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

[Shadow Assassin]

Very interesting how you're going into all this detail about the dam...

By the way, you were wondering why the bridges in the immediate area seem to be made of a completely different material... that's actually quite common with a lot of bridges here. It may not even have been washed away, but probably just was left as concrete so that it can be checked more easily for any erosion issues and it's cheaper just leaving the bridge like that while the rest of the road is asphalted.

I don't know the history of that area, being from Australia, but that's always a possibility. I'm willing to bet that bridge is just a simple concrete arch bridge or a trestle... the sort of bridge that can easily be replaced in a matter of hours if it does collapse.

[joelyboy911]

Everything here is so fascinating, I just hope you don't work on that dam forever! Have you done anything in the game yet? 

The way you have everything planned out perfectly down to the inch - centimetre. I look forward to seeing how you build the city, as well as the suburbs and airports.

[ldvger]

Hello and so terribly sorry for having been away.  I guess everyone knows I am piggy-backing my internet access via my next door neighbor's wifi and his service went down erly Saturday afternoon and has not yet been restored.  It's now Sunday evening and I'm once again at the little internet cafe up the street, so my ability to post may be sporadic until the wifi is restored.

Which is a real drag because I was able to work for almost 5 hours last night writing the last of the updates showing how I get information from RL maps into the game and, other than uploading the 22 screenshots to Imageshack, it's ready to post.  However, I don't have my laptop and desktop networked together, so getting the update from one to the other means I'll have to burn it to CD and then bring it here.  I may do that yet, but it costs money to sit here and it's free to stay home, so I'm keeping my fingers crossedthe wifi at home is restored soon. 

I am actually ready to beging building in my game, which is probably what I'll do when I leave here this evening.  And yes, after all the discussion about the dam, I'm going to start with that and the lake, then add the feeder streams.  There really isn't much goin on in this city tile, it's mostly rural, so it should go fairly quickly.  The next tile east is the city of Novato and it's almost entirely built, so that will take a little longer.

My experiments with the BAT will have to be delayed also, as I need the tutorials to guide me and I can't access them offline. 

Had a wonderful afternoon munching freshly roasted peanuts and watching my Seattle Mariners kicj the stuffing out of those damn Yankees, 10-3.  Gorgeous day, sunny, warm.  Nothing like baseball and an ice cold beer and a stadium full of cheering fans to make it feel like summer.

I'll be back as soon as I can, and thanks for posting folks!

Lora/LD

[meinhosen]

Lora,

Can't wait to see how your building and development goes.  I guess we can all expect the same caliber of work with that as you've shown us with your terraforming and planning.  Looking forward to seeing how you start developing. 

[ldvger]

Update 11: Scaling RL Maps to Game Maps, Part 7

Back at the cafe tonite and I'm going to try to post the next update, which I wrote offline over the weekend. 

meinhosen, welcome and thanks for stopping by!  Hope you come by again soon, as I began last night building the lake.  I took lots of screenshots as I went along and will post them soon, so stay tuned!

Ok, onward!

:::taking a deep breath:::

Ok, this is the last of what I have been thinking of as "Scale Tutorials" in which I have been showing you all how I have scaled game maps to RL maps for the purpose of transferring information from the RL maps into my game.  Now that we have everything roughly scaled to each other, it's time for the REALLY tedious work to begin, the actual transfer of info into the game. 

Briefly, this is done by gridding the maps I made in CAD and matching that grid with the grid in the game.  Remember I created a grid block of 256x256 a while ago?  Now you'll get to see how that grid comes into play.

So this is where we were when I left of last time:



I can see that the information from the topo maps that I traced over is slightly out of scale to the city tile map, but I'll adjust the location of the tracings up/down/back/forth as I work my way across the map rather than going back and trying to rescale all my work to this point.  It's close enough for me as it is. 

We've been taking a very detailed look at Stafford Lake and the Novato Creek dam this last week, so that is the first set of info I am going to transfer into my game:  the lake, the little island in the lake, the dam, and a couple of tributary creeks.  To do this, I first need to copy my city grid block to overlay my city tile map.  But rather than actually copying the block, which is currently overlaying the RL topo map much distance below where my drawing is currently zoomed to, I'm going to use the Insert>Block command instead, as it's way faster and keep me zoomed into where I want to be for the time being:



Now I zoom way into the bottom left corner of my city tile map to make sure the grid inserts at the exact corner:



Well, that didn't work and I had to go searching all over my drawing for my newly inserted block and finally found it WAY far away, so once I had snagged it's errant corner I dragged it back to where I wanted it and now the city grid is overlaying the tile map:



All this work done so far in CAD has been done it what is known as Model Space.  CAD has a second work area and you probably have seen the little tabs at the bottom of the screenshots that say Layout1 and Layout2.  Layout space is where one sets the work in Model space up for printing (or plotting, as CAD prefers to term it).  The next set of sets involves setting up a layout space so I can (finally) print a copy of my city tile map with the grid overlaying it.  This is what Layout Space looks like:



Looks pretty much the same as the Model space and it has all the same tools.  I have already set this space up for printing to 8.5x11 paper, the only size my printer will print.  The white area on the grey background represents the sheet of paper.  I have also set us this space to print in landscape orientation rather than portrait.  The black line you see inside the sheet of paper is what's known as a viewport.  This acts like a window that sees through the paper back to model space, allowing me to position my work, rescale it if I want, zoom in or out or even work in Model space while I'm actually in Layout space.  At the bottom center of the screenshot you'll see a depressed button that says Paper.  When not depressed, it changes to Model and that's how I manipulate information showing up in the viewport.  When depressed and in Paper mode, the viewport is "frozen", which allows me to work in Paper space without disturbing anything in the viewport.  This is handy for a lots of things but doesn't really come into play for my use here.

Currently the viewport is empty because it's looking at a place in Model space where there is no work.  So, I have to change from Paper space to Model space by clicking the little button and find my work:



Notice the black line becomes heavier to help me remember I'm now looking through the viewport.  Now I'm going to zoom out to see the total area of my drawing so I can then zoom in on the area I want to print.  I do this by typing Z enter E enter and this is what I get:



Ok, now I can see where my work is, so I zoom in on my city tile map:



Now, this would be worthless to print out, don't you agree?  The grid is WAY too tiny to be of any use and the features under the grid would be almost completely obscured by the grid itself.  Printing to any kind of scale is not an issue here, as you will see as we go along, so I'm going to zoom further in until I have a clear view of my tile map, the tracings, and the grid:



This is better but I'm an old woman and my eyes aren't as good as they used to be, so this is still too small for me to work with.  I need a corner of the tile and grid as a starting point because, believe it or not folks, I am going to count this grid out into sections of 16x16cells and then do the same thing in my game, using ploppable trees to mark out my sections.  I was hoping the lake would be close enough to the corner to not necessitate making two print outs and overlaying them, but no such luck.  So, I zoom in on the corner:



Ok, even my blind old eyes can see this, so I print it out.  From here on out I am drawing in CAD what I am actually drawing on my print out, as I don't have a scanner.  Actually, I do have a scanner on MY printer, but my printer is out of ink, so I am using my roomie's printer, which does not have a scanner function and is also almost out of ink.  So now I draw my 16x16 sections:



Now I pan down and get my lake:



Print it and grid it:



I just discovered, much to my delight, that the red grid I drew in CAD prints out as a darker, heavier line than the underlying grid, so I didn't have to count off squares on my second print out.  Nice to know, will save me time. 

Now I can close CAD and fire up my game, but for purposes of continueing this update, I need to keep it open to show how I mark off information as it gets entered into the game.

I open the Stafford lake city tile and start planting trees in a very un-natural way.  I first count over from the corner 16 cells, then plant a tree at every cell intersection going south:



I count trees as I plant and when I get to 16, I mark the location of the grid going the opposite direction:



I do this for a long time, maybe an hour.  I don't have to grid the entire tile just now, just the section I am working on.  I can't show you a wide zoom of the finished partial grid because the trees poof! at far zooms.  For this exercise I am using a juniper tree because it's nice and dark, shows up well against the terrain. 

Ok, now I have enough of a grid of trees laid down to cover the area I want to work in.  I'm going to start at the western edge of my map where one of the feeder streams enter the lake.  I'm going to use a different kind of tree to mark this stream's location and I'm going to count cells and wherever the line representing the stream crosses a cell border, I'm going to put a tree on my game map and a red dot on my print out (or in this case, my CAD map as shown in the Layout space.  Because I can't zoom way out of my game to show the tree grid, you're just going to have to take my word for it that I am starting in the first western row of 16 and 6 sets down from the top of the city tile:



Looking at my print out, I see the stream enters the tile between the 5th and 6th cell from the bottom of the section, so I plant a tree there, this time using a subalpine pine:



And put a dot on my print out:



Every place the stream crosses a line of the grid, I plant a tree and put a dot on the print out:





Now I'm at the lake edge and I continue the same way all the way around the lake and then again all the way around the island.  It's a slow, painstaking process, but in the end, I have a fairly accurate transferal of RL info into my actual game:





Not too shabby!  I left the end of the lake where the dam is unmarked, as I am going to be using some as yet unknown FAR road there, whichever I find that fits closest to the actual angle.  Are there inaccuracies and snafus all over the place?  Of course there are, but that's where the creativity of a recreation comes in, to my mind.  Am I going to go through this level of exacting detail and plotting with every built object in every city tile and all 130 city tiles.  Yup, sure am.  This is probably the last you will see of it, but I thought it was important to show everyone all the work that goes on behind the scenes to get to this point. 

And, believe it or not, before computers came along this is exactly how drafters (and, I imagine, cartographers) transferred info from one scale to another or from one drawing to another.  Grid both and plot it out, one point at a time.  Back in 1976 when I first started into drafting, we'd used the photocopier to blow up or reduce site plans and maps, but we didn't have infinite zooms, just presets, so scale could never be matched to any degree of accuracy.  Grid it and plot it, slow and tedious, point by point.  I can't tell you how many site plans and topos I translated from engineering scale of say 1"=50' to architectural scale of 1/8"= 1'.  Hundreds.  Makes my head hurt just thinking about it.  On a difficult site, say a steep slope, with an extremely confined building footprint, the drafter's ability to hit the mark in terms of scale was key, because otherwise the architect would design the house too big to fit on the site and then all hell would break loose.  More than once the foundation inspector would show up after the forms came off, bringing his survey crew with him to make sure the building was within the defined boundaries allowed it, and find...oh heck...that corner of the building is intruding 3" into the setbacks.  Too bad, how sad, red tag the building, stop construction, back to the drawing board (ever wonder where that expression came from?).  Jackhammers to the rescue.  Hammer out the foundation, change the plans, apply for revision permits, re-pour the new foundation and see if it passes this time around.  I'd love to boast that it never happened on a project *I* was managing, but I'd be lying if I did.  The back end of a garage got me.  Had to be hammered out and re-poured.  It happened , back in the days.  Probably still does, even with computers, nothing is ever exact when it comes to building buildings.  They shoot foundations in with computer-guided lasers now and mistakes still happen.  The leader of my knitting group says thats how you know it was made with human hands...there are mistakes in it.  How true, how true. 

Well, that's the end of this update and the end of the "Scale Tutorials" as well.  I started around 7:15 pm and it's now just past midnight.  My wifi connection has been down all day and it's too late to go to the internet café two blocks up the street, so I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens tomorrow.  A good friend of mine, knowing I am an avid baseball fan and strong supporter of Seattle's Mariners, gifted me with a row 40 first level seat behind home plate for tomorrow afternoon's game against the Yankees.  I am pumped!  Nothing says summer like a Sunday afternoon at the ballpark, munching peanuts, drinking beer, and eating a hot dog.  The weather is supposed to be excellent, sunny and 78 degrees, so I better remember to take sunscreen else this pale redhead skin will become lobsterized. 

So what's up next for this MD?  Well, kind obvious, building Novato Creek Dam and plopping Stafford Lake.  Both will be more difficult than you may imagine.  I've used the terrain query cheat over various areas of the lake bed and found it varies quit a bit.  I know the height of the spillway of the dam is 199' above sea level (from the topo maps), so I may start there and make the water level a foot below the spillway at 198'.  I'm pretty close to that in meters/game measurement at the inside face of the dam, the big problem will be smoothing things out to make the west end of the lake shallow and gunky.  I don't have a lot of experience using PW other than just fooling around, so this will be my first serious attempt with it.  I actually think I may need to start with the dam itself, but that's something I'll think about tomorrow.  Sure wish I could post this tonite, but oh well. 

As always, comments, suggestions, and advice are always welcome.  Post away!

Lora/LD

[Battlecat]

Nice, you're certainly going the full length here!  Yes indeed, this is exactly the same technique cartographers use and used on hardcopy maps.  Scaled grids are one of the the most valuable tools available!  You're certainly putting it to good use. 

[soulchaser]

As a Geographer, I can say, you're doing a great job. I would have taken some other tools ( I said this in a post before), but you're working perfectly. I hope you can fullfill your own expection, as it will be hard to find resampling lots.

You might have to find some good batters out there

[MrWacko]

I miss half a week, and you move on! Oh well, it's still fantastic. It'll take me a bit to catch up, but hey, RL occasionally gets in the way. As for buildings and what not that you're planning on BATing, cool! It'll be nice to have more buildings from California, and San Francisco in particular. I've always been bummed out that there are only a handful of buildings from San Francisco, despite its wonderful and varied architecture.

[ldvger]

Battlecat, soulchaser, and MrWacko, thank you for stopping by and sharing your comments, I appreciate it.

My lack of home internet continues to plague me, so I'm back at the cafe again.  I have a short update written offline over the weekend that covers leveling the floor of Lake Stafford, now that it's outline has been laid out.  I'll copy the update to CD and post it tomorrow.  I have not yet plopped the water for the lake.  Instead, using the same technique for tranfering the lake outline to my game, I've begun to transfer some of the road locations as well, especially those around the lake and the dam.  Again, I haven't yet started building roads because I'm hoping to create some custom angled roads.  So, when I get home tonite, I think I may start to work on creating the dam itself, or at least the underlying earth form.  Battlecat has done a very nice job with an earthern hydro-power dam in his MD "Adara", I recommend taking a peek at it.  It has certainly given me some ideas!

That's all for now.

Lora/LD

[JoeST]

If you are consistently going between PC's, may I suggest getting a USB Flash drive.

Cant wait for the next update

Joe

[djvandrake]

Impressive Lora.  This is quite an endeavour and your attention to detail here in the beginning should pay off later. 

[meinhosen]

That's some great work, although I can't imagine the headaches that come from looking at all those gridlines (I got one just trying to familiarize myself with the area you were prepping).  Good luck plopping the water and terraforming the dam- I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

If you are consistently going between PC's, may I suggest getting a USB Flash drive.

I do this when I don't have a 'Net connection on my laptop.  You can probably get a good, cheap USB drive almost anywhere (Walmart and Best Buy come to mind) that can easily handle anything you're trying to store and move.  The only worry is viruses, which can be overcome if you scan the drive before you do any work with it after it's visited a computer that's not yours.  But anyhow, before I ramble on any more I just thought I'd share an easier method than CDs.

[ldvger]

Update 12: Creating Stafford Lake

Boy, do *I* feel like a dingbat!  My roomie has  flash drive I've used before and for some reason it never crossed my mind to use it again for this current "outage".  Thank you for the suggestion, it will certainly be easier than writing to a CD every time I want to update.

Speaking of update, here is the next one:

Ok, so now you get to watch my poor tortured brain go through the process of actually beginning to try to recreate this area from RL to in game.  I don't think this will be as laborious as what I've gone through to get to this point, but I've never tried this before, so who knows where I'll end up going.

I am going to start with the lake and the dam, as you already know.  I'd done some random spot checks of the elevation of the lake bed in previous game sessions and found it varied somewhat.  Now that I have the lake outlined in trees, it's time for a reality check to see just how much variance in elevation actually exists:











Not a lot, but I want the lake bed to be perfectly flat at RL lake level, so my PW sits at the right elevation.  So now I have to do some math and if any of you are allergic to math, get out your inhalers.  The biggest problem is the game is its all metric and my brain isn't because I live in the USA and we use outdated forms of measurement here, which I am hardwired to accept. 

I know that sea level in game is at 250m.  So the first thing I do is subtract 250 from the queried average of my lakebed of 313.4m, which gives me the answer that my existing lakebed is 63.4 meters above sea level.  My cheat sheet tells me 1m=3.28 feet, so now I multiply 63. 4 x 3.28 and get 207.95.  That's the existing lakebed elevation above sea level. 

However, I know from a notation on my RL topo map of this area that the spillway is at an elevation of 199' above sea level, so my lake bed is too high by about 8'.  From the Google Earth photos already posted and discussed, I am going to semi-randomly decide the lake level itself is 12" below the spillway or at 198'.  I chose this number because I know from reading other folk's work in fine terraforming that a close zoom with the depress terrain tool clicked ONCE and with minimum force will yield a depression of about .4 of a meter, which is close enough for me to 1 foot (1'=.305m).  So now I have to figure out what 198' above sea level is in game terrain measurements.  For *me* the easiest way is to divide 198' x 3.28meters per foot, which comes out to 60.67m.  Now add back in the 250 for game sea level and the lake bed wants to be at 310.67, or 310.7 (close enough for me). 

Whew, exit math brain for the time being.  Now I have a lakebed level to try to achieve.  For the time being, I am not going to worry about the spillway or the dam, mostly because I am not currently able to go online at home and I really need to find the height of the top of the dam.  So, even thought I know the dam is 71' tall, I don't know what either it's top or bottom elevation is, so I can't really try to construct the dam itself, tonite, without one of those two variables being know.  I can, however, lay down the lake bed and it's two little feeder streams.

The first thing I am going to do is use the depress terrain tool to VERY CAREFULLY dig a small hole in my lake bed:



Ok, I am at 311.0. which is pretty darn close.  I got there by clicking on the mayor mode depress terrain tool, then using Shift+1 to limit the area of influence and then using Shift +F1 to limit the strength of the tool.  I then clicked quickly 10 times.  So, If I do the same thing again, I should be right where I want to be.  Let's see it if works:



That's good enough for me!  I had to actually click twice, both times very quickly, and I measured the terrain elevation after the first time, so now I am going to do another cell next door the exact same way and hopefully it will come out at the same elevation.  What I am looking to do is create one flat cell at 310.6 elevation, after that I can use the level terrain tool for the rest of the lake bed.

Notice the position of my north arrow.  ALWAYS do this kind of fine terraforming with your north arrow pointing north and click in the CENTER of the cell you are terraforming.  The NW corner of the cell will react, as will the corners adjacent in the surrounding cells.  If you're really good at keeping track of directions, you can use this method with your north arrow in any direction, but I find it easiest to do this way. 

So now I depress a second cell the same way:



Well, this one took a couple more clicks, but it matches now.  On to the next cell:

http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/9614/screenshot9zea.jpg

And then the last cell to make the new flat cell at 310.6:



Now I have a cell flat at the elevation I want it.  To make sure I don't lose this work in the next step, I save my game by pressing Ctrl+s.  And BTW, if anyone wants to learn this fine terraforming technique, both ennedi and dedgren have great tutorials...that's how *I* learned them. 

It occurred to me that instead of using the level tool, I may be able to plop street and road segments instead, so I'm going to try that and see how it works:

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/7619/screenshot11sqk.jpg

Looks good!  Will other street tiles laid next door also flatten terrain?  Lets see:





Hot diggety!  Forget the level terrain tool for now, I'm gonna plop some street segments! And when I'm done, this is what I have:



The island in the lake looks a trifle too large and too steep.  According to the topos I have, it only rises about 40' above the lake surface.  Lets see what we have:

http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/54/screenshot15wpp.jpg

Ok, here comes the math again.  This query shows 336.0.  Minus 250 for sea level means 86m above sea level, which converts to 282.08'.  The highest contour level on the island is 220:



The dark contour line is 200' and the intervals are at 20' (I know this from having read the legends at the bottom of the topo map before cropping the legend out and importing it into CAD and also from counting lighter contour lines between heavier ones...there are 5 between each 100' interval), so the max height this island could be would be 239', right?  Otherwise a new contour line would be there.  But, if you look back at the various pics I have posted in the last two weeks or so, you can see this island is actually very low and the 220' contour is probably close to max.  Let's give this little island the benefit of a doubt and give it a max height of 230'.  So what is that in meters? 

230/3.28=70.12.  Add 250m for sea level = 320.12m max height for this island, if it's to retain any semblance to it's RL counterpart.  So yeah, the game island is just a little bit too tall.  And I'd rather fix it now rather than later, because once I start plopping water, changes in terrain will destroy my PW.  I want my underlying terrain right BEFORE I start plopping water.

So how do I go about making this little island less tall?  Hmmm. Good question and not sure I know the answer.  I could just smash it with the level tool and then soften it and hope it looks ok.  I could erode it.  I could just soften it. 

But, once again its getting to be late at night and my wine is kicking in (think sleeping pill), so I think I'll leave this update as done for the time being. 

Hope you enjoy!

Lora/LD

[ACEfanatic02]

Something to remember, with regards to the elevation of that island:  everything in the game is vertically stretched.  Because of the viewing angle, accurate scaled structures appear squashed, so they are stretched vertically (I think about 125%-150%?  If someone could confirm/correct?)  While that difference is more important with BATing buildings, it's worth considering for terraforming as well, given the level of detail you're going for.  Especially when you get to the hills in downtown.

Looking forward to more.

-ACE

[Albus of Garaway]

I haven't posted here in a while, so I decided to stop in and say that I'm still watching from the shadows.

I really love how Stafford Lake is coming along! Your method of constructing the lake is extremely creative, and is something I've never seen done before. I'm glad you're showing us your progress in such detail!

-Jason

[calibanX]

Lora,

This is amazing stuff. The detail you plan to achieve and the process you're undertaking will be great fun to watch. I loved your back and forth with Battlecat regarding the dam and spillway. Fascinating engineering chit chat. I'll be drawn to this project throughout no doubt.

Happy engineering.

Geoff

[mayorfabz]

Hi Lora,

This is very impressive. Your dedication to accuracy is amazing.
Regarding your island though, maybe you should also keep in mind that 9x12 ploppable water simulates a 2 meter depth, so you should probably factor that in your calculations as to whether this island is too tall or not. Not to mention the banks of the lake.
I have bookmarked your thread anyway and will definitely keep an eye on it. Although I hate math.

Cheers,

Fabien

[Battlecat]

You're certainly going full tilt on this now!  I'm a huge fan of street and road based leveling, it's such a huge time saver and it gives pretty precise control over the final look!  You're certainly putting it to good use! 

[ldvger]

Update 13: Building Novato Creek Dam and Spillway

Wow, great to see some new faces and old buddies! 

ACEfanatic02: Yes, I've noticed before how the game seems to be a bit "flattened" from RL, but I think it has a lot to do with the scale of the basic game cell.  I don't really want to complicate my life any more than it already is regarding this game and MD, so while exaggerating vertical elevations may work for eye candy and other visuals, I think I'll stick to RL elevations, when I can find them.  I'm a ways away from being downtown SF at this point, though, so who knows how much my mind may change between now and then.  I hope you enjoy this MD and will be stopping by often!

Albus fo Garaway:  Welcome back, you've been missed!

calibanX: Battlecat has a great earthen dam in his MD "Aldara" that you should check out under the "Best Sellers" tab.  Once you see his dam and spillway, you will understand why we both kinda went off on a tangent.  Still, glad you are enjoying the banter and hope you'll stop by again soon!

Mayorfabz: I am not certain yet I am going to use the 9x12 TPW.  I may lay individual TPW tiles instead, but even so, the island will definitly need to be lowered some.  Visit again in the next couple of days, as that's definitely on my list of things to do. 

Battlecat:  Always good to see you again, my friend.  And yes, I like using streets and roads, too, especially for smaller areas where the level tool is just too large a "brush". 

Ok, so I have another update to post, this time saved on the FLASH drive rather than burned to CD...and thanks again for that suggestion, it's really a no-brainer and I feel like an idiot for having spaced it.

So, I worked on building the dam and spillway Wednesday evening and didn't take any pics as I worked because it involved about 2-3 hours of rather extreme trial and error.  It was kinda frustrating and I did a LOT of exit without save.  I'm so glad this game doesn't auto-save and really wish, like a lot of folks, that it had an "Undo" function.  I also spent a lot of time going back and forth between Terrain Query and Depress Terrain.  This is what I ended up with:



Water level is at 310.6m.  The spillway, which is at the left and designated by two road tiles, is at 311.2.  It's a little higher than I would like it, but visually it currently reads as barely above lake level, so I think it's OK.  The top of the dam is just a tad over 10' above lake level at 313.7m. 

While at the café this evening (I'm getting to be quite the regular there), I used Google Earth to revisit  RL pics of the dam, especially the back side, because my in game back of the dam looks pretty shallow to me.  So no one has to page back to review, here's a peek at what the RL back looks like:



Now, unfortunately, I have not been able to discover the elevation at the top of the dam.  That would certainly make things easier, eh?  Because, as it currently in rendered in my game, that means the front side base of the dam, given the dam is 71' tall, should be at 292.0m.  So, I checked the elevation at the base in the game and this is what I got:



Way too high.  Now, in the picture above, notice the little line of Xmas trees running across the upper right corner.  That's the road, or rather, the line of the road.  If I look again at the RL picture, it looks to me like the road, as it passes the dam, is at approximately the same elevation as the top of the dam.  Doesn't it look that way to you, too?  Look at the gate structure we talked about a couple of pages back.  It connects to concrete retaining walls at both ends and you can see another retaining wall running along the edge of the road on one side and connecting into the dam at the other.  These all appear to be at the same elevation as the top of the dam and as the one running along the road casts almost no shadow at all, I don't think it sticks up above the road bed by much, maybe 6", which for game purposes is so small as to be negligible.  So, going back to my game, I need to check the elevation of where the road is going to go:



I chose this tree because it is at approximately the location of where the spillway gate structure attaches to the retaining wall along the road.  So, here comes more math.  If I raise my top of dam height to 319.0m that means my base of the front of the dam would then be 297.3 and the top of the dam would be 27.5' above lake level.  So how far down the valley in front of the dam do I have to go to find 297.3m?



Well, that's not TOO far and I remember from other RL pics that the road is quite a bit higher than the spillway and base of dam, so I'm going to raise the top of my dam to 319m and see how that looks.  I'll do this the same way as I did Wednesday night. 



I love it when that happens, makes my drafter's heart beat happy.  So now I'll lay the street tiles to level the top of the dam:



Now I have to create the bottom of the dam.  I think I'll dig a hole, make it a level cell, then again use street tiles.  My location is going to be semi-random, as I don't have any idea what the angle of slope on the dam is.  This may again take quite a bit of trial and error, so I won't take pics as I go, rather I will explain what I did afterwards (I think).



Ok, so I lied.  But hey, am I good, or what?  Just couldn't help but brag.  Only took me two uses of the depress terrain tool.  So now I'll lay out a flat area for the water filtration plant that I'm thinking may be my first BAT attempt:



The street plops stop at about the 297 mark, and from there on down I think the terrain will fall away naturally, but who knows.  This area will probably change a lot as I put in the couple of little feeder creeks that join up here, not to mention the roads (like the one that runs up the left side face of the dam). 

But now what I have to do is create a uniform slope across the face of the dam.  To do this, I am going to use roads, a technique I learned from jeronij:



Well, using that method didn't work too well so instead I "manually" smoothed the face of the dam using the depress terrain tool.  But now the top of my dam looks too wide, so I am going to bulldoze the tiles closest to the lake and spread the lake:



Well, it ain't perfect, but this is actually a very small dam to try to render in game...gives one an idea of how "large" a single game cell actually is.  This dam is supposed to be 650 feet wide, so I'm going to count my cells and do some math to see how close I am.

I am 8 cells wide on a 45 degree angle, from hillside to hillside, which includes the spillway.  Each cell is 52.5' square, so using a squared + b squared =c squared (sorry, don't know how to insert superscript) my calculator tells me the diagonal distance of each cell is 74.25'.  Multiply that by 8 and I get 594'.  Well, that's a little short of actual, but the actual dam isn't at a 45 degree angle either, it's at a greater angle, which would make it longer.  However, this is just a GAME and I can't 100% faithfully reproduce everything and I'm going to need roads and concrete walls to finish of the dam and spillway later, so I had to choose an angle that would work with the content out there, which is all either mostly orthagonal or diagonal. 

This dam is likely to stay in this shape for a while, as I need to plop some roads and creeks before I finish it off.  I also need to address the lake's island, so stay tuned, there's more coming soon!

Lora/LD

[metarvo]

It's good to see that you have an MD, Lora.  The planning you put into your region is just amazing!  I know it must be time-consuming, but I'm sure it will pay off.  Keep up the good work!