Recreating San Francisco: Real Life Aside, October 1, 2009

[dedgren]

Wow²!

Weekend reading, to be sure.  The mapping work looks fascinating.


David

[The_Hutt]

Speaking as a Norcal resident (I live about 45 minutes from the northeast corner of your region) I'm impressed. It takes commitment to get into that fine of level of detail. Good work, and I'll be interested in seeing your take on the area's transportation infrastructure.

[Battlecat]

Quite the project you've got started here, looks pretty impressive so far.  Nice job on those composite topographic maps. 

[art128]

Very very very impressive map there Lora, awesome work with Photoshop there, truly outstanding ! Good luck with SF urbanization and looking forward to more.
-Arthur. 

[beutelschlurf]

moin Lora,

god, what a task you burden yourself with! i wish you all the best ... and can' wait to see first close-ups! 
as David pointed out it will will need more than a couple of minutes to read through your postings! 

b_schlurf

[ldvger]

Update 3: Scaling RL Maps to Game Maps, Part 3

Ok, here we go with the next step in creating the stuff I need to name my individual city tiles, namely, scaling my region map to match my composite topo map.  Why do I need to match the scales to each other?  Because I need to create a city tiles grid 10 wide by 13 deep that will overlay the composite map.  Then I can see built and natural features where the are located in RL and how they relate to my game tiles, thus providing me with enough info to accurately create names for my city tiles.  Also because I may have maps in the composite that I don't need and, if so, I want to delete them.  At this point, my CAD drawing has 43 rather large sized raster images in it and it's slowing the software down quite a bit, especially between zooms.  Zooming in close is no problem, but zooming out to view the entire composite map means the software has to re-render all 43 topo maps.  Also moving around the drawing at far zooms is very slow as well, so if I can eliminate some of the unneeded topos, so much the better.  And lastly because having the game and composite maps synched in scale to each other gives me a base from which to work over the entire course of the rest of the project.  You'll see what I mean about this as we go along.  Right now I am going back over work I did a couple of weeks ago and I've done a lot of work since then, so I'm kinda playing catch up with myself.  This in itself is a bit of a challenge, as I am having to turn off a lot of the layers I've created in my CAD drawing since then so as not to give an freebie previews. 

Onward!

The first thing I need to do for this next step is import the game region map into CAD.  The game region map is a Mapper file and CAD won't import it directly, so I have to create a JPG.  To do that, I used Terraformer:



TF allows me to save a copy of the region in one of three file formats: PNG, JPG, or BMP.  So I chosse JPG, saved to my SFmaps folder, exited TF and opened CAD, which now looks like this:



I now import the JPG I just created and install it into the game:



As you can see, it's a little small, so I grab a corner and drag it to make it larger:



I actually did this step twice and the pic is of the second time.

Now I need to find a fairly large and detailed piece of landscape on the game map that I can trace over and then copy and lay over the composite map, to give me an idea of how close I am to having matching scales...or how far away.  In the far north of the region is the area where the river from the Great Central Valley of California enters the bay and it creates what I think is a good opportunity for what I need:





Now comes the fun part (not really).  Using a line tool called Polyline, I zoom pretty close in and draw a single continuous segmented line around the upper part of the river/bay confluence.  I use this tool instead of the standar line tool because the standard line tool, while you can draw continuous segmented lines with it, the software doesn't see it as such but rather as a series of individual lines attached starting and ending at each other's start and end points.  So, if you try to copy or move them, you have to make sure you get all of them and it's easy to miss one.  Also, modifying the scale of objects drawn with the line tools varies somewhat by tool.  If I use the polyline, I know the software will see it as a single object rather than a composit of many objects, thus when I change the scale, the entire line will stay proportionate to itself. 

So after zooming in and out and about 30 minutes of tracing the coastline, this is what I ended up with:



Now I copy the line and move the copy over to the composite map and see how it fits over the area that matches the game map:



Hmmm, looks a bit too large.  I don't know of any way to do this next part other than trial and error, but I have a good eye for scale and quite a bit of experience is using this software, so I made a guess that the line looks to be approximately 25% too large.  CAD has a tool called Modify Scale that allows me to rescale any object or sets of objects one of two ways.  I can either enter a numeric value, like .75.  The default value is 1.0, which is the object's current size, so entering .75 decreases the scale by 25%.  I will be using Modify Scale again later, but next time I'll be using the second way one can enter a value and that is using a reference point.  We'll talk about that when we get there. 

So now I delete the line over the composite map, I don't want it any more and I have a copy of it still sitting on my game map.  I go back to the game map, activate the Modify Scale tool and select BOTH the game map and the polyline drawn over it by dragging a crossing window across them both:



Both objects are reduced in scale by 25%:



Now I again copy the polyline, check it against the composite map and find that while it's closer, it's still too big.  I didn't take pics of the 3-4 times I had to go back and forth modifying the scale of the game map and polyline, making it incrementally smaller each time, but I got closer and closer until I finally had this:



Looks pretty darn good to me!  Also gives us all a deeper appreciation for Heblem's awesome map making skills, that he could create a game map from a RL map and get the two to come so close to each other. 

So now we have this, a composite of RL topo maps at the same scale as the game region map:



Yipee!  It probably took you longer to read this than it did for me to do the work shown, the most time consuming aspect of this stage was drawing the polyline.  Little did I know I'd be drawing lots of polylines in the days to come.  Remember, all this stuff I'm doing now is just the PREP work for the real stuff yet to come.

If you check back later this evening, I may have the next phase posted, which is gridding the composite map to match the game region map, and then, finally, beginning to name my individual city tiles.

And thank you to everyone who has stopped by, both those who have posted such kind comments and those just breezing through for a look-see. 

Lora/LD

[TheTeaCat]

This is truly a monumental task that you have undertaken.

And fascinating to read I must add.

This is going to be a long running MD I can tell one and I'm sure I shall enjoy over many a cuppa

Looking forward to the next installment


TTC

[ldvger]

Update 4: Scaling RL Maps to Game Maps, Part 4

Hello again and welcome TeaCat, nice to see you here! 

Before I begin with the last phase of the prep for naming my city tiles, I wanted to point out a couple of things I failed to mention in my last post.

Like a lot of graphics programs, CAD is dependent on layers.  For folks unfamiliar with the layers concept, think of using multiple sheets of tracing paper one on top of the other (except they wouldn't slide around).  Each layer holds discreet information that the user defines.  CAD has 2 default layers, the "0" layer, which is white (colors of layers are also user defined) and "defpoints" which is also white.  Anything set in the defpoints layer will not print, which can be a very handy or very annoying feature, depending on how good you are at keeping track of what stuff you put on what layers.  When importing the JPGs into my drawing, I brought them all in on the 0 layer, both the topos and the game region map.  I will not put anything BUT imported objects in this layer.  This way, I can turn them all off at once, if I want, and see what is drawn over them and manipulate that stuff without changing the imported JPGs.  This also allows me to copy drawn objects without copying the underlying JPG's.  You'll see why this becomes important soon. 

I anticipate somebody eventually asking or wondering why I didn't scale the topos up or down to match the region map, rather than the other way around.  The reason is because the composite topo map is just that, a composite of 43 individual objects.  I kinda alluded to this in my last post when explaining why I used a polyline instead of a standard line.  The software would not interpret the compostie map as a composite, it would find 43 individual objects when I activated the Modify Scale tool.  if I then told the software to reduce the scale 25%, it would then do so to each individual object, with the result that they would no longer be married to each other and I would have to go back and remarry them all over again.  This would have happened with a standard line comprised of numerous continuous segments as well.  After modifing it's scale, it would no longer be a continuous line but would be either a bunch of smaller disconnected lines or larger lines overlapping each other.  Hence the use of the polyline and hence my scaling the region map to the topo maps. 

Lastly, I forgot to mention that when I drew my reference polyline around the region map coastline, I created a new layer and called it "black" and made it's color (no surprises here) also black.  CAD also allows the user to define the line type, but I am using all continuous lines so far.  I may use special line types later, I don't know, but I have a wide library to choose from and it helps keep information clearer once you start getting a lot of info on the drawing.  I also neglected to mention that once I got the polyline to match the coast on the topo, I did not delete/erase it, but left it in place because it will be instrumental in precisely locating the region grid over the composite map.

So, ready for the last step?

The first thing I need to do is create a new layer for the region grid.  I did so and called ir "red" and made it's color red.  Then I made sure my ORTHO and OSNAP were turned on and drew a box around the game region map on the red layer:



I used a standard line here because this next step requires it.  I have a tool at Draw>Point called Divide.  It allows me to divide any object into even segments without any measuring...the software does it all for me.  If I used a polyline to box the region map, this tool wouldn't work, although it works excellently on circles and arcs.  It just doesn't like polygons very much.  So, I zoom in to the top line of my red box, switch to the 0 layer because it's white and I want to be able to see the points the software is going to place for me on the red line:



Now I zoom out so I can see the entire region map.  If you look close you might be able to see the evenly spaced little white dots that now exist on the top red line.  I switch back to the red layer, grab the standard line tool and draw a line now from the first white dot to the bottom red line:



Then I use the Copy tool and copy the line I just drew all across the region map, matching the line's endpoint to each node across the top red line:



After all the verticals are drawn/copied, I erase the white points on the top red line, because I don't need them anymore and it's always a good idea to remove excess info from your work.  Then I do the exact same thing with the horizontals, except this time I divide my line into 13 segments rather than 10:



So now I have the city tile grid drawn over my region map.  But, each line of the grid is an individual line and I want to be able to manipulate is as a single object.  To do that, I have to convert it to a Block, which is easy to do and not something I need to show you how to do except that I want to show you that before I convert the grid to a block, I want to turn all my layers except the "red" layer off.  I do this so that the region map doesn't become part of the block as well, as I cannot select the red grid without also selecting the region map.  Well, actually I can if I go and individually select each red line, but that's slow and tedious, whereas if I turn off the other layers I can use a single crossing window to select all the grid lines at once, which is much faster:



Once I have converted the grid to a Block, I turn my "black" layer back on but leave the 0 layer off for the time being.  I want to copy the grid and the black coastline that is now located in the grid from the region map to the topo map.  So I use another crossing window to select them both:



You can see the matching polyline over at the right side of the shot, as well as a grey box that you can ignore for the time being...it's gust another set of objects I have drawn on the black layer and I couldn't turn it off because of that.  It's not a part of this step of the process.

The Copy command allows me to choose a point to use as a copy/match point and I want to use the very tip of the black coatline polyline, click on it's endpoint, then zoom out and move the entire copy over to the topo map and match the end points of the two polylines to each other.  To do this I need to zoom pretty far in:









Once I am certain I have endpoint matching endpoint, I hit enter to end the Copy command and now my region grid has been accurately (or at least as accurately as is possible) overlaid on my topos:





Now you can see where that little grey box fits into the picture, yes?  Soon you will learning just what it is!

So now the city tile grid is superimposed over the topo maps.  Lets see how well they match up with each other.  Lets look at the four city tiles area that comprise the Golden Gate itself.  I have to turn the 0 layer back on now, so all the maps display again:



Now lets see how the grid overlays the same area on the topos:



Not too shabby.  Close enough for me and as I work the individual city tile, I can fudge things around a bit here and there, but overall, I think it's pretty good.  Hope you agree!

So that is the end of the prep stage.  From here I used only the topos and close zooms, going from city tile to city tile, picking out either built or natural features to name my city tiles by.  I used a pad of lined paper and numbered the lines 1-130.  It took me a couple of sessions to got tile by tile through the CAD drawing and write a name down for each city.  BTW, I numbered the grid starting at the far upper left hand corner and then across to 10, the second row started with 11 and went to 20.  I named the first city tile Stafford Lake because:



The lake in the center of the tile is about the only really predominant feature in the tile.  The exurbs of the city of Novato, which is itself a suburb of the greater SF bay area, are in this tile, but the city of Novato itself is in the next tile east, so the lake was really the only thing that jumped out at me as a naming feature. 

Once I had named all the cities, I then, finally, went back into the game itself and went tile by tile, giving my cities the names I had chosen for them.  By this time I had removed all water, texture, and terrain mods that had existed when I orinially rendered the city, so in effect I re-rendered the entire region in plain Maxis vanilla mode as I went along and truth be told I was not unhappy with the results.  As I went along, I watched my region become much drier and plainer, which is what I had wanted.  I also took a close look at my hills/mountains to decide if I was going to have to "rough them up" with terraforming to make them look more like the RL area and, with my recent fly over of the region, decided this would not be necessary.  These are, in RL, low, soft, and heavily aged and eroded hills, there really are no "mountains" in the area as the term is defined in the western US, where "mountains" mean peaks of jagged rock scraping the sky at 14,000 feet elevation.  I don't think there's a single hilltop in SF area, at least that which is contained within my region, which exceeds 4000' and most are much lower.  Flying into SF the landscape looks more like a rumpled unmade bed than anthing else, so I decided the default map was going to be just fine the way it was, no terraforming needed.  My final picture tonite is of the region re-rendered in plain vanilla, this time taken from Region Census:



I think this looks a lot more like the bay area than the original rendered region did.  The snow is gone, the water is bluer, the hills are sandy colored.  I remembered as I was naming re-rending the region that Maxis is located in the south bay area and so why the heck shouldn't the default game terrain values reflect the area the game developers lived and worked in? 

So, many of you may be asking/wondering, what comes next?  Well, now the really intense and difficult work begins.  I have the philosophy that built environments, even mature built environments like this region comprises, must needs be built around and taking into account the natural environment.  So, next up is recreating the watersheds of the region.  The topo maps show every stream and creek and rill and streamlet, and I have a grid in place to locate them.  However, a grid 2.5 miles to a side is not going to be much help for recreating, so next I am going to develope a more detailed grid both in my CAD drawing and in my game cities, which will allow me to plot RL watercourses from the CAD drawing to the game. 

In the meantime, my search for a terrain mod continues.  I have downloaded and installed the Italia mod by cycledogg, but I am not sure I am liking it.  It greens up the landscape quite a bit, it puts wierddark green clumps of stuff on my beaches, and I am not really liking the rock textures.  I am also working hard on PW/GW transitions, as I have many and I want them to be naturalistic, if possible.  I don;t waves running into shorelines parallel to the river shores, which is what happenes if I dredge a river channel from sea level inland.  I don;t like turning off waves in the game to take pics of PW/GW transitions nor do I like playing my game with waves turned off...sea level water laps against a shore and I want wave action.  However, wave action is an obstacle to good PW/GW transitions, so far.  When rivers meet the sea, there are no waves at the intersection because the river creates a deep channel that runs quite a ways out to sea, in fact usually several deep channels.  Many challenges ahead and I am thinking of delving into learning how to create my own custom content in regards to water, both GW and PW to see if I can figure out a solution.  There are a number of folks already working on this who are way ahead of me on the learning curve, so it may be a waste of time for me to try to catch up.

Much cooler today and yesterday, temps in the 80's feel downright balmy after Wednesday's scorcher.  I forgot to mention that summer in Seattle, besides being defined (by me at least) by The Blue Angels and the hydroplanes, also includes the annual arrival of the Navy's Pacific Fleet.  Puget Sound has many harbors that host the Pacific Fleet for a week or so every summer, and the hosting always coincides with Seafair, so while the jets crease the sky and the hydros rooster tail the water, the sailores strut the streets in thier dress blues or work whites.  They travel in small packs, usually, shore leave dontcha know.  Port Angeles hosts a few boats, as does Anacortes, Everett, Seattle, Tacoma, and Bremerton.  The boats hold public tours daily while they are in port and there is a web site where local people can sign up to host a sailor while he/she is in town.  The entire region opens it's arms to those who protect our western shores.  But summer in Seattle is seeing sailors walking the streets and hanging out in the bars. 

Lora/LD

[Nexis4Jersey]

Interesting tutorial , i might use this info to make some Jersey Maps

[Albus of Garaway]

A fascinating couple of updates, Lora. Your work in CAD is simply incredible. I can't wait to see what you're up to next!

[ldvger]

Update 5: Scaling RL Maps to Game maps, Part 5

Albus of Garaway says:

Your work in CAD is simply incredible. I can't wait to see what you're up to next!

And Nexis4Jersey says:

i might use this info to make some Jersey Maps

Well, you won't have long to wait to see what comes next, because this post is it.  Also wanted to say that AutoCAD is incredibley powerful software and I only use about 10% of it's capabilities.  I only use what I need for residential architecture and haven't a clue in the world how to use the rest of the tools, but I seem to learn new tricks and tools all the time.  It's not very intuitive and it's VERY expensive, so if any of you have any thoughts about running out and purchasing it, I hope you have lots of money and many, many hours of free time on your hands.  The learning curve is quite steep.  I've only been using the software myself since about 2004, so about 5 years now, and am considered by most folks to have "adequate" skills and to still be rather slow with it.  There are simpler graphics drawing programs out there that have the same or similar tools as I use and which are much less expensive, but I have CAD so that's what *I* use.  Autodesk, who manufactures AutoCAD, also has a "Lite" version of the full program I use and it's also less expensive, as is thier student version, so if you're into mapping and want a new toolbox to work with, those are options.  One of the reasons I was originally hesitant to start this MD is because I rely heavily on a software tool most other folks don't have access to and it seemed kinda unfair.  However, I really am using only the most basic CAD tools and since many other draw programs have the same sets, I figured that maybe if I just ullustrated tool techniques it would be helpful for others.

I also wanted to clarify my use of crossing windows to select multiple objects, as it becomes critical in this next drawing build.  There are two ways to draw crossing windows, from left to right and from right to left.  Windows drawn from left to write select only those objects fully contained within the window.  Other objects that may also be in the window but which extend beyond the window are NOT selected.  Crossing windows that are drwn from right to left select all objects in the window, including those that extend beyond the window itself.  You will see how this difference in drawing a crossing window comes into play shortly.

Onward!

So, when I left off last night, I had finally named all my cities and created a game accurate region grid to overlay my topos.  Now, in order to assure accurate recreation of RL objects contained within each city tile and shown in great detail on my topo maps, I need to create a new grid, this one a city tile grid of 256 cells square, because that's the grid that occurs in the game itself.  Using an overlaying city tile grid of 256 cells will allow me to semi-accurately plot RL objects into the game to within about 1-2 cells of accuracy or 50-100 feet.  That sound like a lot of wiggle room to someone like me who is used to working with accuracy of 1/16", but hey, it's a game and even *I* know I can't get overall accuracy greater than a couple of cells!

So this is where we left off:



I'm only going to be working on a single city tile square, so I'll need to zoom as far in as I can.  I've chosen to use the Stafford Lake tile for this, as it is the upper left corner of the region and close to unused space, which I am going to need to do some off-map work in. 

Oh!  I forgot to tell you that when I overlaid my region grid on the topos, which actuallu happened a couple of weeks ago and not last night, I found I had 3 topo maps which fell entirely outside of the region grid, all 3 at the far north western edge, so I deleted them.  Because this MD was started after I did that, those 3 maps have never been shown here, just wanted you to know that from here on what there are now 40 topo maps, not 43.

So anyway, the zoom in leaves me here:



Now I draw a box around the city tile, just like I did before, using a standard line that I can divide, and I am putting this on the black layer this time, as I don't want it on the same layer as my region grid.  I may want to turn one off and leave the other on, so I want them on different layers and I really haven't used the black layer for anything so far except to draw my coatsal polyline and I don't need that line any more, so for the time being that means the city grid will be the only object on the black layer.  Once the box is drawn, I use the divide command again, but this time I divide the line by 256 points (that's a lot of points!).  I also switched over to the red layer to draw the points, so that I would be able to see them on the black line.  Now I switch back to black and zoom way in so I can pick up the first point on the line and draw my first line.  Again, I am using standard lines AND my ORTHO and OSNAP are turned on, to make sure I draw only vertical/horizontal lines (ORTHO) and that the software will automatically find ojects for me (OSNAP):



At this close zoom, I can easily pick up the first point on the line but I can't very easily draw to the bottom of the box, so I zoom back out so I can see the entire box again:



At this zoom one can hardly even see the new line I am drawing, it is so close to the edge of the box, which is why ORTHO and OSNAP come in so handy.  I know the line is perfectly vertical and when I see the little tool tip flip out at the bottom of the page saying "perpendicular", I know I have met with the line at the bottom of the box.  My line now drawn, I return to a close zoom at the top of the box, pan the drawing a little towards the left to expose as much of the length of the top line as possible at this zoom, then I use the Copy command and copy the line 15 more times, so that I now have 16 columns:



Now I use a right/left crossing window to select the 16 lines I just drew:



Notice this crossing window displays as a dotted line.  A crossing window drawn from left to right displays as a solid line.  Once I have selected the lines, I select the corner of the box as my copying reference point:



Then I copy these 16 lines 16 times across the top of the box, panning left as I go, and using the end pint of the last line as my copying point each time:



You didn't really think I would draw 256 lines manually did you?  Or, did you think I might copy that first line 255 more times?  Nah, I knew you didn't.  So now we have this:



To do the horizontal lines, I am going to use a shortcut.  Because this grid is square rather than rectangular, I can copy it, rotate it 90 degrees and then place it over the verticals, saving me the time of dividing, drawing, and copying.  This where I use a left/right crossing window, selecting only the objects completely contained within the window.  First I start the copy command, then select my box full of vertical lines:



Now I move the copy over to an area of the drawing that is clear of other work, so I can see what I'm doing AND not affect other work:



Now I activate the Rotate tool, making sure my ORTHO is still on because that will constrain my rotations to 90 degrees, which is exactly what I want, and select the copied box, using whever type of window I want because there is no other work around that might get accidently left out or included:



Now I rotate the box:



Once the box is rotated, I use the Move command to select it, then zoom way to to select the corner of the box as my move point:



Then I pan right and match my move point with the corner of the original box:



Now I have a 256 cell square city grid:





The final step is to now convert this grid into a block, which I explained (sorta) last night.  CAD wants each block object to have it's own discreet name, so I named the region grid "gamegrid" and I named the city grid (what else?) "citygrid". 

That's all for now, dinner's on the table!

Lora/LD

[MrWacko]

Talk about an ambitious project you've got going. I'll love to see how it turns out, being a San Francisco native myself. Heck, your likely to cover a few relatives houses in Novato soon. It's a shame though that the map doesn't cover a few extra tiles south and north, to cover all of Marin, as well as San Jose.

Question for you: How are you planning on doing things like the bridges? You've got the two ends of the Golden Gate Bridge separated by city squares, plus diagonals AND multiple city squares for the Richmond Br. and the suspension side of the Bay Br. Thoughts?

[ldvger]

MrWacko asks:

Question for you: How are you planning on doing things like the bridges? You've got the two ends of the Golden Gate Bridge separated by city squares, plus diagonals AND multiple city squares for the Richmond Br. and the suspension side of the Bay Br. Thoughts?

I plan to cheat, of course.  That is, in reality, part of what I consider to be the creativity of attempting a project such as this...one must cheat now and then and do so in such a way as to not disturb the viewer's perception of a recreation of a RL area.

I have already given thought to the bridges. 

The Golden Gate is nearly vertical in the N/S directions as is, so this one will be easy.  I will create a small island in the middle of the gate/strait to anchor the bridge to as it crosses from one city tile to another.  I don't have any problem doing this because in RL, this is exactly what engineers do...adapt the existing landscape to fit thier needs.  Look at some of the bridges that have been built in Chesapeake Bay and across the Florida Keys.

The Oakland Bay Bridge is another story.  It uses Treasure Island in the middle of the bay as a hinge point and because of my maps and the way my city tiles laid out, Treasure Island is not  in an east/west line with my SF city tile of Oakland tile, so again I am going to have to cheat.  My plan is to extend Treasure Island down into both the SF city tile and the Oakland tile.

Those are the two major major bridges in the area, which is not to discount the importance of the San Mateo Bridge, the Redwood Point/Dumbarton Bridge, or the San Rafael/Richmond Bridge.  In all cases I am going to have to cheat.  Such is life is you are trying to recreat a RL situation using SC4.  The game has limits and one of those limits is that bridges cannot be laid other than orthangonally and must connect from one land mass to another within the city tile.

Maybe by the time I get to that point, someone will have figured out how to build bridges and highways off the grid.  Who knows?  If not, I think I have it covered. 

Which brings up something I have been thinking about a lot lately.  I was orginally planning to go city tile by city tile and lay down all my water first, but I am not feeling so confident about that idea now.  With 130 city tiles, it could take me a year or more just to do this.  So now I am thinking I might want to consider fully developing each city tile before I move on to the next one. 

Feedback and comments on this and other ideas are always solicited and appreciated.

Lora/LD

[Battlecat]

Well you've certainly taken the term "recreating" extremely seriously!  Nice work with CAD there, I agree, it's an excellent and powerful program, which I also use extensively both for work and for SC4.  Nice work on matching the scale of your region to your topographic maps, that's not an easy thing to do! 

I agree that your best bet would be to finish each tile before moving on to the next one.  It'll give you some visual rewards as you move through the project rather than having to wait over a year to see anything completed.  I'm looking forward to seeing what's coming up next. 

[MrWacko]

I'd go RL city by city, covering some of the exurbs of certain cities as SC4 city tiles permit, for your development process. That way you can cover each area with as much detail as possible, before moving onto the next city. For the purposes of larger cities, it's probably safe to simply cover one district at a time, or everything on one side of a particular road/avenue/freeway or other easily visible boundary (like a SC4 tile )

This project has certainly peaked my interest, enough that I'll be paying lots of attention, when I'm not paying attention to RL or my own region. If you need any opinions, help or anything else you can think of, I'd love to volunteer it, since I grew up in SF, and still live in the bay area. Of course it's your region, so do with it as you wish!

[Ryan B.]

Lora, this is some of the greatest in-depth work I have ever seen.  Kudos to you for taking it on - and keep up the good work!

[ldvger]

Update 6: Introducing Thoughts about Mods

Well, it was a quiet weekend here on the MD.  I kept waiting for someone to post a comment so I could throw up the next batch of pics without being accused of bumping my own thread and no one did, so I worked on a couple of other projects instead.  Guess everyone was out enjoying the summer weekend, which I can't blame anyone for doing. 

FYI, one of the other projects I am currently working on is PW/GW transitions, as I have never been happy with any of the many ways I have seen other folks work this challenge out.  Being the perfectionista that I am, and now having a region with LOTS of areas where PW is going to have to transition to GW, I want to see if maybe somehow this challenge can't be resolved.  I've started a thred in the Brainbusters forum board...if any of you are interested in this conondrum, you can follow our discussion over there and see some of the results of the ideas we are coming up with.  There is also a thread and group of folks working on this in the Landscape Design Studio team, they have a thread going in the Projects forum board which I am also monitoring and chiming in on from time to time.  Most of them are currently too busy with RL to do much else for the time being, so my patience is being tested.  Have no fear, I am a Taurus, both tenacious and patient as a cow chewing cud.

Ongoing "behind the scenes" of what I am posting here is my search for a water mod I like, trees appropriate to costal central California, and still a sticking point, a terrain mod.  As I said a few posts ago, by the time I went back into the game and named all my cities, I had stripped all the custom mods out of my plugins folder and so re-rendered my region in Plain Vanilla, which I was not entirely unhappy with.  The biggest drawbacks are the very flat-looking GW and the lack of variable textures on land.  I haven't tried removing all my custom tree stuff (and I have tons of them), but that experiment may yet be upcoming.  I'm not doing any actual work in the region right now...just trying a lot of different combinations to see if I can come up with something I will be happy with. 

Responses to recent comments:

Battlecat says:

Nice work with CAD there, I agree, it's an excellent and powerful program, which I also use extensively both for work and for SC4.

Thanks!  It's not often I get comliments on my CAD work, usually it's a client commenting and the comments are the other way around!    But yes, I use CAD for all kinds of stuff that I'm sure it was never intended for.  I create knitting patterns in CAD as well as color schemes for knitting projects!

MrWacko says:

This project has certainly peaked my interest, enough that I'll be paying lots of attention, when I'm not paying attention to RL or my own region. If you need any opinions, help or anything else you can think of, I'd love to volunteer it, since I grew up in SF, and still live in the bay area. Of course it's your region, so do with it as you wish!

As a current resident of the Bay Area, your comments will be invaluable and you may find you regret offering your services.    Could you run to the upper San Pablo Bay for me anytime soon and take some pics of the area where the Petaluma River enters the Bay?  This is the tile I am starting with and I am wondering what the area looks like.  It'd be nice if you could rent a boat and take pics from the bay toward the land and then maybe do a little paragliding for some low altitude aerials.  The next city tile east is Novato and I'll need some pics of that area too, while your in the area.  I hope you know I'm just kidding    But seriously, your opinions and comments are always welcome and actively sought after.  I can only use Mapquest and Google Earth so far, so having an "eye on the scene" will be very helpful.  I may have to think about assembling a team of helpers who are in the Bay Area in RL to collaborate with me on this project...it's a big one!

Ryan B says:

this is some of the greatest in-depth work I have ever seen.  Kudos to you for taking it on

Aw shucks, thanks!  Usually my anal/OCD/detailism drives folks up a wall (thankfully it amuses my roommate) and folks tell me to STOP IT ALREADY!  Nice to have found an outlet that allows me to express myself in and get positive feedback instead of negative. 

Well, It's only two votes for completing city tiles one by one versus 0 votes for doing the entire region phase by phase, so going tile by tile wins by a landslide.  I actually think it will keep me more interested in the project this way...keep me from getting bored plotting grids, plopping hundreds of hours of PW, detailing streambeds for weeks and months on end, planting invididual trees all night long.  You get my drift. 

And with that issue resolved, I think I may revisit my decision to start with the tile that contains the confluence of the Petaluma River and San Pablo Bay.  In fact, until a way is founf to transition PW to GW naturalistically, I may avoid my coatlines altogether for the time being and work only on land locked tiles.  I have enough of those to keep my busy for at least a year and, fingers crossed, the transition problem will be solved by then, so I can go back and do the shorelines later.  We may also discover a way to defeat the orthagonal only bridges problem, which would mean I'd have to cheat less when it comes to the interbay bridges that span the area. 

Another bee in my personal bonnet is the default highways.  I started reading the BAT Essentials tutorial over on ST today with the idea that I may finally have to break down and learn how to create custom content.  This is a major metroplitan area and the freeways that run through it are not simple 4 lanes.  I've always wanted some 6 lane and 8 lane freeways to work with, not to mention divided freeways where one set of lanes is divided from another by a median.  I also want to copy, as near as I can, the RL interchanges and while the NAM team has done a great job of expanding our library of interchanges, in RL interchanges are designed and governed by the terrain they cover.  I wish I could find some pictures to the I-90/I-5 interchange here in Seattle, it's a little mind boggling.  It's just a "T" intersection, but it occurs both right at the extreme edge of the heart of downtown AND in a steep valley with hills to either side of the "leg" of the "T" makes it an engineering marvel. 

So lots of good stuff ahead.  No pics to post tonite, maybe tomorrow.  I'm ging to start switching out various terrain mods to see what they look like.  I currently have Cycledogg's Italia installed with the optional Olympic Beaches texture removed.  It's a little greener in the lower elevations than I really like and the green goes up a little higher than I like, so I am going to download his Missouri Breaks and see if maybe that one looks better.  I'll take pics and post them here, then we can decide together which one looks best for the RL area.  Along with this, I'm going to start plopping PW but will post pics of how I transfer grid information from CAD topos to the in-game city tile itself.  Warning!  Extreme OCD attack coming up!

Later folks!

Lora/LD

[projectadam]

Lora,

I would be willing to go to where the Petaluma River enters the Bay and take any pictures you could dream up that you would want... On an all expense paid trip from you

I can think of quite a few reasons you want PW but could you get by just using all game water and use the terraforming tools? I was debating this when I started my region and actually if I would have started after the latest update to the NAM I would have used PW but trying the game water route for right now.

I have also always been disappointed in the default highways and use the RHWs pretty much in all circumstances. Can you get by just using the RHWs or what are your reasons for creating custom highways?

On doing all the tiles' major transportation routes, water, etc... I think would have looked best but doing one tile at a time gives off the reward and satisfaction of actually getting something completed and is quite a bit more interesting for the viewers. I continue to wish you the best of luck on this project.

[soulchaser]

Hi,

First of all: great work there, this is really getting big, I think.

I would recommend using a GeoInformationSoftware, for your work on finding the right coastlines. It's likely, that your work would be even more exact.
With a GIS, even if it's freeware, you can rectify maps. You might look at some of my work, where I use GIS for creating maps (so it's the other way round LINK (the lower one)), though I often give up trying to be too exact.

[Albus of Garaway]

Hi Lora,

Some interesting ideas that have been passing through here during my short absence. Here's one of my own: Have you thought of making bridges that are overhanging props that go over the river? That way, they can be any angle you'd like! I've seen this done a few times before so that people can get diagonal bridges, but they don't necessarily need to be diagonal. They can be any angle you please. If I'm not mistaken, BarbyW has once done an overhanging bridge (But then again, it could have been mrbisonm. I really can't remember...).

I just thought that might be something to consider, if you have any skills when it comes to creating BATs.

Good luck!