San Diego: 2.5 yrs Update

[APSMS]

Hi everyone,

So this is my foray into MDing/CJing. Good to be here, though I must say this is mainly to force myself to get in the habit of preparing stuff for display.

First things first...

I'm playing on a map of San Diego, CA (surprise, surprise ), made by the NHP and blade2k5. I think it might be slightly underscaled compared to the practical scaling of the game, but in general I'm very happy with it. Because this is my first MD and because I'm not the most original with names, many will be lifted straight from their real-life counterparts, and will often reflect the real locations in-game. However, the extent with which they match the real world comes to my next point...

This is not a recreation CJ. I will not be attempting to make everything exactly like it is in the real city. Game limitations, personal disagreements with the current city development, and creative factors all play a role. (Plus, what's the point of using the game pics when we can just use the real ones?) Be aware, then, that names may be altered and elements included/removed when compared to the real San Diego (for any who might've been confused by the occasional different name/roadway/etc.)

I will also be building this region as we go along. Many parts of the city are not finished, and may show up from time to time in the pictures. I've noticed that my play style has changed as I've found this site and been exposed to both custom content as well as the way other users play the game. I try to make every city functional, though I will be using the occasional cheat lot for purposes of aesthetic. I want to be able to adapt and adjust my building style as we go along, hopefully with your help. I unfortunately have no time for both an MD and modding, so none (or very little) of that will be seen here, but hopefully you can give me vital feedback about the project as a whole and maybe even make some decisions about how certain parts of the city develop.

Enough about what this MD isn't. First, some pics. Most pics are available in full size. Just click!

1. Old city hall. Now it's used by the county for paper pushing, and is a popular place for business lunches due to the park and the bay that's directly in front of the building (not shown).

Click here for a Z5 mosaic (warning 4mb 3880x2150 res)

2. Key Tower, the second tallest building in the city. It was built amidst much controversy, but we'll discuss that later.
You can see the Emerald Towers and the new Government Center towards the right.


3. Highway 395, part of the city-wide scenic route, and very crowded during rush hour. It also happens to run through the San Diego's "Central Park," known as Balboa Park and also home to San Diego's World Famous Zoo.


4. Banker's Hill. This is just north of main downtown, and primarily consists of mid-rises with the occasional high-rise building. An old height restriction for Lindbergh Field to the west and the large number of historic homes under the Mills Act has kept this part of the city mostly flat, especially compared to downtown just a few blocks south.


5. The city has revived steam power on it's commuter rails, and in a joint effort was able to convince the San Diego and Imperial Railway (SDIR) to also use steam engines on it's daytime freight runs. The switch was for a number of reasons, including a need for increased ridership, a large amount of inexpensive regional coal (esp. compared to current diesel prices), the increased tourism draw, and a glut of manual laborers that would be put to work in maintaining the engines. (the lower unemployment rates were what drew the attention of the currently unpopular government)


As a final note, you may have noticed from my previous posts both on this site and ST that I suffer from a lack of brevity (wordiness, etc.) Hopefully I will improve this too, as we go along. No sense in being tedious; descriptions should be interesting and informative. Let me know if it's boring.

That's all for now. Next update will be (relatively) soon. Looking forward to your feedback!

[Gugu3]

Very nice!

[vortext]

Good start and not boring at all! Quite the contrary, I'm looking forward to more!

[scott1964]

Looks nice

[Swordmaster]

Welcome to the madhouse that is MDing!

I was wondering if you would do something like this one day, so I'm glad to see it. If you keep in mind that MDing is all about the author having fun, nothing can go wrong.

I like the pictures and the location. Especially the nice slopes catch my attention--they're usually my pet peeve. Nice use of multiple transit options as well, so good work so far.


Cheers
Willy

[MTT9]

Really nice start! I'm looking foward for more

[noahclem]

Lovely start 

Keep up the great work and welcome to MDing    Your plan for the MD sounds good and promises to be of interest. It's interesting that you mentioned brevity--my experience with that is that some people will read about everything regardless of wordiness while others will just skip to the pictures no matter how economical you are with words. As my MD following grew some became more dedicated while I also got more casual perusers, so more or less a wash as far as average audience attention span   When I have something I want to make sure people notice in the midst of a longer bit of text I just bold/italic/larger text it

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or if I can be of any help 

[APSMS]

Table of Contents
[tabular type=2 caption="Thanks to Vortext for helping me with this table!"]
[row]   [head]Update[/head] [head]Date[/head] [head]Comment[/head] [/row]
[row]   [data] 1.Introduction[/data] [data]Dec. 9 2013[/data] [data] [/data] [/row]
[row] [data] 2.Teaser & Status[/data] [data]Jan. 16 2014[/data] [data] [/data] [/row]
[row] [data] 3.Replies[/data] [data]Jan. 28 2014[/data] [data] [/data] [/row]
[/tabular]

[vortext]

Here you go. 

[APSMS]

Hi all!

Sorry for the lack of updates. I'm busier home than when I'm at school!

Here's a teaser pic to show that I am still working on stuff:



Hopefully I'll have some more stuff to show by next week. Replies will also be forthcoming at that time. See you then!

-Absalom

EDIT: Picture should be working, now.

As a bonus, here's an extra picture:



As always, click for full size

[benedict]

For some reason that last image doesn't load...

[APSMS]

Very nice!

Glad you enjoyed it.

Good start and not boring at all! Quite the contrary, I'm looking forward to more!

Nice to see you here, Erik. Hopefully I'll be able to fulfill that request. Glad to hear it wasn't boring. Sometimes I wax verbose and it's hard for me to tell when. Thanks for the table info as well; really helpful.

Looks nice

Thanks.

Welcome to the madhouse that is MDing!

I was wondering if you would do something like this one day, so I'm glad to see it. If you keep in mind that MDing is all about the author having fun, nothing can go wrong.

I like the pictures and the location. Especially the nice slopes catch my attention--they're usually my pet peeve. Nice use of multiple transit options as well, so good work so far.


Cheers
Willy

Thanks for your input, Willy. I'm well aware of rail slope limitations, but I'm afraid you won't be completely satisfied in some of my future updates. I play for fun, remember. Still, the days of running a rail line straight up a hillside are long gone for me, even if I'm sometimes tempted to.

This certainly is a madhouse. I'm not a good picture taker, and can never remember to take screenshots.

Really nice start! I'm looking foward for more

Hi Matt. Thanks for commenting.

Lovely start 

Keep up the great work and welcome to MDing    Your plan for the MD sounds good and promises to be of interest. It's interesting that you mentioned brevity--my experience with that is that some people will read about everything regardless of wordiness while others will just skip to the pictures no matter how economical you are with words. As my MD following grew some became more dedicated while I also got more casual perusers, so more or less a wash as far as average audience attention span   When I have something I want to make sure people notice in the midst of a longer bit of text I just bold/italic/larger text it

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or if I can be of any help 

Thanks Noah for the warm welcome! I guess I'll just put down what I want and hope everyone reads it. I can't guarantee much storyline/coherency to this MD, but hopefully it will have enough oomph to stay interesting and well-developed. I have a lot of stuff that I'd like to do and not a lot of time to do it, particularly with regards to freeways and parks, some of San Diego's most prominent features actually (besides the beaches). Thanks for the thumbs up, too.

For some reason that last image doesn't load...

Hopefully it works now. Thanks for stopping by, and nice to see I made it on the top ten!

Can't guarantee when the next update will be. I was hoping for this week, but I wasn't happy with the pictures and I haven't got time this week to develop more areas. Road networks on hills are a particular problem for me right now, esp. with gridded zoning, so it takes a while. Thanks to everyone who commented, though. It really helps with motivation and focus.

[APSMS]

Hi all,

It's been a busy couple of months, and I've been slowly developing the city, but haven't felt like there was anything really complete to show you, until I remembered that this was a WIP MD, so development pictures were par for the course. I've yet to get around to plopping all of the things that I need to (like the park areas and such), but it's coming along nicely. This will be a very picture heavy update to capture the progress that I've made so far in the areas surrounding the downtown. All overviews are looking north unless otherwise noted. Click on all pictures for full size!

1.First, an overview of the developed portion of the region:


2.We start at the western edge of the city, in Point Loma:


3.Some nice gridbusting, I think. The winding road is CA Rte 209 to the Point Loma lighthouse. Looking north:


4.Downtown Ocean Beach. The businesses are still in development; the farms are primarily job placeholders. The blue trolley line runs in the street by the coast. Looking north:


5.Some less expensive Point Loma homes:


6.A close-up to illustrate some of the variety of the homes that you might find here. They're all custom built, so each house is unique:


7.All of the non-canyon areas will eventually be filled up with residential. Looking north:


8.Skipping over to Lindbergh Field (and passing by West Field, since there's nothing interesting in that community yet), we come across a highway junction, a rail line, and a municipal airport.:


There's also been some heavy work done on highway realignment and restructuring: All facing north.
Before:
9a.

9b.

9c.


After:
10.Looking north:


10.5 An absurdly long commuter train. I seriously doubt this train would move very fast in Real Life with that many carriages. The locomotive in question is not particularly noted for being speedy in the first place. The area surrounding it is a definite WIP. Looking south:


11.After our brief drive through Lindbergh Field, we move on to North Park, which, interestingly enough, lies just north of Balboa Park!


There's still a lot of undeveloped land. Mostly it's because I'm wary to use the grid pattern that North Park is comprised of in Real Lifwe, simply because it's uninteresting and not very fun to build on. The main roads are there, and you can see US 395 heading North, while construction of US 80 East is underway; the Texas St overpass has just been finished in this photo. Looking north.

12.A closer shot of some of the development in Hillcrest, which is technically defined as being West of Park Blvd (the northbound avenue on the left), as well as the Red trolley line, which runs north to University Heights and then turns East toward Normal Heights. Looking north.


13.Some of the homes along the cliff that have a view over Mission Valley and out to the ocean, which is but 4 miles west (to the right) as the crow flies. Looking south.


14.Downtown Hillcrest. It's still mostly a WIP, as the development hasn't quite captured the feel I'm going for. You can see the 395 on the right as it goes down the hill, and the RD-4 that goes north is 6th Avenue, which pretty much ends at Washington Ave (east-west). Looking north


15.In Downtown San Diego, progress has been slow, but I have been working on details and controlling development.


Some highway realignment:
16a.Before:


16b.After:


17.Some slow progress. It may not look like it, but there is a major rail, highway, and main road realignment present in this image. The slopes were a pain to work with, but it makes a little bit more sense now. The next step will be to work on the waterfront, and finish developing the hills with residential homes. Looking east:


18.Some night shots of downtown to finish off the entry:


19.By the SimFox towers in Bankers' Hill:


20.An industrial sector at nighttime:


21.The Santa Fe train depot at night. The art deco styling really comes out at night.


22.A small mosaic of Little Tokyo. It's not very big, as the Asian communities in San Diego are more "suburban" in nature. We'll be seeing more of them in National City to the south, and in the northeast of San Diego. Looking south:


23.A brief venture into photoediting. I'm not completely satisfied with it, and if I try it again, there are quite a few things I'd change or do differently. Still, it was good practice, though I did spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find example images, mostly with little luck. Any ideas on where to find good example pictures is welcome.


24.Government Center at night:


25.Finally, we'll finish this picture looking down onto Key Tower and the Emerald Towers. It won two rounds in the SC4Devotion Picture Competition (so close to the HoF, too!), and I think it turned out rather nice.

[vortext]

Well, I for one don't mind development pics, excellent progress so far! 

The region is shaping up quite nice and you're doing a good job gridbusting indeed, pics 12 & 13 are my favorite in that regard. The last couple of night shots are great too!

[kelis]

I have no words to describe this update !! Very well done my friend, I enjoyed so much reading this update, watching the pictures and the progress in your region. The region view looks pretty good as well, so keep it up my friend, your work with San Diego is fantastic.

# Jonathan

[art128]

The closeup shots were already impressive from the previous updates, but those overviews are spectacular!

[FrankU]

I always enjoy development images. It gives me an insight in the way others work on their region.
Besides that: real life is under construction all the time! Nothing is ever finished.

One of my favourite words: a building isn't finshed before it is torn down.

So, yes please show your developments. I like how the region is growing and I especially like the night image with the car light lines. That must have been a lot of work!

[Gugu3]

Really enjoyed this developement update!

[threestooges]

Call it an extended April Fools. However, welcome to OSITM APSMS!

[APSMS]

Hopefully I'll be able to satisfy some expectations here in the next few weeks. Particularly honored to be in OSITM this month. Looking to make a lot of progress here.

One of my biggest issues with the map that I've had lately was my frustration with the coastlines. Currently the land drops very close to the water, particularly near the downtown areas where it makes good seawalls look...well like nothing worth looking at. The other problem I've had is that by default the terrain for beaches would go from 250.4 meters (dry ground) straight to the sea floor at 192 meters, which made using any sort of terraforming tool for nicely sloping beaches essentially impossible. They would always drop to quickly, or else just eat away my land mass, which when trying to develop a city other than Atlantis, is not a good thing. I'd been putting off the inevitable for a while now, but figured this month was as good as any to get started on it.

1.Using the sea level adjustment trick I learned from one of Noahclem's tutorials, I've dropped the sea floor down to around 175m. I'll be doing a bunch of work all around my coasts, but for now, here's a few teaser images of some work I've been doing underwater in Mission Bay:


2.Some prep work for some decent beach slopes:


3.Progress is kind of slow, however:


4.And to finish it off, a pair of images, this time from the community of Mission Hills where I'm having some issues getting my Sims to commute to work in the next tile:
a.

b.


Some replies and more progress will come in the next update, hopefully within a week if all goes as planned. Thanks for stopping by!