Apocrypha

[ldvger 19]

Well, glad to see folks stopping by and commenting, keeps me going.

This version of the region is probably going to become semi-densely populated, as it's already kinda going in that direction.  However, the terrain will rather obviously limit development in many areas, which is good to my mind.  But it's because of the antipated density down the line that I decided to construct my major infrastructure now rather than having to bulldoze entire mature neighborhoods later.  I think of my highways as comparable to the US Interstate system, connecting cities to each other rather than actually alleviating traffic within the individual cities themselves, so having long stretches of little used highway doesn't bother me.  If you've ever driven across the US, you know first hand that this is the case with the majority of the Interstate system.  Nothing for miles and miles but semi's long-hauling.  That's kinda my intent with the highway system I'm building now in this region...it's move for moving goods than moving people.  Not sure if I can do the same with my rail system, which I have yet to start.  

I forgot to mention last night that in anticipation of the highways being goods movers rather than people movers, there are a lot of long stretches of ground level highway rather than elevated.  I really only have elevated highways in the areas where I anticipate greater density of streets, roads, and avenues.  In the boonies, like the farm/rural areas and mountains, they are all ground level highways.  I totally forgot about jeronij's sunken highways and how cool they look.  Maybe I'll try that out in the other version of this region when I get around to developing that...if I ever do.

And because I spent many hours here last night posting update 12, I'm going to go play tonite.  I will take some pics and try to post some close ups of stuff I think is cool within the next day or so.

Lora/LD

[dedgren 830]

Playing SC4 is, of course, supposed to be recreation. A break from real life. A way to put aside daily cares and toil and do something that doesn't count in the overall scheme of things. Sometimes, though...

As a lawyer, and in particular in these rotten times, I see people almost every day who have miserable things going on in their lives. As a self-employed professional and small-businessperson, I'm constantly reminded about how thin the line is between success and failure, between staying in business another day and just throwing up your hands and saying to heck with this. Lora, success comes in strange places for many. At my age I know I'll never be a judge or have a building named after me. I've not had perfect results raising children, either, nor am I the greatest husband in the world (ask either my former or current wife, as I'm sure that what each would have to say would be remarkably similar to the other). But, with SC4, and participating in this community, it seems I've struck a chord.

Just as you did, ma'am, with Apocrypha. The list of folks who left comments here before 3RR was even a gleam in my eye reads like the who's who of Simtropolis, circa 2005-2006. It's quite apparent that, not only can you do this, but that you can do it in a way that really connects with other people. My experience has been that, at times like those you are going through now, being able to be one of the best at something, being able to accomplish something almost every day that people think worthwhile- these are not things to be lightly dismissed or discounted.

I have now looked at every page and post of this CJ. It's wonderful work. You explore freely, you do not feel compelled to have something to show before you feel that its ready, you self-criticize but in a manner that is not self-destructive, and you are not afraid to acknowledge the value of starting again from scratch with fresh ideas when you see yourself reaching a dead end. None of these qualities, btw, are without application in RL, but my guess is that you have figured this out already.

The great thing about terraforming is that, beyond a few readily downloadable things (one of Brian's (c.p./cycledogg) terrain mods and a ploppable tree set, Steve's (sorchin) ploppable stuff, jeronij's ploppable rocks, flora and water, Adam's (Ennedi) slope mod and his adaptation of pjot's slope smoothing mod, tierusu's Extra Terrain Tools (the "rain" tool) and Chris's (chrisadams3997) Rural Renewal Project ploppables, and your terraforming toolbox, right down to the fine level, is pretty much full. You could also download the NAM, the Street Addon Mod (SAM) and Single Track Rail (STR) if you wanted to do any development- those latter things are the couple of indispensable additions to the vanilla game that bring a region to life, even if only the game structures and lots make up the rest of what you do. I'm sure your current work, based on the reception your return to Apocrypha has already garnered, will be of interest to many. My guess is that, whatever you do, you won't find yourself straying straying too far from your "original vision" in any event. It'll continue to guide you, and will likely adapt well to your current approach.

Over the past three years I have tried to post at least once a day somewhere in this community, no matter how lousy RL has been. There's a great sense of connection and mutual support between the folks who love SC4, and all it generally takes is a few words typed into the computer to tap into that.

It's great to have you back, Lora!

David

[tungston 19]

Welcome back LD, it's good to see you again. I will try to get back when I have more time to have a closer look at what you are doing with the region.

[ldvger 19]

David your post here brought tears to my eyes, no lie.  It's true that I have been having a hard time finding value in my life these past 8 months without meaningful work and so without the feeling of contributing to the overall good of the society of which I am a member.  The despair I have come to know has been some of the worst I have ever experienced in my entire adult life and truth be told, I don't know what has kept me going other than knowing, in my heart of hearts, that this is a temporary situation that has sidelined me and that it was not in the tiniest bit of my making.  

I am a strong believer in intuition and trusting our individual instincts.  When I moved my stuff/junk out of storage in February and to my friends basement, part of my mind berated myself for taking the boxcutter and opening the box that contained all my gaming CD's.  But at the time, I had no internet connection, no cable TV, no phone, no way of connecting to the outside world at all, so revisiting old games was my only way to keep myself entertained in the evenings after I had spent a full day seeking work.  I don't think it was accident that SC4 was the first game I pulled from the box and stuck into my backpack.  And the first thing I pulled back into SC4 was Apocrypha.  I knew I had done a great job of terraforming the region, knew I had fans of my work, and so I started playing it again.  

I think I am going to have to divide this CJ out into two CJ's now, though.  I am not terrbly happy or unhappy with the way I have built the region so far, but kinda like 3RR is to you, Apocrypha is my baby and I want to do it right.  Thankfully, I have saved a pristine and completely undeveloped copy of the region, so I may yet have the chance to do with it as I originally intended, including wiriting the story that goes with the region.  Until then, I am terribly/wonderfully encouraged by the folks who have come by to visit, yourself included.  

Thank you all, from the top and bottom of my heart.  I can't tell you how good it is to know that something, anything, I do has value to others.  You inspire me.  

Lora/LD

[ldvger 19]

well, I have spent the last few days looking at a number of city journals, both here and on other sites, and have been downloading the things I think I may need to create the region I had originally envisioned. My number one concern is above ground water, as it has always been. I really don;t understand why this is such as issue, given the vast power and array of the God Mode tools at our disposal. I mean, I am the first to admit to having zero knowledge about coding, but it seem to me that if a tool can be developed to create a very small depression in the landscape, and be painted freely across the lanscape, how hard could it be to fill that depression with flowing water (or not?). I can see that I am probably going to have to delve into the world of coding myself to gigure out how this can, or why it can't, be done. There have been massive strides made is creating above ground water in the years since I started this CJ, but still I am not finding the tools I feel I want or need. I am able to find paintbrush tools for paths that follow slopes and have various textures,,,I dont understand why those same tools can't be modified for above ground water.

Being able to create a realistic watershed is, to me, very important to creating landscapes in SC4. Until I am able to do so, I will remain unhappy. There are tons of eye candy soultions to this issue available and I am downloading them all and trying them all out, to see if I can get what I want with the tools at hand.

In the meantime, I am continueing to build my highway network in my region as it now stands. I have downloaded the latest NAM, so I will have more options forthe way my transportation network comes together. I have also downloaded the SAM, so I will have some variety to play with when it somes to my streets.

I've been away for a long time and much has been done whikle I was away. It will take me a while to catch up. I spent over 6 hours playing SC4 last night, reading various fansite, downloading, installing, and actually playing, and went to bed at 2:30 am. But I couldn't sleep, so I got up at 3:30 am and played for another hour. It's 3:10 am now and I am headed back into the game, after another 6 hour day of downloading, inastalling, and learning more ways to make my region and cities better.

Lora/LD

[ldvger 19]

Ok, here we go another update. Sorry to be slow and testing everyone's patience, but RL is very intrusive these days.

First, let me tell folks about what I've been doing in regards to SC4 these past days (week?). I've been looking for, finding, and playing with ploppable water. I will show you some examples of my first tries:

Well ImageShack seems to be down right now, so rather than post pics first, I'll post text first. I know that's the boring way to manage a CJ, but it's late at night and it seems I have little choice in the matter.

The pics I hope to post show some of my first attempts at above ground water using the BSC_RPK mod. I am not certain but i think it may only be available at the SC4Devotion web site, as that is where I found it and downloaded it from. The mod has a lot of dependencies, including the Columbus Terrain mod, but that one was no problem for me, as this region has that mod already installed to it. Also among the dependencies was Peg's latest stream mod, which was new for me. I had downloaded her ponds and streams a couple of years ago but never got around to finding a way to use them to my satisfaction.

I guess I have to say I was disappointed. The BSC_RPK kit only works on level ground...and water runs downhill. Even the slightest variance in slope creates breaks in the streams, which to me is not the level of graphics I want to portray in my region. The waterfall tiles only cover 3 tiles, one flat unphill, one perfect slope, and one flat downhill. After days of research across several SC4 fan sites, I found several more usuable and realistic waterfall tiles I could use that would allow me to create waterfalls of almost endless height and width.

Another area of disappointment for me was the stream banks, which were almost uniformly straight and could only be built on tiles at 90 degrees to each other. Real water meanders, does not follow a grid. The stream banks were also covered with decidous trees, which is great in flat lowlands, but doesn't work for alpine highlands at all...and that's what I have, alpine highlands. It's great that the trees were seasonal, but seasonal trees don;t grow at high elevations and that is what I need/want for my region. Also, the understory of the stream sides were covered with brown duff of some sort, both rocks and dead plants (I guess), that did not meld at all with the terrain to either side of the stream bed tiles. When I posted a question about this, I was informed I would have to mod the tile myself to get it to conform to my terrain requirements. Ok, I can understand that...there are many terrains available and trying to mod a ploppable water terrain kit to match each one would be a full-time job. No problem, But until I have learned how to mod and bat and create textures and code...I have to leave this kind of task up to other folks. So, short end of the story, I am going to uninstall the BSC-RPK mod and most of it's dependencies.

I like Peg's stream kit, especially the color, texture, and transperancy of the water. I don;t like the straight-sided rock enclosed stream sides or the fact that the streams pieces are again only in 90 degree pieces. If folks are able to mod wide radius roads and railways, why not streams? Peg's stream pieces are at least a lot more slope tolerant, and that is good, but I can see there is a lot of work left to do to get above ground ploppable water to be realistic, despite all the work that has been done so far.

One of the things I think that need to be done, right from the get go, is for all these modders to get together and decide/define some basic water colors and textures. The color and transperancy and texture of RL water does indeed change a lot and some way needs to be found to make some kind of uniform system for the above ground water. Water color depends a lot on depth of the ground over which it flows (but not always), so maybe a basic starting point copuld be that shallow water is lighter and more transparent, while deeper water is darker and more opaque. And, the above ground water needs to be able to match, to some degree, the sea level water. Also, making the transition between sea level and above ground water needs to be studied more closely. In RL, not all streams, rivers, creeks, etc., empty into the sea via a culvert or waterfall or rapids. In fact, quit the opposite is true. Most above ground water, by the time it reaches sea level, is completely mingled with the sea via a delta, large of small.

One of the big problems with this game in it's current iteration is that is doesn't have a realistic water table. Sea level is the water table, which almost never occurs in RL. Natural water tables vary in depth below the surface of the land due to many factors, otherwise folks in Denver, CO would have no water except from nearby rivers...and in fact those nearby rivers wouldn't exist if there wasn't something (rock) underneath the area that stopped the water from draining down through the soil to sea level. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard (to me, and what do *I* know?) to define one of the underlying layers of strata beneath our regions as basically "impermeable" and allowing the water table to "float" under this layer. That's how we get lakes at 6000 ft (lake Titicaca in Peru comes to mind) in RL.

Taking a break to see is ImageShack is up yet.

Seems it is. Here, I hope, are some of my pics:

This shows the rigid form of the BSC_RPK, as well as the problem I have with the understory (area under the trees) matching which the surrounding landscape. I really like the looks of the rapids, tho!

Same view rotated 90 degrees.

My first try at a waterfall. I am not impressed.

This is what happens if the grade is not absolutely flat. This bar becomes darker as one zooms out and is still very visible at medium zoom. Not good, at least not to me.

A close up of the waterfall.

Anyone as anal as me wonder what these images do not make me happy???

Obviously, there are better alternatives. What they are and where they, I don;t know yet, but that is my current quest.

On another note, I got into playing around with scale today, as in the scale of the game versus RL scale. The default Maxis single tile is 16mx16m or, for us Americans, about 52.5 ftx52.5ft. This started ringing alarms in my brain this morning, while I drank my coffee and worked my calculator. My first thought was streets, the least traveled and narrowest of transportation networks. The are one tile wide, of 52.5 feet wide, including sidewalks and a bit of grass into the ajoining lot. As an architect, I know a little bit about transportation rights-of-way and 52 feet is a bit extreme for streets. Each lane is 8 ft wide, so 16 ft. Most utility easmements to each side are 5 ft each, so add 10 ft, and we have 26 ft. Thats half a tile folks, not a full tile. That leaves 13 feet of undeveloped land on each side of the street. Given that the cars that travel these streets take up most of the street and the street takes up most of the tile, I am guessing the cars in this game are at least 10 feet, maybe 12 feet wide. Big cars!!!

So, I have stumbled upon a game scale issue that will likely haunt me. The defualt game scale is badly out of scale. I'm an architect, so I know abot scale and things that are out of scale tweak my mind big time.

Going further down the avenue of scale, I found that an acre of land is equal to 208. 71 fete to each side and that 4 city tiles was equal to 210 feet. That's close enough for me, even as anal as I am. So a 4 tiles square equals an acre. Consulting my game manuals I was able to determine that a region is 1024 tiles to each side. That comes out to roughly 10 miles by ten miles or 65, 536 acres per region. To travel a mile by road in any region, you need 100 tiles (100.5 actually).

So now I opened my game and looked at my region. This certainly looked like much greater than 10 miles from side to side. It actually looks more like maybe 50-60 miles. The original map I downloaded from the STEX was supposed to be scale accurate and maybe it was. But I've bent this region a lot since then and now I can't help but think that it's badly out of scale.

The last exploration I want to share with you is that of height of terrain objects in the region, which once I began to explore this newly found feature, just pointed out to me how much this region had been bent. I found I could turn on a contour map of any city in my region by opening my region, then picking/opening any city, clicking on mayor tools, and then hitting Ctrl+Shift+C. Bright yellow bands appear . From my reaserach into other folks work, I know these bands are 64 meters part from each other, or about 210 feet. Knowing this gives me an idea of how high my mountains and hills are, given that the SC4 Default for sea level is 250 m. It doesn't matter where you set sea level while terraforming in God Mode, when you are done, it will be 250 m.

There is another cool tool I found in my research over the last few days that allows me to check the elevation above sea level of any feature on my map. You can access it by Ctrl+X, then typing into the box "terrainquery". Then, while in mayor mode, click on the question tool and hover the coursor over any point or object in the landscape. You will be able to learn the elevation of whatever you want. Use the "Y" info as your guide and don't forget to subtract 250 meters. Using this tool I found that Meyers Peak in my region, is actually 33, 189 feet tall, which is, I think, taller than Everest. Given that Meyer's Peak rises from sea level within less than 10 miles from the sea, I find this scenario unlikely.

So, back again to matters of scale. It seems to me the scale of the game is skewed, that the scale of objects on the "x" or horizontal axis are not equal to those along the "y" or vertical axis. No where in the know universe is there a mountian rising to 33K from sea level within 10 miles of the sea. I am not 100% unhappy with having discovered this...it's a game and a fantasy. Anything can happen.

I also found a couple of other new tools that I think will help me along the way to making this a better CJ. One is a mapping tool that allows me to see my region from a bird's eye view:

That tall mountain in about the center of the shot is Meyer's Peak. Note it's proximity to the sea....

The white lines show the city squares.

It's almost 4 am, I have to go to bed. Hope you enjoyed this update.

Lora/LD

[SC4Poser-moser 0]

I've noticed things too. and ya, the mountain isn't as far from the sea as it looks..

[edmonton_stinks 5]

There are a lot of things wrong with the ingame scale. The idea that 12 people would live in a single-family home is ridiculous, for one thing.

[ldvger 19]

Well, lets this be a lesson to us all. Do not attempt to do complicated (?) mathmatical computations late at night after 3-4 glasses of wine. Myers Peak is not 33, 189 feet tall...it's 33,189 INCHES tall. I forgot to divide by 12 to get feet (and I consider myself somewhat of a math whiz...that's what wine will do to you!). So, if we divide by 12 we get 2765.75 feet, which I'll round to 2766. This sound much more plausible, but even so I think the terrain would be much more dramatic than graphically displayed in the game if in RL we had a peak of that height rising within a mile or so of the ocean shoreline.

I have discovered a new tool called SC4Terraformer (well, it's new to me, anyway) that I have been attempting to install for a couple of days now. I'm getting close and I'm hoping that, once installed, I can discover a little bit more about how this game default game X,Y, and Z axis are scaled.

And as for having 12 people live in a single family home, well, that's more common than many folks playing this game may think. It's certainly not common across most of the US, and perhaps not much of Europe or Australia/New Zealand, but I think it's very common in the rest of the world. In the household I grew up in, there were 6 of us living in a 3 bedroom 1 bath house: mom, dad, 3 kids, and my mom's mom (my grandma). Mom and dad had thier bedroom, us girls shared a bedroom (bunk beds for me and Charlotte, a single for Kimberly), and grandma had her bedroom.

Lora

[jacqulina 162]

nice waterfall work my friend,i must admit it is hard to get realistic waterfalls.even mine take a fair amount of time to make and get so they look ok .im sure you will find a solution to your quest.

[ldvger 19]

Well folks, now I am frustrated on another front. I am trying to install a couple of surface water mods and slope controlling mods and it's just not working. These are not so much for this built version on my region as they are for my "virgin" region, but still it's frustrating.

I have been working on the built region and in fact spent 3 hours last night building roads and bridges across the massive Moose River Delta area of my region. I started to take pics and create an update file (around 2:30 am) but then my roommate came home and was feeling (drunk and) chatty, so I had to abandon my update for the sake of keeping domestic relations amicable.

I was finally able to figure out how to get the Terraformer tool up and running today and I think it will be a very valuable tool once I figure out all the things it can do. My primary want of this tool is to see the countours of the land and create natural watercourses, if I can.

So anyway, I am off to play Apocrypha for a little while before my roommate gets home (in about 1/2 hour). I will try to take some snapshots for the next update.

Lora/LD

[jacqulina 162]

looking forward to your updates my friend.

[ldvger 19]

Ok, I think I may be able to post an update here tonite, fingers crossed.

This is going to be an ongoing update and other updates may interrupt it. I am calling this update "The Bridges of Apocrypha County: and it will be focused on, you guessed it, bridges.

Half of this region is very mountainous, the other half is water, so bridges play a major role in connecting the islands with the mainland. I am going to start in the upper left hand corner of the region with Glacier Bay, as it has only one bridge, but it's a doozy:

This is the one and only bridge that connects Glacier Bay with all the other city tiles in the region. This is a view looking east, showing a bit of the farmlands to the south and east as well as a peek at the top of the Glacier River Valley, and its attendanr development. This bridge is a 4 lane highway and as you can see "T's" off on the west side to a feeder highway that will service the seaport that is planned to be developed to the south of the bridge.

This is the view rotated 90 degrees, so we can see the upland areas of the Glacier Bay area that this transportation spur is meant to service.

Oops, roommate came home, have to close for now.

[ldvger 19]

Hi folks-

Ok, this is going to be kinda hard for me, but I'll be upfront about what is on my mind. I am going to abandon the direction this CJ has been moving in for the past 2-3 weeks and return it to where I had wanted it to go all along.

Reason one: I have found some of the above sea level water tools I have been wanting/needing to create what I believe will be realistic apprearing watersheds across my region. This was my original goal with this region and rather than deviate from that, which I have done very much so, I am going to return to that now that I have the tools that I think I am going to need.

Reason two: I took a 2 1/2 year leave of absence from this region and revisited it with lack of an internet connection out of sheer desperation and boredom. I didn;t have access to any new custom content, could not see what other folks had done with the newer tools. I was, in short, somehwhat in a state of despair. It's a region with extremely challenging terrain and I disrespected it when I becan to build on it a month or so ago. I just ploppled down zones and roads as if the underlying landscape (which I had spent hundreds of hour painstakingly terraforming) didn't matter. And at the time I did this, it DIDN'T matter. I knew I had a backup copy of the region, so if I wanted to completely mess up one copy, I could without hurting the other copy. So I did...I hurt one copy and hurt it badly. I am going to delete it.

Reason three: I originally abandoned this CJ because a.) RL was getting in my way and b.) the tools I dreamt about did not then yet exist. The ultimate tool I still dream about still does not exist, but...I think I have found a good work around, Enough so that I am ready to start the second phase of this region as I had planned from the beginning, and that is to create a network of natural watersheds across this landscape I have created.

Maybe some folks will be disappointed with this news, maybe others will be happy with it. My purpose with this CJ is not to make folks happy or sad, but to merely show others how *I* want to play this game and the results of that gameplay. I have been tremendously inspired by both jeronij and dedgren...the way they use thier games to create art just amazes me. I aspire to one day be included among the pantheon the inhabit. I want to create art, beauty.

As such, I doubt the region I end up with will be a "living" thing in that I doubt I will run the game out of the "pause" mod very often. This region is supposed to be rural Alaska...metropolises need not apply. I envision lots of dirt roads. steep grades, small towns and villages, all plops. And I won't start building the towns until the transportation networks are in place...and that won't happen until I have the watersheds complete.

Because this is the way RL development works. People come into an existing landscape and because they are few and have little money, they work around the obstacles the landscape presents them. Over time, as more people come and the population begins to grow, the money to begin manipulating the underlying landscape of thier surroundings appears. I want to develope Apocrypha this way. A large region of very scattered hamlets, just like Alaska was and, in many ways, still is. A frontier.

So be warned. It may take me while to create the watersheds...and that will happen before ever a single mad-made lot gets plopped. The entire region will have a complex and, hopefully, naturalistic watershed system first. And, like dedgren did with his original 3RR, I may decide to expand this region many times beyond it's current size.

I have a lot yet to learn and I will be posting a lot of my learning process here. If ths kind of CJ bores you, I am sorry for having possibly misled you. But, if you enjoy watchinglearning in progress and seeing mastery emerge from igonorance, this may be a CJ to keep an eye on, all ego aside. I fully intend to master the many techniques I have seen others use, despite my current ignorance.

I have pics saved of my new trys, but I have to convert them to JPEGs before I can post them and I don;t have time for that tonite...roommate will be home any second.

I will post the pics tomorrow, so you can all see how I use these new tools I have found.

Lora

[ldvger 19]

Ok, here we go! This update officially begins Phase 2 of the developement of Apocrypha and is going to be subtitled "How Lora learns to create a watershed system". You saw my first attempts above. Here are snaps of my second try with new tools:

This is a teensy little pond with two even tinier feeder steams running downhill across a slope (!). The feeder streams are only 1/2 a tile wide and the pond itself is at max 3 tiles wide. I am using jeronij's transparent ploppable water tiles and I am thinking I am going to have to fly to Spain and kidnap this man and his gorgeous son and marry them both (JUST KIDDING!!!). The tiny feeder streams have no need of rapids as they are flowing over a gentle slope. The pond doesn't need embankments to contain it because it's suppoed to be marshy (it's on flat ground and has no outlet). So I didn;t do a single thing the the underlying terrain at all, just plopped the water right on top of the grass and this is what I got. Jeronij's tiles have the ability to overlay each other, which I find delightful, as in areas where they overlay the become darker, giving the impression of varying depth to this shallow pond and it's little feeder streams. This is a zoom at 4 (I think) and I think it looks just wonderful, very realistic (the water at least...not super happy with the plants/rocks, but this was my first try, so I forgive myself). Next pic:

Rotated 90 degrees, you can see upstream a little of one of the feeder streams. The rocks are Goldiva's from her Mayor Tropical Sea Set and most likely the only think I will use from it. The waterside plants are from Gizmo (I think) and are Waterflora_V2. The downed trees/logs came with the BSC set for the squared in rapids shown several posts above and are probably the only thing I'll use out of that set. Next pic:

Another 90 Degree turn and we see the bottm end of the pond. I love how the logs and plants and rocks show up through the water! I'm using several different ploppable trees here. Some are non-seasonal Maxis Mayor Mode landscape menu plops, which I don;t really like because they are not seasonal. The little pyramid shaped conifers are dedgren's sub-alpine firs, which he says grow near water in Alaska, not certain where I got that one. Most of the larger conifers are Red Cedars, which came (I think) with a mod I downloaded 3 years ago, perhaps with the Columbus Terrain. Next pic:

Last 90 degree rotate, looking at the other end of the bottom of the pond. You can see I got a little carried away with the Cedars, although that's a tree that grows here in Western Washington and it is fond of damp places. Next pic:

Ok, here we are zoomed out one notch and you can see my earlier rapids to the left. You can see I also used the God Mode cheat to access my God tools and scatter forests around my pond. You can also see upstream of the left side feeder stream in this pic. For those with sharp eyes, you may notice I have also plopped some of Peg's seasonal tree lots here and there, but that's another effect I am not happy with. They work great in cities, but are a little too formal for my tastes for wild uninhabited areas. I am going to have to search around and find ploppable seasonal trees to use that would make me happy. Some Big Leaf Maples sure would be cool, and I know dedgren has some aspens and cottonwoods. Alders would be nice, too.

This pic also illustrates why the BSC rapids just don;t work for me for my landscape. I also noticed that when I zoom way in, there are kayakers in the rapids and when you run the game out of pause mod, people show up and congregate along the stream banks. This would be most odd in a region that had no houses or roads or services or anything human created to service thier needs. However, I can see how this set of tools could be very useful once a city begins to grow up around a wild river and the river needs must be tamed just a little bit to stay confined within the city's needs. I still have an issue with the brown undergrowth, though. Last pic:

Another 90 degree turn at the same zoom, to show the little hill behind the pond that the feeder streams run down. Taking a lesson from dedgren, I continued to plop the little subalpin efirs up the hill to give the impression of water continueing on past where the visible water starts. You can't really see that here, but trust me, they're there and it works pretty good. The mind begins to associate certain looks with surrounding plants/terrain, so even though there is no longer any visible water, because of the same water plants following a line of contour, your brain tells you there is water there. Optical illusion, if you will.

Of course, this little watershed would never exist in RL simply because the hill is too small to create two small streams. In RL, water would flow around it, not from it. But I wanted to see what the new water tiles would do and try out my new plants and rocks and logs. I haven't started messing with Apocrypha at all yet, this was all created in a numbered game region which is likely to become my classroom.

So, that's how far I've gotten in a day and a half. Lots of learning left to do. Most especially I am anxious to learn how to use the Terraformer tool. I would like to "sculpt" my watersheds into the landscape using this tool, rather than using God tools while in game. For one thing, the Terraformer has an "undo" feature which I know is going to come in very handy (rather than having to exit without save in game). Also, I have already forested my region and seeing the underlying natural contours of the land is hard in game. I guess there is a way to turn off the trees, but so far I have not figured that out.

So, that's it for now. Let me know what you think of my second attempt at a watershed!

Lora

[ldvger 19]

Ok, It's been a while since O posted anything here, so I figured I needed to let folks know what's going on with this CJ.

I have been researching ploppable water methods amd mods, first, and also bigger game issues such as scale, which I think I posted about a while ago. And so, I have delved off into the deep of of CJ research and have been reading Three Rivers Region for the past week or so, learning how dedgren dealth with this same issues as he came across them. Over the past few days I have learned that he almost completely scrapped his original region map, saving only the basic landforms he had created, and started all over again from near zero after upsizing his region by a scale of 4 (made it 4 times bigger). He had at least a year or more or time into his original CJ when he started it over and I have to admit I admire the hell out of anyone who can throw away that much work and not commit suicide, hahaha.

I guess it goes without saying that I am giving serious thought to emulating his decision. I am an architect in RL and matters of scale are more than important to me, they are my career. Yes this is a game, but...it's work for fun, for me, and if I am not happy with the scale of the defualt game, then in the end I am not going to be happy with what I create in the game, either. David came to that same conclusion, which is why he was able to toss several years work out the door and start over. I am, thankfully, not as far along in the development of my region as he was, so even though it hurts me hard to think about starting over again almost from scratch, it won;t be as hard for me as it was for him.

The whole purpose of building a CJ is for personal pleasure, first and foremost. This issue of scale is going to nag and bite me and ultimately undermine my pleasure in playing or posting. I'm too anal, too OCD, to let something as basic as scale go unadressed. Expanding Apocrypha to 256 large city tiles, on the other hand, represents a huge commitment, which I am not at all certain I can make or honor...so I still have some thinking to do on this. I also don't have the technical know how, despite having read through dedgren's posts several times over.

So I guess this CJ is going back into haitus status for a while, while I research what others have done and figure out for myself what it is that *I* want to do. I love the region I have created and would really like to play with it and do it justice. Until I can load the region into the game with a definite plan, I choose to not play at all.

Check back from time to time. I will definitely keep folks aware of what's in my head and, if/when I begin working in the region again, I will post that work here. But it may be a while...I have a lot of learning and catching up to do.

Lora/LD

[fabsies55 5]

man for each post u nearly got entire essays... dont think many people gonna read that... but your pictures look nice... well done

[Darmok 34]

HI Lora,

If those last pics are an indication to where you're going game wise, This CJ will be a huge success! I really liked your work on the small pond, very lifelike and chaotic just like nature is, and speaking of which, that's why I agree with you on the BSC rapids, while their texture is good, they have a "squarish" feel that may go well in a developed area but in a natural setup, the only place they would fit would be in a gorge of some kind, if not they look to "straight", just a shame we don't have running surface water in the game... but then again perhaps it would be murder on our poor CPU's...

Looking at your pics I realize that, like me, you pause the game often to take pics, perhaps you'd like to use the

SMP Yellow Pause thingy remover

(that's a mouthful...) it does what it's name says, no more yellow border... though you have to look at your tool palette to see if the game is running or if it's paused, but it really is a lifesaver when doing mosaics!

One thing I've noticed, and on this point I disagree with you, I think your use of rocks is pretty good, they do look random and it's not always an easy process, as for the flora/plants/water plants, all I'm saying is, get used to never (or almost never) be satisfied, even when we do things that we like at first sight, later on when revisiting that same spot we always think of new ways of doing it... I guess it goes with the creative process... I believe that we are our own toughest critics...

As for the CJ thing... why don't you use it, for the moment as a test bed of sorts and post whatever you're doing, I'm sure it could be beneficial both for you and the readers, sometimes a simple picture can spark some new ideas... you never know.

Anyhow, I think you're going in the right direction and for someone who just came back to the game what I see her is MORE than promising.

Good luck with your scale endeavour.

-John

[Benedict 3,119]

I really love the terraforming you did for this region - just amazing! I'm looking forward to seeing more of your city-building. And, as a writer of a vanilla CJ, I don't mind the in game water color. In your cj it actually looks spectacular in some of the shots where there are many small islands.

[ldvger 19]

Well, thanks for the comments, which I'll reply to here:

Fabsies55, I am a very chatty woman in RL and that tendency to "talk too much" spills over into my writing style. Believe it or not, I *DO* try to stay on topic and be concise...you wouldn't believe how much I edit OUT of my posts before I hit the Reply button. But, I appreciate the reminder and thanks a bunch for stopping by!

Darmok, thank you for your review of my little pond and stream, it helps to know what other folks think of my first fumbling attempts. I will definitely download the yellow pause thingy removal mod, if for no other reason than I love the name of it. And yes, I do plan to use this CJ as my testing ground, showing folks what I learn and what I do with what I learn.

Benedict, thank you for your appreciation of the hard work I did to terraform my region. Part of my hesitancy in enlarging it is knowing a lot of the fine details I so painstakingly applied will be lost and/or have to be redone. I know I don't have to make my region as big as dedren made his, but his looks so fine at that scale that if I AM going to enlarge it, I think that's the scale I am going to go for as well. And as for game water versus water mods, I have since installed a couple of watermods. This is supposed to be southeast Alaska and northern seas are rarely that bright sparking blue the game water displays as. The mods I've installed give me a slightly choppier looking sea, darker blue and greyer as well. There is also the matter of trying to match the ploppable water mods I have chosen to use with the game water so as to make the transitions between them less obvious. Not many rivers meet the sea at waterfalls or culverts, after all!

In a slight aside, another CJ'er, Nik-Nik, has a copy of this region which I sent him/her years ago. It would be interesting to know if he/she ever did anything with it. Nik-Nik lives in the Netherlands and in one of those wonderful little life coincidences, I just two weeks ago sent a copy of the region to another Netherlander named Tony and now we have begun an email correspondence to keep each other in touch with what we each do with our respective regions.

Lora/LD

[Evillions 552]

Have I seen this in SC4devtion?

[ldvger 19]

Hello again and I guess you can tell it's a slow day around my house today. But look what I found:

This is a real life satellite view of the area my region was made from. You can't really read the infor across the bottom of the pic, but the scale bar at the lower left shows a scale of 20.2 miles per large tick. At the bottom right is a handy little data bite that tells us the eye elevation we are looking down from, which is 69.18 miles. That big river delta is actually the Copper River, which down here in Seattle is famous for it's short season special salmon, Copper River Salmon (what else?). I tried to use a Paint program to draw a sqaure around the area, roughly, that consitutes my region, but I haven't yet figured out how to use the many tools (sorry). Other things I found out...this is quite close to Cordova, AK and in fact if you look closely you can see a largish bright blue box toward the upper left. That's Cordova, which is sitting right on the shore of what I named Glacier Bay. Down in the lower right again you can see the town of Katalla itself, which was the name of the original region I downloaded from the STEX. Very clear from 70 miles up is the range of snow covered mountains I named Nelly's Spine. So, now seeing the general area at a real life scale, I am becoming more convinced that I need to enlarge my region and it looks like 40 miles by 40 miles would be just about perfect. Sigh. Boy, that will be a LOT of work. But really...how cool is this???? But wait, look what else I found:

The USGS maps of the area, too! Bet you can guess what I'll be doing tonite, huh? Yup, downloading the individual SCALED maps and trying to cut/paste them together into a 40mile x 40 mile map. I've already been over to the Omnibus forum and read through the tutorial for converting USGS maps into scale accurate (very important word to me) regions, so maybe this CJ isn't dead in the water yet. I printed out the tutorial, so I may have some grey scale images to show off tomorrow (or maybe even late tonite, who knows?).

Stay tuned folks...I think I'm getting fired up!

Lora/LD

[ldvger 19]

A pic of the RL Cordova:

I had some more pics but I saved them as Bitmaps and have not found a way to covert them to JPGs, sorry.

Cordova is a booming of town with a pop. of just under 3k. I learned a lot about it's history tonite. The infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" is just outside of town and once was the conduit for over $200 million dollars of ore. The original bridge was built by J.P. Morgan to facilitate the transport of ore from the Copper River region (about 40 miles south and east) to Cordova, which proved to have a better harbor than Katalla (pronounced KA-tell-a) did. Katalla was was also the first know location of the discovery of OIL in Aaska back in about 1909. It is a ghost town now.

I don't need to make up a backstory for this region...it comes with it's own already built in. I have found historical pics of both Cordova and Katalla (when it still existed). I will continue to post what I find about the area as a way of providing backstory while I struggle with the realities of medling hundreds of USGS maps into a single region.

So I guess you could say that rather than try to create some fantasy backstory for this region, I am going to go with it's RL history. From what little I read tonite, it's very rich and will give me plenty of story-tellimg material.

And now here comes the perhaps strangest part of this post. Cordova is actively seeking new inhabitants. I am out of work and giving serious thought to writing to the Chamber of Commerce to see if they need an architect. Or, if they have an architect, that architect might need a drafter.

Maybe I will be able to actually see Katalla for myself some day. Wouldn't that be cool?

Lora/LD

[jacqulina 162]

i think you are doing well my friend,i love the ponds/lakes you have been making,it takes time to try all things out and be satisfied,it takes me forever lol.i love the RL pics too.

[ldvger 19]

Ok, I have some news, but no new pics, sorry

But first to answer the comments posted since I was last here:

Evillions, no I don't think you have seen this region over at SC4D, at least not as anything *I* posted.  I was unaware of SC4D until about a month ago and I know I have not posted anything directly related to this region there since then.  However, a couple of years ago, when I completed the Gode Mode terraforming of this region, I did send it out to a couple of folks who requested it and it's very possible one (or more) of them has used it as a CJ/MD over at SC4D...or even here at ST, for that matter.  I have been very wrapped up in getting myself back into the SC4 saddle with my own region and CJ and so admit I have not spent much time looking at anyone elses, here or on other sites.  As I stated above, Nik-Nik has a copy of this region and it's possible he/she has played around with it and displayed the work.  But you make a good point, I should cruise around the CJs and MDs and see what other folks are doing.  Looks like this CJ may be down for a little bit, but more of that later.

Jacqulina, thanks for stopping by and for the encouraging words.  I'm not totally unhappy with my first attempts but know I have a ways to go before I am happy with the end result. 

So, my news is this.  Having found USGS topo maps of the RL region Apocrypha is created from, and realizing the RL area is about 4 times bigger than what my region depicts it as, I have made the decision to, if I can (big IF at this point, as you will see)...start over.  This time, I am going to start with an acurrately scaled map which either I or someone else will create using USGS topo maps.  It'll be a big region, 4 times the size it is now, very comprable to David Edgren's "Three River Region" at approximately 40x40 miles square.  I want to capture at the very minimum the same amount of area the region already covers and may extend the region a bit to include the really cool barrier islands off the coast you can see in the maps I posted a few frames up.  I may shift the entire region just a teensy bit to the west, so as to include more of the area around Cordova, but I haven't made up my mind on that yet. 

This may take a little bit of time to accomplish.  I was going to attempt to do this on my own using tutorials in the OmniMaps forums here, but found the tutorials to be badly outdated...so much so that I am unable to figure out how to use them with my limited mapping abilities.  I have suggested that the tutorials be updated (and volunteered to help) and today I see both of the USGS tutorials have new headings on them telling us all that they are under review for possible updating.  Yay!  I was also referred over to SC4D and the New Horizons Production (NHP) team there, who work almost exclusively with maps and mapping, so I went over, checked them out, and of course left behind a post asking for help with my project.  Turns out they use a different method for translating USGS data into game regions than the tutorials here recommend...one that would require me to purchase the same software they use.  Well, that ain't gonna happen, so I'm kinda bummed about that as I was looking forward to learning the process one way or another. 

However, one of the NHP map creators, Troy (blake25k) has volunteered to create the region for me.  Yipee!  Except...it seems Alaska USGS data is different from other USGS data in several ways (why is that not surprising?).  First, it isn't available at the usual USGS site and Troy doesn't remember right off hand where to find it.  I will help him find it, of course, if I can.  Second, and this is a little bit technical, but the topo info for Alaska is rendered into USGS DEM (Digital Elevation Map) files using a 2 second arc of reference.  Most DEM maps are created using a 1 second arc, or even fractions of an arc.  If any of you remember geography classes (or maybe even math classes), you'll remember that the earth is a ball and that lines of longitude (running north to south) are in one second intervals.  Sixty seconds equals one degree, 360 degrees equals the entire planet.  The zero degree runs through Greenwich, England.  Because Earth is a ball, the longitude lines get closer together as they move north or south.  That's why points far north have arc intervals greater than points further south.  This only matters to me (or anyone else interested in this CJ) because the instructions for the USGS tutorials here at ST only work for 1 second arcs or fractions of 1 second arcs.  Nothing is told about how to do a 2 second arc.  I don;t know enough about mapping to figure out how to make that conversion (it might be super simple...like multiplying by 2?) and then again it may not be.  And besides...until we can locate the Alaska DEM files, it's a moot point. 

So, those are the 2 major stumbling blocks facing the continuation of this CJ right now.  1.) finding the DEM maps we need and 2.) rendering them into a new scale accurate region 40 miles square.  Between ST and SC4D, there are perhaps 3-4 folks working on this, so hopefully it will be dealt with soon and I will have some stunning new pics to post. 

Until then, I'll keep you posted. 

Oh and BTW, if you have time, run over to SC4D and check out the new ploppable water dedgren previewed this week on Three Rivers Region...it's awesome!

Lora/LD

[Sim_Air 2]

Your terraforming is simply awesome there my friend. I'd put more trees to beautify the already beautiful. Keep up!

[jacqulina 162]

i am looking forward to those pics my friend.

[ldvger 19]

to respond to recent comments:

Sim_Air, thank you for the appreciation of my terraforming efforts and thank you so much for stopping by my humble and disorganized CJ.  Someday this will be a finely tuned and humming machine, I promise.  But for now, we are not hitting on all cylinders, struggling to keep the engine running.  My apologies and I hope you check back from time to time to see if my nechanic's skills can keep this puppy alive.  As for ading more  trees, the region is currently terraformed using CD's Columbus Mod and the trees go where he says they will go.  I have no ploppable tress in my plugins folder yet but plan to remedy that situation once I get the new region going. 

Which actually brings me to a bit of a sidebar concerning region terraforming.  Which came first, the chicken or the egg?   Do I forest my region after the major/minor landform terraforming has been done and then create my watersheds, or should I do itthe other way around?   My personal thought is to create the watersheds across unforested terrain, simply because this is the way it would happen in RL.  The forests would grow up around the watersheds, not the other way around.  Viewers thoughts on this are welcome, as always. 

Jacqulina, no pics coming up anytime soon, hope you can be patient.  Thanks for stopping by and encouraging me, it means a lot to me.

No other new news to share...it's late at night on a workday and most folks are in bed. 

Except me...bored and lonely.

Lora/LD

[ldvger 19]

Ok, more news and an admittedly bad pic.

Troy over at NHP ran into the same problems at the USGS site that I did, so he has emailed the USGS site administrator to find out what's up (or down, more precisely) with the Alaska DEM files.  Having had many dealings with the government over my (ahem) many years, I am not content to sit and wait for a response.  So I went on a web search tonite looking for "Digital Elevation Maps for Alaska, USA".  I found lots of folks that would sell me maps of anything I wanted, but the majority of the responses I got led me back to the USGS site.  However, most of the addresses looked new/different from what I had found before, so I systematically checked them out.  Again, most of them were dead ends, leading me back to the same web page that fails to deliver the maps I want/need, but I did stuble across a page that linked me to a couple of third party companies that provided free DEM maps of the USA, including Alaska, so I followed those links to:

GeoComm.com

MapMart.com

GeoComm is a mapper's paradise, or so I assume, as I was not able to understand most of the info there, especially the many acronyms.  I was able to gather, however, that if I knew the names of the quads I wanted to download, I could do so for free at this site.  I had found similar services at the USGS web site, but my efforts to find out the names of the quads I wanted/needed led to nothing but deadends. 

So I zipped over to MapMart, which is a much more commercially oriented site, meaning most of what they sell costs money.  However, they do offer a lot of free services, too, so I hunkered down to see what I could learn.  And...

I was able to learn the names of the quads I want/need to download.  Hahahahaha.  One small step for man (or in this case, woman)...

The area of Alaska I am interested in is actually divided into large rectangular quads comprised of smaller townships 6 miles to a side.  These townships I think are the actual "quads" all the various web sites I have visited refer to, as each one is discretely named.  The large quads are comprised of 32 townships each, 8 wide in the east/west direction and 4 tall in the north/south direction.  Each of the large quads has it's own name, while the townships in the large quad are alpha-numerically designated: A thru D, south to north and 1 through 8, east to west.  I begin to understand why some of the files I have been downloading can be opened in Excel. 

So the large quad areas I want are Cordova (primarily), Bering Glacier (east of Cordova), McCarthy (northeast corner to Cordova, and Valdez (north of Cordova.  Here is a very quick, down and dirty map I drew showing the townships I want to find and download:

Well, seems I messed up when I made the file, because no matter how I try to resize it, it's to big to display on the page.  Bummer.  So sorry.  It's really not much of a pic, anyway, just a grid with some hand drawn red lines showing the four large quads and then more red lines with a large red "X" through them showing which of the townships quads I want for my region.  I have chosen a grid of 8 townships wide (east/south) by 7 townships tall (north/south) which gives me a rough starting area of about 48 miles by 42 miles.  I don;t want to trim it down to 40x40 miles until I get a better idea of how the map will translate to SC4.  The USGS DEM maps look awfully flat to me, despite there being some 10K (feet) peaks in the area.  This was my problem with the orginal Katalla map...too flat.

So anyway, that's where I'm at as of  almost midnight Tuesday night, April 7, 2009.  I'll continue to post as progress is made...or not!

Lora/LD

[jacqulina 162]

you take your time my friend,i can wait