City of BALAMB GARDEN

[edmonton_stinks 5]

Nice update, but maybe in the future you could have fewer pictures and more updates. I think that might have been too many pictures.

[Cloud Strife 0]

Originally posted by: edmonton_stinks Nice update, but maybe in the future you could have fewer pictures and more updates. I think that might have been too many pictures.quote>

 

edmonton_stinks: I'm glad to hear that, since this means that you like also to read descriptions and updates instead of just looking at pics.  I did an update with more pics that the previous ones because I wanted to avoid to make people bored of reading much text. This is why I'm happy to read your critics, so I'm going to provide again much more text descriptions and updates, as long as a new storyline.

In next post we'll see a crack in the Balamb Government that will lead to unimaginable consequences.

Simfan34: yeah that has to be a tough guy! I'm sure that the Mayor would be happy to have him stay in the city for an holiday, providing him a suite in the Shinra Tower.

Thanks to everybody else for the comments!

Next update is coming soon .

[jacqulina 162]

looking out for that update my friend

[Simtastico 0]

that is a lot of pictures, all of them are very good and you show your plans for the cj very well.. Looking forward to see more!

[suplado! 23]

cool looking pics...well, really like the way you present your updates sir!!

[Cloud Strife 0]

A CRACK IN THE BALAMB GARDEN GOVERNMENT

Seifer is going to take over the city.

No one would have wondered what happened that day.

No one could expect to see ShinRa escape the city.

No one would bet on Seifer at the time of the college, when he and Squall were mates.

Great changes are going to happen in Balamb Garden, the second biggest city of the nation just after Spira.

The story begins with the celebration of the new HYDROPONIC FARM that Shin.Ra Corporation built in Balamb Garden, by the willing of mayor Squall.

That could seem a good idea to build that farm in the Scalamanga area: it would provide high wealth workplaces and grant the workers the solidity of working for a great company such as ShinRa.

A great inauguration party took place in the new Hydroponic Farm, along Idroponic Street (yeah it took the name after the building of the farm).

Unfortunately, ShinRa did not think of the many many farmers around!

Building that farm, and providing so well paid workplaces, causes much troubles to local farmers, who saw their workers to leave and sign up for ShinRa.

So the farm owners had to increase much the payment of the people they really needed to keep, such as specialists and skilled workers they had. Less specialized workers and the ones who did lower-paid works however left their old workplaces and signed for ShinRa. This great company could pay even a cleaning-man much more than a local farmer could.

You can have a better glimpse of the situation by just looking at the picture below: it shows a shot of the area where the hydroponic farm has been built.

As you can see, around Scalamanga there are many farms. The building of the ShinRa one caused the troubles I said before, and increased the competition for selling the products. ShinRa is even a good mark to sell a product under.

At that point the farmers began to complain. Shinra of course ignored their protest, as long as mayor Squall did.

He thought they could do any damage, and they would calm down soon and get back to their work. They had farms. They were few. They couldn't go anywhere else. He thought.

Unfortunately, there was a person in the city that was more interested than Squall in hearing the farmers' complains.

That person's name is Seifer.

SEIFER ALMASY

So who is him? Seifer attended the same college of Squall, the "Galbadia Garden".

They were mates. Or, at least, let's call them mates.

They've never been friends. They were almost rivals.

Two strong guys with high ambitions, both aiming to join the ShinRa troops.

However, Seifer was an undisciplined, arrogant, cynical, drastic guy.

After a fight with Squall, he was expelled from the college.

He then created a small military troop in the city. Or I should call it a creek. However they've never had a chance to get any kind of power, being the city controlled by a such big entity like ShinRa.

As soon as Seifer heard the farmers' story, he began his search. He thought this could be his moment of glory, the right time to find something for blaming Squall and get his place in the ShinRa government pyramid.

He had many friends and knowledges, being at the same garden as Squall.

He was then able to obtain restricted informations about the project, and knew that the Hydrophonic Farm has been built with the money granted from the new taxes once announced for the works to the city road network.

Squall increased some taxes to get enough funds in order to complete some previously unfinished works.

Instead of doing so, he used those money to build this farm that would give profit to Shin.Ra only.

Moreover, there was the famous GBR PROJECT: GREAT BYPASS RING.

That project is one of the most important ones, since it is about turning the actual bypass road that runs around the city into an high speed highway ring, just like the one we saw in SPIRA.

CLICK ON THE PICS IN ORDER TO OPEN THEM FULL SIZE IN ANOTHER WINDOW. :-)

As soon as Seifer broadcasted the news through the local independent television, the citizens began to protest, and strike and riots were all around the city!

A group of rebels, guided by Seifer, attacked the Shin.Ra Wind Tower and burned it up!

The people that were in the tower were able to escape through a secret tunnel that connects the tower to the base of the hill it's built on.

SEIFER reaches the troops on the hill, and began his project to burn up the Wind Tower, that has ever been a symbol of the Shin.Ra power in the city and the entire nation too.

Here Seifer is giving the signal to the troops to open the fire against the Shin.Ra Tower.

[SimRabbit 48]

great story, and pictures. no job zots are no no's you should get rid of them.

[edmonton_stinks 5]

Whoa, a riot! What next?

The plot thickens.

[bbfan02 23]

Wow, excellent work! I like the flora you used. I agree with Simrabbit about the zots. I like the transportation map. Keep up the good work!

-bbfan02-

[Schulmanator 5,799]

Whoa! Looks like a major mess is about to start!

[Cloud Strife 0]

Originally posted by: SimRabbit great story, and pictures. no job zots are no no's you should get rid of them.quote>

 

uh, you're quite right... I didn't notice them when I uploaded the pics  they're annoying indeed!

I'm going to better check the next upcoming pics!

Thanks for the comments guys! The story is going to be continued soon!

[jacqulina 162]

great update my friend fantastic story line,very nice work and pics,the transport system is great too

[Simfan34 11]

Ooooh..... great update, a coup. I see. C.D. Nafmis officially declares his support for Mr. Almasy's government.

[Cloud Strife 0]

The beginning of Seifer's independent government

The SEED Army recognized him as their new leader

The citizens recognized him as their new mayor

So it happened. ShinRa Corporation has been banished from Balamb Garden, the ShinRa Wind Tower has been given to flames, and Seifer Almasy (the leader of the riot) is now the new mayor.

Squall and the ShinRa people in the tower did successfully escape through a secret passage underneath the hill, and are now in Midgar (the capital city). What ShinRa is going to do we will see in the next post.

At this time, Seifer SEALED THE CITY by placing the SeeDs (the Army of Balamb Garden, once under ShinRa control) at every gate to the city.

No one can enter or leave without being stoppend and acknowledged and identified by the SeeDs, that are ready to fight with their weapons.

As you can see, particular attention is paid to the ShinRa hill: they won't be able to easily access the tower until it perimeter is occupied by the SeeD Army Troops.

In this post, we're going to follow Seifer and the beginning of his plans.

First of all, Seifer decided to have a tour around the city in order to understand what are the main problems of the city and so the first improvements to commit.

In fact, being the new mayor requires that he shows immediately to the people some of the aspects of his politics, in order to consolidate the his rating among the citizens.

Seifer is giving particular attention to the SOUTHERN AREA of Balamb Garden.

Let's have a tour with him!

The following pic shows you the area that Seifer is going to examine.

As you can see in the pics above, the south-eastern suburbian area of the city is full of important points of interest for the city and the communications as well.

In this area we can see:

- The Quetzal Airport

- The SeeD Army Airport

- The Scalamanga Waste Dump

- The Lunaside Water Plant

- The Lunaside residential area

- The Paradise Island residential area

- The Heroes residential area

- The Lenan Castle

- The Lenan village

- Grandidieri District

- Cactuar Hi-Tech Industrial Area

One of the biggest problems of this suburbian area is the bad road network. 

This area has grown without following any kind of expansion plan. It grew in the time according to the needings.

Mayor Squall never did plan for future expansion, expecially in the suburbs and satellite districts.

He never gave proper importance to the areas outside the city walls.

And surely he was wrong.

Also the public transport network here shows the lack of any kind of plan.

There's a lightrail elevated network, that is not connected to the city!

Light trains arrive to the Station of the Heroes terminal. There people have to leave the terminal, and then jump aboard an F.S. Train or a bus in order to reach their destination.

Look

[Benedict 3,119]

Wow, that was a very transport-focused update - really interesting to see all the plans.

[Zelgadis 638]

Okay, I'm still working on reading through the episodes here. They are quite good, but perhaps it might be good to feed them to us in smaller parts. These are quite time-consuming!

Still, I am enjoying the drama. Looks like this is going to become more of a story-driven CJ in the future. I guess we'll just have to wait and see who ultimately wins control. Both main characters look like they could use some personality improvement.

ISF

[Mike the Mayor 51]

Great cj here my friend, really awesome pictures!

I love the whole layout of the city and the theme you have here. The route of the bypass looks great too. Keep up the excellent work.

[edmonton_stinks 5]

That's some decent planning for a guy who seized power in a full scale riot.

[Cloud Strife 0]

Welcome back to my CJ

Thanks for the replies and the interest in my city. I'm really happy to read your comments!

Zelgadis: you're quite right, I understand that those were two huge updates, talking about number of pics and informations.  That's maybe because I had so many ideas and had not worked on it for so long time, due to lack of spare time, so I sent them all in a row

It took much time even to prepare that update eheh.. 

By the way, this makes me think about how much time do you guys spend in order to prepare and send an update to your CJs. I'd be very interested to know your times in creating an update to a CJ, and if you want also the "steps" you pass through (for example: shoting pics in the game, changing their names, resizing, editing them, adding comments, building the plot etc etc..).

However... let's return in the city!

This will be a shorter but more plot-oriented update.

So you will have less pics to see, and more text to read!

Now that it's Seifer on charge, the city is called "The NEW Balamb Garden".

He changed also the logo pic of the city into the one you can see above.

The "GARDEN" Project

The first thing that Seifer wants to build is the new Garden, meant as a militar building for training a special group of SeeD's. It will be built inside the big Balamb Garden area. It is a re-building in fact, because the Garden building already existed but has been damaged in the last war. Mayor Squall decided to bulldoze the ruins of the old garden in order to create that big green park area.

This is the project that Seifer is going to realize.

The western side of the garden wll be closed to people and changed back into a militar area where SeeDs will be trained, a sort of college for the Army.

Seifer won't forget what Squall built there, because he knows that people like to spend their time in the garden expecially from spring to autumn, and all the summer long.

So he will move the stage for live concerts and the museum to the north-eastern corner of the Garden.

In the meantime, the western area will be fenced.

The pedestrian overpasses will be demolished because won't longer be needed (since common people won't be allowed to access the new militar area).

The red subway station will be moved on the other side of the avenue.

The works will take up to 10 months.

The new subway station will be available in about 8 months.

In the meantime the old subway station will be closed down, to allow the workings to go on.

So the subway trains will no longer stop at the "Garden" station. Instead they will go on from Irvine straight to "Guardians" station.

People that has to reach the Garden area should take the FS Train and get off at the ZELL F.S. Station, or a Red Tram and leave it at the "Garden" stop.

B.T.S. - Balamb Transport System

This is the name of the new company that has been created by the actual city government for managing and taking care of the Public Transportation Network of the city, since it was maintained by ShinRa Corp as befor

[Zelgadis 638]

It appears that from the dialogue here, we're going to have to wait awhile before the action. I guess I'm with Cid then.

As for my CJ, my process is this:

1) Make the city. (Time, of course, varies)

2) Take pics.

3) Begin processing pics with photoshop, involving:

-adjusting contrast to +20

-resizing to 750x600

-using the sharpen filter

-and more, depending on the episode. My last one required considerable photoshopping to create a spaceship explosion.

-save pics with new name and in jpg format

4) Open Adobe GoLive and prepare the update in HTML editor.

5) Write the story and post pics with descriptions.

6) Upload html page and pics onto mac.com. (Example: http://homepage.mac.com/zelgadis/episode22.html )

7) Copy/paste new webpage into reply box in my CJ

Add personal replies

9) Reply, then return to first episode to edit the sub-heading of the CJ title.

Done!

All in all, it takes me about 2 hours to do an episode. And that does not include city building or more complex photoshopping.

One thing I have discovered is that very large updates tend to overwhelm and scare people away.  And there is a problem with dial-up users too.  One of these big updates on a page isn't a problem, but when there gets to be several of them, it takes a long time to load, even with broadband.

ISF

[edmonton_stinks 5]

I just mean that you should have fewer pictures per update. It's starting to take a while to load your CJ pages, and I'm thinking that people might be scared off by the sheer amount of pictures. Like I said, break the pictures up into more updates, with less pictures. That way, you can also keep the CJ going for longer.

[anarchy0029 2]

OMG, your CJ is totally amazing. I can't believe how tight this is. Two thumbs up kid!!!!

[Cloud Strife 0]

First of all thanks for the replies, guys!

As for the size of updates, I'm going back to smaller ones. Those two posts were so big because being away for so much time I had a very large amount of informations queued from long time, and decided to send them all in very few posts.

I'm also going to celebrate my 100th post around here! Quite emotioning eheh

The New "Garden" Building

Let's have a look at the new "Garden" that Seifer built inside the Balamb garden.

The "BALAMB GARDEN", as militar training academy, has been restored!

New wannabe SeeDs are going to be trained in this special "college", and only the best ones will pass and graduate, being able to access the SeeD Army, that at the time of writing is no longer under ShinRa's control.

On both sides there are two mako fountains, that seem to be there just for aestethical purpose, but rumors say that they've also got some special function for the defending of the garden (someone says that they are there to activate a sort of energy shield around the building, but it's thought that those are just rumors).

B.T.S. Company is building the new subway station inside the garden.

The older one has been demolished because it was in the Garden Building area, and being a militar zone it could no longer exist there.

It is being re-built in the place that you see in the pic.

At this time, people that need to reach this area by public transportation network should use the tramway or the F.S. railway.

According to the initial plan, the stage should have been moved in the north-eastern corner of the Garden. 

They left it there, even if it's just in front of the Garden Building, and left also the south-western corder of the garden open to people.

The stage is directly connected to the "Zell" F.S. Station, so people coming for live concerts and shows (expecially in summer time) can easily reach it by train (and even by subway as soon as the station will be restored).

The plan for the SOUTH-EASTER SUBURBIAN AREA

In the previous post, we seen the problems of the sout-western suburbian area of Balamb Garden city.

Seifer ended up with a plan whose works will begin soon.

It will be built a freeway to easily connect the Quetzal Airport to the City.

In the meantime, the Lightrailway will be prolonged to the airport, in order to provide an easier connection to the Airport with the public transport system, since at this time it's connected only by bus (that are often late due to the traffic jam

[Benedict 3,119]

Once again, great transport planning and maps. Looking forward to seeing the plans implemented.

[edmonton_stinks 5]

The plot thickens...

[Cloud Strife 0]

Thanks for the replies guys!

This is going to be a small yet quick update, more concerned on the work in progress.

The new highway is being built. It is connected to an existing national freeway that enters the city from the south, crosses it in the underground (do you remember that the freeways in Balamb are all running in the underground?) and then exits the city heading to Midgar.

A new cloverleaf is being built. Due to the available space, it suddlenly turns 180 degrees and passes over the existing freeway and the F.S. railway. Then it continues between the trees heading to the Quetzal Airport.

You can easily identify the new highway because it's surrounded by green lines.

The highway goes on and passes over the Siren Avenue. After a few hundred meters, there's a cloverleaf allowing cars to leave the highway and access the avenue. It can be useful to easily reach the nearby Siren Lightrail station and the Lunagate residential area. I'm pretty sure that citizens living in that suburb will apreciate the availability of this highway entrance/exit, because this offers an alternative route for reaching the city avoiding the traffic jam of the local Lunagate Roadway that we saw two posts above.

Once completed, there will be built also some Pay Tolls.

Moving east, we reach a point where the works are still in progress.

This is due to the fact that, according to the plan, the freeway has to cut and cross the elevated railways and the Lunagate Roadway here.

That roadway is the only direct route available to connect the Paradise Island suburb to the city and the nearby suburbs. However, in order to allow the freeway to pass there, the roadway must be raised.

Since it's not possible to close it down (to allow the workers to raise it), it has been built a surrounding street, called Lunagate Variant Street, where cars will be routed while the yard workers raise the roadway lane.

This is going to produce much traffic at rush hours, however there are no other ways to solve the matter.

The Old roadway is closed and being raised.

Cars are routed on the Lunagate Variant Street, that runs nearby the yard and then connects back to the old path.

This pic is on the other side of the yard, where the Lunagate Variant connects to the old roadway path.

The route of the light trains running on the railway is not affected by the working in progress.

Next update is coming soon, containing also an evolution of the plot.

[Cloud Strife 0]

Route to the Airport

A bus tour to the Quetzal Airport

This update we will look at the actual route required to reach the Airport from the city.

The lack of a large and efficient highway to the airport, as well as the lack of a railway makes the route to the airport very time-consuming by car and public transport as well.

The only way to reach Quetzal by public transport is by the bus service departing from the Galbadia Station and the Carbuncle Station, both on the eastern side of the city.

The journey by car would be pretty much the same, since there's only one roadway to reach the airport from that side of the city.

We choose to jump aboard a bus from the Carbuncle Station terminal.

The bus bench is on the northern corner of the station. If we reached the terminal by train, taxi or subway, we must raise the stairs to reach the bus.

We sit in and sign the ticket.

The bus gets full soon, then the doors close and it begins its journey.

The digital display on the front of the bus shows the destination and the path:

                                                  QUETZAL AIRPORT

Carbuncle Station - Carbuncle Bypass - Nafmis CD - Selphie Avenue - Quetzal Roadway

The first line of the bypass is free and the bus runs at approximately 100Km/h speed.

As soon as we reach the backside of the ARCO and the lanes turn into one the bus has to reduce the speed as some traffic starts to show.

Then the bus turns left on the Nafmis CD Ramp, in order to reach the Selphie Avenue that will bring us out of the city walls.

Out of the City Walls, we're along the Selphie Avenue, in the Scalamanga District. The bus turns right to access the Quetzal Roadway.

After a few kilometers on the Quetzal Roadway, the bus reduces its speed as a long traffic queue shows.

It's about 30 minutes that we're queued on the roadway, the cars proceed so slowly.

We see many people asleep on their sits. They must be commuters that has to reach the

[Dsrwhat316 12]

very colorful, using all those seasonal trees.

looks like there's quite a bottleneck coming off the freeway. i also see you are using some custom lots; always a good addition to a CJ. nice work!

~ Dan

[edmonton_stinks 5]

Whoa, that's congested! Maybe the airport connection is the next project for Seifer!

[Cloud Strife 0]

The New Convention Center and the completion of the highway

The new area has been finally completed, the new convention center has been built as long as a big mall in front of it, in the historical area of Raven (so called because of the ruins of the ancient Raven Tower).

The highway to the airport has been finished as well.

You can see the Willow Mall an the backside of the new convention center.

This convention center is not going to replace the old one (that is built in the heart of the city), it's simply an add-on to the existing one. 

The entrance of the Convention Center.

It's quite modern, and it's nearby the airport, so it can be very useful for national and international meetings and conventions.

There's even a bus station on the back of the Convention Center, to provide connection by public transport system.

Even a few residential buildings are being raised.

The matter for the residentials here is due to the fact that the only way to access this area is the new highway, that has a pay-toll at any exit/entrance, so they would have to pay each time they exit or enter the area by car.

Using the bus won't require the toll payment of course.

Two shots of the Raven Tower ruins, the first one just to show you its location, the second one is a closeup with more details.

An eye on the new Highway

An eye on the Garden Subway Station

Do you remember the building of the new Garden? It required the closing of the old subway station, that had to be moved on the other side of the avenue because it would have been in the new militar area.

The works are now completed, the yard is closed, and the Garden Subway station is open again.