Twin Rivers Region - a work in progress

[Turjan 1,048]

Have a successful surgery!

Rrgarding the issues, did you check whether the links you paste have the right format for Simtropolis? This website is very picky about the link format. I don't know about Imageshack, but on Imgur, of the six links it offers me for a picture, only the second option works here. This website doesn't like links with tags or links that don't end on an extension like *.gif or *.jpg. I know that Imgur at one point started to add some garbage to the link, which I had to edit manually, although they are good again nowadays.

But most importantly, I wish you a good recovery.

[FullStrenght 74]

Good luck on the surgery, get well soon!

[catty-cb 4,412]

4 hours ago, dedgren said:

.... but much better participation by me at your website will happen no matter what the outcome.  There are interesting things happening right now....

The RTMT Team is getting pretty close to being able to release the long awaited RTMT 4.0, its what I work on between RL, CB Admin and visiting here (and from the sounds of it maybe back over at 3RR@SC4D as well) have run out of day or I'd vote yes to the idea, but anyway back to RTMT 4.0 we are almost certainly going to release the RTMT 4.0 Beta over at CB with the official releases over on the LEX and also here on the STEX once we are happy that its as bugfree as its possible to get it.

Can't say just when that will be, I'm hoping before Christmas.

Cathy

[tariely 4,498]

Yes, get well soon, David, those trees are waiting for you !

[Roadman20 601]

Hoping for a speedy recovery David, looking forward towards more greenery.  Also waiting for you when you return is a revived 81 tiles mod.  

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=576327847

[jesper107 113]

Good luck with the surgery!

[gfvsims 169]

All the best for your surgery, David!

[dedgren 830]

Thanks everyone.  The surgery went well!

 

David

8429/216

[catty-cb 4,412]

that picture is stunning 

Glad to hear the surgery went well

[Vals Loeder 27]

Great picture!

[gfvsims 169]

Excellent news! And that picture... simply gorgeous!

[tariely 4,498]

Glad you're back !

 

Those trees are a credit to your zen-like patience ! But...(whispering) ... aren't they a bit monotonous ? Or am I not seeing subtle differences ? (Of course I've been spoiled by all those different SC4 trees we can MMP all over...:-)))

[Turjan 1,048]

I'm happy that everything went well.

5 hours ago, tariely said:

Those trees are a credit to your zen-like patience ! But...(whispering) ... aren't they a bit monotonous ? Or am I not seeing subtle differences ? (Of course I've been spoiled by all those different SC4 trees we can MMP all over...:-)))

If I see this right from the intro, this re-imagining of the Jessamine area uses two different tree models, both more or less with the same foliage color (at least they look very similar to me). In this game, you also have dozens of different trees available, and if you use a big brush (you can adjust those with a slider), you can plant your 2 million trees in a couple of minutes. However, that would just be a blanket and not an exact recreation of a real place. The absence of any conifers and the general tone of green seems to match pictures of the area pretty well, even if there is a bit more tone variation in the real thing. However, this tone variation is rather narrow. When I look at the available trees for this game, those are mostly too yellow, too dark or too saturated for the intended purpose, even if we disregard all the stuff that's totally out of place here. So the limitation to these trees definitely looks like a conscious decision.

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Amazing landscaping and forestry work!

[tariely 4,498]

4 hours ago, Turjan said:

(...) the limitation to these trees definitely looks like a conscious decision.

Ah, I see, yes. Too bad about the limited choices. But considering the way CS is evolving by leaps and bounds, perhaps we can hope for more options in the future. Meanwhile, the landscape/terrain looks splendid enough in its own right for me to disregard a few (ahem...) trees:-)))

 

[dedgren 830]

Working along the Kentucky River in the southeast corner of Jessamine quad.  The more or less rolling Bluegrass region gives way to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains here, and the area becomes much more heavily wooded.

I'm not sure whether things are fixed here or not.  It looks like multiple images are again possible, so I'll try an update again after I get home this evening.

 

David

8769/224

 

[Azurespecter 506]

So stunning I felt your CJ needed a shout out on our Twitter page. I'm going to start highlighting a few more CJ's from Simtropolis as well

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

That's some sharp topography! The hills and the rivers look very natural and organic.

[jesper107 113]

Eagerly awaiting the update!

[Benedict 3,119]

Great stuff, and well done - your CJ debuted at number one on BTT the week ending September 10.

[dedgren 830]

On December 9th we reached the halfway point to the two million trees now allowed by knighthawkGP and DRen72's great Unlimited Trees Mod mod [linkie]).  We noted that milestone with this pic.

#1

I don't know, maybe it was plopping that first tree of the second million that sent Simtropolis all cattywampus- those things pretty much happened at the same time.  In any event, I shot some pics of the quad so that you could get a sense of where we were at then.  A few have been posted in the interim, but I had no idea that we would go just a day short of two weeks without being able to post the update you are seeing here.

This one looks northwest across the quad from a little bit east of the US 27 bridge at Camp Nelson.  It's about 18 miles/30 kilometers as the crow flies to the furthest point on the horizon.  In river distance, however, the Kentucky flows about 40 miles/65 kilometers between the two points.  Both river banks are heavily forested, and there are many tributaries.  You can do the math- I'm tired.

#2

As of yesterday, I have completed foresting the banks all the way to the far southeast corner of the quad.  Here's what things looked like on the 9th...

#3

...and on the 21st.

#4

As I noted in a post yesterday, east of Camp Nelson and US 27, the Bluegrass region gives way to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.  This terrain is the roughest and most heavily forested in Jessamine.  I've already used about another 150,000 trees on it.

#5

Our next update will be a closer look at US 27 as it crosses the Kentucky River on its modern alignment.

#6

Oh, and I haven't done a PSA about saving your work yet, so here it is.

#7

I have found Cities: Skylines to be an amazingly stable game and have not yet experienced a CTD- crash to desktop.  This is a huge improvement over SC4 in the first couple of years following its release.  I have had the game "freeze" once when I left it running unintentionally overnight.  That was not a big deal, as I had saved all my work before I went to bed and thus lost nothing.  I developed the habit of saving about three or four times over a session and giving each save an updated label.  Every so often I clean out all but the last 10 saves from my saved maps folder.  Maybe its overkill, but I'm pretty confident that, when...

...not if...

...the crash comes I won't lose too much work.

_________________________________________________

Thanks to the ST admins and staff for getting the site back in reasonable order.  I know that's not a matter of snapping one's fingers.  It really helps, though, to reassure us CJers every couple of days during a problem.  IMHO in city journaling momentum is everything.  Once lost, it's tough to regain.

 

David

9154/229

 

[tariely 4,498]

That map is really amazing. For Christmas, though, just be content with the one tree ?:-)

[Turjan 1,048]

Good to see that everything is working again and the shaping of your wonderful region goes on.

It looks like I'm not the only one who follows the SC4 school of saving often and not using the same file over and over (actually, there are also other games that taught me the same). In particular, overwriting older saves seems to be a relatively sure way to corrupt a savegame in my experience. It may work 5 times without hitch, but one failure is enough to cause much trouble.

[Roadman20 601]

Suppose I could go hiking through the valley soon?

[tariely 4,498]

re Save Often : I didn't know that overwriting could corrupt a game file (Argh !). That would explain some weird crashes in the past. Thanks, Turjan (and David for starting that)

[The Big Z 103]

Yay! 1,000,000 trees! Now I can't wait to see what the final count is. It's going to be insane, I'm sure.

[jesper107 113]

Great update and great region.

 

Merry christmas!

[dedgren 830]

I'm going to do something here before we get to a handful of pics I shot about two weeks ago of the second major piece of infrastructure- the first being High Bridge [linkie]- that we've placed in Jessamine:  the Loyd Murphy Memorial Bridge that carries US Highway 27 over the Kentucky River gorge at an area known as Camp Nelson.  We'll be doing more on the story of this location in future posts.  But right now, I just need to

I don't care if they call the games city builders.  I don't care that they named the greatest one ever developed Sim City 4.  I don't care that they've named SC4's worthy successor Cities: Skylines.  I don't. care.

As far as I'm comcerned, Maxis missed the boat.  Electronic Arts missed the boat...

...not that EA could've found a boat with both hands if it was chained to one in the middle of New York Harbor....

Monte Cristo probably never knew boats existed, and wouldn't have told you the truth if they had known.

And Colossal Order, despite its creation of an amazing game that came along just as the community, which is a pretty picky one, had all but given up hope...

...will the last person still playing SC2013 please reformat the hard drive and then turn off the computer?  Thank you...

...is on a course that will cause it to miss the boat too.

I'm talking, of course, about the fact that a whole great big wide world lies out there beyond the city limits.  A world where there are many more trees than people, and meadows than parking lots, and creeks and streams than subdivisions.  A world where roads don't have curbs and postboxes and manhole covers.  A world where the occasional lamp post stands like a lonely sentinel at some forgotten corner.  A world where the sidewalks don't go and a crosswalk would be a curiosity.  In other words, the countryside.  About 90+ per cent of the land area of the inhabited part of our planet, last time I checked.  Unfortunately CO, just like its predecessors in their games, just gives the countryside a nod in Cities: Skylines.  Those of us who think developing non-urban areas are an important part of the game get just enough tools and assets to let us know what we could really do if we had our proper share, but that's where it stops and we're told "the next priority is to port the game to Xbox."

I have no desire to snap at the hands that have, with C:S, given us so much for which we can be grateful.  For all I know, rural roads, farms and various assets are in CO's development pipeline right now.  But I'll end my rant with a plea- if they are not, please consider putting them in there?  Please?

[ /rant ]

US Highway 27, a major federal highway running from the State of Michigan to the State of Florida, is four-laned on a new alignment built through Jessamine quad over the last 25 years.  This replaced the old two-lane 27 that was there when I was in college in the early 70s.  While most of the long-distance traffic now uses Interstate 75, a limited access facility that closely parallels US 27 for much of its length, this stretch of road provides an important corridor from Lexington, Kentucky south into the heart of the state and traffic counts reflect that.

In the pic below, which looks from high overhead to the south, you can see at the center-left the long straight alignment of US 27 north of the river, the bridge, and the a slight bend to the east and back again as it climbs the hills south of the Kentucky.

#1

Here's a view directly overhead of the bridge and the area immediately around it.  South is at the top of the pic.

#2

This is the same pic as #2, but noted with a couple of points of interest.

1 - Former US 27 climbing out of the gorge to the south.  This is a very windy and narrow two-lane road on both sides of the river.

2 - The Loyd Murphy Memorial Bridge that now carries US 27 high above the river on a four lane facility.  This bridge was opened in the 1970s.  Its deck is about 200 feet/60 meters above the river.

3 - The location of where the original covered bridge, built in 1838, carried "Lexington Road," the predecessor to US 27, across the Kentucky River.  It remained in service until 1926, when a vehicle broke through the bridge deck and the bridge was closed and demolished.

4 - The second bridge across the river at Camp Nelson.  Opening in 1927, it is built as a Parker truss design carrying a concrete roadway and is now abandoned and very dilapidated.

5 - An old channel of the Kentucky River that flows around an isolated knob of the Palisades (8) is marked with a blue arrow.  US 27 ran through this narrow valley up until the modern bridge was built in the 1980s.

6 - Former US 27 ascending the north side of the Palisades along Hickman Creek.

7 - US 27 rock fill and old road tunnel.  To carry the modern alignment of US 27 across the old river channel (5), a mammoth rock fill was built.  Like the current bridge, the fill is almost 200 feet/60 meters in height.  To allow vehicles to continue to use former US 27, a tunnel was built through the base of the fill and is indicated by the dashed line in the pic.

8 - The limestone knob that is used as the north abutment of the Loyd Murphy Bridge is outlined in green.

#3

The rock fill is clearly visible in the top center of the image below, which looks from southeast to the northwest.  Not to start ranting again, but the crosswalks and lane arrows on old US 27 along the south bank of the river are inappropriate and mar the realistic level of detail that we are trying to achieve in Jessamine.  The overhead arch truss components of the modern bridge are also not accurate (although they are nice looking and would make a cool RL bridge) as the actual structure has only "California" concrete barriers on the sides of the deck an in the median.

#4

This pic is taken downstream above the river to the west of the bridge.  A truss bridge style available for the old road would greatly enhance accuracy here as well.  The tunnel under the rock fill will have to wait until we finally fire up the game, as you cannot build tunnels (yet?- fingers and toes crossed) in the Map Editor.

#5

This pic was made before I began foresting this portion of the quad.  I laid out the gentle grades descending to the bridge with the terraforming "slope" tool, which I have found to be much more effective than any slope mod currently available.  You can see another large rock fill in the lower center-right of the image.  The dark notch is where US 27 crosses a small stream that it runs alongside south of the bridge.  There should be a culvert here for the stream to pass through, but that is not possible in the game as of today.

#6

This is the steady downgrade to the bridge north of the river.  The curbs, sidewalks, lightposts and fire hydrants come close to ruining the image as far as I'm concerned.  Can't someone (please?  pretty please?) do a mod to get rid of all that urban street junk?

#7

Taken looking south from the top of the rock fill.  The rock cut on the ascending grade south of the bridge can be seen.  What is with the change to the goofy narrow lanes on so many of the C:S bridges?  They don't look necessary, and the crosswalk in front of the bridge...ugh!

#8

I'll pretend that dustbin, or mailbox, or whatever on the right side of the highway before the bridge is a utility cabinet or something.

#9

The rock cut on the alignment south of the bridge.   This, IMHO, shows the benefit of careful "grading" before a C:S road is placed.

#10

All you engineers out there- calm down!  We know bridges have abutments at each end.  The developers...not so much.  How hard would it be to add some basic "concrete" abutments that appear when a bridge is placed?  Or, hey modders!- could a set of set of generic rotatable abutments be created?  Thanks in advance to whoever fixes this detail issue.

#11

Looking north over the bridge.  Flaws and all, Cities: Skylines is a beautiful game and a true joy to play.

#12

And to close this update, a pic I know isn't actually how the Loyd Murphy Memorial Bridge looks in real life, but shows how it looks in Jessamine quad.  I like it, and I hope you like it too.

#12

Oh, and...Merry Christmas!

 

David

9314/236

  Edited December 25, 2015 by dedgren  
Fix typo, long post done over a couple of hours with multiple edits

[jesper107 113]

Above is a post from David, also known as the guy who has no issue spending a month building a bridge! Then again, that's exactly why I love your work!

Jesper

[Benedict 3,119]

Nice work. And well done, your CJ was number one on BTT for the week ending 3 September.