Capilano Islands

Czardus · July 21, 2017

I've started a new project: Capilano Islands. I'll be posting videos to my YouTube channel as I progress, along with additional background info on my blog. Here's the first update!

Blog post: Capilano Islands - Starting Terraforming

dedgren · July 21, 2017

Hi Czardus- Always nice to be the first to welcome a new CJ. It looks like you have basic terraforming down to a science and it'll be interesting to see where you take things. That said, some tight editing could make your video about three minutes long and still get across the same info.

Good luck.

David

Czardus · July 22, 2017

David - Thanks! I might do some editing, but for the most part I want to avoid making many cuts. My goal is more to fully document my city, primarily for my own enjoyment, but I decided to make the videos public. I've also found that sometimes I want to know how someone did something in a video but they don't really show how it was done. So I plan to post the details in case people want to see the actual process.

That said, I'll probably periodically post summary videos or cinematics so people don't have to watch all of the detailed videos.

dedgren · July 23, 2017

On 7/22/2017 at 7:51 AM, Czardus said:

....

That said, I'll probably periodically post summary videos or cinematics so people don't have to watch all of the detailed videos.

My bias shows through here. I've never been a fan of the use of all but the most occasional video in a CJ, but judging from the number of authors these days who present their work in video format I am probably in the minority, and perhaps a small minority at that. I posted years ago in Three Rivers Region that a CJer's most important audience in terms of pleasing someone was the author her or himself and that hand in hand with that rule should go that the author should always be his or her own toughest critic. If you can look yourself in the eye and say "this is good enough to post," then it almost certainly is no matter what the format. Nobody here gets paid for authoring a CJ- it's all about sharing your enjoyment of playing a great game. You should do that in whatever way you feel comfortable with,

David

Czardus · July 24, 2017

On 7/23/2017 at 0:04 PM, dedgren said:

My bias shows through here. I've never been a fan of the use of all but the most occasional video in a CJ, but judging from the number of authors these days who present their work in video format I am probably in the minority, and perhaps a small minority at that. I posted years ago in Three Rivers Region that a CJer's most important audience in terms of pleasing someone was the author her or himself and that hand in hand with that rule should go that the author should always be his or her own toughest critic. If you can look yourself in the eye and say "this is good enough to post," then it almost certainly is no matter what the format. Nobody here gets paid for authoring a CJ- it's all about sharing your enjoyment of playing a great game. You should do that in whatever way you feel comfortable with,

David

I totally agree. I do want to try and create content in enough ways that everyone can enjoy my city, though. So you can expect to see screenshots and cinematic tours and whatnot at some point.

Czardus · July 24, 2017

dedgren · July 24, 2017

I love the hydrological aspect of this game. If Colossal Order would listen to me, I have some suggestions that I think would vastly improve it. One would be to allow, maybe with a slider control, the "ebb and flow" effect where a river will rise and then fall all on its own over the course of a minute or two. Another would be to put a little modal info bubble that pops up on each of the water sources after they are placed. It would tell you the output quantity or drain effect in some uniform measurement and the max capacity of the source. It would also be great to be able to move a source once it is placed without changing its capacity and resetting it to max output. Another neat thing to have would be some "steam effect" plops like in SC4 so that you could better simulate rapids and waterfalls.

I did watch the entire video, as this is an area of interest for me.

David

Czardus · July 25, 2017

3 hours ago, dedgren said:

I love the hydrological aspect of this game. If Colossal Order would listen to me, I have some suggestions that I think would vastly improve it. One would be to allow, maybe with a slider control, the "ebb and flow" effect where a river will rise and then fall all on its own over the course of a minute or two. Another would be to put a little modal info bubble that pops up on each of the water sources after they are placed. It would tell you the output quantity or drain effect in some uniform measurement and the max capacity of the source. It would also be great to be able to move a source once it is placed without changing its capacity and resetting it to max output. Another neat thing to have would be some "steam effect" plops like in SC4 so that you could better simulate rapids and waterfalls.

I did watch the entire video, as this is an area of interest for me.

David

Yeah I'm fascinated by the water flow. One thing I want to do with this map is to have much more fresh water streams and lakes. I've seen so many maps that have hills and mountains surrounding flat, buildable land but then only have a single river (or a couple of rivers). The real world has so much more in terms of water features, so I'm hoping to model that a bit more.

As for changes to the UI, I'd be happy if we could just edit the output of the water source after placing. I can't tell you how many times I've deleted a water source in game (not in the editor), just to adjust the amount of water there is.

And I'm glad you watched the whole video! I'm having a lot of fun with this project already, especially because I'm sharing it more than my other projects.

Turjan · July 25, 2017

That looks as if you had some fun .

Just a heads-up: You seem to have only discovered half of what you can do with water source placement. The numerical value you choose during creation is not the only thing that determines the flow of a river, it's also the height where you place the source to some larger or lesser extent, depending on where you place it. If you almost bury the source, the flow will be much less than if you raise it up from the original placement point.

This is one thing you can still fiddle with after you placed the source. You left-click on the source you placed and keep the mouse pressed. This way you will see the exact height the current source will fill terrain via a white overlay. By moving the mouse forward and backward or left and right (just try until it works as it seems to depend on the direction you are looking at) you can then adjust the height as often as you like.

Having multiple sources in a flow is a two-sided measure. Be aware that every source that is lower than another one also functions as drain.These things you place are water level adjusters that do whatever is needed, depending on the height you chose for placement. If, for example, a lower lake flows over because you only have one strong source placed high at the beginning of the river to get a rapid flow, a source in the lower lake will be able to adjust the level down.

Czardus · July 25, 2017

1 hour ago, Turjan said:

That looks as if you had some fun .

Just a heads-up: You seem to have only discovered half of what you can do with water source placement. The numerical value you choose during creation is not the only thing that determines the flow of a river, it's also the height where you place the source to some larger or lesser extent, depending on where you place it. If you almost bury the source, the flow will be much less than if you raise it up from the original placement point.

This is one thing you can still fiddle with after you placed the source. You left-click on the source you placed and keep the mouse pressed. This way you will see the exact height the current source will fill terrain via a white overlay. By moving the mouse forward and backward or left and right (just try until it works as it seems to depend on the direction you are looking at) you can then adjust the height as often as you like.

Having multiple sources in a flow is a two-sided measure. Be aware that every source that is lower than another one also functions as drain.These things you place are water level adjusters that do whatever is needed, depending on the height you chose for placement. If, for example, a lower lake flows over because you only have one strong source placed high at the beginning of the river to get a rapid flow, a source in the lower lake will be able to adjust the level down.

This is a game changer for me. Thank you for sharing this tip. Now I can make shallow ponds without spending an hour trying to get the banks to be the right height, only to have it flood periodically anyway!

Czardus · July 26, 2017

Ok, so before I post today's update on Capilano Islands, I did a little bit of work on the streams off camera. I've now switched each one to a single water source following Turjan's tip. I also made a few sections a bit more curvy, so it isn't just a straight stream.

Anyway, tonight on camera I did a bit of work on the terrain for a few of the islands and added a flowing water source to the starting tile (just in case the map is ever played vanilla).

And here's a couple of screenshots:

Czardus · July 27, 2017

Here's a very short video from a brief play session this morning. I'm testing out an idea for detailing some of the small rocky islands that are along the coasts of the larger islands. There's a screenshot below the video as well. Let me know what you think. Is this something I should do more of on the map?

barcasam7 · July 28, 2017

You've done a fantastic job on the terraforming! I admire anyone who spends effort doing it as I'm one of them person who will just download a map off the steam workshop. If you could post maybe a few more photos that would be great!

Roadman20 · July 28, 2017

Agreed, this terraforming is top notch.

Czardus · July 29, 2017

Here's the next update on Capilano Islands: https://www.czardus.com/2017/07/29/capilano-islands-finishing-terraforming/

There are more screenshots at that link, but here's a teaser.

Turjan · August 2, 2017

Looking good. Make sure that the area outside of the 25 tiles is less suited to city building than the area within. Otherwise, there will probably complaints (well, more than usual ).

dedgren · August 2, 2017

11 hours ago, Turjan said:

Looking good. Make sure that the area outside of the 25 tiles is less suited to city building than the area within. Otherwise, there will probably complaints (well, more than usual ).

Heh! No way!

I really like your cliff texture close in, Czardus, but I wish it zoomed out better. Are those shadows that make it look so dark?

David

Czardus · August 3, 2017

On 8/2/2017 at 6:14 AM, Turjan said:

Looking good. Make sure that the area outside of the 25 tiles is less suited to city building than the area within. Otherwise, there will probably complaints (well, more than usual ).

Thanks! There is about the same amount of buildable space within the 25 tiles as there is outside those tiles. I did a test run-through of the map, and it should be challenging with 81 tiles but definitely possible to play. I've since fixed a couple of issues I discovered, mainly the inter-city traffic issue. I'm finishing up some details and learning how to upload it to the Workshop. It should be posted soon.

Here's the video of the test:

18 hours ago, dedgren said:

Heh! No way!

I really like your cliff texture close in, Czardus, but I wish it zoomed out better. Are those shadows that make it look so dark?

David

It might be the shadows, I'm not sure. The texture is part of the Realistic v1.5.5 Temperate map theme: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=629040688

Turjan · August 3, 2017

What I meant: Don't have the difficult-to-build-on land inside the 25 tiles and the flat land outside. The result may be endless whining .

Czardus · August 3, 2017

14 minutes ago, Turjan said:

What I meant: Don't have the difficult-to-build-on land inside the 25 tiles and the flat land outside. The result may be endless whining .

There's probably going to be whining no matter what I do.

I did post a few screenshots to twitter this morning, but forgot to add them here before heading off to work. One of them shows the 25 tiles: https://twitter.com/Czardus4/status/893095220161761281

Czardus · August 4, 2017

The base map is complete, and now available on the Steam Workshop: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1100110177

Note that I've only used one tree in order to keep down on the required assets, but as we move forward with my project I'll be adding much more variety!

dedgren · August 4, 2017

Congrats on getting the map done and up. I'm sure folks will enjoy playing the game on it.

David

gfvsims · August 6, 2017

Wonderful terraforming! I'm envious of anyone who has the patience for such things as I get so bored/frustrated doing it myself.

Czardus · August 20, 2017

In this episode, we get started on this new city/region. We put together some of the basics by building a coal power plant, and get the main city started.

This Let's Play Cities Skylines series is a city that will be entirely "hand-plopped." That is, each building will be placed individually and there will be no zoning.