i think i might have used fractalize at one time on them. it was one of the first things i put on the map a few weeks ago so i don't remember for certain
is there a smoothing command or something easy like that, or is this something i would have to smooth manually?
You can try right-clicking the Fractalize button and selecting Straight to Smooth from the pop-up menu, but simply redrawing them may be a better choice.
Is it possible to make the river different widths along its course? (perhaps using a smoothed polygon instead of a straight line, filling it with the river fill of your choice, and giving it the same Effects)
a bit of adjustment of the buildings that were sited right on the river, but much less manual fixing that way, and looks more random than had I put my own fixes in
The river end problems look like a node one to me - I've had similar difficulties with river lines before. You may be able to solve them all by simply extending the river lines beyond the map's borders. As long as your mask is still large enough to hide them when finished, that shouldn't be a problem (or you can just extend the size of the mask, or add patches to it to hide them, if needed). You may need to adjust the river drawing tool first (or better, save it as an alternative option, so you also still have the standard default river version available too), so it isn't restricted to the map borders, otherwise you'll may be unable to extend the lines as I've suggested.
I love seeing other people's cities because they take so much time to do and I never seem to have the time to complete mine before I need it for gaming. LOL
Looks good so far. I like the addition of the hills. I would recommend the smooth action on some of those hill corners though (unless they are "man" made and intended to be that way). Also, where the two major water branches meet, you might want to consider rounding off the downstream 'corner' - that will look a bit more believable and also indicate flow direction... You could do the same for the minor stream around the fort, unless that's artificially created.
QUenten: crop fields, I just chose farm field and then put in 3' hedges as the crops. I used same hedges but changed the fill on the other one to dirt 2
JmunsonII: very good suggestions. I planned on doing such for the river corner. the stream around the keep is man made and is just fill, not a flowing stream. I will try the smooth on the hills, as the only thing I was unhappy with was the sharpness of the edges you pointed out
I also plan on doing a path up the hills. a few more buildings south of the river. might even add another small stream branch or two
I at least feel now I can start working on the details as most of the features are in
This is looking really, very nice! I particularly like the, er, black hold, that presumably gave the city it's name. I may steal that idea for my own game!
One thing, I don't see any squares or marketplaces in the city. Or, at least, none that I see yet. Are you planning on putting any in? If not, might I suggest a few, particularly for a city of this size? I recommend some along outside of the wall, near the gates, and the far side of the river, by the bridge, unless the city rulers frown on such things.
Looking forward to watching as you continue building and tweaking.
southeast side near the river there is a marketplace with tents, plus the wider road to the south is a heavy traffic area for shops
another tented market area in the bend in the northwest hill
I do plan on expanding outside the walls as well
didn't have time to work on this the last couple days, but I plan on adding some more stuff tonite. trying to learn how to use the color coding system for buildings deal
On the top left side of the CD3 windows you'll find an icon with a red, a green and a blue layer stacked on each other. Try clicking it and press remove.
I am unsure what your problem is. Are you trying to use demographic coloring, and not all buildings obey, or didn't you mean to activate demographic coloring in the first place, and only want to see your building symbols? For the latter, this can be fixed by going to the City menu -> Layers -> All BLDGNS with shading
Oh, I thought you wanted to get rid of the colors.
Well, when looking at the picture closely, i see that the houses that are not colored, seem to have a color underneath them. So the coloring is there. Have you tried deleting a house (not the underlying color) and then turn demographic coloring on and off again and see what happens? Also, is there any chance that the roof of the buildings is on another sheet? Some city styles use entities that have two sheets (p.a. "Walls" and "Walls Top" in the CD Bitmap A Style"). In the Bitmap A style hiding Walls hides any entity of the walls.
So what you could is either look for such a sheet and hide it or try to do is use the change properties tool on all buildings and set sheet to "symbols".
If a house doesn't respond to demographics coloring correctly, it is something wrong with the symbol itself, probably the image reference is on the wrong layer, so it doesn't get hidden when the command tells it to. CD3-compatible house symbols are rather complex because they need to support multiple features like aligning to roads, adding frills and demographic coloring.
Comments
The only critique I would/could give is that the river(s) seem to have some very sharp bends... ouch!!!
i think i might have used fractalize at one time on them. it was one of the first things i put on the map a few weeks ago so i don't remember for certain
is there a smoothing command or something easy like that, or is this something i would have to smooth manually?
Though, I think, you could probably re-draw it a bit more efficiently...
a bit of adjustment of the buildings that were sited right on the river, but much less manual fixing that way, and looks more random than had I put my own fixes in
I love seeing other people's cities because they take so much time to do and I never seem to have the time to complete mine before I need it for gaming. LOL
JmunsonII: very good suggestions. I planned on doing such for the river corner. the stream around the keep is man made and is just fill, not a flowing stream. I will try the smooth on the hills, as the only thing I was unhappy with was the sharpness of the edges you pointed out
I also plan on doing a path up the hills. a few more buildings south of the river. might even add another small stream branch or two
I at least feel now I can start working on the details as most of the features are in
One thing, I don't see any squares or marketplaces in the city. Or, at least, none that I see yet. Are you planning on putting any in? If not, might I suggest a few, particularly for a city of this size? I recommend some along outside of the wall, near the gates, and the far side of the river, by the bridge, unless the city rulers frown on such things.
Looking forward to watching as you continue building and tweaking.
Cheers,
~Dogtag
another tented market area in the bend in the northwest hill
I do plan on expanding outside the walls as well
didn't have time to work on this the last couple days, but I plan on adding some more stuff tonite. trying to learn how to use the color coding system for buildings deal
any idea why?
If this doesn't help, then I don't know...
Cheers
I want all the buildings to disappear so that I can see the coloring
if I remove the sheet "symbols" they all disappear as well as the coloring
Well, when looking at the picture closely, i see that the houses that are not colored, seem to have a color underneath them. So the coloring is there.
Have you tried deleting a house (not the underlying color) and then turn demographic coloring on and off again and see what happens?
Also, is there any chance that the roof of the buildings is on another sheet? Some city styles use entities that have two sheets (p.a. "Walls" and "Walls Top" in the CD Bitmap A Style"). In the Bitmap A style hiding Walls hides any entity of the walls.
So what you could is either look for such a sheet and hide it or try to do is use the change properties tool on all buildings and set sheet to "symbols".