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Shaping Invermere Valley - Update 42 1/11/08

Started by jimmymac, June 11, 2007, 08:21:48 AM

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jimmymac


Hello everyone and welcome to my MD. I plan on doing this MD without using any maxis buildings. I'd love for people to comment on what they think and leave me some tips if they have any, all feedback is greatly appriciated, be it positive or constructively negative

I will be using the amazing NHP Invermere Valley map with the BSC Italia Meadowshire terrain texture, Peg's weathered granite rock texture and his Brigantine water mod.

Note:
Strikethrough Gone as of update 21



------------------------------

Contents



Update 1 - Bayside
Update 2 - Bayridge
Update 3 - Bedford County
Update 4 - The Other Side Of The Coin
Update 5 - Bayside/Bayridge Revisted
Update 6 - Creating Port Talbot
Update 7 - Building New Port Talbot
Update 8 - Rest stops, Retouches & Overviews.
Update 9 - The Bridges of Beford County
Update 10 - Welcome to Bedford
Update 11 - High Rent Districts
Update 12 - Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
Of Special Interest Of This Month Award
Update 13 - Urban Beautification Project Part 1
Mini Update 1 - Breaking News
Update 14 - Urban Beautification Project Part 2
Update 15 - A Place For My Head
Mini Update 2 - Forest Fire News Update
Update 16 - Someone To Watch Over Me
Update 17 - Stadiums, Museums and Lots More
Update 18 - Back In My Day All This Was Fields
Update 19 - Housing For Everybody Part 1
Update 20 - Housing For Everybody Part 2
Mini Update 3 - Forest Fire News Update
Update 21 - Housing For Everybody Part 3
Mini Update 4 - Forest Fire News Update
Update 22 - Living In The Trees
Update 23 - Life On The Farm
Update 24 - The Coming Of The Colossus
Update 25 - The Arrival Of The Colossus
Update 26 - The Lie Of The (Flat)Lands
Update 27 - Welcome To The Narrows
Update 28 - The Village Of Penbrooke
Update 29 - A Stark Comparison
Update 30 - It Doesn't Look Very Stark Around Here To Me
Update 31 - So that's why it's called Stark!
Update 32 -  Are We Still In Stark? It Looks Very Different Here!
Update 33 - Look Mummy, A Dolphin!
Update 34  - Power To The People
Update 35  - Here There Be Monsters
Update 36 - The War Machines Cometh
Update 37 - The Drums Of War Are Sounding
Update 38 - Something Old And Something New
Update 39 - A New Side To Stark
Update 40 - Back To School...
Update 41 - Christmas Comes But Once A Year
Update 42 - A New Year Comes Around



jimmymac

#1

Update 1 - Bayside


I will start the first few updates with history on all the towns in Bedford County.

Bedford county is just below the metrolpolis of Bedford, around the Bedford Basin. It includes the towns of Bayside, Bayridge, Port Talbot and Hooligans Landing.


First of all we will visit Bayside

The above shot shows the dispersed township of Bayside. The dispersed township of Bayside was one of the origional towns around the basin, it was origionally a fishing town, until the industry moved in and took over, then most of the people moved away, leaving the town as it is today, with roughly 250-300 people. The town plays a huge role in getting people too and from Bedford, as it contains the southern ferry terminal to cross the basin.

When the ferry terminal was built, it was decided that a mass trainsit system was required to prevent the quite town from being taken over by parked cars. Due to this fact, all of the commerce left in the town relocated to the shore close to the traffic.

As Bedford grew, Bayside was forced to grow with it, the main street was replaced by a high capacity avenue that was connected to the newly built highway offramp, at that point Bayside became nothing more than a passthrough for the busy workers on their way too and from work.

Bayside is also home to MacAndrews elementry school. MacAndrews El was built after all of the local elementry schools were consolitated into one. It was named for Father John MacAndrew, who was the vicar of the church at the time.

Finally, we come to the cause of the problems in Bayside. When the industry moved in it slowly killed the old fishing town, and now nothing remains of the old town, which sat in the bay where the port now lies.  There is still more industry planned for this area, as they continue the expansion.

The industry just kept growing and growing, and soon the aircraft manufactures saw that the great open space and rail links was perfect for an aircraft production facility

---------------------------------------------------------

So ends update 1, in update 2 we will visit the other side of the basin and see Bayridge. We will revisit Bayside in a later update to see how things continue to get worse for the poor citizens of the town and also see a few edits taking place to a few areas which really needed it.

I will try to motor through the first few updates on a daily basis to get it to the same stage as it is on ST, which is close to update 9. Any comments would be greatly appreciated, as this is my first real MD and even after playing the game for 4+ years i'm still learning.
- Update 1

TheTeaCat

Well It looks like a very nice start too :thumbsup:.

I shall be popping back to keep an eye on this.

Good luck dude :thumbsup:

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Berethor

Beautiful town , the forest looks very good.   &apls
looking foward for more.

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jplumbley

#4
YES!!

It is finally here!!

Your doing a fabulous job there jimmymac!
"You learn something new everyday."

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Bringing the new horizons closer to reality.

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bat

Welcome and a great start! Wonderful pictures! :thumbsup:

jimmymac

#6

TheTeaCat: Thank you for the kind comments, I hope to see you around these Invermere Valley more often  :)

Berethor: Thanks for the kind comments, I hope that you like what is to come.

jplumbley: I wanted to bring it here from the start, but I couldn't seem to register for a while, then I realised that I already had an account, so i just came straight here to do it. It already seems like it will be better received here than over at ST.

bat As with Berethor above, thank you for the kind comments, I hope that you enjoy the updates to come.

OK, with the replies out of the way, it's time for update 2 of Shaping Invermere Valley as I said in the update yesterday, we will be visiting the township of Bayridge today.


-----------------------------


Update 2 - Bayridge


The township of Bayridge was founded shortly after the township of Bayside, it sits across the bay from Bayside. Origionally it was home to the miners who worked in the mine not far from the town, but after the coal seam was used up, all the miners left and the town, much like Bayside, died. It wasn't until the industry ran everyone out of Bayside that the town thrived again.

Bayridge had it's mass transit system upgraded to match that of Bayside, as Bayridge is the main entry point for the city of Bedford, with it being on the same side of the bay it sees a lot of through traffic.  Much like Bayside commerce flocked to the station area and soon a secondary out of town shopping area was formed.

Bayridge town centre is very much the same as it was when the miners moved out, a few shops and restaurants have moved in and the addition of a hotel to the area really had an affect on the land values. The hotel was built in an attempt to house any people who wished to visit the area, or for many other extra marital reasons too. As soon as the hotel was built, Outback bought out the old diner and rebuit it as an Outback steakhouse, much to the approval of the locals.

As Bayridge was expanding, the old rural route 9 was no longer good enough to support the traffic, therefore it was decided that highway 40 should be built to provide express access to Port Talbot's ferry port. Many people hated that fact that the highway ripped through the countryside,

The above picture shows rural route 11 as it extends up the hill from highway 40 toward Bayridge, many people enjoy the view from the top of the hill, as it looks out over Bryce River and down over Rodgers Falls to the sea below.

The above image shows the above meantioned view, down from the top of the hill, over the river, over the falls and down the sea, many people chose to live in Bayridge for just this reason.

The above picture shows the overall progress so far. The trees don't seem to show in the full panned out view, which is a shame, but it really shows how far apart these towns actually are.

That brings us to the end of update 2, I hope that everyone enjoyed this look into the history of Bayridge and how the growth of a large city can really affect the small towns and villages around it.

In update 3 we will be visiting the areas around Bayridge and taking in some of the beautiful countryside.

bat

Another great update! Wonderful river! :thumbsup:

MsD

Wonderful MD you have here.  Very informative.  I like the links you put in your first post, makes easier to get to the update you want.  Very smart.

Keep up the great work.
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Valley of the Gods

tooheys

Great work, I particularly like your industrial area, There's some nice buildings there.

A good looking map and the town layout works well. If anything, perhaps you could add some variation
to the ploppable trees to give it a more realistic feel. Anyway, just a suggestion. Looking forward
to more.

Cheers

Dave


jimmymac

#10

bat: I'm glad you like the river and the area around it, it took me a great length of time to find the best transition between the peg rivers and the normal rivers in the region. In the end i had to flip the waterfall bottom parts to face the other way, it generated a kind of foam effect which looks like a small waterfall into the sea, not great, but from a distance it works.

MsD Welcome to Invermere Valley, i'm glad you like the updates so far, wait until we get to Bedford, everything will change once we hit the bit city.

tooheys Thanks for the advice on the trees, you will see a variance in trees as we move away from this area, I wanted to create the pine forest look for the valley floor around this area, hence the use of a lot of pine trees, especially as we move toward bedford and away from the valley floor somewhat.


----------------------------------


Update 3 - Bedford County


In the last couple of updates I have covered two of the origional 4 towns in bedford county, but not really touched upon the county itself, so today I will show some of the areas around the town of Bayridge.

The above shot shows the entire township of Bayridge (if you compare this to the above image you will see that a few things have changed, I mostly lowered the density on the houses and the shops to prevent tower growth. I will revist Bayridge again in a later update for a few more edits)

Bayridge Mine was closed down when the seam dried up around 15 years ago, now the old mine and trail has been converted and has become a pleasent nature walk, the mine sits just off of rural route 9 on the east side of Bayridge

The above shot shows the observation tower at the top of the trail, the trail passes through the mountain and uses the old mine lifts to get to the summit and the view points.

Bayridge county camp grounds is a huge hit with the city folk of Bedford, they love coming down for the weekend to fish in the river and get attuned with nature.

The above shot shows the entire area which I have covered in this update, including rural route 9, the camp grounds, highway 40 and something else which we will be introduced to in update 4.

emilin

I haven't commented here before, but you have a very unique style. Interesting sollution with the forest lots. There is some repetiton when you zoom out, but cloes up it looks just excellent. Looking forward to more. :thumbsup:

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jimmymac

#12

Only 1 reply today, so I'll get straight to answering it, then onto the update.

emilin: Welcome to Invermere Valley, i'm glad you like it. Sadly to do what I wanted to do with the trees was always going to lead to some repitition, as I said in a reply in the previous update, I wanted to create a thick pine forest for the valley floor, which meant using plop trees. We'll see other sorts of trees as we move away from the valley floor.


-------------------------


Update 4 - The other side of the coin


As soon as they heard that there was pristine forests open for the taking, A logging firm moved in and quickly constructed a sawmill, the deforestation is already having a terrible effect on the area, and the residents were quick to complain, sadly it fell on deaf ears....

Seeing how easy it was for them another firm was quick to take over the old logging mill and bring it back into working order, claiming another piece of forest for themselves a war for trees soon began between the two, and if there is one thing that Bedford County has lots of, it's trees.

As you may recall, the old Bayridge mine was closed down when the seam was used up, unfortunately at the time they didn't have the ability to check deeper, the miners soon moved in again when they saw that there was coal for the taking and built a reinforced route up the hill for the trucks to use and before long another war was about to begin.... (it should be noted that the hillside path has now changed, because I felt it was too light and stood out too much)

The war for coal was a particularly nasty one, as both companies claimed equal share of the same seam, one building each side of the hill, competing to find the most coal they began to slowly mine the hill dry once again.

Further along highway 40 the first signs of tourism began to raise their head as a highway reststop was constructed, as of yet unfished the proposed plans included a motel, restaurant, gas station and multiple viewing platforms.... things weren't looking so good for the poor towns around the basin....

Here ends update 4 for now, however I have other pictures to show, both of which show progress so far, the first is a far out shot from within SC4 (minus the trees, as they do not show at the max zoom for some reason, but you get an idea of how things are progressing

And finally, here is the region shot as it stands at the end of this update. You can click it for a full size region shot, but it is 3 meg in size, so be warned.


Until tomorrow, take care :)

bat

Great new updates! Wonderful pictures and fantastic work! :thumbsup:

tooheys

Nice couple of updates. You've worked well with the terrain and nice use of PEG's trails :thumbsup:.

I must admit that's the first time I've seen a bridge over the same water which a tunnel runs under,
must create a few engineering problems &mmm.

Some good looking pic's and it looks like you've planned this pretty well.


Looking forward to more.

jimmymac

#15

bat: Glad you liked it, nice to see you back :).

tooheys: Thats exactly the same as what I thought when I looked back at it, it will change rest assured of that.

OK, with the repies out of the way, lets get onto the update, this time we will be revisting some areas which I didn't like the look of that much, and changing a few things. It will be a shorter update again, as I plan to update again later tonight. So without further ado, lets get to it...


-------------------------


Update 5 - Bayside/Bayridge Revisted


Seeing a niche in the area that had yet to be exploited a development company stepped in with the offer to build a new estate of houses in the area, this recieved a mixed response.

The outcome of which was this, some nice 19th century houses in the forest.

I know that I mentioned the ferry terminal in update 1 but I never showed it, so here it is, the Bayside ferry terminal. We will see the other terminal the other side of the bay in update 7.

After producing several dozen aircraft they realised that they had no way to get rid of them so a quick phonecall to a local architect was all it took to get a nice redesign of the plant to include an outgoing runway.

Overall they were impressed with the redesign of the plant, but sadly that elation didn't last long however, as despite multiple patitions froms the citizens of Bayside, the coking plant was finished and started churning out thick black smoke into the perfect skies of Bayside.

Due to the coal pits moving on, a bunch of citizens moved away from Bayridge, this resulted in the county court having to close due to lack of funding and the the town hall falling into disrepair. It wasn't until a kindly benefactor stepped in with an offer to help rebuild that the town was able to do anything about it.

The "mystery" benefactor also donated some money to help develope the houses around the area,

So ends update 5. I will be updated again later tonight with number 6, which will include the creation of a whole new town, which I will go through in a semi step-by-step format.

I am also perminantly moving the journal over here, as it is pointless trying to run it on ST, my last 2 updates have been ignored and run off of the first page within minutes of posting it, so as of update 9 it will be exclusive to here.

Oh, and one last thing before we leave. So far it has only been mentioned by name and not seen, so to prove that it does actually exist, here is the city nicknamed "The Emerald City" and the cause of all the problems in Bedford County: Bedford.....



tooheys

Hi jimmymac, I moved here for the same reason :thumbsup:.

Nice update, would be interested to see your population stats as you sure have a hell of a lot of parking at the ferry terminal ;D
The elevated walkway between the two parking stations, is this an individual lot or are the two parking stations and the walkway one lot, and if so where can it be found, it looks quite good.

Looking forward to more.

Cheers

Dave


bat

Fantastic update! Great pictures of that airport! The other pictures are also wonderful! :thumbsup:

Berethor

Wow, another great update! The airport looks really good.
I want to see more development of this.   &apls

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jimmymac

#19


tooheys: The ferry terminal was always meant to be very grand, as it is one of the few ways people can get to and from Bedford, the other choices are either a toll bridge or by train. There is a rural route which passes around the basin, but it's too far for most commutes, as I wanted it to be. In terms of actual residents in Bedford County i'm sat at just over 2000 residents, which again is around what I wanted for the small towns overall.

As for the skywalks and parking lots. The skywalks are by SYM Prod and are available here and the parking lots are by NDEX and are available here.

bat: I'm glad you liked the plane factory, it's sadly no longer available by the looks of it. It was made by citynut and was part of his Newman Inc  series. The airport will come in a later update and will be worth waiting for I assure you.

Berethor: Again, glad you liked the factory. We will really start moving along once we hit update 10, because that is when we move into Bedford itself.


-------------------------


Update 6 - Creating Port Talbot

Update six is going to deal with the creation of a new town, Old Port Talbot, I will sometimes include updates like this, just to show how I go about doing this, so this is going to be a more step-by-step update than the others. Apologies for the pause sign on many images, I had to do it under pause to prevent it from building.


We start on the hill where I want to build the town, Obviously maxis buildings wont go with this one, so I'm specifically looking for one or two types of building, so a lot of bulldozing will have to occur. I also wanted a few small shops to spring up in order to create that "small town" atmosphere.

At the release of the pause button, everyone swarmed in look at all those trucks. Almost perfectly I get the houses I wanted right away. I bet that wont happen ever again.

And there we go, a nice hillside community, every house is 19th century wooden boards, exactly what I wanted.

Next was the addition of a nice rural fire station which wouldn't look out of place alongside the 19th century houses. We don't want any forest fires now do we.

Next was the addition of the actual "Port" of Port Talbot. Using Cobb's seaport village set, the building of this was very hit and miss, so I didn't include the step-by-step for this bit, lets just say that what you see there took around 45 minutes to create.

Here is an overall of what we've just done, including the hillside village, the port itself and the rural fire station at the top of the hill.

Of course, a quaint little seaport village like that is likely to become a tourist trap, so along the coastal route I constructed a viewing area, and of course, anywhere where tourists are will be people willing to take every cent they have, so in went the fast food restaurant and of course, everyone needs gas, so in went the gas station.

And last but not least, the overall including the village and viewing area.

Here ends update 6. In update 7 we will go through the construction of the other ferry terminal and the town around it; New Port Talbot as well as seeing a region shot of how it looks to that point.