Siilijoki

[rambuckel]

Congratulations on OSITM! I'm really happy to see Siilijoki back "in action" and I'm really curious about your ideas. The pictures so far promise a lot 

Best wishes Theresa


Glad to hear you're excited for Siilijoki's return, Theresa, and I hope you enjoy the plans and ideas! I plan to include some of your great custom content as well as inspiration from your lovely MD

[noahclem]

Thanks so much for the enthusiastic support!

Today I want to go back into the history of Siilijoki a bit. My hope is that the past will help to understand the current Siilijoki and my plans for it which I'll get into more detail about later in this post.

Siilijoki's origins lie 3 1/2 years in the past shortly after I moved to Finland and during period where I had quite a bit of time to myself. Having left the distractions of bartending life back in the States and while waiting for construction and remodeling on our restaurant to finish before I could start work in earnest I found myself spending more time around the SimCity fan sites and exchanges than I ever had in the past. Looking to start a new region that would be as close to "the last region I'd ever need to start" as possible I stumbled upon this map whose dominant feature was what appeared to be a large river. Combining my nascent Finnish vocabulary with that feature and my admiration of the noble hedgehog the name and the region of "Siilijoki" were born.

Even in those earliest days there was more than just a map and a name in common with the present and more recent past of Siilijoki. The first pictures I have from Siilijoki  (published here in a question) inform on that a bit .





Using game water for canals instead of lots offers other advantages but it started as a practical measure: I knew my old machine couldn't handle play on a fully-developed large tile and maximizing the amount of game water meant less lots and flora which meant better performance. The canals remain but I was eventually able to solve the bridge problem with sea level manipulation (you can find the solution through my sig links). Diagonal bridges are already present in the new Siilijoki but represent something else core to Siilijoki: my interest in using all tricks and tools at my disposal to create things in new and unique ways.


Complex, multi-modal intersections with emphasis on aesthetics were also part of pre-MD Siilijoki. This interchange continues to exist essentially unchanged in the Old Siilijoki region:



A bit later I realized the possibilities of the night in SC4 and my love of it never left. This was my first entry (and first win) in the picture competition.



You can expect all of those elements, as well as a lot of the rest of Siilijoki's character to remain a part of it for as long as there is a Siilijoki. And if you want to continue reading about the history of Siilijoki you can continue from the last pics to the beginning of the MD. But what else can you expect from the future of Siilijoki? Well first, it's bigger. Much bigger. And it's likely to grow bigger still.



The original region is in the darkest box with the original center the red dot. For an idea of scale, it is 4x5.5 large tiles in size. The new region, shown in the less darkened box, is 13x13.5 large tiles: slightly larger than NORO's 13x13. The map misses some neat gorge terrain though, and more importantly leaves the new city center (yellow dot) uncomfortably close to the region's edge. Regions can be expanded to the east and south but not to the north or west (without having to go through the process of importing the cities into the newly sized region and losing all regional connections) so my thought is that if there's a reasonable chance I'd want to "annex" those areas at some point it would be easiest to do now. Since I have elevation data for the larger area, courtesy of Dob Driver and extending to the remainder of the map, further expansion is feasible.

And there are reasons to expect a large area developed. Modern tree controllers mean pretty high-quality forested areas can be made in a tiny fraction of the time manually MMPing would take. My vastly more powerful machine means I spend 90% of my SimCity time playing instead of 90% of that time waiting while the game lags. But most importantly Siilijoki is no longer a single-player project. It is not a group project in the sense that NORO or 3RR is but it is in the cloud and I've already been working with Willy (Swordmaster) over the past weeks with plugins and planning and he also plans to build and to be Siilijoki's rail and port expert. I hope you're as excited for his contributions as I am!


You can see a better view of the current region here:


This is a very rough plan for the regions highways (red) and passenger rails (purple) that I suggested to Willy a while back. The area north of the center where transit networks seem to ignore the large amount of water will be terraformed into a river of similar width to the lower part of the "river". This is because what I originally assumed was a river was in fact a sound (see RL map area here).


I've already put quite a lot of time into the new region. Really a lot. But one tends to forget after it's been so long just how much work starting a new region is    Even having very good sets of plugins I'm familiar with the draw from (NORO and Old Siilijoki) building a good set of plugins takes a lot of time--without even taking into account the lotting, modding, and tweaking necessary to make them as good as I want them to be. I'll get to the stuff I've been working on and planning with regard to custom content in the next update. But since I didn't start this new project until after I was asked to do OSITM this week I didn't have the time to do as much of that work as I would've like before starting.

My strategy then was to just start building the center as early as was practical hoping to have enough built for good pictures for the week. Siilijoki is supposed to be much more Old World than NORO (and more so than old Siilijoki) so I started building without detailed plans this time hoping to end up with a more unique and character-filled transit grid. We'll get back to the pretty shots later but today I'd like to post an overview of what's been built to date:

Click to enlarge



Thanks again to everyone for all your support and if you made it through all that text you're awesome! Seeya shortly 

[Gugu3]

Always interesting to have a look at your work Noah!there's always something to pick up and use myself
Cheers
Guglielmo


Thanks Guglielmo!

[rooker1]

Love the history, but I love even more where this is going.

Robin


Much appreciated Robin!

[art128]

I like to see what's going on.

Great update, as per usual. Looking forward to more of this goodness.


Thank you Arthur! I try to keep the goodness coming

[metarvo]

Congrats on OSITM, Noah!  It's good to see Siilijoki still around even as NORO expands.  The multi-player aspect is interesting, too.  It just goes to show that we don't need any new SimCity games to store cities in the cloud or share regions among players.

I never realized it, but the diagonal bridges can have the effect of creating canal walls when built on slopes like that.  That is one impressive find, Noah.



Thanks a lot Metarvo! It's fun to be back in Siilijoki and though there are many things similar in it to NORO they are still very different things to play. Glad you like the diagonal bridge "walls"--I haven't used that trick in a long time!

[Kergelen]

Is wonderful to see how you improve along the years the in-game water canals.

The new Silijoiki map is very appropriate for your style (the center tile is quite silmilar to the old Silijoki) and I really like the marinas inside the canals


Thanks Arnau! Glad you like the canals and marinas. One of the big challenges for me now is getting those paris sea walls to work well with those marinas--but i think i've found a good way to do it

[FrankU]

A very interesting development! A map like that would make me feel lost, however. I stick to something like 5x5 or 4x7 large tiles and that's enough for me.
And because of Prop Pox experiences I tend to use medium tiles these days. Less game lag too.

But I will follow your project. Succes!


Great to see you here Frank! I like big tiles for a few reasons and shouldn't have problems if I take care of the plugins correctly. I'm sure the region will never be "done" (at least I hope) but I like keeping my options open just in case

[Swordmaster]

Great to see those old shots! I hadn't seen them, and probably would never have. It's interesting to observe how you haven't progressed much over the years (cause you didn't need to ).

and to be Siilijoki's rail and port expert.

Expert?? Let's say "nerd"


Cheers
Willy


Well you said it, not me   Thanks buddy!

[rambuckel]

This is an impressive explanation of your way of creating your brilliant sceneries! Thanks a lot! I'm really looking forward to what comes next. I'm sure I'll admire your scenery!

Thanks a lot Theresa! Glad you enjoyed the explanation and thanks for following the new Siilijoki so closely!

[Terring7]

Oh my, I haven't visited Silijoki for a long time. Well, I'm not surprised for the new O.S.IT.M., since it deserve it


Thanks Elias, glad to see you back here!

[noahclem]

Thanks for all the nice replies everyone! I'm a bit behind but have been trying to reply to everyone in their comments--hope to catch up soon

Building a new plugins folder to suit my hopes for the new region means quite a bit of custom work if I want to do things right. I have a lot of plans, some of which may be a bit far-fetched but several of which are already realized. The first thing I made is a new tram station:



Eventually I plan to re-do the textures to match sidewalks--and I've not dropped my plans for revamping the tram network's textures as a whole....


The next thing, which I've already shown looking good, is my tweaks to Xannepan's new version of the Quai Seine. Reducing the vertical dimension by 50% gives me a height I like more and find more realistic and also gives the textures a near-perfect look in zoom 6. That does mean a need for quite a bit of re-lotting which is a bit tricky for several reasons and will thus have to wait until after OSITM. Unfortunately there are two cases where model tweaking created errors:





Since he releases his model files publicly I hope these are things I can eventually smooth out but even with a couple errors I still really like my new version of the walls.


Perhaps the biggest and most important thing I've been working on and plan is a mod to replace all the maxis flora with higher quality ones. As a first example I took these trees:



And replaced them with these:


I'm hoping to make a similar mod for a number of commonly-used props, switching them to the highest-quality HD ones.


I've always liked prepo's work. It's ubiquitous in MDs that use diagonals and amazing for its quality from the fairly early days of the SC4 community. Some great bats of his you just don't see very often and I've been looking for an excuse to use this one--but it wouldn't fit where i wanted it. On my new lot of it the building overhangs all sides except for the one facing the street, which I've decorated with great props from Girafe, namspopof, and vnaonod. You can also see some new park wall lots of been developing here:




I know what you're thinking right now: "but Noah, I like urban roundabouts but the selection of wall-to-wall buildings to surround them with is woefully inadequate." Fortunately I can read minds 












But wait, there's more! Just about every picture I've published this week features at least one building from Art128. I've finished the modding of them, other than a couple small changes to text and menu order, and I suspect Arthur will be sharing them with the community pretty soon.

[art128]

Wonderful update, of course because my building are in them.

Just joking. Nice modding work on everything there, not only my buildings.


Pssst, use the newer version of Animate.

Wonderful update, of course because my building are in them.

If that's the case than all my updates are wonderful 

The Animate building is updated now

[Haljackey]

Thanks a ton Ryan!

[vinlabsc3k]

It's a pity that u restart the region , but I can't wait the new developements and with these teasers it will be a wonderful MD!!

I'll miss old Siilijoki too but I have every reason to think the new one will be even better   Glad you're enjoying things so far

[Gugu3]

Wow Noah!the new Siilijoki looks like an amzing project!can't wait to see all the surprises you're going to show us...and with Willy as head of the department of transports (rail transport ) it can be just amazing!looking forward to seeing some new stuff!
cheers
Guglielmo


Thanks a lot! Willy's been doing an awesome job with a lot of things already and I'm especially looking forward to his rail stuff.

[kelis]

WOW Noah  I see a lot of improvements in your pictures and I like everything which I'm watching !! I hope you keep up this good work and we can still enjoying this great MD.

Greetings / Jonathan


Thanks a lot Jonathan! I do plan to keep Siilijoki going for a long time to come 

[rambuckel]

I really wonder where you got all those houses from. You must have spent hours or even days or weeks to find all of them! The project becomes more interesting with every update ... 


Thanks a lot Theresa! If you ever have questions about where to find anything here be sure to ask 

[Swordmaster]

Fantastic update. It's amazing how fast you get back to this kind of level. You were basically set up in a handful of days, which is hardly noticeably looking at the quality of your scenes.

I really wonder where you got all those houses from. You must have spent hours or even days or weeks to find all of them! The project becomes more interesting with every update ... 

I can honestly say that this guy is a bit of a plugins wonder. The BATs he turns up; I think he has some kind of encyclopedia lying around in his head


Cheers
Willy


Thanks Willy! I'm glad you're impressed on how quickly the city got to this point but part of that is me putting in a ton of hours trying to be ready for OSITM in time. Thanks so much for the kind words on the plugins

[noahclem]

I've got time for one more little update and this time we'll be looking at a small town I'm building in a narrow valley surrounded by high mountains. Part of what I've been wanting to do with the new Siilijoki is to have a more European feel, for small towns in particular. I raided TSC, the LEX. and SimCity Polska for European small town bats and came back with a selection I'm really happy with featuring stunning detail and HD quality. I'd like to offer particular thanks to vnaonod, Girafe, Sciurus, and namspopof for their awesome content that makes buiding an area like this so much fun.

The area is very much work-in-progress and eventually won't have things like mis-matched base textures and out of place T21 props along the streets but I was pretty happy with these anyway:

Click for full size



Click for full size



Also, if anyone is itching to get their hands on those roundabout buildings you can get them here. They're not well-polished but they're ploppable only and should be safe to use. Dependencies are the original buildings' models, vnaonod props, and namspopof props. Also included is a 1x1 filler lot for going under one side of the Ill Tonkso building. I'll come back with links and everything at a later time but am in a rush to get this finished before my week of OSITM is up.

Thanks to everyone for the awesome week!

EDIT: Dependency links:

"ITS Shopset 4 Queen Street Corner" for round buildinghttp://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/17384-its-shopset-4-queen-street-corner/