joerg

The Story of Tengaire Valley begins in the late 16th century during the age of exploration. In 1579 Juan Cortez led and expedition to what spanish explorers believed to be the island of California. Cortez and his men, not to be confused with the far more famous Hernando Cortez, sailed from Spain in 1579 to the eastern coast of North America where they gathered supplies and slaves for a trip around the american continent and back up to California. Cortez eventually landed at the bay of Tangaires in 1583 four strenuous years after the voyage had begun. By this time he and his men were exhausted and sure they still had not found this mystical land of California that the indians described. Another three months trying to navigate around the supposed island of california left Cortez completey sure that this land they had stumbled on was most definately not the Island of California. In 1585, sure that he was close, Cortez set out with half of his crew sailing west into the vast blue Pacific in hopes of finding the real Island of California. He and all 234 me were never to be heard from again. However, the roughly 200 men he left behind did become some of the first Europeans to settle California. The region of Tangaires was acctually named by Cortez, to this day we know not what inspired the name, but the my personal favorite story is the myth that it was named after a woman in the mysterious Cortez Journals. You see there is a legend that Cortez left journals with one of his captains at Tangaires before he sailed out. In this journal the name Tangarine came up many times, she was the woman that stole Cortez's heart, but prior to their marriage Cortez was dispatched to America, soon after Tangarine wrote Cortez that she would come to find him in this "California" she stole away on a ship to America soon after and was never heard from again. Cortez lost his mind and believed if he could find California he could find Tangarine. Legend or Truth we may never know but the people of Tangaires will tell you the only way to truly know is to live their and experience the area's aura that heightens every emotion. The Spanish did not stay long though, without a captain or a purpose the group quickly fled East, and it wasnt until the early 19th century the region again made homage to Europeans. This time it was the American fur trader that found Tangaire to be quite the treasure trove. Beaver can be found throughout the entire area and their pelts were very valuable. As the fur trade came to a close the region found new meaning in 1862 when the American President Abraham Lincoln Signed the Pacific Rail Way Act which eventually lead to the construction of the TransContinental Rail Way. This inpired Lewis Theodore Amos, a wealthy buisness man from Chicago to build his own competing railway just north of Lincolns. He quickly rushed out to California and found a starting location, armed with two thousand men, and a small collection of maps and research on the area, he began his rail way, the Union Northern Continental from Tangaires California, hoping to meet up with the Eastern Trans Continental prior to the famous pounding of the goldspike that connected this country. Needless to say Amos failed misserably at this goal, but the Union Norther Continental did eventually reach the Trans Continetal, and to this day engines roar out of Tangaires proudly branded with the UNC name sake. The contruction of the railroad and the regions important natural harbors created an ideal breeding ground for early west coast industry, and in 1874 Tangaire was officially incorporated into California as a city population 1743. Alright guys so its been awhile sense i last did well anything SC4 related, but im kind of inspired and bored lately so looks like im back for a bit. Anyhow i had pictures but it seems either simtropolis no longer hosts pics or i am a total idiot. Point being im on my laptop and i dont feel like going through image shack right now so no pictures tonight but i promise you can expect them soon. Anyways tell me what you think of the story so far, and as always it is completely fictional but with a twist of real history.

Dear Communities of BOTH Simtropolis and Sim City 4 Devotion. I understand that many things have gone wrong over the past few years, and because of that our amazing community has been fractured at its very core. That core is the fans that make the content and bring that content to life in cities and on the pages of these great sites. I see constant bickering amongst these communities over where content belongs and where credit should be given, and to be honest it sickens me with every glancing read. I do not mean to deny that things have gone a rye and that people have been mistreated under false pretenses. However, I refuse to accept the misconception that we as a community both Sim City Devotion and Simtropolis, as well as many countless other communities have such different agendas and strengths that we may not function as one again. When I left this community two years ago I was still in high school and by many standards I lacked the maturity to understand that maturity and respect are both things that can only be gained over time. I do not claim to have accomplished adding either of those virtues to my character, but I do know those traits can be found within all of us if we simply look past our differences and learn to once again respect each others talents and passions, which unsurprisingly many of us share. I do not have a vast proposal to bring these communities back together, but I do wish to ask favors of each and every one of you. First off please let us go back to accepting that this is merely a game in which all of us love, and that what we add to the game should be enjoyed by all and not the few that we see fit. Next let us learn to respect each other, this should not be hard to ask of you, it just means when a flamer goes off on another member we defend them rather than sit back and let this abuse occur. More over please do not join in on the complaints, it only tears us apart further and drives members like myself and many others away. Finally I believe that both Simtropolis and Sim City 4 Devotion are amazing sites, and both have very different and yes similar things to bring to the community and both are essential to strengthening us as a whole. However, me must learn to share and be a community as a whole. Forget only uploading content to one site out of loyalty or worse, spite! Doing this accomplishes nothing, and if there is one insult to be given in this thread it is this, If you are the type of person that refuses to share with others simply because you want the fame or the hype or you lack the maturity or understanding to communicate and aid in changing things for the better, then you may need to reassess your priorities. All that said I would like to put forth this gesture of goodwill, I will likely begin working with BSC, members of Simtropolis, and members of SC4 Devotion, in an effort to create new bats and it is my hope that I can help bring a renaissance to this community and its many glorious projects. In doing this I promise to release all of my content at both sites with no personal agenda, and it is my personal vendetta to help aid in the repair of that fracture that weakens us all. Thank You –Joerg. PS: if you kids don’t learn to share and play nice I will remove my content and that is like 250,000 downloads so HA! --------------JK, I figured this post could use a good laugh.

Lets just say from a software standpoint SC4 is sluggish title, not designed to take advantage of much scaling beyone what was available at its release. No multi core support, no advanded gpu support, limited support for more than 2gigs of memory, and a rather slow loading sequence. The game would probably run at its absolute fastest on an xp pro system, 3.46ghz P4 Extreme system (the fastest single core cpu based on netburst if i remember correctly), 2 gigs of memory, 4600 series graphics card, and a massive page file stored on if possible a raptor drive. My guess is this combination would yield very impressive sc4 performance. Which is sad becuase i acctuall hadnt played sc4 in 3 years and in that time my computer went from a single core althon 64 3000+ oc'd to 2.6ghz and a gig of memory and a ti4200, I went to a dual core athlon x2 4200+ @ 2.53ghz, 4gigs of memory, and a 6600gt, needless to say the game honestly feels slower to me. Ideally SC4 would have a mem cap of 16gigs, support for up to 4 threads of processing, and support for offloading physics and highly parrallel tasks to the gpu. Unfortunetly it has none of those nice little performace boosters and we are stuck with it as is.

Ok so I think i might be back with a couple buildings and such, but I am having some problems. First off I refuse to touch gmax ever again, so bat for max is the only thing im going to use. However i only have max 8 and 9. 9 lacks the 3dsmax.ini file and doesnt appear to be compatible. Yes i know this belongs in the troubleshooting thread, so i wont go on about that anymore. Anyways so im modeling in max and autocad and i have a building about 9/10ths done. Amazing pace too about 5 hours to model. Saddly about 7 hours of fiddling with the import, installing 8 and then 9 and dealing with conversion problems and now starting to texture. Still no luck getting bat to work though. But here is my dillema, first off I can model buildings and count it towards school stuff, which makes it a valid waste of time, but the hours spent putting the buildings into SC4 simply are not possible for me. I work full time, go to school, and try to have a life, and while i love the sc4 community and the game i simply done have time to convert over my models. I can light them and texture them and maybe render them but i need someone or somebodies to help me build the lots and take those extra few massive steps. Anyone up for this? BTW pictures sooon.

Alright not a whole ton of time these days guys, so here is the best update I can provide for now. Explanations, and comments to follow this evening. Thanks to all that have stuck with this journal. Here is a region map, we had to dig this out of the old county archives, our best guess on the date was something around the year 1931, seems to be a hand made map drawn up for the an organization that predates the USGS. CLICK THE THUMBNAIL FOR FULL SIZE! Sorry again about the lack of time put into these pictures, work has begun on downtown tangaire as you can see, but the game seems to have its own plans (aka crashing to desktop repeatedly, and yes i have dat packer). The harbor needs work, but I have ran into a huge roadblock, seems i have forgotten my stupid Simcity.com account info, and i no longer can reregister with maxis because my serial number is in use by my self. So i find myself lacking night lights on bats and a multitude of props, and my goodness dependency files are nerve racking. Fox i will check that out and who knows perhaps i might have to bat up an embassy

Yeah the max.ini file is in a hidden folder in the user profile, its burried pretty deep. I did change it though, but changing it still left me with errors. Basically I am getting a scripting error with max starts up. Then in my tools list there is no place to make lods, however everything else is there and some things are even there twice.

I can get bat for max to work just fine with version 8 of max but version 9 wont let me even create lods, much less render. I wish i could just use version 8, but my autocad files can only be transfered to version 9. I think ive changed all the paths i need to but still no luck. I just need for someone who uses 9 to point me in the right direction. Thanks for the advice jason, i just wish it were that simple. I dont want to sound like a complete idiot that cant set up the bat, as said it i can render and everything through 8 but that isnt helping me much, and ive tried just exporting to 3ds and then importing it into 8 but its been a pain thus far.

Actually this building was designed prior to me even being aware of the final design for the Burj Dubai. They do seem similar though.

Thanks guys, and thats exactly what i had in mind for the roof, this is an older building designed without sc4 in mind it was never meant to be rendered from a top down perspective, hence the utter lack of anything on the roof. Unfortunately at the moment i have given up on getting bat for max to work and ive tried contacting a few people about it but no luck at all thus far so i guess modeling new stuff is about all i can do.

Regional pop sits at about 48,000 divided into 9 populated large tiles. I hope to lower that though with the residential halfing mod i just picked up (a HUGE thanks to Livin in Sim whom by the way is looking for the mod that extends the length of freight trains so if anyone runs accross it a PM or post here would be great). The good news guys is that zoning, planning, and layout are nearly done on the central city (about one full large tile right now, one day to be more than 10 tiles). The bad news is I work a 12 hour shift tomorrow (6 hours from now YUCK!) and another 9 hours sunday and monday so im going to be pretty beat, that and I just found a new psu for my modded xbox so there are about 10 games in need of serious love. Lol oh and my job is having me do some graphic work for them! Oh and well girls eat up time too, so again the city might start to move at a snails pace, but i promise pictures tomorrow after work atleast of the lake, and McCook pass.

Thanks Livin in Sim, first off the lake is plopped, i made my own ploppable water some time ago even prior to jeronijs mod. The Main roads you are seeing need to be labeled so far the railroad leaving town is pretty much finished and the coastal highway is about 1/2 done. As for the scale, well lets just say SC4 scale is off in so many regards its almost impossible to tell, but yeah the technical size of the map is 12 x 10 large squares long which means about 48km x 40km or 62km across the diagonal or roughly 40miles. I personally prefer to think of each large city as 3x3 miles because SC4's scale is so crazy, so that makes the region 47 miles across diagonally. As for towns getting covered up that will definitely occur, the metropolitan area is going to grow very naturally with towns I am showing you now eventually being immersed in the overall metropolis while farm land expands even further outward. A little update and teaser is that I am currently developing and laying out the starting point of the city of Tangaire which will eventually become the metropolitan area being talked about. I working on the port now, but I think I need new custom content, Im using Pegs CDK pack and it seems a bit bare. Also population is climbing way way to much, like i am at 48,000 regionally amongst 8 large cities, and I know thats not a whole ton, but I kind of wanted to make this more realistic. As far as growth is concerned think of think of the regions current state as like 1900 although I know there shouldnt be cars and roads and such but just keep that date in mind as in the sequence of events and current stage of development. Oh and where can I find the pedrinas farm mod and the residential pop mod that lowers your population? Ive looked for both with no luck. Thanks again guys and more to come soon, I am currently at work on 4 large tiles that have yet to be shown, and I finished lake Clementine which I know means nothing to you but it looks pretty realistic.

Great work jacky, I love the castle its simply beautiful.

Thanks, and thats a pretty impressive region view you have there. Love the journal, cant wait to see more. BTW is that hand terraformed? Parts of it look terraformed in game and parts look imported.

Looking pretty good, the steep slopes in the second picture are not quite my style, but they acctually look pretty good. I love the amusement park next to your downtown, its very original.

It would be interesting to see this topic in 3 years when we are debating where to find SCS buildings in real life, perhaps we should start looking through our telescopes now so as to find a few of the ones we have seen in screens so far. Very interesting topic here, kind of sad how maxis couldnt even create most of their own stuff. I kind of wonder if they asked permission for many of these designs.... Some of them are pretty close to being exact replicas and im guessing architectural firms to have intellectual rights to their work. Furthermore it seems to me it would have been easier to simply have created their own buildings, i know when im batting i prefer building my own to copying others. PS: Dosomthin I love the irony of using live search in a firefox window, that just too funny.

Quick Regional Update before work.... The yellow marks the future home of the Urban Area. Click to see full. Warning over 1meg in size

Ive personally found the best way to produce realistic agricultural development, is to first zone a massive area of ag, doesnt matter if you cover up hills and things just make it huge, now go back over it with a light terraforming brush where you want your hills to be. This forces the farms to conform to the topography and automatically dezones them where you raise your hills slightly, next lay down a grid for american and canadian farms, or a bit more funky road network for euro stuff, now cover completely with trees and bing bang bam...... you have a beautiful terrain conforming rural community, this all done without detailed zoning work or preplanned grids or anything.

Amazing! perhaps there isnt a need for a massive revolt and development of our own game afterall, now if only MC can avoid the mighty all devouring monster that is EA.... My only hope is there there is regional play or atleast some massive maps.

Hmm I really hate it when buildings feel just too symmetrical, which is why I added the garage. As for it being an afterthought, chances are even in real life it would have been one. Anywho im not trying to argue, i just hate to remove it after putting all the work into it, plus I really think you guys will like it once filled in and surrounded by proper textures and a good base. I suppose I will get out a nice zoom 5 screen shot and compare. Thanks for all the comments, and wow didnt even notice its resemblance to conde-nast.

The garage floors are roughly 11ft which is fairly typical, and makes them just slightly lower than the floors of the building, I just rendered this at 795x1400 to see what you are saying jason. It seems to small to me but I will let you guys diagnose. This is a zoom 5 render with the white base set as a 3x4 it just seems sooo tiny..... Hmm anyways here is the picture.

Ok while I ponder the entryway here is a bit more eyecandy, parking textures are now made, a few more custom roof textures, and i need opinions on the communications mast, (it probably needs more detail). Anyhow the doors down there really have me stumped because there isnt a whole ton of room to go with a bunch of doors, unless i completely rework the base..... My new idea is to open it up and make the lobby kind of like an atrium or something and have it be sort of open air. BTW thanks for the car links. Oh and the white square base is proportioned to be exactly a 3x4. I really think I impressed myself with the parking garage and roof textures, they are all hand made based on top down renders. Even the sky bridge has its own custom roof texture that was hand photoshopped. The base is going to be tricky, i dont know whether i want to just build the entire thing in cad or try to mess with custom lods and the le, or just risk it with basic lods and the le. Opinions?

Hmm ok, so are we talking about the doors at the base then? If so, I think I might be trying a new base with rotating doors or something, further more maybe a large mast on the roof. Hmm pics soon i promise.