Lakeside village, from concept to reality!

I’ve used MagicaVoxel (a really cool little free (for now) app), to draft a concept of my next test, a lakeside city. The overall concept is simple (and not really new but as newbie I have to test it!), there will be only one access by land and all the city will be deployed around a small island where farming takes place.

Following a few shots to give you an a better idea on the work ahead (click to enlarge!):

(you may recognize what is the smallest construction at the end of that pier in the last pict… :wink: )

So why a mockup, why not go directly within SH?
First because I needed to put some construction rules and see if they do well on a larger scale. Spacings, wood structures, roofs, shadowing, how to do the piers… Well many details. So now it will be much easier to not do errors in SH.
Then because as we know, the actual construction process is pretty buggy, so to not lose a ton of time validating all the previous rules I’ve chosen to do that in an external app.

For a final nice city, I will need a few new objects like small boats and some others models to give a living touch. But those mods will come later if all goes well.
In the concept, only 9 constructions were done. Of course the city will need a lot more to gain it’s statut!

The first step now is to find a good map with plenty of water to dig out enough space… :grimacing:

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wow, you have certainly become proficient with the tool! the mock-up looks fantastic! :+1:

can’t wait to see how this translates into SH… :smiley:

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Because finding a perfect map for this project is kind of difficult, I will shape my own map! For this I need a vast plain and a lot of water on a high ground not too far. Finally, this map from @Boulderboy will be perfect, but instead of using this nice lake, I will drain it to the lower plain!

Here you can see the reservation work for the central island where farms and cattle will be:

So the next step is to clean the whole area and carve the big lake on 3 layers of soil only to get is the biggest possible.

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I actually had a hard time figuring out if those screenshots weren’t real (Still do in fact) especially with the close ups, reminds me of lego or something.

Good luck with the project, and maybe throw this up in a suggestion for spawnable npc towns or something.

Indeed! :smile:
These renderings are done in one click and a few seconds so definitively I find this app really nice! Too bad it don’t have the crucial multi layer needed to mod in SH… :unamused:

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The cleaning is done and below you can see the approximate final size even if it could be necessary to expand it a bit more after we get a better view with buildings around.

The next step (tomorrow) will be water but I’ll probably go little by little because from some anterior test I know the lua code don’t like too much data at once.

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New build so need to redo the previous step… :cold_sweat:

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I think I found a world seed that may work good for you, @Beatrice! Check out the lower right section. There are a ton of elevated lakes and fairly large area at plains elevation. You should be able to drain the higher water and flood a sizable area
Seed # 2036728054

Edit: I seem to be on a roll tonight! Centre area has a cluster of large and small lakes with a large plains directly below it Seed # 1904885834

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The second map seems really ok so I go test it right now! Tx a bunch!

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My pleasure (deep bow)

I’m eagerly waiting to see the town in all it’s glory! You do great work :slight_smile:

Beautiful City, enjoy building it. :blush:

Ok, back on tracks with a new cleaned up and bigger zone!

Now I will begin a few small steps to see if it will fill or not. Save/reload ahead! :laughing:

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All seems ok till now, water is coming in! (note the rectangular zoning to not stress to much the code with odd shapes)

And here is a x-ray view of the area with the conducts:

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I already bookmarked this post. Looking for the progress. Please keep posting and keep inspiring us! :smiley:

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Well, water, water, water…

I tried several things but water can be very strange. For example, with the same high grounded lake and two different methods to drain the water, in one case I can fill 1 (let’s say 1 is an area unit) and with the other method I can fill 5! With the first method, 4 units are lost somewhere… Really odd! :scream:

Anyway, @Albert told me the water code still need a lot of work so this project may came too soon and what I see isn’t really surprising…

So, for now the last save is stuck in some lua glue. The game is running but the UI is totally frozen, cannot do anything.

Here is a shot (day time with the moon… :astonished: ):

For now I’ve used almost half the water available to fill a quarter of the lake. That’s a problem, at best I think I can fill half of it and that’s definitively not enough for something called a “city”.

So what solutions do we have? Or we wait for post A12 build with some fresh water or I may try again on a smaller scale but then no more city and at best a village…

What do you say?

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I vote for the village :slight_smile:

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my vote also goes for the village, and perhaps when Water Part II is released you could try a city :smile:

I hope they will add the water generation with some pump or skill citizen :stuck_out_tongue: water is disign and good for defence :slight_smile:

Ok, definitively we will try out a village, so let’s change this title!

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The moment I saw this map I knew it was meant for you, @Beatrice .

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Proportions:

The big picture:

Edit: If one could have the “regular building” level decreased by a level ( 5x4 ) i think you would get enough water to fill in a huge pool and could actually drain these lakes from the plain.

OK, let me try it.

Edit 2: 300 x 300 x 5 can be put underwater with the amount of water here.
I’m already getting all lakes together but have stacked 2700 game errors so far, water can be tough…

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