A Guide To Creating A City Journal

[MrCinatit 30]

So, you want to make a city journal.

Hopefully, you are reading this before starting. This might be a lot to go through, but it is important for the success of your journal.

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Part one: The Basics>>

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First...the ten golden rules: 

Images MUST be 800x600 or less

Host your images offsite>>

Give credit where credit is due>>

Be prepared>>

Don't steal someone else's work>>

Don't advertise your journal in another journal>>

Respect your readers>>

Do not get impatient for replies

Update with regularity

Give, and ye shall receive

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Before we get into those too deeply, I would like to cut-and-paste a post made by Dirk when the City Journal forum was first created. The rules still apply:

 >>

"Guidelines:

1. If you're starting a journal, be sure to clearly let us know if you are using any cheats or special trainers.  We don't want to be misled.

2. Try to keep idle chatter to a minimum; we want each author's threads to be clean and clear as possible.  Feedback, comments and recommendations are welcomed, if the author wishes, but keep it constructive and friendly.  Moderators will delete replies that seem irrelevant or inappropriate.

3. Authors, please keep your screenshots as small and concise as possible, if you're illustrating only a small area, there is no need to capture the entire shot of your screen. Use the SPACEBAR to resize your in-game camera.  Full-screen shots should be used judiciously so we can keep these threads loading fast.

That's it!  Have fun">>

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Images MUST be 800x600 or less. Period. It helps on bandwidth. It helps those who do not have DSL nor cable modems. The math is simple: large images take longer to load than smaller images. The longer a reader must wait to read a journal as images load, the greater a chance you have in losing that reader.

Additionally, larger pictures cause a scroll issue. The effect of a picture can be lost if your reader is forced to scroll to see the entire picture. This large picture will also force your text to stretch out...meaning the reader must also scroll back and forth to read your journal. If you make the reader work, you stand to lose an audience.

If your pictures are larger than 800x600, a moderator WILL delete them, without warning. Consider THIS your warning.

Convert your pictures to .jpg, as well.

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Host your images offsite. We highly recommend this. Simply...images hosted offsite saves bandwidth.

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Follow the forum rules. Readers love stories of passions, victories and defeats. However, we ask you do not use graphic language to convey these feelings. Use your head.

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Give credit where credit is due. If you a downloaded map, let it be known where the map came from. Name any mods you are using. You do not have to name every BAT, but if you highlight a particular BAT, be prepared to tell where it came from.

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Be prepared. Post pictures from the start. If you begin your journal only explaining your intentions...then post no pictures...you stand to lose an audience. Frankly, many people could care less what you are going to post, they want to see the results now. At least post one teaser shot of your city...or even an attractive graph. Know how to post pictures...a journal with red "x"s will have no audience.

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Don't steal someone else's work. This might seem like a give me, but you would be surprised. Don't take a picture from someone's journal and pass it off as your own.

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Don't advertise your journal in another journal. Posts such as "I like it...by the way, come see my journal! It rocks!" are not acceptable. Do not take hijack another journal. There are exceptions. If another journal writer is struggling with building canals, it is acceptable to say "come take a look at my journal, I've done this and it works". Just, don't beg for comments for your journal in another author's thread.

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Respect your readers. Yes, you will get the occasional stupid comment. Some comments are downright insulting. Try to be patient. Do not ridicule your readers - again, an easy way to lose an audience. Make an attempt to reply every person who has replied to your journal - it is common courtesy, and can personalize your journal.

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Do not get impatient for replies. If you update at 2 in the morning, don't expect 20 replies in two minutes. Give people time. About 6 hours is appreciated in bumping your own thread. However, once the comments start rolling in, replies are acceptable - once again, this is courtesy. 

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Update with regularity. A journal with a daily update will get more replies than one with weekly updates. Hey, let's face it, people have short memories and even the greatest works of art are forgotten if hidden. Very few people can update every day, but a consistent update system will keep a continued interest in your work. Nonetheless, don't be surprised to find your journal buried on page 3 after one day - there are many journals out there. EDIT: i will thank nealos101 for this one: If you do not receive comments between updates, you ARE allowed to bump your own journal when making another update, as long as it is in a reasonable amount of time. It would be preferable to wait at least one day between updates.  

 

Give and ye shall receive. I will thank utora for this one...if you want comments, be a part of the community. Look at other journals, and comment in them (don't advertise, though). Others will pay you the same respect. Plus, you can get some great ideas by looking through other journals.

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Oh, I forgot one, and it is most important: Have fun with it. If you enjoy your journal, the reader will enjoy it. Not all journals are long and winding stories about some guy stuck in a computer game, but don't be afraid to try something different, whether it be through the story line, Photoshop, or statistical graphics. Use your imagination.

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Part Two: Resizing Your Images

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Let us go to actually posting the pictures.

First...your city pictures will be found in your Documents/SimCity4/Albums folders. However, the pictures might not be the correct size.

As I said, pictures must be less than 800x600. As Dirk said several months ago:

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"It's quite simple really:  the rule of maximum 800 x 600 per posted picture is firm.  That means 801 x 601 will be deleted without any preamble.  >>

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We are graciously allowing picture hosting here, on our servers, and your gracious donations are going to support that.  Please post responsibly.  No one - and I repeat NO ONE is exempt from the above rule.>>

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We could easily change the limit to 640 wide, or none at all, let's not go there!  Thanks, Simtropolians, I know you'll do the right thing, and please remind your fellow members if they break the rules to change their picture before a moderator or admin catches it; because by then, it'll be too late... !  referrelative="t" o:spt="75" coordsize="21600,21600">ath o:connecttype="rect" gradientshapeok="t" o:extrusionok="f">ath>">>

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If you do not have a photo editing or paint program, I suggest you download IrfanView...a free program located at: http://www.irfanview.com/

IrfanView is a simple program...let us take the picture below:

 

 

Yes it is 800x600, but I want to downsize it. First I open IrfanView, and the file:

 

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We then click on the "image" tab, then the "resize/resample" tab:

 

 

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You will then see this screen:

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On the right hand side, we can change our width and depth by a set size (remember: less than 800x600). On the left hand side, we can manually set the size. On the bottom, we can decrease or increase the size by a certain percentage.

Now, say we want to crop that picture to get rid of the game icons.

We can also do this with IrfanView. First, take your curser and "highlight" the areas you want to keep, as shown below:

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We then open the "edit" tab, where we have a few options:

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I use the "crop section" tool, which gets rid of everything around the box. We now have this:

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Finally, when you save your pictures, don't forget to convert them to .jpg - there is an option to do so in IrfanView.

 

 

If you look beside the Cancel button, you will see a pulldown menu...i already have it as Save as type: JPG - JPEG Files. This will also help keep the pictures smaller.

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Other things you can do to make your pictures look better:

Keep out the icons. Get rid of all the u-drive-it icons, all the no-(fill in the blank) zots, etc. They are a distraction, unless you are making a point. It also helps to get rid of the zone colors.

Look at your settings. While your game might run better with low settings, a city journal is more pleasing when the reader can see everything in your city, like cars, people and swing sets in backyards. When taking a picture, change the settings to high - this will present your city in a better light.

Time is on your side. With the day-night settings, you can present your city in many different lights. Day, night, morning, evening...variety is your friend.

Get the edges out. When possible, crop out the city edges in your pictures.

Don't be afraid of Photoshop - but don't overuse it. Borders around pictures can make your journal stand out. However, people can be blinded with too many graphs and glitter.

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Part Three: Posting Pictures

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As I said before, offsite images help Simtropolis bandwidth (still, images need to be under 800x600). Here are a couple of sites:

http://www.imageshack.ws/?cookie=b3b84b1453f0a0acbbeac4d66f6a4878

http://picturehosting.simvision.net/

If you know of any other image-hosting sites, please PM me.

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I  use ImageShack. For some hosting images from ImageShack, I go to JO, who posted this a while ago:

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Hi Everyone, this is a simple and useful tutorial in how to host pics off-site.>>

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Why host off-site?

Simtropolis the site we all love and visit everyday runs basically on donations (no ads, thank god) but it eats a lot of bandwidth, making it very slow, one of the causes is: The City Journals, they eat a lot of bandwidth since most members put their pics hosted on Simtropolis, and not in another site (thus saving bandwidth, and getting Simtropolis faster.>>

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How to host off-site?>>

I am using Imageshack, since it has no bandwidth limitations to the pics, and is an easy-to-use site.

This is the simple part; you just need some organization and the help from www.imageshack.us >>

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Step 1:>>

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Select a Picture you want to host, in this case we will use this dummy pic, generously granted by Microsoft Paint>>

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[MrCinatit 30]

Howdy folks;

I'm going to leave this topic open for a while, for additional hints, anything i did not make clear, and questions. however, i ask you to keep on topic, or the post will be gone.

I am sure i have missed MANY things (found out quite a few already), and would like to open this for any additional suggestions. I will add it to the guide, then...and OF COURSE, i will give credit where credit is due.

 

 

i would also like to address a very touchy issue. i'm not sure how to do it, so i will just be blunt.

I have noticed some journalers in the past creating additional IDs, then posting in their own journals under those additional IDs. such an action is VERY unethical - bumping your journal with your own cloned posts is a HUGE injustice to other journalers out there.

it is very easy for us to find out who is doing this, if it is even being done. such practices have been found in the past, have been delt with, and will be delt with in similar methods in the future.

Please, give other city journal creators a moment to shine, as well. Do not get greedy...it is only a game. You do not gain points in life by gaining additional posts in your journal.

so endeth my ranteth.

[Simworld 056132 1]

This is wonderful information 4 them newbies and a lot of other people.

That must be a long post MrCinatit

[Compromise 1]

I saw this in the Omnibus. Very useful to newbies.

[Alkaola 18]

MRcinatit you're saying' people have short minds'

you are true !!

 

even the best city journals have been forgotten , for example ' olympia ' by agra , i know for sure many people who 've saw it don't think about it often 

 

and its also true if you update once a week you will get less coments thats true

 

very informative

[utora 0]

I'd like to add something to all this information:

If you start a cj, you'd like to have lots of comments from others. However, others want the same, so if you want more people commenting on your journal, just post comments in other cj's you like as well! This helps you getting noticed by the community, and perhaps they will be curious to your own cj if they read a comment from you in their thread.

 

Second: be polite. What I mean by this, is the following: I always get a much better feeling when visiting and commenting on a cj, when the creator of that cj reacts on my comment and doesn't ignore it. A simple thanks for dropping by will do wonders. People feel recognized by this, and they keep coming back, because they know their comment is appreciated. (Once you don't reply to it, nobody knows how much you liked a comment except you).

[toxicpiano 125]

what about those really long images stiched together that go down the page?

[Cjah 15]

Utora is perfectly right.If you can't answer your fans then how can you have any?I noticed every since I took peoples advice and let them have a say in my C.j. it really has started to grow.Before I made my C.J. all I did was comment on other C.J.s then when I started mine I was already a page in.Then in one month it grew to 12 pages.Being friendly and helpful pays off.I give out links when ever anyone asks for them in my C.J.I never get mad.I just like to be helpful.

Here are my 3 rules to the have a good C.J.

 

1.Always Reply to your posters.

 

2.Always offer help and be polite.

 

3.Always try and make a realistic C.J. update.

 

 

Good luck

[utora 0]

@ Toxicpiano: Well, that's just a very clever solution to the restricted image-size of 800x600. Now you can still post large mosaique-images without exceeding the picture size (however it does take some painstaking work stitching them perfectly together)

[MrCinatit 30]

Date: 8/1/2005 3:30:17 AM Author: toxicpiano what about those really long images stiched together that go down the page?

quote>

 

as long as each of those individual pictures do not exceed the 800x600 limit, then there is absolutely no problem - of course i do admit to almost having a heart attack the first time i saw one .

 

and, yes, it is very important to be polite to those visiting your journal, and to be polite when visiting another person's journal. i seem to remember one particularly negative user about a year ago who hardly ever had a nice thing to say about other journals. once he finally got around to making his own...well, let's just say he got the same treatment and the journal did not last long.

[toxicpiano 125]

Date: 8/1/2005 4:15:56 AM Author: MrCinatit

Date: 8/1/2005 3:30:17 AM Author: toxicpiano what about those really long images stiched together that go down the page?

quote>

as long as each of those individual pictures do not exceed the 800x600 limit, then there is absolutely no problem - of course i do admit to almost having a heart attack the first time i saw one .

and, yes, it is very important to be polite to those visiting your journal, and to be polite when visiting another person's journal. i seem to remember one particularly negative user about a year ago who hardly ever had a nice thing to say about other journals. once he finally got around to making his own...well, let's just say he got the same treatment and the journal did not last long.

quote>

i was refering to the ones that are like 800x3000. (very long pictures) surely if you stitch ten 800x600 pictures together in one big picture, then surely you are taking up the same amount of bandwidth as if you had ten seperate pics? if that makes sense.

[MrCinatit 30]

i was refering to the ones that are like 800x3000. (very long pictures) surely if you stitch ten 800x600 pictures together in one big picture, then surely you are taking up the same amount of bandwidth as if you had ten seperate pics? if that makes sense.

quote>

 

if the picture is individually larger than 800x600, then it will get deleted - mainly because there must be a cut-off point for a picture size, and that has been the size decided by the Dirktator himself.

[Lyhoko Leaci 770]

When I do a large picture, I usually put a small version of it within the 800x600 limit, then add a link to the full size verizon, and for the several pictures put together one after another I put a note at the top saying that this is several pictures and not one big one to let people know without them having to find the properties of the image.

[hotwheels73093 0]

I know this is a $%&^! question, but hey I'm a $%&^!!

I was wondering if it is ok to start a CJ using a region you downloaded off the STEX? Would that be considering stealing someone elses work? I'm not good with terraforming and I really want to use tijn21 's Rhiannon.

 

-hotwheels73093 

[MrCinatit 30]

Date: 8/10/2005 2:40:24 PM Author: hotwheels73093

I know this is a $%&^! question, but hey I'm a $%&^!! I was wondering if it is ok to start a CJ using a region you downloaded off the STEX? Would that be considering stealing someone elses work? I'm not good with terraforming and I really want to use tijn21 's 'Rhiannon'.

-hotwheels73093

quote>

actually, a rather good question. simple answer: it is acceptable to use another map.

terraforming is one of the tougher things this side of the bat - it is not something everyone can be good at.

if you do use another map, it is common courtesy to acknowledge the map-maker if possible - the same should be done with some of the BATs you highlight...however, i also realize it might become difficult at times to remember who made what...believe me, i know this from personal experience.

[MayorAce 0]

I got a small question, I really do not feel like making a new region, I was wondering If I could start a CJ like in the middle or near the begining of a new region I am working on?

[ginchael 1]

Date: 8/15/2005 11:12:57 AM
Author: MayorAce
I got a small question, I really do not feel like making a new region, I was wondering If I could start a CJ like in the middle or near the begining of a new region I am working on?

quote>

That's fine. Many people don't start CJs from scratch (myself included) and wait until they are in the middle of or done with development.

[elle_driver 2]

Hi,

I'm trying to sort out a pic for my sig but the link in this thread: 

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=46183  

displays an error message when clicked on. Has the thread been moved or can someone tell me what I need to know to get my sig sorted? Thank you!  

[MrCinatit 30]

Date: 9/22/2005 3:35:59 PM Author: elle_driver

Hi,

I'm trying to sort out a pic for my sig but the link in this thread:

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=46183  

displays an error message when clicked on. Has the thread been moved or can someone tell me what I need to know to get my sig sorted? Thank you!

quote>

 

hmmmm....i cannot seem to find the signature picture help thread in the Mew Members Information forum, either.

however, i did find one which had been archived, and will cut-and-paste Rybolton's post within here...hope this helps:

 

Adding a Picture in Your Signature

Well, one of the things you see around Simtropolis is pics in people signatures. They vary from pics of different items and you also have one's for adimn's, moderators, and many others. One note before we start on this, there are rules on these. The pics can only be up to 300*50 (300 width by 50 height), and they are only suggested to be 10 kb in sixe or smaller. Well, now that you know that let's go.

1. 
   
2. You need to post your image somewhere, one suggestion may be on this thread.
   
   
3. Once you have uploaded it, you will need to access your signature by click on My Profile, then clcik on Edit My Profile.
   
   
4. When you get there, go to your signature area and click within it and click where you want it (If no text, just put cursor in the area, if text, place in text where you want the pic).
   
   
5. Now, place what is shown below
   
   
   
6. Next, if your file is on Simtropolis, just add the filename at the end after the files/ area
   
   
   
7. If your image is off site, then add the link to the file
   
   
   
8. Once you do that, you have the option of adding other tags to make it center, left, or right aligned
   
   Centered Example:
   
   
   
   (Note : Only change the word center to the alignment that you want, such as left or right)
   
   
9. Once you get that right, it should come up like mine or the one below.
   
   Example in code :
   
   
   
   Example in regular mode :
   
   
   (Note : Alignment may be different depending on your option)
   

[elle_driver 2]

Thank you for your help MrCinatit, I finally have a pic!

[PennDOTguy 5]

Where do some of you guys find the interstate shields to use in the GIMP or Photoshop (i have the GIMP)? Just download them from sites and use them that way?

 

thanks in advance

[2ch.net simplayer 180]

To moderator

Sorry, couldn't find a place to post this. Can you delete this thread?

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=56336&forumID=36&search=1&searchstring =

 

It's my old abandoned CJ.  The city has now grown, so I am starting a new one with revised plans.

[olly 0]

I Just Want To Say Thanks To Mr Cinatit For The Guide. It Helped Me Get From Small Red X To Proper CJ Pic.
Thanks Mr Cinatit!

[Lemmie 0]

A question: how do I access my pictures that I take in game to edit them in paint?

 

I am using Windows XP.

[MrCinatit 30]

Date: 11/16/2005 2:22:19 PM Author: Lemmie

A question: how do I access my pictures that I take in game to edit them in paint?

I am using Windows XP.

quote>

they will be in the following folder:

 

MyDocuments/SimCity4/albums/(instert city name here)

[Lemmie 0]

Thanks.

[Lemmie 0]

For some reason, the format isn't supported. Anything I can do?

[mayormommy 8]

Are you saying Paint won't open your .png files in your albums folder? Or that you can't upload your pictures to ST or Imageshack? If you're trying to upload pictures to ST, they should be saved in .jpg format.

[Lemmie 0]

Yeah, sorry I wasn't clear on that.

Yes, it won't allow me to upload onto ST. I'm practically techno-ignorant, so I don't know how to re-save as a jpg.

 

Or whatever.

[mayormommy 8]

First, use the Stretch/Skew feature in Paint to reduce the size of your .png to 78% or smaller first. Go to Image -->Stretch/Skew -->type 78 or smaller number in both horizontal and vertical boxes.

 

After that, you go to File -->Save As -->File Type -->JPEG.

 

Once you get the hang of posting pics on ST, you should try hosting them offsite. I think there's a tutorial somewhere around here about that - if you can't find it through the search, let us know.