Urland - a (mostly) rural Coastline

[canyonjumper]

Bernhard! Excellent update! I liked how you used the Jeroni's Ploppable Water, it looks great with the addition of the details you added! In 19.05, the stairs leading down to the cul-de-sac is Marrast's, correct? I like the way you've placed them. And you may want to consider using this cul-de-sac mod, it makes the cul-de-sacs a bit rounder.

                        Your friend, 
                                       Jordan

[RickD]

Nice village and (of course, I might say) outstanding work with the rail signals and station. I can remember this kind of stations from my childhood. I think there were several of those along the rail line from Kaiserslautern to Lauterecken and Kusel. But I guess by now most of them are modernized. I can see that your level crossing has already been upgraded to modern standards, too.

I was a bit irritated by the signal in the middle of the two tracks in pic 19.5. It looks like the train will hit it because it is so big.

You have really improved your skills with the trees. It looks not bad in the old pictures but it is nothing compared to the newer ones.

[threbos]

AWESOME...your rural scenes are just freakin amazing....MIND BLOWING!

id like to know though...where did you get the nifty paths and fences...specifically in 16.7....i would really like those trails!

[Nardo69]

Hello to All!

It has been a while ... 

While looking what I could use for a new update I found some pics of Klemmbach that I haven't shown yet, including one showing Klemmbach itself. I still don't know why it seems that I haven't any screenshots as I was working there quite some time, usually while working on a special shots I make lots of screenshots ... 

Anyway. No news regarding my technical problems so I am bound  to go on with conserves.

But as always before we start:

@Girafe: Thanks for the compliment!
The little CV will appear in Urland as soon as I can play Sc4 again - at the moment I cannot as my regular pc is broken and my old laptop is way too slow for Sc4... 
You may not believe it but the last class 023 locos (the originals of that special loco) were in service untill 1975 or 1976, and as a child I did see them in regular service around Crailsheim, Kaiserslautern and Saarbrücken!

canyonjumper: Thanks for the compliment!
Yesm´, they are marast's stairs, a classic as most of his stuff. Battlecats stuff looks nice but it wasn't out when I made these pics.

@RickD: I haven't been around Landstuhl / Kusel for a while but between Kaiserslautern and Lauterecken these signals have gone as the railway line has been modernized some time ago. The station layout is somehow standard for doublw track railway lines.
For the  signal in between the standart Maxis DTR texture, well, it's a compromise. Usually these kind of station have (had) four tracks: Two Through - tracks (track 1+2), a siding track (track 3) and a second siding for shunting manoeuvers for the freight termianl (track 4). And since track4 usually was a mere shunting track main signals have been placed only for track 1-3. Unfortunately there is not an alternative DTR texture with bigger distance between the tracks that's why it looks like the trains will hit the signal.

The tree techniques does make a difference, doesn't it? Not so much time in between but so much difference ...

@threbos Thanks for the compliment!
The trails you are looking for are part of the RRP - just make a creator search on the LEX for "ChrisAdams3997" and you'll find them next to a lot of other real nice & useful stuff!

And without further a-do's let's begin with

Mini Update: Some additional Pics of Klemmbach




I might have shown this one before with the RRP-way under the bridge. Usually I use the trails but I confess that this looks nice, too - should make it more often ....



... as you can see here, too.
I don't like the forest too much, though; TreeController forest, densified partially with MM trees. It has been this kind of forest that let me develope my MM tree technique!



On the other side of the bridge some cows don't become irritated by the train rumpling over the bridge.



Here's the picture of Klemmbach I found recently. No closeup but you can see the structures better than on the general overviews.
A rather early screenshot by the way as you can see on the partially "empty" spaces.



The S-curve between the bridge and Neurod from a different angle that shows very well the position of the pre-NAM-underpass of the road. I still like to use these short tunnels for embankments as their flexibility regarding height, width and puzzlepieces is still unbeatable.



From pic 19.19 we moved a bit to the left upper side. This pic shows the indirect connecttion of Neurod the the main road. (It shows also that some final details are still missing ...)
And yes, something suitable hasn't grown on that empy zone ... 

That's it for today!

Have fun!


Bernhard 

[rooker1]

Nice update....the bridge looks perfectly placed but the use of Simfox's trees seems to be a little much.  Other than that great set of pics.

Robin 

[Tomas Neto]

Hi my friend!!! Beautiful bridge, and your rural areas are always of incredible beauty!!!

[Nardo69]

Almost An Anniversairy - Update.

It has been some month that I thought about what I should do on the fifth anniversairy of Urland. I planned a very special city / map but my malworking computer got in the way of it. So I checked my screenshots in order to make a bigger update that usual and go back in memories, back to 2005 and tell about the time of the great classic CJs on Simtropolis like Andrew George's "Norwich", JeroniJ's "Sculpting Columbia River", Whiteshark's "Crystal Junction" but especially Llewellan's Digby to name only a few of them, but that was also the timewhen  Darmok's great "Anduin Valley Revisited" and dhoppeii's "La Plaisance County" started - just weeks before I nervously hacked the first posts of Urland in my PC.

Would someone be interested in my villages and farms? At that time I haven't even installed the brand new BSC farms, and even c.p.'s wonderful trees needed quite some time to find their way into my CJ ...

Well, the first post came faster than I though they would! 

Oh, and in that time I made my first contact with the NAM: downloaded it, started the game with anticipation for the first overpass and then: A window without text, and instead of the overpass: nothing. What a crap I thought and immediately deleted it ... Most probably I "forgot" to read the readme(not) and hence haven't installed some important files. 
Today I can't imageine Sc4 without the NAM - but how many User made a similar first experience with the NAM?

In the end of 2005 I was first time nominated for the trixie, two times to be honest but didn't received any. Boy, I was so disappointed when the "Best Rural CJ" eventually went to my friend dhoppeii!

One year later, in one of all those breaks, I looked into the Trixie winner list - and there it was! My first "Best Rural CJ" trixie - I almost fell from my chair when I read my nick there! Meanwhile I've won the trixie a second time, Urland is one of the few MDs that have been three times OSITM but that first Trixie, it still means something special to me. 

And then in 2005, this friendly and creative rivalry between me and Dan (dhoppeii), not only it made Darmok start farming in AVR, too, but sometimes I think that that was the start for all these nice rurally focussed CJs / MDs that should follow us. We haven't been the first ones who showed lots of farms but still IMHO we were pioneers in focussing on the rural aspect in Simcity.

Memories ...

Actually I wanted to do this update on the fifth anniversairy. Somehow June 29th burned itself in my brain but in fact the first Post of Urland was made on June 6th 2005. So I missed the anniversairy ... again!

Anyway .. let's celebrate the 5 year and 22 day anniversairy then ...

By the way I almost didn't wanted to show that map, it was merely my malworking pc made me showing you that map. I showed some screenshots of the map before. It is actuelly the last map ever where I used Peg's stream and pond kit, mostly because I wanted to do a dam after the works around hydroplant I showed some time before.

And when I just thought now I could use it for the next regular update  Framly showed the first screenshots of the lake and dam of Rondnoir at the simforum. I thought the lake was a bit too small but after seeing Framly's pics I though I cannot show them anymore at all ... and forgot the map.

And well, no pc to play sc4 on, no more actual screenshots, thus Hochroth became active again.

I still have some updates left but my stock becomes smaller and smaller ...

But before we start as always: 

@rooker1: The bridge was my main focus on the map when it was clear there would be such a gorge.
And well, at that time Simfox has had kind of a monopole for mayor mode trees ... but your are right; if I was able to I would have revisited this map. Maybe later ...

@Tomas Neto: Thanks for the compliment my friend!

And now let me present:

Hochroth - Almost An Anniversary Update!

I made the first woods with the treecontroller but in Klemmbach I discovered the MayorMode trees, especially the Simfox trees. They are dominating Hochroth - Hooha46's / c.p.'s MM trees weren't available there ...



The Overview.
Hochroth is the direct neighbour map of Klemmbach and as I wrote in the Klemmback Update the reason for the Klemmbach gorge lies in the neighbour map - Hochroth: Somewhere I needed to create the height distance for the dam ...
I wouldn't do such a small lake on one single map anymore by now ..



The lake.
With a non-opaque ploppable water and a stone shore like Framly it would surely look better; PEG's stream and pond kit always looks like as its depth wouldn't be bigger than one foot ...



The Klemmbach dam and the begin of the gorge. It wasn't easy to plant these flanks halfway realistically ...



Same area from the other side. The street to the left leeds to Klemmbach, the street to the top serves some farms and the street goind downs leeds to the (center) village...



... that lies behind that forrested hill directly at the lake.



The center village with the church. There's only a handful of commercialy on this map and they are all situated at the main road that touches the center village ...



... as you can see here. Main employer in Hochroth is still agrar, ...



... as you can see very well here. The popplar trees at the road leeds us  ...



... to some houses that have been erected along the main road.



This pictures shows again the differences between pure MayorMode forrest and Tree Controller forrest densified with some mayor mode trees.



The main road leaving the map.



A closeup. I might have shown it before.



Let's go back the main road to the village ...



... to the direction of the other border of the map. We pass this small water fall. Its height difference couldn't be used for the dam because Hochroth would have been disappeared behind a high dike.



Behind the small ridge the Klemmbach makes its way through some swampy meadows to its spring in the forrest. (As I stated this was the last time I used the - now outdated - stream kit)



There are some houses next to the old and the new main street.



The grey street between the farms leeds to the neighbour map. There are a lot of such side streets in the Black Forrest, Eifel, Westerwald and other mid range mountains in Germany ...



A Closeup of a farm at the edge of the forrest and the grey street winding up the hill.



And a last a screenshot of a farm close to the lake and the dam.

Today's update has been a bit larger than usual due to the missed anniversary, I hope you liked it and that my sentimanetal memories weren't too ... well ...

Have fun!

[Highrise99]

Looks great.  All the flora, waterfalls, etc. makes the place look very realistic.

[RickD]

Happy 5th Anniversary! 

I enjoyed reading your recapitulation on the early days. So many memories. I followed all those CJs back then and was eagerly waiting for each update. It is very nice to see that Urland is still around while so many of the old CJs and great people from the past have left. I really hope your computer problems don't mean the end of the Urland-age.

Oh, and nice pics, of course. The village is very beautiful and your good use of trees draw off attention from the uniformity of the ploppable lake.

[rooker1]

Happy 5th anniversary my friend.
Even your old pics are great pics. 
I also liked going down memory lane with you and heres to a lot more memories.

Robin 

[Yan077]

I m so sorry, it's been a while I haven't posted here, but I follow closely your MD, I have always be a big fan of your terraforming skills and rural paintings, it looks always so real... 

Splendid retro-update and happy 5th anniversary for this legendary MD 

Yann 

[Tomas Neto]

Happy 5th Anniversary my friend, and awesome update again!!! 

[Battlecat]

Congratulations on 5 years of Urland!  It's never easy to keep something up for 5 years, you've certainly done a great job!  I really like how that gorge turned out!

[Nardo69]

Some replies and a little tiny picture ...

@Highrise99: Thanks for the compliment my friend!

@RickD: Lots of things have happened since then, haven't they. The game is and is not the same anymore somehow at the same time ...

@rooker1: I intended to doe this is a bot mor intense, well, you know ... glad you like it, Robin!

@Yan077: No need to excuse yourself. Espeically since it is really some times hard for me to open your MD... without getting demotivated by your art!

@Tomas Neto: Thanks for the compliment my friend!

@Battlecat: Thanks for the compliment my friend!
Yes, it definately is not. And as you might now there have been quite some ups and downs in Urland during these years. Hopefully the down at the moment will end soon.
BTW: Except for 3rr - are there any other CJs / MDs of that age or older left? Darmok unfortunately lost AVR and is MIA since then ...

Anyway, I pormised you a pic in the header, here it is:



So, what do we see here? The grid is on, there are lots of empty spaces, still no RHW but Maxis highway, and much left to do.

And yet there is somthing very special about this screen shot which made me post it here. Can you guess what's so special about it?

[WC_EEND]

Banned for showing only one picture (sorry, couldn't resist )

Anyway, back ontopic, even though it's unfinished, it still has your typical style in it, ther railways look realistic like always. You might want to use the Euro road textures though (I guess you know which ones I mean)

Anyway, take care Bernhard

Xander, aka your fellow MetEENDo69 entity member

[threestooges]

Love that classic Nardo station facility. Nice work. Looks like Derry really did inspire you to get the game going again. Does this mean the BSODs have stopped? I hope that's the case, since that would mean more screenshots are on the way.
-Matt

[TheTeaCat]

Hey Bernhard,
Sorry its been a while since I visited Urland. And I missed the Anniversary - my bad.

Yes I know that there are some "faults" with the pic (grid, empty spaces  ) but I am going to hazard a guess or two
about its specialness.

It's the first one you took in urland? Or the fact that there is almost no custom content in it?
Or is it the one you mentioned in my md? or is it the fact that the maxis fields look good in this situation?

Whatever it is, it has your style all over it    And I can easily overlook it faults 

Sorry to herar that you are still plagued by BSoD and unfortunately I am not one who can help with that but I do hope you can get it sorted soon so we can see more of Urland.

Till the next time 

Derry

[threestooges]

Can't be the first one from Urland. There's STR in the image. This MD was around long before that (and will hopefully be around for much longer to come). By the way, forgot to mention in the last post, the highway looks great through there; very smooth.
-Matt

[travismking]

hmm, is that a maxis incinerator next to farms or just dirty industry? either way, not often you see that :p

[ecoba]

Looks great, Bernhard ! I'm sorry I haven't been around here recently to post on Urland, and I'm sorry to have missed the anniversary.. 

As always your villages and farmlands are beautiful, and I love that we just get a greater insight to your beautiful region ! I'm going to guess that this is a village that you have recently started, and that you will be showing us more soon? 

Ethan