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CSGdesign's NATURAL GROWTH

Started by CSGdesign, November 20, 2009, 12:50:42 AM

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Battlecat

Great update, nice to see this project getting underway! 

Tomas Neto

Yeah, fantastic update again!!! Great work!!!  :thumbsup:

bat

Nice work on that great new update! Looking forward to the next part... ;)

CSGdesign


Quote from: canyonjumper on January 19, 2010, 08:17:54 PM
Excellent update! The construction of the roads reminds me of Tarkusian Cities, Alex's (Tarkus) MD.

             -Jordan
Yes someone else in the Simtropolis publication of this journal said that as well, and I went looking for it and you're right he did some similar stuff.
I'm surprised there aren't a lot more examples though...

Quote from: RickD on January 20, 2010, 04:09:59 AM
Great MD. I admire to what extend you take the natural growth approach. I tried it several times myself but just couldn't stick to it. My playing style is completely different.
Thankyou RickD.  I much prefer this to any other form of play.

Quote from: Battlecat on January 20, 2010, 09:13:21 AM
Great update, nice to see this project getting underway! 
Yeah it is nice to finally get the ball rolling on this, because it frees me up to be able to short-stories like the one below while things are being built.

Quote from: Tomas Neto on January 20, 2010, 10:40:53 AM
Yeah, fantastic update again!!! Great work!!!  :thumbsup:
Thankyou Thomas!

Quote from: bat on January 20, 2010, 10:53:31 AM
Nice work on that great new update! Looking forward to the next part... ;)
I hope you like it!



BRIEFING AT MEETING OF ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP "WILDERNESS WARRIORS".
Regarding the heavy deforestation being carried out near the town of Carver Hills by Colorado Lumber under the supervision of Johno Gregory, Head of Operations for the region.



Thankyou for coming everybody, and a special welcome to our new guests from Bottle Creek Catchment Coordinating Committee.  Cooperating with groups such as yourselves is vital to our over-all success in the stifling of human development and bringing society back to the status of hunters and gatherers everywhere.

Now the most important issue on tonight's agenda is that of the lumber operations being carried out by Colorado Lumber west of Boston up out at Carver Hills... just here on the map.

Now as many of you will know council granted these guys logging rights around three years after the successful campaigning to set up a Forestry Department here in Boston...

The only place that this company has exercised these logging rights is out past Carver Hills so far, however we have a lead that indicates they may be increasing their operations at three completely new locations, piggy-backing off the council's success in getting public support to clear the way for the Eastern Sea-Board Highway down south of Kelly Bay.

Well we sent a chopper crew out there two weeks ago to obtain some surveillance of the operation because Colorado Lumber has been characteristically uncooperative in disclosing the details of their operation, and of course have refused access to members of the public on grounds of "safety".  Please.

Anyway, here are a couple of shots of what we've got so far.

Here you can see the northern stretch of the operation, which to date has cleared an area of native forest close to 7 SimCorp Stadiums in area.



You can see that Colorado is currently very active in the area... this is the eastern leading edge of their operation and shows that they're taking a lot of lumber out of there on a daily basis... we've yet to calculate exactly how much.



This shows a bit more detail - it appears as though they're primarilly using chainsaw crews and large machinery is only being used to move the lumber onto trucks once it's been trimmed at site... of course it's only a matter of time until they import some really big machinery and step up operations.

We count approximately 14 men - at least half of which are tree-cutters - and 4 catapillars at this leading edge alone... Colorado has three leading edges running simultaneously as we speak.



These two trucks were loaded in under two hours... it looks like they can carry around six or seven nine-hundred millimeter diameter logs.  Make no mistake people, that is a LOT of forest being cut down out there, and it's happening every single day.



You can see pictures of the trailing edge where the crews have been and moved on is little more than a waste-land.  This land can't be used for anything - even developers need to terraform it first... it's a total mess out there.  The only trees left standing are those that are bent, or too small to be useful, and would actually cost more to cut down than to leave standing...



This high altitude shot shows the entire operation as of two weeks ago.  You can see that Colorado has moved squarely into the western forest in the Grange... and in fact our intel suggests that this front is growing more rapidly than even their northern front, in recent months.



The end of their deepest track south-west shows two dozers parked beside the track - a sure sign that this track is undergoing growth... those dozers are being used to lengthen the track as the forest is cleared away from it's leading edge.



Our surveillance team didn't do a count of the south-west crews or take sufficient images for us to count them accurately, but they are clearly at least as large as the two northern fronts combined.

We dont see any obvious movement on the southern-most track, but you can bet that it will head deeper into that forest once Colorado has the resources to fund that operation in addition to the others.

A ground-crew surveillance team at the southern edge had trecked in from a heli-drop about a day's hike further south in the Grange and set up a surveillance position to monitor these guys, and it has quickly become clear that the lumber crews are taking direction from this man:



We took a few shots of him and various personell, but our position was discovered shortly afterwards... apparently one of the guys dropped an aluminium pot of porridge and stirred up a tree full of birds... not mentioning any names... Harrold.



Anyway the surveillance crew did do an excellent job and are to be congratulated for their intel.  The lumber crews didn't persue them into the forest which is just as well.

This man has since been identified as Johno Gregory by an operative in Carver Hills, who I can't name for security reasons.
This Gregory guy is apparently Head of Operations for Colorado and has been running the show for some years now.  He is a key asset to the business, but in doing so he is a key problem to our environment.

Now the lobby here is pretty simple.

We're going to continue to surveil Colorado and Gregory and we're going to identify and document acts of misconduct such as over-clearing and habitat destruction, and we're going to use this evidence to get the government to shut down this operation.  At the very least we need to curb it's wanton desctruction.

There's simply no need for a lumber operation in Boston when we have so many renewable lumber plantations....

Any questions?


mightygoose

fantastic work as always, your update rate is astonishing... one every 24-48 hours, thats dedication. cant wait to see more of your work
NAM + CAM + RAM + SAM, that's how I roll....

canyonjumper

Excellent update!! How much time do you have on your hands??

                     -Jordan
I'm the one who jumped across the Grand Canyon... and lived.

Battlecat

Interesting story!  Lots of great details in there and it's a nice aside from the highway development!

Nanami

Nice story! I like the effect that you use.

CSGdesign



Quote from: mightygoose on January 20, 2010, 06:05:38 PM
fantastic work as always, your update rate is astonishing... one every 24-48 hours, thats dedication. cant wait to see more of your work

I have spurts.  I've neglected building BATs and stuff for awhile now, so pretty soon I expect the bug to bite me and I'll release a bunch of custom content.  I keep meaning to PM you that data... so forgetful!

Quote from: canyonjumper on January 21, 2010, 11:39:15 AM
Excellent update!! How much time do you have on your hands??

                     -Jordan
Well I don't watch television at all Jordan - I find it's mind-numbing rot interjected with crap trying to sell you stuff you don't need to further boost an economy designed to be consumerist and wasteful.
So I take those 3 or 4 hours each evening that most people would sit in front of that stupid machine and chanel it into this game, creativity (like photoshopping and 3d work) and working it into this journal... that is my wind-down from a day's work while I mind my kid of an evening.  You'd be surprised how much you can get done in 3 to 4 hours when it's something you really like doing.

Quote from: Battlecat on January 21, 2010, 12:09:52 PM
Interesting story!  Lots of great details in there and it's a nice aside from the highway development!
Yeah I like to keep things interesting for myself and for you guys by bouncing around the scene a lot and introducing new things, then flicking back to some familiar things, then introducing some new things again... I like it like that.

Quote from: 976 on January 22, 2010, 02:26:00 AM
Nice story! I like the effect that you use.
Thanks 976... it's mostly just desaturation, film-grain, and some dodging around the outer edges.



Eastern Sea-Board Highway South.  This stretch of highway will lead from the inner southern suburbs of Boston all the way down past Kelly Bay and Tunnings Quarry, out of the region, and eventually to the neighbouring city further south.

Construction by the SimNation Federal Government has been underway for several months now, working it's way north from the neighbouring city, and has begun to pierce the forests within the Boston Region itself.



The process is fairly slow.
It involves the detailed surveying of the route by ground-teams that must battle their way through untouched forests.  Several have been eaten by racoons, and one has become a local bear's sleep toy... his screams at night are quite disturbing.  Kind of ironic when a bear gets himself a Teddy Human.  But that's tough luck for him, he should have been wearing his daylight glow life-preserver - on with the story!

After the ground has been surveyed and pegged out every 10 meters, the dozers move in and clear the path of trees, boulders, etc.  Anything that poses a serious obstacle to the graders and road-works crews.

Following a several days behind them are the road-works crews including the grading equipment.  These guys level the ground and perform a much more detailed survey process, ensuring the cuts and fills are just right to ensure the bitumen can be laid at the correct height to ensure motorists of a smooth drive, as per the CAD plans of the road.

The grading is followed by sporadic bursts of bitumening (since it goes down much faster than the grading it is done in stretches)... the end result is a winding snake of a road that is tipped by the interesting effect of a clearing leading into a graded exposed dirt road and ultimately to the finished and line-worked highway.





The leading edge is constantly active, with the dozers being parked in place overnight and accessed by their operators by four wheel drives each day.  Felled trees are usually either pushed off to the side of the clearing, or they are carted away to be chipped or used by land-scapers... in fact they're quite valuable and since Colorado Lumber provides finished wood products (mostly) these raw stumps and logs are no direct competition and cause council no conflict of interest with businesses in the region... quite the opposite - the products are in demand but not enough to justify an industry to supply it.



This stretch of the highway needs two dozers working in tandem, due to the density of the forest at this location.  This will most likely be reduced to one later on since increased clearing speed is not required since the grading and bitumening would then become the bottle-neck.



The grading crew are responsible for taking the road to a much more refined level, including cutting crests and filling ditches... alongside two and sometimes three surveying teams that are constantly relaying instructions regarding height and direction.

After them comes the bitumen crews... but they're not active at the moment... as I said they do it in starts and stops since the bitumen process takes much less time than the grading process (in this part of the project at least).

At it's present course and speed, ESBH South creeps north at the rate of between 60 and 100 meters per day at it's leading edge.
That puts it square on schedule to pass between Kelly Bay and Tunnings Quarry within a month (at it's cleared leading edge)...

Intersections are built at various rates depending on their complexity.  We'll take a look at some of them but not all since EVENTUALLY WE'LL DIE OF OLD AGE!@!!  Erhem.  Ya I'll focus on the more interesting ones and skip over the ones that are just simple crossings or duplicates of similar intersections elsewhere in the project.

Toodles till next time noodles.

Battlecat

Very cool.  Nice focus on some of the challenges of punching a brand new highway through undeveloped forest.  I guess that's why so many highways in the real world are major upgrades of existing roads!     

bat

Some nice shots of your great work! Looks really nice!! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

CSGdesign

#171


Quote from: Battlecat on January 22, 2010, 09:05:39 AM
Very cool.  Nice focus on some of the challenges of punching a brand new highway through undeveloped forest.  I guess that's why so many highways in the real world are major upgrades of existing roads!     

The highway leading down from the north is an upgrade of an existing road, and as a result it is much windier than this is... I'll feature it soon-ish.
This one didn't have a road that was direct enough, and the Western Mountain Highway has no road at all, so it's also a clean punch through untouched woodlands.

Quote from: bat on January 22, 2010, 11:52:43 AM
Some nice shots of your great work! Looks really nice!! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Thanks bat, glad you like it!
Plenty more to come.



Jasper Way - what used to be the "country road" the lead from the eastern part of Boston Central to the northern part.


Now fully surrounded by suburbia it is one of the main roads in the heart of an ever-growing city, and well overdue for an overhaul.


Little choice remains - it needs to be beefed up to handle the traffic flowing between what are now central and very major suburbs of Boston City.


Back in 1975, Jasper Way was little more than a winding country road that allowed traffic to travel between the eastern and northern parts of what was then the outter suburbs of Boston, without having to go all the way into the central area and then back out again... a ring-road, of sorts.





But now, in late 1990, Jasper Way was totally surrounded by suburbia and it was becoming ever denser and busier, along with the destinations at either end of Jasper Way.  The end result was that Jasper Way needed to be increased to handle the flow because sims were choosing it over mass transit due to transit time... despite the conjestion.





Roads would always rule supreme - at least in the forseeable future - so it was time to act.  Especially in light of the pending highway connections to the north of Jasper Way.

Here we see the southern end of Jasper Way beginning roadworks:


Here we see the same stretch nearing completion of road-works.  Landscaping and rezoning around the road-works remains to be done:


The northern end of Jasper Way prior to upgrade:


The same stretch beginning road-works. Resumptions have been completed, properties knocked down, clearing the path for grading crews to survey, cut, and fill in preparation for road-works:
http://www.csgdesign.com.au/uploads/SC4/NG65/NG65i.jpg

The same stretch nearing completion:


The northern end of Jasper Way completed, including an intersection alteration at the northern end to chanel traffic down Jasper Way instead of splitting it between Jasper Way and Knight Drive... giving priority to Jasper Way:


The entire Jasper Way project only weeks after it's completion.  Some newly zoned commercial sites are yet to be sold off:





A fairly hefty project, but one which was turned over in record time so as not to delay the production of the SimNation Highway Project.



MandelSoft

I've been lurking this MD for a while and I'm impressed about how you set up this MD. The whole planning and construction of two highways, spread over a vast amount of updates  :o! A-ma-zing! One thing I would suggest, is that these highways should get a number beside their names (something like I-374, US-128 or something simmilar). And signage would be nice to (so sims know what their heading is).

Keep up the good work!

Best,
Maarten
Lurk mode: ACTIVE

canyonjumper

Ah!! I missed two updates! You're just churning them out before I can reply :)! Great stuff, this MD does an excellent job of describing the process of road construction. Keep up the excellent work! :thumbsup:

            -Jordan
I'm the one who jumped across the Grand Canyon... and lived.

bat

Great pictures from your city! They are looking really nice! :thumbsup:

CSGdesign



Quote from: mrtnrln on January 23, 2010, 04:46:53 AM
I've been lurking this MD for a while and I'm impressed about how you set up this MD. The whole planning and construction of two highways, spread over a vast amount of updates  :o! A-ma-zing! One thing I would suggest, is that these highways should get a number beside their names (something like I-374, US-128 or something simmilar). And signage would be nice to (so sims know what their heading is).

Keep up the good work!

Best,
Maarten
I agree.  I haven't actually said in the entries themselves (only in replies over on Simtropolis) that I will be numbering them.  The debate at the moment is what system to use... I still need to do a lot of homework on what systems exist and what parts of them I want to adopt.

Hope you continue to enjoy!  Drop a comment from time to time, I love taking questions and comments.

Quote from: canyonjumper on January 23, 2010, 06:27:38 AM
Ah!! I missed two updates! You're just churning them out before I can reply :)! Great stuff, this MD does an excellent job of describing the process of road construction. Keep up the excellent work! :thumbsup:

            -Jordan
No rest for the wicked Jordan.  I update once every day and a half on average at the moment, although that rate will probably slow down a little in the future as I spend a bit of time creating new custom content.  Glad you're enjoying, and look forward to seeing more from you!

Quote from: bat on January 23, 2010, 10:52:11 AM
Great pictures from your city! They are looking really nice! :thumbsup:
Thankyou very much bat.  Hope you keep enjoying the read and field some Q's from time to time...  Some of my best inspiration comes from readers' questions and comments.



Eastern Sea-Board Highway North.  This stretch of highway will lead from the inner northern suburbs of Boston (Gretchin Avenue) all the way up through Fondbrooke Valley, Melldawn, Denkins Plains and Carpentaria, then off the region altogether and to the nearest northern neighbour of Boston.

Construction has been underway by the SimNation Federal Government for many months, and has just entered the jurisdiction of Boston City Council.



Unlike the other two highways, this highway is actually an upgrade of an existing road which had already lead from Boston to her northern neighbour.  Of course the pre-existing highway was much slower in speed and much windier, having been made with very old road-building techniques back in the day, and without the volume of traffic in mind.

The upgrade, therefore, not only involves the increase of the speed limit as well as the traffic volume of the highway, but involves the straightening and grading of the road to provide for a much safer drive at much higher speeds.  Often it also involves clearing large trees away from the edge of the road, especially at corners, to prevent the risk of drivers trying to climb trees with cars... (which they're not as effective at as say a drop-bear for example).

So while the cost of surveying, clearing, and grading the road is decreased greatly in comparison to the other two highways leading into Boston, the speed at which the roadworks are done is not much faster due to ensuring minimal obstruction to existing traffic flow, making for a more complicated bitumening process.

The pre-existing highway before being upgraded, this is the northern-most stretch in Carpentaria:



This shows the same stretch after the upgrade:


Note the pre-existing road bends have been ironed out.  Bends that have been removed from the old highway are being left in place and will eventually be filled over by run-off and grown over by weeds.  It's a very remote stretch of road, and the bitumen being left in place has been there for decades, so there is no especially urgent case in spending huge amounts of money to remove it.

Occasionally pieces dissapear in people's cars to be used as fill, around barbeques, souvenirs, and the like... it has become a crumbling reminder of the road that once twisted it's way through these parts.

This shows the southern-most stretch of the Carpentarian section of the old highway:



The same section of highway, upgraded to 100kmph and with grades and curves adjusted to cater for the increased traffic volume and speed:



A close-up view of the westward-curving bend in the road shown above, prior to the upgrade:


...and after the upgrade:



The remaining bitumen from the old highway is unsightly, sure, but it's expensive to remove and it's in the middle of nowhere, and even the Wilderness Warriors aren't getting their knickers in a twist about it since it is causing no direct harm and will in a few short years be completely assimilated back into nature.

Meanwhile this stretch of highway is now a far safer, faster, and more popular drive.


canyonjumper

#176
Great update! Where did you get the road detritus? Or is photoshopped in? Eagerly awaiting more :thumbsup:

                        -Jordan
I'm the one who jumped across the Grand Canyon... and lived.

Tomas Neto


Battlecat

Great pair of updates!  That urban road really was due for an upgrade, that's some serious congestion there!

Also, very nice touch with the highway upgrades, I really like how there are some leftover segments there where the alignment was improved!

BuildingUp

Love the rural road pictures! :) You truly have a magnificent region!