Siilijoki--Welcome to Winter

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Entry posted by noahclem · December 2, 2013

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Hi everyone! It's been a very long time since I've updated here. In part that's because my region Siilijoki has been inactive for almost a year while I've been focusing on a group region called the NORO Cooperative over at SC4D. And in part it's for the same reasons so many others decide not to maintain journals over multiple sites. While I've never considered Siilijoki "retired" it essentially was until a nomination for OSITM over there last month arm-twisted me into action.

I don't want to get into details to the point that it gets boring but to summarize:

1) I've started from scratch on an enlarged version of the same region (thanks to drunkapple)

2) Plugins have been redone from scratch (though I did borrow pretty heavily from my old Siilijoki plugins and from the NORO ones)

3) Copies of its region and plugins files are hosted online and the plugin-building has been collaborated with Swordmaster. Collaborative play is a possibility in the future.

4) During marathon play to be able to put on a week of featured content I could be really proud of I built a pretty significant amount of area for me (my playing style is very slow and detailed). Unfortunately I may have to start over due to some hurried modding that could cause problems down the road, but with the terrain saved the bridges, waterways, and transit networks will be easy to rebuild and those are the most time-consuming things anyway.

5) The new Siilijoki will maintain most of the style of the old.

Most recently I've been working on snowy scenes. It ended up taking me a lot more time than I expected after I decided the snowy terrain mod didn't properly fit my new snowy rock mod. Turns out terrain modding is a lot more work than rocks & beaches & such. Anyway, hope you like what I've been up to

Trying to capture the feel of midwinter's noon in Lapland

Tigers looking for a reindeer snack

I love snow in the twilight--which is probably good considering I live on the Arctic Circle

Without trees and in a mountainous area you can get a better idea of the textures of the terrain. Other than the my rocks in the steepest areas the textures are based off of the Antarctic Terrain Mod on the STEX