Three Rivers Region

[Tommy_Vercetti3 3]

Great river.  Cool highway and bridge layout. Can't wait for more.

Edit: Welcome to page 12!

[dedgren 830]

Awww, you folks are too nice...and John (Darmok - Anduin Valley Revisited) got my Rocky and Bullwinkle reference.  I was afraid upsidasium belonged to the ages...

Anyway, I had the heliputer pilot cut in the "aux" tank...

...yeah, after she dumped the puke out of the hood of her anorak...

...and we are going to do the rest of Roaring Fork as part of this Eye Candy segment.  Part 3 of No. 3...Here.  We.  Go!

When we were last over the river, we were here...

#30

...at the point where it crossed into the northeasternmost township, once again as yet unnamed, of Three Rivers Region.

Here's a stock high-altitude pic...

...'coz you're not getting me up that high in the air  again.

#31

You can see Roaring Fork in the far southest corner.  RTR-22 crosses the township from east to west, and is currently the only road across it.  The mountains are the southern side of the Northern Range.

Here we come in from the point where we turned around from the southwest.  Grissom Bridge carries RTR-22 across Roaring Fork on a high steel truss bridge just upstream of the point where we were last over it.  Grissom Bridge and the road approaches on either side replace an old low-level crossing, about which more in a minute.

#32

As we fly due east, we see the area from a different angle..

#33

Descending rapidly, Grissom Bridge is now right in front of us, and we get a good view of the road switchbacking up the hill to the west of the bridge.  The old road down to the low-level bridge is visible on the east bank.

#34

Even lower, we buzz the top of the bridge...

...you want to have to clean your hat again, fly-girl?

#34

We're now flying further upstream, past the bridge.   The old road, now a rutted dirt track, descends toward the river on the east bank.

#35


Lets gain some altitude and do a one-eighty...

#36


...oh, yeah- there's the old bridge site, at the bottom of the road cut.  That's where the floaters put in, as there is no access upriver and the water is too wild in any event.

Let's drop down.

#37


The old bridge is gone, and there's just sort of a clear area up the west bank where the road rose from where the bridge used to be.

Back up again, and this is seen clearly, to include where the road up the west bank slid into the river.

#38


You can also see where the old road was covered over when they built the grades for the switchbacks.

Dropping down one last time, you can see there's not anything left of the bridge, either.  There's even trees growing where the east abutment was.  That speaks to the power of this river, and of who wins when nature and man duke it out.

#40


Flying over the former bridge location and doing another one-eighty...

...oh man, not another one-eighty...

...we see the put-in point clearly.  No cars, though.  Strange, as several hundred people raft the Roaring Fork every week this time of year.

#41


The Roaring Fork upstream of the put-in point is just one long rapids..

#42


One last big sweeping bend, and this magnificent river leaves Three Rivers Region across its eastern boundary.

#43


A last wide one-eighty...

...bless you...

...and we gain altitude for the trip back to the hangar.  That aux tank is gettin' pretty low, and the sun is doin' the same.

#44


A last view of the switchbacks west of Grisson Bridge, and we're on the way home.

#45


Thanks for spending the day with us, and in Three Rivers Region.

EDIT:  (9/6/06)  Moved pics to ImageShack

[Darmok 34]

That update was simple and beautiful,

and again raised some interrogations...

some serious, some others.... meehhh...

Serious : Grissom not being that common a name, is that in honor of Virgil Grissom.

Meehh..: Now I know that you didn't use the sicksak, but in a lady's hat!  Man, you're bad!

Serious : Loved the bridge setup , pic 34 and the abandoned road, pic 37... reminds me of certain locations when I was working as a forest ranger... just superb!

And no more Meehh..!

Loved it David, nice putter ride... and thanks for the memories!

Regards to you and family

[Rayden 7]

In a landscaping like that, one doesn't feel like building anything else, would ruin the paisage. That old road looks awsome there. Overall, just great.

Cheers

Rayden

[dedgren 830]

I'll just let everyone know up front.

The water flora DL that is so critical to superdetailing in my ST regions is one by jeronij named jrn WaterFlora-V1modijer that he posted on a topic he called Make your favourite tree a plopable !!!.  Unfortunately, as I have noted, all the links in that thread are now dead.  And jrn WaterFlora-V1modijer is not available anywhere else on the STEX.

I PM'd jeronij a few days ago and he, as is his way, very promptly and very kindly responded.  He indicated that he would be happy to send the file to me (I apparently wasn't clear that I already had it) or that a water flora DL similar to his was readily available on gizmo's website Sim City 4 Mods.  All excited about how easily things could be resolved, I went there to check it out...

Now, gizmo's site requires (free) registration, and if you aren't already registered there, I would urge that you do so, as there is a wealth of great stuff there that gizmo has created to enhance your SC4 experience.  I had registered a long time ago, so once past the login screen, I quickly navigated through downloads to the Misc. Mods section of the Miscellaneous Mods section.  Whew!

...and thanks, gizmo, for spelling "mods" correctly...

Anyway, within a few minutes I had downloaded the WaterFlora-V2.zip filed into the "gizmo" subdirectory of my SC4 downloads file.  Then, to test out whether the file did the same thing as jeronij's, I removed jrn WaterFlora-V1modijer from my plugins folder and unzipped WaterFlora-V2 there instead.

The two files are clearly not the same.  Worse, they are not the same in a way that leaves gizmo's water flora not usable by folks who want to achieve the water superdetailing effects I employ here at 3RR.

Here's why, and I'll follow with what I hope to do about the situation.

I created a city outside of 3RR to use as a testbed to compare what the two files looked like "on the ground" (or actually, to be precise, "in the water").  I won't go through the gory details of terraforming it...we'll join just as we've entered the God Mode Cheat to fill up the "game" water in creating a prototype "perfect" shoreline.  We'll left-click on the Terrain Effects icon to get to... 

#1


...the Lower Terrain Level tool.  Actually, it's not really a "tool" in the sense that you apply to your city by clicking or click-dragging the mouse.  Clicking on the icon just raises the "game" water level.

#2


Two clicks of the icon, and...

#3


Water, water everywhere.  Well, mostly everywhere.  As you can see, it runs up into the gentle slope area we've created which we'll use as our testbed shoreline.

#4


Closer still...

#5


Now, I've noted that I use PEG's Brigantine Water Mod and timotheus4's Edmonton Water Texture VERII.  That's what makes my "game" water rivers so much darker (and, if I do say so, more realistic) that the "game" water in "vanilla" SC4.

Wanna compare?  You got it...

#6

Eeeee-yew!  Looks like the cooling tank at Three Mile Island.  Here's a close-up of the "vanilla" "game" water's edge.

#7


So now you know why I do something different.

While we're looking, lets see what the "game" water looks like with just the Brigantine mod in the plugins folder.

#8

The shoreline close-up.  As you can see, PEG's Brigantine mod adds a murky quality to shallow water.  Not bad murky, mind you.  Good murky.

#9

Here's timotheus4's Edmonton Water Texture added.  Compare with pic #8, you'll see it's subtly darker than the water with the Brigantine mod alone.

#10

I think this shows up better in the close-up.

#11

Now, here's a string of the four elements of my river and stream detailing going from on- to off-shore.

   1.  One of jeronij's jrn WaterFlora-V1modijer water plants- the flattish one with the little leaves that shows up most of the way down the menu.

   2.  jeronij's Maxis Rocks (the larger size) from his Maxis Plopable Props set

   3.  Goldiva's Rocks from his Mayor Mode Sea Set.

   4.  brtim2's Edmonton Water plopable stream plops.

Notice how the murkiness of the shallow water immediately begins to obscure ewach of these as quickly as the shoreline is passed.  Within a few tiles, each is more or less invisible as "deeper" water is reached.

#12

Now, let's make one (and only one) change.  We'll substitute gizmo's WaterFlora - V2, which has the same plants as jeronij's water flora, for the jrn WaterFlora-V1modijer.  Here's what happens... 

#13

That, in short (one picture being worth 1,000 words) is why gizmo's water flora won't work.  His file makes the "murkiness" effect go away.  brtim2's surface water streams won't blend seamlessly.  All the things we do here at 3RR that rely on this ability to blend just...go away.

It doesn't get any better when you back up, either.

#14


I'm contacting jeronij again to let him know what the specific problem is, and to ask if there is some way we will be able to provide general access to his water flora file.

I'll keep you posted.

Later.

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

EDIT:  (9/7/06)  Moved pics to ImageShack

[sloppet 3]

hi there! Good update dedgren! I'm definietly a BIG fan of this CJ

[dedgren 830]

Good God, sloppet, was I post 12,000?

What an honor!

David

[koffee 0]

Hmm. I skimmed this CJ once or twice, but I guess I was too busy looking at the screenshots to notice the avatar. I think I'll take a closer look seeing as how we're practically neighbors.

Are you planning on building the same roads over and over and over again, just like real life? It certainly does seem that way sometimes driving around town!

[GMT 389]

great work!

this scneic update is soooo awesome.

and for the water, I'd suggest taking the first new water

waiting for more

[tchaos713 5]

Another great update...

Bummer on the flora though...

[Yoman3 5]

Great work there it all still looks so real!!

[Shadow Assassin 336]

Well done on this. I think the reason why the murkiness effect is the way it is is because Gizmo turned the opacity to a low level. You can actually adjust it in ilive's reader to an opacity of anywhere between 0 and 100.

[JoeMeister 1]

Yesterdays first update really is shamelous.. Scandalous!!

As for the second update... educational I guess... It looks like the flora and water is floating !! haha

[dedgren 830]

Today is the three-month anniversary of Three Rivers Region!

I just wanted to say thanks to the folks (in other words, you) who, starting on March 12th, have made stopping by 3RR part of your day.  In three months we've accumulated just short of 5,000 visits (EDIT: 5,009 as of 1:00 p.m. AST, 6/12/06) and, subtracting my posts out, over 300 great comments.

Again, thank you!

I'll leave you with a few shots of Quartz Creek Mine, and the area around it.  We'll return there in a future update.

#1  The mine, and the edge of the small company town below.  Note the end of the rail spur we saw in Shameless Eye Candy No. 3.

#2  The company town and to the south, where RTR-22 climbs over a low pass.

#3  A closer shot of the spur crossing RTR-22 on one of JayStimson's great bridges.

#4  A train from the mine heads south toward the bridge over Roaring Fork River and the Panther Hills.

That's it.  Have a great day!

David

EDIT:  (9/6/06)  Moved pics to ImageShack

[Darmok 34]

Haaa HA! caught you on my lunch hour!

Well. Happy Birthday 3RR. Happy Birthday 3RR (known melody!) be glad you can't hear me! everybody here is fleeing from my cubicle looking as if I'm nuts.... well it's true... but that's not he point here!

So you're right , again shameless eye-candy shots! (writing a new dentist appointment in agenda) BUT! What candy!

Loved it, especially shots  3 and 4,  in no 3 I just loved how the road design mimics the railways, it gives a great visual composition BTW this shot reminds me of certain parts of the IronOre railway between Sept-Iles and Shefferville. And no. 4, well..... it's just plain gorgeous! What can I say I just love trees!

Good work again,

Regards

John

[GaBoR 7]

Nice update, love that mountain building style you have, very well acomplished, It's nice the way you experiment a let us now how it went, thank you and Congratulations on your "Monthuary"

[sandrasim1 2]

Some have it and some don't. You obviously have it. What? Imagination and landscaping skills that makes me green from envy. This last update is simply gorgeous.

[jacqulina 162]

wow that is a great update looking very pretty love the pics

[dedgren 830]

The water flora problem is fixed!

A few posts back, Shadow (Shadow_Assassin - The Savannah Way) suggested the following

I think the reason why the murkiness effect is the way it is is because Gizmo turned the opacity to a low level. You can actually adjust it in ilive's reader to an opacity of anywhere between 0 and 100. quote>

Well, some tinkerin' with the ilive Reader showed that S_A was on the right track.  I'll have the full scoop tonight in an update that will be posted pretty late (Alaska is GMT -9).

In the meantime, if you want to follow along with the tutorial and don't have gizmo's WaterFlora - V2 file, go to his website SimCity 4 Mods and DL it.

Thanks again, Shadow!

[Cjah 15]

Such awesome and jaw dropping shots of those mountains and the river...very lovely and quite pleasent on the eyes!

Keep up this CJ full of talent!

[tchaos713 5]

Happy Birthday, 3RR!!!

I'm glad that this has continued... it certainly has improved my playing skill...

My dental bill, like Darmok's, has also gone up....

And now we get a Reader tutorial too? That's almost too much for me...

[dedgren 830]

Okay, so I leave for 24 hours and everything comes unglued...

Monday night, as everyone knows, ST was down.  The problem for 3RR is that it was down during the window of opportunity I had to post the solution to the water flora problem.

Tuesday, I had a continued trial to complete.  Then I had to leave my office in Anchorage to drive to Fairbanks (about 350 miles) for a deposition today (the 14th).  Little did I know, about the time I was passing through Houston (Alaska)...

...don't blink...

...my 17 year old son was busy trying to install Warcraft XVIII (or whatever) on the computer I use to serve my pics.

...grrrrrrrrrr!

Of course, he couldn't restart it...so 3RR has been a text-only zone all day.

The things I gotta deal with....

Things now returned to what passes for normal 'round these parts, let's resume our detour...

...already in progress.

I said in my last post that Shadow (Shadow_Assassin - The Savannah Way) had set me on the right track by speculating that gizmo had set the level of water opacity low in his WaterFlora - V2 file.  This has the effect of reducing the "murkiness" effect I rely upon to do stuff like this.

Now, Daniel (tchaos13 -  Ballet Fan Club) and others who are waiting for a tutorial on the ilive Reader...

...you are about to be disappointed.  I use the Reader from time to time, generally when there is a great step-by-step set of instructions someone else in the community has posted about tweaking this or that.  I used it, for example, to bump up the max rail grade in bigredfish's tunnel and slope mod (see Update No. 9 on page 4 of this CJ) from 2% to 4%.  Otherwise, I don't tinker much under the hood...but I do look.

After seeing Shadow's post, I used the reader to compare gizmo's WaterFlora - V2 water flora file to jeronij's jrn WaterFlora-V1modijer water flora file.  I found they were identical-except that gizmo's file had an additional "exemplar" component named "Terrain Properties."  You'll note (I'm giving you the abridged version, this all actually took a while) that an exemplar property called "WaterDepthForMaxAlpha" is set by gizmo to "90," as highlighted below in the green rectangle.

Now, I've seen the Terrain Properties exemplar before, both in the "game" ".dat" files (simcity_1.dat, simcity_2.dat, simcity_3.dat and so on) and in cycledogg's Columbus Mod files (get them at Cycle Puppy's World).  It is my understanding that the game will only use one instance of this exemplar, which is one of the most important in SC4, and that will be the one that loads...last.

Now, here's the Terrain Properties exemplar from simcity_1.dat.  This is the one that comes with the games, and it resides in the mysterious "other" plugins subfolder under the Maxis directory of your Program Files.

...can you tell I'm a Windows user?  Nahhhh, didn't think so.  Sorry, all you Mac users- you are on your own here.

#3

The "WaterDepthForMaxAlpha" in the "vanilla" game, in other words, the default value, is "30," much lower than the value used by gizmo.  "Game" water, then, loses its murkiness close to shore after gizmo's water flora file is installed.  This is because gizmo's file loads after everything in the "game" plugins subfolder, including simcity_1.dat, loads.  The exemplar in WaterFlora - V2 overwrites the "vanilla" game exemplar, and clears near-shore water up.

Like this.

Unacceptable, just unacceptable...

Now, here's the Terrain Properties exemplar from cycledogg's Columbus mod.

Cycledogg uses a "WaterDepthForMaxAlpha" value of "15."  That's even murkier near shore than the "vanilla" game water.  In other words, the effect I want and use in 3RR.

So, I use the Columbus mod.  Why don't I get the benefit of cycledogg's "15" exemplar value?

The answer is because of how I organize my plugins, and a minor change to this organization holds the solution to the problem as well.

Here's my "My Documents" SC4 plugins folder from the top.

I discussed how I organized my plugins back on page 1 of 3RR.  In pertinent detail, the "001" subfolder has mods, props and textures and other things I want loaded first in it.  For various reasons, both my "cycledogg" and "gizmo" subfolders are located in this subfolder.  Back when I was using jeronij's water flora file, which does not include a Terrain Properties exemplar, cycledogg's Columbus Mod files would load, and his Terrain Properties exemplar would overwrite the "vanilla" game exemplar, and all would be well with the world.  After I added gizmo's water flora file, his Terrain Properties exemplar would in turn overwrite cycledogg's.  Why?  Because "G" comes after "C" in the alphabet- it's as simple as that.

So how does this hold the solution to our problem?  Well, like this.

I simply move my "cycledogg" subfolder containing his Columbus Mod to the "999" subfolder of my plugins file.  The "999" subfolder has those things in it that need to be loaded last...

...and it works because...

...wait for it...

...999 comes after 001.  Other folks put "zzz" or somesuch in from of "load-last" files.  I like my way better.

So the "cycledogg" file shows up in here.

I put the two digit numbers in front of each subfolder to control the order in which they load...

...how do you spell a-n-a-l  r-e-t-e-n-t-i-v-e?

Watch it, there!

So now cycledogg's Columbus Mod files, including his modified Terrain Properties examplar, load after gizmo's water flora, and gizmo's modified exemplar.

And, guess what?

We're ready to move on to the conclusion of the tutorial...

...tomorrow.

Good night from Alaska, ST friends!

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

EDIT:  (9/7/06)  Moved pics to ImageShack

[JoeMeister 1]

... 17 year olds are a real pain in the *ss.. thank god I'm 19

[owenluby 1]

really great work! those rivers are looking fab! i love that train that twists and turns through the vallleys and roads.

keep up the awesomeness!

[Shadow Assassin 336]

Well, your effect has, of course, turned out well. Glad to be of help here, eh?

[Darmok 34]

In front of a huge and solemn building....

Walking to a sign planted on the grass who reads :

Stopping one student that's rushing to catch a bus...

Hey! where's the lecture on 3RR???

"In the north wing! The Edgren Hall"

THANKS!

--Walking to Edgren Hall--

**sounds of footfall on marble floor, followed by a light squeaking when entering the Hall**

**hushed voices/unintelligible murmur, some chairs scraping on the floor **

**sounds of a chalk writing on a black board**

   Humm....hummm

**hubub subduing**

Allright students, after seeing this fine tutorial by Mr. David Edgren, we can safely assume, that anal retention can have some good side effects, don't you agree?

**heads nodding in accord**

Now leaving the Anchorage University-----------

******************

Just couldn't resist David!

Loved it!, your tutorial that is! Not my tomfoolery! ;-)

Take care my friend

[cinnebar 0]

I'm glad you found the solution so very simple to resolve and that the fix was so obvious, at least to you.  Simpler is better!  Well done!  Love what you're doing so far in your CJ to help my city development going on a positive start. 

Now just to find the time to put all this to practice. 

Enjoy and keep up the fantastic work!

[tchaos713 5]

Well... although I was hoping (maybe wishing) for an iLive Reader tutorial...

I think your solution is much more elegant, David. KISS all around (Keep It Simple Stupid for those non-native speakers around). This also explains why I've never had that problem, my Cycledogg mod has always loaded last!

And for anyone else who might have interest in the iLive Reader (and the other modding tools available here), T Wrecks is running a modding school in the Lot Editor forum... there might even still be time to sign up!

Edit: Here is the link to the modding school.  Silly me for not including it in the first place.

[bat 6]

Great work!

bat

[Yoman3 5]

I missed an update!!!!!!!! NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! more to the point that railroad was amazing!!!!!!!!! I love the use of switch backs!