Finally Made a Map I'm Happy With :D

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

Y'all might remember my initial excitement at the silly region render of this:

 

in this post here. (This was the very first grayscale that I got Ctrl-Alt-Shift-R to accept.)

Anyhow, I've learned a few things since those trials and tribulations (which I posted there in later replies). Here's my latest creation:

 

I really like how it portrays heavy water erosion.

 

[Compdude787 916]

Wow, nice work!!

[T Wrecks 10,210]

The erosion effect sure is great, and a terrain/water mod combination plus trees will really make this map shine. However, it looks like it'll be terribly hard to build on. Not a map for a sprawling metropolis, but I could imagine some picturesque little coast towns, winding country roads and breathtaking scenery not quite unlike Norway, for example.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Really quite a good map.  This ought to be a great exercise or two in working on difficult terrain.  Since the game is an exercise in problem solving, it poses a nice start just to get coastal villages up and running.  Getting them communicating with each other ought to be fun.  Don't be afraid to tackle some of the spaces with the civil engineering tools.  They are not there just to look pretty.

[fdjw88 39]

the terrain looks beautiful! but i imagine building a metropolis on this kind of terrain would be a challenge.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

2 hours ago, fdjw88 said:

the terrain looks beautiful! but i imagine building a metropolis on this kind of terrain would be a challenge.

I haven't built a 'metropolis' for several years now.  I dislike pin-cushion cities full of sky scrapers, and prefer nice urban layouts with some nice suburbs, rural areas, and lots of green space.  Years ago I proved to myself that I could jam a million Sims into a large tile, and consider it a fait accompli.  Now I take a much more relaxed and artistic approach, and God knows, I am certainly not an artist.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

On 5/3/2016 at 6:15 AM, T Wrecks said:

However, it looks like it'll be terribly hard to build on.

 

On 5/3/2016 at 8:16 AM, A Nonny Moose said:

... a great exercise or two in working on difficult terrain.

 

On 5/3/2016 at 2:52 PM, fdjw88 said:

... i imagine building a metropolis on this kind of terrain would be a challenge.

I enjoy a good challenge.

 

On 5/3/2016 at 5:37 PM, A Nonny Moose said:

I dislike pin-cushion cities full of sky scrapers, and prefer nice urban layouts with some nice suburbs, rural areas, and lots of green space.

Granpa could've been speaking for me here. Just add: with lots of farms and we'd be all set.

 

On 5/3/2016 at 8:16 AM, A Nonny Moose said:

Don't be afraid to tackle some of the spaces with the civil engineering tools.

Indeed. And I use the Mayor Mode ones so my city has to be able to afford their projects. Here's a sample of what I've done with said tools:

 

It starts with this:

 

To this:

 

Here's a tip: Turn on Water Pollution Overlay when raising or leveling terrain. (And set to small diameter for delicate work.)

 

So, it became a profitable stand-alone, tiny town. (I let them gamble and they buy their juice from Coriopolis.)

 

And, finally, to this:

 

Here's what it connects to:

Notice that flat spot? I leveled it for the small industrial complex at the west end of a tiny town near the Highway. A couple little commercial spots go in the middle and then some medium density residential for the factory workers. (They've only build single story ranches and bungalows atm.

 

Here's how the overall region looks now:

 

 

[HayleyRenaNemeth 465]

On 5/3/2016 at 5:15 AM, T Wrecks said:

The erosion effect sure is great, and a terrain/water mod combination plus trees will really make this map shine. However, it looks like it'll be terribly hard to build on. Not a map for a sprawling metropolis, but I could imagine some picturesque little coast towns, winding country roads and breathtaking scenery not quite unlike Norway, for example.

that is exactly my first thought. Especially if she had a slope mod which she doesn't. 

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

On 5/6/2016 at 1:50 AM, AprilAero said:

that is exactly my first thought. Especially if she had a slope mod which she doesn't. 

It's true I don't yet have a slope mod. I haven't researched those yet. Atm, I'm uncertain why I would need one. Here's how I've been dealing with the steep hills:

 

[MushyMushy 3,618]

It just depends on what you're after. If you want realism you'd absolutely need a slope mod. But if you're just trying to play the game, they're not needed.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I gave up on realism a long time ago, and I tried a few slope mods and found they interfered too much with my game.  However, whatever floats your boat.

The game is very much incomplete as a municipal simulator having only the goal of getting Sims to and from work.  You can build some nice looking stuff as evidenced by some of the very artistic CJs which are totally beyond any slight talent I have in that direction.  So, I just play for fun and to while away the hours as I am completely retired and partially disabled.  The program is so open-ended that you can get it to almost sit up and beg for treats, but not quite.

Good luck to everyone in their endeavours.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

2 hours ago, A Nonny Moose said:

... I tried a few slope mods and found they interfered too much with my game. ...

Since I'm still brand new to the add-on content, would you mind describing the interference you experienced? I'd really like to know what to watch out for.

In other news, I've been playing that Rural Setting mod for two weeks and finally decided I don't care for it. While it's great in tiles with only farms and low density residential, it sucks in tiles where I wanted to have like ¾ of the tile as farms and the rest as a small urban community. In that tile the negative income penalty from the mod just didn't feel realistic at all. Like I had a total pollution of 50 in my large tile up in the far left corner and it still insisted on the entire area having very bad pollution and the penalty was about $1.2k. (I'll skip the other details, but yes, I did have neutral, good, and very good for the other things it bases it's report and amount on.)

I've removed it from my plugins and I'm now back to plain 638 vanilla for now.

 

[Compdude787 916]

To me, the reason why slope mods are realistic is that without one, the slopes that you can build appear to be almost 45 degrees steep. (even stairs are not that steep!) I have never, ever, ever seen such steep slopes IRL. The steepest I've seen are like 30 degrees, and that is considered almost steep enough that you need stairs. On a road up a hill near my house, the slope is that steep and that is considered steep enough to require truck climbing lanes. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well, at least one of the slope mods I tried made some grid squares anathema.  You couldn't put anything on them without a crash.  Removing the mod fixed the problem.  After that experience I looked at slope mods with extreme prejudice.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

9 hours ago, Compdude787 said:

To me, the reason why slope mods are realistic is that without one, the slopes that you can build appear to be almost 45 degrees steep.

Ok. So a slope mod is for the added realism. Yes? The way I've built some of my cities would not be possible with a slope mod installed? Sounds like something I'll hold off on for now until I learn more about them. At some point I will want to make more realistic looking towns. For now, I'll wait.

 

6 hours ago, A Nonny Moose said:

Well, at least one of the slope mods I tried made some grid squares anathema.  You couldn't put anything on them without a crash.  Removing the mod fixed the problem.  After that experience I looked at slope mods with extreme prejudice.

Yikes! I certainly don't want a crashes. When the times comes that I want more realism, I'll see if I can vet the slope mod choices before I go getting one.

[rsc204 21,857]

On 07/05/2016 at 6:51 AM, A Nonny Moose said:

Well, at least one of the slope mods I tried made some grid squares anathema.  You couldn't put anything on them without a crash.  Removing the mod fixed the problem.  After that experience I looked at slope mods with extreme prejudice.

If a slope mod is causing CTDs, it's either badly modded or conflicting somewhere. I've only experienced one such issue, it was user error and rectified by removing a duplicate slope mod I had erroneously left in my plugins folder.

As for why you'd want one, well perhaps this would help:

IMO, that's a much prettier way to work with terrain and slopes. But of course it's also more limiting, making the game harder. Since you can't just drag networks wherever you may like to. Since beyond a certain gradient for each network, the game will no longer allow you to build. This was a painstaking amount of work to get all the slopes in nicely. Sadly, you can't see much of it easily, because a lot of it is quite subtle.

[HayleyRenaNemeth 465]

On 5/7/2016 at 5:01 AM, CorinaMarie said:

Ok. So a slope mod is for the added realism. Yes? The way I've built some of my cities would not be possible with a slope mod installed? Sounds like something I'll hold off on for now until I learn more about them. At some point I will want to make more realistic looking towns. For now, I'll wait.

 

Yikes! I certainly don't want a crashes. When the times comes that I want more realism, I'll see if I can vet the slope mod choices before I go getting one.

I haven't had issues with crashes using the slope mod I have. 

[APSMS 1,893]

On 5/7/2016 at 3:01 AM, CorinaMarie said:

Ok. So a slope mod is for the added realism. Yes? The way I've built some of my cities would not be possible with a slope mod installed? Sounds like something I'll hold off on for now until I learn more about them. At some point I will want to make more realistic looking towns. For now, I'll wait.

Once you get used to using a slope mod, you can never go back. The pain of un-sloped networks is too much. For me the biggest difference was the almost complete elimination of the undulating road networks on apparently flat ground (typically caused by "eroded" ground plains), and the more natural hillside slopes are a bonus.

I modified my slope mod to be more lenient with roads and streets, and slightly more restrictive with monorail and heavy rail; this allows for the atypical steep roadside you occasionally see in hilly places (like San Diego) but retains the ability to place more moderate networks by pre-grading with the less lenient rail networks.

My modified version is Ennedi's medium version, with streets and roads at Mountain setting (manually set), and RHW removed* (replaced with the RHW-only RHW slope mod which is somewhere on the STEX). The Monorail is more restrictive than my heavy rail (a perverse reversal), but this is mostly because I still like to play the game as a game, and I tend to pre-treat my more "serious" rail sections with the monorail tool to achieve a smoother slope. Even with all this amateur modification to well-known slope mods, I have yet to have a crash purely from a road slope-related issue.

Ennedi's mod can sometimes cause undesirable digging behavior (the road digs into the ground before coming back up to the appropriate level). This is undesirable on the RHW, where things are already really finicky, so I removed it (the parameter) for simplicity, and replaced it with a simpler slope mod version for more consistent behavior. The digging behavior is caused by Ennedi's mod having a maximum slope between tiles parameter that prevents stiff slope edges on networks--all networks are curvy and smooth--but sometimes requires that the slope be longer than needed to fulfill the requirements of smoothness, causing the digging (to make the slope an appropriate length to satisfy the MSBT).

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

Woot! Finally had the exact right type of clouds today:

I tweaked it to this:

Then, since I like a lot of character in my maps:

Which produced this:

Here's one of the tiles:

And another:

 

On the off chance someone would like to play this map, just grab either of those grayscale images (right click, save as) and then make a config.bmp that's 11x11 pixels. (I use this size cause the region fits edge to edge at the 1024x768 I play at.)

The first grayscale will give a more traditional smoothish map with lots of little bumps and the 2nd is what I used for the full spikey render.

 

 

[Lost Realist 762]

Such a cool idea with the clouds but I really don't understand why things can't be smooth in your world...

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Using cloud formations as a randomizer is just about the most random thing you can get.  In my early mapping days, I used a photo of one of my dogs who was black and white.  Also produced an interesting map, but not really anything to play on.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

2 hours ago, Lost Realist said:

Such a cool idea with the clouds but I really don't understand why things can't be smooth in your world...

I like the challenge. Remember, I'm playing plain vanilla atm and a map like this lets me use its tools to the fullest. I'll post a tile pic in a few days showing what I've done with it.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

@Lost Realist

Here's the main tile in my early development stage to give you an idea of how I'm shaping my town:

I've done all the leveling with the transportation tools. No god mode and no raise, lower, or level tools. I feel it's more like the little sims are designing it with limited, yet powerful equipment.

[11241036 5,108]

Well... I hope you don't feel offended by my post, but usually I dislike a city building ctyle with roads that steep like I've seen in your cities so far. However, this time, your unique style actually looks cool imo. With the forests and lakes in the valleys, it reminds me of a PC game I played several years ago, with a settlement/village/whatever in the jungle solely made of swaybridges and treehouses, being home to some jungle tribe. BTW, my compliment on getting the bridges done with plain vanilla tools and for leveling everything just with road stubs.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Kind of the thing I think would happen in the Pyrenees if the Basques had the money to do it.

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

On 5/16/2016 at 10:11 PM, 11241036 said:

Well... I hope you don't feel offended by my post, but usually I dislike a city building ctyle with roads that steep like I've seen in your cities so far. However, this time, your unique style actually looks cool imo.

No worries. I play the game for my own enjoyment and if steep roads fit in then I do that. I have, however, kept your (and many other peep's) opinion about said steep roads in mind while I've been working on this map.

Here's how I've laid out the transitions in this tile:

Better?

 

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Hm, yes, that's less steep. You really have quite a unique style, and needless to say - if that's what you like, that's what you play, and there's really not much else to it.

As for the "working with slopes" aspect that has been mentioned in this thread, I currently see you at a point where you are (still) working against slopes, actually. Yes, your maps have slopes - more than most peoples' maps. And what do you do with them? You flatten them, only leaving narrow cliffs and sudden peaks. There might as well be equally sized gaps due to bodies of water or anything else between your perfectly flattened terrain sections for settlements, but so far you aren't really doing anything that actually involves the slopes in your overall concept. The result can look pretty cool nonetheless (or because of that!), I'm sure of that. Bridges spanning deep trenches, sheer cliffs rising right behind some buildings - exciting scenery! I might add that I sure like the enthusiasm that you put into it, and I'm absolutely certain that your cities on that terrain will look unique.

Then again, I personally feel that things get more interesting for me and may leave a more intense visual impact on me when I see how someone manages to blend both aspects - scenic nature and sprawling cities - in a more harmonious way. With your terrain, there are so many radical features that I feel they are actually losing impact. Look, that steep trench! Wow! Oh, there's another one! And another! Yup, and another one. And there, too. And over there? Yeah, thought so. It's like one of those cities where every building is a supertall skyscraper: the individual building loses all impact, and the overall city looks like a pincushion. In order for something to be perceived as tall/deep or extraordinary, it needs something shallow or ordinary around it. A peninsula covered in low and mid-rise buildings that are slowly growing taller, and then one huge skyscraper at the very tip - now that's a majestic scene that can make an entire city tile! Add 50 more skyscrapers, and the result may be less impressive.

I get the impression that you are still in that eager, overexcited phase where nothing can be awesome enough and a 30m cliff just won't do if you can also have a 100m cliff. Enjoy that phase and don't worry about a thing! It's fun to play, and your enthusiasm will make sure that you'll keep the ball rolling, learn new tricks, refine your style and build cities that will be recognisable as your work. Right now, your way of building seems to be dominated by extremes, but I guess that will become less pronounced after a while. And if it doesn't - heck, what does it matter? You're having fun, and that's what counts. I'm just rambling a little here to let you know some of the things that crossed my mind and that haven't been mentioned in this threa already so that you can give these thoughts a spin and decide if you can find something useful in them. Happy building!

 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

On 5/17/2016 at 7:25 AM, T Wrecks said:

With your terrain, there are so many radical features that I feel they are actually losing impact.

Yes. I see that. I'll prolly grow out of this phase soon enough. (Or not.)

 

So, in today's mapping adventures I made this from one of my cloud pics:

Which renders to this map:

 

It's got plenty of boring green areas and more subdued mountain ranges so I feel this is prolly closer to what Simtropolites might like.

 

Edit: The config.bmp I'd used for my Cori Land 3 didn't really work well for this map so I created a new one based on where the land masses are:

Then I re-rendered the map. Here it is with the borders on:

Which makes the central tile look like this:

 

[CorinaMarie 29,857]

Hmmm... I guess I went too boring on that last one. How about this evening's render?

From this:

To this:

?

[raynev1 1,886]

Looks cool , I've made maps in the past with pictures of the sky with clouds using Landscape Designer . It's a neat program with a few nice tools .