Cagayan de Oro - 13. San Lorenzo - The Other Island

[Turjan 1,048]

On 1/31/2016 at 9:19 PM, Feindbold said:

Just wanna say thank you, for this great CJ

Save,.. rightclick,.. set as desktop wallpaper 

I'm not sure how it happened, but I somehow only commented on your post in my head . So thank you very much for your kind words, and I'm glad you found an image you like very much. Needless to say that I'm grateful for all your lovely assets that populate my last entry on every image.

On 2/8/2016 at 5:20 AM, spa said:

Thanks for this lovely CJ. It really shows everything that Cities Skylines can do. Cagayan feels like a real place and a beautiful one at that.

PS: Laughed out loud at "Cagayan Land Jellyfish." Their is a mod out that eliminate those ugly sprites now if you don't already have it

Thank you for your encouraging words. Most of my SC4 cities had a whiff of Halifax somewhere, so all your great, colorful bats gave them some distinctive flavor.

Regarding that sprite, yes, that mod by TPB should  take care of it. I have been hesitating to use it by now because those sprites give some structure to the otherwise flat ground textures, but on close-ups, they surely look ugly.

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Thought of the Day: What if...

I guess everyone here does sometimes check out different possibilities of how to build your city before you decide on one approach. One of the easiest comparisons is that between using the European or the International building set as base for a city quarter, as far as vanilla assets are concerned. I just want to show here how Isla de Cagayan would look like if I used the International set. It's mostly just vanilla assets here, so no fine tuning done.

The view from the river changes considerably:

Spoiler

 

On Plaza Mayor, the tall buildings seem to keep at least some distance, which is probably just by chance:

The district around Cagayan Central at night:

Avenida Real from opposite viewpoints:

It's nice how the old buildings sometimes glimpse through the urban canyons:

Santa Catarina doesn't look too bad either:

 

All in all, it also works. Of course, this would be somewhat redundant with regard to the rest of the city. However, it shows that the main draw of this part of the city actually lies in the terrain. That probably explains why I have such a hard time giving some character to the CBD...  Oh well, some day .

[DaHindi 11]

Stunning. Great Work!

[Turjan 1,048]

13 hours ago, DaHindi said:

Stunning. Great Work!

Thank you.

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#9: Luz del Norte - Suburban Dreams

The municipalities that make up Cagayan de Oro nowadays had long been fiercely independent, as the rulers of a time often preferred a "divide and conquer" strategy. One of these formerly independent towns is San Lorenzo, "The Other Island", as they like to paint themselves in the tourist brochures. Ever since the foundation of the Universidad Técnica in today's downtown area as result of a successful campaign by a professor who originally immigrated from Sweden, Cagayan has had some "Swedish connection". With Sweden as a neutral country, this relation lasted through basically all decades, despite the occasional ups and downs. The Tsunami of 1975 had also hit some parts of San Lorenzo, though less so. This resulted in a suburban project behind the railway, an area that had been used for agriculture before. The Swedish input is notable, and the name "Luz del Norte" preserves some of this connection. The large waterfront of the area and the proximity to the new "Airport City" made this a rather pricey neighborhood today, in spite of the modest lot sizes.

On the overview, you can see the location of the area behind two railways, Alphen Line of Cagayan's public transport, and the cargo line to the harbor. The connections to San Lorenzo proper are via road tunnels, after the level crossings proved to be unsustainable. Through roads from Dejans to Didcot and from San Lorenzo proper to Airport City cross the neighborhood. They show only modest traffic though.

The civic center with elementary school, clinic, police and fire station lies in the center.

Towards airport city, a long promenade along the river is well liked.

The houses are very popular, even if their backyards open to the common walkway.

Many of the connections, here the one to Dejans, have bicycle paths.

Pedestrians and bikes can use the shore promenade to pass the railways to San Lorenzo proper, while cars have to take a tunnel.

Being an island, San Lorenzo has many bridges. These are the connections to Didcot and Alphen.

The tunnel from last pic ends up on a five-way crossroads, which even sees both cross roads meet. It speaks for the low traffic intensity that this actually works.

Pedestrians don't have to walk the long way around, they can just take a pedestrian tunnel halfway between the road tunnels.

This conveniently connects directly to San Lorenzo Station on Avenida de la Estación. This is also the current end point of metro line 1 to the airport and downtown.

The railway is another part of town that shows some Swedish influence. The electrification of the lines was done with some Swedish knowledge, and some old Swedish electric locomotives still do their work nowadays.

Last not least, some assistance with the ore industry was also offered.

With this view over the suburb we conclude today's stroll through the city.

[DaHindi 11]

What assets are the houses of the suburb?

[Turjan 1,048]

2 minutes ago, DaHindi said:

Waht assets are the houses of the suburb?

Those are Ullstrumpan's Stockholm row houses.

[DaHindi 11]

16 minutes ago, Turjan said:

Those are Ullstrumpan's Stockholm row houses.

Thanks

[Turjan 1,048]

Thought of the Day: Airport - what to do?

I'm not sure where the next update will lead us, as I tend to work on many things at once, which leaves most areas in different states of being unfinished. Oh well. Anyway, at the moment I'm debating what to do with my airport. The one with the canoe entry. I must admit I don't care too much about airports in this game, as the flight behavior is quite unrealistic. The canal in the linked pic met the airport because this was actually some rather flat area suitable for both, canals and airport, but not smack-dab in the middle of the city. The situation when I placed the airport looked like this:

You can see it in front of the plane's nose.  When I placed it, I considered all four possible trajectories, and I thought that only one of these four would be slightly problematic. The start is generally no problem, as the planes start spiraling upwards before they see the end of the runway (they may attempt to hit a high-rise on the side of the runway though). Which leaves the landing path, which is mostly straight. One of these landing paths is very close to the mountain rim on the right side. Guess which option the game chose. It decided to use exclusively one runway, and only in one direction. So I observed the first landings Will it work?

Hmm...

Oops! Fortunately, C:S planes are not easily fazed, and no passenger was harmed in the maneuver.

Well, I still have some space down there where the airport is, and I'm debating with myself whether I should replace the current one with a longer, single runway solution that doesn't have awkward flight paths. Although, I'm sure the game will make the paths awkward anyway.

Also, its' so nice to watch the dramatic curves the planes fly directly below the rim.

They are basically flying towards the wall and turn around very close to the rock. The mountain that they hit on the image above is the promontory you can see further down on the last image. Good that I'm not sitting in there. I've also somewhat shaved off the mountain on the flight path and the planes have now about 2 meters clearance, which means that it now works in principle, awkward or not.

Decisions, decisions...

[Horus_Kol 118]

Reminds me a little of the approach into Basel-Mulhouse... The planes had to dodge two or three peaks as the descended into an airport on the western edge of the Alps.

[Turjan 1,048]

Yes, there are awkward airports in the world, especially in the Himalayas and on small islands. However, here I expected the game to choose one or two of the three other options, which are uncomplicated. I wonder why the game refuses to use the other runway.

There's still the option to move the airport up onto the rim. Yes, that's not the map edge. Taken from the text that accompanied the map, I was actually supposed to build my city up there. One of two highway connections and two of three railway connections are up there. I haven't touched the area aside from traffic connections, as I'm somewhat worried about the consequences of a split city. It should be an interesting challenge though. I'm waiting for the 4-lane 2-way national roads to come out, as my 2-lane ones are already packed without a city up there.

[Koesj 659]

I think planes choose the runway that's closest to the terminal they're arriving at/departing from? At least that's how it works with custom ones built with airport roads, not sure how that works with the vanilla ones (I have literally _never_ built the new international airport).

Can you change the direction of the runways with one-way arrow mod?

[Turjan 1,048]

I never tried that. In my last city, the game used both runways equally. Now that I think of it, it actually shows passengers for both "stations", so the runway animation for the other runway may just have bugged out. I could try and re-plop it, but I don't like the thought very much as it was difficult to get it into this place.

I guess I should talk less and just try something out, even if I stick with the current solution in the end. It's supposed to be fun, isn't it? I think the only thing that has kept me from doing so until now is the thought that I build a long runway and the plane then uses ten meters of it.

[DaHindi 11]

I hope the runway will not be built on this canal

[Turjan 1,048]

12 hours ago, DaHindi said:

I hope the runway will not be built on this canal

Heh, it's dead enough there, so nobody would be hurt . I posted that because of the airport at the end of the canal. The runway would be roughly perpendicular to the canal's orientation.

______________________________________________

I thought I'd get a last update in before the game update hits, and who knows whether the city will still load .

 

#10 - The Harbor - Connection to the World

At the beginning of the 20th century, Cagayan's harbor was finally moved from the city island to the mouth of the Cagayan de Oro river. This allowed much larger modern ships to stop there, as they did not have to sail up the river. Economic fantasies ran high, but reality struck soon enough. As all of Cagayan de Oro is located on a large island, and as all other larger cities are also located on the sea and have their own harbors, the harbor's importance would never increase to much more than to serve the city itself and a few towns in its hinterland.

An overview shot shows that it amounts to not much more than a big "C" that struts out into Macajalar Bay, with facilities on that "C" and the mouth of the river. Access is easy due to the harbor's location at the end of the M1 highway.

The main activity is on a railroad spur to a cargo hub. It can become quite busy, but the activity never afforded a larger solution. The area is also home to some industry, garbage handling and the Misamis County Prison.

The harbor crews have the reputation of being quite relaxed. Nobody knows exactly why.

Here is an overview of the whole area (*sorry, no props*). You have the prison amidst lots of smaller shed industries on the left side, with the rail coming in to a container terminal on the river. The outer part of the harbor has a direct bypass to the M1 highway. The passenger facilities are to the right in the Embarcadero area.

Several junctions to different parts of Macabalan, the harbor and the industry make sure that the traffic flows, unlike the situation a few years before. In particular the new harbor tunnel proved helpful.

Traffic can easily reach the lower harbor this way. The tunnel from Bayabas has a separate exit on the left. With the advent of modern container traffic, even the rather modest dimensions of the harbor proved to be too much. Although goods traffic went up with the growth of the city, ships stayed much shorter times, and a few container terminals is all the city needs. Some of the warehouses were converted to industry as a result.

This is also true at the outer end of the quay.

The area that was handling military ships in former times is now home to a big logistics center for inner-city commercial areas.

The rest of the quay was even made into an area with pubs and restaurants, which are easily reachable from Macabalan's Embarcadero Station.

The main harbor exit.

A map view reveals the underground situation with connections to the M1 highway and the Bayabas tunnel.

Finishing this, here are a couple of night shots.

This concludes my last update before "Snowfall".

________________________________

A final off-topic remark: While I absolutely love looking at those huge harbors in some of the CJ and admire the pics of them, I cannot bring myself to build very large, basically functionless areas. It's a bit like a mental block as I don't like to look at things like that when the game is running, even if I love the pics. So I guess a pocket-sized harbor is the largest you will ever see from me.  Fortunately, there's enough alternatives out there to scratch that big harbor itch.

[Horus_Kol 118]

I love this harbour - I agree with you that some folks do seem to just have a sprawling docklands which doesn't seem to stop. Your harbour is probably on a similar scale to what we have at Port Adelaide - due to the size of our state, and length of our coastline, there are lots of small ports all around dedicated to iron/coal/wheat - so there's not as much shipping into our state's chief port as there would be in other parts of the world. So, yeah, I find your port to be fairly realistic.

[Roadman20 601]

Indeed, a bigger harbor area isn't necessary better.  I think what has been key to utilizing the an active looking harbor for something as large as Seattle's Harbor Island is capturing something like your harbor and applying it on a much larger scale.  You want pockets of actual activity among the wide variety of props.  The key points I've found to emulate activity is through mixing props with nearby industrial zoning and one-way road routing.

I know you wanted to know how large Harbor Island was, so it's roughly 1 km wide by 2 km long. Eventually the whole Port of Seattle complex will be 2 km wide by 3 km long, taking up at least 1-1/2 city tiles.

[Turjan 1,048]

18 hours ago, Horus_Kol said:

I love this harbour - I agree with you that some folks do seem to just have a sprawling docklands which doesn't seem to stop. Your harbour is probably on a similar scale to what we have at Port Adelaide - due to the size of our state, and length of our coastline, there are lots of small ports all around dedicated to iron/coal/wheat - so there's not as much shipping into our state's chief port as there would be in other parts of the world. So, yeah, I find your port to be fairly realistic.

Thanks, that's what I thought. I actually looked at the harbor of the real Cagayan de Oro, and that's also not that big, even if it's a city of 600k inhabitants.

14 hours ago, Roadman20 said:

Indeed, a bigger harbor area isn't necessary better.  I think what has been key to utilizing the an active looking harbor for something as large as Seattle's Harbor Island is capturing something like your harbor and applying it on a much larger scale.  You want pockets of actual activity among the wide variety of props.  The key points I've found to emulate activity is through mixing props with nearby industrial zoning and one-way road routing.

I know you wanted to know how large Harbor Island was, so it's roughly 1 km wide by 2 km long. Eventually the whole Port of Seattle complex will be 2 km wide by 3 km long, taking up at least 1-1/2 city tiles.

Thank you, that's really an impressive dimension. I especially loved your railyards. I had been thinking of drawing the rail to the outer cargo harbor, but now it has just road access. I guess it would not be used much by the game anywhere, as that tends to use the closest.

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Thought of the Day: What color do I wear today?

Now that the game update is looming over us, I wonder about consequences for the look of the city. The last update brought us night and day and a complete change how the biome lighting looked. Now we will get rain and fog, so who knows how the city will look like?

Anyway, given that we get an ingame theme editor now, I thought I'd use the opportunity for a shout-out to @TPB . While his theme editor mod will probably fade away (who knows?), there's still the themes, of which I hope that they survive in one way or the other. So here are just a couple of screenshots of how Cagayan would look like with the New Caledonia theme, a bit mangled by the Natural Color LUT.

Quite different, but not exactly bad, I think. Thanks for those themes.

[Turjan 1,048]

#11: A New Sunrise - Times of Change

Welcome back to Cagayan. I'm still struggling to sweep up behind the fallout of the game update. I'm able to load the city, but not everything could be restored properly, mostly due to my attempts to get the city start up at all. I'm already seeing that I cannot continue as I had been doing this up to now, as the game doesn't want me to load that much stuff anymore.Which means that the city will have to change fundamentally. Some of my most beloved areas will have to go, but I guess those deserve their own treatment anyway.

But enough of these ramblings. What has been an amazing change to the game is actually the lighting. Not many people talk about it, but the following screenshots were taken without Daylight Classics mod, just with the same LUT I had been using through most of this CJ so far. One thing I miss from the long time I had been living in Arizona are those glorious sunrises and sunsets. You get all these striking blues, pinks and oranges in an intensity you simply don't get in the North. At least before the stark daylight sucks all contrast out of everything and leaves an overall brown impression. I find it nice that you can get these colorful sunrises here in the game.

The first light is subtle enough, and the morning fog emphasizes the tree contours.

This also gives the rolling hills in this rural area a nice impression. Okay, I guess we had this before, but it's always nice to look at.

Exactly opposite, you get the already known sun glare on the facades, like here in San Lorenzo. I notice that my sun position reset to the point where it was in the beginning. Yay!

The same reflection downtown. Do you recognize the left of those three taller buildings in the foreground?

Look at all these colors in the sky and on those buildings:

Artificial canyons.

Further downstream:

The major boulevard:

Also, on Isla de Cagayan, things look quite pretty, like here in Santa Catarina:

The view from Casa Antigua:

And with the sun reset, I can finally reproduce the very first image of this CJ that showed a building:

Thanks for watching.

[jmsepe 2,039]

Looks like Cagayan de Oro improved a lot overtime! Great work. 

[Linoa06 1,374]

This is some pretty neat stuff

[89James89 1,169]

This looks gorgeous so many nice screens. I especially like the small scale harbour that you have going. Looks much nicer than some of the huge ones you see.

Cheers

James

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

Very Nice! I will be following this. I notice the lighting improved on my end too.

[Turjan 1,048]

 

On 3/4/2016 at 3:23 PM, jmsepe said:

Looks like Cagayan de Oro improved a lot overtime! Great work. 

Thanks. I guess you are more into skyscrapers .

On 3/20/2016 at 0:56 AM, Linoa06 said:

This is some pretty neat stuff

Thank you. I enjoy your city journal, too.

On 3/22/2016 at 1:42 PM, 89James89 said:

This looks gorgeous so many nice screens. I especially like the small scale harbour that you have going. Looks much nicer than some of the huge ones you see.

Happy that you like it.

On 3/22/2016 at 5:44 PM, Mr_Maison said:

Very Nice! I will be following this. I notice the lighting improved on my end too.

Thanks, and your assets help a lot with giving the city character.

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#12: It's raining...

Admittedly, this is only half a real update. I'm lacking time for the game lately, so it will be mostly atmospheric images again. The reworking I wanted to do hasn't even started yet, but I did a few tests with the airport. Some of you may remember that I had a few issues with runway use, and someone on the Paradox forums gave me the helpful hint that you should never have any runways or taxiways below flight paths, because that confuses the plane simulation. Sure enough, one of the major flight paths crossed my city airport.  As a consequence, I tried some simple, custom airport up on the rim. It's far from ready, and you can see the city in the background:

The runway is outside of the city borders, which works well. However the taxiways change quite a bit, depending on the theme you use (some themes convert them to grass ). You can see the city border easily, even without border markers (hint: the major taxiway is directly on the border):

I guess I will be moving it slightly into the city to make it look less silly, but the concept is sound. I have already built a train line up there, but we will get to that one another time.

So yes, rain has come to the city, and I quite like the lighting effects with it. Here is San Lorenzo in the light of the setting sun:

Of course, the western view is much more dramatic (even if the sky lighting is all wrong):

Plaza de la Victoria:

Macabalan:

Some parts need to be reworked and look a bit eclectic at the moment:

Even garbage handling can become quite picturesque if the light is right:

A view towards downtown:

Thank you for stopping by.

[dedgren 830]

Hope all is well, Turjan, and that there's more of this great CJ ahead for us to see.

David

[Turjan 1,048]

On 6/23/2016 at 5:07 AM, dedgren said:

Hope all is well, Turjan, and that there's more of this great CJ ahead for us to see.

David

Thanks for asking, everything is well on my side. However, I hardly got to play the game during the months. I guess that's life *shrug*.

Admittedly, I only wrote the last sentence for an excuse to add an image of my "shrugging park" .

So far for bad jokes. Anyway, as I'm already here, I can as well scrape the bottom of the barrel for some pics. As the last two entries already had some pics from San Lorenzo, I will add a few more.

#13: San Lorenzo - The Other Island

The "shrugging park" is situated in Luz del Norte, the part of San Lorenzo that is situated behind the railway. Both, the long intercity railway and the Alphen Line of the local railway network, separate it from the rest of San Lorenzo.

The space in front of the station is busy with commuters.

The Golden Pavilion on the other side of the road greets the visitors who exit here.

Security is tight. There's enough security around here to either solve the problem - or remove those people who have them.

The Pavilion gets reflected in the small lake in its garden.

For the most part, San Lorenzo is a rather unremarkable living area. But that's how the locals like it. On San Lorenzo's highest point, the main church and the former town hall are situated. You can see in the last entries (#11 and #12) that two roads lead straight up to the church from East and West. A parking lot greets the visitors, directly across the road from the cemetery and the old town hall. The latter still serves as wedding and birth registry for the locals, even if the rest of its functions have moved to Cagayan.

A wide road leads down from the church to Palacio Blofeld, the original owner of the largest plantations in San Lorenzo. Most of the agriculture is gone from here, but the garden still exists.

The early light at dawn highlights some of the garden features.

We have a last glimpse at the small business center of San Lorenzo. Here we have the art museum for the Blofeld Collection and the first highrise of San Lorenzo. The locals are proud of it, but they think that this is just enough.

So let us respect the wishes of the locals and leave them to their own ways for today.

[kanashimi08 1]

On 12/3/2015 at 9:59 AM, Turjan said:

Welcome to Cagayan de Oro, my attempt at a Cities: Skylines city journal.

 

On 12/3/2015 at 9:59 AM, Turjan said:

It won't be any recreation of a real place (my apologies to people from Cagayan de Oro: I just stole the name).

Lol I'm from Cagayan de Oro in the Philippines and WOW does this CJ look awesome!

I wish our city looked like that irl tho. :\ I'd love to live in an alternate universe where Cagayan de Oro looked like this.

[Turjan 1,048]

On 8/31/2016 at 8:51 PM, kanashimi08 said:

Lol I'm from Cagayan de Oro in the Philippines and WOW does this CJ look awesome!

Thank you very much!

On 8/31/2016 at 8:51 PM, kanashimi08 said:

I wish our city looked like that irl tho. :\ I'd love to live in an alternate universe where Cagayan de Oro looked like this.

Oh, I'm sure your city looks much greener than this. Although I could help that a bit with all those new trees from the Workshop, thanks to Mr. Maison.

But who knows how your city will develop? The right ideas, and everything may go very quickly. Asia is still a growing region, so good luck for the future!

[Linoa06 1,374]

Nice park :>

[Libertyville 164]

what LUT do you use?

[Turjan 1,048]

Thanks, Linoa.

On 11/4/2016 at 0:56 AM, Libertyville said:

what LUT do you use?

Most of the CJ was done with the CrispWarmContrast LUT. The last image above your post used the Natural Color one.

Keep in mind that the last big update changed the lighting again, which means I don't use those LUTs anymore. Nowadays it's mostly the Flat and Natural LUT. If I remember correctly, some of the early morning pics are even shot with the vanilla temperate one.