theterminizer

At long last, this is my second map uploaded to the STEX, a region I have been wanting to play for a long time but haven't found anywhere. This is an often-ignored but quite scenic and historic area of Washington, the eastern Olympic and western Kitsap Peninsulas. As a Portland resident with family on both peninsulas, it is an area I have frequented, and there are few better drives than Highway 101 up the Olympic. I like small maps with one large city to create a non-sprawling metropolitan region with a single urban center. I did take the liberty of making the southwest Kitsap Peninsula as the main city, as there no urbanized areas on the peninsula and the Kitsap is large and generally flat. I tried to grid out the rest as true to life as possible. The historic towns of Port Angeles, Sequim, and Port Townsend (originally meant to be the shipping center of Washington) are highlighted. Hood Canal is the large fjord that cuts through the two peninsulas. In the far southwest, the Skokomish River and Watershed lead to Lake Cushman. The Dungeness River flows to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, separating the United States from Canada, in the north. A large city was gridded in the heart of the Olympic Mountains, making for the perfect opportunity to recreate Olympic National Forest using some of the great mountain, park, and trail mods around the STEX. It's up to you whether you make this the industrial and commercial giant the founders of the area envisioned, or keep it as the secluded and peaceful natural area that it is today. Thanks for looking and hello to my fellow Northwesterners! Is it Spring yet??

This is my first upload to the STEX so please be gentle. I've downloaded a lot from the STEX so it's time to start giving back. I've spent a lot of time trying to get this mapping thing right and I finally feel like I can create something that is worthy of being uploaded. If all goes well, this will be the first of many maps (and maybe even some BATs). I grew up all over this region, which lies to the east of Los Angeles and Orange County. I tried to include the major lakes, though I'm afraid I'm not skilled enough to draw in the Santa Ana River. If you want this to be accurate, you'll need to manually carve it in. I even included Big Bear and Arrowhead Lakes, though as they're mountain lakes, they're in some pretty deep holes. I've included a custom config.bmp which you may or may not like. I don't like to play with a lot of large and medium cities; I don't like a lot of sprawl (which surely comes from growing up in Southern California) so I try to contain growth to specific areas. I also find that I don't build up the small cities until I've developed much of the larger ones, and I find the resulting empty spaces and subsequent development between towns and cities to be a lot more realistic. As a rule of thumb, if a city's population is over 100,000 in reality, I'll make it a large city; 25-50,000 will be a medium city and less than that will give a small city. Given the limitations of the map, I couldn't grid things out perfectly, but it should be generally representative of the area. The large cities are meant to be Riverside, Corona, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino, Fontana, Moreno Valley and Perris (I made the latter a large city because of its geographical size and because I wanted it to encompass as much of Lake Perris as possible). I'd also like to make note of the medium city on the left edge of the map sandwiched between several large cities. That's the city of Norco, where I spent 10 loooonnnng years of my youth. I'm the first to admit this isn't a particularly interesting region, but I'm pretty much going to stick to places I've lived or been with some regularity. My future maps will be moreso, but I wanted to get this one out there, get some feedback to improve future maps, and maybe give someone else from the area a chance to play on their hometown. If I get enough response (and some tips for improvement), I'll release an updated version (maybe with a river). Otherwise, I'm going to try my hand at some other, more interesting places. Enjoy!