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[Evil Weasel 88]

CONTENTS:

Page 1: Centre-ville (centre financier)

Page 1: Centre-ville (nord/ Rheims)

Page 1: Uptown (nord/Duceppe + nord-est/Le Carrefour)

Page 2: Uptown (nord-est/Duceppe E + Dion E

My original La Fourche did not quite get the realism level I wanted it to, and the terrain it was located on was blocky and unrealistic. Thus, in La Fourche II, a more natural flowing set of rivers cuts through the city. This time around, it will be more carefully planned. The general theme of this CJ is a dumpy city in Québec suffering from urban blight, poverty and abandonment. I realise there are tonnes of other CJs that are much better done overall and better in terms of eye-candy, but I will do my best to make something beautiful out of the ugliness. I have made heavy use of Google Earth in the planning stage, resulting in a very Canadian grid city with a few diagonal avenues like those in Detroit.

A small example shot.

[Twenty20 28]

Excellent start for this new CJ, I love the strange ambiance of this city.

[Tomasneto 20]

Awesome city, very nice picture!!!

[Evil Weasel 88]

Mise à jour no1: LA FOURCHE: CENTRE-VILLE

Sitting on the confluence of the Saint Joseph and Sainte Marie rivers, the city centre of Québec's infamous Saint Joseph (AKA La Fourche) presents a wall of dull office buildings, blocky tenement blocks and stretches of row houses and 1930s low-rise commercial buildings.Seen below is the downtown eastside- to the east of the highrise financial centre. It is dominated by high-density housing built in the 1950s.

The financial centre itself is relatively clean and shiny, and has a low crimerate. The office buildings mostly belong to the industrial giants whose factories sprawl out on the southern bank of the river and around the city's outskirts. The area is bordered by Parc Molson, the stadium of the city's professional baseball team, Les Hérons de Saint Joseph.

A close up of some of the skyscrapers in the city centre.

To the east of the financial centre lies the bend of the Saint Joseph river, and a few inner-city housing projects or cités- some of the cleanest and safest in the city, hence their high demand compared to the decaying ghettos on the south bank. The bridges lead to the East (La Rive Est) and South (La Rive Sud) banks.

The double-tower belonging to a leading poutine maker, once the city's main industry before the disastrous start of health-concious eating.

In the downtown eastside, the Centre BMO lies among the rowhouses of the quartier algérien, the traditional centre of the largest Algerian community in Canada. The Centre BMO hosts Les Hermines de Saint Joseph, the metropolis's professional hockey club.

High-rise cités in the eastside. This older apartment blocks (using the plans from those built at the same time in New York) are unique to the downtown area, as the city adopted slightly newer ones in 1960s modelled after those in Toronto, which are more common outside the core.

A closeup of the westside cités, just south of Avenue Richard and east of the river bend.

The unusually quiet intersection of Avenue Richard and Boulevard des Chasseurs. The city hall and its municipal office tower dominate this area to the north-east of the financial centre. It is considered an ugly eyesore by tourists (the few that waste their time in this city), but beautiful in comparaison by its residents who are used to ugly 1960s tower blocks and burnt out ghettoes.

An overview of the downtown area. The northern end of the downtown (viseable here) will be covered later on. Sorry about the horrible quality and ugly blur-outs. This is more just to show at what point I am in the creation of the city.

[Abc987 3]

Very nice update! It was strangely depressing...in a good way, though.

[fabsies55 5]

looks pretty cool, just one tip... dont use effects too much

[fabsies55 5]

looks pretty cool, just one tip... dont use effects too much

[suomi2005 52]

Very beautiful looks very North American the zoning is very realistic.

[Teeparex 6]

Wow, thats very realistic looking!

I love how it looks so far. I would have preffered all the photos to have the same effects as the photo in your first post (tad more colour!), but they're still amazing pics. Nice work!

[Twenty20 28]

Your city is growing fast ! I like the downtown with old buildings. The overview is really beautiful. Keep up the good work !

[delija21 295]

Very nice city...the 1st pic get an A+....as for the others i love old photo style but maybe you should add some scratches,just to make it more realistic...anyway grait work....keep it up

[Evil Weasel 88]

Thank you all for taking the time to comment. I can't really respond to every comment (especially if there's not much to say) but I appreciate that you made them.

Jrhnemo: Well that's good to hear, depressing is the feeling I'm looking for in making this city.

Twenty20: I tend to make cities in quick spurts, with long periods of tinkering in between. Hence the first udpate seems pretty large for the "beginning" of a city.

Teeparex and Fabsies: Photo effects are a large part of making my CJs and I'm not going to drop them- I may add more colour, but I there's a reason why I didn't. The fact is with the colours in, the building colours look way to random and saturated and it kills the realism. In colour the screenshots would have looked like this:

[Evil Weasel 88]

Mise à jour no2: LA FOURCHE: CENTRE-VILLE (Nord)

The north end of Saint Joseph's core is somewhat similar to its east end, however slightly less run down and more "chique" (if anything in this city can be called that). Immedietly to the north of the bisinuss centre lies the Université de Saint Joseph, the city's small (and cheap) university.

An overview of the north side. The intersection of Boulevard des Chasseurs and Rue Stéphane Dion marks the traditional northern end of downtown. Strip malls and apartment blocks begin to take the place of wall-to-wall 1930s and 40s shops and rowhouses.

A closer view of the north end's lowrise apartments and office buildings north of Rue Stéphane Dion. Some genius sent the city a massive American campaign poster, mistaking it for Saint Joseph, United States. Nobody's taken it down yet.

More appartments and shops along Avenue des Chasseurs. Lowrise single familly homes border this area, and sell for a pretty high price due to a convenient distance to the downtown core and subway line access.

Cube appartments and old rowhouses in the densely populated Rheims neighbourhood.

A closer view of the intersection and its surrounding bisinusses. There is usually not much traffic in La Fourche, half due to a decent subway system and half due to the danger of carjackings and random murders.

Slightly farther south, encompassing Parc Molson and a bit of the city hall to the south.

Northeast downtown, AKA Le Triangle, formed by the northeast-running diagonal line, Rue MacDonald, which cuts awkwardly accross the square concession lines on the north bank of the city. It is heavily populated, with rowhouse lines and a huge subsidised housing block, la Cité des Loutres. Why they chose that ridiculous name is anyone's geuss.

The horrendous 5-way roundabout (the only one in the city) which connects Rue MacDonald with various midtown streets about Le Triangle. Because of zoning restrictions, Rue MacDonald is surrounded on both sides by trees- rendering viseability even worse and making this area the city's most infamous site of fatal pileups.

Cités and rowhomes in Le Triangle, just to the south of the above image.

[Teeparex 6]

Fantastic update!
The buildings and the way you've put everything together is pretty much perfect. Everything looks like it's exactly where it's meant to be and the photoshopping is excellent! I am certainly looking forward to more.

[De Ja Vu 117]

This looks really awesome! I like the dark feel your city makes. I sure wouldn't mind getting lost in that concrete jungle

Take care and have fun!

-Dejavu

[GreekMan 246]

wow what a great city! dirt and grimy and i love it!

[Evil Weasel 88]

Teeparex: Well I might have cheated a bit there, but thanks.

Déjà vu: To be honest, no you wouldn't want to get lost in Murder-City North. You'd do more swimming with the fishes in the Saint Joseph river than walking.

Greekman: I have yet to see a truly clean city IRL hence that's usually the effect I search.

[Yuu Caa Sim 55]

Wow! I love how gritty some parts of the city look. The whole design of the city seems very realistic in fact. Great job!

[jacqulina 162]

great start and intro my friend,great looking city so far i like the grimy look.

[Evil Weasel 88]

(Note there are not *yet* any descriptions on the images. I had an error in which when I posted the first time only the first paragraph was registered by the forum. All my descriptions and all my uploads were completely cut and I don't want to do the descriptions again right after spending a lot of time on them. So I just reuploaded the pictures. I will respond to above comments tommorow, and add the descriptions, sorry for the delay!)

Mise à jour no2:  AVE DES CHASSEURS (NORD) + CITÉ  DES MARTRES

The areas directly surrounding the downtown of Saint Joseph are dominated to the north by an uptown commercial centre and to the northeast by lowrise housing and infamous midrise public projects such as la Cité des Martres (roughly translated as the marten projects or Marten Park).

Avenue des Chasseurs (nord), north of the Avenue des Chasseurs/Avenue Duceppe intersection in the semi-suburban Duceppe area. Small shops line Avenue des Chasseurs, one of the city's main streets.

The intersection of Avenue des Chasseurs and the east-west uptown Avenue Gilles Duceppe. People figured that good old Gilles would get something named after him in such a dirty city. He eventually did, when the route's old namesake was found posthumously guily of fraud and murder. This intersection is the centre of the newly named Duceppe neighbourhood in north uptown Saint Joseph.

A closer view of the intersection's modern office blocks and restaurants.

Avenue des Chasseurs south of Duceppe. The major avenues in Saint Joseph (like other major cities in Canada such as Toronto) are spotted with midrise 1960s apartment blocks. Here, they are known as occassional crime pockets.

A few further out, with the midtown Rheims area to the south.

An apartment complex along Avenue Duceppe (ouest).

The former trackbed of a defunct railway runs along beside Autoroute 688b (which is eerily deserted outside of rush-hour).

A closer view of the trackbed, now a park that snakes along between single familly homes.

Le Carrefour (the intersection) is the junction area between highway 688b, Rue Stéphane Dion and Rue MacDonald. In it sits the Cité des Matres. Ironically located in the centre of a relatively affluent area, it is one of the poorest areas in Canada (although shockingly not nearly the poorest in the La Fourche metro area).

A few cheap apartments along Rue Dion.

Lowrise housing to the south of Cité des Martres, with slight urban prairie visable at the bottom left.

A closeup of the Cité des Martres' 1950s housing blocks and paved over areas.

Midrise blocks on the north side of Rue Dion, beside the confluence of highway 688b.

Another run-down apartment complex in the area.

[GreekMan 246]

oh god i HATE that. It's happened to me twice and its so annoying!After that happens you don't want to redo everything....

ANyways great update EW!

[Sim_Air 2]

Suck kind of Cjs make lazy people like me want to play again. Awesome pics Weasel, great planning. All I can say is that it's pretty damn realistic

[Petrovar Ambassador 15]

sorry to hear about that weasel...anyways, your pictures can explain for themselves, they look great!

[Evil Weasel 88]

Jacqulina + yunxiang:  Thank you, no city is clean and I specifically looked for a level of dirt and darkness that moves away from the forest of shiny ivory towers that appear in many other CJs.

Greekman: Glad to know I'm not the only one that's happened to...

Simair: Trust me, I'm lazy. I come into and out of this game and this site. My cj's have never lastest long, though I hope this one will be the apex of my evolution of realistic ugliness (if not...bleh...).

[Sim_Air 2]

Originally posted by: Evil Weasel

Simair: Trust me, I'm lazy. I come into and out of this game and this site. My cj's have never lastest long, though I hope this one will be the apex of my evolution of realistic ugliness (if not...bleh...).

quote>

Aahh, you just mirrored myself there. Don't worry mate. Cheer up and sleep tight with the thought of another day tomorrow. Who knows.

[feliwi 4]

Nice downtown! I lov this old-fashioned style of how you're coloring your pictures! Keep it up!

[De Ja Vu 117]

Great update once again! Your selection of buildings really impresses me. I think this update was flawless!

Keep it up!

-Dejavu

[Evil Weasel 88]

Déjà vu: Thanks, my building selection is mainly influenced by the architecture of my own city, Toronto, as well as Québec cities, especially Gatineau. I would say though, that these pics are far from flawless...

Felewi: I find the default colour palette of SC4 too saturated and cheerful for this sort of city, so the visual effects were pretty much necessary. Glad to see they sort of worked out.

Anyway, this is not a real update, more of a few random unconnected shots. To showcase upcoming updates (teasers if you will). The first is a prototype burnt out core area. These areas are not done of course, but to show you where I am:

Another overview, moving a bit farther to the east. The east-side midtown (bottom right) and the burnt out core (the two residential sections northeast of the downtown) will be the next update.

In another update, the farther north-east will be explored, including this highrise block. Note how I have now covered the whole of what I have done up to now in pine trees to make it more realistic and look like an older inner-city residential area.

[Yuu Caa Sim 55]

Grimy city indeed . Nice job! The converted trackbed was a interesting idea. I probably would have put pedestrian trails alongside, but it looks great this way. Those housing blocks are cool as well.

[jacqulina 162]

very good planning my friend,quite realistic,i know what you mean.