Darley Island

[emgmod]

I expected a bit more sprawl, but that's pretty good for only 1000 people. I also liked that school a lot.

[vester]

I expected a bit more sprawl, but that's pretty good for only 1000 people. I also liked that school a lot.

Sprawl ? Why ?

Connor is English, sprawl is an American thing.



Looks good Connor.

[Luke09]

Nice Town!Its very nice,and my favorite place is the pub

[Nanami]

Nice update. Hmm so, this region is not suitable with that mod.

[kwakelaar]

Nice work on your MD, your first village is looking very nice and I always like seeing GC bats being used. Gives your development a distinct English flavour.

[Connor]

Replies:

Battlecat: Firstly, thanks very much for commenting again.

As for additional housing styles, I was expecting at least one person to say this. And like many people, I base my gameplay on real life. I don't know what it's like in other countries such as USA and Canada, but when I look out the window of my house all I see on the other side of the road is a bunch of houses looking straight at me, all of which look pretty much identical to my own, and its pretty much the same all over the country.

Because I like to make my gameplay realistic I implement this into all my residential areas. However, I do agree that in Simcity it can look rather repetitive and quite bland to have all the houses in one area looking exactly the same, and so whilst I agree that adding different houses would look better, I didn't want to spoil the realism that I was trying to create.

Emgmod: Firstly, thanks for commenting again.

Secondly, by sprawl I assume you are referring to urban/suburban sprawl. When it comes to the bigger towns on the island there certainly will be sprawl, but this is only a little village, and so there isn't much sprawl here.

Vester: Firstly, thanks for commenting, and welcome to Darley Island.

Secondly, although sprawl may be more common in America, sprawl is happening over here in England as well. Nearly every time that I read the local newspaper there's lots of articles and letters from people opposing new developments and trying to prevent sprawl, and so I can tell you that it most certainly does happen in England, though is much more common in America.

Luke09: Thanks for commenting, and welcome to Darley Island.

976: Thanks again for stopping by, and yes I did feel it wasn't suitable. It's a great mod, but I wanted the water to look more dirty and polluted.

Kwakelaar: Thanks for commenting, and welcome to Darley Island. I love those GC BATs and as you said they're great at making the area look English.

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So, that's the replies done.

I've got some RL things to do this weekend though I'll be trying to cram in as much simcity time as possible.

Connor.

[Battlecat]

Good point about the housing!  If you're shooting for your local brand of realism, then you're doing a great job!

At least around my part of BC, even an individual subdivision of 20 -40 homes will have 2 - 4 different building designs.  As you move from subdivision to subdivision, the building styles can vary quite dramatically depending on the age and context of the development!  Interesting how personal experience colors our view of what "realistic" looks like; thanks for sharing your thoughts on the matter!

Hope RL doesn't slow you down too much, I'm looking forward to your next update!

[Connor]

Replies:

Battlecat: Sounds like a lot of variation in housing styles over in your area, especially compared to where I live anyway. In England, whenever they build houses somewhere, they tend to build them so they all look the same. For instance, the town I live in has a CBD area, and surrounding that are various residential areas. Each residential area tends to have its own housing style, and so all the houses in one area look the same, though they are normally a different style to houses from other residential areas of the same town.

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This isn't the update that I had intended, but I got a little distracted.

Firstly, I decided to try out a few different terrain mods. I've been using the Olympic terrain mod for atleast a year now, and just out of curiosity i tried out a few alternative mods, and I've now settled on using the Meadowshire Terrain Mod.

So, here's the updated region overview, which now includes the village of Kimble, and of course the new terrain mod.



Here's a couple of pics showing the Meadowshire terrain mod on the western side of the island.





Secondly, it was my intention to make a little map of Kimble. I went looking through various mapping tutorials and got a little distracted. One thing led to another I ended up making a topographical map of Kimble's tile (B2), which can be seen below.

All credit goes to degren's fantastic tutorial, which is here: http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=112.msg50350#msg50350

I'm not sure why, but i found that topo mapping was rather enjoyable.

Note that the grey areas are water, the white area is land, and the black lines are the contour lines. The grey area on the east side of the picture is the sea, and the smaller grey are on the west side of the tile is the eastern half of Kendal Lake.



Due to the rather small size of the island, I'm considering doing this for each tile, giving me a topographical map for all six tiles, which I can then also use to create a map for the region as a whole.

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What I intended to do over the weekend I'll start working on tonight, and post the next update midweek, probably Wednesday.

Connor.

[art128]

It's a nice Md you have there, Connor. I liked a lot discovering your region and your progress with the roads layout. Kimble looks like a nice village, quite a pleasant town to live in. Nice work with the green open fields behind the houses, it's not something we can see usually but the result you've done here is quite nice.
Can't wait to see more urbanization and/or vegetation.

-Arthur.

[Battlecat]

Nice start on the topographic map!  Nice simple colors are a good place to start, you can easily replace the black and white to create a color map in the future! 

Good choice of terrain mod as well!

[Nanami]

Great!
It seems you try to use meadowshire terrain mod, actually I also try to use it in my MD.

[sumwonyuno]

I like the topographical map idea, and I'm interested to see one for the whole region.  What is the spacing on those contour lines?

[Connor]

Replies:

art128: Thanks for the nice comments. By the way, im assuming the 'open fields' you referred to was the empty areas outside of Kimble. The only reason these areas are empty is because i have not had the time to develop them with trees and farms.

Battlecat: Thank you for stopping by again, and yes any future topographic maps will be in colour.

976: Thanks for replying, and yes i've begun using the meadowshire terrain mod, and as you use it yourself you can see how good it is.

sumwonyumo: Thank you for replying, and i hope you like the region topo map when its done. I don't actually know what the espacing is on the contour lines. To make the map i just followed David's (dedgren's) tutorial from 3RR and i dont think it didnt say anything about the spacing so i dont actually know.

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I apologise for the lack of proper updates, but over the last couple of months i've had a lot of work in RL to do, though thankfully the assignment i have been working on is due in for tomorrow and so i finally finished it last night.

I'll have more free time on my hands now, which means more SC4 time, and some actual proper updates rather than the random little posts i've been showing you so far.

I intended to have the next update ready for today, but i haven't done as much as i had hoped, and i had problems with the LE, which have been solved now.

Anyways, i'll try to get the next update done as quick as i can.

Connor

[Connor]

It's been a while since any proper update, and I do apologise for that, but as you will find out, updates will be much more development based.

So, I launched up SC4 and opened the region to find this:


Then I sat there for a while looking at this screen wondering what on earth I was going to do. Then, I decided that enough was enough and it was time to start some city building (though strictly speaking this is town building).

So, what do I build first...?

After a slight moment of hesitation i decided to build Darley.

Darley is the largest settlement on Darley Island, hence the name of the island. Because Darley is the largest settlement on a small island such as this, Darley is the centre of commerce on the island. Anyone wishing to go from the island to the mainland can do so via the car and passenger ferries at Darley, which connect the island to the mainland. A fair chunk of the island's population does this on a daily basis, due to living on the island, but working on the mainland, as there is little opportunity for highly paid and skilled jobs on the island. The ferry service is not only used for commuters but also by students and shoppers. The ferry journey is only twenty minutes long and runs regularly throughout the day from early in the morning until late in the evening. The population of the town of Darley is approximately 15,000.

Its about time I posted some pictures. So, let's begin with some town planning.

Here's tile A2, where most of Darley will be located.


Zoom in a little...

Time to plan. Remember...fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

*Retail park...british terminology. I think they're called strip malls in the US.

Okay, okay planning done.

It's now time to start building. To begin with i will be focussing on the area labelled town centre on the above image.

No English town centre can be complete without a High Street.

Whether the town is big...


Or the town is small...


No English town can be without its high street. A British high street is normally a road or pedestrian area, lined with shops on one or both sides. The shops are normally built in old wall2wall buildings.

Here's some pictures of what I mean...









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Luckily for me, there are some fantastic BATs out there, and I look forward to developing Darley high street and the rest of the town.

---

Connor.

[canyonjumper]

Nice update! They are called strip malls, not only in the States, but here in Canada too. The high street also has an US/Canadian equivalent: the Main St. Same thing as the high street, except people don't walk on road. If they did, they'd get hit . Hope next update is just as good as this one, if not better

                             -Jordan

[Connor]

Hi all, i've been under the weather today, and have ended up stuck in bed all day. I'm hoping to recover quickly because as a result i'm unable to play SC4, and i've fallen well behind in RL stuff, and i've got a lot of catching up to do.

However, i did feel a little better for a short while, and had the energy to start working on Darley High Street (see previous post).

All i did was download some Gascooker lots, and put them in game so i could take a look at them, and i really like them. They are very realistic for British towns.

I'll show you how they look at the moment:







I need to do some lotting on these, and i want to start putting into place some more BATs, though my SC4 time may be limited for a few days.

I'm hoping to do a full update before Christmas.

Connor/

[canyonjumper]

If you wanted a High street like you showed in the pics, use the NAM's Pedestrian Mall tiles, so that people can walk in the middle of the road. Cars won't be able to get through though. Nice work on the high street. 

[Battlecat]

Very nice looking start to this town!  Those are great buildings!

[calibanX]

That's a beautiful looking High Street. It's got great character and it's very inviting. I'm looking forward to what you build around it.

Geoff

[warconstruct]

wow very great job in your cities !!