Apocrypha

[Twenty20 28]

It's really a beautiful region !

[ldvger 19]

Well, I am feeling better tonite and glad I am not my roommate.  He has been very ill all day and I was almost convinced he had Whooping Cough.  I've been stuffing him full of cough suppresants and antihistamines all day, trying to get him to eat (very little success), but his cough has quieted a lot over the course of the day and he seems to be feeling marginally better.  He's tired, spent the entire day in bed watching TV and dozing or sleeping, which is a good thing.  But he had me very concerned this morning when he was coughing so hard he was vomiting.  Poor guy, I stayed close to home all day to play Nurse Lora.  I know I annoyed him off and on, especially with my demands that he eat, but I think he also appreciates that I am trying to care for him.  I bought him some Nyquil for tonite, knowing he was in for a hard night after sleeping all day, and advised him to take a double dose when he was ready for sleep, so hopefully that will knock him, and his cough, out for a good 5-6 hours and he can get the sleep he needs to get well.  Fingers crossed. 

My own condition has been improving slowly thoughout the day.  The pain and heaviness in my upper chest has been dissapating.  I still have this chemical smell in my nose, but that's starting to go away, too.  I think I may have beaten it this time around.  When you are 54 years old, been a smoker for 35 years, respiratory problems are never something you ignore. 

But, back to the game (sorry if my asides bore you).  Now that the region is fully rendered, I have a couple of things I would like to do before the fine terraforming begins.  And in this I am very much influenced by dedgren's Three Rivers Region.  I guess first of all I would like to create a bird's eye view of the overall region, divided into it's 256 city squares, with an over;ay that show 1.) the alpha numeric name of each city tile and 2.) the location of all the protected tiles.  This would give folks some ideas aboput what tiles would be available for  long term development or short term terraforming. 

It's a big map.  And given the constraints of the 800x600 pixel images we can post, I'm not sure I am going to be able to present the region clearly via the ImageShack links I am currently using.  I may need to post here the 800x600 pixel "thumbnails" and then  create links offsite to another place where viewers can see the image at greater scale.  I've been trying for the past 2 days to use the bird's eye view map I made and overylay it with the city tiles and protected areas, but everytime I import the image, everything is so small and hard to see as to make it pointless.  I know linking readers offsite is a problem for a lot of CJ readers...they won't follow the link.  So, it's a bit of a conondrum for me. 

I also want to start naming and identifying landscape elements in the region, and for that I need  two things.  I need a good "flat" map of the region and I need to be able to cross reference elemnets in the region with thier RL counterparts.  I have PM'd Heblem to ask him to forward to me the data sets he used to create my maps, as if I have those I will be able to match them up with my own maps and so "orient" myself, annd, consequently, you the readers.

One of the other big issues I am dealing with is sea level and ocean depths.  All my oceans are right now extremely shallow.  I need to figure out how to dredge my oceans deeper without affecting the shorelines...and I am not quite sure how to do that yet.  My first thought is to use the God Mode Cheat and Lower Terrain by maybe 20 clicks, then use Gouge and Valley and Level Terrain tools to deepen the oceans.  I know you folks must think I'm nuts, but I am actually considering using NOAA maps for this exercise, to make sure I make the oceans realistically deep, or shallow.  Then again...who the hell really cares what is going on underwater so long as ships can make it through the shipping lanes? 

It's just that it will be a big job to create deep oceans.  I will have to start at the river mouths and work my way out to sea from there.  That's a lot of territory in this map.  Fine terraforming.  And I volunteered for this, hahahahaha

Well, no time to start like now.  Think I'll fire up my game, load my region, and start with the Copper River Delta.  But first I'll put my headphones on, so as not to wake my now sleeping roomie. 

Lora/LD

[jacqulina 162]

sounds like you on the mend my friend,thats great,i hope your rommie gets better too.i think the plans you have for the region are fantastic.

[mightygoose 92]

on the large offsite image hosting, www.majhost.com is a great site. no bandwidth limit or max picture size, no bulk uploader though, but she works a treat ive put images as large as 8000x6000 on there.

[Heblem 600]

Lora: As you request this all I do is give you the link where you can download the data from USGS:

http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.htm

Just zoom in to Alaska and look for the area you want (you know where is it) then select the area for download, modify the request and make sure to select the National Elevation Dataset Alaska (NED) 2 Arc Second and change from ArcGRID to GeoTiff, you should be able to see and download the area.

If youre lost you can see approximately the area Ive selected...

In other notes I may suggest you to use fileden.com where you can upload large images, videos any kind of files, etc, but you have to register there. As for the water is shallow, well you can see that in the four maps, I did an manual modify on it but unfortunately I didn't do it in the latest map i sent to you, but it's ok you have some options on how to do it:

-Open your SC4Terraformer and use SC4TF tools for editing the water to make it deeper (its faster than opening every city tile in god mode, make sure to lock the others city tiles that youre not going to work on)... but don't worry! you don't have to render over again your map... just the area that you edited need to be rendered again, the area that you didn't touch will be rendered as you left it...

-Or either if you wish to render your entire map over again... do the PNG export and edit the water shallow with photoshop, but as I suppose not a good option as you can suppose... hehe

Hope that helps!

[technicallydead 1]

You really worked hard for your map! Good luck and God Bless!

[ldvger 19]

Well, we are all on the mend here at my house.  I am back to 98% normal.  Roomie is still in recovery mode, sore and achey and tired today, so It was another day on the couch for him, but he did go out for a while this morning.  He also ate a little bit more today.  He slept amost 9 hours straight last night without coughing and has only had 2-3 coughing bouts today.  Now his nose is starting to get runny, so I think his condition can safely be downgraded to your basic cold.  Tomorrow is a work day for him and he is planning to go, so he must be feeling better. 

I didn't work on my region last night, after all.  Instead, I got caught up a little bit with what was going on over at Three Rivers Region on SC4D, then spent some time catching up on personal correspendence.  Went to bed early (for me) and slept well. 

To respond to some recent comments:

Twenty20, thanks you so very much and thanks, too for stopping by.  I seem to recall you have stopped by here in the past and, if so, thanx for returning.  I know this CJ is moving along a little slowly right now and appreciate that folks have both the patience to bear with me and, even more so, appreciate the long, difficult, and frustrating struggle I've been through to get this region looking the way I want it to look.  There's still lots of work ahead (that could be the understatement of the year), but I hope things will begin to move along a little more quickly soon.  Stop by again, please.

Jacqulina, my friend, always a pleasure to know you have stopped by.  Planning things out happens to be a specialty of mine, so you can count on lots of that in the future, hahahahaha. 

mightygoose, welcome back and thanks for the tip.  I have noted the site address in my Daytimer, although I have not yet gone over there to check it out.  You can count on the fact that I will, and soon.  And, BTW, in regards to you last post here, even with a lot of projects already on your plate, surely doing a little bit minor terraforming on a city tile or two could be squeezed in?  You don't need to make any huge commitment to the entire life of the project or to any single city tile.  We're just going to do the mountains first, one tile at a time, and anyone/everyone can give it a shot.  I'm far away from being an expert terraformer and even so it only takes me maybe an hour to do a dense tile, so I hope you will reconsider.

Which brings me to yet another aside.  I haven't yet quite figured out how to share individual city tiles with others to terraform on yet and I haven't yet been able to chat with dedgren about how he's managing to do that with Three Rivers Region.  My initial thought, for this first phase anyway, it to email folks the greyscale .jpg map and the config.bmp file, both pre-packaged in a folder titled "Copper River Project" that could be then installed into you game using Mapper.  The region would not be fully rendered and you wouldn't need to render it...just the individual city tile you were going to work on.  Or, now that I think about it, I could include the city tile you requested to work on in the zip file, then once you had installed the region using Mapper, you could replace the default named city tile with the rendered one I sent you.  Then when you loaded the region in the game, the only city tile that was rendered would be yours, making it easy to find among the non-rendered tiles.  Once you have completed the work on the tile, you could just send the tile back to me and I would replace the same-named city tile my my game with the one you sent.  I'll have to do the massaging of the tiles to each other, reconciling them together, but hey, that's part of my end of the work.  Any feedback on this issue would be deeply appreciated...I've never tried to do this before and so am in uncharted waters.

Heblem, always a pleasure to see you!  Are you ready to terraform a city tile or two?  Solamente las montanas para ahora.  Lo siento no hay un tilde sobre la "n" en "montanas", pero mi "keyboard" no se que como.  Have I murdered your native tongue enough yet?  You'd never believe I was close to fluent in Spanish at one time, would you?  It comes back to me a little bit when I use it, but I do make a terrible mess most of the time.  Thank you for also giving me an alternative offsite large image hosting service, I get the feeling I am going to need one and soon.  I just hope they are free, because I can't afford it otherwise. 

Also thank you for the data set information.  Now that I see it, I'm not certain it will fit what I need, other than knowing apporximately the area you pulled to make my maps from...but that will help quite a bit. 

And while I maye be able to fix my ocean depth issues using Terraformer, the idea of rendering even a single tile of the region over again is just way, way far away from anything I want to do.  I would much rather go city tile by city tile at this point.  There's a lot of work to be done along the shorelines and to get it right is going to require very close zooms, some very detailed and careful terraforming, not to mention lots of plops.  Right now I have nearly vertical cliffs dropping at 100% uniform heights into the ocean all across the junctions of land to sea and we all know that doesn't happen anywhere in the known universe.  I need shallow shores and mudflats near the river mouths and then to slowly and painstakingly work my way around all the rest of the coastlines, raising cliffs a bit here, lowering them there, making rocky beaches, adding boulders and dead trees, etc.  I can't do that in Terraformer and wouldn't try even if I could.  I am going to try to create wetlands, too, which you can bet will probably end up being protected.  I may end up backing my actual ocean shorelines out to sea a bit and using water plops for the river deltas.  We'll see.

Don't think I'll work on the region for the second night in a row.  I need to continue to review 3RR over on SC4D to see how dedgren did his work, especially concerning his flat maps.  I really want to get a good region-sized flat map done before things get much further along.  It will serve as the "baseline" flat map for everything that comes after, so I feel it's important to discover the process for creating such a map sooner rather than later.

Lora/LD

[jacqulina 162]

hi my friend.im glad your roomie is much better now,sounds like you have some idea where you might begin this huge terraforming project now. cant wait to see some progress.

[ldvger 19]

Ok, well, I have been working on a bird's eye view map these past few days.  In so doing, I've also had the opportunity to become much more acquainted with this new region and am becoming even more impressed with it's stunning beauty and Heblem's ability to map it for me. 

Dedgren was able to steer me to a comprehensive tutorial he wrote 2 years ago for creating what he calls "Terrain Maps", which he uses as a foundation and underlayment for almost all of the other maps (think flat maps, like road maps), that he has been making for each city tile (which he calls "townships") in his game.  After reading the tutorial, I realized I was probably jumping the gun quite a bit to think I needed to create by base maps now.  He had already completed all the major and minor terraforming of his region before he started maping his maps, so he was able to include all his ploppable water into his base maps.  It's a very time-consuming and mind-numbingly tedious job to creat these maps, especially for a region of 256 city tiles, so I made the decision to wait to go through the entire process until the terraforming stage of development was complete. 

However, I do want to be able to show and communicate this region in a true bird's eye view with decent colors (rather than the semi-psychedelic SC4M colors), so I have committed myself to creating a preliminary base map, which is what I have been working on.  Doing this required me to open my game and then load each individual city tile in the region one-by-one.  Then in Mayor Mode, I hit the Graphs menu, brought up the city map, then using Ctrl+Shift+s, activated the in-game camera tool, hit the space bar three times to size the camera window to capture the data map, took a pic, closed out of the city without saving back to the region, and then called up the next city tile.  I did this 256 times yesterday and last night, finishing about 2:15 am. 

Today, I skipped knitting on my lace shawl this morning over my coffee and instead got right back to work.  Using Photoshop, I created a new image file of 4097x4097 pixels (the size of my region), then opened the A1 .png snapshot I had taken yesterday, cropped it, then copied/pasted it into the new PS file.  Saved both files, closed the A1 file, opened the B1 file, cropped, copied/pasted, then carefully matched it up to the previously pasted A1 file.  I went through this same basic repetition all day, took a couple of hours break, then worked again this evening.  I am halfway done, 128 of the 256 city tiles pasted into the new map and I have to admit, it's looking pretty good. 

What do you think?

Sorry about the blank space, but I didn't crop this image down before I saved it, so it still is importing at 4097x4097 even though only half the file has image in it.  I have yet to choose an off site large image hosting site, but will do so very soon, as there is phenomenal detail in this map that I would hope others would find as exciting as I do...and that I would hope folks would link off-site to see.  The existing watercourses are all extremely visible and very obvious, which is going to make plopping water very easy. 

A secondary use for this map is for me, so I can, once this base map is complete, attempt to match it up with the USGS topo maps I have, and so begin to match up RL landscape objects with objects as they display in game.  I have done some very minor checking of the heights of mountain peaks in game and think they are pretty darn close to right on with RL peaks.  In the upper left hand corner of the map I found a peak of 4560', which given it's proximity to sea level, seems just about right.  It was one of the highest peaks in the A1 city tile.

What I also love about this new map is that you can see the glaciers really clearly, even at this small scale, and how they create the watersheds that drain them.  You can also see, to some degree, the underlying geology the glaciers have developed upon.  I have not yet gotten to sea level on this current map...but the blue-green areas are close to sea level valleys.  Rather obviously they will have rivers and streams in them.

One thing I think everyone can count on, at some point in the future, is learning a lot about glaciers.  Glaciers create a lot of very distinctive landforms, each with thier own names, both while they are in place and after they retreat.  This landscape has lot of both, so I hope you readers enjoy geology.  I plan to do some background research into the native rock types found in this area of Alaska, but I can almost bet you all dimes to dollars it's your basic volcanic granite. 

Other plans I have for this preliminary map include an overlaying grid that shows all the many city tiles and thier current names, so folks who want to play with them can make thier choices.  As I figure them out, I will also beging to add feature names, as I have found I can export/import layers from one file to another.

Anyway, that's what I've been doing these past two days.  That and just letting my brain go in lots of directions about how to start developing the region once it is mapped.  I keep coming back to the shorelines...I think I am going to have to start where the rivers meet the sea and then work both out to sea and upriver from there.  One of the big issues with ploppable water is transitioning it to game water, so I want to be very careful about how I terraform those transition areas.

Lora/LD

[jacqulina 162]

looks very nice my friend

[mightygoose 92]

great progress, i love the study of galciation and my father is somewhat an expert,having written his dissertation on the subject. i look forward to the completeion of the map.

[ldvger 19]

Ok here is the completed map:

Notice the very slender white lines.  These are not lines I drew in the map, ratherm they are spaces between the individual city tiles that comprise the map.  The white lines are the background against which I pasted my copied data game maps.  And while it seems that they only occur in the bottom half of the map, there is a line of background that shows through, ay higher magnification, in the upper half of the map as well. 

I believe these gaps are created because when we make new maps, we add a pixel to the overall de=imension of the map.  For example, each large city tile is 256 pixels square.  My region is 16 x16 large city tiles square, so 16x256= 4096 pixels, right?  Not.  All the tutorials I have read instruct me to add a pixel to the overall map, hence this map above was created on a 4097x4097 pixel canvas.  When Heblem made my maps, he followed this same rule.  And when I loaded the maps into the game, I had one cell/pixel at the edges of may maps that was not part of the map, but rather completely bizarre.  It's just one cell, one pixel, I can live with it.  However, it calls into question why, those of us who are into creating maps, add that extra pixel.  I'm going to post a new thread over on the mapping forum to ask this question and maybe someone will have an answer. 

mightygoose, what a better way to intimidate someone than to tell them your dad is an expert on a subject they are giving thought to writing about!  I have two years of general sciences at the community college level amd am by no means an expert.  But I paid attention, took notes, and aced my classes.  I don't remember it all, but I remember enough to maybe give a layman's chat about glaciated lanndscapes and the extremely basic physics behind how glaciers work.  I hope you won;t read my chat out loud to you dad and then post a critique! 

Tomorrow I will be deciding on an off site large image hosting site that I can link to for full size images of what I post here, so tune back in to see the map above in all of it's huge glory. 

Off to the Mapping Community Boardroom to ask about "that extra pixel".

Lora/LD

[mightygoose 92]

the extra pixle is to do with how simcity reads the image, the images will not actually work when using the in game greyscale terraformer if they do not have that extra pixel. as to the specific coding reasons, i have no idea.

as to glaciation im sure your explanations will be more than adequate, i just eagerly anticipate any tit bits i might be able to contribute

[ldvger 19]

Mightygoose-

The extra pixel is turning out to be an issue for me when creating maps from game pics and if it's necessary for the greyscale, then why do I have a row of "fence" tiles at the far western edge of my map that is one pixel wide?   I may delve deeper into this issue at some time down the road, but right now I have other things on my mind.  And, after all, it's only ONE pixel.  My dithering over a single pixel gives you all some idea of how anal I am.  I really can't apologize...it would be like saying I'm so sorry I am redheaded instead of blonde, tall instead of less tall, slender instead of less slender, old instead of young.  I am just who I am and given the exactness possible with computers, I am in hog heaven until I run into an extra pixel here and there, then I fret.  As an architect who drew all her plans with pencils and pens for over twenty years before making the transition to drawing on the computer, I used to accept a loss of accuracy that was inherent to manual drawing.  Then, once I started to learn computer drawing, I went nuts with accuracy, drawing to the 164th of an inch.  Madness.  The truth is, in my job, 1/8" is the closest I need to come because humans still cut the wood and a saw cut is 1/8" wide.  I deal with rough carpentry, framing, not finish work or cabinetry.  I know for a fact that when a framer sees a dimension of 1/16th or 1/32 or even 1/64 of an inch, he howls with laughter and calls all his buddies over and they have a grand ol' time making fun of the fool that drew the drawings. 

That doesn't mean my penchant for absolute accuracy has been allayed.  It just means I realize that, as much as that extra pixel bugs me, it;s JUST ONE PIXEL.  Let it go, Lora. let it go.  It may come as no surprise to anyone that at one point in making the map immediately above, when I discovered the one pixel issue, I actually gave thought to asking Heblem to redo my maps and correct the issue for me.  Because on top of the one pixel issue, I also founf that when he "married" my four individual maps to each other and so created the one large map from which I rendered this single large region, he inadvertently overlapped the NW and NE quadrants by one pixel.  It doesn't show up in the game and has zero effect EXCEPT in the map I made above.  It compounds the one pixel to a two pixel. 

So what.  No one will ever notice and if it bothers me that much (which it may, eventually), I can always add the missing pixels using Photoshop.  It would abe a perfect "I'm bored out of my mind and can't find anything else to do" task. 

As for the some day chats about glaciated landscapes, good to know there won't be a PhD reading over my shoulder and that you, Goose, will chime in with insights (and possibly corrections) or your own.  Some of the topics I have noted for future discussion include:

aretes

morraines

cirques

hanging valleys

tarns

stream borrowing

crevassi

glacial anomolies

seracs

After a thorough review of this region, I am able to find examples of (almost) all of the above. 

I started terraforming/weathering the mountains last night but was not happy with the results.  I will try again tonite...

Lora/LD

[jacqulina 162]

awesome region my friend

[ldvger 19]

My apologies for becoming sidetracked, but there are some exciting developments over in Three Rivers Region on SC4D that have me very distracted.  Dedgren and jeronij have found a way to create a water table beneath the surface of the game...and found a way to slope it, so in essence now instead of plopping water, we may be able to "drill down" to the watertable and have above sea level water running downhill.  This is very exciting news and I am watching the developments of this new tool very closely.  This could be the huge breakthough that all of us who have been frustrated with the lack of above sea level water have been waiting for, but time will tell. 

In the meantime, I have not been idle, just not producing anything visual.  I was able to download a great set of very high definition maps from the USGS site several weeks ago that I have been playing around with and wondering how to use.  I have been able to identify a number of landscape elements in my region from the RL maps of the Copper River Delta area, but areas beyond the river and delta are still hazy for me.  I am uncertain how to use this data, except for the watersheds, which are clearly defined both on the USGS maps and, to a lesser degree, in my game region.  I want the USGS maps to guide me, so I think creating an orientation point is primary. 

I know a lot of folks check this CJ are may be disappointed but the lack of pics, but I don;t want to rush off into unknown territory.  This is going to be a slow process. 

Lora/LD

[jacqulina 162]

wow that is exciting news my friend

[ldvger 19]

Well, I am still waiting on the new PW (Ploppable water) that is being developed elsewhere.  Above sea level water is very important to this massive region, so I don't want to plop a single tile until I feel comfortable with being able to create the watersheds I envision.  So...no work on the region itself in a while.  Be patient...or not.

While I have been awiting for the PW issue to be resolved, I have been dinking around in Photoshop with my USGS maps, trying to marry them to each other with hopes of eventually creating some kind of overlay contour map that would guide me to creating watershed in the region itself.  I thought I was making good progress earlier this week, but I am a novice with Photoshop and the composite map I created so painstakingly over a 6 hour period completely disappeared as soon as I saved it.  Sigh. 

I am having other thoughts, also.  Having worked now with the RL USGS maps of this region/area, there is really not much buildable area on it at all.  It's gorgeous to look at but truthfully will never have much population on it, just as RL Alaska is very thinly populated.  It's just not a very people friendly place.  High, steep mountains, glaciers all over the place, wild rivers that cover valleys from side to side and turn into miles of mud flats when they reach sea level...there just isn't much land that is habitable.  And that's OK, of course, the world needs places where there are few, if any, people.  But this is a *CITY* building game and as a player, I doubt I can build a city anywhere on this map, at least without completely desecrating the landscape...and that's not what I'm all about. 

So, sad as it may seem to hear, I am thinking about abandoning this region and hence, this CJ.  I haven't made up my mind 100% yet.  But the truth is...I want to be able to build cities, or at least ONE city and I don't think this region will support that goal.  In RL, Cordova is the largest city in the area and it's a whopping 3000 folks huddled on the side of a glacial bay.  To the best of my knowledge, fishing is the only industry. 

So I am thinking about looking around for a new area.  One with some lanscape drama but still enough flat ground to build a decent city.  I am thinking about Seattle, my own home town. 

Again, I haven't made up my mind.  Maybe I need to create a total fantasy region, as Jacqulina prefers to do. 

I just don't know right now..and felt it to be important to let you all know where my brain is going with this.

Lora/LD

[mightygoose 92]

an alternative history is also a perfectly viable option, real location, fictional places, dont feel that you have to stick to what is there in real life, it is only a game at the end of the day

[ldvger 19]

You know, mightygoose, you are right...and thank you for bringing me back down to earth again, really.

It's a game.  Just because I am using a RL area for my region doesn't mean I have to conform, to the absolute best of my ability, to the RL USGS maps this region was created from.  Just because I HAVE the maps doesn't mean I have to try to copy them as close as 100% accurately into my game.  The USGS data is a starting point, true, but it doesn't have to be the end point, as well.  It doesn't have to be the entire point, either, which I had somehow talked my myself into believing it had to be.  That's why I moved from excitement to despair...the idea of trying to 100% recreate the RL landscape of the area completely overwhelmed me.

But I don't have to do that.  No one is going to sue me if I make the landscape my own.  It's a game Lora, just a game.

So, I am not going to abandon this gorgeous region. 

I may go through these spasms of mental distress again in the future...it's just the way my brain works sometimes.  I am a little bit OCD (ok, well maybe more than a little bit) and I tend to get fixated on what turns out to be tiny details that just stop me dead in the water.  This happen in my professional work as well.  I have a very close professional and long time personal friend who calls this my "move the post syndrome".  As an architect, I have to keep the physical structure of a building in mind when I design...each architect only gets to use one "sky hook" in his/her career (in other words, if you depend on a sky hook to keep your building standing, your career is over).  So when I design, I place structural elements, like posts, where I think they need to be and then design them into the rest of the building.  As the design process progresses, it sometimes happens that the initial placement of supports needs to change, and so the floor plans need to change to accomadate that.  I have trouble being able to see this.  The post is where it is and where I want it to be to make the floor plan work...so moving the post doesn't occur to me.  I go into very expensive and elaborate schemes to keep the post where it is, spend tons of time trying to stay married to my original design and in the end the simplest solution is move the stupid post.  Once I let go of keeping the post in it's original place, the entire project starts to fall into place like a simple jigsaw puzzle. 

In truth, this problem of fixating and getting very married to an idea at it's early inception has cost me a lot over the space of my 30+ year career.  I have never been able to successfully design a truly gorgeous home without having a more senior architect watching over me and, when I start filling up numerous wastebaskets of tracing paper with discarded ideas for keeping the post in place, pat me on the shoulder and tell me, "Move the post, Lora, move the post".  In my professional life, I am getting better at recognizing these times, but I still get hung up from time to time.  It;s just the way my brain works...or doesn't work, as the case may be.

And...now I see that this same problem with fixating carries over into my game play.  I abandoned this CJ almost 3 years ago because I couldn't "move the post" in regards to dealing with issues of 1.) above sea level water and 2.) an emerging sense that the scale of the project was way, way off.  And I almost did it again, this time because I couldn't exactly replicate the accuracy of the USGS maps. 

It's a little embarrassing.  But not horribly so.  It's  just a game, not a proving ground of any kind.  Play Lora, just play.

So thank you mightygoose...I think I will "move the post".  And guess what...I bet I will have new pics and progress to show next time I post.

It's too late at night tonite to go into the game and start playing (almost 2 am), but I will probably be at it first thing tomorrow.

Lora/LD

[jacqulina 162]

the ploppable water you are waiting on my friend,looks fantastic so far.

[ldvger 19]

I have not been idle despite my lack of posts.  I have been playing around with ways to make my shorelines (ocean to land) work a little better andI think I may getting the hang of it...but I still have much to learn.  I have been working on Copper River tiles, but have not been saving my work, so I have no pics to post yet. 

I have decided that starting at the shorelines and working my way both out to sea and inland is the way to go.  This is taking  a lot of experimentation on my part.  I am starting at what I think is the most dfficult area of the map, the Copper River Delta.  My topo maps tell me there are massive mud flats as well as extensive areas of salt marsh.  I am not going to try to re-create the entire delta...it's way too massive.  But I do want to create somehwat of a realistic delta.

So I'll keep playing around and will hopefully have some pics to post soon. 

Lora/LD

[jacqulina 162]

sounds great my friend,cant wait to see some work

[ldvger 19]

ok, I had a pic to post tonite of my work creating mud flats along the shorelines of my river delta, but not sure I can find the pic (singular).  Lets see if I can try again.

Sorry, can't find the image, too may glasses of wine. 

I wll try again tomorrow.

Lora/LD

[ldvger 19]

ok, I had a pic to post tonite of my work creating mud flats along the shorelines of my river delta, but not sure I can find the pic (singular).  Lets see if I can try again.

Sorry, can't find the image, too may glasses of wine. 

I wll try again tomorrow.

Lora/LD

[jacqulina 162]

sounds wonderfull my friend,cant wait to see them

[ldvger 19]

ok, at last, hopefully some pics.  I have been working on shorelines in the area of the Copper River Delta, trying to create the mudflats and shallow braided channels I know all big rivers create.  I saved a pic a few nights ago but couldn't find it, but I think I have found not only that pic but the pics I took of my work tonite, which I saved for the fisrt time since starting this new region.  Pics first:

This was my first attempt at creating mudflats.  I had to level the terrain quite a bit, as the default land is about 2 tiles above sea level.  The brown you see if jeronij's "dirty" water plop.  

I wasn't happy with this, so I tried again tonite and I think I got better results.  I started by leveling the terrainat the point where the sea met the land. 

It looks kinda wierd now, I admit, but I am liking the fact that the land is very flat at is meets the sea.  This is the NW corner of the city tile I am working on. 

And I would love to continue to upload and post the other images I have, but it's 3:15 am and I am toast.  I ned to find my bed and sleep.

Lora/LD

[mightygoose 92]

having seen plenty of river delta mudflats i know exactly what you are going for and i have to say that is a great effort so far. 3:15am sounds about right for me also. just dont get caught in an irregular sleeping pattern, otherwise you will never escape

[ldvger 19]

Well, my roomie was going to take me to see the new Star Trek movie tonite at the local IMAX, but when we got there it was sold out.  Sniff, sniff.  We'll try again next Saturday, which is his next day off, hopefully the crowds will have thinned by then.

mightygoose, thank you for the kind comments about my attempts to build/terraform a river delta.  Looking at the pics tonite they look pretty strange to me...kinda like moldy pancakes floating in (very) dirty dishwater.  But all of those sandy and green islands will eventually be covered with mud (dirty water) tiles and I have yet to dredge the very shallow little waterways that will vein through the flats.  I have an excellent set of RL maps of this area to guide me and besides extensive mud flats there are also extensive salt marshes, so I will be raising the rerrain ever so slightly as we go away from the delta and then plopping sedges and reeds and water plants.  The pics now are just the "bare bones" underlying terrain.  And as for a wierd sleep pattern, not worry.  I am a night owl anyway and usually don't go to bed until about 2 am and then sleep till about 11 am.  Last night was later than usual, even for me, but my roomie prevents me from staying up too late most nights.  He sleeps on his futon in the living room, which is about 15 feet from my computer desk in the dining room, and he keeps the same basic hours as I do (he doesn't have to go to work until 11 am).  Last night he was away from home, spending Mom's Day with his family, so time kinda slipped away from me.

So, before I have too many more glasses of wine, lets see if I can find the rest of the pics and post them tonite:

This is the southwest corner of the city tile (J16 by name, actually).  the grey areas are very shallow water.  I may try to "feather" this a little more carefully, but as you can see by the edge section, I haven't dropped down more than maybe a sigle tile, so I'm not sure how much feathering of this effect I can accomplish. 

The southeast corner.  I think almost all of this is going to be mud and will probably fall into the category of Copper River Wetlands Protection, therefore undevelopeable. 

Northeast corner.  Again, not much to look at and it will probably be all mud.  I have some more pics in my folder, can't remember what they are, so I may or may not post them...lets see what they are first.

A close up in which I forgot to turn of the UI (sorry...it was very late).

Another close up, view rotated.

More of same.

Moldy pancakes!

Forgot to turn the UI off again, dang!

That's the end of the pics from last night.  It's not much, I know, and not very exciting, but it's progress. 

I am uncertain now about how to create my small waterways through the mud flats and salt marshes.  I am wondering if I should use game water channels, which would be the mottled grey of the shallow water seen here surrounding the islands and shorelines or if I whould use a water plop.  This land is very flat, so water plops would work very well, but I worry that the color might be wrong and then also, the everlasting problem of melding bame water with plop water occurs.  I know I'll have to face that hurdle some day.

Anyone have any thoughts on the matter?  I am very open to siggestions.

Lora/LD

[jacqulina 162]

WOW GREAT PROGRESS oops sorry caps.looks like your getting somewhere my friend.nice result there.