ryleeys

As you can tell, a very new region... Aieia

The traffic circle with crossing roads looks exactly like several interchanges in Guangzhou, China. Many of them have one highway remain at ground level, one highway as an underpass, and the traffic circle as an overpass... or sometimes the circle is at ground level and sandwiched between highways...

After the last three years of my life in Guangzhou, the most important thing that city needs to do is clean up the Pearl River and develop a true waterfront district. It's an absolute waste of the delta there right now, partially because the river has such a disgusting smell sometimes that you can't tolerate being near it. Unfortunately, they're only really developing away from the best river spots at the moment.

I know I'm going to be out by myself on this one, but I think the worst building in the world is Falling Water, a house in Pennsylvania by Frank Lloyd Wright. It's not a terrible building and has its fine points, but for the sheer amount of hype it gets that completely overlook its shortcomings (massive concrete walls detracting from the scenery, incredibly low ceilings and narrow hallways, etc.), it gets to the top of my terrible architecture list.

Well, I've seen some nasty backups on the Washington DC Beltway... but I've never seen anything worse than the daily traffic in Guangzhou (where I lived the past 3 years), both automobile and human.

Okay, I just got a copy of SimCity 4 Deluxe. I've downloaded the SC4Update4BAT... but where can I download the Update 1? simcity4.ea.com only directs to SimCity Societies now...

We miss ya, Digby.

If anyone has the time, I'm looking for an accurate scale map of St. Mary's County, Maryland. I've managed to use GoogleEarth to come up with the shoreline, but since it's satellite photos, the elevation data is worthless. I'd like the map to range as far: west to the St. Mary's - Charles County border, north to Prince Fredrick in Calvert Count, east to include the shores of Calvert and St. Mary's Counties, south to a little beyond the tip at Point Lookout in St. Mary's. If it includes parts of Virginia or the Eastern Shore, that'd be more than fine. It's gonna be a pretty good sized region, but I need room to build. All of the inlets and bays and rivers and streams should make nice building areas though. Depending on how much room there is, I'd be thrilled if it ranged all the way north to Annapolis. Anyway, I appreciat the help.

Never ending construction in one word? China. The apartment building next to mine was completed in April. Before any tennants could move in, they tore out the first two floors (stores and a lobby) and began rebuilding. Rumor has it that the government keeps unemployment here artificially low by creating these building projects. However, I found out there are places in greater need than in a developing city like Guangzhou. I recently vacationed in a town about 10 hours by bus inland from Guangzhou. However, if there were real roads in the area, it'd probably be a 5 hour ride. Anything more than an hour outside of a city here and the roads are worse than just driving across open terrain. I think this road was built in the '50's and has never been repaired. There were drops in the pavement of greater than a foot. On a side note to that, we were on our way back to Guangzhou and ran into a traffic jam on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere at 2am. Seriously, can that happen in any other country? There were more than 20 vehicles on this two lane road in rural Guangxi at a complete standstill. Crazy. Back on topic though, I saw a tremendous amount of construction in Korea, but it's nothing like in China. The road I live on is about 500 meters long and has no less than 7 buildings of more than 20 floors under construction.

You know, I've read dozens upon dozens of city journals and after awhile, the pictures tend to look the same... That being said, I really appreciate the analyis that you put into this. It'll make it a much nicer journal to follow. If you're looking for ports, do a search on the STEX for PEG and CDK That stuff is crucial to coastal development.

Is that going to become the tallest building in Digby?

Well, if you wanna put me in your journal, go for it. Ryan Fickes, Teacher I'll live anywhere... all I ask is that I have some type of car and maybe a lady friend...

Target across from Wal-Mart isn't that uncommon... In my hometown, there are three consecutive shopping center / strip malls... the first is a Target, the second is a K-Mart, the third is a Wal-Mart... I'm intrigued by this region.

Hey, wanna show us some cool tricks with bridges???

Can you do sage brush or Joshua trees?

Very nice indeed... If you're the resident stadium guru, may I suggest Oriole Park at Camden Yards for your next creation? There are quite a few football and soccer stadiums out there, but a lack of nice major league baseball stadiums...

Any of these networks very functional? Or is it all eye candy...

Those are props... they're cherry trees. Very common in Japanese temples and castles.

I like it, but just my two bits about the original terraforming... I'd like to see more of a blend in the desert. It just seems to be an abrupt transition from desert to greenery. I've never really seen that in my travels around North America (is this based on somewhere else?) Also, beautiful mountain ranges... but I like foothills too... you do like your cliffs, don't ya?

To NOB and Armandeus I was wondering if you guys could do me a favor. I'm looking to replace all of the in-game farms with rice paddies. I haven't gotten much response over on the BAT request thread, so I thought maybe you guys could look around the Japanese websites, they might be more interested in this type of thing. Maybe they'll even make a new BAT for it. Anyway, I'd be very grateful if you could come up with something. Thanks for all the great BATs... (now to see if I can return the favor and put my Korean and Chinese to use finding some SC4 pages from those countries)

Well, since I've only really ever worked on one region, this is about the best I've got. I've got a port and railyard located pinned between a river and a mountain, so not much space. I just put the railyard right over the access road and rail for the port. It was expensive to get the terrain all at the right level, but I think it looks nice enough and is functional. None of the roads intersect the rail, so trains don't ever have to interrupt traffic.