Wildcat Junction

[Pat]

Joan im soooooooooo extacted that you are finding the wonderful world of Customization!!! Its a grand baby and also a pain too... But you got the skills that will keep you patient and i soooooooo cant wait to see what the month of Feb will bring, hopefuly something special on 2/9 lol



btw welcome to page 12

[Jmouse]

@All: After spending nearly two weeks organizing plugins and working with the LE, I planned to update Meridian today.
This was not in the master plan, however.

^ What looked like this in the last update ...

^Now looks like this ...

^These brown boxes in the region overview don't show up in the city, but represent the few structures which did not disappear.

The good news is that the only thing lost was the area where the newly-created lots will appear, and I can recreate it using album photos. The bad news is that it will take a few extra days to produce an update.
So if there is only one thing I can convince each of you to do, it would be to stop whatever you're doing this minute and back up your city, region, album and plugin files.
The backup I'll be using is dated 1/1/08, but I plan to start backing up W.J. every night when I'm through playing.
Once again, many thanks for your continued support and encouragement. Personal replies will be forthcoming soon.

Until next time...
Joan

[thundercrack83]

Sorry to hear about the corruption troubles, my friend. I hope you're able to get it all sorted out. And that's some sage advice, too, about backing up everything. It can definitely save a lot of frustrations!

Good luck!

[Pat]

ooooooh no Jooooooan noooooooooooooooooooo!!! Im soo sorry to hear that you got struck with an ouchies but you will recover pretty Darn quick though and I have good faith in you.... BTW check this out!!!! as i know you are registerd at pegs this is the brown box killer and very very niffty to have........

[tkirch]

Soory about everything that happened.  It just drives you nuts when that happened.  I got myself a portable drive and copy everything over to that everyday.  That ways it is in two places.  And real easy to back up to a portable drive.  Its been awhile since I have been around here and gave a nice long look to your because I always loved everything you do.  

Look at the brightside, everything you didn't like before can now be done differently, you have to look at the upside.

[FrankU]

I remember a friend....
It was in the days before we used computers. He was a student of architecture. He had been drawing on his designs for days and some nights. They were finished and he rolled them into his cylinder (how do you call these cylinder shaped things you hang around your neck?). He jumped on his bicycle and drove to the faculty to show the designs to his teacher. It was raining. There was a lot of wind. On a large road crossing the cylinder opened and all his drawings fell into the dirt and the water and the wind blew them away and the cars drove over the remains and it was a hell of a mess.

He did not have a backup.

This became my nightmare, but nowadays I have everything backupped on an external drive.

[paroch]

Joan,

Aaaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhhh

Sorry to hear you'd lost a lot (no pun intended - ouch).  Was it a case of just "over organising" your plug ins??  I hope my filing system pics didn't contribute  .  I did something with SimGoobers lots - run a cleanitol and installed the mega packs from on the LEX but lost virtually all his other stuff.  Took a good few hours of re-downloading before my city started to look anything like before.

The one that caused the REAL problem was the "Health Mega Pack".  Don't use it unless you can go in and bulldoze all of SG's health lots before installing the new pack.  I re-opened Regent to tidy a few things up and the city went a bit crazy budget wise and is now in debt!!!!!  It did have a health warning which I didn't pay enought attention to! 

My advice would also be not to open any other of your cities until you are confident you've replaced the missing files, or else the same will happen there (sorry if I'm teaching you to suck eggs).

I don't back up at the moment (other than keep the last Plugins Compressed from DAT Packer) - But I will put plugins and regions to CD every few weeks from now on!

Good luck with the recovery work - let me know if I can help locate stuff in anyway.

Regards,

Paul

[nedalezz]

Aye, that one in always painful. Having said that, Im going to back up my city right now!

Waiting for the next mezmerizing update!

[Tarkus]

Joan, I've finally had the chance to catch up on your MD, looking at it "cover-to-cover", and this is just absolutely amazing stuff you have here.  I feel bad for not stopping by sooner.

Everything is so colorful, and you've got some very fine suburbia and natural surroundings in the pics--some of the best I've ever seen.  And you really do seem to have the transit thing figured out from what I can tell--I love your usage of the NAM Diagonal Streets.

I'm very sorry to hear about your Plugins, too.  I've got a new 160GB external drive here, which I have yet to use, but I think seeing that may convince me to finally go through and back stuff up.

Best of luck with getting everything sorted out, and I'm really looking forward to seeing your next update.

Best Regards,
Alex

[tooheys]

So WJ is in for some changes

Well that wasn't quite what I expected 

Sorry to hear the bad news Joan, but I'm sure it won't be long before you have things back on track  .

Cheers (well not so cheerful  )

Dave

[FrankU]

Ah, about the backup stuff:
There are lots of programs that will help you with making backups. Fancy stuff that will cost you a lot.
But there is also the simple and cheap method: a bat-file.
Some of you will probably remember MS-DOS times? In these days you needed some basic skills on writing bat-files...
Well I'm not that good in IT-stuff, but a simple bat-file is within my reach. So I wrote two different ones, put them on my desktop and every time I want to make a backup I now have the choice of backing up to my second internal HD or my external HD.

This is what the text in the bat-file looks like:

----------------
xcopy/e/d/Y/h d:\docume~1\beheer\mijndo~1 J:\BK_Mdoc\
pause
----------------

What does it do?
It copies all the newer files form directory D:\etc.... (it is the dutch name for My documents folder) to disk J:
So the first time it will backup every file, afterwards it will only copy the newer files: added ones and edited or changed ones. It overwrites the old files.

The word "pause" makes the bat-file prompt for a keystroke once it has finished copying. I like to see what has happened. It is safe to delete this line, then the process quits automatically.
You can add as much lines as you want: the file can be used to copy all your documents to locations you like.

Making te bat file:
On your desktop right-click with your mouse, choose "New" and make a new textfile.
Type in the lines you want, save the file (think of a name like "backup all my files") and then change the extension from *.txt to *. bat.

Now you can double click and the process starts running.
Cheap and easy.
Just don't forget to do it sometimes.

There is one problem: the bat file only works with the old MS-DOS 8-letter-names of folders, while now we use much londer names. Hence the names like docume~1... So it is a quite difficult task to find out what the DOS-name of the folder is. The My Documents folder is usually Mydocu~1 (the first 6 letters of the folder name (spaces don't count)) and then: ~1.

[Jmouse]

Replies:

@ Paul (paroch): Much has happened in the past day or so, but Meridian stands here as living proof that you can find a stepping stone in the ashes of disaster if you'll just look for it.
As I glanced through the photo album, I realize how much better the finished product looks now than it did on the first go 'round. It isn't perfect by any means, but it's an improvement.
Bridge names will have to wait for the next update when there will be several major changes made.  Explanation below.

@ Schulmanator: Hope this update has been worth the wait. If not, please view my lengthy list of excuses below.

@ threestooges: This update is all about school, so I hope you enjoy it. And as explained above, the bridges are on hold for the moment whilst my poor little brain wraps itself around the slings and arrows of LE.
OUCH, that smarted!

@ Pat: You're right about the LE being a pain in the posterior, but it's addictive all the same. You're far ahead of me in the area of customization, so if you need a box of tissues to wipe away the tears of laughter, I'll understand. Your suggestions for improvements will be welcome after you catch your breath, though!

@ thundercrack83: Thanks for the encouraging words. Rebuilding the lost "acre" has been frustrating, but I hope the end result is worth the trouble.

@ tkirch: I have an external hard drive, but it failed me when I needed it the most. Now I just make weekly backups to a DVD and save my city daily on a flash drive. And as stated above, the lost area was not a huge loss, just a time-consuming inconvenience. Hope you'll like the revised version.

@ FrankU: Your story chilled me to the bone!  I was a commercial artist long before practical PCs were a gleam in the eyes of Gates and Jobs. During those years, I accumulated a portfolio, but I lived on the banks of the San Jacinto River north of Houston. Eventually, seven floods in 20 years wiped out all traces of my work. I had no backups.
Now I do in this wonderful age of flash drives and secondary hard drives. And I'll try out your bat-file method ASAP. Thanks for explaining it.

@ nedalezz: I always appreciate your visits, and I hope you'll enjoy this update.

@ Alex (Tarkus): Actually, I was very lucky in that nothing critical was lost – it just took some time to repair the damage.
By all means, back up your work to the external drive, just make sure it's working properly. And in the spirit that you can't have too many safety nets, back up your MD city daily to a flash drive or CD-RW, and commit everything in your MyDocs/SC4 folder to a DVD once a week.

@ Dave (tooheys): This wasn't what I expected either, but things are starting to get back on track now. Hope you like the new update.

@ All: Learning to use the LE is pretty easy, but the pre-use organizational demands are formidable. In my case, there is still much work to be done before things will run smoothly.
As a beginner, I opted to try something simple. A few greystone paths on a City College campus, but one thing led to another and another and another.
For those well versed in the use of LE, this update may not appear to be the culmination of two week's toil, sweat and high-pitched screaming, but be assured that it is.

^C-10.1 After countless meetings and many trips to the drawing board, Mayor Hooter Hillcrank and other city officials hammered out a plan for higher education.
An unexpected endowment from Dr. Hardy Boyzz, the late president of Meridian Junior College, funded a vast expansion project.

^C-10.2 To the west (upper left), residence halls were added to accommodate out-of area students.
In the center, a new science building offers classes in geophysics as related to oil-well drilling. Trees near the storage tanks are a bit spindly, but students are working to relieve ground-water corruption.
In the lower right corner, a tech building houses hundreds of computer geeks. They are learning to discover veins of oil by hacking into isopromytle geomagnetic planes underground. At present, they are waist deep in petroleum byproducts – or something dark colored.
A small chapel to the north provides sanctuary to students with failing grades, bad attitudes and/or angry parents.

^C-10.3 Right below the residence halls, a Denny's Restaurant provides sustenance to bleary-eyed students 24/7. The diner became popular with nearby neighborhood residents as well, and a new greystone walking trail was created.

^C-10.4 Many of the students attending classes at the main campus get their basics courses out of the way and transfer to four-year universities. Those who stick around for the science and tech programs, however, can earn their four-year degrees and never leave the farm.
A park to the east is a popular gathering place for non-geeks, and statues of the mayor and his wife provide a ripe venue for squab hunting.

^C-10.5 Above the campus, an enormous football stadium awaits a few finishing touches like goal posts. Still, confident students rush to buy season tickets for the Meridian Marauders' upcoming games.

^C-10.6 East of the stadium, tennis courts and a softball field have been installed. This area was a concession to the female students after they beat the football team in a practice game – it was a sorority prank. Now, however, the only females allowed on the football field are certified cheerleaders.


There has been little time to think about bridge names – the LE tends to cause a major brain drain. The idea has not been forgotten, however, and will be addressed in the next update. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoyed this one and will provide feedback on this newbie's first attempts at Lot Editing.

Until next time...
Joan   

[Tarkus]

Joan, I'm really glad to hear that things are back in order with the city.  That's a really nice looking campus you've built there.  I can definitely see you've done some very creative LE work there, and the results are fantastic.  Re-purposing that Maxis Industrial building like that was particularly clever. I also see you're a big fan of MAS71's retaining walls, too.

I've unpackaged my external HD now, too. 

-Alex (Tarkus)

[nedalezz]

My my my! That is quite the educational facility, better and more complex than anything I couldve come up with!

Wonderful update, indeed I liked it very much!

[tooheys]

Very nice Joan. Love the stadium and your use of the paths and parks is 

You seem to have mastered the use of retaining walls as well, I remember you complaining several times in the past that you just couldn't get them right    . Well you have certainly sorted that problem out 

Your a step ahead of me now that your working on LE. I'll be crawling to you for help if I ever find some time to dabble. 

Cheers

Dave

[Schulmanator]

lol! Your excuses have been accepted. I need to visit that chapel for the angry parents and failing students!   

[bat]

Great update there! Like that town!

[threestooges]

Don't be so modest. You're off to a great start with the LE from the looks of things. This'll give Wildcat Junction that extra little bit of customization that you've done a great job with so far. Out of curiosty, "relieving gound water corruption" is that one of those things from the map loading screen? It seems like the perfect project for an agricultural area though. I like the football stadium. Nice work with the center field advertising, however, it seems to make the rest of the field seem stretched (not sure if there is anything you can do about that, aside from making new textures which I have no idea how to do). Take your time with the bridges and all of this project. The LE is a very useful tool and you seem to be putting it to good work.

[Pat]

Joan im far from being well versed in LE I have lots to learn yet.... Key word here is learn and as long as you continue to learn, you will go higher places with LE... Who knows maybe even better branch out into the other progams out there to accomplish so many more things such as make a lot grow or Landmark have jobs and the best of the best TE'ing.... Joan I know you will go great places and I will never laugh at your creations, as you have inspired me to break away from my normal places and do stuff differnt.... Joan you have a great gift here and I cant wait to the next update..........

[paroch]

Hi Joan,

Well, first off, I can spot many of your LE creations and can appreciate the time, effort and creativity you have put into this update, so a MASSIVE for that.

10.1 - My first question, is that after your city problem, did you have to demolish the Hillside Mall?  And if so id this where the new college has been built?  It's just that the terrain looks kinda familiar.  Just wondering.  I know that we provide each other with honest feedback, so I have to say that for me, the green retaining walls are a bit too green.  I think that the walls coupled with the very bright green turf of the football pitch just make it "too green".  It's as though the eye is drawn to these features away from all the great work you've done on the campus.  Just my opinion and I'm sure you'll take it as such.

10.2 - Now, I'm trying to spot all of your custom lots!  I'm guessing the paved areas are your work - nice choice of texture.  I'm also assuming the residence halls, science building, storage tanks and tech building are all customised.  I think the use of the storage is inspired.  But my favourite are the residence halls.  Very nicely lotted .
Have you done them as plop landmarks, or growables?  I guess my only question would be the parking areas.  How are the cars meant to get there?   One little prop I have found useful for giving the appearance of entrances to parking lots can be found here:
http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=18253
You'll get the hang of 'em pretty easily.

10.3 - Nice paths again!  And also, nice mix of colours in the trees.

10.4 - I'd love to see this pic with a brown or grey retaining wall - I just think it'd show off the scene in front of it so much better.

10.5 - love the surroundings, can see the work in there.  And I like the idea of the sposorship on the pitch, just nor convinced it works quite right.  Someone else mentioned it making the pitch look stretched.

10.6 - Just ADORE the tennis courts - your creation???

Joan, I hope you appreciate these comments for what they are - just my opinion.  I think the actual lots you've produced are fantastic and I'd jump at having them in my region.  I'm rubbish at retaining walls, so I don't know whether you tried other versions/colours, but I'd love to see part of it in a different colour.  The overall campus is awesome.  You've thought of everything and it is a great facility.

Look forward to more and good luck with your further explorations into LE.

Paul