Evergem, The Netherlands

[capo]

REPLIES:

bat: Thanks for your visit bat!

paroch: I'm going to get working on that tutorial very soon. I'm happy that the tutorial for the coastal lines was of use and when I look at the results in your MD, I must say that I'm impressed. Thanks again for your many visits and compliments!

XoX: Thanks! Yes it's all plop unfortunately, until Evergem has reached the days of the invention of cars and trains, I will have to continue to plop every tile

tooheys: Thank you my friend, yes it was quite some work but when I look at the result and all those friendly comments here, I know it was well worth it

Schulmanator: Thanks, I'm real grateful for your kind words. Strange enough it means a lot

JanYpe: Welcome JanYpe! With a name like that I'm guessing you are from Friesland, much of the history of Biroud must be well known to you as well. I'm glad that you like what you see, I'm curious about your Dutch city. Please share your pics with us!

amapper: I believe that pedestrians can walk on these paths (still have to test that to be sure), but not cars so they are not completely TE. I got them from http://kurier.simcityplaza.de/ Here's the link to the file itself: SFBT Feldwege. Thanks for your kind words and your visit!

Shadow Assassin: Welcome back. Yes Biroud has grown a lot. Yes I might edit these wege in LE, that's a great idea. It would add some real variaty to the road network..

cjwalter78: Welcome to Evergem and thanks for your kind words. More is on it's way!

tkirch: Thanks my friend and welcome back, I hope it has been a good week you had. The stone roads linkie is posted in ampapper's answer and I just got news from Andreas that they will be uploaded to the LEX as well as soon as the read me is translated. I'm guessing that will become a very popular download

emilin: Thanks for the  . I'm glad that you, despite the lack of time, left me a comment. Much appreciated!


't Veen:
Before Biroud's next update, I would like to introduce the birth of a small village about 20km south of Biroud, 't Veen. Reason I'm introducing 't Veen now is that I really needed a Biroud break 't Veen is also the birthplace of a character that will play a role in Biroud's next update so I figure I can use that as an excuse for introducing this small village to you

Here you see the road from Biroud to Akenberg. Many merchants and other people of the Evergem region use this main road, it's a vital road for the region's economy. Unfortunately the travellers have no place to sleep at night, forcing them to camp just beside the road. You can imagine that many merchants woke up the next morning finding all of their merchandise stolen or their limbs eaten by wildlife. Entrepreneurs should see a business opportunity here, what a perfect place for an inn. Fresh water from the lake is available, together with plenty of wood and stone to build with and fertile ground to farm on.

Welcome to Herberg tussen de Bruggen (Inn between the bridges) The place where the ale is plentiful, the beds and pillows soft and safe and that for a lousy goldcoin per night..what a bargain! Every bed is filled every night and the Inn's owner Hendrik is slowly becoming a very wealthy man. To protect his wealth and to keep his inn safe, Hendrik has hired a few mercenaries from Biroud to guard the place. You can see their quarters right beside the inn. I guess these guys are the world's first bouncers So if you would like to stay for a night at the Herberg tussen de bruggen, please send your mail pigeon to Hendrik to reserve a bed!!

Well...that's just....typical. Whenever someone comes up with a great idea, others will follow. It seems that Hendrik his new found wealth has attracted other fortuneseekers. 't Veen now has a smitty, to prepare of your horses for your long journey or to take care of them after your journey. A shop has opened, offering food and camping attributes. But most important: another inn has opened right across the road from Hendrik's inn, it's offering rooms for only one silvercoin per night!!! Of course this outprices Hendrik his beds...so he decided that with your bed, you will be offered a free wooden 'splatter' to kill the bugs with during the night. He can now advertise having the most luxorious beds in town, I guess that's true...

A better overview of 't Veen after a year or two. A small farm has developed and a few other homes have been built. Also a new road has been built to the small town of Koeman, I will introduce Koeman and other small villages in future updates.

Thanks for your time, I hope you enjoyed 't Veen...remember prices are fair, recources are plentiful and the atmosphere is priceless!

[bat]

Another great update there! And great little area there!! Looks very beautiful, capo!

[sebes]

Capo: that is once again an amazing update from your hand. I thought we have seen the best of medieval villages already, and now you come with this "elfenbos" and the great story about rivaling inns. How do you do that  .

Great work my friend, great work 

[Shadow Assassin]

Talk about a promotional campaign. 

I love it, I can see some elements of 20th century life coming out of this. We can say that fierce competition began here in this small village.

[Strechnitz]

LOL

Great update capo.
What would a sophisticated traveler be without a luxurious wooden splatter to kill the bedbugs?

Strech.

[capo]

I promised paroch on how to create the plopable farms in this MD, so for him (and others who are interested) here is how to get them yourself. It's so easy, everyone can do it. This is a tutorial for people just starting out with Lot Editor, LEProp and the reader so if you know how to use these tools...this tutorial is not for you

All you need is:
The Lot Editor
ILives LEProp
and the farm of your likings you would like to plop, you can use the maxis ones but I prefer:
BSC Farm Fields - SG Revised

First you need to find a lot to edit. I choose the in-game plopable gardens/fields to keep my menu nice and tidy. So after you boot the Lot Editor enter: pz1x1_parkvictorygarden1 and hit OK to confirm


I'm giving this plopable farm the same properties as SG's growable farm, so under Foundation Treshold (highlited below) you enter 90.00.


Under Elevation change you can enter what elevation the lot can handle, I recommend not putting this number too high, many of the SG farm props really come out wrong when the angle is too steep. So usually I keep SG's setting of 12.00. Why mess with the legend his settings?


Now it's time to change the base texture of the lot to something of your likings. Click the Base Texture tab to get there. FIrst remove the texture that is already there, click once on the pic of the garden in the blue screen to select the texture and then hit the "delete" button on your keyboard to delete the texture. Your lot will now look like this:


Every lot in the Lot Editor needs a base texture so let's pick one through clicking on the "add item" button. When you have the BSC textures installed, be ready for a long scroll to find the one you like. For this tutorial I will use the basic maxis grass 1x1 park texture, the ID is: 0x25f40000 but you can add any base texture you want


Looks kind of empty, well let's put in some of the awesome-o SimGoober farm props. Hit the props tab to get there and click "add item". There will be a huge list of props ready for your use, but now all I'm interested in are Simgoober his farmfields. In the Find box type sg_farmfields and you will find the list of different farmfields by simgoober. Pick the one you like, some farmfields come in different forms (example SG_FarmFields_Potato01; SG_FarmFields_Potato02;SG_FarmFields_Potato03), I believe these are all different growth stages..yes the good things about SG's farmfields is that they will actually have to grow for a year to develop, even when you plop it I'm not sure which number is which, so experimenting with this is something I still do. In this tutorial I will use the potatoes as an example, simply because I am boiling some as I'm typing this


Place the SG Farmfield props on the lot like this

and click the save as button, I'm saving it as Plopgarden. This is not the name that will come up in your menu, to change this you need the LEProp. The file will be saved in your plugins folder, easy as that

Now to change more lot properties you need LEProp. Hit the Open Dat button and select the plopgarden file.

Here you can change the lot name that will appear in your menu and the description if you select it. Also the plop and demolition cost, well the program is that easy to use that it all speaks for itself basicly. Except from the plop cost I wouldn't change that much to the lot, the fields produce a little water pollution (pesticides), consumes some water (sprinkling the fields), has a small park effect (who wouldn't want to live next to fields of delicious potatoes?)


Now hit the apply button and the save dat button and you are done. I told you it was easy right? The next time you play SC, the new potatoe field will be waiting for you between the maxis plopable fields. But why stop here? How about creating the same farm field but with a fence on one side and one with a corner. Now you can fence your farms to make them look even more realistic. The plopable farms do not supply jobs, but are a great addition to a rural community! Have fun

[rooker1]

Super work on the tutorial my friend.  That will definatley help some people.

Robin   

[bat]

Yes, a really great tutorial! And it is useful!

[High5Tower]

Very nice lesson here and I will be practicing.
On the same subject of farm fields, I often use the various fields to enhance certain areas of my city by using the lot plop device. I really like the olive trees as rows along neighborhoods and the red roses in garden walk areas and also us the fields to add to an already grown farm to add to its area.
I notice they seem to work will and the game has no problem with them. But I don't understand just how the game engine catagorizes these plopped grow only items.
I have learned so much be reading articles like this one that I am slowly understanding the inner works of this crazy game that I can't stop playing. Thank you.

[kwakelaar]

Lovely looking village in the small there, and a great tutorial, thanks.

[Schulmanator]

Such an asweome update. I love the beautiful setting of the old town. 
As for the lot editing, I need to quit being lazy and learn!   
Thanks for the tutorial. I will look into it!   

[Shadow Assassin]

Speaking of ploppable farms, maybe this would be more convenient, seeing as someone else already has done the hard work a while ago?

Ploppable farm fields by uroncha

[High5Tower]

I dug out and fired up my copy of ploppable farms fields and now I remember why I took them out. They take up too much valuable menue self space. For the 5 items that I use alot, capo's tutorial solved that issue for me plus I now get park effect with them. 

[capo]

Thanks for the replies everybody!

@Shadow Assasin: I wasn't aware of the plopable fields on the STEX, however I noticed that uroncha made 4 dat files out of them..meaning it will be hard to remove the farms you never use and your menu folder will be filled with unwanted stuff (like High5tower mentioned also). But thanks for the linkie!

And besides...I always like to make my own lots

[FrankU]

Indeed,
Having read about the plopable fields I immediately thought about the plopable farm fields by Uroncha. It took me quite a while to find the dependencies, because some of them are not there anymore. Probably replaced by new megapacks. But I think I have them all now. I have so mayn dependencies installed that everything should be there now. At least they seem to work fine.....
I don't use them often, but they are nice and there are very many lots!

Capo:
One point of criticism: If 't Veen has been built in a... well...veen, there should have been no stones at all to build your house with! That's the reason why our ancestors invented the plaggenhut and later the wooden house and then the brick house. Sorry about my perfectionism.
But, considering there are no plaggenhutten on the Lex or the Stex or any ?ex... I think it's perfectly legal to twist real history a bit.

Anyway, your villages are beautiful and very nicely detailed. A splendour for the eye. 

[paroch]

Hi Capo,

An update and a tutorial - Hmmmmmmm, nice.

The pics of 't Veen are really good.  Hendrik's story is pretty cool too. I'm guessing Hendrik is going to pop up eslewhere in Evergem in future.  The rope bridge over the stream is a really nice touch - well done.

And that Tutorial is excellent - even I will be able to follow that.  I'll need to download LE Prop and then I'll be away!  Thanks so much for producing this capo.  Your MD is firmly in my favourites.

Paul

[tkirch]

Great tutorial.

But I love the areas around the water.  It looks like the perfect place you would want to go to and relax.  Just beautiful pictures.  You should put one of those in the Picture Competition.

[Pat]

Hey Capo wonderful tut and wonderful Update you have done  cant wait to see more and learn more 

[capo]

Thanks for the comments everybody, I will add personal replies with my next full update as always. I just wanted to introduce (tease you with) "Het Paroch Plein" (The Paroch Square) to you all. It's part of a high wealth diplomatic and commercial area:


And "Het West End Huis" (The West End Home)


More about this area in Biroud's next update!!

[GrizzlyBuilder]

Wow,  I think a speak for everyone that this Mayor Journal is quickly heading ot the classics. 
Keep up the good work.