Leaderboard

Just wanted to make sure an essential component isn't neglected: time. You recieved many great suggestions from skilled people here but be aware that obviously there is no magic to apply here. It takes time to learn your own style and it takes time to learn how to use all the tools you have to create what you want to create and there's no shortcut to it. Afterall, every art takes lots of practice.

I've made reference to that in the "Looks like the crown has been passed" thread. Part of the reason I still spend more time with SC4 (part; not all) is because of this. Don't get me wrong; it's great taking part in something that continues to be under active, supported development. But there's that annoying side effect of having to keep verifying mods, starting cities over, etc. Eventually, CO will move onto the next project and the dust will start to settle on C:SL - and it'll be that stable, mature game that the modders will commandeer. (As an aside, it will be then, and no sooner, that we can finally start judging whether or not it really is the "next" or "successor" to SC4 - seeing as the whole concept of what SC4 "is" is largely based on its longevity during that phase of its existence. Until then, any such comparison must be prefaced "possible" or "potential" as it is still comparing apples to oranges, IMHO.)

Oooo! I get a nice Euro feel/NA style type of vibe here, really exiting! Very realistic and thoughtful, I dig it. Came here to post a current picure of Whitehaven that's actually kinda going for the same thing on a larger scale: Screwed up on the transparency this time, eh. It's currently in running simulation for a couple of ingame-years so the commutes and all would set in before I continue developing. It helps to keep a large city that falls on a tile like this stable and functional to not develop everything and then let the game take it from there, I find.

Well guys, it seems like this is the end of the road. I talked extensively about that yesterday on the forums, so go read that for more. Now, for the finale I'm going to take one image from every entry of Saturnia, which will be 21 today and 20 on Saturday, October 17. I'll go into a deep and sad speech about endings of things then. Entry #1: Introduction to Saturnia Entry #2: History of Saturnia (Part 1) Entry #3: History of Saturnia (Part 2) Entry #4: History of Saturnia (Part 3) Entry #5: Saturnia in the 21st Century Entry #6: Saturnia in the Present Day Entry #7: Saturnia Stars Baseball Entry #8: Suburbs of Saturnia - Summer Fun in Menken Entry #9: Suburbs of Saturnia - Back to School in Hudson Entry #10: Livin' in the Ghetto Entry #11: Life of a Saturnian: Frank Gatewood Entry #12: Founder's Day 2014 Entry #13: Election Day 2014 Entry #14: Saturnia: A Towering City Entry #15: Saturnia: An Institutional City Entry #16: Saturnia's Newest Skyscraper? Entry #17: Center Square Christmas Tree Entry #18: Suburbs of Saturnia - Shopping Rush in Walnutville Entry #19: A White Christmas in Saturnia Entry #20: Saturnia: An Athletic City Those were good times we had... weren't they?

First of all apologies for the mess of quotes I created - love this forum software, but the quote functionality is seriously bugged. Anywho, I just wanted to counter that you need unique buildings to create a realistic-looking skylines. In the city that I'm working on, the CBD is exclusively made up of growable buildings (the one exception being AJ3D's superb LaSalle Wacker), and I don't think it it looks any less realistic than the (seriously beautiful) screenshots you posted. Granted, the towers in my screenshot aren't quite as tall, but most US skylines have buildings in the 100-250m. range anyways - super-talls are still a bit of an oddity in the vast majority of American cities with a prominent skyline. The big difference compared to using lots of unique buildings is that my CBD is actually a fully functional district where Cims live, work, shop and find leisure, instead of a modern-day version of a Potemkin Village, consisting mostly of empty husks that serve hardly any other purpose than looking good. Having said that, I'm not trying to convince people that one approach is better than the other (I've read solid arguments for both sides of the coin) - I'm just trying to show that even when strictly sticking to 4x4 growable buildings, you can create a downtown district that contains both fillers and eye-catchers, looks realistic ánd scales well with the rest of the game.

Still working on Portsmouth:

Work in progress, very hard to do to me imo:

I just looked on the front page of the Steam Workshop, and noticed almost everyone that has a thread on Simtropolis is on there. http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=255710&browsesort=trend&section=readytouseitems Nice job everyone! It's been amazing to watch the quality of everyone's assets go up with each successive release. I really think we can start to approach the quality level seen on some of those SC4 BATs.

Not at this stage, but we are on the home straight and the finish line is in sight catty (RTMT Team)

Yes, but i'm thinking. Would a free camera help to improve SC4? I belive it will not help the game. I think the overview is a certain part of the SC4 experience. I think the game runs not how the people go, but how the City is going. That's a difference in mine opinion.

1 / Actual cities with 4x4 plot size are boring. 2 / Ploppable buildings are fantastic. But they are useless. 3 / So : we need mods. (I dont think CO will do something about this) 4 / AJ3D you broke my heart why did you stop ? We need something like this. (Can't do it by myself !)

It's true we all have to start somewhere. I agree about file size, I try to aim below 4MB though that's not always possible when making something really big. It does amaze me how some creators upload really basic stuff with a 12MB size. Makes me wonder where all the bytes went...

My first train map

I agree about the railway, would be more realistic. But i like the buildings chosen, and i think i might have to search the Japanese sites as you seem to have some buildings that are new to me. Here are two images from me, i am doing a Asian/Australian/American style city, Japanese is the predominant style for now, especially the suburbs that are shown.

Many good tips here. I would add that a beautiful city should also have or start on a beautiful landscape region map. Preferably, the individual city map tiles that make up that region map would be beautiful as well. This doesn't necessarily mean our landscape maps at either the region or city levels have to be wildly dramatic and fantastical in features. Instead, the terrain maps I find most beautiful are typically based on real-world regions, and my preference is for those that suggest natural constraints, perhaps by a watershed drainage system, even if they are just dry creeks, or by bounding topography like hill or coasts. I often like to look at and favor cities which somehow show a deliberate response to the geography of their maps. For example, when I am looking at creeks, I like to see when the street gridiron adjusts itself around that creek, or if that creek got channeled and rerouted. I try not to totally erase the features of the originally natural landscape underneath uniform swaths of development, even if the developed city plan is heroic in scale and rigid in its gridiron implementation. If done well, we will have a network of creeks, a network of streets, maybe a chain of hills, maybe even a network of rail tracks, and all of them will be layered over each other making interesting intersections and defining by their edges interesting neighborhoods. If done really well, we will see these effects in play at the region level, at the city tile level, and even down to the neighborhood and block levels. kingofsimcity showed off this vast region, and I love distant mountains that bound and frame regions, even if the framing mountains do not reach into the urban cities. City_Master is working on this map, and it has a wonderful mix of coastlines, hills, mountains, and a wide river system. It maybe perhaps exotic, but it is very rich spaces and places. rodent1989 made this out of Death Valley, and mentions specifically building up to and adjusting to features of the land. ROFLyoshi offered this work in progress of his region Redwolf and its fascinating. Imagine the smaller zoom details of this creek system also brought into the broader spaces of the previous three region maps. citycowboy has a rigid gridiron cutting across landscape features, but interweaved through it is a river/creek system slowly turning into linear parks. art128 barely developed flat region is especially interesting in the naturalistic cuts and spaces. kingofsimcity followed this diagonal coastline, while the rest of us might us just cut a simple orthogonal grid across everything. Many of the rest of use might have just cut an easy orthogonal grid and made broke the effect of the landscape. VMIUJcadet09's version of Greenville, South Carolina. selles had this metro. euverus made this on a Sydney map. These cities/regions, along with many others, all look amazingly beautiful to me because I can see how they work with the landscape of their maps, and we have not even brought ourselves into the city block and street levels within them yet.

Downtown of a city near Akuraku. Work in progress and also posted in City Journal. I need suggestions and criticism, thanks

New region, new capital city, new highways (and this time, the Real ones) But first, a general view: the terrain is the Attica Basin (Athens), but the city is not a replica. The coloured areas show the general zoning, but obviously the orthogonal grid will avoid the circular shape, which is only referential. The first interchange is the simpler one: the First Radial Highway -a RHW 6S- becomes a 6C, allowing the central lanes to split vertically and connect with Industries Avenue, with minimum right-of-way usage. Efficient and nice, but dull. The second image is a very symmetrical cloverleaf interchange between the same radial highway (up to down) and Route 1, the main north-south highway. It uses RHW-2 for the clover leaves, minimizing unlevelled lanes (I don't know why, but I haven't seen much cloverleaves of this style). Now, the innovative part: thanks to the wonderful tools of the NAM 33, the interchange between the first radial (up to down again) and Route 3 (a westbound, 4 lane highway) capitalizes its sloped terrain. What is more, the RHW-4 extends after the interchange and splits to two MIS that crosses and becomes a sunken viaduct, ending in the city's West Bus Terminus.

The biggest infrastructural project in my new region so far. Northbound H24 intersecting with westbound H7, which begins at the roundabout and is extended towards the east via federal roadway F242b.

Indie Developer Crowbox in Germany, has promised a new and interesting take on the city building experience. Welcome the game EndCiv. "EndCiv is a survival city building game with high-quality 3D graphics. The world has been destroyed, and you are tasked with re-civilizing the wastelands. Resources for survival must be collected permanently to keep people alive. Energy production is an important task which is directly connected to the simulated weather of daytime, rain and wind. You will also experience that the wastelands are coming to life at night." With dynamic weather, and manageable resorces EndCiv offers a new take on the ideas of city planning. But the developers need your help, after a failed indegogo campaign it is not certain of the future for the game. Spreading awareness of the game would be a wonderful thing, as I know some of you might find interest. EndCiv on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/endcivgame UPDATE: New Images Released from Crowbox Productions for the upcoming title: Also, be sure to check out the game at Steam Greenlight to keep updated on the progress. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=322996033

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Right, some big news... I've now created an interactive spreadsheet, which hopefully provides a solution to the issues, and makes it easy for us to calculate results. Baseline Automated Ranking System (BARS) Features Summary Ranking Automatic ranking of challenge results. Priority sorting by the rating, then the number of votes. Entries with more votes are ranked higher, in case the rating is identical. Ties In the event of identical ties, the rep prize is split between those entries. This still keeps to the total Prize Fund (as close as possible when rounded to a whole number). Ties are clearly highlighted on the rank. Baseline Method As a solution for entries with a low sample, the "Baseline Method" is used. Consider it a cut line, which is established using the averages of votes & ratings. There are two baselines: Base Votes and Base Rating. Base Votes limits the possible ranking for entries with a small # of votes (compared to others). It's calculated using 75% of the mean (average) votes, and is rounded to a whole number. The Base Rating is calculated the same way, using 75% of the average rating. This is used to make the ranking more logical. For example, entries with a low votes sample, but a higher rating will rank above. This is because the priority is still given to the rating. Entries outside the band are highlighted with a red flag icon. Reputation Prize Fund Prize fund is calculated and distributed to the top entries. This is based on the number of entries & the challenge type. New "Bonus" rep, which adds a bit of variance to the Prize Fund. This is calculated based on the average rating, and the number of entries. Calculation to add the author's new reputation total. Checkbox to mark when the prize has been awarded. Data Validation checks to ensure data is entered accurately. Alerts box which show any glaring mistakes with the data. This kind of works like a checklist. Options to customise each challenge (e.g. ranks which receive a rep prize, manual adjustment of Prize Fund & multipliers). This means prizes could be allocated say to the top 10. Cell formatting for certain conditions (e.g. top 3, tied ranks, duplicates). Each challenge is stored on an individual sheet. Misc stats for each challenge. Preview from the "City Life" challenge (click for full size): How does the ranking work? The basic concept is quite simple. For each entry, it first checks whether it meets the 'Baseline' for rating and votes. If so, it looks at the rating value and ranks them accordingly, highest to lowest. Then a tiebreaker is used, which is calculated using the votes tally. This allocates a decimal number, which is unique to the # of votes. The more votes an entry has, the smaller the tiebreaker will be (and vice versa). It's then added to determine the final rank. If an entry fails the 'Baseline' test, it's placed in a second rank. Here entries are still sorted by the rating, but appear further down the list. The majority of the calculations are done using hidden sort columns. Really it's a bit more complex than it looks from the outside! Why not just do a simple sort using the ratings? Well, the main reason is to ensure consistency. It allows results to be decided automatically, and eliminates the need to manually split ties, or decide how many votes is a fair sample. All it requires is data to be entered accurately (in the spreadsheet). Initially I was considering doing something even more complex. For example, to use weighted ranks based on the rating & votes for each entry. Essentially to award points to each entry, and then sort highest to lowest. But in the end, I think the 'Baseline Method' is more transparent, easier to understand, and keeps most of the sorting by the ratings. Will the data be revealed for each challenge? Yes, when results are announced, I'll include a link to the spreadsheet. This will be a read-only version uploaded to OneDrive. The voting data for all challenges can be found at the following link: ST Challenges - Results Data (Excel spreadsheet shared on OneDrive) Hope this sounds useful! If all goes well, we aim to bring all results up-to-date this weekend.

Some double-decker roads made by jdcrozier have been released on Steam today: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=535804966 Hope that helps!

As one of the most prolific, experienced BATers out there, my next interviewee worked hard to bring the Midwest to life in SimCity 4 with the Barry Sanders Project, which has since become mipro. Calling the great (and underrated) American state of Michigan home, Jasoncw has been BATing for longer than I have even been active. His buildings are realistic, detailed, and look just awesome in my cities, and probably yours, too! So, without wasting any more of your time, Jasoncw! ST: When did you first get SC4, and what do you remember about your first experiences with the game? Was SC4 your first involvement with SimCity, or did you already have a history with the sim games? Jasoncw: My first involvement with SimCity was the original. I had to have my brother start the game using the command line in DOS. I’d start a new city (usually Jasonville or something similar), plop the airport, and then fill an area with roads, because a cluster of 4-way stops looked like a parking lot. And then I’d have no money and that would be the end of it. For SC2K I was old enough to actually play the game. Before SC3K came out I was so blown away by the graphics that I told my friend the resolution was so high that you could even see inside the windows. That wasn't completely true, but compared to SC2K's graphics it might as well have been. I had a demo of the game where you could build a city, but only for about 20 minutes before it would kick you out, making you start over next time. I played it for hours on end before finally getting the full game. ST: What aspect of SC4 do you enjoy most – what keeps you coming back? Jasoncw: Considering how rarely I actually play the game, the answer would be BATing, but the truth is that if it weren't for the community I wouldn't be BATing, so it’s the community that keeps me coming back. ST: Do you recall the first plugin you installed? Jasoncw: I don’t, but I do have fond memories of certain early plugins. The Liberty Building, Buffalo City Hall, and Niagara Mohawk Building, by Sabrethooth78, the Chicago Tribune Building by Prepo, and Western Investments by ONeil_1. Pegasus’s Garbage Chute was both very useful and very funny. ST: What led you to Simtropolis at first? Can you remember your initial impressions of the site? Jasoncw: Despite being an active SC4 player and a lifelong SimCity fan, my reason for coming to Simtropolis had nothing to do with SimCity! I wanted to learn 3d modeling and found gmax, and needed the BAT gamepack in order to render things. I came to Simtropolis for gmax tutorials. ST: Describe your progression into the world of SC4 custom content. Was it a particular lot or BAT that inspired you to take the first step? Jasoncw: SimMars was close to my original intention of modeling science fiction stuff, so I started making things for SimMars, but it didn't take very long for me to start making normal buildings. ST: Speaking of first steps, what was the very first thing that you modeled using the BAT? Do you still have a screen shot? Jasoncw: I’m pretty well organized and I keep everything, but somewhere along the line I lost a lot of my early stuff. Below are the earliest things I was able to find, I believe from fall and winter of 2004. My first upload was in spring of 2005. The BATs to the left were intended for SimMars. ST: Many of your BATs are released under the mipro (originally BSP) banner. For those who may not know much about mipro, can you elaborate on what you guys are about/how you are organized and what your role in it is? Jasoncw: mipro is dedicated to recreating buildings from the US State of Michigan, including Detroit. During the time that I was getting into BATing I was also getting into Detroit’s architectural history and development news, the BSP thread was very active, and a lot of the early BSP members were the same people I was interacting with on other urbanism/Detroit forums. So a lot of different things converged, and it was inevitable that I got involved. Unfortunately by the time I was producing BATs the original group was pretty much gone, but nofunk came along soon after, and JBSimio did our early custom queries. ST: Your list of uploads is populated by a large number of buildings from the Midwest. Are there any particular reasons for choosing to direct your efforts in this direction? Jasoncw: To be honest I didn't realize that until you pointed it out! Obviously my mipro BATs are from the Midwest, but the rest I think are just a coincidence. A lot of my fictional BATs are loosely based on buildings from outside of the Midwest. ST: What is the thought process behind choosing what to create next? Jasoncw: It’s a combination of how much I like the building (or a style, if I'm going to make a fictional building), how well it fits into the game’s 16x16 meter grid, and how easy it would be to make. ST: I think most custom content creators would consider their work a hobby, but like anything in life, some parts are more fun than others. What do you consider your least favorite part of the BATing process? Your favorite? Jasoncw: I hate lotting, and I avoid projects where I have to do it. When I make a BAT I start off with the facade, which is the fastest, funnest, and most immediately rewarding part of the process. After that there’s a point where the entire building is modeled and the BAT is no longer a cluster of floating facades, and it’s nice to see the building come together as something close to its final form. I also love seeing the transformation from an untextured BAT to a textured BAT. And of course I like plopping the building in the game for the first time. ST: Since this is a sort of hobby (in the sense that custom content creators are not paid for their work), what keeps you motivated to continue releasing new creations for the SC4 community to enjoy? How much do comments in the download section mean to you? Is it exciting to see your models used in the CJs of others? Jasoncw: You’re going to throw me into an existential crisis! Why do I BAT?? I absolutely appreciate the positive support I get. BAT releases are like a party, and comments, ratings, and downloads on the STEX are like confetti. In my thread, comments and upvotes can be encouraging when I’m struggling to be productive. And then there are times, especially during the Trixies, when people go beyond typical commenting and write very kind things. Most people go through their entire adult lives rarely experiencing the good will and appreciation that I experience regularly. People have been very generous to me. ST: You released your first BAT in 2005. Is there any one of your creations that you are particularly proud of? Are there any fun stories or facts relating to some of your works that we don’t know about? Jasoncw: My early BATs. For those, each one I worked very hard on, learned a lot, and I was improving a lot from BAT to BAT. My first uploaded BAT was Poirer's Pictures, and I probably spent 6 hours in Photoshop just trying to make a peach color that was similar to ones used in the game. Fisk Insurance was similar, I spent absurd amounts of time literally matching my BAT’s facade with Maxis’s Fisk Insurance. I’m also proud of Fisk Insurance (and some WIPs that never made it) where I first developed my glass texturing technique. After my early BATs, I’m most proud of the Penobscot Building. I started it in 2006, restarted it several times, and finally pushed through the difficult task of finishing it in 2014. Even counting my early BATs it’s the most hours I've put into a BAT. ST: Has your experience BATing had any influence on your personal or professional life? Are there any skills that you have developed over your BATing career that have helped you beyond the world of SC4? Jasoncw: There were things like LEGO and drawing, but SimCity most specifically lead me down the path to pursuing a career in architecture. But unfortunately I’m very unemployed. If you work in architecture, are located somewhere in the world where I can get by with English at first, and would like to consider hiring me, please contact me (I’m not joking!). I bring the same dedication to quality and personal engagement to architecture as I do to BATing. On a personal level I've become friends in real life with Nofunk and a few others, and I've enjoyed online friendships as well. If you get along well with someone here and live in the same area I recommend meeting up. ST: What advice would you give to a new member of this community who was planning on creating their first BAT? Jasoncw: The most important thing is that you have to feel it in your heart that you are capable of making great BATs. Then you have to understand that at first you’ll be bad, but you need to be patient and keep working and learning until you’re good. You can’t accept ‘bad’ as your final result. And then, more practically, start a BAT thread, follow other people’s BAT threads, and learn how to find existing information (be a resourceful self-learner). And don’t be afraid to ask questions. As long as you've done your due diligence, BATers won’t mind helping you out, and it’s a nice way to build relationships. ST: Simtropolis is organized into ‘player’ and ‘builder’ categories. Regarding the ‘player’ section, do you have any favorite CJers that you enjoy following? What are your favorite SC4 ‘scenes’ (i.e., towering metropolises, urban sprawl, rural landscapes, etc.). Jasoncw: Over the years there have been certain CJers whose work I've enjoyed, but I don’t follow city journals closely enough to be able to list names without the risk of leaving out great CJers that I’m simply oblivious to. I like CJs that contain realistic urban areas, and that do a good job of using my BATs. I've never been able to get into story-based CJs though. You've probably noticed that most BATers don't follow city journals, and that most CJers don't BAT. I respect the few that are able to do both well. I enjoy seeing my BATs used, so if you’re happy with the way you've used one of my buildings, you’re welcome to post it in my BAT thread. ST: On the ‘builders’ side, do you have any favorite BATers that you enjoy following? If you still play SC4, what was your most recent download from the STEX? Jasoncw: When I see Odainsaker's BATs I think I get a glimpse of what it’s like for other people to see my BATs... especially those years-long “almost done” WIPs! Nofunk is an obvious answer to this question. Aaron Graham is very important to my cities. Vlasky does a great job. Don Miguel was very influential early on. My plugins folder is in a perpetual state of disrepair, but I don’t think anyone would be surprised about the types of things I have in there. ST: SimCity 4 has been out for over 12 years now. Are you surprised that this community is still going strong all these years later? What do you think is the secret to its longevity? Do you think there will still be new content being created 12 years from now? Jasoncw: If you’d have told me all those years ago, I would be surprised. But moving forward from year to year there’s never been any indication that the community was about to die. At this point SimCity 4 has gotten so big that even when the day comes that it’s not very active, I think it will still linger on for a very long time. ST: Are there any games you play besides SC4? What other hobbies do you have away from BATing and SimCity? Jasoncw: I mostly play older games, a lot of RPGs on the SNES. The Earthbound/Mother series is one of my favorites. I play StarCraft 2 casually. I play the guitar. I like architecture of course. I used to draw and it’s something I’d like to get back into. Thank you very much for your time and for your great answers!

good times......great times

Surprise us. Try and make it for Christmas.

CBD for the major city of Nashville CBD/Downtown for Nashville's as of now unnamed neighbor to the north

Sure, no problem. I'll post a few shots in the 'Show your downtown'-thread after I get home from work, okay? edit: I posted a few screenshots in the topic I mentioned

I've tried DAMN a while ago but I wasn't really happy with it. So in the meantime I organize my menus by using the Reader to correct the item order. Works fine with me and gives the game a very personal touch... I am very curious about RTMT V4.0 though... Is there a release date available yet? Kind regards!

Hi, I can say I play it for 10 years now, still love it. It's not a game, it's a hobby... and the only installed game on my rig... Kind regards!

The Vietcong got military hardware from North Vietnam, who in turn got it from China and the Soviet Union. And they got professional soldier training on how to conduct guerrilla warfare. To call them 'armed citizens' would be a disservice to what they really were, namely a professional fighting force. The militants currently fighting the US in Afghanistan and before that in Iraq are also a bit more then a bunch of citizen gun lovers. Again most of these have had (military) training, they have access to military grade hardware. And most of their 'success' stems from the fact that they are operating on home ground. They know that America has to leave eventually, so all they have to do is stick around long enough. In cases of actual military engagement with the American military they get obliterated every single time. A guerrilla war is a lot more difficult when you are fighting against your own government. It only works if the vast majority (I'm talking about 80-90% or more) of the population HATES their government and wishes to see it destroyed. Given that a lot of these 2nd amendment armed resistance advocates already think the government is a tyrannical you can be sure that any armed insurrection would fail almost instantly. They would be branded as right wing terrorists, they would be ratted out, and the FBI armed response units would move in to arrest them. Indeed, any potential tyrant likely got power through being elected into office, which means that any potential tyrant has a significant supporter base. And if they don't, well, it means he won the elections because the opposition just didn't bother to show up. And if people can't be bothered to show up and vote against a tyrant, what makes you think they are willing to take up arms against a tyrant? Really, the first and best line of defense against tyranny is voting.

Definitely more Steams fault for not prompting when you do press that button. One of the reasons I always check the page before subscribing...

So limitwise, another one bites the dust... I still have hopes for this game

Cool industrial-harbor warehouses! I also recommend you using this mod by TheQuiltedLlama for taking pics without that bad-loooking yellow thing. Have a nice day! ^^

Balloon installation at DesignMiami, Miami, FL, USA

The bus station is finished! You can find it here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=534580194

Time for a new chapter for the CJ of the Bright City, the last one featuring the northern part of Maya Bay. But as usual let's start with your comments, that this time were quite numerous! FEEDBACK CORNER Before showing you the two new districts I want to share an aerial comprehensive view of what has been shown of Maya Bay till now. As already told it's just the northern part of the whole thing! SIGNAL HILL If you want to buy a family house and live in the immediate vicinity of the city center there aren't many choices. One of these is definitely the neighborhood known as Signal Hill, that despite being very close to all major arteries of the heart of Aurora still manages to be a quiet and peaceful place for its residents. The district takes its name from the high telecommunications tower that serves the entire bay dominating the hill. To buy a house here is not for everyone: even if this is not one of the most expensive districts of the city, certainly is a lot less cheap than the popular neighborhoods that surround it. In the district shops and leisure facilities are virtually absent but there are two bus lines that connect it with the rest of the city, although residents can certainly afford one or more vehicles per household! The most fascinating feature of the neighborhood, as well as having the Red Lights Districts easily reachable even by foot (with all that implies in terms of drinking and saving the taxi fare!), surely is the amazing view of downtown skyline enjoyable even while sitting in the pool or during a picnic in the garden with friends. But if in the evening you don't want to sit at home, taking the car is just a matter of a minute to get into the city! HAWTHORNE If you are then asking yourself where the residents of Signal Hill go for shopping, the spontaneous answer can only be in the neighboring district of Hawthorne, that in its streets offers an enviable array of commercial activities. It's also necessary to cross Hawthorne to get to one of the most important railway and highway junction in the whole city. If you do not know well the road network it's pretty easy to get lost here! And past this maze, to the east the district ends with one of the most unique train stations of the whole region: Keep followin' and you'll be surprised!

Awesome!! *-*

I like the Dump idea! But for now, I decided to go with something else: A fictionalized reimagining of the White Star Line (of Titanic fame) as an airline. It's finished and can be found on Steam here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=531607794&searchtext= Some pictures:

Base textures are done-ish. Just need to figure out what livery to put on the plane now. Probably something fictional for now. The only problem is the textures with the livery probably won't look great at 1024x1024, but we'll see. Might be okay.

Hi and welcome back to a "classic" entry of the Brighr City CJ after three episodes focused on the release of the new C:S expansion. But this certainly is another After Dark installment! FEEDBACK CORNER RED LIGHTS DISTRICT Every city needs a place over the top to attract droves of tourists, and in Aurora this certainly is represented from what faces the beach of Oldshore and neighboring streets, so that the neighborhood itself rarely is called with its own name but it is more well-known with the name of Red Lights District. Those looking for entertainment, nightlife and a healthy dose of excess is here that have to go. The Oldshore strip is in fact well known for its restaurants and bars open all night, his nightclubs, casinos and of course the beach parties, without forgetting its famous drive-in theater and the small but very popular amusement park located in its north end, just bordering Miramar. Right above the funfair there is a small hill from which you have a wonderful view of Maya bay with many clubs including the most exclusive of the city, The Celsius. Access is not easy for mere mortals, but for who can there is the concrete possibility to meet sports stars and VIPs! Those cannot enter the Celsius can always fall back in the big disco Indie Lizard, definitely larger and affordable of everyone. Moving south nightclubs give way to bars, restaurants and various hotels as well as fast foods, souvenir shops and a huge arcade: it is virtually impossible to be disappointed by the variety offered along the main boulevard. There is also the famous Hard Rock Café, where tourists never fail to visit to buy a magnet or a t-shirt. Continuing south, past the twin towers of the Travelodge Hotel, one of the city's biggest venue for conferences and attended by businessmen, you get to the end part of the district that borders downtown. Here is the most famous restaurant in the city, that the at third floor has a spectacular terrace eating from which you have a breathtaking view on the big guys. The Red Lights Districrt ends at the level of California Square, which overlooks a small park and the headquarters of a company of the new economy that I think you well know. Meanwhile the morning has come already and it is time to get back to duty! Keep followin' and you'll be surprised!

Interesting, but these fleas have no place to flee. We keep playing with Goddard rockets and are getting nowhere fast. They want to go to Mars, but it takes months and costs absolutely gazillions of rasbucknicks for a one-way trip. Imagine setting up for a two way excursion, and all the excess water vapour that would wind up in the atmosphere just as the beast takes off. Has anyone ever figured out how much water winds up in the atmosphere from all those launches? I know they are supposed to be using liquid Hydrogen and Oxygen for the motors, but what happens when they are producing all this nice clean fuel? Out of what? By what methods? Oh, and if we get a manned colony on Mars, the next planet out is Jupiter. There is absolutely no going there, but it may have habitable moons. Europa, anyone? Seems it might just be a water world with no land at all. Wouldn't that be a joke? I think I've said outright in this thread that we need to take note of the way the native people lived before we got here and messed things up. They lived with nature, didn't overpopulate, and got along just fine holding little wars and generally having fun counting coup in a hunter/gatherer culture with spots of farming here and there. There were some extinctions due to things like drought: -- The Anasazi people, for example, who had to bail out of their major settlements because there was no more water. Some of the survivors have been found to be still around, but not many. We keep abusing the kernel of existence. All the advances of our science get abused before the ethics of their use catches up to them. How do you like the ethics of WW II? The Germans used their advanced engineering technology to take over Europe and tried to create a master race at the cost of millions of lives of what they considered to be untermenchen. Then to cap things off, the allies dumped a couple of dirty A-bombs on the Japanese because they could. Not very ethical, perhaps, but the Japanese were not listening, and their military and political intelligence was very poor. Perhaps they should have been invited to the tests at Los Alamos and then they might have got the message. I like Harry Truman rather well, but that was a dastardly deed, indeed. Since then, the world has been scared to death of the word "atomic". The number of peaceful uses of atomic energy and atomic physics are legion, but say the word power plant and what you get is a lot of screaming about Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island. Yet we don't worry much about automobile accidents which wreak carnage on our roads daily. However, getting back to global warming: we are not responsible for the major effects of what is happening. At least, not in any meaningful way. One big forest fire or a volcanic eruption puts more crap in the atmosphere than we ever have. Mind you, it is not smart of us to add to it, but let's work on cutting all that down by eliminating use of fossil fuels and dumping garbage that generates methane - CH4 (a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2). Nature has enough methane locked up in the oceans and the permafrost in the arctic regions to give us a real hot time in the old world in the next few years. The trick here will be to delay the tipping point for this as long as we can, and cutting our own emissions will clearly help. Our ethics on this have started to catch up after 150 years of devil-may-care behaviour. I think in a couple of centuries when things are a lot warmer that the equatorial zones may well become uninhabitable and that the arctic could be getting tropical. All the farmers should be thinking of alternate crops as the available water and heat changes. In some areas it is going to be hotter and drier, others will be hotter and wetter. What happens when all the mountain glaciers that feed big river systems are gone? A good example of that one is the Ganges. The whole character of the Hind subcontinent will change. A number of the west coast of America rivers depend on the ice fields in the Rockies. What happens when these have all melted? Heh! People think we have troubles now?!

Here's a couple new interchanges I made yesterday and today. The first one is in my biggest city, Twin Forks, in the downtown area. It makes good use of the new NAM 33 components: Here's the interchange it replaced. Yeah, it looks terrible, doesn't it? And now, here's a parclo interchange I made in a new city tile. It's the first parclo I've made in SC4: Being able to use those multi-radius flex curves was sure helpful in making this interchange. That's the hidden new feature here; hidden because it's not something obvious like new ramps.

Downtown of my second largest city. Sorry it's not farther out; my computer lags horribly at 1 and 2 zoom level. Suburb of same city. Working on expanding the rail system at the moment.

Amesbury maps! (Link to the CJ here) The first one is a map of Amery County. It is to scale with both the map I've posted on top of this page and the Shady Strands Cities Skylines map (the area around Amesbury). It's a simple map that zooms in Amery County to show its bigger towns and major road links, and it's more meant as a handy overview. Since it's a TES project it's closely related to this map and set in the same universe here (or a few pages ago in this very thread) The second map is a city map of Amesbury. In order to showcase as many things as I needed I've also put motorway exits on the map, which may be of interest to some but ultimately isn't very important to the map itself. Bit of fanservice to the road geeks Eventually there'll be a PDF version and probably more POIs though, hence the smaller fonts. Bigger link here

Yeah, in Inkscape you can even just Ctrl-drag your lines and they should come out straight and vertical if you so draw them. Not my bestest map, but that damn Cities XXL thing needed some purpose, so here's the very basic map of Cathnoquey, home of my current CJ. Again, really rushed, not a lot of time and the like. :/

My suburbs