Hi there,

Long overdue update on this CJ. So lets start with a summary. I've decided to not continue this particular 1:1 recreation project. My decision is not final and I may decide to continue it again in the future. For the last year I've been playing Cities: Skylines with alot less assets and I've been loving it to death. For the first time in a long while I'm seeing the possibility of me actually finishing a whole map in this way. This has been on my bucket list for a while and I'm really excited about it even if I agree it is extremely nerdy. The particular city is a more internationally inspired one and I've post screenshots of it to my steam screenshots folder as well as reddit. I could see myself sharing that city to Simtropolis as I probably have enough quirks and made up historical facts to warrant it becoming another CJ.

I am very much considering returning to this map and trying to build a vanilla assets only Karlskrona. I feel this is a far more realistic and satisfying task to attempt as I can't just go onto the workshop and try to find the perfect assets for every single real life building and instead need to shift my focus to do more with less. I also strongly feel that new mods like e.g. the intersection marking tool would speed up the detailing process alot and allow me to focus more creative stuff. I may be putting this project to the side for now but my dream of creating my hometown in-game is still very much alive.

I know some of you were eager to see this CJ go the distance and I'm sorry to disappoint you. I hope you'll understand. There's a Swedish proverb: "Den som väntar på något gott väntar aldrig för länge" which translates to "the one who is waiting for something good never waits too long". If you can have unconditional patience with me and my dream you will eventually be rewarded.

I hope you didn't expect there wasn't going to be any pictures. I've got quite a few. Some are older and some are new. There is less of a common theme this time I'm gonna try to be as clear as possible with my text captions and explainations. Let's star with a overview.

This is what has been built to date. Its both an impressive and a pretty sad sight considering how much of the town was never filled in.

Quite a few blank spaces have appeared around Trossö. These could be due to workshop assets being removed or other asset related issues such as building sets being deactivated. Im pretty confident I could solve this by troubleshooting a bit and digging through my local asset backup folders. This issue hasn't really affected my decision to sideline this project but it does increase my motivation to play without custom assets and to rely less on the workshop. In the screenshot you can see that all of Eastern Trossö is completed until Bastion Aurora and the start of the naval base. You can see I planned to use Kreml tower assets for Amiralitetskyrkan (Admirality church, red building with green roof in the top left of the screenshot). Maybe not quite as ironic as having Tsar Peter standing on the main square but i still find the anecdote mildly amusing.

Långö is still looking really good though which makes me happy. Home sweet home for many years of me growing up. I never really did put so much effort into hedges and fences as I did here in any other build I've done. Result still looks stunning if I may say so myself. It really makes the difference for the many non-rectangle shaped lots in these kind of neighborhoods. It may look abit over the top but basically the whole coastline of Karlskrona is littered with small jetties and recreational boats. The never ending plopping of boats has been both really fun and a challenge in this project.

North Långö and långö beach. Older screenshot explains the different color theme. I planned to do alot of these small beaches. Looking back at this im not super impressed with my surface painting skills back then. A few decals here and there would probably do the trick but old myself wouldn't dare place 2 or 3 decals out of fear of hitting the user prop limit. Now I know better and that its the node and segment limits that I really need to worry about.

So im pretty happy how well King Leno's curbs worked for making miniature golf courses. This is the Långö Beach mini-golf course. I'm not entirely sure how much of a Swedish thing this really is but I do know that there are courses everywhere and that there are atleast some people who take it very seriously. This course is a pretty basic one. I would have no idea how to tackle the one on Dragsö that features elaborate miniature versions of local landmarks. Now that I think about it, Id probably spend a week or two using PO to get it just about vaguely resembling the real thing..

While were on the topic of Långö, heres a view of the bus stop at Ingenjörsgatan, near the Långö bridge. I don't think I've really mentioned this but I made my own bus re-texture for this project. I guess I must have been waiting for a public transport episode or something like that where I would have bundled together busses, regional trains, and skärgårdstrafiken (The archipelago ferry service). The bus is a Mercedes Citaro C with the Blekingetrafiken livery, Blekingetrafiken being the regional public transit authority of Blekinge County. Ive uploaded the bus to the workshop so if nothing else, this can atleast be a legacy of this project.

I guess the prospects of having Van Roths excellent Öresundståg without the correct buses was just too much for me to handle. I haven't done any retexturing since or before so I'm definitively a noob. The process was still pretty straightforward and there are excellent guides on how to do it if you want to make e.g. your own local bus textures.

The next screenshots show the completed main train station, Karlskrona Central, and its immediate surroundings. This is probably the most detailed area in town. The line markings and roadworks here were such a pain. Im really excited to try this stuff again, but now with the help of the intersection markings tool.

I've not shown many night views so far until now so here is one of Pantarholmen, Pottholmen, and north Trossö including Karlskrona Central. When building these areas I went one a trip back to Karlskrona and by chance found that Pantarholmskajen, quayside street along Pantarholmen (bottom-center of the image), had been turned into a one-way street. First thing I did when I got back from my trip was to convert the street into a one way street. To this day I'm not sure Google Maps has seen this updated.

Hoglands park lights up beautifully at night. However, some of the bus props I created by essentially just importing the the same 3d models as props (parked at Kungsplan between the station and the park) appear to have some issues with illumination mapping. As I said, I am a noob at this stuff.

Hoglands Park at day from a more down to Earth perspective. Man I miss using these custom trees. Ive been struggling with foliage ever since I joined the no workshop asset cult.

Southeast corner of Hoglands Park has this weird entrance to an old tunnel that goes under Stortorget, the main square. The tunnel was presumably for trains going to the naval base in a bygone era. Being closed of now, this tunnel has been the object of some of my coolest urban exploring finds.

Hoglands Park and adjacent blocks. Nothing really more to say about this. Perhaps I could complain about the PostNord trucks (bottom-center) being abit too bright.

Ronnebygatan or Ronneby street. The main pedestrian only shopping street stretching east to west just north of Stortorget. The blue sightseeing train asset is a near identical fit to the thing they drive around town in the summers.

A scene from what I just assume is Ronnebygatan. By my best estimation this is supposed to be the Kebab place Michel's or the crappy bar/club Playbar (now under a new name and ownsership but still crappy imho).

The same sightseeing bus/train thing heading up Borgmästaregatan (Mayors street) just before the start of Ronnebygatan (left turn).

Stortoget with Fredrikskyrkan (two towers), Trefaldighetskyrkan (dome) anad Rådhuset (the parklife reptile house zoo building). Near the Bottom left you can see the "weird" tunnel exit on the other side of the square.

Northwest Trossö. A pretty hilly/cliffy area with pretty tall appartment buildings on top. Pretty good views from here I'd imagine. This area was also home to the legendary "Piraten" (The pirate) nightclub on the small sideroad to Ronnebygatan near the bottom right. Allegedly Swedens oldest "disco" ca. 2010 when it was still open. Much memories. An interesting place for sure.

Let's move over to the more completed East side of Trossö. In the center, going north to south is Drottninggatan (Queen street). I put alot of effort into making this street true to real life with planters, street parking, and textures.

More of East Trossö. Nothing to note about this one. This part of town is home to most the High Schools but we'll see those better in the subsequent screenshots.

From left to right: Ehrensvärdska (vanilla European highschool), Chapman (red buildings), and Törnströmska (across the park from Chapman). These are the main public highschools of Karlskrona. I like how varied this area turned out with some parks, some industry, the Ericsson offices behind the forgotten smokestack, smaller town houses, larger apartment blocks etc. The warhouse on the waterfront used to house a go-cart track at one point. Today it might be a skatepark or something similar but im not sure.

Once again the Aspö ferry berth. The ramp ahs been improved since previous screenshots I must say. Would be nice with a more realistic minimalistic and yellow colored ferry but this one does the trick. I used a trick where i placed the actual ferry dock below ground to make passengers not wait in mid air for the ferry to arrive. Now the passengers just teleport through the ground near the large information board instead. You may also see the small quayside ferry stop right behind the Aspö ferry. Not sure which exact ferry these guys are waiting for but I know I had fun recreating the ferry lines of Karlskrona after the official system maps available online.

In what has become my lamer version of Cato the Elders ranting about Carthage, I would like to advise Colossal Order and Paradox to add RORO ferries into the game with the next DLC.

Sparre, old military barracks and such, located just south of the bridge to Stumholmen. Recreation turned out really good. I can clearly see me improving during the process.

Now this insignificant junction, that also is a bus stop tried my patience alot. You just don't have to care about things like this if you build on a flat map.. Now these sort of situations are all over real cities and towns, Karlskrona not excluded.

Southeast Trossö. Rosenfeldt school (with the sports ground) and the tree lined road Alamedan directly below it.

Länsresidenset (county residence) where the Landshövding (country chief) lives. Litteral translations. I have no idea what the correct translation would be. I also have no idea what the Landshövding actually is or does. I do know they get a nice house though.

Amiralitetsparken (Admirality park) with Klockstapeln (The Clocktower). The previously mentioned train tunnel exits through this park before heading into the naval base and shipyards.

Speaking of which, here is the unfinished (or barely even touched) naval base. Note especially the long red roofed building on Lindholmen (bottom). This is Repslagarbanan (Ropmaking track) and it is THE WORLDS LONGEST WOODEN BUILDING!!!111 At 300 meters long it is a great source of pride for all Karlskronites. To the left you have the Shipyards with the large building being Skrovhallen (The Hullhall or alternative the Hall of Hull). I love litteral translations. Somewhere in this frame irl the worlds oldest still used dry dock can be found but tbh I forgot which one or where its at. I think its supposed to be next to the Repslagarbanan. These 17th and 18th century naval structures as well as the fortifications spread out around the archipelago (and some other stuff) are since 1998 together classified by UNESCO as a world heritage site, one of only 15 in Sweden.

One of the aforementioned fortifications is Kungsholmen (King islet) here very hastily assembled using mainly vanilla assets. The fort guards the main entrance to Karlsrkona from the Baltic Sea between Aspö and Tjurkö. Drottningskärs Kastell, which is another fort, is located on the oposite side of the passage, on the Aspö side.A very early work in progress design of the Swedish Naval Musuem at Stumholmen. Once again, the vanilla museums (with some PO) worked really well. This bodes well for eventuall vanilla only attempts to fill this map.

Finally, here are some more overview screenshots of the latest state of things.

So many empty spaces..

I can't find any more suitable way to end this entry then by saying goodnight with a shot of the fort bearing the name "Godnatt" (Goodnight) at night. I hope you could enjoy this City Journal despite all its flaws and unfulfilled promise. It is after all just a game. Everything I'd show you can be experienced in real life, without lag and out of bounds error messages.

Until next time, I wish you all the best.

/Teddy