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The Heartland - Random Images

Started by meinhosen, February 23, 2007, 06:06:04 PM

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meinhosen

Personal Replies:

petercintn - I agree with you 100% about urban Europe being more picturesque than the US.  I'm pretty sure that more of Nebraska is on the way... along with some shots of Illinois (yeah, homestate!) and Iowa, too.

threestooges - I hope my previous post answered your question about the long freight train(s).  Getting a town to blend into farmland has always been tricky for me... and having grown up in a farm town, you'd think I'd have a pretty good idea of how things look.  ;)

Naryanna - Thanks!

dedgren - Glad you enjoyed the train pic  :)  And the comment on the terrain, coming from you (one of SC4D's terrain masters), means a lot!

kwakelaar - Thank you!

Rayden - Thanks! 

sebes - Ooh, I wouldn't go so far as to drop your pants for the train (engineers get kinda leery when someone moons them).  :P

emilin - Thanks!

bat - Thanks, I hope things continue as well as they began.

thundercrack83 - Thanks - in case you're curious, Holyoak is modeled after a city near where I grew up (Elburn, IL).

goin2chicago - Reminds you of the town you're attending school in, eh?  I'll have to do some more work on a small college town that's just east of Holyoak and post those pics...

kimcar - Thanks.

Kokopelli - Crete, NE?  Hmm, if the region I'm about to show was bigger I might have been able to include Crete.

Flipside and rooker1 - Thanks!

joelevan - Hope the previous post answered that question for you.

ryalmighty1 - Would you believe me if I said that the small town(s) function extremely well once a region starts developing as a whole?  Once Stage 3 farms begin growing, farm towns can actually profit quite nicely (which makes expensive eye-candy a lot easier on the town's wallet).

NikNik - Thanks. 
Quote from: NikNik
It's just a gentile, quite town.
Hmm, I'll have to put the synogogue by SG in the next small town I show so it isn't so gentile.  :P




Since this MD will hover around two new, relatively small regions I'm throwing together, I thought I'd show you what it looks like.  While it's nowhere near finished, the following screenshots should give you a rough idea of how things look.



Cedarville, NE is based, roughly, off of Lincoln, NE.  It still functions as Nebraska's state capital, and it also functions as a college town (RL it's the home of the University of Nebraska).  The city itself much like what you saw with Holyoak, only writ large.  While the current regional population hovers near 190,000 my expectations are that it won't surpass 225k-250k, which would put it right around the RL location.



Here you can get a view of the city's transit map.  Running east to west is I-80, with I-180 running south across the river into downtown.  Capitol Parkway is the other visible freeway, running west into some small suburbs.  Cedarville is also home to the crossroads of three major US highways: US 6, US 34, and US 77.
Bisecting the city are two of America's largest railways: the Union Pacific, and the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe (BNSF).  BNSF maintains a sizable railyard just west of downtown, while UP has a smaller sorting yard just east of the creek.

I'll devote future posts to the transportation network in and around Cedarville.



Finally, I'll leave you with a quick shot of downtown Cedarville.  No mega towers here (its Nebraska, for crying out loud), which gives me the chance to play around with all the great low-rise BATs and lots available.  Downtown has quite a bit of detailing that needs to happen before I'm confident to show it again, but that's coming.
You're telling me I get to be home for more than 12 months?


thundercrack83

Those region shots look fantastic! I love all the farms that you've made, and the downtown of Cedarville looks great, too! Keep up the good work!

bat

Wonderful regionoverviews! Fantastic work! :thumbsup:

kimcar

 &apls Wow , that' s avery nice region view. Thanks for sharing.

rooker1

Amazing region view, it looks so realistic it's awesome. :thumbsup:
Call me Robin, please.

kwakelaar

The region view could almost be taken from google earth, very well made. Also your downtown Cedarville seems to be coming together quite nicely.

ryalmighty1

Hmm... I suppose I never had the foresight or the patience to wait for all stage 3 farms. For some reason, I can usually only develop super low-wealth or super high-wealth. Probably just my playing style. But, if you don't mind, I would like to use your MD as inspiration as to how I would rather play. Any tips would be much appreciated. BTW amazing region shot!!
There is no end.
There is no beginning.
There is only the infinite passion of life.

-Federico Fellini

petercintn

Man, that is a great region view.  I think David has a tutorial on getting them that way, but you just inspired me to figure it out.  The sheer amount of farms, boggles the mind... ???
Carolina Tar Heels... National Champs again!

meinhosen

Replies

thundercrack83 - Thanks!  I hope to show more of downtown Cedarville soon, but not today...  ;)

bat - Thanks!

kimcar - Thanks for the encouraging comment!

rooker - The region is an adaptation of central Iowa, hence the quilt-like/realistic appearance to the farms.

kwakelaar - Thanks for the compliment!  Actually, as I hinted above, the region view was meant to look like a Google-Earth shot as it's based off of one.  ;D

ryalmighty1 - Thanks for the comment, and glad that I could be an inspiration for someone.  I guess the most concise advice I can give you is simply to play your own style.  Of course, I'll be the first to admit that I've copied a lot of stuff from such CJ/MD greats as paletexan, Dedgren, jeronij, Darmok (and the list goes on). 

Posting some of your work on the "Show us your..." board and getting feedback is a good way to compare yourself without actually starting a MD (that's how I started on ST). 

What I really want to share is this: if you love building and get satisfaction from what you create, share it.  Other folks around here love to see what others are doing (or else we wouldn't have the MD section  ;) ).  Highlight some of the cool areas of your towns and regions.  I know you have them...  :) ... they're those spots you center on when you're tired of building but not tired enough to shut the game down... those spots where you just sit and watch the city... that's where about 90% of my screenshots come from are those small areas.

Hope that helps!

petercintn - Actually, I used David's/dedgren's tutorial to make those... I used to eyeball it (which is why my previous attempts were all crooked  ???).




We head west today.  Far west.  Colorado west.  I did some trainspotting in Bearclaw Pass, CO (it's on the left side of the region-shot below). 



A quick note on the region: this is just a quickie region I'm making to experiment building in the mountains.  I'll incorporate it more into this MD as it develops.  :)





Thanks for stopping by!
You're telling me I get to be home for more than 12 months?


dedgren

That's putting those new relaxed NAM rail curves to good use.  I'm wondering, though, and will check back through my experiments with them, why you didn't get the brown ballast texture through the curves- I recollect I did.

Back to you here when I find out...probably over the weekend.

Super pics!


David
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

thundercrack83

I find it quite amazing that you can take a simple concept like a train crossing a road and make look so great! And your mountainous Colorado region looks beautiful, too. Keep up the great work!

threestooges

First, thank you for answering that train length question. It has been bugging me mildly for some time now. Cedarville looks great. You have used open spaces/plazas to a nice effect; something I have never done. (I play the game with a budget, and if I'm plopping that school, etc, I'm going to get every penny out of its transportation radius). Now then, onto the most recent pics. Both are great (as I'll say again, I love trains), Amtrak, and BNSF (or BN?) if I recognize them right. It seems like, though, the gates are still up on the first pic (call the transportation dept, they're probably the same people that work in my region, as the train has usually passed by the time the gates lower).

Good luck with the new region. It looks like it will present some interesting building opportunities and will undobtedly offer plenty of room to do so.

Flipside

Love Bearclaw Pass, meinhosen.  ()stsfd() Your forests look really natural.

bat

Great region and fantastic pass! :thumbsup:

Badsim


God: another incredible map !... I will follow the development on this beauty .
Love your trains scenes . :thumbsup:

I've had the same reflex than David about ballast textures ...I don't know so far if there's a way to solve this . &Thk/(

°   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °   °


meinhosen

Dedgren and Badsim -

I did some checking on the rail curve, and it's basically an off-ramp for trains (it's the same idea as a highway interchange, too), so to get the rail dirt I'd have to rebuild the pieces that make up the curve.

I guess for the time being there's always Photoshop (not that I would ever do something like that ;) )
You're telling me I get to be home for more than 12 months?


DarkLoki

That's an amazing region shot. I like how you have used the peg streams, i have looked at the us in google earth a few times and on those images you can also see green lines trough the farm fields indicating little streams.

meinhosen

Here's the rest of the screenshots from Bearclaw Pass... but first:

Replies

dedgren - Thanks for the comment, David.  I'll search around a bit on ST... I could have sworn I saw a thread somewhere dedicated to adding PEGs raildirt to the NAM pieces (underbridge, curve, etc).  Since I was never any good at searching the ST forums that'll probably take a while.  ;)

thundercrack83 - I think the little things like a train crossing a road are some of those little things that make SC4 great (and make a MD a bit unique).  Thanks for the comment!

threestooges - You're right, those gates are up... it's in the Colorado mountains, perhaps no one noticed because no one's driven on the road for a few months...  $%Grinno$%  Actually, my gates usually don't go down at all when I'm trying to take screenshots. 

I can echo you on playing the game with a budget.  All of my cities run quite nicely in the black- Cedarville is no exception, although it is just barely making it's budget.  I think a lot of that is the fact that my computer can't handle a huge plugins folder, so I'm real limited on the eye-candy I can put into any give city; that really helps a lot with maintaining a functioning budget.

Flipside - Thanks for the compliment... but we ought to thank Cycledogg for his work at putting together a stellar terrain mod.

bat - Thank you!

Badsim - Thanks for the compliment!  I hope you enjoy the pictures on this post as much as you enjoyed the last one.

DarkLoki - GoogleEarth is a great tool for making a realistic region shot- it gives you a good foundation to work with.  Glad you liked the region shot, and thanks for stopping by!




I think in all reality I ought to rename this MD "How to do Eyecandy on a Budget Plugins Folder".  Since my poor old computer cries for mercy when I load up big/developed maps, my goal is to keep my plugins below 700mb (which means I can load a city in less than a half hour).  Currently, I have 722mb of quality packed/crammed/shoved into the plugins, a lot of which you've seen over the past few updates.

We'll revisit Bearclaw today, and then head back east to another town I've been slowly developing over the past week.



Above and below - Bearclaw pass, a little bit closer up, along with a transportation view so you can get an idea of how the road and railroad weave through the pass to reach the town.







At the zoom levels you see above, it almost looks like you're sitting on top of the ridge looking down at the town.  It reminds me a lot of actually sitting on top of a mountain looking down at a town.



As you can see, not a lot has changed in the town over the past 46 years.



I love the look of the rails and the road winding through the pass.  It's very hard to tell in the pic, but both of them are actually passing on the lowest point of the valley (which I think was intended to be a stream by the mapmakers, but is a handy right-of-way for man-made transportation).



I'll remark again about the streambed... you can see it a bit better in the above screenshot.





Moving east, we find the city of Boseridge, CO.  Seen above is Bose Island, just south of the town.  (It's amazing that when you're strapped for city names what you can come up with when you look around your desktop... soon to come are the cities of Dell, Inspiron, Bic, and Laserjet  :P )
(And no, I was not eating a bear claw when I made Bearclaw Pass)









You can see my experiments with Sorchin's rocks... I like the dark ones, but the light gray ones are probably going to have to go... they stand out too much.
You're telling me I get to be home for more than 12 months?


thundercrack83

That is a great looking region, "Budget Plugins Folder" or not! You've really set the standard for the NAM rail curves, too. Every one you've used looks fantastic. And the plopplable streams look beautiful, too, especially the waterfalls. Great job, my friend!

threestooges

I second thundercrack's remark about the rail curves. I especially like the first train pic in the streambed (you and your incredible long trains... boy I love them) and I would also love to get that part of the mod you use to get that effect. The train looks so good winding through the s-curve. Those dark rocks on the creek are a great way to break up the uniformity of pegs ponds (though you've done a fine job of that anyway). Keep it up, this is great.