal, but I want to finish the main city before that!

compdude787: Thanks a lot!

APSMS: Thanks so much! It takes a little amount of time, but it's a real pleasure since I've planned a lot of stuff and once you separate different parts of the seaport, it becomes funnier!

kbieniu7

I agree, the seaport with diagonal piers and docks looks brilliant from the region  :)
Thank you for visiting Kolbrów, and for being for last ten years!

Ralfger

#783
A map I am working on sinces ages - learing by doing. Still a lot to do but I´m rather satisfied with the northern part. At least with the central river and it´s delta.  ()stsfd()
Special thanks go to to Ernestmaxis for saving the file  :thumbsup:
I have no clue how to make the mountains and hills more realistic. Suggestions are warmly welcome!
As far as I know it should be possible to work on the map even with started regions, right? I really would love to start my first city....

vortext

Wow Moe31 that looks awesome!  &apls Would really like to see some city pictures.  :thumbsup:

Nice looking region Ralfger! And yes it is possible to use the Terraformer while also playing the region, just be sure to lock any started city tiles when you open the region in Terraformer so they don't get saved over.
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

Ernestmaxis

Im curious about the details! Love to see the first city! Keeps us updated!

kbieniu7

#786
Hey, Ralfger! Nice project you have here! I also have made my region by myself, using terraformer and in-game tools, so I can give you some advice :)

First of all, like vortext said, after you start your region you can use Terraformer. It's a marvelous tool, that allow to . However, vortext mentioned also to protect started cities not to have them saved over... but personally, I don't do that! I do modify already existing cities and when saving I chose the option to save changes but not erase established cities (hidden behind "no" button). For now, I haven't had any erros related to this.

1. First of all - water. Even though you're in the mountains. It's better to terraform with thinking not about mountain ranges but about water catchement areas (drainage basins)*. Bear in mind that rivers are everywhere. Water drops from the rainfall and any point need to find its way downstream... right down to the sea.

So, avoid creating small basins without outflow. In real, they would fullfill creating a lake and after reaching the top, water would flow further**

I used to make the same mistake back in the past until I put a river somewhere in the mountains... and had to reterraform everything below.

2. Secondly - the main rivers. Rivers in flat areas tend to meander. Yours seem to bit a little bit to straight sometimes, in few places you could make them winding.

3. Try to make a place for a dam - you might want to have one in the future. A narrow valley with steep slopes, in area of high elevation.

4. Now about mountains and terrain shapes - mountain ranges are... ranges and tend to have a continuous "centerline" that makes their general direction and layout. This line is called "ridge" (Gebirgsgrat in German).

Below I marked on your region few areas without outflow (red circles) and proposed main ridges (yellow)

What is more, I'll show it on the example of my region. With blue lines I marked rivers (note that from each place water can flow downstream!). With red lines I marked main ridges. With thin purple line I marked few examples of catchements. The image is high resolution in a link below:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzbCDgJovefZWEt1T2hoVDJFUGM


*A drainage basin or catchment basin is an extent or an area of land where all surface water from rain, melting snow, or ice flows to a single point at a lower elevation (usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another body of water, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean). It is very important to know and feel what a catchement area is.



** Excluding very dry regions. Or very big no-outflow areas (like Grand basin in western US or Jordan Valley), that creates their own closed system, where instead of sea there is a lake (like Great Salt Lake or Dead Sea) big enough, that amount of water evaporated from it equals to amout of waters that flows in from rivers.

I hope, that you understood what I generally mean... sorry for any mistakes, I was writing it quite quickly. This is some knowledge that I gained after years of trial and error terraforming and region shaping :) Feel free to ask more (in fact, hydrology and hydrotechnics is my profession, so I know something about that :D )

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

Ralfger

@vortex: Thank you! And I thought so but as soon as I started SC4 after terraforming in a city under development (locked!) I faced a ctd until I removed the whole region  ()what()

@Ernestmaxis: Thanks again and I´ll do for sure - it may take a while....

@kbieniu7:
First of all thank you very much for your great advice and the effort! What you describes is exactly what I have in mind for my region - a dam for water power and reservoir, a plateau for a skiing resort, small creeks, waterfalls and rivers running down the hills into the main rivers, a canal connecting the rivers between the moutain ridges, impressive cliffs by the sea... Imagination is without limit but - a rather huge but - I don´t have the knowlege to achieve it at the moment.  :crytissue: E.g. shaping of mountains: I end up with eiter cliffs and deep valleys or those silly round lows. So I take my chance to fire away my questions (not only regarding the water system but mainly technical stuff if that´s ok with you)  ::)


  • It is possible to see the city borders within the Terraformer? Sometimes I face very annoying, unplayable layouts in specific cities.

  • How do I control the level curves during shaping? Using tools like smooth/make valley and so on gives me odd results...

  • What is the trick to path down e.g. a small valley for a later creek made of mmps?

  • Is there a ratio between the size of the tools and the tiles in SC4? I need to get a feeling of proportions e.g. width of a river, size of harbour etc.

  • How do I cap the altitude of hills/mountains without smoothing them to death??

  • How do I avoid terraforming below bulidings of existing cities?

  • Regarding the forking river I still have no idea how to start/connect it to small outflows from the hills. A lake seems to be unrealistic.
Sorry for that long list of questions (I still would have more  "$Deal"$).  ;)

Thanks a lot for your patience and any answer!

kbieniu7

#788
Ralfger, that's fine, although I'm not a pro in Terraformer and have rather trial-and-error knowledge ;)

Quote from: Ralfger on January 18, 2017, 10:20:51 AM
It is possible to see the city borders within the Terraformer? Sometimes I face very annoying, unplayable layouts in specific cities.
I don't think so. I have the same problem. My solution is to have an in-game screenshot of the region with tile borders on and try to navigate with its help, but that's not perfect anyway.
However, I don't care much about city tiles, I try to built as there was no edges, trying to seam everything on both sides of the border. I've even built a dam across two tiles ;D

Quote from: Ralfger on January 18, 2017, 10:20:51 AM
How do I control the level curves during shaping? Using tools like smooth/make valley and so on gives me odd results...
Actually, I don't understand what you said there. Could you explain more?

Quote from: Ralfger on January 18, 2017, 10:20:51 AM
What is the trick to path down e.g. a small valley for a later creek made of mmps?
Hmm... First of all, I try to imagine, how a creek/valley would go. Then, I try to "open" all no-outflow areas on this way (it might create some kind of steps along the future river course. If so, I use "smooth" and then "plain" tools, trying to make the longitidunal slope as consistent as possible. That's quite time consuming unfortunately.

Quote from: Ralfger on January 18, 2017, 10:20:51 AM
Is there a ratio between the size of the tools and the tiles in SC4? I need to get a feeling of proportions e.g. width of a river, size of harbour etc.
If you press "g" key, you toggle the grid (instead of default countour lines). This grid is equal to the in-game grid (1 tile=16x16 meteres). If you know your terrain well, this might help with figuering out where tile borders are located.

Quote from: Ralfger on January 18, 2017, 10:20:51 AM
How do I cap the altitude of hills/mountains without smoothing them to death??
Once again, I'm sure what you mean. If you want to make a mountain (or any other terrain form) that have exact altitude, you should check it with mouse cursor during terraforming (look for a small red dot at the top of the cursor). Below the main window (in the lower right corner) you can see several data - coordinates: x,y and height - they correspond to the point that you are currently pointing with the cursor.

Quote from: Ralfger on January 18, 2017, 10:20:51 AM
How do I avoid terraforming below bulidings of existing cities?
Like vortext said: just after loading your region into Terraformer, you can chose which cities you want to lock. No changes will be made to those cities (all changes you make over them will immediately and automatically "undo") as well as none of them will be saved.
However, if for example you want to terraform just a part of existing city (like you had built up just half of the tile and you want to terraform the other half)... then you need to remember where exactly the buildings stands and just avoid terraforming this places.

Quote from: Ralfger on January 18, 2017, 10:20:51 AM
Regarding the forking river I still have no idea how to start/connect it to small outflows from the hills. A lake seems to be unrealistic.

You mean to connect MMP water with "real" one? Well, that is a big question to all of the players ;) In one place I made a dam - upstream was plopable water (as a lake) and downstream was the "real one". I ploped a waterfall generator, so it imitated a spillway and covered the beginning. In the rest of situation I just plop MMP water as far in the "real" one as possible (with making a little estuary with "real" water), but it's not always nice-looking...
You can check two of my updates, where I made such things.
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=5922.msg422511#msg422511
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=5922.msg514846#msg514846

Hope that my answers help a little. If I wrote something unclear or you have more question, don't hesitate to ask! :)
Thank you for visiting Kolbrów, and for being for last ten years!

art128

Quote from: Ralfger on January 18, 2017, 10:20:51 AM
It is possible to see the city borders within the Terraformer? Sometimes I face very annoying, unplayable layouts in specific cities

Is that what you are looking for?

I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

M4346

Morning devotees!  ;D

I've been working on some (re)texturing for the past few days, mainly to relot (CP's residentials and other lots) and modify some textures, in particular the AC airports textures, to match the MGB mod(s) I use.

I'm absolutely obsessed with making everything match up  ::) ;D

Here's the results, for the airports (click for larger):

Small Airport (Stage 3)





Medium Airport (Stage 5)





Large Airport (Stage 9)




The image below shows some of the re-lotted CP residentials, and shows a bit of my other work...

I've modified the TGIs for the Maxis (and SFBT) medium wealth trails / parks and the medium wealth (weird off green) grass to match MGB's mod(s) I use and to replace the MW trails with the HW (black) trails.

While not the most realistic looking parking lots, etc., it is an interim (and easy) solution, the long-term and more arduous task being re-lotting them.

I hated how the parking lots of commercial buildings didn't line up if they grow next to one another, so I thought of fixing it this way.

I must say, I'm very pleased with the result  ()stsfd() :P


You'll also see I'm quite obsessed with the SMP sandstone base texture... I hated how lots didn't always align / match the sidewalk texture, so I've replaced (modified the TGIs) of most in-game base textures so that they now match - and more importantly, line up!  $%Grinno$%

Bedtime for me! Flight to Cape Town later today...  :-[
New Horizons Productions
Berethor ♦ beskhu3epnm ♦ blade2k5 ♦ dedgren ♦ dmscopio ♦ Ennedi
emilin ♦ Heblem ♦ jplumbley ♦ moganite ♦ M4346 ♦ papab2000
Shadow Assassin ♦ Tarkus ♦ wouanagaine

vester


Ralfger

#792
@art128: How stupid I am -never seen that :D  Thanks, now that issue is solved for sure!

@kbieniu7:Thanks again for your really helpful answers! Terraforming becomes more managable... Regarding my question about the level curves an example might help: I want to fine-tune a riverbank using flattening or smoothing on a level curve. Sometimes is goes to the right expanding the beach, and on other occasions it goes to the left, narrowing it. And it doesn´t seem to have any influence on the result placing the red dot on either the left or the right side of the curve. ()what()

I gave it a quick try to start a city and indeed -no problem so far :)! Kings Road to Königsfurt


By the way: Are there any diagonals for Stanleys wonderful seawalls?

kbieniu7

No I get what you mean, Ralfger. I had the same issue, it's quite challenging to smooth it correctly... I do not have answer there, I just use trials-and-errors rule :/ By the way I also forgot about this option that Arthur posted :D
That's a nice terrain there. Hope you will show us more of your developement! What about starting an MD? :)

To M4346, that's pretty nice lotting! I hardly lot anything larger than several square tiles large, one small town in LE took me two years :D Hope, you have more time to show us something from your New Frontier as well ;)
Thank you for visiting Kolbrów, and for being for last ten years!

deora

Development in my Game might have slowed down,but it never really halted.Manhattan is growing,slowly but steady.Filling all those Holes between the big Landmarks and well known Buildings is surprisingly hard and really painful.I also noticed that the good old NYBT Team seems to be on a long Hiatus or died off :(

Anyway,this is what i can show you right now...

This is where the Quensborough Bridge meets Manhattan...




I was totally jazzed to see that someoe made a new Chanin Building which looks Waaaaay better than the old one (sorry) and i immediatly had to place it. @Diego Del Llano really improved his Skills and the Quality on his recent Uploads is outstanding.

The Area around Chrysler Building still needs a lot of filling but i love how everything lights up at Night







The Sutton Place Area next to Queensborough Bridge.

The Waterfront was redeveloped to satisfy the Needs for Office Jobs











The Turtle Bay Area with Tudor City and the legendary UN Headquarter.




And a small Overview about the whole Area i`m working on right now.



I hope you like my newest Pictures.

siemanthepieman

I have been working on building up the agriculture in my region and also a state forest. Lots of MMP trees = slow going.

From 20 March


To tonight


Still a way to go!

Bipin

#796
It's been a while since I've posted here, so without further adieu...



Been working on this suburban area for some months now. I'm trying to build a "model" contemporary suburb of sorts.


Simmer2

Welcome back D :)

That scene is reminiscent of one of Hamilton's outskirts  ;)

Cheers

Nick
________________________________________________________________________________

art128

That looks great! But please change that train tunnel... ;D
Also remember to resize your pictures. :)
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

feyss

You managed to make it look quite organic. Great job!  :thumbsup: