Delvedene - Update 7 - New neighbours

[Horus_Kol 118]

New land opportunity: Delvedene

The Ministry of Land and Population are please to announce the creation of Delvedene Shire. We are currently looking for immigrants, pioneers and workers to clear the land for farming and the construction of a township. Mineral exploration rights are also up for grabs.

Delvedene is located on the coast, about halfway between state capitals of Boram and Willistown. While the area to the south of the Delvedene estuary is swampish, there is good agricultural land in the north of the shire. There is also the freight train link between Boram and Willistown, although no immediate plans to build any station until there is sufficient population to support one.

Behind the scenes The basic idea is to go for some kind of organic development - starting with a new farming settlement in what is an analog of rural Australia (not every in Australia is red sand). This happened a lot in the 50s and 60s. The poster is an actual Australian poster from 1950 (slightly modified). The map is a heightmap of Reading, Berkshire, UK from http://terrain.party Mods Cross the Line by BloodyPenguin All Spaces Unlockable by S. Klyte although I couldn't figure out how to build dirt roads out if the area, so I had to rebuild the highways.

[dedgren 830]

Wide open spaces.  Nice start.

 

David

[Horus_Kol 118]

Replies Wide open spaces.  Nice start. Thanks - I hope I can meet the bar that some of the Journals here have set (including yours).

First Survey and Land Allotments

The state surveyors headed out to Delvedene a while back to conduct the first survey. The basic requirements were reasonable access to the road connecting Boram and Willistown; and flattish land with good soil and solid bedrock for building on.

Once the survey was done, markers were laid out for the new town centre and the allotments for the new farms. Finally, roads were laid out in typical grid fashion (although, to save costs, roads negotiate the terrain to save on costs cutting and filling.

Claims on farm allotments will be drawn by lots

While the roads were being laid out, the state energy department built a substation to take the high voltage power from the grid and installed power lines.

So, it looks like we're ready for the first round of settlers and farmers to claim their lots

Behind the scenes This is actually my third go this week at getting the initial layout done. I wanted to avoid a completely square grid layout - while still following how Australian townships and farms are typically laid out - https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Barossa+Valley,+Tanunda+SA+5352/@-34.5294763,138.9519826,8734m Eventually, I simply drew out a road grid, then looked for awkward looking cuts and fills and redrew the roads around the terrain. The substation is the Dream Power Producer - gives a nice bit of power starting out, and mean I don't have to start building power stations for an uninhabited area right away. I'm also using an Eco-friendly Sewage Facility out near the edge - I figure the first settlers are going to use septic tanks, and don't want to be discharging out into the river right away. I've also uncovered couple more mods in the week that I want to use on top of what I had collected last week - particularly agricultural decoration. Mods For this update: Realistic II - After Dark optimized by Yeol Eco-friendly Sewage Facility by Wallrik Dream Power Producer by Fr3dTP Wooden Utility Pole by kei_em And, if you look carefully, there are some rocks by TPB

 

[dedgren 830]

I hope I can meet the bar that some of the Journals here have set (including yours).

That's an awfully nice thing to say, H_K, but I really don't think there's necessarily any standard, just different styles.  I have a particular way of presenting a CJ.  I don't recommend it to anyone, because it takes me doing it to make it go, I think.  I love reading other folks CJs/Mayor Diaries.  I lurked for years on SC4D after I stopped working on Three Rivers Region just to get an ongoing fix from the great work in the MD section there.

You've got a nice style going here.  You are detail oriented without being verbose (a particular failing of mine).  You have an easygoing way of presenting things and an eye for nice shots that fit the narrative.  You've picked an interesting place as the subject matter.  What more could anyone ask for?

When I have had a CJ here at ST (3RR started here in March of 2006) I have tried hard to comment after every update in other folks active journals.  That's small repayment for all the new ideas I steal borrow am inspired by.  So don't sweat meeting anyone's standard but your own.  If you think your CJ is good stuff it is likely that other people will think that it is too.

Good luck!

 

David

[Horus_Kol 118]

Settlement begins

The first settlers began moving in - most of them are hopeful families who bought into the land draw, but a small labourer force of young men have also moved in to help with construction and various farm work.

The state government has already had experience setting up a few other towns, and are well aware of the problems with having lots of young men with not much to do but drink after a long day working, so a police station has been built - there's room for a couple of troublemakers to sober up in. The state's Country Fire Service has also established a presence, and a doctor's clinic has been built.

An exploration of the region was made several decades ago by the famous trekker Temperance Johnson. He labelled a few of the more prominent areas and landmarks, and even named the region Delvedene after his home village back in England. Unfortunately, he also had a bit of an ego and saw nothing wrong with naming landmarks after himself.

Still, Mt Johnson does offer a good view point for those who can find the time to hike up there:

Now that people have begun moving in, the town charter will soon come into effect, and a small council will be elected from the settlers. One of the first things that some of them want is for the government to upgrade the unsealed road which links them to other nearby towns. There's already a decent amount of traffic moving along there:

Behind the scenes Farm windmill by Kailen_ Local fire station by Grumpy Nita Police rural station by Ngon Rural Clinic by Freewill001 Small Landfill by Helicoprion Growable/vehicles: Farming and Industy by kidhedera Growable Greenhouses by Kliekie SHELL gas station by Svenpotsdam  Small Tractor by Archie **** (the username has a swear in it)

 

[dedgren 830]

Sun baked colors.  I like 'em!

 

David

[bbgunn 3]

Sun baked colors.  I like 'em!

 

David

I do too!  Are you using an LUT?

[FullStrenght 74]

This looks like an interesting set-up, I am looking forward to see how this develops.

[Horus_Kol 118]

Replies: Dedgren and bbgunn - thanks, I'm using Yeol's Realistic II - After Dark optimized LUT - I think it gets just the right kind of colour for the landscape I'm going for. FullStrenght - thank you. To be honest, I'm looking forward to that too  I have a direction, but not a plan...

Teaser

I'm a long way from getting the next update going - been busy, and my laptop is starting to crumble now that I've started the next phase - but here's a little teaser of what's to come;

As you can see I've been making heavy use of Terrain Fillers by FX2K and Wheat Fields by ShroomBlaze.

I can't seem to get the tree brush mod working - so every wheat field is being filled one tree at a time. s I said, though - this density of trees seems to be causing some issues for my ancient laptop.

[Horus_Kol 118]

This year should bring a good harvest

The first farms have all made progress with planting and growing the first crops:

An area on the edge of the new township was cleared and leveled for an airfield. While the main use is for the crop-duster, this airfield means that emergency medical patients can get a ride on the Royal Flying Doctor Service. This is very important, since the nearest major hospital is at Boram - 450 km away!

The farmers have left quite a few trees in their fields - these are touch local trees that pretty much take dynamite to get out the ground, so it's just easier to grow and harvest around them.

The town itself is growing pretty nicely:

And here's a nice aerial view showing the new track out into the forest - it's been decided that the local building industry could use the local timber, so there's going to be a bit of forestry starting soon:

Behind the scenes The laptop is struggling already... hopefully, it can withstand a bit more development. I'm split on the use of ShroomBlaze's wheat fields - they look pretty from a distance, and right up close - but get a bit sketchy in the middle distance. Some more mods in action here: Terraform Tool 0.8 by rollo Fine Road Heights by Japa Precision Engineering by Simie NoPillars by BloodyPenguin Sharp Junction Angles by Thaok The airfield is my own - using a couple of props: Murka's Saraj (Shed) by kowkamurka crop duster (prop) by giovanni portacabin/site office prop by Urban

 

[dedgren 830]

C:S is flat out unplayable on my laptop.  Best of luck with that.  I'm not satisfied that ShroomBlaze has come up with the right answer for farm fields.  I have a lot of them in Jessamine, and look hopefully in the workshop every day.

Delvedene continues to be both unique and fun.  Nice work!

 

David

[Horus_Kol 118]

C:S is flat out unplayable on my laptop.  Best of luck with that.  I'm not satisfied that ShroomBlaze has come up with the right answer for farm fields.  I have a lot of them in Jessamine, and look hopefully in the workshop every day.

Delvedene continues to be both unique and fun.  Nice work!

 

David

My desktop overheats after running the game for about 5 minutes... mind you, it's been cooking itself with Kerbal, and Civ - so I think there's a fan problem or something. Going to be upgrading it soon - so, until then (or until the game grinds to a halt on my laptop) I'll just have to deal with loooooooooooonnng load times...

[Horus_Kol 118]

Update 5 - Growth spurs a new township

Delvedene has been filling in nicely, and has now got its own train station on the mainline between Boram and Willistown. The farmers are happy that their produce will be at the markets within a couple of days (the trains are not very frequent or reliable, but they're still better than the service roads).

In fact, Delvedene's growth has been so strong, and the land has proven to be quite fertile, that a new township has been sponsored on the other side of the Irwell River.

Behind the scenes I think I might have filled in the towns a bit too quickly - but they're there now... I have to keep reminding myself to stop expanding every now and then to take these images and post them in the journal - there's just so much choice for expansion everywhere! The new township (I forgot its name, and I can't be bothered waiting to fire up the map right now) may or may not get the same field treatment as Delvedene... it's rather painstaking and possibly temporary (in a long, long term sense). Also - I'm not sure why - but Chain of Ponds seems to have dried out a bit, and is no longer connected to the Irwell River - I'm not sure if this is related to the recent patch update. Mods and buildings Rural water tower by Scanners Cargo loading station (Functional version) by ravenz

 

[dedgren 830]

Also - I'm not sure why - but Chain of Ponds seems to have dried out a bit, and is no longer connected to the Irwell River - I'm not sure if this is related to the recent patch update.

 

I've been struggling with extra water in my rivers and streams lately.  Maybe C:S water levels are tidal.

The images in this update are a little dark for my taste. I know they are evening/night shots but they are a bit difficult to make out detail in.   What I can see looks great, though.

 

David

[FullStrenght 74]

I agree on Dedgren with the visibility, other than that, please take us trough the changes your towns have gone trough! Looking forward to them  

[Turjan 1,048]

Those towns definitely look pretty.

Regarding water, you can have tidal effects if you get resonances between water sources. There are even tidal maps for download on the workshop where you have big tides on the coast. However, on the map I'm using, the water sources seem to be steady, at least as long as I don't fiddle around with them. I had tidal effects on the first map I had been using though, with periodic flooding of my coastal industry area (until I gave up and moved it a bit higher).

Regarding the wheat fields, I'm afraid that is a game engine limitation. If you use assets that are built from asset+prop combinations, the game will force a series of  LOD transitions on the props, and the intermediate ones look really ugly. I'm using Mas71's excellent sea walls, but they have the same issue: close view and far view look pretty, the two stages in between pretty bad:
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/402306273346521661/6FCFF8FE13BCD4FD04144661F06A4991D4EDFF58/

There's nothing he can do about it though. You can make nice LOD models for assets, but most likely not for props on assets.

Of course, the LOD-Toggler helps here for screenshots.

[Horus_Kol 118]

Replies:

Wow - yeah, looking at the images on my work computer, I realise I must have the brightness level up high on the laptop. I'll see about reposting some lighter pictures.

I've been struggling with extra water in my rivers and streams lately.  Maybe C:S water levels are tidal.

The images in this update are a little dark for my taste. I know they are evening/night shots but they are a bit difficult to make out detail in.   What I can see looks great, though.

There's a thought - I have noticed some interesting tidal like effects on some maps, but hadn't seen it on this particular map. Then again - this map is paused a lot of the time while I'm planning. I think it's only gone through 2 day/night cycles.

I agree on Dedgren with the visibility, other than that, please take us trough the changes your towns have gone trough! Looking forward to them  

Thanks - yeah, I'll be sure to check the brightness setting on my computer next time. And plenty more development is on the way.

Those towns definitely look pretty.

Regarding water, you can have tidal effects if you get resonances between water sources. There are even tidal maps for download on the workshop where you have big tides on the coast. However, on the map I'm using, the water sources seem to be steady, at least as long as I don't fiddle around with them. I had tidal effects on the first map I had been using though, with periodic flooding of my coastal industry area (until I gave up and moved it a bit higher).

Regarding the wheat fields, I'm afraid that is a game engine limitation. If you use assets that are built from asset+prop combinations, the game will force a series of  LOD transitions on the props, and the intermediate ones look really ugly. I'm using Mas71's excellent sea walls, but they have the same issue: close view and far view look pretty, the two stages in between pretty bad:
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/402306273346521661/6FCFF8FE13BCD4FD04144661F06A4991D4EDFF58/

There's nothing he can do about it though. You can make nice LOD models for assets, but most likely not for props on assets.

Of course, the LOD-Toggler helps here for screenshots.

I'll check out the LOD-Toggler, thanks.

I guess for farms - it would be really nice if we had the same method as Cities XL for farms, parks, and plazas. I know there's some people with concepts out there. I'm a developer, and would love to start tinkering about to see what I can do. Then again - there seem to be far more talented people already at work on things like this (and I'm a web developer, not application).

[Horus_Kol 118]

Update 6 - Down by the river

The Delvedene Council released some land down by the Carackalinga - and, in typical fashion, have name the area Port Delvedene.

It's already a pretty popular spot - and the fishing is good.

There's housing going right up Third Creek:

Delvedene's farmland is spreading - the council are trying to avoid clearing too much woodland, as the government are offering subsidies for sustainable forestry.

And, finally, there's some black topped road - the council got funding to surface the main route through the town. They're hoping this encourages the highways agency to upgrade the service road.

[Turjan 1,048]

The sprawl is spreading .

As for the name, does that mean you will build the port there?

[Horus_Kol 118]

On 12/18/2015 at 5:28 AM, Turjan said:

As for the name, does that mean you will build the port there?

Sorry, should have put a little behind the scenes at the end of that post - so, here:

Behind the scenes

There's a bit of an odd naming convention in Australia (at least, in South Australia) - mostly because of historical reasons, I guess. All along the coast, almost every town is Port Something - oftentimes, they're named for another town that just a bit inland. Most of these places are nothing more than a boat ramp and a jetty, although some do have actual breakwaters and even fewer have active fishing fleets. In fact, there's only a handful of major ports left on the South Australian coast.

So, Port Delvedene is a continuation of this convention - the Carackalinga is too shallow for it to be a deep water port, but there looks like there's some good fishing to be had.

[Turjan 1,048]

Thanks for the explanation. It's nice to learn something about an area I don't know much about.

[Horus_Kol 118]

Yeah - I like the same in some of the journals where the authors are making cities inspired by real locations. I think it helps ground their city as a real location - since there's a reason for most decisions in naming, locations, layout in reality, it's nice to draw parallels.

[Turjan 1,048]

Hmm, yes, you are right. I'm actually thinking about doing some kind of "history" update at some point. Even if the city is not based on a real one, that's only half the truth. And even fake cities may work better with fake histories, which may also make sense of some design decisions.

[Vals Loeder 27]

I like the village approach you have chosen. Looking forward to more updates.

[dedgren 830]

Finally got to see the images from the last update today, H_K.  It looks like Delvedene is moving along.  The overhead shot is very nice.

 

David

[Horus_Kol 118]

Just a quick note - Delvedene is not forgotten, and will be returning... It's just that I have a wedding coming up and lots of planning and preparation, and so it's a struggle to get in and do much work on the city (nevermind that one computer crashes and the other takes an age to load the map).

Hopefully, will be getting an update with some new towns in the region, soon.

[Horus_Kol 118]

Update 7 - New neighbours

It would seem that the state government has seen Delvedene's success, and after surveying the land over the Irwell River, have decided to grant charters for three new townships.

Here we are looking over Delvedene and the Irwell, and see the new towns and farms on the plains to the coast:

The new towns are Senly (on the left), Ravenglass (furthest away), and Verdun (to the right). Delvedene has also been granted the whole triangle between the Irwell and Carackalinga, under provision that they create a sustainable timber industry. Verdun also has been granted some woodland along the Carackalinga to offset the huge land grants to Senly and Ravenglass.

Learning from first settlement at Delvedene, the state government wasted no time laying down sealed roads to the new towns:

Above, we see the road from the main highway into Senly - there's also a secondary connector towards Delvedene off to the right. Below, we see the junction that splits the roads to Ravenglass (left) and Verdun (right):

Delvedene may be the administrative centre for the shire, but Senly is trying to attract attention by laying out a footie oval to bring in crowds at the weekends:

Ravenglass has been centred next to Saltz Hill - named for Harry Saltz (who was a bit of a gambler, somehow managed to talk some investors into supporting an expedition, and then mysteriously disappeared leaving his mule behind at Willistown:

Verdun has decided to build a small outlier community on the Irwell River (more good fishing, apparently), and imaginatively named it Bankside. There seems to be a bit of a fire here at the moment (in fact, there's quite a few all around the shire - each new town has a single engine firehouse, and Delvedene has two engines, but that doesn't seem to provide enough coverage).

Finally, some aerial shots showing the grid layouts of the new townships:

And comparing with the original Delvedene allotment:

 

Behind the scenes

So, this has taken a while - partly because of the scale, and partly for real life reasons - but now its done.

I'm fairly happy with the semi-grid layouts - they're pretty representative of how things work here in Australia where there is a lot of open land. I wish I could be bothered to plant more crops in the new farms - but that would likely take me until the end of the year again!

Now I'm probably going to focus on detail work - start paying attention to those fires and develops these towns into a metropolis - hope you'll keep following along.

[Turjan 1,048]

It looks as if you had the road grid of that future metropolis already down. I'm looking forward to seeing the development.

[Smokytoks 8]

Been reading this nice CJ and eagerly waiting for the next update ! 

[Horus_Kol 118]

Thanks @Smokytoks - now that my wedding is all over and done with, and my international visitors have all returned home, I should be able to find some time to dust off this savegame. I've even bought a new beast of a gaming PC just for SKylines and Kerbal Space Program