Lucario Boricua's Caribbean Map Catalog

[Lucario Boricua 7,028]

I may not be the most skilled nor best-equipped mapmaker in SimCity 4, but I'm motivated to contribute! Here you'll find my latest map creations and map ideas to fill in the gaps in one of the least represented parts of the world in SimCity 4 mapmaking!

I've also developed a custom map legend for use with SC4 Mapper 2013 to turn the rendering preview into a useful topographic map, find it here!

 

I'll soon add an index map showing which locations I've represented myself and which other locations have been represented by other players, distinguishing between full-scale and small-scale maps.

 

PUERTO RICO:
 

• San Juan: compact variant (from Toa Baja to Loíza) and wide variant (from Vega Baja to Río Grande, including the Caguas Valley)

 

 

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• Humacao:  includes the flat areas of Yabucoa, Naguabo and most of Las Piedras. This one is also part of a collaboration project with @Indiana Joe , who's making a pre-fabricated transportation network for the players who find it too daunting or tedious to develop those themselves.

 

 

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• Western Puerto Rico: My first attempt to make it to publication, it corresponds to the Porta del Sol tourism region. This includes the west as a whole and three cut-outs: northwest (from Rincón to Camuy), central-west (Mayagüez and neighbors) and the southwest (from Cabo Rojo to Yauco).

 

 

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• Aguadilla: includes the municipality of Aguadilla and most of its immediate neighbors, including Rincón, Aguada, Moca, and parts of Isabela and San Sebastián.

 

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• Vieques: includes the full splendor of the island-municipality!

 

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• Culebra: includes the main island and the numerous cays under its jurisdiction

 

 

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• Guayama: includes the city of Guayama and the neighboring southeastern municipalities of Coamo, Santa Isabel, Salinas, Aibonito, Cayey, Arroyo, Patillas and Maunabo.

 

 

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•  Upcoming ideas:
  • North-central coast: centered in Arecibo, this one will go from Quebradillas to Vega Alta (under development)
  • South-central coast: centered in Ponce, this one will go from Guánica to Santa Isabel (under development)

 

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC:
 

• Santo Domingo: includes the entire National District, the Haina lowlands and the Caucedo seaport

 

 

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• Punta Cana: includes all the glamorous touristy areas to the far east end of the Dominican Republic

 

 

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• Upcoming ideas:
  • Santiago de los Caballeros
  • Samaná Peninsula (under development)
  • Altagracia Province (under development)
  • Puerto Plata
  • Southeast coast: includes San Pedro de Macorís and La Romana (under development)

HAITI

• Upcoming ideas
  • Cap Haitien
  • Gonaïves
  • Port-de-Paix and Tortuga Island

JAMAICA

• Upcoming ideas
  • Montego Bay

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

• Upcoming Ideas: 
  • Port-of-Spain

CUBA

• Upcoming ideas:
  • Havana
  • Santa Clara
  • Cienfuegos
  • Isla de la Juventud
  • Camagüey
  • Sancti Spiritus
  • Ciego de Ávila
  • Manzanillo
  • Santiago de Cuba
  • Bayamo
  • Moa Mine

SMALLER CARIBBEAN ISLANDS
 

• Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao
• Turks and Caicos
• Cayman Islands
• Selection from the Bahamas:
  • Andros and Gran Bahama
  • New Providence (Nassau)
• Virgin Islands:
  • Saint Croix
  • Northern group: Saint John, Saint Thomas, Anegada, Tortola, Virgin Gorda and the smaller ones between them
• Mona Island: this one will have to wait because I've found major problems with the available topography sources there.

  Edited December 5, 2020 by Lucario Boricua  
New content

[tonyfv 23]

Hola!

I have been preparing to create a region of Santiago de Cuba, my birthplace, and in looking for tips on region building I keep running into you in threads, and now I saw one place you mentioned the Caribbean and damn! You haven't built Santiago yet

I'm a closet geographer and loved maps and mapmaking since I was 6 (my mom taught Geography and had plenty of maps and books at home). Anyway, I've got my topo map ready and picked out a default region and did the km-to-tile measurements, planning where the city tiles would go, etc. But now I'm learning there's a whole new world out there, and mods to make terraforming more accurate, etc.

So I'll keep reading your threads and catching tutorials to see if I want to take the task on. I'm a newbie, working on a Macbook. I hope the mods I want to install work.

OK, so thanks again!

[Lucario Boricua 7,028]

On 8/14/2021 at 1:20 PM, tonyfv said:

Hola!

I have been preparing to create a region of Santiago de Cuba, my birthplace, and in looking for tips on region building I keep running into you in threads, and now I saw one place you mentioned the Caribbean and damn! You haven't built Santiago yet

I'm a closet geographer and loved maps and mapmaking since I was 6 (my mom taught Geography and had plenty of maps and books at home). Anyway, I've got my topo map ready and picked out a default region and did the km-to-tile measurements, planning where the city tiles would go, etc. But now I'm learning there's a whole new world out there, and mods to make terraforming more accurate, etc.

So I'll keep reading your threads and catching tutorials to see if I want to take the task on. I'm a newbie, working on a Macbook. I hope the mods I want to install work.

OK, so thanks again!

I haven't made further regions yet, but seeing that you're requesting Santiago de Cuba, I could make it into the 1st Cuban region of my Caribbean regions collection! I've been especially busy with another major SimCity 4 activity, the Network Addon Mod, and several of my personal projects have been on hold whenever NAM development reaches critical stages.

Now, if you want to create your regions, there's only one method I currently know: extracting 8-bit grayscale PNG images from a website known as the Tangram Heightmapper. It's a tedious process, since I have to manually assemble and edit the source images. I still lack the knowledge to use proper Geographic Information System (GIS) software to export 16-bit grayscale images, but I do have the programs accessible. We can stay in touch directly to further coordinate the making of Santiago de Cuba, with the added benefit of a fellow Caribbean SC4 player to guide me.

 

An initial extent I'm considering for a potential Santiago de Cuba region would be this, encompassing a 40km X 40km square. How about it?

 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

10 hours ago, Lucario Boricua said:

I still lack the knowledge to use proper Geographic Information System (GIS) software to export 16-bit grayscale images, but I do have the programs accessible.

By this, are you referring to DEM data? If so, and if it's available for that area, I could make the 16-bit grayscale and send it to you for the refinements you do. It would then need rendered for the game using the compressor in Terraformer and after that creating the .SC4M file.

[Lucario Boricua 7,028]

1 minute ago, CorinaMarie said:

By this, are you referring to DEM data? If so, and if it's available for that area, I could make the 16-bit grayscale and send it to you for the refinements you do. It would then need rendered for the game using the compressor in Terraformer and after that creating the .SC4M file.

What I need to do is learn how to do the 16-bit grayscale exporting. I know how to do all the steps before and after that. I also know where to find digital elevation models in GeoTIFF, SRTM and DEM file formats. The offered help would be immensely appreciated as a start!

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

Just now, Lucario Boricua said:

The offered help would be immensely appreciated as a start!

Alright. For simplicity, can you tell me the full Latitude and Longitude coordinates for the upper left and lower right of the area you'll make?

[Lucario Boricua 7,028]

The map area to extract is the one bound by the square defined in these points:

• Upper left (northwest): Latitude 20.277403 °N, Longitude 76.043540 °W
   
• Lower right (southeast): Latitude 19.870708 °N, Longitude 75.613394 °W

This bounding box corresponds to a 45.056 X 45.056 kilometers (11 X 11 large city districts), from which I'll crop the 40 X 40 km area for the map.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

It's 11.6 MB so I put it on the temporary hosting site WeTransfer.com: https://we.tl/t-nyQGeTmUXe (Linky good for one week.)

Here's how the cropped out DEM looks superimposed on the map:

^ Note: The DEM is an inverse image to show better.

 

And the DEM image:

[MarkShot 631]

Just visiting your thread here.

So, do your PR maps come with sound effects of el coqui?  We got lots of frogs here to hear if you are out on a warm evening night; like 40 years ago I remember people with a mining helmet and nets hunting them.  Vieques I know well.  Where is Lares? ... I remember from friends El Grito de Lares.

Something I will regret; never seeing Haiti.  When I was young, I was on the political s**t list so it was not possible.  Whenever we protested around the UN, there were always people taking photos of faces.  People went into Forte Dimanche, but never left.  I had wanted to see a statue known in French as Le Marron Iconnu off the beach leading up to the palace blowing a conch shell.  Marron is a chestnut, but the local slang for a runaway.  They would head deep inland up into the mountains as most plantations and towns were along the coast.  They played a key support/logistics role in the early days of the revolution of 1789 as the fight transitioned from more of a slave insurgency to an outright war against the Whites and France to conclude with independence in 1804.  Yes, it would have been nice to have gone.  (I think there was also such a name in Spanish too; Cimarron?)

Here is:  Taiwan Province

[MarkShot 631]

Google is amazing.  A while back I took a friend here who had never left Taiwan on a tour of my youth in NYC using some maps and Google street view.  It was truly an amazing virtual trip.

The food, bodegas, botanicas, cuchifritos ... I got those off of Google image search.  She is probably the only Taiwanese who knows how to cook banann pèze which to you would be like tostones.  But I think ours are better as they are double fried and dipped in salt water before the second frying.  Hey, this isn't bias.  My borinqueno friends said so; yep, a guy has to know how to cook if he doesn't want end up eating at a lechoneria every night.  I think the favorite plantano verde dish I miss ... mofungo ... never saw that written (correct?); it was good.

Oh, I think I am going to be home sick ... excuse me. 

[Lucario Boricua 7,028]

On 8/14/2021 at 1:20 PM, tonyfv said:

Hola!

I have been preparing to create a region of Santiago de Cuba, my birthplace, and in looking for tips on region building I keep running into you in threads, and now I saw one place you mentioned the Caribbean and damn! You haven't built Santiago yet

I'm a closet geographer and loved maps and mapmaking since I was 6 (my mom taught Geography and had plenty of maps and books at home). Anyway, I've got my topo map ready and picked out a default region and did the km-to-tile measurements, planning where the city tiles would go, etc. But now I'm learning there's a whole new world out there, and mods to make terraforming more accurate, etc.

So I'll keep reading your threads and catching tutorials to see if I want to take the task on. I'm a newbie, working on a Macbook. I hope the mods I want to install work.

OK, so thanks again!

I hope you're still around, because I finally figured out a way to get decent quality maps for SimCity 4!! I now have a draft version of Santiago de Cuba, and would love to get your opinion on it! I still gotta adjust the coastal waters, and turn the inland water bodies into flat land surfaces at the water's elevation.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, I'm also re-visiting some other ideas I've wanted to make, and also will re-make all my maps to be in high definition! Including...

 

Western Puerto Rico, in its upcoming third version!

 

 

Isla de Mona, the last missing of the main outlying islands of Puerto Rico!