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Evolution of Windwatt

Started by Ralfger, June 15, 2018, 06:26:27 PM

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Ralfger

#20
Update 7: Backstage

Replies:

@pressus: Thank you very much for your kind comment!
@dedgren: Thanks a lot! Although I never commented I really like 3RR.
@evarburg: There is more rural developmet to come - so stay tuned  ;) You have a really nice and incredible fast developing MD out there -  how do you manage that?
@eldalo: Thanks for the nice words! Actually, most of the lots are my own creation, or add-ons, or modifications of existing lots. Your question inspired me to show you some typical examples in more detail. Enjoy!


Some "Secrets from behind the scenes":

There are many lots I make from scratch - that´s in particular the case for sceneries of specific interest in my developing towns and rural areas like historic monuments or large squares. That together with highly detailed MMPing is one of the reasons of the hard-bitten progress of the MD. Examples are the cemetery (pic 2.2), the small playground (pic 2.1) or the marketplace (T1) - the figures refere to the particular update.


7.1 This market is part of a larger square in front of the main church of Königsfurt - you may spot some other parts in T1 and 5.5.


In other situations, I am highly influenced by lovely bats and just have to create some additional lots to fill in the gaps. The Schiffenberg Monastery demonstrates that very good, core element of update 5.


7.2 Pure monastery complex...


7.3 ... and an overview of my additional courtyards and atrium (row of houses for reference).


Last but not least you find many more or less perfect lots on our well known exchange sites. I love them as they are tweaking them only slightly according to my needs and add some extra lots, e.g. Ms O´Learys Diary Farm (pic 6.1).


7.4 Hard to recognise any difference: I get rid of some trees and base textures and placed some more objects. 
   

No matter why or to what extent I create/modify a lot - I always imagine a storyline for the scene detailing it to a hight degree regardless if these details can be seen in a picture or not. Some of them may be revealed by different angles, by time or season and others will not:


7.5 All for angles of the connecting street frontage (6.4, 6.5).


7.6. Chapel Holy Tide (2.2) in autumn and...


7.7 ...same angle during winter season.
 

Have fun!
Ulrich

evarburg

Hey, secrets of the trade ! Aren't we supposed to keep them jealously to ourselves ? Kidding. I love that SC4 is a collective endeavour. (For instance, ahem, I wouldn't mind having those Shiffenberg plazas !) :thumbsup:

You asked about my MD, thanks, and I confess : I am migrating my CJs from Simtropolis, as I migrated them first from the now defunct SimPeg ; it relieves the itch, especially now that for technical reasons I cannot play (nor relot -- aaargh !) That is the only reason it's growing so fast.

Looking forward to more of Windwatt !

Ralfger

#22
Sorry to hear that -I hope you´re able to solve the technical problems! I am curious to see more of your MD...

Those Schiffenberg plazas are part of the secrets - I ´ve made them by myself. As I never meant to release them I didn´t care neither about dependencies nor the technical stuff necessary to do so. Nonetheless I feel honoured that your are interested  ;D
Meanwhile I adapted the caption of the picture - no more "its" but "my". Apologies for misleading!

Ralfger

Update 8: Back to Fürstenberg

Today we are visiting Fürstenberg´s historic city centre. Middle of the town as well as Windwatt´s religious life is dominated by St. Rodger I., a superb Gothic cathedral.


8.1 St. Rodger I. Vis-à-vis you can see the episcopal see - a baroque styled palace erected in 1724 MD by prince-bisop Uhodal XX. 


8.2 The daily market around the Chaedral offers everything your heart desires - from foods and the finest fashion, to jewellery, books and flowers.


8.3 Next to the market you may find even more attractive shops, enchanting cafés and lovely places to enjoy the sun.


8.4 Soon after the episcopal see´s dedication the first cultural heritage act enters into force forbidding the erection of any modern building within the city walls. Still today Fürstenberg´s cityscape is characterised by timbered houses.


S.O.S!!!
What an abrupt end to this update - I can not open my city tile any more!!! :angrymore: :o

I just made some minor changes on a lot for a better appearance of the bishop´s park and to fix the silly tree in the last picture - and faced a CTD opening the city again. I set graphics to low, launched again - CDT after opening the tile. I deleted the lots from the plugins and opend the game once more, put them back, changed graphic settings in every aspect - always the same result: Several seconds after entering the city tile I face a CDT. Does nayone has any idea why that happens and how to solve it??


Still a way to go - sorry for the bad quality, older screenshot taken with my mobile.



Manuel-ito

#24
Sad to hear about the CTDs, that historical centre looks really good!  &mmm
About the problem: Did you happen to use the 'save and quit' option instead of the two step method of saving then 'quit without saving'? It turns out the former doesn't wait long enough for a heavily customized city to fully save before quitting, to desktop nor to region, thus potentially leading to save corruption.
Unfortunately there's no way around this once this happens, outside of reloading a backup and rebuilding the lost work. In any case, I'd recommend Installing this plugin to avoid clicking on the 'save and quit' option in the future.
Another CTD issue can happen if you uninstalled a flora plugin (as in 'MMPs') in-between sessions without bulldozing existing instances first. The game doesn't really delete the previously used flora, so any terrain-related update on their former location can lead to a sudden CTD.

Ralfger

Thank you for that useful link! As far as I rember I always avoided that mentioned mistake but better to have a capable reminder  :thumbsup:
Finally I have had the time to dig deep into my hard disk and found a backup file made a couple of months before my last update. A major setback and very frustrating as it is the second time I ended up with such a mess... It means to redo a lot of work but stay tuned - WINDWATT is still alive!

PaPa-J

This is great news!  :thumbsup:
Lighten up, just enjoy life,
smile more, laugh more,
and don't get so worked up
about things.

Ralfger

#27
Update 9: "back on track"

Replies:
@Manuel-ito:
Thanks again for your hint! In the meantime I have found out what caused the CTD: a modified lot!!

@PaPa-J:
Thanks for your kind words, glad to hear!  :)



After a couple of days reinstalling an ancient backup, starting rebulilding and facing instant CTDs after reloading the city tile I finally managed to identify the reason: my episcopal see based on a modified lot of Landsdowne Terraces! I don´t have a clue why as I didn´t uninstalled any flora plugin at any time but after deleting I managed to be back on track... 




9.1 Safe playground down the moat right behind the city gates



9.2 The market place with all its lovely market stalls and nice cafés is not only a spot for fresh food but popular meeting point among the locals. Eeach day hundreds of tourists are crsooing the place on sightseeing.



9.3 Enough shopping? Sit down, have a a cup of coffee with me and enjoy the sun!


As you may see and remember from update 8 the bishop´s palace is still missing. And I have to admit that I am very hesitant rebuilding it....

Have fun!

siemanthepieman

I love the playground in the moat!

PaPa-J

The market place looks busy but relaxing!  Great job!
Lighten up, just enjoy life,
smile more, laugh more,
and don't get so worked up
about things.

evarburg

Nice little old town and market, esp. picture 3 ! I'll have that relaxing coffee now, thank you !   :)

kbieniu7

It's the first time that I post in this thread. Nice to hear being mentioned in the first post, thank you :)

I took time to look trough the images and now I need to say that they are wonderful! I love the climate of that historic (yet) little town. Combined with awesome lot editing and MMPs all of it gives an excelent detailed image!  :thumbsup:
Thank you for visiting Kolbrów, and for being for last ten years!

Ralfger

#32
Birthday Present

Replies:
@siemanthepieman:
Thank you! It would have been nice to have such a playground in my childhood  ::)

@PaPa-J:
Thanks for your nice comment!

@evarburg:
Thank you! I am sitting at the first table next to the planter placing the order  ;)

@kbieniu7:
Thanks a lot for your comment.I plan to show more of the map in the near future! I really love Kolbrów - especially the Krakow episode. It reminds me on a wonderful New Year's Eve I spent there. 


Having birthday is not only a day to celebrate but a good occassion to make a little gift and to satisfy almost forgotten wishes: 

Quote from: evarburg on February 15, 2019, 11:58:27 AM
(For instance, ahem, I wouldn't mind having those Shiffenberg plazas !) :thumbsup:

So I decided to present you with two of my litte additions to the Schiffenberg monastery (to be found as attachment):


T2: Fürstenberg Monastery: Garden and Yard with a small fountain

Have fun!
Ulrich

Ralfger

#33
Update 10: Wachtenklipp - development of transport infrastructure


10.1 Commuter train between Wachtenklipp and the popular seaside resorts further down the coast.

Replies:
@all the constant "Like-givers":
Thanks a lot for your support - any comment would be highly appreciated. In particular, I would be grateful for critical hints and suggestions how to improve.
@the ones who downloaded my Schiffenberg gardens:
Thanks for doing so - please leave a message if the files are working well and if I have mentioned all dependencies as the SC4 Tool didn't work...


As the name suggests, Wachtenklipp was founded as small watchtower overlooking the see. Over the centuries the tiny outpost developed into a small fishing village. Let's have a look on the map - can you imagine where the village might be located?


10.02: "Mare e Monte" - 4x4-tile Wachtenklipp

While Wachtenklipp remained a rather small fishing village, further down the coast some popular seaside resorts popped up. Mayor Ralfger, governor on behalf of the Rodigen dynasty, decided to build a bypass to reduce through traffic in the town.


10.03: Unfortunately, he had to learn that the smoothest solution possible was neither covered by the budged nor by the official Network Ageny Model.

There is no other alternative as to dig once more deep in the municipality's pockets and to rebuild the layout of the line.


10.04: Primary task is to find an appropriate solution for the bypass without shifting the railway line even a single tile.

After a lengthy selection process NAM provided a sound solution:


10.05: The new bypass winds its way up with rather sharp curves due to...

... Wachtenklipp´s industrial zone. Food production forms an important part of the local industry. 


10.06: The Cajun Sausage factory is one of the most important employers in the city and the whole region.


10.07: The company is the only supplier of the famous fish sausages.

Most of the commuters use the rail:


10.08.: Central-parking next to the main station


10.09: We narrowly missed the arrival of the train.


10.10: Commuter train to the seaside ressorts.


10.11: Crossing a small creek meandering to the see.



Question Corner
Welcome to a new section of my MD: The question corner is meant to be a discussion forum. A place for me to ask silly or profound questions about gameplay and in the same way for you to place remarks, questions and suggestions.

So my very first question is about this odd behaviour of this lot:

The concrete textures change into the green ones after a couple of in game months and the railway line does not match. Could the reason for the first be a lack of workforce and the latter multiple overlay textures? Does the rail line only fit with a singel layer?

Have fun!
Ulrich

kbieniu7

Quote from: Ralfger on July 15, 2019, 04:10:34 PM
Thanks a lot for your comment.I plan to show more of the map in the near future! I really love Kolbr󷠭 especially the Krakow episode. It reminds me on a wonderful New Year's Eve I spent there. 

Thanks! Nice to hear it :)

That's some nice work with the infrastructure. I often have similiar problems that the ideal layout is very hard or impossible to build in SimCity :/ Nice workaround, though.

Nice shots with trains going trough the landscape, would like to see some more of railway infrastructure ;)

Regarding your texture problem, I sometimes have similiar issue, but do not know how to solve it either :/
Thank you for visiting Kolbrów, and for being for last ten years!

Ralfger

Update 11: Wachtenklipp - Bypass road Part II

Replies:
@kbieniu7: Thank you! This time, I don't have new pics of the railway line but I hope that road infrastructure will do it.  ;)



After completion of the southern part of the bypass the uphill section of the road has to be projected and built. The current traffic situation on the existing country road leads to permanent traffic jams.


11.1 Afternoon traffic on a typical early summer's day.

Remembering the waste of money during the erection of the southern part, Mayor Ralfger ordered some models from NAM to find a workable solution for the northern section in the run-up to the real actions. The bypass has to overcome a height difference of 23 meters between the tunnel entrance and the roundabout and an additional height difference of 28 meters to meet the finished southern end.


11.2 The first and preferred solution. Mayor Ralfger was quite proud of the smooth split until he checked the paths. He should have read the description of the used exit type more carefully.


11.3 A nice flyover to change the driving directions but requiring rather much space for the drive-up ways.


11.4 A smaller although drawn-out solution.

Whereas mayor Ralfger preferred the second solution, the citizens of Wachtenklipp organized a couple of demonstrations. They fear that the bypass will consume to much space and destroy popular spots. They insist on the preservation of these scenic beauties.


11.5 At this small hillside the famous Girafe berries are growing in a remarkably amount.



11.6 Each summer, dozens of Wachtenklipp´s citizens invade the spot to crop the berries or to find other fun.



11.7 A lovely mountain face and excellent hunting ground.



11.8 As a compromise, the bypass will be realized as a modification of the third model. The road is closed for the next months and the construction trailer for the field surveyor is in place.



11.9 Road construction begins at the tunnel entrance and will proceed very carefully to minimize the environmental impact.



11.10 The construction process has reached the former roundabout.



11.11 Due to a smooth road shift directly after the tunnel entrance and the most compact layout possible both, the berry spot as well



11.12 as the hunting ground remained untouched.



11.13 The smallest possible final layout of a smooth interstate junction ready to be inaugurated.



11.14 To reach the southern part of the bypass, the new road has to make a sharp bend.



11.15 A positive side effect of the construction works: Mayor Ralfger himself planted a lot of sweet new Girafe berries.

Enjoy and have fun!
Ulrich


PaPa-J

Lighten up, just enjoy life,
smile more, laugh more,
and don't get so worked up
about things.

Unconstantean


xxdita

Bumping this thread to make sure new replies will work.

Ralfger

#39
xxdita,
thanks for bumping in to reactivate the thread. Even after several new logins I get the message that the 12th update is already posted but I can't see it. Does somebody of you can see it?? ()what() :crytissue:

Update 12: The Bishop's see

I hope that everyone is in the pink these days!
It's a long time since my last post so hopefully you are still curious to see the next developments of Konigsfurt. But first of all:

Replies:
@PaPa-J: Thank you :-)

@Unconstantean: Thanks for leaving a message and the compliment!

@Evarburg: I hope that we can find out what´s going wrong...

@xxdita: Thank you so much for your support!

Today, I lead you back to the capital of Windwatt. Like the first time, the specific lot for the see causes a lot of trouble but at least I managed to take some pictures that I want to share with you.

Just before the first cultural heritage act enters into force, Uhodal XX, duke and prince-bishop of Windgau, gave order to erect a new baroque styled episcopal see. In 1724, a whole district vis-a-vis the chatedral was razed to the ground. The clearance of more than 1.000 sqm was built up in four steps.


12.1 Development plan for the area.

1.: A gazebo for the monks.
2.: Access path to the walls and direct entrance to the monastery. Has to be built extending a placed lot because of some footprint-restrictions of the walls.
3.:Small addition to the market place.
4.: Main building and adjacent garden.
5.:Several adjustments for a coherent look.

The staggering of the storeys and the curved facade break up the building that opens onto the central town square.


12.2 The front of the episcopal see forms a perfect counterpart for the cathedral.


12.3 The town square in the middle of the ecclesiastical heart of Windwatt.

Above the central entrance the coat of arms of the House of Rodrigen and the insignia of the archbishops are displayed. Today, the episcopal administration and monastic enterprises as well as several start-up companies are housed in the diffrent wings of the palace.


12.4 The coat of arms above the main entrance with a fountain in front, donated for the 200th anniversary of the erection.

The monks sell products like vine, cherries and small trees at their own market stalls in front of the palace and in the inner courtyard.


12.5 The monks´market stalls - do you spot the ancient wine press and carriage?


12.6 The inner courtyard and the gazebo now open to the public.

Previously encapsulated, the garden of the episcopal see is now accessible to the public. Although very popular with the locals, the garden is a quiet and solitude oasis.


12.7 The buzzling market...


12.8 ...and relaxing gardens


12.9 The monks are committed to nurturing their gardens.

Due to the heritage act, the Monks Garden reamins the only vast and green space in a town of narrow alleyways between timered houses.


12.10 Konigsfurt remains a picturesque medieval town

Enjoy, have fun and take care!
Ulrich


Thank you so much for your prompt and straightforward help Tarkus, xxdita and Andreas! I will never ever use umlauts again!


Edit: The umlauts and accent were throwing the forum software for a loop.  Should work now. -Tarkus/Admin