My Cities: Skylines CJ Scrapbook -- The Night Cometh...

[Haljackey 17,398]

So many custom buildings. Hard to believe this game isn't even a month old yet. Great work, they feel right at home in your city!

[iviaarten 534]

Impressive selection of buildings. Can't wait until I feel Forkton is big enough to support some high rises

 

Looking great on the pictures still. I think the problem with the dynamic resolution mod also has to do with memory usage. The game loads a lot slower for me when I forget to turn it off after taking pictures. I'm guessing that with all those mods (and especially the textures for the larger buildings) eating up more memory, that the super high resolution starts to get too demanding. Just think 200% on a 1080p base resolution is close to 4k resolution, a thing a lot of graphics cards struggle with

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Replies:

 

PK111: Here you go- http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=410866014&searchtext=new+york+times.

 

Sansha: This city is going to rock harder when I lay down an elevated railway line through the centre.

 

coolwiththecool2: Be scared, be very scared! If you are doing nothing wrong then you have nothing to hide, that's the OCM's motto. Usually.

 

kingsofsimcity: I get moments where CS drains me fully, so I stop playing for a few hours. But then the hankering for more CS returns. On the plus side this game is not getting stale because there are always lots of new mods, buildings and features to try out.

 

89James89: Thanks! And yes the land value is very high because of an excessive amount of civic coverage overlap. You don't want to be clogging up with dead bodies you see.

 

Haljackey: I know, I can't believe the game has been out for barely three weeks and already it feels so different with the huge amount of mods available. Where will CS be in one year's time?

 

iviaarten: I think Forkton is well beyond the stage for lots of skyscrapers- bring on the high rises! As for the dynamic resolution mod problems, I think I placed the anti-aliasing fix in front of the actual mod in the mod folders, so the fix would load up last and this was giving me some gripe. When I switched it around the game was running more smoothly at 200% as I took pictures for this latest entry.

 

 

---

 

 

Entry 20: Take me to the sea

 

Today I stumbled across this really cool mod which adds beach items: beach umbrellas, tents, lifeguard towers and so on. This is the Beach Tools mod- http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=417022843, created by Lord Rato. Well an obvious candidate for this mod is the city of Tamboria and the wide yellow beaches this area has, so without further adieu...

 

///

 

And some music by electronic extraordinaire's Yello that fits this entry wonderfully.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzskrK_bmG4

 

 

I present to you Ranley Beach.

 

 

 

 

 

The curving concrete footpath was inspired by beaches in Los Angeles and those in GTA V.

 

 

 

I spent a bit of time symmetrically placing down palm trees to border these beach footpaths.

 

 

 

 

The footpaths connect up to the commercial area in Lumber Sands.

 

 

 

Lumber Sands has expanded quite a bit thanks to the designated tourist spot which Ranley Beach has become.

 

 

 

If you are wondering why Ranley Beach is deserted, well...

 

 

 

There was a sewage leak two days ago due to flooding upstream and so the whole beach smells of crap.

 

 

 

And who wants to sunbathe with the smell of raw sewage filling their nostrils?

 

 

 

The real reason is because these beach park items don't have to be connected to a road, thus tourists can't reach them.

 

 

 

It would be nice if these beach props/items would spawn Cims, preferably Cims in beachwear.

 

 

 

For now though I'm sticking with the flooded sewage story.

 

 

 

The suburb of Lumber Sands has expanded Eastwards.

 

 

 

Along with new shops which have sprung up along the coastline.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lumber Sands Station has become more busier because of the newly renovated beach.

 

 

 

Meanwhile a boy, and his teddy bear, waits on the platform for his parents to arrive.

 

 

 

Really though, what is it with boys in public clutching teddy bears in this game?

 

 

 

And now I'll round off this entry with more glorious views of Lanley Beach in the sunset.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lumber Sands in the setting Sun.

 

 

 

Wish you were here.

[iviaarten 534]

Didn't expect to see Tamboria back so soon

 

Too bad you posted the music all the way at the bottom. Edit it to the top, reading the entry would have been even better with that playing in the background!

 

Great use of the beach assets, lovely pictures.

Hope they find a way to add tourists to the lots, and hope we get the mod options for cims soon too, so we can see people in proper beach wear.

 

Awesome entry.

[max_13 128]

Really great looking beach with all the lovely assets you put there, especially the small surf shop looks neat! If I may nitpick a bit: the lifeguard towers are kind of cramped in there, a drowning swimmer would definitely die while Mitch Buchannon is busy falling over the beach chairs. Also, it's a very high-density beach with lots of parking within a low-density neighborhood. By the looks of it I would expect a Miami Beach-esque mass tourism district. Or maybe I am missing something and the residents / tourists live somewhere else? Either way, fantastic looking beach, great job.

[defakto 0]

Great!!! 

[tankmank 853]

I like the previous two entries, some great work. I need to try to make something as big as what you've been doing so easily, i just never seem to like what i have created 

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Replies:

 

iviaarten: I still have plans for further expansion of Tamboria and there is one large suburb, by the observatory, I have not properly explored yet. So there is more to come from Tamboria, also I definitely want to expand that beach.

 

max_13: The parking is reasonable and I see this all the time in British beaches, furthermore I made sure the lifeguard towers had a clear straight line to the beach. So Mitch Buchannon, aka The Hoff, can clearly run past the beach chairs and then strut his stuff as he saves a hapless swimmer.

 

defakto: Thanks!

 

tankmank: Just keep going, also plenty of mods help as well.

 

 

---

 

 

Entry 21: Bits and Bobs

 

So this is a collection of pictures meant for the last ten entries but somehow they never got in. It also allows this player a quick one-day breather after playing a ton of CS!

 

///

 

 

A very young Brendon.

 

 

 

This was going to be the teaser postcard shot to introduce Brendon. Notice how the mountains were coloured dark and grey? The mayor changed their colour to brown. Yes. The colour of the mountains is within the mayor's purview.

 

 

 

Another picture of the skatepark, minus the young lad holding his teddy bear in the deep end of the bowl.

 

 

 

 

I wanted to get more of the Baleout Banking Tower in this picture.

 

 

 

For some reason I was not happy with the angle of this picture showing the phthalate plant of Charon Lake, I believe the reason was to show a bit more of the hills in the background. Though the sliver this picture does reveal of said hills appears rather mysterious and mystical to me.

 

 

 

An older shot of Brendon's CBD. Now there are more high rises.

 

 

 

 

 

The extent of Brendon at the time of the CBD entry. Now this city has almost doubled in size.

 

 

 

It is a great picture but taken from the wrong side of the road. I wanted to clearly show that there was no bus stop area, encroaching upon this road, in this modded SAM rural road.

 

 

 

This should have been included. I think I didn't add it in the CBD entry under the grounds of repetition.

 

 

 

More views of the Dayana Roundabout Interchange.

 

 

 

Different angles true...

 

 

 

Just not the ones I wanted at the time, or the ones to be shown in a certain order relevant to this CJ's entries.

 

 

 

Another area view of Tamboria, which is only different because of the beach I added and the expansion of the Lumber Sands suburb.

 

 

 

These last four beach pictures are designated by what I call "pick-up" shots. Sometimes I feel I have not covered a certain angle of the area being featured in an entry.

 

 

 

Sometimes I'm going for a really pretty picture.

 

 

 

And sometimes the pictures were removed from the intended entry to minimize repetition of various camera angles.

 

 

 

But it doesn't make them any less inferior.

 

///

 

Tomorrow I try out a new mod as I build a new area of Brendon in a very modular and planned fashion.

 

[iviaarten 534]

ewww.. modular and planned... stop cursing

[Ratonces 7]

Replies:

 

iviaarten: I still have plans for further expansion of Tamboria and there is one large suburb, by the observatory, I have not properly explored yet. So there is more to come from Tamboria, also I definitely want to expand that beach.

 

max_13: The parking is reasonable and I see this all the time in British beaches, furthermore I made sure the lifeguard towers had a clear straight line to the beach. So Mitch Buchannon, aka The Hoff, can clearly run past the beach chairs and then strut his stuff as he saves a hapless swimmer.

 

defakto: Thanks!

 

tankmank: Just keep going, also plenty of mods help as well.

 

 

---

 

 

Entry 21: Bits and Bobs

 

So this is a collection of pictures meant for the last ten entries but somehow they never got in. It also allows this player a quick one-day breather after playing a ton of CS!

 

///

 

A very young Brendon.

 

 

 

This was going to be the teaser postcard shot to introduce Brendon. Notice how the mountains were coloured dark and grey? The mayor changed their colour to brown. Yes. The colour of the mountains is within the mayor's purview.

 

 

 

Another picture of the skatepark, minus the young lad holding his teddy bear in the deep end of the bowl.

 

 

 

 

I wanted to get more of the Baleout Banking Tower in this picture.

 

 

 

For some reason I was not happy with the angle of this picture showing the phthalate plant of Charon Lake, I believe the reason was to show a bit more of the hills in the background. Though the sliver this picture does reveal of said hills appears rather mysterious and mystical to me.

 

 

 

An older shot of Brendon's CBD. Now there are more high rises.

 

 

 

 

 

The extent of Brendon at the time of the CBD entry. Now this city has almost doubled in size.

 

 

 

It is a great picture but taken from the wrong side of the road. I wanted to clearly show that there was no bus stop area, encroaching upon this road, in this modded SAM rural road.

 

 

 

This should have been included. I think I didn't add it in the CBD entry under the grounds of repetition.

 

 

 

More views of the Dayana Roundabout Interchange.

 

 

 

Different angles true...

 

 

 

Just not the ones I wanted at the time, or the ones to be shown in a certain order relevant to this CJ's entries.

 

 

 

Another area view of Tamboria, which is only different because of the beach I added and the expansion of the Lumber Sands suburb.

 

 

 

These last four beach pictures are designated by what I call "pick-up" shots. Sometimes I feel I have not covered a certain angle of the area being featured in an entry.

 

 

 

Sometimes I'm going for a really pretty picture.

 

 

 

And sometimes the pictures were removed from the intended entry to minimize repetition of various camera angles.

 

 

But it doesn't make them any less inferior.

 

///

 

Tomorrow I try out a new mod as I build a new area of Brendon in a very modular and planned fashion.

 

Hello sir, nice city, i notice you using the beach mod, just a tip: You can rotate the umbrellas/tents, don't know if you wanted the chairs face the opposite direction to the beach on purpose.

[RipRap 4,400]

Awesome stuff! I especially like the beach scenes and that grown downtown

[89James89 1,169]

That looks lovely. I really like the look of that first image in the previous entry with the beach and the skyline of Tamboria in the background and the beacj in general looks lovely.

 

Cheers

 

James

[Mymyjp 1,052]

Wow...Lnx, I think this is the first time I see a "beach" feel to your cities! Awesome entry as always!

[simsample 61]

Ahh! What a paradise! I'll bet that your chirper feed always features messages to that effect.

[mb1.0.2 193]

That last shot...just gorgeous. Really love what you've done with the game.

 

A few updates ago, you replied that you have 12GB vRAM. How did you get that much? I barely crack 1GB, which is where I think my problems are stemming from. I've gone ahead and upgraded my vid card and ram, so hopefully that will help; my problems have kept me from being able to play for about a week now.

[Schulmanator 5,812]

Looking good... makes me want to head out to the beach, myself!

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Replies:

 

iviaarten: Modular, modular, MODULAR! And planned...

 

Ratonces: That was a mistake, I should have paid a bit more attention to the orientation of the beach chairs.

 

Tonraq: Thank you.

 

89James89: Thanks.

 

Mymyjp: I want to extend that beach, or promenade, a great deal further when I next return to Tamboria.

 

simsample: It is paradise, but I never pay any attention to Chirper. In fact the first mod I got was to remove that annoying little blue bird.

 

mb1.0.2.: I'm not sure why my rig has so much virtual RAM, but I did buy it five years ago from UK Gaming Computers, so I guess it was, by default, optimized for computer games.

 

Schulmanator: Maybe the Kingdom of Schulmania has settlements in the domain of City Skylines...

 

 

---

 

 

Entry 22: Preston Park and the Red Viper rollercoaster

 

Parks, greenery and a rollercoaster! I'm counting down the days until this game becomes Rollercoaster Tycoon and one can build custom rollercoasters and create theme parks.

 

///

 

 

Preston Park is in the East of Brendon.

 

 

 

 

The Red Viper rollercoaster.

 

 

 

The Red Viper is a LIM launched rollercoaster.

 

 

 

LIM standing for Linear Induction Motor. There are magnets in both the station and the first slope which propel the coaster train forwards.

 

 

 

A storage yard for the Red Viper rollercoaster; for the magnets and train.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And now for a slice of European housing architecture.

 

 

 

We need more of these buildings in CS.

 

 

 

 

Beware the man-eating cougar! There are plenty in every city but this one is of the feline type.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Spiral Green.

 

 

 

 

 

The elevated railway line is called Kingston Tracks.

 

 

 

 

 

[iviaarten 534]

Damn, imagine the possibilities when more theme park rides get released, thanks for showing off that roller coaster.

 

Lovely pictures, like the parks.

[max_13 128]

The modding community is crazy, great rollercoaster and great pictures as always. I agree we need more historic buildings (and a better way to control what buildings grow than bulldozing).

[Schulmanator 5,812]

Roller coaster looks like fun... maybe I can get a season pass and come on over for a summer full of fun!

[gviper 922]

Fantastic creations!

[Carnivorus 19]

Like I said in Forkton CJ, this place here is very inspiring.
So awesome creativity and well thought city planning is incredible.

 

I like your industrial decoration tiles near the rollercoaster. Just very good use of style elements.

[Mymyjp 1,052]

I want to get on that ride sooo bad!!! This is really cool. Also, you are right about that green house...we need more buildings like that...the details of it is stunning.

Excellent entry LnX, you have taken on CSL very well.

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Replies:

 

iviaarten: It would be like a version of the film Inception but with games instead. A game within a game, Roller Coaster Tycoon inside of Cities Skylines.

 

max_13: Let's hope this craziness persists!

 

Schulmanator: There is no season pass for Red Viper. You pay one cimolean for one token, and one token gives you five rides on the Red Viper during daily opening times.

 

gviper: I love to impress.

 

Carnivorus: Thank you! I have seen a couple of amazing CJs in this forum section which are unbelievably artistic. Balthoraz's latest CJ has nothing but CS pictures akin to that of paintings. As for the roller coaster, well one thing that struck me was just how industrial a roller coaster really is. There is spare track to mount other trains, there are a couple of generators to power the station, the brakes and the chain lift, and there is nearly always some kind of track wide enough for a lorry or crane to use. So that's why I placed down that industrial filler.

 

Mymyjp: Thanks a lot. Maybe there will be a mod in the future which adds functioning coaster trains.

 

 

---

 

 

Entry 23: Welcome to the concrete jungle

 

Skyscrapers, endless roads, sprawling suburbs, a mass of buildings and the intensity that only large cities have. Let's enter the concrete jungle.

 

///

 

 

Though Brendon may be large there is still more space to fill up. As you can see this mayor has planned out new suburbs and areas on an industrial scale.

 

 

 

 

Altrea Bridge ahead.

 

 

 

 

SAM sure does spruce up suburbs.

 

 

 

 

So I was taking pictures and as usual my graphics card was acting up due to the ridiculous graphical settings I use to take pictures.

 

 

 

The lag and frozen frames were getting really ridiculous, hence I needed a new approach.

 

 

 

This picture and those ones hereafter were taken with this new approach.

 

 

 

First of all I ditched the SureCam mod I have been always using from the start.

 

 

 

I now use nlight's first person camera mod and this is one actually designed for the Dynamic Resolution, Ambient Occlusion, PostProcessFX, Sun Shafts and of course Bordered Skylines mods.

 

 

 

The result was a much smoother process. True it still lags and the frame rate can freeze from time to time, but it is now substantially better.

 

 

 

Another thing I used was the Bordered Skylines mod. It basically enhances and highlights edges. I pick the realism option to minimize the black edges.

 

 

 

This does something very special: it highlights all the bumps and protrusions of the terrain, walls and surfaces. Wall tiling becomes far more clearer, rougher and realistic.

 

 

 

Another important mod is the PostProcessFX. It has bloom, flare and anti-aliasing options. I ignore the bloom and flare options as I don't need them when I have Sun Shafts. But the additional anti-aliasing comes in useful. The last option to the right of the anti-aliasing slider is the most compatible with the realism choice of the Bordered Skylines mod.

 

 

 

All of this graphical tweaking makes even over-bright buildings look better and more realistic.

 

 

 

This is probably the best I am going to get with the graphics and better yet the camera is now smoother.

 

 

 

But it is in the shadows where the combined effect of these mods really becomes noticeable.

 

 

 

And now we are deep inside the concrete jungle.

 

 

 

Even lamp posts and signs are now more detailed.

 

 

 

Aside from a vastly smoother performance thanks to the First Person Camera mod, there is also one additional benefit.

 

 

 

The pedestrian view is far superior.

 

 

 

There is an option with this camera mod preventing the camera from travelling through the ground, instead it just moves forwards at the same tilted angle along the ground.

 

 

 

Which means I can take unprecedented close-ups of the Cims. 

 

 

 

This Friday I'm going to publish a Koyaanisqatsi-esque entry with nothing but close-ups of the Cims. I guarantee you that it will be intense since there is something about staring at another person's face in close proximity.

 

 

 

I'm waiting for the CS videos which show not only the buildings and the sweeping scenery, but close-ups of the people, of the Cims. Just a hint.

 

 

 

The shadows are a bit offski for such close proximity, but then again I don't think Colossal Order imagined players getting this close to their creation.

 

 

 

Dirt glorious dirt. I love this roughed-up concrete car park.

 

 

 

Do you feel small?

 

 

 

 

One can take picture after picture of never-ending, always diverse, urban scenes like this.

 

 

 

But I'm going to place a full stop here for this entry.

 

///

 

Mods:

First Person Camera- http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406255342&searchtext=first+person,

PostProcessFX- http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=412146081&searchtext=process,

Bordered Skylines- http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=410196151&searchtext=process.

 

Are you not entertained!?!

 

_{I jest...}

 

[89James89 1,169]

Lovely entries Ln X. Can I ask what your comp specs are? I'd love to be able to get my game to look this nice and still run well but you may have a more powerful computer than my laptop lol.

 

As for the city I love it. The shots inside the concrete jungle look amazing and really realistic!

 

Cheers

 

James

[SteveManx 24]

Nice work. I like the super thin Bordered Skylines setting. It's the one direction I haven't gone with that mod yet but I'm going to experiment with it now.

 

Just an FYI, bloom is a completely different process from the sun shafts and WILL improve your images even more. It will add an emissive glow to directly lit and "overexposed" surfaces. The bloom effect generally becomes more intense as the light source moves to your side and back, which is exactly when you don't have shafts. Also when looking directly toward a light source that's occluded by a dark/shadowed object, in which case it does somewhat mimic shafts but glows "in" over the object instead of "out" like the shafts. I suggest you play around with it some more.

[Haljackey 17,398]

Great shots!

 

All I can think of is...

 

[Carnivorus 19]

Very nice cam angles. I take so much out of your overview pic for my current town. At least I hope to get to some point where my traffic hell will get managable

[iviaarten 534]

hmz, never thought about using the Bordered skylines mod since I don't like the style of the full borderlands graphics. When toned down though, it really does add a lot. I'll have to play around with this a bit as well. Thanks for sharing.

 

Great pictures!

[TekindusT 3,809]

I mean... just wow...