Three Rivers Region

[asturianu 4]

Wow, David, theese maps are great!!!

I especially love the first, where is very clear the elevation, nice!

[DioAngel 1]

Oooo sweet! :-)

[tchaos713 5]

Lookin' good!

On the side note, I have been testing IE 7 for a couple months now. It seems to be stable and runs well. I haven't had any trouble. Now Windows Media Player 11 on the other hand...

[Rayden 7]

Yep, you're becoming a map expert. Thinking of changing profession, or is that a backup just in case everybody start to behave good and then no need for a lawyer?

[wouanagaine 83]

Someone said my name ?

Dedgren sumoned wouanagaine

Cool map david, maybe you should try modifing the gradient color in SC4TF,

make a backup of datas\basicColors.ini

change the [land] section with some grey values, that may help you building those map

Take care

[tommiej 0]

nice terraforming...

[dedgren 830]

Uh, oh...

...hours pass...

Heh.  Noop...

...must 'a been a figment of my (vivid) imagination.

Something like this from a while back...

[jacqulina 162]

lol david waiting to see more

[dedgren 830]

The next update will probably be the one most everyone is waiting for, but putting it together will probably take a bit, so here's a sneak peek at the completed greyscale.

Since evryone has been so patient, here's a link to a 2048 by 2048 pixel image (260 kb) of the same thing [ linkie ].  It will open in a new window.

Enjoy.

UPDATE:  Here's the first PNG output of the completed map from SC4TF.

Later later.

UPDATE2:  (10-23-06  12:05 a.m. AST)  Some raw output from the Terraformer before I'm off to bed.  Note that I have done nothing other than import the greyscale map (I'll admit that I hit it with a slight "blur- average" just before I saved it) I just made into a blank eight large tile by eight large tile region.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

I don't know if I'll do anything more than save to SC4 at this point, as it look like further editing could be done with the game tools (I don't know anything...yet...about the SC4TF tool set).  Wouanagaine, if you're out there- what do you think?

It's late- I'm off to bed.

Enjoy. 

[crazychickensc12 84]

lol ST for sale, wonderful works from the map lab dedgren, these are turing out really good..keep it up!!

[wouanagaine 83]

This look quite good

lot of flat land to build , depending of your style you can try to add some small hills to break the flatness, using 'Brush tools'->'Steephills' with a small strength ( below 8 )

All brush tools are the replics of the SC4 tools but I must admit that sometimes the view in SC4 is better to do some little adjustment than in SC4TF especially if you are used to the SC4 tools.

On my upcoming map I used Zone Erosion / and Zone Smooth in conjunction to steephills to add some  little relief

BTW : CTRL-S will enable you to take screenshot without the the SC4TF window border, you can save the 3D view as png or jpg

[Nik-nik 3]

So David, eh you like also fjords as Slartibastfast does?

Great maps!

85 PAGES of images? I can imagine Imageshack gives you a page of your own. .... 85 pages...tsjik, tsik, tsik.

Nik-Nik

[emilin 2]

I've been lurking here for ages, but since you were kind enough to post in my CJ I really had to make myself visible.

Although I must admit I don't really undestand everything you are doing here, I'm finding myself strangely drawn back to this CJ time and time again. I don't know if it's your pictures, your sense of humour - or just your happy manic obsessivness, but this is a truely unique and very addictive CJ.

[Gaston 0]

Morning David,

   I'm off work for a couple of days so I'm here on a Monday morning.    I really love your work with the terraformer.   I've played around with it a bit and am not sure I really like it.   Don't get me wrong.   It is an amazing tool.   I am just not to good working with it.   If anyone has some tips or can direct me to a link that will help, let me know.

On a slightly different note.   I down-loaded the "cheats dll" that you posted a link to.     I love it (not that I would ever use any cheats).     I have only one little problem.    I have no clue what about half of these do.  See below:

Buggi, a SC4 Under-the-Hood God, has available on this thread [ linkie ] a DLL that you install in your plugins folder that gives you this-

Check it out!

   I know the obvious ones (weaknesspays, fight thepower, you don't deserve it).   But most of the others I have no clue what effect they have.    Do you happen to have a link to a list of them and what they do?     Somedays I feel like such a $%&^! it isn't funny.   lol    Hope you have a great day.

---Gaston

[bat 6]

Great SC4 Terraformer Pictures!

bat

[tchaos713 5]

Great pictures of the Terraformer. I think I'll have to try it out.

By the way, to all concerned, Buggi has promised to get us a list of all the cheats and, more importantly, what they do when he has time.

[DioAngel 1]

Keep it coming David!

[dedgren 830]

The next update will probably be the one most everyone is waiting forquote>

Well, I lied misspoke.

 

mis·speak   (ms-spk) v. mis·spoke (-spk), mis·spo·ken (-spkn), mis·speak·ing, mis·speaks v.tr. To speak or pronounce incorrectly: The lead actor misspoke his lines. v.intr. To speak mistakenly, inappropriately, or rashly. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.quote>

 

UPDATE:  (10-24-06)  John (Darmok - Anduin Valley Revisited) advised me here [ linkie ] not to at least be so impolitic.  Good advice.  Hey, I didn't mean to do it!

What can I say?

I'm going to instead give you another sneak peek.  To reward you for your immense patience, though, what follows will include a sneak peak into the very future of 3RR.

You'll recall that the last substantive update stopped several pages ago with the presentation of information and analysis demonstrating...

...at least to my satisfaction, anyway...

...that 3RR, as currently laid out and developed, just doesn't work as a 10 mile (16 kilometer) by 10 mile square region.  Not if I want to create

an urban "core" area of about 5 miles on each side (the original four (SC4 large city) townships of Pineshore, Wind River, Cold Lake and Grand Lake) surrounded by farms, woodlands and other open space.quote>

Comparing 3RR side-by-side with a particular RL place: Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, that looks like that description...

...shows I have grossly erred in terms of achieving any realistic degree of scale.

Let me give you another reason to reach that conclusion.

Remember my "Running the Roaring Fork" updates that started back toward the end of page 11 [ linkie ]?  If you'll recall, I described the river, shown here crossing a large township ("game" city)

 

in the following terms:

The Roaring Fork enters the area at the bottom left, continues along the northern boundary of the township, and, after a large S-bend, exits the township to the north just short of the eastern boundary.  It is one of the region's pre-eminent whitewater rafting rivers, as you'll see.  Wolf Creek, a tributary stream, flows into Roaring Fork from the south most of the way through the S-bend.  Interregion (I)-60 is the freeway running east-west south of the river.  You can see I-760, the outer east regional bypass heading south from its junction with I-60 along the top of the pic.quote>

The remainder of the stretch of the Roaring Fork in question is depicted here crossing the southeast corner of a medium township square and exiting the region to the east.

Now, I described the raft trip as a two-day affair, pulling out for the night here

about one-third of the way downriver.

Sounds pretty good, right?  Well, let's consider the matter more closely.

Checking, we find that at least one source would indicate that the current through whitewater rapids runs about four feet (a little more than 1.2 meters) per second [ linkie ].  Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the current along this stretch of the Roaring Fork averages about three feet (about .9 meters) per second in speed.  That's 180 feet (a little less than 55 meters) per minute or about 2 miles (just under 3.3 kilometers) an hour.

Think about it.  Estimating the length of the section of the Roaring Fork we describe running using the size of the townships (2.5 miles/4 kilomters a side for a large square and 1.25 miles/2 kilometers a side for a medium square) it crosses gives us a total trip distance of...

...uhhh...

...about three miles (4.8 kilometers).  That means that if we put in about 9:00 o'clock in the morning, we'd reach the overnight camp area by ten...

...leaving plenty of time to drink be...enjoy nature.

Sleeping late (wonder why?) and getting a late start at 10:30 the next morning, we'd reach the pull-out point halfway through the lunch hour.

Like I said, 3RR's scale just doesn't work.  At least not for what I want to do with the region.

...breaktime!  Back in a bit...

UPDATE:  The break (of course) took longer than I thought.  This is continued here [ linkie ].

[Darmok 34]

QUOTE ¨Well, I lied.  What can I say?"

**Adressing the bench...**

Your Honor I humbly request that this statement be stricken from the record. My client having clearly been pressured and under duress! And besides his counselor was not present at the time....

Thank you your Honor!

**returning to his seat**

Hehehe.... Always wanted to do something like that!

About that sneak peek, well, it's kind of a retro peek!!

But can't wait to see where it'll lead us!

My friend don't EVER say again that you lied! BAD for business! ! Do it, but don't say it!

See you

John

---

EDITED:

I know you dont like it, so it's an incentive enough to do it! 

It's my privilege of opening page 38.  And here's to many more!

[tommiej 0]

really nice map... look really good!! keep it up

[tommiej 0]

really nice map... look really good!! keep it up

[jacqulina 162]

excellent work and terraforming i love it,beautifull pics

[dedgren 830]

n.b.:  Make sure you read my previous post [ linkie ], as it will place what follows in context.

Also, hey John (Darmok - Anduin Valley Revisited)- 

My friend don't EVER say again that you lied! BAD for business! ! Do it, but don't say it!quote>

Heh!  Well, that's blunt.  Probably good advice...

...now who's sounding like a lawyer?

...but blunt.  At least I didn't say my prior statement was inoperative [ linkie ].

Oh, and

I know you dont like it, so it's an incentive enough to do it! 

It's my privilege of opening page 38.  And here's to many more!

quote>

Hey!  Who said I didn't like it?  Truth be told, if it wasn't for folks doing that, half the time I'd never know what page I was on.

Hmmm...38 pages.  Who'd 'a thunk it?

On to content...

__________________________

So I stopped last time by noting

Like I said, 3RR's scale just doesn't work.  At least not for what I want to do with the region.quote>

...well, actually you didn't...  ...the last thing you actually said was "...breaktime!  Back in a bit..."

,,,okay, enough already- you know what I meant.  So what do we do at this juncture?

I'll spare you the "tortured mind un agony" bit, and just give you the answer.  Yes, what you've been waiting for- the end of all this dithering about scale...

...the envelope please [ linkie ]...

...

...the Intro from Thus Spake Zarathrustra [ linkie ] plays...

...

...the ring is destroyed and Barad-dûr [ linkie ] falls...

...

...the Eagles [ linkie ] reunite...  ...again...

...

...okay, okay- you get the point.  We're going to make 3RR larger, folks.  A lot larger.

From its current 10 mile (16 kilometer) square dimension, we are rescaling...

...shudder- there's that ferschlugginer word again...

...Three Rivers Region to an area 40 miles (64 kilometers) on a side.

At this size, our float trip, among others, will grow to a far more realistic (but still all too short) 12 miles (about 20 kilometers) in length.

Yeah, I know...that's 224 256 (thanks, bat ...gee whiz, I'm bad at math!) large township squares to develop.  Well, at the end of this post I'll give you my ideas as to how we'll address that situation as well.

I'll post this at about 7:10 a.m. on October 24th so an ST crash...

...OMG- does ST crash?

Ha!  Do wild bears poop in the forest?

...doesn't eat what I have written thus far.  Come back later if there's no text after this point.

Hokay, I'm back for a bit more.  In the interim, bat posted and corrected my math.  Indeed, the new 3RR will have 256 large township squares.

bat inquires, nervously

Could this not be too largely for SC4 or for the computer?

This would be a very large region for SC4!quote>

As you'll see glimpses of in a 'mo, I'm already running the region at that size, and haven't had any problems.  I don't think (but have no particular technical knowledge or other insight) that SC4 region size really creates memory or processor problems for a computer, as very little actually is done at the region level.  If there's an upward limit to "city" squares in SC4, it's above 256 because I'm running the game with that many now.

Another brief break...

...and we're off again.

During the break I loaded 3RR16² into Region Census.

Region Census is a tool no serious SC4 afficionado should be without.  I won't take the time here to discuss it in any detail, but I will note that, as things on the web are, by nature, ephemeral- if you don't have it, DL IT NOW!  It used to be available through Sim City Central [ linkie ], but that site has gone the way of the dodo.

...another victim of the Spore plague, it appears...

Googling [ linkie ] the term "region census" does not bring a link to its download location up anymore either (it used to).

So here's the link:

Region Census Download [ linkie]

Again, even if you don't have any use for it right now, DL it and tuck it away in your SC4 folder- you won't regret it.  

__________________________

Here's the image Region Census produced.

  

Dang purty, ain't it?

So I'm pretty sure it will work just fine.

Let's take a brief trip back to RL.  You'll remember Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, the urbanized area I concluded, back when 3RR was 10x10, that my description...

an urban "core" area of about 5 miles on each side (the original four (SC4 large city) townships of Pineshore, Wind River, Cold Lake and Grand Lake) surrounded by farms, woodlands and other open space.quote>

...would fit.

Well now, since 3RR16² is four times its old 10x10 dimensions, we meed to proportionally rescale that urbanized area, so here's the new description (which also omits the references to the four no longer in existence townships):

an urbanized "core" area of about 20 miles on each side surrounded by farms, woodlands and other open space.quote>

Here's a 40 mile (64 kilometer) by 40 mile Google map [ linkie ] of the Bloomington-Normal area with the outline of the core urbanized area superimposed on it.

Honey, I shrunk Bloomington-Normal [ linkie ]...

...what?  ...no?  ...whew...

Well, actually those fine towns are the same as ever.  It's just a consequence of our rescaling.

...urkkk- there's that word again...

So, we'll need to find another urbanized area that has a "correct" RL land area size.  Let's head east to...

Indy!

Indianapolis, Indiana appears to be just about perfect.  The shaded rectangular area that is not quite coterminus with the core urbanized area outline is Marion County, the political subdivision of the state in which Indianapolis is located.  The two share, I believe, a consolidated city-county government, but I could be mistaken.

...nope, it does [ linkie ]...

Marion County had a population in 2000 of about 860,000 people.  We'll call that about 900,000 today based on its rate of recent growth.    That's a population density of 2,250 persons per square mile or about 880 per square kilometer.

I've got to stop here and head into my office.  I'll resume this tonight in a new post.

Later.

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

[bat 6]

Yeah, I know...that's 224 large township squares to develop.quote>

But that are somemore large townships, that are 256 large townships in your picture.

(16x16 (=256) large township quares)

Could this not be too largely for SC4 or for the computer?

This would be a very large region for SC4!

bat

[psteverific 8]

Ahhh, so that's where you've been going with this.... this is one massive project alright.

I will certainly be looking forward to seeing more of your plans

[threestooges 0]

Pardon my asking, but what does this "upscaling" do to the rivers and streams? Will this require a change to the scale of the bodies of water? Just a quick look at your scaled up map shows that one of the smallest parts of your streams now measures 1/6 of the distance across the new large map (this translates to about 1100 feet wide: row 7, column 5 from your recent post) I know rivers are wide, but... at any rate, I wanted to ask this now to avoid the potential for future problems. Can't wait to see what comes from that last pic from SC4terraformer though.

[Gaston 0]

David,

   This is some fanscinating stuff.   I know because I am having a hard time following the thaught train.   LOL   I had to re-read it several times and now I think I have it.    

    On an entirely different note:

    

You said: Ha!  Do wild bears poop in the forest?      quote>

    In answer to this particular query.   I would have to say yes.   Except of course if the king of Spain happens to be around and you are a bear that has been drinking hard liquor, and speak bear in russian.   Oh yes!   If you like to entertain children.   Then you would of course try to get the heck outta there as quick as possible.  

     (okay,   Personnal opinion:   Take one (1) King of Spain (allow King to drink a bottle of vodka [watered down to lessen desired effects]), one(1) large pit and of course one (1) UNTRAINED bear.    Coat King liberally with meat juices and arm him with a small salmon.   Combine ingredients.   Stir.   Allow to stew for about 10 minutes.    If King is still in a condition to climb out let ingredients stew for about 30 more minutes.    This is of course my personnal opinion and not the opinion of this CJ, it's owner, simtropolis, or any other members of this site that I know of)

   Sorry for the of topic statement.   But you brought it up.    Oh okay so you didn't really bring it up.  But you did mention the word bear and and well that got me thinking.   Sorry.

I'll check back later.   Gotta go make dinner.    (Acorn squash and Morning Star Farms veggie burgers tonight.  For those that wanted to know but didn't wanna ask.)

---Gaston 

[sanantonio 0]

Hmm, not sure which is bigger - your region or your signature...best of luck with both!!

[UnkleS27 24]

good luck with that region, that is massive

[tchaos713 5]

Wow! 256 Large squares! That would take me the better part of a year to develop (assuming I actually played every day - which I don't).

Good luck... I certainly am looking forward to the results.

Daniel