Three Rivers Region

[cinnebar 0]

Fantastic job, as usual, David.  You know how to explain things in very very simple terms.  Kudos!

If I may add my 2 cents, David, that rain modd, in my very limited experience, is very tricky.  I tinkered away today, got frustrated, so I zoomed all the way back.  Pushed rain and....bam...the whole entire city map was filled.  Too little of a circle and nah dah happens.  Very frustrating to learn but as David said save first just in case.  When I make mistakes, I make doozies.

My hat's off to you, David.  Well done!

Don

[dedgren 830]

Hey, GaBoR (Oro Bruno)- You were 3RR's 4,000th page view!  Thanks for that.

And the next post, Don's (cinnebar), at page view 4,001, started page 10.

This is such a great community...I really appreciate everyone's interest in my CJ.

David

[GaBoR 7]

Hey I didn't noticed that lol, It's great to see Veteran CJers who share the

[tchaos713 5]

I will put this to use forthwith!

Excellent job!

[Rayden 7]

Land bridge, Land bridge,

Thx David, incredible, I have that extra terrain tool installed and never used it before

[Darmok 34]

QUOTE...

Back again.  The child is in kid jail.

insanity is hereditary...

...you get it from your children.

END OF QUOTE

And you should add : "or by repeated exposure to this thread" 

...Sorry just couldn't resist!...you're not the only maroon here you know!

David this was brilliant, I've already seen some tutorials about the rain mod, modd, extra terrain tools, errmmm.. whatever... but none compare to that last one! Detailled, humorous, informative... stop me anytime now before your ego can't pass through the door!

Seriously, this was great (here's that dreaded word again..) let's say admirable, does that suit you? hehehe I knew it would!

All right, enuf of this, on with the show, loved it, can't wait for more, see you later!

Regards

-John

[Pixelrage 34]

Originally posted by: dedgren

#9 - Pine Creek

quote>

What's the name of the STEX download where you can get the ploppable algae?? It looks great...

[pvarcoe 0]

Wow, excellent tutorial.

Humorous and very informative.

Thank you for posting it!

Looking forward to more.

[gmavignier 3]

I have a question for Dedgren: what whater textures do you use? It goes really well with Jeronij's water.

[iquere 2]

Beautiful CJ! I will keep my eyes on this.

[Ringo 0]

awesome mixture of functionality and beauty

[psteverific 8]

Nice Journal! 

Your tutorials are very in-depth... I appreciate that you don't take anything for granted and illustrate every last detail. I think I will be refering back to this journal often for hints and such.

I'm also quite interested your explanations of how things are engineeered in the real world. thank you for sharing some of your expertise

I look forward to your next update

Psteve

[sebes 3]

What a great CJ - and great tuturials too! I love the way you mix them in. I 'steal' the mrb powershed immediately, as well as the rain mod. How do you get the stones in the water on the shores?

[dedgren 830]

Hello once again!

...tomorrow or the next day, eh?quote>

What, what?  Oh, I'm sorry...I did say that last time.  And that was, when...

...oh...

...last weekend.  [ said as I crawl off and hide under a rock ]

Well, I'm really, really sorry.  You see, every so often I have these bad RL attacks.

They say, though, that a half-hour of SC4 a night, or in its place, a half-hour spent on ST is the best therapy for the condition.  An antidote, really.

I'm going to take a moment and do a shameless plug, as, after all, I am...

...wait for it...

...shameless.

One of the things that I have found, over time, to be a major limitation of the "vanilla" game is the inability to place a RH functional (i.e. carries traffic) transportation network mode (i.e. road, rail, highway) under a "game" bridge, whether placed over water or dry land.  I mentioned this in the last part of this update.

Now, I'm not going off on that tangent here (but you have been warned).  I'll point you, though, at a topic I started on the forums as I began to find things on ST that allowed me to work around the problem.

Clicking on the pic will take you there.


The topic is short, just a few replies over a few months (notably, though, several from smoncrie, one of the ST Transport Gods who was also working on the issue).

None of that, however, is the promised shameless plug.  Here it comes.

One of the STers who replied on the topic was psteverific.  As I recollect, psteve and I exchanged a private message or two over what I thought was a possible solution to the problem (it never panned out, though), and then I lost track of him.

Well, psteve is on the CJ forum with a journal called Queenston.  Aside from the fact that he turns out to be an SC4 Master City Designer, psteve is also doing the most incredible tutorials.  If you haven't visited  Queenston yet, or in the last day or so, go there now.  You can always come back here later, but what he's doing is a must see.

...end of shameless plug...


So, on to surface water, and how to make it look real.

Last weekend [ nervously glancing around ] we arrived at this stopping point.

Now, you could just plop a few "game" trees around the bridge, call the valley a dry gulch, and just leave it at that, right?

Well, that's not how we do things here at 3RR, uh uh.  No way, no how.

We'll begin by going to Mayor Mode and, on the Plant Flora submenu of the Landscape Tools menu, select brtim2's Water Model 1, which we'll call, as he does in the Plopable Water - Examples and Continued Development topic, Edmonton Water.



Uh-oh...



If you haven't downloaded Edmonton Water yet, there's a problem.  It was only available through a link in the Plopable Water - Examples and Continued Development topic, which was started by ST Cartographer God Vandy and was active late last summer and into the fall, and where all the links are now broken.

Well, poop, to put it bluntly.

I've PM'd brtim2, who's avatar discloses that he has been on ST as recently as today (no privacy here, folks...heh!), and called for help.

In the meantime, we'll take a break.

EDIT: I've now, over two years, made a byte's worth (i.e. 256) of posts to ST.  That's about a third of a post every day!  Oh well, I've never gone for quantity...

EDIT 2: WE SHOOT!  WE SCORE!  brtim2 PM'd me back.  He'll try to upload the file, which he'd lost, onto the STEX later today.  Thanks, brtim2!

It'll be several hours before I get back to the 'puter to continue the update.  In the meantime, here's some eye candy from Grand Island, a city I was working on about a year ago...

#1


#2


#3


#4


#5


#6


#7


#8


Enjoy.  Later...

EDIT:  (9/9/06)  Moved pics to ImageShack

[bat 6]

nice update!

bat

[rw0381c 2]

Speaking of gods ....

Why does it seem so effortless, and then I try it, and ...

Great job David!

[psteverific 8]

Hey,  thank you... shameless is my favourite kind of plug!
   (except in the bathtub... there I prefer the regular kind)

It sure would be nice if someone could find a solution to transit-enabling those underbridge roads... that subway solution seemed to hold so much promise... too bad about busses and freight.
Well, hopefully we can get someone thinking about it again.

Oh, and bless you for getting the Edmonton Water file onto the stex. I've never acutally used plopable water (belive it or not), so I'm looking forward to following your excellent tutorial soon. 

keep it the good work

[Battlecat 14]

Nice set of eye candy there!  I'm looking forward to the next step of your tutorial. 

[mrbisonm 1,620]

I haven't had the chance to look at this CJ yet, but now I am glad that I did. Great work and the details that you create with your talent are equal to the precise lotplacing as jeronij' CJ's Columbia.

One thing that bothers me a lot though and I can't hold it back from saying: So many pretty and beautiful pictures in this CJ are destroyed and do not get their full appreciation by the presence of the gridlook when you take the picture. Please turn that off when you do make the screenshots the next time. Some of those pics would make a nice wallpaper if it wasn't for that. I know that some of these pics need the grid for the tutorial purposes, but others don't like that beautiful Town-riverbend with the two bridges.

Hope you didn't mind me snooping around in your CJ and making suggestions.....lol

Greetz

mrbisonm

[Darmok 34]

Hi David,

Yikes! Use of the "P" word.... **looking around a few times**.   Hey no moderators in sight let's use it again!...

Hehehe...

Good thing you did with brtim2 for the Edmonton water! A big thanks to both of you! (downloaded as I type this) And as I'm experimenting with your technique in Anôrien right now, I'll have to replop (I like the sound of that word... here it goes again... replop!... wonder if they will accept it in Webster's new edition??) sorry for the digression, what was I saying, ah yes I'll have to replop it again! BUT it'll be a pleasure!

Now.... on with the pics..

Over a year ago you say, I'm absolutely impressed! I doubt that the bridge pillars were where they are on those pics by sheer coincidence. I'm sure you've finetuned your terraforming a lot. Pic no 5 is showing it perfectly!

Again (and again)... impressive work!

Enjoy the week!

-John

[sloppet 3]

Making the long story short: insane updates!

[Caddielook 1]

very cool region. I love the grass texture you use. where did you get it?

that +loppable water is beautyfull. keep it up!

[Yoman3 5]

looks great rly love the work you've done with the turtorials here.

KEEP IT UP!!!!

[dedgren 830]

So here's where we left off a few days ago before all the excitement.

...and the day+ long ST crash...

Oh yeah, that.  Tell yourself you don't take ST for granted...

...then click your "Favorites" link and get, after waiting way too long, a 404 error.

Now, you already know when you see this that none of Bill's suggestions are going to work.  ST is down, end of story.

You feel like one of Sigourney Weaver's Marine escorts in Aliens...

That's it, man.  Game over, man!  Game over!quote>

You just never know what's a linkie around here, do you?

Anyway, ST is back up, brtim2 has posted Edmonton Water on the STEX, and all's right with the world.

BTW, didja see brtim2's new CJ, Terketmek?

...gesundheit...

No, no, sorry, that's the name of his CJ.

Looking at it, I predict brtim2 will become The Desert King.  The real Grand Canyon took millions of years to come into existence.  He's close to duplicating it in about four days.

And his wit is as dry as his CJ's terrain.  From his CJ:

That's everything right now, not what you expected, probably, but a sign that I am alive. And that's a good thing.quote>

I see many return visits in the future for Terketmek...

...gesundheit...

Oh, be quiet!

That's the break whistle- off to put the boy to bed.  More later tonight...sorry for the slow start.




EDIT (6-6-06 - that's pretty cool...):  I've used, from time to time in my CJ posts here, traffic signs from Richard Moeur's great Manual of Traffic Signs webpage.  I was under the naive impression that he had put them out there for free use as long as you weren't involved in any commercial purpose.  As I flipped through his site last night, though, I finally read the full legal, which requires that you put the following on any page where the signs are used:

Sign images are from the Manual of Traffic Signs, by Richard C. Moeur.

I think that's a small price to pay anyone who has gone to the extensive time and trouble to make those images.  Richard, if you are reading this, you are The Road Sign God, and I Am Not Worthy.

EDIT:  (9/9/06)  Moved pics to ImageShack

[sloppet 3]

ok, good to know this isn't dead.. now wait a second... this isn't dead! yay!

[tchaos713 5]

Pavement Ends???

Wait, I though we were building bridges here....

[Darmok 34]

Pavement Ends!

That's a dreaded sign for an old biker!

Hoping we'll find some asphalt soon!

[rw0381c 2]

David, among your 1001 different careers, were you ever a writer? It's such an enjoyment to read your CJ, at the end of each post, I anxiously await the next. This my friend, is like "crack" (not the plumber's type) for Simcity fans, and I haven't even mentionned the images ...

[dedgren 830]

Without further delay, we'll pick up where we stopped over the weekend.  There's quite a bit to do today, and I'm going to try to get done in a few (yeah, right...) fell swoops.

Hopefully, everyone has use our extended break to load up into their "My Documents" plugins folder (or wherever, if you use a Mac, is the equivalent) Edmonton Water by brtim2.

We'll select Edmonton Water from down toward the end of the Plant Flora submenu under the Mayor Mode Landscape Tools icon.

Unlike the other tools we've used recently, Edmonton Water is a sort of ploppable...

...some spell that "plopable...

Well, I don't.

...anyway, a sort of ploppable irregular water-colored shape.  Like the pop-up balloon says, if you left-click once when you place it, you get a single shape centered more or less on the click point that generally is most of the size of a grid square.

 

Note that (for the two or three of you non-cheaters left out there) Edmonton Water costs nothing to plop!  A SC4 Freebie!

Left clicking again at a new location provides a different shape, and so on.



If you press and hold the left mouse button while you drag, you will get a continuous line of shapes that approximate...

...you guessed it...



...a stream.  Or a river.

Edmonton Water drag-plops up gentle slopes nicely.



It even works up fairly steep slopes, but the will be a noticeable increase in the "jaggies" on the edges and in between the plops.



It even plops under "game" water, which, as you have seen elsewhere in this CJ, can be used to good effect.



As I understand it, brtim2 based the color of Edmonton Water on the Edmonton Water Texture VERII water mod by STEX Water God timotheus4.  That, in answering gmavignier's question asked back on May 31st...

what water textures do you use?quote>

...along with PEG's Brigantine Water Mod, are what are in the 3RR "My documents" plugins folder.  I've tried many combinations, but those two just work great together, and very well with Edmonton Water.

So, let's drag-plop a stream in our canyon.



We'll start under the bridge we created over the past weekend.  Notice that you can drag Edmonton Water right under the bridge.  We'll spin the view one-eighty and drag some on the other side of the bridge.



With a section of our stream down, we'll return to the Plant Flora submenu and select Goldiva's Rocks, which are from his indispensible Mayor Mode Sea Set.

If you haven't downloaded the Mayor Mode Sea Set yet, it can be found on the STEX here:

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=13068

While you are at it, and if your thing is tropical coastlines and swamps, you should also DL Goldiva's great Mayor Mode Tropical Tree Set, which is found here:

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=13067

These, once downloaded, get unpacked into your "My Documents" plugins folder.

So, click on the Rocks by Goldiva icon...



I plop Goldiva's Rocks fairly liberally up and down the sides of my streams at random by moving the cursor along the "banks" and clicking every so often.  Sometimes I will put the rocks out into the stream.  I will also place the rocks to hide particularly jagged places on the edge of the Edmonton Water plops. 



Note as well that we have placed a few rock "plops" on land close to the abutments of the bridge.  I think that adds to the overall detailing, but I have some further thoughts about this that I'll take up later.

Now...



No, no...we're not taking a break...yet.

The reason for the warning sign here is that, if you are not reasonably judicious in placing Goldiva's Rocks, your surface water stream will look like it is running between two gravel berms.  In other words...

DO NOT DRAG-PLOP THESE PUPPIES!



They pile up real quick.

Now, we'll take a break.

Oh, and...

Sign images are from the Manual of Traffic Signs, by Richard C. Moeur.

EDIT:  (9/9/06)  Moved pics to ImageShack

[Darmok 34]

Can I take a breath now!

I realized at some point while reading that I was holding it! with my face inches away from the monitor hehehe.....  ;-)

**standing and leaving to get a cup of Java**