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Harren (Part 3: Shoreton Part 2, what a rubbish update)

Started by 89James89, March 30, 2013, 03:33:32 AM

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89James89

Herran Region Growth


Part 1: Introduction to Herrington


Just a random thread I thought I'd share while I build on the region of Herran. There's not prior terraforming, I'm just making it up as I go. Playing on a 20x20 region, all medium city tiles. There will also be no true story to go with it. Sure I';ll name a few things and there will be reasons for what I'm doing but it won't follow a storyline like the Tepin Island's and will be mostly OOC in the viewpoint.

As with my other CJ's, Sim City 4 and Rush Hour with no mods.

Right so lets see. First tile I choose was two away from the edge of the region as I wanted a coastline and maybe a few islands off of it. It's also the planned area for the eventual CBD when the city expands so its just a simple coastline.


Jumping into the map I zoned the first few areas. Simple blocks for now with an attempt to keep industry away from the other areas.


Growth continued at speed with the initial area expanding in the same blocky pattern.


At which point I got bored of the squares and started adding random winding streets that will no doubt be be bulldozed as we expand. Pointless but nicer to look at.


Decided that as the income could support it to place a Elementary School and a High school. This led to the demand for dirty industry dropping out completely so some demolition was needed to allow the manufacturing to grow.


Just a random picture of the pointless but nice suburbs. I even spent loads of money pointlessly adding trees.



Finally a overview of where were at at the moment. You can see me starting to try and fulfill the sims needs to farm.


That's all for this first look at the region. It's basic and not much compared to most of the other city journals on here but I want to share it anyway.

Cheers

James

89James89

Part 2: Herranton Growth.

As you may have noticed I got the name of the actual city wrong in the first part. Not a brilliant way to start but hey. The name is meant to be Herranton rather than Herrington so apologies for that.

Anyway as for what I've done today its just trying to grow the city really.

First off was trying to fix the fact that when I'd rezoned for the manufacturing industrial due to the size of the lots it had left bits of the industrial zoning unfilled.


This both looked bad and was a waste of space so I rezoned and restructured the entire area. A little while later we had a mix of both dirty and industrial springing up. Not entirely what I'd planned but hey it worked and used the space so it'll do for now.


The other thing to grow was the CBD. As this its planned the the most of the tile will be CBD eventually and the heart of the city that wasn't a bad thing and a promising start. As such I had to zone over some of the housing.


Farming was also expanded as you can see below. I'm still in the process of planting hedgerows and copses of trees so excuse the spaces and blocky look of the area.


Both the rezoning and farmland increase led to the expansion of the suburbs to give the city a more rounded and complete look as well as housing the displaced people.


As you can see from the above picture though, unemployment with the medium wealth residences is becoming a problem. I do pkan on adding water and rezoning somne of the areas to medium density soon though so hopefully that might cease to be a issue, aided by the filling out of the rest of the map with farmland. I know I want this to be the CBD eventually but for now, it can remain as a small town as we develop the surrounding tiles (or at least that's the plan).

Anyway enough blabbering, instead I'll leave you with this overview of current progress.


Hope you enjoyed the update and have a happy Easter everyone!

Cheers

James

rooker1

Another new MD.  A warm welcome to MDing.

Robin
Call me Robin, please.

RickD

So you really start from scratch.  ;) It will be interesting to see how your town develops.
My name is Raphael.
Visit my MD: Empire Bay (My old MD: Santa Barbara County)

89James89

Replies:[/b]

rooker1: Thanks for the welcome.

RickD: Thanks though that town has gone as I decided it'd be a better idea to terrafrom a region first.



Part 1 (redone) Terraforming and Island


Right, well I've decided that the region size I had was too big and that I didn't really like the whole blocky approach I'd had to Herranton so far. With this in mind I went back and have redone the whole region as a island. The size is now 4x3 Large squares with a rim of small tiles around it (so 18x14) in all.

The below images just show the terraforming work (I work by hand). I'm nearly done with it in the last image shown, just need to add some more weathering and make the mountains look a bit more realistic and flowing, then tree the island, but most of the work is done.

Initial shape set out


Taking shape


Current state. I discovered the region census program hence why this one is a lot better and clearer. At this point I've just finished reconciling the tiles and there's just a little bit more work until I can fill the island out and get building.


Comments and criticisms appreciated.

Till next time.

James

Kergelen

Nice to see your MD start from the begining, without mods and any plugin. I'll be interesting seeing how you begin to add mods and other plugins (if you do)
The island looks quite beautiful. I suggest you to use SC4Terraformer to polish terrain transitions between cities ;)


                                    Links to SC4 websites

vortext

Looks good sofar, I also wanted to make an island for a long time, badly. Wondering what it is about SC4 that makes us do that!  :D

Anyhow, Kergelen gives good advice, the Terraformer is indispensable for creating regions. You may also want to have a look at the regions that've already been made (here & here). There're some pretty neat islands in there!  ;)
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

89James89

#7
Replies:

Kergelen:
Thanks and yes, it will be right from the very beginning as then you can all watch it grow along with me. I don't think I'll be adding any mods at any stage as I want to see what I can achieve with the base game and rush hour.

I did download the terraformer but I was struggling with it but seeing as I made another island by hand that looks a lot more seamless it should be all good. Thanks for the link though and I'm sure with a bit of practice I'll become better at using it.

vortext:
Thanks. You should make a island map as there pretty fun to terraform. As I mentioined above I tried to use the terrofrmer but struggled a bit, though I've made a much more intesting map by hand below anyway so it should be all ok.

Thanks for the links to the maps, I'll have to take a look through them. For now though I'm going to use the one I've terraformed below.



Part 1 (again) Final design for the island

Right this is the final design for the island. After looking at the last one I decided that it was a bit boring what with it just being a square with a small chunk missing so went back in and made this more interestingly shaped island. I've done it by hand again, due to the difficulties I was having using the terraformer program, but this time I don't think the tile seams are as noticeable.

The map is entirely medium square tiles, which, due to the shape and terrain of the island should be fine as I don't think I'll have any huge cities anyway. As for the actual island, it's all thats ready for now. I do plan on adding some more islands around it and need to add the rest of the trees to the main island but I think the shape is there so I shouldn't be too far off of actually settling it.

Anyway here's the new island.


Like I said I will hopefully have more for you soon but just to show you the stage that I am at now.

Cheers

James

EDIT: Next update has been edited onto previous post.


Part 2: The start of the island settlement, Shoreton (part 1)

Finally got started on the actual city building on the island with a small settlement on the south east of the island. Before we start though, here's the finished island. I know I said about adding smaller islands around it but I can  do that at a later date.


Right, moving onto the first settlement Shoreton. As I stated at the beginning the cities in this CJ/MD will all be organically built. As such there all a bit all over the place, with no defined grid or optmised road layouts, a real sprawl, with commercial mixed into residential and industrial. This is also not helped with the way that the island is actually trerraformed so there's areas where there's spaces in-between developments.

Anyway here's some images from the initial development of the small town.

Firstly an image that shows just what I meant by the whole mish mash approach, with residential, industrial, commercial and farming all in the same area. Obviously as the town expands, the farmland will be consumed but the mish mash approach I'm keen to keep throughout, with an approach to providing what they need as they need it.

The centre of the small town.


The second image shows an area built up during a time where residential was in high demand. There's still commercial and industry mixed in but it's mostly a small housing estate.


On the outskirts of town it's mostly farmland as it would be in real life, although I like to mix it up in town, on the outside I wanted it to be mostly farmland, with the odd small hamlet and industrial site (as well as the odd industrial building used to add buildings to farms).


Anyway that's all I've got for now though I'll finish up with this overview.


Hope it's not boring and plain for you all. Its not as nice looking as most of the others here but I hope that some of you may find it fun just to follow along as we grow.

Till next time

James






RickD

The map looks great. Should be fun to build on it.
I recommend getting a water mod. The baby blue Maxis water just does not look good.
My name is Raphael.
Visit my MD: Empire Bay (My old MD: Santa Barbara County)

rooker1

Some great work here.

Please remember to post your pics as jpgs as the MD rules states, as pngs are uasually much larger and take too long to load.

Robin
Call me Robin, please.

sim_link


89James89


Replies:[/u]

RickD: Thanks it is a lot of fun to build on, though rather more hilly than I planned. I'm afraid I want to keep it mod free so I'm afraid the water will be staying as the baby blue maxis provided us with. Hope this doesn't annoy you or put you off to much.

rooker1: Thanks and sorry about the image sizes, I thought that photobucket automatically formatted the file size. I'm saving them as jpegs now though so the opening time should be decreased by a lot.

sim_link: Thanks and I'm hoping you continue to enjoy it.




Part 3: Shoreton Part 2, what a rubbish update


Right lets see. Last time we left off we had a small town of justr over a thousand sims. Today we'll take a look at the first issue that has arose for the citizens of Shoreton which, amazingly enough wasn't a fire. In fact the problem was trash. As you can see in the next image the trash which had no where to go was really beginning to build up.


So, the initial solution for the problem was this tip on the outside of town, which as you can see, didn't really solve the iussu as it quickly filled up.


So a further look at the tip in the middle of growing farmland, and I added a recycling centre to try and help with the rubbish which seems to be working for now. As this is also probably going to be a pretty permanent feature, what with not being able to delete zoned tips that are in use, I've planted trees around the site to try and seperate it from the farmland surrounding it.


Anyway other than that the town has continued to expand outwards. I've also tried using the terrain conforming ped mall tile as a retaining wall. It's not perfect and doesn't compare to the retaining walls but I actually think it gives the place a sort of old school charm and is the best option considering that I want to keep this journal/diary non custom content.

(as an aside, the first image that has a large (and frankly bad) overuse of this method was eventually sorted out so it look's a lot better.)


Anyway that's all for now. The town is at around 3,500 sims and as you can see from the overview below, it's slowly growing outwards. At some point soon I may have to provide some services but for now continuing to expand seems like a much better idea.


Till next time

James


nbvc

Nice work. I like the farms. Will you use Maxis buildings only? Some custom buildings can add some variety to your city.

SimCity V6

Quote from: 89James89 on March 30, 2013, 03:33:32 AM
Herran Region Growth


Part 1: Introduction to Herrington


Just a random thread I thought I'd share while I build on the region of Herran. There's not prior terraforming, I'm just making it up as I go. Playing on a 20x20 region, all medium city tiles. There will also be no true story to go with it. Sure I';ll name a few things and there will be reasons for what I'm doing but it won't follow a storyline like the Tepin Island's and will be mostly OOC in the viewpoint.

As with my other CJ's, Sim City 4 and Rush Hour with no mods.

Right so lets see. First tile I choose was two away from the edge of the region as I wanted a coastline and maybe a few islands off of it. It's also the planned area for the eventual CBD when the city expands so its just a simple coastline.


Jumping into the map I zoned the first few areas. Simple blocks for now with an attempt to keep industry away from the other areas.


Growth continued at speed with the initial area expanding in the same blocky pattern.


At which point I got bored of the squares and started adding random winding streets that will no doubt be be bulldozed as we expand. Pointless but nicer to look at.


Decided that as the income could support it to place a Elementary School and a High school. This led to the demand for dirty industry dropping out completely so some demolition was needed to allow the manufacturing to grow.


Just a random picture of the pointless but nice suburbs. I even spent loads of money pointlessly adding trees.



Finally a overview of where were at at the moment. You can see me starting to try and fulfill the sims needs to farm.


That's all for this first look at the region. It's basic and not much compared to most of the other city journals on here but I want to share it anyway.

Cheers

James

Cool MD! Hope it gets into the MD Hall Of Fame, OSITM, and #1 at Ben's Top 10 soon! Who says a MD has to have boatloads of custom content???