MallowTheCloud

Not just "closer together", but touching. And yes, it's purely visual. Some of us play SimCity not JUST for the representation of city mechanics or the challenge of building a successful city, but for the visualization of the city as well.

Please elaborate? Many users are mentioning a bug with the water system. Or you dont have anything factual to add? I'd also like to point out that many of the issues I originally brought up (certainly more than half) are neither related to launch issues nor simple game-mechanic-ignorance. Like the fact that my city selling water wasn't earning any money for it. I'm reasonably convinced Mr. Griffith didn't even really read my post.

Yes, again, this is perfectly logical, but not what I was talking about. Take a look at my post again. I'm asking about "excess" as it pertains to police, fire, medical, etc. How am I supposed to know how many ambulances I need to reach the "excess" threshold?

I'd also like to point out that there are aspects of the game that are amazing. The level of detail of the buildings, the fact that every sim is accounted for, etc. If it wasn't for the unnecessary frustrations (there are necessary frustrations, but I'm not referring to those here), there would be quite a bit going for this game in my eyes. And I do believe things will improve with time. The game has a lot of potential. But as it is now, it's very tough for me to enjoy the game as a city simulator.

You've built a strawman. Nobody is suggesting that the city sizes are too small because there's not enough space to do stuff in. The problem is that this is ostensibly a "neighborhood simulator", not a city simulator. The "region" is the size of a city, and since you can only build on maybe 1/5 of the region's land, even that isn't sufficient to call what you have a "city". So calling it a "city simulator" is a misnomer... it's simply not.

I disagree. This is exactly the kind of thing I like figuring out and should NOT be documented in the help docs. Half the fun of playing new games is figuring out all the tricks and features and how to use them. It would be great if it was logical. But it's never logical to have an infinite water table. And that's what this does. So either it's a bug, or something I would have never thought to do. Besides, since it's infinite, it feels like "cheating" to me, and I never have fun when I feel like I'm "cheating" the system. No. There are 4 different water/sewage buildings. There are the two basic buildings, the outflow pipe for sewage and the tower for water. They have a relatively low capacity. Using just these two buildings, you're not creating the infinite loop (unless you want to pump sewage back to your people), but at the same time, if you can survive on a single water tower, it probably rains often enough to keep the water table fine. Then there are two advanced buildings for each. There's a water filtration system for sewage, and there's a water pump for water. I don't know exactly how they stack up to the basic buildings in terms of $/hr efficiency (they're probably better), but they're significantly more expensive to place and offer significantly higher capacity then the basic counterparts. You need enough outflow pipes and/or filtration systems to handle ALL of your city's sewage. Period. If you don't have enough, you need to export your sewage, or you'll have it backing up. You need enough water pumps or water towers to handle ALL of your city's water needs. Period. If you don't have enough, you'll need to import your water, or your city won't be providing water everywhere. Now, I can't remember all the ploppable options on the filtration system, but the water pump had two ploppable options. One of the options is for a basic pump (I think these are like 44,000 each) and the other is for a filtration pump (and I think these are 66,000). They both pump the same total capacity (and each one you plop increases the total pumping capacity of the building). The advantage of the filtration pump is that if the water below it is polluted, it will clean it up before dispensing it through your city. So, if you've got a bunch of outflow pipes (or dirty water for whatever reason), you can plop the filtration pumps and pump clean water out. But if the water isn't dirty, just plop a normal pump and pump away. You don't need towers and pumps. The filtration system is a replacement for the sewage outflow pipe in the same way that the pump is a replacement for the tower. The filtration system deals with your city's sewage. It's more expensive than the outflow pipe, but it has a significantly higher capacity and it also cleans the water before dumping it out. I guess I wasn't clear. I understand all of this (I'm not dumb). When I said "all you need is a single outflow pipe", what I meant was that you can do the following: - Plop a sewage treatment facility to handle all your sewage. - ALSO plop a single outflow pipe. - Plop a single water pump with filtration pumps next to the outflow pipe - Infinite water-->PROFIT This just seems so broken to me. And the fact that in a large city, it's either this option or run out of water makes it even more annoying.

http://akamai.cdn.ea.com/eadownloads/u/f/manuals/GAME-SIMCITY/SimCity_2013.pdf Yes, do you see how unhelpful that is? Just an example quote, and this is the MOST helpful type of quote I can find... "Other services, like police, fire, or transportation, can be volunteered to another city. To send help to your neighbor, you must first have enough resources to supply your own city. Once the needs of your people have been met, you can choose to assist others. If you have surplus, select the icon of the resource, and then select the number of vehicles to volunteer to that city. Your services are then on the move, and help will arrive in your neighbor’s city shortly. Note that vehicles you volunteer do not subtract from the number of vehicles available to your city." Great. Something I would have logically concluded on my own. And yet it doesn't answer my question. What, exactly, constitutes "enough resources" to supply my own city? What's the threshold, and why? This is one of the most technical paragraphs in the whole manual, and even it isn't that helpful. The game manual simply does not answer most specific questions about game mechanics.

Um, you guys do realize that SC4 is one of my favorite games of all time, right? I know how city-simulation games work. I've played pretty much all of them (even Cities XL). Zpike, the city I ran out of water in was a city with "max" water supply. It now has almost zero. As for the sewage->treatment->water not being a bug, that's fine, but there's no way I would have figured out that that's a way of "fixing" my water problems by myself. I would have assumed, logically, that dumping sewage would not lead to an infinitely-replenishing water table. That makes no sense. kgpurrs, it should be a challenge to build a large, successful region. It should take strategy and wise use of resources. There should be moments of frustration, but it should be a moment to learn and recover. That has not been my experience so far. My experience has been that I don't even know what's going on in my city half the time, and have no idea where to even begin looking. How can I learn from a mistake when I don't even know what the mistake is in the first place, and have no idea where to find out? They claim data layers give you more information about your city than ever before. But not all mechanics have a data layer, and for those that don't, you're stuck just accepting that what's going on is intended behavior (if you can even know what's going on). EDIT: I'd also like to point out that I could easily create a large, successful region on my own if I wanted to given what I know of SimCity so far. But I'd have to forego some of the aspects of the game I want to try in order to do so. Which is ridiculous game design... "we have made this available for you, but good luck figuring out how to implement it how you want to successfully, because we're not going to explain how it works in-game".

Ignorance of game mechanics, sure. Refusal to try to figure them out? No way. I have been to the game manual. It explains everything in the least helpful ways possible. It gives info on overarching ideas, but doesn't go into specifics. And specifics are where I'm running into brick walls. And let's be fair, only one of my issues is related to lag/server problems. Not "half".

Depends on the city. I know in Portland, OR, the main water supply is a reservoir up in the Cascades that is fed by, in large part, glacial melt. No need to dump sewage into fields and then pump it out, clean it, and re-dispense it. In other words, they should have a way to extract water from... you know... bodies of water. Because not every city relies on what are essentially wells sucking up the water table. More importantly, if this dump-the-sewage-and-treat-the-dirty-water was an intended part of the game, it should be documented somewhere. It shouldn't be up to us random folk to figure it out on our own (via the other helpful people on here or elsewhere). I wasn't expecting to run out of water so soon in my city, and when I did, I expected there to be a logical in-game solution. The dumping-waste-and-putting-in-a-pump method is not something I would have figured out on my own.

It's really messed up. It seems like one water pump is sufficient to produce some huge amount of water, but you basically need to add all the filtration systems you can. And it seems you only need a single outflow pipe to make it work? The whole water/sewage system is buggy. If you have both outflow pipes and sewage treatment plants in your city (maybe just if they're on opposite sides of town?), you have plenty of capacity but sewage still backs up in parts of town. Or at least, that's what happened to me.

Definitely having the first issue. And I let each city run for 15 minutes or more. Money disappeared from the first city, but never made it to the second. The second problem, I'm finding a bigger issue. Buying water from a source city costs the sink city as expected. However, that money seems to disappear, too. My source city (again after having let both run for over 15 minutes) never ended up making any money from the deal. Finally, progress on great works seems to be buggy. It's very unclear to me (as there's no info in the game manual or any other official source) how it works. My main city produces plenty of alloy, plastic, and processors, which kind of get sent to the big solar plant I'm building. But for some reason the trades occur in odd chunks, and sometimes even though I have the resources available, I get a message saying they aren't and we've stopped sending that resource. Processors were the oddest... the first chunk of supplies only sent plastic and alloy, and only enough to fill maybe 1/20 of the bars. However, the second chunk of supplies filled up almost half the processor bar. But since then, no processors have been sent. I just don't understand how it's deciding when and when not to send resources.

Hi everyone! I am creating a new map-making tutorial, as the old one is not very close to the method I currently use to make maps. This is going to be quite a long tutorial with a lot of information, so I am going to have to split it up in to sections. I'll edit this first post with each new section. Also, I will give two sets of information. The first will be the basics we will need to make an accurate-scale map. Then, in quotes, I will give more in-depth information... as to why you're doing something, for example.quote> Contents... Preface 1: Downloading and Installing Necessary Programs Preface 2: Setting up Global Mapper Section 1: Finding and Downloading Correct Elevation Data Section 2: Creating the Base Map Section 3: Creating and Overlaying the First Water Template Section 4: Creating and Overlaying the Second Water Template (optional) Section 5: Cropping and Saving the Completed Greyscale JPG Section 6: Rendering the Map Preface 1: Downloading and Installing Necessary Programs Before making any maps, we must get the programs that will allow us to make them. I have completed an exhaustive list of all the programs I use when making a to-scale map. They are as follows: The Gimp Global Mapper High Elevation Import Mods W Erosion Control Parameters iDraw IrfanView Landscape Designer NASA World Wind MS Paint And of course, Sim City 4 * The Gimp will be used to select the water outlines for the First Water Template. * Global Mapper will be used to make greyscale images from elevation data. * The High Elevation Import Mods W Erosion Control Parameters will be used to more accurately portray elevations. * iDraw will be used to create gradients, and to draw in water for the Second Water Template. * IrfanView will be used to resize images, crop images, and change images to greyscale. * Landscape Designer will be used to create custom config.bmp files. * NASA World Wind will be used to get visual information from which we can create a Second Water Template. It will also be used to find coordinates of a city. * MS Paint will be used to overlay the water template(s) on the greyscale elevation map. * Sim City 4 will be used to render the final image, and play! quote> Another very important piece of information is the site from which we will get ALL of our elevation data: NASA Elevation Data In fact, there is some data we should download now for future reference. Go to the link above, then click on the "SRTM30" link. In every folder, there is a DEM file. Download each one to an empty folder which we will use for mapping information. It might be good to have a folder inside this Mapping folder specifically for this data. For example, you might put all the DEM files in \Desktop\Mapping\Large Scale DEMS\ These are large scale DEMS that we can use as a filler for possible holes in the smaller scale elevation data. They're named for the top-leftmost coordinates, so, for example, the one containing Hawai'i is W180N40. They are split in to rectangles with a width of 40° longitude and a height of 50° latitude. For more information, go here.quote> Next, we will set up Global Mapper for easy use with SC4. Preface 2: Setting up Global Mapper There are many things we have to do in order to get Global Mapper to be easy to use. Once we do this, though, the options will not have to be changed again. First, we want to remove the scale bars and change the scale to metric. To do that, go to the Tools menu, and down to Configure... Then, in the General tab, change the information to where it looks like the image below: The scale displays will just take away much-needed area for the map, and we need the metric units so we can resize the map image properly.quote> Next, we want to go to the Vertical Options tab and do a few things. First, uncheck the "Enable Hill Shading" tab. Then, change the "Elevation Display Units" to Metric. Next, make sure "Water Transparency" is 255 (Opaque). Finally, we want to click on "Water Color" to change it. In the color pallette, click "Define Custom Colors >>" and change the Red, Green, and Blue fields to 5 (see image below): We need the water color to be as close to black as possible while still being differentiable by eye. In this way, we will be able to see the difference between the water outlines (which show up black) and the "water" that loads improperly. Furthermore, if this color was lighter, we might get it confused with actual land in the case that we were using a high import plugin, such as 5000m, because the lowest elevation of this plugin is a grey of 13.quote> Next, we want the Shader Options tab. We have a lot of work to do here. First, under "Custom Shaders", click the New... button. Under "Name", type in 100. Then, click "Add" under "New Elevation" ("Height" should be 0). Now, click "Define Custom Colors >>" again, and set Red, Green, and Blue to 184. Then, click OK. Next, type in "100" for the height and click the "Add" button again. This time, set it to white (the bottom right color). Click OK to get out of the color selection, and make sure your Custom Shader screen looks like the one below: Now, you think that was a lot of work? Well, we need to repeat this many times, once for each elevation mod. So, do everything the same, except name the new Custom Shaders for the max elevation, make the max elevation white, and base the grey for sea level (Height 0) on the following table: 100 - 184 250 - 129 500 - 87 1000 - 52 1500 - 38 2000 - 30 2500 - 25 3000 - 20 3500 - 17 4000 - 16 4500 - 14 5000 - 13 This is the feature of Global Mapper that, in my opinion, makes it better than other DEM loading utilities. Setting the correct elevations for each import mod now will save us loads of time when making the maps, and best of all, the elevation data will now be accurate. The Sea Level of the 100, 250, 500, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 3500, 4000, 4500, and 5000 meter import mods are actually 182, 127, 85, 50, 36, 28, 23, 19, 16, 15, 13, and 12 respectively, but if you set them that low, especially with erosion upon rendering, there will be patches of water on what should be land.quote> Finally, after all that, there's only one thing left to do. Click OK until you're back at the main screen, go to the View menu, go to "Background Color...", click "Define Custom Colors >>", and change Red, Green, and Blue to 5 so it looks like the image below: We do this for the same reason we set the "water color" to RGBs of 5 each. This will show "missing" data, which we can't do anything about. In almost all cases, with the addition of a larger scale underlay, we can avoid missing data. The few places where this may not be the case is near the coast, so in the future when we change these dark areas, we will simply change them to sea level.quote> Click OK, and we're done setting up Global Mapper! Section 1: Finding and Downloading Correct Elevation Data The first thing we need to do is to choose a location. It's pretty easy to just choose a city and work from there. We'll do San Diego for this example. First, we will open NASA World Wind, hit CTRL+F, and search for San Diego. The first one is California, which is the one we'll do. Double click on it, and it will turn the globe to where you're hovering above San Diego. If you have text in the upper right, good. If you don't, hit F10. Now, you should have something like this: Don't worry about anything except the "Latitude" and "Longitude"... but you will want to take down those numbers. So, in a temporary textpad, type something like: Lat: 32.71520° Lon: -117.15614° You can close NASA World Wind for now. Examine the latitude and longitude. The first thing you'll want to note is how close each one is to the nearest whole number. For example, the latitude above, 32.71520°, is 0.28480° from 33.0°, and the longitude is 0.15614° from -117.0°. If either of these are within 0.2° away (in this example, the longitude is), we're going to need to download an additional piece of data. We are going to want to download data that covers the latitudes from 32° to 33°, and longitudes from -117° to -118°, and ALSO from -116° to -117° (because the longitude was within 0.2° of the previous whole number). If the number is negative, we'll choose the higher end, and if it's positive the lower end. So, we want a latitude of 32° (the lower end) and longitudes of 118° and 117° (the higher ends). Positive latitudes are north, negative are south, positive longitudes are east, and negative are west. So we finally have 32°N, 118°W, and 117°W. The NASA Elevation Data website has files split in to sections that are 1° in longitude wide, and 1° in latitude high. They are named for the latitude and longitude in the lower left corner. So, some examples of places and their corresponding tiles would be as follows: quote> Next, we want to go to the NASA Elevation Data website and download the correct data. First, if the location is in the US, go to SRTM1, and if not, go to SRTM3. Since ours is San Diego, we'll go to SRTM1. Next (for US data only), click on the link at the bottom, called "Region definitions.jpg" Find what region your map is in (San Diego is in region 4), go back a page, and open the corresponding region folder. Now, we have a list of height files in the format N##W### (If you're elsewhere in the world, it might be N or S, E or W). Note which latitudes and longitudes you want and hit CTRL+F. For San Diego, we will search for N32W117, and then N32W118 and download both of them. Below is an example in Firefox: Download whichever ones you need... for San Diego, we will download both N32W117 and N32W118. Now, we have the height files, but we need the water-boundary files. So, go back to the website, but this time, go to SWBD. If your longitude is east, go to SWBDeast, and if it's west, go to SWBDwest. For San Diego, it's west. Now, do a CTRL+F again, but this time, the format is W###N## (If you're elsewhere in the world, it might be N or S, E or W), so search for it in that format. For San Diego, we will search for and download W117N32 and W118N32. Now, find where you downloaded your zip files to, and unzip them to a special mapping folder. You have the correct elevation data! Don't close that temporary text pad yet, though! You know, the one with the latitude and longitude? Section 2: Creating the Base Map First, we need to load Global Mapper. The next step, though, depends on how many tiles of NASA data you had to download. 1 tile: I will edit this information in later. 2 tiles: In the case of San Diego, we had to download two tiles of data (32°N, 118°W and 32°N, 117°W). Hit CTRL+O to load the open dialog. Navigate to the folder you unzipped the files to, and select all the .hgt and the .shp files (holding down CTRL to select multiple files): You'll get some dialog boxes regarding shape files and projection information... just hit OK through it all until your images load. 4 tiles: I will edit this information in later. The shp files are major water boundaries, such as boundaries for lakes, seas, or rivers. The hgt files are the elevation data. The shp files don't have built-in projection details, but they will be able to automatically choose the best projection information on their own.quote> Next, use the top drop-down menu to select a color scheme, higher than the highest elevation in the terrain you will highlight. For San Diego, 1000 will likely do: Try to judge which elevation scheme to use by finding the lowest one which has no white in the area you'll likely be zooming in on.quote> The San Diego data is a bit tricky, because since I downloaded it from the US data (SRTM1), the data south of the border doesn't show up. But, anyway, use your latitude and longitude data to find the right spot to zoom in (for San Diego, it was Lat: 32.71520°, Lon: -117.15614° ). You'll notice in the bottom right of Global Mapper it shows the latitude and longitude of where your mouse is hovering over. Get as close to the right coordinates as possible, then click to zoom in. Click the near the top left twice more, and you should be on a pretty good zoom level. Hover the cursor over what looks like the highest point, and make sure it's below your currently selected color scheme. On my San Diego map, the highest point I can find is just over 250m, so I'll change my color scheme to 500m, the lowest I can go without parts of the map going over. Also, if you are using the "2 tile" method, check if there are any black splotches in high elevations (not just lake or river outlines, those are fine, but actual black splotches where there should be mountains aren't). If there are, you'll have to use a modified version of the "4 tile" method which I will explain later. For my San Diego map, there are no high-elevation black splotches, so I can continue. You'll want to zoom in so that your region is about the right size... a good size is about 40 x 40 km or less, though if you want a bigger region, it is up to you. The larger your region, the less detail you will get using this method.quote> To continue, view the map on Global Mapper, and hit the "Prt Scr" button on your keyboard. Without quitting Global Mapper, load IrfanView. Then paste the image in to IrfanView. Next, using your cursor, make a box around just the area that contains the map. Then, hit CTRL+Y to crop the image. Now, we have to figure out the scale. Go back to Global Mapper (without closing IrfanView). Choose the tool at the top of the screen. Hold SHIFT and click the mouse once at the furthest left portion of the screen. Then, drag the ruler across the screen, keeping it as straight as possible, until you reach the right edge. Look in the bottom left corner to see how wide the map is (for San Diego, it's 24.5km). Type this in to your notepad to remember it. Next, do the same, only from the top to the bottom of the map rather than from right to left, and see how tall the map is (for San Diego, it's 21.1km). Type this in to your notepad as well. Next, go back to the IrfanView image and hit CTRL+R to resize it. Make sure the "Preserve aspect ratio" box is unchecked, and the "Size method" is resize, not resample, and type in the new width and height using the following formula: 64 x km wide = pixels wide 64 x km high = pixels high So, for San Diego, we have 64 x 24.5 = 1568 pixels wide, and 64 x 21.1 = 1350 pixels high: Now, go to the Image menu, and down to "Convert to greyscale". Finally, save the image as a bmp file. You can name it whatever you want, but I'd suggest keeping the height mod number (color scheme in Global Mapper) in the title to remember. I named mine SanDiego500. Once you've saved the image, you have your base image! You can now close IrfanView, Global Mapper, and your temporary text file.

Originally posted by: blade2k5 Originally posted by: MallowTheCloud I'm doing fine! I graduated in June and am one of the fortunate ones to have a job right out of college. It looks like you've been keeping up with the map making, and your maps are incredible!quote> Glad to hear that. I don't think I'll ever stop making maps, it's in my blood like I was born to do it Have you been over to Devotion yet? I'm sure the guys would be tickled pink to know you're still among the breathing quote> Not yet. I should definitely stop on by over there, though!

I'm doing fine! I graduated in June and am one of the fortunate ones to have a job right out of college. It looks like you've been keeping up with the map making, and your maps are incredible!

Wow, Blade, you sure have my homestate down!

Bump! Okay, I'm not going to fool myself. I probably won't get around to completing this tutorial, at least not any time soon. I'd like to, but I'm just so busy and I have lots of other things to do in my free time. But, first and foremost, I think the part that's complete gives a pretty good idea of where to begin. Secondly, who knows? Maybe I will finally dredge up enough diligence to get this thing done! Just letting you all know that I still exist. Whether or not anyone cares, I donno.

Here 's a link to my Mapp Squad Maps. First and foremost, this is where I want anybody to post any problems they may have with maps that I have made. I don't want to have low quality maps, so any input is good input! I have released two map packs, so a search on the STEX for these cities may not return anything by me, but they're in the packs. The US Edition includes the following regions: Boston, MA Cincinnati, OH Des Moines, IA Harrisburg, PA Jackson, WY Jacksonville, NC Kansas City, MO Los Angeles, CA Madison, WI Mankato, MN Memphis, TN Rochester, NY Rome, GA San Jose, CA Tri Cities, WA Twin Cities, MN The International Edition includes the following regions: Aurillac, France Barcelona, Spain Berlin, Germany Bermuda Brisbane, Australia Florence, Italy Geelong, Australia Gothenburg, Sweden Jamaica (not to scale) Mexico City, Mexico Monterrey, Mexico Mornington Peninsula, Australia Norwich and Great Yarmouth, UK Rome, Italy Scotland (not to scale) Strasborg, France My individual maps: 1. Duthford 2. Guadalajara, Mexico 3. Saint Augustine, Florida, US 4. Palm Coast, Florida, US 5. Cloudland 6. Singapore 7. Tokyo, Japan 8. North Sydney, Australia 9. Buxton, England 10. Delta, Netherlands 11. Southland Gorge 12. Ottawa, Canada 13. Everett, Washington, US 14. New York City, New York, US 15. Sydney, Australia 16. Long Beach, Washington, US 17. Indianapolis, Indiana, US 18. Portland, Oregon, US 19. Las Vegas, Nevada, US 20. West , Northeast , and Southeast Mallorca 21. Stockton, California, US 22. Central Alps 23. Nushagak Bay, Alaska, US 24. Saint Petersburg, Russia 25. Saskatoon, Canada 26. Jakarta, Indonesia 27. Regina, Canada 28. Chatham Islands, New Zealand 29. Stockholm, Sweden 30. Rivervale 31. Oslo, Norway 32. Bakersfield, California, US 33. Newcastle, Australia, US 34. San Francisco Bay Area, California, US 35. Colorado, US 36. Ann Arbor, Michigan, US 37. Reykjavik, Iceland 38. Columbia River Gorge, US 39. Lafayette, Louisiana, US 40. Long Beach, California, US 41. Wizards Coast 42. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 43. Cairo, Egypt 44. Lisbon, Portugal 45. Florida, US 46. New Jersey, US 47. Oregon, US 48. Laredo, Texas, US 49. Rome, Italy 50. New York State, US 51. Berlin, Germany 52. Harrisonburg, Virginia, US 53. Stratus Cliffs, Cumulus Hills, and Cirrus Plateau 54. Korsør, Denmark 55. Cincinnati, Ohio, US

It's been a while! I'm sure there are many "newer" members who don't remember me, but for you old-timers, I just stopped in to say hi. I've been in college for the past three years, and along with work and my obsession with other forums (namely two specific weather forums), I have neglected Simtropolis. But this was my first forum experience, and I felt I owed it to you guys to give an update on how things were going. Hopefully I don't act like a stranger in the future, and instead visit more often. I haven't played SC4 in a while, but I know it's only a matter of time before I pick it up again. ~Mallow the mapmaker

Might as well stop by in this thread again... been awhile.

Originally posted by: jacqulina hiya hows you doing welcome backquote> Thanks! I'm doing well. Originally posted by: s.i.X I remember you! quote> Originally posted by: coolotter88 just don't be a TV meteorologist, I hear that job stinks.quote> Agreed! Originally posted by: Vandy Hello, Mallow, my friend. It is SO VERY nice to see you posting again. I must say I've certainly missed your presence around the Forums. I'm sure you've noticed quite a bit has been going on since you've last been active. I'm still making maps, albeit under my Map This! - Cartography Service label. (Currently, I am creating a map for two different Simtropolis members and hope to have them finished and uploaded in the next week or two). I've a map I'm creating that promises to be the best and biggest I've done so far and hope to have it completed approximately two weeks after getting the other two maps finished. After that, I'll be taking a hiatus from map-making in order to fully persue a project I've been contemplating for some time, my own CJ. When you get a free moment, how about "poking" around the OmniMaps - Mapping and Terraforming Information portion of the Omnibus. It's a little "project" I've started and am trying to grow. Again, Mallow, it is really great to get the chance to chat with you again. Take good care and good luck with the weather forums. Regards, Gary (Vandy)quote> Hi, Gary! Thanks so much for the kind words. Originally posted by: Easy Bakes Welcome back mallow quote> Thanks! Originally posted by: your_adress_here Well I'll be darned. Welcome back!quote> And thanks! Originally posted by: Ded I remember you Welcome back....quote> And thanks again! Originally posted by: Duke87 This is where I say "Hey, I remember you. Yes, I'm still here. No, I haven't gotten a life."quote> Heh. It's okay, neither have I. Originally posted by: Explodingsims Hmmm, I think I've seen you here once... Well, at any rate, Hi!quote> Hi! Originally posted by: Smarty218 Can't say I remember you....But welcome back all the same!quote> Yeah, you joined p

That they are indeed! I'm almost done with this year (just a few more weeks to go), then I have one more year and I'm all set.

OMG, I can't believe I won a Trixie and wasn't even here to accept it. I'm sorry! Thank you very much for the nomination! I will try to make up for my absence by completing the map tutorial, and maybe, just maybe, if I can find the time, I might make some more maps.