Nepheris - SimNation

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10 August 2010 @ 11:57 am

SimNation

A while ago I started up this little project purely for my own amusement. I'd always wondered if there was some larger simworld out there in which the seperate hoods were situated, rather than them being floating squares in the middle of nothing. How do you get from Pleasantview to Bluewater Village? Where is the elusive Sim City located? The Road to Nowhere might go nowhere, but where does it come from?

So I popped open SC4 and decided I'd try and figure it out. The map that was created in the process isn't based on anything except my imagination, and the 'climates' different hoods seem to have. With regards to the Megahood, I still think it's an interesting idea, even though I'm not sure anymore if the layout I created back then corresponds with how I now think about the layout of SimNation.

Here's a preview of how it looks in SC4:

This would be an 'actual map' that I skewed in Photoshop in an attempt to reconstruct how it would all look in a top-down view. I tried to let the terrains of the premade hoods determine the layout of the rest of the terrain, and create a believable geography. Note that I'm not an expert on mapmaking, mountainformation or any other fancy geographical thingiebobs, so it's fully possible some inconsistency or inaccuracy got into it. I'll at least pride myself on the fact that my rivers don't run uphill :p

The different coloured bands are the 'climates' that I associate with the neighbourhoods. From top to bottom:

Blue: Very cold mountain climate, near-permanent winters.
Teal: Cold mountain-ish climate, but with seasons, even if summers are mostly wet and chilly. Spring-fall-fall-winter or similar.
Green: Temperate climate, spring-summer-fall-winter.
Yellow: Warm, mediterranean climate, humid, possibly with rain seasons. Spring-summer-summer-fall or similar. My decision to rebuild Desiderata Valley into what it is in my game now was mainly based on its location on this map :)
Orange: Desert, sort of micro-climates as they're very localised. I'm really not sure anymore about the placement of Sedona/Oasis Valley/Viper Canyon anymore, it feels forced. Strangetown is on the complete edge of the map, which makes sense in that it is remote, but not really if you consider that the Megahood hoods should be within eachothers reach somehow. I'm not sure how to solve this problem, suggestions are always welcome :)
Red: Hot, tropical climates. Twiikki Island is supposed to be in there somewhere as well, but apparently it got a bit lost in the process.

I might rework this map, as I'm not completely satisfied with it anymore. There's various problems with it that I've mentioned (though I'm rather fond of the relation between Pleasantview, Bluewater Village and Belladonna Cove I created). Especially the locations of the desert towns bothers me, Strangetown in particular. I'd really appreciate any and all ideas you guys might have about it, as I'm a bit stuck :) I'd also be interested to hear about how you envision the wider world of TS2 and how the hoods are interconnected.
General comments are welcome as well, of course, and if anyone spots a bit of land on the map they would really like to have a hood made out of, let me know. I quite enjoy messing around in SC4 and making terrains.

The next Megahood update is in the pipeline as well, so no worries, I haven't forgotten about it.

Tags: simnation

16 comments | Leave a comment

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trippytexan.livejournal.com on August 10th, 2010 01:27 pm (UTC)

Your map looks great-- like an *actual* map. I like how you've incorporated all of the neighborhoods, even the ones that aren't populated. It's kinda fun to imagine all of the different ways that the nbhoods could fit together. I did my own take on it here (though your map is much more realistic than mine): http://trippytexan.livejournal.com/3139.html

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nepheris.livejournal.com on August 10th, 2010 01:32 pm (UTC)

Oooh *off to read*

It's not very hard to make it realistic when you can use a program to do it, though :)

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meetme2theriver.livejournal.com on August 10th, 2010 03:56 pm (UTC)

That's a really good idea! I like that you've included all those other terrains, too. :) And the Bluewater Village/Belladonna Cove/Pleasantview combo looks really good. I take it Sim City is "downtown", or?

Hm, perhaps Strangetown should be located near the other desert areas? Also, maybe the colleges could be included, too? At least which city they belong to?

I take it Veronaville is located somewhere else? (As well as Twikkii Island and Takemizu Village.)

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nepheris.livejournal.com on August 10th, 2010 04:35 pm (UTC)

Thanks! :) I don't really play the other terrains, but felt that they were part of Maxis 'canon' as well so included them. I envision Downtown as part of SimCity, which on the map has four parts: North, East, South and West SimCity.
The reason I didn't put Strangetown right next to the other desert hoods was because I wanted it to be really remote, but in hindsight it makes much more sense to have them at least in the same sort of area.

I didn't include the colleges because there's no SC4 terrains of them, and Veronaville didn't really fit in anywhere with its weird canal thingie, and I was thinking more along the lines of America vs Europe, so it wouldn't be on the same continent. Same goes for Takemizu and Twikkii. But to be completely honest, I didn't really break my head over those problems either, and just left them out for convenience's sake. This map was made about a year ago after all, when I hadn't even heard of Megahoods :)

I'm far from happy with this version though and if I make a new one, I'll be definitely including the colleges and Veronaville, and I'm sure I could find a spot for Twikkii as well. Still unsure about Takemizu, though. I don't think I'd do it again in SC4, as it takes aaaages :p

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simstatenews.blogspot.com on August 10th, 2010 07:32 pm (UTC)
howdie

Glad to find others playing the Megahood also.

I have also drawn a map:
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_4-r0biimxBY/S5IZhhhC4XI/AAAAAAAABFY/9ug7lK39E1w/cats.jpg

On top of that, I stationed the headquarters of different career tracks in different sub-hoods, and forcing the sims to relocate if they live too far away from their jobs.

I am also using the visitor controller so the walk-bys are local residents. Sims will only meet sims from outside of their sub-hoods through their job connections, at community lots designated to specific hobbies, or by visiting downtown. Just to add a little more realism to the game-play.

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nepheris.livejournal.com on August 11th, 2010 07:20 am (UTC)
Re: howdie

Wow, that's really professional and realistic looking. I'm very impressed :)

Love how you've fleshed out all the hoods and given them each their own character, but still keeping true to the flavour EAxis gave them. I read all of them and could only think 'yup, makes perfect sense.'

I take it Mandala City is represented by Downtown? And what map did you use to show the layout of the hoods?

I use Pescado's (I think) local walkbys so I don't have vacation npc's running around in my hoods, but I didn't even know you could set the visitor controller to get such specific local walkbys. Thanks for that tip :)

I've also had a look at your blog - It's extremely well thought out and definitely a very interesting way to develop a neighborhood(s). I like the idea how having living, breathing, working cities (but am unfortunately too easily distracted to play that way myself :) )

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simstatenews.blogspot.com on August 11th, 2010 11:33 am (UTC)
Re: howdie

I cut the maps out of Google topo maps. The central one is actually the map of the greater Boston area, with the Boston harbor to the east.

Sims 2 is great because there are many possibilities of how one can play with it. At at end, it is really the human imagination outside of the game that breaths life into the animated characters.

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nobody-at-all-6.livejournal.com on August 11th, 2010 02:54 am (UTC)

De-lurking myself to answer this question, because it's always interesting to me how people imagine their SimWorlds.

I'm working on a story now that places the hoods in specific locations in the real-world USA. It was necessary because the story is historical fiction, but it worked out well and I like where I've put them. Pleasantview and Bluewater are in upstate New York; Strangetown is in the middle of nowhere in the New Mexico desert; Veronaville is in rural Ohio; Riverblossom Hills is waaay up in Maine; Desiderata Valley is in North Carolina somewhere near the coast; Belladonna Cove is in southern Washington.
Three Lakes, Takemizu Village, and Twikki Island are located in the places they stereotype: Canada, Japan, and Polynesia.

This means that the close proximity in the Megahood doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's either that or no interaction between the hoods at all.

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nobody-at-all-6.livejournal.com on August 11th, 2010 02:56 am (UTC)

Oh, and SimCity is New York City.

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nepheris.livejournal.com on August 11th, 2010 07:12 am (UTC)

I hadn't even thought of that, placing the hoods where they could fit in in our world. That's a really cool idea, I like it :) I'm not very familiar with the layout of the US (I'm a European myself) but from the little I know, those locations fit the hoods nicely.

I always thought Twikkii was supposed to be Hawaii myself, but I might be utterly wrong :)

It's really, really difficult to make the Megahood make sense in terms of proximity, especially if you want to translate it to real world geography and locations. I don't think there's really a place that has mountains, a desert and lush, temperate suburbs in close proximity to eachother.

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(Anonymous) on August 13th, 2010 11:21 pm (UTC)

actually...

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=&vps=1&jsv=265c&sll=34.18795,-117.886047&sspn=0.838353,1.783905&ie=UTF8&geocode=FYqYBwIdm77z-A&split=0

I live in a Los Angeles suburb and I'm about a half hour to an hour away from the beach, mountains and quite a lot of desert.

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nepheris.livejournal.com on August 14th, 2010 07:32 am (UTC)

That's awesome! Thanks very much for pointing that out, I had no idea :)

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selenecorvino.livejournal.com on August 16th, 2010 03:16 am (UTC)

Couldn't the Moon Islands be a pseudo Hawaii?

Love your placement of Belladonna Cove, Pleasantview, and Bluewater Village.

Here's a Google map of the real Sedona: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Sedona&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-Address&oe=UTF-8&rlz=1I7DKUS_en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Sedona,+AZ&gl=us&ei=LKxoTLmGGJD0tgP0qdH1DQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CCUQ8gEwAA

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nepheris.livejournal.com on August 16th, 2010 07:23 am (UTC)

There's a real Sedona? Lazy Maxis!

Thank you for the link :)

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llama-ramalon.livejournal.com on September 29th, 2010 01:16 am (UTC)

I've been lurking through your journal a little bit, and I just wanted to say that I love this idea so much! It never even occured to me to use SC4, and it sounds quite fun, if time consuming. :)

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llama-ramalon.livejournal.com on September 29th, 2010 01:16 am (UTC)

I should say, to use SC4 as such. :P

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