Dalton

Nothing can beat a mosaic to truly capture the flow of a city. So why not showcase your best...

A combination parclo/trupet between a road and RHW 2

I've been doing my Trees with MMPs and it's been tedious and I'm not 100% sold on some of my results.  Just figured out about tree controllers (guess I've been living under a log)  My next update might be a bit delayed while I re-tree some stuff

So while I've been around ST for many years, I haven't posted much in the forums in a while. I did at one point have a CJ named Dalton, so I've decided to recycle my name. I can't promise particularly frequent updates but I'll do what I can. This CJ will focus on a large scale project I've just embarked upon. The development of the small fictional province of Dalton within the larger country of Sim-Nation. I am working with the rather large Eaton region map with my goal being to fill the map up someday even if it's just wilderness across many of the tiles. I know this is an obnoxiously ambitious goal, but it will give me the options to build whatever situation I feel like at a given time. I always build for realism, but sometimes I prefer rural, sometimes small towns, others I prefer large scale cities. This project will allow me to do all of those. While I am borrowing many city names from various parts of Canada simply for the fact that I hate trying to come-up with city names, these will not be recreations of their real life namesakes. As I mentioned above, my goal is realism, so if you have any suggestions of what I should change or alter, or what mods I should look into, please let me know. I am always looking for ways to improve the realism factor. I'll get this started with a quick overview of the region as it stands now, as well as a map of my Inter-Provincial Highway network, then I'll get down into our first tile as indicated on the map below. The Highway network will follow these naming conventions. Highways belonging to the Inter-Provincial Highway network will be designed by the letter I for inter-province, followed by a number. (I-17) Provincial Highways will be designated by the letters DR for Dalton Route followed by a number (DR-34) Highways going generally N/S will be even numbered, so I-6 or DR-24 Highways going general E/W will be odd numbered, so I-3 or DR-19 Ringroads or Bypasses around major centers will be designated as 3 digit versions of the highway they are bypassing, for example if I-15 passes through a city, and a bypass is built around the city, the bypass will become I-115. If a second ring road is built, it would be named I-215, a third would become I-315. So that's enough explanation for now. Lets get into this now. Provincial Overview (we will be taking a closer look at the highlighted tile) Click for full size Highway Network. Lets take a closer look at Dieppe a small town along the coast in the north eastern section of the province at the mouth of the Montague River. Dieppe is a small town/city with a population of around 15,000 people. It is mainly an rural farming community. Here we can see the town's water reservoir. Here we have the northern I4 & DR1 junction. I4 is the twinned highway running through, while DR1 at this point is a 2 way traffic country highway. Here is the main street exit off of I4 heading towards downtown Dieppe

REPLIES Mymyjp - Thank you, the FAR intersections do look pretty Tonraq - Thanks, while tedious, I love what can be done with RHW slickbg56 - Thanks ================================= So as I mentioned in the comments on the last update, I discovered tree controlers and had to re-forest my city, here is a view of the water supply before and after, originally I hand plopped each tree, the new one was done with god mode tree tool much quicker and easier. BEFORE AFTER Anyway, lets dig a bit deeper into Dieppe. As I mentioned before, it's a small own in a rural setting. Just a reminder of where we are and how to get to where we're going... (Click for full sized) (Click for full size) Here you can see I-4 passing by the town, and DR-1 passing looping around to the north and east. There are 2 main routes into the city from I-4. One is the major exit directly onto mainstreet which I showed last update, the other is via DR-1 which connects with I-4 in the north, then follows the coast down before crossing the Montague River and heading south through the province. The Main street exit from DR1 is an interesting combination parclo & trumpet that I was quite happy with the result. Since we're on Main street, lets see a bit more. Here you can see some of the suburbs that have grown up around the outskirts of the down town area. In the top corner you can see part of the I-4, Main street exit. More suburbia C.R. Judd Elementary School tucked in among the middle class homes. And lets finish up with a view of some small factories that have setup shop near the city due to the low cost of labor

There are tons of them along the rural sections of the Trans-Canada between Quebec (city) and New Brunswick too. For the record, HWY 400 from Toronto to Barrie is the fastest flowing section of highway I've ever driven on. Last time I drove up there, I was in the middle of 3 lanes going 145km/h being passed by cars in the left lane like I was standing still.

I hope I didn't just miss it earlier in the thread, but how would someone generate a screenshot of a rather larger region without stitching them together in photoshop later? I'm working with the Eaton map and would like to get a few in progress shots of the entire map.

The first thing I've posted on the forums here in a few years, some of the older guys and gals might remember me though. Anyway, this is something I've been working on. Not happy with the chunky-ness of the curves... any suggestions on making them smoother?

As promised.

I step away from simtropolis and simcity in general for a couple of years and my thread is still going some great work in there, now that I'm playing again, I'll have to build a mosaic of my current project.

I've been away from SC for about a year so the newer RHW stuff is pretty interesting to me, but I have what is maybe a dumb question. Those crossover avenue pieces, are they actually used in reality? I've never come across anything like that on any highway and was curious if they were real or not.

I think that's part of NAM

zakuten, can I suggest a leveling mod? jeronij has a good one on SC4Devotion it just smooths the land under roads/rail/highways ect... I'm getting motion sick just thinking about driving around your streets

honestly, who has the courage to try and post after something from Nardo???

Hi, Welcome to my first CJ. I may have been playing this game since it first released, and all the other versions before it but it wasn't until about 6 months ago that I found ST and discovered how to really play the game. That being said I still consider myself to be a newby. What I have learned since "the epiphany" (more on that later) I will showcase here. Before I get into the goods I need to give some credit where due. First of all, the one responsible for "the epiphany" louisville327 and his Eureka. I still don't know what it was about that CJ but it was like walking out of a thick fog into crystal clear sun light. My gameplay changed completely after seeing this CJ. I don't think I build in his style but what I saw there made me realize what this game was. A city simulator, with the goal being to simulate a city. Not to build block after block of grids with the goal of getting a high population. Since that moment, I have not built a single grid. I'm not saying I don't use square city blocks. These are real, every city has them. But rather I don't use set patterns of blocks and my cities have a much more realistic and organic feel as a result. Secondly I much thank Jeroni. His work on simtropia, and the countless mods he's blessed us with have given me no end of inspiration and made this game so much more fun to play. Now I don't tend to have a lot of bats but I do have a fair number of mods installed. I won't bore you with a list, if you see something you want to know more about, let me know. Now, that we've gotten the teary eyed speeches out of the way.... time for some pics to thank you for putting up with me. One last thing.....I welcome all feedback, positive or negative. I only have one request, more for negative but it applies for positive as well, Please tell me why you dislike, or like something. If I don't know why I can't hope to improve my paying style. This city is called Charlottetown (not based on the real one) and is a rural/industrial area in the North West of the mythical province of New Alton. Depending on response I will most likely continue this CJ through the rest of the province but we need to start somewhere right? This is Charlottetown, peaceful farms, and a small town off the Trans Sim Highway (TSH). Things were going ok in Charlottetown, sims were living out their lives oblivious to the black gold that flowed beneath their home and fields. That is until the day Jed MacDonald decided he needed a deeper well for his irrigation system. He quickly called his cousin who worked with some oil company or another and next thing you know old Jed was a millionaire. Last anybody heard he was living it up in California. possibly Beverly Hills.... This is what his farm looks like now. It's been taken over by the new oil discovery. Before long a pipeline was stretched from the oil wells to the port where a new refinery is being designed. The port itself seems to have sprung out of nowhere with the discovery of oil and was quickly established to quicken the deliveries of the heavy equipment needed for such projects. Before too long, a new town had sprung up closer to the strike. Stratford is home to many low to mid wealth workers as well as some of the local Sim-Oil execs. Unfortunately there isn't much for kids to do around here these days so some have taken to TPing peoples yards. That's it for this time. Next update we'll see what's happening in the port since the refinery is due to be completed shortly. How will Charlottetown, and the new Stratford deal with the sudden strain on the local infrastructure? Stay tuned.....

Update Ok, as promised, the latest update. I'll start by explaining what my goal is here.... The other day I was checking out random CJ's and came across one (can't remember which anymore) that had one of the most realistic region shots I've seen in a while. It was a massive area of low density urban sprawl. When I saw that I decided this was what I was going to strive for. Only including the outlying farms. Obviously this won't be a quick easy project but I've made a start anyway... The region view isn't good enough to share yet, but I will share some pics of the work in progress. Here is part of a housing development that as you can see is still out from the city and bordered by farms. I was quite happy with how this rail crossing turned out. I recently changed my slope mod to the one Jeronij put out and couldn't be happier with it.... The rest are just more random shots. Sorry, no mosaic today. Once I get a bit more of the suburbs done I'll do one up.

Replies Haljackey, Most of what you saw was from about a year ago, My play has changed a bit since then. Particularly how I view highways/interchange construction (a lot of this can be credited to your work with RHW which showed me some interesting ideas) As I move this new city in from the rural into the urban setting I'll get to play more with that. Dan and bbfan02, You are both correct in the shelter belts. These are how fields are bordered around here so when I came across these fence lots for farms it was probably one of the best mods for me since RHW/NAM. Preview I should hopefully have a new update later this evening. I'm still building it But for now here's a small preview of what I'm working on. Farms forever get dull after a while, so what you see is the small developments/suburbs starting as you gradually move from a rural to an urban environment. I'll explain what and why when I do the full update later.

I had that same issue when I was trying to run it under linux. I ended up getting around it by a re-install.....

Ok, so here's the other mosaic followed by some random shots. and the random shots, enjoy.

Well after almost a year of in-activity, I've decided to re-cycle this thread and start posting some of my new work. I won't be creating any story this time around, just more showing what I'm working on, looking for feedback, and suggestions. I'll start with a mosaic today, I have another one in progress and a few random shots to post that I'll do later. That's it for now, I'll get some more up later. Be sure to check the older pages to see how my farming has changed in the last year...

for the rails it might be better if you can get your highway to go over the rails. You don't often see trains making that kind to grade