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And to complete things: The Lemmy Kilmister Grove (finished?) (entirely dedicated to hand made Rock 'n Roll):

Another sneak preview: The "Johann Sebastian Bach Festival Ground" (almost finished). Now Sims can have open air classical concerts.

Ever since stumbling upon a cache of Elevated Rail Stations created by DocRorlach, I've thought about trying to finish them off. Having resolved some memory-related issues when opening these models, I've made some progress today. In total there are 7 stations, to my knowledge, sadly none of these have ever been released. Here is the basic 6x1 Elevated Station. It's modelled really well. So it's a snap to create variants for Elevated Rail, Monorail, HSR and Viaduct Rail. The original models are in gMax (SC4BAT), but I've already switched this model into 3DS Max, the render quality seems to be greatly improved. Note a few issues remain to iron out here. The most exciting model is probably this Y-Station. Likely it will be the most work to mod. Anyhow, I've barely started, but I would love to get these models into the hands of players eventually.

@Fantozzi I'm liking your lots, some creative lots. I know that the lot editor section doesn't get loads of attention, but i have decided that i am going to upload more of my custom creations, be that re-lots of custom mad lots. It is some walls and parking for a gated community, the gated communities are all plopped buildings but i think the walls would work and look fine even if you wanted to use them with grown buildings, i have made about 20 or so lots at the moment, they are just made using the maxis grass, relotting that. But will have to edit it a bit. I plan on also uploading the buildings shown as they are made the same way as the walls. I plan on it being modular, unfortunately the walls don't have any diagonals, but there would still be scope to create a wide variety of different combinations .

Life is hard in the valley--and no other town in the region shows that more than Dagger Creek. Desolate, abandoned, and left to return to the earth, Dagger Creek shows the perils of living so close to the edge. The old rail bridge...a good measuring stick to see just how much the creek has dried up. Barely a trickle is left--certainly not enough to sustain a working town. Still, it is beautiful, in a haunting sort of way. Always considered blue collar, Dagger Creek was a hard-working town. The factory was the way to make ends meet here--now it rots. The silhouette of of old train depot, overgrown and crumbling, it sits disconnected to the rest of the world. The tracks are far too overgrown and parts have actually washed away in torrential (albeit infrequent) rains without upkeep. The factory, the church, and the train depot: once gathering places for the bustling little town. The only sound that you can hear now is the wind whipping through the abandoned streets. Even the dead can't escape the brutal conditions when no one is around to keep things clean and neat. A few houses still stand, but most lots sit empty. Climbing the hill, the tiny town of Dagger Creek looks insignificant in the backdrop of the desert.

Finishing touches on tha refinery, power plant & the end lot for the new hydro towers I've been working on. @Fantozzi I could really use some of those open air concert grounds, they look great.

Thank you for the MHO props, the toll booths looks better now : As for the SCILT textures, I do use the special overlays for details that I otherwise couldn't do. I do plan on using it extensively too, so maybe that one won't go away yet By the way, I uploaded the Grand Rail Station lot to the STEX: Feel free to point out any mistakes I may have made, technical, aesthetical, grammatical, whatever. Also remind me to open a new thread for my stuff so I don't feel like i'm taking over this one by accident

Really? I found it one of the most well written and user friendly guides. Bear in mind though, it's not directed at modelling for SimCity, but it gives you a great deal of information about using gMax or SC4 BAT. I'm not sure which tutorials you were doing, but it starts of with a Mace and some animation. Did you start at the beginning or skip ahead? BAT Essentials is a great tutorial for gently going through making a small office step by step. - Meh, just noticed the images are gone . Moderator, if you are seeing this, if I had all the images and was willing to fix the tutorials formatting, how would you feel about me fixing it up?

Tyvm guys! I'm really happy with the textures too and I've even managed a little variation (color mask with some more tags, which don't always appear). I originally made them as props, but I'm considering changing them to buildings (with the dummy ai). Then ofc some kind of mod will be needed to turn off collision (but that's the same with a prop, which needs another mod to not have the lod disappear way too early) or I'd have to move the pivot point to the side (that makes rotating it a bit weird :P). I hope to release the 2 cell and 4 cell versions today - and the 2 cell one works with on/off ramps too. Sadly it doesn't look right with rail. 4 cell works with 3 lane highway and the 4 & 6 lane roads. A shorter, lower version (like 6 units, 8-9m high) also seems like a good size. And I'll definately make a block prob 6-8 units long. Atm my days are somewhat busy, so these are great little projects until I have more time again. Plus it gives me a little variation in what I make. Some almost-final pics! Edit: Oh, and if you need graffiti or inspiration Graffiti Central is the place to go!

The model is shaping up nicely for sure! Have you made a test export yet to check how the textures will come out in game? Especially if you're using gmax, they can be bleached out considerably and deviate from what you see in the viewport, so it might make sense to check the overall appearance before you start the fine-tuning.

A long time ago, in an earlier city of mine... There was this curious tram that tried to eat it's tail

This entry will cover the east end of the refinery district but before I get to that I'm trying to finalize the texture selection for the hydro pylons I recently created and I would welcome your input. Imo this mod would best be used in either and industrial or suburban settings. It might be interesting to use in areas of higher densities too, but it would be largely be hidden amongst taller buildings so I think its more important to decide on how well it contrasts with development in areas of lower density buildings. Additionally you don't really need a space saving hydro pylon that goes over roads and railways outside of the city in open landscapes so getting the contrast right with natural scenery is less important as well. Imo, the lightest texture works best because it stands out more against the grayish textures used on most industrial lots, but if I'm wrong about that just let me know! Vote on the poll for which option you think works better. Options are number from 1 to 3 from left to right, plus a 4th alternative option. Onto today's entry. End of the Hydro Corridor Here we see once again see the Eastlea hydro corridor running down Petrol drive. The piplines next to the roadway lead to Tank farm A with some diverging to one of the refineries flare stacks. A pedestrian ramp-bridge runs above the rail line to the main parking lot for the refinery which is located on vacant land squeezed in between between the rail line and highway 705. You can see the transition BAT I've created to start/end the hydro line. 2. 3. Some renders of the end piece in 3ds Incinerator & Tank Farm A At the end of Petrol Dr. is a small incinerator owned by the 'Squeaky Cleaning Company'. Kudos to you if you know where that comes from. Organic waste is stored in stainless steel drums outside the plant to mitigate odor pollution. Sometimes soiled recyclables are dropped off in piles outside the building. The facility is largely automated using robots to transport the drums minimizing manpower requirements and the sites overall foot print. The incinerator has a maximum capacity of 75 tons/hr 1800 tons/day through which it produces a small amount of power the maximum capacity of which is 88MW. Tank farm A is located behind the incinerator and has 7 large & 8 small storage tanks. The coal wharf for the power plant is in this vicinity as well. 9. 10. This one of my favorite parts of the city, the transition from industry to nature. 12. 13. 14. There will be a future entry that showcases more of my mmp work in this city. Eastlea Power Plant Turning back along the shoreline we encounter the Eastlea coal power plant. This small coal power plant was built by the Avalon Corporation in 1976 to provide power to their Apotex refinery and other facilities in Industrial Sector C. Excess power is sold to the PRPA (Pretoria Regional Power Authority) and routed to the Cental distribution grid via the Eastlea Hydro Corridor. The plant has only one unit with a nameplate capacity of 475MW. In comparison the massive Dresden GS across the Bay is nearly 5 times it's size at 2,240MW. Coal is delivered by only by ship to the port of Baycole using " handymax" bulk carriers with a capacity of about 50,000 DWT. The boiler is marred to a single-flue 400ft/122m tall smokestack. In contrast to most of the images so far this plant and the surrounding infrastructure is probably best view from a higher zoom. 16. 17. 18. 19. Port Facilities Further west along the shore are the piers used to off-load crude oil. 21. 22. The central section of the refinery will be covered in a future update as well. Night Shots I hadn't shown any night shots in a while, so here's a couple for the road. 24. 25. 26. Edit* Just remembered I promised to post a picture of the the 'train'. To get it all in one image with a decent level of resolution here's a odd little mosaic, bit of a mind bender actually The end. Told ya it was a long train! There is still more of the refinery to show but to cover it all it would double the length of this entry and after a while I think looking industrial lots might get a little repetitive to so. And so I'll take a break for the current topic and the next entry will instead be a special feature, the next in my series of overly informative Encyclopedic Entries. Except this time the information will be conveyed in a very unique way, stay tuned.

After 50 and a half years Bronzo City was just hit by its second recorded snowfall. The Tram, Police, Fire Department, And other services weren't able to get out after the the huge snowstorm came in without warning and blasted the streets with snow leaving people unable to leave their jobs, schools, and apartments beacause of the city's lack of proper precautions and equipment.

Cargo area: General view of the Airport: Ok, that is all, for today, thanks and I hope that enjoy this Special.

142,857 This number appears in the reciprocal of 7. 1/7 = 0.142857142857... for eternity. 14, 28, 56 are 7 multiplied by the powers of two. Here's what's interesting about this number: 142857 x 2 = 285,714 142857 x 3 = 428,571 142857 x 4 = 571,428 142857 x 5 = 714,285 142857 x 6 = 857,142 The first six multiples of 142857 are all permutations of the digits 142857. Then of course we have: 142857 x 7 = 999,999 142857 + 857142 = 999,999

I'd be all for the BAT Essentials tutorial being fixed up. I originally learned how to make BATs in gmax from that tutorial. It's not perfect but it's very useful to beginners - plus a reasonable bit of the knowledge can be carried over to the wonderful realm of 3DS.

I currently adding a little satellite city to my map, loosely inspired by the rust belt cities: In context:

As a bridge engineer I'm delighted with this challenge. I'll try to take part in it

I don't know if this will help you. http://www.turbosquid.com/gmax gmax12_tutorials.exe (gmax Tutorials 14 MB) library.exe (gmax Sample Textures 2.8 MB) max12_help.exe (gmax Help 15 MB)

Ahhh finally command base finally finished. 750 colonists have come to mars to start a new colony and reach out for a new world. Earth now a dying world she has an estimated 100 years before she becomes uninhabitable. There was not enough time to search for a new world beyond a few light years. Mars being reachable was the most likly planet to launch the new space craft to be built at the space station built a few years prior to the mission to colonize and launch the largest ship known. Researchers will have to search further into the known galaxy to find a suitable planet............ Power station and a habitat ring and water station will have to be constructed before landing can be done for the remainder colonists. Ground staff only at this point.

There are a few things you can look for. Residential buildings have lower floor heights. Residential buildings are divided into individual apartments which are divided further into small rooms. Office buildings are large open floor plans filled with cubicles. Walls are put in occasionally to divide floors up into different tenants, and also to create private office suites (although note that in some countries the open office floor plan didn't catch on). This means that the facade of an office building will tend to be more open and uniform, while the facade of a residential building will appear more cellular. This will also show up in nitelites where in office buildings the nitelites should be (if the BATer did them correctly) long horizontal strips of lit up windows representing the cube farms being lit up, while residential buildings will have smaller clumps of windows lit up, representing bedrooms or living rooms. Artificial lighting is considered more acceptable in office buildings, meaning that they can be very thick and the deep interior can use artificial light, or uses that don't need much light, like conference rooms, can be put there. Thick buildings are more cost effective than thin buildings, so especially in big American cities you end up with really thick office buildings. Residential buildings are expected to have natural lighting for all of the main inhabited spaces. Not only that but there are a lot of walls, and the ceilings are shorter, so natural light penetrates less further into the building. For most apartment buildings the elevator and hallways are in the middle, then surrounding those are hallways and bathrooms, and then along the exterior of the building are living rooms and bedrooms. When you add up the dimensions of these rooms together you end up with narrow slabs. As a general rule of thumb if a tower is thicker than 2 tiles then it would be hard for it to be residential. The cellular nature of residential floor plans affects the structural system used. In office buildings you want open floors with as few columns as possible, and so you're more likely to see steel beams used to create as large of spans as possible. This means that whenever columns are visible on the outside of the building they'll be spaced much further apart. With residential buildings you already have a bunch of walls anyway to hide columns in, so the larger spans are not necessary, and so residential buildings are usually reinforced concrete. When you see columns on the outside (and there might not even be any columns in concrete structures) they'll be much more closely spaced than in office buildings. And then finally residential buildings will tend to have a more domestic character, while office buildings will tend to have a more institutional character. In general, since European office buildings are thinner than American ones, and tend to have a much smaller scale in general, you'd have better luck with trying to pass those off as residential buildings. And there's also hotels which in real life are very similar to residential buildings, since they're essentially apartment buildings.

Nice work everyone! Continuing with the relots... Experimenting with a MHO version of the toll booths: Turns out the building itself is invisible, so I had no problem replacing the booths. The issue with doing this is that, since I'm using the avenue toll booth prop for the elevated highway, there's a floating shadow on the right. Following @T Wrecks suggestion, I modified the Grand rail station lot by adding a second DTR line and doubling the middle platform. I took the oportunity to replace the cars with timed versions. Also, I removed some plants on both fire stations and relotted the library. The only issue right now is that the train automata seems to clip slightly trough the back of the platforms. Other than that, I like it more now : And finally, the relot of the passenger rail station. Since I failed to crop it out of the screenshot, may as well show it : Something I haven't mentioned is that I'm using cp's SCILT instead of the vanilla sidewalk tiles, so it should integrate easily with many sidewalk mods.

WORK IN PROGRESS -- THE JADE BIGHT -- WILHELMSHAVEN: (Click to make bigger.) Some of you might remember back when I was experimenting with a slope Mod -- and trying to realistically bridge a shipping canal. Thought you might like to see how that turned out -- BEFORE: AFTER: A CSX Passenger Express bound for Nuenburg while a 12 meter yacht passes beneath the bridge. (They all came together -- so I took the shot (lol).)

Do you have time for some philosophical thoughts? One of the big differences between classical painting and modern painting is - before there were movies and novels (prose novels became popular at the end of the 19. century) the ideal of painting was to capture the deciding moment. Paintings before 1900 capture a scene, therefore they capture time. If you look at a Cezanne or Monet - those "scenes" are always timeless, they capture light an colours, they don't freeze history or events in a "magical moment". Compare renassance artists like Michelangelo and Raffael with them and you'll see this difference. Lotting is very similar to painting. Meanwhile batting is real and sincere architecture (except for statics perhaps), lotting is real and sincere painting. So all what you would do in painting is valid for lotting. You have a blank linen and you'll have to choose an appropriate size. Good in lotting: you can always extend or lessen your linen during the painting process. But as a painter you have to decide what will be the main motives on the picture, what will be the backround. You'll have to think about proportions, so the background doesn't become to mighty and you don't recognize anymore the message (basic messages in sc4: civic, commercial, industry, residential). Where will I put them, how do I arrange them? Well - and as in painting you'll follow certain principles of aesthetics, You won't create an industrial lot with flowers and fountains as background. And that's realy interesting! Because thinking so, we already think about meaning. No joke - we are thinking about metaphors and symbols and patterns. Painting becomes art. And so does lotting. One of the secrets, what makes SC4 a special game - it deals strongly with symbols. Smoke, just for example, to express "heavy industries" and crude, hard work you'll put stacks and smoke on the lots. You can put a lot of smoke on the heavy industrie lots - and soon you'll discover: you doing expressionism! You point out something, you make something obvious - you want to tell something with lotting. Well many simlulation have this problem - they are meaningless 3D-worlds, they look real and complex and everything, but they express the obvious. They aren't thoughtfull or funny or ambiguous or fatal or dramatic (all the things meaning owns). That's the sense of the word "meaningless" - information hasn't meaning by itself. So many information day by day will pass by, you'll notice them, shure, you might process them - but this isn't meaning. You allways make meaning by yourself, by recognizing which information is important - information is just a raw material for sense or meaning. O.k. - that's another discourse. But therefore I would open a radical thesis: the visual restictrictions of SC4 are poetic advantages – regarding newer simulators, that are focused on information qualities (like real 3D) for example. One would never argue painting is so restricted compared to filming. If it comes to meaning - wo can say, you can't express yourself with paintings? Shure you can do. On the other hand look at all those amateur-filmmakers compiling hours of boering family scenes. This isn't what makes things interesting - it's alway meaning, that makes things interesting. Not information qualities. That's why you can't say a couloured photo is always better than black and white one. These are stylistic devices – and again, it dependends on what you want to do, what you want to express, the meaning, if and how to use them. Lotting is art, while creating meaning, telling something, dealing with symbols and metaphors. You can do quotes - recreate movie scenes for example, you can follow styles - grunge, baroque, compressed, decorated, create empty, desolate spaces and dense, crowded spaces and you can even visualize terms: like bureaucracy, dissipation, education, civil disobedience, social classes and tension and so on. Also many of the lots I see are "talking" about harmony and beauty and symmetry and perfection. They following an aesthetic born in italy in the late middle ages and represented by Leonard da Vinci and Leon Battista Alberti - that tries to unify mathematics and beauty. So my critics would be: sometimes, here at Simtropolis, your're going to much for perfection, for the aesthetics of geometry. But the vivid isn't a straight line. Therefore amongst creators "tree-makers" like girafe are my heroes - they have to model the randomly grown with exact geometrics - from a philosophical point of view this is a high claim. I think a pinch of imperfection here and there doesn't harm the cities of SC4. Sometimes it has a nice effect to have new classy Skyscrapers in HD and beneath them some poor, ruined residential in non-hd. Even this can be a stylistic device. I also think, that is, why SimGoober was such a great contributor. If he made props or bats - most of the time they carried a little story, they did express something, capturing a moment like painting did in the old ages. And that's what I try to do and what makes lotting a whale of a time to me. To tell something, to express something. When I browse through the simtrop-challenge-pictures or the city journals, I think that's all about. Telling a "magic moment" some sort of a "freeze frame of a story", what artists do with SC4. Doesn't need to be a big story or an important message. Justr something neat with a "touch". The french filmmaker Jean Luc Goddard once said "a good story you can tell in three seconds." Not with words. But with pictures you can.

Some detail shots of a small satellite city: Old river port Old river port and downtown Downtown close-up Commercial zone on the outskirts Eastern (or western, I dunno ) approach

A week or two, then I hopefully can upload them all as a package.

How on earth did you reply so fast @_Michael, that was like 30 seconds!!!

Hi @takemethere had an idear - maybe stupid - but I was thinking about an modular tower (and more to place it in the city, not at the outskirts). The base structure was the building model, generic and always the same - only differ in heights - but the top is a prop and exchangeable. So you could build up antenna parks or build tk-masts in your city with a variety. Don't know if this makes sense.

More mouths to feed

Yeah, sorry about that didn't show up when i did a dependency check, but should be all fixed now. To get back to some other lots i am looking to upload. It is some walls and parking for a gated community, the gated communities are all plopped buildings but i think the walls would work and look fine even if you wanted to use them with grown buildings, i have made about 20 or so lots at the moment, they are just made using the maxis grass, relotting that. But will have to edit it a bit. I plan on also uploading the building shown as they are made the same way as the walls. I plan on it being modular, unfortunately the walls don't have any diagonals, but there would still be scope to create a wide variety of different combinations .

When making terrain/water textures the average value of the source texture is quite important. If its too dark as the mips are made (the lower scales) it just gets darker, the opposite if its too bright to start with. For SC4 terrain/water textures its best if Brightness>=128 or 0.5 and average Sat <=128 or 0.5. In nature - everything becomes fainter at further distance because of reflected light and light extinction through air so your textures should get lighter (and ideally slightly bluer) as you zoom out. This is far less obvious with land terrain but here too saturation (i.e. purity of colour) declines as you zoom out. This is really obvious when visibility isn't perfect. Also in GoFSH there are three other things to take account of 1) GoFSH was designed with 256x256 terrain/sea textures in mind - the HD controllers map the textures differently over the terrain - their textures may be up to1024x1024px. 2) the numbering of these textures is different from most others - so you may need to renumber them manually, and use reader to make the mod. 3) if using the terrain option the source textures are doubled (2x2 tiled) then scaled back to size as a cascade from zoom 4 to zoom 0. This makes tiling artefacts show up very quickly - before making up your mips make sure your original texture tiles neatly - repeats or edge effects will surely be exaggerated during the tile/scale process. You can review the mips by clicking in the FSH display window, this pops up a window with the other 4 mips. Another thing that may happen: If you use Photoshop to make your source images or your mips for terrain/sea these beware that rescaling images can leave an edge effect - either scaling up or down. This can show as a tiling artefact in the game. Always check that you cant see this by half rotating the image both horizontally and vertically (Filter/Other/Offset) and if necessary repair it.

Well the lots are just there for the Rail Depot models, I wanted something more modern which didn't really exist, so I made one. The model took over 6 months of work, so I don't really plan to go making any others soon. But Rail / HSR will be supported: Thanks to Simmer2 for making the RRW rail textures used (Left). The lots here are designed for RRW, the GLR used in my Sandstone and other texture mods (available as separate rural GLR mod on STEX) and Vershner's HSR textures. However, the pack will come with options for Maxis/PEG 205 Rail, regular GLR (NAM) and the default HSR textures too. They are very flexible, because the resources I've put together will form a prop pack. I am hoping that will enable lotters to do better justice to the depot than I can.

HOLT: ONE YEAR LATER It has been one chaotic year. It has been a full year since I lasted posted an update here in Holt. When I posted that Holiday shopping update a year ago, I didn’t expect there to be a full year gap in updates. But, as they say, life is what happens when you’re busy making plans. So, you might be wondering what has been going on in Holt for the past year… Unfortunately, not much. A lot has been going on in RL, basically everything has been keeping me busy. It’d be easier to list things that haven’t kept me busy. Needless to say I haven't been around here much this year as RL kept me more than busy... So, Holt. Unfortunately not much has been going on there. In all honesty I have probably spent only a few hours in Holt the entire year. Certainly nowhere near the amount of time I have in years past. Little has been developed/achieved. That's certainly not to say I haven’t been messing around in SC4, I have, just not so much in Holt. Call it creator’s block, if you will. There are certainly some ideas floating around, but few seem to really work out. I think I am, more or less, “stuck” with where to go in Holt, or at least not sure how to get where I want to go. I think, like some of my other projects, I worked myself into a corner. Some things I have done in the past in Holt have set me in a direction I can’t totally change, and unfortunately some of what I want to go with Holt, can’t be achieved without totally changing the dimensions of Holt. (By that I mean the realism of things built not being suddenly scrapped, minus that one CBD, of course. ) People who play any sim-style game will know the desire to try something new every now and then. Which brings us to now. In essence, there is nothing new to show from Holt from this past year. Part of that is the creator’s block described above, part of that is RL keeping me immensely busy. Unfortunately for Holt, it doesn’t look like the busy part will get any better. In fact, it will probably only get worse. Those two facts, and several other factors, lead to one hard decision: One year after the last Holt update, I am officially ending Holt. These past 3 (!!!) years have been absolutely amazing. Okay, so the last year may not quite count, but you get the point. When I started Holt I had a general idea of where I wanted to go, but I never did fully expect how much it took off. The sheer volume of likes, views and comments received exceeded my expectations exponentially. The feedback has been great, and I have had so much fun sharing the progression of Holt with you. Recently, I took a look back and read through the updates I have published. I don’t often actually go back and look at updates that are too far back. It was a great trip down memory lane. I can still picture preparing some of the updates, particularly larger ones (like the census) or ones outside my normal comfort zone (Helllooo Amusement Park!)… but all in all it did make me smile a bit. So too did everyone’s feedback, even when people were pointing out things that were a little, off... things I needed to work on. (How else would I know how to get better? :)) This past year, well past several really, have been exciting and challenging. A lot has changed, just as a lot of things changed here too. It was definitely not easy to officially call this the end, but here we are. While this certainly is not good-bye (I plan to still be active in the community, despite 2015 being a mostly non-existent year for me), it’s the end of a big chapter of my time here in the community. It is time to officially close the book of Holt. It has been an absolute blast publishing Holt for the past 3 years. Hopefully I will see many familiar people around the community for some time to come. And as any avid book-lover knows, just because you’ve closed a book doesn’t mean you’ll never read it again. All the best, simlink Thank You, for coming on the journey through Holt for the last 3 years.

Greetings once again from Asgard! Thanks for all the comments and the constant private messages I receive from everyone .. it's still much appreciated.. I'm so disappointed that all my images have been lost since Majhost went down earlier this year, and I hope to one day start uploading them again to share with you all. Although I no longer play SC4 .. I never showed off some of the work I was doing with the remake of Triton City. I'd never done a large sprawling Uni before and was quite inspired by another member after seeing theirs, I once again I got the Lot Editor out and started relotting things to my own style .. unfortunately it got a little out of hand as you can see from the mosaic I am posting .. over two city tiles and a mosaic of 9 different pictures.. University of Asgard, Triton. I'm still playing Cities: Skylines .. but no doubt SC4 will eventually draw me back in one day, I'll just have to get around to installing it again and looking for some new bats. Best wishes to everyone, stay creative.

Welcome Back! Skyline Rising Ahead... Former parkland redeveloped to house more development. Provincial Parliament parks receiving complete makeovers. That's all for today. Hopefully another update soon. (But, you never know. RL... pesky thing it is. ) NMUSpidey ...and there's more where that came from! The whole western portion of the region is beginning to get covered. Easy to get lost. Thanks for stopping by! naftixe Haha, yep. Not the most interesting area of the region by any stretch. The suburbs and sprawl of North America is fun to depict. It's rampant all over the continent it seems. "Wahoo" Schulmanator As have I. As fun as they are to build and watch grow... don't know if I'd want to be quite this close IRL. Belfastsocrates I aim for realism! It's amazing how much sprawl there is across Canada, and the US as well. Definitely fun to depict in SC4 for me, personally. coolwiththecool2 Same here, it's be totally awesome through here. I'd get lost for sure. xD packersfan It's a fun look. Post-War is definitely less tight, yes. This is more-so based on suburban sprawl in the GTA (Greater Tronto Area) and Calgary. Very tight in those areas. No large yards front and back there, sadly. Land is at a premium (especially in the GTA) so they cram everyone in. As for building areas like this but not turning out, try building one area/neighbourhood at a time, and after a couple switching the building style. I find that adds for a nice mix. Mymyjp Haha, the area has that effect, even in game. And I built it. Thanks For Visiting! Happy Holidays!

What you need to do is to smooth your waterfronts. The cliffs need to be transformed into beaches, ideally the best terraforming tool is the smooth one and just keep holding down until there is barely a gradient. Ideally you want a gradient like this... Notice in the top left how the river bank barely rises while the sandy textures extend at least four tiles in land. THAT is the look you want I believe. Edit: It's not the best picture but I'll try to find a better example from one of my CJ pics.

Hi everyone, So this is my foray into MDing/CJing. Good to be here, though I must say this is mainly to force myself to get in the habit of preparing stuff for display. First things first... I'm playing on a map of San Diego, CA (surprise, surprise ;D), made by the NHP and blade2k5. I think it might be slightly underscaled compared to the practical scaling of the game, but in general I'm very happy with it. Because this is my first MD and because I'm not the most original with names, many will be lifted straight from their real-life counterparts, and will often reflect the real locations in-game. However, the extent with which they match the real world comes to my next point... This is not a recreation CJ. I will not be attempting to make everything exactly like it is in the real city. Game limitations, personal disagreements with the current city development, and creative factors all play a role. (Plus, what's the point of using the game pics when we can just use the real ones?) Be aware, then, that names may be altered and elements included/removed when compared to the real San Diego (for any who might've been confused by the occasional different name/roadway/etc.) I will also be building this region as we go along. Many parts of the city are not finished, and may show up from time to time in the pictures. I've noticed that my play style has changed as I've found this site and been exposed to both custom content as well as the way other users play the game. I try to make every city functional, though I will be using the occasional cheat lot for purposes of aesthetic. I want to be able to adapt and adjust my building style as we go along, hopefully with your help. I unfortunately have no time for both an MD and modding, so none (or very little) of that will be seen here, but hopefully you can give me vital feedback about the project as a whole and maybe even make some decisions about how certain parts of the city develop. Enough about what this MD isn't. First, some pics. Most pics are available in full size. Just click! 1. Old city hall. Now it's used by the county for paper pushing, and is a popular place for business lunches due to the park and the bay that's directly in front of the building (not shown). Click here for a Z5 mosaic (warning 4mb 3880x2150 res) 2. Key Tower, the second tallest building in the city. It was built amidst much controversy, but we'll discuss that later. You can see the Emerald Towers and the new Government Center towards the right. 3. Highway 395, part of the city-wide scenic route, and very crowded during rush hour. It also happens to run through the San Diego's "Central Park," known as Balboa Park and also home to San Diego's World Famous Zoo. 4. Banker's Hill. This is just north of main downtown, and primarily consists of mid-rises with the occasional high-rise building. An old height restriction for Lindbergh Field to the west and the large number of historic homes under the Mills Act has kept this part of the city mostly flat, especially compared to downtown just a few blocks south. 5. The city has revived steam power on it's commuter rails, and in a joint effort was able to convince the San Diego and Imperial Railway (SDIR) to also use steam engines on it's daytime freight runs. The switch was for a number of reasons, including a need for increased ridership, a large amount of inexpensive regional coal (esp. compared to current diesel prices), the increased tourism draw, and a glut of manual laborers that would be put to work in maintaining the engines. (the lower unemployment rates were what drew the attention of the currently unpopular government) As a final note, you may have noticed from my previous posts on this site that I suffer from a lack of brevity (wordiness, etc.) Hopefully I will improve this too, as we go along. No sense in being tedious; descriptions should be interesting and informative. Let me know if it's boring. That's all for now. ST Forum Archive!

Hopefully I'll be able to satisfy some expectations here in the next few weeks. So I'm in the OSITM over at SC4Devotion this month (April). One of my biggest issues with the map that I've had lately was my frustration with the coastlines. Currently the land drops very close to the water, particularly near the downtown areas where it makes good seawalls look...well like nothing worth looking at. The other problem I've had is that by default the terrain for beaches would go from 250.4 meters (dry ground) straight to the sea floor at 192 meters, which made using any sort of terraforming tool for nicely sloping beaches essentially impossible. They would always drop to quickly, or else just eat away my land mass, which when trying to develop a city other than Atlantis, is not a good thing. I'd been putting off the inevitable for a while now, but figured this month was as good as any to get started on it. 1.Using the sea level adjustment trick I learned from one of Noahclem's tutorials, I've dropped the sea floor down to around 175m. I'll be doing a bunch of work all around my coasts, but for now, here's a few teaser images of some work I've been doing underwater in Mission Bay: 2.Some prep work for some decent beach slopes: 3.Progress is kind of slow, however: 4.And to finish it off, a pair of images, this time from the community of Mission Hills where I'm having some issues getting my Sims to commute to work in the next tile: a. b. Some replies and more progress will come in the next update, hopefully within a week if all goes as planned. Thanks for stopping by. Also, I am more active and find it easier to respond to comments/posts in either the CJ section of ST (not the forums) or at SC4Devotion, mainly because I find the editors easier to use in those places, so responses may take longer here in case you're looking for a BAT, method, or just want a response for something in general. I consider this to be more of an archive and informal, however, so if you think it may take more than one response (like Ln X's and my conversation above) then I guess this is the place for you.