Tutorial: Building dams and shaping rivers

[kbieniu7 266]

Hi All!

As I took the chance to get back and see what's happening at Simtropolis, I decided to share something. It's a tutorial, generally about water. I've already posted it at sc4devotion forum this February.

I really like water. I mean - everything what is connected with hydrography, hydrology and river engineering. That was a part of my education at university and is a part of professional life. I could spend hours in SimCity shaping rivers, streams and creeks, forming lakes and seashores, as well as dams and resevoirs which are not so popular things to see among MDs.

So, I thought, that maybe I could write a quick tutorial about creating dams, shaping rivers and proper terraforming... a quick one, well... it turned out to be quite large in volume (43 pages), so I divided it into few chapters, where you could find:

Catchment basins – worth keeping in mind when terraforming
Basics about proper terraforming in order not to flood your country.

A little bit of hydrology. How it varies between regions?
Basics about hydrology (mostly about rainfalls).

Watercourse
How to shape rivers.

Water and humans
Some facts to keep in mind when locating your cities.

The never-ending battle
Floods and measures how to protect against them.

Dams and reservoir
Structure of dams and rules how to find a good place for them.

And as a separate file:

A step-by-step guide how to build a dam

I tried to describe some real-life mechanisms, provided with real-life images and their SimCity counterparts. I'm aware that probably for almost everyone it would be too big in volume or too boring to digest. However, maybe few realism-oriented players would find some of its parts useful... Or just as another text to read during your commute in a bus or train.

I've chosen a PDF format, mostly because it's more sure for the future. I'm really upset about the possibility of loosing images hosted on an external server. They are on my google drive (4,5MB and 2,5MB), as well as attached to this post. You can download them by clicking on the images below or scrolling down to the list of attachements:

         

All information in this document is based on books, trusted internet sources, as well as my own university education and own experience. I tried to do my best, but if you manage to spot any kind of mistakes or discrepancy, feel free to share your comments. Most of examples are based on Poland and Europe and might be a bit biased, as (obviously) I have the biggest experience with this region.

Thanks for people who agreed to use their photos: Vizoria, Badsim and Korver.

I'd also recommend following video tutorials from Scribosilyn where he has nicely shown in-game how to create rivers and ponds element-by-element:

SC4 - Phoenix Project Tutorial : create a river 1
SC4 - Phoenix Project Tutorial : create a river 2
SC4 - Phoenix Project Tutorial : create a river 3
SC4 - Phoenix Project Tutorial : create a pond

Cheers!
Kamil

ATTACHMENTS:

A few words about rivers in context of SimCity 4 - kb7.pdf

TUTORIAL_How-to-build-a-dam_kb7.pdf

[Vigilante1987 180]

I've read the first few pages and it looks quite interesting.  Thanks for posting this.

[Cyclone Boom 16,853]

This really is a highly impressive dissertation. I've only had a flick through so far, but can already tell what a fabulous analysis you've documented here. This will be truly fascinating as a study of the realism aspects for creating natural landscapes flowing with rivers and streams. I can imagine how for map making also, it'll be a really useful base of inspiration to shape various techniques. The same for terraforming in the game too by hand on a wide scale. A lot about realistic recreations is to the world around us, and to understand a bit about the geological aspects I think is a neat way to realise how to go about it in SC4. The dam construction tutorial looks great too.

Very well done, and thanks for sharing with us all.

(I also like the idea to attach both PDFs here at ST in case the external storage or links ever got changed.)

[rsc204 21,806]

Thanks so much for taking the time to document and share this information. I'm quite certain I'll put parts of this into future regions I develop.

[Prophet42 1,501]

Great tutorials!  Well planned, organized and informative.

[PaPa-J 778]

Awesome Tutorials.  Neatly organized!  Thanks for your work.

[Giuliano40k-- 188]

As an Geographer myself, when playing city builder games ,I always try to follow certain rules designing my city and natural scapes, its simply umbearable to not follow the expected behavior regarding topography for egxample. Until recently I played mostly Skylines,since I lost my copy of SC4,my plugins folder, et al ,and its easier to follow this preceits in skylines, as its a more modern game, but as I resumed playing Sc4 , this guide will come in hand to keep following the "rules". Thank's for sharing this tutorial. 

PS: Recently I found a paper regarding city simulator games , in this case SimCity 4, under the logic of Urban Geography and urban planning, I'll post it here on the forum  when I finish reading It. Excuse for my poor English as well,its rusted,at best.