zzsim

CU is looking very promising from those screenshots ! I'm excited to hear that you guys are putting a lot of emphasis on the transportation side of the game. CL developed a good base for road networks (no grids, easy to construct bridges... etc.) and if you expand that to more road types (highways mainly) I think the transportation system in CU could be very cool. I do have a few questions, though, concerning the terrain and maps. From the sound of it the maps will not be region based like in SC4, so that leaves me with the question of just how big they will be. Will I be able to create a sprawling metropolis, and how much control will I have over editing the terrain to my liking? Anyways, great work so far and thanks for keeping the community informed, I really look forward to seeing more information about CU!

Thanks for the great tutorial tompadom ! I'll have to see if its possible to do the same thing in the Gimp. Have you tried creating a similar effect for snow? That would be a cool way to recreate those chilly North Dakota winters!

Originally posted by: Duke87 Answered correctly so far:4) zzsim 6) zzsim 7) zzsim 9) tiduskeegan Hints on the unanswered: 1) How does Joe 90 the engineer not know this one? Anyway, it's not Rhenium, but you're in the right part of the table. 2) This movie was making fun of another series of movies 3) He has long flappy ears 5) He was a very significant historical figure. Everybody's heard of him. Imageshack says it's 1.5 megabytes, but they lie. They're using an improper definition of what a megabyte is. 10) Not Einstein, but he was a European who came to America. He and Thomas Edison weren't too fond of each other.quote> 2) Well I was originally thinking that it was someone from the 40 Year Old Virgin, but if your saying that it was a movie making fun of another series of movies, then it would have to either one of the Scary Movie(s) or the Date Movie. Though I wouldn't be able to get this anyway, I don't really remember character names or actors very well. 1.538 megabytes 10) That's a pretty easy clue, but Joe 90 already got it. AC v. DC

^ Dirk has to keep watch of this site's users somehow (j/k ). Why do these forum games exist?

1) Rhenium 4) Piccadilly Line 6) 100 I use to love that game, but damn was it annoying , everyone kept leaving there apartments in droves once your tower got to a certain size (if you thought SC4 abandonment was bad, try this game, it'll have you pulling your hair out ). 7) Royal Gorge Bridge

TheSixCents: 5/10 Nice image, but the parlm trees and logs in the canals are a bit of an eye sore that could have been easilty corrected. Amerikaner: 8/10 Looks like a nice European (maybe Russian?) city. Though I would like to see some more detail around the Kraxel Tower, such as a park, instead of the plain trees. Cokatoo-210893: 5/10 Sorry to be so harsh as I like most of your pics in your cj, but this one is just way too overly edited for my taste. tomdapom: 8.5/10 Great rain effects on top of an already impressively realitic oir refinery make for an excellent picture. Nice work! CarmineHilton: 7/10 Nice looking skyline, just nothing that really sticks out in this image. autoVino: 7/10 Good looking nature scene, despite the Maxis terrain/trees. patriots_1228: 6/10 Its a cruise ship, nothing really else to say. SpecialEddie: 8.5/10 Although I don't think the snow effects turned out perfectly, I can still see what you were going for, and the image itself still looks very impressive. Surferb0i8o8: 8/10 Nice lighting and photo shop skills! Oh and to answer your question smstevenms, that is the marrast embankement set. Just search "marrast" on the STEX and you should find it.

Nice interchange gmavignier! I like the realistic gradient of the on/off ramps, and its great to finally see more people make good use of the new on slope highway pieces.

Great start sEAhAwk fAn121, that was a very original introduction ! Your city looks excellent so far, especially the Capital Building and surrounding gardens. Nice skyline also, got to love those NDEX skyscapers! My only suggestion would be to make some of the highways either elevated or sunkin, as that will not only add realism to your city, but it will also conserve space. Anyways, I can't wait to see what everything looks like when you finish filling everything in!

Excellent use of the new terminals in your airport, very modern looking ! Based on the end of your update, I'm also betting we'll be seeing some airport expansion updates in the future. As always, I look forward to seeing more of Domeston!

Update 3.0 Corrections & Explanations: First off, I made a change to the park around the round about, because I felt that it looked too plain (oh, and I was missing a GLR piece in the station ): Chase Tunnel Explanations: I have also decided to give you all a bit of an explanation as to why I choose to use a tunnel to connect Carson Beach to the mainland with a tunnel. First, the SC4 was reason was simple that I can't build a GLR bridge, and the plain elevated rail bridge looks too boring. Now the city's reason for using a tunnel is that the body of water between Carson Beach and the mainland is actually apart of the real life Inter Coastal Waterway, which hugs the Atlantic coast and provides many shipping vessels with a safer (calmer) route versus tranveling in the open ocean. Often times in real life, the Inter Coastal Waterway goes inbetween the mainland and the barrier islands because the water there is much calmer than the water in the ocean which is good for smaller vessles. Since that waterway is a shipping channel, a bridge connecting the island with downtown would have had to have been fairly high to allow the larger ships to pass underneath. A bridge of the required size would have taken up too much valuable room in downtown and Carson Beach, so the city council decided to go with a tunnel that would not only carry car traffic but also carry the city's new Light Rail service. To recover some of the extra expenses, the city also decided to build a toll booth. So that's pretty much how the Chase Tunnel was born. Bonus Current Region Shot: Linked to provide a full, non scaled back view: http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/3603/coastalheights23rj9.jpg Replies: jacqulina: Thanks, I'm pretty happy with how the flora has impacted my beaches, though I think that I may have went alittle overboard with the palm trees ! tomdapom: Thanks for the great comment! I'm glad you like the GLR, I was a bit worried that it wouldn't really fit in with the rest of the island. topcliff: Ok, you got me . I just thought that it sounded like a nice name for a tunnel, plus I'm not very creative when it comes to naming stuff ! Godzillaman: Thanks, I tried to create a more laid back atmosphere as a bit of a contrast to the buissy dowtown district. waldner: Thanks, I'm glad you liked Carson Beach ! However I think that I've got a long way to go before my cj is in the same league as some of the other greats (past and present) on this site. Thanks again everyone for your comments, stay tuned for future updates! Edit: As of August 1, this cj is now closed.

v. 3.0 Carson Beach Well, I've finally completed the southern most tip of Carson Beach. Overall I am happy with the result, but I am still planning on improving some of the beaches down the line. Also, please excuse any zots in the picture. Due to the beach water glitch, I could not use the cheat to remove the zots without making the glitch reappear. So as a tradeoff for some nice pretty beaches, you're going to have to look at a few unsightly zots . Overview: Notice the improvement some foliage has made since the first preview shot. Two of the largest condominium high rise in Carson Bay are built at the tip of Carson Beach: A second Marriout Hotel also appears in the city, though this time in a much more desirable location (center building): The Grand Incan is one of the city's finest and most exclusive resorts: The southern most tip of Carson Beach is home to some of the richest people in all of the state: Current residence of the mayor, William S. Carson: The Carson Beach Aquarium is a popular tourist attraction for people visiting the beach: The roundabout markes for a major headache for drivers pretty much any day of the week: The Pier is a popular fishing and watersports spot for both the tourists and locals alike: Some high class restaurants and shopping centers line the island's main boulavard: And now for those wondering how people make it out to Carson Beach, I present the Chase Tunnel. Its named after the city's premier baseball player, Tom Chase, who took the team to the World Series in the year 1999, one year before the tunnel opened. The tunnel features a two lane roadway, and also carries the Carson Bay Rapid Transit (CBRT) island line. Currently the tunnel is one of only 3 access points to Carson Beach (two not shown yet): Chase Tunnel Carson Beach entrance: That's all for this update. Thanks everyone for your comments and support ! Replies: FissileBread: Thanks, I'm glad you like my interchanges and foliage placement! sEAhAwk fAn121: Thanks for all the nice complimants ! 2nerdy4u: Thanks, a tunnel connects the two, though it is not the only connection, more will be shown later. koekie01: Wow, thanks for the great page intro ! Yeah, the file name is a bit confusing, I can see how you'd think that it was just a dependency, but yes it is the whole mod. Though like I said, you'll also need to download the trees seperatly. Hope everything is cleared up ! waldner: Thanks, I don't think its perfect yet, but its getting there.

How you can make such mondane things as apartment complexes look so beautiful amazes me. The creativity your cities display is astonishing, such as with that sunkin park, brillant work! Truly inspiring, I can't wait to see more of your city !

I vote for the river! As for that space, a small park would look nice there, and break up your skyline a bit. For midrises, check out some of ill tonkso's work. He's made a lot of great modern midrise builidings that would look excellent in your city. Overall your downtown is looking very good so far, all you need to do is fill in the rest of the space with some buildings, maybe a park/plaza or two and you will be set. I look forward to seeing more !

Mini Update 2.3 Island Preview & Small Downtown Improvements: Well I finally started work on the island east of downtown, simple known as Carson Bay Beach. Here is a very early preview shot of what I have planned for the island's developement: And finally another shot of downtown showcasing some small improvements to the entertainment district: Replies: Amerikaner: Thanks I'm glad you like my transportation network ! jacqulina: Thanks for the great support, hope to see you again! koekie01: I'm going to have to say my bad on this one, it turns out I gave you the wrong link . After doing some more searching I found out that the original C.P. Columbus Terrain Mod is still avaliable on the STEX, and the ones on SC4Devotion are just modifications to it. Here's a link to the actual terrain mod (note the mod comes with options for snow in the installation process): https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=13804 If you search the STEX for cycledogg's work, you will aslo find the tree mods that accompany the terrain texture mod (there are several downloads). topcliff: Not at all, imitation is the sincerist form of flatery ! To be honest, this is the first time that I have really tried to build a light rail system (or regular rail for that matter) in my cities, so I don't have a lot of experience with them. Right now the goal of my LR service is to connect the central train station to all of the different districts around the downtown area and the island. The station by the train station acts as the central hub of the network and the LR branches out from there going to Carson Bay Beach, the entertainment district and the rest of downtown. Thanks again everyone for your comments! Once I finish off the island, I will then begin to develope more of the suburbs surrounding the city's core.

^ Well, I have an Nvidea 8800gts with 640mb of video memory, 2 gbs of DDR2 Ram @ 660mhz, and 4 gbs of virtual memory, I highly doubt that SC4 was crashing (for me atleast) because it ran out of memory. When I checked the memory usage during the most intensive sections of the game (loading the game or a city) the memory usage never even went above 1gb. Plus, before I upgraded my computer I only had 512 mb of memory with a P4 2.4 ghz processor and never had any stabiltiy issues. If this problem is infact memory related, why did my old computer with much less memory experience no crashing problems when my new one with 4X the amount of memory did? All I know is that by turning off Hyper Threading, I have not since experienced any SC4 stability issues. The game does run a little slower, but it dosen't crash when I decide to zoom out.