Blog Link: http://sturgeonbayworld.blogspot.com/

Trailer Song Poll: http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?...4b057054fd316a6

Most Recent Update in Thread: Road Placement V.1

Design Document:

Sturgeon Bay











Theme: I envision a small coastal fishing town along the coast of the great lakes near a peninsula. Often shrouded in fog, the sun sometimes shines through the heavy cover of evergreens to reveal a small shore-side community surrounded by intimate country cabins and large colonial lakefront homes. Along the river delta, which carries freshwater into the massive lakes is a small port, controlled by a small underground crime syndicate operating off of an island in the delta. Off of the state park peninsula is an old abandoned lighthouse, resembling the Wagoushance Point Lighthouse. This sleepy little town has much to uncover within it's silty waters.

Note: Some of the lot sizes will be strange but for the most part they will be normal.

Recent Edits:

3/12/12: 3 New Lots added to accommodate SHT, and One removed.
Details:

I have also realized how much maintenance this world will take even when it's finished, due to EA releasing a new expansion/stuff pack every 88 days. I plan to up to date version for each expansion alongside the pre-existing ones (once its finished and uploaded), for those players who are more for the gameplay and don't want to ruin the atmosphere by building their own lots.

Some Main Town lots re-arranged.
Details:

As of today, I have plans for 6 of the lots complete.
Details:


3/16/12: Resculpted Mainland Terrain, plan to work on slopes and ridge levels over the weekend.

3/17/12: As a break from sculpting, I worked on the weather of the town, which is mainly the Bridgeport weather with multiple tweaks.

As of now, I have 10 lot plans completed, of course these are only concepts, and although the buildings will look just like the concepts, there will be a few tweaks to allow for flowing traffic.

List of Completed Lots:
1. Residential Lot 1
2. Residential Lot 3
3. Corporate Park
4. Promenade
5. Art Square.
6. Hospital.
7. Dive Bar
8. Laundromat
9. Movie Theater.
10. Spa.

Note: I will not complete Lots 17-21 until I know the exact lot sizes of those because I have no knowledge of the road widths.

4/15/12: Terrain Done. Road and Lot Placement begun.
Lot sizes (37,17-21) changed.

4/21/12: Roads and Lot Placing In Progress. Residential Lot Designs 1-6 completed. 7-8 in progress.

Resources

EP's: WA, AMB, LN, GEN, PETS, SHT, FL
Store Content: None
CC: Rabbit Hole Rugs, CAW Ferryboats, CAW Road Signs, CAW Custom Mix/Match Bridges, CAW Criquette AIport (Sims 3), CAW Rowboat and Pier, CAW 2 Masted Sailboat, CAW Container Ship (http://tjstreaksnotsonaughtysims.bl...ainer-ship.html), Game Framework Permanent Tents (For the Wagoushance Point campground)(Simsample), Foot bridge (Link ), Airplane (Link ), Ford Fiesta Store Set
Technical Challenges: Custom Distant terrain, Wagoushance Point Lighthouse, Weather, Water color.

Concepts:

Description: The town lies along the banks of the Great Lakes, which being so large, one cannot see the other shoreline. This will give the feeling of being on the ocean. The town and surrounding area will be very green, with the peninsula being quite low, flooded, and possible slightly swampy. There will be a River Delta running through the right side, which will leave a silt deposit along the banks. The coast is studded with beaches many of them private, and secluded due to the rock outlets from land. A lot of the area along the shoreline will be shallow, with a reef forming the Skillagagee Island (inaccessible). Out off of the peninsula is an old abandoned lighthouse, crumbling atop a massive rock tower, much like the sea forts of yore. The peninsula is generally swampy, and divided into 3 low lying islands: Temperance Island, Goose Island, and the furthest island, Wagoushance Island. Wagoushance point will be a small national park, studded with evergreens and trees. The residential area is generally on the lower area near the shore, with a little plateau just up above with a few houses. and baove that is a second plateau, which houses the town. The town has 2 main square: Promenade square and Capitol Square. The promenade has streets and shops on both side, while the Capitol square is more political building such as the police station and the town hall. below both is Main street, housing the market, the gym, and a dance club. off to the side is the Industrial-ish type area, with a fire department, a dive bar, and a laundromat. Off to the side even further are the ports, the hospital and the military base. Below on the residential plateau is Trade Square, an art district with an art gallery, a library, and a school. All will be custom built using the rugs. The main roads are asphalt, albeit in a slight state of disrepair, and the other rodas (most of them, actually) are dirt, leading to the houses and the parks and beaches. The right area of the map is generally the richer residential district. Skillagagee Island will contain the modern lighthouse.

Climate: Very grey, dense fog. occasionally there will be sunlight to give a realistic light hearted look to the area. If a weather expansion get released, I will update the world for snow and rain. A dramatic sunset if not foggy, and a wonderful view of the opposite peninsula, with the red sun setting over the abandoned lighthouse.

History: Known for it's vast amount of Sturgeon, Sturgeon bay was founded as a fishing town in 1814, with only a few residents living in a town of cottages right on the shorelines, fishing off of the old pier, the fishermen would gave at the steamships making their endless trek across the expansive lake. As shipping boomed in the great lakes, a business man came into the town and opened a port in the river delta, which unfortunately failed due to the shallow sea level around the bay, which had caused many ships to run aground on Skillagagee Reef. Before leaving the man had razed the old town and half-built a town on a plateau further inland. Colonists finished the unfinished town and restored the crumbling unfinished Victorian shops to their full glory. The area was designated a national park, and a lighthouse was installed on Skillagagee island, marking the old, Wagoushance Point Lighthouse obsolete. The government deemed the building unsafe and off-limits. The port is still accessible by small shipping boats, and it is said there is an underground crime ring planning on digging out the bay, to allow ships to pass through.

Inhabitants: Generally Fisherman, there will also be a few politicians, an old sea captain, rich folk wanting an adventure or a gorgeous view, a family whose goal is to modernize and reinvent the town, and a struggling artist.
EDIT: I also plan to add the Cracked.com columnists involved in the show After Hours (Soren Bowie, Michael Swaim, Daniel O'Brien, Katie Willert) you know, just as a tribute to the wonderful site and this wonderful and hilarious show. I'm thinking Michael and Soren will be roommates, the other two - I'll figure out later.

Motifs: The town is very quiet and calm, a fishing atmosphere to it, The captain tells his sea shanties at the dive bar, while a nice old lady runs the bookstore down the street. Very peaceful, and at times very foggy.

Sturgeon Bay FAQ

Q:What area does this represent?
A:The Great Lakes Area, more specifically one of the little bays at the top of Michigan, which is in reality called Sturgeon Bay. It is entirely a National Park, but I edited that for my purposes. Only the Peninsula is now a National Park, and I added the River on the Right Side to accommodate a port, it doesn't actually exist.

Q:Do you plan on releasing a Beta?
A:Yes, mainly for testing and brushing out all of the glitches and kinks. It should come out by Late Summer. And a final version in October. See.. I planned it out all too well.

Also, big thanks to kiwi-tea for letting me use his Design Document Format

Lot Information:



Family Information



Misc. Information:

- I also plan to make a Cape Cod styled world after this Beta is released, hopefully in Late Summer, in time for my 2 year anniversary as an MTS member. I plan to release a Final Cut in October.
- When the Cape Cod world (with a cape and forests and colonial houses and such) goes into Beta, I will begin work on a very different kind of world called Utopia (no spoilers yet! ), which I should release Next Winter if all goes to plan.

Last edited by Riptide651 : 17th May 2012 at 06:22 AM.

Sounds like a great idea, and judging by your plans it should be!

Thanks

I would like someone to make DT for the world, If you'd like to volunteer, PM me. If not, I guess I'll just have to deal with making it myself.

I will post sculpted terrain pictures soon, I have the base of the map set up, I just need to sculpt the terrain itself.

Last edited by Riptide651 : 1st Mar 2012 at 06:45 AM.

It looks like you have the layout planned well, although you need to resize that HUGE image up there. A design document is usually a very wide-ranging statement of intent. You need to tell us what themes you're aiming for, what atmosphere, and what motifs you'd like to end up with. When I set up my design document templates for Port Piston and Grimschurch (in Open Office Writer) I looked at what usually goes into a games industry level-design document and stole a lot of headings that I thought were useful to me. Perhaps you'd like to take my format. You're welcome to it, and it would help both you and us to see what it is you're planning.

Format Fixed I hope its clearer now

Kewl! I know what the real place looked like a la 1985-ish. I was up in Pointe Au Baril summer 1985ish, Is your place somewhat modeled on that area? What I remember is all the granite boulders just barely rising from the water. The little clapboard cottages here and there were propped up on rocks. YUMMIE blueberries! Of course the pine forests and the birches. Minnows in the sandy shallows... the sand had gold sparkles. Cattails and rushes in the shallows, Moose, and loons. :0) Lovely place.

A little bit, Pointe Au Baril is a bit to the East of What I had in Mind, but yes, the only difference is, that since Pointe Au Baril is more of a Delta with hundreds of tiny islands, Sturgeon Bay is more of a solid land mass. You know that tiny little bay tip on the the top left side of Michigan, that area... I an planning on including the boulders propping out of the water in the swamps , and there will be plenty of Pine Trees The campground on Wagoushance Island (the one at the very tip) will have a set of clapboard cottages all in a circle.

I look forward to watching your progress and publication of this world. :0)

Could we get in-caw, or in-game pictures of your work with this world. As you know, we can't give you feed back based on text, and this is not a planning forum
You have good format on the first post, but you could hide a lot of -now- irrelevant info behind infobutton tags.
What comes to this line "I will need someone to make DT for the world, If you'd like to volunteer, PM me." - it's basically a request, and those are not allowed here. There is a tutorial on CAW tuts on making custom DT's, I'm sure you've seen it as you wouldn't be asking here otherwise, and our meshing forum is full of nice tuts and helpful people.

The plan looks nice, no doubt on that, but please post actual process pictures too.

Hehe.. It's alright. Some time great inspiration come from peaceful mind.
Anyway, keep up the good work!

Eh I don't wanna put up another "big" update until I actually get some progress done. I already finished what I said previously, and completed the east shore of the river. I'll post some pics when I get the slope done before I do the detailing, and I also downloaded about 152 different textures to work with, but of course I wont use all of them

OK sorry about the double post but I have some "big" updates to show you guys:

I played with the weather to make it more like the weather in the Great Lakes with often storms and such using the Bridgeport files as a base. Heres the results:

Normal Weather




Sunny Weather




Stormy Weather




The probability factors go as such:

Normal: 0.2
Sunny: 0.2
Stormy: 0.5

I have excluded the other 2 weather types because not only did this seem enough, but the other 2 emitted a weird purple glow and/or were TOO foggy.

Also the weather is set to be picked randomly based on probability every 10 hours opposed to the usual 8.

I wanted to have the stormy weather more often because of the unpredictable storm on the great lakes, plus if there is more stormy weather it will make those sunny days where you go to the beach oh so much sweeter.


Heres the progress on the terrain:



I promise the images will be more breathtaking when theyre painted.

Just a little treat, here how the land looks in Insanely Stormy and custom, and you will see why I set the Probability of both to 0.0:



EDIT: Sorry about the large photos - fixed

Last edited by Riptide651 : 18th Mar 2012 at 10:37 PM.

Not an update but a nice little detail I just Noticed. If you look at the world at 6:00 PM when Its Sunny Weather You get one of the most gorgeous sunsets I have seen in the game:





Another view:

It looks very nice, but I'd really suggest making the really stormy option appear-just with the lowest chance possible, because I, for example, live in Hilo (in the third rainiest city in the US), and we may just get regular weather like your sunny and stormy, but occasionally we get some storms that blow through and wreck up the place-just last month we had a cold front that lasted for about 2 weeks and it would do nothing but rain for that period (Causing me to play nothing but "when the levee breaks" by Led zeppelin all week), and back in November of 2000, we had the breakup of a tropical storm that caused us to have about 50 inches of rain a day for a week and a half (it tore up some roads and a water spout even came down!), but anyway-ramblings aside, I think you should really include the intensely stormy weather on an incredibly unusual basis. (Sorry for the probably quite boring lecture on how we get a bunch of storms here!)

Thanks, that lecture was quite interesting, and yeah, I've set the probability to 0.1, unless it should be lower.

I was going to replace custom with sunny, and I replaced the .ini files and then reopened CAW and was so confuzzled. Then while I was falling asleep I remembered I forgot to replace the Color Ramps -- Silly me.

Just another update, sry about the double posts... again...

I made another quick teaser. Basically shows I have the basic skills for photoshop





nonetheless, I think it looks pretty.

The weather looks pretty amazing, I still have yet to play around with that aspect of CAW manipulation. It looks like you've got it down!!


(PS: I think it's ok to bump when it's your own post and you're adding something to the update!) =)

its actually easier than it looks. I just picked the weather from the EA world which is most like what I'm envisioning (simsample managed to provide them all in the Sea, SKy and Lighting thread) and I tweak based on the instructions in the .ini files and import them alongside with the color ramps (which I have yet to change because im to lazy to download the photoshop dds plugin) into the.world file using S3PE.

I dont really think I need to edit the color ramps unless it for the custom weather.

Another little update about the weather. I played around with the night sky and stars setting and whatnot and heres what I got:




I think the black blotched make up for the unnatural blue, and the stars are large because I don't plan for the world to be light-polluted, in fact its very empty and tree-filled.

That's quite nice-I like how it turned out, but I'd suggest making it a bit less blue.

Well I just played a few numbers to add black, IDk how to "remove" the blue

Wow! okay I'm bumping a ton, and I am totally on a roll with this and I worked a little on the main terrain. As you can see its much more hilly and according to my plans there will be a rise just like on the beach a bit more inland, and on top of that another, so something to looks forward too:

Maybe you could ask dDefinder-he/she must know a bunch about that since he/she made such an excellent lighing mod!

The thing with the lighting mod is that is is a package that edits the default weathers, while in my case I'm directly changed the codes and colors in the overrides through S3PE, but I can sure ask.

But I actually kinda wanna keep it a bit blue because you know on those really bright nights how the sky is a bit blue because of the stars? Its noticeable if you live in a nonlight-polluted area or go camping often.

Another Update, I labelled the map with general names and areas. The map is so big though that when I zoom out fully, half of it becomes covered by a white screen so I'm asking simsample about that, same EIG too. So for your comfort I've dived it into 2 maps - coastline and mainland. Emmett is the main town and Art Square is part of it, just off to the side. the rest is residential other than Porthead. Wycamp is the high end community. Wagoushance Point is in Emmett National Forest (Wagoushance point includes - Temperance Island, Goose Island, Wagoushance Island, and the Wagoushance Light):