The Iron Coast - Update XV - 04/04/2010

[PhilsCafe 8]

Amazing! What a fantastic insight into region planning!

I'll be watching this.

[Jillybean86 38]

Wow, definitely amazing. My dream is to do the skyscraper-suburb transition that well - like in the first pic in your CJ history update. I'm trying, but yours is out of this world...any advice? You've got a fan in me...HONK

[mightygoose 92]

Replies

Korot - no the cities will be all large tiles. As to biting off more than i can chew, see below. thanks for coming back.

Ironicepitome - thanks alot, yeah patience is something i have had to really master for this project.

CG - thanks for dropping in.

TmiguelT - It is early days to start saying things like that but i have everything crossed.

Archean - Oh i think 2010 is a year to bring back the city journal, we should all be pushing the boundaries as much as possible.

PhilsCafe - Thankyou for watching, i hope i don't disappoint.

Jill Jacobs -

with transitions, from skyscraper to suburb, just imagine you have another segment in between, the midrise area, this is where your ghetto's and your retail centres, and your major transit hubs go, surrounding the CBD, buffering it from the suburbs, creating  a much shallower urban gradient. do not fear, there is an update ahead that will go into this in much more detail.

Well here we are with another Update, this update may seem rushed but that is a perfect dichotomy to the amount of work put into this mammoth project for just the pictures you see here. well lets get to it shall we.

Landformer

Well I said I’d show you why I had bitten off more than I thought I could chew. So this update will not be as verbose as the majority of the others, I’ll simply leave you to enjoy a series of pictures taken over the course of 36 hours work terraforming the region. There were ups and downs, which I will talk about at the end. But till you get to the bottom enjoy…

PLEASE NOTE: that each numbered map image has been reduced from 2591 pixels wide to 400 so the quality here does not reflect full image quality.

 

 

 

 

Firstly, I thought I was having issues with height. You can see in maps 3 and 4 that I had grossly underestimated the contrast required for mountain, then again in 5 & 6. By 9 & 10 I realised something must be amiss. It seems in the SC4mapper I was importing 16bit PNG greyscale images as 8bit greyscales, which meant the terrain was being greatly compressed. 11 & 12, and 13 & 14, were mainly tonal correction work to bring the terrain back into kilter, now that I was importing via the 16bit button. The final tile I consider to be over correction so the region as it stands is map 13.

However some final alterations and changes are required in game so although I have the map, its not ready for release or upload yet and probably won’t be for some time. I have not yet opened every tile, although am in the process. To round off this rather shallow and picture heavy update I present some mid terraforming test eye candy. These images are all very raw and don’t represent how I envisage the final product looking.

 

 

Anyway see you next week for a very much longer post XD

[Jillybean86 38]

Beautiful. You really spared no detail in creating that map. I probably would've given up around step...4. Looking forward to more

[PhilsCafe 8]

Pictures say more than a thousand words sometimes! Awesome update! I also realized that with 8bit vs.16bit greyscales. Terraformer is a lot more "sensitive" on contrasts...

Keep it up!

- Phil

[Oktoberfest 0]

wow, i saw this on the SC4D, very nice a second time

[DCMetro34 577]

Wow! Marvelous and beautiful terraforming!

[sEAhAwk fAn121 0]

Stop being so amazing. Just stop!

JUST KIDDING! Keep it up goose! Loving it!

[Eʟᴇᴍᴇɴᴛ 273]

 Amazing terraforming! I wish I could terraform like that, I just do it the old school way.  Anyways I hope to see more soon.

[Simbourgeois 139]

Chapeau! This is just incredible!!! I could never do that, I'm still using the in-game terraforming tools...

Keep up the great work!

Best regards,

Simbourgeois

Mayor of Belleville

[Larks2242 251]

Awesome job, really cool how you create the details on the map!

[Korot 6]

Nice terrain, but what water mod are you using? I seem to spot a little bit of Maxis water on the bottom of the third picture from below.

I also advise you to use Haljackey technique for big pictures ("Click for full resolution!"), to allow use to see the full glory of 2192x1370.

Regards,

Korot

[CSGdesign 27]

This is more like an extended and very helpful tutorial than a journal, at this stage.

I very much like your combination of terrain mods, water mods, and tree mods.

Very nice work Goose. Very impressive - I'm very much looking forward to seeing your actual city works, and how you approach the various parts of it.

[mightygoose 92]

Replies

Jill Jacobs - Giving up at step four would have left me with a real mess of a map that didn't look remotely realistic, its quite a rewarding process really.

Philscafe - thanks for your kind words, unfortunately for this update a thousand words say a thousand words, twice!!

Oktoberfest - thanks again for showing your support.

DCMetro34 - thankyou very much.

Seahawkfan121 - I will do my best to keep impressing you XD.

Elemented9 - You do it the old school way very well though.

Simbourgeois - anyone could do what i just did, i taught myself and this is my first attempt at this type of mapping, it is far from perfect trust me.

Larks2242 - thanks.

Korot - The water mod in the last picture is a HD water mod by MAS71, available on Simcity4Devotion, i may well switch to Haljackey's click for full resolution but at this point i felt it wasn't necessary.

CSGdesign - thankyou, and yes it may seem like an extended tutorial because it well kind of is, its a diary of me writing a city journal, i mean i havent even started the city journal yet, this is all background stuff, stuff that people like me used to wonder about, why up until now all my efforts at city journalling were significantly less successful. I hope that you are enjoying this trip as much as i am.

Anyway, there is a big warning sticker attached to this update, it is a pretty heavy read but i hope you find it interesting never the less.

A Little Bit of History

Well, I am lying. There is a lot of history. For me this whole project transcends Simcity, it is as much about a literary interpretation of my imagined nation as it is about the visual tools I have used to portray it. This is something that I find makes it easier to know where I am going. As I intend to do this as a natural growth style journal (thanks CSG for coining the term), I thought it would make sense if I at least knew where and when each of the towns and villages were founded.

That is where I was at the map stage, since then it has kind off spiralled out of control. I take notes on everything Dedgren does in 3RR, and if I knew how I’m sure I would create a wiki for all the information I intend to throw at you. As it stands you can expect timelines, family trees, treatise; letters from soldiers, sailors and fathers to their daughters; bank notes, wedding invites, newspapers and flyers. All accompanied by full narrative written by me.

I thought I would show you some of the things I have been working on behind the scenes, getting ready for the commencement of storytelling. (Told you it would be the story of the story) First up is something I wrote back in March, it is the first part of a biography of Sir Arthur Lock I, Founder of The Iron Coast.

As you can see it is brief and far from complete. It was meant to be a pilot almost. I think it is suitable, and have since built up the picture to ensure this piece is still accurate to the canon*. I think that to portray a realistic history you have to have the good with the bad, so I do warn you, some parts of the history you will be exposed to are grim and sometimes unpleasant but that is part of the rich tapestry of life I am trying to put across.

The key to longevity in journals it seems is to be prepared for the long haul, early on. Thus I have started spreadsheets recording just about every possible bit of data there is on The Iron Coast; Replies per member, views per reply and all manner of such statistics. These I will share with you once sufficient data has been collected. Here is a shot of some of the excel work that I have going on currently.

As I mentioned earlier, Endora is another one of my influences, and my primary consult for steampunk in the SC4 medium. On this line of thought I decided to try my hand at one of his fantastic collages. Made up of many parts of many images and then put together in photoshop to look like a particular scene. This is my first attempt and I don’t particularly think it’s very good. I have posted an original Antimonycat collage first to demonstrate the concept.

I know that city looks somewhat advanced for 1762, but that will be explained in a couple of updates. As you can see I am not even close to the level of finesse that my inspiration demonstrates. But I intend to produce many more of these style images to show some of the key moments in The Iron Coast’s history.

To show you something more up to date, here is another excerpt from the Biography of Sir Arthur Lock I:

“On the ninth of February, 1482, Sir Arthur married Lady Elizabeth Huxley. This marriage was by arrangement of Victor Grosmont Huxley, First Duke of Lancaster. His daughter was not the most abiding of potential wives and the Duke took rather a risk to ensure his daughter was married prior to her 25th birthday. However lowly this marriage seemed for the Huxley family, the rise in status it brought to the Lock’s echoed round the chambers and lodges of England, and many otherwise disinterested businessmen began to look at The Iron Coast as a potential investment. The marriage turned out to be such a success that Lady Elizabeth’s niece married her son in 1507.”

As you can see, now it is somewhat more detailed, and includes more culture than the previous representation. This also gives you an idea of the scope of the project, there are five people mentioned in this brief passage, each in need of a biography, so the threads of history can be woven into a wonderful work of multimedia art. I don’t wish to get too romantic so I will call this an end here. Further reading below is available for those who wish to but today’s teaser is here.

*here comes a really nerdy bit. Canon refers to literary universes, and is used to describe the nature of additional media, and to define what is to be held as true within that universe and what is deemed fan fiction. The opposing term is Apocryphal, where everything on the subject counts, no matter the author, its just sources from points of view and the reader has to make up his own mind. Below find an essay I wrote for a website associated with Warhammer 40,000, a tabletop battle game that has a massive fictional universe with much fan fiction around also. This ended up in their equivalent of the Omnibus.

Games Workshop needs a clearly-defined policy stating which books are “official background material” and which are not. Some works, particularly older ones, should not be considered official.

To start I wish to clarify a few definitions.

The term Canon/Canonical denotes fictional material that is "genuine", i.e. created by the original creator/s of the fiction. This material is taken to be absolute truth and any contradictions in supplementary fiction are considered incorrect.

The term Expanded Universe denotes the 'extension' of a media franchise with other forms of media such as comics and original novels. This typically simply involves new plot arcs for existing characters within the franchise; however in some cases entirely new characters and additional themes are introduced.

The term Apocrypha/Apocryphal denotes fictional material that is created by a source other than the original creator/s. This material is taken to be valid exempting contradictions to Canon, although not to be treated as absolute truth. It may or may not be endorsed by the original creator/s and may or may not become Canonical at later stage.

From a business perspective there are several points to be considered. If a company adopts a Canonical/Apocryphal distinction then they can significantly constrain themselves and reduce interest and sales in the franchise. Primarily this distinction turns enclosed novels into enclosed fact, any mystery or speculation on a plot & its implications become somewhat pointless as unless clarified at a later date in Canon, any consensual conclusions drawn by the fan community are entirely worthless. This can rapidly lead to stagnation and a decrease in community interaction, leading to alienation and eventually to a reduction in consumer base and general sales. This also imposes incredibly stringent constraints on everything that the creator/s publish, as any internal contradiction totally undermines the entire corporate stance on Canon.

In a non canonical system, all material created that is enclosed by the expanded universe, by any author is equally valid. This is a direct parallel to reality; WWII only occurred 60 years ago and even today massive debates rage across the historical community arguing over specifics based on the evidence of any source they can find. What gets printed in the history books is just the general consensus among those same historians. As fans of a franchise in a totally apocryphal expanded universe we are the historians, archivists, reporters and even the characters. Our battles take place, we can write about events we witnessed (even if that witnessing is only implied by authorship) and we the community decide what really happened because that is our obligation, we have to make that decision. It is this debate and ciphering of sources that keeps the community alive, it is what keeps up lying awake at night dreaming of epic battles implied but not detailed. It is that sense of perpetual ignorance that keeps us buying the books, and posting in the forums. We want to garner every morsel of information from the new sources that are released. And it is this free advertising that keeps the Franchise afloat.

To compound this initial argument I will quote Marc Gascoigne, a publisher at the Black Library, don’t worry I wont use the whole quote, just the relevant bit:

“Keep in mind Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 are worlds where half truths, lies, propaganda, politics, legends and myths exist. The absolute truth which is implied when you talk about "canonical background" will never be known because of this. Everything we know about these worlds is from the viewpoints of people in them which are as a result incomplete and even sometimes incorrect. The truth is mutable, debatable and lost as the victors write the history... “

So Games Workshop don’t particularly want to adopt a Canonical/Apocryphal approach, because it is simply unrealistic. Remember newer versions of the same sources exist in real life and are treated as separate sources; this is because they were written at different times with different influences and with different intended implications. An article written in Rogue Trader era about space marines describes them the way he understood them to be, what he felt they were like. The same article written now may describe them in a totally different way and even flatly contradict the first source, but it was written by a different author. This author may be the same person, but his influences and intentions will have changed and that is why it is a separate source. Even real life quotes get misquoted down the ages, and how many versions of the bible are there, denominations of Christianity, interpreting the same sources differently.

 

Now for the second half I want to talk about why I don’t want Games workshop to adopt a Canonical/Apocryphal approach. I love the Iron Warriors; I love their persona, their attitudes and their methods. There are codex entries, there are rogue trader references, there are novels, and all these sources are pieces of a puzzle, for me to assemble, to create a consistent portrait elaborately integrated with the rest of the expanded universe. There are massive voids in the literature though, and I feel as a fan it is my responsibility to try and fill them. I went to find more sources; I searched my White Dwarf collection, and then various other articles written about them by official creators. Then I went to the other historians, looked at the sources they had created based on their interpretation of the available evidence. I had looked through the primary sources and the secondary sources.

All that was left was for me to pull all these resources together into on continuous, tangible thread of potential truth. There was no way that all the sources could be true so I deferred to consensus, just like a real world historian. I began to fill in the gaps with my own logical reasoning: “for event A to occur, condition B had to be true, which implied case C”, as this continues that thread slowly became an expanding tapestry of history. A history that is just as valid as any other, published or as yet unwritten. If the general consensus agree with parts of my tapestry it becomes accepted, but parts will not and they become new secondary sources, ready for the next historian to interpret.

Also as a hobbyist I want to convert models from both my own range of miniatures as well as some of those from other factions. Now in a Canonical/Apocryphal system there is no place for this. These new vehicle variants that I have created are in actuality wrong; they don’t exist and have no place in the universe. This is an absurd notion to me, why should my creation be branded eternally as implausible fluff, apocrypha that looks pretty but has no background, and no point. My Ram-raider is a siege tank used by some Iron Warrior forces, just because there have only been one or two sighting’s does not mean it exists. In WWII, to flog an analogous parallel to death, there are examples of vehicles that never made it off the drawing board, or vehicles that only one or two prototypes were ever made, and even some vehicles that were hastily converted in the field, lashed together to try and make the most of what they had. Flak emplacements were welded to the top of artillery tractors because a commander needed mobile air support.

As much as the Adeptus Mechanicus would disapprove I am sure many a guard general has ordered similar retrofits to vehicles under his command in desperate or unusual circumstances. Sometimes it is these lash together individuals that later go on to create a fully fledged variant. For those who don’t know that is exactly how the Predator Annihilator came into existence, prior to one particular engagement only Destructors were built. It may have taken hundreds of years of testing and augury to acquire the blessings of the Machine God, but they were gained eventually and now no decent anti armour formation is without them. Even the Adeptus Mechanicus, a fanatically ritualized organization learnt to accept apocrypha into their canon, so why should we as open, inquisitive and imaginative historians deny it?

A Canonical/Apocryphal system, if adopted by Games Workshop would be unrealistic, difficult to implement, detrimental to sales and community participation. I do not wish to deny that to an extent there is a canon. The rules Games Workshop publish in codex and rulebook are Canonical. Homegrown rules are very much Apocryphal. However, to the broiling clouded expanding universe that is the 41st millennium and the other forty that passed before it, that’s history, which is very much open to interpretation.

Now, for those familiar with the game that probably made a lot of sense, but for those not versed, I hope the message I was trying to portray got through. There will come a point where I may ask some of you to take part in The Iron Coast, either writing fictional pieces or helping decide the history. Any and all fan art, fiction, ideas, I will try to incorporate to the best of my abilities.

Further to this, you may have noticed the ever changing banners at the top of each post. This is because in March a member called shadeslayer created a joke banner for me. In honour of this his banner was used in the first update. This updates banner is brought to you by Benedict. Any other submissions, no matter how silly will most certainly be used at some point.

Anyway enough for this week, peace.

[Korot 6]

The first of those composed pictures is absolutely stunning, but I've got the idea that you only showed it as an example of Endora's work, and isn't your own.

The second picture, which I presume is your first attempt, isn't very good idea. I wouldn't use the word awful, but it comes close. I don't know why, it could be the lack of detail, or the clear sign that it is a coppy/pasted immage, with all pieces having a different perspective.

The ingame screen shot on the other hand looks real good. It looks like it has been taken from above, and some of the trees look like they've been taken in the real world.

Regarding the nerdy bit: I didn't read through it, to much text about something that doesn't really interest me equals exit.

Regards,

Korot

[Benedict 3,119]

Interesting treatise on the use of canon ... although here at ST you can do whatever you like with your cj, so I'm sure that nobody's going to be too picky. I like the fact that you want to make evrything perfect and as detailed a spossible with respect to background/back story/context. Hoping for a more meaty update soon.

[SounderBruce 173]

Very nice history! A long one too!

[mightygoose 92]

Replies

Korot - thanks for your honesty, it is those kind of responses i am looking for, i know it is a first attempt and it is pretty poor, but i hope to improve and considering the map itself was a first attempt too. As I said, the nerdy bit was entirely optional, although with only three replies and thirteen views in the week the continuation of my presence here is up for debate, especially considering i have to reduce image resolution just for this site.

Benedict - I do get rather obsessive with details, my checking process involves picking holes in whatever story i have narrated and then filling them, thus i end up with an ever increasing level of detailnd up with an ever increasing level of detail.

CG - Thanks.

Setting the Water II

Right lets get to it shall we, this week we start a more in depth run at terraforming from a hand drawn map. This time round the region is 14x10 large tiles in a landscape configuration so the greyscale image has to be (56,40)×64+x+y=(3585,2561).

Now crop your photographed map and expand the correct portion to fill the canvas.

Next I lassoed and deleted any unnecessary text & drawings in the water areas of the map; this makes it easier to see for future stages.

Start tracing in a narrow black brush all coastlines and water bodies, do this on a separate layer. This is also your last opportunity to make any significant changes to the map without making things much more difficult later on. As you can see I edited the river mouth on the right hand side of the image.

Once you are happy, create a new plain black layer and sandwich it between your trace and your photo layers. Then invert the colours of the trace layer.

Go back to the photographic layer by making the plain black (greyscale) layer invisible; next trace any major contour boundaries you feel like. I chose two more, the bottom of the treeline for Meadowshire tree controller, & the snowline. For reference, shoreline is at RGB 12, treeline at RGB32-RGB35, snowline at RGB54-RGB57.

In theory if all your lines are continuous and run to the edge of the map, you should be able to use the magic wand tool to select all the areas that will be at shoreline to treeline altitude in your trace layer. Swap to your greyscale layer and bucket fill RGB12.

Rinse and repeat for the other contours until you have what looks like a very basic cell shaded map on your greyscale layer.

Save the whole collection of layers as “[name of region] working map”; then delete all but the greyscale layer. Flatten the image so the layer becomes background, finally please check that the file is a 16bit greyscale, save as a copy, a PNG file named “[name of region] test one”. Do not save changes to original file when exiting photoshop, otherwise you will lose the other two layers which are still handy for reference.

If you want, at this stage you can boot up the mapper and create a region from your current test file. This is not the exact method I used in the first region, this is a more streamlined version I hope. My result in the mapper shows considerable noise, this is from chopping and changing between the best options for import into the mapper.

Well as you can see all the various elements are there. In a few updates time we will come back and look at some detailing techniques. Next time we are going to be looking at steampunk as a genre, and the stylistic direction I wish to take the regions architecture in (i.e. what plugins I will be picking). Finally as per requirement we have the fundamentally key teaser image, this is one of my favourites so far. Enjoy.

Anyway, I hope this has shown that going from hand drawn map to sc4 map is not quite as impossible as it first looks. See you soon.

[tostartpressanykey 2]

oh my sweet jesus. im at a loss for words, but good luck, uve got ur hands full with this one

[SounderBruce 173]

Very nice...

[PhilsCafe 8]

Okay, I missed an update... many words indeed I read through most of it though. Very interesting concept you have there.

As for the latest update, I think I would have done it the same way. It would be useful to know though, how the mapper interprets the different colors. For example what height is which shade of gray. I know there was something like this for the in-game render.

Keep it up!

- Phil

[crazychickensc12 84]

Well hello fellow feathered friend!! Long time no see nice to see your making a new CJ here!! Awesome start and I cant wait for more!!

[Korot 6]

Last picture is again stunning! There are some very realistic trees in that shot.

As to the rest of the update: Nice tutorial, but can you further explain what the colours on the mapper picture mean?

Regards,

Korot

[Schulmanator 5,812]

Very nice. And you have been quite thorough in your process to bring it into SC4. I like the way this one is developing.

[Benedict 3,119]

I agree with Korot - the final picture is absolutely stunning. Looking forward to the next installment.

I also really like the banner for this update.

[lucky7 73]

The pictures are really awesome, absolutely breathtaking... the tutorial is very informative, but needs a little makeover explanation-wise

Looking forward to more,

lucky7

[mightygoose 92]

[Kusajika Yachiru 9]

Very impressive region you have going on there. Those very first set of pictures at the top look like Alien X-Rays (lol).

[tostartpressanykey 2]

oooooooo... FIFTEY whole kilometers! (quickly goes to converter website for KM to miles conversion)

[SounderBruce 173]

Wow! Beautiful terrain!