Greenacre

[Jmouse]

I'm glad you showed the former and new locations of the fleet. Otherwise I would have been completely lost. Would it be possible to see a map with the borders turned on?

To be sure, dredging was vital to the mobility of the incoming ships. You've done a good job of defining the harbor's shape, a terraforming job I've always found to be a bit tricky at best. It looks like Point Atascocita is turning out to be an ideal naval base location.

I agree with Noah. You've piqued my interest in the new base, and I'm eager to see where you take it in the next phase.

[threestooges]

Replies:

Noah (noahclem): Oddly enough, while the terrain mod looks pretty good, those edges will be covered over bby other seawalls (also of a white, concrete, block-like nature). The old area, looking back on it, felt too wedged in. I liked the idea of the naval base on a hillside, but the area of the island didn't provide enough space to fully allow the infrastructure development. That's something the residential area will end up addressing too when we get back there. A transparency change sounds like it would be in order. I plan to incorporate a fair bit of water flora, but indeed, for the type of water it is, and the area, it's unlikely people should be able to see all that deep. I may hit you up to remind me how to change it. I remember doing it before. I just need to recall the property to edit in the Reader. Thanks for the great thoughts.


Schulmanator: Thanks for the thoughts. Glad it got the job done. It may be tweaked a bit more as things go, but for now, this is the basic shape. Mentally add some water flora and reduce the transparency of the water a bit and that's about how it may or may not turn out. How's that for specificity?


Joan (Jmouse): I can provide a map with the borders turned on. I'll put it in with the next update. Perhaps by then the fleet will be on the move. Glad to hear you approve of the base's name. Hope you enjoy what comes next.



So I just finished moving (hooray, back in Southern California!) so I haven't quite polished any areas yet, but in the interest of trying to keep more regular updates here, and given that the idea of these updates is to show the development of the area, here we go with the Point Atascocita Naval Base.

The base structures and moorings are still under construction, but they can partially be seen at the top of this picture here. The submarine fleet has been relocated, but the remainder of the fleet is out on maneuvers preparing for the transition until the facility is ready. For today's update we're going to look at the base housing that's being developed.

This is the area where we'll start. The grid is on for your viewing pleasure.

47.00



First up, a main access road. This will later serve as a main entryway to the base.

47.01



A first attempt at the road. Even with a slope mod installed it comes out a bit bumpy.

47.02



So let's break out the railroad tool and take advantage of the lower maximum slope.

47.03



Rebuilding the road. So much better.

47.04



Now that the road is taken care of, the base will need some security. Some surfing of Google maps showed several base housing developments tucked safely behind checkpoints. So here's one of the ones for Point Atascocita. There's also the main road that'll be going through the area too.

47.05



The sign out front bids visitors welcome to the Point Atascocita Naval Base. The hum-vee stationed in the road on the other hand speaks of proper paperwork, and no loitering. The fact that this is a transit enabled lot didn't hurt the slope much either. There's a bit of a kink in the road, but it's fine for now.

47.06



Now then, on to this area for some officer's and family housing.

47.07



Some road plopping makes short work of leveling an area, and avoids mistakes with the leveling tool.

47.08



The first round of growth was fairly random. Nice for a general neighborhood, but for base housing, they were looking for something a bit more uniform in nature. Time to get judicious with the bulldozer.

47.09



Much better. Point Atascocita contracted with the NUTs Architectural Firm utilizing their popular "Mouse House" floor plan.

47.10



Now, families on base need a place to send their children. As there will also be need for other classrooms (for naval classes) a school, recreation field, and lunch plaza have been added.

47.11



Wedged in next to the generator facility is a small commercial area that, in part, provides gas at a greatly reduced cost for service members and their families. Basically, if you have clearance to be on the base you can fuel up here.

47.12



When next we visit, we'll look at how they're getting along with the actual port facilities, the construction of a seawall, facilities for the enlisted personnel, and general base beautification. As always, comments, thoughts, etc. are appreciated.

[rooker1]

Great update....I like work in progress updates.
I think the school is a little too big for the housing you have there now...but maybe you plan more housing in the up coming updates.  I like that you choose the mouse houses, they look great.
I look forward to the area filling in.

Robin

[noahclem]

Development of the Naval Base and surrondings is looking very good    The mouse houses look great and I like the entrance and other facilities on base. It sounds like a fun project 

[Swordmaster]

Very nice update! Good idea to keep the grid on.

I'll really have to keep track of this since, in the long run, there will be a naval station in my region, too. I'll also need to read up a bit of how they tend to look over in the States.


Cheers
Willy

[Jmouse]

The development of the new naval base has been/is interesting to watch. I, too, enjoy seeing in-progress updates. The base is starting to look more and more like a military installation. I don't know where you got those funny-looking little houses, but I have to admit, they do fit in pretty well.

I'm sure that, as time goes by, there will be more demand for all kinds of RCI development, so I think you did well to build a larger school complex. I've really enjoyed this update, and I'm glad to know you're going to update more often. Also glad to know the move went smoothly. It took me two weeks to move in three of U-Haul's largest trucks and an assortment of trailers.

Good work you're doing on the base...
-Joan

[threestooges]

-Robin (rooker1): Thanks Robin. I have more housing planned indeed, but that will come in a later update. Or it may just randomly appear in a picture. I'm trying to keep taking pictures as I go, but sometimes I will go through a swath of development and completely forget. The Mouse Houses felt like the perfect choice for the era and style of housing: fairly prefab, nothing too fancy, something out of the 50s. They fit the bill just fine. It was a bit of a pain waiting for them to all grow in though. Plenty of work with the bulldozer.


-Noah (noahclem): The project continues, but as you'll see, I put your suggestions into practice with respect to the flora. That's actually what launched this tangent of a tangential update.


-Willy (Swordmaster): For the finished pictures it's best to turn the grid off, but I've always thought it helped show off developing areas and gives a better sense of scale in how things all fit together. Once I finish my research on it, I'll send it your way. What I've noticed so far is very little wasted space. They also seem to blend recreational areas right into business areas. I'll likely end up posting a few pictures here like I did with the airport too.


Joan (Jmouse): I think you know the person that made those houses. Pretty well too I'd imagine. I'm not too worried about RCI demand here insofar as I can get it to balance well enough to support the stuff I'm adding. Having filled the majority of a UHaul helping others move, I can only imagine the fun that must have been had in loading three plus trailers. It's amazing how much we accumulate sometimes that we don't realize we have, yet still use. Always good to see your thoughts here Joan.


So one of the things that has been occupying my time between updates has been what to do with the large amount of water which occupies the area. I like the water texture I have, but the flora I've been using doesn't quite fit the bill, and there could be more.

48.01


I'd like to explore the possibilities of what's out there though, and how it all looks at varying depths. I started with Gizmo's water flora. It was great when it came out, and still is today. However, its colors are highly saturated, which can look good near a stream or something, but I'm looking for a bit more of a faded look that might accompany a foggy shoreline near deep water.

48.03


Chrisadams' Rural Renewal Pack provide a number of great flora options, and many of them are able to be used underwater. Interesting to note is that the yellow flowers (both regular and bold varieties), pink flowers, and white flowers cannot be plopped underwater, yet the blue flowers can. In particular, I like the grass, I've used it as a gap filler before, and I think it can be used to ease transitions to areas with more sparse vegetation underwater too.

48.04


Recommended to me by Noah (noahclem) who uses it extensively and to good effect in his MD Siilijoki, the VIP flora packs have some interesting, and high definition, flora pieces. They can also be plopped underwater. The ferns, as they're called in the menu, and shown here toward the bottom of the picture, have the closest look to deep fields of seaweed that I've seen yet.

They are seasonal, which, while normally a good thing (and they work well at it too) makes it tricky when you're using the plop for something other than its intended purpose. That being said, some careful timing on the photos is all that's needed to make it look as expected.

48.05


The VIP pack, as I was playing around with it, also has some fun things like fishermen, herons, and cows (also pigeons, and chickens, but they're not shown here).

48.06


This is what I was referring to when I mentioned the season changes. The "seaweed" I'll be planting will get a bit yellow, but it still looks good. The one thing I wasn't too keen on was the size of the large cattails. I'm sure there are locations where they can look good, but the scale of them won't work too well here. I have seen areas where they can get tall though, I'm just not sure if they'd be that tall. They do look good though.

48.07


Here is all is put into practice. I started with a sweep of the VIP ferns (the dark green) and cut it with a few of the taller green plants by gizmo to break things up a bit. Using Chrisadams' RRP grass I cut in the edges of the flora to smooth the transition to the barren/rocky areas. It's not big, but that little bit of texture does help. A few types of rocks form gizmo, goldiva, the RRP and VIP help anchor the plants as they would in real life.

48.08


Applied to the current section of shoreline, it looks like this:

48.09


Even in the "off season" when the plants change color the look still doesn't look too bad at all.

48.10


Curious to know your thoughts on the progress, as well as any tips for making good underwater flora.

Also, this update was brought to you today by Willy's (Swordmaster's) "menu button remover tool" thingy. It does a great job of removing that pesky button left at the bottom left of pictures that is the bane of so many MD'ers. Look for it coming to the LEX here soon.
-Matt

[Swordmaster]

Can't believe this is your first dabbling with those kind of MMPs. The result looks quite stunning. I wonder what those above-water rocks are you applied. Is it Heblem's sand? I never manage to make it look that good on the water line.

I'm not sure how far you want to go to get things looking your way, but I'd suggest Model Tweaker as a possible route to shrink some of the props you find too large. I've done it with a couple of them, to quite good effect I dare say.

Cheers
Willy

[CasperVg]

Thanks for that overview of underwater/seaside MMP's there, Matt! Very informative; I didn't even know about that VIP Pack. Looks very good on that pier though, looks like you nailed it. The seasonal effect is interesting too, almost looks like the weeds are dying off from excessive pollution or something like that

[Gugu3]

very very nice!!!really interesting....must play around with this stuff as I'm inspired by your post

[Jmouse]

Matt, this has turned out to be a terrific experiment. I didn't know how much I needed something like this until I saw it. I agree that Gizmo's water flora is too bright and saturated, but we have a lot of alternatives now that we didn't have then. Chris Adam's flora was one of the earlier alternatives, and I still like it a lot.

I also like the way the finished product turned out (48.10). It looks very natural and realistic. Water flora has always been something I dread having to work with, but somehow it doesn't seem quite as frightening now.

Excellent work...
-Joan

[Ol.S / Benoit]

Even if I don't come here enaugh, I like your MD because you explain each step of your work, thought process, which is something I don't do... Maybe I should do that a bit more, I love it.

Curious to know your thoughts on the progress, as well as any tips for making good underwater flora.

Looking good, VIP flora pack does the job. You can also work with NBVC rocks, and Heblem tropical grass, looks very good underwater.
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/24399-hbs-tropical-flora-pack-mayor-mode/
http://community.simtropolis.com/index.php?app=core&module=search&do=user_activity&search_app=downloads&mid=201408

[bat]

Two great updates there. Looking forward to more...

[noahclem]

Looks like the experiment was quite successful! The end result in the last couple pictures is quite stunning. You have some really neat ideas for uses of these different flora that make me feel like trying my hand at these underwater areas. I agree with you that those larger cattails are too large, I use only the small ones and more commonly girafe's cattails on the LEX.

Looking forward to seeing more of this project 

[Dantes]

Oh yes  Thats cool.Thanks for your mmp tips, I finally ideas for my coast. 

[threestooges]

Willy (Swordmaster): Well, I've fiddled with the first few before, but not the VIP packs, and in the interests of comparison, I decided to show them all. Also, I've never really sized them all up like that before (usually just plop-and-go) so it was interesting to look at their various properties. The sand is from Peg, and the rocks are a mix of the several sources I showed. The trick to getting it that close to the seawalls is plopping it before the seawall. I may go more into that as I go forward.


Casper (CasperVg): I just recently found out about the VIP pack too, which is part of what prompted this update. Hopefully there's not too much pollution around here, but I suppose with any port it's inevitable. I'm going to keep fiddling with things and I'll keep posting the results until it gets there. Always good to see you here Casper.


Gugu3: If I have inspired even one person for something to do in this game, I've succeeded. Glad to hear it's given you ideas.


Joan (Jmouse): Joan, knowing what you can do with your rural scenes, that's high praise. I'll be interested to see what you do now that I've posted this. I'd like to see a before/after to see what ideas it gave you. I still really like Goldiva's and gizmo's stuff for the most part, and in a pinch are some of my go-to flora bits. Water flora is basically land flora, just with more water. That sounds like a joke, but it's not really. It'll tend to be bushier/leafier because it has more moisture to draw upon. Best of luck with your work with it.


Ol.S / Benoit: Good to see you here, and that chat we had last month was a good one. It gave me some ideas for this update (and the project is almost done too). I'll look into these two packs you linked here. I'm curious to see what they can do.


bat: Thanks bat! Always good to see you here.


Noah (noahclem): Again, like I said with Joan, knowing what you do with flora, that's high praise. I'm not sure what I have is all that great, or if it's even finished yet (probably never will fully be) but good to hear it's looking good so far.


Dantes: Good to hear I was able to give you some inspiration. Hope to see some interesting pictures from your shores. Let me know when you post the pictures.


It's that time of year again. Christmas eve is here (Christmas morning for some of you already. Hope you're enjoying it). As I've tried to do the last few years, here's the annual Greenacre Christmas photo. Also, as it is, it's been four years since Greenacre first debuted. I have some thoughts on what to do about that further down the line, but for the moment, I would like to thank everyone who has posted here, or even just stopped in to lurk, over the past four years. The comments, thoughts, and questions have provided much in the way of inspiration and development in the way Greenacre has grown.

This photo comes to you from the South Coast area and shows off some of the Christmas lights in the area. Big houses with lots of ground to cover and space to light up. I got the idea by a local custom that they have in Newport Beach down here: the local boat parade. Many of the houses and boat owners in the bay bedeck things in many lights. It's a great sight, especially with the lights reflecting off the water. This is a smaller scale version of it, but nonetheless it draws its inspiration from there. The houses, trees, and even the local streetcar system have done their bit. Perhaps in a few years this too will become a tradition drawing folks from across Greenacre too.



In this season of togetherness and giving of thanks, thank you all for being here, and here's to more years to come.
-Matt

[noahclem]

Merry Christmas Matt and a huge congratulations on 4 years of Greenacre    Cheers to many more years indeed   

Excellent work with the festive lighting here    I imagine Christmas has a somewhat different look in California than in northern Finland    I hope you have an excellent Christmas!

[Swordmaster]

Merry Christmas, Matt. And happy birthday Greenacre   Nice picture to go with it, although parking there would be a hassle for some on that slope.


Cheers
Willy

[art128]

Merry Christmas Matt!!

Very nice picture there.

[Jmouse]

Wow, four amusing and amazing years. Your annual holiday photo somehow symbolizes the spirit of Greenacre, Matt. It brings back a flood of memories along with a bright promise of more to come.

So with that, I'll wish for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all who have contributed to the success of Greenacre.

Here's to many more years of fun and flora...
-Joan