unseelie

Thank you for your responses, guys. I had begun to suspect that density thing before I went to bed, since I was seeing random parking bays here and there by the end. My main testing had been in one of the Berlin cities, so it was pretty much all low density. The trees aren't a deal breaker for me, but I was disappointed that they ended up obscuring my view so much. They are beautiful trees, however, and I like them a lot. I will probably just choose a set of smaller trees when Andreas' version comes available. Of course, I might not end up using the mod at all since it seems to be bogging my game down tremendously. Maybe if I remove some of my forty million or so plugins, it might help.

Just a couple of things. I, too, am not seeing parking bays. My cars are parking on grass. There are no asphalt textures appearing beneath them. I could live with that, but it sort of defeats the purpose. Otherwise, it is a very exciting mod. I do have one criticism, however. There are way too many big trees generated. They tend to obscure my view of the buildings. I know there will be an upcoming modification that allows more tree choice, and I would ask that the number of trees generated be controllable, if possible. Don't get me wrong; I love the look of the trees, and the tree-lined avenues are spectacular, but not being able to see my buildings is bad. Overall, though, I love this mod and thank you for putting the effort into it.

While I also suffer from many of the same problems, I've recently been devising strategies to help me get up to speed. One of my favorites is building a region-wide transportation system, but not one that goes to every adjacent square in every city. I map out a route for a major road or railway, representing the push of a transportation system from a more civilized area, and I follow the terrain in a logical way to get to another edge of the region. The terrain will dictate this, and multiple routes may be made if so desired. I usually lay a railroad first, then make a road going along the same general route. Then I try to start a number of communities along that route in places that look like they might be good for communities, esp. near rivers and such. That's usually a big help when I might otherwise be scratching my head wondering where in the city square to begin building. Your map seems good for some farmland. The islands especially would work, but just use flat land and gradual slopes. I think the key is patience, though. You have to play and play. I usually make a backup of each region in its pristine state so I can play and try things and then start over if I don't like it. I think the best advice would be to start building and see where it takes you, identify the problems you encounter along the way, and then try to figure out solutions for the next try.

Nice CJ so far, Fug. Just so you know, that post up near the top asking about the angel with the flaming sword is a reference to the Biblical passage stating that God put an angel with a flaming sword east of Eden after Adam and Eve were evicted.

Sweet, Buddybud. Thanks. I'll try that out asap. And again, nice job on this thread. I really like your el-train and NAM under-road addon effects. Are you planning on putting any of them out for public use, or are any already out?

I actually do the shift alt ctrl click on the god mode button thing and all it has is four new tools for making earthquake faults, sinkholes, etc, but no rain. Maybe they took it out since you downloaded it. Oh well.

First, this is very nice. I love the lots. Second, you had a land-bridge tutorial where you mentioned using the rain tool in the extra god-mode tools mod to create rain in a depression. I installed that mod, but for the life of me I can't find anything that adds rain. Am I missing something?

I don't know about the animals thing, but to the responder who said he hadn't seen a whale in forever, it might be due to a water-color mod. Dark colors can obscure the whales for the most part.

Do you by chance have BigRedFish's tunnel and slope mod installed in your plugins directory? I was playing around with the Rush Hour tutorial with that installed and had trouble with that same city.

The reason people living in recently built suburban areas today generally drive is because they are simply not given a choice This isn't true in my case, although I don't live in a new-style suburban area. I drive because a) it's more convenient than walking, b) it's faster than walking, and c) I can carry more stuff, and thus get more done in one trip, than I can when walking. My hobbies don't include spending hours just walking around all day to do my chores. I want the chores done with as fast as possible so that I can do something I enjoy. Some people also like to drive. It's fun for them. They can boom their car stereos. There are a lot of reasons why people would drive cars rather than walk, given a choice. In fact, I think the only way you would get the majority of people to give up driving regularly is to force them to not drive, and that really goes against everything American. Not everyone in any city of significant size can live beside their work places, and not all of them would want to. Mom and pop corner stores also fail to provide people with lots of things they want, such as lower prices, great selection, or the ability to get a wide variety of things in one place. While New Urbanism sounds great, and may have many great aspects, I highly doubt it is the panacea some people tout it to be.

Actually, that city east of SF is spelled Pittsburg without the h. I don't think AMC was talking about that one. There may be an Oakland near Pittsburgh PA also.

One thing to keep in mind about the water mods: some shades of water will hide the ferry routes in transport map mode. I also like the snowcapped mountain mod, although city names in snow-covered cities can be hard to see, since they are written in white letters. Another interesting mod is the TunnelandSlope mod. The most extreme version is found only in a thread on these boards. I don't remember the name of it offhand, but go to Sculpting Columbia River in the City Journals section and Jeronij has a link to it in his sig. This makes it very hard to lay rails as they only allow a 2% grade, but it makes for much more realistic looking paths, and as Sculpting Columbia River shows, it's also an excellent mod for sculpting cities. It's worth at least testing out.

Dragonanime, Jeroni has a link in his sig to a discussion on Awesome Tunnelling. That thread is the only place where you will find the TunnelandSlope-b mod, which is what he uses. It's a few pages along in the discussion, and it's an attachment to a message.