Tell me a fable

[Romaq 18]

I didn't see much in this forum about CJ's and how they bear upon Cities unlimited. CJ's with SC4 are rather limited. It takes some degree of moxy and talent to use graphics software to turn an isometric oblique view into an overhead city map, but people here have done it. It takes immagination to tell of the stories I've read, and a great deal of creativity and planning to build the work in an SC4 region that becomes the City Journals here on SimTrop.

I hope one of the things Monte Cristo is doing is looking through links to 'the best of the best' of CJs and figuring out how Cities Unlimited can apply a healthy layer of storytelling power to get from the city that someone immagines to the graphics that tell the story within someone's website or a CJ thread here in SimTrop.

For the life of me, I keep seeing 'city street maps' within CJs, but they are such a sordid pain to make look right unless you just go along with the only viewpoint provided for a region in SC4. CU can obviously do that better, but what are particular points of interest to the people that MAKE these things that they'd like to see done better?

I also have a vision of a 'virtualtour.mov' or 'virtualtour.swf' file that CU could create at a camera point. In this vision, I put the camera at street level of some place and capture some file. I can then put the file on my website and in the middle of my CJ showing off what I'm doing you'll see something like the virtual tours from here: http://vegas.aol.com/galleries/360. Now how cool would THAT be in a CJ? Especially supposing if I could attach CU music/ sound to it? The bonus for Cities Unlimited... some serious attitude word-of-mouth advertising for the game. Is anyone with me on this? Given the amount of scrolling shockwave movies in CJ's I've seen lately, what's going to work?

Anyway, that's the sort of thing I'd like to see in CU, but I've yet to post a CJ yet. I simply lurk and look. The people who DO the CJ stuff really should have something to say about the topic.

[rctshack 182]

Can you speak on a less geeky level... I truthfully didn't understand half of that. Maybe recap with a layman's version.

[Simcitytrainer 3]

I think he means a flycam at street level.Like a helicopter going through the streets at a very low altitude.

That sounds cool. Nice idea Romaq

[rctshack 182]

but what then confused me was the link to a revolving camera on the las vegas strip. I am all for stroy telling though, so anyway to help other learn about your city/region is a great idea.

[John-SJ 13]

I have just started playing City Life a bit.  One thing I found was a camera mode that is useful for a really nice ground level first person view.  You can use the arrow keys to navigate down roads or wherever you want.  Give a very nice perspective for you city.

This is at least a good start, if Monte Cristo will listen to suggestions I am sure there could be some more interesting modes available for CU.

[Romaq 18]

The revolving camera website is just one example of something that CU could create to be put into a CJ. I would like to see more direct ways of creating street maps and arial views. High quality prints/ image captures are another example. What if I could press a button that does a screen capture, but instead of 1280 x 1024, suppose the screen blinked out a moment (as if it were a flash) and then saved the image as 2560 x 2048 in 16 bit color, suitable for printing as a photograph? That might be overkill and reveal the limitations of the render engine. I'm just thinking about different ways to translate what you see in the Cities Unlimited game into formats you can use to tell other people about your city.