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We are here: Responses: First of all, thanks everybody for your continued visits on my CJ and your interest. If I recall correctly, there've been 7 comments on my last CJ entry, but 2 of them fell victim to the recent Simtropolis server wipeout disaster. I don't recall what you wrote, you're of course welcome to post it again. Since I couldn't think of any specific answer to your last comments, I'd like to send a thank you to the 5 people who wrote the surviving comments: @EastChapel, @Tyberius06, @simster007, @Xander2005. And of course to my long-time visitor, @justforfun, I'm glad you liked it too, especially the mire. I got my inspiration of it from visual inspection of some pictures I found on the internet, as, unfortunately, here in westernmost Austria, coherent wetlands are almost extinct. Disclaimer: Most of you heard it: The server containing all data from Simtropolis got wiped due to nothing more than a billing error, which resulted in the loss of files, pictures and other content after a certain date. Fortunately, none of my CJ entries themselves were lost, however, some pictures are gone now, as well as at least 2 comments of you on my last CJ entry. I'm doing my best to restore them in the next weeks, as soon as I'm finding time; my job unfortunately takes a lot of time every year in June. If there's something you'd like to see, please feel free to PM me (that way, it's more likely that I'm noticing you wrote something). Contents: After exploring the mainland areas of Birkenhang, we now conclude this city tile by exploring the islands surrounding it, namely: Langland, Windau, Grünau, Sonnenau, and Einsiedeln. Let's first recall this picture of the village parts of Birkenhang: Langland: Actually, Langland isn't an island, it's actually a peninsula, but I didn't had time to finish it in the last CJ entry. Langland is famous for the Donnertafel (lit. thunder table), one of the many mesas on the peninsula from Sebastianskirch to Birkenhang and one of the many results of volcanic activity there. It is only connected to the mainland via a short sandbank, with the only street connecting it to Birkenhang going over a dam: As already shown in the Show us what you're working on thread, the combination of AGC rocks and the new Plop & Paint mod made it possible to place some rock formations there, looking similar to a cliffside (although it's still clearly visible that the altitude difference to sea level isn't very big): Even an area as remote as this has a small village: And an overview: Sonnenau: This island is close to Mariahilf and Eschenfall, and is home to a large monastery complex, with a main building and two side buildings. First, a view of the three buildings, second, a view from the rear, additionally showing the graveyard: And an overview of the island, complete with some fields (that new Plop & Paint mod greatly helped me with that, especially with the fences) and a public park: Windau: Unlike the other islands, this one is uninhabited, but signs - some abandoned buildings on stilts - indicate that this hasn't always been the case. It is unknown who built these houses, presumably this has been an outpost of fishing people that got abandoned: Other than that, Windau is famous for a big grotto, the remainder of a caldera that collapsed, and the warter started eroding away one of the walls. Two pictures from different angles. By the way, I took inspiration for this picture from a similar island named Vila Franca do Campo on the Azores (picture courtesy of Alamy): Grünau: Unlike Windau and Langland, this island is actually mostly the result of sand being gushed to an underwater sandbank and gathering, forming an island. Singns indicate, however, that the western parts of this island have been there much longer before that. Grünau (lit. green land, in German, the suffix -au, derivated from the Latin word aqua [water] is occasionally used for areas and villages at rivers or on islands) is the largest of all of the islands. It is famous for a small village which is actually part of Birkenhang, its green landscape and its vast areas of coastal grass (I don't actually know what type of plant it is supposed to be, I just took Girafe's feather grass, cattails and some of the ALN plants). First, let's have a look at the village itself. I wanted to give it a coherent style, especially with the roofs of the buildings. Next, the harbor, the coast has partly been fortified with rocks to limit erosion of the rather sandy ground: Further to the east and north, let's have a closer look at the sandy coast, partly overgrown with various plants and shrubs. Let's continue to the west now, to see some other parts of the coast (this time used as a public beach for bathing), and the small village part on the northwest of this island. There's even a small extra island, the first one I made only with MMP'ing, nothing else: And an overview: Einsiedeln: The German word "Einsiedler" means hermit, one could thus translate this island's name as hermitage or the like. In fact, despite its rather warm climate, it is actually barely inhabited. It became famous when one of the mayors of Birkenhang shipwrecked on it after a voyage to the Seeviertel with his crew, thereby actually discovering this island (maybe re-discovering it, nobody knows for sure how long his island actually has been known to any humans). They managed to survive there until they were rescued. Since then, it has interestingly been custom for most mayors to live there at least during summer. This island also contains a farm from a rich family growing lemon, fig, and peach trees in the warm climate. It is even being reckless enough to try to grow date palm trees; on the southernmost shore, palm trees are growing. First, a picture of the harbour, the mayor's villa and the beach. According to history (aka urban legends), the people who shipwrecked there built some temporary wooden shacks there; nowadays, this area is interestingly used as a small vacation spot for surfers. Next, the aforementioned farm, with its outpost on the southern shore. I should mention that I made heavy use of the Plop & Paint mod, especially for the lavender farm and the small community garden: And three overviews, first from the northern part of this island, second from the southern part, third from the entire island: And that's it for today's update. Next up - who knows. There are a lot of areas to discover. Unfortunately, my current MMP-ing style for Maxiland takes a lot of time, and only 5 out of 49 city tiles have been completed so far. I'm considering to develop new, less time-consuming, ways of MMP-ing and designing the landscape; I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this. Hope you liked this entry.

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it. Yes, that's the Haus Stechinelli by Kwakelaar. I couldn't find it either. I'm sending you a PM later this evening. I was also thinking about using fillers to civer the jagged pavement, that's a nuisance to me, too. I'm waiting a bit; I believe casper mentioned that they are working on updating the Plop and Paint mod to make it possible to directly plop textures over the streets. If that doesn't work out well, I'm going to make myself some flat grass props and plop them over the street.

During the latest extended downtime of Simtropolis, to put it mildly, I fortunately had some time to work on my next CJ entry, this time dealing with the islands surrounding Birkenhang. Hope you like it.

I'm glad to see that Simtropolis is back. Thank you for all the efforts in restoring lost content. Fortunately, my losses are minimal, except I'll need to recover many of the pictures in my CJ. It's a shame how this has happened, a poor way to treat a customer.

Recently in Maxiland: A few years ago, a previously unknown abandoned hamlet of sorts has been discovered, presumably a former outpost of fishing people, most likely at an age of several centuries. Soon after word has spread, tourists wanted to occasionally have a look at it, so, it has been partly restored, and people can visit it in small, guided groups. Click on the picture to see it in full size.

Responses: @Ke|is Thank you for your continued interest and your nice words. It's actually the sea, not a lake, but I'm nevertheless glad you liked it. We are here: Contents: In today's entry, we are continuing to explore the market community of Birkenhang. Or, to be more exact, the community parts of Eschenfall, Mariahilf, and Außerdorf, as shown on this sketch from the last entry: This coincidentally allows me to finish more or less the coastal parts of this city tile, something that is usually very MMP-heavy. First, let's recall this picture from the last entry, from the area Klarenbach. We are going to continue the road leading to the left of the picture. And we arrive in the center of Birkenhang, the community part of Mariahilf. This part was formed when the first harbour was erected; a lot of merchants moved into this area and thus, this part, nowadays the old community parts, have been built. Nowadays, people have also thought of the recreational aspect: On this small peninsula, a sports center, a hotel, and a marina have been built, and we have already seen the popular beach with a series of small restaurants. Next, a few close-ups: First, the old military building, the so-called Alte Kommandantur, former seat of the head of the local military, nowadays a museum with a small park in close proximity. Second, a close-up of the sports area, I like the way the promenade along the coast has turned out. The bridge there leads to an island with a monastery, we'll see about it in a future entry. Third, a close-up of the old village parts. A small part of the old protection walls, including the gate, has survived and is now part of another park. Fourth, the newest addition to Birkenhang, the small temple the local Buddhist community built there. And fifth, I'd like to include this picture of the rocky coast, I already showed it off before, but I wanted to include it here, for the sake of completeness: A bit more to the north, there's the community part of Eschenfall, more or less a modern expansion, with a nice view to the sea. Even some rich people are living there, enjoying the view. We now head into the opposite direction, to the southwest. This is the new harbour, a good amount of cars and passengers can board and leave ships there. There's also a fishing harbor. The federal route B2 ends at the harbour, but a small street continues all the way to the next community part, Außerdorf (lit. outer village), a small hamlet on a precipice. Two pictures from different angles. Between Außerdorf and the harbour, rainwater has formed a small wetlands area. The people decided to keep it, it is just looking so interesting. And here, an overview over the entire area, including Klarenbach, Unterdorf, and a small part of the Spitz. I've blackened out parts of this picture, since this ara is still a WIP and looks horrible right now. And that's it for today. There's still a good amount of work to do in Birkenhang, such as the mire and the fortress in Oberdorf, the lighthouse area and four islands. Hope you liked this entry. As a bonus picture, I'm showing my first attempt at making a screenshot from a different camera angle with the new Camera DLL mod. The buildings and the marina are looking quite odd, but this picture is capturing the feeling of the hilly terrain around this coastal area much better than the default SC4 angle.

@Lazarou Monkey Terror I just tested this theory by modifying the wealth property in the building exemplar file by replacing 0x02 by 0x03, which means the lot is considered to be of high wealth. It seems to fix this, at least I got the right texture when I tried it in-game. Please try out the file I've attached below and see if it works for you as well. That seems to indicate that I was right about the wealth-dependent texture, but this is a rather unelegant solution. PGX - WLP002M2 Straight wMonoRail_56ace8ea.SC4Lot

Actually, judging by how the lot looks like, it seems it is overriding 0xf918010a, not 0x25901000. However, there is something more important to consider that I just realized: That code glitch you mentioned is actually intended by Maxis. If the 5th digit of the 8-digit code is 1, 2, or 3, this texture is considered to be a wealth-dependent texture. That's how Maxis made it so base textures on growable lots look different when they are downgraded to a lower wealth level. I'm still puzzled of how 0xf918200 can override one of the two textures, though. Edit: This would also explain why the lots look fine in LE but not in-game: The LE can only display the texture that will be replaced - not the other. I'm tagging @pgxpgx now because imo the only sensible way to fix this is to alter the affected textures IID and modify all affected lots. This surely won't be fun because I'm talking about thousands of lots, but I can't see another way. In general: Do not make and release textures where the 5th digit of the IID is 1, 2, or 3, unless you know what you're doing.

OK, that's even stranger, you don't even have that offending texture on this lot. A few questions: Did you make this lot yourself in LE or did it come with the Thing? Do you maybe still have some outdated files or lots in your Plugins folder? I couldn't understand the Readme, but if I'm getting this right, this part of the Thing has been updated at some time during its development. If this is true, then maybe you are having a conflict with an old lot somewhere. You might want to consider uninstalling the Thing entirely (or at least this part of it) and then reinstalling the most recent version.

OK. I'm trying to help you, but this is really the weirdest thing I've ever heard of. The overlay textures files. Those that you want to load last. I even suggest that you actually rename the folder containing the texture files from the Thing by adding AAA at the beginning instead, as an experiment, so they will be overridden themselves. Another, much simpler, explanation that I can think of: There is a bug in LE that actually makes you place two base textures on a lot although normally you can only place one. I don't know how this happens, but sometimes, after I was making some lots in LE, I found out that somehow, there were two base textures at the same tile. If that can be happening with overlay textures as well, this would explain it. To verify that, you may want to upload one lot affected by this override issue and I'll quickly have a look. If possible, one with a lot size as low as possible, ideally 1x1.

I don't actually know if I got this right: Do the textures appear correctly in LE but wrong in-game? Both textures are having the same TGI? If yes, then there's, IMO, only one explanation possible, although I haven't been able to prove it (please forgive my bulky English). I've noticed that the game and the LE sometimes have strange loading orders, sometimes different than Windows is handling it: In the prop selections of LE, a capital letter comes before a lowercase letter, this is quite noticeable with Girafe's props which I'm using frequently. A capital Z even comes before a lowercase a. Also, if you are having the same file/folder name with only one difference - the gap between two letters being replaced by an underscore (_) - the underscore is loading last (in Windows, however, it is coming first). IMO, this strange behaviour is indicating that SC4 and LE are defining the loading order in different ways. You may want to try replacing the ZZZ by zzz (or vice versa) and see what's happening. But other than that, content creators should IMO avoid such issues, anyway, and be aware of this override matter. That's the reason why the BSC texture range has been invented. I'm not so sure if this has been intentional (I've already uploaded mods that override SC4 or even my own textures, and I know why) because it looks odd enough to me that I'm thinking that this is just an oversight. Assuming I got this right, you should report this to pgxpgx.

We are here: Responses: @justforfun Thank you, I'm glad you liked it. I don't actually have a ferry schedule table yet, but this puts some interesting ideas into my head. I'll come back to that later, maybe. @Girafarig Thank you, too. I looked up some pictures of Chiloé Island. I can't actually tell if it's looking the same, but it seems to be a lovely island, with the nature and the houses on stilts. Seriously somebody should make something like this for SC4. @Ke|is @simster007 Thanks to all of you, too. I'm glad you liked my last entry. @Kuba138 I don't actually know if that question is all that important, but the majority of the inhabitants of Maxiland are Catholic Christians, but other religions, including Buddhism, are occasionally present as well. For further information, I suggest reading Entry 6 of this CJ: Excursion: justforfun asked me in the last CJ entry if I could provide him with a ferry schedule table. While I haven't actually put much thought into this, I actually tried to develop a bus line system for Maxiland a good while ago. It may be subject to some changes, but, inspired by the public transportation system in westernmost Austria, I developed a system of regional and communal buses, with a 3-digit line number with a system including both types of buses. I know it's crazy but to me, this is fun, sometimes... This is a bus line table of the Feldviertel, not including the communal buses: (Dashed lines: limited bus service, mostly limited to certain times of the year; grey squares: those settlements have a communal bus system) And here is an attempt to make a communal bus system of Birkenhang: (Dashed lines and stations in brackets: limited bus service; black-white line: railway; light grey: terminal stations; dark grey: railway stations) Ortsbus: communal bus BF (Bahnhof): railway station; HBF: main railway station, NBF: northern railway station Contents: In today's entry, we are going to explore the mountaineous surroundings of Birkenhang, mainly the fortress and the mire I mentioned in the last two entries. Since I'm coming up with no less than 28 pictures, I've put some of them into spoilers, to make it easier to read this entry. Let's first recall this picture of this spa en route from Krabbenfels to Birkenhang: We are going to continue the small gravel path at the top of this picture. This path goes all the way from the spa to the fortress in the mountains. On its way, a small dead-end path branches off to a small wetlands area. First, we are passing a transitional area with a loose conifer forest with the floor covered with berries and moss: Taking the path to the right first, we stumble into the mire. I've put it into a spoiler, to organize this entry better. Back on the gravel path, we continue our way uphill. We arrive on top of some cliffs above the mire. The ridge itself is actually only partly overgrown, mostly with a loose larch forest, shrubbery and stuff. This is mostly due to very low amounts of soil there; at elevated locations such as this, wind often blows away soil, leaving little places for plants to grow. Also, some local woodcutters have built some cabins there. Please make note of the street - I'll come back to it later. And here a close-up, I already shared it in the Show us your MMP work thread: But now for something different. We are going to have a look at the fortress, probably the craziest thing I've ever built. This fortress is dating back to the 10th century, it has been erected between the years of 922 and 946 AD. At first, it has been built to improve the defense in case the Arabian forces that have taken over the Seeviertel would be attacking. They actually never attacked, but the fortress proved to be useful later in the counterattack against the Arabian Caliphates as a training ground for the soldiers, as well as a lookout and trading post. Even now, people live there, and it is a popular tourist attraction, along with the mire (for nature lovers) and the nearby mountain (for hikers). Among its main attractions, there is the historic path from Birkenhang to the fortress. Again, another spoiler, to keep things organized. And we finally arrive at the fortress, sitting on top of the Prinzenberg (lit. prince's mountain). In the spoiler: Four pictures from all 4 angles (north, west, south, east). And some close-ups: First, the church and the Prinzenvilla (prince's villa), second the park, complete with even an artifical lake, used as a drinking water supply, third, the outlet of the lake leads to a small pond and a dried-up creekbed that only fills in case the lake basin gate needs to be open because of too much rainwater. We are not even done yet: At the Prinzenvilla, there's a secondary exit at the east, leading down the cliffs to the mountain Windkogel, with a former watchtower on top of it. From this watchtower, the soldiers used to look over the sea, in case the Arabian forces came attacking. There was even a system of communication via light signals from this watchtower to the fortress to another tower close to the Kommandantur. Again, another spoiler. And that's it for today. Since I've finished the mainland parts of Birkenhang, I'd like to share two overview pictures, the first of the hillside (zoom level 2), the second of all the developed parts (zoom level 1). And as an extra picture, a view from the side (camera pitch 10) from the Windkogel, the Prinzenberg fortress, and the hills: I hope you liked this entry, although this was probably the longest one I ever wrote. There are five islands in Birkenhang that still need to be developed, you might expect the next entry dealing with them.

A huge fortress, a mountain with a watchtower, and a mire, all part of my next CJ entry. Hope you like it.

Another experiment of mine. This is a rather loose larch forest, with shrubbery and rocks, as well as a bit of grass and flowers, close to a cliff, where the lack of soil due to frequent exposure of this area to wind makes it difficult for plants to grow. This is a real-life picture, courtesy by me, that inspired me to to so: A rather loose forest on the top of a ridge, with oaks, hornbeams, maple trees, shrubbery, grass and occasionally, holly. I like those rather rare forest combinations.

And another one. Small old street leading far up, over a dried-up creekbed and immediately through a tunnel.

A semi-rural area (the first houses have already been built here, at a single street going up the hills) in the hills.

My next CJ entry is online, continuing the work at the coastal community of Birkenhang.

Another one from me. A small, partly decorated creek flowing through the heart of a bigger village.

Another experiment of mine, a coast with partly only rocks, and a walking path.

We are here: Introduction: The last weeks have been taking me to a different direction I expected: I started developing the eastern tip of the peninsula Sebastianskirch is located (the yellow frame in the picture above). There's only one community there, Birkenhang, but due to the terrain, it is interestingly split up into several smaller hamlets and village parts. As usual, the historic background: It is unsure when the first humans arrived in this area, but the community of Birkenhang (lit. birch hill), as it is now, literally was formed at a very late year, the year of 1907. It should be noted that in this area, there were several villages and hamlets for a long time, each of them appearing at entirely different times; the eastern tip itself has, however, been called Birkenhang for a pretty long time. In 1907, all of these settlements have been put together to a single community. Here is a sketch of the different parts of Birkenhang at an earlier stage of development (white names: names of village parts, in italics: mountains and hills, in grey: island names, colorful: various building projects): The most important aspects in the history of Birkenhang and its village parts are related to the fact that people there lived mostly from fishing (there's still a considerable amount of fishing industry there, we'll see about that in a later entry), and, interestingly, military and trade. You might have noticed the light blue frame in the second picture above. This part of Maxiland is called "Seeviertel", I already mentioned the 4 realms of Maxiland in Entry 4. In the year of 712, at the time between the first and second Empire, military forces from an Arabian-speaking country started taking over the peninsula at the southeast, taking advantage of the fact that there was no coherent Maxiland empire which could have organized a defense against them. It took until the years between 1325-1443, until Maxireich (even the third Empire) was able to take back part of this area (at least the area visible on the map above; the first Empire possessed much larger parts, but those turned into other independent states at about this time). The close proximity of Birkenhang to the area occupied by Arabian Caliphates made it an ideal staging ground for a counterattack, and thus, in earlier time than nowadays, a military harbor, some barracks (the so-called Kommandantur) and even a huge fortress have been erected, the latter one in case of an attack of those Arabian countries. We'll see about the Kommandantur and the fortress later; for now, I'm concluding the historic background by mentioning that after that, Birkenhang gained some importance in trade between the Seeviertel and the adjacent countried with the rest of Maxiland, and some buildings became cultural centres, such as the fortress itself, the various old village parts and the monastery. Contents: Let's first recall this picture from Entry 13, dealing with the village of Weinbach. The road at the upper left, the federal route B2, connects to the easternmost parts of Birkenhang. We'll start at Klarenbach, the direct connection point, just beyond the border. Two pictures from different angles. It is still a WIP, the adjacent parts haven't been developed yet. Klarenbach is more or less a 19th century expansion at a piece of flat land, and at the intersection (the roundabout) of the B2 with the B7, coming from Michaelshaven over Zirbenbucht to Birkenhang. Agriculture never played an important role in Birkenhang, but as you can see, there are at least a few fields in the little free space available. First, we continue following the B7 (on the top right of the last picture) to the village part Oberdorf (lit. upper village). The very low amount of wine fields is actually part of Weinbach. The small street at the left of this picture goes all the way to the large fortress. And a close-up of the Klarenbach spring: Between Oberdorf and Krabbenfels (see Entry 20), this special spa hotel has been built. It should be noted that there's a small mire nearby, and the hotel's most widely known specialty are mire baths in the mud which is rich in minerals. We'll see more about it later. Back in Klarenbach, here's a close-up of the park between Klarenbach and the center of Birkenhang, Mariahilf. Unlike my usual way of laying out villages (people in Maxiland like building their houses on slopes), slopes in this village are being used as parks, farmland, or just covered with forest. Next, we follow the road into the opposite direction, to the village part of Unterdorf (lit. lower village). The old village buildings are witness to the fact that this area once was covered by several small settlements. Two pictures, the second one is a close-up of the old village and the beach. I should note that I chose these old town buildings because I think they fit with the style, but unfortunately, they're a bit large compared to the rest of the buildings here. The coastline quickly gets more rugged, but as you can see, this didn't stop some farmers from at least deploying a few farm fields on what little flat or smooth land this area had to offer. By the way, I took inspiration for these pictures from a CJ from here, Kanin Fjord. And we arrive in the most peripheral village part of Birkenhang, Spitz (this just means tip), owing its name to its twisted landscape. This area has been living from fishing for a very long time and is most likely actually the oldest village part of Birkenhang. First, two pictures from different angles: And three close-ups: First, the old village parts. Second, the so-called Angler's land, a small peninsula which now only contains a single house, a restaurant, and the local anglers' club, and is a very popular recreational area. Third, the beach of the fishing people still practicing some traditional fishing. And that's it for today. There's still a lot to do in Birkenhang - the village parts of Eschenfall, Mariahilf and Außerdorf, as well as the fortress and the mire are remaining on the mainland; furthermore, the 5 islands of Langland (with a mesa and a lighthouse), Einsiedeln (with the mayor's villa), Sonnenau (with the monastery), Windau (an uninhabited island, the remains of a caldera), and Grünau (a very flat sand island) remain. Hope you liked it.

@Dgmc2013 @justforfun Thank you, I'm glad you liked it. @simmering Thank you too. The moss is actually part of the rock model itself. You can download these rocks here:

My next CJ entry is online, dealing with the multi-part village of Birkenhang. Hope you like it.

A small artifical creekbed near a resort hotel.

Don't drink and drive. Use public transportation. And maybe you shouldn't go drunk to work, either. (This counts double for bus drivers. Here in Maxiland, we are having RHD, not a mixture of both RHD and LHD.)