Recreating San Francisco: Real Life Aside, October 1, 2009

[Glowbal]

Hey again, Lora!

First of all; Did you forget the pictures? Since im only able to see the first 2.

Hello and welcome to my MD!  Always great to "see" a new face and "hear" a new voice chiming in, I hope you stop by often!  And yeah, I know some folks get bored with all the tremendous detail I go into and how many of the screenshots can appear to be very repetitive, but like I said in my introductory statement for this MD, this may not be everyone's ball of wax.  You seem to understand that I am attempting as nearly accurate a recreation of the SF Bay Area as the game will allow me, so you must also understand that it takes a lot of attention to small details pulled from many sources to be able to pull such a feat off well.  Combined with that, I have to take a very close look at all of the tools the game and custom content developers have created over the years, to find that "just right" look to make the recreation as credible as possible.  I am hoping you have read the MD from beginning to end and realize that this is not a project that will move quickly at any point in time.  The region is huge, consisting of 130 large city tiles and so far I have only done a little building and terraforming in one city tile, Stafford Lake.  Also, this MD is still actually very young, so I'm still doing a lot of behind the scenes research as I work on the first city tile.  I've only been up and running with this project for about 2 months and plan to spend several YEARS developing it, so things will always move along a bit slowly here.  I appreciate your input though and in truth try to stay sensitive to my readers wants, which is why rivit and I are taking a break from the mud flats and I am returning to building for a while.  I just thought that while the background work for the bay coastlines may be boring for some, it could very well be fascinating for others.  I am 2 city tiles away from any coastal tiles, so all this work on mudflats is in the nature of "homework", preparation for work to come months down the road. 

I have been following this MD from the very first post, basicly read it all.
It's a good thing to not keep updating about 1 thing all the time; it will become boring for people. To much of the same without anything else in between will mostly work 'discouraging' (forgive me, I do not know the correct word. But I hope you get me).

Just know that as long im around at sc4devotion, I will keep following this MD. I like the way you work, apart from to many updates about the same thing sometimes.
Perhaps that's just a personal thing. But hey, who am I not to say this?   Never said is never heard.

Cheers!
- Glow


Edit; Congratz on page 11, and reply #200.

[threeswept]

It is quite fascinating...the tidal flows. Not quite the Amazon when fresh water meets the ocean, but there is an area called Potatoe Patch http://www.sfsailing.org/news/potato-patch/ which explains what happens to the silt. It's quite a sight to see out in the ocean. And, when you have the extra time, you should check this out http://www.sfmuseum.net/assoc/bridge03.html for how the towers were built. The North Tower - not mentioned here, was built on a bedrock shelf, 20' below the water.

[citymax]

nice !!

[ldvger]

I found time this afternoon (Tuesday), to post the remaining pictures in the last Update, so if you missed them the first time around, you may want to page back for a peek. 

Busy evening planned today.  My roomie and I are having a roast beef dinner, then I have my knitting meeting.  When I get home from that, roomie and I are planning to watch a movie, maybe two (Benjamin Button and Wolverine, two gorgeous men, both of them are my boyfriends), so it's not likely I'll get around to another update tonite.  Don't despair, I have nothing planned for tomorrow!

Lora/LD

[Battlecat]

Looks pretty interesting in that area.  I'm not sure you're going to need to worry to much about those culverts since they're quite small.  Based on the size of the stream and the scale you're working at in SC4, you might be able to use the presence of the tree canopy to create the stream without having to worry about details that might not be at quite the right scale.  After all, with the angle and height we're looking at things from in SC4, culverts are quite often hidden in the foliage. 

But it's your project and I'll be interested to see what approach you decide to take if you do want to recreate those culvert explicitly!  Good luck! 

[ldvger]

Just wanted everyone to know I have a new update all written and ready to post as of 12:42 am Friday morning, but am too tired to get to replies and then upload pics just now.  My day is clear of commitments tomorrow though, so tune back in Friday afternoon/evening.  The new update is all about in-game road building, so those who may have become bored with my out of game explorations should be pleased. 

Lora/LD

[ldvger]

Update 23

Well, guess I am ging to have to bump my own post to post this new update.  All the MDs seem to be a bit on the slow side this past week or so.  I wonder if it has anything to do with all the students going back to school?

Replies

Glowbal:  Thanks for coming by again!  And no I didn't forget to post the rest of the pictures in the last update, I just ran out of time after the first two.  I included a note to that effect, letting readers know I would come back and post the rest of the pictures the following day, which I did. Then you say:

It's a good thing to not keep updating about 1 thing all the time; it will become boring for people. To much of the same without anything else in between will mostly work 'discouraging' (forgive me, I do not know the correct word. But I hope you get me).

Ya know, I kinda hate to say this, but the truth is I am not writing this MD with the sole purpose of entertaining others.  I am writing it primarily because I thought some folks might find my approach to the game interesting and given the responses so far, some folks do.  I am not a professional writer and while I do have aspirations to someday become such, few if any of the MD writers here create flawless prose and every writer, be thet amatuer or professional, bores thier readers from time to time.  So if how I write my MD and post updates bores some folks, such as yourself, then I would hope that those who are bored would at least have the manners not to say so, especially in such a public forum and not only say so once but twice.  My advice to anyone who becomes bored reading here is to skip over the parts that bore you, as I do when reading other people's MDs or any of the many books I read, and post constructive critisism, if you feel you must critisize.  Or, if the MD continues to bore you, then stop reading it entirely. 

On a more personal note, I put a tremendous amount of time and effort into this MD, mostly because I am out of work and have been for the past 15 months and my idle time weighs heavily on me.  As anyone knows who has been involuntarily unemployed for a very long period of time, it affects your mental state, your self-esteem and self-confidence.  I am no different and in perhaps what is in the nature of too much information, my mental state is fragile on my best of days during this extended idleness and I really don't need someone telling me that the hundreds of hours I have poured into this project over the past 3 months is boring.  If you don't have the patience to wait out the parts of the MD that bore you, then please refrain, from this point in time forward, from being so rude as to complain.  If you, Glowbal, continue to complain about being bored, I will contact a moderator and do a little complaing myself. 

On a lighter note, I am amused by the irony that your last post was post #200.  What a way to celebrate a milestone!

threeswept:  I visited both of the links you gave me, thank you, and yes, very interesting stuff.  Thanks for visiting and stop by again soon.  Surf's up and hang ten (I used to surf when I was a teenager, but never got good enough to stand all the way up on my board).

citymax:  Thanks!  Glad you enjoy!


Battlecat:  Yes, the large scale of the basic building block (the cell) of the game is going to make rendering most of these great little details I am finding nearly impossible.  I am going to look around and see if I can find some small culverts, as the ones I currently have in my plugins file are monsterous, a good 30' in diameter.  Scale issues have always been a problem for me with this game.  As a drafter and architect, I'm used to working to 1/16" accuracy at a scale of 1/4"=1', so working to an accuracy of 52.5' is a little frustrating.  A single cell is 256 pixels in each direction (I think, not sure), making 1' equal to approximately 5 pixels.  So, the little stream I found running along Novato Creek Rd. might have been all of 3' wide, which in game would translate to a whopping 15 pixels wide.  The smallest PW tile I have is PEG's 1/4 cell Tahoe which roughly scales out to about 13' in width.  So yeah, scale is a problem.  Even a 15' wide culvert is very large in RL and would be very small in game, so your suggestion to fake it using trees is an excellent one, one that I will take.  Thanks!

Update 23: Novato Creek Rd., Part 2

Well, it's taken me several evenings of fooling around with streets, roads, rails, slope mods, and various God Mode tools, but I think I finally got the road built tonite.  I didn't take any pictures of my painful struggles to achieve my success, so this update will be a little shy on screen shots. 

I had two major challenges...well, actually three.  One, learning how to use the various diagonal street puzzle pieces combined with Maxis streets and the (very) few FAR street puzzle pieces.  I learned that while road and street making CC folks have come a LONG way in busting the grid, there is still a very, very long way to go.  My wish list is so long I didn't even bother to write it down.  Novato Creek Rd. is actually a gravel road (or so it appears) once it starts up the side of the dam and as it continues west past the dam and along the south side of the lake, but the only gravel road mod I have is a 2 cell plop made by PEG and it only goes orthogonally, not along the diagonal, let alone any other angle.  So, rather than having my road change surface textures every 2-5 cells along it's way through the hills and valleys around the lake, I opted to keep things simple and just use the street textures. 

My second challenge was getting the road up the side of the dam and then past the dam to the side of the lake.  Pictures will show you the results, but leave it so say I am learning a lot about the various degrees of slope of the various slope mods and finding I'm not really falling in love with any of them (so far).  I could not get a street up the side of the dam, period, if I had ANY slope mod installed, so I ended up removing the slope mod completely and hand-terraforming, cell, by cell, a great deal of the road.  Even so, it's bumpy with lots of not very realistic grade changes.  I may go back and regrade this road if I ever get super bored, but for now I'm going to be content with it. 

My third challenge was coming to the realization that, given the limits of the gravel and dirt roads available, I am not likely to use any of them.  If I can find some "paintable" paths of various textures, I'll probably use those instead, as back-country vehicle access doesn't fall into a grid pattern.  Many dirt and gravel roads are also wide one laners with pullouts in wide spots, so this may actually be the better way to go.  Using a paintable path with also allow me to more closely follow the actual RL locations and terrain, but it also means I'll have to do quite a bit of hand terraforming to create realistic grades.  No rest for the wicked. 

So, at a very far zoom, this is what the completed road looks like:

23.1


I'm going to go grab an image off Google Earth from about the same angle and height so we can all compare how well I did (or not).

23.2


And because it's a little hard to see the road in this shot, I'm going to Photoshop it to highlight the road's route.

23.3


Well, not too bad, but I can see I am going to have to nudge things around a bit later when I start to build the Disc Golf Course. 

But lets go look at some close up and see what still needs to be done.

23.4


This is a wide shot of the intersection with Hicks Valley Rd. and something you may not be able to see or realize unless you page back a ways is that I have regraded Hicks Valley Rd. to be closer to the elevation of the base of the dam.  My little walk along Novato Creek Rd. in the last update informed me that Hicks Valley road was way to high.  You may remember that I deduced the elevation of Hicks Valley Rd and the top of the dam were roughly the same at the top of the spillway entrance, so I went back and checked to see if that was what I had built and found that no, the road (Hicks Valley) was quite high there, about 16 feet or so.  So I bulldozed the road and regarded it one cell at a time (this took a bit of time and a lot of trial and error) until I was finally able to get Hicks Valley Rd. down to where it needed to be directly next to the dam's spillway.  Then more careful terraforming to slowly grade the road surface down to where Novato Creek Rd. branches off.  This occupied most one of evening's game play.  However, I am happy with the results, as the intersection of the two roads is now nearly flat, just as it is in RL:

23.5


There is a downward slope to Novato Creek Rd. that is not evidenced in the photos we've seen, but hey, it's a game and this was the best I could do.  The scale of the game really prevents me from doing much better, as the smallest unit I have to work with is 52.5 feet square. 

23.6


I've zoomed out one level and rotated the view 90 degrees so we can see how the road comes down to the base of the dam and crosses the spillway (which is not yet built). 

23.7


Rotating again, you can see how the road climbs the face of the dam and the cliff that resulted from my terraforming the road surface flat.  I will build a water filtration plant to the left side of the road at the bottom of the dam, most likely a Maxis default.  Given the high level of detail I have concerning this plant, I'd love to try to BAT it, but it's on a diagonal and I have not yet tried my hand at BATing, so for now I'll just plop a Maxis lot in there as a placeholder for later.

I actually have a lot of work to do here in this stretch of road, as I need to soften the cliff down to a hill not only here but all along the south side of the dam (left side of the picture).  My primary concern for this update, though, was getting the road in, so softening the terrain to the south of the road will be another update further down the line.

23.8


This compound curve is actually something I am quite proud of and took a while to accomplish.  This is (2) 2x4 FAR street curves used back to back with each other and rotated 180 degrees from each other.  I won't tell you how much time was involved in getting this to work because it really doesn't matter.  What matters to me is that I think it looks quite good and if you look at the RL road above, it's pretty close. 

23.9


Moving west along the road, this was a tricky spot to negotiate and I'll likely bulldoze this and do it over later when I install the golf course.  As the road climbs the hill to the right side of the picture, in RL there is at least one golf green to the top side of the road, so you can see I need to do some terraforming here.  But I am anxious to begin work on the lake, so I'm ignoring the golf course for the time being.

23.10


This is another stretch I'll likely redo sometime in the future, but as a placeholder while I build the lake, it works fine for me for now.

23.11


And this is the last leg of the road so far, as it heads up into the hills south of the lake.  That nice big curve is a 4x4 FAR piece and while I didn't terraform the road bed ahead of time, I think it looks good as a placeholder for the time being, don't you? 

And that's it for this update.  Next up is to terraform the lake's island and then plop the lake itself, then start adding some flora.  Some exciting stuff coming up, so stay tuned!

Lora/LD

[Battlecat]

Looking good!  Building streets over slopes tends to be a bit of a pain, you've done a very nice job with it!  Looking forward to seeing some water flow in here! 

With regards to the trees simulating streams, David (Dedgren) had some good ideas in his Three Rivers Region project.  The basic idea was to pick out a particular type of tree model that stands out from the ones you're using for the rest of the area and use those along most of your rivers and streams.  Then, when your stream gets to narrow to build explicitly with plopable water, you continue a line of those trees styles associated with water without the water.  Once you put the rest of the trees in, you'll be creating the illusion of a wetter area for the people looking at your region after it's done! 

Looking forward to seeing what's next!

[ecoba]

Great Update, Lora.

All of your work makes me want to do a reacreation now!
Maybe I will....

Ethan

[woodb3kmaster]

Fascinating work, Lora! I'm sorry you've had to contend with some viewers who don't know when to keep their opinions to themselves (I can relate), but you're free to run your MD however you please. Don't let a couple bad apples ruin the barrel! I, for one, will definitely be back for more.

Zack

[ldvger]

Update 24

Replies

Battlecat:  Yeah, I know folks are getting impatient for me to get some water going in this MD and I'm working on it, as this update shows.  Patience, my precious, patience!  As for dedgren's method of simulating small watercourses, yes I am familiar with it and plan to use it.  My only problem is that all the flora is California Live Oak and scrub bushes, so finding a plant/tree to use to signify the presence of water may be a challenge.  I may have to do some botanical research to learn some of the native plants of the area.

ecoba/Ethan: Glad you stopped by and are enjoying my work.  And while I may be inspiring you to attempt a recreation project of your own, might I suggest you pick something smaller and easier?  You have a lot on your plate already with school and music, so don't overwhelm yourself!

woodb3kmaster/Zack: Well, this is a little embarrassing.  Now I think I've gone and hurt Glowbal's feelings, unintentionally, just as he unintentionally hurt mine.  He wrote me a very contrite PM aplogizing and saying he'd honor my request for him to stop posting, as such was his perception of my last reply to him.  Boy, did *I* feel like a ghoul.  I have PM'd him back making my own apologies and asking him to please continue stopping by and posting, just maybe to be a little more careful about how he words his critques.  I don't think English is his native language and so part of our misunderstanding could be the differences in our respective mother tongues.  I have invited him to come back and comment on this new update, so maybe (I hope) he will.

And, I'm glad you are enjoying my work! 

Update 24: The Island in Stafford Lake

This is likely to be yet another short update, as I don't think it will take a lot of work to squash down the island in the lake to a more appropriate elevation, but I thought maybe folks might be interested in my process, both mental and in game. 

We've looked at and discussed this island a little bit in the past, but I'd like to review a bit, so folks won't have to page back to find previous chatter on the subject.  Also because I have not yet taught myself how to make links from one post to another, but don't tell anyone, OK?

Lets look first at the RL island.  I think I have an aerial in my files that will work nicely for this.  Well, I guess I don't after all.  That's ok, I was thinking about taking some street view shots across the lake from Hicks Valley Rd towards the island, anyway, so I'll just fire up Google Earth and save some new shots.

24.1


Ok, here's an aerial from about 4000'.  You should be able to see the scale at the left side of the pic showing a distance of about 1120'.  I'm going to use a scrape of paper and copy the scale and measure the island to compare it's RL size to mine in the game.  Having done that, I'm going to call it 840'x300' +/-.  Some of the islands characteristics should be noted.  It is fairly flat overall.  It slopes steeper on the side towards the dam and less so away from the dam.  It really only seems to have significant flora on the dam side of the island.  The flora on the island appears to be generally the same as the other flora around the lake and in the area.

24.2


Rotating 90 degrees and zooming in.  There appears to be a semi-obvious high water mark and the water level shown here appears to be below that.  We are oriented in such a way that south is to the top of the picture.  There is some degree of "beach" to the south, a little bit of beach to the west and east, and none to the north.  This lead me to conclude the lake is shallower at the south tip of the island and deeper at the north side.  This will come in handy when I start plopping the lake, as you will see when I get there.  Ok, that enough of the aerials, now I'm going to go to street view and walk a bit along Hicks Valley Rd. to see if I can learn anything else new.

Not really.  Well, other than that there are power poles along the lake side of Hicks Valley Rd., as well as the bike path we saw in update 22. 

But before I fire up the game and get to work, I want to review my topo map of the island.

24.3


The dark contour line on the island is 200' and the lighter one is 220'.  I remember I decided to set the max height of the island at 230', which is halfway to the next contour upwards.  So now I need to do my meters to feet conversion and subtract 250m to figure out what my max game elevation is going to be.  Mathaphobes beware!  :::grabbing my cheat sheet::: 

One meter=3.28 feet.  So, 230/3.28=70.12 metes.  Now add 250m for game sea level and max height on the island should be 320.12. 

Ok, now I'll fire up my game.

24.4


So the island is about 16m too tall.  That's a lot, over 48 feet!  Boy, this is going to be a very flat island!  I also think the south beachs, to the bottom of the pic above, look a little steep.  So, let's get to work.

24.5


I'm going to start by digging a small hole at the highest end of the island using my MM Valley tool, with controls set at 1 and F1.  Then I'm going to go all the way around the square to create a semi-flat cell at the max elevation.

24.6


I queried the center of the cell here rather than the corners because, well, this doesn't need to be as exact as other stuff I've been doing and this gives me an idea as to how close I am, in general terms, to where I want to be.  Now I'm going to plop street tiles and flatten the top of the island.

24.7


Ok, now I have flattened the top of the island to the max height, so I'm going to go back and kaboom all the street tiles I just laid.

24.8


A bit of gratuitous violence, for those who love to blow things up (or see things being blown up).

Now I'm just going to use the MM Valley tool again, this time much more carefully, and sculpt a more natural looking landscape object. 

24.9


And there you have it.  It looks a little rough now, but by the time the water is plopped and the flora added, I think it will be pretty good.

And that's it for this update.  Hope you enjoy!  Next up is (finally!) plopping the lake, which is likely to be a long update and take me several play sessions to accomplish, so stay tuned!

Lora/LD

[Bobbi]

Unbelievable

Bobbi

[metarvo]

I like the way that the attention to detail continues.  After all, IRL careful planning must be done when a lake is to be built.  The terrain must be cleared and altered.  Of course, SC4 gave us the single road tile which works quite well for terrain-leveling purposes.  I use this technique regularly when I build highway overpasses, particularly for sunken highways, to ensure that the terrain is level on both sides.  Keep up the good work, Lora.  I'm looking forward to seeing the lake when it's completed.

[ecoba]

Great Update, Lora.

Your careful planning and attention to detail is amazing.

If I do start a recreation, I don't think it would be as big as SF.

I cannot wait for more of your work, Lora.

Ethan

[ldvger]

Just want you all to know I am working on an update, plopping Stafford Lake, and have run into some unexpected snags.  Been working on this for the past 3 evenings and have lots of pics, but I am not happy with any of my results so far, so I am continueing to chip away.

I am not absent of ignoring anyone, just bust behind the scenes trying to get this lake to plop the way I want it too. 

This is also a busy time of the week for me, Monday and Tuesday, so I've been a bit distracted. This post-weekend distraction is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, so I guess folks need to get used to it. Monday and Tuesday are the days when I actually get to interact with real live human beings, and being as how I am mostly housebound the rest of the week, well, I guess you can figure it out from there. 

Tonite was an especially good example.  I had my knitting meeting tonite.  Last week I started a new pattern for a pair of slippers and completed the first slipper Monday morning.  It was way too small and there were other problems with it, like a seam running up the middle of the foot.  So I took the slipper with me to tonite's meeting and we discussed how to modify this pattern to make it work better.  So, tonite I started a new slipper, after unraveling the first one. 

My roomie and I have also started to designate Tuesday evening as movie night, a night when we watch a movie together.  We have recently agreed to split the cost of a Netflix account.  We have not yet activated that agreement, so we are still renting movies from Blockbuster, which is 1 block away.  Tonite, on my recommendation, we watched "Vanishing Point".  Michael didn't care for the film at all.  I saw the film in a theatre within days of it's opening back in 1971, when Michael was 1 year old and I was 17, so there is not only a generation gap between us for understanding and appreciating the film, but also the fact that film is nostalic for me.  Whatever...he didn't care for the film and I enkoyed seeing it again immensely. 

So, this MD, besides staying on topic, may also veer off into movies and knitting from time to time.  Just a heads up.

Lora/LD

[ldvger]

Update 25

Replies

Bobbi:  Thank you so very much and welcome to my MD!  Stay tuned, lots more good stuff to come.

metarvo:  Thanks for stopping by and commenting, always appreciated!  And yes, the creation of a man-made lake in RL is fraught with many issues.  I saw a program on TV maybe 12-18 months ago about a huge new dam being built in China, Three Gorges Dam I think it's called, on the confluence of three major tributaries of the Yellow (Yangtze?) River.  The natural terrain is quite steep and the dam is planned to be quite tall, so the new lake will reach very far inland from the dam.  Hundreds of villages and towns needed to be relocated, so new cities are being built to house the dislocated populace.  An engineering project of immense scale!  Novato Creek Dam and it's resultant Stafford Lake are tiny projects by comparision, but much much still be considered.  It's unfortunate (to my mind) that so many of these dam-building projects of the last century or so never bothered to take into account the effect would have on the native flora and fauna.  As a child of the 50's who came of age during the 60's amd 70's, I remember the birth of the environmental movement and how the whole "green" movement has grown from being seen as a lunatic fringe group of "tree-huggers" to a mainstream trend.  A project such as the Three Gorges Dam could probably never be built in the US today, due to environmental damage such a project would incur.  Personally, I agree that this is how it should be and while I marvel at the engineering of the Chinese project, I am appalled at the cost to both the peoples of the area and the native flora and fauna. 

But, philosophy aside, I'm glad you (among others) appreciate my attention to detail, even if no animals or plants were injured or killed in the process.

ecoba/Ethan: I'm glad you stopped by and very glad you are enjoying my work/play.  You and Battlecat are becoming my two biggest fans.  Which is not to discount all the others who post here, I appreciate any and all comments and posters. 

As for Lily's gash, Neosporin should do the trick.  I have three cats of my own and always have a tube of Neosporin around, in case of injuries.  However, if Lily acquired her wound while adventuring in the world outside of the house, you may want to consider adapting her to being an indoor-only kitty.  Indoor kitties live longer, healthier lives that indoor-outdoor kitties do.  I am assuming she is spayed.  She's a very pretty girl, I hope she recovers quickly.  Have you any idea how the injury was incurred? 

Update 25: Plopping Stafford Lake, Part 1

Well, at long last, I am going to plop Stafford Lake.  Is that a cheer I hear?  Let's start by taking a look at what we have to work with now that roads, dam, and the island have been taken care of:

25.1


One of my concerns is that the borders of the lake are quite flat in some areas and that once I kaboom the street tiles, I am going to lose track of where the lake ends and the water starts.  So, I'm going to start my PW prep by placing markers along the shoreline.  I want to be careful doing this, as I'll need to kaboom the markers later and don't want to inadvertently kaboom any of the lake at the same time.  So rather than placing markers directly on the shorelines, I'm going to set them back a bit and into a cell of their own.  I'll probably end up kabooming a few PW tiles when I remove the markers, but hopefully this method will keep the rebuilding of lake tiles to a minimum. 

25.2


Unfortunately, my marker trees disappear at further zooms, so I can't gather a complete screen shot of the entire lake.  Notice I did not go all the way around the lake with markers, as in many places the shorelines are steep enough that I'll still be able to know where the lake ends even after the street tiles are gone.  I basically just placed markers where the terrain has little or no slope.  I also kept all the markers at least a half cell away from any street tile.  So now I'll kaboom the street tiles.

25.3


ACK!  After months of looking at those street tiles holding down the boundries of the lake, it sure looks naked all the sudden!  And BIG!  And ya know, this is a bit of a milestone for me.  Not only is this Update 25, but this is really going to be my first big recreation build.  The dam was really just careful terraforming and the roads, well, how exciting are roads to build?  But a lake?  That's exciting!

So, I have a method I use for building PW bodies of water.  I use several layers of PW, to create an illusions of depth.  I use Edmonton, which is a very dark opaque blue for deep water, and Tahoe for shallower water that still too deep to be transparent.  The edges between the two dark PW's are then "blurred" using underwater plants, then the entire area is overlaid with TPW.  I don't remember where I learned this method or who pioneered it, but I find it to be most effective and realistic in appearance. 

This lake is not really very deep anywhere, I don't imagine, but I surmise it's deepest up next to the dam and around the north side of the island, so I am going to start with laying down some Edmonton tiles in those areas.

25.4


So this is where I have decided the extents of my deep water will be.  Next I switch to the Tahoe PW, and lay down the medium deep water.

25.5


So here we have the Tahoe bordering and blending with the Edmonton.  I used the ¼ tile Tahoe all the way around the Edmonton, laying it down one tile at a time.  I find the ¼ tile Tahoe to be incredibly useful, I just wish I had similar PW plops of other colors.  If you ever want to use this method in your own city, be sure to rotate your views all the way around the compass and zoom in close enough to see those areas that the PW tiles miss, then plop a tile to cover it. 

Now that I have my deep and medium deep water blended (so far...more blending to come), I'll plop the rest of the Tahoe to designate the medium deep water. 

25.6


Now, from RL pics of the area, I know the western (left) edge of the lake is very shallow and muddy with lots of underwater plant growth.  For now, I'll worry about that later.  When viewing the above pic, notice that I have kept the Tahoe PW away from the shore lines where I had placed marker trees and brought it closer to the shore line in areas of steeper beaches.  Looking at my RL maps and pics,  I think there might be some deeper water to the west of the island, so I an going to correct that now.

25.7


I had to kaboom some of the Tahoe PW to install the Edmonton, but that's OK.  Now comes the use of  underwater plants to further blur the edges between the Edmonton and Tahoe.  For some reason, attempting to place the plants after the TPW had been laid doesn't work as well, so I'll place the flora now, before the TPW.

Several days later.

Well, I have been having all sorts of problems with both the underwater flora but, more especially, plopping the TPW over the Tahoe and Edmonton.  I have been experimenting with a number of methods over the past few days and think I have something figured out, but it's going to take some time to plop the TPW, so I think I'll go ahead and post this update, as far as it is so far and leave the TPW overlay for another update. 

Lora/LD

PS.  Can any of you MD gurus tell me how to modify my thread heading to show the posting of new updates? 

[ecoba]

Thanks, Lora, I'll try that. I have 3 cats myself. Lily, and her sister Jetta, who is my profile, and a stray I took in, Jane.

I deleted the first post because I felt it irrelevant.

I didn't know different ploppable waters had names! I just had the Blue, Teal-Green, and Muddy. What water is this?

Ugh, would I would give to have a laptop that I could take with me, to Stafford Lake, hold up the laptop in front of me, and say, Lora's lake looks exactly the same!

Part 1, that's something I always like to hear, because it most definitely means there's more.

Thanks for the advice, Lora.

Ethan

[Battlecat]

Looking good!  Using two different types of PW on a single feature tends to be quite challenging.  I've tried it once early on in my MD as well, I'm still not 100% happy with the results though. 

For changing your MD title, all you have to do is change what's typed in the Subject portion of the post when you create a new entry.  You can even use the modify feature to change your post title after the fact. 

[just_a_guy]

I never even thought of using diferent styles of plopable water to mark the deeper parts of the lake. It looks really good. So far all of the carefull planning is really starting to pay off!

[ldvger]

Update 26

Replies

ecoba/Ethan: Well, the various PWs do have names, kinda sorta.  There are a lot of PW's out there, just like there are a lot of water mods that change the color of the game water.  To distinguish between the PW's, some of the folks who make them give them names.  PEG has made a PW he calls "Tahoe".  It's the lighter blue one I use.  I am not remembering now who made the "Edmontonv2" that I use for the darker blue water, but that was the name it's creator gave it, also.  Dogfight has a bunch of PW's and I think he named them each, also, and he has a bunch of water mods as well and I think he named each of those as well.  I think the PW's you have and are referring to are jeronij's TPW (Transparent Plop Water), which I also have and have used below, the blue one.  And while it may be possible for you to take a laptop to Stafford Lake and compare my game lake with the real one, I highly doubt they would look very much alike to each other.  But thanks for the vote of confidence and, as always, thanks for stopping by!

Battlecat: Actually, I am using 3 types of PW, 2 opque and then the TPW over the top of them.  And it's not fun at all, as my efforts below reveal.  However, I think the end result is worth the time and effort.  Hope you agree and thanks for stopping by!

just_a_guy:  I would never have thought of it on my own, either, so please don't give me credit for the technique.  I don't remember who's MD it was, but I saw someone else make lakes and rivers this way and was very impressed with the results, so I copied it. 

Update 26: Plopping Stafford Lake, Part 2

So, I have been having some troubles with plopping the TPW over the opaque PW.  In looking closely at my MM flora menu, where my TPW icons reside, I find I have (2) sets of the blue TPW, which plop slightly differently from each other.  The first set displays slightly differently in the menu in that it appears to be bounded by a suggestion of shoreline, even though, when plopped, no shoreline is included.  This set has plop tiles in 1, 2, 3, and .5 plop cell widths.  Looking closely, the water texture and color seems to be slightly greener than the second set.

The second set shows no shorelines in the menu icons and there are three options: 1, 1.5, and 2 cell plops.  The water is slightly blue-er and when plopped in the game has what I think of as an "ice" texture.  I have found one set plops over opaque PW better than the other, but, forgive my senior moments, I don't remember which right now.  I think it's the first set.  Regardless, I was able to plop the blue TPW over my opaque PW the other night, in the area to the west of the island, and this is what it looks like:

26.1


You can see the "ice" effect I am talking about on a few of the tiles that are covering the Edmonton "deep water" I created to the west of the island.  I don't mind this at all...water is one of the hardest things to render realistically in games due to it's chaotic and very dynamic aspects.  Fire is the same.  So different shades and water effects adds to realism, to my mind, rather than detracting from it. 

Having covered most of the Edmonton deep water (finally), my task now is to cover the rest of the lake with TPW and create some decent looking shorelines along the edge of the lake.

I have seen other folks use underwater flora to help obscure and blur the boundaries between shades of opaque PW and TPW and shorelines.  From my own experimentation with this technique, I have found the flora needs to be plopped first most of the time.  My ongoing conversations with rivet have revealed that the game has limits as to how many objects can be layered one over the other and my want to use opaque PW, flora, and TPW over both is stretching the game's acceptable limits.  Perhaps it's my computer and it's specs, because I have seen other folks create the effect I am trying to achieve.  Then again, it may be my technique. 

So, for the time being, I am going to forego using underwater flora to blur the edges of my various water mods and instead just see if I can get the TPW to cover the opaque PW.  I may go back sometime in the future and kaboom the entire lake, but for now, I need a semi-decent placeholder so I can move on to other areas of the city tile.  I am becoming especially curious about the Burdick (not sure of the spelling) School that is across the street from the Stafford Lake Park entrance. 

Here I go, plopping TPW.

26.2


This is about 20 minutes of very careful work, rotating the screen view constantly.  The TPW will plop in some directions and not in others.  It seems to plop best when I start with a tile that has already been plopped...they seem to like each other and grow best outward when so started. 

26.3


Another 20 minutes and a lot of zooms in and out, a lot of screen rotations.  I am finding the .5 cell plop to be most useful for painting the shorelines and filling in gaps that the 1 cell plops leave behind.  This is slow, painstaking work folks...but I am liking the results so far.

26.4


Another 20 minutes later.  Notice how I am leaving some portions of the Tahoe PW exposed at the western edge of the lake, near where one of the lake's major feeder creeks empties into the lake.  That's because, color wise and eye wise, the Tahoe has a brownish hue as compared to the blue TPW I am plopping over it and I want that brown hue at the creek mouth and in the lake around the area of the creek mouth.  I am leaving bits and pieces of the Tahoe and Edmonton PW uncovered by the TPW for the same reason...water, RL water, varies a lot on color and hue depending on depth, so this method of making above sea level water really appeals to me. 

And, I am out of time for this evening, but I will continue this update tomorrow.

Ok, back again and ready to do some more slow and careful TPW plopping. 

26.5


Man, this is REALLY tedious!  This is about ½ an hour's work and while we're getting there, boy oh boy is it slow.  I think it looks fantastic, but I am beginning to understand my buddy rivit's objections to the TPW as being "complex and expensive" to render.  I probably have close to 1000 of the .5 cell plops down there and my in-game zooms and pans are becoming choppy.  I have a fairly high end computer with a lot of RAM and a high end graphics card, but all those little plops are taking their toll.

Edit (9/27/09):  When I came back to post replies this afternoon I noticed something funky about my screen shoots.  For some reason, perhaps computer memory issues, not all the screen captures picked up all the TPW plops I had made.  In the photo above, all of the TPW I had plopped over towards and up to the back side of the dam is missing.  In the photo below, which I have since replaced, it was originally supposed to show to completed lake but instead only about 1/2 the TPW showed up.  So this afternoon I went back to my game and took another screen capture of the completed lake and this time all the TPW shows up. 

FYI, rivet is looking into developing a new and "less expensive" TPW.  I have been testing his first draft attempts and they are pretty good. 

Back to more plopping.  Hopefully I can complete the rest of the TPW plopping this eveing and post this tomorrow.

26.7


And there it is, in all its glory.  I still have some areas of Tahoe to try to go back and plop over, but am thinking the uneven color where the Tahoe is not overlaid with TPW may give a higher level of realism to the water.  What do you think?

Also, please understand this is the "raw" lake, as there is a lot of detailing left to do to create shorelines and muddy beaches.  I also have not planted any flora yet, and that will make a big difference, too.

Out of time once again, but I think this is done enough to post as a new update. 

Please, your comments are needed, so post away!

Lora/LD